For the first time in his life, Corbin felt like maybe he could belong. In the kitchen with Alex, sugar between his fingers, he felt at home. Every time Alex looked up at him and smiled, or moved next to him to show him how to shape a dough or mix a batter, he felt another piece fall into place, another chime sound. The air between them danced and burned.
That was how it happened, his aunts had always told him. First you fit together so perfectly there were no seams. Then you were torn apart forever.
They were putting pastries in the display case and Alex’s forearm brushed against his. Corbin shuddered. His entire skin felt hypersensitive these days. Every touch felt like a caress, every accidental press of flesh like an embrace. He thought if Alex ever actually kissed him, he might come on the spot. He always pulled away quickly, afraid to leave a blight on Alex.
Corbin dropped a muffin on the floor. Trouble’s coming.
Mac strode through the door.
Mac thought he was a freak. Jinx. That’s what Mac used to call him. Corbin gathered the crumbs of the pear streusel muffin.
“Alex, hello!” Mac’s voice scraped at the inside of Corbin’s head. “I wanted to talk to you about our Thanksgiving week Main Street promotions. Everyone’s participating, but I haven’t heard back from you. Did you get my email?”
“I did. Sorry not to have written you back sooner—new business and all, you understand.” Alex’s voice stroked Corbin’s nerves back into place. “I’m not going to be participating in the Thanksgiving week activities, but thanks for the heads-up.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, and I’m not comfortable having my business make money from it.”
Alex’s voice was calm, but Corbin could see his frustration, his distaste. The air around Mac muddied, and Corbin took a step backward.
“Why not? You don’t have to believe in all that stuff about the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. Most people don’t. Nowadays it’s more just a time to celebrate with family, be thankful for everything we have.”
“I think you’re right about what the holiday means to a lot of people. That they agree it isn’t celebrating anything that should be celebrated but they do it anyway. Because they don’t want to disappoint loved ones or they want to take advantage of a day off from work. But honestly, Mac, the only way to encourage people to stop celebrating it is . . . well, to stop celebrating it. So, I’m sure you’ll understand why I can’t be a part of any Thanksgiving week promotions.”
Corbin felt a smile tug at his lips. Alex’s fierceness, his conviction, stirred the air between him and Mac to a swirl of abject brown and glowing purple. The purple shuddered up Corbin’s spine and made him long for it to be Alex’s touch instead. But Mac’s brown froze him.
“Uh, yes, I suppose so.”
“I have a counter-proposition, though. Perhaps you and all the other small business owners could join me in donating half our profits made during that week to some Michigan area First Nations charities?”
“Ah. Well, the promotions are already set up, so . . .”
Alex nodded knowingly. “Maybe next year.”
Corbin had wanted to stay crouched behind the counter out of sight until Mac left, but a timer went off in the kitchen, so he stumbled to his feet, pan in hand. Mac’s frown fell on him, and he felt insects under his skin.
“Wale. Do you work here, now?”
Corbin watched as Mac’s outlines shifted at the sight of him. Anger, disgust, revulsion. He hates you.
Corbin shuffled past him and made for the kitchen, the beep of the timer like a friendly voice calling him home. He slid the almond torte out of the oven to cool and waited for Alex to come tell him what to do next.
Just the thought of Alex telling him what to do calmed Corbin.
But his calm evaporated when he saw that Mac was still talking to Alex. Because he knew what Mac would be saying. He would confide in him—from one business owner to another. He would warn him about Corbin. He would tell Alex that Corbin was untrustworthy, a space cadet. A freak.
Sometimes you can call his name for a full minute without him hearing you. Sometimes he doesn’t show up to work at all. And then there’s the way bad things follow him everywhere he goes. Mrs. Edelman’s freezer exploded. Mr. Sakaturi’s shop got broken into. My car caught on fire after he unloaded it. Everyone knows he ruins whatever he touches, so look out.
When Alex walked into the kitchen, Corbin looked up to see that he’d poured two dozen zucchini muffins and sprinkled the tops with pepitas and brown sugar without noticing.
For the next few minutes, Alex worked and Corbin writhed. The world had narrowed to a tunnel. At one end of it was the warmth and comfort of Alex and his kitchen, and at the other end was Corbin and the life he’d had before. He could try to pick his way through the tunnel, but it was long and sloped uphill. Or he could turn away and settle in with what he already had.
He was so tired.
“I should go,” Corbin said finally, as the first tendrils of vanilla and cinnamon snaked to his nose from the muffins in the oven.
Alex glanced at the clock and frowned. “Do you feel okay? You’ve got two hours left on your shift.”
Corbin’s mouth was dry, and he swallowed convulsively. Whatever magic it was that saw, in the bland woodiness of raw zucchini, the potential for the melting sweetness of zucchini muffins, that was the magic Corbin needed.
