by Amy Lane
“So, sorry about my brother-in-law the other night,” he said, all conversation, zero intent. “I mean, I love the guy—he’s great with the kids, you know—but he’s like Des. Competition brings out the, uh, more interesting side of the two of them.”
Desi had once baked fifteen dozen cupcakes for the school bake sale—ten dozen regular, two dozen gluten-free, two dozen sugar-free, and one dozen completely vegan. Nina had brought store-bought cookies, and while Tenner hadn’t seen what the big deal was, Nina assured him there had been one, and that she’d lost. It had been shortly after the divorce, so Tenner had been grateful to Pat’s wife. At the time, Desi’s showing up Nina had seemed like a gesture of support, but even he could see that level of competition would be tough to live up to.
“Makes things fun,” he said lightly, thinking about Ross getting excited about Mario Kart. “I was sort of wound up. Late picking up Piper, you know?”
Pat sobered. “That went okay?”
“Oh, yeah.” Tenner shrugged. “Nina doesn’t like it when plans change, but once we get a routine established, she’s fine. And she knows how much I love playing softball. She’s not a monster.”
Pat smiled slightly. “No, but she does have you over a barrel, datingwise, doesn’t she?”
Tenner couldn’t look at him. “It’s just so… ambiguous,” he said after a moment. “I mean, when I do decide to date, it would be nice to know that it’s not going to screw me over.”
“Ten, would you like me to have a lawyer look over that custody agreement for you? So you, uh, know exactly what it could mean?”
Tenner swallowed. “What, uh, exactly could it mean?” he asked, uncertain.
Pat gave him one of those looks—one of those patented Dad looks. One of those looks that said, “I know you think you’re cute and you have this all handled, Junior, but I don’t know who in the hell you think you’re fooling.”
“It could mean that eventually my brother-in-law won’t have to sleep in the guest room.”
Tenner choked on his black lentils. “I, uh, I mean, I assume as long as Piper isn’t there, it doesn’t, uh… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He wasn’t sure how Pat did it. He tilted his head, raised one eyebrow, and widened his eyes, and Tenner was suddenly ready to confess everything from the first time he got laid in college to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and both Kennedys.
“Tenner.”
“It was the guest room,” Tenner said when he’d had a drink of water and washed down his lentils. “The guest room. He’s a, uh….” He couldn’t say friend and really couldn’t say fuckbuddy. “We ate dinner with Piper and played video games. It was perfectly innocent.” Aside from that first, uh, thing that was, or the kisses…. Oh dear God, the kisses had caused his head to spin and his body to sing—making the bang behind the bathroom seem more like an amuse-bouche than a cheap hot dog in the car.
“I know my brother-in-law,” Pat said, barely blinking. “Innocent, he is not. And you know what? Innocent is over-fucking-rated. Involuntary chastity is boring. You’re young, at least chronologically. You’re healthy. Why shouldn’t it be more than that?”
Tenner breathed in evenly. “You know why. You just said it yourself.”
Pat shook his head. “No. I know what you’ve been using as an excuse since the divorce.”
“An excuse?” Tenner fought a flicker of irritation. “Piper is not an excuse—”
“No, she’s not an excuse for you to be careful with your romantic attachments, Ten. But you have been celibate for a year and a—”
“Two and a half. Almost three,” Tenner muttered, miserable. Somehow, that hadn’t come out in the first horrible months after he’d asked Nina for a divorce.
Pat dropped the piece of naan with tandoori chicken and lentils on it into his lap, and kept staring at Tenner.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I… well, I told her I was gay about a year and a half before the divorce,” Tenner muttered. “She… she sort of stopped touching me, period. I was like, ‘Honey, this isn’t your fault. My body doesn’t do that, but I love you as a friend. Can we just keep raising our child together as friends?’” Patrick’s expression didn’t change, and Tenner gestured rather desperately at his lap. “You… aren’t you going to pick that up?”
“Sure,” Pat muttered and went about cleanup on automatic. “But first tell me how you haven’t been laid in three years. I’m riveted.”
