by I. M. Flippy
“Is he what they call a twink?” Cal said.
“He’s an otter!”
“What is an otter?” Cal said, narrowing his eyes.
“It’s what he is,” Jason mumbled. “Never mind.”
“He looks younger than thirty-two,” Cal said doubtfully. Jason only shrugged at that and thanked his lucky stars they’d left behind the topic of his sexuality... not that this was much better. “I’m worried he’s after your money.”
Jason almost spat out his tequila, simultaneously amused and offended on Charlie’s behalf. “What money?”
“Well, I know you don’t have a ton, but you have some,” Cal said, shrugging. “That trust your parents gave you that you never touched and... uh, your retirement fund and the book advance. I mean you have a yacht, so he probably thinks you’re very wealthy but you don’t have to be for him to drain you dry—”
“Just stop talking,” Jason groaned.
“We’re both just worried,” Alyssa said, patting Cal’s arm and giving him a stern look. “We love you and we wonder if you’re not jumping into something without thinking about it. I mean like I said before, you haven’t been quite yourself for a long time. Maybe this is just a phase for you. If it is, that’s... that’s fine. Just don’t go getting yourself in trouble.”
“I gotta get out of here.” He had eaten little, but he’d drained his tequila and he swayed as he got to his feet. “I can’t talk about this anymore, I really can’t.”
“You can’t just not talk about things, Jay!” Alyssa said.
“You know what, I can not talk about whatever I want to,” he sputtered, throwing up his hands. “You guys don’t control my life. Look, I’m…” He took a deep breath. “I really am glad to see you. But this is... Obviously, this is sensitive. I just need to get some air on my own. Let’s meet up later when we’ve cooled down. Okay? Text me and let me know where you’re staying. I’ll come by later or something.”
His head buzzed. He wasn’t drunk, but he was close to it. He felt like going to The Flamingo to brood.
But more than anything he wanted to talk to Charlie... who probably never wanted to see him again. He took out his wallet and peeled out several bills, tossing them on the table.
“I’ll see you guys later.” He walked out and didn’t look back.
18
Charlie
“Let’s shut down the store today.”
Charlie’s mother didn’t look as if she’d lost her mind, but now he was starting to wonder. He sat on his stool, watching Gus’s live feed of his yard in case somebody tried to steal an incoming package. Charlie felt bad leaving for two days during which Gus had to watch the feed himself. Now he was grateful to get back to it. He needed the distraction.
Charlie leaned on his hand and stared at his laptop, his eyes fixed on the inactive yard.
“We’re not shutting down the store,” Charlie said. “You just put out new stuff. Business has been crazy good lately, and it’s not even summer. You’d be throwing money away.”
It was lunchtime and his mother had brought in burgers. Charlie couldn’t even finish his. He sulkily nibbled on fries instead. Even his milkshake wasn’t enough to entice. Nothing tasted good.
“Well, I don’t care!” His mother paced around the store, puttering with the merchandise, occasionally straightening a folded blanket or a stack of T-shirts. “Look at you! This is so upsetting. You shouldn’t have to work.”
“I want to work,” Charlie argued. “If I don’t work, I’ll just think about it every second.” He kept his eyes trained on Gus’s yard where somebody approached and left a box by the backdoor. Maybe that meant somebody would try to steal it soon. That would be something. “Not that I’m not already thinking about it every second.”
“I just can’t believe he did that to you,” his mother said. “What a... a cad!”
“A cad.” That made Charlie crack his first smile in two hours. “Make him sound like Mr. Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. A cad…”
“I don’t know,” she said, resting her hands on her hips. “He is though. A cad, a vile rogue.”
“Vile rogue… wow.”
“Fucking asshole,” his mother hissed.
