by Jane Davitt
“What? When?”
“You weren’t driving around the middle of nowhere for the fun of it, not with gas the price it is. Where were you heading?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“You got that right,” Abe agreed. “It isn’t. I’m still asking. If you can’t talk and pout at the same time, I get it.”
Gary sucked in a breath. Abe braced for the blast, but it never came. Gary exhaled, a rueful smile replacing the bad-tempered twist of his lips.
“I’ve been an asshole.”
“No argument here.”
“I’m not lazy, I swear. I washed enough dishes growing up that when I didn’t need to . . . well, it seemed like a victory.”
“It won’t kill you to scrub a few plates.” Abe didn’t hide his impatience. “Trust me.”
Gary cracked another smile. “Okay, moving on. I was going to Vegas, wandering down there, seeing the sights on the way. I’m not in a rush, so I thought what the hell, why not swing by and see where I grew up. I planned to drive down Main, hit the gas, and leave the place eating my dust.”
“I can’t blame you for not wanting to look me up. Or anyone else for that matter.”
“If I’d called ahead, told you I was on my way, what would you have said?”
Abe pictured that call and couldn’t get past hearing Gary’s voice again. Would he have hung up or rolled out the red carpet? They’d never know. “I’m not sure. Don’t think I’ve gotten over the shock of seeing you standing by my truck, if you want the truth. I never expected to see you again.”
“I didn’t think you’d want to.”
“There was a time when I’d have given anything if you came back, but I moved on, same as you.” Abe met Gary’s eyes. “I meant it. I’m glad you’re back. The way you left hurt. Jesus, Fox, you were never a coward, never. I don’t get why you ran.”
“It didn’t feel like running. Escaping, yes. A door opening. I don’t know. It was the push I needed to leave, and in some ways, if it hadn’t happened, if we hadn’t gotten caught—what would’ve happened, Abe? It’s not as if we could’ve moved in together, settled down. Not then, not here.”
“It’s changed now.” Abe took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee. The memory of the night Gary had left didn’t haunt him anymore. He’d learned to keep it buried. That wasn’t possible with Gary sitting across from him, though. He was torn between the past and the present, his emotions veering from a half-forgotten anger and hurt to his current relief. He’d been sure sometimes that Gary was dead. He’d ached with grief that had no anchor to truth. “Not saying it’s as easy as it might be in other places, but people don’t stare at me like I’ve got two heads.”
“I could never live here again.” It was a warning. “I miss it sometimes, the mountains, the quietness, but it’s so . . . small. It’s not enough for me.”
“I get that. Feel the same way sometimes, but I’ve got ties. My family, my job.”
“House-sitting?” The incredulity in Gary’s voice made the word an insult. “Abe, you can do more than this!”
“It suits me.”
“Stagnating suits you? Since when?”
Abe set his coffee down on the table nearby with his arm shaking because he wanted to slam the mug down and he couldn’t, not without spilling it or cracking one of the decorative tiles set into the tabletop. Holding back was an effort.
“How about you stop dissecting my pathetic life and tell me why you were headed to Vegas in a car that screams ‘broke’?”
“I didn’t mean—oh, I guess I did.” Gary exhaled, puffing out his cheeks. “Sorry. If it suits you, fine. It’s your life. Vegas? I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. You know about Peter and it’s not a secret.”
“I don’t know about Peter,” Abe said. “I don’t know why you did what you did, I don’t know what agreement you had or why—I don’t know anything.”
“But you want to,” Gary said shrewdly. “It’s driving you nuts trying to guess, huh?”
“Kind of,” Abe admitted. “You were always bright, Fox. I don’t get why you’d need to hook up with a stranger almost three times your age.”
“There was nothing I was qualified to do that wouldn’t leave me where I’d spent most of my life—at the bottom of the pile. I wanted more, and Peter was how I got it.”
The stark words left Abe wanting to do or say something to wipe the pinched tightness from Gary’s face, but he settled for an awkward pat on Gary’s knee. Gary looked down at his hand and frowned. He took the hint and withdrew.
