by Talya Andor
He'd thought that Soren would wait for him after his shift so that they could leave the store and figure things out from there, but Soren had ducked out without a word. After work, he had avoided the phone calls and texts that Lucas had sent him. Lucas had even tried logging onto chat, but Soren was either offline or invisible.
Lucas was being ignored, and it was a novel situation for him. At least, he'd never been given the cold shoulder by someone he was dating.
He picked up his phone and messed around with it, checking the last few texts, looking at the time stamps, trying to figure out what Soren would be doing right now. He had his pride too. He wasn't going to beg Soren to pick up, and there was a limit to how many messages he'd let himself send before it was Soren's turn to do something.
Lucas sighed and switched his phone's screen off. He ought to go to his room and get ready for his next class. Soren's failure to respond was the only thing that filled Lucas's thoughts right now though. He wasn't going to be able to concentrate until this got resolved.
He hadn't said anything in his messages about being willing to meet Soren's parents, though, and maybe that was part of the problem. He'd only said Can we talk? Call me, and variations on that theme, including I'm sorry, but cutting himself off before he got exasperated enough to start getting accusatory. Frustrated as he was, he recognized that he didn't have the high ground.
The clock across the room let Lucas know it was time to get moving or he would miss his class. With reluctance, he got up and shoved his phone into his pocket.
Lucas made another noise of frustration as he kicked open the door to his bedroom. The sheets on the bed were still rumpled. Less than twelve hours ago, he'd been wrapped up in those sheets with Soren. Now he'd screwed things up so badly between them, he wasn't sure where that left their relationship.
He stood at the foot of the bed for a moment staring at the pillow that had been Soren's. At last he stirred and began making the bed, setting one thing to rights, at least, with sharp snaps and precise tucks.
He'd never met anyone's parents before—not with Stephen, and not with Shari before him.
Now there was Soren, and within the first month, he was being asked to dinner with the parents.
Lucas gnawed at his lip for a moment while he considered his next move. He had to change clothes, swap school books, and get out the door within the next ten minutes if he didn't want to be late. Instead, all he wanted to do was call Soren and set things right between them.
The phone in his back pocket began to vibrate, and Lucas pulled it out and brought it to his ear.
"Hey, look, I'm sorry," he began, ready to hurry on with the next part of his apology. The thought that he would mess up his second chance if he didn't set a time to meet Soren's parents was heavy on his mind. He was also firm that he didn't want it to be tonight, so Soren was going to have to compromise. "If we could just move things over—"
"Lucas?"
Lucas wilted. "Dad."
"Is something wrong?"
"N-no, I'm…trying to work things out with someone, that's all."
Jonathan cleared his throat. "Dating someone?"
"Uh, kind of," Lucas said awkwardly. It wasn't even a lie. If he couldn't resolve this with Soren, he knew that Soren probably wouldn't want to see him anymore.
"How do you 'kind of' date someone? Never mind. What does your schedule in November look like?"
Lucas stared blankly at the wall. "Which week? They don't have us scheduled at the store yet."
"In general, your schedule in general. School and everything. End of November, near Thanksgiving."
"I'll be getting ready for exams at the end of November." Lucas went over to his desk and shifted his phone from one ear to the other, flipping through his planner. "At the very least we'll probably have serious papers…we get a long weekend for Thanksgiving, though."
"I may be coming out in November."
Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside of Lucas and he held onto it by the thinnest of margins. There was someone in the family who needed to come out, and it wasn't his father.
"Dad?" Lucas managed. He took a deep breath to brace himself. "Business or pleasure?"
"Don't be a smart-ass."
Lucas didn't think he had been.
"Keep your Friday and Saturday open."
"Uh, should I ask off work, then?"
"Better not. I'm certainly not paying your cell phone bill again if you fall short for the month."
"That was one time—"
"One time too many, if you expect to be a responsible adult soon. You've got to learn to take care of your own finances, or you'll never be a successful accountant."