“There it is.” Charlie sighed and stuffed another French fry in his mouth, chewing listlessly. “I’ve just never felt that way before.” He had said some version of this a dozen times already. His mother did not appear to mind his repetitive rambling. “I’ve never been with anyone who would feel the need to hide a relationship or pretend it’s not happening or even feel a little bad about being gay or bi or whatever. Any of it. I never really thought about how shitty it would feel to have someone you love just dismiss you like that. Like you’re nothing.” He felt hot tears behind his eyes again and took a sip of his milkshake as if that would make them go away. He had already cried buckets and his eyes were swollen and sore. “I didn’t know how angry it would make me either. Not at the moment, anyway. Now I wish I was angry, but I’m just... sad.”
“I hate this!” Sandra said, throwing up her hands. “I hate that he made you feel this way! You know I never liked the look of him!”
Charlie snorted at that. “You met him once, and you acted like a schoolgirl with a crush, you big liar. I saw you bat your eyes.”
“I was high!”
“That’s true.” Charlie stuffed more fries in his mouth. Jason had not texted, and Charlie hated that he kept checking his phone to make sure.
On the live feed, Charlie watched someone come out of Gus’s store. It was Leo, one of the booksellers. Leo paused in the narrow alleyway behind the driveway and looked down at the Amazon package on the ground. Charlie fully expected him to grab it and take it inside to give to Gus.
Instead, Leo grabbed the package and walked down the driveway with it, presumably to his car.
“Ah!” Charlie sat up straight and pointed at the laptop. “Son of a bitch!”
“What, sweetie?” his mother said. She was busy straightening the dolphin figurines.
“It’s Leo!” Charlie said. “Leo’s the one stealing Gus’s packages. Unless that one just happened to be for him. Hang on…” Charlie whipped out his phone and whipped out a text to Gus asking him if Leo ever had packages sent to his house.
Not that I know of?
He’s the thief, Charlie texted back. I’m sorry, Gus.
Shit.
“What an asshole,” Charlie said. He sent Gus one more text, mainly composed of sad emojis, and pocketed his phone again. He closed his laptop, disgusted. There was no point in watching the live feed anymore. “Why is everyone an asshole? Everything sucks.”
His mother walked up to the counter, wearing the tragic expression that had not left her face since he’d told her what happened with Jason. A couple customers walked in and Charlie sat up straighter, trying not to look so upset. He likely failed.
“I hate this,” his mother said. “I don’t want this to make you look at people differently or give you a cynical view of the world.” She pouted and patted his hair. “You’ve always been my sunshine boy.”
“Pretty sure sunshine boy is another way of saying I’m naïve.”
The customers, two older ladies with a shopping basket full of knick knacks, T-shirts, and mugs came up to check out and Charlie smiled warmly, moving his food under the counter.
“Oh dear, are you all right?” One lady, whose hair was too blue to have been a mistake, patted his arm.
“His boyfriend was horrible to him!” his mother said before he could answer.
“Mom, ugh…” He rubbed his eyes and blushed, bracing for the ladies to be weird or homophobic which would not have occurred to him before, even from tourists. There were times where some narrowminded tourists made a homophobic comment and it went completely over his head because he didn’t have the ear for it.
But the ladies only looked sympathetic to him. “Oh, no!” the other one said. “Well, you just have to wash that man right out of your hair, that�
�s all. Or you could give up men entirely. That’s what I did.”
She winked and threw her arm around the blue-hair who was digging out her wallet. The blue-hair giggled and slapped her hand. “Oh, stop.”
Oh.
Charlie smiled at that as he rang up their loot. At least somebody was happy.
“We’ll take one of these blankets too!” the blue-hair said, grabbing one of his mother’s creations from the big shelf by the register. It was one of his mother’s giant coverlets. The most expensive item in the shop.
“That’s the big one,” Charlie said. “That’ll run ya six hundred bucks.”
“Well worth it,” she said, smoothing her hands over the chunky knit. “It’s beautiful.”
He watched his mother preen under the compliment. “She made it,” he said, nodding at her.
