Wanderlust (Filling Spaces #1) (3 page)

“Not quick enough to
save the hot water for you,” Jamie deadpanned, and slumped down in front of the
computer.  “Help yourself.  There’s an extra towel in my bag if you want one.”

Surprised by the
continued generosity, by the useful stock of small supplies in Jamie’s bag,
Shea obliged and retrieved the thin towel.  Jamie had thoughtfully left the
bathroom light on and Shea focused on the feeble golden glow to distract
himself from the bathroom’s other problems: the toilet that hadn’t been properly
cleaned in years, the yellowing buildup on the shower’s walls, the spider
eyeing him from the corner of the ceiling. 

“Geez,” he muttered as
he hurriedly doffed his clothes and tried not to touch anything in the bathroom
more than necessity demanded.  “The owner needs to clean this thing out.”  The
thought gave him pause as he realized he
wasn’t
the owner, and Jamie
either—they were both trespassing, and worry stilled him as he eyed the lock on
the bathroom door.  What if they got caught?  What if they
didn’t
get
caught?  How safe could it possibly be to strip down with a complete stranger
in the next room, anyway?

But he didn’t lock the
door.   Instead he set his jaw and, determined, stepped inside the shower.  The
pipes rattled as he turned the ancient silver knob, and the spray that shot out
was colder than it was lukewarm; Shea yelped in spite of himself and heard,
through the closed bathroom door, laughter from the kitchen.  He inhaled a
sharp curse through chattering teeth.

It wasn’t safe, he knew. 
None of this was safe: breaking into a cabin that wasn’t his, sharing it with
someone
else
breaking in, spending time with a stranger whose identity
and statements he couldn’t verify even if he
felt
they were true. 
Showering nude in an unlocked bathroom with said stranger in the
very next
room…

But—the revelation hit
Shea the moment that the warm water
finally
tempered the frigid water
that pelted his skin—he didn’t care.  He simply didn’t care.  Whether it was
grief over his father’s death, the painful realization of how damn ordinary and
empty
life was back home, or whether Jamie’s words stirred up longing
within him, he didn’t
care
that this might be risky, or unusual, or
new. 

For tonight at least,
he decided, he could be unreasonable.

Tonight, it was okay.

II.

Jamie stared absently
at the computer screen. 

In front of him, the
cursor blinked.  After a moment he impatiently pressed the backspace button and
watched with tired eyes as the cursor gobbled up four sentences of words.  He
didn’t attempt to replace them; tonight seemed like one of those nights where
he couldn’t write for
shit. 

With a sigh, he turned
a glare to the closed bathroom door that hid the source of his current writer’s
block.   As if in response, the water cut off and a resounding silence fell,
broken only by the thump and thud of Shea exiting the shower and getting
dressed.  Resigned, Jamie closed his laptop and decided to give up writing for
the evening. 

“That water doesn’t get
really warm at all; it just gets…less cold for a little while.”  Despite the
complaint, Shea seemed in good spirits; the shower had brightened his eyes and
his limp, though evident, seemed manageable.  “How do you live with it like
that?”  Like a cat or a puppy, he seemed smaller when damp: a petite,
small-boned man whose clothes fit a touch too loosely on his frame and whose
sleek damp hair, water-darkened into a pale gold, curled up untamed beneath his
ears.  Jamie wanted to touch it, to touch
him
, to slide his warm hands
over cool, water-damp skin.

He dampened the urge
immediately and arched an eyebrow instead.  “You talk like I’m here all the
time.”

Shea glanced up from
his inspection of a ladybug on the kitchen counter.  “You are, aren’t you?  Or
a lot of the time, anyway.  You didn’t mention living anywhere else, so I just
assumed.”

Surprised, Jamie took
his time packing up his computer to give himself time to respond properly. 
Shea possessed a certain naiveté that belonged only to the privileged—a certain
belief that the world was right and good and belonged in a certain order—but he
was far more perceptive than his earnest, honest blue eyes would have led Jamie
to guess. And Jamie didn’t
want
to talk about the rougher nights, the
darkness that nipped at him whenever he settled in one place for too long.  He
didn’t want to lie to those trusting blue eyes, either. In the end, he settled
for evasion. “You assume a lot,” he observed.  “And you know what they say
about assuming.”  When Shea gave him a blank look in response, he laughed
helplessly.  “Or not.”

Brow furrowed, Shea
considered the comment and then shrugged, turning to the window again as Jamie
struggled to zip his laptop into the bag.  “Well, I won’t assume then.  I’ll
just ask.  Where do you work now?”

