Full Exposure

by Jerry Cole

  “Evan?” he calls hoarsely, as soon as he manages to get his voice to come out as more than just an incoherent croak. A sizzle meets his ears in reply, and he props himself up on his elbow just enough to see over the bar counter to where Evan is flipping something hot and thyme-scented over the stove. He turns when he hears his name, barely more than a head and shoulders above the countertop from Scott’s perspective.

  “Morning, sleeping beauty,” he calls, even though the lighting outside means it can’t be any earlier than six in the evening. “Steak all right?”

  Steak is much more than all right, and Scott’s stomach growls loudly in agreement.

  Once he manages to shake the sleep from his shoulders and get to his feet, he pads his way over to the kitchen quietly, rapping his knuckles on the wall in the entryway as if Evan isn’t perfectly aware he’s there already. In the kitchen proper, Evan has two eyes turned up on the stove, at high heat. One of them has a pot with what looks like potatoes boiling away inside, the other is a large, cast iron frying pan with a slab of steak sizzling away in a bed of butter and thyme sprigs. It smells like Home, capital H. Not like the dingy, too-quiet apartment Scott lives in, but like coming back and belonging, like comfort and warm hugs and propping your feet up against the coffee table because no one minds if you do. His mouth waters.

  Evan is wearing an honest to God kiss the cook apron, baby pink with a bright red lipstick mark dotting the I in kiss. Scott can swallow down the caustic joke on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t stop the little snort that comes out of his nose at the sight.

  There’s hardly a response, though. Evan is busy. He slices open a clove of garlic as Scott walks in, doing a confusing little maneuver where he sticks the paring knife straight into the thickest part of the clove and twists it around to pop the garlic out of the papery skin. It’s fascinating to watch, especially through the hazy lens of Scott’s sleep-addled brain. Evan’s hands are deft and practiced as he works with the knife, knuckles prominent and fingers long and slender as a pianist’s.

  “I didn’t think you’d be up so soon,” he says, looking up but still ritually stabbing and peeling the garlic. Scott wants to tell him to slow down, look back at the knife before he takes off a finger, but his throat seems to have gone back to parched and completely useless. “You passed out pretty hard there. Dinner is almost done, though. I figured you would be hungry.”

  “Need any help?” Scott asks, shifting his weight from foot to foot in the kitchen entryway. He might be about as useful as a sack of wood chips when it comes to actually using a stove, but he figures he can offer anyway. Evan raises an eyebrow.

  “You have kitchen skills, now, do you?”

  “Not really.”

  Evan folds his lips to the side in an amused mock scowl, setting the wooden spoon in his hand back into the steak pan and pulling the pot off of the heat. “That’s fine, you can just mash the potatoes for me while I finish this up. Butter’s in the refrigerator, the masher should be in the left drawer over there.” He picks the spoon back up motioning to the corner of the kitchen with it, and Scott sets to work.

  It’s oddly domestic, he thinks as he methodically pounds the butter down into the potatoes. The kitchen is small enough that he’s nearly hip to hip with Evan, raising his arms and tucking himself closer to the counter every time Evan skirts around him without even thinking twice. It’s a nice feeling, someone besides himself belonging in his space. It’s a feeling he hasn’t had since April.

  Scott isn’t stupid, at least not when it comes to himself. He knows, knows it like the back of his hand, that he could feel something for Evan. That he does feel something for Evan. He just doesn’t know what to do about it.

  More than that, he doesn’t know if he can do anything about it without Evan bolting like a startled deer. It’s been nearly a month since their almost-kiss on New Year’s Eve, and Scott can still catch Evan tensing up every time he so much as mentions the party. He’s done a good job, a great job really, of integrating himself back into their little circle of friends, but when he thinks no one is watching, he still gets this expression on his face, like he isn’t quite sure how to fit himself into frame. Scott supposes that’s life for a photographer - always taking the pictures, never quite in them. He thinks about Frances’ Christmas photo, about how it was the first real glimpse of Evan he ever got to see. It’s such a strange dichotomy, he thinks, looking at Evan’s profile in the dim light of the kitchen. The slope of his nose is the same, the curve of his jawline and the dusting of freckles along his cheekbones, but it’s different, somehow. He looks older, more worn, more hesitant.

