Enjoy the Dance

by Heidi Cullinan

  Gosh, what could possibly go wrong there?

  There wasn’t much to be done about it now, though, so he took a shower, tamed his hair, put on his nicest jeans and the blue sweater his mom had bought him, and declared himself ready. Before he was allowed to leave the apartment, however, his mother fussed and picked at him and gave him lectures on how he should behave with his date. Tomás endured it without complaint because he knew plenty of Latino gay men whose parents never gave up on the right girl changing their minds about liking dick. His parents had tried that angle only for a few days, and afterward they were fully on board with Tomás finding a nice man to settle down with instead.

  “Open doors for him. He is a man, yes, but he is a sensitive soul, and the gesture will make him feel treasured. Ask him about himself and his hobbies. Let him talk to you, and seem interested.”

  “I am interested, Mama.”

  “I know, mijo.” She patted his cheeks, sighed, and pulled him down so she could kiss him on the forehead. “You are a good boy, Tomás. The best boy in the world.” Then she took his chin in her hand. “Which is why you will be chaste tonight. Kisses, touches, but nothing more.”

  Tomás sputtered. “Mama!”

  Renata didn’t relent. “This is the danger of two men. There is no one to force things to be slow. Take your time and enjoy it. You should both go home full of yearning, dreaming for the next date. The tension is how you make real love. Love that lasts.”

  “Listen to your mother,” José called from the kitchen, where he was finishing up dishes. “She made me wait two months before I could so much as hold her in my arms. And look at us now.”

  They continued with their lectures and advice for another fifteen minutes, until Tomás was nearly in danger of being late. He was confused, because this wasn’t his first date with a man. Why were they behaving this way now?

  When Spenser opened the door to his apartment, smiling and smelling subtly of cologne, framed by the doorway and backlit by the light above the table so he looked like a saint, Tomás began to understand why his parents had treated his date with Spenser differently. Because Spenser was different. No one else Tomás had dated was so clean-cut, so polite, so kindhearted he’d take a child he didn’t know into his home. No one else could, with one smile, make Tomás vow he would endure two bowling alleys full of judgmental, white, straight men if that was what it took to be with Spenser.

  The chaste part, he thought as he caught another whiff of Spenser’s cologne on the way to the parking lot, would be harder.

  Spenser offered to drive, since he knew where the place was, and they chatted all the way into Minneapolis, mostly about Duon. “He’s spending the evening with Ed and Laurie. He did well in school this week, so he gets to help out all Sunday afternoon at a dance clinic Laurie is hosting.”

  Tomás knew a pang of jealousy. He wanted to help at the clinic, but he had to work. “I’m glad to hear that about school. I know it’s been a struggle. He hasn’t asked me for help with homework as much lately, which I’d hoped was a good sign. I was going to ask, but I didn’t want to push him. You know how testy he gets when he decides you’re too bossy.”

  “I do indeed. I hope I’m doing all right with him.”

  “You’re doing more than all right. Trust me. I only wish I were able to help out more.”

  “You’re with him plenty. I don’t know how you do it, with all your jobs.”

  Tomás laughed bitterly. “I don’t know how I do it either, most of the time.”

  “Your mother babysits, yes?”

  Oh, they were in dangerous waters. “She watches my nieces and nephew for my sister a lot of the time.”

  “Your sister is the woman with the long hair with a red streak I see sometimes?”

  “Yes. That’s Alisa.” Time to switch the subject. “Are you from the Cities, or did you move here?” When Spenser became almost wooden, Tomás quickly backtracked. “Sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”

  Spenser smiled, but he looked tired. “It’s fine. I don’t like to talk about my past much, is all.”

  “Then let’s talk about your present. What do you do when you’re not teaching school or taking care of Duon?”

  Spenser bit his lip. “Um, not much. Read, I suppose.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Spenser considered this a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know. Sorry, that’s not meant to be a cop-out. I truly don’t know. Until Duon came into my life, I pretty much went to work, came home, and did things around the house. Watched Netflix.”

  “But no chill?” When Spenser only regarded him blankly, Tomás tried to recover the joke. “It’s, you know. The euphemism for…” He blushed. “Never mind.”

