Tipping the Balance

by Koehler, Christopher

  Brad smelled bullshit but decided not to push the issue. He recognized a gift when he saw one, and it reminded him just why it was he cared for this man. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Drew said. “So when’re you going to give notice?”

  Brad laughed, but it was devoid of humor. “It’s not that simple. I have to tell Randall in person to make sure he gets the message, and since I live with him, that’ll make it extra exciting.”

  “I really don’t understand why he’s so insistent that two grown men not only work for him, but live at home. Most parents can’t wait to get rid of their kids,” Drew said.

  “So I’m told,” Brad said with a sigh, “but Randall’s been weird since Mom died. He clamped down after the funeral. I’d have thought it would’ve eased up over the years, but if anything, he’s just gotten worse.”

  Drew cocked his head. “So how come you’re not completely beaten down?”

  “Because I fight him,” Brad said with a shrug.

  “You? You’re one of the most easy-going guys I know,” Drew said.

  “Maybe, but where Randall’s concerned, it’s different. I’m dead weight. If I just sat there on the floor, there’s no way you’d be able to move me. I do the same thing to him, only it’s mental,” Brad explained.

  Nodding slowly, Drew said, “You don’t engage. When he fights you, you don’t respond.”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes I go along because it’s easier. Sometimes I yell back. I pick my battles,” Brad said.

  “So why don’t you just move out?” Drew asked.

  “I really can’t afford to yet. Even if I’d stayed working at Suburban Graveyard—and developed an alcohol problem, by the way—it’d be debatable whether I’d be able to afford an apartment that wasn’t a complete dump, let alone the kind of place I’d bring you to,” Brad said.

  “I’m not that much of a princess,” Drew said with a slight smile. When Brad gave him a look, he said, “I’m not!”

  “Drew, if I put a pea under your mattress you’d toss and turn all night,” Brad laughed. “I don’t mind. It’s what makes you, you.”

  It made him want to take care of and protect Drew, too, but he didn’t say that yet. Couldn’t say that yet.

  Drew looked like he was weighing something. “You could… you could move in here. If you wanted to.”

  Brad’s heart just melted. He held onto Drew for a moment. “You have no idea what that means to me, but I’m just not sure I’m ready. I mean, I didn’t know I liked dick this summer, and now I’m in a serious relationship.”

  “Oh thank God,” Drew breathed. “I’m not sure I’m ready to shack up, either.”

  “Then why’d you ask?” Brad demanded. He knew he’d never understand this man.

  “Because you need it,” Drew said simply.

  That was why Brad tried both to understand Drew and to deal with being gay, but he also tried not to hear the word fag echoing in his ears.

  Brad took his sweet time telling Randall he’d be quitting Suburban Graveyard. He wasn’t necessarily afraid of his father, although that certainly contributed to the week he spent building up to it, but he’d also spent a lot of time—since his mother died—refusing to engage Randall, and he found that habit hard to change.

  But life gave him incentive in the week after almost falling asleep at the wheel. There were no more near misses in traffic, but now that he’d noticed it, Brad realized just how tired he was most of the time. By the time he got to Drew’s house, one or both of them would be too tired for more than cuddling. That didn’t bother him as much as he knew it should.

  For one thing, getting it up when he was bone-tired sucked. Locker room bravado aside, Brad knew he was no sex machine, even if Drew usually revved his engine. But truth be told, he was glad for a break from the sex. Hearing one of his rowers call Nick a fag still shocked him. Hearing a hateful word and knowing it applied to him was a new experience, and he didn’t like it.

  Big bad Brad was afraid of a tiny little word. It wasn’t just hearing it, he acknowledged as he sat in the cold and the dark in his car, screwing up his courage. It was hearing it paired with the make-up sex with Drew and what it meant. Because that sex? Drew not quite fucking him over a sawbuck was just about the hottest thing ever, and that scared him.

  He was gay. That the hottest sex of his life involved another man made that hard to deny, but it didn’t make it easier to take. All the construction-worker talk, all the straight-male bravado, that didn’t vanish just because Drew had gotten in his pants. His body might crave Drew’s touch, but his mind still protested. He cared for Drew, might even be coming to love him, but didn’t he get a say in something that promised such radical changes in his life?

  He groaned and rested his head on the steering wheel, which was kind of sticky from all those meals he’d eaten while driving. He was kicking and fighting, but he hadn’t been lying when he told Drew how happy he was. Who knew that Brad, widely regarded as not the deepest of thinkers, was tying himself into knots over all this?

  And speaking of fighting… Brad knew what he had to do. He sighed and got out of his car. It was late enough that Randall should be home and parked in front of the idiot box.

  Sure enough, as soon as Brad walked in the front door, he heard the television. He walked in and stood in front of the television.

  Randall cleared his throat. “Do you want something, Bradley?”

  “Yeah. I….” He took a deep breath. “I need to quit Suburban Symphony. I’ve got too much on my plate right now, and the sales office just isn’t working.”

