by Gregory Ashe
“I’m not a—” The next rush of alcohol was like the surf washing sand out from underfoot. “Not a—” Shaw blinked. “Hi, Percy.”
“Hello. It’s been a while, Shaw.”
“The bartender was being nice to me. I think I knew him from when I got reincarnated as an otter.”
Percy burst out laughing. “Same old Shaw.” He shifted his weight. He’d put on muscle in the years since college, and he carried it well, most of it exposed by the thin white cotton of his tank. His hand settled on Shaw’s hip, and one finger played with the waistband of the hot pants. “It’s good to see you again.”
“It’s good to see you again too.” Blinking, Shaw tried to make out what was happening over Percy’s shoulder. Even though it seemed impossible, it looked like another of their college friends was here. Rufus, in biker leathers, was pointing a finger at Rik’s face, saying something that was lost in the ambient noise. Whatever it was, though, the body language communicated the tone: Rufus kept advancing, getting bigger in his leather vest, and Rik kept retreating. It didn’t make any sense; Rufus wasn’t one of Teddi’s friends, and Shaw was sure he hadn’t been here a few minutes ago. Before Shaw could consider it further, though, his stomach gave a queasy lurch. “Percy, I think I’ve got food poisoning.”
“You had such a crush on me freshman year,” Percy said. His breath was warm against Shaw’s face, sweet with rum and lime. “And I was a total idiot. I’ve thought about that a lot lately. When I heard you and North were together, I was crazy, crazy jealous.”
The suffocating heat of the room seemed pleasant in comparison with the blaze inside Shaw. His stomach flip-flopped again.
“I did some stupid stuff in college,” Percy said, his fingers growing more adventurous, sliding past the waistband to press against bare skin. “But the stupidest thing was not telling you how much I like you.”
“You liked Tucker,” Shaw said, and then he had to swallow, hard, against a wave of nausea. “And North. Or maybe both of them.”
“No, I played with Tucker and North. I liked you, but I was too much of a coward to go for you.” Percy leaned closer. His lips brushed Shaw’s ear. “And then I saw you tonight, looking so very fuckable, and I didn’t want to be stupid again.”
Shaw closed his eyes, battling the sudden need to vomit.
North’s voice broke through the party’s clamor. “Hey Percy.”
“North—”
“Let’s get you a drink.”
Shaw opened his eyes. North was gripping Percy’s arm. Livid spots marked Percy’s golden skin where North’s fingers dug in.
“I’ve got a drink,” Percy displayed the mojito, “and since you were so busy with that kid with the great shoulders, Shaw and I decided to catch up—”
“Great, Percy. That’s fucking great. Here we go.” North hauled on Percy so hard that his heels came up off the floor. Percy shot a look at Shaw, and then North was towing him into the crush of bodies, and then they were gone.
Blearily, Shaw tried to find a place to put down the rest of his hurricane.
A hand took it from him, and then another hand caught his shoulder, bracing him. “Oh boy. Who let you into the booze?” Tucker whistled. “North is going to be pissed.”
Tucker’s perfectly coiffed looks doubled and recombined and doubled again. Shaw’s gut twisted, but he tried to keep his face smooth as he looked at North’s ex. “North and Percy—”
“Yeah, I saw. It’s kind of fun, being on this side of his whole insane jealousy thing.”
Shaw had an answer for that, but he lost it in the struggle to keep from puking. In spite of the heat, he felt clammy now, and he was pretty sure Tucker was the only thing keeping him on his feet.
Tucker was staring across the room, and Shaw followed his line of sight to where North and Percy were getting in each other’s faces, their shouts swallowed up by the party’s roar. With a sigh, Tucker shook his head. His attention settled on Shaw again, and he brushed a sweaty curl away from Shaw’s forehead. “Jesus,” he said, so quietly that Shaw almost couldn’t hear him. “I never had a chance, did I?”
“Tucker, I think I’m going to puke.”
