by Anna Martin
From the kitchen, James could hear people talking, so he headed that way. The man standing next to his dad was vaguely familiar, until James remembered dashing past him on his way out a few weeks back.
The man stopped talking to James’s dad and looked at Dylan in surprise.
“Steve?” Dylan said, his hand slipping from James’s.
“Hey, Dylan. I thought I saw your car outside.” Steve looked confused. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m with James,” he said.
James felt a growing, gnawing dread start to spread through his stomach.
“Dylan is…,” James’s dad started.
“My son,” Steve finished.
No.
“Your son.”
“Yeah.”
“And Steve is the guy you’re dating,” James said, pointing at Steve.
No, no, no….
“Holy shit,” Frankie murmured.
“You and Steve are dating each other, and me and Dylan are dating each other.” James’s heart was pounding in his chest, making him feel incredibly, dangerously like throwing up.
“James…,” his dad started, and then he turned to Steve. “Wait, your twenty-one-year-old son is dating my eighteen-year-old kid?”
“Is that a problem?” Steve demanded.
“This is the same kid you told me about, right? The one who has… issues?”
“Issues?” James echoed, turning to Dylan, who looked furious.
“You told him about that?” Dylan shouted at Steve.
“I… not in detail, Dylan.”
“I don’t believe this.” Dylan shook his head. “I’m gonna go.”
“Dylan, wait.” James hoped, for a moment, that he could get Dylan to not run out on this epic clusterfuck, but Dylan wasn’t stopping for anyone. Even James.
He stormed through the house and yanked the front door open just as someone else rang the doorbell. It echoed loudly in the deathly quiet house. Dylan stopped short.
“Hello,” a familiar female voice said. “Who are you?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Who is it?” James’s dad yelled from the kitchen.
For a moment, no one said anything. Then Frankie called out, “Mom’s here.”
Chapter Sixteen
“KAREN, WHAT are you doing here?” Mark sighed.
Steve watched from the kitchen as Karen walked straight into the house, clearly ignoring the “you’re not welcome here” vibes. Steve wasn’t surprised. Karen wore slim, tailored cream pants and a voluminous blouse, an expensive purse hanging from her elbow. If he didn’t know she was the mother of two eighteen-year-olds, he never would have guessed she was old enough to be their mother. Steve thought that was probably the point.
“I’m here to see James and Frankie,” Karen said defensively. She tossed her shoulder-length hair, almost the exact color as her daughter’s. “Who was that rude young man?”
James had run after Dylan, and Steve wasn’t sure if letting them go was a good idea or one of his worst parenting mistakes ever. They all had a lot of talking to do, and Karen didn’t seem the sort of person who would happily mediate.
“My son,” Steve said, figuring he’d have to introduce himself sooner or later. “I’m Steve Morrell.”
“Karen de Loss.”
They nodded at each other, neither offering to shake hands. Frankie was back in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with her arms folded over her chest, an expression of horrified fascination on her face.
“Frankie, can you take your mom somewhere please?”
“Where has James gone?” Karen said, completely ignoring Mark’s comment. “He seemed upset. Tell me what happened.”
“Mom, we should go,” Frankie said. Steve wanted to hug her.
“No, I don’t like this one bit. I come back to see my kids, and everyone’s yelling at each other, and no one will tell me what’s going on. I want to know what’s going on, Mark.”
Steve felt incredibly sorry for the guy for half a second, until he remembered the “your kid with issues” comment, and then he was back to being furious.
“It seems,” Mark said, looking very weary as he pushed his fingers through his hair, “that Dylan, who is James’s boyfriend, is also Steve’s son.”
Karen raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“And Dad’s dating Steve,” Frankie offered.
For a moment, Karen made a goldfish face at them all. She recovered quickly. “You are joking.”
“God, I wish I were,” Mark muttered.
“Well, that sounds mighty complicated.”
“He’s my adopted son,” Steve offered. He felt like that was important to add.
“Yes, and we only just figured out the connection about three seconds before you walked in. So there are still conversations that need to be had. Right now I have no idea where my son is, and all I do know is that he’s very upset.”
“Maybe Frankie and I should go look for him,” Karen said.
“Yes, that would be good,” Mark said tightly. There was clearly no love lost between the two of them.
Karen blinked at Mark for a moment, then reached out to her daughter. “Come on, darling. Let’s see where your brother has got to.”
Frankie grabbed flip-flops from the front door and didn’t even bother to put them on as she followed her mom to a sleek black convertible that was parked at an odd angle in the driveway.
Steve decided he didn’t like the woman. He didn’t need to let Mark know that, though.
“So Dylan has issues, huh?” he said coldly as the front door closed. Mark wasn’t looking at him. “He can be a great kid with a bright future when he’s this inspirational character who you’ve never met. But suddenly he’s dating your kid and he becomes some kind of parody of an adopted child who you don’t want anywhere near James. You fucking hypocrite.”
“Steve….”
