Love in Tandem

by Natalie Arden

  Infuriatingly, the new system wasn’t difficult to use or anything like that. Installing his old system and figuring out how to make it work for him had been an incredible pain in the ass. This one seemed to be up and running like he’d been using it for years. The only downside was that every time he looked at his laptop, he couldn’t stop thinking about Eamon and his attempts to mold Scott into something better, something more appropriate for someone of his stature. They might have bonded over their experiences in starting small businesses, but it should have been clearer to Scott that Eamon had overtaken him years before they ever met. No wonder he was impatient at the way that Scott was falling behind.

  He had a lot of time to spend with the system too. September was sliding towards October, and with October came the rain. It weighed down the leaves until even the ones that were barely yellowed were falling from the trees and piling up in wet heaps. The bike rental business was always dependent on the weather, and the rest of Scott’s business on the time of year. He had a few appointments made from people wanting to winterize their bikes or looking for advice on how to store road bikes for winter, but otherwise things were slowing down.

  Usually fall was Scott’s chance to catch up on the book keeping that he’d let slide in the summer rush, but now book keeping involved Eamon’s system and Scott was still avoiding that as much as possible. So instead he had plenty of time to sit in the shop and brood. His shipment of winter goods came in: cycling gear designed to keep you warm, tchotchkes to give the cycling enthusiast in your life for Christmas, the latest magazines. He spent far too much time that week organizing these things – creating displays that no one would see before he ripped them down to redisplay the goods in some other way.

  It was better than thinking.

  He’d already blown off two or three invites from his friends when Lennox stopped by the shop, an expression of great determination on his face.

  “You’ve been hiding out here for days,” he said firmly, even before the door had closed behind him.

  “I’ve been what?” Scott replied weakly.

  “Hiding out, and you know it.” Lennox shook a finger in Scott’s face. “That’s not a good way to respond to a breakup, you know.”

  “A what?” Scott’s voice rose into almost nothingness and he looked away.

  “Everyone knows that you and Eamon are no longer an item,” Lennox said baldly. “The guy’s completely fucking disappeared from town, and you look like death every time someone asks you where he is. No one’s that stupid.”

  “So we broke up,” Scott snapped. “Can’t I take some time to get over it?” It hadn’t even been a week, and people were already going to give him shit for not being over Eamon?

  “That’s what friends are for!” Lennox said, beaming at him. “Don’t hole up and sulk about this shit alone. Come over and get drunk while you tell us why you broke up with your exact perfect guy out of the blue!”

  “Perfect?” Scott snarled, angry all over again.

  Lennox clapped his hands. “That’s the spirit! Come over tomorrow and tell us all about it.”

  “I have to work,” Scott protested.

  “Not in the evenings, not in this weather,” Lennox said drily. “We know you better than that, buddy.”

  “Fine, just get out of here,” Scott mumbled, defeated.

  “Perfect.” Lennox smiled like he’d just gotten everything he ever wanted. “I’ll see you at my place at seven.” He flashed Scott a thumbs-up and took off again.

  Scott put his head down on the desk and groaned. So Eamon had disappeared from town, huh? That made sense, in a way. Eamon was clearly fed up with the small town life – with his small town boyfriend. No wonder he’d disappeared back to the city – or, more likely, some place even better, somewhere befitting the lifestyle he could afford to live. Scott already knew he’d misjudged Eamon and the kind of guy he really was.

  This was just the icing on the cake.

  38

  Scott

  Rain pelted down from the sky as Scott trudged towards Lennox’s house. He hunched his jacket up around his ears, feeling its inadequacy in the chill seeping into his bones. The wind had already flipped his umbrella upside down twice and left him soaking by the time he made it to Lennox’s door, and he resented his promises immensely as he rang the bell.

  Lennox opened it at once, infuriatingly warm and dry. “My god,” he said immediately. “Did you bike over here in this mess? You’re soaked.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Scott said grumpily. “This is with an umbrella too. I walked.”

