Undue Influence

by Jenny Holiday

  “It’s not like you’re using the spot.” Adam didn’t know why he was trying to reason with them. “And it’s a public street.”

  “Yes, but they’re just flaunting it, parking it right there,” Mark said.

  Adam was sure the McGuires, who, despite their ugly-ass house, were nice people who’d been nothing but kind to Mark and Chloe, hadn’t thought of it in those terms at all. He was tempted to suggest that Mark and Chloe stop interpreting everyone’s actions as being about them. Still, he was practical—you had to be with his family—so he left it alone.

  “Anyway,” Chloe said to her husband, “since you’re hungover, I’m assuming you won’t be going to the bush party tonight.” She turned to Adam. “You should come with me.”

  “I’m not hungover,” Mark said. “I’m sick.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Thanks,” Adam said to Chloe, “but I think I’ll take a pass.” Bishop’s Glen had a pretty well-established bush-party scene. The town’s young people would head out into a forest clearing or a fallow farm field with cheap local wine and the makings of a bonfire and sit around and drink. He’d gone sometimes when he was younger, but he’d never really been that comfortable at parties. He’d long since grown out of them. Mark and Chloe had not.

  “I wonder if the McGuires are going.” Chloe was still scowling out the window. “It’s going to be a big crowd tonight because Freddy Wentworth is in town.”

  Adam almost dropped his nephew as adrenaline erupted inside him. He had to force himself to lower the boy with arms that suddenly felt made of jelly. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Freddy Wentworth.” Chloe must have mistaken Adam’s shock for confusion, because she added, “You know. The Food Network chef? That show Food Fanatics where he goes around and eats food and gets mad at people for making it wrong? And that Ben Captain guy follows him around trying to smooth things over?”

  Oh, Adam knew the show. He had every single one of its twenty-two-episode run saved on his DVR. Sometimes at night, God help him, he turned it on, closed his eyes, and let Freddy talk him to sleep. You call this a roux? Here, let me show you, you idiot. It was surreal, not least because the Freddy Adam had known had been nothing but kind. Gentle.

  “He was a big troublemaker when we were kids?” Chloe was still trying to jog Adam’s memory. “Greaser type? You probably don’t remember him because he was a bit older.”

  “Oh, Adam knows Freddy,” Mark said. “They were friends for a while.”

  “Really?” Chloe was surprised. Everyone had been. On paper it had been an odd friendship. In reality, it had been the most natural thing in the world—and it had been more than a friendship. “Then you have to come.”

  Adam made fists to try to stop his hands from shaking. He shouldn’t be so gobsmacked. Freddy’s sister had bought Kellynch—that had been a shock, and one he was still reeling from. He hadn’t recognized her married name when he’d learned the identity of the purchasers. It had only been a week ago, when she’d moved to town and tongues had started wagging, that he’d made the connection. But given that Sophie had bought Kellynch, why was Adam so surprised that Freddy might come to town to visit her?

  Mark sat up. “You know what? I’m starting to feel much better.”

  “You two go.” Adam forced himself to slow his breathing so he could talk like a normal person. “I’ll stay with the munchkins.” He never minded hanging with Whitney and Mark Jr. And now? If it meant not going to a party at which Freddy Wentworth would be in attendance? Not only did he not mind, he insisted.

  “Oh, I don’t think we can possibly ask you to babysit again,” said Chloe in a manner that suggested she was thinking of exactly that.

  “But we’re gonna work on the playhouse!” Whitney exclaimed.

  Yes. Saved by the six-year-old. He was building the kids a playhouse out back, and the next task was to add the roof.

  “Okay, but since Mark is sick”—Chloe shot her husband a look—“I’m going to send him home early to swap with you, and then you can come. He should get to bed early, and you should get to say hi to Freddy.”

  “Sure.” Adam only agreed because he knew that once the partying started, she would forget about him. People generally did.

  They left, and that was that. Adam and the kids ate some mac and cheese. They made a playhouse roof out of one-by-fours. They watched some PAW Patrol. A normal, unremarkable Saturday night.

  Except for the fact that Freddy Wentworth was less than five miles away.

