Top Shelf: A Seacroft Novel Page 17

  A blind person could see the panic spread across Oliver’s face, but the family’s collective eyesight appeared to have deteriorated significantly over the years.

  Oliver was gripping his knife like a weapon. “I could meet you somewhere. You don’t need to come all the way to the office.”

  “No, no, I’ll have the car. I can park it in your visitor parking for free while we eat.”

  Cheap bastard.

  Oliver appeared to be on the verge of losing consciousness. His knife trembled, and he threw a desperate look at Seb.

  Coward.

  Seb felt for him, though. Announcing his holistic lifestyle makeover to this room of his nearest and somewhat dearest was never going to be easy. The thought of their father strolling through Oliver’s soon-to-be former office and hearing the news that way had to be even more terrifying.

  Seb sighed. Time to dig his brother out of this one. He’d collect his reward later.

  “I’ve got a show coming up in six weeks.” His opening line was unimportant. He needed to wait for someone to take the bait. “I’ve been invited to exhibit some of my work as part of a tribute to Arlene Schiller.”

  “Seb, that sounds great!” Nora said.

  “Sebastian, don’t interrupt while I’m talking to your brother.” Philip regarded him like a fly buzzing around a picnic.

  Seb forced his smile and continued undeterred. “It was supposed to be a collaborative show, but Schiller had to back out.”

  “Do you get paid for something like that?” Jason asked.

  Bingo.

  “Oliver—” Philip tried again.

  “Some. It’s exposure mostly, but shows like this usually net a few sales after the fact,” Seb said. “Kenneth says it’s good for my career. Probably the biggest show I’ve done so far.”

  “Sebastian—”

  “But you don’t get paid? Is it even a real job if you’re not making money? What kind of sense does that make?”

  Seb narrowed his eyes. Jason always made it too easy. “About as much sense as my sister keeping you around even though we all know you’re a Class D moron.”

  “Seb!” Parker said.

  “Sebastian!” Philip’s knife clattered to his plate.

  Seb smiled blithely across the table at his father. “Yes, Dad?”

  “Apologize to Jason.”

  Martin’s leg shifted against Seb’s, possibly in warning, but Seb knew exactly what he was doing. Too bad Martin would witness this, though. Things were about to get loud. The Stevensons were yellers when they all got together.

  “Jason.” He slipped his hand into Martin’s. “I’m sorry you wouldn’t know good art if it bit you in your sagging ass. Seriously, man, with what you make in commissions, a gym membership shouldn’t be that hard to manage.”

  “Sebastian!” Philip’s voice dropped another note lower.

  “It’s fine, Seb.” Oliver’s voice was quiet next to him. “You can stop.”

  Seb winked at his big brother. Oliver never understood this. The only way to escape was to commit to the very end.

  “Seriously?” Jason’s face was several shades pinker than the fish on his plate. “That’s the best you can come up with? You’re going to insult my ass?”

  “I’ve seen a lot of ass in my time,” Seb said.

  “Sebastian, that is enough!” His father pounded the table.

  “Yours isn’t all that great. I remember.”

  “Seb!” Parker’s voice rose above the others.

  “Seb, stop.” Oliver’s hand was on Seb’s knee, squeezing so hard the pain radiated up his leg.

  “You asshole,” Jason growled.

  “It’s okay, Jay.” Seb took a bite of his dinner. “Everyone gets experimental. I’m always happy to help a brother-in-law out.”

  “You didn’t!” Parker said. It didn’t matter if she was talking to Seb or Jason.

  “That is enough, Sebastian.” Philip’s face was purple. Murderous.

  Seb squared his shoulders. Now they were getting somewhere. “Dad. Do you know who calls me Sebastian? Just you. No one else. It’s Seb, Dad. It has been since I was ten. It’s like you don’t want to admit who I am or something. That I don’t get to make my own choices.”

  “You’ve made your choices.”

  The table around them went silent. Seb stood his ground. “I have, Dad. Repeatedly. Yet you choose not to recognize them.”

