Finally, he drew a breath to speak, the emptiness in his chest beginning to ache.
“I want you to know, I’m not….” He hesitated, clearing his throat against the tight, choked sound of his own voice. He knew he owed Gavin an explanation but be couldn’t bring himself to put it in any sort of terms that would make it any more palatable. Not without telling Gavin things he couldn’t bring himself to say, things he wanted to leave far in the past. “Look, I keep myself informed. I know how to be safe. I don’t have any irrational fear that makes me think I can’t… breathe the same air or some ignorant bullshit like that. It’s not prejudice, I swear. I just….”
God, why was this so difficult? He hardly knew Gavin; it shouldn’t be this hard to walk away. He turned to meet Gavin’s hopeless eyes, swallowing hard as he pushed away memories and grief. “I can’t.”
Shoving himself away from the patio door, refusing to let himself pause or falter, he grabbed his keys, heading for the hallway that would lead him out the door.
He paused at the entrance to the hallway, looking at Gavin a final time. “There’re reasons I’ve been alone all this time.” He saw the stunned look dawn upon Gavin’s face as he began to comprehend that Derrick was leaving, and that ache in his chest grew tighter.
“Thanks for the really good time. I like you, Gav. A lot. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”
Hanging his head, unable to meet Gavin’s eyes any longer, he walked without stopping to the door and closed it behind him.
In the elevator, he pushed the stop button between floors, grinding the heels of his hands against his eyes. When he felt he could be calm again, he restarted the elevator, letting it take him down to his truck.
DERRICK DROVE HOME with his white-knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel, trying not to shake.
Fuck.
Fuck.
His pulse raced, heart pounding. His breath came short and rapid, as though he’d just finished a long sprint. Nausea churned in his gut, made worse by the bitter tang of adrenalin souring his breath.
He’d had enough anxiety attacks by now to be familiar with the feeling, but this was shaping up to be the worst he’d had in years. If it kept up, he wouldn’t be able to drive. He tried to tamp down the feeling, though he knew it was a futile effort. Full dark had fallen; it wasn’t safe to pull to the side of the road. His only hope was to get home quickly, before it got worse.
The anxiety mounted as he arrived home, and Chelsea came dashing out the dog door to greet him through the fence around the back yard. He paused only to fill Chelsea’s food dish, ignoring her disappointment that he didn’t acknowledge or pet her, before heading into the bedroom. On the top of the dresser was a small, antique clock that had been a wedding present when his grandparents had gotten married.
He opened the door that gave access to the gears within and, from the small space beneath the clockworks, withdrew a small bag of marijuana.
Six months before her death, Derrick had begun risking arrest to acquire marijuana for his grandmother. She’d protested at first, but the only other option had been dangerous levels of opiate painkillers. Gram hadn’t wanted her mind dulled in those final months, especially when his Gramps had been on such a rapid decline with his Alzheimer’s.
The weed had helped. She’d continued to use it until after Gramps had died and she’d had her final Christmas with Derrick. After that, her final few weeks were spent in a drugged daze, barely aware of Derrick and the hospice nurse who came to help take care of her.
The year after her death, Derrick began to experience anxiety attacks. He saw a therapist for a while, but she didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. All she wanted him to do was wallow in memories, and he refused to do that. Instead, he’d done some research and found that in other states, medical marijuana was being used to treat anxiety disorders, without the potential side effects of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. When Michigan finally passed their medical marijuana act, he got his license. Coping with the attacks since had been easier.
Thankful that the next day was Sunday, he sat in an armchair in the corner of the bedroom, tamping the grass into a small pipe and lighting it. If he’d had to work the next day, he wouldn’t have allowed himself to smoke. The effects never lingered that long, but he still made certain not to take any chances. If he had a particularly bad attack during the week, he rescheduled his jobs for the next day.
