6. Evan
“I thinkI’m going to do it!” Evan shouted above the heartbeat thrum of EDM bass that reverberated through every cell as he moved in time to it. As a dancer, he was middling to mediocre, but that had never stopped him from diving into a crowd and putting his whole self into free expression.
“Do what?” Max said, sidestepping a slithering, sinewy body that threatened to grind against him.
It was funny how quickly Max had changed. A year before, he would have been flirting with every guy on the dance floor then gone home with the one who looked the scariest. Now he was practically married, and Evan was left alone to sort through what slim pickings had chosen to come to the club that night.
“Take the room. With Nick.” Evan tried to sound nonchalant, but he couldn’t help noting the way Max’s face fell. He hated to ruin his night, but then, there was no perfect time to bring up that one was moving in with a good friend’s ex-husband. The queer scene in Seattle was incestuous, but he and Max were close enough that shit like this required an explanation.
“What?” Max shrieked—a sharp pterodactyl screech that might have brought the room to a halt had the music not been at an eardrum-bursting volume. “Why?”
“Because it’s a fantastic house.”
That was half true. The house was a broken pile, but Evan had loved it from the moment he’d stepped inside. The split crown molding and dirty wooden archways spoke to him in ways that his clean, comfortable downtown loft couldn’t. He needed to be there. To create there. To sit up in that attic and find inspiration in the juxtaposition of mundane modern-day suburbia and the turn of the century, when the house had been new and untouched by time and neglect.
There was also Nick, the other half of the fantastic equation. Not because Nick was all that fantastic, with his catalog-model good looks and that cupid’s-bow mouth perpetually twisted into a moue of distaste, but because he was Evan’s opposite. Nick was wound tighter than a corkscrew stuck in a bottle of cheap champagne, and Evan had felt derision dripping from him in waves as soon as he entered the house. It was clear Nick had some issues—Max had insinuated as much—and the self-loathing energy he exuded annoyed Evan to the extent that he found it inspirational.
“There are lots of fantastic houses,” Max countered before grabbing Evan’s arm and dragging him to the bar, where he ordered two lemon drops because his “friend was being an idiot.”
“I’m not being an idiot,” Evan countered before throwing back his shot.
“You are. Nick’s the worst. And now I have to tell Ben about it!”
Evan shrugged. “Not necessarily.”
“Uh, yes, I do. It’s his ex-husband.”
“What’s that saying…? What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him?”
Max rolled his eyes and downed his shot. “Yeah, it doesn’t work like that. We tell each other everything, and I have to tell him about this. And he’s going to think you’re a bigger idiot than I do. Nick’s just… I mean, I only met him a couple times when I was still at the firm, but ugh. He was so condescending to me, and he was so awful to Ben when they were married.”
“This has nothing to do with Nick. I probably won’t even see Nick that much—he said he works all the time. I liked the house, is all, and I already broke my lease.”
Max frowned, leaning back against the bar and folding his arms. “This wasn’t the plan, Evan. I just wanted you to look and see how sad he was, not how, like… awesome he’s doing.”
Evan offered a shrug before stepping closer and taking Max’s hand, a gesture as familiar as it was fraternal. “I never said he was doing awesome. The house is a fixer-upper, and I think he’s having money issues.”
There was no way someone so curmudgeonly would be looking for roommates without needing an influx of cash. Although part of Evan worried that his rent might contribute to Nick stripping the soul from the house, taking away everything original and unique to leave her as bland and generic as every other open-plan remodel in the city. But if he was living there, maybe he could exert some influence regarding the house’s rehabilitation. If nothing else, he could probably convince Nick that a more thoughtful restoration would make the house worth something in the future. From what little conversation they’d had, Evan could tell that Nick was plain and practical, like greige, a color so blandly neutral that it didn’t even have the dignity to call itself taupe.
