One More Time

by Shawn Lane

  “I’ll be back shortly.” I glanced at my watch and estimated I’d be back in ninety minutes tops. I frankly didn’t have that many old times to talk about with Theo.

  I walked outside in time to catch Theo turning off the engine and opening the driver door.

  “I’m here. No need to get out.”

  He stepped down anyway. “I thought I’d come inside and say hello to Hank and Emily and the kids for a moment.”

  “They’re sitting down to eat.” I walked around to the passenger side of his truck. “We should do the same.”

  Theo sighed, but he got back inside his truck when I opened the door and got in. I snapped the seat belt into place.

  “Didn’t know you were so eager to spend time with me,” Theo said, starting the engine.

  “Is that an attempt at humor?”

  “Sort of. You okay?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  Theo shrugged as he backed out of the driveway. “You seem a bit hostile.”

  I tamped down my irritation, which I suppose could be viewed as hostility. But maybe I was hostile. I glanced out the window. “Nope. I’m fine.”

  “This place I’m taking you to wasn’t there when you left. It opened up two, maybe three summers ago. It’s good though. If you like Italian.” He paused. “Do you?”

  I loved Italian, but I saw no reason to cut him some slack, so I murmured, “It’s all right.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, and I was glad when silence descended in the cab of the truck. I had never been good at small talk, and I didn’t feel like trying with Theo.

  Theo pulled his truck into a parking lot that could fit maybe ten cars. He found a spot at the far end, and we got out to go around to the front of a brick building where the sign read LUIGI’S.

  The hostess, a tall brunette, smiled a huge welcome aimed at Theo. “Theo, how nice to see you.”

  “Nice to see you too, Marie.” He kissed her cheek.

  She barely glanced at me before her gaze went right back to him. “We have your table ready.”

  No doubt a former girlfriend, I thought as I followed the two of them into the main part of the restaurant. It was a dimly lit, cozy sort of dining room with fresh flowers and flameless candles on the tables set with white tablecloths. We were led to a booth toward the back.

  Theo gestured for me to sit in the booth facing away from the entrance, so I slid across the leather seat, and he took the bench opposite me.

  Marie handed us menus. “Enjoy,” she said and walked away.

  “I like to sit facing the front so I can see who comes in,” Theo said as he picked up his menu. “Cop thing, I guess.”

  I shrugged.

  “You look really good.”

  At that, I lowered my menu. “I look the same as when you saw me earlier in the park.”

  Theo smiled. “Yes. And you looked good there. I meant in general, though. You were really cute as a kid, but now you’re gorgeous.”

  I blinked at that but went back to studying the menu, muttering, “You look about the same.”

  “I read one of your books.”

  I closed the menu and set it in front of me. “I see. Well, good. I hope you liked it.”

  “I did,” he assured me. “For a crime novel, it was really well done.”

  My lips twitched. “You don’t like crime novels?”

  Theo shrugged. “Most of them aren’t very accurate in their portrayal of the police.”

  “And was mine?”

  He nodded and smiled at the waitress who arrived at their table. “Do you drink wine, Dane?”

  “Yes, though I prefer white.”

  “Riesling okay?” At my nod, he told the waitress, “A carafe of the house Riesling, please. And two waters.”

  “I’m glad you thought I did all right with the police,” I said and meant it. I’d done research, and Donald had helped me as well.

  “I do. I have the other one, just need to find time to read it. You writing more?”

  “Yes.” Or I planned to eventually. I had been working on one when Donald died. Since then I couldn’t really seem to motivate myself to write again. I hoped it would pass. But I wasn’t exactly comfortable being the subject of our conversation. His gaze was too intense, too searching for my liking. “What are you going to order?”

  “The pasta primavera. It’s excellent here.”

  “You come here a lot?”

  “Probably, I guess. A few times a month. I know the family who owns it. A retired detective and his wife. Marie is their daughter.”

  “Former girlfriend?” Not that I cared.

  “No, Dane.”

