Here, There Be Monsters (pt 2)
Part Two: Here, There Be Monsters
Reread Part One.
*
“Hey, Jon, what would you think about moving the surf boards to the other side of the store?”
Brendon watched Jon, seeing him standing in front of the window, staring out at nothing in particular.
“Jon?”
Blinking, Jon turned. “Huh? Yeah, sure.”
Brendon beamed, his hand only twitching slightly as he grabbed the first board. Jon still hadn’t asked him what that was about. It was only his left hand, and it didn’t happen all the time. Brendon never said anything or mentioned it at all. It didn’t appear to hinder him at all.
Jon knew he should really get back to work. There were a few boards in the back that really needed to be finished. He couldn’t bring himself to focus on work, though, when his mind kept straying to the strange man that lived on top of the cliff, all alone.
No one seemed to know who he was, but it wasn’t as though Jon had asked many people. He got the feeling that whoever that man was, he wasn’t popular or well-known in town. Brendon had told him all he knew, Jon was sure. Brendon wasn’t the type to keep things from him, although he was still being slightly evasive about the circumstances under which he’d been hired by Tom and his pseudo-relationship with Ryan.
Jon wondered for a minute if Ryan would know about the man on the hill.
“Hey, Bren,” Jon said, following Brendon as he hauled another board off the rack and moved it to the other side of the store.
“Huh?” Brendon asked, concentrating hard as he leaned it against the wall. His hand twitched again as he released it and stepped back to make sure it wasn’t going to fall. He bounced, though, as he turned to Jon.
“How long has Ryan lived here?”
Brendon paused. “Four years, three months, and seventeen days.”
Jon just stared and Brendon tilted his head to the side.
“What?” he asked innocently.
Shaking his head, Jon sighed. “Nothing, um. Where does he live?”
“North side of town,” Brendon provided instantly, momentarily distracted by a skewed pile of shirts. He spent a few minutes rearranging them as Jon thought.
“What does he do?” he asked finally. He hadn’t really gotten much of a feel for Ryan yet, especially since Ryan hadn’t quite warmed to him since that first day.
“He’s a manager.”
Jon didn’t push and Brendon finished rearranging the shirts. Blinking at Jon, he smiled.
“Why?”
“I was just wondering.” He shrugged. “He doesn’t come by much. You guys are really dating?”
Brendon’s mouth quirked and his hand jerked again. “Well, you know,” he just muttered, and Jon didn’t, but again, he didn’t push. He didn’t know what would happen if he pushed Brendon too far and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to find out.
“Right,” Jon murmured quietly. “Hey, what do you think about moving the clothes further back?”
Brendon’s eyes moved to him and his mouth quirked into a small smile. “Okay.”
*
“Didn’t manage to burn the place down, huh?”
Jon smiled as he leaned against the wall, staring out his front window to the swirling ocean beyond. The sky was overcast again and a steady mist had persisted through most of the morning.
“Nope, everything’s still safe and sound.”
There was a pause and then Tom spoke. “You moved shit, didn’t you?”
“Well, I had to find things,” Jon defended himself. “Besides, the place was cluttered.”
“It was a reflection of me,” Tom argued and Jon laughed.
“Well, your mind is a cluttered place.”
Jon could practically see Tom rolling his eyes over the phone. “No, but things are okay, right? No problems with anybody? Brendon’s been good?”
“Yeah, he’s fine.” Jon paused, watching a seagull dive into the ocean. “Why did you hire him?” he asked finally.
“What, he didn’t tell you?” Tom asked, sounding a little surprised and strangely reluctant at the same time.
“Not really,” Jon said slowly. “I mean, he said no one else would hire him and rattled off a laundry list of bad qualities. He just said you needed help.”
The pause was longer this time as Jon waited.
“I did need help,” Tom said finally and Jon frowned.
“Is there something wrong with him or something? He seems like a nice guy, but people treat him strangely.”
“He is a nice guy,” was all Tom would say and Jon had to settle for the idea that maybe this town was stranger than he thought.
“Okay, well, what about Ryan?”
“What about Ryan?”
“Is he okay?” Jon didn’t really know anything about Ryan since he practically refused to talk to him.
“Sure, Ryan’s fine. A little stubborn and don’t ever argue with him about classic literature, but otherwise, he’s fine.”
“Oh. Well, good,” Jon said for lack of anything else to say. Tom made a vague noise.
“Keltie’s calling. I have to go.”
“So whipped,” Jon muttered and Tom scoffed.
“Not.”
“Hey, wait, before you go,” Jon said quickly and he waited.
“What?”
Jon shook his head quickly. “You know that house on the hill?” He felt stupid for even asking since Tom would probably read way too much into it and he’d be in for endless teasing in the months to come.
There was a pause. “You mean the one on the south side, above the ocean?”
“Yeah,” Jon agreed, trying not to sound too eager that Tom recognized it.
“What about it?”
“Do you know who lives there?”
Another pause followed his question and Jon glanced out the window at the grey sea.
Then Tom laughed and Jon was confused.
“What?”
“Just ask around,” Tom said finally. “I’m sure someone knows.”
“So you don’t?”
“I only know the stories.”
That made Jon frown, but Tom said something about Keltie needing him and hung up before he could ask exactly what stories he meant.
*
There was a crash, a muffled curse, followed by a reluctant, “Oh no…” before Jon could get out from where he was pricing tee shirts for the sale and into the back of the store where the workshop for repairing boards was.
Skidding slightly on the sawdust covered floor, he found Brendon tangled up in the chord to the sander, a dark, strong-smelling liquid drenched over his jeans.
“What happened?” Jon asked, concerned, as he leaned over to help Brendon untangle himself from the chord.
“Tripped,” Brendon muttered. “Didn’t see the chord.”
“It’s okay,” Jon assured him, pulling him up by his arm. “Are you okay?”
Brendon glanced down at his ruined pants and Jon recognized the smell as wood sealer.
“You should go change. Why don’t you just take the day off?”
“No!” Brendon said, so fast that Jon was taken aback.
“But your pants.” Jon eyed them obviously. The stain ran all across most of his right leg and his lap. Brendon shook his head quickly.
“I don’t want go home,” he said, his eyes wide. “The sale starts today.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Brendon just shook his head and Jon saw that he wasn’t going to win this. He didn’t see why Brendon was so adamant about it.
“Okay, fine, but at least go change. You can come back.”
Brendon nodded eagerly, hurrying out of the store. Jon watched him go, noting that he didn’t have a car parked in the lot. He just ran down the row of shops and turned the corner towards town.
Shaking his head, Jon sighed and returned to his tee shirts. A few moments later, the bell rang over the door and Jon looked over to find Gabe there, William trailing after curiously. Jon doubted he’d ever been inside a surf shop.
“Hey,” he greeted them happily, putting down his labeler. “I’m glad you guys came by.”
Gabe was looking around interestedly. “Yeah, well, once spring is over, I’m fucking getting out on those waves.” He grinned and William only looked around the store carefully.
“Where’s that other guy that works here?” he asked after a minute.
“You mean Brendon?” Jon asked and William’s eyes lit up at the name.
Gabe laughed. “Space case, that one. Crazy.”
Frowning, Jon didn’t reply immediately. “He’s a good worker.”
Gabe laughed again. “Uh huh. I don’t know why Tom hired him. He’s an odd one.”
Jon didn’t think Gabe really had room to talk, especially with William peering over his shoulder, practically molded to his back.
“He’s not all there,” Gabe said, voice conspiratorially low. William didn’t say anything, but whispered in Gabe’s ear. Gabe smiled and nodded once. “So what do you got new here?”
Jon still felt slightly awkward as he showed Gabe the tee shirts and the other things marked down for the sale.
As Gabe browsed, occasionally making interested noises, William stood back, looking out of place. He didn’t seem to mind, though, and Jon opted to talk to him instead of Gabe.
“So have you lived here long?”
“Couple years.” William shrugged, taking in Jon carefully. Jon tried to ignore it.
Jon hesitated, knowing it was going to sound stupid. “You know the house up the hill from you?”
William only raised an eyebrow and Jon fidgeted.
“Do you know who lives there?”
Gabe pulled his head out from the rack of shirts to laugh at Jon. “Dude, you don’t wanna know.”
“Why not?” Jon looked from William to Gabe.
“No one ever comes down from up there,” Gabe said. “Trucks go up about once a month, but no one ever comes down. Rumor has it that a crazy old guy lives up there living off seagulls.”
Jon frowned and Gabe turned back to the shirts.
“Not a crazy old guy,” William offered quietly. “He’s young. People say he’s up there because he ran away from someone or something. No one knows what and no one knows who he is. There’s a dog guarding the house. I’ve heard it at night, when the moon is hidden by clouds and the stars are obscured, when the ocean calms and the seagulls are the only noises in the darkness.”
Jon wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, but William only arched an eyebrow and turned to Gabe when he held up a shirt.
“What about this one?”
“I like it,” William replied and Gabe grinned.
*
One day, not too long after, Jon wandered over to Greta’s shop next door. He hadn’t yet been in but Brendon had nothing but good things to say about it or Greta, so he figured he should pay a visit. That and he wondered if she knew any more stories about the house on the hill. If anyone wouldn’t judge him for it, Jon thought it might be Greta.
A tingling bell met his entrance as he pushed open the door, similar to the one in his own store.
Inside, everything was a little cluttered, but in a warm, inviting sort of way that reminded Jon of old bookstores. The store was bathed in a soft yellow glow from the lamps overhead (certainly not from outside where more rain clouds were gathering on the horizon).
Wandering through the shelves of little coastal trinkets, Jon took in the store. It was about the same size as his and smelled a little like scented candles. He wasn’t surprised when he passed a table of them near the front. As he neared a shelf of the same wooden carvings as Greta had given him, she appeared from behind a large cherry desk upon which sat the register.
“Jon,” she greeted him with a smile. “What are you doing in here?”
Jon shrugged. “Just thought I’d take a look around.”
“Looking for souvenirs to send back home?” she asked playfully and Jon grinned.
“Nah. Just sizing up the competition.”
Greta laughed lightly, straightening one of the carvings. “Where are you from anyway?”
“Chicago.”
