Taste of Love

by David Horne

  “Just so you know, Mom’s on a mission again. Talking about grandkids.”

  Alex snorted, pocketing his keys. “I bet Sara’s having a great time.”

  “Honestly, Mom thinks everyone has time for children and setting up a home life. She works all the hours God sends and she didn’t even have time for a home and kids.”

  It was said without a hint of bitterness, but Alex knew it was there anyway. Their mom had been building a business when she’d fallen pregnant with Alex. Though she had tried in the intervening years to make up for her absence, it was too little too late. Waking up eighteen years after having children and realizing you haven’t spent a whole lot of time with them must have been a shock, but Alex didn’t have to like her attempts to force family time on them.

  Alex looped an arm around Bella’s neck and tugged her in. It was all right to be affectionate, he supposed, given the subject of their conversation. “At least she’s not on at you to start a family.”

  Bella rolled her eyes, pinching his hip. “She’d have to like Milo for that.”

  That thought made Alex pause. Their mother tended to latch onto a partner with abandon, perhaps trying to make up for her lack of interest in her children, but it either felt too stifling, or too judgmental. There had to be a happy medium somewhere, but she had yet to find it. “You could always just talk to Dad at dinner.”

  Making a face, Bella pushed open the front door. “Are you kidding? Until he retires, we’ll keep hearing about perps this and arrests that.”

  There was a reason they sat Sara next to him after all.

  “I heard that.” Luke poked his head around the door, raising his eyebrow. Alex’s dad was graying at the temples, but he still looked like he could wrestle a bear to the floor without breaking a sweat. It was the one thing Alex had hoped to inherit out of his genes, but sadly, height was the only thing.

  “You were supposed to,” Bella said sweetly, leaning up to kiss her dad’s cheek. “Look who I found in the driveway.”

  Luke met Alex’s eyes and he smiled warmly. Alex and his dad didn’t get warm and fuzzy a lot, but he was the easier parent for Alex to get along with. He strove for his mother’s approval, whereas his dad gave it freely and without judgment. “You’re here early.”

  “There was no traffic on the 495,” Alex told him, shutting the door behind him. He needed to message Harry before he forgot, so he waved a hand vaguely up the stairs. “I just need to use the bathroom.”

  Bella was eyeing him around their father, but Luke just clapped him on the shoulder as he passed.

  “Don’t take too long,” he said. “Your mother will want to see you.”

  Alex waited until they had both disappeared into the living room and took the stairs two at a time, secluding himself in the bathroom. There hadn’t been any more messages, which was a little disappointing, but then Alex had left him hanging. Was Harry sitting there, worrying about whether Alex would reply, or if he would change his mind?

  Sorry I was driving. It’s Sunday dinner with the parents. I’d like to say we had mixtapes when I was in high school, but honestly everyone had MP3 players. Music recommendations, Harry. I want music recommendations.

  As an afterthought he added, if it takes me a while to reply, it’s because I’m with the parents. You should tell me where you want dinner.

  That didn’t sound too stupid, did it? Would Harry think he was being indecisive? Alex had sealed business deals for his mother’s company, but he couldn’t figure out how to text a guy he wanted to date. “Get a grip, Wheeler.”

  Just in case, he brought up the message chat again. He typed in his number, deleted it, and then typed it in again.

  Call me later tonight? If you want.

  Let Harry decide; Alex was apparently incapable of making any hard choices where Harry was concerned.

  Pocketing his phone, he flushed the toilet and washed his hands; his dad was a stickler and if he hadn’t heard the flush, he would know something was up. Bringing Harry up at the dinner table was out of the question. If their mom was already on a roll with Sara and the whole grandkids thing, Alex didn’t want her delving into his love life. Not that there was much for her to learn, but Harry was his and his alone. At least for now.

  When he eventually made it downstairs, his mother was in the kitchen, he could hear her yelling at Jason about the sauce, and Sara, Bella, and his dad were all in the living room.

