by Amy Lane
“That’s real fucking mature,” Bobby said, and this time, there was no mistaking the bitterness. But he didn’t move, and when Dex tapped his wrist and looked at Kane and Ethan, Bobby nodded and followed them home.
The next day, he moved out of the expensive place he’d been saving for his girl and into Ethan’s craptastic apartment. Then he called his girlfriend and broke shit off. Ethan was only there for the phone conversation. When Bobby hung up, he looked up at Ethan with bleak eyes and a solid resolve.
“I’ll be there for you if I can,” Ethan said quietly. “Well, you know. Not today—I’ve got someone I got to see.”
Bobby grimaced. “You’ve been really human. You sure you don’t want any of that stuff in the apartment?”
Ethan’s clothes were all at Dex’s house, and so was his computer. His books were in the trunk of his car, and the posters? Bobby could keep those.
“I’ll take the stuff on the bed,” Ethan said seriously. “The sheets and stuff. The ugly-ass yarn dolls. You can keep the TV on loan until I find a place. The cleaning supplies, the food, the shower curtain? All yours.” He might not have found a permanent place yet, but suddenly, with what he planned to be to Jonah, he had a hope to get one. He had an idea of what kind of home he wanted. They might have been “playing house” the other night, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t important.
Ethan knew what home was now. He’d figure out how to make one for himself.
He wanted to help Bobby move, to figure out these things too, but he had a promise to keep, especially if he was going to Amelia’s service tomorrow. In the end, he gave Bobby the key to the apartment and a monster bear hug and bailed. He had something else to do.
THE mental institution hadn’t changed much in the past five years. Curtis was allowed to smoke now, which he did freely, but not in front of Ethan, because it still made Ethan sick.
“Omigod!” Ryane said, jumping up and down as she saw him. She was dressed in übertight jeans and fuck-me thigh-high boots, and the only reason she didn’t die from hypothermia in the freezing rain was that she was wearing a rabbit-fur coat. And she could still zip her wide-hipped body across the sad little smoker’s courtyard as Ethan walked up from the miniscule parking lot. With a little hop, she launched herself into Ethan’s arms, circling his hips with her legs and greeting him with a full-mouthed tongue-on-tongue kiss, which he returned with enthusiasm, smoker’s breath and all.
It was their usual greeting, and her girlfriend and his porn hadn’t changed it one iota. He didn’t think Jonah would begrudge it to them—they’d kept each other together during some rough times, and this was what they had.
“Omigod!” He grinned, pulling back from the kiss but continuing to walk with Ryane wrapped around him like a python. “How many baby bunnies did you have to kill for that fucking coat?”
“None!” she crowed. “Me and Jamie found it in a vintage clothing store, but it sheds like a monkey with the fuckin’ mange!”
“All over my dead cow!” he bemoaned, because between Ryane and Donnie, his leather coat wasn’t ever going to be the same.
“Don’t whine, porn star,” she said and gave him another kiss, and he put her down so they could walk up the steps to the porch of the institution, where Curtis waited for them, bundled in sweaters against the chill of the rain.
“How’s is?” he asked Curtis after a sturdy hug over Curtis’s skeleton frame. “Where’s Jimmy?”
Curtis shrugged, and his brown gaze darted under a fringe of hair and acne. It was obvious he was trying not to be devastated. “He’s in restraints. Happens to him every holiday. He just… just pushes against his meds and ends up needing to be forcibly fucking calmed down.”
Ethan grimaced and went in for another hug, which Curtis returned with interest.
“It’ll be okay,” Curtis reassured him when they came up for air. “He always paints his best stuff before he melts down. Sells like crazy. It’ll keep us in Prozac for another five years.”
Curtis had actually been attending computer classes at the institution, and he had a job editing a small magazine. It wasn’t enough to get his Social Security canceled, but it gave him and Jimmy pocket change, which not everyone had.
They sat down on a little bench under the porch and watched the rain and shot the shit. Ry and Jamie were moving in together while they finished school, Curtis thought he could earn a degree in humanities in a couple of years, and Ethan?
