Spencer Cohen Series, Book Three (The Spencer Cohen Series 3) (14 page)

I snorted. “Oh, Andrew. You have no idea.”

Then Lewis’s phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and groaned. I saw the name on the screen, whether he wanted me to see it or not.

Dad.

Lewis let out a long sigh. “Sorry.” He answered the call, and thankfully I could only hear his end of the conversation. “I told you I wasn’t coming in this week. … Just down at the beach. … Can’t Chris look after it?” He groaned again. “Fine. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

He disconnected the call and his nostrils flared. “Sorry about that. I have to go into work.”

“No worries,” I told him. “We’ll catch up tonight, yeah?”

Lewis nodded. “Sounds good.” He stood up, then stopped. He took out his car keys. “Here. Take my car. Show Andrew the sights of Sydney.”

“I don’t have a licence anymore. It expired,” I told him.

He threw the keys to me. “Then don’t get caught.” And with that, he walked down to Campbell Parade, hailed a cab, and was gone.

I jingled the keys. “Well, then. Where to first?”

He tried not to cringe. “You’re going to drive your brother’s new Audi after you’ve not driven for how many years?”

I held the keys out. “You wanna try?”

“God, no.”

I laughed at his expression, and we walked back to the hotel. I was stupidly excited at the thought of driving again. It had been years. I’d never driven in the States, and when I got behind the wheel and started the engine, it purred like a kitten, and I grinned like an idiot. “When we get home, back to LA, I think I’d like to get my licence.”

He chuckled at me. “Just don’t sideswipe anything.”

“Oh ye of little faith.” I slipped the car into reverse and neatly pulled out of the park. I was cautious and nervous, but mostly excited, and it really was a skill you just didn’t forget. I merged cleanly into the flow of traffic on Campbell Parade and headed toward the city. As we got to a familiar intersection, I realised there was something I needed to see. “Before I give you the grand tour, there’s something I want to show you first.”

I drove up a few streets then turned up the street of my childhood and pulled the car to the kerb. I pointed to the pretentiously large double storey white house up a bit further. “That’s the house I grew up in.”

Andrew stared at it. “You never told me your family owned hotels.”

“Up until two days ago, I didn’t have a family.”

Andrew shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry. You know what I mean though.”

“I do. It just wasn’t anything worth talking about. I try not to mention them or even think about them, to be honest.”

Andrew nodded in understanding. I looked back at the house, just as the garage door opened. My heart stopped, not knowing who I would see, if they’d see me, and if they did, what they would do.

A new model BMW backed down the drive and stopped. The garage roller door lowered, and a woman I’d never seen before got out of the car and collected her mail from the mailbox.

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know.” I studied the house some more and realised the four big pots that my mother had paid a fortune for were no longer across the front balcony, and there was a dog in the front yard and my mother was allergic to dogs… The woman driving the BMW drove past, and it was then we saw she had two small kids in the back. “They must have sold it and moved.”

Andrew frowned and squeezed my hand. Maybe he was going to reason that surely my parents would have told me, until he remembered that no, they certainly wouldn’t have. “You okay?”

Was I okay?
I took a second to assess how I felt in my heart, looking for the most honest answer I could find. “You know what? I am. I am fine. This hasn’t been my home for almost ten years. And as for my parents? I don’t give one single fuck about where they live now.”

Andrew smiled at me. “Will you show me where your Aunt Marvie lived?”

I grinned at him. “I’d love to.” I pulled the car back into the street and drove past the house that had been my childhood home. The fact I didn’t feel anything was a very welcome realisation that maybe I was finally moving on and accepting of how my parents had treated me. I also knew damn well the man sitting in the car with me had a lot to do with that.

Maybe that was the difference between Andrew and therapy. My therapy had focused so much on my parents and the hurt they’d caused, whereas Andrew, very unknowingly, had focused on me. He showed me that I was someone worth loving, and that if I could just lower my walls a little, it would not only let love in, but also let some of the hurt out.

I drove through the backstreets of Double Bay and pulled up out the front of a rather large bungalow style house. “This was us here.”

“Does it back onto the water?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus.”

I barked out a laugh. “Now you know why my father had a shitfit about Aunt Marvie’s will.”

I could see it in his eyes when it slowly dawned on him. “She left you this house?”

