When he was younger, 210 Francis Street had been a haven, a place he escaped to when life turned too difficult. Safe behind walls reinforced by his mother’s love, he’d been shielded from bullies and bad grades. He was free to create his own worlds that didn’t contain an absent father or the longings of a boy struggling with his sexuality.
It was his refuge. Nothing bad could touch him inside his mother’s house.
Until now.
Inside his mother’s house was the man he loved and had hurt. Once he crossed the threshold, the haven would turn into a battle zone, where he would have to fight his way through Spencer’s barricades and release the hurt little boy Justin turned Spencer back into.
A knock at the driver’s side window caught his attention. He turned to see his mother standing in the rain underneath her navy blue umbrella. Quickly, he pushed the button that automatically lowered his window.
“Why are you sitting out here when he’s in there?” she asked.
“I’m too terrified to move,” he told his mother. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her attempts to comfort Spencer had obviously caused her to weep as well, not for herself but for the pain her boys were enduring.
“Fear will only push you further apart,” she said.
Justin nodded. He couldn’t argue with her, not that he could if he wanted to. His mother was the only person in the world capable of refuting any argument or claim he made. He found her logic uncanny.
“I’ve made a mess of things, Mom,” he managed to choke out. A sob was stuck in righteous retribution in his throat, unwilling to move up or down. Unable to either repress or express his misery, he felt trapped in its web of torment.
“I know,” said his mother. “Spencer told me what happened.”
Justin figured as much. Although he’d wanted to be the one to confide in his mother, she was Spencer’s mother now too. Spencer couldn’t be faulted for turning to the most caring and loving woman on the planet in this time of distress.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “For what I’ve done. For letting you down.”
“Letting me down?” she asked, incredulously. “I’m your mother. I love you no matter what you do.” She opened the car door and pulled him out. As always, he marveled at how her strength was superior to a man half her age. “You can never let me down. But I’m afraid you have let down not only Spencer but yourself.”
Again, his mother’s words were as accurate as a beesting.
“Now, the man you love is inside. Go to him. Do what needs to be done. Scream. Throw things. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the two of you work through the bad to find the good hidden beneath.”
“Does he know I’m here?”
“Yes,” replied his mother, her eyes full of regret. “He didn’t want me to call you, and I told him I wouldn’t. But I lied. He should’ve known better than to ask that of me. What choice did I have but to lie?” Even with her umbrella in her hand, she held her palms up and shrugged. Spencer always loved when she did that.
Justin nodded and walked toward the house. After a few steps, he noticed his mother wasn’t following him. Instead, she was walking toward her car, which was parked on the street. “Where are you going?” he called to her.
She didn’t answer. She only waved good-bye, got inside the car, and drove off into the early morning light.
When her car had disappeared from view, he turned tentatively toward the house and went inside.
From the kitchen off to the right of the living room, he heard dishes clanging together. He walked past his mother’s Audubon clock, which chirped away the hour. It was seven in the morning. It had only been about four hours since the phone call that shattered their lives. It felt more like four years.
The unmistakable poof of flame from the gas stove told him Spencer was cooking, a task he often turned to when upset. Suddenly, Justin realized how ravenous he was, as if his hunger were somehow tied to the swoosh of flame. His stomach complained loudly. Still, he didn’t expect Spencer to be cooking anything for him.
Sopping wet from the rain, he headed for the bathroom first and retrieved a towel. He disrobed and then patted himself mostly dry. He then wrapped the towel around his waist and pointed himself toward the kitchen.
Crossing through the living room, he noted how different this walk felt from the first time he’d traversed a room to get to Spencer. The first time magic drew Justin to him. Now, he felt the polarity had shifted.
It worked against him as if he were walking into a strong wind. It pushed him away, telling him to go back, to leave Spencer alone. He had done enough damage and had lost whatever chance he had of living a long, happy life with Spencer.
Justin foraged ahead. He didn’t care what the magic thought. He didn’t care what anyone thought. Magic might have brought them together, but it wasn’t needed to keep them together.
Relationships weren’t sustained by magic; they thrived on hard work and persistence. He had enough of both for the two of them.
When Justin finally turned the corner into the kitchen, he saw Spencer scrambling eggs in a pan while drinking a cup of coffee. There was also another cup of coffee sitting on the breakfast table. The light brown liquid within the cup told him that Spencer already added cream, which probably also meant that the sugar he craved with his coffee had already been stirred into the beverage, just the way he liked it.
So far, Spencer hadn’t acknowledged his presence. Staring intently at the eggs as he stirred them, he ran his fingers through his sandy hair, trying to convince the pesky strands to lie down instead of stand up. Then he adjusted the belt of Justin’s mother’s pink terrycloth robe, which Spencer had taken the liberty of wearing. He must have recently taken a shower.
Justin had never seen a sight more beautiful in his life.
“Breakfast is almost ready,” Spencer said. “Grab some plates.”
Justin wanted to apologize; he wanted to spout out a litany of promises and regrets. He did none of those things. Instead, he crossed the kitchen and retrieved two plates from his mother’s yellow cabinets.
