by Amy Lane
That’s too bad. We’re going to see my parents if Mason can get his ass in gear. He seems to think he won’t have to stop for coffee.
Carpenter chuckled. You ALWAYS have to stop for coffee.
Have a good day, right?
Huh. That sounded like Dane might not. You too. Text me when you’re back online. If I’m home, we can game.
Of course, gaming was quickly becoming code for talk, but Carpenter didn’t mind. He loved Skipper—wholly, unabashedly, with all his soul. Skip had been sick a couple of weeks earlier, and Carpenter and Richie had taken turns watching over him because he literally had nobody else in his life who’d do that, and Clay had been proud to be part of that team. He could talk with Skip about anything, and he hoped Skipper was starting to trust him to do the same.
But in a million years, he’d never imagined talking to someone like Dane—someone super quick, and super funny, and super smart—and feeling so very comfortable and at the same time so very alive.
It was almost like he felt a click whenever Dane’s name popped up on his phone or his handle—RainbowShorts—popped up on his PS4.
Will do. Don’t fall in love with Skipper while I’m gone.
Carpenter chuckled. Richie would come after me with a shiv—and he LIKES me.
Does my brother know this? I think he’s still crushing a little bit.
Your brother didn’t stand a chance, Carpenter texted brutally. Richie’s— He paused typing and tried to think of how to word this. —an auto mechanic and fierce. He doesn’t look big or scary, but we got into an argument once and I thought he was going to chop me into bits and stuff me in the freezer.
Holy God.
Well, that did sound a little extreme. Skip was sick and out of it, and we were both losing our minds. My first thought was DOCTOR. His first thought was FIX IT OURSELVES. Because that’s what happens when someone like him and Skip grow up without insurance.
There was another pause—lots and lots of the little thought bubbles on the phone. Is this why you’re taking Skip to your parents’ house for Thanksgiving?
Carpenter swallowed. I want him to have more than me and Richie in the world. I mean, as rocky as it’s been between me and my folks, at least I knew they were there.
Why rocky?
Ugh. That was a tangle. Chat later. Gotta go. And then, as if to make him not a liar, his phone lit up with Skip’s name and it was time to go outside so they could drive up to his parents’ place in Rocklin.
SKIPPER WOULDN’T have seen it, but Carpenter knew his mother was nervous. He seriously hadn’t brought anybody home since his fifteenth birthday, when he’d invited Calliope and Jordyn to dinner. When they’d left, Jordyn had told him quietly that he was welcome at their place for cookies and video games anytime.
But Skipper had been duly warned about not eating the weird bean dip that his family thought was amazing, and he valiantly smiled when he had to eat Tofurky. And Carpenter’s parents took the news about Skipper dating his fellow striker on the team with genuine smiles.
For a brief, shining moment, Carpenter was calling it a win.
Then his mother brought up Clay’s older sister—and how her two perfect children were going to spend their Thanksgiving in a children’s oncology ward volunteering to help the sick children—and he felt a craving, right in the gut, for cherry pie with the crust made of fat and a half gallon of creamy full-fat ice cream on the side.
And then, while he was fighting that, Skip and Clay’s uncle Carter got into the most unexpected dumbass argument.
Skip probably didn’t notice it. He probably didn’t think of it as an argument at all, because Skip was just that sunshiny sweet summer child, oh yes he was.
But Uncle Carter was sort of an asshole. Lots of, “Oh, so you’re finally playing a sport, Clay,” and, “They let you on the field as you are?” Which Carpenter was used to by now, but it still wasn’t awesome.
And then Skipper started talking about Richie arguing about the offsides penalty—because that’s what Richie did, of course—and Uncle Carter spoke up. “Don’t you mean the offside penalty?”
Skipper stared at him blankly. “Isn’t that what I said?”
“No, you said offsides.”
“Yeah, the offsides penalty.”
“But there’s no s, Christopher. It’s pronounced ‘offside.’”
“But that’s not how we say it,” Skipper said, still completely oblivious. “I mean, you want to say it your way, I’m sure it’s fine, but we all say it our way, and that’s offsides.”
