Glass Tidings

by Amy Jo Cousins

  Don’t be stupid. He won’t need extra help, or extra stock, when people stop shopping.

  But Gray hadn’t known anything about Eddie being a glassworker or low on funds when he’d first offered to put Eddie up for a while. So it could be that Eddie’s sticking around wasn’t really just because Gray needed help in his shop.

  Maybe the man was lonely. Maybe he didn’t have any friends either.

  Eddie had never met anyone who spent as little time on his cell as he himself did. But Gray hadn’t pulled his phone out once in Eddie’s sight. In fact, Eddie couldn’t vouch that the man had a cell, although obviously that was a completely insane idea. Everybody had an iPhone or an Android, even antisocial bastards like Eddie.

  Stop it. You’re just making shit up now, wishing you’d found yourself some lonely gay guy who’d fall on his knees and suck your dick because he’s so lonely. You got resisted plenty easy last night.

  Not that Gray hadn’t been tempted. Eddie wasn’t an idiot. He could hear a breath catch, feel the sudden squeeze of wanting hands on his arms, as good as anyone. Better than most, probably, because he paid attention. Noticing shit like that mattered. He’d seen that Gray hadn’t known where to let his eyes stop, flicking them up, down, side to side. From Eddie’s mouth to his dick to the skinny trail of hair that ran south from his belly button. Gray’s gaze kept returning to Eddie’s like he was only safe there.

  Like maybe Gray didn’t have anyone in his life to look at naked and he was trying to get enough of Eddie in one go to tide him over for the next rest-of-his-life.

  Seriously. Don’t be a fucking dumbass.

  Plus, Gray had brought him back to the house after midnight and had left for the shop at 8 a.m. Normal people probably didn’t spend much time between midnight and breakfast on their phones. That didn’t mean a thing. Guy probably had a million friends and a boyfriend who’d be over for dinner later and glaring at the sketchy stranger on the premises.

  Good times.

  Boredom pushed him to dire lengths. He looked up the closing time of Gray’s shop online, googling Christmas shop and Clear Lake. Six o’clock. The shop was one point seven miles away from Gray’s house according to the GPS on his phone.

  He spent a good half hour on that website, mostly getting more and more irritated that there was so little information on it. The photo on the landing page showed a storefront that looked like a gingerbread house had been plopped in the middle of downtown Americana.

  Fucking adorable.

  He hadn’t noticed if Gray had driven off in a car or walked to the shop, but it was definitely walkable. Eddie teased himself with the urge to lace up his shoes and stroll on down to Grayson’s shop like he was anyone else in the world, just out for a brisk walk and a bit of shopping.

  In the end, he settled for draining his bank account ordering a bunch of borosilicate glass rods, and trying to figure out what he could scrounge out of Gray’s near-empty cupboards and fridge that would make a decent dinner. Searching through drawers and cabinets, Eddie had come across very little useful foodstuff, but some seriously fifties ruffled aprons. The urge to put one on while he sliced the half-sprouted potatoes he’d found into thin circles was irresistible.

  Until he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on a trip to the bathroom as he washed his hands in the sink.

  Fuuuck no.

  In the kitchen, he ripped off the apron and stuffed it back into the hell drawer where he’d found it.

  The Borg. Only explanation.

  By the time his host with the most got home from work, Eddie was regretting to the bottom of his soul the entire “make dinner for the breadwinner” thing anyway.

  Too Leave It to Beaver for words.

  But, too late. Plus, he was seriously hungry.

  “Is that a . . . quiche?” Gray asked, standing awkwardly in the kitchen doorway.

  “Sort of.” The confused look on Gray’s face told him the thick slab he’d sliced for Gray as soon as he’d heard the front door opening wasn’t matching up with the vision of a soft flatbread Gray no doubt had in his head. There hadn’t been anything he could use for a crust, but his favorite recipe website had offered the Spanish dish as an alternative. “It’s Spanish and . . . pretty much a quiche, yeah. You can make it in a frying pan. Eggs, potatoes, onions. I added some cheese.”

  After he’d cut off the moldy bits.

