Worst Men: An Enemies to Lovers Gay Romance

by Rachel Kane

  Nat set his head on the table and groaned. “Dad, could you really not?”

  Sergio had covered his mouth to hide his smile. I looked around. Nobody was looking at me at all. It was wonderful.

  Nat’s dad continued, “One thing we wanted to know is, what do the gays like for wedding presents? Debbie said that a set of towels would be a nice gesture, but I said I wanted to celebrate my son, to show him I was proud of him! Isn’t that something you people like, pride? So I did some research about gifts and found a website called GiveItToHim.com, where you can buy--”

  “Okay, Dad, thanks for the lovely speech!” said Nat, rising from his seat. “Wasn’t that great, everybody? Give my dad a big hand!”

  “But wait, I didn’t tell you what the gift was! You see, it looks like a saddle like you’d put on a horse, but it has--”

  “Big hand, everybody!” said Nat, his voice strained. We all clapped politely.

  Dinner broke up a little earlier than expected. But at least nobody asked me about Sergio.

  We were up in our room. I’d piled up some pillows to lean against, and was flicking through TV channels. Sergio was brushing his teeth.

  Why did I feel so doomed? Why did I dread Sergio coming in from the bathroom?

  He’d want to talk. He’d want to do warm and happy couple things. Then he would realize something was wrong.

  When he came in, my eyes stayed glued to the TV. I’d found a cooking show, and watched a woman mincing onions. In my peripheral vision, I watched him hang his dinner clothes neatly back up, and pull his folded pajamas from a drawer.

  Is this what it would always be like, this issue hanging between us?

  “That guy, wow,” said Sergio, sliding onto the bed beside me. “I might give my own dad a hard time for being rich and shallow, but at least he’s not like Nat’s.”

  “Yes, that was bad,” I said. The lady on the screen was putting spices into a hot pan.

  “I don’t know how Nat grew up to be so normal.”

  I didn’t want to talk about Nat. I didn’t want to talk about us. I guess I didn’t want to talk, period. He noticed, after a while.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  I shook my head. “Just tired, I guess. Long day. Lots of events.”

  “Hm,” he said. He put his hands on my shoulders, and began kneading them. “You’re really tense.”

  He didn’t get it. He wasn’t going to take my short responses as a signal. He was going to start asking me questions that I had no answer for, and worse, he was going to be sympathetic and generous, rather than doing the one thing I needed for him to do, which was to realize his offer was troublesome--not that I’d taken it the wrong way, not that I was somehow mistaken about his intent, but that he’d made an error that showed he didn’t understand what Xavier had done to me.

  And I couldn’t explain that to him. I’d tried, but he didn’t understand. He just couldn’t put himself in my place.

  I knew one way of getting him off the topic, though. As his thumbs pressed into all the tense parts of my muscles, I turned my face towards his, and kissed him. When our lips parted, he began to say something, but I didn’t let him, I went right back in for another kiss. He responded, pressing against me. I slid down, pulling him on top of me.

  I want to say it made me feel better. I want to say that his obvious need for me, his passion, his hunger, soothed this pain and filled the empty place in my heart our fight had caused. What kind of person was I, that as he made love to me, I couldn’t let myself melt, but still felt cold as ice inside?

  Staring up at his loving, earnest face, his eyes closed as he pressed into me, I wished I could have been a million miles away. I wished I could be different. I’m supposed to be normal. Things aren’t supposed to bother me. Right? I’m just another cute guy with no problems, at ease with the world.

  I felt like a liar. Dishonest, a cheat. When he came, it was all I could do to kiss him and hold him and whisper to him, encouraging him, driving him on.

  Things had changed, and I had no way to make him understand.

  19

  Sergio: Truth Hurts

  It was going to drive me nuts, this thing with Marcus. It was the next morning, and I was down in the freezer, putting the finishing touches on the sculpture. Today was the day. In just a few hours, it would be wheeled out where people could ooh and ahh over it, before it quickly melted away.

