Irresistible

by Andrew J. Peters

  Naturally, a group of guys surrounded Cal on the concourse. They were a groomed and shirtless tattooed tribe who looked like they went from posing at the gym to posing at the beach, and to posing at whatever gay nightclubs were trendy these days. The guys had probably started chatting Cal up on the train in from Manhattan, hoping to coax him to spend the day with them, or at least to get his phone number. That didn’t bother Brendan. Cal couldn’t help that he was irresistible. He didn’t even notice the attention he stirred up.

  Cal saw Brendan standing by the boardwalk railing, and he lit up with a smile and waved. The muscle queens said their goodbyes, apparently adding things up. Now Brendan put together who Derek was in the crowd. A skinny kid with dark hair, dark shades, and a black T-shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones skulked behind Cal. His face was bland, giving off the unmistakable vibe of “I’m being dragged along for this?”

  It was going to be an interesting day.

  Cal climbed up the ramp and gave Brendan a great big hug, which Brendan tried not to return too enthusiastically so Derek wouldn’t be uncomfortable. Cal stepped aside and made introductions. When Brendan held out his hand, Derek shook it weakly and peered around the boardwalk as though he was looking for something more interesting.

  Brendan let the two decide on a spot to claim on the crowded, littered beach below them. Cal suggested a prime location near the surf. Derek sneered and said there were too many people in that area. Cal pointed out another option farther down the beach. But Derek gazed off in the opposite direction and said they should try that side. Never one to put up a fuss, Cal shrugged, and they followed Derek down the ramp to the beach and onward for a long hike through the hot sand to a sparsely populated area.

  It was a hot and brilliant day, perfect for the beach despite Derek, the storm cloud who had come along. Brendan laid down a blanket he’d brought for the three of them. Derek sat at a far corner of it, pulled off his T-shirt, and dug out suntan lotion from his faded canvas backpack.

  Derek called out to Cal, “Are you going to do my back?”

  “Sure.” Cal scooted up behind him and rubbed suntan lotion into his fair-skinned, freckled back and shoulders. Brendan brought out a beach towel and three frozen bottles of water from his suede tote. He handed one bottle to Derek.

  “This is your first time at an ocean beach?” Brendan asked.

  “Yep.”

  “There’s a beach on Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, but it’s nothing like this,” Cal said. “Derek and I were at the lake just about every weekend last summer.”

  Derek said nothing.

  “This is my first time at Coney Island as well,” Brendan said.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Cal said to Derek. “He grew up right here in New York City.”

  “I believe it,” Derek said. “You’re more of a Hamptons kind of guy, huh?”

  That was true to an extent. Brendan’s family never went to city beaches, and his mother had a house on the water in Southampton. Though Brendan didn’t spend a lot of time there. His mother had bought the house with his stepfather, and over the summer, it was a compound for his teenage half sisters and their friends. That story didn’t seem worth mentioning. By his flat tone, Derek’s insinuation was pretty obvious. He thought Brendan was a snob.

  “I’m happy in most places,” Brendan said. “It’s good enough for me to just be invited.” He hiked up some more friendliness. “Cal told me you guys Jet Ski. There’s a place you can rent them in New Jersey. You can ride all around New York Harbor and see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We should all do it sometime.”

  Cal smiled at him favorably.

  “How old are you?” Derek asked Brendan.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Huh. I thought older. That’s a swell suggestion, Daddy. But unless you’re paying, it sounds like it’s out of our price range.”

  Brendan tried to take his little dig in stride. “I’ll find out how much it costs,” he told Derek. “Hey, another thing you might like is Fire Island. That’s where all the gays go around here. You can get there on the train and take a ferry.”

  “Ask Cal,” Derek said. “He’s the money-miser. He’s got us budgeted to the penny.”

  Cal broke in. “We already talked about it, remember? We said we’d splurge over Fourth of July weekend when the shop’s closed.”

  Derek yawned. “I don’t recall.”

