Page 31 of Beyond the Hedge Maze

Jesse beamed, and Oliver knew he needed to thank Rose for giving him the swift kick in the arse he so obviously needed. Jesse spent the next few minutes explaining all the stacks of books and how they were organized. Oliver tried to pay attention, but was wholly preoccupied by the timber of Jesse’s voice.

“Got it?” Jesse asked.

He didn’t have it. Not even a little bit.

“I didn’t expect you to be so…” Oliver tried to choose his word carefully, “academic.”

Throwing his head back, Jesse laughed. “I’m not sure if you remember, but I did attend Cambridge. You’ve heard of it, right? The most prestigious university in the country? Top in both academics and athletics?”

Oliver threw a book in Jesse’s direction—completely missing him—which only made Jesse laugh harder.

“See?” He gestured to the book. “Not a shred of athleticism from the Oxford grad.”

“Shut up. Give me that book back.”

Jesse bent to retrieve the discarded text and hand it to Oliver. During the hand off, the tips of his fingers grazed the back of Oliver’s hand, and Oliver had his earlier thoughts about Jesse confirmed.

Complication, indeed.

Chapter 15

Jesse

Present

Jesse wasn’t known to be prone to hysterics. So far as he knew, there was no family history of insanity, but there was no reason he couldn’t be the first.

He could feel his muscles tightening in anticipation, a bead of sweat gathering at his temples. Any second now, any second…

CUCKOO. CUCKOO. CUCKOO. CUCKOO.

Jesse scrambled from his seated position on the floor, abandoning his laptop and the clock he had been cataloging. “Son of a bitch!! Where are you??”

CUCKOO. CUCKOO. CUCKOO. CUCKOO.

He stumbled all around the room, nearly kicking over one of the dozens of antique clocks that were scattered about, trying to find the location of the sound. It had been driving him mad all morning. Every ten minutes, like, well, like fucking clockwork, the damned thing would squawk, and Jesse couldn’t find the source.

CUCKOO. CUCKOO. CUCKOO. CUCKOO.

On his second day at the estate, when Oliver had still been ignoring him, Rose had given him a tour of the house. She had pointed out the bedrooms that were primarily used for guests—Oliver’s friends, she had clarified without him prompting—and which had essentially become storage spaces. She explained that the guest bedrooms had mostly been stripped of antiques and wouldn’t be worth his time, but that the other rooms hadn’t been opened in many years, and would most likely need some attention. He assured her that it wouldn’t be a problem. He could handle some dust.

He hadn’t prepared for this—the slow descent into madness driven by a cuckoo clock that shouldn't even be functional after so many years. He yearned for the library, for the chaotic lack of a system. He had conquered that library, crushing its lack of organization under his heel. He had even found several valuable manuscripts and a potential buyer to boot.

Jesse fumbled to the back corner of the room, lifting clocks at random to his ear to see if he could hear any sort of ticking. He had even resorted to picking up any old wrist or pocket watch just to be sure. By his logic, if it could screech, that meant it also had to tick.

“Uh, am I interrupting something?”

Jesse squeezed his eyes shut in embarrassment. How many times could Oliver find him like this—worked into a frenzy over inanimate objects? He slowly lowered a large bronze clock that had a mermaid perched on the top, away from his ear. “I’m not crazy. I swear, I’m not.”

Oliver held a takeaway bag in his hand, and carried it over to where Jesse had left his laptop. He sat crisscrossed on the ground and began to unpack two wraps alongside containers of cucumber salad and hummus with pita. “I know you’re not.” He pulled out napkins and plastic wrapped silverware. “I got gyros. I didn’t know if you ate meat or not, so one is vegetarian.”

As if on cue, Jesse’s stomach growled. He cleared some more space and joined Oliver on the ground. “Not a vegetarian, but I’ll eat pretty much anything, so you choose.”

Oliver held one tinfoil wrapped gyro in each hand, weighing them both before putting them on the carpet. He closed his eyes and mixed them around, handing one at random out to Jesse. Jesse grinned, and knew he was doing a horrible job of playing it cool, but he couldn’t help it that he found Oliver adorable.

Since he had apologized in the library, Oliver seemed to find any excuse to be in the same room as Jesse. Sometimes it was only to grab something at random, sometimes he brought food like he did now, other times he showed up under the guise of feeling guilty about not helping with the appraisals. He didn’t want to read too much into it, but even if these little meetings were only moments of casual kindness from Oliver, Jesse wasn’t going to complain. He was going to soak up every single second.

He knew this wasn’t how he was supposed to act with clients, but he wasn’t going to waste this opportunity by pretending to be someone he wasn’t. If Oliver wanted to spend time with him, he was going to get the real Jesse, no one else.