The Virgin Manny

by Amy Lane

  And for two?

  Tino had spent the past two weeks thinking about how good Channing smelled when he was tired and when he was wide-awake and when he was freshly showered and when he was just about to go to bed.

  Taylor smelled like Axe.

  But for the next two hours, Tino didn’t have to get anywhere near Taylor, and that was a vast relief.

  Arthur’s little brother and sister didn’t have anything close to the self-consciousness of their older brother. They were in the pool before Tino even got into the backyard, and had suckered Elaina and Nica into playing Simon Says just as Channing walked through the door, and before Tino could ask Channing if he needed any help.

  “Nope,” Channing grinned, giving the grill one last scrape and closing the lid. “It’s gas, so as soon as we’re ready to cook, we’ll heat it up and throw on the dogs.” He gestured to an ice chest by the outside table. “I’ve got sodas and water and even juice boxes, which I always thought were an abomination against God, but Sammy seems to love them.”

  “Sammy loves the super healthy ones,” Tino agreed with a shudder. “It’s unnatural. But good—”

  “Chips on the table”—Channing gestured again—“and carrot sticks and even some cookies. We’re good.”

  Tino smiled at him, still embarrassed. “Seriously, more than good. You’re… I’m so sorry. This wasn’t even—”

  “Look!” Channing said softly, and then he bent over Tino’s shoulder, turning Tino toward the sliding glass door that came off the sitting room. “See?”

  Sammy stood there uncertainly, wearing—oh thank God—a pair of yellow swimming trunks that fit, and holding a tube of sunblock that Tino had left on the sitting room end table.

  “Tino?” he called, his voice wavering as he looked at all of the strangers in his backyard. “Tino—I need some help with this!”

  “Right here, Sammy,” Tino called, not wanting to move. Channing’s hands were on his shoulders, and he was close enough to nuzzle Tino’s temple….

  Which he did, just before straightening up.

  Tino risked a glance at him, but Channing was too focused on Sammy to look back. Oh… damn. Tino’s heart was thundering in his throat, and it was all he could do to step forward and rub lotion on Sammy’s back and shoulders and then turn him around to get his freckled nose and forehead.

  “Oh, hey!” Arthur called from the shade behind the pool. “Tino, can I get some of that for Gwennie and Lance? Mom told me I had to, but—”

  “But you forgot,” Lance said, climbing out of the pool. “We were only in the pool for fifteen minutes, which is the longest we can be in without protection, but see? If that’s SPF 50, we can be in for fifty times that much, which is….” He paused for a moment and started drawing figures in the air.

  “Seven hundred and fifty minutes,” Gwennie said matter-of-factly, coming up next to her brother. “That’s a really long time, right?”

  “Yeah,” Sammy said, nodding. “That’s over twelve hours. You guys do good math. Do you want to do math in the pool?”

  Tino regarded all three of them with horror. He had to use the calculator on his phone for even the most basic functions. He could program a spreadsheet like nobody’s business, but if anyone asked him to multiply fifty times fifteen in his head, he’d be toast.

  “No,” Gwennie said, her round little face sort of squinched up like Tino’s was. “But we’re looking for someone to play Marco Polo with. I’m tired of Simon Says.”

  “I like Marco Polo!” Sammy said excitedly. He looked up at Tino, who was busy using the excess sunblock on Gwennie’s little freckled face. “Can we?”

  “Let me get them,” Tino said seriously. “Look at them, Sammy—if I don’t coat them up good, they’re gonna go nuclear.”

  “I will,” Gwennie agreed. “Lance tans. Mom said he got the Native American genes and I got all the Scotsman. I don’t want a Scotsman in me if he’s going to explode.”

  Tino’s eyes popped open, and behind him Channing made a strangled sound over his soda.

  “I’m just lucky I’ve got Native American,” Lance said wisely, and Tino turned his attention to Lance’s admittedly browner cheeks. “If I was imported, I’d have to be Scotch or vodka.”

  Channing made that sound again, and Tino was surprised enough to say, “What?”

  “Dad says they’re not native liquors,” Lance explained. “So they’re imported. Like Gwennie’s Scotsman. But I don’t know what would have to be in me if I was imported vodka. What country is vodka from?”

