Every Other Weekend

by TA Moore

  “It’s what I’ve always tried not to do,” Clayton said. He let his hand slide down Kelly’s back, from his shoulders to the dip just above his jeans. Then he took it away and stepped back from the car. “Anyhow, I should go and check in with Nadine. She’s still my client, unless she’s changed her mind.”

  There was something in the tone of Clayton’s voice—a resigned edge to it—that made Kelly look up at him.

  “That sounds final,” he said.

  Clayton brushed his hair back from his face with one hand. “I told you I wasn’t anyone’s Prince Charming,” he said regretfully. “Not even for you. Maybe we could have drawn it out a bit longer before it went wrong—”

  “My record is a year,” Kelly joked through the stupid ache in his chest. He hadn’t put in the time to have earned the right to hurt over this, but it still did. Apparently his heart just wasn’t ready to accept reality.

  “Not quite that for me,” Clayton said. “I’m Nadine’s lawyer. You’re Byron’s brother. There’s a conflict of interest there, and now I know it.”

  “I’m not that fond of Byron right now,” Kelly offered without much hope it would work.

  “Still.”

  Still. It would have been easier to argue if Clayton weren’t right. They might both want it to work—at least, work a bit longer—but it wouldn’t. That had never been in the cards.

  Kelly couldn’t resist one last mistake, though. He hooked his fingers in Clayton’s waistband and pulled him back in for a kiss. There was dust on Clayton’s lips and adrenaline sour on Kelly’s tongue. The kiss still curled sweetness all the way down into Kelly’s thigh with a dully eager ache.

  “I still think you’re a good man, Clayton,” he said against warm lips.

  Clayton cupped Kelly’s face in his hands. He brushed over the curve of Kelly’s lower lip with the soft pads of his thumbs—a brief caress that prickled all the way down his nerves.

  “I still think you’re wrong,” he said. Kelly waited for a kiss, but Clayton seemed to have conquered the need to make bad decisions. “But I hope you find one. You deserve it.”

  Kelly swallowed the dry itch of regret in his throat and dragged a smile up out of his boots while Clayton stepped back.

  “I’ve had worse breakups,” he said. “But the whole dramatic goodbye is going to seem a bit odd next time I’m at the office.”

  The twist of Clayton’s lips acknowledged the truth of that. “I’m sure we can be civilized.”

  He walked away, and Kelly crossed his fingers and waited for the usual guilty pang of relief. However much he cared about someone, it was usually easier to have broken up than to be breaking up. Besides, it took away one layer of tension between him and his family.

  Not this time. This time, as he watched Clayton’s knife-lean form walk away, he just felt like shit.

  IT TURNED out that when Clayton said “civilized” he meant “avoid each other as much as possible.” In the two weeks since they rescued Nadine—or since Nadine rescued Kelly—they’d seen each other three times and spoken once.

  Even that had involved Kelly shamelessly taking every excuse to put himself in Clayton’s way.

  It was pathetic, Kelly thought sourly to himself as he got onto the elevator. He’d always been cheerfully, hopelessly romantic but never pathetic. Or at least he never thought he was.

  Not that that realization seemed likely to stop him anytime soon.

  Kelly slouched back against the mirrored glass wall of the elevator and watched the floors count up. It stopped once to let an overcaffeinated student—three pens twisted in his hair and a dusty streak on the sleeve of his jacket—push his cart of files onto the car.

  The top layer of files wobbled and spilled as he stopped, and Kelly caught them before they hit the ground.

  “Sorry,” the student said. “Thank you. Are you looking for someone? Representation, I mean.”

  The eagerness in his voice made Kelly wonder if the young man hoped to recruit his first client between floors.

  “No, thanks,” Kelly said. He thought of the last few conversations he’d had with his family—accusations of treachery mixed with appeals to his family loyalty, all seasoned with the unspoken reminder that it was all his fault—made him grimace. “Not just yet.”

