Strawberries for Dessert

by Marie Sexton

  “Hey, sugar,” he said when he answered. “Are you finally home?”

  “I am. Why? Did you miss me?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Then you won’t mind that I have to go to the office before I come home.”

  “Honey, you’ve been gone for twelve days! It really can’t wait until tomorrow?”

  “It can’t. But it should be quick. I’ll be home by five.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m awfully busy tonight anyway, sugar. Maybe I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I said, smiling. I wasn’t fooled.

  I was still grinning like an idiot when I got to Marcus’s office, and I had to make an effort to get my mind off of Cole and back to business.

  “Come on in, Jon,” Marcus said. “Close the door.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Jon, we’re getting close to having this ‘restructuring’ bullshit wrapped up,” he told me, once I was sitting down. “We’re letting the Senior Liaison Account Directors pick where they’re going based on seniority. Jensen, MacDonald, Nguyen, and Simmons were ahead of you, so now it’s your turn.”

  I hadn’t really thought much about the restructuring since our last meeting, and I found that the misgivings I felt before were only amplified now. The thought of moving was completely unappealing, and I was being honest enough with myself at that moment to admit that it was largely because of Cole.

  “What are my choices?” I asked.

  “Utah, Vegas, or Colorado.”

  “Shit!” I said before I could stop myself. Luckily, Marcus wasn’t the type to be offended. I put my head in my hands, closed my eyes, and counted to five. I counted to five again. Then I considered my options.

  It figured that Arizona and the three California locations would have gone first. Of the three that were still available, I felt Colorado really was the best choice. If only I could convince myself that it would not be a step backward. Utah was a beautiful state, but seemed like a bad choice for anybody who wanted to live openly as a homosexual.

  Maybe that was a poor assumption on my part. Maybe I would find more acceptance there than I thought. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk it.

  Which left Sin City.

  “You don’t have to decide right now, Jon. Take the weekend to think about it. I’ll need your decision by Monday,” Marcus said. That came as a relief, although I doubted having two more days to mull it over would make my decision any less painful.

  I drove home in a bit of a daze. I was trying to convince myself that the knot of trepidation in my stomach was unwarranted. Maybe Vegas wouldn’t be so bad. I had spent a lot of time there over the past few years. I knew my way around, to some extent at least. I knew where to eat, but the restaurants were all overpriced, and I liked Cole’s cooking better. I knew where to shop, even though I hated to do it. And I knew where to go when I wanted to get laid. Although right at that moment, I had absolutely no desire to go to any of those places ever again.

  I didn’t know what to tell Cole. And more importantly, I had no idea how he would react. He might be upset. He might offer to visit—it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it—and I would become nothing more than another “friend” in his travels. On the other hand, it was equally possible he would cut me loose and find somebody to take my place without a second thought. I wasn’t sure how I would handle it if that were the case.

  Despite his words on the phone, I wasn’t surprised to find Cole’s car in my driveway when I got home. I found him in the kitchen of course, chopping vegetables, barefoot like always. I had been thinking about him nonstop for days, yet my pleasure at seeing him was tainted by the dread I felt over having to leave Phoenix in the near future.

  “Not so busy after all, I see,” I said as I wrapped my arms around him from behind. He was stiff in my arms, but he didn’t pull away.

  “I decided I could squeeze you in.”

  I ran my hand down his stomach to his groin and kissed the butterfly on the back of his neck. “I sure hope there’s some secondary meaning to those words,” I said, and he laughed.

  “It’s possible.” He finally pushed me away, like he always did.

  “After dinner.”

  I left him to cook while I showered and unpacked. There was a bottle of his strawberry shampoo in my shower, and it made me smile. I actually took the lid off and smelled it, just because it made me happy to do it. Then I remembered my conversation with Marcus, and my heart sank.

  Coming out of the shower, I was met by the smell of what I suspected was étouffée. It was one of Cole’s favorites, and I knew that meant a Rioja Crianza to drink. I followed my nose into the kitchen and discovered that I was right. The wine was already open. I resisted the urge to kiss him again as I passed. I poured a glass and took it with me back into the bedroom to finish unpacking.

  I was halfway through the glass before it occurred to me that it was a Spanish red—Zach’s favorite. I waited for the pain to come and the regret. I steeled myself for the melancholy that always followed.

  But this time….

  It didn’t.

  It was a surprise to me to realize that the tiny sense of loss that had come with the thought of Zach for ten years now was gone at last.

  There was nothing but fond remembrance in its place. I had spent so many years of my life looking back at what might have been, but now I realized that I no longer cared. It was like an epiphany. A revelation.

  An overwhelming feeling of liberation that almost made me giddy.

  I truly felt like I was home. And it felt so good, having Cole there with me. It felt right.

  And then like a punch in the gut came the realization that it couldn’t last. That sometime in the near future, I would be moving out of the state. What would happen then?

  “Good lord,” Cole called from the other room. “Are you coming out, or are you going to make me eat alone?”

