Chapter 12
12
Seth Mays
Just letting you know that I have a new apartment.
Thanks for letting me stay with you.
Elliot Crane
You didn’t have to do that.
Yes I did.
But thanks anyway.
I should have stayed and talked with you.
It’s fine.
I understand.
I shouldn’t have left like that.
I didn’t respond to that one, sighing as I deliberately put my phone down, screen against the kitchen counter. I’d signed the lease yesterday, and this morning I’d said my goodbyes to Judy and Marsh. Judy had hugged me, telling me that I could come over anytime and they’d make fish or barbecue chicken and she’d make me a totally dairy-free pie. It was very sweet, and I was tempted.
But I also didn’t want to impose. I might go by sometime—they were very nice people—but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome or overextend their generosity.
That, and I knew myself. I’d attach myself to them—just like I had to Elliot, like I had to Devin before him, like I had to every guy I’d dated before that. Like I had to Noah, although I knew that was a bond that I wouldn’t ever really lose—nor did I want to. But I needed to do this. To be on my own.
Conveniently, my new apartment all but shared a parking lot with the Shawano Police Department, so I could walk there and still be able to run to my car if I needed to. The Shawano County Sheriff’s Office was a couple blocks north, so I could walk there, too. And if we needed to drive, we’d be taking the truck or van anyway.
It occurred to me that I should tell Noah I had a new address.
I sent him a text with it.
It only took a few minutes before he sent me one back.
Does this mean you and Elliot aren’t seeing each other anymore?
I hated the fact that that was the first question he’d asked me.
We were never seeing each other , I sent back. Not like that.
Fine, came the next message. Then, Does that mean you’re not sleeping together anymore?
Sometimes, I didn’t like my brother. None of your business, nosy.
He either didn’t take the hint or chose to ignore it. You’re still staying anyway?
I have a job now, I sent back. You know, the whole reason I came out here.
Noah didn’t send anything for a while.
I worked on unpacking a box of thrift store kitchen stuff—a few plates, some silverware, some bowls, a casserole dish, a skillet, and a french press. Judy Hart had given me a set of dishtowels and washcloths. She’d tried to give me a lot more, but I’d kept her to that. They were cute—the towels. Your standard white kitchen towel, but one had a little pepper cut out of fabric and stitched on like a quilt, and another had a tomato, and the third an eggplant. The washcloths were crocheted, the cotton yarn dyed to shift through primary colors—red, yellow, blue.
I’d also bought a couple of bath towels and a rag rug for the front door. I’d gone to three different thrift stores—I was pretty sure there were only three in Shawano—and I’d managed to make a deal with the local Habitat for Humanity to drop off an old, but moderately unstained, mattress sometime later today. How I was going to get it up the fire escape that led to my apartment door, I didn’t know, but that was a problem I’d deal with when it got here.
I’d spent more than I probably could afford, but I needed dishes to cook with and eat from and something to sleep on that wasn’t the floor. I had another whole list of things it would be nice to have, but those could all wait until I had more than a couple dollars left in my bank account.
I’d also hit the Dollar Store, and now had a collection of off-brand cleaners and soaps and toiletries, as well as paper towels, toilet paper, and tissues. The essentials.
I already hated living by myself.
Did you really hate working with me that much? Noah asked me.
Fucking hell.
I called him.
“No, Nono, I didn’t hate working with you ,” I told him, emotion thickening my voice. “I just hated not doing what I do .”
“And you had to go all the way to Wisconsin? You couldn’t get a job in like Maryland or something?”
I stifled a sigh. “There was an opening here,” I said softly. “One I knew existed.”
“Did you even look anywhere else?” he asked, accusation in his voice.
I forced myself not to get angry. Or, at least, not to let my anger show in my voice. Yelling at Noah wasn’t going to do me any good. It would only upset him and upset me more. “No, because I knew about this one. I knew Hart could write me a recommendation, and they might actually listen to him because he grew up here. Because he worked on a case here. I consulted on a case here. It gave me a real chance instead of a remote possibility.” All of that was absolutely true.
It’s just that Elliot was the real reason I’d moved out here.
But that wasn’t going to become anything. He’d made that clear. It had always been clear, I just hadn’t wanted to pull my head out of my ass to see it.
Noah was quiet for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” he asked, his voice small and hurt.
“Because I didn’t want to hope too much,” I retorted. “And if I didn’t talk about it, then I wouldn’t be as disappointed if it didn’t work out. Because I was scared that if Shawano wouldn’t hire me, nowhere would.”
