by Aiden Bates
Maybe for normal relationships, it was early to start dating again. Brantley would rather be with Allen, but he couldn't take his family or friends' word for it. He had to go by what he saw. And what he saw was that Allen wanted to move on.
He could go talk to Allen. Every attempt he'd made to talk to Allen had been met with "I'm fine," but he could try yet again. What were the chances he'd meet with anything but the same result?
He could call Janine, he supposed, but Janine was another of Allen's busybody associates.
He pushed the thoughts away from his mind. He needed to focus on the future. He'd made a decision. He needed to stand by it, instead of dwelling on the past. He'd always mourn for what he'd had with Allen. He'd always wish they could have made it real, but that was just too much to ask. Maybe, if he couldn't get over his own fears and Allen couldn't grow up enough to speak on his own behalf, they wouldn't have ever been compatible anyway.
He headed back to his office and got back to work. He took Allen's pictures off of the screensaver on his machine, and he changed the background picture from Allen to a more generic island picture. He hesitated before he took down the framed picture of himself and Allen with Alaina. He didn't want to take that one down. Jeff had taken it, and it was one of his most precious memories.
He took it and put it into a drawer. He wasn't going to be able to move forward with his life if he kept surrounding himself with all things Allen. They'd loved. They'd lost. It happened. Why should Idoni, or Luke, or Janine, get to make him into the bad guy for living again? Had none of them ever gone through a breakup, for crying out loud?
By the time he went home that day, no visible traces of Allen Frye remained in Brantley's office. He felt hollow and empty inside, but he'd done what he needed to do. He was going to move on. He was going to start a family of his own. He was going to thrive, damn it. Mama was right. Fabian had been happy before he died.
It was time for Brantley to be happy too. He'd have been happier with Allen, but since that wasn't an option, he was determined to be happy without him.
Chapter Seventeen
Allen finished out his day at work after he tried and failed to tell Brantley about the baby. Then he went home, and he cried. Alaina cried too, because she was an infant and that was what infants do. Sadie joined in, too, because sometimes dogs just have to howl.
A neighbor pounded on the wall. Allen ignored them.
He picked himself up after a little while. He couldn't just sit in bed all evening, sobbing his eyes out. He needed to eat. He was eating for two now, after all. He couldn't afford to just stuff his face with processed crap.
He found some frozen rice and peas in the back of his freezer and heated it up. Then he find some funny movies on Netflix, piled into the bed with Alaina and Sadie, and got down to the business of getting over it. Yeah, sure, his heart was broken. It had been broken and patched before. He could do it again. It wouldn't be easy. It would take time, and determination.
But he could do it.
It hurt to know just how little he'd meant. Brantley had seemed to care for him. He'd said he hadn't cared enough for Dwayne to try to be public with him, but there he was reaching out to him almost as soon as he and Allen had parted ways. Okay, sure, they hadn't had a real relationship, but surely Brantley had felt something?
No, that was just Allen being stupid and naive, again. Someone like Brantley would never feel anything but pity for someone like Allen. Allen was at fault here, for letting himself think it could have been different. Allen had learned his lesson. Fortunately, it would never be an issue again. By the time Allen had the time to date again, given that he would soon have two children in diapers, he would be long past the age where anyone thought it would be a good idea.
He hadn't told anyone else about his baby, not yet. Eventually they'd figure it out, once he started showing, but for now he wanted to keep things private. He didn't want anyone's pity, and he didn't want Brantley to have to deal with anyone's ire. He plastered a smile onto his face, did his job, and went home.
He got a call from Dwayne on Friday afternoon. He almost declined the call, but he kicked himself. It wasn't Dwayne's fault, after all. Dwayne was a good guy. "Hi, Dwayne," he said, and plastered his smile on. Everyone said if you faked a smile often enough, you'd eventually manage the real thing. "How's it going?"
"It's going well, I guess." Dwayne sounded a little nervous. "So… look. This is awkward, so I'm just going to lay it right out there. Did you and Brantley really split up?"
"We did. And I know he called you up for a date." Allen looked out his window. Syracuse was gray again today. It looked like it wanted to rain, but the pavement stayed dry.
"And…" Dwayne trailed off and tried again. "Are you okay with this? Are you mad, sad, furious? What?"
"He's a great guy. I'm sorry to see him go." Allen kept his voice light. "But you're the one he wants, and that's okay. I'm hardly going to get mad at you about it."
"Really? Because you guys seemed really tight when I saw you. I mean, you looked at each other like you were water in the desert."
Allen closed his eyes and lowered the phone for a second. "Yeah, well. Stuff happens, you know? I'd still do anything for him, but things don't always work out the way you want them to. It's sad, but can't be helped sometimes. I wish both of you the best and hope you're very happy together."
"Okay. If you're sure. I just… something isn't sitting right. I don't want to feel like I'm stabbing you in the back." Dwayne let out an aggravated sigh.
