Page 69 of Beau and the Beast

"No, I didn't. I tried to make it work—for ten months, actually. A lot longer than I normally try. Iwantedit to work. But I finally made myself face the reality that I could barely have a conversation with him."

"Ah," Wolfram said, thinking he understood perfectly. "That's why it's so important to have things in common."

Beau looked at him quizzically.

"Do you think it is?" Beau asked.

"Certainly. How else do you find mutual ground to relate? No, you need a solid foundation that you share," Wolfram said, realizing even as he said the words that he had no idea what he was talking about. He'd just gotten done confessing that he'd never had a romantic relationship that was significant, and here he was talking about love.

"I disagree," Beau said firmly. "Look at the two of us. Our lives couldn't be more different. Our backgrounds are different, our professions—hell, you're twenty years older than I am. But we talk so easily, to the point where we both forget what time it is. It's been, what, two weeks without a day off and we're still not out of things to say."

"You're right," Wolfram said quickly. "I hadn't thought about it that way. I was just telling myself that on another planet, on a different timeline, I would've liked to meet you when I looked like a normal man—but of course I convinced myself that you would've rejected me flat out."

Beau laughed hard, pinching the bridge of his nose—harder than the statement warranted.

"What?" Wolfram said. "Is it that difficult to imagine?"

"No, oh my God, Wolf, it's not that," Beau said, almost hiccupping. "It's just that even in your imagination you really loathe yourself, don't you?"

Wolfram postured up and frowned.

"Am I that transparent?"

Beau shook his head, still apparently feeling the aftershocks of his laughter.

"I can read you like a book," he said, smiling.

"I suppose in my imaginary scenario, you could just let me down easy, instead," Wolfram said.

"Jesus," Beau said. "Why not shoot for the moon? It's your fantasy. Are you so serious even inside that big brain?"

"Doing anything but being serious is taking practice," Wolfram admitted. "But with you around all the time, I'm starting to remember how it's done."

"Just like riding a bike, Wolf," Beau said, smiling. "We'll keep trying."

Chapter Fourteen

More than twoweeks after his big brother had disappeared on his mysterious work assignment, Noah found himself doing something extraordinary.

He was grocery shopping.

At 25, he knew he should've gone solo grocery shopping at least once before. He could remember going with his dad to the store and sitting in the shopping cart, Beau trotting along beside the cart.

But that had been different. That grocery store had been big with wide aisles and friendly faces—nothing like the bodega down the street where he found himself that morning.

When he'd gone with his family, there had been no one there to stare at him—only friendly faces, people calling him and his brothercuteafter greeting their dad fondly.

On Saturday morning, the bodega was cramped and crowded and Noah was fighting an absurd existential crisis in the canned soup section.

He'd put off the errand as long as he could. Noah was lucky because Beau never wasted a goddamn thing, including leftovers—so even though there had been no one to grocery shop since Beau had left, there had been plenty of food in the apartment. Noah had made his way through the leftovers in the fridge, then the freezer, and then he'd gone through the pantry, cooking every last dry bean and grain of rice that he could find.

But despite the fact that he was supplementing his diet with his quick runs to the pizza place downstairs to grab a dollar slice and jaunts to the vending machine in the apartment lobby, the food in the apartment had run out—of course it had—and he'd needed to make a plan to get more.

Noah thought that the bodega down the street would probably be deserted if he showed up early enough. He'd dug his rolling backpack out of the closet.

It should be an easy run, he thought. Four blocks to the store, grab a few things and stuff them into the rolling bag, then four blocks back to the apartment. He could do that once a week until Beau got home. That wouldn't be impossible.

As he stood in the aisle that morning though, fluorescent bulbs buzzing overhead like malevolent insects, Noah realized he'd been wrong. New Whitby never slept, and the bodega was filled with people—tourists and locals alike—all jostling to get what they wanted.

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