The Spindle's Curse: A modern mm romance inspired by Sleeping Beauty (Ever After Book 1)

by TL Gehr

  I arrive at The Spindle a little early on Wednesday. My stomach is already fluttery with excitement and nerves—to see Philip and to have the difficult conversation about Mom.

  Maxine is behind the bar and she doesn’t smile at me. In fact, her eyes look hard when she says, “Mister Arrigo wants to see you.” Mister Arrigo, not Philip.

  The fluttering in my stomach intensifies. “What’s wrong?”

  She shakes her head.

  Maybe she heard about me and Philip. I can see why that might make her angry, if she thought I was getting laid when I should have been watching the front. Or maybe we were loud on Monday and a customer complained. My heart thrums loudly, but I take a deep breath. No negative thought spiraling.

  It’s going to be fine. And if it’s not fine, it’s probably not going to be as bad as you think.

  It’s Philip. Talking to Philip isn’t something to be afraid of.

  Except it’s not Philip. The man sitting behind Philip’s desk, paging through a file, who asks me to shut the door behind me, is Philip’s father. Philip is standing next to him, but he’s staring straight ahead at the far wall. He doesn’t even look concerned, he looks blank. Like some sci-fi automaton.

  “Have a seat.” Philip’s father says.

  I am nothing but a pounding heartbeat as I sink into the chair opposite him. “Um, it’s good to see you again Mister… sir.” I realize I still don’t know his name. I look at Philip, but he doesn’t even acknowledge me.

  “Is it?” His father asks. “Brian Rose, born 1995,” he reads from the page in front of him. “Dropped out of school in 9th grade.”

  My blood turns to ice in my veins. If that’s my file then…

  “Arrested at age sixteen, but charges dismissed.” He flips the page. “Picked up again at age nineteen. Served thirteen months at Wallkill Correctional Facility. Three months at Daisy Spring Treatment and Recovery center. Suffers from a variety of mental health disorders… I don’t even know what these are. Your psychologist calls you defensive and unwilling to take responsibility for your own choices.”

  It feels like I’ve just been punched in the stomach. I can’t breathe. Where did he even get all of that? No wonder Philip doesn’t want to look at me. His jaw is set. He hasn’t moved a muscle. I would have told him. Just not like this.

  His father closes the file. “Did you think I wouldn’t have the man dating my son investigated? And just as well I did. Did you really think you could steal from us and we wouldn’t know?”

  Steal? My face feels numb. This is a nightmare. It has to be. “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t try to lie—”

  “Everything you said is true but I didn’t steal, wouldn’t steal, especially not from here.” Nothing that would hurt Philip, never anything that would harm him. No matter what. I’m shaking. Did something happen with the safe? Do they think it’s me because of my record and because I asked about the cameras? Oh god, and I saw Philip put in the code.

  But his father slams a black and white photograph of me down on the desk. “I’d like to hear you try to explain your way out of this.”

  The photograph is from a security camera. It’s me. I recognize my hair and my jacket, even the little triangle tattoo at the back of my neck that’s supposed to represent my new start. It’s me and I’m standing at the register and I seem to be holding a stack of bills.

  Philip’s father points to the timestamp. “You were the last person at that register before it was found to be empty.”

  “There has to be some mistake.”

  “Is that or is that not you?”

  “It is me but I don’t… I don’t…” Even my lips are quivering. My brain is fuzz, this waking nightmare is like bleach on dark fabric, spreading blankness through my mind, through my limbs.

  “Are you saying the security cameras lied?”

  I shake my head. “I didn’t take the money.” I look at the man who I so recently held in my arms, who bent me over this very desk. “Philip, please…”

  He flinches.

  His father hits the table with the flat of his hand. “Don’t you dare ask my son for sympathy.” He throws the file at me. The papers scatter. “You have him to thank for the fact that you’re not walking out of here in handcuffs. If I could press charges I would, but he insists we give you a chance. So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. You are going to return the money and then I never want to lay eyes on you again. If I see you near here or near my son I will have you arrested. Return the money by the end of today, assuming you haven’t shot it into your veins already, and we won’t get the cops involved.”

