Bowl Full of Cherries (9 page)

After Rell had finished the massage, Crowley continued to lie on his stomach, pretending that he was sleepy. He really just didn’t want to roll over.

Rell’s hands had been even better than he could have possibly imagined. No one had ever touched him like that. No one had ever felt his bare skin like that. For just a moment, he let himself slip into a fantasy where Rell enjoyed giving the massage, where he was turned on by Crowley’s back, his warmth, his skin….

He rolled over, felt the cool metal casing of his phone against his arm, and dug it out. He didn’t mean to check. If there was anything that could make his mood any worse, it was checking his cell. But it was habit now. New messages from Tyler: he was lamenting the snow, telling Crowley where the cool parts of Susset were, and there were three different messages cursing Rell. There was nothing from his mother, though.

What did it matter? Even if she’d changed her mind, tomorrow was two days until Christmas. Even with his flight credit, all the planes would be full. And would he want to go?

He sighed at the thought.

He loved her. Of course he wanted to go.

Of course…?

The Lang household was fun and full of bustling energy. The kids made certain everyone on the block knew
they
owned the house. Running up and down the stairs, shouting at each other, laughing loudly, playing. They were high on sugar and an impending visit from Santa Claus. And despite no less than four different adults shouting at them to “Settle!” they carried on.

Earlier in the day, when Rell showed him around the house, the youngest of the kids had walked right up to Crowley and shoved his mother’s iPhone into Crowley’s face.

“Can you beat this level for me?” he asked earnestly.

Crowley had looked down at the phone. The screen was smudged with fingerprints.

“Sure,” he said and sat down beside the small child and showed him what to do.

The last man had just fallen when the boy grabbed the phone and shouted to his siblings in the next room, “I beat it!”

Now, Crowley shuffled his phone from palm to palm and closed his eyes. Doubts assaulted him mercilessly. Doubts about his family, doubts about Rell, and doubts about himself.

He shouldn’t have freaked out in the kitchen.

If there was a glimmer of a speck of hope that Rell would ever think Crowley could be anything but his brother’s friend, he couldn’t go off like that. Crowley cringed. The feel of Rell’s legs around him. Tight. Pulling. Mindlessly playful. Thank God the sandwich had made him a little nauseous, otherwise he might have stumbled forward and grabbed Rell into a kiss. That would have been a million times worse.

He could never admit it out loud, not even to Tyler, but Crowley Fredericks, at twenty-two, hadn’t actually ever kissed anyone before. Stumbling into Rell in the kitchen, stealing a playful kiss at the sink, wouldn’t have been a bad first time. He wondered what Rell would have done? Kissed him back? Taught him how to move his lips, what to do with his tongue? Grabbed him and twined his fingers up in Crowley’s hair? Jesus, the thought of their lips touching, moving, melding together…. It was enough to get a guy hard, which—as the bedroom door came open—Crowley realized he was. Years of inopportune hard-ons had given him the reflexes of a cat. He rolled over on his side, facing the upper trundle mattress.

There was a moment of silence, no movement in the room at all. And then he heard the door close and felt Rell step on the edge of his trundle to climb up into bed.

God, he would have given anything to be the fantasy that moved Rell’s hand.

T
HE
PHONE
rang ten separate times the next morning and every time that shrill
br-r-r-ing!
filled the house, Rell made a point of being the one to answer. One time was a wrong number and another time it was his great aunt, wishing them all a happy holiday while calling him Gregory. The other eight calls, though, were
all
Tyler. That’s what made the game so damn fun.

“I swear to God, if you do not put Mom on the line I’m going to choke you in your sleep.”

“With your bare hands or your pretentious infinity scarf?” Rell joked.

“Tell her to
call me
.”

“I would if she were here,” Rell said.

“You’re telling me she
never
came home last night? Never once?”

“She came home.”

“I told you to tell her to call me
last night
. And at some point, conceivably, she came home. Why hasn’t she called me?”

