Jilted

by Lilah Suzanne

  “Carter, you know it’s just because she worries about you. Like, why make your life more difficult? If she and dad couldn’t learn to like Matthew, a rich, handsome lawyer, then maybe it’s worth reconsidering your choices.”

  Carter snaps, reflexively, “It’s not a choice.” It’s also not news that his family considers his bisexuality to be a mere phase—one designed to wound them and, more importantly, make them look bad to their snobby, judgmental friends—but it still hurts.

  Paige ignores him. “You know my friend Meredith is still single.”

  Her friend Meredith is twice divorced, with a shopping addiction and a penchant for collecting tiny, yappy dogs that are only slightly less obnoxious than she is. “I’m not really ready to date yet.” And not interested in dating Paige’s friend Meredith ever.

  “Whatever, okay. Just listen, Carter. Think of this as like, a blessing. A chance to start over and get your life on track, finally. We care about you. We just want you to be happy.”

  Carter ends the call and rests his forehead against the wallpaper; the raised pattern is velvety soft against his skin. We just want you to be happy. And yet, no matter how hard he tries, no matter what he does, they never are happy with him. He never gets it right.

  When Carter gets back to the room, Link is perched in front of the bathroom mirror swiping on shiny lip gloss. They’ve changed into skintight, white jeans that are tucked into heavy black boots and a draping, cream-colored button-down. Gold bracelets jingle on their wrists with every light, graceful movement. Gorgeous. Carter’s stomach clenches, and he shifts against the closed door. He’s feeling too many conflicting emotions tugging at him from all directions, sinking him.

  “Are you changing? Not that you don’t look cute already,” Link says with a silly, flirty wink. The nausea grows in Carter’s gut. “Hello? Carter Jacob?”

  He looks at the floor. “Yeah. Uh. They didn’t have any rooms.”

  “That’s okay,” Link says sweetly. “It would have been weird trying to explain to the hotel staff why my new spouse was sleeping in another room anyway.” Link laughs, but Carter says nothing, just grabs a change of clothes and slinks off to the bathroom. Thank goodness he’s an over-packer and planned a few nice going-out outfits. At least he won’t look like a total schlub, though he feels like one.

  Tonight’s destination is only a few blocks away, so they walk. Carter shuffles with his hands in his pockets and shoulders high. Link swans along and chatters about various landmarks and tourist traps in the French Quarter; they’re extremely knowledgeable about New Orleans. Normally Carter would be so into it, but he nods and offers a single mhm. His brief conversation with Paige has put a dark cloud over everything. Is Carter now so desperate not to be alone that he finds no issue with pretending to be someone’s husband? Is this how he was pretending that things were fine with Matthew? What if Paige is right, and he is just making his life difficult?

  The restaurant is in an old Creole-style townhouse: pink stucco on the outside and green and coral on the inside. A plaque in the waiting area says it’s been there since 1942, and it looks like it, as if frozen in time and place. Link checks in at the host stand while Carter admires the intricate latticework separating sections of the restaurant, the walls made of still-sturdy, hand-shaped mud bricks, and the upstairs walkway circling the entire perimeter. “Look at that balustrade,” Carter says wonderingly when Link returns. “Real marble, wow.”

  Link looks up with him. “The… railing?”

  Carter, forgetting to be sullen and conflicted, moves next to Link and points up. “Yes, well, the railing and columns. Those round posts in between there are called balusters, balaustra in Italian, because they look like blossoming pomegranate flowers. The style dates from the fifteenth century and was favored by Italian royalty.” Link stares up, squinting, trying to see what Carter sees. “Sorry,” Carter says, “that is random and boring.” Everyone hates when he does that, but he’s not trying to be annoying; he just gets excited.

  Link gives him a look that Carter can’t read, then says, “Carter Jacob, you can info-dump about Italian architecture to me any old time.” They might be teasing, Carter thinks, though Link’s expression certainly appears sincere.