“Chi-town,” Greta murmured and Jon tilted his head to the side.
“You’ve been there?”
Greta’s smile was warm. “I was born there, but my parents moved out here when I was about ten.”
“Cool.” Jon grinned. Glancing around, he noticed the glass floats in the window. He’d always wondered how they made them.
Greta watched him carefully. “So how is everything?”
Jon shrugged, turning back. “Fine. Business is a little slow, but I think it’ll pick up.”
“And Brendon’s doing okay?” she asked, her head tilted to the side in the universal gesture of sympathy, or at least, that’s what Jon gathered. He still couldn’t figure out why everyone talked about him and treated him so differently.
“Yeah, he’s fine,” he said after a minute, thinking about asking her but decided it wasn’t as important as his other question. “So you’ve lived here a while, then?”
She nodded, pushing a pair of carved ducks closer together. “Yeah. After I went away to college, I just kind of stuck around. It’s not so bad. In the summertime, you’ll actually be able to go out on the beach without getting drenched.” She laughed and Jon nodded along.
“I was wondering,” Jon said, feeling as if he was asking this question a lot lately. Maybe it was a sign that he should stop thinking about that guy on the hill altogether. “Do you know anything about that little house up on the hill? You know, the one you can see from the beach?”
Greta paused, thinking. “It’s been there since before I moved here. I don’t think anyone lived there for a long time, but a couple years ago, maybe four or five, there were trucks going up the drive. No one’s ever seen who lives there and some people say it’s a ghost, but I don’t believe that.”
Jon looked out the window but couldn’t see much from this vantage point. Only the waves that crashed along the shore, practically the same color as the sky, filled his vision.
Greta was watching him closely. “You shouldn’t go up there, Jon,” she said finally.
“Why not?”
She shrugged, fingering a wooden pelican. “Strange people live in little towns like this, and they’re not all friendly.”
Jon didn’t reply, only frowned and looked back out the window.
*
The wind howled and rain pounded down on the top of his umbrella as he trudged up the hill, slipping occasionally on the wet gravel, but always catching himself and glancing ahead to the top where the roof of the little white house was coming into view.
Jon still wasn’t sure what he was doing climbing up a hill in the middle of a rain storm to see a guy whose name he didn’t even know, a guy who had rumors circulating all around town about him. He could have been some crazy guy obsessed with Thoreau and transcendentalism. He could be like Ryan.
Pushing away the thought, Jon continued his upward push against the wind that seemed determined on stopping him. Despite his umbrella - that both Brendon and Greta had laughed at him for, saying only tourists or wimps used umbrellas - the rain hit him, a sideways torrent hitting his knees and down soaking his jeans.
It seemed to take longer than the first time to reach the hill’s crest and the little white mailbox, cleaner than the house, at the top. He finally made it and stopped by the box again, wondering why he was even there.
He’d heard more stories about the house since he’d first come upon it. Everyone seemed to have a different version. Some said it was a haunted house, others said a grizzly old man lived there, hidden away with the body of his dead wife stuffed in a closet. Some claimed the house was deserted and refused to budge on the subject. Some went so far as to tell Jon that it was a murderer who used a saw to cut up all his victims. They claimed to have heard saws in the dead of night.
Of all the stories, however, none could produce a name for the person living atop the hill.
Jon had never considered himself an overly curious person. He wasn’t like Brendon, who liked to practically stick his nose in the register to find out what made it open when he pressed the button. Some things he could just accept and move on.
But this. This he couldn’t accept.
It was a strange feeling, as he stood before the house that appeared empty on the outside. Normally, he wouldn’t have pushed this so far. He would have asked around and then accepted that someone lived up here and no one knew a thing about him. But he’d seen the guy. He had seen how he’d glared down at him with his bright blue eyes, his hips jutting out to the side challengingly, and Jon couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The bottom of his jeans were soaked, dragging down the rest of the pants as he stood by the mailbox, debating whether or not it would be a good idea to knock on the door.
He was saved the trouble, though, as the man appeared from around the corner again. Jon wondered what he did behind the house, but wasn’t going to ask, not yet.
Once more, the man came to a sudden stop, staring at Jon as though he couldn’t believe he’d come back.
“Uh, hi,” Jon said when the silence went from shocked to awkward.
“What the fuck are you doing back?” the guy demanded and Jon saw his eyes narrow.
He didn’t have an umbrella, Jon noticed, and his hoodie was splotched with water droplets. It looked as though he hadn’t been outside for long. His eyes were as blue as Jon remembered and his hands rose haughtily to his hips.
Jon didn’t really have an answer to his question as he’d spent the entire walk up trying to figure it out.
The guy glared for another minute before giving a sharp yell. “Belle, come!”
Jon was confused for a second until a large brindle and white Boxer came bounding around the corner, bouncing jovially until it caught sight of Jon and froze next to its owner.
Apparently the dog part had been right, Jon mused, but was careful to keep an eye on the dog that now sat calmly next to the young man, its brown eyes focused unwaveringly on Jon.
“Look,” Jon said after a minute, feeling as though he should explain something, if not for his own safety. He didn’t like the look of that strong jaw. “I’m not trying to bother you or anything, I just…”
The man’s eyebrow went up and Jon knew he sounded stupid.
“Well, you are bothering me, so get off my property.” The tone was cold and Jon could feel the shiver in the air, but it didn’t deter him. He had to know more about this person.
Jon paused, trying to think up a valid excuse of why he’d climbed up to this guy’s house in the pouring rain other than he couldn’t stop thinking about him. That didn’t make him sound like a stalker at all.
“Will you just talk to me?” he asked finally and he was sure he saw the guy’s expression darken. His hands were stroking the dog’s head slowly and didn’t falter at Jon’s question.
“No,” he replied. “Why should I?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” Jon countered, hoping he might be able to talk his way in since he obviously wasn’t going to get anywhere based on his usual charm. This guy was hard to crack it seemed.
The young man sneered. “I’ve got a list a mile long.”
“I’ve got time,” Jon offered and the man’s glare deepened and his hand stopped stroking the dog’s ears. The dog looked immediately at him, seemingly waiting for instruction or to be acknowledged.
“Well, I don’t,” the man replied finally, his tone indicating the conversation was over.
Jon hesitated, but the dog was growling at the man’s feet, hackles rising, and he thought it best to take what he could get and retreat down the hill, the wind at his back hurrying him on.
*
Jon was reorganizing the shirt rack - which had been decimated by Gabe and numerous others in their quest for the right size - when the bell over the door jingled loudly. Struggling up from the bottom row, Jon looked over the shelves to find Ryan standing in the darkened doorway. The weather had apparently decided that winter was far from over and it had been raining steadily for the past week.
Stepping out from the shirts, Jon folded the black tee shirt in his hands. “Brendon’s not here,” he said and Ryan looked at him almost sharply.
He paused a second. “Where is he?”
“He had a dentist appointment. I said he could just go home after.”
Ryan frowned and didn’t reply. Jon watched him for a second and then spoke carefully.
“Shouldn’t you already know that?”
“Why?” Ryan’s eyebrows came down and he frowned at Jon.
“Aren’t you, like, dating or something?” Jon asked. He wasn’t entirely sure what was going on with them, but that’s what Brendon kept saying. He set the now-folded shirt on top of the rack and watched Ryan.
“Did Brendon say that?” Ryan asked finally, his voice not sharp or mean as it had been previously.
“Sort of,” Jon allowed, echoing the words Brendon seemed so very fond of when it came to describing his and Ryan’s relationship. “Why? Is that not true?”
Ryan hesitated, sticking his hands into his tight jean pockets. “We’re not dating,” he said finally.
“Brendon seems to think so.”
“Well, Brendon also thinks that mermaids really live in the ocean,” Ryan retorted, getting defensive, and Jon couldn’t help but wonder what had triggered it.
Jon frowned, eyeing Ryan. He was all for giving people chances, but Ryan had done nothing but be cold towards him from the beginning. “Yeah, he also thinks you’re a nice person, but I’m finding that hard to believe.”
Ryan looked taken aback at Jon’s words. He stared for a minute until he finally shook his head.
“You don’t know anything about this town, and you don’t know anything about Brendon,” he said finally, turning with a last dark look and leaving into the pouring rain, the rumble of distant thunder covering up the cheerful jingle of the bell.
*
“Aren’t you going to help?”
Jon tore his gaze from the distant slant of the house on the hill’s roof to where Brendon sat up to his ankles in soft sand. His flip flops were cast off to the side and he had the makings of a flimsy sandcastle in front of him.
“Don’t we need to have wet sand for this to work?” Jon asked, coming over to look down at the sad little castle. It was mostly just a heap of sand without any real shape to it.
Brendon paused, glancing out at the stretch of beach that lay between them and the waves that rolled in, crashing against the shore and rushing back out.
“No,” he replied instead, repiling the sand and not meeting Jon’s eyes.
Frowning, Jon sank onto the sand with Brendon, grabbing a handful of sand and watching it fall through his fingers.
The sun above them peeked through the cracks in the grey mask of clouds and Jon realized that Brendon was right. The beach was all they had.
“Are you afraid of the ocean?” Jon finally asked. He’d been trying to figure out for a while why Brendon refused to go any nearer to the ocean than fifty feet from the shoreline. He always opted to climb up and down the small dunes instead of strolling along the edge where the dry sand petered out and the wet sand began, where the couples walked, hand in hand, a happy dog gamboling ahead.
“No,” Brendon said, a little too quickly. He threw a smile at Jon, but it wasn’t his usual brighter-than-sunshine smile and Jon doubted it somehow. Brendon wasn’t looking at him, though, and Jon had learned in the past few weeks that pushing Brendon was a bad idea.
Instead, he took another course. “Ryan said something strange the other day.”
“He did?” Brendon’s eyes shifted up and he stopped midway to grabbing another handful of sand to pile on top of the castle.
“He said you weren’t dating.”
Jon watched Brendon carefully, seeing the closed-off look that took over his eyes until he shook his head and smiled at the sand.
“Ryan says that.”
“Why?” Jon was curious to know what was going on in this town, but it seemed as though no one would tell him.
Brendon swallowed, tracing a circle in the dry sand with his finger. “I don’t know,” he murmured, although Jon was almost positive that he was lying.