“Nowhere currently,” Jamie
replied coolly.  He could
feel
Shea’s eyes widen in surprise without
even looking up to confirm it, and smiled faintly in response.  “Surprised?  It’s
kind of my cycle: I work at a place and live cheaply until I can save up some
money to live on for a while, move when it pleases me and write until the money
runs out, then start over again when it’s necessary.  Wash, rinse, repeat.”

Shea looked offended by
the very idea; he turned away from the window in evident consternation.  “But
what if you can’t
get
a job?” he asked worriedly.  “What if you
need
a job and one isn’t available?”

Jamie fought mightily
not to laugh.  “If I was a lawyer or a doctor or I cared about where I worked, if
I had a family to provide for or needed more than I do, maybe I’d worry,” he
shrugged.  “But the world will always need people to serve food and clean up
other people’s shit.”  He caught the faint flinch that touched Shea’s features
and sharpened his tone.  “Or is that kind of work beneath someone from the
humanities
?”

He didn’t know what he
expected—for Shea to storm out, maybe, or pout, or argue. To encourage him that
he could do better, be more. But the smaller man did none of those.  He simply
stood for a moment, absorbing the words, and then nodded.  “You’re right,” he
said simply.  “I’m sorry.”  And the sincerity written on his innocent, cheerful
features seemed so frank and honest that Jamie found himself without words.

Uncertain of how to
respond, he walked instead to the hall closet and tugged out the sleeping bag
there.  He felt Shea watching him—felt that quiet gaze burning into his
back—and sighed heavily.  “What?” he asked as he unrolled the bag across the
floor.  “What is it now?”

“Well,” Shea pointed
out carefully, “there are two beds here, one in the master and one in the guest
room, so I don’t see why you need a sleeping bag.”

Jamie stood from the
bag and grabbed his flashlight, then caught Shea by the arm and marched him to
the bedroom.  He pointed the beam at the bed.  “Look,” he instructed. “What do
you see?”

Shea bent forward in
the shadowy room and squinted.  “Something…moving” he said uncertainly.  “Really
fast.  I only caught a glimpse of it before—” 

“Spiders,” Jamie
announced, and gleaned a little satisfaction from how quickly Shea backed away
from the bed.  “Goddamn
huge
fucking spiders.  They’ve made nests
between the bed and the wall there and they crawl over it at night. The other
bed too, I think. I mean, if you
want
to sleep in there, suit yourself,
but…”

Hastily, Shea limped
out of the bedroom and back to the bright kitchen.  “No,” he muttered, aghast. 
“I’m fine.”  In the safety of the bright light, he glanced around the room to
assure himself that no spiders infested
this
particular area, and then
turned his glance down to the single sleeping bag on the floor.  “Um.”

Sleep on the goddamn
floor and quit complaining
, Jamie started to say, but his
gaze caught on the careful way Shea stood to keep his weight off his swollen
ankle.  Cool from his shower, he had his arms wrapped around himself to ward
off the chill and his slightly swollen eyes reminded Jamie that he must have
been crying earlier during his time here alone.  
Shit.  Why am I supposed
to care? 
And he wasn’t.  He wasn’t obligated to give a damn.  And yet…

“A bed of only the
highest
quality for my prince,” he announced sarcastically, and gestured to the
sleeping bag. 

Shea blinked.  “But
it’s yours,” he protested.

Jamie flopped down on
the floor nearby, stretched out long limbs and tried to ignore the way his
shoulder blades dug into the hard floor.  “You’re a master of stating the
obvious.    Now quit complaining.  It’s late and I’m tired.”

Wordlessly, Shea
obeyed.  After some shuffling and awkward bending to avoid putting pressure on
his ankle, he tucked himself neatly into the bag and pulled it up to his chin. 
“It’s warm in here,” he muttered, sounding surprised, and before Jamie could
tell him that sleep meant shutting up, he added, “It’s nice to make a few more
good memories here.”

“This qualifies as a
good memory?” Jamie asked skeptically.  He rolled over on his side and propped
his head up on his arm to give Shea a disbelieving glance.

Shea glanced over and
offered a faint smile.  “Yeah,” he answered simply.  After a few moments of
silence, he continued fondly, “My family and I had a lot of fun here.  My dad
took care of the cabin and it was in good shape, then.  Not like it is now.” 
He craned his neck to gaze around the room.  “You said teenagers come here to
make trouble?”

“Yeah,” Jamie replied
shortly, and opted not to share the details: the too-young girls who came up
here in borrowed fishnets and bandeau tops to fuck acne-marked boys, the bands
of teenage guys bonding over cheap beer and stories about sex too exaggerated
to be real, the addicts who somehow found the place and made it a shelter to
sleep off a bender. 

“Dad would have hated
that,” Shea replied quietly.  Jamie couldn’t quite make out his features in the
dark, but melancholy clotted his tone.  “He thought of this place as a
sanctuary.  A place where we could come and be happy.  Even towards the end, he
had plans to buy it back and work on it.”