  The student looked confused, but Kelly got off on the next floor before he had to explain. His feet squeaked on the polished wooden floor as he headed through the office. Half of him scrambled to come up with an excuse to detour past Clayton’s office—luckily he’d already used up the best ones on other days, so he had to struggle—but he squashed it and walked on past.

  He was there to see Baker. He just wanted to see Clayton.

  The one person he didn’t expect to see was Nadine in Baker’s reception, her hair chopped into a pixie bob and her plaster cast a rainbow of Sharpie doodles and names. He hesitated in the doorway, his stomach tight with a mixture of curiosity and guilt.

  Not that he’d done anything to her… not directly. On the other hand, since she’d found out who Byron really was, Kelly hadn’t done anything to help her either. He knew he should, but… it had just been easier not to. His family was angry enough with him.

  “Kelly,” Nadine said as she looked up and saw him. She stood up abruptly and then froze uncomfortably in place. “I mean—”

  He quickly held up his hand. “Kelly,” he said. “That’s what everyone calls me.”

  Nadine nodded. She shifted her weight awkwardly from one foot to the other as she looked down at the paperwork she’d been absorbed in. “I’m sorry,” she blurted suddenly. “I didn’t know you were going to be here. I know it has to be awkward.”

  “It isn’t,” Kelly said. It was entirely true, but he corrected himself. “Or, if it is, it’s not your fault.”

  She smiled tiredly. “That’s not what James… Byron… said last time we spoke. Apparently it’s all my fault. If only I’d have been a better wife, he could have introduced me to his—to your—family.”

  There Kelly felt like he was on solid ground. “Byron’s never taken responsibility for anything in his life,” he said. “I don’t think he ever will. How are you?”

  “I’m okay,” Nadine said. “So’s Harry. He wants to meet your family, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea?”

  She didn’t put him on the spot with a direct question, but the uncertainty in her voice suggested one. Kelly thought about what would happen if Harry met his family. They would love the boy—as much as they frustrated him, his family weren’t monsters—but they’d also pressure him. Or Mom would push at him to forgive his father, to make his mother back down from what she was doing to poor, misunderstood Byron. And everyone would let them.

  “Not yet,” he said. “They’d mean well, but my mom is the one who taught Byron to dodge responsibility. Once everything with Byron is done and dusted.”

  She sat down and waited until he gingerly did the same. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?” she asked. “Mr. Baker says I am—”

  “Baker?” Kelly asked.

  She nodded. “He’s my lawyer now. Clayton said it would be more efficient, since Mr. Baker could handle my divorce and the suit against the LAPD. He’s an… odd man, but Harry and the puppy love him. Dogs never liked Byron.”

  Old habit poked at Kelly to defend his brother. It was what you did for family—made excuses and overlooked warning signs. Kelly was trying to stop that. He just admitted they never did.

  It was a careful conversation, one that skirted the edges of anything too raw and skimmed over conflict, but it was a conversation. The ice was broken, and maybe that would make it easier for Kelly to do the right thing next time.

  Or now.

  “Would you like to meet him?” he asked. “Maxie. I mean, would Harry like to?”

  For a moment Nadine looked blank. Then her eyes widened. “You mean the baby?” she said. “Byron’s son. The one he wanted.”

  “The one he had,” Kelly corrected. />
  Nadine frowned for a second and then shook her head. “No. I mean, I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s too much. Maybe if it were just that my husband had another family, but they were his real family. We were…. Not yet.”

  “It’s up to you,” Kelly said. “I get that it can’t be easy.”

  She looked like she doubted that, but she nodded. “I’ll ask Harry once things are more settled,” she said. “If he wants to see Maxie, then we can do that. Just… he’s gone through too much for now, I don’t want to put any more pressure on him.”

  “You have my number.”

  The door to Baker’s office opened, and he stepped outside. His eyebrows rose when he saw they were talking. “Mr. Kelly. Do you and Mrs. Kelly need a minute?”

  They glanced at each other and mutely acknowledged that they’d run out of things to talk about.