Sighing, he looked away from Brendon, his gaze falling back on the house. It looked so solitary standing there all alone on its cliff face, overlooking the ocean. He hadn’t been back since he’d practically been sicced on by the dog. He hadn’t told anyone that he’d gone up either. He was quickly learning that rumors spread fast in this town. Everyone already knew he was the new owner of the surf shop, whether or not they’d gotten a flyer in the mail. Jon had met countless people who lamented Tom’s departure and wished him good luck (with a strange sort of sympathetic look that Jon couldn’t work out).
Tom didn’t have much advice to offer whenever he called which Jon found slightly frustrating.
Staring at the house, Jon decided that if nothing else, he would find out the name of whoever lived there and find out just which rumors were true.
*
“It’s a vampire.”
Jon paused as he dug through his wallet for his credit card, looking up at the register clerk. The man’s nametag read “Frank” and he was nodding at Jon seriously.
“A vampire?” Jon repeated doubtfully, hardly paying attention to the bag boy, who pushed his glasses up his nose and placed the eggs in the bag.
Frank nodded decisively. “Totally. At night, he comes down to the village and feeds off wild animals.”
“Not humans?” Jon was sure Frank had to be making this up. Of all the stories he’d heard about the man on the hill, this had to be the most ludicrous.
“Too risky,” Frank pointed out, shoving the jug of milk down the tiny conveyor belt along with the apples. “Then everyone’d know.”
Frowning, Jon didn’t reply, but Frank didn’t seem to notice.
“Me and Gee have this theory that if you catch him in the daylight, his skin will burn.”
Jon was slightly alarmed by that. “You’re not going to try it, are you?”
Frank shrugged, pressing a few buttons on the register. “Nah. That hill’s too high to climb up anyway. Gerard’d collapse halfway up.” He grinned, holding out a tattooed arm. “That’ll be twenty-five sixty-seven.”
Jon just blinked and pulled out his card, handing it to Frank.
*
Jon was pretty sure that he could compile a book entitled Myths and Stories of the House on the Hill by the time everyone offered their opinions and stories about the house. He was sure it would be a best seller. But then, he thought, maybe people would confuse it with The Haunting of Hill House and he didn’t like the sound of that.
He preferred to think that the man who lived up on that hill with only his dog, Belle, for company was normal just like him. The only way to find out, however, was to venture up again, and Jon wasn’t sure he was ready for that.
Instead, he remained in his shop to wonder about the house and its inhabitant.
Brendon seemed oblivious to Jon’s preoccupation and bounced around the store as usual. He knocked things over on accident and rambled on for whole half-minutes about a million different subjects.
No one seemed willing to explain the twitch in Brendon’s left hand or how he sometimes gazed off into space for whole minutes at a time and then came back completely on a different subject.
Ryan hadn’t come back to the store since Jon had lost hold of his temper that one day. Jon felt slightly bad for what he’d said, but a part of him thought that Ryan deserved it for the way he treated the world. Maybe Jon didn’t know everything about Brendon, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Even Tom refused to talk about why everyone treated Brendon differently, some with disdain, others with overly-sensitive words. Brendon appeared indifferent to the treatment, although he did shy away from those who gave him annoyed looks when he started to ramble excitedly about the tides for the day.
Jon spent a lot of time in the back at his desk, working on paper work, looking over the books, staring at the little wooden otter he used as a paper weight and letting his mind wander to the piercing blue eyes that were starting to haunt his dreams.
“Jon?”
Blinking himself out of his latest trance, a daydream that had involved lots of sharp hips and glares, Jon found himself looking at Brendon in the doorway to the small office. It was really just a desk shoved into a back corner of the storeroom, but Jon would take what he could get.
“Yeah, Bren?” he asked, pushing away the paper in front of him that held the month’s sales.
“It’s five,” Brendon said slowly. “I’m gonna go see Ryan.”
“Okay,” Jon agreed. He usually let Brendon off early anyway. He didn’t know why Brendon needed to see Ryan when it was obvious that Ryan didn’t care for him in the same way, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything to Brendon, to see the crestfallen expression on his face, much like he’d gotten the week before when Jon had told him they wouldn’t be stocking novelty pens anymore.
Brendon smiled. “Okay, see you tomorrow!”
Jon just nodded as Brendon vanished from the doorway. He heard him knock into something as he left the storeroom, a loud thud as a box fell to the floor. Shaking his head, he decided he’d pick it up later.
Wandering out to the front room, Jon paused, taking a look around. Everything was where it should be, organized and neat in the little black metal shelves. The surf boards sat, colorful, in their holding rack. Jon hadn’t actually had a chance to go out surfing yet since he’d gotten there, but he was eagerly awaiting the sun that people forecasted for June.
As he moved to the window, he sighed, gazing out at the ocean. It reflected the sky like usual, gray and dark. He could see the white caps in the distance and hear the rush of the waves on the shore even from inside.
Glancing down the sidewalk outside, he paused, catching sight of Greta standing outside her store. Her curls were blowing in the wind but she wasn’t moving. He waited a second before pushing open his door and heading out to join her.
“Hey,” he said as he approached her and she glanced at him with a smile.
“Hi.”
“What are you doing?” he asked, shivering slightly in the cold wind whipping around them.
“Just thinking,” she said quietly, looking out at the ocean. “This is a good place for it.”
Jon wasn’t quite sure that he knew what she was talking about, but he nodded anyway.
“What are you thinking about?”
Greta paused a minute, closing her eyes as she breathed in the salty air. Finally, she opened them and smiled at Jon.
“Anything I want,” she replied quietly. “Because out here, nothing else exists.”
Jon frowned. “What does that mean?”
Greta laughed quietly. “Live here a few more years and you’ll get it.”
She turned then and headed inside while Jon frowned and looked after her, feeling slightly lost and more than a little confused.
*
“There’s something wrong with you.”
Jon just frowned as he stood by the mailbox, a safe distance from the young man, who was standing in his front door, his usual glare gracing his features. The dog, Belle, was at his feet, waiting calmly.
“Why?” Jon asked, not daring to move closer, but not retreating quite yet.
The guy shook his head, staring at Jon. “Are you stupid?”
Pausing, Jon shook his head. “Not that I know.”
Huffing, the man crossed his arms over his chest and Jon couldn’t help watching the way his hips swung to the side, a pissed off stance that Jon could recognize a mile away.
The guy seemed to notice the way Jon’s eyes wandered down and his eyes narrowed further.
“You must be to keep coming back here.”
“Why?” Jon asked again, eyeing the man and wondering why he was so standoffish. Jon was sure no one else ever came up to visit him aside from whatever trucks came up the hill once a month. That seemed to be the only similarity between all the versions involving the man and his house.
The man scoffed but didn’t relax his body, which practically screamed at Jon to get the hell off his property and leave him alone.
“You’re obviously not from around here,” he said instead, running a hand through his dark hair and looking down at Belle, who met his gaze, waiting for instruction.
Jon was confused. “What does that matter?”
Scowling, the man’s hands went to his hips angrily. “You’d know better if you were.” He paused, and when Jon didn’t move, glared. “Leave.”
Jon hesitated but only got a glare in return, the bright blue eyes burning into his skin as though if he stared hard enough Jon might burst into flames.
“I’m not going away,” he said as he turned, though, and started down the hill, leaving the man and his dog standing in the doorway to the little house.
*
Jon wasn’t sure, but he thought that his curiosity might be bordering on what some would call obsession as he stood in the town records building, waiting calmly in line. He’d left Brendon in charge of the shop and hoped he would be okay for an hour or two while Jon looked into this man on the hill.
Stories from grizzly old men to vampires rolled around in his mind as the line moved forward until it was just him and an older woman in line.
The man behind the counter looked tired as he gave the woman directions to the restroom and sighed when she left. His dark hair fell in a curtain over his eyes as Jon stepped up. Jon could see the piece of paper the man was embellishing with a drawing of what looked like Vlad the Impaler’s castle. Pausing, Jon wasn’t sure he wanted to ask, but curiosity propelled him forward.
“Yeah?” the man asked tiredly as he looked up from his drawing where Jon could see a score of dead bodies impaled on long spikes outside of the castle.
“I had a question,” Jon started slowly and the man nodded.
“They all do,” he muttered, pushing aside his drawing and pulling his keyboard to him, looking at Jon expectantly.
His nametag read “Gerard” and Jon paused. “I’m actually just trying to find out who lives in that house up on the hill.”
Gerard’s fingers faltered on the keyboard and he cast a careful glance back at Jon.
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
Jon shrugged, thinking over his words carefully. “No one seems to know much about him,” he said finally and was surprised to see Gerard’s mouth quirk slightly.
“They don’t,” he said finally.
Jon paused, glancing at Gerard’s drawing again. “You don’t know Frank, do you?”
Gerard blinked, casting a suspicious glance at Jon now. “How do you know Frank?”
“Uh, he rang up my groceries,” Jon said slowly. There wasn’t much to it.
“Oh.” Gerard paused, pushing his hair from his eyes and looking like he was thinking. “Yeah, I know Frank.”
Silence fell for a moment and Jon wasn’t sure how to word what he wanted to say. It was obvious he wasn’t going to get his name from the records building.
“Frank seems to think it’s vampire up there.”
Gerard’s mouth quirked again and he glanced at his drawing. “Have you ever seen who lives up there?”
Jon paused, thinking it would be a bad idea to tell the truth when so much stigma surrounded this mystery person up on the hill. “No,” he lied finally and Gerard nodded.
“Exactly. Trucks go up but no one knows what’s in them. People say they’ve heard barking dogs, and you know dogs have heightened senses of hearing. What do you think they’re hearing?”
Jon wanted to say that it was probably the guy’s Boxer, but he held his tongue.
“I don’t know.”
Gerard nodded again. “So maybe he is.”
Jon wasn’t going to contradict him. All he wanted was the guy’s name. “So you don’t know who it is? There’s no way to find out?”
Gerard paused, looking at Jon now, a slightly uneasy look coming over his features. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m just curious,” Jon said, not admitting that he’d already been up the hill several times and the guy refused to just tell him.
