by E M Lindsey
Wyatt smirked and sat back. “Maybe. Maybe not. You can use it on the next woman you want to pick up.”
At that, Mat flinched like he’d been struck. It was so fucking easy to forget that Wyatt thought he was straight, that Wyatt wasn’t actually hitting on him. That Wyatt didn’t want him. He swallowed thickly and let out a dry laugh. “I appreciate it, even if that well is pretty fucking dry right now.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t you and Ruby…”
“She ended that a while ago. Got kind of a thing for Amaranth,” Mat said with a shrug. “No big deal though, honestly. It’s…shit, it’s not like I’m in a great place for anything serious. Like trust me, when people find out I can’t read…”
Wyatt looked annoyed. “You’re doing well with braille, which means you can read. And that to me sounds like you need a better wingman. I can help.”
Mat felt his body go cold from the inside. “No. Seriously, no. You don’t need to subject yourself to the Fairfield nightlife for me.”
Wyatt reached over, found Mat’s knee, and gave it a squeeze. “We’re friends, eh?”
Mat grinned in spite of himself. “Yes.”
“Amit keeps asking me to visit his bar. We’ll go together. I’ll give you good French lines to woo someone. Maybe the French will be enough to hook them for long enough to get to know you. Ten minutes, and I promise they’ll be in love.”
“Ha,” Mat said, trying not to sound bitter, “trust me when I say ten minutes isn’t going to do the trick.”
Wyatt huffed and shook his head. “It would be impossible not to. If they have any sense.”
“You didn’t fall in love with me,” Mat pointed out before he could stop himself. “Uh. You know. Before, when we first met.”
Wyatt went suspiciously quiet, and when he spoke again, his tone was firm, but kind. “I don’t make it a habit to fall in love with men I can’t have, Mateo.”
You can have me, his insides screamed, but even those soft words felt more like a letdown than a confession. “Okay. So, Amit’s place, then? I work the afternoon shift tomorrow. I should be done around seven, if you want to go then? I’ll get one of the guys to drive us. Tony could probably use a night out.”
Wyatt smiled. “We’ll call it a plan.”
Mat didn’t think this was a good idea at all, at least not where his heart was concerned. But then again, his heart rarely listened to his brain.
Chapter Ten
There was a reason Wyatt hated going to crowded bars and clubs. Even with Pomme, it had always been a mess of people, the noise overwhelming enough that he couldn’t concentrate on where he was, the lights too dim to know when people left the group. The bar Amit worked at was some of those things. The music was loud, and the lights were dim, but it didn’t have the same chaotic feel to it as other places Wyatt had been to. All the same, it wasn’t somewhere he’d choose to spend time if given another option.
Part of it, he knew, was the fact that he was older than a lot of the artists at the tattoo shop. Apart from Mat being straight, the age difference was enough to give Wyatt pause. After everything Ioan had put him through with the student, the idea that Wyatt might seem in any way guilty made him feel sick to his stomach.
Of course, Mat wasn’t nearly that young. He was at the start of his mid-thirties, but still, a decade younger, and it was a lot. Luckily, he didn’t have to worry about it too much. It would be difficult helping Mat hook up with someone else, but Wyatt was hoping that the night would help him move on from the impossible crush he couldn’t seem to escape.
Mat occupied his thoughts more than he wanted to admit. And some days, he was damn sure Mat was flirting with him. In fact, at the shop, he’d been pretty sure that Mat was disappointed when Wyatt had said he didn’t fall in love with straight men. Wyatt had met straight men over the years who were arrogant enough that they felt everyone should be attracted to them, but Mat didn’t seem the type.
If he didn’t know better, Mat wasn’t as straight as he claimed to be.
“I’ll grab drinks,” Tony said as they found a table in the back. The spot was far enough away from the speakers so the noise wasn’t overwhelming, but the light was so dim Wyatt had none of his sight. It made him a little itchy, and he rubbed at his eyes absently. “What do you all want?”
“Scotch,” Wyatt said. “And I’ve got the first round.” He started to dig into his pocket, but Mat put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“We drink for a deep discount. Like free,” he clarified when Wyatt opened his mouth to protest. “It’s a drinks for ink exchange.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows rise. “I don’t have anything to contribute to him.”
