Authors: Marguerite Labbe
“If you want to shut me out, fine, but whatever it is between you and your dad, you need to find a way to address it, whether it’s by talking to someone else about it, talking to him, or finding some Zen, because what you’re doing isn’t working,” Galen said, his tone more exasperated than angry.
Nick turned back toward him and squirmed inside at the steady way Galen regarded him. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
Galen shrugged, opened a fat file stuffed with documents, and spread the contents out on the counter. “Don’t be sorry; just do something about whatever it is that’s going on inside your head. I don’t like seeing you flinch every time the phone rings.”
“What do you have there?” Nick asked, thrusting his chin out toward the file.
“Everything that Suzane was working on for the opening of the exhibit.” Galen began leafing through the contents. “Catering information, stuff for the silent auction, and on and on. I don’t know what’s actually been done and what hasn’t. I’d like to tie up some loose ends for her before she comes back so she doesn’t go into panic mode.”
Galen shoved a hand through his hair with a grimace. “And don’t even get me started on the accounting chores I’ve let slide.”
“Let me take a look at it.” Nick held out his hand for the file, grateful for something to do. “Paperwork is my specialty.”
N
ICK
moved through the museum, turning down the lights and checking to make sure doors were locked. Galen was up in his tower office, going over the account books for the day. He’d enjoyed helping Galen out with the museum while Suzane had been gone, even if there wasn’t much left to do by the time he got off work in the evenings.
Galen really did need more permanent help. He rarely took a day off that Nick could tell, and often he was juggling both running the place as well as staffing it if Heather couldn’t come in. It was like the museum had become his whole life. Nick knew he had family nearby, but he wasn’t sure how often Galen saw them, and he wondered what Galen had done for fun and relaxation before they’d started dating.
Suzane was returning tomorrow, and Nick hoped that Galen wouldn’t mind him continuing to insinuate himself into the day-to-day activities of the museum. The thought of coming here after work got him through the daily grind even more than dreaming of his vacations had. And damned if it didn’t wake up other dreams that he’d thought had died and been buried.
The work he did was practical, stable, and not at all what he’d wanted when he started college. But it was either change his major from Art History to something more marketable or quit school to come back and work for his dad. Nick winced. He hated that there was a little part of himself that still resented the ultimatum. He understood why his dad had pushed for the change. College had cost a lot of money that they couldn’t really afford, and Nick hadn’t had a plan for his life after he graduated.
Nick walked into Dexios’s exhibit and was struck by how uncluttered it seemed with all of Ella’s equipment moved out. Her finished mural was draped in shadows now, but he’d had the pleasure of being present at her very nervous unveiling earlier. Soon Galen would start bringing in the final pieces, and Nick couldn’t wait to see how it all looked together.
Nick wanted his dad to see it too. He closed his eyes, stuck his hand in his pocket, and traced the hard outline of his phone. It was a little crazy. Ever since he’d left home he’d been sure that this Collection was his ticket back into his family. His dad would see that there was some merit in having a dream, no matter how improbable it seemed.
He could just hear his dad now, telling him that he was wasting his time with the statues, that they couldn’t afford the insurance on them, and a hundred other practical details his dad would latch onto instead of seeing the wonder of having found something that had been lost to their family for decades. His dad wouldn’t see those things, and his brothers would take his side, because once again Nick was causing trouble. He just wished they could understand that he needed some space to be himself and that leaving San Francisco wasn’t a personal betrayal.
Was this what it had been like for his mom after she’d left? Maybe she had wanted to make amends and be a part of their lives only to feel too guilty, too afraid, until it just became easier to move on.
Nick did not want to move on. He didn’t want to destroy those last ties, yet he was letting it happen without even a token protest. What the hell was wrong with him? If he didn’t try he could forget about being godfather to Jason and Sophia’s baby. He could count on Stefan and Damian never talking to him again. And worst of all, knowing he hurt them, hurt his dad.
“Why do you look so mournful?”