  Before he can stop himself, Scott wonders if there’s anything he can do to put that carefree smile back onto Evan’s face.

  The thud-thud-thud of the knife against the cutting board jolts Scott out of his reverie, and he looks down to realize he’s got a white knuckled grip on the potato masher. He lets it go slowly, one finger at a time as if he’s afraid it’ll break if he pulls away too quickly, and when he looks back up the glow that had bathed Evan’s skin in fiery gold has receded back into the usual fluorescent kitchen lighting.

  Evan drops the chopped garlic into the pan, filling the air with a smell so heavenly it has Scott’s stomach growling loudly again, and they both chuckle at the way the sound fills the silent air.

  “You don’t cook much at home, then?” Evan asks, with the garlic sizzling away in the pan alongside the steaks. Scott picks up the masher again, sets to work on the potatoes even though a burn is starting to work its way through his arm.

  “Never really needed to,” he says. “April did most of the cooking. She was the one with the touch for it. I’ve just been making meals for myself since, and that doesn’t really take much skill.”

  Evan gets a sad look on his face at that, a sort of melancholy downward curl to his lips that makes Scott remember that Evan has been alone just as long as he has.

  Scott works his way through the potatoes to avoid having to reply, and after a few minutes, he’s more than satisfied with his work. He might be piss poor at cooking, but he can say he knows how to make a killer dish of mashed potatoes, and when Evan sticks a spoon in it to taste, he hums appreciatively. The steaks seem about done, too, and the scent that wafts through the kitchen as Evan plates them up is just shy of pure, unadulterated ecstasy.

  Despite the posh splendor of the meal, they end up eating in the kitchen, Scott leaned back against the cooling stove as Evan sits and swings his legs on the countertop across from him. The kitchen is narrow, meant more for length space rather than width, and Evan’s feet brush Scott’s knees every few swings. Suddenly far too interested in his meal, Scott shifts his weight from foot to foot, shuffling almost imperceptibly so that he’s out of the range of Evan’s swings. The mashed potatoes are warm and fluffy as they hit his tongue, and he’s just a little bit unreasonably proud of that.

  Something hits his knee, and he looks down to see Evan’s leg swinging back down to bump against the cabinets beneath him. It’s bizarre and strangely heartwarming, and a little flare of fondness spreads in his chest at the realization that he’s here, crowded into Evan’s little postage stamp of a kitchen, eating a home cooked meal and practically playing footsie with him. It’s so absurdly domestic that it threatens to knock him off his feet.

  Evan looks pleased as punch with himself, despite the fact that he stubbornly refuses to make eye contact with Scott every time they brush up against each other. He’s staring down the steak instead, spearing the little cut up pieces with his fork and popping them into his mouth like candy. When he finally gets around to the mashed potatoes, he moans around the mouthful, snapping his eyes up to meet Scott’s. There's a glint there, accompanied by a splitting grin as soon as he swallows the bite down. The swell of pride comes back, nestles into his chest like it’s finding a home, and this time it’s accompanied by something small and warm and tender that Scott can’t quite put a name to.

  About halfway
through the meal, Evan drops his fork to the plate with a clatter, a little ah! sounding from his lips. “I almost forgot,” he says, putting down his plate and hopping off the counter. He skitters out of the kitchen and returns a moment later, a very expensive-looking bottle in his hands. “Frances gave me this. I promised her I’d have it next time I made a meal to go with it.”

  He pours the wine, heavy and blood-red, into a pair of glasses, handing one off to Scott. Scott doesn’t know much about wine, really, but he swirls it in the glass anyway, trying his best to come off as dignified when he takes a sip. It goes well with the steak, that’s for sure, but he can’t really say anything more than that. Thankfully, Evan doesn’t seem to look for his approval, taking a sip of the wine and grimacing slightly.