“You shouldn’t want to know,” Gerard replied instead, shaking his head warningly. “People get into trouble that way.”
“What do you mean?” Jon asked slowly.
“You work with Brendon, right?” Gerard asked. “At the surf shop?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Flyer.” Gerard shrugged. “Ever wondered why people don’t talk to him?”
“Yeah, they do,” Jon argued, thinking of himself, Greta, and Ryan. The customers who came in talked to him as well, but now that Jon thought about it, a lot were tourists not from the town itself.
Gerard shook his head. “They don’t.”
“Why?” Jon asked, staring to get annoyed. No one seemed willing to explain just what was so wrong with Brendon. Sure, he was a little hyper and had that strange, unexplainable twitch in his hand, but he was a nice guy.
Gerard just shrugged again. “He’s just weird.”
That was all Jon could get out of Gerard about Brendon, and it seemed useless to try to find out more about the house when Gerard was convinced the guy was a vampire as well.
He was resigned to returning to the store empty-handed and annoyed. He wondered now the exact reason Tom had left. His words echoed in his head as he walked down the sidewalk of stores.
They’ll appreciate my point of view down there.
Jon was beginning to think that Tom hadn’t been joking.
As Jon pushed open the door to his own shop, he could hear the radio spouting the forecast, something about rain with a chance of showers, or showers with a chance of rain. Sighing, he let the bell jingle above his head as he entered, automatically straightening a mess of sunglasses as he headed towards the back.
Approaching the back, he heard voices and paused for a second to listen.
“Why did you tell Jon that?” Ryan’s voice demanded, sounding agitated and annoyed.
“It’s true,” Brendon insisted. “Sort of.”
“No,” Ryan replied and Jon crept closer. He knew he shouldn’t be listening, but interrupting now seemed wrong. “We’re not. I’ve already told you. We can’t date.”
“But why not?” Brendon’s voice was pleading and Jon frowned.
“You know why.” Ryan sighed and Brendon matched it.
“But Gabe and William do, Frank and Gerard, Mikey and-”
“That’s not why,” Ryan interrupted, frustrated.
There was a pause and Jon thought it best to interrupt now, but then Brendon spoke again.
“Is it because I’m…” He trailed off slowly.
“Bren,” Ryan said, his tone was softer now, “it’s not you.”
“Yes, it is,” Brendon muttered. “It always is. Always has been ever since…” He sighed.
Another silence followed Brendon’s words and Jon had heard enough. Making enough noise, he made his way back to find Ryan and Brendon standing in the back, several feet apart. Brendon looked sad and Ryan was only frowning.
“Ryan,” Jon said when he stepped inside. “What are you doing here?”
Ryan’s glance to Jon was quick and he paused. “I was just leaving,” he said instead, turning from Brendon and weaving his way out to the door that jingled after him. Brendon watched him go and Jon didn’t know what to say.
“Uh,” he started but Brendon looked at him.
“I was thinking,” he said. “Could we repaint the inside walls? It’s kind of dark in here.”
Jon paused a second, looking through the veneer of Brendon’s smile to the hurt that leaked from him. Instead of commenting, he just sighed and placed an arm over Brendon’s shoulder. “Sure. You can even pick out the colors.”
Brendon only smiled and left to the main room while Jon frowned behind him.
*
“You’ve got to tell me.”
Jon paused, listening hard to the silence that followed his statement. There was a slight static on the phone from the wind outside that was slamming into the wall of his house.
“Tell what?” came Tom’s voice and Jon knew he was evading him.
“Tom,” he said plainly.
Tom sighed. “Every town has secrets. This one just has a lot.”
Frowning, Jon turned from his window where rain lashed against it, drizzling down to pool under the sill.
“Why did you really move?” Jon asked seriously and Tom paused.
“For Keltie.”
“Come on, Tom,” Jon said plainly. “Why else?”
Tom only sighed. “I’m not going to tell you what’s up with the town, Jon, so stop asking. If you want to know, you should figure it out on your own.”
Jon knew that Tom had always been a firm believer in staying out of other people’s business, but Jon thought that hadn’t extended to strange towns where every other person had some sort of secret. Not where he was concerned.
“What’s the big deal?” Jon asked, flopping down on the couch and listening to the rain. “It won’t change what I think.”
Tom was quiet for a minute. “It might,” he said finally. “And I won’t be the one to change it. So good luck.”
“Wait, Tom,” Jon said quickly, but he’d already hung up and only silence met Jon’s ears.
Sighing, he shut the phone and tossed it onto the cushion beside him.
*
Jon was lying in his bed, staring at the dark ceiling when he heard the creak of the bedroom door. He lay still, listening hard but all he could hear was the rhythmic drum of the rain outside on the window, dripping off the roof onto plant leaves. There were no muffled footsteps, no sounds of cocking guns.
He didn’t dare to breathe until he felt the dip of his mattress near his feet and tried to sit up, but then a heavy weight was on his hips and he couldn’t move. A hand covered his mouth and Jon silently panicked.
“Shh,” came a familiar voice and Jon squinted through the dark.
“You-” He tried to talk around the hand over his mouth. The hand slid away after a minute, when it appeared Jon wasn’t going to yell for help. “How did you get in here? What, how did you know where I live?”
Jon could see the outline of a smirk of the figure sitting on top of him.
“You left the flyer,” came the voice, low and seductive in the darkness.
Jon was confused, but he felt the man shift, hips sliding down, and Jon’s eyes shot open wide as he felt a hardness pressing into his thigh.
“You-” he tried to say again, but cut himself off with a sharp breath as the man’s hand rested lightly against his chest and he shifted again.
“I,” the man continued for Jon, “don’t want you to talk.” He paused, leaning forward until his breath, hot and moist, fell on Jon’s cheek. “I just want you to feel,” he whispered against Jon’s ear, lips trailing over the shell.
Jon’s eyes fluttered closed and he could only nod to the words. He felt the lips trail over his jaw, over the stubble of the previous day. He could hear the quiet exhales of breath, feel them on his skin. He bit his lip as the man’s hips rocked forward, slowly persuading Jon’s cock to pay attention.
“Why-why are you here?” Jon managed to choke out as the rocking continued and fingers played idly with his hair.
He could feel the smirk against his skin, and struggled to open his eyes, searching for the bright blue that he knew would be there to meet him.
“’Cause I want to be,” the whisper came in the darkness and Jon didn’t have a chance to respond as lips covered his own, a hard kiss that left him gasping for breath.
The man’s hand was slipping down his chest slowly, stroking the trail of hair that disappeared under Jon’s boxers.
When Jon pulled away from the kiss to gulp down air, feeling the lips hot against his still, he reached up to thread his fingers through the soft, dark hair, gasping against the mouth as the hand on his torso slipped further down.
“Will you at least tell me your name?” he whispered, almost tasting the other man as their mouths moved closer together.
“My name,” the man whispered slowly, nipping at Jon’s lower lip, “is-”
A loud crash of thunder shook the room and Jon’s eyes jerked open. Breathing hard, he stared at the ceiling as the thunder receded and the only sound that remained was the pitter-pat of the rain. Blinking slowly, he let out a shuddering breath, raising a shaking hand to his face to find sweat on his brow.
The room was empty and he should have known it was a dream. Swallowing carefully, he sighed and rolled over on the bed, only to find that he was hard. Groaning, Jon buried his face in his pillow and refused to acknowledge his erection, forcing himself after many minutes to finally drift off to sleep again, indulging in dreams that didn’t feature clear blue eyes and devious smirks.
*
“How about these?”
Jon looked up at Brendon and then down to the paint chips sitting in front of him on the desk. One was a bright yellow and the other a shocking neon green. Pausing, Jon tried not to frown at the lurid colors.
“Think more universal appeal,” Jon suggested instead of pointing out that those had to be the ugliest colors he’d ever seen.
He would have been forced to take that statement back, though, had he said it as Brendon’s face lit up and he dug in his two-inch thick stack of paint colors and pulled out two more that he laid before Jon; bright pink that nearly blinded Jon and a green that Jon would rather not know where the designer had gotten the inspiration from.
“Brendon,” he said slowly carefully turning the colors over so that he wouldn’t have to look at them. “Close your eyes for a minute.” Brendon immediately closed his eyes and Jon sighed softly. “Okay, now picture yourself in a big room. There are a lot of people who have a lot of different opinions on colors. What are the colors you can see on the wall that none of them will cringe at?”
Brendon was quiet for a moment, his eyes still closed and chewing on his lip slowly.
When he finally opened his eyes, he dug through his stack, coming up with two colors and laying them out for Jon. One was an extremely light mint green color and the other was a darker shade of blue for the trim.
Letting out a relieved breath that nothing was neon or fluorescent, Jon smiled at Brendon. “These are perfect,” he said and Brendon grinned.
“When can we start painting?” he asked excitedly and Jon hesitated. Painting was a big job.
“Maybe next week,” he said to satisfy Brendon’s bounce.
“Okay,” Brendon agreed readily, hopping up on the desk and holding out the paint chips from his face. “It reminds me of the ocean.”
“It does kind of,” Jon admitted after a minute. “Although I’d say the ocean is more grey than blue or green.”
“Wait until the sun comes out,” Brendon only said matter-of-factly. “Then it’ll look like all those pictures of oceans.”
“When will that happen?” Jon joked, pausing to listen to the trickle of water in the gutters behind the store.
Brendon shrugged. “Soon. Then you can go to the beach and not have to bring a sweatshirt.”
“I’m looking forward to that,” Jon said honestly. He wondered how Tom felt, being down in California now where the water was always blue and rain was a rarity.
“But you won’t be able to see the house as well,” Brendon continued and Jon was taken aback.
“The house?” he asked instead, careful to sound curious instead of wondering how much Brendon knew about his growing obsession.
Brendon nodded. “The leaves are already growing in on the trees. Soon you won’t be able to see it from the beach as well. That’s partly why it’s up there.”
Jon frowned at the little wooden otter on his desktop. “Why do you think it’s so isolated?” he asked finally and Brendon just shrugged.
“He wants to be alone.” Sighing, Brendon looked at the paint chips in his hands. “I can understand why.”
Jon didn’t know what to say as Brendon bit his lip and sighed at the cards.