  “I think we’re done,” Kelly said. He stood up and extended his hand to Nadine. She shook it clumsily, wrong-handed by her cast. “If you need anything, call me.”

  “I will,” Nadine said. She smiled faintly. “I trust you.”

  He left her to her paperwork and followed Baker into the office.

  “Are you sure about this?” Baker asked as Kelly closed the door. He sat down behind his long, glossy black desk and steepled his fingers under his chin. “It won’t be easy.”

  Kelly knew that. It was nothing new. It was never easy to do the right thing—to go against the peacemaking flow with his family—but sometimes, when you couldn’t see any other option, you just had to do it.

  “I’m sure.”

  IT WAS six hours later that someone knocked on Kelly’s door. He had a pretty good idea of who it was, but he couldn’t quite let go of the hope it might be Clayton. That would make him loitering around Clayton’s office a bit less sad, a bit more hopeful. He put the paintbrush down, wiped purple on his jeans, and headed down the hall to answer the door.

  It was Jim, with a beer and a scowl. Kelly wasn’t sure which of the two had annoyed him.

  “Dad?”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Someone has to do it,” Kelly said. “You know what Byron is like—he isn’t up to parenting a child. You’d never even let him have a dog.”

  “He’s not your son.”

  Kelly shrugged. “I love him. He needs me. Who else is going to do it?”

  It was the sort of answer that usually made Jim bristle and bluster. Tonight it just made him slump, as though heavy weights had suddenly settled over his shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” Jim said tiredly. “It should be me. Byron’s my son, my responsibility, but your mom…. She thinks if she loves Byron enough, he’ll become someone worth loving.”

  “I know. Do you want to come in?” Kelly asked. He stepped back from the door and waved a hand at the living-room door. “I’ve not got a car to work on, but you can help me paint the wall.”

  In his entire life, even when he’d been in the hospital and everyone was crying, Kelly had never seen his dad cry. He didn’t want to see it either. For an instant, as Jim pressed his lips together and took a deep breath through his nose, he thought he was about to. Instead Jim shoved the cans into Kelly’s chest and strode past him into the main room.

  It turned out that Kelly had done it wrong. He wasn’t sure how, but when he went upstairs to give Maxie his dinner, Jim started to paint over what he’d already done.

  “Your granddad was a painter,” Jim said after a while, as he crouched to drag the paintbrush along the taped-off skirting. “Well, painted, decorated, did odd jobs. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “No,” Kelly said. He slapped paint over the square foot of wall he’d been directed to work on. “You never talked about my granddad on your side much.”

  “That’s because he was a bastard.” Jim straightened up with a wince. He braced his knuckles in the small of his back and stretched until something popped loudly enough for Kelly to hear. “He looked a bit like Byron. Had a temper like Byron too when he had a skinful. I always wondered if maybe I was too hard on Byron because of that. If I wasn’t being fair.”

  “Did Byron ever do anything bad?” Kelly asked. It was a question he’d wondered for a long time, ever since he realized how often they’d moved before they settled in LA, how Byron always started with his new doctor before the rest of them even had a new school. As a little kid, he always wondered why his pediatrician didn’t need to see him once a week, and why they didn’t have puppets. “Anything really bad.”

  “Other than what he did to you?” Jim asked. He didn’t look around at Kelly, just at the wall as he stepped back and ran his eye along where he’d cut in.

  “You knew?” Kelly asked. He supposed he should be angry. Or something. It was just too much of a surprise to feel anything past that. That Jim didn’t know, that he couldn’t know, had always just been something he assumed was true.

  “Yes. No. Not really,” Jim said. “Your friend Clayton… your boyfriend… he told me, but I wasn’t surprised when he did. So I suppose, on some level, I always suspected it.”

  He put the paint down and picked at the paint on the back of his hands. Kelly still didn’t know what he should feel. He never expected to hear Jim had called someone, anyone, his boyfriend.

  “I don’t think he meant to blind me,” Kelly said. It was too unprecedented a conversation to avoid the lure of old habits. “Just hurt me.”

