North didn’t sleep that night (morning, whatever it was), or not anything that felt like sleep, anyway. He woke again and again with the heat of the fire on his face, confused by the darkness, the smell of damp cotton, with the echoes of gunshots fading in his ears. He saw Emery’s face, the fury animating it, and played their conversation a hundred different ways, saying all the things he should have said.
He didn’t wake until noon, and Shaw was still asleep. He showered, dried himself off, checked himself out in the mirror. Some circles around the eyes. Some bruises that were starting to stiffen him up. Nothing a few days wouldn’t sort out. He’d had worse, on plenty of occasions, after a bad night with Tucker.
After dressing as quietly as he could, he began repacking their bags. He’d text Auggie. Wouldn’t that be the cherry on top of all this fucking mess, having one of the Super Friends drive them home because the GTO was nothing but a slagheap? Shaw wouldn’t mind, of course; he and Auggie would probably watch TikTok the whole way, and North would have to drive, and while the Audi wasn’t a bad car, he could actually feel his balls getting smaller.
When the bags were packed, he knelt there, and he thought, It’s over. He recognized what he was feeling, that sense of detachment, the distance from himself and from that river running through him. He had felt this way before. He hadn’t died from it. Sleep, he thought. And food.
Food sounded good, so he checked Shaw once more—still asleep, some of that auburn hair curling across his cheek, the occasional snore slipping out of him—and let himself out into the blistering sunlight. Summer hung on him like one of Shaw’s cloaks, sticky and heavy and clinging. He checked his phone as he went down the exterior steps. There had to be a place close enough for him to walk and grab something for them to eat. Shaw would be starving, maybe even hungry enough not to drag North over the coals if North picked up some shakes to go with the—
The buzz of a window made him look up, and it wasn’t until that moment that he registered the sound of an engine running. A Honda Odyssey was parked in one of the stalls, and Emery sat there, drumming his fingers on the wheel. It might have been a full minute, the sun like a hand pushing down on North, that he stood there trading stares with Emery. Then he gave Emery the finger. The tension in Emery’s shoulders eased, and he tilted his head toward the empty passenger seat.
North climbed into the minivan as Emery buzzed the window up again, and a wall of air conditioning met him. The van had the usual parental clutter—abandoned cups, a pair of shoes that must have belonged to Evie, toys, stray French fries. A couple of paper bags were stashed between the front seats, and a heavenly smell drifted up.
“Breakfast,” Emery said. “Although I suppose it’s lunch by now. And it’s either a peace offering or a bribe. Both, I guess.”
North let his gaze slide up. Today, Emery was dressed in what North thought of as his usual outfit: tactical boots, jeans, a t-shirt. The t-shirt was Death Cab for Cutie, and it looked a little too small for him, and washed within an inch of its life. It was obvious Emery had showered, but he still looked like a wreck.
“You know, I was just thinking about my balls shriveling up,” North said, reaching for the bag, “and then I saw you sitting in this van.” He opened one of the containers and was met with a cheesy, sausage-y, and most importantly cheesy croissant. It tasted—
“God,” Emery muttered. “Now I’m going to have that sound in my head for the rest of my life.”
North managed to stifle additional noises, but he took another bite, and then another. Then he paused and said, “It’s still hot.”
“Adults swallow their food before speaking.” Then Emery must have remembered this was an apology-slash-bribe meal, and he gestured to the cup holders. “I assume Shaw wants the unicorn latte. I got you one too, but if you’d like to pretend that you prefer your coffee black, I also bought you a decoy cup.”
North chewed the next bite more slowly, studying Emery. After he swallowed, he said, “You’re a lot.”
To his surprise, Emery laughed quietly. “I think that’s the consensus.”
“It’s hot.”
Emery’s eyes widened, and North gave him a crooked grin and held up the croissant.
“Don’t do that,” Emery said with a weirdly breathy laugh. “John has this insane theory about us—” He stopped whatever he’d been about to say. “It wouldn’t be much of an apology if it were cold.”
“I thought it was a bribe.”
“That too.”
“And you’ve been out here since…?”
“Ten.” A wry smile creased the corner of his mouth. “I think the delivery people are getting sick of me.”
