Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lennox

I shouldn't have said that.

My flashlight is swallowed by the depths of the basement as I descend the stairs, one careful step at a time, sinking into darkness. An ashy smell bites at my nose, reminding me of the charcoals that I sketched with last night. The remnants are still under my fingernails and staining the creases of my palms.

And I shouldn't fucking have said that.

Why did I?

Because he asked? Because it's the truth? Because I don't know how to stop thinking about him?

I've felt that confusion he's talking about. It used to fill my thoughts and my sketchpad, endlessly coiling and snaking around in hasty, desperate drawings—the only way I knew how to bleed it out. Fuck, it hurts to remember that. It hurts to know he's going through something like it now.

And at the same time, there was this weightlessness when I saw him standing in the lobby, his height and the length of his arms and the angle of his jaw, and he made me lightheaded. He made me forget what I was doing, why I was there.

He makes me forget I'm mortal.

Which sounds bizarre, I know. He makes me feel larger than myself. Part of something bigger. The same feeling I get when we're all these separate mechanisms working together on one of Jamie's films. The same feeling when the world slips away as my pencil scratches along my sketchpad.

I felt delighted . Are you supposed to feel that when you see a person?

I glance over at him now as we reach the bottom of the stairs, his hat tugged low, eyes fixed ahead, and every bit of that feeling is right there, simmering under the surface.

I could fall for him.

So hard that I don't know if I would ever be the same again.

It could change me.

Do I want to be changed?

I haven't fallen for anyone since Archer. Not really. I've cared about people. I've had relationships. But I learned very early on what it felt like not to be safe. That vulnerability which continually exists as a trans person. I think most anyone who's under that rainbow umbrella probably feels it.

And I don't want to be there again.

No way. Not the way it felt with Archer in that hallway, polished white tile under my shoes, the scent of chlorine cloying the air. Even after all these years, my stomach still knots at the memory, nausea still thickens in my throat. Everything I felt about Archer flipped in a microsecond.

He's not Archer .

But he's not fully safe either. And I don't know if he knows I'm trans, on top of everything else.

I press my lips and then dig out my phone. I pull up an image of the hotel blueprints. I need to concentrate on why we're here. Get through this and then onto the next thing. Which is locating this recreational room. Then filming. Then finish up the tentacle man for that client.

"We go this way," I say, gesturing with my chin. I haven't studied the layout for the basement much, but it looks like the room is straight back from us, underneath the library. "Another long, dark hallway."

"Seems to be the thing around here."

"I guess. Except?—"

Our lights scan over a wall in our path, about ten feet away.

"That wall shouldn't be there." My forehead lines as I glance back down at my phone. "It's not on the blueprint."

"Show me." Reed moves closer. My throat closes. The way he smells . That musk and cotton. And that tiny spark of chlorine, which is actually real right now.

Focus .

"We came down the stairs here." I point to the outline of the stairwell. "And then this hallway that leads straight back. So this wall shouldn't be here."

"No." He shakes his head, my phone casting a white light on chin. "Think there's a way around?"

I point to another point on my phone. "Maybe here? But it gets confusing on the blueprint."

He walks to the wall, his joggers hugging his thighs, his hair peeking out from under his hat, the width of his shoulders drawing into narrow hips.

Stop noticing .

He extends a long arm and sets his palm flat on the wall. "There's a doorway."

"There is?"

"On my left." He turns. "You probably can't see it from there. Lots of shit blocking it."

As I near him, I realize he's right. The door's nearly covered, hidden behind boxes and an upturned dining chair, some kind of easel, and a few sagging pillows.

"I don't think there's a door handle." He dislodges a chair from the pile. "Which makes it fucking creepy."

We toss all the junk in a pile on the side, and then we're staring at the door.

"So…" I take a breath, dust and charcoal still thick in the air. "We could break it."

He runs a hand along the top of the doorframe, his fingers moving lightly, tattoos on the back of his wrist shifting as his forearm rolls. "Why not? The whole building is set to be demolished in three weeks. What's one more broken door?" He twists to look at me. "Do you want to?"

I step back. "You can."

"Yeah?" His eyes light as his hand falls.

"Go on." I take another step back. "Show me what you've got."

His lips rise, then fall as he tucks his phone into his pocket. I steady my flashlight on the door. He takes a breath, angles his shoulder toward the door, and then steps into it, slamming against the wood.

The door doesn't budge.

"Fuck, I thought it would be easier." He laughs softly, deep in his throat, and then he backs up again. He concentrates on the door, then rams his shoulder into it. Wood splinters, the door swinging in. He stumbles but catches himself.

Beyond him is pitch black. No windows, no light.

He pulls his phone out, and we both sweep our lights around. The deep red carpet dead-ends at the threshold of the doorway, dull light green tile beyond. A handful of cabinets line the walls. The room's shaped like an L, not wide enough for anything beyond the cabinets. Directly across from us is another wall, but a door is to our right, this one open with more black beyond.

"There always seems to be darkness in this building." Reed backs up so he's standing next to me.

