by Jerry Cole
“I hope so, Mitch,” he says, voice a low mumble as he speaks into his cup. “I really hope so.
***
There’s a knock on Scott’s door at half past eleven, just as he’s washing the last of his dishes. He’s half convinced he imagined it at first, given the time, but the knock echoes a second time, louder. Whatever salesperson is going door to door in the middle of the night while it’s pouring rain must be out of their mind, he thinks. He ignores the knock again, figures whoever it is can just assume he’s asleep or busy.
He hears the voice as he’s drying his hands and drops his towel into the sink in shock.
“Scott?” it calls, muffled by the wood of the door, sounding heart-breakingly like the voice Scott’s been aching to hear for months. He all but trips over his own feet in his rush to answer it, pulling it open and screeching to a halt in his footsteps when he sees the man standing outside.
“Jesus, Evan, you look like you fell in a pool,” he says, the words coming out of his mouth before he realizes he’s talking, his chest feeling oddly hollow. Some part of him, some small voice in the back of his brain is finding it near impossible to comprehend the fact that Evan is here, that Evan is standing at his front door dripping rainwater and being so very alive and tangible, but Scott pushes that voice to the side. He can argue logistics later, get the whole story at some point when Evan isn’t shaking and soaked to the bone.
“Didn’t have an umbrella,” replies Evan, like it’s any sort of explanation for why he’s standing in Scott’s living room at ten to midnight, suitcase in hand, instead of in Europe with Frances. He gives a half-hearted sort of shrug, and the movement looks oddly defeated.
“I thought you were in the Alps,” Scott says finally, when his tongue stops feeling like it’s cemented to the roof of his mouth, and Evan’s face falls. Immediately, Scott backpedals, tugging at the suitcase with one hand and ushers Evan inside with the other wrapped firm and gentle around his arm. Evan follows limply, hunched over like all the fight left him the moment Scott opened the door. “Come on,” Scott says, guiding him through the living room and down the hallway. “Let’s get you dried off, yeah?”
He rubs Evan down with clean towels from the hallway cabinet, stifling a snicker at the way Evan’s hair sticks up like a bird’s nest before he smooths it back down. Evan just stands there and shivers, avoiding eye contact, and Scott doesn’t even have the presence of mind to consider the fact that they’re standing nearly chest to chest, crowded together in the narrow hallway, closer than they’ve been in months.
He feels oddly stiff all of a sudden, too close for comfort. With a last, haphazard ruffle of Evan’s hair, he drops the towel from his own hands into Evan’s and takes a step back, gulping a breath of air.
“Should we catch up?” he says, jerking his head back toward the living room. “I have ice cream.”
Evan nods like all the fight has gone out of him.
***
Midnight comes and goes with the two of them bundled onto the couch, sitting just far enough that the sticky, stifling heat doesn’t double up with the proximity. The city is just beginning to quiet down outside the open window, and Evan seems to be out of his element, starting a bit whenever he hears a siren or a car horn or a particularly loud drunk on the streets. By the time Evan scarfs down the food Scott had scrounged up for him, it’s nearing one in the morning, and he’s finally beginning to look less like a drowned rat and more like an exhausted bundle of curly hair and oversized sweatpants. His clothes from earlier have long since been tossed into the washer, and he had pulled a pair of pajamas out of his luggage the minute Scott had said he could stay.
Scott takes the plate and the glass of water from the table and carries them into the kitchen as Evan gets to his feet. He shuffles down the hallway like a zombie, and when he disappears from Scott’s line of sight Scott can hear a door open and the sink tap start up in the bathroom. A small smile spreads across his face, unbidden. Despite the surrealism of the situation, it feels oddly domestic. Evan is here, close in a way he hadn’t been since he and Frances had disappeared on their madcap adventure around the globe, and suddenly every single emotion Scott had tucked into a lockbox three months ago comes rushing to the surface.
He drops his hands to the countertop, leaning over and taking deep breaths. The surprise of the situation is beginning to fade away, leaving him with a familiar ache in his chest and the rolling anxiety sitting heavy in his gut like it had every time Evan had been in his house since December.