I nodded slowly. “I sold it. Hence the money.”

He stared at the house, then back at me. “You said she left you a chunk of change.”

I shrugged. “Your folks live in a ritzy part of town too, ya know. You never told me their house was a mansion.”

“I said they were in theatre.”

“Yes, but so are starving actors. LA is full of them.”

He laughed. “When you said you didn’t need to work, I thought… well, I didn’t know what I thought, to be honest.”

“I have it tied up in term deposits and invested in stock, so if you saw my bank account, you would think I was just kinda doing okay. My portfolio, on the other hand, is fairly decent.”

He looked at me for a long second, then snorted out a disbelieving laugh. “You are the most modest person I’ve ever met.”

I shrugged. “My great-grandfather had made some very smart real estate investments in the 30s, which my whole family, aunts and uncles, benefited from when he died. My parents were name-droppers, social-ladder climbers. You know the type. But Aunt Marvie was very humble, very down to earth, regardless of her financial worth. She taught me to treat everyone the same, whether it’s the CEO of a bank or the guy who cleans the toilets.”

Andrew was smiling warmly at me. “I wish I could have met her.”

I leaned across the console of the car and waited for him to do the same so I could kiss him. “Thank you.”

Andrew sat back in his seat. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Do you regret selling it?”

“Nope. Sydney isn’t my home anymore. I wasn’t ever coming back here.”

He looked out the window at the house, like he didn’t want to see my face when he asked, “What will you do now? Now that you and Lewis are talking?”

“I’ll go back to LA and talk to him from there.” I squeezed Andrew’s hand. “Look at me.” He did and I continued. “My home is in LA. With Emilio and Lola, and there’s this pretty amazing guy I’m seeing. He’s on the cover of
The World’s Most Incredible Boyfriends
and everything.”

He fought a smile. “Is he now?”

“Yep. And the
Sexiest Man Alive, Cockness Monster
edition. It was a sell-out, just flew off the shelves.”

Now he laughed. “You’re absurd.”

“And you’re kinda perfect. So we’re even.” I kissed him, both of us smiling, and started driving again. I turned onto the main arterial road and followed the signs to the city.

“Where to first?” Andrew asked.

“First stop today on the amazing Spencer Cohen’s Sydney sightseeing tour is the glorious city centre where we shall take in Darling Harbour, Circular Quay, the Rocks, and a little thing called the Opera House. Then, we shall venture over the Harbour Bridge, and if we have time, we’ll take the handsome American tourist to the zoo to meet some of Australia’s cute and cuddly wildlife.”

“Aren’t they all dangerous?”

“Not all. Some will kill you, the rest will just seriously injure or maim you. You’ll be fine.”

Andrew laughed at me. “You know, you’re actually a pretty good driver.” He held out his hand, which I took, grateful Lewis had an automatic car.

I rested our joined hands on my thigh. “Thanks.”

* * * *

Flying out of Sydney felt both good and bad. We’d had a great few days with Lewis and Libby, and while I was looking forward to going home, I was sad to be leaving my brother. He and Libby had driven us to the airport and come to see us off.

He hugged me hard before reluctantly letting me go. “We’ll talk, yeah?”

I nodded. “Absolutely. Email, phone, whatever.”

He looked a bit upset at the goodbye, but like me, glad we had bridged the gap between us. “I really can’t thank you enough for coming. It… it means a lot.”

“Next time you guys’ll have to come visit us.”

Lewis’s eyes lit up. “Can we? That’d be great. Libby’s got two weeks off in October, and we were wondering if we should go away.”

“Just book the tickets and let me know when to pick you up.”

Lewis was much happier knowing there would definitely be a next time. He hugged Andrew goodbye, and when Libby hugged me, she whispered in my ear, “Thank you. For everything. He needed this.”

“So did I,” I whispered back to her. Then I kissed her cheek. “Anytime.”

* * * *

They called our flight, and Andrew and I both fell into our seats, exhausted. Knowing we’d be on a plane all night, we’d spent the day doing everything we could think of, including spending half the night in bed doing everything
but
sleeping. We’d been shopping for everyone we knew, and we’d eaten our own body weights in food.

But I knew as soon as I sat in that plane seat, I’d be dozing off to sleep. With my head on the headrest, I turned to look at Andrew. “Thank you for coming with me.”

