“I didn’t have the chance to return the favor,” he murmured when he finished. He’d been lapping at me for the past five minutes as I halfway drowsed in his arms. His hand drifted down to carefully cup my cock.
“Later,” I said. “With the mirrors.”
“Oh, honey,” he said. “I can’t wait for tonight. You are going to be the star of that show.”
I chuckled, waking all the way up, and realized that I wasn’t in the least put off by that remark. “I can’t wait either. But I guess we’d better get cleaned up now. I kind of made a mess on your furniture.”
“You’re not the first one,” he said.
“I didn’t think I was. It looks like you’ve had this couch for a while.”
“Uh-huh. In Louisiana, where sometimes a friend would come visit for a weekend…. But you know what?”
“No, what?”
“I haven’t been with anybody but you since June. And I like it that way.”
“For me too. Nobody but you since….” Since that first time in Houston. “Last November.”
Kevin untangled from me and sat up, so I did too. He held his hands folded between his knees, hunched over a bit, and looked at me seriously. “You’ve been here… what? Five hours?”
“Almost.”
“You know I don’t want you to leave. Do you understand that? What I’m saying?”
I looked down at the area carpet that covered his hardwood floors. Kevin’s house. Kevin. “I know.”
“I really like you.”
And I really liked him too, even if I didn’t know how I’d managed to find my way to his house. I liked him enough that I’d let the kids and their thoughtless comments overcome my objections and propel me here. I liked him enough to understand what he was really saying, what we each were on the verge of saying and what I knew in my heart I was feeling. For all my fears and worries, I knew that feeling.
“You got here,” Kevin went on. “I didn’t think you would. So now I think you can do anything.”
I gave him a small, incredulous smile. He didn’t know that it’d been pique and embarrassment that had brought me here, as well as pride. And him. “Anything?”
“Yep. Superman. Come over next Tuesday, why don’t you? Just… follow me home. Nobody needs to see or know. Don’t make us both suffer through that night alone.” He nudged me with his elbow. “Tommy.”
I didn’t immediately say no. I didn’t even turn away from him. Instead I kept his gaze, and thought: this is how it could be. Kevin and me against the world. No more fitting myself into a box too small, no more hopeless trips for sex. Baseball and football games shared, this is how my day went, how was yours, porn DVDs, and it’s time to get the oil changed in my Miata, let’s take care of your truck too. My Miller Lite in the fridge next to his Michelob, the end of the day on Tuesday not spent alone and frustrated, no more elaborate plans for weekends away, but every day, every night, Kevin and Tom together.
“God, I wish,” I murmured.
“Me too. Think about it, okay?”
Another gentle push. I knew where this was going. I knew what he wanted as well as he did: from this weekend here, to a Tuesday night shared, to every Tuesday night and every weekend, and why don’t you move in with me? And after that, me never seeing Kevin again because I just couldn’t do that.
It wasn’t fair, what I was putting him through, or what I was allowing myself to endure. Wanting and having were two different things. A hope resurrected was the strongest of all… and the most painful to kill.
But I didn’t have the strength to say no, not right now. It looked like I would be going through hell one way or the other, either now—So long, Kevin, thanks for the lunch, have a nice life—or later—Goodbye, Kevin, thanks for wanting me forever, have a good day—so why couldn’t I revel in this much happiness before then? Why couldn’t I have the man I wanted for at least this long? I took the coward’s way out. Tuesday. Maybe.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
He clapped me on the knee. “Great!” He grinned. “Or if that decision is a little delayed, then maybe we can, you know, give each other a call? Do it over the phone?”
I groaned out loud. “Pervert. Besides, that can’t come close to the real thing, and you know it.”
“That’s right,” Kevin said with a wink and a nod. “A case in point. Come on, let’s get dressed and clean up. And eat, because I’m starved. Beer, queso, and chips?”
