8. Oxygen
OXYGEN
Jake closed his eyes, holding the phone an inch or two away from his ear.
“Hello, Jake? Is that you?”
“Hey, Robbie.”
“Hi. What’s up? Is something wrong?”
“No.”
Jake could hear Robbie’s sigh of relief through the phone. “That’s good. Why are you calling me, though? Are you trying to pull some sort of prank?”
“No, I just—you said you wanted a friend.”
“What?”
“On the beach today. You made it sound like you wanted a friend.”
Robbie paused. “Oh, yeah, something like that, I guess. Listen, Jake, you know how those evenings at the beach get. We’re both tired, and it’s so isolating out there. Sometimes we say things we don’t mean.”
“So you don’t want a friend?”
“Are you even capable of being friends with a man like me?”
This conversation was not going how Jake had wanted.
Secretly, he’d hoped that Robbie would grovel a bit, thanking him for showing up when he didn’t have to, and then he could finally get on top of their twisted little relationship.
But that wasn’t Robbie’s method of operation, and Jake should have known that by now.
He would get no credit for trying to be marginally nice for his own gain, not with Robbie Eaton.
“I guess you’re right about me, Robbie,” he finally said. “I’m hot and then I’m cold. I should let you go so you can go cook or smell bread or whatever you said you like doing.”
Robbie laughed softly. “Yeah, okay. Try not to call unless it’s important next time. You had me worried there for a second.”
Jake ran his free hand along his thigh, kneading the heel of his palm into his muscles until they hurt. “Believe me, I’ll never call you again if that’s what you want.”
“Goodnight, Jake.”
Jake paused. He almost said goodnight back, but then Robbie hung up, and he was left holding his phone to his ear, listening to no one at all.
Maybe Robbie was telling the truth now, and he really didn’t want Jake as a friend. He could be sneaky with his manipulation at times. Maybe that was all the conversation earlier had been—a way to guilt Jake into being a little nicer. If that was the case, then it had worked a little too well.
Jake left his room to get some food an hour or so later, expecting Isabel to have gone to bed. To his surprise, she was still up, going through some boxes she had out in the living room.
“What’s all this?” he asked, sitting in the chair closest to the TV.
“Oh, just the last of Marcus’ things that I haven’t gone through yet,” she told him.
“I thought you got rid of all that a couple months back.”
“I thought so too, but these boxes were hiding in the garage.” She pulled out an old, worn baseball glove that Jake remembered using when they visited years ago. “He must have packed all this up before he got too sick.”
“I can deal with it in the morning if you want,” Jake offered.
“No, no, it’s fine.”
“Let me help right now, then. I’m not ready for bed anyway.”
Isabel smiled. “Thank you, dear. It shouldn’t take long to sort through everything. I’ll donate most of it anyway, and the rest just gets thrown out.” She sighed. “If it were any earlier, I would ask Robbie to come over and help too, although it’s probably for the best that I can’t bother him now.”
“Yeah, he’s good at sorting shit out—unless it’s his own.”
Isabel set the glove back in the box and looked up, her confused expression sending a wave of heat through Jake’s chest all the way to his head. “That’s rude.”
Jake shrugged, trying to remain nonchalant. “It’s true. If he’d just stand up to his family, he wouldn’t have to deal with their bullshit anymore.”
“That would never happen,” Isabel said. “They’ve told Robbie in no uncertain terms that if he wants anything left to him at all, he has to fall in line and stay there. It’s why half the town prefers not to associate with him—he’s too close to his parents.”
“He told me as much. But he doesn’t need their money. No one needs that much wealth. He’s got a house and a job, and before you say his job is tied to his parents, I bet he could get another one anywhere else easily. He must have a pretty good education, and he seems smart, if a total prick.”
“He is smart,” Isabel agreed. “Smart enough to know that right now in his life, his time is best spent giving back to this town. If he turned heel and left now, he could never come back, at least not while his parents are alive.” Isabel leaned back into the couch and folded her hands in her lap.
“It’s a tough choice for anyone to make, but especially Robbie. He loves it here.”
“I know.”
“And simultaneously, his parents are suffocating him here.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s such a dickhead all the time.”
“Oh, he is not,” Isabel chided, “and you need to stop calling him names.”
“Don’t worry, Aunt Isabel. He likes it.”
“You are too childish for your own good sometimes, Jakey. Now, are you going to help me with these boxes, or should I get started on my own?”
“I’ll help you,” Jake said, jumping up from his chair to move closer to Isabel and the boxes. “It’s what I’m here for, right?”
“Oh, Jake, you’re here for much more than that. I wish you could see what the world holds for you if only you would accept it.”
On Saturday, Isabel asked Jake to take the boxes they’d gone through to the thrift store a town over: Grayland, as it happened.
“I might stay out for a while,” he said to her as he grabbed a box to take out to the car. “I’m dying to get out and have some fun.”
“You have been awfully busy,” Isabel conceded. “You deserve a break. Just be safe, all right? No bar fights this time.”
“That’s never happened to me before, I’ll have you know. This town is cursed.”
