Homebird

by Amy Lane

  “And Todd and Millie. And he wasn’t put off by your scary bearded brother-in-law who doesn’t speak.”

  “Not even a little. I swear to God, Cameron, he got Todd to smile. Four times.”

  “You lie! I didn’t know the guy had teeth!”

  Crispin rolled his eyes. “We took him out drinking for his bachelor party, remember? We saw his teeth when he sang karaoke.”

  “God.”

  Another shared shudder.

  “Yeah,” Crispin said. “So we got to see him smile without hearing Nickelback. Win! Anyway—Luka’s awesome. I… uh… really like him.”

  Cam sighed, and Crispin negotiated the irritating U-turn that got them to the slowest Del Taco in Northern California. But at least it was nearby.

  “Like him?” he asked pointedly.

  “I don’t want to talk about the other word,” Crispin said, but it didn’t feel like he was salvaging his dignity. It felt like he was trying to save his heart by holding up a bulletproof nickel in front of a cruise missile.

  “Great. Because not talking about it is going to save you, but go ahead.”

  Crispin grunted and rolled down his window. “I’ll have three epic cali steak and guacs, one epic chicken avo, and a classic chicken burrito.” He paused and looked at Cam. “Are we getting sodas?”

  “Fuck ’em—let ’em buy their own, ’cause it’s a pain in the ass.”

  “Okay,” Crispin said into the intercom. “That’s three diet cokes, a root beer, and an iced tea, unsweetened. All medium. Thank you.”

  The cashier rattled off the total, and Crispin rolled up the window against the gray foggy day. There were about five cars in front of them, and given Del Taco’s drive-through, that gave them about fifteen minutes.

  “You don’t eat,” Cam muttered. “You’re ordering all their diet stuff.”

  “I don’t do the fast part of the treadmill, and I’m shorter than all of you. If I ate like Link, I’d weigh 400 pounds.”

  “Okay, fine. So we’ve covered he’s awesome, he’s amazing, and you’re trying to stay fit. Why’d you look so sad on Friday night? That’s what I want to know. I’m with Link here—we gave him a perfectly good Crispin, and I’ve seen you look shy, and out of your depth, and like you were thinking of running away from us screaming. But I’ve never seen you sad. How’s he going to break you?”

  “I finally know the thing,” Crispin told him, trying to put it into words.

  “What thing?”

  “The thing that makes him wander. The thing that’ll make him leave. And… it’s not small. It’s… it’s huge. It’s… I mean, we’re both broken in the same places, but… but I took ten years. I had my sister, and then I had you guys, and then Todd. I had the house, and I had to stay put, and I had… had home. The stupid dog, the idiot cat—I had all these things, and I used them all to paste my heart back together one more time and say, ‘Here. It’s doing more than beating. It’s having a good time! I can have an affair with a hot guy in Germany and it might not shatter into a million pieces.’ So I know how to fix myself.”

  Cam grunted. “I could argue—but I won’t. I want to know the other part of that sentence. What’s his thing?”

  “He… he thinks leaving, traveling, whatever, will keep his heart safe. So… so it’s like the opposite of me.”

  “Are you sure you’re an accountant?” Cam asked. “That sounded like… psychotherapy poetry, really. It was gorgeous.”

  “I have the same degree you do,” Crispin retorted. Then, because it was only fair, “But I have it from a slightly shittier college, so I’m not sure it means as much.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about the shittier college, local boy. I’m the one who let myself get lured from a Fortune 500 company to Klosky’s and decided to stay there—”

  “Why was that again?” The next car in front of them moved up, and Crispin let his foot off the brake and coasted one car closer to the window. “I mean, isn’t your entire family back east?”

  “Asked and answered,” Cam said sharply. “But let’s get back to Luka, because this sounds bad. I mean, it took us years to get you to travel. So that’s, like, four years you spent hiding in Sacramento begging people not to look at you or you might get attached.”

