13. Everett
CHAPTER 13
EVERETT
I t was late after Colin left. Really late. Like, I’m-going-to-be-super-sad-in-the-morning-when-I-have-to-get-up-at-seven-to-work-holy-shit late. But even knowing that, I really didn’t want to leave. Partly because Colin’s revelation about the dangers behind getting involved were freaking Kyle out, even though he tried to hide it. I got it. It wasn’t nice to think about your family being hurt, and this was clearly the family member he got along best with. Of course he was worried. Of course he wanted him to be safe.
The other reason I didn’t want to leave was because…well…
“Would you actually consider being my boyfriend?”
Kyle looked up from where he’d been knitting his fingers together, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “What?”
Huh. Had I non-sequitured him? Or maybe I was just rushing things. “I mean, can we date?”
“I…kind of thought we were already dating.” Kyle pointed to the cat grass. “Or do you bring that sort of thing to every friend’s house when you come over?”
“I don’t go over to a lot of people’s houses, actually.”
“Not the point, Everett.”
Oh, right.
“Right. Well…I just…”
Would really, really like to actually be able to call you my boyfriend and there’s no time like the present and who cares that we only ever see each other in the dark of night?
“I think you’re an awesome guy, and you have awesome pets, and I would at the very least like to keep dating you until you feel like calling yourself my boyfriend. If that’s cool. And,” I added as the thought came to me, “if you’re thinking about saying no because you’re worried about some murderer coming after me because they see that we’re close or something like that, you don’t have to worry, because anyone who saw you at Decadence the other night definitely saw me too, so I’m already a target.”
Kyle swallowed. “That really doesn’t make me feel better. Actually, maybe we should stay apart for a while. Do our research independently. If we’re not seen together maybe there’s less of a chance that they’ll worry about us working on Ricky’s stuff.”
“Or maybe they’ll feel emboldened and still follow us around and I won’t even get to hang out with you,” I countered.
“You just like my cats.” He sounded like he was joking, but maybe also like there was a part of him that was definitely not joking.
“Don’t forget your fish. And no, honestly, I like you so much,” I said, because when everything else failed I could always fall back on awkwardly earnest to set the record straight. Then again, most people didn’t like it when I was really honest, but Kyle deserved to know how I felt about him. “I think you’re great. You’re super hot and a hard worker and successful and you live by yourself without needing any roommates—other than the cats and the fish—and I’m pretty sure you’re way too put-together for me, but I want to date you. I want to watch movies and play with your pets and take you to late dinners at Waffles? and maybe try a nicer restaurant sometime too.”
Kyle licked his lips nervously. “What about…kissing me? Is that something you’d like to do?”
How was that even a question? Or, fine, it was a question, but it wasn’t the question. The question was, “Can I?”
“Yes.”
That was all I needed to hear. It was kind of awkward going for a kiss when it took a few steps to even get close enough for it, but if there was one thing I was good at, it was ignoring being awkward. I touched his arms first, running my hands from his wrists to his shoulders. He exhaled heavily and reached for my hands, holding my wrists tight but not pulling them away. He pressed my hands down harder instead. “I’m ticklish,” he said.
“Got it.” If he didn’t hate being tickled, that was something we might have fun with later, but in the meantime…
I wasn’t much little taller than him, but enough that it still felt nice to watch his chin tip up and his lips part. I couldn’t see anything else after that because I was kissing him, and he felt so soft and tasted so sweet—not literally, but my brain wouldn’t let me go down a rabbit hole of comparison because for once, I could only think about one thing. Kyle, and kissing him, making sure he felt as good as I did, because I felt amazing, like I was on top of the world, like I’d just won some incredible prize because how else could I experience something like this?
Kyle was warm and pliant and I tilted my head and deepened the kiss, hard enough to make him let go of my wrists and wrap his arms around my shoulders instead. We kissed and kissed, started and stopped long enough to catch a slip of breath before beginning again, and by the time I pulled back I was on my back, on the sofa, and Kyle was straddling my lap and his hands had found my hair and he was pulling just the way I liked, and?—
“I should go,” I blurted.
“Um.” Kyle’s glasses were slightly fogged. He took them off and stared at me like he wasn’t sure what to do with that, which—fair. “Why?”
“Because all I want to do right now is ask if I can get you off, but I definitely won’t want to leave if we do that, and if I fall asleep I’ll never get to work on time tomorrow, and then my dad will kill me.”
Kyle sighed, but he smiled at the same time, so at least I knew he wasn’t pissed that I was calling an end to the fun before it really got going. “Okay, go.”
“But I’ll see you again soon,” I clarified, because that was important, damn it.
He paused, then said, “Yeah. I’d like that.”
