by Peter Styles
His footsteps slowed as realization set in. What did he have that didn’t belong to Markus? The very clothes on his back had been bought by his boyfriend’s—ex-boyfriend, he reminded himself—credit card. He technically didn’t even own the money in his wallet, since it was an allowance. And the wallet had been given to him by Markus. That left him with absolutely nothing in the world. And now, he had nowhere to go.
He’d started off walking again before he knew it, heading in the direction of Chris’s apartment. But, no, Chris would be at work. He adjusted slightly and started walking toward the real estate building now, knowing that he was probably not going to be welcome there. It was the only option though.
Jeremiah walked, trudging along with his head down. The morning was still new but this was NYC. Even weak sunlight was amplified a thousand times by all the reflective surfaces. Heat lapped over his skin, almost immediately threatening to give him a burn, and wavered up from the sidewalk to bake his face. Sweat gathered and trickled from his armpits and down his back, reminding him that he hadn’t showered or brushed his teeth, or changed clothes. He probably reeked.
Now I know why no one is walking near me.
They might not even let him inside the real estate office, now that he thought about it. His appearance and his disloyalty to Chris were heavy strikes against him. But he had nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. He couldn’t even afford a bus ticket to make the journey faster.
A full hour later, panting and ragged, he stumbled through the doors of Finley Real Estate. Sweat dripped from his face, soaking the front of his shirt in a wide ring. Oh, but the cool air conditioning flowing through the building felt like a blessing. Feeling his sweat dry, a little revived, Jeremiah looked around.
Every agent in their little office had their head up, looking right at him. No one smiled. No one waved. They all knew, and he had known they would. Squaring his shoulders, a little disgusted with the way that the garment clung damp and cold to his skin, he slogged off toward the desk where the receptionist sat. It was the same petite woman as before. Jeremiah summoned her name with difficulty: Ms. Temple. This time, she wasn’t multitasking or even working. She wasn’t doing anything but staring at him, unsmiling. Waiting.
“Hello, Ms. Temple,” he said as he neared the curved desk. He didn’t touch anything. His hands were disgusting.
“Mr. Bird,” she replied, voice clipped. “Your name isn’t on the list. Please leave a message.”
Jeremiah squared his shoulders. Family or not, he was tired of being bossed around by people who thought they knew better. “I’m here to see Chris.”
“Mr. Finley isn’t in the building. Would you like to leave a message?”
The damn girl sounded like an answering machine. “Chris has to be here. Where else would he be?”
The receptionist puffed out her chest and set her shoulders, clearly mocking him. “Let me rephrase this for you so you understand better. Mr. Finley doesn’t want to see you. Any message you give me will never reach his ears. You have to leave now.”
“Ms. Temple…”
Her hand moved, sliding under the desk. He tensed up, taking a step backward. Was she armed? “If you don’t leave in five seconds, I’ll be forced to call security. I have my finger on the button.”
“Wait,” Jeremiah pleaded. His voice broke. Everything that hurt inside him came bubbling up to the surface as tears. They constricted his throat with their burning, scorched his sun-heated skin. “Please, just wait. What happened was a terrible mistake that I made and I am so, so sorry that I did. I would give anything to make it right, or even to just tell Chris face to face how sorry I am. I didn’t even get to explain.”
The receptionist crossed her little arms, but she no longer looked so sure of herself. “I don’t see what you would need to explain, Mr. Bird. It all looks pretty straightforward to me.”
Jeremiah rubbed his face with his hands and sighed into them… and decided not to do that again, because it made him smell his own breath. “Look at me. Clearly, I have something to say. I want Chris to hear it. And it can’t be in a message.”
Ms. Temple hesitated a good while longer, but she placed both hands back on top of the counter where there was no emergency button. “Jeremiah,” she began, “I think that you think you have something to say. But I don’t know if Mr. Finley—”
“Let Mr. Finley decide for himself,” Jeremiah growled. He thumped his fist lightly on top of the desk, leaving a salty smear on the polished surface. “He’s an adult.”
