Art of Love (Valley Boys Book 1)

by Vicki Tharp

“The man needs help. I don’t want him to have a heart attack on the street. This is me turning the other cheek.”

  “You’re a better man than me,” Demetri said, though he kept walking with Roman instead of returning to his car.

  The pastor stiffened as Roman and Demetri approached. Roman half expected the man to hurry back inside to avoid them, but he didn’t. “Can I help you,” the man said in a tone that indicated he’d rather do anything but help them.

  Roman stopped, his hands on his hips, paint splattered and smudged on his clothes and skin. He probably looked a sight. He bobbed his chin toward the boxes. “We’ve come to see if we can help you.”

  The man’s jaw dropped, and Roman schooled his smile.

  “I’m... um...” He glanced behind him at the church. “We’d stored our food for the food drive in the basement. Unfortunately, water from the fire seeped through the old floor and flooded the basement. I’ve separated all the can goods, but all these dry goods are ruined. I need to carry them to the curb for trash pickup.”

  “With the three of us, we should be able to knock it out in no time,” Roman said.

  The pastor glanced at Demetri, who only nodded. Considering how the pastor had treated them, Roman knew Demetri’s heart wasn’t in it, but Roman had to hand it to Demetri for offering to help anyway. Though Roman had the distinct impression he was doing it for Roman and not the man in front of them.

  “I— You—” The pastor blew out a breath and used the collar of his T-shirt to wipe the dripping sweat off the side of his face. “I would appreciate the help is what I’m trying to say.”

  “Lead the way,” Demetri said.

  It took several hours to dispose of the water-damaged food to the curb, relocate the canned goods to a drier location, help the pastor squeegee and mop the excess water off the floor, and set up fans to help dry everything out.

  Roman’s stomach grumbled on the way out of the church. He needed food before he collapsed. Demetri looked like he could use the calories too.

  On the church’s porch, the pastor offered his hand to Roman and Demetri. “I don’t know how to thank you. You didn’t have to help.”

  “We’re going to be neighbors. And that’s what neighbors do. They help each other.”

  They all shook hands, and Roman and Demetri headed to the parking lot a few blocks over to get their cars. Demetri put a staying hand on Roman’s arm before Roman could climb into his car.

  “Can we talk?”

  Roman closed his car door and leaned against it. “Today was a good day. Maybe we shouldn’t fuck it up by talking.”

  Demetri nodded, but by his exasperated expression, it didn’t look like he agreed. Then he did the unexpected. He moved in close, and though no one else was within hearing distanced, his dropped his voice and whispered, “I miss the fucking out of you.”

  It took several seconds for Demetri to meet Roman’s gaze to gauge the effect his words had. If Demetri stepped even an inch closer, he’d be able to feel the rap of Roman’s heart against his sternum without having to lay a hand on him.

  Demetri stood there, the vulnerability staring back at him. Roman almost let the truth slip out and said, ‘I miss you, too.’ But he swallowed the words down before they could betray his true feelings.

  Demetri closed the gap, laying his hand on Roman’s chest as if he needed to feel what his words had done to him. But would he be able to feel the way his heart had ripped? Could he feel it bleeding out into his chest?

  “And I know I shouldn’t. And I understand if you don’t want it, too. But I’d like to kiss you.”

  It took every ounce of willpower Roman had ever possessed in his life not to dip his head and taste those lips. The lips that had been in his dreams every night. Lips on his lips, his chin, his chest, his co—

  Roman leaned away, practically becoming one with his car door. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Retreating a step, a soft, humorless chuckle ripped from Demetri’s throat. “Look, I understand if you hate me right now.”

  “Fuck, Demetri.” Roman shook his head and laid his hand on his chest where Demetri’s hand had been. “I don’t hate you. All of this would be a hell of a lot easier if I did.”

  “We need to talk then.”

  “I’m not sure it will help.”

  “I’m willing to risk that. Are you?”

