The Inside Edge, page 21
Nate exhaled and closed his eyes for a moment, scrubbing his hands over his face. “So where do we go from here?”
“I don’t have to go anywhere. I told you, I haven’t decided if I’m going.”
“Haven’t you?” Nate challenged. For the first time, he really took in the breakfast table. There was a tablecloth and linen napkins, and Aubrey had poured the orange juice in champagne glasses. Or maybe those were actually mimosas. He’d dressed nicely.
He’d obviously been buttering Nate up for something. Nate felt a little twist of guilt in his stomach for not noticing sooner. He might’ve missed out on Aubrey actually coming clean about Cirque and a much more productive discussion.
Aubrey dropped his gaze to his plate. That was answer enough.
Fuck.
“Look. Opportunities like this probably don’t come around that often, am I right?”
Aubrey gave him a weak smile. “There are only so many shows and a lot of retired athletes who can still skate.”
That was what Nate thought. Still, his heart sank. “And this is what you want to do? As opposed to, I don’t know. More broadcasting work. Maybe a stint on Dancing with the Stars.”
“I would be incredible, thank you for recognizing that.” The smile didn’t get much stronger, though. “Yes, this is what I want, at least right now. I’m only going to be this recently retired once. In a year or two my window will have closed. So, if I want to do it….”
“Now’s the time.” Nate understood. Hockey had felt like that too, in the later years. He’d had to choose between trying to find a spot on a team with a strong shot at the Cup or staying and playing with the team he loved, knowing they were in the middle of rebuilding and wouldn’t have a chance.
Marty’s business was in Houston. Nate stayed.
“Yeah.” Aubrey bit his lip. “But if it came down to you or Cirque… I’d stay.”
Nate couldn’t stand being the reason Aubrey missed out. Nothing was worth that. “Don’t.”
Now Aubrey closed his eyes. The corners of his mouth turned down, and crow’s feet appeared in the corners of his eyelids as he squeezed them shut. His brows drew together. “Nate—” His voice cracked.
Fuck. “Not, I’m not….” Nate forced himself to take a sip of coffee to wash away the lump in his own throat, took a deep breath, and tried again. “I love you,” he said roughly. “So I can’t be the thing that holds you back from following your dream. You should go.”
Aubrey swallowed visibly and opened his eyes. He looked sad… and scared. “I don’t want to break up.”
Oh, thank God. “Me neither.” Nate had to clear his throat. “It won’t be easy. But it’s not like I’ve never had a long-distance relationship before.” Being gone half the time was just his default state of being. “It’s not that bad. We can figure it out.” He could fly to Vegas on a Saturday redeye or an early morning Sunday flight and be back in Chicago by four on Tuesday. It wasn’t much, but it was more than nothing.
“You think so?”
In truth, Nate didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to give up without a fight. “It’ll be Christmas in a couple weeks. We’ll have a few days off where we can see each other. There’ll be other holidays…. Isn’t it worth trying, at least?”
“Yeah, no. Yes. Absolutely.”
Great. Now that they had that sorted…. Nate picked up his fork again, but when he took a bite of his frittata, it had gone stone cold. “Hey. I’m sorry I ruined your special breakfast.”
“No, I think I get at least half the blame for that. I should’ve told you about Cirque sooner.”
He should have, so Nate didn’t argue. “Let me take you out to breakfast instead to make it up to you?”
But Aubrey slowly shook his head. “Rain check?”
Nate blinked. “O… okay?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I just think….” He ran a hand through his hair, mussing up a style that must have taken him ten minutes to perfect. Nate had seen him fuss with it often enough to know. “I came over this morning to ask if you wanted to come with me to Vegas, and instead we got this.” He gave a tight, unhappy smile. “I need some space.”
That stung, but Nate couldn’t blame him. “Okay. I understand.” He took a breath, more challenging than it sounded, since it felt like tight bands had wound around his chest, constricting his lungs. “Text me later to….” To what? Let me know you’re okay? Confirm you’re not mad I said no? Aubrey had every right not to be okay, or to be upset Nate turned him down. “Just text me later?”
