by Alexa Land
Sadly, the garage I rented for my van was three blocks away. “This takes ‘walk of shame’ to a whole new level,” I said, smiling for the camera as half the people we passed on the sidewalk whipped out their cellphones.
We’d almost reached the garage when a police car pulled to the curb beside us, and a deep voice asked, “Cole? What’s going on here?”
Cole peered into the patrol car and said, “Oh hey, Duke. This is River, I’ve told you about him. And that’s his roommate, Quinn. They got stuck in a birdcage. I’m going to drive them to Oakland, so River’s brother can cut them loose.” He straightened up and turned to Quinn and me. “Guys, meet my roommate, Duke Blumenthal.”
Duke and his partner, Finn Nolan, got out of the police car. Finn was turning red and biting his lip to keep from laughing, and I said, “Go ahead and let it rip. I know what this looks like.”
Finn burst out laughing, but Duke remained dead serious as he came up to us. He examined the cage, then asked me, “Why did you decide to put that thing on your head?”
“Oh, I didn’t decide to. Quinn did.”
“It was on account of the rabid hell beast,” Quinn explained. “Safety first, I always say. Well, okay, I don’t always say that. But I should. What I actually say is, ‘I never met a cocktail I didn’t like.’ Not that that’s relevant here. I haven’t been drinking. And I don’t know why I’m telling you that. Must be the uniform. It instantly forced a confession out of me.”
Duke stared at him for a long moment, and then he turned back to me and asked, “Would you like me to help you remove the cage?”
“No thanks. It’s stuck under my chin, and when we tried to yank it off, it hurt like hell,” I said. “My brother Skye is a metal sculptor, so he’ll be able to cut us free in no time.”
A clicking sound to my right caught my attention, and I turned to look at Finn, who was snapping photos with his phone. He was still chuckling as he said, “Sorry River, but I have to send a picture to my husband. Words won’t do this justice.”
I said, “Knock yourself out.”
Duke frowned at his partner, then asked us, “Where’s your vehicle?”
I told them it was in a garage at the end of the block, and for some reason, Finn and Duke accompanied us to our destination. Now that we had a police escort, we drew even more stares. Finn was walking behind us, and he said, “Um, River, you know there’s a huge wet mark on the back of your jeans, right? I mean, it’s probably the least of your worries right now, but….”
“Yeah, that’s anal lube,” I told him. “Quinn had the brilliant idea of applying it to my neck to help remove the cage. That resulted both in the lube sliding down my back, and in him getting his hands stuck in here with me.”
Finn grinned and said, “That makes sense, in an odd sort of way. But I can’t figure out why Quinn’s wearing safety goggles, galoshes, hot pink briefs, and matching body glitter.”
“That’s just Quinn being Quinn,” I said, and my roommate smiled at me as if I’d paid him a tremendous compliment.
“And the pizza pan?” Finn asked. “What’s that doing for you?”
“That’s a boner shield,” Quinn explained. “For the record, Darth Maul is standing at ease now, but I guess River doesn’t want to take any chances.” Duke stared at my roommate like he was completely insane, and I thought, welcome to my world.
Finally, we reached our destination. I handed Cole my keys, and as he unlocked the garage, he told the police officers, “We can take it from here, guys. Thanks for your help.” Finn wished us luck, and as they returned to their cruiser, Duke shot us one final, perplexed look over his shoulder.
I tossed the pizza pan into the back of the van, and when we tried to climb into the passenger seat, I hit a snag. I hadn’t realized just how far the tall, narrow cage extended past the top of my head until I whacked it on the doorframe. After a few more awkward attempts at stuffing myself inside, I said, “I’m not going to fit.”
Cole thought about that, and then he rolled down the window and said, “You could stick your head out like a dog. Normally, I wouldn’t suggest driving that way, but I don’t think we have a choice.”
“He is actually wearing protective headgear, so he’ll probably be fine,” my roommate pointed out.