  “I’m supposed to recognize that you’ve thrown everything I’ve ever offered you back in my face? That you continue to embarrass this family? You want praise for that?”

  “Philip,” Nora said. Philip ignored her.

  “Everything you’ve offered me?” Seb said. Oliver’s hand on his knee was a claw, and even Martin’s hand around his had gone tight, but Seb pushed on. “You told me how it was going to be and then kicked me out when I didn’t do things your way.”

  “We gave you every kind of support you needed. And you rejected it.”

  Seb had to laugh at that. Was that how his father saw it? “You didn’t offer support. You offered a straightjacket.”

  “He has dyslexia.” Philip turned to Martin. “Did he tell you that?”

  “You make it sound like it’s contagious.” Seb’s insides boiled. That wasn’t Philip’s story to tell.

  “Do you know his art,” the word was a sneer, “is an extended metaphor for revenge against me and my life’s work? Your life’s work too. Those poems you work so hard to prove your dead German wrote? He’ll cut them up and sell them.”

  “You’ve never understood.” Seb’s voice dropped. His work wasn’t some coping mechanism or a shout into the void about the unfairness of the way his brain was wired. He created new words, new works from unwanted goods. That was his art.

  “We tried to help him.” Philip was still speaking to Martin, probably seeking backup. “Accommodations could have been made.”

  “I didn’t need accommodating.” Seb sneered. “I needed you to see I wasn’t like you!”

  “Because you never even tried!” Philip banged on the table again.

  “Dad!” This was from Oliver.

  “You were determined to fail at everything we ever asked you to do.”

  “Fail? Because I don’t work a job with a salary? Because I don’t come here to talk about my mortgage and my retirement plans? Because I bring men to the house instead of women?”

  “This has nothing to do with that. We have always supported your and Oliver’s choices.”

  “Dad.” Oliver said again. Seb would have bruises where Oliver gripped him.

  “It’s not a choice, Dad! We’re gay! Your sons are gay.”

  “Dad!”

  “You think I care about—”

  “Dad!”

  “What?” Philip’s glare seared its way across the table to Oliver.

  “I quit my job to make artisanal kombucha.”

  17

  “It’s not like it used to be,” Seb said, after dinner. They were on the patio, staring out over the dark yard. Seb had a whiskey in his hand. Martin sat on a cold patio chair, nursing another vodka soda.

  “It went better than I thought it would.” Oliver sipped his own rocks glass.

  “That was better?” Martin asked.

  The brothers chuckled. The dark sound made Martin shiver.

  The dinner reminded him of his first lecture at Mount Garner. Don’t look them in the eye, they said. They’ll know if you’re nervous. Don’t let them see you sweat. They smell blood in the water.

  His students smelled his blood from the moment he’d left his office, two floors up from the chaos of the lecture hall. He wasn’t supposed to be teaching that semester, but he’d been asked to stand in for a week to cover for a colleague with pneumonia. The freshman students, already mid-semester and bored, took one look at him, and before he even opened his mouth, he knew it was a lost cause.

  The difference between his first lecture and dinner with the Stevensons was that, at Mount Gar
ner, he had fought to be seen and heard over the roar of the crowd, whereas at the dinner, sitting next to Seb, Martin desperately wished to vanish.

  Everyone started shouting at once. Philip redirected his fury at Oliver. Parker pointed fingers and hurled insults, sometimes at Jason, sometimes at Seb. Gillian and Julian tried to break up Philip and Oliver, and Parker and everyone, and Nora kept asking if someone could pass the wine.

  “I noticed Mom bought new dishes,” Seb said.

  “I think we’ve broken so many of the other ones over the years that she didn’t have enough to serve all nine of us.” Oliver pulled a cigarette pack out from his pocket.

  “How does that fit with your holistic lifestyle?” Seb asked.

  “I’m going to quit.”

  “How did the dishes get broken?” Martin was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  “You should have let me handle it.” Seb glared at Oliver.

