by J. P. Scott
It was moments like these that he enjoyed about dating. When he was just hooking up with guys, he knew something was missing. The sex was hot, and the touch of another man fulfilled a need inside of him. Physical touch and its warmth faded quickly when the person left. Interactions like this left behind a memory of a smile, a laugh, and a deeper connection than just a touch alone. Patrick felt like he could see a part of Aaron’s soul.
They had dinner with lights dimmed and a few lit candles on the table casting a light glow. Between bites and a sip of wine, Patrick would reach over and grab either Aaron’s hand and give it a squeeze, or rest his hand on Aaron’s knee.
Patrick could have stayed like that all night, maybe even all week. They didn’t need to say much to each other, Aaron’s look said everything. He was as much in love with Patrick as he was with Aaron.
After dinner, they returned to the bedroom for another round of lovemaking. This time, they were tender and slow in their actions. Kisses were long. Lips opened and searched for a lip or a tongue on the other side to suck and hold. Fingers ran each other’s sides, finding every ticklish spot. When they entered each other, it was also while staring into each other’s eyes intently.
Lovemaking was followed by slumber and peaceful dreams. Patrick felt warmth all around his as he snuggled into the bed, surrounded by blankets and Aaron’s arms. Sometime in the night, he rolled over to change positions. He opened his eyes when his arms had nothing to reach around.
“Aaron?” He sat up in bed and looked around. Aaron was not in the bedroom. The door was closed, but Patrick could see light coming through the crack underneath.
He grabbed discarded shorts and t-shirt as he got out of bed and made his way to the door. He opened the door to find Aaron seated at the dining table looking through a box, contents scattered before him.
“Aaron, what are you doing?”
“Oh, I hope I didn’t wake you.” Aaron scooped the items in front of him up into a pile and covered them with his hand.
“You didn’t. I just didn’t feel you next to me anymore and I was worried.” He stepped closer to the table, but did not understand what Aaron was doing with the box. “What are you looking at? What is this?”
Aaron looked down at the box and items that he was covering up. He looked back with sadness in his eyes. He started to talk, but then began to cry.
Patrick’s arm moved around Aaron to comfort him and Aaron rolled into him, crying into Patrick’s side. He didn’t know what else to do to comfort Aaron. He hated to see him upset.
Looking down at the table, he now had a better view of what Aaron had been looking at. The pile in front of Aaron was a small stake of candid photos. Inside the box was a necklace.
Patrick waited for Aaron’s sobs to subside and then pulled away so that he could sit in another chair at the table. He kept a hand on Aaron’s shoulder in comfort. “Tell me what this is.”
It took Aaron a few moments, but he finally said, “This is everything I know about my dad.”
Patrick looked back down at the photos and the box. It wasn’t much.
“Can I see?” Aaron pushed the stack of photos over to him. He picked them up gingerly. There were five photos with the same two young people. Based on the hairstyles and clothes, they had to be from the 90’s. The couple looked very much in love, smiling into the camera. Each photo was from a different location, most outdoors. Arms were draped around each other and heads leaned into each other or rested on shoulders.
Patrick looked closely at the faces of the couple. He looked at Aaron and then back, examining the faces for similar features. He didn’t look like either of them, but Patrick could pick out features that aligned to one of the other. His overall coloring matched what he assumed was Aaron’s mom. The face structure was like his dad’s.
Patrick did feel relief that he was not looking at a photo of his own father. There was a part of him that had wondered if his father had actually told him everything. If there had been one affair, why couldn’t there have been two? If this was indeed a photo of Aaron’s mom and dad, then it was the final evidence needed that Patrick and Aaron were not brothers.
“They look very happy. And very much in love.”
Aaron nodded.
“How did it go with your mom?”
Aaron wiped the wetness from his cheeks and took a deep breath. “She didn’t really want to talk about it. I’ve never known her to be angry, but she was. She didn’t understand why I was suddenly asking questions.”
Patrick let out a nervous laugh. “What did you tell her? About us?”
“I only went as far as to say that people had said we looked alike, and that I had started wondering about my dad and wondering who he was. And where he was.” Aaron looked down at the pictures, looking at the top one for a moment and then moving it to the bottom of the small stack so that he could see the next one. Patrick let him work his way through the pictures, knowing that he would speak when he was ready.
Their relationship had brought up a lot of questions and secrets for both of their families. What if they had never met? Would Patrick have ever found out about his father’s affair? Would Aaron have ever heard more about his own father? Or would life have just continued on without them ever thinking to ask more questions about the past?
“They only knew each other for a summer. He was working construction one summer to help pay for college. They met, went on a date, and they were inseparable after that.”
Young love. Intense with emotions. It burned brightly but quickly and was gone. Patrick had felt that with his other boyfriends. There was instant attraction, a lot of intense feelings, but then it was over. He wanted desperately for his relationship with Aaron to be more than that. And wasn’t it? Didn’t it mean a lot that they were having moments like this that weren’t about the physical but about what was going on deep inside of them? They were getting to know things about each other that most other people would probably not know.
