Chapter 17
“Hey Maru.”
The greeting surprises her but she tries not to show it. She sets the large snowball on top of her snowman before she turns, “Hi Abbi.”
“Looks good.”
She’s surprised to see Abbi leaning on the fence that surrounds the little yard in front of her door, equally surprised by the pastel pink scarf around her neck. Abbi was less likely to ignore her than Sam or her own brother back in the day, but she never went out of her way to chat.
“What’s up?” She says, picking up a stray stick and jabbing it into the side of her new creation. A pathetic arm.
“Not much. You need a hand?”
Maru doesn’t let her surprise show, “you don’t have to.”
Abbi ignores that, leaving the fence and sticking the other arm in.
“Did Sebastian tell you to be nice to me or something?”
Abbi snorts, “yoba Maru, we aren’t kids anymore. We can get along despite our teensy age difference, can’t we?”
“You came all this way to hangout with me?” Maru says in a tone that expresses the impossibility of that.
“No.” Abbi admits, taking her scarf off and wrapping it around the neck of the snowman. “Been dying for a way to get ride of this horrible thing. My mom still hasn’t given up on making me a proper young lady.”
“I don’t see how you’re improper.” Maru admits.
Abbi regards her, “you really don’t, do you?”
Maru shrugs. She used to not “getting” these social nuances. She knows Caroline doesn’t like her daughter’s way of dressing because she’s heard her talking about it, but she’s never been able to piece together why. What do clothes or hair colour have to do with anything?
“I’m gonna go see your brother, you want to come?”
“I have work this afternoon.”
Abbi nods, “next time.”
Maru doesn’t think Abbi was just saying that, wouldn’t be the type to just offer. It feels strange, the new normalcy levelling out between the three of them. How Sam didn’t fit into that normalcy, increased the strangeness.
Since Abbi had mentioned something going on between Sam and her brother she’d been keeping a closer look. What had happened between them? Was it the reason Sam had left? Was it the reason Seb was back here now? How was Penny tied into it all? Did Penny know what Sebastian’s involvement was, and if she did, why did she know and not Maru? The list of questions kept growing, and she kept them catalogued for later. She knew her brother well enough to know that he wasn’t like her, that straight up questions made him squirm and he would, out of principle, give vague and meaningless answers. She was forced to observe, wait for the right moment.
He pulled a salmon out of the fridge. Shane had learned how to cook something other than eggs when he stopped going to the Stardrop for good. There had been a long while where he knew if he went in there, even just for a hot meal, he’d get a drink too. Frozen Joja meals were only acceptable when you were plastered. He was left with no alternative. He’d learned to love it over time, especially when he started working full-time on the farm. There was something magical about turning food he’d helped grow into a delicious meal. He figured Alex would probably like this kind of thing. Something simple but classic. And even in his state of heightened anticipation to see him, the act of cooking calmed him.
Late into Spirit’s Eve they had found a dark corner to hide in. Alex had kissed him the same as before, all reserve melting away, all his shyness fading to a nearly unbelievable memory. The night had been cold, but Shane hadn’t felt any of it.
Afterwards he’s walked him back to his door, Alex standing on the step, staring at their intertwined hands, lips visibly raw even in the dim moonlight.
“Thank you.” He’d whispered.
“For what?” Shane had asked.
“Tonight... it was...”
“Yeah, it was.” Shane grinned, pulling Alex in for one more kiss before bidding him goodnight. He hadn’t wanted to leave. But he didn’t want to rush things. Only because he was still having difficulty computing any of this as real.
Tonight he was making Alex dinner. Alex would be here, in his home. It was becoming real.
As soon as he opens the door Alex’s mouth is on his. It takes him off guard, he stumbles backwards but is caught by the other man’s strong arms. The reality of Alex’s strength seems to sap all of his own, he feels himself melt like butter, parts of him burning. He forces himself to recover his strength, only enough so that he can support his own weight. He allows himself a moment to let his hands roam, Alex responding to every touch.
His hand finds Alex’s lower abdomen and he lets it rest there a moment, feeling the muscled body beneath, tempted to go lower. Instead he pushes him away.
He grins, “let’s not let this dinner get cold.”
For a half second Alex looks half crazed, like he might protest, but he composes him self, allowing Shane to lead him to the dinner table.
“This is...” Alex pauses.
“Hmm?”
“My favourite meal. Did you know?”
