by Chase Potter
I’ve only made it over to the nightstand when my phone buzzes with a message from Carson. Be home in half an hour. You don’t have to wait up for me.
If it were any other teenager, I wouldn’t be nearly so trusting. But Carson is different, and I don’t just think that because I’m related to him. He’s just a great kid.
A new wave of mental exhaustion rushes over me, and I finally give in. Stripping down to my briefs, I crawl beneath the covers, hoping that sleep will come easily but knowing it won’t. Because at the center of the knot of shit inside me, there’s a nagging feeling that I can’t coax into the light.
* * * * *
The view from my office is perfect this morning. Brilliant crimson overflows from the horizon, drenching the skyscrapers and luxury high-rises with dawn. Not for the first time, I wish the windows opened. But even with an impenetrable layer of glass between me and open space, I can almost taste the cool air of mid-November.
It’s beautiful, but I also can’t forget that today at least, there might be some truth to the old mariner’s rhyme — red sky at morning, sailors take warning. I think a storm is coming.
“You get too much sun in this office,” James complains as he lets himself through the glass door. He sits down across from me and hands me a coffee. “So how’s it going? Missed you at football last night.”
“Uh…” A dozen explanations pop into my mind, but I don’t want to explain to him that — in a sad twist of irony — I skipped the game to avoid Alex but ended up blowing him instead. “I’ve been busy with a new project. Some lofts in the Warehouse District. I figured it would be good to get away from municipal work for a bit.”
“Good man.” James sips his coffee. “It was probably for the best that you didn’t come to practice. Alex Price is still breathing down our necks on the council. Every time he talks to anyone with even vague connections to city development contracts, he starts asking a shit ton of questions.” James makes a face. “And now he’s pulling records for which councilmen voted for and against each variance request.”
I catch myself holding my breath. “Does he seem to be getting anywhere?”
James shrugs. “He thinks he’s investigating an inconsistent zoning approval process or something. Hopefully it won’t go beyond that…” As his words trail, his expression brightens. “You know, Eric Bradford got elected.”
“Yeah.” I did know, I just didn’t care.
He scrutinizes me, and I can tell he doesn’t like my answer. “There’s a victory celebration at his home tomorrow night. Bradford has a nice place. You should come.”
I raise an eyebrow. James has family money, so if he thinks Bradford’s home is nice… “Actually I have plans tomorrow.”
James brings a finger to his chin. “Did I make that sound optional? I suppose I did. It’s not.”
I feel myself bristling with an instinctual, reactionary anger. I’m about to tell James exactly where he can shove his party invitation and then what he can do to himself afterward, but Edith saves me from saying something I shouldn’t. She backs through the glass door with a push cart stacked with white boxes.
“Here are the files on the 4th Street building.”
James glances from me to the boxes, but I ignore him. “Thanks, Edith. You can take the rest of the day off.”
She stares. “What the hell am I going to do with all that time?”
“Whatever you want,” I tell her. “Go and enjoy the day.”
She makes a might-as-well face and turns from my office. I watch as she packs up her things and leaves, and only then does James ask, “Do we have some documents to look through?”
“Yes.” I set my beastly paper shredder onto the desk with a definitive thud.
James grins. “I kind of feel like an Enron executive.”
“That’s not a good thing.”
Chapter Eight
“What’s bugging you?” Carson’s voice drags me back to the present.
I slowly look up from the white tablecloth spattered with candlelight. “Excuse me?”
“You haven’t said anything for the last ten minutes.”
I shrug, trying to push myself into making conversation. “Um… how was your day?”
Carson ignores the overture. “And you haven’t complained about the food even once. What’s wrong?”
I lower my voice just in case the chef himself might hear me. “I don’t complain about the food here!”
“Yes, you do.” He raises an accusatory eyebrow. “Last time you hated the pâté, the time before that it was the quinoa falafel.”
Soft classical music plays in the background, and I concede, “Sometimes I don’t love every course.”
Carson snorts at my carefully crafted understatement. “So what’s bothering you?”
Guilt washes over me, but this time it’s not because of anything I did with Alex. It’s because my selfish indulgence is now spilling over into my relationship with Carson. He claims that W.A. Frost is the best restaurant in the city, and it’s certainly the most expensive. Set in one of the oldest buildings still standing, it was originally an upscale pharmacy. Now, twenty foot velvet curtains hang from the tops of expansive windows while a fire crackles in a brick fireplace to our left. Eating here is probably his favorite thing we do together, and it’s shitty of me to be sullen all through dinner.
Carson sets down his fork beside the glazed pork belly. “Well?”
“It’s just been a rough week is all,” I say.
“I thought you were working on something you liked. Converting a warehouse, right?”
His spot-on recollection of my occasional comments about my work catches me by surprise. Sometimes he’s a teenager, through and through. And at other times, he’s so much more than that. A sense of pride glows in my face, and it takes a moment for me to answer. “It’s not that.”
