by E M Lindsey
He settled back against Sage’s arm, tracing his fingers around a Roman numeral tattoo and let himself feel content and safe.
In the back of his mind, Sage couldn’t help but wonder if he’d chosen the dead of summer as some sort of penance for his final visit to see Ted. He hadn’t told Will that he didn’t plan on coming back, and he wanted the idea of returning to stay open, but he knew it would be a damn long time before he set foot on that grassy patch of earth again.
Monsoons were in full swing, but when they made it to the cemetery, the rain had let up and the air was thick and oppressively hot. The clouds hung low above their heads, and the sound of the cicadas in the trees was almost overwhelming.
Ted’s headstone was glistening, dark beads of moisture still clinging to the top, waiting to evaporate in the heat. Sage reached into his pocket and felt the stone there. This one was unpainted, beautiful, rough around the edges—a lot like the person Ted had been. It felt like a fitting goodbye.
“I don’t think I ever really let him go before this,” Sage said as the two of them settled onto the grass. His eyes tracked a large, bright red ant which was carrying a yellow Palo Verde seed pod across the corner of the cement. “The funeral wasn’t it for me.”
“I don’t think funerals are it for a lot of people,” Will said. He brushed his fingers down Sage’s arm, lingering over the tattoo Sage never, ever spoke about. “I think they’re just the start to the process of letting go.”
“I always assumed coming here would be part of my routine forever,” Sage told him. He dug the rock out of his pocket and leaned forward to place it on the headstone, taking note it was the only one there. He half-wondered if his mother picked out the ones he left and threw them in the bin. “It’s weird to think I won’t be back.”
Will frowned. “But…”
Sage shook his head, the motion cutting off Will’s words. “It’s okay. It’s time. I meant it when I said I didn’t think he was here listening. This was mostly for me. I was hanging on to him because I didn’t know who I would be if I let go. It took me a while to realize I’d found myself already, and that I was a different person from the man Ted was going to marry.” He leaned back and touched the tattoo on his arm. “His heart stopped twice. The first time was the day before he officially died. I was in the room with him, holding his hand. He squeezed my fingers, and then he just…flatlined. They rushed in and shoved me to the back of the room, and it was so surreal,” he finished on a heavy breath. “I didn’t think he was coming back, but suddenly he was there again, and his heart was beating. I was angry about that moment for a long time, because it felt like false hope. I thought it was a sign he was going to pull out of it. Like in those dramatic romance movies, you know?”
Will nodded, picking at a few blades of grass. “Yeah, I know those. Where you think the hero is finally going to die, and everyone’s crying and saying their goodbyes. Then suddenly the miracle happens, and it fades to the next day where they’re sitting up and smiling and eating soup.”
Sage snorted a laugh. “Yeah, something like that. I’d spent my life miraculously escaping the worst of my situation and coming out okay, so it didn’t occur to me that it wouldn’t happen this time. I physically couldn’t conceive of him not making it through his illness. Then the next day, he just stopped living. His heart gave out, and after eleven minutes of his mother screaming and trying to force them to keep going, they called it.”
“And this?” Will asked, touching the ink.
Sage shrugged. “It was the exact time when his heart restarted that first time. I was looking at the clock when it happened, and I thought it was a cruel, cosmic joke. I got the tattoo to remind myself that shit just…happens.” He closed his hand over the ink and sighed, looking at Will in his periphery. “I was bitter and angry. I spent too fucking long trying to figure out why he came back that first time.”
“Did you ever figure it out?” Will asked.
“I still don’t have a damn clue,” Sage admitted, and he smiled when Will let out a startled laugh. “I think the body is kind of fucked up, and kind of beautiful, and I think the doctors were able to restart his heart and delay the inevitable for a few extra minutes. I think the universe is too vast and too much of a sociopath to care how I felt right then as I lost the man I loved.”
Will shifted close and laid his head on Sage’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“Me too.” Sage pulled back and took Will by the chin, kissing him. “But I’m not sorry I met you and fell in love again. I’m not sorry we’re here right now. If by some actual miracle he’s standing here watching us, I think he’s happy for me. He would have liked you. Hell, he probably would have left me for you.”
“Or the three of us would have made a gorgeous triad,” Will offered.
Sage blinked, then threw his head back and laughed. “He definitely would have left me for you. Fuck, I love you so much. Sometimes it scares the shit out of me.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Will said gently.
Sage shook his head, but he couldn’t find the words, so he just cupped Will’s cheek and kissed him again. “Saying goodbye kind of sucks, but I’m glad I’m finally able to.”
Will nodded, but he didn’t say anything more. He just nestled into Sage’s side and leaned on his shoulder. Sage let himself absorb the silence of the moment, to conjure up old memories of Teddy here in this city when they were alive and young and happy. Sage had died a little bit the day Ted had, and somewhere along the way, he’d been reborn into someone he had to get to know all over again. It wasn’t the first time. The day he and Derek left their dad’s home—he’d become a new person then too, and he was pretty sure this wasn’t the last time it would happen, either. But he felt confident that Will would evolve right along with him, and go on loving him, making their short human life feel like a real forever.
