by Shawn Lane
“Julia, you’ve never met my youngest brother. This is Dane. And these are my children, Owen and Callie.”
“Nice to meet you.” I shook Julia’s hand and nodded at the two little ones. I remembered they were somewhere around five and seven. They were playing with some sort handheld video game systems, and they barely glanced my way.
Julia smiled. “It’s quite something to finally meet the baby brother. I’ve heard a lot about you, Dane. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go fetch the dip.”
“My wife couldn’t make it,” Garret blurted out into the now awkward silence. “Sorry.”
I nodded. “It’s all right.”
“Would you like something to drink, Dane?” Theo asked, suddenly there, touching my arm.
“A beer?”
“Yeah, come with me. How about you, Em? Hank?”
“Beer sounds perfect to me,” Emily said.
“Me too,” Hank added.
I followed Theo out of the living room and toward the kitchen where Julia had disappeared a few seconds before.
“Thank you.”
“For?”
Sighing, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “The rescue. It was a bit…strange.”
“I noticed. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve been away so long.”
“We’re like strangers.”
Theo nodded as we entered the kitchen. Julia had her arms full of two bowls of dip.
“Need help with those?” Theo asked.
“No, no, I got it.” And Julia headed out of the kitchen.
Theo walked over to a cooler, popped the lid, and withdrew four beers from it. He handed two of them to me.
“I’m sure it is like strangers,” he said as he twisted the cap off one. “There was a bit of an age difference between you and your brothers anyway.”
“True.” I leaned against the counter and set the second bottle I held down. “I don’t think it was my mom’s idea originally to break up the family like that, but really that’s what happened. Once we moved there wasn’t much effort on anyone’s part.”
“Except Emily.” He brought the neck of the beer to his lips and took a swig.
I nodded. “Yeah. She’s also the only one who has fully accepted my being gay.”
“Your mom didn’t?”
“As well as she could, I guess. I don’t think she would have ever marched in any gay pride parades, though.” I twisted the cap off the bottle I still held. “She didn’t disown me or anything, but she didn’t want me to be homosexual.”
Theo studied me. “She told you?”
A memory skidded across my mind.
“Yeah. It was right around the time she got sick that last time.”
Theo reached for my hand and curved his fingers around my palm. For some reason I couldn’t quite figure out, I let him.
“What did she say, Dane?” he asked softly.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t give me that. I saw your face just now. It was like a shadow passed over. What did she say, exactly?”
My mother had always been frail. And sickly. During my childhood she’d even ended up in the hospital few times with pneumonia. She’d had asthma all her life, and any cold she got always went straight to her lungs.
That last time she had been sick enough I had to have her hospitalized. I’d barely turned twenty and hadn’t known what else to do for her.
I spent lots of hours sitting by her bedside as she got frailer and frailer.
“Dane, call the nurse for me,” she rasped from her hospital bed. “I need another pillow behind my head.”
“Maybe I could do that for you?”
She made a sort of coughing noise that I thought was meant to be a laugh. “You’re too weak. Push the nurse’s button. It’s their job.”
I grabbed the button on the wire and pushed it. I knew they wouldn’t answer right away. They never did.
“Why me?” she mumbled.
“Excuse me?”
She sighed. “Why did I have to get stuck with a gay son? I wish Clive were here. He’s much stronger.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry.”
Waving her head weakly, she shook her head. “No, no. You’ve been a good boy.”
We both fell silent for several moments before she spoke again.
“Dane?”
“Yes, Mom?”
“It’s going to be hard for you.”
“What is?”
She sighed, but she was so weak it came out as a whoosh. “I’m dying. I think we both know it, but we’re dancing around it.”
“Mom—”
“You’re still very young, Dane. And out here by yourself and gay. I worry about you.”
“I’ll be all right,” I whispered.
“I’d feel better if you were big and strong like your brothers. Being gay is like some curse.”
“It’s not a curse.”
“I don’t mean that exactly. What I mean is your life is going to be harder than it needs to be. It’s easier to fit in with everyone else. You’ll always be different, always vulnerable. I just wish you were normal.”
“Dane?” Theo’s hand was on my arm again. “You all right?”
I shook myself. “Yeah, fine. But we should get back to the others.”
“You aren’t going to tell me what she said, are you?”
“Some things are better left unsaid, Theo. Let’s go.”
* * * *
As awkward parties go, this one was of the more awkward. Julia was the sort of hostess who chose the seats for her guests. So even though Em had invited Theo for my benefit, he was seated as far from me at the table as possible.
Naturally, I decided it was some sort of antigay message. Let’s not sit the two gay guys next to each other in case they can’t keep their hands off each other during the meal. Well, one gay guy and one bisexual guy, I guess.
I was stuck between Garret and Clive’s little boy, Owen. I didn’t know whether to count myself lucky or not, but either way, Owen paid me little heed—except when his constantly moving legs managed to kick me.
Garret kept sneaking glances at me, but he rarely stayed focused on me for more than a few seconds at a time. He was nearly as fidgety as Owen, and I guessed that fit with the drug use.