If there’s something Carson can’t resist, it’s good food, and he picks up his fork again. “What then?” He takes a bite, and then with his mouth full, asks, “It’s not about me, is it?” Concern infiltrates his expression.
“No, no it’s not.”
He watches me. “You can talk about it if you want.”
“Um, thanks.” But I won’t, because… he’s Carson. Yeah, he’s my brother, but he’s also sort of like my kid. And there’s no way in hell that I’m going to confess to him that I’m having a crisis, that I can’t stop thinking about when I’m going to see Alex next.
* * * * *
For the second time tonight, music suffuses into my distracted senses. Except this time, it’s played by a live string quartet. It’s not classical though. I don’t recognize what they’re playing but it’s a cover of something modern. The music is supposed to be upbeat but really it’s just grating. On the high top table in front of me rests a solitary glass of champagne that I haven’t touched. Dozens of other high tops are spread across the room, and tuxedos and conversation gather around them, but I have no one to impress here. My dinner with Carson was hours ago, but I keep replaying his questions in my mind, wishing I could have been more open with him.
Not that I would have known where to start. With my experiences with Alex? Or with a confession that my business has crossed both ethical and legal lines?
My lips press into a line, and I force my gaze up from the sprawling parquet floor of mayor-elect Eric Bradford’s federal style mansion. The song comes to an end, and the man of the hour steps in front of the quartet and plucks a microphone from the stand.
Silence drapes itself over the room, smothers the hundred or so of us who were summoned – solely by James most likely – to pay homage to the new mayor.
“I’d like to thank you all for coming tonight,” Eric Bradford begins. His words continue but my attention wanders. I glance around the room to faces I recognize and faces I don’t. The whole city council is here, and there are some other developers like myself. Noticeably absent are any career city employees, not that I’m terribly surprised. James
hates bureaucracy.
I tune back in and immediately regret it. “… and I welcome you all to join me over the next four years as we tackle several key priorities. First…”
Picking up my flute of champagne from the high top, I excuse myself through the crowd toward the far end of the room where glass doors guard the balcony. The words of the city’s new mayor roll off my shoulders as I step into the brisk air. His voice is replaced by the sound of traffic on the street below, and it’s absolutely an improvement.
I take a breath of the crisp cold as I approach the stone balustrade overlooking the street. I lift my glass and take a sip, and the bubbles of carbonation sizzle and pop on my tongue. It’s extra dry, exactly the way champagne should be, and for a moment I let myself admire the imposing architecture of this building. My eyes roam across the red brick and gray stone, and the columns and green vines that scale the structure. I’ve always loved federal buildings because there’s nothing hidden in them. You can see the way everything is put together and supported, brick and block and stone and mortar, every piece built on another. It’s an honest sort of architecture.
Bradford is a tool, maybe even as much as James, but this mansion of his is something special.
The sound of a door latch opening and shutting breaks my reverie as Alex steps onto the balcony with his own glass of champagne. I hold my breath and watch as he closes the door behind him.
He joins me at the stone balustrade, and I turn so we’re both facing the street below. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” I finally say.
“Bradford invited me,” he says. “I wasn’t going to come.”
“No?”
Alex shrugs, and it makes him look slightly shorter than normal. “I’ve already taken statements from half the people here on that zoning issue. Doesn’t make me very popular.” He looks over his shoulder to get a view of the ballroom through the glass doors. “And the other half I just haven’t gotten to yet.”
I keep my eyes downward, focused on the red and yellow lights in the street below.
“That was a joke,” Alex says with a sigh.
“Right, sorry.”
I can feel him watching me, his gaze lingering. “You’re not mixed up in that, are you?”
My eyes flick toward his, and I let them smolder with intensity. It helps me mask my fear.
“Dumb question,” Alex answers himself. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you were. Unless you were like… the worst white collar criminal.” He laughs and takes a sip of his champagne.
I’m not sure whether to be relieved or offended. “Uh, you mean because I…”
He raises an amused eyebrow. “Yes?”
I swallow the words I was planning to say. Instead, I ask, “Do you usually have a good idea of who’s guilty?”
Alex smiles. “It’s not my job to decide if someone is guilty.”
“Right, that’s for a judge and jury. But you know what I mean?”
He shrugs and relents. “If someone is up to no good they do two things.” He counts on his fingers as he speaks. “First, they shut their mouth. Second, they lawyer up.” Then he smirks at me, to himself, to the street below. “And they definitely do not give me a blowjob.”
My cheeks burn with embarrassment, and when I finally bring myself to look at him, he says, “We match.”
“Huh?” My mind struggles to guess what he could mean.
“We’re both wearing bowties.”
I glance to just below his neck. Like me, he’s wearing a black satin bowtie. “Oh.” I say with relief, not wanting to look away from him just yet. “So if you’re not the biggest hit with this crowd, why did you come out tonight?”
Alex turns then so he’s facing the glass doors, leaning the small of his back against the stone. The golden light from the chandeliers shines against him, silhouetting his face against the November night. And now it’s not his bowtie holding my attention but his lips, parted just a little.