  “I always tell her I’m not a wine person,” he says, shuddering a little. Scott hides an amused snort behind another bite of steak and potatoes.

  “You didn’t have to open it, you know.”

  Evan flushes a little, looking steadfastly down at his plate. “Maybe I wanted to show off,” he says, his tone light. It’s playful, but there’s an undercurrent to it that comes to the surface when he adds, “you know, wine and dine you and all that.” His feet bump Scott’s legs as he hops back onto the counter, and he props one of them up against the cabinet directly to Scott’s right.

  “Well,” Scott says, a little spark of bravery flaring up at the way Evan looks at him. “Maybe it’s working.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  February comes and goes in a haze of melting snow and budding flowers. The five of them get together at Mitchell’s for Valentine’s Day, trading bargain chocolate boxes and acting appropriately grossed out when Frances leans back in her chair to give Mitchell an upside-down kiss as she passes by. Evan sticks to Scott’s side like glue the entire afternoon, looking simultaneously like he’s hanging off every word in the conversation and also a thousand miles away.

  When Evan disappears into the restroom for a second, Gabriel slides smoothly into the vacated seat, pinning Scott down with an unreadable look.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asks immediately, and Scott doesn’t even bother trying to pretend he doesn’t know what Gabriel is talking about. He spares a fleeting glance in the direction Evan had gone, clenching his jaw for a split second as he turns back to Gabriel.

  “I don’t know,” he admits. It’s a lie, of course. He knows. He knows all too well exactly what the feeling that rises in his chest whenever he looks at Evan is. He just doesn’t know what to do about it.

  “You’re still thinking about her, aren’t you?” Gabriel says, and Scott winces.

  “I don’t ever stop—” he begins to say, but Gabriel just raises a hand to stop him apologetically.

  “No, no,” he cuts in, “I know. I wouldn’t expect you to just forget about her, man, you know that. But you can’t possibly think she’d want you to swear off relationships forever, do you?”

  “I was going to swear off relationships when I married her,” Scott grumbles. It’s a hollow argument, and he knows Gabriel’s heard it a hundred times by now, but he can’t help himself.

  “And then you didn’t marry her,” he says. His voice is gentle, like Scott is a baby deer he’s trying not to scare off. “Look, all I’m saying is that you have something good in front of you. I don’t want you to get so caught up in looking for someone that’s gone that you miss the people you still have.” Again, Scott hears, even if Gabriel doesn’t say it.

  He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. He knows there isn’t anything stopping him, aside from lingering grief over a dead girl. Evan is alive, though, alive and real and digging himself deeper into the center of Scott’s heart with every passing day. Scott doesn’t know why he can’t just let himself like Evan.

  Gabriel hums, a quiet note of finality to the conversation, before rapping his knuckles against the table and standing back up. “Think about it, will you?” he says, as a parting note.

  So Scott does. He thinks about it, turns it over and over in his mind. He’s still thinking about it when Evan comes back to the table, and still when they leave the cafe, and still even more when he bundles Evan into a taxi and sends him home. He thinks about it later that night, poking aimlessly at a plate of leftover pasta salad, trying to picture the curve of Evan’s jawline, pinning it up like a mental snapshot next to every memory of April he can scrounge up just to see if the feeling matches up at all.

  It’s like a curse, really. Now that someone’s brought it front and center, forced him to look at himself and his feelings, he can’t avoid it any longer. He obsesses over it for the rest of the night, eyeing the couples walking down the street outside his apartment on their way to and from Valentine’s Day dates. He thinks it over as he’s going to bed, and again when he wakes up the next morning, and even still as he meets Frances outside the coffee shop for a drink at lunchtime.

  It’s not that he doesn’t like Evan, because he does. He knows that much by now, has figured that he can’t really deny it, at least to himself. It’s not the burning, all-consuming love he had expected, nor is it the easy and inevitable kind of love he had for April. It’s something else altogether. With Evan, it’s a kind of potential, an understanding that things could be good, could be amazing, even, if only he would let himself fall in love.

