Infamous

by Jenny Holiday

  Which Jesse turned into proper, if still perpendicular, hug as he tightened his arms around Hunter so he could move him aside enough to hit the space bar and wake up the computer.

  From the looks of things, Hunter had been reading a scientific paper. He was on the website of the Journal of Pediatrics.

  “Dude! You’re working!”

  Hunter shifted like he was uncomfortable—which he probably was, because Jesse was still hugging him like an idiot.

  A fact that Jesse’s own body suddenly cottoned on to as it came to life, like the computer coming out of sleep mode. The feeling of Hunter’s hard torso against his own . . . did something to him.

  Jesse had kept the promise he’d made to Matty two years ago. Which meant he hadn’t had a man in his arms since that ill-fated night caught on film by GossipTO.

  “Yeah, so . . .” Hunter pulled back against Jesse’s grasp in what was clearly a nonverbal request for him to let go.

  Jesse did, with a great deal of reluctance. And, in turn, a great deal of confusion.

  “I tried to get up and running on Grindr, but it was so . . .” Hunter wrinkled his nose and rose from his seat. “Transactional.”

  “Well, that’s the idea behind Grindr, isn’t it?” Jesse said. “As I understand it, I mean.” Shit. He needed to not sound like an expert on Grindr. And he really wasn’t. He’d used the app once years ago, but these days, he only had to lift a finger and women offered themselves to him. And women were “brand-approved” by Matty, so Jesse went with the path of least resistance. It hadn’t been a hardship, particularly.

  Or so he’d thought.

  “I guess,” Hunter said. He opened a pantry door, rummaged around, and produced a drill. “This is going to make me sound like a total dork, but I don’t think I’m looking for just a hookup. So I texted a younger, single friend in Montreal and asked for advice, and he told me to try Tinder. It’s still casual, but apparently a better avenue for potentially meeting someone to date.”

  Jesse inspected the drill in order to buy some time to digest this piece of news. Yep. Drill. Very drill-like. “So you’re looking for what? A boyfriend you don’t have enough time to see?”

  He wasn’t sure why he was being such a dick about this.

  “Point taken,” Hunter said. “I’m not opposed to meaningless hookups, but I guess I want my meaningless hookups to come with the possibility of more. I’m not getting any younger.”

  “You’re a romantic,” Jesse said. Of course he was. Hunter might be a workaholic, but that was because he genuinely got caught up in the lives of his patients. His big heart was probably also why he couldn’t quite cut ties with his ex. He got attached.

  “But, for the sake of argument,” Hunter went on, “isn’t that the point here? Find something to get me away from work? What better way to do that than to get an actual boyfriend?”

  “‘An actual boyfriend,’” Jesse echoed, unsure why he suddenly felt so weird, like he had one of those monkey hooks lodged in his gut. It was just that imagining Hunter hooking up was one thing. Imagining him with a boyfriend was another. If Hunter had a boyfriend, that would almost certainly be the end of his twice-weekly dinners with Jesse.

  But what could he do? He had no claim on Hunter. So he picked up his hardware store bag and ordered himself to get his head out of his ass. “Okay. You get to work on Tinder, but tell me where you want stuff hung, first. Then I’ll do my thing while you do your thing.”

  An hour later, Hunter not only had a Tinder profile, he had a bunch of matches. He’d right-swiped a handful of people, and damned if most of them hadn’t right-swiped him back. He’d even started texting with a couple of them.

  Also, and perhaps more exciting, his walls had art.

  “Wow,” he said, following Jesse around his apartment and taking in his familiar old Montreal art hanging on his Toronto walls. In the bedroom, a beloved painting he’d bought from an up-and-coming artist hung over his bed. It wasn’t worth any money, but he adored it. Hadn’t realized how much he’d missed seeing it. It was like some forgotten part of himself had been restored.

  “Wow,” he said again. “I can’t believe you did all this.”

  “Dude. It’s not like I, I don’t know, arranged a liver transplant for a kid.”