A crack of thunder interrupted his musing, and he swiped his hands on his jeans, standing and helping Will to his feet. He looked down at Ted’s name, the dates that immortalized such a short time on earth, and he felt a pang of real and aching grief for the loss. But it didn’t scare him anymore, didn’t overwhelm him. He let his hand press into Will’s, and they made their way to the car.
Before Will could get in, Sage pinned him to the door and pressed both palms to the roof on either side of Will’s body. “I’m going to marry you one day.”
Will blinked. “Are you seriously proposing to me in the cemetery where your dead fiancé is buried?”
Sage couldn’t help his laughter, doubling over with it as he shook his head. When he finally had control over himself, he surged up and kissed Will once, then twice, then a third time. “No,” he murmured against his soft lips. “No. When I propose to you, you’ll know it. I just wanted to make sure you understood that just as birth and death are inevitable, so is the fact that I’m going to put a ring on your finger and marry the shit out of you.”
Will grinned as his hands closed over Sage’s hips and tugged him close. “Then I’m looking forward to it.”
“Soon,” Sage promised.
Will grinned at him widely. “Yes. Soon.”
* * *
The End
Book Four
Bio-Mechanical
Irons and Works: Book Four
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
Oscar Wilde
Chapter One
“Now, I want y’all to take a good look around you. Lookit all these people you love, all these people you been prayin’ for God to keep safe in his arms.”
“Momma?” He was five, and his voice didn’t have a hope of rising above his father’s, who stood at the pulpit this Sunday—and every other. He tugged on her skirt, and she gave him a stern look, but he stared back with all the determination of someone who didn’t fully understand consequences just yet. “Momma!”
“Jimmy, you know w
e don’t talk when your daddy’s preachin’,” she told him softly, running a hand down his soft, light brown hair.
He shook his head. “But…momma, why I gots this card?” He held it up, half crushed in his fist. There was a word printed on there he couldn’t read, though he could sound it out. “Ho—hoh. Moh. Momma?”
She curled her hand around his wrist and gave him a sad look. “Your daddy wants to play a game today for service. Just you be patient now, okay, baby? He’s up there doin’ the Lord’s work.”
James shrugged and settled into the pew, his little legs kicking back and forth as he stared down at the word. It was a memory James would carry with him for years—probably for the rest of his life. His hand was sweaty though, and he didn’t want to hold the card. He wanted to go play with Robbie and Bill, and swing on the swings, and have some of his nanna’s sweet tea and cobbler.
“Now, you look at those cards there, and those’a you who have them hell-worthy sins, I want you to stand right up,” his daddy said.
James looked at his card, then to his momma who gave him a nod. His throat went tight as he stood there, and he felt all the eyes on him, startled maybe that Reverend Gossett would send his boy to the Devil. He could hear people murmuring, and he held his chin up because his daddy wouldn’t like it if he wasn’t brave.
“You lookin’? You see all these people out there? Those of you with those cards, you represent the percentage of folks you know—folks you might see at the bake-sale, or the fair, or the chili cook-off—who don’t understand the powerful love of God. Who don’t know what his terrible wrath can bring down upon them. Adulterers, homosexuals, harlots, liars, ones who have sex before marriage—these sinners, for all that He loves them, are destined for the darkness. For everlasting torment and pain, all because they couldn’t remember their salvation is through Jesus Christ himself, who got up on that cross and died for you!” His fist pounded down on the pulpit, making James jump, his eyes filling with tears.
“Amen! Amen, Lord, yes Jesus!” A chorus around him, just like every other Sunday, but this time it felt so different. This time it felt like they were staring at him, hungry to watch him suffer.
James swallowed thickly and remembered some of those 3 paintings in his daddy’s office he wasn’t supposed to look at. The ones his momma said weren’t for his eyes. He’d snuck a peek, of course, because Robbie dared him to. He’d never forgotten the look of torment on those people’s faces, or the look of hatred and pleasure on the Devil himself. No, he’d never forget.
His stomach churned and his eyes filled with tears. “Momma, I don’t want to go to hell. I don’t want to be a Hoh-moh-xual.”
“No, baby,” she said, gathering him into his arms and kissing his cheek. She took the card from him and shoved it into her purse. He didn’t miss the way his daddy’s eyes fell on them both, or the way his momma held him tighter. “You’re not any of those things. You hear me? You’re gonna spend eternity in the loving arms of our Lord Jesus. With me, and your daddy, and your gramps.”
James nodded, pressing his little face into her neck and breathing out slowly. They didn’t play the game after that. Not even when his daddy told the people who had the Bad Cards to go outside. Not even when he told the others to look around and see how empty Heaven was without the people they cared about. Not even when his daddy said their one job on this earth was to obey God—and that came with the task of saving others to earn His grace.
* * *
“…no right to play that game with him, Richard! No right! He’s gonna be up all week with nightmares. You know he saw those pictures in your office!”
“It’s for the best, Mar, you know that.” James squeezed his eyes shut as he heard his daddy’s voice—tired, not angry. “You seen the way he gets with those boys. It ain’t natural.”
