Laurie didn't physically withdraw, but the warm glow Ed had cast inside him died as the hollow emptiness this argument always inspired filled him instead. “I'm not performing.”
She continued as if Laurie hadn't spoken. “I was thinking it could be something unconventional. Even if you were to do something with Maggie, something simple, that would do. It'll draw more people if they think they'll be seeing Laurie Parker perform again after all these years. What you do, exactly, is nearly immaterial.”
“I'm not performing,” Laurie said again, working actively to keep his teeth from clenching. “If you advertise otherwise, you'll be the one explaining why you misled them, and if you make it purposefully awkward for me, I simply won't come.”
“Stop being so petulant, Laurence. It doesn't become you. You just performed half an hour ago, and you performed yesterday as well. And it all went well, just as we all told you it would. Now it's time to take the next step forward.” She glanced at the roses again, then at Laurie's pocket, where he'd stowed the card. “Who are the flowers from?”
Laurie said, “From my boyfriend.”
The confession shocked them both, and they stood there, each reeling in it for a few seconds.
Caroline fingered the petals of one of the roses, staring at it intently as she spoke. “I see. I take it this is someone you're seeing...publicly?”
Laurie's chest was hurting, his heart and belly feeling open and vulnerable, and he could see she had noticed his discomfort. But he thought of Oliver and all his talk about raw sex, about what he had done that morning with Ed, about how good it had felt, and he made himself say, “Yes.”
“I see.” She gave him a polite, distant smile. “I won't be coming to the reception, so I'll say good-bye to you now. But while all these people greet you and tell you how wonderful you were, think of what it would be like to perform again for real. Think of what it would be like, Laurie. To be normal again.” She crossed to him and pressed close in a formal, polite embrace. She pressed her hands on his shoulders and her cheek to his, her lips grazing his skin with little more than a brush of breath as she withdrew. He did not reach up to return the gesture, which earned him a flashing glance of disapproval, but once again, she said nothing out loud, not about that. She just smiled and said, “I'll call you later in the week once you've had a chance to think things over,” and then she headed for the door.
Laurie just stood there, watching her go.
Once the door closed behind her, though, he turned to the flowers. He didn't touch them, didn't smell them, just stood there with his hands in his pockets, clutching the card as everything jumbled inside him. When it became clear it wasn't going to settle, he slipped into his coat, pulled out his keys, and grabbed the vase, bracing it as gracefully as he could against his side as he carried it out of the dressing room.
It garnered him plenty of stares. At first that unsettled him, but the floral scent kept wrapping around him and pulling him back in. Roses didn't really smell that wonderful to him, but the arrangement collectively did: it was more earthy and grassy than floral, associating the bouquet even more strongly with Ed. By the time Laurie was on the back stairs, he was smiling and even enjoying carrying a ridiculously large vase of flowers out to his car. He didn't even care when it took him ten minutes to get it arranged on the seat so that the flowers wouldn't get crushed, but it wouldn't tip over as he drove, and he glanced over to smile at it every time he was at a stoplight.
There were at least three dozen flowers in there. He was late to the reception because he'd stood in the kitchen trying to count them. And he'd been right; there were almost three and a half dozen flowers in there. Laurie had pressed his hand over his lips to stay his ridiculous grin, heart swelling inside his chest as he imagined Ed picking them out. He could just see him standing there, overseeing the stuffing of the great big—horribly gaudy—vase, rejecting roses he didn't think were good enough, not caring about how many were in there but how it looked.
Laurie tried to think of the last time someone had done something like this for him. He couldn't come up with anything that even remotely compared.
The reception was at a country club in the wealthier part of St. Paul. Ostensibly it was a thank-you to some of the sponsors of the performance, but mostly it was a chance for everyone to rub elbows with one another and for Maggie and the other instructors who organized it to brag up their studio. Laurie had never liked these things, but he especially disliked them tonight. All he wanted to do was go find Ed and thank him for the flowers, to kiss him, to touch him, to make love to him, but even just to be with him. Instead he was pasting on a smile and staying the urge to dull the edges of the event with too much champagne.
