by Amy Lane
It was stupid. It was insane.
Veterinary medicine—particularly at the graduate level when the residencies started—was famous for being relentless and unforgiving. It broke up relationships and drove people to the brink of insanity, and Dane had already looked over that precipice and had to remind himself daily that the abyss was wide and deep indeed. He might never live alone. Having someone to remind him to do basic adulting things like taking his meds had turned out to be an absolute imperative. What made him think he could apply to a program that would take him away from his parents, his brother, his entire support system?
And his parents were all out of money from the “Dane’s being flaky” years. He’d been waiting tables in a restaurant for the last three years to afford his education, and while he’d been living at home and had tuition saved up, room and board wasn’t something he could afford.
Yet another reason he still lived at home, like the big crazy whiny albatross he was.
But… but it was a dream. It was the ability to say he’d done something with his life, even though mental illness had sort of swept his knees out from under him in his twenties. He was hitting the big three-oh in June, and boy, wasn’t that embarrassing. Thirty years old and he had nothing to show for it but a pharmacy in his medicine cabinet and parents who still loved him.
Parents who might not be around to take care of him forever, not that he ever wanted to think about that.
“Dane?” his mother inquired delicately. God, she was beautiful. She was in her seventies now, because she’d had Mason and Dane a little later than a lot of moms, but her age was shown in the lines around her eyes and the gentleness of her smile, and in no other place. She was pretty adamant about dyeing her hair chestnut brown every six weeks, so that helped, but mostly, she just laughed a lot, and it kept her young.
“I, uh, applied to the graduate department at Davis,” he said. “Veterinary science. It was, you know, just sort of for fun. To see if they’d take me.”
She grunted. “Oh, honey—”
“I know. We can’t afford it. I don’t even know if it says yes.”
“Maybe you can ask your brother for help,” she said softly. “You know, he doesn’t like to brag, but he makes a lot of money.”
No, Mason didn’t like to brag. Which was too bad, because he worked in upper-level administration at a technical firm in Silicon Valley, and he made a smashing amount of money. Mason would probably dump money on Dane’s head because Dane had always been his biggest cheerleader—and Mason seemed to need that. God. Poor brilliant, socially awkward Mason. He could manage a department to make money pretty much in his sleep. He could expand business and get morale thriving and was mostly a walking, talking treatise on economic theory in a bulky, unflattering, American-cut suit.
But opening his mouth on a casual level?
Not Mason’s best thing.
“Would Ira even let him do that?” Dane asked caustically. Mason’s live-in boyfriend was such a douchecanoe—such a douchecanoe. Besides being smarmy and insincere, he made Dane’s brother feel like shit.
Nice suit, Mason. You couldn’t afford something besides Penny’s? Wow, Mason, you managed to put a whole sentence together—in public. Now maybe try not antagonizing your boss. I’d say we can go clubbing, but it would be like asking a pile of bricks to dance. I’ll just go out myself, and you can play sudoku or whatever you left-brained people do with your time.
Ira was an artist. A bad one. For the last four years, he and Mason had been putting out Christmas cards with little cartoons on the front that weren’t funny, and that made Santa look like a bear on a porn site.
Such a douchecanoe.
“Ira doesn’t have a fucking say anymore,” Jeanette Hayes said bitterly, and Dane inhaled sharply through his nose and realized he’d been wrong about “maybe.” There was definitely vodka in whatever she was drinking.
“What happened?” Dane asked. He wasn’t dismayed—not exactly. He sort of wanted to do the cha-cha, really. He knew his brother wanted a happily ever after, a husband, a nice house, maybe even kids eventually, the whole nine yards. But for four years, Dane had lived in fear that Ira would be that guy and he’d have to get through Ira’s passive-aggressive cruelty to see his brother, who was too sweet to even recognize it for what it was.
But at the same time, watching Mason get his heart trampled was Dane’s least favorite thing. Mason was always so… so puzzled. He usually had no idea what had happened, how his marching to a different drum often led to people bailing from his parade.
