North and Shaw Out of Office - Gregory Ashe Page 0,18

point, he slept, dreamless this time. North stayed awake until the room flooded with the gray pre-dawn, and then he closed his eyes to keep from crying.

PUPPY PATROL

This story takes place before Declination.

1

THE DOG IN the next cabin wouldn’t stop barking.

“Do you hear that?” North said.

“What?” Shaw asked from deeper in the house.

“That dog. The one barking.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

North dropped their bags by the door; the summer heat poured in behind him, carrying the smell of the lake, the honeysuckle, the shady spots between the trees. He didn’t like any of it; it put an itch between his shoulder blades he couldn’t scratch. It hadn’t changed since they’d come here at the beginning of freshman year. He settled for shutting the door and leaning against it, as though he could keep the outside outside.

“At least it has air conditioning,” North said.

North found Shaw at the far end of the house. Shaw had already stripped down to a pair of swim trunks that were so short—and so tight—that they might as well have been Speedos. Fuck, they might as well have been nothing at all. He lay on the sofa, totally comfortable in the log mini-mansion where they were spending their Labor Day vacation. It made sense that he’d be comfortable; this was his family’s lake house, after all.

For a moment, North could see Shaw as he’d been eight years ago: skinnier, less confident, but with the same patch of coppery hair mixed in with the reddish brown. He could see the curve of Shaw’s spine as he bent over the sofa, listening to something Percy was saying, his face turned to catch every word, like Percy was giving the fucking Sermon on the Mount.

“You hate this place,” Shaw said. “I totally forgot that you hate this place.”

“It’s fine.” It had ghosts; that’s what North wanted to say. Not just Percy’s and North’s and Shaw’s. Tucker’s ghost was here too, back before North had ever imagined he might date the asshole, let alone marry him. “It’s a million dollars of totally, perfectly fine.”

“Maybe you should get naked.”

“Somebody might see us.” North glanced at the wide windows that looked out on green grass and brakes of raspberry bushes and the slender droop of a weeping willow and then the dock stretching out into all that muddy water. No billboards. No streetlights. No cars. No people. He fought off a shudder at the prospect of so much emptiness. They could pull the blinds at least. No reason to give everyone a show—and no reason they needed to stare out at a wilderness.

“We’re at the lake,” Shaw said as though that explained something.

The dog was still barking; North could hear it through the shut door, even over the rumble of the air conditioning. “We’re at Innsbrook. Ten thousand people are probably here this weekend, all of them staying in places like this, even if it looks like we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Let’s go swimming.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You’re worried about burning.” Shaw brightened. “I brought sunscreen. I can rub it on your back. Please let me rub it on your back.”

North snorted. “Not a chance.”

“Remember when Percy pushed you off the dock? Remember how mad you got?”

“I’m surprised you remember; you were too busy staring at Percy’s ass.”

“He had on really tight shorts,” Shaw said. “Sue me.”

North snorted again.

“We could go skinny dipping.”

The thought of being naked in that brown water, of kicking his legs down where . . . something could swim past him, made North shiver.

“Oh my gosh.” Shaw’s eyes were wide. “Oh my gosh.”

“Stop.”

“You don’t know how to swim.”

“Fuck that. I used to swim a mile every day at the Y.”

Narrowing his eyes, Shaw pushed back a strand of reddish-brown hair. “You’re afraid of the lake.”

“I’m not afraid of the lake.”

“It’s totally safe.”

North just shook his head, trying not to get into it, but the words slipped out before he could stop them: “Not totally.”

“How is it not safe?”

“Just drop it, Shaw.”

“No, I want to know. Is it, like, bacteria? Do you have a cut or something that might get infected?”

“Jesus, no. That’s gross.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know, Shaw. We live in a state with about a million poisonous water moccasins. What could go wrong swimming in a muddy lake?”

“Venomous.”

“What?”

Shaw propped himself on one elbow. “Venomous. Animals are venomous. Plants are poisonous. Maybe spiders are poisonous too. They’re kind of a gray area.”

“Venomous. Poisonous. Who the fuck cares? I don’t want one biting me.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“I know I’ll be fine. I’m not getting