Lonely Hearts (16 page)

Elijah wanted to deny the Lifetime original movie
Adventures With Baz
was the reason he'd uncorked, but he was pretty sure she was right. “He'll get bored of it any second.”

“Maybe he'll get bored. Maybe not.” She nodded at the screen as she rose. “Until you find out, ride the wave. Get some story out of the stress, and enjoy the sex. Just be safe, okay? Baz has been around the block.”

Elijah focused on stuffing spaghetti in his mouth, hoping marinara would hide his guilty expression.

Chapter Twelve

If Baz had known Marius was going to stare at him all through lunch like he'd grown an extra head, he'd have stayed at the White House.

Three days after returning to Saint Timothy after his weekend with Elijah, he'd taken Uber to the U of M campus. Baz read up on first-year medical school on the way in—MS-1, he now knew, was the lingo—and he was ready to commiserate about gross anatomy, pathology and biochem. That's not what happened, though. Marius demanded all the details about Chicago, so Baz told him, and now Marius looked as if Baz had announced his return from Mars.

Probably this was because he'd casually slipped in there that he and Elijah were dating. And rooming together.

“You're dating. Actually dating.”

Baz poked a fry into ketchup and glared at Marius. “Is it so impossible to believe I might be in a relationship?”

“Yes.”

Baz tossed down the fry. “Fine. I'll admit it's not my usual.”

“I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying I'm surprised.” Marius slouched in his booth seat, still studying Baz as if he were part of an experiment. “I guess I shouldn't be. You don't do anything halfway. Why court him cautiously, when you could move in together?”

“Did you fake your freakout so you could interrogate me?”

“No.” Marius's stunned amusement evaporated. “Oh my God, Baz. It's going to be insane. So crazy bad. The schedule is unreal, and the
workload
.” He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I have no idea how I'm going to do it all. I mean, I will never do laundry again. Or cook a meal. Which means my budget is all off. And my idea I could pick up some weekend job is out.”

Fucking money. Baz wished he could give Marius a grand or two, but he'd never take it. “What about your roommates? Can you work out some kind of communal thing for laundry and so on?”

“That's funny. Really fucking funny. They're so loud and insane. I'm going to have to study at the library. So I'm going to pay through the nose to only sleep there, and with earplugs.”

Now
Baz
was stressed. “Come back to the White House.”

“I can't do a half-hour commute. In addition to gas and paying to park, I'd lose all that time. If I could use it to study, it'd be fine.”

“You need a med-student roommate. Or someone else who has as intense a schedule as you. Or people who aren't assholes.”

Marius sloshed his beer in circles before downing the dregs and pouring himself a new glass. “Trust me, I'm looking. I don't know that I'll find anything, though. And if I do, I've still got to break my lease.”

The problem plagued Baz through the rest of their meal, and once they'd said their goodbyes, he wandered campus a bit instead of calling Uber for a ride home. There had to be another way for Marius. In fact, he felt like he almost had it, and if he limped one more time around the block, he'd find it.

It took two blocks, and he'd blown out his hip, but he'd figured it out. After snagging a Starbucks, he settled into its sidewalk seating and pulled up his contacts on his phone. Walter Davidson answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Sebastian. I mean—Baz.”

“This a good time?”

“Perfect. I'm walking out of the library, trying to figure out how to kill the hours until Kelly's done with his summer class. What's up?”

Baz glanced around, searching for something to ID where he was. “Well, I'm at the Starbucks in the Radisson on campus. You want some coffee?”

“Absolutely. I'll pop over on the train. Give me ten minutes, and your next latte's on me.”

Baz took some ibuprofen and an oxycodone while he waited. By the time Walter hopped off the commuter rail in front of the cafe, Baz was still feeling pain, but he didn't care so much.

He rose as Walter came up to him, and they did the gay-boy kissy thing before getting in line. Once they had their drinks, Walter adding a sandwich, they settled into a table. While Walter ate, Baz calculated his best point of entry.

“So you guys still live near campus, right? Aaron says you moved in June.”

Walter nodded as he wiped his mouth and finished chewing. “Yeah. We moved to this two-bedroom in Seward. It's nothing great, but it's close to campus, the train, and it comes with a washer and dryer. There's a Pizza Lucé two blocks away, so I'm going to be fat as fuck, but I'll die happy.”