"An unlimited supply," I agree.

I glance down at the blueprints on my phone, trying to make sense of things.

"I suppose we keep trying to head straight back from where we are." I step into the room. "So if we take a right here, then we need to head left at the next opportunity. If we get to the end of the building, then we've gone too far."

"Alright." He stays with me, a foot away. "I feel like we should leave some breadcrumbs or something."

My lips lift. "Do you have breadcrumbs?"

"Nope."

"Me neither." All I have is what's in my pockets. "I've got a Sharpie. We could draw an accurate map."

"On what? Do you have paper?"

I negotiate my phone and flashlight to pull out the Sharpie and take off the cap with my teeth. Then I stretch out my arm, pulling up my hoodie sleeve with the other hand. "Nope."

"Let me." Reed tucks his phone into his pocket and then leans over me, tugging my sleeve farther up. "I'd draw it on my arm"—he shrugs—"but tattoos."

"I can see that," I say around the Sharpie lid.

He slips the marker out from between my fingers, then hesitates, his hand in the air, before he takes the cap from between my lips. "Unless… you want to draw somewhere else on me?"

His voice lilts at the end of the question, his brows rising. Then he suddenly stiffens. "Fuck, I'm sorry, Lennox. I didn't mean to…"

"Flirt with me?" My lips rise.

"I wasn't." His forehead lines under his hat. "Or if I was, it wasn't… intentional. It just came out. I…fuck."

"It's alright." My wrist is cradled in his hand. "You're safe here."

His cool brown eyes shift over my face. "Other than the bloodthirsty wombat and murder basement?"

"Besides that."

His fingers clasp lightly, a shiver moving from my forearm to my elbow.

"It is okay to flirt, you know," I say.

"Sure." His face sharpens. "Men flirt with other men all the time."

"They do." A smile brushes my lips. "They call it ‘fucking around' or ‘giving each other shit'. But if you watch carefully, it's absolutely flirting."

He blinks, staring at me for a long moment. Then he laughs. It's so unexpected that I stiffen, nearly taking my hand back. Which he is still holding onto.

Laugh lines carve into his cheeks. I've never seen them before.

"In the locker room a couple of days ago," he starts, "everyone was in the showers, and Saif was running around, dick kinda swinging everywhere. Not that I, uh… noticed."

"Of course not."

"Yeah, uh, so… someone flung a Speedo at him, and they were all laughing so hard. And I…" He shakes his head, smile falling. "They were just ‘fucking around', I guess."

My brows rise. "Naked in the slower and flinging clothes at each other? Clearly no sexually charged behavior there."

He laughs again. "They weren't…" He pauses. "It wasn't sexual. It was just…"

"I know what you mean." I keep my hand still in his fingers, my skin prickling at each brush of his fingertips. "But it's easy to overthink things."

"Yeah." His thumb sweeps along the outside of my wrist. "I've been doing a lot of that lately." He pulls in a breath. "Okay, let me draw this."

I shine my flashlight on my arm so he can see.

He presses the tip of the Sharpie below the heel of my hand, the wet ink seeping into my skin, and draws a rectangle. He outlines it carefully, with hatch marks for the stairs. The Sharpie feathers as he draws a door next to the stairs and then writes "broken" next to it.

"Like that?" He blows out a breath over the ink, cooling my wrist.

"Yep." My voice roughens, that tingle racing up into my shoulder. "Like that."

"Good." He looks down at his work, hat pulled low, his palm warm against the back of my hand.

He's got a face that begs for makeup. Achingly beautiful facial structure. I could spend hours bringing something to life on his cheekbones, his jaw, the bridge of his nose, his lips.

He lights up so many different parts of me—something deeply creative, something real, something edged with a desire to create. Even just standing here, that touch of his hand, that all-encompassing feeling he gives races over me, in cold dregs, in warm desire. It's mixed up. It's tangled. It's deep in my body.

I slip my hand back from his.

"I like your nails," he says quietly. "And your…" He flinches, his jaw tightening as caps the Sharpie.

"Thanks," I say, but he's already turning, shoving my Sharpie in his pocket.

Does he know my nails are painted in the trans flag colors? I open my mouth to ask, then hesitate. I need to tell him. I can't keep holding this part of myself back.

His light swings toward the darkness, and he takes a step in that direction.

I'm proud of who I am. It's not that I don't want him to know. But all of this—down to the tile underneath my feet—it reminds me of so much.

And here we are, alone .

I could go into all the various experiences I've had, but at the core is something I hold fast to. That I know is always true, beyond authenticity. Beyond the argument of when one should or shouldn't offer up this information.

It's this— be safe .

We're alone. I've only known him for a short time. We kissed. And I just invited him to flirt with me. He also has at least six inches on me, and even with my Muay Thai training, that's a physical difference, which is difficult to overcome.

Can I trust him?

I'm not going to bet my safety on it.

Although I'm still walking with him into the depth of a dark hallway, the coolness of the basement making me tug up the zipper on my hoodie.