  He was babbling. Nervous, which wasn’t exactly unlike him, but normally Eddie kept those nerves buried deep in his stomach where the acid didn’t show. He’d put a small salad on each plate too, although the lettuce in Gray’s fridge had been, frankly, limp.

  Gray moved to the edge of the small kitchen table, touching the plate, the folded napkin, the silverware Eddie had laid out after looking up on his phone which was the right side for the fork. That was one of those things he knew he’d been taught as a kid at the home, but it had been so long since he’d eaten anywhere proper place settings mattered he kept doubting himself, even though it turned out in the end he’d done it correctly.

  There was the formal dining room, of course, but that whole thing had been way too intimidating. Not to mention, if he’d set up their plates in there, he’d have needed to search for the fancy plates and silver he was sure Gray had somewhere, which seemed like a great way to make himself look like he was scouting for shit to steal, no matter how many times Gray told him he didn’t think Eddie was a thief.

  Gray, who was staring at Eddie now like he’d sprouted two heads.

  “You made me dinner?”

  Eddie’s face was warm. When had it gotten so hot in there? “It’s no big deal.”

  “I don’t even have groceries,” Gray said faintly, staring from the pan on the stove to the plated meal on the table and back again.

  “You had eggs. And potatoes. And some other stuff.” Jesus. Gray was going to kick him to the curb in another minute, once he realized Eddie had spent the entire day playing house, pretending he knew what it was like to have a real boyfriend and not a guy who locked himself in a room and got high all day.

  “I did?”

  Or maybe Gray wasn’t.

  Eddie couldn’t take the surprised-slash-grateful-slash-melty look on Gray’s face for another second. “Sit. Eat.”

  So they did.

  Cleanup after dinner was easy with both of them working silently together. Eddie meant to provide some casual banter, to make things less weird, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Which was strange as fuck, because Eddie’s entire lifestyle pretty much depended on him being able to force himself to get along with total strangers despite his every introverted urge to retreat to an empty corner and make like a mime. A mime who read books and didn’t entertain anyone.

  “You can borrow a coat if you want,” Gray said out of the blue while drying his hands on the cheerful red towel hanging from the refrigerator handle.

  “Borrow?” Eddie was confused. Did Gray mean to lend him a coat for the trip to Texas, because it was still snowing from here south to almost Oklahoma?

  A tiny pain plucked at his chest at the idea of getting dropped off—because surely Gray would give him a ride, he was that kind of nice guy—at the bus station in the early morning hours. Gray would probably make him a cup of tea in a travel mug and tell him not to worry about shipping it back.

  “My car warms up pretty fast, and it’s only twenty minutes or so to Home Depot, but it’s cold out.”

  Eddie spun on his heel and turned his back to the room because it was so stupid that his eyes were watering at the realization that Gray was only talking about a trip to the store.

  “Cool.” He cleared his throat roughly. “No, I’m good.” If he were foolish enough to accept the offer, he’d probably end up doing something even dumber like pressing his face into the fabric and taking a big sniff, just because it smelled like the man behind him.

  Eddie didn’t know what had stripped off all of his skin, leaving him so raw to these emotional fucking roller
coasters. Maybe it was seeing Lily Rose almost die. Or being so deeply at a disadvantage with Gray after having just gotten kicked in the ass by letting himself get in the exact same position with Bertie. Whatever it was, he didn’t fucking like it. Not one bit.

  On Black Friday, he’d expected Home Depot, even late at night in the boonies, to be jumping. But the store was a ghost town, empty endcaps and bedraggled displays indicating the bargain shoppers had been through like locusts in the early hours of the sale.

  Eddie loved it.

  He hated it when people in stores shadowed him, asking what they could help him with or just staring at him. Eddie could usually figure out if sales people were pushing for commission or convinced he was there to steal something. Both options made him squirm, but if they were eyeing him for shoplifting, sometimes Eddie would hover too close to the shelves and make sure his hands drifted in and out of his pockets, trying to provoke them. He never stole anything. Ever.

  But it was fun as shit to yell at some security guard or store manager for insisting on giving him a pat down or emptying his pockets. Fuck them if they couldn’t believe he was in their store for any legit reason. He’d embarrass the hell out of them, because it made him feel less like shit about his own humiliation.

