Chapter 28 #4
“Chary.” Laurie shifted, pushed their foreheads together, placed his hands on either side of Chary’s puffy face, ’til he felt supported by those simple, dear touches alone.
“For God’s sake. You faced a hundred policemen barreling you down in a bathhouse, you beautiful, brave man; how’s that for a barrier?
And, before that, got almost everybody else out. ”
Brave? Chary gave a shaky, disbelieving laugh. Beautiful?
“My heart breaks to have to tell you no. I’d petition Roosevelt myself if it would accomplish this thing for those boys.
But you don’t need me,” Laurie said fiercely.
“Even if my story never makes it to print, there are still yet avenues for them. And you haven’t seen me despair, but I have.
Promise. I’ve raged and screamed and cried against that same futility you feel now.
It doesn’t make you a fool. It makes you wonderful and me lesser for shutting the door against it. ”
“No,” Chary protested.
Laurie kissed his brow, his cheekbone, the sharp cut of his jaw just above his collar.
“I am lesser,” he murmured, hot against his skin, “to have to disappoint you.” He came back to Chary’s mouth, breath hard, lips trembling.
“I told you to have faith, and you did that, and I’ve let you down.
Yet again. God. There’s nothing worse than—”
He halted, then kissed Chary hard.
Chary didn’t quite understand what he meant, but he kissed back anyway—until moments later, when the distraction became too much for even Laurie’s lips to overcome. Then he broke free, standing his ground, though Laurie yet sought out his mouth.
Chary demanded, “Nothing worse than what?”
Laurie sighed. “Chary, do you know how I’ve come to feel about you?”
“No,” Chary replied honestly. “And to answer a question with a question”—he bit his lip—“well, that isn’t finishing your original statement.”
Laurie made a laugh-groan into his shoulder.
“Please do finish it,” Chary said, finding it harder to breathe. “Because although I can infer what you might have gone on to say”—he swallowed—“usually, I am”—wrong—“well, in this instance,” he clarified, “I think I may have it right.” And I’m terrified to be wrong.
“Far be it that anyone is sure of me in any way,” Laurie muttered. He blew out a breath. “Which is an inward criticism of myself, spoken aloud. Not of you.” His brows arched concernedly as he ducked his chin in that perfect, coy angle of his. “What’ve you inferred thus far?”
“That there is no worse feeling than to let down”—Chary lost courage all at once—“a—a reader. A subscriber. An admirer. To fall from their estimation.”
Laurie should’ve glowered; instead, his eyes gleamed, as though Chary were funning him, and he found it quite the game.
“But you aren’t a subscriber,” he said warningly.
“But I am.” He was now.
“Sure. Maybe. And maybe a little bit of an admirer.” Laurie put his thumb up to Chary’s bottom lip and pushed. “Yeah?”
“Well—” His tongue made passing contact on the alveolar l, and Laurie’s eyes flared.
“Mm-hm. And certainly a reader.” He said it low and dark, like that simple fact alone aroused him.
“Yes.”
“However,” Laurie said, with a dramatic pause, “those aren’t what you are to me.”
“No?”
“My love,” Laurie said patiently, “there’s nothing worse than to have to let down the one you love.”
Chary inhaled. “What?”
“That’s what I was too coward to say. Did you have it right?”
Laurie’s thumb pushed open Chary’s slack, stunned jaw, to make his mouth drop open just a very little, so as to draw forth secrets. Truths. Hopes.
“Yes,” Chary said. “But only in my most fantastic dreams.”
Laurie laughed. It was kind and soft and a little shaky.
“You can’t love me,” Chary protested. “We’re…”
Opposites. You don’t know the truth about me. You think I’m someone else.
“…hardly acquainted,” he tried.
“Too bad. Too late. Don’t care.” Laurie’s thumb moved back and forth, his eyes wide and intent upon it.
“I have fallen in love with you, Chary Wright. There’s nothing I want more than to give you everything I possibly can.
That I can’t give you this… it’s not fair,” he growled, “because I desperately want to give you the world and you to love me back for it.”
I would anyway, Chary thought. In fact, I’m afraid I do. Very much so.
He didn’t say it. Laurie didn’t really give him a chance, anyway.
He leaned up and kissed him: open-mouthed, sweet, scared.
Chary returned it, and they fell into each other, stumbling, as uncoordinated as they’d ever been together—neither was willing to yield his want, even with nothing to fight for but to be closer, with nowhere to go.
They hit the cellar wall with a thud, Laurie’s shoulders solid up against the plaster.
August was right. He must tell him. He must. Laurie couldn’t love him and not know who he was; otherwise he’d be loving someone else. Someone who didn’t exist.
Chary was obliged to extricate himself, leave Laurie panting into his neck.
“You can’t love me,” he said. He felt again like weeping but wouldn’t; without the anger prodding it, his sorrow was toothless.
“Says who?”
“You did. In March.”
Laurie scoffed. “That was an excuse. Thin as newsprint.”
“But it was correct. We’re opposites. We have no business being together. I have no business letting you love me. It is fundamentally inequal.”
“No,” Laurie said slowly, “no longer. I didn’t see it at first, but you’re different—”
“No,” Chary interrupted. “I’m not.” He took a deep breath. “I have to be honest now. I am precisely one of those privileged men you despise. I always have been.”
“But I knew—”
“I’ve never known anything different. Not at any point. Ask me how long my own brother was on the streets, selling his body, before I found him.”
“What? How is that—”
“The whole tapestry. Every thread, Laurie. Twenty-one years.”
Laurie’s eyes met his, startled.
“Twenty years?” he said. “He can’t be old enough…” He inhaled. A pause. “He killed… August Wright.”
His sharp, smart Lawrence. In the end, it hadn’t taken very long at all.
“Yes,” Chary said quietly, “he did. We did, together.”
To avoid Laurie’s stare, he stepped away.
He wiped away wisps of stray threads of glass from the spider and began the process to cool the furnace.
He let Laurie work through it, have his revelation of the truth, and pressed his lips together meanwhile to remember their kisses; he didn’t think he’d get more.
“Chary…” Laurie said, and then looked like he wanted to bite it back. “Is that your name?”
Chary turned and put his hands behind his back. “Chary’s my name. It is my name. Charles—Edward—August—Wright.”
Laurie pushed forward—not angry, not threatening, but intense—straight into Chary’s space.
Why is he not angry? Why is he not totally betrayed?
Laurie put up two hands, slowly, like he had that first day in the rooming house.
“Yeah?”
“Of course.”
Laurie threaded fingers to either side of Chary’s ears. He held his face gently between two palms, then pushed his head left and right, inspecting, stroking his cheeks.
“You’re the designated heir. The second son. Not August—not your brother. He was disinherited as a boy. You received your father’s fortune on the day of his death.”
“On my majority. Our father passed when I was fourteen. It’s how I could work at the furnace shop, if not why. But yes. The entire fortune. I’m the changeling son.”
Laurie’s brows furrowed. “How old are you?”
“School age or real age?”
“Real age,” Laurie said roughly. “This body, this brain, this heart.”
“Twenty-four. Twenty-five, this month. August.”