by J. A. Rock
We made pasta for dinner using the Pasta Boat, and then Ryan had some files to look over for work, so I promised I’d sit with him on the couch and not bother him.
It worked for like half an hour. I played QuizUp on my phone, and he scowled at some documents on his tablet, and then I got bored and asked, “What are your files about?”
“They’re about how Erica can’t type up a brief to save her life so I have to redo it.” He looked up. “You know how I feel about Erica.”
“You wanna put her in a hamster ball full of turds and roll her down a hill.”
“I do. Kind of. Yeah. She really just bothers me.”
He didn’t say anything else, so I changed the subject. “Do you wanna meet my dad on Thursday? Tomorrow he has a thing with an old coworker, but he wants to hang out again Thursday.”
“Uhhh . . . sure.” He swiped through some pages on the tablet, frowning. “I was gonna work late that evening. But we could do lunch break.”
“That’d be cool. Lunch is good because we’ve got an out if we need one.”
“I want to thank the man who bought us a juicer.”
“Who knows what else he might buy us if he feels guilty enough.”
“I think we should get a bagless vacuum. With hose attachments.”
“Okay.”
“But the one I was looking at was three nineteen.”
“Holy cat balls.”
He looked up. “You know what, though? We spent two hundred dollars on that sex sling when we were drunk last month. And we never even use it because we’re too lazy to put hooks in the ceiling.”
“We’ll do the hooks. This weekend.”
“We could send it back, though, since we never used it. And use the money for a vacuum.”
“I’d rather have the sex sling.”
“Then figure out how to mount it.”
There were so many “mount it” jokes I could have made in that moment that I just sat there hyperventilating until my brain exploded.
He focused on his tablet again and was quiet for a while. I beat Captain Wizzerbam from Romania in a name-that-celebrity round of QuizUp.
Eventually Ryan sighed. “I should live in Seattle.”
I lifted my head. “Huh?”
“It’s one of the best cities for paralegals. They pay a lot.”
“But you don’t want to live in Seattle.” I paused, because something had just occurred to me. “Do you?”
“Why not?”
“Doesn’t it rain a lot?”
He put the tablet on the coffee table and leaned back, hands laced behind his head. “I’d get used to it.”
“It’s freaking far away.”
“From what? If we lived there, it would be our home. Everything else would be far away.”
I hesitated, not sure how serious he was. Laughed. “Um, Mr. I-don’t-get-to-see-my-family-enough. You’d be like a million miles from them.”
He put his feet up on the coffee table. “You’re right. Maybe a cool city closer to here. That pays paralegals a lot.”
“What’s wrong with here?” I slung my arms over the back of the sofa. “Just not enough money, or what?”
“No, it’s fine here. I just like to try new places.”
Uhhh . . . “Well, bad news. We have a year lease, so we’re stuck here for a while.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Maybe someday, though.”
I gazed up at the ceiling. I thought about Mom telling me I liked to take risks and try new things, and how it wasn’t really true, but I wished it was. “It must be cool. I mean, you’ve lived all over, and I’ve just lived here.”
“Only San Fran. And Annapolis, for school. There’s a lot I haven’t seen.”
“Maybe you should sell your art and make millions of dollars, and then we could travel all the time but still live here.”
“Pfffff.” He grinned, shaking his head.
“Why’s that so funny?”
“Because I’m not an artist.”
“Shut your tiny face.”
He turned toward me. “You’re sweet.”
I didn’t push. But it kinda bugged me that I suggested a real thing he could do to be happier, and he was like, Oh, how cute. But the thing was, I could tell he liked the idea. That it was more than just flattery to him. That somewhere, deep down, he believed he had talent and that it should be recognized. I’m not that great with words. But I know what people’s faces mean.
After a while I said, “I guess I’d like to see other places. But everything I need is here in this city, so I’ve been too lazy to, you know. Explore or whatever.”
He nodded, leaning forward to play with his tablet again. “Bet this was a fun place to grow up.”
“Oh yeah. I got into all kinds of trouble.”