“He’s like any other boy, Richard. Don’t you start with me about him. He’s a rough-and-tumble kid, happy as a clam to be out there workin’ on the tractor with you, or diggin’ for worms with the Chase boy.”
“I ain’t too sure about that Chase boy. His parents go to St. Marks up the hill and they’re progressive. I also seen the way he walks, Mar. And the way he reads—it ain’t…baby, it ain’t normal.” Richard sighed. “I just want my boy to be safe. To be saved.”
“Scarin’ the tar outta him ain’t gonna do it, Rich,” she warned. “It’s just gonna make him run when he gets old enough to go.”
“I trust our boy to do the right thing,” daddy said. His voice was softer now. “He’s bein’ raised right, he just might need the occasional nudge in the right direction. I love him, but there’s a limit. I don’t want to lose him, but I’ll do what I have to do.”
“I know, sweetpea,” momma said.
James didn’t want to be stabbed, and burned, and eaten by monsters for ever and ever and ever. He wanted to be with momma, and daddy, and Jesus. And probably old Duke who died when he was three. And his granddaddy who died the year after that. He wouldn’t be no ho-mo-xual, or no liar. He’d do exactly what his daddy told him to do, and he’d be safe. Even if it meant not being friends with Robbie Chase anymore. If that boy made him feel funny things, then maybe he ought to find a new friend elsewhere.
Chapter Two
“Tell me somethin’ about you that no one else knows.” The man’s voice was that sweet, southern twang James had found himself missing since he decided to take his cash, tent, and truck and drive to the house his momma’s brother had left him when he turned eighteen. He’d settled in to open up his mechanic’s shop, and eventually started part time at Irons and Works. The place was a far cry from where he’d grown up, and too often he felt like an outsider.
James’ gaze darted over to the table across the bar where Sage, Sam, and Lucy were sharing a pitcher. His glass was still there, still half full, but none of them seemed bothered he’d abandoned ship for the cute little southern twink who had been giving him the eye all evening.
Of course, in reality, he was only keeping up appearances. Exactly one person knew the truth about him—that in spite of the popular belief in James’ promiscuity, James was untouched— and Mat had taken off an hour before. The man—Robbie or Cory or something—reached over and put his hand on James’ thigh, and James blinked away a vicious image of hellfire.
“I hate grits,” James said. Not a lie, exactly, but not what the kid was looking for.
All the same, he gasped. “Blasphemy.”
James laughed at the irony, shaking his head as he shifted closer. He looked across the bar again and saw Sam’s lawyer hesitantly approach the bar. Rowan’s eyes darted toward Sam, then looked up across the room and met his. James felt his heart jolt in a way he hadn’t expected. He barely knew the guy beyond the introductions Sam made just before shit started to go down in court for his daughter’s custody case. Rowan was attractive, and he was cut-throat, which worked in Sam’s favor—automatically making the guy a hero to everyone at the shop—and he’d taken the whole scene outside between Sam and Niko with as much grace as was possible.
James swallowed thickly and felt a strange compulsion to wave him over and offer a drink, but Rowan was hurrying out like his ass was on fire. “So, Cory,” James tried.
“Colin,” the kid corrected.
“Sorry, it’s noisy in here,” James lied. Sin after sin— though at this point, not even Kardashian cash could have paid off his indulgences—and he wanted to wrap them around himself like a protective blanket because according to his dad, he was hell-bound no matter what he tried. The Lord’s prayer wasn’t going to save him now.
“Wanna get out of here?” Colin asked. When James hesitated, Colin leaned closer. “I could go for a smoke at least, if you ain’t ready to take off.”
James considered him a moment, then shrugged and followed Colin out of the booth, heading through the side door to the alley where everyone took their smoke breaks. It smelled a little like rotting garbage, ass, and old beer, but he had just enough buzz on to deal wi
th it. His legs had been bugging him all night and he knew he’d have to call it quits before long.
Leaning against the wall, James braced himself and tried to take some of the pressure off his stumps. He watched Colin watching him and started a mental count-down in his head.
Four…three…two…
“Can I ask how it happened?” Blast-off.
“Accident right after basic training,” James said. He reached under his shirt and pulled out his dog-tags. He wasn’t about to explain to this kid why he wore them. Why it had little to do with his service and everything to do with the man who had slipped them on this chain.
When he thought of the memory, the way his dad had hovered over him, his calloused hands pushing the little metal bead into the clasp, he was nearly transported back there. There had been no pain in the beginning—they’d given him a spinal block and a little machine by his bedside clicked every few hours with a fresh dose of opiates. But the old smell of starch and anesthetic, the sound of nurse shoes on the polished tiles, the look on his dad’s face like he’d fucked up yet again and disappointed him—he didn’t need the pain of missing legs to feel the agony of what his life had become.
James startled when Colin’s hand came around his tags and tugged. It sent James slightly off balance, and he had to press his palms to the brick to steady himself. “Please don’t touch them.”
“Why?” Colin asked. He was going for playful, but there was something in his eyes James didn’t like.