Belonging

by Alexa Land

  “What were you doing, Zan? Why did you come here?”

  “I had to convince you not to move to New York, but I was so upset when we were talking this morning that I threw my phone and it broke. After that, I had to come in person.”

  I wanted to ask him a million questions, including why he wanted me to stay and what was behind that kiss, but we weren’t alone so it wasn’t the right time for that discussion. Instead I asked, “How did you get to the boarding area? You’d need a ticket to make it past security.”

  He sat up a bit and reached into the pocket of his jeans, then pulled out a handful of stuff, including a crumpled boarding pass, a passport, and maybe a dozen hundred dollar bills. Some money fell to the floor of the patrol car. Zan didn’t even notice, so I picked it up and handed it to him as he said, “I bought a ticket. I can’t remember where it’s to. It was just to get me into that part of the airport so I could find you. Thankfully, I somehow had the wherewithal to grab my passport before I left home, or they wouldn’t have sold me a ticket without that for I.D. Really though, the only reason I thought of that was because I spotted it inside my cash box.”

  “How did you get here from Marin?”

  “I rode the lawnmower most of the way to town, then flagged down a cab.”

  “But I used up all the gas in the mower yesterday,” I said.

  “Yeah, I found that out. I had to syphon the petrol out of my convertible. I did try the car first, by the way, lest you think I’m completely daft and went straight for the mower. Needless to say, the Jag wouldn’t start.”

  “I can’t believe you rode the mower. Its top speed is probably something like ten miles an hour if you’re running it flat out.”

  “Probably. It took me ages to get to town on that blasted contraption. Part of the time, I was literally yelling in frustration. I almost got off and tried sprinting, but figured the mower was very slightly faster. Eventually, it ran out of petrol and I had to abandon it, but I was close to town by that point and could run the final stretch.” As he was talking, he stuffed the money and documents back in his pocket.

  I asked him, “How did you make yourself come here? I didn’t think leaving the house was really an option for you.”

  “I was never agoraphobic. At least, I wasn’t before. I don’t know if that’s still the case. All I know is, I’d gotten used to being alone, so all of that was incredibly overwhelming. I just had to face it though, because I needed to see you.”

  He sighed quietly and added, “I’m not sure when exactly I became this damaged. It just started with needing to step out of the public eye. I did that to try to heal myself after my career wore me down to almost nothing. But at some point I guess the cure became more damaging than the original ailment.” Then he went back to staring out the window.

  Chapter Eleven

  Nana’s house was bustling with activity when we pulled up out front. The driveway was full of cars and the big gay pride flag hanging between two upstairs windows waved proudly in the breeze. The police officer glanced at that expressionlessly when he got out to open the back door of the patrol car for us (opening it wasn’t possible from the inside). When I thanked him for the ride, all he said was, “Just doing my job,” before getting back in the car and driving away.

  “This is your house?” Zan asked.

  “It’s my grandmother’s. I grew up here from the time I was four, after my parents died.”

  “I’m sorry. How did they die?”

  “They were shot to death in our home.” He turned to me with a startled expression and a question in his eyes, so I added, “It’s a long, awful story. Let’s save it for a time when we both feel like being depressed.”

  He looked sympathetic as he took my hand and gave it a squeeze, then turned his attention back to the house. “Is there a party going on?”

  “Nah. Nana just has people over a lot.” He still hesitated, and I told him, “You don’t have to come inside if you’re not feeling up to it. I can just get my keys and drive you home.”

  “I’d like to meet your family if that’s alright. After being inundated by strangers at the airport, how scary could your grandmother be?”

  I had to knock on the door since I’d left my key ring with Nico, and even I was startled when Nana swung the door open. She was dressed in her red leotard, which she’d paired with white Keds, a chunky gold necklace, and a giant, feathered, Vegas showgirl-style headdress for some reason. She’d also tried to put on red lipstick, but she’d done it without looking in a mirror and had been a bit off in guessing the location of her lips. “Hi Johnnie!” she exclaimed. “Did you lose your keys? Hi Zan, I’m glad you finally left your cave. Come in!” I introduced Nana and Zan to each other once we stepped into the foyer.

  “Dude!” Jessie exclaimed, bounding up to us and grabbing me in a hug. “Why weren’t you answering your phone? Everyone’s been trying to call you!”

  “Oh! Shit. I’d put it in airplane mode and forgot to change it back. Jessie, I’d like you to meet—”

  “Like Zan Tillane needs an introduction,” Jessie said, shaking Zan’s hand vigorously and asking him, “Are you okay? You looked like you were about to lose it at the airport.”

  “I...did?” Zan murmured, turning his head to the left to take in the six little old ladies in colorful leotards and huge headdresses who’d spilled out of the living room. They were all beaming at us.

  “How did you know about that?” I asked.

  “You two are all over the internet.” I must have looked startled, and he said, “Let me show you.” Jessie took his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen a few times. While he did that, I introduced Zan to my grandmother’s friends and learned they were changing up their Jazzercise routine with something called the showgirl workout. Sure, why not?

