“Hey,” Nick said as he leaned his hip against the counter.
Crash smiled and waggled his eyebrows at him. “Hey, yourself. Did I wake you?”
“No,” Nick said. “You wore me out though.”
“Hmm… So you say, but since you’re standing right in front of me, I am not so sure,” Crash said.
“I could say the same for you,” Nick said.
“I assure you, Nick, you nearly fucked my brains out,” Crash said.
“Nearly, huh?” Nick said. “I guess I’ll have to try harder next time.”
Crash crossed from the sink to where Nick stood and pressed against him, his naked body warm against Nick’s and a surprisingly good fit. “That’s the spirit,” Crash said. He flicked his tongue out, lightly licking Nick’s bottom lip. “Fuck me so hard I am naught but a drooling vegetable by the time you’re done with me.”
“Yeah, nothing says ‘sexy’ quite like brain death,” Nick said.
“I know, right?” Crash said with a laugh. “It sounds like ‘unnn’ with the bonus of drool.”
“Sounds like zombies,” Nick said.
“No, it sounds like zombie lovin’,” Crash corrected.
Nick made a soft heh sound in the back of his throat and started to say more, but Crash tightened his arms around his waist and kissed him. Nick gasped and leaned into him still feeling like he was behind the curve when it came to kissing. However, he found that he liked doing it and he had always been a quick learner.
When they broke apart, Nick said, “I have to go.” He licked his lips and almost smacked, the taste of Crash’s kiss lingering in his mouth. It was an odd taste, strange and yet familiar.
“Right now?” Crash said, trailing his fingers down Nick’s spine.
Nick pretended to consider it then said, “I guess I can give you another thirty minutes or so.”
“You, sir, are too kind,” Crash said. He leaned forward and nipped Nick’s bottom lip hard enough he sucked in a breath. Crash’s grin was unrepentant. “Have you met my kitchen table yet?”
“No, but I have a feeling I’m about to,” Nick said.
“Wow, you are kind and psychic,” Crash said. The corners of his grin turned up more and his expression became sharper and more feral.
Nick sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and let Crash tug him over to the kitchen table, still trying to figure out what that taste was. Crash sat on the side of the sturdy yellow pine plank farm table and wrapped his legs around him. He tightened them, drawing Nick in until he was right against him, Crash’s legs crossed just beneath his ass as he framed Nick’s face and drew him in for another kiss. The taste was still heavy on Crash’s tongue as they kissed, Crash moaning into his mouth.
Two hours later, Nick was freshly showered and bumping his way back down Crash’s driveway. The sun was up and relentlessly bright, making Nick squint against its glare until he got to the end of the driveway and was able to stop so he could get his sunglasses out of the glove compartment. When he looked toward the road again, he found E.O. Fussell standing across the road by what Nick assumed was his mailbox, the morning’s first steaming cup of Irish coffee gripped in one gnarled hand. Nick lifted his hand in a wave and E.O. stared him down like he was deciding whether he ought to wave back or not. After another second, he raised his coffee mug in a grudging little salutation then pointedly looked away from Nick to open his mailbox.
“Old shit,” Nick said.
E.O. Fussell had been a school bus driver in Sparrow Falls when Nick and Nancy were kids. As luck would have it, he had been their bus driver and Nick had hated every moment spent on the old drunkard’s bus, bouncing to and fro. He could still smell the odor of whiskey fumes wafting down the aisle on cold days when they kept the windows closed. When E.O. wasn’t hungover, he’d been drunk and, either way, he was a son of a bitch. Nick actually thought he had been nicer on heavily hungover days because he’d felt too damn bad to bother with being ornery. It was a wonder E.O. had never driven them off a bridge and into one of the many creeks around the area or down in a ditch. Or into oncoming traffic.
