by A. M. Arthur
“And when the Laundromat burned down last summer, Casper was one of the initial suspects. Payback for Nathan.”
Jace hesitated. He hadn’t heard that part, and he had a hard time believing the laid-back guy he’d met last month could burn down a building and destroy so many lives. “There was never enough evidence to prove arson.”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.”
“No one in that family tree is smart enough to get away with arson.”
“But they have money. I overheard Dad talking to Laura Walsh back at the Fourth of July picnic. Dad said Nathan Blonsky made a big withdrawal from his savings a few weeks before the fire. Told the police he gave the money to Casper, and Casper told the police he used it to cover some gambling debt. No one could prove Casper used it to pay someone to burn down the Laundromat, so the case was closed.”
Irritation prickled the back of Jace’s scalp. She was judging someone she’d never met, like she was judging Gavin—all based on things she’d heard and didn’t know for herself. “Even if Casper had something to do with the fire, which there is no proof he did, what the hell does it have to do with Gavin? Is he guilty by association now? Or is he not good enough because he’s half-Mexican and lives in a trailer?”
Rachel stared at him like he’d just kicked a puppy in the face. “That’s not fair.”
“That’s what I’m hearing, Rach. You’re tearing down him and his friends, so if it’s not what you mean, then please clarify for me.”
“I think you’re acting weird, okay? You’ve been different since Thanksgiving, and that’s when you and Gavin first hooked up, right?”
His irritation swung into full-on anger. “Gavin is the best thing that’s happened to me all year. He’s funny, and he’s fun, and he doesn’t push me, so watch what the fuck you say about him.”
She flinched. “I’m sorry, okay? Maybe Gavin’s awesome, I don’t know. All I do know is that you aren’t yourself, so what is going on?”
The heat of his anger cooled into something sharp and uncomfortable. Sometimes he really hated the so-called “twin bond”. She read him like he had his feelings spray painted across his face.
“Are you worried about coming out to Mom and Dad?” she asked.
He was, sure, but coming out wasn’t weighing him down like a cinder block around his neck. He had a far worse secret than being gay. A secret only one other person in the world knew, and he couldn’t tell Rachel or Gavin about it. He didn’t dare. “I am nervous about that,” he admitted.
She studied him with what he called her Dr. Analytical face. “But that’s not it, is it?”
“It’s part of it.”
“Look, you were there for me this year when I thought I was going to completely lose it. I want to help you with whatever’s going on.”
“I know.”
“Which is code for you aren’t going to tell me?”
“Exactly.”
“Fine, but promise me that if you really need help, you’ll come to me. I know you, Jace. You hold things in until the secret makes you sick. You don’t have to do that.”
Intellectually, he knew she was right. He could trust her, could tell her everything and she wouldn’t judge him. She’d listen and comfort him. But then she’d try to fix it, and this wasn’t her problem to fix. He got himself into it, he’d deal without dragging his sister into the middle of the shit storm.
“Promise me,” she said again.
Jace looked her in the eyes, identical to his own, and lied to her face. “I promise.”
7
Sleep mocked Jace from afar that night. He prowled his room for hours, unable to fully relax enough to sleep, until physical exhaustion forced him to flop down into his papasan chair with his iPod. He shuffled until he found a selection of panpipe music from the Andes that he’d downloaded for a school project two years ago. The gentle tones of the pipes and their melodies did the trick, and he woke with the sun in his face and a cramp in his neck, as unrested as he’d ever felt in his life.
He wanted to call Gavin, just to hear his voice. He couldn’t describe what it was about the tall, hyperactive older boy that calmed Jace’s own morbid thoughts and gentled the stress that battered him from all sides. Maybe it was as simple as Gavin’s comfort with himself—something Jace certainly didn’t have. But he couldn’t call Gavin, because Gavin had gone into work early to help with inventory at the Dollar Mart. They’d made plans to meet for lunch at eleven-thirty, which meant Jace still had four hours to kill.
Running could murder some of that time.
He changed into sweats and sneakers and took off without bothering to warm up. Maybe he’d pay for it later, but he just wanted to go.
The morning was cold, with enough frost in the air and gray clouds overhead to hint at potential snow. It hadn’t snowed much yet that winter, and they were due for a good dumping. With Jace’s luck, they’d get a blizzard and he’d be snowed in at his house for days with Gavin on the other side of town. He shivered as much from the cold that had instantly numbed his face as from the horrible idea of being stuck with his family for days.
It had been fun when he was five. Not so much now that he was an adult.
The cold air burned his lungs as he ran, choosing an unfamiliar route through his neighborhood, toward the center of town. As his muscles warmed, he picked up speed. His empty stomach growled, annoyed at the exercise without first being fed. He ignored the familiar sound, ignored the lightness in his head, ignored the warm muscles that had, strangely, already started aching.
He was burning more calories than he was consuming—years of running told him that with perfect clarity. He still didn’t stop or slow down. The adrenaline pushed him forward, kept him going for the first mile, when lack of sleep and food tried to make him quit. He wouldn’t quit, not on something as easy as a run.