Two bedroom. Baz did a mental fist pump. “Seward's pretty expensive, right? That's the big liberal district, and close to campus, everything must be at a premium.”

Walter grimaced. “No shit. I had us upgrade, so we have a study in mild grime for the pleasure of fifteen hundred dollars instead of a nightmare of rat semen for an even grand. It means Kelly has to find a second job and I have to beg my old man for an allowance increase, but you do what you have to, I guess.”

Baz didn't have to lift a finger. This was setting itself up. “Would you guys be open to a roommate?”

“Theoretically, yes, that was the plan in taking the two bedroom, but we got cold feet. Who wants to room with a newlywed gay couple?”

“What if it was someone who came pre-vetted? Someone I could promise is so LGBT friendly he chews me out over my PC faux pas? He would basically be there to pay rent, sleep, be friendly over coffee on his way out the door and occasionally forget his laundry in the washer.”

Walter put down his sandwich. “Where is this unicorn?”

Smiling, Baz sipped his latte, nibbled on his cookie and fixed everybody's problems.

By the time Kelly texted Walter to find out where he was, Marius was on his way over, and soon Kelly was too. Another round of lattes had the three potential roommates forming a more perfect union, and as they arranged a meeting at the apartment, Baz acknowledged his work here was done. Because he could get Stephan to discover a sub-leaser without Marius knowing it had happened.

As he pulled up the Uber app, though, he felt an unexpected pang of…something, and he closed it again. He opened the text client instead.

You busy, babe?

He didn't realize how tense he'd become waiting for a reply from Elijah until it arrived.
I was writing, but mostly in circles at this point. What's up?

Through his glasses, Baz glanced up at Kelly's and Walter's smiling faces. Kelly had moved his chair so close to his husband he was practically in his lap. It made Baz ache.

I'm on the U of M campus, saving the world. NBD.
He hesitated before plowing ahead.
I was gonna ask if you could give me a lift, but I don't want to bug you if you're working.

A total lie. He really wanted a ride. The thought of sitting in the back seat of a stranger's car for a half hour hollowed him out.

If there's dinner in it for me, I could be persuaded.

Baz had to bite the corner of his lip as joy expanded inside him. “Hey, Lucas. I mean—Davidson. What was the pizza place you said was making you fat?”

“Pizza Lucé on Franklin.”

“Thanks. Elijah's bringing the Tesla in so I don't have to Uber.”

Kelly beamed. “Sounds wonderful. We could all go, unless you'd rather be alone.”

“Company's good.” He ignored the subtle smile from Marius and replied to Elijah.
I have good pizza on standby.

Excellent. Where am I meeting you, exactly?

“Is it okay if I tag along to your apartment while I wait for my ride?”

Walter glanced at his husband before nodding. “Of course. We can all go together right now, if that works for you, Marius.”

As they rose from their chairs, Baz texted Elijah Walter and Kelly's address, and the emptiness faded to a dull roar, a hollow filled with the shape of a saucy, dark-haired boyfriend.

It weirded Elijah out to drive the Tesla on his own. What if he wrecked it? Baz's reply was always “Insurance much?” Except Elijah didn't believe for a second the loss of the car would be anything but huge for Baz.

So Elijah drove into the Cities like a grandpa, keeping just under the speed limit, obsessively checking his blind spot before lane changes. He followed the Tesla's navigation instructions as if they led to Heaven. He switched from Hi Fashion to RuPaul because he needed the confidence boost and “Champion” gave him focus. Before long, he pulled into the parking lot of a rather sad-looking apartment complex, at which point he had to call Baz.

“I can't figure out where to park. Everything has a number on it.”

“Hold on.” Baz's voice went muffled for a second. “Coming outside with Walter. He says it has to be on the street, but it's tricky.”

Walter and Baz appeared shortly thereafter, and Elijah immediately got out of the car. “You drive,” he said to Walter. “I don't want to think about parking this somewhere
tricky
.”

Walter's gaze was carnal as he accepted the fob and rounded the hood, bending to run his fingers over the fender. “Fuck, this is a sweet set of wheels.”

Baz brushed a kiss on Elijah's ear, a slightly awkward gesture. “I'm going with him. You want to come along, or go inside?”

