by R. J. Scott
“My foster families were a means to an end. We mutually disliked each other every time.”
Shit. I’d just taken a can of worms and yanked at that lid, hadn’t I?
Should I say I was sorry? Was that what a normal person would do with the guy they’d just shared orgasms with on the plush carpet of his suite? I was lucky. My parents were awesome, even if I did owe my dad a long-overdue conversation about how I was sorry. Not that I hadn’t apologized before, but one day I wanted everything to be back to normal with him.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said as if he’d read my mind. “It is what it is. My last foster parents lived in a nothing special kind of house, three bedrooms that they’d subdivided into more space for kids. They weren’t bad people, don’t get me wrong, but I was fourteen, and they were religious to the point that they thanked God for everything. They thanked him for their house, and their lives, and for giving them the right to send me to my room hungry if I did anything that God wouldn’t like. That ranged from stealing a cookie to getting home late from school. The only thing they gave me was a love for baking, and I wish I didn’t have to say it, but I owe them in a way.” He stopped then and picked at a thread on his PJ bottoms.
“They taught you to bake?” That sounded okay, right? Any family who taught their kids the practicalities of life had to be good.
“No, I taught myself to bake. Every freaking week it was church bake sales for this, that, or the other. And when I made cakes and cookies, the congregation would say I was sent from God and truly blessed, but maybe for the rest of that day I wouldn’t get in trouble or sent to my room. Soon as I turned sixteen, I was out of there. Tracked down my mom who was living in this shit room in the middle of a heap of shit rooms. I slept on the sofa, and she spent most of the time in bed, on her own, drowning her sorrows with Jack and Jose, ruining her liver.”
“You don’t need to tell me all this—”
“I need to because I want more with you, and I want you to know what made me who I am, so you can understand—”
“You’re a good man—”
“You don’t know that.”
I tilted my chin in that stubborn way I had going for me. “Yes, I do.” I could feel something in him, a kindness that called to me. I’m losing my shit and getting poetic now.
“Whatever.” He waved his hand at me. “I just knew I wasn’t going to be stuck in that room. I had a phone, just this heap of shit that I found in the garbage one day. I saved up money washing dishes. I got it fixed. I sold it for profit. I kept looking for stuff to buy, fix, and sell, and I saved up more. I never took one cent of aid, and I scraped and fought my way out of that stupid crappy kitchen that had one burner and an oven that was only properly hot on one particular shelf.”
“See, a good man,” I began, but he shook his head.
“Listen to it all first.”
“I’m listening.”
His eyes took on a faraway expression, and he was still picking at the thread. “I began posting about my cakes, and I learned about tagging and following. I made cookies for a local bakery, said if they let me use their kitchen to make them, then I’d do it for free until they were happy enough to give me a cut. Then, when my mom died, I found out she owned that crappy room. Turned out she used to have a job in sales and everything. I don’t know what went wrong to make her give up, maybe she was cursed with her head like I am.”
His head. I’m guessing he meant his mental health, but now wasn’t the time to ask questions. I hoped that tonight wasn’t just a one-off, and that I could find out more about him, maybe take him home to the family so they could adopt him, and he could stay in my bed forever. Pipe dreams I know, but this attraction inside me wasn’t just for sex. It was a push to look after Justin, and for him to look out for me.
“Anyway, she died, and I stayed there, and I saved and saved until I could see money in the bank. I took some college courses, and at nineteen I was lucky enough to get noticed for my blogging and Instagram and got invited to be on the show. When I left that last foster home, I vowed I would have a bigger house than them without their God’s help, and I have that. I said I wanted more money than they ever had, and I do. I said I wanted a name, a reputation, and to be safe. I have all of that. But it’s nothing like your family.”
“Well, I have my mom, Maggie. She is a PTA dragon, involved in everything, always busy and alive and running through life at speed. My dad, James, is a used car salesman. He owns a Ford dealership, and my brother Joe works with him. Dad and I have been in a weird standoff since the Marc thing happened.”
“He didn’t like you marrying a man?”
“Huh? No, not at all, he pulled Marc into the family, gave him a job selling cars, only when it all imploded it became clear that Marc had been skimming the sales, doing deals, and pocketing the difference. So it made it awkward, even though I paid him back. He blames me, and he’s right because I should have known what Marc was doing.”
“Did you see him do it?”
“No, but I had suspicions about where he was sometimes… with other men.”
“But you didn’t know he was stealing from your dad as well?”
“No.”
“Then how is it your fault?”
“I should have known.”
He kissed me hard and whispered, “Idiot,” with affection. “So tell me about the rest of your family.”
“Adam is my twin. Joe is my older brother, works with my dad and is a sculptor in his spare time, and Lacey is the youngest.”
“She’s the one who works with you.”
“Yep, she’s a genius with flavor profiles, and she’s holding the fort and working on a separate business that we can combine so she has her own thing. She’s more into pastries and so on. I’m the cake side, it’s symbiotic.” That was a good word. “No one taught me to bake either. I learned from my nan’s copy of Alma Norman Bakes.”