“I wasn’t messed up by what happened.” Gary seemed to reach a decision, his words sharp, clipped, tumbling out. “I never starved. I’d saved up some money. I came into a bit when I was eighteen. A policy of Dad’s he set up when I was born. It wasn’t much, but it helped. I didn’t tell you at the time because compared to anything you had, it was still peanuts.”
“You talk like I was some rich kid, and that’s bullshit.” His mother was a grade school teacher and his father a realtor. Growing up, he’d been aware of the differences between his house and Gary’s, but they weren’t striking enough to warrant Gary’s take on things. His house had been inherited from his maternal grandparents, and it was big but old, with maintenance an ongoing problem. Gary’s house was smaller, and when Gary was living there, it’d been suffering from neglect, but so what? The town wasn’t big enough to have a seedy area.
“It felt that way sometimes.” Gary fell silent, visibly closing up, a snail retreating into its shell.
“I’m sorry.” That much information thrown at him . . . he felt bruised. “Look, you don’t need to tell me anything. Why don’t we—”
As if Gary was determined to do the opposite of whatever Abe suggested, he sat up straighter. “No, you wanted to know, and I’m telling you.”
There was a strident note to Gary’s words, but Abe didn’t try to derail the conversation again. If Gary needed to talk, he was willing to listen. Well, not willing, but he’d do it.
“I didn’t have the qualifications I needed for a good job, so I waited tables at first. Eventually started tending bar. Used up my savings to make ends meet. After five or six years of drifting from place to place, job to job, I ended up in Seattle. I got a job behind the bar at a club for businessmen, thinking I could network my way into some entry-level desk job and work my way up. That’s how I met Peter. And I took a shortcut.”
Abe made a valiant attempt to lighten the mood. “I’ve met dozens of guys in bars, but they didn’t buy me fancy suits. Hell, they didn’t buy me dinner.”
Gary lay back against the high arm of the couch, his legs curled up as gracefully as any pose Sailor could produce. “In a way, I bought them myself. We had this deal . . .” He pursed his lips. “It’ll sound weird.”
“Already does.” Abe turned to face the room, not Gary, and drew Gary’s feet into his lap. Gary gave a surprised murmur and wiggled his toes. It was enough of an invitation to continue that Abe obligingly rubbed Gary’s feet, working his thumbs into the soles with no intent to seduce. Like this, he was close while still giving Gary some space. They’d gone too far in the story to turn back. “Tell me.”
“Bossy.” Gary cleared his throat. “He’d spent his life hiding that he was gay. It wasn’t fear, but practicality. He wanted to succeed in the business world, like his father, and he knew if he was out, that’d make it harder. Attitudes were different back then, not that it’s much better now. He got married—she died years ago, though. Breast cancer. He even had kids. When he discovered he didn’t have long to live, he stopped pretending, to his family, anyway. I was his way of saying ‘fuck you’ to the world, I guess.”
“He didn’t die, though,” Abe objected. “You said you were together for five years?”
“Yeah, Peter always was stubborn. Some new drugs came out that helped. Frankly, I didn’t pay much attention to the details of his medical care. First rule. Don’t mention Peter’s heart. Ever. Don’t sugg
est he take it easy, don’t ask how he’s feeling, don’t offer to help when he looks like shit.”
There didn’t seem to be much to say. Abe’s fingers ached, so he wrapped his hands around Gary’s ankles and waited for more.
“The first time we met at the bar, he took me up to one of the private meeting rooms and I blew him,” Gary said. “We talked afterward—wasn’t expecting that—and I guess he liked what he heard, because he offered me a job a week later. He said I could be his new secretary, personal assistant, whatever. That job I was good at, by the way. It went beyond that, though. I had to be available around the clock. I didn’t go anywhere unless it was with him, or he’d given permission. He’d lost control over his life, so he took over mine. Or maybe he was always kinky and it was another thing he’d decided to explore while he had the chance.”
“Jesus.” Abe turned his head. “What about you? Did he ever think what it was like for you when he wasn’t around?” He could hear the whispers and vicious comments that would’ve followed Gary around the office, picture the averted glances or malicious stares. The larger picture of Gary’s complete submission, he shied away from. Too much to take in.