  The host leads them upstairs and Carter has to talk about the Norman truss on the pitched ceiling and the difference between a king post truss and a Norman truss while a waiter takes drink orders.

  Link explains their work in more detail: the process of salvaging and piecing together old metal gears and chains and bicycle and engine parts to create something new from something old. Carter is fascinated, transfixed by the excitement in Link’s eyes, the way their full lips form around the words, the quick, expressive movement of their hands as Link explains welding a recent sculpture. It seems like no time all before their entrées arrive: seafood gumbo for Carter and Link’s Creole-spiced shrimp salad.

  “You know, I’m Creole on my mom’s side,” Link says. “Part Cajun on my paternal side.”

  “No kidding? That’s fascinating.” Everything about Link is fascinating. A tealight flickers on the table between them, and all the lovely contours of Link’s face take on a dramatic, sharp glow. “So you have roots here, then?”

  Link chews and nods. “I do. Then all over, doing the nomadic, freewheeling-artist thing for a while. And lately, I’ve really wanted to settle down. Have a home. Someone to come home to. I guess part of why—” They wave their fork, indicating the two of them, clearly meaning the post-dumped situation they’ve found themselves in. “I wanted it too badly.”

  “Well, perhaps I didn’t want it badly enough,” Carter confesses. For so long he thought it was him, that maybe he didn’t stir strong romantic feelings in anyone, that perhaps love always felt like settling and that was okay. He now knows that isn’t true. It was just that Matthew had real, true feelings for someone else.

  Link flicks a hand to dismiss the sad route they’re heading down. “Anyway. How did you end up in Aurora?”

  “Born and raised,” Carter says. He scoops up gumbo; it is delicious. “I always thought I would leave and then I… didn’t.” He never found a compelling enough reason to go elsewhere, though he was still in Aurora only incidentally.

  “Well, you have family and friends there, right?” Link says diplomatically. “A good job. Stability. That’s important.”

  Carter moves his gumbo around the bowl and doesn’t answer; his mood shifts again. Carter wishes Link wasn’t so nice to him. The more time the two of them spend together, the more Carter is drawn to Link, and the more he knows he can’t be. In six days, Carter is going home to a place he doesn’t want to be, to a life he built around someone who left him and a family who will never accept him. There are worse things, certainly. But there are better ones, too, and he can only pretend otherwise for so long.

  Five

  The hotel room seems to have become smaller as Carter and Link maneuver around each other while getting ready for bed. There’s no way to not brush up against Link as they sort through a huge suitcase in the tiny hallway by the bathroom, no way to undress without being overly aware of the single thin door separating him from Link and how much of him Link has already seen. Carter emerges from the bathroom in the thin satin pajamas he bought for special occasions.

  Link whistles. “Fancy.”

  Carter ducks his head and wishes he’d brought sweatpants. “I, uh, was under the impression that this trip was going to be something different, so…”

  “Yeah,” Link says, their tone suddenly bitter. This was supposed to be a honeymoon. “Guess I won’t be wearing my sexy lingerie.” Carter can’t tell if they’re joking. He can’t tell if he wants them to be. At Carter’s awkward silence, Link nods toward the bathroom. “I’m just gonna…”

  They dance around each other so Link can pass, both of them moving right, then left, then right together. Link chuckles at the clic
héd predicament and grasps Carter’s elbow to keep him still as they stand a breath apart. Heat spikes along Carter’s skin. He lunges away from Link’s touch and clambers onto the bed to remove himself from the way-too-close proximity. While Link is in the bathroom, Carter takes three steadying breaths, then searches for extra linens in the large antique bureau, and finds only a single sad, coarse blanket.

  I’m just lonely, Carter reminds himself. The two of them get along, sure; they have an easy camaraderie, yes; Link is attractive, definitely; but doing anything under the circumstances… It’s a bad idea.

  He’s situating the thin brown blanket on the floor between the bed and the wall when Link comes out of the bathroom, not in lingerie, but in cotton shorts and a T-shirt. Carter drops a pillow on top of the blanket and tries to convince himself that the tight space will be cozy and not claustrophobic.