Jamie told himself he
didn’t care.  He’d learned long ago that roughly ninety-eight percent of people
were assholes, and the other two percent weren’t worth the trouble anyway.  So
he remained silent, stretched out as far as he could on the floor with his arms
and legs splayed out, and listened to the chirp of insects outside.  He didn’t
care.  He didn’t
care
.  But there was nothing else to do but look at the
ceiling and listen to the rustle of the trees outside, and maybe something the
idiot said would inspire his writing—so he gave in and asked, telling himself
the question was purely for curiosity’s sake.    “You said your dad died.  What
happened, exactly?”

Silence.  For a moment
he thought Shea was asleep.  And then a quiet answer in the darkness, a single
sad word: “Cancer.”  More silence, and Jamie found he didn’t know what to say. 
He’d never
had
parents beyond the purest biological definition, at least
not in the honest sense of the word, and therefore no realization of what it
might be like to lose them, to lose that kind of love or affection.  But Shea
spared him from having to change the subject or offer false, comforting
platitudes.  “It’s a horrible disease,” he acknowledged from the sleeping bag. 
“
Really
horrible.  But my dad had a pretty good sense of humor, and he
kept us laughing the whole time.  My whole family’s like that—pretty goofy, I
guess.  We don’t like sad stories, so…we try to find a reason to smile.  Even
during the darker times.”

Jamie closed his eyes. He
didn’t care.  Or maybe he didn’t know
why
he cared. “Tell me,” he said
simply.  “About them.  About you.”

Even in the dark he
could sense Shea’s surprise, but after a moment the sleeping bag rustled and he
knew the smaller boy was making himself comfortable, searching his memories. 
“Every year when we visited this place and got ready to head back home,” Shea
started hesitantly, “my dad would hide the car keys from Mom when we were
supposed to leave.  It used to scare her, but eventually she got used to it and
just shrugged it off.  So the year he
did
lose the keys, it took him
hours to convince her he wasn’t just playing around.”  He laughed a little in
the dark.  “Before Mom went to the hospital for the last time, she hid his
extra set on purpose.  He didn’t find them until weeks after the funeral, and
said it was her way of trying to make him smile even when he was sad.  I guess
I’ve inherited their sense of humor, too…”

And so he spoke: about
his mother and the heart problem that took her life, the loss of his father,
his sister Kady and her fiancé in New York, his struggles in grad school, his
quiet and small apartment.  Jamie listened rapt, imagining the faces and places
to flesh out the words, hearing in the stories more heart—and maybe more
loneliness—than Shea might have imagined.  He didn’t know how much time passed
as he lay there listening; it was only after Shea had been silent for a few
moments that he stirred. 

“Mm?” he asked without
opening his eyes.  “Why’d you stop?”

He could feel the
weight of Shea’s sleepy gaze.  “You’re letting me go on and on about myself,”
he murmured, “but you haven’t said anything about
you
.  What about you? 
What about your life?”

“Boring,” Jamie replied
lightly, but he opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on the ceiling.  “Nothing
worth speaking of, really.” 

“But—”

“If Sleeping Beauty
isn’t tired,” Jamie said archly before his companion could argue, “then I’ll be
happy
to take his sleeping bag and leave him in the bedroom to sort out
his thoughts.”

Shea sighed, but
accepted the pointed comment and did not protest.  “I’ll stay here, thanks,” he
said dryly.   The sleeping bag rustled more as he settled down more
comfortably. “Jamie?”

“Mm?”

Shea reached out
blindly with one hand, caught Jamie by the shoulder, and squeezed.  Jamie’s
gray eyes widened and his heart, thrown into riot by the unexpected gesture,
thumped rebelliously in his chest.  “Thanks,” Shea said simply. “For being
kinder than you needed to be.”  The warmth of his touch vanished as he rolled
over and scrunched himself up like a caterpillar in the sleeping bag. 
“G’night,” he mumbled.

“Goodnight,” Jamie
muttered mechanically.  He
wasn’t
kind; he knew better than that.  He
preferred being alone.  He hated people who coasted by on privilege, cared
little to understand the way the world worked, and wanted to live forever in
the safety of their cozy little lives.  And he wanted to
say
all of
those things suddenly, to make them vehemently clear, but he couldn’t open his
mouth to spit out the words because at least right now, at least with Shea,
they weren’t
true
.  Shea was fundamentally different from most people Jamie
knew—naïve but disarmingly shrewd, open and thoughtful in his manner, sweet
even in his melancholy—and Jamie chose to be kind to him because…

…because…

Sleep took him before
he could find a satisfactory answer.