Slow Pitch

by Amy Lane

  Tenner made to talk, his expression unhappy, and Ross could hear the question underneath. For how long? For three days? For two months? Every time Ross came to town?

  But Ross wasn’t ready to answer that one yet. He captured Tenner’s lips again and plunged his tongue in, kissing until Tenner pulled back, his best Dad look on his face.

  “Sleep well,” he muttered, taking a step back and adjusting himself. “I know I won’t.”

  Ross chuckled, but it was a strained sound, needy, and not cocky at all. “Me neither, dammit. Night.”

  But Tenner gave him a salute from behind his head and trudged up the stairs, clicking the switch at the top so the house fell into darkness.

  Ross sighed and undressed to his briefs, then set his phone for six so he could get up.

  BY THE time he’d gotten to his sister’s place and showered for work, everybody was up and running around in circles doing the school routine. Pat wasn’t really a morning crazy person—he huddled in the chaos with his tablet and his coffee and gave terse instructions from time to time.

  “Your backpack’s in the bathroom. No, I don’t know why, but that’s where I tripped over it. No, your brother’s not trying to kill you. Coffee, Allison. Cof. Fee. What’s the rule?”

  His twelve-year-old tossed her glossy copper curls and flounced off to find the backpack. “No talking to Dad before his coffee. I get it!”

  “Coffee…,” Pat murmured, falling into himself.

  Ross poured himself a cup and parked next to his second-favorite relative and sipped.

  Loudly.

  Pat looked over his tablet to see who dared intrude on his time, and Ross gave him a toothy grin.

  “The fuck do you want?”

  Ross held his hand to his heart. “Wounded. Wounded am I, that you, my favorite brother-in-law, would suspect that I, the man who sleeps under his roof, eats the bread from his table, wants anything more than simple scraps of his affection.”

  Pat managed to maintain his scowl for a whole three seconds before he started to chuckle, sipping at his coffee with relish. “Do you need lunch money or a backpack?”

  “I do not,” Ross assured him.

  “I might not kill you. What do you need?”

  “Info.”

  “I can give you a breakdown of CPU speeds using current video technology or baseball scores. Choose wisely.”

  Ross chuckled and took another sip of his coffee. “Tenner.”

  Pat set down his coffee. “Gibson? From baseball? The guy you were trying so hard to piss off?”

  “That’s the one.” Ross didn’t know what he put in his voice, but Pat’s eyes got big, and he bit his lip, uncharacteristically uncertain.

  “You, uh… got a crush?”

  “Mm… I have an interest.”

  Pat let out a sigh and looked wistfully at his coffee, and then cocked his head toward the morning chaos, which seemed to have moved on to the bathroom. Abner—his boy, the middle child—was possibly in fear for his life, but Desi was insisting he’d earned it, so nothing was pressing.

  “Tenner’s had a rough go of it,” Pat said. “We knew him and Nina together. He looked like the perfect husband.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He was supportive, did all the right things, loves Piper like crazy. But Nina… she never really looked happy, you know?”

  “I get that impression,” Ross said, his voice gaining an edge, and Pat raised an eyebrow.

  “What do you know?”

  Ross didn’t want to betray a confidence, but God, he wanted to talk. “I know about his custody agreement,” he said, and both of Pat’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Oh, wow. He told you that. Okay. So more than an interest. Yeah. Look, here’s the thing. I think Nina really loved him, but he couldn’t, you know, be the husband she needed.”

  “It would make a person bitter,” Ross conceded. Tenner had tried not to demonize her as well. Ross needed to follow his lead.

  “It would. And Tenner tries hard, but you’ve seen him. He can be a closed-off bastard with everyone but Piper.”

  Well, yeah. What had seemed like a fun romantic puzzle to Ross would have been a grim emotional void to someone who didn’t have the key to that puzzle. It hadn’t been Nina’s fault she didn’t have the key.

  “Complicated,” Ross said softly.

  “Not the kind of thing you can change overnight,” Pat agreed. “But then, I understand you’re coming back to live in my basement after this next trip?”

