Chapter Text
TUESDAY
The back of Carmy’s throat was gummy with Pepto and his eyelids felt like sandpaper. The nicotine gum made his teeth all fuzzy and stale. He couldn’t remember the last time he drank water. It was either Wednesday or Thursday.
“The amuse is romaine and smoked salmon roe,” he said, squinting at his own handwriting, “with lemon-anchovy vinaigrette, on a—a buckwheat, puff, thing.”
He looked over the lineup of cooks waiting in front of him. He only knew a handful of their names, if that. To varying degrees, they all looked like they were cowering, stuck in a full-body wince, and that meant they weren’t new, because they knew how brutal shit was around here.
Syd leaned in. “Since when do we have salmon roe?”
“Since today, chef. Next, we got duck fois gras, with…”
Fak smiled at him as Carmy’s eyes met his. Next in the row was Richie. After a full month of not speaking to him, Carmy had gotten so good at avoiding his eyes that he didn’t have to think about it anymore; his gaze slid over him like water, like he wasn’t even there.
“With sliced apricot—”
There was a glassy clunking from out front as someone knocked on the door. Carmy pressed his lips together, then went on.
“—poached in—”
The knocking continued unanswered, even though he fucking knew Nat was out front.
Syd said, “I’ll get it,” and turned away.
Carmy slapped the paper in his hand down on the counter. “Poached in lapsang souchong. I got it.”
“It’s okay, you—”
“I got it, chef. Finish up.”
He shoved open the door to the front. Nat was in the corner giving orientation to a couple new front of house staff, he remembered now; she gave him an apologetic wince, then kept talking. Carmy went to the front door, unlocked it and blinked out into the late afternoon sun.
Standing on the sidewalk was some young guy—early twenties, dyed blond hair neatly styled, dark eyes. He was built like he worked out, and dressed like it, a white tee and black gym shorts tight over big thighs.
Carmy rubbed his eyes. “You bring pants?”
Nat said something about losing more servers, fucking already. Nobody wanted to work, nobody was up to standard. It shouldn’t have been so fucking hard.
The guy frowned at him. “What?”
“Front of house, right? You can’t wear fucking shorts. You’re on today? Did Natalie hire you?”
The guy had carefully manicured eyebrows. He was a few inches taller than Carmy. He looked familiar in the way that all young guys looked the same, but he didn’t have the dour, pinched face of servers who had spent any time in fine dining.
“Nnnno, I don’t work here.”
Carmy squeezed his eyes shut. “Right. Right. Okay, so, what—what do you need, if you’re looking for a table, you can go—”
“Look. Does an Italian DILF work here?” the guy cut in. He motioned above Carmy’s hand with a flat hand. “Yea high, super blue eyes?”
It took Carmy embarrassingly long to catch up. He just frowned, chugging until— Christ, he meant Richie.
The first thing Carmy thought to say was, “He’s Polish.”
The guy gave him an appropriately confused look. “Okay, sure. Yeah.”
First, Carmy thought about how the only person he’d heard call Richie a DILF was Richie, but then—this was a young, very done-up guy calling Richie a DILF, and looking for him, and—there had to be a reason for that, other than what Carmy was thinking. He was a friend of a friend, somebody’s kid, a nephew. Carmy scrubbed a hand over his eyes again.
“Look, if he said he’d get you a job, he’s not—”
“Dude, dude, chillax. It’s not a work thing.” The guy reached into his pocket. “Can you give him this?”
He produced a nice, heavy watch that Carmy had never seen before. Carmy took it and turned it over in his hands. He was still trying to figure out not a work thing; whatever mental capacity he’d ever had for not a work thing, it had been severely diminished as of late. He tried to keep up.
“And you have it, because, uh—”
The guy said, “He left it at my place.”
Alarm bells went off like God’s tinnitus in Carmy’s head. “Right. Yeah. Okay.”
Some young guy Carmy didn’t know had Richie’s watch, because Richie left it at his place. The guy didn’t know Richie’s name, but he had Richie’s watch. Carmy’s brain was full of holes and spinning out.
“One sec,” he said finally, giving up.
He looked over his shoulder at the faces in the slice of window through to the kitchen. He waved a hand until one of the cooks looked, then said something to Syd. Syd saw him and went to the door.
“What?”
Carmy tipped up his chin. “Get Richie.”
The guy at the door said, “Richie. Right.”
Syd gave him a what the fuck look, but she ducked back into the kitchen and her face was replaced by Richie’s, him and his suit a monolith of black against the white wall. He looked pissed and his mouth was open and ready to argue until he saw the guy standing in the doorway. His eyebrows went way up.
“Oh, fuck, hey.”
The guy smiled at him. “Hey yourself.”
Over in the corner, Nat was looking again. Carmy stepped out of the doorway and Richie brushed past him out into the sidewalk, got up next to the guy and lightly touched his back, then ushered him down the sidewalk.
Ostensibly to Carmy, but without looking at him, Richie said, “Two secs.”
Richie and the guy disappeared around the side of the building and Carmy stood frozen in the doorway, holding… Richie’s watch. Richie’s watch. Hey yourself.
Behind him, Nat said to the staff, “I know that was a lot, so take five, sit, and in a few minutes, we’ll have our CDC Sydney go over the menu.”
Carmy stared down at the watch in his hand. It was big, with brushed matte black links and hints of gold on the face. It would go well with an all-black suit.
He tried to come up with a list of reasons that a young gym rat could have Richie’s watch at his place.
One: the guy was somebody’s kid. Richie visited his place, got drunk and crashed there, then left without his watch. Richie’s friend, the parent of the kid, made his son drop off the watch.
Carmy got stuck at that list of one for some time, staring out at the street and furiously chewing his gum. The kid didn’t know Richie’s name.
He very, very hesitantly added a second possibility—one that heavily weighted the ‘DILF’ comment—but he knew it couldn’t be that. It was Richie.
Third possibility: Richie anticipated Carmy guessing that second possibility, and was intentionally fucking with him in a massive waste of time.
Nat came up behind him. “Sorry, what the fuck was that?”
Carmy was still staring down at the watch. “I think—”
“You think?”
Nat got it. She pushed open the door and stuck her head out. Carmy leaned in and looked over her shoulder.
“There’s no fucking way,” he said. Nat broke into a grin.
“Oh my God.”
The kitchen door swung open to voices and hubbub, the meeting finished. Syd came out, then Fak.
Fak said, “Where’d Richie go? Is he okay?”
Nat said, “We think he fucked that guy.”
Carmy let the front door swing closed. “We do not think that.”
Syd said, “What?”
Nat took the watch from Carmy. “He had Richie’s watch.”
Fak, taking the watch: “Richie wears a watch?”
“Apparently.”
Carmy looked outside. “They could be friends.”
Syd took the watch from Fak and examined it. “That guy?”
Fak: “All Richie’s friends are old dudes.”
Carmy: “That doesn’t—”
Nat: “Gross old dudes. That guy was hot.”
Carmy, exasperated: “Sugar.”
Syd, handing the watch back to Carmy: “He kinda was, though.”
Richie came back around the corner, alone, and Nat, Fak and Syd pretended they hadn’t been watching out the window strip. Carmy went to head for the kitchen, but he was still holding Richie’s watch. He spun around and tried to give it to Nat, but she wouldn’t take it and she had this shit-eating smile on her face, and then it was too late and Richie was back.
“Okay, back, gimme the menu.”
He took the watch from Carmy without even faintly acknowledging he was there. They were both getting good at it.
Nat said, syrupy and gross, “Richie, who was that?”
Richie started putting on his watch. “That? That’s, uh, Zander. Xavier. Something like that.”
Nat clicked her tongue. “Sweetie, if you’re fucking people with X’s and Z’s in their names, you’re going too young.”
Richie’s head snapped up and Carmy knew everything in that first second because he’d spent his whole life being forced to look at Richie’s stupid fucking face.
Richie said, “Yo yo yo, what? What fucking, who’s fucking? Who says I’m fucking him?”
He was so fucking obvious. Carmy watched from a few paces away, physically nauseous with second-hand embarrassment.
“Are you?” Nat asked Richie.
Richie tried to roll his eyes and scoff, but he looked so stupid. Everyone had to see that. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and laughed a high, awkward laugh.
“What the fuck kind of a question is that? You think I…”
He trailed off, and again, Carmy fucking knew it. They were all staring at him and Carmy thought, in a slow-motion trainwreck, he wouldn’t.
Richie sighed and tipped his head back so he was looking up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes for a beat, then opened them.
“Aw, fuck.” He brought his face down and rubbed his eyes. “Okay. Fine. Sure. Why not?”
Carmy forgot he wasn’t speaking to him. His ears went staticky. “The fuck does that mean?”
Richie looked right at him, maybe also forgetting. His face was all red.
“The fuck it means, is,” Richie started, looking away, “that I’m too confident in myself now, and comfortable with who I am, to wanna do the whole macho-ass song and dance where I pretend you’re wrong, and then you find out I’m lying and bust my balls for it anyway.”
Carmy wondered if Richie’s glance back at him during that was intentional.
Nat said, “So…”
Richie sighed. “So, you fucking got me, I hooked up with that guy. Proud of yourself, you fuckin’ lizards?”
Fak gasped. “Are you for real? Is this for real?”
