Life on Pause

by Erin McLellan

  “I’m sorry. I’d probably feel helpless all the time if I had kids.”

  “That’s pretty much a requirement. So do you want children?”

  “I don’t know. I can hardly take care of myself some days. How would I handle a child?” Niles gazed wistfully into his glass of Miller Lite. “It’s weird though. My mom was thirty-eight when she had me, and they’d tried for years and years. They wanted me, you know?”

  “Yeah. You’re pretty awesome. I can see why they would.”

  Niles scrunched up his nose and blushed. “A part of me likes the idea of having a kid that is part them, if that makes sense. A kid that has my dad’s skin, my skin. Or my mom’s curly hair. And it’s not only physical attributes. It’s their heart, you know? Their legacy—the one they worked so hard to give me.” Niles paused, and then glanced up at Rusty in horror. “God, does it sound like I want to have children with my parents? Because that’s not what I’m trying to say. At all.”

  “I get what you’re saying,” Rusty chuckled, totally and unsurprisingly charmed. His heart was pounding, like it wanted to jump into Niles’s palm, like it belonged to him.

  “But I’m gay. It’s a little difficult to get the right ingredients.”

  “But not impossible.”

  “No. I guess not.” Niles laughed suddenly. “I still sleep in my childhood bedroom. I cannot believe you just got me to talk about having kids!”

  “I bet it’s hard being there without your parents, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s not easy, that’s for sure.”

  “Tell me about them,” Rusty said softly, hoping to encourage Niles to open up. “You’ve told me bits and pieces, but I want to hear everything, if you want to tell me.”

  Niles took a slow breath and said, “Well … my dad was probably one of the best men I’ve ever known. Or is one of the best men. I screw that up all the time.”

  “Screw what up?”

  “Past and present tense. My dad’s alive, but he’s not the same and I catch myself using past tense to describe him. It’s fucked up.” His voice trembled on the last word.

  “Hey, we don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

  “No. I do.” Niles smiled shyly and Rusty melted a little. “My dad’s mom—my grandmother—was a schoolteacher, and then after she retired, she went back and got her master’s degree in public policy and worked for the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. My granddad was a mechanic. And my dad got the best of both of them. He’s a gearhead, and he also has this ambition and desire to help others. He started with vo-tech and got his master mechanic certification, and then he went back to school for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration. After him and my mom got married, they moved here and he opened the Tire Shop. Some of my earliest memories are of playing in that shop. It’s hard to go in there now, though.”

  “I can’t imagine, babe.”

  “He’s a good dad. A good person, and I miss him. My mom told me once that he faced some backlash when they first moved to Bison Hills and he opened his shop. You know, dumb rednecks that didn’t want to see him as anything but a stereotype. When I told my parents that I’m gay—which wasn’t a big surprise to them, I assure you—he hugged me and said he was proud of me. Proud of my courage in coming out, which is so laughable to me because I’m a coward, like, ninety-nine percent of the time. But he modeled that courage every day. He tried to prepare me to deal with my own intersecting identities as a gay man and a Native American in a state that tends to abhor one and pretends to celebrate the other.”

  Niles huffed a little laugh and reached for Rusty’s hand. Rusty gripped his fingers like they were a lifeline.

  “So it never bothered your parents that you’re gay?”

  “No. I think my parents suspected early. I was kind of a soft child. Sensitive, I guess. And I loved watching boys on television. I can’t remember how old I was—maybe seven or eight—but during the Winter Olympics, I got obsessed with male figure skaters. Like, drooling-a-foot-from-the-TV obsessed. After this one skater performed, I turned to my parents and said, ‘He’s beautiful.’ I’m pretty sure the coin dropped after that. Also my mom had a friend from college who’s gay and now married—his name’s Drew and his husband is Anton—and they’d visit us about once a year, which looking back, had a huge effect on me. I knew from an early age that there were men who liked men, that I wasn’t alone in that, and that my parents loved Drew and Anton, regardless. It didn’t matter to them. When I was fourteen, my dad got an equality tattoo on his biceps, and at the time, I thought it was for Drew and Anton, but it was for me too. I didn’t come out to my parents until I was sixteen, but I cried when he showed the tattoo to me, like full ugly tears. I knew he’d love me no matter what. My mom too.” A wobbly smile stretched across Niles’s face.