  It was like Adam could feel him. Well, no, what he was feeling was more like imaginary bugs crawling under his skin, making him jumpy and agitated. Freddy, back in the day, had made him agitated, but in a much more enjoyable way. He could close his eyes and be back in the lake, shivering from a mixture of cold and lust as Freddy’s hands roamed all over his body.

  It was hard to square that version of Freddy, the one who, gilded with moonlight, had whispered words of affection into Adam’s ear, with the TV version of Freddy, who yelled and cursed and banged pots around. But then, Adam had always seen a different side of Freddy. A private version Freddy didn’t show to anyone else. Adam wondered if that Freddy still existed, or if Adam, by breaking his heart, had killed him off.

  The worst part about it was the knowledge that Rusty had been wrong about Freddy. Totally, utterly wrong. Contrary to Rusty’s predictions, Freddy had made something of himself. He was the town’s most famous export. His New York restaurant had a two-month waiting list for a table, and his Food Network show had been a huge hit, catapulting him and his friend Ben into the ranks of celebrity chefs.

  No, the worst part was that some part of Adam had known, even back then, that Rusty was wrong. He’d known Freddy would make something of himself. Or at least he’d known it didn’t matter. That his essential nature—his Freddyness—was enough. Was everything.

  He had known all that, and still he’d let himself be persuaded.

  This wasn’t so bad. Freddy took in the familiar surroundings of a Bishop’s Glen bush party. If he had to think back to one thing about the town of his youth he didn’t hate, it might be a bush party. You could see the stars out here, which was something he hadn’t even realized he’d missed. And the smell. In the summer, the rural and forested land around the town smelled…green. Intensely, gorgeously green. There was no other word for it. Plants at the peak of their life cycles, full of stored energy, bursting with life and potential. You didn’t get that in New York City.

  There was quite a crowd out tonight, and an older one than he remembered. There were lots of people here he’d overlapped with in school, and he was twenty-nine. He recognized everyone from the former high school quarterback to the guy he’d washed dishes with at the Bee’s Knees. For some reason, these parties had always drawn from across the social spectrum. Kids of rich residents and kids like him. They’d drink local plonk and cook over the fire. In all his years of Michelin-starred cooking and dining, he’d never tasted anything quite like a spicy pork sausage from Ken Rawlings’s farm roasted over an open fire. And despite having a sommelier’s course under his belt, he still had a secret soft spot for room-temperature Riesling that wasn’t nearly as acidic as it should be.

  “Don’t hog Freddy, Henry.”

  Lulu McGuire appeared, hands on hips, silhouetted against the bonfire behind her.

  He almost laughed. There was another thing that hadn’t changed. Lulu McGuire had been the homecoming queen back in the day, the peak of the social pyramid in high school—and judging by the way people deferred to her, she still was.

  She tried to edge in between her brother Henry and Freddy, who were sitting on a log. That was something new. Lulu McGuire hadn’t paid much attention to him back in the day, at bush parties or elsewhere. She hadn’t been cruel like most people. Lulu had always been a nice girl, if not the brightest bulb. She’d just been busy with her friends, and Freddy had not been one of those.

  Freddy hadn’t had any friends besides Ben,
actually, unless you counted that summer with Adam, and he didn’t.

  “He’s not a blanket, Lulu.” Henry stood—or sat—his ground on the log next to Freddy. “He’s a person. He can’t be hogged.”

  And that was something different, too. Last time Freddy paid any attention to Henry McGuire, who was a couple years younger than Lulu and him, the guy had been straight. Or so Freddy had presumed. Judging by the all the flirting and the suggestive looks Henry was throwing Freddy’s way this evening, that was no longer the case.

  Lulu huffed and came around to sit on Freddy’s other side. “Freddy. We were all so shocked when you came out on TV as bisexual. I mean, I knew you were into guys, but I had no idea you liked girls, too.”

  That’s because Lulu had never paid any attention to him. Yes, his big Bishop’s Glen outing had involved that ill-advised blow job that had made him infamous in town, but he’d fooled around with both boys and girls in his youth and had never tried to hide that fact. And he’d fooled around a lot—before Adam, anyway. Funnily enough, even though everyone looked down on him, he’d never really had much trouble rustling up a certain kind of companionship when he’d wanted it.

