Excerpt
Excerpt from The Ghost of Solstice Past
…Timothy lay beside him now, fast asleep in the cold air. An occasional snore punctuated his soft breathing. Jasper smiled, appreciating the warmth of his partner's body, listening to the wind smacking a branch against the rooftop.
He heard no other sounds. A single shaft of light broke the right-hand edge of the black-out curtains, the same way it always did. He could never seem to get the curtains pulled evenly closed, no matter how hard he tried.
So why was he awake? Jasper scanned the quiet bedroom, the sleeping Craftsman bungalow. Nothing. But now that he was awake, he may as well get up and pee.
Swinging his legs out from the covers, he hissed as the cold air hit his naked legs. He stretched his toes out, feeling around on the soft rug for his slippers. Couldn't find them. Oh well. He'd be back in the warm bed again soon enough.
Jasper grabbed his flannel robe from the bedpost and eased into it, belting it around his belly. He padded his way through the bedroom, navigating around the heavy furniture by that single shaft of light. He followed the soft glow of the bathroom nightlight down the hall, halfway there, he heard a noise. A soft rattling of keys, knocking against a wallet chain.
A noise he hadn't heard since nineteen ninety-two, when gay men, hip hop heads, bikers, and punks all tethered the leather wallets in their back pockets to a leather snap tab that held their keys by a heavy chain. When you slipped your keys into the front pocket of your jeans, they clinked against the chain.
There it was again.
Yeah. They clinked against the chain in just that way. And when you also had a drilled AA chip clipped to the chain, the sound was even more specific.
The soft noise came from the kitchen, a jingling counterpoint to the click and hum of the refrigerator.
As Jasper approached the kitchen, the smell burned cloves smacked him in the face. He stumbled against the wall, shoulder displacing one of the framed photos he could barely see. Dark shapes. Rectangles and squares. Ghosts of moments, happy and bittersweet.
Ghosts of moments, like standing outside a nightclub South of Market, waiting for the most handsome man he'd ever seen to finish the goddamn clove cigarette and kiss him again.
The most handsome man, muscular. Hard. With a scratchy beard and a wicked smile.
Of course. It was Solstice Eve. What was it about ghosts and the longest night? Last year it was Nanna, coming to visit him. This year it was…
"Danny." The name was another ghost in the dark hallway, the shape of it on his lips, once so familiar, the taste of it like a kiss made of cloves and nicotine and smoke.
