by Lynn VanDorn
Josh collapsed onto Tyler, face snuggled into the crook of Tyler’s neck and his weight smothering him for just a few lovely yet breathless moments, and then Josh moved off him, laying down beside him. Josh tugged at Tyler’s shoulder and pulled him down so he rested on Josh’s chest. “This really just happened,” Josh said as he ran his hand up and down Tyler’s spine.
“Yep.”
“I'm not having some sort of dream.”
“Nope. Don't think so.”
“You love me.”
“I'm afraid so.” Tyler started to grin. He stroked Josh’s chest. Mine, he thought, and for the first time he didn't feel the need to qualify the thought. And I will find a way to keep you, by God. You are in for it now, Dr. Rosen.
“I love you,” Josh said. “It seems so strange to say it out loud.”
“We are strange. This is strange. There is nothing normal about either one of us.”
Josh moved his body under Tyler's hand, inviting more, so Tyler pushed up and kissed him.
“So, what?” Josh said. “Who needs normal? You love me.”
“Yes, Josh.”
“You really do.”
“Yes. Even if you are annoying as fuck, I love your fussy, pedantic, neurotic ass. It's only fair, since you seem to love my mental, self-destructive, selfish self.”
“I do,” Josh said. “You also forgot high-strung.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“And princessy. Hot-tempered. Um… let's see, what else?”
Tyler raised an eyebrow at Josh.
“Oh, and bitchy! I forgot bitchy.”
“Are you done?” Tyler asked.
“No. You’re also sweet, loyal, smart, funny, brave, and strong. So strong. Stronger than you give yourself credit for. Also, the most beautiful person I've ever seen, and you give the world's best blow jobs.”
Tyler wasn't sure if he could live up to all the things Josh thought he was, but maybe he could try. “Oh. Well. As for you…”
“Yes?” Josh asked. A shit-eating grin spread across his face.
Tyler sighed. “You’re just Mary fucking Poppins, aren't you? Practically perfect in every way. It's a large part of what makes you so annoying.”
“And you love me.”
“You like hearing me say it, don't you?”
Josh nodded.
“Yes, Josh Rosen. I, Tyler Chadwick, do so solemnly swear that I am in fact, for better or worse, most emphatically in love with you. God help us both.”
“Okay,” Josh said. “That'll do for now.”
–—
Saturday, October 1st, 2:02 a.m.
Josh’s very tidy bedroom
Evanston, IL
Tyler: I should still fire you.
Purvi: But you won't
Purvi: Are you done being a little bitch?
Tyler: Maybe.
Tyler: Confessions of the L-word may have been exchanged
Purvi: Seriously?
Tyler: I believe I have just acquired an actual boyfriend.
Purvi: You sound like you’ve adopted a puppy
Tyler: There are similarities
Purvi: Is he at least housebroken?
Tyler: He’s the neatest person I've ever met. It's pathological.
Purvi: Great. You snagged another crazy one. Tho R promised me this guy is no David.
Tyler: No. He's like the anti-David. You'll see when you meet him.
Tyler: I need to get him to California.
Purvi: You'll have to.
Tyler: I KNOW
Purvi: Leave it all to me.
Tyler: Leave what to you?
Purvi: Enjoy the wedding. Dance with your man at the reception. Piss off your father. Leave everything else to me.
Tyler: Purvi?
Purvi: Go back to sleep
“Put that damn phone down,” Josh growled in his ear.
“I couldn't sleep.” Tyler stretched, luxuriating in the feel of his naked back sliding along Josh’s hairy chest.
“Do I have to exhaust you to get you to sleep?”
“You can try, old man.”
Josh’s hands stole under the waistband of his sleep pants. “Challenge accepted, your majesty.”
Chapter 30
Patrick Crashes the Wedding
Saturday, October 1st, 5:45 p.m.