“Your friendship,” Tony said with a laugh. “I see a buddy of mine at the bar though. You two cool if I hang there for a bit? Or do you need ole’ grandpa to keep you kids entertained?”
Wyatt snorted. “I’m older than you are.”
“Yeah, but I got aches and pains from having a kid and no sleep. Trust me, I’m the old man here.” Tony clapped him on the shoulder, then Wyatt heard the squeak of him leaving the booth.
It left the two men alone, and then he heard Mat mutter, “If I didn’t fuckin’ know better…”
“Hmm?” Wyatt asked.
Mat coughed like he was embarrassed. “No, nothing. Sorry. Talking to myself. Uh…how was your day?”
Wyatt couldn’t help a tiny chuckle. “Small talk? Have we reached that stage in our friendship?”
Mat elbowed him lightly. “Shut up. It’s just been a long day and my brain is a little fuzzy.”
Wyatt’s brows dipped. “Still trouble with the doctor?”
“Nah,” he answered after a second. “Ooh, drinks.” There was a pause as Mat pushed Wyatt’s drink against his knuckles, then the sound of him gulping down his beer. He let out a soft, ahh, then sighed. “I got the MRI done today, and a pretty decent apology from the staff at the office. Not the bitch who was giving me a hard time, but they said they marked my file, so it won’t happen again.”
“That’s good, right?” Wyatt pressed.
He felt a motion against him, and he had a feeling Mat had shrugged. “Sometimes I think about getting a service dog, you know? Like, my therapist has suggested it to help with my anxiety and with days where my brain just doesn’t want to keep it together. She said it might help to have some outward physical indication of my disability so people will stop assuming shit.”
Wyatt chuckled. “You know, when I was a lot younger—maybe around ten, I stopped using my cane. I wanted to be normal, and I had a little more of my central vision so I could get from place to place mostly without falling on my face. But it wasn’t perfect, and I still needed help more often than not. It was easier when people saw the cane. I didn’t have to explain myself. Why my eyes never stopped moving, why I needed help, why I couldn’t really read text.”
“Do you ever think about getting a dog?” Mat asked.
Wyatt couldn’t stop his wince, and he felt bad when he heard Mat take in a sharp breath of regret. “I had one. She…she passed right after my divorce.”
“Woah, seriously?” Mat asked, then let out a tense laugh. “Fuck, the universe really kicked you in the balls that day, huh?”
Wyatt couldn’t help his surprised laugh. The sympathy was nice, but the lack of pity was even nicer. “It wasn’t a great few months, I can tell you that. My ex-husband had gotten involved in a big scandal at the school, tried to implicate me, and I was nearly fired for it.”
“What?” Mat demanded.
Wyatt waved him off as he took another drink of the scotch. “I was able to clear my name, but it destroyed my reputation.” He hesitated, thumbing the rim of the glass. He hadn’t really told anyone here why he’d run or what had really happened. James knew he’d had a work issue and a divorce, and that his guide had passed on. But Wyatt hadn’t ever given details, and no one had asked. He appreciated it most of the time, but now all of those words wanted to come bursting out
of his chest. He’d been holding on to it for so long.
“Crisse,” he muttered, dragging a hand down his face, then rubbing at his eyes. “We were professors at this very expensive, very prestigious private school. Ioan had a sort of bad-boy reputation for most of the time I knew him. He’d…I was in University when he’d come to Canada to finish out his own education. I was a few years older than him, but he was the son of a family friend. We fell in love, got married, talked about a family. Then he was caught having a sexual relationship with a student—they were over eighteen, but only just. Ioan tried to say that he was acting on my insistence, that I’d orchestrated the entire thing. The student was briefly in on it, but records were able to prove I hadn’t known.”
“Holy fuck. Wyatt,” Mat said, his tone a little helpless.
Wyatt managed a brittle smile and he down the rest of his drink. “I was offered my job back, but I couldn’t show my face there again. Pomme—my guide—was old and the vet told me she wasn’t going to last much longer. My parents and my brothers welcomed me home, but it was so much worse. They suffocated me. They wanted me to give up the gay thing.”