That sounded great to me. I stood up and smoothed down my long-sleeved polo shirt; it might be a little wrinkled, but it would do since it was only Kevin and me there. This was going to be a who gives a shit weekend, and it had gotten off to the best possible start.
I retrieved the rest of my clothes, put them on, and went back to the garage to get my overnight bag so I could dump it in his room. Finally I got a cloth from the kitchen and spent some time cleaning up the mess I’d made, relieved that the leather didn’t stain, because the last thing I wanted was a permanent memento of me coming on Kevin’s furniture.
I rinsed out the rag at the kitchen sink, and Kevin turned on the microwave to warm up cheese and picante sauce. “I figured you wouldn’t want to go out to dinner tonight,” Kevin was saying over the noise as he stood right in front of it. “We could get a—” when I thought I heard a noise. A door opening? Closing? I froze with my hands under the running water.
“Kevin?” I said, uncertain.
But before he could answer, there was the unmistakable sound of feet on the carpet and some person walking through the living room, headed this way.
“What?” Kevin asked as the microwave chimed that it was through.
“Daddy?” called a young woman’s trembling voice. “It’s Channing. I need to talk to— Oh!”
She came around the corner like she was running a race, a red-faced, frowning, anxious-looking girl… but she stopped abruptly when she saw me, the thirty-eight-year-old man who taught her history during third period.
Channing looked from me to her father and then back to me again. We stood motionless in a three-person stage play, waiting for someone to remember the next line.
She knew. I saw it the second comprehension kicked in, from the shocked look in her eyes to the way her mouth opened in an astonished “O.”
My stomach heaved, and for a dizzying span of seconds I fought the very real likelihood that I would throw up in front of her. I managed to catch my bile and force it down, but the guilt that must have shown on my face swept through me. I’d just sucked off her father, for God’s sake! My own come had just washed down the drain from the cloth in my hand and—shit!—the DVD case lay in plain sight on the coffee table.
In that moment I hated Kevin. I hated myself.
Channing drew an audible breath. “Daddy! You should have told me you and Mr. Smith had gotten together!” She said it with all the artless earnestness of a seventeen-year-old who thought she understood everything.
I turned away from her and shut off the water. Into the silence Kevin said, “Honey, it’s not like you think, we—”
“Don’t treat me like a child!” she said with a sudden edge. “Now I know why you wanted to volunteer for the play.”
Kevin took a step toward her, his hand out. “Channing, you know that’s not the way it is. I wanted to help you out. And Mr. Smith and I are just—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said with a distinct hiccup. “It doesn’t matter, really, and I don’t care. I really don’t. I don’t care about anything!” Tears were but one step away.
Kevin drew even closer, approaching cautiously, as if he were dealing with a wild animal that might bolt at any moment. “What’s wrong? We don’t mind that you came over, do we, Tom?” He threw a desperate look over his shoulder.
But I didn’t get the chance to answer. Channing said, “I don’t care that you two are…. I mean, I even wondered if you knew Mr. Smith was gay too, and if you would…. You have a right to…. But it doesn’
t matter! Nothing matters!”
Finally Kevin was close enough to put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s happened?”
She looked up at him with despair in her eyes. “Oh, Daddy, I’ve got to talk to you. I’m in big trouble.” She threw herself into his arms and burst into tears.
Kevin put his arms around her and held her tight, patting her on the back and murmuring, “It’ll be okay.”
But I stood rooted in one place. She knew her father was gay? And Kevin hadn’t told me that? He’d kept that from me, when I’d needed to know. Because she’d said….she’d said…. She’d said I wondered if you knew Mr. Smith was gay. The words ran over and over in my head. If you knew. If you knew. I wondered if you knew Mr. Smith was gay. As if everybody knew. Channing knew. How had she…. The cast. George. You of all people should know people are just people. My students. Because if Channing could say it, then…. Principal Watts. The elders of the First Baptist Church of Gunning.
Who else knew?
