Guest.
It’s about Ralph, not Auden, and there seems to be nothing special about it really. It was written for a local paper, and it’s an interview with him about maintaining a local village tradition at Lammastide. He mentions Estamond Guest as another Thornchapel owner who went to great pains to revive all the particular village customs, including Imbolc and Beltane. There’s a picture of him standing in front of the fountain in the walled garden, looking directly into the camera without a smile. Irritatingly, he looks handsome and mysterious without it, just as his son does today.
The article interesting, mostly because it could be confirmation of what Poe suspects, which is that Ralph and the other adults at the house that summer might have been doing the same rituals we are. But perhaps the most interesting part of the article is not what it’s about, but who wrote it.
My mother.
I decide to save the article to show to Poe, I pocket the rosary, and then I’m finished. I leave the Bible on the table, and I leave the bed as is in case there’s ever need for a spare room. Doubtful, since Thornchapel is basically all spare rooms, and who would come here when they could come to Thornchapel, but stranger things have happened. I also leave up the picture of Jesus by the bed—it’s that one picture where Jesus is staring out at you with a sort of really? REALLY? expression, like he’s just checked your data log of sins and is very disappointed. But I like the picture for all that because you can see Jesus’s heart in it, and it’s circled by thorns and crowned by fire, and I’ve always thought that if there was any kind of heart worth having, it would be that one.
I drag down the bags of clothes too old or worn to donate and pop them in the wheelie bin outside, and then pile the donation bags into my clapped-out shitheap of a car. And then I decide that the day’s work calls for day-beer. But by the time I search out a Hobgoblin and sit down in my mother’s office chair, I hear the front door open.
Startled and too raw for company, I jump up, thinking I’ll make excuses about going into work soon or something. But when I round the corner and actually see Auden standing there in slim gray trousers and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up enough to show the strong lines of his forearms . . .
Well, my resolve leaves me pretty fast after that.
“Um, hi,” I say, taking a drink of my beer and trying to look absolutely, totally casual. Not like I want to throw myself on the floor and give him my unconditional sexual surrender. “It’s Tuesday.”
“So I’ve heard,” Auden replies. “Can you believe it really comes round once a week?”
His cool teasing means so much to me that my first instinct is to deflect with growly sulkiness so he can’t see how much I crave his attention. “Yeah, I meant more like, shouldn’t you be in London right now?”
A one-shouldered shrug. His shirt is so well-tailored that it pulls a little with the movement, displaying the flats and furrows of his stomach underneath, along with the swells of his shoulders and arms.
I should say something else sarcastic, but my mouth is busy tugging at my lip piercing.
“Rebecca’s people are going to start on the maze tomorrow, so I decided to take the week off. It feels like a big step.”
“Then shouldn’t you be there? Not here?”
Auden tilts his head. “Do you not want me here?”
I don’t answer, because I do, I do want him here, but somehow admitting that feels like a concession, and today isn’t the day.
“Hmm,” Auden says, taking a step forward. And then another step. He reaches for my beer and takes it out of my hands, raising it to his lips and taking a drink. I think I might be hypnotized by the working of his throat as he swallows, by the way his Adam’s apple bobs and moves. God. That fucking throat.
He hands the beer back to me, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he steps past me and looks into my mother’s office. “You know, I’ve never really seen your house? Both times I came here looking for you, your mother gave me tea in the front room, but I never got any farther.”
“There’s nothing to see,” I say, hating myself for how much I like his thoughts focused on me. “It’s just a house.”
Auden turns to me with eyebrows raised. “No house is just a house, Saint.”
“This one is.”
“Then why can’t I see it?”
Feeling trapped by my own argument somehow, I scowl.
“Fine. See it. I don’t care.”
Auden’s already turning to go up the stairs, and somehow I know in my bones that his search of my room is not going to be the same kind of quick little survey Poe gave it several weeks ago. No, he’s going to look. He’s going to see.
I almost go up after him. To do what, I don’t know—throw my body in front of my bedroom door maybe, or just flop on the floor and wrap my arms around his ankles. Beg him to stop this relentless seduction of me because I can’t bear the heat of his attention, I can’t bear knowing that he hasn’t called me mine again yet, I can’t bear anything about him or about us.
I stand at the foot of the stairs for a few moments, chewing on my lip, and then I make myself wheel back around to the office, where I sit in the chair with a decisive plop. I’m going to do what I planned on doing before Auden barged in, and that’s fucking that.
It’s very hard to concentrate though, with Auden just a floor away. Hearing the slow creak of his footsteps above me, and knowing he’s studying my life like I’m an exam he’s going to sit. Part of me craves it—all of it—I want him to scrawl an M over my heart once again—I want to crawl to him and cling on to him and bear every single brunt of his displeasure as Poe already gets to sometimes.
But another part of me wants to stay hidden forever. Being seen hurts. And what if he comes downstairs with a grave expression on his face, and it turns out that his investigation confirmed some horrible suspicions about me? Like I really am dull and uninteresting, I really am a coward? I’m still the same soul that took six steps away from him before I turned back?