That last bit of logic was what seemed to break her. “You really will have to come back some other time though. He isn’t here.”
Jeremiah stopped. “Not here? For real?”
“Really.”
“Then where is he?”
The receptionist bit her lip, clearly debating with herself on whether or not to reveal that information. Then she sighed. “If I tell you, you have to do me a favor.”
“Anything.”
“For God’s sake, don’t tell him that I’m the one who told you.”
Jeremiah lifted up one hand with his pinky raised, to make a promise, but she refused to touch him. He didn’t blame her.
“Mr. Finley is at a hospital. I don’t know which one. Don’t ask.”
Her brisk tone told Jeremiah that she did in fact know which one and just wasn’t going to spill. That was fine with him. He’d heard enough. Chris was in a hospital.
He was out the door like lightning, racing down the street in the direction of the nearest one. His teeth set in a grim, determined line. Snorts of breath pulsed from his nostrils and expelled roughly. He didn’t care how long it took or how far he had to go, dammit. He was going to find Chris!
Chapter 16
There was no one else around. Chris looked this way and that, checking all up and down the hospital hallway. To his left, the emergency room’s front desk. To the right, halls that led deeper into the hospital. He was effectively alone in the waiting room, although presumably not for long because this was a large city with an impossible amount of people who were hurt every day. And thus, being alone, the respectable businessman uncapped his bottle of water and dumped a liberal amount on top of his head.
A soft little gasp pulled from his lips, hardly enough to be noticed. The water soaked into his hair, wet his scalp, dripped down his face and all over the shoulders and front of his suit. None hit the floor.
Slightly revived from the blast of cold, Chris shook his head and sent droplets flying. Thoughts cleared, he returned to the very important decision at hand. Decision made, he punched in three numbers and a package of cookies fell down from the vending machine and into the slot. He pushed his hand through the little door flap and grabbed his snack, and was about to head back to the little corner nest he’d made for himself when a sudden awareness struck him. He felt it as eyes burning into the back of his skull, watching. Waiting.
One hand gripped the cookies so hard the packaging split. The other tilted slightly toward his pocket, where he kept his knife.
A stabbing in a hospital. I bet that won’t be a first.
Then, a scent reached him. Musk, faint and sweet.
His hand fell away from his pocket as he registered the smell. His whole body slackened with relief, and then tightened into anger. Familiarity tore him in one direction, and anger in the other.
“I can’t believe you followed me here. You’re sick.”
“I probably look sick too,” came a humorless reply. “Good thing we’re here in a hospital.”
What the hell did that mean? Eyebrows furrowed, he turned around and was given the answer. Jeremiah stood there, looking as though he’d been homeless for years. His clothes were filthy, torn and greying with dirt. Mysterious stains covered his jeans. His perfect hair hadn’t been done yet, but yesterday’s gel had soured and twisted the perfect locks out at all odd angles now. There were circles beneath his eyes, and his skin was slick with sweat. Not normal sweat either. Layers
of sweat, as though he’d started perspiring and never stopped.
“You look like shit,” Chris said.
Jeremiah let out a breathless laugh. “I feel like it too.”
And now Chris noticed his heaving shoulders, the obvious trembling muscles. What on earth had happened here? For a moment, concern threatened to overtake him before he found his anger again. “How the hell did you find me? I told everyone to… never mind. Go away.”
“No,” Jeremiah said. He was still catching his breath, creating a long pause between sentences. “I’m not going to go away. This is the fourth hospital I’ve been to, searching for you.”
He was searching for me?
Chris folded his arms over his chest, shaking his head. His own hair fell limply around his eyes, reminding him that he probably didn’t look in perfect shape either. “I’m supposed to be honored or something that you drove around for me?”
“I didn’t drive. I walked.”
