Prodigal

by TA Moore

  “That doesn’t mean I’m going to play this game,” he said.

  “What game?” Morgan growled. He grabbed the back of Boyd’s jeans and dragged him back onto the bed when he tried to get up. “I’m not the one playing pretend with my feelings. You don’t know how I feel.”

  “I didn’t say I did,” Boyd said. “Maybe you don’t love me—”

  Morgan curled his lip. “I don’t.”

  That… yeah, that hurt. Boyd shrugged as he pulled Morgan’s hand out of his jeans. “Fine, you don’t love me, and you aren’t going to stay in town, but you like me. And anytime you realize that, you act like an asshole to get me to back off.”

  “Take the hint, then,” Morgan said flatly.

  Boyd bit his tongue and got up off the bed. He grabbed his hoodie, checked his pockets for his phone, and tossed the keys to Morgan, who snatched them out of the air. “Stay as long as you want. Lock up when you go. I’ve got a spare set at work.”

  “The only reason you think you love me is because you think I’m Sammy,” Morgan accused as he scrambled off the bed. He held up the keys, so they dangled from one finger. “This? This is all some fucked-up attempt to play house with a ghost. So don’t act like this is about me. I’m just the stand-in.”

  He tossed the keys into the sheets and stalked into the bathroom. The door slammed behind him, but Boyd shoved it open and followed him inside. Morgan had his arms braced on the sink, shoulders hunched and tight as he glared at himself in the mirror. He looked as frustrated with himself as Boyd was right now.

  “Fuck you. And Shay and Mac and everyone who thinks they know what I feel better than me. Yeah, I loved Sammy,” Boyd snapped. His throat hurt the way it always did when he talked about it, a tight mixture of sentiment, loss, and grief. “He was my best friend, and hell, I don’t know what he’d have been if someone hadn’t taken him away. I don’t even know if he was gay or bi or not into sex at all. What I know is that you’re not him.”

  Morgan looked up to meet Boyd’s eyes in the reflection. “What happened, you pass the torch of believing that I’m Sammy to Donna?” he asked bitterly. “Because she can barely spit my name out.”

  “It was fifteen years ago,” Boyd said. The flare of anger had already started to fade. It never hung around, usually just long enough to get him in trouble. He reached out and brushed his hand over Morgan’s tight shoulders. His fingers lingered on the faded crescent welt on the back of his shoulder. It matched the one on his thigh, but it had healed better. From the back, it wasn’t so easy to brush off Morgan’s scars as everyday wear and tear. Morgan flinched at the contact, his hands tight around the sink, but he didn’t move. “None of us are who we were back then. Whoever Sammy might have been if he’d stayed isn’t the same person who’d come back. I don’t know that Sammy. But I know you, and who you are isn’t going to change just because of what DNA says. How I feel about you isn’t going to change. Okay?”

  Morgan turned around. He leaned his hips against the sink and crossed his arms over his bare chest as he looked at Boyd.

  “I don’t want you to love me,” he said.

  “Tough.”

  “I don’t want to be the one who breaks your heart,” Morgan said. “I guess I figured that would be easier if you knew I wasn’t going to stay. Or if you didn’t want me to. But….”

  Boyd nodded. “But if it worked and I didn’t miss you…?”

  The corner of Morgan’s mouth twisted up in a halfhearted stab at a smile. “I’d be so fucking pissed,” he said. “I want to be the one guy that, if I ever came back, you’d throw over whatever boring asshole you’d hooked up with for me. Even though you knew I’d fuck off again. Fuck up again.”

  “Deal,” Boyd said. He stuck out his hand. Morgan rolled his eyes, took it, and pulled him in against the long, sweaty length of him. “Every time.”

  Morgan ran his hands down Boyd’s back and cupped his ass. “Ask me to stay?” he said. “Maybe I won’t be an asshole this time?”

  “No,” Boyd said. He kissed Morgan and then stepped back. “I’m late. I should go. You still gonna be around this evening?”

  “Where else am I going to go?” Morgan asked. “I’m not exactly free to up stakes just yet.”