The problems waiting for him at school faded behind the burn in his legs, the fire in his lungs, the cold air all around him. Jace focused on nothing except each new step, each extra yard. Stratton itself faded into the background. Nothing existed except the cold, the sidewalk and the burn.
Until a blaring car horn startled him out of the haze. Brakes squealed, and the terrifying noise was immediately punctuated by the flash of a blue hood as Jace slammed into it with his entire body. His left knee jammed against the passenger wheel and a jolt of pain shot down his leg. The car had stopped moving, and Jace stood there, hands braced on the hood, panting and dizzy.
I was almost hit by a car.
“Holy shit, man,” the driver said as he climbed out.
Jace recognized the voice, and he looked up to find Rey King staring at him, wide-eyed, from the other side of the car. Jace glanced up and down the street, unsure where he’d ended up. He’d circled back toward the neighborhood where Rey lived, and he’d apparently run right out into the street without checking first.
“Jace, you all right?” Rey asked. He came around to Jace’s side of the car, breathing hard like he was the one who’d been running. “You came out of fucking nowhere.”
“Sorry, my fault,” Jace replied. He peeled his hands off the hood and stood up straight. His left knee protested with a bolt of pain that forced out a wince.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” He tried to take a step backward, away from the car, and his knee flared. He stumbled.
Rey grabbed his right elbow and held him steady. “Easy.”
Jace felt like a jackass for running out into the street like that. “I got caught up, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“No kidding. Seriously, though, are you hurt?”
“Banged my knee a little, I think.”
Rey looked down, as if he could assess the damage through Jace’s sweatpants. “Listen, I can drive you to the hospital—”
“No! I mean, it’s not that bad, really. I’m sure I’ll walk it off.”
“Jace, if you did something that needs a doctor—”
“I didn’t, I
promise. It’s just sore.” As if to prove his point, Jace took a few steps back and forth next to the idling car. His knee hurt like a son of a bitch, but he wasn’t going to let Rey feel guilty about this. Or have the accident mess with his insurance. Mostly Jace wanted to go home and back to bed.
Rey gave him a dubious look. “At least let me drive you home, okay? Sam will kill me if I don’t do that.”
“You’re going to tell him?” Something about the idea of Rey’s cop boyfriend knowing about this frightened him, and he couldn’t explain why.
“Is there any reason I shouldn’t? It was an accident, Jace.” Rey frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, shaken up a little, but I’m fine.”
“Well, shaken up is to be expected. Hell, I’ll be coming down off an adrenaline high here soon too.” He gave a rough laugh, and Jace saw exactly how worried Rey was—not only that he’d hit a pedestrian, but that he’d hit the son of a friend. He couldn’t imagine the things going through Rey’s head right now, and the last thing Jace wanted to do was make it worse.
“A ride home sounds good,” Jace said.
“Good. I mean, it’s the least I can do.”
“Weren’t you going in the other direction, though?”
“Just some errands, but they can wait. Come on.”
Rey opened the front passenger door for him, and Jace slid inside the small hatchback. It smelled like spices, warm things like cinnamon and clove, as if the car had been full of sticky buns. His knee ached from being bent, but he’d had knee injuries before and this was most likely a simple bruise. He’d ice it when he got home. Air from the heaters blasted him in the face and made him sweat more than he already was. He angled one of the vents toward the window.
Jace buckled up as Rey climbed into the driver’s seat. He tried to covertly study Rey as the older man used someone’s driveway to turn the car around. He didn’t know Rey or Samuel very well, not like his parents did. Jace envied the couple. It wasn’t easy being gay in a small town, but both men were extremely easy to like—according to Jace’s father, because Samuel intimidated the hell out of Jace. They lived quiet lives and had a lot of friends, not to mention the support of most of the community.
“Something on your mind?” Rey asked, and Jace realized he’d lost his covertness and was openly staring. “Other than your knee?”
“Can I ask you something?” He didn’t know what possessed him to bring this up. He just had to talk to someone else. Someone who wasn’t close to him and who could provide an unbiased perspective.
Rey gave a gentle laugh. “Considering I nearly ran you over with my car, yes, ask away.”
“It’s pretty personal.”
“If I’m offended, I’ll tell you. Ask.”
Jace swallowed, suddenly horribly thirsty. Now or never, though. “How old were you when you came out to your parents?”
In profile, Rey’s jaw twitched, but his face remained otherwise neutral. He negotiated a left turn that took them into Jace’s neighborhood. “Well, my father died when I was twelve, so that was never an issue. I figured out I was gay in high school, and at the time, my best friend was a girl my age named Carly. My junior year, Mom kept bugging me about Carly and why we weren’t dating when we spent every minute together. One night I blurted it out over dinner. Mom was actually pretty cool about it. She was cool about most things.”
Something sad passed across Rey’s face, and Jace didn’t have to ask to know she was dead. Was he supposed to offer condolences years after the fact? Or simply thank Rey for his honest answer to an extremely personal question?
“Any particular reason you asked me about that?” Rey asked, and when Jace didn’t speak up, he added, “You know, anything you say in this car stays in this car.”
