by Amy Lane
“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t be leaving in a week.”
“I notice you’re not whining at Garrett and Cliff this way!” Oh dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit. He knew that was the worst way to close an argument, but still, the unfairness rankled.
“Your brothers have families.”
“So do I.”
“Your boyfriend doesn’t count!”
Usually that was when Brandon took a couple of laps around the house, since his father wasn’t going to get it done, and his mother… well, she cried a lot.
“Do you really have to go away again, Brandon?”
“Don’t think of it so much like running away, Mom. Think of it as escaping.”
And that would be more laps around the house.
He missed Taylor fiercely.
He wasn’t stupid. He asked himself repeatedly how he knew this was love, real love, something that could last as long as Nica’s parents, or Tino and Channing, or Nica and Jacob.
All he could come up with was that nobody, not in his whole life, made him want to do for someone, be a better man, be a positive force in the world, in the future, in his own life, like Taylor did.
Right now, while he was stuck at his parents’ house, fighting to be that man was a lot harder than it was when he was living at Jacob and Nica’s—or, he suspected, renting the small apartment Tino and Channing were readying for them.
Which was what had put him on this road.
Thursday night he’d had a brief, wistful conversation with Taylor, pleased as always by his sharp tongue, his sarcasm, and his complete competency in all matters.
“So Melly had a breakdown in the grocery store? What were you doing there in the first place?”
“Nica had a craving—try to keep up.”
“It wasn’t sugar, was it? Because she skirted diabetes with Conroy—that’s why Jacob got the vasectomy.”
“No, it was steak. Can I get on with my story?”
Brandon smiled, lying back in the dark in his old bedroom. “By all means tell me about this earth-shattering trip to the grocery store.”
“Melly lost her shoe.”
“Shocked, I am. Shocked that—”
“Shut up. So she lost her shoe and started crying, and I had to grab Dustin by the collar so he wouldn’t go running off to find it because we have that kid trained like Pavlov’s dog, and Conroy suddenly goes, ‘Fwoot Woops!’”
“Froot Loops?”
“Yeah—out of the blue. And the cereal aisle was the last one over. So Melly’s going like a fire engine, and Conroy’s going, ‘Fwoot Woops, Tay, Fwoot Woops!’ and I think it can’t hurt. So you know where I find the frickin’ shoe?”
“On the Fwoot Woops?” Brandon couldn’t contain his grin.
“No—on the Frosted Flakes, actually, but while we were there, I got him Fwoot—I mean Froot Loops, because hey. The kid called it, and I owed him a solid.”
Brandon laughed heartily. “Oh geez—yeah, yeah you did. That’s awesome. You’re so good with them. How’d you know you’d be good with them?”
“I didn’t,” Taylor muttered, and Brandon could hear the discomfort brought on by the compliment. “But, you know. I had a history teacher in school—sort of turned me on to the subject. Nica sent me books on historical events when I was deployed—King Henry the VIII, Charlemagne, that sort of thing. And I’d tell the guys in the unit about them. It got to be a thing. I’d get a new book, and I’d read it, and during chow time, we’d have story hour. And we’d start talking about, you know, how the government we followed had evolved from the one in England, and how fighting tactics had changed, and we’d all get excited about the next book. I’d already done two tours before that missile hit. I knew what I wanted to do when I got back.”
“So you knew you wanted to be a teacher. The being good with kids, that was just a bonus?”
“Took care of Sammy and Elena some,” Taylor admitted. “Just, you know. Watched Nica’s parents. Watched Nica. Liked how they talked to kids. Better than my folks. Wanted to do the same.”
Brandon heard the opening and took it. “Are you ever going to talk about your parents?” he asked softly. “I mean, for real?”
“Dad used his fists and Mom drank,” he said, but not angrily. “Tell me about your parents.”
“Dad’s an asshole and Mom lets him be. No fists or alcohol involved, but they’re still pissing me off.”
