Top Shelf: A Seacroft Novel Read online

  He didn’t expect Brian to say anything. He was all set to go get his brother a coat before Seb’s car pulled in, when Brian said, “I can’t have kids.”

  “What?”

  Brian’s eyes were red-rimmed when he turned. “I can’t. I’m shooting blanks.”

  Martin tried to piece this together. “How long have you known?”

  “Over a year.”

  “And Jess knows?”

  Brian’s smile twisted again. “She knows. We both knew there was a problem. We tried for a long time. But my . . . er . . . equipment always seemed to be working right, so when she finally convinced me we should see a doctor, I assumed the problem would be with her.”

  “And it’s not?” Was that too personal a question? Should Jess be here to tell him about this?

  “Nope. The doctor said she wasn’t getting any younger, but with viable sperm there was no reason to think she wouldn’t be able to . . . You know.”

  Martin leaned back in his chair. The timing was terrible. His brother was finally talking to him, and he was about to leave for the weekend.

  “Well, there are lots of ways to make that work, right? You can’t be the only ones who have trouble with this kind of thing.” Martin had certainly never planned to find a nice woman and make a bunch of kids, but he’d still like to be a father someday. “I mean, there’s adoption, or you could find a sperm donor. Some of it’s expensive, I think, but if it’s really important to you . . . ”

  Brian shook his head. “We looked at that. All of it. I told her I couldn’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Raise another man’s kid.”

  This was so much more complicated than Martin had expected when he’d come out onto the porch. “And you told Jess that?”

  “It didn’t seem right, you know? I mean, if we adopted some kid, who knows what could happen?”

  “What do you mean? “

  Brian shrugged. “There are so many risks. Jess gave me some stuff to read. There’s a lot of things we might not know, about history and medical things, with an adopted kid.”

  “It’s not like having a biological child would be any more of a sure thing. Look at you and me.”

  Brian glared at him. “Thanks, Smarts.”

  “No!” Martin sighed. This was difficult, but Brian was obviously hurting. “I mean, we’re pretty different, even though we had the same parents. Nothing’s for sure, no matter how you do it. That’s all I’m saying. And adoption wouldn’t be your only option.”

  “Jess looked into all that. A sperm donor—” Brian’s eyes widened. “It was my job, wasn’t it? My job and I couldn’t get it done. Looking at some other man’s eyes in my kid for the rest of my life . . . I couldn’t do that.”

  Martin faltered as he tried to choose his words again, but Brian kept talking.

  “Anyway, you can imagine how that conversation went. Jess has always wanted to be a mom, and if I’m not the guy, then she—” He held up the separation agreement again, letting it flutter in the wind.

  The photo swam into Martin’s mind’s eye again. Was that why they bought the house? It had always seemed big for the two of them, with an extra bedroom in the back and a finished basement they never put furniture into. The backyard was big enough to play catch, the kitchen table large enough to fit a whole family around. Was that what Brian and Jess had imagined when they had their picture taken?

  The house was still there, but Jess, it seemed, was gone.

  “That’s a lot of bullshit.” His words surprised him as much as they surprised Brian, if his brother’s face was anything to go by.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You can’t raise some other man’s kid. That’s bullshit, Brian. I’m sorry for saying it, but if that’s how you feel, then I can see why she left your sorry ass.”

  Brian snorted and shoved at him. “You sound funny when you swear.”

  “You know you don’t ever have to meet him, right? The sperm donor or whoever. It’s not like he shows up and sleeps with your wife and then you have to invite him for dinner once a year to celebrate the conception of his kid. He’s just a test tube of semen.”

  Brian squirmed. “It would still be weird.”

  “Do you remember Dad?” Martin asked. “Because I don’t, not really.”

  “Sort of. He came a few times, for birthdays and stuff, but he stopped when you were still pretty little. Is this the part where you tell me he was never a real dad, just a sperm donor, and that real dads are the guys who show up day after day?”

  “That was going to be my point, yes. I don’t know about you, but I would have loved a real dad. You’re not raising someone else’s kid unless that’s how you want to see it.”

  Brian folded the paper and put it back into its envelope. “That’s what Jess told me.”

  “She was always my favorite sister-in-law.”

  “She’s your only sister-in-law.”

  A blue hatchback pulled into the driveway. Seb popped out of the driver’s seat wearing a pair of dark aviators and his leather jacket.

  Martin stiffened. It didn’t seem right, giving Brian a pep talk and a pat on the back and then heading off for the weekend.

  “Go on.” Brian gave Martin a tight smile. “It’s good to see you like this. Go. I’ll be fine. Nick’s coming by tonight. First round at The Dugout is on him.”

  And the second, and the third, no doubt. Martin grabbed his suit and duffle and went down to the car, surprised when Seb came forward to greet him with a quick peck on the cheek. He waved at Brian over Martin’s shoulder.

  “You did that on purpose,” Martin said.

  Seb smiled broadly in Brian’s direction while he took Martin’s bag. “Just want him to know what we’re up to this weekend.”

