Chapter Fifteen #2
It was hardly cause for alarm, even if David’s mind did keep drifting back to their tryst at inopportune moments (and perhaps a few opportune ones late at night, and in the shower).
He hadn’t been to bed with anyone in some time, and naturally his imagination was latching onto the details.
Details like Meredith in his arms, reduced to a state of mindless desperation as he thrust against his palm.
The undisguised admiration in the way he’d caressed him.
That sweet little sound of contentment he’d made when David had stroked his face afterward.
It meant nothing, of course. The encounter had simply awakened urges David had been suppressing as best he could since his last relationship ended.
Urges best acted upon with someone else, ideally a someone else with whom there was some chance of compatibility or a future together, a someone else who did not go rushing off on impulsive nighttime herb-foraging expeditions or inflicting acts of decoupage upon innocent surfaces.
Still, David kept Mrs. Jupiter’s words in mind, and when Meredith invited him to join him and Kinley at the Rat Cellar on Thursday night, he agreed without protest.
“Oh, but, David, you must, Secondhand Orwell are playing and—wait.” Meredith blinked as David’s words caught up with him. “You said yes.”
“I did,” he confirmed.
Meredith narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “You never say yes, not on the first go.”
#93: Which he takes as his cue to continue asking relentlessly.
“And you never allow me to decline,” grumbled David.
“Oh, but that’s our little game, isn’t it? You like pretending you don’t want to come with, but I think you’d miss it really if I gave up so easily.”
David certainly would not, but he’d let him believe it for the time being.
(Once again, he congratulated himself for doing just as Mrs. Jupiter had said.) Perhaps there was a grain of truth to Meredith’s words, but it disconcerted him to have it laid bare like that when he’d never realized it himself.
In any case, he wasn’t going to admit it and encourage such behavior.
—
Kinley awaited them outside the Rat Cellar, leaning against the building’s half-timbered facade and smoking a cigarette. He raised a hand in wordless greeting, and Meredith raced over to throw his arms around him.
#94: He acts as if an absence of hours or days has been years.
It was only when Meredith stood up on his toes to kiss Kinley’s cheek that David realized he hadn’t greeted him that way all week.
Not that he wanted him to, of course. In fact, it was for the best that he’d stopped, especially after what had happened between the two of them.
After all, where would they be if casual affection started to bleed into their everyday interactions?
Inside, once the three had obtained beers, Kinley made a beeline for one of the few remaining unoccupied tables in a dark corner, and David followed. Meredith, of course, was the last to arrive, taking his time to greet a number of the other regulars.
They, too, all received air-kisses, which caused David to scowl.
Such excess was truly insufferable, and witnessing it brought on an unpleasant sensation as if someone were squeezing the air out of his lungs, crumpling something inside of him.
Even if theirs was an unlikely friendship born of propinquity, he couldn’t help but feel as though he’d been relegated to the scrap heap.
David instead devoted his attention to his pint of beer, which, as usual for the Rat Cellar, managed to be watery and sour at the same time.
Eventually Meredith drifted over to the table, taking the empty middle seat. His gaze wandered to the band, midway through their sound check onstage.
Kinley nudged him with an elbow and nodded in David’s direction. “You tell him what we’ve got going this week?”
Meredith giggled. “I haven’t! Oh, David, you’ll love this—no, you tell him.”
Kinley said, “We’re making a collage of Cliff Richard—”
“Out of smaller pictures of Cliff Richard!” interrupted Meredith, unable to contain his excitement.
David considered this for a moment, then asked the only question he could. “Why?”
“It’s art, man,” said Kinley.
“But…does either of you even like Cliff Richard?”
“No!” exclaimed Meredith in delight. “It’s a mockery!”
#95: Just like everything else he does.
Meredith, overcome with laughter, leaned over to hide his face against Kinley’s shoulder. When he straightened up and tossed his hair back, David was captivated. Though exposed for only the briefest flash, the side of his neck still bore the faded but unmistakable mark of David’s bite.
David forgot to breathe. An intangible force jerked at something deep in his belly, and he was seized by the urge to bury his face against Meredith’s throat and do it again. And again, and again, until he was quivering against him, begging for more—
No. That was out of the question. It had been enjoyable enough, but it mustn’t happen again. These little daydreams were really getting to be a problem.
He tuned back in to catch the tail end of Meredith’s words. “—see the point, really.”
“The point is to do it for yourself,” said Kinley. “If you don’t—” He broke off as he caught sight of the man hurrying through the crowd in their direction.
He was no one of David’s acquaintance—a chubby, balding, clean-shaven man whose cutoff T-shirt left his arms bare, revealing his freshly healed tattoos.
“One of yours?” Kinley asked. As if there were any question—the angular dark flowers interspersed with bits of swirling abstract blackwork were a dead giveaway. He added in approval, “That looks sick.”
Judging by the man’s dismayed expression, he had not come to discuss tattoos. “Schwarzy!” He seized Meredith by the hand before he could rise to greet him. “Jesus, I been looking all over for you. I’m so sorry, man.”
“There, it’s all right, Ed, take a breath.” With his free hand, Meredith gave him a cautious pat on the arm. “What exactly—”
“It is so far from all right,” lamented Ed. “I’m so fuckin’ grateful to you, man, and the last thing I wanted was to cause you any trouble when I went and posted about what you did for me.”
This, David surmised, must be the reformed neo-Nazi.
