by Rachel Kane
"Do I know you?" asked the man. "I’m terrible with faces—oh, wait, I saw you earlier, didn't I? You were dressed differently then."
What did you do with Alex? he wanted to ask—except he really, really didn't want to ask that. Besides, he had to be nice to the guests.
"Oh, sorry," he said. "Yes, I'm Judah Cooper, one of the co-owners."
"A Cooper! Bastian, look, it’s one of the proprietors! Darling, lovely house you have here. I mean that. When Bastian showed me the website I wasn't sure. So many of these places, you know, they look like they've ordered out of some generic bed and breakfast catalog. Pale woods and soothing pastels. Horrid! Yet look at this wallpaper. Some real thought went into this room."
His bladder urged him to make a quick excuse and leave, but his curiosity over these guys kept his feet planted on the floor.
"We tried really hard to keep things period-appropriate," he said.
"Not too period-appropriate, one hopes," Ian said. "The south was such a nasty place in the 1920s. Although one always hopes for progress, doesn’t one? After Bastian and I left Atlanta, I swore never again, and it’s hard to say we really miss it after Berlin, and our recent sojourn in Shanghai..."
There was no sense hiding that Judah knew exactly who they were. “You’re Ian. Alex’s—”
The man brightened still further, a hundred-watt bulb behind his smile. "Yes, I am. Or was, I suppose. Are you good friends with Alex? He may have already told you all our dark secrets—don’t believe a one of them, dear! Ian Grant, at your service."
Judah felt his self-esteem collapsing like an old mansion built on shaky foundations. This guy was like some young god, tall and sun-blond and chiseled, that confidence in his eyes that Judah had never been able to mimic.
"Alex...hasn't said much about you."
Another wry grin. "Better that way, trust me. You know how it is with exes."
"I...don't, actually, but okay. Listen, I need to run upstairs—"
His bladder wasn't taking no for an answer anymore, and if he didn't get to the bathroom soon, he was going to explode.
"No, no, of course, I'm sure you're quite busy. Your little hotel is packed to the brim with guests, I see. But I do hope I'll see you again. Any friend of Alex's is a friend of ours, isn’t that right, Bastian?"
He stared into the mirror over the bathroom sink, the bottom edge fogging from the hot water he was scalding his hands with. “Ouch,” he said silently, and turned the cold tap on.
It was clear why Alex had been into Ian. Everyone on earth liked a guy like that. Tall, confident, good hair. Insouciant, was that the word Judah was looking for? The kind of man who fit into any social gathering, painlessly, easily. He knew what you were about, just by glancing at you.
The total opposite of Judah himself. Judah was bulkier, darker, more awkward, like an end-table that doesn’t really fit with the decor anymore but you can’t quite bear to throw it out.
Like the lions, really. Stashed in a basement because they simply didn’t work with anything else in the house, anything else in the world.
And now Ian was here.
It was stupid to jump from that fact, to the idea that Alex would forget about Judah. Alex and Ian were exes, after all, and Ian had moved on with a guy who looked remarkably like him, and clearly there had been a reason for the break-up.
Except don’t people love second chances? Isn’t that like 90% of the romance novels Alex sells, people who thought they’d fallen out of love but really hadn’t?
Clearly the thing to do was to talk to Alex about it.
No. The thing to do was not to talk to Alex about it, to hide it away and never let it see the light of day, because there was a little complication there, wasn’t there? Admitting that Ian’s presence bothered him would be to admit that he liked Alex. That he liked him on a deeper level than friendship, deeper than all the sex they’d been having.
He pressed his forehead against the cool mirror, feeling it draw the blushing heat from his skin. Opening his eyes, he stared straight downward into the sink which was gradually filling with water. He closed the taps, watched the water spiral the drain, emptying out like all his hopes.
