Watching Elijah Fall
by Amy Spector
Copyright September, 2014 Amy Spector
Originally published as part of the M / M Romance Group's
“Love's Landscapes” event on Goodreads.com
Cover Design by Amy Spector
Photograph by mikelaptev / Dollar Photo Club
Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
I hope you enjoy this book.
Acknowledgments
I owe a lot of thanks to my beta reader Calila, to Raevyn for all the work she put into this story and to the team behind the scenes of the Love's Landscape event.
This story is dedicated to Aaron.
Watching Elijah Fall
By Amy Spector
Chapter 1
I would have sworn I had only just drifted to sleep when my cell phone vibrated on the nightstand. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, easily convincing myself it was a wrong number, relaxing once it quieted. When it vibrated again, I groaned and worked to untangle myself from the sheets in the middle of the bed.
After four months, I had finally started to migrate over to Jason’s side. I couldn’t help but think that it was a good sign.
As I reached for the phone, I silently prayed it wasn’t my mother, or worse yet, work. I might have been able to use the money, but what I needed was a few more hours sleep and, God willing, a short line for coffee when I did finally decide to get up.
I groaned when I saw the screen.
“Hello?” I answered, trying hard to keep the irritation out of my voice, but failing miserably.
“Don’t get pissy with me, Mr. Pierce. Where the hell are you? I’ve been waiting for nearly thirty minutes.”
Shit.
“Sorry Nicholas, Jason called me late last night, and I’m so tired I must have turned my alarm off in my sleep.”
“Why the fuck would Jason be calling you?”
I let out a tired sigh. “I think it’s his new hobby or something.”
Nicholas was quiet for several moments before finally telling me to get my butt down to the diner.
“But I’m so tired.” I knew I sounded whiny.
“Jacob, sweetheart, it’s eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning for God’s sake. I’ve waited longer for you than someone whose pants I want into.” I could practically hear Nicholas roll his eyes. “Shimmy your fine ass into a pair of jeans and get down to the diner. We really do need to talk.”
If I hadn’t already been aware of my best friend’s love of the dramatic, it would have sounded ominous.
“Fine. Give me fifteen minutes,” I told him.
“I’m willing to give you thirty,” he said before hanging up.
I decided to grab a quick shower, keeping it cool enough to help wake me up but warm enough to not be uncomfortable. One of the few changes I had made when Jason left, besides canceling his subscription to People and vowing to hit the gym more days during the week than not, was to crop my dark hair short, which made for a quicker morning routine. If I skipped shaving, I would be able to make it in less than twenty-five minutes without even pulling my Jeep out of the garage.
By the time I walked into the diner, I noticed that Robert and Evan had joined the corner booth, and I considered turning right back around. It felt more like I was walking into my own intervention than meeting friends for breakfast. When everyone at the corner booth grew quiet at my approach, I suspected I was more than half-right.
I slipped in, giving Nicholas a kiss on the cheek, the others an apologetic smile.
It didn’t surprise me that it was Robert who spoke first.
“So Nicholas says that Jason has been calling you.”
Of course Nicholas had.
“Yeah,” I said, shrugging, “a couple of times in the last few weeks.”
It had been six times in two months.
I heard Nicholas make an angry noise in the back of his throat.
“You don’t want to get back together with him.” It wasn’t a question. It was always so obvious that Robert was used to everyone listening to him.
“Of course not.” I spoke a little too loudly, and I felt myself blush as people in other booths glanced in our direction. “Last time I lost my television and ended up twenty-eight dollars and seventy-six cents short in my checking,” I said, far quieter this time. “I’d probably lose a kidney a second go around.”
I hadn’t meant to sound so bitter; I was just really, really tired. Jason had gotten into the habit of calling and giving me a drunken recount of all the ways I had fallen short in the boyfriend department. If he had wanted me to fear ever getting my toes wet in the dating pool again, it was working.
I was saved momentarily from the conversation when our waitress approached to take everyone’s order. The others had already ordered drinks, having been there waiting for me for almost an hour, and had obviously made the decision to forgo breakfast for lunch, all ordering burgers and fries, except for Evan who ordered grilled cheese.
I thought, rather unkindly, that grilled cheese seemed fitting being that it couldn’t have been too long ago since Evan had been ordering from the kids’ menu. I felt instantly bad for the thought.
