by Laura Stone
Mostly, he wanted these two people who had meant so much to him over the years to simply like each other. If anything, it would be great to have someone close by to talk with about Seth once he’d gone back to the States.
“Would you get a load of this pack of temptation! Dressing up for me? You flatter me, darlin’, but we both know it won’t happen.” Moira wore the high pink of a few beers. She flashed Oliver a brilliant smile and reached up, wrapping an arm around his neck. “You gorgeous beast, you did this on purpose.”
Oliver laughed and self-consciously fussed with his hair and shirt collar. He couldn’t accompany Seth for the night and not make an attempt to keep up, so he’d taken a little extra care with his clothes, choosing colors he’d remembered Seth favored on him. Before they left the apartment, Seth had looked at him so appreciatively that he’d begun to blush after Oliver asked if he looked okay.
“Yes, very,” had been Seth’s breathy reply. The little side-glances Seth had given him on the way over had given him a little boost of confidence, too. With the exception of his trip to see Seth on Broadway, it had been a while since he’d had the chance to dress up, or to go somewhere that wasn’t the library or lab.
Oliver leaned over to give Moira’s cheek a peck.
“Now, out of my way and let me get my hands on this lovely creature you’ve brought to meet me,” she said.
Seth laughed, a warm liquid sound that made Oliver’s stomach loop.
Oliver made the introductions. “Seth? This little elfling is Moira; Moira, this is Seth.”
Seth stepped forward, smiling, with his hand out in greeting. “It’s very nice to meet y—”
“Enough of that, give us a kiss.” Moira grabbed his hand and gave it a tug. Stunned, Seth allowed himself to be manhandled in her strong grip as she pulled him close and kissed each cheek.
“There. Now you’ve had a bit o’ milk, time to focus on the rest of the cow.” She waggled her eyebrows at him. “Take a seat, take a seat,” she said, motioning to the chairs on either side of her with a shooing motion.
“Uh, Moira?” Oliver leaned in and whispered into her ear. “You’re laying it on really thick.”
She fixed him with a stare. “Of course I am!” She leaned in and whispered back, “He’ll be so terrified, you’ll find him shivering in your lap in five minutes, mark my word.” She winked at him and hopped off her stool, pushing it out so they sat in more of a triangle than a straight line. At least that way Oliver knew she wouldn’t be able to steal a kiss from either of them if they had to lean across her to talk.
“Okay, now that you’ve given me the tourist version, how about I get to know the real you,” Seth said with a determined smile. “Hi! I’m Seth Larsen.”
Moira laughed and squeezed his knee. “Excellent. And fine, no more Plastic Paddy.” She offered her hand and said, “Moira Byrne, and believe me, the pleasure’s all mine.”
“That’s probably accurate,” was Seth’s dry reply. Fortunately, Oliver knew that Moira had a liking for a dry sense of humor. He allowed himself to exhale and told himself to not worry that they might hate each other after all.
“So you’re a huge star in America, I hear,” she said, her eyes glittering with mirth.
Seth tugged on his cuffs, and to Oliver it looked as if he was fighting off a smile.
“Sounds like you’ve met my father,” Seth said.
“Nope! But if he looks like you, I’d like to. Ah, cheers, mate.” She took a new beer from the bartender and set it in front of her. “I’ve just heard you off this one’s phone. Beautiful singing voice; matches the rest of you.”
Oliver looked around her to send Seth a “please don’t hate me?” expression. Seth asked the bartender for a vodka tonic with a lemon twist and said, “I see why you keep her. Where can I find one?”
“We’ll set up a loaner system later,” Moira said. She bumped her shoulder into Oliver. “And how are you? Any, well… interesting tidbits of information you’d like to share with the class?”
Oliver fixed her with a sour expression and said, “Well, I think Seth and I would like to have a drink or two before all of that, so why don’t you tell us what’s been happening with you, instead?”
Seth made an excited noise, put his drink down and gave her his full attention. “So! I met Janos. A little birdie told me that you happen to know him very well.” He made a production of folding his hands in his lap and giving her a massive grin.
