I have no idea.
Except I did, and finally, finally the chipmunk let go of the question I’d been wanting to ask her ever since I came out of the bedroom. “But Mom, what if I don’t want to be gay, or bi, or anything but normal?”
My mother’s face turned to steel. “Paul Allan Hannon, you are normal. Who you are is not a choice. If you’re gay or bi, you’re gay or bi, and that’s that. You can’t choose to be straight if it isn’t who you are.” She searched my face a few moments, and then hers fell. “I should have told you that when you were younger, shouldn’t I?”
I swallowed against a throat that was suddenly dry and scratchy. “Maybe.”
She kissed me on the cheek, tears running down her face, and when she pulled back, I had tears too.
“Eat your dinner,” she said, “and then we’re going to go buy a few more things for this fantastic yard of yours. Then we’re going to stay up late talking about boys, and girls too so long as they aren’t Stacey, and tomorrow morning you’re going to take me back to that shop and introduce me to your young man.” She tweaked my nose again, smiling through her tears. “Come on. My scalloped potatoes aren’t any good cold.”
Letting go of a weight I thought I’d been carrying since that afternoon with the Hazzard boys, I picked up my fork and ate my mother’s potatoes, dreaming tentative daydreams about making everything up to El in the morning.
On the night before the Fourth of July, Abuela called El over for an emergency meeting: Patti had found out they’d cleaned the attic.
Though he went straight over, by the time he and MoJo arrived, the hysterics were in full swing and the entire Rozal family was on the front lawn carrying on like a bad episode of Cops. In the center of it all was Patti, eyes swollen and nose running as she keened for her father’s lost junk like someone mourning the dead.
She looked, he realized, like he felt when he thought about losing Paul.
For the first time in his life, as their gazes met and El saw the sorrow in his mother’s face, as he felt it reflect the agony in his own heart, he understood the truth of his mother’s pain: that mourning the dead and the lost was exactly what she was doing.
“Emanuel.” She wiped her nose with her sleeve and pointed to his uncle. “Emanuel, they took his things. They took his things.”
Except this time he heard what she didn’t say as well as the things she did. They took him, Emanuel. They took my papi away.
El swallowed hard and came closer to his mother, letting MoJo down to run after the kids. “I know, Mami. I’m sorry.”
“They took his things,” she sobbed again.
They took him. They took my papi.
Rosa glared at El, waiting for him to be rational. Lorenzo and Miguel only looked tired.
El closed the distance between his mother and himself and enfolded her into his arms. “They took his things,” he whispered, “but they didn’t take him.”
Patricia Rozal shuddered, gripped El’s shoulders, then sank heavily against him with a new round of sobs.
El held her, swaying from side to side as he let his mother cry. “It’s just things. You don’t need them to remember, Mami. He’s bigger than that. And so are you.”
“But I miss him,” she sobbed.
“I know.” El shut his eyes and thought of Paul hovering over him in bed and smiling. Paul blinking cluelessly as El flirted with him. Paul, eyes falling closed as he gave himself over to the pleasure El made for him.
Paul. Paul, who wasn’t a thing at all, who El did need, who he missed very much. Paul, who was worth the risk of being disappointed, of being abandoned. Because even if it ended someday, if Paul left or they grew apart or something else, having him for a while would be better than not having him at all.
He crooned to his mother, smoothing her hair, promising himself as soon as this was settled that he’d drive across town to get Paul back.
Noah was there too, he realized as they finally convinced Patti she should sit down in her rocker (after Lorenzo cleaned out the crap from it and moved it into a space where it had room to rock) and drink some tea. When he asked Rosa about it, she shrugged.
“He was helping me set up and insisted he come over with me when I got the call from Abuela.”
El glanced over at Noah, who watched, hovering and ready to jump in and comfort Rosa in case she needed it, or to get her a glass of water or the moon or whatever it was she decided she wanted. And El decided it had all gone far enough.
He turned his sister to face Noah, holding her firmly by the shoulders. “What is it you see, Rosa?”
“What the fuck, El?” She glared at him, but when he wouldn’t budge, she sighed the sigh of the perpetually weary little sister. “I see Noah. So what?”
“Yes, Noah,” El said. “Noah who babysits your kids whenever you ask him. Noah who buys you grills and patio sets and sets them up in your yard for you. Noah who came over tonight with you. Noah, who I would jump in a hot minute except he’s straight and only, you might notice, has eyes for you.”
Rosa went still. “No.”
“Yes. I know you didn’t meet him in a bar and that his IQ is fifty times higher than the slugs you usually hook up with, but you might want to give this one a try.” She swatted at him, but only halfheartedly, too stunned and fixated on Noah, who was fixated right back and looking really, really hopeful. El kissed her on the cheek and patted her backside. “Go get him, tiger.”
El wove his way through the backyard and the house. He was done pouting and being determined that Paul was going to go back to women or simply get tired of him. He’d find a way to make it work. He’d wait until Paul was ready to let go of the ring and anything else.
He’d adopt fifty dogs and maybe even a cat, if that’s what it took.