  Hunter shook his head. Jesse could downplay it, but Hunter was going to remain impressed. That unhung art had been nagging the hell out of him. Had started to seem insurmountable, in fact. Yet Jesse had breezed in and taken care of it all like it was nothing. There was something so . . . viscerally capable about Jesse. Hunter wasn’t downplaying his professional accomplishments, but they were the result of years of training. Jesse, by contrast, just knew how to do stuff. He could literally make something—a song, a perfectly hung picture—out of nothing. Hunter was a sucker for that kind of effortless competence.

  No crushes on straight guys.

  Jesse idly picked up a corner of Hunter’s duvet, which was crumpled at the foot of his bed. “I have to say, I would have pegged you as a bed maker.”

  “I usually am.” And of course the one day he hadn’t made the bed would also be the first day in years he had someone else in his bedroom. “I had plans to meet for coffee at five this morning with the mother of one of my patients. She starts work at six. I forgot to set my alarm earlier than usual, so I had to bust it out of here.”

  One corner of Jesse’s mouth turned up. Probably because Hunter had launched into a long “the dog ate my homework” style excuse for something as trivial as an unmade bed. Jesse probably slept in a cave strewn with pillows and supermodels. Like a harem.

  Yes. He had no trouble imagining Jesse sleeping in a harem.

  Which was neither here nor there, on account of the “no crushes on straight guys” thing.

  Jesse was still holding the corner of Hunter’s duvet, rubbing it back and forth between his fingers.

  The way he was paused there, looking at Hunter but not saying anything, it was hard not to spin out fantasies. A disheveled Jesse sprawled in that very bed, his dark scruffiness in marked contrast to Hunter’s crisp, white, high-thread-count linens. But also, because Hunter was a dork, Jesse holding one corner of the duvet while he waited for Hunter to come around and take the other so they could make the bed together.

  Domestic bliss with the rock star.

  Hunter would have been disgusted with himself if he wasn’t already laughing inwardly at how ridiculous he was.

  He needed to get a boyfriend. Or get laid.

  Or maybe both.

  A chime issued from Hunter’s phone.

  “Ha!” he exclaimed. Perfect timing. “Another match!”

  Jesse dropped the duvet, and with it, his weird hold over Hunter’s imagination. “Is that what that noise is? I’ve been hearing it almost constantly.”

  “Yep.” Hunter hoofed it to the kitchen, picked up his phone. Before he investigated the most recent match, he checked his texts. He had some new ones from a guy named Aaron he’d messaged with through the app successfully enough that they’d switched to text. Aaron was a high school biology teacher who liked hiking and baking. Aaron was also adorable.

  A ding signaled another incoming text.

  “I can see how this could get kind of addicting,” Hunter said, surprising himself by how excitedly he clicked over to the photos that another guy—this one was named John—had texted him.

  Jesse made an inarticulate noise that was a cross between a grunt and a growl, and Hunter started a little—he hadn’t realized Jesse was right behind him.

  “Okay, that guy is clearly an axe murderer,” he said, leaning over Hunter’s shoulder and pointing at the screen.

  “John, age fifty, computer programmer into foreign films, is clearly an axe murderer?” Hunter asked incredulously. The picture Jesse was looking at was of a shirtless John standing in a garden in front of a suburban home.

  “‘Computer programmer’ is probably code for ‘he lives in his parents’ basement in the ’
burbs.’ Have you checked on Toronto real estate prices lately? That is totally his parents’ house.”

  “I don’t know how you get that from this. Or how you get axe—”

  “He’s also too old for you,” Jesse interrupted, still squinting at the picture.

  “Well, I’m not going to marry him. Who cares if he’s a little older?”

  “Oh, excuse me,” Jesse drawled, his tone suddenly pissy. “I thought you were all heart-eyes-emoji looking for love. If that’s the case, John, age fifty, is too old.”

  “You don’t even know how old I am.” Hunter sounded as cranky as Jesse. Why were they arguing about this?

  “My money’s on thirty-four.”

  That was . . . exactly right. Hunter laughed, which had the effect of loosening some of the weird tension that had stretched taut between them. “How did you know that?”