“That I do,” she said, giving a saucy shake of her head and cackling. “Biblically, you might say. Now, don’t go looking at us like that, and you just meeting me and all!” She shook her finger at him when Seth wrinkled up his nose at her confession.
“He’s handsome, sure, but…” Seth shook his head a little bit before asking, “Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t you doing the ‘anti-bully, love the gays’ thing with Oliver? Why on earth did you hook up with a homophobe?”
Moira twisted in her seat to give Oliver a turn at her full attention. “Anti-bully, love the gays? You changed the name without telling me?” She rolled her eyes playfully and turned back to Seth. “You do have eyes, don’t you?”
Seth, looking slightly wary, answered, “Yes, but—”
“And you’re a real live boy with urges and needs, right?”
“Um, I don’t think that I—”
“Because let me just tell you. That was an itch I didn’t know needed scratching.” She kept eye contact with him as she took a long pull off her drink. “Oh, he’s thick as mud and half as useful, but Christ does he fill out a pair of trousers.”
As she fanned herself, Seth leaned behind her to get Oliver’s attention. He mouthed, “Oh. My. God.”
Oliver just laughed.
“But you’re right, he’s a smart as a sack of hammers and as open-minded as a shut door,” she sighed.
“Does this mean the backpacking across Hungary is a no?” Oliver asked.
“We-ell,” she teased, wriggling in her seat a bit and shoving on Oliver’s forearm. “Ask why. Go on.”
“Why?” he laughed.
“Oh, that’s because I’ll be busy, you see.” She opened her eyes wide and took a dainty sip from her beer. She even held out her pinky.
“You’ve worked it enough. Spill,” Oliver said.
“I accepted a four-year fellowship at one University of California, Berkeley just this morning, that’s why.”
“That’s wonderful!” Oliver exclaimed, pulling her into a hug.
“Congratulations!” Seth echoed.
She leaned back, beaming at them each in turn. “I was sold on it because it’s the school of free love. That sounds perfect for me.” She winked at Oliver.
“Oliver still hasn’t decided where he’s going,” Seth said, swirling his glass. He looked at his drink as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.
“He hasn’t, has he?” She gave Oliver’s knee a squeeze, then motioned for the bartender to bring another round by circling her finger overhead. “Well, Seth, I’ll tell you—it’s maybe the most difficult decision I’ve made in my life yet, struth.”
“We don’t have to do this now,” Oliver said, trying to get Seth to look up at him.
Seth sat up, squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. “I want to hear about Moira’s choice, though. It’ll be interesting to hear how it all works from someone who isn’t likely to use Broadway understudies as an example.”
Moira looked totally confused at that.
“I don’t know this Broadway thing, but I do know that at first, and Oliver will back me up.” She turned to face him and rested her arm on the back of her bar stool. “Or he’d better—I was going to take some time off. Travel, that sort of thing. I’ve been going at it hard for five years, and the thought of another six made me feel melted.”
“So what changed that?” Seth asked.
“I went home for the holidays,” she laughed. “My da went to university, but no one else in my family did. At first they
all teased me, said I was puttin’ on airs.” She took a long drink after that, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth to wipe away the moisture. “But this last time going home… oh, the stupid articles they pressed at me. They just want me to get married and make babies. I’d rather skip all that and just practice at it, personally.”
Seth hummed a little laugh at her. Oliver had known about her family’s background, but thought most of it was put on for his benefit: the “Plastic Paddy” act.
“So, my mam pulled me aside and said enough was enough, it was time to stop thinking I was smart and ‘do the smart thing.’” She shrugged but smiled. Oliver noticed the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “So I am. I’m doing the smart thing. Making sure that I will always have the credentials to have the life and respect I deserve.”
Seth reached over and delicately patted her arm in sympathy.
“And it doesn’t hurt that it’s the top-ranked graduate program in the whole world, and don’t let this one,” she pointed her thumb at Oliver, “tell you otherwise.”
