Jilted Read online

  “I was just calling you—oh.” It isn’t Paige dropping by to badger him into not being alone, it’s someone Carter doesn’t know at all. They have blond hair cropped into a pixie cut, a silver nose ring, and eyes that dart nervously at Carter and not at Carter. It’s a little late for solicitations, and they don’t really look like a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon in their pink cotton dress and whimsical silk scarf. Familiarity he can’t place tugs at the back of his mind.

  “Can I help you?”

  “You’re Carter, right?”

  “Yes?” Carter answers, unsure if he should really be confirming his identity to this person who apparently knows him. “Do I know you?”

  They hesitate, eyes darting again as if they also shouldn’t be confirming who they are, then finally, “I’m Jamie. Um, can I come in?”

  Carter robotically lets Jamie in, shows her to the dining room, and asks if she’d like something to drink. He goes to the fridge and grabs two bottles of sparkling water, then sits at the table that Link made with Link’s ex-fiancée and Matthew’s… whatever she is now. The last time he saw Jamie, he barely caught a glimpse of her: a blur of pink and purple ruffles, running off with his fiancé and away from her own wedding. Her hair was different too. He knows her but doesn’t; he is connected to her in the strangest of ways. He has no social script for this situation whatsoever.

  “I’m sorry, I know this must be so completely awkward and uncomfortable for you,” Jamie says after a stretch of long, awkward, and uncomfortable silence.

  “Um,” Carter replies. “Well…” He takes a drink of water.

  Jamie doesn’t open hers. “You don’t owe me any time at all, for good reason,” she says, “So I’ll cut to the chase: I don’t think Matthew is over you.”

  Carter chokes on his mouthful of fizzing water. After he stops coughing and cleans up the dribbles on his chin and the table, he croaks, “What?”

  Jamie’s hands spread flat on the table; her face is pulled tight. “I just,” Jamie starts, looking at her hands. “We’re supposed to move to Austin together, somewhere new where we can start over. But lately Matt’s been dragging his feet, making up excuses for why he has to keep delaying things. Delaying us. And—” She looks up, eyes flashing with hurt. “The other night I found him going through some pictures of you two. So I came here. I didn’t know who else to talk to.”

  Reeling, Carter can only think to ask, “How did you even find me?” Matthew doesn’t know where he is, and Link said that they’d made a clean break with Jamie, so it must somehow be because of—

  “Your sister,” Jamie says, confirming what Carter had just figured out was the connection. “I’m still friends with Eli on Facebook, and Paige tags him in stuff all the time, including some photos of your house, with a geotag. Honestly, it’s way too easy to track people down these days.”

  Carter wouldn’t know; he thought that sort of thing would be inappropriate and invasive. “I don’t really understand what you want from me.” His tone is terse because it’s late and he’s tired and sad and really believed he was through with all of this.

  Jamie looks down, cowed. “I have no right to ask you for anything. It’s been so much harder than I thought, moving forward with Matt. I guess I thought we’d just fall back into it, that it would be easier. I hurt Link for this. I disappointed my family, and my friends think I’m crazy. Maybe I just need someone to tell me that I haven’t made a huge mistake.”

  What Carter should do is send her on her way, because she’s right, he doesn’t owe her anything. But what has his bitterness ever gotten him? And if he can’t get his happily ever after, then he can at least help Jamie and Matthew find theirs. If this is his lot in life, so be it.

  “Look, I can’t tell you that you didn’t make a mistake with Matthew,” Carter starts. Jamie nods, lips pressed tightly together. “But,” Carter continues, “he did drag me halfway across the country on the off chance that the person he never stopped being in love with for a moment in the course of an entire decade might still love him back, confessing his feelings at your wedding, even. And you came all the way here to talk to me because you’re so afraid of losing him. I can tell you honestly that no one has ever done anything close to that for me.” It’s sad but true, and probably no one ever will. There’s no point dwelling on it. “That sort of love, I think, is worth fighting for.”