Shane feels something rush through him, he scratches the back of his head. “No... lucky guess. I’m glad. I hope I didn’t fuck it up.” Suddenly he’s nervous.
“Looks amazing.” Alex says, squeezing his shoulder before taking a seat at the table. Watching him take his first bite fills Shane with even more warmth.
After they’ve eaten, and talked, and laughed, and eaten and talked, Shane starts to clear the dishes, fully planning to dump them in the sink and then sink himself into Alex, but Alex stops him. “Let me.”
He takes everything away and starts washing. Shane watches from his seat at the table, mesmerized by the domestic scene. There’s a stupid smile on his face, but nobody to see so he doesn’t repress it.
He gets up and walks over to him slowly. When he’s directly behind him he reaches across and turns off the tap, leans in and kisses his neck.
"You don't have to finish those." He says in a low voice.
Alex slowly lowers the plate he’s holding back into the sink. Holding his breath, waiting.
Shane keeps kissing his neck, lets his hand find its way under Alex’s shirt, running his palm over his abs, his chest, feeling his perfectly sculpted smoothness. His other hand joins the exploration. Alex is fully leaning his weight back on Shane now, breathing raggedly.
He backs away from his neck and tugs the shirt off. Alex turns to face him, using his hands to support himself on the counter behind him. He looks wrecked and Shane’s barely begun. He’s so turned on he doesn’t even bother to smirk.
He leans in and kisses him slowly, tasting him thoroughly. Alex doesn’t touch him back, just keeps holding himself up. But he responds to every kiss equally, and when Shane kisses his neck again he exhales heavily. When he gets to his collarbone he moans, leaning his head back. When he gets to his nipples he’s almost trembling. Down his abdomen and Shane thinks he might fall over, so he holds his hips between his hands.
Alex is barely moving, locked in a battle for self-control. Shane fully intends to make him lose. He unbuttons his jeans, pulls them down. Licks him through his boxers, up and down, then pulls them around his knees. He kisses his pubic hair, then takes him in his mouth.
It doesn’t take long for Alex to come. Panting and smiling, looking down at him – Shane thinks his heart stops. Alex pulls him up into a breathy kiss, wraps his arms around his waist, and then leans his forehead on Shane’s shoulder. They stand like that, against the kitchen counter, Alex naked except for his pants around his knees, Shane fully clothed, just breathing.
Shane didn’t know he could feel this good, like every one of his cells is singing.
Then Alex shoves him off, grins at him. He steps out of his boxers and pants in one fluid movement, pushes Shane back into the chair he’d had dinner in, somehow removing Shane’s shirt just as fluidly as he’d peeled off his own clothing. He doesn’t have time to feel embarrassed about his older and considerably less sculpted and much harrier body before Alex is on his knees and unzipping his pants.
“Fucking hell.” Shane breathes raggedly.
Afterwards Alex plants a sloppy kiss on his bare thigh and then rests his head there, looking up and him and breathing heavy. Shane himself is panting, one hand tangled in Alex’s hair the other still gripping the side of the chair, his heart palpitating, almost sick on the good.
“Good?” Alex asks, smiling softly but egotistically. Reading his mind.
“That’ll do.” His words contrasted by an exasperated laugh.
Alex straighten up, “will it? I had so much more planned.”
“Planned?”
Alex kisses him and Shane knows this will be the mouth to kill him. He tries to stand, pulling Alex along with him, but his legs are so weak that he’s more using the younger man for support.
“Carry me to bed, darling? It seems some young man has tired me out.” He’s too relaxed, too undone, to care how out of character he sounds.
“You’re still reading Elliott’s book, aren’t you?” Alex mumbles into his lips, laughing and kissing him.
That night Alex doesn’t get around to what he’d “planned.” Instead it is what he hoped for. What he would never dream of orchestrating, what just happens naturally. Him and Shane in bed, holding each other, talking, laughing, just being. It feels like pure relief.
Days have gone by but it feels to Maru like minutes, or months, or seconds, or years. Anything but what it is. What she’d admitted to Ry she hadn’t even admitted to herself and now that she had she felt lighter. She felt more nervous, an increased sense of anticipation, but in an excited way more than out of anxiety. Somehow this changed the quality of time. The monotonous blur of days felt, for the first time in so long, not like the essential essence of her life, but like a waiting period.
