Twelve

“YOU EVER notice in almost every single historical romance, the guy always has hair longer than fashionable? All of them. And it wasn’t the style then. It was all terrified owl, then Ides-of-March number two, but all of these guys? Hair longer than was fashionable.” Ivo glanced up from the yellow-edged book he was reading when Gus walked into the shop’s art room. “Shit, if every guy has their hair that long, then it’s fucking fashionable.”

Gus stopped at the end of the table, or where the end would have been if Ivo hadn’t moved it aside to make room for the extra-wide armchair his brother dragged from Bear’s cramped office. Today’s ensemble was plain enough: cowboy boots and black jeans like Gus, but paired with a tank top covered in silky dark-blue-and-purple feathers, and at some point between going with Bear to fix an old woman’s tattoo and waking up to come to the shop, Ivo’s hair now matched his shirt.

“I imagine there’s all these pots of color in your bathroom, and you wake up every morning and think, which unicorn’s shit am I going to put in my hair today? Pretty Petal Petunia or Raging Blue Bonnie?” Gus put his sketchpad and tackle box down, then slapped his brother’s feet off of the corner of the table. “You get mud on what I’m working on, I’ll skin you alive.”

Ivo waited a heartbeat too long for Gus’s liking, then angled himself sideways in the chair, hooking his legs over its arm. His dark blue eyes were visible over the book’s overly dramatic cover of a half-undressed redhead in a mum-yellow dress while a piratical blond man in Regency garb clasped her shoulders and leered down over her nearly exposed breasts. The composition was a little muddy, it was impossible to tell where her hands were, and for some reason there was a Highland cow in its full shaggy crimson glory just over the shoulder of the green-waistcoated lothario, but Gus couldn’t figure out how the damned beast connected to the couple.

“There’s a cow on the cover.” He was probably pointing out the obvious, but Gus found himself saying it anyway.

“Yeah, I haven’t gotten to any cow yet. They’ve met in Hyde Park. Not a lot of cows there,” Ivo said, shrugging. “Or there could have been. It’s not a history book. It’s a romance, but dude, you can tell when someone doesn’t do their research. This one’s pretty good. They’ve got the vehicle types spot on.”

“They? Author’s first name is Katie.”

“Lots of romance writers are guys.” He cocked his head back to toss Gus a disparaging look. “Well, some of them, and some co-write with other people. ‘They’ is just… easier. Now shut up so I can read.”

“You can read in the lounge.” Another pointing out the obvious, especially since the art room had been set up specifically to do art in it. “Because, you know, that’s where you lounge.”

“You want me to do art so I can sit here? Fine.” Ivo reached over and plucked one of Gus’s pencils out of the tackle box. After sketching out a strong three-quarter view of a man’s hand with his fingers curled in and his middle finger extended, Ivo tossed the pencil onto the pad’s cover, then went back to his book. “There. Have some fucking art.” He flicked the battered novel back down and glared. “Wait, why are you here today? It’s what? One o’clock? Shouldn’t you be all brooding? All gargoyle and emo? Or is it too early for you to get your Batman on?”

“I want to get some shit done. This… isn’t working, and the guy’s coming in next week for it. I need to have something to show for the money he’s laying out other than a deformed chicken holding a Faberge egg.” He straightened the table, its weight making his shoulders burn as he moved it. Sliding into his chair, Gus reached for his sketchpad, but Ivo pulled it out of the way. “Seriously, I’m going to hurt you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He flipped open the cover, studying the quick portraits on the first page, then frowned when he got farther in. “Okay, the kid ones are cute. He’s cute. Hard to believe you made that, but whatever, but the Rey faces? That’s just pathetic, Goose.”

“Don’t call me that.” An automatic response seemed better than denying his fingers itched to capture Rey on the page.

“Pathetic?” Ivo sneered, his lip curling up in the same slant as Puck’s did when his twin dared him to do something Gus hadn’t wanted to do. “Or Goose?”

“Fuck you,” he lobbed back. It was weak and did nothing to dissuade Ivo from flipping through the rest of the pages. “I’d be—”

“Oh Jesus fuck, that is not something I needed to see.” His brother recoiled with a hiss, then slid the sketch pad back over the table. “Dude, I have to eat dinner with that guy. I don’t need to know he’s got a hood on his dick.”

“Reap what you sow, asshole,” Gus reminded him. “Now let me work a bit.”

It was either the light or maybe just the day, but Ivo was… too much of a distraction. Glued to the pages of his book, Ivo was focused, but the rattling part of his brain kept a fidget going. His left foot shook, a small tremor of back and forth with enough movement to catch Gus’s eye. His mouth was definitely theirs. There was no mistaking the perpetual pout and sneer their mother’d given them, and even though his eyes were darker, their shape mirrored Gus’s… and Puck’s. He could pick out the bits of his older brother in his younger one, slices of a personality and mannerisms never allowed the chance to bloom except for what parts lived on in Ivo’s habits.

