“So,” Zachary said. “You’ve lived here for five seconds and already started a neighborhood prank war. I hope you’re proud.”

  “Excuse me. You started the neighborhood prank war when you dumped paint on Snaggletooth.” That was the name he’d given his dragon in his head.

  “That wasn’t—I didn’t mean to—Yeah, okay, fine.”

  Bram grinned at him and hooked his arm through Zachary’s elbow. They continued down the street—after all, Hem did need her walk—and when they got back to their own houses, Bram took a gamble.

  “Don’t suppose I could tempt you to come hang out at my place instead of going back to work for—” he checked the time “—one hour and six minutes?”

  Zachary hesitated like maybe he was considering it, so Bram played his ace card.

  “I’ll show you how the cat boxes are coming along...”

  Zachary bit at his lip and Bram could see the actual discomfort it caused him to contemplate not working his usual full day. He was just about to tell Zachary never mind, in fact, when Zachary blew out a breath and muttered, “Screw it. Yeah, okay,” looking up at Bram.

  Sunlight coursed through Bram. “Yeah? Yay!”

  Something like a smile answered him on Zachary’s face. It was uncertain and a little hesitant, like maybe he’d never known the joy of skipping school or sneaking in an extra-long lunch break. Or maybe, Bram mused, he couldn’t believe that his presence and company would cause anyone excitement.

  That was unacceptable. Bram squeezed Zachary to his side and led him through the front door.

  Usually when they spent time together it was at Zachary’s house. Bram knew his space was messier than Zachary enjoyed. But he’d straightened up that morning, hoping to make Zachary more comfortable there. Fortunately, since he didn’t have a lot of stuff, the mess was easy to contain.

  He was using the living room as his workspace, and he led Zachary inside.

  The week before he’d gotten the logs—which were actually tree trunks—and hollowed them out in Charlie Matheson’s woodworking studio. It was where he’d also cut all of the wood for the cat boxes that would go downtown.

  Zachary immediately knelt to examine the boxes, running curious fingers over the hollowed-out tree trunks.

  “These are larger than I’d imagined,” he said. “But I can see that it’s good to have them longer for warmth.”

  “Yeah, exactly. That’s why I left one end closed too. So the wind wouldn’t blow through. Plus with more than one cat in there it’d be warmer.”

  Zachary continued on to the in-town boxes.

  “Is this for the Odeon?”

  “Yeah. I talked to Henry and he was very into the idea. He said he’d put a donations box in the lobby too, where people can drop off cat food and blankets and stuff. Rye and Charlie helped him with the Odeon reno so he’s happy to help out.”

  Bram was happy Zachary had noticed that one. It was his favorite. The shape echoed the Odeon’s proscenium, with a red velvet curtain framing it. The entrance to the box was in the back with an offset piece to protect the opening from cold and wind that was shaped like a box of popcorn. It was large, since the theater had a large sidewalk in front of it—easily big enough for four or five cats to curl up, were they so inclined.

  Bram had painted it the night before and the scent of paint still hung in the air.

  “Want some help?” Zachary offered. He looked enthusiastically around the room.

  “Sure. Do you want to paint the one for the coffee shop? It’s all put together.”

  Zachary inspected it.

  “You went with the spilling coffee—awesome,” Zachary said, eyes bright.

  “Yup. Can you see how it’s supposed to go?”

  Zachary nodded. He was, Bram realized, the last person he needed to help see structures that weren’t quite there.

  Hemlock flopped onto her cushion in the corner and Bram got out the paints.

  “Do you want to borrow something so you don’t get paint on your suit?”

  Zachary looked down at his impeccable outfit like he’d forgotten what he was wearing.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “You could just paint with no clothes, if you want,” he said with a wink.

  He’d been going for flirtatious, but Zachary said, “You’re right.”

  He stripped out of his suit and hung it neatly over the back of a chair. Then, in his underwear, he picked up the paintbrush.