Hmm. Now, that was an idea. A series of greige canvases painted to look like solid, staid walls, complete with wainscoting and trim. But behind them—he wasn’t sure how he’d accomplish it yet, and the initial thought was trite—a hidden world of discordant color, shape, and noise bursting at the seams of conventionality. It could be hackneyed, or it could be phenomenal. Either way, it was more creative inspiration than Evan had had in months, and he hadn’t even moved in yet.
Max snapped his fingers in front of Evan’s face. “Hey, where’d you go?”
“Sorry, I was just… thinking.”
“Work stuff?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Because of the house?”
Evan shrugged rather than answer. His mother had instilled in him the belief that God hated a liar. Sure, he was more agnostic than Catholic these days, but some morals stuck.
Max sighed and shook his head. “Ben’s really not going to like it.”
“Ben’s not in charge of me.”
“I just mean…” He scowled. “I can’t come visit you there. Nick knows me.”
“It’s not like you come downtown much these days. Anyway, this’ll give me an excuse to visit you, and besides, it’s temporary. I’m going to bleed my inspiration dry, and then I’m going to move to New York.”
“Uh-huh.” Max put a hand on his hip. “I thought you said you were cutting your safety net. Trying to push yourself out of your comfort zone. All I see is you moving the same shit to a different location.”
Evan frowned. “I threw away my phone. I’m not escorting anymore.”
“How long before you run out of money?”
That wasn’t a question he had given much consideration to as his bank account was currently flush, and he had a fair bit of runway before he needed to worry, even with paying for two rooms. “Maybe… six months?”
“You think you can build a career in six months?”
Heat flared in Evan’s chest, and he stood straighter, using every bit of his five feet and six inches. “I have a career. I’ve exhibited, and I sell stuff all the time.” Albeit in local coffee shops, but still…
“I’m just saying that you need to start being a little bit hungrier and stop thinking the world’s going to magically find you because you’re talented.”
“Excuse me?” Evan felt his dander rise. While he wasn’t much of a fighter, he also wasn’t used to hearing harsh truths from Max. And they were truths, much as he didn’t want to admit it.
“Just don’t waste the opportunity! Promote yourself a little—get back on Instagram or whatever!”
“Ugh. That’s gauche.” Evan abhorred the way he was expected to splash his work across the internet for anyone to see, screaming out hashtag-laden captions about how wonderful he was.
Still, he could appreciate Max’s point—all the masterpieces in the world meant very little if nobody was buying them, and without a serious influx of cash and attention, New York would remain a pipe dream. After all, his nemesis, Maureen Thomas, was all over social media, and she was making millions. He supposed he could deign to post a piece or two, but he’d be damned if he used a hashtag.
“Maybe I will,” he said.
“Good. If nothing else, I need you to succeed at this so you’re not living with that douchebag for too long.” Max hesitated. “Did you tell him that you know me and Ben?”
“Oh. No. It didn’t seem relevant.” More accurately, he’d been nervous that Nick might not rent him the room if he knew of Evan’s connection to his past. “He just assumed I found the Facebook listing, which isn’t exactly untrue. I’d already seen it when you noticed who he was. And I mean, it’s Seattle,and we’re both gay. It’d be more surprising if we hadn’t fucked at least a couple of the same people.”
“Yeah, well, I told you that Nick’s not really in the community.”
“Surely, he’s not celibate.”
“I hope he is,” Max said with no small amount of bitterness. “I hope his dick fell off the day he broke Ben’s heart.”
“Should I check for you?”
“Ugh, no. And you’d better not sleep with him either.”
Evan’s mouth twisted into a rueful smile as he recalled the way Nick’s coldly calculating eyes had regarded him with barely concealed contempt. “Believe me, that’s not going to be a problem. Now, can we get back to dancing, or do you want to waste a night out on something as silly as conversation?”
Max studied him for a moment then shrugged and threw his arm around Evan’s shoulders. “At least it’s temporary,” he said as he dragged him back to the dance floor.