  “Well, you’ve been here for a little longer than two years. You said you were in Montreal for ten—you did your med school and residency there. I pegged you as the type who went straight from undergrad to med school, and I did the math.”

  “Huh,” said Hunter. “Gold star for you. People usually think I’m much older than I am on account of the gray hair.”

  “Nah. Anyone can tell it’s way premature.”

  In Hunter’s experience, that wasn’t the case. Most people didn’t look closely enough. But that Jesse had was . . . nice.

  Hunter let loose a big sigh and set the phone aside on John, age fifty, who, truth be told, probably was too old. “I don’t know what the hell I’m looking for.” He knew only that he needed to shake things up. “I’m sick of the same old, same old.” He sat down at the kitchen island.

  “Come to the cottage this weekend.”

  “What?” Hunter blinked, almost startled back to standing by the invitation. Jesse had a cottage in the Prince Edward County region east of Toronto. He and the band spent most summer weekends there. There was a small, makeshift studio on site, and to hear it told, they would noodle around on songs there and then come back to the city to record them properly. “But isn’t the cottage kind of a remote studio for you guys? Like a working weekend?”

  “Yeah, but you won’t be in our way.” When Hunter didn’t answer right away, Jesse added, “Think about it. What you’ve said you’re looking for with the whole move to Toronto is a new start. What anyone with half a brain—and by that, I mean Avery and not me—can see is that you’re working yourself into the ground. And you just said you’re sick of the same old, same old. Come along this weekend. Get out of the city. Out of your head.”

  It did sound tempting. A lot more appealing than pretending to be interested in the Maple Leafs and being on the emotional roller coaster of Tinder.

  “There’s no wi-fi,” Jesse went on. “And questionable cell reception. Half the time you have to walk out to the main road to get a signal.”

  “Wow. Total disconnection.” Hunter couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. Had he ever done that? And he wasn’t on call this weekend, so he could actually get away with it.

  “Yeah. Everyone kind of putters around doing their own thing—which for the guys mostly means staying up late partying and sleeping in. But you can swim. There’s a canoe. You know, the whole cottage deal.” The way he was waving his hands animatedly as he spoke, Hunter could tell how much he loved the place. “We do some writing and some studio time as the mood strikes. That’s part of why I started dragging the guys up with me. It gets everyone kind of on the edge of boredom. Forces creativity.”

  Just like he sometimes forgot Jesse was famous, Hunter also sometimes forgot Jesse had an entire life outside of their dinners together and his visits to the hospital. Hunter had never met the other guys in Jesse’s band. He’d never met anyone in Jesse’s life. Jesse existed as a self-contained unit.

  He wondered about the others. He’d seen them in the band’s videos and sometimes when they were interviewed as a group. Hunter was nothing if not exhaustive about his YouTube stalking, so he knew their names. He knew what they looked like—rock stars. They all had that same tousled, hard, rocker look that Jesse personified.

  “Is it going to be weird that I’m . . .” He made a vague gesture toward himself. He was wearing his standard work uniform. His job didn’t require scrubs, and he was old-school—he still believed in presenting oneself smartly and professionally—so he wore a shirt and tie under the white coat he kept in his office. But today’s combination of a purple-and-white gingham shirt and a pink-and-navy striped tie, while liable to land him on any list of the city’s best-dressed doctors, didn’t exactly scream, Hi, I’m a straight manly man who’s good at waterskiing and starting bonfires!

  “That you’re what? A doctor? Not at all. You can save Billy from alcohol poisoning.”

  “No, that I’m . . .” God. Was he twelve? Hunter was comfortably, firmly out in pretty much all circumstances.

  Except, apparently, at Jesse and the Joyride nature weekend.

  “A neat freak?” Jesse smirked and raised his eyebrows. “Nah. They won’t even notice. You, on the other hand, should probably pack some tranquilizers for yourself because by the end of the weekend . . . Well, let’s just say I have a regular cleaning service.”

  Jesse was teasing. It felt . . . good. And Hunter appreciated the hell out of the implied message that his sexuality wasn’t going to be a thing.