It was painful to watch, and Dane was already texting someone at work to cover his shift so he could drive out to Walnut Creek to comfort his brother.
“Ira was cheating,” his mother said, drinking deeply of whatever fruit punch/vodka abomination had kept her sane during her children’s traumatic growing-up years. “Apparently with his boss.”
“Oh, the fuck—”
“I told him you were on your way over,” she said, looking at him levelly.
He stood and kissed her cheek. “I already texted work.”
“I know you did, honey. Because you’re a good brother, which is why I bet he’ll propose some sort of solution to help you get through school.”
“I don’t even know what it says yet!” he said, looking at the envelope with a little bit of horrified anticipation.
“I do,” she said, giving a ladylike little belch. “Because that’s what steam is for.”
Dane turned the envelope over and saw the wrinkled edge that indicated it had been opened already.
“So?” he asked.
“Get ready for greatness, honey. You’ve been admitted for a graduate program. I’m not sure which one—there was a lot of talk about residency and preliminary stuff, and frankly? Your brother called first, and this isn’t my first glass of Kool-Aid.”
Dane smirked. His mother was pretty much the best on all levels. He opened the letter and saw that she’d been right. He hadn’t been admitted into the residency—not the full veterinary science program itself—but he had been admitted into the graduate program as a science major. It wasn’t going to be a cakewalk—and he’d have to complete it in order to be a resident—but it wasn’t bullshit either.
“Congratulations, honey,” his mother said, beaming at him softly. Of course she would, because she wouldn’t want Mason’s tragedy to override Dane’s good fortune.
“Thanks, Mom. Let me go comfort Mason.”
She saluted him with what was left of her Kool-Aid, and he left.
Mason was sad, as it turned out. But mostly he was self-recriminatory, and that was hard to watch. Before he could launch into “How could I be so stupid?” Dane proposed his plan over a glass of super pricey, really awesome Scotch.
For a guy who—like Dane—had spent his entire life in the Bay Area, Mason was surprisingly excited to get the fuck out. And he was super proficient at making big shit happen too. Before Dane could even say “tuition,” Mason had paid it, gotten a job up in the Sacramento area at some place called Tesko Tech, and bought a sweet little house with four bedrooms, an office, three-and-a-half baths, and a swimming pool that both of them thought was a stupid waste of money… until they actually moved to Sacramento at the beginning of August.
“Oh dear God,” Mason said, getting out of the car as they watched the movers cart their stuff into the house.
“Augh!” Dane took one breath of the incinerator that was August in Sacramento, dove back into the car, and slammed the door.
“What are you doing?” Mason asked, exasperated. “It’s a convection oven in there!” He already had a sweat stain between his pecs and shoulder blades, just from standing up and breathing.
“Not if you get in here and turn on the car!” Dane snapped. “Do that!”
Mason complied, because he was a nice guy in the body of a gym-rat business-douche, and for a moment, they sat in the air-conditioning and tried to breathe.
“There’s a pool,�
�� Mason said unnecessarily.
“Can we drive the car into it?” Dane was totally serious. He’d been a creature of comfort since his earliest years, and outside was not comfortable.
“No, we can’t!” Mason took a deep breath. “But stay here. I’m going to go see how the movers are doing, and we can come back when they’re done.” Because Mason had marked all his boxes in big black letters, rendering the two of them there for oversight absolutely unnecessary. KITCHEN. UPSTAIRS GRAND SUITE BATHROOM. LIVING ROOM. He’d even included schematics. “If they can follow directions, we should be able to turn on the AC immediately.”
“Where are we going in the meantime?” Dane asked, feeling peevish. He hated that sound in his voice—it meant he was stressed, and whatever his meds usually did to keep him balanced, they weren’t doing it right now. Things, stupid things, like the temperature or a change of plans could catapult him from being a functioning adult to big whiny baby with his own mood-funk surrounding him like weather.
“We’re going to the nearest home and garden,” Mason said decisively. “That pool is going to save our lives.”