“Yo, why would I joke about this?”
Nat: “Uh, ‘cause you’re a fucking psycho?”
Carmy, again, forgetting: “Since when?”
Richie didn’t look at him. “Since now, alright?” He addressed the group at large and held up his hands. “I still like chicks, for the record! Don’t get it twisted.”
Syd: “What does that have to—”
“It’s just something I’m trying out, ‘cause I’m looking inwards now, and it’s my own personal business, so—”
Carmy: “He came to the fucking restaurant, you’re making it our business.”
Richie, ignoring him: “—can we please be normal about this shit, for once?”
Syd said, “You’re not normal about anything.”
“Well, I’m turning over a new leaf, as you can see.”
“That’s a very, very new leaf.”
“You’re never too old for new leaves, chef.”
Carmy squeezed his eyes shut. His headache spread out behind his eyes. “Okay, great, we all have leaves. Syd, tell Richie the menu.”
Fak said, “Wait, wait! This is big! Richie, you fuck guys now?”
Richie spread out his hands and grinned. “I fuck guys now!”
“Holy fuck, that’s cool. He was hot!”
“I know!”
“You fucked him? You can pull!”
“I know!”
Syd said, “Sorry, uh, how old is he?”
“What, you think I’m checking ID? He’s like twenty-five. Twenty-four. No need to cancel me, woke mob.”
“Was he alive for 9/11, yes or no?”
“Unlikely. He said a lotta words I don’t know. The fuck is rizz, is it like steeze?”
Carmy stalked towards the kitchen. “Twenty minutes to open, chefs, Syd, give Richie the fucking menu, please.”
The kitchen was a cacophony of noise but it was a salve and Carmy tried to focus, check in, get his shit ready. Behind him, Syd rattled off the menu to Richie.
“—foie gras with sliced apricot poached in lapsang souchong, that’s a smoked tea—”
Tina stuck her head up. “What’s going on, what’s up?”
Syd said, “Richie fucks guys now. Tagliatelle with seared, foraged morels and runner cannellini, topped with crispy piave, that’s a cheese—”
“What? Since when?”
“He’s turning over a new leaf. Richie! Dry-aged striploin with fresh horseradish, red mustard microgreens and—”
Tina spread out her arms—turned away from her prep, twenty minutes to open and it wasn’t done, Carmy seethed—and beamed up at Richie.
“Aw, Richie, what! Is this for real?”
Richie stooped down, hugged her and kissed her cheek. “It’s for real, T. You still gonna love me if I’m a faggot?”
Syd and Carmy, in unison: “Don’t say that.”
Tina laughed. “Richie, baby! If you’re happy, I’m happy, lookit you! You’re glowing!” She kissed his cheeks. “You never got any pussy, maybe you’ll finally get some dick.”
Every cook had slowed what they were doing and watched Richie and Tina cackle and hug, and now they laughed along with them. They didn’t fucking need this right now, Carmy didn’t need this right now, Richie couldn’t go two fucking days without making this shit about him, having some new insane thing of the week annoyance that got them all off track.
Syd said, “Richie, will you please listen, we need—”
Richie spun around to face her. “Romaine hearts and smoked salmon roe and lemon-anchovy vinaigrette, duck foie gras, sliced apricot poached in lapsang souchong, tagliatelle, morels, cannellini and piave, dry-aged striploin with horseradish, red mustard microgreens and a bone marrow bordelaise, and salted ricotta ice cream drizzled in olive oil and motherfucking magnolia syrup!”
He threw his arms in the air to a chorus of hoots and jeers.
“Getting my dick wet makes me sharp as fuck! Get ready for a whole new level of me rocking this shit.”
WEDNESDAY
Carmy hadn’t slept more than three hours a night in weeks, and he didn’t sleep well that night, either. He finally fell asleep at three AM and woke up an hour later standing naked in front of his bathroom mirror. In that first second upon waking he looked into his own eyes and realized that Zander-Xavier looked familiar because he’d seen him before.
Wednesday was sunny and clear and cold. Carmy left his apartment at six and went for a run, down to the lake and the park and up along the shore. He stopped at each of the outdoor gyms that dotted the waterfront, did some pull-ups and kept an eye out, then moved on. He didn’t find him, but the world didn’t end because he got to the restaurant a little later.
THURSDAY
He went out again, varied the route and the time he left at. The weather was good and it felt good to use his body; he hadn’t been working out since they opened and he felt it in his aching joints and dwindling muscle as his body ate itself alive. It felt good to be present, running and breathing and living. He expected to have better cardio without the smokes, but it felt about the same.
Everyone had learned about Richie and he wouldn’t stop talking about it. Carmy overheard Ebra say to him, with gentle disappointment, “You been too online, man, this isn’t you,” to which Richie replied, “I think it is me, man. I think maybe it’s been me for a while,” like he wanted applause for being brave enough to fuck hot guys half his age, like he was a martyr for it. Carmy couldn’t be anywhere around him; he made Nat swap positions with Richie so he didn’t come into the kitchen so much, but he still found reasons to. Carmy chewed so much nicotine gum he threw up in the bathroom during service.
FRIDAY
On Friday morning, Carmy found Zander-Xavier doing dips at the northernmost gym by the water. Carmy had been veering close to any blond guy to get a look, and finally he recognized the face. He’d spent the last few days looking so hard, waiting, that he’d forgotten to plan what to do when he found the guy. He didn’t know what he wanted.
He slowed his run, then walked. He wandered aimlessly near the parallel bars and caught his breath. The guy was the only other person there save for a few people running by on the path. He had a speaker sitting on his bag playing music Carmy couldn’t make out.
Carmy wanted to… know. He didn’t know why, or what exactly it was that he wanted to know. To know whether Richie was fucking with him, and if not, he wanted to know… something. Anything. He couldn’t stop thinking about it and it pissed him off. While he was trying to figure out what to say, Zander-Xavier looked at him.
“I know you from somewhere,” he said, not pausing in his dips. Carmy scratched his hair.
“Oh, hey. Yeah. Yeah, I work at the… The Bear, on Michigan. The Beef. You dropped off a watch.”
“Right, yeah. Rick. Ricky.”
“Richie.”
“Richie, yeah.”
“And you’re—”
“Xavier.”
“Carmen. Hey.”
Xavier nodded. Carmy started stretching to make it look like he’d just wandered by during a normal run, and watched Xavier surreptitiously. There was no good segue and Carmy was the farthest thing from smooth. He went for it.
“So, you—you went out with him? Richie?”
Xavier raised his eyebrows. “Eeeeyeah.”
“Went out, like—”
“We fucked, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Carmy knew that, Richie said it, but hearing it from this stranger meant it for sure wasn’t a bit. Richie didn’t fuck. Carmy had no fucking idea how Richie got this guy or how he got anyone, what he was like when he turned it on and whether it was any different than how he was normally, which was very, very off.
Xavier dropped down from the parallel bars. “Oh, fuck, you’re not his boss, are you?”
“No, no. Just a friend.” Carmy took off his sweaty ball cap and ran a hand through his hair. He watched Xavier watch him do it. “He’s just been kinda weird lately. Kinda off. I’m trying to get a read on him.”
“Huh.” Xavier walked around and stretched his arms. “I wouldn’t know if he was off. I only saw him the once.”
“Right, right. How’d you meet?”
“Uh, Grindr?”
He said it like it was obvious, which maybe it was. Carmy had never, to say the absolute fucking least; before Claire, there was a whole lot of nothing for a very long time. He shouldn’t have tracked this guy down, shouldn’t have been talking about it, he was fucking insane. He just couldn’t see it.
“And?” he said anyway, like a fucking idiot.
Xavier chuckled. He crouched down next to his bag and looked at his phone.
“And, we met up at a spot by my place.”
“And it was, like—it was cool? It was good?”
“Good enough,” Xavier said slowly, looking up at Carmy like he thought this was funny. Better than thinking he was a psycho. “He paid for my drinks. He’s hot as fuck. I dunno, I was into it. He’s got daddy vibes.”
Carmy’s stomach flipped. He rarely thought of Richie as any older than him, because of how Richie was. And on some objective level, at some point, he’d acknowledged that Richie was attractive, once he’d gotten older, found some bone structure and grew that beard. At some other point, very shortly after that first one, it became irrelevant to Carmy that Richie was attractive, because of how Richie he was.
This guy didn’t know how Richie was. This guy saw a tall, middle-aged guy with freckles, a nice smile and extremely blue eyes. And he wore suits now.
Carmy said, “He’s forty-five.”
Xavier made a face at him. He was still sitting on his haunches in the gravel with his phone out.
“Girl, that’s young for me. That’s old for you?”
Carmy realized that they were having two different conversations. He saw for the first time how it looked. He knew he should leave, and didn’t.
Xavier said, “Trust me, older guys are life. They treat you like you’re a god.” He got to his feet. “A body like yours? They’d worship that shit, they’d give you anything you want.”
Richie had this constant desperation to him, like a stray dog. Carmy imagined him in some bar, buying drinks for this hot kid who was half his age, and the kid liking it. Did Richie worship this guy? Was that sweaty desperation supposed to be a turn-on, having him look at you all the fucking time like he had a thousand stupid things he wasn’t saying?
“What was he like?” Carmy asked. His voice sounded weird in his ears.