I want to pull out my hair at the thought, but I settle for pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes until I see stars, and then I pull them back with a sharp, determined breath and dive into my mother’s things for real.
Focus.
Do not listen to the footsteps above you.
Do not think about the handsome man making them.
And with a vigorous shake of my head, I really do try.
My mother’s room had been neat, if dusty, and fairly easy to divide into sections and tasks, but her office is not neat. Nor is it easy.
She’d been working on two different long-form pieces when she died—one about the evolution of folk customs and the other a more personal one about the last time she’d gone home to Dallas and realized she felt as much British as she did American—or indeed Mexican—after more than twenty years here. Research for both pieces are stacked together. And by research I mean the occasional photocopy or dog-eared book, and then a handful of receipts and envelopes she’d used in place of a notebook. And then that research is piled together with old pictures and typewritten oral histories from the Thorncombe Historical Society, and of course this is just the stack on her desk. I look around at the floor—all loose paper and folders and old books of regional history—and want to give up before I even start.
You want to live in a shrine to loneliness and grief? I hear Poe ask.
No, I should have told her. At least not like this.
With a sigh, I start making piles—money things, research things, Thorncombe Historical Society things. The bills, I can mostly throw away—I caught all the accounts on the next month’s round after the hospital and got the utilities transferred to my name. Same with the bank statements. There’d been so little in her accounts when she died that even I’d been surprised—I didn’t even have to pay a probate fee when it came time.
I’m almost done with the pile on her desk when my name in her round, pretty handwriting catches my eye.
St. Sebastian
—Death —S. Muerte —Giorgetti —Perth
She must have been planning to write about my name and what it means, although whether that was in connection to the folk customs article or going back to Dallas, I don’t know. And I probably never will.
Creak, creak, creak.
My heart flips over inside my chest, as if it’s trying to float up to where Auden is.
I resolutely push it back down in my chest, and look back down at the receipt, trying to focus on the dead and the strange little mysteries the dead leave behind when they go.
Perth. She never told me what that name meant, not really. She’d told me that it was for my father and his family, although I haven’t encountered another Perth on the Davey side. Not that I’ve asked. My place in my father’s family is too shaky for me to feel comfortable to do any kind of digging; I don’t want to ask questions and then have them remember how different I am, how outside of their nest I am even still.
Creak.
I drop the receipt in the research pile, and then there’s a folder full of old pictures of young men holding strange headdresses and giving big sepia smiles to the camera and—
Creak.
I stand up without bothering to close the folder and concede defeat. I can’t stand it a moment longer. Having Auden here, so close, is like having helicopter rotors spinning in my chest, and with each whump-whump of my pulse, I can feel my resolve breaking.
I make to walk out of the office and accidentally kick something clangy and big under a pile of papers and send paper everywhere as I do. I hop awkwardly over the pile without looking to see what it is and then creep up the stairs as quietly (but as quickly) as I can.
I’m really not sure what I expect he’s found, although I do expect to be humiliated by it. Why would I not, when I’m still the same poor kid gaping at his designer pants and he’s—well, he’s him? But when I turn into my doorway, I don’t see my entire room upturned on my bed in an exhibit of a shabby life, I don’t see him thumbing through my journals with amusement or poking at my sex toys with disgust. Instead, I find him sitting on the floor, his back against the bed, my old iPod in one hand and earbuds in his ears. He’s got one strong leg drawn up with an arm resting atop it, and he’s got his head leaned back against the bed as he listens. His eyes are closed, and there’s a slight tilt to one side of his mouth, like he’s on the verge of a smile.
He’s listening to my music.
He opens his eyes to see me standing frozen in the doorway, but he doesn’t lift his head. Instead, he gives me a lazy, hooded smile.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I say back. “Please tell me you didn’t find what I think you did.”
“You mean,” Auden says, a little mischievously, “the playlist called Auden + Proserpina?”
I slump against the doorway, hanging my head, almost wishing he’d found the sex toys instead. But of course, he doesn’t let me feel my shame in peace. He gets up and walks over to me, and while I’m still slumped and staring down at his pretty shoes wondering why I’m destined to live without a single shred of dignity, Auden’s warm fingertips brush my ear. They secure an earbud in with the utmost gentleness and care, and then I hear the soft strains of a Death Cab for Cutie song.
“I like this one,” Auden says softly. His fingers linger around my ear and jaw while the music plays for us both. “It’s very sad and sweet at the same time. Like you.”
That finally makes me look up. “I’m not sweet,” I say, glaring.
His fingers move through my hair and then he’s cradling the side of my face. “Hmm,” he says, in that terrible way of his.
“Stop it. I’m not sweet.”
“This song is about following somebody into the dark. That’s very sweet.”
I close my eyes again. “It’s . . . honest, maybe. But not sweet.”
“Saint. Look at me.”
I look at him.