That stopped him. He paused, biting his lip and thinking it over. Walking all across the city was a bit different than driving. A skinny guy like Jeremiah, especially in the condition he was in, would have made a good target for a mugger. Despite himself, he was glad that the other arrived safely.
“So, you walked. Big deal. How did you even know where I was?”
Jeremiah flashed a very weak smile that fell from his lips almost immediately. “You weren’t going to be at home, so you were going to be at work. And when you weren’t there, that must mean something terrible has happened.”
Chris felt that like a knife to the heart. He grimaced, turning his head to the side as tears prickled behind his eyes. “Something has. Just, not to me. You found me. Congratulations. Now I’m asking you to leave me alone again, please.”
Hurt crossed his ex-lover’s face. “I came here to explain.”
Throwing his arms out to the side, Chris struggling to control his volume. “I don’t need your explanations!”
“But you do!” Jeremiah shouted back.
An admonishment came from the receptionist’s window, warning them to be quiet. Both men stared at each other as the faint echoes of the shout rang down the long hallway. Chris was abruptly aware of the cold, stifling damp of the hospital air, and the disinfectant smell. Tiredness crashed into him again and he turned his head in the other direction, still refusing to look directly at the other. “Fine. Explain.”
“Markus was always talking about you. You’re his biggest competition. He hated you. And now you’re bigger than he is and he hated that. He made up all these stories about you cheating, or lying, or hacking, and he… he wanted me to seduce you to try and find out what your secrets were.” Jeremiah closed his eyes, sagging against a nearby wall. “He said he would finally marry me if I did that. That was all I ever wanted from him. Commitment.”
Disgust made Chris’s lip curl. Markus couldn’t even treat his own boyfriend with the warmth and respect he deserved?
“I never wanted to do it, Chris. Please believe me! I hated lying to you, but all I could think about was Markus… Except I started comparing the two of you and you were everything I had been missing, everything I had wanted from Markus that he wouldn’t give me.” Jeremiah stared down at the floor, voice slowly fading away. “That was the big secret I had. And I made up my mind that I was going to break up with Markus because I… realized you were the better match for me. But he wouldn’t listen to me. He never listens. He wouldn’t even let me talk.”
“I see,” Chris said. And that was all he said. He thought now that he disliked Markus Worth even more than he already had. Holding someone’s greatest want over their head to get your own way? It was sickening. And this was probably only the very tip of the iceberg as far as manipulating people went, Jeremiah and others included. How many others, Chris shuddered to think. People like that were always looking for ways to turn attention from themselves.
But that didn’t mean Jeremiah was entirely innocent in this. “You could have told me. Ages ago.”
“I didn’t understand,” Jeremiah admitted.
And that was good enough. How would any man be expected to understand what was going on if he didn’t know any better? And that was a two-way street. Jeremiah hadn’t known any better about Markus, and Chris hadn’t known any better about Jeremiah. If he had, he might have understood better why the other man always seemed so surprised to be treated so gently. Of course, Jeremiah had said no one ever treated him like that but Chris assumed that meant there was no one steady in his life before, not that he had been emotionally neglected for…
“How many years did you date Markus?”
“Three.”
Three god-awful years of briskness and silence, being constantly pushed to the side and humiliated—for Chris knew now that the silver glitter suit was Markus’s idea. Three years of low-grade hell.
Damn.
“I really do have feelings for you, Chris. I really do. I meant what I said before.”
Chris set his hands on the other man’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length. “I know you did,” he said, gently. “I understand. But the thing is, I realize now there’s a whole lot you don’t have experience with.”
Jeremiah waited, not understanding. His eyes were frightened. Chris sighed and released his grip. “I’ll explain but not right now.”
“Why are you in the hospital?” Jeremiah finally asked, after a silence that dragged out for almost two full minutes.
Chris opened his mouth to explain, and then figured that could come out with the rest later on. They would be done with it in one fell swoop. “I guess this is my secret. My secret to everything. You’ll finally get to know, won’t you?”
“You said you didn’t really have any business secrets.”