His mother protested when he kissed her goodbye. “You just got here,” she complained. “And Miguel already had to leave because he had to go to a fire.”
“I know, Mami, but I’ll be back tomorrow.” He squeezed her hand and smiled, though it was a little shaky. “Maybe with a handsome young man on my arm.”
His mother smiled broadly and squeezed his hand back. “You do that, Emanuel. You do that.”
He kissed her soundly on the lips. “Te amo, Mami.”
“Te amo, Emanuel,” she whispered back, hugging him tight.
MoJo leaned enthusiastically out the driver’s side window all the way over to Paul’s side of town, and if El could’ve done it while driving, he would have, too. He settled for scratching her behind her ears instead. “Let’s go see if we can find you another daddy, huh, sweetheart?” MoJo barked enthusiastically and wagged her tail.
El’s heart beat hard as he rounded the corner to Paul’s street.
But not half as hard as when he heard the sirens.
“Is there supposed to be smoke like that?” Mom asked, pointing.
I craned my neck around the sun visor she’d lowered and squinted at the horizon just below the mountains, where indeed there was a nasty, black plume of smoke. “I don’t think so. If someone’s burning trash with this drought, they’re going to get one hell of a fine.”
“That’s an awful lot of smoke to be a trash fire,” Mom observed.
“Maybe the trash fire has already gotten out of hand,” I said, hoping it wasn’t on my block and that if it was, the fire trucks weren’t blocking my house.
But when we turned onto my street, we found out the fire wasn’t just on my block. It was my house.
My house. My house was on fire.
I didn’t remember parking the car, only that one minute I was looking at fire roaring out of my house’s windows, and the next I was on the street, a female firefighter holding me back as I stared, dumbfounded, at my life going up in flames.
Suddenly someone was hugging me hard and sobbing. It was Stacey.
“Oh, Paul.” She buried her face in my shoulder. “Paul, our house!”
“Stacey, why are you here?” I wasn’t even sure she act
ually was. Everything seemed muted and far away.
“I came over to talk to you, and the house was on fire! Oh, Paul, how could you let this happen?”
She was clinging hard to me, and I didn’t like it. I pushed her off, and before she could reattach, my mother swooped in and drew her away. Thanks, Mom.
I went back to staring at my house, watching it burn.
It felt . . . oddly good.
Really good, actually, and the longer I watched, the better I felt. Things. Just things, El’s voice whispered inside my head. All my things were burning up, and Stacey’s too, everything we had built together, everything that was nothing more than a lie I never needed to have told. That and a couple of pairs of scrubs. And my phone. And my iPod.
Things.
I laughed, quietly, raising my hand to my mouth to hide my smile.
“Paul.”
It was El’s voice again, but this time it wasn’t in my head. It was behind me, and when I turned, there he was, face pale and eyes wide as he ran toward me, his shoes slapping against the water in the street.
“El,” I said, smiling. “You’re here.”
You’re here, and you’re the only thing I really need.
He crushed me to him, holding me like he would never let me go. “You scared me half to death. I thought you were in there. I even called you, but you didn’t pick up your phone.”
“I left it in the house.” I shut my eyes and pulled him closer. “El, I’m so sorry.”
“You should be.” He was shaking. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Paul?”
We both turned to Stacey, who stood next to my mother with eyes as big as her Detroit Daisy, watching the two of us embrace.
“That’s Stacey,” I told him.
He snorted. “You can so do better.”
I shut my eyes and leaned into him. “I already have.”
Mom and I went back to El’s place that night. My landlord, who’d heard from the fire department that it had all started because of faulty wiring, looked very pale and kept trying to put us into a nice hotel. But El wouldn’t let go of my arm, and my mother couldn’t stop cooing over MoJo, who’d been very put out to be left in El’s car while he’d run through the chaos to find me. Mom wouldn’t take the bedroom, either, insisting she wanted to sleep on the couch so she could stay up and watch TV. When I pointed out El didn’t have one, she swatted me on the butt and told me to go make things up with my young man.
I did as I was told.
It didn’t take much effort, since as soon as the door closed behind us, El had me in his arms, kissing me so hard I couldn’t breathe.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said for what had to be the fifteenth time.
“You didn’t,” I assured him, and held him close.
“About tomorrow.” He stroked my hair as he spoke. “My family has this big picnic, and I’d love it if you came with me. You and your mom both.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling, and kissed him.
He blinked at me a minute, almost as if I’d surprised him. Then he let out a breath that almost sounded like relief. “And stay here for now, okay? We’ll get a better bed for your mom, but—just stay, Paul, please.”
I wasn’t sure when I’d been this happy, and this was speaking as someone whose house had just burned down. “Yes,” I said. Then I pushed him onto the bed and reminded him as best I could that I was right there and not planning to go anywhere.
That night I dreamed about Bo and Luke Duke doing a striptease for me, but when Luke took me into his arms, he turned into a beautiful woman, then into El, and we made love all night long. At some point the dream turned into reality, El crushing my mouth under his as he drove into me again and again and again. After that my sleep was deep and dreamless, probably the most peaceful sleep I ever had.
