by J. P. Scott
Cam had ordered tests for them to take. With priority shipping, they should be arriving that day or by midweek. How long did it take to get results? And would Aaron be open to taking tests to prove if they were related?
Or were there easier ways? Could they just pop into his primary care doctor’s office and get a test performed? Could they know in a matter of hours or days?
Daytime talk shows for years had featured DNA testing to determine paternity. What wasn’t shown was how long it took between the test and the filming to know the truth. How long would they have to wait before they knew a definitive answer?
And did they want to know?
Even knowing the possibility, Aaron had been unphased at having sex. He continued to ride Patrick. HIs feelings for him must be as intense as his feelings for Aaron.
But could intensity of feelings dictate whether or not they were in a relationship? There were social norms and expectations about having relationships with people you were related to. If Aaron was his brother, or step-brother, it was wrong. They would never be able to enter into a marital relationship and start a family.
“Hello! Are you even paying attention?”
“Sorry. Another set of ten. We are going to increase the weight by five pounds.” Patrick leaned over to make the change on the machine.
His client groaned and shook her head.
The rest of the morning did not go any better. He just could not focus on his clients like he normally did. All of his thoughts were on Aaron.
At a break, he texted Aaron to see how he was doing.
A response came sooner than he expected. “I called in sick to work. I’m driving up to see my mom.”
Patrick’s heart stopped. That could change everything. Maybe if Aaron confronted her with what he knew, she would tell him the truth that she had kept from him all of these years.
And then what?
What did life look like if they found out that Patrick’s dad had an affair with Aaron’s mother and conceived a baby together? They would break up. Could they be friends? What did friendship look like with someone who used to be a lover?
The only people that Patrick stayed in contact with that he had slept with were Cam and David. It had been a night of passion that he knew was more about their interest and desire to be with a third person than anything about it being with him. The sex was hot and he had a good time, but he knew it was not about love or wanting a connection. Sometimes he had to remind himself that it had been with his friend versus some random hookup.
Even when he saw Cam and David now, he could not totally picture what it was like to be with them, naked and fucking. Instead, they were just guys he had brunch with.
Would Aaron just become another person that he saw on the weekends and drank mimosas with?
A one-time encounter with Cam and David gave him no heartache. If something casual happened again, he wouldn’t mind. But he was fine with life moving on. He could not say the same thing about Aaron. With Aaron, he needed there to be more. He wanted a life with him. He wanted to touch him, and feel him, and be with him. There needed to be a life together with a common purpose.
What would Aaron’s mom’s reaction be? She had no context around why Aaron was visiting or demanding answers. She did not have the liberty of seeing Patrick and Aaron at a party and seeing a resemblance. She did not even know who Patrick was…or who is father was. She would be totally caught off guard. Would she break down and answer Aaron’s questions? Or would she get defensive and deny him the truth that he was looking for?
Patrick moved his client to the next machine, demonstrated the movement, and then set the weight. While he watched and counted her reps, he tried to imagine what Aaron would find when he arrived at his mother’s. He wished he could be there for support. He was also grateful that he was far away and didn’t have to deal with the negative ramifications. She might yell and scream that they were disgusting for sleeping together, for being boyfriends and lovers.
Was Aaron strong enough to handle this? The entire situation was a mound of complex emotions. Learning about a parent’s affair was a lot. The layer of incest was more than most people could handle.
“Are you okay?”
Patrick’s breathing hand become short and rapid. He felt like the walls were closing in on him.
“Um, excuse me. Keep…keep working.” He dropped his clipboard and pen and scurried to the office for the personal trainers. He entered and closed the door. He paced in the small space and finally sat down, putting his elbows on his knees and his head in hands.
After a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. “Patrick. Dude, what are you doing in there?”
He wiped the wetness from his eyes. His boss was trying to get into the office.
“I’m…I’m not feeling well.”
“Dude, your client was pissed. She left after demanding her money back for her session.”
“Sorry. I think I need to go home. I…feel sick.”
The door creaked open and his boss poked his head through. “You’re never sick. Everything okay?”
Nothing was okay. His world was falling apart. But he couldn’t get into that here, not with this boss. “I’ll be okay. I’ll work on contacting my clients and rescheduling.”
“Yeah, get some rest. Feel better, dude.” His boss closed the door and Patrick was alone again. He pulled out his phone and opened the app the gym used to communicate schedules for their trainers. He had a packed Monday with clients. Rescheduling was going to be a pain, but he knew that he could never make it through the day.
His next couple clients were regulars and pretty cool. They would probably come and work out on their own anyway. He began to shoot off some texts and quickly cleared the next hour and a half of work. When he got home, he could work on the rest.
His last text was to Ollie. He scrolled through his contacts and brought him up. Normally, he chatted with Ollie in a group text with Cam, but he wanted to send a note to just him. “Not doing so great today. Not sure what your schedule is like, but I was hoping you could talk.” Ollie often worked from home when he was not needed in the office to train and was pretty flexible with his time.