There’s this concept in fiction called the idiot plot, where everything could be resolved if the two main characters would only talk to one another. Kind of like how most horror movies would be over in five minutes if someone had a cell phone and a lick of sense, the idiot plot relied on artificial devices to keep characters from talking. How many books had he read, where simple diplomacy would have kept two star systems from battling, would’ve saved millions of lives, instead of the alien leaders getting all in their feelings and refusing to talk? How could you run an entire civilization if you couldn’t even speak?
Which makes me the idiot, I guess, because I have no idea how to bring this up to Alex.
He didn’t even know if he should bring it up. It wasn’t coincidence that Ian was here, clearly; the world wasn’t as random as that. Alex had been tense whenever the topic of his ex came up. Was that because he was still getting over the break up, or because of hidden feelings he wasn’t allowing himself to admit?
Clearly Judah wasn’t going to be able to talk this through, not with Alex. He needed a friend to talk to.
It couldn’t be Liam. Liam was so caught up with work right now, he didn’t have a spare second for anything else.
So it would have to be Noah. Noah, whom he loved like a brother, but who was not the deepest thinker. Still, he’d been around the block so often he’d worn a groove in the sidewalk, surely he’d know how to handle a situation like this.
Except—it came to him again—that would mean admitting what he and Alex had been up to. And he wasn’t sure he could do that. If nothing else, Noah would give him endless hell about it, he’d see it as a huge joke.
That was the other problem, no one ever took Judah’s feelings seriously. The downside of remaining a virgin your whole life, was when the moment came that you had relationship problems, people couldn’t shift their view of you.
Hell, I can’t shift my view of myself. That’s half the reason I’ve been keeping this such a secret from everyone.
Alex had been keeping it secret too…but what if his secret had been because he was ashamed of Judah?
“Come on, come on, you’re just making up reasons to feel bad, now,” he told himself. He dried his hands on the towel. “Just because Ian is everything in the world that you’re not, doesn’t mean Alex always goes for guys like that. Clearly he’s into you. Right? Doesn’t he have to be? Hasn’t he given all the signs?”
He looked down at his clothes, and thought about Ian’s wardrobe. A long sigh escaped him. Who would you pick, he asked himself, in a match-up between you and Ian? Lumpy old Judah in his stupid game t-shirt, with his thumb calluses from game controllers? Or cosmopolitan playboy Ian?
If he didn’t get back downstairs soon, Liam was going to have a stroke. He was sure his brother had a long, long list of duties for him to complete now that the system was back up and running. Worse, he’d have just as many tasks for Noah, so it’d be impossible to get a free minute to talk to Noah about all this. That’s if he could figure out how to bring it up, figure out how to weather the storm of ridicule he knew would be coming if he admitted having feelings for Alex.
For now he would have to hide those feelings. He couldn’t tell anyone right this second. The world around him was too cluttered, too busy. He’d have to swallow them all down until the opportune moment.
He just had to hope that moment came before Ian swept Alex off his feet and flew him back to Shanghai.
21
Alex
The good news was that Alex made it to work safely. Ian and Bastian hadn’t turned into a team of serial killer since Alex’s breakup, hadn’t tied him up and tossed him into a trunk or any of the myriad things Alex had feared when he got into the car.
In a way, what happened was worse.
He tried to explain it
to Toby later that afternoon.
“So there’s fruit called salak that Ian really likes. Another name for it is snake-fruit. And we don’t have it here, and that’s a shame, because it’s one of the best fruits he’s ever eaten. We are missing out on so many delicious fruits—”
“Wait,” said Toby, leaning forward on the counter on his elbows, “he flies halfway around the world, ignoring your boundaries, invading the town, so that he can tell you about fruit?”
“And his hotel room in Shanghai. And the side-trip he took to Thailand. And how you can really get writing done there, you’re immersed in humanity in a way you can never be in the sterile suburbs of America. And how—”
“Jesus,” muttered Toby, pushing himself up. “You told him to go to hell, I hope?”
“It’s Ian. He’s so nice. How do you tell him to go to hell? I mean, I tried. Over and over.”
“I’m telling you, the man is a secret psychopath.”
