Follow Him Home (Alternate Worlds Book 1) Page 10

  Bending, he placed a kiss on Christian’s head. “We have a few things to talk about later,” he whispered. “For now, I’m headed home to shower.”

  Christian murmured something in his sleep before stilling again. As Peter crept out of the condo – not encountering Victor on his way out – he felt like a man emerging from a fairy tale and the entire trek from the elevator to the front door seemed littered with moments of disbelief. The doorman, who hadn’t been present the night before, bowed at him as he walked out of the building. After returning the gesture, Peter paused to admire the humdrum of city life surrounding him, smiling at the notion that this was a normal day for the people who walked past him.

  Joining the throng of pedestrians, he walked for the nearest subway entrance.

  The journey home coincided with the march of employees headed into work. When he entered the confines of his apartment, the deafening quiet which greeted him on the other side of the door unnerved him, reminding him that by then, he was usually asleep and alienated from the daytime crowd. A quick gage of his fatigue reminded him he’d upset his normal rhythm by napping with Christian. “Maybe I can get some cleaning done,” he mused aloud, looking first at the pile of mail on his dining room table.

  After brewing another cup of coffee, he settled into a chair, opening the first few letters and peering at their contents. While most contained rejections – We’ve filled our roster for the coming year, but thank you for applying! – three of them claimed interest, bearing the promise they’d be in contact when their first round of interviews began. Peter placed those aside, pausing after throwing away the rejection letters to consider their locations. Baltimore. Rochester. Wilmington. Not Philadelphia; not without taking the standing offer left presented by Temple Hospital.

  Yes, he had every right to second guess getting in too deep with a polyamorous hitman. And moving out of town would be the perfect excuse to reconsider.

  “I’ll see you again soon.”

  Despite his better judgment, Peter didn’t want to the ride to end just yet.

  Stacking what letters remained unopened, he restored some order to the table and took a much-needed shower. After a getting dressed, he walked around the apartment, gathering dirty clothing while whistling what he remembered of the song Victor had been humming. Its melody carried with him to the laundry room, haunting him enough for him to pull out his earbuds and cycle through a list of playlists on his phone. When he found one for the classical piano, he pressed play and perched atop one of the folding tables to wait.

  Machines tumbled and his eyes followed until a thought captured him and carried him away. He imagined Victor seated at the piano, and as the daydream took form, it added Christian to the mix: the dancer, standing beside the instrument and swaying to its melody. The carefree way he surrendered to the music continued even after Victor stopped playing. As the voyeur took over, he pictured Victor rising from the bench to trap Christian into a lurid kiss.

  His phone vibrated, knocking him out of the fantasy. Peter blinked, returning to reality, his gaze shifting down to the display as a message flashed on the screen. As he read the text, he expected it to be from Christian, imagining the sleepy man rousing in time for lunch and discovering Peter missing. Instead, he chuckled at the admonition from an old friend.

  ‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ he said. ‘This usually means you’re up to no good.’

  Peter paused the music and flipped screens to tap out a response. ‘Not avoiding,’ he said. ‘More like busy. I tumbled down the rabbit hole and wound up in Oz.’

  Moments later, he received a reply. ‘You’re mixing literary references deliberately to upset me, aren’t you?’

  ‘Maybe I am.’

  ‘I’d say you owe me lunch, then. You don’t start work until 6PM.’

  ‘I don’t know what scares me more, that you know my schedule or that sometimes you know it better than I do.’ After pausing to think, he eyed the tumbling washing machine, seeing it tick down the final seconds of its cycle. ‘Give me five minutes to switch my laundry and I’ll meet you at the usual place.’

  ‘Good. I’ll be waiting with a nice cup of tea.’

  Peter laughed. Adding a benign, ‘I’ll see you later,’ he hit send and jumped down from the table. Removing his earbuds, he pocketed them and the phone before the washing machine buzzed. Damp clothes made their way from one machine to the other. After pressing start on the dryer, he ascended back to the ground floor, taking his transit pass from his wallet on his way to the subway.

