by Anne Tenino
She tossed her brush on the palette and nodded at the three mirror frames. “Now let’s mount the glass in those puppies so we can get out of here. I’ll gild and age the frames in my studio at home.” By the time she was done, nobody but a true expert would be able to tell them from the real Victorian article. “You’re building the false wall, I assume.”
“Seth said he’d take care of it.” Nate had offered to help, but Seth had been insistent—yet oddly chill about it, as if building an entirely superfluous wall with a hidden peephole was something he did every day. Nate tried not to stress about it, beyond reiterating his offer to help, and restrained himself from nagging Seth for a progress report. “I’ve got a baby Fresnel on loan from the Playhouse, complete with its own dimmer, so I can rig the lighting effect for Floating-head Fennimore.”
Morgan helped him secure the glass in each frame, and Nate double-checked that the frame with the trip hammer got the glass that had been treated with a protective film that would keep the broken pieces in place: they wanted to crack the mirror on cue, not scatter the polymer shards all over Pearl’s vintage carpet runner.
When they were done, Nate schlepped the mirrors out to Morgan’s truck. “I’ll wait for Floating-head Fennimore’s paint to dry, then take him home. Let me know when the mirrors are ready and I’ll come by your place to pick them up.”
She grinned. “Not on your life. I’ll bring them over to Sentinel House on Saturday. I want to see everything in place. Will that be a problem?”
“No.” He drew out the word, raising an eyebrow in time with it. “But are you more interested in the SFX, or in how I act with Seth?”
“Baby, that’s the most unbelievable effect of all, and I can’t freaking wait to see it!”
The excitement that built up in Seth’s chest before seeing Nate was familiar, but today it was even stronger. He’d probably go so far as to call it nervous apprehension.
What he’d learned about gray asexuality hadn’t helped that much. The various interpretations were all over the place, so he had to go with Nate’s own words and the observations he’d made. Nate was capable of being attracted to people he felt a strong attachment to. Seth thought it was possible that Nate was developing those feelings for him.
But how would he know? Would Nate make a move? Yeah, you just sit tight until he kisses you.
Or Seth’s own feelings overpowered him and he kissed Nate.
Sighing, he turned back to inspecting his wall. It was another reason for his anxiety—he’d learned nearly everything he knew about carpentry either by doing, or by being told how to do by the guys at the hardware store.
Well, and a lot of shows on the home and garden channel.
Whatever. The wall was done, it looked good enough. Nate wouldn’t expect much from two days of work, would he? Plus, of course, there was Seth’s longstanding rule of never worrying about other people’s expectations.
Even a person he was romantically interested in. Who might be romantically interested in him?
“Are they here yet?” Grandma’s voice grew louder as she came into the entry hall. A waft of deliciously scented air followed her all the way from the kitchen.
“Not yet. Are you baking something?” Pie, hopefully, although this smelled a bit more savory. “Cheese sticks?” Yum.
“Dog biscuits,” she said, adjusting her apron. It was different than the one she’d had on earlier. And had she ironed it? “I just love that Tarkus. You know, I’ve always wanted a dog, but your grandfather, well . . .” She shook her head.
Yeah, I know. He was a dick. Even after living with her all these years, he’d had no idea she’d had it so hard with Grandpa until all of the family’s dirty laundry had been aired. The old guy had died when Seth was twelve, so his few memories were fuzzy. None of them seemed to be the warm variety of fuzzy, though.
The fact that she didn’t even control her own money should have been a clue.
Seth was about to go hug her, but finally he heard noises on the front porch. Footsteps and the faint click of canine claws. Seth opened the door before Nate could knock, and Grandma called, “Welcome!”
As soon as he saw Nate, his nerves started jangling. “Hey, Grandma made Tarkus treats, but not us.” Nice opener.
“Hush, you.” Grandma slapped him on the shoulder. “Let them in.” She took over, thank God, starting the tour of the house, chattering at Nate, petting the dog. Sneaking biscuits out of her pocket for Tarkus.