  “Handle what?” Oliver said through clenched lips as he lit the cigarette. “I really thought he might kill you this time.”

  “Nah. We’ve said everything we were ever going to really say to each other years ago.”

  Martin had seen it coming. He didn’t even know what it was, but he’d felt the shift, like the quiet moment before rain started. One minute, they’d been talking about dinner and Oliver’s ex-boyfriend, and then something in Seb’s face changed. His pale skin went taught around his eyes and his jaw. The color rose on his cheeks as he leaned into the table.

  And then Seb walked into the no-man’s land of a family dinner, armed with nothing but a tilt of his head and words aimed to wound.

  “Did you really sleep with Parker’s husband?” Martin asked.

  Oliver laughed around an inhale of his cigarette.

  “No.” Seb leaned in to kiss Martin, quick and hard. Everything about him was kinetic in the watery glow of the floodlights that lined the yard.

  “Then why—”

  “Because Seb can’t even spell subtlety,” Oliver said. “It’s the silent b. Gets him every time.”

  Seb punched him in the arm, making Oliver yelp and his whiskey slosh over the edge of his glass.

  “First blood.” Seb grinned. “Doesn’t matter what it’s about. If you draw first blood in a confrontation, you start with the upper hand.”

  “But Parker—” Martin tried to say.

  “Knows it’s not true. Jason could only get straighter if I shoved a stick up his ass.” Seb snorted. “I really thought she’d have divorced him by now, though.”

  “She’s got the kids. You know Parker.” Oliver tossed back the last of his drink. “She wears the pants in that relationship. The pants, the boxers, and the combat boots. She’ll leave when she’s good and ready.”

  They laughed, clapping each other on the back. Oliver’s hair was darker against his skin on the shadowy patio, while Seb’s nearly glowed. But at night, all cats were gray, and they stood shoulder to shoulder. Sadness slithered through Martin as he watched them commiserate. What must growing up together have been like for them to congratulate each other on getting through a meal without a broken dish and discussing the end of their sister’s marriage like they’d run out of small talk?

  Seb glanced over his shoulder. He must have seen Martin’s thoughts on his face because his easy grin turned serious. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Martin pulled himself to his feet, faking a stretch. He was an intruder in all of this, and it was time to go. “It was a long day. I think I’m going to head to bed.”

  “Already?” The rest of Seb’s smile faded. “It’s kind of early.”

  Martin took a step back. Anxiety thrummed under his skin as the edge of adrenaline from the most dysfunctional dinner he’d ever been to wore off.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He needed some space to think, and despite the sprawling backyard, he wasn’t getting it here. He turned, leaving the Stevenson brothers to themselves.

  * * *

  The bed was comfortable, but it still wasn’t his. Martin stared at the dark shape of the dresser. He’d been trying to sleep for an hour.

  The dinner replayed over and over in his mind. The yelling, the insults, the way Oliver and Seb laughed it all off when it was over. Nervousness spiraled in a loop from his brain to his chest and back again. He shouldn’t have been there, at dinner. He shouldn’t have come at all.

  Once again, should was such a useless word.

  There was a scraping sound.

  “Martin.”

  Martin’s breath caught.

  “Hey, are you awake?”

  He lay still where he was.

  The patio door slid in its track, and Martin silently cursed that he hadn’t thought to lock it. He held his breath, then squeezed his eyes shut at the sound of Seb’s footsteps on the carpet.

  He was asleep. Seb needed to think he was asleep.

  “We’re pretty fucked up,” Seb said quietly. “I can’t even imagine what that must have looked like to you. Zoo animals have better manners than we do.”

  “No shit,” Martin said.

  “You are awake!” Seb’s voice rose in the dark.

  Martin growled, pulling himself upright against the headboard. He fumbled until he found the lamp by the bed and turned it on. Seb sat across from him in the floral arm chair. Mud streaked the sleeve of his leather jacket, and his feet were bare, but he grinned at Martin. Normally, that grin was charming, but tonight it flared an emotion close to anger in Martin’s chest. He didn’t deserve to feel like this, and it was Seb’s fault for bringing him into such a volatile situation.