He looked just as tired as I felt. His smile was slow and one-sided. “You’re very welcome.”

All I could do was stare at him. Someone asked him a question, but I couldn’t pay attention. I couldn’t draw my eyes away. He was so fucking perfect. Unbelievably gorgeous, kind, intelligent, and funny. If I were to believe that souls were split in two and we needed to search out our soulmate, then I’d found him. He was the very missing half of me.

“Spencer?” Andrew must have asked me something. “A drink? The attendant wants to know if you want a soda or water. They don’t have green tea; I’ve already asked, and I doubt the pot of tea would be good enough—”

“I love you.”

He stopped rambling and stared at me. “What?”

I was still leaning tiredly against the headrest, smiling at him. “I said I love you.”

“Oh.” He put his hand to his mouth. The flight attendant gushed some
awwww
sound, and the woman next to Andrew stared at him, waiting for his response. “Spencer…”

“I’ve been trying to say those words for weeks. You know it’s hard for me, but you’re pretty fucking incredible, you know that?”

Andrew blinked back tears, and he mouthed,
I love you too
like his voice wouldn’t work.

I smiled sleepily at him. “Just thought you should know.”

Andrew waved the attendant off, and she smiled at how flustered he was. He took a deep breath and slid his hand over mine. “If there was a magazine called
The Most Awkwardly Romantic Declarations Of Love
, I’m pretty sure that would be on the cover.”

I chuckled. “Sorry. I told you I had a stupid heart and even stupider brain. They just kinda decide these things on their own.”

He laughed, and his eyes glistened with happy tears. “I love you too,” he whispered, getting actual words out this time, and leaned over for a quick kiss.

I sighed, like his words were a warm blanket. “Now I can sleep.”

“Sleep? How can I sleep? My heart is doing this allegro thing right now, and I feel like I’ve been injected with caffeine. You can’t just say you love me and expect me to sleep.”

I closed my eyes, still facing him in my seat, still holding his hand. I’m pretty sure my smile wasn’t going away anytime soon. “Shhhh.”

I could feel him glaring at me. “Ugh. I hate you.”

Now I laughed, nearly asleep. “No you don’t.”

He raised our joined hands, and I felt his lips against the back of my hand. “No, I really don’t.”

There’s something to say about coming home. Landing in LA was a relief I could feel in my bones. We had managed a few hours sleep, but the time zones scrambled my already-tired brain. “What day is it?”

Andrew looked at me blankly. “I have no clue.”

We got through customs in a zombie-like haze and walked out to find both Lola and Sarah waiting for us. It was so good to see Lola, and I quickly scooped her up for a bear hug.

Andrew hugged his sister too. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Well, we”—Sarah gave a pointed look at Lola—“thought it might be safer if we both turn up. You know, your first trip away, not the happiest of circumstances.” She frowned at me. “We weren’t sure if you’d be sick of each other, and we thought we’d come to, you know, offer support.”

Lola made a face. “It sounded like a better idea on the phone.”

Sarah laughed. “Yeah, it kinda did.”

“Sick of each other?” I asked, looking at Andrew and shrugged.

“Thought never crossed my mind,” Andrew replied. He looked at his sister. “What day is it?” She just laughed and took his suitcase. He didn’t move. “No, I’m being serious.”

“Oh, it’s Sunday.”

“Thank God,” Andrew mumbled and rolled his neck. “I don’t go back to work till Wednesday.” Then he squinted at her. “Sunday? Really?”

He wasn’t joking when he said he didn’t cope with jet lag. Sarah said, “I thought I’d take you home and get all your laundry done while you did your jet-lag, dying thing.”

Andrew looked at me. “Oh.”

Lola put both hands on his shoulders and peered up into his eyes. “You want to spend more time with Spencer, don’t you?”

“Well, I just, yeah…” He looked kinda lost. “Um, Sunday? Really? We left Australia on Sunday.”

I put my arm around his shoulder and pulled him against me, trying not to laugh. I looked at both Sarah and Lola. “We’ll go back to his place. Do laundry and sleep.” I looked at Lola. “Then we’ll do dinner at the tattoo shop so we can tell you all about the trip. How does that sound?”

