Page 64 of Giving Up The Ghost
Squeeze lurch thump.“You’re kind of worrying me here, Ez.”
“This has been,” he said carefully, each word weighing a pound, “a very strange week, even by our standards. And I’ve thought a lot about family, and what mine did and would still do if given a chance. And about yours. And how we’re the way we are.”
“And how are we?”
He gave my foot a nudge with his. “Ride or die. BFFs. Those don’t seem like enough, huh? But also… Well. You beingtheOscar Fellowes, and me just being Ezra.”
I shifted, turning to stare at him one-eyed with my face mashed into his shoulder. “Ezra…”
He sighed, shook his head, and sat back, our pinkies still linked and me following him perforce. “I’m just exhausted. You know how maudlin I get when I don’t have a solid twelve hours.”
“Because you’re a cat.”
“Oh!” He startled, craning his neck to look at me as we got settled. “The birthday! Did you decide on what we’re doing? Harrison had some ideas.”
I smiled, burrowing into the pillow and nodded. CeCe and Julian’s birthday was next month, and we’d been low-key planning a small surprise get-together for them, which necessitated sneaking into address books and Harrison digging for information to make sure we weren’t inviting someone they hated or their dentist or something. “Tell him to email me. But for Julian… I have some ideas you’re not privy to.”
He laughed, reaching past me to turn off the lamp. “Good.”
We curled around each other on the bed, his chin resting atop my head and my back pressed to his chest. It was nothing like when Julian and I slept together, not even remotely. There was no heat, not even a hint of passion or interest. Just Ezra and Oscar, two men who would always be two boys against the world deep down inside.
* * *
JULIAN
Two Days Later
“I still can’t believe you made the tour guide quit,” I mumbled around my toothbrush.
Oscar glanced up from his tablet and raised one supercilious brow. “I didn’tmakehim do anything. I just suggested that, if he wanted to make a living lying to people, perhaps he should enter politics.”
“You’re awful and I love you.” Oscar’s laugh followed me back into the ensuite as I finished getting ready for bed.
“Besides, he didn’t quit. He just went on break and said I was the worst guest he’d ever had on a tour. The lovely lady haunting the visitor center begs to differ. She said the worst was the gentleman who decided to use the facilities in one of the display cells.”
“Ew.”
“In a word.” Oscar set his tablet aside and flipped back the duvet with a very theatrical come-hither look, fluttering his eyelashes at me as he stretched out on the mattress. “Finally alone. Take me, you ravishing stallion.”
“Oh my god, shut up,” I laughed. “Ezra can hear us.”
“He very much can!” Ezra’s muffled voice came through the wall. “Ezra is also scarred for life after whatever you got up to this morning.”
I managed to suppress my laugh, but just barely. Oscar rolled his eyes. “I apologized,” he muttered. “And reminded him that we’re both permanently damaged from when we returned early from the museum and caught them on the table.”
“I miss my table,” I muttered. “They made it impossible to have breakfast without picturing Ezra’s junk where my toast goes.”
Oscar’s giggles broke then, warming down into my marrow as he buried his face against my shoulder, tugging the blanket up to muffle the sound. Ezra knocked on the wall once, then the sound of the television in his room turned up to drown out whatever he thought we’d get up to.
Joke was on him. We were both too tired for any more sex after a round in the shower and a quiet, quick blowjob in the kitchen while Oscar had ostensibly been doing dishes.
The past three days had been everything the previous week wasn’t. We’d gone on some very touristy sight-seeing tours, they’d shown me some of their old haunts in London—both metaphorically but also places they’d been to that were very haunted and didn’t have a tour guide to lie about it. We had more time, pushing out our return tickets by another week and already making vague noises about going even further, longer before we returned to the States. After the decompression on our first night in London, we’d decided to just say fuck everything, ignore the news and don’t answer calls unless it was from CeCe or Harrison, don’t turn on the TV or look at social media (though I suspected Ezra was using some of his sock puppet accounts to reply to shitty comments about Oscar, thanks to his name being connected to Nadine, and Nadine telling anyone who would listen thatOscar knows I’m right! Oscar will explain this! Talk to Oscar!
CeCe had been keeping me apprised of the goings-on and it was ugly. Not only were the usual sites and podcasts unveiling oh-so-edgy think pieces about ghost investigation shows and whether or not the paranormal was real, but insidious ableism had begun creeping into the discourse, couched inI’m not saying he does have a mental illness, but I will say I’m worried about his mental healthbullshit.
Harrison had been up to his neck in filing cease and desists with various media outlets who insisted on trying to monetize the entire lurid incident. Apparently, when the show you’re involved with has a strong history of uncovering murders and attempted murders, chronically online people who need to not only touch grass but roll in it repeatedly decide you must be a serial killer. And onlinereaderswith names like Morgana LaFey Atlantia Pixiesnot Moondrip claim to be in touch with your victims.
So, there were a lot of lawsuits happening. Which was a problem for later us. For the moment, the only problems we decided to face were what tourist attractions to see next, how late to sleep in, and whether or not we should extend our stay another week. Or even a month. Filming didn’t begin until late March, with promo soon after.
