Bound by Lies (16 page)

The day is a busy one, for which Brayden is thankful. Since he’s working a split shift along with Max and Jenner, he goes home for some sleep and a meal after tackling the morning clean-up, then returns later in the day. When he gets back to the Pub that evening, it’s already filling up fast. Brayden and Jenner man the bar, keeping the drinks flowing, with Jenner making the occasional sprint to the kitchen to check on things there. Apart from an unsettling but small and containable grease fire, there’s a reasonable level of excitement to keep things from getting boring. The worst thing for Brayden about bartending at Parrish Pub is the way that people smile at him. Those smiles are always because of one of two things, since everyone in Robertsville sees him through the lens of a decade’s worth of local gossip. If the customer is a woman, they might be smiling at him with obvious attraction. He’s become an expert at detecting it, the intent there as they compliment him, trying to lure him in when he has no interest in being lured. He can’t let them know that, so he has no choice but to play along. It can be exhausting, but it’s not as bad as dealing with the other sort of smile.

If the customer’s a towny, which ninety-nine percent of them are, then they know about his parents, or think they do. They’ve heard stories about “that Clare boy”. So, they smile at him, knowingly. Those smiles are like a bad coat of paint. You can see right through them.

A few times that night he gets, “You’re Lara’s boy, aren’t you?”

To which he answers as he always does, smiling back, “I guess I am. Can I get you anything?”

The key is to direct the focus back to getting them drinks. No matter what they say, that’s what he keeps in mind. Usually, persistent curiosity brings additional questions—which are always worse—like “Whatever happened to her anyway?”, “Is it weird to be back here, after what happened to your dad and all?” or “Where’ve you been all this time? California? San Francisco?”

Then, sometimes, they laugh, like the joke is on him.

The insinuations are a constant, which is why he likes it when it’s frantically busy. If he can’t stop to listen to the questions because he’s got drinks to pour and money to put in the till or orders to take as the crowd roars with a multitude of voices around them, that’s the best scenario he can hope for. A sorority descends on the place, packing the bar and as many tables as they can claim. He gets a lot of the first kind of smile from them. Because not all of them are townies, he gets none of the second kind of smile, so he lingers with them. At one point he helps them set up some body shots. They try to get him to do one off of one of the girls, chanting his name and giggling, but, hyperaware of Jenner’s presence, he declines persistently. “It’d get me in hot water with the boss,” he explains, which isn’t really untrue anyway.

By closing, everyone is exhausted. Max locks the door and Brayden folds her petite body up in a platonic hug born out of their shared relief.

“I hope it’s slow tomorrow,” Max grumbles, her arms wrapped around Brayden’s shoulders.

“Bet you got good tips,” Brayden tells her, smelling the fruity perfume of her hair.

“Yeah, but my feet are killing me.”

“Want a foot rub?”

Max pulls back, looking hopefully up at him. “…Really?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs.

“Then hell yes. Count me in.”

He chuckles as she grabs his hand, dragging him toward the break room. Letting his guard drop at last, after hours of calculated politeness, he’s just glad to be alone with people who won’t give him a hard time.

By the time Jenner and Art join them, with Jenner drying his hands on a towel and Art making a beeline to his locker to get his gear and get gone, Max is stretched out on the bench, leaning against the far wall, her feet propped on Brayden’s lap as he massages them.

She moans. Art, not stopping or caring to look, digs for a clean shirt. With disinterested playfulness, he says, “What’s going on in here?”

“I love Brayden. He’s awesome,” Max sighs.

“Take your foreplay somewhere else, please.”

“It’s a goddamn foot rub. Asshole,” she frowns, swatting at Art’s backside before he moves out of range, having found the shirt he was looking for.

“I’m sure it is. Give ’er hell, Braydy,” Art calls back, pumping his fist into the air.

“Will do, man.”

“You just gonna stand there and watch or what?” Max asks Jenner, who is lingering in the break room’s doorway.

“Oh, am I supposed to join in? How’s it go again? I haven’t seen this porno in a while. The burly bartender walks in on the slutty waitress and the blond himbo and—?”

“Hey!” Brayden complains. “Who are you callin’ a himbo?”

“Oh, I meant it in the best possible way,” Jenner grins. “But please, don’t let me interrupt. You seem to have a knack for making Maxie moan.”