  He couldn’t ever just tell me it was ready. He always had to turn it around and make it sounds as if I should have known, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m a little busy,” I teased.

  “That’s fine, love. More for me.”

  Of course I wasn’t busy at all, and I went into the dining room to join him. The food was amazing, like it always was, and I thought about the first time he had made me étouffée at my condo in Vegas. It was a warm memory for me. But on its tail came the realization that I would be moving there for good, very soon.

  And he wouldn’t be there.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong,” he asked, startling me out of my thoughts, “or are you just going to sit there and stew all night?”

  And even when he was scolding me like I was a petulant child, it made me smile. “Am I that transparent?” I asked.

  “Like crystal.”

  I debated for a moment how to tell him, but in the end, there weren’t that many options. The only thing to do was say it. “My company is being restructured, and they want me to relocate.”

  He didn’t say anything. He barely reacted at all, except to go very, very still. “How long have you known this?” he finally asked.

  “I’ve known for months that it was a possibility. But I didn’t know for sure until today.”

  He seemed to think about that for a moment, and then suddenly that strange stillness was gone, and he was completely himself again.

  “Where will you go?”

  “I have my choice of Colorado, Utah, or Vegas.”

  “I assume you’ll choose Colorado, then.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” he asked in surprise. “You lived there before. It seems like the obvious choice.”

  “It does, but….” I wasn’t really sure what to tell him. I didn’t want to talk about Zach. “It’s part of my past, and I don’t want to go back.”

  And I saw in his eyes that he understood. And more than that, it pleased him. He tried to hide it. He looked quickly down at his plate.

  But it was the
re, just the same.

  “Vegas or Utah, then,” he said. “Which will it be: Zion or Sin City?”

  “I suppose it will be Vegas.”

  “It’s a good choice, love,” he said, keeping his head down so that his hair hid his expression from me. I realized it was something he had done frequently when we were first seeing each other. He did it less often with me now. “All-you-can-eat bacon really is preferable to eternal salvation, isn’t it?”

  We didn’t talk about it for the rest of the evening. He kept up a constant stream of small talk, and I had a feeling he was deliberately not allowing me to revisit the subject. He fell asleep on the couch next to me, like he often did. I nudged him awake, and he followed me into the bedroom. He got in on his own side of the bed, which would have been normal if we had already had sex. But it was unusual for him to be uninterested on my first night back. I didn’t push it. I got in on my side and turned out the light.

  We lay in the silent darkness for a while, and I could tell by his breathing, and his stillness, that he wasn’t asleep.

  “Do you want to go?” he finally asked.

  “No.”

  “But you will.” It wasn’t even a question.

  “What else can I do?”

  He was quiet for a moment. I wished I could see his face to get some idea of what he was thinking, but I knew he had waited until now to have this conversation specifically so he could keep me from seeing… something. “I don’t know, love,” he finally said. “You tell me: what else can you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If you say no, you’ll be let go?”

  “No.”

  “No? They won’t fire you? Then what’s the problem? Why go if you don’t have to?”

  “It will mean accepting a demotion.”

  He was still for a moment, and then suddenly he sat up. He sat across my hips so that he could look down at me, although in the darkness, my expression had to be as hidden from him as his was from me. “Would you lose money? Is that what this is about? Can you not afford a pay cut?”

  “No!” I hated when he talked about money. He was ridiculously wealthy, and his idea of how much money normal people had was somewhat skewed. Sometimes it seemed that in his mind, everyone who wasn’t a millionaire was only pennies away from living on the street. “I have plenty of money,” I said in irritation. “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “Then what, love? Make me understand. Why would you choose to do something you don’t want to do simply because they ask it? Why would you not choose the option that makes you happy?”

  “I haven’t worked my ass off for this company for nine years just to accept a demotion!”

  He sat there, perfectly still, looking down at me. And then suddenly he rolled away. He moved back to his side of the bed, and I could see just enough in the darkness to determine that his back was to me as he pulled the covers up to his chin.

  “That’s it?” I asked, annoyed. “You have nothing else to say?”

  He sighed. “You accept that the shadows on the wall are real, love. I have no idea how to make you turn around and see the light.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing at all. Goodnight.”

  I hardly slept that night. I wanted to wake Cole up and make him talk to me. I wanted to make love to him. I wanted to hold him. But as always, I respected the walls he maintained, and I let him sleep. We passed our morning in stiff, awkward formality. It felt wrong, and it made me sad. It was as if the eight months we had been seeing each other had never been and we were little more than strangers.

  After breakfast, he showered, and I sat on my bed watching him while he shaved and got dressed. He was silent the entire time, watching me with wary eyes, but finally he turned to me with a dramatic sigh. “Good lord, love. Stop sulking and say whatever it is you want to say.”

  His brusqueness made me smile. “Cole, I need to know….” I trailed off, not knowing how to ask the question that was in my heart.

  Not knowing if he would answer or if I would want to hear it if he did.

  “You need to know what, love?”