  “Are you gonna fit?” Link asks, perching on the far side of the bed.

  Carter tips his head. “Yes?” On his side, he should, probably. Mostly.

  “You could just—” Link gestures at the other side of the bed. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything…”

  “I was trying to not make you uncomfortable.”

  Link sighs, gathering up their hair up into a messy twist. “This is dumb. We already shared the bed once—”

  “Drunk,” Carter points out.

  “Yes, drunk, but still.” Link’s hands drop and their hair tumbles loose to their shoulders. “We’re adults. I think we can handle sharing a bed without accidentally dry-humping each other in the middle of the night.”

  Carter considers this with his jaw set. That blanket does look very uncomfortable. “All right,” he concedes. It is a pretty large bed. Carter perches on the edge. “Do adults really call it ‘dry-humping,’ though?”

  Link seems embarrassed until Carter smiles, then laughs and pushes at Carter’s shoulder. “Yes, we do.” After turning off the lamp next to their side of the bed, Link curls under the covers. Carter does the same, and quiet settles into the room, until Link says in the dark, “What would you call it?”

  Flipping to his back, on the very far side of his side of the bed, Carter says, “I don’t know. Foreplay?”

  Link hums. “Fair enough.”

  In the quiet darkness, it’s impossible for Carter to keep his mind from drifting to Matthew and his own family and the unhappy life waiting for him back in Aurora, then to all the missteps that led him here, and how he’s coping with the fallout by not coping with it and dragging Link down with him. Maybe he should just go home.

  “Hey, Carter?” Link says, voice soft with sleep.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you. For staying with me. It’s… helping.”

  “Sure,” Carter says. He is anything but sure.

  Carter wakes abruptly from a fragmented dream of cascading coins and racing chariots and chasing something perpetually out of reach. The room is gray with watery pre-dawn light, and Carter’s only coherent thought is irritation that he woke before his alarm sounded. Closing his eyes, determined to sleep a little longer before he has to trudge off to work, Carter tugs the blanket tighter around his shoulders. He always runs extra cold on winter nights, stacks blankets and seeks out the body heat of the person next to him in bed, flinging an arm over, tucking legs between, pushing his pelvis against a hip, unthinkingly grinding against the early-morning ache between his legs.

  Carter realizes too late that this morning the person in bed next to him is not Matthew.

  Carter flings himself back, startling Link from sleep. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry.”

  “’S’okay,” Link mumbles, then rolls over and goes right back to sleep.

  Carter is wide awake, awake and aroused and embarrassed. Several deep breaths have no effect on his situation, so Carter gives up on sleeping and scurries off for a cold shower.

  “Aren’t you an early bird this morning?” An hour or so later, Link finds Carter on the balcony, where he’s wrapped up in the terrible brown blanket. Link hands over a cup of coffee, sits close, but not too close, on the little bench, and tugs a corner of the blanket over their lap. “I conked out last night. Don’t remember a thing.” Link is saying it for his benefit, graciously letting him off the hook. It doesn’t make Carter feel any less awkward. Apparently, he can’t sleep next to Link without dry-humping them. He should have slept on the floor.

  Propping one foot on the wrought iron gabling, Carter sips his coffee, says nothing, and watches the morning sun cast the whole city block in a golden glow. There’s nothing else to say, nothing to be done about it now; he’s apologized and he can add it to the list of things he’s pretending are fine and normal.

  Together he and Link watch the city below come to vibrant, busy life with the streets and sidewalks full of people passing by, going in and out of shops and restaurants. A carriage like the one they took to their picnic yesterday bumps by, pulled by two white horses trotting at a steady pace. One busker plays harmonica on a corner, another dances to a song playing from a boombox; a street artist spray-paints colorful galaxies next to a vendor selling street-food delicacies. In New Orleans, Carter could be someone else living a different life, one full of color and sound and light.

  “I love it here,” Carter says to himself.

