Accidentally Yours: A Friends-to-Lovers Gay Romance (Superbia Springs Book 3) Read online

  Damn it, Ian, I should let it fall straight into the gutter. But something inside Alex—some unexamined emotional masochism, some need to find himself punished for the sin of once thinking he could have a relationship—thrust him forward, grasping at the card as it fluttered in a strong breeze (a storm breeze, he thought almost subconsciously, feeling the dropping barometric pressure, an absolutely appropriate tempest rushing at him). Dark clouds had been gathering since the accident, one of those instant summer squalls in the making, and he had to get Ian's card before it got wet, or—horrors—before it fell into the gutter, because that's exactly where it was headed after all, as though he'd had a premonition, sliding directly toward that black slot into nothingness.

  The breeze was nothing if not capricious, and it caused the card to lift upward, and with a sense of relief he saw it would avoid the gutter, it would be spared that loss. I swear to god when I reach you I am going to rip you to shreds after all. He pressed forward, nowhere near as quick as he needed to be, but finally quick enough, bending forward and snatching the card out of the air.

  A victory! A well-deserved one, too.

  He intended to turn to Judah, brandish the card, utter some simple confirmation that he'd gotten it, didn't need help, he was capable of taking care of everything on his own—

  It's just that he didn't realize, in that final step forward to grasp the card, his foot had entered the slot of the gutter.

  The crack when he turned to face Judah was loud enough that his friend heard it too.

  A bookseller's life is a quiet one. There are, of course, moments of passion and strong feeling in anyone's brief time in this world; however, the career Alex had chosen for himself was for the most part one of silence and solitude, dusting shelves while waiting for the next customer, spending his time talking to friends, looking over book catalogs, with the calm assurance that none of the grand drama and heightened emotions contained within those volumes would ever come into his life.

  Which is to say, nothing had prepared Alex to be screaming red-faced in the middle of downtown Superbia, unable to extract his foot from the gutter, unable to move, unable to do anything but experience the most unwelcome and overwhelming pain he'd ever felt, and as Judah reached for him, his final coherent thought was...

  Goddamn it, Ian. You'll never stop hurting me, will you?

  "How is he?" asked Toby with a worried tone. He was still wearing his apron from the bar; his sleeve was dotted with spatters of lemon pulp.

  "I'm right here," said Alex. "I can hear you. I can hear everything. The entire world of sounds is available to me. I believe I can hear the ocean, the rush of waves assaulting the innocent grains of sand—"

  "The doctor says he's fine, and that the cast should be all he needs," Judah said. "No surgery, no pins, thankfully."

  "Brother Toby! Tobias! My little Toady. Bufo Americanus. Have you come to save me? I got a little present today, Toady. A little, a little..."

  Alex's brother looked at Judah. "Painkillers?"

  Judah nodded. "He was in agony when I first got him here. Now he's just...loopy. They're getting the forms to discharge him, and there's a prescription."

  Toby cut his eyes over at Alex. "Maybe we'll be careful with that prescription."

  "This room is glorious," said Alex. "So functional. A room of the future. Someday we will all live in pods like this, our every need attended to. Press the button for the TV, Toady. You will see today’s menu. I won’t keep you in suspense: It is turkey loaf. I don’t think I’ll be here that long. Should I stay for turkey, Toady? Toady Turkey?"

  Judah nodded at Toby. “Probably for the best.”

  “Time to get you home,” said Toby, patting his brother’s shoulder.

  “Do you need help?” asked Judah.

  “Nah,” said Toby. “They’ll probably plop him in a wheelchair, and I can get him into my car.”

  “Should I check on the store? Oh, and his box is still in my trunk, and—”

  These worried words disturbed Alex. “A box,” he said, mulling over the words. “The box. The box. “ Some faint idea seemed to shine through the murk of his opiated brain. “The store! It’s unlocked!”

  “No problem, buddy,” said Toby. “We’ll take care of it.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Judah, “I’ll do it. I’ll bring the box over and lock up.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Toby.

