BLAKE
Friday
Blake probably should have known that Jay’s reaction to being fired via text would be to show up at Blake’s house and knock on the door.
He answered, eventually, and fixed Jay with his most effective glare. “What?”
Unfortunately, Jay was impossible to intimidate. It was probably some combination of him being 6’2”, as physically fit as an Olympian, and willfully oblivious to anything that conflicted with his goals.
Athletes.
“I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“Is that what people do after they’ve been fired? Check on their former boss?” But Blake didn’t have the energy to stand in Jay’s way, so he drifted backward out of the doorway and Jay immediately brushed past him.
Blake gave the outdoors a cautious look as the door fell closed behind Jay, but for now, the bright light it framed wasn’t causing him any discomfort, so he flipped on the light switch before Jay could make a comment about the apartment being dark.
“Well,” Jay was saying, plopping down on Blake’s couch, “at first I was pissed. Not because you fired me, but because you did it in four words over text.” He looked at Blake with that wounded Golden Retriever face—like Blake had broken his heart by being careless with his feelings, even though they’d said a grand total of a hundred words to each other in the loosely eighteen months of their acquaintance.
“Okay,” Blake said, leaning against the back of an armchair.
“Then I saw Mr. Moriarty in the grocery store.”
Blake wrinkled his nose.
Jay rolled his eyes. “What an asshole, right?”
Blake sighed and circled the chair so he could drop into it, throwing one leg over the arm. “Yeah, kind of.”
Jay didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, he gave Blake a wide-eyed look. “Well?”
Mystified, Blake stared back blankly. “‘Well,’ what?”
“Are you going to tell me what the fuck’s going on?”
Blake shrugged.
“Oh, my God. You’re as bad as Bria!”
“Hey,” Blake said. “That’s going too far.”
Jay snorted. “Then, tell me!”
Blake chewed on the inside of his cheek until it stung. “Look, I don’t have the money to pay you anymore, all right? I don’t even have the money to pay me. More than half of my clients quit this week. I don’t mean to be an asshole, but what do you expect me to do? Stop eating so that I can keep you around?”
Jay flushed. “You know, my mom’s a lawyer, and—”
“Thanks,” Blake snapped, “but I have a lawyer. And I guess I appreciate you checking in, or whatever this is,” he added flatly, and in a tone that he hoped made clear just how much he did not appreciate it, “but I was just about to go on what’s left of my route, so I really don’t have time to sit around being interrogated by a former employee.”
“Would you shut up with the ‘employee’-‘boss’ bullshit?” Jay asked, his voice harder than Blake had ever heard it. It made him stiffen and sit up straight in the chair as Jay went on. “You’ve paid me less than minimum wage, under the table, for a few hours a week here and there. I’m not here because I’m, like, in financial distress because that’s gone away. I’m here because I’m your friend, you asshole.”
Blake had no idea what to do with that rant, so he just looked at Jay with his eyes narrowed until Jay snorted and rubbed a hand through his hair, ruffling the blond waves into curls.
“Wow, yeah, even worse than Bria,” Jay muttered as though to himself, and then he sighed and shook his head. “I’m offering my help, and if you’re not an idiot, you should probably take it. Because my mom is actually a really good lawyer.”
“I’m sure she is,” Blake said as politely as he could manage, “but I already have a lawyer. And it’s not that big of a deal.”
Jay looked unconvinced. “Fine. But if you change your mind, call me, okay? I already said something to my mom and she said she’d be happy to help.”
Blake couldn’t figure out why Jay was bothering, but when his shrug made Jay glare, Blake surrendered and nodded.
“Yes, I’ll call if I change my mind.”
Not that he was going to.
After Jay left, Blake spent some time looking at the unfinished portrait. He couldn’t say why. Was he trying to punish himself? And if so, for what? He was to blame for a lot of the mediocrity in his life, sure, but his inability to paint like he’d used to wasn’t on the list.
He picked up his sketchbook on a whim and sat at the dining table with his back to the easel and the canvas resting there. He opened the book to a blank page and smoothed his hand over the fine texture of the surface three times—his little ritual. Then, he began to sketch with a pencil, quickly forming faint curves and darker lines, not letting his thoughts get in the way.
After about a minute, he had the basic rendering. The shape, the suggestion of depth, and a few additional details around the eyes to give them the specific expression that had spurred him to draw.
Oliver’s face smirked up at him from the page.
