“It’s so good,” Corbin murmured, and stuck the fork in again.
Alex glowed.
They talked for a while, and Alex offered to drive Corbin home so he wouldn’t have to walk while carrying the cake.
“So, do you do art for your job too?” Alex asked as they drove.
“No, I don’t have a job right now. I got fired.”
“You did? Why? Where were you working?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“Oh,” Alex said. “Okay, no problem.”
He pulled up in front of Corbin’s house and Corbin slid out, clutching the cake box to his chest.
“Thank you for the cake, Alex,” he said softly. And at the sound of his name in Corbin’s mouth, Alex knew the other man had been right. Because every time Corbin uttered Alex, Corbin had power over him like nothing he’d ever known.
“I don’t suppose you’d want to work here?” Alex asked Corbin the next day. Corbin was helping him fill an almond torte.
Corbin snorted and shook his head. “You don’t want me to work here. People think I’m weird, and they won’t want to eat things I touch.” He bit his lip.
“Well, it doesn’t matter if people think you’re weird because you’ll be in the kitchen. It’s a baking assistant that I need. I thought you might want to try.”
“Why.”
“Well, you said you don’t have a job right now. And you’re good at it.”
“I’m not. I don’t know anything about it. I just do what you tell me.”
Alex grinned. “It’s a good start.”
The air between them sizzled.
“I—I can’t . . . You can’t be serious.”
Alex couldn’t believe how serious he was.
“I am.”
“You can’t,” Corbin said softly. “I don’t want anything bad to happen here.”
“Your self-esteem isn’t great, gotta say.”
But Corbin just shook his head.
Neither is your sense of humor, Alex thought. There was something incredibly charming to him about the way Corbin didn’t joke around. Like everything he said and thought was serious, sincere, genuine. Unguarded by the distance humor provided.
Alex’s eyes lingered on the line of Corbin’s neck as he dropped his head. “Corbin. Do you want to?”
He nodded. “I want to.”
Alex grinned. It felt like a piece had slid into place in a puzzle, though he didn’t know what the final picture would be.
Corbin was good at it. He paid attention to detail, he followed instructions well, and he never assumed that he knew anything he didn’t know. It was as good a place to start as any.
Alex’s one reservation about hiring Corbin had been the way the man got lost in his own thoughts. He feared he might let trays burn or leave dough proofing for days. Instead, Corbin turned that absorption to whatever he was working on. So Alex was treated to that same single-minded focus on creaming butter and sugar, on evenly strewing berries in custard, on forming perfect rolls.
In fact, it was Alex’s thoughts that had a tendency to wander when Corbin was in the kitchen, Alex who nearly burned three things and found two tubs of over-risen dough on Corbin’s first day. Get it together, get it together, get it together, he scolded himself.
Corbin was careful not to touch him all day, but as they moved around each other in the kitchen, Alex’s awareness of the other man’s body was so heightened that it felt like they touched anyway. The air between them was charged, and when he’d catch a hint of Corbin’s scent, Alex would feel his body flood with desire.
It was almost a relief when afternoon rolled around and Corbin’s trial shift was over. Alex was leaving also, to go pick up Gareth from the airport.
“You did really well,” Alex said. “Did you like it?” Corbin grinned and nodded quickly. “Okay, then. You’re hired.”
Alex had snuck glances at Gareth all the way from the airport. He thought he could see concealer on what he remembered to be the worst of the bruises, but nothing could have hidden the still-unhealed split lip or the puffiness around his left eye. After fifteen minutes, Gareth had smacked him in the shoulder and told him to cut it out because he felt like enough of a loser without being gawked at.
Back home, Gareth had flung his suitcase into the guest room and slumped moodily on the couch. Every time Alex tried to talk about anything more substantial than the show Gareth had chosen on the Cooking Channel, Gareth fobbed him off. Alex was starting to get irritated.
This was what Gareth did when he felt threatened or judged, Alex knew that very well. But he wanted so much to help, and he’d been so worried for days, and now Gareth had fifty things to say about mirepoix and nothing to say about himself. Even “How are you?” had only garnered a snort.
But Gareth straightened from his slouch when the door opened and Alex’s mom came in. Alex had asked her if it was all right for Gareth to stay for a while, but he hadn’t told her the details of why. She came into the living room with a smile, but it melted away the moment she saw Gareth.
“Hi, Helen,” Gareth said quietly, eyes downcast, like he was about to be scolded. He looked guilty. The first time Alex’s mother had come to visit, Gareth had said, awed, “So that’s what having a real mom is like?”
She sat on the couch next to Gareth. She considered him for a moment, reaching out to touch his cheekbone where the concealer was thick and obvious. Gareth let her, where he’d slapped Alex’s hand away. She let out a sigh and held open her arms. “Come here, sweetie,” she said.
Gareth’s eyes flicked up to hers and then he threw himself into her arms sobbing.
Alex watched in shock as Gareth cried and his mother stroked his hair and his back. And he tried not to feel hurt when his mom shooed him away from his best friend.
He grabbed his coat off the peg and walked into town. When he got back with Chinese takeout two hours later, Gareth was nowhere to be seen.