Grandma and Tarkus didn’t make it past the kitchen, which was only the third room they visited. Fortunately, by the time his grandmother had stopped pretending she had any interest in the humans, Seth’s more steady personality traits had reasserted themselves. He managed to show Nate the basics of the first and second floors. He could probably skip the third floor servants’ quarters, but there was one cool thing he’d like to show him upstairs.
“Come up to the widow’s walk.” Seth pulled down the folding attic stairs from above a false ceiling panel.
Nate followed Seth up, the treads creaking under their feet. “Good thing Tarkus is worshipping at your grandmother’s feet. I’d never trust him up on the roof, but I wouldn’t want to leave him at large in the house either.”
“You think he’d get in trouble? He’s fine at your place.”
“Yeah, but my place isn’t a virtual porthole into the past.”
“You worry too much. We have more heirlooms than we know what to do with.” Seth led Nate around boxes and furniture—antiques judged unfit for display—to one of two identical dormers. The windows set in them were actually small doors.
“Damn.” Nate ran his hands over the frame, studying the way the hinges were hidden in the trim boards. It was charming, the way he needed to touch things to really see them. “The workmanship. It’s incredible. You never see that care and attention to detail anymore,” he said once he’d satisfied his curiosity and was clambering out next to Seth. “Selling it will be like losing a family member. A shame, really.”
Seth’s alarm must have been all over his face, because Nate threw up a hand and said, half-laughing, “Hey, it’s not my place to judge. If your grandmother is ready to move on, that’s her right. But I sincerely hope whoever buys it doesn’t decide to ‘modernize’ the soul out of it. I’d hate to think the links to the past would be lost because some joker with more money than sense decides the master bath needs a giant whirlpool tub. Or worse, some cretin who’ll gut the place of all the original fixtures because he can sell ’em for a mint on eBay.”
Actually, he could see Nate’s point. It was kind of a shame, but not so much of one that Seth wanted to step up and keep the place, if he even could have afforded to. “Well, if the B&B people buy it, they want all the furniture for ‘atmosphere.’”
Nate flashed him a grin, then, like they were both responding to some unknown signal, they turned toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It wasn’t a picturesque view today, instead it was a melding of clouds and ocean. Somewhere offshore, fog bled down into the sea, or maybe the water was evaporating into the sky. A horizon line was barely discernible. It could have been twenty yards out or two thousand, it was impossible to tell.
“On a clear day, you can see Canada.” Seth wondered how many people had stood here and said exactly that. “I kind of like it like this, though. It’s more . . .”
“Authentic,” Nate finished for him. It was the perfect description. They were allowed to see the Sound out of costume because they were locals. It would answer the door in sweatpants for them.
In spite of the looming mist, it was dry enough that Seth could sit on the ledge where the roof met the walkway. The butt of his jeans might get damp, but he didn’t care.
It had been years since he’d come up here, and he’d forgotten how small it was. The whole thing was barely long enough for pacing, about twelve feet, built between the only two windows set into the roof.
Showing Nate the house had given him a weird sense of nostalgia. Wist
ful nostalgia, reminding him of when he’d been a little kid and his world had seemed so familiar and right. Before he’d figured out he’d never fit into the Larson Man mold. Before he’d figured out he wasn’t straight.
“I was insanely curious as a kid,” he mused.
“I’d argue that you still are, but where did that come from?” Nate’s voice was as quiet and reflective as his had been. Again, perfect. A sign he understood Seth’s mood and validated it.
“It’s how I figured out I was gay,” he said, surprising himself with the admission. “By being curious. I wasn’t only curious, though, I was careless. Impulsive. You remember me telling you about that chemistry set I had, and how I’d mix things together to see what happened without thinking about the consequences? My whole life was that when I was younger: acting without thinking about the end result. There was this guy . . .” Was he really going to tell this story? He never did, not without strong incentive. He turned to see Nate looking at him, waiting. “It’s really humiliating.” Again, he said it before he thought, but it seemed okay. Safe.