Blake felt a familiar thrill, but one he hadn’t experienced quite so strongly in some time. It was the act of taking possession of an image that moved him. Pinning it, containing it. Making it his.
He brushed his thumb over the plane of Oliver’s cheek, carefully smudging the graphite so that it suggested a sharp curve… the beginnings of making the drawing three dimensional.
And then, quick as a lightning strike, a hot throb of warning pulsed in his forehead, and he dropped the pencil as he flinched away from the table.
He kept his eyes tightly closed until the momentary pain eased. When he cautiously opened them again, he threw the sketchbook in the direction of the wall, swept the pencil off the table with a frustrated jerk of his arm, and then slowly leaned down until his forehead was resting against the cool surface.
He wanted to break something. The feeling reminded him of the events surrounding his disorderly conduct cases. The charges had come twice, in quick succession, in the middle of college, right before the migraines started. He remembered the fleeting satisfaction of hitting someone, but at the same time, it felt like a memory that belonged to someone else.
He was so accustomed to mourning the person he’d been, that on Monday when Oliver had suggested these years since the migraines—that felt like one long, blurry stretch of hurt—had changed him for the better, he’d been stunned.
One thing hadn’t changed. Even back then, he hadn’t really wanted to break something, and any comfort fits of destruction had brought him were short-lived. No, he’d wanted someone to break him—to break for someone. That was still what he wanted. And even though it wasn’t easy to admit now, it used to be so much harder.
Now, he still wanted to break. And now, he knew who he wanted to break for.
Oliver.
Blake knew he probably shouldn’t assume anything. He knew the rules of casual sex—don’t ask for too much, don’t get clingy. He didn’t want to force Oliver to blow him off by trying too hard or giving away too much. Oliver was so obviously not the type to encourage attachment, especially from some younger, messed up kid. Blake absolutely should not infer anything from the fact they’d traded blowjobs in Oliver’s foyer. Oliver having been interested then did not mean he’d be interested now.
On the contrary—if he’d been interested, he probably wouldn’t have made himself so scarce all week long. Blake had walked Cujo every day at their usual time, but Oliver hadn’t been there.
For the hundredth time that week, Blake began drafting the text message he’d send in his mind… maybe with a photo of his hip and thigh, and the caption, Would look better w/ stripes.
When he got his phone from his pocket, though, a notification caught his attention.
Bria: Tish set up an interview for us with HERE
Blake: No idea what that is
Almost instantly, Bria was typing back.
Bria: The KC art magazine. Will u come? Tomorrow at 9 AM?
Bria: Never mind I’m not asking I’m telling u—9 at Tish’s—BE THERE
Then, before he could digest Bria’s message, his phone rang—a rare event—and it wasn’t even Jay calling.
After hesitating for three rings, Blake relented and answered.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, honey.” On the phone, she always sounded like she was in a sound studio. Maybe because she usually made voice calls from a landline in her office, and Blake was used to crappy, cell-phone call quality. Blake could imagine her there, framed by enormous windows and the cityscape sprawling out behind her. “You’re avoiding me.”
Blake put his forehead back down on the table.
After a moment of silence he didn’t fill, she went on. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Have you been attending your appointments with Dr. Collier?”
“Most of them.”
He heard the sigh she tried to mask. “Well, that’s better than nothing. And your business? How are operations?”
Though she sounded sincerely curious, Blake knew there was no way she could take his minimum-wage-earning “business” seriously. She was Ami VanPelt.
Sometimes, Blake thought it would be easier if she’d just forget she had a kid. Stop calling. Stop caring. But despite him being increasingly convinced that he was definitely nothing special and an absurd waste of his mother’s genes, she hadn’t given up yet.
“I’m thinking of visiting next week,” she said. “We could make it an early Christmas.”
Blake sat up abruptly. “Visiting me here?” He always came home for visits. His mother hadn’t been to Canton since his graduation, and she’d only attended the ceremony. She hadn’t even seen his apartment before, and he couldn’t imagine her here at all. Did she mean she’d stay in the apartment? Surely not, right?
“Yes. It’s a little ridiculous that I know so little about your daily life. I thought I’d stay two days. What do you think?”
He was thinking… nothing. Blake’s mind had gone completely blank.
“Someone is peering through my door, so I have to let you go. We can work out the details in the next couple of days, okay?”
“Okay,” Blake said numbly, and he hung up the phone.