“He went to bed,” Helen said quietly, coming into the kitchen and helping herself to some food.
“He wouldn’t even tell me how he was,” Alex said. It sounded bitter.
“Sometimes people just need a mom.”
Alex blinked at her. “Yeah, I guess so.” They ate in silence for a minute. “What do you do when you need one?” His mother’s parents were both long dead.
Helen pursed her lips and smiled a little. “It’s the strangest thing. Once you become a mom, you need one differently.” She smiled at him and put a hand on his shoulder. “You did a good thing, bringing him here.”
“I hope so. I’m not really sure what to do now that he’s here.”
She shrugged. “Most people don’t know what they’re doing most of the time. You’ll figure it out.”
It was something she’d said to him so many times when he was growing up, but it hit him differently this time.
“Yeah. I guess I will,” he said.
On his way home from And Son the next day, Alex stopped at the grocery store and got boxed macaroni and cheese, bacon, limes, and tequila. He set these things on the kitchen table and woke Gareth, who’d been dozing on and off all day.
“Wow, you’re the devil,” Gareth said when he saw.
“I need to talk to my best friend and my best friend likes bacon mac and cheese when he drinks.” Alex shrugged. “You do the math.”
Gareth’s nostrils flared, and he said sharply, “I don’t want to talk about this shit, Barrow.”
“Psh, who’s talking about you, I’m talking about me,” Alex said, putting water on to boil. He sliced a lime and poured them each a tumbler of tequila, then he handed one to Gareth and clinked.
Gareth threw back the tequila and swore a blue streak when the liquor burned his split lip. He stuck his finger in the olive oil and swiped it across his mouth.
“Okay, what the fuck do you want to talk about?”
Alex dumped the boxes of macaroni in the water and relished the sizzle of the bacon as it
hit the pan.
“So, there’s this guy,” he said. And he watched the life come back to Gareth’s face for the first time since he’d arrived.
Alex Barrow had streaked into Corbin’s life like a shooting star through a dark sky. Things that had long dwelt in shadow were illuminated. Things that had been buried deep could no longer be ignored.
The morning he met Alex, Corbin had woken from a dream of swans roosting in the eaves, their feathers falling like snow. He’d pushed the window open and smelled apples on the air. Green apples and moss. They were the scents of possibility, and he’d set out walking without knowing where they’d take him.
When he’d gotten to Helen’s place and the scent dissipated, he was a bit disappointed. Not that he didn’t like Helen’s coffee shop—it was where he always went. But the smell had been so fresh and sharp that he’d thought it meant something different. He’d told himself it had just been a sign that the coffee shop was open again, after weeks of being closed. At least, he’d thought it was weeks. Corbin wasn’t great with time.
It was only when he’d walked in that he’d realized everything was different. The man at the counter had a warm glow around him. It felt like kindness and nature and energy and something Corbin didn’t quite recognize. Something he couldn’t look away from.
It was like desperation but with none of the darkness.
Now, Corbin knew that his first impression of Alex had been correct. He was kind to his core, with boundless energy to take on a project, and he savored fresh air and trees as if each breath were the first he’d had in a long while. He reminded Corbin a little bit of Wolf.
But there was still the quality he couldn’t figure out. It wasn’t sadness—not exactly. Nor loneliness. There was no pity to it, no regret. The closest Corbin could name it was something like potential. An unused resource. Something waiting for . . . something.
Corbin floated home at the end of his first week officially working as a baker at And Son, mind still on the transformation of heat and yeast. Wolf bounded up to him excitedly and nuzzled him, taking in all his new scents.
“Come walk with me.” Wolf fell into step with him.
They walked into the woods, Corbin trailing his fingers along pine needles and pressing close to smell bark and berries. It was the smells he missed most in the winter. The cold dulled them down so his world felt smaller, closer. He had to get right up close to things to get their full picture in winter.
He wondered if Alex liked the winter. If he’d bundle up and keep walking outdoors, or shiver and complain about the cold. Did he turn up the heat or pile extra blankets on the bed? Did he do what Corbin did, and leave the window open even through the deepest snows and most biting winds?
When his stomach growled loudly enough that Wolf turned to him with perked ears, Corbin realized he’d been walking a lot longer than he’d intended. The paths he’d worn through these woods over the years snaked into one another so that, if you weren’t paying attention, you could move through them for hours without coming out the other side.
He’d been so lost in his thoughts about Alex that it had grown dark without him noticing.
“Let’s go home.”
Wolf barked once, and turned to the right. He would lead them unerringly home.
Corbin fixed dinner and ate at the kitchen table where he’d eaten thousands of times before. His aunts had never kept regular schedules, so cooking smells would waft through the house at all hours of the day or night, and Corbin would come to eat. Sometimes he’d awake in the middle of the night to find every pan and pot dirty and the aunts feasting at a table covered in dishes; sometimes it was freshly baked bread and butter, sometimes ice cream for days.
Whatever the whims of his aunts, there had always been food in the house if Corbin wanted to make what he liked. But he enjoyed the surprise. He would stay in his room until the last possible moment, tasting the air and making guesses about what he’d find in the kitchen.