“But you said it would be like swimming in a tub of lukewarm bacteria!” Dane shuddered. He wasn’t even a germaphobe, but… ick.
“Well, not when we’re done bleaching the shit out of it,” Mason said, and he was using his executive voice, which meant discussion was over and they were men of action.
That was actually reassuring. Mason’s plans usually worked out. Dane always figured that’s why his boss—the one schtupping Mason’s boyfriend—hadn’t been able to fire him. Mason was just super confident with anything that didn’t involve communication with anybody he wanted to impress.
And Mason’s plan worked.
Suddenly they were both looking up the most efficient pumps, the best chemicals to put in the water, and were super fixated on how to keep the pool in tip-top shape, because to boys who were used to eighty degrees being warm, one hundred seven was the fiery furnace of hell.
Once they’d bought the best pump in the world and made plans to have it installed, they went back to the house, and Dane got his first look inside—not bad. It had been made up sort of blandly to sell, they both thought, and the walls were white, the carpets beige, and the hardwood covered. Before they’d even moved out, Mason had redone the kitchen as well as pulled out the carpeting in the living room area and replaced it with hardwood and a big, handsome area rug with big blocks of masculine colors. Dane had liked that, and waited to see what Mason would do with his own room.
He’d kept the carpet, but had painted one wall sort of a maroon brown and bought sheets and comforters to match, then added really stunning black-and-white prints. Dane had made vague noises about doing his own room, but then school started, and Dane was getting his ass solidly kicked.
Between the commute—Fair Oaks was a solid hour away from UC Davis, and that was when traffic didn’t blow—and the course load, and the medication Dane had switched to when he’d gotten a new shrink in Sacramento, he had his plate full.
And for once, he wasn’t getting laid.
He’d been sort of the restaurant slut during his last years of school. His prediagnosis relationships had ended badly—for more reasons than just that Dane could go batshit at any moment, really. But the last one… well. That had ended with an uninterrupted upswing, and the guy hadn’t called Dane’s parents until Dane had knocked down his walls with a sledgehammer and spray-painted what was left of them black. Not good times, really. Dane didn’t remember most of them, because when he got so deep in his head that reality fractured, that’s just what fucking happened. He did remember his brother hauling him—fireman carry—into the psych ward physically, and then sitting by his bed in the weeks of aftermath. After that, Dane had figured his family would get all his loyalty. Period. Because nobody else was going to have his back.
Let’s just say it made him… wary… of any other attachment.
Besides, Dane was, in his own way, as weird as his brother. No, he didn’t wear the wrong clothes to work because he mistakenly thought casual Fridays were a thing when they weren’t, and he didn’t make dumb jokes about cheese when his boyfriend was hosting a wine-and-cheese party to a bunch of Francophiles. But he did make wild movie/game references when they pinballed into his brain, and he did take the sarcastic, snarky way out whenever he had the chance, and he just got tired of that, “Oh Jesus, Dane, could you make sense for once,” look that his hookups eventually gave him, which was why he kept it short.
You kept it to one or two bangs a buck and you didn’t have to see that look, right?
He never asked himself, “But what if your crush got you like that from the get-go?” Which was too bad.
Because he wasn’t prepared for Clay Alexander Carpenter in the least.
The Meet Cute
WHEN DANE Christian Hayes met Clay Alexander Carpenter, the earth stopped, the sun brightened, the skies turned to turquoise and fairy dust, and all of the angels, the birds, and the kids playing out-of-tune instruments in grade schools achieved a perfect chord.
And then Dane found out Carpenter wasn’t gay and the world fell to shit.
It seemed ordinary enough.
Dane had been golfing with Mason, because even though it was November and they’d moved to Sacramento in August, Mason had no social life at that point and was feeling low. And truth be known, Dane was not doing very well and had no friends either.
Well, Mason didn’t know that.
