He groaned, vaguely aware of the people surrounding them, as he got unsteadily to his feet.

  They were screaming things, but Gabriel wasn’t sure what they were. He wasn’t sure of anything.

  All that he was sure of was that Sean was right in front of him and that he wanted to bash his face in.

  “This is your fault,” Gabriel said. Or at least it was what he wanted to have said, because his mouth was full of blood and the words sounded like nothing but muffled, wet noise. “Without you, Holden wouldn’t have left.”

  “Wake the fuck up, Gabriel,” Sean said. He was standing up and wiping his bloody face with the back of his hand. Gabriel wasn’t sure when he had hit him in the face, but he was glad that he had. “This is the best thing I ever did for myself. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get away from him too.”

  “Fuck you, Sean,” Gabriel said. “Stay away from him. And from me.”

  “Yeah, no problem…”

  He trailed off at the sound of sirens and Gabriel paled.

  He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. He had never had the police called on him before and he didn’t know if he was supposed to run or stay where he was.

  It seemed as if his body was the one that made the decision for him, because even though he tried to take a couple of steps to at least seat down and analyze the situation, he was glued to the ground, completely unable to move. He was leaning against one of the tables, catching his breath and staring down at Sean.

  Sean bared his teeth at him. “You started this.”

  “God, you’re such an asshole,” Gabriel said. “What did he ever see in you?”

  Sean looked him and down, then he smirked. “We both know that you know the answer to that. And if you don’t, you’re even stupider than you look.”

  Gabriel rubbed his raw face. “Honestly, why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

  “Want to get beat up again?”

  Gabriel opened his mouth to answer, but the siren lights flooding into his eyes made him quiet down instantly. The officer in the car parked it right in front of him and opened the door. He started to approach them, the engine still running.

  “Fuck you,” Gabriel said, hopefully only loudly enough for Sean to hear. Then he saw that the officer was approaching him and tried to smile.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Holden didn’t even want to look at how many times he had called Gabriel.

  The little number next to Gabriel’s name on the screen of his phone felt like an annoying taunt.

  Gabriel normally picked up immediately when Holden called him, so this made him nervous. Everything had gone relatively well on Holden’s side, all things considered.

  At least everything that he was supposed to do happened, so all of the practical things that he had planned had gone well.

  He had snuck into Sean's house undetected, because he still had his key. Technically, it was still his house, his name was still on the lease.

  They had added it as a formality, because Holden really didn’t spend as much time there as he should have, but now it was a blessing.

  No one could call the police to get Holden to leave his own house.

  He had been lucky, too, because Sean hadn’t changed the locks. Holden had snuck inside the house and stood in the foyer, waiting for someone to show up or for something to happen. He didn’t know how long he had stayed there, skulking around the door, holding his breath as he wondered when he would hear from Gabriel again.

  But he didn’t hear anything, from Gabriel or from the inside of the house.

  He called out with a weak hello, his heart going a million miles a minute. He hadn’t wanted to do it, but that was the only way that he could be sure that there was no one there.

  In order to carry out his plan, he had to make absolutely sure that no one was at Sean’s house. He took a few steps toward the open area, where the living room and dining room were, and looked around. He felt a little sick to his stomach, but this was right.

  This would help him feel better.

  His house was completely empty—and Holden had always thought of it as Sean’s house, never as their house. It helped that it looked like he had just cleaned up.

  Sean had always been tidy, one of the things that back when they had first started going out together, Holden thought was compatible about them. Holden was messy, maybe, but he was clean. He didn’t like cleaning, but he liked a clean house, which was why he had hired a service specifically for that.

  He had yet to realize how excessive Sean’s tidiness was, how much it felt like it was set dressing instead of part of his life. He took a few steps toward the kitchen, hearing only his heartbeat and the way that his feet sounded on the floor.

  He hesitated for only a second when he took in the living room which had the bright windows that faced the water.

  There was something that he had always found relaxing about being in this house, but it was never Sean’s company.

  He took a deep breath, tried to steady his breathing and ignored the living room as he walked toward the back of the house, turning on every light switch that he could find on his way there.

  Even if this was a bad idea, he had come too far. He couldn't turn away now, he couldn't just stop doing what he was doing. It was important. It was more than important, it was necessary.

  It was exactly what Holden needed, because it was going to make him feel better.

  It was going to make things go back to the way they were before, before Sean, before the wedding. Before Sean had left them at the altar in front of a bunch of people, in front of his parents. Before Holden had bolted and made everyone worry about him.

  It was Sean's fault. It was all Sean's fault, and he was here so that Sean knew exactly what he had done.

  When he got to Sean’s kitchen, he looked around and noticed with something like curious detachment that there was nothing that belonged to Holden still in Sean’s house, at least not anywhere visible.

  He wouldn’t collect any of the clothes that Sean had kept—if he had kept any—because that would have been a dead giveaway and Holden wasn’t stupid.

  He knew better than to blow his own cover. He would demand his stuff later, after some time had passed, then he would act outraged if Sean said that he had thrown it away.