We continue on. Past the doorway, we come to another unexpected dead end. Reed continues the map on my forearm, his breath warming me as he draws, the heavy weight of silence around us.

"Is it my imagination," Reeds says, "or is the hallway getting narrower?"

"I wondered if it was just in my head." I rub at the back of my neck, peering ahead, down the tiled hallway, a smattering of dark-colored glass winking in our lights. I step around a heap of fabric—tablecloths maybe, or towels, their musty scent thick as we pass.

Paper litters the ground. This part of the building is messier—scraps of wood and millwork and wires and fixtures and piles of furniture that partly block the hallway. All the while, the hallway narrows.

"It can't be doing that," Reed says, his thoughts in the same place as mine.

"Are you sure?" My brows lift. "What if it's mystical, and we're just traipsing narrower and narrower hallways until it catches us."

He laughs. "Stop freaking me out."

Does he ever laugh like that with Indy?

Shit, what am I doing? Comparing? Getting jealous? Wondering if he's different with me?

All of the above?

I chastise myself. Because the answer is so obviously yes . All of the above.

All of that .

"So…" He clears his throat, stepping back and sliding his hands into his pockets. "What did you do while I was gone?"

"You're really interested?"

"Yes."

I frown. "Let's see. Filming. Going over script changes with Jamie. Redrawing a masturbating tentacle man. Work at the library. And… I read." The last part comes out thoughtfully. I mean, I definitely read sometimes. It's not my main outlet for creative energy, but I appreciate inspiration in all forms. "You know those journals in the library?"

"By the angels?"

"Yep." I pause by another pile of laundry, holding my breath at the smell. I step around it, and I swear the hallway narrows by six inches.

Or Reed's suddenly six inches closer. The feeling of him there—I can't ignore it, can't get rid of it, can't pretend it isn't repeatedly punching me in the stomach.

He twists partly to look at me, his steps slowing. "What's in them?"

"I didn't know you'd be so curious," I say.

"I didn't either." He shrugs. "But surprising myself is kinda my theme lately. So, tell me."

I drag my teeth over my bottom lip. "They were love letters."

"Really?" He comes to a stop for a few beats, then resumes walking again. "There were about a dozen of them, right? All of them are love letters?"

"I only took home two. But, yeah, both of those were entirely filled with love letters." I inhale a slow breath. Reading them had been pretty unreal, sitting on the floor with my back against my bed, my heart up in my throat, as I slowly studied the pages, not wanting to read too fast, not wanting it to end. "It wasn't just words. Drawings intertwined with the words. You know those angels? More of those. And other drawings. Memories, I think. They were…" I fight for the right words. Beautiful doesn't feel like enough. "They were haunting. Gorgeous and woeful and aching. And beautiful, too. But…" My throat tightens. "The longing in them was almost like grief."

We walk silently for another few paces, my mind stuffed full of those pages. I'd felt it all. Thick in my chest and heavy in my fingertips as I turned the pages. I feel a lot of emotion when I see any kind of art—I think that's what makes it so alluring to me—but those two journals pushed me past boundaries that I didn't even know were there.

"I'd like to see them," Reed says quietly.

"I'll show you later."

"And your masturbating tentacled man."

My lips rise. "I'll show you that, too."

We come to another intersection and stop, Reed turning on his heel to face me. "Who wrote them?"

I swallow. "I don't know. They weren't signed, and they weren't addressed either. But it was clearly just two lovers. Always the same two. It talked about this hotel. The library. One of the rooms." I rub at the side of my neck. "They would meet here. In secret, I think. It was… forbidden."

"Why?"

I let my arm hang by my side, careful not to brush the Sharpie ink. "I don't know. I'm pretty sure both were men based on the descriptions of them together, but I didn't get the feeling that was the reason they were hiding. I mean, it's possible. That would have been the mid 90s. I don't know what the culture would have been around Boston then. But it felt like it was more than that. Like their families wouldn't accept them."

Reed's light moves to my chest. "Ever?"

"No."

He's quiet for a moment, lost in thought. I want to ask him about what he's thinking. What that means to him.

I know so little about him. He's mentioned the your-art-sucks brother that I have zero respect for. But he's never mentioned parents or other siblings or much of anything. Even water polo still feels like a reserved topic. Like there's so much that he keeps locked up inside.

I wish he'd let it out.

I'd listen.

"Have you ever?—"

He turns, fast on his heel, his light darting over the hallway behind him, delving into the dark.

My pulse lights, flicking up into my throat. And then I sigh. "Do not tell me you heard something."

"Alright." He continues to scan the hallway. "I didn't hear anything."

"Shit." I squint past him. "The fucking murder basement. I swear this place has an agenda." I'm becoming sure of it, actually. Who says that buildings can't have a plan? "I guess we should keep going."

He nods, jaw tight as he stares down the hallway. "Toward the noise I didn't hear? Or away from it?"

I scan my arm, comparing it to the blueprints. Fuck me. "It looks like… toward."