by Brandon Witt
So without my family, where did that leave me? What did I want? I really had no idea. Before Mum’s debt I had been on my way to buying myself a house, but I wasn’t really sure why. Just because it seemed like the sensible thing to do. I didn’t even really have an idea of what sort of place I wanted—a townhouse in the city? An apartment on the river with a view? A house with lots of room in the suburbs?
The girls all had dreams and visions of the future. Ellie wanted to get off government handouts and buy a nice house for Skylah and herself. Lizzy had dreams of international law and fighting for justice. Maria just wanted to learn, learn, learn. But what about me?
I had no plans for a big career. I didn’t want to go back to school and study. I had no big aspirations to travel. I actually had no compass at all—no north that I was heading toward. Mum was right—I was a planet. I revolved around my sisters’ needs, and once they were gone, I would have no direction.
Could Patrick be my sun? What would life be like with Patrick? He needed someone to take care of him, that’s for sure. Not only his physical needs—and I don’t mean sex!—but he really did need someone to brighten his life. He needed someone to force him to go to pubs and someone who would take him to the beach. He needed someone to make him eat healthy instead of existing on salt!
He needed a househusband.
What he didn’t need was a keeper. He didn’t need to be caged and babied like my mother. He didn’t need someone to give him money for he had enough of his own and wouldn’t be needing handouts like my sisters. He needed someone to hold his hand and be by his side, and occasionally to be behind him, giving him a push to try new experiences.
But the big question was, did he want me to do that?
Weighing on my mind was also the blindness issue. It was true I loved Patrick despite his blindness, but the simple fact was, the man was blind. There were things we couldn’t do. There were allowances I had to make. Could I live with that permanently?
The previous week I had grabbed a couple of things from the supermarket and brought them home on my bike. When I made it back to the house, I was busting for the loo, so I dropped the bags on the kitchen floor and raced for the bathroom. I wasn’t even halfway through emptying my bladder, when there was a tremendous crash and a whole lot of cursing. Patrick had tripped over the bags, and by the time I arrived at the scene, he’d busted open a bag of rice and had Coke frothing from a break in the plastic bottle. I’d felt extremely guilty and had apologized sincerely. I was mortified when I found the bruises on his arms and legs that night, and it killed the amorous mood for me. I covered it well, and I don’t think he noticed, but I felt completely wretched at the fact that I’d caused him injury.
I also learned very quickly not to close doors in the house no matter how much I enjoyed kissing his bruises better.
Regardless of what I had said to him, I did feel sorrow in all the things we couldn’t do together. Before selling my car, I’d jogged to keep fit. That was something I couldn’t do with Patrick. Watching a movie with a blind man is also a completely different experience – not to mention the fact that he didn’t find Paul Walker attractive, which was just unnatural. I’d pointed out that in some ways I greatly resembled the man and he’d laughed himself silly. He went on to describe how my voice was infinitely sexier than the actor’s voice, speaking of modulation, nasal quality, and accent. I was chuffed at the fact someone would prefer Jacob Manning over Paul Walker.
Once I’d accidently left the room without telling him and came back to find him still chatting away to thin air because he’d missed my leaving. That was a little embarrassing.
There were, however, some great benefits to being with Patrick. The man genuinely enjoyed my cooking. I knew I wasn’t a bad chef, but the numerous compliments I received for everyday dishes were great. His nose could sniff out the merest hint of spice and he often identified all ingredients in the meal before the first bite.
He was also intelligent, well-read, honest to a fault, goddamn perfect in bed, and made my heart sing like a fucking canary.
So just because he needed a little more help than other guys I’d dated, it in no way made me balk at the thought of a relationship with him.
Now I had to find somewhere in our conversation to make that clear to him.
SATURDAY I crawled out of Patrick’s bed around 10:00 a.m. He’d been up for a while and was sitting on the veranda with a coffee and his laptop, listening to the news on the web. I brushed a kiss over the crown of his head and sank into the chair beside him.
“Gosh, I’m tired. You need to stop waking me up at dawn to ravish me. You should wait until a decent hour like 8:00 a.m.”
Patrick pulled the earpiece out and grinned at me. He knew I was joking, since it was me who woke him more than he woke me. “Poor baby. Are you getting old?”
I flipped him a finger and then groaned, “Oh, fuck. I just made a rude hand gesture at you and you’re fucking blind. That’s how dumb and tired I am!”
He roared with laughter and left me to wake up in the sun while he made me a morning coffee. He knew me well because he came back with two coffees—I’d usually skol the first one and then sit leisurely over a second cup. I contemplated the cloudless blue sky and asked, “How about a dip in the river today? Are you a budgie-smuggler type of guy, or boardies? I don’t really care, but just give me a bit of warning so I can tell my dick to behave when you strip off in public.”
“Do I look like the type of man who would wear budgie-smugglers to go swimming in public?”
I grinned. “A gay man can always hope, can’t he? But I understand if you don’t, because I wear boardshorts to go swimming too. So tell me, Patrick? If I can find us a not-so-public swimming spot, will you wear Speedos for me, or do you think I could persuade you to skinny-dip?”
