Double Blind (17 page)

“I need cheese, and I can’t decide which is better. Help me.” When Ethan did nothing, Randy pushed the cheese the rest of the way into his mouth. “Chew, Slick.”

Ethan did, and the world came reluctantly back into focus. He ate the cheese without really tasting it, though, and took a bottle of water absently from Randy and drank without looking at him. But then the second piece of cheese came into his mouth, and he looked up at Randy, startled as a quiet explosion took place inside his mouth. It was smooth, it was… buttery, but it had a bite to it, too, and something smoky—

“Second one,” Randy declared, and tossed several packages into the cart. “I’ll keep extra on hand, too, in case you go into a coma again on me.”

Ethan grimaced and drank more water. “Sorry.”

Randy took control of the cart and aimed them back toward the bakery. “You freak me out sometimes, Slick.”

Ethan freaked himself out, to be honest. What was he doing here? What was he doing in Las Vegas, playing poker and having dinner with gangsters? Why wasn’t he going back to Provo, apologizing to Marion and getting his job back? Why was he eating cheese at Whole Foods and playing dress up at H&M?

He watched Randy moving with determination through the racks of bread, pinching several and shaking his head in dismissal before picking up a large, long, crusty loaf with an almost piratical look of victory, and Ethan realized he was looking at his answer.

Because I’m following him
.
Because Randy is the strangest, most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen, and right now he’s the sun I can’t otherwise seem to find, even when it’s right above me in the sky.

Randy glanced at Ethan, waggled his eyebrows, and held up a loaf of bread like the spoils of war.

But I can’t let him know that,
Ethan thought, and held back the warmth he truly felt as he smiled back.

The
knock on the door came exactly at seven, and Ethan watched, still mystified by the whole experience as Randy ran a nervous hand through his hair and went to let Crabtree in.

The house had been immaculate when he and Randy had come home from the store, but Randy still went over everything, straightening pillows and wiping off the face plates of the light switches. Once everyone had showered, he’d stood in his towel and wiped it all down again, all but getting a magnifying glass out and searching for stray hairs. For a minute Ethan had thought he was going to iron the hand towel by the sink too.

But in between their return home and the bathroom inspection before Crabtree’s arrival, there had been the food, and there had been the fight.

Randy had managed, in between barking out cleaning orders and arguments with Mitch, to prepare a three-course gourmet meal that actually was gourmet. Ethan had made casual notice of the ingredients he’d brought back for breakfast and been impressed that Randy’s taste in food was not parallel to his penchant for grease-stained fingers and shredded T-shirts. But as he watched Randy work, as he picked up the notes Randy had pulled out of a binder over the top of the fridge, he saw that Randy was actually a much better cook than Ethan was himself, and Ethan was no slouch.

Randy moved with casual skill around the kitchen, chopping and weighing and sautéing even as he aimed a butcher knife at Mitch’s nose and declared, “I didn’t
mean
to do this, but it’s here now, and it might end up being the best thing for everyone, so just
shut up and let me cook if you aren’t going to help!
” After that Mitch had taken off on one of the bikes in the garage and headed for a local bar, and Randy paused his preparations long enough to console Sam. Then he sent Sam after his husband in a cab because he didn’t know how to drive Randy’s stick-shift truck. Once Sam was gone, Randy peeled out of his T-shirt, tied a bandana around his head, aimed a fan at himself, and got really serious.

He was making, Ethan saw from the stained notes on the table, baked salmon in cucumber cream wine sauce. But the first course would be mesclun salad with lemon vinaigrette, and there was some note about asparagus spears that Ethan couldn’t quite mentally map but was looking forward to seeing. With the salmon would be small new red potatoes—the notes said carved into mushroom shapes, but surely Randy didn’t have time—and a julienne of fresh snow peas and carrots. The third course would be a modified tiramisu, served with fresh custard in a martini glass.

“I’m cheating on the tiramisu,” Randy said, thin-lipped. “I’m going to run out of oven, so the ladyfingers are from Whole Foods, but I’m making the custard to go with it myself. But he’s still going to know I bought the ladyfingers.”

“How?” Ethan asked.

“He knows what mine taste like,” Randy said, pulling an apron from behind the broom in a cupboard.

It was funny, because they had only been talking about tiramisu, but somehow the way Randy said that convinced Ethan that the double entendre he heard wasn’t an accident.

“You’ve cooked for him before?” Ethan asked, as mildly as he could.

He should have known better—Randy didn’t do indirect. He glanced over his shoulder—his bare shoulder, slick with sweat—and looked Ethan in the eye. “I’ve cooked for him. I’ve fucked him, too, but mostly he’s come here for dinner, and then we’ve gone back to my bedroom where he’s tied me up and done the sorts of things to my body that would curl your little Mormon’s toes.”

He turned around and went back to chopping, which was good, because Ethan needed a few seconds to recover, both from what Randy had revealed about his relationship with their imminent dinner guest and the knife cut that had been his reading of Nick.

“How did you know Nick is LDS?” he asked, when he thought he could manage it coolly. He didn’t.

