Tom sank back into his chair. Ollie snatched up Leticia’s drink and downed it in one. “Another round?”
This time James rose and offered to buy. He hesitated before asking Tom what he wanted, clearly expecting the other man—the now very awkwardly situated other man—to apologise and leave. When Tom said, “Same again,” James looked unsure but was clearly polite enough to simply go with the flow.
Ollie waited until James was out of earshot then rounded on Tom and hissed, “Go! Bugger off, too! You’re totally cramping my style.”
“How are you going to write this up, Ollie? When is this going to start being funny? He’s a nice guy! He’s just an ordinary bloke trying to connect with something good in his life and you’re totally fucking him up!”
They glanced back toward the bar, and, again, their heads touched, Tom’s hair tickling Ollie’s forehead. They jerked apart as James returned with the drinks. Once more, Ollie’s didn’t appear to have any actual alcohol in it, so he surged to his feet and returned with it to the bar. The other two men were talking about him behind his back. He couldn’t physically hear that they were; he just felt the bitter recriminations. He didn’t care. He drank a single vodka quickly, got the bartender to pour him a double, tossed that back and then got another—a double as well. And a spare one to go.
Back at the table, Tom was talking about wood. Ollie sniggered and interrupted, “What did the gay termite say to his supposedly straight friend? Hey, mate, you’re about to get a mouthful of wood.”
The conversation about Adirondack chairs stopped. Tom put his hand over Ollie’s drink. “You’ve had—”
“Are you hungry?” Ollie gave James a winning smile. He could pull these out whenever he wanted them. He’d being watching their effect on various people for years and wasn’t disappointed now. “I’m starving. Fancy the gondola up to the Skyline restaurant and all-you-can-eat New Zealand feast?”
James nodded enthusiastically as Ollie had expected he would. All day in a field with sheep dag and anyone would feel a bit peckish. He smirked at Tom as they rose. “Sorry. Do you need money for a taxi?” He swiped James’s unfinished drink as the other man was distractedly searching for his car keys. He gave Tom a provocative eyebrow raise as he polished it off. Tom suddenly plucked James’s newly found keys from his hand.
“Why don’t I drive you both? That way you can have a drink as well, Jamie.” Without waiting for the blond man to reply, Tom began walking toward the door, clicking the key fob and asking no one in particular, “What sort of expensive fucking car have you got then, veterinary?”
James hung back a little, and Ollie was forced to remain by a hand on his arm. “Look, your brother seems like a nice—”
“My brother? He’s not my
brother
; he’s my—”
Awkward
.
“Oh. I thought…so…why’s he so weird with you then?”
Ollie turned to him quickly, and James added apologetically, “About the drink thing? It’s kinda big brotherish overly protective, isn’t it? And the destructive tendencies—has he got a thing against beer mats? I thought he was, like, suffering from PTSD—because he said he was in the army—and you were looking out for him. That’s why you brought him along. Shit. I’m no good at this sort of human interaction stuff. I should have stuck to talking about sheep’s arses.”
Ollie didn’t help him out, he was thinking about the
weird with you
comment. He thought about it some more while James took the opportunity to visit the bathroom. Weird didn’t sound at all unpleasant by the time they all met up at the car. Ollie had a little difficulty climbing into the huge off-roader, but covered by pointing imperiously at the mountain which loomed fairly unmissable from everywhere in Queenstown. “That way.” He licked his lips and repeated this more clearly.
He was in the back, so he got to listen to James and Tom make desultory conversation about food. He lay down, feeling queasy, then shot back up with a small shriek, which he tried to turn into a manlier, “What the fuck?”
James twisted around. “Oh, sorry. Don’t worry. It’s fresh. I wasn’t expecting anyone in the car. That emergency I mentioned? Sorry.”
Ollie stared at the dead ginger cat stretched out next to him, pretending to be a pillow. He felt a rush of extreme OCD-panic sweep over him. He had
dead cat
in his hair! He snatched at the door handle, vomit rising in his throat. Tom twisted around from the driver’s seat and grabbed his arm. “What the fuck, Ollie! You’ll fall…”
Ollie fought him off and leaned out of the door.
