by Cate Ashwood
It was entirely possible he didn’t want to get involved with someone who had no idea what they were doing in this arena. Or what if he’d lost interest and moved on to someone more exciting? After all, he never frequented the same restaurants twice, so would it follow that he craved the same newness and excitement out of romantic partnerships?
I knew the symptoms of overanalysis when I saw them, even when it came to my own internal thoughts. I dismissed the questions and assumed conclusions, and by the end of my first class on Thursday, I’d decided to call him when I got back to my office. As far as I was aware, there was no rule that said I had to wait for him to contact me. With the prospect of talking to Asher present in my mind, I was as impatient as my students were to get out of the stuffy room. I left out the door at the bottom of the stairs and crossed the grass rather than using the paved walkways, making a beeline for my office.
As I entered the building, my phone chimed with a notification. I pulled it from my pocket to check.
It was a message from Asher. All it said was “Tomorrow?” with a link beneath it. I clicked it as I closed my office door behind me and a video filled the screen. Creepy music played and I could barely make out what was happening, the lights on the screen were so dim. A flash of lightning highlighted a room with antique medical equipment as a faux-grainy finish was added to the video as a man with strangely groomed facial hair appeared. He spoke in what was clearly a fake British accent and wiggled his fingers for dramatic effect as he described the Spooky Seattle Ghost Hunters tour.
My laughter filled my tiny office. I’d never seen something so hilarious in my life. The production value of the promo video alone boded poorly for the actual tour. I clicked through from the video to my contacts and selected Asher.
It rang twice before he picked up.
“I’m in,” I said before he could say hello. I was still laughing, but my declaration was met with silence. “Asher? It’s me. Uh, Henry.” This was only the second time we’d spoken on the phone. I shouldn’t have expected him to recognize my voice.
“Hang on a sec.”
I could hear muffled voices on the other end of the line, and a minute later, Asher was back.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “The last few days around here have been insane… but I didn’t want to miss your call.”
“Is this a bad time? I can call you later.”
“No. This is a great time. I’m glad you phoned.” He sounded happy and it made me smile in reflex. “I wanted to call you so many times over the past couple of days, but the shit hit the fan at work, and between launching our own internal investigation, the phone calls to parents and employees, and all the fucking paperwork, all I’ve done is work and sleep.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“One of the piano teachers was accused of verbally abusing the kids.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I wish I wasn’t, but it turns out it’s true.” Asher suddenly sounded exhausted. “It was a mess, but it’s all been sorted out now. I hope.”
“It sounds like you need a night out.”
Who was this person I was becoming? Two months ago, my idea of a perfect night was one spent alone.
“You want to do the tour with me? It looks completely hokey.”
“It sounds like fun.”
“Great. I’ll text you the address, and I’ll go ahead and reserve a couple of spots for the tour. Tomorrow? Eight?”
“It’s a date.”
Friday dawned overcast and dreary. By noon, the skies had opened and the view from my office window looked more like October than early June. As I watched the rain travel in rivulets down the dirty glass, I pulled my phone out to text Asher.
It’s pouring. Are we still on for tonight?
I wanted the confirmation, even though we’d made solid plans. It was something to look forward to—a bright spot at the end of my day that I so desperately wanted. A moment later, Asher’s response came through.
I don’t mind getting a little wet if you don’t.
My mind immediately dipped into fantasies of Asher, his clothing drenched and water running down over his muscles. My mouth went dry.
See you at eight.
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to keep my mind out of the gutter and failing hopelessly. I was ready to cancel the whole evening and suggest we stay in.
It was something I’d been thinking about a lot in the days since we’d gone stargazing. I was anxious and eager, all in one breath, to see what would happen next. I didn’t know chemistry like this could occur between two people, and more than anything I wanted to explore where it could lead us.
I parked a couple of blocks from the address Asher had sent me. I was early, but it always paid to be prepared. The sky held on to the last light of the day despite the heavy clouds, but it would soon be dark. As I pressed the lock button on my key fob, I spotted Asher walking toward me.
He was so handsome, the fading light at his back. When he smiled at me, I felt warm all over, and when he leaned in and pressed a chaste kiss to my lips, my body flushed hot. I stepped in closer even after he’d broken the kiss, just to be a little bit nearer to him.
“Are you ready to hunt some ghosts?” he asked in a spooky voice.
I laughed at his attempt, but even his spooky voice was low and gravelly and made me remember the way he sounded after he came. If I was going to survive the night without getting hard in public, I was going to have to pull my mind out of that space and concentrate on keeping things PG-rated.
“I believe I am, yes. How does this work?”
“I dunno. I’ve never done one of these before, but I think we meet at the designated spot and the guide takes us around to all the haunted places in the area.”
There was already a small group gathered around a handwritten chalkboard sign outside a shoe store on the corner. We crossed the street and met up with the others. Most of them looked like tourists, some sporting Seahawks gear and some with overly large cameras around their necks. A few of them had raincoats.
