Glass Tidings

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “I know.”

  “And it’s important. That’s why you kept it.”

  “Eddie, I keep a lot of things, yes, because they are important. But there’s a reason they’re not on display in a—a . . . museum cabinet or wrapped up in tissue paper in the attic. I like remembering my mom and dad or my grandma every time I use their things. But using them means that sometimes they’ll get broken. Or worn out. And that’s okay. That’s part of the risk you take when you keep something you love close to you.”

  Maybe Eddie would never understand how Gray felt, because he’d spent his entire life letting go of things every time he picked up and moved on to another faire. Eddie didn’t own anything that had been handed down for generations, so to him those objects were imbued with some kind of fairy magic and preciousness.

  “It’s just a cup,” Gray said simply. He didn’t have to forgive Eddie, because in real life, sometimes teacups broke. Maybe you could fix them. Maybe they were ruined forever. But they were just things, just anchors for memories and the memories couldn’t be broken like thin porcelain.

  Eddie stared at him as if he weren’t sure Gray meant it. If they’d been at home, Gray would have taken him by the hand and pulled him upstairs to his bedroom. Would have stripped him down until Eddie was naked, and pressed his forgiveness into Eddie’s skin with his mouth.

  But they had rules about that kind of touching.

  Rules that needed to be broken, damn it.

  He cradled Eddie’s face with cold fingers. Eddie’s eyes widened. Gray kept his hands gentle, ready to let go in a moment if Eddie pulled away.

  The air was so cold it burned. Or maybe that was just him, his need roaring like a furnace. He leaned down and pressed his mouth to Eddie’s, breaking all the rules.

  Warm breath against his face. Trembling lips under his own. Trembling, but only for a moment. Then Eddie was kissing him back, hands fisted in Gray’s coat, mouth opening beneath his. A harsh groan ripped through the quiet street, and Gray wasn’t sure whose it was. He almost apologized for the sound, for anything that might remind Eddie that they weren’t in his room, in the dark, where touching was allowed, even if kissing rarely was.

  Gray slid his hands down Eddie’s back to his hips, the slick cold fabric of Mrs. Wasserman’s son’s old coat slithering under his palms.

  Fuck the rules.

  He lifted his mouth just enough to whisper, “Come home.”

  Eddie’s back stiffened.

  He’ll be hearing the words I said for a long time too.

  “It’s yours, as long as you want it.” Gray held his breath, waiting.

  Eddie’s fingers twining with his was answer enough.

  Seeing had become a challenge.

  As soon as they’d walked in the door, Eddie had shoved Gray toward the living room, encouraging him to start a fire, knowing that would occupy him for long enough for Eddie to deal with the damage he’d left behind in the kitchen.

  He’d thought his heart was going to stop when the cup had broken in his hands, handle snapping, base cracking against the scarred porcelain of the old sink.

  Already sick to his stomach with the words he’d used like a weapon to make Gray shut up, wishing desperately he’d just sat there and taken the lecture, Eddie’s self-loathing had reared up and grabbed him by the throat at the sight of the broken china in the sink.

  He’d dug superglue out of the junk drawer next to the sink and had tried to put the pieces back together.

  Mostly, he’d succeed in making a terrible mess.

  The cup was smashed. There was no fixing it.

  No amount of Gray coming after him and apologizing, not even asking Eddie to apologize first, could make him feel better about this.

  A throat cleared behind him.

  Eddie had heard the footsteps approaching from the living room. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Some things just couldn’t be repaired.

  He couldn’t look Gray in the eyes. Staring at the cup, his vision blurred and the pressure built behind his eyes. “I tried to fix it.”

  “I see.”

  “Didn’t work.”

  Gray hummed something that sounded like agreement. Eddie finally managed to look at him.

  Holding that gaze was impossible. Eddie rubbed his palms against his eyes. “Jesus. That’s a terrible fucking metaphor, huh? I’m so sorry.”

  When Gray huffed a laugh, Eddie decided a fistfight might be better than this fucking awkward conversation.

