by J. M. Colail
When he looked up a half a minute later to grab the ketchup, it was to find Jack looking at him with an unidentifiable expression. “What?” Julian asked. “What? Have I got something on my face?”
Jack just shook his head and picked up his fork, digging into his own breakfast. There was some kind of biscuit, a stack of pancakes, and what seemed to be half a plate of breakfast sausage. “Nothing,” he said innocently, his eyes betraying him.
“What?” Julian persisted, stabbing another forkful of hash browns covered in egg yolk and mushing them in the ketchup for good measure. The part of him that was a doctor and sometimes had to remind people to count calories and think about what they ate switched right off.
“Just….” Jack waved his hand. “Where do you put it all, man? Are you always this… hungry?”
Julian nodded, swallowing. He didn’t exactly look like a guy that could put away a plate of food in three minutes. “If I thought about how many calories I consume in a day, I’d have to put myself on a diet.” He shrugged. “More fallout from med school. You learn quickly not to waste your time eating when you could be doing something useful, like studying or sleeping. It’s not good for you to eat so fast, but old habits die hard.”
“Some things need to be savored,” Jack pointed out, spearing a piece of pancake. They did look delicious, and they came with whipped cream. Julian kept his mind firmly away from that dangerous path.
Well, he tried, anyway. He got points for that, right?
“I savor things,” he defended himself. “Days off, for example. I will never again take them for granted.”
“Remind me to call you early and wake you up on the weekends,” Jack ribbed.
“You’d better not. I know where you live, and I could kill you and make it look like an accident.” The threat was somewhat undermined by the fact that he said it between huge bites of egg-slathered toast. Just the orange juice left to go.
There was a lull in the conversation as they both finished up the last of their breakfasts. Then Jack asked, “So, your sister. What’s the deal with that?”
Ah, crap. That figured. Julian had found someone he could hopefully safely crush on from afar and the guy was only interested in Roz. Typical. He shrugged, trying to mask his disappointment, annoyed with himself for being disappointed in the first place. “What do you want to know?”
“You look alike, and you act alike, and you even have similar jobs, but….” He trailed off. “Am I crazy? You can’t possibly actually be her younger brother.”
Julian sighed. Maybe he was just curious, just making conversation. It still wasn’t something he particularly wanted to talk about, but he’d just find out from someone else in town anyway. “She’s not really my sister,” he explained. “We’re cousins, but we were raised together. I’m actually a couple of years older, but her parents adopted me when I was eight and she was five. Since I’m newer to the family….”
“You got dubbed ‘little brother,’” Jack finished. “Got it.” He looked like he wanted to comment further, but for whatever reason he left it at that, and Julian was grateful.
“What about you? No brothers or sisters?”
“On Cape Breton, everyone’s family,” Jack said. “It’s part of why I’ve always liked small communities, and why I like it here. But no, no siblings. My parents married late in life; maybe they didn’t have time for two. I don’t know.”
Julian sipped his orange juice absently, having run out of things to say, and gazed out the window. The small town was starting to come to life, as much as it could on a Saturday morning. There were kids coming in from hockey practice and seniors playing bridge in the corner. He wondered if he’d ever get used to life in a small town again.
“You boys ready?” Bess was back at their table again, collecting their dishes. “Or are you stayin’ for lunch?”
Jack shot her a smile that could have lit up the Arctic Circle in December. “I think we’re done here.” He looked over at Julian. “You’re not going to eat another plateful, are you?”
“Not for at least an hour,” he affirmed. Actually, he was feeling a little queasy. Maybe he should’ve taken time to breathe between bites.
Jack turned back to their waitress. “In that case, check, please!”
It was then that Julian started to panic. He flicked his gaze around the pub again, taking it in. The majority of the clientele appeared to consist of families—dads and daughters, mothers and sons. A few guys Julian thought he recognized as oil refinery workers or people he’d known in high school were sitting in the far corner, playing cards. There was the bridge club, and the Monforton brothers sitting up at the bar.