Saying it out loud to his sister was a hell of a lot easier than saying it to a semi-stranger—even if said stranger could sympathize with Jace’s internal battle. “It’s something I’ve been wondering about a lot lately,” Jace replied. He wiped sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “Coming out in general, I mean.”
Rey nodded slowly as he turned onto Jace’s street. “It’s different for everyone, because no one’s situation is the same. Or their family.”
“Did you feel better after you were out?”
“Only my mom and Carly knew for a couple of years, and that was how I wanted it. But once I really embraced who I was and was honest with other people…yeah, I felt better. I could be me without the weight of that secret hanging around my neck.”
Jace closed his eyes as nausea rolled his stomach. He knew about secrets and most of them had nothing to do with his being gay. When he opened his eyes, Rey was pulling into the driveway. The empty driveway—no one else was home, not even his sisters, and Jace said a silent thank you. He just wanted to ice his knee in peace and forget his stupidity with crossing the street.
“Jace, seriously, if you ever want to talk about anything, I’m here,” Rey said.
“Thanks.” Jace couldn’t make himself get out of the idling car quite yet. He didn’t know what he was waiting for.
“Who knows?”
Jace didn’t insult Rey by playing dumb. “My sister Rachel knows. And now you. And Gavin.”
“Perez?”
“Yes.” He gave what he hoped was a sharp look, but Rey was smiling.
“Gavin and his mom are good people,” Rey said. “You two spending a lot of time together?”
“Me and his mom?”
Rey laughed at the smartass comment. “Yes, exactly, you and Gavin’s mom.”
Jace grinned for the first time in the conversation as he thought about Gavin. “We get along great. Really great, actually, but…”
“But?”
“Gavin’s out.”
“And you aren’t.”
“Right.”
“Have you guys talked about that?”
“No. I mean, we hang out and have a lot of fun together, but I don’t know if it’s serious. Doesn’t discussing that make us serious?”
Rey tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel. “Not necessarily, which is why you two should talk about it. Jace, you can’t come out because someone else wants you to, or because you think it’s what they need. You have to come out for you and no one else. Understand?”
“I do.” He was pretty sure he did, anyway. “Thank you for the advice.”
“Not a problem. Like I said, if you need anything, even just an ear to bend, you can call me or Samuel at any time.”
“No offense, but Samuel’s kind of scary.”
Rey chuckled. “I hear that a lot. I’ll tell you a secret, though. Sam looks and sounds like a grumpy grizzly, but he’s really got a marshmallow center. He’ll just never admit it.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Take care of that knee, okay?”
“I will. Thanks for the ride.”
“Least I could do,” Rey said as Jace yanked open the passenger door.
Jace limped up to the front porch and waited while Rey backed out. Once the little hatchback was out of sight, Jace sank down into a wicker chair near the door. His previous sweat was freezing to his skin and his teeth had started to chatter, but he didn’t care. The conversation with Rey kept looping through his mind.
You two should talk.
They needed to talk—about a lot more things than just Jace’s location inside the closet. But if Gavin knew all the secrets Jace was holding inside, would Gavin still like him? Or would this tentative, playful thing growing between them be over before it really had a chance?
Most of his co-workers disliked the tedium of inventory, but the task suited Gavin. He came in at 4 a.m. to assist the store manager, Theresa, with prep, which included taping little white numbered squares of paper onto every shelf, every display, and in their proper numerical, floor plan order. By the time they finished prepping, the counting company had arrived, and the store became a symphony of crackling cellophane,
clanking ceramics, muttering, and the occasional shout of “SKU check!”
The morning passed in a blur, leaving Gavin little time to anticipate lunch with Jace. He still couldn’t put his finger on the subtle differences he’d seen in Jace since Thanksgiving. If someone could manage to be both more self-confident (mouth + dick = wow!) and more withdrawn, then Jace had mastered it. Gavin wasn’t exactly concerned. More curious. He wanted Jace to come to him if he had a problem, to lean on Gavin. After all, Gavin had pretty broad shoulders and really didn’t mind.
Inventory was winding down right around the time the store opened for the morning. Gavin gave cheerful greetings to the cashiers coming on duty. Most of his co-workers were middle-aged women, but Gavin had a knack for getting along with almost everybody. The assistant store manager, Dan, didn’t like him much, and Gavin chalked that up to the man’s lack of confidence in his own sexuality. Or maybe Dan simply needed to get laid.
Theresa waved Gavin off to lunch around eleven, and he was glad to go. He needed food and caffeine if he was going to make it the rest of the day. He’d been up late the night before scrubbing down the kitchen in what was probably an overreaction to the faint, unwelcome scent of raw onions. Despite Mama’s heritage and their combined love of Mexican food, they both detested raw onions in any form, and they very rarely cooked with them. The distaste came from Gavin’s asshole sperm donor—Kai would walk around the house chomping on raw onions the way normal folks ate apples, and the odor used to drive Gavin crazy.
The scent of onions in the kitchen had been incredibly faint, and Mama insisted she hadn’t used any. He didn’t find any in the garbage or elsewhere, and even though the smell had faded by the time his search was complete, he wiped down every surface with Lysol just to be sure. The activity hadn’t benefited his going into work at 4 a.m., but he felt better about the kitchen.