  All the late-shift workers at Home Depot had crap to do though. Stocking shelves or mopping floors or setting up new displays of a thousand different things. It was awesome. Eddie went up and down all the aisles, Gray followed him silently, checking out all the weird shit you had to get to make a house. All these aisles full of fiddly bits and random stuff turned Eddie’s fingers itchy with the need to make something. He knew how to weld, basically, and the hundred yards of pipe fittings and screwy bits practically begged to be turned into some kind of maze-spaceship-cyborg creation.

  Eventually he tore himself away from fantasies of becoming a reclusive yet rock-star-god-like sculptor and headed for the safety glasses and the gas tanks for his torch.

  Like you know anything about art. Ha.

  Thank god Gray couldn’t actually read his mind, no matter how uncanny his feel for Eddie seemed to be.

  Some shit was too embarrassing for words.

  Not until the cashier scanned the bar code on his new, super dorky and super safe, white-plastic-framed glasses with pink lenses did Eddie realize what he’d done.

  The intimidatingly high total amount due on the register screen was more money—way more money—than he had. And that didn’t even include the propane and oxygen tanks.

  He spun on one heel to face Gray and put his back to the cashier. Fuck if he was going to let her watch him humiliate himself.

  Gray was looking at him curiously.

  “I, uh, blew all my savings ordering boro rods this afternoon. The glass I need to make stuff.” He’d been sensible at first, ordering a basic rainbow assortment set of colored rods that would do for plain work. But then he’d scrolled through the fancier offerings, individual glass rods for sale that were made of colors that swirled and sparkled like a night sky full of the Milky Way or the stormy red and yellow clouds of Jupiter. He’d ordered a half dozen he couldn’t afford at all. Which was going to suck the big one if Gray laughed at him for being a total fucking idiot and told him to hit the road. Eddie literally didn’t have ten bucks left to his name.

  Nausea swamped his stomach. What the fuck was it about this guy, this town, that had him making such stupid fucking mistakes? He’d never let himself get stuck like this with anyone. Even with Bertie, Eddie hadn’t been so stupid as to put himself in this kind of vulnerable situation.

  “Fuck.” He pushed the box with the glasses at the cashier blindly. “I gotta get out of here.”

  Gray’s hand on his elbow was a steel bracelet. “Wait. I got it.”

  “No.” Knee-jerk. This wasn’t a con, a faked-up emotional act to nudge someone to do something they basically wanted to do anyway. He wasn’t in control enough to make this an act. This was just Eddie.

  Gray shook his arm. “Listen. It’s just . . . supplies. I order supplies all the time for the store.”

  “Supplies you can’t use?” Eddie scoffed, pulling against Gray’s hand, but not hard enough to force the man to let him go.

  Maybe he didn’t want to be let go. Yet.

  “Well . . . maybe I’ll find someone else local to do glass stuff for the store after you’re gone.” Gray’s voice was gruff. He cleared his throat. “You want the glasses when you leave, you can buy ’em off me. If not, I’ll keep them. They’re mine.”

  “I . . .” Eddie said and paused. God, he was so stupid to think this was maybe the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him. “Okay.”

  His face still burned while Gray paid for the fucking glasses.

  Eddie was going to make the best goddamn Christmas ornaments Gray had ever sold in his goddamn shop if it killed him.

  At the house, Gray led Eddie out the back door and down the driveway to a detached garage at the rear of the property. He pulled a key ring out of his pocket, unlocked the side door, then reached inside to flip a switch.

  “Can you work in here?”

  Eddie pushed past him and into the dimly lit space. Grimy windows circled the room along the ceiling, letting in a minimal amount of light. Gray left his car on the brick pavers of the driveway every night, so the space was almost entirely empty. A workstation ran along one side wall, with a pegboard bearing a scant handful of tools

  “I don’t keep much out here. Most of my tools are in the house.”

  “I can tell.” Eddie ran his hand along the workbench. Old wood, worn and hard. Unlikely to catch fire from stray sparks, but he’d feel more comfortable with a metal sheet plate clamped to the counter, just in case. And this light wasn’t gonna cut it. “You got a lamp or two I can borrow from the house?”