  It was a sandwich shop located on the University campus, and while it represented one store in a national chain, it had the unique reputation of being where the teaching staff preferred to take their lunch. Dim lighting and soft music provided a comfortable venue to talk, while the meditative atmosphere made it an ideal place for grading papers or preparing lesson plans. Peter often chided that the lack of light, though, formed one of the reasons his old friend needed glasses.

  Michael O’Shane always replied that he probably would’ve needed them anyway.

  After walking through one of the college common areas, Peter strode into the shop and nodded at the people behind the counter who stood waiting to take orders. Bypassing the registers for the moment, he headed directly for the booth closest to the bathrooms, knowing he would find his friend there. Michael – or Robin, as he’d been nicknamed after the hijinks of one drunken night – always said he preferred the vantage point, using it for people-watching. Once, Peter had been daring enough to accuse him of being a voyeur, too. Robin had countered by inviting Peter to find out for himself.

  The dark-haired man looked up from a book and smiled in recognition of Peter. Sliding a bookmark into the place where he’d been reading, he shut the cover and placed it aside, atop a stack of papers that looked only partially-touched. Peter noted that while Robin adjusted his glasses at least thirty times during any conversation, the hair gathered in his ponytail always looked tightly coiffed into place, like nothing could force the strands loose aside from an act of God. Exchanging a smile with Robin, Peter slid into the booth opposite him. “People are going to start talking if we keep meeting like this,” he said, removing his coat.

  With a snort, Robin lifted the paper cup in front of him and took a sip of his drink. His thumb casually brushed the ends of two tea bags as he did so, knocking one haphazard as he set the cup back down. “You keep rebuffing me,” he said, his characteristic Irish brogue making its way into his speech. “Maybe we’ll finally decide to validate their suspicions this way.”

  “If we get people talking?”

  “Who doesn’t like a good scandal?”

  Peter laughed. Casting a quick glance again at the stack of papers the adjunct professor had beside him, Peter also weighed whether Robin had taken it upon himself to order lunch. The absence of any trash suggested he hadn’t. “So, what are we eating?” he asked. “Because I only have a couple of hours before I need to head back home and there’s a lot for me to talk about.”

  “Now you have me curious.” Robin nodded toward where the workers stood. “Fetch me my usual and I’ll settle in for the story. I wasn’t lying about you owing me lunch.”

  “As you wish, Master.” Peter winked, sliding back out of the booth and walking toward the front of the store again. When he returned, carrying two trays bearing food, he set Robin’s order in front of him and placed the sandwich he’d purchased in front of his space. Situating himself once more, Peter took a deep breath, using the moment which followed to gather his thoughts. “I think I got myself in over my head,” he confessed. “I mean, even worse than Paul from Spanish.”

  The soft smile which crossed Robin’s lips bore the familiarity of nine years. A decade Peter’s senior, Robin had first met the younger man while working as a teacher’s assistant. Throughout the course of the year, both men danced around a forming acquaintanceship, exchanging glances neither seemed able to interpret. When Peter chanced upon Robin at a rave, he fou
nd the normally-composed, would-be linguistic scholar dancing with another man, the tenor of the dance telling him all he needed to know.

  After a wild night, during which Robin not only confessed his similar sexual interests, but also deigned to show his inebriated junior what both agreed was a good time, the two hooked up one other time before hitting a stalemate. ‘I’m not looking for a commitment, Peter,’ Robin had confessed back when the younger man was still an undergraduate.

  Now, however, he’d become something far better than a lover.

  Shaking his head, Robin picked up his sandwich while pausing to think. Peter saw the shift of his friend’s expression and knew exactly what he was thinking, bracing himself for it by saying, “For the record, I’m trying to avoid getting my heart broken again.”

  “I know,” Robin said, starting the response with a mouth full of food. He paused to chew and swallow before continuing. “I wouldn’t think after what Paul did to you that you’d be deliberately lying down on the train tracks, but you also have a bad habit of only recognizing danger after you’ve flirted with it.”