“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare try and justify it. Your kid is not automatically better than mine just because he knows who both his parents are.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No? Then explain it to me, Mark. Because you were all for meeting Dylan and getting to know him, right, until he’s suddenly dating your son. Then he’s not good enough?”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“Oh, you didn’t need to.”
Mark sighed, clearly frustrated. Steve didn’t care.
“Look, Steve, my kids have had a sheltered life. That’s on me, because their mom abandoned them when they were still in diapers and I did my best to make sure nothing would ever hurt them again. That’s on me, okay? I take full responsibility. But they’re sheltered and so… so fucking naive. I’m terrified of letting them go off to college because I know how I failed as a parent. It’s not your kid specifically. I’d freak out about either of them dating a twenty-one-year-old. The fact that Dylan is—”
“What? Abused? Adopted? Clearly not white middle class?”
“Fuck you,” Mark snapped. “He’s an adult.”
“So is James.”
Mark slumped back against a counter, pushing his glasses up so he could close his eyes and massage them with his fingertips.
“Jesus.”
Steve saw red. “I have so had enough of you. I thought—”
“What? What did you think, Steve?”
“I thought you were better than this.”
“Forget it,” Mark muttered. “It’s not about Dylan at all, is it? You’re freaking out about the fact that our kids are dating each other and you’re projecting.”
“Oh, is that what I’m doing?” Steve demanded, aware that the sassy bitch he usually kept well contained was coming all the way out.
“I’m worried about James, you’re worried about Dylan, and that’s fine, but the issue here is us. Not them.”
Steve planted his hands on his hips. “I don’t think you’re the person I thought you were.”
“In that case, yo
u should get the fuck out of my house.”
Steve narrowed his eyes at Mark for a second, then turned on his heel and did exactly that.
Chapter Seventeen
“DYLAN, WAIT.”
James rushed after Dylan, only catching up to him when Dylan fumbled with his car keys as he dragged them out of his pocket.
“Please.”
“James… not now.”
“Please don’t go,” James said, begging, not caring if he sounded desperate. “Or take me with you. I don’t care. I just….” He grunted in frustration as he dragged his hands through his hair. “I don’t want anything from you. I just don’t want you to be on your own.”
Dylan stared at him for a long moment. Then he relented. “Get in.”
James let out a whooshing sigh of relief and let himself into the passenger side of the car. He had a hundred things he wanted to ask Dylan, to talk about, but he was prepared to keep his promise. This was not the time to press Dylan for answers.
They drove in silence for a while, not in any particular direction, then Dylan reached over and turned on the radio. It was tuned to a golden oldies station, and Dylan left it there, turning the music down low enough that they could talk over it, if they wanted.
After a while, James noticed they were heading out toward the national park. The Sequoia forest was about a forty-minute drive outside town, but James hadn’t spent a lot of time out there since he and Frankie were kids. He wasn’t the biggest fan of hiking or the great outdoors.
When they left the town limits, Dylan started to talk.
“When I was about thirteen, I got moved into a group home. It was supposed to be a ‘transition’ place for teenage boys, but it was a group home. They just tried to pretty it up as something else. After I arrived, there was a woman who was one of the counselors. Not like a therapist… more like a camp counselor, right? Her name was Caroline, and she decided for whatever reason that she liked me.”
James sat very still, listening very carefully. He got the impression Dylan wouldn’t be telling this story more than once.
“Over the next few months, she got closer and closer to me. She would pick me up after school, take me out to the diner for food, help me with my homework. I was so fucking starved for attention I lapped it up. No one really noticed or cared. She was very careful about not doing anything where people who were in charge could pick up on things.”
Dylan cracked his neck from side to side.
“I had just turned fourteen the first time I had sex with her in the back of her car,” he continued. “After that, she would sneak back into the home during the night and get me out of bed to go somewhere so we could fuck. She would talk about how we’d run away together, how she’d get me out of the shitty situation I was in and we could plan our lives just the two of us.”
“How old was she?” James asked.
“At the time, twenty-five.”
James nodded, pushing down his instinctive revulsion.
“I don’t know if she actually was planning on breaking me out of there, but about six months after it all started, I met Steve for the first time. I really, really resisted going with him because I thought I was going to run away with my girlfriend and he was stealing my chance of happiness.
“We had a family therapist from the moment Steve started the foster-to-adopt thing, and I had my own one too. It was my therapist, Sam, who helped me come to terms with the fact that I was groomed and abused and raped by Caroline, and that none of it was my fault.”
“Holy shit, Dylan.”
Dylan didn’t react. “Sam let it be my decision whether or not I told Steve, which I did. After a while. We decided together, as a family, to go to the authorities to report her. It turned out as soon as I left, she had moved on to another, younger, boy in the home. I had to testify against her in court.”
“Where is she now?”
“Prison,” Dylan said simply. “After the trial a few more boys came forward to say she’d abused and raped them too. Their trials added more time on to her sentence. She was only given five years for what happened to me, eight years total, so I expect she’ll be out soon.”
