Center of Gravity

by Neve Wilder

  “I didn’t know, dude. Not at first. He looks just like a fucking chick. Just fucking like one, not drag-queeny, and you know how the lights are in there and how fucking loud it is and we were dancing and he was grinding his ass all up on my cock and maybe I started to have an idea at some point, but I was also kind of drunk and I wasn’t sure and shit, I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to ask, considering how recently offended you’d been. Then his hands were in my pants right in the middle of the goddamn dance floor and I was fucking into it. I was kissing him and it wasn’t any different and it was fucking… Fuck.” He paused his stream of verbal diarrhea, folded his arms over the table, and thunked his head down on them.

  “What happened?” I didn’t want to ask. I felt bad about that, too. This was obviously weighing on Tom and all I could think was…let him figure it out for himself. I was being a shit friend, I knew it, so I tried to muster up some give-a-fuck.

  He let out another long exhale. “So he leads me down into this hallway. Supply closet or some shit. I don’t know. He has a fucking keycard and he gets me up against the wall like he’s going to finish me off. He’s got a hand on my dick, and he grabs my hand too, and he puts it under his skirt and there it fucking is. For a second I’m holding it. I don’t know what was going through my head. Like, I wasn’t turned off. I wasn’t revolted. I just fucking…panicked, made up some lame excuse, and bolted. And I’ve been panicking for weeks because I don’t know what the fuck it means.”

  “Jesus, Tom.”

  “I know,” he groaned. “I know. And here’s the thing. I can’t stop thinking about it. Alex, I was legit turned on. So I started doing all of this research and I still don’t know what it means about myself. Am I gay? Am I bi? Am I curious? Am I fucking fetishizing this whole thing? Him?”

  I took a long swallow of my beer and studied him. Definitely not the story I expected to hear out of him. “Tonight is not the night to go back to Razz, then.”

  “I thought if maybe I saw him again. Talked to him again, it’d make more sense. I don’t know if I fucking hurt his feelings or if he’s used to that or, shit, if maybe he thought it was kind of funny.”

  “He probably didn’t think it was funny. But as far as I know, he also has a pretty thick skin. He’s pretty popular actually, you know. Or you don’t know, of course, but he’s got his own little following of go-go groupies.” Reese was a fantastic dancer and super hot. “But either way, if you’re going to talk to him, you should do it sober.”

  “Is he umm…trans?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he’s either genderqueer or enjoys crossdressing, or is just nonconforming. I’m not sure. You’d have to ask him.” I explained the nuances as best as I could, given his level of intoxication and my own state of exhaustion.

  “So I’m at least bi.”

  “Not necessarily. But, dude, I can’t tell you what you are, only you can. And if you want to see him again and try to sort it out, that’s fine, but you need to do that shit sober.”

  At home that night, I sat in the middle of my bed as I’d done weeks earlier, tossing my phone back and forth in indecision. Rob and I didn’t really talk during the week. Occasionally a text, which was how I’d hear on Fridays whether he would be coming down or not, but it was radio silence other than that. And it was growing a little strange, I had to admit, as if we were coasting on the fumes of the rapport we’d built over the summer and our plethora of hormones. The sex was still good. Fucking fantastic, actually. Like we saved up our entire week of life frustrations then just cut loose on each other in bed. But that night I wished I felt like I could dial his number and tell him about Tom, tell him about my dad, and not worry I was bothering him or bringing the outside into our bubble. I wasn’t sure how much of my hesitation was due to him and how much of it was me and my own anxiety.

  After some more back and forth with myself, I sent him a text. It was almost three in the morning, so I knew he wouldn’t reply, and it was possible he even had his phone off as I’d seen him do before. Either way, I typed out my message and sent it.

  It was short, and it was simple, and it was true: I miss you.

  21

  Rob

  I miss you. A week later, I hadn’t deleted the message. When I clicked on Alex’s name in my messages, it was still there, appended and overwritten with my text the following evening: Are you busy Saturday? I supposed that was an answer in its own right, wasn’t it? Vague and cowardly, but there it was. I thought that if he brought it up when I saw him, we’d talk about it, but he didn’t bring it up and neither did I.