“But that shows poor education about the sport,” Carter laughed, and Carpenter wanted to deck him because he sounded like a smug and superior asshole.
“Well, yeah,” Skipper said, “on your part. How can you live here your whole life and not know we call it offsides and not offside?”
Carter had gaped and laughed, and the table had followed his example, and Carpenter had felt a little less homicidal.
But not much.
If someone could pick a fight with Skipper—who worked his ass off to be a really great person—what chance did Clay Carpenter stand? Why even try to lose weight, to find a better job, to give to every charity known to man, hell, to pay off his student loans, when his own damned family couldn’t look past the difference of one lousy goddamned letter in a word to see that Skipper was trying to drag a scattered bunch of total assholes kicking and screaming into a family unit?
And be proud of Skipper when he mostly succeeded?
Skipper didn’t even ask questions when Clay begged him to stop for burgers, pie, and ice cream on the way home.
They had themselves a pity party in Skip’s awful kitchen, and Carpenter got to console him for missing Richie, and then Skip did an unexpected thing.
Skip gave him points for being a good friend.
Carpenter had been crying into his cherry pie about how wonderful his sister was. It wasn’t like he didn’t remember, right? Sabrina helping him with his algebra? The way her husband had tried to make him feel welcome—in spite of the fact that his brother had been the douchebag Clay and Skipper had been ditching at golf.
The fact that he’d gotten to hold her twins first, after she’d given birth right out of medical school? He’d never forget.
His sister was a good person. She was bright and shining and had paid off all her student loans, right? And she made the world a better place.
And Carpenter could barely get his fat ass out of bed.
But Skipper told him his good karma was fucking earned. He’d taken care of Skip when he was sick. He’d dragged Skip to Thanksgiving. He’d taken him golfing. He’d played soccer because Skip had asked.
He’d been Skip’s friend after Skip had told him about Richie, and Clay was still his friend.
To Carpenter, these things felt like the bare minimum. Like he’d been raised to be a superstar and Skip was praising him for using words like human being.
But Carpenter was starting to see that to Skip, he had effectively raised the bar on being human. To a guy who had no family, being dragged to a family gathering was a blessing. To a guy who’d just figured out he was gay, having one friend who still treated him right meant he could have a whole lot of faith in the world to come. To Skipper, who had apparently grown up too quickly and too alone, the point wasn’t that Carpenter felt happier in his kitchen than he’d ever felt in his life. The point was that Carpenter came into his kitchen at all.
Carpenter had been wondering, this past week, why someone as bright and shiny as Dane would want to hang with a big goober like himself online and play games.
After Skipper said that raw and vulnerable thing about how Carpenter had been the friend he needed when Skip had needed him, Carpenter got the first clue that maybe, maybe, the world wasn’t quite as dark as he thought it was.
Blessings
DANE WALKED through the parking lot of UC Davis and felt that horrible environmental betrayal for not riding a bicycle almost immediately
.
Everybody in Davis rode their bikes. Everybody. The fact that he commuted in notwithstanding, he was pretty sure people expected him to have one of those little folding bikes in the back of his Honda so he could make his way around the vast campus and little college town the way society dictated.
And he got it—he did. The entire town was made up of bike lanes and bike racks and students on bikes. It was a giant virtue signal on the edge of the breadbasket that was central California, and Dane was all for the last bastion of liberalosity in all its forms. But he was exhausted, and he would rather take a Lyft to his parking lot than figure out how to pack a tiny bicycle into the trunk of his car.
And as he hefted his backpack over his shoulder, he heard a rattle that started a panic attack in his gut as his general funk and pissiness took on a whole new context.
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.” He got to his car and unzipped the backpack, almost weeping when he pulled out the full pill calendar.
“Motherfucker!”
Two doses. That was his morning dose and the lunch dose, and he had two hours until his evening dose. “Shit shit shit shit shit….” No wonder he was feeling vertigo.