When he manages to get a handle on the churning in his stomach, he straightens up, drying off his hands and padding down the hallway. The bathroom door is open, Evan’s back visible through the opening. He’s hunched bodily over the sink, hands pressing a damp washcloth against his face. He looks up when Scott knocks on the doorframe.
“Everything all right?”
Evan is silent, making fleeting eye contact with Scott through the mirror’s reflection before dropping his gaze back down to the sink. Scott takes that as his cue to slip through the doorway, perching precariously on the edge of the counter next to Evan, his feet just barely brushing the floor. He waits for Evan to speak first, content with the silence. He’s had a lot of practice waiting.
After a long moment, Evan lifts his head again. His eyes are red-rimmed, visible through the periphery of Scott’s vision.
“I saw my dad,” he says, four little words, and suddenly understanding plummets through Scott’s chest like a gunshot. Evan had never really talked much about his relationship with his father, but Scott knew it had been bad enough to warrant Evan wanting to be disowned. It must have been a shock for Evan to run into his father again, Scott supposes, but then Evan takes a shuddering breath, his knuckles white on the basin of the sink, and opens his mouth again.
“He’s dying, Scott.”
Scott can’t think of a single thing to say. His mouth flops open uselessly, jaw working but no sound managing to claw its way out of his throat. It takes nearly half a minute of silence, of Scott’s lungs feeling like they’re going to collapse, before he manages to make a noise that could reasonably be considered a coherent word. “Jesus. Shit, that’s—”
“Yeah.” Evan’s voice is hollow and small, sounding miles away even when he’s standing less than a foot away from Scott.
“Does Mitchell know?”
“She will soon, I think. Frances will tell her.”
Scott blinks. “You haven’t seen her?”
“No,” Evan replies, shaking his head. “You were closest so I came straight here.”
Scott doesn’t reply, something in his chest gaping dark and cavernous. Instead, he just tilts his head to the side, looks at Evan like he’s trying to memorize the lines of his face. Evan looks like he’s aged a lifetime in the three months since Scott saw him last, worry etched into the lines of his face and a tight set to his jaw. Scott wants to reach out, to pull Evan into his arms and smooth away the wrinkles across his brow, kiss the hard frown from his lips. A split second goes by and he remembers exactly why he can’t do that anymore.
“You know,” Evan says, after the silence has stretched out long enough. “The strangest thing is, I wasn’t even mad about any of it. The money, the marriage, all that.” He inhales, tilts his head back to face the ceiling, and Scott studies the curve of his throat. “He wasn’t any better when I saw him in the hospital. Of course kept going on about how I was a disappointment and should have sucked it up for the good of the family, blah, blah, blah, being gay is a sin, burn in hell, but I just didn’t care anymore. I got over all that a long time ago, I just didn’t expect him to keep holding onto it.”
With the carefully affected nonchalance masking the quiver in Evan’s voice, Scott can almost believe it. “What did you say?” he asks, speaking each word as carefully as he can.
Evan snorts. “Nothing, actually. Just told him I was there to get closure and listened to the rest of it.” His voice is sad. “I don’t think I co
uld have said anything, really. He wouldn’t have heard me. The doctor said he had about a week or two left, asked if I wanted to stay, but it wouldn’t have helped anything.”
“So you came back to let Mitchell know?”
Evan looks at Scott for the first time, and his eyes are piercing green rimmed with angry red. “Something like that, yeah. She shouldn’t have to find out in a phone call.”
Scott bites the inside of his lip, worrying the skin with his teeth. There’s so much more he wants to know, so many things he wants to say, but he knows he can’t push Evan. Not at a time like this, not when he needs to put Evan before himself. In the end, he reaches out, drops a hand lightly onto Evan’s shoulder, squeezes it gently in support. “Are you okay?”
