The First Hello

by Willa Okati

  “But…it’s not like that, for you and—” Shawn’s lips refused to shape the word me. “You and him.”

  Raleigh noticed that. He sighed. “You and me, Shawn. We’re born, we live, we meet, we die, and the cycle turns again. As soon as my brain is capable of rational thought, I start to see you in my dreams. A thousand lives’ worth of dreams. Then I come to realize in the waking world who you are to me, and me to you. I remember. Every now and then we get lucky and we’re neighbors, or our parents are friends, but mostly I go looking for you.”

  Shawn kept quiet. He didn’t know what to say, but honest to God he didn’t think Raleigh was even capable of hearing him now if he tried. His gaze had gone faraway and pensive again, looking back over— God. Millennia. If he wasn’t just crazy. And he might be, he might…

  Only the thing was, Shawn didn’t believe that anymore. All he had to do was look at Raleigh to see the ages weighing down on his shoulders. But he could only believe for Raleigh. For himself—it still didn’t fit. The pieces slid against each other without locking together.

  “And then I find you. I remember the life we had in this house,” Raleigh mused aloud. Shawn could almost feel the tick in his jaw and saw the pink deepening in his skin. “The first time we were in bed together, then. I remember the way you looked lying on your back beneath me, opening your body, your mind, and then your face when it all came rushing in… You don’t always look the same. Genetics and regional variance play their part. But I know you. There’s always something about you that’s a reminder. Your hands. Your smile. The way you look after the ones you care about.” He pushed himself back slightly from the table to lean against the tall ladder back of his chair, looking directly at Shawn again. “Up until now, it’s been the same for you.”

  Shawn narrowed his eyes. There was something to the way he’d said that last bit… “Always?”

  “Mostly,” Raleigh said after a visible struggle with himself. “It isn’t as easy for you as it is for me. You don’t usually know I’m coming before I find you. And…it seemed like it was getting harder for you, the last few times. But it did happen in the end. Sometimes almost at the beginning, once my being there, or even just starting to search, triggered the memories you’ve seen inside your head.”

  Shawn dropped the corner of bread he’d picked up. His heart kicked against his ribs from the inside. “What?”

  “The episodes you keep having,” Raleigh said, utterly unmoving. Not cruel but kind, and that felt cruelest of all. “They’re memories, Shawn. I’d stake my life on it. Your subconscious is trying to make you see the truth, but whatever went wrong this time around won’t let it happen.”

  “Jesus.” Shawn covered his mouth with the heel of one hand. “No. That’s not how it is.”

  “Isn’t it?” Raleigh had no mercy. “Tell me about the man in your dreams.”

  Shawn startled himself, and Raleigh, by striking the table with his fist. “I don’t know. I don’t know his name. I’ve never even seen his face!”

  “Because you never asked, or you didn’t want to know? And there’s Gabrielle. Does it happen to her too? I see her phase out every now and then.”

  “Damn it, Raleigh!” Shawn wanted, so much, to stand up and walk away, but God help him, he couldn’t even move his legs. Gabrielle wasn’t like that. What was wrong with her—depression, addiction—it ran in the family. It wasn’t done to her. He’d fight Raleigh over that out loud, only every bit of him had gone numb with shock, with dismay, with both. “Stop.”

  Raleigh didn’t hear him. He watched Shawn’s hands, not his face. “I think they would call it dissociative disorder these days. When you’d swear the memories inside your head aren’t your own, so strongly that you don’t believe in them. I had almost given up, you know? I’d been looking for you for so long, and I couldn’t find even a hint of where you might be. I searched everywhere. All the places I knew we’d been together. Here.” He raised one shoulder. “Nothing. When Miss Anna died, I thought that the best I could do was hope you would find me. That you’d come back here. And if nothing else, I’d have the book.” He rubbed his face with both hands before lowering them to the table. “And then, this roughneck without a winter coat yelled at me for sneaking around on his property, and I knew. But you didn’t. And here we are.”

  The knell of finality rang at the end of his words. And Shawn—

  He wanted to believe. He didn’t. He touched his mouth and felt his lips twitch, searching for something to say.

