"We gave you a good life. Better than ours ever was." He couldn't tell if she was angry, she sounded flat and detached as if commenting on the weather. "We made the decisions we felt we had to. We did it for you."
"For me," he repeated dully. "Is that what you tell yourself?"
"It's true."
"I'm going to go now, Mom."
"Oh. If you have to..."
"Yeah. I think I do." He hung up before she could get out a goodbye.
The house creaked around him, an ancient cradle. The sofa sagged under him. He idled his fingers over the keys of his phone and at last tapped out,
Done. Sucked. How's your night going?
Fixing someone else's shit work. Need company? Ace texted back almost immediately.
Not now. Talk to you when you get home.
K.
He picked a bent paperback up off the coffee table. Reading for a few hours seemed like just the thing, but the novel was too familiar to him and not nearly distracting enough. He needed something new. There was a stack of books in Ace's room, collected there from some stray errand to the apartment. Liam hadn't looked through them. Hadn't had the right.
Can I borrow a book? he texted.
Yep. Won't even charge you fines.
Permission granted, he unstuck himself from the couch and cast the phone away. The air conditioner shivered over his skin where the afghan had slid away. He tiptoed down the hall, conscious of Cole's open door and the spill of the nightlight. The books were where Liam remembered them, stacked haphazardly on the floor next to the dresser. He flicked on the lamp and knelt down beside them.
There were a few junky mysteries that he set aside and then a dog-eared copy of Fight Club. Beneath that was World War Z, which surprised him, and Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson that didn't. At the bottom was a worn copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the book that had persuaded Liam to give Nietzsche a chance. The very book that Ace had claimed ignorance of all those weeks ago.
"Really?" He asked the open air, folding up his legs to sit on the floor.
If Ace had just gone out and bought it after their conversation then that was sort of sweet, actually. Liam cracked it open, the faint used bookstore musk greeting him. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. There was an inscription in bubbly handwriting on the inside cover,
Hey Big Bro,
Twenty! Wow! You're getting old! Found a good one this year. Think you'll like it. Can't wait for you to come home!
Hugs,
Joy
2/23/02
Ace had read the book before they'd talked that day in the diner. Or had it at least. Bemused, Liam sat on the floor, opening the pages that had gone tender with age. The words were familiar, so he breezed by them, stopping here and there to take in a phrase.
There was only one underline, done in the same pen as Joy's inscription:
Suffering and taking sin upon himself might have been right for that preacher of small people. But I rejoice in great sin as my great solace.
Next to it, Joy had drawn a winky face with its tongue sticking out. 2002 meant Afghanistan, the little book travelling over oceans to reach its destination, a small raft of Nietzsche's nihilism decorated in girlish handwriting. It meant it had been read years before the shop had opened, bearing the now suspiciously familiar name. Liam traced the words over with the tip of his finger. He'd quoted the lines right to Ace that day and seen no reaction. Was Ace that good an actor, or had Liam been so nervous that he'd missed whatever Ace might have betrayed?
Why had he lied about it in the first place? If it had been Liam in his place, he would have been pleased that someone recognized the quote. It was hardly the kind of thing most people would pick up on.
Left with too many questions, Liam picked up one of the mysteries and settled himself against the headboard. He preoccupied himself with words just as he'd always done, following the detective into the labyrinthine mind of a very strange serial killer. When the front door opened though, all his attention returned to a much more immediate mystery. He listened as Ace took off his boots and sent his keys clattering into the dish in the kitchen. The socked thump of footsteps to the bathroom and the toilet's flush rattling through the floor.
Ace paused in the bedroom doorway, leaning against the doorframe,
"You don't look traumatized."
"Don't feel it either." Liam set the book down.
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
Ace crossed to him, taking Liam's face and touching the tips of their noses together.
"You have no idea how good you look right now," Ace told him.
"What? In my pajamas?"
"In anything." Ace laughed, low and promising. "But much better in nothing at all."