“I dunno. Awkward ‘til I got a few drinks in him, but, I dunno. He was funny.” Xavier started milling around, moving between the platforms and bars. He was smiling. “He was a goof. It worked. It got him back to my place, anyway, so, maybe I’m just stupid.”
Carmy said, slowly, “You’re not.”
He matched Xavier’s slow wandering, staring at him. He looked amused enough by the conversation that it pissed Carmy off.
Xavier said, “Oh, wait, you mean like, you want deets.”
No, Carmy thought. And then he thought about the way the guy said hey yourself when he saw Richie, all flirty and coy, and that was—something. It was fucked.
Xavier laughed. “You’re fucking weird, bro.” He kept slowly walking, his face tipped up to the sky like he was thinking. “Uh. I dunno, I was drunk. He… kissed a lot. Said a lot of porny shit. Dirty talk.”
Carmy tried to remember if he’d ever seen Richie kiss anyone. Tiff, inevitably, but it’s not like he noticed, and not often.
Xavier went on. “He was kind of a machine, actually. I got a few out of him. Like, I’m talking hours.” He smiled like he was warming up to the idea. “I kinda wanted to film it, but I didn’t want to freak him out. I got an OnlyFans, he’d be content.”
Carmy almost said, he would’ve let you, because he would. Richie was fucking stupid.
Xavier said, “I thought he was straight ‘til he started eating my ass. Closet cases don’t do that shit, you know?”
He looked at Carmy like he couldn’t hear the pulsing, staticky cacophony of panic inside his head. Carmy didn’t know how he couldn’t hear it.
Xavier said, “Like, the guys who show up drunk as fuck, no foreplay, calling you a slut and a faggot and shit.” He paused. “You know.”
Pointed emphasis. Carmy swam to the surface.
“I, uh, I don’t, actually. I don’t… do guys.”
Xavier rolled his eyes. “Ohh-kay.”
Pissy anger beat out anything else Carmy might have been feeling. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“No, what?”
He’d gotten up in Xavier’s face without realizing it. Xavier was taller and maybe bigger, and it pissed Carmy off that he didn’t look freaked at all. He just held up his hands.
“It means, only one of us is here asking some guy about his buddy’s cock, is all I’m saying.” He grinned. He had veneers. “Big, by the way.” He made a loop with his thumb and forefinger. “Like, totally decent.”
Carmy shoved him in the chest. He fell back, laughing.
“Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t be messing with you. You wanna fuck him, right?”
Two very different conversations. Carmy was so surprised he forgot to be mad and just stood there speechless.
Xavier said, “Look, he said he was single. That’s on you for not closing.”
Carmy told him to go fuck himself and jogged off the way he came. He ran until his lungs burned and the sun was fully up and his shirt was soaked through, and when he went back to his apartment it was hot and stuffy. He threw open the windows, showered, and thought about the day’s menu for the first time all morning. Normally, it hit him right when he woke up.
—
Dropping back into work helped him not think about Richie eating ass for two seconds, but the whole thing kept nagging at him in any stray moment, pulling him away from what mattered; Richie kissing a lot, Richie—whatever. Carmy chained his gum until he felt sick, chewed each piece until it disintegrated. It didn’t fucking matter.
He was scribbling down the new menu. He wasn’t happy with it. He didn’t know how to fix it. Duck again for sure, but different. New duck. New leaves.
Nat stuck her head out of the office. “Is Richie here?”
Carmy didn’t look up. “I’m not his fucking keeper.”
“Right, you two are still doing your dramatic fucking divorce thing.”
“Sug—”
“You’re acting like a child, Bear, grow up.”
“Thank you, Sugar. Very helpful.”
“Richie’s fucking late, we have an interview at nine.”
Carmy looked up at the clock, thinking it was seven-thirty. It was ten to nine. “Oh.”
“He won’t answer his phone,” Nat said. “He’s not usually late.”
“He’s a fucking mess,” Carmy said automatically. He went back to the menu, but he was thinking about Xavier, and guys like Xavier.
Nat said, “He’s actually been pretty good. Not that you give a shit.”
That familiar Richie-based rage started to simmer in Carmy’s chest. He shook his head and Nat made some exasperated noise and went out into the front. Richie was nowhere near good, he was intentionally and meticulously fucking up Carmy’s shit because he got off on being in charge. He thought Carmy couldn’t do this. He was a fucking problem. Carmy wished he’d shit-talked him to that guy, told him what Richie was really like to ruin any possibility of a second date. Date, hookup, whatever.
Syd came out of the walk-in with a clipboard. She looked around. “Where’s Richie?”
“I don’t fucking know, please stop asking me about Richie.”
“O-kay, got it, chef, normal response, thank you.”
Carmy had to shut his eyes. Syd had a fucking tone all the time lately. He wanted to say something. He wanted to not talk about Richie for two fucking seconds because Richie didn’t matter, none of his shit mattered.
The back door opened with a telltale lack of care and banged off the wall behind it.
“What’s good, losers?”
Carmy’s jaw ached from chewing gum. He was so fucking mad all the time, this place was so loud, it was a mess, nobody was doing anything right and Richie was fucking late. Nobody fucking cared, it was all on him.
He looked up when Richie came around the corner—in his stupid fucking suit, with his stupid face—Richie hooking up with some stupid twink when this was make or break for all of them, when Carmy had given up everything for this—Richie bragging about getting laid like he wasn’t the loneliest fucking guy any of them knew—and Richie looked back at him with nothing but bored disdain.
“Morning, chef,” Richie said to Sydney.
He turned his head to look at her as he went by. Above the collar of his shirt, under his jaw, he had a dark, blotchy bruise. His ear lobe was bruised, too. Carmy lost it.
“Is that a fucking hickey?”
Richie rolled his eyes. “Chef Sydney, would you please tell Chef Carmen—”
Carmy charged at him and shoved him hard. Richie backed up against the counter with his hands up like he was fucking above it, like he wasn’t doing it to piss Carmy off.
“Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t—”
Syd tried to get between them. “It’s too fucking early for—Carmy—Carmen, stop—”
“Outside,” Carmy said, incensed, knocking his fist into Richie’s shoulder over and over again. “Get the fuck outside. Now.”
“Oh, now you wanna talk? Now you wanna fucking talk, you fucking gremlin?”
Carmy shook Syd off and manhandled Richie down the hall and back out the door, both of them babbling at each other fuck you, no, fuck YOU until they were outside. It was clear and bright and Carmy squinted into the sun as he shoved Richie into the alley. He got up in Richie’s face and shoved at him, too mad to think.
“I don’t need this shit, Richie! Not now!”
“Sorry, are you talking to me? I know you’re not talking to me, ‘cause—”
Carmy shoved him again. “Yo, fuck you! You try to tell me how to run this shit and you can’t even fucking be on time—”
Richie got up in his face. Carmy could smell the coffee on his breath.
“Yeah, ‘cause I got a fucking life, unlike you, you fucking loser!” Richie shoved him back. “It was five fucking minutes, the fuck do you care? Do I get to bust your balls every time you spend five fucking minutes making our lives fucking miserable, is that what we’re doing now?”
“I’m not the one showing up late with a hickey like a fucking asshole, you fucking skid, you child—”
Richie jabbed a finger into his chest.
“I’m a child? I’m a fucking child, you baby? You don’t talk to me for three fuckin’ weeks and now you wanna get up in my shit for—”
Carmy pushed him again, but Richie shoved him back so hard he stumbled and his back bounced off the fence.
Carmy shouted, “For flaunting that shit like a fucking asshole! Fucking everything depends on this shit and you’re showing up late, bringing fucking guys to my restaurant—”
Richie cackled meanly. “Oh, shit, that’s what this is about? You fucked it up with the one chick who could stand your lonely ass—”
“Yo, fuck you!”
“—and now you’re fucking heated that I’m getting laid. You’re so pathetic, seriously, oh my God—”
Carmy shoved him. He just barely kept from punching him in the face, he couldn’t think.
“How come everything’s so fucking easy for you, Richie? Huh?” His mouth ran on without his brain, right up in Richie’s face. “My whole fucking life I agonize over this shit, waiting for you fucking vultures to shove it down my throat, and you! You just fucking wake up one day, and—and you don’t even give a fuck—”
“Yo, what?”
“—you fucking flaunt that shit and everyone fucking loves you for it, when I’ve been fucked up my entire fucking life over—over—”
Richie had stopped shoving him back. All the anger and mirth dropped off his face like he forgot they were fighting, and for a moment, Carmy couldn’t figure out why.
Then Richie said, “Yo, hold up,” and Carmy realized what he’d said. “Do you like dudes?”
Carmy walked back through it in his mind. White hot electric panic sparked through him.
“What? No.” His hands were sweating. He backed away from Richie. “No! What? Fuck you.”
It didn’t work. Just like how that Xavier guy knew—YOU know, he said, like he could smell it on him—and just like how Carmy knew about Richie before Richie opened his mouth to lie—Richie knew.
“Oh, fuck,” Richie said, his voice all soft. “You do.”
He had that needy look on his face he got when he thought Carmy couldn’t handle something and needed help, like Carmy ever fucking needed him, like they weren’t in the middle of hating each other’s guts.