  With a whistle of astonishment, Lennox ushered him inside. “Rain was bad enough for even Scotty to walk,” he called out to whoever was in the living room.

  Scott made a face. “Haven’t I been through enough?”

  “That’s true.” Lennox took the umbrella from Scott’s limp hand and hung it over the tiles to dry. “How you doing, man?”

  “How do you think I’m doing?” Scott said. He shook his head, sending droplets of water every which way.

  Lennox sputtered. “Hey, watch it! Let me get you a towel.”

  “Fine,” Scott grumbled, and watched Lennox make his way upstairs.

  He was drier, but no less cranky when he entered the living room. Tony was sprawled over the couch, doing something on his phone, but he lifted his head to nod welcomingly at Scott. “How’s it going?”

  “Fucking shitty,” Scott snapped. “You think if I say that enough people will eventually stop asking me?”

  Tony raised his hands placatingly in the air. “That’s fair, man. Come take a seat. I think Lennox is planning to get you pretty fucking drunk tonight.”

  “I could use it,” Scott admitted, plopping into his usual chair.

  “I can see that,” Tony agreed. “So...” He drew the vowel out until he was on Scott’s very last nerve. “What happened to lover boy?”

  “If you mean Eamon, just say his name,” Scott said bitingly.

  “That’s fair.” Tony looked up at the ceiling, back down at his phone, over to Scott. “So what happened to Eamon?”

  “We broke up.”

  Lennox appeared from the kitchen, three beers in hand. “Hey!” he said, the bottles gently clinking in his grip. “No interrogating Scott without me.”

  “No interrogating Scott at all,” Scott complained. “Can’t you just get me drunk without the details?”

  “We’ll definitely get you drunk,” Lennox said, handing Scott a bottle. “But how are we supposed to hate Eamon properly without all the details?”

  “Help us understand,” Tony put in. “You guys seemed perfect for each other.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” Scott said darkly, and chugged half a beer in one go.

  Tony and Lennox watched him in respectful silence.

  Scott sighed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay, fucking ask away.”

  “Thank fuck,” Lennox said. “I was dying here.” He held up a hand when Scott snarled at them both. “Look, we just want to know what’s going on, Scotty man. As your friends.”

  “Did he cheat on you or something?” Tony said, visibly perking up. “Did he always have a secret man back in the city? Was he fucking that Kevin guy?”

  “Nothing like that,” Scott said, annoyed. He was still angry at Eamon, but he also didn’t want his friends to start ridiculous rumors about the guy. Eamon had always been his own kind of honorable. Scott couldn’t imagine him cheating or even lying to Scott about something. Except, he guessed, his intentions. But maybe Scott should have been smart enough to pick up on those from the beginning.

  “Who the fuck was Kevin then?” Tony asked. “Because he was always fucking leaving in the middle of the game to answer the guy’s calls.”

  “His VP, I think,” Scott said. “Some guy from work. What the fuck do you care?”

  “Why was he always talking to some guy from work when he was on sabbatical?” Lennox asked.

  “Bec
ause he was really fucking shitty at being on sabbatical,” Scott snapped. “He wasn’t any fucking good at taking breaks.”

  “Okay, now that actually sounds like a thing,” Lennox said sympathetically. “Wild speculation about Kevin aside, what did Eamon actually do?”

  While Scott spelled out the fact that Eamon had, mostly, built him a new system, his friends stared at him in confusion.

  “So, he built you a computer system,” Lennox said slowly. “Free. Out of the goodness of his heart. This fancy guy.”

  “And then you break up with him?” Tony broke in. “What’s that about?”

  “It’s not about the fucking system,” Scott complained. He didn’t know how he was supposed to explain any of this to his friends. It wasn’t that a new system was so terrible: it was everything that the system represented. How Eamon was making plans for Scott’s future without consulting him. That he apparently didn’t think Scott could run his business on his own. That he didn’t think Scott was good enough the way he was.

