Page 43 of Beyond the Hedge Maze

Oliver woke the next morning horny and unwilling to face any of his responsibilities.

Jesse had left him standing in front of his bedroom door in a baffled state. Oliver didn’t date often, but that didn’t mean he was inexperienced. He knew when a man was into him. He wanted that kiss from Jesse more than he had wanted his next breath. Instead, he was left there choking on air with a raging hard-on that lasted most of the evening and carried into the morning…no matter how many times he had tried to take care of the problem.

As far as his responsibilities went, he didn’t have an immediate solution on how to pay for the repairs on the roof. He could only hope Jesse was able to find something he could sell that might cover the cost.

The roof, however, wasn’t the only thing he wasn’t equipped to handle that day. Mr. Stillwell had called and left a voicemail that his parents were officially threatening to move their claim to the High Court. Some contractor he didn’t hire had blabbed about his plans for the roof.

There was nothing he could do about either of those things. Nothing was going to happen today to change his circumstances. So…fuck it.

Oliver got out of bed, put on his glasses that had been resting on his nightstand, and stood in front of his wardrobe. His style had become more conservative in the last couple of years, an armor, a reflection of the role he thought he had to play. Every day he’d put on something sensible and respectable, and every day was like he was slowly and subtly unraveling—a ball of yarn unwound.

He shook his head. Not today. Today he was going back to basics. He was going to be himself.

Closing the wardrobe doors, he went to the small dresser that sat forgotten in the corner of his bedroom. He pulled out an old pair of jeans and a checked shirt that he exclusively used to wear when he painted. Splattered along the denim and fabric was the memory of finished and unfinished projects alike, the ghost of his former self. He changed quickly and headed into his ensuite bathroom.

Oliver took off his glasses, washed his face, and instinctively reached for his contacts container. Back to basics, he reminded himself, and decided not to put them in. Whether or not Jesse said he missed him in his glasses was of course, of little consequence.

After he finished getting ready, he stopped by the cupboard that kept the majority of the house’s cleaning supplies. He grabbed some window cleaner and a few old rags, and made his way to the conservatory.

The day was sunny, and the light was struggling to break through the dust and grime-covered windows of the conservatory. The space had once been Oliver’s primary studio before his grandfather’s death, but had stood unoccupied since. The plants that had once lived there were, unfortunately, long gone. Oliver didn’t have the same green thumb as his grandfather—this was no safe space for them to thrive.

He refamiliarized himself with the room, opening the various metal cabinets that had held his supplies, and was shocked that he at least had a handful of clean brushes. He wouldn’t know what shape the acrylic paints were in until he opened them each up and smelled their contents, or checked to see if the paint had separated.

Oliver found a stepstool he kept in the studio when he worked on larger canvases, and maneuvered it around the room as he cleaned the windows. After about an hour, he was satisfied with the result. They needed to be washed on the outside, as well, but he could spray them down with the hose another time.

Next came the set up. Buried at the bottom of the cabinets were a set of old drop cloths. He unfurled them and pulled the fabric apart where the paint had stuck together, hastily folded before the paint had fully dried. Gingerly, he laid them out, careful and cognizant to make sure they overlapped at the seams lest any paint slip through the cracks. Before, he would have never been that attentive. But that was before.

The process was routine, a flex in muscle memory, a once familiar song and dance. In the process his body slowly relaxed, the fog he’d been carrying around slowly lifting.

He gathered up all of the paint scattered across the various cabinets and sat on the floor, crisscrossing his legs and tucking his old Converse underneath them. Quickly, he separated the unopened from the opened tubes, and got to work checking the ones that had already been opened.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it, moving onto the first tube. But as soon as it stopped, it started again. He wanted to ignore it, keep up the momentum of bypassing his responsibilities, but it wouldn’t stop ringing. Sighing, he took it out of his pocket and saw Isaac’s name flashing on the screen.

Oliver smiled. He hadn’t talked much to Isaac or Rachel since he last called them on the day Jesse arrived. Other than a few sporadic texts, the friends had all been busy and hadn’t had much time to catch up.

Oliver enthusiastically answered the phone. “Hiya.”

He was met with silence on the other end, and he pulled the phone from his face, checking to make sure the call hadn’t been disconnected. It hadn’t, Isaac’s name was still there, illuminated on the screen.

“You suck at answering my texts, and what the hell has gotten you so excited?”

“I’m sorry, you know how it—”

“Or should I say, who has gotten you so excited?” Isaac interrupted. Oliver’s face flushed as he put his phone on speaker and set it on the ground beside him to start assessing his paints. He opened one and smelled the opening of the tube, noting the plastic-like scent. Happy it hadn’t gone sour, he capped it and set it in its own pile. “Spill. Don’t make me call Rachel. I’ll add her right now.”

“I’m dying,” Oliver said dramatically.

Isaac chuckled, and Oliver could hear him roll his eyes through the phone. “You’re not.”

“Fine then. He’s going to kill me.”

Oliver uncapped another paint and winced, the smell of rotting milk hitting his nostrils. He tossed the tube across the room.

“The hot rower? Do you mean metaphorically or literally, because the ensuing conversation really depends on the answer.”

He considered not telling Isaac about last night, but he wanted to. Years ago he would have enthusiastically told him every single detail. “We’ve been circling around each other for weeks now. Then last night we had dinner, and I thought we’d…”

“Fuck?” Isaac happily supplied. His voice way too chipper.