He laughed without looking up. “You?”
“Yeahhhh.”
“I’ll bet it was pretty adorable trouble, though.”
“How do you know I wasn’t a total gangster?”
He snorted. “Uh-huh.”
I shifted, leaning closer to him. “I did a lot of bad stuff when I was younger.”
“Like?” He was typing a message to Amanda.
I pulled some lint off his shoulder. “Me and some guys from high school, we were friends with Dumb Josh. Dumb Josh wasn’t dumb—he was the only one of us in honors classes. So we thought it was hilarious to call him Dumb Josh. But he was, like, he really did sound— There was something wrong with his voice. So there was this bingo hall in town, and we’d always go and play—”
“What were you, seventy-five and desperate for a free lava lamp?”
“Shut up. Pelletor needs your kindness now, not your censure.”
“What does that even—”
“Bingo is a game of skill.”
“It’s a game of luck.”
“It’s a game of looking. And listening.”
“Fair enough.”
“We’d go and play, and we’d make Josh pretend to be mentally . . . disabled? Is that okay to say?”
“Developmentally disabled, legally speaking.”
“Okay, yeah, so Josh would pretend to be that, and they’d always give him free games or count his bingo when he called it, even if the numbers were wrong.”
“You’re a bad person.”
“No. Josh is a bad person.”
“Guilty by association.”
I eventually curled up and dozed while he edited the brief. But I kept getting pulled awake again, thinking about Seattle. Or, not Seattle specifically, but just the idea that Ryan and I still had years stretching ahead of us. Were we really gonna spend them here? Watching the same movies and hanging with the same people and talking about the same stuff? That had been enough for me my whole life so far.
But maybe there was more we needed to do, more we needed to try. I mean, look how we kept surprising ourselves. Moving in together and realizing we loved one another and drawing and music and, like . . . panties.
The thought made me really nonsexually excited, but also pretty nervous. I hated change. When Hal had died, I’d just kept thinking, Everything’s gonna be different now. And it had bothered me that my brain didn’t seem as upset about Hal being dead as how this was gonna change the group. And maybe that’s why I was a little better at moving on than everyone else. I wanted everything to go back to normal.
I looked over at Ryan, who was cursing Erica under his breath. How did you get someone to understand your history if they hadn’t been there for it? With my friends, it had happened really naturally. It was like we’d understood one another right off the bat, and the things each of us didn’t know about the others’ pasts and personalities and whatever, we’d osmosed by hanging out together.
It had been sort of the same with Ryan, but now that I was older, it was a little harder to get other people caught up on my story. And harder for me to catch up on theirs. But maybe that was the point of this relationship. It was a new phase in my life, so
I had to kind of step away from my old stories and get ready to make new ones. Yeah? Maybe with the right person rocking it with you, change wasn’t so bad.
Maybe panties and kale juice were just the beginning.
Dad came to see me perform at Pitch the next night. Ryan had a coworker’s retirement dinner and couldn’t make it. And I wasn’t sure if my friends even knew I was playing. I’d thought about texting them earlier in the day, but figured they’d already come to my gigs lots of times, and it wasn’t like I had anything particularly exciting in store that night.
I played at Pitch once a month. Used to be more often, but then I got busy with work and stuff, and started to suspect I might not ever actually become a famous singer. I was twenty minutes late tonight because I’d freaking forgotten how far away Pitch was from my new place. Used to be I could just roll out the door ten minutes before my set and be fine. The usual crowd was there, plus some new faces. I wasn’t nervous, but I guess I did feel this extra need to be on, with my dad watching. I played a few covers—“Fast Car,” “Telephone Line,” “Bye Bye Symphony.” I tried some original stuff, including a song I’d written about a bottle of Lysol Multi-Purpose Cleaner that comes to life and kills a guy, called “Everyday Tough Messes.” The audience laughed pretty hard. Probably because they were drunk.
Afterward, I found Dad at the bar with a beer. He grinned at me. His bald spot was sweaty. “Well done, Kamen. You just get better and better.”