  I was trying to get into the zone, where I could just work and not think, so my subconscious mind could solve the problem with Marcus for me. But it wasn’t working.

  Maybe it was because of last night, where I could tell he was hurting, even though he wouldn’t tell me about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him how mad I was at him. It wouldn’t have made sense to him even if I’d managed to find the words, I know.

  Who gets offered a gift, and then accuses you of trying to manipulate them?

  I know the college thing was too big. Fine. That’s great. In a moment of love, I’d made too big an offer. Was the solution to that to just stay weird at me for days? Were we supposed to break up because I’d gone too high in my attempt to help him?

  None of this was my fault! It wasn’t my fault he sold himself out to Xavier. That wasn’t even relevant. I wasn’t Xavier, I didn’t have any gross intentions towards Marcus. I wasn’t trying to buy him, I was trying to help him. But no.

  It’s not like my own life has been easy--

  I chuckled ruefully when I heard myself think that. What was wrong with me? Why was I being so defensive about this? My life hadn’t been easy? My life had been a fucking dream compared to his. Everything I ever wanted, handed to me.

  And yet it had hurt. I would have traded every cent to have parents that actually cared about me, rather than treating me like a charity case. Treating me like the runner-up in some Personal Value competition with my brother, because he understood money. He spoke its language. Always knew the best things to buy, the best ways to show off his wealth. It was like an instinct with him.

  I wasn’t bad with money, I was bad at being rich. I paid my bills as quickly as I could. My brother’s various businesses almost always ended in bankruptcy, yet it never mattered, he’d just move on to another project. It was such a double-standard. I’d come home with a jacket I liked, and they’d be all, was that really the wisest choice? Then he would come home with a trillion ugly cufflinks from some boutique and they’d fawn all over him.

  What would my parents say about my offer to send Marcus to college? Probably have fucking heart attacks, the both of them. Oh Sergio, you’ve only known him for how long? Son, even for an artist with his head in the clouds, that’s not a smart investment.

  “I rescinded the offer, okay?” I said aloud in the freezer, to all the people inside my head judging me. “I took it back! Everybody in the world thinks it was a dumb, insulting idea. Fine. All gone. No college for Marcus. But why should I even have the money, if I can’t spend it in ways that make sense to me?”

  My voice was muffled beneath the roar of the fans keeping it frigid in here. I’d taken off my gloves, because I wanted to detail work on the faces. I knew it was a little bit hopeless--ice just isn’t stone, and you can’t get tiny details in--but I felt almost fanatical in my need to keep working on it, to get closer and closer to the vision that was in my head. But my hands were quickly going numb as I shaped the cheeks and the tousled hair with my thumbs and little dental tools.

  “Stop,” I said. “Just stop.”

  If I went any further, I was going to damage the sculpture. I stepped back from it. I was done.

  It was...perfect. Two figures, so clearly in love, so clearly made for each other. There was longing in their faces, in their raised brows. One more cut into the ice might destroy it all.

  I had done it. Nearly all of it without my tools, in the most ridiculous setting for sculpting, using a medium that my artist friends had laughed about. But I had done it. This was a gift for Nat and Owen. This wa
s a celebration of love.

  Why can’t I have that? I asked myself. Why can’t Marcus and I look at each other like that, without this tension, this worry that we’re doing something wrong?

  Some other time I might have tasted a bitter irony to have sculpted such a happy couple, when I was so tormented inside. Right now I was just sad. Maybe I should just admit I was completely, completely wrong. No, maybe I should admit that I didn’t understand why I was wrong, and that some part of me might never understand, but that the last thing I wanted was to hurt Marcus. That I understood having mysterious parts of your soul that hurt, that were hard to explain to people.

  Maybe back home, it would have been easier to explain. Everything was amped up on vacation. There was so much going on. So much that was alien to our daily lives.