Lucas ground his teeth. He didn't even want to be an accountant, but given his father's obvious mood, he wasn't even going to attempt to tackle that subject today.
"You can tell them to keep your evenings free, surely."
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I can," Lucas said, fixing a hideous grin on his face to keep the anger out of his voice.
"Don't sound so smarmy, Lucas. You see me three, maybe four times a year. You can accommodate your schedule to mine for a couple of days."
There really was no way to win. "You're right, Dad," Lucas replied in his best neutral tone. It took effort to suppress the smart-ass you're always right response.
"I'll call with more details in a few weeks. Keep your grades up. If you've got girl trouble, dump her. You can always date after college."
Lucas lost it. "Oh, you have got to be joking—" he started, but Jonathan had already hung up.
He checked his phone for notifications again before he switched off the display and got moving. Once again, there was nothing from Soren. He didn't know how he was going to resolve this, if Soren kept avoiding him.
He knew one thing for sure. How was he supposed to be comfortable with meeting someone else's parents, when he could barely get along with his own?
*~*~*
Soren stared up at his ceiling as the room got darker with the setting of the sun. He should move to switch on his light. He should get up and start prioritizing his homework assignments. There were a lot of things he ought to do, but he was avoiding everything.
He had stayed offline and ignored his phone for the past couple of days. He'd been unable to face Lucas, and so he'd ended up taking the way out that had always been his refuge before: he ignored everything associated with the issue.
Explaining to his mother that, no, his boyfriend couldn't come over that night—in fact, that he wasn't sure if Lucas would ever come over, or if he still had a boyfriend—had been so acutely humiliating that Soren had been trying to avoid his own family. He left the house early to get to work or campus, stayed late and got his homework done, and sneaked around the house taking food from the fridge before hiding in his room.
Low, doleful music came out of the stereo and it kept Soren weighted to his bed. He ought to turn his phone on and see what Lucas had sent to him, if anything, but he was too scared. He hadn't seen Lucas since he'd slipped out of the store days ago, and he was afraid if there were recent messages, they would be telling him that it was over between them.
The door to his room clicked open and Soren turned his head slightly, too apathetic to get up, but not disinterested enough to keep staring at the ceiling.
"Oh my God," Angie said. "If you let that Coldplay album cycle on repeat one more time, I'm going to come in there and brain you. Better yet, I'll 'accidentally' throw something and let your stereo pay the price."
"You will not!" Soren said, sitting up.
"Look, there's life in the old boy yet. What's going on with you, Soren?"
"What, hasn't Mom been gloating?" Soren muttered.
Angie took a few steps inside, looked around, and shuddered. "The stench of emo is overwhelming. No, Mom hasn't said anything. Did Lucas stand you up, or something?"
"Or something."
Angie stood at the foot of his bed for a moment, looking at him. When it became
clear that Soren wasn't going to elaborate, she made an impatient gesture. "Well? What happened?"
"Does it matter?"
"'Does it matter,' he asks. I don't know, Soren. You're the one who decides if it matters or not. Did he break up with you?"
"Not exactly."
"Okay, if this entire conversation is going to be like pulling teeth, I have better things to do." Angie turned and reached the door before Soren mustered the energy to speak up.
"Wait?" he asked. He sounded pathetic.
Angie turned and folded her arms. "Did you break up with him?"
"I…don't know? I haven't been looking at his texts or calls."
"Why not?"
"He promised to come meet our parents. But when I told him the other day that Mom wanted him to come over for dinner, he turned me down. Kind of. I'm pretty sure. Then we had our first fight, I guess. Or we would be, if I was talking to him."
Angie groaned. "Soren…"
"What?"
"If I even need to tell you, that's half your problem right there."
Soren sighed. "I haven't looked at any of my texts or checked my voicemail because…well, I'm afraid he might've broken up with me while I've been ignoring him."
"Problems don't go away if you ignore them."