I couldn’t tell if he meant it or not. When I was younger, my parents used to compliment me on everything, and I never questioned it. I thought I really was the best player on every team, or the most creative person in each class or whatever. And honestly, it didn’t go to my head. ’Cause I had teachers telling me I needed improvement in pretty much every area except attitude. But I developed this inner confidence that didn’t really get shaken until I was an adult and started to realize that not everyone thought I was as awesome as my parents did.
“Thanks.” I noticed Gould and Miles at a table a few feet away. They waved at me. I grinned and waved back.
Dad looked where I was looking. “Oh—wow. Is that Miles and . . .?”
“Gould.”
“That’s Gould?”
“Yes. That’s always been Gould.”
“I haven’t seen them in years.”
“I know,” I said, a little sharply. For real, it didn’t bother me that Dad had his own life in Oregon. I’d always been closer with Mom anyway, and I didn’t feel, like, abandoned or whatever. But sometimes it just dug at me a little that he didn’t know what was going on with me. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to start telling him about all the stuff I’d been dealing with lately—growing up and having a laundry room and thinking about Seattle and all that.
Mom thought I should have invited him to Hal’s funeral. But I’d been like, why ask him to come all the way out here for the funeral of someone he’d only met a couple of times?
This memory hit me all at once of Mom at the funeral. Crying like she was going for an Oscar or something. And I was so weirded out by how hard she was crying that I didn’t even cry at all. Not until way later.
Dad and I went over to say hi to my friends. It was awkward, because my dad tried to hug Miles, and Miles was always, like, rigid with general life terror. You had to give that dude about five minutes warning before you hugged him, so he could mentally prepare for affection.
Dad just shook Gould’s hand, but I wasn’t sure if that was because hugging Miles had gone so lousy, or because Dad still suspected I wasn’t telling him the truth about this being Gould.
“What do you think?” Dad asked them, slinging an arm around me. “Isn’t he talented?”
I tried to grin, shrugging away. “Dad. You don’t have to present me to my friends.”
“That was really nice,” Gould said. “I liked the Lysol song.”
Really nice.
If I actually had the talent to make it big in the music industry, people would say much better things than that, right? They’d be, like, pressuring me to send my demo to record labels or sharing my YouTube channel with everyone they knew. They wouldn’t be like, That was nice.
Suddenly I just wanted to be home with Ryan. Or I at least wanted a beer.
Dad said he was gonna head back to his hotel, and Gould had to get home because he went to bed at Old Man O’Clock. But Miles said he’d stay and have a drink with me.
I collapsed in Gould’s vacated seat and tipped my head back with a sigh.
Miles took a sip of beer. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Just tired.”
“Your dad’s a lot balder than the last time I saw him.”
I straightened, scooting back in the chair. “Does this ever happen to you, since your dad’s away a lot? Like, he comes back, and you feel kinda weird, like, ‘Who is this guy?’”
Miles’s dad was a truck driver. Miles’s mom lived about half an hour away, so Miles saw her a decent amount, but he only saw his dad a few times a year.
Miles nodded slowly. “I suppose.”
“I’m not mad at him for leaving. I mean, I was when I was a kid, but I’m fine now.”
Miles grinned. “Are you?”
“Uuuuughhh, yes. Yes. I don’t know why. I just get impatient with him for not being up-to-date on my life. He couldn’t even remember Gould.”
“You want a drink? I’ll buy.”
“No, dude. I’m sorry. I need to shut up about myself and hear all about Zac. I got your pictures from his first day at the house. He looked, like, psychotically joyous.”
Miles’s grin broadened. “He’s incredible. I won’t pretend it hasn’t been stressful. But I’m trying to roll with the punches, I suppose.”
“But you got to sneak away to do some drinking tonight?”
“Zac loves Drix. He was ecstatic at the idea of getting to hang out with Drix for an evening.”
I squinted at him suspiciously. “Does Drix live with you?”
Miles shook his head. “No. Absolutely not.” Then he took the kind of nervous beer sip only a liar would take.