Carmy came up with a dozen lies on the spot and Richie might have believed some of them if he could get them out, but it was nothing he’d ever really admitted even to himself and so the thought of Richie of all fucking people knowing about it like he’d dug into Carmy’s head and tore it out was unthinkable, violating, nauseating, and he froze up.
Richie said, “Cousin. Are you fucked up about this?”
He made it sound like he cared. Carmy couldn’t take it, he didn’t have anywhere near the presence of mind he’d need to deal with any of it. He swore some half jumbled word and turned around and went back inside. There was more than enough to keep him busy and away from Richie until service.
—
They got their shit rocked that night, barely got through a single seating because food was coming out so slow. They ran out of the fish and every fucking table was a birthday. Barely an hour in, Carmy saw Richie on his phone behind expo.
Carmy shouted, “Put that shit away. Are you fucking kidding me?”
Being mad at him was so much easier than thinking about the other stuff, Carmy was almost grateful for the opportunity. But, Richie didn’t shout something stupid back at him. He jumped a little and slipped his phone into his pocket right away, looking guilty.
Carmy watched him after that. Once more, during a lull, Richie stood in the dining room just outside the kitchen door, and when Carmy crept to the strip window to look, he had his phone out.
He was texting. Carmy couldn’t make out the messages, but the message bubbles were orange and blue.
Carmy set his jaw. He had an insane headache that hadn’t let up since noon and couldn’t be placated by four ibuprofen and four Tylenol. His gut was rotten and he was sweating and his feet hurt. He watched Richie text back, in the front of his fucking restaurant in sight of customers, and he felt mean and stupid and trapped.
He got a really bad idea, and he didn’t let go of it for the rest of the night.
—
Richie left his car behind when he headed out, which made Carmy think he was right. He followed Richie, feeling fucking insane, all the way to the station and onto the train, but in a different car, like a fucking stalker.
He sat near the window and watched for Richie getting out of the other train car. He flipped his phone around in his hands and wished he had one single person in his life who he could talk to about this, so they could tell him to go home. Syd didn’t need to know he was having a mental breakdown. Claire would have been kind and helpful, if not for like, everything, and he couldn’t fathom explaining any of it to Nat even if it wasn’t Richie. So he put his phone back in his pocket, then took it out again, thumbed through his recent texts (all work) and put it away again. Watched for Richie.
Richie got off at California and Carmy followed him; Richie didn’t look around much, because who would, and Carmy kept his distance. It was almost midnight, but it was Friday and the street was busy enough.
Carmy decided he was following Richie because he wanted to know if Richie had a steady thing, like a boyfriend. He wanted to know because he couldn’t be doing that, because Carmy wasn’t doing that, because Claire was gone. And if he didn’t get to, then Richie sure as fuck didn’t. He could enlighten himself after they’d got that star. They had to be all in on this.
Plus, if he did have a guy and it was that dick from the park, then Carmy had to know so he could run damage control. There was no way the guy wouldn’t tell Richie that Carmy had talked to him, and he’d tell him about the wrong half of the conversation.
Richie stopped outside a loud bar and lit a smoke. Carmy hid in a nearby doorway like a fucking kid detective.
Richie didn’t meet anyone Carmy could see outside the bar. He stubbed out his smoke and went in. Carmy spent five more minutes milling around outside, looking at his phone like he was waiting for someone and debating whether he should bum a smoke. Hot people went in and hot people came out, and Carmy talked himself into going in.
It was warm and dark inside, loud as hell, not many tables left; it was an old neighbourhood dive with wooden tables dotted around the room and coloured lights hung on the walls, reeking of fryer oil and tequila. Carmy slunk in with his head bowed, searching faces for Richie.
Carmy hated himself. He didn’t do this shit. This wasn’t about Richie’s lack of focus and it wasn’t about work at all. It wasn’t about that guy at the park. Carmy admitted, shuffling along the back of the bar, that it was about what he shouted in the alley, and how he was jealous, and how he wanted to see what this could look like for a guy like Richie, who was, in many ways, a guy like Carmy. He didn’t see how it could work for Richie because he hadn’t ever seen how it could work for himself; with his family and his life, it had always been easier to label any thoughts about guys and sex or dating as unimportant, then throw himself into work so completely that they genuinely became unimportant to him. He lost himself in Claire and got to pretend for a while, and that had been a mistake.
But, Richie was going out after work on a Friday night with someone he’d been messaging on Grindr. He wasn’t so wound up that he couldn’t sleep or so stressed that he couldn’t imagine talking to anyone, let alone a stranger, and Carmy wanted to see what that was like. Richie was very nearly a Berzatto, as much as Carmy didn’t want to admit it, and they didn’t get things like this. Mikey kind of had, and look how that turned out.
Carmy spotted Richie sitting near the bar. He had his back to Carmy and Carmy recognized him by the back of his head, the shape of his hairline, which he had unwillingly spent his whole life looking at.
In the bench seat across from Richie was a different guy, a new guy, but he looked a little like Xavier: also young and blond, but natural this time. His hair was longer and messy and he had a weird little soft mustache. Like Xavier, he was pretty built. Richie had a type.
Carmy grabbed a seat where he could see Richie and his date and ordered a Coke when a server came by. The two of them were talking and the guy was smiling a lot. He was drinking something amber from a lowball glass; Carmy couldn’t see Richie’s drink. Richie was sitting up straight. It made his shoulders look broad. He ate some guy’s ass, and he liked kissing. Carmy couldn’t imagine him interacting with any guy without calling him a stroke or a jagoff and he watched, entranced, like it was fucking Nat Geo.
Richie rested a hand on the table and it crept closer to the other guy’s hand every time he set his drink down after taking a sip. Finally, Richie touched his hand, gentle across the guy’s knuckles. The guy laughed, looked down and turned his hand over so his fingers brushed Richie’s palm. Fucking uncharted. Carmy had no idea what Richie could possibly be saying, or how anyone could buy it.
He wished Richie wasn’t so fucking Richie about everything, because the thought that they’d both been closeted—maybe had grown up together, as much as they did, both closeted—and hadn’t known was kind of gutting. Carmy hadn’t known about Richie, anyway, not in a million years, but he wondered with a sinking feeling whether Richie had known about him.
Richie’s hand slid up the guy’s forearm. He tipped his head to the side. The guy said something and scooted over, and then Richie got out of his chair and slid onto the bench next to him.
That put him facing Carmy. The place was crowded, people passing between them all the time on the way to and from the bar and pressed in on all sides, but Carmy still slunk down in his seat. His untouched glass of Coke sweated condensation onto the table.
Richie was taller than the other guy by half a head and he tipped his face down to talk to him over the roar of the bar. He put his mouth right on his ear, fucking flirty, and the guy looked like he was loving it, flashing this bashful, toothy smile. They were still playing with each other’s hands on the table, drinks forgotten.
Richie put his face in the guy’s neck, then trailed his mouth over his jaw. He put a big hand on his face, turned him towards him and kissed him.
Carmy flushed hot, mortified; mortified for himself and second-hand mortified for Richie, making out in a bar with some guy half his age like a fucking loser. It was a long, deep kiss with a slick hint of tongue. Richie tilted the guy’s head back, let him run his hands up his chest and onto his neck. Richie wasn’t big but he was tall, and he seemed giant then.
They came up for air and Richie turned his face against the guy’s cheek. He was grinning, both of them were, and then Richie kissed him again—not noticing the looks from anyone passing by in the dark, or not caring—and again and again, torrid, hypnotic, insane to look at, like he was another version of Richie lightyears away from the greasy twenty-something-year-old kid who brought Mikey insanely stepped-on coke and watched Beavis and Butthead in their basement.
Richie’s hand dropped below the lip of the table. The guy turned his face against Richie’s and took a breath. His eyes were closed. Richie was smiling against his cheek.
Carmy stood up so quickly he knocked his chair back and had to catch it before it fell. His palms were sweating, this was so fucking embarrassing, he was out of his mind. He weaved through the crowded bar before he knew where he was going, ended up in the hallway to the washrooms, panicked, then went in.
There were a few guys at the urinals and he took the end one and pissed, head pounding, heart thumping hard. He hated Richie so fucking much. He hated himself. If he were smart he would have headed for the door, and now he’d have to go past Richie to leave. Richie would have to come up for air to notice him, though. Richie was gonna go home with that guy and tomorrow was Saturday and Richie would show up late, hung over and bragging about it, and Carmy would finally kill him.
He zipped up, washed his hands and popped a new piece of gum. He wanted a smoke more than almost anything. He steeled himself and left the washroom, turned down the hallway and braced himself for another idiotic sneak through the bar.
He made it halfway down the hall before Richie appeared at the end, coming the other way.
Any excuses, any denial or anger or anything valuable left in Carmy’s brain, evaporated. Richie saw him.
Carmy stopped. Richie stopped. The smell of dirty oil from the kitchen door nearby was so strong and sick and the cooks were shouting, dishes banged, and Carmy’s vision tunneled.
“Hey, cuz,” Richie said, looking amused, but not surprised.
Carmy just stared up at him. There was a bulletin board next to his head, xeroxed flyers for punk shows, yoga teachers, improv theatre.
Richie said, “I saw you get on the train,” and Carmy winced so hard his face screwed up. “How come you’re following me?”
“Fuck you, I’m not following you.”
Richie scoffed. “Right, ‘cause you’re a bar guy.”