  “Russia,” Tino said numbly.

  “I’d have to import a Russian inside me to explode like Gwennie,” Lance said, sounding wise.

  Channing was going to die. Tino just knew it. No man could make that sound and continue to live.

  “What would I have to have explode inside me to be like Tino and Nica?” Sammy asked guilelessly.

  “Italian,” Tino responded automatically, because their mother was almost fully Italian. His brain hurt. His brain hurt and his eyeballs hurt and his throat hurt, because he wanted to be laughing all over the place, but he couldn’t, because if he started now, he’d stop breathing.

  “Hey, Uncle Channing!” Sammy called. “Can we import an exploding Italian vodka man?”

  “Sure,” Channing gasped. Tino couldn’t answer anymore.

  “Great! Who’s Marco and who’s Polo?”

  Sammy jumped into the water with Gwennie and Lance, and Channing and Tino lost their frickin’ minds.

  When Tino could breathe again, he was clinging to Channing’s shirt and Channing had his face buried against Tino’s neck, and they’d been laughing long enough to capture everybody’s attention.

  Nica sauntered by, her round body filling out her swimsuit with enough curves to make Jacob wolf whistle. She grabbed a plate full of chips while Channing was still giggling in Tino’s ear.

  “What in the hell?” she asked, looking at them both strangely. “Tino, what did those kids say?”

  “I don’t….” Channing shook his head.

  “I don’t even….” Tino flailed with the hand not buried in Channing’s shirt.

  “I can’t even explain it,” Channing gasped, straightening up. “Just….”

  They met eyes and shook their heads. “Between the three of them,” Tino said slowly, “they can all do higher math, but they failed cultural sensitivity—”

  “Genetics,” Channing added.

  “And bartending,” Tino supplied, figuring out if there anything else had been violated in that conversation.

  “And sex ed,” Channing decided. “Or thermodynamics, because there was an exploding Scotsman in there somewhere and I’m not sure how she meant that.”

  Tino managed one good gasp of air—that was all. He stared at Channing helplessly and said, “Oh man, you suck!” before dissolving into giggles again.

  Channing supported his weight while he laughed himself out, and Nica gave a sniff of disgust with both of them.

  “You two are stupid,” she pronounced. “I mean, no offense, Mr. Lowell, because it’s nice of you to do this for us and all, but if you hang out with Tino too much, you’re going to pollute your brain. He was only salutatorian in high school, you know. He can’t even cook lasagna, and his college GPA wasn’t that great. You shouldn’t let him hang out with Sammy—he’ll make Sammy stupid too.”

  With that pronouncement, she turned back around to where Taylor, Jacob, and Artie were sitting in the shade of the canopy by the pool house. Even as Tino was muffling his chortles against Channing’s shirt, he noticed that Jacob’s expression around Nica was as dumbstruck as he imagined his own expression was around Channing most times.

  A part of him worried about more people than just Tino and Channing being stupid, but right now he was having too good a time to pay attention.

  Eventually the heat by the picnic table got to be too much, and they managed to kick off the fit of the giggles. Tino straightened self-consciously and we
nt to take a step back, but Channing had an arm wrapped casually around his shoulders—and suddenly he wasn’t letting go.

  “Thanks,” he said, giving Tino a little squeeze with his arm—and pushing Tino’s sweaty black hair away from his forehead.

  “For what?” Tino asked breathlessly.

  “For letting me laugh like a fool. It’s been….” Channing’s swallow made Tino remember the night before and how he’d been all but done in. “It’s been a week. I needed to laugh like you wouldn’t believe.”

  There wasn’t a thing Tino could do to keep his smile from turning shy. “Well,” he said, “you know, I can’t make lasagna and my college GPA was only a 3.8.”

  Channing whistled lowly. “That’s what she means by ‘not that great’? My God, your sister has some exacting standards.”

  Tino looked over his shoulder to where Nica was staring besottedly at Taylor while Jacob was staring—no doubt about it—besottedly at Nica, when they were supposed to be playing dice with Arthur.

  “Not so’s you’d notice,” he muttered.