He’s very close to me now, so close that I can’t even see the white cord of the earbuds stretching between us, so close that I can make out the distinct green and brown striations in his eyes. “Is it so far gone between us that I’ll never get to earn you?”
That surprises me. “What? No! I mean—I don’t think so.”
He lets out a long breath, pressing his forehead to mine. “Then can you forgive me? For what I did to your mother?”
My throat hurts. “I don’t know,” I whisper. “Maybe.”
“Because I’m sorry,” he goes on. “Not a day goes by when I’m not fucking sorry. You were right when you said it was something my father would do, it was, it was exactly like him. When I found out he’d been giving her money—I already hated that you’d fucked off to America, hated it—and I just hurt so goddamn much and I wanted to hurt you like I was hurting and I lashed out.”
“You never lash, Auden. You plan and you strike. The thing that makes you strong is the same thing that makes you dangerous.”
Now it’s his turn to close his eyes. “Yes.”
We’re breathing together now, our sighs warm against each other’s mouths.
“How did you find out?” Auden asks, eyes still closed. “What I did?”
“When I came home and my mother realized I’d left school, she was livid. Ferocious. I’ve never seen her that angry about anything ever before, and she was yelling about how I’d thrown my whole future away just because you’d decided to be cruel, and she wouldn’t see my future threatened because of you, not again.”
Auden flinches at the reminder of the graveyard. “And what did you say?”
“I said that I didn’t care what Auden Guest did, I was done running away from Thorncombe. No matter how shitty the villagers have been to my mom or me, she loved it here. So do I. Now, at least.”
Auden’s hands drop to my back and fist in my T-shirt. “You belong here.”
“Yes.”
“With me.”
I let out a shuddering breath. “Yes.”
“Even though we’ve hurt each other? Badly?”
Is he offering to forgive me too? Are those six steps outside the graveyard walls as branded into his memory as they are into mine? I’m too scared to ask.
Once again the coward.
“Even though we’ve hurt each other,” I repeat in a whisper, and coward I may be, but I’m also very, very smart, because that answer earns me a fierce, searing kiss. It’s a kiss like the one we once shared in his walled garden, the kind of kiss that could draw blood if it goes on long enough—or if Auden’s mood changes.
As if remembering the same kiss, Auden turns me so that he can pin me against the wall, shoving his hips into mine with a grunt and asking, “I’m not scaring you away again?”
I can only tell him the truth. “You never scared me, Auden.”
He bites at my lip piercing, catching it in his teeth and tugging just hard enough to make me gasp. “Good.”
His erection is hard and thick against mine, and he grinds it relentlessly into my body, as if already demanding his pleasure. With each roll of his hips, I’m more and more mindless, more and more his, whimpering for him. “Take me,” I say against his mouth. “Take me like you were supposed to back then.”
Auden pulls back to study me, his mouth swollen and pupils blown and one earbud still in his ear. “Are you saying I’ve earned you?”
“Yes, Auden.”
“Are you saying you’ll be mine?”
I nod, my heartbeat surely louder than the music still pouring out of the iPod. His hands move from my back to my chest and then up to my neck, where his hands make a warm collar. “Mine, St. Sebastian Martinez. Do you know what that means?”
“That you’ll have sex with me, hopefully,” I say. My desperation and short, panting breaths make me sound crankier than I am, and Auden raises an imperious brow. I suddenly feel like a thane who’s mouthed off to his king.
“No need to get shirty with me,” Auden murmurs, his eyes dipping to my mouth and the
n growing even darker. “But perhaps if we’re already going there . . .”
“Are you going to play Dominant with me now?” I ask, trying to sound casual. Forgetting that my hard-on is ridiculously evident—which he reminds me by giving me another dry thrust.
“I don’t play,” he warns me. “Either you’re mine or you’re not, Saint, you pick right now.”
Like I’d pick anything else. “My safe word is still May I,” I say, deciding that I’ll keep the one he gave me after Imbolc. I don’t mind hating my safe word because I never plan on using it.
“Say yes, Saint. Say yes to me.”
I take a deep breath. “Yes, Sir.”
Auden drags me by my shirt over to the bed. “I’m not going to fuck you today,” he tells me as he climbs on top of me.
I groan. “Why not?”
His eyes rake over me as he straddles my hips, over where my shirt has rucked up to expose my stomach. He runs wondering fingertips down the corrugations of my abs.
“I admit that I want to. I even thought about it on the way over here, thought about what it would be like to fuck you in the same bed I should have been fucking you in eight years ago.”
“Wh-what made you change your mind?” My voice is cracking because he’s just scratched his fingernails up my stomach to my nipples, where he scratches lightly again, studying my face for my reaction. “Because I think you should fuck me in this bed too.” God, just the idea of it—being fucked where I’d beat off so many nights lusting after Auden . . .
Auden doesn’t answer me. At least, not directly. To my disappointment, he moves off my hips and gets to his feet.
“I found some interesting things when I was looking through your room,” he remarks. “Some very interesting things.”
Feast of Sparks Page 26