Asher watched with an envious expression as a teenage girl opened her Hello Kitty umbrella.
I pulled my messenger bag open and grabbed my collapsible umbrella from inside.
“At least one of us is prepared,” he said.
“We can share,” I replied, and tamping down my nerves, I reached out and pulled him close to me. This was the first time we were out on a date in public… at least it was the first time I was aware we were on a date in public. It wasn’t the two of us, surrounded by darkness or hidden away where no one could see. This was downtown Seattle. This was completely new for me.
I pulled to mind Megan’s words from the other day and attempted to forget about everything else and enjoy being with Asher. As always, he smelled so damn good, and I wanted to bury my nose in the curve of his neck and inhale.
“Welcome to Spooky Seattle Ghost Hunters. I’ll be your host this evening. My name’s Glenn.” I shifted my attention to Glenn, who looked to be about eighty and didn’t seem overly enthusiastic to be leading us through the streets of Pioneer Square in the rain. “Tonight, I will take you on a tour of Seattle like you’ve never seen it before. If the spirits are in a generous mood, you will experience inexplicable occurrences and otherworldly phenomena.”
The speech sounded scripted, and by the way Glenn delivered it in a single tone, I imagined he’d given it about a thousand times already. Still, most of the audience seemed captivated, and with Asher pressed against my side, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.
Glenn led us down the alley behind the shoe store to a large, dirty window with rusty bars. It looked into the basement of a tall building. “Our first stop is possibly one of the most haunted spots around.” He gestured toward the window and dropped his voice, finally seeming to get into character. “This was the site of a gruesome massacre in the late ’70s when the bar was run by Clyde Parsons, one of the most notorious men in Washington.”
“Clyde Parsons sounds more like a guy who owned a cattle farm in Centralia,” Asher whispered.
“He ran underground gambling rings all over town, but the largest was based out of this bar. Witnesses describe a man in black who arrived at the back door of the bar—this very door here—and once inside, opened fire. Thirteen people were killed, including Parsons.”
There were a few “ooohs” from the crowd.
“The shooter was never found,” Glenn explained, “and after a long and fruitless investigation, the bar was sealed up by the police. While the hotel above is still operational, the space that was formerly the club hasn’t been opened since. The place as you see it now is just as it was at the end of their investigation. The souls of the thirteen men and women who were killed are said to haunt the club, unable to find peace because their killer went free.”
I leaned in closer, peering through the filthy glass. I couldn’t see anything inside beyond some shadows and dust-covered chairs overturned onto tables. Cobwebs hung from the doorway, but beyond that, there was only darkness.
“Ten bucks says Glenn was the shooter.”
I jumped, my heart racing. “Shit, you scared me.” I pressed my hand to my chest.
Asher covered my hand with his. “Sorry. If it helps, I can give you mouth-to-mouth.”
I laughed. “That was bad. You don’t use pickup lines like that on all the other guys, do you?” The idea of him doing anything with other guys left an acrid taste in my mouth. I pushed the thought aside.
“Nope. You’re special.” The way he said it, the words heavy with subtext, made me precipitously happy. He dropped his hand and turned to look through the filthy glass. “Kinda creepy, isn’t it?”
“A little. Imagining the people that lost their lives in there. Kind of macabre.”
We backed away from the window to let the other people on the tour take a look. Glenn answered questions and gave a little more backstory on Parsons.
“Do you believe in this kind of thing?” Asher asked.
I shook my head. “I don't think so. I’ll admit that not everything can be explained rationally sometimes, but I have to believe that an explanation will be found eventually. Maybe someday someone will be able to offer scientific justification for the things that people believe they’ve witnessed, but as it stands right now, with the information that’s available to me at this point in history, I don’t believe it’s possible.”
I realized I’d slipped into lecture mode. “How about you?”
Asher shrugged. “Dunno. I haven’t made my mind up either way on the subject.”
“No?”
“You’re right about there not being much in the way of scientific evidence for the existence of the afterlife, but the house I grew up in was old. Really old. And things happened there every once in a while that made me think that, maybe, there might be something beyond what I could see and understand.”
The group had started moving, Glenn leading us to the next location on the tour.
“Like what?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Just strange noises in the house… things going missing and turning up where we couldn’t have possibly left them… The sound of knocking at the front door was probably the most common thing. There was never anyone there, but it happened regularly enough that my mom started joking that the ghost she’d nicknamed Doris had forgotten her keys again.”
The way he described it, with a mixture of spookiness and happy nostalgia, it made me want to believe he was right about there being ghosts in his old house.
I walked a little closer to him as we approached our next stop. I liked the solidness of his body next to mine, the warmth of his skin as our arms brushed as we walked. As we turned the corner and approached a large brick building, the rain let up. I collapsed my umbrella, shook off the excess water, and tucked it away in my bag.