Part Three.
Reread Part One.
*
“Hey, Jon, what would you think about moving the surf boards to the other side of the store?”
Brendon watched Jon, seeing him standing in front of the window, staring out at nothing in particular.
“Jon?”
Blinking, Jon turned. “Huh? Yeah, sure.”
Brendon beamed, his hand only twitching slightly as he grabbed the first board. Jon still hadn’t asked him what that was about. It was only his left hand, and it didn’t happen all the time. Brendon never said anything or mentioned it at all. It didn’t appear to hinder him at all.
Jon knew he should really get back to work. There were a few boards in the back that really needed to be finished. He couldn’t bring himself to focus on work, though, when his mind kept straying to the strange man that lived on top of the cliff, all alone.
No one seemed to know who he was, but it wasn’t as though Jon had asked many people. He got the feeling that whoever that man was, he wasn’t popular or well-known in town. Brendon had told him all he knew, Jon was sure. Brendon wasn’t the type to keep things from him, although he was still being slightly evasive about the circumstances under which he’d been hired by Tom and his pseudo-relationship with Ryan.
Jon wondered for a minute if Ryan would know about the man on the hill.
“Hey, Bren,” Jon said, following Brendon as he hauled another board off the rack and moved it to the other side of the store.
“Huh?” Brendon asked, concentrating hard as he leaned it against the wall. His hand twitched again as he released it and stepped back to make sure it wasn’t going to fall. He bounced, though, as he turned to Jon.
“How long has Ryan lived here?”
Brendon paused. “Four years, three months, and seventeen days.”
Jon just stared and Brendon tilted his head to the side.
“What?” he asked innocently.
Shaking his head, Jon sighed. “Nothing, um. Where does he live?”
“North side of town,” Brendon provided instantly, momentarily distracted by a skewed pile of shirts. He spent a few minutes rearranging them as Jon thought.
“What does he do?” he asked finally. He hadn’t really gotten much of a feel for Ryan yet, especially since Ryan hadn’t quite warmed to him since that first day.
“He’s a manager.”
Jon didn’t push and Brendon finished rearranging the shirts. Blinking at Jon, he smiled.
“Why?”
“I was just wondering.” He shrugged. “He doesn’t come by much. You guys are really dating?”
Brendon’s mouth quirked and his hand jerked again. “Well, you know,” he just muttered, and Jon didn’t, but again, he didn’t push. He didn’t know what would happen if he pushed Brendon too far and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to find out.
“Right,” Jon murmured quietly. “Hey, what do you think about moving the clothes further back?”
Brendon’s eyes moved to him and his mouth quirked into a small smile. “Okay.”
*
“Didn’t manage to burn the place down, huh?”
Jon smiled as he leaned against the wall, staring out his front window to the swirling ocean beyond. The sky was overcast again and a steady mist had persisted through most of the morning.
“Nope, everything’s still safe and sound.”
There was a pause and then Tom spoke. “You moved shit, didn’t you?”
“Well, I had to find things,” Jon defended himself. “Besides, the place was cluttered.”
“It was a reflection of me,” Tom argued and Jon laughed.
“Well, your mind is a cluttered place.”
Jon could practically see Tom rolling his eyes over the phone. “No, but things are okay, right? No problems with anybody? Brendon’s been good?”
“Yeah, he’s fine.” Jon paused, watching a seagull dive into the ocean. “Why did you hire him?” he asked finally.
“What, he didn’t tell you?” Tom asked, sounding a little surprised and strangely reluctant at the same time.
“Not really,” Jon said slowly. “I mean, he said no one else would hire him and rattled off a laundry list of bad qualities. He just said you needed help.”
The pause was longer this time as Jon waited.
“I did need help,” Tom said finally and Jon frowned.
“Is there something wrong with him or something? He seems like a nice guy, but people treat him strangely.”
“He is a nice guy,” was all Tom would say and Jon had to settle for the idea that maybe this town was stranger than he thought.
“Okay, well, what about Ryan?”
“What about Ryan?”
“Is he okay?” Jon didn’t really know anything about Ryan since he practically refused to talk to him.
“Sure, Ryan’s fine. A little stubborn and don’t ever argue with him about classic literature, but otherwise, he’s fine.”
“Oh. Well, good,” Jon said for lack of anything else to say. Tom made a vague noise.
“Keltie’s calling. I have to go.”
“So whipped,” Jon muttered and Tom scoffed.
“Not.”
“Hey, wait, before you go,” Jon said quickly and he waited.
“What?”
Jon shook his head quickly. “You know that house on the hill?” He felt stupid for even asking since Tom would probably read way too much into it and he’d be in for endless teasing in the months to come.
There was a pause. “You mean the one on the south side, above the ocean?”
“Yeah,” Jon agreed, trying not to sound too eager that Tom recognized it.
“What about it?”
“Do you know who lives there?”
Another pause followed his question and Jon glanced out the window at the grey sea.
Then Tom laughed and Jon was confused.
“What?”
“Just ask around,” Tom said finally. “I’m sure someone knows.”
“So you don’t?”
“I only know the stories.”
That made Jon frown, but Tom said something about Keltie needing him and hung up before he could ask exactly what stories he meant.
*
There was a crash, a muffled curse, followed by a reluctant, “Oh no…” before Jon could get out from where he was pricing tee shirts for the sale and into the back of the store where the workshop for repairing boards was.
Skidding slightly on the sawdust covered floor, he found Brendon tangled up in the chord to the sander, a dark, strong-smelling liquid drenched over his jeans.
“What happened?” Jon asked, concerned, as he leaned over to help Brendon untangle himself from the chord.
“Tripped,” Brendon muttered. “Didn’t see the chord.”
“It’s okay,” Jon assured him, pulling him up by his arm. “Are you okay?”
Brendon glanced down at his ruined pants and Jon recognized the smell as wood sealer.
“You should go change. Why don’t you just take the day off?”
“No!” Brendon said, so fast that Jon was taken aback.
“But your pants.” Jon eyed them obviously. The stain ran all across most of his right leg and his lap. Brendon shook his head quickly.
“I don’t want go home,” he said, his eyes wide. “The sale starts today.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Brendon just shook his head and Jon saw that he wasn’t going to win this. He didn’t see why Brendon was so adamant about it.
“Okay, fine, but at least go change. You can come back.”
Brendon nodded eagerly, hurrying out of the store. Jon watched him go, noting that he didn’t have a car parked in the lot. He just ran down the row of shops and turned the corner towards town.
Shaking his head, Jon sighed and returned to his tee shirts. A few moments later, the bell rang over the door and Jon looked over to find Gabe there, William trailing after curiously. Jon doubted he’d ever been inside a surf shop.
“Hey,” he greeted them happily, putting down his labeler. “I’m glad you guys came by.”
Gabe was looking around interestedly. “Yeah, well, once spring is over, I’m fucking getting out on those waves.” He grinned and William only looked around the store carefully.
“Where’s that other guy that works here?” he asked after a minute.
“You mean Brendon?” Jon asked and William’s eyes lit up at the name.
Gabe laughed. “Space case, that one. Crazy.”
Frowning, Jon didn’t reply immediately. “He’s a good worker.”
Gabe laughed again. “Uh huh. I don’t know why Tom hired him. He’s an odd one.”
Jon didn’t think Gabe really had room to talk, especially with William peering over his shoulder, practically molded to his back.
“He’s not all there,” Gabe said, voice conspiratorially low. William didn’t say anything, but whispered in Gabe’s ear. Gabe smiled and nodded once. “So what do you got new here?”
Jon still felt slightly awkward as he showed Gabe the tee shirts and the other things marked down for the sale.
As Gabe browsed, occasionally making interested noises, William stood back, looking out of place. He didn’t seem to mind, though, and Jon opted to talk to him instead of Gabe.
“So have you lived here long?”
“Couple years.” William shrugged, taking in Jon carefully. Jon tried to ignore it.
Jon hesitated, knowing it was going to sound stupid. “You know the house up the hill from you?”
William only raised an eyebrow and Jon fidgeted.
“Do you know who lives there?”
Gabe pulled his head out from the rack of shirts to laugh at Jon. “Dude, you don’t wanna know.”
“Why not?” Jon looked from William to Gabe.
“No one ever comes down from up there,” Gabe said. “Trucks go up about once a month, but no one ever comes down. Rumor has it that a crazy old guy lives up there living off seagulls.”
Jon frowned and Gabe turned back to the shirts.
“Not a crazy old guy,” William offered quietly. “He’s young. People say he’s up there because he ran away from someone or something. No one knows what and no one knows who he is. There’s a dog guarding the house. I’ve heard it at night, when the moon is hidden by clouds and the stars are obscured, when the ocean calms and the seagulls are the only noises in the darkness.”
Jon wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, but William only arched an eyebrow and turned to Gabe when he held up a shirt.
“What about this one?”
“I like it,” William replied and Gabe grinned.
*
One day, not too long after, Jon wandered over to Greta’s shop next door. He hadn’t yet been in but Brendon had nothing but good things to say about it or Greta, so he figured he should pay a visit. That and he wondered if she knew any more stories about the house on the hill. If anyone wouldn’t judge him for it, Jon thought it might be Greta.
A tingling bell met his entrance as he pushed open the door, similar to the one in his own store.
Inside, everything was a little cluttered, but in a warm, inviting sort of way that reminded Jon of old bookstores. The store was bathed in a soft yellow glow from the lamps overhead (certainly not from outside where more rain clouds were gathering on the horizon).
Wandering through the shelves of little coastal trinkets, Jon took in the store. It was about the same size as his and smelled a little like scented candles. He wasn’t surprised when he passed a table of them near the front. As he neared a shelf of the same wooden carvings as Greta had given him, she appeared from behind a large cherry desk upon which sat the register.
“Jon,” she greeted him with a smile. “What are you doing in here?”
Jon shrugged. “Just thought I’d take a look around.”
“Looking for souvenirs to send back home?” she asked playfully and Jon grinned.
“Nah. Just sizing up the competition.”
Greta laughed lightly, straightening one of the carvings. “Where are you from anyway?”
“Chicago.”
“Chi-town,” Greta murmured and Jon tilted his head to the side.