“Have you told them you’re a shifter?” he asked, then.
I blinked, surprised. “One of the detectives knows,” I answered.
“But not your boss.”
“No.”
“And what happens when they find out?” he demanded. “What if you shift at work?”
“I’m not going to lose control,” I retorted. “Elliot worked with me on controlling my shifting.”
“Did he.” It wasn’t a question.
I blew out a breath, trying to control my temper. “Yes, Noah, he did. It was helpful. I can shift of my own free will and I know who I am and what’s going on around me when I do.” I didn’t mention the fact that I’d lose my contacts and not really be able to see all that well. I wasn’t planning on shifting at work, so it shouldn’t ever be a problem.
“You’re—are you sure?” He sounded… sad? Wistful? Why would me being able to control my shifting make him sad ?
“Are you upset that I can control this?” I asked, incredulous.
“No—I just… I wish I’d been there to help you, too,” he said, finally, and I felt like a jerk.
“Noah—you did help me,” I said, trying to placate him. “You helped a lot . When I really needed you.”
“But you needed him more,” he said.
I didn’t really know how to handle this. I hated that I’d upset him, but I also didn’t want to turn around and go back to Richmond. I love my brother—but I also wanted to have my own life. “I—I needed to make my own choices,” I said. “To know that I can be on my own.”
“You can’t be on your own here?” he asked, and I could hear the hurt in his voice.
“No, I can’t,” I said softly. “Not because you’d do anything wrong, but because I wouldn’t be able to help myself.”
“What does that mean?” he asked, and, if anything, the hurt was stronger in his voice.
I sighed. “It means,” I said, trying to sort through my words and feelings so that I didn’t make this any worse. “That I will rely too much on other people if I’m around them. You, Quincy, Hart—I’ll let everyone else do the hard parts for me, and I won’t ever learn how to do them myself.”
“But I want to help you with the hard parts, Sethy.”
“I know you do, Nono. And… I’m grateful you do. Really. But I need to be able to do this on my own.”
“Do what ?” Noah sounded exasperated.
“Anything,” I answered. “Everything.”
Once I’d gotten off the phone with Noah, I’d spent the rest of the day cleaning—with a break to haul the mattress upstairs with the help of the nice Habitat volunteer named Carlos. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he’d even flirted a little, but I wasn’t going to go there. Carlos seemed nice enough, and he was pretty cute, but I’d lost the will to even think about trying to date anyone. I assumed that would come back to me in a month or two or ten. Once I stopped thinking about Elliot every five minutes.
It was amazing just how much grime built up around human life—and how much grime you could scrub off of something that you thought was fairly clean and just needed a little bit of shine.
It felt like some sort of fucked up metaphor for my life.
No matter how much I scrubbed, there always seemed to be more caked on grease and dirt and stains—blood, sweat, vomit, shit. I was starting to wonder if maybe that was all there was to me—just layer after layer of grime without anything of substance left once you’d scrubbed all the filth away.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
An even less pleasant thought was the idea that I’d never lived on my own because I’d been secretly afraid that I would discover that without someone else in my life, I didn’t have anything. No purpose, no motivation, no actual substance. That I wasn’t even a person.
Now that I had my own extremely sad and slightly-less-grimy apartment, I had nothing but my own thoughts and a laptop for company.
The laptop was fine. My thoughts—not so much.
I kept thinking about how the more people at work who knew I was a shifter, the more precarious my job was. About how I’d almost certainly ruined any chance I might have had to develop a relationship with Elliot by pushing things too quickly. About the fact that Noah was still pissed at me for moving out here.
About how I’d decided I wanted to do everything by myself, and now that I was in my own apartment and had my own job, I was half a country away from everyone I loved who actually loved me back—and I was deeply lonely.
I didn’t do well by myself. It was why I’d spent the better part of the last fifteen years clinging to one person or another—Noah, then Clay, then Enrique, then Devin. Then Elliot. And in between the boyfriends had always been Noah.
There still was Noah, of course—he was a thousand miles away, not dead—but it was different when I wasn’t sharing his apartment or pretending that I was just crashing on his couch for a couple days. It had always been too easy to just let Noah hold me up when I felt like I was drowning. But it meant that I never learned to swim.
So I’d decided to throw myself into deep water—and either sink or swim.
I honestly wasn’t sure which I was doing.