  “Your basement is my dream home,” Ross told him, sincerity dripping from every syllable, and Pat laughed.

  “God, you’re an ass. Anyway, I want to tell you to stay away from that sitch because it can get messy….”

  “But?” Ross prompted.

  “But….” Pat took a wistful sip of coffee. “But Tenner’s lonely. And he doesn’t deserve to be. He did something dumb in college—don’t we all? But he’s a good father and a truly good man. And if coming back to him gives you an excuse to come back to us? Settle down a little? I’m all for it too.” He paused and darted a surreptitious look toward the sounds of chaos coming from his bathroom. “I’ll be honest, I think Abner might be ready to come out in a year or two. And it’s nothing we’re going to force, of course, but I think it would be great if his awesome Uncle Ross was here to make him feel all okay-fine.”

  Ross had to swallow a couple of times for that one. “I think his awesome dad would do a pretty good job of that too,” he said after a moment. “But I’ll think about it.”

  At that moment, Ross’s sister came bustling in, her rich blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, her blue eyes snapping with irritation.

  “Patrick, could you help me with this thing?” she muttered, gesturing to the prosthetic she attached to her arm every morning. She’d been born without the lower part, from the elbow down, and had played every sport but baseball growing up. Pat often said that’s how he knew he loved her. If he could be with a woman who didn’t like baseball, it had to be true love forever, because that was the only explanation.

  Pat’s love of technology and decent health insurance kept her in the newest and shiniest of prosthetics to help her through her day, but any computer engineer knew that every upgrade had its price.

  “Yes, honey,” Pat said. “Sorry, honey. We can go back to the old one if it’s—”

  She rolled her eyes. “You were right. I was wrong. This one works very nicely, thank you. It’s much more responsive than the old one.” The look she sent it was one of pure disgust. “It just doesn’t like me.”

  Pat put the flesh-colored extension down for a moment and wrapped Desi up in a warm embrace from behind, kissing her cheek. “How could it not like you, sweetheart? You make the angels sing and the heavens weep.”

  It should have been impossible to roll your eyes, smirk, and blush at the same time, but Ross’s sister managed to do all three.

  “You’re impossible,” she mumbled before turning her head for a kiss.

  “I’m out of here,” Ross said cheerfully. “You guys feel free to gross your kids out while you suck face. I’ve got a job to do.”

  “Hey, Ross!” Desi stopped him, breaking away from Pat with obvious reluctance. “Can you take Abner to school? His sisters are making him apeshit, and I need to have a talk with both of them.”

  “What’s Paulina doing?” Pat asked, surprised. “Allison, yes, but Polly?”

  “They’re badgering him,” Desi said. “Asking who his friends are, what his favorite subject is. He gets all family shy and shuts up. And then they get relentless.” She sniffed and looked at her brother with knowing eyes. “They haven’t learned yet that the best way to get information is to do lots of favors and play on guilt.” She gave a smile that was all teeth. “Like I have.”

  “Going!” Ross set his coffee cup down in the sink, not wanting to get caught there. “Gotta go! Abner! You, me, car, now!”

  “You think you’re going to just walk out and pretend y
ou were here all night?” Desi demanded, and Pat fumbled with the strap on her prosthetic.

  “You weren’t here all night?” he asked, horrified.

  “I was in a friend’s guest room,” Ross told them both righteously, but he saw Pat’s eyes widen in sudden understanding.

  “I wish you’d been getting laid in a bar!” he said. “Desi, hold still. Let me help you with this thing today, and I’ll figure out a shortcut tonight so you can yell at Ross with both hands tomorrow!”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry, honey.” Ross’s first-favorite relative relaxed her shoulders and arms, but kept her gimlet glare focused on Ross. “Whose guest room?”

  “Uncle Ross!” Abner was running through the house like the hounds of hell were after him. “Uncle Ross, can we go? Like, now? Now, Uncle Ross!”

  Ross jangled his pockets to make sure he had keys, badge, phone, and wallet, and sighed with relief when he found them all where they should be.