“I swear to God, I haven’t had anything to do with those guys since I got out of that life years ago. I had no idea they were even gonna see, let alone come after you for it.”
“What’s he talking about?” demanded Kinley. “Who came after you?”
“Of course you didn’t,” Meredith soothed him, ignoring Kinley and extricating his hand from Ed’s grip, forcing the poor man to begin wringing his own hands instead. “But how did you ever find out about that?”
That was the question. David hadn’t mentioned the incident to anyone, and had assumed Meredith wanted it to be forgotten, as he’d never brought it up again himself. Strange, though, that he hadn’t even told Kinley.
Ed darted a glance around the room and said in a low voice, “Jared turned back. Showed up on my doorstep this morning half out of his mind. Turns out a couple nights in the sewers can really make you reconsider your life choices.”
David scanned the crowd, already rising to his feet. “Where is he?”
“No, man, he left town already,” Ed hastened to reassure him. “Went to go stay with his mom and try to work some things out. He ain’t gonna bother you again.”
“He’d better not,” said Kinley.
Ed went on, “He says he never thought Kevin was gonna take it that far. Says they were just gonna rough you up a little for mouthing off—not that that’s cool, either!
” he added hurriedly, palms raised in the face of David’s murderous glare.
“Only when you fought back, it got out of control and—I’m so sorry! ” he interrupted himself yet again.
After further consolation and hand-patting, Ed finally departed. Kinley watched his retreating back with narrowed eyes, then turned to Meredith. “You want to tell me what that was about?”
Meredith did so, providing a condensed version of the story with surprisingly few embellishments—none, in fact, aside from depicting David as far more heroic than he had been.
“Dude, what the hell?” Kinley reproached him. “Why didn’t you tell me any of that was going on? I would’ve handled those guys for you.”
David had tried not to dwell on the memory of that night, but now the scene was fresh in his mind once more. All things considered, he thought Meredith had handled it pretty well himself, as far as anyone could be expected to. Three against one was hardly a fair fight.
“Because,” said Meredith. “It was my problem to deal with. I didn’t need to go dragging you into it. I—I suppose I never thought it’d go that far.”
Kinley took a thoughtful swig of beer. David did the same and regretted it.
“You know what your problem is?” Kinley said at last. “You don’t talk to anybody.”
“I talk to everybody, all the time,” protested Meredith. “Whether they want me to or not, really. Just ask David.”
“I mean about anything heavy. You keep that shit to yourself and on the outside act like it’s all smiles and sunshine—well, maybe not sunshine,” Kinley backtracked. “You’re a little too dark for that.”
It was true—sunshine hardly fit a person who perpetually dressed in black, who preferred rain to shine and night to day.
“Starlight,” interjected David, quite without meaning to.
Kinley started, as if he’d forgotten he was there, then gestured in David’s direction.
“Yeah. Starlight,” he agreed. “But not everything is, not all the time. Trying to pretend isn’t good for you, and it isn’t good for the people around you, you feel me?
Sometimes you have to tell somebody about these things before it turns into something you can’t deal with on your own. ”
“Sorry, Kinley,” said Meredith, chagrined.
“Hey. You’re my little brother and I love you, okay?” Kinley threw an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a rough embrace. “And that’s why I will personally kick your ass if you ever pull something like that again.”
“I know,” said Meredith, resting his head against Kinley’s shoulder. “I love you, too.” After a moment, he added, “But I do need another beer.”
“I’ll get it.” David suddenly wanted nothing more than to get away from the table, from the two of them. “This round’s on me. Another of the same for you?” he asked Kinley.
“Sure. Thanks,” said Kinley in surprise. “I got the next one.”
With a curt nod, David started off for the bar.
It was as Meredith had said: the sentiment between him and Kinley was definitely familial rather than romantic.
Though why the two of them felt the need to claim each other as siblings when Meredith already had a perfectly good brother of his own, David couldn’t begin to understand.
Then again, he and his sister, Ruth, had never had a close relationship, in large part due to their twelve-year age difference, so perhaps this sort of thing was beyond him.
Out of nowhere, he felt himself struck by a wistfulness, a false nostalgia for a closeness that had never been.
He would not hesitate to say that he and Ruth loved each other, but they were by no means in the habit of making spontaneous declarations of it; on the whole, their family tended to share a quieter, more reserved sort of affection.
Though David had never felt slighted by this, a small part of him now wondered whether things could have been different.
By the time he returned to the table, Meredith was alone.
“Kinley went out for another cigarette,” he explained. “He says I stress him out.”
“And you didn’t go with him?”
“Nah, I’d best finish this beer before the band starts, otherwise I might not have the nerve to heckle them.
Besides, you was saying just the other night how you don’t like me to smoke cigarettes.
Were saying.” He winked at David as he took the glass from him.
“See, didn’t even need you to tell me that time. ”
All at once, it clicked into place: the wordless exchange in Kinley’s living room that he hadn’t understood, the tail end of the conversation he’d caught in the kitchen. That hadn’t been about Meredith’s one-sided infatuation at all, but about David himself.
Meredith had urged him long ago to point out when he slipped into nonstandard grammar, and it had become all too easy of a habit, so much so that he suspected the original request had been lost to memory for them both before Kinley brought it up.
And the way it must have looked—
David swallowed hard, and found that he couldn’t bring himself to look up from the depths of his own glass. “Meredith?”
“Hmm?”
“Kinley is a good friend.”
Meredith gave him a puzzled look. “I know.”
“Yes,” said David, “so do I, now.”