Evan had come into our group only three months back when he had started dating Robert. I had been friends with Robert for what seemed like forever, and there was no argument that he was a good-looking guy, even better looking now at thirty-one than he had been at twenty-five. But Evan was a very young-looking twenty-one, all big eyes and unruly black hair, and it seemed like such an odd pairing. Though you’d have to be blind not to see how much they adored each other.
Perhaps, at the moment, I was a little jealous.
Feeling guilty, I asked the waitress for the same thing Evan was having, and he gave me a shy smile, one I had no doubt won over Robert the moment he had seen it, then continued watching me in the quiet way he had that I found unnerving.
After a few minutes, it was Nicholas who spoke. “You need a hobby, like drag or something.” I sometimes found it hard to follow my best friend’s train of thought. “Maybe you could take a cooking class.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” The confused look on my face had Nicholas barking out a laugh.
“Since that dick of a boyfriend left, it’s like you’ve been some kind of automaton.”
I couldn’t hold back my grin. “Automaton? Really?”
Nicholas flipped me off. “You know what I mean. A person can’t just go to work and go home to bed and do nothing in between. You need to do something for yourself. And grabbing a meal or two a week with your friends does not count,” he added quickly when he no doubt suspected I was about to argue.
I went to the gym too, but I didn’t bother to say that. I knew he was right. Since the breakup, I had definitely withdrawn, rarely doing anything that broke from my daily routine. I hadn’t even hit a club but once, a night three weeks after the breakup, when the thought of my own company seemed unbearable. At twenty-eight, I was starting to feel too old for that sort of thing. Perhaps if every decent gay bar in town hadn’t been so close to the university, the crowds wouldn’t have always been so predominantly young.
“I don’t know that cooking is my thing,” I told him.
“Cooking should be everyone’s thing,” Robert said, exchanging a glance with Evan. This was obviously not a new conversation with them.
“They’re going to be starting photography classes at the Cultural Arts Center,” Evan said, his eyes down, running a finger through a ring of condensation left from his glass. When everyone quieted, looking at him, he looked up, quickly pulling
a folded flier from his back pocket and handing it across the table to me. “I thought you might be interested.”
Robert shot Evan an odd look, and Nicholas just shook his head. “That’s already what Jacob does all day long, honey.”
That was true enough. I worked in the art department of a marketing firm and spent much of my day shooting product— shampoo, shoes, things that resembled food but were in no way edible— so that it would look good through the lens. The remainder of my day was spent in front of a computer, perfecting what I’d taken. I was starting to lose my passion.
“That’s all digital,” Evan said, dismissing the concern with a wave of his hand. “These are art classes. Real darkroom stuff.”
I looked at the flier then, liking the idea but not totally sure. I had spent a lot of time in darkrooms in college, and even some in high school but, it had been long enough ago that I wasn’t sure how much I remembered and wasn’t sure I wanted to make the commitment.
“Maybe, I guess.” It was the best I could do.
“I don’t know,” Nicholas said, “I’ve always heard those chemicals can make you sterile.”
“Well cooking classes could make me fat,” I countered. The look those words got out of Nicholas had the whole table laughing.
Much to my relief, once the food was served, the topic of conversation moved away from my shell of an existence and on to other things: Nicholas complained about how slow the art museum gift shop counter had become with students gone for summer. Robert talked, about the short piece of fiction he was working on for some magazine or other. Evan, as always, said very little but seemed content just to cuddle close to Robert’s side, occasionally running his perfectly smooth cheek against the other man’s shoulder. It was nice to watch, if a little depressing.
When we finally stepped out into the early afternoon sunshine, making our promises to meet up later in the week, Evan drew me aside to ask if I thought I might actually take one of the offered classes and seemed pleased with my answer. The instructor was apparently a widowed friend. He declined my suggestion that perhaps we find one that we could take together— it seemed only polite to ask— but said he was looking forward to hearing what I thought.
Surprisingly, he hugged me before we all went our separate ways, and I thought, begrudgingly, that I might have had a better understanding as to why Robert was so taken with him.
As I headed back to my apartment to grab a few hours of the sleep I had lost the night before, I changed my mind, deciding to do a little shopping instead. The weather seemed too nice to waste and, for once in a long time, I felt like taking advantage of it.