Something Beautiful

by Jenna Jones

  "Oh, no. I'll be fine, and you'll only be away a few hours."

  "We'll be gone most of the day Friday and Saturday."

  "I'll manage either way." He yawned. "I brought stuff to do and I'll be sleeping a lot."

  "Okay." Dune kissed the top of Micah's head and cradled him in his arm, closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. He would have loved for Micah to join them on the slopes, but that would have to wait until next year.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Micah woke up early and lay awake for a while, waiting to fall back asleep. He'd been so exhausted since the appendectomy -- he thought most days he slept eighteen hours out of twenty-four.

  Maybe that was why he didn't fall asleep again, even though Dune's watch read four a.m. Micah pushed himself upright and sat on the edge of the bed, stretching out his arms and his neck. He was post-sex sore and his incision ached, but he felt pretty good all around, his muscles loose, his nerves tingly.

  Micah looked at Dune, who was still sleeping, undisturbed even when Micah lifted his arm to look at his watch. He debated waking Dune up, but decided it would only upset the man and Micah didn't want that -- even if sleepy Dune meant they'd be back from snowboarding sooner, Micah still wanted Dune to enjoy the day.

  Micah got out of bed, went to the room where he'd left his suitcase and dragged it back to the room they would share. He chose clothes for day, focusing on comfort and warmth, and took a brief shower in the cramped, turquoise bathroom. Bathed and dressed, he looked at Dune again, and then smiled and got out his camera. Micah turned on the bedside lamp, waiting while Dune frowned and turned onto his back, and then carefully knelt over him and took a picture. My beautiful Dunie, he thought, kissed Dune's forehead and put the camera away.

  Micah went downstairs to the kitchen and flipped on the overhead light. Ben had all of his recipes in his head, so Micah didn't know what he could do to help dinner be ready for later that day. They didn't plan to be back from snowboarding until noon at the earliest, and would eat Thanksgiving dinner around five o'clock.

  He would make breakfast, Micah decided. That might be a nice surprise for everyone when they woke up. He found coffee beans and the grinder and ground up enough for a full pot. Once that was perking in the silver coffee maker, Micah dug around in Ben's boxes a little more and took out the ingredients for pancakes. He might not be a pro like Ben, but what he could make he made very well.

  Soon the kitchen smelled doughy from pancakes and sharp from coffee, and Micah heard footsteps on the stairs. "Good morning!" he said cheerfully as Jamie stood in the doorway, wincing at the bright light.

  "Are you sure it's morning?"

  Micah pointed out the window, where the darkness was more gray than black. "It's coming. Do you want orange juice? There's a carton of it in the fridge."

  "Sure. Thanks." He sat heavily at the table and murmured, "Thanks," when Micah handed him a tall glass of juice. "You're perky this morning."

  "I just feel good." Micah went back to the griddle and started dropping blueberries onto the pancakes. Ben had thought of everything.

  "Yeah, I heard you two last night."

  Micah felt himself blush. "Sorry."

  "It's not a problem. I'm glad you're happy. I've worried a bit about that."

  Micah nodded. "Thanks." He popped a blueberry into his mouth. "Jamie? Did you break up with me just because of Ryan?"

  Jamie sighed and put down the glass of juice. "No. There were other things."

  "Like what?"

  "Do you really want to get into this right now?"

  "Yes. We never have a chance to talk, just you and me. Whenever I see you you're with Ben or I'm with Dune -- usually both. It's like you don't want to see me by yourself."

  "It's not on purpose," Jamie said. "It's just the way things go. I'm with Ben a lot because I love him and like being with him, and you're with Dune a lot because -- well, you know why better than I do."

  "Because he's my best friend and I like being with him."

  "There you go."

  "What other things?" Micah said, and poured a cup of coffee.

  Jamie drained the glass and said, "For one, you made a lot of promises you didn't keep. You'd say you'd be somewhere and then never show up. You rarely called to say where you were, and sometimes you'd go for days without emailing or calling or coming over, and of course I couldn't go see you because of your parents. When I realized you were sleeping with Ryan it solidified everything I'd suspected: I didn't matter to you."

  Micah clutched the coffee cup in both hands. "You mattered to me. You matter to me now."

  Jamie shook his head. "So you say, but your actions said otherwise. You can't say you love somebody and ignore them for days. I can depend on Ben. When he says he's going to be somewhere, he's there. When he makes promises nothing short of death will stop him from keeping them. When I call for him, I know he'll come to me. That's trust. Trust is a huge part of love."

  Micah put down the cup, turned back to the griddle and flipped the pancakes, wondering what he could say. He and Jamie had been so close once, even before they'd started sleeping together. Jamie had been like the big brother Micah had always wanted -- and then Jamie had kissed him, had said he wanted him, and Micah had been so overwhelmed by his attraction that he hadn't given it a second thought.