Nick nearly drove right by his turnoff on Anna Duff Road and took the left too quickly and promptly hit the big pot hole right at the end of the road. The impact jarred Nick and he cursed as he bounced, only to curse again as the back tires found the pot hole as well. It jounced Nick around, snapping his open mouth closed—and right down on his tongue. Outside of burns, to Nick nothing hurt as bad as biting his tongue and it felt like he’d taken a chunk out of it.
He grimaced and rubbed the side of his face, like that would do him a single bit of good. It was an automatic reaction though, as was feeling around his mouth with his already throbbing tongue to see if there was a piece of it floating around in there somewhere; maybe stuck between his molars. He found no random bits of his flesh, but his tongue was bleeding. He could taste the blood as it ran down his throat; metallic, a little salty, a touch sweet.
Nick stiffened in his seat when it finally clicked what the taste in Crash’s mouth had been: raw meat. His kisses had tasted like raw, bloody meat. Nick rolled his window down and spat a mouthful of blood out the window. The morning light and shadows playing through it made it look like exploding gemstones.
21
Wes had moved into the guest house on the grounds of Gallagher House at Dawn Marie and Tobias’s invitation. Dawn Marie in particular felt bad for sending Wes off on what had almost been his last adventure. That and she liked him a lot, liked talking to him and spending time with him. Having him in such close proximity made him infinitely easier to harass when the whim struck her. He didn’t live there for free, of course, but Nick had a feeling he wasn’t paying nearly as much rent as the house was worth either. They had tried to rent the place before but had only gotten one taker, a single woman who had up and moved out one day without a single word.
Wes had settled in quite nicely though; he said he enjoyed the proximity to the main house—and safety, should he need it again—while still having some privacy thanks to the way the trees screened the guest house from the main house. It was about three acres away from the main house, not visible from the ground floor because of the trees and the winding path that curved away out of sight. The driveway to the guest house was separate from the main drive; another slice of privacy. It was seclusion with the bonus of still having close neighbors. Wes said it was cozy.
He was sitting at the white wicker table in the small sun porch scowling at his laptop screen when Nick showed up. Wes sat leaned forward in his seat to keep any weight or pressure off his injured back, but the way he was glaring made it look like he was trying to pick a fight with his computer. He didn’t even look around when Nick pulled up, just clicked the mouse and began scrolling, finger swiping down the touchpad too fast for him to actually be reading anything.
Nick rapped lightly at the storm door and bit back a laugh when Wes squeaked in surprise. “Can I come in?” Nick asked.
“Yes, it’s open,” Wes said, already getting lost in whatever it was he was doing on the computer. Maybe he’d found a fascinating article about wendigos or something. Nick sat in the chair across from him and waited a few minutes; they didn’t have to go just yet. Curiosity finally got the better of him when Wes flipped off the laptop screen and said, “Well, screw you, too, internet.”
“What did the internet ever do to you?” Nick asked.
“I can’t find the case I had on my phone,” Wes said. “They say the internet is forever, right? But they lie.”
“They do?”
Nick knew about the internet, sure, but he’d never had much occasion to use it and for someone his age, he was way behind the times. He had no idea what Wes was talking about; only thought the guy was a little fixated on his cell phone. That seemed to be the norm these days though; Nick didn’t know many people anymore who weren’t attached to their devices. He’d thought about getting one, but then wondered if it would be worth it to become a slave to a machine.
He had a landline phone, but that was it for him so far and he thought it might be for the foreseeable future.
“Yes, they do,” Wes said. He pushed his hair out of his face and made a grumbling sound of annoyance. “I can’t find it though. I got my new phone yesterday and today I was going to get the case, but that’s not happening.”
“Was it a special case thingy?” Nick asked.
“It was my case thingy,” Wes said. “I just… I want to fix things. I want them to be normal again and it’s stupid, I know it’s stupid, but that case was… it was part of it. Never mind.”
Nick remembered Wes’s phone, remembered him carrying it around with him, but he could not remember what it looked like other than the phone itself was a thin rectangle. It didn’t look like much, but it definitely had upset Wes. Nancy called such things projecting though—Wes wanted the cell phone case and was angry that he couldn’t find it, but that wasn’t really what was bothering him. Something like that.