  I hug myself, trying to keep my body from shaking itself apart. I can’t go back to prison. I can already smell the concrete, the stale sweat. I can feel the kick of the boot, the punch of the fist, hear the clang of my cell closing. I can’t go back. The cold concrete beneath my knees. The scrape of gravel on my palms. My body no longer my own. I can’t go back.

  “How… how much?”

  “What?” the old man asks.

  It’s difficult to get the words out, they’re coming out all crumpled. I try to enunciate better. “How much money. If I’m going to pay it back I need to know how much.”

  Philip looks at me for the first time while his father reads out the number. It’s a very large number. Philip said they made a killing from all those expensive coffees, and lunch was pretty busy too. It’s a large number. I know that much. But when it enters my mind, and I try to make sense of it, the digits get all confused.

  “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

  “Get out.”

  I stare at him. He needs to repeat the number, but even as I’m sitting there in shock, I know that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because there is absolutely nowhere I can get that kind of money.

  “Out!” Philip’s dad points to the door.

  I scramble out of the chair and dash from the restaurant, my fright becoming flight, my numb limbs flooding with adrenaline. I don’t stop running until I get to Wall Street station. I run all the way down to the platform and onto the train. I’m shivering and twitching. My legs give in and I sink to the floor, huddled up in the carriage with my head between my knees. I want to throw up and I need to hold it in until my stop before I spoil the shoes of at least three finance guys.

  I can’t go back to prison. I can’t get the money. Dad’s broke since paying for rehab and I don’t have anyone else.

  When I get to my apartment, I pull out my backpack where I’ve been storing the pay from The Spindle. I try count it out, but of course I fail because my head is too much of a mess. I try again, but it’s no use. No matter how many times I look at my savings it will never be more than a few hundred dollars.

  I push the backpack back under the bed and that’s when I see Philip’s underwear. The pair he left here.

  My chest caves in. Philip…

  I’ll never get to touch him again. I’ll never see those dimples again. I’ll never feel his kisses again. I touch my neck, where he left his mark. I’ll probably never even see him again. Even if I do… the way he was standing there. Cold and remote. Cold and remote like when he was with Chase. Like when Chase hurt him. I swore I’d never let him feel that way again… and yet, before even forty-eight hours had passed I shattered his heart with my own hands. How did I think for a moment I could be better than Chase? I press my palms to my eyes. I keep imagining Philip’s father telling him about my past, how betrayed he must feel. He believes I stole from him…

  I haven’t just lost my job, my new start, I’ve lost him. I try to hold back the tears, I try to hold myself back from the spiral. What would Gene say now?

  Your psychologist calls you defensive and unwilling to take responsibility for your own choices.

  I curl in on myself. I don’t know how the private investigator got hold of her files, but I can see her writing those notes while I’m speaking, telling me, “The only person responsible for you is you, Brian. You can’t le
t someone else’s mistakes hold you back.”

  I thought she was on my side. She didn’t even like me.

  I need to think of a way to save myself and I can’t. All I can do is lie here and cry. Miserable, weak piece of trash. Selfish deviant. A real man wouldn’t crumble like this. So pathetic and broken. I can’t take this pain.

  The craving twists through me like a dark tentacle. It folds around my heart, offering oblivion.

  There’s no fighting it… It’s your brain, it’s the way we’re wired… Some folks need antidepressants to get through the day, some people need everything in straight little lines. We need this. Getting high is the only way we feel whole.

  I reach for my tags. White, orange, green and red. What do they mean? Philip asked.

  Nothing. They mean nothing.

  I throw them across the room. I have neither a reason nor the strength to fight this anymore.