“Dunno. I gave her the message.”

That was true enough. He’d said, “Tyler called. He wants a ride from Hooper Bay to Susset.”

She was sitting in the big armchair by the fire, the footrest popped out and a bowl of caramel corn on her stomach. She looked up at him, tired from a long day of going places, seeing people, and spreading holiday cheer.

“What’s he doing in Hooper Bay?” she asked.

“Well, he isn’t there yet,” Rell explained. “But he and Crazy-Cakes Xondee are going to try and drive it. And he wants someone to make the trip out to Hooper Bay and get him and bring him back here.”

“All right,” she agreed, picking up the remote and changing the channel. Rell’s grandfather protested loudly, having been snoring lightly on the couch until the moment she grabbed the remote. She flipped the channel back and he grunted his approval. “So, you’ll be driving out to Hooper Bay tomorrow then is what you’re telling me?”

He’d figured she was going to say that.

“I could,” he agreed. “Or I could clean out the garage, like you wanted.”

“Or you could do
both
,” she said pleasantly, not looking at him, but eyeing her father. Her finger hovered over the button like she might change the channel again, but with a defeated sigh, she let it fall away.

So each and every time Tyler called looking for his mother, Rell gave him more and more grief until the second to the last time he shouted a string of expletives at Rell that would have made a whole fleet of sailors blush.

“Brother—” Rell tried to interject.

But Tyler was raging at a speed and volume that, frankly, wasn’t quite as fun as he’d imagined. Quietly, Rell placed the receiver back on the cradle and waited by the phone for it to ring again.

“Hello,” he said when that final call came.

There was a really long moment of silence. The kind of clicking silence that they had learned, as kids, meant telemarketers in a call-queue. They’d been taught to hang up on the silence, but somehow the annoyance radiating through the earpiece didn’t exactly scream “consolidate your credit card debt.”

“Are you in Hooper Bay?” Rell asked quietly.

“Not. Yet. That’s why I need to talk to—”

“Mom knows you’re going to Hooper Bay. I’m driving down there to pick you up.”

“What?”

“I told her last night and she told me to drive out and get you. So I’m driving out and getting you. In the snow.”

The silence returned.

“Tyler?”

“I’m thinking,” he snapped. Thinking about whether or not he wanted to yell some more, probably. “I got a text from Sondra. She gets in at seven.”

“She need a ride too?”

“Well, obviously she’s not going to
walk
from the airport.”

“Obviously.”

“She wants to know if we want to go to the Livery tonight?”

Rell sighed pointedly. He hated the Livery with its throngs of pretentious assholes wearing plaid and trying to out-indie each other. Or as he liked to think of it: a really crowded, hot, overpriced gathering of Tylers. Seriously, Sondra? She was flying in from
Paris
and the first thing she wanted to do was go to a club?

“No, no, no, and, uh,
no
. No Livery.”

“Fine. Sondra, Crowley, and I can go without you. It’s not like we need you there hating everything.”

“Oh yes.” Rell sighed. “Because how would I stand out if I was hating everything just like everyone else in the club?”

“Assuming we don’t run off the road again—”

“Again?” Rell asked.

“—we’ll be there about three-thirty or four. Make sure you’re not late.”

“You want
me
not to be late, when you don’t even know if you’re going to make it or not?”

“Be there, you prune,” Tyler demanded.

“So random.” At that moment, his mother walked by and Rell waved at her, motioning to the phone. With a final little grin, Rell said, “So, you wanted to talk to Mom, right?”

“W
HERE
’
S
C
ROWLEY
?”

“Hello to you, too, Tyler. You’re welcome for the whole picking you up thing.”

Tyler grunted something that may have been close to a thank you and slammed the car door behind him. “I hate the snow and wish it would die.”

“Good thing it’s all green grass and balmy weather in Susset,” Rell harassed.

