The First Hello

by Willa Okati

  Quiet in his head. All quiet.

  “Shawn,” Raleigh said, as hushed as the absence of memory.

  Shawn couldn’t answer. His mouth wouldn’t work any more than his hands, and he didn’t know what he would have said anyway. He didn’t know how to do this any more than he knew how to be gentle.

  But he knew what he wanted. Heat bloomed in the pit of his stomach, his groin. Want. Hunger. But to want and to take, those were two different things, and he—

  He—

  Raleigh twisted his wrist and captured the arm that’d caught him. Colors and sounds faded before they’d fully emerged, drawing a gasp from Shawn and a stumble from his feet. The storm in Raleigh’s aura dissipated fast as steam in the falling rain, as breaking clouds and cracked earth. “Shawn,” he said again. He lifted his left hand, not quite touching Shawn’s face with his fingertips. “You…”

  “Shawn! Hey, Shawn? Are you up there?”

  Gabrielle. Shawn’s fingers flexed open. He let go and took two steps back, eyes stinging hot from not blinking.

  Raleigh followed him. “Shawn.”

  Shawn brought up an arm, crossways over his chest. He couldn’t see Gabrielle, but she sounded close. “Not in front of her.”

  He watched the argument fight itself in Raleigh’s face, finishing with the shutters coming down and his lips pressed into a line. “Not in front of her,” he agreed, every syllable reluctant. “But we’re not done here. Understand?”

  Shawn swallowed. He forced himself to nod and stepped back. Adrenaline washed through his limbs, making his knees weak. “Understood.”

  He pressed both hands to his face and took in three sharp, quick breaths. She couldn’t see him like this.

  By the time his sister had meandered her way around the corner, Shawn was back on his knees with his hands in the dirt, and Raleigh sitting up cross-legged, buried in his book. “There you are,” she said, stopping to put her fists on her hips. “Were you hiding?”

  Shawn snorted. The ordinary emotion was a relief so sweet after the ebbing rush of flustered frustration that he almost lost his balance. “Not too well, if you found me that easy.”

  “Asshole.” Gabrielle relaxed her pose long enough to flip him off, then spluttered when a skirl of wind from the sea blew her unbraided hair over her face. “Ack!”

  Raleigh’s laughter was, Shawn found, even more of a relief. “I think I’ve got some rubber bands in the kitchen if you need one.”

  “If you’ve got a knife or a pair of scissors, I’d rather have those,” Gabrielle grumbled. She double fisted her hair—it’d grown some since they’d come to the coast—and did something girly with the hanks, winding them around each other and tucking the ends under. The knot she made sat cockeyed on the top of her head, more to the left than the center, but she looked pleased as punch with herself. “There!”

  Shawn covered his mouth to keep from laughing. Raleigh didn’t hold back his chuckles. “Early Ragamuffin,” he said. “It’s a good look for you.”

  Normally, Gabrielle wouldn’t take well to comments on her appearance. With Raleigh, she only wrinkled her nose and pretended to glower. Though they hadn’t met often, she seemed to like him. As if they were old friends who hadn’t seen each other since they were kids but were getting to know one another again. A few bumps in the road, but more good than not. She didn’t seem to drift off half as much while he was around, either. Shawn would have appreciated his presence for that alone. “Says you. I can make it work for me.”

  “If ever there was anyone who could,” Raleigh agreed, too mildly to trust.

  She did look good, though, Shawn thought. Better than she had a few weeks ago. Color in her cheeks, life in her eyes, some solidity added to her little bird bones. The hollows under her eyes had filled out, and the points of her cheekbones no longer seemed as if they were trying to poke their way through the skin.

  Better, but not well. He had to remember that and not rely on hope. Hope didn’t go far without plenty of hard work, he’d found, and even if she hadn’t made herself truly sick again, it was still too frequent a thing, catching the smell of whiskey on her. Though Shawn didn’t pretend to understand how transfer of property really worked, enough money from the sale should hit his nearly empty bank account any day now. He’d been doing his homework slowly in the meantime, looking for a good place where Gabrielle could really get her head back in order.

  He tossed a clump of weed-bound dirt her way. “God help us all if the two of you join forces. What are you doing up here, anyway?”