“What did it look like?”
Wes glanced down at his keyboard and tapped lightly at the keys, not typing; fidgeting. “It had a unicorn on it.”
Nick coughed, tried not to laugh, but then did it anyway. “Like sparkles and rainbows and all that?”
“No,” Wes said. “It was a badass unicorn. Like the old stories say they were; it wasn’t some little girl’s fantasy unicorn. Actually, it was a Da Vinci sketch of the maiden and the unicorn from one of his journals. You know that old myth?”
“Can’t say that I do,” Nick said.
“Of course you don’t,” Wes said. “No one does. That’s why it was so funny to people. But I am telling you, it was right here on the internet and now it’s not. Now I don’t have my case anymore.”
“You can get a new unicorn for your phone, can’t you?”
“That is not the point. The point is, I want that unicorn,” Wes said.
He waved his hand and Nick noticed a brace around his ring and pinky fingers. He guessed it was to hold Wes’s malfunctioning digit still.
“I’m sorry?” Nick said.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Wes said. “I’m sorry. I’m being a real headcase. I just… I felt like if I had my phone case back then… I don’t know. Darnit.”
“It’s all right,” Nick said. He glanced at his watch. “We need to go. And look—you can tell me about it on the way to the doctor or whatever.”
“Goody, the doctor,” Wes said as he pushed his chair back. He got up slowly and didn’t wave Nick off when he went around the table to help steady him. “I have a feeling I’m going to be living at the doctor’s office for months to come.”
“Does it matter?” Nick asked. “If it helps you get better then I say pitch a tent in the waiting room.”
“Don’t mind me, I’m just camping out,” Wes said with a faint smile. “Anyone up for s’mores?”
“Make me two,” Nick said as they started down the steps.
“I will do that.”
Wes leaned his head against Nick’s arm before he helped him into the truck and Nick patted him gingerly. He didn’t want to pat too hard or in the wrong place and upset Wes’s wounds.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’ll do, I suppose,” Wes said. “I’m just… you know.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. He did know, too, at least he could guess. The circles under Wes’s eyes said he still wasn’t sleeping and though his wounds were healing well according to his doctor, he was still in a lot of pain; injuries like Wes’s didn’t get better overnight.
He got Wes in the truck and fastened his seatbelt for him, which earned him a weak glare and halfhearted thank you at the same time.
When Nick got in the truck, Wes raised his arm and pointed toward the horizon. “Onward then brave knight.”
“Sure,” Nick said.
Wes’s appointment was in the hospital on one of the upper floors where a few doctors had offices. Nick sat in a chair in the lobby and waited, watching the sick shuffle through and by. He had always hated hospitals; it was something he could remember feeling even when he had been a little bitty boy, back before his mom ran off and his dad got sick. It was a low-level sense of revulsion that only got worse the longer Nick had to sit there. Working wasn’t that bad, his mind was always on something else. It didn’t matter that he mopped up blood and dumped plastic bins of used syringes; he was still occupied with the task at hand.
Sitting in the lobby while he waited on Wes made Nick feel itchy and anxious though; he couldn’t stop his skin from crawling or the hollow, unpleasant feeling in his belly. It wasn’t the sick and dying people that did it to him; it was the smell of hospitals that got to him after a while. It was the kind of smell Nick could detect the odor of hours after leaving, like it stuck to his clothes and sweated out of his pores. He scratched lightly at his arms and told himself not to fidget, it wouldn’t take that long then he could go home and wash the nastiness off like he badly wanted to do.
An hour and a half later, the elevator doors slid open and Wes made his slow, careful way out and across the lobby toward Nick. He had new prescriptions and appointment cards in hand and he looked pale and tired. He was still weak after his ordeal and Nick really didn’t think he should have been released from the hospital, but Wes had checked himself out as soon as he was able to get dressed without feeling the urge to pass out. He didn’t like hospitals either; he said they made him feel small and weak.