  The waitress arrived with two wineglasses and a glass carafe filled with white wine. She poured it in our glasses and then turned to me with a questioning look.

  “The cheese ravioli with marinara sauce with the minestrone soup.”

  She wrote it down, then took Theo’s order and left.

  “So you don’t have a wife. How about a girlfriend? Was that her the other day when I saw you?” I decided not to beat around the bush.

  “What makes you ask about a girlfriend?” Theo asked, lifting his wine to his lips. “Given our history.”

  “We don’t have a history, Theo. We had sex one time. Hardly a history.”

  “Your first time,” he said quietly.

  For a moment, the old pain of his rejection afterward rose up, clogging my throat. But that was ten years ago. I’d moved on and had a great relationship with Donald—even if it had been marred by Donald’s secrets.

  “Everyone has to have a first. Anyway, what does that matter? You wouldn’t even talk to me after that night.”

  Theo winced. “I was scared.”

  “Scared?”

  “I wasn’t ready to get involved. To be serious.”

  I snorted. “It’s not like I demanded a ring. You wouldn’t even talk to me to blow me off.”

  He sighed. “We all make mistakes when we’re young. I was stupid, I know. But I was still trying to figure out a lot of things, and I couldn’t handle someone with your intensity at that time.”

  A load of rubbish, but I let it pass. What the hell did I care about it now anyway?

  “You asked me why I keep asking you about a girlfriend. I saw you a few days after we had sex, kissing a girl. Sarah Stewart, to be exact, and you both looked pretty into it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh. So don’t get all innocent on me now, Mason, and give me the ‘what makes you think I like girls’ nonsense. You weren’t faking it with her.”

  The bastard’s lips twisted in a smile. “Well, no, I wasn’t. I did have a thing with Sarah. Some other girls too. And guys. I didn’t have a commitment to anybody, and I was screwing around a lot when I was younger. There’s no point lying.”

  I nodded and picked up my own glass of wine. “Good, glad we got that cleared up.”

  “That was a while ago, though. I’ve changed since then.”

  “Sure. So you’re no longer bisexual?”

  “I don’t mean I’ve changed my sexual preference. What’s your issue with bisexuality?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.” I was not going to get into what happened to Donald.

  “Anyway, I have changed,” Theo said. “I still enjoy women, but I’ve decided for the most part I like guys better. The woman you saw at the table with me the other night is a colleague, and we decided to eat after a long day. We’re just friends.”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t really matter anyway. Whatever you do or whoever you’re with is your business. What happened between us was over ten years ago.”

  His eyelashes lowered, hiding his dark gaze for a moment. When he looked at me again, his expression was guarded. “Perhaps we have some unfinished business from those days.”

  I shook my head and took a large swallow of my wine. “Nope. Not as far as I’m concerned. We fucked, you ran, I moved, end of story. Sounds finished to me.”

  Theo’s mouth thinn
ed, but he didn’t say anything, just brooded into his wine. A moment or two later, the waitress arrived with our meals, and we both set our attention to them.

  “Dane?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I thought maybe we could—ah hell.”

  I swallowed a bite of ravioli. “We could what?”

  “I know it’s too soon after Donald—”

  “Damn right it is. You’ve gotta be kidding me. You said this wasn’t a date.”

  Theo sighed and put down his fork. “It’s not. Exactly. I just want to explain that I’m just as attracted to you now as then, maybe more, and maybe in the future, down the road, you’d consider seeing me.”

  My heart thundered loudly in my ears. “I don’t even live here anymore.”

  “You could move back.”

  “Back to Vermont?” I shook my head. “Why would I do that?”

  “Your family is here. You could write anywhere. I admit I don’t know much about your life in California. Have you got a lot of friends there?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this. This is obscene.” I felt the prick of tears and wanted to throw my wine in his face. Instead I got up and threw my napkin on the table. “Fuck you.”

  I headed for the restaurant bathroom. I needed to put as much distance between me and Theo as possible just then. Pushing open the swinging door, I went straight for the urinals.