They hadn't done much since Gene had died, though they'd continued to share the bed. Liam had gotten used to the warm comma curve of Ace's body around his. Only now though did his libido stir back to life. He weighed the mystery of Nietzsche against the demands of the body. Philosophy lost hands down.
"Nothing is an easy outfit to change into." He settled his hands on Ace's waist and tilted his face up for a hungry kiss.
They made a tangled mess of the bed. The paperback wound up somewhere on the floor with a soft crack that had sent them both into a terrified pause. When Cole didn't wake, they went on with only slightly more caution before collapsing against the pillows. The afterglow settled over them, and Liam decided to savor it rather than bring it all up. He'd had enough fighting for the night.
"I'm going to miss this," Ace confided as they settled in to sleep. His hand rested over Liam's heart, his lips grazing Liam's shoulder.
"What? Why?" Liam asked.
"When you go back to college," Ace said carefully. "I mean, you are still... you're going back."
"I hadn't thought about it. Not since... but." Liam set his hand over Ace's. "Yeah. I'll miss this, too. It's only a semester though. Four months, and I'll be back."
"You shouldn't make decisions now." Ace drew the covers over them. "Grief confuses everything."
"I'm not confused," he protested. "Unless, you don't want to wait, I'd get that. It's far, and long distance is really hard."
"No. I mean. Yes. I want to wait. I don't care about that. But you shouldn't be tied to coming back here. You could go wherever you wanted. Be whatever you want."
"Exactly." Liam closed his eyes. "Want to be here. With you and Deb and Goose and Frankie. Want to be home."
"Okay," Ace whispered, kissed his shoulder again. "Whatever you want."
It was strange going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning like a normal person. Granted, he'd fallen asleep around three a.m. and woken at eight, but it was still a marked improvement over snatched dozes on the couch. He lingered in bed, relishing the soft sheets against his bare skin. The sensual details of life were slowly trickling back in through the numbness of grief.
Maybe it was too soon, and he should feel worse than he did. Yet, he felt like he'd started his mourning the moment he'd gotten on the plane to come home all those months ago. Maybe it had really been too long. He got up and pulled on a pair of pajama pants before padding into the kitchen. Ace was sitting outside on the deck, Cole in his lap and a book in his hand.
Liam listened to the rise and fall of Ace's accented English through the screen door. He didn't follow the story, some Seussian nightmare of snarled rhyme. Ace's rhythm was a little off, his vowels slanting everything the wrong way. Cole didn't seem to care. He had his head on Ace's shoulder, and he steadily broke apart a leaf in his hands until green confetti fell every which way.
"Morning," Cole chimed when he caught Liam spying.
"Good morning." Liam ducked his face away from Ace's knowing grin.
"I'm going to take him to school soon. Want to come with? I was gonna head into the city to pick up some stuff for the store after."
The no waited on his lips. He had things to do around the house soon and he had to meet with the lawyer
in a few days. There was paperwork he should prepare for that. But he couldn't take another day of not leaving the house.
"Yeah, okay." He turned away to start breakfast. "Maybe I can get some new sneakers. The soles are peeling off my old pair."
Liam had never had a reason to see Cole's school before. It was pretty, a low brick building with cheery murals painted on the stone walls. The teacher, a slim man with animated wide eyes, greeted Cole with a cheerful grin.
"This is Liam," Cole informed his teacher immediately. "We live in his house."
"I've heard." The teacher extended his hand to shake, paint splotches crisscrossing his knuckles. "Sam Hogenberger. Nice to meet you Liam."
"Good to meet you, too."
"It's nice to know I'm not alone out here, I've got to tell you." Sam glanced around, checking on the kids. "Good to see a happy couple out here in the 'burbs, you know? Used to think I'd never see the day unless I went back to teaching in the city."
"Oh." Liam glanced at Ace, whose eyes were cast upward, an innocent expression pasted on. "Yeah, of course. I know what you mean."
"Mr. H! Sarah won't let me play with the blocks!" a little girl called out.