When Blake got to Oliver’s, he eased open the door, his gaze going automatically past the cased opening to the library, to the chair where Oliver had been waiting for him on Monday.
Five days ago. It didn’t feel like it had been that long, especially when he could look at the marble tile and remember exactly how hard and unyielding it had been on his knees while Oliver had held him by the hair and fucked his throat.
He shuddered pleasantly at the memory.
But he frowned at the other bit of mental math. It had been seven days ago that he’d seen Lyle here, and shared that moment with Oliver, distinct in his memory despite the haze of the migraine.
Oliver wasn’t here, though, and Blake didn’t walk Cujo on the weekends. The possibility of bumping into Oliver each day had fed Blake’s hopes, but now they began to wither.
He sighed and walked into the library, where he crouched to unlatch the door to Cujo’s kennel. She hadn’t barked or growled since he came in, and instead of cowering at the back as soon as he lifted his hand to the latch, she waited with her nose pressed through the plastic grate of the door, her tail wagging rapidly.
“You good, good girl,” he told her softly, rocking back on his heels as the gate swung open and she rushed forward to his knee, all confidence. Her ears were pinned back in excitement and her tail was still wagging. A huge grin split Blake’s face.
“What a good little girl,” he said over and over again, rubbing her chin and behind her ears and down her wriggling back. “What a good, good girl.”
Saturday
The reporter was meeting them at Tish’s, and Blake was there by 8:45. On the way, he’d been irritated that they weren’t meeting in a coffee shop or a restaurant, or even the public library. Any place that constituted neutral ground. But then again, he had to admit that Tish’s place was probably the most memorable and unique location they had available for something like this.
Tish’s home and business were located in a converted stone house on a lot that was thick with trees. The single-story house tucked amongst the low-hanging branches and hedged with flowering bushes looked like a cottage in a picture book, right down to the stone-paved sidewalk that led up to the front door.
Blake lingered on the sidewalk and then walked up to the front door slowly, just in case Bria wasn’t there yet. Bria was never on time. Instead she sailed in twenty minutes later than she’d promised with a look on her face that dared anyone to comment—a dare few would rise to. But she was also pretty serious about this whole gig, and she’d seemed ecstatic about the interview. So, he’d thought maybe she’d make an exception and be punctual.
But when Blake knocked on the door and Tish opened it almost instantly, like they’d been waiting at the window, he realized Bria hadn’t broken her pattern—and he was facing alone time with Tish.
Blake and Tish had never hit it off. They probably should have been able to get along. They liked a lot of the same things—the same music, some of the same artists, and, of course, Bria. But Tish was pretentious. Their confidence in their own excellence, and their unwillingness to even pretend to have any humility, got under Blake’s skin.
Today was a femme day for Tish. They were wearing loose black corduroy overalls with nothing underneath. Their chest was painted with some kind of body glitter that Blake already knew he’d be washing out of his own t-shirt for weeks because Tish was a hugger.
“Blakey,” Tish said by way of greeting, as always saying the thing they knew would irritate Blake most. They looped their lean arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. They smelled like a candy store—some combination of lip gloss, body oil, and hair products all in various fruit flavors.
“Hi, Tish,” Blake said stiffly, kind of patting Tish’s lean hip. When the two of them broke apart, there was a streak of opalescent glitter on his arm… and that was just the spot he could easily see. He sighed.
“Are you, like, super-excited about today?”
“Let’s not get carried away.”
“Blakey.” Tish squeezed his bicep hard enough that he winced and jerked away. “You never get carried away. It’s very boring of you.”
Blake rubbed his arm. “Yeah, well, not all of us can be as fascinating as you,” he muttered.
Tish beamed. “I know. It’s so tragic.” They pivoted to let him pass into the house.
Their place was always a mess, but in a genius artist kind of way that Tish may have intended or may have managed by accident. Blake had never been that kind of artist. Even when he’d had a dedicated workspace, growing up in his mom’s house, he’d kept his workspace so minimalist and spotless that no one would have known whether he sculpted, painted, or collected stamps.
In Tish’s space, on the other hand, everything everywhere screamed “PHOTOGRAPHY!” There were a few framed prints of their work on the walls and many more empty frames. Most of the frames had loose photographs tacked on—clipped to the edge of the frames, taped to the glass. A homemade floor lamp in one corner was shrouded in a curtain of spools of film negatives interlaced with fairy lights. Small custom shelves tacked here and there displayed vintage cameras.
