Acrobat

by Mary Calmes

“Oh I will, very soon.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” He sighed and hung up.

  “Who do you love?”

  I looked up and Dreo was there, looking unsure, brows furrowed, eyes cloudy.

  “My kid.”

  He brightened, nodded.

  I grabbed his arm and pulled him back behind a crowd of talking people, next to the drapes, before I put a hand on his face.

  “My son and the woman he loves, the soon-to-be mother of his child, they’re going to need to move in with me for a while, but I don’t want you to think that I want this, us, to stop because of—”

  “Why’re they moving in with you?”

  “Because they need a new home until I can find them one.”

  “Why don’t they just move into my place?”

  I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. “I’m sorry?”

  “My place,” he reiterated, “is right across from your place. Me and Michael could move in with you, and your son and his girl could move into my place. It’s nice, just not as nice as yours, but I’ll sell it cheap.”

  It couldn’t be that easy. And Jesus, I was not prepared to move in with…. What the hell kind of slow start to a relationship was that? We were just beginning. You didn’t move in a minute after you said “ready, set, go.” Nothing fell into place like that, not without somersaults and cartwheels and everything else.

  “So?”

  “Dreo, you don’t just—”

  “I think you do.”

  “I think we need to talk about this some more.”

  I could see the worry. “You don’t wanna live with me?”

  “No, I do, I mean, maybe I do, I just… this is fast, right?”

  “Four years is fast?”

  “Dreo, we have not been having a relationship for four years.”

  “Haven’t we?” And he looked honest to God confused.

  Was there a chance that what I had thought so little of, he had taken as a foundation? Had we been building something without me knowing? Had we been dancing slowly toward each other since we first met?

  I thought about him then, about Dreo Fiore. What had I considered him? When I used to look at him, when I explained who he was to others, what had I said? What had I thought?

  Friend? More than friend? What was he to me?

  He raked his fingers through his thick hair. “You know, never mind, I was being stupid. You’re right, just—forget I said anything. Me and Michael, we’ll be waiting until you’re ready, whenever that is. And take as long as you want to and don’t feel like—”

  “No,” I cut him off, because there was Dreo, all set to start his whole life over, new job, new plans, and new relationship with me, and if I wasn’t ready to dive in…. But why wouldn’t I be? Normally, I contorted myself into whatever a new partner wanted, and that was for people who I could just maybe, possibly imagine a future with. But Dreo… at that moment he was all I could see, all I wanted to. What kind of an idiot did I have to be to turn him down?

  “Nate?”

  I grabbed his hand and squeezed tight. “Move in with me. I want you to.”

  He shook his head. “No, I got ahead of myself there, and—”

  “Please.”

  “I don’t wanna force you.”

  I arched an eyebrow for him. “You really think you can make me do anything I don’t want to? Me?”

  He was searching my eyes.

  “Dreo?”

  He finally chuckled. “Maybe not.”

  “I just hadn’t thought that far down the road. Forgive me.”

  His face infused with light, and I smiled.

  “If it doesn’t work out—”

  “Fuck that,” he cut me off, leaning close, pining me to the wall behind me, hands on my hips, mouth close to my ear. “This is gonna work; I know it is. When you want us to move in?”

  “Next week?”

  “But starting from now, we’re gonna stay with you?” he asked, leaning back, his eyes meeting mine.

  It was hopeful, the look I was getting, and I was stunned. Where was all this longing coming from? It was like he had been carrying around feelings and plans and he was ready to unload it on me, cover me, if I would just let him.

  “I would love that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  “Everything is new with me, and I just want a chance with you too.”

  “You have it.”

  He took a breath. “It won’t be easy. My parents just told me that they don’t wanna see me for Thanksgiving but that Michael is welcome, and he told them to—”

  “Try not to worry about that,” I assured him, cutting him off because I didn’t need to hear poison when I was on top of the world. “You and Sal are going forward with your business, you’re moving in with me, and Michael supports all your decisions. Your parents can feel however they want because, big picture, I’m going to take care of you both. I have a wonderful family that I would love to share with you if you’ll let me.”

  He put his arms around me and held me close, his mouth open on the side of my neck, kissing hard before he sucked on the skin. “I went a little crazy there hearing you tell someone you loved them.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  I sighed deeply. “That’s a very nice thing to say.”

  “My plan is to get you to really see me.”

  “I already do.”

  He gave me a final hug and then stepped back from me. “You’ve made me very happy.”

  “Well, that goes both ways,” I assured him.

  “We should go,” he told me. “It’s hard to keep my hands off you.”

  I smiled wide. “Is it?”

  He grunted and reached out and took my hand. It was nice when he squeezed tighter before he let go to walk back across the floor to get Michael. He was done, I could tell from his stride, from the way he moved, the way he barked at his nephew, who perked up immediately, nodded, and, after saying goodbye to his grandparents, started across the floor to me. We were all ready to go home. When Michael reached me, his smile was huge.

  “What did Dreo say to you?”

  “He said ‘Get your ass over there to Nate, ’cause we’re going home.’”