“You’ve been there?”
Greta’s smile was warm. “I was born there, but my parents moved out here when I was about ten.”
“Cool.” Jon grinned. Glancing around, he noticed the glass floats in the window. He’d always wondered how they made them.
Greta watched him carefully. “So how is everything?”
Jon shrugged, turning back. “Fine. Business is a little slow, but I think it’ll pick up.”
“And Brendon’s doing okay?” she asked, her head tilted to the side in the universal gesture of sympathy, or at least, that’s what Jon gathered. He still couldn’t figure out why everyone talked about him and treated him so differently.
“Yeah, he’s fine,” he said after a minute, thinking about asking her but decided it wasn’t as important as his other question. “So you’ve lived here a while, then?”
She nodded, pushing a pair of carved ducks closer together. “Yeah. After I went away to college, I just kind of stuck around. It’s not so bad. In the summertime, you’ll actually be able to go out on the beach without getting drenched.” She laughed and Jon nodded along.
“I was wondering,” Jon said, feeling as if he was asking this question a lot lately. Maybe it was a sign that he should stop thinking about that guy on the hill altogether. “Do you know anything about that little house up on the hill? You know, the one you can see from the beach?”
Greta paused, thinking. “It’s been there since before I moved here. I don’t think anyone lived there for a long time, but a couple years ago, maybe four or five, there were trucks going up the drive. No one’s ever seen who lives there and some people say it’s a ghost, but I don’t believe that.”
Jon looked out the window but couldn’t see much from this vantage point. Only the waves that crashed along the shore, practically the same color as the sky, filled his vision.
Greta was watching him closely. “You shouldn’t go up there, Jon,” she said finally.
“Why not?”
She shrugged, fingering a wooden pelican. “Strange people live in little towns like this, and they’re not all friendly.”
Jon didn’t reply, only frowned and looked back out the window.
*
The wind howled and rain pounded down on the top of his umbrella as he trudged up the hill, slipping occasionally on the wet gravel, but always catching himself and glancing ahead to the top where the roof of the little white house was coming into view.
Jon still wasn’t sure what he was doing climbing up a hill in the middle of a rain storm to see a guy whose name he didn’t even know, a guy who had rumors circulating all around town about him. He could have been some crazy guy obsessed with Thoreau and transcendentalism. He could be like Ryan.
Pushing away the thought, Jon continued his upward push against the wind that seemed determined on stopping him. Despite his umbrella - that both Brendon and Greta had laughed at him for, saying only tourists or wimps used umbrellas - the rain hit him, a sideways torrent hitting his knees and down soaking his jeans.
It seemed to take longer than the first time to reach the hill’s crest and the little white mailbox, cleaner than the house, at the top. He finally made it and stopped by the box again, wondering why he was even there.
He’d heard more stories about the house since he’d first come upon it. Everyone seemed to have a different version. Some said it was a haunted house, others said a grizzly old man lived there, hidden away with the body of his dead wife stuffed in a closet. Some claimed the house was deserted and refused to budge on the subject. Some went so far as to tell Jon that it was a murderer who used a saw to cut up all his victims. They claimed to have heard saws in the dead of night.
Of all the stories, however, none could produce a name for the person living atop the hill.
Jon had never considered himself an overly curious person. He wasn’t like Brendon, who liked to practically stick his nose in the register to find out what made it open when he pressed the button. Some things he could just accept and move on.
But this. This he couldn’t accept.
It was a strange feeling, as he stood before the house that appeared empty on the outside. Normally, he wouldn’t have pushed this so far. He would have asked around and then accepted that someone lived up here and no one knew a thing about him. But he’d seen the guy. He had seen how he’d glared down at him with his bright blue eyes, his hips jutting out to the side challengingly, and Jon couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The bottom of his jeans were soaked, dragging down the rest of the pants as he stood by the mailbox, debating whether or not it would be a good idea to knock on the door.
He was saved the trouble, though, as the man appeared from around the corner again. Jon wondered what he did behind the house, but wasn’t going to ask, not yet.
Once more, the man came to a sudden stop, staring at Jon as though he couldn’t believe he’d come back.
“Uh, hi,” Jon said when the silence went from shocked to awkward.
“What the fuck are you doing back?” the guy demanded and Jon saw his eyes narrow.
He didn’t have an umbrella, Jon noticed, and his hoodie was splotched with water droplets. It looked as though he hadn’t been outside for long. His eyes were as blue as Jon remembered and his hands rose haughtily to his hips.
Jon didn’t really have an answer to his question as he’d spent the entire walk up trying to figure it out.
The guy glared for another minute before giving a sharp yell. “Belle, come!”
Jon was confused for a second until a large brindle and white Boxer came bounding around the corner, bouncing jovially until it caught sight of Jon and froze next to its owner.
Apparently the dog part had been right, Jon mused, but was careful to keep an eye on the dog that now sat calmly next to the young man, its brown eyes focused unwaveringly on Jon.
“Look,” Jon said after a minute, feeling as though he should explain something, if not for his own safety. He didn’t like the look of that strong jaw. “I’m not trying to bother you or anything, I just…”
The man’s eyebrow went up and Jon knew he sounded stupid.
“Well, you are bothering me, so get off my property.” The tone was cold and Jon could feel the shiver in the air, but it didn’t deter him. He had to know more about this person.
Jon paused, trying to think up a valid excuse of why he’d climbed up to this guy’s house in the pouring rain other than he couldn’t stop thinking about him. That didn’t make him sound like a stalker at all.
“Will you just talk to me?” he asked finally and he was sure he saw the guy’s expression darken. His hands were stroking the dog’s head slowly and didn’t falter at Jon’s question.
“No,” he replied. “Why should I?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” Jon countered, hoping he might be able to talk his way in since he obviously wasn’t going to get anywhere based on his usual charm. This guy was hard to crack it seemed.
The young man sneered. “I’ve got a list a mile long.”
“I’ve got time,” Jon offered and the man’s glare deepened and his hand stopped stroking the dog’s ears. The dog looked immediately at him, seemingly waiting for instruction or to be acknowledged.
“Well, I don’t,” the man replied finally, his tone indicating the conversation was over.
Jon hesitated, but the dog was growling at the man’s feet, hackles rising, and he thought it best to take what he could get and retreat down the hill, the wind at his back hurrying him on.
*
Jon was reorganizing the shirt rack - which had been decimated by Gabe and numerous others in their quest for the right size - when the bell over the door jingled loudly. Struggling up from the bottom row, Jon looked over the shelves to find Ryan standing in the darkened doorway. The weather had apparently decided that winter was far from over and it had been raining steadily for the past week.
Stepping out from the shirts, Jon folded the black tee shirt in his hands. “Brendon’s not here,” he said and Ryan looked at him almost sharply.
He paused a second. “Where is he?”
“He had a dentist appointment. I said he could just go home after.”
Ryan frowned and didn’t reply. Jon watched him for a second and then spoke carefully.
“Shouldn’t you already know that?”
“Why?” Ryan’s eyebrows came down and he frowned at Jon.
“Aren’t you, like, dating or something?” Jon asked. He wasn’t entirely sure what was going on with them, but that’s what Brendon kept saying. He set the now-folded shirt on top of the rack and watched Ryan.
“Did Brendon say that?” Ryan asked finally, his voice not sharp or mean as it had been previously.
“Sort of,” Jon allowed, echoing the words Brendon seemed so very fond of when it came to describing his and Ryan’s relationship. “Why? Is that not true?”
Ryan hesitated, sticking his hands into his tight jean pockets. “We’re not dating,” he said finally.
“Brendon seems to think so.”
“Well, Brendon also thinks that mermaids really live in the ocean,” Ryan retorted, getting defensive, and Jon couldn’t help but wonder what had triggered it.
Jon frowned, eyeing Ryan. He was all for giving people chances, but Ryan had done nothing but be cold towards him from the beginning. “Yeah, he also thinks you’re a nice person, but I’m finding that hard to believe.”
Ryan looked taken aback at Jon’s words. He stared for a minute until he finally shook his head.
“You don’t know anything about this town, and you don’t know anything about Brendon,” he said finally, turning with a last dark look and leaving into the pouring rain, the rumble of distant thunder covering up the cheerful jingle of the bell.
*
“Aren’t you going to help?”
Jon tore his gaze from the distant slant of the house on the hill’s roof to where Brendon sat up to his ankles in soft sand. His flip flops were cast off to the side and he had the makings of a flimsy sandcastle in front of him.
“Don’t we need to have wet sand for this to work?” Jon asked, coming over to look down at the sad little castle. It was mostly just a heap of sand without any real shape to it.
Brendon paused, glancing out at the stretch of beach that lay between them and the waves that rolled in, crashing against the shore and rushing back out.
“No,” he replied instead, repiling the sand and not meeting Jon’s eyes.
Frowning, Jon sank onto the sand with Brendon, grabbing a handful of sand and watching it fall through his fingers.
The sun above them peeked through the cracks in the grey mask of clouds and Jon realized that Brendon was right. The beach was all they had.
“Are you afraid of the ocean?” Jon finally asked. He’d been trying to figure out for a while why Brendon refused to go any nearer to the ocean than fifty feet from the shoreline. He always opted to climb up and down the small dunes instead of strolling along the edge where the dry sand petered out and the wet sand began, where the couples walked, hand in hand, a happy dog gamboling ahead.
“No,” Brendon said, a little too quickly. He threw a smile at Jon, but it wasn’t his usual brighter-than-sunshine smile and Jon doubted it somehow. Brendon wasn’t looking at him, though, and Jon had learned in the past few weeks that pushing Brendon was a bad idea.
Instead, he took another course. “Ryan said something strange the other day.”
“He did?” Brendon’s eyes shifted up and he stopped midway to grabbing another handful of sand to pile on top of the castle.
“He said you weren’t dating.”
Jon watched Brendon carefully, seeing the closed-off look that took over his eyes until he shook his head and smiled at the sand.
“Ryan says that.”
“Why?” Jon was curious to know what was going on in this town, but it seemed as though no one would tell him.
Brendon swallowed, tracing a circle in the dry sand with his finger. “I don’t know,” he murmured, although Jon was almost positive that he was lying.