Nick turned to look at Galen, only it wasn’t his boyfriend who stood at the entrance. The accent was wrong, the set of his shoulders not quite right. Lykon, not Galen, and it was Galen who he longed to confide in. “You shouldn’t take control without his permission. He doesn’t like it. It isn’t right.”
“You are hurting.” Lykon stepped closer and reached out as if to touch him, and Nick stepped away.
“Yeah, well, there’s nothing you can do to help.” Nick pulled out his phone. Galen had urged him to call his dad several times since they’d last talked about it. He had asked Nick what was the worst that could happen. And each time Nick had brushed him off. He didn’t even want to voice the worst.
He looked at Lykon, and all the frustration and anger at himself leapt up and turned on him. “Leave Galen alone. He is not your toy. He is not yours to use to get what you want. And we’ll both fight you on that. I swear to God, if you keep grabbing at him like you have been, I’ll make sure the curse never gets broken.”
Lykon’s eyes widened, and he took a step back. “You would not do something so evil.” His expression became bewildered, and he shook his head. “I cannot believe you would have changed so much, Dexios.”
“Let’s get this straight. I am not Dexios.” Nick stabbed his finger toward the statue. “Dexios is trapped in there, just as you are trapped in Galen. We may be parts of you reborn, but we are our own persons, and we do not need you pushing and shoving us around. Have you ever thought that maybe that’s why every generation fucks this up? Next time you want to talk to me, you’d better ask Galen for permission first.”
He turned his back on Lykon, his heart aching even more. He’d always dreamed of finding the statues, and this wasn’t at all what he’d expected. It was supposed to be a triumph, but now that he had dived so deep into the mysteries surrounding the statues, he didn’t know where the surface was or how to get to it before he ran out of air.
Nick called his dad before he could change his mind, his stomach clenching into a knot almost as hard as his fist, which hung at his side. It couldn’t be too late. He had to find a way to fix this, because if he couldn’t fix his relationship with his family, how could he hope to build anything with Galen?
“Nick, you worry an old man when you shut me out.” Nick closed his eyes again at the sound of his dad’s voice. He did sound old. The realization struck him hard. Old and tired and sad. He loved his dad’s voice, and the sound of it brought a thousand memories, most of them good. “Have I done something that offended you? Have I hurt you in some way?”
How like his dad. Damian and Stefan accused Nick of being selfish, of being like their mom. And his dad blamed himself for Nick’s silence, just as he’d blamed himself for Nick’s mom leaving. “It’s not you, Dad, it’s all me. I’m sorry.”
The silence on the other end of the line weighed on his soul, had him scrambling for some excuse to hang up before he heard what he didn’t want to hear. Nick sat down on the edge of the dais that lifted up the first statue. He could sense Dexios behind him, and he wondered if Lykon remained in the room, lurking. He didn’t want to turn around and see him watching out of Galen’s eyes. He had to find a way to put a stop to Lykon taking over Galen before it got ugly.
“Explain it to me, because I’ve been trying to understand.” His dad broke the silence, and Nick’s heart contracted. “I thought maybe you needed to go explore yourself, so I tried not to resist when you moved out of state. I thought giving you space to breathe would bring you back, so I tried not to pressure you, and now I keep thinking that you’re slipping away even more.”
Nick traced his finger over Lykon’s sandaled foot, the metal in the statue cool and textured against his skin. “I don’t feel a part of the family anymore,” he finally said, the words forcing their way out of his throat. “I’ve felt like I’ve been on the outside looking in for a very long time now.”
The scuff of a foot against the floor alerted him, and he looked up to see Galen, his face lost in shadow. At first he wasn’t sure it really was Galen at all until he came closer and Nick saw the concern in his eyes, a familiar expression, not one slightly foreign.
There was a question on his face, and Nick answered it by scooting over and patting the bare spot next to him. Nick didn’t want him to leave. Galen sat down and offered Nick his hand, and after a long moment he took it with a grateful squeeze.
“Whose fault is that? You don’t answer when I call. You don’t return calls except for on a rare occasion, and when you do, you don’t talk about what is going on with your life. You haven’t been home for a holiday in years, and your brothers have little confidence that you’ll be here this year. What else can I do to make you feel welcome?”
