The Broken Triangle (3 page)

Patrick had pouted, then mimed zipping his lip. Because he was Patrick, he’d unzipped it long enough to add,
“Anytime you want that, just say the word.”

Patrick was a known quantity. Ben and Shane, not so much. Shane was talking to Ben now, up in his face, his finger stabbing Ben’s chest, but with no real anger there. As Vin left the bar to deliver Riley’s drink, he saw Ben say something to Shane, saw Shane’s bravado change to a waiting expectancy, his head sink down for a moment.

Then Shane was on the move, briskly wiping down the top of the bar, a small, private smile tugging at his lips.

Weird.

At least when Vin took the pint over to the table, Riley was still there. “Here you go,” he said, setting it down. “On me.”

“Thanks,” Riley said.

“No problem.” The occasional free drink for a friend was one of the benefits of the job, and one Vin almost never took advantage of, so he figured he was more than entitled. He leaned against the wall, the throbbing in his feet too much a part of his life to be a distraction. “You gonna be okay here?”

Riley smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it beat a frown. “I think so. Unless there’s something about this place I don’t know? I read the article in the paper about you reopening.”

Which, Vin remembered, had included his name. “That’s how you found me? That was weeks ago!”

“Yeah.” He got an abashed look from Riley. “It took a while for me to get the nerve up to come and see you. After the fire there was a lot of talk about this place. I might have ended up here not knowing it was where you worked. That would have been a surprise.” Riley smiled again, and this time it seemed more genuine.

“It was a surprise for me this way. Like time travel.” When Riley gave him a confused look, Vin explained, “I felt like I was back in high school, seeing you standing over there.”

“That was a long time ago.” Riley gestured vaguely. “Not in years, I guess, but we’ve grown up. Changed. I can’t remember why I freaked out if I got a C or cared if the Sabres beat the Ghosts. It mattered then, but it sure as hell doesn’t count for anything now.”

“Yeah.” The door opened, and a group of five men came in, talking animatedly, heading for the bar as if it were iron and they were magnets. Shane had always encouraged that.

“Someone comes in my pub, they come up to the bar and get a drink first, not a table. Concentrate on the important stuff. That’s the way we do it back home. And we don’t run tabs either. You pay up front before you get too pissed to remember where your wallet is.”

“Yeah, well, over here, we like being waited on, and running a tab keeps them ordering more instead of walking out after one drink,”
Dave had pointed out, effectively silencing Shane.

The men were regulars—friends, not couples, two of them straight. They’d shared a house in college and stayed in touch. Vin liked them. Good tippers, and they talked to him instead of treating him like a drinks dispenser. Vin shifted his feet, irresolute. If he served them and Riley slipped out…

“I won’t take off.” Riley’s gaze was steady. “I promise. I don’t want more than this one drink, but when I’ve finished it, I’ll wait for you.”

“Okay.” It wasn’t like he could duct-tape the guy to the booth, so Vin had to trust him and go back to work.

It was a long hour, waiting for Diane to show up, but luckily it was also a busy one. Vin delivered a soft drink and some fries to Riley after twenty minutes, then went over when a couple of guys he didn’t know lingered at Riley’s booth, and offered them a free drink to move them on their way.

“Go on,” Patrick said five minutes before Diane was supposed to show up. “We’ve got this. Go with your friend.”

“Thanks,” Vin said gratefully. “I owe you one.”

“Don’t think I’ll forget that.” Patrick fluttered his eyelashes at Vin and gave him a gentle shove toward Riley, who had gotten up and was stretching like he’d been sitting in that booth a lot longer than he had.

“My place is upstairs,” Vin said as he joined Riley. “Used to be Shane’s, but after the fire, he moved in with Ben. Do you want to come up? Or would you rather go somewhere else? There’s a coffee place a couple of blocks away.”

Riley grinned, a flash of humor erasing some of the tension around his eyes, if only for a moment. “Staying here is fine with me. I always wondered what your bedroom was like. I pictured it being black on black, like your clothes.”

You could’ve seen it anytime you asked. Seen me in it. Joined me on the bed, and no, the sheets weren’t black. We could have had so much if you’d let yourself be what you are instead of what people expected you to be.