Okay. He could go out for breakfast with a man and nobody was going to call the feds to put him under what Roz eloquently referred to as homosuspicion.
It had been different in Toronto, of course. He had never felt the need to hide there. Most of his friends had either been gay, curious, or just plain easygoing. But this was Alberta, conservative to the core. It made him nervous.
Trying to squash the rising uneasiness he felt, Julian reached for his wallet—only to be stopped short by the warm hazel eyes across from him. Jack tipped his head. “I believe your terms were breakfast. This one’s on me.”
Oh, God. He didn’t know how long his resolve would last if Jack kept giving him looks like that. His composure was already shot to hell. Now he was worrying if this was a date! Julian didn’t know if he’d feel worse if it were or if it weren’t.
Toronto had never been this complicated; but then again, he’d been far too busy when he’d lived there to date seriously, barring a very few notable, atypical exceptions. In point of fact, even the one or two short-lived flings he’d managed to fit in between classes, clinics, exams, and rotations had in no way prepared him for a situation like the one he was in now.
“Thanks,” he managed.
Jack winked at him and grabbed the bill, taking it up to the register to pay, limping the whole way. Julian watched him without really meaning to, envying the easy manner with which he carried himself, the quiet confidence he had. Part of him knew how good it felt to be perfectly comfortable in his surroundings, firm in his belief in himself and his abilities; he’d been practicing medicine long enough. He just wished that same self-assurance would transfer over to his personal life.
“You all right, Doc?”
Julian started, blinking up and recognizing Jack standing over him at the little booth. “What? Oh, yeah.” He shook himself, standing. “Sorry. I was somewhere else.”
“I could tell.” He held the door, eyes curious. “Anyplace interesting?”
Shuffling out onto the sidewalk, Julian shook his head, squinting in the morning sunlight. “No place I’ve got any business being. Thanks for breakfast, again.”
“Thanks for the lift, again,” Jack returned. The inquisitive look had nothing if not intensified. “You wanna talk about it?” he hedged.
I’d like to drink it right out of my system. He didn’t want to lie, but he wasn’t just going to come right out and say it, either. “Nah, thanks. It’s sort of personal.” He laughed softly, though he was anything but amused. He was trying desperately not to think about how much Jack reminded him of someone he used to know. “Apparently I’m even a bear after orange juice.”
“The grumpy kind or the cuddly kind?”
He glanced up to find Jack’s eyes shining with some kind of warm amusement, and he shook his head again. “Depends on the company, I guess.”
Wait—was that disappointment? Whatever the flash of emotion had been, it was gone almost as soon as it had appeared. But the tone was light. “Lucky me.”
Julian opened his mouth to say something, anything; to apologize, or to clarify. But he couldn’t come up with something that didn’t sound wrong. “The broody kind, apparently,” he sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I’m not great conversation this morning. You’ve got your truck. I’ll catch up with you later, all right? You should come in fo
r a check-up, maybe Tuesday, to see how you’re healing up.”
“Yeah.” A muscle in Jack’s jaw twitched, and the warmth seemed suddenly to be gone from his eyes. “I’ll do that, Doc. Think I might just take the drugs and sleep away the weekend.”
“It’ll be good for you,” Julian promised, and wished he meant something else. “See you Tuesday, then.” Not wanting to be any ruder than he already had been, he extended his hand for the man to shake.
Jack eyed him for a second before grasping it, his grip dry and firm, but not crushing. “Later, Doc.”
Julian waved as he turned, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants and wishing he’d worn a coat. Somehow, the day that had appeared so fair and warm from the truck this morning seemed cooler and darker now. Climbing into the truck took the rest of his energy, and he sat there for a minute wondering what to do before starting the engine. He headed home.