  Gray shook his head. “It’s just a cup. Not a metaphor for anything.”

  “I don’t know. Sure feels like one to me.”

  “That’s because you don’t have enough things,” Gray announced briskly, pulling open a cabinet door and searching gently through the shelves. When he found what he wanted, he pulled it down and turned to hold it out to Eddie. “Here. I want you to have this.”

  Like a child, Eddie whipped his hands behind his back, refusing to touch the cup and saucer Gray was pressing upon him. “What? No. That probably belonged to someone important.”

  “It did. It was my grandma’s favorite. But you’re somebody important too, and this will be a way for you to remember me when you’re gone.”

  Because they both knew that even though Eddie had come back home with Gray, he would be heading out in a couple of weeks.

  Eddie’s voice was rough. “It’s cool. But I won’t need a fucking souvenir to remember you.”

  And that was the kind of thing that would keep a guy awake at night, having said such sappy shit because he couldn’t not.

  Gray cleared his throat. “You won’t need it, but you can enjoy it. And if someday it breaks, you’ll know that you still have your memories and that losing the cup isn’t the end of the world.”

  “I’m not an idiot, you know.” Eddie scowled. “You’re really working that metaphor.”

  “Take it, or I’m going to drop it on the floor and it’ll smash into a thousand pieces,” he said. Then he pushed the cup and saucer into Eddie’s chest, paused (as if he really didn’t want to break his grandma’s cup), and opened his hand.

  Eddie grabbed the china before Gray’s fingers had even let go.

  “What are you, crazy?” he scolded Gray, clutching the cup and saucer tight to his chest. He kept muttering as he brushed past Gray and set the precious objects on the kitchen counter. “Raised in a barn. Messing with your grandma’s china like that. Jesus. Could’ve broken it . . .”

  When they were safe, he spun and pressed himself into Gray’s arms so hard, hugging ached.

  The alley door was sticking again, and Eddie’s head was still buzzing with the heady power of Gray’s grin after the latest bout of flirting, so he stopped for a moment to rest his forehead against the heavy steel door and just breathe.

  Something about the final days before Christmas seemed to have set Gray’s motor revving. The man had been seventeen kinds of suggestive and full of innuendo for the past two days. Ever since that kiss on the street that had stopped Eddie’s heart.

  Stopped it, jumpstarted it, and left him off-kilter ever since. All his rules about touching and kissing had flown out the window with that moment of connection, their apologies to each other, and his return home with Gray.

  He wasn’t sure they’d actually fixed things. Sometimes it felt like they’d smoothed over a crack with a surface layer of new glass. But Eddie always knew when he’d done a shoddy job on a piece. Even if it looked fine to the casual eye, Eddie could always feel it in his fingertips. The flaw beneath the surface.

  But it was hard to think about that kind of stuff when Gray had taken to grabbing him and kissing him at random moments throughout the day.

  Fuck fitting in. Eddie was about to get himself kicked out of town for having a permanent hard-on in a Christmas shop.

  By the time he bodychecked the door open and heaved the trash into the alley, the hooded figure was nearly slipping around the corner back onto the sidewalk.

  “Hey,
kid!”

  Better nip this potential after-school-special drama in the bud before some mama came tearing after him for corrupting her baby.

  Except when the boy turned at Eddie’s shout and headed back into the alley, he slinked with such a blatant I’m pretending I’m invisible set to his shoulders Eddie wished he hadn’t called him back at all.

  Jesus, kid. Could you act more like we’re setting up a drug deal or something?

  He wasn’t even going to let the word blowjob cross his mind in this creepiest of creepy alley meetings.

  “Listen, I don’t know what you think—” was all he managed to get out before the boy interrupted him.

  “I’ve got one fifty.” White face sweating. The kid kept looking over his shoulder as if waiting for someone to jump out at him.

  Eddie’s head ached. What the hell was this? “I got no idea what’s going on here, but—”

  “I know you saw. I get it. You’re gonna tell. But one fifty is all I have. If I steal any more out of my mom’s purse, she’s gonna know.”