Carmy hadn’t meant to say it, obviously untrue, but his options were limited and didn’t include the truth. Denial was always safe. Richie’s hair was rucked up on one side. He looked stupid and old.
Richie ducked his head. It was a habit he’d had since Carmy was young, short then and short now, as a way to bridge the gap between their heights when something important was being said. Here, crowded against the wall to let servers by, it felt intimate. Conspiratory.
Richie said, “This about earlier?”
Obviously. Carmy’s back started sweating. He jabbed a finger at Richie and spat, “Fuck you.”
Richie was unfazed. His eyes flicked over Carmy’s face, and he said, low, “I’m thinking maybe it is.”
Carmy wet his lips without thinking and watched Richie’s eyes drop to his mouth. Pure panic flooded his veins, sweaty fear and bone-rattling adrenaline. It was about earlier, and maybe, Carmy realized—horrified, staring—something else.
Richie looked serious now. He scrubbed a hand through his beard and glanced at a server brushing past. Then back at Carmy.
“This is fucked,” he said faintly.
Carmy said, “You’re fucked.”
Tense, heated silence, both of them just looking at each other and playing chicken, daring the other to go first. Richie was bad at a lot of shit, but despite all reasons to the contrary, he was usually pretty brave. He shifted closer.
“So what’s up, cousin?” Excruciating eye contact, deep blue eyes and freckles. “You jealous?”
Carmy jolted back. You fucking WISH, fuckface, but he couldn’t get it out because it slammed up against jealous of who? Fuck Richie for ever getting him on his back foot, fuck him for his unfounded fucking confidence and his incredible zest for fucking shit up and ruining everyone’s lives.
Then, worse than the whole rest of it, obliterating any chance of plausible deniability for either if them, Richie said, so soft, like he was so fucking curious:
“You like watching me work?”
Carmy shoved him so hard he scraped back off the bulletin board, stunned and stumbling. Carmy shoulder-checked him to get out into the bar and kept going, past Richie’s date looking at his phone, and out into the street. He didn’t catch his breath until he was on the train. He went home and dreaded a text from Richie, but nothing came through. He slept like shit.
SATURDAY
Carmy laid in bed and tried to pretend he might sleep some more. Pale morning sun came in through the blinds but he resolved not to check the time because that always made it worse.
He picked up his phone and accidentally learned the time anyway; eight a.m., late for him, not that it had been a quality sleep. He didn’t dream, but vague thoughts and images floated to him as he tossed and turned half-awake, then haunted him when he woke up: Richie’s jeering face, what working with him tonight would be like after that, if he’d fucking tell everyone. Chef Sydney, would you tell Chef Carmen that I didn’t appreciate him stalking me on my hookup last night, and watching me and this guy make out with—just my personal opinion here—way too much interest?
With half his face buried in his pillow, Carmy flicked through his messages, virtually none save a TikTok from Pete and three texts from guys he used to work with, whose numbers he didn’t have in his phone, asking about jobs.
He opened his chat with Richie. The last text was from a month and a half ago, yo are we doing a baby shower for sugar, unanswered by Carmy. No time, Carmy had thought, and then he found out later that Pete threw her one and he’d missed it. Everyone else went.
He rolled onto his back, opened the app store and downloaded Grindr. He’d had so much practice not thinking about things he was consciously doing that it was easy. He watched himself do it. Make an account, log in—easy. Zero thoughts or feelings about it at all.
He didn’t upload a picture and picked some nothing username. He set his location and fudged his age by a year or two. He didn’t add a bio. It wasn’t about that.
He filtered specifically, set a radius—mapping out car rides to Richie’s place in his mind, all the times he’d driven Richie home while he puked into a Big Gulp cup in the passenger seat—and scrolled. Dozens of the same faces, selfies and mirror pics, guys who were objectively attractive but whom Carmy couldn’t imagine saying two words to. And then, sure enough, there was Richie.
Carmy tapped into his profile. Richie’s picture was a cloudy, try-hard mirror pic, face and all, but he looked good. He was wearing a t-shirt and gray sweats and he’d managed to position his arms in a way that made him look ropey and strong. His eyes looked very blue. Carmy had expected a suit.
He chewed the inside of his cheek, staring. Richie wasn’t online, but.
Carmy messaged him.
Hey
He locked his phone immediately after and set it down, like that would make it safe. He folded his arms over his chest and stared up at the ceiling, his mouth pressed into a thin line.
He thought about how it was Saturday and how they were full up. He didn’t have a menu yet. Syd had been getting more and more pissed at him, cagey and short. He didn’t like his last iteration of the cavatelli thing, it wasn’t even close. He’d go in as soon as he got out of bed, nothing else he had to do. Mix up an instant coffee and head out.
His phone buzzed. He shut his eyes.
It took him a second to creep his hand out and grab it, and another to look at the message.
hey yourself
Fucking Richie. Carmy chewed a hangnail on his thumb.
How’s it going
He had no fucking idea how this was supposed to go. Richie replied instantly.
good good just lying around
Carmy had a thought. It was always about work.
You work today?
not til later thank fuck
What do you do?
There was a pause. Carmy stared up at the ceiling.
hospitality.
Carmy thought it was best to play dumb.
Like hotels and shit?
nah restaurant lol
Which one?
don’t worry about it
what do you do
Retail
You like food?
yea. I like what it means
??
like bringing people together. how much it means to people. you ever go to a spot and they like make you feel so special it blows your fucking mind?? makes you emotional and shit
Carmy blinked up at the ceiling. Richie was so fucking earnest. Carmy messaged back.
Yeah
well. that. doing that for people rocks
You like your job?
It felt like reconnaissance. Carmy could never read Richie when it mattered, and sure as hell not lately. He could never tell when Richie was fucking with him.
my boss is an asshole but yeah lol
While Carmy frowned at his phone, another message came through.
it’s why im here. like alive in general I think
Carmy got a lump in his throat. He was a fucking asshole. Richie meant that.
Before he could say anything else, Richie messaged him again.
nvm im being boring. im not looking for anything serious
send me a pic. what do u look like
Not looking for anything serious, Richie said, immediately after pouring his heart out to a stranger. Carmy’s heart beat loud in his ears. Richie’s lips swollen from kissing last night, the way he held that guy’s face in his massive hand. The way he talked to the servers like what they did was more important than what happened in the kitchen. Carmy caught him rearranging flowers last week. Richie knew Carmy had followed him when he started making out with that guy. He looked at Carmy’s mouth for a long time in that hallway last night.
Carmy got his breathing to slow; he didn’t know when it had picked up. His whole body was buzzing, and he was half hard in his sleep pants. He slid a hand slowly down his bare stomach towards his waistband, lower, and cupped his dick through his sweats.
He hadn’t thought about sex since Claire. He’d thought about sex during Claire, but even then, it had felt secondary to the towering, all-consuming way he’d loved her, how she made him feel. Sex with Claire was about perfect, beautiful closeness. This was a whole different thing.
Carmy closed his eyes and kneaded himself hard, rolling his palm, pressing in. He grabbed a sweater that was crumpled at the foot of the bed and pulled it on, then tucked the front behind his neck so only his arms were covered, which hid his tattoos. He’d have to be careful about the ones on his hands, and he had one on his chest, but Richie had never seen it. He even pulled his chain to the back.
He sat up against the headboard. He pulled the front of his sweats down around his cock and he felt so fucking stupid, but this was—safe. Pretend. This was Richie not knowing it was him, which was maybe cruel, but he wasn’t thinking about that. Richie had fucked with him worse, he was sure, he just couldn’t remember when.
Carmy took a photo of his chest and stomach, all the way down to show the base of his cock. He worked out because it felt good to use his body for something, because being fit let him stand for longer and because it gave him something to do when he couldn’t sleep. He’d never thought much about how he looked, but knowing now that Richie might find him attractive because of it—not knowing it was him, but still—was some small victory.
He sent the picture to Richie, then whipped his phone across the room and covered his face with his hands.
He felt like a fucking kid. He wanted to take it back. A headache bloomed behind his eyes and he was still hard like a fucking moron. He struggled out of the sweater and threw it on the floor, and he put his dick away but kept a hand on it through his sweats, like he was comforting it. Sorry, boy. Playing with himself a little. He dropped a forearm over his eyes.
His phone buzzed on the floor.
He debated not looking, because then it wouldn’t be real. That lasted a second before he vaulted out of bed and picked up his phone.
From Richie:
oh shit
Carmy wandered back to the bed and sat on the edge, staring down at the text. Was that a good ‘oh shit’ or a bad ‘oh shit’?
He looked at his phone virtually unblinking for half a minute, then shuffled back into bed and set it down. It was possible Richie wasn’t down. Carmy spun out: he’d read this whole thing wrong, how fucking arrogant was he to assume Richie would want him? And even if he did, what was his fucking game plan? Why send a picture? Did he want Richie to want him?
His phone went off again, dread and guilty excitement all at once. He hated himself so much he wanted to throw up. He flipped his phone over.
“Fuck,” he said out loud.
Richie sent a photo of his cock. There was nothing coy about his, no reason to hedge that bet with someone he thought was a stranger. He was in bed, sitting up, and he had a hand around his cock and it was all the way hard, red and huge and—and he wasn’t wearing his wedding band. Carmy squinted at his hand and swore he could see the faint tan line where it had been. He wondered when that started.