  “Oh.” Spenser blushed too, but he smiled. “Right. It’s supposed to be code for have sex, but then all the adults used it to mean ‘hang out’, and now we run around looking insane if we use the phrase to mean watch movies and relax.”

  “Yeah, a local pastor advertised a Netflix and Chill outing in the church parking lot. The kids had a field day.”

  They both laughed, but it also made Tomás think about having some Netflix and chill with Spenser. He ran his thumb down his jaw as he stared into traffic and let the fantasy play out in his mind for a few seconds. Nothing said they couldn’t take their food to go and continue this conversation on Spenser’s couch. Or the edge of his bed.

  Nothing except, much as he hated to admit it, his mom might be on to something. It wasn’t the right move to go straight to the sack with Spenser. The trouble was, Tomás didn’t know how to get from where they were to under the sheets. He decided maybe confessing that was the place to start. “I’m going to be upfront with you. I haven’t dated tons. So if I suck at date talk, I apologize in advance.”

  Spenser kept his eyes on the road, not meeting Tomás’s gaze. Tomás was ready for him to say he hadn’t dated much either, but to his surprise, it wasn’t what Spenser said. “When you asked about my past, I was hesitant to talk about it because my past isn’t like yours. In fact…” His cheeks stained with embarrassment tinged with shame. “I have quite a lot in common with Duon.”

  Tomás tried not to let his shock lead to a dumbass reaction, but…well, he had not expected to hear that. He glanced between Spenser and the car ahead of them a few times, then surrendered with a heavy sigh. “Damn. I had no idea. I’m sorry. I—” He cut himself off, fairly sure he’d fucked up.

  “I work hard to make sure people don’t have any idea, so there’s nothing to be sorry about. Unless you meant you were sorry I had to go into the system at all, which I’ll accept with thanks. When I realized where Duon was headed, knowing what it would be like, I didn’t have to think about my choice to be his placement. In a way, it was like being there for myself.” He ran a hand through his hair, staring at the dashboard. “I was in the foster system at eight. In hindsight I know it was better than continuing as we were, but at the time it was rough because it meant being separated from my sisters and living with a series of strangers until I was finally so old no one took me in, and I went to shelters instead.”

  Tomás couldn’t begin to imagine. He had so many questions, but he didn’t know which were okay to ask. The sisters seemed like a safe subject. “How many sisters do you have?” He hadn’t ever seen anyone come visit Spenser. No family of any kind, except occasionally the one lady who was old enough to be Spenser’s grandmother but didn’t look anything like him.

  “Three. Kaylee, Gina, and Hannah. I’m the oldest. They’re…oh, I guess Kaylee would be twenty-six now. Gina twenty-four, Hannah twenty-two.”

  “Why did you get separated from your sisters?”

  “It’s difficult to keep that many kids together. Plus Kaylee had behavior issues. Gina and Hannah were in the same home and eventually adopted. But not Kaylee. She ran away from everywhere they put her. Then one day she ran and they never caught her. I don’t know what ever happened to her.” He flinched. “Sorry. I’m not much f
or date talk either, I guess.”

  Tomás took a moment to get over the idea of not knowing where his sister was. He wanted to punch her face half the time, yes, but… He gripped the wheel tighter. “Wow. I’m so sorry, Spenser. Are the other two…okay?”

  He nodded. “They live in the area, I think. I tried to keep up with them for a while, but their adoptive parents never wanted them to have contact with me, so it became easier to go along with it.”

  “They what? Can they do that?”

  “I think maybe now, no. Maybe they couldn’t then? This is one of the things you learn with kids in the system. There are rules and laws and ideals, and then there’s what actually happens. I don’t think it’s malicious on anyone’s part. I think the system is simply overwhelmed and underfunded.”

  That must have been a real comfort to Spenser as a kid. Tomás couldn’t imagine being away from his parents at age eight. Though he supposed he was lucky they hadn’t been deported and decided to leave him in the states with a foster family. Hell, he could have ended up in a bunk next to Spenser. “Is it bad in the shelters?”