Evan sniffs a little, gives a tiny nod and turns to drop the washcloth back into the basin of the sink. “Jus’ needed to get my bearings,” he says, his voice a little hazy with exhaustion. There’s a slight curve at the corners of his lips, a smile that’s equal parts bitter and relieved, and when he exhales Scott can see his shoulders relaxing. “Haven’t slept in upwards of two days, I think.”
He laughs, breaking the tension, and Scott blinks in shock. “What the hell, Evan, you should have just gone to bed instead of letting me keep you up—”
“No, no, ‘s okay,” Evan says, cutting him off and raising his head a bit to look at Scott through the mirror’s reflection. “Glad I got to see you.”
Scott’s heart does cartwheels in his chest, and he feels his expression soften into something tender, vulnerable. “Glad I got to see you too,” he mumbles, because it’s true. “Now come on, let’s get you to bed.”
Evan nods, patting Scott’s arm on his way out of the bathroom, teetering his way down the hallway toward the living room with one hand on the wall for support. Without much thought, Scott reaches out and tugs at the fabric of his shirt, tilting his head toward the bedroom when Evan turns to look at him.
Evan looks like he’s about to argue, but seems to think better of it. “Yeah, okay,” he says, deflating.
He collapses into bed like a marionette with cut strings, shuffling just enough to get himself comfortable, curling into himself on his side. He opens his eyes for a moment, fixes Scott with a glittering stare, and Scott feels like he’s being tossed around by a hurricane.
“Stay.”
Desperate longing sparks down every single one of Scott’s veins, leaving an ache in his chest and a buzzing in his head. He hadn’t had enough time to prepare himself for this. When Evan left, he had gotten complacent, forgotten the feelings that claw up his spine at times like this, spitting fire through his veins and making him dizzy with yearning to reach out and just hold Evan. A protest starts up in the back of his head the same way it always does, banging pots and pans together and trying to get him to see sense, reminding him that the last time the two of them had been in this bed together, it had ended with Evan naked on top of him and Scott getting his heart shattered into a thousand little pieces.
Evan blinks up at him, hazy and barely present for how tired he looks. Scott pushes the protesting voice firmly aside as he climbs onto the empty side of the bed, feeling the mattress dip and shift as he tries to make himself comfortable without actually giving in and pressing himself against Evan’s side. Vanilla and cloves fill his senses, his skin prickling with awareness, with the knowledge that Evan is real and alive and inches away from his skin. His entire world shrinks, reduces like it’s been sucked into a black hole, until the only thing he can register is warmth and the tender ache in his chest and the way he can feel the rise and fall of Evan’s chest as he breathes.
Evan shifts, turns, and Scott’s lungs go tight when he tilts his head to see Evan facing him. His eyes are barely opened, glazed over with sleep, and even in the dim light Scott can count every one of the freckles dotting the bridge of his nose. “G’night,” Evan mumbles, voice barely audible even with how close they are.
And then he closes his eyes, curls in until his nose is pressed against Scott’s collarbone and one leg slotted between Scott’s thighs, and falls asleep.
The clanging in Scott’s head seems to quiet all at once, his racing thoughts coming to a screeching halt at the first slide of Evan’s leg against his own. It’s like pulling the plug on a television, fuzzy black and white static disappearing into a single point of warmth where Evan is pressed against him, and suddenly he can’t remember why he ever tried to fight the tender sting that pierces him through like a lance.
He only hesitates for a second before reaching up, wrapping one arm around Evan’s thin shoulders, exhaling and relaxing into the content feeling in his chest.
Chapter Nineteen
Scott wakes all at once, fumbling at the pillow draped over his chest before realizing it isn’t a pillow at all. There’s a terrible sense of deja vu that hits him as he claws his way into lucidity, one that comes along with the feeling of a warm body in his bed and a leg snug between his own.
Quietly, carefully so as not to jostle Evan awake, he clambers out of his side of the bed. It’s awfully, terrifyingly familiar. The last time he woke up with Evan in his bed, Evan had disappeared less than twenty-four hours later to run across the globe. Still, though, it’s not quite the same. There’s no impending hangover, no deep-seated guilt at waking up with someone in his bed. It’s just him, just him and Evan and the rustle of chatter and morning traffic on the street below.