"Hope I didn't embarrass you." Sam was already headed away. "It's nice to put a face to the name!"
Ace waited until they were back in the car then started laughing.
"Oh my God, your face! You turned a new shade of pink."
"What the hell was I supposed to do?" Liam tried to look angry, but he couldn't with Ace gasping in air between shaking bouts of laughter. "Why does he think we're Mr. and Mr. Smith?
"He kept flirting with me," Ace explained between wheezes. "Not enough that it was inappropriate or that I could call him on it. So I just kept bringing you up until he got the picture. Now he thinks we're like the golden couple or something."
"He's kind of cute," Liam allowed. "You must have thought about it."
"Nah, he's Cole's teacher. It seemed sort of wrong." Ace laughed. "Anyway, I've got you now. Why would I bother?"
"Dunno." He leaned back in his seat. "We never got around to the monogamy talk."
"You looking for someone else? After that whole slurry speech you gave me last night?"
"No! Of course not."
"So? Why am I any different?" Ace put the car in drive and eased out of the parking lot.
"You're different." Liam smiled. "Very different."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing bad." The drive would be about a half hour into the city. Probably no better time than the present. "Can I ask you about the book?"
"What book?"
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Found it in your pile."
"Oh." Ace got them onto the main road, eyes on the yellow lines. "Yeah, sort of thought you might. I grabbed it without really thinking it through."
"Why didn't you tell me that you'd read it? That I was right about the shop's name and everything?"
"Because then I'd have to explain the whole thing, and I wasn't ready to do that. Kept feeling like you had enough of me already."
"All the way back then?"
"Yes, Liam. All the way back seven weeks ago. God, where does the time fucking go?" Ace rubbed a thumb over the steering wheel. Liam had felt that nervous caress against his thigh, his cheek, the curve of his ass. "It hasn't really been that long."
"Do you not want to tell me now? Should I back off?"
"Even if I said I did, would you?"
"I'd wonder why."
"Pick at it until that ridiculously big brain of yours exploded." Ace licked his lips. "Look, it's not even that big of a deal really. It's just... sort of stupid."
"I've told you a lot of stupid things."
"No, you've told me big gaping wound sort of things. Bleeding out sort of things. Sort of means I should give up holding onto meaningless details, I guess."
"You don't. Really." Liam stared at Ace's profile, the sharp line of his nose and the reflective glass of his eyes. "It's just... curiosity. I mean, you sort of... you lied to me."
"Only thing I have lied to you about. I swear." Ace risked turning to him for a second. "You believe me?"
"Yeah." And he did. No matter how stupid that was.
"Man, this is... it's really not a big deal. Just sort of became one, over the years. It's... Joy always used to get me books for my birthdays. But it was a little sister sort of thing, so it couldn't be a purely nice gesture, right? So she had to tease me."
"I got that from the face." Liam mimicked the smiley she'd drawn.
"Well, she was a kid back then. But yeah. She thought she was funny."
"I'm not getting the joke."
"It's my name." Ace said flatly. "That's the joke. That's always the joke from twelve to thirty, she buys me a book every year with my name in it."
"Which you've never told me, so I still don't get it."
"Think about it." The thumb started tapping against the wheel now. "My mom was all new age and crap enough to name my sister Joy all those years after I was born. What kind of name do you think she slapped on me when she was still really rocking the patchouli?"
"No," Liam protested even as it all started to make sense. "She didn't."
"My father tried to tell her that no one would ever take a boy with that kind of name seriously. He wanted to call me Ian. I would've liked Ian. Practical sort of name. Doesn't rhyme with anything easy to make fun of or warn off any potential friends before you get a chance to say word one."
"Solace." Liam rolled it over his tongue.
"Yeah. That's me." Ace pulled out his wallet one handed and managed to tug out his driver's license while changing lanes. "I threatened to get it legally changed once, and my mom started crying. Said she named me that for a damn good reason."
