Salvation

by Land, Alexa

  “She’s a tricky one.”

  “Yes she is.”

  When he put down his satchel, I threw my arms around him and held him tightly as he enveloped me in a hug and rubbed my back. Eventually I asked, my voice smaller than I would have wanted, “What happens now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happens when we’re both back in San Francisco? These last few days have been so intense and intimate that it’s hard to imagine dialing it back to simply dating.”

  “I don’t know if you’ll even want to date me. As soon as you leave this idyllic environment and get back to reality, you’ll be reminded that I’m still the guy that took you on a dangerous car chase the day I met you, the one who’s involved in all sorts of questionable things that necessitate carrying a gun. You might find yourself having second thoughts, which would be understandable.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  A black town car pulled into the circular driveway just then, coming to a stop a few feet from us, and I made myself let go of Vincent. He picked up his bag and turned to me again as the driver got out of the car and opened the door to the back seat. We just stood there for a few moments. A million things still needed to be said, but we ended up saying nothing at all.

  Vincent leaned in and kissed me on the lips. It was quick, maybe because we had an audience. He took one last look at me, reaching out and running a fingertip lightly over my lower lip, some sort of intense emotion burning in his dark eyes. He turned from me then and got in the car. The driver closed the rear door before getting behind the wheel. I raised my hand in a little wave and watched as the car pulled away, soon disappearing down the private road.

  I missed him immediately, the second the car door closed, as a matter of fact. It made me wish I’d invited myself along so I could spend tonight with him before catching a ride back here with River in the morning. But Vincent hadn’t offered, and had said there were things in the city that needed his attention. So here I was.

  I went back inside, intending to stay out of the way in the guestroom Vincent and I had been sharing. To reach it, I had to cut through the kitchen. Jamie was in there, unpacking some of the numerous shopping bags they’d brought along, and intercepted me with a cheerful, “Hey, Trevor. Do you have any idea how to make Sangria?”

  “Kind of. I read a recipe for it once. You’re going to need some citrus fruits.”

  Jamie dug around in a canvas bag, then hauled out two big handfuls of limes and lemons. “Check!” He tossed these on the counter and they started rolling everywhere, so I quickly caught a few that were bound for the floor. “Any idea where a cutting board is?”

  I’d gotten very familiar with the kitchen over the last few days, and retrieved a board and a couple knives for Jamie. I began helping him slice the fruit without being asked, while he rifled through the bags and pulled out a few oranges and a green plastic basket of strawberries. “These could go in there, right?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  An unfamiliar voice said, “Oh, hey. I’m going to assume you guys are with the wedding party, and not a couple of epicurean burglars.”

  We both looked up at the handsome, dark-haired guy in the doorway, who had a garment bag slung over one shoulder and a suitcase beside him. He was in his early twenties, a little over six feet tall with collar-length black hair. A pair of sunglasses were perched on his head, and a white polo shirt showed off his tan and big biceps. “I’m Gianni, by the way. My family has the odd habit of calling me Johnnie, but don’t feel that you have to.”

  “Oh! I’m Trevor, the caterer, and this is Jamie, one of the groomsmen,” I said.

  “Hi Trevor. Jamie, you actually look familiar. I think I met you at my brother Dante’s wedding.”

  “That’s right, nice to see you again,” Jamie said with a smile. “I heard you were going to be gone all summer.”

  “Change of plans,” Gianni said, frowning just a little. He draped the garment bag over the suitcase and joined us at the kitchen island. “Please tell me whatever you’re making is alcoholic, because I could seriously use a drink right about now.”

  “It is!” Jamie said cheerfully. “Thank you for letting us invade your beautiful home, by the way.”

  “You don’t say no to Nana,” Gianni said with a grin, taking a seat on a barstool. “But I was glad to do it anyway.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “Shit, I’m completely jetlagged. I was in Santorini twelve hours ago, and now my body doesn’t know if it’s day or night.”

  When we’d mixed up two big pitchers of Sangria and grabbed a stack of glasses, Gianni followed us out to the pool. I felt a little less like a third (or ninth) wheel now that he was here. Dante was in the water making out with his husband, and when he spotted his brother he bellowed, “Johnnie!” He was out of the pool and embracing his brother not five seconds later, completely soaking him.