  Ironically, the only thing he’d ever been in the closet about was the one time he actually fell in love.

  Henry scooched a little closer to Freddy. “Was that planned? I’ve always heard those shows are actually scripted.”

  “It wasn’t planned.” Freddy tried to think back to the episode in question. It had been a throwaway remark, something he’d said in response to a homophobic statement made by a chef whose restaurant the show was visiting. It had just been a little “fuck you,” which he’d thought had gone with his TV persona. The persona itself had been kind of scripted. They’d wanted him to be the cranky, foul-mouthed bad boy—the bad cop to Ben’s good cop. It wasn’t a huge leap—they merely wanted an exaggerated version of his real self. He’d been happy to oblige. He was kind of an asshole, and the show had really been Ben’s thing.

  He’d been surprised when his offhand “I’m bisexual, so stop with this bullshit” comment had garnered a landslide of “celebrity chef comes out” media attention. It was funny that in Bishop’s Glen, everyone thought he was gay, but in the wider world, he was assumed to be straight. So in a way, pronouncing himself bi on national TV had amounted to coming out in both directions to both audiences.

  The resulting media firestorm had passed quickly, though, and for a while, it had gotten him a lot of extra attention of the male variety, which was not something Freddy had minded.

  Lulu scooted a little closer to Freddy from the other side. They were gradually smushing him in the middle of a McGuire sandwich. Then she leaned forward and glared at her brother around Freddy’s torso. Freddy almost laughed. Had he ever imagined being the object of interest of one of the McGuire siblings, much less both?

  He should probably be more annoyed by it. Take his own advice to Sophie about looking down his nose at all the bastards in this town, but the truth was the McGuires had always been pleasant, if a bit shallow. And the other, more immediate truth was that they’d both grown up quite nicely. Lulu still had the blinding smile and killer curves that had gotten her elected homecoming queen, and Henry, who had been a wiry soccer star in high school, had bulked out considerably. He was wearing a tight tank top that showed off arms and shoulders honed to perfection.

  Maybe this little sojourn in Bishop’s Glen wouldn’t be totally without its amusements. Freddy got so busy in New York that he rarely made time for anything beyond a quick hookup. Customers frequently came on to him, and when he had the inclination, he took one home. The catch was that he usually didn’t have the time.

  But now, here, with Ben lost in grief and Freddy refusing to abandon him, he had nothing but time.

  “Hey, now,” he said to both McGuires. “There’s enough room for everyone.”

  “Oh, but here comes Adam Elliot,” Lulu said. “He’ll need to sit down. Get up, Henry.”

  And just like that, Adam Fucking Elliot walked into the circle of light cast by the fire. Freddy’s body started doing that thing where it refused to get the be cool message his mind was sending. Thousands of tiny pins were pricking his skin, and someone had turned the temperature up on the fire from pleasantly toasty to hellish inferno.

  Adam still had the same limp that created his signature loping gait. Still had that dark, wavy hair, that light dusting of freckles over delicate facial bones. He was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a snug-fitting T-shirt, but Freddy suspected that unlike Henry, Adam wasn’t doing it on purpose. Adam wasn’t vain.

  Although, how did he know that? Everything he’d thought he’d known about Adam had been a lie, hadn’t it?

  Adam didn’t notice Freddy at first. His sister-in-law, Chloe, greeted him, and they had a conversation about whether Mark, who had been at the party earlier but had apparently gone home, was going to let the kids stay up too late.

  The longer Adam stood there without seeing him, the more uncomfortable Freddy got. He realized he’d been holding his breath, so he stopped—but that resulted in an audible, sharp exhale that drew the attention of Lulu next to him.

  “Hey, Adam!” she called. “You remember Freddy Wentworth? Our resident famous person has returned to the fold!”

  “Temporarily returned.” Freddy congratulated himself that his voice had come out sounding even and unbothered.

