Against the Wall

by Alexa Land

  “Where was your real dad during all of this?”

  “Touring and recording. I’d get these extravagant gifts in the mail. My dad was bad about hitting my birthday and Christmas dead-on, but he’d usually get something there within a few weeks. The weird thing is, until I was ten, my mom didn’t tell me who my dad was. She didn’t want us to live under the scrutiny of the paparazzi and when I was little, she didn’t trust me to keep the secret. I had all these ideas about my dad. I knew he had to be rich, based on the gifts he’d send me, so I concocted all these crazy theories, like maybe he was a prince, or the president, or a rock star. I remember watching a Zan Tillane concert special on TV when I was about eight and thinking, ‘Could that be my dad?’ But then I dismissed the idea because we look nothing alike.”

  “That must have been really strange for you,” Shea said.

  “Looking back, I see that it was. At the time though, it was just my reality. When I was ten, Mom decided I was old enough to keep the secret and finally took me to meet him. He was on a world tour and had a stop in San Francisco. I remember it was late at night and he was staying in this fancy hotel. We went up to the penthouse suite, and there was Zan Tillane. It was a weird moment for both of us. I remember he and I just stood there awkwardly, staring at each other, and then I blurted, ‘Shit. I thought maybe you’d be a prince.’ My mom shrieked at me for cursing, but Zan burst out laughing. We had a good talk after that. He got us hot fudge sundaes from room service at one a.m. That’s the kind of memory that sticks with you when you’re ten. Anyway, he was only in town that one night but after that, we started writing letters back and forth. They dropped off a bit when he disappeared from the public eye, which happened the year after we met, but a few months later they picked up again. We kept corresponding until I moved in with him when I was fifteen.”

  “And you kept the secret of who your dad was.”

  “Oh hell no,” I said with a grin. “Come on, I was ten. I blabbed to everyone at school on Monday morning, but of course no one believed me.” Shea grinned at that and I said, “How did we go off on this Zan tangent? We were talking about Christmases growing up.”

  “This is way more interesting.”

  “I want to hear about your childhood traditions, though. What was Christmas like for the Nolan boys?”

  “Typical. We’d go see relatives on Christmas Eve, then Christmas morning my brother and I would open presents in our pajamas and spend the rest of the day playing with our new toys.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “I guess it would have been if my parents could stand each other. Holidays were tense because they were forced to spend extra time together.”

  “Did they always hate each other?”

  “Except for about ten minutes in their senior year of high school. They went to the prom together and my dad got my mom pregnant. Apparently they were both virgins. A shotgun wedding followed.”

  “Damn.”

  “I’m kidding about them only liking each other for ten minutes. They had me four years later, so I’m evidence of a time when things weren’t all bad. I don’t remember those days, though. All I remember is this quiet, life-long cold war, just because their religion told them they weren’t allowed to get a divorce.”

  “I’m sorry you had to grow up with that.”

  He shrugged and kissed my forehead. “It could have been worse.”

  “Could have been better, too. I wish they’d managed to get their shit together for your sake.”

  “They just weren’t capable of that. But, what’re you going to do? All parents make mistakes. They’re only human, so all of us grow up with at least a few invisible scars. But maybe that’s okay, because the hard times are what make us strong enough to survive all the crap life throws at us down the road.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You asked me once if I wanted kids, and this is pretty much why I said no. I wouldn’t make the same mistakes my parents did, but I’d still make plenty, guaranteed. I might have screwed up so badly that my kids would have turned out really messed up.”

  “You wouldn’t do that. You’d have been the world’s coolest dad,” I told him, caressing his arm. “You’ve retained such a youthful outlook. I could just see you and your kids going to superhero movies and comic book conventions together.”

  He gave me a wry smile. “That’s a really nice way of saying it, ‘retained a youthful outlook’. Sounds so much better than ‘incredibly immature’.” He kissed my cheek and changed the subject as he sat up. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Do we have anything in this apartment besides incredibly bland food meant for people with stomach viruses?”

  It turned out we didn’t, so we decided to go out for lunch. After we showered, he once again borrowed some clothes, since all he had was his uniform. We then walked the three blocks to one of my favorite Thai restaurants. It was totally dead the day after Christmas for some reason, so the middle-aged couple that ran it were thrilled to see us and ended up visiting with us throughout most of the meal.

  The city seemed quieter than usual, too. Not many people were out on the sidewalks as we walked home after our meal, even though the sun was shining. It was still fairly brisk, but a gorgeous day nonetheless.

  I surprised Shea by grabbing his hand and pulling him into a little vestibule at the side entrance of a closed business. He burst out laughing and said, “Are you doing what I think you’re doing? In broad daylight?”

  As he was talking, I ran my hands down his back and kissed his neck. “It’s up to you,” I said before licking his earlobe. “We won’t do it if it doesn’t excite you.” When I rocked my hips forward and my cock grazed his, I found he was already getting hard.