  Jim winced. “That’s not any better.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Kelly admitted. “I just don’t know what to say.”

  Jim sat down on the couch and dangled his paint-splattered hands between his knees. “Me neither,” he said. His shoulders rose and fell as he sighed deeply. “I spent my whole life proud of one thing—that I was a better dad than your grandad was. None of my kids ever went cold or hungry. They never wanted for new clothes. Yet I never stopped this. I let your mom convince me that the doctors were all wrong, that Byron was just hyperactive or something or… anything but what the doctors wanted to say he was. I let Cole spend his life covering for Byron. I told you that you should hide who you are to stop gossip, instead of just telling the gossips to shut up. All my life I was so proud of myself, and I failed you all. I failed Maxie. I failed that little boy I might never get to meet.”

  “Harry.”

  Jim nodded and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “I was so scared that I wouldn’t be able to protect you from things, I just ignored them instead of at least trying to protect you.”

  “What does that mean?” Kelly asked.

  “It means that you shouldn’t have to raise your brother’s son, but I’m proud that you stepped up to do it. It means… that if anyone says anything when you bring Clayton to the next barbecue, I’ll flatten them.” Jim looked up at Kelly with an almost-pleading expression. “It means that I should have done better, but I can’t fix that. All I can do is try and do better in the future.”

  Kelly swallowed hard.

  “Dad, could you mind Maxie for the night?” he asked.

  Jim looked as though that weren’t quite the response he’d hoped for. “Why?”

  “I need to do something.”

  “Something you just remembered?”

  Kelly scratched at his jaw and picked a lump of paint from the stubble. “Something I just worked out,” he said. “Look, I don’t know if what you just said changes anything. I didn’t even know I was mad at you until recently. So, I don’t know. If you want to do better, though, I need to do this.”

  After a puzzled second, Jim shook his head and spread his hands helplessly. “I suppose,” he said. “If it’s important.”

  Kelly considered that for a moment. “It is, and I didn’t want to admit that… any more than you wanted to deal with Byron. So I guess we’re both doing the right thing tonight.”

  CLAYTON OPENED the door to his apartment with a tumbler of whiskey in one hand and silk trousers low around his hips. He looked surprised to see
Kelly on his doorstep, although it was hard to tell whether it was a good or a bad surprise.

  “I want to marry you,” Kelly blurted out. He’d worked out a whole speech on the way over. It hadn’t been eloquent, but it had been clear. He thought it explained his feelings pretty well. But it had dissolved like cotton candy, and the only words he could find were insane. “I want to go to France on our honeymoon. I want you to worry about me getting hurt at work and not understand when I worry that some mad ex is going to try and kill you. And you should be careful, because we might have kids. I don’t really know that, not yet. I’m going to adopt Maxie, but it won’t be easy. I want it, though. And you. I want you.”

  He only stopped because he ran out of breath.

  “What?” Clayton said.

  Kelly rubbed his hands over his face and shoved them up into his hair. His fingers caught in the dense mat of it.

  “There’s more,” he said. “First, do you have someone else with you? That would be really awkward right now.”

  Clayton stepped back and let the door swing open. He invited Kelly in with a slightly sloppy wave of the glass of whiskey.

  “I might not be a romantic,” Clayton rasped as Kelly walked past him. “But it still hurts to end something.”

  “So why end it?” Kelly asked.

  “Because I told you—”

  “You’re no one’s Prince Charming,” Kelly interrupted. He stalked across the apartment, too full of nervous energy to stay still. It was all caffeine and bluster, enough to keep him just ahead of the urge to play it safe and chicken out. The apartment was good for pacing, all long stretches of wood with no baby toys or unfinished DIY to get in the way. “Well, maybe that’s good. I’ve spent my whole life on the heels of a fairy-tale romance. I’ve been swept off my feet. I’ve been promised the moon and stars. None of it was real. It felt real at the time, maybe we both wanted it to be real, but there’s no ‘The End’ when it’s real.”