  “Yeah.” Adam nodded at him like you’d nod at someone you vaguely remembered from your past. “I was sorry to hear about Ben Captain’s wife. I knew her a little—she had major car troubles a couple years ago when she and Ben were here for a few weeks, so she saw more of me than she probably wanted to. But she was always gracious.”

  “You still fix cars?” Freddy asked. Amazingly, he continued to sound undisturbed.

  “Oh, yeah,” Henry said. “Adam works his magic at Anderson Motors. You remember Rusty Anderson?”

  Freddy sure as hell did. The old queen had taken way too much interest in Adam back in the day, in Freddy’s opinion. Had too much sway over him.

  “There’s not a car they can’t fix between the pair of them,” Henry said.

  Adam looked at the ground. Was he blushing? There was nothing to indicate that—the light of the fire wasn’t bright enough to illuminate subtle changes in skin tone. But Adam had always flushed easily, and Freddy knew that mannerism. Adam had always looked at the ground and sort of done a half smile when he was embarrassed—and he had always been so delightfully easy to tease into a blush.

  Freddy wondered what had inspired this one. Was he embarrassed that he was still in Bishop’s Glen fixing cars? If the Elliots had lost Kellynch to foreclosure, things probably weren’t going too well. He hoped that at least—

  No. Adam was not his problem anymore. He didn’t wish him ill, but he wasn’t going to waste any time feeling sorry for him. Hoping for some outcome or other. Hope was an utterly useless emotion, in matters of the heart and in life more generally. Things either happened or they didn’t. Hope had no bearing on the matter. Hard work, maybe, if you were looking for an avenue of influence, but not hope. Hope was for the weak-willed.

  “And, oh!” Henry exclaimed. “Freddy, it just occurred to me that your sister now owns—”

  “Shh!” Lulu shot her brother a death glare. Then, when no one said anything, she said, “Well, that’s awkward.”

  “It’s okay,” Adam said quietly. “I was glad Kellynch went to someone like Sophie.”

  “You should sit,” Freddy said to Adam. He rose, vacating his spot between the McGuire siblings. Adam hated being coddled—or at least he used to—but there was no reason for him to stand on that bad leg. It had always bothered him less when he was sitting or, somewhat counterintuitively, when he was walking. Walking took his mind off things, he’d always said.

  And anyway, Freddy needed to leave. Needed this evening to be over. So he waved off Adam’s protest and made his excuses to the group, promising Lulu and
Henry that he would see them later in the week.

  And that was that. He walked away from the fire and into the night toward his car.

  When Freddy had thought about seeing Adam again—which he tried not to do, because he was done expending emotional energy on Adam Elliot—he imagined it being a Big Freaking Deal. There would be portentous music playing. The wind would be blowing. There might be yelling. Certainly, everyone would be staring at them.

  He did not imagine it being so anticlimactic. You still fix cars? Please, take my seat. They could have been in one of those conversation-heavy costume dramas Adam always used to like to watch, the ones where all they did was talk and talk and talk and everyone was so emotionally stifled Freddy had always half expected one of the characters to suddenly snap and start doing whatever the nineteenth-century equivalent of going postal was.

  Also: who was he kidding? He had totally thought about seeing Adam again.

  But that was only because Adam had been his first love. People never forgot their first love, right? The sway Adam had over Freddy didn’t have anything to do with Adam specifically. It was the position he held. His role. Surely if Adam himself still had any power over Freddy, that reunion would have been a lot different. There would have been portentous music and all that. The universe would have recognized it in some way as Monumental.

  Right?

  Chapter Five

  Eight years ago

  “Adam!”

  Adam stopped. He knew that voice. Hell, he dreamed about that voice. It snaked through his subconscious while he slept, and he woke up with wet pajama bottoms.

  It was like his ears were tuned to the exact frequency at which Freddy spoke. Like he had superhero abilities, supersonic hearing—but only for Freddy Wentworth.

  What Adam didn’t hear, along with Freddy’s voice, was a car. Usually Freddy pulled up next to him, asked if he wanted a ride home, took Adam’s no thanks in good stride, shot him a knee-dissolving grin, and took off.