“What?” James demanded. “Five years for raping a child? That’s disgusting.”
“She had to register as a sex offender for life and can never work with children again. I have to be okay with that, James,” Dylan said, his tone turning to a warning. “I have to accept that she is being punished for what she did.”
James nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“The whole thing messed with my own perception of my sexuality for a long time,” Dylan continued. “I didn’t think I could be gay because I’d had what I thought was consensual sex with a woman. She messed me up, James. A lot. In the process of coming to terms with my sexuality, I had a lot of risky sex with men I didn’t know. I contracted an STD—not HIV—which I’ve had multiple all-clear test results from since it was treated with antibiotics.”
“Okay,” James said again, feeling dumb, numb with shock.
“I’m telling you all this because I want to be in a relationship with you. I want you to be my boyfriend, and I don’t want there to be things in my past that you’re left wondering about. I fucking hate talking about this, but… but… it’s important that you know.”
James nodded. “Pull over,” he said softly.
Dylan did as he was asked, finding a space on the edge of the road and killing the engine. He rested his forehead on fists that were still desperately clutching the steering wheel.
“I’m so fucked-up,” Dylan muttered. “You deserve so much better than this.”
James unbuckled his seat belt and reached over to do the same for Dylan. He gently nudged Dylan into sitting up, then pulled the lever to push the seat back as far as it would go. Then he crawled across the console and straddled Dylan’s lap.
Dylan huffed a laugh but wrapped his arms around James’s waist and buried his face in his neck.
“I think you’re perfect,” James murmured. “I love that you’re my boyfriend. I’m so, so sorry someone hurt you.”
Dylan sighed, low and weary. “It’s okay. Thanks. I’m still figuring stuff out, and it’s all good. You’re so good for me.”
“I’m pleased.” James tilted his head and met Dylan’s lips in a slow, easy, comforting sort of kiss.
Dylan feathered his fingers through James’s hair, gently keeping him in place as Dylan pushed for a little more. James slid into the kiss like a knife in butter, melting slowly against Dylan’s chest.
“Jay?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you want me to take you home?”
“Huh?” James pulled away enough to look Dylan in the eyes. “No, not at all.”
“Okay. Do you want to come back to my house?”
“Sure.”
“Do you want to have sex?”
James grinned. He wasn’t sure where Dylan had been going with that line of questioning, but he was definitely okay with where it ended up. “You sure?”
“Very.”
“Then yeah. I do.”
“Okay. Well, I can’t drive with you on my lap….”
James laughed and moved back to the passenger seat.
It was another half-hour drive back to the Morrell house, but the atmosphere in the car had changed. James relaxed, quite content that they had made some silent agreement not to talk about their dads. James didn’t even want to think about their dads. So he didn’t.
The house was still and silent when Dylan pulled up. He took James’s hand and let them in through the garage, not hesitating before heading up to his bedroom. James almost wanted to laugh when he shut the door behind them; it was probably only an hour ago that they were standing in his own room and James was thinking about telling Dylan I love you.
It wasn’t the right moment anymore. This was something else, something equally important and no less real.
James felt at home here now, and not just from the times he’d been
in Dylan’s room and they’d had sex. It was the time in between the sex, when James came over for an hour after Dylan had finished work, and they’d spend time talking or making out. Or when James sat and worked on his homework assignments while Dylan read a book or made a new playlist.
This room was where they could be alone, together, and no one disturbed them. It was quiet and peaceful and theirs.
James walked over to the bed, stripping off his outer layers and leaving them where they fell. Dylan held back, watching, and James wondered if he was going too far. The look in Dylan’s eyes told him he wasn’t, so he slowly stripped off his shirt and nudged his jeans down to pool at his feet.
“What do you want?” Dylan’s voice was a little rough. James counted that as a victory, along with the bulge in Dylan’s jeans.
James opened his mouth to ask, then hesitated.
Dylan crossed the room in seconds, pulling James against his still-clothed body.
“You can ask,” he said, holding James close and running his hands over James’s back. “Whatever you want, ask.”
“I don’t know,” James said with a little laugh. “Everything with you is so amazing.”
Dylan grinned as he drew James into a slow, easy kiss. With his eyes closed, and without breaking the kiss, James started to quietly remove Dylan’s clothes.
There was still something captivating about Dylan’s chest; the smooth lines of muscle and dark hairs, his chocolate-colored nipples that perked up under James’s touch.
“You know, I never really understood how attracted to men I am before I met you,” James said. Dylan laughed. “No, I’m serious. It was always this kind of abstract thing, like this type of body is hot to me.”
“Is my body hot?” Dylan teased.
“It’s more than that.” James spread his hands on Dylan’s chest and smoothed them over his shoulders, down his arms, and back up and over his back. “Of course I’m attracted to you, but I never knew being with a man would make me feel like this.”
Dylan smiled and leaned in, catching James’s lips in another slow kiss.
“Well, for selfish reasons, I’m glad you’re figuring that out now.”
