Page 43 of Set Fire to This Cardhouse

“Not anymore.” Setting the small table upright, Toby stretches out his legs. He considers leaving it at that, but the propeller’s vibrations fill him with a sense of ease, a comfortable buzz in his stomach, and the blinding brightness of the sun reflecting off a cloud-made ocean sparks in his eyes. “It used to,” he continues. “For a while, I wanted to take those headlines and shove them at my wife to say, ‘Here, look at me, look at what I did.’” He squints at the view. “Well, ex-wife. Which, you know. Part of the problem.”

In the periphery of his vision, Mike shifts. “You were married?”

“Long story.” Toby lifts both shoulders in a shrug. “Or maybe not that long. We were fairly young, she was beautiful, and I was stupid. Marriage seemed like the thing to do. Who would have thought that a smart woman will see through your flimsy excuses for frequent, sudden absences? Not me, that’s who.” He doesn’t meet Mike’s eyes. “Mistakes made, lessons learned, not necessarily wiser for the experience.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s a quiet statement, Mike’s head bent a little so that his lashes hide his eyes. When Toby glances over, he takes absent note of how remarkably long Mike’s lashes are.

“Appreciate the sentiment, but it’s water under the bridge, you know? Even without the lies, it wouldn’t have worked out just because I wanted it to.” Mostly, he’s telling the truth: he’s no textbook example for well-adjusted adulthood, but he has largely dealt with his shit.

Mike is silent for a long moment, his brows drawn together. When he speaks again, his tone is light—carefully so. “I didn’t know you were straight.”

“Whoa, hold it right there.” Toby twists in the seat to get a better look at him. “First off, I assume you’ve heard of bisexuality as a concept, correct? Because if the answer is no, then you, my friend, will spend the next two days watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show and reading Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Plus other movies, books and TV shows you might have missed while living under that comfortable rock of yours. Forget the beach.”

“Oh.” Mike looks so openly relieved that Toby wants to hit him. Or kiss him, possibly.

He softens his voice. “Seriously, Mike. I’m not going through a sexual identity crisis of some sort—been there, done that, and have come to the conclusion that while I don’t care to define myself in rigid terms, I’m primarily attracted to guys, these days. I wasn’t lying when I said that it’s our working relationship that worries me.”

If Toby was smart, he’d leave it at that. Mike is watching him with a strange, quiet intensity, though, and Toby clearly isn’t smart, because what he adds is, “I also wasn’t faking how much I enjoyed myself that night. Seriously, get a handle on those insecurity issues, will you? With all due respect, of course.”

“Of course,” Mike echoes. He’s aiming for dry humor, but relief still swings in his tone, and how can someone who looks like Mike harbor persistent doubts about Toby’s genuine attraction to him? If Toby was that good-looking, he’d be a cocky bastard about it.

Well, in all fairness, Mike is a cocky bastard—he certainly didn’t doubt his ability to charm Jeannot’s daughter out of her father’s room. Maybe it’s just Toby he finds difficult to read, then.

“What about you?” Toby asks. “How do you handle it, not being able to tell your partner the truth? Unless you just... do.”

“I don’t get into relationships.” Mike says it like it’s an obvious choice, no further clarifications needed.

“What, never?” Toby knows he’s staring, but... Just, never? True, after Jada, Toby made a conscious decision to stay away from anything serious, but he’s never treated it so dismissively.

“It’s not that weird.” Mike counters Toby’s blatant stare with a blank look. “You’re not about to tell me that life is empty without love, right? That the only way to happiness is through another person?”

“That’s exactly what I was going to tell you.” Toby keeps all inflection out of his voice. “And maybe after, we can look at my unicorn collection, if you don’t mind. Really, though—does SEAL training include lessons in how to switch off your emotions completely?”

Mike’s smile creases the corners of his eyes. “That’s the advanced course.”

“Which you aced.”

“Nah. Once in a while, something still slips through.” Mike shrugs nonchalantly, muscles shifting with it, and Toby needs to stop being so aware.

“I’m sorry to hear it. That must be disconcerting.”

“I handle it with patience and grace.”

Toby raises both brows and smirks across the separation, settling into the safety of banter. “A true inspiration, you are.”

“Thank you.” Mike bends his head, humbled. His eyes are bright with amusement, and Toby looks away after a moment, leaning back in his seat to watch the sun flood the sky with so much light that it’s hard to even look at it.

VIII. Samara Beach, Costa Rica

M ike rents them a 4x4 car and pays in cash. They sign a form in which they agree they won’t take the car out of the country, or drive it on unpaved roads or through rivers. That second part makes Mike’s lips twitch suspiciously.

“You were lying,” Toby says as soon as they’re both seated. “You, my friend, were shamelessly lying to that poor man. I swear to God that if we return this car broken and drowned, it will not be on my head.”

“I’ll take full responsibility.” Mike is grinning almost too widely, an unnatural tilt to it as they pull off the rental company’s property and onto the road. Before Toby gets a chance to investigate, Mike remarks, out of the blue, “Haley would enjoy surfing, don’t you think so?”

She would. However...

“At the risk of sounding repetitive: there’s a way conversations work, and this isn’t it.” The car smells of overheated leather. Toby flicks the air conditioning on and undoes the first three buttons of his shirt before he turns his face into the gust of cool air. After the Ecuadorian Andes, the heat of Costa Rica’s Pacific coast is a mild shock. “Conversations aren’t the equivalent of firing random sentences at each other. If you expect me to follow your thought process to a point where it makes sense for you to say ‘Haley would enjoy surfing’, you need to bring me along for the ride. It is not like throwing grenades, you see.”

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