  “There he is,” Sara said, bouncing to her feet. She looked like she’d been to yoga before coming here, which was probably why their mom had started on her. Dressing appropriately for dinner was apparently a thing. Throwing her arms around Alex’s neck, Sara dragged him down for a hug. “It’s been too long.”

  “Work,” Alex pointed out, tapping her hips gently with his hands. “Also, your husband is determined to keep us apart.”

  Sara looked over her shoulder to see Jason coming out of the kitchen, gravy bowl in hand. She grinned devilishly and planted a sloppy kiss on Alex’s cheek. “Tragic. Our love is not meant to be.”

  “Oi,” Jason said, jerking a finger at Alex. “Hands off my wife.”

  Alex held up his hands with a grin, showing Sara’s hands wrapped around his neck. “I can’t help it if your wife prefers me.” Jason placed the gravy bowl on the table, glaring at Alex the entire time. Sara extricated herself and laughed, propelling Alex forward.

  “Go on, boys,” she said. “Kiss and make up.”

  Jason rolled his eyes but dragged Alex into a hug. “Thought you’d show up just as the food was hitting the table.”

  “I couldn’t resist this face for too much longer,” Alex said, patting Jason’s cheek. He got a punch to the arm for his trouble and stepped back, slipping his hands into his pockets. “I hear you’re trying to get pregnant.”

  “Alexander,” Luke said, and Alex gave his dad a placating gesture. Bella was smothering a laugh behind her hand, and Jace flipped Alex the middle finger when their dad turned away.

  Sara huffed out a frustrated breath. “Why she can’t look to you for grandkids, I don’t know.”

  Alex raised his eyebrows. “Dunno. Might be the gay thing, Sara.”

  “That doesn’t stop you having children, Alexander.” Alex’s mother came out of the kitchen, hands on her hips, and gave him an appraising eye. There was a pleasant smell wafting out of the kitchen, and there was a lock of hair coming undone from the bun on top of her head. Aris was usually so well put together that the thought of her in the kitchen still weirded Alex out.

  “Hi, Mom,” Alex said, taking his hands out of his pockets.

  “I missed you,” she said, drawing him into a hug.

  “You saw me two weeks ago,” he told her, squeezing her gently. He did love her, despite how overbearing and difficult she could be, and he sighed. “If you didn’t send me to so many different states –“

  “Don’t start,” she said, with a smile. “You’re my best employee.”

  “Uh-huh,” Alex said, giving Jason a roll of his eyes. Jason shrugged, not bothered by the slight, and waved him off. “So, dinner?”

  “Yes,” Aris clapped her hands together and gestured at her husband. “Lay the table would you, darling? Jason, Bella, help me with the dishes.”

  While the rest of his family was busy with the dinner, Alex sneaked another look at his phone. All he could see of the notification was I’ll call you. Enjoy din… and he grinned, slipping his phone back before anyone could ask him what he was doing.

  Chapter Four

  “I think it’s nice you visit your parents regularly,” Harry was saying into the phone. “I work with mine, so I can’t really avoid them.”

  Alex dropped his hand into the bowl of popcorn, grabbing a handful. Before he shoved them into his mouth, he said, “I’m sure your parents are less overbearing than mine.”

  Harry chuckled softly. “Not unless I’m late for work.”

  Watching cars speed through Rio de Janeiro for a while, Alex contemplated
what he was going to say next. Dinner had gone smoothly, and while he had spent the whole day wishing it was over so that he could call Harry, he had a good time anyway.

  “Do you like working for them?”

  Harry hummed in the background, and Alex could hear him shuffling around on something. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about doing anything else. I love baking. It seemed natural to take over from them.”

  “I used to want to be an astronaut,” Alex said, wistfully remembering being a kid, dressed to the nines in astronaut gear and dreaming about space.

  “Admirable.” Harry sounded amused. “What changed?”

  “My parents,” Alex admitted. “Well, my mom. She assumed I would be following her into the family business.”

  Confessing it felt like a weight lifting from his shoulders. He had spoken about this before to Jason and Bella, but while Jason understood, and Bella sympathized simply because her relationship with Aris was so strained, Alex felt differently, telling someone removed from the situation.