Chapter Four
JACKSON SLAMMED the truck door shut and stomped inside, nursing a giant headache, a throbbing leg, and a really foul mood. His dog Robot met him at the door, her tail wagging unflaggingly, and he ruffled her ears absently before continuing to the kitchen.
Relax, he told himself. Deep breaths. You’re overreacting.
When would he learn to leave well enough alone?
Pouring himself a glass of water, he glanced briefly at the directions on his prescriptions before shaking out the appropriate dose and knocking them back. Hopefully this was close enough to breakfast time to count as “take with food.”
Utterly disgusted with himself, Jack almost threw the water pitcher back in the fridge before slinking into the living room and flopping down on the couch. Robot could obviously tell he was in no mood. Ordinarily by this time she’d have some toy or another in her mouth and be absolutely begging to play, but today she was standing almost indecisively in the doorway to the kitchen, her tail still going slowly.
He sighed. He was such a jerk. He was taking out his groundless frustrations on the only being in the universe that was consistently happy to see him. “Come here, girl,” he said softly. She padded over and sat down, her head nudging his hand.
Jack rolled his head back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling, petting her absently. He’d been happy enough earlier this morning, considering the pain he’d had to grit his teeth through and the fact that he’d barely slept. Julian—Dr. Piet—had been interesting enough company to keep his mind off of it, most of the time. That was the problem, really. Jack didn’t like to need people. He especially didn’t like to need other men in this part of Alberta.
He would have liked to sit around the entire day half-stoned on pain medication and fantasizing about that ass, though.
Except that Jack was a realist, more or less. He could tell when something made someone uncomfortable, and while Julian hadn’t struck him as particularly homophobic or even unreceptive—he couldn’t have been, not with the constant innuendoes and sly smiles of the day before—he was certainly… awkward this morning. It made Jack wonder what on Earth he was running or hiding from all the way out here in the middle of nowhere.
That, Jack decided, was what Julian had done this morning. Run. He’d seen something that had scared him and made his excuses as quickly as he could. It was a far cry from the doctor he’d met yesterday, a man who gave as well as he got and then some, a tease and a flirt. The dichotomy sent up giant red warning flags in Jack’s brain that said that even if there were some way of determining whether Julian might be interested in making a house call every now and again, it was probably a bad idea.
This sucked.
Any other time if something like this had bothered him he’d have just hit the gym to work it off, or gone for a jog with Robot, or found a reasonable substitute. None of those things was going to help him work it out this time, though. He was effectively under house arrest until further notice.
God, maybe there was some porn around here somewhere, he thought hopefully. At least then he wouldn’t be bored.
Just five more minutes, he thought to himself. Five more minutes just laying here, petting his dog, and then he’d find something to do about getting his mind off of the pretty doctor.
Just…
five…
minutes…
Then the medication and lack of sleep the night before took their toll. Jack’s eyes fell closed, his arm hanging limply off of the side of the couch, boots on. Robot curled up on the rug beside her master with her head on her paws and followed him into unconsciousness.
SOMEWHERE, A phone was ringing.
Jack grumbled, not wanting to get up, resolutely keeping his eyes shut against the noise. He shifted onto his side, rubbing his face into the pillow—
and sat up before he fell off the couch. Damn, that upholstery was rough on the skin. He made a mental note and sighed, glancing around for the phone.
Mental note: Do not call people early in the morning.
Jack stood stiffly, his left leg nearly buckling under him as he did so, and limped to the phone cradle. “Hello.”
“Geez. Sorry, man. Who shit in your cereal?”
Jack grunted. “Hamilton. What the hell time is it?”
“Five-thirty. Did I wake you up?! I thought you got up before the sun!”
“I didn’t actually go to bed last night, I don’t think.” He limped into the kitchen, rummaging in the fridge for something to drink. His mouth was drier than the Gobi desert. He grabbed something without looking and pulled it out, squinting. Orange juice. It’d do. He tried to put Julian out of his mind. “Five-thirty? Shit.”
He’d slept for almost eight hours; no wonder he was hungry and lightheaded.