  We spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning together, no mention. Maybe he’d forgotten, maybe he’d tossed it off half drunk and was embarrassed the next day. Regardless, we played at ignorance and continued as usual. But it stuck with me because when I’d first opened the text the next morning, an alternating tide of cold and warm rushed through me. I missed him in the same moment that I felt myself drawing back and retreating. Being with Alex was easy, sexually speaking, but being with him in any way beyond that was bound to be complicated, considering the life logistics that would be involved. But I would think about that text often in the coming weeks and months, wondering had I responded with the cold, hard truth, if things would have turned out differently. Because I’d missed him, too. It was still on my phone, this subtle but cumbersome marker of a turning point I cast a purposefully blind eye to.

  “Rob? How many?” Scott asked. I glanced down at my hand again, considering the pair of queens that sat next to a three, five, and seven of three different suits. I pulled them out, tossing them into the discard pile.

  “Three.” The trade gave me an ace high that might work out, but these guys were cutthroats, so I’d likely end up folding.

  Tuesdays had become de facto poker night with Scott and a few other business professional types who lived in the complex. Scott, I had learned, was the president of one of the local banks. Smith was a pharmaceutical sales rep. Ben and Solomon were in the tech industry, and Dom was a lawyer. That was the ever-present core crew, and there were a few other guys who rotated in and out. Scott typically hosted. I liked his place. The set up was the same as mine, but it was a cozy and well-considered space with a palette of pale greens and abstract ink washes of historic Savannah avenues on the walls.

  Ben led the hand with a raise, and everyone else at the table met it except Solomon, who folded. Then Scott raised and the rest of the guys bailed. I eyed him over my hand. He had a few tells when he got lax, but he wasn’t lax right now. His face was an imperturbable mask. Until he caught me eyeing him.

  “You’re not going to find any cracks.” He grinned.

  “You’re bluffing,” I countered.

  He kept smiling. I liked him. He was nice, genuine, and much like his apartment, always well put together.

  “He makes no sense. That’s how he gets us,” Smith said. “Dom, you’re the lawyer, you tell us: is he bluffing?”

  Dom laughed as Scott protested, “That’s not how this goes. There’s no ganging up.”

  I threw my chips in the pile. “I stand by it. You’re bluffing.”

  He laid out his full house, smile widening, “Not this time.”

  I grunted and tossed my cards onto the pile as he raked in his chips.

  Once the rest of the guys had left, I stayed behind to help him clean up. I’d started doing this recently. It gave us time to talk, and I enjoyed his company.

  I picked up a few empty wine glasses and carried them to the sink as he sorted chips and replaced them in the case.

  “Any bites on the house yet?” he asked as I rinsed the glasses and stowed them in the dishwasher. I’d filled him in on my parents, the house, my job. I suppose he’d become a genuine friend, and it was nice to have one who wasn’t associated with my accounting firm.

  “Nope. Plenty of showings but no bites.”

  “You still go out there most weekends, though, right?”

  I nodded.
/>   “You haven’t thought about just keeping it, renting it out?”

  I smiled at how the conversation paralleled with the one I’d had with Alex months before. I thought of his indignance, which widened my smile. The truth was, lately I had been thinking about keeping the house. I could buy Summer out of her share. The problem was, I couldn’t separate my emotion from the true motivation. Did I truly like being there or was Alex the draw? Did it even matter? The logical part of me, the part that thought in numbers and bottom lines, said it did. But there was an increasingly illogical bent to my thoughts that didn’t care either way.

  “I have. I’m just trying to sort out the financial side.”

  Scott shoved the case of chips back into the cabinet, then poured us a fresh glass of wine, handing mine off after I dried my hands on the kitchen towel. I carried the glass with me as I wandered over to his bookshelves, studying the pictures of his family.