  Randall stared at him until he started squirming. Brad hated that. His dad always stared at him during one of their confrontations, stared until Brad backed down in front of the silverback.

  “Out of the question. Quit something else. Quit that pointless renovation of that dilapidated waste of money that man talked you into,” Rand ordered.

  “Why’s it pointless?” Brad demanded.

  “I just told you, weren’t you listening, Bradley? It’s a waste of money. There’s no way that old firetrap can be made safe, let alone suited to modern needs. I told you not to get involved with it, but you didn’t listen. You never listen. And now you’re overcommitted. The answer’s no.”

  Brad stared at his old man. Was he losing his hearing or just his mind? “I didn’t ask you.”

  “That’s all right, Bradley. I’m telling you. You’re not quitting. Now, you’re blocking the screen,” Randall said.

  Brad shook his head. He knew his dad was arrogant, but this was something else. “Yeah, I am.”

  “It sounds like you’re abandoning this family, Bradley. We work for the family company. I do. Philip does. You do. That’s the way it is.”

  “No, I did work for Sundstrom Homes,” Brad said. “Now I work for St. Charles Renovations and the CalPac crew.”

  Randall glanced away. “You are abandoning this family. Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me you’re moving out.”

  “As long as you mentioned it, yeah, once I save enough, I’ll be getting my own place,” Brad said.

  “Absolutely not,” Randall gasped, the first emotion Brad remembered him showing in a long time.

  “Randall… Dad. It’s time. I’m twenty-two. Why the hell Philip’s stuck around this long, I’ll never know. Once I’ve got enough saved for first and last month’s rent, I’m getting my own apartment.”

  “This family stays together,” Randall said, standing up. “It has since your mother died.”

  Brad backed up a step. “Just because I’m finding my own job and want to live in my own place doesn’t mean I’m not a part of the family.”

  But even as he said it, Brad knew it was a lie. He hadn’t been part of the family for years, not where it counted, not in his own mind. Not since Randall tied him and Philip to him with ever-tighter ropes in the wake of Helena’s death.

  “No!” Randall screamed. “I said no, goddamn it. I promised your mothe
r when she died that I would keep this family together. That’s exactly what I’ve done and exactly what I’ll continue to do, and the wishes of a foolish child are quite beside the point….”

  Brad backed up another step, not sure what to make of Randall’s temper. It was the first time he’d seen his dad lose his cool in years.

  “So no, Bradley, you will not quit Sundstrom Homes, and you will not move out of this house, do you hear me?”

  But this time, instead of ignoring his old man or taking the path of least resistance, he said, “No.”

  “What?” Randall screamed.

  “No,” Brad repeated, remembering that he was no longer the gangly kid he’d been when his mother had died. When Randall had intimidated him into compliance when he was young, sometimes he’d retreated into the weight room; sometimes he’d knuckled under to keep the peace. As he got older, he retreated emotionally. “No.”

  In two quick strides, Randall stood in front of him, his cold blue eyes looking up into Brad’s brown ones. “I told you, you will not quit,” he bellowed, grabbing Brad’s jacket.

  “And I told you, I am quitting,” Brad said just as loudly.

  Then Philip appeared in the doorway. “What’s the yelling about?”

  “This doesn’t concern you, Philip,” Randall said calmly.

  “Get him off me, Philip,” Brad said, never taking his eyes off his father.

  “Go to your room, Philip,” Randall snapped.

  To Brad’s disgust, Philip turned and left, sent back to his room like a disobedient child. Then and there Brad knew somehow he had to get out, money or no.

  He brought his arms up and knocked Randall’s hands away, but then Randall grabbed him again, and before Brad could stop him, his dad slammed him up against the wall next to the television.

  Then again. His head knocked back into the wall, and stars lit up his vision.

  Again and again, each slam more bone-rattling than the last.

  “It’ll only be temporary! Stop!”

  Randall stopped but still held onto Brad’s jacket.

  Brad fought to clear his head. “Yeah, jeez. That hurt.” He knocked his dad’s hands away again and then ducked away before Randall could grab him again. “I hate you more than you’ll ever know, you fucking son of a bitch.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  After Brad stormed out, Randall turned off the television, switched off the lights, and went upstairs to the special room across from the master bedroom. It had been Helena’s sitting room, her quiet place away from the noisy and boisterous world of a houseful of men, done up in mauve and lavender.

  Almost everything was as she had left it when she’d gotten into the car—his car—for the last time, when he’d driven her to her death, T-boned by a drunk driver. He’d walked away from the crumpled ruin of his car; she’d died on the scene.

  He never allowed the housecleaners in there and had fired more than one for violating the room’s sanctity before he finally gave in and installed a lock on the door.

  The only change he had made was the portrait taken a few months before the accident, and even that had not moved since he’d placed it on her vanity table after the funeral. It was his wife’s image, frozen in time, the hairdo now out of date, the clothes unstylish, so at odds with the image she’d cultivated in life. Soft black silk draped the silver frame, pooling around it on the table’s marble surface. It lent her a severe air, but one he thought suited her.