He contemplated it for a moment with a smile playing around his mouth, and then he said, “Will you be skinny-dipping with me?”
“Of course,” I answered promptly. “And do you know what? I have this sudden urge to buy a pool for us this afternoon. Just a toddler’s pool will do. It’s not like we’ll use it for very long before needing to head back inside.”
When he didn’t laugh at my joke, I looked over with concern. He was fingering his nearly empty coffee mug in a nervous fashion, and my heart sank. I had a feeling that whatever had been on his mind all week was about to come out. No matter what he’d said to my mother, I wasn’t sure that it would be good news.
“Jake? Are we… exclusive?”
That was not the question I was hoping for. Did it mean he wanted other guys? There was no other way to answer apart from honestly. “I don’t know. I know I’m exclusive to you and I was planning on remaining that way. How about you?”
“Definitely exclusive to you, Jake. If you’re around I don’t even see other guys—and that’s not a blind joke.”
Hope soared in my heart. “So can I call you my boyfriend?” I asked cheekily. “Are you my boo?”
He rolled his eyes and smiled. “I don’t think I could ever be anyone’s boo, but I’d love to be your boyfriend.”
That deserved a kiss, and I jumped up and snatched one from his lips. “Good morning, boyfriend,” I said.
He caressed my face for a moment before I sat down again. “Jake? I need to ask you something—something serious. It’s important to me, so I need you to consider it and don’t be offended or get angry or anything without thinking it through. Can you hear me out?”
Oh, shit. Something serious? “Okay.”
“I want you to move in with me.”
I blinked a couple of times to focus and make sure I wasn’t dreaming. He thought I’d get angry at him over this?
“Patti-cake….”
He held up his hand to stop me. “Wait! Just… wait a minute. There’s more. Moving in with me has strings and conditions and lots of responsibilities. So can you just wait until I tell you all of it before you jump in?”
I settled back
in my chair and remembered my yes-boss-no-boss voice. “Okay.”
“I want you to move in, but I think it needs to come with a change of status between us. At the moment you’re my housekeeper, but you’re doing half of your work outside of hours. I’ve noticed how often you put on the washing machine on the weekend, and you always do the dishes after dinner. These are the jobs I’m paying my housekeeper to do. So I want to terminate my contract with Housekeepers Inc. and pay you direct.”
“Pat—”
“No!” he stopped me again. “Wait. I haven’t finished.” He swallowed and continued on. “I’ve spoken to my accountant, as he’s the one who pays all my bills and takes care of my finances. I can pay you a salary direct, and then you could continue to do the housework but not be restricted to hours. I’ve had a housekeeper for this house for five years now and I know how long it takes them to look after it, so as long as you still do the dishes and vacuum and stuff, I don’t really care if you do them at night or on the weekend. The nine-to-three hours were just to make sure the housekeeper wasn’t bothering me when I wasn’t at work. And….” He held up his hand as I went to interrupt. “And since I don’t have to pay the agency, then I can pay you extra. I thought it would be fair to you that you get paid the same amount plus what I was paying for agency fees. It would be a good swap for you—a pay rise, plus you’d have more flexibility in your day because you’re not restricted to hours while I’m at work.”
He anticipated my next attempt at an interruption because this time he held up both hands. “Wait! There’s more.” He couldn’t see me but I was grinning madly. “I know that you’re going to tell me that you want to pay your way and you should pay me rent or board or something for coming to live with me. I’ve thought about that. You need to realize, Jake, that I’m a rich man. I know you don’t want to live off me, so I’m not suggesting it.”
He did know me well, because it was exactly what I was about to say. I grinned some more and waited for him to continue.
“You don’t need to pay me rent because I own this house outright. I don’t have a mortgage, so you don’t need to contribute to it. And in lieu of you paying half of the electricity bill or whatever you were about to ask, I’d like to make you a deal. I’ll pay for all your board if you cook all the meals. I hate cooking so if you cook me—us!—meals and make dessert at least… hmm, let’s say twice a week, I reckon we should call it square.”
I was pressing my lips together to keep from bursting out. But Patrick wasn’t finished.
“And there’s more.”
More?
“I want to hire you for more things too. So I’ve talked to my accountant, and he showed me the figures, and you would actually be saving me money. So don’t think I’m asking you to do this out of the goodness of my own heart. This is a good deal for me too. I want to pay you for more than just six hours a day. I want to increase this by two hours a day, including weekends, and pay you to drive me to work. At the moment I’m paying a huge sum to the taxi company, mostly for taxis to wait around for me. So instead I want to buy a car and pay you to drive me to wherever I need to go—work, university, the shops, the park, the barber. It would work out cheaper for me, plus you’d have the car during the day at your disposal to go to the shops and visit your family and everything. Plus if we had a car we could go places on the weekend.”
Oh, yes!