Sighing, he looked away from Brendon, his gaze falling back on the house. It looked so solitary standing there all alone on its cliff face, overlooking the ocean. He hadn’t been back since he’d practically been sicced on by the dog. He hadn’t told anyone that he’d gone up either. He was quickly learning that rumors spread fast in this town. Everyone already knew he was the new owner of the surf shop, whether or not they’d gotten a flyer in the mail. Jon had met countless people who lamented Tom’s departure and wished him good luck (with a strange sort of sympathetic look that Jon couldn’t work out).
Tom didn’t have much advice to offer whenever he called which Jon found slightly frustrating.
Staring at the house, Jon decided that if nothing else, he would find out the name of whoever lived there and find out just which rumors were true.
*
“It’s a vampire.”
Jon paused as he dug through his wallet for his credit card, looking up at the register clerk. The man’s nametag read “Frank” and he was nodding at Jon seriously.
“A vampire?” Jon repeated doubtfully, hardly paying attention to the bag boy, who pushed his glasses up his nose and placed the eggs in the bag.
Frank nodded decisively. “Totally. At night, he comes down to the village and feeds off wild animals.”
“Not humans?” Jon was sure Frank had to be making this up. Of all the stories he’d heard about the man on the hill, this had to be the most ludicrous.
“Too risky,” Frank pointed out, shoving the jug of milk down the tiny conveyor belt along with the apples. “Then everyone’d know.”
Frowning, Jon didn’t reply, but Frank didn’t seem to notice.
“Me and Gee have this theory that if you catch him in the daylight, his skin will burn.”
Jon was slightly alarmed by that. “You’re not going to try it, are you?”
Frank shrugged, pressing a few buttons on the register. “Nah. That hill’s too high to climb up anyway. Gerard’d collapse halfway up.” He grinned, holding out a tattooed arm. “That’ll be twenty-five sixty-seven.”
Jon just blinked and pulled out his card, handing it to Frank.
*
Jon was pretty sure that he could compile a book entitled Myths and Stories of the House on the Hill by the time everyone offered their opinions and stories about the house. He was sure it would be a best seller. But then, he thought, maybe people would confuse it with The Haunting of Hill House and he didn’t like the sound of that.
He preferred to think that the man who lived up on that hill with only his dog, Belle, for company was normal just like him. The only way to find out, however, was to venture up again, and Jon wasn’t sure he was ready for that.
Instead, he remained in his shop to wonder about the house and its inhabitant.
Brendon seemed oblivious to Jon’s preoccupation and bounced around the store as usual. He knocked things over on accident and rambled on for whole half-minutes about a million different subjects.
No one seemed willing to explain the twitch in Brendon’s left hand or how he sometimes gazed off into space for whole minutes at a time and then came back completely on a different subject.
Ryan hadn’t come back to the store since Jon had lost hold of his temper that one day. Jon felt slightly bad for what he’d said, but a part of him thought that Ryan deserved it for the way he treated the world. Maybe Jon didn’t know everything about Brendon, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Even Tom refused to talk about why everyone treated Brendon differently, some with disdain, others with overly-sensitive words. Brendon appeared indifferent to the treatment, although he did shy away from those who gave him annoyed looks when he started to ramble excitedly about the tides for the day.
Jon spent a lot of time in the back at his desk, working on paper work, looking over the books, staring at the little wooden otter he used as a paper weight and letting his mind wander to the piercing blue eyes that were starting to haunt his dreams.
“Jon?”
Blinking himself out of his latest trance, a daydream that had involved lots of sharp hips and glares, Jon found himself looking at Brendon in the doorway to the small office. It was really just a desk shoved into a back corner of the storeroom, but Jon would take what he could get.
“Yeah, Bren?” he asked, pushing away the paper in front of him that held the month’s sales.
“It’s five,” Brendon said slowly. “I’m gonna go see Ryan.”
“Okay,” Jon agreed. He usually let Brendon off early anyway. He didn’t know why Brendon needed to see Ryan when it was obvious that Ryan didn’t care for him in the same way, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything to Brendon, to see the crestfallen expression on his face, much like he’d gotten the week before when Jon had told him they wouldn’t be stocking novelty pens anymore.
Brendon smiled. “Okay, see you tomorrow!”
Jon just nodded as Brendon vanished from the doorway. He heard him knock into something as he left the storeroom, a loud thud as a box fell to the floor. Shaking his head, he decided he’d pick it up later.
Wandering out to the front room, Jon paused, taking a look around. Everything was where it should be, organized and neat in the little black metal shelves. The surf boards sat, colorful, in their holding rack. Jon hadn’t actually had a chance to go out surfing yet since he’d gotten there, but he was eagerly awaiting the sun that people forecasted for June.
As he moved to the window, he sighed, gazing out at the ocean. It reflected the sky like usual, gray and dark. He could see the white caps in the distance and hear the rush of the waves on the shore even from inside.
Glancing down the sidewalk outside, he paused, catching sight of Greta standing outside her store. Her curls were blowing in the wind but she wasn’t moving. He waited a second before pushing open his door and heading out to join her.
“Hey,” he said as he approached her and she glanced at him with a smile.
“Hi.”
“What are you doing?” he asked, shivering slightly in the cold wind whipping around them.
“Just thinking,” she said quietly, looking out at the ocean. “This is a good place for it.”
Jon wasn’t quite sure that he knew what she was talking about, but he nodded anyway.
“What are you thinking about?”
Greta paused a minute, closing her eyes as she breathed in the salty air. Finally, she opened them and smiled at Jon.
“Anything I want,” she replied quietly. “Because out here, nothing else exists.”
Jon frowned. “What does that mean?”
Greta laughed quietly. “Live here a few more years and you’ll get it.”
She turned then and headed inside while Jon frowned and looked after her, feeling slightly lost and more than a little confused.
*
“There’s something wrong with you.”
Jon just frowned as he stood by the mailbox, a safe distance from the young man, who was standing in his front door, his usual glare gracing his features. The dog, Belle, was at his feet, waiting calmly.
“Why?” Jon asked, not daring to move closer, but not retreating quite yet.
The guy shook his head, staring at Jon. “Are you stupid?”
Pausing, Jon shook his head. “Not that I know.”
Huffing, the man crossed his arms over his chest and Jon couldn’t help watching the way his hips swung to the side, a pissed off stance that Jon could recognize a mile away.
The guy seemed to notice the way Jon’s eyes wandered down and his eyes narrowed further.
“You must be to keep coming back here.”
“Why?” Jon asked again, eyeing the man and wondering why he was so standoffish. Jon was sure no one else ever came up to visit him aside from whatever trucks came up the hill once a month. That seemed to be the only similarity between all the versions involving the man and his house.
The man scoffed but didn’t relax his body, which practically screamed at Jon to get the hell off his property and leave him alone.
“You’re obviously not from around here,” he said instead, running a hand through his dark hair and looking down at Belle, who met his gaze, waiting for instruction.
Jon was confused. “What does that matter?”
Scowling, the man’s hands went to his hips angrily. “You’d know better if you were.” He paused, and when Jon didn’t move, glared. “Leave.”
Jon hesitated but only got a glare in return, the bright blue eyes burning into his skin as though if he stared hard enough Jon might burst into flames.
“I’m not going away,” he said as he turned, though, and started down the hill, leaving the man and his dog standing in the doorway to the little house.
*
Jon wasn’t sure, but he thought that his curiosity might be bordering on what some would call obsession as he stood in the town records building, waiting calmly in line. He’d left Brendon in charge of the shop and hoped he would be okay for an hour or two while Jon looked into this man on the hill.
Stories from grizzly old men to vampires rolled around in his mind as the line moved forward until it was just him and an older woman in line.
The man behind the counter looked tired as he gave the woman directions to the restroom and sighed when she left. His dark hair fell in a curtain over his eyes as Jon stepped up. Jon could see the piece of paper the man was embellishing with a drawing of what looked like Vlad the Impaler’s castle. Pausing, Jon wasn’t sure he wanted to ask, but curiosity propelled him forward.
“Yeah?” the man asked tiredly as he looked up from his drawing where Jon could see a score of dead bodies impaled on long spikes outside of the castle.
“I had a question,” Jon started slowly and the man nodded.
“They all do,” he muttered, pushing aside his drawing and pulling his keyboard to him, looking at Jon expectantly.
His nametag read “Gerard” and Jon paused. “I’m actually just trying to find out who lives in that house up on the hill.”
Gerard’s fingers faltered on the keyboard and he cast a careful glance back at Jon.
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
Jon shrugged, thinking over his words carefully. “No one seems to know much about him,” he said finally and was surprised to see Gerard’s mouth quirk slightly.
“They don’t,” he said finally.
Jon paused, glancing at Gerard’s drawing again. “You don’t know Frank, do you?”
Gerard blinked, casting a suspicious glance at Jon now. “How do you know Frank?”
“Uh, he rang up my groceries,” Jon said slowly. There wasn’t much to it.
“Oh.” Gerard paused, pushing his hair from his eyes and looking like he was thinking. “Yeah, I know Frank.”
Silence fell for a moment and Jon wasn’t sure how to word what he wanted to say. It was obvious he wasn’t going to get his name from the records building.
“Frank seems to think it’s vampire up there.”
Gerard’s mouth quirked again and he glanced at his drawing. “Have you ever seen who lives up there?”
Jon paused, thinking it would be a bad idea to tell the truth when so much stigma surrounded this mystery person up on the hill. “No,” he lied finally and Gerard nodded.
“Exactly. Trucks go up but no one knows what’s in them. People say they’ve heard barking dogs, and you know dogs have heightened senses of hearing. What do you think they’re hearing?”
Jon wanted to say that it was probably the guy’s Boxer, but he held his tongue.
“I don’t know.”
Gerard nodded again. “So maybe he is.”
Jon wasn’t going to contradict him. All he wanted was the guy’s name. “So you don’t know who it is? There’s no way to find out?”
Gerard paused, looking at Jon now, a slightly uneasy look coming over his features. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m just curious,” Jon said, not admitting that he’d already been up the hill several times and the guy refused to just tell him.