“Jack? You okay, buddy?”
“Fuck, I think I’m still stoned.”
“Dr. Dan fix you up good?”
“He wasn’t in,” Jack said, sloshing orange juice over the counter. Crap. “Got some new guy to kiss it better.” Damn, he must still be feeling the effects if that was slipping out of his mouth. Maybe he should eat something.
“So, are you coming to work on Monday, or what?”
“Doc’s got me under house arrest ’til Tuesday,” he said, opening the fridge fully again to check for orphaned leftovers. Excellent: leftover pizza. He grabbed the container and debated over adding a beer to his growing pile of items for consumption before ultimately deciding against it. “Be too damn stoned to drive anyway.”
“Aww. Life’s really tough. Want me to send you home something to do?”
Oh, thank God. “Would you?” he said gratefully, mouth full of pizza. Hamilton wouldn’t get it. He was a nine-to-fiver, and a family man, and if he’d had the bad luck to get stuck at home for a few days he’d have had his wife and four-year-old to drive him comfortably insane in no time. Jackson was facing a weekend of quiet boredom and sleeping off the drugs, and even if he did manage to rustle up some porn there was only so many times he could do that in a day.
“You’re nuts,” Hamilton told him flatly, “but I have to go in anyway; left Mellie’s pregnancy book in the office. Which project do you want me to bring?”
Jack swallowed, chasing the cheese, mushroom, and sausage with a mouthful of orange juice. “Bring in that new one GeOil just sent in. I want to look at the specs before we get it hooked up. Last one damn near burst, it was put together so badly.” He bit off another piece of pizza.
“The modifications turned out nice, though.”
They had. The company had made a tidy sum on that little patent-pending number.
“Yeah.”
“Listen, I need a favor.”
Oh, boy, Jack thought. Here it comes. “Yeah?”
“Melanie’s scheduled for a C-section on Thursday at two o’clock. Can you pick Jason up from his swimming lessons and bring him by the hospital?”
Well, if that was all. He could pick up the kid, sure; he was going to be at the gym to pick up his neighbor’s daughter anyway, just like he did every weekday at five-thirt
y. “I can do that. I’ll have to drop off Hallie before we head out to the hospital, though.” It was an hour’s drive on the best of days, and with the way Jack’s luck was going, he wasn’t prepared to count on a best day.
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I’ll call the gym tomorrow to let them know.”
After a few more moments of Star Hamilton’s token whining about his pregnant wife, and a pointed remark from Jack that the two were not, in fact, officially wed (about as close to scandal as it got up here in the northern prairie provinces), they hung up, and Jack went back to wolfing down the pizza.
Making his way to the kitchen table, he winced at the stiffness in his leg. Damn. Maybe he’d need that physiotherapy after all. Then again, maybe he’d just slept funny. It wasn’t often that he passed out with his boots on.
Wolfing down the rest of his dinner, Jack popped his medication, then checked his watch. “Come on, Robot. What do you say?” Jack stretched, attempting to work the stiffness from his leg without pulling any stitches. “Want to try a walk?”
Robot wagged her tail, then chased it in a circle. He figured on that for a yes.
Jack pulled a pair of gloves and an adjustable leash from the front closet, snapped the clip on Robot’s collar and headed out the front door at about half the pace he would have just a few days ago. It felt like premature aging, and poor Robot was probably wondering why they weren’t huffing along at their usual speed, but fresh air was definitely preferable to being cooped up in the house for another minute.
As the medication gradually kicked in, the pain in his leg lessened into a sort of dull ache, and Jack finally relaxed enough to let his mind wander. In this part of the country, the leaves on the few deciduous trees had already turned and fallen, leaving the ground covered in a slightly damp-smelling red and orange carpet. The sun was setting earlier and earlier each day, and the mornings came coated with a thin blanket of frost that, as Jack neared his thirty-sixth birthday, was just starting to annoy his joints.