“It seems like he lives with you.”
“He stays over four nights a week. Sometimes five.”
“Miiiiiles.”
“Go get a drink, and I’ll tell you more.”
I headed up to the bar and ordered a beer. After a few seconds, I sensed someone behind me.
“Hello, Kamen,” said a smooth, icy female voice.
I turned. “Cinnamon.”
Cinnamon flashed me a smile. She was in her early thirties, with long legs and red hair. Wide lips and dark-brown, kinda root beer–colored eyes. She was a big deal in the pony play world, and a regular at Riddle—she and her partner Stan were always doing grooming stuff next to the bondage furniture. So, I mean, try getting blown on a bench when a woman in stiletto boots and with a bit in her mouth is, like, having her ass currycombed a few inches away. I thought what she did was cool. She just wasn’t a very cool person.
She tossed her head. “Interesting set.”
I was wary. “Thanks.”
“You ought to record yourself singing that Lysol song and put it on YouTube. Be one of those so-bad-he’s-good YouTube stars.”
My jaw tensed, and I thought about pointing out that I did have a YouTube channel, and I actually had followers who really dug me. But I stayed quiet hoping she’d take the hint and go away. The bartender brought my beer.
She moved closer. “Was that your dad here a minute ago?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s handsome. In an old-guy way.”
I handed my card to the bartender, then turned back to her. “That’s kind of a weird thing to say.”
“He and your mom are separated, right?”
“How would you know that?”
“I’ve talked to your mom before. At Riddle.”
Small world. I signed the slip and picked up my beer. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“Kamen,�
� she called as I walked toward my table.
I turned. She was smiling. And it was not a pleasant smile. “I know a secret. Something that might interest you.”
Part of me was instantly curious. Except it was totally a trap. What secret could Cinnamon know that I’d care about? Dave claimed I was nice to everybody, but it wasn’t true. There were definitely people whose heads I wanted to throw bricks at, and I didn’t always make an effort to hide it. I ignored Cinnamon and walked to my table.
“Cinnamon’s here,” I told Miles as I sat.
He turned to look. “Oh my. I’ve never seen her outside of Riddle.”
“She said my dad was hot.”
“She’s an odd one.”
“Why does she hate us so much?”
He sipped his drink. “She’s insecure. And hey, maybe we make her jealous. If the shit people say about her at Riddle is any indication, she doesn’t have many friends.”
That actually was sad. Not sad enough for me to feel sorry for her, though.
I swigged my beer. “So you were gonna tell me about Zac?”
“Yeah. It’s been crazy. But not as crazy as I thought. He was spending weekends with me for the last month, so he knows me, knows Drix, knows the house. Knows my mom and sister and even some of the neighbors. But it’s just . . . now he’s there all the time.”
“And it’s great.”
“It’s great,” he agreed. “But . . .”
“But crazy.”
“Exactly.”
“When can I meet him?”
“Well, I actually wanted to ask you,” Miles said. “Would you be able to come over Saturday afternoon? Dave and Gould are coming, and I’d like the three of you to meet him all at once. I was thinking around two?”
“Awesome! Yeah, I’ll check with Ryan because he was maybe gonna have coffee with Amanda, but I’m sure he can schedule it around this.”
Miles hesitated, looking guilty. “Actually, I—and this has nothing to do with anything that was said Sunday. Ryan’s great, and I think it’s . . . it’s very bold of you to have moved in with him. But I’d prefer to just keep it us, for now. So we don’t overwhelm Zac.” He met my gaze and added quickly, “It’s not just Ryan. I asked Dave not to bring D yet either.”
I tried to hide my disappointment. What he was saying made sense—a little bit. I mean, what was the difference between introducing Zac to four people or introducing him to three? I guess I’d just kinda figured once I moved in with Ryan, people would treat us like a couple. If you invited one of us somewhere, you invited the other too, by default. And the whole “bold that you moved in with him”—WTF? I loved him. Why was that so hard for the guys to understand?
