“Shit,” Colton cursed. “I’ll come around later and fix it for ya. Put on an extra lock, too.” Henry squirmed in his seat, playing with his paper napkin absentmindedly.
“Itdoesn’tneedfixin’,” he rushed out before getting up from his chair, adding, “I’ll settle the bill.” A strong arm grabbed him around his midsection and stopped him in his tracks. Glaring at his boyfriend, Colton spoke, his deep voice just an octave higher than usual.
“Not so fast, sweetheart. What do you mean that it don’t need fixin’?How come?” Henry threw a quick ‘get me out of this, will ya?’at Hank, who just shrugged a ‘you’re on your own here, kid.’ He was just as eager to find out where this was heading. Realizing there was going to be no backup from Hank and that Colton was hardly going to let this go, Henry sighed.
“Because the door isn’t broken?” he offered Colton a weak apologetic smile.
“Are you askin’ or tellin’?” Colton thundered, which in itself was a rare occurrence. But it wasn’t so much the volume of his voice as the fearful expression in his eyes that revealed the seriousness of the situation.
“I might’ve forgotten to lock the back door…” Henry replied. “I’m sorry, baby, but this is Hayley’s Pe—”
“More coffee, gentlemen?” Tilly chirped, interrupting Henry’s attempt at explaining himself. Taking in their serious faces, she stopped mid-run and pourand looked at the trio questioningly. “What’s wrong?” she spoke rapidly, glaring at Hank. “Is it the catfish? For the love of God, please don’t tell me that it’s the catfish. Wilson assured Vern this morning that it wasfreshly caught and…” Hank held up a hand, interrupting Tilly’s rambling.
“It’snotthe catfish. Everythin’s great with the food, Til,” he reassured her.
“Oh, thank God,” she deflated as soon as Hank called off the Armageddon. Then her eyes landed on Colton’s unusually pale complexion. “What is it then?”
Colton cleared his throat, his eyes not leaving Henry’s for one second.
“There seems to have been a break-in at the clinic,” he spoke, his deep voice neutral aside from a slight underlying tremble.
“A break-in?” Tilly gasped, clutching at her apron. “My, my… in Hayley’s Peak?” Shock was displayed across the older woman’s face before it was replaced by worry. Reaching out a hand, she patted Henry’s shoulder. “Are you alright, honey?” Henry nodded slowly, a glimpse of a smile showing at the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, I’m fine, Til. It happened overnight,” he explained, shooting Colton a quick glance.
“Oh, thank God. What a scare, though.” She shook her head in disbelief. “What is happenin’ to our small town?” she murmured in front of her. “First the raccoons and now this. What is it all comin’ to?”
“Raccoons?” Henry bit at his lip. “What about the raccoons?” When he repeated the word, Louis finally looked up from the spot on the linoleum floor that he’d been licking obsessively long after he’d swallowed the three-maybe-five-but-who’s-counting slices of bacon in one go. The pup started his manic polka dance, his beaver tail wagging all over the place.
“No,” Henry chuckled. “No raccoons. Settle down, boy.” At the sound of his boyfriend’s carefree chuckle, Colton seemed to relax a tad—just a tad—in his seat. Crossing his beefy arms in front of his chest, he turned toward Tilly, a brow raised in question.
“Raccoons?”
“Yes, they’ve been going into the trash lately,” she nodded. “But Vern ain’t havin’ none of that. Bought them heavy padlocks down at the hardware store.” There was an almost comical finality to her words, and Hank buried his smile behind his hand. “You should get some, too, honey,” she spoke at Henry.
“He will,” Colton stated matter-of-factly, his gaze softening somewhat as he rose from his seat. “We’ll get ‘em right now,” he spoke at Henry before he handed Tilly a handful of bills. “Here you go, Til. Please tell Vern that it was the best darn catfish I’ve had in ages. The puppies, too.” Louis rushed to his owner’s side at the wordpuppies,and Tilly blushed at Colton, who was more than twenty years her junior.
“I sure will, honey.” Turning toward Henry, she cooed, “You take care now, hon. Who knows, it might be them city folk with their drugs and guns and such…”
“Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Til,” Hank hummed. “No need to get all worried over nothin’. For all we know, it’s just them darn raccoons,” he said.
“I sure hope you’re right, Hank,” she clutched the wad of bills in her hands. Smiling at the three of them, she turned toward the counter while throwing over her shoulder, “Don’t forget to stop by, boys, before you go on that trip, now! I made a little somethin’ for ya.”
“We won’t, Til,” Henry smiled as they headed for the door.
“I’ll see you back at the shop, Hank.” Colton nodded once they were outside in the street. “I’ll just walk Henry back to the clinic.”
“Yeah, he might just be a while,” Henry grinned, a sedated look in his sky-blue eyes.
“Be quiet, brat,” Colton murmured against the top of his head, while Louis ran in frantic circles around them.
Suddenly, a different pair of blue eyes manifested before him, and Hank recognized the familiar sting in his chest. He was happy for the two young guys who’d found love when it had seemed unlikely, perhaps even impossible. And still, he couldn’t seem to let go of the melancholy that sometimes overtook him when witnessing Henry and Colton’s happiness. All his fondest memories had an edge of sadness attached to them. He didn’t revisit them often because they mostly resulted in at least a few days of a depression-like state, but sometimes it was just too tempting to not go there.
His favorite memory swept through him, small fragments gathering like pieces of a puzzle coming together, painting a picture of happiness, all-consuming and infinite. During Eugene’s third summer in Nebraska, when they were still riding a wave of lovesick infatuation and couldn’t be apart for more than a few hours at a time, Hank had taken Eugene on a road trip to the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. He knew how much Eugene wanted to see the unique stone formations, and Hank was keen on revisiting the rich fossil beds himself.
‘Babe, just imagine the photos I’ll be able to take,’Eugene had beamed at Hank when he’d realized where they were going. ‘The display of light and shadows is supposed to be sick,’he’d spoken excitedly, his West Coast dialect seeping through, and, in that moment, Hank would’ve handed Eugene the goddamn world on a platter if he could always have him smiling like that. Hank had just nodded solemnly, always the more serious of the two of them, as he’d blinked back the tears pressing behind his eyes.You are the light and the shadows and everything in between, my love,he’d wanted to say, but like so many times before and after, Hank had remained quiet. He’d never been great with words like that. Anyway, Eugene always seemed to understand that an entire world of want and love lay in the silence betweenthem. And that seemed to be enough; Eugene never asking for something Hank found it hard to give him.
They’d stayed at small B&Bs on the road, Eugene snapping pictures of almost everything, Hank continuously joking that he couldn’t have been any more of a city guy even if he’d tried. Eugene had just smiled at him, sticking out his tongue teasingly, before going back to documenting every small detail of their time together. The days when their entire life together was seen through a camera lens, through the eyes of Eugene, lay hidden away in the attic, stacks of photo albums collecting dust. Since he’d mostly been behind the camera, there were very few pictures of Eugene, but Hank had his favorite tucked away in the bottom drawer of his office desk at the shop. Hank had snapped the picture when Eugene had been deep in thought, gazing across the vastness of the grass prairie in South Dakota, not realizing Hank was taking his picture.