“All good?” Nick asked.
“Not exactly,” Wes said. He tried on a smile and made an effort to sound optimistic when he said, “But better. Doctor Galet says that as far as they can tell, the nerve damage isn’t too extensive, whatever that means. If it’s not too extensive though then that’s a good thing, I think. I mean, I’m pretty sure. I’m going to talk to my uncle tonight and tell him what Galet said; maybe he can clarify for me.”
“Your uncle is a doctor?”
“Cardiologist, but he speaks the same lingo,” Wes said.
“Huh,” Nick said.
“He’s a nice guy,” Wes said. “He has a really big heart.”
“That is a terrible joke,” Nick said.
Wes nodded, but he was laughing anyway. “At least I amuse myself,” he said.
“You’re funny,” Nick assured him.
“Hence why you are in stitches right now, huh?” Wes said.
“I’m laughing on the inside,” Nick said. “Scout’s honor.”
“Okay, sure,” Wes said. He rubbed his stomach. “I’m hungry. Do you mind if we grab something to eat after I drop off these prescriptions? My treat.”
“All right then,” Nick said. “Where do you want to go?”
“Stayin’ Alive,” Wes said. “That place is fabulous.”
Wes was exactly the kind of person Stayin’ Alive was made for, so Nick resigned himself to eating great beer-battered onion rings to the rocking beat of “I’m Your Boogie Man”.
“You don’t have to feed me though,” Nick said. “I can buy my own mirror ball milkshake.”
“God, that place is so great. I love the way they named things,” Wes said with real delight. Then he shook his head. “Buying your lunch is the least I can do. You’ve all been so… so nice to me that I feel like I should do something.”
Nick thought Wes had probably given him enough money as it was, but he didn’t argue. Hell, he’d probably take more money if Wes decided to buy some more of his time. At the thought, he felt an instant twinge of guilt, which drew him up short. He didn’t feel guilty about taking a john’s money. Ever.
Except Wes wasn’t just a john anymore or Nick wouldn’t have been shuttling him back and forth to the doctor and the pharmacy. Somewhere along the way he’d started to genuinely like Wes. He’d already known that he liked the guy, but it was more than that. He had come to think of Wes as a friend and motherfucker, wasn’t that the cat’s meow. Nick really had lost his edge. Either through time or maturity he had stopped thinking quite like the old Nick had,
where every man he met was a potential mark; a body to use him—and be used by him—for an exchange of paper. Wes was not a means to an end to Nick anymore.
It was a revelation that he found annoying and disconcerting. This version of himself was a stranger who had sneaked into his skin when he wasn’t paying attention. Nick was not sure if he liked it.
They walked out of the hospital and into the glaring noonday sun. Nick squinted and automatically started to flee back inside to escape the little needle daggers of pain in his eyes the sunshine caused. He barely registered the shadow coming up on his right and had only started to turn when he heard, “Hiya, boys.”
“Hey, Crash,” Nick said as he swam into focus.
Crash was eating little chocolate chip cookies from a bag and looking happy to be there. Though why he was there was a mystery to Nick. Crash leaned in and gave Nick a quick kiss then looked around him at Wes who was watching with polite curiosity.
“Who’s your friend?” Crash asked.
“This is Wes,” Nick said, gearing up to make introductions. “Wes, this is my… friend… Crash.”
“Come on now, we’re more than friends,” Crash said with a smile that was just the wrong side of nice as he stuck his hand out to shake. “Nice to meet you, Wes.”
“Hi,” Wes said as he took Crash’s hand. He didn’t look curious now, he looked confused then he winced as Crash’s fingers closed around his. “So you and Nick are—”
“Fucking,” Crash said with a nod. “A lot.”
Nick flinched and was instantly angry at Crash.
“Oh,” Wes said. “Um… that’s… nice. Congratulations?”
“I should think so,” Crash said. “I’m having a great time. What about you, Nick?”
Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1) Page 27
