Page 11 of Ink & Snow
“Yeah, I’m sure. I still want to fuck you though. Guess you’ll have to let me know when it’s all right for me to ask you that.”
I saw a wet sheen come over Amory’s eyes, and I had no idea what had triggered that, my words, the snow, the cold. I didn’t want to poke him in case it had been me.
After a minute or two, he asked, “And you’re a florist?”
“I don’t have formal training, but my aunt had a flower shop. She raised me, and I worked there ever since I could, end of elementary school all the way to high school. I’ve been doing stuff I didn’t really enjoy for the past few years just because I’m good at it. I figured it was time for something new, something that didn’t drain the life out of me. And the flowers never drained me. So I figured I’d do that.”
“Wow. That sounds like a midlife crisis thing.”
Yeah, needed to watch this one with both eyes for sure. “You calling me old, Amory?”
“No. You don’t look old. I meant, like, it would be surprising if it was that.”
“Ah. Sure.”
“Really though. You’re not old.” He paused, tilting his head, his fingers curling against mine in my pocket. “How old are you though?”
“Thirty-two.”
He beamed. “In Korea, I’d be calling you my hyung.”
“Huh? Young?”
He laughed. “No, no. H-y-u-n-g. It’s what you call a guy who’s older than you. It’s this respectful thing they do, you know.”
“Right. You can call me that if you want.”
He led us down a street, residential, and the lights strung up on a tree in one of the yards illuminated his face, painting the planes and angles in artificial blue light.
“No, I think I like calling you Soyer.”
“Okay then.”
He pointed. “It’s that house there, next to the church. My stepdad is the caretaker.”
I frowned. “You the churchy type?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Mom forces me to go every now and then, but I secretly joined the Satanic Temple in college. College was really transformative that way, you know.”
“I see. Good thing too. I’m not overly fond—” of dealing with clergy messes, I almost said. Those fucking messes always made me feel like filth after cleaning them up, and these old men in their dresses saying their magic words in old buildings had never learned to keep their hands off children. Filth in robes, that’s what they truly were. “Not very fond of religion,” I said, steering clear.
“Don’t come to Sunday dinner. They say grace and everything. I’m just lucky to have a little half-sister who does the whole thing a lot better than me or my sister ever did. She’s mom’s favorite, which means me being the black sheep tattoo artist of the family isn’t her focus of attention, and my sister’s fine with being able to do her thing too.”
“I’ll cook you dinner,” I told him when we stopped outside a neat family home. The drive had been cleared and lights were strung up all over the place, plastic angels singing silent songs next to a manger in the front yard.
“Might take you up on that,” Amory said.
He pulled his hand from my pocket. I wasn’t going to be the complete and utter asshole who tried to get a goodnight kiss out of someone on the ace spectrum but fuck if I didn’t want to.
“See you around, neighbor.” Amory waved at me with his bandaged hand.
“Take care. Don’t get that hand wet.”
He grinned. “I have tons of surgical gloves. Comes with the job.”
“Good. Sweet dreams, Amory.”
“You too,” he said quietly after a shy little pause.