  Jamie’s smile is sad, but maybe a little hopeful. “I think so too.”

  Carter tips his head in acknowledgment. “And, if it helps him to move on, you can tell Matthew that when he confessed why we were in New Orleans, that he’d come to win you back, I was relieved. Not angry or sad. Relieved. We weren’t really happy, and he can stop feeling guilty about it. Matthew doesn’t still have feelings for me; he just hates that I wouldn’t let him smooth everything over so we could both move on.” Carter lifts his hands from his lap and waves them in an arc. “I release him. You have my blessing. For real.”

  Jamie reaches across the table and takes both of his hands in hers. “Thank you. You are everything Matt said you were and more.” Carter blinks, staring at Jamie’s hands. “I hope you find happiness, Carter.”

  She stands, and Carter watches, still trying to grasp what just happened. It’s stupid: not what Jamie’s said, but the way he’s been acting. I hope you find happiness echoes in his brain as he walks Jamie to the door, as if happiness is a stray penny on the sidewalk, waiting for him to accidentally stumble upon it. That isn’t the way happiness works.

  “I wish there was some way I could repay you for your kindness,” Jamie says on his darkened porch. Carter takes other people’s whims and hopes and makes them real. He does not wait around for happy accidents.

  “Actually, could you drop me off at the airport?”

  Forty

  “Please remove laptops from bags and place shoes in a separate bin!”

  Carter shuffles through the security line already in his socks with his items neatly arranged in two bins, annoyed that the person in front of him is yakking on their phone instead of paying attention and following the security protocol. They’re going to make everyone wait longer, and Carter just spent a small fortune on a last-minute ticket to Seattle. He’s going to be so irritated if he misses his flight.

  “Please remove laptops from bags and place shoes in a separate bin!”

  Carter glares at the back of the person in front of him. Do it.

  “Carter!”

  Do it. Do it, do it, do it, do it. Do. It.

  “Carter Jacob!”

  Carter shuffles forward, looking around. He could have sworn he heard his name. He slides his bins onto the rollers for the X-ray machine and waits to be scanned. He hears his name again, and movement catches his eye. Link? Just past security and into the terminal, Link stands on tiptoe, waving their hands to get Carter’s attention.

  “Carter! Don’t—”

  “Please remove laptops from bags and place shoes in a separate bin!”

  Whatever Link was about to say is drowned out by the announcement, and then the person in front of him finally catches a clue and starts to frantically dump their carry-on while simultaneously trying to remove their shoes and get into the scanning line. Carter glances at them disdainfully. When he looks back, Link is gone.

  He gets through security and claims his things, going immediately to where Link was with his shoes tucked under one arm and his bag still open. Not there. Did he imagine them? Carter shoves his feet into his shoes and gets his bag situated, then turns to scour the terminal in search of Link, provided he was not, in fact, hallucinating. He is very tired. And then he spots them on the other side of the security line.

  “Link!”

  “Carter?”

  “Link?”

  “Carter!”

  Link says something that’s drowned out by another announcement, so Carter rushes to the exit, w
inding through the terminal and people, out past the signs that shout NO RE-ENTRY, and quickly makes his way to the spot where Link just was—and is no longer. Carter hikes his bag up higher on his shoulder, pants for breath, and spins in place. Where the hell did they go? Someone bumps into him—

  “Link?”

  “Excuse me, sorry.”

  Not Link. Carter huffs out a frustrated breath. This is ridiculous. Link was just here. Someone else bumps into him, and Carter ignores them. Did Link go through security to meet Carter in the terminal? Should he buy another ticket and get in line again? The person who bumped into him taps his shoulder. Okay, he’s sort of in the way, but there’s plenty of room to maneuver around him—

  “Oh. Link!”

  “Carter!” Link reaches for him, then stops and brushes a lock of hair from their face. “What are you doing here?”

  Carter shakes his head. “Me? What are you doing here? I thought you were in Seattle.”

