André
Page 23
The words love you sat there, right at the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them down and gulped hard. “Tomorrow then.”
Marcus clicked off and I pushed myself off the bed and to the bathroom to clean up. From sweetheart to I love you in one conversation? What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
Marcus
André was comfort. I figured it out the next time I came in town. The way he held me when he saw me, the way he drove with one hand laced with mine, the way anywhere we walked, he kept a hand laid protectively on my back, even though he was shorter. The way he praised everything I made, attempted to convince me to eat out so I wouldn’t bear the full burden of cooking, the way he worshiped every ounce of my body any time we were together. Yeah, it was official. I was a goner.
And the more I thought about it, the more all I wanted to do was give back to him like he’d given to me. What that meant, exactly, I wasn’t entirely sure.
André talked me into going out for dinner. So we did, hitting up Stan’s again so I could indulge not only in their wings but also in their catfish tenders, before heading home. André had me pressed against his side as we entered the lobby.
“Marcus?”
I whipped around, to face the couple sitting to the left of the door, and stumbled backward. André’s hand against my back firmed, keeping me upright, and he moved that much closer to me.
Dad stood and crossed the distance, stopping a few feet in front of us. He looked at me—and I couldn’t tell if that was concern, amusement, or what in his eyes—then turned to André and held out his hand. “Maurice Thompson. I’m Marcus’s father.”
André’s hand on me didn’t falter. “André Ellison. I’m Marcus’s boyfriend.”
That gasp? That was from my mom, who sounded like her world had been tilted on its axis. Why, I didn’t know, because my parents had known I was gay since I was eleven. I’d never introduced them to anyone, but that was only because frankly there was no one worth introducing them to.
At least, thankfully, for Dad’s part, he didn’t look the least bit surprised. “It’s good to meet you. Sorry for intruding like this, but we heard some things about our son and needed to check in on him.”
I felt André’s frown, felt him angle his head to look at me. No doubt there’d be nothing but questions on his face, because I surely hadn’t said anything to him. In fact, the only person I had spoken to was—
“Jake called you.” It wasn’t a question, because Jake was the only one other than Dr. Brenda who I’d talked to about this, and she wouldn’t have reached out unless she thought there was the potential for self-harm. And even then, I don’t know that she would have called my parents versus the police.
Dad at least had the grace to look a bit guilty, but Mom did not. She popped out of her seat and marched over to us. “And thank God he did. Jake also tells me this is the person you were working for during that temporary assignment over the summer.”
André nodded. “Yes, ma’am, that’s correct.”
“So you had designs on my son, is that it?” I could see her anger ratcheting up a level, not helped by André’s overly calm demeanor.
“Excuse me, and pardon my interruption.” I turned and there was Mr. Johnson, a walking stick in hand, standing proud and upright, and I don’t think I’d ever seen him not sitting before. He was the clear elder in the group, and my parents went quiet until he made his way to us. He laid a hand on André’s shoulder, and I watched my boyfriend—he’d said it, and I liked the sound of it—smile at him.
Mr. Johnson held a hand out to both of my parents and shook. “I’m Otis Johnson, the resident manager on duty, and have been since they opened this complex. I don’t know what’s going on, and it’s not my place to say, but this conversation is not appropriate in the lobby of my building. I kindly ask that you either go somewhere more neutral or, if Mr. Ellison is so inclined, to his apartment. But I cannot allow this conversation to continue in public.” He squeezed André’s shoulder again, tapped his cane hard on the ground once, and walked off.
Dad looped an arm around Mom’s shoulders and tugged her close. We all knew what had just happened was Mr. Johnson’s incredibly benevolent way of telling her she was out of line with her insinuations. After witnessing how obtuse André’s family could be, seeing the care Mr. Johnson showed him warmed me.
André broke the ice. “If you would like to continue this conversation, you’re more than welcome to follow me upstairs.”
Dad nodded, not giving Mom an opportunity to respond, and they followed us to the elevator bank. And André’s hand stayed on me the entire time.
The inside of the apartment had never felt cold before. And maybe that wasn’t fair, because it wasn’t cold per se. But it was tense, my parents’ concern warring with André’s confusion warring with my anger. It was a bad combination.
André offered them refreshments, passed around four bottles of water, then sat on the loveseat next to me while my parents took the couch. In all this time, I hadn’t said a word since confirming Jake had reached out to them. Was I mad? Confused? Betrayed? Yes, but none of them came close to the overriding one, the one I understood least. Relief.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” André started, “you indicated you had some concerns about Marcus?”
Oh, he’d gone super formal. I didn’t know if I liked it or not.
Dad gave a short nod and cleared his throat. “Well, as Marcus said, his friend Jake called us this past week. Said he was concerned about Marcus, and possibly about the guy he was seeing.”
André, who had been looking at me as Dad spoke, whipped his head around. “About me?”
“Said he was worried about Marcus being brainwashed and all that.”
Next to me, André dropped his elbows to his knees and leaned forward. “I’m sorry, I hate to keep going in circles, but I genuinely do not understand what’s going on.”
