Top Shelf: A Seacroft Novel Read online

  “More than a little! Your Shakespeare project sold for more than six thousand dollars!”

  “Shakespeare project?” Martin tried not to sound judgmental. Apparently, nothing was sacred under Seb’s knife.

  Seb laughed. “It’s not about the money. And Shakespeare’s overrated. I was doing him a favor. I cut out anything that wasn’t a dick joke or some other kind of innuendo. It was still surprisingly intact when I was done.”

  Cassidy giggled. As the apartment lapsed into silence, Martin hovered where he was. The two artists hunched in front of him, intent on their work.

  “Well, I should get going.” Better to head off the inevitable awkwardness. They clearly had a plan for the day, and he was intruding. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “You can stay for a bit, if you want,” Seb said without looking up. “I don’t have TV, but there’s all the books you can handle downstairs, and the Wi-Fi password is ThisIsMine27, no spaces, with the first letter of each word capitalized.”

  Martin paused, thinking of the one password protected Wi-Fi network he could access from the bookshop.

  “Are you Get Your Own?”

  “Well, I’m not sharing with all those busybodies downstairs.” Seb glanced up at Martin from under his lashes. His pale pink lips stretched into a smile that held something other than his usual sarcasm. Martin swallowed hard as attraction stirred in his chest, a dusty feeling he hadn’t encountered in quite some time. He shouldn’t have been surprised Seb, with his charm and good looks, rattled it loose. Martin trembled as he tried it out for a second, then dismissed it as quickly as it came on.

  Seb didn’t appear to notice, or feel the same thing, so Martin excused himself, promising to return. He went downstairs and pulled a few books off a shelf labeled ‘Why Can’t We Be Friends?’

  When he returned, he settled on Seb’s sagging green couch. It was surprisingly comfortable, not broken down so much as well-worn. Loved. Martin relaxed deeper, waiting for a spring to pop out of nowhere and remind him that this wasn’t his place, but the cushions let him sink in.

  Lulled into a tentative comfort by the quiet industry of the apartment, he sprawled along the couch and worked his way through half of the first book. It was a western saga about feuding families, the kind who made Brian and Jess’s earlier scene look positively functional. Martin slipped into the story, losing track of time until Cassidy shook his shoulder.

  “Sorry.” She giggled as he startled. “I’m making grilled cheese for lunch. Do you want one?”

  “Oh. No.” He checked his watch. After one o’clock. He’d been there for hours. “That’s fine. I don’t want you to—”

  “If you say you don’t want her to go to the trouble, I’ll throw this book at you. She’s offering. Take her up on it.” Seb’s voice was low, and Martin’s eyes darted to him. Seb glanced up from the book he was cutting into, smirk and eyebrows back in their permanent expression of sly teasing. Martin pressed himself a little more deeply into the couch.

  “A sandwich would be great. Thanks.”

  “Ketchup or no ketchup?”

  Martin wrinkled his nose. “No ketchup.”

  Cassidy sighed and glanced across the room. “He was doing so well, too.”

  Seb gave a one-shouldered shrug as he cut a long line through the book under his hand. “He’ll learn.”

  They ate on their knees, hunched around the coffee table. Martin couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a grilled cheese sandwich. The sandwich was delicious, simple and comforting, reminding him of cool fall days at home when he and Brian had been kids.

  Martin didn’t have much to say, but Seb and Cassidy kept up an easy conversation. Seb laughed openly at Cassidy’s jokes, unrestrained in a way that Martin hadn’t seen before. When he laughed, Seb’s eyes and forehead crinkled, showing real humor. It was a contrast to the wry smirks he gave in public, where he always seemed ready with the punch line Martin couldn’t see coming. His kindness toward Cassidy was a side that might be worth getting to know instead of simply admiring from a distance.

  “Can I ask you something?” Cassidy said.

  “You’re not really giving him a choice, are you?” Seb’s reply made Martin realize the original question had been directed at him.

  “Oh.” He set down his plate and brushed crumbs off his knees. “Sure.”

