“That wouldn’t make any sense.”But then Doyle grinned.“How was your nap?”
Larkin’s heart beat a little too hard under the steady gaze of those pyrite eyes.“It was good.”
Doyle pinched the black hair tie around Larkin’s still-raised left wrist, gave it a light snap, then started for the bank of elevators busy with administrators and uniformed and plain-clothed officers coming and going in all directions.He pressed the Up button on the nearest panel before looking over his shoulder and motioning Larkin to join him.
It’d have been easy, Larkin thought, to walk away from his domestic problems.To get in that elevator with Doyle and leave behind the lawyers, the arguments, the tears.He could drop the dispute over finances, give Noah half of his life, and become strangers again.
—’til death do us part.—
But their love, like all loves, had been a conscious decision of vulnerability, of unfettered access to the soul, of trusting one person above all others with the parts of ourselves that were the most difficult, the most scared, and the most ugly.
And yes, their love hadn’t lasted, hadn’t endured, hadn’t separated them only in death, but whether fault could be blamed or fingers pointed, it didn’t negate that Larkin and Noah had once tried to nurture and cultivate something beautiful together, had laid bare their inner workings to each other, and had forged memories that no other person would share.
Paperwork was easy.
Tying off a bleeding heart was hard.
The elevator doors opened and people exited, parting to either side of Doyle.He was still looking at Larkin, brows now raised expectantly.
Larkin raised his phone in response.
Doyle looked a little resigned, maybe a little worried, but he nodded once and then got on the elevator.
The doors shut.
Larkin turned right, away from reception, and walked down a long hall until he could hear the cafeteria, that familiar cacophony from his childhood school days of competing voices bouncing off too-high ceilings, chairs dragged across high-traffic linoleum, stacking lunch trays, banging pots and pans, theding,ding,dingof the register.
Coming to a stop at the wall opposite the cafeteria entrance, Larkin leaned back against it, tapped a few buttons on the phone, and put it to his ear.
Noah answered on the second ring.“I’m so glad you called—”
“Explain yourself,” Larkin interrupted.
Noah sounded a bit taken aback as he said, “I—I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”
“I can’t always drop what I’m doing to take your call.I’ve told you this I don’t know how many times.”
“But younevertake my call.That’s the wholeproblem.”Noah swore, his voice becoming distant, like he’d lowered the phone, and then he returned and said in a strained but civil tone, “I don’t want to fight.”
“I’m not convinced of that.”
“You’re being an ass.”
“I just sat through my mother calling my partner a homewrecker and then accusing him of what very much sounds like stalking, Noah.I’m a little irritated with you.”
“I’m sorry I resorted to calling your mom, but you weren’t answering and—no, don’t interrupt me, Everett.I’mtellingyou, he was outside our—my—apartment last night.”
“No, he wasn’t.Ira’s been with me, at work, since 3:48 in the morning.”
Noah countered, a little smug, “It was around one o’clock when I saw his car.”
“1:00 a.m.is not ‘last night.’”
“Last night—this morning—who cares.The point is, I woke up, got a drink of water, couldn’t fall back asleep, and that’s when I noticed his car was parked directly across the street.”
Larkin was quiet, considering.
For the last eighteen years, he’d been held at gunpoint by his interpersonal relations, his back to a wall of societal expectations, wearing a mask not of Melpomene’s tragedy or Thalia’s joy, but a paper bag with a drawn-on smiley face placating, pacifying, pleasing—I can’t see—don’t disagree, don’t disappoint, don’t disgrace—I can’t breathe—a neurotypical poison ofJust Keep Smilingfor a world that wasn’t perfect nor beautiful nor noble, but instead, one that was entirely indifferent to the inevitability of his death.