  “Now, Abner!” he said, darting for the kitchen door. He paused at the landing to make sure Abner got out first and as his sister—now literally armed—tried to make him stay and answer her question, Ross said, “Tenner Gibson’s! Gotta go. Bye!”

  Then he fled like the hounds of hell were after him.

  “Tenner Gibson—that’s Piper’s Dad. Why were you at his house?” Abner asked as they got into Ross’s Tahoe. Ross started the thing up while waiting for ten-year-old Abner to belt himself into the back seat. Ross and Desi were tall and muscular—but Pat was about an inch shorter than Desi and wiry, and Abner looked like he was heading that way too. His hair was a dark auburn color, the kind most women looked for longingly in boxes, and his eyes were green, which meant every time he set foot out of doors, he risked becoming a giant heat blister. His summers in the dry wilds of Folsom, California, were a long misery of zinc oxide, dorky sun hats, and SPF Shade-on-Mars.

  And he looked desperately like he wanted to talk about anything but himself.

  “I kind of want to date him,” Ross said honestly, wondering what kind of trouble that could get him into. “I was over at his place last night, playing video games too late and ended up sleeping in his guest room.”

  As he made to back out, he caught a glimpse of Abner’s suspicious green eyes in the rearview.

  “So, no sex.”

  “No, sir, we hardly know each other.” Ross swung the car around and turned to face forward.

  “So how do you know if he wants to date you back?”

  Ross crossed his eyes, trying to make sense of the logic, and failing. “Look, buddy? All I can tell you is that there are many steps between knowing if he wants to date me back and sex.” At least there should have been if you weren’t two horndogs on a hot spring night.

  And then he had a terrifying thought.

  “Abner… do you go to school with Piper?”

  “Yeah, but we only see each other at assemblies because she’s in the second grade and I’m in the fifth.”

  “Okay, look. You can’t say anything about dating to her. I mean, you can put in a good word for me, but she might not know about the dating, and that would be a shi—erm, crappy thing to do to her dad.”

  “Why?” Abner asked, his tone indicating he very much needed the answer.

  “Because who you want to date is a private thing. You can share it with family, but it’s always your business and no one else’s. This would be… I don’t know. Cheating. It’s Tenner’s job to tell his daughter if he wants to date me.”

  “Does he?” Abner asked cautiously.

  “Vote’s still out.” But Ross realized unhappily that this was going to be a thing. Their families mingled, their kids knew each other, and everybody worked in the same area. Just telling his family might have repercussions for Tenner that Ross had never anticipated, but he wasn’t sure how he could have stopped it. He wouldn’t lie to Des and Pat for the world.

  “Well, I’d want to date you if I was a grown-up.”

  “And if dating your uncle wasn’t icky,” Ross completed.

  “Yeah, that too. I hope you score.”

  Ross grunted. He wasn’t exactly sure what he’d done to Patrick to deserve this, but it must have been heinous. “It’s not about scoring,” he said, hoping that if God struck him down as he was driving, the big guy would make sure Abner landed safely. “It’s about establishing a relationship with someone you have a connection with.”

  No lightning. Go figure. He must have been telling the truth.

  “So you can’t kiss until you have a relationship?” Abner asked, making sure.

  “You can’t kiss until you know the person well enough to know they’re going to want to kiss you back,” Ross temporized. There were no clouds, but he still couldn’t discount lightning on a bright spring day.

  “When can you score?”

  Oh, to hell with this noise. “When you’re eighteen. And a half.”

  “Why the half?” Abner asked suspiciously.

  “You have to wait until the permit goes through,” Ross said with a perfectly straight face. “Here’s your school, kid. Do I drop you off in front?”

  “Yeah, thanks, Uncle Ross. Nobody at home gives me a straight answer.” Abner slid out of the car after it stopped, and Ross banged his head softly against the steering wheel. While he was waiting at the light, he whipped out his phone.

  Bad news, Patrick. Your son thinks he’s going to need a permit to get laid.

  When he got to work, he saw the response.

