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Tean nodded.
“John, the path is too narrow for me to—” Frustration laced Emery’s voice. “If you’d trade places with me, I could finish explaining to Dr. Leon—”
“Mary, Mother of God,” John-Henry said.
“Maybe we should walk faster?” Tean asked.
“If only it were that simple,” John-Henry said.
But he did pick up the pace.
13
Their hotel room had been destroyed.
Jem flipped over a suitcase. He picked up an armful of clothes from the floor—his and Tean’s, mixed together—and dumped them on the bed. He slotted one of the dresser drawers back into place. One of the assholes who had searched the room had smashed a lamp against the wall, and Jem carried the trash can under one arm and started picking up the biggest pieces.
His mind kept playing back those awful moments in the multipurpose room: John-Henry’s fucking cop eyes, that fucking cop voice, that fucking cop’s way of talking until you were in a corner and you didn’t have a fucking chance. He dropped a ceramic shard that had once been part of the lamp, set down the trash can, and went to open the window. It didn’t open, so he tried the balcony slider. That didn’t open either, which didn’t make any sense because it was a slider. The whole point was for it to open. He tried again. And again. And then he went at it, yanking on the handle in furious, repetitive jerks as his body heated and sweat prickled all over him. With a short bark of a yell, he shoved on the handle and released it. The door remained closed. In the half-reflection of the night and the glass and the room’s dim light, he looked like he was swimming.
“It’s locked,” Tean said.
Jem wiped his forehead as he turned. Tean stood just inside the room, door shut, behind him, arms folded across his chest. A dark mark on one arm, where the sweater polo’s sleeve rode up, looked like a bruise starting to form.
“You have to unlock it first,” Tean said gently.
Jem nodded and wiped his face again. When Tean’s gaze moved, taking in the room, Jem said, “I didn’t—it was like this.” His voice sounded thick, and he didn’t recognize himself in it.
Tean’s response was to walk across the room, still hugging himself. Most of the light was behind him now, and shadows shifted across his face, his shoulder, his arm. Was it a bruise? That seemed very important in the moment.
Slipping past Jem, Tean fiddled with slider’s handle, and a moment later, the door opened on its track. A wall of lukewarm air pressed into the room, sticky against Jem’s skin and smelling like mulch and water and old cigarette smoke. Fresh sweat popped on his chest like fireworks.
“Is that better?” Tean asked. Then he touched his glasses like he wanted to resettle them and blurted, “I’m sorry for how I reacted. I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I definitely shouldn’t have—have left you with them.”
“You’re sorry?” Jem asked. “I’m a fucking moron. I’m sorry. I’m the one who fucked up.” He tried for a smile, but it felt like it canted, like it might slide right off his face. “All they did was give me dirty looks and walk me back here, so you don’t have to worry. They didn’t even beat me up or anything.”
For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of water, and the simmering heat closing like fingers around Jem’s throat.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Tean asked.
“I want to keep saying I’m sorry. Like, a million times. Does that count as talking about it?”
A smile worked its way to the surface, and somehow, the worst of it was over. Jem cleared the clothes from the bed, sweeping them into one of the empty suitcases. He squared up the mattress. He straightened the comforter. His face grew hot when he realized he was smoothing the wrinkles out with one hand, and he wondered, if he were in one of those old-fashioned books Tean sometimes read, if he’d be laying down a handkerchief next, or whatever shit those guys did.
Jem did a little flourish, and Tean’s small smile rose to the surface again as he sat. He held out his hand, and Jem took it and sat, and their knees bumped.
“So,” Jem said, dropping his eyes to the carpet again, “I shouldn’t have, you know, done that. Running that game, first off. Although how I was supposed to know Shaw would end up being a private detective, I have no idea. He literally fell out of his underwear while we were talking.” He struggled with how to explain the rest of it: hearing everyone call Tean Dr. Leon, and seeing the posters and the conference programs, all those names with impressive initials behind them, all the words that Jem had to stop and sound out, and even then, they didn’t mean anything to him. Feeling like he’d walked through the wrong door, and everyone was staring at him, even though he knew that was all in his head. Feeling like they knew, somehow, that he didn’t belong here. Didn’t belong with Tean, maybe, in particular. “There was this guy,” he finally said, “in a Sonic the Hedgehog t-shirt. And I was trying really hard to be good.”
The rest of it flowed, more or less, and he told Tean all of it: DeVoy, the pictures, the mixed motivation of wanting something interesting and the belief that Tean would want to know about someone trying to sell exotic birds. Jem managed to stop short of saying,I thought you’d be proud of me, but only barely. Then the Cottonmouth Club, his skin crawling by inches, the girl they’d forced, stumbling, through a door to a back room, the van.
“Like I said,” Jem finished, “I fucked up. And when you asked—I wasn’t trying to lie to you. I mean, I was, but not because I wanted to lie.” His eyes felt hot. “I guess it doesn’t matter why.”
Tean adjusted how their fingers wove together. His free hand stroked Jem’s arm, brushing the blond hair there lightly.
“Could you say something, please?” Jem asked. “Anything? How’s your swearing? Have you been practicing?”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t—well, unhappy, I guess.” Tean’s nails scritched lightly at the sensitive skin on the inside of Jem’s arm. “I don’t like that you lied to me, but I understand it’s more complicated than that, and things got out of hand. And I don’t like...” Voices came from the hall, filtering through the door, a babbling enthusiasm that told Jem the biologists had gotten into the appletinis. “I mean, we’ve talked about this.”
Jem nodded. The drunken biologists passed their room, words and laughter fading, and Tean was still waiting. “I’m sorry,” Jem said.
