Mine

by Mary Calmes

  It was gorgeous up there, the entire strip laid out. The nightclub was done in white, the warmth and luxury on display. For the second time that day, I was overwhelmed, and as I was passed a glass of Cristal champagne, Neil called for the first of many toasts of the night.

  “To my beautiful wife, we are blessed with your presence, and to my dear son, welcome home.”

  There was clapping and the clinking of glasses, and then Landry was basically rushed. I had to move out of the way; there were just too many people who wanted to get to him, talk to him. And he was smiling his dazzler, eyes glittering, face animated, hands going wild, as he was an expressive talker. It was fun to watch him hold court, and I moved to the edge of the terrace so I could see the world below me.

  “Would you care to dance?”

  I turned and Jocelyn was there, grinning at me.

  “Are you sure?” I teased her. “I didn’t wear a tie.”

  She rolled her eyes and grabbed my hand.

  We had a good time, and after a while, some of her friends joined us, and it was me and all the beautiful women. I had to take my jacket off because I got hot, and because Jocelyn’s best friend, Daria, got cold, I gave it to her to wear. I led four women to the bar, and Jocelyn was surprised when she ordered a Midori sour and two cosmopolitans for her friends and I had bottled water.

  “Not drinking?”

  “Gotta be clearheaded,” I told her, inhaling.

  “Hungry?”

  “God yes, the food smells amazing.”

  She was laughing as she took my hand and tugged me after her toward the buffet. I was watching for Landry, and every now and then when he looked up to scan the room, I waved so he’d see me. And I got the nod; he could see Jocelyn as well, and everything was fine.

  “Boy, he keeps a close eye on you,” she remarked and smiled at me.

  “It goes both ways,” I said, grabbing a napkin, turning to go.

  “I thought you were going to sit with the girls,” she said, actually sounding sad.

  “I am,” I smiled at her. “I just need to make sure he eats. If his blood sugar dips, he gets frantic, and he’ll start bouncing off the walls.”

  She nodded, touched by that.

  I carried the plate across the room and leaned into the circle, which included Landry’s brothers, Will, and others.

  “Eat,” I ordered him, passing Chris a bottle of water. “Hold this for him.”

  Chris nodded. “Yessir.”

  Landry’s smile was huge. “Yes, dear.”

  I grunted and left them and returned to the girls.

  “Daria will be back,” Jocelyn said as I took a seat beside her. “I made her promise not to disappear with your suit jacket.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s a patented move, you know,” she said with a chuckle, arching an eyebrow for me. “Steal a guy’s jacket and when the guy comes to get it, go home with the guy.”

  “Huh.”

  “I explained that she had the wrong equipment.”

  “And the wrong face.”

  “Mostly that.”

  I nodded. “Most of all that.”

  She cleared her throat. “So tell me, what kind of meds does Landry take now?”

  It was meant to be just conversation, but it nearly killed me. “He doesn’t take anything.”

  She scowled at me. “How is that possible?”

  “Could you please just tell me the whole story, from the beginning?” I asked her. “I’m getting bits and pieces, and I don’t want to ask Landry for the whole explanation right now because I know he’s not ready.”

  Her breath was shaky. “Trevan, I—”

  “Please,” I pressed her.

  “I’ll do my best, but you’d be better off to ask Mom or Dad.”

  “I’d rather hear it from you.”

  “Okay, well, as you know, Landry’s the son of a very rich man. We were all exposed to drugs very early, but in high school, Landry, with his crappy self-esteem and his need to fit in at any cost, he let it run right over him. I mean, we knew he was manic and then depressed, but until Mom and Dad gave us the diagnosis, that he was bipolar, we had no idea it was anything more than just the way he was.”

  “And the drugs did what, made it worse?”

  “Of course.” She sighed. “My parents were all freaked when they found cocaine, but really, that was the tip of the iceberg stuff; the meth was the real problem.”