“No, I feel okay. But I can imagine what Mac said. I thought you wouldn’t want me to work here anymore.”
Alex frowned, and Corbin looked at his shoes.
“What did you imagine he said?”
Corbin longed to have Wolf at his side. He always felt steadier when he could lean into Wolf’s warm fur. “That I’m a freak. A weirdo. A jinx. That I ruin things. Break things. That I’m bad luck to have around, and you don’t need any bad luck.”
Then Alex was right there, closer than he usually came. Corbin shrank away like he always did. The last thing he wanted was to touch Alex’s bare skin and risk tainting him. Risk somehow allowing the curse to rub off on him. But where Alex usually pulled back too, as if he could sense that Corbin was dangerous, this time he took Corbin’s shoulders in his hands.
“I don’t care what Mac says. I don’t care much what most people say. You’re enjoying working here, aren’t you?”
It was difficult to think with Alex touching him, like all the places they touched throbbed with awareness.
“It’s the best thing in my life,” Corbin said, scattered and abstract, and watched the fierceness in Alex’s eyes fall away and his mouth soften.
Then Alex pulled him against his broad chest—slowly, so there was time to get away. But Corbin didn’t want to get away. He wanted to be enfolded, consumed, engulfed. He wanted to be held at the eye of the storm, and let the world rage around him.
In Alex’s arms, time was measured in breaths and distance in the wrinkles of the clothing between them. Though he was held firmly, his breath felt deeper, like his lungs could expand up to his throat and down to his stomach, filling him with all the air he’d need to stay there forever. In Alex’s arms, nothing else could touch him.
What if I could have this. What if this were possible. What if I could keep him.
There was no point asking questions if you already knew the answers. Then, questions were just regrets directed at the future rather than the past.
Because he couldn’t have this. This wasn’t possible. He couldn’t keep him.
He was a Wale, and Wales were cursed. It was the one immutable truth he’d always known.
He took one last deep breath, to impress the feeling of Alex’s arms on his bones, imprint the sensation of Alex’s skin against his own, catalogue the smell of Alex’s hair and breath. It was better than nothing. But in doing so, he pressed his face closer to Alex’s shoulder, and Alex’s arms came around him even tighter—a trap laid with the most tempting bait and teeth of snapping steel.
“Corbin,” Alex whispered.
His name. His name with everything in it.
And for just a moment Corbin saw how it could happen. Saw how quickly one of the pieces could slide, and you could say, I don’t care if it ends, as long as I can have it now. Saw that if he leaned back only a very little and tipped his face up toward Alex’s, he would be kissed.
Alex would kiss him, and he would be gone, and anything would feel justifiable. He saw how his aunts must have sealed the fates of their lovers though they knew the stories better than anyone. How his mother might have convinced herself to take a chance.
He saw the monsters that love and longing could make, and they all had human faces.
“Hey, you’re okay,” Alex said, and Corbin realized he was shaking. He pulled away and scanned the air around Alex desperately, to make sure the colors hadn’t dimmed, hadn’t absorbed any of his taint.
He gathered his words up like spilled acorns and tried to put them in order, but before he could, Alex was talking again.
“So then it’s settled. You’re not going anywhere, and the next time Mac or anyone else has something to say about you, just don’t worry about it. Okay?”
Corbin found himself nodding because Alex was a force. Not as strong a force as the curse, but strong. And because all that mattered was more minutes with Alex, more hours.
“Do you want to help me with this new recipe? I could use a taste tester.”
Corbin nodded.
“I’m going to start making challah to sell on Fridays for Shabbat, and I have a recipe I usually use, but I wanted to try a couple of variations. One with figs and honey, and one with sundried tomatoes and basil.”
Corbin nodded again.
Alex paused and looked like he was about to say something, but then he just smiled and got out what they’d need. He seemed more natural in motion.
As Alex mixed ingredients and kneaded dough, making one challah after another, he talked. He always talked as he worked. Sometimes he talked to Corbin, sometimes to what he was making, and sometimes Corbin got the sense he was just leaking words like a waking dream, letting them out so they didn’t gum up the works. Alex was a well-functioning machine.
Now he talked about Mac, about Thanksgiving, about small business practices and how sick it made him that people cared more about making more money than about doing the right thing.
“It’s a holiday that glorifies an American holocaust,” Alex said passionately as he tore basil. “Yeah, we’ve turned it into something that we say is about giving thanks, so no one can argue it’s bad. But that makes it even worse. Anything that we do to celebrate it only adds to the problem. There’s no way I’m trying to encourage people to spend money because of it.”
