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“Isn’t it just awful?” Miss O’Jenny held a hand to her now-Harry-free bosom. “God, it’s like the end of an era, isn’t it? Not that I’m admitting how old I am?—”
“God forbid,” Tristan said, earning himself a smack on the arse with her handbag.
“Not that I’m admitting how old I am,” she continued, “but back when I was just a fresh-faced country boy from Taree, Jimmy bought me my first drink and my first set of tits.” She sniffled, then tugged a lacy handkerchief from her handbag. “My fucking mascara’s going to run, isn’t it?”
“You look gorgeous,” Tristan said, looking around at the people arriving. He knew quite a few of the faces—a few more drag queens, Wei from the adult shop, and a couple of the pole dancers and the bartender from The Palace. But there were also a bunch of serious-faced people who were looking back at them like they were the ones who didn’t belong here. As soon as they went inside the chapel, Tristan saw that the lines had been well and truly drawn. The left side of the chapel was full of queens, go-go boys and queer octogenarians who must have been Mr. Erskine’s peers. The right side of the chapel had about a pew and half filled with people in sensible suits and blouses in varying shades of black, with nary a sequin among them.
In fairness, Tristan was also wearing black, but he was wearing it with style. He’d specifically worn the leather pants that Mr. Erskine had always said made his arse look delicious. He felt like the old man would have appreciated the gesture.
“Did Mr. Erskine have a secret double life as an accountant?” he asked, helping Miss O’Jenny into a pew.
Miss O’Jenny huffed out a bitter laugh. “Oh, that would be his family.”
She said it in a way that made Tristan want to reach past all her battle makeup and find that fresh-faced country boy from Taree and tell him that he’d be okay. But he nodded instead, then sat down beside her in the pew.
Harry and Jack squeezed in beside him. Ambrose and Liam sat behind them with Wei.
The service was short and sombre, and there was nothing in the eulogy that reminded Tristan of the man he’d known at all. The family sat stoically through the entire thing without a ripple of emotion crossing their faces except for one young man, who looked genuinely devastated when they reached the end of the service and the coffin went rumbling on tracks through a curtain at the back, presumably for cremation. Tristan watched as the young man’s throat bobbed and he ran the heel of his hand over his eyes, presumably fighting back tears.
He was attractive, in a tense, rumpled-accountant kind of way. He was also wearing black, but interestingly, Tristan spotted a discreet rainbow pin on his lapel. The guy looked to be in his late twenties. He had dark, wavy hair with curls that brushed the collar of his jacket, a dusting of rather enticing stubble along his jaw and wide, expressive brown eyes that were distinctly red-rimmed. He was shorter than Tristan—although since Tristan was six feet four, most people were—and compactly built. If it hadn’t been a funeral Tristan might have hit on him, but even he had some decorum, apparently.
He’d wait for the wake, like a decent person.
Although now that he thought about it, the guy was sitting with the family. Maybe, Tristan speculated as they filed towards the side room for tea and sandwiches, he was Jimmy Erskine’s boyfriend, and that was why he’d been welcomed into the family fold. It wouldn’t surprise Tristan in the least to find that Mr. Erskine had a pretty boy one-third his age warming his bed, and he felt a pang of sympathy for the guy as he watched him fill a plate with finger sandwiches then stare at them, unseeing.
Deciding that the least he could do was offer a shoulder to cry on, he stepped in closer and placed a hand on the man’s arm. The guy startled and almost dropped his plate, but Tristan managed to save it. “Sorry,” he whispered, before wondering why he was whispering. It was a funeral, not a library.
The guy frowned at him. “Do I know you?”
“No, but I just wanted to offer my condolences,” Tristan said, petting the man’s sleeve for no good reason.
The man gave him a small nod of acknowledgement before pulling his arm back. “Thank you.”
“Can I ask how long you were together?”
Dark eyebrows pulled downward. “I beg your pardon?”
“You and Jimmy,” Tristan clarified. “I’m assuming you were”—he glanced at the various relatives and lowered his voice further—take that, anyone who’d ever accused him of being indiscreet—“his inamorato?” He was greeted by stunned silence. “The cowboy he rode to save a horse?” he clarified. Again, a blank stare. Obviously, he was being too subtle, which wasn’t something that had ever happened to Tristan before. He blinked and tried again. “The, um, object of his affections? The friend with all the benefits? Boytoy? Lover?”
The man’s brows shot back up, and he hissed, “Jesus, no! He was my great-uncle!”
Oops.
There was probably no way to salvage this, was there? Especially not by saying, which for some reason Tristan did, “Sorry, you just looked like his type.”
So much for discretion.
The guy’s face covered a range of emotions between horror and disgust, then landed somewhere in the middle of them both, as though he’d tasted something truly awful on his finger sandwiches. “Oh, Jesus. He was ninety-two!”
“And still had perfect eyesight, apparently,” Tristan said, wincing apologetically. He decided that on balance it was probably better not to mention that Mr. Erskine had come on to Harry quite recently and had always been bragging to Tristan about what they could get up to if only he’d been twenty years younger. Maybe fifty years and Tristan would have considered it, but he’d always smiled, agreed, and flirted right back because Mr. Erskine was hilariously incorrigible and hell, a part of Tristan hoped to be just as outrageous at that age.
The guy’s brow furrowed. “Perfect eyesight?”
“Because you’re hot,” Tristan said, faltering. “Only now that I say it, that makes no sense, because you’re his nephew and not his hot younger lover, so he wouldn’t be looking at you like that at all. Shit.”
The guy looked at Tristan, down at his sandwiches, and then at Tristan again. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and eat my sandwiches somewhere else. Away from you.”
“Yes,” Tristan said. “Okay. Sorry for the confusion. It was nice to meet you.”