“You know it, baby,” Max purrs. Reluctantly, she pulls her feet from Brayden’s lap. “Thank you, I totally owe you one. You’re my hero. But I’m gettin’ the hell out of here before the slave driver thinks of something else for me to do.”

“You know, now that you mention it…” Jenner says thoughtfully.

“Nope! No fuckin’ way. I’m out,” she says. Max grabs her purse, slips on her shoes and bolts from the room. “Later!”

“Bye, Max,” Brayden shouts amiably.

“What do you think? Too obvious?” Jenner asks after they hear the front door open and close heavily.

“That you wanted her gone?” Brayden shrugs. “You really don’t like it when I flirt with her, do you?”

Now it’s Jenner’s turn to shrug, his expression unreadable, even as he smiles.

“I’ll leave you alone. See you tomorrow.” Jenner begins to leave.

“Jenn!”

He pauses, but doesn’t turn, keeping his back to Brayden.

Getting up from the bench, Brayden sighs and pushes his hands down into his pants pockets. Then he steps slowly toward Jenner.

“You still staying upstairs?”

“I could be if you want me to.”

Brayden takes a steadying breath, nervously pushes a tendril of hair behind an ear and says, while looking at his feet, “Maybe tomorrow, after work, we could go up there and, you know. Talk. Or something.”

Jenner pivots, facing him, blue eyes searching. “Tomorrow?”

He starts forward. Brayden flinches away. Frowning at this, Jenner takes two quick steps forward and Brayden almost falls over his feet trying to back away.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“…No. Yes. I don’t know.”

His back to the lockers, Brayden has nowhere else to go. As an experiment, Jenner keeps walking forward. Brayden inhales sharply and holds the breath, squeezing his eyes shut. He can feel it when Jenner is right there, chest-to-chest with him, looming over him.

“Kiss me,” Jenner asks.

“I can’t.”

“Why? Why can’t you? Explain it for me. Or is it that you don’t
want
to kiss me?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Of course it’s that simple.”

“It’s not for me.”

When nothing else is said, Brayden opens his eyes, seeing Jenner taking a long look down Brayden’s body. Brayden’s hands are out of his pockets now and splayed at his sides on the metal of the locker doors. His jaw is set in a stubborn, proud line.

Restless, frustrated and slightly dejected, Jenner demands, hissing between his teeth, “What do you want from me, huh? Do you want me to fuck off? You said you want to talk, whatever that means, so I’m a little confused here.”

“You know what I want.”

“Clearly I don’t! You’re playing some game here and not telling me the rules. Is that what you want? Rules? I told you about some rules that could make this easier on you, but we don’t know each other well enough for me to make assumptions about what you’re expecting. You made me wonder if I forced myself on you, and ran out of my apartment with hardly a word but now you want to come home with me? What is this? Do you want to be my slave? Do you just want to get off? What? You need to
tell me
. You need to
explain
.”

Brayden’s brow furrows. His lips stay sealed. Jenner’s hand shoots out, and wraps around Brayden’s throat. Instantly, both of Brayden’s hands come up and take hold of Jenner by the forearm as he tries to pry him off. “Stop,” he gasps.

Jenner immediately lets him go. After a long pause, when Brayden says nothing, does nothing, he tries again, but this time he gently brushes Brayden’s cheek with the back of his knuckles.

Brayden flinches away, turning from the touch just as ferociously as he had when his throat was grabbed. “
Stop
.”

Heart-rending anxiousness flickers in the quirk of Brayden’s lips, the set of his eyebrows, the tenderness hurting more than the violence. And, slowly, Jenner begins to understand.

“If I held you down right now and kissed you, would you kiss me back? Would you call me Master and beg for more?”

Brayden’s breathing quickens. Color rises to his neck and cheeks, spreading.

“Do it and find out.”

Jenner breathes out a soundless laugh. “Wow. Okay.”

“Do it,” Brayden nearly growls, egging him on when Jenner backs off. “
Do it
.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Eyes opening, aggravated, Brayden wants to scream as Jenner takes another backward step, and Brayden is unable to make himself bridge the distance between them. “You don’t understand!”

“Explain it to me.”

Brayden growls. Throwing up his hands he says, “Fuck this.”