“I know it sounds a lot and it’s a big responsibility. You would have to give up any chance of having another job during the week. You’d be running after me at odd times during the day, plus the responsibility of the house. And living with a blind person is not a walk in the park. But it would give us time together, plus you’d have your own money to do what you want. You don’t have to give me your answer straight away, and you don’t have to worry about refusing if you want to. Just please tell me what you’re thinking so I know how to fix things before they become a problem. Because I love you, Jake. And I want us to be together forever. This is not a three-month contract. This is a long-term commitment. So what do you think?”
I looked at the guy who had stolen my heart and smiled. “So I’m allowed to talk now?”
Patrick’s mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile. “Yes.”
“Let me get this straight—you want me to come and live with you, keep your house, drive you around, and look after you, and you’ll pay me a wage for it?”
“Yes.”
“And you also love me?”
“Yes.”
“So what you’re really looking for is a househusband?”
“Yes.”
He couldn’t see it but my smile was splitting my face. I put down my coffee mug and answered. “Yes.”
“Yes?” he spluttered. “Yes? Did you just agree to everything?”
“Yes.”
His eyes widened and he looked at me with shock. “Just ‘yes.’ No argument, no changing the terms, no insisting on your way, no rebuke for bad manners, no smart-aleck reply? Am I speaking to the right person, because I swear the man I love wouldn’t just say yes like that.”
I laughed with delight and plonked myself down on his lap where all the neighbors could see. “Yes. I love you too, Patrick. Yes, I will come and live with you and let you pay me to look after you. But be warned, I’ll still rebuke you for your bad manners. I’ll insist on doing things my way and I’ll make you go out and have fun, even if it kills you. There’s just one little thing I’d like to change.”
His hands encircled my waist and found their way under my sleep shirt. “Ahh, there’s the Jake I know and love. Well, go ahead, what’s your condition?”
I threaded my fingers through his hair and pressed kisses along his jawline. I could feel his excitement rising under me and hoped that no neighbors were actually watching too closely. “It’s not really a condition, just something you forgot to write in the contract. You’ll pay me and I’ll look after you, and in addition to that we’ll share—share love, share a life, and share a bed.” I kissed my way across his lips and shivered as he circled my nipple with his fingers. “Definitely the bed bit. Because I have a feeling we are going to need a lot of bed.”
Patrick gasped and thrust upward. “Yes, bed sounds good. How about we go and see about that part of the contract right now?”
We kissed passionately, not caring about the neighbors. Finally I pulled back and looked at him. “There’s just one more thing I need to ask.”
“What?”
“Who used the blue silicone butt plug I have hidden away in the laundry? I found it after your weekend party of debauchery.”
“The what?” Patrick was stunned and his eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline.
“The butt plug. It was tangled up in the sheets.”
“It was—Oh, my sweet Lord. You found that in my room?”
“Yes. Is it yours?”
Patrick laughed like mad. “Hell, no. It must be Mark’s. I wonder why he didn’t ring me?”
I cupped Patrick’s jaw and kissed him again. “Well, he’s never getting it back because you have deliberately lost his phone number, haven’t you?”
He laughed and agreed. “I’ll never need his number again. I have everything I could ever want in my arms at this very moment. I will never need more.”
I melted, but Patrick had other things on his mind. He whistled Gregor before leading me inside and locking the door behind us.
And we all know what that means.
PATRICK MAY’VE been blind, but he moved damn fast when he wanted something.
By Monday afternoon he had a brand new car delivered—a brand spanking new HSV, fresh from the car yard, which sent me into raptures—and he had terminated his contract with Housekeepers Inc. Mrs. Martha West rang me to express her astonishment, but then offered her congratulations on our “official” new status. She asked me to visit her offices to complete my resignation paperwork, but otherwise I was free from any obligations.
On Tuesday, after dropping Patrick at w
ork, I cleared out my room at the apartment, then told the owner to tally up my final payment and send me the bill. At lunchtime I received a phone call from Wally Myers, who introduced himself as Patrick’s accountant. Wally needed me to fill in a couple of forms for taxation and wanted my e-mail address. I laughed and told him I didn’t have one, so he promised to e-mail them to Patrick.
“I usually have a weekly meeting with Patrick on Wednesday morning. I’m guessing you’ll be driving him tomorrow?” he asked. He was friendly and jovial and I liked him already.
“I don’t know. If he wants me to. I’ll bring the forms with me if he does.”
“I’ll see you then. I’m looking forward to meeting the man who has my boy in such a flap.” And he hung up.
I easily informed the official places of my change of address, but telling my family and friends was not as easy.
“You are joking! You’ve moved in with him? I thought he was straight?” Davo’s response was disbelief.
Lizzy was unfortunately not as kind. “What the hell are you thinking, Jake? Moving in with him already? He seems like a nice guy, I know, but he could be a drug dealer or an axe murderer or anything. How much do you really know about him? You’re setting yourself up for heartbreak.”
Thankfully, there were those who were happy for us.
Charlie shook my hand with a big grin and said, “Finally! I never took you for moving as slow as you did, Jake!”
My mother and Maria were glad—and pleased that I now had a car to visit them. Ellie broke down and cried, saying she was so happy that I had found someone for me. Luke clapped me on the shoulder and muttered, “As long as you don’t do that kissy-kissy stuff that all married couples do in front of me.”