  Cal stared at the back of his friend’s head in exasperation. “How do you not recall? It was the first thing we talked about when we decided to come to New York for the summer.”

  “You talk so much, how am I supposed to remember details?” With his back done, Derek leaned back on his elbows, kicked off his flip-flops and brushed his pale, slender feet together to get rid of some sand. “If you two want to go to Fire Island, that’s fine with me. But don’t pretend we had some huge discussion about it.”

  Cal heaved a breath. “Brendan and I never talked about it. It was you and me.”

  “Are you going to harp on this all day?” Derek asked.

  That brought the conversation to a screeching halt. Brendan glanced at Cal sympathetically. They were both sitting behind Derek, so he stole a quick squeeze of Cal’s shoulder. He’d never seen Cal get irritated. He was always gentle and magnanimous. Though Brendan knew codependent, gay male friends could bring out the worst in anybody.

  Derek looked around the beach. “This place is kind of gross. I heard you have to watch out for hypodermic needles walking around here.”

  Cal shot him a glare. “You’re the one who was dying to come to the beach.”

  “It’s all part of the New York City experience,” Brendan interjected. “You haven’t had the real treatment until you’ve stepped on a hypodermic needle, or had your face slashed on the subway.” He thought he caught a smirk pinch up on the side of Derek’s face for a second.

  “I’m starving,” Cal said. He glanced at Brendan. “I saw a hot dog stand on the boardwalk. They call them Coney Islands, right? How ’bout I get us some?”

  “That sounds great,” Brendan said.

  “Not for me. I’m trying to keep my carcinogen intake to a minimum,” Derek said.

  Cal stood up. “Two then. With sauerkraut?” he asked Brendan.

  “Sure.”

  “Great,” Derek said. “Then I get to smell you two farting all day.”

  Cal gave Brendan a helpless look, and then he wandered off to the boardwalk.

  Brendan slid up on the blanket beside Derek. Rushes of Atlantic waves roared in front of them. Little kids were playing a game of running toward the ocean as it receded and running back before the waves broke and doused them. It brought back a memory of a summer long ago, when his parents were still together, and they had rented a house for the season on Martha’s Vineyard. “I like your sense of humor,” he told Derek.

  “That’s too bad. It alienates most people.” Derek brushed some sand from his forearm and proceeded to apply suntan lotion to the front of his lanky body.

  Brendan chuckled. He really did think Derek was funny. “That’s a good one. So tell me, how did you and Cal become friends?”

  “Is it so hard to believe?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Derek finished lotioning up, sealed the cap on the tube, and stowed it in his backpack. “It’s a legitimate curiosity. Back home—at the gay student union—they used to call us Beauty and the Beast.”

  Brendan scoffed. It was hard to tell if Derek was being serious, especially since his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. But he had no reason to feel that way. Derek wasn’t a bad-looking guy. Plenty of gays went for edgy twinks. Unless the mean queens called him “beast” because of his personality.

  “What you have to understand about Cal is that he’s completely in denial about his vanity,” Derek said. “He keeps me around to have someone to look better next to so he gets all the attention when we go out. Then, if nothing turns up for him, he has me to take him
home and tell him how great he looks and what an amazing guy he is, and how it’s not him, it’s just gay men being bitches.”

  Brendan let that pass without comment, though an urge to defend Cal burned in his chest.

  “Cal’s vain. I’m self-loathing. It makes us perfectly compatible, actually,” Derek said. “To answer your question, we met at Gay-mer Night during freshman orientation. When Cal walked into our little den of geekdom, I was the only person in the room who could muster the courage to talk to him. I actually felt sorry for Cal. But it was all part of his game.”

  “It’s funny,” Brendan said. “Cal tells such a different story about you two. He talks about how much you have in common. That he’s always admired you. He says what a great friend you’ve been to him.”

  “That’s not surprising,” Derek said. “He’s a narcissist. His mind warps things like a revisionist historian so he always comes out looking better. Anyway, if you already knew the story, why did you bother asking me?”