Within ten minutes he had done the necessary things to get ready to leave and was out the door. His boss and the front desk staff gave him weird looks as he dashed past them. They were used to him being a hard worker and rarely missing work. Patrick didn’t care. He just wanted to get out of there.
Thirteen
The knock at the door was unexpected. Rarely did he have unannounced visitors stopping by his apartment. He put his head back down on the pillow as she lay on the couch where he had collapsed after getting home from work. If he ignored the knocking, he hoped whoever it was would go away.
They didn’t. Moments later there was another knock at the door.
Patrick rolled and got his feet planted on the floor and slowly stood up. He didn’t want to deal with someone trying to sell things or help a lost person find their way to the actual apartment they were looking for. He didn’t want to see anyone.
Before reaching for the doorknob, he leaned in and put his eye to the peephole. There was a familiar face on the other side.
What the hell is he doing here?
He stepped back and opened the door. “Omar?”
His first boyfriend had stepped away from the door and was looking out at the sky. At the sound of the door opening, he turned to look at Patrick. “You’re alive. That’s good.”
Patrick didn’t know what to say. It had been months since he had seen Omar. “Um, come in. What’s going on?”
“I could ask you the same question. What was with that text you sent?”
“What text?”
Omar pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it up to Patrick. It was the text that he had sent to Ollie. Or thought that he had. When he scrolled through his contacts, he must have hit the wrong name.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to send this to you.”
That explained why he had not heard anything from Ollie since he left work. Even if he wasn’t free to chat, he was usually good about responding to text messages.
“Why didn’t you just text back? Or call?”
“Well, it sounded like you might need to actually see someone. What’s going on?”
Patrick straightened the pillows on the couch and indicated that Omar could have a seat. “Can I get you anything?”
Omar waved his hand to indicate that he was fine. “Man troubles?”
He did not really want to confide in an ex-boyfriend about his current situation. The fewer people who knew what he was dealing with, the better. But Patrick did want to talk to someone. He had to get his thoughts and feelings out or they were going to drive him crazy. If Ollie wasn’t available, Omar was a good runner up. He was thoughtful, honest, and trustworthy.
“I’m not sure you need to be burdened with all of this.”
“Probably not, but I’m here. You might as well lay it on me.”
Patrick began at the beginning, filling in Omar with all of the details about how he met Aaron, their initial week together, the party, and their current situation of trying to find out the truth.
“That’s more than I expected. I was expecting more like this Aaron guy didn’t like Madonna or something. That’s usually what has the gays throwing themselves down on the ground.” Patrick could only wish for some superficial problem to be upset about.
“If it makes you feel any better, it sounds like you are taking the right steps to get it figured out. Aaron going to talk to his mom and get answers isn’t fun, but maybe the best way to get to the bottom of things.”
“I’m just scared that she isn’t going to tell him the truth. If she hasn’t told him about his dad after all of these years, what would make her do it now?”
“It’s hard for us to say since we don’t know her or her situation. But if she loves her son, and he comes to her wanting to know the truth, she’s bound to give him what he needs.”
“And if that means we can’t be together?”
Omar looked at him with a tight, sympathetic smile on his face. “Then you might not be able to be together. Which right now seems like the end of the world.”
“I think I’m in love with him.”
He nodded. “You might be. Humans find ways to love all kinds of people in many ways. Sometimes that means even loving someone from a distance and moving on in life.”
“Have you ever left someone you thought you were in love with, romantically?”
The laugh that erupted shocked Patrick. “Way too many. Way too many.” Omar continued to laugh, and Patrick wondered what was so funny. “I forgot how young you actually were. You have so much to learn about the world.”
“What does that mean?”
“You just don’t have a lot of experience when it comes to love.”
Patrick’s defenses were up. “I’ve been with a lot of guys.”
“Sticking a penis in a hole and having a deep, emotional connection with someone are two different things. Wasn’t I your first actual boyfriend?”
Patrick shrugged. “Yeah. So what?”
“It just means you haven’t had a lot of exposure to the inner workings of a relationship and what it means to make something work. Most often, relationships start with intense attraction and explosions of emotions. Hot and heavy sex consumes you. After a while, that starts to fade. There has to be something more in order to keep the relationship together. Common interests, talking and sharing, putting up with each other’s quirks.”
Patrick thought about what Omar was saying. He knew it to be true. There was no way that Adam and he could keep up the same pace of sex. Did they have other things that would help cement them as a couple? Were there other things that they had in common? Other than genetics?
“Did you lose interest in me?” Patrick realized that he didn’t really know why his relationship with Omar ended. Things had been pretty good, from what he could tell. In comparison to how he felt for Aaron, he knew that it was different, but in the moment, he had not really known what wasn’t working.
