by Gregory Ashe
“I did not assault you,” Magnus said, but he was smiling now, letting Knight pull him into an embrace. “I was the one who ended up with a concussion.”
“I want to kiss you,” Knight whispered in his ear. “Right here. Right now.”
Magnus had learned early on that the only way to keep up with Nickolas Knight was to try to get a head start. All around them, cheers erupted as Magnus kissed the hell out of his man.
VI
FEBRUARY 24
SUNDAY
1:02 AM
BACK IN THE HOUSE that Hazard had rented for the night, he kicked off his jeans and flopped back on the bed.
“That was exhausting.”
“That was incredible.” Somers bounced on the mattress next to him, then rolled onto his side. “That was, no exaggeration, the most fun I have ever had.”
Hazard scowled. “You improvised. That part about Narcisa and the books at auction.”
“Oh, come on, Ree. The material was perfect: the weird ledgers, all that stuff about the debts. It was such a great way to tie things up.”
“It was unrealistic. A struggling used-book store in a small town isn’t going to have the resources to find, acquire, and then sell at auction rare books worth enough to cover any outstanding debts.” He played with his sweatshirt, trying not to add the next part, but it slipped out anyway. “And I wrote a good solution to that problem in the original script.”
“Right.” Somers bounced off the bed, papers rustled, and he came back with a sheaf of pages. “You’re referring to pages two through twelve of our final scene? When Nickolas Knight and Magnus Shelton sit down in the airport and make a solid plan for investing, including a list of specific index funds that Nickolas Knight personally recommends, and then their vigorous debate about the pros and cons of ETF vs mutual funds.”
“It’s very thoroughly researched. And accurate.”
“People watching a romantic movie don’t want thorough and accurate. They want sappy and melodramatic and heartbreaking and huge, warm, fuzzy feelings that make you think you’re going to explode you’re so happy.”
Hazard grunted as Somers snuggled up against him, and he played with Somers’s hair as he said, “They’d be better prepared for retirement.”
Laughing into Hazard’s chest, Somers nodded. “Yes, they would. And, for the record, you wrote a kick-ass romance story.”
“It’s very easy once you—” Hazard tried to explain, but then Somers kissed Hazard’s throat, and he gulped. The rest of the sentence sounded reedy. “—know the formula.”
“And you’re a very good actor,” Somers whispered, swinging a leg over Hazard and running his hands up Hazard’s chest.
“I just—God damn, John.” Hazard’s breathing altered as Somers tugged on the sweater and nipped at Hazard’s collarbone. “I just played myself. Stiff. Awkward. Although I would never make an idiotic investment like a used-book store. I’d be better off burning cash in a barrel.”
Somers hummed something that might have been agreement. “How’d you get permission for me to run through the airport like that? And how’d you get all those volunteers to play the parts of regular people?”
Heat sifted into Hazard’s cheeks, and he said, “A magician never reveals his secrets.”
“Oh my God,” Somers said, burying his face in Hazard’s sweater. “They weren’t actors.”
“Well, Shakespeare once said, ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ So in a philosophical sense—”
Somers’s head came up. “I thought I recognized Mrs. Jacko.” Then he laughed and burrowed into the sweater again, his face warm against Hazard’s chest. “Oh my God, people are going to be talking about us for a decade.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Mad?” Somers slid up and kissed him. “Emery Hazard, who has to be one of the most intensely private people I have had the privilege to know, just performed an amateur play in front of dozens of people, for the sole purpose of making me happy.”
The heat in Hazard’s face spread to his throat and chest.
Somers kissed him again. Then, with an Eskimo kiss, he said, “You know, there’s one part of the romance formula you forgot.”
“Well, I eliminated some of the beats for the sake of time, but I got the major structure.”
“A very important part.”
“Oh yeah?”
Somers tugged on the sweater again. “Yeah.”
“What did I forget?” Hazard asked, feeling the heat lick down from his chest into his belly.
“The hot, steamy, maybe even raunchy, sex. Lots of it. Pages and pages.”
Twisting under Somers’s weight, Hazard opened a drawer in the nightstand and pulled out a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs. “Police issue,” he said as he fell back on the bed again, dangling them in front of Somers. “I just made them a little more comfortable.”
With the tiniest smirk at the corner of his mouth, Somers sat up straight and held out his hands.
Hazard snapped on the first cuff and then rolled, flipping them so that Somers was pinned. Displaying the second cuff, he raised an eyebrow and rocked his hips slowly into his boyfriend. “Pages and pages, you said?”
EMERY’S BIRTHDAY SCAVENGER HUNT
This story takes place before The Keeper of Bees.
I
APRIL 24
WEDNESDAY
7:12 AM
EMERY HAZARD WAS HAVING a very pleasant dream. In this dream, he worked in a library. And in this library, they had only non-fiction books. And the non-fiction books were organized by the Revised Hazard Decimal System, which was much more specific than other, sloppier decimal systems. In this dream, he was having a vigorous debate with a fellow librarian—a smarmy blond man who would sometimes arrange books by the color of their covers or by their height, who sometimes shuffled books and stored them completely at random—about whether the proper categorization for Dark Side of the Moon: Exploring the Hidden Sexual Politics of the Butt placed it in 611.2.61.9, anatomy of the butt, or in 528.9.14.71, human anatomy as ephemerides.