He was still palming himself through his sweats, looking at the picture. He watched porn but he’d never been with a guy, had never even thought about a guy he knew. He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t even know how to start to think about what he wanted. Richie seemed to know, or he was pretending to. You like watching me work? Lucky fucking guess.
Richie messaged him again.
you like?
Carmy’s mouth was dry, his empty stomach was killing him and his head was pounding and he stared at his fucking phone and lay back in bed, slid his hand into his pants and grabbed his cock automatically. His other hand texted back.
Yeah
Richie didn’t know it was him. Richie would kill him if he ever found out. Richie would tell everyone. Carmy could never look Sugar in the eye again if he jerked off to Richie fucking Jerimovich. He couldn’t actually meet up with him. This didn’t go anywhere. At the end of this line was hardship, humiliation, confusion and distraction, a failed restaurant and him letting everyone down. He couldn’t do this ever, but especially not now. There was no world where anything good came out of it. Nothing could ever, ever come of it.
Richie’s flat stomach was faintly hairy, down past his navel into a well-kempt bush. Carmy had no other measure but his dick looked big—totally decent—and it looked good. He looked good. Good enough. Richie would fucking kill him.
Another text came through.
free tonight?
“Fuck!” Carmy said again, and dropped his phone like it burned him.
He slid down the bed, lay on his back and covered his eyes, breathing hard, hand still working inside his sweats. His back drew up and he worried the inside of his cheek with his teeth. He didn’t have the energy or interest to jerk off often. Sex was something that happened to other people. His head tipped back and he was so sick, he was out of his mind, he was a bad fucking person, but he thought about it. It didn’t count if he wasn’t looking at the photo while he did it. He’d delete the app. Richie wouldn’t know and Carmy could hate himself in peace, forever, alone. It had to be that way. There was no other way. He sighed, drew up a knee, curled his toes, and let himself fall into it.
He washed his hands afterwards while his head still buzzed with fuzzy static and his body thrummed with endorphins and sweat went cold in the column of his spine. He went back to his bedroom and fished his phone out of the sheets.
Grindr was still open. He physically couldn’t look at the photo of Richie. He read back through their messages, numb with self-loathing. He wanted to get caught. He deserved it. He texted back.
Yeah
—
He showered and went in, jittering with nerves. Saturday service was as good a thing as any to throw himself into with such fervor that he didn’t think about Richie at all. He hadn’t heard back from Richie after he said yeah. Maybe he was bluffing. Maybe he changed his mind during post-nut clarity. In any case, Carmy kept his phone on him.
Sydney got in shortly after him, once he’d drafted the day’s menu. She always pushed back, more and more every day, and it was starting to piss him off. He knew it shouldn’t, but it did.
He said, “No, it’s not crusty, it’s like—”
Syd said, “It’s a rose made of pickled carrots, I feel like that’s the definition of crusty and ostentatious.”
“It’s not a rose, it’s a—you don’t get it. Here, lemme…”
He got out his phone and searched for pictures of the thing he was thinking of. This spot in New York did it well, it wasn’t a rose, it was a shape. It was understated. He found an alright example and held his phone out so Syd could see.
“Like that,” he pointed at the screen, “it’s like a little, like, sculpture, it’s not—”
His phone went bing and a banner popped up at the top of the screen, bearing the little Grindr logo. The text was a street address and a time.
Carmy swiped it away.
Sydney’s eyebrows went way up. “Uh—”
“That’s—that’s, just, uh—”
“That’s Grindr.”
“—something I’m trying,” Carmy finished lamely.
Syd was staring at him, awkward and frozen. Carmy clacked his phone down on the counter, rubbed his face and turned around. He was fucking cursed. This was why he didn’t do shit like this.
Syd said, “I won’t tell anyone.”
Carmy sighed. “Why do you think they don’t already know?”
“Uh, ‘cause you wouldn’t have told me your name if I didn’t already know it, and everyone here is a huge, huge gossip.”
“Right.”
“If they knew, I’d know.”
“Right.”
“Fak took a bad shit yesterday and I heard about it.”
“Yes, me too. Point made.”
Carmy ran his hands through his hair and turned back around to look at her. It was some reassurance to remember that Syd was almost as bad as he was at fielding any real emotions. She looked mortified.
She said, “Sssso, Claire—”
“Nothing to do with Claire, chef.”
“Right. Right, got it.”
Carmy put his hands on the counter and went back to hunching over his menu. Their menu. “Okay, so, if the carrot’s stupid, I’m open to suggestions.”
The carrot wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t open to suggestions. It was just the right thing to say.
Syd said, “Hold up. Uh,” and Carmy closed his eyes.
“Is this about Grindr?”
“Yes. Sorry. Don’t get pissed, but—”
“What?”
“Does this have anything to do with Richie?”
Carmy squeezed his eyes shut harder. “Why would this have anything to do with Richie?”
“Just, like, his—his thing earlier. That’s… some timing.”
“Richie didn’t make me go on Grindr.”
“Yeah, yeah, right, obviously.” Syd twisted her hands together. “That’s—good for you, putting yourself out there, though. That’s great.”
“Thank you, chef.”
“It’s good to have a—an outlet. I know we’ve been talking about focus and everything, but you’ve been—”
“High-strung.”
“I was gonna say an asshole, but high-strung works. So. Maybe it’s good to—”
“Have an outlet.”
“Yeah. Yes. A healthy outlet.”
“You want me to get laid.”
“No! No, that would be, uh, super inappropriate, for me to say. I just mean, you—you should have fun, or something. It couldn’t hurt, just, like… drinks, or food, or…”
“Thank you. Heard.”
They were both staring down at the menu at this point, but neither of them said anything else. Carmy could feel the nervous heat blasting off Syd’s body. Nobody else was around. For a second, Carmy considered telling her.
Then she said, “So you’re not, like… You’re not interested in Richie.”
“I’m not even talking to Richie.” Carmy gave up, tense, and took a few aimless steps away. He popped a piece of gum. “We can like guys and not like each other.”
“No, I know! I know that, with two guys, I—I didn’t mean to sound, like, insensitive, or—”
“You’re good, Syd.”
“I just know what it feels like to be so stressed and insane that bad ideas start looking like good ideas because they’re right there, and you don’t even notice, and—and I know you’re kind of nuts right now, I am too, and your thing with Claire went, you know, but Richie—”
“He’s a bad idea. I know, chef. I wouldn’t fuck Richie with a stolen dick.”
That was, in a way that twisted into more horrific, humiliating possibilities with every passing hour, not true.
Carmy chewed his gum like his life depended on it. He patted his pockets for smokes in some automatic muscle memory and was bitterly disappointed.
Syd said, “We don’t know each other well enough to be having this conversation, do we?”
Carmy sighed up at the ceiling. Syd was trying to help. She was good.
“We do,” Carmy said, and meant it. He wanted to tell her. She would in no way get it. “I don’t like tall guys.”
He picked up the menu again and stared at his chicken-scratch writing. It was all fucked. Nothing was new. He genuinely didn’t like tall guys. They made sure he knew he was short, something he never minded until some asshole brought it up.
“What kind of guys do you like?” Syd asked.
Carmy sighed again. “Still figuring that out.”
He liked the worst possible choice in any scenario. He liked feeling like shit all the time. He liked guys that would ruin his entire life and everything he’d worked for, guys he couldn’t fucking stand, the tallest guy he knew.
Syd said, “You’re going to Level Twelve?”
He looked at her. “What?”
“Sorry. That address, from the… app. That’s Level Twelve. Chris Lovett’s new spot.”
A shudder of dread ran down Carmy’s spine. He didn’t know what it meant.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Yeah, I heard about it.”
Syd nodded along. “Cool, cool. Tell me how it is.”
That was the last thing they said about it. The prep cooks arrived and Carmy hovered and corrected them, and he and Syd compromised on ribbons of jalapeno-pickled carrot folded into a lattice. When Richie came in before service, Carmy avoided him so perfectly that it felt effortless, like two opposed magnets. Any time they were near each other, he caught Syd watching them. In the walk-in towards the end of the night, Carmy got out his phone and messaged Richie back a thumbs-up emoji. He deserved to get caught.
—
Carmy wanted a smoke more than he wanted pretty much anything else. Being in transit between point A and B was the worst, because of the habit of it; a cold night, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, his skin crawled for the physicality of a smoke and not the sour fucking taste of nicotine gum. His resolve wavered. With all the other shit he’d put on himself, starting to smoke again felt like an easy L to take in comparison.
He figured it was in his best interest to get to the place early. He could see it: he’d wait outside, Richie would see him when he came up, and they’d fight. The fight would end up physical. Someone might call the cops, and whatever relationship Carmy had with up-and-coming restaurateur Chris Lovett would be ruined, but he didn’t know her that well anyway. He hadn’t changed his clothes after work. No point in dirtying a nice outfit in the gutter. All of this would get it out of his system.
The restaurant was about the furthest from a dive bar that you could get; Carmy would have been underdressed if he could fathom actually going inside that night. The facade was white painted brick, darkened windows, very sleek. They mostly did cocktails, shared plates and dessert. Popular date spot, open late. Carmy didn’t know what it meant that Richie picked it.