The marijuana calmed the racing of his heart and shortness of breath. The gut-twisting sense of falling started to abate. He stopped once he felt steadier, well before he began to get high. He put the pipe aside and, leaning his head against the back of his chair, closed his eyes.
With calm came a hollow feeling of regret. Regret for the lost opportunity of—whatever had been developing between Gavin and himself. Regret that he’d never know what it might have become. Regret that the short period of excitement was over and now he’d have to go back to the way things had been and find a way to live within his old routine.
Regret that he’d walked away.
He wasn’t used to having regrets. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. He’d always known what he wanted, what was right for him. He took his time, reached his decisions with slow, careful deliberation, and once he’d decided, he moved forward without hesitation.
He didn’t look back.
I shouldn’t have left.
The thought nagged him as he mechanically showered and brushed his teeth, and gave Chelsea a few perfunctory pets before climbing into bed. She lay beside the bed, opting to remain close to him rather than sleeping in her dog bed in the corner of the living room. As the hours passed without rest, Derrick rolled onto his stomach and hung his arm over the side of the bed, stroking her short, sleek fur. His thoughts continued to churn just short of the panic he felt before.
I shouldn’t have left.
He lay there with that one thought haunting him until an early dawn lightened the August sky. He spent Sunday on the sofa, Chelsea hovering watchfully nearby, not paying attention to the Tigers game. Staring at the television without really seeing it, he tried to fit the events of the past week into the context of his everyday life and make sense of it.
Why had he ever let himself be attracted to Gavin in the first place? It wasn’t like him. He’d gotten so used to shutting down any hint of interest he might feel toward another person that to do so was second nature. He didn’t ignore the attraction he felt for other people; he simply never let himself feel attraction to begin with.
Why now? Why Gavin? Of all people, why Gavin?
It made no sense in the pattern of the life he’d built. It went contrary to everything Derrick had made of himself over the last decade.
He had several beers and went to bed for another restless night filled with too many thoughts.
He was better off out of the situation, he decided somewhere in the middle of the night. With that resolve, he pushed the nagging voice of regret to the back of his mind. What had happened was a fluke, an aberration. Now he could put it behind him as a lesson learned and get back to the life that made sense to him.
Groggy from lack of sleep, he rose and went about his morning routine with robotic precision.
The familiarity and organization of it all was wrong. Empty. Uninteresting. Had it always felt this way? The last month, he’d felt more alive, more awake, than he had in his entire adult life. What he had always known no longer seemed to be enough, now that he was aware there was more. But more included risk; terrifying, unpredictable, uncontrollable risk.
Which is the entire point, dumbass, he scoffed at himself as he loaded up his truck. You’re better off playing it safe.
He’d been just fine, these last ten years, without those sorts of complications. Forget LeeAnn and her view-from-the-gallery advice. Who was she to waltz in after only seeing him a few times over a decade and assess the way he should be living? He had friends, he had activities, he had hobbies and interests and a job he enjoye
d. He had a life he liked.
Why didn’t that feel like it was enough anymore?
But the risk….
He knew it wasn’t like when he’d been a kid, first learning about the spectre of AIDS on the evening news his parents and grandparents had watched. HIV was no longer an automatic short-term death sentence. These days, HIV positive people, with the right medications and lifestyle, had a life expectancy that wasn’t far below the average.
But he also knew there were strains of HIV that were drug-resistant and virulent, progressing rapidly to AIDS.
And he knew that AIDS was an ugly way to die.
The thought of watching Gavin die threatened to trigger another anxiety attack. He couldn’t think about it.
It was strange, he thought, as he pulled out of the driveway and headed for the lumberyard. His own safety wasn’t even a concern. He knew he’d be conscientious about using protection, and he knew Gavin would be, also, despite whatever had happened with his ex. He didn’t doubt it for an instant.
That wasn’t the issue. It wasn’t what kept him from obeying the nagging voice inside which told him to call Gavin. It wouldn’t be silenced, despite his resolve. It told him to apologize and beg Gavin to meet for coffee so they could talk things over.