The Field Museum
Chicago, IL
Patrick had been expecting something much like the weddings he'd been to growing up in Ohio. They were always held in a church. There would be ushers at the entrance asking if each guest was there for the bride or the groom, even if the usher was someone you'd grown up with and knew damn well the bride was your cousin. During or before the wedding there might be a church service, especially if it was a Catholic ceremony. Afterward the reception would be held in the church basement, or rec center, or, if it was really fancy, in one of the town’s banquet halls. At least half of the weddings he'd been dragged to by his parents had had a potluck dinner afterward, and instead of champagne there was punch made from ginger ale and frozen lemonade.
This was not that sort of wedding.
For one thing, it was being held at the Field Museum. Patrick wasn't sure if they'd let him in without an invitation, but he'd come wearing a suit and holding a present and he'd slipped in between two groups of invited guests who had arrived just as he had.
A rudimentary aisle had been set up with two groupings of chairs to either side. Patrick waffled about which side to sit on and finally chose the groom’s side, if only because it put him closer to Ryan. Even so, he found a chair in the back and did his best not to look conspicuous.
Brad and three groomsmen stood in front of Sue, the museum’s T. Rex skeleton, with their backs to the guests. First was Brad, then Ryan. From the back, the two of them looked very much alike, but Patrick would know Ryan from any angle, at any time. He was an inch taller than Brad and his hair was a shade more golden. Next came a shorter, slender man with closely cropped brown hair, and after him a tall man with black wavy hair that looked like it wanted to curl.
The man with the black hair had to be Josh. Patrick wondered where the vicious blue-haired tornado was when he realized with a start that Tyler was the man between Ryan and Josh, minus all his blue hair. He looked wrong up there. For one thing, he was taller in Patrick’s memory. Seeing him from behind he looked impossibly too small, but it was an illusion. Patrick knew Ryan was 6’4, Brad was nearly as tall, and Josh was somewhere around Patrick’s height, which was six feet exactly. Tyler was maybe four inches shorter than Josh, which was short for a man, but combined with his small frame, standing next to Ryan Tyler almost looked like a child. The contrast in the brothers’ coloring was striking as well, them being so blond and him the odd one out with his dark hair.
Patrick sat there, studying the back of Ryan's head, and tried to decide why he'd come. It was probably knowing Ryan would be there with both Stephanie and Josh in attendance and Patrick couldn't stand staying at home and trying to study, which was what he should have been doing. Crashing the wedding was a terrible idea and Ryan would be furious if he found out, but Patrick planned on remaining unseen. Unfortunately, it was a much smaller wedding than he'd expected. His current plan was to escape by slipping out between the ceremony and the reception, hoping no one would be the wiser. The entire fiasco was a waste of his time, but at least it had cemented something in his mind. Patrick didn't belong in this world, and he needed to break it off with Ryan. The sooner, the better.
Patrick thought the ceremony was unusual, but he had never been to a Jewish wedding before, so maybe that was it. He'd seen some things in movies, like the canopy thing held over the bride and groom, and at the end of the ceremony the glass being stepped on and broken. Brought up Catholic with mostly Catholic friends, Patrick found the whole thing somewhat bewildering, but interesting.
For a moment, he entertained the idea of a wedding between him and Ryan. He tried to picture his family and Ryan’s family in
one place and couldn't do it. Even if his relatives didn't freak out at the idea of him marrying another man, and they would, they’d be like fish out of water at an event like this one. The whole thing was hopeless, just like Tyler had warned him it was. Just like Josh had hinted.
Lost in his thoughts, Patrick was unprepared for the ceremony being so short, and missed his opportunity to slip away at the end like he'd intended. He tried to get away from the other guests, but due to how the chairs had been set up, the only way to leave was either past the reception line or climbing over a row of chairs. He wasn't sure which would be worse, and while he debated, he ran out of time and found himself in front of what had to be Rachel and Josh’s parents. Their father looked like a fussy professor-type with salt-and-pepper hair cut military short and wire-rimmed glasses, visibly uncomfortable in his rented tuxedo. Their mother, who looked very much like Rachel, smiled and looked ecstatically happy.