“What? The gay thing?” Mat demanded. “Like sexuality’s some kind of phase. You were married to a man.”
Wyatt’s smile was a little more genuine this time. “They…love me, but I think they’ve always believed that I tried to make my life that much harder by being gay.”
“That’s such bullshit,” Mat said indignantly. “Like even if you did like women, even if you were bisexual, it’s still not a fucking phase.”
Wyatt startled when another drink hit the table, and he felt a stab of annoyance that he couldn’t even see shadows. It made his stomach twist with anxiety, and he breathed through it. The desire to ask Mat to leave was getting stronger, and that wasn’t fair. He hadn’t come to tell Mat his sob story, he’d come to help Mat find someone to get a date with.
“It’s not important,” he insisted.
“Uh, well that’s also bullshit,” Mat said, leaning in closer.
Wyatt rubbed at his eyes again, and felt Mat go a little stiff next to him and he dropped his hands. “Sorry, bad habit.”
“No, that’s not…you just look a little overwhelmed. Do you want to get out of here?” Mat asked.
Wyatt felt his heart swell with affection, and his stomach burn with resentment and regret because this was the man he could never have. “No, of course not. You haven’t even talked to one person in French.”
“Uhg,” Mat groaned, and there was a thump. Unable to help himself, Wyatt reached out to verify that Mat had, in fact, dropped his head to the table.
“It’s going to be fine. Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you one sweet French thing to say, then I’ll go to the bathroom and you go use it. If it fails, you’re off the hook and we’ll call it a boys’ night.”
“Boys’ night sounds good,” Mat replied, and there was something in his tone Wyatt was too afraid to read into. “Fine. You have a deal. I’ll use the line, and if it doesn’t work, we can end the madness.”
Wyatt’s smile felt a little stiff, but he tapped his chin to think of all the ridiculously absurd lines he’d listened to boys in school try to use when they were teenagers. His pick-up lines were maybe a little archaic, but it was French, and he knew the women would love it. “Okay try,” he tempered his voice slow so Mat could follow. “Si j’étais un chat, je passerais mes neuf vies avec toi. It means, if I were a cat, I would spend my nine lives with you.”
“Boo,” Mat said with a laugh. “That’s so cheesy!”
“That’s the point,” Wyatt insisted. “Now try it and we’ll get you sounding fluent before you go out there.”
It took Mat a handful of tries to not only remember all the words, but come close to passable pronunciation, but eventually it sounded alright. “Do I pass, professor?” Mat teased.
Wyatt felt his face heat up. “T’es parfait.”
“Parfait,” Mat repeated slowly. “Perfect.”
“See, you’ll be speaking it fluently in no time,” Wyatt told him. “You know, my ex-husband lived and worked in Québec for more than twenty years, and he never spoke French with me, never at home. You’ve done more in these last months than he ever did.”
“Damn,” Mat breathed out. “That guy was a real dick.”
Wyatt chuckled and shook his head. “That’s one word for it. Okay, now for the important part. Do you see anyone who catches your attention?”
“Yes,” Mat breathed out slowly.
Wyatt felt his stomach squirm, and god, how he wished that tone was directed at him. “Then you go. I’ll find the bathroom and we’ll see if you can’t get lucky.”
“Right,” Mat said after a moment, and sounded weirdly tense. “Get lucky. Yeah. I can do this.”
Wyatt pushed up from the table and let Mat direct him toward the bathrooms, and it was with total reluctance that he walked away. This was the last place he wanted to be, but if it made it so Mat could find someone who could make him happy, it was enough.
Mat slid up to the bar, taking one of the stools next to Tony who was presently drinking alone. The truth was burning in his gut, and after talking with Wyatt all this time, he knew he couldn’t keep it down anymore. He didn’t want to come out-out. Not yet. He needed time to process, but he needed Wyatt to know he was more than what everyone assumed.