  17

  “We can go to my place,” Demetri suggested, but hell, he’d go wherever Roman wanted to go as long as they talked. Would it all work out? He didn’t know. But he didn’t want to walk away without putting in the work.

  Because if anything, their time apart had shown Demetri that what he felt for Roman wasn’t fleeting. It was building. Despite Roman running away. Despite the time apart.

  And that wasn’t just his dick talking.

  Roman glanced down at his crotch. At the tenting in his shorts. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Though he knew Roman’s roommate had a good chance of being at Roman’s apartment, he said, “Yours then.”

  Roman shifted out of reach. “That’s even worse. Maybe someplace that I won’t try to get you naked.”

  “You still want to get me naked?”

  That had to be a good thing, right? Roman’s admission brought a flutter to Demetri’s chest that had been missing since his disastrous disclosure. That flutter turned into a thumping when Roman’s shy smile spread across his face.

  “Wanting you naked has never been the problem, though now it’s more of a complicating factor. I can’t think when all I want to do is hold you, and kiss you, and...”

  “Fuck me?”

  Roman chuckled. “Definitely that too. None of this is about me not wanting you. It’s about—”

  The grumbling of Roman’s stomach made Demetri’s growl in response. The sun was setting low over the valley, and night would soon fall. “Hold that thought.”

  Demetri unlocked his car and held the passenger door open. “Get in the car. I know where we can get some food and have a little privacy, but not so much privacy it’ll get us into trouble.”

  He waited out Roman’s hesitation, his heart lodged in his throat, hoping like hell Roman wouldn’t come to his senses before he climbed in.

  Finally, Roman pushed off his car, locked it, and mumbled, “I hope I’m not going to regret this.”

  Demetri closed his door and to himself said, “You and me both.”

  They found a gourmet drive-through diner with burgers so thick you practically had to unhinge your jaw to eat them. The aroma of cooked beef, honey-glazed bacon, and fresh fries filled the interior of Demetri’s car.

  By tacit agreement, they didn’t talk much along the way. They sipped on their chocolate shakes as Demetri drove to a park in the foothills overlooking the city. They climbed out with their food as dusk turned to darkness, the city lights shimmering below, the breeze mild as the Santa Anas finally relented.

  They boosted themselves onto the hood of Demetri’s car, the bag of food between them.

  “Nice spot,” Roman said as Demetri squirted hand sanitizer into Roman’s palm. The hand sanitizer wasn’t ideal, considering they’d been working with their hands all day, but it would do.

  Demetri carefully worked the sanitizer around his bandage. “This was one of my favorite places to go when I first got my driver’s license.”

  “You bring any boys up here?”

  Demetri chuckled. “One or two maybe.”

  He glanced over at the big tree on the other side of the guardrail, where a kid from his class had given him his first blowjob. It had been sloppy and lacked all skill, but any doubts Demetri had had about being gay vanished that night.

  “One or two?” Roman took another slurp of his shake. “Why do I think that number needs a multiplier in front of it?”

  Those were much simpler times. All any of them cared about was getting off as often as possible. Sure, feelings were involved, but not all the time, and they hadn�
�t seemed so consequential.

  Not like now.

  “It was hard to find any kind of privacy when my mom didn’t work outside the home. We did what we had to do. Where’d you go?”

  “The desert. Lots of open land in Utah. Lots of sand in crevices on my body I’d like to forget.”

  “I’ll bet.” Demetri bit into his burger before it got completely cold. They weren’t talking about what they’d come up there to talk about, but they were talking. Hard for someone to block you in person. And he had the car keys, so it would be harder for Roman to run if the conversation got too messy.

  One for the win column.

  “How’s the hand?” Roman unwrapped his burger, dumped both containers of fries into the middle of his wrapper, and squeezed out all the ketchup packets.

  Demetri opened and closed his hand. It hardly hurt. “I’ll live.”