What would she do next time she saw Ry? Would she run away? Would she smile? She knew, the only thing she’d known in so long, that she wanted to ask her to hangout. It terrified her. She didn’t know what it meant. If she could muster the courage, she wouldn’t make it sound romantic... just friends. A test. She had a challenge – could she actually enjoy being around someone?
She found herself going outside more. Walking around. Errands at Pierre’s. Visiting the frozen beach. She never ran into Ry, she felt foolish. There was a certain pain in it, but she could laugh at it. It felt strange, to have this. But after a week of it, not seeing even a glimpse of the farmer, the feeling could not be sustained. She sinks back into her usual nothingness, it never occurring to her as a serious option to visit the farm, write a letter, call.
It doesn’t take her long to accept her brief escape from apathy as just that, a brief escape. She returns to dullness. She folds herself into her books. She sees Penny at the library. It’s a familiar sight. Back in the day she used to stop in and walk Penny and the kids back home. She wasn’t like Penny was with Vincent or Jas, found kids difficult to relate to and felt uncomfortable dumbing down her speech, but she’d walked with them anyways, trying to distract Penny from her job by cluelessly yammering on about whatever sci-fi series she’d been reading at the time. Now Penny was alone, scribbling in her lesson plan book, and Maru had no desire to rant.
Vincent and Jas took a bus to middle school out of town. They’d outgrown Penny’s primary home schooling, she was now just their tutor a few times a week. Mostly for Vincent, who was much more interested in sports and being outdoors, his grades reminding his parents of this every report card. This made the additional hours of learning, school with tutoring on top, even more unpleasant than they had been in past, Vincent holding a general bitterness and increasing hostility towards books, words, numbers. But for Penny it was one of the only things she had. She would sit for hours and diligently plan out lessons for him, schemes to trick him into enjoying reading or math or science. Jas was easier, willing to be persuaded in the joy of learning, but for this very reason needed her less and less. Penny’s world was shrinking in around her.
Maru sits across from her. “Hi.” She says, resting her book on the table.
“Hi Maru,” Penny says, without glancing up from what she’s writing. It almost feels like old times, but for the lack of kids. Maru opens her book and begins reading. They sit in silence, both focused on their own tasks, but together.
When it gets dark and Gunther starts loudly clearing the place up to signify he wants to close they shut their books and head out. They walk back to town, snaking up towards Penny’s in continued silence. When they arrived at her door Penny kicks at the snowy ground, hands deep in her pockets, lingering.
“I think I need to get my drivers license.” She says, voice muffled by the scarf wrapped tight around her face.
“Yeah?” Maru replies, breath fogging the air.
She nods, looking at the ground. Maru knows this is as close as Penny will come to saying she needs to get out of here. She knows what a driver’s license means to someone stuck in a small town. That Penny’s been denied it because her mom only has access to the public bus – not the best thing to learn on – or is otherwise drunk. That Penny’s too proud to ask someone else to teach her.
“I’m sure my mom will help teach you. The old truck isn’t the best, but... at least it’s not Seb’s motorcycle.”
Penny laughs, and it shocks them both. Then she nods, “yeah, maybe,” before heading inside.
Maru stands in the cold a moment longer, relishing the half-way normal time she’d just shared with her old friend. The cold is too sharp to enjoy it for long.
As she’s walking by Alex’s she sees a familiar figure standing outside the Stardrop. Ry, hands shoved deep in pockets, talking quietly with someone. Automatically her pace slows as she anticipates being noticed, her heart clenching in expectation of the smile she’s going to receive, her back tingling where her skin remembers having contact with her. She feels her own greeting bubbling up to her lips.
But Ry doesn’t look at her. She’s totally absorbed by who she’s talking to, a tall woman in a beautifully tailored coat and heels. Maru can’t make out who it is in the dark, but it’s not someone from around here she’s sure.
In the warm light cast out from the window of the Stardrop Maru can see Ry’s soft smile, how it reaches her eyes. There’s none of the amusement that usually accompanies it, at least when she’s looking at Maru. It is only softness, admiring. Dread begins pooling in Maru’s stomach and she finds herself needing to get away as quickly as possible, feeling, for once in her life, like a complete idiot.
When there’s a knock on the door his heart flutters. Robin or Demetrius wouldn’t stop by at this time of night, they rarely come into during weekday evenings.
Alex pulls the door open, smile already spreading across his face, but it isn’t Shane. His mouth falls open.
“Haley?!”