  “Let go of me, you soggy maniac,” Gianni yelped, but he was laughing.

  Dante released him and exclaimed, “You’ve been away too long, brother! It’s been six months since we saw each other, you know.”

  “God, has it been that long since your wedding?”

  “Yup. Come say hi to Charlie.”

  Gianni went to the edge of the pool and crouched down, then extended his hand to his brother-in-law. “Great to see you again.”

  “You too,” Charlie said, shaking hands.

  Dante made some introductions, capping it off by summarizing, “Brian and Jamie are Kieran’s groomsmen, and Hunter and Charlie are Christopher’s. Dmitri and I are the plus-ones.” He grinned broadly.

  Jamie poured the drinks as Gianni flopped down on a lounge chair and pushed his sunglasses into place. I’d started to feel a bit self-conscious and had begun drifting back to the kitchen, but Gianni’s hand shot out suddenly and grabbed mine. “Come and sit with me, Trevor,” he said. “Without you, I’m the odd man out, and I just hate that!”

  I perched on the edge of an adjacent lounger as Dante toweled off, then sat at the foot of his brother’s chair. “So, what happened to your three-month world cruise?” he asked Gianni.

  “My travelling companion and I had a difference of opinion, so she sent me packing.” Gianni raised his drink and called out, “Cheers to the happy couple!” He then drained half the glass before coming up for air.

  “What sort of difference of opinion?”

  “She didn’t think I should be blowing the entire shipboard wait staff. I disagreed.” Gianni flashed his sibling a brilliant smile, and Dante burst out laughing.

  “Wow. Okay. I didn’t know you did that kind of thing.”

  “Well, I wasn’t always so candid about my bisexuality,” Gianni said. “But since you came leaping oh-so-gracefully out of the closet and even found yourself a hot husband, I figure, eh, why not be upfront about it?”

  “What are the odds?” I hadn’t actually meant to say that out loud. When both brothers turned to look at me, I felt an insta-blush warming my cheeks and stammered, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just thought, you know, it’s surprising that out of four brothers, two are gay and one’s bi. I don’t know about the fourth one. I mean, I assume Mikey’s straight, since he was married to a woman and has kids.”

  “Wait, Vincent’s gay?” Gianni asked.

  My eyes went wide and I exclaimed, “Oh God, did I just out him? I assumed you knew. It wasn’t news to Nana, so I figured it was common knowledge.”

  Gianni grinned at me. “Don’t panic, Trevor. We knew that. You just cut my bad joke off in midstream. I was going to claim he was asexual, since as far as I know, he’s never actually dated.”

  “Oh! Well, that’s a relief.” I felt like a moron, but still mumbled, “And he is actually dating someone,” before I made myself shut up.

  “Really? Who?” Dante asked.

  Well, I’d stumbled that far down the path, might as well go all the way. “Me.” I looked down at the dark red drink in my hand and poked a
t a floating lemon slice with a fingertip.

  “Well, damn,” Gianni said, beaming at me. “Good luck with that.”

  Dante lightly smacked his sibling’s arm and said, “Way to be supportive, you nub.”

  “What? I’m just saying that Vincent isn’t the easiest person in the world to warm up to. I mean, I love my brother, but you know as well as I do that he’s spent his whole life building walls around himself.”

  “But when he lets you behind those walls, it’s absolutely amazing,” I said quietly.

  “What are we talking about?” Charlie came up to us, drying off from the pool, and dropped onto the lounge chair behind his husband.

  “Trevor here is dating our brother Vincent,” Gianni told him. “Which was fairly shocking to us, since ol’ Vinnie isn’t exactly the dating type.”

  Charlie flashed his perfect smile at me, his green eyes sparkling. “Oh man, wait until he drags you to a Dombruso family function. They’re a riot!” As he was talking, he wrapped his arms around Dante’s broad shoulders. “I was totally overwhelmed when I first went to one, and that’s even after growing up with my ex-boyfriend Jamie’s huge Irish-Catholic clan.”

  “What about my family?” Jamie wanted to know, strolling over with a drink, hand-in-hand with his husband.