He opens his locker and grabs his keys but leaves the bag. He walks around Jenner toward the exit. As much as he wants Jenner to grab and hold him, forcing Brayden to submit, he doesn’t do it. He doesn’t even try. Jenner lets Brayden go, out the back door and into the night, showing him he needs to make his own choices in order to get what he wants.

Twenty-four hours later, Brayden and Jenner are sitting in two folding chairs in the bare living room of the apartment above Parrish Pub. Jenner had brought the chairs from home, knowing that the lack of seating (not counting the bed) could be a problem if he intends there to be actual talking instead of “talking”.

The day had been strained. Max got her wish and it wasn’t busy at all, leaving her plenty of time to wonder at the awkward, strained silence between Brayden and their boss. It had led her to ask Jenner, again, for an explanation. Unsurprisingly, Jenner completely avoided her questions.

It all adds to Jenner’s stress. Not only does he have Brayden to figure out, but he has to tip-toe around his best friends. And he doesn’t want Brayden to know that Max suspects, for fear of pushing him into quitting. That leaves Jenner to play referee while trying to manage his own feelings about the complicated situation.

Max went home early in the night, but Art waited around to give Jenner a ride back to the house. Jenner didn’t know whether or not to take Art up on the offer. Surely, Jenner figured, Brayden had changed his mind after giving Jenner the cold shoulder all goddamned day and would choose to go home rather than prolong their shared torment. But, to Jenner’s surprise, Brayden did not tell him to fuck off. Instead, he gave Jenner a peculiar, pointed look as he retreated to the break room, saying within earshot of Art, “I need a minute to get my shit together if you two are taking off. Need me to lock up?”

It was an opening—an opportunity to linger.

Pleasantly amazed, Jenner replied, “No, I’ll wait.” He turned to Art and told him to go on home without him. Art asked if Jenner was sure, said that it wasn’t a problem to hang out for a minute, but Jenner insisted. Now, with Art long gone and possibly commiserating with Max, Jenner wonders if Art is going to join Max in her meddlesome curiosity, concocting god-knows-what theories behind his back.

With a heavy sigh, Jenner slouches forward in his folding chair, the emptiness of the room uncomfortably focusing attention on its limited occupants. He asks, “You want a beer? I can grab a couple from downstairs.”

“No, thanks. Serving drunks all day kind of kills my taste for it.”

Brayden is sitting back in his folding chair, his arms wound around the sides, his hands gripping the thin back legs like he’s trying to convince himself he’s shackled to them, or at least this is what Jenner imagines. It makes Jenner wonder if he’s been judging Brayden harshly, if he’s seeing things clearly or merely reacting to phantoms projected by his own frazzled mind.

Jenner nods, hands laced together, trying to be patient.

“So what did you want to talk about?”

With a somewhat reticent glance, Brayden tries, “Are you still pissed at me?”

“What? No. No, of course I—” Jenner stops, wiping a hand over his face. He couldn’t help noticing that Brayden has brought his mysterious bag upstairs with him, the one that had traveled to work yesterday and has been stowed in Brayden’s locker downstairs. Now it’s sitting over by the wall. Its presence is very distracting.

“You asked me what I want from you,” Brayden says, filling the space left by Jenner’s abandoned explanation. “I might have an answer. I’m still trying to figure it all out, but I wanted to ask you the same thing. What do you want from
me
, Jenn? Honestly. Is it just about sex? Is it about bossing me around in the bedroom and getting your rocks off on how helpless you can make me?”

Brayden’s choice of nickname only amplifies the nature of their relationship, and especially because, for a reason Jenner does not even understand, it doesn’t bother him. But if anyone else called him Jenn, it definitely would. What is it about Brayden that makes it all right? Why doesn’t it set Jenner on edge to hear the feminine endearment on Brayden’s lips? What does it portend for where this is all going?

With a sigh, pushing his musings aside, Jenner admits, “Right now, I just want to understand what happened and what your motives are.”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t know. But I do.”

“This is about more than keeping me employed at the bar, and getting free access to sex whenever you want it?”

Thinking of David and Shea and what they’ve been able to have together, Jenner says, “What I want isn’t just about sex. I think you know that. You’ve known that since Manse. I want you to trust me so that we can explore that type of… dynamic. It’s not about bossing you around. It’s about mutual trust and respect. It won’t work otherwise.”