Once school started, Evie came back from her summer job down the shore, football practice began and chores on the farm took over my life. At least, that’s what I told myself. I couldn’t find a way to make Vinny part of my life beyond that summer without making my entire world explode. I ignored him at school, pretty much, even though alone in bed at night I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I kept those worlds separate because they seemed to be in completely different orbits. It was a shitty thing to do. I know it now and I even knew it then.
I left The Hideaway mad as hell at Vinny—or rather Vince—for the way he treated me in the kitchen, but the truth is I deserve everything he said to me and more. How could I ever get him to understand the choices I made back then and why I made them? How could I explain to him how hard I have worked to undo everything I did back then? Then I remember how I already started on the wrong foot. He asked about Evie and I went all mysterious and vague. I should have told him we got divorced. I should have told him that we still co-parent a wonderful, funny six-year-old. I should definitely have told him that I finally came out as bi. But picking him up on the side of the road was such a confusing surprise that my brain wasn’t functioning at full capacity.
A car flies past me with a series of aggressive honks and I’m back to reality. “Crap, Axel, we gotta blaze,” I tell my truck after I catch a glimpse of the clock on the dashboard. We kick into gear and pull up to the farm much later than I usually do. My father is standing on the porch that wraps around the white farmhouse, propping himself up with his cane.
“Where have you been?” he asks.
“Dad, you shouldn’t be out on the porch, it’s too cold out still. Did the nurse say it was okay to be out like this?” I ask as I grab the crates from the farmers market and start putting them in the storage barn near the house.
“I don’t take orders from her or anyone.”
As soon as my back is turned I roll my eyes. My dad has slowed down over the past couple of years almost to the point of being immobile, but while his body has weakened his ornery personality has not.
“Where have you been?” he barks at me again. I’m thirty-five but he treats me like I’m still fifteen. I guess the fact that I moved back into the farmhouse after the divorce didn’t help me mature any in his eyes. Divorce is a sin right up there with other sins of the flesh but living here is the only way I can pay for classes at culinary school. Everything in New Hope is too expensive but I keep looking hoping I can find a deal like the one Evie got.
I need to just drop off the materials and crates and get on the road to school. I can’t be late today. We have a special event with a chef visiting from a restaurant in Philly. He’s doing a demo of some pan-to-plate sauces and I’ve been looking forward to seeing his technique for weeks. I know I can grasp it if I just watch an expert do it in front of me. This kind of event only happens once a semester.
“Sorry I’m so late,” I say, staying focused on moving the crates. “They’re working on the bridge over on Headquarters Road.” It’s true they are working on the bridge. I didn’t drive that way but still I’m not technically lying. My God understands. His? Maybe not so much.
“Dad, you should sit down. Your legs are still getting their strength back after your flu.”
He hears me but stays leaning on his cane on the porch.
“How were sales at the market today? Is your cousin Richard having any problems?”
“He seems fine but really, Dad, I’ve got this...” Before I can finish I see him tremble.
“Dad!” I say, running up to the porch, but his legs have started to give way and he begins to fall. I leap up the steps and grab him in my arms just before his body tumbles over. I drag him over to the rocker. The sudden imbalance has clearly startled him. His eyes seem hollow and his complexion is gray.
“Are you okay, Dad?” He doesn’t respond but then almost nods. This is as close as he would ever come to admitting he needs help. “I’ll get you some water and then I’ll call the nurse so she can give you a once-over.”
“She’s in...will take her over an hour to get here...” He seems stable but is clearly out of breath. He’s not in immediate danger but I know he is rattled. I can’t leave here until the nurse arrives and checks him out. He may be the most difficult person anyone has ever met but he’s still my dad.
“Don’t worry, Dad.” I pull open the screen door to the kitchen to fetch his water but pause in the doorway. “I can skip school. Nothing important going on today anyway.”
Chapter Six
The door to the kitchen swings open and Anita rolls in. “Where’s Tack?”
“I don’t know,” I say, putting my checkbook back in my bag. My plan is to never see him again.
“Well, you better find out. Catered events are one thing but a full dinner service is another. We need a chef.”
“I know that.” The fact is, we need to get dinner service started as soon as possible before this place goes so deep in the red it looks like a GOP stronghold. My buddy Barry at FunTyme confided in me that they want to start looking at properties and doing closings soon so I have to move quickly if I want a chance at making this place an attractive enough prospect for the investors. I should be thinking about how I’m going to move the needle on the books for this place, but I can’t seem to get Tack off my mind.
If I had thought for a second that buying this place would mean I would lay eyes on Tack again I would have opened an Etsy store and sold yarn art or kitten bobbleheads or whatever crap people sell online. Anything to avoid Tack and the mess of emotions that go so well with him, like his ridiculously tight jeans. Can he seriously work in those? The image of his perfect ass from this morning races across my mind and I kick it out.