One girl crying in a kitchen, and my whole world staggered. I put a hand out onto the kitchen counter for some kind of stability, but nothing would ever be stable again. She knew? Channing Carlton, ordinary kid, nothing special except she could sing, and she knew I was gay? Suddenly I was a piece of trash caught up in the whirlwind of a tornado, being tossed around and around.
My eyes focused on Kevin and Channing, and I realized time had passed, though I didn’t know how long. I thought of looking down at my watch or over at the clock on the microwave, but I couldn’t get my head to move. It was as if there was so much whirling in my brain that the rest of me was forced into stillness.
Kevin was still patting her back and sometimes patting her on the head. As I watched he rested his hand protectively over her high ponytail. His mouth was moving, and I tuned in to hear him say, “Honey, crying isn’t going to help. You’ve got to tell me so I can help you.”
Honey. He called me that sometimes. And now Channing. Desperately, I gulped for air.
Kevin turned his head and looked at me, rolling his eyes significantly toward the media room that was open to the kitchen. He had realized about Dangerous Liaisons too. He wanted me to go take care of it.
Not an unreasonable request. I could do that. I walked past both of them, over to the coffee table, and picked up the DVD case. Movie-Tom embraced Sebastian as if he meant it. But they were naked and making love, and Channing couldn’t see that kind of monstrous perversion. She’d better stay out of Kevin’s bedroom too. What had he been thinking, with all those mirrors? What had he wanted to see with them?
I picked up the case and tucked it into the bookcase where Kevin had gotten it in the first place, and then I put a copy of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces in front of it, so there was no way she could see even the DVD’s edge.
I turned back to the scene being played out in the kitchen. Channing had stopped crying but was still clutching Kevin’s sweater. Kevin said, “Now, will you tell me what this is all about?”
She lifted her head and sounded like a five-year-old when she said, “I will, Daddy, it’s just that….”
Time for my exit. I wanted nothing more than to get out of her presence. “I’ll leave the two of you alone then.” The garage was behind me, but my keys were on the counter.
“No!” Channing turned around within Kevin’s hold. “Oh, Mr. Smith, please don’t go. I was going to talk to you on Monday anyway. You might be able to help.”
Damn kids. Damn her and my counseling experience that had gotten me into all this trouble. And damn that somewhere underneath my shock and my rage I actually cared, and damn that, based on what she knew of me from school—Mr. Smith, always ready to listen to a student who needed to talk—she expected me to stay and help her, when all I wanted was to get out of there and try to pick up the pieces of what I’d thought had been my carefully constructed, carefully closeted life. Who else knew?
I glanced at Kevin. He was looking at me with wild eyes; he knew the position she’d put me in and the conflict I was going through. Maybe he wondered if he’d ever see me again. Well, I wondered that too.
“Please, Tom,” Kevin said. “If you can.”
Of course I could. I’d done every other thing he’d ever asked me to do, so why not this? Why not sit down with father and daughter and help them out of a rough patch, when I cared? Why not?
“Okay,” I heard myself say. “Let’s… let’s go to the living room where the three of us can get comfortable. Channing, do you want some water?”
God, anyone listening would think I was calm and had it all together. I really should be in the movies, I thought as I ran water into a glass and followed them away from the incriminating evidence. With every step I tucked the seething, terrified Tom back where I’d always kept him, into the space I’d chiseled into myself sixteen years ago.
A large floral sofa, blues and creams with a touch of apricot, dominated the living room, and that’s where Kevin and Channing sat. I gave her the water and took the armchair to the side, sitting forward with my hands clasped, trying not to look like her father’s lover.
“Okay now?” Kevin asked.
“No,” she said, with the weight of the world on her shoulders. For the first time, I had the presence of mind to actually wonder what her problem was. I could barely gather the interest.
“You’ve got to promise,” Channing said, hitching around and facing her father, “that you won’t… that you won’t hate me.” Tears started again.
“Channing, no matter what you’ve done, I will always love you.”
