The Square Peg (5 page)

of a cat, a sleek black cat. He’d shed his long coat and boots and changed into a T-shirt

with a lot of skulls on it and no sleeves. His tattoos were spectacular, inviting the eye to

look and the hand to touch.

“Sorry about your dad,” Vin offered.

“Thanks. I didn’t know him; he left when I was a kid.” Ben leaned back and

turned slightly toward Vin. “Shane knew him better than I did.”

“Shane doesn’t know anyone,” Vin said. “I don’t mean it in a bad way. He just

doesn’t get involved. I think he cares more about the Square Peg than any actual

people.”

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27

“You wouldn’t know it to look at the place.” Ben regretted it as soon as he’d said

it. Vin must have some degree of loyalty toward Shane, as his boss at least, and even

though he’d said as much to Shane’s face, Ben didn’t want Shane to discover he’d also

been talking behind Shane’s back. “Maybe he just needs someone to do the organizing.”

“I don’t know. It’s kind of a mess, sure, but it’s a bar. It’s not supposed to look like

a five-star hotel.” Vin wrinkled his nose. “Not that I’d know what a five-star hotel looks

like.”

“Tell me more about the bar. What it’s like, what the customers are like…”

“It’s pretty mellow, mostly. I mean, it’s not a dance club. It’s low-key, and

everyone seems to get that most of the customers are gay, so we don’t get a lot of

straight people trying to cause trouble.” Vin made it sound as if
straight people
were

aliens from another galaxy.

“So…you’re not?”

Vin laughed. “Straight? God, no. I’ve been out since junior high. Are you kidding

me? I hope you didn’t have plans to set me up with some friend’s daughter or

something.”

“How old do you think I am?” This was a good-natured argument. Ben found

himself grinning. “Most of my friends don’t even have kids yet.”

Vin squinted at him, giving the question some thought. “Thirty? Forty?”

“All us old people look the same?” Ben asked, his voice dry. “I just turned thirty.”

“I’m twenty-two,” Vin said. “Dropped out of school to find myself, and I’m still

looking.”

“That sounds like a line you use a lot.” Ben had the satisfaction of seeing some

color show under Vin’s skin. “Does it work? Are you seeing anyone?”

“No. I don’t do that. Sex. Relationships. Don’t drink, smoke…” Vin’s gaze

dropped, and he rubbed at his forearm, stroking the dragon absently. “Body’s a

temple.”

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Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow

“Don’t the tattoos kind of cancel out that theory?”

“No! They’re an expression. They’re art.” Vin leaned closer and turned his wrist,

pointing at the swirled end of the dragon’s tail. “They’re initials, see?”

Ben frowned, trying to read them. He thought they were an
R
and a
W
. “Not

yours?”

Vin traced them with a finger. “No. They’re…a reminder. Of the first boy I ever

loved. Not that I’d forget him, but I wanted something visual.”

“Did something happen to him?” Ben asked gently, and Vin shook his head.

“Just the bad luck—from my perspective—of being born straight. God, he was

beautiful. I used to follow him around, watching him with his friends. They were all the

popular kids, you know? Plenty of money, smart, good-looking.”

“You’re not exactly hard to look at,” Ben pointed out, sympathy easy to find,

because he’d gone through something similar himself. Gay or straight, who hadn’t?

“The Goth look works for me. It’s who I am, but my high school had this strict

dress code, and I used to feel as if I was in a costume every day. Halloween was the

only time I turned up looking the way I wanted to. If I couldn’t be myself around him,

how could I ever make him see me?”

“What is it with all the black? I’m not prying or being judgmental, I swear. I’m just

curious.”

Vin’s answer was readily given, as if it was another speech he repeated often.

“Black’s pure. You can dirty white up, because anything you add to it stains, but black

just keeps getting blacker and more intense.” Vin shrugged. “Darkness swallows

everything in the end. Embrace it.”

“That’s an interesting point of view.” And from Ben’s perspective, on the

depressing side, but he supposed that only added to the appeal for Vin.

Vin smirked as if he’d read Ben’s thoughts. “I know I’ve got a fucked-up way of

looking at the world. I grew up dirt poor. Family moved up from Mexico when I was a

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29

baby. My mom’s Mexican; my dad’s white. He was a student working down there, and

he met her, they fell in love…violins and hearts. Except she was engaged to an older

man and shouldn’t have been even looking at someone else.” Vin shrugged again, a

fluid gesture, his silky hair falling over his face. “Love screws you up. That’s why I

don’t go there. And sex is just a complication.” He gestured toward Ben. “What about

you? Anyone special screwing up your life?”

Ben found himself responding with some confidences of his own. Vin was easy to

talk to somehow, just because he didn’t know Ben. And it wasn’t as if Ben had many

friends left to confide in. Most had apparently been closer to Jenson than to him,

judging by the way invitations to socialize had dried up since Jenson’s departure.

“Not at the moment, but recently, sure. There’s still stuff of his sitting around, I’m

sure, even though I spent hours trying to collect it all. He was great, but I wasn’t good

enough for him. Or something. Sometimes I feel as if I don’t know what happened. Just

that he wanted me to be someone I wasn’t, someone exciting and unpredictable,

someone who knew how to live. Some shit like that.”

“You don’t seem boring to me.” Vin was examining his fingernails now. “I mean,

you decided to let a complete stranger stay at your house. That’s unpredictable.”