  “More and more videos keep being uploaded,” Jessie said. “The sudden reappearance of the legendary Zan Tillane after all this time is freaking huge. The internet’s going to explode with this story!” He turned his screen to face us. The clip, taken over the top of the crowd, began with Zan calling my name and cut out a few moments after we kissed.

  Jessie said, “The two questions everyone’s asking in the comments are: where’s Zan been all this time, and who’s Gianni? You’re going to end up totally famous after this, Gi.”

  “Shite, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” Zan told me, pushing his hair back from his face. “I never meant for you to wind up in the spotlight like that.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” His shoulders were slumped, and stress and exhaustion were evident in his eyes, so I asked him, “Do you want to go upstairs and lie down for a little while before I drive you home?” When he nodded, I told everyone we’d talk to them later, then took Zan’s hand and led him up the wide, curving staircase to my bedroom.

  When I closed the door behind us he tugged off his boots with some effort and set them out of the way, then looked around curiously, his tiredness apparently forgotten. The room had only changed a little from my childhood. The walls were still navy blue, and I’d kept the white curtains with tiny nautical flags embroidered around the edges. But the wall of shelves held books and photos instead of toys, and my old twin bed had been replaced with a queen size one at some point.

  He gravitated to one of my favorite things, touching the ornate brass sextant carefully as he asked, “Do you sail?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I used to. I don’t have a boat anymore.”

  “This is quite remarkable,” he said, running a fingertip over the antique navigation instrument. “May I pick it up?”

  “Sure, but be careful, please. It’s one of my most prized possessions.”

  He glanced at me and asked, “Then why did you leave it behind when you packed up to move?”

  “I didn’t know if I’d end up staying in New York long-term. That thing’s over a hundred years old and kind of delicate, so I never took it along any of the times I moved. I’d only bring it if I was going someplace I kn
ew for a fact was going to work out.”

  “Sounds like you didn’t have a lot of confidence in Jason Jax.”

  “I barely knew him.”

  “And yet you were willing to drop everything and move across the country to be with him.”

  “I figured I’d give it a shot. I mean, why not? No one else wanted me,” I said quietly.

  “That’s far from true.”

  I turned to look at him. “Why did you come to the airport, Zan? And why did you kiss me? You spent all those months hating me, and then all of a sudden—”

  “I never hated you, Gianni.”

  “It sure seemed like you did. You barely spoke to me, and when you did it was usually just to tell me I’d done something wrong.”

  “I avoided speaking to you because you intimidated the hell out of me. Until you returned my kiss today, I had no idea where I stood with you. I could barely think when I was around you, let alone conduct a conversation. I did manage to complain, but let’s face it, that doesn’t take much. Even a three-year-old can whine about things.”

  “Why the hell would you be intimidated by me? You’re a world famous pop star and I’m...nothing.”

  “Nothing? How could you say that?” When I shrugged he said, “I didn’t even know what to do when my son brought you home and introduced us. My emotions were already totally raw because I was so worried about Christian’s health at that point. Then in the midst of all that and after years alone, I was confronted with the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Later on, you also proved to be intelligent and caring and witty, and that just made it worse. I was incredibly attracted to you, but I kept behaving like a complete and total arse. It was all just so terribly awkward and humiliating, and the longer it went on, the worse it got.”

  “What was humiliating?” I asked, taking a step closer to him and resting my hip against the bookshelves.

  “Seeing myself through your eyes, for one thing. I always tried to tell myself I was coping pretty well overall, just with a few limitations. That was pure bullshit, of course. And then there was the fact that I was dependent on you to bring me everything I needed. I lived in fear of suddenly developing an embarrassing condition and having to ask you for rash cream or, hell, fucking hemorrhoid ointment or something.”

  I grinned a little and said, “Okay, I could see how that’d be a bit awkward.”

  “Oh, a bit doesn’t begin to cover it. It got far more awkward than that, too. For weeks, I thought about asking you out and kept trying to figure out how that could possibly work. First of all, I wouldn’t be asking you out, I’d be asking you in, since I never fucking went anywhere, so all that would do was shine a spotlight on my issues. Then, if I wanted to make you dinner, I’d have to give you the damned list of ingredients and you’d have to bring them to me. The real pinnacle of awkwardness, though? If I thought there was even the most remote chance of getting lucky during this already completely ridiculous dating scenario, do you know what I’d have to do? I’d have to write condoms on the fucking shopping list and ask you to pick some out and bring them to me, just in case I somehow got you into bed.”

  My smile got wider. “You could have asked...no, never mind.”

  “Ah, see? Exactly! The only thing more awkward than asking my date to bring me condoms would be asking my son to get me some, and that was my only other alternative.”

  “Well, this is all news to me. You really didn’t broadcast this alleged attraction in any way,” I told him.

  After a pause he asked, “Why’d you let me kiss you at the airport, Gianni? I’ve been nothing but a thorn in your side since the day you met me.”

  “Why do you think?”

  He watched me for a long moment, the fingers of his right hand absently tracing a pattern on one of the shelves beside him. Finally he said, “You didn’t say goodbye. You didn’t even tell me you were moving, and I just saw you yesterday.”