And if it was anyone other than Aaron sitting at this table with him, would he be willing to stay as he was? Would he want to listen to the story and provide comfort? If it was Ryan sitting here, would Patrick’s whole body be longing to comfort him, or would he be annoyed?
“She says she should have seen it coming. He was only working for the summer. He would be heading back to school in the fall, but it seemed so far away…until the day came. And he was gone.”
Patrick’s heart dropped. Had Aaron’s father just abandoned his mother at the end of the summer? Had he not loved her enough to try to make it work?
“What happened to him?”
“He went back to school. They wrote and called each other that semester, but the communication got less and less. When she told him about me, he promised he would come out at break to be with her. He promised to put school on hold or transfer someplace closer.”
Patrick reached out to touch Aaron. He knew the end of the story. His father never returned.
“When I was born, she wrote him one last letter. It came back to her. Someone had written on the envelope, ‘Person unknown, return to sender.’ She never knew if he had just moved and left no forwarding address, or if he had sent the letter back unopened.”
She must have felt so alone in that moment. Young and pregnant. Dreams of love smashed into pieces. Unsure of what the future would hold or how she would build a life for her son.
The emotions were taking their toll on Aaron. His shoulders were slumped and his body was collapsed into the chair.
“Come to bed. We can talk more about this later.”
Patrick helped Aaron to his feet and they started to walk. Aaron stumbled over the feet that were too tired to move. Patrick reached one arm down around Aaron’s legs and put the other across his upper back and scooped him up in his arms. Aaron curled in closely.
In the bedroom, Patrick set Aaron down on the bed and slowly removed the t-shirt and shorts he was wearing. He covered both of them with the sheets and comforter. He
put his arms around Aaron and pulled him close, and they slept.
Nineteen
Patrick and Aaron avoided the topic of parents for a couple days. Patrick took it as a sign that Aaron needed some time to digest and process everything and to spend some time grieving for the father he never knew who had walked away for some unknown reason.
It always gave Patrick some time. He wasn’t so much grieving, but avoiding talking about the brother he had lost. He could not help himself from pulling up Jacob’s profile and staring at his picture and wondering what kind of person he was. If Aaron came into the room, he quickly closed the app and set his phone aside. So far, Aaron did not seem to notice.
By Friday, they had run out of other things to talk about that were obvious fillers. When Patrick got his mail that day, he knew that they needed to take the next steps in discussing what was going on.
“What are those boxes?”
“Well, when I first told Cam and Ollie that we might be brothers, we looked into those DNA kits that you can do at home.”
“The ones that tell you about your family?”
Patrick nodded. He had resisted Cam’s recommendation, but finally relented and they ordered a couple kits online. The original plan was for both Patrick and Aaron to take them to see if there was a biological connection.
“Maybe you could use one to find out more about your dad’s family. You might have family out there that you could connect with. Maybe you can even find him.”
Patrick and Aaron stared at each other. Patrick did not know if Aaron was interested in meeting his dad after all of these years. If he did, would that cause problems with his mom? From what it sounded like, after he cut ties, she had not tried to reach out to him ever again.
Aaron picked up one of the boxes and jiggled it to see if it made noise. “Wow, one little box can make some big changes.”
Patrick nodded. “It only helps you find people if they have done a test, too. At the very least, it will help you know where his ancestor’s came from. You might learn some history about where you’re from.”
“You still have one, too. Are you going to do one?”
Of course, Patrick knew his parents and their history. There weren’t the same questions hanging over him as there were with Aaron. But it would tell him more about where family immigrated from. And there was the chance that other members of Jacob’s family would be in the database. Then he also would have the option of reaching out to them. They would also know about him.
“I think we should do it together. And then when we get the results, we see what makes sense after that.”
They opened the boxes and spread out the directions and the contents of the box onto the table. It all seemed pretty simple. They needed to do some swabs that got sealed up and returned to the company. Then they had to register online and wait for the results.
It was all quick and easy. They walked the return boxes down to the offices for the apartment and left them for the next package pickup.
“You haven’t talk about your meeting with your dad.” They were walking slowly back through the complex to Patrick’s apartment. “How did it go?”
It was the conversation that Patrick had been avoiding. If he didn’t talk about it, maybe he could forget what he had learned about this father and the past.
He knew that he had to tell Aaron. If there was anyone in the world that he should share this with, it should be with the man he loved. Aaron had shared with him and been vulnerable. He should do the same, or he couldn’t expect that their relationship would work.
“Well, I learned what we now both already know. We’re not brothers.” Patrick laid out what his father had told him about his affair. Aaron listened intently. “I was relieved that you couldn’t be my brother. But then he told me that I did have a brother out there.”
“Wait, what? You have a brother that you didn’t know about?”
“Well, actually, I had a brother. He died.” Patrick pulled out his phone and pulled up Jacob’s profile. He hesitated, but then passed the phone over to Aaron. “His profile is still active online.”