Oliver rubbed her back with one hand. “I’m really happy for you.”
“Prove it by buying a round! What is this, a funeral?” She polished off her beer. “Christ, I’ve seen livelier wakes than this. Lots more nudity, too.”
Seth choked on his drink as she laughed and pounded on his back.
* * *
Seth swore that Moira had drugged him, because in twenty-plus years not even his own father had ever gotten him to play darts; but she had managed it somehow. He also told Oliver later that he was not surprised to find that he was excellent at it.
“With all of the daydreaming I did of throwing sharpened pencils into the faces of bullies in middle school, it just felt natural.”
He also swore to Oliver that he didn’t drink much that night, but she somehow managed to get him tipsy. Not drunk, just loose-limbed and laughing. After the day they’d had, Oliver was glad to see him relaxed and happy.
As the night went on, the bar began to get crowded, and the table they’d moved to near the dartboard became hot property. When Seth moved to sit down after a turn at the board, someone had taken his chair. He raised an eyebrow at Oliver, who immediately made to stand up and give Seth his seat. Seth rolled his eyes, pushed Oliver back into his seat and then perched on his lap sideways, draping one arm over Oliver’s broad shoulders, his fingers trailing over the thick, rounded muscle as Oliver held onto his waist.
“You were right. She’s fun,” Seth said, his mouth close to Oliver’s ear to make sure that he could hear over the din.
Oliver’s eyes closed and he shivered from the sensation. His hand naturally migrated to the side of Seth’s thigh to hold him in place, and he pressed his face into Seth’s chest, just breathing him in. Seth’s fingers on his shoulder sent electric pulses shooting through him, centered at his aching heart.
It was like being a teenager again, the way his stomach bubbled and fizzed, and yet he felt tied up in knots, wondering where the night could go. He had the hyper-aware feeling that Seth wanted him, and knew that the possibility of intimacy was becoming more likely as the night went on. And he had that amazing sensation of time, which seemed to race at breakneck speed and yet in certain moments almost froze in flashes, like snapshots for him to dream over later. As when Seth, impeccably dressed, laughed at something flattering that an older gentleman said to him regarding his waistcoat; and when, his familiar fashion-fervor lighting up his eyes, he admired the man’s Donegal newsboy cap in turn. Like when Seth turned to look at Oliver over his shoulder, having made three bullseyes in a row. He looked proud, a little surprised, and pink with both excitement and drink.
“Oliver?” Seth’s fingers had moved to twine and ruffle the shorter hair at Oliver’s nape by this point, and Oliver wanted to sit in the silly pub forever if it meant Seth never stopped what he was doing.
“Mm?” Oliver tightened his arm around Seth’s waist when he rested his cheek against Oliver’s hair. Seth was close enough for his body heat to seep into Oliver’s skin, for the delicate scent of his cologne to be evident, for Oliver to be soothed by the gentle rise and fall of his breathing.
“I want us to have a special place together.”
Oliver’s chest constricted painfully; Seth sounded so… despondent. Suddenly, he wanted Seth to turn back into the laughing, joy-filled person who, just an hour ago, had praised an old man with a pipe, saying that he was the “epitome of the classic British gentleman.”
“I don’t want to visit your tree. I don’t want you to visit my corner.” Seth sighed and ran the flat of his hand down Oliver’s back and up again, curling his fingers at the nape of Oliver’s neck and tangling them in the hairs there. “Are we just not meant to have something that’s ours?” Seth’s voice broke at the end. He turned to kiss the crown of Oliver’s head and said, “Is that what we’re not admitting ourselves?”
Oliver squeezed the leg that Seth had draped over him and held him just so. It didn’t matter that they were in a public place; Oliver could barely hear the buzz of the crowd over the pounding of his own heart. He shut his eyes tight and pressed his face into Seth’s side, the silk of the pocket square momentarily cooling his heated cheek. “I want us to have that, too. I always have.”