  “The blond kid?” Channing asked softly, not that any of their conversation could be heard over the kids screaming “Marco!” and “Polo!” in the pool. “What’s his problem with you? He keeps looking over here like he’s going to kill someone!”

  Tino grunted. “God. He’s… he’s got sort of a crush on me.”

  “But your sister—”

  “Yeah. Look at them. They’re a telenovela just waiting to happen. Three brilliant losers and a guy who may not be brilliant but who’s already beat them in the game of life. It’s….” He shook his head.

  “It’s college,” Channing said, sounding like the older man for once. “And I’m getting in the way. Here, I can go inside and let you—”

  “Don’t you dare,” Tino snapped, outraged for Channing that he’d let himself be pushed off his own patio. “C’mon, they’re playing dice. Totally easy. And when we win, we can throw Jacob in the pool.”

  Without thinking about it, he grabbed Channing’s hand and hauled him toward the shade.

  “Not anybody else?” Channing laughed.

  “Naw—we like Jacob, and he likes being thrown in the pool. It was his thing all through high school, trust me!”

  Channing did trust him—he must have. The next two hours were good ones, playing dice, plunging in the pool. Channing ducked into the garage and came back with four water squirters that the adults used on the kids, shooting them like ducks in a barrel, and then the kids insisted that the grown-ups jump in too.

  After two hours they made the little kids get into the shade and play quietly while Channing and Tino grilled hot dogs and set up plates. When lunch was over, Tino got Gwennie, Lance, and Sammy to go change and then took them into the house for some quiet television time.

  After the noise and the bright sunshine, the kids responded well to an hour of cartoons, and Tino got up in the middle to bring them some water and grapes. While in the kitchen, he peered into the backyard again and saw that Artie was still laughing and relaxed, and a part of him thought that maybe he’d done really good.

  And then Taylor slid into the kitchen from outside.

  “Hey, Taylor. Are you guys out of ice?”

  Taylor—blonder than Jacob and taller too—barely glanced over his shoulder at what was going on outside. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “I just came inside to see you.”

  “That’s sweet,” Tino conceded. “How’s your summer?”

  “Not bad. Got a job to help me get through college. Not as sweet as this setup here, though.” He glanced around appreciatively.

  “Yeah, well, I lucked into this. Channing needed help with Sammy, I needed help with my loans—it worked out.”

  Tino started stacking the glasses of ice water and the cold grapes on napkins on a service tray, just to consolidate everything. So when Taylor moved up behind him and mashed his groin into Tino’s backside, Tino was so surprised he dropped a tumbler into the sink, where it shattered.

  “Goddammit,” he muttered, bending over hard and fast enough to hip-check Taylor the hell out of his space. “Taylor, that was stupid. What are you trying to do?”

  “Here,” Taylor said, reaching in front of him. Tino really hip-checked him this time.

  “Just stay out of the way,” he muttered. “Get out of my space, turn on the light, and let me pull the glass out of the sink—ouch!”

  “Oh man. Baby, did you hurt yourself?” Taylor pulled Tino’s hand away from the sink, and together they watched the blood well up from the cut on the side of Tino’s palm.

  “I’m not your baby, and get out of the kitchen,” Tino snarled, out of patience. “Jesus, Taylor—I’m not in the mood to be hit on, can’t you see that?”

  “Oh that’s a lie, and we both know it,” Taylor snarled back. “Do you think the whole world can’t see you slobbering all over your boss? You should be embarrassed, Tino—you’re like his little wifey, taking care of the kids, obsessing over the chips—”

  “He’s being really generous letting all of you come over—”

  “He is, and I’m not talking about him, I’m talking about you. You know, you can crush all over him if you want, and he might even let you hit that, but these rich guys, Tino—you gotta know all they see in guys like us is a piece of ass.”

  Tino refused to acknowledge the direct shot. Taylor knew where Tino lived—literally. They both lived in the same not-as-awesome-as-Stanford-Ranch neighborhood, and they’d had to put up with that attitude in school. That big chip on Tino’s shoulder, the one he’d acknowledged to Channing? Well, he and Taylor had shared custody, and Tino saw it now for the ugly thing it really was.