  “Oh, gorgeous, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “It’s okay. I haven’t really opened up to anyone else about my parents. It’s nice.”

  “What about your mom, then? What was she like?”

  “My mom was a character! A total free spirit. Before I was born, she managed this little garden center in Tahlequah, but once I came along, she did the stay-at-home-mom gig. I’m a lot like her. She was quirky and shy and socially awkward and loved Harry Potter. When she was dying, I actually read the books to her. She’d read them a million times, but they were comforting, I think. So the three of us—Mom, Dad, and I—would sit in their bedroom, and I’d read and read. We made it to the fifth book.”

  “Oh God, Niles.” Now Rusty was choked up, the swirling emotions in his head so confusing. He couldn’t imagine the pain Niles had been through. “I don’t know what to say. That had to have been so hard.”

  Niles lifted a palm to Rusty’s cheek and smiled. “Don’t be sad. It was a bright spot, in a way. Something we all loved doing together. Mom was always this bright spot in the darkness of my days.”

  Rusty’s chest hurt, like it had been split open. Niles was his bright spot.

  Was that love? He wasn’t sure. With Todd, Rusty had simply noticed after about a year that they were saying “I love you” before bed. He couldn’t remember when it had started, couldn’t remember who’d said it first, and they certainly hadn’t made a big deal of it. It was like they’d fallen into love by accident.

  But it was a big deal now, this thundering in his ears and the overwhelming need to touch, to feel. Rusty gripped Niles’s hands and held Niles’s knuckles to his lips while he tried to get his bearings.

  “What about your parents?” Niles whispered. “Tell me about them.”

  “I don’t feel like I know them at all, not really. Not like you know yours. They’re retired. My mom’s into selling Mary Kay, and my dad likes country music. Practically the only time I’ve seen them react to anything—good or bad—was when they freaked out about Jackie getting pregnant.”

  Rusty finished his beer in a long gulp and considered getting another. They probably needed to head home, but he was enjoying this moment that was about more than sex or sci-fi television shows. This moment that was about connection and realizing that the emptiness in his heart could be filled, could be mended by Niles Longfellow.

  “Your sister and Margo are lucky to have you,” Niles said.

  “Nah, man. I’m lucky to have them. That’s the honest truth.”

  And oh, God, what would he do if they moved and he didn’t? What would he do without them? He shook off that thought and focused on the present moment with Niles, who was wonderful. Who he was falling for.

  After another beer, they walked back to Rusty’s apartment, watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica, and made out on the couch. Then Rusty led Niles into his bedroom and took him apart with his mouth and his hands and a string of anal beads that Niles’s friend, Victor, had sent him from Miami. Afterward, Rusty coached Niles through fingering him during a blowjob, telling him when to go harder and when to add another digit or crook his fingers, and it was as
sweet and exhilarating as everything else they’d done so far.

  So, yeah, as a package deal, Rusty had hit the boyfriend jackpot.

  Before Rusty fell asleep, he remembered that Jackie wanted Niles to come over for dinner. His buzz didn’t seem to have worn off, or maybe he was simply sex drunk and exhausted, because his words slurred a little.

  “M’sister wants you for dinner,” Rusty mumbled into the top of Niles’s head, which was planted on his chest.

  Niles snorted. “Am I the meal?”

  “No. Guest.”

  “That sounds fun.”

  How did Niles sound so alert and awake? It was obnoxious. Or adorable. Niles lifted his head and Rusty opened his eyes. The smile on Niles’s face made Rusty all gooey and happy, and it was weird. He was pretty sure he’d never felt anything like this. Niles planted a soft kiss against his lips.

  “I’d love to get to know your family better,” Niles whispered.

  And the longing in his voice woke Rusty right up and kept him awake long after Niles fell asleep.

  For the next couple of weeks, Niles spent his fair share of evenings with Rusty, and he treasured every moment they were together. Most nights they slept at Rusty’s, but Niles had to be up early for a meeting with the Bushyhead Homestead Board of Directors tomorrow, so they’d decided to sleep at his house.