  “Not that you’re not welcome to visit any time you want,” Raleigh butted in. He laid his pet book aside, covers neatly closed. His hands, folded in his lap, and a darker pink to his skin were the only hints that she’d interrupted anything. “But usually you have a reason.”

  “What?” Gabrielle’s hair began to slide out of its topknot. She blinked to bring herself back on track. “Oh. Right. Lunch. Did you have it yet? Because I brought you sandwiches, if you didn’t.”

  Shawn blinked. “We have sandwich stuff?” Peanut butter, maybe, but anything else? Not likely.

  “We have sandwich stuff,” she said, beaming. “BLT. Really good bacon too. Peppery.”

  Shawn knew they didn’t have that. He dusted off his hands, already frowning in concern. “Gabrielle…”

  “Shawn,” she mimicked him. “I found a few bucks in an old pocketbook. They smelled like mothballs, so I don’t think whoever they belonged to is going to come back for them, and I thought, why not?” She dug her hands into her pockets to fish out the wrapped sandwiches with choppy frustration. “It’s not stealing if it got left behind, okay?”

  “Take it easy, Gabrielle.” Shawn held up both hands. “I didn’t say that.”

  She lifted her head high and threw one of the packets at him. It bounced off his shoulder. “You were thinking it. God! Would you just stop?”

  “Shawn,” Raleigh said, his quiet voice calm but firm. “Gabrielle. Enough, both of you. Shawn, she was trying to do something nice. Say thank you like a grown-up. Gabrielle, you know your brother worries, that’s all. He’s not mad. It’s just hard to tell sometimes.”

  If he’d wanted to stop them in their tracks, he’d succeeded. Gabrielle stared at the man, while Shawn genuinely could not decide whether he wanted to punch Raleigh for that, or kiss him. Maybe both. Looked like Gabrielle couldn’t make up her mind either, but she huffed and shook her hair free of the temporary knot, and then settled. “Mind your own business.”

  “When it’s not bickering on my property, sure, no problem,” Raleigh retorted, a hint of that wicked grin playing around his lips. “Gabrielle? I love BLTs. Thank you. And for the record? No, I don’t think it’s stealing. The last woman to live in that house died in 1983. You might want to check and see if any of the coins are valuable before you stick them in a drink machine, but otherwise, with my blessing.”

  “Hmph!” she said, looking fiercely pleased. “Thank you.”

  Shawn rubbed at the bridge of his nose. And to think he’d been proud of himself for not rifling through the old wishing fountain after all. Might as well have gone in there with a scoop. Fuck. And—he liked BLTs, sure, but he’d always been fond of the peanut butter and jelly they could afford on their own. Used to fix them for her using the armrest in that old station wagon as a makeshift table. Jelly got everywhere except in their mouths whenever they hit a bump in the road, and he knew firsthand how peanut butter never washed out.

  “Yeah,” he said at last, when he knew they were both waiting for him to speak. “Thank you. But I can take care of myself.”

  Meaning, she didn’t have to. Meaning, it was his job to take care of her.

  Neither meaning being the one that she took away. Gabrielle scowled at him and deliberately turned her back to walk away without saying good-bye or even another word to Raleigh.

  Raleigh watched her go. “That could have gone worse. I’m not sure how, but if I think, I can probably come up
with one or two ways.”

  Shawn’s temper prickled. “She’s my sister.” My responsibility. “Stay out of it.”

  “Can’t. She brought it to me.”

  Always with the quick replies. Shawn gritted his teeth before answering. “You shouldn’t have given her permission to take whatever she finds.”

  “Why not?” Raleigh honest to God didn’t look as if he understood. His eyebrows drew together as he sat up, and the book slipped off his lap. “Anything she could lay her hands on is mine to give away, now, and what’s the harm?”

  The harm? What if she finds enough to buy junk from whoever it was that sold it to her here? was what Shawn thought. But he clenched his fists and said nothing. Out loud. He’d never told Raleigh anything about Gabrielle’s troubles. She wouldn’t have wanted him to. She wouldn’t say, but he thought she liked someone knowing her as just a person, not a set of problems.

  Shawn had too.