Julia had chosen to have a dinner party rather than something simple like an outdoor cookout. I supposed it made sense given the time of year and the chill in the air. Our first course was some sort of salad made with romaine lettuce and itty-bitty chopped tomatoes.
“So, um,” Garret mumbled, stabbing at a leaf of lettuce, “how’s the book business going?”
“Pretty good. I need to finish up my latest novel so I can send it to my agent.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess that’s how it’s done, huh. I haven’t read any of your books,” Garret told me.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that it somehow didn’t surprise me, but I decided to let it pass. Given what I could tell from Garret, he probably didn’t have much time for anything but drugs. It made me very sad. I wondered if one day I’d get a call from Em telling me Garret had overdosed. Three times in rehab, and none of them had taken.
“I was sorry to hear about your friend,” Garret said. He still wouldn’t look at me.
“Friend?”
“Yeah. You know. Um, David or Donald or something.”
“Donald. He was my partner.”
Garret did look at me then, and before he got a chance to hide it, I saw the distaste in his eyes. He let it slip away almost immediately, but not soon enough.
“Well, as long as you’re not calling him your husband,” he said, pushing his salad plate away. He shrugged. “It’s not the same as a real marriage between a man and a woman.”
My fist tightened around my fork, and I had a sudden flash of clarity. Why the fuck had I come back here? I didn’t belong here ten years ago, and nothing had really changed.
I guessed maybe I shou
ld say something, but my tongue seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth. Or maybe it was the two shades of color Julia lost just a few seats away from me. I knew she was thinking, Oh my God, my party is going to be ruined by a scene. I didn’t even know her, but I couldn’t do that to her. It wasn’t her fault Garret was obtuse. And that was putting it nicely.
So, instead I reached for my water glass and took a sip, counting to ten in my head. The conversation had stopped for a few seconds for the rest of the table’s occupants, but when they realized I wasn’t going to strangle Garret, the chatter picked up again.
The rest of the dinner passed too slowly for me since I had decided not to try to engage Garret in much conversation. He had fallen silent as well, which was fine by me.
I wanted to go home. To California. But I still had weeks left on my visit here. At least I wouldn’t need to deal with this again—I hoped. If Emily had any more family gatherings planned, I was going to veto them.
When dinner was over and I had helped bring some plates into the kitchen, I slipped out the back door to the yard behind the house. The chill in the air was a little much, but it beat having to be in the house with the stifling tension.
I leaned against the house and gazed out into the darkness, wondering how much longer Hank and Emily would want to stay. The door opened, and I held my breath, praying it would be Emily saying they were ready to leave, but instead Theo appeared. Well, it definitely could have been worse.
“Hey, want to get out of here?” he asked immediately.
“God, yes. You offering?” I straightened from the wall.
“Yeah, let’s go. In fact, come with me to my house. It’s only a few blocks from here. We can have coffee or something. I have cookies.” He grinned.
I bit my lip. “I think Julia has something planned for dessert.”
“She does. Tiramisu. I want cookies. You in or what?”
Maybe going with Theo would be a mistake. I thought it probably was. But I couldn’t stand the thought of staying here.
“I should tell—”
Theo shook his head. “I already told Hank I was rescuing you. He said he’d let everyone know.”
And then I smiled. “You’re a lifesaver.”
Theo laughed. “Come on. Let’s slip out the side gate and go right to my truck. Saves us the dramatic exit.”
Chapter 5
I don’t know quite what I had been expecting when Theo pulled into his driveway, but it wasn’t a small, one-story, warm, cabin-style house. There was nothing pretentious or imposing. Just a nice, normal-sized house.
“Home sweet home.”
I smiled a little as I got out of his truck. “It’s nice.”
Theo grinned crookedly. “Is that Los Angeles speak for boring?”
“No, I mean it. I like it. Looks like you have a great front yard too.” I followed him to the door. “You don’t park in your garage?”
He shrugged. “I’ve turned it into a workshop. I’ve got tools and wood and some engine stuff. I’m kind of like my dad. He never used his to park his car either.”
He flipped a switch as soon as we walked inside. We had immediately entered a living room with a large fireplace.
“I did all the stonework myself,” Theo explained when he saw me looking at it. “It was pretty plain when I bought the place four years ago. I’ve actually done quite a bit of work on the house.”
“How many bedrooms?”
“Three. One is fairly small ‘cause I chopped some of it off to expand the master bathroom. It’s just sort of an office, though I can’t really say I spend much time in it. The other bedroom I turned into a home gym. I like to run, but in the winter it’s kind of out the question most days, and I’m not real comfortable at some of those big gyms with the memberships.”
I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “Wow, all this is pretty cool, Theo. I’m impressed. You’ve done really great. Did you redo the kitchen too?”
“Yeah, come see.”
I followed him down a very short hall to an arched doorway leading into the kitchen. It was a kitchen that would have made a chef proud—a gorgeous granite-covered island in the middle, stainless-steel appliances, lots of hand-built cabinetry.