He placed them on the kitchen table. Then, he went to the utensil drawer and got out two forks, which he placed next to the plates.
He then sat down and waited for Spencer to portion out the eggs.
“Your mother didn’t have any green onion or cream cheese,” Spencer said as he scooped some eggs onto Justin’s plate. “So it’s just eggs and cheddar cheese.”
“It looks great,” Justin said. “Thanks.”
Spencer didn’t reply. He slid the remaining eggs in the pan onto his plate and then placed the pan in the kitchen sink before he returned to the table and sat down.
They ate in silence. In spite of his desire to speak, Justin knew he had to follow Spencer’s lead. Rushing things wouldn’t help. He was at Spencer’s mercy, and if he truly wanted to make things right, he had to wait until Spencer was ready.
When their plates were empty and his stomach no longer grumbled, Justin rose from the table. He placed Spencer’s dirty dish on top of his and took them both to the sink. He ran water over them and then filled the sink with warm water and soap.
As Justin washed the breakfast dishes, he looked out the small kitchen window over the sink. Outside, he saw the kids across the street, running away from parents already late for their early morning work shifts and who were trying to corral their children for school. The unmindful children dodged in and out of flowerbeds, which were bursting with red and pink blooms of late summer.
A dog barked at them from the neighbor’s yard. It was tied to a tree and apparently unappreciative of all the noise the kids were making. Two cardinals sang to each other in his mother’s magnolia tree, and he also heard a lawnmower engine running from somewhere down the street.
The world outside was somehow oblivious to the pain he and Spencer were feeling. Since they had been brought together by what could only be described as magic, he expected the world to feel the pain as well.
“I guess I should’ve known better,” Spencer said, still sitting at the kitchen table.
“What do you mean?” Justin asked while shutting off the water. He didn’t want to give the impression he wasn’t paying attention.
“I made Elena promise not to tell you where I was,” he said. “I guess breaking promises is standard operating procedure for the Jimenez clan.”
Justin winced. He’d expected for several grenades to be thrown at him, but he never expected one to be volleyed at his mother. He let it slide. Justin suspected Spencer was immediately regretting including his mother in the jab at him.
“You know how she is,” Justin said. “Whenever her boys are hurting, she does whatever’s possible to stop the pain.”
Spencer said nothing further.
Justin went back to washing dishes. He scrubbed the egg particles off the pan rather easily. He wished all messes were so easily cleaned, but he and Spencer weren’t Teflon-coated pans. They were flesh and blood, and real wounds required time and care to heal.
When the dishes were done, Justin began wiping down the countertop and the oven, two chores he typically didn’t do at home. Spencer never approved of how Justin cleaned up after he cooked. Truthfully, Justin never thought to clean the countertop and oven. He was responsible for dishes, so dishes were what he washed. The stove and counter weren’t dishes.
They used to bicker over it at the beginning of their relationship, but Spencer had let that one go years ago. Spencer obviously felt battling over a clean countertop and oven wasn’t worth it, when he could do it himself.
“Now you clean the countertop and oven?”
Justin nodded. Words weren’t wise. Spencer was trying to pick a fight, and he wasn’t going to help.
“I guess you’re doing a lot of things you haven’t done before these days,” Spencer said. “Cleaning and cheating. What else is there in your repertoire that I don’t know about?”
“I guess that’s about it,” Justin said while tossing the sponge into the soapy water.
“Just the cleaning and the cheating?”
“Yes.”
“I approve of the cleaning.”
“I know.”
Justin stood at the sink, staring into Spencer’s green eyes. They were still pastel green, the color they turned when Spencer learned of the affair. They had yet to return to the rich, jade hue that so captivated him ten years ago.
In their dulled reflection, he saw his broken promise. The one Spencer made him agree to a few months into their relationship. Justin swore he wouldn’t cheat. The last time someone cheated on Spencer, he had been infected with HIV.
Justin made the promise easily. Then he broke it just as easily several years later.
“How did we get here?” Spencer asked; his question was filled with sadness deeper than the Pacific Ocean was wide.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Justin replied.
“Why don’t we try with honesty?” Spencer asked. “It’s what we used to do so well.”
Justin exhaled. Honesty was where the deepest hurt would reside, but it was also the only place where renewal would spring.
“I think we started taking each other for granted,” Justin finally said. “We stopped putting in as much time on us as we were putting into our careers.”
Spencer nodded. “I agree.”
Justin was pleased that even in the heart of an emotional storm, their communication could be logical and mature.
“We lost sight of what was truly important,” Justin continued. “I know I did. I hate that I can see it so clearly now, Spence, but I can.”
He walked over to Spencer and sat down next to him, twisting the towel so it wouldn’t slide to the floor. In his nakedness, he felt vulnerable, exposed. But he knew that in that defenselessness lay the potential for rebirth.
Spencer sat back in his chair and placed his hands in his lap. It was his way of telling Justin not to touch him. Justin didn’t dare dismiss that warning.