  Much like the car ride up, they mostly ate in silence, starved, and each unsure what to say. At least the food tasted delicious.

  Roman finished first, dumping his empty cup and his ketchup-smeared wrapper into the bag. He leaned back on the hood of the car, bracing his weight on his elbows as he stared up at the sky. A few of the brighter stars popped out, but the light pollution hid most of them.

  He pointed at the sky. “Shooting star.”

  Demetri caught the end of it out of the corner of his eye. “You’re supposed to make a wish.”

  “Done.”

  He threw his trash into the bag with Roman’s and turned, one foot on the bumper, the folded up on the hood. “What was your wish?”

  Roman blew out a heated breath and held Demetri’s gaze. “I wished you hadn’t lied to me.”

  “Fuck, Roman,” Demetri glanced down at the hood, making abstract designs in the fine layer of dirt with his finger. Then he glanced up. “Don’t you think I wish I could take it all back and do it all differently?”

  “I don’t know what you wish. All I know is that I knew something was wrong, and you wouldn’t open up to me no matter how many times I asked.” Roman sat up. “There are many things I can forgive and forget, but dishonesty... that’s not one of them.”

  “Who hurt you?” Demetri asked at last.

  This was supposed to be Demetri’s chance to explain himself, not that Roman had expected the explanation to make any difference in the end, but he’d resigned himself to at least listen.

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “It’s as much about your baggage as it is mine. Don’t deny that to my face.”

  The kicker? Demetri wasn’t wrong. Roman jumped off the car and started pacing, the milkshake souring in his stomach, and that scar on his heart his father’s lies and deceptions and half-truths had left him with broke open again.

  He stopped in front of Demetri, the backdrop of the city behind him, the warm wind rising off the valley floor, whipping his shirt. He had to clear his throat. “My father.”

  Demetri tilted his head as if confused. “I thought your father knew you were gay. I thought the two of you got along.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “He did. And we did. Except...”

  How could Roman explain something he’d never been able to explain to himself fully?

  “He loved me. I know he did. But as much as I felt his love and acceptance, there was a barrier between us. But as thin as it was, it was also impenetrable. I thought I knew my father. As it turns out, I didn’t know him at all.”

  Demetri shifted, both feet on the bumper now, and leaned forward, his forearms on his knees as if he didn’t want to miss a single word.

  “He was gay. And he died of AIDS when I was fourteen.”

  Demetri sat up straight. “Wait. What?”

  A soured laugh escaped Roman, though he found nothing funny about growing up being deceived. “I didn’t find out about it until after we’d put him in the ground. My mother knew. About his orientation. About him being poz. I don’t know if that’s why she’s so bitter, or why she hated me so much—because I was so much like him.”

  As his words flowed, the righteous indignation that had fueled him leached out of his body. His knees became weak, and he sat down on the thin edge of the metal guardrail, bracing his hands on either side of him.

  “Why... why didn’t he tell you?”

  “I’m not sure. I think that as much as my father accepted me, I don’t think he’d ever accepted himself, and I think getting the diagnosis only made him more ashamed of who and what he was.”

  Roman’s anger started building again as he thought back on his father’s silence. “Do you have any fucking idea how much it ripped me apart to know he couldn’t tell me? How ashamed it made me? How could I believe that he loved me when I was the same as him, and he—he couldn’t love himself?”

  Roman held his head in his hands, trying to keep it from exploding as his heart drummed in his chest. “I watched him get thinner and thinner. Watched him waste away in front of my eyes. All the while, he told me he would be fine, that nothing serious was wrong with him. That he wouldn’t die. That was the biggest lie of all. Coming from a man who’d taken it upon himself to stop taking his meds. To leave his son in the care of a woman who couldn’t stand the sight of him.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Demetri muttered, the words almost drowned out by a jet flying low overhead on its approach into LAX.

  Demetri stared down at the gravel, his mouth working, but it didn’t look like he had any idea what to say or how to make it better.