  “Do you see your sons often?” I asked. He’d been divorced for several years, but he didn’t talk about his family too much, had one son finishing high school and another who was a sophomore in college.

  He gave me a thin smile. “I don’t think they’re quite done being mad at me yet.”

  I looked back at him with a questioning expression, then schooled it. I didn’t intend to pry, but he came to stand alongside me, swirling his glass before he took a long swallow. “I’m gay,” he said, “In case you hadn’t figured it out by now.”

  To me, someone’s sexual orientation was like a woman’s pregnancy: you never assumed until the hard evidence was right in front of you.

  “Ahh.” I said. “That must have been a rough transition.”

  He chuckled. “To put it mildly. But not undeserved. Serves me right for being a coward for so long.” He glanced at me sidelong and took another sip of his wine. “I still love their mother. We get along great. The boys? They’re not so forgiving. Allen”—he flicked his thumb at the picture of a boyishly charming version of himself—“says that I’m nothing but one big lie. I remember that kind of conviction, you know? It’s so much stronger when you’re young.”

  “He’ll come around, don’t you think?”

  “Mm.” He nodded. “I think so. It might be a permanent mark on my record, but the sting will lessen in time. I didn’t cheat, didn’t do anything shady, but a lie by omission is still a lie. God, half my life has been one big denial.” He sighed, then chuckled again. “Sorry, that’s a pretty heavy topic for a post poker game nightcap.”

  “It’s fine. There are a lot of days when my life feels like one big heavy topic.” I smiled, though that was no longer as true as it used to be. Lately, I’d felt…lighter. I looked forward to coming back to my apartment, taking Winslow for his walk. I’d been debating new paint colors, an update on some of the furnishings. My life, such as it was, was starting to feel more my own, rather than fogged over by death and my ex.

  Alex called me around noon the next day. It was so rare for either of us to call each other, that I worried something was wrong. I shut the door to my office and answered the phone.

  “Everything okay?”

  “What? Oh, yeah, everything’s fine. Hi.” He laughed. I heard a crash in the background, and then a curse. “Hang on.”

  A half minute later, he returned. “Sorry, Tom bit off more than he could chew. This poor woman’s copper cookware just spilled all over the sidewalk.”

  I chuckled.

  “So anyway, um, I was just thinking if you aren’t busy tonight, I could come in to the city? I don’t have any moves or classes scheduled for tomorrow morning, and I wouldn’t mind a change of scenery. I’ve never even seen where you live.”

  “There’s not much to see. You’d be horrified by the color of my walls.”

  “I think I could turn a blind eye, especially if you gave me something else to look at.”

  I exhaled. “I can’t, though. I have a new client dinner tonight, and those things always tend to run late.”

  “Oh.” I could hear the deflation in his voice just before he reined it in and continued. “No problem, it was just an idea.”

  “You’ll be around this weekend, though?”

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding cautious. “Just like I usually am. Ready to serve your whims.” I thought I detected a little biting sarcasm in that last part, though.

  I got off the phone wondering why I insisted on keeping him at arm’s length. We got along great. The sex was phenomenal, but for some reason I refused to incorporate him more into my life. I didn’t worry about being judged, but I couldn’t deny the age difference was a factor, and it felt somewhat more important, given the position I’d be moving into with my company soon. I could see some of the other partners taking issue with it. Maybe not overtly, but they would. More than that, though, I was afraid. He was young and I was afraid that once the novelty of the older man wore off, he’d move on and I’d be in too deep and end up heartbroken again.

  “So you’re afraid of heartbreak,” Summer said when I called her later that night.

  “Who isn’t?” Dinner had run long, as I’d expected and I might have been a bit tipsy and thinking about Alex, wishing I’d just told him to come. “I think it’s worse if I get my heart broken by a not-yet college grad.”

  “You’re being ridiculous. You don’t even know that would happen. And you know what’s worse than being heartbroken? Never giving yourself the opportunity to be heartbroken again.”