“No more cursed than you are. Here, let me open the door for you.”
Jake loaded the first box into the trunk of his car, returning for the second one a moment later. “I’ll call you if I’m not gonna be back tonight,” he said.
Isabel raised one eyebrow. “You need to be more careful, Jakey. Going home with strange men doesn’t always work out as well as you might imagine.”
“Believe me, I’m aware.” Jake grinned. “I know what I’m doing, Aunt Isabel. Don’t worry.”
“Okay, but you let me know if you need me to come get you or anything else. I don’t mind, so don’t even think twice about asking.”
Jake closed the trunk. “I promise.”
“See you tonight,” Isabel called from the doorway.
“Hopefully not,” he called back.
He drove to the beach first, where Robbie was already gathering up branches from the park that appeared to have been clipped earlier in the day. Jake grabbed his gloves from the backseat and set off to join him.
Robbie looked up, but he didn’t wave. He was probably mad after that phone call, and Jake had to force himself to not be preemptively annoyed with his attitude.
“I have to leave early,” he told Robbie, picking up a branch to drag into the larger pile they were creating, “so you won’t have to sign off on my hours today.”
“Oh?” Robbie sounded less than interested. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to Grayland to drop some shit off at the thrift store for my aunt, and then I might try to see what else there is to do outside of Eventide. What are your plans for the evening?”
Robbie shrugged, snapping an unwieldy twig in two. “I might try to get some reading done. We got in some new books at the store, and one of them happens to be from my favorite author.”
“You’re such a drip.”
“No worse than you and your perpetual horny quest to find a guy out here to fuck.”
“At least that’s fun.”
“So’s reading.”
“Only if you can’t think of anything better to do.”
Robbie sighed. “Really, Jake, not everyone wants to be like you.”
“Well, I know you don’t.”
“Plenty of others don’t either. You’d do well to take a step back and examine your life instead of just bulldozing through it like you are now. There’s more out there than pretty faces and a good time.”
Jake stood up straighter, resting his fists on his hips.
His gloves were filthy, and at any other time, he would have thought better of touching his clothes with them, but his judgement was more than a little clouded right now.
“You think I don’t know that? I have a life, Robbie. And it’s more interesting than yours.”
“Really?”
“It was before I moved here.”
“Yeah, you’ve told me that plenty of times before. Well, have fun tonight, I guess. Don’t do anything stupid. I won’t be there to bail you out this time.”
“Thank God.” Jake turned around and stooped to pick up some clippings.
“Hey, I saved you at that bar.”
“And I thanked you for that.”
“Eh, kind of—begrudgingly.”
“You’re gonna have to be happy with begrudging thanks, then.”
“Oh, believe me, I am. Any thanks from you is impressive. But you seriously can’t rely on me tonight.”
“I don’t want to.”
Jake glanced back to see that Robbie was smiling again. He winked, and then he looked away, leaving Jake to stare at the back of his head.
Robbie was still working when Jake left, too engrossed in his cleanup to bother saying goodbye. But Jake didn’t need a goodbye from Robbie. He’d see him again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
After stopping at the thrift store, dropping off the two cardboard boxes a few minutes before it closed, he got back in the car and pulled up the map on his phone.
He was looking for the gay bar less than half an hour away from there.
He was so starved of touch, so starved of excitement, that the mere idea made him giddy.
Tonight was going to be a great night.
But first he had to get there, and the drive was more complicated than Jake was prepared for. “Aw, fuck,” he muttered, pulling into a parking lot to turn around when the directions beeped at him. “That was my turn back there.”
It was dark by the time he finally pulled onto the side of the street. It was getting dark earlier now, but Jake wasn’t worried. This city was much brighter than Eventide at night, though it was no match for the colorful nights Jake was used to.
The atmosphere the moment he walked into Oxygen, Grayland’s premier and only gay bar, was already better than the bar back in Eventide.
He stopped, taking it all in. The rickety little stage in the back was set up for karaoke.
Bass-heavy pop thumped in his ears and chest. Familiar smells of liquor and soda, sweet musk, and sweat tickled his nose. He was home.
He walked deeper into the room, approaching the bar to order a drink. As his nose grew used to all the other assaulting scents, a smoother, more complex one broke through: one he’d smelled earlier in the day, when he was standing inches deep in damp sand with hot, stiff gloves on his hands.
And then he saw him sitting at a table in the corner, shirt crisp as ever, light brown hair tinged purple by the lighting, with some sort of fruity cocktail on the table in front of him.
Robbie.
“Excuse me.”
Jake stepped aside just in time to avoid getting pushed out of the way by two men leaving. He stumbled the rest of the way to the counter, eyes still on Robbie. He hadn’t noticed Jake yet, but he would. It was only a matter of time.
“Can I get you something?”
Jake looked up at the bartender, as dazed as if he’d just been thumped on the head. “What? Oh, yeah, vodka soda.”
“You got it.”
He immediately turned his attention back to Robbie, who finally glanced up. Their eyes met, and as recognition dawned on Robbie’s face, Jake shook his head.
Not tonight, he mouthed. Stay the fuck away.