  I put my hand on his cheek. “It was very sweet, what you said to Mrs. Romelli.”

  He shrugged and moved so he was standing beside me. “It was no big deal.”

  I nodded. “So your uncle said that he’s not welcome for Thanksgiving this year but that you still are.”

  He scoffed. “Like I would go anywhere either of you guys wasn’t welcome. Screw that.”

  “I hope they come around.”

  “I don’t care; I don’t wanna go over there anyway.”

  “They’re still your grandparents.”

  “If they decide to change their minds, they can come visit you and me and Dreo.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “We’re movin’ in, right?”

  “What?”

  “You want him, I know you do. I’m not blind. I can see how you look at him, and I can see how he looks at you.”

  “How do I look at him?”

  “You’ve got this dopey look on your face, and you’re smiling and shit, and he can’t seem to look at anything but your ass.”

  “Michael!”

  He cackled. “Shit, he told me this morning that he was gonna ask you to move in with us, but I told him to ask if we could move in with you instead ’cause your place is bigger and nicer.”

  “He told you this morning?”

  He nodded. “He likes you a lot.”

  “I like him too,” I told Michael. “You have to tell me if you have trouble at school, okay? I don’t want anyone to hassle you.”

  “Danielle already knows,” he told me. “I mean, she doesn’t know about you and Dreo, but she knows about you, and my best friends know too. And my friend Tatum, she’s gay, and my friend Garret, he’s gay�
��. Nobody hassles them; it ain’t like that at my school. Dreo pays like a small fortune to send me, ya know?”

  “Well, I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “Was your son okay about you being gay?”

  “He was,” I told him. “But he had great friends.”

  “So do I,” he assured me, his smile wide.

  “You should tell them that you value them.”

  He scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

  Boys.

  Chapter 11

  IT WAS after three when we got home, and the day that had started out dark and cold and gray got darker and more charcoal, and the sky just opened up and dumped down rain. I sent Dreo and Michael back to their apartment to change and was making sandwiches for them when my front door was flung open and Melissa charged through it.

  “I’m going to kill you!” she roared.

  “But I’m making sandwiches.” I sighed, making a sad face for her.

  She growled and stomped across the room, driving her purse down into my counter, tearing her trench coat off and hurling it at my couch.

  I tried not to snicker too loudly.

  “He’s too young!”

  “And you would have them do what?”

  “Nate!”

  I lifted my shoulders. “Love, I’m just saying, the ship has sailed, you know? I would have preferred they waited as well. He’s not the same twenty-seven that either of us was. I mean, hell, I think we were both more mature at eighteen and seventeen than he is now, but really, what are you going to do?”

  Arms crossed, scowling, she was standing next to the opening into my kitchen when the door opened again and Ben and Dreo and Michael came through it.

  “I just….” She caught her breath. “You always look better than I do because you think first and then you talk, and I really hate it!”

  I smiled at her. “Love.”

  “No!” she snapped as I moved over to her. “When we were married, I could count on you to make sure I didn’t put my foot in my mouth!”

  Gently, slowly, I put a hand in her thick, blonde hair and pushed it out of her face.

  “And now he hates me!”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” I assured her, sliding my arm around her shoulders. “He loves you; he’s just hurt that you weren’t excited.”

  She turned to look at me. “I was excited. I just think he’s too young!”

  “Which he is.” I smiled wider, taking her into my arms as the floodgates opened and she began to sob.

  She was shuddering in my arms, crying all over me (the woman was not a delicate, movie-star heroine crier), when the three men, her husband and the two staying with me, joined us.

  “Ben,” I said brightly over his wife’s howling, “did you meet Dreo and Michael?”

  He nodded. “I did, outside.”

  Dreo looked concerned, Michael confused.

  “Maybe we should call him now, huh?” I offered my distraught ex-wife.

  The frantic nodding made me smile.

  She ended up hiccupping and, as she calmed down, was very pleased to meet Dreo and Michael. Even though she looked like someone had punched her in the face, really not a pretty sight, both men were enchanted with her. I put Jared on speakerphone when I called him back.

  “Dad?”

  “Tell your mother you love her because she’s sorry already.”

  He started chuckling. “Shit, Mom, that was fast.”

  She took a shuddering breath. “I just think you’re too young. I never said I didn’t want a grandbaby!”

  “Oh for crissakes, woman, don’t cry. I know you love me and Gill and the baby. And you might have to help me make lease payments on the loft Dad’s putting us in, so just quit already.”

  It sounded like both of them, mother and son, had experienced a reality check. She realized there was no changing what was, and he realized that his mother had been surprised only, nothing more judgmental than that.

  “You still love me?” Melissa whimpered.

  “Dad!” Jared yelled for me, wanting me to make her stop. It went that way. She crumbled; he looked to me to fix it.

  I was laughing and she was crying again, and he was swearing because, goddammit, when had he ever said that didn’t love his mother, before Gillian got on the phone and Melissa started gushing.

  “I’m so sorry,” she told the mother of her son’s child.

