by Lee Brazil
"Are you hungry?" he asked, grabbing two plates and shoving one at Ashton. "Dad and Eden made all my favorites. Or maybe they had some catering done." His eyes widened at the varied display.
"A little, is that Tom Ghai Pan? Wow…I think I'll stick to good old fashioned hot dogs and potato salad. Hmmm. And barbecued beans." Ashton filled his plate with food Bailey was sure he never ate at home.
"You know, I can cook this stuff, right?" Ashton lived on take out. In the past year, he hadn't seen the kitchen of the man's beach bungalow used for anything but storage.
"Are you implying that you think I can't cook?"
"I'm deducing that, yes. We haven't eaten a home cooked meal at your place in the past year, so yeah. I say you can't cook."
"Next week, you'll be eating those words."
"Promises, promises!" He chortled. Ashton picked out a spot for them to eat beneath the oak tree where Bailey and his brother had climbed as children and they settled down happily.
Out of the blue Ashton took the plate from his hands and set it aside, then bent and kissed him. Bailey opened his lips to protest, but was quickly swept away into a controlled stream of sensation. The kiss was sweet, tender, passionate, but left Bailey with no doubt that Ashton knew exactly how far he was taking this, and nothing untoward was about to happen in his dad's backyard surrounded by their friends. It felt like a declaration.
"Ahem." The harsh throat-clearing sound impinged on his consciousness and he slowly withdrew from the kiss. His cheeks burned, and he knew he flushed, but embarrassment wasn't what made his skin prickle and his heart race.
Turning his head, he met his dad's gaze, then Eden's. Both were staring from him to Ashton. His dad looked livid, Eden merely concerned.
Rising, Bailey reached down to offer a hand to his quizzical companion. The moment of truth lay at hand. From the expressions on their faces, he should have volunteered a lot more information about his boyfriend than he had. Bailey took a deep breath, steadying his nerves as all passion fled. "Dad, this is my boyfriend, Ashton Duval. Ashton, this is my dad, Drew Harris, and his boyfriend, my friend Eden St. Cyr."
Ever confident, Ashton stepped smoothly forward, murmuring polite meaningless phrases, while Bailey tried to get his thoughts in order. He clung to Ashton's hand in search of courage. His heart quailed a bit when his dad seemed to connect dots, or maybe Ashton had said something that clued him in.
"Baby, Dr. Duval is a professor at the college, did you know that?" His dad's voice when he spoke to Eden was icy and cold, the same sort of tone he'd used when he'd called Bailey on the carpet for any number of misdemeanors over the years.
"Freshman composition?" Eden, thank God, didn't seem the least bit upset.
Ashton nodded. "Yes, I've been at the college for many years. This is my last year teaching there, though."
"You're goddamn right it is!" Drew bellowed. "Taking advantage of students under your care like this is unconscionable!"
"Dad!"
"Drew!"
"Mr. Harris…"
Bailey's anguished moan conflicted with Eden's protest and Ashton's reasonable tone. His professor's voice carried over the others, cut through them with the precision of a man accustomed to silencing a room with his voice. "I did not take advantage of a student." He turned a censorious gaze on Bailey. "You need to talk to your father. I thought we cleared this up."
"Bailey?" Eden asked. Bailey simply stared at him, wide-eyed. As though sensing a long story, Eden continued. "I think, Dr. Duval, that it might be best if you left now, and Bailey and his dad can sort this out. It seems there are some things that need to be said."
Heart sinking, Bailey tried to protest, but his dad cut him off with an angry scowl. Maybe he should have told his father more about his boyfriend, but at first they'd just been friends, then the relationship had been too new, and then too special to share.
He whipped his head around as he heard Ashton agreeing. "You are quite correct, Mr. St. Cyr. I think that Bailey and his father have much to discuss."
What had he done? Bailey quailed more at the idea of disappointing his lover than his father. Drew's anger was irrelevant. Bailey was an adult. Ashton… He couldn't have Ashton upset with him. Nervous tension knotted his stomach. He glanced anxiously up at Ashton, hoping his feelings weren't written on his face. Ashton's stern expression didn't soften as he met Bailey's gaze. Still, he had to be impressed. Drew's anger didn't appear to intimidate Ashton at all, and Bailey counted his dad as one of the most terrifying things on the planet.