  And in case the implication had been too subtle, Jesse followed it with, “Hey. We’re modern men. And it’s my cottage. You’re my friend. Anyone who has a problem with you can fuck right off.”

  Pull over when you get to Waupoos and text me. The cottage is only about ten more minutes from there, but the roads are dark as hell and the turnoff is hard to see. I’ll walk out to the main road with a flashlight, and I’ll flag you down.

  Hunter followed the instructions in Jesse’s text, and man, was it ever dark. He and Julian used to camp some, but Julian had been the true outdoorsman, and anyway, it had been years since Hunter’d been out of the city.

  Now that he was almost there, he was glad he’d succumbed to Jesse’s insistence that he drive out tonight, despite the fact that an unforeseen emergency had kept him at the hospital late. It would have made much more sense to wait till the morning rather than arriving at—he glanced at the dashboard display—2 a.m.

  Well, he’d wanted a new leaf, and 2 a.m. in the middle of nowhere with a rock band definitely qualified.

  Pulling out from the tiny hamlet of Waupoos, Hunter headed up the narrow, wooded road toward Jesse’s place. Thankfully, the blanket of dark made it so Jesse couldn’t see the silly grin Hunter broke into when his headlights lit up the rock star, who was standing by the side of the road with his thumb stuck out, hitchhiker style.

  “Hey.” Jesse hopped into the car. “Glad you made it.”

  “I’m sorry I kept you up.”

  “Nah. I’d be up anyway. The others, uncharacteristically, have gone to sleep—there was a mix-up over who was bringing the beer, so it’s a dry night for the guys. But I was on a bit of a tear with a song.” He pointed to an almost unnoticeable dirt road protruding from the forest, and Hunter turned onto it. “Everything okay at the hospital?”

  Hunter started to say yes, everything was fine. But everything wasn’t fine, and he realized with a start how much he missed having someone to talk with about work. He didn’t have any doubts about breaking things off with Julian—he couldn’t live stuffed in someone else’s closet any longer—but he missed that closeness, missed having someone who knew his cast of characters. That was probably why he was having trouble cutting ties once and for all, why he was still responding to Julian’s texts.

  But actually . . . it was equally startling to realize that Jesse did know his cast of characters. Some of them, at least.

  “Well, I’ll be a stereotypical doctor and tell you I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that Avery’s post-op infection is clearing up nicely, and I think she’ll
be able to go home next week.”

  “Hey! That’s great. I gotta say, though, I’m going to miss her.”

  “I’m under instructions from Madison to tell you that you’re not off the hook because Avery’s going.”

  Jesse laughed. “Noted. And I’m happy to stay on the hook.” He paused. “Tell me the bad news too.”

  “I had a teenager unexpectedly go into cardiac arrest this evening.” He wished he could say more, tell Jesse about fourteen-year-old James, who was battling a bad lupus flare-up, but patient confidentiality laws prevented him from talking in anything other than generalities.

  “Jesus.” Jesse shook his head as he gazed out the window into the black night. “Cardiac arrest is not a phrase you should hear applied to teenager. What happened?”

  “We stabilized him. But his parents were three hours away. In some ways, that’s the worst of it for these kids. Life in the hospital is boring. Most kids have at least one parent who’s around the majority of the time. But sometimes they have to go home. They have jobs, other kids.” He swallowed, his throat tightening. “And, of course, the scariest thing that’s ever happened to this kid has to happen the one weekend his parents have gone home. He fronts like he’s too old to be in a children’s hospital, but he needed his parents.” Thinking of James trying so hard to be brave gutted Hunter.

  “So what happened?”

  “We called them, and they got right in the car.”

  “And you stayed with him until they got there.”

  Hunter had to swallow again. He still didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded in response.

  It sounded so stupid. It wasn’t as if the hospital wasn’t full of people who cared about the kids there. Kind, loving nurses who would have been on duty anyway. Did Hunter think he was irreplaceable? That he was the only constant presence in these kids’ lives?

  “You’re a good doctor,” Jesse said softly. Then he laid his hand on Hunter’s upper arm. “A good man.”