Chapter Eleven
Baxter
When Lake followed me out of the cafe, it came as a surprise to find I didn’t mind. I might even have welcomed it, given that I slowed to let him catch up. His phone was still in his hand, but he’d ended the call. “He wants to try a second date,” he said once he drew level.
I forced a smile. “Great. I’m happy for you. He sounds like a good guy.”
We walked on in silence. I didn’t know where I was going, and I had an inkling Lake didn’t either. “Let’s go to Regent’s Park,” he eventually suggested. “Unless… you have stuff to do.”
I let out something of a strangled laugh. “Well, I don’t have a job to go to, so my calendar’s pretty clear. You’re probably busy, though?”
Lake shrugged, our pace having picked up now that we had a destination in mind. “I’m a writer most of the time, so my hours are flexible.”
“What do you write?”
“History books. Nothing exciting.”
Something clicked into place. “Ah. Hence the French guillotine thing.”
A tinge of color crept into Lake’s cheeks. “Yeah. Verity frequently tells me off for wittering about long-dead people. She claims that one day someone will drop dead of boredom while I’m speaking. You know what sisters can be like.”
“Not really.”
“No sisters?”
“No siblings at all. Not unless you count Calisto. We were like brothers.”
Lake took the left turn through the side-gate into the park. “One you no longer speak to.” He laughed before I could comment. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s exactly what a sibling relationship is. I do my best to ignore Verity, but she makes that extremely difficult most of the time.”
“You said you mostly write,” I queried, keen to change the subject from Calisto.
“I teach as well,” Lake said. “Secondary school history, but that’s more about keeping the wolves from the door than a genuine passion for forcing historical facts into young minds.
History for them is mobile phones only having the game Snake to play, and shell suits.
Anything further back than that is too much for them to grasp. ”
I smiled. “I had a shell suit. I thought it looked cool. Now when I look back, I realize it was a bright blue and purple monstrosity that rustled so loudly people could hear me coming a mile away.”
Lake laughed. He looked good when he laughed. It gave him tiny creases around his eyes and relaxed his mouth. There hadn’t been much laughter last night. We’d both been too busy wallowing. “Mine was pink, purple, yellow, and green. I reckon I could probably be seen from space.”
Regent’s Park was fairly quiet at this time in the morning on a weekday.
Leaves crunched beneath our feet as we followed the long path to the boating lake.
“If I said Leonardo to you,” I asked Lake, “what would you think of?” I braced myself for Lake to talk about Leonardo da Vinci. He was a historian, after all.
“Cowabunga,” Lake said without missing a beat.
A warm glow spread through my chest. “I work with someone called Leo. He didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.”
“Philistine,” Lake said, his expression saying he was only half joking.
He led the way to a bench just a few feet away from a large group of ducks and geese.
Used to humans, they were supremely unbothered by our presence.
“Do you know the theory about their weapons being carefully chosen to counteract their personalities?”
I frowned. “No. How does that work?”
Lake swiveled around to face me and sat up straighter. It gave me a glimpse of the history teacher. “What was Leonardo’s weapon?”
I rolled my eyes. “I wouldn’t have mentioned them if I’d known there was going to be a quiz.” Lake waited, one eyebrow slightly crooked. “He had katanas,” I said.
“A powerful weapon.”
“Right. And?”
“As the leader, he had to use them wisely and decisively, showing his sense of responsibility and compassion. Who was the most aggressive turtle?”
“Raphael.”
“And as such, he had the sais, which is primarily a defensive weapon for blocking attacks. It’s theorized that Splinter used this as a method for teaching him patience and control.”
“Donatello?” I questioned. “What does his staff say about him?”
“A primitive tool for the tech genius meant to teach him how to use his intellect to come up with creative ways to use it.”
“And last but not least, Michelangelo?”
“I think you should work it out. What were his personality traits?”
“He was the joker. He was scatterbrained and immature.”
“And what weapon did he have?”
I closed my eyes, picturing the orange turtle. “Nunchucks.”
“Very good. And what do nunchucks require?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had any,” I said dryly.
“Think.”
“I’m so glad you never taught me.”
Lake crossed his arms over his chest and waited.