  Raleigh watched him. Patient but so, so tired. Knowing he hadn’t gotten through.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Shawn said at last. “If they—the men you think are us—loved each other so much, why would it be like this?” He laid his hands on the table, palms up in frustration. “How could it be like this now?”

  “I don’t know that, Shawn. I wish I did.” Raleigh touched the side of Shawn’s hand, just barely, with the tips of his fingers. “I have a feeling that would be the answer to more than one question.”

  Shawn took a breath. The fire in the hearth was too warm now, making his skin flush and prickle from the heat. “And if I don’t believe you, even now? What then?”

  “Nothing,” Raleigh said. “Nothing, in full. That’s all I can see for it. Maybe trying again.”

  Shawn wasn’t a smart man, but he knew what that meant. His head came up sharply. “Don’t you goddamn dare think about that.”

  Raleigh shook his head. “Why not? Finding you is what my lives are about. Without that, without you, I don’t… I wouldn’t do it on purpose.” He took Shawn’s hand and turned it over, tracing the lines on his palm as if he found them fascinating. “I think it’d just happen. Whether I wanted it or not. The seasons turn, Shawn. That’s how it works. You say you can’t accept what I’m telling you. If that’s so, then why do you want to believe?”

  “Because whatever else they were, those guys in your book, they did love each other,” Shawn said in a burst. “They were happy. This was home. I don’t know what that feels like. I never have. And…” He bit fiercely at the inside of his cheek but managed to keep his head held high, begging Raleigh to understand. “If I could, I would be that for you. Because you’re worth it. Because you’re the good man here. And that fucking terrifies me, okay? Because there is no one else like that for me. Ever.”

  He stopped. Raleigh had fallen still, gazing at him like a—a starving man. Like he was water in the desert. A terrible, terrible hope.

  “I’m sorry,” Shawn said, sitting back in a slump of shoulders and deflating anger. “It’s not much.”

  “Don’t say that.” Raleigh reached across the table to take his hand—both his hands—and pull him back. He knotted their fingers together and pulled again to bring Shawn to his feet, a little wobbly and off balance, but didn’t let him fall. He didn’t let go as he edged around the table, and didn’t stop until he held Shawn’s hands pressed tightly between both their chests. “I’m going to kiss you now. All right?”

  Shawn’s eyes fell shut. “God, yes,” he said on lips parting for the touch of Raleigh’s mouth on his, warm and firm and enough to drown out the rest of the world. Kissing him back, because he didn’t know how to say I’m sorry or thank you or help me.

  Raleigh heard him anyway. Put his big, warm arms around Shawn and held him tight, one hand at his back and one buried in his hair. Taking without asking, giving what Shawn needed, and it made him want, even more, to believe.

  “It’s strange,” he said. “Every time a life ended, when I closed my eyes, I remember how I’d think of you. How glad I’d be to see you again soon, young and healthy. It didn’t seem so hard to say good-bye when I knew it was only a pause before the first hello.”

  Shawn couldn’t listen to that. Not and keep it together. He squeezed his eyes shut. Stop.

  Raleigh wasn’t hard, or at least not all the way, not yet, but getting there fast. Shawn could feel it, pressed against his leg. Getting stiff, getting thicker, lo
nger, hotter. Himself too. Riding up on Raleigh’s thigh like trying to climb a ladder, just once to see what happened, and again when Raleigh broke his kiss in a startled gasp that made Shawn’s chest go supernova. Now it was his turn to take Raleigh by the nape and to pull him down, to rut against him and drag their bodies tight together.

  “Stop,” Raleigh said—though he didn’t stop. He readjusted his hold on Shawn and buried his face at Shawn’s throat, kissing him sharp and quick and openmouthed from the junction of his shoulder to the pulse below his ear. “Almost threw you on the table.”

  Shawn made a sound that even to him rang desperate, and hitched his hips higher. He wouldn’t mind the table.

  “Too much stuff on there, Shawn. Unless you want soup in your hair,” Raleigh said, almost laughing now and nearly tender in the way he pushed Shawn’s hair back. Nearly, but then with a rasping drag of breath and a push forward that Shawn could only answer by trying to wrap his leg around Raleigh’s. He wasn’t a small guy, just skinny, and he thought Raleigh could do it. “Here. Like this.”

