Vincent's Thanksgiving Date (2 page)

He went through the motions of being a normal person in sort of shock, though the lingering adrenaline from speaking with the guy from 223 and making him laugh—and then dashing away from him like he was running for his life, made him restless. He set up his phone to charge, went to the bathroom, washed his hands, then stood in his kitchen trying to think about dinner although it was only the afternoon.

His day job was part-time office work at a local non-profit advocating for developmentally disabled adults, which usually meant he was home by early evening at the latest. It was rare for him to get home at the same time as his neighbor, but today Vincent had left early since there wasn’t much to do. Around the holidays, most people thought of charity as food banks and homeless shelters, and most of the other workers had gone home for the holiday already anyway.

The man from 223 left for work in the early hours of morning, rain or shine, and most days was home by three, although in June Vincent had barely caught a glimpse of him.

See you around
, Vincent heard himself saying again and winced at what a stalker he was turning into. He should go back to using his pills, and he could already tell his therapist was going to have something to say about this. She’d probably tell him that nerves were normal around someone he was attracted to. And then he would explain that it was more than nerves, that he felt like he was gasping for air when he tried to speak. He didn’t understand why other people found silence so uncomfortable when it had never bothered him. But every time he was quiet for too long, he could see people start to wonder what was wrong with him. Then he’d get cold and his palms would get sweaty, and he’d know from the knot in his stomach that he’d done it again; he’d alienated someone else with his inability to talk politely about things that didn’t matter.

He started up his laptop, determined to at least answer his professional emails to make up for his personal failures today. He got direct fan mail sometimes, and answering it could take days while he composed polite responses in his head that he hoped translated through text. His books were online-only novels, murder mysteries with a queer protagonist. He’d self-published the first one and a tiny niche publisher had published the rest. The publisher was talking about releasing them in print, but they’d been talking that way for a while so Vincent wasn’t expecting much. What would he do with print copies anyway? He’d never survive a book signing and he wasn’t sure he wanted a chance for fame. The amount of money he made was reasonable for a guy living alone with another job to fall back on, and the attention was minimal.

What he really ought to do was stop fretting over what he’d said in passing to a neighbor who had already forgotten it—please let him have already forgotten everything—and think about what he was going to do for Thanksgiving. 

Conceivably, he
could
make a pie. A pumpkin pie ought to go well with wine. He could get up in time to watch the parade, then eat a turkey sandwich and wallow. After that he could pretend to get some writing done while knowing that once he opened a bottle of wine any writing he could do would be unusable, except possibly an idea for sex scene or two.

Then, once he’d gorged himself on pie, he ought to treat himself to the gayest Thanksgiving ever and take a bubble bath. He could marathon a bunch of Shelley Long movies. Finish a whole bottle by himself, of something good too. That would be a day to be grateful for.

Or, he could actually write. It would keep him from winding up drunk, in a wet towel, facedown on his couch while Shelley Long modeled Wilderness Girl uniforms, which was not how he wanted to end up on Thanksgiving.

Thinking about it was so disheartening that he flopped onto the couch two days early and stared up the ceiling. Clearly something had to be done about his life before he wound up as the guy eating frozen pot pie by himself every Thanksgiving and staring through the peephole whenever his handsome neighbor went outside.

Of course, that was easier said than done.

It was still on his mind the next morning, making him hurry down to his car to head to work in order to avoid any more embarrassing encounters with his neighbor so soon after that one. However, once he got to the office he realized there hadn’t been much point in going in. His boss informed him he was taking the rest of the week off since everyone else was gone, and the sent Vincent home too. So Vincent snuck back up the stairs as though he’d done something wrong, and then sat in front of his laptop, determined to get some sort of work done today.

He had an established series he should be working on, but he wasn’t in the mood for murder right now. His series straddled the fence between unrealistic, overly elaborate, rich person murder mysteries like those of the masters, and the equally stylized mysteries of traditional noir, although he liked to think he got a little more realistic. Not that he personally knew anything about homicide, although his search history was probably going to get him arrested one day.