“I thought you said involuntary chastity was boring?” Tenner asked bitterly.
“Imagine my fucking surprise!” Pat snapped. “It took you a year and a half to ask for a divorce after that?”
“I thought we could be friends!” God, Ross hadn’t gotten this either.
“Well, if she’s your friend, talk to her like a friend!” Pat argued. “Tell her you would like to have a relationship with a perfectly nice guy who plays softball and is trying to save the world!”
Oh God. “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, cut the bullshit, Tenner. He stayed the night at your house, and I don’t care if he was on the roof, we both know that the entire game, where he was trying to get under your skin, was foreplay.”
Tenner tried not to gape. “I, uh, never thought of that,” he said weakly.
Pat got rid of the last of the food on the napkin in his lap and gave Tenner another one of those Dad looks. “Sure, sure you haven’t. Look, you send me a copy of the custody agreement, and I’ll have my lawyer look over it, when directed by someone not full of unnecessary guilt and fruitless remorse. You talk to your ex-wife and see if you can get her to give you the go-ahead to date quietly, agreeing not to tell Piper until it’s something permanent that will impact her life. The world has shifted a lot in two and a half years, and Nina might have thawed a little bit too. Are we agreed?”
“Why?” Tenner asked bitterly, his excitement over Wednesday evaporating like soda bubbles. “Why would I do all this for someone who’s leaving in two months anyway?”
Pat’s Dad look stayed, but it morphed somehow, gentled. Tenner had seen him wear that look of pure patience when one of his children had done something really stupid… for all the right reasons.
“Because he might come back and stay, Tenner. There’s no guarantee you guys will hit it off so well that he’ll come back and stay for you, but what if you do? Give him a reason, kid. He’s getting old enough to settle down, and God, aren’t you old enough to hope again?”
Tenner concentrated on finishing the last of the sauce on his plate. “After I, uhm, come to your guys’ practice Wednesday night…. He was going to come over afterwards.”
“No Piper?” Pat seemed to know exactly what that meant.
“No Piper,” Tenner confirmed. “Aren’t you going to say that’s moving a little fast?”
Pat snorted. “I am not the person to judge the fast or the slow. I just want to see your train leave the station. Piper’s a great kid, Ten-Spot, but she can’t be the be-all and end-all of your existence. Maybe it’s time to let someone else in?”
Will he be careful? Will he not derail my entire life? Or will he jump around and change things and leave wreckage in his wake?
“Sure.”
Pat frowned. “I think I deserve a better answer than that. I’m going to have to go home and change—the stain may never wash out of these pants.”
Tenner managed a crooked smile. “I’ll see you on practice Wednesday?” he said, some of his earlier hope returning.
Pat let out a long breath through his nose. “I’ll take it. I don’t like it, but I’ll take it. The rest of this we’ll have to leave to Ross. That kid better not let me down.”
Tenner rolled his eyes, feeling like a teenager. “I have to ask you. What gave you the impression that the two of us couldn’t manage our own lives?”
And Pat’s eyeroll made Tenner’s look pathetic and sad, the forlorn imitation of a child trying to be the parent. “Are you kiddin
g? That kid won’t stop playing around, and you won’t stop working. Neither one of you can wipe your own asses. You both make me tired. Fix each other, dammit, so I can work on my own kids.”
Tenner shrugged. “Nobody’s as perfect as you are, Pat.”
“Yeah, sure, tell that to my daughters. I’m gonna go get some soda water, then head to the bathroom so it doesn’t look like I’ve got a killer kidney infection. Stay here and think about the error of your ways.”
But as Pat bobbed his way back to the hostess stand like the evil little leprechaun he was, Tenner thought about how Pat’s children gave him T-shirts about farting every Father’s Day, and saved their baseball hats and foam fingers carefully in their room so they could go to a River Cats or Giants game on a moment’s notice. Sure, they had their normal problems—a little bit of sass, dragging feet on homework, the occasional “Oh my God, Dad!”—but for the most part, he was pretty sure Pat’s kids knew. They all had to know.
