The Blind Dragon

by Noah Harris

  The Blind Dragon

  A Gay Shifter Romance

  Noah Harris

  Contents

  The Phoenix

  Too Close for Comfort

  Death by Isolation

  Unwanted Visitors

  Tip-Toeing

  Confessions

  Two Weeks Later

  Confessions

  Clara’s Castle

  Doctor’s Orders

  Flying Solo

  Flying Solo Pt. 2

  Realizations and Reunions

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  The Blind Dragon

  Drake’s Street Book 1

  Noah Harris

  Published by Books Unite People LLC, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 by Noah Harris

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. All resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Editing by: Jo Bird

  Beta Reading: Melissa R.

  The Phoenix

  Shaeffer Gipson

  Drake Street. The newfound cultural hub of Texas, where artists, performers, influencers, and manic depressives have found their home or, at least, their haven. Brick buildings painted with colorful murals line the street, host to artisanal coffee and pastry shops, seemingly ancient bookstores, and a plethora of restaurants whose menus seem to change daily. At night, the street is lit up in a flare of flashing lights from the classy nightclubs, tethered in velvet rope, and warm hanging bulbs from fragrant patio dining rooms.

  Welcome to Drake Street.

  Shaeffer Gipson didn’t live on Drake Street. In fact, most of the people he knew or worked for didn’t live on Drake Street; they merely occupied it. Desperately looking for vacant apartments and calling days ahead to make sure they had reservations at Oliviana’s—Italian for the non-Italian, or The Rosemary and Sage—a different ethnicity every week and a celebrity chef who’d traveled the world, or Beets—specializing in vegan cuisine and club music. Shaeffer was here, tonight, like most nights, to ingratiate himself with yet another crowd of B and C listers. But there was another reason, one that Kyle Morry, Shaeffer’s current boyfriend, apparently couldn’t get over.

  They stood outside The Burgundy Gallery, most of them already fired up from the few drinks they’d had before assembling to wait for it to open. The gallery was brick like the other buildings but painted the same color as its namesake. The name was etched on the wall in orange spray-paint, graffiti-style.

  “Would you fucking drop it? I mean,” Shaeffer chuckled humorlessly, throwing his free hand up in the air, his other hand grasped, tightly, to his ticket for the show. “I don’t know what you’re even on about. I haven’t said a fucking word about this guy. Have I?” He looked around for help at the others who’d accompanied them. Four other models from work, closer to Shaeffer, or at least more likely to go to events with Shaeffer than they were with Kyle. That had to count for something. They shrugged, their bare tan shoulders up near their ears, their straight, perfect white teeth exposed as they grimaced helplessly, almost amused by the argument.

  “You haven’t said a word about him, but you haven’t shut up about the show and how amazing the art is and how you have to see him, and you have to meet him.”

  “You’re jealous of some paint on a canvas, Kyle? How sweet,” Shaeffer mocked, a dramatic frown on his face, making his normally eccentric, angled, sought-after face look strained. Kyle fumed as he stared back, and Shaeffer laughed. “You need to let this one go, don’t you guys think?” His comrades shrugged again, and he rolled his eyes. “The line’s moving, come on.”

  Shaeffer moved to the front to follow the line, but also to avoid looking into Kyle’s face, the face of a teenager who hadn’t lost his baby fat and was cute, not hot. He wasn’t sure what he’d seen in the pouty lips and sullen eyes. He knew what he saw in this Konrad Fontaine’s art, though, whoever he was. Passion and truth and an emptiness so vast it manifested as fullness on the canvas.

  He’d always thought that maybe, someday, an artist would be the one to see true beauty in him. Not the photograph-ready beauty on the outside, the upturned nose, the gapped teeth, the angular jaw and heavy dark eyebrows that he’d only just grown into; his inner beauty, who he was. Perhaps they’d even help him grow into the kind person he knew he could be, just as he’d grown into his looks. Right now, coldness and lack of depth was a survival skill.

  Kyle Morry was a placeholder, a shallow one at that, one that possessed whatever attribute had made him cute from the moment he was born. He’d never had to work for anything, not acceptance or love or self-worth. Kyle had been handed his future by the universe when they created his round cheeks and rosy lips that all the teenage girls and boys fainted over.

  The line moved slowly, and Kyle squeezed through Shaeffer’s friends to sidle up next to him. Kyle stood there silently for a moment, keeping the slow, one-step-at-a-time pace, but Shaeffer kept his eyes forward. Their friends milled behind them, greeting people they knew from different sections of the line or murmuring, Shaeffer presumed, about him and Kyle.

  “I know you, Shae, and I know you’re not deep enough to appreciate an art show without some ulterior motive,” Kyle said coldly, in a low voice, and Shaeffer scoffed at the nickname.

  “Shae,” he said distastefully, keeping his eyes to the front. Kyle sniffed.

  “I’m just trying to…”

  “That’s a silly nickname, don’t you think? A bit feminine, even. Maybe my sexuality isn’t the problem, here,” Shaeffer interrupted, looking over at him with hard eyes. Kyle flushed and looked straight ahead.

  “I didn’t want to come to this stupid fucking exhibition.”