  “Why don’t you do what you love?”

  It was a question Alex had asked himself time and again. He could never come up with an answer that would satisfy. Fear of Aris. Fear of disappointment. Fear that he wasn’t good enough for anything but what he was doing. In the end, Alex went for the partial truth. “Jason and Bella didn’t want to take over the family business. I had to.”

  Harry was silent for a while. “Sacrificing your future to keep your siblings happy?”

  “It’s not a sacrifice,” Alex snapped, though his protest died a little under Harry’s reply.

  “You’re giving up on doing something you love to make sure your siblings can do what they love.” Harry kept his tone light and soft, and Alex closed his eyes. “I would say that’s sacrifice.”

  Alex made a noncommittal noise, keeping his eyes closed, and took a deep breath. “I didn’t mind. When I was out of college and had just started the job, it was all right. Now I just wanna do something else.”

  “What would you do instead?”

  Tipping his head back against the couch, Alex stared up at the ceiling, brow furrowed. He hadn’t really thought about it. Whenever he took the time to consider alternative jobs, it was always wistful and without substance. “Something with archery?”

  Harry’s laugh was just as addictive as his smile. Alex wondered how often he could make him do both. “Archery is a thing for you, huh?”

  “I used to go every Thursday as a kid,” Alex confessed. “It was the one thing I was good at that my mom couldn’t tell me to improve. Yeah, mom issues,” Alex said, with a laugh.

  Instead of laughing, Harry just said, “Everyone has something, Alex.”

  Alex let silence fall between them. He didn’t know what else to say, and thoughts were whirling around his head in a rush. Harry’s quiet comfort and support was unexpected, but not unwanted.

  “Thank you,” Alex said eventually, grabbing again for the popcorn bowl. “I didn’t mean to get deep on the first phone call.”

  “At least we didn’t have to discuss the weather,” Harry pointed out, and Alex could hear the humor in his tone. “That’s a sign of a bad date.”

  Alex snorted. “I’ll keep an eye out for those warning signs.”

  “I don’t think we’ll have that problem,” Harry said softly. For a moment, Alex was afraid that meant he didn’t want to talk again, but then Harry let out an awkward laugh. “If you want to do this again, I mean.”

  Sitting up straighter on the couch, hand clutching the phone so tight his fingers ached, Alex hardly dared breath. “Yeah. Yes, I do.”

  This time, Harry’s laugh was relieved. “Oh good. I was hoping you would say that.”

  Letting out his own tension in a breathy laugh, Alex stared down at the bowl of the popcorn, flashing from the TV in the periphery of his vision, but he was so happy he could have yelled. Thankfully for his neighbors, he managed to restrain himself.

  “I’m glad you decided to stalk me on social media.”

  Harry snorted, making a non-committal noise. “You could have just left something on the plane.”

  Alex wasn’t afraid of that. “You saw me double check.”

  “You did it twice if I remember correctly,” Harry pointed out, and he sounded intrigued.

  “I couldn’t put my seat belt on,” Alex admitted quickly, feeling his cheeks heat up as he did so. Over Harry’s laugh, he groaned. “You were smiling at me.”

  There was something warm in Harry’s voice when he replied, and Alex felt his heart lurch. He had it bad. “I flustered you? That’s flattery if ever I needed it.”

  Alex stopped the movie, rubbing his thumb gently over the buttons of the remote. He stared down at it, trying to think of his next words carefully. “Not all cute guys fluster me,” he said eventually. “Just the ones that I—”

  Cutting himself off, Alex didn’t really know where he wanted to take that sentence. Was this stuff too deep for a first-time conversation? Admitting that Harry’s smile made him a klutz was one thing but feeling a deeper connection than just a crush was another.

  “It’s all right, Alex,” Harry told him gently. “I get it.”

  “Oh,” Alex breathed. You’re the first felt too heavy a thing to say. I’m sorry I’m such a loser was just as bad.