The relief was almost as heady as the kiss. Way to not fuck it up, Everett! “Me too.” I leaned in and kissed him one more time, because how could I not, and maybe I stroked one hand up into his hair to help me tilt him a little bit to the right, and maybe I bit and sucked on his lower lip until it looked like he’d been punched by my mouth and liked it, and maybe I could take a few more minutes and?—
My phone went off. I recognized that alarm. That was my this-is-your-last-chance-not-to-fuck-things-up alarm, and it only went off when I was almost beyond hope in the sleep department on a day I was expected to work. It was an important alarm. “I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said, finally pulling back again. “I’ll call you and come see you when you’re free, okay?”
“Mmm.” Kyle seemed blissed out, which was awesome, and I wanted more than anything to join him again, but if I wanted to land a responsible guy, I needed to be a responsible guy. “Yeah. I’ll do some work on the pictures of the shoe impression you took, see if I can pull some more identifying marks and match them to anything in the other photos.”
“Ooh, save some for me,” I said, because that sounded fun, and I was going to need some fun to look forward to tomorrow. Today. When the sun was up.
“I will.”
Was there anyone else in the world who would humor my interests like this, or had I just gotten incredibly lucky and found the one guy in the world who understood how fascinating this stuff really was? “Okay.” I kissed him again—his cheek, then the side of his neck—then pulled back and forced myself to say goodbye. I included the cats and the fish in my farewell, and with a parting shot of “Don’t be too much of an asshole, Steve” that got me a laugh from Kyle, I wandered out the door and finally pulled away. I glanced at the clock on the dash and groaned. I was going to pay for this late night.
Worth it.
I was useless the next morning. Not even a four-cup pot of coffee just for me was enough to resurrect my brain from the depths to which it had fallen. Thank God there was only one service today and Dad was in charge of it (the Morriseys were family friends, and he liked to help those folks out personally). Stuart was off running bodies into other states, so that meant I was on pickup duty if something was called in. The rest of the time, I was supposed to handle the phones, answer emails, and help out in the front office while Leanne worked on Kurt Davidson in the back. Kurt Davidson Junior, actually—just twenty-four and dead from an overdose a week ago.
God, it was weird to see him there. I knew him, kind of. I knew him in the way you knew someone you passed in the hall every day in high school. The way you caught the name of someone who wasn’t in your class but who was a friend of a friend. Kurt was two years younger than me, but we’d seen each other around and gone to a few of the same parties. We even had driver’s ed together, since I had to go back for a “refresher” course after getting a few too many tickets. I’d never expected this. The last I knew he was apprenticed to his dad, who was an electrician, and prepping to take over his family business. That was a few years back, though.
Those few years hadn’t been good to him. He had scars from injections on both arms, and he’d gone from lanky to stringy. I didn’t realize I was staring until Leanne gently nudged me as she came around the table. “Are you all right?”
“I—yes,” I said. “I think so, just…it’s weird, seeing people I know die. He was so…he was straight-edged in high school, I think. He never drank at parties. He never smoked. Kurt getting into drugs is really bizarre to me.”
“I hear you,” my sister said, pulling out her makeup palette and going to work on his face. “Two of my friends have gone to rehab in the past year. It’s gotten so easy to find drugs downtown. Theo thinks that—” She paused and cleared her throat. “He thought that the city’s become something of a ground zero for dealers recently. He wasn’t sure why, and his boss in the DA’s office isn’t focusing on the dealers, either. They keep pursuing the users, I guess because they’re easier to get evidence against. It frustrates him.”
Ha, I forgot that Theo was a lawyer. “Doesn’t that seem weird?” I asked.
She smoothed a layer of thick foundation over Kurt’s face, giving his skin a false glow. “Weird how?”
“That they wouldn’t have some sort of, I don’t know, operation in place to go for the dealers. If that’s where the root cause is, then that’s what they should focus on, right?”
Leanne snorted. “I mean, what’s the root cause when it comes to someone deciding to do drugs? Access is a factor, sure, but it’s tougher and tougher to make a living out there. People need a distraction from the shitshow of their lives, and drugs are a good one.”
That sounded a little ominous. “You’re not…I mean, I know you’re not doing anything, but if you needed help you would tell me, right?”
Leanne laughed tiredly. “What could you help me with, Ev?”
“Anything,” I told her, kind of annoyed but trying not to show it because I knew she was in pain and didn’t mean to imply that I was useless. “I could help you with anything you wanted. I could listen if you need to talk about Theo, or I could stand in and do makeup in here—you taught me how, don’t pretend I’m not good at it—or I could be a sounding board if you wanted to tell me about the different aesthetician programs you’re considering, or?—”
My sister dropped the sponge she was holding and turned to me with wide eyes. “How did you know about that?”