He also wanted some support. He felt like the world’s biggest asshole for going to Tony first and not James. He had every single one of James’ secrets—including the fact that before Rowan, James hadn’t been with anyone in any capacity. He had been there for James’ breakdowns, for his drunken rages, for his sobbing confessions that he was going to hell for being born a gay man.
But right now, Tony was here. Tony had been the other man who had pulled him out of the mental fire he’d been stuck in for so damn long when he first set foot in Denver. Tony had taken him under his wing, helped him apprentice, taught him everything he needed to know. It just felt natural now to give up his last secret to the man who only wanted him to be happy and successful.
“How’s the night going?” Tony asked, tipping the neck of his bottle toward Mat in greeting.
Mat shrugged. “Good. I mean, weird, but good. Uh…Wyatt was teaching me some French in case I saw a woman I wanted to take home.”
Tony snorted, shaking his head as he took a drink. “That man confuses the hell out of me, but I like him.”
“Yeah,” Mat breathed out. “Me too.” He finally dared to look Tony in the eye, and he could see the intensity with which Tony was watching him. He swallowed thickly. “I really like him.”
Tony looked thoughtful, then took another drink. “Would I be the world’s biggest asshole if I told you that I figured?”
Mat felt a brief surge of panic, but he swallowed it down. “That bad?”
“Not all the time, no,” Tony said slowly. “Just…I don’t know how to put this delicately man, but straight guys don’t make out with their dude friends. Not even to pull their ass out of a bad date.”
Mat flushed all the way to the roots of his hair. “Uh. Right. Everyone else probably knows too, don’t they?”
“Maybe,” Tony conceded, “though if they did, no one ever said a word about it.”
Mat huffed, shrugging, but he couldn’t stop a tiny smile from tugging at his lips. “I was probably pretty obvious tonight.”
“You’ve been obvious for a while, son. But luckily, most of these guys are idiots who can’t see past their own noses. Or their boyfriend’s dicks. But I haven’t seen you smile like that in maybe ever, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at least James could tell.”
“Do you think Wyatt knows?” Mat chanced.
Tony took another drink, humming in thought. “I wouldn’t know. You ever bring it up to him?”
“No. I almost did but uh…but he said Amit told him I was straight, and he apologized for flirting with me.” Mat ducked his head and toyed with a l
oose string in the crease of his jeans. “I didn’t get the chance to correct him. I want to tell him, though. I think. I mean, I have no idea if the guy likes me. He’s ridiculously hot, and older than me, and infinitely cooler and smarter…”
“Hang on there,” Tony said firmly. “Apart from older, you’re all of those things. Hell, you’re one of the smartest guys we’ve got in the shop, Dr. Harlow.”
Mat scowled a little. “I’m pretty damn far from a doctor now,” he pointed out.
“Something like that injury standing in your way doesn’t mean you didn’t earn every second of that education and experience, Mat. And because of those things, I think more than anything you deserve to go after what makes you happy. Are you…is this some sort of sexuality crisis? Are you just figuring this out now?”
Mat felt his ears go hot. “Uh. No. I mean, I think I’ve known I was attracted to guys since high school. I just didn’t think it was allowed to count, you know? I’ve never done anything with a guy.” When Tony gave him a pointed look, Mat rolled his eyes. “Making out with Sage at Ruby’s to chase off some handsy asshole doesn’t count. And James pouncing on me and sticking his tongue down my throat when he drank absinthe doesn’t either.”
Tony laughed, setting his beer down and turning to Mat to face him fully. “Webster’s dictionary defines bisexual as…”
“Oh my god, fuck off,” Mat groaned.
Tony laughed again, pushing at Mat’s shoulder. “I’m kidding. But really, you don’t have to like earn your bi card by fucking a guy, Mat. Either you are, or you aren’t. But I think you know exactly how you feel, and I don’t think there’s any real harm in telling that man over there what you really think, because I can guaran-damn-tee you he’s not gonna turn you down. I mean, that dude has been teaching you French pick-up lines.”
Mat flushed. “Yeah. I wish I knew one of my own, you know? To throw at him.”
“Lady Marmalade,” Tony told him, and when Mat frowned, Tony rolled his eyes. “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir.” He half said it and half sang it, and it triggered Mat’s memory.