“Stop staring at me, dickhead,” Ivo muttered from behind his book. “Work on your… chicken. You’re freaking me out.”

“Coming from you, that’s scary.” He found a line he liked for the beak, then worked backward, sweeping the phoenix’s head from a steeper angle than he’d tried before. There was a shape in his head, but it slid away from him, and Gus closed his eyes, breathing through his frustration until he found it again. As he began sketching a loose version onto the corner of the sheet, he glanced up to find Ivo studying him. Snorting, he added a bit of tail to the bird’s curling body. “Okay, now who’s staring?”

“What are you going to do about Rey?” Ivo nodded his chin toward the sketchpad. “The only thing you didn’t do in there was sign Gus Montenegro all over the front page so you could get used to it. Did you guys talk on Sunday after Bear and I left? Or any of the seventeen times you guys saw each other over the last few days? He might as well move in at this point.”

“Nope, he and Mace took off after they watched the game. Don’t look at me like that. Rey and I fucked. We had a good time.” Gus swallowed around his lies. “And then we didn’t. He was just done before I was, dude. Nothing—”

“Jesus, you’re an idiot.” Slapping his book down, his brother growled. Sitting up, he planted his feet on the ground and leaned his elbows on the table, snarling at Gus. “You don’t move forward, man. Nothing you do moves you forward. You want Rey. I can smell it on you when he’s around. You look around Mace every time he comes through the door because you hope Rey’s behind him. He’s stupid about you. I swear to God, it’s like watching a bad soap opera with the two of you. I keep waiting for one of you to turn around when you talk so you both have a good camera angle. He’s—”

“He wants a second chance,” Gus admitted, putting his pencil down. The urge to draw was gone, whispered away by Ivo’s poking. “With me.”

“No fucking kidding. Who else would he want a second chance with?” Ivo spat. “Earl?”

“I told him no.” As painful as it was to say out loud, Gus nearly smiled at Ivo’s sputtering. “There’s… look, you threatened to kill him, remember? Now suddenly you’re Team Rey?”

“Because you pine after him like a damned Norwegian Blue. You’re stuck in this cage and your damned feet are nailed down. Either tell him no and walk away or yes and…. Hold on.” Ivo got up and closed the door, then bolted it shut. Returning to his chair, he sat down, tapping Gus’s sketches with a stiff finger. “You’re drawing him. Naked. From memory. Unless you guys are hooking up on the sly and none of us know about it.”

“No, no hooking up.” His face felt too tight, the skin stretched over his bones, and when Gus yawned his ears popped. “I told him I couldn’t now. Ivo, I’ve got… shit… there’s so much going on. There’s Chris and… today.”

“It’s been twenty years, Gus.” Ivo flattened his mouth into a disapproving line. “Why do you keep going back there? What do you think you’re going to get out of it? Answers? And to what? Why Mom did it? Here’s your answer. She was psycho, and what she did was fucked-up, but you’ve got to let it go. You’ve got to let Puck go.”

Ivo might as well have stabbed him with a knife.

“It’s not that easy. I miss him, man.” The world swam in front of him, sliding around behind a veil of tears he refused to let go of. He’d go blind first, but the weight of his sorrow grew too heavy and Gus looked away, staring at the block of sunlight coming in through the room’s high windows. “I know it’s stupid. I get it. I only had him with me for a few years but… sometimes I feel like she… like it wasn’t enough she killed him. She made sure I was still alive so I could fucking feel like this the rest of my life.

“I see him in you. In Bear. Just bits and pieces, and it fucking hurts, Ivo. You smile like him. Bear has a stupid hiccup at the end when he laughs, and he calls Earl over like Puck used to talk to the neighbor’s damned Chihuahua. It’s like having a ghost of him around, and I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse. A part of my soul keeps reaching for him, and there’s nothing there. I see him in the mirror every time I look, and… there are times when I wonder if I’m not him and I’ve just taken Gus’s place because it’s too hard to let the other half of me go.” The tears came, hot and burning, so quickly Gus couldn’t scrub them off fast enough. “I lost a piece of myself back then. And I’m afraid to lose more if… I’m… scared to love Rey. Fuck, I’m scared to love Chris.”

“Shit, come here.” Ivo grabbed at him, moving the chair with a shove to make room for Gus. “Just… fucking come here. And if you tell anyone, I’ll break your face.”

“We’re not going to fit.”

“We’ll make it fit. It’ll be weird and maybe uncomfortable, but we’ll fit.”