“You cook a lot?” I asked. Really I didn’t know much about this Theo. I just knew the one who had fucked me and then ignored me like I didn’t exist.
“I like to cook. Sometimes with my duty schedule, I don’t get a lot of time to do so.” Theo shrugged. “But for those times I do, I like to have a great space to cook in.”
I walked over to the back sliding doors and flipped the light switch, illuminating a redwood deck.
Theo slid the lock and then the door. “Come on. You can’t see too much in the dark, but you may as well get the full tour.”
The raised deck had a set of stairs leading down to the rest of the yard, which was lined with tall trees rather than a fence.
“This is awesome. You have, like, a little forest right there.”
Theo chuckled. “It is pretty cool. When the weather’s nice I like to go hiking because there’s a little path. Maybe we can go one day.”
Grimacing, I said, “I’m not much of an outdoorsman.”
“I’d take it easy on you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Speaking of, it’s cold out here. Can we go back inside?”
“Okay, okay. You’ve spent too much time in that California sun.”
We stepped back inside his warm house, and he turned the lock on the door and turned off the outside porch light.
“So, cookie time.” Theo went to a pantry and took out several packages of store-bought cookies. “Coffee, tea—”
“Or me?”
Theo’s eyebrow rose. “Well, if you’re offering—”
“Tea,” I said quickly, wondering why I had even said that. I didn’t want to go there, I reminded myself. “It’s easier on my stomach at night.”
“I have milk if you’d rather have that, little boy,” Theo said with a grin.
“Just tea.”
I watched him fill an electric kettle with water from the built-in filter at his sink, then take out two oversize dark blue mugs from a cabinet.
“How long have you been friends with Clive?” I asked.
“I’m not really.”
I frowned. “But Emily said you were.”
“We’re friendly. My brother’s wife is one of Clive’s nurses. We’ve been at a few social functions together.” Theo shrugged. “I think Emily invited me for you.”
“For me?” Emily had said she wanted me to have a familiar face, but I’d thought she added that after telling me Theo and Clive were friends.
He took out two small plates and placed a variety of cookies on them. “Face it, Dane—right now I’m the nearest thing to a friend you have here in Northfield. May not be your ideal choice, I’ll grant you, but I am on your side.”
I opened my mouth to get all pissy about it, but I realized that whether or not I would have chosen to have Theo at the dinner, it had worked out well. He had rescued me from it.
“Thanks,” I managed to get out.
“Excellent. You said that without choking on it.” Theo grinned and then poured boiling water over two tea bags. Plain old orange pekoe, I noticed.
I took the plate of cookies he offered to me and noted there were chocolate chip, wafer cookies enrobed in chocolate, and frosted animal cookies.
“So, you really think you prefer guys?”
Now why the fuck had I asked that? I didn’t care.
If Theo was surprised by my question, he didn’t show it. He discarded the tea bags in the trash under the sink and pushed one of the steaming mugs toward me.
“For the most part I have a slight preference toward guys. As I said before, I think basically I’m bisexual. I know some people like to pretend bisexuality is not real, that you’re confused about being gay or something. But I really am attracted to both sexes.”
“Donald was bisexual,”
I blurted out and then looked down at my feet. I’d been resisting telling everyone about what I’d learned about Donald, but I needed to tell someone.
Theo put a knuckle under my chin and made me meet his gaze. “It’s not an evil condition, Dane. You say that like it’s an accusation. It doesn’t mean that a guy who is bi can’t commit to another guy.”
“But women can provide children and a stable family life.”
“That’s not something I care that much about.”
“Still, you’re pretty young at this point,” I pointed out, knowing him to be twenty-nine. “You could change your mind in five years.”
“Even so, there’s nothing that says you can’t have a family with two men. There are all kinds of families, Dane.”
“True enough. I guess I just assumed a guy like you in a small city like this would prefer to conform to what’s considered acceptable.”
Theo smirked and let go of my chin. “You know that old saying about assuming, Dane.”
I felt my cheeks grow warm, and I covered it up by lifting my mug for another sip. “Anyway,” Theo continued, “I fall for people, not genders. I don’t check out what private bits they have before I decide if I find them attractive.”
I couldn’t look away from his dark eyes. I read lust and some deeper emotion I found pretty confusing. “Donald had a wife.”
“Okay. But lots of people have ex-wives or ex-husbands.”
I swallowed heavily. “A son too. And there’s more.”
“What else is there?”
Now that I could tell someone—other than George, who already knew—it was like a relief to talk about it. To get it off my chest.
“I found this all out after he died, Theo. He was married before I met him, and I never knew. He kept this whole previous relationship, his wife, his son—it was all a secret. As far as I knew, as far as what he told me himself, he was gay and hadn’t been with women, let alone had a wife.”
“I see.” Theo had moved closer to me as we spoke, and as I talked about Donald, feeling agitated and jumpy, he began to rub my shoulders. “I’m sorry he kept all that secret from you. But it sounds like from what I’ve heard, from what you’ve said, he did love you.”
“Yeah, he did.” And I did believe that. Maybe because I had to or lose my mind. But I did believe Donald had loved me.