There were two women smoking out by the curb. Carmy broke and went up to them. “Can I bum a smoke?”
They gave him affable smiles and one handed him a smoke, then let him use her lighter. That first drag was better than any sex Carmy ever had, better than any could ever be. He thanked them, turned around and got a head rush like he hadn’t gotten since he was a teenager; he leaned back against the bricks and savour it. No amount of efficiency was worth not smoking and he was stupid to ever try.
He looked up at the night sky, hazy and orangey in the city. Best case scenario, Richie didn’t show. Best case.
“Huh,” Richie said.
Carmy twitched so hard he almost dropped his smoke.
Richie was a few paces away walking down the sidewalk, also smoking, and when he got into the light from the restaurant the first thing Carmy noticed, the first and only fucking thing, was that Richie didn’t look surprised. It was like digging in his heels before skidding off a cliff, like dreams he’d had where his teeth shattered in his mouth and fell out into his waiting hands, earth-shattering, piss-your-pants terror, no no no no nonononono—
“The fuck are you doing here?” Carmy said anyway, because he had to, had to, at least try.
Richie was wearing a different suit than he had been at work, though only subtly different. He wasn’t smiling, he didn’t look happy, but only the faintest hint of nerves crossed his features.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said slowly.
Carmy just stared at him. He didn’t know where he went wrong. There had to be something he could say to fix it, and excuse or lie or brush-off. His heart raced and he sucked on his smoke, watched Richie watch him do it and started to sweat.
Richie flicked his spent smoke into the gutter and got out another. He bowed his head to light it, hand cupped around it, his face lit up by the flame.
“Fucking knew you wouldn’t go first,” he said finally, in a cloud of smoke as it caught. He shook his head and looked away. “I knew it was you, cuz.”
Pain rocketed through Carmy’s head and left him fuzzy and numb.
“How?” he choked out.
Richie was fucking with him. Richie was always, always fucking with him, and he’d been fucking with him the whole time. He didn’t want him and he’d tell the story so Carmy looked fucking stupid, and he’d tell everyone. The kitchen would fall apart, nobody would respect him, if they even did now—
Richie rubbed the back of his neck, still not looking at him. “The, uh. The triangle tattoo.”
Carmy stopped. “What?”
“In the picture,” Richie said. Without looking back, he pointed at Carmy’s chest. “You, uh. When you’re wearing a sweater, right, and you take it off like this”—he put his hands at the back of his neck and mimed the motion— “it pulls up your shirt. So, I see it. And you… you don’t forget a thing like that.” A long, pregnant pause. “Or, I don’t.”
“Oh,” Carmy said, and then a beat later, he got it. He squeezed his eyes shut so hard blood rushed in his head and shapes danced behind his eyelids. “Fffffffuck.”
Richie wasn’t fucking with him.
Richie said, “Yeah, fuck.”
Richie wasn’t fucking with him. Carmy had no idea what to do with that. That meant Richie saw his cock and knew it was him, it meant he sent his knowing—
“What do you want me to say?” Carmy bit out, eyes still closed, and sagged against the wall. Richie leaned next to him a good arm’s length away, in silent agreement to not look at each other while they said any of this.
“Well,” Richie said carefully, “we’re in public, not in your fuckin’ kitchen. So you can’t yell at me.”
“You yell at me! You always fucking—”
“Yo, we exchanged dick pics on fucking Grindr, you really wanna talk about work right now?”
Everything was about work. Carmy covered his eyes.
“This doesn’t change the, like—”
Richie cut him off. “If you sent fucking nudes to avoid apologizing to me, I’m gonna kill you.”
“You sent the nude.”
“A, yours was basically a nude, B, you started it, and three, you fucking knew it was me when you sent it, so.”
“You knew it was me!”
“Only after I’d seen your cock! That’s different.”
Carmy ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “It’s not better.”
“That, we can agree on.”
Carmy’s whole body was buzzing. He kept his hands on his eyes. One second at a time. If he could get through the next thirty seconds, he could do anything. Five seconds, six, the restaurant door opened in a wash of sound as people came out, their heels clicking on the sidewalk, laughing and talking. Cars going down the street, Richie’s exhale and the fucking intoxicating smell of his smokes.
Carmy knew what all of it meant, logically, but he couldn’t make the two halves touch. One second at a time. He took his hands off his face and glanced over at Richie. He was looking out into the street, frowning, moving his jaw back and forth.
Richie sighed a long-suffering sigh and tipped his face up to the sky like he was looking for God’s help. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t—”
“I know you don’t fucking drink. Make it an apple juice, but lemme buy you a drink.”
Carmy’s heart was pounding. Finally having a smoke after so long was making his hands shake and his head get all floaty and he asked, “Why?” because it was all he could think to say.
Richie pushed up off the wall and stood so Carmy had to look right at him. He took a long, final drag on his smoke, then flicked it away.
“You know why. You want to or not?”
The restaurant was cool and dark inside, hyper-modern and lit by greenish strip lights hidden in a lip that ran along the walls. Black tables, black floors, zig-zaggy nooks of walls hiding tables from one another for a sense of privacy.
“Tron-looking motherfucker,” Richie mumbled as they were shown to their table. Richie, it turned out, had made a reservation.
Carmy sat across from him at a small, angular table. The green-teal strip lighting ran behind Richie’s shoulders and made the sides of his face glow.
Carmy asked, “You been here before?” just to say something that sounded halfway normal.
“Nope,” Richie said.
“They’re supposed to be good.”
“Yeah. Chicago Magazine said their new pastry chef is doing that molecular gastronomy shit. He’s got like… dessert spheres.” Richie shrugged and squared up the black linen napkin in front of him. “Thought you might be interested.”
Right. Richie knew it was him.
Carmy said, “I’ve seen you drink mouthwash. You’re like, physically incapable of impressing me.”
Richie shifted uneasily. “That was a long time ago.”
Carmy couldn’t look him in the eye and alternated between looking at his right ear and squinting at the bizarre, black-shellacked dried flowers that sat in the middle of the table. They were try-hard, or in any case, not Carmy’s thing. Him and Richie both examined the single-page drink menus in front of them and didn’t speak until their server arrived.
Richie got a cocktail with a stupid name. When the server asked Carmy, he said, on a gut-wrenching impulse, “Whiskey on the rocks. Whatever your well whiskey is.”
Richie gave him a what the fuck look, but didn’t say anything until the server had finished pouring them waters and left.
“Are you sick or something?”
“None of your fucking business.”
Richie groaned, put his elbows on the table and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Okay, let’s set some neutral ground here. Some… some Switzerland, between all this shit.”
“I don’t want fucking Switzerland.”
“Well, you’re getting it. You don’t wanna say you’re sorry for calling me a loser, and worthless, and saying you don’t love me and shit—”
“Yo, fuck you.”
“—and you’re still on your totally fucking insane dictator shit, your wrecking your brother’s restaurant and ruining all our lives shit—”
Carmy was half out of his seat. “Get fucked, Richie!”
“—so we’re gonna sit here and talk about dick, ‘cause it’s the only thing we got in common and I’m hoping it’ll make you a fraction less shitty to me.”
Carmy sank slowly back into his chair. He didn’t know what part to get mad at first and he stalled out on the whole thing.
He managed to look right at Richie, and they stared at each other in silence for a while. Richie looked tired; it was after midnight on a Saturday and they’d both been at work for almost twelve hours, so Carmy figured he looked just as drained. Richie’s suit jacket gleamed in the green light over his shoulders. His eyes moved over Carmy’s face and Carmy’s moved over his and all of this, as far as Carmy could tell, meant that, on some level, Richie wanted him and he wanted Richie and they had to figure out how to live in an unfathomable fucking world where they knew that.
The server brought them their drinks in patterned lowball glasses, asked about food, then left.
Carmy’s whiskey had a perfect sphere of crystal-clear ice in it, the kind that cost a shit-ton to make. You had to freeze them in a special thing and keep them perfectly level. These ones had a design imprinted on the ice; they probably outsourced it. Richie’s drink was opaque and green.
“So. Grindr.” Richie sipped his drink, then made a pretty good type of face. “That new for you?”
Carmy stared at his ball of ice sitting in two fingers of whiskey. He hadn’t had a drink in twelve years. He nodded.
Richie said, “Did I, like… inspire you?”
Richie had a knack for phrasing everything in the worst way possible. Carmy scowled.
“Don’t fucking flatter yourself.”
“Yo, what am I supposed to think? You find out about my shit, and like, two days later, you do this?”
“What, you think you fucking made me—”
Richie held up his hands. “Okay, okay, my bad. Neutrality, bro, fuck. Truce.”
“You can’t just say truce and make it—”
“I know! I know, that’s on me, I’m fucking…” He shook his head and looked away. A muscle in his jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth. “Struggling.”
Carmy saw for the first time that he’d misinterpreted Richie’s smarmy bravado as genuine. He was fucked up over this. Obviously he was fucked up over this, because Carmy was. It was fucked, and they, together, were fucked. That’s what Richie meant by neutral ground.
“Am I being shitty?” Carmy asked.
“Super fucking shitty.”
Carmy scoffed and picked up his drink. Under Richie’s curious gaze, he took a sip, ice cold whiskey coating his tongue rich and sharp and terrifying. It worked, as a thing to direct his terror somewhere other than Richie.