  Dune was right, damn him. Micah had never thought of himself as attractive until Jamie came along. In high school he was too nerdy, too skinny, too shy -- and he'd known, long before he knew what it meant, that even though everyone expected him to date girls, he didn't want to. There had been a boy on the track team...

  But then there was Jamie, who was brilliant and fearless and foreign and sexy, and Jamie had wanted him, of all people, and Micah had fallen so hard he'd thought sometimes he should be bruised from love.

  "Micah?" Jamie said. "Are you mad at me now?"

  "I'm thinking." He sipped his coffee. "Do you know where Ben stashed the syrup?"

  "It's in one of those boxes."

  Micah went hunting through the boxes again, aware that Jamie was watching him. He was still thinking, though: about Ryan, who had been beautiful and mysterious at first before he turned into clingy and annoying. It had been a relief, in the end, to tell Ryan he'd met somebody new.

  But Dune had been right about that, too: he'd been flattered by Jamie's attention and thought that was love, and he'd been flattered by Ryan's and thought that was love, too. And when Lucas had come along, at first he'd been solid and dependable and steady -- and then the whole marriage thing had come up, and Micah had been relieved to see him go.

  He found a bottle of real maple syrup and set it on the table. He straddled one of the chairs and looked at Jamie, who raised an eyebrow at him, patient.

  "All I can say is that I was a lot younger and didn't know what I was doing," Micah said.

  "I know."

  "But I know how to be in love now -- and how not to be."

  Jamie smiled quietly and nodded. "You're doing a lot better."

  "So -- so I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so careless with you."

  Jamie smiled even more deeply. "I think it was a learning experience for both of us, really. And I'm doing just fine. I love Ben a lot and he loves me, and it's been a good time so far."

  "Yeah," Micah muttered. He leaned his cheek on the back of the chair. "Maybe someday I'll meet somebody who'll come when I call, too."

  "I wonder if you already have," Jamie said.

  Micah felt himself blush. He jumped up and went back to the stove to take the pancakes off the griddle, glad for the excuse for the heat in his face. He wanted to say "Dune doesn't come when I call," but Dune did. If Micah had asked him to come to Europe after Lucas left, Dune would have come. Dune was always there, exactly what he needed, knowing the answers, willing to admit when he didn't, willing to let Micah discover things for himself when he needed to, his friend, his lover, his Dune.

  Micah felt arms wrap around him and lips kiss his ear, and Dun
e said softly, "Mm, blueberry pancakes, perfect," and Micah knew he was in love.

  And it wasn't bruising, it wasn't falling, it wasn't even going along with someone else's desires because he didn't know how to say no. It was true, simply and beautifully true, something he knew in his bones and his breath and his blood.

  He turned his head back to kiss Dune quickly and said, "Set the table, please? These will be ready to eat soon," and wondered what Dune would say when he told him.

  ***

  They were out the door by sunrise, leaving Micah with several instructions. Take this key if you go for a walk, but don't walk far so you get tired, and stay by the road so you don't get lost. Don't worry about cooking anything: there would be plenty of time when they got back from the slopes. Stay warm, get plenty of rest, and call any of their cell phones if he needed them.

  "Go, go," Micah said, shooing them out the door. "Don't worry about me."

  Once the door was shut and Jamie's Jeep was creeping up the snowy road, Micah lit a fire in the fireplace and plugged in his laptop. He made himself comfortable on the sofa and typed up a quick blog entry to post when he got home, and then a longer, private journal entry. He wrote about what Jamie had said and about Dune, and wrote, "All I know for certain is that I want Dune with me as much as possible. He's already here, but how do I make him stay?"

  He reread that last sentence, erased it, and typed, "He's already here, so how do I keep him?"

  He sighed, closed the word processing program, and opened another program to work on his game. It wasn't as complicated as the video games -- and some days he missed that horribly, it had been so much fun to play for a living -- but people liked simple games they could play right in their browsers. This game was making fun of the whole layoff situation: the point of the game was to avoid falling pink slips and collect blue paychecks. The fiddly bit was how to make some of the blue slips turn pink, to make the higher levels more challenging. He'd found the sound effects he wanted from a soundboard site: a "ka-ching!" for when the player collected a blue slip and an "oh no!" when they were hit with a pink one.

  Micah plugged away on the game for a few hours, napped for a while after that, and then decided to brave the snow and go for a walk. He laced up his boots, pulled on a down jacket over his long-sleeved T-shirt and a knit cap over his head, took the house key and his digital camera, and climbed carefully down the snowy steps to the road.

  The cold forest air smelled of pine and redwood and snow and for a few minutes Micah just stood and breathed, filling his lungs. The only trouble with living in the city, he thought, even with the ocean so close, is that it was so easy to forget what really clean air smells like. And feels like. He breathed with his eyes closed and then buried his face in the collar of his jacket and started down the hill.

  There were other cabins along the way, several yards back from the road like their rental, and most of them looked deserted. He wondered if their owners were skiing today or if they simply hadn't made the trip this weekend. He took pictures of the cabins, walking up to the ones that looked empty to take close-ups of their icicles or the interesting ways that snow hung off tree branches.