  It was as if the supposed ‘gift’ had made everything snap into place and he could suddenly see a side of Eamon he hadn’t seen before. Eamon had warned him, he supposed, that he could be kind of an overbearing asshole. That was what they’d kicked him out of his old job for, wasn’t it? For getting on everyone’s case. He’d bet they didn’t even have real problems at CarreSys, just a boss who didn’t think anyone else could do their jobs without him getting in their way.

  “What is it about then?” Lennox asked softly.

  Scott leaned back in the chair, head lolling against the armrest as he tried to put his jumbled thoughts in some kind of order. He went to take a swig from his beer and found it mysteriously empty. Shaking the bottle, he grumbled, “I don’t know how I can explain without a beer.”

  Lennox laughed. “Okay, okay.” He rose to go into the kitchen. “Tony?”

  “I could drink another,” Tony said, his eyes fixed on Scott’s face. Scott didn’t know what he was seeing, if all of Scott’s hurt was out there for anyone to see, or if he just looked as tired as he felt.

  “Okay.” Lennox vanished through the doorway.

  Tony leaned forward. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want,” he said gently. “But it might help.”

  “More beer would help,” Scott mumbled.

  Shrugging, Tony said, “That too.”

  Three or four beers in, everything that Eamon had done suddenly seemed a lot easier to explain.

  “He just doesn’t think anything I do is good enough,” Scott said, pounding the arm of the chair he was sitting in with his beer bottle.

  “Well, fuck him!” Lennox cheered. “You’re doing great.”

  “Not the Cycle Works, not the conservation area, none of it,” Scott continued, ignoring his friends support. “It could all be better or more and he’s the one to show me how to do that. Just him, of course, none of my ideas count.”

  “Your ideas?” Tony sounded annoyingly sober, and Scott shot him a glare.

  “I’m doing my best here,” he protested. “I’ve got the Cycle Works up and running and now he wants me to fuck off to the city with him?”

  “Wait,” Tony said. “He asked you to move to Columbus with him?”

  “He didn’t ask,” Scott spat. “That’s the fucking problem. He just assumed I’d come with him whenever the fuck he got around to going back to work.”

  “That’s a big move,” Tony said, sounding stunned.

  “But he’s being an asshole about it,” Lennox said. “C’mon, Tones. This is for Scott.”

  “I just don’t get you guys breaking up, that’s all,” Tony said, shrugging expansively. “You seemed perfect for each other.”

  Scott made a disgusted noise. “I wasn’t fucking perfect enough, I guess.”

  “But he can’t get you down,” Lennox howled.

  “That’s right!” Scott said firmly. “I’m doing fine.”

  “You are,” Tony said with a laugh. “Just fine.”

  There was a catch in there somewhere, but Scott couldn’t quite see it through the haze of alcohol. He took another swig of his beer.

  “And another thing!”

  A few more beers later, Scott was kind of getting the idea that his friends were getting bored of his recitations of Eamon’s flaws. But it was hard to stop, there were just so many flaws, and he felt like Lennox and Tony needed to hear them all, needed to really understand.

  “And he would tell me what to do all the fucking time!” he said. “Like in bed! He was always giving me all these instructions, and then when I would do the thing, he would look all dreamy...” He stopped, anger giving way to confusion. “What was I saying?”

  “You were telling us how great the sex was,” Tony said, looking pained. “Please stop.”

  “But it was so good,” Scott protested. He looked down at his hands. “How can he say I’m not enough when the sex was so good?”

  “Maybe you guys should get back together?” Tony suggested. “Have some more great sex and stop acting like your awesome sex life was a problem we need to hear about?”

  It felt like the last straw.

  “He fucking left town!” Scott said loudly, pointing an accusing finger in Tony’s direction. “He clearly doesn’t want to kiss and make-up, I told him he couldn’t do whatever the fuck he wanted and he just fucking bailed! I don’t even know where he is now.”

  “Probably hiding his face wherever the fuck rich people go,” Lennox practically yelled.