  “Oh, jeez,” Bram said, eyes magnetized to Zachary’s lithe form. “That’s...okay.”

  He was across the room in two strides and almost got a paintbrush in the nostril as he bent to kiss Zachary.

  Zachary grinned at his ardor and let himself be caught up in Bram’s arms, paintbrush falling to the floor.

  Bram loved the feel of Zachary in his arms. He was small, but strong, and he held on so damn tight when Bram kissed him.

  The kiss was deep, and a wave of heat broke over him, but Bram let him go with one last kiss to his cheek.

  “You’re very tempting,” he said, and he thought he saw the slightest flush over Zachary’s cheeks, but maybe it was just a trick of the light.

  They painted in quiet companionship for about an hour. Bram worked on the box for the library, smiling as he inked titles of books onto spines with a detail brush.

  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Cat’s Eye, Cat’s Cradle, and The Catcher in the Rye.

  Bram finished before Zachary and was able to watch his meticulous work. Zachary held the paintbrush like it was a pencil and used tiny, precise strokes.

  From afar, the to-go cup looked like you could stop to pick it up and throw it away. The spill of wooden coffee that was the entry to the shelter looked wet.

  “How did you learn to paint like this?” Bram asked, impressed.

  Zachary shrugged.

  “I always liked painting.”

  “You’re amazing.”

  Zachary looked confused for a moment, then said, “Thank you. Should I put something on the cup? Like a name or an order?”

  “Catnip Latte,” Bram suggested.

  Zachary nodded and lettered it onto the cup. His eyes were bright with interest.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Zachary mmm-hmmed, eyes on his work.

  “Do you like your job?”

  “I love my job,” he said instantly, still painting.

  “Right, I know you love architecture. But do you like designing pet stores and other boxes that don’t let you express your skill or creativity?”

  Zachary’s eyes darted left and then right.

  “It’s a good job. They aren’t easy to get.”

  “I’m sure they’re not,” Bram allowed.

  He’d decided to broach the topic, but clearly this wasn’t something Zachary was open to discussing. At least not right now.

  “You want to do another one?” he asked instead.

  Zachary took the bait.

  “This one is for that bakery on the corner of Main and...”

  “Turner,” Zachary said. “Got it.”

  He studied the cutout, squinting. Bram had come up with this one himself.

  “A giant croissant?”

  “Yup.” Bram was relieved it was recognizable.

  Zachary smiled. “Okay, I can do that.”

  As soon as he started painting, it was like he went away somewhere, his essence retreating an inch inside his skin. Unreachable. He worked for an hour without speaking, not seeming to notice Bram starting and finishing the Matheson’s Hardware shelter, washing his brushes, or taking a shower.

  When Bram came to ask if he was hungry, he was crouching in front of the shelter examining his work.

  It was golden brown and flaky-looking, and for some reason it struck Bram as one of the cutest things he’d ever seen—a cold cat curled up inside a giant croissant, warm from the oven.

  “Damn, it’s so good it’s making me hungry,” Bram said.

  Zachary drew him close with a curled finger and Bram sank beside him. He pointed at the layers of pastry and when Bram squinted he saw that in several places the whorls of dough formed...

  “Oh my god,” he breathed. “Tiny cat faces. You freaksome genius.”

  Zachary laughed with joy.

  “I realize it could be interpreted as a bit ghoulish—like the croissants are made out of kittens or something. But I didn’t mean it that way. I thought maybe unconsciously the cats would recognize familiar patterns and be drawn to it. I don’t know. I don’t know how cats work. Just a thought.”

  Bram also could not claim to know how cats worked. But he was learning how Zachary Glass worked, and it was with utter, sincere dedication to every single detail.

  Bram wasn’t exactly sure why he found that so attractive and endearing, but he really, really did. In fact, there was a lot about his responses to Zachary that were surprising him. Bram had always been drawn to people that felt like his family: warm, socially skilled, and motivated to destroy the tethers of corporate capitalism that threatened to ensnare anyone not actively working against them.