Nick looked down at his hand clasped with Galen’s. It scared him. Close relationships had scared him for a long time. Only now he thought that maybe the longing to not be so lonely anymore, to not survive off superficial connections, outweighed the fear. And instead of pulling away and searching for privacy he clung to Galen’s sure grip. Oddly enough, it seemed like he and Galen were battling the same issues, only he was sure Galen had a better grip on his than Nick did.
Nick wanted reassurance that his dad accepted him for who he was and not just Nick the dreamer. The subject of him being gay had not really been brought up since he came out to his family. It was like the huge elephant in the room that everybody danced around and nobody acknowledged. Not even Nick. He was afraid to bring it up again only to find more silence.
“Hey, Dad, remember those statues Uncle Stavros was so obsessed over?” Nick glanced behind him, and his breath caught as he found both Dexios and Lykon watching him from their embrace. Galen glanced up too, and shook his head with a wry expression on his lips.
“I don’t understand. What do the statues have to do with anything? I’m talking about your family, and you’re bringing up legends.” His dad never raised his voice, but Nick could hear the palpable frustration in his voice. “Call me when you’re ready to let me in. I don’t want to talk about Uncle Stavros. I want to talk about you. I want to know about your job, whether you’re seeing someone. I want to know if you’re happy in Seattle.”
“I am seeing someone,” Nick blurted out, scrambling to find some way of keeping the connection before his dad hung up. And as soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them. What if his dad was still disappointed that he was gay, just as he’d been disappointed when Nick went off to college, or decided that he wanted to move, or a dozen other things that Nick could name?
“You are?” Cautious pleasure replaced frustration, and Nick braced himself for his dad’s next words. “Who is it? Is he special? Do you care about him?”
He, not she. The tension that Nick had been carrying for years cracked at that one little word. He glanced at Galen, who watched him with the kind of support in his eyes that Nick had never imagined he could have from him. Galen made him feel like he was a whole person, not a shadow. And all those feelings he’d been fighting clicked inside of him. Nick loved him, maybe he’d never stopped. Only this time, there seemed to be a lot more of Galen to love.
“Yeah, I think he’s pretty special.” Galen smiled and squeezed his hand. “I’m at his museum right now, and we’re in the middle of shutting it down for the night. Then we’re grabbing something to eat.”
“You do not know how happy that makes me.” His dad hesitated. “I’ll let you get back to him, but you’ll call again right?” Doubt crept into his dad’s voice. “I want to hear all about him and you. You’ll call?”
Guilt made him want to squirm in shame. He really had let it get this bad. “Yeah, I’ll call you this week. I promise.”
Nick hung up the phone and stared at it for a long minute, trying to work through all the complex emotions and thoughts that crowded his brain. On the one hand, he wished his dad had let him tell him about the statues, but to know that he’d been so wrong about his dad’s feelings over him being gay… that lifted the worst of the weight.
“Could have gone better?” Galen asked, leaning into him.
“Actually no, I think it could’ve gone a lot worse.” Nick looked over at him as a hope that he hadn’t dared to believe in surged to the surface. “I think maybe things might be okay.”
Galen smiled and kissed him. “That’s what I was wishing for, for you.”
Nick twisted toward Galen and cupped the side of his neck. “You feel okay? Lykon didn’t screw you up, make you dizzy?”
“I don’t think we have to worry about him for a while. You scared him pretty good.” Galen kissed him again and smiled against his lips. “Come on, I think we’ve both earned a drink.”
“
C
LOSE
your eyes,” Galen insisted to Suzane as they stopped just before the new exhibit.
“Please tell me you didn’t find some more mysterious statues while I was gone,” Suzane said as she closed her eyes and extended her hand for Galen to guide her. “We’re well into April, and the opening is only two months off. If you add anything new it’s going to make the whole exhibit seem cluttered.”
“Nope, nothing like that.”
“And nothing else weird has happened? You can tell me. I prepared myself.”
“I’ve gotten used to the weird,” Galen said with a chuckle. “And nothing else has happened to freak me out. We’re good, I swear.”