Tyler let his head fall against the window, and he sighed. “I’m tired. I’m hungry. Xondee drives like an
insane person
. Even in a blizzard. It took forever. It was cold as ass—”

“In my experience, ass has always been quite warm.”

“And now I’m riding with Mr. Comedian. For
three more hours
.”

“Three if we’re lucky. Could be four or five.”

“Where’s Crowley?”

“I asked if he wanted to come and he said no. Kinda awkwardly,” Rell said honestly. All he’d done was walk in the room and Crowley’s face had gone nine shades of red. When Rell asked if he wanted to ride along, the other man had barely been able to stutter out an excuse. “Guess he hates you now, Tyler.”

Tyler rolled his eyes pointedly. “Probably didn’t want to spend hours on end trapped in the car with you.”

Yeah, that’s what Rell was afraid of. He just didn’t understand
why
. Everything had been going so well. Crowley even said he enjoyed hanging out with Rell. And then this morning, everything was awkward. Maybe he’d snored all night?

“All seriousness, brother, how did you find such a cool friend?”

“All of my friends are cool.”

“If by
all
you mean
none
, or if by
cool
you mean
dillfucks
.”

“If you and Crowley are getting along, maybe I should reconsider our friendship,” Tyler sniffed, probably joking. Hopefully joking.

“And what’s weird, you’ve never even talked about him. I mean, until Mom told me to pick him up, I’d never heard of the guy. You….” With all the self-control he could muster, Rell schooled his voice. It was too easy to harass Tyler, and this wasn’t something he wanted to joke about. “Are you guys dating?”

“Nope,” Tyler replied casually.

“’Cause you know it’s okay if you’re gay, right?”

“Oh, thank God you said so, Averell. Now I can finally come out of the closet.”

“You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

“Don’t say stupid things and I won’t be a dick.”

“I just thought since you usually bring your girlfriends home… and Crowley told me he’s gay. And you did take a guy to prom.”

“To make a statement. Susset can be so vanilla. But Crowley isn’t my boyfriend.”

“Is he….” Rell didn’t know why he hesitated when he asked. “Is Crowley dating anyone?”

“Nope,” Tyler said, and tolled his head to look at Rell. “Why are you so interested?”

“Making conversation. Sorry. You want three hours of silence? I forgot my iPod.”

“Got mine,” Tyler said, digging it out of the pocket. He had to stretch his legs almost straight, pushing up off the seat to be able to reach into the pocket of his skinny jeans. After a moment of grunting, he triumphantly produced an iPod that looked fresh off the assembly line. “Crowley’s never dated anyone.”

“Wait, what?”

Twenty-two years old, good-looking, cool, a talented musician. “Is he… I mean, on purpose?”

“On purpose, what?”

“Has he not dated anyone on purpose?”

Tyler shot him a look before settling on the
Holiday Happenin’ EP
. Xylophone filled the cab of their mother’s SUV.

“Guys are assholes.”

“You’re a guy, brother.”

“I just mean, sometimes people can’t see how cool he is on account of his….”

“His…?”

“Well, he’s shy. And he’s sensitive. And he’s… just….” Tyler fumbled awkwardly, and Rell grew more annoyed by the second. He wouldn’t have known what Tyler was dancing around if Crowley himself hadn’t said it.
Tease the fat kid
….

“The man isn’t a blimp.”

“I didn’t say he was.”

“And you’re his best friend, why are you—?”

“
I’m
not judging,” Tyler snapped. “I think he looks great. He was way bigger when I first met him. He’s been working really hard and—”

“‘Way bigger’? You snob.”

“I’m talking about the douchebags he’s interested in. What they think. Fucking jocks. Jason Unger. Nate Dunn. God, that
creep
Peter Yeats. Okay? It’s not
me
. It’s not
my opinion
. It’s these juiced-up meatheads. If he would look for a guy a little more, y’know,
like him
.”