“You put in the mortuary’s email address for one of the responses,” I said. “I thought it was spam at first, but then I opened it and it looked kind of official, so I forwarded it to you. Was I not supposed to do that?”
“Don’t tell Dad.”
I almost laughed. “You assume he’d listen to me even if I tried to talk to him.”
She frowned at me. “I’m serious, Everett.”
So was I, but whatever. “I won’t,” I said. “But I think he’d be supportive of you going back to school.”
She sighed. “Not when he learned that it would mean not working here anymore.”
Oh. Oh wow. Both of my siblings were thinking of jumping ship. If they did, and if Dad didn’t hire more help or trust me to take on more responsibilities, then the business would go under.
Weirdly, that didn’t scare me as bad as it might have a while ago. Change happened. And my siblings clearly needed that change.
“Not that I’m really going to do it,” she said, picking up the sponge and turning back to Dwayne. “It was just a thought. Theo used to—I mean—he always said I’d be good at it. He helped me narrow down the programs I was interested in before he called things off.”
Oof. I wondered if that meant, “He encouraged me to do something, anything, rather than staying in a holding pattern that didn’t seem to make time for him.” Damn, maybe I should have been a therapist.
“So, I might have a boyfriend.”
My sister dropped the brush again and glared at me. “Thanks for rubbing it in!”
Nope, never mind, I didn’t have the sensitivity or timing to be a therapist.
“I don’t mean to rub it in, I just—” The bell on the front door sounded, giving me the out I needed to escape Leanne’s glare. I darted out of the prep room and headed for the front office. There was a guy standing there in a plain black T-shirt and jeans who I didn’t recognize. He was checking out sample pictures from some of our nicer memorials, hands in his pockets.
“Hi, welcome to Mulligan’s Mortuary Services,” I said as I came around the desk to stand beside him. It was a little weird to have someone in our front office without an appointment…or had I forgotten one? “What can I do for you?”
The man smiled. He had a small scar in his cheek that got deeper with the motion, and his canines projected over his lower teeth—it kind of made him look like a vampire. “Are you Everett Mulligan?”
“I…yes.” Not that there was any reason for him to know that. “Have we met?”
“Nope.” The guy popped the “p” on the word. “And I wish we didn’t have to. It’s better that guys like you don’t meet people like me, Everett.”
O…kay. “What kind of person are you?” I asked. It felt like the logical question, but the guy just turned his eyes back to the photo wall.
“It looks like you and your family do good work,” he said. “And I understand your business license is up for renewal.”
“Um.” Was it? I didn’t stay up on those details, that was all Dad.
“It would be a real loss to the community if that renewal didn’t go through.”
Was this guy from the city? “Is that a possibility?” As far as I knew, our finances were in the black and we didn’t have any citations for anything.
“Anything is a possibility when people start messing with things that don’t concern them.” The guy turned back to me and put a hand on my shoulder, then squeezed. Hard.
“Ow!” I tried to pull away but he didn’t let go, and oh, shit, I finally got it. This was a shakedown, a warning, exaction, blackmail—maybe not blackmail, but?—
“You need to leave well enough alone, you hear me?” The man’s voice was low and menacing. “No more asking questions about the dead, not unless you want things to get bad for you and your family. Got it?” I stared down at the floor, silently freaking out and unable to say a word as the pain got worse and worse. “I said, you got ? — ”
“Detective Reardon?”
The guy let go of me immediately and turned toward the newcomer—Leanne, standing in the door in her white coat and holding an embalming scalpel in one hand. She looked calm and relaxed, but she didn’t lower the scalpel as she stepped into the office. “I thought I recognized you,” she continued in a friendly voice. “We met at the department’s Christmas party last year, remember?”
“Right, right,” the guy—the detective , apparently, holy shit—said, perfectly level. “You came with Mr. Walsh. Sorry to hear about the breakup.”
Her smile went brittle. “Thanks. How can we help you today, Detective? Have you suffered a loss?” If you haven’t yet, you’re about to , her voice warned.
“Nothing of the sort, just…went for a walk, decided to pop in and look around. You two have a nice day.” He gave us one last smile, then walked out with a merry jingle of the bell.
My sister was beside me in an instant. “Everett, what was that all about?” She might not have heard what he’d been saying, but she could read body language better than most people.
I didn’t know what to tell her, so I mumbled something about having a headache and escaped to the kitchen. What could I tell my sister? That we were being threatened by a cop because I was trying to prove an innocent man was murdered? No way, I couldn’t tell her that. I needed to think up a decent lie, but my mind was too full of the last thing I’d seen before the detective left.
I was too scared to focus on anything but that pair of black Air Force 1s on his feet.
Shit.