One Real Thing

by Anah Crow

  “What are you doing?”

  “I like being able to find my things. It’s your fault.” It looked like Holly had brought enough clothes for at least a week, maybe more, though he was efficient about unpacking. “Don’t worry about me. Pretend I’m not here.”

  Nick didn’t know what to else to do, so when the microwave binged, he got his coffee and sat in the nest he’d made on the bed. The sheets hadn’t been washed in weeks, but it didn’t matter. He just wanted to have his coffee and go back to sleep.

  Holly ignored him. Disappeared into the bathroom. There was running water and scuffling and noises that filtered into Nick’s head eventually as “Holly cleaning up” noises. But he was so tired. He left his empty mug on the bed near the pillows and pulled up the covers to shut out the world. Even Holly.

  ***

  The apartment was a disaster. The motel room in Hollywood might have been in worse shape, but it had been less cluttered. A great deal of the wreckage looked like random boxes, whatever Nick had brought from his old place and empty takeout containers. Looked like Nick had been living on pizza and Chinese food for weeks. Maybe months.

  Holly could deal with all of that, but Nick…One step at a time. For now, Nick was hidden under a heap of blankets in the bed alcove. At least Holly knew where he was, and that was good enough.

  The air in the apartment was stale, like the windows hadn’t been opened the entire time, and the scent of old sweat blended with the stench of even-older food. Holly left Nick to sleep and opened two floor-to-ceiling windows. The night air slunk in around his ankles.

  That done, Holly turned his attention to the unopened mail scattered over the table. He had to figure out how bad things were, and Nick wasn’t in any shape to tell him. He sorted through the bills and found one for a storage locker. He put that aside and kept going. At one point Nick had been well enough to take care of some things. There were a few things that needed Nick’s personal attention, but it wasn’t as bad as Holly had feared. He could deal with most of this later.

  Now it was time to clean. At least the apartment was small. Holly hadn’t slept since the plane, but this was more important. He needed to clean the kitchen, sort some of the junk, wash the floors, unearth the table, then sleep. Tomorrow, laundry and trying to get Nick to eat real food. There wasn’t a thing in the fridge.

  Finally, in the small hours of the morning, the place was cleaned to Holly’s satisfaction. He changed from jeans to pajama pants and pulled on a warm Stone Age Sports hoodie. The couch was stacked with things for Nick to sort through, and he couldn’t just crawl in bed with Nick. It wasn’t the first time he’d slept on the floor. With a sigh, he curled up beside the bed. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep.

  It felt like he’d just fallen asleep when something landed on him, jolting him awake before it pulled away. As he blinked against the bright midday sunshine, he saw Nick standing over him.

  “Shit,” Nick muttered, rubbing at his face. “Sorry.” He shook his head and turned away, shuffling toward the bathroom.

  Time to get up. Holly rolled to his feet and shook off the aches and pains. Months of life with Danner had made him able to put up with almost anything. Holly might have had Director, Public Relations on his résumé, but his real job was keep Danner in one piece while Julie runs the business, and Danner had ideas like “let’s go sleep on a three-foot-wide ledge halfway up the mountain” and “graffiti art on sand dunes.” If nothing else, Holly was never bored.

  Danner wasn’t fooling around, though. His constant motion kept Stone Age Sports in spotlight. That, combined with the fact that Danner was a really good guy and knew sports and fashion better than anyone on the outside would guess, made for a lot of money.

  Holly scrubbed the inside of the coffeemaker and set a pot to brew. He eyed the bed. Once he got the couch cleaned off, he’d make a bed for Nick there, then wash the linens from the tangled nest. Eventually, through fixing the rest of the mess, he’d find a way to fix Nick too.

  By the time Nick emerged from the bathroom, the coffee was ready. He stared at the coffeemaker for a long moment, looking confused, and then shook his head and poured a cup. With a wary glance at Holly, he went back to bed and curled up against the pillows, blankets heaped around him, to drink his coffee.

  Holly got some coffee for himself and then sat on the floor, his back to the bed, to drink it.

  “The boxes on the couch need to go to the storage locker,” he said quietly. “If you give me the key, I’ll take them over and get them out of the way for now.”