  “I was just saying that the Dombruso family somehow manages to be even more loud, boisterous, and generally drunken than the Nolans, and that’s no small feat,” Charlie said.

  “Think so, huh?” Jamie said with a grin. “Team Nolan is going to be descending on Kieran’s wedding in force, so we’ll just see, won’t we? I mean, I’ve never been to a Dombruso gathering, but there’s almost no way that they could be wilder than my family. Our shindigs usually end up right on the brink of the National Guard getting called in.” He sat down beside me, and Dmitri settled in behind us on the wide lounge chair.

  Hunter and his boyfriend joined us. Brian was back in his wheelchair after the pool, a towel wrapped around his waist. He was a former Marine, and had lost both of his legs below the knee in Afghanistan. “What are we talking about?” Hunter asked as he sat on his boyfriend’s lap.

  “Who’s the more boisterous, wild, and totally inappropriate family, Dombruso versus Nolan,” Dmitri told him.

  “That’s a close call,” Christopher said as he and Kieran came up and settled down on Dante’s lounge chair. A slight southern accent was creeping into his speech that I hadn’t noticed before. “I’ve been to numerous gatherings with both families. They each feature an insane number of cousins, rampant drunkenness, frequent threats to shoot someone, and the TMI dial turned up to eleven.”

  Everyone chuckled, and he added, “If I was forced to pick, though, I’d go with the Dombrusos. But only because they have a really horny drunken cousin named Rachel that tries to dry hump me at every single family get-together. That scores bonus points in overall inappropriateness.”

  “Well, shit,” Gianni exclaimed. “If all it takes is a little dry humping to declare a family the winner, come here!” He flung himself at Christopher and pretended to try to climb on top of him while everyone burst out laughing. When he sat back down, Gianni said, “Now that I’ve dry-humped one of the grooms, can I come to the wedding? I can do you too if you want, Kieran, so you don’t feel left out.”

  “Of course you can come to the wedding, you didn’t even need to ask!” Christopher exclaimed.

  “See? A little dry humping works every time,” Gianni said as he wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Oh man, we need to change the subject away from dry humping. That expression grosses me out,” Hunter said with a smile and a little shudder.

  “This from a former porn star.” His boyfriend grinned at him.

  “That’s why you look familiar!” Gianni exclaimed. “You’re Hunter Storm!”

  “I was Hunter Storm. Now I’m just Hunter Jacobs, unemployed soon-to-be college student.”

  “Oh hey, did you hear about your application for late admission to S.F. State?” I asked.

  “Yup. I’m in. I don’t have a clue what I’m going to major in, but it’s a start. Brian got in too,” Hunter said. “We’re going to be study buddies.” He shot his boyfriend a huge smile.

  “Wow,” Kieran exclaimed, “that’s terrific! You didn’t tell me you were doing that, Bri!”

  “And that’s exactly why,” Brian said, drawing a circle in the air around his brother. “I knew you’d be a little too excited about this whole thing, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to wash out after about two weeks anyway. I was never the academic type.”

  “You did fine in high school,” Kieran said.

  “If you mean I played football, got stoned, and pretended to chase girls, then yeah, I did awesome,” Brian told him with a grin.

  “You’ll have fun taking classes together,” Charlie said. “Dante and I have taken several through University Extension while waiting for our restaurant to open.”

  “Speaking of which, when’s that going to happen?” Jamie asked.

  Dante shrugged and said, “Hopefully at the end of summer. The earthquake retrofit on the building and the remodel have both hit snags, so it’s been tough to pin down an opening date. Everything else is going great, though. I even think I found a chef, after months of searching. His name’s Tyler Remmy. He’s coming back to the U.S. in August after a year in Rome and we’ve already begun contract negotiations.”

  “Oh wow,” I murmured.

  Dante looked at me and asked, “You’ve heard of him?”

  I nodded. “He’s supposed to be brilliant, a rising star in the culinary world. Where’s your restaurant?”

  “On Chestnut in the Marina District.”

  “You know,” Hunter chimed in, “Trevor doesn’t talk about it much, but I suspect he has culinary aspirations that extend way beyond catering. Maybe you could see if that chef would be willing to take on an apprentice.”