When Tenner grew up, he wanted to be just like Patrick.
TO THAT end, Tenner got back to work and attempted to finish enough of his project to let him off early Tuesday so he could watch Piper dance. He was midway through running a test to see if the chip was making its benchmarks when his phone pinged.
I am thinking about you every second of the goddamned day. Please tell me I’m not alone.
His chest buzzed with what he had to admit was excitement.
Not alone.
That’s it? I practically wrote you a love sonnet on the phone and I get “Not alone”?
God. Ross. Handsome. Golden. Vain as a lion. Lots of roar and bluster. Of course, Tenner missed him.
Wednesday’s a long way off.
Be still my heart. I may die of too much affection.
Yeah. That’s likely.
Wow. The schmoop just keeps on coming.
If you got any more pets, you’d get static shock. Tenner smiled a little with that last one. So true.
If you don’t give me some goddamned affection, I’m sending you a dick pic!
Tenner’s eyes went wide. No! Piper plays with my phone!
Thought bubbles appeared, and Tenner stared at the screen with horror. When the picture showed up, though, it was of a middle-aged man with a bright shiny head and a fringe of dark brown hair.
Meet my friend Richard.
You. Dick.
No, he’s Dick. I’m Ross. I’m dying to see you again.
And Tenner couldn’t help it. He was laughing quietly at his desk, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt.
So am I. You made me feel really special.
He read the text about sixty times before he pressed Send.
Good. I like being that guy. See you Wednesday.
It can’t come soon enough.
TENNER WOULD never admit it to his daughter, but he loathed dance class. He liked watching the kids dance—they were cute as hell, even that one kid who’d liked to dangle from the barre when she was four and sing the theme song to Shrek at the top of her lungs. He loved that kid, in fact, because as it turned out, she was his.
No, it wasn’t watching little girls wander around the stage, get lost, and pick leotards out of their bottoms that bothered him. It was the damned sound system that made it Purgatory. The music was too loud, piped through an ancient speaker, and after a long workday, it reverberated around Tenner’s head like a nuclear-powered ping-pong ball, smashing his good mood into bits and making him yearn for a sensory deprivation chamber and long centuries of silence.
It wasn’t the greatest venue to talk to Nina, but his date with Ross had been buzzing around his stomach, the thought of practicing together, giving each other shit, then going back to his house to… what?
More banging?
Maybe some Mario Kart afterward?
Ice cream?
Tenner didn’t remember how any of this worked. Not at all. He’d dated in college. There’d been lots of midnight blowjobs in the dorms, the occasional sleepover, and then that fumbled attempt to come out to his parents over Christmas vacation when he’d finally thought, “Hey, I’m gay, I’m in love, and they keep asking about girls!”
The silence had been… glacial. He’d had to get his own ride to the airport. And as he’d taken a cab from his folks’ little white farmhouse in Nebraska back to CSU Sacramento, it had occurred to him that coming out had isolated him from everything he’d ever known.
The next time he’d contacted his parents, he’d been dating Nina.
So he didn’t know how to date as a grown-up, and he might very well have wrecked all attempts at dating by launching himself onto Ross McTierney like some sort of spring-loaded stuffed toy. But suddenly, he hungered to know that he could date. That appearing in a restaurant with a friend (Ross) who was well-dressed and looking at him like he was important (definitely Ross) and holding his hand and winking (oh my God, could it please be Ross?) seemed like something he’d needed for a long time.
Was it because he was lonely? Or could he have stayed celibate his entire life if he hadn’t had that surprising moment of yielding in the dark?
He had no idea. This thing he was about to do outside the dance studio with Nina was a nice way of maybe investigating this new and hidden—or long forbidden—side of him further.
The dance teacher called all the little girls into a huddle to teach them a new skill, and Tenner gave Nina a nod.