I sighed. “I guess they require a lot of skill, which means you need patience.”
“Exactly,” Lake said with an enthusiasm better suited to me having discovered the cure for cancer. “They require focus and dedication. All their weapons offset their personalities. That’s the theory, anyway.”
“Who knew,” I said. Yet, I was smiling. A genuine smile.
Not one I’d plastered on my face for appearance’s sake while lying through my teeth and telling everyone I was fine.
Lake knew I wasn’t fine. He’d had front-row seats to me breaking down in his living room, so there was no point in maintaining a facade with him.
It was freeing. Especially when he still wanted to spend time with me.
He could have pushed me out of the door first thing, but he hadn’t.
He’d taken me for breakfast instead. He could have let me leave afterwards, but he hadn’t done that either.
Instead, we were sitting on a bench in the early morning sun dissecting the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.
And I was closer to happy than I’d been at any time since my resurrection.
I watched two geese fighting over a single chunk of bread that a toddler had dropped. They were so busy competing with each other that a duck ran in and stole it. “I need to fix myself,” I said, my words quiet.
“How are you going to do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.”
“Who killed you?”
I closed my eyes against a sudden wave of nausea. Instead of the comforting darkness I’d been searching for, I got a concrete floor and a spreading puddle of blood and coffee.
I opened them again, forcing myself to breathe slowly while I took an inventory of my surroundings.
Water. Children. Geese. Ducks. A chocolate bar wrapper floating past. Red, so probably a Kit Kat wrapper.
All better things to focus on than the image etched on the back of my eyeballs.
“I don’t know. They never caught anyone. ”
“How did they…?” The sentence trailing away to nothing screamed of Lake deciding halfway through that it was too intrusive.
“They stabbed me in the back.” My fingers twitched, my instinct to reach behind me and rub the spot. Knowing Lake was watching, only a massive amount of willpower stopped me from doing that.
“Did they puncture an organ? Is that what killed you?”
“I don’t know.” I was starting to sound like a broken record. “I was dead.”
“You never asked Calisto to find out?”
“Calisto was eight when I met him. I’m not in the habit of sending eight-year-olds out to investigate murders. He would have insisted on taking his Lego with him, and no one would have taken him seriously.”
Lake was silent for a moment as he digested what I’d told him. “What about your parents? What about the people you left behind?” I sat forward on the bench, hands dangling between my thighs, and said nothing. “You haven’t seen anyone, have you?”
“My relationship with my parents was difficult even before I died,” I admitted. “They weren’t exactly overjoyed at having a gay son. I had a boyfriend, but I expect he’s moved on in nineteen years. We’d only been seeing each other for a few months.”
“Right.” The sun came out again, Lake squinting against it. “Well, it’s obvious what you need to do to heal, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Face up to things and stop hiding from what happened.” He made it sound so easy. “I can help.”
I turned my head to study his expression. There was nothing but earnestness staring back at me. “Can you? How?”
“It’s basically research, isn’t it? And if there’s one thing someone who writes books about history is good at, it’s research.”
“I’m sure you’re too busy.” He’d agree he was, and I could go back to living in not so sweet oblivion.
“Let me help, Baxter. I know this is hard for you, but that’s why you need to do it.”
I let my head fall forward. This time when I closed my eyes, there was nothing but blackness. “I don’t know why you care. You only met me a few hours ago.”
“I just really like doing research.”
I laughed, and when I raised my head, Lake was laughing too. “Not today,” I said. Lake would have been justified in pointing out that I was putting things off, but he didn’t. He nodded instead. “I should probably go home.”
“Let’s go to the zoo.”
“What?”
Lake stood, his expression one of pure enthusiasm. “It’s just over there.”
“I know where it is.”
“Well, then. Let’s go. You can stroke the goats.”
Lake was already walking away. I hurried after him. “Is that a euphemism?”
He turned, his eyes twinkling. “You think I’m inviting you to masturbate in the middle of the zoo? They have a petting zoo. Get your mind out of the gutter. Stroking animals is therapeutic.”
“Maybe. But a goat?”
“Better than the tigers. You get to keep your fingers.”
“True.” It seemed a zoo visit was on the cards today, and I wasn’t mad about it.