11. Nick
Nick watchedSydney walk up the skinny staircase to the attic, followed by Evan, who’d appeared out of nowhere like a sullen teenager whisperer, whisking her away to something more interesting than her legal troubles. At least those troubles were proving less troublesome than Nick had initially worried they would be. Yes, she’d done something stupid, but the prosecutor wasn’t interested in going after a first offender with a shaky story, so a decent plea deal was likely.
“That’s nice of him to offer,” Donna said.
“Hmm?”
“Your partner. Offering to show her the studio.”
Nick shook his head hard enough to give himself whiplash. “Oh, uh, no. Evan’s not my—he’s my roommate.”
“My mistake,” said Donna. “Still, nice of him.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s a peach.” Nick gestured to the paperwork. “As I was saying, I think I can get Sydney off with community service, maybe writing a letter of apology to the woman she stole the car from, something like that.”
Donna nodded at the first part of the sentence and frowned at the second. “I’d rather she didn’t have to do that, but if it keeps her record clean, then so be it.”
“Not a fan?”
“That woman…” Donna shook her head. “Beggars can’t be choosers, but some of the people that qualify as caretakers would surprise you.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” he said. Though Donna reminded him of his own caseworker from years before, he didn’t yet trust her with his story. “Not that I’m in family law, but I’ve heard some horror stories.”
“Mmm.” She sighed then looked up at the sound of footsteps overhead. “Sydney’s a good kid deep down. But she’s had a rough go of it, and I suppose you ought to know what happened in case it helps you plead her case.”
Loath as Nick was to admit it, sob stories worked, so he nodded.
“Her mother was—is—an addict, and her father’s never been in the picture. She has no other family that we know of, or at least none willing to take her in.” That was uncomfortably close to Nick’s own history, save for his grandmother, and he felt a shiver run down his spine. “She’s been in the system since she was eighteen months old, which is normally young enough that a kid’ll get adopted. But Sydney’s mother prevented that from happening because she kept going through periods of sobriety and fighting to get her back. People weren’t interested in starting the process of adopting a kid that might get taken away.”
“Is her mother still trying?”
“Not anymore. When Sydney was nine, Haddie—her mother—seriously got her act together. Steady job, steady boyfriend, steady everything. Near as I can tell, she’d gotten pregnant again and decided to get sober.”
“Sydney has a sibling?”
“Mm-hmm. A brother—Sam. He’s in the system, too, which is… well, we’ll get there. But back then, Sydney was over the moon, kept saying she was going home. Which she did for a while. But three years into that arrangement, the boyfriend left, and Haddie relapsed. Badly. Sydney and Sam got split up and sent to two different families, though we tried to let them see each other as much as we could. Sam was easier to place—he’s still little.”
Still unbroken, Nick thought, frowning. “Is that when she ended up with the, ah…” He glanced at the case file. “The last family?”
“She went to them when she was fourteen, and it was a bad fit from the start. Sydney and that woman were oil and water, and then Sydney got the boyfriend and…” She shrugged. Nick knew the story from there, up to and including the car theft.
“Kid can’t catch a break,” he murmured.
“Sydney’s had her heart broken more than most, that’s for sure, and it’s nice to see someone like you standing up for her.”
“Oh, that’s…” Nick shook his head. “It’s not a big deal. I’m between jobs right now, and keeping busy looks good on my résumé.” He cleared his throat and gestured to Sydney’s file. “Now, if you want to get back to it, I can walk you through my plan.”
* * *
“So, Sydney’s pretty talented,” Evan said later that evening, appearing in the kitchen silently.
“Jesus.” Nick jumped and scowled. He’d been deep into research on the foster care system in Seattle—if he was going to be Sydney’s lawyer, he was going to make sure everything to do with her situation was on the up-and-up. “You scared me. What about Sydney?”
“She’s got an eye for art. Abstract shit, but still. What’s her deal?” Evan strolled toward the fridge. He’d changed out of his paint-covered clothes and into a pair of skinny jeans and a tight black sleeveless top, with a blue bandana stuck in his top left pocket, which made him look like Bruce Springsteen’s queer cousin.