Vin swallowed the pointless words and settled for an answering grin as they started for the back staircase. “I wanted to paint the walls black when I was a kid, but my dad told me to wait until I was in my own place, and now that I am, I don’t want to. Besides, I rent it from Shane and Ben, and I don’t think they’d be any more in favor of it than my dad. Too hard to paint over later.”

“You’re still rocking the Goth look, though,” Riley said as Vin led him upstairs. “I like it. Can’t see you in a suit and tie, short hair, no piercings.”

“God, neither can I.” Vin shuddered, picturing himself bare naked like that, as he unlocked the door to his small apartment. Ben and Shane had a key to it, in case of emergencies, but they’d never used it. Vin kept it locked out of habit. He’d lived in some dives when he was asserting his independence, and he’d learned that anything not nailed down was considered up for grabs.

Losing money had been a pain, but when a photo of his family had gone missing, presumably for the silver frame, he’d moved out and bought a better lock for his new place.

Living alone suited him better, though he’d enjoyed the months he’d spent living at Ben’s. Ben was a peaceful man to be around, though Vin doubted Shane would share that view.

And there he was again, prodding at an aching tooth. One day he’d ask them what they had going on and see what they said.

Or keep his mouth shut and hang on to his job.

“Nice,” Riley said, looking around.

“Not really,” Vin said. “Functional.” Some of the furniture was left over from when Shane had lived there. The soft furnishings had suffered smoke damage, but Shane had salvaged the tables and chairs. Vin’s gratitude was genuine when Shane had told him to use them. He had better things to spend his money on.

“I like it.” Riley walked over to the small table—anything bigger wouldn’t have fit in the kitchen—and brushed his fingers over the little decorative water fountain that was one of Vin’s things. “This looks like you.”

“It’s peaceful. After that racket downstairs, it’s good to have something to calm the nerves, especially on my nights off. Speaking of which, do you want some tea? Or are you all beveraged up?”

“Tea would be good,” Riley said.

While the kettle boiled, Vin showed Riley around, more to have something to do than out of any real desire for Riley to see a bathroom too small for both of them to stand in, and a bedroom with a comforter tangled in the center of the bed.

“I make it usually,” Vin said, seeing his place through Riley’s eyes and wincing inwardly. Riley’s family was well-off, or at least that was the impression Vin had gotten. He’d walked by Riley’s home a few times during his high school days when he’d known the family was on vacation, drawn there by an ache of longing he couldn’t soothe. It wasn’t a mansion, but it was old enough to look settled in place, mature oaks shading a well-kept yard, huge stone planters filled with annuals making vivid splashes of color against the gray stone walls.

Truthfully, Vin preferred the life and bustle of the street he’d grown up on, row houses crammed together with tiny yards separating them from the sidewalk, and a narrow strip of land behind. His family wasn’t poor, but four kids made for a tight budget. For a few hellish years before his oldest sister, Anna, had gotten married and moved out, he’d been sleeping in an unfinished basement, the roar of the furnace jerking him awake in the winter. It’d been his choice; it beat sharing with Suzie, the sister closest to him in age, who was fond of drenching herself in perfume before breakfast, making Vin’s eyes water and his throat close up.

“It’s a great commute,” Riley said solemnly enough that it took Vin a second to get that he was being teased.

He laughed, elbowed Riley in the ribs as naturally as he would’ve done if it’d been Patrick, and turned in the narrow doorway after hearing the kettle click off. The electric kettle was one of Shane’s castoffs, something Vin had thought was weird but which had turned out to be surprisingly useful.

Riley didn’t move back as Vin had expected, and they collided, Vin grabbing Riley’s arm to keep his balance, the warmth radiating off Riley making him want to get closer still.

“Sorry,” Vin said automatically. He said it a dozen times a night working in the small space behind the bar, weaving between bodies as he mixed drinks. Generally the contact involved was minimal. In his job, when to zig and when to zag was learned early.

“I’m not,” Riley said and covered Vin’s hand with his, the shock of contact enough to make Vin’s heart stutter. Riley curled his fingers around Vin’s hand and tugged, loosening Vin’s grip on his arm. It wasn’t a rejection. When Vin let his hand drop to his side, Riley drew him into a hug, his lips brushing Vin’s cheek, then moving to take his mouth in a kiss.

Vin wanted the kiss—God, how he wanted it—but this was way too fast. He pulled back a little, trying to find a compromise between enough space so he felt okay and not so much that Riley felt rejected. “Wait.”