  “You were a professor, right?”

  Her use of the past tense made him flinch. “That’s right.”

  “So you taught a lot of classes?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you must have graded a lot of assignments? Read a lot of essays?” She twisted a strand of her curly hair around one finger.

  “Just spit it out, Cass.” Seb chewed on his grilled cheese.

  “Would you help me write my application essay?” Cassidy said it so fast Martin nearly missed it, and then her eyes went wide.

  “Oh. Um. I’m not really—that wasn’t . . . ” He tried to think how to explain. “An admission essay is more of a personal statement. My students wrote academic essays. Research and—”

  “But it’s an essay.” Cassidy was twisting her curls into small braids now, her fingers working quickly. “I know it’s not the same. I want to know if mine’s any good, and maybe, you know, you can check for spelling and things like that? My spelling sucks.”

  Here, Martin’s colleagues would roll their eyes and mutter about the artificial security blanket of computer spell checkers or the abysmal literacy rates in high school graduates.

  The more he rolled the idea around in his head, though, the more he thought there might be some value. Before he’d had to devote all his time to research and teaching classes, he’d done some private tutoring in the last year of his undergrad and again in the first year of his master’s program. He’d always been more comfortable in those one-on-one settings than in a lecture hall. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to hold his own in front of a class again, but surely he could manage this.

  Cassidy’s eyes were full of hope, and he had to stamp down the fear that her trust in him might be misplaced.

  “Sure. I can read your essay.”

  The change on Cassidy’s face was like the sun coming out. She hopped to her feet and ran around the coffee table, flinging her arms around him without any hesitation. It surprised him, and he blushed furiously when he caught Seb watching them, but eventually he found all the muscles he needed to hug her back.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”

  He tried to sound confident as he said, “No problem.”

  * * *

  It had been an odd day. After working on the fashion book most of the night, Seb went out for an early walk to clear his head before Cass arrived. He hadn’t expected to find Martin talking to seagulls and staring at the ocean like he was contemplating an autumn swim. Since the scene in his apartment days earlier, Seb truly had been trying to find a moment to apologize. He led with what he now considered their usual repartee, where he teased and Martin stammered, but everything about Martin had been askew, from his moody scowl to his even more rumpled than usual appearance. With his messy hair and baggy hoodie, he might be coming off a three-day bender.

  As Martin growled they had nothing in common, Seb pushed down the urge to poke at him to see what would happen. He still didn’t know what made Martin tick, but starting a new argument before apologizing for the last one was bad form. So he’d offered a coffee and a place for Martin to hang out for a few hours.

  As the afternoon wore on, though, Martin turned out to be pretty good company once he stopped hovering on the edges. He mostly lay on the couch reading, but eventually he wandered over to look at Cassidy’s project, turning a little pink when he saw the book she was working on.

  “What about the drawings?” he asked as he took in the two naked men, legs wrapped around each other for the purposes of symmetry and barely enough modesty.

  “Seb said I needed to diversify my portfolio.”

  Martin
stared across the table with wide eyes, but Seb held up his hands.

  “I mentor. I don’t censor. She’ll get enough of that on her own.” He waited for Martin to protest, either with a return to the sanctity of books or by pointing out Seb was corrupting Cassidy’s young mind. Instead, Martin simply watched them for a while longer without any obvious judgement before he returned to the couch and his book.

  A little after five, Cass’s phone vibrated out a cheerful samba rhythm and nearly danced off the table. Seb’s hand twitched at the sound, and he almost cut off the arm of the man in the polyester suit he was painstakingly carving around.

  Cass heaved her book shut with a dramatic sigh and went to pack up her things. “My mom’s here. Thanks, Seb. I’ll see you this week. I don’t work on Wednesday or Thursday. Martin, could you help me with my essay then?”

  “Sure.” Martin still didn’t look excited at the prospect, and Seb maintained the whole thing was stupid and pointless. But she was insisting, and the kind professor had agreed to help, so who was Seb to get in their way?