That pulled a laugh from North. He ate some more. And then—because his balls had not shriveled up, not entirely, anyway, and because he was a man, and because he could do this, regardless of what Shaw thought, and definitely not because of those creepy fix-your-relationship VHS tapes Shaw had bought in bulk at an estate sale and then forced North to watch when it was his night to pick something on TV—North said, “I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
Emery nodded. “I fucked up too. And you don’t need to apologize to me. I, on the other hand, definitely need to apologize to you.” He looked out the windshield, and his hands wrapped around the steering wheel again. “John has been under tremendous pressure. First, those kids. Then Dalton and the sheriff. I know that this is personal for you, but I don’t think you can understand.”
“It’s different,” North said. “I get that. The sheriff was your friend. This is your home. John-Henry’s in the spotlight.” He wrestled for a moment with the next bit. “I’m not blaming John-Henry. Sometimes leads don’t pan out; I get that. The Moss family is going to keep their secrets, and Eric Brey’s got a lawyer, and he knows how to terrorize women into being quiet. But that search at the RV park was a cock-up, and it almost got me and Shaw killed. You’re good at what you do, I know that. John-Henry too. But last night, half of those guys didn’t know their ass from their elbow. And then Cassidy—”
“What happened with Cassidy?”
North gave himself a mental kick. And then he told him.
Instead of exploding, Emery said, “I wish you would have told us.”
“That’s it?”
Emery blinked. “Pardon me?”
“Colt told me a story about you punching a tree because a branch almost fell on him.”
“I didn’t punch it, I—” Emery stopped, and that tiny smile flickered again. “I’m not surprised Jonas killed Welch in the way you described. Or, frankly, that he tried to kill you. Jonas is concerned primarily with Jonas, and when it comes to protecting himself, he’ll do whatever he has to.” He was silent for a moment. “It’ll be impossible to use as leverage, unfortunately. It’s your word against his, and you were inside a storage unit. He already admitted to moving Welch’s gun, so there’s an explanation for his prints on it. No, I don’t think there’s anything we can do with it. But it’s good to know. We suspected he was involved; now we know he is, at some level. Even if he doesn’t have a connection back to the Cottonmouth Club, he’s tied up with the Mosses and Brey, and he can’t be trusted.”
North waited for more. “That’s it?”
“I assume that your experience with Jonas and your frustration with the search at the RV park explain why you acted independently when going after Ezell.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Perhaps you could tell John that.”
“What?”
“John is almost unbelievably willing to forgive. He did what he did—”
“Fired our asses.”
“—because he felt like he had to.”
“After we unpacked this entire fucking case for you.”
“You did, yes. But North, be reasonable. You are, if I’m being honest, a terrible employee. Tell me, is this how you conduct your own investigations? When you’re working independently, just you and a client?”
North considered the question. “Pretty much.”
“Don’t be ridiculous; of course it’s not. You write reports. You provide updates. You work within the parameters the client has established. This case is different, and I understand that. Our window of time is compressed, and there’s not a chance for you to write up your findings and submit them and wait for further instructions. But there’s always been time for you to make phone calls. I thought, for a while, you understood and were doing better. It seems that wasn’t the case. You put John in a terrible position. He has to explain not only why you acted the way you did, which resulted in the death of two people key to this investigation, but he has to tell the whole world that he had no idea you were even doing it—that the people he trusted kept him in the dark.”
The croissant was gone. North went for one of the unicorn lattes, ignoring the way Emery raised an eyebrow. It was sweet, and the caffeine kicked like a mule—well, a unicorn—and it did nothing to help with the sloshing feeling in North’s stomach. Finally, he muttered, “Ok, well, yeah, I’m an asshole.”
“You do that a surprising amount, you know.”
More coffee. The sloshing only got worse. “Do what?”
“Parade your…combativeness, as though that were its own kind of excuse. Perform self-awareness as a way of distancing yourself from your behavior. It’s a defense mechanism, I believe. It’s one of your standard maneuvers. That, and picking on someone. Usually, Auggie, which on general principle is probably fine; God knows he needs it.”