  God, I hated when she made more sense than me. Logic was supposed to be my territory.

  “Hey,” she said, “Did you ever get any further figuring out who was writing those letters to Dad?”

  I hadn’t. I’d forgotten about it between work and Alex, but when we hung up, I went into the living room and fished out the shoebox from the box of other personal items I’d brought back with me.

  I spread the letters over the coffee table and went through the photographs again. Winslow darted around me, sniffing at the edge of the table with interest. I refilled his water bowl and went and opened the sliding glass door to my tiny porch to let some fresh air in. I still hadn’t figured out how to combat Winslow’s doggy scent in my tiny apartment.

  After circulating through the letters again, I returned to the photographs and kept getting stuck on one in particular. The one that had stuck out to me before, where a younger man was displaying some award in one hand, his other around my dad’s waist. There wasn’t anything outwardly intimate about the pose and hell, my mom was there, too—I recognized her in the background with her back turned, talking to a group of women—but there was something about the way my dad was looking at the guy.

  At New City College, my dad had presented the History Department’s award for achievement for years, I remembered that. I retrieved my briefcase, pulling my laptop out and opening it on my knees, then I navigated to the college’s web site and fifteen minutes later found the archives. And there he was: Michael Masters, recipient of the History Department’s Scholastic Excellence award, 1993. I’d been twelve at the time.

  A Google search of his name turned up a faculty page for Braswell College outside of Jacksonville, Florida. Michael Masters was the head of the history department there, and it was undoubtedly him. He had a kind expression, but a sharp face, a tenacious face. And office hours every afternoon. Before I could rethink what I was doing, I wrote down the address of the school.

  I had no game plan and plenty of time during the drive to wonder what I was doing beyond satisfying my own curiosity, but at the least, I could report back to Summer that the mystery had been solved. I’d packed up at the office after lunch, figuring I could beat traffic and make it to Braswell College before office hours were up and be back in Savannah a little after dinner time to tie up loose ends.

  Michael’s office was located on the north end of the small campus in a building that appeared to have been recently renovated. The smell of fresh paint and carpet was pungent when I went inside. When I peeked through th
e crack in his door, there was another student in with him, so I waited.

  After the girl left, I rapped lightly on the door before pushing it wide.

  His expectant expression shifted to one of uncertainty, then lit with a tentative warmth. I could tell somehow he recognized me. I didn’t know what I expected, maybe a flash of guilt or shock, but there was none of that and for some reason that comforted me. I didn’t feel any sense of righteous indignation—not at him, at least. At the moment, I had only curiosity.

  “I was wondering…” he started, and then gestured me in. “I knew he kept my letters. You look so much like him, it’s…” He shook his head, and then put his fist to his mouth as if he might clear his throat as I came in and sat. I didn’t shake his hand and he didn’t seem to expect it. But when I’d situated myself and looked up again, I saw him blink rapidly before he took a deep breath and then did clear his throat.

  “Rob,” I said.

  “Yes, I know. Hugo would send me printouts of articles, awards you got in high school and college. He was very proud of you. Summer, as well.”

  I nodded, swallowing thickly, and found I had nothing to say. When he offered me a drink, I accepted, and he reached into a little fridge next to his desk, producing a bottle of water. He didn’t have a ring on his finger, and the photographs on the shelves behind his desk mostly featured a black lab and a tabby cat.

  “I’m not sure why I came now, honestly,” I said.

  He gave me a thoughtful nod, his silence prompting me to speak further or not. I got the idea he was good with either. It felt respectful and nice and despite what he represented, I thought I might actually like him.

  “Did my mother know?”

  “Later on she did.” He picked up a pen, and then put it back down and rubbed his palms slowly together. “I’m not sure how much you want to know, but it was of course very complicated. There was a period of time when we didn’t speak at all, and then once he suspected you were gay, we began speaking again. He struggled with it, in his own way, as he struggled with his own sexuality. But he loved his family fiercely and there was never any chance that he would divide it.”