  I gave the sculpture one more look. It was fogging over now. It was at its most perfect, right in this moment. The version people saw in a few hours would be less detailed, would have already begun its slow transition into a puddle, into vapor.

  Don’t read too much into that, I said to myself. Just because Marcus and I had shared a perfect moment on the cliff, didn’t mean it was all downhill from here. We weren’t doomed to melt. I could fix this. We just needed to talk, openly and honestly.

  Honesty was the key. I had to tell the truth, about how it felt to make him an offer and not understand why it was bad. Not defend myself, not push him away. Just be honest.

  I stepped out of the freezer, and was just stripping off my jacket when I realized I wasn’t alone.

  Hunter was leaning against a wall, staring at me. “Sculpting going well?”

  “All done,” I said. I suddenly felt wary. Of all the places he could be at the resort, all the people he could be talking to, he’d decided to come down here to talk to me. That couldn’t work out well.

  “How nice. Good of you to spare some of your celebrated labors for your friends. A sculpture like that, what would it go for, if it weren’t made of ice?”

  I shrugged. “It’s two guys looking happy together. Not a lot of market for that.”

  “I suppose not. Although it’s such a rarity for two men to find peace and happiness with each other! Frankly, I have given up the idea. In fact I spent some time this morning on the phone with my dear friend Spencer, you remember him.”

  I shook my head. This wasn’t a conversation I cared to have. I really wanted to get back to Marcus and talk this through. I wanted him back to normal. I wanted to stop feeling like I’d done something wrong.

  “He’s a darling,” said Hunter, “very sympathetic. He was a fashion designer for the longest time before retiring to Oceanside. He knows you, certainly. Oh, he knows everyone, hates everyone, never a kind word to say, but is very sympathetic to my plight.”

  “I do remember him,” I said. I started moving down the hall toward the ballroom to get back upstairs. Hunter followed.

  “The funniest thing, though. I was bemoaning my fate, when I happened to mention your dalliance with Marcus.”

  “At this point, I’m not surprised when anyone gossips about us.”

  “It wasn’t gossip, dear. I was heartbroken to hear about it, since I thought if you didn’t want Marcus, maybe I--but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, when I mentioned him to Spencer, he told me something very interesting.”

  There was poison in Hunter’s voice. Something inside me warned me off. Get away from him. He wants to hurt you.

  “I really need to get upstairs and clean up,” I said. “The wedding is in a few hours, and there are preparations and--”

  He wasn’t listening. No, he was intent on telling me his news. “We were on the topic of you, when Spencer mentioned to me that Xavier was not Marcus’ first outing into the world of wealthy men. In fact, he could easily name three other men who had taken care of Marcus in earlier years. One at least was quite early.”

  “This really doesn’t sound like something I care about,” I said. My heart was pounding. I wanted to get out of here.

  “Oh but you should,” said Hunter. “I think you should care quite a bit. Because there is a pattern here with your boy Marcus.”

  “He’s not--he’s not--”

  “You see, I heard through the grapevine that you offered him money--”

  “He turned it down. End of story.”

  Hunter’s hand on my arm stopped me. I turned to look at him, at his long alligator smile. “End of story? Or just the beginning? That’s his pattern, dear. He always plays hard to get at first. Above all these mere financial concerns. Impossible to buy. And yet he quickly becomes more expensive than you might ever have imagined.”

  “Listen, Hunter. I don’t want to hear this. There has been enough damage caused by gossip in our community.”

  “Ask Richard Morley if it’s gossip, Sergio. Ask Craig Barks. Ask any of the men Marcus prostituted himself out to. It’s always the same. He has been doing this for years, Sergio, and you’re just the latest victim.”

  “Enough!” I said, shoving Hunter against the wall. “I don’t want to hear one more word out of you. I don’t know what your agenda is, but you are done speaking to me about Marcus. Do you understand? And if I hear even a breath of this mentioned among our friends, I will come after you, and you will not like that, I promise you.”

