In The Absence Of Light (31 page)

I don’t know why, but it always made me sad to run up on patrons who were committed to wasting the evening of their life perched on a vinyl stool with a beer mug in one hand.

Jessie smiled at me and tossed the towel he held over his shoulder. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

I parked it at the corner.

“Thirsty?” He had a mug on the counter in front of me before I could answer. I took a sip. Shit got better every time I tried it. “So what’s new?”

I shook my head. “Not a whole lot.”

“Well, you need to hurry up and find something.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I have to tell the blue-haired ladies something when they ask about you.”

“Blue-haired ladies?”

“Yeah, your fan club.”

The heat in my cheeks had nothing to do with the alcohol.

Jessie laughed. “I was thinking maybe we could get a couple of glossies made, you sign them and I could sell 'em. Split it fifty/fifty.”

“Remind me to kill the SOB who invented camera phones.” I drank my beer and tried to push aside the fact people still gave me the look. The one they got the moment they realized where they’d seen me before.

But every time I went to Berry’s store, he reminded me it could have been worse.

I didn’t even want my imagination to wander in that direction.

“I thought Morgan was riding his bike home.”

A clump of foam stuck to my lip. I wiped it away. “He was. I just kind of showed up hoping he’d let me give him a ride back instead.”

Jessie clicked his tongue. “You got it bad, my brother.”

I did.

“But it looks good on you. Good on Morgan too. Been a long time since I’ve seen him this happy.”

I drank some beer to try to cover up the stupid grin on my face. I don’t think Jessie was fooled. Personally, I couldn’t remember if I’d ever been this happy.

The door to the back swung open, and Morgan came through with a bin on his hip. He paused for a second before rushing past to the last dirty booth. After he cleaned it, he wiped down the tabletop until it gleamed.  Then he was gone, without a word.

Jessie collected money from one of his customers. When they left, to me, he said, “You two argue?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” But by all his actions, it was as if I hadn’t even existed. “You mind?” I threw my thumb in the direction of the back.

“Naw, sure, go ahead. He’ll leave out the back anyhow.”

I left my beer half empty and made a dash through the kitchen. Morgan was rinsing his hands in a large sink close to where they washed the dishes. Clean pots and pans hung neatly on the hooks overhead.

“Hey,” I said.

He turned off the water and took out a paper towel from the dispenser, used it until it was too wet to be useful anymore, folded it up, threw it away, pulled out a second, and repeated the process.

“Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Grant.” The deadpan reply was worse than any scream. And the fact he wouldn’t look at me?

“Talk to me, Morgan.”

He hung his smock up on one hook next to his jacket. The nights were getting colder now, and honestly the windbreaker wasn’t enough, not with just a T-shirt underneath. I was glad I’d made the decision to come pick him up. The last thing he needed was to get sick, cause he’d never go to a doctor. Luckily his feet had healed with minimal care, but pneumonia was a whole other story.

I could see me trying to get medicine down his throat. It would be like trying to bathe a feral cat.

Morgan took a sweatshirt with the store logo from another hook, slipped it on, then picked up his jacket.

“Why are you here?”  He put on the windbreaker and zipped it up.

“I wanted to give you a ride home.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s cold.”

Morgan pulled a stocking cap from his coat pocket and put it on. “I told you I was going to ride my bike home.”

“I know, I just thought—”

He tucked back waves of blond hair with his beautiful fingers. “I can take care of myself, Grant. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”

“I never said—”

“When I tell you I can ride my bike home, I mean I can ride my bike home.” He flicked thoughts, and his shoulder jerked.

“It’s colder than you thought—”

“It rains sometimes too. I get wet. I use a towel to dry off.”

“Morgan, that’s not the—”

“I don’t need you making decisions for me.”

“I’m not, I—”

“I’m perfectly capable of—”

I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Will you shut up for a minute and let me finish? I’m not,” I tried to catch his gaze and failed. “I’m not here because I thought you shouldn’t ride your bike home. I’m here because I wanted to give you a ride home.”

His body jerked with a series of tics. I held on. “What’s the diff… difference?”

With the sock hat on, his bangs were corralled back and there was nothing to hide the anger blooming in his cheeks or how his gaze darted around, going everywhere but to me.

“One, you do because you’re worried the person might be making a bad decision, the other, you do because you miss them. You care about them and you want to be with them.” Morgan dropped his chin to his chest. I cupped his face, and he didn’t fight meeting my gaze. He had such beautiful eyes. Surrounded with dark heavy lashes, the brown was made all the richer. Just the tiniest flecks of mossy green surrounded his iris. But what took my breath away were the moments he focused on me. It was like having my soul examined, but in a good way. Scary, but good.

His fingertips were cold on my jaw. He drew a path down my neck to my shoulder. He retraced the path up my neck to my jaw. His touch reached my lips. There he rubbed the dip at the top of my chin. The only place I never seemed to grow hair. I wasn’t sporting much of a beard, maybe a few days of a shadow, but it was all it took to make the bare piece of skin stand out, giving me the illusion of a cultured pattern.

Morgan rasped a thumb over my chin. Chills raced down my chest turning into a heavy weight when they reached my stomach.  My skin warmed head to toe, my muscles tightened, and my cock hardened enough to threaten a slow crawl out of the top of my jeans. I hoped Jessie would stay busy up front. I didn’t need more videos on YouTube. Although, at the moment, I don’t think I cared.

“Yesterday, you said you didn’t want to fill the space anymore. You wanted to be with me.”

