Trapp #2
Trapp blinked blearily, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, head pounding. His mouth tasted like he’d licked the pavement, throat sticking. It wasn’t until he had staggered to the kitchen, filling his glass with cucumber-and-mint-infused water from Grayson’s refrigerator that he remembered.
The tailor.
He dropped his aching skull against the refrigerator door, groaning.
The bespoke dresses and suits for the wedding that Grayson was paying for, for the entire bridal party. All they’d needed to do was show up. The appointment for the groomsmen had been made around his schedule. The appointment that had been on his calendar for several months.
He couldn’t contemplate Grayson’s anger when his eye was pulsing.
Trapp rifled through cupboards until he located something to take for his headache, took double, deciding chasing it with one of the imported beers in the refrigerator wouldn’t actually be the worst thing he’d done that day, and went back to bed.
The sky was already dark by the time Grayson came home that night.
Trapp had woken an hour or two earlier, his headache only slightly improved.
He had left the house to go to the pharmacy, not wanting to completely empty his brother’s medicine cabinet, seeking an OTC remedy and food.
And alcohol. We’re going to need a lot of fucking alcohol.
Vanessa was in the city, and there was no one to witness him sliding deeper into what he admitted to himself was a pool of self-pity and regret, for which there seemed to be no bottom.
He was sitting in front of the actual pool when Grayson crossed the deck. It was a long, heavy moment before he spoke, and Trapp knew from long experience that he needed to head it off.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I slept right through it. This shift was . . . it was rough; I didn’t get any sleep at the station. It’s my fault for even telling you to schedule the appointment on my first day off.”
“It’s fine.” Grayson’s voice was deceptively calm. “You can go this week and have your measurements taken. It was probably easier to choose the fabric and cut without another opinion anyway.”
Trapp nodded silently, reaching blindly for another bottle.
“It’s Thursday. Did you want to go to the Pig?”
He shook his head, wincing at the movement. “No.”
“Well, what is your plan, exactly? Because I don’t know if using my house as an avoidance tactic for the fucking mess you’ve made of your life is a long-term strategy, Trapp.
If you still don’t have one, then you’ve learned nothing these last few weeks, and this is exactly why you wound up here in the first place.
Lowell is flying in, so, you’re about to have a roommate.
You know he can’t be alone for five minutes. ”
“Great, a megaphone to amplify my every bad decision.”
Trapp glared into the wavering water of the pool, the reflection of the lights from the house making the surface gleam, trying to decide why this particular conversation was making him feel worse.
Grayson was reliably an asshole, and by rights should have come stomping in to berate Trapp for missing the appointment, but he hadn’t.
He was tiptoeing around Trapp in the most un-Grayson-like way.
Pity. That’s it. His stomach twisted. He hadn’t come here for pity.
He knew better. To be eliciting it now was a bad sign.
The argument with her should have been a catharsis, a final chapter slamming the book shut for good.
She’d made that clear. Instead, he felt as poorly over it as he’d felt all those years ago.
He was tired of Grayson’s attempts at making him feel better.
He didn’t want to feel better. He wanted to wallow, and his brother’s best half-assed efforts over the last several weeks hadn’t done anything to assuage the gnawing sensation in his chest.
It was smart that he had decided to do his drinking here.
After the coffee shop, his fingers had itched with the desire to pick a fight, and he knew that if he were to allow himself to mingle with the general populace of Cambric Creek right now, he would be a fucking menace.
The instant he detected even a whisper about her, that would be it.
Mugshot in the paper, a suspension from work, if they didn’t fire him outright.
Drunk and disorderly, felonious assault, there was no question about any of it.
But, he still wanted to pick a fight with someone.
Far better to do it here. And unfortunately for Grayson, Trapp knew the precise location of all of his buttons, having placed a few of them there himself.
Inciting Gray to violence was no easy feat, for the magnanimous bastard had an excellent poker face. Angering him wouldn’t work.
Insecurities, on the other hand . . .
He chuckled darkly, interrupting. “I guess that’s Lowell’s problem to figure out when he gets here, isn’t it?
You know what’s kind of funny? I was thinking about this the other day.
When Liam graduates—” he continued to laugh, already anticipating Grayson’s fist connecting with the side of his jaw and his dive-tackle response, the bloodshed he was craving above all else “—you and Lowell will be the only two in the family without STEM-adjacent degrees. Birds of a feather, really.”
Grayson scoffed, his own laughter a pitch-black scrape, a Grayson special, absent of pity, at last. Trapp could tell that Gray could see exactly what he was being led into. But will he take the bait?
“You’re cute. Right? You think you’re cute.
You think any of this is dignified? I heard the brass at your station hauled you in for a formal reprimand.
Over someone you haven’t seen in twenty years?
I think I’m starting to see why your human left, to be honest. You’ve only been here a few weeks and I’m fucking exhausted from your constant need for ego stroking.
You think fighting with me, being an asshole with me, is going to make you feel better? ”
Trapp glowered. He wanted to punch something, wanted to bleed. He didn’t want another fucking lecture.
Grayson shook his head, continuing to snicker blackly, muttering under his breath, his eyes also trained on the water. Until the moment they weren’t.
Trapp dove off his chaise longue, not expecting Grayson to kick a sun chair at him, launching it like a fucking cannon and obliging him to roll across the deck to avoid being clipped.
“Why don’t you get the fuck out of my house, Trapp.
I don’t want to see you until after the moon.
If you want to wallow in all of your failure and inadequacy and be a miserable piece of shit, go do it somewhere else.
I’m tired of looking at you. I’m tired of smelling you.
I’m tired of pretending that it’s not pathetic you couldn’t close the deal with a fucking human.
Now you’ve got some coyote bitch making you the bitch.
Frankly, I’m rooting for her. I might not know every sixty-two year old socialite on the East Coast, but I’m also not sitting here jerking off in the dark and crying over the one I fucked. ”
Trapp cursed himself, unsure of what he thought he was going to achieve. Grayson couldn’t be baited that easily, especially not when his opponent was miserable and drunk. He should have known better, Trapp lamented too late, for Gray knew all of his buttons as well.
Grayson pantomimed tears, rubbing at his eyes, making an indistinct blubbering sound before snapping again.
“Grow the fuck up. If you want to go cry somewhere, go cry to Mom. Because no one else wants to put up with your entitled, woe-is-me bullshit. And we all know that running away is what you’re good at. ”
Trapp pushed himself to his feet. He was missing a shoe, but he wasn’t going to deign to go hunting around for it now.
He didn’t especially want to leave his case of alcohol behind, but that, too, would have required bending over, which he knew without question Grayson would use to his advantage to either flip him into the pool or sink a fist into his gut.
Kicking off his remaining flip-flop as soon as his feet touched the grass, he attempted to walk as steadily as he could to the gate.
He was in no condition to drive, but fortunately he didn’t live far.
“Run away, Trapp. It’s what you do best.”
He was on the other side of the gate now, having shut his brother out, unsure of what he would do next, realizing too late that walking home without shoes wasn’t an option either. Pathetic loser at the trolley stop it is.
“Don’t forget next time,” Grayson’s disembodied voice echoed across the water, carrying to him easily, rising in volume and irritation as Trapp walked shakily down the driveway. “My degree is in hurting people’s fucking feelings.”