The three women fell into conversation as Charlie finished the sale and bagged all their things. He was happy that their attention was off of him.
But just then the bell above the door jingled and Andy came storming in, looking ready to murder.
“Where is he!” Andy said, his eyes wide. “I’ll kill him!”
Charlie sighed. He had not texted Andy about what had happened yet. He looked at his mother and narrowed his eyes.
“Well, I can’t kill Jason myself,” Sandra said, shrugging. “I’m much too frail.”
19
Jason
Jason was a little buzzed and once inside his golf cart, he realized he should not be driving it. It was easy to dismiss the seriousness of driving a golf cart drunk. But having been a cop, he knew better. He also couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing than getting a DUI while driving a golf cart.
Instead, Jason left his cart at the restaurant and started walking in the general direction of Crescent Avenue. His head felt too full of his conversation with Cal and Alyssa. But now that he was alone, he could remember in full ugly detail exactly how he had left things with Charlie. He walked harder, leaning too much on his injury, gritting his teeth, and feeling as if he deserved it. He should be hurt. It would be nothing to how much he must have hurt Charlie, who he…
“Who I love,” he said to himself, hearing his own deep voice cracking around the lump in his throat. “Who I love, who I love, who I love…”
There was no use denying it now. It would be like denying simple facts: he had once been a cop, he had once loved Alyssa, and he was madly in love with Charlie who was kind and warm and funny and smart and somehow able to see into his soul just having read the couple pieces Jason had written and the shitty introduction to his book. He was pretty sure he’d realized he was in love when Charlie had given him all that sharp analysis. Because it was more than just the book. It was the way Charlie saw him in a way nobody else did.
He was crying, he suddenly realized. Tears fell hotly, one after the other, as he remembered how quickly and easily he’d lied to Cal and Alyssa about who Charlie was and the blank shock on Charlie’s face before he simply marched away, dragging his suitcase behind him. The shock and the hurt…
Down on Crescent Avenue, Jason found himself just six blocks from Porpoise Pot.
He wasn’t about to go there. He couldn’t even imagine facing Charlie.
“What did I do…” He found an empty bench on the sidewalk in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the main drag and he sat down, wincing as his leg somehow liked that less. He rubbed at his thigh and felt a headache coming on.
For a long time, he only sat there, staring and telling himself what a shit person he was.
It was late in the afternoon when Alyssa finally found him. He didn’t see her coming, but suddenly she was sitting down beside him, smiling and following his stare out at the ocean.
“We messed up,” Alyssa said. She waited, as if that explained everything. That was not unusual for Alyssa. She tended to make little declarations and then let Jason sit with it for a minute before she bothered to explain herself.
“You messed up?” Jason rubbed his head and sniffed. “I’ve ruined everything.”
What he’d lost suddenly seemed immeasurable: underwear breakfasts, working on his book and talking to Charlie about it, hanging around in the shop and bringing him lunch, bike rides, snorkeling, waking up in bed together, hearing his every thought and joke, boba…
“Everything,” he said again, and fresh tears slid down his cheeks. He rubbed them away. He had lost everything; an entire future thrown away because somehow he was brave enough to chase serial killers and get shot for it, but not to let on how he felt about another man.
“Oh my God, you’re crying,” Alyssa said in wonder. “Do you know the only time I’ve ever seen you cry was when you were in the hardest part of your physical therapy and you got so frustrated? I only ever see tears when you laugh really hard. You didn’t even cry when we got divorced. I was a mess.”
“I’m…. sorry. I know I haven’t always been forthcoming about shit.”
Alyssa stared at him and burst out laughing. She put her arm around him and leaned on his shoulder, and that felt nice. He let himself lean on her.
“Jay, I tried to tell you that for ten years,” she said. “We had so many fights about it. You wouldn’t tell me how you felt, so I had to guess. It was exhausting. Even when you got shot, I could hardly tell if you were having a good day or a bad day. You just kept all that shit to yourself. You wouldn’t let me be there for you. That meant you weren’t that great at being there for me either. But you tried and I could always see you trying so hard.”