Anyway, the real reason anybody read his stories was because they had a lead character who had lots of sex with many different people. Vincent was starting to think that was why he was stuck with the current novel idea not going anywhere. It wasn’t the mystery that was the problem; Vincent was fully aware that his mysteries were not as complex as they could have been, although they worked for cheesy genre fiction. No, the problem was that that Landowski, his detective, generally known as Lando, wasn’t changing, at least, not for the better. The things Lando had seen were leaving him bitter and despairing, burning him out, and he knew it. His personal life was in a rut as well, bodies and faces a blur. What he needed was a connection with someone who didn’t die or wasn’t a complete villain.

Actually, he had one. He’d had one for most of the series, but Vincent wasn’t sure what people would think if he started including more scenes with the owner of the gay bar beneath Lando’s office.

Indecision had Vincent researching obscure, forgotten laws many cities had kept on the books after Prohibition, and then how to infuse flavors into alcohol, and then how exactly one died from wood alcohol poisoning, until he was deep in a sea of useless information and it took a knock at his door to snap him out of his research daze.

He wasn’t expecting anyone and tensed at the thought of dealing with some kid selling something door to door, or some religious group. If it was missionaries, he was going to ignore them as they deserved to be ignored. If it was kid he might have a dollar somewhere, maybe, though he didn’t keep much cash around.

He crept up to the door and leaned on his hands in order to peer through the peephole. He saw a halo of black curls before his neighbor raised his head and squinted as though he was trying to look through Vincent’s door.

“Hey, 220, are you home?” The man gave the door another tentative knock. “You usually are, this time of day. I need your help. It’s not an emergency, I promise. Actually, it sort of is, but not a life-threatening one.” He exhaled at the end of that sentence and leaned in. Vincent imagined his palm flat against the door exactly where Vincent had placed his hand. The guy from 223 lowered his voice. “Hey, come on. Please? I won’t bite.”

Vincent jerked his head up. His neighbor wasn’t flirting, he was teasing, because Vincent was clearly afraid of other people. Vincent tightened his mouth and opened the door. He wasn’t expecting his neighbor to take a tiny step backward, as if he was surprised Vincent had answered him. Then he smiled and Vincent’s stomach swooped in a truly alarming way.

His neighbor wore a red hoodie and tight jeans, though the hoodie was unzipped to show part of his collarbone and the top of the torn t-shirt he had on underneath. His ears were pierced. Vincent had never been close to him for long enough to stop getting distracted by his eyes and notice the studs in each earlobe. He focused on the red and black swirled globes, then realized he was staring and blinked.

“Cool. You’re here.” The guy from 223 managed to make that sound like a good, rare thing, as though Vincent wasn’t almost always home. But then his gaze dipped down and Vincent dropped his head to also take a look at himself, his loose, comfortable jeans and baggy sweatshirt, his purple fuzzy socks. His neighbor’s smile grew impossibly wide when Vincent raised his head and probably flushed beet red. But he kept talking before Vincent could offer an excuse for his wardrobe choices.

“Listen.” His sweet voice was even better when he seemed to be speaking for Vincent alone. “This is a lot to ask, I know, and you’re probably busy.” Somehow, he sounded like he meant that. Vincent made a strangled sound anyway. His neighbor raised an eyebrow, but otherwise ignored it as he made a short, helpless gesture. “But, well, this year I am doing something for Thanksgiving. I mean, this year I am
doing something
, and for the first time. It was going to be a little thing, but it turns out it’s more than you and me avoiding our families this Thursday. So now I’ve got more people coming over and it’s no longer such a little thing.” He took a deep breath as though he needed to calm himself and stared at Vincent with the most apologetic, imploring expression Vincent had ever seen. “That means I have to go to the store.”