  Sometimes Boyd missed things. He always had. His brain just didn’t categorize things in the same way other people did. So he zoned out of calculus because there was a butterfly stuck in the window, or he went to the wrong restaurant for a date because he hadn’t actually listened to the whole conversation. Except at work, where the stakes were high enough to keep him focused, and with Morgan, who nearly clawed his way out of his own skin when he was locked in that interview room in Huntington.

  It didn’t matter. Boyd was shit with money. He’d have pissed away the bail on something else—another couch he didn’t need, a car that would end up resold to Shay because Boyd liked his dad’s old pickup. Hell, he paid nearly five grand for a con artist to take Donna on a magical mystery tour of nearby scrublands. So he wouldn’t draw the line at fifteen grand for Morgan’s freedom.

  But he didn’t say any of that, just like he hadn’t asked about Morgan’s scars. Some things you didn’t have a right to know, not until it was offered. Boyd had grown up with half his life pinned out like butterflies for people to gawk at. Morgan got that.

  “Take me out, then,” he said instead. “Somewhere nice. We can call it a date this time.”

  Morgan looked as though he knew there was something Boyd hadn’t said. He abided by the same “leave sleeping dogs” code and didn’t press him on it. The corner of his mouth tilted up in a cautious smile.

  “In public?” he said. “People will talk.”

  “Good.”

  Morgan laughed, and Boyd took the opportunity to leave. He got halfway down the stairs and had to stop for a second. The sharp prickle of tears stung at the back of his eyes and throat and wet and salty in his nose. Shit. He paused on the steps and impatiently scrubbed his hand over his face.

  It was stupid. Morgan hadn’t even left yet. But he would. Boyd took a deep breath, sniffed hard, and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

  At least this time he got to say goodbye.

  IT WAS the wrong day to come back off suspension.

  Boyd stripped the sheets off the narrow cots in the dorm, flipped the mattresses, and left the naked pillows in the puddle of sun in front of the window. He had no idea if it made any difference, but Harry insisted it made them fluff up. He was the boss.

  It wasn’t filthy. The beds were changed and laundered once a week. But the sheets smelled like a half-dozen firefighters had slept restlessly in them, and odds were at least someone had hooked up during a shift. Not exactly how Boyd imagined his triumphant return, and the monotony of it gave his brain too much time to mope. He pulled a sports sock out of a pillowcase, grimaced, and tossed them both over with the sheets.

  “Hey, Boyd,” Jessie said as he rattled up the concrete steps in his heavy boots. The cat they’d saved from the trailer fire—Chitlins—was perched on his shoulder. “You got a minute?”

  “Sure.” Boyd picked up a sheet and tossed it across to him. Jessie fielded the cotton out of the air before it hit him in the face. The close call made Chitlins hiss, jump down from her perch, and shoot under one of the beds. “Pitch in.”

  Jessie shook out the sheet. “I did it last week.” Despite his complaints, he flicked the sheet over the mattress and tucked in the edges at the bottom of the bed, tightly enough to pass Harry’s inspection, while Boyd did the top. As they worked, the cat, whiskers curled and ear tips still frilled and bald from the fire, slunk from under her bed and made her perch in the stack of pillows.

  “Last night, after you left, I hit a few more clubs and ended up at the Bucks.” Jessie dropped a folded blue blanket at the bottom of the bed and moved on to the next one. The Bucks—or The Buckingham, if it was for the fire risk-assessment reports—was the closest thing to a gay bar that Cutter’s Gap had. At least it was after 1:
00 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday. Between them, Boyd and Jessie stretched the sheet drum-tight over the stained mattress—it looked like blood, but Tom swore it was tomato juice—and folded the corners in with military precision. “Shay was there.”

  Boyd stalled midtuck and had to pull the sheet out to start again. It wasn’t as though Shay was in the closet, but he wasn’t exactly out of it either. With their friendship still on hold, Boyd didn’t feel he had the standing to decide what side of that line Jessie was on. Technically he knew, but whether his failure to recognize Shay was real or not, Boyd didn’t know.

  “It’s a free country,” he said. “And the beer’s cheap.”