For a white-bread prep-school boy, Tucker sure knew how to haul ass, which Shaw was distantly able to appreciate as he upchucked in Teddi’s hall bathroom.
Later, leaning against a wall painted a color that Shaw decided to call sea foam, he said, “I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying,” Tucker said, laughing as he passed over a cool washcloth.
Shaw wiped his face and neck. He closed his eyes again. “North is going to be so mad. He wanted to hook up tonight, and then I made it weird, and then he made it even weirder, and then I got mad and drank one-hundred-percent pure poison, and now I’m dying, and he’s going to be really, really mad.”
“Yeah, well,” the note in Tucker’s voice was strange, and Shaw opened his eyes to see a shadow on his face, “somehow I doubt he’ll stay mad at you for long.”
“He’s going to make me rip up carpet or fix a toilet float valve or cut my nails.”
“Right.”
“He will.”
Tucker rolled his eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shaw said. “And why are you being nice to me?”
“Oh, you mean, ‘after I beat the shit out of you with a nine iron, why are you being nice to me?’ Is that what you’re asking?”
“I didn’t know it was a nine iron.”
“Look, Shaw, I fucked up a lot of things in my life. You were…kind of a wake-up call. Not one I enjoyed, by the way, and not one that needs to be repeated. I spent a lot of my life hating you because I was so afraid of how much North loved you.” Tucker ran a hand through the perfectly barbered blond locks. “And, according to Dr. Farr, that might be why I sabotaged my own marriage by being the worst piece of shit imaginable.” He fell silent, his gaze on the tile, his eyes dark.
The thud of music pulsed through the house. Bodies crashed up against the closed door, and someone giggled, and then footsteps staggered away.
Shaw twisted the washcloth. “North and I broke up. Well, he broke up with me. Well, kind of. He was doing a terrible job, so I had to do most of it for him. Like when he was trying to shave the back of his neck and he kept dropping the mirror and—”
Tucker rolled his eyes again.
“He did! He thinks he’s athletic, but sometimes he’s not coordinated at all, like when he was standing on the chair, trying to change a light bulb, and I jumped out and shouted, ‘Boo,’ and he fell right off and then wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the day, even though it was Samhain.”
“Oh my God. I honestly can’t with you two.”
“North—”
“North is still in love with you, Shaw. Honestly, it’s a little…intense how much he loves you. You guys might be going through a rough patch, but nothing’s going to keep you apart permanently.” His voice took on a dry note. “Trust me; I tried.”
“No, we’re just friends, which he made abundantly clear when he couldn’t keep his hands off Jack and—”
“And I guess when North crawled up Percy’s ass, it had nothing to do with Percy trying to give you the Harvard handshake through your booty shorts?”
Shaw smoothed the washcloth over his knee. The cotton was rough and damp. He folded the tag back and forth.
“Still wondering why I’m being nice to you?” Tucker asked.
“Is it rude if I say kind of?”
“I…hurt North. Bad. And I know we’re finished, and I know I can’t make it up to him. But I’d like to see him be happy. And, honestly, I’d like to see him be happy with you. I mean, what’s the point of living in terror that he’d leave me for you, spending my entire marriage scared that I’d wake up and he’d realize what he had with you was so much better, if the two of you don’t end up together?”
All Shaw could manage in answer to that was “Oh.”
<
br /> “Come on.” Tucker held out a hand. “Up.” When Shaw was on his feet, Tucker straightened Shaw’s tank top, and he shot Shaw a crooked smile. “Feeling better?”
“A little.”
“You want to speed things up between you and North? Hurry things along so you can get back together?”
“Um.”
“You saw how North lost his shit when Percy got handsy with you?”
“I think he was getting Percy a drink.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s why Percy’s going to have bruises on his arm for a week. Look, North lives for that macho possessive crap. He likes feeling like the alpha, or whatever you want to call it. So, you go out there, you find the hottest guy you can, and you’re all over him. Channel your sluttiest inner Shaw.”
“Actually, we don’t use the word slut anymore because—”
“And I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that North goes out of his mind. He’ll be over there so fast your head will spin.”