Chris shrugged. “I guess we all hide the truth sometimes.”
Jeremiah flinched. Chris didn’t apologize. He had forgiven him but he didn’t know how he felt in regards to anything else. Only time would tell how that sorted itself out, and he had a feeling he was going to have an awful lot of time to think in the next couple of days.
Just then, a door near the waiting room opened and a matronly nurse poked her head out. “Mr. Chris Finley?” she grunted.
Chis looked over at the other man. His lover. Ex-lover. He didn’t know. “I’ll text you when,” was all he said. Then, he turned his back on Jeremiah and walked through the door after the nurse.
She led him down a series of short, tight hallways to a long room full of beds. The beds were screened off from each other to allow for a modicum of privacy. During busy hours, Chris suspected those screens provided even less privacy than they already seemed to; now, with all but one or two empty of occupants, he was struck with a feeling like that of an office after hours, cubicles abandoned.
The nurse led him to one in particular, though he could have easily found the way on his own.
“Hi, Dad.”
There was no response, only a steady rattle of old lungs being force-fed by a breathing tube. The nurse left him there without a word, and Chris sank down into the visitor’s chair to wait for the old man to open his eyes… if he would.
Chapter 17
Jeremiah sat on Chris’s couch with his hands dangling down between his knees, waiting for the other to speak. But of course they couldn’t simply get right down to talking. That was too much like simple business, and nothing was ever simple for Chris.
Jeremiah still ached from being invited into the house like he was nothing more than a guest; a passing acquaintance. Chris had offered him a seat and then moved off to the kitchen to make tea for the both of them as a proper host would.
He returned, carrying two steaming mugs. “Here,” he said briskly, and offered one over.
Taking it, Jeremiah pressed his palms around the source of heat and tried to guide it into his chilled body. He waited for something to be ignited in his cold, numb chest, but nothing was.
Chris perched on the chair nearby and sipped at his c
up of tea, steam curling around his face. His eyes were closed, lashes dark against the background of paler strands of hair tumbling from his forehead. He looked like a man who feels dirty and wishes nothing more than to spend an hour, thoughtless, in the shower. Having done just that, Jeremiah knew the cleansing power of such an experience. He scrubbed and scrubbed at the dirt and sweat coating his skin and emerged a slithering pink thing. Refreshed and reborn, he was only tired. Tired and accepting of what might be coming to him for what he’d done.
“You know, I hated tea when I was a kid.”
Jeremiah started, hot liquid sloshing up over the rim of the cup and onto his hand. However, the tea wasn’t technically hot anymore. In fact, it was very lukewarm. How long had they sat there in silence, both waiting for the other to speak?
“You did?” Jeremiah asked, prompting Chris to continue. He thought it was pretty self-explanatory. Depending on how it was prepared, he could see a normal kid disliking tea.
“Yeah.” Chris took another sip. “See, my mom always made tea whenever there was a problem. If she was feeling down, or if I had a bad day. I guess it was good tea. It’s what I’m drinking right now actually, but when I was a kid it tasted like nightmares and unhappiness. I hated the kettle, mugs… Anything associated with tea.
“And then she was gone and the first thing I did was make tea, and I finally understood why she did it: it’s something to do when everything else is untouchable.”
Jeremiah considered that, looking down at the cup in his hands. The steam coming up from the cooling tea had a soothing scent to it, although he didn’t really appreciate the taste of it plain. It needed cream and sugar. “Is this something untouchable, Chris?”
Chris flashed a tired smile. “I have a suggestion of what to do about us.”
Oh.
“The untouchable thing is the reason for everything. My secret. You’re finally going to have your answer, Jeremiah.” Chris tilted the mug up all the way to completely drain every last drop, and then he began. “My mom loved me. My dad loved me. He was a college professor, renowned across certain circles. He’d published some essays, written a book. He had a following and he knew how to get along with damn near everyone. He was a good man, and that’s why I can’t fault him for having a belief that ran counter to mine.”