  There was silence for a long while, and then Nick said, “My keys are hanging in the hall closet. It’s the small silver one.”

  “All right. I’ll take care of that, then. Can I get you anything while I’m out?” Holly looked over his shoulder at Nick.

  “I’m fine.” That was obviously far from the truth.

  “Okay.” Holly reached back to stroke Nick’s knee. “It’s good to see you.” He wanted to crawl up into bed and kiss Nick’s rough face and then hold him until Nick relaxed and really slept.

  “I’m sorry Rich called you, or whatever he did.” Nick looked sorry. He looked miserable. “I didn’t want this to touch you.”

  “Mm. No idea where I’ve heard that before.” Holly sighed and let his head fall back on the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You’ve just gotten your life together. Why would I want to fuck that up?”

  “My life.” Holly reached up again and found one of Nick’s feet under the covers. “You could never, ever fuck up my life. I’d live in a fucking box under an overpass and play the harmonica for spare change and I’d be fucking happy doing it if I got to keep my friends. All this time I thought you were okay and I could be happy. If I’d known for a minute that you were living like this, the nice apartment and the continent hopping would have been a living hell.”

  “You’re making my point for me.” Nick drank his coffee, looking toward the windows. “It’s not that bad. I’m fine. I’m just…figuring things out.”

  “What point is that? Is there some rule that says my life is better if you’re miserable? That you’re allowed to disappear now that you’ve ‘saved’ me? That I’m not allowed to put you first?” Holly tucked his mug under the bed so it wouldn’t get knocked over. “You can tell me to leave, and I will. But one of the things that makes me who I am is you, and that won’t change. I can’t pretend it’s not true. All the things that helped me get better only happened because of who you are to me. You can’t have only half of the equation.”

  “Don’t. Just…don’t.” Nick stared down at his coffee as though, somehow, it held all the answers. “It was all wrong, all of it. I didn’t want you to be part of that.”

  “What was all wrong?” Holly turned so he was kneeling, like he was praying. He understood why Nick had been so angry in L.A. That was how Nick dealt with things, and Holly wouldn’t have had it any other way. But seeing Nick sinking didn’t make Holly angry, just sad and scared and more in love with him than ever. Seeing Nick imperfect and fragile touched him so deeply, made him ashamed that he’d ever put so much stock in Nick’s perfection and quiet, impenetrable façade.

  Nick scrubbed his free hand over his face and sighed. “I invested in the wrong things, molded my life around my family’s vision of how it should be, but I didn’t see what was happening around me. I don’t know. I can’t figure out when everything changed, or if it was always that way and I was too busy doing the right thing to notice none of it was right at all.”

  “It wasn’t just you. You can’t control everything, Nick. You’re a good person who trusted people. You got played. It happens. You were and are right about a whole lot of stuff.” Holly leaned forward and kissed Nick’s bare foot. “You were right about me.”

  “I was.” Nick offered a sad, wry smile. “Maybe that’s why she hated you so much, because you were the one real thing in my life.”

  That sounded suspiciously like th
e truth. She’d disliked Holly from the first time they met—when she’d sauntered into Nick’s off-campus apartment to find Holly sprawled across him in bed. Nick’s completely rational explanation—they were talking, hanging out—hadn’t helped. The fact that they’d both been fully dressed hadn’t made a difference either.

  That meeting had been all the evidence Holly needed to know Caroline didn’t give a damn about Nick, only about what other people might think. Caroline hadn’t taken any longer to work out that Holly didn’t give a damn what anyone thought, especially her. It had been downhill from there.

  “Look, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Holly pressed his cheek to Nick’s cold foot, then kissed it again, finding the pale curve of the arch. “I mean it. Stop blaming yourself.”

  “I’m…You don’t know that.” Nick shook his head. “There was so much…I don’t know.”

  “I’m real, though, right?”

  Nick looked at him for a long moment, long enough that Holly wasn’t sure what the answer was going to be. And then, finally, he said, “Yes. You’re real. Even if…I know I wasn’t wrong about that, about who you are.”