At least I showed him. Showed him that I’m not so easily manipulated anymore, that I’m in charge, that I’ve become the man no one ever thought I would be. At least, I think I showed him that. He must have noticed I’ve changed. Or did he show me, tearing up that check like some diva?
“Tack has culinary school on the other side of Doylestown. He has to pass through New Hope on his way back to school after the farm. I’ll call him and see if he can meet with us tonight.” Anita takes her cell phone out from a pouch on the side of her chair.
“No!” I don’t want to yell at her but I do not want her to make that call. “Look,” I say, softening. “It’s been a long day and I know you have been phenomenal keeping this place going. I just want to unpack and take a minute to get my bearings. Let’s you and I meet tomorrow morning. We don’t need to talk to Tack tonight—or at any point. There is no way he can work here.”
“But he has totally proven he has the skills.”
“It’s not about skills. It’s about history. I know his wife, Evie. There is no way she is ever going to let her husband take a job at an inn that I own. It will never happen. I can promise you that.”
I can still see Evie’s face when she cornered me outside the back door of the band rehearsal room. “He doesn’t want anything to do with you. You got that? Stay away from him.” She adjusted her bra so that her breasts were at attention, sneered at me one more time, and went back to twirling her baton.
“I’m going upstairs to unpack,” I tell Anita, grab my bag and head toward the stairs at the back of the kitchen. I want to take off my suit and review every stupid decision I’ve made in the past few months, from buying this inn to forgetting to download more Law & Order reruns.
“Look, Vince. You may know history but it’s ancient history.”
I stop with my foot on the first step. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Tack and Evie got divorced,” Anita says and rolls toward the kitchen door.
“Excuse me? The Prom Queen and King have called it quits?”
“I’m not a gossip. It’s not my story to tell but you got your facts wrong. Evie is not an issue.
She’s changed. And they are not together in that way anymore.” Anita leaves and I head up the stairs toward the owner’s suite.
Why didn’t Tack tell me he and Evie got divorced? I think back to our conversation in his truck and I realize he didn’t say they were still married. He only told me they got married. I think about the ride, and the sun coming in through the driver’s side window that made the light hair on his forearms glow over his newly tanned arms. I can see the curve of his pectoral muscle just under his open shirt and how the breeze teased me by blowing it back and forth, revealing and concealing his perfect body.
I walk up the last few stairs, open the door to my new place and strip down to my boxers. I’m too tired to even look around my temporary home. I make it past all the boxes to the bed and collapse on top of it.
Chapter Seven
I wake up two hours later with a raging hard-on, not just typical morning wood but full-on dick of steel that could hammer nails into two-by-fours for the rest of the afternoon. I haven’t had an erection like this since I was a teenager and...
My muscles tense and I try not to finish the thought but it relentlessly pulses through me. High school. Watching Tack at the farm and praying his father doesn’t find me. The excitement and fear combined like atoms in a molecule. I think about Tack’s sweaty body stacking bales of hay from the barn as I watch through a knot in the old barn wood. He tosses each mammoth bale with so much force I expect it to launch into space. My weak arms couldn’t even budge one of them but Tack has few obstacles. He’s in sync with the world and it’s his confidence and ease that made me so turned on then, and being around him again is clearly the reason I now have one hand grabbing my cock and another one squeezing my nipple.
I spit on my palm so I can rub my hand over the head of my dick with more friction. I let my hands enjoy the impact of my last kettle bell workout as they move across my chest. I was so stressed by the move that the workout was even more strenuous than usual and muscles are still sore so that means enough tissue broke in order to repair, stronger, thicker and tougher. That’s what change is. You need to break things to make things happen.
It’s humid in the apartment without any of the windows open so there is some sweat in the hairy valley between my pecs. I grab my dick and jerk off quickly, my hand bouncing on my shaft and hitting me in the abdomen. A fantasy tries to creep across my brain but I don’t let it. I focus on myself, my shaft and the pleasure I am giving myself. This load is about me and giving myself the release I want. The release I need. It only takes a few beats to get me where I need to be.
Then I remember exactly why I’m so horny. I shoot my load thinking it will release all thoughts of him with it but even after my climax I can’t stop thinking about Tack.
I wish I could say I don’t remember the last time I saw him but that memory has never let go of me.
I was going through a serious James Baldwin phase senior year of high school. Even though I had moved on to reading the poems he wrote while in Paris, I came across a used copy of The Fire Next Time at the bookstore. I had read it a few months earlier and Baldwin’s description of transforming racial prejudice and hate with love captivated my foolishly idealistic mind. Tack had been ignoring me at school and I thought if I could just do something to remind him of the time we spent together over the summer he would open up to me again and we could pick up where we left off. I bought the book for Tack and planned to find a way to give it to him before school ended.
I could have left it at the farm but his dad scared the crap out of me.
In my stupid, naïve head I thought there was something romantic about leaving the book at school for him, a step toward making our very private relationship public.