  “I nearly killed him,” said Judah. “I guess I kind of owe it to him.”

  “He’s very helpful,” said Alex. “So helpful. You should have seen him at the accident, Toady. Not the one where I twisted my ankle. The one where he ran me over. Very solicitous. Very kind. And strong, too. Did you know Judah is strong? He picked up that box like it was nothing. Look at those arms. Make a muscle for Toady, Judah. Show him your arm. Readers shouldn’t have arms like that, should they? A book by itself doesn’t weigh that much. Yet he lifted that box full of books—”

  “Yeahhhhh, I think we better get out of here,” said Toby. “Sorry about all that,” he said to Judah, who was blushing again.

  “Don’t be embarrassed!” cried Alex. “Physical beauty is no small thing in this world of ugliness!”

  Alex woke up in his apartment, parched, dry-mouthed like he had been holding a teaspoon of sand on his tongue, but clear-headed for what felt like the first time in years. His foot ached sharply within the cast, although the intensity of the pain wasn’t anything like it had been before.

  Was he alone? He listened to the darkness for the sound of another breath, a footstep, a television. There was nothing. A note on the nightstand, his brother’s familiar handwriting. You’re out of milk and sugar, gone to the store.

  Alone. Left to his own devices. There were crutches by the bed, and he had some vague memories of using them to hobble here, assisted by Toby.

  His bladder said it was time to hobble again. He picked up the nearest crutch, using it to help him swing his legs off the bed, putting his healthy foot down.

  Make a muscle for Toady, Judah.

  “Oh god,” he said. “Did I say that? Did I make that much of an absolute fool of myself?”

  And then, as the memory became clearer, and he remembered the babbling he had done, his shoulders slumped, and his grip on the crutch firmed, as though it were the only thing in the world holding him upright.

  The whole point of these platonic little crushes—these safe, sane, quiet attractions—was that they stayed inside your head, and didn’t make their way out into the world. Now he’d be awkward around Judah. And it wasn’t even a real crush, not a swooning one, not the sort of thing where he sat in the store and wondered what Judah might be up to in that moment, well not always wondering anyway, although when the bell over the door sounded, he did always look in that direction half-hoping his new friend would be there.

  Now he’d probably never come back to the store again.

  “Damn it, Ian! If you’d just stayed away, everything would be all right!”

  4

  Judah

  “You can’t just go around killing people,” said Noah, bringing Judah a mug of tea. “It’s frowned upon in these moralistic times.”

  “I guess I should be glad it was only a broken foot.” Judah breathed onto the tea, its little cloud of steam scudding away.

  “I’m just glad Roo wasn’t in the car,” said Liam, looking over the tops of the ridiculous reading glasses he was wearing these days. They made him look like a slightly disapproving professor. He was going through tax paperwork tonight, getting everything in order for the new staff. “Maybe I’ll drive her to storytime myself from now on.”

  “It really wasn’t my fault,” Judah said. “He was standing out in the middle of the road, not paying attention to anything.”

  “Do you often run down daydreamers, philosophers, anyone you see generally lost in thought?” asked Noah, dodging Judah’s answering swat with a laugh.

  “Even so, I feel really bad. What kind of gift
says I’m sorry I almost hit you and even though I wasn’t directly responsible for you breaking your foot, I still feel guilty?”

  “Maybe a box of chocolates,” said Liam. “With a little card.”

  “Or sleep with him,” suggested Noah.

  “Noah!” said Liam.

  “I’m not going to do that!” Judah protested.

  Ever since he’d first walked into Alex’s bookstore, he’d found himself with one of those unformed little boy-crushes he would sometimes get on heroes in his novels—not the big bulky dragon-slayers, but the wily, knowledgeable rogues and thieves, the ones who could slip through the shadows silently. Not that Alex looked like an assassin, but there was something in his lithe figure that suggested the possibility, and he had become a fixture in Judah’s mind.