Aubrey stood up, rapping his knuckles on the table. “I will.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
IT WAS a good thing Aubrey was rich, because he apparently needed a lot of therapy. “I fucked up,” he admitted to Theresa as soon as she could fit him into her schedule. He was pretty sure she was working through her lunch hour, and she definitely charged extra for last-minute appointments. It was worth it.
She clicked her pen, never taking her eyes off him. “What makes you say that?”
“I didn’t tell Nate about Cirque, and he got mad.”
She sat back in her chair a little. Her face didn’t offer anything in the way of judgment, which…. Was that what they taught in therapy school? How to keep a poker face? He made a mental note never to play her in Texas Hold’em. “Did you escalate?”
“No. I told the truth.” He paused, considering how to phrase his next admission. Fuck it. “I asked him to come with me, and he said no.”
Again, no reaction. “Then what happened?”
“Then we talked, I guess? He’s not ready to move to Vegas. But he said I should go.” That was what Aubrey kept getting hung up on. They loved each other, didn’t they? They’d said as much. Maybe they didn’t say it all the time, but they said it. He was pretty sure they meant it. Wasn’t that supposed to make all the other problems go away?
He felt like romantic comedies had been lying to him.
Theresa tilted her head to the side. “It sounds like he’s supporting your dream.”
Aubrey made a face. “Cirque isn’t the dream… but I’m not ready to be done skating professionally. I should’ve known that by halfway through October.” Instead he’d gotten distracted by his attraction to Nate, and then sex with Nate, and then his feelings for Nate. Bantering with him gave Aubrey the same sort of thrill he got on the ice.
In retrospect, maybe it was no wonder he hadn’t noticed that he really wanted to be doing something else.
Apparently her last comment hadn’t steered him where she wanted him to go, because she changed tactics. “Did you break up?”
No, they hadn’t. The problem was that he didn’t know how they could be together and apart. “I don’t think so, but I… I don’t even know how to be a good boyfriend in person. How am I going to manage long distance?”
That finally got her sitting forward again, leaning across her desk. He’d given her something she could engage with. Yay. “Being a good boyfriend isn’t a singular skill set, you know. It means different things for different people. If you and Nate are going to try long distance, he probably already thinks you’re a good boyfriend.”
“Yeah, but his ex-husband sucks. The bar is too low to trip over.”
Now she pursed her lips. “I think you’re selling Nate short. He can’t be a pushover. In fact I know that he’s not from how you came in here after you met, complaining about him busting your balls.”
Fine. He let her peel away that excuse as well. That just left him with a plain, honest fear. “I just… I don’t want to mess this up.”
Theresa didn’t say anything. Aubrey fell into the trap as usual, trying to make her understand. “When I first started coming to see you, I couldn’t imagine being in a relationship. I lied to myself about not wanting one, but the truth is, I’m too needy, I always have to be the center of attention. I knew that, just like with my parents, I wouldn’t feel like I was important and I’d mess it up.
“Nate makes me—he’s just always paying attention, you know? Even when he’s not. He buys me my favorite crappy pulp paperbacks in airports before flights. He knows my coffee order. I mean, he’s hot and kind and funny, but so are lots of people. He never makes me feel ignored. He’s perfect for me.”
When he finished, Theresa had a hand over her mouth, but it didn’t do much to hide her smile. Maybe he was safe to play poker with her after all. “What?” he asked.
She took a moment to compose herself and then placed her hand flat on the desk. “First let me say that I don’t want to minimize what you feel for Nate. It’s wonderful that you’ve found someone you’re so compatible with.”
Aubrey sensed a but coming.
“However, your reasoning is flawed. Broadly speaking, people were never ignoring you. Their behavior hasn’t changed. Your perception has.” She tapped the notebook in the corner of her desk—the same one Aubrey had written his assignments in. “You put the work in. You made having a relationship possible, not someone else. And if it came to it, I am confident that you could do it again.”