Mason still looked at Dane with this baffled adoration in his eyes at all times, and Dane didn’t like to disabuse him of that. He’d heard some people say their older brothers were pains in the ass, or control freaks, or complete assholes, or even just distant names on a Christmas card, but in spite of months of adult cohabitation, Dane still didn’t feel that way about Mason.
Mason was still the dear, geeky, as graceful as drunken Mercedes—if a drunken Mercedes could grow hands and golf—brother he’d always loved. His split with Ira hadn’t destroyed Mason’s boundless optimism, which was why his excitement about a round of golf at the beginning of November had seemed like a good idea at the time. Mason just sort of gave it that rosy glow, and Dane went with it, as he always did. Watching Mason’s face light up—dark eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, Superman jaw and all—made ditching his homework totally worth it.
Besides, it gave them a chance to talk.
“No, seriously,” Mason was saying as he lined up a shot in complete abjection. “I don’t understand people at Tesko,” he murmured. “You have no idea of the mess I almost made at work.”
Dane let out a sigh. Oh, Mason…. “It couldn’t possibly have been that bad,” he said staunchly. He took his turn at the tee and eyed his brother, who actually wore golf slacks and white shoes! It was amazing. Of course, it was that bad. Mason’s heart was in the right place, and workplace harassment had never really been his thing, but his awkward mouth hadn’t gotten any better with the change of scenery.
Sometimes people’s biggest faults just took over.
But Mason had seen Dane when that had happened to him, and had held his hand and brought him back to the land of the living.
So yes, technically Mason could do wrong. But in the real world inside Dane’s head, there was no wrong Mason could do that the rest of the world shouldn’t forgive the shit out of him for.
They played on in silence for a few, and Dane looked around the small Fair Oaks golf course and tried not to judge. There were better golf courses on the Bay Area peninsula, and they were greener and the hills were hillier and the sand traps had more sand, he was sure of it. This place was dry. Even when everybody in the world said, “Oh, yes, Sacramento’s having a wet year,” Dane was pretty sure people were just saying that to fuck with people from the Bay Area or Seattle. He figured there was sort of a joke among locals to keep everybody from acknowledging the perennial drought that seemed to plague the area.
Or at least the golf course, whe
re the grass was only one-quarter green, even in November.
He was just in the middle of a glum contemplation of changing his major yet again and quitting the whole stress-laden graduate program to go into microbrewery instead, when he realized two of the guys from the party behind them were standing nearby, having played through in a relatively few number of strokes.
They were snarky… and funny.
“Yeah, Skipper, I don’t get where that’s fun. I mean, here’s guys who profess to like girls, but they’re going out of their way to be awful to them. I mean, these guys who harass girls in the gaming world need to wear that steel-titted G-string in public and dance the Watusi before they open their mouths, you know?”
Dane turned toward that voice—gruff, deep, hitting all the sweet spots in Dane’s stomach—and paused.
The two guys waiting for them to play weren’t… weren’t like most other golfers.
For one thing, they were in cargo shorts. Mason and Dane’s father was a little older than their friends’ parents, and he’d given them both sort of an old-world formal sensibility. You didn’t wear jeans golfing. You didn’t wear cargo shorts. You wore slacks. They didn’t have to be white or plaid, but anything was better than cargo shorts.
But these two golfers were in cargo shorts. One of them, a blond guy in a hooded sweatshirt, was making Dane’s brother trip over his own tongue as he stood next to an averagely tall, stocky brown-haired guy with scruff and bangs falling in his eyes and glasses, and who appeared to have a liberal streak that Dane approved of.
Mason was doing his suave older-guy thing, extending his hand and introducing himself. When the blond one introduced himself as Skipper Keith, Mason said, surprised, “Schipperke?”
“Are you the guy who keeps calling IT?” Skipper asked, a little dumbstruck.
The brown-haired guy, Clay Carpenter, gave his friend a compassionate, long-suffering look that indicated he would have expected this chance meeting from nobody else but Skipper, which was why Clay obviously loved the guy like a brother. Dane recognized that look.