  Cass’s footsteps thumped dully on the stairs as she made her way out. Seconds later, the bookstore’s door groaned, and the building fell into silence.

  Martin glanced at Seb out of the corner of one eye. “I should probably get—”

  “Takeout?” Seb forced a smile and pushed up from his chair. “I think that’s a great idea.”

  Martin shook his head. “No. I should go. I appreciate you letting me hang out with you guys today, but I wasn’t looking for a babysitter.”

  “Of course not.” Seb studied him again. Illuminated from behind by the living room lamp, Martin seemed especially defined, a comic book character with an extra thick line to make him stand out from his background. It was like he’d been dropped into the space, somewhere he didn’t belong.

  He might not need a babysitter, but he definitely needed a friend.

  “Got plans for tonight? Hot date?” Improbable, but since it was still unclear what Martin had been doing at the beach so early that morning, Seb was keeping an open mind. Who knew? The professor might like getting a little freaky at night.

  “No.” Martin heaved a sigh that would have made Cassidy proud. “But Brian will wonder where I got to. I left in a hurry this morning.”

  “Brian? Is he your boyfriend or something?” No way Martin was with someone. Everything about him felt so abandoned. Whoever this Brian guy was, he was doing a lousy job looking after him.

  Martin’s crooked smile flashed with dry humor that Seb hadn’t seen before. “If he were my boyfriend, I could break up with him. But he’s my brother, and you can’t pick your family, right?”

  A couple thoughts pinged through Seb’s brain all at once. First, not picking your family was one of life’s true tragedies.

  Second, Martin hadn’t balked at the mention of a boyfriend.

  What an interesting development.

  “You can call him? Seriously, there’s no rush to leave. The light’s bad for me to keep working anyway. I’m going cross-eyed.” Apparently, Martin’s sad face and the sudden prospect that he might be gay were enough motivation to lie. Seb had hours of potential working time left, but not letting Martin wander off was suddenly more important.

  “I can’t call him. My phone died,” Martin said.

  “Use mine. Please. You’re doing me a favor. I’m too pretty to go blind before I hit my thirtieth birthday.” More lies. He had hit thirty, knocked it out of the ballpark, and already run the bases.

  Martin’s eyes slid over his face. Seb preened before waggling the phone in his direction, but Martin shook his head. “I don’t even know his number. It’s programmed into my phone, but I have no idea what it is.”

  “His loss. So what do you want? Chinese? Pizza? There’s a Thai place down the street that has amazing garlic pork. I’d offer to cook, but I’d probably kill us both and burn this place down in the process. In the interest of self-preservation, I’ll buy us dinner.”

  Martin sat down heavily on the couch and leaned back, hands over his eyes. “This town is determined to make me fat again.”

  As he stretched, the hem of his hoodie rode up, stopping just at the waistband of his jeans. Another quarter inch would reveal skin, and Seb found he wanted to see it. Whatever Martin was, he was not fat. Lean, possibly even wiry. But not fat. Seb watched intently as the shirt pulled up a bit farther, exposing just the thinnest line of skin and a swirl of dark hair. Then Martin exhaled, and his clothes settled into place again. His gray eyes blinked open in time to catch Seb staring.

  “I don’t think you have to worry too much about your weight.”

  Martin’s cheeks went pink, like he knew what Seb had been doing. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  Seb laughed as he flipped through his phone to find the take out menu he wanted, trying to ignore the way his pulse had picked up. “Were you a fat kid growing up?”

  “I wasn’t a skinny kid. Not fat, just soft. But then I went to college. That’s when I got fat.”

  Seb looked him over once more. The individual parts of him—long arms, crooked nose, sad eyes—weren’t specifically attractive, but put together, something about him was compelling.

  “Clearly, you got not fat again.”

  Martin’s palm trailed over his hoodie, across his stomach. Seb was suddenly intrigued by what the body underneath all those clothes might look like, but then Martin’s hand dropped, and he glanced away again. He was holding something back, and Seb couldn’t put his finger on what it might be. He left it alone and ordered dinner.