  He wonders, for a second, how he would handle things if Evan were to ever give him a real opportunity. Sure, he flirts harmlessly. But then again, words here and there aren’t the same, and he doesn’t find himself alone with Evan quite as much now as he used to.

  A feeling nags at him, a fixed suspicion that if he were to follow his heart and his instincts, if he were to let himself tumble down the rabbit hole that falling for Evan inevitably comes with, he wouldn’t come back up the same as when he started.

  ***

  He gets his answer a month and a half later, on a night out with Evan and the girls. There was an occasion, something minor that served more as an excuse to get them all in one place rather than something to actually be celebrated, but it doesn’t make much of a difference to Scott. He keeps his drink count low, sipping plain soda between beers. He doesn’t know what he’ll say to Evan if alcohol loosens his tongue, and he’d rather not risk it.

  When they split ways at the end of the night, it’s a block from Scott’s apartment. The girls go one way, arms linked and footsteps receding in the direction of Mitchell’s coffee shop, and Scott pauses for a moment, turning to face Evan.

  “You’re good to get back?” he asks, stuffing his hands into his pockets. The weather is warming up a little, but the early spring chill still sticks to him like frost if he stands still for too long. “You can come up if you want, you know.”

  Evan smiles at him, something incomprehensible flashing behind his eyes for a moment. “Is that a good idea?”

  Shrugging, Scott scuffs the toe of his shoe against the pavement. “You tell me,” he says, trying and failing to keep his voice nonchalant. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

  “Are you asking me what I think you are?”

  Caught. Scott supposes there’s really nothing for it now, and he rubs at the back of his neck, wincing slightly. “Might be,” he mumbles. “Actually, you know what? It’s late, I should—”

  “Yeah,” says Evan, cutting him off. “I, uh, I should be getting back soon anyway.”

  “Right, then.”

  “Yeah.” Scott turns stiffly, walks back in the direction of his apartment complex before he can stop himself and go back to Evan.

  When he turns, looking over his shoulder at the spot he had been standing, Evan is looking back at him with an unreadable expression clouding his features.

  ***

  There’s a knock on the door half an hour after he gets back, just as he’s finishing tidying up his kitchen for the night.

  “I missed the taxi,” Evan says, slouching in Scott’s doorway with his tie undone and his hands stuck deep into his pockets. Scott tries to ac
t like he’s surprised to see Evan there, he really does , but he can’t stop the smile spreading over his face. That smile is there, mask slipping more due to the late hour and his surprise than to the haze of the few drinks he had downed earlier, and he sees it mirrored in kind on Evan’s soft, handsome features. He tugs the towel free from the hanging rack, wipes off his wet hands absently as he steps out of the kitchen to better face Evan.

  “You can stay here, you know,” he says, even though it should be a given. He’s never said no to Evan, and he isn’t about to start now, just because his traitorous heart decided to override all common sense and develop some semblance of romantic feelings. It pounds in his chest like a metronome at full volume, swinging wildly from one side of his ribcage to the other in the same frantic kiss him kiss him kiss him rhythm it’s been on all day.

  He doesn’t know if it shows on his face, if somehow he’s projecting some aura that tells everyone in a five mile radius just how much he’s aching to get his lips on Evan’s, but something seems to shift in the air after the offer. Evan steps in, properly over the threshold now, closes the door behind him. “You always let me stay.”

  Kiss him kiss him kiss him, goes Scott’s heart, in double time.

  He shrugs nonchalantly, trying and failing to school his expression into something even remotely unaffected. Maybe it’s the lighting, maybe it’s the rose-tinted glasses Scott’s been wearing ever since New Year’s on the beach, when Evan’s lips had been a breath away from his own, but he reads himself in Evan’s expression, recognizes the nervous sort of hopefulness that lifts the corners of his eyes and plays around his laugh lines. “I like having you around,” he admits, too close to the truth for comfort.