  But nothing would make what Roman’s father had done to him any easier to swallow.

  Roman had to live with that. He’d thought he’d buried it over the years, especially since leaving for college when he didn’t have to take the daily scorn and verbal jabs from his mother.

  He didn’t know what his father had seen in her, other than a body to be his beard—a cover so people wouldn’t think he was gay—so he could go behind her back and fuck men on his way home from work or maybe on his many business trips out of town.

  “He was flawed,” Demetri said at last. “But no one is perfect. I don’t doubt that he loved you, though.” He held Roman’s gaze, an empathetic smile on his face. “That would be the easy part.”

  “Do you have any idea what it would have meant to me growing up, knowing my father was also gay? That I wouldn’t have had to go years thinking I was the only boy who plastered his room with posters of superheroes because they turned me the fuck on? It would have been nice to talk to someone else who was paranoid about looking left or right in the locker room because they didn’t want to take a chance that someone would see them pop a boner.”

  “It was a different time.”

  “It was thirteen fucking years ago. Not so different. He could have been out if wanted to. He could have protected me, but he chose the easy way out.”

  “I don’t think deciding to discontinue the medication that kept him alive was taking the ‘easy way out.’ I think it was probably the hardest decision of his life.”

  Roman’s voice broke. “Then why the fuck did he do it?”

  “I don’t know, babe.”

  Demetri stiffened as the endearment slipped from his lips. “Sorry, I—”

  “Forget it.”

  But Roman didn’t want to forget it. He liked the way ‘babe’ rolled off Demetri’s tongue and how it spread warmth throughout Roman’s chest. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Roman’s brow went up, but Demetri didn’t elaborate. He climbed down and sat next to Roman on the guardrail, facing the city instead of the car. They both turned so they could see each other more easily in the moonlight.

  Demetri put his hand over Roman’s on the guardrail and bowed his head. “I thought... I thought when you ran out after I told you I was poz, that you feared my diagnosis. That you didn’t know or have all the facts. That you’d thought I’d put your health in danger.”

  “We didn’t do anything that could have infected me,
even if you weren’t undetectable.”

  “I know. It took me a long time to allow myself to start dating again, even after my viral counts dropped below the detectable range. I felt tainted. Embarrassed for letting something like that happen to me. Everyone I asked out, I disclosed my status to. It seemed only fair since I would want someone to tell me.”

  “How did that work out for you?”

  Demetri rubbed his thumb over Roman’s knuckles. Roman should take his hand back because Demetri’s touch made him forget all the reasons why he’d walked out that door. But he kept his hand in place, Demetri’s thumb bumping from knuckle to knuckle.

  “Let’s say I rarely went out on a second date. A third was unheard of. And more often than not, they flaked before even making it to the first one.”

  Considering his father’s history, Roman had done a ton of personal research into HIV and AIDS, trying to learn as much as he could, hoping it would bring some closure or understanding for how his father had treated him. And while it hadn’t brought the closure, it had given him the knowledge that perhaps other people hadn’t sought. Unlike some of the other men Demetri had tried to date, knowing Demetri had HIV wasn’t a deal-breaker for Roman.

  “Then what made me different? Why didn’t you tell me from the start?”

  Demetri didn’t answer Roman right away, trying to find the best way to answer the question and not sound like he was trying to shift the blame away from himself.

  “I listened to some bad advice. That’s not an excuse. More of an explanation. The theory was that if someone got to know me—the real me and not some statistic on the CDC’s website—that the person might think twice about giving me a chance.”

  Demetri held his hands out to the side. “I didn’t think it through. I didn’t weigh the damage I might do. All I knew was that you intrigued me in a way a man hadn’t for an awfully long time. The connection I felt with you was immediate. But I also never thought I’d see you again after that first night.”

  “But you did see me again. And yet you said nothing.”

  “I was waiting for a good time to tell you, and—”