by E M Lindsey
He’d been furious, but fired up, and scored a hat trick after that. He couldn’t help but smile at the memory as he fiddled with the laces. “This is…” he let out a heavy breath. “This is scarier than I thought it would be.”
Sam froze from where he was adjusting the straps on the bucket and he turned to face Niko, reaching for him. It was no question for Niko to give himself over, to melt into Sam’s touch, and his eyes closed as Sam dragged fingers through his hair. “This is for you, and for me, and for Maisy. And for the future of Kryiake’s,” he said, and Niko loved the way his restaurant’s name sounded on Sam’s lips and tongue. “You’ve got this, sweetheart, and I’m right here.”
Niko released the lip he was biting, and with renewed determination, laced up for the first time in what felt like an actual eternity. It took him a moment to regain his balance, to remember how to hold his ankles and position his weight, but by the time he got to the edge of the rink, he was ready. It was like slipping into a second skin, his muscles remembering exactly what to do to keep him upright.
He had trained far too long to forget how to do this, no matter how much time passed.
“Go on,” Sam urged softly. He was still in his chair, at the edge of the rink, and he reached for Niko’s fingers, pressing a kiss to his palm. “I’ll meet you out there.”
Niko took a deep breath, then put one tip of his blade to the ice. Closing his eyes, he willed himself forward. And then…
And then he was moving. His blades cut a harsh line into the freshly polished surface, the familiar sound of it, the stinging scent of frozen water in his nose bringing him so far back to the past, he almost lost himself. He did loop after loop, around and around the rink until he wasn’t sure he knew where he was anymore. Then he heard a sound from the side, and he turned, his gaze fixed on the entrance to the rink as he saw Sam pushing out in the bucket. Everything came crashing back, every second of pain and struggle to this very moment when his life finally felt like it had knitted back together again.
Sam was wobbly in the sledge, but he was getting the hang of it faster than Niko would have. He was grinning as he pushed his sticks against the ice, laughing when they slipped, sending him careening sideways.
Niko dug his blades into the ice, skating forward and coming to a skidding stop, snowing the bottom of the sledge a little which made him grin. He offered a hand up, and Sam’s warm palm took his as he tugged him upright.
When he made to pull away, Sam’s fingers tightened, not letting him move. Niko’s gaze snapped down, but just as his mouth opened to ask what was wrong, he saw it. A small black box, laying open in Sam’s other palm, a platinum band nestled in the velvet.
His voice caught in his throat, breathing stuttered in his chest as Sam’s gaze fixed hard on his face.
“I didn’t prepare a big speech, because that’s not really us. I just wanted to tell you that I love you, and I can’t imagine spending another moment of my life not engaged to you. If marriage isn’t your thing, then just take this as a gesture of knowing I’m in this. For good. It’s us, and Maisy and I aren’t going anywhere. Okay? So…will you?” His voice shook with his obvious nerves, and Niko’s brain scrambled. “Will you marry me?”
“No,” he blurted. When Sam’s face started to crack, he regained some of his ability to make sense. “I mean, yes. Fuck. I mean…” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his own ring box, dropping to both his knees in spite of the pain of kneeling on ice, and the gentle melt now soaking through his jeans. “I was going to. Also,” he managed.
Sam was staring at him, eyes wide, face somewhat disbelieving. He reached out with his free hand and touched the edge of the box. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Niko said with a half-hysterical laugh. “I have one for Maisy too, but it’s at home. I was going to give it to her in the morning, if you said yes.”
Sam swallowed heavily, his hand trembling as he pulled away. “Maisy too…?”
“Because it’s both of you,” Niko clarified. “I want all of it, okay? The good, the bad, the complicated, the easy. I just want to be a family with you and that amazing little girl.”
Sam swiped the back of his hand under his nose, then laughed and thrust the box at Niko. “Here, asshole. I can’t believe you stole my thunder!” His voice was thick with the tears swimming in his eyes, but he didn’t shed them. He just stared with a watery gaze as he took his own ring from Niko’s hands.