  “Then, why are you here?” Shaeffer asked lightly, relishing the hardness of Kyle’s aura next to him, how easy it was to set someone off. Easy come easy go. 3…2…1…

  “Well, fine, if you don’t want me here then…then I’ll just go,” he said, a little more loudly than Shaeffer appreciated. He glanced over at Kyle, squinting warningly, and then shrugged.

  “Okay.”

  “If I go, I’m not coming back, Shaeffer,” Kyle said, but it sounded less like a threat and more like a plea. Shaeffer didn’t answer, only took another step forward with the rest of the line, and Kyle grunted angrily. “Fine, then! Fine!” And with that, he was struggling through their friends to the velvet rope and clumsily climbing over it. The rope got stuck on his ankle, and he nearly fell. Shaeffer watched him with pity.

  “Good luck, Kyle,” he called as the man stormed away, and Kyle flipped him off, not bothering to turn around.

  “That was harsh, Shaeffer,” Emil said in his thick French accent, and Shaeffer shrugged.

  “He was insecure.” They chuckled awkwardly behind him, and he just kept following the line. He knew that, if he wanted the companionship, Kyle would be a phone call away. That was how it always was. No one appreciated or cared about him enough to stick around for anything but opportunity-laden public events and sex. Normally he was desperate enough for the attention they gave him that he’d just let them take advantage of him, but he was getting tired of going through guy after guy only to be left feeling emptier than before. Kyle had been, what, the eighth, ninth boyfriend he’d had since leaving Ireland?

  Back home, he was mocked for his appearance. How many times did your parents drop you on your face? I wouldn’t come within ten feet of you, Caterpillar Boy. It wasn’t the words that hurt, although they weren’t exactly compl
iments. It was the actions compounded by the words, the isolation, the lack of friends and romantic interest. He looked too…eccentric. The combination of features he was gifted had been a curse back home. As he matured, he grew into the sharp angles of his cheekbones and browbones, the thickness of his brows gave his pale green eyes a hint of dramatism, his sloped nose was in style. The loneliness, the isolation, the lack of real affection had never left, though, and he was left to pretend with all these pretend boys. He wanted something real.

  The girls in front of him had something real; they might’ve been the only people in this entire line that did. Their fingers interlaced, covered in rings and bracelets, ears pierced more times than he could count without staring. The girl on the right was about a head shorter than her counterpart, with dreadlocks and fawn-brown skin. They didn’t speak. They stared around, sneaking looks at one another, giggling when they caught one another’s eye and taking that moment to point something out that the other had missed. They spoke another language, one Shaeffer didn’t recognize and had matching tattoos of lit matches on the backs of their arms. They smelled vaguely of marijuana and bonfires.

  “Can we help you?” one of them said suddenly, the taller one, as she looked over her shoulder at Shaeffer. She sounded Russian.

  “No, of course not. Cool tattoos,” Shaeffer fumbled, and she smiled at him. Her canines were noticeably sharp. The smaller one glanced back and then up at her girlfriend, trying not to laugh. Then there was a shout from the front, and the line started to move far more quickly. As the entrance came into view and the laughter from his friends behind started to grate on his nerves, he considered the fact that he was, now, technically single.

  Maybe he would flirt with this new artist. He hadn’t planned to, and it might’ve happened accidentally, of course. But he hadn’t planned to. The line thinned, and the arched brick entrance was now overhead. The inside of the gallery seemed to call him, its eerie silence. He mindlessly handed the ticket to the collector, and walked inside, following the crowd. His friends whispered behind him, but he ignored them.

  The eerie silence fell away, and he found himself suddenly thrust into a huge, open, white space with high ceilings. The talk was almost deafening, and the remixed classical music was the perfect background. He looked up to see exactly how tall the ceiling was and was shocked to see people on balconies on three sides of the room. The wall without a balcony was occupied by a low stage that spanned the entire length of the wall, and was hidden from floor to ceiling by black velvet curtains, so dark they seemed to suck the light out of the room and undulate on their own.

  Shaeffer looked around for his friends but found they’d wandered off. He frowned and spotted a bar, slipping through and around the dense crowd to reach it.

  “Blackberry bourbon smash,” he said expertly once he reached the bar and the patron behind it, a wrinkled man with curled hands. The man smiled, his entire mouth filled with gold teeth, and bent to begin mixing the drink. Shaeffer, unsettled, looked around and noticed a woman he recognized standing with several he didn’t.

  The bartender coughed and slid the glass across the countertop into Shaeffer’s hand. The mint in the drink filled his nostrils and soothed him, as did the sip he took. He felt a bit more himself and shimmied his shoulders as he walked through the crowd, ignoring the call or two he heard from the people that recognized him.

  “Fiona!” he called, and she looked up and across her little circle of friends at him. Her hair, unlike the last time, and the first time he’d seen her—when it was an ocean-dark teal—was a pale lilac and curled. It reached her tattooed shoulders, exposed by the black lacy slip she was wearing. “Fiona Lovelace,” he said, and she reached out to give him a one-armed hug, balancing the wine in her other unpolished, ringed hand.