But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t.
He was better off, he reminded himself. Better off alone than involved in something messy. Something risky.
Mustering a placid if insincere smile, he paid the clerk and went outside to wait by his truck.
Miss Ingrid was not a paying client.
She lived just down the block in the neighborhood of nearly identical red-brick houses Derrick lived in, and she had been his grandmother’s closest friend for over forty years. She and Gram had met twice a week for coffee and gin rummy. Her husband had died when Derrick was sixteen, and Gram had asked him, as a favor to her, to do some repairs and maintenance around Miss Ingrid’s house.
He’d never stopped. He’d repaired her appliances, used his contractor’s discount to get her wholesale pricing to replace things when needed, rebuilt her bathroom floor after a leak had caused it to rot out, and installed her carpet. And he’d never charged her a cent for labor.
When her eyesight got too poor for her to drive, he began taking her to the grocery store once a week. She, in turn, repaid him with occasional batches of amazing Swedish baked goods. If there was one person left in this world beside Devon who was the next-best-thing to family for Derrick, she was that person.
This year she needed new shingles on her roof before the fall rains began. The next time she’d have to have her entire roof replaced, and he’d have to arrange for another contractor, one with an actual crew, to do the work. But this job he could do by himself.
As lumberyard employees loaded his truck with packs of shingles, he realized, in her mid-eighties already, odds were high Miss Ingrid would never need to have her whole roof replaced.
Shit.
Working up on the roof forced Derrick not to get lost in his own thoughts. He had to concentrate or risk injury. Smashing his thumb with a hammer was the least of his worries when he could take a twelve-foot fall and break his neck. Though August turned out to be cooler than usual, working in the open sun was still brutal, and he made a point of coming down frequently for plenty of water and time to cool off before climbing back up. It wasn’t safe to think, and so he didn’t. He worked until nearly sundown, when the darkening sky made it impossible to continue. Then he came down, ate the dinner Miss Ingrid insisted on making for him, and drove back home to shower and collapse in bed, too weary to think.
That got him through to Wednesday evening, when he finally finished Miss Ingrid’s roof.
“You’ve been quiet this week,” she said, sitting at the table with a cup of after-dinner coffee while Derrick was still eating. Her face was deeply wrinkled, and her eyes were the most amazing shade of dark blue Derrick had ever seen. Her skin had a fine, luminescent quality that confirmed for him the gorgeous young woman in the black and white photos lining her hallway walls was her. “Well, quieter than usual, at least. It has always been hard to drag words out of you.”
She might require a walker to get around some days, but her mind was still as keen as the day he’d first met her fifteen years ago.
“Yeah,” Derrick muttered, swallowing the last of the delicious stuffed cabbage rolls and gravy. “I’ve been busy. Lot on my mind.”
“Trouble with a girl?” A hint of fond amusement colored her lightly accented voice.
Anyone else, he would have shut down and told them not to ask personal questions, but not Miss Ingrid. Even before he’d moved in with his grandparents, he’d been raised with an old-fashioned, deferential respect for his elders, and Miss Ingrid in particular merited it. Derrick liked her too well to bring himself to be so blunt with her. So he let her pry, knowing she didn’t do it often. She never pushed, and she never did so just to be nosy. She was concerned about him, and he felt he owed it to her to allow her that.
Still, he wasn’t ready to talk about it. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be.
“No.” He shook his head, wiping his mouth with one of her fine cloth napkins. Whenever he came to dinner, she treated him like Important Company, serving the meal on her best china and table linens. No matter how many times he reassured her it wasn’t necessary, she insisted.
Bah! Humor an old woman who doesn’t get company much these days!
“No, Miss Ingrid. Got nothing to do with a girl.”
“Trouble with a boy?” Derrick choked mid-sip as he drank water out of a crystal goblet, coughing and staring at her with wide, watering eyes as she dropped a wicked wink.