"Yeah." Soren drew his legs up and re-settled himself in a cross-legged pose. He reached for the dog-eared copy of Stranger in a Strange Land that had fallen face down on his bed. It was one of his go-to comfort books when he wanted to shut out the world.
"Hey," Angie said. "You remember Mark, from your ballet class?"
"Do I ever," Soren said with a brief sigh, keeping his eyes fixed on the cover of the book in his hands. With no internet and no family dinners or evenings of television, he'd been returning to books to occupy his spare time.
Mark had been everything Soren had thought he'd wanted in a boyfriend, at the time. He'd spent many afternoons at Soren's house in Eugene for a brief, blissful summer. Soren narrowed his eyes at Angie. He knew what she was getting at.
"Tell me why Mark stopped coming around, again?"
"I stopped inviting him." Soren said tonelessly.
"Why?"
"You know why, all right? I stopped going to ballet."
"I know that," Angie said. "But you never said why, Soren. You stopped going and gave Mom some b.s. story about not liking it anymore. Which is crap, because you loved it."
Soren glanced away, tucking a lock of hair over his ear. He had really enjoyed ballet. Even the stigma of gay male ballet dancers wouldn't have chased him away. Mark had come over nearly every day after class and they'd hung out, laughed, and had fun. That had come to an abrupt end the day after Mark had leaned in and almost kissed him. Terrified, Soren had withdrawn. He and Mark hadn't really spoken after that, and Soren had been so crushed when Mark had turned right away to another guy in their class, he'd dropped out of ballet.
"I stopped talking to him, because I pulled away," Soren said. "We had a…misunderstanding."
"Yeah." Angie stood there a moment longer. "You want the same thing to happen with Lucas?"
"Of course not!"
Angie nodded. "It's up to you, then," she said. "No one's going to do it for you, Soren." She turned and left his room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Soren heaved himself up off the bed and tossed his book at his pillow. "I know that," he said. He went to the stereo, considered switching CDs for a moment, and ended up turning it off.
At last, he went to his phone where he'd left it on his desk, switched it on, and groaned when he saw how many notifications were waiting for him. He started to read through them and collapsed into the chair at his workstation.
Lucas had asked him to call him, apologized, and asked Soren if they could talk. Soren was too mortified to check his voicemail. Part of him was tempted to sign on and see if Lucas was online too, then he could make contact with him that way.
He opened the most recent email from Lucas, which didn't even have a subject line.
Look, just talk to me. Please? I need to know, one way or the other, if I fucked everything up for good. Remember when you told me you were scared, and I said I was scared too? That's me now. Can we do this together, at least?
Soren put his phone down and pressed his palms against his face. It was up to him, for sure. This was serious, and he couldn't solve it with a phone call, or a text or IM. He had to see Lucas in person.
He was working tomorrow, but after that, he knew where Lucas would be.
*~*~*
It was a busy morning at the store, and Soren left with a hurried step and the sense that he was escaping. Danice had asked if Soren had class in the next few hours, hinting that she might ask him to work later, and he had been quick to tell her he had plans. Now that the rush was over and he had clocked out, all he could think about was getting to Lucas's place as fast as possible.
He hustled out of the front door and came within half an inch of slamming into someone on their way in the store. His eyes went wide as that someone caught him by the arms.
It was Lucas.
"H-hey!" Soren said, not sure if it was a greeting or a startled exclamation.
"Soren," Lucas said, looking surprised. "You're headed somewhere in a hurry."
Caught off guard, Soren blurted the first thing to come to mind. "You're not on the schedule today." As he said it, his face grew hot. It sounded like an evasion.
"Yeah, but…I knew you would be, so…here I am."
It might have been his imagination, but Lucas looked somewhat red in the face too.
"Oh," Soren said, and fell silent. Tell him you were on your way to see him, an inner voice urged. Before he could pluck up his courage, Lucas spoke again.