Taylor let out a breath. “They get manipulative,” he said after a moment. “They tell you if only you were a better boy, they wouldn’t have to do what they’re doing. With my dad, it was hitting. With my mom, it was letting him. Your folks… they’re not as bad. But, you know, they’ve got the dynamic down.”
The entire crappy week flashed behind Brandon’s eyes. “I get it,” he said. “I don’t know if they were like this when I was home before.”
“Probably—just not overtly. They might have picked another target. Garrett probably got a lot of ‘If you didn’t watch your brothers, this is your fault.’ You came out, left the house, you’re fair game now. No wonder your brothers ditched you there.”
Brandon grunted. He’d called Cliff that night to make sure Cliff was coming down from Tahoe to attend to business matters in Sacramento and dropping him home Saturday, but he hadn’t gotten a response. “Well, don’t I feel dumb for not noticing.” And he did—he could remember now. Garrett getting bullied about his grades, Cliff getting called milquetoast and worse. Brandon had been the baby—able to do no wrong, right up until he’d told his mom he’d finally kissed a boy.
“Not your fault,” Taylor said softly. “Love’s not supposed to come with strings. You told me ‘I love you’ and you didn’t even wait around for a reply. You just wanted me to know. I said it when I was ready, and you knew I meant it. You had it right—you knew what love and life were supposed to be. Don’t let them tell you different just ’cause you’re stuck under their roof, okay?”
“Okay.” Brandon’s throat tightened, and he had a tough time swallowing, even a few minutes later, when they’d signed off. He’d never wavered, but he had worried once or twice. Taylor knew what love was. He knew what the long haul was.
And he knew what he and Brandon had was important.
They were going to be fine.
And that’s exactly what he thought until he woke up Friday morning and his phone, which he’d left charging next to his bed, was gone.
His mom professed ignorance. His dad asked, rather sarcastically, if he could have made it into the bedroom without wheezing loud enough to break the windows.
Brandon tossed every corner of the house when he should have been arranging for a nurse to come help care for his father starting Sunday.
He’d had all the numbers in his phone.
Friday night he called his brother from the house phone and asked him to call for the nurse. Cliff told him, “But Dad said you were staying another month. I don’t know who to believe!”
“Believe that if you’re not here at one o’clock, I’ll be walking into town and buying a bus ticket,” Brandon snapped. “And you tell Mom and Dad that if I can’t find my phone, they’re going to have a hard time finding the number for the folks who are supposed to help them, because I had all the information.”
“Well, Brandon, you can hardly hold them responsible for you losing your phone—”
“I did not lose my phone! It was right next to the bed, Cliff! Mom took it because she doesn’t want to deal with him alone!”
“You take that back,” Cliff replied, voice so smug it was a good thing he wasn’t standing right there.
“What?” Brandon knew what he was doing—Brandon had done it himself more than a week before.
“You take that back, what you said about Mom, or I won’t come get—”
Brandon hung up on him.
Then he told his mom that if she didn’t cough up the phone, he was going to leave them without any help at all.
“I’m
sure it will show up in the morning, sweetheart. And you don’t want to walk to town—it’s almost ten miles!”
“I walk that much on a regular job, Mom,” he muttered. “Please just find my damned phone.”
The time came and went when he usually called Taylor, and he’d slept dreaming about Taylor calling his name in the fog and getting no reply.
The next day he tossed the house again, without apology. At two thirty he finally heard a buzzing coming from his mom’s purse on the back of the chair.
He pulled it out while she watched, embarrassed, and without another word, he grabbed his duffel from his room.
“But Brandon, we just thought that if—”
“Bye, Mom. Don’t call me unless there’s a death in the family.”
“Brandon!”
He paused with his hand on the doorknob and winced, because that was beyond harsh and beyond indifferent. “Okay, scratch that. I’ll call the nurse when I get home and make sure someone comes tomorrow. Maybe he’ll listen to someone besides me. In the meantime, I’m out of here.”
“Brandon!” His mother wiped her hand under her eye. “Don’t leave me here,” she begged. “Not with him. Please?”
