Chapter 24
Saturday night Charlie took Lorenzo out to dinner. It wasn’t a supernatural-affiliated restaurant, and he didn’t bring up a single harebrained scheme to befriend some huldra or a flock of selkie. By all appearances, it seemed to just be a date.
Lorenzo tried not to let on how much it pleased him, but he felt fizzy all evening.
He’d thought Charlie might pull back a little after everything Lorenzo had told him about his past and the house—he wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d needed some space.
But Charlie didn’t seem distant at all; they weren’t exactly baring their souls over dinner, but Charlie had been warm and funny and seductive all evening.
Lorenzo was acutely conscious of trying not to grasp on to it too firmly, worried he might startle it away.
Once they’d paid the check and were standing on the cobblestone street outside, and he realized they had the whole night ahead of them, he had to physically fight a wide grin.
“So what next?” he asked, leaning closer to Charlie. “There’s this art house movie theater around the corner. Or if you want to rest for a bit we could go back to my place, and then—”
“Actually, I was thinking,” Charlie said, and he paused to flash Lorenzo an apologetic look for jumping in. “I mean, I was just thinking—if you wanted, you could come over to my place.”
Lorenzo knew he hadn’t hidden his excitement quickly enough, because Charlie was already smiling, small and relieved. “Really?”
“Yeah. If you want,” Charlie said, glancing down at his shoes, like he was nervous. “I mean, it’s not as nice as yours. But. If you want.”
“Yes,” Lorenzo said. “I want.”
Charlie’s apartment was on the second floor of a small, squat building. The door jammed a little as Charlie opened it—the building was newer than Lorenzo’s, but it was neglected and dim, and smelled of mildew.
Charlie rubbed a hand on the back of his neck as Lorenzo took in the foyer in its dark, dusty glory. The place was barely decorated, and most of the furniture was utilitarian. It might even have been IKEA.
Lorenzo whistled. “Wow. It’s . . .”
“Like I said, it’s not as nice as your place.”
“No, it’s not,” Lorenzo said, poking around Charlie’s coffee table with great interest. “Why do you have so little furniture?”
“I dunno,” Charlie said after a moment. “Just not much of a decorator, I guess.”
“Clearly not,” Lorenzo said, disgusted and fascinated as he explored what constituted the kitchen.
Eventually they reached the bedroom. The bed was made, the final clue that Charlie’s offer hadn’t been spontaneous, but Lorenzo said nothing. The furniture was just as awful and sparse in there as in the rest of the house, but the bed was a queen, and it looked sturdy.
Charlie was looking like he’d put up with Lorenzo’s insults for the rest of the apartment just so he could lure him in here. “Oh, is that your bed?” he asked, wandering around the other side.
“Yes it is,” Charlie said, following him.
He leaned in for a kiss, and Lorenzo stopped him with a finger to his lips, nodding at the nearby window, which was covered in cheap aluminum blinds. Charlie followed his gaze and winced.
“I forgot,” he breathed, staring up at Lorenzo’s lips and biting his own.
“Well, I can’t spend the day here,” Lorenzo said. “Not with it like this.”
“We can be done before daybreak,” Charlie said, pulling Lorenzo closer.
“Wow,” Lorenzo said, acting utterly appalled as Charlie leaned up to press kisses to his neck. “You don’t want to make your apartment vampire-safe so we can . . .”
He took Charlie’s face in his, leaned down, and whispered against Charlie’s lips: “. . . take our time?”
There was a big-box store five minutes away that was still open at one a.m., and Lorenzo and Charlie couldn’t stop giggling as they made out in the home furnishings section.
There was a big display with dozens of curtain fabrics hung up side by side, and they got tangled up in them as they sampled different kinds, shoving each other around and getting entirely too carried away with their necking for a public place.
The lights were screaming bright fluorescents, tinny Chappell Roan was beating down from the store’s speakers, and Lorenzo felt drunk on Charlie, on the way he made fluorescent light and suburban errands feel enchanting, wondrous. Magical.
When they finally made it to the cashier with their blackout curtains, Charlie couldn’t stop blushing.
Every time their eyes met, all Lorenzo could think about was staying in bed with Charlie until high noon.
The curtains being rung up might as well have been condoms. “You don’t have to pay for them,” Charlie said, his voice tight with giddy, delicious shame.
“Let me,” Lorenzo purred back. “Your sad apartment needs them. And besides—I am the one who will benefit.” He leaned over Charlie, hungry for a kiss.
The cashier was desperately uninterested in them. “The chip reader’s not working guys, just touch it.”
Lorenzo snatched his card and the curtains back from her and manhandled Charlie out of the store.
They drank and listened to music while putting up the curtain rods and then the curtains, and then Lorenzo tackled Charlie back onto his queen mattress; not as big as Lorenzo’s, but perfectly adequate.
They fell asleep for a while, but Lorenzo woke first. He was perfectly content to scroll on his phone as Charlie slept, but he blinked awake soon too.
Charlie smiled and rolled over to snuggle him more thoroughly, and Lorenzo put his phone away.
They lay in silence for a moment, and then Lorenzo said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Mmm?”
“Your father,” he said, and he felt Charlie tense. “He’s a professor at the university, isn’t he? A prominent one?”
“Yes,” he said, after a moment.
“So I assume he—makes good money?”
“Yeah?” Charlie said. “And?”