“Yeah, well, psychopath or Santa Claus, having an accurate diagnosis doesn’t really solve the problem of him being here, does it?”
“Have you talked to the Coopers about this? You’re staying there. There’s no reason he should be there too. Have them throw him out. He can stay at the Motor Lodge instead. Or, y’know, he could get the fuck out of town, and stop bothering you. What’s he here for?”
“He’s here to take care of me, because I clearly can’t take care of myself. You know how he is, Tobes.”
“I mean, he’s not wrong, you’re a disaster, but he’s not the one who should be helping!”
Right, because I’ve got Judah to do that.
Except this obscure little guilt twisted his stomach when he thought about Judah.
Not guilt over having talked to Ian—there was zero chance he would ever, ever go back to him—but guilt over all the rest of it.
He had been so tempted to tell Ian, sorry darling—darling!—but you’ve been replaced. How would Ian have taken that? Shocked? Surprised?
In the end, he hadn’t been able to say it. Not just because Ian was deluging him with descriptions of the produce section of the entirety of southeast Asia, but because his instinct was to never let Ian into any part of his life now. The minute you told him anything, he latched onto it, used it as a niche in your armor, a little crack he could work his way into. All in the name of helping. Making things better. Things you never even realized were broken, he’d try to fix.
Besides, Alex wasn’t replacing Ian with Judah. Judah was just a friend.
Right?
Surely if it were more, Judah would’ve mentioned it? He was always wanting to talk, wouldn’t he have brought it up, if he felt anything deeper than this sort of lustful friendship they’d moved into?
Alex found himself so cautious. He was scared. That’s what the problem was. To admit you needed someone else? That was a step toward disaster. Look at what had happened in his last relationship. The disaster was still on-going, the disaster was right back in town.
He looked over at Toby, who had begun pacing angrily at the thought of Ian’s return.
He should tell Toby. Just admit what had been going on between him and Judah. He should admit that what had started as just a way to get over Ian, and then a way to enjoy themselves, had turned into something deeper…at least on Alex’s side. How did Judah feel about that? But telling Toby seemed really unfair to Judah, revealing a secret that was no one’s but their own. How could he talk about it, without clearing it with Judah first?
God, I hate my life, he thought. Why couldn’t things be simple? Why couldn’t he just get fucked by Judah on a nightly basis, without feelings complicating things?
Of course he couldn’t even think about that right now, because the second he imagined the two of them in bed together, he began to get hard, and this really wasn’t the time or place to be pitching a tent.
That proved this whole friends-with-benefits thing was a lie. It’s one thing to have a fuckbuddy. It’s quite another to find your whole body and soul responding, the moment you even think of someone.
That’s not friendship, Alex thought, with a gnawing realization that he needed to explore this further, needed to think, needed to talk… And all this at a moment when time to talk privately seemed to be in short supply.
“I’m going to speak to Ian,” said Toby. “I’m going to tell him to get the fuck out of town.”
“No, you’re not. This is my problem, and I’ll handle it.”
“Like the way you handled breaking your leg?”
“That was an accident!”
“Caused by Ian and his fucking postcard! He can’t be around here, Alex!”
“But you can’t treat him like he’s a monster,” said Alex. “He’s just…Ian. Besides, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we live in a very small town. Very small. Everyone knows everyone’s business here. And the second you have your Big-Boy Talk with Ian, every gossip and busybody in town is going to know why. How am I supposed to face these people, if I can’t handle my own problems?”
“That’s bullshit,” said Toby.
“Is it? You run a fucking bar, for god’s sake. You hear everyone’s secrets. You know what they’re like. My whole life will be dissected for their amusement. I’ll be lucky if Ian’s mere presence in town doesn’t start them talking.”