Ignoring Drew's growing rage, Ashton bent and pressed a kiss to Bailey's lips that left him smiling and Drew snarling. "Call me when you've told him everything," he admonished, pushing Bailey's long brown hair back behind his ear in a tender gesture before striding away.
Eden intercepted Bailey's glare and Drew's admonishing gaze. "Okay, problem solved for now. Discussion when the guests go home. You"—he pointed at Bailey—"don't leave here. You"—he turned his attention to Drew—"are going to tell me more about this sudden realization that you love me." Eden hooked his arm through Drew's elbow and led, more like dragged, him over to a remote corner of the yard where they could lean on the fence and watch their guests while talking in relative privacy.
Whoa! A glimpse at his father's rapidly paling face indicated that Eden's comment wasn't as out of the blue for the two of them as it seemed to him. Astonished, Bailey gasped. Had his father really never told Eden how he felt about him? Hiding his feelings was a mistake Bailey would never make. He told Ashton constantly how much he loved him, how much he looked forward to them being together.
But his lover was right. He needed to be open with his dad, apologize for his foolishness in hiding things. Come clean. Dad would understand, once he knew how they felt about each other.
After all, he'd never told his father that his boyfriend was young. Just that they'd met at school. He glanced after Drew and Eden, having an intensely intimate conversation near the fence. He'd better get to mingling with the crowd of friends and coworkers before his dad figured out that he was moving into Ashton's place when he moved out next week. Not that he would hide that fact, he just hadn't shared the news yet.
Idiot that he was.
Chapter Three
"No, Dennis. I don't care that you're no longer married." He scowled at the bottles behind the bar. No amount of alcohol could make getting back together with Dennis sound like a good idea. "No. I'm involved with someone right now, anyway."
Glancing at a bemused looking Arlo, Ashton rolled his eyes. "It's not about you, Dennis. Scratch that. It is about you. I don't like you and I'm not a naïve young kid fresh out of grad school anymore. You used your position as my boss to keep our relationship going long after it should have died a natural death. I'm moving on personally and professionally; you should do the same."
Ending the phone call with the swipe of his thumb, Ashton held up a hand to ward off Arlo's comments. "Save it. I've heard all of this before."
"How long has he been pestering you?" Concern laced his old friend's voice.
Wearily, Ashton drew circles in the condensation rings on the table. "Since his divorce went through a few months ago." He paused for a moment. "Do you think I'm doing the same thing to Bailey?"
"What? Stalking him?"
"No. Abusing the power dynamic to keep him in a relationship that isn't appropriate? He's so young. His life is just beginning."
"Absolutely not. You're nothing like that creep and your relationship with Bailey is hardly the same. There is no power dynamic. He's not your student, you're not his boss. And he's not that young from what you've told me."
"Twenty-one." Ashton glanced moodily around the bar. Pete's At the Beach wasn't the right type of bar to go to. Not if you just wanted to get shit-faced and forget that your boyfriend lied to you. Most nights it was more of a family sort of place, where established couples came to have a margarita or a Mai Tai after a day spent in the sun. This close to the beach i
t caught a fair share of the young singles crowd looking to hook up, too, but when all you needed was a steady flow of alcohol and a sympathetic ear, it lacked something. Drinks were stupidly expensive, the décor commercially trendy pseudo-tropical. He and Arlo Johansson sat on crazily uncomfortable woven barstools that Arlo claimed were Polynesian influenced and therefore did not fit in with the rest of the décor.
All Ashton knew was that the plastic fake straw shit poked through his khaki shorts and the back positively abraded his skin through the thin polo shirt he wore whenever he forgot himself so much as to lean against it.
So what was he doing here in this den of high priced mediocrity drinking whisky like water and attempting to drown his sorrow and ire? Arlo could take the blame for that too.
Answering his cell phone in the car as he left Bailey's birthday slash graduation party, he'd been in enough of a foul mood to agree to meet his old college roommate.
Arlo lived on a boat that docked at the marina near the bar, which made meeting at Pete's convenient for him. Ashton didn't care, but the idea of a drink and some conversation to distract himself from brooding over Bailey's behavior sounded good.