AUBREY COULDN’T put it off any longer; the offer was about to expire. At one in the afternoon on Monday, he was in his agent’s Chicago office, signing the paperwork.
An hour after that, he confirmed his rental.
Now all that was left was packing up his life. He had four days to make the drive to Vegas. That basically gave him twenty-four hours to say goodbye. By the time Nate went to work tomorrow, Aubrey would be on the road.
How could he make the last day count? There were so many things he wanted to do with Nate—make him buy something fabulous and just out of his comfort zone on the Miracle Mile, take in an exhibit at the Art Institute, spend a day at Shedd. Neither of them was from Chicago. They could play tourist.
And then there was skating in the park. It was a cliché, but apparently romantic relationships were actually full of those. Besides, they both liked skating.
What else did they both like? Aside from The Cutting Edge. Did Nate like other romcoms? Was he too much of a jock to enjoy musical theater?
It felt like Aubrey still had so much to learn. That feeling led to a sense of inevitability. How were they ever going to get to know each other when he was in Vegas? Maybe this was as close as he’d ever get.
Maybe—
Aubrey blinked as he stepped into his apartment. The table was set for two—wineglasses and San Pellegrino, a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape in a bucket. The kitchen emitted some familiar wonderful smells—garlic and ginger and soy, and something with a strong sense of heat that cleared Aubrey’s sinuses.
That heat was practically glacial in comparison to the sight in front of him, though. Because Nate was decked out in a full tuxedo, hair freshly cut and styled, jacket buttoned. He looked like he’d come right out of a Tom Ford catalog.
“Wow,” Aubrey said. He didn’t mean to say it out loud, but his brain was having trouble doing more than just committing Nate to memory. He felt like his phone when it got stuck in an infinite reboot cycle. “I mean…. Hi.”
Nate’s eyes sparkled like in an actual fairy tale. Aubrey had the giddy thought that he’d be writing about this in his diary later, because he’d apparently reverted to a teenager. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind I took a few liberties.”
“For future reference, if you ever need to get away with something, just put on the tux.” Nate could politely rob a bank in that tuxedo and no one would lift a finger to stop him.
Maybe that was why Bond wore them.
Nate smiled, and Aubrey’s brain rebooted again. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The reboot finally completed, Aubrey cleared his throat. “What’s all this?”
Nate rubbed the back of his neck, and the Bond persona evaporated. Thank goodness. Bond was hot, but Aubrey didn’t love him.
“Uh, well, I figured a, I owe you for raining on your breakfast yesterday, and b, you’re leaving tomorrow, so I thought I’d recreate our first date. Our first real date, anyway. I wasn’t sure I could arrange for a blizzard, and even if I could, you’d have to drive through the mess it left tomorrow.”
That was why everything smelled familiar. “Did you get the whole tasting menu?”
“Yeah, but I only got the two bottles of wine.”
“My liver and I thank you for your restraint.”
They sat next to each other at the table, and somehow Aubrey ended up with Nate’s foot hooked around his ankle.
He didn’t fuck Nate over the back of the couch this time, but although it was slow and sweet, the desperation felt the same. He needed to make every second count.
Afterward Nate fell asleep with his head on Aubrey’s chest, breathing deep and evenly. Aubrey’s last thought before he followed was that he didn’t know how he could ever give this up.
IT WAS stupid to feel like the building was empty because one person had moved out of it. There were twenty-one stories; Nate was hardly alone. But lying in his bed after Tuesday’s show, trying not to grit his teeth over Paul’s continued glorification of “old-school hockey,” he missed Aubrey. It was like Nate could sense that the apartment upstairs wasn’t occupied.
He sighed and rolled over, thinking maybe if he wasn’t staring at the ceiling, he’d stop pretending he could see through it, only to find the light on his phone blinking.
Aubrey, with his first check-in.
Nate debated only for a second—using his phone in bed always made sleeping more difficult afterward—but then he snatched it up. He wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon at this rate anyway.