  Jessie sat down on the corner of the made bed, foot braced against the metal base, and dangled his hands between his knees. “I think he knows that,” he said. “He was drunk off his ass, Boyd, and trying to pick fights with people. The bouncers chucked him out in the end. I went out and called him a cab, but I got the feeling he didn’t plan to head home.”

  After the things that were said during the fight the other day, Boyd wasn’t sure he should even care what Shay did or how he fucked up. But life was never that easy.

  “Did he say anything about—”

  Boyd hesitated as he realized just how many options he had to finish that sentence. The last few weeks hadn’t been easy for anyone, but Shay had more to deal with than most. He hadn’t just had to wrestle with whether his brother was back. He had to handle Donna’s fragile state and deal with the sour old gossip that had bubbled up out of the town’s subconscious like gas from a swamp. Every time Sammy’s case made it back into public consciousness, the first thing people started to speculate about was who’d done it—the brother, the teacher, the stranger passing through? Boyd realized with a pinch of guilt that this time he had mostly left Shay to wade through it alone.

  “Anything?” he finished the question weakly.

  “You mean about your weird thing with maybe Sammy Calloway?” Jessie asked.

  “It’s not weird,” Boyd said stiffly.

  Jessie raised his eyebrows and snorted. “It kinda is,” he said. “I mean, it’s not my place to judge, but the guy’s either a con artist or an eight-year-old. All things being equal, that’s pretty weird. Anyhow, Shay didn’t mention it to me, but things had already kicked off when I got there. I don’t know if it was about that, but….”

  He trailed off and spread his hands. What else would it be? Boyd exhaled raggedly and scratched his jaw.

  “Okay,” he said. “Once I finish in here, I’ll give him a call and check up on him.”

  Jessie looked relieved to have passed on the responsibility. He hopped to his feet and grabbed a handful of wrinkled sheets and crumpled pillowcases off the floor.

  “I’ll stick these in the laundry,” he said. “Take that off your plate.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jessie got a few steps down the stairs and paused. He shifted the ball of laundry in his arms and glanced over the banister at Boyd.

  “Look, who am I to judge,” he said awkwardly. “I mean, it’s weird, but who isn’t, huh? I wouldn’t want to be married to Tom’s wife, but he seems happy.”

  Boyd shrugged and shooed the cat out of her pillow nest. She laid her singed ears back, swatted him, and left a raw sting of blood across his knuckles that made him hiss.

  “It’s all right,” he said as he licked the blood off his knuckles. “I want him more than I want you to like him.”

  There was a pause, and then Jessie shook his head. “Well, fuck,” he said. “I guess I know why none of my boyfriends work out, then.”

  The cat, fluffed and indignant, stayed to watch as Boyd finished the last of the beds. He left her to sleep on one of the pillows, curled up so her tail was in the sun, and headed downstairs. The linens were in the wash, and he could have taken a break, but instead he finished the rest of the chores on his list. It took half an hour to run out of excuses.

  Boyd tipped the soapy water from the windows down the drain in the street outside. As it drained away, he tossed the bucket back inside and fished his phone out of his pocket. He leaned against the damp windowsill as he called Shay and then waited.

  The call rang through to voicemail twice. Boyd hung up each time without leaving a message. On the third call, he hung on through Shay’s lazy message and waited for the tone. Then he waited some more as his brain fizzed noisily around silence.

  “Shit,” he muttered on autopilot, and that reminded him of the other words. “Sorry, look, it’s Boyd. You probably know that.”

  He leaned his head back against the glass and made a face. Tattered strips of clouds trailed through the crayon-blue sky. “Hopefully you’re screening my calls, not passed out over a hot grill. Or something. I know we’re still pissed at each other, but let me know you’re not dead? You know this isn’t going to fix anything, Shay. It never does. Just—”

  The siren went off inside the station. Boyd cut the call short and shoved himself off the wall. He could finish the call to Shay later. Or not. If Shay didn’t want to talk to him, maybe he should respect that. Right now—Danni tossed him his gear as he loped back inside—he had work to do.

  “We’ve got a vehicle fire on Elmwood,” Harry barked as he strode out of the office, jacket half-on. “Two cars involved so far. Suit up and let’s go.”

  TWO CARS.