“You don’t have to tell me, you know. Not if it makes you uncomfortable. But if you want to share, I’d be honored, and I promise I won’t laugh.”
“I might feel better if you did. Everyone else I’ve ever told it to was horrified.” Understandably. He doubted there were many survivors of such complete public shaming. He couldn’t hide from it, though—the story had become legend in his high school. The whole town, actually . . .
“Bluewater Bay High is so small that in order to have enough players for most sports, everyone eligible had to want to play, so sometimes there just wasn’t a team for a particular sport. When I was a freshman, the juniors and seniors had a basketball team.”
People often smiled at this point, because they thought they knew where this was going, but Nate didn’t. He just regarded Seth steadily, his eyes somehow radiating trust me.
Seth did. “There was this one guy, Theo. He’s not around anymore, he left town as soon as he graduated. Anyway, he was really, really good-looking.” So much so that he might almost have eclipsed Nate in a side-by-side comparison. “But, like, not in a traditional way, you know? Pushed all my buttons, though.” The guy had been almost the opposite of Nate, actually, with a nearly too round face that still managed to be stunning. Theo’s dimples had had the power to wipe all thought from Seth’s head.
Nate murmured some kind of acknowledgment.
“Theo went to a different grade school, and he was a few years older than me, so when I started high school, I’d never seen him before.” Bringing his feet up onto the ledge in front of his butt, he wrapped his arms around his shins and rested his chin on his knees, gazing out at the strait. He trusted Nate, but that didn’t mean he needed to watch his expressions while he told this story. “He was the one.”
“The one what?”
“Like, I kind of knew I was different, but after I saw him, it became impossible to not know I was into guys.”
“Oh, that ‘one.’”
“I kept trying to figure out why. Why was I gay? I thought he held some kind of answer. I used to follow him around. Between classes, down to the coffee shop after school. Into the locker room.”
For a brief second, Nate’s fingers caressed his arm, and that was enough to make him continue.
“So, one Friday night, the basketball team was playing a home game, and I went to watch him. Theo. But of course seeing him play wasn’t enough. After the game, I followed him and the rest of the team into the locker room—I don’t know what I thought I was doing, but by the time I walked in, they were naked, or close enough. Theo was naked. And I was . . . mesmerized. Compelled to watch him.” It sounded so perverted, now, but he refused to whitewash what had happened. He knew he wasn’t the only fourteen-year-old guy out there whose hormones had overcome his reason, and he wasn’t going to deny it had happened. “I got hard. Like, so fast—crap, I nearly came in my jeans, and I’d grabbed myself to keep from, you know—” he nearly did it now to demonstrate, but managed to stop himself “—and that’s when one of the guys was throwing his jock into his gym bag and he overshot it, so he had to go pick it up. I didn’t see him coming in time. He got a little too close, and there I was with my hand on my dick.” He swallowed compulsively. “I wasn’t doing anything, but you know high school.
“I didn’t even try telling them I wasn’t gay. It didn’t matter. I never tried to stop the rumors or anything. Shit, if I’d been straight and just holding on to my dick to keep from peeing, they still would have told everyone I was gay.” He’d barely known that himself. Lucas had fought tooth and nail every rumor that he might be gay in high school, but Seth had just accepted his social stigmata and suffered.
Nate’s hand closed on his arm. “Did they hurt you?” Nate’s voice was low and almost fierce, his gaze intense. He touched him again, palm sliding down Seth’s back, and Seth realized he’d been expecting it. It was becoming habit between them. “Because if they did—”
“There’s nothing you can do now.” Nice to know he’d like to, although Seth wasn’t sure he deserved the sentiment. “I can’t blame anyone but myself.” He always said that, as if he were okay with having been publicly outed in a seriously humiliating way.
Suddenly, Nate’s arms were wrapped around him, holding him close. “Look, I can’t say that lurking in the corner of the locker room to spy on your crush isn’t a little creepy, but you were a kid, and if those assholes injured you, then that’s on them—and on the school authorities if they let it happen.”
