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Holden looked down into his glass. He didn’t speak.
“If he does and you’ve spent that advance, you’re in a world of trouble. Don’t go giving money away that’s not really yours yet.”
Holden lifted his gaze and smiled ruefully. “You have a better business head than me, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
Holden reached out. He cupped the back of Tyler’s neck. “I want to kiss you. Can I do that here?”
Tyler surveyed the diner behind him from the corner of his eye. A woman on her own at the back was watching them, but apart from that, no one seemed interested. His policy had always been don’t ram it down people’s throats. Not doing that kept him safe in his book. The diner in this quaint backwater seemed as non-threatening as you could get though. The clientele were ladies lunching together and a few middle-aged heterosexual couples. No children to ask difficult questions.
He opened his mouth to say sure, but Holden had already decided for himself. He pressed his lips against Tyler’s and swept him away on a tide of bliss. Tyler heard himself sigh in deep pleasure. He opened his mouth and they explored each other’s lips with soft, sweet kisses and no tongues.
“All right, get a room,” Finn said. When they drew apart to look at him, he said, “Brandon and I give this crowd enough to talk about, thanks. The lady at the back reading a gay romance likes herself some man-on-man though; you just made her day. She only comes in on the days I’m working because she knows Brandon will show up and give her an eyeful.”
Tyler looked and the woman in question lifted her paperback featuring a half-naked man on the cover over her blushing face. He smiled.
“We should invite her for dinner,” Holden said. Tyler glanced at him and caught the direction of his thoughts. Voyeurism. Inviting someone to watch them. Part of his addiction. He probably wasn’t even joking.
He shifted his gaze to his menu and said nothing and Holden squeezed his knee as though in apology.
They walked home together after their meal. The sun was still hot, the air thick and humid and buzzing with insects. Tyler admired the bright wild flowers growing along the side of the road and the bees busily collecting pollen. Their arms brushed and then their fingers. Holden caught Tyler’s hand loosely. They didn’t speak. Tyler felt easier than he had ever been since J-bad. Even though his leg was doing its best to ruin his day as it always did, at that moment it didn’t have the power to touch him. The pain was what it was. A testament to his survival. Keeping him strong.
They got back to the house and stopped in the yard facing each other. “I’m going to go up to the attic and look for my stamp collection,” Holden said.
Surprised, Tyler said, “Now?”
“Yeah.” Holden smiled and patted him on the arm. “Go and rest.”
Tyler did as he was told. He sat on the edge of his bed and debated taking his leg off. If Holden brought the stamp collection straight over, Tyler would have to answer the door without the prosthesis. Even now, he didn’t want to be without it in front of Holden, despite what Holden had said about it not bothering him. Maybe it was true. It didn’t mean Tyler wanted to flaunt the stump at every opportunity. But still, he was in his own house, if you could call renting a house from Holden his own, and that meant he should be able to take off the damn leg whenever he wanted to. If Holden chose to knock on the door, it was his fucking problem if Tyler answered it without his leg.
Sighing at the fierce nature of his thoughts, he unclicked the prosthesis and maneuvered the cup free. He rolled down the silicone liner and followed it with the several layers of socks. Exposing his skin to the air felt great, as it always did. He used a baby wipe to clean the stump before he lay down. Just a rest, he told himself. Forty winks while Holden looks at the stamps. He felt his eyelids growing heavy immediately and drifted into a fond reverie of Holden coming back from the attic with a full sheet of mint condition Newfoundland stamps. Or maybe a dozen nice Penny Blacks.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Holden
Holden saw Tyler lying motionless on the bed from the window on the landing before he carried the heavy cardboard box downstairs. He let himself out of the house and crossed the yard, hesitating outside Tyler’s door. He didn’t want to knock and disturb him. Nor did he want to leave the box outside his door, where dust and maybe even rain could get into his collection. Not that he was that bothered anymore about the collection, but Tyler would be. And maybe his enthusiasm would kick start Holden’s appreciation of the hobby of kings. Maybe he and Tyler could be a pair of stamp collecting geeks together. For some reason, he liked that idea more than he could say. And he was all too well aware of the power of a hobby to take you away from the weight of life. Balancing the box against his chest, he tried the door handle and found it open. He tiptoed inside. He’d leave the box and let himself out. It would be a nice surprise for Tyler when he came around from his rest.