"Dwayne, I appreciate that. I do, more than I can say. I love him. I'm not going to lie about that. It wasn't mutual. It's a shame, but I'm not going to try to hold him somewhere he doesn't want to be."
"Okay. Well, thanks."
"Thank you, Dwayne." Allen hung up the phone and closed his eyes. I'm moving forward. None of that is part of my life anymore. If he repeated that often enough, the tears would dry up and he wouldn't be on the verge of tears anymore.
If Brantley tried to reach out, Allen would probably have blocked him. As it was, Brantley did not try to reach out. Allen saw Brantley every now and then in the hallway, or in the cafeteria, and they passed like strangers. That made it easier on Allen. It helped him to build up a little wall of resentment. He loved Brantley, and he'd always love Brantley, but Brantley was in the end no different than anyone else he'd let into his life. He'd lost his value to Brantley, and now Brantley wouldn't even acknowledge him in passing.
That outraged even Carter. "How's he going to respond when you start showing?" he muttered, as Brantley pushed past with a team of oncologists, noses in the air.
"Are you kidding?" Allen snorted. "He won't even see. He's like the rest of them. As far as he's concerned, I'm in the landfill."
Carter shook his head. "I hate him."
Allen turned to his best friend. "Don't hate him, Carter. He's a good man."
"He's not. He turned you bitter. You never were before. Come on. Let's go grab lunch."
Allen delivered three babies to single parents that week. He tried not to see any parallels to himself in their stories, but it was hard to keep a professional distance. One of them had a partner that had just wandered away two months into the pregnancy, and all through his protracted labor and difficult delivery the poor man cried out for his lover. "Do you think he'll come?" he asked. "I texted him. Do you think he'll come?"
What was Allen supposed to say to that? "I think you and me, we don't need them right now," he said. "I think if you bear down and push really good, you might be through this."
On the weekends, Allen helped out with his family. His dad was still recovering. He was able to putter around the house a little bit, although he had a cane and couldn't go too far yet. He'd had to retire from Home Depot. The hours were too long, and the work was too physical for him now. The transition from working every day to sitting at home wasn't going well for Dad, and Allen needed to spell Mom so she could get out and refresh her spirits.
>
He helped with Harper and Ethan too, although that was harder. They wanted Uncle Brantley back. "How come you didn't marry Uncle Brantley, Uncle Allen?" Harper stomped her little foot at him one night, while her parents were away overnight at a historical reenactment event. "He was awesome. He said he'd teach me more science."
"I didn't marry Uncle Brantley because he didn't ask, sweetheart." Allen closed his eyes and pretended he was okay with that.
"Why didn't he ask?" Ethan tilted his head to the side. "He was the handsome prince. He was supposed to ask. How come he didn't?"
"Because handsome princes always marry someone fabulous, darlings." Allen waggled his eyebrows up and down. "I'm the ugly step sibling. Roar!" He curled his hands into claws and chased the kids up to bed.
It did get a little easier, just as he'd thought it would. Alaina grew. Allen convinced his father to do formal portraits of her, and he convinced Jim to help his dad set up an online portfolio. "You don't have to do wedding photography or anything like that, Dad," he said. "All you have to do is take the pictures you want to take and sell them as you want to sell them."
It was more complicated than that, but Jason Delancey could explain that to Dad. The important thing was that Dad felt like he was doing something, instead of sitting around and watching daytime television all day. That helped Dad to perk up, which improved Mom's mood significantly.
The kids soon stopped asking about Uncle Brantley, probably because Jim confided to Allen he'd seen Brantley out with "some guy. I don't know. Looks familiar, I might have seen him in a magazine or something?"
"Oh yeah. That would be Dwayne. It's good they're still together." It had only been three weeks, but they'd known each other before. Who knew how long it would take them to fall in love again, especially if Brantley was now feeling more comfortable with being public with his affections?
Allen cleared out the guest room. Brantley had left some of his things behind. Allen boxed them up and dragged them off to storage. He ordered a new crib, a twin to Alaina's, and some new furniture. He took the old furniture apart by himself, or at least what wouldn't fit, and dragged that off to storage, too.
Maybe he should have called for help on that, but he didn't want it. His family didn't know yet, and the only people who knew were Carter, Luke, and their husbands. He wasn't about to ask two heavily pregnant guys to lug and carry and build, and he wasn't going to ask their husbands for help, either.
Shame was part of the reason he wanted to do everything on his own, but so was pride. If he was going to be left on his own, then damn it, he was going to do it on his own. He didn't need some guy. Let his kisses be the sweetest in history. Let him give the best sex ever. Allen didn't need it. Allen didn't want it. Allen would be fine without it. Allen was going to be okay. He was going to build a life for himself and his children, and he was going to do it without reference to anyone else.
Dwayne called him, the Monday after that. "You were right."
Allen blinked. "I was right?"
"About Brantley. I loved him more than he loved me, too. He's an incredible guy. I knew that going in, but I just… I guess I thought it would be different this time. After what you told me, when we met." Dwayne sighed. "It's hard, you know? It's… you want to be with him, but you need more than he's capable of giving. It's sad."
