Questionable Friend Advice
Bill watched Huxley carrying his boxed bird out of the exam room.
Normally, he would have followed, seen a client out, reiterated the most important instructions, but he was still trying to process seeing Huxley for the first time in he didn’t want to think how long. Never mind having an actual conversation with him and then being floored by Huxley’s invitation to bring his paperwork by the farm.
He’d been back two years and hadn’t seen more than a passing glance of the man when he’d made a call to the farm. Huxley had never acknowledged his presence or stopped to chat. Of course, Bill hadn’t made any attempt to contact Huxley, either. He supposed that part was on him.
“Hey boss. You okay in here?” Leland’s knock on the doorframe a few minutes later startled him into realizing he was still standing next to the table but hadn’t moved to clean up the detritus from treating the crow.
“What?” He grabbed up a wad of soiled gauze to chuck in the trash can, maybe a bit more aggressively than necessary. “Yes. I’m fine. Why?”
Leland tilted his head at him, like a confused puppy. “Normally you walk folks out. What’s up with that?”
“What? Nothing’s up with anything.”
“Wow. Okay.” But he grinned as he started helping with the clean-up.
“God. What?” He braced for Leland’s snark. Which of course he didn’t get, because Leland, despite sometimes being prickly, wasn’t a jerk.
Instead, Leland turned his attention to the clean up. “So.” He lifted one pierced eyebrow. “Huxley Jackson.”
“What about him?”
“You tell me.”
“What’s to tell?”
“Maybe why he was a grumpy asshole right up until someone—I’m guessing you—mentioned Matthew.”
“No idea what you’re talking about. He never wasn’t grumpy to me.”
Leland chuckled. “All I’m saying, he was much nicer to me when he came out of here, as though he was happy to find out I was someone else’s boyfriend.”
“Someone else’s?”
“As in, not yours.”
Bill made a sound that might have been ‘ew’, but it was out before he could sensor it.
Leland laughed.
“No offense,” Bill said quickly. “But it’d be like?—”
“Brother kissing. Same.” Leland made an exaggerated shuddering motion. “Gross.” He winked. “Huxley does not feel the same as I do, I bet.”
“Whatever.”
“It was nice he asked me how Matthew’s doing. Like he knew him but hadn’t talked to him in a while. And I thought I’d met all Matthew’s friends.”
“I wouldn’t say he and Matthew were friends.”
“No?”
“We all went to school together. Me and Huxley, Susan, and—which of Matthew’s brothers? I think Nathan? Matthew’s older, but there are so many Sharp brothers, they start to run together.”
“People say that, but they are nothing alike. Not once you get to know them.”
“They’re kind of clannish. You take one on, you get them all, but you don’t really get any of them if you aren’t on the inside.”
“Well okay, You’re not wrong there. Did Huxley take Nathan on?”
Heat raced up Bill’s cheeks. “He did not.”
“Ah. So if not Nathan…”
Bill shook his head, determined not to reply.
“You leave me no choice but to speculate. I think you left Huxley, your high school sweetheart, behind to go to university and haven’t really spoken to him since.”
“I was gone for a while.” No use denying it. For all he wasn’t a native of their small town, Leland had learned fast how to nose his way into people’s business. Unlike the regular run-of-the-mill small-town biddies, he was never unkind about his curiosity. And he was almost always right. “We both moved on. By the time I came back, he wasn’t interested in reconnecting.”
Leland out and out snorted at that.
“I’m serious. He hasn’t shown any interest in me since I’ve been back.”
“And have you shown any interest in him? Since you’ve been back, I mean.”
“I’ve been giving him space.”
“How long have you been back?”
“Two years.” He said it under the rustle of the garbage bag he was emptying, and with his back to Leland.
“I’m sorry?” He was enjoying this way too much. “Did you say two years? How much space did you think he needed?”
“He knew I was back.”
“So you left for school, you came back, and the reason you haven’t spoken to him in all that time is because he didn’t approach you?”
“Why are you prying?”
“Just trying to figure out why it is that he came in here with a date, but his date stayed behind to have supper with me and Matthew, and he didn’t even seem to notice.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a date.”
“Oh. Trust me. It was a date.” Leland gathered up the sweater and scarf the crow had come in with.
“And you know this how?”
“Us twinks stick together.”
“You are hardly a twink.”
“Maybe not anymore, but I do speak twink, and I spoke to Danny. It was definitely a date. Right up until he also noticed that Huxley acted hella weird the minute he stepped foot in here. If I noticed, and I don’t even know the guy, you can imagine the guy he was about to go pound?—”
“Please don’t.”
Leland looked triumphant.
“No. Really. Don’t.
“Just wondering if he was your first love. First…anything?”
“I am not dishing to you about ancient history.”
Leland took the bag of garbage from him. “Is it ancient history? Because it feels kinda current affairs-ish.”
Bill sighed. “Why are you like this?”
“It’s a gift.”
“Is it, though?”
“You know, just because I would never want to kiss you doesn’t mean no one wants to.”
“Huxley and I had our chance.” Bill leaned his ass on the counter and stuck his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. “We blew it a long time ago.”
“A long time ago, you were both young and didn’t know half of what you know now. Maybe instead of blowing each other off, you just—” he waved a hand in the air “—blow each other. See how that goes.”
“That’s terrible advice.”
“Oh, probably.” Leland left the room with the garbage in hand, and an annoyingly smug smile on his face.
“Well shit.” Bill sighed and glared after Leland.
Huxley had asked Bill to bring the paperwork to his house, though. “Why? Why not do it here, on neutral ground?”
And more important, why had Bill agreed?