  At a bend in the road he came across a small meadow where the snow was completely untouched even by rabbit prints. He took a picture of the meadow, framing it carefully between the rust-colored redwood trees, and then looked around. The forest was completely silent: there wasn't even a chipmunk to see him. Micah laughed, tucked his camera safely away in a zippered pocket, and fell onto his back in the pristine snow.

  He made a snow angel, and when he was satisfied he carefully stood and jumped away so he could take a picture of it, too. But it looked lonely, so he choose a place nearby the first, spread his arms, and fell onto his back again.

  There was a car moving slowly up the road and it slid to a stop on the slushy snow when Micah fell. A man stepped out and called, "Young man, are you all right?"

  "Yes," Micah called back. "I'm making snow angels."

  The man walked across the road to the meadow and came to a stop at Micah's feet. "Micah? Is that you, Micah-child?"

  "Stuart!" Micah jumped to his feet and hugged him, not caring about the snow angel. "Stuart! What are you doing here?"

  "I mentioned I would be in California until New Year's and Jamie was kind enough to extend me an invitation for this weekend." He looked good -- tall and handsome and solid, wearing a thick, charcoal-gray wool coat and a dark red scarf wrapped around his neck. "His directions were terrible."

  "You haven't missed anything. They all went snowboarding this morning. They should be back soon, though."

  "And they left you behind?" Stuart said with concern and lightly touched Micah's cheek.

  "I had my appendix removed a month ago," Micah explained. "Going for walks is about all the exercise I can handle. It's not far to the cabin -- I'll direct you."

  "What about your, er --" He nodded to the meadow.

  "The snow angels? Oh -- I was going to take pictures --" He took his camera out of his pocket and then squinted at Stuart. "Can I take a picture of you?"

  "You want me to make snow angels?" Stuart said, amused.

  "If you want to, but I was thinking you could stand next to a tree. The colors will look really good."

  "I'll stand next to a tree," Stuart said, and leaned casually against the nearest redwood, his shoulders as broad as the trunk. Micah snapped several pictures quickly, pleased with how the shadows fell across Stuart's noble face.

  "That's enough," Micah said when he was satisfied, and Stuart chuckled as he pushed himself away from the tree. He took Micah's arm to cross the road.

  "You must fill me in on your life. You've been negligent about keeping in touch with me." He let Micah into his car.

  "I'm sorry," Micah said as he got into the passenger seat. "I emailed you about the job, didn't I? And the apartment?"

  "Yes, very neutral subjects, all." Stuart slid behind the steering wheel and started up the engine.

  Micah bit his lip and watched the trees pass. "Take the left here. I'm sleeping with Dune."

  Stuart's tone was neutral. "Indeed."

  "Yeah." Micah peeked at Stuart, but there was no hint of his opinion in his face.

  "And is it true love?"

  "I -- I don't know. He likes me. I don't think he loves me."

  Stuart looked at him a moment, then back at the road. "And you?"

  "Turn right here. It's not much farther." He sighed and looked down at his hands, fidgeting in his mittens. "I think I might love him."

  "I see."

  "I don't know how to tell him," Micah said.

  "Generally one says, 'I love you.'"

  "You know what I mean. Everybody thinks I'm flighty."

  "Oh," Stuart said skeptically, "certainly not everybody. There are people who've never even met you. They have no opinions about you at all."

  "Stuart," Micah said, exasperated, and then caught the hint of Stuart's smile. "Oh. You're teasing me." He rolled his eyes and looked out the window.

  "Yes, sweet child, I am."

  "Here's our road," Micah said, pointing, and sat back as Stuart steered the car to the cabin. The Jeep was still gone. He sighed, disappointed.

  Stuart patted his knee. "Don't fret, my dear. I'll keep you company until your true love returns." He got out of the car.

  "It sounds dumb when you say it," Micah said, following him, and tried to take the suitcase that Stuart lifted out of the trunk.

  "I can carry it. You probably shouldn't be lifting." Stuart took out a long, narrow, clanking bag -- skis and poles, Micah assumed.

  "You're not going to snowboard?" Micah asked as he unlocked the front door.

  "Certainly not. That's for teenagers."

  "All of the others are, even Leo."

  Stuart chuckled and started stamping snow off his boots against the porch railing. "Leo's young at heart."

  "Sometimes he is. Not so much lately. He kicked Adam out." Micah sat down in
the front entryway to pull off his boots, and Stuart stopped stamping at his words.

  "Did he, now? Interesting."

  "Adam's in love with somebody else." He hesitated. "Stuart. Do you ever miss Jamie? Do you feel sad about him leaving?"

  Stuart raised an eyebrow at Micah and went about folding his scarf. "Sometimes I miss him, but I try not to dwell on it. Every young man should have a mentor -- but I'd be a poor teacher if Jamie had never left me."

  "But you were in love with him, weren't you?" Micah pressed.