by Mary Calmes
“Oh,” his mother said, bringing me back to the conversation I was eavesdropping on.
“Every single time, Mom,” he told her. “He never isn’t there.”
“Well, yes, that’s very nice.”
“It’s not nice, it’s amazing.”
“Honey—”
“Every time, Mom, without fail.”
“Okay.”
“And yeah, T, you’re right,” he told his sister. “He doesn’t go out dancing with me, but he trusts me to go, sends me off just like he did here, telling me to have a good time.”
Silence.
“When was the last time you went out, just you and your girlfriends, without Mike having a goddamn seizure?”
“Dylan Walter Shaw!”
“Mom, c’mon! You should be way more worried about Tina’s psychotic boyfriend than the stable, dependable guy I live with who wants to buy a house with me.”
There was a pause.
“What?”
“Yeah.” He exhaled sharply. “Malic has this great house in Pacific Heights that I love, but he doesn’t want me to feel like I moved into his house, so he’s gonna move just so we can buy something together. And I keep telling him that I love the house we’re in now, that I think of it as our house—I mean, you should see it, Mom, it’s like this great summer cottage that would fit perfect in a beach town in Florida—but he’s worried, so I gotta move, and I’m trying so hard to get him to hear me, but—”
“Dylan.”
“He just won’t lis—”
“Dylan!”
“What?” he barked at his mother, who had interrupted him.
“So what you’re trying to tell us is that man upstairs shows you he loves you instead of telling you.”
“Yes.” He sighed.
Long, long silence.
“Why are you looking at me?” Dylan’s father said after another minute.
“Think about it a second, Dad.” Tina sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “It’ll come to you.”
“Oh.” Dylan’s mother’s voice trembled the same way her daughter’s had.
“Crap,” his father groaned after another minute or so, and I smiled because the longer I knew the man, the more I liked him. Hell, Dylan’s whole family was growing on me. “He’s just like me.”
“He’s just like you,” Lily agreed. “Jesus.”
“So lemme get this straight.” Tina was starting to giggle. “You went out and found someone just like your father? Would that even be called Oedipal? Is there even a name for that?”
“Oh God,” Dylan moaned. “I’m gonna throw up.”
“Here’s a tip: don’t use the wicker trash can.”
“Eww.” He made a low noise of disgust.
“Damn it.” Jeff was beside himself. “I’m not like that. I tell you guys I love you all the time!”
Tina scoffed.
“I do!”
“That’s amazing,” Lily sighed. “Your son went out and found someone just like you.”
“It sounds worse every time you say it,” Dylan complained.
“Oh, shut up,” Jeffrey Shaw grumbled at his son as the front doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Tina chuckled.
I came around the corner at the same time Mrs. Shaw’s sister and her family arrived for dinner. Apparently they came every year the night before Christmas Eve to eat, visit, drop off their gifts for Dylan and his family, and pick up the ones from Dylan’s family to theirs. What was nice was that as soon as I cleared the stairs, Lily was there to take my hand and lead me into the living room to have me meet her extended family. Apparently when I had been meeting cousins and aunts and uncles before, that had been Jeff’s family. This was hers. It was a lot of people to get to know in such a short amount of time. But she introduced me like she liked me and as though this was how things were between us. Friendly. I hoped it stayed that way.
As I was not good with names on my best days, I gave up trying to retain them all, but I found myself smiling over the screaming kids running around the house, the hugging and kissing and happy squealing. I realized that I had been missing out on the big family gathering for my whole life. Funny how having Dylan back, knowing we were solid, made everything else enjoyable.
“Good morning.” Dylan smiled, unsure for some reason.
“Come here, baby.”
He moved fast, and I understood as he sprang at me, arms wrapping around my waist, face in my chest, that he was scared.
“What’s wrong?”
Quick shake of his head.
I put my hands in his hair and tipped his head back so he had to meet my gaze. “Tell me.”
“Later, okay?”
What was I going to do, twist his arm? “Okay.”
He leaned forward and just breathed. I loved it. There was just something about holding the man in my arms that centered me and grounded me like nothing else. I was better when he was near me.
Dylan offered to cook lunch, and after a moment of surprise, his mother agreed. She had no idea that I’d starve if the man didn’t cook for me, and she really had no clue that he was really good at it.
An hour later, as the production line for Ryan’s huevos rancheros was in full swing, Lily leaned on the counter to ask her son a question.
“Why do you call this creation Ryan’s huevos rancheros and not Dylan’s?”
“Oh, ’cause Ryan taught me to make them.”
“And who is Ryan?”
“He’s a friend of Malic’s. He used to be a model, but now he’s a television host in San Francisco.”
“Really?” she teased her son. “A model?”
He nodded as he whipped out the iPhone I had given him when he moved in. He fiddled with it a moment and then handed it to his mother. “There, see? Ryan.”
She caught her breath. Tina, who was standing beside her, did as well.
“Ohmygod, D, you know this guy?”
He smiled wide. “Yep, Malic used to date him.”