“Somehow, I don’t think it’s the kind of thing he meant.” Other than the fact that

Jenson had thought his job was boring, though, Ben wasn’t sure how, exactly, he had

failed to live up to expectations. Extensive questioning hadn’t provided an answer. In

the end, it hadn’t mattered why he wasn’t what Jenson had wanted. He just…wasn’t.

“Sounds as if he’s got shit for brains.” Vin yawned, showing off white teeth and a

deep pink tongue. Ben had to admit it looked healthier than the fur-coated one he

sometimes saw when he was brushing his teeth. “Sorry. Pulled a double shift yesterday.

Needed the money. Speaking of which…”

“You don’t need to pay rent since this is temporary, but you can contribute to the

food and keep your room reasonably clean.” Ben made sure his voice was firm without

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Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow

being bossy or confrontational. “If you have friends over, well, fine; just don’t make me

feel as if I’m the outsider.”

Vin stared at him for long enough that Ben felt a blush rise, heating his face. “I

respect things,” he said finally. “Lines, boundaries, limits. I don’t need them, but I know

people do. No worries.”

The implication that those limit-restricted people were lesser beings had Ben

biting back a smile. God, had he ever been this young and earnest, so certain he had all

the answers? Probably. Once.

Vin stood and walked past him, pausing when he was level with Ben to reach out

his hand. Surprised, Ben took it, finding it warm and strong against his.

“You’re not as boring as you think,” Vin said gravely, squinting again as if it

allowed him to see Ben better. “You own half of the Square Peg. We’re all about

embracing your wild side. It’ll rub off on you.” He released Ben’s hand and grinned.

“So will a few of the customers if you bump into them in the men’s room.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ben said and hoped his bravado was convincing.

He hung out in the living room, trying to concentrate on a thriller he’d been

reading for weeks with a hopelessly complex plot.

Vin went upstairs to the guest room, then came back down to use the bathroom.

“Night,” Vin called from the foot of the stairs.

“Night!” When the house was quiet, Ben shut off most of the lights—he left one on

in the kitchen just in case Vin got up in the middle of the night—and went to brush his

teeth. It felt weird having someone he didn’t know just upstairs, and it occurred to him

they might have to make some rules about extra overnight guests to avoid

embarrassment. Not that he had any plans to bring someone home, but sometimes his

plans went awry.

He didn’t realize how tired he was until he put his head on the pillow. A full day’s

work at the office followed by a solid five hours at Square Peg had exhausted him, and

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31

there was an endless future of similar days to come. Sure, he could hope in six months

the bar would be turned around, making good money so he could quit his office job and

focus on it full-time. However, whether that would happen was anyone’s guess.

Either way, he was in for a hell of a year.

* * * *

bedside light, angling it away to save his eyes. Ben could remember he’d been running,

falling into deep water, then sinking. Yet even as he tried to control his harsh, ragged

breathing, the dream was fading. It still left him shaken, sweat cool on his back.

God.

He wasn’t prone to bad dreams, but they had plagued him when he’d been under

stress. The day before had certainly qualified.

The clock told him it was just past three. Too early to get up by far, but the

thought of falling asleep again, with who knew what waiting for him in his dreams,

didn’t appeal either.

It was stupid of him to think he needed to put some space between himself and

the nightmare, as if falling asleep in an hour would be safer. Still, in the middle of the

night, logic wasn’t as strong as instinct.

So. Face his demons while he was awake and maybe they’d flee from him in his

dreams? Worth a try.

Moving quietly, not wanting to disturb his houseguest, he went over to the tiny

built-in closet and took down a shoebox full of photos he’d found when he went

through his mom’s belongings.

There were only two pictures that were genuinely old, black and white with the

edges fragile. One was of his mother as a toddler. Her hair was pale and wispy, her

expression wide-eyed, lips parted. She had a stuffed animal clutched in her chubby

hands and looked as if she’d been focused on some story in her head only to be startled

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Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow

by the photographer. The second photo was of her as an older child. When Ben turned

it over, his grandmother’s handwriting spelled out,
Jenna’s first day of school.

The rest of the pictures were in color. Some of them were Polaroids, thicker and a

little bit faded, of his mother and father together. She looked like a hippie in her

seventies blouse with its ruffles and orange flowers, her hair long and loose, an arm

around a young, bearded Craig’s waist. She was pregnant with Ben, but no one would

have known it from that photo, her untucked cotton top hiding her waistline. They

were both smiling, happy.

A small collection of pictures chronicled the first few days of Ben’s life. They

shared the same hospital backdrop, white walls and pillowcases, brown fabric chairs

and blue blankets. Here was one of his mother propped up in bed, cradling him in her

arms, gazing down at him with an expression of wonder. She looked exhausted; there

were dark circles under her eyes, and she was thinner than he remembered her, but she

was smiling. Then another where she was looking at the camera or whoever was behind

it. Craig, maybe?

Ben went through the photos slowly. He wished he had more memories of his

father from when he was a kid. There were only a few pictures—and none he could be

sure were actually of Craig rather than some other male relative. He had a scent

memory of a man’s cologne on a shirt collar, and another of being tickled by large

hands as he giggled uncontrollably. And another of flying up into the air, a man

standing below him and tossing him high, the sky blue and the grass green. He’d been

scared and excited at the same time.

He’d sometimes thought about finding Craig when he was going through the

turmoil of adolescence, confronting him, punching him maybe, making him see how his

selfishness had ruined two people’s lives.

It’d never occurred to him then that the total was three.

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33

Now he wondered how Craig had overcome his addiction and if he’d had help.

How hard the struggle had been and if Craig had ever considered returning to them