Ethan got to go last.
“So,” he said slowly, steepling his fingers and watching the runoff carry away the seedlings in the ragged flowerbed right under the awning. There was too much concrete here—the rain always did that, every time, but the patients kept planting stuff, because sometimes the rain held off, and then the sun came along to kill the stuff dead. “What do you want to hear about first? Getting kicked out of the house or falling in love?”
“Getting kicked out!” Curtis exclaimed, puckering his lips up to his beak of a nose.
“Falling in love!” Ry protested, smacking Curtis on the thigh.
Ethan grinned at her, loving the way her brown hair curled now that she didn’t put any product in it. She would never be beautiful, but when she smiled, her broad face lit up, and Ethan thought he’d rather look at her than at his sisters or his mother or any of the girls on the het side of Johnnies any day. Of course he’d told her about the porn that first year. He threaded his fingers through her hair and kissed her cheek.
Curtis rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. But can we at least ask—”
“Porn,” Ethan said, shrugging. “I mean, go figure, right? I just wish it hadn’t almost gotten Allie’s baby taken away.”
And then he told them. He would have told them anyway, but somehow, Tommy’s acceptance and Jonah’s love made it easier to confess.
“Wow,” Ryane said, squeezing his hand. “That’s rough. Now let’s hear the good stuff.”
Ethan grimaced, and his voice roughened, and while he could tell them about getting kicked out and make it sound like he was all okay-fine, the falling in love?
“He’s not in the business,” Ethan said quietly. “And, you know, I felt so bad about myself for being in the business, and he didn’t understand at first, and….” He shrugged. He saw Curtis and Ry twice a year.
“Hard?” Ry said softly.
The tattoo had barely stopped stinging. “It was like an unexplored planet of pain,” Ethan said, not able to smile or joke about it at all. “But he’s got his own planets, you know? We all do. Curtis lives on his, you visit yours sometimes.”
“Jamie comes with me,” Ry told him, threading their fingers together.
“Yeah—and you know. Jimmy lives here.” Curtis said it with an eye roll, but Ethan knew—he absolutely knew the reason Curtis hadn’t made that last final attempt on his life was because Jimmy did live on his planet of pain, and they might have been crazy, but at least they weren’t alone.
“Yeah,” Ethan agreed. “So tomorrow, I’m going to his sister’s funeral. And I’m going to dress like a human being, right? And act like… I don’t know, a good boy. And I’m going to put my arm around him in front of his parents, because they’re cool with the gay and they think I’m a friend, and if they ask me what I do for a living, I’m going to tell them.”
“That’s really damned grown-up of you,” Ry told him, leaning her head on his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Ethan agreed. “But it’s not a college degree in something besides sexology.”
They laughed, and the conversation continued until they couldn’t stand the chill anymore and Curtis needed his medication and some downtime from other people. Ethan and Ry shared an old-friends sort of kiss before they got back into their cars, and he gave her Dex and Kane’s address so she could send his birthday card there.
“You going to be here for long?” she asked.
Ethan grew thoughtful. “No,” he said. “I don’t have a plan yet, but I think I can come up with one if I think about i
t.”
She smiled and patted his cheek. “You know, you were always the smartest one. I bet people forget that. You’re built like a refrigerator now, but you need to remember it. You were always the smartest. You got the good grades. You had the plans. Don’t lose that because of the job or the family. It’s important to remember.”
He grinned at her. “I was a close second,” he said, but she didn’t smile back.
“Evan, honey, I’m not shitting around. You could do anything you want to do—”
“As long as they don’t find out about the porn,” he said soberly, remembering that first conversation with Dex.
“Well then, maybe you just need to do it with people who understand about the porn,” she told him back, and then they both shivered, because they were getting soaking wet, and they said their good-byes.
Well, shit. The only people who understood about the fucking porn were in the fucking porn, he thought with no irony whatsoever. But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was going to Dex and Kane’s and drying off, and then finding a good department store that would get him a suit.