  He took a few steps toward the wall and narrowed his eyes as he tried to select the tool that he needed to carry out his plan.

  His eyes stung for some reason, though he wasn’t sure why and he wasn’t that interested in finding out. He could think about the way that he felt later, after this was all done.

  His gaze found a knife that was about twice the size of his hand. He thought that he had seen Sean use it for cutting vegetables before. He wouldn’t use it for cutting vegetables, but he didn’t think that it would be too incriminating to get caught with Sean’s own knife. Not that he was going to get caught, he knew better than that.

  He stepped forward and reached out. He grabbed the knife from Sean's knife rack.

  It was a big knife, and one of the most likely to do a lot of damage. It weighed heavily in his hand, almost too much, and for a second, Holden considered dropping it.

  He wasn’t going to, he knew better.

  He wanted to be someone that he never had been before. He wanted to be determined. He wanted to go through with this, because he needed to prove that at least one of them would. At least one of them could.

  Holden considered himself to be a man of his word. He had told Gabriel that he was going to do this, so he was going to do it. He couldn’t back down now.

  He was sure that the moment that he saw everything that he had done to the house, that would make him feel better. It would make him feel less like this was a waste of time, less like this was stupid. He tried to steel himself as he took a deep breath and faced the living room.

  He walked towards the living room, sat down in one of his expensive couches, and traced the pillow with the big vegetable knife.

  Sean’s couches were nice. They weren’t too nice, because Sean couldn’t afford too nice, but they were perfectly respectable secondhand pieces that he had bought at auction houses.

  He was a stylish man that needed stylish furniture. Holden had laughed at him, obviously, but he hadn’t realized that Sean caring about furniture would provide him with an excellent starting point for his revenge plan.

  He pressed slightly harder against one of the throw pillows, the white one with the fuzzy sides that had the word love embroidered on it in cursive writing. His hands were trembling slightly, but he thought that was from the excitement of the whole thing. He was excited.

  He was ready to get this over with, too. He was ready to be done with this chapter of his life.

  This was the epilogue, this was what it would take to close this chapter of his life.

  Once it was done, Holden would never have to think about it again. He would never have to think about Sean again, he would never have to think about his wedding again.

  He would never have to think about the way that Gabriel had looked at him when he had found him by the pool of that dingy motel, with a mixture of relief and anger that Holden never wanted have to experience again in his life.

  That had been Sean’s fault. The way that Gabriel had looked at him, his brown eyes almost black, the way he had brushed his hair back from his forehead, that was all Sean.

  Sean didn’t deserve to be forgiven, Gabriel thought, looking at the knife in his hands and at the pretty white sofa under him.

  He deserved to feel the pain that he had made Holden feel, the pain that he had made Gabriel feel.

  Holden might have been able to get over what Sean had done to him, but Gabriel was a step too far.

  No one messed with him.

  Gabriel never allowed anyone to mess with him. Holden had always thought it was silly, that he pushed everyone away, that he never seemed to like having a conversation where people disagreed with him. But now he got it, and he had only gotten it because of Sean.

  He understood it the moment that Gabriel almost tackled him after he’d found him, he felt it in his bones when Gabriel was doing his nails and putting make-up on his face.

  Gabriel had done such a good job protecting Holden that it had never occurred to Holden that Gabriel might have been the one that needed protection. Holden had felt so stupid that he hadn’t realized, but it made perfect sense.

  Sean’s behavior had crystalized it for him.

  He sighed heavily and looked down at the pillow once again, grabbing it and putting it right next to him, just out of reach enough so that he wouldn’t hurt himself, not even accidentally.

  He traced the word love with the edge of the knife, and then slowly, very slowly, he started to press harder.

  He could see the indentation on the fabric from the knife, but it wasn't like it was doing anything. He started pressing harder, until he could hear fabric ripping open.

  The stuffing looked like yellowed cotton balls and Holden didn’t want to touch it. He was pretty sure that just being around the stuff would make someone feel itchy.

  Once there was a big slit cut open in the middle of the pillow, he grabbed it and opened it widely, which started to spill the contents of the pillow on the sofa.

  As far as acts of vandalism went, this wasn’t a bad one by far, but it was just the start. He smiled at his work, at all the yellow filling on the perfect white sofa, at how dirty it looked, at the deflated pillow in his hands.

  This was good. Sean would come home and see this and he would freak out. But it wasn’t good enough, Holden needed to do more. He needed to make him understand that he was serious.

  Holden Brochu was no one to fuck with, he thought with a smile. Sean would learn that, since he clearly hadn’t already. Holden walked toward the sofa and pressed the knife hard into the cushion. It made a satisfying sound, and it wasn’t difficult, though it was firmer than he had been expecting it to be.

  The filling started to overflow out of the cushion that he had just attacked, so he moved to another one, and then another one, and soon he was done with Sean’s perfect show home ready living room. There was stuffing everywhere, all his throw pillows had been destroyed, and he was definitely going to freak out when he got home.

  Holden smiled. He grabbed the bottom of the glass coffee table and flipped it over. He watched as the glass top hit the tile floor, making a sound but not quite breaking.