He entered the bedroom and placed the box on the foot of the bed, on the opposite side to where Tyler was stretched out, one long muscular leg bare with a white sock on the foot, the other ending just below the knee in a smooth stump. Holden stopped. He examined the stump for long moments. Then he went around the bed to the window and sat down beside Tyler. He smoothed Tyler’s dark hair back from his forehead with a tender hand and all sorts of feelings rushing to fill his breast. This man was special. Broken and damaged, but special, and Holden wanted him in his life. He couldn’t fuck this up. He couldn’t hurt Tyler. He needed to step up and be the man Tyler needed.
Tyler stirred under his touch, thick lashes flickering before he woke, looking up groggily at Holden. The smile he gave melted Holden’s heart. If he hadn’t been sure, he was now. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’ve left the box. Go back to sleep and look at them when you get the chance.”
Tyler raised himself on his elbows. “No way,” he said and Holden couldn’t help but smile at the childish excitement on his face. He got that. He’d had it once himself when looking through packets of stamps he’d purchased without seeing the contents first. There was always the chance of a great find, a rare find, no matter what the odds. Although it hadn’t really been about the money with him, more about the beauty of stamps, their history and the story they told.
“All right then,” he said and got up to walk around the edge of the bed. He opened the box and lifted out the contents—smaller boxes, envelopes, glassine packets of stamps, albums and stockbooks—before placing the box on the floor and spreading the goodies out over the other side of the bed. He couldn’t believe how much stuff he had. He didn’t remember most of it. He found numerous envelopes sorted by country or continent. He showed Tyler—Asia, Africa, US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and various countries in Europe that had their own envelopes like Germany and France. He remembered doing these over a period of years, recognized his own scrawl on the front as though looking at a stranger’s writing. Tyler opened one of the albums. Holden hoped he wasn’t a purist about hinging stamps because Holden had done that from childhood. Only when he got older and gained some stamps worth something did he display them in folders and stockbooks.
“Really nice,” Tyler said, admiring the colorful Hungarian stamps Holden had a lot of which he’d been given by a family friend in the late seventies and early eighties. He got a lot of pleasure from looking at those. He loved the birds, the butterflies and flowers and was even now more attracted to those than creased up old stamps from over a hundred years ago. Even though those were worth the big bucks. Still, he found himself apologizing to Tyler. “I never really collected to retire on the profits,” he said with an awkward laugh. “I like pretty stuff.”
Tyler had moved onto a few sheets of Japanese stuff on black plastic cards—all flora, fauna and Mount Fuji—some of Holden’s favorites. “I can see that,” he said with a reassuring smile that told Holden he didn’t think he was as worthless as his collection. If he was disappointed that Holden’s collection probably didn’t contain any gems, he didn’t show it. On the contrary, that childish excitement remained on his face as he searched through the collection.
Holden located a few A4 size wallets of stamps—there had to be thousands. “These are the last stuff I bought.”
Tyler grinned, looking thrilled, and Holden found two lots of tweezers in the box, handing one to Tyler before he tipped one of the folders onto the bed. They sorted in silence for long minutes, occasionally making murmurs of appreciation. The stamps were a world mix and while many were as modern as the 1980s, some were considerably older. As in a hundred years older. Tyler showed him a couple of Queen Victoria stamps from Malta and Jamaica and nodded approvingly and Holden smiled and thought about gifting the entire collection to Tyler just to make his day.
Tyler held up a red stamp in his tongs. “Penny red.”
“Really?” It really was.