  Crispin tried to remember those years, when he finished his degree and then worked for Klosky’s while trying to parent Millie through the rest of high school and her tumultuous first few semesters of college. “That’s fair,” he admitted. “I had Millie, and she was a handful, and just watching a movie hurt. I accidentally caught Fried Green Tomatoes on cable one night and had to call in sick to work the next day because I couldn’t stop crying. So, yeah. Took me four years to be a semifunctional human being. I mean, Luka’s sort of got me beat. He went to college, had sex, sold his possessions, decided to pursue philosophy as a calling—you gotta admit, that’s pretty brave.”

  “Not hardly. It’s pretty much exactly what you were doing, only with more sex and more fun.”

  “Isn’t that braver?”

  Cam shrugged. “I mean, there’s more sex, so I’m not sure I can’t say his way’s not better. I’m just saying you were right. It looked like you guys were living different lives, but you were just learning to deal with the same damage. Question is, has he fixed his damage enough?”

  “No,” Crispin said promptly and ignored the giant pain—not ache—saying it out loud caused in his heart. His heart was going to have to toughen up if he was going to survive the Luka-pocalypse. “I mean, we might be able to fix it, if he gives me some time. He might learn to trust, to stay. But I might have to let him go and come back too.”

  Cam groaned, and Crispin pulled up one more spot.

  “What are you whining about?” Crispin wanted to know. “I’m the one who’s going to get my heart weedwacked when he walks out the door and maybe….” All his flippancy died. “Maybe doesn’t come back.”

  “Yeah, that’s great. You’ll get your heart weedwacked, and I’ll….” Cam let out a breath. “I’ll fool myself that I even have a chance.”

  Oh. Oh shit.

  “Cam?” Oh, he hesitated to say it, but it needed to be said.

  “Yes, I’m still engaged to Darla, and yes, I still think I love her, and no, treating her like a consolation prize does not make me a prince. Have we covered everything?”

  Crispin let out all his objections in one big breath. “No, I think you’ve got about everything there. Way to cover your bases.”

  Cam groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. “I do love her,” he said, and Crispin believed him. “I’d break it off if I didn’t. And no, it’s not like, ‘I love her, but we’re not great in bed.’ We’re great in bed. But… but I’m dreaming about your mouth. And… uh, other mouths.”

  “Who?” Crispin asked, hoping please God, let it not be Link or Ray or someone who was taken.

  “Gah! Jamie! Man, he looks at you with that hurt-puppy thing going, and I just want to buy him a drink and commiserate and… well, I don’t have any idea what comes next. I’ve started to look at porn, but—”

  “I watched porn for ten years,” Crispin muttered. “Believe me, that’s nothing like how real people work.” He pulled up to the drive-through window and rolled down his own unconsciously. “I’m serious. If you have to have yoga, a trapeze, and a penis extension, it’s not real people sex.”

  “That’ll be $35.27,” the twentysomething young man with the goatee and the Hello Kitty earring said through the windows. “And thanks for the info. I’ll make sure my girlfriend knows the trapeze is out.”

  “Gah!” Crispin handed over his card, mortified, and Cam lost his shit next to him.

  “Yeah, porn is really not the way to go,” the kid said, nodding wisely. “If you want to know about sex, start with a kiss and consent and see what happens next.”

  Crispin managed a weak laugh and looked over at Cam, who had sobered. “Did you hear that?”

  “God, I hate you. Yes, I heard that. Bu
t first I’d have to….” He sighed, and Crispin took his card back and got the tray full of drinks from the clerk.

  “Break up with your girlfriend,” Crispin said levelly. “Or, you know, just give it up as a fantasy. It’s not different than giving up other girls for her, you know that, right?” He handed the tray to Cam, who put it on the floor.

  “I know that,” Cam said, the laughter gone.

  “Is he having feelings for a guy?” the clerk asked, and Crispin tried to regret making him a part of this.

  “He’s curious,” Crispin told him. “And I think he’s got feelings for a bartender, and it’s sort of blowing his mind.”

  “Bartenders are sexy,” the boy said, nodding with approval as he handed over two giant bags full of burritos. “I mean, male or female. It’s like dating a walking ball of charisma, right?”

  “I think so,” Crispin said, completely sincere.