Before I could think too deeply about it, I slipped my hand into Asher’s. He looked over at me, his expression of surprise turning into one of satisfaction. He laced his fingers with mine and gave my hand a gentle squeeze.
I hadn’t realized how many haunted hotels there were, but they made up five out of the eight stops on our itinerary, each one with a more ghoulish history than the last. Glenn dazzled us with tales of gruesome deaths and tragic suicides. Everyone in the group was sufficiently disturbed by the time we ended up at our last stop—an Irish pub that, at one point, had been a mortuary. As we looked for the ghost of the little girl said to haunt one of the mirrors, Asher and I grabbed a pint of Guinness and sat at one of the tables near the bar.
The evening had been… interesting… but I felt like we could have been picking up trash by the side of I-5 and I would have had a good time if Asher were there with me. There was something about him that made me crave his company. I didn’t want the evening to end.
I reached across the table, took his hand, and held it, palm up, in mine. With my other hand, I traced his fingers, the lines carved into his skin. He smiled at me, lopsided and genuine, and I felt my stomach flip. The things he did to me with just a look—it was baffling. I still didn’t understand the response I was having to him, but clearly my body knew exactly what it wanted, even if my head took a while longer to catch on to things.
“I was thinking,” I began, trying to keep my expression serious, “that given what we’ve learned here tonight, and the fact that spirits are capable of following the living, being alone isn’t the wisest decision.”
Asher looked at me for a moment, and I could see the wheels turning in his head. I knew he didn’t want to scare me off, but somewhere between the Arctic Club Hotel and the Hotel Ändra, I’d already made my mind up.
Finally, he seemed to have reached a decision. “You want to come back to my place… to help ward off any ghosts who might have hitched a ride?”
I laughed, pleased that he was playing along. It made asking so much easier. “Well, it would be the smart thing to do.”
“If you say so. You’re the professor.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
Inside Asher’s home, the walls seemed so much closer together than they were in actual fact, as though he took up twice the amount of space a normal person did. I felt his presence there, the air shifting, carrying on it a current of electricity that hadn’t existed before.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, and I was suddenly incredibly nervous. That was what people did though, right? Have a drink before getting to… whatever we were getting to? I swallowed hard. I knew what was coming next. I’d mentally prepared myself all week. I’d googled and researched and read everything I could get my hands on.
Coming here had been my suggestion, after all, but with the reality of it looming over me, I was nervous.
After hours at the computer, I believed I understood most everything there was to know about the mechanics of sex with a man, but as with everything else in my life, academic understanding of a concept is not the same as real-world application.
“Henry?”
I looked at Asher, realizing I’d spaced out and forgotten to answer the question.
“Huh?”
“Drink?”
“Oh. No, thanks.” I’d decided beyond the Guinness I’d had at the pub, I didn’t want alcohol clouding my brain. Not that I thought I’d become drunk and make poor choices, but because I wanted to be completely present for whatever was going to happen.
Although, once I’d declined Asher’s offer, I regretted the decision almost immediately. I was suddenly at a loss for what to do with my hands. This was a level of discomfort usually reserved for parties with dozens of strangers rather than a single person in a quiet room. There was no reason why I should be so terrified, but my body buzzed with nerves. I shoved my hands in my back pockets to keep them from shaking.
Asher was watching me, his bright blue eyes keen and observing. “Everything okay? You’re a little… pale.”
I attempted a casual smile, which,
judging by his attempt to suppress a laugh, did not work out well.
He took a step forward and reached for me, sliding both his palms along my arms and pulling me against his body. The scent of him surrounded me, and in that moment I knew what to do with my hands. I slid them around his back, feeling the solidness of his muscles and how they tensed and relaxed under my touch. “I’m fine. Just out of my depth, but that’s nothing new when it comes to this, is it?”
He reassured me with a gentle voice. “There’s no rush… for anything.”
I took a breath, gathering my thoughts. I could nod and take a step back and that would be that. Asher wouldn’t push. But I didn’t want to take a step back. I wanted to barrel forward, to toss reservations aside and dive in. I wanted to know what it was like to make him feel the way he’d made me feel that night under the stars.
“I don’t know if there’s anything I’ve ever wanted as much as this… wanted as much as I want you.” As far as confessions go, that might have been the most terrifying one I’d ever made.
I tilted my head up and leaned forward, pressing my lips against his. He kissed me back, running his fingers through my hair, angling my head back to deepen the kiss. I let him lead, and he kissed me like he wanted me as much as I wanted him. I lost myself in it, the way his tongue stroked mine, the way his hands held me close, the scent of wood shavings and coffee that was becoming so familiar to me.
My cock stiffened, trapped between us, and I could feel the hard length of Asher pressed against my hip. I rocked forward, ever so slightly. Our kisses became more intense, more frantic as he moved against me, our clothes adding friction. I clutched him tight, holding him to me, as though I might float away if I didn’t.
Things were becoming superheated, the air, my skin, and when Asher pulled away, I chased his kiss, needing more of him.