  “Ah, girls, this is Shaeffer. How are you, honey?” she asked, and he grinned at the term of endearment. It made her sound old, even though she was only around ten years older than him.

  “I’m fantastic, and you look phenomenal,” he said smoothly, and the women sipped their drinks. They smiled guardedly at him, but he only had eyes for Fiona. There was something kind about her, genuine, that made him want to talk to her for hours, express his deepest turmoil.

  “You’re such a schmooze, Shaeffer,” she chuckled, taking a large gulp of her wine.

  “Well, you know me. Did you attend Colin’s brunch the other day? It seemed like your crowd,” he said, realizing he was outing himself as knowing little to nothing about her profession. How’s work was the more common question, but he had no idea what she did. He only knew that she knew just about everything and everyone on Drake Street. Another reason to get close to the mysterious and fashionable Fiona.

  “I was actually busy on a trip out of the country that weekend, so I had to decline,” she said regrettably, and he nodded, unsure how to continue the conversation. How many other parties did he know about that she might’ve attended?

  “How’s the modeling world treating you, Shaeffer?” she asked after another deep sip of her wine, and he sighed with an easy smile, not wanting to give too much away about his true frustrations with the business.

  “I have a few things lined up, but my agent is basically living inside my ass,” he said crudely, and Fiona laughed unabashedly.

  “I hear that’s how they tend to be,” she said. “I’ve met only one or two that seem relatively normal and not as…invasive.” They all laughed, even the women who’d been silent when he arrived, and Shaeffer took another sip of his drink, relishing the tartness of the blackberries. One of the women asked Fiona something, and he looked around, over her shoulder. A man, probably a few inches taller than even him, was standing in the midst of the crowd as if invisible. People walked around him without even noticing his presence.

  His hair was silver, shimmering in the light from the overhead fixtures, and his eyes seemed to twinkle despite the lack of light shining on them. He shifted his gaze and looked right at Shaeffer, who immediately realized he’d been staring but he didn’t look away. The man smiled, small but relaxed, cocky. Shaeffer’s breath caught in his throat, but he couldn’t look away.

  “That’s Konrad,” one of the women whispered to another. Konrad Fontaine, the artist, the man whose art he’d come to see, along with the chance of a little flirtation. Apparently, it would be easier than he thought. Konrad seemed to show an interest in him, and Shaeffer couldn’t look away. It seemed like the man was a magnetic force pulling him in. There would be no forcing this interaction.

  “You know, Shaeffer,” Fiona said, and Shaeffer dropped his gaze to her face, which looked as if she was studying him. “We heard about a bit of a scuffle with a guy who looked like you.”

  “Ah, right,” Shaeffer said, clearing his throat and taking another quick drink, letting the burn give him courage. “Well, I was involved with someone until around an hour ago, but it’s really no loss.”

  “What happened?” one of the women asked, and Shaeffer found he was actually taken off guard being addressed by one of the other women in the circle he’d made himself a part of.

  “Well, he was being his usual jealous, insecure self, saying I had some ulterior motive coming to this show,” he said with a brief, uncomfortable chuckle. “And he threatened to leave me, so I made the executive decision for him.” He shrugged, giving them a tight smile. “He was probably right,” Shaeffer began but was interrupted.

  “Oh, men are the worst, aren’t they?” one of the other women said, and then she and another socialite got swept up into a conversation about their marital woes. Fiona smiled sympathetically at him and raised her glass in a subtle salute; he mirrored the act and they drank. Then Fiona turned and waltzed away, graceful and purposeful in her movements. Shaeffer watched as she joined an older woman, so old she seemed unable to move on her own. Fiona leaned down and whispered something in her ear, and the woman nodded gravely.

  So this was Fiona’s job. She was the assistant, or something, to this o
lder woman. That was far less glamorous than he’d imagined.

  Luckily for him, Konrad hadn’t moved. In fact, he was obviously unhappily trapped in some conversation with another older man Shaeffer recognized as Teddy Ross, a millionaire who preyed on young models. He looked back over at Fiona and instead found the old woman’s yellowed gaze trained on him, watching his every move.

  A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases…he thought to himself, taking a deep breath. He’d found that line while reading Keats in high school, and it had lodged itself in his subconsciousness. He assumed he’d remembered it so clearly because, in his adolescence, the subtle power of poetry had shaken him to his core because of the way it could shape the world. Now, though, it would swim to the surface whenever he felt judged or objectified. Another deep breath and Shaeffer finished his drink. He held the empty glass tightly in his hand as he walked across the room toward Konrad, repeating his mantra and trying to ignore the old woman’s piercing stare.

  “Konrad Fontaine, I presume?” Shaeffer said coyly, holding out his hand. Konrad took it and shook it, letting his fingers trail along Shaeffer’s palm when he released it. Shivers ran down Shaeffer’s spine.

  “And you would be?”

  “Shaeffer Gipson.”

  “A pleasure,” Konrad said, his sparkling gray eyes seeming to turn gold as the light reflected in them. “You remind me…A thing of beauty,” he paused, looking deeply into Shaeffer’s eyes, and Shaeffer felt his pulse quicken, his throat get dry. His mantra, his poem. “Is a joy forever.”