“I don’t know if using jealousy is a healthy way to patch up a relationship.”
Tucker shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s healthy; I’m saying it’ll work. But if I’m wrong, what’s the worst that happens? You and North are friends. You agreed you were going to find someone to hook up with. I mean, if North doesn’t come charging in, you cruise a hot guy and have fantastic sex.”
After a moment, Shaw shrugged.
“And Shaw?” Tucker said as he slipped out of the bathroom. “Mouthwash. Then play it cool.”
Shaw swished mouthwash. He checked himself in the mirror. He let down his hair, long enough now that it tumbled to his jaw, and he shook his head a few times to loosen it up. Working his way through the press of bodies, the sweat and heat making his head pound, he tried to decide what he wanted to do. He decided to procrastinate by getting a bottled water, and he worked his way over to the coolers to give himself time to think.
A guy with a nice ass, on display in skimpy Union Jack briefs, was digging through the ice. He stood, glanced over his shoulder, and did a double take. Then he smiled. His teeth were white against his dark brown skin.
“I was hoping I’d see you again,” he shouted over the roar of the party. He had a swimmer’s build, every muscle cut clean.
Play it cool, Tucker had said.
Shaw leaned against the wall, doing his best impersonation of nonchalance, and offered a reserved smile.
Then he slipped.
He caught himself, but by then, he’d gotten tangled in the bunting, which disoriented him. He took a few more steps, lost his balance again, and went down hard. He pulled the bunting with him. The bunting pulled the fairy lights. Like some terrible, Fourth-of-July domino set, the decorations came tumbling down, first on one wall, then the next, then the next. People screamed. Then they stopped screaming.
The music continued to pound, but the party had fallen strangely silent.
Union Jack was frowning, obviously torn between helping Shaw and getting the hell out of there.
Shaw felt a draft.
“You know what?” North said, standing over him and pausing to take a pull from his beer. “One of them is definitely bigger.”
Shaw groaned and willed the earth to swallow him.
“Like,” North said with a frown, “see-a-doctor bigger.”
Chapter 2
“SLUT!”
Shaw ducked his head and walked faster through the reception area.
Not fast enough, though, because Pari, their office manager (a promotion she had given herself), caught the strap of his tank and spun him around.
After a killer had burned down Shaw’s home a few months before, Borealis Investigations had needed a new base of operations. A number of factors had led to their new digs, located in an aging Benton Park strip mall well off the beaten path. The main factor had been North McKinney’s cheapness, which explained the cinderblock walls; the peeling paint that was the color, as North had once remarked, of old man dandruff; the mustard-colored shag carpeting; the warped wood-grain paneling peeling away from the studs; the threatening ceiling fan (which Pari insisted was possessed); the weird stain in the hallway (which Shaw insisted was Our Lady of the Pestalozzi Street Shopping Plaza (ALDI COMING SOON!!!)); and the french-fry smell (which North insisted Shaw was imagining, and which Shaw now believed might be psychic evidence of a crime).
Currently, Shaw was sending a prayer up to Our Lady of the Pestalozzi Street Shopping Plaza (ALDI COMING SOON!!!), asking that the murdered french fries manifest, or that the ceiling fan make a few ominous swipes, or that the building collapse on top of them.
“You. Are. A. Slut.” Pari wrinkled her nose. “And you stink. Like sex. Go take a whore’s bath in the sink.”
“First of all, both slut and whore—”
“Oh my God!” The words were one unbroken squeal. “Are those hickeys?”
Shaw tugged on the tank. “No.”
“They are!”
“No, I was doing something with a vacuum.” Shaw scrambled. “Something auto-erotic.”
“Those are totally hickeys.” Pari perched on the desk, knocking over several stacks of papers in her excitement, and adjusted her long, dark hair. Today, the bindi was gunmetal gray. “Ok, what’s his name?”
“Well, it’s rude that you assume that it was a guy because, as I told you, I’m pretty sure I’m bisexual now because I was watching that cologne commercial, and there was a lady in it, and I had a physical reaction.”