Lola did her little jumpy-clap thing. “Perfect!” She grabbed my suitcase, and she and Sarah walked ahead while I followed, with Andrew tucked under one arm. I felt like a different man than the one that left here just a few days ago. In a lot of ways, I guess I was. I kissed the side of Andrew’s head as the warmth of the LA sun washed over me.

Thankfully, it was Sarah driving Andrew’s car, not Lola in Cindy Crawford. I wasn’t quite up for jet lag
and
heart palpitations. We dropped Lola off with promises to see her later, and Sarah drove us to Andrew’s. When we walked in, Andrew left his suitcase near the hall that led to the laundry. He put his arms out and let his head fall back. “Ugh. Home.”

“I bought food for you,” Sarah said. She looked right at me. “Andrew’s never dealt with jet lag, and I knew he wouldn’t have the patience for ordering in, so I did it for you. It’s just some pasta. I thought the carbs would help you sleep. You just need to heat it.”

“You are an angel,” I told her. “Leave the laundry, though. Seriously. We can deal with that later. You hungry?”

Sarah looked at her watch. Apparently it was mid-morning. Felt like dinnertime. She shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

I guided Andrew to the kitchen and leant his arse against the counter before Sarah and I fixed some food. With three bowls of a mix of pastas, we talked about our trip. Well, I talked, Andrew squinted a lot, his brain obviously somewhere else. I gave Sarah a diluted version of what happened with Lewis; how I said goodbye to one brother, and through his tragic loss, gained my other brother back. I told her how I took Andrew sightseeing and showed her some photos on my phone of him holding a koala. “Aww, that’s the cutest thing ever,” she said.

Andrew stared at her. “How can it be Sunday? How is it physically possible to arrive before our departure time?”

Sarah laughed and patted his arm. She looked at me. “Take him to bed. His brain will catch up on the whole time-zone thing after some sleep.” She put the dirty dishes in the sink and kissed Andrew’s cheek. “It’s good to have you home.” Then she smiled at me. “Both of you.”

I took Andrew’s hand, and when we’d said goodbye to Sarah, I took Andrew straight upstairs. I put him to bed, taking his shoes off, then I thought better of it and pulled his jeans off too. I stripped as well and climbed in beside him, sinking into his heavenly soft bed. Sarah was right. All that pasta in my belly was putting me to sleep. I closed my eyes and was drifting off to sleep when Andrew spoke. “You told me you loved me.”

I opened my eyes to find him looking at me. “I did. I do.”

He sighed and smiled. “Tell me again.”

I rolled on top of him, spreading his legs apart with my knees and settling between his thighs. I put my hands to his face and pushed his hair back and watched as his eyes swam. I kissed him softly at the same time I rubbed my erection along his. “I love you. Andrew Landon, I am
in
love with you. I have been in love with you since that time at my place when I asked you to pick an album to play, and out of all of my vinyl collection, you picked Jeff Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah.’ I just haven’t been able to tell you, until now. You healed something inside me.”

A single tear ran from the corner of his eye to his temple. “Oh.”

I kissed him again, and this time he opened his mouth. He tilted his head and deepened the kiss while his fingers dug into my back and his hips rolled into mine. He only stopped kissing me to breathe. He bit his lip. “I read somewhere that sex cures jet lag.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. Getting fucked into the mattress. It’s the only way.”

I laughed but was only too happy to oblige.

* * * *

After curing Andrew’s jet lag, we slept for a few hours, did laundry, which we took back to my place, then made our way down to Emilio’s shop. As soon as we walked in through the door, Emilio stopped disinfecting his work station and hugged me. “Here they are!”

“Man, it’s good to see you,” I told him. “How’s it been?”

Emilio and Daniela closed up shop for the day while he filled me in on the happenings of the tattoo shop. We put an order in for dinner to be delivered, and Lola and Gabe arrived, as did the Chinese food, right on cue.

It was perfect.

The most important people in my life, not including Lewis and Libby, surrounded me and listened intently as I told them about everything that happened in Sydney. We ate our dinner, sitting around Emilio’s waiting room, like we’d always done. Only now Andrew sat beside me, our little group perfectly paired off.

“Oh,” I said, looking at Emilio. “Andrew had the idea of a single piece tattoo for Archer’s phoenix. He thought maybe leaving this one”—I nodded to the blackbird on my arm—“just as it is. He said it tells its own story. I kinda like that.”