“Hardly. You’re one of the hottest guys I know. You know your way around the bedroom, too. That was hard to give up.”
“Then, what was it?”
Omar sighed. “I knew that you had a lot to learn. You may be a young man, with a budding career, and lot of opportunities headed your way. But you’re a baby gay.”
Patrick blinked at the phrase. “A baby gay? What’s a baby gay?” He felt like he was talking to Ollie and Cam who threw out terms all the time expecting him to know what they were talking about.
“A baby gay. Recently out. Still trying to figure out what you want and who you are. You’ve gotten a taste of the gay world, whether it be the bars, hooking up, watching Broadway musicals. But you haven’t really seen it all.”
“What else is there?”
Omar again erupted in laughter. “Honey. Come talk to me when you have walked in your first Pride parade. Call me after someone calls you a fag as they drive by. Go hang out with some teenagers who are trans and fight every day for acceptance. Sit at the bedside of a friend who is about to give up battling a disease that is ravaging the body and the spirit has had enough. You’ve got a lot more living to do.”
Patrick didn’t know what to say. He thought he had been doing a good job of opening himself up to experiences.
“Look, I came out much earlier than you, and I have a few years on you to have experienced more. My gay age is much older than yours. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have more to do. There are so many gay men that have way more knowledge and experience than I do. And soon you will meet guys of all ages and you will see when they are baby gays. Their eyes are opening, but they’ve only just begun.”
Patrick was quiet for a few moments, taking in all that Omar had said to him. Cam and Ollie definitely were older than him in a gay sense. Even though they were not much different in age than him, they had been out longer and done and seen more than he had.
Patrick saw that Omar had more experience as well. That was one of the things he really liked about being with him. They talked about world events and things that were going on in the world. Even Devin had been older than him in gay years.
“I loved every minute dating with you. But I had to be honest with myself. We were in different places. I needed someone who was more on par with me when it came to gay age.”
“I was just holding you back?”
“No. If anything, I was holding you back. You need to have some of the experiences every new gay guy needs to have. I could have helped show you a lot, but there would be a lot you missed because I had already been there and done that.”
Patrick didn’t know if that was true or not. He wasn’t even sure if he really cared. Sometimes Cam and Ollie and their boyfriends made a big deal about teaching him something that was important to the gays and he didn’t really see the point.
But if Omar and Patrick were not supposed to be together, did it matter the reason?
They had gotten a long way from the reason Omar had come over in the first place. They weren’t talking about his relationship with Aaron. What did any of this have to do with the problems he was facing?
“What do I do about Aaron?” He was frustrated and the words blurted out of his mouth.
“Well, the same advice that I would give to any of my friends going through some heartache: there’s no easy answer. For some, fighting to be together is the best thing for love. For others, it’s letting go and holding on to the fond memories of hour time together. The second is what I had to do with you.”
Patrick’s memories of Omar were fond as well. He can still remember the day when he brought Omar to brunch to meet all of his friends. Cuddles on the couch watching a documentary of events Patrick barely knew about but that Omar seemed to have studied in great detail. There always was a moment when he looked over at Omar and his smile broadened and his white
teeth cast a glow across the room. The light seemed to emanate from his soul.
Omar was a good person, and Patrick missed having him around. He made a promise to himself to reach out to Omar more often to hang out. He needed good people in his life, and not just in a crisis.
He had hoped for more concrete steps. That Omar had a wisdom of what someone does in this situation. A clear direction.
“Do you ever regret fighting for love and it still not working out? Or letting go and thinking maybe you should have stayed in it?”
“All the time. There is no such thing as no regrets, my love.”
“Let me as you honestly. If Aaron and I are related, and we decided to still be together. Would you judge us?”
Omar slowly shook his head. “How could I? As a black man, I’ve been judged by the color of my skin. As a gay man, I’ve been judged for loving someone who also has a penis. I once dated a drag queen, and even though people came every week to watch her shows and giver her dollars, they judged me for my choices. Naw, I’m out of the judgment game.” Patrick realized that there was a lot that he didn’t know about Omar and wished he did.
“The real question will be, are you ready to handle what the world may throw at you, if you decide to be together. Other people will judge. Family might pull away. If you let it, it could become a thing that creates discord in your relationship.”
Since having brunch with his mother, Patrick had wanted to find the solution. The way to handle what he was going through. That didn’t exist. Still, he was feeling a sense of comfort by it. If no one knew, then he shouldn’t feel bad about feeling helpless and lost in the situation.
“Look at any strong and meaningful relationship between two people, and you are going to find struggle, and doubt, and mistakes. No one has a recipe for success.”
Patrick’s world was full of those recipes. He talked about them with his clients every day. Follow this diet, do these workouts, stick to a plan, and in two months they will see results. He had pictures to prove it to anyone who doubted him, the before and after of clients who worked out with him. Love didn’t work that way, and he had to learn to accept it.