“I don’t want to work,” I blurted out.
André craned his head to look back at me. “What’s that, sweetheart?”
That he didn’t hesitate to call me sweetheart in front of my parents made my insides do a little happy dance. “I made the mistake, apparently, of telling my best friend that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work at all.”
“Then what do you want to do?” Mom asked, her voice softer and quieter than I had ever heard it.
I inclined my head toward André. “Take care of him.”
André bolted up, twisting his whole body to see me. “Say that again?”
I turned to him, running a hand down the side of his face, pausing at his cheek, grinning when he pressed his hand against mine and closed his eyes briefly, before grabbing it and setting it between us. “Baby, what are you talking about?” he asked again.
There was no help for the fidgeting I did before I spoke. “Look. This whole thing started when I was a kid. When it was too girly to prefer being in the kitchen or cleaning or taking care of people. I decided I wasn’t going to be that person who embarrasses my family, so I’d do something else. I would go, and I would make something of myself, and then people wouldn’t care about that stuff.”
I didn’t look at them, but I saw from the corners of my eyes the way my parents shifted at my words. They hadn’t necessarily meant to drive home that caretaking was a problem, but that didn’t change the reality of what had happened.
“When I started at Clarymore, I was still on that trajectory, still convinced that’s what I wanted to do.”
“What happened?” André asked, his voice almost a whisper.
“You did. Working with you, cooking for you, going home to you. That made me happier than anything I did at Clarymore. I was happier about winning Pennington for you than for me, even though it’s a feather in my cap. That didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was you getting what you needed.”
André ran a hand down his face. “Marcus, I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you lo—” Marcus? When the hell had he gotten back to calling me Marcus, versus baby or sweetheart? I dropped his hand and stood up, staring down at him.
André’s eyes were closed, defeat hanging on to his shoulders. He turned to my parents and looked at them, avoiding me completely. “Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, I am so sorry. I met your son in unusual circumstances, and honestly, I came to rely on him too much.”
“André, what are you saying?”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I don’t know what happened, if I said or did something to make him feel this way, but I promise you I never wanted this for him.”
“I’m a grown man, André. I know what I’m doing. I know what I want.” I yanked on his wrist and pulled him to stand. “What the hell?”
André gripped the back of my neck, but even with his lips next to mine, there was nothing romantic about this. “Don’t. This is not what you want, and this is not what you need. Baby, I am so sorry.”
I swatted his hand away. “Don’t you fucking baby me. I need you to believe me. This is what I want.”
“But it’s not what I want, Marcus.”
I stepped back and shoved my hands deep in my pockets. André’s eyes were sad, resigned, and didn’t hold a candle to how I felt.
“Fine, then. I respect that. Mr. Ellison, I wish you well.” I nodded to my parents, then got the hell out of that place.
Chapter Twenty-Four
André
I stared at the closed door for long moments, willing it to open. When it didn’t, I finally heaved out a breath and walked back to the living room, where Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were still sitting on my couch. If anything, I guess I could take some cold comfort in the fact that they looked as absolutely stunned as I felt.
“When will he return?” his mom asked, and I raised a brow at her.
“With respect, Mrs. Thompson, I don’t believe he has any plans to.”
“But isn’t he staying with you?”
“Yes, and I doubt that will make a difference.”
“You could force him to come and pick up his stuff.”
“I wouldn’t do that to your son.” My voice had gone soft, reverent, barely a whisper out of my lips.
I sank back onto the loveseat, the vision of Marcus there and gone so quickly flashing through my head like a mirage. Maybe that entire thing had been a fever dream? That’d be preferable, but the Thompsons were still sitting on my couch, staring at me. Which meant I’d lost him.
“When are you going to reach out to our boy?” Mrs. Thompson asked.
I chuckled. “What makes you think Marcus would take my calls?”
She inclined her head in acknowledgment. “So that’s it? You’re just going to give up on him?”
I frowned. “Mrs. Thompson, what are you saying? I thought the whole reason you guys showed up tonight was because I was taking advantage of your son.”
“We were wrong.”
Mr. Thompson straightened, ready to argue, and Mrs. Thompson held a hand up. “Maurice, don’t. Our baby is in love with this man, and wants to be with him.”
“At the expense of his career?”
“The world won’t end. It didn’t for me,” she said with a sad smile. Mr. Thompson rolled his lips in, then trailed his hand down her face much the same way Marcus did with me.
“But that was different.”
“The circumstances may have forced my hand, but it gave me the excuse to do what I’d wanted anyway.”
Mr. Thompson frowned, then shifted to face her. She kept going. “Fact is, I’d wanted to be a stay-at-home wife, homemaker or whatever they’re called now. You said we couldn’t afford it, and with our loans and whatnot, I agreed.” She chuckled nervously. “It’s why I pushed so damn hard in the beginning to get them paid down. So I could stop working sooner rather than later.”
He laughed and set a hand on her knee. “I remember those days.”
She cradled his hand in hers and kept going. “When we had Marcus I had to work, and it was okay because we had this perfect little boy to come home to. And then I got sick, and Marcus saved my life.”