  He moaned quietly and rocked forward too, rubbing against me. I dropped into a crouch and pulled down the front of his jogging pants, then freed his cock from his underwear and sucked it for a couple minutes as it swelled between my lips. As I sucked him, I lowered my zipper, pulled out my cock, and slicked myself with a little tube of lotion I’d brought along. Then I got to my feet and kissed him deeply as I pushed a lubed finger inside him. He gasped against my lips.

  Shea turned around for me and bent over slightly, bracing himself against the wall. I tried to hold back a moan as I pushed into him, his little hole tight and warm around my hard shaft. We fucked urgently as people passed on the sidewalk just a few feet away. We were pretty exposed, but blocked from sight as long as no one chose to come into the little space between buildings and peer into the alcove.

  It was so exhilarating that we both came fairly quickly. I grasped his hips as I emptied into him, and he drew in a sharp breath as he shot all over the wall. As soon as we were finished, I pulled up his pants, then quickly put myself back together. He took a look at the mess he’d made and raised his foot to the wall, using the sole of his sneaker to wipe down the trail of cum. “Good as new,” I said, and when he turned to me and grinned, I pulled him into a kiss.

  After we returned to my apartment we went back to bed and cuddled, snug and warm under the blankets. When I looked up at Shea sometime later, his blue eyes were somber. I knew it was just a matter of time. We’d been distracting each other for the last few hours, but of course the bombshell I’d dropped on him was hardly forgotten. He said softly, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I know you don’t want to keep talking about this, but I was pretty overwhelmed earlier so I didn’t think to ask about the clinical trial you’ll be participating in. You said there’s almost no chance it’ll help you. But ‘almost no’ isn’t the same as zero. Is there a possibility of it making a difference?”

  I sat up and pushed my hair out of my eyes. “We don’t really know. This will be the first time this drug has been tested on people with brain tumors. But mine is already so advanced that my doctor isn’t optimistic. Besides, this is a research study. I could end up with a placebo. It’s not about trying to cure me, it’s about te
sting a drug that might end up helping others down the road.”

  Shea sat up, too. “What does the clinical trial involve?”

  “A new drug has made it through several years of testing, both in labs and on healthy human subjects. In June they’ll conduct tests on subjects with various types of tumors. They’ll try to isolate the effects of the new drug by administering it in a controlled setting.”

  Shea knit his brows. “Could the drug actually worsen your condition, maybe accelerate the growth of the tumor?”

  “There’s no way of knowing.”

  “But with so little time—” He cut himself off abruptly as his emotions overwhelmed him. After a moment he continued quietly, “The tumor is going to begin affecting your quality of life soon as it is, and I’m worried that this is going to rob you of some of the good days you have left.”

  “It might or might not. I want to do it either way, though. If I play even a small part in getting a beneficial drug to the people who need it, then...well, I guess it’s a way of having my life mean something.”

  “Your life does mean something!”

  “But what am I leaving behind? A few murals that no one notices anyway? We only have one shot at life and maybe this is my chance to make it count.”

  He was quiet for a while before saying, “I think what you’re doing is noble. I do. I just wish it didn’t have to be you. Couldn’t someone else volunteer to test the drug?”

  “There are several participants in this study group, actually, gathered from all over the country. It also already went through a round of testing on healthy subjects to check for possible side effects and to determine dosages. According to my doctor, I’m the only one in the Phase Two group with a tumor this advanced, so the data I provide could be really valuable.”

  Shea sighed quietly and gathered me into his arms. “This is your choice, of course, and I do understand your reasons for doing it. You get why it’s hard for me, though.”

  “I do.”

  We laid down again, cocooned by the blankets and each other’s arms. He was quiet for a long time before he said softly, “My natural instinct is to protect you. I can’t though, not from anything that’s happening to you, and that makes me feel incredibly helpless.”

  “I know.”

  After another pause he asked, “Why can’t they operate and remove the tumor?”

  “It was already too widespread by the time I was diagnosed.”

  “Did you get a second opinion?”

  “I got a seventh opinion. I’ve been to the best doctors in the U.S. and Europe. They all said the same thing.”

  Shea buried his face in my shoulder. After a while, his body began to shake as he sobbed silently. I rubbed his back as I held him and told him, not for the first or last time, “God I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you like this.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Throughout the week between Christmas and New Year’s, Shea was at my apartment every minute that he wasn’t at his job. The intensity that had always existed between the two of us was amplified somehow. There was an urgency when we kissed and when we made love. We both felt the need to be together as much as possible, as if we could somehow fit an entire relationship into the space of a few months.

  Once all Shea’s questions were answered, we stopped talking about my condition. It was always the elephant in the room, though. He tried so hard not to let his sadness and worry show, but it was there in his eyes whenever he thought I wasn’t looking. He treated me just a little differently, too, even though I knew he didn’t mean to. He kept doing little things for me, like opening doors, and cooking, and cleaning up around the apartment. Yes, he was just being nice, but I didn’t want to feel helpless before that actually became my reality.

  Three nights that week, once Shea left to work the swing shift, I got in my Jeep, picked up Chance, and drove to Skye’s studio in Oakland. I’d been a shitty friend lately and was trying to make up for lost time. Plus, it just felt really good to spend time with my friends.