Randy shrugged his shoulders—Ethan noted, helpless to do otherwise, the way it made the muscles in his back ripple—and cleared his cutting board. “Lucky guess.” He picked up a cucumber and began to cut into it.
Slice, slice, slice.
“So he has a name now.”

And you had to go and open this door, didn’t you?
Ethan scolded himself. “He’s always had a name.”

Slice, slice, slice.
“He a broker too?”

Out. I want out of this.
“He worked for Deseret Book Company. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’s publishing house.”

“I know what it is.”
Slice, slice, slice. Chop.
“‘Worked’. Past tense, is it?”

Ethan’s fingers dug into his own arms, which were bare. He was wearing a new T-shirt. It hadn’t been washed yet, and it itched. “Yes. He was laid off six months ago.”

Ethan held his breath, waiting for it. He didn’t want to be exposed like this, and he resented being made to spill his dirty laundry just because Randy liked to play games. His rage spun out of reason and into wordless chaos, and it kept spinning, cycling inside him with nowhere to land because Randy wasn’t saying anything. He just kept cutting his vegetables:
slice, slice, slice, slice, chop
. Ethan drew a new breath and waited again, sure Randy was just drawing his retort out, and Ethan kept himself braced and ready, but still, nothing except the fucking slicing and chopping.

Then, finally, Randy glanced over his shoulder. “You’re gonna pass out, Slick, you keep holding your breath.”

And Ethan lost it.

“He’s married,” he spat, and when Randy didn’t turn back around, Ethan stormed over to him, looming over him, ignoring how fucking sexy he looked all slicked over, how he was practically oiled, how the sharp, fresh aroma of the vegetables mingled with his musk. Ethan tried to breathe through his mouth, but then he could
taste
it, and that made it worse. It made him furious. He grabbed Randy’s wrist. “He’s married, okay?
Married.
With four kids. Nick and Mary Snow, and their cherubs Jacob, Rachel, Ezra, and Ruth. They look like a fucking Hallmark card in their Christmas photos.”

Randy’s face had been bland until that part, but then he actually looked surprised. “He sends you his family’s Christmas cards?”

“No,” Ethan spat. “I saw them on Facebook. Which I had to hack—” Something started to break inside him, but he pushed on, because he saw the flicker of pity in Randy’s eyes, and he knew he’d misrepresented this, and he wasn’t going to be
that
pathetic. “I knew,” he said, scathing. “I knew from the moment we met. He was married then. So don’t go looking at me like that.”

“That’s not why I was looking at you like that,” Randy said, and Ethan could see him trying to school his features again, but the pity was still there, and it made Ethan all the angrier.

“I
knew
he was married, so
stop.
That’s not why I left him.” He waited a beat, then sneered. “This is where you ask me why, Randy.”

Randy’s eyebrows lifted. “Okay, sure. Why, Randy?”

Ethan paused, confused, then caught the “joke” and rose up in another wave of fury. They were endless, those waves, always carrying him forward and he was glad for them, because without them he was fairly certain he would go under and drown. “Oh, you’re so
clever
, you little shit, aren’t you? Always seeing everything, even what you shouldn’t, and you’re having such a
good time
picking me apart—”

“Slick?” Randy’s voice cut quietly across the scream of red.

Ethan huffed, angry at being caught, but caught all the same. “What?” he snapped.

Randy nodded, discreetly, down toward the counter. “Would you mind putting down the knife?”

Ethan blinked, then looked down and saw, to his complete surprise, the butcher knife quivering in his hand, its tip flashing, scattering bits of cucumber and knocking over the open container of cream, sending the thick, yellow-white liquid down the train. The knife was aimed at Randy’s hand, which had backed up several inches and was off the cutting board entirely and now balanced carefully against the edge of the sink.

Ethan dropped the knife, let out his breath and the rage with it, and without his fury to support him, the wave crashed over. To his eternal shame, he felt the dark crush him, and he began to cry.

Sobbed, really—and why it happened then, finally, after months of wiping away tears and sniffling and nothing more, why it was
there
that he finally broke down, there in Randy’s kitchen, the world smelling of cucumber and garlic and sweaty man and lemon cleaner, why
there
he didn’t know. He just knew that he couldn’t hold it back anymore, the pain of days—which was, of course, the pain of years, and in another view, of a lifetime. It hit him square in the center of the chest, and as if breaking down emotionally in front of Randy weren’t enough, his body had to fail him too. His knees buckled and he crashed down literally as well as figuratively.

And then, in a move that both healed and cracked him further open, Randy’s arms were around him, keeping him from falling, and when it was clear Ethan and his pain were too much to keep upright, he eased them gently to the floor, sat Ethan between his legs, and took him into his arms.

“Oh God,” Ethan whispered, giving in and burying his face in Randy’s neck. “Oh
God,
I’m so sorry.”

“Hush,” Randy said, his rough fingers skimming over Ethan’s shoulders before drawing him in against his bare chest with only a tiny bit of hesitation. “I’m not trying to be clever, Ethan. I’m not trying to be anything. I’m no good at this, and I’m the one who’s sorry, because you deserve better than me for this.”