“Come on,” the blond man kept saying.
“No,” Hazard said, “you come on.”
“For the love of God, will you just wake up?”
And then Hazard was awake, being rocked back and forth while someone shouted in his ear.
“Christ, John, get off.” The hand went away; Hazard burrowed into the pillows.
“Are you awake?”
Hazard pulled a pillow over his head.
“Ree?”
Hazard dragged the comforter up over the pillow.
“You never sleep in. What’s going on?”
“Technically,” Hazard said from inside his cocoon, “I’m not sleeping in now. You’re making it very difficult.”
The comforter slid down; cold air washed across Hazard’s chest. Then Somers grabbed the pillow; Hazard was too slow, and it was yanked from his grip when he tried to drag it back. Hazard settled for putting an arm over his eyes.
“Good morning,” Somers sang.
“Go away.”
“Were you having a sexy dream? Is that why you don’t want to get up?”
As Hazard moved farther away from sleep, the dream slipped away, and he couldn’t recall every one of the hundred subdivisions for each category. But he still smiled and said, “Yes.”
“Was I in it?”
Hazard dropped his arm and stared at Somers through narrowed eyes. “Yes,” he said flatly.
“Oh. Good.”
“Pillow.”
“Nope, time to get up.” A huge grin split the blond man’s face. “Happy birthday!”
Groaning, Hazard put his arm over his eyes again.
“I’ve got a whole day planned,” Somers said. “I made you a birthday button to wear.”
“That’s an empty threat.”
“Oh really?”
Hazard slid his arm up a few
inches and saw the button, which read, I’M A VERY SPECIAL BIRTHDAY BOY. PLEASE TREAT ME RIGHT TODAY.
“Sweet Jesus,” Hazard groaned again. “Why can’t you be a good, normal boyfriend and forget about my birthday?”
“No, sir. A whole day. Lots of public meals and public outings and public handholding and public singing. Lots of strangers talking to you. Lots of unfamiliar faces wishing you happy birthday.”
“I like holding hands with you in public. Do you think I don’t? Is that what this is about?”
“This is about your birthday.”
“I’ll hold your hand in public every minute we’re out of the house for the rest of the year if we don’t have to do this.”
“That’s very sweet. Now, get up so we can make it to our breakfast reservation.”
“No.”
“I’ll tickle you.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Extreme circumstances,” Somers said with a shrug.
“John,” Hazard said, fighting the whine in his voice. “It’s my birthday. Why can’t we do what I want?”
“Because you would choose sitting silently in an undecorated room for eighteen hours while you trade imaginary stocks.”
“That was one time! And it wasn’t eighteen hours.”
Somers offered a crooked grin. “Up. Shower. Dress. Fast.”
Then the blond man was gone, and Hazard put his arm over his eyes again, already running a timer. How long could he delay and still manage to get ready on time? He’d done this as a kid, Sunday mornings, when he was supposed to get ready for church. He’d lie in bed, watching the clock, ignoring his mother’s reminders, and then, at the last minute, shower and dress in a dash. Thirty-five wasn’t much different than fifteen when you were engaged to John-Henry Somerset.
The internal countdown pinged, and Hazard rolled over, planted his feet, and got out of bed.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand.
He didn’t recognize the number, and today, that was a good thing. An unrecognized number meant it was most likely a work call. A work call from someone Hazard didn’t know might mean a prospective client. A prospective client might mean an in-person meeting, might even mean starting work on a new case. Today. It might be an urgent case. There might be no time to lose.
He grabbed the phone and answered, “Emery Hazard.”
“Hi, Ree,” Somers said.
“I’m out of bed.”
“Actually, this is a work call. Do you always tell people at work your in-bed or out-of-bed status?”
“What?” Hazard wiped his face. “It’s too early for this. Are you calling me from a burner?”
“I need to hire you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is The Case of the Missing Birthday Brunch. I think someone stole the brunch I prepared for my fiancé. I need you to find it.”
Hazard silently counted to ten. Then he said, “Goodbye.”
“Hey, wait. Are you too busy today? You’ve already got plans?”
“John.”
“Because if you’ve already got plans, like, maybe you’re going to breakfast at Big Biscuit, and the wait staff already know it’s your birthday, and they’ve got balloons all over the place, a big number 3, a big number 5, and they’re going to sing to you as soon as you walk through the door, and then, after breakfast, you’re going to go shopping at the mall in Columbia, and your fiancé is going to make you try on some new pants, real, grown-up pants that don’t look like a thirty-five-year-old man bought them for eighteen dollars at Walmart and has worn them down to rags—”
“Those jeans are really comfortable.”
“—and then lunch at Shakespeare’s Pizza, where the wait staff already know it’s your birthday, and they’ve got balloons—”
“Where are you?” Hazard growled, grabbing a flannel shirt off the back of a chair and slipping into it as he headed out of the bedroom. “I do not deserve to be threatened on my birthday.”
“Does that mean you’ll take the case?”