Especially when he found out his mother had already begun her campaign to get him to perform at her benefit; everyone at the reception kept telling him how excited they were to see him perform again.
It was this that ultimately led him to leave early. He'd planned to cut it short as it was, but he left before they even brought out dessert, not even bothering to excuse himself to Maggie. He would hear about it the next day at the studio, but he didn't care. The longer he stayed, the angrier he would be at the donors, at Maggie, and most of all at his mother. And he didn't want to be angry. He wanted the giddy feeling back that he had when he was with Ed, when he thought of him.
It came back a little as he navigated his way back to Ed's apartment, missing the streets a few times and having to double back, but mostly he was nervous now and jumbled. He should have called, but he didn't want to. He wanted to just appear. He wanted to simply see him, to see his face—somehow it wouldn't be as real if it were on the phone. Oh, it didn't make sense when he tried to articulate it, even to his thoughts. He just knew he needed Ed, live and in person.
Normal, his mother had said. Laurie didn't even know what that was. He didn't think he'd ever known. He might not be meant for normal. All he knew right now was that he was tired of feeling guilty and sleepy. He needed something. Something more. He needed... He didn't know.
Ed. He just needed Ed.
He hoped Ed needed him too. He feared that he'd simply had an emotional, ridiculous day and had imagined all this, that Ed had simply sent flowers and that was all. He still feared this would end somehow, feared that it would hurt more than he could bear, and he wondered where those thoughts were coming from and what they meant. But right now all he knew was that he needed Ed. Needed him. Now.
As he climbed the stairs to Ed's door, his heart beat in his ears, and his stomach flipped over and over with every step. By the time he knocked on Ed's door, he was a wreck, and as he waited in the endless seconds between his knocking and its opening, he had to remind himself to breathe.
And then Ed was there, disheveled and messy and wearing a dark gray muscle T-shirt stained with sweat. He was surprised, and then his face changed, and Laurie realized this was what he'd needed to see, why he couldn't call, why he had to simply arrive. Because first there was surprise, yes, and then there was joy. It faded quickly, turning to awkwardness as he ran his hand over his hair, but there had been that joy, that same eagerness and giddiness that had wrapped Laurie up since he'd seen the flowers—in truth, since he'd woken up this morning in Ed's arms.
“Hi,” he said, breathless, his voice wavering a little. He tried to smile. “Did I come at a bad time?”
“Oh—no!” Ed ran his hand over his hair again. “I was just—I would have showered.” He took a step back and held out his arm. “Come in. Come on in. I'll just—I—” He dithered a minute, starting for the bathroom, then stopping and turning back to Laurie again. “Did you get...?” He stopped, blushing.
Laurie could not have stopped his smile even if his life had depended on it. “Yes. I got the flowers. Thank you. They're beautiful.”
Ed seemed pleased but still hesitant. “Good. I mean—after, I thought maybe it would look weird. It was a lot of flowers, and I didn't know—” He rubbed at his hair again. “I mean, we h
adn't—We haven't said if we—I didn't know what—” He swore under his breath. “Fuck. I'm no good at this, Laurie.” He appeared to steel himself and looked Laurie dead in the eye. “Are we...dating? Or—”
Oh, Laurie could have flown to the moon, he felt so high. The smile was still there, so wide it hurt his face. “I'd like to,” he said, heart pounding again. “If you want to.”
“Yes!” Ed said, starting to answer almost on top of Laurie. He was smiling now too, a little uncertainly, but that was fading fast. “I just didn't—” His smile turned to a grin, and he jerked his head toward the bathroom. “I'm just gonna go shower up quick.”
But as soon as he turned to go, Laurie called him back. “Ed?”
When Ed turned back around, Laurie stepped forward and took his face in his hands. Giddiness bounced crazily inside him as he watched Ed's eyes hood and his whole body go soft.
“I've been working out,” Ed murmured, but his gaze was on Laurie's mouth. “I'm kind of smelly.”
There was some line here Laurie could have given, some flip reply about how he could use a workout too, but he wasn't deft at this sort of game. So he just pulled Ed's face down, shut his eyes, and kissed him softly on the mouth.