  I’d just finished washing my hands when Theo came through the door.

  “You seem to make a habit of following me into the restroom.”

  “Dane, please. I didn’t mean to upset you. Come back and finish your dinner.” He stepped up close to where I stood by the paper-towel dispenser.

  I shook my head. “Theo, just go away.”

  He stood too close. Towering over me, my space. “I don’t want to go away. Talk to me.”

  “Move out of the way.”

  Theo lifted his hand and caressed my cheek. Our gazes met, froze, locked on to each other. He lowered his mouth to hover only a fraction of an inch over mine. I parted my lips just as he touched his to mine.

  It was just a small kiss, a feather-light brush of our lips together, but the jolt that went through my body shook me.

  Theo pulled back. “Come back to the table.”

  I nodded, unable to find my voice, and stepped around him to go back to the table to finish my ravioli. We sat in silence for several minutes before Theo spoke.

  His face shuttered, but then he smiled, a rather gentle smile. “I’m sorry. I’ll drop it for now.”

  I didn’t respond, just stabbed at my ravioli as though it had been the one to upset me, to fracture my thoughts into a million little pieces with just that tiny kiss, instead of the idiot across from me. But I didn’t miss the last words he’d said—“for now.”

  Chapter 4

  For the first time since I was a teenager, I woke from a wet dream. One I, unfortunately, remembered pretty well. Theo’s hands and lips had been all over me, everywhere. He’d sucked my cock, deep throating it. After I came hard in his mouth, he’d fucked my ass hard and fast until I came again. I lifted the covers and got out of bed, going straight to the bathroom to turn on the shower. What would I do about the sheets? I didn’t really want my sister to know what had happened. Lord, it was like I was a kid all over again. After taking a leak I got in the shower and washed, tears of guilt streaming down my face.

  I should have been dreaming of Donald, not Theo.

  When I was done showering, I dressed and then stripped the sheets off the bed and tossed them in the hamper.

  Today Emily had decided to have a family gathering at my brother Clive’s house. Clive was the brother I hadn’t seen since moving to California with mom ten years earlier. Emily had also invited my brother Garret. I had seen Garret and his then girlfriend when they were on their way to Hawaii.

  Basically, I would be meeting with strangers. Or it seemed that way to me. When I was sixteen Clive had been twenty-four and in the navy for his second tour of duty. Since that time I’d received maybe one e-mail a year from him telling me about his own family, a wife and kids. When Clive left the navy, he’d become a doctor and now lived in a large house in the hoity-toity part of Northfield. I’d never met his wife, Julia, or their two kids.

  Garret, according to Emily, was on his second wife. He didn’t have any children, but he did have a drug habit. Or so she’d told me with her little nose wrinkled in disdain. Garret hadn’t kept in touch with me at all. Then again, I guess I hadn’t kept in touch with him.

  I frankly thought the whole thing might be a bad idea. Neither of my brothers had ever been particularly chummy with me, and they’d both acted as though my homosexuality was contagious. I could almost picture Clive keeping his kids at least ten feet away from me.

  “You can’t be here in the same town they live in and ignore the fact they exist, Dane,” Emily reminded me as she handed me a cup of coffee that morning.

  “Why?”

  “Because they are family.”

  I poured a healthy dose of half-and-half into my coffee. “Well, Garret’s been ignoring me for years.”

  “And you haven’t pestered yourself to check on him either.” She handed me a plate of toast and scrambled eggs. “That’s no excuse. How would you feel if you found out they were in Los Angeles for a whole month and never even bothered to tell you or plan to see you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Oh don’t you shrug at me. You only have one family.”

  Rolling my eyes, I went to sit at the dining room table, and she took her own food to sit next to me. “Neither of them sent me a sympathy card after Donald.”

  She sighed and sipped her black coffee. “I’m sorry about that. I’m sure Clive meant to, and Garret…well, his mind is cloudy most of the time.”