  “I don’t get it,” Brendan said. “If you think so little of Cal, why do you waste your time being friends with him?”

  “I told you. I’m self-loathing. Like a fly drawn to a bug zapper.” He pantomimed the visual and made a big splatting noise.

  “Maybe you should get over that.”

  Derek coughed out a sarcastic laugh. “Wow. That’s really deep. You managed to take some psych courses while earning your triple minors and a certificate in dramaturgy? What’s dramaturgy anyway?”

  “It’s the study of dramatic composition and its history and social context.”

  “Sounds really practical. But I guess it’s a fine hobby when you don’t have to do anything to pay the bills.”

  Brendan’s face compacted like a glacier. He imagined for a moment his fist making sweet, brutal contact with Derek’s smug face. He drew a long breath through his nose. Was Derek baiting him to do that so the day would be ruined, and he could blame Brendan for doing it? The kid was seriously disturbed.

  Derek drew grooves through the sand with his toe, and his tone turned more genial. “You thought this was going to be easy meeting me? Like a trip to the beach was going to make us best buds?”

  “I thought we could be friends.”

  “Thought? Past tense. I guess you made your mind up pretty quick.”

  Brendan hadn’t meant to say it like that. Or had he? “I haven’t made my mind up,” Brendan told Derek. “But I don’t like you ragging on Cal.”

  “Maybe I was harsh.” Derek cocked his head to look at him squarely, albeit behind his glaring sunglasses. “Maybe I’m just as broken as you think I am, with that deadly sincere, pitying look on your face.”

  “I don’t pity you, Derek.”

  “Let’s change the subject. Why are you interested in Cal?”

  Brendan shifted a bit. The question was most certainly a trap. Though he had nothing to hide.

  “I fell in love with him. Harder than I’ve ever fallen for anyone before. It happened quickly, but it feels like the one true thing I know in the world.”

  “That’s sweet,” Derek said. “Have you had a lot of boyfriends, Brendan?”

  “A few.”

  “Cal told me you just broke up with some hot Brazilian model. Something about infidelity.”

  “He was unfaithful.”

  “That had to hurt,” Derek said. He took a slug of water from his bottle. “So how do you know that Cal isn’t your rebound guy?”

  “He’s not my rebound guy.”

  “Might be worth checking in with your therapist about that though, huh? It would be cruel to lead Cal on. Especially when he’s talking about uprooting his life to move down here with you.”

  Brendan felt like he was sprouting horns. Who was this fucking twerp? “You’re really protective of him, aren’t you? Almost sounds like you’re in love with Cal yourself. What was it Cal told me you call your relationship with him? Sexless lovers?”

  “That’s a low blow, Brendan Thackeray-Prentiss,” Derek said. “I thought you said you wanted to be friends. Or did you just make up your mind about me?”

  Brendan didn’t answer. He was over talking to the jerk. Some silence passed, and he looked to the boardwalk, hoping Cal would be quickly on his way back.

  “I’ve been a little hard on you,” Derek said. “You can understand. Cal’s had a lot of psychopaths in his life. He told you about his most recent stalker—Steve?”

  Brendan knew a little about Steve, though Cal had only said his ex had been possessive, not a stalker. Derek must have picked up that tick of dissonance on his face.

  “They were set up on a blind date back in February,” Derek told him. “Steve seemed like a normal guy. He’s about your age. A good-looking boy-next-door type. The kind Cal usually goes for. He was an IT tech for a security company. That should have been a red flag, in my opinion, but Cal inherently trusts anyone who fawns over him. He sees the world as all rainbows and unicorns. Even after Steve just happened to keep showing up everywhere Cal went, Cal agreed to go on a second date with him. And he slept with Steve. That was all the encouragement Steve needed to amp up to full-on stalker mode.