  Tony blinked at them both. He looked a little closer to drunk now, which made Scott less annoyed with him, but he still kept saying infuriating things. “You know what?” he hissed. “I bet we could find out.”

  “Yeah!” Lennox bounced up off the couch where he’d been lying and staggered into the other room. “Fucking find out what this scumbag is up to without you.”

  “I don’t–” Scott said weakly. He wasn’t sure that he really wanted to see what Eamon was doing without him, how Eamon was living it up now that he was unencumbered by some small-town loser who couldn’t live up to his finicky standards.

  “I bet he’s a fucking sadsack wherever he is,” Tony told Scott comfortingly.

  “Unless he isn’t?”

  “But he will be.” Tony patted Scott’s arm.

  “I don’t even know how you’re going to find him,” Scott said when Lennox came back into the room with his laptop. “He’s really fucking shitty at social media.”

  “He’s a big shot, right?” Lennox said, perplexed. “And he’s rich as fuck. Someone’s got to care what he’s doing.”

  “Whatever.” Scott drank some more beer and leaned back in his chair, slouching down as if to hide from the revelations about to pour out of Lennox’s internet searches. “Do what you want.”

  “I always do,” Lennox said cheerfully. He flipped open the screen and began to type.

  Scott had another drink and waited, horrified anticipation curdling in his bones.

  Lennox looked up from the screen. “Uh, Scotty? What’s your boy’s last name again?”

  Scott threw his hands up in the air.

  Even with Eamon’s surname and the company name, Lennox couldn’t seem to find anything for the longest time, and Scott’s back began to relax again. He didn’t even know what he thought they might find – pictures of Eamon in the sun with some other guy seemed so deeply unlikely, and yet everything about the last week had been incredibly unlikely – but he was already sure that he would hate it.

  “Your boy is boring,” Lennox complained after a while. “Everything here is last year’s tech conferences and him giving kudos to some dipshit on twitter over something I don’t understand at all. It looks technical.”

  “You’re just dumb,” Tony told him lovingly. “I bet I can get something better than that.” He snatched the laptop over Lennox’s protests and began to type in something else.

  Scott watched them both warily. Now that they couldn’t seem to find anything,
he felt paradoxically curious, wondering if his deeper knowledge of Eamon’s life and personality might help him find out where Eamon was now.

  “More recent results!” Tony crowed after a moment.

  “From the last six months doesn’t fucking count,” Lennox complained. “We want to know where that asshole has been this past week.”

  “Better than you managed,” Tony said smugly. “Shit, look, that one’s from this month. We’re getting closer.”

  “Is that even about Eamon?” Lennox said, peering down at the screen. “That looks like an interview with whats-his-nuts – the VP you think isn’t fucking your man. For the most boring looking industry mag in the world, so you know it’s gotta be good.”

  By now, Scott’s curiosity – fueled by beer – was at its height. He couldn’t see the laptop from where he slumped in Lennox’s armchair, only hear his friends dismissing each other’s finds like they were nothing. What the fuck was Kevin up to anyway? He’d heard so much about what he was supposedly doing at work from Eamon, but he’d never met the guy. Never even seen a photo. Sometimes Eamon acted like the two of them were friends, but Eamon had been in Sellis Creek for months and Kevin hadn’t come anywhere near the place.

  “Give it to me,” he said suddenly.

  Tony and Lennox’s bickering came to a halt. “It’s really boring,” Tony said. “We can get you some better shit than this. We just have to go deeper!”

  “Fuck off,” Scott told him. “I can fucking do it myself.”

  “Ooh,” Lennox caroled. “So now he wants to look!” But he gave Scott the laptop, so what did some teasing matter?

  The page open was still the interview with Kevin for some incredibly staid looking industry magazine. Scott skimmed down it, looking for references to Eamon. He was pretty sure that ‘our CEO’ meant Eamon, though Kevin didn’t sound any too impressed with the CEO, and he was supposed to be Eamon’s friend, right? Or something like a friend. A business friend?