  “He’s been nothing but a gentleman,” Tino snapped. “And I can’t say the same for you. Have you come out to my sister yet? Because while you’re in here trying to grab my ass, she’s picking out furniture for after you guys graduate from college.”

  Taylor let out a little groan. “That’s not my fault—”

  “You think it’s not?” Tino got tired of watching himself bleed and grabbed a paper towel. “I told my family when I was twelve, Taylor. And I had to live with that all through middle school and high school, and it wasn’t great, but it didn’t suck either. Have you told anyone but the guys you’ve been banging?”

  When Taylor spoke next, he sounded 100 percent surly adolescent, and Tino remembered that he had helped change Taylor’s diapers and they had grown up together. But Tino had grown up first, and Taylor still had a lot to go.

  “It’s nobody else’s business,” he whined.

  “Oh God. Get out,” Tino ordered.

  Taylor took a step toward him, his demeanor going from whining adolescent to sexual dominator in about two seconds. “Really?” he purred. “Really, do you really want me to leave?”

  “Oh God, do I ever,” Tino muttered.

  Taylor took another step forward, and Tino was contemplating actually hurting the kid when there was a clatter from the hallway.

  “Tino, I brought you some Band-Aids and some Neosporin!” Channing called out, and then thudded into the kitchen on uncharacteristically loud feet.

  Taylor looked from Channing, who stood there with a first-aid kit and a genial smile, to Tino, who wasn’t even trying to hide his relief.

  “We’re going to have to go soon,” he said sourly. “Probably after the kids watch cartoons.”

  “That works,” Channing said good-naturedly. “Sammy likes to read in his room for a while on the weekends anyway.”

  “Yeah, good.” And with that Taylor let himself back onto the patio, and Tino was left staring at the first-aid box in Channing’s hands.

  “How did you even know I cut my hand?” he asked, feeling stupid.

  “I heard you drop the glass,” Channing replied without shame. “Now give me your hand and I’ll put something on it not a paper towel.”

  Tino nodded and unwrapped the bloody bandage while Channing fussed over the cut. “
Well, I’m grateful,” Tino admitted. “That kid is—”

  “A handful,” Channing said, flashing him a rueful grin. “And pretty close to your age. Are you sure you’re not—”

  “No!” Tino insisted. “Oh my God—did you hear the part about not even being out? I mean, yeah, I may be the world’s oldest virgin, but dude, even I have my standards.”

  Channing’s fingers were gentle as he took a cotton ball and used a disinfectant on the blood. “Yeah? What kind of standards do you have?”

  “I… uh….” Tino couldn’t stop looking at him. He had blue-gray eyes that should have been cold but weren’t. Laugh lines at the corners and grooves at the creases of his full mouth. But he couldn’t say beautiful because Taylor was beautiful, and it wasn’t the beauty that was grabbing Tino by the gut anyway.

  “A sense of humor,” he heard himself say, and was gratified when Channing looked up from his hand.

  “Yeah?”

  Tino nodded. “Decency,” he added, because he liked Channing’s integrity and the way he cared for Sammy and tried to treat everybody fair. Even his business practices were fair.

  Channing nodded soberly. “Go on.”

  “Kindness, but… but drive too. Someone who wants to go out and do things in the world.” Because even if Jacob were gay, Tino could never see himself falling in love with his friend, for that reason alone.

  “Check,” Channing said, reaching for a bandage. “Pretty good list so far.”

  “But… but I can’t put it all on a list,” Tino finished, feeling stupid. “It’s just… when I look at him, my stomach has to know, right?”

  Channing’s power grin emerged, the one that deepened the grooves in his cheeks. “So not easy on the eyes, but easy on the stomach. I hear you. Makes total sense.”

  And Tino still felt stupid. “What about you?” he asked defensively, watching as Channing placed the bandage and rubbed the edges down to make sure it stayed. “What’s on your list?”

  Channing glanced up at his eyes and continued to rub the back of Tino’s hand—the part not covered by the bandage—with his thumb. “Kindness,” he said softly, the rumble of his voice hitting Tino directly in the gut. “Resilience. The ability to be tough without being mean.”