Next was Peter Chadwick, an older, grayer, and frailer version of Ryan and Brad. Standing next to him, but simultaneously as far away as she could be, was a woman who had to be Ryan’s mother. She looked equal parts happy and nervous, cutting glances between her sons and her former husband. Despite her age—Ryan was thirty-five so she had to be somewhere in her fifties at least—she was exquisitely lovely with only slightly grayed dark hair and enormous blue-gray eyes, but hers was a fragile beauty, like one wrong word would make her shatter.
Brad didn’t give Patrick a second glance, but Rachel did. She narrowed her eyes at him but didn't call him out for his unexpected appearance. She only murmured in his ear how surprised she was to see him and said she'd see him later, which he tried not to think was ominous.
The bridesmaids passed by in a peach blur, but then he was before the groomsmen, and that's when his luck ran out. First was Tyler. The short cut of his hair somehow made him both less pretty and more beautiful, the resemblance to his mother marked, as they shared the same coloring. Then he opened his lovely mouth and the spell was broken. “Who the fuck invited your stupid ass to the wedding?”
Josh, standing next to Tyler, stiffened. Ryan, just beyond Josh, gave him a look of barely restrained fury. “Patrick? What the hell are you doing here?”
I have no clue. It seemed like a good idea this morning. He said the first thing that came into his head. “I brought a present.”
Tyler gave him a disgusted eye roll. “Well, that makes it all okay, then.”
Josh looked threatening. “If you make a scene and embarrass my sister I will murder you with my own two hands.”
There was more eye rolling from Tyler. “Oh, the big, bad dermatologist. We're all so scared. Really, new boy, I am by far the one you need to worry about most. Josh likes to think he's scary, but really, he's the nicest man on the planet. I, on the other hand, will cut you and watch you bleed. You need to leave. Now.” Then he gave Patrick a charming smile that still managed to convey imminent danger. Patrick had no idea how Josh felt safe enough with Tyler to live with him, fake relationship or not. He couldn't imagine being able to close his eyes and sleep in the same place as Tyler. Not without Kevlar pajamas.
However, Tyler was the least of his worries, because while his expression was lethal, the look Ryan gave him was full-on nuclear. “Go and wait for me by the south entrance. Do not leave before I've spoken to you.”
He met Ryan’s eyes. They were not the blue of summer skies. Right now, they were the color of concentrated flame. “And if I don't?” He'd meant to sound defiant, but the last word wobbled in his mouth.
“Do. It. Now.” Each hissed word hit him with the impact of a bullet.
Patrick was toward the end of the receiving line, but there were other guests behind him who were wondering why things had ground to a halt. He had to do something. “Sure,” he muttered. Dismissed, Patrick went to stand by the south entrance.
“I see I'm not the only one here uninvited,” a man said.
Patrick looked up from the floor he'd been blindly studying, although he didn't have to look up far. The man who’d spoken was in his mid-fifties, slight, with graying dark hair with auburn highlights and hazel eyes. He had pale skin that was crinkled at his eyes and around his mouth, but was otherwise smooth and clean-shaven. He had fine features and was extraordinarily attractive. It struck Patrick that this was what Tyler would look like in thirty years.
He'd said he was uninvited, though. Maybe he was one of Ryan's maternal relatives. There was no love lost between Ryan’s father and mother. That did make the most sense. Patrick grunted a noncommittal response.
The man leaned against the wall. “The trick to crashing a wedding where you are unwanted but known to the family is getting up to use the restroom right before the end of the ceremony. That way you completely bypass the reception line.”
“That’s a life pro-tip right there,” Patrick said. “Where were you fifteen minutes ago?”
“In the restroom. Are you not paying attention?”
“Apparently not,” Patrick said. If I had half a brain, I would leave now. “Are you a relative?”
The man tipped his head back and forth a few times as if debating with himself. “Something like that,” he said. “What about you?”
“I work in the Chadwick firm with Ryan. And Rachel, of course.”