  “Did you want any hot, medium, or mild sauce with any of that?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Then have a nice day—and happy dating. And remember—porn isn’t real.”

  “Thank you!” Crispin said brightly before he pulled way. “Now that was a crying shame,” he said as he negotiated the parking lot.

  “That we’ll never be able to go back there again?” Cam asked, completely serious.

  “Let’s make Link come here from now on. We’ll go to Chipotle. We’ll never tell him why.”

  “I’m good with that,” Cam said, just as serious as Crispin. Crispin found his way to the main road and started back to the little office building in old town Fair Oaks. “Crispin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You really are my best friend. I mean, if I had to choose between being your best friend and being your boyfriend, I… I think I’d pick best friend. I’m not sure what that means—”

  Crispin sighed, his heart in his throat. “It means it’s going to be your job to pick me up when shit goes south,” he said, knowing it would come.

  “I promise.”

  “Good. Can we talk about something else for a while? A movie or something? Crying in my burrito is no way to get shit done.”

  So they did; they moved on. It wasn’t until after lunch, when Crispin was in his cubicle, working, that he had a chance to analyze their conversation.

  He would have someone when Luka left. Maybe not a romantic someone, but someone. Great. Wonderful. Bully for Crispin.

  He would be emotionally supported, and his buddies would pick up the broken pieces of his heart.

  Luka would be quite alone.

  THE THOUGHT of that, of the other shoe, was the only cloud in an otherwise perfect sky. The ease with which Luka fit into his life was almost surreal.

  Sure they both worked different hours, but who didn’t? That was negotiable.

  But Luka was there to help him cook pies—ones that turned out this time—for Thanksgiving at Link’s house. He fit right in with the crowd of girlfriends and wives and guys, and managed to make Todd more comfortable at those gatherings too.

  “Think it’s because he’s not speaking lingua Henry?” Millie asked after dinner, when Luka managed to get Todd into the den to play video games with the rest of the guys. “Maybe you and me do the brother-sister thing so well it scares him off.”

  “No.” Crispin didn’t believe this—and not just because he was reluctant to give up the special code he and Millie seemed to have together. “I think it’s because he knows what it’s like to be lonely in a crowd. It… I think it’s what attracted him to me, actually.”

  “Mm.” For a moment they watched as Luka and Todd played each other in a split-screen RPG, and then she finished the thought. “What’s the catch with him, Crispin? I mean, when does he stop being ‘guest boyfriend here from Germany’ and start being ‘freeloading boyfriend you want to ditch’?”

  Crispin laughed. “He’s got a job, honey. He buys food—in fact, I wish he wouldn’t, but he insists. So no, that’s not going to happen.”

  “So?” she asked, maybe hearing the same thing Cam had heard. “When does it become permanent?”

  Crispin remembered his prediction, that Luka’s own damage would scare him away.

  “When he realizes it can be permanent any time he wants,” he whispered, almost to himself. “But don’t tell him that. It’ll scare him away.”

  But not yet.

  Thanksgiving at Link’s was a success, and they both slept in hard the next day, making love and goofing off until Luka had to work. That night, as the guys lingered over beers at the Cave Bar, Link suggested they play football in the mud the week before Christmas, over Crispin’s strenuous objections.

  “We’ll do it!” Luka declared, face shining with excitement. “Crispin, you can cheer me on, yes?”

  “Well, finally! A sport I can get behind!” There was much general laughter then, but Crispin caught Cam’s thoughtful gaze and knew they were both thinking the same thing.

  At least they knew Luka would be staying until Christmas.

  THE NEXT day Crispin took Luka to get a tree and then pulled out the family decorations. More pictures of him and Millie, more memories in every ornament.

  “See this?” Crispin said, pulling out a set of tiny stuffed animals made of felt.

  “Very cute,” Luka said, and when Crispin looked up, his eyes were warm on Crispin’s face and not the tiny red and green mice.

  “Well, thank you.” Crispin blushed—and then got back to his point. “But the ornaments. See, these were the ornaments Millie and I bought for our first Christmas alone. We… well, we got one for Carmen, and one for James, and one for Millie and one for me. And we put them on the tree every year so Carmen and James can watch us have Christmas.” Crispin smiled shyly at him. “It’s tradition.”