  I couldn’t even look at him when I said it for fear that I would see only mockery in his eyes. I looked down at the floor between my feet instead. “I need to know what will happen to us if I move.”

  He didn’t answer at first. We were frozen there, unmoving, for what felt like a painfully long time. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I watched his bare feet instead. It was completely quiet in the room, and the silence seemed to stretch on forever. I started to debate telling him to forget I had even asked. But finally he walked over to me, and I felt his featherlight touch on the back of my head, his fingers weaving into my hair. It was such an unusual thing for him to touch me casually, and I found that there was a lump in my throat. “I don’t know, love,” he said.

  “The only thing I know for sure is I live here. Vegas and Utah are both easy trips. But Phoenix is my home.”

  I looked up at him, hoping to see something in his eyes that would help, but he had his walls firmly in place. I could see nothing through them. “Do you want me to stay?”

  “Please don’t try to make this about me. Whether you go or stay, it needs to be what you want.”

  “You’re not helping. Tell me what you want.”

  “I want you to choose what feels right.” He took his hand from my hair and moved across the room, away from me, like he always did.

  “I can’t help you, Jonny. You have to figure this out on your own.”

  I HAD a lunch date with my father, and although I invited Cole, he declined. I met my dad at the restaurant. He talked about basketball and about taking me to a game in a week or two if I was in town. He talked about having to wait three weeks to see his doctor and how the barber he had been using for the last ten years had retired and about the fact that his office wanted him to take a vacation, but he didn’t know where to go. And all the while, I was thinking about Vegas.

  It took me a while to get up enough courage to say the words. I was pretty sure that I had never said them before. Certainly not since turning sixteen. “Dad,” I finally said, interrupting his monologue about whether or not he should join a health club. “I need your advice.”

  He stared at me for a moment, completely dumbfounded.

  “Really?” he said at last in amused surprise. “Is the apocalypse upon us?”

  I had to smile a little at that. “Not as far as I know.”

  “Thank goodness. I’m hoping to have sex at least one more time in my life.”

  What the hell? My father had never, ever mentioned his own sex life to me before, and I felt myself blush. I stormed ahead before he could mention it again. “I’ve told you that my company might be restructuring. It took them months to get it together, but it’s down to the wire now, and I have to decide what to do.”

  “What are your choices?”

  “I can move. I have my choice of Utah or Vegas.” I didn’t even mention Colorado. “Or I can stay and accept a demotion.”

  “Utah or Vegas? That’s not much of a choice.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s simple, Jon. Do you want to move?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t.”

  My whole life, and he boiled it down to one question? It just wasn’t that easy. “I’ve worked so hard, Dad,” I explained. “I’ve been with this company for nine years now. I worked myself up from the ground floor. Do you really think I should let them demote me?”

  “It’s not ‘letting’ them do anything, Jon. It’s your decision.” He was quiet for a moment, watching me, waiting for me to respond, but I didn’t know what to say. I felt exhausted and beaten. I wished I could go home and crawl into bed and sleep until it was all over.

  “Jon,” he said at last, “it seems to me your choice boils down to this: your happiness or your pride. You can let your pride rule. Forfeit your life here to chase your next promotion. Or you can
forget all that and do what makes you happy.” He shrugged. “I want you to stay. But it can’t be about me.”

  I couldn’t even look at him. I kept my eyes on the table and said, “I don’t think I want to leave Phoenix.”

  “What does Cole think?”

  I closed my eyes, tried to block out the chaos in my head and in my heart. “He won’t say.”

  A moment of silence, and then he said quietly, “That’s good.”

  “How is that good, Dad?” I asked in annoyance. “It doesn’t help me one bit.”

  “He’s not using your feelings for him, or his for you, to make you do what he wants. He’s trying to let you choose for yourself.” He shrugged. “I think that’s admirable.”

  “I don’t want to leave him,” I said, and a weight I hadn’t quite known was there lifted from my shoulders. It was such a relief, just to say it—to finally admit out loud that he was a factor.

  “Are things that serious?”

  “No,” I said. “Not yet. But I feel like I’m on the right path, Dad.

  And I haven’t felt that way in a long time. I want to be able to see where it leads.” He looked away from me, looking at some point over my left shoulder. “Is that so wrong?”

  He sighed, and met my eyes again. “No,” he said gently. “It’s not wrong. If you were staying only for him, I might say it was foolish. But this is your home, Jon. I….” He had to look down at the table again to say it. “You’re all I have left, Jon, and I don’t want you to go. But I know you can’t stay for me either. If you stay, stay for you. But the important thing is if you leave, then leave for you too. Don’t throw away your life here simply because they say you should.”

  “I don’t know how to decide.”

  “Quit thinking about it so much. You’re trying to make this about logic, but some things can’t be quantified. I know that’s counterintuitive for you, but”—he shrugged—“my advice is ‘stop thinking’. Pick the option that feels right.”

  “That’s exactly what Cole said.”

  He smiled, shaking his head. “I think I might like that fruitcake after all.”