Ed kissed him back, not very softly.
“Laurie,” Ed whispered when they came up for air. He pressed his forehead against Laurie's and ran his hands down Laurie's back. “Laurie.”
Laurie kept his eyes shut and nuzzled Ed back. “Make love to me,” he whispered. “Please.”
In answer Ed kissed him hard and deep again, and Laurie felt the last of his tension leave. When Ed swept him up into his arms, he laughed, surprised, but then Ed's hands started to move on him, and Ed kissed him again as he carried Laurie across the room toward the bed. All thoughts of his mother, the studio, the benefit, and anything that wasn't making love to Ed Maurer sailed away as he sank into the mattress, opening his mouth, his legs, his body and took Ed all the way into his soul.
It started when Ed woke up on Monday morning as a nagging pull down the side of his neck.
He didn't even consciously notice it until he was in the shower, when he caught himself massaging the spot. It had bugged him off and on all weekend, acting up something nasty after they'd done all that moving, but he'd doubled up on painkiller, and the pain had gone away. He hadn't thought about it much after that. But now the pain was back, louder and angrier than it had been in a long time. He stopped, and for a moment he stood under the spray, an old panic blooming up from the place it always lurked. Then he pursed his lips and went back to scrubbing his chest with the bar of soap. It was probably nothing. He'd just slept on it wrong. He'd done that before, and he'd do it again.
Even so, he popped a few ibuprofen before he shaved, just in case. He'd just done too much on Saturday. It wasn't a big deal, though. It'd be fine in a day or so.
He made himself focus on good things, like how nice it was to get ready for work in a place that was clean, of how the pillow Laurie had clutched while Ed made him cry out before he came his brains out still carried the echo of his scent. He lingered over his coffee and cereal, thinking of Laurie while he stared at but didn't really watch a morning news program. Laurie worked late, but Ed was going to go over and meet him at his place at eight thirty. Which meant, he acknowledged, dick humming, that they were going to have sex. Again.
Ed smiled around the rim of his coffee cup and hummed to himself as he finished getting ready for work. He even rinsed out the dishes. Sort of. He'd do them later.
Before he headed out the door, he went back and took two more ibuprofen, finishing out the maximum dose. Nothing wrong with hedging his bets.
Even with the painkillers, though, he found himself rubbing at his neck a lot during the day, and by lunchtime it was really starting to worry him. He must have hurt himself on Saturday. That was the only explanation. And it timed out about right. It had hurt Sunday, but he'd ignored it and had some...well, the sex hadn't been rough exactly, but it had been intense. It was just too fun, thinking up ways to fuck Laurie without literally fucking him, and he hadn't thought about being careful of his neck. And that was the way it went. Once he woke it up, really woke it up, every little thing sent it screaming. Normally that would have depressed him, but not today. Not now. He wasn't going to get down about this. He'd have to take it really easy the next few days, that was all.
But by three in the afternoon his neck hurt so much he could hardly focus. He'd borrowed Aleve from a woman in the cubicle next to him when it was safe to redose (okay, a little sooner than that, but it was close enough), and he might as well have taken Tic Tacs for all the good it did him. At four he had to duck out of a meeting and put his head down at his desk while the colors exploded in his head.
At four thirty he gave up and called his mom.
She was, predictably, very upset. She came over with his father so they could take both him and his car, and as they went down the elevator, she told him six different times about how she'd already made him an emergency appointment at the clinic. Thankfully, his father overrode her when they got down to the parking garage and insisted on driving Ed instead of her, leaving her to bring along their vehicle. After murmuring thank-yous to his mom, Ed climbed into the passenger seat in his own car and hunkered down as his father ferried him silently back across the city toward St. Paul.
Dick Maurer was as taciturn as his partner was exuberant, and just being with him had long been a restorative for Ed. But today not even that was enough, and when they got caught in a traffic snarl and slowed to a crawl, Ed filled the silence with the thoughts gnawing at the edges of his mind.
“It's never been like this,” he said, hunching over and staring into the Mazda logo stamped onto the dashboard. “I've screwed it up before, but never like this, never over so little. It never got this hot this fast.”