“I don’t pick on—” But North stopped and stared into the mountain of whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles. He wanted to say that’s what he did with Shaw, and it was true. Because he loved Shaw. And messing around with him was fun. Especially because Shaw loved it, and because later, he had plenty of time and opportunity to show Shaw how he really felt. But had he had that opportunity with Auggie? Or Theo? Or Jem? Or, for that matter, Emery? He put the coffee back and said, “Remember how I told you that you’re a lot?”
Emery laughed again. When he quieted, though, his tone was serious. “I do not always remember you being this abrasive, however.”
The sting in North’s eyes surprised him. He closed them briefly, barely more than a blink. “Yeah, well, I guess you’ve got me all figured out.”
Something crossed Emery’s face. His eyebrows drew together, and his hands loosened around the steering wheel.
“You know, it’s not like the last couple weeks have been easy. You get that, right?” North tried to stop there. He tried to think of what he ought to be saying—something light, something with an edge. He’d spent years of his life perfecting it, the dry ironic distance that kept the Chouteau boys on one side of the wall, and him always on the other. Everyone except Shaw, as it turned out, who had the insanely fucking annoying habit of jumping over the wall no matter how high North built it. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Maybe it was the reality of the last few days, everything finally soaking in. “You know, Shaw could have died last night. We both could have, but Shaw—” He had to stop again, his throat tightening. “And that asshole just kept coming. It didn’t matter what I did; I couldn’t stop him. He had that fucking sickle, and he—he just wouldn’t stop.” The sun caught in the glass blocks of the motor court, and he had to close his eyes again. He gave up on what it felt like, on trying to make the words into some kind of sense. Opening his eyes, he shook his head. “John-Henry was right to fire me. Fucking useless, that’s what I was.” He pushed open the door, and the heat was a tidal wave. “Thanks for breakfast.”
Emery’s hand on his shoulder stopped North, as much from the surprise as the actual contact. North wasn’t sure Emery had ever touched him before—nothing beyond a handshake, maybe some incidental contact somewhere along the line. Not like this: the touch purposeful, firm, unhesitating. It was, in its own way, a demand, and North’s eyes rose to Emery’s in spite of his best efforts.
The gold-glitter of amber looked surprisingly soft right then. Maybe not even amber at all. “North, for a long time now we’ve been drifting in and out of each other’s lives. My husband is convinced that it’s somehow meaningful that I have you on speed dial. My son worships the ground you walk on. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from John and Colt, it’s that nobody can control who comes into your life. Chaos or chance or the universe, call it what you will—it brings people into your orbit, and you can’t control it, can’t change it, can’t stop it. But at some point, you can’t keep drifting. You either take hold, or you let go.” He paused. “You’ve been an ally to me. In some bizarre, twisted way, you’ve been a mentor. You’ve certainly been a pain in the ass. I’d like you to be my friend.”
“Do I have to?” The words popped out, more as a way for North to deal with the rush that stung his eyes, but he didn’t miss the way Emery’s brow wrinkled with annoyance. “Sorry; bad habit.”
Emery made a sound that could have meant anything.
“Do we have to braid each other’s hair now?”
“I believe you were leaving.”
“Shaw would say we should kiss, but no tongue.”
“This is very good. This is all the proof I’ll need when I tell John—again—that I was right and he was wrong.”
“Fine. Yes.” North couldn’t actually look Emery in the eye, but he managed to mumble, “We should be friends. We are friends.” He couldn’t help adding, “I guess.”
“Remind me again: you’re how old? And in some clownery version of a committed relationship?”
“Well, fuck you,” North said. “I don’t go around squirting my feelings every time things get bad. I’m so fucking sorry.”
The smile was tiny. Barely even there.
“Yeah, yeah,” North said. “I hear it; I’m an asshole.” He slid out of the van, grabbed the remaining breakfast sandwich and the unicorn latte, and said, “This has got to be a secret. If you tell Shaw about this, he might literally kill me.”
“Hm.”
“I’m not joking. When you asked Tean for his opinion about those two weird documentaries, he went into the garage and tore up a bunch of old newspaper and screamed.”
“I was saving those newspapers.”
North stared at him. Then, to himself, he said, “What the fuck did I get myself into?”
When he moved to shut the door, Emery said, “North, I still believe John did the right thing, ending your contract with the department. But I hope you’ll remember that the breakfast, it was a bribe too. Don’t leave.” North wasn’t sure how much it cost Emery to add, “Please. This isn’t over.”