“I came because I thought I might see you here,” he says softly.
Despite my embarrassment from a moment ago, my hand ventures into the dark, sliding into the space between his black tuxedo jacket and the white of his shirt. I pull gently on his waist and he turns into me. My eyes are closed but my lips find his anyway. He’s warm, sweet, and his tongue pushes against mine. His stubble is rough against the edges of my lips, and my hands tighten around him. Time holds still, shutting out everyone and everything. This moment is for us even though it’s not nearly enough.
Somehow when he pulls away, it still feels as though I’ve barely gotten a taste. I step back, searching his expression for what went wrong.
Alex flashes me a mischievous smile. “We are in a public place,” he states.
“I don’t care what any of these people think,” I say, and it’s so close to the truth.
“I doubt that,” Alex laughs and his hand glides away from my waist, whisking his fingers across my stomach as he starts toward the doors.
“Where are you going?” I demand.
“It’s almost midnight,” he says, even though it doesn’t explain anything at all.
Frustration fills me. “You came here just to see me, and now that you have, you’re going to leave?”
His hand comes to a rest on one of the brass door handles, and he looks back at me. A smile tugs at his lips, the ones that were on mine just moments before. “Yeah. And it was totally worth it.”
Chapter Nine
The following week drifts past like a thick fog as I throw myself into the loft project, plodding through the various condo layouts. Bathrooms, living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens.
Normally I would subcontract all this out, but for now it’s a necessary distraction. Day by day, I force my head into the work, letting it bury me until even Edith starts making comments about me needing to take a break.
The hours seem endless, but still they stack together to create mornings and afternoons, and in turn those form into days. Days that I don’t hear from Alex.
I don’t make an effort to contact him either. But I can’t get him out of my head, and I’m not sure I even want that.
Somehow Friday finally comes. The end of a week of mercilessly pushing myself on a project I’m supposed to be passionate about. I am excited about the loft condos, but my thoughts always find their way back to the same place.
Outside, an unusual storm for late fall pounds frigid rain against the glass walls of my office building. Evening descended on the city over an hour ago, and my office is cold. I glance outside, out over the city lights fractured by water falling through the dark.
In the middle of my desk littered with papers, my phone glows with life. All on its own, my hand reaches across the top of my desk. The message is from Alex. What are you up to?
This is when I’m supposed to ignore him. This is the chance to make a clean break, to step out of his life.
I desperately try to reason with myself, and as I explain it over and over, it sort of works. I had a weird and passing interest in another guy. I went along with it and got my rocks off — well, his — and now I’ve moved on.
And that kiss on the balcony?
I grit my teeth, because it doesn’t fit into the logical construct I’ve been putting together.
The truth is that I don’t need something like that in my life. I have Carson, and I have my work.
I force my eyes back to my computer screen. But my mind refuses to obey, wandering away from what I’m designing, getting lost somewhere in the distant dark. It finds that first memory of Alex tackling me during a game of flag football. He’s staring down at me with curious hazel eyes and a quirky smile, brimming with a cool confidence.
And somehow my phone has made it back into my hand again. My thumb hovers over the screen, and temptation coils inside me. It tugs at my fingertips, my stomach, my throat, and I know that this is giving up. This week will have been for nothing if I text him now. But still I can’t stop myself. Or maybe I just don’
t want to.
My breaths seem to stick in my throat as I type out a message and send it. Still at work.
Have you eaten yet?
Not yet.
I haven’t been eating much at all lately. Rain slams against the glass outside, and Alex doesn’t respond. I hold my breath, wondering whether I should just go home. Carson is staying at a friend’s tonight, but if I asked him to cancel his plans and hang out with me, I know he would.
But I’m convinced the moment Carson saw me, he would know. He would know that something wasn’t right, and then his questions would chip away at my defenses until there wasn’t anything left. My secrets would be laid out for him to see, and I don’t know if I could handle that.
Fifteen minutes have passed when Alex lets himself in from the darkened hallway, through the empty lobby, and into my office.
“You’re… wet,” I say, trying to keep my voice light.
Alex looks me over, and I get the feeling he thinks I might say something like we should get you out of those wet clothes. But I don’t. “It’s pouring out there,” he says, holding up a bag from Chipotle.
Part of me thinks I should ask him what he’s doing here, but I keep my mouth shut as Alex sets the Chipotle bag on my desk and takes a seat across from me. “Steak or steak?” he asks. “Both have everything on them.”
I finally catch the scent, and my forgotten stomach growls in anticipation. “Even guacamole?”
He raises his eyebrows. “What kind of savage do you think I am? Of course there’s guac.”
A sheepish look pulls at my mouth as he pushes one of the burritos toward me.
“You can say it,” he says with a smirk. “I’m too good to you.”
I tear into the foil wrapper and take a huge first bite of my burrito so I don’t have to respond.
Alex chows down too, diving into the burrito like it might run away from him. “Damn, dude,” I manage to say between bites. His mouth is stuffed, and his answering grunt is barely audible.