  “I’d try to deny it, but you know me too well.” Peter lifted his sandwich and took a bite. Ruminating over the food, he thought about sitting in the kitchen with Victor, not sure how best to explain his predicament. “So, the latest incarnation of Paul is a guy whose name is Christian. I met him at the hospital during one of my shifts.”

  Robin raised an eyebrow. “Was he there with one of the other patients?”

  “No, he was the patient.”

  The other man barked a laugh. Lowering his sandwich back down into the plastic basket, he brushed off his hands and leaned against the back of the booth. “You?” he asked, an accusation laden in his issuance of the word. “You’re fraternizing with your patients? I thought that was against your moral code.”

  “You’re accusing me of having a moral code?”

  “Yes, you do. Remember, I’ve heard your trials and tribulations throughout the years.” Robin cleared his throat before lapsing into an exaggerated impersonation of Peter, replete with American accent. “Robin, I would’ve asked him out if I met him under any other circumstance.”

  “Well, most of the time, they’re not worth getting fired over,” Peter countered.

  “This one is though?”

  Peter hesitated, knowing he’d cut himself enough for Robin to smell blood. “Ha!” Robin said, adopting his normal brogue and pointing at Peter. “You are in over your head. How many dates has it been?”

  “Only two,” Peter said, chagrined.

  “Only two and you’re picking out curtains?”

  “It’s not like that.” Peter sighed and lowered his sandwich as well. Reaching for one of the napkins he’d carried over with their food, he wiped his hands free of debris. “I have some strange magnetic attraction to him and what’s made it difficult for me to say no is the fact that he keeps… showing up places. He followed me around like a lost puppy until I finally agreed to go out with him and I have to admit, he’s a little…” Peter trailed off, in search of the right word to describe it.

  “Well, if we’re comparing him to Paul, he’s a bastard and that just makes you want him even more.”

  Peter gestured at his friend. “That. Only, unlike Paul, he seems to feel the same way about me. I mean, I…” He used his gesturing hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “I might have… slept with him last night. After what was the single most surreal night of my life.”

  “That’s going to require more in the way of explanation.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  After a brief pause, Peter started into the story, talking about their date at the sushi restaurant and his walk with Christian through Rittenhouse Square. Rounding out with the temptation he’d had to accompany Christian back to what he thought was his place, he confessed that he’d wished he had accepted the offer. “That was what led to date two,” Peter said. From there, the tale explained the bar, the people who gathered there, the run through Northeastern Philadelphia and the conversation he’d had with Christian before they slept together.

  “Before I could even sort through the fact that I’d just gotten myself involved with a hitman, though, I woke up to discover we’d fucked in someone else’s house.”

  Robin, who had since abandoned his food, adjusted his glasses only for the first time since Peter had begun. “This is normally where I’m chiding you for using the vernacular, but I think a little obscenity might be called for,” he said. Removing the spectacles entirely, he pulled free the end of his shirt, using the fabric to clean his lenses. “Peter, are you insane? Are you sure he’s not having a go at you?”

  “You needed to see the people in this bar,” Peter countered. “They didn’t exactly look like the kind of people who had normal jobs, if you get what I’m saying.”

  “Yes, but a hitman is a little far-fetched. You might have convinced me he was something like a loan shark first.”

  “I had that thought, but he’s not greasy enough.”

  “With your vast knowledge of the criminal underground.” Robin’s lips quirked, his expression settling somewhere between concern and amusement. As he situated himself again into his normal posture, he picked at a crumb in the paper wrapping. “Let’s assume that this man is exactly what he claims to be. Doesn’t that seem like a little more danger than you should probably entertain?”

  “Maybe.” Peter sighed, lifting his sandwich again. “No. Definitely.” Taking a bite, he weighed that thought while he chewed and found his way back to the morning; to waking up beside Christian. He thought about the two of them wrapped up together – of kissing him goodbye – and floated back into the space of time between those moments. “So, I told you we slept together in someone else’s house. I met the owner. And that’s where this gets tricky, if his profession wasn’t enough to do that.”