  But there was just no way.

  He had quit the social drug use right after we met. I had told him I was clean and had to have a partner who was going to be the same way. He had told me it was no problem, it was only recreational so could be easily terminated. And it had been. He quit the day we had the talk. I had never known an addict who could do that without a relapse or withdrawal or anything. He could not have been a drug addict; there had to be another explanation.

  “He stole money from my parents, took some of my mother’s jewelry for drugs, and all of it while they were trying, along with the doctors, to get his meds worked out—ohmygod, Trevan, you have no idea the horror it was. He became a completely different person.”

  The question of why remained, however, and the only person who had answers was Landry himself.

  “I don’t—oh.” She blanched.

  “Jocelyn?” I questioned her because I had never seen anyone go completely white and their eyes get quite that big.

  “Oh God… oh God….” She was starting to hyperventilate.

  I took hold of her arms. “Honey?”

  Her head snapped up, and I was faced with huge scared eyes as a woman stepped up beside us. She was tall and tan and stunning. She looked like a Barbie doll come to life.

  “Who’s this, Jo, your next conquest? My husband not good enough?”

  I noted her heavy-lidded eyes, the martini glass, and the combative stance. She was ready to fight, wanted it.

  “He’s a little rough, isn’t he? This one might actually be too much man for you.” She was immaculately dressed.

  “Who are you?” I snapped at her, annoyed over the change she was causing in Jocelyn.

  Her eyes moved slowly over my body as she looked me up and down. “You first. Where did you come from?”

  I squinted at her as a man joined us.

  “Evie, please. Don’t make a scene.”

  “Fuck you, Marc,” she told the man behind her, tipping her head sideways. “I’m talking to the boy toy here.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” I demanded.

  “Oh,” she said with a low chuckle, hand over her heart. “I’m Evelyn Tate, sweetheart, and this is my husband, Marc Tate, and this”—she pointed at Jocelyn—“is the woman he fucks around on me with, one of his reps, Jocelyn Collins. And you are?”

  I squinted at her. “You should leave.”

  “I was invited.”

  “This is a party for Jocelyn’s mother and her brother. Do not drag your bullshit in here. This isn’t the time or the place.” I tipped my head at her husband. “Take your wife home.”

  “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but—”

  “Please,” I asked her nicely.

  “I—”

  “Take her out of here,” I ordered Marc.

  “Evie, please.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Hugh shouted, charging up beside me, grabbing Jocelyn and whirling her around. “You couldn’t even deal with this shit for one fucking night?”

  “Don’t manhandle her,” Marc barked at him, wrenching Hugh’s hand away from Jocelyn.

  “Oh God.” Evelyn broke down, and I got why; it had to be hard to watch your husband defend his mistress right there in front of you.

  Jocelyn’s friends came back, and I could tell right then and there that I was smack dab in the middle of a situation that had been simmering for God knew how long. Tempers flared. Words were spoken under breath and then erupted.

  Evelyn started crying, Daria started yelling, Jocelyn tried to ge
t everyone to calm down, and one of Evelyn’s friends called Jocelyn a whore. And then it got loud, at which point Hugh balled up his fist and hit Marc in the face really hard. I had to reassess my first impression of the man. He had looked like a GQ model to me, vapid, dull, with only plastic pretty going for him. But he was certainly possessive of his wife, as was evident from the way he picked Marc up off the floor and started pounding on him.

  I had no idea rich people had Jerry Springer moments. It was illuminating.

  No one was coming to break it up since it was supposed to be a very exclusive and elegant affair, so I ended up having to separate the two men. Getting in the middle of any fight is painful, so I was not surprised when Marc caught me in the face and split my lip. It was an accident. Hugh got me in the ribs, but that, too, was unintentional. It stung for a minute, but I’d been hit much harder before. What was problematic was the beer that got spilled on me, on my shirt, soaking through to my skin with all the jostling. I got pissed and grabbed Marc’s bicep and shoved him down into the closest chair.