  After I let him go, he brushed himself off. “Ah, well. I tell you these things for your own good, Sergio. You’ll learn soon enough. No, no, there’s no need for raised fists, I’ll say no more.”

  My mind was racing. In the time I’d been in the freezer, they’d closed off the ballroom to decorate it, so I had to go the long way around, which meant time to think, which I didn’t want.

  Was Hunter telling the truth? Had Marcus just hopped from sugar daddy to sugar daddy, soaking them for money then moving on? Now after a fallow period, he’d found me. I thought about how quickly we’d gone from bitter enemies, to lovers. Had it been just a little too fast, a little too convenient?

  Earlier I’d been eager to rush to Marcus and talk to him...but now I wasn’t so sure that was the right thing to do.

  I’d go to Marcus, and he’d have an explanation, or we’d have a fight, and we’d separate and I’d have to think about things and then we’d talk and then, and then, and then.

  Maybe this was just too complicated.

  Maybe it was time to cut my losses. I couldn’t handle the pace of shocking revelations about Marcus. It reminded me so much of the end of my time with Harris, when horrible truths would just keep cropping up every few hours, his obsession with other men, his controlling nature, all the lies he had told me.

  All I wanted out of life was a chance to do my art, and to have a love that was uncomplicated and simple. To just be with someone I cared about, without any drama attached.

  When I reached the lobby, I paused before approaching the elevators. If I went upstairs and had that talk with Marcus, we might work everything out. Or maybe we’d just be in a holding pattern while I waited for the next crisis.

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to get hurt anymore. No more fighting, no more anything. Instead of going to the elevator, I turned and walked out to the bar.

  20

  Marcus: Break The Ice

  I woke up and Sergio wasn’t there, and the bed seemed so empty without him. I had already curled up on his side, inhaling his scent from his pillow, before remembering we were in a bad place. It was like having the roof suddenly cave down on you. Happily lonesome one second, broken the next.

  Over on the coatrack, his jacket was missing. He’d gone downstairs to finish the sculpture. Okay. That was all right. I could find him there.

  I wasn’t going to go through one more day of feeling fake. We were going to work this shit out. Even if it turned into a fight, even if it felt awful, I had to lay out for him why his reaction to my feelings about his offer, was worse than the offer itself. That was all there was to it. He didn’t have to apologize, I guess. I wasn’t looking for him to
break down into tears or grovel or anything stupid like that. He just had to know. He had to see the boundary there, and why it was important, given my past, and given the way rumors had destroyed my life.

  The optimistic side of me said we could do this, work it out, and be happy in time for the wedding. I wanted to be happy. Hell, I wanted, for once in my life, to have a little sappy sweetness, to be in my tux looking across the aisle at Sergio, smirking together like we were sharing a secret, while Nat and Owen said their vows.

  I mean, I wanted that, but I was still worried. If there’s one thing Sergio and I had in common, it was our ability to hold a grudge for years at a time. But as I showered and dressed (stealing some more of his clothes), I tried to be hopeful. We both knew something was wrong. We both liked each other enough to work through it. It didn’t have to be a big deal.

  But naturally, naturally, after I’d taken the elevator and walked through the lobby and found I had to take the long series of corridors back through to the freezer, all the while getting more and more nervous about talking to Sergio, naturally by the time I reached the freezer, he wasn’t there...but Hunter was.

  He gave me a sly smile. “You just missed your boyfriend,” he said.

  I looked at the freezer. The lock wasn’t on the door. “He’s not in there?”

  “See for yourself, if you don’t believe me. He was quite rude to me a moment ago.”

  I opened the freezer, just to check, and sure enough, no Sergio, although his tools were all laid out neatly. He’d left his phone on the shelf with them. I had this weird sense that he’d simply vanished in the middle of things.

  Hunter was suddenly inches from me. “I understand his rudeness, of course. He was in a state of shock. All the blood drained from his face, when he learned you hadn’t told him everything about your past.”