  Shawn didn’t understand, not at first, but what Raleigh had in mind came clear when Raleigh set him down on both his feet, took him by shoulders and waist, and turned him around to face the old, old timbers that made up the walls of the house. Standing close and tight behind Shawn, he caught both Shawn’s wrists in one hand and lifted them over his head. Held them in place on the wall long enough for Shawn to get the idea and to make some sort of moan in response. When he did, Raleigh rewarded him with a rough bite that almost broke the skin, and would leave a bruise. God, he was hard. Shawn canted his hips backward to grind his ass against Raleigh’s cock and to make him hiss with sensation.

  “Like this,” Raleigh said, hands at Shawn’s belt. “Just like this. That okay?”

  It wasn’t fair play. He gave up on the belt almost as soon as he’d started, and used both hands at Shawn’s hips to slide his jeans far enough down for room to work. He must have given himself the same treatment. Shawn heard a muted jangle of unfastening suspender clips, and then Raleigh’s cock was pressed to his ass, bare and heated, slick with precum and the sweat of their bodies. Almost slipping into the cleft.

  “Like that. God, yes.” Shawn tried to turn his head to look back, wanting more of Raleigh’s mouth. Though his eyes had both gone blurry with lust and effort, and the angle wasn’t good for this, he could drink in his fill of the man if he worked at it. He tried a smile and was surprised at how easily it came. “Raleigh, God.”

  Raleigh dropped his head briefly to Shawn’s back. Must have taken his cock in hand, his strokes at the cleft of Shawn’s ass gaining speed, smoothness. “I remember one time we did it like this,” he said. Rasped, soft and raw sounding. “Vienna. I think it was Vienna, only it was before they called it that. We were—we had to be so quick and so quiet, but I couldn’t stop to care. And in Canada. Quebec. Behind a barn, in harvest season. And you looked at me, and you said…”

  Maybe he’d meant for that note of emptiness to fall. Maybe not. But it did, a soundless clanging bell full of nothing as Shawn opened his mouth but couldn’t fill in the blank. He closed it again, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Raleigh. I’m sorry.”

  He could see the flash of deep-down hurt in the man, and then the stubbornness. “Doesn’t matter,” Raleigh said. He put his head down hard to Shawn’s shoulder and slid his cock snugged tight to Shawn’s hole, still tender from before but his body so, God, so willing. He mouthed at Shawn’s neck, over the tendons Shawn knew must stand out tight and hard. “Doesn’t matter.”

  But it did. He knew it. Shawn knew it too.

  Shawn shut his eyes and knotted his fists where his palms had lain flat against the wall. If I don’t mention it, then maybe, maybe, maybe…

  “Damn it,” Raleigh said. He was still hard, and his body shook with the effort of it, but he stilled. “God-fucking-damn it, Shawn. Stop.”

  Shawn shook his head. For all the good it did. He could feel his own cock faltering, starting to lose its edge. “No, come on…”

  The warmth of Raleigh’s breath on his neck went cooler, escaping him in a long sigh. “I can’t. You can’t look at me and believe, and I can’t touch you and think it’s not supposed to be like this. It’s like trying to kiss a shadow when I know, I know…” He dropped his head. His fists drove gently home at the wall on either side of Shawn, still boxing him in, and he made a noise that was next-door neighbor to a swallowed scream but came out a ragged, choked-off yell. “Are you sure you still want to call me a good man?”

  “No,” Shawn said. “Yes. I don’t know. I’m trying, Raleigh, I—” He stopped himself, feeling the old familiar sting settle deep beneath his skin. “But that’s not enough. Is it?”

  “I want it to be,” Raleigh said. “I thought it could be. I…”

  “Don’t.” Shawn shook his head. He drove his elbow backward, not as hard as he wanted to, and dragged his jeans back up his hips. Wasn’t too difficult. His balls ached with a sullen throb, but his cock had gone as soft as Raleigh’s by then. “It hurts you. Doesn’t it?”