  Noah shrugged. “I’m just saying, anybody can give chocolates. The world is full of candy. But when’s the last time you saw Alex get lucky? He’s so tense all the time. He hasn’t had a boyfriend since we’ve been here. He’s there at Toady’s every night, haunting the bar like the loneliest little ghost, and nobody ever lifts his sheet. And by lifting his sheet I mean—”

  “We get it,” said Judah.

  “Sex,” finished Noah. “I mean sex.”

  “Not everyone goes to Toady’s to pick up men,” said Judah.

  “And rightfully so,” said Noah. “Why, I remember in my single life, before Dalton, going into Toady’s on a Saturday night and just despairing over the selection of men. Where were all the hot sweaty farmers, in their overalls with one strap undone?”

  “I don’t think Alex is the type to go for a sweaty farmer. He’d want someone more…bookish,” said Judah.

  “Mm-hm,” said Noah. “And who do we know who likes books? I’ll give you a guess, it is most certainly not me.”

  “I’m not sleeping with Alex out of pity, Noah.”

  “It’s not just for his own sake that I suggest it, either. You have been having a dry spell lately. And by lately I mean, your entire life.”

  “Oh god, Liam, make him stop.”

  Liam looked up from the paperwork. “Why are we talking about Judah and Alex hooking up? I mean, nothing against my baby brother, but isn’t Alex a little too cultured for you?”

  “Too cultured? I have plenty of culture!”

  Noah narrowed his eyes. “Weren’t you the one who sulked for a week when we told you that you couldn’t put arcade games into the game room?”

  “It’s a game room! And vintage arcade cabinets are very hot right now! Everyone’s reliving the retro gaming thing!”

  Liam groaned. “Would you two settle down? I’ve got to get through these tax forms or else the government’s going to haul us off.”

  “I mean, it is kind of typical,” Judah said. “You didn’t want to let me set up the game room. You won’t let me get the lions out of the basement.”

  “Oh god, not the lions again!” said Noah. “Would you please let the poor monsters sleep in peace? We don’t want to scare the customers!”

  Mason walked into the kitchen. “What are you guys fighting about? I could practically hear you upstairs.”

  Liam paused in his work to lift his face to receive a kiss from Mason. Judah felt a pang seeing it. Just one more thing he’d never have. A boyfriend to just randomly kiss. Not a special kiss, not a passionate kiss, just one of those hello, I have entered the room kisses.

  “Judah’s on his woe-is-me thing again,” said Noah.

  “The lions?”

  “And the game room.”

  “I thought we settled that?” said Mason. “We’ve got the backgammon and chess tables, the roulette wheel—”

  “It is settled,” said Judah.

  I’m just saying, it wouldn’t hurt for someone to agree to something I suggest. I live here too, you know. I’ve worked just as hard as any of you on this place.

  Even as he thought about saying it, he stopped himself. The last thing he needed was to sound like a whiny cliche.

  Besides, it wasn’t true. They had trusted him entirely with the technical details. Mason had dutifully written down all the information on CAT5s, routers, and network switches that Judah had given him, and Noah had followed all his guidance on how their social media presence should be set up. He’d actually had a lot of say about the house. He’d been one of the first voices urging them to keep it once they’d inherited it, after all.

  So being rankled was ridiculous. Nobody was being unfair to him.

  It was just that little-brother instinct, he supposed. The one that always made him feel left out, even when he wasn’t.

  Noah said, “We were also saying that Judah should sleep with Alex.”

  “Wait, what?” Mason said, head whipping between the three men. “What?”

  “Noah’s being crazy. As usual. Nobody’s sleeping with anybody,” Judah said.

  But now a contemplative look settled on Mason’s face. “Judah and Alex, huh? Yeah, I could see it.”

  “Stop seeing it! I nearly ran him over, and now I feel guilty, but I don’t feel guilty enough to…to…”

  Mason laughed and clapped Judah on the shoulder. “It’s for the best. I’ve known Alex all my life, I love him and Toby like they were my own family, but there’s no denying he can be a little… A little… What’s the word I’m looking for?”