Seth kissed the top of his head again and leaned back to his ear. “I want so—this might be it, this time together. Let’s enjoy it. We don’t know what’s going to happen, and I just really need to have this time with you. Let’s just enjoy this, please?” It was the please that broke him. For Seth to plead with him—for him to think that there was anything Oliver wouldn’t give him…
But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? He wasn’t able to give Seth a definitive answer to the most important question for their future. He gave Seth one more squeeze. He needed to hang on to this moment, to burn the feeling of Seth holding him into his memory before he finally looked up to say fervently, meaning it with everything in him, “That’s what I want, Seth.”
“Oh, and don’t I hate to break up this pretty picture!” To her credit, Moira truly looked flustered. “But if you don’t take your turn, Oliver, I think these old geezers are going to break our kneecaps.” Moira pointed over her shoulder at the group of men who had edged closer to their table over the past half-hour.
Oliver looked up at her; he must have looked either exhausted or devastated, given her reaction.
“Screw the darts; let’s take a bit of a break, aye?” She cupped both of their faces and jerked her head toward the other corner of the bar. “There’s a sofa in the corner that’s free; grab that while I nick us a round.”
She hurried off to the bar before they could argue. Seth got to his feet and held out his hand, a sad little smile on his face. “Come on. I’ll let you be the little spoon.”
Oliver dropped his chin and smiled against the hot prickle building behind his eyes. “You know that’s my favorite.”
“I do indeed,” Seth said, tucking Oliver’s arm around his and leading him back to a well-worn Chesterfield. Seth sat against the arm and patted the space to his right, sliding his arm along the back of the sofa as Oliver slipped in next to him.
Oliver noted that the crowd was the usual mix of students, older academics who lived in the city and locals. People from all over came to this particular place, but it had a homey air about it and, for all its notoriety, it was still a neighborhood pub. And while it wasn’t quite the same as New York, it also wasn’t unusual for same sex couples to be out and about in Cambridge.
Oliver reached his hand up to clasp Seth’s, just at Oliver’s shoulder, and Seth linked his other hand with Oliver’s, pulling him back against himself. They sat quietly, wrapped in each other, pressed temple to cheek. It was undeniably bittersweet. Every time the “this could be it” thought rose up, Oliver quashed it with a counter-thought, “but this could be how it always is,” and let hope have its moment for a change. Seth was right; they needed to enjoy this time together, regardless
of the outcome, and stay positive and hopeful.
He turned his head and pressed his forehead into Seth’s neck, breathing him in. “I still get to go to New York next week, remember.”
Seth inhaled slowly, deeply. He squeezed Oliver’s hand in his. “How long are you there?”
“I don’t know. They just said to come.” Oliver leaned back, searching Seth’s face for just the slightest hint that he’d not given up yet, that this wouldn’t be it. “So that’s something we can plan tomorrow, maybe? We could see if there’s a seat free on your flight back?”
Seth smiled at that, a genuinely warm and happy smile, and buried his face in Oliver’s hair once again. It went a long way toward soothing Oliver’s bruised and aching heart. Seth nuzzled behind Oliver’s ear and murmured, “That would be great. Let’s look at that first thing tomorrow morning, okay?”
“Whatever you want.”
Seth’s body briefly went rigid around him and his smile faded. He buried his face in the back of Oliver’s hair again and shuddered. Oliver realized that it was a lie—it wasn’t whatever Seth wanted. He needed to control his impulsive habit of saying whatever popped into his head. He pulled Seth’s hand to his lips and placed a chaste kiss on it in apology. It wasn’t enough, he knew, but it was something.
Moira arrived, balancing two huge pints and Seth’s highball in one of her tiny hands like a professional.
“You either were a waitress or a world-class juggler in a previous life,” Seth said to her.
She laughed. “I’ve four brothers, and guess who’s expected to keep them in beer when the telly’s on? And why do you suppose I want to get to California so badly?” She gave him a wink and sat in a deep wingback chair adjacent to the sofa.
“Oliver? You know I love ya dearly, right?”
“Of course!”