  “Nothing like it,” Link agrees. “Ooh! You know what you need to have? Beignets at Café du Monde. It’s not just for tourists; locals actually eat there too.”

  “Sure, yeah,” Carter agrees.

  Link glances at him over the top of their steaming coffee cup. “Are we okay?”

  We. Carter frowns. There is no such thing. There can’t be. The fantasy life he imagined for himself is just that. A fantasy. “Sure.” Carter says, then changes the subject. “So, beignets?”

  Six

  Carter doesn’t know Link very well at all, and yet the cemetery tour on the honeymoon itinerary for today is exactly the sort of thing Carter expects Link to be interested in. It is not something Carter would ever choose, but he’s happy enough to go along, as Link’s bubbly happiness when they arrive at the tour headquarters makes Carter fizzle with something like excitement too.

  On the tour bus, Link is downright giddy, bouncing in the seat next to Carter as the tour guide explains the history of Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1: It is the oldest cemetery in New Orleans, famous for its above-ground crypts. As they file off the bus, the guide says that Mark Twain once dubbed these cemeteries “Cities of the Dead,” and for good reason: the tombs could be small houses, laid out in an architecturally gothic neighborhood of final resting places.

  “Nicolas Cage has a plot here,” Link says, breaking off from the group and turning down a narrow passageway between crumbling brick and stucco tombs as if they know exactly where to go.

  Carter frowns. “Nicolas Cage is dead?”

  “Nope,” Link moves quickly along the path; their long gray scarf flutters behind them like a ghost.

  Though well within the city and with busy freeways sprawling nearby, the cemetery is hushed; just the crunch of footsteps and the quiet howl of the wind twisting through the grave sites keep them company. Together, Carter and Link pause to read the inscriptions, the ones that aren’t worn down by age and weather, then continue in silence. At a tomb of a husband and wife, buried together, Carter stops as Link moves on. Together for eternity. Is that Carter wants? Is it what Matthew was looking for and found with someone else? If Jamie was the one who got away, then what the hell does that make Carter? He’d committed to Matthew. He had planned a forever with Matthew. And now he has no plans, no future to look toward, no one who is interested in sharing a life with him, let alone an eternal afterlife.

  “Oh, Jacqueline and Louis,” Carter says to the double marble tomb, to the people who have been dead for two hundred years. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

  “Carter!” Link�
��s voice comes from a few rows down. When Carter finally finds where they are, the rest of the tour group is already milling nearby. “Check it out.”

  “Barthélemy Lafon,” Carter reads. He turns to Link for further explanation.

  “Notable architect and pirate. That’s one way to inject a little excitement in your career.” Link makes a pirate-like arrr noise and laughs. It’s hard to feel anything but joy when Link laughs like that.

  “I don’t know,” Carter says, flat and serious. “I get pretty bad seasickness.”

  There’s a moment when Link seems to be trying to figure out if Carter’s serious. Then they laugh again. “But otherwise…”

  “Otherwise I’d for sure be an architect-pirate,” Carter says, in the same serious tone. Link bumps against him, still smiling, then stays pressed close as the tour moves on.

  “Known as the Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau’s life remains shrouded in mystery,” the tour guide says, rounding a corner with the rest of the group. “After her internment here in 1881, she was said to be spotted walking around the French Quarter the very next day.” He pauses for dramatic effect, then claps his hands. “And that’s all for the guided tour folks, feel free to look around until we board the bus for our next stop on the Haunted New Orleans Tour. And by the way,” he says as the group starts to wander in all directions, “we have newlyweds on our tour today!”

  Back turned to the tour group and Link, Carter’s stomach drops.

  “Congratulations to Link and Jamie!”

  Carter turns to find Link wide-eyed and frozen in place as the tour guide and group all turn their attention directly to Link. Carter moves without thinking, taking Link’s hand in his and holding it high as if taking a victory lap.

  “Thanks, everyone!” Carter says. Everyone claps. Carter keeps Link’s hand tight in his even while everyone gathers to move on, no longer paying the two of them any attention.