  That’s fine. Will he need to fill out paperwork with that?

  Sure. I told him he had to wait until he was 18 1/2 before the permit went through.

  You’re GOOD. I’ll pass it on to Desi. We can keep this going for years.

  As Ross got out of his SUV to walk through the solar-paneled parking lot of Green’s Hill Developing, he kept a wary eye out for lightning.

  There just had to be something morally wrong about telling a ten-year-old he had to have government approval for sexual activity.

  Worse Than Paperwork

  “HEY, TEN, how goes the project?”

  Tenner looked up from what was turning out to be a surprisingly productive day. He’d expected to be logy and baffled—his weekend had been something of an event—but truth to tell, every time he surfaced from being lost in his work, he found himself sort of reveling in feeling that everything would be okay.

  When had he started to think that way?

  Everything hadn’t been okay since he’d had to drop out of college baseball to get married. Everything really hadn’t been okay since he’d told Nina he was gay.

  But now, after one, uhm, not-so-regrettable incident and a super fun evening that had been mostly PG-rated, he found that everything was… sort of okay.

  It just made it easier for him to relax, that was all.

  Could have been anybody. One good night with some lube and a good toy would get you the same.

  But he knew that was bullshit. One night with some lube and a good toy wouldn’t get him two hours on the couch playing Mario Kart with an adult, or the nice touches to his knee or the careful, masterful kisses.

  Gah! Especially the kisses! Dildos were not great kissers. Lubricant was hard on the lips.

  Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday….

  “Tenner?”

  “Wednesday!” Tenner blurted, shocked out of his reverie.

  “What’s Wednesday?”

  Tenner turned around to see Pat had stuck his head into Ten’s cubicle. “Uh, I’m coming to practice with you,” Tenner said, trying to pull his head out of… well, Ross McTierney.

  “Oh! Did, uh, Ross invite you? Because when you get to play on my team next season, it would be great if you knew everybody!”

  It was the word “uh” that gave him away.

  “Did he, uh, say anything to you?” Tenner asked, not sure if he sounded pathetic or dumb. Maybe both.

  Pat slid into the cubicle and stuck his hands into his pockets. “Did you bring lunch?
I forgot mine. The house was crazy this morning. Do you want to go out for lunch?”

  Tenner looked at that forced casual attitude, and his stomach went cold. “Did I do anything wrong?”

  Pat shook his head. “No. I suspect you might be doing something very right. But I want to talk about it. Is that okay?”

  “He was in the guest room,” Tenner blurted. “You know that, right? I had Piper last night and—”

  Pat grabbed his upper arm and hauled him up by it, like he would a recalcitrant three-year-old. “No, Tenner, you’re not in trouble, but I really think we need to go somewhere else for this conversation, okay?”

  “My keys—”

  “I’ll drive.”

  Tenner scrambled for his wallet and work badge even as Pat pulled him out into the hall.

  PAT TOOK him to Pat’s favorite Indian food restaurant, which Tenner understood was Pat’s way of making it seem like his paying for the meal wasn’t a favor. It was like baseball. Pat only played baseball with his guys at work—so it was a reward to Pat if they joined him on the field. Pat only ate Indian food when he wanted to talk to someone. He claimed it was his right to pay because his family hated it.

  So this day, Pat took Tenner for Indian food. They both sat on cushions and ate tandoori chicken and naan, and Pat rambled on about how much he loved his kids for a solid twenty minutes.

  Tenner sort of loved him like this, because he wanted to think that his own excitement at being Piper’s parent wasn’t an anomaly. His own parents had been fine with him, but not particularly excited or indulgent. Just… fine. He’d produced a grandchild—that had been his best thing. And then he’d gotten a divorce and come out, and he hadn’t even existed anymore.

  So having Pat talk about things like unconditional love and surviving events like a daughter’s first pimples and training bras and buying Kotex and going to every school activity known to man like it was why they were put into this world, made Tenner feel like he’d accomplished one really awesome thing in his life.

  And then without changing expression, Pat brought up Ross.