Morgan touched me again, and the effect echoed twice as loud.

I tightened my hold on him. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Why? It was a simple question, and there were a thousand things I wanted to say, but none of them felt good enough.

Good enough for Morgan.

I let him go and stood there with no answer. No way to put into words how he made me feel. How touching him connected me to the world. How tasting him breathed life into my lungs. How I hadn’t been alive until the moment I saw him and even then I’d resisted, afraid of what I’d felt, fighting what I feared.

How I thought I knew what love was only to realize, standing in front of him, I knew nothing.

Morgan waved a hand at the back door only to follow up with a string of flutters and snaps. “I heard from a pretty reliable source it’s a lot colder than the weather man said it was going to be. I didn’t put on any long underwear, and only one pair of socks. Do you think you could give me a ride back to my place?” He shrugged. “I mean if you have the time. If you don’t…”

All I could do was nod.

Morgan led the way out the back door. It occurred to me I hadn’t paid for my beer, but I’d make it up to Jessie next time I was in town. I didn’t know what was happening between Morgan and I at the moment, but I wasn’t about to break it. He pushed his bike over to the truck, and we lifted it in the back.  He made a few adjustments, wedging it into the corner and turning the wheel until the pedal acted like a brace, before getting into the passenger side.

Morgan didn’t speak until I parked the truck and asked, “Do you mind if I come in?”

His shoulder jerked and he snapped his fingers, then there was only silence.

“Please talk to me.”

“Did you have sex with him?”

I squinted at Morgan. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m assuming it was the FBI agent, Jeff.”

What the hell had Jeff gone and done? “Did he tell you that?”

“No.” Morgan sat back in his seat. His wayward hand made an escape attempt, but he tightened his hold on his wrist. His knuckles turned ghostly.

“Then why would you ask me that?”

“But you saw him today. Was it at your place or in town? My guess is at your house. It would have been private.”

“Yeah, he came to the house.”

“You weren’t expecting him?”

“I’m never expecting him; he just shows up. Why would you think I had sex with him?”

“I don’t think you had sex with him. That’s why I’m asking. I didn’t know.”  Morgan nodded. The fingers on his wayward hand opened and closed.  “So did you?”

“No.”

His shoulders fell.

“Now will you tell me—”

“You have scratches on your neck, and your chin.”

“I’m covered in scratches and about three layers of calamine lotion. I’ve been crawling under the house all day and fighting off army ants.”

“We don’t have army ants, Grant. Just black ants. Sometimes farther south you see fire ants, but not often. Army ants or they’re sometimes called Legionary Ants don’t really have nests, and you’d only run into them in Africa or parts of Central and South America.” He took a breath. “You have teeth marks on your collarbone. Even army ants don’t have teeth.”

I’d looked myself over in the mirror a good twenty minutes after I showered. Not because I wanted to make sure Jeff hadn’t left evidence but because I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed painting any of the ant bites. Sure I’d seen the scratches, but they’d just been scratches.

I turned on the cab light. Maybe it wasn’t bright enough, but I still couldn’t see teeth marks in the rearview mirror.  “Something tells me any attempt at a surprise party would be a waste of time.”

Morgan wrinkled his nose. “Surprise party? What does that have to do with anything?”

“You see everything even when there’s nothing to see.”

He dropped his gaze and reached for the door to get out. “Not always. The last time almost got me killed. That’s why I asked.”

I stopped him. “I swear nothing happened but not because he didn’t try.  He came on, hard, I turned him down, but it took some pushing, shoving, and parking a sawhorse between us.”

“Did you want to?”

I paused only because I wanted to make sure I didn’t lie. “Yes and no.”

“Why yes?”

“Because we’d been together a long time. There are a lot of memories and they don’t like to stay buried. That and sometimes my dick has a mind of its own.” Morgan snorted, and I chuckled. “Don’t pretend you’ve never noticed.”

“And the no?”

“Because I only want you.”

“But you can’t tell me why?”

“It’s not that I can’t, I just don’t know how. I was never good with words.” I could have told him I loved him, but my throat tightened. How many times had I whispered those three words to Jeff? How many times had I called them out when making love to him? They were just three words, but they felt tainted because I’d already given them up once to another man.

Saying the same thing to Morgan felt like re-gifting hand-me-downs.

Morgan got out of the truck. He went right to his house so I followed.  He paused at the bottom of his porch steps, and I wondered for a moment if I’d called it wrong, but then he took my hand, unfolded my fingers, and pressed my palm against his heart. Strong, rhythmic, a bit fast, as if something worried him or excited him. Or maybe even frightened him.

He traced my fingers. Counted my knuckles. Then petted the back of my hand.

“I need you in my life,” I said.

He continued the ritual, mapping my digits like he did fragments of light.

“Permanently, or at least as long as you’ll let me.”

“You said three years, maybe four.”

The tightness in my throat moved to my chest. “I know.”

“You were going to Seychelles, remember? Where the beaches are perfect and the water’s clear. There are some really neat shells there. I’ve always wondered what sand would feel like between my toes.”

“If you want to go, I’ll take you.”

“I can’t.”

“You haven’t tried.”

Morgan stopped moving. “I left once and I couldn’t get home because I had to leave the apartment. There were too many people. Too much noise.”

“The beach would be quiet.”

“The beach is even farther away. What if we got there and I had to come home?”

“Then we’d come home.”

“And you’d never get to be there.”