Elijah felt dumb getting in only to park a car, but he didn't want to go inside, either. “I'll wait here and have a cigarette.”

He lit up as they drove off, watching Walter discover the head-fuckery of regenerative braking. He switched to taking in the neighborhood once they disappeared around the corner. It wasn't a bad area, but it wasn't textbook-pretty, either. A fence bordered the edge of the parking lot, and beyond lay the tracks for the public transit system. Farther still was the highway which had brought Elijah here from Saint Timothy. Another apartment building lay to the west, and more parking and a tall office/apartment complex on the other side.

There was a realness here unable to permeate in Timothy. A homeless man shuffled with a shopping cart at the far edge of the lot. The cars in front of Elijah had more of a mixed metaphor—plenty of beaters in college parking, but some of the ones here had car seats. The city of Minneapolis swelled around him, noisy and smelly and unforgiving. It made Elijah remember the days when
he
was the homeless man. Except he'd been a kid, wide-eyed and terrified and reeling from the revelation that the world was a seriously awful place to exist.

He couldn't articulate it in his sessions with Pastor, but as he lit up a second cigarette in Walter and Kelly's parking lot, Elijah acknowledged it was the homeless memory more than his parents or even the shooting bringing on his panic attacks. Being so alone and helpless, realizing in a way no sixteen-year-old should there would never be anyone there to help him but himself.

Which didn't explain why he was here, now, waiting for Baz and Mr. Fabulous.

Baz and Walter appeared in the distance, around the same bend where the Tesla had vanished. They both had their hands in their pockets, walking close together but not touching. Elijah got the idea they were having a fairly serious conversation. But when they got close to Elijah, Baz smiled and reached up to tip his glasses down so he could wink.

The gesture scrambled Elijah's circuits, but when Baz took his arm, Elijah punched him lightly in the chest. “You shouldn't expose your eyes.”

“It only hurts for a second, unless I'm already having a migraine. Besides, you were so sour. I had to lighten you up.”

Walter had gone ahead, but Elijah still kept his voice low. “This is weird, being here. They're the perfect people, and I'm the rat at the picnic.”

“You're not a rat. You're perfect.” Baz pulled him close, copping a generous feel of Elijah's ass. “I'm trying to set up Marius with Walter and Kelly. His roommate situation sucks, and they need someone to share rent. It could be a perfect arrangement.”

The apartment was small but cute. It had about zero character, compared to the old-world charm of the White House, but Walter and Kelly had filled it with their things, giving it a touch of home. A Disney-esque but decidedly hot framed print of a cartoon naked man seated on a rail beside cute little animals hung over a slightly worn armchair. A couch full of pillows and afghans opposed a flat-screen television, and a desk sat beneath a window overlooking the parking lot. The kitchen had canisters on the counter, dishes in the sink, and two backpacks spilled open on the small IKEA kitchen table.

With everyone else occupied with chatting, Elijah snuck into the hallway and gave himself the rest of the tour. The bathroom was pretty standard, though he liked the deep blue shower curtain and matching accessories. The first bedroom had to be the spare, mostly holding half-empty moving boxes and a rather sad futon, but the other one was obviously Walter and Kelly's. Two dressers overflowed with personal items, and a laundry basket of unfolded clothes sat on a neat bed with a thick, inviting comforter. The walls were decorated with David Kawena Disney heroes and Tom of Finland prints—over the bed was a framed Flynn Rider, looking pretty goddamned fine.

Done with his tour, Elijah felt awkward and unsure of himself and so wandered to the kitchen and watched the others interact. Kelly Davidson paused his earnest hallway conversation with Marius to accept a drive-by embrace and kiss on the cheek from Walter, who scooted behind him to open a folding door and change a load of laundry. Marius asked about utilities, and Kelly explained the rates.

Elijah, who had somehow ended up with Baz's arm around him, turned to look up. “I don't know who to pay rent to and when for the White House. What about the utilities? Who do I talk to?”

“There's a lockbox in the kitchen. They post the breakdowns to whatever email of yours they have on file because it's prorated depending on what room you have.”

“Well, I didn't give anybody my email, and I'm not in the room I was supposed to be in.”

Baz stroked his hair in a
calm down
gesture. “It's not a big deal. We'll sort it out.”