  “Oh Mel, it’s okay.”

  “When are you two getting married?”

  “Oh.” Gillian sucked in her breath.

  “Oh for the love of God, what did you say now?” Jared was back on the phone, and I asked when he was planning to make an honest woman of his girlfriend.

  “Dad!”

  I noticed then that Dreo was smiling. “What?”

  He nodded. “You have a nice family, Nate. Really nice.”

  I shrugged. “They’re all nuts. Wait’ll you meet my mother.”

  Mel looked over at Dreo and nodded. “Oh, I so wasn’t upset about letting that relationship go. Good luck with that.”

  “Mom, are you talking about Nana?” Jared cackled on the other end of the line.

  “What? No!”

  “Dad!”

  Ben talked to Jared then, and told him we’d all be there, ready, willing, and able to help them both. Jared appreciated it, told us all he loved us, said they’d be there in a week, and hung up. Melissa grabbed me again, and I squeezed her really tight.

  “You see what we did there,” I said, hands smoothing her hair out of her face, wiping tears away with my thumbs. “We distinguished ourselves from Gillian’s folks forever. They’re moving here, not to Connecticut.”

  Her eyes got huge. “Ohmygod, that’s right.”

  I nodded, smiling smugly. “We got the grandkid.”

  Her smile lit up her face.

  “High five.” I grinned at her.

  She lifted her hand to hit mine and was beaming a second later before she took direction and left to wash her face in my bathroom.

  “I hate it that she only listens to you,” Ben grunted, eying my sandwich.

  “Do you want one?”

  He smiled at me. “Since you’re asking, yes, please.”

  We were all eating when she came back, and she moved over next to me and picked up the untouched other half of my sandwich off my plate without asking.

  “Who are you?” she asked Dreo.

  “Andreo Fiore, and this is my nephew, Michael,” he introduced himself.

  She smiled around the sandwich she was eating. “You live across the hall?”

  “Sì, your son is going to move into my loft.”

  “And you’ll move where, Andreo?”

  “Dreo.”

  She nodded, one eyebrow lifting evilly. “Dreo.”

  “Here,” he told her. “Michael’s getting the guest room; I’m sleeping with your ex.”

  Her lips curved as she turned to look at me before nudging me with her elbow. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

  “No, this is new.”

  She waggled her eyebrows. “Me likey.”

  I groaned, and she laughed, and Ben sighed deeply as we all turned to him.

  “What?” she asked her husband, the sound muffled because she was talking with her mouth full.

  “You’re exhausting.”

  “So what?”

  Only then did it dawn on me that she’d eaten half my sandwich and I was starving.

  I could tell that Dreo and Michael were both absolutely enchanted with Melissa Ortiz. But I understood: she was an easy woman to love.

  “Why did you shave?”

  I turned to look at her as she straightened up, picked up my beer glass, and took a long swig. “I dunno.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I think you thought, he’s so young, and I’m old, but if I look younger, if I shave off the beard, people won’t think I’m robbing the cradle.”

  “He’s not old,” Dreo told her.

  “Oh, honey, you’re pr
eaching to the choir.” She shrugged before returning her eyes to mine. “And while it is nice to see the hot dimples again, you can let the beard grow back and people will still think you and pretty boy here belong together.”

  There was throat clearing.

  We all turned to Dreo.

  “I’m not,” he assured her, “pretty.”

  One of her perfectly shaped golden brows rose. “Maybe you need to go look in the mirror, Mr. Fiore.”

  “I’m considered kind of scary, you know.”

  “By who? My husband’s scarier than you are.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Ben asked her.

  She just shrugged.

  Ben and Michael took up residence on my couch to watch SportsCenter on ESPN, catching up on the all the college football that had been played that day, the scores and highlights captivating them both. Later, poor Dreo was grilled by the woman he found so charming, answering question after question she fired at him as they sat together at the kitchen table drinking oolong tea, which apparently they both liked. The buzzer that connected to the outside security door went off a couple of hours later, and when I asked who it was, a familiar growl answered me back.

  “I need to talk to you,” Duncan said.

  “I’ll be right down,” I told him and cut him off before he could argue.

  I went out in jeans and a T-shirt, socks, and a fleece hoodie, all of which I had changed into when I got home. Opening the security door, I found him safe out of the rain in the small foyer where the mailboxes were.

  “Come in.” I smiled, holding the door so he could slip by me. When I turned, I was surprised how close he was to me, and took a step back. “You’re working on the weekend.”

  He looked me up and down but said nothing.

  “How may I help you, Detective?”

  “Can we go up?” he asked, taking a step closer to me even as I took one back.

  “No. I’ve got company, and you’ve got news about something, right?”

  He nodded, walking around me to take a seat on the couch that was in the lobby. “Come here.”

  I joined him, taking a seat in the chair across from him, not beside him, and waited.

  “What the fuck, Nate?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “You can’t even stand to sit close to me?”

  “Duncan, why are you here?”

  He took a breath. “I’ve never seen you without the beard. You look great.”