“How?” I didn’t want to interrupt, because this moment felt too private, like I was an intruder in my own home. But I couldn’t turn away, and I needed to know.
She smiled at me, all big and bright and joyous. “He loved having me at home. Cooking with me. Cleaning with me. We’d sit there and make up stories, debate whatever was going on for the day and everything. And—” she waved her hands around before giving her husband a sheepish grin “—at some point my being home became the norm. Maurice never asked me to go back.”
“What happened? Because that doesn’t sound like the Marcus I know.”
“He did,” Mrs. Thompson said, pointing to Marcus’s dad. “He didn’t like it, and he wanted me to toughen him up and stuff.” She gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “Marcus probably thinks I resented being at home. If anything, I resented not having my buddy home more. Not that Jack and Jill wasn’t good for him,” she rushed to add, “but I was still salty about it.”
“I worried about over-feminizing my son,” Mr. Thompson broke in. “Maybe too much, but this world only accepts so many deviations from the norm. Black and openly gay are already two of them. Not that he’d told us, but we knew. I won’t apologize for not wanting him to become the ‘girl’ in the relationship.”
Oh boy. Marcus had been spot-on with his concerns, but... I got what his dad was saying. It came a little too close to matching my own fears, for better or for worse. Was I emasculating Marcus with the secret thrill I’d gotten when he said he wanted to stay home and take care of me? Was I trying to turn him into the “woman” of the relationship? I knew, deep down, that those were old school, patriarchal, misogynistic-as-fuck thoughts, and I liked to think I was above them.
That hadn’t stopped the concerns from damn near choking me, not just tonight, but every time Marcus was here. Every time he said he didn’t mind cooking or straightening up after us. So yeah, I did just reinforce all the bullshit he’d spent his life trying to deny. He’d been, somehow, for reasons beyond me that I could only be grateful for, comfortable with me. He’d cared enough to let that wall down and tell me what he really wanted, and my response had been to tell him that it was wrong, it was a lie, and that he didn’t really want it. Oh yeah, bang-up partnership material.
“Mr. Ellison, you told me you and my son had met under different circumstances. How’s that?” Mr. Thompson asked, and I startled. I’d forgotten they were there.
I swallowed and tried to smile, a tough ask under the circumstances. “With respect, sir, I’m going to decline to answer that question.”
At that, he busted up laughing, the sound rich and loud and so damn much like Marcus it made my heart clench. “Say no more, I understand.”
“Well, I don’t,” Mrs. Thompson groused.
“Yes, you do.”
She paused, like she was thinking about it, before her face cleared and she blushed. “Oh. Yes, I understand. But when are we going to see Marcus?” Right back to the point.
“Ma’am, the most I can do is send him a message. If he doesn’t want to talk, I’ll leave his belongings with Mr. Johnson at the front; he can pick them up at his leisure. I am not going to force him to speak to me.” Not after what I’d done.
“Will you call us after you’ve spoken to him?”
I thought about it for the briefest of minutes before shaking my head. “No, I won’t. One person has already betrayed his trust, and I won’t add to it.”
She looked at me as if she wanted to argue, but when I glanced over to Mr. Thompson, I saw nothing but grudging respect on his face. He stood, pulling his wife up with him, and shook my hand. “It was good to meet you, Mr. Ellison. I look f
orward to doing it again soon.” He walked toward the front door, his hand on his wife’s back, and I saw how he rubbed little circles with his thumb, much like I did Marcus. Whatever he whispered to her, she nodded, and I shut the door behind them.
I wanted to rage, to scream and punch something and curse my damn self. Instead, I called Fiona. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
A laugh burst out of me. “Why does something have to be wrong?” God, I sounded just like Tracey.
“André, in all the years I’ve known you, you have never unilaterally called me out of the blue. So something has to be wrong.”
Definitely just like Tracey. I thought about that, and honestly, it was sad. I did count Fiona as one of my closest friends, but I hadn’t behaved that way. I needed to do better.
“You’re right,” I told her, “and I’m sorry. And you’re right again, something is wrong.”
She paused, then said, “Wait. Isn’t Marcus supposed to be with you?”
“Yes.”
“I take it he’s not?”
“Correct.”
“On my way.”
She showed up almost half an hour later, and I was about to tease her, but I smelled the heavenly scent of lush chocolate gooiness and shut the hell up.
“Those for me?” I asked, pointing at the pan of brownies she was carrying.
“You sounded despondent, so I figured we could go with some emergency rations on top of our talk. Besides, Brian will literally eat them all if I don’t take them.”
“Thanks. Really, thanks.” I opened up the door and she walked inside, setting the pan on the counter and slicing up two hefty portions. While she did that, I poured us each some Leopold’s, and we sat on the couch.
“So what’s going on?” she asked without preamble. I told her everything, that things had gotten more and more domestic, his parents showing up just—God, was it only an hour or so ago?—and how everything had fallen clear the hell off the rails.
“So, wait,” Fiona said when I was finished. “He asked you how you felt about stay-at-home parents a few weeks ago and it didn’t occur to you that he might be talking about himself?”