I leaned over as Quinn and I climbed into the van, and Cole gingerly shut the passenger door with my head sticking out. As I fastened the seatbelt around my roommate and me, Cole said, “I’m a little concerned about this, because we’re going to be driving on the freeway.” He thought for a moment, then asked Quinn, “Can I borrow your goggles?”
“Sure,” Quinn said, “but you’ll never get them over his eyes. Your hands won’t fit through the door of the cage.”
“Oh, I know.” Cole removed the goggles, then extended the rubber strap as far as it would go and slid it over the cage, positioning them right in front of my eyes.
When he and Quinn started laughing, I asked, “What?”
“You look exactly like one of those cartoon minions from that movie,” Cole said. He snapped a picture on his phone and held the screen up for me. “See?”
I stretched up to glance at the photo over the top of the goggles. Then I laughed too and said, “Oh man, that’s exactly what I look like. Well hell, let’s get this over with.”
*****
When we let ourselves into the warehouse about forty minutes later, my brother took one look at me and literally fell on the ground laughing. “It’s like performance art,” he managed after a minute. “Or a really bizarre game of charades. Minion at a rave? Is that what you were going for? I can’t believe you drove all the way over here like that.”
“With his head sticking out the window of the catering van,” Cole said. “People kept pulling up next to us and taking pictures. One guy even called the number on the side of the van to ask what we were doing.”
Skye sat up and pushed his royal blue bangs out of his eyes, and then he exclaimed, “Cole!” My brother leapt to his feet, ran across the big warehouse, and gave him a hug as he said, “Are you and River back together? Please say yes.”
Cole returned the hug and glanced at me with a shy smile. “We’re taking it slow, but yeah.”
“That’s fantastic news,” Skye said. “Why am I the last to know?”
I told him, “You’re among the first to know, actually. We just got back from Napa this morning, which is where we reconnected.”
“Aw, that’s great! So how was the wedding?”
I shot my brother a look over the top of the goggles and said, “Can we catch up after you surgically remove Quinn from my cranium?”
“Okay, okay. Come over to my tool bench.” As we crossed the warehouse, we sidestepped the metal framework of an enormous sculpture. It was just starting to take shape, and I could begin to make out a man’s agonized face as he clawed his way up from some sort of imagined underground. His hands were two separate sculptures, and his head and shoulders rose up nearly fifteen feet from the cement floor. My brother occasionally did commissioned work, but he’d told me the metal man was just for him.
Skye started laughing again a moment later and stopped in his tracks. As he pulled his phone from the front pocket of his overalls and fired off a text, he said, “We can’t free you until Dare sees this. Do you know that when you walk, the round yellow bird at the top of the cage starts rocking wildly on its little swing? It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”
I raised a brow and said, “Seriously? You want me to wait like this until he gets here?”
“He just has to come downstairs. Dare and Haley and a couple other guys from the dance troupe are up on the roof, working on some choreography. I told them to get down here, stat.”
My brother-in-law and his friends came barreling into the warehouse just moments later. They all had a good laugh as I hauled Quinn around the warehouse for demonstration purposes, and apparently, the fake bird at the top of the dome enjoyed a vigorous ride on its swing
. Finally, my brother located a metal cutter and snipped the rim along the base of the cage in two spots. It seemed completely effortless. Cole grasped the front and back of the cage and spread it open a couple inches, and Quinn slid his hands out and exclaimed, “Well, that’s a relief!”
As Cole lifted the cage off my head, Quinn shook his arms out and did some stretches, and Dare asked him, “What are you wearing?”
“Rain boots and underpants.”
Dare grinned and pushed his damp, dark brown hair off his forehead. “I see. So, why are you wearing that?”
“Because I didn’t think it was a good idea to come to Oakland barefoot.”
“Of course. That totally explains it. And the body glitter?”
“That was just a happy accident,” Quinn said as he looked down at himself and patted his glittery flat stomach. “I was applying it to the wet paint on our living room walls with a hair dryer, and there was a lot of blow back. I guess I was pretty sweaty, because it stuck like glue. It looks cool, don’t you think? I should start wearing it regularly.”