  When they’d first met, Zachary had seemed the opposite: standoffish, prickly, and so dedicated to the nine-to-five grind that he wore suits while working from his own living room.

  How, Bram had wondered, was he drawn to this man? Of course, he’d quickly realized that Zachary wasn’t standoffish, he just operated in tune to a different set of social mandates. He wasn’t prickly, he’d just always had to defend his way of being in the world to detractors and had internalized it as a default. And he wasn’t dedicated to the grind, he was soothed and supported by a strict schedule that freed his mind from the pressure of having to make certain choices so that it could meander freely through his creative process.

  The resistance to seeing that his job wasn’t a great fit for him...well, that was a conversation for another time.

  “You hungry?” he asked, instead of gathering Zachary in his arms and telling him how much he delighted Bram.

  “Yeah, actually. Painting this made me hungry.”

  Bram stood and offered Zachary a hand. He pulled him up easily and for a moment he thought Zachary was going to hug him, kiss him, something. But he just steadied himself and cleaned his brushes without comment before donning his clothes once more. Most people looked very different in a suit than they did in their underwear, but Zachary didn’t. His demeanor didn’t change at all.

  Bram cooked them pasta with mushrooms and fresh herbs and when he passed Zachary a steaming bowl, Zachary held it for a moment like he was Oliver Twist or something.

  “What?”

  Zachary shook his head.

  “I just don’t remember the last time someone cooked for me.” He paused, then said, “My mom, I guess.”

  “Was she a good cook?”

  “I don’t know. I always ate it, but...” He shrugged and Bram took that to mean You know I don’t care about food.

  They sat at Bram’s newly constructed kitchen table to eat. Zachary took a few bites of pasta and said, “It’s good, thanks.”

  Bram narrowed his eyes at him, and he laughed. “Fine, it’s totally edible, I don’t care about it, but I was being polite because I appreciate you doing the work of cooking it. Okay? Better?”

  And actually, it was.

  Bram wouldn’t have thought that he’d prefer to hear someone say they didn’t care what his cooking tasted like, but the more time he spent around Zachary, the more he found himself soothed and reassured by his particular blunt variety of honesty.

  It would be easy to say it was because after Naveen and Drake he would prefer any kind of honesty to any kind of lie, but it wasn’t that simple.

  It wasn’t just the feeling that Zachary was being truthful. It was that his truths came without judgment. Like he detached facts from any evaluative metric, so he was able to tell them easily and without struggle. He didn’t assign any value to “tasting the food” so telling Bram he didn’t care about it was a logical extension, not a confession.

  Bram’s phone started vibrating with texts from multiple siblings.

  “Oh, shoot, it’s family Skype tonight. I forgot.”

  “Okay, I’ll get out of your way.” Zachary started to clear his bowl.

  “No, wait!” Bram suddenly, desperately wanted Zachary to stay. To be a part of his life. “Sorry, didn’t mean to shout. Just, I’d love it if you wanted to meet everyone. I’ve talked all about you so they’re dying to meet you.”

  “You’ve talked about me?”

  Zachary said it slowly, like he couldn’t quite imagine it.

  “Of course.”

  Bram didn’t clarify that his siblings had sent him dozens of texts begging for private introductions, pictures, and details about Zachary.

  “Okay,” Zachary said quietly. He sat back down and patted himself into shape though he was already immaculate except for his wayward curls, which sproinged joyously.

  “Yeah? Awesome.”

  Bram sat next to him on the bench and propped his phone on the bookstand he used for a phone stand.

  Before he signed on, he pressed a kiss to Zachary’s cheek. Zachary turned wide eyes on him, but leaned in and kissed him sweetly.

  “Do I have food in my teeth?” he asked, then bared them.

  “Nope, you’re good. Me?”

  Bram did the same and Zachary reached over and brushed something off his lip.