Niko took in a trembling breath, then pulled the ring out of the box and held it in the palm of his hand. “Will you put it on me?”
“That was the plan,” Sam told him, his voice still a little tense, but maybe in a good way. “Until you decided to steamroll my surprise.”
“Oh, babe,” Niko said, holding out his shaking hand for Sam to slide the ring up his finger. It was the exact fit. “Babe, believe me, this is a perfect fucking surprise.” He didn’t waste another second as he took Sam’s ring back, then looked up at his face who was staring down at it in wonder. “Like you said, we’re not big speech guys. And even if I had tried to write something, I would have fucked it up anyway. I just know that you’re my family, and I need you. So, marry me, okay?”
Sam laughed, reaching for him with one hand, holding out his other. “Okay,” he said. Niko managed to get the band on seconds before the sledge toppled over again, and Sam groaned. “This is the least fucking romantic proposal in the history of ever!”
Niko helped him upright, then straddled the front of the sledge and squeezed with his thighs as he took Sam’s face between his hands. “Maybe, but it’s also us. And so is me getting you off in the locker room where there are no cameras. So, you want to celebrate this thing properly?”
Sam grabbed the front of his shirt. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Awesome.” Niko stood up, reached down to hand Sam the sticks back, then eyed the rink where Sam’s chair waited. “Race you?” At Sam’s squawk of indignance, Niko took off, and for the first time in over a decade, felt finally and truly complete.
* * *
The End.
Book Three
American Traditional
Irons and Works: Book Three
Chapter One
Sage stood a moment and took time to reflect on how he’d always liked the way the sun reflected off the beads of water which clung to the blades of grass, right after the sprinklers shut off. A lot of cemeteries watered the fields early in the morning or late at night, but the one Ted’s mom had chosen watered their grass at ten every morning. Of course, Sage didn’t get to appreciate the view very often. He could only get away twice a year to pay a visit—once on the anniversary of Ted’s death, and once near his birthday, a day late to avoid running into Ted’s mother.
In the years past, he liked to spend the entire afternoon there, lying on the grass, staring at the flecks of sun through the pine trees. He’d spend hours talking to a man he knew was no longer listening, and the last thing he wanted was the woman interrupting him with her not-quite-subtle implications that Teddy wouldn’t be dead and buried if it hadn’t been for Sage. Not that anyone could take blame for Ted’s disease, but she needed something tangible to hate and Sage had always been an easy target. He’d let her do it at first, telling himself that eventually she’d stop being so angry and appreciate that there was someone else in the world who had loved Teddy as much as she had. But the years and her bitterness proved him wrong, and eventually he got tired of the constant verbal lashing. So, he’d show up late, and spend a little extra time there tracing the carvings in his stone with the tip of his finger to make up for lost time. It never brought him peace, but he couldn’t seem to stop showing up.
This year, though, felt a little different. He couldn’t bring himself to admit it aloud, but these visits were starting to feel a little morbid. Which, maybe it was appropriate. After all, visiting your dead fiancé’s plot where there was only a fraction of a cremated body was a bit of a morbid concept. Then again, everything that went o
n right after Teddy’s death had been a little… macabre.
As he stood at the foot of the grave, he couldn’t help but remember the fight that happened between Ted’s parents in the days before the funeral. Sage hadn’t known them well, he’d only been introduced a handful of times, but Ted had told him they’d been divorced for twenty years and getting them together for any reason was always toxic. Sage recalled with perfect clarity the way Ted had laughed and said, “The only times they’ll agree to be in the same room as each other will be my wedding—and should they outlive me—my funeral. But trust me when I say they’ll find some reason to fight. If I die, my body will literally turn into that little Israelite baby and they’ll be the mothers trying to lay stronger claim.”
“Does that make me King Solomon in this situation?” Sage had asked.