“Oh for crissakes,” I growled. Dylan cackled. “We’re friends,” I told the two amazed women. They were staring at me like I had grown another head. Really, was I so vile that a man who looked like Ryan Dean would never even give me the time of day?
“Wow, D.” Tina whistled. “How are you supposed to compete against that?”
His voice dropped low in warning. “You know what….”
I put a hand around the nape of his neck and drew him back to me, tucking him against my side.
He leaned against me more heavily than usual, like he craved the closeness, as the noise rose around us. After everyone was sitting and eating, balancing plates on knees on the floor, in the living room or at the coffee table or the dining room table with the extra leaf added, Dylan’s folks and his sister joined my hearth and me at the kitchen table. I was surprised when Lily leaned forward and took my hand.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t believe my son when he told me you were special to him, Malic. Please forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive.”
“He told me all about you. Don’t think for a minute that he’s been quiet. He’s been singing your praises for over a year now.”
“He never stops,” Tina confessed from her seat beside her mother. “You know how the Eskimos have like seventy-five words for snow?”
I nodded.
“Well, D has, like, the same number for the color of your eyes. It’s revolting.”
I turned and looked at my boyfriend, who was sitting on the other side of me, eating.
His smile was big and out of control. “I told Brad Darby your dance card was full.”
“What?” I chuckled.
He made his eyes wide. “When your buddy Brad called early this morning to see if you could come out and play, I told him that you were busy and would be for the rest of your life.”
“You did not.” I smiled because he was adorable when he was all pissed off and jealous. Like he had anything to worry about.
I grinned. “Do you now?”
He tried not to smile. “Yeah,” he said, lowering his eyes, like I wouldn’t be able to see how pleased he was with himself.
“Dylan, he’s a really good—”
“Brad Darby is gay?”
We all turned to look at Mr. Shaw. Poor guy, he was having a hell of an afternoon. First, he had to talk about his son’s love life, and now his next-door neighbor was a homo.
“Yes, Dad, I’ve told you that a million times.”
“The man was a Marine, for crissakes,” Jeff complained.
I chuckled.
“Ohmygod, Dad, please crawl out from under your rock.” Tina laughed.
“He’s so big!”
“Malic’s bigger, and he’s gay,” Tina said. “He could hold the man down and make him scream uncle if he wanted.”
“Which is probably what Brad dreamed about last night,” Dylan grumbled.
“Oh dear God!” Jeff Shaw barked out, and we were suddenly all laughing together instead of them without me.
“He’s disgusted with you, you know,” Dylan said under his breath so I had to lean sideways to hear him.
“What are you talking about?”
“Brad, he thinks you’re a jerk because you’ve got a boy toy instead of a real relationship. He told me to tell you how disappointed in you he is.”
“I see,” I grunted.
“Don’t you care?”
“Why would I care?”
“You guys are friends.”
“We’re acquaintances, and now I know we’ll never be friends.”
“Why not?”
“Because friends don’t judge you before they know all the facts. That’s why they’re your friends.”
“Really?” he said snidely.
“Don’t start,” I warned him.
“I’m just saying that Rene Favreau deserves a pardon.”
Not again. “Let it go.”
“The man was one of your best friends for years, and just because he slept with Jackson’s ex doesn’t—”
“He wasn’t his ex when they slept together,” I reminded him. “That’s the problem. Rene was my friend, but Jackson’s more. And Rene—”
“Is Jackson happier now than when he was with Frank? Yes or no?”
“That makes no difference.”
“Answer the question.”
Of course my fellow warder Jackson Tybalt was happier; he finally had someone to love as hard as he wanted with all the passion and possessiveness he had to give. Jackson had needed an equal in power and strength. He just hadn’t known it. But that was not the point. Jackson had been living with and loving Frank Sullivan when my friend—one of my best friends—Rene Favreau stepped between them. He had been the other man, and I found that no matter how I tried to forgive the trespass, I simply could not. It was made worse because Rene had unwittingly come between a warder and his hearth, but truly, that part shouldn’t have mattered.
“Malic?”
The man I loved was being deliberately obtuse to try and push me to reconcile with Rene, and had been for over a year. I, however, was not about to change my mind.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told Dylan for the ten thousandth time. “Lying is lying, cheating is cheating, and Rene knew who he was getting in bed with when he did it. What Jackson’s life looks like now is—”
“You’re being so stubborn and—”
“I’m inclined to side with Malic on this,” Dylan’s father chimed in, and we both turned to look at him, having forgotten that we weren’t arguing in a vacuum. The other three people at the table had apparently been listening in rapt attention to our discussion.
“Dad,” Dylan whined, “you don’t even know what you’re—”
“If a man cheats on a stranger, he will cheat on a friend. It’s about character.”
I looked at Dylan and pointed at his father. “Exactly,” I agreed.
“Rene didn’t cheat on anyone,” Dylan told me.
“He knew Frank belonged to Jackson, and he slept with him anyway. He cheated, Frank cheated. The only one who did nothing wrong was Jackson.”
