Bewitched by Bella's Brother (19 page)

you find, Big J?”

“A lizard. Lizards are cold-blooded and humans are

warm-blooded.”

“Oh,” said Sebastian, knowing what came next. Jordan

raised his head, his messy dark hair a riot around his face and his hazel eyes intent.

“Say it!”

“Absolutely. Lizards are cold-blooded and humans are

warm-blooded,” he repeated, and Jordan nodded his head.

“Humans are warm-blooded. That’s why their hearts

break,” he said gravely, and Sebastian’s eyes widened.

Jordan had drawn him pictures in the past few weeks. They always featured Jordan as a square and a hole in the ground that was also square, with a deceased butterfly in the hole.

There was always a broken heart inside Jordan’s square.

Jordan knew what a broken heart meant.

“Yeah,” Sebastian said, sitting near his feet. “But they’re also good at mending, okay, Jordan?”

Jordan leveled him an unfriendly look and Asa shot

Sebastian a grimace over the kid’s head. He was a very

singular child—he needed to be heard.

“Only if you come back,” Jordan said. “And then never

leave again.”

Sebastian cringed. They’d tried to explain the idea of

“Thanksgiving break” and “Christmas break,” but Jordan

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had drawn a line in the sand. The only way Sebastian could leave now is if he never left again.

“Jordan,” he said now, not able to face that discussion

again, “will it help if you know my heart never leaves? You’re sort of in charge of it now, okay? You can keep it for me when I have to go, and I’ll get it back when I come back, how’s that?”

It was stupid. It was stupid and romantic, and it was a

promise—something he had studiously avoided making.

Until this exact moment.

“Sebastian…” Asa said, a little sharply. It was a

promise; they both knew the reason that Sebastian had

avoided committing to anything beyond visiting during the holidays had been so he didn’t hurt Jordan.

“I mean it,” Sebastian said a little desperately. “I mean it, okay? It’s a promise. I’ll be back, and he can give me my heart back, okay?” Sebastian looked up at him, everything they’d avoided saying absolutely clear in his eyes. “It’s a promise. I’ll be back.”

Asa sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, as

though realizing that he was agreeing to something that

might cause him pain. “You’ll always have a home with us, you know that, right?”

Sebastian nodded. “I’ll take you up on that. I promise.”

He was both surprised and appalled when Asa stood

from the rock and wrapped his arms around Sebastian’s

shoulders, drawing him into his chest in what was
not
a platonic hug. Right there. In front of Jordan.

“I’m holding you to that,” Asa said, and Sebastian gave

it up and melted into him. Okay. It was a commitment. He Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
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was coming back. He wouldn’t betray that moment for

anything.

AN HOUR later, he was packed up in the VW with the tiny U-Haul trailer hitched to the back and trying very hard not to cry through three states.

He only partially succeeded.

He managed not to cry on the winding part of the road

in the Sierras, which was good because he probably would have killed himself, and he managed to make his way past Reno and through northern Nevada.

He must have turned to the seat next to him six times

during that part of the trip in order to ask Bella if he was doing the right thing.

When she wasn’t there, he thought about the way Asa

had held him the night before and told him that it was okay; he and Bella would always be tight, they wouldn’t just fade out of each other’s lives the way some college friends did. By the time he pulled up in front of the hotel room he’d planned as a halfway point, he was not only exhausted, he was pretty sure he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.

By the time he pulled up in front of the tiny off-campus apartment he and Bella had pre-rented, he was
absolutely
sure
of it.

The hotel room had been one thing; he’d expected it to

be sterile, and he’d texted Bella when he got there.
Green
polyester paisley. Oh the horror.

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Bella must have handed her phone to her brother,

because Asa texted back.
Did you know the paisley design
came from India but got its name from Scotland?--A

He’d giggled through his tears then, remembering the

moment, and texted:
Stop me. Stop me now.

No, baby. Stop yourself.

Does it count if I say it in text?

Not if you don’t say it out loud first.

I love you. Even out loud.

His phone had buzzed then, and Asa’s voice on the

other end said, “I love you too. You couldn’t have said it here?”

“I wouldn’t have been able to leave.”

“I’ll remember that during Christmas break.”

“You do that. Tell Jordan I’ll have the laptop set up

tomorrow and we can face to face before bed.”

They talked some more then, about the trip (pretty

country, winding roads, only a couple hours of driving in the morning), and then said goodnight. Sebastian said, “I love you,” before signing off, and wondered why the words had been so hard face to face.

They were such a part of him now.

But that was the hotel room. Hotel rooms were, by

nature, transitory, even the shitty parts. An apartment….

Oh God.
This
apartment.

It was
exactly
like his and Bella’s last apartment, down to the cracked mirror and the miniscule shower and the

crappy green carpeting.

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It had been one thing to live in a place like this with

Bella to make it bearable, but he’d just left a wonderful home and a man who apparently adored him enough to set him

free, and for this?
And why was that, Sebastian? Can we
look at why again?

Because this was the only university on this side of the country that didn’t laugh his thesis out of the hallowed halls of higher education.

And what was he planning to do with that doctorate?
Do
we remember? Oh yes… there’s the answer: not a goddamned
thing.

Fact was, he could have written his dissertation as a

crackpot book, found a publisher, and done the whole thing on his own. The same number of people would read it and

laugh at it, and he could have slept in the big king-size bed every goddamned night instead of the tiny twin-sized student cot that left his toes dangling over the edge.

And, more importantly, he could have slept with Asa.

He unpacked with persistence rather than eagerness

and returned the U-Haul in time to go get himself a salad for dinner.

He hated salad. Bella used to know how to make

healthy stuff; she could make a grilled chicken sandwich on a hotplate. It was some testament to his state of mind,

though, that realizing that he was not only alone, but alone without any cooking skills whatsoever, was the last of his worries.