  But Raleigh still didn’t get it. Shawn could tell he didn’t. But neither was he willing to let it go like a normal person would. “No, enough of that. Either tell me what I did wrong so I know how to fix it, or—”

  He slid forward, reaching for Shawn, and—

  * * * *

  “No. Not like this.” His lover’s hand clamped tightly, too tightly, around his wrist and wouldn’t let go.

  Stiofain pulled anyway. “You’re hurting me.”

  “And you’re killing me.” He could see the whites of his lover’s eyes, though the rest of him was lost to shadow, as if the world had been swallowed by a cloud. “Why? That’s all I want to know. Just tell me why?”

  “Tell you why?” Stiofain shook his head. The hand that held him belonged to an old man. So did his arm. Both of them, neither of them as young as they had been. He could see the gray in his lover’s hair, far more gray than gold, and more frost than silver in his own. His bones ached when he moved, a bone-deep ache throbbing away like bad teeth in his knees, his hips.

  And this was them when they were lucky.

  He pried his lover’s hand loose, one finger at a time, with knuckles gone knobby from age. Didn’t work. Every one he pried free, another clamped down. “Stiofain, please,” his lover begged. The soft-hard rasp of a palm worn rough with calluses cupped his cheek. “If you’re leaving me, then tell me why.”

  “Who said I was leaving you? Growing old together. That’s what we’re doing.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” There was a staircase behind him, golden-mellow wood, that dug mercilessly into Stiofain’s back when his lover pushed him forward, hard against it. “I’m not talking about this life. I’m talking about the next.”

  God. Stiofain had known he would figure it out. He’d hoped, but… He shook his head, then changed his mind and pressed his cheek into his lover’s palm. “I can’t be alone again. Don’t you get that?”

  He could see the confusion written in the lines on his lover’s forehead, though he couldn’t see the man’s eyes. “But I find you. Every time, I find you, or you find me.”

  No. He had to stand fast. “And before you find me? And after you’ve gone? I can’t. Not again. Don’t ask it of me.”

  That one sank home. He could see it. “You’re telling me you’d think it was better not to find me at all? Stiofain, no.” His lover leaned into him, a hand on his chest now, over his old, old heart. “I wouldn’t be able to live without you.”

  “You could try.” Stiofain turned his head. His heart beat too quickly, out of sync beneath his lover’s hand. “You’re going to have to try. I tell you, I can’t do this again, and I won’t.”

  “It can’t be broken,” the man protested, angry now—and alarmed, beginning to believe Stiofain now. “There’s nothing either of us can do to stop the wheel from—”

  Stiofain looked up, at his lover’s face, trying to memorize it through the smoke that clouded his vision. It was his eyes, he realized. Old man’s eyes, clouded and filmed with cataracts. He could barely make out his lover’s shape. “Isn’t there?” he asked. “If I never found you at all, that would be the end of it. If I didn’t remember you, I would be safe. I could do it, if I chose. Don’t tell me there’s nothing, Ra—”

  * * * *

  “Shawn!”

  He didn’t remember stumbling forward, but Shawn sure as hell knew when he hit the dirt. Knees first, sinking in the newly loosely turned soil, too soft for balance, pitching forward to scrape his palms on the rough unweeded patch beyond. He hissed in pain.

  Raleigh knelt beside him, one hand warm and sturdy on his back. “What was that?”

  Shawn blinked at him, shaking his head. “What?”

  “Don’t play dumb. You know exactly what I mean, Shawn.” Raleigh kept that hand steady on Shawn, rubbing at the skin. “You turned white as a sheet and pitched over. Vertigo like that is nothing to play around with. Tell me these things. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on. Is this sandwich she brought the only food you’ll have gotten today?”

  Shawn’s stomach rumbled in answer, and humiliation clamped his mouth shut. He sucked for breaths of the cold, salty-tasting air. “Forgot breakfast, is all,” he said stiffly. “Just give me a minute.”

  “Uh-huh.” Raleigh let go of him at last, too soon. “Why don’t I believe you?”

  Probably because you have more than two grains of sense to rub together. “I’m fine,” Shawn lied. He wanted very much to take Raleigh’s hand in his and to make sure it was a young man’s hand, not gnarled with arthritis and freckled with age spots.