“Honestly? No. And if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. He knew I could handle it, and I did. He never said what I was, not at work. He showed them. Touching me. Ordering me to do something and making it sound—oh God, making it sound filthy.” Gary’s gaze was faraway, wistful. That made no sense.
“Jesus,” Abe repeated, helpless to convey how fucked-up Gary’s life had been the last few years. “Was it worth it? I wouldn’t have done that for a million a year.”
“I didn’t get a penny. That was the bargain. I was on the payroll, but my salary was deposited straight into an account Peter controlled. He paid my rent, bought my clothes—he paid for my life. I walked around with a few dollars in my pocket, no more.”
Abe pushed Gary’s feet aside and stood. He needed to move, even if he found he couldn’t turn his back and walk away. “That’s the biggest pile of crap I ever heard.”
“It worked for us.” Gary picked at a ragged edge on one of his nails. They’d been perfect the day before, and Abe wondered when Gary had started biting them. “He got a kick out of owning me, making me beg for something I wanted, sweet-talking him out of it, or offering to do things in bed I’d told him I never would. You don’t want to know what I did for those suits of mine.”
“No, I don’t. So you gave him everything and got—what? I don’t see how it worked for you.”
“Seriously?” Gary spread his arms wide. “No worries, Abe. None. No unpaid bills, no debts. How many people our age can say that? They’ve got a houseful of the latest toys, new cars, vacations every year—and a line of credit that’s extended so far their grandchildren will be paying it off. I owe nothing. I own what’s in that car. Nothing else, sure, but I’m still better off than most.” He waved at Abe, an arrogant gesture. “How much do you have saved up?”
Put that way . . . “None of your business. Some. I don’t owe the bank anything, anyhow.”
“Yeah, but you don’t own anything. You live here or with your parents. We’re not that dissimilar.”
“So what happened to it? Your money?” Abe wanted to make this conversation end, but he couldn’t stop probing the subject, the same way he’d picked at scabs on his knees when he was a kid. “There must’ve been something left over after he died.”
“Doubt it. I lived as well as Peter and he didn’t hold back. I’ve been all over the world with him. Where did you see in the New Year? Not this one, last year’s. Right here, yeah? I was in the Bahamas staying somewhere with a private beach and getting sand in my ass because Peter kept me naked most of the time.”
Peter sounded like more of a selfish son of a bitch with every passing moment. Gary was fair-skinned. He burned.
“Yeah, well, that sounds nice, Fox, but no job, no money—so you’re back where you started. Seems to me you’d have been better off staying behind the bar.”
“From where you’re standing, it might. Sorry.” He sounded blatantly unrepentant, and his gaze traveled over Abe, a lazy examination leaving Abe warm with arousal and discomfort. “If I’d known the story of my kinky life as a toy boy would bother you so much, I’d have invented something tamer.”
“Invented?” Abe crossed his arms across his chest to stop his hands from forming fists. “Did you make it up? Is any of it true?”
“Most of it. Peter’s real, the deal was real, but I lied when I said I was good at my job. I pretty much sucked at dictation. Oh wait, was that a lousy pun? Yeah, I guess it was.”
“You make me want to hit something,” Abe said flatly. “Oh, not you, don’t worry,” he added, not that Gary looked scared.
“Well, after yesterday, you can’t blame me for doubting you.” Gary gave Abe a smile, his fingers tracing the shadowed bruise on his jaw.
“That was to save your life.” Abe wet his lips with his tongue. Okay, slight exaggeration. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”
“You don’t owe me an apology.” Gary got to his feet. “Let’s go and look at the winter wonderland. I might build a snowman with you. Wholesome fun for all the family. Only if I get hot cocoa afterward and one of the cookies you used to lure me here, though.”
“I ate them all,” Abe lied and took deep satisfaction in seeing the pout return to Gary’s face.