  Harry didn’t say anything for a while, and Alex’s chest tightened, scared that he had messed something up, even if he couldn’t figure out what it was. Breathing a sigh of relief when Harry started talking again, Alex let the remote drop back to the couch. “I’ve only dated one person before you.”

  “Oh,” Alex said again and felt like an idiot. He had a wider vocabulary if only he could actually use it. “So, we’re new at this together?”

  “Yeah,” Harry said, and Alex could picture his smile, cheeks dimpled. Alex really wanted to see him again. “Though next time we should be new at meeting in person.”

  The thought instantly made Alex relieved, and happy. “We don’t have to do that,” he pointed out. “We managed to do that with minimal trouble.”

  “You couldn’t do up your seat belt,” Harry reminded him, and Alex relaxed back into the couch cushions, cheeks hurting with how much he was smiling. If he stopped worrying and just let himself have this, let himself enjoy whatever time he managed to spend with Harry, things would find a way of working out.

  Time, he supposed, would tell.

  Chapter Five

  There was a café around the corner from the Lins’ bakery, and Alex agreed to meet Harry there after work the following Wednesday. He was so excited about the potential date that he’d spent an hour on the phone to Sara, confessing everything and begging her not to tell anyone else.

  “Don’t be a teenager,” Sara chastised. Then, after a beat, “Tell me everything.”

  Alex felt relief in telling other people about Harry, but he didn’t want that to roll so far that his parents would find out. There hadn’t even been a proper face to face date yet and Alex wanted to get that out of the way before he started trying to put a name to what it was.

  “They’re always on me to find someone,” Alex explained, toward the end of the phone call. “I want to figure out what’s happening before I try and get them to butt out.”

  “Sounds fair,” Sara allowed. He could hear a whistling in the background; they needed a new coffee maker, but Jason had to drain every inch of life out of something before he replaced it. “This piece of…”

  “Just buy a new one,” Alex said, latching onto the new subject with gratitude. “Let him bitch about it after.”

  Sara cursed under her breath and then groaned. “You wouldn’t have to live with him after. He would never let it go.”

  Alex gave her that. Jason was an irritating person all around, and Sara deserved all the awards for making a life with him. “I’m sure he would tone down the bitching if he understood the alternative was a coffee maker to the face.”

  “You make a good point,” Sara s
aid eventually. Unfortunately, she also continued with, “Don’t think this conversation is over.”

  Rolling his eyes, Alex eyed the clock above his desk. He hadn’t seen his mother all morning, which was a blessing, but he still had some paperwork to fill out before he could get home. “I promise I’ll tell you everything after the date.”

  Sara said, “damn right,” and started in on another rant about the coffee maker, so Alex put her on speaker so that he could get back to work. Now that the conversation had turned away from Harry, Alex could get more comfortable.

  Alex didn’t regret meeting Harry, nor did he wish to abandon the idea of going on a date, but he was also afraid that his whole life would become about him. Loving someone, he had always reasoned with himself, didn’t mean you had to give up who you were.

  If you even know what that is.

  Ignoring the urge to punch his subconscious in the face, Alex shoved the voice down and concentrated on working. “I’m a multi-faceted person, right?”

  Sara stopped talking abruptly. “What?”

  Alex was a moron around everyone these days, apparently. “You know what I mean.”

  “Are you having a crisis of self?” Sara sounded incredulous and Alex massaged his temples, regretting saying anything at all. “Because if you are, stop it.”

  “I don’t want Harry to think I’m boring,” Alex admitted quietly.

  “You’re not boring,” Sara told him, and she sounded sure of herself. She didn’t lie, Alex reminded himself, and she would have no reason to do so now. “You don’t get out much, sure, but you’re funny, you make an excellent omelet, and I know I can call you whenever I have a problem and you’ll talk me down.”

  “Okay,” Alex said, dumbly, not knowing what else to say. Maybe there was a reason that Sara was one of his best friends.

  “To make up for making me tell you all of that,” she said, continuing as if she hadn’t just confronted everything Alex had been worried about, “You can buy me dinner tonight. Jason’s working and I need to get out of the house.”