18. Emory
Emory
On Monday morning, Emory was uniquely humbled as he stood stark naked in the corner of the apartment while his pop star roommate, his landlady, and the island’s vice mayor carried a new bathroom mirror through the front door.
The newly nippy autumn air invaded the room, swiped over his nether regions, and sent an uncomfortable chill through him.
He clenched his jaw as best he could to keep his teeth from chattering and giving him away.
When Gerard raced up just as Emory was about to climb into bed and told him they were to have company, he made a quick decision.
It was either this or ducking into the crawl space again, and his muscles still hadn’t forgiven him for all that circus-level contortion the last time.
The glass mirror faced where Emory stood, but no reflection peered back. Instead, the sunlight shining in from the window to his left bounced off the glass and nearly blinded him.
“How’d you say you broke this again?” Kellen asked Gerard, their voices echoing out from the bathroom. Regina stayed in the room, looking around. Every time her gaze swept over his invisible form, Emory shuddered. Hiding in plain sight took on a whole new meaning.
“I had a hair spray can with a clogged nozzle. I struggled to get the lid off, and it went flying,” Gerard lied.
Kellen sounded skeptical. “Musta been one hell of a projectile.”
“Yeah.” Gerard offered an awkward laugh. He stepped out of the bathroom for a moment and pulled some cash from his pocket. “This should cover the damage. Sorry again.”
“Let’s call it a trade.” Regina accepted the money and handed Gerard a maroon-colored, leather-bound book. “I came to bring this to you last night, but it sounded like you had a visitor.”
All the color leaked from Gerard’s cheeks. “What?”
“When I wandered up to knock, I thought I overheard you talking with someone around dinnertime,” Regina said. Emory’s heart picked up speed. How was Gerard going to explain this away? All the best lies were easily debunked. TV? There wasn’t one. Video on his phone? There was no Wi-Fi.
“Me? Dinnertime?” Gerard performed deep thought before snapping his fingers and retrieving an iPod that looked to be on death’s door. “Oh. That’s funny. I was listening to a podcast.”
“That ancient thing gets podcasts?” Kellen asked as he worked diligently to remove the broken shards of the mirror. Gerard seemed to ignore the question.
Regina bunched up her lips. “I thought I heard your voice, too.”
“When I’m lonely, I talk back to them sometimes,” Gerard said, rubbing the back of his neck, which made his biceps bulge. Emory looked a little too long, senses tingling. “I know it’s weird.”
“When I’m watchin’ a Nationals game, I coach the players through the screen like I’m there. I getcha,” said Kellen, helpfully squashing any disbelief crinkling Regina’s forehead. She accepted the lie and left them to it.
Still, Emory couldn’t very well sleep while Kellen was there. If he got under the covers, they’d bulge. If he lay on top of them, they’d dent. He had no choice but to stand there, naked and cold, while Kellen completed the task.
Probably sensing Emory’s discomfort, Gerard offered Kellen a hand, which sped up the process of mounting the new mirror and also gave Emory a good view of the two capable, strong men hauling the sheet of glass into place. Their pits visibly dampened and their showy muscles flexed as they grunted.
Damn. Not only was he standing there naked and cold like a creeper.
Now he stood there naked and cold with a boner.
To shield his unfortunate situation, he turned away, but not before noticing Gerard noticing Kellen, who lifted the bottom hem of his blue T-shirt to swipe the sweat off his upper lip, exposing a toned stomach with a prominent treasure trail that disappeared into the waistline of his jeans.
Lust practically leapt off Gerard’s gaze.
Nothing killed an erection more than jealousy.
The vice mayor had natural muscles, a sharp, stubbly jaw, and a nice tan from working outdoors that still hadn’t faded from summer. Emory didn’t look anything like that. As he glanced down at his own hands, he remembered that he didn’t look like anything … anything at all …
“That was a close call today,” Gerard said as they cleaned up that night’s dinner.
Emory had woken up minutes before Gerard was due back, threw some lettuce, peppers, and croutons into a bowl, and called it a salad. His eyes were heavy and dry. At least Gerard couldn’t see the gnarly bags he sensed developing under them.
The previous night, naked so as not to be seen, Emory had dipped out into town.
Time had lost most of its meaning by that point—everything except BI (before invisibility) and AI (after invisibility)—so the seasons changing had not been on his radar.