Nick rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t have a deal. She’s a client.”
“When’s she coming back?”
“Why?”
“Because I told her she could paint again when she did.”
“I have no idea,” he said, which was the truth. He had enough information to handle Sydney’s case, and he didn’t see any reason they needed to meet at the house again.
“Ah.” Evan pulled a bottle of kombucha from the fridge, which was a trend Nick didn’t understand in the slightest. Who wanted to drink cold vinegar with slime in it? He’d stick with water. “She said she was in foster care.”
“Mmm.” Nick glanced up, waiting for judgment to cross Evan’s face, but he seemed neutral on the topic. “Group home.”
Wrinkling his nose, Evan shook his head. “Sucks.”
“Yeah, well, she was with a family for a while, but… you know. Steal your foster mom’s car, get sent to a group home. The circle of life.”
Evan arched a brow. “How pleasantly detached of you.”
Nick shrugged. She’d made her choices. Relatable ones, sure, but choices all the same. “Actions have consequences.”
“Yes, as we all know when teenagers fuck up, the first thing you do is send them into the wilderness to live on their own.”
“Sort of, yeah, when they’re in the system,” Nick snapped. “She wasn’t with that family long enough to form an attachment.”
“How long does it take to form an attachment?” Evan pressed.
“Longer than two years,” he gritted.
That was how long Sydney had been with her previous foster parents—after two years with the family she’d gone to after her mother relapsed. Now she was two years away from aging out of the system, and Nick would be damned if he didn’t give her a shot at getting out with a clean slate. After all, he’d managed it for himself. How hard could it be to get Sydney on the straight and narrow?
“Jesus Christ,” Evan said with a snort. “Those people… I mean, teenagers do stupid shit! I snuck my mom’s car out of the driveway when I was sixteen and fucked my first boyfriend in the back seat. We lost the condom after, and she found it two weeks later at the car wash.”
Nick could see Evan’s point, but it didn’t change the fact that his situation and Sydney’s were worlds apart, by virtue of Evan’s relative luck of the draw in being birthed into what was, by all accounts, a pretty normal family. “Yes, and she’s your mother, so you guys probably had a fight and figured it out. That’s different. And it’s not even my point.”
“What’s your point, then?”
“The point is, I can’t change Sydney’s past. I can only focus on what’s in front of her. Which involves keeping her out of trouble.”
Evan sighed, conceding the point as he studied Nick closely. “It just makes me sad, is all.”
“Me too.”
“You don’t act sad.”
“Yeah, well, some of us aren’t a walking advertisement for our feelings,” he muttered then regretted it when Evan’s face fell. He didn’t want to start another fight. “I appreciate you giving her somewhere to blow off steam today.”
“Sure. She’s welcome anytime, like I said.”
The offer pinged something in Nick’s brain. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Having something to do after school would keep Sydney out of trouble, and Evan was presumably an educated professional, capable of teaching a lesson or two. Nobody vetted piano teachers to make sure they were qualified—people just showed up and plonked their children down on the bench then left them to learn.
“Maybe I could get her a bus pass. Let her come over,” Nick said.
“Really?”
“Sure. She could come a couple times a week, learn from you, keep her nose clean.” He hesitated, studying Evan’s face. “She couldn’t pay for it.”
“I wouldn’t ask.”
To his surprise, Nick found himself nearly smiling as a grudging kernel of respect for Evan wormed its way inside of him. “Then I’ll get her a pass. Thank you.”
“Sure.” Capping the bottle, Evan headed for the door. “Just let me know when to expect her.”
“I will. And, ah…” He licked his lips, his eyes flicking to the pizza menu stuck to the fridge. “I was gonna order dinner. If you wanted to go in on half.”
“Aw, thanks, but I can’t,” Evan said, and though his words didn’t sound patronizing, Nick felt stung all the same. “Some friends are picking me up—it’s eighties night at Tryst.”
