Page 62 of Epidermis

“Will you stay tonight?” Konrad asked, barely louder than a whisper.

“Yeah.” Jasper kissed him again in preemptive apology for his next words. “After tonight, I should probably spend some time at home, though. I feel bad that my dogs have been alone so much lately. You’re welcome to come spend the night with me too, but I know it’s a lot more convenient to do that here since it’s closer to work for both of us.”

“I’m an early riser, so the added time to my commute is of no consequence. However, if you would like some time to yourself, I won’t take it to heart.”

“I know you wouldn’t.” Jasper smiled. “But I don’t.”

Konrad smiled too, with his beautiful, crooked teeth, deepening the lines around his eyes, and Jasper loved him like he loved starlight.

twenty

Jasper wasn’t sure how long it had been there, but it took about two weeks for him to notice the new picture on the wall next to the staircase in Konrad’s house. He just happened to glance over and see it. Recognition didn’t even strike instantly, he kept walking almost to the top of the stairs, then backtracked as his brain caught up to his eyes. In a black frame that matched all the others was a photo of him wearing a long skirt, sitting in Hiyori’s window, looking into the camera with mild disapproval. He heard footsteps and looked up to see Konrad at the top of the stairs, following his gaze to the picture with a smile.

“How did you even get this?” Jasper asked.

“Hiyori sent them to me. I had this one printed and framed.”

Jasper huffed, trudging up the stairs, flattered and embarrassed at the same time. “So, she sent them all to you, and you wanted the one where I look kind of pissed?”

“You look righteous, as if to gaze upon you is a privilege. I quite agree.”

Why did I even ask? Of course it was an answer like that.

Jasper had only gone back downstairs for his glass of wine that he’d forgotten at the dining table, so he got back into bed with the refilled glass in tow, sitting up against the headboard. He picked up his sketchbook and opened it across his legs. Konrad sat next to him, reading the book he’d abandoned to check on Jasper when he’d been taking so long to return.

For a long while, there was only the sound of a pencil scratching against paper, and the occasional turning of a page. Jasper had been enjoying how often Konrad was spending nights at his farmhouse, but he was prepared to admit that Konrad’s bed was way more comfortable.

He blew excess charcoal off his sketch and realized Konrad was staring at him.

“Can I help you?” Jasper asked, his lips twitching against his best efforts to ask with a straight face.

Konrad opened his mouth, then looked away, picking his book up again. He tried to continue reading until he noticed that Jasper was pointedly staring at him just as he’d been doing to Jasper a moment ago. His eyes slid over to Jasper, who raised his eyebrows in expectation. Konrad put the book back down. “There’s somewhere I wish to take you, but it would be for my benefit alone, and likely a rather solemn affair at that.”

Konrad’s voice was unsteady, and he wouldn’t look at him. That made Jasper put his sketchbook fully aside, and he did the same with Konrad’s book so he could inch closer, until their shoulders touched. “Konrad, talk to me,” he implored.

When Konrad finally did, his words—wrought as they were with emotion that he did a poor job of concealing—were not anything Jasper could have anticipated.

“I would like to introduce you to Anna.”

Jasper was stunned, but it had visibly taken so much effort for Konrad to say it that he knew he didn’t have the luxury of a long silence in which to form his answer. Konrad’s eyes sparkled with more than just their beauty, his jaw flexing, and Jasper didn’t think he’d ever seen him so vulnerable. So Jasper just took his hand and said the first thing that came to mind.

“I’d love to meet her.”

Konrad looked at him at last, the wetness in his eyes clinging to his lashes like early dew on the threads of a spiderweb, and in that moment, he was perhaps just as fragile. He closed his hand around Jasper’s and nodded. Jasper knew the look of a man who didn’t trust himself to speak without crumbling, so he leaned over and wrapped his arms around him, pulling Konrad’s face into his shoulder. He stroked his hair in silence, his fingers grazing Konrad’s earring.

They went on Jasper’s next day off. They spent the night before at Jasper’s, and he got up before Konrad, slipping out of bed and avoiding the floorboards he knew would creak if he stepped on them. He pulled on his boots at the front door and took the dogs on the short walk to the lake. It was early enough for the sky to still be grey and mist to still sit on top of the placid water. He walked along the edge of the shore, picking flowers from among the tall weeds, his hands getting wet from the moisture that clung to the grass.

When he got back to the house, he was carrying a messily assembled bouquet of violet irises and clusters of pink swamp milkweed, tied with twine from his shed. Konrad was sitting on the front steps. The dogs rushed up to him, ignoring Jasper’s whistle for them to settle down, making a rare and unanimous decision to ignore his commands to greet Konrad instead.

“I tried not to wake you,” Jasper said apologetically.

“You didn’t.” Konrad looked at the shoddy arrangement in Jasper’s hand, his jaw working in that way it did when he didn’t want the next thing out of his mouth to sound like he felt. “Brightening up the kitchen table?”

Jasper stopped in front of him, one step lower than where Konrad sat. He fidgeted with the twine wrapped around the flowers’ damp stems. “They’re for Anna.”

Konrad leaned in until his forehead met Jasper’s abdomen. Jasper wrapped an arm around his wide shoulders, stroking his sleep-mussed hair, and Konrad wrapped his hand around Jasper’s that still held the flowers safely down at his side. Jasper didn’t expect him to say anything, and was content to stand there with him in silence, but Konrad eventually said, “She loved flowers.” He swallowed with an audible click of his throat. “Thank you.”

“Let’s have breakfast,” Jasper said. He’d learned Konrad could only stand to open up about his sister by the smallest increments before he needed to step back from that yawning chasm of grief. Jasper couldn’t relate to the depth of Konrad’s loss, but he could only imagine the way it hurt his heart, to think of her so fondly yet be pierced so deeply by her memory.