Chapter 4 - JayceNamidJayceNamid

Chapter 4

Jayce

I never realized just how much I depended on Jordyn's presence to ground me, and I've been so lost, floating on my own without him. After our parents died, we were all the other had. We both wanted more one day, of course - a wife, a husband, kids. We wanted families of our own. I've always known that would be harder for me than for Jordyn; after all, how many single gay men are there in a backwoods town with a population under three thousand? Not many. As far as I know, it's just me. Still, I wanted that for each of us - to have someone to love other than each other. We'd always love one another. We'd always be a part of the other's soul; that's how twins are, but we both knew we needed more. Neither of us had found it, so we'd been one another's everything.

I knew the moment I lost him that his ghost would haunt me at the shop .

The vacant desk in the office is gathering dust because I can't bear to sit in his chair, and the absence of his bulky shoulders as he stood at the front counter plagues me every day, but it's the small things I've found somehow harder to bear. It's the thirty texts a day about football and food that never arrive. The online dogs that bark on my phone screen with no one for me to send them to or laugh at them with. The tea that no longer miraculously appears on my workbench at four every afternoon.

For the thousandth time in only a few short weeks, I'm sitting on the single high bar chair behind the reception desk holding my phone in my hand, willing it to beep or to vibrate or to ring until my knuckles whiten and the edges cut into my skin. What am I supposed to do now, alone with my thoughts and my hopes and my dreams? Alone in the shop and in my truck and at home. Alone with no one on the other end of the telephone line.

I crush my lower lip between my teeth hard enough that the metallic taste of blood floods my mouth as my thumb slides along the blackened screen. It's not the first time. Without the sound of my tools, the silence that seems to hang in the shop like thick fog is deafening, and my world is collapsing into a black hole of nothingness.

The sound of the door chime pulls my attention from the breath that sits trapped inside my lungs and the heat of the salt water that's found its way onto my face once again, and I manage to loosen my grip on my phone and set it on the counter in front of me .

Namid asked if he could come to the shop on a Saturday. He doesn't spend a lot of time around people, which makes sense, I suppose, as any time I hear people talking about him in town, it's always with a bit of uncertainty. They aren't sure what to make of him with his refined demeanor and almost otherworldly beauty. Objectively, I understand why they think he's out of place here. People here are kind enough, but they're hearty and boisterous and roughened by the cold and the dark. They are eagles and falcons - strong, sturdy hunters - fending for themselves in an obvious, almost predatory way. Namid doesn't feel out of place to me. He feels like a jay, bright and small and blue and beautiful. Happy to soar through the clear spring skies looking for seeds and berries. Yet there seems to be a quiet strength to him, like he's thriving by foraging in the crisp snow-covered woods. He fits here, just as the jay does. He simply doesn't conform in the way others expect him to.

He smiles at me as he walks in, and it's effortless and happy and brilliant. It's like he's offering me the gift of a single ray of light to cut through the darkness surrounding me, and I can't help but smile back, even though the movement is unfamiliar and awkward these days.

"Good morning." He crosses the room without hesitation and sets a paper cup on the counter in front of me.

"I thought I was supposed to buy the next round."

He looks almost playful. "You'll just have to get the next, next round, I suppose. "

I'm not sure what to say to that, so I just mumble a, "Thank you," as I stand and take the cup.

"You want me to show you around?"

"I'd love that, thank you."

He keeps talking as he follows me through the glass door that leads into the work bay.

"I've been here before a few times, for Ken's shitty old trucks mostly. Ken says that he used to be his own mechanic before you opened this place, but as someone who's seen him try to fix the office's radiator, I'm grateful that I don't have to drive something that he's worked on."

We're standing in the shop next to the lift, surrounded by tools and the smell of oil. We're standing in a place where I stand a hundred times a day, but it feels different with him here rambling at me, filling the silence.

"I've never really learned to do much with cars. I'm good with math, and I read enough to enter some kind of reading triathlon if such a thing exists. I don't think it does though. I'm a pretty good cook, I think, and I'm handy enough when our plumbing has issues, but cars I've never really figured out."

He walks down under the lift into the pit.

"This is very cool. So, you don't have to slide under cars on those little scooters these days, huh?"

He glances briefly in my direction as he walks back out of the pit and resumes his exploration of the shop's diagnostic computers and the pneumatic tools I've left on the floor since I usually don't have the energy to put them away at the end of the day anymore.

"I mean, I own one of those."

He spins around to face me with a grin.

"Can I play with it?!"

A laugh forces its way from my chest. A laugh . A short, tight, strangled sound that I don't quite understand anymore.

"Can you…play…with it?"

"Yes."

"No."

He shrugs and continues wandering around, trailing his graceful fingers along the edges of toolboxes and the curves of wrenches before coming to a stop in front of me.

"One day, you'll let me play with it."

He sounds so confident, so sure of himself, so…joyful. Like he intends to insert himself into my life and my shop for long enough that I'll agree to let him use one of my tools like a child's toy until he somehow smashes into the lift and brings an entire car crashing down on me…or himself.

I don't know how to respond other than to shake my head in disbelief and lead him back to the reception area.

His playfulness fades as we approach the office door. It's opened about a foot. That's how Jordyn left it the last time he walked out. I haven't been able to approach it since .

When I pause, unable to take the last two steps and push the door open, Namid lays his hand on my forearm.

His touch is warm through my thick flannel shirt, even though his fingertips rest so lightly on my arm that I can barely feel their pressure. The heat spreads across my skin, down through the muscle, until it feels like my arm is throbbing where we're connected. I don't understand this sensation. Even though there is no one in this town for me to build a life with, we get tourists in the summer, and I spend plenty of time letting them touch me and touching them in return. All the lips I've kissed, all the skin I've touched, it all blends together into something vaguely memorable but ultimately uninteresting and indistinguishable. Never has the brush of a hand through fabric sent my body reeling the way his does. I really have lost it.

"Do you want me to do this alone?" His tone is gentle, the type of tone one might use on a hurt or skittish animal.

"No. I'm okay."

I take a deep breath and force myself forward.