  “Do not get up,” I warned him.

  He glowered at me but stayed there, and I shoved Hugh toward the cabanas and ordered Jocelyn to go with him.

  “Who do you—”

  “Shut up,” I told Evelyn, yanking her forward, my finger in her face. “I told you this was neither the time nor the place. So sit the fuck down and don’t move.”

  She sat, silently.

  I sent Daria to the bar for ice, sent another of the women for bottled water, and used one of the dinner napkins to stem the blood flowing from my lip. When Daria returned with an icepack and a bucket of ice, I sent her with the latter to Jocelyn and Hugh, and I made Marc lean back as I placed the pack on his face.

  “Shit,” he groaned.

  “Just don’t move,” I grumbled at him.

  I went to check on Hugh, put some of the ice cubes in a napkin, and had him press it to his knuckles. Pushing back his head, I checked his eyes and his nose.

  “Thank you, Trevan,” he said, his left hand closing on my wrist. “What you must think of me.”

  “You?” I shook my head, untucking my shirt and unbuttoning it, not wanting to reek of alcohol anymore, yanking it off. “Who did you cheat on?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “No one.”

  “Well then.” I smiled at him, satisfied that he was fine. “You’re not in the wrong here.”

  He cleared his throat. “We should run downstairs and get you another shirt.”

  “I’ll run down myself. You and Jo need to get out of here before anyone sees you.”

  “Nobody saw that?” He was astounded.

  I shook my head.

  “Are you sure?” Jocelyn finally found her voice.

  “No, I think you’re good. Everyone else is way on the other side. Just leave now. You guys need to talk anyway.”

  “Yes.” Jocelyn began weeping.

  “Finally, yes.” Hugh sighed heavily, hand tightening on my forearm just for a moment. “Thank you.”

  I nodded and walked back over to Evelyn and Marc. “You guys ready to go?”

  “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “Just go home.” I was annoyed and certain it was in my voice as I walked over to Daria. “Sorry.” I smiled at her. “I need my jacket to go downstairs.”

  Her eyes were all over me. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I don’t need company. I just need my jacket.”

  She drew closer, hand going to my chest. “I have a room; come with me.”

  I moved her hand and reached for my jacket.

  Quickly, she stepped away. “Baby, I can’t tell you the last time I saw a carved eight-pack… and all tatted up.” She bit her bottom lip. “Very nice.”

  “Please,” I asked nicely. “Just—”

  “Hey!” she yelled as the jacket was ripped from her hands as she clutched it around her.

  “Oh back off, Daria,” a voice said, full of disgust, and we both turned to Landry’s friend William. “He doesn’t even like girls.”

  “You’re fulla shit, Will,” she told him. “Run on back to your beard now before she realizes that you slipped and fell on another dick. How much gay porn does she have to find on your hard drive before she gets a clue that her marriage is all for show?”

  “Fuck you, D,” he spat at her.

  “No, fuck you, Will,” she hissed back, pointing. “You may have fooled your family with that bullshit conversion therapy, but your friends… we know you’re still fuckin’ rent boys because you didn’t have the balls to tell the whole wide world that you’re gay.”

  “Go to hell.”

  She made a show of looking around. “And where is the little woman tonight, Will? Did you even bring her? Where are the kiddies?”

  “Since this is an adult party and Rose felt that—”

  “Rose didn’t feel shit,” she scoffed at him. “You didn’t want her to meet Landry. She’d know her life is a fuckin’ sham if she saw you look at him just once.”

  “You’re so full of—”

  “I hope you’re not still pining for Lan,” she cackled. “I mean, I really hope not, ’cause it looks like someone got past white bread, huh? Someone goes for the dark meat now.”