Ted had laughed, kissed him softly, and said, “Bold of you to assume you’ll outlive me.”
The irony was painful, even now, years later when he no longer had tears to cry. Sage hadn’t been King Solomon at the funeral, mostly because Teddy had been a pragmatic kind of guy and had a will with very specific details. His mother, being Orthodox, threatened to throw herself into the ocean if they cremated Teddy’s body, but Sage had to inform her it was already done by the time she arrived to collect his remains. Teddy’s father told her there was no point in being angry now, he was already gone, and she had to be restrained by two men in dark-blue kippahs until she calmed down. It was then Sage decided to step in and remind her that being cremated had been what Ted wanted, but she hadn’t taken that well, either.
He could still hear the cracking sound of the slap as her hand made contact with his cheek when the words spilled from his lips. Sometimes he could feel the echo of the sting, and he didn’t entirely blame her. Part of him hadn’t wanted that for Teddy. It made him feel twisted and sick inside to think of his body being burned to ash and condensed into some tiny urn and left to settle into dust. Though, in truth, Ted’s body shoved in the ground wasn’t a better image. There weren’t any good solutions, and because he had no legal rights to make decisions when it came to the final resting of Theodore Alain Cassian, he watched as the family tore themselves to pieces over what would come next.
In the end, Marie got some of it her way—Teddy was given a plot in a little Jewish cemetery, and she was allowed to bury a portion of his ashes facing east. Teddy’s father hadn’t asked for anything other than permission to enter their apartment and take a small box of photos Teddy kept in their linen closet.
Sage had, of course, given him free-reign in spite of the fact that the moment Alain had left the house, he spent the next twenty minutes bent over the toilet heaving what little he’d managed to eat over the week leading up to the funeral. It wasn’t like he had claim to the photos—they were all of Teddy’s childhood memories, long before he’d ever known Sage. Everything Sage had of the two of them fit conveniently onto a little stick he could plug into any computer and carry with him in his pocket. But losing any more of Teddy felt like too much.
Derek had come for him three days later, packing his apartment with stoic purpose, and neither of them talked about it. Sage didn’t protest as he sat in the passenger seat of Derek’s car and watched the scenery change from Arizona desert to the lush trees and far-reaching mountains of the Rockies. He cried twice during that time, and Derek acknowledged it with a hand on his shoulder, and absolutely no words.
Sage didn’t cry again. At least, not where anyone could see him. Instead, he threw himself into work—doing everything in his power to cultivate his art skills and reach the same level as Derek so he could build his own client base. Slowly, like a river of honey, Sage settled into his new life. Slowly, the people at Irons and Works became his family. He did his journeyman across the eastern United States, and he came home and got his first regular. He started taking graduate level classes in math and physics. He habitually drank black coffee every morning.
He stopped rolling over in his sleep and reaching for Teddy.
He stopped being able to remember what Teddy’s laugh sounded like, or the exact color of his eyes, and he was never brave enough to fire up the few videos he still had saved on his thumb drive.
He stopped crying, except on the two anniversaries he took those trips back to where he’d first met the love of his life, and now, those tears had dried up too. The only drops of water between them were the sprinkled beads of reclaimed water to keep the grass alive. He supposed he appreciated it—in a way. The fact that without it, the cemetery would feel like a wasteland, and no one wanted that.
Death was bad enough, and it was nice to be reminded of life as he knelt on the soft patch of lawn and reached out to touch the carving in the dark granite. The weight of the stone he’d picked out was heavy in his palm, and he felt his skin go a little clammy around it. A bead of sweat dripped down his temple from the midday heat. It was November, but Arizona rarely subjected itself to proper seasons.
