Roni Loren - Nothing Between Us

Now where that gentle soul had been was a world-weary, angry guy who seemed to barely be getting by but was too mistrustful to accept any help from anyone. The whole thing made Colby want to punch something.

He flipped the bacon and heard movement behind him. Keats shuffled in, wearing only the shorts Colby had lent him. The sight jarred him for a second. He kept expecting to see the boy but kept finding a grown man there instead. The tattoos he’d noticed on Keats’s forearms last night went all the way up—full sleeves of colorful ink, framing a lean but defined torso. Colby cleared his throat and looked away. “Mornin’.”

Keats’s bare feet smacked over the ceramic tile and he pulled out a chair at the bar. “You’re going to burn that bacon. Heat’s too high.”

Colby glanced back at Keats and lowered the flame on the burner. “Bacon expert?”

He shrugged. “I worked the griddle at a breakfast joint for a while. You ruin enough bacon, you learn the tricks. Low and slow.”

Colby grunted and turned back to the pan. “I usually microwave it, but I’m out of paper towels.”

“Microwave?” Keats’s chair scraped the floor, and he walked over to Colby, putting his hand out for the tongs. “I got it. You have any eggs?”

Colby was surprised to have his formerly hostile houseguest offering to take over breakfast, but he wasn’t going to complain. Cooking wasn’t exactly his strong suit. He handed over the tongs, grabbed a carton of eggs and some butter from the fridge, and dug a skillet out. Keats got the other pan going in no time, cracking the eggs one-handed.

Colby slid into the spot behind the bar to sip his coffee. Watching Keats from behind, his face obscured, made it easy to forget who was standing there. The tattoos alone were something to behold. They weren’t rush jobs; they were art. Expensive shit by the looks of it. From this distance, he couldn’t tell what all of it was, but he could see trailing music notes and scrawled words—probably lyrics if he knew Keats. Colby’s gaze traced over the words and lingered on the way Keats’s shoulder muscles moved as he shifted his attention between the pans—efficient, almost elegant. Colby forced his attention to his cup of coffee.

Having a half-naked guy in his kitchen wasn’t a new occurrence. Even though Colby tended to gravitate toward women more often than not, he’d figured out pretty early on in his life that he didn’t fit into a narrow lane when it came to sexual preference. It took him a little longer to figure out that besides attraction he only had two true requirements when it came to his bed partners—submissive and tough enough to handle what he liked to dish out. What was below the waist mattered a lot less to him than what was in someone’s wiring above the neck. That was what got his blood pumping.

But none of that mattered right now. Beyond the fact that Keats had declared he wasn’t into guys last night, this was Keats . A twenty-something-year-old guy he’d pulled off the streets. A former student. Off-limits.

Keats dished up a plate of eggs and bacon for them both and then stood at the counter to eat instead of taking the chair next to Colby.

“Thanks,” Colby said, stabbing a piece of scrambled egg with his fork. “This looks great.”

Keats poured himself a cup of coffee and dumped in sugar and a little cream. “No problem. I figured someone who microwaves bacon can’t be trusted.”

Colby smirked. “Are you still working as a cook?”

His gaze shifted down to his plate. “Nah, I quit the diner a while back when I got a gig at a tattoo shop. That was a good job—decent pay and the owner did my ink on the house. But then he got sick and they had to shut down, so lately I’ve been doing construction.”

They ate in silence for a few moments and Colby was trying to figure out how best to approach that looming elephant in the room when Keats pointed his fork at the window behind Colby. “So what’s with your neighbor?”

Colby glanced over his shoulder to see Georgia in her yard, picking through the remnants of the toilet paper he hadn’t gotten to yesterday morning. “What do you mean?”

He swallowed his bite of eggs. “Nothing, just saw you hightail it over there last night, figured I’d interrupted plans or something.”

“I was supposed to help her finish cleaning up, and I was going to bring burgers over but … got sidetracked last night.”

“By me?”

“Eventually by you. But by whiskey first. Had a shitty day at work.”

“How come?”

Colby pushed at his breakfast. “A student attempted suicide over the weekend.”

Keats flinched. “Sorry. He okay?”

Colby blew out a breath, not sure why he was sharing any of this with Keats but unable to stop. “Yeah, thank God. But I’ve been put on leave since I was the last one to counsel him. His parents want an investigation.”

“Counsel?”

Colby took another long sip of coffee. “Yeah, I’m a school counselor now. I went back for my master’s after … after I left Hickory Point.”

Keats’s head lowered and he picked at the food on his plate. They stayed quiet for a few more minutes until Keats shifted on his feet and cleared his throat. “You lost your teaching job because of me.”

Colby leaned back in his chair, the past pressing down on him with that, smothering him in the bright, airy kitchen. “No, I resigned. I knew the rumors wouldn’t stop. And really, I didn’t want to be there anymore anyway.”

Colby wouldn’t tell Keats that he’d been physically sick with grief for months, torturing himself with the constant what if s, wondering what could have saved Keats, and knowing, deep in his gut, that he’d handled things all wrong. He’d seen too much of himself in Keats and had wanted to be there for him. But he should’ve known that offering that level of open conversation could be misconstrued by a confused kid. He hadn’t kept the boundaries clear enough. And that last night, when Keats had asked if Colby was bi, Colby had admitted that the rumors were true.

Looking back, it had been so inappropriate to share that. But he’d seen Keats tearing himself up for feelings and urges he was having, using his father’s hateful language as a constant internal soundtrack. He and his dad had had a huge fight that final night, and his father had threatened to send Keats to military school.

Besides the regular music classes at school, Keats had been taking guitar lessons two nights a week with Colby. But that final evening, he hadn’t shown up for his appointment at the rec center where they met. Late that night, he’d shown up on Colby’s doorstep instead, carrying his broken guitar. Keats’s father had smashed his son’s most precious possession against the wall.

Colby had made the fatal error of letting Keats inside. Keats had spilled everything about the fight with his dad. His father had found a sheet of lyrics Keats had written—a song called “Off Limits” that had made it sound like Keats was in love with a boy. His father had flipped his shit, called Keats every disgusting name in the homophobe handbook, and had told him he’d rather be dead than have a fag for a son. Even when Keats denied that the song had anything to do with that—that it was really about how everything he loved to do, like playing music, was off-limits—his father hadn’t listened. His dad wasn’t going to be satisfied until his artsy son turned into what he wanted—a tough-as-nails “man’s man” who would follow in his father’s and older brother’s footsteps into the Marines.

It had taken everything Colby had not to drive over to Keats’s house and beat the stupid out of Keats’s father. How could anyone look at Keats and not see how talented and amazing the kid was? But he’d controlled himself and had tried to be there for Keats as a sympathetic ear and to offer a safe place for him to express his feelings. But when Keats had asked him point-blank about his sexuality, Colby hadn’t been able to lie. Instead of saying that wasn’t an appropriate question to ask him, he’d been honest.