He looked at me in surprise. “So we both started with the same book. Do you remember the lemon drizzle on twenty-three?”
“Yep, and the shortbread on twenty—”
“Did you ever try the flambéed cognac flan at the back?”
“So many times I could recite the warning in my sleep.”
Justin laughed and as he said it, he air-quoted, “Not for beginners so stay away unless you know how to play.”
I laughed as well, not just because we shared memories, but because he was smiling and genuinely happy. Somehow we’d taken on family history, and even though his had been hell compared to my walk in the park, he’d come out the other side, whole and sexy and mine.
Mine?
Well, there you go, seemed as if my brain was in on the whole attraction thing.
“Hey, you want to go check on Jeremy?” I asked, even though I’d already done it tonight.
He abruptly looked serious. “We should. I can’t believe I forgot.”
Wrapped in our coats, beanies pulled low over our ears, and gloves on our hands, we headed out into the frigid mountain air, our breath puffs of white in front of us. If he spotted my previous footprints near Jeremy or that the snowman was looking okay, he didn’t say anything. Instead, we scouted around for more twigs to make his arms better and laughed and joked about recipes from that old book, voting on each one out of ten and concluding that lemon drizzle was where it was at.
Finally, we’d done all we could and stood back to examine Jeremy in all his glory.
“Abigail would be pleased.”
We walked the entire path holding hands as new white stuff had fallen on packed snow and the walkway was slippery.
“So, I have something to say,” I began as we neared the lamps that lit the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel patio, I didn’t even give him a chance to wonder what it was. “I’m really attracted to you.” There. I’d said it. We were under the cover of the trees, and he tugged us to a stop. Nerves bit at me as I wondered what he was going to say.
“And I’m attracted to
you.” He leaned into me and we kissed softly, flakes of snow falling onto us, and the cocoon of quietness was utterly perfect. “That sounds so Victorian, maybe I should say that I want you so much it hurts.” His voice dropped as he said it, and damn the man but I was hard again. However, I needed him to know that I wasn’t ready to launch myself into another search for happily ever after.
“I want to go slow.”
“So no blowjobs?” He blinked at me innocently, but I could see the smile he was trying to hold back.
“No, that doesn’t mean no to blowjobs.”
He smirked and punched me on the arm. “See, it’s never a no to blowjobs.”
I forged ahead. “But I’m just coming out of something that nearly destroyed me. I don’t know what this is, what us is, but I want to know more about you away from the show, so maybe we can meet up after we’re done and—”
“Please.”
“Okay then. So I was thinking… ” I had to word this properly because maybe he didn’t want to be too hasty in this and maybe seeing each other on our day off from filming would be his idea of rushing. “We have a day off tomorrow. You want to go out somewhere, just the two of us? No cameras? There’s a hot spring in—”
“Yes.”
“Meet you in the parking area at nine?”
“So no more blowjobs tonight?” He looked up at me a hundred kinds of innocent and then dissolved into more laughter. “Yes, parking area at nine.”
When I got back to my room, after the conversation with Justin about his parents, and along with that niggling doubt that I hadn’t said sorry enough, I called my dad. I know it was late for him, but the need to speak to him overwhelmed my sensible side.
“Brody? Is everything okay?” Dad sounded worried, and I could hear the commotion behind him, Mom scrabbling for the control as the sounds of a show in the background lowered.
“Sorry, yes, I shouldn’t be calling now, but I met this guy, and he was in foster care, and he missed out on everything I did, and I want you to know I love you, and that again, I’m so sorry about what I let Marc do to us.”
Silence. My dad said nothing, and then I heard him sigh. “Hang on.” More noise, the quality of that silence changing, and I could imagine him walking out the living room through the kitchen and out to the sunroom on the back of the house. “I don’t understand,” he inquired, and there was a rustling and I assume he was sitting in his favorite chair. “I mean, I do, but I wish you wouldn’t feel you need to keep saying it.”
I was frustrated, pent-up fears clutching in my chest. “I do, Dad, because it’s not the same, and I want things to go back to normal. I love you, and I hate what Marc did, and I hate that I didn’t stop him.”
“Brody—”
“He took money from you. He stole from you. He took it from me—”
“Stop. That’s enough.” Dad was using his ‘I’m-the-father-here’ voice, and I instantly subsided. Jim Thomas had a way of raising his voice just enough to be heard over sibling squabbles, and not one of his four children ever ignored him because he used that voice so infrequently. “I knew what he was doing for a few weeks, and I didn’t tell you. That is why it’s awkward because when I see you now, I can’t look you in the eye and keep on lying.”
I slumped to the bed, all the energy leaching from me in one go.
“The week before you found him… ” In bed with another man. He didn’t need to finish that sentence because I knew what he meant. “I’d had a call two or three weeks before from the accountant telling me that things weren’t adding up. Small things here and there, nothing huge up until a few months before and then the proceeds from a truck sale couldn’t be found as posted, and the bank accounts didn’t match up. He couldn’t understand, but there was only one person who could’ve been doing that.”
“Marc.”