  Three houses, no fatalities, but two elderly homeowners taken to the hospital.

  One school bus, parked outside the elementary school.

  The old equipment shed out at the derelict factory.

  “You smell that?” Danni asked as she pulled her SCBA off. Her nose and around her mouth was grimy with soot. “Gasoline. Same as the rest.”

  Boyd raked his fingers through his hair. It was drenched with sweat and matted to his head, itchy behind his ears and at the nape of his neck. Shed made the space sound small, but it was a barn-sized steel box cluttered with machine parts, office furniture, and two forklift trucks. Plenty to burn, once it started, and the metal walls had been hot enough to glow by the time the fire truck got there from town.

  Tom and Jessie were still at it outside, hoses turned on the sides of the structure to cool them down. The walls cracked and groaned in protest at the cold bath.

  “Think someone’s discovered the joys of arson?” he asked.

  Danni wrinkled her nose and wiped her hand over her mouth. Under the soot, her skin was flushed red.

  “Weird targets, though,” she said. “Kids with lighters and a weird tickle in their pants usually start small—bonfires in the woods, small fires in derelict houses, that sort of thing. And they usually like to watch us put it out. Out here we’d have seen them a mile off.”

  Scraps of burned paper floated in the runoff of grimy water that covered the floor. It sloshed around Boyd’s feet and darkened as each step stirred up ashes and mud. He kicked something that clinked, so he bent down to fish a bottle out from under the charred remains of a desk—a whiskey bottle, label half-peeled off from being soaked, and still half full of booze.

  “Looks like someone has been camped out here,” he said as he held it up to show her. “There’s an old mattress back there too—what’s left of it—and some clothes.”

  Danni splashed over and took the bottle from him with a laugh. “Got drunk and set fire to his own shit, huh?” She turned the bottle around, smoothed a dangling bit of label back into place, and whistled softly. “Good taste in whiskey, if nothing else. This stuff isn’t cheap. Remind me to tell Mac that our firebug could have hit a liquor store.”

  She tossed the bottle back to Boyd. He’d just set it down on the blistered plastic seat of the forklift to dry when their radios crackled static that turned into Harry’s clipped, fire-hoarse voice.

  “We got a structural fire on Jessmyn and Kendall,” he barked. “We’re up. Stow the hoses and get in the rig.”

  Tom said something, but Boyd tuned him out. He fumbled with the radio for a second with clumsy finger
s before he lost patience and stripped off the heavy gloves. He set them down next to the whiskey, ready to grab on his way out.

  “Where on Kendall?” he asked harshly. “Harry?”

  There was a pause, and then Harry admitted, “It’s Shay Calloway’s shop. Doesn’t change a thing we do, Maccabee. That’s our best every time. Now get in the rig. We got a job to do.”

  Boyd’s mind fritzed out.

  THE NEARBY shops had emptied out. People lined the street, clustered together in small groups as they watched black smoke billow out of the shop and flames flicker at the windows. Most of them murmured among themselves or tutted their tongues at how long the fire engine had taken to get there. One woman, head still bristled with foils, stood outside the hairdresser’s with her phone stuck up in the air as she recorded.

  “Did you get in touch with Shay?” Harry asked as he hit the horn to get people out of the road so they could pull the fire engine up in front of the shop. People backed reluctantly out of the way as though they thought being close enough to melt their sneakers on the tarmac was a good day out.

  “No.”

  Boyd shoved his phone back into his jacket and zipped it up to his throat. Eight calls to add to the four earlier for an even dozen. Each time it had rung through to voicemail. The last two cut in automatically, without even an attempt, so the phone was dead.

  The truck stopped up to the curb, and they spilled out. A second crew, tanker attached, pulled up behind them.

  “You sure he’s in there?” Harry asked as he shrugged the tank onto his back. “He could be in someone’s bed or in a cell. He might not have come back here last night.”

  Boyd shrugged as he buckled his helmet on. He knew. Shay could hold his drink, nurse a couple of beers all night, and be the life and soul of the party. But occasionally he drank to get mean, bottles of whiskey lined up ready so he could wipe out a whole week at a time. He never wanted company for that, and he didn’t stop drinking at last call either.