  “Thanks,” Bram breathed. It had been an intimate gesture and it had made his stomach go all squishy.

  “Um. Brace yourself, I guess?” he said as he clicked the join call button.

  “Huh?” Zachary asked.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Zachary

  The screen came alive with faces and voices. Zachary knew Bram had four siblings, but he had no reference for what a seven-person family was like. One of them was cooking dinner, another was outside, a third had two kids jammed into view, and the fourth seemed to be upside down. Then there were the parents, who were pressed close together to share a screen. But before Zachary could track what they were talking about, one by one, all eyes snapped to the cameras and they started talking at once.

  “Bram!” and “Is that Zachary?” and “HELLO, BRAM’S FRIEND!” and “About time, you little sneak.”

  Next to him, Bram cleared his throat and when Zachary turned to him, he was turning red, flushing from his throat to the apples of his cheeks.

  “Are you okay?” Zachary asked.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Bram answered, strangled. “Just, maybe this was a bad idea.” But before he could say anything more, their mother held up her hand and the other feeds went quiet.

  “Wow,” Zachary said. “I can’t believe that worked.”

  “Bram, would you like to introduce your guest?” his mother said. “Kids, can you introduce yourselves too?”

  She said it casually, but there was an air of steel in her voice. Zachary only had time to be amused at referring to these adults in the twenties and thirties as “kids,” including one brother who appeared to be even larger than Bram, before Bram spoke.

  “Hi, everyone. This is Zachary Glass. He’s just been helping me paint the cat shelters I told you about, and I wanted you to meet him. Please be humans instead of jackals. Thank you.”

  “Zachary, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m Mirabelle, Bram’s mother.”

  “I’m Bram’s dad,” the older man said. “Trent.”

  The brother who seemed even bigger than Bram waved. He was the one cooking dinner and he’d paused his activities.

  “Hey, Zachary. I’m Thistle. I’m the oldest of this wolf pack. Nice to meet you.”

  “Zachary, hi! I’m Vega, the youngest sister.” She smiled a sweet, wide smile that put Zachary at ease. He waved.

  “Omigod, finally!” the upside-down sister said, then her screen tipped queasily, and she was right-side up.

  “I’m Moon, one of Bram’s younger sisters, and I can’t help but notice that you’re—”

  A hand came from behind her and clapped over her mouth, silencing her. The person belonging to the hand ducked into view and rested her chin on Moon’s shoulder.

  “Hi, Larkspurs,” she said. They clearly knew her. “Zachary, I’m Ming, Moon’s girlfriend, and I would like to apologize for whatever is almost assuredly going to come out of my beloved’s enormous, rude mouth during the tenure of this call.” She grinned. Zachary grinned back at her and smoothed down his shirt.

  The final sister, who was on mute and talking to her kids, unmuted and said, “Hey, Zachary. I’m Birch. These small monsters are Millie and Dorothy. Nice to meet you.”

  Then everyone was silent, and Zachary saw his face in the camera, blinking at them all. Bram put a warm palm on his back and slid it up and down his spine. You couldn’t see it on camera, and it made Zachary think about all the things that could be going on in the back of all the other people’s cameras that he couldn’t see.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Zachary.” Then, compelled to use the same format as they all had, he added, “I’m Bram’s... Halloween prank war nemesis?”

  The Larkspur family smiled, laughed, nodded enthusiastically, looked wryly, and nodded, respectively.

  “Welcome,” one of them said, though Zachary couldn’t tell which one.

  * * *

  Zachary called his mom for the first time in two months. She’d left him several messages over the last few weeks, which he’d ignored. But seeing Bram’s family, so close and so joyful at one another’s company, had made him pick up the phone.

  “Zacky!” she answered. The sound of her voice wound his stomach like spaghetti on a fork.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  He didn’t say “How are you?” because that was always an invitation for her to start talking about the case.

  Not that not asking usually avoided it.

 

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