“I was just making coffee,” Tish said. Having closed the door behind Blake, they were now standing in the kitchen, which Blake could see through a propped-open butler’s door on the far side of the small dining room. “I didn’t want it to get cold, so it’s not ready yet.”
Blake heard a kettle beginning to sputter and whistle, now that Tish mentioned it.
“Make yourself at home!” Tish called.
Blake itched with the urge to take off his shoes, but no one ever took off their shoes in Tish’s house, so he left them on. In many ways, his mother had been an atypical East-Asian-immigrant parent—deliberately so, having a laundry list of objections to her own upbringing—but she would have murdered him if he’d worn his shoes around their house, and the training was deeply ingrained.
He made his way to the futon in the living room, but seeing that there was a dusting of body glitter on the couch cushion he’d been about to sit on, he rerouted to an orange vinyl-upholstered chair he could first brush off.
A coffee grinder came to life in the kitchen. Blake’s gaze strayed to the coffee table in front of him, where Tish had laid out the photographs from the shoot.
Blake’s breath hitched. He leaned in.
Usually, with his own work, he didn’t like to see it again right away. His process basically boiled down to an idea gracing his brain and making him feel like a genius, and then a feverish execution that transcended the original idea. At the moment of completion, he felt immense satisfaction and certainty that he’d made what he was supposed to.
But then, later, he couldn’t help looking at the finished product and remembering the original idea. They almost never aligned.
It took months, or occasionally years, before he looked at his work with truly fresh eyes and could appreciate it apart from the process.
There were a few exceptions to this; a few projects that had taken him by surprise, occurring to him seemingly out of nowhere, which he painted without the shadow of some grand inspiration. Projects like that weren’t necessarily objectively special, but they were also the smaller, simpler pieces that Blake was more likely to keep for himself.
“Do you like them?”
Tish was back with an artfully-tarnished silver tea tray, which they carefully set on an area of the coffee table that wasn’t dominated by the spread of photographs. Arranged on the tray were four porcelain mugs and a French press carafe.
“Yeah,” Blake said with a quick, almost-involuntary smile. He reached out and tapped the glossy corner of one near the middle of the arrangement. “This is amazing.” His eyes swept the line of Bria’s arm, held at a borderline inhuman angle, the curve of it strangely compelling, with the silver paint in the hollow of her elbow gleaming like polished chrome.
He glanced up at Tish, but instead of appearing boastful, they just looked unsure. One candy-red lip was snagged between their slightly crooked front teeth, their fingers drumming against their left thigh.
“Hey,” Blake said, a little louder. Tish, startled, met his eyes. “They’re awesome,” he said firmly. “Seriously. No wonder HERE wants to do the story.”
Tish shook their head with a small smile, sitting down and reaching for the carafe. “Well, Bria was an amazing subject. You made her an amazing subject. So, my job was easy.”
Blake accepted a cup of coffee that smelled like nirvana. “It can be hard to like your own stuff at first,” he offered. Tish shot him another startled look, their veil of nonchalance knocked out of place again.
“Yeah,” they finally agreed, their smile thoughtful.
“I’m usually that way,” Blake said, staring down at the images on the table, unable to look away for long. Not that he was going to tell Tish that. Their ego didn’t need that much encouragement. “But maybe because the photographs are kind of their own layer… I don’t know? I don’t feel the usual ‘this isn’t nearly as good as what I imagined before I made it’ feeling.”
“Shit!” Tish laughed. “That feeling. I hate that fucking feeling.” Suddenly, they gasped, drawing Blake’s attention and his puzzled frown. “Omigod, Blakey, are we commiserating right now?”
Blake scowled. “Definitely not.”
There was a knock on the door. It had to be the reporter because Bria had probably never knocked on a door in her life. Tish jumped up, eyes sparkling along with the little shower of glitter they shed with the quick movement.
“We definitely were,” they said delightedly, backing toward the door and pointing a finger at him. “It happened, and you can’t erase it.”
When they turned and reached for the door, Blake got to his feet, suddenly nervous in a way that he hadn’t been before he’d seen the photographs. He’d thought of the night as a one-time thing, an experiment—something he’d done to appease Bria and the build-up of static need in his chest that only got its outlet by painting.
But now he had seen the photographs, and they were fucking fantastic.
Bria was right. This could be huge.
The realization terrified him.