He pulled out one dose and the little chocolate milk jug and guzzled everything down before slamming his head back against the seat rest.
It was the third time he’d done that this week.
Goddammit. No wonder he needed his brother as a babysitter for probably the rest of his life. It was his last day of finals—thank fuck—but his meds were out of whack, and he knew better than to let them get wonky. Mason had made sure he had his pill calendar every fucking morning, and this was going to have consequences that Mason didn’t deserve. Oh hell, the next few days were going to be a joy. Dane squeezed his eyes shut and resisted the beginnings of an all-out anxiety attack in the parking lot.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Come on, man, hold it together. If you can get home, you can do this in your boring bedroom and Mason never needs to know. Dane was such a big whiny baby—it was so embarrassing that he couldn’t hold his shit together.
His chest was getting tighter, though, as he thought about how bad it could get. He hadn’t been sleeping—was that an upswing or was that just finals? What if it was an upswing? What if he ended up repainting his room purple because suddenly, at two in the morning, magenta seemed like the thing to do?
You’ll be up playing games with Carpenter anyway.
Oh yeah. That would be great. Why not let Carpenter see him like this, panicking and fighting tears and getting ready to scream and pound on the ceiling of the car?
It’s missed meds, Dane. Oh my God, stop being such a toddler. Mason loves you. He’ll help you out. Come on, man. He’d rather have you call him, right?
Dane pulled out his phone, startled a little out of his spiral when it buzzed in his hand.
Carpenter.
Oh God, it was Carpenter, with his raspy voice and his easygoing banter and his way of making Dane feel completely normal.
Congratulations on making it through your trimester! How’d the finals go?
Dane’s fingers shook as he texted back.
Fine. I unbalanced my meds, though. Trying to deep breathe through it.
His phone buzzed in his hand. He hit the Accept Call button.
“Unbalanced your meds? Is that like when you put a bunch of them on one end of the scale and a fat bastard on the other and the meds are swinging out of your reach?” Carpenter asked.
Dane let out a cracked laugh. “Yeah, Carpenter, that’s what it means. Fucking Jesus.”
“Okay, so do I need to get off the scale?”
And Dane realized through his panic that Carpenter was inviting him to play along a little. “No, no, you can stay on the scale. We can just share the drugs, maybe,” he said, but his voice was still wobbling, and he wasn’t fooling anyone. “Tell me about your day.”
“Sure. Richie got a job, and we saw your brother at lunch.”
“Got a job? Wasn’t he temping?” Carpenter had kept Dane apprised of the Skip and Richie show. They’d both breathed a sigh of relief when they’d moved in together the day after Thanksgiving. Dane had even had a celebratory bag of microwaved popcorn.
“Yeah, but he’s now working at an auto parts store instead, and he’s ridiculously cute about it. So, your folks are gone for Christmas? That’s what Mason said.”
Dane let out air through his teeth. “That’s because he’s a dork that doesn’t read Mom’s emails. They were going to be gone for Christmas, but I think Mason and I are driving down Christmas Day now because Mom’s cousin got the plague or a heart attack or is suddenly dead or something.”
Carpenter snorted. “That’s a very compassionate diagnosis, Dane. How fond are you of this relative anyway?”
“She keeps giving Mom brochures on how Jesus can cure my bipolar disorder and my gayness.”
“The suddenly dead plague it is,” Carpenter endorsed staunchly like the good friend he was. “And good, because that means you guys can still come to Skipper’s Christmas party on Christmas Eve. It should be fun. Skipper’s getting a firepit for outside, and there’s going to be marshmallow toasting and assholes bragging about their feats of prowess in soccer. You didn’t hear it from me, but Menendez and Cooper and Thomas are all baking cookies together. I mean, it’s not supposed to be sexual, but I can’t be held accountable for what these mild-mannered teachers and lawyers and accountants do when covered in sports testosterone and flour.”
That did it. A laugh broke through. Some of Dane’s tension had begun seeping out at the sound of Carpenter’s voice, and with the apparent normalcy of his conversation.