  But he didn’t. Because that made no fucking sense, and it was bad enough that the episodes were eating his head. They didn’t get the right to chomp up the rest of his life in big hungry bites.

  He put his arms out to push Raleigh away. “Leave it alone, or I fucking swear, Raleigh.” To his horror, his voice broke down the middle. “God, Raleigh. Please, just…”

  Raleigh said nothing. He didn’t move, but he didn’t speak.

  And when it went on too long, Shawn took a rattling breath and looked up into the face of an angry, angry man.

  Who held Shawn’s shoulder fast in one hand, took Shawn’s chin hard in the other, and raised his head with a jerk.

  “You’re lying to me,” Raleigh said. And kissed him.

  Chapter Six

  “Do you never forget?” Céin asked his lover, once upon a time. “Do you ever wish you had made a different choice?”

  “Never,” his lover replied. “Not even once. I always remember. How could I not? You are in my heart.”

  The shock of being kissed held Shawn fast for the first beat, the moment when—if it had been anyone else—he would have bolted from them. Maybe after introducing his knuckles to their jaw. Maybe not.

  Raleigh held him hard, though. No chance of slipping the ties he bound. And his mouth…

  His mouth. Shawn inhaled Raleigh’s breath on his startled gasp as Raleigh moved his mouth against Shawn’s, skin soft, chin tight, demanding that Shawn part his lips to let Raleigh in. One arm went around Shawn, bringing him closer.

  Shawn could feel the pounding of the man’s heart rattling his rib cage, playing the bones.

  “What—” he asked, his mouth tingling as if he’d tasted a splinter of lightning.

  But Raleigh wouldn’t let him speak. He backed them up, kiss first, flush against the tree he’d laid himself out to read under. The bark rasped roughly at Shawn’s back as Raleigh tilted his head to the left, almost too far—an ungentle touch—and came in again, bending Shawn’s neck in a tight arch with the hardness of his kiss.

  Shawn knotted his fist in the back of Raleigh’s coat, suede soft and wool rough. Raleigh’s tongue slipped deep, stroking against the roof of Shawn’s mouth. He kneaded Shawn’s biceps, sculpting him into the shape of need. To be kissed like this was like swan diving into the eye of a hurricane. It’d kill him, but only when it ended.

  And when it was too much—not before—he broke away with a spli
ntering force nearly tangible on Shawn’s roughed-up mouth. He blinked his eyes open, stunned and startled, to be caught by Raleigh’s hard stare from bare inches away.

  “I know you’re lying to me,” he said. “I know you’ve been lying to me since the day we met. Don’t lie to me again and tell me that’s not so.” He was hard, pressed against Shawn.

  Shawn only realized then that he was too, stiff and aching. His mouth was dry as weathered cotton, his throat sore as if holding back a shout or a moan. “I wasn’t—”

  Raleigh’s big, warm hands wrapped around his elbows. He rattled Shawn’s cage, though he shook him only lightly, but tightly. “Don’t. Just don’t. I’ve been trying, Shawn. You have no idea how I’ve been trying. I thought we were starting to be friends.”

  “We are,” Shawn protested, stung into defending himself, and that wasn’t a lie. He liked Raleigh. In his way, which was the way of someone who didn’t have friends, who didn’t know how to be a friend, but who wanted to try.

  He took Raleigh by the nape and clumsily, awkwardly, but with his whole heart, thrust up onto tiptoes and pressed his mouth to Raleigh’s.

  And Raleigh kissed back. Only for a second. Nowhere near long enough.

  “Shawn, God.” Raleigh let go slowly, withdrawing into a statue of a man. All hard and cold, except for the eyes and the pain deep within them. Heartbroken kind of pain. Shawn didn’t understand, and Raleigh wasn’t sharing. “Don’t do that unless you mean it the way I want you to, and you don’t.”

  “But I—”

  “No.” Raleigh had made up his mind now, and he was as far out of reach as the stars. “You’re playing with fire, Shawn, but you’re not ready to burn. Not yet.”

  Shawn’s mouth dropped open. Indignation, frustration, six of one and a half dozen of the other, and both kept him silent as Raleigh turned his back and walked away, up the stairs and into the house, the kitchen screen door slamming shut behind him.