  “Sure. What do you think? Will it work?”

  “That door open?” he asked, gesturing at the big garage door.

  “Of course.”

  “I need ventilation. Breathing this shit is not good for you.”

  Gray’s eyebrows flew up. “It’s gonna get damn cold in here if you’ve got the garage door open.”

  “Better cold than full of cancer. Or, you know, dead.”

  “Shit. Should I be checking on you every so often, just to make sure you’re alive?”

  Now Eddie was the melty one. He’d worked for more than one shop on the circuit who bitched about his insistence on ventilation in his work space.

  “Nah. I’ll be fine,” he said, ducking his head. “And it’s good. That it’s separate from the house, I mean. Just in case of a fire.”

  Gray’s jaw clenched. “Is the garage going to burn down?”

  “No! I’m safe. I mean, I work safely.” Eddie stumbled over the words as he corrected himself. His brain supplied him with a bunch of extra, totally unnecessary words, filling the silence as Gray stared at him peculiarly. “In Venice, they made all the glassworkers move onto this separate island, like, a thousand years ago, so they wouldn’t burn the city down. Just saying. It’s good the garage is separate.”

  He was really ballparking those dates, man. History. Not his strong suit.

  Gray laughed. “Okay, then. At least the house is safe.”

  Worst. Houseguest. Ever. All Eddie wanted was to shut himself up in the garage and be embarrassed in peace. But, “Be a while before the glass gets here though.”

  “No problem. I’ve got plenty of work for you at the shop until then.” Gray shoved his hands deep in his coat pockets. “Speaking of which, I should go. To bed, I mean. Not to the shop.”

  “Right. Me too. Up early, huh?” He could probably leave his new safety glasses out here in the garage, but his hands didn’t want to let go of the bag yet.

  “Not as early as today,” Gray said, glancing away, reminding Eddie of how Gray had snuck in his room at dawn. “My weekend girl opens the store for me. We can go in at ten.”

  Of how Eddie had jumped out of bed buck naked and how G
ray had pretended not to notice, but totally had.

  “Right. So. Bed, then.”

  They’d both moved toward the door at the same time, then stopped, then started, doing that awkward you first dance until they were both smiling and staring goofily at the floor.

  Finally, Eddie went first, then felt Gray’s eyes on him all the way back to the house and up to the hall bathroom on the second floor where they both stopped and stood awkwardly close to each other.

  “See you in the morning,” Eddie said, his voice soft. Almost . . . inviting?

  Gray stared at his face, saying nothing.

  “Night,” he finally burst out before striding off to his bedroom and shutting the door.

  After using the bathroom, Eddie stopped in the hall to stare at the closed door to Gray’s room.

  This was going to be one hell of a Twilight Zone experience.

  Grayson’s shop was magic.

  Eddie could have spent his entire first day fondling the merchandise. The glass alone was mesmerizing. He recognized Gray’s instinctive lean toward the Germanic in the baskets and bins full of painted, glittered blown-glass balls and animals and Santas. Oh, those Santa Clauses were marvelous. There were painted versions of all different kinds of Saint Nick, from a kilt-wearing Santa with a set of bagpipes to one wearing a beret and carrying a baguette under one arm. Not exactly traditional figures, but fun as hell.

  After he pulled himself away from the glass, Eddie lost another chunk of time to the Christmas Village houses. He’d had to ask Gray what they were for, because the houses were charming—tiny details picked out by lifelike paint jobs and golden yellow lights glowing from some kind of interior wiring—but clearly too big to hang on a tree.

  “They’re for display. Or collecting. Some people like the unpainted ones, so they can use whatever colors they want, but lots of people just buy the finished ones to make their village bigger.” Gray’s voice was diffident, as if he couldn’t care less who bought his little houses, but his hands roamed over the display while he talked, nudging a giant British manor of a house into perfect alignment with the shelf edge, leaving room for a toy-sized Rolls-Royce in front. “The Downton Abbey ones were really popular at first, but I think everyone who wanted one of those has gotten it already. I’m probably going to be stuck with this last batch forever.”