After dinner, Corbin settled into the armchair in the living room where Stick dozed in front of the fire, paws twitching in her dreams. He opened his sketchbook and unzipped his pens, flipping pages. The last five pages featured a new subject.
Alex.
One he’d let Alex see—him smothered in dogs, alight with the joy of them. Others he hadn’t.
Alex baking, strong arms tensed as he worked the dough.
Alex holding out the perfectly frosted cake that he’d made just for Corbin with a smile. Corbin had put the cake in the freezer to eat bites of when he wanted.
Alex walking with Corbin and Carbon, Lex, Jasmine, Finnian, and Wolf in the woods behind his house, as if he’d always been a part of the group.
And one that he’d never show him. One he could hardly bear to look at, himself. He’d woken from dreams of Alex and drawn it half-asleep, in the middle of a long, dark night. Alex, in Corbin’s bed, arms wrapped around him, chin on his shoulder. Alex holding him, wanting him. Cherishing him.
Corbin flipped to a new page. It would never happen, so it was better to put it out of his mind. That way lay madness. Better not to want things. Better to focus on what he had instead of what he never would.
He began to draw. His tougher twin, Carbon, emerged first, glaring at him as she played with Wolf. Then elfin, blonde Lex, who’d stayed child-sized even after he’d grown up. She smiled at him like she always smiled at him. Tall, placid Jasmine strode through the woods toward them, hand raised in greeting. She didn’t seem upset, just in a hurry.
Finnian was last. His handsome face held concern, but no resentment, and his hand reached out to take Corbin’s. It was a relief.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much lately,” Corbin said, running his fingertips over them once the ink was dry. “I got a new job. I think this one might be different. Well. Alex is different. So maybe that means the job will be too.”
The fire crackled and Stick wheezed peacefully in sleep. The wind outside rustled dry leaves and the air inside smelled of pine and dried sage and tomato from his dinner. He was warm and comfortable, and he lost himself in the world that unfolded in his sketchbook.
He’d begun drawing them when he was twelve, the year he started sixth grade and his aunts were forced to send him to a real school. He should be excited, the social worker had told him—all those other kids his own age to play with, and all those things to learn! And he had been excited initially. Corbin liked new things, he just didn’t get the chance for them very often.
But his excitement hadn’t lasted long. His classmates were curious at first, but curiosity transmuted so effortlessly into suspicion, and What’s his deal quickly became What a freak.
He could see their anxiety spike when he came near them. Not fear of him but fear of having to interact with him. Fear of the awkwardness that would come from being seen with him. And if curiosity became suspicion, fear became anger. If he sat at their lunch table and they didn’t want him there, then they had to be mean and tell him to leave. And they hated him for it. If they were paired with him in history class and their friends made easy jokes about it, then they were angry with him for providing the fodder.
It was misplaced anger at themselves, but then, it nearly always was.
And it didn’t matter anyway, because it affected Corbin the same. Made him feel jittery and jangly and too full of the world. Made his feet clumsy and his fingers shake and his eyes unsure where to land. Made him want to crawl under the covers where no one could see him and stay there until things were different.
He said nothing at home, until one day, Aunt Hilda found him in the forest when he was supposed to be at school. He’d left the house at the usual time, then doubled back to spend the day in the woods. Hilda never ventured into the woods alone if she could help it, but Ramshackle, one of her older and more esteemed cats, had run into the tree line, and Hilda had deigned to follow and lure her home.
It hadn’t been difficult to get out of him what the trouble was, and Hilda too
k him home and settled him at the kitchen table while she mixed teas.
“Fear,” she’d said, “is natural. But anger is the weak mind’s attempt at inoculation against fear. Don’t pay any attention to them. They have small minds and they’ll have small lives.”
“Don’t we have kind of a small life,” Corbin had asked, indicating the house, the garden, and the woods, which were the extent of Hilda and Jade’s world.
“First, we have three lives because we’re three people. And second, don’t believe for one second that scope is measured in square miles.”
Corbin had sighed. He’d known what she meant. Corbin wasn’t as literal as people thought he was. Sometimes he just needed to limit the number of options his mind processed at one time. But he’d hoped that maybe, just this once, Aunt Hilda would empathize instead of prophesy. Exclaim, Those little assholes! Or say, I’m sorry, Corbin. I’m sorry that happened to you.
But his aunts were never sorry for anything. They didn’t believe in regret. And sorry was just a wish about something that had already happened. Just a regret on someone else’s behalf.
He’d drawn Carbon that night. He’d begun sketching himself. Had meant to draw himself differently. Not because he wished he were different (regret is useless), but because he wondered what his life would be like if he were.
They teased him for being scrawny and clumsy, for looking like a girl; they teased him for staring too much and for not making eye contact. They made fun of his clothes because they were all the colors of the forest. They teased him for not talking, and for anything he said.
So he’d meant to draw a different version of himself, just to see. But what he’d drawn was Carbon. She wrenched herself out of his pen and onto the page, and she stared at him with her hands on her hips and her head cocked, a mirror image of his own. And she said, Screw those little assholes, bro. Screw them and their boring-ass friends. Then she smirked and her teeth were even sharper than his.