  Niles was in the kitchen making grilled cheese sandwiches, when he heard the slide of the fallboard on his mom’s upright piano. He peeked around the corner to catch Rusty run his finger lightly over the keys without playing any of them.

  It was odd for Niles to have Rusty in his parents’ home. He felt more like an interloper with Rusty there than when he was alone. Rusty’s presence among his parents’ belongings and knick-knacks made it increasingly obvious that Niles was nothing but a guest living among his parents’ stuff.

  Rusty tapped out a vaguely familiar song, his fingers flying over the keys, and emotion reared up and choked Niles.

  “Oh,” he breathed, the noise falling unbidden from his lips. He wasn’t sure how he felt about seeing someone else play his mom’s piano. It was out of tune, but it still sounded beautiful.

  Rusty glanced over at him and smiled. “Is this okay?” he asked, his fingers plinking softly at the keys.

  “Sure.” Niles moved toward the piano like he was in a fog. When he sat down on the edge of the piano bench, Rusty stopped playing and kissed behind his ear.

  “Are you okay?” Rusty whispered, his breath hot against Niles’s neck.

  Niles nodded, skin buzzing from the soft touches. “What were you playing? It’s pretty.”

  Rusty rubbed his beard against Niles’s neck and jaw. “‘Zanarkand.’ It’s from Final Fantasy X.”

  “Oh my gosh, you nerd,” Niles said, breathless and way too turned on to be talking about a twenty-year-old videogame.

  “I know.” Rusty dropped his hands from the keyboard and pulled the spatula from Niles’s hands.

  Why had he been holding a spatula again?

  Rusty’s large, warm hands on his face made every other thought fly out of his head with a whoosh. And then Niles was kissing Rusty like their lips were made to be fused together. He was being too insistent, too needy, but he didn’t care.

  One of Niles’s elbows bumped the keyboard and the spatula was knocked to the floor, but neither of them paused until Niles was practically straddling Rusty on the bench.

  “Holy moly, we cannot fool around on my mom’s piano,” he yelped when Rusty reached for his shorts.

  “Oh,” Rusty said, his eyes dazed. “Okay. I think something’s burning.”

  “What?”

  Right then, the smoke detector blared, and Niles flailed, banging the keys on accident again.

  “Fuck! The grilled cheese sandwiches!”

  Niles jumped off Rusty’s lap and rushed into the kitchen where he found two lumps of bread and cheese burned to a crisp. He shut the burner off and opened the window over the sink so the smoke could clear. The smoke detector stopped shrieking after about a minute.

  “Do you think they’re still edible?” Niles asked Rusty. “That was the last of my bread.”

  Rusty poked one of the sandwiches and grimaced. “We could try?”

  “I’m not sure they’re worth it. I have a frozen pizza. Let’s eat that instead. This is why I don’t cook.”

  After Niles had set the oven to preheat, he turned and slung his arms over Rusty’s shoulders, and Rusty grabbed his hips.

  “I’ll teach you to cook.”

  “That might be biting off more than you can chew. I’m pretty hopeless.”

  “So it would take a long time?” Rusty asked sweetly before swooping in for a kiss.

  “Yes. It could take years, so you’ll have to be willing to stick around for a while.”

  Rusty drew back and an unreadable emotion—discomfort, maybe?—flashed across his face, but it disappeared so fast Niles wasn’t sure it had been there in the first place.

  “Stick around in Bison Hills?” Rusty said softly.

  “Well, I guess. We both live in Bison Hills, but I meant that you’d have to stick around with me,” Niles teased, hoping to make Rusty smile, but then a horrible thought hit him. “If you want to stick around with me. It would make sense if you don’t.”

  “Hey. Don’t say shit like that about my boyfriend. Of course I want to stick around.” Rusty cupped his jaw with one hand and gripped his hip with the other, pulling until their bodies were pressed together.

  Niles popped a boner in a second flat. “I’m not sure I want to fool around in my mom’s kitchen either.”