Even so, I woke early, just after dawn. El was dead to the world, and so was Mom. I should have gone back to bed, but I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and padded around the kitchen, not sure what to do with myself. It was almost like something was nagging at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. When MoJo danced around my legs, I took her outside, and once I was there, I realized what was bothering me and what I had to do to fix it. When she was done with her business, I took her back upstairs, left a note on the kitchen counter, and went for a walk.
Bill was outside when I got to the ruins of my house, assessing the damage to his own property.
“Is everything okay?” I asked him, frowning at his ruined flowerbed. “Outside of this, I mean.”
“It’s all good,” he assured me. “They soaked the garage pretty well, and everything smells a little like smoke, but it’s all going to be okay.” He grimaced. “Sorry you can’t say the same.”
I waved the worry away. “I guess we’re both out of the contest now, huh?”
Bill looked confused. “Contest?”
“The Curb Appeal contest from the neighborhood association. For $500? You know, what Lorraine has been helping you with?”
When I said Lorraine’s name, Bill’s eyes darkened and he glanced back at his house. “What about Lorraine?”
Lorraine, I realized, was watching us from Bill’s front porch, in what looked to be a borrowed robe.
Pieces of the puzzle fell finally into place, and I had to swallow a laugh. Bill didn’t know about the contest. He hadn’t been competing with me. I remembered the way he’d gloated at me that one day, how Lorraine had been hanging out with him all that week, defecting from my yard.
Well, he’d been competing with me, but not for $500.
“Nothing,” I said at last, and smiled. “Just that I hope the two of you are very happy together.”
The clouds left Bill’s face, and he smiled too. “You take care, Paul. I’ll let you know if I hear of another rental in the neighborhood.”
“Thanks,” I said, eyeing the wreckage of my house, identifying what I hoped was the remains of my bedside table. “But I’m kind of hoping to be living somewhere else.” I nodded at him. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s one thing I’d like to see if I can find.”
El woke to the sound of someone knocking on his bedroom door. Blinking in confusion, he sat up and looked around for Paul. He wasn’t there. “Yeah?”
The door opened, and Paul came in, looking like a hot mess, covered in ash and grime and stinking of smoke. He had a funny look on his face. “I can’t go with you to the picnic.”
“Oh.” El tried not to give away how disappointed he was. “Well, that’s okay,” he lied.
Paul shook his head. “I can’t go with you, not until I take care of something. Because I have something to pawn.”
“What?” El said, coming to full attention.
Paul sat down beside him and held out his hand. El frowned down at the molten mess for several seconds, but just when he was about to ask what the fuck was going on, he saw the gold smear across what looked like the remains of a cellphone. What could only be a diamond glinted from the center of the keypad.
El bit his cheek to stop his smile. “Are you selling or pawning?”
“Well, I don’t want it back,” Paul replied, not even bothering to hide his grin.
El took the melted mess from his lover and pretended to consider it, in part to let himself savor the moment. “I don’t know how much it’s worth. You held onto it too long, and the value’s gone way down.”
Paul’s hand slid up El’s leg. “If I can’t sell it, maybe I could work out a trade?”
“Maybe.” El set the cellphone and ring merger onto the bedside table and drew Paul onto his lap. “I could take it, but in exchange, you have to go to the picnic.”
“Well, yes, that was what I meant—”
“I’m not done,” El said, holding him off. “You have to come with me, and I get to introduce you as my boyfriend.”
Paul was smiling now. “Okay.”
“And then later we’re going to go to Lights Out, and I’m going to wear you
as arm candy all night and introduce you to my friends. Then I’m going to make out with you on the dance floor again, and on the patio, and probably we’ll steal Jase’s key so I can do you in his office. Then tomorrow I’m going to close the shop and spend the day getting to know your mother, because I really, really like her.”
Paul was beaming. “Fine with me.”
El’s throat threatened to close, but he swallowed hard, and took Paul’s face in his hands. “You’re going to stay with me at least for now, and if you want I’ll help hook you up with a reasonably sized apartment, but it’s going to be close to the shop, and you aren’t moving out until your mother has gone and I have fucked you and you’ve fucked me in every square inch of this place, and maybe down in the shop too.”
“It’s a deal.”
The last bit stuck in El’s throat, but he pushed it through. “I’m sorry I was such a dick about the ring, about making you rush. I kept worrying you’d come to your senses and ditch me.”
Paul caught El’s hand and kissed the back of it, holding El’s gaze as he spoke. “All I want is to be with you, Emanuel. You aren’t my first choice or my second choice. You’re my only choice.”
If Denver could have seen El right then, he’d have laughed his meaty head off at what a sappy moment he’d found himself in. It wasn’t just happily ever after—it was the schmaltzy Disney ending, the old-school kind with the warbly-voiced opera singers and tinny orchestra swell.
El loved every moment of it.
Paul’s expression became mock-serious. “So, about this trade. I really need to unload this. Tell me what you need. I’ll agree to whatever terms you want, El. Just so long as I get to be with you.”
“That’s enough for me,” El said, drew their mouths together, and sealed the bargain with a kiss.
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