“You don't normally work it all day long like you did on Saturday.” His father reached over and gently patted Ed's thigh. “You were a man possessed.”
Because he'd wanted to impress Laurie. And wasn't that a good thing? But his reward for cleaning up his place for the first man he'd cared about in a long time was to have this damn thing act up again. His hands tightened into fists in his lap. It wasn't fucking fair.
“Put some music on, son,” Dick said mildly, playing rudder. “Something fun to distract you. Don't go making this into something big before Dr. Linnet tells you it is.”
It was funny, because Ed hadn't quite figured out that this was what he'd been thinking until his dad had called him on it. But yeah, he was worried about that. What was the doctor going to tell him? What was wrong with his stupid neck now? What was the treatment going to be this time?
What else was he going to have to give up?
He did put the music on, and the song “Nothing Matters When We're Dancing” by The Magnetic Fields came on. That was when Ed realized the real thing he was worried about, the thing he was now almost certain they were going to take away, the thing he'd been quietly loving almost as much as the man who'd introduced him to it.
Shutting off the stereo abruptly, Ed stared into traffic and hated the whole damn world all the way to the clinic.
By some miracle they didn't wait long in the lobby, and before he knew it he was back in an exam room. His mom had come with him. His dad had tried to dissuade her, but she wasn't having any of it; she was going back with her baby because he was hurting. Though Ed grumbled on the outside, secretly he was glad. Here they did wait awhile, and Ed didn't protest when his mother took his hand in hers, running her thumb over the back of it soothingly.
The doctor's verdict was what Ed feared and wasn't, both at once.
“You've just strained it,” Linnet declared. “Working all day like you described when you aren't used to doing that is going to cost you. But this happened, Ed, because that muscle and the ones surrounding it are so weak. You didn't come to your therapy like I wanted you to—I know because I checked—and you aren't treating you
r body like it's been injured.”
“Work's been busy,” Ed grumbled, not meeting the doctor or his mother in the eye.
Linnet made a disapproving sound. “I've already given you my opinion on keeping a desk job. You'd do better with something with moderate movement on a regular basis. Have you been taking regular breaks like we discussed?”
Ed had not. It was a nice idea, getting up to stretch every thirty minutes, but even with a doctor's note, somebody taking breaks that regularly in a department constantly downsizing didn't stay to take breaks long. “I've been doing some ballroom dancing,” he said. He decided not to mention the athletic sex.
Linnet brightened. “That's good. Be smart about it, because yes, you can injure yourself dancing, and you can do a fine job of it too. But I'm for anything that keeps you moving. Is there any prayer you've kept up with the exercises PT gave you before you quit?”
“I've moved a bit beyond them,” Ed said, trying not to be testy. The doctor knew him too well, though.
“I know they're not what you're used to doing from training for football,” Linnet said, “but lifting weights is not rebuilding the muscles of your neck. You need to keep to their schedule for your recovery. Just because you feel like you used to doesn't mean you can go back to old times. I want you back on a regular PT schedule for the next month, and this time I want you to go. Mrs. Maurer, if you have any sway with him, I suggest you use it. And Ed, I want you off all physical activity outside of what they assign you for a few weeks. That includes weight lifting, dancing, and sex. And work.”
Ed looked up sharply at him—eyes only, because his neck was fucking killing him. “I can't be off work for two weeks!” And the hell I'm telling Laurie we can't fuck for fourteen days.
He couldn't even let himself think about the dancing.
“Then you can look forward to having this kind of pain at increasingly frequent intervals, and probably with increasing degrees of pain as well.” The doctor braced his elbows on his knees and looked Ed squarely in the eye. “We've had this conversation before, Ed. I know dealing with this is hard for you, but this isn't a usual injury. If you'd hit just a few millimeters over, we'd be having this conversation as you sat in your wheelchair. This isn't something you're going to recover from. This is something you're living with. You'll get better at it, but you're going to live with it.” He paused, then added, “Have you given any further thought to my suggestion that you see someone to talk about what that's going to mean to you long-term?”
Dance With Me Page 20