  Dare had started teaching dance classes at one end of the big warehouse and they were usually just finishing up by the time we arrived. We’d stay until well past midnight, either hanging out or helping Skye with his sculptures by dismantling some of the weird odds and ends he had stacked around the edges of his workspace. Chance alternately helped out or took pictures of Skye’s work, which he found endlessly fascinating.

  River and his boyfriend Cole joined us one night, along with Trevor, Vincent and their son Joshie. The kid spent a lot of time running around and playing tag with Benny the dog. After that, we all settled in to eat pizza and play a makeshift PG-13 game of charades while trying not to add colorful new words to Joshie’s already colorful vocabulary.

  I hadn’t told any of them what I’d told Shea yet. That was part of the reason it felt so good to hang out with my friends, aside from simply enjoying their company. I could just be Christian, instead of The Boy Who Was Dying. I’d have to tell my friends soon, especially now that Shea knew, but not during the holiday season. In the meantime though, I was going to enjoy the hell out of just being one of the guys.

  *****

  On New Year’s Eve, I took Shea to meet Zan and have our movie marathon. He was incredibly nervous, even though I told him he had no reason to be. “My dad already likes you,” I pointed out.

  “It’s bad enough that I’m meeting my boyfriend’s dad for the first time,” he said, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans. “That alone is enough to freak me out. But on top of that, he also has to be incredibly famous.”

  “He’s not that famous,” I hedged. “He’s not like, Elvis famous.”

  “He’s pretty freaking famous, actually.”

  “Okay, but so what? He’s just a guy that used to sing in front of people.”

  Shea rolled his eyes. “He’s a just guy that used to sing in front of people by selling out the world’s biggest concert venues. Not like he was working the corner coffee house.”

  “Famous people are no different than the rest of us. We act like they are, but they have their flaws and insecurities just like everyone else. And hell, as far as that goes, Zan has way more than his share.”

  He mulled that over before asking, “Is your father alright? I mean, you said he never leaves the house.”

  I focused on the traffic around us on the Golden Gate Bridge as I considered the question. Finally I said, “I don’t know. I mean, physically, he’s in perfect health. Mentally...I have no idea. I was just thinking about this a few weeks ago, actually. I don’t know if he’s just eccentric or if the things he does can be attributed to mental illness. He’s definitely bipolar, I know that for a fact. But I’m really not sure why he isolated himself like that. The doctors he used to see were quick to call him agoraphobic, paranoid, a whole laundry list of things, but all of that felt off to me. The isolation always struck me as a conscious decision.”

  “It’s hard to imagine someone cutting themselves off from everything on purpose,” Shea said.

  “When I asked him about it recently, it sounded like it just started as a break from the pressure of being in the public eye, but then it grew into something else. Maybe he only intended to step back for a little while, but now that he’s been gone so long, he might be afraid to face the world again. And who can blame him? Can you imagine the media frenzy if Zan Tillane simply showed up at a Starbucks one day? He basically has zero chance of a normal life if he ever leaves his house.”

  “That’s sad,” Shea said. “It’s like he’s imprisoned by his own success.”

  “Pretty much.”

  By the time we reached my dad’s house, Shea had built up such a case of nerves that he was on the verge of hyperventilating. A sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead, and he was wiping his palms on his jeans every few seconds. He asked me as I shut off the engine, “What if, hypothetically, I wasn’t able to do this? Would you be willing to tell him I had to stay home while I hid out in the Jeep?”

/>   “You can do this, Shea. It really is going to be fine, you’ll see.”

  I went around to the passenger side and opened his door for him, and he looked up at me with wide eyes. “What if he doesn’t like me?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It’s not.”

  “It is. What’s not to like about you?”

  “Well, there’s the fact that I’ll most likely throw up on your dad the moment I meet him. Nobody likes a barfer.”

  I grinned at that and reached across him to unfasten his seatbelt. “My advice? If you feel you need to throw up, aim away.”

  “Please don’t let me make a fool of myself. I mean, doing that to some extent is totally inevitable, but if I start rambling aimlessly about something stupid, please shut me up.”

  I put an arm around him after he slid out of the Jeep. “Shut you up how, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. Think of something.”

  “This is going to be fine, baby. I promise.” I drew him into a hug. He nodded against my shoulder and then let go of me to wipe his sweaty palms on his jeans yet again.

  I retrieved a couple bottles of champagne and a canvas grocery sack from the backseat, then let us in through the side door. “Hey Zan, we’re here,” I called as we made our way down the long hallway. My dad knew that, of course, since he had the whole place hooked up to a closed circuit surveillance system that fed to two little screens in the den, but I liked to announce my arrival anyway.

  “Holy crap,” Shea muttered and I glanced at him as I picked up his hand. He was staring at all the gold and platinum records we were passing. The awards didn’t mean much to my dad, which was why they’d been relegated to a back hallway, but my boyfriend was clearly awestruck.

  When we reached the kitchen, I let go of Shea long enough to deposit the champagne in the refrigerator and put the bag on the counter. I then put an arm around his shoulders. As we rounded the large kitchen island and headed for the den, Zan appeared in the doorway. Both he and Shea froze in their tracks when they spotted each other.