“I’m sorry,” Jason whispered. “I’m sorry to you, I’m sorry for everything. My dad sucked at talking about shit. So did my mom. I just... I was always supposed to lock it up, you know? Chin up, soldier on. I guess I didn’t learn how to do it. I’d like to learn how. Hopefully, it’s not too late.”
“God…” Alyssa shook her head, chuckling. She sat back and stared out at the ocean. “Jay, don’t you see what happened here? I’ve been yelling at you to open up for years and this guy, this Charlie, he cracked you open in a week? Don’t you think it means something?”
Yes.
He wiped his eyes. “I do. But it’s too late, Alyssa. The way I treated him when I saw you two. I just… I was so afraid suddenly. I don’t even know of what. It’s not like you guys would ever shut me out for any reason I can think of. I know you both better than that. I don’t know, I was just so afraid. I mean, I remember how hard it was for guys who were out on the force. The way my dad used to talk about that stuff wasn’t so great either, to say the least. It was more in my head than I thought. And I was a coward, and I hurt him. I’ve never been so ashamed of myself in my life.”
“You should probably tell him this,” Alyssa said.
“He won’t want to talk to me,” Jason said. He rubbed his eyes. Someday he’d think about the oddity of talking to his ex-wife about his new boyfriend. Maybe they could laugh about it. Today was not that day.
“You know, I meant what I said before,” Alyssa said. “We messed up, Cal and I. I just read him the riot act but that wasn’t fair either. It was just as much my fault. You, who are so closed off, you showed us something about yourself that was so personal and new and different for you, and we acted like assholes. We completely fucked it up, Jay. I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t that surprised, were you?” Jason said. “That I’m with a man? It’s weird, I don’t remember ever telling you I thought about guys. You never said anything.”
“Because I didn’t care,” she said. “I should have told you it was fine. You seemed kind of touchy about it. Not too surprising given how things were on the force and how you grew up. I think part of you has been locked away a long time. Maybe it always would have been. And you don’t fall for people easily. I know that much. This Charlie must be very special.”
“He is.” Jason impulsively got to his feet and Alyssa followed his lead, slowly rising. He sniffed and shook his head and walked in a circle on the sidewalk before stopping ag
ain and facing Alyssa, toe to toe. “Alyssa, I’m in love with him. I don’t know what to tell you! I know it’s weird and sudden, but I love him and if I can possibly get him back, I’m damn sure going to try. I don’t give a shit what Cal says! He’ll just have to deal with his best friend being bisexual. Which is what I am and... have always been. I just never had to say so before.”
“Jason,” Alyssa said softly. He looked at her and she smiled the same smile he had seen a million times when things were good, and he had pleased her in some way. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to get that smile out of her over the years. “I’m happy for you. Even if things don’t work with him and I truly hope they do, I’m happy that you’ve figured this out for yourself. It’s a new part of your life and I think it’s great.”
“Thanks.” Jason took a breath and a confidence he’d never felt before came over him. “I have to talk to Charlie. He probably hates me now, but I have to try.”
“Go get your man,” Alyssa said, patting his shoulder. “And forget about Cal for now. He’s probably kicking himself too. Go!”
Jason nodded and limped his way back to Porpoise Pot.
But in seconds, despite his sore leg, he was running as fast as he could.
20
Jason
Jason had the feeling of things moving in slow motion as he made his way to Porpoise Pot. He ran, and soon enough his leg began to bother him. But he was impatient to see Charlie and pushed through it. He arrived at the little shop sweaty and dizzy with pain. The sun was setting. The shop was closing soon. He had just made it. He shoved the door open, the bell jingling wildly over his head as he stumbled inside.
“Oh my God,” Charlie’s mother said from the other end of the shop.