  “Snooty?” suggested Liam.

  “Pretentious?” suggested Noah.

  Mason scowled. “I was going to say I always thought he was a little too good for this town. If you’d asked me a couple of years ago, I would’ve said there was no way he was going to stay here, settle down, have a business. But then, I guess heartbreak has a way of making your decisions for you.”

  Judah didn’t mean for his interest to be sparked by the word heartbreak, yet he suddenly found himself listening much more intently. “How is that?”

  But Mason shook his head. “Not my story to tell, I guess. But why are we even on the topic?”

  The next morning, Judah was bothered by the fact that he still had not fulfilled his mission from yesterday, his mission to save the lions, and it felt like he had failed them. Or was on the verge of failing them. He hadn’t even had the heart to go downstairs and visit them last night.

  So that morning, early, he found himself driving the same road, although much more slowly, nearly coming to a stop at the intersection near the post office, just in case anyone came by with an armload of packages and couldn’t see him.

  He had read an article recently on self-driving cars, and the artificial intelligence algorithms that helped them navigate the world around them: What was a stop sign, what counted as a person? People liked to worry about technology, even though anyone who had dabbled in science fiction knew that machines were seldom the problem in themselves, but rather, the powers behind the machines, making the programs, making the decisions. And the worry with cars was, what if they had to make a dangerous choice? What if some innocent car were faced with a group of people standing in the way: It could rush into that group, or it could swerve, hitting a pole and endangering the driver. How would it choose what to do? How, in the nanoseconds of decision-making time before disaster brought the entire technology to a halt, would the car decide who lives and who dies?

  When he’d read that, he’d shaken his head in disbelief. How often in life did you have to choose between only two things? How could this hypothetical car only swerve in one direction, toward the pole? Why couldn’t it put on its brakes, hard? Why couldn’t it—just for the sake of argument—fly upwards, missing everyone, and landing only when it could do so safely? What was the point of these imaginary scenarios if you couldn’t imagine your way out of them?

  No one was standing in the road today, so he didn’t have to make any split-second decisions himself. He was able to drive the rest of the way to the bookstore without resorting to further vehicular homicide.

  The Closed sign he’d put in the door yesterday was still there. Which was odd. Alex usually ope
ned the store bright and early, often had a pot of coffee going for the first arrivals, sometimes pastry as well. The lights weren’t on. Putting his hands around his eyes to shield his view through the window, he could see dimly inside, could see the counter where the big box he’d put there yesterday still sat, untouched.

  He glanced up. Alex had a small apartment at the top of the bookstore, although Judah couldn’t see from this angle whether the lights were on up there.

  A little worry creased his brow. Where was Alex? In his mind there was an image of Alex, collapsed on the floor, and the sudden fear drove him around the side of the building, to the back entrance with its heavy fire door, and the narrow metal steps that led up to the apartment. He took those double-time, feet clanking against the steel, a certain nervousness informing every move, a sense that time was running out quickly. He got up to the landing, and knocked. “Alex? Is everything okay?”

  Wait, I should just call him. Why don’t I do that? He tugged his phone from his pocket, and began to flip through his contacts, when he heard a voice from inside. Was it a plaintive wail? A scream? Just a mutter? He couldn’t tell. These old buildings were fantastic insulators of sound. He put his hand on the knob, and was surprised to find the door unlocked. He let himself in.

  “Alex?”

  “Judah? Is that you? Could you give me a hand?”

  It certainly didn’t sound like the voice of a man on the verge of death, but his worry still propelled him forward at top speed, down the narrow hall and into the living room that overlooked the street.

  “Oh god, Alex!”

  The bookseller scowled from the floor. His crutches were several feet away, buried under a tumbling stack of books.

  Alex himself, shirtless, in pajama bottoms with one leg slit to accommodate the cast, was pushing himself up off the floor, the lines of his shoulders making an interesting geometry that Judah couldn’t quite avert his eyes from, although the chaos surrounding him kept tickling his attention.