Made it to Lincoln, the text read. It was dated seven minutes previously. Fun fact, the state flag of Nebraska kind of looks like a big white dong.
Nate googled it, found he did not disagree, and navigated back to the text thread to say so, only to find another message. Nebraska, the Moby Dick State.
The corn fields are just a metaphor for the ocean, Nate replied, vaguely impressed with himself for remembering what a metaphor was. Tenth-grade English was a long time ago. Weather hold out?
As though he hadn’t checked it three times since Aubrey left.
Nothing but a few flurries, he confirmed. Think I’m going to hit the hay, though. Another 11 hours tomorrow.
Drive safe, Nate wrote back.
I will. Then, a few seconds later—I love you.
Nate smiled, stupidly tracing his thumb over the words as though he could feel their warmth. Love you too.
He was tired but too keyed up to sleep, so to distract himself, he flipped over to Instagram and scrolled through his private feed. His friends’ kids were growing up before his eyes. The dogs too, and Kaden’s cat.
And then he scrolled past an ad, blinked, and scrolled back up.
Huh.
Seized by a sudden wild hair, Nate clicked the ad. Aubrey had left a copy of his rental agreement just in case. He could get the address from that.
When he finally put his phone back on the nightstand a few minutes later, he had no problem falling asleep.
THERE WAS a box on Aubrey’s front step.
Not just any box either. It was four-and-a-half feet high and maybe twenty-two inches square. It had a cheerful red-and-yellow DHL sticker and a fat customs form taped to it. When he picked it up, it weighed a ton.
Had he ordered something and forgotten? He hadn’t been sleeping well the past few nights. He was used to Nate’s deviated-septum breathing at night, and now he needed a white-noise machine or something. He’d been meaning to order one online. Maybe the lack of sleep had caused him to do some late-night impulse shopping, but he didn’t remember it.
Weird.
He took the box inside.
Finding a knife that was actually sharp took some doing. Aubrey hadn’t done a lot of unpacking, and the knives provided in furnished rentals had notoriously dull blades. But finally he managed to get something that would cut through the thick tape.
The box had layers, like an onion. Slice by slice, his living room became a cardboard graveyard. Inside the two exterior boxes was an actual honest-to-God wooden crate that said FRAGILE THIS WAY UP in Italian. Aubrey didn’t have a crowbar, so he carefully pried off the lid with a butter knife. Well, two butter knives; the first one bent. Then there were packing peanuts. Then bubble wrap.
He was starting to doubt there was anything actually inside the box when he found the semi-sharp knife back in the pile of packing material and sliced through the tape holding the bubble wrap.
It fell away slowly, dreamily, leaving behind a four-foot-tall mustard and puce glass sculpture that looked… that looked….
It looked like a giant whale penis with a really nasty skin infection. Just looking at it, Aubrey knew it must have cost several thousand dollars, never mind the cost to get it to the States. It was the kind of color that would only appear in nature if nature were very ill. There was no hope that it would ever match Aubrey’s décor, because Aubrey was not a cave-dwelling gremlin who’d had his taste surgically removed.
What the fuck. It looked just like the hideous vase they shattered at Nate’s apartment, only larger and orders of magnitude more hideous.
It had to be from Nate. No one else would spend that kind of money on something so singularly unattractive. But what kind of message was it supposed to send? Aubrey didn’t think it was a callback, intentional or not, to Nate’s relationship with Marty. Nate was definitively over that. It seemed like an unsubtle reminder of what had happened to the first vase.
The shape was right, anyway.
The kicker of it was, Aubrey didn’t want to get rid of it. Sure, it was ugly, but it was hilarious.
While he was cleaning up, he found a card in the mess of packaging—typed rather than handwritten, probably because Nate had bought this on the internet and never seen it in person. Happy housewarming!—N. Very understated. He could hear Nate saying it too, see the warm, smug curl of his mouth around those words as he handed over a supremely useless gift. That fucker.
Aubrey set the sculpture on the breakfast bar in the kitchen. Maybe he could get matching plates.