  “What am I doing here?” Martin let his irritation show. “Huh? Why did you invite me?”

  Seb’s smile fell. “I’m sorry.” Shadows played over his face.

  “Do you want me here at all? Or was I part of some big screw you to your parents?”

  “No!”

  “What happened to being civil? What happened to leaving at the first sign of someone looking at you funny?”

  “Oliver needed me.” Seb twisted his hands in his lap. His earlier frenetic energy vanished.

  “To do what? Start a yelling match at dinner? Imply you were sleeping with your brother-in-law? What was it you thought he needed you to do?”

  “To be me, okay?” Seb’s features hardened.

  “What does that mean?” Martin’s fists clenched against the comforter.

  “That’s who I am to them.” He beat at his chest. “The fuck up. Screwed up Sebastian, who can’t be normal, who can’t be like everyone.”

  “Are you really dyslexic?”

  “That’s what you’re getting out of all of this?” Seb paced the room, and the energy charged around him.

  Martin sighed. This wasn’t what he’d wanted. He was still reeling from the whole evening, but he hadn’t meant to direct his frustration at Seb. He pulled the covers away and stood, trying to get in front of the other man. “Just calm down.” The last thing either of them needed was for Seb to go storming into the house looking to pick another fight.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Seb’s voice rasped.

  “I never said there was.”

  “It’s not a disease. He says it like I have syphilis.”

  “He doesn’t think that.”

  Seb’s eyes flashed cobalt in the dim room. “How would you know?” He continued to circle like a caged tiger. Martin fought the flutters in his stomach that told him to run. He’d never seen Seb like this, the confident persona shattered to pieces.

  Martin held his ground. Seb was hurting. Martin needed to stay. “Hey.” He held his hands out wide. “Hey, it’s okay.”

  “It’s not.” Seb grabbed at big handfuls of his hair. “It’s not okay. Why are they like that? Why do they make me so crazy?”

  “Families do that.”

  “Does your family do that?” Seb glared at him.

  “My family is me and Brian and sometimes our mom. We don’t have the critical mass to be like yours.”


  “Critical mass? What are we, some kind of bomb?” Seb’s face was pained.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a crater where the dining room used to be in the morning.” He took another step forward.

  “Screw you,” Seb said, but there wasn’t any heat behind it. He hunched in on himself, arms curled around his sides. The Seb who swaggered through the bookstore was nowhere to be seen.

  Martin was close enough to smell the leather and sweat scent of Seb’s jacket. Another step, and their toes bumped together. Martin’s arms were still wide. To his surprise, Seb closed the rest of the space between them, burying his face in Martin’s shoulder and wrapping his arms around Martin’s waist.

  “Fuck, I’m so sorry.” Seb breathed it against Martin’s skin. His hands wrapped all the way around his body. Martin relaxed and slid his own arms around Seb, one hand resting in the middle of his back, the other on his neck where the white-blond hair was fine and soft.

  “It’s okay.” Martin’s anger evaporated as Seb shuddered against him.

  “We’re horrible. You shouldn’t have to see us.”

  “It’s fine. I’m not sorry I came this weekend.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I brought you.”

  * * *

  Martin smelled like laundry detergent and drug store deodorant. Seb wanted to drown in it. Burn his senses out with it, so the last few hours went up in a puff of cotton fresh-scented smoke.

  He’d been giddy, buzzed on that one glass of whiskey and the evil thrill he got every time he went toe to toe with his dad.

  But the disappointment in Martin’s face as he’d left Seb and Oliver on the patio made holding onto his good mood impossible.

  Now he pressed into Martin, fighting back tears while Martin smoothed a hand over his hair and murmured soft things.

  “I just . . . ” Seb said. “I see my dad, and something inside me snaps, you know?”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”