“So I’m surprised you’d rather live here than at home,” Lorenzo said.
“I’m an adult,” Charlie said petulantly.
“Yes, but Charlie, these quarters are . . .”
“They’re not that bad.”
“Hm,” Lorenzo said, in a tone that conveyed that Charlie was obviously wrong, but they didn’t have to discuss it more if he didn’t wish to.
After a moment, though, Charlie spoke again. “We’re not close,” he said flatly. “My dad and me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. We just . . . aren’t.” He paused. “He doesn’t really approve of my . . . my graduate degree.”
“Your thesis?” Lorenzo asked, frowning. “Why not?”
Charlie laughed hollowly. “He’s an economist. Me writing about people’s relationships and friendships and sex lives? I think he’s embarrassed by it all.”
“Well—that’s ridiculous,” Lorenzo said firmly. “You’re an academic, just like him.”
Charlie said nothing. Lorenzo thought he’d said the wrong thing somehow, and grasped to right himself. “If your father makes you feel ashamed of yourself, he’s a fool,” he said, hoping Charlie could hear how fervently he believed it. “You are smart, and capable, and kind.”
Softly, Charlie said, “Thanks, Lorenzo.”
He had another question, but this one was much more delicate, and he wondered if he should quit while he was ahead. Eventually, however, his curiosity won out, and he asked gently, “What about your mother?”
He watched the shadows creep across the room as the silence stretched out. After a while Charlie shook his head, and Lorenzo thought that was the most he could do. He pulled Charlie’s head down into his chest more firmly, holding him tight, letting him know that it was okay.
But then he said, in a thin, bare voice, “She died when I was seventeen.”
“Oh, Charlie,” he whispered.
“Yeah. It was, um . . . I mean, I had time to say goodbye,” he said. “Not a lot. It was pancreatic.”
Lorenzo just held him and stroked his arm, from his shoulder down to his elbow. “What was her name?”
“Ali,” he said quietly. “Alison.”
Lorenzo kept stroking Charlie’s arms, his back, steadily and firm, like he could knead comfort into his muscles and his bones. “What was she like?”
“She was . . . fun,” Charlie said. “She was so much fun.”
He took a deep breath. “Her room used to be filled with all these—like, trinkets, stuff from random shops, and prizes we’d won at fairs, and beads from Mardi Gras.
She just liked having that stuff around, to remind her of the good times.
And she loved telling stories, especially ones where she did something stupid or embarrassing.
” He sighed a little, his body molding itself even closer to Lorenzo.
“I know I can be a . . . a really prideful person,” he said, his voice small.
“But I think I turned out okay because . . . she taught me to laugh at myself. She loved to laugh at herself.”
He paused again, for a while this time. “She helped you see the world for what it was—ridiculous and often disappointing and always fun. She was just so . . . happy,” he said.
“She made you forget why life wasn’t like that all the time.
” After a moment, he added, “My dad got—quieter, after she was gone.”
Lorenzo kissed his forehead.
“Y’know what’s so weird about it,” Charlie rambled on.
“Once you’ve . . . been through something like that, it’s like you suddenly become a member of this .
. . club. The—the nightmare scenario club.
Because—people who aren’t in the club—people who haven’t had to go through that—I mean, they—” He scoffed a little.
“They just don’t have a fucking clue. But once you’re in the club, you can—you can see other people who’re in the club.
And you can help them,” he whispered. “You can be like—I’ve been there too, I know what it’s like when your .
. . your whole world falls apart. Because mine did too. ”
“Yeah?” Lorenzo asked, even though he knew it was true. He’d been a member of the club for two centuries.
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “And it’s . . . it’s the only good thing about it. Feeling useful like that. Feeling like you’re able to do that for someone else.”
Even as he said it, a frown twisted Lorenzo’s face.
Charlie was talking about something horrible but lovely, a silver lining on the darkest cloud, but he didn’t sound sad in that way; he sounded twisted up and bitter.
Like he was talking about something he’d lost, aside from his mother.
“You’re a good person, Charlie,” Lorenzo whispered.
Charlie huffed a laugh and turned his face away. “I don’t know about that.”
Lorenzo hummed and rubbed Charlie’s back more. Speaking aloud as the thought came to him, he said, “Well, with your mother gone, and you living in this . . . squalid hole, maybe the time is right for you and your father to reconnect.”
Charlie sighed. “Lorenzo . . .”
He knew that Charlie had been working tirelessly on his thesis—that was what had brought them together, after all, and even with all the time they’d been spending together lately, he’d seen Charlie hard at work on his laptop, and knew he toiled away during the sunlight hours as well.
Perhaps all that hard work wasn’t enough; perhaps he struggled with self-doubt, and the situation with his father no doubt fed into that.
Maybe, if they could resolve things, Charlie would feel better.
“What if . . . you invited him to the party?” Lorenzo asked tentatively.
Charlie frowned. “The party?”
“Our party,” Lorenzo said. “The thing at my place, for the—all my supernatural, y’know. Contacts.”
“Oh,” Charlie said. He seemed odd suddenly—almost breathless. “Yeah—I—sure. That’s not a bad idea. Sure.”
It was tepid, but Lorenzo would take it; he’d pushed enough for tonight. So he just cuddled Charlie closer to him in the small, dark room, kissed the top of his head, and said, “Good.”