  “Don’t even joke about that,” I muttered.

  “I’m not joking,” Hunter said. “It could be a great opportunity for you, Trevor.”

  “He wouldn’t want someone with so little experience,” I told him.

  Dante said, “Remmy actually told me he likes to work with young chefs and train them from the ground up to do things his way. He has a lot of innovative ideas about how to run a kitchen. I’d be more than happy to set up an interview for you, Trevor.”

  “Thanks, Dante.” I pushed down the excitement that had started to flare up in me. No way was I going to get my hopes up.

  Dmitri and Dante compared notes on running a restaurant for a while as I sipped my drink and paid close attention. After a while, Dmitri said, “The bar and grill will soon have our divided attention, though.” He smiled at his husband and said, “Should we tell them our news?” When Jamie grinned at him and nodded, Dmitri said, “We’ve decided it’s time to start our family.”

  “Holy shit, that’s huge!” Dante exclaimed. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

  Jamie said, “As ready as any couple is when they decide to become parents, I suppose.”

  “Will you adopt?” Charlie asked.

  “We may later on, since we want several kids. This first time though, we’ve decided to use an egg donor and a surrogate. We’ve gotten that process started by visiting a few clinics and interviewing candidates.”

  “So, this may be a totally inappropriate question,” Gianni chimed in, “but whose sperm do you use?”

  “Both of ours,” Jamie said.

  “Really? Like, mixed together into a baby-making cocktail?” Gianni asked.

  Dmitri grinned at that and told him, “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Wow. Well, best of luck, you two,” Gianni said. “You’re braver men than me for taking on something as huge as parenthood.”

  Charlie moved over to Jamie and grabbed his ex-boyfriend in a big hug. “I’m so happy for you,” Charlie said. “I know how much you want this, and I can’t imagine two better parents than you and Dmitri.”


  “Thank you, Charlie.” Jamie kissed his cheek before Charlie let go of him and took his seat, and then Kieran grabbed Jamie in a hug.

  “I knew it was just a matter of time, cousin. You’re going to be a great dad. Both of you are,” Kieran said, and then he hugged Dmitri as well.

  “What about you, bro?” Gianni asked Dante. “Has the baby bug bitten you and your husband yet?”

  Dante picked up Charlie’s hand and looked in his husband’s eyes. “We’ve decided not to have children,” he said. “We both did a lot of soul searching and reached the same conclusion. It’s just not what either of us want.” He glanced at his friend Dmitri then and added with a smile, “So, we’ll just have to spoil your kids rotten instead.”

  Dmitri grinned at that. “You’ll have to get in line behind all of our sisters. We haven’t told them yet by the way, because they’re going to be a little too excited. Actually, you’re the first people we’ve told.” Dmitri turned to me and said, “Jamie and I have eight sisters between the two of us. Our kids are going to be inundated with aunts.”

  “We’ll tell them when we’re a little farther along in the process,” Jamie said. “My sisters will be at the wedding by the way, so all of you please keep this under your hat for now. Once we tell them, they’ll be calling us fifty times a day for updates.”

  “Fifty is a really low estimate,” Dmitri said.

  “That’s true, actually,” Jamie agreed. He smiled at his husband, and then leaned in and kissed him softly.

  Gianni got up and took my hand, saying, “We’re out of Sangria. Come on, Trevor, be my booze buddy. We need to whip up some more cocktails.” I let him pull me to my feet, then followed him into the kitchen.

  As he opened and closed cupboards, searching for something, Gianni told me, “Wow, was that depressing! I really had to get out of there for a minute.”

  “What’s depressing?”

  “All those happy couples. Nothing like being around a bunch of newlywed, baby-making, totally-in-love people to make you feel utterly and completely alone. Ah ha!” He pulled something from a cupboard and changed the subject. “I feel like making Jell-O shots. Of course, they’ll take a while to set up, so we’ll need something else in the meantime. Something potent, to counteract all that lovey dovey stuff going on outside.” He tossed five boxes of gelatin on the counter, then went back to rummaging, this time in the lower cupboards. Eventually he pulled out a long cellophane sleeve of little plastic cups and said, “Speaking of lovey dovey, how serious is it between you and my brother, anyway?”