“Happy birthday, Ted. Sorry I’m late,” he said to the slab of rock as he settled onto his ass. He felt the wetness soak into the back of his jeans, but he didn’t care. “Your mom decided to stay an extra day—found that out yesterday when I pulled up and saw her setting up a camping chair here. I don’t think I’m being paranoid when I say she’s probably doing it on purpose to fuck with my travel plans. I don’t know if she’s ever going to stop trying to drive me away. I mean, it didn’t work when you were alive, and it’s not like there’s incentive now that you’re gone. Though I do hope you haunt her ass sometimes.”
He twisted the stone in his hand, and part of him was grateful the Jewish tradition didn’t call for flowers. His stones were never still there when he came back, but he had a feeling Teddy’s mother would have loved letting flowers stay there and rot for Sage to find the following year.
He leaned forward and put the rock on the top of the headstone. It contrasted almost comically to the polished, crystal-like stones his mother had left, and he liked to think Teddy would have found the juxtaposition of them amusing. “I found this last week on a hike,” he said, brushing his fingers over the top before letting his hand fall away. He leaned back in the grass and turned his face up, the sun’s beams flickering through the heavy canopy of pine. “I probably shouldn’t have painted it. I ruined the natural aesthetic of the rock, but I was inspired. Plus, James crashed on my couch after drinking an entire fifth of whiskey and he was snoring loud enough to shake the windows so I couldn’t sleep. I finished a couple paintings last week too, but I’m probably going to burn them. I don’t think I’ve kept a single canvas since before you…”
And no. It was still too hard to say aloud. He never considered the idea that the word died would feel like the most vicious curse on his tongue, but it was years later, and it was still too much.
“I guess it doesn’t matter. Being an artist isn’t me. I mean, not in the traditional sense. Though you’d love what Derek has been turning out lately. His therapist has him working through his post-panic attacks by doing charcoal work. It’s almost like being in the eye of a tornado or something. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s…intense. I think he’s going to sell them as a set when he’s finished.”
Sage laid all the way back, his head pillowed on a patch of clovers. There were probably fat, angry fire ants not far off, but he didn’t think he’d mind that kind of pain. It was easier to handle than the intangible ache of grief which settled in his chest. Stretching his legs out, he felt the press of the headstone against the soles of his boots and wondered if this was some sort of desecration. If it was, Teddy would have loved it.
“I think I could have had hate-sex the other day. Niko and I got into a huge fight over tomatoes—because that fucking heathen won’t admit they’re a fruit. It got weirdly intense, and he kept staring at me when we were changing after our run. I don’t think I would have said no if he’d asked, which would have been a mistake, because I’m not going to hate-fuck a guy over tomatoes as th
e first time I let myself…after you…”
He cleared his throat and felt the familiar tightness in his chest, but his eyes remained dry. “I’m not crying,” he told the empty air. “I feel like I should tell someone about it, but I think people stopped listening to me talk about you a long time ago. It’s probably better that way.”
Sage turned on his side, letting his arm prop up his head, and he closed his eyes to feel the mild breeze over his face. He pictured Teddy sitting with him there, his hand holding Sage’s ankle the way he used to when they’d spend lazy Saturdays on the sofa—not watching TV or cooking so Teddy could pretend like he was keeping the Shabbat. He could almost feel Teddy’s fingers massaging him, and he could almost hear the rumble of his laughter until he realized he couldn’t remember what any of that was really like.
And still, he didn’t cry.
Chapter Two
Imagine how much nicer my college dorm would have been if I’d discovered anger-cleaning back then, Will thought to himself as he stormed around the condo with the plastic bag clutched between both hands. He was, by nature, a minimalist and hated any clutter around. He’d once come to the conclusion that growing up rich had given him the inability to assign value to material items. Even after getting cut off by his family and scraping by on a barista salary, he’d never lost that.
Material things had just never held much meaning for him. Up until he was twenty-one and graduating from Duke, he’d never had to work for anything. He’d make a quick phone call and whatever he wanted would be delivered shortly after. It was only contingent on the future where he’d become Dr. William Hasan Rahman, aptly named after his maternal grandfather and his father—both with long legacies of wealth and success.