“You know . . .” He took a moment to breathe before going on, enjoying the feeling of having told someone who just accepted it. No judgment, not that he could detect. “I was so— My hormones were so starved then, and I’d just figured it out, my sexuality. I didn’t know it would, like, take me over. It was like my higher brain function had shorted out. I was all instinct and desire and—” he shrugged “—I really couldn’t stop myself. Tell you what, though, I wish I’d found a better hiding spot.”
Nate didn’t laugh, but neither did he.
“Christ, Seth. Bluewater Bay might have its good points now, but back then, when it was so narrow and suffocating and as far as you knew it would never get any better? Why did you stay? If they treated you so badly, why didn’t you get the hell out of Dodge?”
There it was, the thing he’d been struggling with since running into Evan. As he answered, though, the real reasons began to coalesce. Drifting into his mind and out his mouth, bleeding together like the fog and water. “If I’d left . . . I’d never have come back. Not because of my memories, but because of how other people remembered me. I’d have worried what people were saying about me every time that story got passed around, and eventually, I’d have been too scared to face people. As long as I’m here, I can prove it, you know? Prove that one stupid mistake doesn’t define you. What I did doesn’t make me, I don’t know . . . It doesn’t make me anything.” Tension he’d probably been storing since the other night ebbed out of his shoulder muscles. So much that he almost felt shaky. Like he’d just put down something five times his weight.
Nate’s arms tightened around him. “I just . . . I hate to think about you being alone. You didn’t deserve that.”
“I had my cousin Laura and some other people.” Yeah, he’d been bullied fiercely all four years, some of it physical. “Girls would escort me into the ladies’ room so I didn’t get jumped in the guys’. It could have been worse. Matthew Shepard was beaten to death, for God’s sake. I barely ended up with any bruises. I survived.” He let his hand rest on Nate’s knee, not gripping it like a lot of him wanted to. “I did better than survive. I’m . . . good.” He could even smile about it, right now, gazing into Nate’s dark-rimmed gray eyes. Until he realized he was leaning toward him, and he’d parted his lips, expecting Nate to kiss him. His body was telling him it was inevitable, that Nate wanted to.
Am I imagining this? Nate’s breathing had
picked up and his lips were parted too, and Seth was torn between retreating and closing the gap between them.
Before finding the answer, Nate ended the moment, suddenly pulling back. “Morgan’s going to be here any minute.”
“Oh.” Swallowing, Seth stood. Yeah, he’d probably imagined that. Stupid hormones all over again. “Excellent. We should probably go downstairs, then. Need to get this haunting show on the road.”
Nate stood after Seth squeezed past him, heading back to the door they’d come out of. He didn’t look back the whole way through the attic or down the stairs, even though he was tempted to.
Nate had come this close to kissing Seth. Near-disaster much, you idiot? Aside from the piss-poor timing—with Seth’s grandmother downstairs and Morgan expected any second—it would have been a total dickhead move. While he was still wrestling with his own tangled feelings, he had no right to make any kind of tacit relationship promise to Seth. That wouldn’t be fair. Don’t lie. You’re afraid to put it to the test.
Afraid was an understatement—he was freaking terrified.
So instead, he did what he did best and avoided the issue entirely to concentrate on the task at hand, stopping on the “haunted” landing to run his hand over the smooth surface of the false wall that hid the door to the servants’ stairs.
It was a perfect location for their plan—the landing was extra deep, so reducing the area by two feet didn’t make the turn of the stairs feel cramped. He couldn’t see a single seam, the corner joins were invisible, and the paint matched the rest of the stairwell perfectly. Furthermore, no hint of construction debris remained anywhere that he could detect. “This is outstanding work. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this had always been here.”
Seth shrugged. “No big. I’ve been maintaining this house for more than a decade.”
“Really?” Nate glanced around. The house had the usual Victorian gloom, but none of the genteel decay that a lot of old gingerbreads developed over the years. “I had no idea you had this kind of talent. You’ve done a terrific job.”