Tom half-surged into the back, as if he thought Ollie was jumping out. Ollie heard James shouting, there was a sickening thud and a half-scream, half-howl and then Tom was steering the vehicle to the side of the road and the two men in the front were diving out and Ollie was on his own with the cat. It wasn’t telling him anything, so he half-fell, half-slid out of the backseat and staggered unsteadily to the front of the car.
A dog lay illuminated in the headlights, unmoving.
Tom and James were kneeling by its side like saints in a religious tableau praying over a Christian martyr. And Ollie supposed they were—the vet and the soldier and the victim of his…of his…
Ollie’s knees went from under him, and he collapsed with them beside the dog. James was pressing fingers to its neck and said authoritatively to Tom, “In the trunk—a carry harness and my bag.”
Tom shot off.
Suddenly, the dog jerked, lurching with an instinctive need to get to its feet and meet danger head on.
“It’s alive?”
James nodded, holding the dog still and stroking its neck to calm it. Ollie couldn’t think of a thing to do to help, but he picked up one paw and gave it a little squeeze and then held on, feeling the rough pads on his palm.
Tom returned with the bag and the large canvass sling.
Quickly, James filled a syringe.
“What are you doing? You can’t kill him!”
James didn’t even waste time explaining to Ollie. Only when he’d injected the dog did he nod to Tom, and very carefully they began to ease the animal into the sling.
“Ollie?”
Ollie lifted his tear-streaked face to Tom. “Let go of his paw. We need to get him into the car.”
Ollie swallowed and rose to his feet, watching them carry the dog. James was also on his phone, having a rapid conversation in Kiwi. Ollie caught a word or two, and then they were back in the car.
Tom drove and James navigated them through the streets of Queenstown until they came to the lake and then a low, long building with a smiling cat illuminated on a sign. A young woman was waiting for them. She was dressed in gym clothes and was stamping her feet to keep warm. She greeted James with a handshake, ignored the other two but directed them into the surgery and to a back room, where they laid the dog on a table.
James introduced her as Millie. They’d qualified together. She’d got a junior position in Queenstown; he’d gone to Wanaka. They occasionally worked together. Like his partner, she did small animal work.
When Ollie had first heard small animal he’d imagined
small
—mice and guinea pigs, perhaps. He’d never envisaged the large shaggy thing they now had on the table. He’d made hell of a thump for something
small
. Ollie’s nausea rose again. He felt Tom grab his arm, and he was led forcibly away down a corridor and pushed into a toilet.
The alcohol came up very easily.
It didn’t make him feel any better.
The tears returned.
Ollie couldn’t breathe for the misery. He wanted to curl up into a tiny ball and wrap his arms tightly around himself. He wanted someone else’s arms wrapped tightly around him, and the absence of such comfort for his entire life only increased his unhappiness. He leant over the sink, washing his face, scrubbing at the self-pity he saw in his reflection.
When he’d killed Ed Barnes, he’d been knocked unconscious and therefore spared the actual horror of seeing his bodyguard dead on the road. This was better. He deserved this.
There was a light knock on the door. “Ollie?” In his haste to vomit, he hadn’t locked it, and Tom eased it open. He had two cups of tea in plastic cups in his hands, and he offered one to Ollie. Ollie blinked. Life just went on? Tea could be offered and drunk?
When he didn’t take the drink, Tom indicated with a jerk of his head for Ollie to follow him, and because there seemed nothing else he could do, Ollie rubbed once more at his cheeks and did exactly that.
They stepped out of the back door of the unit into cold night air so pure and fresh that it seemed exhaled by the lake. Tom insisted Ollie take one of the cups, wincing a little at holding two hot plastic containers and then began sipping at his own.
Ollie swallowed. His throat was raw from the vomiting and the crying, so when he asked, “What’s happening?” it came out sounding as if he’d smoked a packet of unfiltered cigarettes.
“They’re sorting him out now. I don’t know.”
Ollie felt a familiar panic attack beginning to close off his breathing. His tea was plucked from his hand and put on the ground with Tom’s own, and suddenly he was wrapped in a tight, vast hug of leather and muscle and strength, and it felt exactly as he’d always imagined it would. Tom pressed his mouth to Ollie’s hair once more and held his lips there.
Into Tom’s warm neck, Ollie whispered, “I had a car accident last year. I killed my bodyguard.”
“Shhh. I know, Ollie. Don’t try to talk. You’re in shock.”