“Call Cliff,” Brandon told her. He got it—he knew why she wouldn’t want to be left alone. But he’d done his part. He was done. “Cliff needs to be your go-to guy for a while. Because this? This bullshit? This is unacceptable. I have a home to get back to!”
“How can that man be your home?” his mother asked, sounding honestly befuddled. “Brandon, we raised you—”
“To go out and start a family of my own. Mission accomplished. He’s the start of my family. Even if we never have more than the two of us, that’s still the family I choose.”
And with that he took his duffel bag and his dying cell phone and went stomping down the driveway.
Two hours later he could see the hotel he and Taylor had stayed at through the trees. He was ready for a rest and maybe some food, and definitely ready to call Taylor and beg for a ride.
Tomorrow, he thought glumly, looking at the long shadows. Taylor might not be able to make it up there before dark, and it was a hellish drive to make in the dark if your eyesight wasn’t optimum.
He’d just resigned himself to a night in the Best Western when the truck—his truck—skidded to a halt in the turnout he’d just passed.
He turned, surprised, and started trotting toward it, breaking into a full-out run when Taylor slid out of the driver’s seat and stood glaring at him as he approached.
“Going somewhere?” Taylor asked, obviously fighting a brilliant welcoming smile.
“Going home,” Brandon told him, dropping his duffel and stepping into his arms.
Ah yes—it was like breathing again. Taylor smelled like pancakes, and like sweat and irritated man, and the heat of his body comforted the angry, bitter part of Brandon’s heart like blankets and hot chocolate comforted a child after snow.
“Then you were coming to me,” Taylor whispered, and Brandon squeezed him even tighter. He let go only to allow Taylor to cup his jaw and initiate the kiss, ravenous and frenzied and greedy, that Brandon had always dreamed Taylor would demand from him but that he never had.
Until now.
Brandon rucked up Taylor’s plain white T-shirt and shoved his hands down the back of his cargo shorts, hauling him shamelessly closer, grabbing sweet handfuls of wiry, taut flesh.
Taylor didn’t back down, didn’t back away, just kept kissing him. He buried his hands in Brandon’s hair, knotting his fingers and holding Brandon in just the right position to ravage his mouth some more.
A car drove by, honking, close enough to knock them against the truck with the air of its passing, and that was the only thing that pulled them apart.
“We need a hotel,” Brandon rasped.
“We need to be home,” Taylor said shortly. He lifted his foot up to get in the truck, and then put it down and looked away. “But, uh, you need to drive,” he said, and the ferocity that Brandon had welcomed so much drained away, replaced by embarrassment. “Uh, the shadows and the trees and the road—we’re damned lucky I didn’t drive off a cliff on my way up here.”
“I love you so much right now,” Brandon rasped. “Why’d you do that?”
Taylor just shrugged and walked around, then got in the passenger’s side while Brandon tossed his duffel in the bed and swung up behind the wheel. “Oh, baby, did you miss me?”
“Yeah, Brandon. It was the truck that missed you.”
Brandon leaned across the seat and pulled him in for a kiss. “You sure you don’t want to stop by the Best Western?”
Taylor shook his head adamantly but averted his gaze. “I may have to stop in half an hour because I have a fierce need to pee and I haven’t eaten lunch. But I… I want you in our bed. In our apartment. We may move in two weeks, but right now it’s our stuff and it’s home.”
“You came and got me,” Brandon told him. “I am home.”
Taylor’s familiar sardonic look—the one where he rolled his eye so hard his eye patch twitched—crossed his face. “I knew something was wrong as soon as you didn’t answer my call last night. What the hell happened?”
“Mom stole my phone.”
“That’s mature.”
Brandon snorted, because that had been his exact thought. “You know, she’s over fifty. You’d think she’d be able to deal with Dad by now—or at least not take it out on innocent bystanders, right?”
“Yeah, well, she made her choice to stay with him. Just because they gave you free room and board for your first twenty years doesn’t mean you owe them jack now.”