  Robin remained quiet, apt to ignore eating while Peter pursued his food. Peter finished one half of the sandwich and sighed once he had swallowed down the bite. “His name is Victor,” Peter said, “And apparently, Christian’s in some sort of relationship with him, too.”

  The other man blinked, still silent for several moments following. When Peter failed to continue, he shook his head and finished off his tea. “And we’re continuing to talk about your involvement with Christian? You had a difficult time with my lifestyle. How are you going to handle someone who isn’t monogamous?”

  Peter sighed. “It wasn’t you sleeping with other people that was the problem. You know that.”

  “Wasn’t it? Are you so sure of that?”

  A sudden flight of nerves swept through Peter as he forced himself to evaluate the question. Tapping into old memories, he thought about their brief relationship and tried to think of why Robin’s habits had caused him to reconsider what they had pursued. “We didn’t really get to that stage, to be honest,” he said. “At least, not in my mind. Not like I was asking you to be exclusive when I said –”

  “– That you wanted us to be boyfriends. And Peter, as much as I hate to dredge up our history, you might not have been asking me to be exclusive, but how would you have handled it when I wasn’t?” Robin folded his hands together. “Ignoring the insane and absurd assertion that this man kills criminals for a living like some capitalistic vigilante, he comes home to Victor. Not to you, yet. Or maybe ever. If you let yourself get too involved with him, at what point does their relationship start to worry you?”

  “Worry me how?”

  “Leave you wondering where you stand with him? Force you into the reckoning that he might love you, but he’ll always love Victor, too? Polyamory isn’t some deviant lifestyle, but if you’re going to respect that part of him, you should do so with both eyes open. At some point, you’ll not be so sure about this.” His lips quirked. “Once your cock wanders back to reality.”

  A weight settled on Peter’s shoulders, and while he was tempted to be upset with Robin, he reminded himself that his friend al
ways meant well. “I don’t know about anything right now, to be honest,” Peter said. “I mean, we slept together. I haven’t even paused to really let the whole hitman thing sink in and I’m still feeling dizzy from all of that. I’ll admit that I don’t want to think about it right now. Being with him feels incredible.”

  “Aren’t you job hunting anyway?”

  “Don’t get me started on that. I didn’t have any business starting to see somebody with that right around the corner. I just…” Peter looked from his food to the wall to the ceiling and scrubbed his face with both hands. “I lose my head when he’s around me. I’ve never felt so drawn to somebody before.”

  “I’m tempted to take offense to that. Jokingly, of course.”

  Breathing a soft chuckle, Robin reached to place a hand on Peter’s arm. “Don’t let your friend take the wind out of your sails and don’t get too obsessed with details,” he said. “Maybe you’ll tumble into this and fall on a safe place to land. Who knows? If you’re happy, then be happy, just be careful.” He quirked an eyebrow. “Whether he’s what he claims to be or a pathological liar, he could hurt you either way. And even if you make peace with his other lover, I’m not sure you’re ready to wade into the criminal underground just yet.”

  Peter chuckled, gathering some sense of whimsy back from the shards it had broken into. “Well, Victor’s a lawyer,” he said, “so he manages to keep his head above water somehow.”

  “I’m not convinced lawyers are much better than criminals.”

  “You might have had other thoughts if you saw him making breakfast.”

  Robin leaned against the back of his seat, his hand retreating from Peter to settle onto his lap. Eyes narrowing, he smiled as if amused. “He made you breakfast?”

  Nodding, Peter lifted the second half of his sandwich. “Bacon and eggs. While shirtless.”

  “You demon. He was testing you.” A slow smirk lazed across his lips as he watched Peter take another bite of his food. The way he stared at his friend left the impression that somehow, Peter had tipped his hand and shown him his cards. “Have you done it yet?”