  I broke eye contact and said, “I didn’t decide to go until after I’d seen you. And, okay, I could have called you myself instead of letting Christian tell you, but I didn’t want to say goodbye to you, Zan.”

  “Did I do something that drove your decision?”

  I looked up at him and said, “I thought I was attracted to someone who hated me, since you kept shutting me out. It seemed like getting far away from that situation was the best solution.”

  “I’m sorry I made you think that. I’m also sorry that I acted like a child and couldn’t just tell you what I was feeling.”

  “Well, I couldn’t, either.”

  He said quietly, “Nothing’s really changed with me, you know. Just because I managed to force myself out of the house doesn’t mean I solved a damn thing. I’ve still got a mountain of problems and you’d be doing yourself a favor by running away from me. But for fuck’s sake, don’t run to New York. You managed to pick someone even worse for you than I am with Jason Jax.”

  “New York was a dumb idea. I’m going to call Jason and let him know I’m turning down his offer. Actually, I should call him now, before he sees the internet footage of us kissing at the airport. That’s a bad way to let him know I’m not coming.”

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and took it out of airplane mode. There were twenty-two messages. Apparently a lot of people had seen my internet debut. I scrolled through the missed calls and saw one from Jason. When I listened to the message he’d left, my eyes went wide. I put it on speaker and played it again for Zan.

  Jason sounded incredibly angry as he growled, “You fucking whore! I ask you to fucking come and be with me, and there you are all over the internet, making out with fucking Zan Tillane, of all people! You better not have gotten on the plane to New York after that stunt. If you did, you can just turn around and get your sorry ass right the fuck out of here on your own dime! This is your fuckin’ loss, bitch, not mine! You think you’re something special because you ended up in my bed? Newsflash. Boys like you are a dime a dozen. I have five more whores just like you in apartments all over New York. Actually, on second thought, they’re not like you. They’re younger and cuter! I was doing you a favor by making you this offer and you’re a fucking idiot for fucking it up the way you did. Lose my number, slut.”

  “Alright,” I said as I disconnected and set my phone on the shelf, “lay it on me.”

  “Lay what on you?”

  “The I-told-you-so. I was wrong about Jason Jax, and you were right. He’s a total jerk, and I didn’t see it.”

  “The surprising thing about Jax is that he’s actually a good actor,” Zan said with a half-smile. “One would never guess it by the crap films he keeps making. You’re just the latest in a long line of people that have believed the act and not seen him for the complete wanker that he is. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that you had to find out the hard way.”

  “Oh, I didn’t find out the hard way. I got off easy by getting the full Jason experience in just a voicemail, instead of moving to New York and eventually experiencing his Jekyll-and-Hyde trick first-hand. Thank you for going through all that trouble to come to the airport and stop me.”

  “I didn’t really come to the airport because of Jason. I came because of me. But you’re welcome anyway.”

  I reached up and brushed a long strand of hair out of his eyes. “You came because of you?”

  Zan nodded. “The message I was bringing from Marin wasn’t ‘Jason’s a prat’, though he is. It was ‘I fancy you’.” I started to laugh, and he said, “What?”

  “That’s hilarious. ‘I fancy you.’ Of all the British expressions you’ve managed to hold on to after years in the states, that has to be the most endearingly awkward.”

  “But you fancy me too, so I can get away with it.”

  I flashed him a big smile. “I do. I fancy the hell out of you, Zan. And I’m never, ever going to call it that again, because it sounds completely insane.”

  He grinned and pulled me into his arms, brushing his cheek against mine as he ran his hands do
wn my back. “God, it feels good to touch you,” he murmured.

  “I can’t begin to imagine how you went all those years without physical contact.”

  “It’s amazing what one can adapt to and learn to do without. But once I met you, that all went to hell. I was vividly reminded, every time I saw you, of all I’d been missing.”

  I stroked his hair and asked, “If I hadn’t forced your hand by almost moving across the country, when were you going to do something about the way you felt?”

  “I was waiting for some sign, any little thing that showed me I wasn’t the only one feeling this. That day with the weird tentacle fruit, when we were joking around and I had you up against the wall, I was dying for you to kiss me. It was the perfect moment, you had every opportunity. But when you didn’t do it, I felt like such an idiot. I thought you didn’t want me, so I really tried to back off after that.”

  “I was waiting for you to make a move,” I told him, “in case I was reading it wrong.”

  Zan chuckled at that. “We’re a hell of a pair, both of us so afraid of making a mistake that we almost let this slip away.”

  He kissed me so tenderly, and I whispered against his lips, “Thank you, Zan.”

  He pulled back just a few inches to look at me. “What are you thanking me for?”

  “You turned your whole world upside down for me. What you went through to get to me....” I took a deep breath, trying to keep my emotions in check, and added softly, “Thank you for caring that much.” He smiled sweetly and kissed me again.

  I guided him to the bed and we stretched out on top of the covers fully clothed, then went right on kissing. His touch was incredibly gentle, his fingertips exploring my hair, my neck, the curve of my jaw. After a while I said, “Please don’t go back to your house, Zan. At least, not right away. You’ve made it this far, maybe you can build on that and start a new chapter in your life.”