I remember being scared and excited the day I brought the book to school. He had math after my calc class and while everyone was in the hall changing classes, I carefully slipped a note on his chair without anyone seeing. My hands trembled as I tossed the paper down. I wrote that I would leave something for him on the tables behind the school under the pine trees. No one ever used those tables so I knew he wouldn’t have any problem finding the gift.
After school I hid behind one of the trees and waited for Tack to pick up the book. I couldn’t wait to see his beautiful face unwrap the package and start reading. It felt like hours until I finally saw him come out of the building.
As soon as he got close to the tables, his eyes darted over to the book. He was alone. My heart went into my throat. We weren’t at my house or at the farm. This was happening at school, in the world.
But then Evie appeared. She ran over to him and wrapped her arms around him like she always did, treating him more like a prize than a human. Maybe she saw me behind the tree or maybe she didn’t but she pulled Tack toward her and gave him a sloppy kiss. She grabbed his hand and led him down the sidewalk away from school.
I stood behind the tree for a while, hoping Tack would return, but he didn’t. It started to rain and instead of grabbing the book I just let it sit there. I had always thought of books as sacred objects that needed to be preserved at all costs but maybe they weren’t worth protecting at all. Maybe protection wasn’t something someone provided for you. Maybe you had to learn to do it yourself.
The clouds turned darker. A sudden clap of thunder and water poured like a pipe in the sky had just burst. I ran back home, soaked through to my skin. A few weeks later I left for college and I never saw Tack again.
Until, of course, today.
Chapter Eight
“Are you telling me there isn’t a qualified chef within 20 miles of New Hope?” I ask Anita as she peers over her laptop at me.
“I’m telling you there isn’t a qualified chef within 100 miles. Not with what you’re paying.”
I’ve been surveying my investment over the past few days and all of the capital I have left is going to have to go into renovating the eight rooms at the inn. They look like they haven’t seen a guest since the inn was built in 1886. It’s not a job I want or can do so I found a contractor who came in with a solid budget and a guarantee that he can have the rooms in decent shape by Labor Day. The rooms are far enough away from the dining room that any construction won’t make a huge disturbance and this guy has enough experience with historic buildings that he won’t need me to hold his hand. Although, if there weren’t a wedding ring on his finger and he didn’t have a vibe straighter than my bangs during a teenage flat iron phase, I would definitely hold more than his hand. In any event, there isn’t a lot of cash to hire an experienced chef.
“Maybe I should get creative here and think about profit sharing as a way to entice a chef,” I say, thinking out loud.
“Oh, sure,” Anita says. For a split second I think I have won her approval. “Let’s see, you are currently making a profit of zero so half of that would be... I don’t have my calculator so let’s just say approximately...zero!”
I’m getting used to Anita’s barbs. No one talks to me like that but she’s smart and has exceptional business skills. I need her so I have to put up with it. She’s also got a sharp wit that impresses me, so that helps.
“There must be something else we could offer a chef...” I say, trying to come up with a solution.
Anita wheels away from her laptop to be right in front of me. “There is one thing,” she says in an uncharacteristically sweet voice.
“What’s that?” I ask, taking a swig of my still warm black coffee.
“Room and board,” she says.
“The contractor is starting tomorrow. They’ll be offline until the end of August.”
“That’s true,” she says. She wheels to the other side of the kitchen and grabs the coffeepot then wheels closer to me and refills my cup. I’m immediately suspicious. “But the owner’s suite is pretty big—two bedrooms, as I recall.”
“It is,” I say, putting my coffee down. “But I’m not sh
aring my apartment with a stranger.” I’m desperate but the thought of having to wear a towel every time I take a hot shower after a workout is a bridge too far.
“No,” Anita says, her voice still soft and singsong. “Not a stranger. Someone you know. Someone you used to know quite well.”
“No way,” I say firmly. “I thought we were figuring out options so I don’t have to hire Tack.”
“If you have a better way let me know, because the way I see it Tack is your only option.” All of the sugar has completely evaporated from her voice. Welcome back, Anita.
I turn away from her and stare through the thick handblown crown window that looks out over Main Street. The lilac bush blurs through the glass and the lavender petals swirl in a way that makes them one with the leaves, street and sky.
When I bought this place I knew it would mean stirring up some old memories. I was prepared for that. But Tack? I’ll never be prepared for that. After he broke my heart I took every feeling I had about him and shoved it so far down I was sure I would never have to see it again. But here those feelings are again, staring back at me in the wavy nineteenth century glass and it makes me nervous. No, I cannot have Tack working with me let alone living with me. It’s impossible.
“Tack wants to start cooking at a real restaurant. He certainly has the talent and he’s getting the training. I know the commute from the farm to culinary school is tough for him, so lodging here, with you, would be a big bonus. Big enough to make him take the job even.”
Big bonus? I doubt that. When he left the kitchen yesterday that was the last I planned to see of him ever again and I’m pretty sure my performance made him feel the exact same way.
The Hideaway Inn Page 4