The snow had stopped, but the sky was heavy with clouds, the air ominously still. Gary, his feet in a pair of borrowed boots too big to be comfortable, watched his breath steam out and tried to estimate how long they had before the flakes started to fall again. They’d made it back to Abe’s truck at least, retracing their steps with difficulty. Abe had put on snowshoes, but he only had one pair. Gary had been forced to struggle along behind him in the rough trail Abe had broken, sinking up to his knees at times.
All the snow in the world had landed on them overnight. Every single fucking flake.
He dug his shovel into the snow and removed a teaspoon from the ocean of white, tossing it out of the way. They needed to saw off the branch holding the truck in place, but first they had to get to the branch, which meant shoveling. Lots of it. Abe made infuriated hissing noises under his breath every time Gary’s shovel hit the truck—unavoidable—and dug like a man possessed. Gary wanted the truck to be okay too, because it was the only way he’d get into town. He hadn’t heard a single car all morning.
Well, why would there be a car? There was nothing here but trees and snow.
He’d get into town, arrange a tow, get his car fixed, and . . .
“I never told you why I’m going to Vegas,” he said, more as a reason for pausing than because it mattered. He leaned on his shovel, his body whimpering with gratitude at the chance to rest.
“Don’t care.” Abe grunted lifting a laden shovel. “Dig.”
“I’m about to pass out and my arms resemble spaghetti. I’m taking a break.”
“So do it quietly.”
“You can’t dig and listen?”
Abe rammed his shovel into the snow and faced Gary, his face flushed from exertion, his hair plastered to his head with sweat and snow. It was a measure of how easily Gary had slipped back into lust with him that he didn’t care. Abe would look that way after an hour in bed, mussed and sweaty.
Gary wanted to see him like that. Soon.
Abe tugged off his glove and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d kill for a cold one.”
“Yeah, it’s hot work.”
“How would you know? You’re not doing any.”
That was unfair. He had cleared . . . well, not as much snow as Abe, no, but he was out of practice. “When we get into town, I’ll buy you as many beers as you can drink and drive you home. How’s that?”
“If you think I’m ever letting you drive my baby again, you’re crazy.”
“Your baby? Oh please. It’s a hunk of metal.”
Abe gave him a glare that could’ve melted sto
ne. “It doesn’t drive off and leave me.”
“You want to do that now?” Gary demanded. “In the middle of nowhere, when we’ve got a job to do? Because I can guarantee you if we start in on this, it won’t end well.”
The sex, the chatter, the brief dip into what they’d done during the years apart—all superficial. It was the two of them treading water, waiting to finish an argument they’d begun so long ago.
Abe exhaled a cloud of frustration. “Fine. Why are you going to Vegas?”
Gary began to shovel again, pacing himself. His muscles were tight from the exertions of the day before, complaining when he twisted and bent. “I’ve got one last job to do for Peter.”
“Throw his ashes into the Grand Canyon? Sprinkle them on a craps table?”
Abe had taken a dislike to Peter, judging by the edge to his voice. Sweet. Misguided, but still . . . yeah, still sweet.
“In his will, he left me enough money for the trip and ten thousand dollars that I’ve got to pick up from a lawyer down there.”
“Ten thousand?” Abe gave a grunt that could’ve meant anything. “It should tide you over until you get a job, I guess.”
Gary took a certain grim satisfaction in popping that particular bubble. “The lawyer goes with me and watches me put it all on one spin of the roulette wheel. I don’t get to keep it. I mean, legally it’s mine, but that’s what he wanted me to do.”
“Jesus.” Abe shook his head, his incredulity plain, and went back to shoveling. “Why not toss it in the trash? Though I suppose you might win. Odds aren’t good, but you might.”
“If I do, it goes back on the table until it’s all gone, every cent.”
He’d spent the journey mulling that over. The conclusion he’d reached was that it had comforted Peter at the time to picture Gary’s future compliance. It didn’t matter if he failed to carry out the precise instructions—Peter was dead and beyond caring. Even so, he intended to do what Peter had wanted. It was an expensive memorial, but Peter’s family hadn’t allowed Gary to attend the actual funeral. They’d even told him not to send flowers, making it clear if he did they’d be tossed in the trash. This would do for a tribute instead.