  32

  Philip

  I gather the papers up from the floor, the letters blurring before my eyes. My hands are surprisingly steady, but probably because I know my father is watching me. The shame crawls across my skin under his gaze. He’s been going on at me for twenty minutes about how stupid I was to hire someone without even doing a basic background check. How am I supposed to run the family when I’m such a trusting fool? When your mother hears about this…

  I’m surprised he hasn’t told her already.

  I pick up the photograph. It’s Brian all right. Even if I hadn’t known the jacket, I’d have known the tattoo. I never got a chance to ask him what it meant.

  Maxine called as soon as she discovered the register was empty. I was instantly outed as a clueless pretender with this whole business management thing. I didn’t know what to do, who I was supposed to contact first. The police? The insurance people? So, I called Dad. He got hold of the security company and watched the tapes. Then he called me into his office and he read this file to me.

  I didn’t sleep at all last night. I kept reaching for the phone, wanting to call Brian and ask him if it was true. But Dad said I shouldn’t contact him, or he’d run. He wanted to have the police waiting for him when he rocked up to work.

  I cursed myself for being so gullible, for giving my heart away to a practical stranger. I felt sick with it and sick with the memory of his body under mine.

  Then I kept seeing that body in prison. Gentle, vulnerable Brian. He wouldn’t be a first offender this time. He’d be stuck there. I’ve heard things don’t go well for gay men in prison. What has he been through already?

  In the morning, I told Dad no cops. I don’t care what he’s done or how he’s used me, I can’t be responsible for locking him away for years. It took a lot of convincing and I think the only thing that swayed him was that the business is in my name and I was ultimately the one to choose whether or not to press charges. If he pushed the matter, I said, I’d tell the cops that the money was a gift. Then they could do nothing.

  I knew I had to be there when Dad confronted him, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at him. He didn’t even know how much money he took. Of course not, because no matter what else he might have told me, the dyscalculia must be real. I saw the panic in his face when Dad read him the number. Brian can’t do numbers.

  Brian… can’t do numbers.

  “I never gave him access to the register,” I say suddenly.

  Dad stops his diatribe. “What?”

  I shuffle through the papers to get to the sheet with his “mental illnesses” that Dad mentioned. I’m sure it’s not legal for us to have this. I show it to him. Second on the list, below ADHD and above insomnia is dyscalculia.

  “It’s like dyslexia. He can’t process numbers. I never gave him a login for the register.”

  Dad narrows his eyes and looks up from the page. “What are you saying?”

  I shuffle back to the photograph. It’s pretty damning. “It looks like he’s at the register, but I never gave him access. I had other staff ringing up his orders.” My heart thuds as I realize… “The register is closed. In the photo. It’s closed. Do you have the footage?”

  My Dad pulls out his laptop and sets it on the desk. It’s already cued up to the part of the footage that shows Brian.

  I can clearly see his shoulders moving, but his torso blocks the register itself from view. There’s a flash of paper in his hands like he’s handling cash, but he’s not standing far back enough for the register to be open.

  “If he’s not taking from the register, what is he doing?” Dad asks.

  The paper flashes again and then I realize.

  “Shit. Fuck.” I rush out into the restaurant, my father demanding explanations behind me. Alarmed customers look up as I skid on the tiles in my hurry to get behind the bar.

  It’s there—the tattered, much-folded, manual that I gave Brian on his first day. I seize it and hold it up to Dad as my heart plunges. “He was studying the menu.” I wave the paper under his nose. “I gave him this to study.” Oh god what have I done? “I need to find him.”

  I head for the door, but my father grabs my arm to stop me. This kind of public display is completely unlike him. “Just wait a minute. Someone took that money.”

  I drop my voice. “But not Brian.”

  “The felon? Are you sure?”

  I should have been sure from the start. I should have trusted him, stood by him. It was too easy to believe that all those wonderful things he said to me were no more than flattery, that the magical last few days were just another fairytale spun by someone who wanted to use me. That I was, when it came down to it, unlovable. My own insecurities made my love so fragile. He’ll never forgive me, but I need to ask.

