36. Seb
SEB
“Tori! Come on!” Asher stomped from the living room into the bathroom and returned with his long fingers around the crook of her elbow. “We need to take photos before Gemma gets here.” He shot a look at Seb. It said, Coward.
Seb pursed his lips and practiced his pout. It wasn’t hard.
A nameless sensation had gnawed at his insides since he’d woken up too early, smashed into the window seat, the day before.
He’d fallen asleep on his phone, and it had left a purple imprint on his jaw.
Slowly, he remembered calling Lily after their dinner at the French-Scandinavian restaurant, several rounds of drinks, the impromptu dance party that faded into conversation and then sleep.
Part of him thought it had been a dream until he checked his phone log.
He’d been on the phone with Lily Perkins for nearly an hour at two in the morning.
She had answered and talked with him at two in the morning.
The whole trip felt like a dream, one that he didn’t really want to wake up from, except for one damning thing—Lily was here.
He wished he’d invited her to come with their group, even though she would have never accepted.
Tori was right—she would have made a great Mary Shelley; she was sharp, observant, shrouded in an aura of darkness which he now thought might be grief instead of a curse.
“How’s my hair? I swear there’s an entire can of hairspray and twelve enchantments in there.” Tori turned side to side for Seb’s opinion.
“You didn’t need to copy his hair.”
Tori sighed. “Great art is about commitment.” She looked down at her dust-colored tailcoat. “I can’t believe you made me be Keats. I should be Byron.” She glowered at Seb.
Asher scoffed. “No one mopes like Sebastian. You could have been Mary Shelley.” He offered his arm in faux gallantry.
“There is nothing more boring than women’s Regency fashion. Give me a tailcoat and a cravat over an empire waist or give me death.” She attempted to flip her hair, forgetting that it was now much shorter.
Seb stifled a laugh. “You could have been my bear,” he said with a wicked grin.
“Ha ha, Sebastian. Get fucked.”
Asher returned to the bar cart and decanted the evening’s first drink, passing it around. It swirled honey gold, and sharp spices wafted toward Seb as he accepted it. He could drink six in a row without thinking if he wasn’t careful and Asher was particularly obliging.
Asher grinned. “O Muse,” he said, naming it, then raised his glass. “To dying young and leaving beautiful corpses.”
“Keats wasn’t beautiful—he’s gotten an upgrade.” Tori laughed.
“Leave Keats alone,” Seb bristled, adjusting his deep burgundy cravat.
“Come to think of it, Seb—have you chosen a single Halloween costume that isn’t someone who dies early?”
Tori choked on her drink.
“Hey, out of all of us, I live the longest. Byron died an august thirty-six.”
“Last year was Patroklus, the year before that was Chopin—”
“I didn’t pick those years.”
“Yes, you did,” Tori said. “You picked last year.”
“No.” He tried to keep his voice light. “Conrad picked last year.”
“Oh. Right.” Tori became suddenly interested in her drink.
The reminder dragged Seb backward to the Halloween prior.
Technically, the Homeric theme had been Conrad’s pick, but it had been Seb’s idea.
Going as Achilles and Patroklus—flanked by Asher as Odysseus and Tori as Athena—had been the most overtly gay thing Seb had ever done, and it had been one of the best nights of his life, a shimmering collection of moments against which he’d weighed everything that had come after.
Looking at it from the other side, though, he remembered everything he’d shoved under the rug at the time—how hard he’d had to plead to get Conrad to go along with the idea; how their only real dance together had been in an empty conference room; how when Seb had run his hand through Conrad’s bronze curls, he’d been shaken off, and they’d fought about it, in terse whispers, behind a vending machine, before Conrad had finally stopped him with a kiss and they’d left the dance early.
“Let’s take some photos. Gemma will be here any minute,” Seb said, pulling himself out of the spiral. Relief and a tiny flame of pride sparked through him as he realized he’d done it. Maybe it does get easier.
“At least I had the good sense not to invite my date to our most private sanctum,” Tori said, glaring.
“Who’s your date?” The boys said in unison.
“Exactly.”
“What’s Gemma going as, anyway?” Asher said, topping off their drinks.
“No idea—she said it was a surprise.” Seb didn’t even bother to hide the sigh in his voice.
Tori groaned.
Asher gave him another look.