  I jerked my jacket from Will’s hands, leaving them to have their bitchfest alone as I pulled it on, wadded up my dress shirt, and fisted it in one hand as I headed for the elevator. Once I was in the lobby, I went directly to the John Varvatos store I had seen earlier, walked in, and told the sales clerk I needed a shirt.

  He eyed me coolly, and I groaned. I got a smile after a second and a sarcastic, “Oh yeah?”

  I appreciated sarcasm in all its many forms, and when I threw up my hands in defeat, he put out his hand for my soggy, beer-soaked shirt.

  “It’s marinated in Heineken,” he observed. “I think it’s done.”

  “I agree.”

  “Let’s do a lightweight crew sweater at this point, huh?”

  I nodded, let him pick what I needed, paid him, put it on, and then headed back to the elevator to return to the nightclub and the party. Maybe if I stretched it, my elapsed turnaround time was twenty minutes. When I got back up to the nightclub, though, as soon as I walked back in, I had a hand grabbing hold of my bicep.

  “Where were you?” Chris gasped, looking terrified.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, looking around instantly for Landry.

  “He’s looking for you,” Chris told me. “He’s upset and he’s getting loud and scaring my folks.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Someone thought they saw you toward the back, I think that’s where he went.”

  I made my way across the enormous rooftop, and as soon as the crowd shifted and parted, I saw William. He moved fast to reach me.

  “Where were you? Landry’s freaking out!”

  But I doubted that. I was already getting the impression from his friends and family that what was huge to them was sort of a minor irritation for me and mine. What they considered a freak-out in their polite, everyone-is-civil world might simply be Landry being annoyed. My family, our friends, when Landry had a snit, we all just dealt with it. But if when Landry was growing up, they had responded to him with panic instead of calm…. I was starting to get the idea of what had gone on. “Where is he?”

  “Daria told him you were over by the cabanas, so he’s looking there.”

  “Thanks,” I said, turning to leave.

  “So,” he said, keeping pace with me. “I’m the one Landry was caught with all those years ago in the stable.”

  “I know,” I grunted, looking for my boyfriend.

  “Did he tell you?”

  “Chris did, he did, so yeah, I’ve been informed.”

  “I went to a reparative therapy camp and he left home.”

  “Maybe he got the better end of the deal, huh?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing.”
r />   He stopped me with a hand on my bicep, and I turned to face him.

  “I love my wife and I love my children.”

  “And I don’t doubt that, but you also cheat on your wife and your children,” I told him. “Right?”

  He said nothing.

  I waited.

  “I cheat on my wife, yes,” he acquiesced.

  I scowled at him. “Make no mistake, you cheat on your kids too.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him. “One day they’ll learn the truth, and they’ll know the whole damn thing was a lie.”

  “What are you—”

  “The marriage,” I told him. “One day your kids will find out it was bullshit, and then they’ll wonder, was anything he ever said real? If he didn’t really love her, does he really love me?”

  “That’s ridic—”

  “I know about lying. I’ve met a lot of liars, seen them doing their thing. You need to fix it now, make it right for everyone, plus you, and give your wife a shot at the happiness she deserves.”

  “She’s happy!” he shouted at me, upset and defensive. “She has everything. Cars, a house—a mansion—jewelry. She’s not an idiot. She likes her life, and she’ll play along until the kids are grown, and then as long as I’m always discreet, she’ll give me my divorce and take the settlement I give her.”

  I stared at his eyes and could see what Landry had found alluring. The man was blond and handsome, and his eyes were soft, and so was his mouth. “That’s so fuckin’ sad.”

  “You’re not listening. You—”

  “I’m listening,” I assured him. “But you’re talking out of your ass.”

  “I—”

  “No doubt you’ll be able to keep a boy who will be discreet, but what I’m saying is that you won’t be able to have a partner because no out and proud gay man will live his life in a closet. You will always have a boy who belongs to you but never a man who walks beside you and holds your hand.”

  He took a shuddering breath. “And Landry’s life is, what, so much better than mine because of that?”