Ivo’s hands were warm, his arm a welcome heaviness on Gus’s shoulder, and he sniffed, fighting not to shatter under his brother’s comforting touch. He let himself get dragged over to the wing chair, and for all its double width, the two of them didn’t fit into it but Ivo gave it a good try. Half perched on Ivo’s leg and the chair’s arm, Gus felt good to be tangled around his younger brother, the feel of his pulse beating under Gus’s shoulder. They’d hurt in a bit, probably fall off the cushion or maybe even break the damned chair, but he needed Ivo’s touch.

Because he’d never ever again have Puck’s.

And maybe not even Rey’s.

They held each other, caught in a storm of Gus’s making.

“You’re so damned stupid. I’m ashamed to say I’m related to you,” Ivo whispered, his chin digging into Gus’s shoulder. “You’re like one of those dogs paddling away in midair when someone holds you over the water. Jump the fuck in. You can’t keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Take a chance with Rey, and yeah, if he fucks with you, we all kill him, but that would go for anyone. Okay, Mace might not help with the killing part, but he’d dig the hole. And Chris—”

“Jules got out of the hospital today. We talked a bit, then she put Chris on. Kid’s….” He smiled a bit, remembering the Tesla globe of a conversation he had with his son. “He’s excited about penguins. Kid’s not right.”

“Penguins are awesome,” Ivo argued. “Not as cool as dinosaurs but still plenty awesome. You going to be getting some steady time with him? Chris. Not Rey. Not that getting something steady with Rey is bad, so long as he’s decent about it.”

“We’re working out a schedule between me, Jules, and her parents. Probably Bear too, because I’m going to have to juggle some times. Good thing I do tattoos. I can spend some mornings with him, and she’ll bring him by the house on the weekends.” Rubbing at his nose, Gus shifted, murmuring an apology when his elbow dug into Ivo’s chest. “And dude, catch up. I just told Rey no when he came by after the first time Luke and I saw Chris.”

“You told him not now back then.”

“Then wasn’t even a week ago.” He moved his leg to give Ivo space. “I need time to figure things out. Figure me out. Even if it’s just a couple more days, I need to get past this week. I need to get past today. Do you want to come with me?”

“No.” Ivo shook his head. “She didn’t come to get me. Only the two of you.”

“She probably couldn’t get to you. We were easy. All she had to do was roll around in front of the school behind the buses and pull us in.” He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing back a rush of memories. “And Bear… wasn’t hers, so… he didn’t matter.”

“None of us mattered, Goose. It’s why she tried to kill you. Why she killed Puck.” His brother patted Gus’s knee. “She just hadn’t planned on dying while she did it.”

THE BRIDGE scored Gus’s walk to its first pylon with a familiar symphony, the wind swelling and threading through the chiming clack-clack of traffic passing over the span. Massive cables creaked, absorbing the bridge’s sways and bows, and the clipping uneven percussion of people walking by kept a discordant beat Gus’s mind struggled to make sense of. There was no crowd on the bridge. It was too foggy and damp for sightseeing, but the hardy still made their pilgrimages, tiny clutches of locals setting a pounding pace to cross the span before the wind froze them solid. He no longer felt its brackish, tainted bite or even really cared about seeing through the gray clots of fog obscuring the Bay and its islands.

He’d come to say goodbye, and for the life of him, Gus couldn’t seem to find the words he needed in order to finally walk away.

There were never reasons to cross the bridge in his daily comings and goings. It was rare for him to even get past the piers, although he’d been to the Palace a few times for shows. His life simply didn’t include the dark-orange span, and it was often just a blur along the water, jutting up from either side of the shore but in the background, nothing he sought out or even remembered as he went along his day.

But standing on it, feeling its sway and hearing its incessant, ever-changing rhythms, snatched the breath out of his lungs and stole his thoughts before he could protest their weight.

The sounds on the bridge stuck out in his memories. That and the wind. Everything else was muted, caught behind a frosted glass pane he couldn’t quite see through. There’d been something in the juice bottle she’d given him, a sickly sweetness he hadn’t liked. Given a soda flavor he didn’t like, Puck reached for Gus’s drink, handing him the ice-cold can.

Puck’d been too far gone, too limp to walk behind her on the bridge, but Gus followed as he’d always done before, a few steps behind and stumbling. His mouth numb, he’d tried to tell his mother to slow down, but his tongue was too thick and his lips didn’t seem to want to move. She’d carried Puck like a sack of rice, his head occasionally banging on the railing, and Gus screamed at her to stop, to quit hurting him, but the wind snatched his words away, or maybe she just hadn’t cared.