  Spenser shrugged, keeping his gaze on the road. “It’s not a home, is the best way to put it. You don’t have much privacy or security of your things, either, which are precious few to begin with. For queer kids especially it’s dangerous because shelters are always strained for resources and staff, and it’s rare they make helping you feel accepted for your orientation or sexual identity an important issue. I’d like to think they’re better now than they were when I was a teenager, but I wouldn’t count on it. Probably depends on which shelter and who sponsors it. The ones I went to were religiously affiliated, and it wasn’t the best place to be gay.”

  Tomás couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like. He didn’t know what to say, either, except to offer another I’m sorry, which was phenomenally unhelpful. But it was all he had. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry, Spenser.”

  He shrugged again, and this time Tomás saw through the gesture for what it was: a mask. “I made it through. Now I get to help make sure Duon does too.”

  They lapsed into silence, and soon they were at Bryant-Lake Bowl. It was a funky neighborhood, and the outside was a little bit hipster but nothing too insufferable. Tons of bicycles, and a long row of benches with ashtrays, though no one was smoking. The inside was a mix of pseudo-retro and legit retro—a peek at his feet revealed generations of flooring in various stages of wear, from several linoleums to a straight-up hardwood floor on the bottom. But it was bright and clean and not too noisy.

  Spenser pointed to a poster on the wall. “It’s an indie band for the show tonight, at nine. If you want, we can eat, bowl, then hit the show. Or we can eat and chat in the bar while we wait for a show. Or eat and then leave. Lots of options.”

  Tomás would have happily skipped the bowling, but after their heavy nosedive into serious discussion on the way over, he wondered if maybe a buffer activity wouldn’t be bad. “I’m fine with bowling so long as you understand I haven’t done it since I was fourteen.”

  Spenser grinned. “Oh, this will be fun. I’m going to wipe the floor with you.”

  They scored a lane for an hour and a half later, which gave them plenty of time to sip funky cocktails and chat, though Tomás indulged in some serious people-watching too. While it was mostly white people as he’d predicted, they were not the predominantly middle-aged male assholes of his imagination. In fact, a pride flag hung from the awning outside, and Tomás thought he saw a few other same-sex couples seated at or waiting for tables.

  They decided to buy tickets for the show too and sign on for the full Bryant-Lake Bowl experience. The food was much better than Tomás had expected, and the ambiance was fun and nonthreatening. Though it was definitely a hipster place, and there was exactly one other brown guy bowling, it was all so much more fun than Tomás had anticipated.

  Except for the part where Spenser kicked his ass at bowling. Like, kicked his ass.

  “Were you a professional bowler in another life?” Tomás asked after Spenser’s fourth strike in a row.

  “The shelter I lived in had a bowling alley down the street that gave us free passes. When I couldn’t get a ride to the library, I went bowling.”

  This reminder that Spenser’s childhood had been grim drew a cloud over Tomás’s pleasure, but Spenser didn’t seem fazed and carried on slamming his ball into the pins with ferocious glee. Normally Tomás was competitive, but he didn’t have a chance here, so he did his best to relax and enjoy losing in an epic fashion.

  After Spenser finished handing Tomás his ass, they waited in the theater for the show, talking about the dance studio, how Tomás got involved with dance. “They had free classes at the Y, and I begged my mom to let me go. She saved up for me to take more lessons at a studio once she saw how much I loved them, but I could rarely do the shows because I couldn’t afford the costumes. When I was in high school, I had jobs and paid for my own, but then I couldn’t do as much because I was working. I’m nothing like Laurie, but I do okay, and sometimes I even get to use my Spanish. We have a few families where the parents can’t speak English, and I have to translate.”

  “Are your parents native citizens? I assumed not with their accent and limited English, but…”

  Once again, way too close. Tomás did his best to gingerly edge them away. “They were born in Mexico, but my sister and I were born in Arizona.”

  “What brought you to Minneapolis?”

  “Better jobs, better education system. Though my mother regretted it immediately once we hit our first winter.”

  Spenser looked wistful. “I love how you’re so close to them. Your parents are both wonderful.”