“No. It means I keep promising to paddle your ass, and now I’m going to do it.”
“It’s a really important case. This brunch would be perfect for my fiancé: quiet, private, those little quiches with bacon and white cheddar that he likes. Did I mention private?”
“This is a game. You are trying to blackmail me into playing a game. I do not like games.”
“You got a little Dr. Seuss-y at the end there. What do you say? Will you take the case?”
“I hope you’re not planning on sitting down anytime soon.”
Somers just laughed. Hazard broke the main floor of the house into quadrants, searching them one by one. When he got to the dining room, with its windows looking out the front of the house, he paused. Then his fingers tightened around the phone until he heard the glass and aluminum groan.
Out on the driveway, Somers was in the Mustang. He gave a cheery wave and then, over the phone, came his voice.
“Glad you’re up, sweetheart. But before we start playing, you should probably put on some pants. Not those jeans, though. Real, adult pants. I left some in your dresser.”
“No, John. No. No. No. I will say it however many times I have to say it. I am not playing some ridiculous game you invented.”
“Then I’ll see you at Big Biscuit?”
Hazard didn’t even know what to call the sound he was making.
The line went dead. A moment later, the phone buzzed once: a text message.
Do not look at the screen, Hazard told himself. Don’t even look.
The message said, I’m glad your name isn’t Evangelina, something I never thought I’d say; go to the place where we saw Brangelina, and later, we went downstairs to play.
Hazard tapped furiously at the screen: That is a fucking terrible poem.
A kissy-face emoji came back. Picture, please, when you get there.
That was when Hazard screamed.
II
APRIL 24
WEDNESDAY
7:41 AM
HAZARD WAS ABSOLUTELY NOT going to play this game. He didn’t like games. He didn’t like nonsense. Instead, he marched upstairs.
But his mind was turning already, spinning up, teasing out the lines of the poem. Evangelina sounded like nonsense that Somers had thrown in just to have a rhyme with Brangelina. And the rest of the poem wasn’t hard to decipher. Last summer, a local movie theater had tried to drum up business by running a Summer Romance theme, which included matinee showings of a mixture of older movies that patrons could pay five bucks to see again. One of those movies had been Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which had Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Hazard and Somers had gone to see it because Somers liked shit like that, of course, and because they’d both been so unmoored by everything that had happened over the Fourth of July that they’d been desperate for ways to get out of the house, to spend time together, to try to normalize themselves after horrors that could never be normalized.
And then, because, well, Brad Pitt, Somers had gotten a little handsy. And handsy had escalated into a make-out session in the parking garage. In the middle of the day. With a lot more handsiness. Hazard blamed the recent trauma for letting himself get so carried away.
Hazard’s brain unpacked all of this from the poem before he had gotten into bed, and he couldn’t deny a little tug of satisfaction in his gut. But he was not playing this game. No way. He crawled onto the mattress, pulled up the comforter, and closed his eyes.
It hadn’t been a particularly difficult riddle. But, still, it had been kind of fun to solve. Hazard couldn’t pretend he hadn’t liked it. Just a little. And, of course, knowing Somers, the riddles would escalate. And some of them might be really difficult. Really, really challenging. The kind that would take some serious brainpower. Because, after all, Somers was smart. And he had obviously prepared for this. And he would have expected Hazard to solve the first riddle almost instantly
, because Somers never underestimated him. And a really tough riddle, a real challenge, seeing Somers work his hardest to stump Hazard—well, Hazard had always been attracted to smart guys, and Somers throwing down the gauntlet was, to say the least, inspiring.
Hazard fluffed the comforter and pulled it over his head. Absolutely not. No way.
But the thing with Somers was that he never left well enough alone. And he really wasn’t one to bluff—well, most of the time. If he said that either they were playing this game or they were going to a huge, public breakfast at Big Biscuit, well, he was telling the truth. And if Hazard tried to ignore him, Somers would just take things to the next level. Dragging the pillow over his face, Hazard tried not to think about what that might look like. A parade of strangers coming into the house? A marching band? Somers wouldn’t actually bring people into the bedroom, would he?
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Hazard said into the pillow. Then he threw the pillow aside, sat up, and looked around the room. “Fuck.”
He got out of bed. He went to the dresser. When he pulled out the bottom drawer, he said, “Fuck,” again.
All of his clothes were gone. Well, all the pants anyway. His jeans, his khakis, his dress pants. Gone. In their place, Somers had left a single pair of tan chinos.
Hazard held them up. The fabric was some sort of blended material, soft and slightly stretchy. Hopping on one foot, he pulled one leg on. Then the other leg. He dragged them up. They fit. Hazard lifted the flannel shirt to inspect how the pants looked on him. Decent. Actually, better than decent. And they felt good too.
He grabbed socks and sneakers, and as he dressed, he tried to figure out what to do. Staying at the house wasn’t an option; Somers would resort to the nuclear option and have some sort of birthday-themed home invasion. And Hazard refused to give his fiancé the satisfaction of playing this ridiculous—albeit, somewhat interesting—game. And he would not have his birthday breakfast at Big Biscuit wearing that godawful button while strangers sang to him.
So, Hazard decided, he would have to cheat.