"Should have gone home and graded papers," he muttered, interrupting Arlo's story about an incredible find in Aruba where he'd apparently spent the last six months working on a friend's prehistoric dig. That stack of blue books still sat on the floor between his sofa and the lamp. Instead, he'd spent last night making out and laughing and planning a future with the man he loved.
"After uncovering the sixth body, we've determined the site must be a graveyard…" Arlo droned on, apparently unaware that Ashton wasn't following his conversation at all.
No, he couldn't tear his thoughts away from the man he'd loved, trusted with his whole heart. Stupidly, it turned out. Bailey was no more worthy of his trust than any of his previous lovers had proven. Oh, he wasn't a cheater or a player like some of them had turned out to be. Like Arlo played the field… He could forgive that.
But once before he'd been someone's secret. Only Dennis had been hiding him from their boss and his wife, not his father. Ashton wasn't quite sure what was worse. Nor did he understand the point of it. He didn't hide his sexuality on campus or off it, he never had. And neither had Bailey. He remembered his first meeting with the broken-hearted youth on campus. Bailey had been hidden behind a palm tree on the upper floor of the library, sobbing softly. Tremors shook the broad shoulders, and while he'd been tempted to flee, his predicament had touched Ashton. He'd taken a chance on the burly youth accepting comfort and placed a hand on his shoulder. The heat that flared between them astonished them both.
He'd coaxed Bailey's story from him over a cup of coffee in his office and couldn't hide his pleasure when the younger man came back again and again to talk. Talk. All that talking and he couldn't talk to his own father about Ashton?
"It's not like he doesn't know his son is gay." He slammed his glass down on the counter and waved the bartender over.
A warm hand landed on his thigh, squeezed comfortingly. Evidently for all his determined talk of ancient ruins and mummified bodies, Arlo was listening. "Yeah, but you said he was insecure, that he'd had a bad experience." Arlo Johansson was doing his best to cheer Ashton up, but he wasn't succeeding.
"For Christ sake, it wasn't with his dad. The man is bisexual!" Ashton's voice rose, attracting curious glances and a censorious frown from a table with small children. He stared down the parents for a moment before turning back to Arlo and speaking in a softer voice. "He has a male lover who lives in the house with them."
"But he's young and gun-shy, and is it really so wrong what he did?" Arlo scanned the crowd, and Ashton saw him do a double take and study one face more carefully.
Ashton glared at his friend, a professor of marine archeology at UCLA. "Whose side are you on?" The bald bartender brought over a bottle of whisky and waved it over Ashton's glass. He nodded curtly and watched the whisky level rise. When the bartender stopped, he snorted impatiently. The bartender poured more, stopping just short of the rim. Ashton laid a twenty on the bar and picked up the glass. Spinning his barstool back to face the crowd made him dizzy, and he clutched at Arlo's shoulder for support. Maybe he had had a touch too much to drink. No matter. He swallowed a large mouthful, cursing as the liquor burned on the way down. Turning back to Arlo, he found the man still staring across the room.
The bar was a popular place, situated practically on the beach, and played host to a variety of clientele, from college students to the young working crowd. Pete's was a hot place to be on a Saturday night. The white blond hair and thin face of the man who'd caught Arlo's interest rang a bell for Ashton. "Hey, now. He's bad news. Stay away from that one if you know what's good for you." He picked up his glass and swallowed the last of the whisky in it. Bartender was slow as fuck tonight, but he supposed that was because of the crowd.
"You know him?" The interest in Arlo's voice was unmistakable.
"He's the fucker who messed up Bailey."
A smooth sun bleached brow rose. "That is the boy who lives with Bailey's father? Does his lover know how he spends his nights?" Ashton frowned at the man across the room. He was scantily clad, his skin seemed to glow from the sun. Sleepy lids half hid Sylvan's pale blue eyes, and his mouth was a smudge of pink in the distance. One earnest suitor had a hand on his shoulder, another man bent over the back of his chair. Sylvan Griswald was having a fine time if the laughter and loud voices were anything by which to judge.