My father and mother stood over my hospital bed. I was in so much pain I could barely keep them in focus. “Mom?” I said. I wanted to reach out to her, touch her, but I could barely move for all the bandages. “How could you do this to us?” she asked, keeping her hands to herself. My father said, “I thought we knew you. Is this why we sent you to college?” There’d been no love in their voices.
“Mr. Smith? Do you promise that—” She hiccupped again, loudly, and then gulped. “You wouldn’t…. I mean—”
“Calm down, Channing,” I said.
“No, no! It’s not you who…. Promise!”
“Whatever it is,” I said steadily, hoping she wasn’t going to go off into full-blown hysterics, “I will keep your confidence as long as I am legally and morally capable of doing so.” I was beginning to think I knew what Channing’s problem was.
Kevin was staring at her as if he knew now too. “Channing? What is it? Don’t tell me you’re—”
“It wasn’t my fault!” she cried, and covered her face with her hands. “I didn’t want to do it! But he said…. He said….”
Kevin gripped her arm. “Who? JJ?”
She looked up at him, her face blotchy red and white, despairing. “Of course JJ! I’ve been going with him forever. Since sophomore year.”
“And he forced you to….”
“It was right after I got the part. You know, Maureen. Some kids at lunch were messing around, calling me dyke, asking me if I liked kissing other girls. And JJ, he got…. I mean, he knows I love him, but… but….”
“But what?” Kevin growled.
The words came tumbling out now, probably what she had rehearsed driving over here, or maybe what she hadn’t been able to get out of her head at night. “He said I had to prove to him that it wasn’t true and that it wasn’t what I really wanted, to be with girls. I told him he was crazy, it was only a play, but then he heard how we’d kiss onstage, and he got all mad and said he’d date somebody else who wouldn’t embarrass their boyfriend, and what choice did I have?” Her voice rose. “Daddy? What choice did I have? If I hadn’t slept with him, he would have dumped me, and everybody would have thought… would have thought… would have thought it was because I was a lesbo.”
And all this time, shortsightedly, I had been focusing on Robbie, looking out for his interests, trying to smooth the way for him, while right under my nose Channing had been teased in the cafe
teria and maneuvered into sex when she hadn’t wanted it. Because I hadn’t worried about the girls. I felt like the world’s most incompetent teacher, and for sure I needed to forget any pretense I’d ever had of being a decent counselor.
Kevin asked, “You’re saying you’re pregnant, right?”
She pulled away from the grip he’d been maintaining on her arm and frowned at him. “I didn’t come over here to tell you I slept with JJ! Of course I’m pregnant.”
“Are you sure?”
She sniffed. “I took the test three times since Thursday morning.”
For the first time he reacted. He stood up, fists clenched by his side. “For God’s sake, Channing. Don’t you have any sense?”
“I do, I do!” she cried, her face upturned to him.
“Not then you didn’t.”
“But he—”
“Didn’t you use any protection?” Kevin asked as harshly as any parent in this position would ask. “Condoms? Surely you know about condoms!”
“Of course I do!” Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. “I know all that stuff.”
“But you didn’t use one? Channing, how stupid can you get?”
“I know, I know. I was so dumb.”
“And what about an STD? For God’s sake, you could get any kind of a disease if you don’t use your head when you have sex. You could even get AIDS!”
Her eyes flashed and she jumped to her feet to face him. “Oh, thanks, Dad, that’s just what I wanted to hear! That’s what I should be saying to you, not the other way around. Ever since I was old enough to understand, I’ve been afraid of that for you. Bad enough I have a gay daddy, I always thought, but the icing on the cake would be to have you die of AIDS.”
As soon as she finished, panic sprang up all over her face. “Oh, God.” She closed her eyes and flopped back down, slumping and covering her face again as if she wanted to disappear. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know,” Kevin said grimly. “And you don’t have to worry, I’m not dumb enough to have sex without protection, and I don’t have AIDS.”
Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits Page 97