  “Even if what?” Holly reached out, tentatively, to touch Nick’s hand.

  “I don’t know,” Nick said, but he didn’t pull away, so Holly held on. “I don’t…I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay.” How could they both do the same foolish thing, from such different places? “Don’t worry about it. I’ll let you be, now, but I’m not leaving. I’m going to take those boxes to the storage unit, and then I’m going to do some laundry. Is that okay?”

  Nick watched Holly over the rim of his coffee cup. “Yeah. Yes, that’s okay.”

  “Don’t worry about anything. I’m going to drop the boxes off, stop at the bodega for a few things, then get back here.” Holly snagged his mug as he stood. “Try to rest.”

  Nick didn’t answer, but he did tuck his coffee cup onto the shelf over the bed and then lie down. He didn’t look better, exactly, but at least he hadn’t hidden his head under the blankets. That was a step up from last night.

  Holly got to work. He called a cab company and asked them to send a van over. A text message to Julie to say he was dropping by Stone Age NY to pick up a few things would cover him getting Nick new clothes. Most of what he’d found in the boxes were suits; Nick must’ve left his casual clothes in the storage locker—assuming Caroline hadn’t done to Nick what Sierra had done to him—and Holly didn’t want to waste time sorting through boxes there if he could help it. He thought he knew where he could pick up linens too. The apartment needed to be refreshed in more ways than one.

  When the van driver arrived, Holly buzzed him up and then checked on Nick again. Sound asleep. He pressed a kiss to Nick’s temple. Nick would be back on his feet in no time. Holly propped the door open with a box and moved things into the hall. It wasn’t much. Nick would be better off if his old life disappeared for a while. Then they could work on starting over.

  Chapter Twelve

  The cot that folded out from the love seat wasn’t as comfortable as the bed, but Holly had banished Nick from the bed, insisting on washing the sheets and blankets. Nick simply sighed and curled up into a tighter ball, tugging the couch blankets closer. He was so tired lately, always so tired.

  Nick couldn’t see what Holly was up to, but he heard water running and something clinking in the sink. Holly’s footsteps came to the bed, and there was a creak as he sat down.

  “C’mere, Nick.” Holly ran a hand over his hair. “Let me do something for you?”

  Nick rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, then blinked at Holly. Do something for him. Holly. Right.

  “Okay.”

  Holly set things on the arm of the couch. “Sit up for me?”

  Rubbing his eyes again, Nick sat up and leaned against the back of the love seat. “What are you…?” Glass of water. Shaving brush. Pot of shaving soap. Razor. “Oh.”

  “Up a bit more.” Holly nudged him and then came around the back of the love seat. Without any warning, he climbed over and wriggled behind Nick. Suddenly Nick was nestled between Holly’s thighs and pillowed against his chest. “There we go.” Holly plucked a folded, wet cloth from the stack on the arm of the couch. “Relax.”

  Relax. Nick could do that. Couldn’t he? He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

  “It doesn’t matter if I haven’t shaved, Holly,” he pointed out. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You’ll feel better.” Holly smoothed Nick’s hair back and then washed his face with the warm cloth. “You don’t have to go anywhere. No wiggling, or this might not go well. I like both your ears where they are.”

  Nick wasn’t sure anything was going to make him feel better at this point, but he sat still. He wasn’t in a hurry to feel worse either, and he was certain losing part of an ear would do that.

  “Just…be careful.”

  “I will be.” Holly was so gentle as he went to work, lathering Nick’s stubble and then drawing the razor along the landscape of his face. He moved slowly, peeling away days of sweat and skin and hair.

  Something about shedding those days did make Nick feel better. Lighter, at least.

  “I could’ve done this myself, you know,” he said while Holly rinsed the razor between rounds of shaving. Probably. It would’ve been a lie to say he would have done it himself, though, so he didn’t.

  “Then I wouldn’t get to do it.” Holly ran the fingers of his free hand through Nick’s hair. “Want to take a shower afterward?”

  The hot water did sound soothing, relaxing. Like it might wash away something of the uncertainties still weighing him down.

  “A shower sounds good.”