  “Fair enough.” Rusty released him and smacked his ass playfully. “Feed me, then!”

  Later that night, after mediocre frozen pizza, two episodes of Battlestar Galactica, and languid blowjobs, Niles watched Rusty sleep. His hair was spread out on Niles’s pillow and soft snores fell from his perfect lips.

  Happiness filled Niles, like it was being poured straight into his veins. Seeing Rusty in his bed, in his home, soothed that bruised part of his heart that had been lonely for so long.

  Rusty snuffled a little bit in his sleep and flung an arm across Niles’s waist.

  Maybe it wasn’t happiness that was filling him. Maybe it was love.

  Rusty wasn’t able to hold Jackie off on her dinner with Niles for long. She’d cornered him again and had insisted Niles come over “this Friday, no excuses.” And then Niles had been almost heartbreakingly excited by the prospect when Rusty had asked if he was still interested.

  But now that Friday had arrived, Rusty couldn’t shake his jitters. He paced back and forth on the porch of Jackie’s duplex, hoping to work out some of his uneasiness as he waited for Niles to get there. The old lady in the connecting unit didn’t seem to mind that Jackie and Margo had completely taken over the shared porch with toys and an elaborate fairy garden in big terracotta pots, so he walked all the way to her door and back to Jackie’s, hoping she wouldn’t mind a big bisexual stomping around either.

  It had already been a stressful evening. Jackie had decided that she would move to Sapulpa and become co-owner of her friend’s salon. It was what she wanted, and he wanted it for her. But it was still a lot to wrap his head around. He wasn’t sure what he should do—move to Sapulpa with his family or stay in Bison Hills without them.

  He needed to figure his shit out, which got harder and harder the deeper his feelings for Niles grew. He’d asked Jackie not to mention the job or his decision to Niles, which had earned him major stink eye. She was not impressed that he hadn’t already filled Niles in. And he just wasn’t in the mood to defend himself. He sucked.

  Plus, he wasn’t sure he was ready for Niles to meet Jackie and Margo for real. Yes, they’d already met him, but at the time, Niles had essentially been a stranger. Now he was a boyfriend.

  When Rusty had been with Todd, they’d been like an insular little family. Todd and Rusty and Margo had spent every day after school together,
and almost every evening with Jackie. The four of them could have practically made Christmas cards. Working with Todd had made it harder to keep everything separate, and it had never occurred to Rusty to try. He hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to pull those threads that had tied Todd to his sister and niece apart. It had been especially painful for Margo, who’d been calling him Uncle Todd since she could talk.

  Being dumped and then having to see Todd every day, especially with him moving on so quickly, had been embarrassing. But the hardest thing had not been that he’d missed being with Todd. No, he’d missed being Rusty and Todd and Margo and Jackie. Todd and Rusty had never been a dynamic duo. They’d always been the unstoppable quartet.

  And now Jackie and Margo were going to move, and Rusty wasn’t sure he was ready to split the gang up. But he also couldn’t imagine giving up on Niles when he’d just found him, when he’d only recently convinced him that they were worth it.

  Niles’s shitty Mazda bounced into Jackie’s gravel driveway, and Rusty waved at him from the porch. When Niles unfolded himself from his car, it looked like he was wearing a baseball-style shirt for some sports team, but on closer inspection, it turned out to be a Harry Potter Quidditch logo. He was also wearing cargo pants that were slightly too long and baggy, and his hair was a total mess.

  Niles had never looked better. He bounded up the steps of the porch and straight into Rusty’s personal space.

  “It’s almost chilly today. I think fall arrived overnight,” Niles breathed in his ear, wrapping his long arms around Rusty’s neck, and shivers that had nothing to do with the weather worked their way down Rusty’s spine. He gripped Niles’s chin and kissed him hard on the lips. He tasted wonderful, like sugar cookies or some shit.

  A cough startled them apart, and Jackie laughed when Niles almost stumbled off the top step of the porch. Rusty caught his elbow and steadied him.

  “Well hello, lovebirds,” Jackie chirped through the screen door. Rusty smiled, and Niles turned adorably rosy. “It’s nice to see you again, Niles. And wearing normal clothes too!”