Page 15 of The Stars and the Stage
“How’s the city doing?” Diego forced themself not to sound like they missed it, then regretted the act as Maddox just shrugged, responding with equal casualness.
“Same as ever. Too many tourists in the summer, too many forgotten graves in the winter.”
Even that was enough to bring visions of the crowded boardwalk, rollerbladers shouting and laughing in their bright pads and kids climbing on the rails, boats whizzing across the lake. The same tourists would flock to the city’s numerous cemeteries in the evenings for gaudy ghost tours and historical recounting of the sanatoriums that had founded the city. There was one tour bus in particular that drove past Diego’s childhood home at exactly 6:30pm every weekend evening from May to October.
It was an odd thing to fix emotion to, but there hadn’t been much inside that house they cared for.
“Is my family… do you keep up with them at all? They uh, loved you.”More than me, Diego didn’t add. They had believed Maddox over their own flesh and blood, had threatened Diego in Maddox’s defense while he’d been safe in his mother’s house and Diego was panicked and hungry and in pain.
Maddox slowed, kicking at the growing number of pebbles in the sand. “They kept in touch for a few years.”
“But?”
“They moved in ’86. Didn’t give out a forwarding address. No one even realized they’d sold the place until the U-Hauls drove out.”
“They wanted to forget me.” The laugh that lodged in Diego’s throat was all bitterness. “Well, I guess that’s not anything new.”
“Diego…”
“No, I’m fine, really. I’d already figured I’d never see them again. Now we’ve both made it official.” They still didn’t want to linger on it though. There were better old memories; places and people they’d loved far more. “Any other home news I should know about? Did the arcade close or the Fishnettery turn into a straight bar or something?”
Maddox, to his credit, obliged the topic change with grace. “The arcade is the same, though the Fishnettery’s trying to expand. One of the wealthier men who frequented it died of AIDS last year, and he left them a plot of land right on the main street of the lakefront. The city doesn’t want it there, but I think there’s still hope it’ll happen. Oh, Vitalis-Barron has started asking for vampires for their medical trials, and the vampire community is in a bit of an uproar over whether the pharmaceutical company is finally working on something that will help them or simply taking advantage of their desperation for anything that will pay people with fangs.”
“San Salud has—” The word caught in their throat: vampires. Them. Like the Celestial Club, but larger than a single building, a single family. “A community?”
“In a sense. It’s like the one here—a little disjointed, circles within circles. They’re hard to find, let me tell you, but if you can break in once, it gets easier to hunt down others.”
By the sounds of it, Maddox has accomplished that: the breaking, the hunting. Because he’d been guilty over what he’d done to Diego all those years ago? Or perhaps just for the thrill of it, the hope that he could find a vampire who’d sink their fangs into him the way he so desperately seemed to want from Diego. “Why look in the first place, if you’re human?”
He merely shrugged. “Must my life be solely about me?”
The answer only made Diego’s chest tighter. They bared their fangs. “You live in LA now, though? You’ve clearly found some ofourvampires.”
“I have an apartment here, and a house in San Salud—just a little one that I bought off the TV money.”
A house, that he owned. “Wait, exactly howmuchTV money are we talking?”
Maddox lifted a brow. “You don’t know? I thought for sure, with how you’ve been pushing me away…” He stared at them in disbelief a moment longer before shaking his head. “Well, fuck, I’m not bursting that bubble.”
Diego slugged him in the shoulder with his own fist, still wrapped tightly around their hand. “Tell me!”
“No!” He laughed. “And don’t you go looking it up, either. If you don’t already know, then I don’t want you to think of me that way. There’s some parts of my work that are just things I’m doing—and I’m not ashamed of them—but I want you to know me likethisfirst, no bells, no whistles, no offenses or awards, just me.” Even in the darkness, the way he looked at Diego was a burning focus that made them feel undone in all the best and worst ways. Then his lips quirked. “When it was showing, I wondered a lot about your reaction to it, to seeing me. Who knew all that time I could have stopped fretting becauseyouwere living under arock.”
“It was a bridge, not a rock,” Diego grumbled. “I was preoccupied with not being dead while spending way too much time wondering if maybe being dead was just the better option all around, then trying to recover from the hell of that while also helping the woman who rescued me. I only got back into living a few years ago.”
“Ah.” Maddox’s intensity stayed on them, warm and full, even as his humor faded to a comforting solemnity, as though he were a wishing well, patiently awaiting their every secret. “I’m sorry. Your life has been brutal, and that was my fault.”
He’d apologized so many times already, Diego didn’t know why it was that one which broke them.
They forgave him. Whether they could make their stupid brain let go of the memory of his betrayal or not,theyforgave him.
“Itwasyour fault, but it was everyone else’s too. You were easy to blame—you were the one who wielded the weapon that hurt me—but society constructed it and someone else would have brandished it if you hadn’t. I’ll keep hating that weapon with everything in me, but I refuse to keep hating you, Maddy. I fucking refuse.” They snatched his other hand, stole it like they were proving a point taking possession of him, pulling him into their space with a growl. “And regardless of all that was done to me, and all the days I didn’t want to keep living, Idid, and I’mhappynow—I will keep finding that happiness because that’s a rebellion no one can take away from me. I love what I’m doing. It shouldn’t be all I’m allowed to have in this life, but if it is, then it’s going to be enough.”
Maddox closed the little distance that remained between them, lacing their fingers together. He leaned down, his nose brushing their cheek, and Diego could feel his breath as he whispered, “It’s not theonlything you have.”
“Oh fuck off.” They pushed him, closing in just as quickly as he stumbled away, not letting any space form between their bodies. Not wanting it to. “I thought thiswasn’ta romantic walk.”
“Well fuck you too,” Maddox growled. Then his lips were on theirs, fast and hungry, with all the power of a tornado, churning up Diego’s fire into a breathtaking natural disaster.