  The nice thing about living in a small town where ribs and beans were considered the height of gourmet: Thai takeout was fast. Fifteen minutes later, boxes of garlic pork and pad thai covered the space Seb cleared off from the working table. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually sat down to have a real meal in his apartment. Making a fuss over dinner when he lived alone was a lot of work, and his table was usually full of materials. Better that way. Eating formally at the table brought back too many unpleasant family memories.

  “How are things downstairs?” he asked as they poked at their food with chopsticks.

  “Fine. It’s busier than I thought it would be. For a bookstore.”

  “I think Mrs. Green makes as much money renting the space as she does selling books.”

  Martin nodded, looking glum. “There are a lot of groups. I’m not so good with people, especially when it’s a lot of them.”

  “That must have made teaching challenging.”

  Martin stabbed at his plate, the chopsticks moving up and down without picking anything up. Seb pieced together the little bits he knew. Dr. Lindsey, illustrious professor, living with a brother and hiding away in a used bookstore. At no point during the day had Martin brought up his research or his credentials, and that was usually the first thing fussy academics like him wanted to talk about.

  Witness protection, maybe?

  “Can I ask you a question?” he said. Martin squinted up from his meal. Seb laughed, remembering his earlier joke to Cass, and held up his hands. “Fair enough. But can I?”

  “I guess.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Martin froze mid-chew as his cheeks went pale. Seb didn’t mean to make him uncomfortable, but too many little things didn’t add up.

  “You invited me?” Martin said once he’d swallowed.

  “What? No. Not here. I mean—” He waved his arms around him. “Here. Seacroft. The bookstore.”

  “Oh.” Martin’s shoulders slumped.

  “I mean, I can’t imagine we’re a step up from wherever you were before.”

  “Mount Garner College.”

  Seb paused. “Mount Garner? That’s a good school.”

  “Pretty good.”

  “But you left?”

  Martin studied him, and Seb stared right back, taking a second to really examine him. Brown hair, gray eyes, a nose that didn’t quite sit straight. Or
maybe his jaw was a little askew, making everything else appear crooked. There was a scar on his chin, an old one by the looks of it. If he weren’t so nervous all the time, he would probably have been handsome, with full lips and a sharp edge to his jaw.

  Martin plucked at the zipper of his hoodie. “There were mitigating factors.”

  “What? Were you deflowering underclassmen during office hours?” He laughed at the idea of Martin playing Naughty Professor with some twinky student.

  Or maybe it was Martin on his knees while a more senior colleague…

  There was a choking sound across the table. Martin’s face had turned bright red, and his eyes were wide. His cheeks ballooned as he struggled to swallow whatever was in his mouth. In the end, he discreetly turned his head and spat it into a paper napkin.

  “No.” His voice was hoarse. “It wasn’t about me. I was unlucky.” He picked at his food some more but wouldn’t meet Seb’s eyes. Whatever had happened was clearly a sensitive topic, so Seb backed up.

  “What’s your PhD in?”

  Instead of launching into the minutia of whatever his specialty was, though, Martin hesitated, like he was trying to decide if the answer could be used against him. What made him so allergic to disclosing any kind of personal information?

  “German history.”

  Seb stomped on the instinct to bristle. With someone else—with his dad—the two word answer would have been an implication that Seb wasn’t sophisticated or important enough to understand. But Martin didn’t seem to be like that. Seb did his best to keep his voice light as he said, “All of it? It goes on for a while.”

  “It’s really specific.” Martin pushed the plate away. “Most people aren’t all that interested.”

  “Trust me. My dad was a professor.” That was the kindest thing Seb had said about Philip Stevenson in years. “I know the drill.”

  “Your dad’s a professor?” Martin perked up. Of course he did. They knew how to sniff out their kind. “Where does he teach?”

  “He’s retired. What was your thesis about?”

  “The persecution of gay Germans in the lead up to World War II. I wrote my thesis on the life and work of Werner Bergmann.”