“Are you screwy?” It was Rory, in his coat and cap with a messenger bag slung across his body. He clung to the lift, his whole arms wrapped around the railing like a cat on a tree branch, and behind the glasses his eyes were huge. He looked down and then jerked his head back up, face green. “Christ, Ace, we’re high as the clouds.”
Arthur shook off his shock and scrambled across the unfinished floor to Rory’s lift. “What on earth are you doing up here?” he said, as he stretched out his hands.
Rory took them with trembling limbs, palms sweating and his grip tight enough to hurt. “Looking for you.” He swallowed hard. “This is really high.”
Arthur bit back his questions and lectures and helped him from the lift to the sturdy steel decking welded over the bracing. He tugged Rory down to sit with their backs against a wide beam, Rory close and safely on the inside, away from the edge.
“Why were you looking for me?”I’m not cuddling him, I’m offering support.Rory will pull away any moment, when he’s ready.
Except Rory had tucked himself tightly to Arthur’s side and didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “So I knew you weren’t at your pad—”
“How did you know something like that?”
“I dunno,” Rory said, with a careless shrug, and before Arthur could interrogate that useless statement further he went on. “So I called the Magnolia and Jade wasn’t there, but Benson gave me another number, which turned out to be Zhang’s tea house, and Jade said she thought you were at this construction site and Zhang said he could check with his fancy astral tricks. I asked and Jade knew your favorite deli, so I caught the train while Zhang found your cab then met me at the deli to tell me where you were, and that construction fella let me in the lift when I told him why I came down. And then I cameup, because you’re screwier than me, Ace, and that’s saying something.”
Arthur tried to parse through all that in his head. “Butwhy?” he finally said. “Are you all right? What’s wrong, what do you need?”
“Nah, I don’t need anything.” Rory dug in his messenger bag, then held up a thermos. “I made coffee. And I got you pastrami on rye. Jade said it’s your favorite.”
Arthur blinked hard. “I’m sorry, I can’t possibly be following,” he said sincerely. “Because it sounds like you enlisted the aid of half of New York and traipsed all the way to the Financial District to bring lunch.”
Rory pushed a paper-wrapped sandwich into Arthur’s hands. “Yup.”
His fingers tightened around the sandwich, just shy of crushing it. “Butwhy?”
“I was hungry. And I thought you might be hungry too. Mrs. B. didn’t mind.” Rory shrank into himself. “Am I outta line? I wasn’t trying to embarrass you, I don’t know all the rules of your world—”
“No!” Arthur blurted. “No, you did all that, you braved the sky, all for lunch, it’s so—”romantic“—thoughtful.” He swallowed. “No one’s ever done something like this for me.”
“Their loss.” Rory pulled out a second sandwich and peeked out past Arthur, beyond the skyscraper’s edge and the dizzying drop to the ground. “It’s nuts up here. But geez, that’s some view, isn’t it?”
Arthur glanced down at Rory as he settled himself right back into the space along Arthur’s side. “I like it better now.”
The sky was cloudless and blue, the sun warm on Arthur’s face and neck with the skyscraper’s beam to block the wind. Rory had gotten a corned beef sandwich for himself and they’d split both, sharing the same thermos of coffee.
Rory was getting braver, peeking over Arthur at the view more often. “We can see the ocean!”
Arthur had to smile. “Looks different from up here, doesn’t it?”
“I dunno,” Rory said. “I never seen it from the ground either.”
That couldn’t be right. “Manhattan is anisland. A nickel will get you to Coney Island.”
“Maybe, but we don’t got a beach in Hell’s Kitchen and that’s where I always stay.”
Arthur’s heart clenched. “You left it today.”
“Because of you. I’m doing lots of new things because of you.” He was almost smiling. “I barely recognize myself.”
Arthur had to smile too. “Like,who are you and what have you done with Rory?”
He’d been teasing, but Rory’s expression sobered. “More like,who are you and what have you done with Teddy?”
Arthur winced. “I didn’t—”
But Rory bumped his shoulder with his own. “I know you didn’t. It’s just been a long time since anyone but Mrs. B. knew my real name.”
Rory had taken off the newsboy cap at some point. As he leaned over Arthur’s lap to better admire the view, the sun highlighted his profile, the tawny olive skin, the curl to his hair, the beautiful brown eyes. Christ, no wonder Arthur was pining.