  “I’m sure. Maxine!”

  She comes around the bar, arms folded and eyes sorrowful.

  “Maxine, did you discover the cash missing yourself?”

  “No, Malena did.” There’s a roaring in my ears that almost drowns out the rest of her words. “She went to ring up a table and there wasn’t anything in the till.”

  I look at my father. I promised Brian I wouldn’t use what he told me in confidence against his mom. “Get your guy to run a background check on Malena Rose. I’ll meet you back here in a few hours.”

  “You’re giving me orders?”

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I need to find Brian.”

  There’s an app on my phone that shouldn’t be there. Or rather, I shouldn’t use it this way.

  I bought Brian’s phone and set it up under my account. I haven’t told him yet, because I didn’t want him to freak out about money, but it’s on my contract. Which means as far as Apple knows, his phone is my device.

  The Find My app tells me Brian is a few blocks from his apartment.

  I catch a cab, but I hit the morning rush. As the cab crawls uptown, I watch the little icon that represents Brian’s phone. It spends some time walking around the neighborhood, pauses a few blocks from home, then heads back towards his apartment. I give the cabby his address. Midtown is nearly impossible to cross at this time of day. Horns blare, breaks squeal. The driver waves out the window, swearing, when someone nearly goes into us. I clutch at my coat. Every moment I’m not with Brian is a moment he’s in pain. I nearly dial his number for what must be the twelfth time in as many hours, but no. I can’t apologize over the phone. I owe it to him to beg his forgiveness to his face.

  Finally, when we’re a few blocks away, I pay the driver and jump out. I hurry the rest of the way on foot, weaving between tourists. When I get into his building, I climb the stairs two at a time. I’m out of breath when I arrive at his door and I knock frantically.

  “Brian! It’s Philip. I know you don’t want to see me right now, but I need to talk to you.”

  No answer. I know he’s in there, I can see it on my screen.

  I knock harder. “Please, at least let me talk to you?”

  I wait ’til the count of five. Still nothing. “I know I messed up,” I say through the door. “I
’m sorry. I know you didn’t do it. Please open the door.”

  Nothing. I sigh and dial his number. Maybe he’s listening to really loud music or something.

  The phone rings and rings. I can hear it ringing. A spike of fear jolts into my heart.

  I bang again. “Brian, please? I know you’re there. Just let me know you’re okay.” I bang with my fist, hard enough that the door shakes. There’s no way he can’t hear that, even if he has earphones in or is in the shower or something. “I just need to know you’re okay then I’ll go.”

  Nothing.

  “Brian!”

  The next door over opens and a little old lady sticks her head out. “What’s all this about now?”

  This must be Cynthia. No time for introductions. “He’s in there. He’s upset. He’s not answering.” I show her the phone. Now my hands are shaking.

  “Oh, well, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  I’m not so sure. I have a horrible sick feeling in my gut. “Brian!” I shout again, rattling the door.

  “That’s enough of that,” Cynthia says. I whirl on her, but she’s holding up a key.

  I snatch it from her hand without even saying thank you and shove it into the lock.

  The room is dim and the blinds are drawn. “Brian!” I’m hoping he’ll come out of the bathroom and shout at me to get lost, but I don’t hear the shower. I’m aware of Cynthia at my shoulder as I move further into the room.

  I see his leg first, dangling over the corner of the bed.

  I rush through to the bedroom and when I see him it’s like a jackhammer to my chest. He’s sprawled across the bed, mouth open, a belt tied tight around his upper arm.

  “No!” I fall to my knees beside him, narrowly missing the syringe that’s tumbled from his limp fingers.

  His skin is cool as I feel desperately for a pulse. “Call 911!”

  His chest isn’t moving. I cradle his head in my hands, pressing my fingers to the place just above the hickey I gave him. This can’t be real, this can’t be happening. Is that his pulse, or mine? He got in a few minutes ago, he can’t be dead. I should have run faster.