“I’d been drinking all day. I was going to tell him—I’d worked up to it, you see. All those tutorials for my PhD, but all I was thinking was about Ed…It had taken me all year to work out what I was feeling. I was going to tell him I loved him. But I—”
“Hush, you don’t have to tell me now. Just calm down and breathe slowly.” Tom’s arms squeezed harder around him.
“So I drank too much. Like I did tonight. He was driving. I opened the door, exactly like tonight. Because I didn’t want to vomit in his car.”
“Ollie, I know. I know. Don’t cry. Everything will be okay. Just try to relax and calm down.”
“He swerved. Same as you did. I don’t remember anything else because I was thrown clear. But he hit a lorry head on and was killed. I mean, I killed him.”
“Ollie, it
wasn’t
your fault.
No one
blames you.”
“No, you don’t understand. See, I’d told him. In the pub. I’d told him that I loved him, and he’d told me…said he was straight, and that anything I’d thought I’d heard or felt from him was only…his job.
Caring for me
. I told everyone I wanted to vomit when I opened the door, but I
didn’t
. I wanted to get out.
Jump
out. I think I saw the lorry, and I wanted to jump out in front of it. But it got him instead.”
Tom lifted Ollie’s face away from his neck, cradling his cheeks in both hands, staring at him intently. It was so cold their breath steamed between them. Tom turned the soft cradling into a squeeze of possession. “Can you misinterpret this?” and then he came in hard and fast with a searing kiss. His hands moved, roaming fiercely into Ollie’s hair, then went down his back, heaving him up and close and on, so their hips were joined. Ollie suddenly returned the kiss, as if he had been holding back for a moment to ensure it was real, but then for the first time committed to something without any internal dialogue distancing him from pain.
They only parted because Ollie, breathless from his earlier panic, had to take a vast gulp of air. Tom laughed and wiped casually at his mouth. “You taste of sick.”
Ollie was outraged, but then he could feel nothing but mounting desire as Tom hauled him back in for another long, mouth-wide kiss, as if declaring that he didn’t care however Ollie was, he simply wanted him.
For once in his life, Ollie didn’t want words. He decided he’d had his fill of them entirely. What good had any clever turn of phrase ever done him? This, this physical sharing of intent was far, far nicer.
Finally, Tom stopped kissing him and just pulled him back into a tight hug. Ollie went with it, his arms under Tom’s leather jacket against the warmth of the small of his back, the cotton of his shirt so thin he could feel the strong muscles twitch and flex as the other man shifted position.
Tom sighed and fished out his phone. “I’ll get you a taxi. You must get home.”
“What?” Ollie straightened. “I want to stay here until—”
“Absolutely not. Your mother would kill me.” Tom ignored Ollie protests and organised a taxi for him.
“Well, why aren’t you coming too then?”
Tom gave him a look. “I’ll have to wait for the police.”
Ollie froze. “What? No!”
“Yes. I hit a dog. I wasn’t in control of my vehicle. I’d also had a couple of drinks.”
Ollie hastily swiped up the two cold teas. “Drink them! I’ll get another!”
Tom smiled and cupped his face. “I’ll be okay, but I want you away from here.”
Ollie bit his lip. “Will you tell James sorry…about everything?”
“Sure. But, hey, good first date for your book…”
The joke fell very flat, and Tom apologised with a small pout as soon as he’d said it. Ollie swallowed, but whatever he wanted to say was lost when headlights swooped in from the street, and they were suddenly illuminated in their harsh glare, the soft, dark, comforting cocoon they’d discovered for themselves entirely lost.
“Tell James I’ll pay for the dog. Everything and anything it needs.”
Tom nodded. “Okay. I will. Thanks.”
“I’ll see you later tonight, yes?” Ollie felt a surge of panic once more, as if something he’d finally gained after an incredibly long struggle to find it was about to be snatched away from him. “Back at the house. You’re coming back tonight, right?”
Tom made a distracted gesture, and then bent to speak to the driver of the waiting taxi. He didn’t attempt to kiss Ollie again, but patted him on the head as he might had he been an older brother, and then bundled him into the backseat of the car.
He stood in the darkness watching Ollie depart, as Ollie, twisted around on the backseat until the cords in his neck began to ache, registering something ominous and frightening about the retreating figure that, had he still been using words to hide his baser emotions, he might have described as utterly chilling.