Aaron looked at the phone and then pulled it closer to his face. He looked to Patrick and then back to the phone. “This is your brother?”
“Yeah, why?”
Aaron handed the phone back to Patrick and reached into his own pocket to pull out his own. Patrick saw his fingers fly over the screen as he opened an app and scrolled. When he looked back at Patrick, there were tears in his eyes.
“What is it, babe?”
Aaron held up his phone and showed the screen to Patrick. He looked and saw Jacob’s profile. Compared to his own screen, he could see more details. It was the view of the profile that was visible to friends.
“Wait, did you know Jacob?”
Aaron nodded. “We went to school together. I didn’t really know him until high school, but we were…friends.”
Patrick stopped walking and looked up at the sky. He had no idea what to make of this. Of course, it made sense that they would know each other. They were the same age and had grown up in the same small town. He never expected them to be friends.
“I—I can’t believe he was your brother.”
Patrick felt his mouth grow dry. He tried to swallow, but he struggled. “Can you tell me about him?”
Aaron nodded, but he was having trouble speaking. He was as caught up in emotion as Patrick was. It had been years since he would have thought about his friend and classmate who died. Was it the first friend he had known that had died? Probably the youngest person he had known to pass away. Jacob’s death must have sent a shockwave through the student body as each young person had to deal with death in a real way and with the knowledge that it easily could have been them instead of Jacob.
They began to walk towards the apartment. “I think we need some drinks,” Aaron said, trying to add some levity to the discussion.
When he began to talk about Jacob, he sounded like a pretty average kid. He played a lot of sports and seemed to have a passion for basketball over anything else. “In junior high, I used to walk my dog after dinner and would always go by his house. He’d be out working on free throws in deep concentration.”
Aaron and Jacob had been in different social circles until their junior year when Jacob surprised everyone at school and tried out for the fall play and started hanging out with the drama kids. Many were unsure if Jacob was serious about wanting to be involved in plays and kept their distance. Aaron and two other friends made it their goal to get to know him and make him feel welcome.
“He had a real talent on stage, too. He really did. When it came to cast the fall play senior year, he beat out the expected favorite for the lead.”
“I guess we don’t all fit into the stereotypes that we’re only good at one thing.”
They were settled into spots on the couch with vodka drinks in hand. Patrick was still in shock that he was able to get some answers to his questions about his brother. He didn’t really know what to ask and let Aaron drive the conversation where he wanted. He talked about a few nights hanging out with friends at a coffee shop or a hike that Jacob had suggested they all go on which ended miserably. “I’ve never had so many blisters before.”
When Aaron had slowed down in his storytelling, Patrick took a deep breath and managed to ask the question that he most wanted to know. “Where you there that day? The day of the accident?”
Aaron looked down at his hands. After a few moments, he shook his head. “I was supposed to be, but I had strep throat and was homebound for a week. One of my friend’s parents had a boat that they would take up to Lake Powell. A large group of friends went up for a long weekend.”
Emotions swelled up in Aaron and he needed a few moments to collect himself. “Everyone on that trip was experienced with swimming and boats. That may seem rare in Arizona, but it’s true.”
It was true. Lakes and rivers were far and few between. However, there were large reservoirs with robust boating
. Many Arizonans also had pools to beat the summer heat. Even in the desert, water was king.
“He was skiing and they hit a rough patch of water. He took a tumble. The boat turned around to go back to him and found him unconscious. They pulled him into the boat and raced back to their campsite.”
Lake Powell was a huge reservoir that filled canyons. Most of the shoreline was red sandstone. It was not uncommon to be far away from where a houseboat was parked on a sandy beach when skiing. From there, it could be several hours to get to the closest marina and only the tiniest bit of civilization.
“The canyons often hide rocks and outcroppings under the surface of the water. They think he hit something when he fell and suffered injuries to his head and neck. Even if he was closer to a hospital that could have given him the attention he needed, the injuries were very severe.”
It was never easy to hear about an accident that took a turn for the worse. People went waterskiing all the time, fell, and were ready to get back up again. To strike something and cause an injury was a one in a million event. To compound it with Jacob being so young, it made the whole situation even more tragic.
Everyone involved must have been devastated.
“I think about Jacob all the time. Whenever I see any of those videos of people falling off a trampoline, or attempting a trick on a bike and failing, all I can think about is how easily his life was ended.”
They sat in silence, each taking sips of their drinks and thinking about Jacob, and death, and trying to understand everything. Every death came sooner than expected, but when someone had been able to live through many stages in life, at least it made a little sense.
“I have to confess something else,” Aaron said.
Patrick could not imagine what else there could be to say. Aaron wasn’t even at the lake when the accident happened. He played no role in what Jacob experienced or what decisions were made about getting him help.
“Jacob was more than just a friend.” Aaron hesitated, but then his eyes looked up to Patrick and locked with his gaze.