IT WAS too fancy and too overdone—he knew that. But it turned out that the only place that had something to fit him was a Big & Tall store, and those places didn’t do cheap suits. So he went with the black wool and the burgundy shirt with the little kerchief in the pocket, almost like a tuxedo. He had to buy new shoes to go with it, and when they offered the complimentary umbrella, you better believe he took it. The rain hadn’t let up.
“Are you going to a prom?” the nice lady at the counter asked as she hung the suit up and put the plastic bag with the store’s logo over the shoulders. She was middle-aged, chubby, and she’d been almost creepily complimentary over his body as she’d tried to find him a suit that fit off-the-rack.
“A funeral,” he answered glumly.
She patted his hand. “I’m sorry, dear. Someone close?”
“My boyfriend’s sister,” he told her absently.
She didn’t look surprised in the least. “Well, my condolences to the family,” she said, releasing his hand and handing him his packages. It was store closing time, and the rain-dark was washing the K Street Mall, giving it a glamour Ethan never really associated with Sacramento in the daylight.
“Thank you,” he said soberly before walking out into that tear-shiny night. “It’s a real nice family.”
“Well, they’ll appreciate you being there,” she assured him.
He didn’t know if he could ever explain why he needed to hear a complete stranger say that, but he knew he gave her his best smile before he opened the door.
DEX helped him dress the next day, with the tie and the kerchief and making sure his creases were perfect. Kane hung around in the bathroom, offering commentary.
“So why we doing that thing with his hair? You know, that thing that says, ‘I’ve got no product and I’m real fuckin’ boring’?”
Dex cuffed him on the side of the head, and Kane grinned without the least bit of repentance.
“We’re doing it because he’s trying to look like a respectable member of the family and not the fucking mafia,” Dex snapped. He grimaced at Ethan. “Sorry, man, but seriously—this is some fuckin’ suit.”
Ethan looked at himself and his spiffy shiny cuffs and sighed. “I was going for grown-up,” he confessed.
Kane was the one who said it. “Well, what you got was connected, but that’s okay, right? Because, you know, better a hired killer than a porn star.”
Damn. This thing had silver buttons on the cuffs. “Well, I hope they prefer the porn star, ’cause that’s what I’m telling them if they ask.”
Both men looked at Ethan in quiet horror. “Really?” Dex asked, his angel-blue eyes open in surprise. “I mean… at the funeral and everything?”
Okay, there really wasn’t anything more he could do to look neat and tidy but not like a mafia don. “Well, I’m not just announcing it at the funeral—I mean, they’ve got better things to worry about, right? But I told Jonah I’d be there, and I told him I’d be… I don’t know, like, out about him.”
“But how is that going to work, you and him?” Dex asked quietly, and Ethan could tell—it was the same look Tommy had given him. They didn’t want him to be in pain.
“Well,” he answered back slowly, “I guess it’ll be one problem at a time, right? So first problem? Showing up at the funeral. If I leave in ten minutes, I’ll make it. Second problem, what to say if they ask. If I’m discreet—don’t laugh, I can do that—then they might not ask for a while.”
“Ethan,” Dex said softly, “have you ever thought… I mean, you’re a smart guy. Don’t you want to do something different?”
“First problem,” Ethan said firmly, “is showing up at the funeral. I gotta go get my wallet.”
“Yeah, you weren’t shitting about him being smart,” Ethan heard Kane say as he walked away. “He can dodge a question like a pro.”
“You know who else was good at that?” Dex snapped, obviously upset. “Chase. Chase used to be fucking awesome at dodging questions.”
“I’m not suicidal!” Ethan hollered as he got his keys from the bedroom.
“Oh thank God,” Dex shouted back. “’Cause I’d hate to redo the fucking bathroom!”
Ethan stuck his head back in and grinned. “Don’t worry about me, guys. I’m smart. I can figure this shit out, I swear.”
“Get out of here or you’re going to be late!” Dex ordered, and then Kane stepped in and made them the best couple on the planet.