  * * *

  Seb slid into the driver’s seat and pulled the car back onto the road. He’d been looking forward to having Martin to himself since the moment he’d finally kissed him. In the week that followed, he’d flirted outrageously. Martin, predictably, adorably, blushed and stammered, but in small stolen moments at the back of the store turned out to be a decent kisser. They’d only been caught once, by Cass, whose eyes had nearly bugged out of her head before she’d squeaked and hurried away.

  It was either his good mood, or possibly the underlying tension from the idea of seeing his family, but Seb didn’t notice Martin had barely spoken—even less than usual—until they were on the highway, leaving Seacroft in the rearview mirror.

  “Want to pick some music?” Seb asked. Martin wordlessly flipped the radio on, scrolled through the dial for a moment, and then went back to staring out the window.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” Martin sighed and leaned his head back against the car’s leather headrest. “Except it’s possible I haven’t been the best brother in the world lately.”

  “Well, you’ve had some shit to work through. And as far as you’ve told me, he hasn’t exactly been a poster child for big brother of the year either.”

  Martin fiddled with the knobs on the car’s dash, turning the fan up and down until he turned it off altogether. “My brother’s having a tough time. Ending a marriage is never easy, but I think it’s harder on him than I realized. He said some things, just now, that I wasn’t expecting to hear. Makes me wonder what else he hasn’t told me since he’s been too busy taking care of me.”

  “Hey.” Seb put a hand on Martin’s knee. “At least he’s talking to you. That’s more than most of my entire family will do.”

  Martin gave him a glum smile. “But you’re going to see them now.”

  “Call me brave or stupid. I’m just glad Oliver tracked me down to say my grandmother was sick.”

  “Are you closest to your brother then?” Martin grazed his fingers over the back of Seb’s hand for the briefest second before he quickly folded both his hands in his lap. Seb grinned. He was a tactile person, always had been. Now he had the option to touch Martin freely, and he want
ed the connection pretty much all the time. Wearing down Martin’s reserved restraint would be fun.

  He ran a finger over Martin’s ear, smoothing down a curl of hair threatening to fly free.

  Martin shivered under the touch. “You’re avoiding the question.”

  Seb growled and put both hands back on the wheel. “Ollie and I were close when we were growing up. He was my big brother. Whatever he did, I wanted to do it too. He played sports, I tried out for the team. He got elected senior class president, I ran to get on the student council too. I wasn’t always successful—sports were never really my thing—but I wanted him to see me, you know? To know I saw him and how amazing he was, and that I wanted to be the same.”

  “And did he?”

  Seb made a face. “When Ollie came out right before he went away to college, I think that was the happiest day of my life. Because my mom cried and said it didn’t matter. And my dad hugged him, and he said they would support Ollie, no matter what. And I just about burst, because I knew it was all going to be okay. I’d known forever I was gay. And they said they’d support him, and I thought that meant they’d support me too when I was ready to tell them.”

  “Brian outed me to our mom. He didn’t mean to,” Martin said quickly when Seb went to protest. “We were joking around at dinner one night. He had his first serious girlfriend. I was giving him a hard time about it and brothers . . . you know. He kind of let it slip out. He looked so embarrassed when he said it. My mom smacked him for not letting me tell her when I was ready. And then she smacked me for thinking it was something that needed to be kept a secret.” He smiled at the memory. Seb thought of Martin’s smiles as something hidden, a little private. He was glad to be part of them more and more often and definitely wanted to see more of them. But then the smile shifted as Martin glanced across the car. “I gather that wasn’t quite what happened with your family.”

  The happy little thrill over Martin’s smiles faded. Seb sighed. He could make a joke and change the topic, but it didn’t seem right. He’d brought this up, and Martin deserved to know at least some of what had happened since they were driving into the lion’s den together.

  “It seemed okay at first,” Seb said. “Maybe my first mistake was telling them while I was still in high school. Oliver waited until right before he went away for college, but I didn’t want to wait. I had a boyfriend, Kevin McCreery. I didn’t want to have to hide when he came to the house, so I told my parents about him. It wasn’t like when Ollie told them—there weren’t tears and hugs—but they seemed to understand. But I guess the difference between me and Ollie was his big gay escapades were happening in a college dorm somewhere, and mine were happening in their house.”

  Martin’s eyes widened. “Did they catch you with—”

  “Not like that. But Kevin was out and proud and had been forever, so he didn’t think anything of holding my hand at the dinner table or calling me ‘babe’ when my parents could hear. And I wanted him to like me, so I pretended not to see the way my dad looked at us.”

  The lane markers on the highway rolled by as they drove. Seb hesitated. He was telling the truth, but not all of it.

  “Actually, I think my only real mistake was not being Ollie. He was the good son. He got good grades, went to the right school, got a good job right after graduation. My dad probably even thought Oliver’s boyfriends were the right kind of gay. Good looking guys with good last names and good jobs. My dad could introduce as ‘Oliver’s friend’ and let people assume what they wanted.”

  “And yours weren’t the right kind?”

  “Not even a little.” His boyfriends were moody twinky types with long hair, piercings, and often a chip on their shoulder bigger than Seb’s. He took a few of them to the house, but even introducing them as “Sebastian’s friend” would never have hidden who they really were.