Corbin sat on a stool next to the table and listened, eyes half closed. He found Alex’s voice lulling, even at a rant. It reminded him of how Finnian would tell him stories some nights, or how he’d fall asleep to Lex and Carbon debating one thing or another. He didn’t notice he’d dropped off, head on his hand, until he almost fell off the stool.
“My mom used to say I could talk someone to death, but I’ve never actually seen it come quite that close to happening. You okay?”
Corbin muttered that he was and stood up.
“If you promise not to fall asleep in the middle, I’ll show you how to braid challah.”
“Please.”
Braiding interested Corbin. His aunts always said braiding was meditative. They wove baskets and knotted rope to hang bird feeders. They threaded ribbons through the hems of their skirts and braided sections of their hair at the new moon to anchor thoughts in the dark.
“Do you know how to do a three-strand braid? Okay, then we’ll do six-strand braids.”
Corbin watched as Alex’s strong hands made sense of the snakes of dough, winding them together neatly, saying the pattern out loud as he went: Over two, under one; over two, under one.
“My grandmother always made challah for Shabbat and dropped it off at our house. She said braided bread was a symbol of love because it’s like arms interlocking.”
“Did she teach you to bake.”
“Yeah. At first I wasn’t interested. Then, one day, I watched her make pizza dough. I watched her the way you watched me the first day you came in here. I was transfixed by that moment. That moment where things that were completely different came together to be one thing. It was like magic.” He chuckled. “My grandmother just thought I really loved pizza. Which, for the record, I really do.”
When Alex smiled at him easily, Corbin felt it in his gut like a bolt of lightning.
Then Alex braided the fig and honey, and draped both with towels to rise again. He told Corbin all about challah and the different styles of braids, and about Shabbat.
When the loaves were in the oven, Alex turned to him. “I don’t remember that much about you in high school.” His voice was deliberately neutral. “But I remember—”
“What a freak I was,” Corbin murmured.
Alex’s gaze was sharp. “No. I was going to say how brave you were.”
“What, why.”
Alex’s shame was a sour streak that wrinkled Corbin’s nose. “Because you were all alone, and small, but you still didn’t deny who you were. I was on the damn football team and the track team. I had friends who would’ve had my back. And I still didn’t own who I was.”
Corbin’s heart pounded at the unfamiliar characterization. “But you knew.”
“Yeah. I always knew. Maybe I even wished that someone would ask me directly. Because I doubt I would’ve been able to lie about it to someone’s face. But no one ever did.”
“Sometimes knowing it yourself is enough.”
“Sometimes,” Alex allowed. “But this was just me being scared and self-conscious. It was me valuing the wrong things. I try very hard not to do that anymore.” His jaw was set and Corbin could see the truth of it. Could see the fierceness with which Alex always did what he thought was right.
It had never occurred to Corbin to deny that he was gay. But it hadn’t been out of a sense of righteousness. The other kids at school had called him a lot of things—some true, some not—but there had been no utility in commenting on them. They hadn’t cared about the truth of him. He’d been a stand-in, a convenient spot in the universe to direct the feelings they hadn’t wanted to hold inside themselves. What good would it do a spot in the universe to say if those feelings were true or false.
But Alex had looked at him and seen something different. Alex had been seeing his own failings in contrast, but he’d seen bravery nonetheless. It warmed Corbin to imagine that decades-old regard shining on him like a stray ray of sunlight through the small windows in their high school hallways.
The timer dinged and the smell of the challah made Corbin’s stomach growl. Alex was describing a sundried tomato bread he’d had in Italy, as he let the challah cool a bit, then he cut them both slices.
Corbin’s mind was still on the way Alex’s arms had felt around him, when he looked up to find Alex making a face.
“Yikes,” Alex said, snorting. “That doesn’t work at all.” He pinched off a piece and tasted it again. “I should’ve cleansed myself or something after that conversation with Mac. My grandmother always said don’t bake while you’re angry or sad because your bitterness will flavor the bread. You should bake with love if you’re baking for people you love, and they’ll taste the sweetness.” He winked and it blasted through Corbin like a shot.
Corbin blinked, the world shifting into slow motion, tumblers falling into place. Alex was rewriting his recipe aloud—sundried tomato pesto, with thyme instead of basil, running in a ribbon through the challah—but Corbin’s mind was racing.
Your bitterness will flavor the bread.
Negative feeling transferred into the food, communicated through its creation. If it was possible to channel bitterness and anger into the challah, was it possible to rid yourself of them that way, too? To bake them out of yourself? A purgation in flour and salt?
If it were possible . . . could Corbin do it? Bake the curse out of himself, one loaf at a time?
The thought ricocheted around his head, fizzed at the back of his throat, and settled in his nose, smelling of pine and snow—smelling of the kind of wildness that made things happen, and leaving him lightheaded with a surge of something that felt frighteningly like hope.