“Awesome.” Emilio smiled at Andrew. “Great idea.”

“I was thinking about making the phoenix a back piece. But we can work on the perfect one, no rush.”

Emilio gave me a nod. “It would be my honour to draw that for you.”

“Oh,” Daniela said. “Andrew, weren’t you supposed to be working on something for Spencer?”

“Yes!” I said. “He reckons he’s half done it or got some rough idea or something.”

Andrew cleared his throat. “I finished it, actually.”

He what?
“You did? When?”

Andrew blushed a little and looked at me sheepishly. “On the plane. I couldn’t sleep, and the cabin was kinda dark, so I took a pen to the back of the airline safety manual.”

I would have found that funny if I wasn’t so intrigued. “What did you draw?”

He swallowed hard and his lip pulled down on one side. “I um, I have it here.” He pulled out his wallet and took out a folded piece of paper. “I’d need to do it properly. This is just a general idea. But you wanted me to draw the one thing that symbolises who you are. What I think of when I think of you.”

With a deep breath, he handed the piece of paper to me.

It was an elephant. He’d only had a pen to draw with, but he used the simple writing tool like a paintbrush. Inside the elephant was a pattern of leaves and circles, so intricately done, all different depths of blue… It was incredible.

Andrew must have taken my lack of words as though I didn’t like it, because he started that nervous, fast-talking thing. “You wanted me to draw something that comes to mind when I think of you. And I… well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s stupid…”

It was an amazing drawing, but the reference was lost on me. “I remind you of an elephant?”

“Yes. An elephant never forgets. You want something that symbolizes how you got to this point in your life, well, there it is. You said you’d never forget what your family did to you, and you shouldn’t either. You should remember it always. Because you should also never forget how strong it made you. And elephants are the strongest animal, and they’re larger than life, but they’re also incredibly gentle and peaceful. And that’s what you are.”

Oh.

He added, “And the leaves, well, they signify a change in season, passing of time and of course new growth. I thought they were fitting.”

I couldn’t believe how much meaning he put into one drawing. I looked closer at the drawing, at the faint circles in the blue ink. They weren’t circles. “Are those music notes?”

Andrew nodded. “It’s the first bar of ‘Hallelujah.’”

My heart squeezed, tripped, and fell in my chest, and tears sprang to my eyes. “Oh.”

He looked alarmed. “If you don’t like it—”

“Like it? It’s perfect. It couldn’t be more perfect. No one has ever… no one…” I couldn’t speak, and a stupid tear rolled down my cheek. I scrubbed my face with the back of my hand.

Andrew looked horrified. “You weren’t supposed to cry.”

I snorted back more tears. “No, it’s just that it’s perfect. Completely perfect.” I handed the drawing around for the others to see it. I kissed Andrew, not caring that our friends were watching. “Did you have any colours in mind?”

Andrew made a face. “It was the colours that I couldn’t decide. You see, colour and shading is paramount in what I do when I draw at work, but for you, I just couldn’t decide. I wanted primary colours: red, blue, green. Because from those, all colours are made. And that’s what I think of when I think of you. The basis of all colours and light…” His words finished in a mumble.

The basis of all colours and light.

My voice was thick and filled with unshed tears. “Oh.”

Andrew shrugged. “But primary colours won’t look so great in a tattoo.”

“Emilio will make it work,” I said, finally finding my voice.

I looked at Emilio, but he was studying Andrew’s pen-drawn elephant. “Yes, of course,” he said, not looking up from the piece of paper. “This is really good,” Emilio said. “Like,
really
good. You’ve adapted it for a tattoo like a pro.”

“Oh,” Andrew said, blushing. “It’s just a rough draft. I’ll redo it properly if Spencer says it’s what he wants.”

“I want that one,” I said adamantly, pointing at the piece of paper. “Done in red, blue, and green.”

“But it’s just a drawing I did on the plane.” Andrew was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “While you were asleep, I just watched you, and I know that sounds creepy, but all I could think was how you can see the real person when they’re peaceful, and that probably sounds really stupid.”

“That,” I replied softly, “is why I want that drawing.”

“But it’s not perfect.”

I smiled at him. “It’s perfect for me.”