"Sad?" Allen leaned back against the cushions of his couch. "How do you mean?"
"He's going to die alone. He can't be with someone. He just can't. It's not in him. You, me, we've got someone out there for us. We've got a lot of love in our hearts. Brantley has some, but it's so locked away it might as well not be there at all. It's just… you wish it could be different, but it's not."
Allen looked around himself. He could remember all of the love Brantley had shown in this room. He could remember how amazing Brantley had made him feel. Brantley didn't deserve to die alone and unmourned. Of course, Allen himself wasn't going to be much better off. "Maybe someday he'll find the right one to unlock it. It's not me. I guess it's not you, and I'm sorry. I really am. But I hope he finds someone. He's got too much to give."
"I suppose. Anyway, I just thought I'd let you know. Hey, our school is having a career day. Do you want to come in and talk about being a nurse practitioner?"
Allen considered. He hardly thought of himself as a role model, but why not? "Sure, thanks. Send me the details and I'll see if I can get the time off."
Once he hung up the phone, he sat back to think about what Dwayne had said. Brantley had seemed eager to start something up with the handsome teacher when Allen heard him on the phone, but the affair hadn't lasted very long. Was there something wrong, that he just couldn't stay committed to any one man for very long?
Of course, Brantley had said specifically that he'd found Dwayne to be a little too needy. Maybe he'd tried to push Brantley too far. Maybe he'd seen that little bit of progress Brantley had made and assumed it went farther than it did.
Maybe Brantley assumed it went farther than it did. Maybe Allen had lucked out, by not having a chance to tell him about the baby. Maybe Brantley wouldn't have been able to handle knowing about the baby. Allen couldn't fault him for that. He'd been traumatized. That kind of mental scarring was real. Still, it would be devastating to Allen to have to go through pregnancy and labor knowing Brantley had rejected the pregnancy, rejected their child.
It had been bad enough getting thrown away like trash. How could he explain that to their child?
He steeled himself for the rest of the week. He wouldn't tell Brantley. Maybe Brantley would figure it out on his own, maybe not, but Allen wasn't going to be the one to tell him. Allen would keep going, regardless. He'd made a mistake, but that didn't need to ruin the rest of his life.
He would be grateful for what he had. He would love his children, and his dog. He would love the roof over his head, and his job. He had a fantastic family and friends, and that was enough for him.
***
Brantley left the oncology ward with a heavy heart. He'd lost a patient during the night. It hadn't been a surprise, exactly. Anita Jagets only had a ten percent chance of survival, even with the best treatment money could buy. She'd been a fighter. Sometimes fighting just wasn't enough.
It didn't help that he was still feeling sore about losing Dwayne. Well, maybe not. He hadn't been able to bring himself to have sex with Dwayne, and in the end, that had been what killed them. He'd wanted to, sort of. He just hadn't been able to make himself move beyond kissing. Every time he tried, he kept seeing Allen's sad face there.
Why couldn't he get over Allen? Why could he just not get over him? It couldn't have anything to do with all of the people telling him Allen loved him. It went past that. No, he wanted, needed, Allen. He missed Allen. There was just something about Allen that had changed Brantley on a profound level, and now he was useless for anyone else.
Maybe he should go check in on Allen. He didn't believe for a minute that all of these busybodies who insisted Allen was pining away for him like some kind of Victorian heroine had anything going for them, but maybe he should just check in. Maybe there was something to be worried about—not a lovesick maiden, but something.
He shuffled back to his office and opened his desk drawer. There, in all its glory, was the picture of himself and Allen with Alaina. He should get rid of it, not just hide it away in a drawer. He should do what he needed to do to take care of himself. Maybe this was why he couldn't move on. Maybe this was what the ghost was holding on to.
He rubbed at his face and looked at his calendar. He had six appointments before lunch. Good God, would it ever stop? He already knew the answer, of course. He supposed it kept him in business, employed and valuable enough to Silver Oak that they kept a man like Gupta around to protect him. Still, the toll in life and misery couldn't be worth it.
At least today looked like it should be relatively good. He had two remission checkups, and he'd already seen the scans on those patients. They were still clear. He would b
e able to tell two patients that they were in remission, which was even better. Only two of the patients were new diagnoses.
He sat down and got ready for the appointments.
The first was a new diagnosis. It wasn't that bad. Kim Leeson already knew she had cancer. Her primary care doctor had given her the bad news. She just didn't know what it meant for her, exactly. All Brantley had to do was to explain her treatment options, and to give her the prognosis. Considering the fact that her tumor was not operable due to its location, but was still in an early enough stage that it had not yet spread, he thought they had a good chance of beating it.
He gave good news to the next patient. The breast cancer she'd been fighting for over a year had gone into remission. She would have to stay vigilant, and she would have to come back for scans and checkups, but she would be able to go out and live life again.