“So, you see, for all that time, I was suspicious and telling you that I thought something was happening, but I never told you what I knew, so you defended him. I was investigating with the accountant, working my way through, and we saw what he was doing. I wanted to fix things, only he got to you first, said I was telling lies and what could I say? You loved him—”
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
“—and whatever you had, it was special and important to you, and for me to blindly tell you what I knew for sure and for you to hate me for that. I couldn’t do it.”
“God, Dad, I could never hate you. I thought you—”
“You’re my son, I love you so much.” He was choked up. “I wish I could have made it okay for you.”
“You do, every minute of my life you make things okay.”
We did what men do, sat in stoic silence for a while, then Dad cleared his throat.
“So tell me about this young man you’ve met.”
“Young? Who said he was young?” I teased because that was my safe place.
“We all know you have a crush on that Justin fellow. Spill.”
So I did.
Early the next morning I was at the parking lot first, standing by my Toyota with its winter tires and wondering if it would be me driving. Justin’s car was right there all big and luxurious, and I bet it had all the bells and whistles. Part of me hoped he would suggest driving.
“Morning!” he called, quickening his stride toward me, closely followed by Ivan along with Kristen, who hadn’t left to go home, and instead moved into Ivan’s room. As soon as Justin got near, he mouthed something that looked like couldn’t help it, sorry.
“Hi!” Ivan said jovially as he and Kristen reached us. “We have our stuff, and we were heading for the springs, Justin here said we could join you.”
Kristen shook her head. “Actually, what happened was, we met Justin in the elevator and found out we were all going to the same place, and Ivan here invited us to go with you.”
“It’s good. I’ve heard the springs are beautiful.” I defused Justin’s worry with a smile. “Who’s driving?” I tapped my trusty car, but Ivan was all about the big Ford.
“Justin, wanna show us what this beauty does?”
I wondered for a moment if Justin knew about cars, but he shrugged and held out the keys to Ivan. “We can take it, you drive.”
Ivan was in heaven. I sat in the back, and Justin gave up shotgun to Kristen, and that was cool.
Because in the back Justin and I could hold hands.
The hot springs weren’t far up into the mountains, and we got to see more of Banff and the surrounding area.
“It’s stunning,” Justin confessed. “I’d never been to Canada before this.”
“I hadn’t either,” I added.
Justin sighed. “In fact I never saw much of L.A. outside the stage when we filmed season one. All I recall is that I was exhausted the entire time I was there.”
“It’s fun this time,” Ivan and Kristen held hands for a brief moment before he returned his attention to the road.
“Even if one of us is out of the competition,” Kristen said without heat.
Ivan patted her arm. “I’ll be joining you soon, and then we get a real vacation together.” Ivan stared at Kristen as if she hung the stars.
“How did you meet?”
“At the last reunion, we chatted, spent two hours in the dark out the back just talking, and realized there was something there.” Kristen blew Ivan a kiss. “Love this big lug.”
“Love you too, Krissy.”
“That’s so cool.” Justin glanced at me.
I just squeezed his hand and sue me if I couldn’t stop grinning.
The baths weren’t busy when we arrived, snow was falling, and the flurries were icy cold but we all agreed we couldn’t come to Sulphur Mountain and not do the springs. We paid for tickets, then changed into our swimwear in the small cubicles. When we first arrived a faint scent of sulfur hung in the air, but weirdly enough the smell seemed to grow less noticeable after a few minutes.
“Probably burned our sense of smell or whatever,” Ivan said as he st
uck a toe in the warm water. “None of us will ever be able to bake again.” He and Kristen went in and bobbed out of sight in the rising steam. I went to follow, only Justin wasn’t moving. He was eyeing the water with trepidation, freezing his ass off as snow floated around him.
“You need to get in. It’s warm in here.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll stay out here.”
“What’s wrong?”
He looked from me to the mountain that loomed over the springs. “You ever see the movie Dante’s Peak?”
“I’m guessing it has a mountain in it?” I deadpanned.
He rolled his eyes at me, which was cute, then he hitched up his swim trunks, a bright red and orange pattern, the only ones that they sold in the lobby gift shop. I’d packed my own knowing I wanted to try out the springs, so mine was a more sedate dark blue, but he looked good in those bright colors. Admit it, he looks good in anything, and particularly nothing at all.
“For real, these two young beautiful people decide it’s a good idea to go into a hot spring and then just like that,” he snapped his fingers, “the volcano starts doing some crazy shit and boils the water, with them in it.”
“Well, that’s okay then,” I said and waited for him to take the bait.
“Why is it okay?”
“If they only take the beautiful ones, then you’ll be fine.” I went deeper into the hot water before he could give me a comeback, and I only knew he followed me in when he tackled me from behind and gripped me like a monkey.
“Asshole,” he muttered in my ear, and I snorted a laugh then extricated myself and turned to face him. We were hidden from the rest of the swimmers in the wisps of steam that rose above us, but I wasn’t ready for a PDA that could be innocently walked into. I tugged him along until we were around a stony corner, out of sight, and hidden in the steam, and then I cradled his face.