“What are friends for,” North said sourly and then, because things were getting real grab-assy, he slammed the door.
Upstairs, Shaw was pretending to sleep.
“How much did you hear?” North asked as he shut the door.
A yawn. An elaborate stretch. “Hm? Oh, where’d you—”
“Cut it out, or I’ll drink this unicorn latte your best friend got you.”
“No!”
With a roll of his eyes, North delivered the food and then dropped into a chair to take off the Red Wings. Shaw tore into the breakfast sandwich—it reminded North of some of those animal shows Tean occasionally put on TV, the ones where John-Henry always had to say, “No, that deer is fine, it’s just sleeping,” before ushering Evie and Lana out of the room. Throughout the process, though, Shaw somehow managed to keep his eyes locked on North.
Finally, North said, “What?”
Shaw kept eating. And looking.
“It’s not a big deal.” But Shaw was still staring at him, and North found himself fidgeting in his seat. “He wanted to talk. He…he made some good points about, uh, the stuff with John-Henry. He doesn’t want us to go home. He practically begged me.”
“And?”
North shrugged. “That’s it. I’m ok with staying, I guess. For a little longer. If you are.”
“I don’t care about that. I want to hear the good part.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“When he asked you to be his friend!”
It wasn’t exactly a surprise; Shaw was a born snoop, and the whole sham sleep meant North already suspected Shaw had heard some of it. But the friend revelation made him think of a lot of screaming and a lot—like, seriously, an overwhelming amount—of shredded newspaper. A part of North’s brain felt a moment of dismay as he thought, What the hell was he saving them for?
“Uh, he asked me to be his friend.”
“And you said yes!” Shaw practically sang the words. He kicked back the covers, tossed aside the now-empty sandwich wrapper, and clambered over to North. The tone was confusing, but North was pretty sure Shaw would go for his eyes, so he was unprepared when Shaw climbed on top of him and wrapped him in a hug.
“What’s happening?” North asked. “Are we fighting?”
“Of course we’re not fighting.”
“Is this a trick?”
“Of course it’s not a trick.”
“I don’t even want to be his friend. Is that why this is ok? Is that why—well, we don’t have any newspaper.”
Shaw hugged him tighter. He kissed North on the temple, and North was surprised to feel tears on Shaw’s face.
“What’s wrong? Hey, it doesn’t mean anything. He just said it because he knew I was pissed—”
“Of course he didn’t! Oh North, I’m so happy for you!” More kisses. And definitely tears.
“Well—” North wasn’t sure what to say, so he went with “I’m not!”
Shaw ignored that. He made more of those crooning, contented noises, and he planted a lot of kisses—so many, in fact, that North finally had to shove him away a few times. They ended up with Shaw sitting sideways on his lap, one of North’s arms around his waist. Shaw was beaming and blinking his eyes, still trying to clear them.
“Ok, I was sure I was going to have to tell you in a padded room. Or one of those rooms where they let you break everything. Or maybe first one then the other.”
“What? Why?” Then Shaw laughed. “Oh my God, North, I’m not jealous. I mean, it’s cute that you have a friend. Finally. After, like—wait, how long have I known you? And I’m glad it’s Emery. See, Emery and I are soulmates, so it would make sense that he’d also be attracted to your—is grumpishness a word?”
North wasn’t sure about grumpishness, but he did know that their current position meant Shaw was basically in prime position for a sack tap. While Shaw was still groaning, he dumped him on the floor, crawled across the bed, and helped himself to the second unicorn latte. Shaw whined and moaned and made a pathetic display of dragging himself onto the bed, but a few sips of the unicorn latte proved to be restorative, and not too long after, they were cuddled up on the bed together. The mini-split chugged, trying to cool the room. The sun had climbed above the window, filling the room with shadows. Outside, a car accelerated, and then the sound faded into the distance.
“I’m very happy you have a friend,” Shaw whispered.
North grunted.
“Did you hug?” Shaw asked.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
For some reason, that made Shaw giggle into North’s side, and North stroked his hair. When Shaw had recovered, he propped his chin on North’s shoulder and stared at him.
“What?” North asked. And he thought maybe grumpishness was a real word. Maybe.
“I want to know what you’re feeling.”