  “I was. I mean I was going to.” Link is dressed in all black: textured pants and a long shirt slit open on the sides, black boots, a round-brimmed black hat, black eyeliner, black nail polish. Something one might wear in Seattle. “Where were you going?”

  Carter flattens his hair nervously before answering, “Seattle.” He had this whole speech planned. He was going to show up at Link’s door and proclaim that he’s figured it all out, he knows exactly how he and Link can make things work; it was going to be very compelling and well-thought-out and romantic too. Only, he was going to plan that speech on the long overnight flight to Seattle. Now that he’s suddenly standing in front of Link, he doesn’t know what to say.

  “I went to your house,” Link says. “But you weren’t there. Paige said you might be here.”

  How did she know? “Oh,” Carter says.

  “You were going to Seattle for me?”

  Carter nods. “You didn’t go to Seattle for me?”

  “Yes.” Link bites their bottom lip. “I, uh, I had this whole speech. But now that I’ve been saying it over and over in my head for a while, it sounds stupid.”

  Carter nods. “Okay.”

  Once again, he and Link find themselves at an impasse. The airport rushes busily around them, with people who know exactly where to go and what they need to do to get there. Link hesitates, so Carter hesitates, then can’t help it and blurts, “I don’t know how to make us make sense. We haven’t done anything in order or according to the steps we’re supposed to follow, and I don’t think that’s something we can change.” There is no such thing as starting over, not really, and he and Link will always have come from rubble.

  Link glances down. “I know. I know we can’t.”

  “No,” Carter says. “However.” Link’s eyes meet his again, and, just like the first time, on a day that should have sent them on opposite paths yet somehow brought him and Link together, Link’s gaze connects to something deep and unexplainable inside of Carter, something that’s the opposite of pragmatic and sensible. “We don’t need our story or our past to make sense, because you and me. We do. We make sense.”

  Link smiles, briefly, and then shakes their head. “Carter, you need more than that. You need a solid foundation and, and a logical procession of steps. I know you.”

  “If you really knew me,” Carter says, blunt, “then you would know that I’m also drawn to things that are beautiful just for their own sake, even if I don’t always understand them, even if they don’t always make sense.” A logical order of relationship steps is what he had before, and thank god Matthew was brave enough to risk his heart on something real and save them both.

  Link’s head tilts. “Are you saying I don’t always make sense, Carter Jacob?”

  Carter looks up, glancing around as if in thought. He smiles. “Yes.”

  Link scowls playfully, then laughs. “All right. Fair enough.” Carter wishes he and Link weren’t in public right now; he would have liked Link showing up on his doorstep with a speech they’d thought up just for him. He would have really liked bringing Link inside and kissing them soundly afterward. As if reading his mind, which is ridiculous, of course, Link takes a deep breath and says, “I’m gonna do my dumb speech now.”

  Link’s eyes close and they say in a rehearsed rush, “Carter. I know you don’t believe in fate, but I do. Because I know that meeting you was my destiny. That night after I was left at the altar, sitting at that bar all alone, I was convinced that that was the end of my story, the end of my happiness. But it wasn’t.” Their eyes open, green and gold in the bright airport lights. “It was a beginning. It was something that wasn’t supposed to be real but was, from the very start. I hate that you’ve moved on. I was so wrong; I am miserable without you. And I swear to you, Carter Jacob, that I am going to figure out how to be the person that you need me to be, because I’m in love with you. I have been for a long time.”

  Carter can’t move, can’t speak, can’t think, can’t breathe. Link loves him. Link is in love with him and has been for a long time. Link wants to be with him. Link is with him. Right now. Here. Carter blinks and blinks and says, “Can we go?”

  It pours down rain on the cab ride back from the airport. In the backseat, Link takes Carter’s hand, and Carter threads his fingers securely through Link’s.

  “You love me?” Carter asks, needing to hear it again.

  Link smiles, soft and secretive. “Yes.”