Fall was in full swing then, wind battering the leaves on the trees, making him shiver in his birthday suit.
Inflatable ghosts and orange string lights bedecked front porches, giving the mostly identical houses their own personalities.
Even the single-story library building had potted mums dotting the front steps, one of which Emory almost kicked over as he wedged open the wide window that never locked right. He snuck inside in search of some new reading material.
“Sorry about the whole ‘Quick, get naked or get out!’ thing earlier,” Gerard said, scrubbing their used bowls clean.
“It’s fine,” he said, happy that the broken mirror no longer plagued him from the bathroom. While he had no use for it presently, he didn’t need the reminder of that particularly stressful night when everything seemed to be going sideways.
“We’ll just be a little quieter and more careful,” Gerard said as the drying rack grew full.
Emory was tired of being quiet and careful, but he didn’t say that. He wasn’t going to be the one to rock their little lifeboat of two when things were working out well, so he changed the subject. “Why did Regina give you that book earlier?”
“She wants me to join her church choir.” Gerard rung out the sponge and wiped his hands on a checkered towel.
A single soap bubble took to the air. What Emory would’ve given to have at least a refractive index equal to that bubble.
To have a sheen and a shape in the space.
Gerard would at least walk into him less.
“Are you going to join?” Emory asked.
“At this point, I think Regina would evict me if I didn’t.
” He leaned back against the counter, wearing the same T-shirt he had been dressed in earlier while he changed the mirror.
Emory wondered what it smelled like after a full day of rubbing up against Gerard Wells’s skin.
In the mess of a morning with the mirror, he’d never changed the sheets, so once the commotion died down, he’d nestled under the covers and got hit with a nose full of grapefruit body lotion, aloe, and clean musk.
He wondered if it smelled the same direct from the source.
Gerard moved past Emory’s workspace, fingers grazing the book he’d left open. “The Physiology of Music,” Gerard read aloud. “What is this?”
“Just something I’m reading.” In the library, the book appeared to have never been checked out, so Emory figured it wouldn’t be missed.
A smile took up Gerard’s face; however, it didn’t match the smile Emory had seen him sport on those posters from his college days. This was less symmetrical, unmanufactured. The sight beamed right into Emory’s heart, causing a sharp rise in his blood pressure.
Gerard flipped the book over, scrutinizing the dust jacket and the sticker on the spine.
“When did you go to the library? Better yet, don’t tell me.
The less I know about your gallivanting, the better.
” Despite his wary admonition, his reserved smile never slipped.
“Have you learned anything interesting?”
“I’ve only read bits,” Emory said. “I found it fascinating how many parts of the brain go into perceiving music. There’s the right temporal lobe, which identifies pitch, with a nearby center decoding timbre.
Blood flow in the cerebellum adjusts based on a song’s rhythm, and that’s not even to mention the huge frontal lobe, which stimulates your own emotions while interpreting the emotions conveyed by the music. They all work together.”
“You make it sound like the brain is its own band. Every part having a role in making the song sound good,” Gerard said.
“Exactly. If it were a band, it could be called Corpus Callosum,” Emory said, nerding out, voice pitching up in a way it only ever did when Emory was comfortable with someone. Which was extremely rare.
Gerard’s smile grew exponentially. “That’s the part that makes the two sides of the brain talk, right?”
“Yes!” Emory said. “Musicians, especially ones who started training at an early age, are scientifically proven to have bigger corpus callosa than nonmusicians.”
“If only a big corpus callosum earned you respect in the locker room,” Gerard said with a self-deprecating chuckle.
Thankful that Gerard couldn’t see his fervid blush over the dirty joke, he asked, “Do you know about oxytocin?”
“The love hormone? Yeah, it’s a well-trod trope in pop music. We covered it on album one, got it out of the way,” Gerard said, making an aside motion with his hand.
“Do you have it on that iPod you showed Regina earlier? Can I hear it?” Now that he had a basis for music’s scientific functionality, he was eager to feel the physiology at work. Not for pleasure—purely for research purposes, of course. “Listening to music you like releases oxytocin.”
Gerard screwed up his mouth. “I do have the song, but I don’t know. It’s not our best work. It’s juvenile. It fits better in the context of the album, I think.”
“Can we listen to the whole album, then? You said maybe another time.”