“I’m not feeling anything.”
“North!”
“Jesus Christ.” He wrestled with that one for a while and finally said, “It’s fine, I guess. Holy shit!”
He rubbed the spot where Shaw had pinched him as Shaw said, “Emery and I are not going to be friends with you—”
“God damn it, am I going to have to hear that for the rest of my life?”
“—if you act like this.”
“Great. Fantastic. I’ll watch whatever I want on TV, and nobody will scratch me with their fucking toenails at night, and I’ll stop getting calls at six in the morning because some asshole across the state wants to argue about the best model of telephoto lens.”
That made Shaw giggle again, and North stroked his hair some more. He could feel something loosening, his muscles relaxing, his hand slowing against the silk of Shaw’s hair.
“I know you have friends,” Shaw whispered. “But everyone from college is in such a different phase in their life, and you’ve got Jadon and Zion and Truck and Pari—”
“Yeah, Pari.”
Shaw punched him and continued, “—but it’s different because of work. And it’s different with us because we’re, well, us now. And I want you to have people you can be yourself with, and be happy with, and know that they love you.”
“All of that sounds like the fucking worst.” But Shaw’s silence dragged more words out of North, and he heard himself talking. “Apparently I’m a royal asshole. Some of the stuff Emery said.” He tried to stop there. “Do I really pick on Auggie? I mean, I know I give him shit.”
“Oh yes,” Shaw said.
“What the hell, Shaw?”
“Does it help that he likes it?”
“Are you serious right now? Oh my God. Even my partner thinks I’m an asshole.”
Laughing quietly, Shaw bent to kiss his shoulder. “You’re not an asshole. Well, you are, but you do it on purpose, and that’s different.”
“Now I have to be nice to all those motherfuckers.”
Shaw made a skeptical noise.
“I will. I’m going to be nice to them. I can be nice.” That got nothing from Shaw, so North said, “Say something, dumbass!”
“I’m sure you can be very nice.”
“Jesus Christ. No wonder I’m such an asshole. This is the kind of support I get.”
“You’re going to be the nicest. You’re going to be so nice. Even to Theo.”
“Fuck me, I forgot about Theo.”
That made Shaw laugh again.
It took North a while to find a way to speak again, and when he did, he was surprised at how hesitant he felt. Almost timid, and he didn’t think he’d felt timid in a long time, maybe not since he’d been a child. “Emery said some stuff about me. About how I make jokes, about defense mechanisms. About giving people shit—I guess that was part of it too.”
Shaw was quiet for a while. He traced one finger across North’s chest and asked, “How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t know. Shitty.”
“North—”
“I mean, he’s not wrong. He’s Emery fucking Hazard; when is he ever wrong?”
“I bet John-Henry keeps a list.”
But the joke slid past North. “He’s not wrong, not really. Growing up, and then at Chouteau.” It was hard, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t quite summon the words. It was hard to be the queer kid in Lindenwood Park. It was hard to be the guy paying his own way when everybody else had trust funds. It was hard when you were afraid because you knew the person you loved most in the world kept getting hurt over and over again, and you couldn’t do anything about it. And it was hard when you’d grown up being told never to show fear—never to show anything. What he wanted to say was that it was hard when you’d never been allowed to be gentle, not until you met a certain doofus who wouldn’t take no for an answer. And so it was easier to be an asshole, but a funny one, because it kept everybody at arm’s length. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it, so he said, “He’s not wrong.”
An old man in a custodial uniform passed their window, pushing a cart that bumped along the uneven floor. Then silence. Then a bird. And then silence again.
“God,” North said, and he tried to laugh, but he wasn’t sure what to call the sound that came out. “Do they all hate me?”
“No! No, no, no.” Shaw stretched up to kiss him.
North shook his head.
“They don’t hate you,” Shaw said. “They’re our friends.”
North shook his head again.
“They are,” Shaw said firmly.
“Ok.”
“North.”
“I said ok.”
Shaw was silent for what felt like a long time. “You won Emery over, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” North said.
Another of those pauses came. Shaw made an unhappy noise. “North, I don’t want you to be sad.”
North touched that coppery patch of Shaw’s hair and forced himself to smile. “I’m not sad, baby. I’ve got you.”