  “Steve made some kind of GPS tracker for Cal’s cell phone. Like the kind the cops use. He knew where Cal was every minute of the day. When Cal got weirded out by all of his phone calls and pop-up visits, he broke things off. Steve didn’t take that well. He started harassing Cal’s friends and family, asking them what he could do to get Cal back. Cal changed his phone and his e-mail twice, but Steve still managed to keep tracking him down and begging Cal to give him a second chance. When that didn’t work, he flipped out and made twisted threats, saying he was going to kill Cal and then kill himself.”

  An icy chill passed through Brendan. Was evil Derek making up the story to screw with his head? Cal had said Steve was bad news. Was he that bad?

  “Cal made a report to the police, but they didn’t do much except give Steve a slap on the wrist,” Derek went on. “I don’t know about New York City cops, but the ones in Syracuse don’t really know what to make of us homos, and they’d rather pretend we don’t exist in any case. Steve got smarter about keeping an eye on Cal. He borrowed cars from friends to park down the street from our house. A different one every night, so no one would notice him watching Cal. He even rented cars sometimes.

  “One night when Steve saw Cal coming home with a guy he didn’t recognize, Steve went berserk. It was just one of our college friends visiting for the weekend, but Steve thought Cal was bringing him home for the night. He pounded on the door and wouldn’t leave. When Cal wouldn’t let him in, he rammed his car into the house. That night, when the cops came and took Steve away, Cal finally had something to pin on Steve they couldn’t ignore. Cal got a restraining order. Steve violated it about twelve hours later, and they locked him up. Seems getting thrown in jail for a while cooled him off, but we still look over our shoulders sometimes.”

  Brendan was in shock. That was something Cal should have told him, wasn’t it?

  Derek took account of Brendan’s face. “Yeah, there’s a lot of things you don’t know about Cal,” he said. “My job is to help weed out the crazies who follow him around. But you actually seem like a decent guy.”

  “That’s high praise,” Brendan said. “But I don’t know that I believe you mean it.”

  “I do think you’re decent,” Derek said. “Anyone who can put up with my bullshit without trying to smash in my face probably deserves a humanitarian award. I was fucking with you earlier. I can tell your intentions with Cal are honorable. To hear him talk, you’re his dashing leading man, like Chris Hemsworth and Matt Bomer all rolled into one. I get you falling in love with Cal. I honestly hope it works out.”

  Brendan took a skeptical account of Derek. He swung from one side to the other, making it hard to keep up.

  “The tough part for you will be keeping him,” Derek said. “He thinks he wants to settle down, but he’s got the attention span of a goldfish. You
’ve probably noticed that a guy who looks like him gets presented with a lot of options. Besides, who settles down at twenty-four years old?”

  Cal came shuffling back through the sand with two hot dogs loaded with sauerkraut. Brendan took his hot dog and tried to look casual, though his head was reeling.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Derek announced he’d had enough of the beach and was going to catch a movie. Cal didn’t ask if he wanted company. Derek had been determined to turn the beach trip into a train wreck, and they were all better off with him going his own way.

  The situation had Cal stunned. He wondered if this was the end of their friendship. Even though he had Brendan, Cal felt like he’d been carved hollow. As they walked Derek down the crowded boardwalk to the subway station, it was as though he was adrift in a sea of strangers.

  Cal went home with Brendan in his chauffeured black Mercedes sedan.

  When Cal emerged from his gloomy inner world, he realized he wasn’t the only one who’d been stunned silent. Brendan hadn’t said a word since Derek left, and he wouldn’t even look Cal in the face. Adding to the tension, they had mad traffic all the way to the Midtown Tunnel.

  Clearly, introducing Brendan and Derek had been a bad idea. Derek had been a total douchebag all day, and from the point in time Cal had left them alone, Brendan had been distant. Cal sensed there were accusations brewing in his boyfriend’s head, but he had no idea what they were. The longer he thought about it, the more it felt unfair. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Why couldn’t Brendan just say what was on his mind?

  Brendan broke the silence while they were idling at the toll plaza for the tunnel.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Steve?”