  Randall sat on the tiny bench in front of the vanity. “Bradley’s being willful again. Not that he’s ever stopped. You were the only who he’d listen to, and you’re gone,” he said. “Philip’s a good boy. He works for me now, as you know. He makes good money. He’s dating a nice girl. But he doesn’t move out. But Bradley? He fights me every step of the way. He just quit the family firm. It won’t be long before he moves out. I can feel it.”

  Randall lovingly caressed the portrait through the black crepe. “I promised you when you died I’d hold our family together come hell or high water. Water,” he mused, “or maybe fire, but whatever tries to split our family apart will be dealt with. Whatever, or whoever.”

  After the fight with Randall, Brad spent a sleepless night at Drew’s followed by an early morning down at the boathouse. He surprised Bob Miller by showing up in the morning, but the contractor didn’t mind. It gave Bob a chance to update him on the status of the job and him a chance to break it to Bob gently that he’d be there full-time.

  “You quit Sundstrom Homes? Just like that?” Bob asked.

  “Yep, just like that,” Brad said.

  Bob gave him a tight smile. “Are you going to tell me why?”

  “Because my dad’s an asshole,” Brad snorted.

  Bob shook his head disapprovingly. “Young man, your father is not an asshole. He’s a fucking asshole and has been as long as I’ve known him.” He grinned. “I’m glad you finally chewed through your leg to free yourself from his trap.”

  Brad didn’t tell him that his dad had literally beat the concession of his separation from Sundstrom Homes being only temporary out of him. “You know about that?”

  Bob put a hand on his shoulder. “Brad, you’ll find that the home trades in this area are a very small community, and there’s not a whole lot that won’t get out eventually. It’s something to keep in mind.”

  “Good advice,” Brad said, nodding slowly. “I wonder if Drew realizes that sometimes.”

  Bob considered the matter for a few moments. “He’ll have a tough row to hoe by being out in this business. Things are changing, but I’m not altogether sure if he appreciates how slowly.”

  “I doubt it.” Brad didn’t think Drew had any clue whatsoever about just how homophobic construction workers could be. He knew, and it was one of the reasons he struggled with being out. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take advantage of being a man of leisure who only works two jobs to go have lunch with a friend.”

  Bob laughed and waved him off. It’d been more than a week since he’d e-mailed Morgan, but it was the first time his erstwhile rival could meet during his busy final year of college.

  Brad met Morgan between classes, figuring since Morgan was doing him the favor of listening, he could at least not make the man drive to meet him.

  Perhaps for the first time, Brad noticed that Morgan looked amazing. Morgan was tall, almost as tall as he was, which was why they’d been paired in the boats, but where Brad resembled a linebacker, Morgan possessed the classic rower’s build, defined without being overbuilt, long of limb and lean of muscle. Add to that his dark curly hair and fair skin, and the man looked like a cover model. Brad could see what must’ve drawn Nick.

  But Morgan possessed more than those physical attributes. There was a confidence about him, a natural poise, an ease in any surrounding that proclaimed louder than words that Morgan, sooner or later, got what he wanted. For his part, Brad just assumed he himself was the alpha. No wonder they’d been rivals. Brad had no idea how he’d missed it before.

  “Hey, buddy, thanks for meeting me,” Brad greeted him outside one of the campus eateries.

  “You’re welcome. You said you needed to talk about things,” Morgan said, “and given how edgy you are and evasive you were in the e-mail, I’m guessing it has to do with being gay?”

  “Let’s order,” Brad said shortly, moving past him into the self-service coffee shop. With a raised eyebrow, Morgan followed in his wake.

  After they ordered and found a seat, Morgan said, “So what’s going on?”

  “I don’t want to be gay,” Brad blurted. He didn’t know Morgan well enough to engage in small talk beyond the crew, and he was too nervous for much of that.

  Morgan looked at him levelly. “Interesting. I’d say that you already are and don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. I certainly hope you don’t think I’ve got information on reparative therapy.”

  “There’s a cure?” Brad said, not expecting a positive answer. If a real cure
existed, he’d have heard about it.

  “No, it’s a misapplication of psychology that leaves troubled people even more deeply scarred. It’s nothing but manipulative bullshit,” Morgan spat. “Okay, I have to ask… how come?”

  “It’s hard,” Brad began and then realized what he said. But even as Brad turned redder than a sunburned tomato, Morgan didn’t snicker. He had to give the man points for that. “I’m just figuring out that I’m… that I like guys, you know,” Brad said. “That way.”

  “Go on,” Morgan said.

  “It’s a lot to deal with at once. I thought it might help to speak to someone who’s obviously gay. Wait, I mean someone who’s gay and accepts it and… everything,” he trailed off lamely. Why was it he could think this so clearly in his car, but when faced with someone he’d asked for help, he tripped over his own tongue?