Brandon grimaced. “I am going to call a nurse as soon as my phone’s charged,” he confessed. “Because, dammit, Dad’s not going to make it if someone doesn’t talk him into moving around some more.”
“Just not you,” Taylor said with feeling—a far cry from the man who had insisted Brandon go up in the first place.
“Just not me,” Brandon confirmed. He came and got me. That knowledge was not getting any less warm and fuzzy in his chest. “What made you decide to drive up?”
“You wouldn’t have been late.” Unequivocal and adamant. “I mean, I think you’re crazy—and I have no idea why me—but I know you. You don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep. When you didn’t call last night and weren’t home by three, I knew.”
Brandon peered at the dash clock. “Oh my God, Taylor, you must have driven like the wind.”
Taylor grunted. “I, uh, may have broken some traffic laws. I mean, as far as I knew, they had you bound and gagged in a basement somewhere.”
“My parents?” Brandon laughed. “Seriously?”
“Hey, don’t look at me—it’s your sick family we’re talking about.”
Brandon thought about how trapped he’d felt this entire past week, and the sheepish “I haven’t really done anything wrong” look on his mother’s face.
“Yeah, okay, fair point. Mom and Dad off the Christmas card list—at least until I get a real apology for hiding my phone and letting Cliff get away with not coming to pick me up.”
“What was his excuse?”
“My accusing my parents of taking my phone,” Brandon muttered. God. Family.
“But she did take your phone!” Taylor shook his head. “Wait. No. Forget I said that. We’re not engaging the crazy. We’re driving the hell out of Crazytown, our next stop your tiny apartment with my pissed-off cat.”
“And sex,” Brandon told him seriously. “I’m talking massive quantities of—”
“Of me nailing you into the mattress until you stay put,” Taylor snapped.
Brandon almost moaned, his sudden erection aching in surprise. “You’d better not be bullshit,” he muttered.
“You weren’t. Trust me on this one—this is something I need.”
They drove in tense silence for the next half hour, and then Brandon pulled off at a gas station that backed up against the mount
ains. He and Taylor went in to use the bathroom and get sandwiches, which they ate leaning back against the truck, looking up at the magnificence of the trees and the red-dirt mountain that loomed above them.
When they were done, Brandon ran their trash to the nearby can, but when he came back, Taylor was still leaning against the truck, looking at the shadow of the trees against the summer blue sky.
“What?” Brandon asked, following his eyes.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, it really is.”
“If I could draw a picture of how my heart feels, it would be that pretty.”
Brandon swallowed hard and painfully. “This is why I love you, you know that, right?”
Taylor turned and searched his face. “Why?”
“Because your heart—the things inside—they’re that real. They’re that beautiful. You came and got me. You believed me when I said I wanted to come home to you. I mean, we’ve got some ups and downs ahead of us, but this place here? We just have to remember that this is where we start.”
Taylor smiled softly, the expression setting his whole face aglow. “I could start here. With you. We could do great things from this place, you think?”
Brandon had to kiss him. Had to. Warm and safe, this kiss, the urgency thrumming beneath it like a live current cushioned by vinyl over the wires. When they got to their destination, that charge would go somewhere, but right now it was just enough that they wrapped their arms around each other and felt the possibilities between them.
THEY got home in time to swim before dinner. Taylor stretched in the pool, and Jacob barbecued. They ate with the kids at the picnic table by the pool, and while the sun set, Brandon told them stories about giant trees and deer and rabbits in the forest, leaving out why he spent so much time walking down the road in the first place.
They cleaned up the paper plates and left the few dishes for the housekeeper, whom Jacob was starting to adore, and sat in front of the television, where everybody fell asleep.
Including Jacob.
Taylor and Brandon snuck out of the house and up the stairs to Brandon’s apartment when the sky was mostly velvet purple, and they stood on the landing and looked at the stars wordlessly before Brandon turned and led Taylor inside.