"Why was that?" Liam took the offered card. Ace didn't have dreadlocks in the picture, which took him off guard. He'd had some kind of buzz cut that left his skull weirdly exposed, and there were dark circles under his eyes. The name did indeed read, "Reece, Solace".
"Because when she was at the lowest in her life, she got pregnant with me. She said I consoled her in the womb." Ace's rolled eyes told Liam what he thought of that. "So that's it. I got stuck with a hippie name. I started going by Ace when I was five, thanks to my Dad. Best gift he ever gave me. Soon as I moved here, I told everyone that was my name and most people just accepted it."
"Goose really doesn't know?"
"He really doesn't." Ace took his license back, stuffing it into the wallet with one hand still on the wheel. "And he never will. He'd use it against me all the time. Deb knows because she had to fill out some forms for me once when we were on tour. She's decent enough not to talk about it. Know it's just one of those sore spots."
"It's not a bad name," Liam said. "I mean, I get why you don't like it, but... it's sort of accurate, you know? Could've been one of those things where someone names their daughter Chastity, and she sleeps with half the town just to get rid of it."
"So you're saying I'm not slutty?" Ace laughed.
"No, jerk." Liam scowled. "I'm saying, that you are pretty good at the whole comforting thing. Maybe not at the moment, but you know. You're sort of soothing."
"Soothing like Xanex or soothing like soft rock?" Ace challenged.
"You make me feel better. About everything." Liam shrugged loosely. "I won't use it. But I like knowing it. For the record."
"Okay." Ace's eyes didn't leave the road. "I can accept that."
"Why name the shop that way though?" Liam asked. "I mean, if you hate your name, why make the store a clue?"
"I liked the quote. It had good rhythm to it. And believe it or not, me and Joy used to get along. I liked the idea of having her be a part of the shop. She loved it when we first opened. Used to bring Cole by and babytalk to him in the lobby. Probably drove half our customers away."
"Sounds nice though," Liam said gently.
"Yeah. It was. Only lasted a short while." Ace shrugged it away. "Anyway
, the shop name is only a clue if I managed to find the one tattoo artist in the whole damn state that memorizes big chunks of dead people's writing for fun. Wasn't banking on finding you."
"Guess not."
"Glad I did, though." Now Ace gave him a side eye, his smile reflected in the rearview mirror.
"I found you," Liam corrected, sneaking his hand across the center console until he could rest it innocently on Ace's knee.
"Yeah, maybe, but I'm the one that decided to keep you."
"Because of a sketch of a gaslamp and a sad story." Liam snorted. "Or was it taking my shirt off that hooked you?"
"Could say that. Did like the back tattoo a lot," Ace said mildly, one hand dropping off the wheel to cover Liam's. "I gave you a job because you wanted one. Not a lot of interest around here, and I had a machine. Figured if you were awful, I'd fire you. But you weren't. So. Here we are."
The skyline cut through the trees, jagged teeth of skyscrapers and milling clouds. Liam had managed to avoid the spike of buildings since he'd come home, trying to avoid the snarls of traffic and tangles of memory. He preferred Ace's imagined metropolis with its cheerful marker lines, Dionysian revelers and unlikely playgrounds.
After grumbling over parking, Ace jammed the car into a street space and fed the meter a heavy pocket full of quarters. The neighborhood was chicly rundown. Liam leaned against the car, trying to get his bearings.
"What can you get here that you can't get online?" he asked, watching a gaggle of teenagers idle down the sidewalk.
"Technically nothing, but there's a supply warehouse that cuts better deals if you come in person. We're low on a few inks, and I want to see what they're looking to get for a new machine. Goose's made a weird splutter yesterday and near as we can figure nothing's wrong with it but age." Satisfied with the meter, Ace started down the street. "Anyway, good to get out of town once and awhile."
"I don't know. Town is growing on me." Liam caught up with him. "Where are we?"
"Fifth and Forty-eight. Probably a good distance from your old stomping ground."
Stories Beneath Our Skin Page 17