  Luka’s eyes opened surprisingly wide. “This probably means no more sex in the living room, yes?”

  “Ha!” Crispin doubled over laughing. “Yeah—at least until they’re put back.”

  “When do you put them back?” Luka asked, and Crispin’s stomach sank.

  “January 1—more family tradition.”

  “Mm.” Luka looked around Crispin’s warm little living room, the faux fireplace flickering merrily, the bright lights lining the mantel and the doorframes and even the tree. “Well, I will probably be here to take them down. I think I’ll take it easy on the thumbtacks from here on out.”

  Crispin felt a tight coil of apprehension unwind in his stomach and back. “Good,” he said. “Fewer holes in the walls.”

  Fewer holes in our hearts, idiot. Just stay.

  “Of course.”

  Of course.

  “CRISPIN—LOVE. It’s time to go to bed.”

  Crispin blinked sleepily in the light from the Christmas tree, adjusting his Kindle so he could set it on the end table. Something about having the tree up and carols going in the last two weeks before Christmas made the nights Luka got home late seem even later.

  “You’re home.”

  “Yes, it would seem so.” Luka crouched next to the couch, feathering his fingers over Crispin’s cheekbones. “You didn’t need to wait up for me. Friday and Saturday are long nights.”

  They were—but Luka made a lot of money in those hours, and Crispin wouldn’t begrudge him a way to make a living.

  “Bedroom is sort of lonely without you,” he said and then froze, wondering if Luka heard the words like he did.

  “Well, I’m home now. Crawl in and I’ll go shower. I smell like beer, and I’d rather smell like you.”

  Crispin got to the bedroom and undressed—completely, out of hope.

  Because Luka hadn’t freaked out at the suggestion of permanence. In fact, he’d said the word “home.”

  Crispin lay down and dozed until Luka slid under the covers, spooning him from behind.

  Ah… bare skin.

  Crispin wiggled his backside, making yummy-porn noises when he felt Luka hardening against his cheek.

  “You are ju
st so delicious,” Luka murmured, nuzzling Crispin’s neck. “And naked. Naked is even better.”

  What followed was slow and sleepy lovemaking with a lot of laughter—and some gasps of surprise.

  When they both crested together, Luka inside him, still spooning, Crispin sank bonelessly into the mattress, heedless of the mess, fully satisfied to have Lukas’s spend on and in his body.

  It was all he wanted to wear.

  “That was wonderful,” Luka purred. “Best way to fall asleep ever. Beats wine hands down.”

  Crispin laughed sleepily, and unguarded, let a question he’d been sitting on slip into the open air. “Luka, what do you want for Christmas?”

  “I don’t know, love—what do you want to give me?”

  The world. I want to give you the world. But Luka’s world was in a beat-up canvas backpack with too many pockets to empty that had needed to be laundered twice.

  “Clothes, if that’s okay. You have two pairs of jeans that might not make it through the next drier cycle.”

  Luka chuckled. “If that’s what you want, then that’s fine.”

  “And Harry Potter on Kindle.”

  “Also fine.”

  “And a drawer in my room, and a toothbrush not a travel toothbrush, and a work visa.”

  He heard Luka’s indrawn breath and still couldn’t seem to shut up.

  “And a ticket to Delhi for both of us in the spring so we can travel, both of us, and you can show me why you love it.”

  “That’s lovely, but—”

  “And a car and a driver’s license and a trip to New Zealand to see your three boxes so I can know if you’ve always had that dimple on your left cheek.”

  The silence in the room was stunning, and Crispin forgot how to breathe.

  “I know what you’re asking,” Luka said, his voice low and tortured. “I… I am not sure I can give it to you. Not now.”

  Crispin swallowed. Pain. Not an ache. That ache thing was bullshit. He knew that now. “I can wait,” he said with dignity. “I’ll start with the jeans and the book.”

  A kiss on the nape of his neck that left his hair wet and probably salty. Oh, Luka.