He dresses quietly, scribbling at Mitchells’ on a notepad next to the bed, tiptoeing out of the room and trying his best not to let the front door squeak when he walks out.
***
Frances is at the coffee shop when Scott walks in, chatting amicably with a stunned Mitchell over the counter, and Scott wonders if he’s genuinely surprised or if he’s just shocked that he was half expecting this in the first place.
“You’re alive,” he says, and Frances whirls on her heels. “When did you get back?”
She gives him a wide smile, all warmth and bright teeth and missed you too written over her expression in bright red marker. “Just now, actually,” she says, and Scott looks down for the first time and notices the small carry on suitcase at her side. “I followed Evan out, but I haven’t seen him yet.”
Scott opens his mouth, thinks better of it, then closes it again. Frances pins him with an unreadable look.
“He’s at my place, actually,” says Scott, and watches as surprise flickers over Frances’ expression. “He got back yesterday and passed out on my couch.” His voice stumbles a bit over on my couch, color and warmth flooding his cheeks, and Mitchell squints at him as if she knows exactly what thoughts are running through his head.
“He came to see you?” Frances asks, like she’s half expecting him to take it back. Scott isn’t really sure what to make of that. Before he has a chance to respond, though, Frances beckons him away from Mitchell, leaving the suitcase to the side of the counter and stepping delicately over to her usual table. Mitchell watches them as they go, a bemused sort of expression on her face. Scott realizes with a pang that she probably hasn’t heard yet.
“So, you know,” Frances says when he slides into the seat across from her, hands folded primly and a sad look in her eyes. He nods.
“He told me when he came by last night. He’s still asleep. I figured I would let him rest.”
Frances nods her agreement, a soft little sigh escaping her mouth. She leans back, lacing and unlacing her fingers. It’s a nervous tic, Scott’s noticed, one she does when she’s trying to find something to say. “He’ll probably come here when he wakes up, stop by to tell her everything that’s happened.” She looks past Scott, eyes drifting a bit to the right, to where Mitchell is taking the order of a customer at the counter. “It’s probably best if we leave them to it.”
She says it quietly, more resigned than anything, and Scott swallows. He wonders, absently, if Evan had ever told her about their night together, right before he had left. He thinks of Evan, soft and warm and tir
ed in his arms, of the way they had fit together like puzzle pieces on Scott’s too small double bed.
“Probably,” he says, when he realizes he can’t let the silence draw out longer.
There isn’t much in the way of a reply, not that he really expected one. Frances seems different now, not quite the same as she was when she left to chase Evan halfway around the globe. Scott had figured, of course, that Evan would be changed somehow by the journey, but Frances hasn’t come out untouched either.
Scott peers at her, studies the fine worry lines that crease her forehead, at the way she takes a second to brace herself before splitting her expression into a smile. He wonders, not for the first time, if the three months apart had left a rift, a crack in the center of their tight knit family, and if there’s any way he can patch it up again.
She blinks at him, though, seems to notice the concern in his expression and smooths her own into a placid, easy smile. “Why don’t we get out of here?” she says, and Scott doesn’t understand why until he turns around to see Evan’s familiar figure stepping in through the doorway, one hand on the doorframe and the other jammed into the pocket of Scott’s favorite hoodie.
Scott’s heart does a funny little leap in his chest, and Frances raises an eyebrow at him.
Evan seems to freeze when he notices Scott at the table, eyes darting between his face and Frances, expression vaguely like a deer caught in the headlights. All at once, Scott is bowled over with the memory of Evan in bed, early morning light streaming through the window. He isn’t sure exactly which memory he’s reliving, but the light filtering in through the doorway plays around the tips of Evan’s curls in the same way, dyeing his head fiery gold in the glow.
There’s a warmth against his hand, a light pressure, and when he looks back, Frances inclines her head toward the doorway.
“Let’s give them some privacy, shall we?”
***
She walks Scott down the street and around the block, ducking into a flower shop that Scott hadn’t known was there.