Richie said, “You don’t have to drink that.”
“I know.”
“The ice ball looks sick.”
“They’re crazy fucking expensive.”
“Figures.”
Carmy shuffled his feet under the table. He kept his hands curled around his glass. The silence hummed between them until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Did Mikey know?” he asked.
Richie snorted. “Fuck no.”
“You think he’d care?”
“Nah. Or… I dunno. I think I cared. I was an asshole.”
“Was.”
“Fuck you, dickhead, I’m growing.” Richie took a long pull of his drink. Carmy watched his hands. “Mikey was a good guy and all, but he said shit he didn’t mean. Took him a while to… work through shit like that. I didn’t wanna make it weird.”
Carmy had always been terrified of, specifically, making it weird. He’d gotten his first inkling that he had some kind of attraction to guys in mid-high school, when him and Mikey were still close, and his worst nightmare had always been Mikey finding out.
Richie said, “It’s not like it came up. I was doing my thing. I got married. Never really thought about it.” He ran a thumbnail along the ridges in his glass. “Now shit’s all different, and I thought I should, like… figure it out.”
He did have a faint tan line where his wedding band used to be. Carmy couldn’t look up at his face.
“You think you got it figured out?” Carmy asked.
“Kinda. I like dick, apparently. I think guys like me more than chicks do. Chicks are fucking vexing.” Another drink, a long one. “Past that—I dunno. Working it out.”
Women were vexing, Carmy thought with an appropriate amount of shame. He’d always been surrounded by men—dozens of uncles and cousins, scores of family friends—and he’d learned by careful, obsessive observation how to match their brand of jovial masculinity so well that it was genuinely a part of him now, and somehow he made it to his mid-twenties without realizing he hardly knew any women at all. He was still digging himself out of that hole.
He wanted to ask Richie if his ‘working it out’ included any thoughts on the difference between fucking guys and dating them. The thought plagued Carmy because it was a big fucking difference, and with his zero experience, he’d never been able to answer it himself. He took another sip of whiskey instead and almost gagged. Richie went on.
“I kinda just followed Mikey’s lead for like, my whole entire life, and he didn’t think about that shit, so. Now I’m forty-five and on fucking Grindr.”
They worship you, Xavier said. They treat you like a God.
“I hear older guys are in right now,” Carmy said hollowly.
Richie scoffed. “Yeah, right.”
Carmy made himself look at Richie’s face. Richie was looking down. He was a giant black hole of longing. He had to fit in and he had to have a lead to follow, he tried so hard to make people laugh and look at him and all he did was want, so open and obvious. It was that sweaty kind of hunger that hurt to see. Carmy had always seen it.
They worship you. Carmy wasn’t immune to the thought of that.
Richie looked up and their eyes met. Carmy’s throat burned hot with whiskey and he took a long, slow breath and held it until he felt his heartbeat in his eyes. Looking away meant losing, but keeping the contact was excruciating.
Richie asked, “Did Mikey know about you?”
Carmy wasn’t blinking. “I don’t know about me.”
Richie’s eyebrows drew together. It looked like pity, which pissed Carmy off, but then Richie said, so fucking gentle about it:
“C’mon, man. You know.”
Carmy’s eyes snapped down. He bowed his head and raked his hands through his hair, and when he put his hands back on the table he pressed them down flat out in front of him and didn’t touch his drink.
He did know. He’d spent a long time convincing himself that he didn’t, but he did. He couldn’t stand the thought that Richie knew, too.
He said to his hands, “You didn’t tell me either.”
Richie laughed wryly.
“Believe it or not, cuz, you’re not exactly easy to talk to,” he said. Carmy watched him pick up his glass, and when he set it back down, it was empty. “And, uh.”
The little vial of black-coated flowers sat between them. Carmy’s hands were so fucking awkward out in the middle of the table. His vision tunneled again.
“And what?”
Richie held onto his empty glass. Carmy’s heart went nuts. He wet his lips, then answered his own question.
“And, you, uh. You like ‘em young.”
“Kinda,” Richie said quietly.
“Blond.”
“Sure.”
“Gym rats.”
Richie’s thumb tapped a nervous staccato on his glass. “Uh-huh.”
There was that all-consuming, jittery-terrified sense of no no no no nonononono. Carmy’s face was sweating. He cleared his throat.
“That a coincidence, or…”
“Nope,” Richie said, popping the P.
Carmy looked up at him. He looked wild-eyed and fever-flushed and he was sitting perfectly still, like Carmy was a predator whose notice he could escape.
Carmy said, “Fuck.”
Richie nodded. “Extremely fuck.”
Carmy made himself keep looking at him, but he couldn’t think of a single fucking thing to say. Richie chewed the inside of his cheek and Carmy caught a glint of his tongue between his teeth. A lifetime went by.
“This still neutral territory?” Carmy asked.
Richie nodded very slowly. “It can be.”
Carmy thought Xavier looked a little like him when he first opened the restaurant door. When he saw Richie’s second guy, he put it together, somewhere deep down that he couldn’t look at all the time. He wondered how many others there were and if any of them had tattoos.
“Since when?” he asked.
Richie spread out his hands on the table to match Carmy’s and looked down at them. “Dunno. Everything’s been weird since you’ve been back.”
“No shit.”
Carmy chose not to mention Richie mirroring his hands. Richie’s hands were bigger than his. Richie started to speak so fucking slow, like he was figuring it out as he went along.
“I mean, not lately, the fuckin’ way you’ve been acting, but… when you actually shut the fuck up. And when you’re not being a massive piece of shit, then… Yeah. Sometimes.”
“Sometimes.”
Richie swallowed audibly. “Most of the time.”
Their server hadn’t come back yet and the only thing Carmy could think about was how she must have been watching them and she could tell it looked too heavy to interrupt, because a place like that was too good to let your glass stay empty, and while he was looking around trying to figure out which other tables could see the intense, weird looks on their faces, or worse, hear them, Richie brushed his knuckles against his.
Carmy’s eyes slammed shut like he’d been hit, adrenaline like a fucking earthquake coming up from his feet.
A second passed, then two, and Carmy turned his palm so the backs of their hands touched, his fingers gently curled and open, like it was an accident. Richie moved his knuckles against his. Carmy pressed his lips together into an anguished line, eyes still crushed shut.
“Sometimes,” Richie said, kind of wobbly, “when you’re not being a fucking asshole, and I’m not being a fucking asshole, I feel like I see you looking at me. Like…”
Carmy opened his eyes and Richie was looking back, still so intense it crackled and burned, his face all glowy and red and embarrassed even in the dark room. His knuckles still lay against Carmy’s on the table and Carmy’s entire world narrowed to their joined hands. A tight knot of anxiety bundled under his ribs and for a split second it was so fucking exciting he forgot to be scared.
“Like that,” Richie finished quietly.
This could happen, Carmy realized. If he fucked up and let his guard down, there was a path here that got them in big fucking trouble.
Carmy pulled his hand away, then got the pack of gum out of his pocket and popped one. He chewed noisily. It was so fucking hot in there.
He said, “I’m gonna need some more neutrality here, cousin.”
“Fuck.” Richie swore under his breath. He grabbed his previously untouched water and took a massive gulp. “Fuck, Carmen, you’re killing me. Neutral. Neutral.”
Carmy nodded, dazed. He couldn’t take his eyes off Richie now, marveling at the fucking situation of it all and feeling with a deep sense of betrayal his dick thickening up at the thought of—all of it. Everything that could happen if he let it, and the fucking look on Richie’s face like he was thinking about it too.
Carmy swore and wiped at his eyes. He kept his hand over his mouth, elbow on the table, and wondered if he should run—how long they could draw this out if he made it difficult, how long Richie would keep at it doggedly until he cracked, whether they’d both keep at it. More photos exchanged, more stubbornly not talking at work. A fight one night to make it physical, and then the natural conclusion of that physicality. It was all a big fucking disraction and Carmy thought, with a rising tide of panic, that he didn’t really know how to stop it.
Richie leaned forward with his elbows on the table.
“Look, I gotta ask.” He grinned. “Is it the suit?”
Carmy snorted an appalled laugh. Richie had a fucking superhuman ability to break tension, when he wasn’t more invested in making the tension worse. Carmy drank his water to hide his smile.
“It is definitely not the suit.”
“It’s the fucking suit.”
“You look like one of those fucked up kids at a—a fucking beauty pageant, wearing grown-up clothes. You look like a fucking ventrilloquist dummy. You look fucked when you’re not in a Beef shirt.”
Richie leaned back and got this look on his face. “Holy shit, you like me.”
“Richie, believe me when I say I do not fucking like you.”
“You like me big time, oh my God! You like me when I’m all gross and normal and shit. That’s so embarrassing.”
He looked as though he were lit by some interior light, he was so pleased with himself. When he wasn’t invested in fucking up Carmy’s day, he could pretty reliably make him laugh.
Carmy said, “Trust me, nobody likes that.”
Richie kicked his foot under the table. “You sound so fucking stupid right now. I didn’t even need the suit.”
“Was the suit for me?”
“Fuck that, I got it for me. But that means you like me more than I like me, ergo, you’re fuckin’ cooked.” Richie reached across the table and grabbed Carmy’s whiskey. He tipped his head back and downed it. “Let’s blow this place. You look like a dog in a hot car.”