Together they walked gratefully into the balmy spring night, and Nina gave an audible sigh of relief. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “That sound system. I love this teacher, but for sweet fuck’s sake!”
Tenner laughed. “It makes me want to live in a seminary where nobody talks for years.”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Right? Yikes. Sorry, Ten, I mean, I’m so sorry.”
Tenner chuckled again, a part of him sad. They’d been so good at this once upon a time. Laughing at the funny stuff.
“You’re forgiven,” he said. “At last year’s recital, she was the best one.”
It was Nina’s turn to laugh. “No, no, she really wasn’t. She lost the steps and turned around and danced with her own shadow, but you’re very sweet to say so.”
He inclined his head, and before he could find a way to bring up the subject, she said, “So what’s up? You’re not cancelling on Friday, are you?”
“Oh, no!” he said. “I might be there around the same time, though. I hope that’s okay.”
“Yeah, sure.” She sounded so mellow now, but then, having her plans changed at the last moment had always brought out the worst in her. “Piper says watching you practice with the team on Sunday was a lot of fun. I guess one of the guys came home for dinner?”
Tenner rolled his eyes. “She invited him, Nina. I mean, it’s a good thing he was a good sport about it, but she practically lassoed him to come eat at our house. But yeah. It’s a sweet team.”
“Good. Is that what you wanted to talk about?” Anxiously she looked behind his shoulder. He glanced over too and saw the girls were still learning a new move, something with lots of extended hands and bounces.
“No, uh, actually….” He chewed his lip. “Nina, you’re dating, right?”
Her relaxed expression disappeared. “Yeah. A couple of nights out, a couple of different guys. Why?”
He swallowed. “I’m glad.” He put all the sincerity into his voice that he could manage. “You’re a good mom. You don’t deserve to be alone.”
And suddenly her entire body went still. “Are you dating?”
He swallowed. “I’d like to.”
“You can’t bring any of that crap into your house, Tenner. You know what the settlement says—”
Tenner held out his hand. “No sleepovers while Piper’s there—I promise. I… I… need you to think about what the settlement does say.”
Her eyes began to dart nervously. “What do you mean?”
“What sort of lifestyle are you talking about?”
She opened her mouth and nothing came o
ut, and he realized that she was as lost as he was about that clause in the settlement.
“Look. I’m not going to press you anymore about it,” he said softly. “I, you know… I think you deserve to be happy, Nina. I need you to ask yourself why I don’t.”
“I never said that!” she defended, and he cocked his head.
“Just alone.”
She opened her mouth again, and the music started up. They locked eyes for a miserable moment, and then he gestured her back into the dance studio for that eardrum-shattering piano music.
It was a start.
Anticipation
ROSS AND Pat threw the ball in a leisurely way, remembering to include Abner when he looked ready to catch it. Baseball wasn’t his game, but his sisters were both at an indoor soccer game, and Pat had offered to take Abner to baseball to save him the boredom.
They were a couple of minutes early, but Ross still kept looking around oh-so-casually to see who would arrive.
“He’s got a project he’s trying to finish,” Pat said as if he could read his mind.
“I didn’t say anything,” Ross defended.
“Of course not. He’ll be a few minutes late. Knowing Tenner, he’ll want to have all his loose ends tied up before he gets here.”
Ross nodded. “I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
“Of course not. Are you coming home tonight?”
Ross’s eyes darted to where Abner stood, staring wistfully at the bullpen where his backpack sat with a book he’d been reading in the car.
“Abner, fly, be free,” Ross said. “We won’t torture you anymore.”
Abner gave a grand smile. “Thanks, Uncle Ross. You’re the best!” And with that, he tore off toward the bullpen and whatever sword-and-sorcery tome had captured his attention this week.
“Sure,” Pat muttered. “Uncle Ross is the best, and Dad’s just some asshole who wanted a game of catch with his kid.”
“You really want to bond with him? Find one of those whats-it, role-playing fairs, and let him deck himself out with a toy sword. You wear tights and a doublet or whatever, and you will be the best dad in the world.”