“You shouldn’t want to know,” Gerard replied instead, shaking his head warningly. “People get into trouble that way.”
“What do you mean?” Jon asked slowly.
“You work with Brendon, right?” Gerard asked. “At the surf shop?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Flyer.” Gerard shrugged. “Ever wondered why people don’t talk to him?”
“Yeah, they do,” Jon argued, thinking of himself, Greta, and Ryan. The customers who came in talked to him as well, but now that Jon thought about it, a lot were tourists not from the town itself.
Gerard shook his head. “They don’t.”
“Why?” Jon asked, staring to get annoyed. No one seemed willing to explain just what was so wrong with Brendon. Sure, he was a little hyper and had that strange, unexplainable twitch in his hand, but he was a nice guy.
Gerard just shrugged again. “He’s just weird.”
That was all Jon could get out of Gerard about Brendon, and it seemed useless to try to find out more about the house when Gerard was convinced the guy was a vampire as well.
He was resigned to returning to the store empty-handed and annoyed. He wondered now the exact reason Tom had left. His words echoed in his head as he walked down the sidewalk of stores.
They’ll appreciate my point of view down there.
Jon was beginning to think that Tom hadn’t been joking.
As Jon pushed open the door to his own shop, he could hear the radio spouting the forecast, something about rain with a chance of showers, or showers with a chance of rain. Sighing, he let the bell jingle above his head as he entered, automatically straightening a mess of sunglasses as he headed towards the back.
Approaching the back, he heard voices and paused for a second to listen.
“Why did you tell Jon that?” Ryan’s voice demanded, sounding agitated and annoyed.
“It’s true,” Brendon insisted. “Sort of.”
“No,” Ryan replied and Jon crept closer. He knew he shouldn’t be listening, but interrupting now seemed wrong. “We’re not. I’ve already told you. We can’t date.”
“But why not?” Brendon’s voice was pleading and Jon frowned.
“You know why.” Ryan sighed and Brendon matched it.
“But Gabe and William do, Frank and Gerard, Mikey and-”
“That’s not why,” Ryan interrupted, frustrated.
There was a pause and Jon thought it best to interrupt now, but then Brendon spoke again.
“Is it because I’m…” He trailed off slowly.
“Bren,” Ryan said, his tone was softer now, “it’s not you.”
“Yes, it is,” Brendon muttered. “It always is. Always has been ever since…” He sighed.
Another silence followed Brendon’s words and Jon had heard enough. Making enough noise, he made his way back to find Ryan and Brendon standing in the back, several feet apart. Brendon looked sad and Ryan was only frowning.
“Ryan,” Jon said when he stepped inside. “What are you doing here?”
Ryan’s glance to Jon was quick and he paused. “I was just leaving,” he said instead, turning from Brendon and weaving his way out to the door that jingled after him. Brendon watched him go and Jon didn’t know what to say.
“Uh,” he started but Brendon looked at him.
“I was thinking,” he said. “Could we repaint the inside walls? It’s kind of dark in here.”
Jon paused a second, looking through the veneer of Brendon’s smile to the hurt that leaked from him. Instead of commenting, he just sighed and placed an arm over Brendon’s shoulder. “Sure. You can even pick out the colors.”
Brendon only smiled and left to the main room while Jon frowned behind him.
*
“You’ve got to tell me.”
Jon paused, listening hard to the silence that followed his statement. There was a slight static on the phone from the wind outside that was slamming into the wall of his house.
“Tell what?” came Tom’s voice and Jon knew he was evading him.
“Tom,” he said plainly.
Tom sighed. “Every town has secrets. This one just has a lot.”
Frowning, Jon turned from his window where rain lashed against it, drizzling down to pool under the sill.
“Why did you really move?” Jon asked seriously and Tom paused.
“For Keltie.”
“Come on, Tom,” Jon said plainly. “Why else?”
Tom only sighed. “I’m not going to tell you what’s up with the town, Jon, so stop asking. If you want to know, you should figure it out on your own.”
Jon knew that Tom had always been a firm believer in staying out of other people’s business, but Jon thought that hadn’t extended to strange towns where every other person had some sort of secret. Not where he was concerned.
“What’s the big deal?” Jon asked, flopping down on the couch and listening to the rain. “It won’t change what I think.”
Tom was quiet for a minute. “It might,” he said finally. “And I won’t be the one to change it. So good luck.”
“Wait, Tom,” Jon said quickly, but he’d already hung up and only silence met Jon’s ears.
Sighing, he shut the phone and tossed it onto the cushion beside him.
*
Jon was lying in his bed, staring at the dark ceiling when he heard the creak of the bedroom door. He lay still, listening hard but all he could hear was the rhythmic drum of the rain outside on the window, dripping off the roof onto plant leaves. There were no muffled footsteps, no sounds of cocking guns.
He didn’t dare to breathe until he felt the dip of his mattress near his feet and tried to sit up, but then a heavy weight was on his hips and he couldn’t move. A hand covered his mouth and Jon silently panicked.
“Shh,” came a familiar voice and Jon squinted through the dark.
“You-” He tried to talk around the hand over his mouth. The hand slid away after a minute, when it appeared Jon wasn’t going to yell for help. “How did you get in here? What, how did you know where I live?”
Jon could see the outline of a smirk of the figure sitting on top of him.
“You left the flyer,” came the voice, low and seductive in the darkness.
Jon was confused, but he felt the man shift, hips sliding down, and Jon’s eyes shot open wide as he felt a hardness pressing into his thigh.
“You-” he tried to say again, but cut himself off with a sharp breath as the man’s hand rested lightly against his chest and he shifted again.
“I,” the man continued for Jon, “don’t want you to talk.” He paused, leaning forward until his breath, hot and moist, fell on Jon’s cheek. “I just want you to feel,” he whispered against Jon’s ear, lips trailing over the shell.
Jon’s eyes fluttered closed and he could only nod to the words. He felt the lips trail over his jaw, over the stubble of the previous day. He could hear the quiet exhales of breath, feel them on his skin. He bit his lip as the man’s hips rocked forward, slowly persuading Jon’s cock to pay attention.
“Why-why are you here?” Jon managed to choke out as the rocking continued and fingers played idly with his hair.
He could feel the smirk against his skin, and struggled to open his eyes, searching for the bright blue that he knew would be there to meet him.
“’Cause I want to be,” the whisper came in the darkness and Jon didn’t have a chance to respond as lips covered his own, a hard kiss that left him gasping for breath.
The man’s hand was slipping down his chest slowly, stroking the trail of hair that disappeared under Jon’s boxers.
When Jon pulled away from the kiss to gulp down air, feeling the lips hot against his still, he reached up to thread his fingers through the soft, dark hair, gasping against the mouth as the hand on his torso slipped further down.
“Will you at least tell me your name?” he whispered, almost tasting the other man as their mouths moved closer together.
“My name,” the man whispered slowly, nipping at Jon’s lower lip, “is-”
A loud crash of thunder shook the room and Jon’s eyes jerked open. Breathing hard, he stared at the ceiling as the thunder receded and the only sound that remained was the pitter-pat of the rain. Blinking slowly, he let out a shuddering breath, raising a shaking hand to his face to find sweat on his brow.
The room was empty and he should have known it was a dream. Swallowing carefully, he sighed and rolled over on the bed, only to find that he was hard. Groaning, Jon buried his face in his pillow and refused to acknowledge his erection, forcing himself after many minutes to finally drift off to sleep again, indulging in dreams that didn’t feature clear blue eyes and devious smirks.
*
“How about these?”
Jon looked up at Brendon and then down to the paint chips sitting in front of him on the desk. One was a bright yellow and the other a shocking neon green. Pausing, Jon tried not to frown at the lurid colors.
“Think more universal appeal,” Jon suggested instead of pointing out that those had to be the ugliest colors he’d ever seen.
He would have been forced to take that statement back, though, had he said it as Brendon’s face lit up and he dug in his two-inch thick stack of paint colors and pulled out two more that he laid before Jon; bright pink that nearly blinded Jon and a green that Jon would rather not know where the designer had gotten the inspiration from.
“Brendon,” he said slowly carefully turning the colors over so that he wouldn’t have to look at them. “Close your eyes for a minute.” Brendon immediately closed his eyes and Jon sighed softly. “Okay, now picture yourself in a big room. There are a lot of people who have a lot of different opinions on colors. What are the colors you can see on the wall that none of them will cringe at?”
Brendon was quiet for a moment, his eyes still closed and chewing on his lip slowly.
When he finally opened his eyes, he dug through his stack, coming up with two colors and laying them out for Jon. One was an extremely light mint green color and the other was a darker shade of blue for the trim.
Letting out a relieved breath that nothing was neon or fluorescent, Jon smiled at Brendon. “These are perfect,” he said and Brendon grinned.
“When can we start painting?” he asked excitedly and Jon hesitated. Painting was a big job.
“Maybe next week,” he said to satisfy Brendon’s bounce.
“Okay,” Brendon agreed readily, hopping up on the desk and holding out the paint chips from his face. “It reminds me of the ocean.”
“It does kind of,” Jon admitted after a minute. “Although I’d say the ocean is more grey than blue or green.”
“Wait until the sun comes out,” Brendon only said matter-of-factly. “Then it’ll look like all those pictures of oceans.”
“When will that happen?” Jon joked, pausing to listen to the trickle of water in the gutters behind the store.
Brendon shrugged. “Soon. Then you can go to the beach and not have to bring a sweatshirt.”
“I’m looking forward to that,” Jon said honestly. He wondered how Tom felt, being down in California now where the water was always blue and rain was a rarity.
“But you won’t be able to see the house as well,” Brendon continued and Jon was taken aback.
“The house?” he asked instead, careful to sound curious instead of wondering how much Brendon knew about his growing obsession.
Brendon nodded. “The leaves are already growing in on the trees. Soon you won’t be able to see it from the beach as well. That’s partly why it’s up there.”
Jon frowned at the little wooden otter on his desktop. “Why do you think it’s so isolated?” he asked finally and Brendon just shrugged.
“He wants to be alone.” Sighing, Brendon looked at the paint chips in his hands. “I can understand why.”
Jon didn’t know what to say as Brendon bit his lip and sighed at the cards.
Part Three.