“You cannot fault the heart for where it needs to go,” Tina told me.
“Yeah, you can,” I assured her.
“You can’t help who you love,” Dylan’s mother seconded her daughter.
“The two people who were doing the cheating on my friend….” I shook my head at Dylan’s mother. “They broke up four months after it started.”
There was a long silence as Lily Shaw considered her next point. “Oh, well, then that was just crap, wasn’t it?”
I laughed at her, and she smiled and swatted my arm. Even Dylan ended up smiling at the look of absolute disgust on her face.
AFTER LUNCH, I sat with Mr. Shaw and some others watching a college football game, as I had been invited by Dylan’s father to join him on the couch. Dylan was with his cousins, talking, laughing, and I was enjoying listening to his father argue with two of his brothers, my boyfriend’s uncles, about quarterbacks and defensive lines and how they were both full of crap.
When the game was over and people started just talking, busting out cell phones and cameras and connecting the video camera to the TV, I was going to excuse myself, but suddenly I had a lap full of Dylan. He had basically fallen down on top of me and startled his mother, who was sitting beside me.
“Dylan, be careful,” she gasped, because it had been a violent movement, fast, bruising.
“I don’t have to be careful,” he murmured, pressing his face into the side of my neck. Normally he would have kissed and bitten me, sucked hard to leave marks, and even though I was too old for hickeys, I found that every now and then, a love bite from my man was a welcome mark of his passion for me. But his mother was there, so he contained himself, simply inhaling deeply, breathing me in.
“He doesn’t have to be careful,” I echoed his words. “I won’t break.”
Dylan nodded, his hands on my chest, clutching at me.
“Or leave you.”
“I know.” His voice faltered.
“Or not keep you safe.”
The whimper came fast, and he wrapped his arms around my neck and buried his face down in my shoulder as he pushed against me, trembling hard. When I turned to look at Lily, her eyes were huge.
“What’s going on?” I asked softly.
“I have no idea,” she assured me, patting Dylan’s back. “Sweetheart, why don’t you and Malic go upstairs and talk, all right?”
He nodded, slid out of my lap, and was on his feet in seconds. “Come on.”
I stood, towering over him, and took his hand. He held on really tight. “Whatever this is, I will make it all right.”
He shook his head. “It’s no big deal. I’m just being stupid.”
Whatever it was, I hoped nothing I ever did would create the pain I was seeing on his face.
It took everything in me not to yell and make him confess his soul to me right there. Instead, I followed step by step back up to the second floor to his room. When the door closed, he tried to dart across the room, but I held his hand and sat down on the bed.
“You have to let me go,” Dylan said.
So I did, because he looked like he was on the verge of tears. I took a breath. “Please tell me already, because you’re killing me.”
“It really is nothing,” he assured me. “It’s just my folks, this morning, and… I was just caught off guard, is all.”
“Please.”
He cleared his throat. “Okay, so when I was seventeen, I thought I was in love with Ethan Burke.” He took a breath and smiled at me through now watering eyes.
Shit. I realized that this thing he was going to tell me was so far from being nothing that I felt my stomach flip over.
“And he really wanted to have sex.” He coughed, starting to
pace. “But I was seventeen, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to, even though I really wanted to, you know?”
“Sure.”
His eyes flicked to mine, checking, seeing what I was doing, and I wanted to yell at him to hurry the hell up and talk. I nodded instead.
“Yeah, so, Ethan, he was a big deal. He was on the swim team and the soccer team, and he was captain of both, so he couldn’t tell anyone that he was gay.”
“Okay,” I said, because he had stopped talking, waiting for me to say something.
“Okay,” he echoed, “so I didn’t know, but he was friends with this guy, Gordy Horne. He was one year ahead of us, so when Ethan was a senior in high school—”
“Gordy was a freshman in college.”
“Right.”
“Go on,” I prompted. “So what did Gordy do?”
“Well, so Gordy, he invited us to this party at a frat house, and I guess he was pledging there or whatever, and he could bring two guys, or girls, with him, and he took us.”
“And?”
“And so Ethan brought me a wine cooler or something, and after just one, I’m wasted, and I know that’s not me, and I asked him if he put something in my drink.”
Everything in me tensed.
“He told me he did, just to loosen me up.”
Oh God, please no.
“At the hospital, the doctor said I tested positive for Rohypnol.”
“Come here.”
He moved fast, and I had him in my arms and then under me on the bed seconds later. As I stared down into his eyes, I saw how intently he was looking at me, searching my face, checking for something.
“What happened?”
He swallowed hard. “Could you lie down next to me?”
I lay down with my head on the other pillow, facing him, and he turned on his side to look at me. It was nice; we talked that way in bed at night a lot.
“So,” he said, reaching out, tracing my eyebrow. “I ended up in a room with Ethan and Gordy, and all of a sudden Gordy thanks him for bringing me, and Ethan’s telling him that it’s not a problem and that he’s welcome to me.”