  He could hear Raleigh setting his own jeans to rights, slowly and far more clumsily than usual in his movements. “Yes,” he said after far too long, grudging but honest. Shawn could hear the truth of it in his words. “It hurts. It breaks my heart, Shawn. It’s too much. I understand now. And I wish…”

  “Don’t,” Shawn said a second time. Emptiness had begun to fill the hollow left behind when the need for Raleigh’s cock in him faded away. It hadn’t disappeared, but it had drowned beneath everything else. He’d known this would happen. Good things didn’t last. Not for him. He’d known it, and he had no one to blame but himself. “I don’t want to hear you say it.”

  He thought Raleigh wanted to argue. All the tension had to go somewhere. Instead, he backed away three steps, giving Shawn room enough to get free. If he wanted. “I wish I knew what I must have done to you before, to make this all happen,” Raleigh said. “Who I pissed off. I must have. Or maybe if it’s just breaking down. Everything does, in the end. All things cease to be. And I think that maybe…”

  The pain written on Raleigh’s face made Shawn’s heart hurt. He couldn’t look at the man, but he could and did lay one hand on Raleigh’s shoulder and one over his heart and shake him just once. “Don’t.”

  “Fuck.” Raleigh took another step back, and another that carried him out of arm’s reach. He seemed to be as old as every one of his years when he looked at Shawn, bereft of any drop of hope now. “So what happens next, Shawn Tillerman? What are you going to do now?”

  Wasn’t that the question? Shawn scrubbed hard at his face with both hands until the friction of it stung, a sharp and welcome pain. “I don’t know,” he said. “God help me, Raleigh Carter. I don’t know.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Are you sure you want to do it this way?”

  Shawn shifted his weight in the office chair set before Della’s desk. He’d started to become familiar with its quirks by now—how it wobbled just slightly on the back left if he leaned the wrong way, and the tiny pick in the upholstery on the right arm, where restless hands might worry at the design. He made himself fall still before nodding, then answering out loud. “It’s how it has to be.”

  Della, seated on the business side of the desk, had folded her hands beneath her chin to watch Shawn far more closely than his comfort allowed for. The concern in her face, her voice, her posture, only made this harder. She didn’t say anything, but pressed her lips together and furrowed her forehead.

  Shawn knew the tactic. Keep quiet, so others will rush in with words to fill the empty space. He knew better than to rise to it but did anyway. “I can’t work with him. He knows that. It was his idea.”

  “Was it?” Della asked.

  Shawn raised one shoulder and resisted the urge to fidget further. “Close enough.”

  Hadn’t Raleigh as good as told Shawn to go and not come back, so long as he couldn’t accept
what he called the truth? And Shawn couldn’t. Just couldn’t. Even when he tried, he ran up against a solid wall of doubt in his head that wouldn’t yield to tooth or nail.

  “And I want to do it right,” Shawn said, looking up, away from the pick in the upholstery, at Della. “To terminate my agreement to do the work on the house myself. However it’s worded. I don’t know if there are papers for that, but if there are—”

  “Not exactly.” Della shook her head, just barely. She looked like he’d disappointed the hell out of her. What else was new? “I don’t think Raleigh is the kind of man who would sue you for breach of contract, Shawn, and since he hasn’t yet, I don’t expect to see any termination notices. What you propose is just ceasing to be there.”

  Shawn winced. He didn’t care for that way of putting it, but—wasn’t it true? “He can’t say I didn’t at least try.”

  “No. I doubt he’d do that, either.” Della shook her head, finally looking away from him as she stood and walked toward the window. She was slow without her cane, but her head held high with dignity. Shawn couldn’t help but watch her while she lifted the corner of the blinds to look out at the sea. “I know him as well as he thinks I do, though he’s a gentleman for not pushing his luck or pestering a woman who’s lived her life and wants to see some happy endings in her silver years. Do you know, the weather was exactly like this the day they laid the cornerstone at the old house?”

  Shawn frowned.

  “Fog rolling in off the sea,” Della said, still watching out the window. “So thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Like breathing inside a cloud. I remember it well.”

  Oh. Shawn’s heart sank. “Della…”

  Della ignored his interruption as capably as Raleigh would have. “There’s a story about it, you know. The day these two gentlemen laid eyes on each other and every breath of fog blew away. It would have been something to see.” She raised one eyebrow in a pointed arch. “Or so the story goes.”