“Do you want to imagine a threesome, or should I?” Dane had been in his share, but he’d found they’d been overrated. Lately, the thought of people he didn’t know touching him just felt… awkward. As Carpenter’s raspy voice cascaded over his skin, soothing away the rough edges, he felt an attraction based on nothing more than comfort.
“I got no idea. Thomas is this sort of goofy-looking school teacher with a shaggy beard and hair like a blond dandelion. Cooper looks like Jared Padalecki, and like he should be a college professor instead of an accountant. Menendez is small and he’s mean. You can imagine these guys having all the sex you want, but I’ve seen them covered in mud and down five points. I don’t think I can.”
Dane laughed some more and realized his eyes were closed and he was breathing normally.
“Who do you want to imagine in a threesome?” he asked, not really caring who the starlets were. What mattered was that Carpenter kept talking.
“Hm…. John Krasinski—”
“The Office?” Dane’s voice squeaked.
“Uh, Jack Ryan, because duh. Anyway, John Krasinski, Joel Kinnaman—”
“Who in the fuck—”
“He’s in Hanna, the series. Super tall, a little gangly, but very Swedish. You’d like him.”
“Swedish?”
“Okay, Jay Hernandez—the new Magnum reboot. Not as good an actor, but I’d have a beer with him. And… hmm… oh. Aldis Hodge. Easy.”
Dane’s brain exploded, but in a good way. “Carpenter, aren’t you straight?”
“Maybe—I was trying to plan a threesome you’d enjoy. How’d I do?”
“I don’t know,” Dane said, the descent from his almost-anxiety-attack washing him in melancholy and making him table that “maybe” for later. “I think I need to watch more TV to see some of these guys with their shirts off.”
“Well, how about you come home, and I’ll meet you there with takeout. You, me, and Mason can leave the games for the night and watch mindless fucking TV and you can chill.” Carpenter’s voice dropped suddenly, becoming terribly, terribly gentle. “You really need to chill, don’t you.”
It wasn’t a question, and that’s when Dane realized he hadn’t fooled Carpenter one bit. This whole twenty minutes or so of conversation had been Carpenter trying to distract Dane from his anxiety attac
k, and it had worked.
“I really do,” Dane said, tears of weakness squeezing out from the corners of his eyes. “Don’t take this wrong, but can you show up before I get there?”
“Yeah, sure. No worries. What do you want for takeout?”
“Anything,” Dane said. “Just… just I’m going to start the car so the phone can start through Bluetooth. Could you, uh, text Mason for me and ask him to buy chocolate milk, then tell him you’re coming over tonight?”
“Not a problem. Did you want to call—”
“No.” Dane couldn’t stop the note of pleading in his voice as he turned the ignition. When Carpenter was linked up with the speaker, he said, “I… just keep talking to me, okay? I just really want to come home.”
“Yeah, sure. Have you seen this newest version of Fortnite? I am digging the new skins. How about you?”
“I’ll be more impressed if we can put some of the big muscular male characters in a dress. Because that would be fun.”
“Wow. That’s a little kinky for me. But your character might carry it off.”
“She’s happier in leather,” Dane said, closing his eyes for a moment. Yeah. His brain was clear, and his meds were probably kicking in. He had no idea if that was true or not—he knew he needed blood levels of those chemicals to stay even, but he had no clue if just throwing them all down his gullet did any good at all.
But he was going to tell himself it did so he and Carpenter could keep talking.
All the way home.
HE GOT home expecting hell to pay—but there wasn’t. Just Mason with two gallons of chocolate milk and Carpenter with something that didn’t look like takeout.
“What the hell…?”
“Yeah, well, Skipper’s got me on this health food kick,” Carpenter explained. “So, chicken on whole wheat with pesto. I caught the sandwich place before they closed, got like six of them, so whatever.”
Mason looked up from his corner of the pale leather couch in his spacious living room. His tatty sweats and rumpled cardigan were a signal that his weekend had already started, and he must have seen Skipper and Richie together, so his Skipper Keith pity party had not quite wrapped up.