Skye turned to me and exclaimed, “No fair! When you and I were roommates, you wouldn’t even let me paint our boring white walls, let alone glitter them! They would have looked so cool all blue and sparkly!”
“And then I could have lost that security deposit, too,” I said. “For the record, I didn’t ‘let Quinn’ do any of that. He went rogue while I was gone all weekend.”
Quinn turned to my brother and said, “I can help you glitter the warehouse if you want. I’ve really gotten the technique down.”
My brother’s eyes lit up, and he exclaimed, “We totally should! The guy who owns this place is super chill, he’d probably like it. He didn’t mind at all when my friend Christian painted that mural.” He gestured at a vivid cityscape at the south end of the large space.
While Quinn and Skye went over to another wall and started brainstorming ideas, I turned to Dare and said, “Could you find Quinn some clothes? Once he and your husband finish hashing out their plans for losing your security deposit, I want to try to herd him into some pants. Then I should see about getting some food in his belly. I don’t know if he’s eaten today. I’ll make lunch for y’all too, if you’re hungry.”
Dare grinned at me as he scratched his big bicep. “You really care about Quinn, don’t you?”
“Yeah, despite myself. He’s like a big, dopey puppy. Even if he drives me insane, I’d have to be heartless not to want to help him.”
“That’s sweet. You don’t have to go through the trouble of feeding all of us, though.”
“It’s no trouble,” I said. “I’ll just go to that great mercado down the street and see what I find. It’ll be fun.”
“Well, great! Thanks, River.”
Dare and the rest of the sweaty dancers turned their attention to getting themselves drinks of water, and I drew Cole into my arms and said, “Finally, a minute to ourselves! Thank you for helping me with the cat and driving me here. I know none of that was how you planned to spend your day off.”
“It’s better than what I had planned. Well, except for the cat, that was horrifying. Do you think he’s so enraged because of the tuxedo? I tried to remove it, but he wouldn’t let me.”
“He’s pretty much always like that, except with Conrad. He’s a one-man cat.”
“Aw. And now I actually feel sympathy for the little monster. He must miss his owner.”
“Well hell, now I feel sorry for him, too. That means I’ll probably try to pet him when I get home, even though I know for a fact I’ll pull back a bloody stump.” Cole smiled at me, and I ran a fingertip along his jaw as I said, “If you need to get back to the city, you can take my van. Quinn and I can take public transit when he’s ready to leave. Since he and Skye are heading into project mode, we might be here a while.”
“Actually, I’d like to hang out with you, if that’s alright. Besides this impromptu trip to Oakland, what do you have planned today?”
“I’m going to cook some soup and a few other dishes for Trevor and his family and deliver them to his house. After that, I have a date with a super hot guy.”
Cole smiled at that and said, “What a coincidence. So do I!” I grinned and kissed him, which was met with a chorus of ‘awwwww’ from the dancers.
After I cleaned up a bit in the restroom (and tied one of Skye’s sweatshirts around my waist to hide the big wet mark on my jeans), Cole and I headed out into the neighborhood. It was home to a large number of transplants from throughout Mexico and Central America, and the local businesses reflected that rich heritage. The open-air mercado was a particular favorite of mine. It was nestled under a freeway overpass and didn’t look like much at first glance. But like many things in life, it was most definitely worth a second look. It was part farmer’s market and part swap meet, and it also included several vendors cooking up dishes that made my mouth water.
I decided to forgo cooking lunch myself when we came across a woman selling handmade cheese tamales. I tried the sample she offered us and complimented her, then purchased a couple dozen to take back to the warehouse. As she packed them up, we had a lively conversation in Spanish about how Tamales Oaxaqueños from her hometown of Oaxaca differed from those in other parts of Mexico.