“Your thing,” Pari said, wrinkling up her nose, “did its thing because North came in from a run and was wiping his gross, sweaty, hairy chest with his shirt.”
“That cologne lady had a bikini on! Like a…like a temptress!”
“No,” North muttered from the front door, only halfway across the threshold. He was wearing dark sunglasses and rubbing a spot between his eyes. “No fucking way. I am too hungover for this shit.”
“Shaw is a slut.”
“As I was saying,” Shaw tried, “slut isn’t a word we use anymore because—”
“Of course, you’re a man-whore,” Pari said to North. “Or a fuck-boy. I’m not sure which yet.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure which is better, actually.”
“Fuck-boy,” North said.
“Man-whore,” Shaw said.
“I’m going home,” North said, shouldering open the door again. “We’re closed. We’re closed forever.”
“That’s good, right? So I can shred all those papers on your desk—”
“Don’t go anywhere near my fucking desk.” North leveled a finger at Shaw. After a moment, when it seemed like he’d made his point, he growled out some grumbling subvocalizations, pushed his way past the two of them, and disappeared into the back office.
“Did you see who North went home with?” Pari whispered.
Shaw shook his head.
“Come on, you had to have seen.” She leaned closer. “I mean, I know he’s still in love with you, but if this new guy has good equipment, you might need to move a little faster with your plan.”
“What plan?”
“Your plan to win back North and prove that for some reason—you have to fill in the blanks here because I honestly have no idea what you’d say—he should get back together with you, even though you’ve got those bushy pits and sometimes you don’t brush your teeth and still think pig Latin is cute and—”
“Ok, ok, ok,” Shaw whispered furiously. “I’m working on it.”
“You’re serious? You didn’t see his new guy?”
“No!”
“What about your new guy?” Pari’s expression grew concerned. “Is it serious?”
“What? No. Of course not. He’s—it was just fun.”
Pari made a face. “You really do smell like sex. Whore’s bath. Now.”
After scrubbing his most important parts in the tiny bathroom—a lady-of-the-night’s bath, Shaw decided was the best name for it—he checked on N
orth. The blond man had his head on his desk, a bottle of ibuprofen next to him, letting out a whistling snore. Shaw shut the door gently, went back to the reception area, and began sorting promotional materials.
While North’s cheapness extended to picking a new office in an ancient strip mall with half its storefronts empty, it apparently did not include promotional materials. New business cards. Window decals. Banner stands. Flyers. So many flyers. The original design—North’s—had featured a picture of North and Shaw standing back-to-back with their arms folded, like they were posing for a ’90s hip-hop album’s cover art, or doing a bus ad for a law firm. After Pari had laughed so hard that she had fallen over, North had redesigned the flyers to feature text only. They’d arrived on Wednesday, the day before yesterday, and Shaw guessed that his afternoon assignment was going to be wandering in the brutal Midwestern heat, stapling these to every utility pole he could find.
“Shaw.” North’s voice was a growl from their office door. “I need your help with this new parabolic mic.”
Shaw hid a smile by digging deeper in the boxes. “Why do you need my help?”
“With the instructions.”
“You can read them yourself.”
“Shaw.”
“I don’t understand why you need my help.”
“Because I do. Right now.”
“I better work on these flyers. You told me on Wednesday that they were top priority. You went on and on about it for like an hour.”
“Like two hours,” Pari said, eyes still locked on her monitor.
North grunted something and shut the door.
Five minutes later, though: “Shaw, get your ass back here.”
“I told you: I’ll help you with the mic—”
“Not that. The numbers on the Pasco invoice are fucked to shit.”
“You can fix it.”
“It’s your invoice. You typed it up. Get your ass back here and fix it.”
Shaw extracted himself from the boxes long enough to direct a soft smile in North’s direction. “You know I’m not any good with numbers. You go ahead and fix it. It’ll be faster anyway.”
“No, I want you to—”