  “I don’t care,” Eddie said, totally lost and wanting nothing more than out of this whole conversation.

  Tears shone in the kid’s dark eyes, trembling at the edge of his lashes, threatening to spill over. He moaned like a wounded animal. “Okay. Okay. I’ll get more. But you can’t tell. You can’t tell anyone.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Eddie said, keeping his voice low because the kid’s antsy-ness had somehow infected him and now he was worried that someone would overhear them. “What the hell am I gonna tell?”

  But even as he spoke, the boy’s earlier words were echoing in his head.

  I know you saw.

  I know you saw.

  You can’t tell anyone.

  White face, sweating. Dark eyes.

  Jesus fucking Christ on a popsicle stick. Eddie had seen this kid before, staring at him out of the driver’s-side window in the middle of the night, the sound of Lily Rose bouncing off the car hood still ringing in his ears.

  “Oh, holy fuck, kid. That was you.”

  The boy wrapped his arms around himself and stared at the pavement.

  Eddie’s brain raced in circles. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What the hell was he supposed to do? Make a citizen’s arrest? Jesus Christ. What the hell was wrong with that cop that she hadn’t tracked this little punk down before now? How had he ended up getting sucked into this crap?

  Pacing was one hundred percent required in this totally fucked-up situation, but as soon as he started to move, the kid flinched and pulled his shoulders even more tightly together.

  Now Eddie was the one sweating and breathing hard.

  “Why? Why the hell are you here, telling me this?”

  The kid yanked his head up as if he were a puppet on strings. “Because you told me to.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” For a moment, he felt guilty about cursing so much in front of a teenager, but this wasn’t a Ren faire, and when you were about to be supremely fucked as a material witness in a negligent homicide case (Eddie had binge-watched about a hundred episodes of Law & Order in his two months at Bertie’s condo), cursing was totally allowed.

  The kid threw his hands up in the air.

  “You followed me all around the shop that day, telling me you knew what I wanted and how all you wanted was to get back on the road again. Jesus. You asked me for money to keep your mouth shut.”

  Now Eddie was the one moaning like an animal. He remembered the afternoon he’d followed the boy around Gray’s shop, convinced he was there to shoplift a pretty for a girlfriend. Eddie had mixed his usual faire patter about knowing what the customer really wanted with some supremely pissed-off bitching about his own life. Not exactly his most professional moment.

  Even further back, he remembered the first afternoon the boy had set foot in the shop, taken one look at Eddie, and then whirled for the door.

  In retrospect, it was all perfectly obvious, and Eddie wished for a time machine so he could go back and leave town five minutes after their first encounter.

  But then you’d have missed out on everything else . . .

  His pacing took him to the dumpster, which he kicked because kicking the boy was not an option.

  Goddamn it. If I go to the police . . .

  “Five hundred!”

  He spun around.

  The boy surged forward two steps. “I’ll get it somehow. I don’t know how, but I’ll do it.”

  Eddie shook his head. “You know they’re going to figure it out, right? You’ve got to go to the police yourself. It was an accident, right?”

  “Of course it was an accident. Do you think I was trying to kill her?”

  “She didn’t die.” Flashback to Gray telling him the same thing. How had Eddie ended up being the one in this role?

  “You don’t know my parents. They think I’m perfect. I have to be. I’m the one who lived,” the boy said, grabbing his arm with surprisingly strong fingers.

  “Lily Rose didn’t die,” Eddie repeated, snapping out the words because this was getting out of control.

  “Not her,” the boy said, either full of typical teenage melodrama or, Eddie was starting to suspect, on the edge of a genuine panic attack.

  Figuring all this out wasn’t Eddie’s job. All he knew was that this kid was fucked, one way or the other, and that was a feeling Eddie knew all too well. He sighed and pulled away from the boy’s hand, rubbing his forehead.

  “Ahh, shit, kid. Lemme think.”