She waved a dismissive hand at his spluttering discomfiture, her amusement subsiding a little. Then she reached over and squeezed his hand. “I know about such things. Love—even the sort of love that makes others raise their eyebrows—is not a modern invention.”
Derrick blushed, ducking his head. “Miss Ingrid, I….”
She leaned back, looking at him with affection and sipping her coffee. “You do not have to talk if you do not want to. I am being a meddling old biddy and I know it. I simply wished to make it known that if you did, you will not find me shocked or disgusted as you would so many others my age.”
Derrick looked down at his empty plate, his heart racing with the feeling of being put on the spot, exposed for all the world to see. It wasn’t true, and he knew it, but that didn’t stop his deep-rooted sense of privacy from cringing in agony.
“How did you know?” he asked softly. He didn’t talk about personal issues with people. He liked his privacy. But now, an unfamiliar yearning settled in his chest, to share his burdens with someone who might understand. He couldn’t talk with Devon; the HIV issue would concern him deeply. Some of the kids he worked to get off the streets, even at such a young age, were HIV positive. He’d be far too concerned for Derrick’s safety to give Gavin any sort of reasonable chance.
She shrugged, serene as she sipped her coffee. “I didn’t. It was merely a lucky guess. You have been too much alone, all these years since your grandparents passed on. You have not brought any girls home, which I thought perhaps meant you were being… discreet.”
He shook his head in adamant denial at the implication he’d been living in the closet. “No. No. I have been alone. This is all new. Really, really new. And it’s… there’s problems.”
“He does not feel as you do?” Miss Ingrid rose and poured him a cup of coffee as he pushed his plate away.
Derrick snorted, picking up his cup. “If I had the first clue what I was feeling, maybe I could answer that. No. That’s not it.”
She tilted her head, staring at him over the rim of her cup without speaking, not asking the obvious question.
He blurted out the answer anyway. “He could be sick. And I’m not sure I could handle that. Not again.”
“Ah.” Miss Ingrid bowed her head, and her lips moved silently for a moment
. Derrick knew she was murmuring a short prayer for the souls of his departed grandparents.
She, more than anyone, knew what those years from the time he was eighteen to the time he was twenty-one had been like. She’d been the one to take over the care of his grandparents for an hour or two here and there, pushing him out the door when he became overwhelmed. It had been Miss Ingrid he’d turned to for advice when, not long after he turned twenty, he had broken down, muffling sobs with his fist in the basement one day because he could no longer cope with caring for both of them full-time. Finally, ashamed and defeated for not being able to handle it alone, he’d hired a nurse at her urging, to help so that he could give himself a break by working. His choice to start his own business had followed. It had been the result of a decision to keep his hours flexible so that he could continue to take care of his grandparents, and that, too, had been her idea.
Miss Ingrid had been there for the funerals for his grandparents, and then two years later, for Derrick’s brother’s when he’d died in Iraq. From a discreet distance, in her quiet, kind way, she’d watched him recover from the exhaustion and hopelessness of those years. With her encouragement, he’d built himself back up after each and every loss.
“All love carries a risk,” she said finally, looking up.
He nodded, swallowing. “I—I know that. I’m just not sure I’m up for taking on that sort of risk.”
“You would rather remain alone?” Her voice lifted incredulously, and Derrick shrugged with a small smile. No one ever seemed to understand why he, or anyone, would want to be alone.
Instead of trying to explain, he drawled with exaggerated Southern charm, “Well, now, ma’am, who could be lonely with a pretty girl like you just down the block?”
She laughed, blushing in spite of herself. “Your flattery won’t work on me, young man! Set your sights on someone your own age!”
Then she sobered, giving him a knowing look that said she both knew he had evaded the question and that she wouldn’t push it if he didn’t want to answer.
Inertia: Impulse, Book One Page 9