  “How bad are the drugs?”

  “He’s tried rehab three times. None of them have stuck. His first wife left him because he wouldn’t get clean.”

  “Yeah, I met her when they went to Hawaii. She was pretty. Seemed nice.”

  Emily nodded. “She was. A former Miss Vermont. But she couldn’t change Garret.”

  “What about this latest marriage?”

  My sister wrinkled her nose. “She’s not as sweet as the first wife. And I think she’s done some of the drugs with him. I’ve noticed needle marks in her arms. They’re always bickering. I don’t think they’ll last much longer, really.”

  I grimaced. “Sounds delightful. Are you sure this is necessary?”

  “It won’t be so bad.”

  “They do remember I’m gay, right?”

  Emily laughed. “Yes, Dane.”

  With a heavy sigh I took a large bite of the eggs and tried to think of a positive side to this. Maybe this would be the only time I’d have to see them while I was back in Vermont. Or maybe they’d magically decide their gay brother was all right after all.

  Right.

  * * * *

  Clive had once e-mailed me a few pictures of his Northfield house. It was a Cape Cod—style home. Quite lovely, really. Nowhere near as grand as the house Donald had inherited from his mother and I now inherited from him. But really a nice home. And I knew he had earned the money to get it, whereas the money I now had came mostly from Donald and his family.

  By the time we pulled into Clive’s long, winding driveway, I had a bitch of a headache. Annie and Alex were chattering in the back of Hank’s minivan, and Emily was trying to engage me in conversation. Not very successfully.

  When I got out of the van, I immediately noticed Theo’s truck. Frowning, I turned to Emily. “What’s Theo doing here?”

  She smiled and patted my arm. “Oh, I invited him. He and Clive are friends, and besides, I thought you might need an ally.”

  The muscle in my jaw ticked. “I wish you hadn’t.”

  Her smile dimmed just a little. “I just wanted you to have a friendly face other than us.”

  Was I being an ass? Probably. Emily meant wel
l even if she might be a bit misguided. So I plastered on a smile—or a half smile—because it was the best I could do.

  “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

  I knew it wasn’t the biggest burst of enthusiasm, but it was better than running screaming back into the minivan. Or back on a plane to Los Angeles, where I really wanted to go.

  As we approached the door, I wondered just how many families turned into strangers who were basically forced to tolerate one another just because they shared some of the same blood. Depressing.

  The door opened only seconds after Emily’s sturdy knock to reveal Clive himself.

  There was a pretty strong family resemblance in our family, so looking at Clive was like looking at an older image of me in the mirror. Sandy-blond hair, more gray than blue eyes, boy-next-door good looks. He was taller and more muscular than me, though.

  He looked past Em and her family and his gaze landed on me, cool and assessing. Probably checking me out to see if I looked too gay for his family.

  “Hi Dane,” Clive said simply. “Welcome back.”

  I nodded, noticing he hadn’t said home, and forced a smile. “Thanks.”

  “Come in, everyone. Julia is just getting ready to put out some dip and chips.”

  Emily’s brood filed in ahead of me, rambunctious. I lingered back, finally forcing myself to walk into the house. It wasn’t as though they’d be waiting with pitchforks. I knew I needed to chill.

  We followed Clive to his living room, and I took in the scene: Clive’s kids slouched on the couch; Julia putting a large bowl of chips on the coffee table; Garret looking older than Clive, though he wasn’t—he was pale and wasted, thinner than me, really. He didn’t meet my gaze, but looked away toward the bowl of chips. I didn’t see another woman in the room, so I wondered where Garret’s wife was.

  And then…there was Theo. For some crazy reason I was suddenly glad he’d been invited. We weren’t even friends, really, yet my twisted gut loosened just a bit when I spotted him leaning against a bookcase not too far from where I stood. His face wore a gentle smile, and I had no doubt it was aimed at me. My throat tightened.

  “Hello everyone,” I forced myself to say. After all they’d all gotten together to meet me, something of the prodigal son.