“We let the everyday minutiae of our lives interfere with the magic that brought us together,” he told Spencer. “But that magic’s still there. I can feel it. Whenever I see you, whenever I hear your voice, whenever I touch your skin, I feel that spark. That force that brought us together. All we have to do is close ourselves to the rest of the crap. Let that force back into us.”
“I don’t know if I believe in that force anymore,” Spencer admitted after a moment’s silence. “I did at one time, but I don’t think I do anymore.” He swallowed hard. It was obviously as difficult for him to admit as it was for Justin to hear.
“If that force was so powerful, then it should’ve kept us safe,” Spencer said. “We should’ve never gone through what we have. There should never have been any problems. Not what we went through last year. Certainly not what we’re going through right now.” He wrung his hands together, something Spencer did whenever he was about to say something really unpleasant. “Maybe we were never meant to last this long. Maybe we were never meant to be together forever.”
“Don’t say that,” Justin shouted. “We were meant to be together for the rest of our lives. I can feel that inside every cell in my body.”
“That makes one of us.”
“You’re only saying that because you’re hurting,” Justin said. “And you have every reason to be hurt. I betrayed you, your trust, our relationship, and the magic that brought us together. I’m the one who’s thrown us out of whack.”
“It takes two people to make a relationship,” Spencer told him. “It also takes two people to destroy one.”
“I don’t believe that,” Justin said. “I’m the fuckup here. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I wish I could believe that, but I can’t.” Spencer reached out and patted Justin’s hand. He then quickly withdrew it when he realized they were touching. For a moment, the walls fell, but they went back up just as quickly. “I’m not the wide-eyed twentysomething anymore, who believed that cheating was always the fault of the cheater. I’m in no way saying I’m equally culpable for it. You share a major part of that blame, but I’ve played a part too.”
Justin was confused. “What do you mean?”
“When your mother and I were talking, I was saying the most awful things about you. I was surprised she didn’t throw me out of her house for talking about you that way. When I asked her why she wasn’t angry with me for what I was saying about you, do you know what she said?”
Justin shook his head.
“She told me that I was just as angry at myself as I was with you. At first, I thought your mother was going senile. But then she told me about your father, and the affairs he had while they were married. The first time he cheated was shortly after you were born. She was no longer interested in sex as she had you to take care of. Since his needs weren’t being met at home, he went elsewhere.”
“She never told me that,” Justin said. “She’s never talked about the affairs.”
“She blames herself more than your father for them,” Spencer told Justin. “She was angry at him, but she never said anything about it. Her silence gave him permission to continue. Her lack of self-respect. Her lack of respect for their marriage helped the affairs to continue.”
Justin was dumbfounded. He never knew his mother blamed herself for her marriage falling apart.
“Afterward, I kept asking myself what I did to start us down this path.”
“What do you possibly think you did?”
“I’m the one who came on to Tyler,” Spencer answered.
CHAPTER 14
2005
“I FEAR Tyler’s drunk,” Spencer told Justin. “Again.”
“You think?” Justin asked.
Tyler stumbled from the kitchen into the dining r
oom carrying a freshly poured martini. His black hair looked disheveled, a result of stumbling into the couch on his previous martini run. His hazel eyes were vacant and rolled around in his head like gumballs in a gumball machine.
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Tyler said, doing his best Julia Roberts impersonation from Steel Magnolias. Recently, all their friends, when they had time in their busy lives to get together, had begun quoting the movie as much as they did. Spencer enjoyed the mimicry. It proved that despite their now hectic lives, filled with children and new jobs, their friendship still played like background music in their lives.
Tyler was the only one from the group who they saw on any regular basis. And at this moment, he was quite a sight to behold. He staggered around the coffee table, telling it not to move, and then plopped down on the couch adjacent to where Spencer and Justin sat.
“You okay, Shelby?” Justin asked.
They laughed, but Tyler guffawed as if he had just heard the funniest comment in the world. His hysteria resulted in a spill, which Tyler dutifully lapped up.
It wasn’t unusual for Tyler to get drunk on their weekly night together. They spent every Saturday night hanging out, watching movies or playing games. The others were invited, but Chris and Jill and Teresa and Sam were busy with their clutches of children, Heather and Pat had moved up to New Braunfels and rarely came to San Antonio, and Chuck and Don worked night shifts.
Still, Saturday night was the one night of the week Justin and Spencer didn’t do anything work-related. They cut loose and had fun.
It was also the best way for them to keep track of their best friend’s progress. Tyler’s partner of five years, Rene, had left him six months ago. Tyler came home to find all of Rene’s possessions gone and a note taped to the kitchen refrigerator. The note said, “I’m sorry. Love, Rene.”
The hurtful way Rene abandoned Tyler had infuriated Justin. Spencer, however, had seen it coming. Never a part of the group in the three years they had all been friends, Rene had skirted its periphery. At first, Spencer had thought Rene to be painfully shy. He finally realized a few months ago what the problem was: Rene was unhappy and most likely having an affair.
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