Nick could have kicked himself—he should have realized that Evan was dressed for going out. “Oh. Definitely. Cool.”
“But, um, enjoy your pizza?”
“Yeah, totally. Have fun.”
Evan flashed him a grin just as his phone pinged with, presumably, a text from his ride. “Don’t worry—I always do.”
* * *
Hours later, after pizza, a dormant bit of Nick’s brain kicked into gear, bringing forth a tidbit of information about something called the hanky code. The code was a curious bit of queer history from the ’70s and ’80s in which different-colored bandanas tucked into back pockets meant different things about one’s preferences. Ben had told him about it once, and Nick had dismissed it as a relic of times gone by because who needed hankies when Grindr existed?
But Evan had been going to an ’80s party, and he’d had a blue bandana tucked into his pocket. From what Nick knew of Evan, he’d bet that wasn’t a coincidence. So he got out his laptop and did a quick search on what different colors meant. Not that he cared; he was just curious.
Frustratingly, outside of a few primary documents, there were different modern-day interpretations of what the hankies meant. Plus, Nick couldn’t remember if Evan’s had been dark blue or more of a teal or a regular old royal blue. He also wasn’t sure what side Evan had been wearing it on. According to the internet, the left pocket indicated one was a top, the right, a bottom. And blue? Well, blue could mean a lot of things, depending on the side and shade—cocksucker, top, cock-and-ball torturer, or torture recipient.
Evan didn’t seem like a torturer. But maybe that was just Nick being naive. After all, most people would look at him and assume he was a top, which had never been his preferred position. With Ben, it had been easy because Ben had been a service dom obsessed with giving Nick what he needed, no matter how much Nick bristled against the coddling. Since then, Nick’s toppiness had been taken for granted, but though he could be versatile, he much preferred to bottom.
He sat, staring at the screen, thinking about Evan and his bandana. Stupid—Evan was allowed to do what he wanted to do. Nick didn’t even really like Evan. But what if Evan brought someone home with him? That thought scared Nick badly enough that he retreated to the privacy of his bedroom, picturing Evan and some anonymous guy stumbling through the front door.
Half an hour later, he was asleep, and when he dreamt, it was of the Conners, his first foster family. In the dream, he was wandering the upstairs hall of their trim yellow farmhouse with its tin roof that amplified the sound of the rain, turning it into a long, pleasant shiver that ran down his back during thunderstorms. Michelle and Brendan Conner were the first people who had tried to give him a home, though their good intentions couldn’t turn a hollow promise into something real.
In the dream, he reached the tiny corner bedroom that had been meant for a biological child, where a suitcase lay open on the narrow twin bed. Michelle was there, packing Nick’s things. When he tried to tell her to stop, she turned, and he understood, in his dream-addled state, that she was actually his grandmother.
“We went away,” she said, and suddenly, Nick was standing at the bottom of the stairs, suitcase in hand. He tried to go back, but the Michelle-grandmother voice came floating down to him. “He went away. We went away. You went…”
There was a crash—the roof caving in, the world on fire, the end of—
Nick sat straight up, eyes wide, the reverie broken. Something in the real world had woken him, and he shivered as he blinked into the darkness. After a moment, he heard movement in the hallway. A thump and a muttered curse.
Evan. It had to be Evan. As Nick came back to himself, leaving Michelle Conner in her little Iowa farmhouse with her homophobic husband, he waited for the voice of the complementary hanky. When a few seconds passed and no second voice came, Nick went to open the door, where he found Evan sitting on the runner rug, his back to the opposite wall.
“Oh,” said Evan, looking up at him with glassy eyes and a drunken grin. “Hi.”
“Hello. Did you fall?”
“No. I just… needed a sit.”
“Needed a sit,” Nick echoed, trying not to smile at the phrasing. “Can I help you up?” The hallway was drafty, and the last thing he needed was Evan catching a cold, since he seemed like a person who would be extremely annoying while sick.
Evan hesitated then took him up on the offer, clinging as Nick pulled him upright and wrapped an arm around his shoulders to steady him. “Thanks. If you can just dump me in bed, I’ll survive.”