Toby was back at the counter, jabbing his finger onto the surface. “So what, you’re going to do nothing? You’re going to let Ian make you miserable again? See, I told you that you should find someone else. Even just for fun. Something to get your head straight. You didn’t take my advice, and now he’s back, and you’re going to let him steamroll you all over again. I don’t know if I can pick up the pieces once he’s done, Alex. I love you, but I can’t keep watching you get hurt, because you won’t listen to common sense.”
“God, and I thought I was the dramatic one. I can’t believe you’re making me defend my ex! He’s not going to break me, Toby.”
“He literally caused you to break your leg! I am not being metaphorical! This isn’t one of your fancy literary novels!”
“I’ll handle it.”
His brother sighed. “You’ll handle it. Great. Great.” He paced some more, his fists finally unclenching, and an apologetic look on his face. “Fuck, man. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to blow up.”
“It’s fine.”
“I just worry. Come on. Let me beat him up. Just a little. Flatten his tires. Give him a black eye. Make him pay for what he did to you back then.”
Alex reached over the counter and grabbed Toby’s hand. “I love you, Toady. Trust me, okay? I’ve got this.”
Sometimes the best way to deal with something is to avoid it while you work out your next step.
Okay, that wasn’t true, but Alex was bewildered when it came to his options. Clearly just telling Ian to leave wasn’t going to work. Could he tell Liam and Judah to throw him out?
It wouldn’t hurt to ask, surely.
But that also meant avoiding seeing Ian in the meantime, so things wouldn’t get derailed.
He ended up getting a ride from Mason, which he was grateful for. Mason, his oldest friend other than Toby, was the perfect person to talk to about this, because he’d do exactly what Toby had done—bluster about all the violent ways to take Ian out—except he also had a direct line to Liam, and would know how to approach the delicate matter of kicking Ian to the curb. If that would even work.
“He fucking what?” said Mason, his hands gripping the steering wheel. “Ian Grant is at my house?”
The only problem was, he had to explain it all again, which he’d already done for Toby.
“I just don’t know if kicking him out is the right thing,” said Alex.
“He’ll be lucky if that’s the only thing I do to him.”
“No. Let me stop you right there. You will do absolutely nothing to him.”
“Bullshit. I saw what he did to you. I saw how he broke your heart. I’m not setting him up as a fuc
king guest in my place.” He pulled out his phone, and Alex put his hand on Mason’s arm.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Liam. Telling him to throw the bastard out.”
“Wait. Just…wait, okay? Let’s talk about this.”
“What the fuck is there to talk about, Alex?” Then Mason peered at him. “Tell me he’s not inside your head. Tell me you’re not thinking of taking him back.”
“God no!” Why did people keep thinking that? Because Judah’s a secret, that’s why. If you could just tell someone, anyone, maybe they’d stop assuming you were ready to fall back into Ian’s meddlesome arms! “No, I just… You know Ian. You remember him a little, at least. It’s not that he’s a danger or something. The only danger here is to my ego.”
“And your heart, otherwise you wouldn’t be so worked up about it. So what’s your plan?”
My heart? No, Mason had that all wrong. The harm Ian would do wasn’t to Alex’s heart. Injury to his dignity? Sure. Wound his self-reliance? Definitely.
“My plan is to stop talking to everyone individually, because you all want to go off half-cocked. No. Let’s talk, all of us, you, Liam, Judah and me, tonight. Let’s figure out the best way to approach this.”
“I’m not sure I see the point in that. Liam’s going to agree with me, you know that. Judah… Well, I can never figure out what that boy is thinking, but presumably he’ll go along with Liam.”
“Please? Let’s just talk about it tonight. Don’t do anything until we figure it out. I need time to think about options, about consequences, about… I just need time, okay?”
What he really needed was what he wasn’t going to get right now, time alone with Judah. With the resort open, practically the only time they could be alone was late at night.
He’d changed his mind about talking. Deep down, he didn’t need to talk about any of this. The right move would appear at the right time. No, all he wanted was some comfort. Someone to put their arms around him and let him know it was going to be okay. He didn’t need anyone to solve his problems for him. He just needed to know someone out there loved him.