  Because Lily Rose had lived. And the boy was clearly scared straight—ish, Eddie’s gaydar argued—and would probably never get behind the wheel again. He was obviously horrified at what had happened.

  And eventually, no matter how many times he and Gray humped against each other behind the checkout counter in those moments when the shop was empty of customers, Eddie was going to have to leave town again.

  Those cracks beneath the surface weren’t going to stay hidden forever. Leaving before the whole thing shattered would be, for fucking sure, the wise move.

  Five hundred dollars was a whole lotta bus fare.

  Gray pretended for four days, all the way to Christmas Eve—the quiet of the house settling around them after they’d closed up shop behind the final rush of last-minute customers—that nothing was wrong.

  He was shit at pretending.

  Pretty decent manipulator though, after all this time watching Eddie do it gently to everyone around him, giving everyone permission to do the things they hesitated over.

  He waited until he was curled around Eddie’s sweaty, shivery body, the glittering dregs of his orgasm still bleeding through his muscles. He’d pulled him upstairs the moment they’d arrived home, barely giving him time to toe off his boots at the mat by the front door. A fucked-out Eddie was a more pliable Eddie, he’d figured.

  “Just tell me.”

  Eddie was lying on his back, not facing away on his side for once. Gray could see well enough in the moonlight to watch Eddie freeze at his words.

  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  He wouldn’t try to fix it. He wouldn’t. But he could listen. Maybe if he’d listened harder to Brady, he’d have understood how unhappy Brady had been.

  Grayson would do better this time.

  “I figured out who hit Lily Rose.”

  Everything stopped.

  His skin cooled to ice, sweat slick and chilly enough to make him shudder.

  Gray lost track of the words as Eddie kept speaking. Describing a teenager who Gray recognized by the description, the moment when Eddie had realized who the boy was and why he’d been hanging around the shop so constantly. Describing the bribe he’d been offered by a desperate kid.

  Gray didn’t know how many times Eddie had called to him until the push that shoved him onto his back.

  “Don’t.” Eddie’s voice was flat. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  Gray tried not to. But he obviously failed,
because Eddie rolled off the bed in one swift movement and was halfway down the hall before Gray could blink. He paused to tug on his shorts.

  By the time he made it to the guest room, half of Eddie’s belongings were already yanked off their hangers.

  Before Gray could stop himself, the words tumbled out of his mouth. “You can’t take that money.”

  Eddie ignored him, punching his clothes into his duffel bag without saying a word.

  “I’m serious, Eddie. I’m not trying to tell you what to do—” Gray couldn’t finish. That was obviously a lie. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this, but surely this situation was different than the ethics of accepting a hand-me-down winter coat? He couldn’t leave this to chance. “Okay. I am. I am telling you what to do. Because you can’t take the money, Eddie. You have to talk to the police.”

  “Jesus. It’s so easy for you, isn’t it?” Eddie stood up and looked at him, finally. “You really don’t have any idea at all what money means, do you?”

  The anger in his eyes pushed Gray back a step.

  “Easy?” None of this was easy. Trying to figure out how to explain to Eddie the real and deep dangers here wasn’t easy.

  “It’s super fucking great how you immediately assumed I would do it, too. Let that kid off for something that bad.” Eddie was snarling now. Gray took another step back. “He’s got a cut on his wrist, that kid. Did you know that?”

  “What?” He couldn’t keep up with Eddie’s twisting turns in this awful conversation.

  “It was an accident. A terrible accident. And he’s damn close to killing himself over the guilt from what he’s done.”

  “That doesn’t mean he should get away with it,” Gray said automatically, because he couldn’t stop himself from being a pedantic, bossy asshole apparently, when it came right down to it.

  “No shit, Sherlock. Jesus Christ. You really are a judgmental prick, aren’t you? I know he shouldn’t get away with it. I’m good at talking people around to what they already want to do. I don’t fucking aid and abet them in crimes. I talked to Christine yesterday.”

  A kick in the guts. The first edge of nausea crept up the back of his throat. “You did?”