  Tomás couldn’t help smiling. “I’m pretty fond of them too.”

  The music started, and while technically the band wasn’t great, Tomás would remember the night for the rest of his life as a magical, perfect time. The music felt exactly right too, in its way. Everything was soft and framed at the edges, rose-colored, and whenever Spenser smiled at him in his shy but eager way, Tomás’s chest puffed out.

  They held hands on the way to the car, and on the way home too, in fact. As they walked down the hall of the apartment building together, grinning like fools, Tomás’s only regret was the evening was coming to an end.

  But when he tried to leave Spenser at the door with a soft kiss goodbye, Spenser had none of it. “Come in. Have…some tea with me.”

  Tomás hesitated. “I want to.” He glanced over his shoulder at the door to his family’s apartment and thought of his mother’s warning about too much kissing. Thought about how it had seemed such an important warning…when he wasn’t standing outside Spenser’s apartment with Spenser looking utterly kissable.

  Utterly fuckable.

  Spenser ran a shy but deliciously coy hand down the front of Tomás’s shirt. “Then come in already.”

  Weak, Tomás went.

  Spenser was happier than usual, full of a brightness that was hard to resist. He was still slightly hesitant, deliberate in a way Tomás had begun to understand was his way of guarding himself. But tonight some of those walls were down. He bounced on his heels as he put on water for tea, selecting a pair of mugs, blue and green ones this time.

  “What would you say to some peach tea?” he asked, withdrawing a box from the top shelf of his tea cupboard.

  Tomás fixed his gaze on Spenser’s backside, which was nicely outlined by his jeans as he stood on tiptoe. “Peach sounds nice.”

  Spenser put the bags in the mugs, turned around, and smiled at Tomás. It was a real smile, projecting an ease and happiness Tomás had absolutely never seen on the man before, and it did him in. He stepped forward, took Spenser into his arms, and dipped his head as he went in for a kiss.

  The weight of Spenser made Tomás ache. The sweet, wet press of his mouth sent him spinning. Kissing Spenser felt like dancing in a dream, as if he’d stumbled into somewhere he shouldn’t be but could l
inger without getting caught. He smelled like…linen and pepper. Clean and bright, with a bit of bite. He tasted that way too, but with an echo of the rum and fruit juice he’d had in his cocktail at Bryant-Lake.

  He felt like heaven. He felt like home.

  When the water began to boil, Spenser paused kissing long enough to turn off the burner—then he pressed Tomás to the kitchen wall and dove in. The insistent ridge of his erection along Tomás’s own left him torn between shifting this afterparty to the bedroom and letting himself drown right here in the kitchen, in this perfect moment in Spenser’s arms.

  A sharp knock sounded on the door, startling them both. A few seconds later a familiar, heavily accented voice rang out. “Hello? Spenser? Tomás? I have something for you.”

  Tomás shut his eyes, sagging into Spenser as he rested his forehead against the wall. “Oh my God, my mother. I’m so sorry.”

  Renata knocked again. “Hello, boys?”

  After they composed themselves as best they could, Spenser opened the door, bewildered. Renata Jimenez stood in the doorway, smiling innocently and holding up a glass pan with a pair of potholders. “I make empanadas. Cinnamon.”

  She pushed past them breezily, as if she didn’t know exactly what she’d interrupted, and set them on the table. “Very hot. Tomás, come bring ice cream.”

  Spenser, who had a known weakness for empanadas and had practically begun drooling at the sight and smell of them, snapped out of his food trance. “Oh, I have ice cream, Mrs. Jimenez.”

  She patted his cheek. “You call me Renata, cariño. I have ice cream. Homemade. You must try.” She grabbed Tomás’s arm and dragged him from the apartment. “Tomás will bring.”

  As soon as they were out of earshot, she launched into him in Spanish. “Tomás, you must let there be longing. You cannot have sex tonight. You will ruin everything!”

  Tomás sighed, but he didn’t roll his eyes because he knew that path led to terrible things. He also tried not to think about how she knew what had been going down in the kitchen before she delivered her food bomb. “Mom, it’s fine.”