Page 89 of Total Creative Control
“Right,” Tag said. “Back to the grindstone, is it?” He pulled back the other chair at the table and sat down, passing a set of napkin-wrapped cutlery to Aaron.
“Yeah,” Lewis said weakly. “Busy day.”
He glanced back at Aaron, who was watching him with a strange expression.
“See you back at the office,” Lewis said, toasting Aaron with the cup of hot chocolate that he didn’t even want anymore.
“Yeah, see you,” Aaron echoed. And for a moment, Lewis just wanted to… stop the world. Hit some giant pause button that would make everything grind to a halt, except him and Aaron.
Say,“I made a big mistake. Can we…
… go back?”
But no. The world was still turning. Now Tag was setting the empty tray down on the only other seat at the table and unwrapping his own cutlery, and Lewis had no reason to linger another moment. He glanced at Aaron again, who still wore that odd expression, nodded, and made for the door without another word.
When he got outside, his mind was in a whirl. Or more like a tornado.
The thought of returning to the office was impossible. Instead, he consulted his phone, located the nearest green space—a small park—and headed that way.
By the time he got there and found an empty bench, his hot chocolate was cold. He set it down on the wooden seat beside him. A blob of whipped cream flew out of the little drinking hole, as though in temper at being ignored, and landed on the wood. Lewis sighed, then set the sandwich down beside it, any appetite he’d once had entirely gone.
For a while, he just sat there as his mind stormed incoherently, replaying images of Aaron in the café: the startled expression he wore when he first saw Lewis, his wry chuckle as they joked together, shifting his chair to make room for Tag.
Tag.
Tag liked Aaron, and he didn’t mind showing it. He was an uncomplicated guy. Uncomplicatedly good-looking, friendly, inoffensive. He was probably really together about relationships too. He could probably make Aaron feel special and taken care of.
Loved.
The sudden stab of pain that thought produced was astonishing.
Lewis determinedly shoved all thoughts of Aaron and Tag aside and made himself look around the park. A handy distraction trick, that, the same one Aaron had used on him in Safehaven. Grounding himself in the here and now, logging all the sights and sounds and smells around him.
It was a very ordinary little park, made nicer by the unseasonal warmth of the day. The sun shone valiantly, despite a bank of grey cloud that threatened to overtake it, and probably would in little while. It seemed to be a well-used park. There were joggers, dog-walkers, a few women doing what looked like some serious exercise in the middle of the grass, and a constant stream of little kids scooting and biking and skipping past with their carers on their way to the crowded play area.
Absorbed as he was in his job, it was easy for Lewis to forget about this sort of stuff. Ordinary life. No vampires, no great story arcs or triumphant character redemptions. Just the day-to-day stuff, with the ordinary dramas: love, romance, family arguments, health problems, money problems.
The boring stuff, as he had always thought of it.
The stuff he mostly ignored in his own life.
A weird, bewildering lump appeared in Lewis’s throat and would not be swallowed away. Shit, was he going tocry? What the hell was up with him? Hurriedly, he got to his feet, turning to gather up his abandoned lunch.
For some reason, his gaze snagged on the little brass plaque on the bench. “For John Spencer Craig (1954-2015), partner, best friend, and co-parent to our corgis, who loved this park.”
It was a stupidly ordinary message, so why did it bring unfamiliar tears to Lewis’s eyes?
Why did it make him feel like such a fuckingloser?
Why was he, right now, eaten up with envy that a cheerful-but-penniless barista-slash-actor was currently sitting with Aaron Page eating the most utterly dismal soup Lewis had ever seen?
Blinking, he dashed away incipient tears with an angry swipe of his hand, gathered up his rubbish, and stalked away to dump it all in a nearby bin.
He didn’t feel remotely calm enough to return to the office yet, so he did a circuit of the park, then took the long way back to the office.
By the time he entered the building, he felt oddly wrung out. He lifted a hand in acknowledgement of Dymek’s greeting and carried on to the lift lobby, stabbing the call button, before pulling out his phone to see what he’d missed. Damn. The monthly budget call. Toni wouldn’t be happy about that.
The lift rose sluggishly, spitting him out on the fourth floor, and he trudged to his office. His stomach was hollow with physical hunger, but his appetite was non-existent. He should eat something, he knew—a chocolate bar from the vending machine would have to do.