Better Than People (Garnet Run 1)

At sixteen, when he’d failed three classes because the teachers wouldn’t waive the participation and presentation grades and the school had sent home a letter warning that he might be held back a year, she’d been the one to pluck the letter from his mother’s hand, announce that she’d take care of it, then march into the principal’s office and give him a piece of her mind that had, Simon was sure, been what let him enter his senior year.

At seventeen, when he wanted to apply for college but didn’t have a single teacher who could write a recommendation letter on his behalf, his grandmother had been the one to suggest he ask Cindy and Bill, who ran the Humane Society where Simon had spent the weekends since he was fourteen, to write instead. He hadn’t gotten in anywhere, but he still had the letters. They were the only endorsements of his character he couldn’t deny.

She’d been there for him more times than he could count, always warm and fierce and unrufflable.

But now she looked small, uncertain, angry. She looked heartbroken.

Simon crossed to her, not sure what to say.

“I can’t believe he left me,” she choked out. “Bastard.” Simon put his arms around her and gathered her close. “Can’t believe that bastard died and left me all alone,” she sobbed. Simon had never heard his grandmother say bastard before.

“Bastard,” he cooed in solidarity about the kindest man he’d ever known.

His grandmother swatted him. “Don’t talk about your grandfather like that,” she admonished through her tears.

“Sorry,” Simon laughed. His grandmother laughed. She cried and laughed and then Simon found himself crying and laughing.

“Good lord,” she said, wiping her tears and taking a deep breath. “What now?”

Simon knew she wasn’t talking about this very moment, but sometimes the next moment was all you could really deal with.

“Well,” he offered, “we could break more stuff?”

His grandmother’s eyebrows rose.

“We could,” she said thoughtfully. “We could break more stuff.”

Simon reached into the open cupboard and took out two plates. He handed one to his grandmother. Then he clinked the rim of his to the rim of hers in a defiant cheers and threw the plate at the wall.

It exploded, then the pieces hit the tile floor and shattered again. Simon grinned, giddy with glee.

“Wow,” he said. “Good thing you replaced those linoleum floors you had when I was a kid. They wouldn’t have yielded nearly such a satisfying result.”

“True,” his grandmother said. Then she threw her plate at the wall and let out a holler of joy as it exploded.

They looked at each other, wide-eyed and grinning like naughty children.

“Again?” his grandmother said.

“Again,” Simon agreed.

Chapter Eight

Jack

It was so infuriatingly stupid, but Jack had the urge to call Davis. Not the real Davis, who’d shown he didn’t care about Jack at all. The Old Davis. The...fictional Davis?

The Davis who’d been his best friend since freshman year of college; the Davis who’d listen wryly when Jack would grumble about wanting a relationship but hating people, shake his head and say, “You don’t hate people, bro. You’re just a romantic and no one’s lived up to it yet.” At which point Jack would invariably huff and puff and change the subject, then wonder about it for days afterward.

Did it make him a romantic that most people irritated him and when he imagined waking up with them every morning for the rest of his life he wanted to barf at the tedium and annoyance?

Did it make him a romantic that, on the few dates he’d capitulated to, questions like What are you afraid of? and What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you? killed the mood when in his fantasies they created intimacy, depth?

And now: Simon.

Simon, who didn’t irritate him, but fascinated him. Simon, the thought of waking up next to whom every morning filled him with a fizzy lightness like the air on a cold, clear birthday morning just after sunrise. Simon, whom he now desperately wanted to ask what was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Simon, who he didn’t hate, not even one little bit.

So, despite every possible betrayal and disappointment, sitting in his cabin with his pack, Simon’s kisses lingering on his lips and the image of Simon’s face in ecstasy—trembling mouth open, eyes shut, throat taut—as he came by another’s hand for the first time, Jack wanted to call the Davis of his past and say:

Maybe you were right. Maybe I am a romantic. Because I am feeling romantic as fuck right now about a man called Simon Burke.

* * *

Jack organized his sock drawer. Painstakingly easing it from the dresser so he could sit on the bed, he divided white from black; wool from cotton. He hung his shirts in color spectrum order in the closet.

He alphabetized his spice rack. He sharpened every pencil and perfectly aligned his books’ spines with the edge of the bookshelf.