He set up the laptop and found himself face to face with Jordan, staring stonily back at him, and manned up to the worst of them.

“Still mad at me, huh Big J?”

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“I start school next week. I wanted you at home when I

started school. How am I supposed to tell you about school when you’re not here?”

Sebastian sighed. “Well, I’ll tell you what. You have your dad tell me what time you’ll be home, and we’ll talk just like this, okay?”

Jordan nodded, and his lip quivered. “But we’re having

dinner with Mom tomorrow. I liked it when you were here the last time. It meant Dad had a place where Mom was

supposed to go.”

Oh Christ. This was why people avoided children at all

costs. Sebastian
had
been there when Deirdre had eaten with them. She’d been quiet and soft-spoken and charming; in short, everything Sebastian was not. Jordan had sat

stonily next to Sebastian as they’d watched cartoons after dinner and ate dessert, and had asked for Sebastian’s

company exclusively to tuck him in. Asa had rolled his eyes and said that was fine, and Deirdre had waited until

Sebastian got down to the bottom of the stairs before she said—politely—what she was really thinking.

“Is it really wise to let him get so attached to you when you’re leaving?”

Sebastian had blushed, looked miserably at Asa and

said, “I’m coming back. It’s school, not prison.”

Deirdre’s lips had quirked reluctantly. “Yeah,

Sebastian—but my kid is already stuck with me for a

mother. I’d like to know his other mother is going to be a little more regular than I am.”

“I’ll be here, Deirdre,” Bella had said. Bella hadn’t tried to make nice with the other woman; her silence would have frozen pickles. Sebastian hadn’t heard that much ice tinkling Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
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since one of her dates had cracked a gay-pride joke.

“Between me and Sebastian, we’ll be like June Cleaver—but Sebastian can wear the pearls.”

“Can I vacuum in them?” Sebastian asked, and Bella

grinned cheekily at him.

“Only if you wear the high heels!”

“I’d pay to see that,” Asa said, and Sebastian smirked at him gratefully. Even Deirdre’s mouth curved reluctantly.

“Look,” she’d said after a moment. “Don’t get me wrong.

I like you, Sebastian. I like this whole set up. I’m the last person who should get hung up on appearances or

technicalities. But it’s my kid, and you’re about to break his heart.”

Sebastian had sighed then and said, “Well, consider the

favor returned,” and then flopped on the couch. He hadn’t had anything else to say.

He didn’t have anything to say now.

And then Asa stepped up and saved him, and Sebastian

thought bitterly that he didn’t deserve it. “Come on, Jordan.

Let’s leave Sebastian alone. He feels bad enough already.”

Jordan sighed and let Asa sit down in front of the

computer so he could look at the monitor himself. “You

made it,” he observed, that faint, grave smile on his face, and Sebastian nodded.

“Yeah, but I don’t now how long I’ll live on McSalads.

Man, you need to tell Bella that I never thanked her enough for cooking, because I just realized I’m going to be living on tinned soup for a year, and what sort of diet is that for a grown man?”

“It’s not,” Asa replied, his mouth quirking.

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“And this shower—Asa, this shower is barely big enough

for Jordan, and I think something is growing in it that was not made on this planet. I’ve never seen mold that color, sweartodog—and it’s not just funky colored, it’s got texture, it’s like the gods got busy with a palette knife made of yuck and just smeared it on the damned cubicle. I bought some of that wonder cleaner you have and sprayed the whole thing down, but you may want to give me a Silkwood shower or

something when I come back because I’ll probably catch

something just from breathing the same air….”

“I get it,” Asa said. His eyes were focused on the

computer monitor hungrily as he listened to Sebastian

prattle, and his mouth stayed quirked on the side. “It’s not ever going to fit the two of us, is it?”

“No,” Sebastian said hollowly, silenced with that. “No.”

Asa’s shower could have stood four, but all Sebastian
cared about was that it fit him and Asa. It was a masterwork
in glass and non-skid royal blue tile, with big chrome bars at
every corner. One third of the cubicle was the glass door, and
there was even a little plastic bench to sit on and still revel in
the spray coming from the three showerheads.

All of which had come in handy and then been completely
forgotten the day they’d both snuck away from work for a
quickie and ended up with Sebastian clinging to the chrome
bars, his face plastered against the blue tile, riding three of
Asa’s fingers in his ass while he begged for more.

Asa’s whole body, chest, thighs, groin, and cock, had
been smashed slickly against Sebastian’s back, and he’d
lowered his mouth to Sebastian’s ear and spoke harshly
against the sound of the spray.

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“Come on, Sebastian. Tell me what you want. I’m just a
little ol’ man-virgin, right? I wouldn’t possibly know what an
experienced cocksman like yourself would need.”

“Aw, Asa, fuck you,” Sebastian whined. He knew he was
being teased, but Asa had tormented him through the whole
shower—teasing touches to the chest, the nipples, his cock.

Sebastian had finally gotten impatient and leaned back
against the wall, taken himself in hand and said, “Here’s a
refresher course, man-virgin, just in case you forgot!”

And Asa had whirled him around, laughing throatily, and
that’s how Sebastian had ended up begging shamelessly, his
words muffled by his hair and the blue tile.

“Fuck me?” Asa chuckled, shoving his cock harder

against Sebastian’s hip and his fingers farther up into
Sebastian’s willing, dilated body. “Fuck me? I’m pretty sure
I’ll get off today, buddy… but that’s not what you’re worried
about, is it?”

He wiggled his fingers then, and grunted happily when
Sebastian whimpered. Then he reached around, his hand
good and soapy from the bath sponge he was still holding and
wrapped the hand—sponge and all—around Sebastian’s