“Hm,” the man said. “Were you planning on interrupting the wedding ala The Graduate? If so, you're too late.” He looked out through the glass door. “If you hurry and pry Rachel away from Brad you could make your getaway on the bus out there, though.”
Patrick had never seen The Graduate so he had no idea what the guy was talking about. He remembered hearing or reading somewhere that the movie involved an older woman named Mrs. Robinson—he’d heard the Simon and Garfunkel song, at least—seducing a younger man. If so, Ryan was his Mrs. Robinson and he hadn't had to try very hard to get Patrick into bed with him.
“Oh, so that's how it is. Hm. I never thought he'd defy his father. Guess we can all be wrong.”
Patrick looked up. The man he'd been standing next to gazed at the wedding guests milling about the hall, chatting, drinking, and eating canapés. Making his way through them like a bull storming through a china shop was Ryan, his brow low and a scowl on his face. Defy his father. That phrase caught at Patrick and he looked toward Ryan’s father, who was occupied with Brad and his new daughter-in-law, but who still stared after Ryan with a similar frown on his face. Then Patrick searched for Stephanie and found her chatting with one of the bridesmaids. He saw her shoot an indecipherable look at Ryan—she might have been either confused or concerned or both—then she went back to her conversation.
“You shouldn't have come,” Ryan said as he drew near. “I'm taking you home.”
“Ryan, it's been a long time,” said the man beside Patrick.
Ryan stopped short and looked away from Patrick. “Uncle Mike? I haven't seen you in forever. How have you been?”
The man smiled. “I've been better, honestly, but it's good to see you again, Ryan. The last time was… let me see… Gretchen was in eighth grade, so you would've been a freshman in high school. That was right after Sophie had her first relapse. But I don't want to talk about sad things. Not today. I'm glad to see Brad looking so happy.”
“Yeah. It's great seeing you again, Mike, but I need to get my friend home. He's not feeling well.”
The man—Uncle Mike—looked Patrick up and down. “Of course,” he said. “I could tell the young man was feeling unwell and came over to keep him company. It's very kind of you to make sure he gets home safely.” So, the man was a relative. Probably Ryan's maternal uncle. Not only did Tyler look like him, but they both had the uncomfortable ability to hide sharp objects into their smiles.
“See you later, Mike. We'll have to get together later and catch up.”
“Sure, Ryan, I'd like that. Ah… good luck.”
Patrick allowed himself to be dragged out of the museum and down the steps. They didn't go down to the bus stop, howeve
r, or hail a taxi. The family had hired a valet service for the wedding, and Ryan signaled to the attendant.
“Ryan,” Patrick began.
“Not. One. Word.” Ryan bit out. “Not until I have you in private.”
The valet came back with Ryan’s brand-new gray Panamera. It cost twice Patrick’s yearly salary, even more than what Patrick’s childhood home was worth. He’d heard Rachel giving Ryan a hard time about the purchase and had then googled the price out of curiosity. Patrick couldn't imagine spending that much money on a mere car. It was yet another reason why his relationship with Ryan was crazy and doomed. Even if Ryan wasn't engaged, even if he wasn't so deeply in the closet he'd require an experienced spelunker to find his way out of it, he and Patrick existed in completely different worlds.
Ryan got in the car and Patrick hesitated. He should've never gone to the wedding. It was a huge mistake. Getting in the car with Ryan was another. He was engaged. He would be at his own wedding less than a year from now. Was Patrick going to sneak into that one, too? Would Ryan also abandon it to take him, a supposedly sick friend, home? Of course not. Better to back out now. The 146 bus was approaching. All Patrick had to do was wait for it to arrive, get on, take it back to the Red Line, ride it back to his stop, and walk three blocks to his apartment. He could picture it all in his head.
“Get your fucking ass in the fucking car,” bellowed Ryan through the open passenger door, and Patrick jumped. It was unlike Ryan to curse, let alone yell.
“Why?” he asked.
The bus got nearer.
“Get in the car, Patrick. Now.”
Patrick felt his legs wanting to obey but he locked his knees. “Why?” he asked again.