Nick led Evan into his bedroom, which he hadn’t seen since Evan moved in. The room had been transformed into a bohemian haven, with large tapestries covering the worst of the peeling plaster and a jungle of houseplants positioned on a table near the window. The decor wasn’t to Nick’s taste, but it was the nicest room in the house by far.
“Hold tight.” Nick helped Evan stretch out on the bed, ignoring the way his tight black shirt rode up to reveal a strip of golden skin. “I’ll be right back.”
Nick fled to the kitchen and got a glass of water then returned to the bedroom, where he sat on the edge of the bed and tugged Evan’s shoes and socks from his feet, because it felt like the gentlemanly thing to do.
“Thanks,” Evan slurred. “Sorry I’m a mess.”
“It’s fine. Did you have a good time?”
“So-so.” He dropped his forearm across his eyes and sighed. “You ever get so horny you’re willing to fuck anything?”
Of all the questions Nick expected, that wasn’t it, and his response was ten percent more sputtery than he’d have liked. “Well, sometimes you’re desperate, I suppose.”
Desperation wasn’t particularly familiar to Nick. He’d never related to stories of illicit affairs and tawdry one-night stands spurred by an inability to keep one’s hands to oneself. Certainly, he liked sex, but his libido was the sort that knocked politely and waited by the door to see if anyone was home.
“You mean ‘you’ like the general you or, like, me?”
Gotta love drunk logic. “‘You’ as in you. I’m fine.”
“So you don’t fuck?” Evan asked.
“Of course I…” Nick felt his face growing hot, so he nipped the topic in the bud. “If I need to settle my soul, masturbation suits me fine.”
Evan grinned, waggling his finger in the air. “‘Settle my soul.’ That’s great phrasing.”
“My grandmother used to say it. The soul part, not the, uh, masturbation. Obviously.”
“She still around?”
Nick cleared his throat. “No. She passed when I was twelve.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
His grandmother had been more than his last living grandparent—she’d also been the last relation willing to take him. Sure, there were cousins—and second cousins and third cousins twice removed—who lived close enough and had known his mother or his father. But being distantly related meant that none of them felt any real obligation to him. As for his actual aunts and uncles, none of them had stepped up to the plate, their familial relations long since snapped into pieces.
Nick didn’t begrudge them precisely. They’d all had their own lives to lead and families to raise. But still, if someone came to him and said he had a long-lost niece or nephew, he would figure it out, even if he’d had issues with a wayward sibling and an abusive parent. Which, as he understood it, had been the case in his mother’s home, with her father a tyrant and drugs her only escape from the noise.
“Still sorry.” Evan let out a yawn so big it threatened to split his face in two.
“You ought to sleep,” Nick said.
“Mmm, probably.”
Evan blinked, a hazy smile settling on his full lips. Pretty lips. Soft. Kissable, if one was thinking about kissing. Which Nick wasn’t. His brain was simply fixated on the fact that he’d thought about Evan and his stupid hanky code once or twice that evening, and it was compensating accordingly.
“Right,” Nick said, getting swiftly to his feet. “Sleep tight, then.”
“Bedbugs bite,” Evan agreed as Nick left the room and shut the door behind him.
He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes before returning to bed. Only he couldn’t sleep because Evan’s question, and the remnants of what a blue handkerchief might or might not mean, had sparked that soul-settling need in Nick’s body. Annoyed, he jerked himself off with steely determination, using spit for lube as he flipped through a mental notebook of favored fantasies.
“Fuck,” he grunted as he came, glad his shirt was pushed up high enough to avoid the spatter.
A few minutes later, he was curled into a ball on his side, feeling somewhat more relaxed as he drifted off to sleep. It was weird that he’d gotten so worked up after spending time with Evan, but then, he’d been thinking about sex and hankies, so it made sense. It didn’t mean anything—Evan was proximal, and Nick’s hindbrain was following its instincts. There was no need to make a mountain out of a molehill.