Cole and I wandered all throughout the market before finally heading back with armloads of delicious treats. In addition to the tamales, I’d purchased a big bag of ripe fruit, a dozen Jarritos sodas in every color of the rainbow, and a box of round, sweet buns called conchas, with crispy, pink sugar tops. “My sweet tooth totally got the better of me,” I said as we walked down the street side-by-side.
“Good. I’m looking forward to trying those pastries.” Cole glanced at me and said, “You know, you’re a lot more fluent in Spanish than I realized. Did your dad teach you some when you were a kid?”
“No, I taught myself. He was never interested in his family’s heritage, but I wasn’t willing to discard a huge part of who I am.”
Cole thought about that as we walked down the street. I tilted my face up and enjoyed the impossibly blue sky and the sunshine warming my skin. After a while, he said, “I think in some ways, I’m the opposite. My dad’s African-American family never approved of him marrying my mom. I don’t know if that was because she was white, or Jewish, or if they just didn’t like her in general. She never wanted to talk about it. Anyway, when I came along, they were indifferent to me at best, so I decided at a young age that I didn’t want anything to do with them. Reject people before they reject you. That seems to be a theme with me.” He glanced at me before directing his gaze to the sidewalk. “Maybe that’s why I moved out when we started having problems. I guess I was so sure you’d leave me that I wanted to beat you to the punch. But that was a really shitty thing to do, and I’m so sorry I hurt you like that, River.”
“I understand why you left. You’ve faced so much rejection in your life, from your relatives, from everyone in that shitty town you grew up in, and later from Hunter, who blindsided you when he ended your relationship. Why would you stick around and wait for it to happen again?”
“That’s so unfair to you, though. You’re not Hunter, and hell, looking back, I don’t even blame him for breaking up with me. We got together because we were the only two openly gay kids in all of Gomsburg, Idaho. We were never meant to be with each other forever.”
“That may have been what brought you together, but I know you loved him, Cole, and I know the end of that relationship tore you apart. You told me it took years to get over him. So please don’t feel guilty for being afraid of getting hurt again. I don’t blame you for bailing out of our relationship, and you shouldn’t blame yourself either.”
“You’re so nice,” he said quietly. “Nicer than I deserve.”
“I made plenty of mistakes, too. You and I both know that.”
“But still.”
After a few moments, I stopped walking and turned to him. “Can I propose something?”
“Sure.”
“It’s great that we’ve been talking about what happened with our relationship. We needed to do that, so we could clear the air. But we’re both carrying a lot of guilt around for the mistakes we made, and I don’t want us to get bogged down in that. So, here’s my suggestion: let’s treat tonight like a first date and consider it a fresh start for us. I’m not suggesting we pretend the past never happened. I’m just saying, let’s turn the page and move on to the next chapter of our lives. Instead of dwelling on what was, let’s try to focus on what’s before us. What do you say?”
Cole smiled at me and said, “Absolutely.”
Chapter Ten
“I think we’re ready.”
I’d spent several hours cooking after I got home from Oakland, then got cleaned up and took some food to Trevor and his family before meeting my friend Dante at his restaurant. Since it was closed on Mondays, he was letting me use it for my date with Cole. I stood at the edge of the dining room with him and said, “I can’t thank you enough for this.”
The restaurant was spectacular. Dante had built it from the ground up and spared no expense. Dark wood tables and booths and indigo walls provided a backdrop for some stunning artwork, including a gorgeous mural Christopher Robin had painted behind the sparkling bar. The room was lit to emphasize the art. The kitchen with its brick pizza oven was also front and center. It was open to the dining room, integrated as beautifully as the paintings, instead of tucked out of sight. Cooking as an artform. I loved that.
“You’re more than welcome. I like what you did with the place.”
“I’ll put it back the way it was when we’re done, I promise.” I’d moved the adjacent tables back a bit and adjusted the lighting to softly spotlight a table in the center of the dining room. I’d also ringed it with big bouquets of sunflowers. A low centerpiece of candles and mini sunflowers decorated the table, along with two place settings, and a wrapped gift waited for Cole on his plate.