  “I’ve probably never been the right kind of anything.” It hurt to say it. “I barely got through high school. The only reason I got into college at all was because Dad pulled some strings at Watersmith, where he worked. I don’t know what he thought I would do there. He put me in a business program, but I took all the fine arts classes I could get myself into in my first year, and in my second year they let me switch into the BFA program. He was pissed that no one in the registrar’s office consulted him before they made the change.”

  “But you got in on the merit of your work then, not because of who you were.” Martin ran a hand down Seb’s arm. He caught it just as Martin went to pull away, lacing their fingers together. He held their hands on his thigh while he drove.

  It was hard to say where his relationship with his family all went wrong, buried in so many years of disagreements and small failures.

  “He didn’t speak to me the whole summer between my freshman and sophomore years, and then after that second year, when I told him I dropped out, he didn’t talk to me for another six months. The only reason he finally did was to thank me for coming to Parker’s wedding. Like not coming had been an option.” Realizing his attendance hadn’t been considered mandatory was still painful.

  “Parker’s your older sister, right?” Martin squeezed his hand, pulling Seb out of his funk.

  He was going for his grandmother. He had to focus on that.

  “Yeah. I’ve got two older sisters. You’ll meet them both. Gillian is the eldest. She’s twelve years older than me. She got married while I was still in middle school, so we’ve never had much in common. Parker is between Gillian and Ollie. She’s six years older than I am and four years older than Ollie. She’s the only one who still lives in town. She’s married to Jason, who’s a real estate agent and an ass. They’ve got three kids and two golden retrievers. They’re irritatingly perfect.”

  “What’s Gillian’s husband’s name?” Martin asked.

  Seb glanced at him and smirked. “Julian.”

  “Gillian and Julian?”

  Seb let his smirk turn more evil. “The heart wants what the heart wants. And Gillian’s heart wanted Julian. Gillie and I don’t have a lot to say to each other, but don’t think I didn’t bring that up as much as I could through my teenage years.”

  Martin chuckled, almost a real laugh. Seb wanted to praise him for it, like one of Parker’s golden retrievers. How much he enjoyed seeing those little unguarded moments of Martin’s happiness surprised him.

  “What about your mom?” Martin said. Seb’s urge to rub his tummy popped like a bubble.

  “My mom has done everything my dad has ever wanted. She’s not a robot, but doing everything my dad’s way was the agreement from the beginning, I think. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice there’s six years between Gillian and Parker, and then there’s all three of us afterwards in six years together.”

  “I’m a historian,” Martin said, “but even I can do that math, yes.”

  “Well then do this math. My parents got married in May, and Gillian was born in November the same year.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yup. My parents were poor undergrads who, let’s assume, got carried away in the throes of young love. One and one makes three, as it were. So they got married and my dad probably promised my mom that if she stuck with his plan, they’d live a big happy life with a house full of kids someday.”

  “Sounds like it worked out, though.”

  Three out of four functional children was close enough?

  “The point is, my mom got on board and never looked back. My dad calls the shots and she delivers.”

  “So she never stood up to your dad for you?”

  Seb scratched at his ear. It was complicated. “She probably did. I mean, she did. When he’d lecture me about getting my grades up, she’d stand by him because what mother doesn’t want her son to do well in school? When he told me I was throwing my life away if I left college, she said she just wanted me to be happy. But her idea of happy was a degree and a steady job and a houseful of kids. Security. So it’s not like she chose my dad over me at some point
. She just . . . ”

  “She didn’t get it,” Martin said. It was close enough to the truth. “My mom’s a little like that.”

  Seb raised an eyebrow. “But you’re the poster boy for success. She must be so proud of you.”

  Martin’s gazed dripped with dark humor. “I’m sleeping on my brother’s couch and putting my PhD to use in a used bookstore.”

  Seb waved him off. “That’s just temporary. Baby steps, remember?”

  “My mom never went to college. She married my dad when she was twenty and divorced him before my second birthday. She’s worked minimum wage jobs her whole life. When I went to college, she was proud of me. When I stayed in college to study dead Germans . . . ” He smiled his secret smile. Seb really wanted to pull over and kiss him. “She’s proud of me, but she doesn’t understand why I do it.”

  Seb consoled himself by pressing Martin’s knuckles to his lips.

  “Maybe we can switch. If you like them, my family is yours.”

  15

  Martin enjoyed the drive, but nervous energy zipped under his skin as they pulled off the highway. The population sign by the exit said the town was a little bigger than Seacroft, and Seb told him the number didn’t count the eight or so thousand students who attended Watersmith. The downtown was bright and bustling. Everyone was pink-cheeked and cable knit, like Mount Garner before it turned gray and unwelcoming.

  Seb drove with the confidence of someone who knew the town, signaling for turns Martin couldn’t see until they were already at the intersection and making his way through quiet residential streets that all looked the same.

  The farther they drove, the bigger and older the houses got, and the more Martin’s pulse thrummed behind his eyes.

  “The campus is right down there.” Seb pointed down a tree-lined street as they made their way. Martin could have guessed that anyway. It was a Friday in October, and the sidewalks were full of students in Watersmith sweatshirts.