  Carter presses his leg against Link’s, hip to thigh to knee to ankle; desire thrums at every point of contact. At Carter’s house, they splash through puddles together and laugh and try not to laugh too loudly because it’s late at night now. Carter’s ribs feel as if they’ve been cracked wide open, that beams of light pour from him as he kisses Link just inside and against the front door and in the living room and the kitchen, then stumbling around the dining room and tripping up the stairs to bang into his bedroom.

  “Link,” Carter says, his back pushed up against his bedroom door. He whispers the words over and over into Link’s throat and mouth, gasps them into the room as Link sinks down in front of him and starts to unbuckle his belt: “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Link looks up with one mischievous eyebrow raised, fingers poised over the button on Carter’s pants. “May I?”

  Carter’s head thunks back against the door. “Yes,” he answers on a quick inhalation. “Yes, please.”

  Forty-One

  Link takes Carter into their mouth without any further preamble. Carter is still in rain-damp clothes, and Link is still in a jaunty black hat. Link’s head moves achingly slow, a drag of lips, a flicker of tongue, so gentle, so slow. It’s not even foreplay, it’s whatever comes before that, like the click click click of a gas stove trying to light. Carter can’t get a single breath; his lungs are seizing. Then Link sucks him in earnest, once, then twice, and Carter, shuddering, gasps. Link pulls away entirely, stands to kiss Carter, and sucks on his tongue again.

  Link sinks back down to a kneeling position.

  “Oh, god,” Carter says, shivering and pulsing with need.

  Link’s answering grin is dangerously pleased. “How long can you hold out, do you think?” A tease of lips, a swirl of tongue.

  A second, Carter thinks. Forever. Somewhere in between. “I don’t know,” he answers, then asks, “How long do you need me to?” Link’s head bobs deeply, taking Carter down to the hot clasp of their soft palate.

  Link pulls back and coughs, answering, voice rough. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  So Carter floats and floats, lost to the mellow, easy pleasure. There is only Link’s warm, wet mouth and Link’s softly grabbing hands, one on Carter’s belly and one on his thigh. Link huffs short little breaths, and Carter moans long, rumbling ones. When his moans get too loud, too wanting, when Carter’s fingernails scrabble on the wood holding him upright, somehow, still, Link pulls off, stands, and press
es their mouth to Carter’s lips.

  He’s resigned himself to this blissful purgatory where orgasms don’t exist when Link sits back, rubbing at their jaw and saying, “Okay, my knees hurt, damn.”

  Link hops over to the bed and drops down, the mattress bouncing with their enthusiasm. Carter, however, can’t move at all for fear his legs will give out beneath him. Link crosses their legs primly, shrugs their shoulders and smirks, one shoulder coyly lifted. “This is fun.”

  Carter laughs, and it’s enough to break the spell so he can at least walk on wobbly legs to the bed. “Torturing me is fun?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  Carter flips Link’s hat off, then crawls on top of them, captures Link’s swollen lips in another kiss, and nudges them back and up higher on the bed. Carter starts to lie down, then grunts at the feel of his damp clothes bunched against his skin and wriggles free of the pants and shirt and briefs. Link watches with blatant desire, until Carter says, “Your turn,” and moves back on top. He finds the spot on Link’s neck that smells heady and sweet, where Link’s pulse taps against his tongue. The sides of their shirt are open to the bottom curve of Link’s ribcage, and Carter slides his knuckles up and up until he finds where Link’s nipples are stiff and hard. In the same gentle tease, Carter circles the nubs, flicks his thumb in a just-there touch. He pushes the shirt aside, fabric bunching in his hand against Link’s sternum, and then teases with his tongue just as he had with his fingers and thumb.

  When Link’s hips start to buck, back arching, mouth dropping open, Carter’s plan for slow-spooling revenge spirals out of control, his own arousal coming to the forefront, his body reaching, desperately aching. Link gasps, back bowing, and Carter’s bottom teeth scrape on a nipple. Link’s hips grind and thrust and roll against Carter’s hips.