  “I’ll wash your hair if you want.” Holly rubbed his cheek against Nick’s ear, then went back to work.

  It took a moment for the offer to make sense, for Nick to realize Holly intended to come into the shower with him. By the time Nick remembered he had to answer, there wasn’t enough time to figure out what to say; Holly was already wiping his face with a warm cloth, finished shaving.

  “Go on,” Holly said, rubbing between Nick’s shoulder blades with one hand as Nick moved to get up. “I’ll get you started, then come clean up. If you want me to wash your hair, just say so.”

  More time. That might help. Might, if Nick could figure out how to say—

  “Yes.” Nick swallowed hard, didn’t look back as he said it, just kept moving toward the bathroom. He wanted it, and Holly was offering, and all his efforts to draw some kind of line between him and Holly had only resulted in Nick making a mess of his own life. There was no reason to keep up the pretense of distance at this point.

  Holly followed him and turned on the water. There were clean towels—plush black and gray—stacked on the back of the toilet.

  “Tell me if you need anything. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Nick nodded and waited to undress until Holly had left the room and closed the door. He’d been wearing the same pajama pants and T-shirt since the last time he’d showered, after spilling coffee on himself. It hadn’t seemed worth the effort to get cleaned up. Holly was right, though: it’d make him feel better. He left the dirty clothes on the floor and stepped into the shower, turning so the water beat down on him.

  “Ready to let me help?” It felt like no time had passed, but Holly was stepping into the shower with him, wearing a pair of swim shorts and armed with a tube of shower gel and a washcloth.

  Stepping out of the spray, Nick asked, “You brought swim trunks? To New York?”

  “Nope. I picked them up at SAS today.” Holly wet the cloth and drizzled shower gel over it. Then he knelt at Nick’s feet. The water flowed over him and darkened his hair. “So I could do this.” He gently washed Nick’s feet.

  Nick had asked for help with his hair; he hadn’t expected Holly to wash the rest of him too. Especially not like this, on his knees. It made Nick remember the way Holly had knelt at his feet to apo
logize for breaking the rules months and months ago. So many things had changed since then.

  Holly was tender and determined. He washed Nick’s legs, working in circles to coax blood to the surface. When he reached Nick’s hips, in the perfect position to suck him off, Nick’s ring flashing gold on his hand, he stood and changed tactics.

  Time for Nick’s hair. Holly worked shampoo and conditioner through Nick’s tangled curls, massaging his scalp and temples and neck. All Nick had to do was move enough to get rinsed once in a while. Then it was back to the cloth, scrubbing the dead skin and sweat and failure from Nick’s shoulders and arms and back. Holly turned Nick so the hot spray rinsed his back clean and pounded his aching muscles.

  It felt good, indulgent, as indulgent as it had been to hold Holly and pet him when Holly had been the one in need of help. When Holly reached his hips again, Nick stopped him with a touch on his shoulder.

  “Let me.” He could wash the rest himself. He could’ve done all of it, but this…He didn’t trust his body to remember this was only about getting clean. When Holly handed over the cloth, Nick said, “Thank you,” and meant it for more than just helping him shower.

  Holly straightened to kiss Nick on the cheek. “I’ll wait.” With a final pet of Nick’s hair, he slipped out.

  When the door clicked shut, Nick finished what Holly had started. He did feel better, so much better. It felt like he’d shed some of his worries with the sweat and grime that had been weighing on him. It was Holly, Nick knew, more so even than the shower.

  Holly. God, how had Nick ever pretended that Holly didn’t affect him? Holly’s hands in his hair, on his skin, all over him. Not just washing him—serving him. And that damned ring was still snug on Holly’s finger like Nick had branded him, and every time he saw it, mine, mine, mine chanted through his mind.

  For all that he’d told himself possession wasn’t what he’d intended in giving Holly the ring, that was what came to mind when he watched the flash of gold move over his own skin. Possessive was how he felt when Holly knelt for him, how he felt when Holly obeyed him without question, asking permission for everything from a cup of coffee to leaving the apartment. And that commitment from Holly, the bone-deep promise the ring symbolized, was as precious as the obedience.