“And be real nice to Jonah, okay? He’s gonna be real fuckin’ sad.”
“Will do,” Ethan said, and then he ventured into the gray end of December and a child’s funeral.
HE COULDN’T have said, later, what made him pick “The Boxer.” It’s just that the pastor guy, was talking about a kid Ethan didn’t feel like he knew, and all he could think of was Jonah’s words about how Amelia hadn’t been a fighter. Belladonna had loved musical theater—but Carmina loved Mumford & Sons, and she’d played their cover of the song for a month straight the year before.
It was about a guy who really wasn’t a fighter either.
So it felt like a message from one lost sister to another, about forgiving people for not fighting, forgiving them for being human. Ethan forgave his sisters for leaving, because you did what you had to in order to survive. He forgave Jonah’s sister for leaving, because she’d been nourishing her soul instead of her body, and that was just a tough choice to make.
He’d realize later that most normal people would be a little anxious about singing badly in front of a group of strangers—but then, for Ethan, that wasn’t really the worst thing he’d ever done in front of a million people he didn’t know, was it? The look of gratitude Jonah gave him as he stood up in that made-man suit and sang off-key in a crowded chapel was completely worth it. For a minute Ethan was his hero, and Ethan thought for that moment, he’d do anything to make that look stay.
AFTER the steak dinner at Black Angus, which Jonah’s dad probably couldn’t afford, they talked until Dylan looked at his watch apologetically.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I… it’s late. I told my mom I’d be home by seven.”
Jonah’s mom and dad stood up and offered to take him home, and Ethan looked up and said, “I’ll take Jonah home, if that’s okay?”
Jonah’s mom bent down and kissed his cheek. “That’s fine. Thank you, Ethan. We’re so grateful you could come today.”
Jonah’s dad offered him a hand, and Ethan stood up to shake it. Laura and Dylan were halfway to the door, and Seth looked to make sure they were out of earshot.
“We trust you to take care of our son,” he said seriously.
Ethan blushed. He wasn’t sure what Seth Stevens knew about him, but it was, maybe, more than Ethan had planned. “I’ll do my best,” he said honestly. “I… well, my best may not be perfect or good enough, but it’s all I can promise.”
Seth
nodded and raised his eyebrows as though not certain what to do with that answer. “I guess it’s all I can ask,” he said. He shook Ethan’s hand again and turned around to leave, and Ethan sat down at the table.
“You want dessert?” he asked out of the blue. Jonah was pale and looked like he hadn’t slept in three days, and Ethan wanted to do something, anything, to make his life better. Sugar and empty carbs were always a good place to start. “I want dessert. Something huge and piled high with chocolate and fudge and—”
“God, yes,” Jonah burst out, and then he looked faintly surprised. “I could eat an entire fudge brownie sundae all on my own.”
Ethan winked. “Well, you know, I wouldn’t mind helping.”
“So,” Jonah asked after they’d ordered, “how was your Christmas?”
“Wasn’t bad.” Ethan still had his salad fork, and he stroked the shiny metal tines, feeling where the edges began to bevel. “I got propositioned, which was, well, flattering, but he slept on the couch at Dex’s place. He’s gonna move into my old apartment, and I’m gonna be sleeping in Dex’s guest room.”
“With the animals?” Jonah asked. Ethan couldn’t tell if he was appalled or jealous.
“Well, we moved some of them out so we could fit the bed in.”
“Oh,” Jonah said quietly.
Ethan caught his hand across the table. “It’s not permanent,” he said quietly. “But I want to find a good place—a place I can take you to, some place you wouldn’t mind moving into when you’re ready. And in the meantime, while I’m looking, I’ve got people to come home to.” His voice caught. “I’ve missed that. People to come home to.”
Jonah turned his hand in Ethan’s and held it, then patted his other hand on top. “I know. And you’re right. My folks aren’t ready for me to move out right now. That would be….”
“Cruel,” Ethan said softly. “And we’re not, neither of us, mean like that. So I figure we find a place, and then we can both sign up for school.”