  He considered stepping on it so that it would shatter into small pieces, but then he decided that he didn't have enough time for that, and this was plenty.

  He still had to go to the bedroom, he still had to turn on all the faucets in the house and block the drains. He still had to carry out the rest of his plan.

  He didn’t need the knife anymore, but he didn’t want to leave it in the middle of the living room. He didn’t want Sean to think that he was a threat when he wasn’t. He was just trying to fuck around with his world a little bit, to make him see that when he did things, there were consequences.

  He couldn’t outrun consequences. Nobody could.

  He walked into Sean's perfect bedroom, squinting as though the sun was hitting his face.

  It was night time, but just facing this window reminded him how little he liked being here. That was one thing that Holden had always hated about staying at Sean’s house. The window might have been calming, but even though they lived somewhere hot, Sean insisted that he wouldn’t draw the curtains during the day, regardless of how hot the inside of the house got.

  He said that it affected how beautiful the place looked. Holden could see that, but mostly, he hated it. The place didn’t feel more open. If anything, it felt hotter, stiffer.

  As always, everything Sean did was about appearances. Holden sighed as he looked at Sean’s bed, wondering how much of him was real.

  He wondered if even Sean himself would be able to answer that question. Holden would never know, because it wasn’t as if he could ask Sean. Even if he could, he had no intention to.

  He didn’t want to hear anything that Sean had to say ever again, he thought as he walked into the bedroom.

  He drew the curtains and smiled as he walked over to the nightstand to turn on the lamp.

  The quilt was gray, with little trimmings of purple.

  Holden was sure that it was expensive, far more expensive than anything that Holden would ever have in his own apartment. It was thick and heavy, and absolutely not season appropriate.

  Holden grabbed it and started to carry it toward Sean’s bathroom, ignoring how heavy it was.

  He kicked the door open and tried to fit all of the quilt into the bathtub, but it didn’t work.

  It was good enough that half was in and half was out, though, and he leaned down to run the tap just to fill in the tub. Hopefully it would be enough to expand the quilt, at the very least. Hopefully it would be enough to make Sean freak out.

  He wasn't sure how much damage putting a quilt under running water was going to do, but he knew that Sean wouldn’t be back any time soon.

  Holden had absolutely no reason to believe that Gabriel wouldn’t hold up his end of the bargain. He always did. That was the one thing that he could, invariably, count on.

  He moved the quilt slightly so that a different part of it was taking water and pondered exactly how bad this would be for it. He was sure that it was going to take a long time for Sean to be able to dry it out. It wouldn’t fit in his dryer and Sean didn’t have a clothes line. He wouldn’t have been caught dead using a clothesline anyway, Holden thought with a smile.

  He took inventory of his accomplishments so far. When Sean walked in, he would be freaked out, and he would have a ton of shit to deal with already.

  There was also the fact that there might be possible flooding, because he had turned on the faucet for the sink too, and he could hear it running.

  He wasn’t sure how bad the flooding should be. A sofa was one thing, but flooding was serious. Then again, a wedding was serious. Maybe flooding was exactly what Sean deserved. He was lucky that he hadn’t set his house on fire and that all he had done was carry out a few harmless pranks. Water wasn’t so bad, he thought as he shook his head. Sean should be able to deal with it.

  He was kneeling next to the tub as he had all these thoughts, parts of the quilt still in his hand. He had left his phone in the kitchen, next to the knife rack, and now, for some odd reason, he desperately needed to check it.

  He needed to ask Gabriel if this was okay. He needed Gabriel to tell him how far this went before it wasn’t okay anymore.

  Holden had been aware that Gabriel hadn’t exactly been encouraging to his plans, but he hadn’t discouraged him either. Gabriel just wanted him to feel better.

  He made sure to stuff the quilt in a little bit further into the tub, and then he could feel the water on his toes. Until then, he hadn’t realized just how long he had stayed on the tile floor of Sean’s bathroom. He was wearing sandals and he hadn’t realized just how cold the water was going to be on his feet.

  The way that the water felt on his feet—it was as if the water was reminding him of where he actually was, in space, and what he was doing.

  And what he was doing was crazy, it suddenly occurred to him, with a clarity and sharpness that felt like pain.

  He got up quickly and turned off the water in the bathroom, then went back to the kitchen. He wanted to ignore the living room because he really didn't want to look at it, but he couldn't.

  He needed to stop and get the knife, the one that had done so much damage to Sean's home.

  He grabbed it, took a deep breath, and went back to the kitchen, ignoring the fluffy stuffing everywhere. He was sneezing and he was sure that it would be a pain in the ass to clean up, but he didn’t feel satisfied at that idea anymore.

  Instead, he felt a little sick to his stomach.

  The walk to the kitchen felt like he was walking through water, because it seemed like the air had gotten thicker.

  Not just from the stuffing, though.

  Everything was in slow motion, and the things that he had done were so obviously in front of him, and its effects so very immediate and visible, that Holden had to close his eyes tightly as he walked to the kitchen.

 

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