"No. Eden St. Cyr was the boy he had a crush on. He tried to be nice to Bailey, from the way Bailey tells it, but he wasn't into him and he was just thoughtless. Did things like forget his name. No, that one is Sylvan. He was outright nasty."
"He's quite pretty. I think almost pretty enough to make up for the personality."
The sound Ashton made could only be described as a snort. "I'd like to make his outside match his inside. Then people might not worship him so blatantly."
"Don't you think you've had enough of that?" Arlo demanded. "Come on. Let's take these drinks out to the patio and watch the sun set." Without waiting for an answer, the sun-burned archeologist scooped up both their glasses and began forging a path through the crowd to the patio.
The cool breeze sobered Ashton a bit, and he regretted his outburst of complaints as he seated himself on a bench at a picnic table. "I'm sorry, Arlo. Bailey is a good guy, a little shy, a little insecure. I know he'll talk to his dad and get things squared away. It's just that with Dennis…" He paused to sip more of his whisky. "Maybe Bailey isn't the only one who's gun-shy."
"Different cases entirely, my friend. Now. Are we going to get drunk and wallow in misery all night, or shall we get drunk and catch up on our lives?"
"Bailey is my life," he confessed softly. "I don't know what I'll do if his dad talks him out of moving in with me, or… God. I don't even want to imagine what could happen. I've been waiting eighteen months to make him mine, Arlo."
"That's a long time, my friend. What does he say, Bailey? Does he feel the same way you do?"
"He says he loves me. Sometimes I think he does, and sometimes I remember what I was like at twenty-one. I was horny as hell and fell in love with every hot ass that walked past." He stared at the brilliant colors of the setting sun, afraid to look his friend in the face in light of that confession, one he hadn't even acknowledged to himself yet.
"You're afraid he'll be unfaithful?"
"I know. I'm a fucking mess. I'm afraid all he wants me for is sex, and at the same time, I'm afraid that sex won't be enough. Hell, part of me even wants to tell him that he's too young to tie himself down with me. I'm thirty-six."
Arlo stood abruptly. He stared down at Ashton with glittering pale blue eyes. Why had they ever fallen out of love? Out of lust, he corrected himself. Oh yeah. The faithfully ever after thing. And graduate school on the east coast. "Why'd you have to go to Yale?"
Arlo smiled gently. "Oh, it's all my fault, now, is it?
" He tugged Ashton from the picnic table bench and onto his feet. "Let's blow this joint. The local man-whore drama is more than my celibate self can take. We'll pick up something at the corner store and finish getting drunk on my boat."
"Man-whore? We've never even slept together…" He followed Arlo's meaningful glance to where the white-blond Sylvan sat smiling with evident amusement while the two men who'd been touching him earlier appeared to be squaring off. "Oh."
"Oh, indeed, my love. Not everything, sad to say, is about you. But I've no wish to be arrested in a bar brawl my first night back in the country."
Chapter Four
"I wasn't intentionally hiding his age from you, Dad." Bailey stared into his father's angry eyes. "I didn't even think of it as hiding him from you, more as keeping him to myself." Of all the things he'd thought his father might say, an objection to his relationship based on Ashton's age hadn't been at the top of his list.
"He's fifteen years older than you are!"
"Eden is twenty years younger than you are," he returned smoothly. Knowing his father was a reasonable man and would see the light didn't make this conversation any easier.
"Eden was an adult when we met."
Heat crept up his neck and Bailey tried to count in his head to control his own rising ire. "I was an adult when I met Ashton. I was nineteen as a matter of fact."
"It's different." His father slashed a hand down emphatically, as though making his point clear. Bailey pressed back into the sofa as his father crossed the room in front of him again.
Steam practically exuded from his ears, he was so upset. "Dad, it's the same. At least, if you're objecting on the basis of age."
"I have been nineteen, Bailey. I was nineteen when I met your mother and she was pregnant with our first child." He clasped his hands in front of his face and gazed earnestly at Bailey. "That's not what I want for you, for any of my sons. That trapped feeling."
"Jesus, Dad! I love Ashton. And if things go wrong, seriously, it's not like he's going to get pregnant and we'll be tied together in a life of misery in order to raise children." He regretted the irritated outburst as soon as his father's face froze.