"Can we talk?"
Soren winced. He knew that those words typically presaged a break-up.
"I haven't seen or heard from you in days." Lucas struggled to sound neutral, but some hurt bled through. "I know I was an ass, again, but…" He broke off and shook his head, releasing Soren.
"You didn't deserve the way I treated you," Soren said. He bit his lip, glancing over his shoulder. "Yeah, but not here, okay?"
"Of course."
"Oh, uh…I have the car, so…you want to go someplace?" Soren asked. He began walking up the sidewalk toward his car, and Lucas fell into step with him.
"Lunch?"
"Wherever's closest. I think the teriyaki place has a lunch special," Soren said. They wouldn't even have to move their cars.
"Sounds fine to me."
They were back to the stilted, polite conversation of their earliest days together. Soren stewed with a half-dozen different ways to breach the topics that needed to be discussed, but his courage withered every time he glanced at Lucas out of the corner of his eye. Lucas's jaw was set, his mouth drawn in a flat, unhappy line.
The teriyaki place was across the street. They each got a bowl, chicken for Soren, short ribs for Lucas, and settled at the furthest booth in the restaurant. This time, Lucas slid into the seat across from him.
Soren looked down at his food. "I'm sorry," he said softly, eyes still fixed on his plate. "I shouldn't have ignored you. I just…I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to deal with how angry I was."
Tone strengthening, he continued. "I was humiliated when I went home and had to tell my mother, who was getting dinner ready, that you weren't able to come. And I just…fell apart."
A hand slid across the table between them, reaching for one of Soren's clenched fists, and Soren looked up.
"I'm the one who should be apologizing," Lucas said, covering Soren's hand with his. "I was sorry the minute I said it. You took it the wrong…no, I can't put it on you. The way I worded things was all wrong. It wasn't what I meant to say."
"You didn't mean you were too busy to come meet my parents for dinner?"
"No…well, yes. Look, I wasn't expecting it to be so soon. It caught me off guard, you know?"
"I guessed that," Soren sai
d, using his fork to push around his food, but he had no appetite for it yet.
"I know I agreed to meet them, but I wasn't ready. And I wasn't bullshitting you. That was the worst day of my week to try to fit something in for the night."
"Okay." Soren said, beginning to relax.
"So, can you forgive me for that?" Lucas asked, rubbing his thumb alongside Soren's hand.
Soren blinked. "You…you're not mad at me?"
"I was mad you were ignoring me," Lucas admitted. "But I got more upset that I might have blown it—that you'd never speak to me again."
Soren ducked his head. Now probably wasn't the time to admit he'd contemplated asking Michelle for a transfer, or outright resigning.
"It wasn't the right way to handle it, and I'm sorry," Soren said.
"Same goes for me. It was shitty timing, and I made it worse. Sorry."
"Okay."
"You forgive me?"
Soren nodded. "Yeah, as long as you forgive me for blowing you off."
"Understandable." Lucas cocked his head. "Unless you were planning on avoiding me forever?"
Soren shook his head. "I checked all my messages last night. I was going to come find you after work today, because even though it's easier for me to say some things through a computer, I didn't want to risk making it worse. I had to see you in person."
"Well, I'm glad we didn't miss each other," Lucas said. His thumb rubbed over Soren's hand again.
The last knot of tension dissolved. "Me too," Soren replied. "I've been pretty miserable these past few days."
"Me too."
They sat for several moments, picking through their lunches and shifting to lighter topics, catching up, and discovering both of them hadn't done much worth discussing while they had been apart.
"Homework, homework, and more homework," Lucas said with an aggrieved sigh.
Soren nodded. "I was doing homework and a lot of reading-for-pleasure, staying offline."
"I stayed signed in a lot. I kept checking for your name."
"Sorry."
"Don't be. I was an ass," Lucas said, looking sincere. "I missed the other night, but if you can arrange it, I'll come to dinner. And meet your parents."