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“Would you like to hear me play?” Alek asked.
Ian was about to say “Huh?” His brain was still pretty sex-fried, but then his eyes landed on a piano in front of a bay window in the far corner of the room.
“Sure.” He was already in for a penny, so why not?
Without dressing, Alek sat down on the piano bench and began to play.
Ian should have left as soon as he zipped up his pants. Once he heard Alek play, it was over. Alek’s music was like water or air. It spread out, filling up all of the space until there was no room left. It crept through Ian’s bloodstream, sinisterly, like an infection, until it was too late and, with as much intensity as a sudden high fever, Ian’s soul burned with the auditory embodiment of him.
Alek’s music took Ian’s thoughts and feelings and replaced them with his own.Simultaneously nostalgic and hopeless. It was lonely and selfish. Angry and sad. Tormented and haunting. Alek wasn’t playing for Ian. He was playing for himself.
15
IAN
PRESENT DAY
On the long drive home from the hospital, Ian replayed every word, every betrayal. If he distanced himself from the situation, if he looked at things objectively, the way he usually did, all signs pointed to ending things with Alek, but loving Alek was confusing, addicting, mind-fucking.
The highs and the lows were extreme and often wound together so tightly that Ian couldn’t have one without the other. When things were good, they weren't just good. It was so transcendent that Ian had a difficult time giving up, even when they were in the deepest of trenches.
The potential was there inside Alek. Ian really believed that. Alek loved Ian with unrestrained fervor, as if by withholding his love from everyone else, it overflowed when he finally had someone to give it to. It was just that the guy needed therapy—intensive therapy—but Alek didn’t accept help, and he didn’t ask for it either, and opening up to an outsider?
Impossible.
Pulling off the road and onto the Victorian’s drivewaybrought everything back in reverse. After Alek had been strapped to a narrow stretcher and loaded into a helicopter that then lifted skyward, Ian was left behind, empty, bereft, like a part of him was up on that helicopter with Alek.
Now fog wrapped around the Victorian, obscuring most of it from view, so that it appeared slowly and then all at once like a mirage. The Victorian looked different. Something was missing. It seemed colder, somehow. Maybe because of what happened? Or because Alek wasn’t there?
When Ian parked his truck and got out, his eyes caught on a heap of branches with fronds of dagger-shaped leaves crumpled at the bottom of the house. In front of the ruined wisteria, a pool of dark red blood stained the forest floor, like the wisteria had bled out instead of Alek. The fallen pine needles were matted with coagulated blood, much like Alek’s hair had been.
Ian’s heart dropped just like it did on the more than infrequent occasion that his foot sank through rotting wood in a house he was restoring. He’d forgotten about the blood, that someone would have to clean it.
He went into the house and plugged his phone in. Then he cleaned the blood he’d smeared on the kitchen counter when he’d searched for a towel for Alek’s head, packed a bag with clothes and toiletries for both of them, Alek’s favorite snacks, and a book Alek hadn’t yet finished.
As Ian went from room to room, his footsteps echoed jarringly against the tomblike silence. Now that he thought about it, this was the only time he’d ever been at the Victorian without Alek lurking around somewhere nearby. Alek was a total hermit. Even when they broke up, Alek didn’t go anywhere. Ian’s anger cooled rapidly inside the cold, lonely house. He shouldn’t have left Alek alone after he’d lost so much. He picked up the landline and dialed his mom.
“How’s Alek doing?” she said after the first ring.
“There’s no privacy in EMS, huh?” Ian’s mother was a paramedic and the first responders were as tight-knit as family.
“I figured your phone was off and I heard you were okay, but I’ve been climbing the walls worrying about Alek.”
Sometimes Ian wondered if his mom liked Alek more than him. She always baked to his tastes. Alek favored desserts made with chocolate so dark, it was as bitter as espresso, cut with fillings made from tart, blood-red fruits like cherry, strawberry, and blackberry. She fussed over him constantly, hand-sewing and knitting heavy wool sweaters and coats in dark fabrics; blackest black, herringbone charcoal, and a mossy evergreen that cast his eyes the most beautiful seafoam.
Ian may have liked to tease them both—Alek for stealing his mom, and her for spoiling him—but he was grateful that his mother was so good to Alek, especially because of the way Alek practically preened like a well-tended house plant after he saw her.
“He’s going to be okay.” Ian ran his fingers over his eyebrows and tried to hide the threatened tears from his voice. “That’s actually why I called. Could you head over there and stay with him? I ran home to shower and take care of some stuff and I don’t want him to be alone.”
“Of course.”
He thanked her. “Before you go… He can’t speak English, but he can?—”
“He can’t talk?”
“No. Um… the fall and whatever damage it caused… he can only speak in Bulgarian right now. That’s where he’s from.” He paused, expecting her to interrogate him about the Bulgarian thing, but she didn’t. “He can understand English and he can write it. So if you have to talk, there’s that. Also, he can’t play the piano, so don’t bring that up.”
“And you left him? Ian.”