The air tasted of metal and salt, the bridge singing its descant while his mother hoisted Puck to the railing and waited for Gus to catch up. She’d finally stopped at the jut around the first pylon, and the cold had seized his spine, his skin nearly as numb as his mouth, and he hadn’t been able to stop the quaking tremor rolling through him.

A horn blared behind Gus, and he jerked his head around, startled out of the haze he’d fallen into. His hand hurt, clenched tight around the green plastic army men he’d brought with him, and despite the heavy pea coat he’d borrowed from Bear, he couldn’t get warm. Not in the icy trap of his mother’s deceit and hatred.

He ignored the footsteps behind him like he had the countless times before. They were a part of the dirge the bridge played for him every year, odd drops of sound adding to the rhythm of the wind, metal, and car hum. These stopped, and Gus closed his eyes, feeling the man standing at his shoulder.

“What are you doing here, Rey?” He wasn’t sure if he could be heard over the wind, but then Rey moved in closer, snugging up to Gus’s side, bringing some welcome heat. Opening his eyes, he stared out at the water, unwilling to look at the one man he’d shared his heart with. “Why’d you come out to the bridge?”

“Well, you’ve been here for almost an hour and a half, and you’re making the bridge guys kind of nervous. I’m friends with one of them. He’s on duty. They were about to draw straws to see who’d come out here and try to get you out of the cold.” Rey held up an insulated tumbler of something hot, and Gus sniffed at the steam coming through its opening, a strong kick of coffee, sugar, and cream. “And as to why, Ivo told me to come down and pry you off the railing, but I planned to do that anyway. It was just talking your brothers into letting me be the one to do it.”

“I wasn’t going to jump. Never crossed my mind. I just lost track of the time.” He shoved the army men into the pea coat’s pocket, then took the tumbler, promptly burning his tongue when he took a sip. “Shit, that’s hot.”

“You’re going to need it. It’s damned cold today. Sure it’s nice after the heat we’d been having, but this is insane.” Rey turned so his back caught most of the wind, and Gus shivered, grateful for the break. “I came because you probably need someone to talk to, so I took a chance you were still out here.”

“Bear—”

“Bear knows I’m here. Told me I was stupid for chasing you across the bridge but wished me luck.” Rey shot him a rueful smile when Gus gave him a suspicious look. “I had an appointment today at the shop. Ivo gave me some shit, Earl knocked me over, then Bear suggested I offer you a shoulder to cry on since you won’t let any of them near you today.”

“Fuckers. They think I wallow.”

“Do you? Wallow, I mean.” Rey pressed in closer and Gus leaned back, hating himself when he did it. Shifting away, he bristled when Rey’s arm came up around his waist. “Just… let me be here, Gus. Is it so hard to do that?”

“See, I’m what you call emotionally compromised right now, and it’s kind of when I make some really stupid life choices. Case in point, I now have a three-year-old son because I couldn’t handle you breaking up with me.” His nose was cold, an icicle of flesh on his face, but his cheeks were warming up. “You’ve got to promise not to fuck me when we get off this bridge, because right now, that’s what I want more than anything else. I don’t know if it’s because I miss you or if I just want… to feel alive.”

“I promise not to fuck you. Or let you fuck me. No matter how much you beg but just for today. Tomorrow, I can’t make any guarantees.” Rey’s smile was a flash of white against his tanned skin and the fog-shrouded gray sky. “Talk. Don’t talk. It’s all up to you. We’ll stay out here for as long as you want or until we turn into ice cubes. Whichever comes first.”

Gus turned his head away from Rey. His hair whipped around his face, long strands escaping the beanie he’d shoved on to keep himself a bit warmer. They stung his cheek, slapping threads over his lips and nose. His mother’d slapped him, a hard connect of her hand to his flesh, and he’d spat blood, adding more metal to the taste of the bridge in his mouth. The ring of scars around his ankle itched, probably more from the cold than the memory of steel cutting through his flesh, and the puckers of healed-over cigarette burns on his forearm twisted tight, reacting to his rubbing at his coat sleeve, trying to get his skin to warm up.

He’d covered the burns with his first big tattoo, a defiant screaming eagle with talons curved around a banner with the word rebel. There’d been some noise about him having to grow into the word, with Bear reminding the crew around him of Gus’s more inspired acts of stupidity growing up. He’d sat silent through the pain, listening to the jeers and teasing, but he’d hadn’t chosen the word to represent himself. Instead it was his reminder to not follow blindly, to fight against being led to his own slaughter, especially when it was someone he loved doing the leading.

Taking another sip of the coffee, Gus leaned against the railing, then dug out one of the army men he’d brought with him. Holding it up for Rey to see, he said quietly, “Let me tell you about Puck.”