“It’s the week of Thanksgiving,” Vincent heard himself informing his neighbor, possibly the most obvious thing he’d ever said, except for how it also implied what he wasn’t saying; only the desperate would visit a grocery store this close to the most food-centric of American holidays.

“Yeah,” his neighbor agreed with his every unspoken word and sighed. “Yeah, but it’s today or tomorrow, and tomorrow will be worse. I also have limited time available if I have to clean and get the place all Martha Stewart. Then work—I still work tomorrow. And then there is the food preparation I will probably end up doing after that… I really wasn’t expecting this.”

He wasn’t pouting. His expression was more disgruntled, like his plans had been disrupted and he was put out with humanity in general. Vincent thought, fancifully, that he looked like a disgruntled supervillain whose plot had been thwarted.

He still didn’t get why the guy was telling him this, but he had never spoken this much with Vincent in the entire time he’d lived here and Vincent didn’t want to say anything to make him leave.

Vincent considered the amount of work that went into hosting a Thanksgiving dinner party and how much his sister complained about it, then gave a cautious nod. “Okay?”

His neighbor dropped his shoulders. The motion sent a wave of detergent and flower scent in Vincent’s direction. “But it’s just me and my bike.” He seemed to deflate at the admission.

Vincent had forgotten the bicycle. The bicycle had a basket attached to it, and sometimes the guy from 223 wore a backpack if he had more to carry home, but there was no way he was going to be able to carry the groceries for an entire meal that size home with him, not in one trip. Maybe not even in two. Taking the bus by himself and carrying it all wasn’t really a possibility either.

Vincent understood the knock on his door now, and jumped. “You want to borrow my car? I don’t even know your name.” It was the only objection that came to mind. No one would want to steal his old sedan.

If anything, his neighbor appeared even more disgruntled. An unhappy frown came and went on his face before something measuring made him stare for another few moments. Then he extended his hand.

“You don’t?” He made the question into a mild complaint, but then offered a rueful grin. “Cory. Cory Hamilton.” His voice was even until Vincent took his hand. Vincent hated shaking hands, hated wondering if his handshake was firm and manly enough, if he was too limp-wristed for what they expected, but Cory took his hand without any pressure, and released it just as Vincent was imagining Cory’s slender fingers at his wrist, or trailing up his arm to draw him closer, or curled around his cock. “And you’re Vincent Thomas.” His teeth were so mesmerizing it took Vincent a moment to realize his neighbor, Cory, knew his name. He jumped again, and Cory lifted his hand away and explained. “Everyone on this side of the building knows you.”

Vincent hunched his shoulders as he realized what the other man probably meant. Everyone knew Vincent as that the strange, quiet one who kept to himself. Yeah, Vincent knew what they thought of him. That’s what people always thought of him. It took him a while to warm up, that was all. His coworkers liked him now, even if they hadn’t understood him at first. They probably still didn’t fully get how his anxiety worked, but they invited him out with them anyway. He even went, sometimes.

The memory of a night out in a bar with his coworkers didn’t make him feel any better about this, although he could admit that having a name for his handsome neighbor was something that would have warmed him at any other time.

He met Cory’s confused stare and realized he had let the silence go on too long.

“I have my license,” Cory went on slowly, and again Vincent got the feeling that Cory was thinking about something other than what he was saying, like his plans had gone awry and he needed to formulate new ones. That was probably Vincent’s overactive imagination making him see things that weren’t there. “And it’s in good standing,” Cory continued, as if he was trying to figure out he’d said that had made Vincent so unhappy. “No tickets. The only reason I don’t have a car is that cars cost money, and I live like a mile from where I work, so what’s the point? But I wasn’t going to borrow your car.” He tossed his head, dismissing that idea, and Vincent straightened. “I was going to ask if you needed to go to the store too, and if you’d mind me tagging along?” Cory’s smile returned, friendly and polite. “I could pay for gas.”