“Why? You want me. I can tell.” Riley seemed confident in that, at least. “Why wait?”

“Because I’m not jumping into bed with you less than two hours after seeing you again for the first time in four years. Five.” Vin stepped back until they weren’t touching at all. “We don’t even know if we like each other anymore.”

“Liar. You still like me. I haven’t changed.”

“Except for being gay now? Or is it bi?”

Riley glanced away. “Gay. That didn’t change as much as evolve.”

“Sit,” Vin said and pointed at the couch. “We’re going to have tea, and we’re going to talk.”

“Talk,” Riley said as if it were a new word to him. He rubbed his mouth, his large hand covering lips and chin, hiding his expression. “Sure, I guess. I didn’t mean to rush you or take anything for granted.”

The apartment layout meant the kitchen and the living area were separated by nothing but a change from linoleum to carpet, both new following the fire that had gutted the bar. The apartment hadn’t been damaged badly, but water and smoke had combined to cause as much destruction as the flames had done downstairs. Even with freshly painted walls and the new, if basic, flooring, the place managed to retain the tatty air it’d had when Shane had lived there.

It was easy to keep an eye on Riley as Vin made the tea, peppermint because that was all he had. He needed to buy groceries, but it was easier to grab breakfast at the nearest coffee shop and forage in the bar kitchen for the rest of his meals if he was around. Shane never minded, though Ben was making sounds about overheads as if Vin eating leftover pizza or stale sandwiches made the day before would lead to bankruptcy.

Riley sat, his hands linked, fingers twisting nervously, his gaze darting from the posters on the walls to the bedroom door. If Vin had been an artist and he’d drawn Riley, he’d have called it
Man on the Move
or something, because for all that his ass was planted on the couch, he was anything but relaxed.

Joining him on the couch, Vin tried to project calm and reassurance. It worked when his yoga teacher did it during a relaxation class, her voice soothing him into a state approaching sleep, but it wasn’t as if he could tell Riley to picture himself floating in a warm ocean.

Riley would probably point out that warm salt water usually had sharks.

“Here,” Vin said, handing Riley a mug. “Careful, it’s hot.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” Riley blurted out and set the mug down, which was good if the alternative was him spilling it.

“Okay,” Vin said. “How to do what?”

“This!” Riley gestured meaninglessly.

“Drink tea? Sit on a couch? Talk?” Vin suggested.

Riley snorted. “You definitely haven’t changed.”

“I just want you to stop freaking out, or whatever it is you’re doing, so you can make sense. You obviously weren’t talking about not knowing how to kiss—”

“Unless your reaction to it was an indication,” Riley muttered.

Vin couldn’t imagine not welcoming a kiss from Riley. “You surprised me, okay? Don’t get me wrong—I’ve dreamed about kissing you. But this morning when I woke up, I didn’t imagine ever seeing you again, let alone having you in my apartment, so give me a little time to adjust to the idea.”

Vin set his mug down on the table and turned toward Riley, whose expression had softened.

“I’m sorry,” Riley said. “I don’t want to rush you. I’ve dreamed about kissing you too, and I hate that I fucked it up when I finally got the chance.”

“You didn’t fuck it up.” Vin let himself reach out and brush his fingertips over Riley’s cheek, willing his hand not to shake.

“Do you think…” Riley swallowed, eyes searching Vin’s. “Could I try again? Just once?”

In reply, because he wanted Riley to know he wasn’t in this alone, Vin leaned in and pressed his lips to Riley’s.

A mouth on his, soft lips, the scrape of stubble from hairs too fair to be visible unless the light caught them just right, the taste of Riley’s mouth—it was overwhelming, but Vin didn’t allow himself to feel doubt or hesitation. This was what he’d wanted all these years, why he’d shaken his head to every offer he’d gotten.

At first, it’d been loyalty to the love he’d felt for Riley. And yeah, it was all kinds of stupid choosing to live off a dream instead of searching for something real, but it’d worked for him. He’d seen friends fall in love and get their hearts broken, or men like Patrick screwing their way through life as if sex was as pleasant and meaningless as eating ice cream. He’d started to take pride in being aloof from it all. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t do drugs, and kept his caffeine intake down. Searched inside his heart for answers and let the tattoos and piercings take the place of sex.