by Jaime Samms
Pete glanced at his watch. The habit was so ingrained from his days of running helter-skelter on a set that it didn’t occur to him to look at his phone sitting on the counter next to the sink, or the clock on the stove or the microwave or, for that matter, the kitchen wall.
“And time to spare.” He smiled to himself. He had a full half hour before he even had to preheat the oven. Vince liked to decompress a bit after work before eating, so Pete would start the cooking about the time Vince and Lee were expected home. They could shower and change and visit a bit before dinner.
All he was missing was a bottle of wine and some fresh parmesan cheese. He could text Vince to pick those up on the way home, but since he knew Vince was in meetings all day, he didn’t want to bug him. No need to disrupt a meeting for that. Instead, he pulled up Lee’s number and tried him.
Hey. Busy?
He waited about two minutes before Lee texted back. Not terribly. What’s wrong?
Not wrong. Just need a few things for supper. Can you guys stop?
There was another, slightly longer wait. Pete tried again. I’m sorry. Are you in the middle of something?
No. came right away, followed by a protracted pause while blue dots undulated across the bottom of the screen, indicating Lee was typing. Vince isn’t here.
“Well. That was a lot of typing for three little words.” S’ok. I’ll give you the list. He will stop
. . . ok
Need parm cheese and red wine. Plz ask Vin to stop @ Daley’s
K.
Even his text sounded terse, which worried Pete. He wished Lee felt more relaxed and at home with them. Pete knew how to help with that if Lee would let him.
“Worth a try, I guess.” He typed up a new message and hit Send. Also pick up tangerines and a citrus herbal tea you like. Going to work out a mediation for you to practice.
There was a slight pause, then typing . . . typing . . . typing . . . and finally: I don’t meditate.
Yet
Ever.
;-> Trust me.
More prolonged typing. Either the guy was the slowest texter on the planet, or he typed and deleted a lot of replies before he ever sent one. This one, too, was much shorter than the length of typing dots warranted. Will be going to mine after work.
“Oh no.” That wasn’t good. Too many stairs. Come home. He began to pace the kitchen as he waited for the reply.
I live in Bluffside Bldg. fourth floor. Remember? U were there.
Pete typed each word of his next message on a separate line for emphasis.
Fourth.
Floor.
*Remember??????
Lee shouldn’t be pushing his body so hard. He’d already rebuffed Pete’s attempts to talk him into a half day of work. Now he thought he was going to hike up those stairs and what? Sleep on a bare mattress on the floor? Or, more likely, in that lonely recliner in the living room, no curtains on the windows, light shining in from the streets.
I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Will go to my place.
Again, Pete separated each word of his text, almost vexed enough to caps lock them. But not quite.
Come.
Home.
There was no reply. No dots blipping across his screen. Nothing. Pete’s gut began a spiral downward.
“I should have caps locked.” Now he was worried, and that annoyed him. He rang Lee’s number. Unsurprisingly, Lee didn’t pick up.
“Lee, call me back. I’m going to meet you at your apartment, so if you decide to go home with Vince after all, you had better let me know.” Pete hung up, put the food away, then found his keys and wallet.
Maybe he was being too harsh, but he didn’t have the patience for this crap. Lee’s determination to be independent set alarms off in Pete, and that left him unbalanced.
The drive to Lee’s was short, since the side streets were still relatively calm, and parking was easy to find. The visitor’s lot was next to empty. Pete parked by the front entrance and got out. When he made it to the overhang outside the doors, he could see inside that Lee hadn’t picked up his mail yet, so presumably, he hadn’t arrived.
He was right. Less than ten minutes later, he saw Lee slowly making his way from the footpath across the parking lot. Pete went out to meet him.
Lee grimaced when he saw Pete. “What are you doing?”
“You didn’t listen to my voice mail? I told you I was coming.”
“Why?”
“Because look at you. You walked what? Three blocks and you’re in pain. Can barely stand straight. Now you’re going to climb the stairs and then? Eat something frozen and warmed in the microwave? Sleep in your chair?”
Lee shook out his keys, opened the street door, and went to his mailbox. Most of it was junk, and he tossed it into the recycle bin below the boxes. The rest he shoved into the outer pocket of his laptop bag. “I’ll have you know that chair has sixty million massage settings and heat settings.”
“Well, that’s actually impossible.” Pete took Lee’s arm and leveraged some of Lee’s weight against him. “Come on. Car’s over here.” He pushed through the door back out into the parking lot.
“You can’t do this,” Lee growled, pulling away. “You can’t make me go with you if I don’t want to. That’s actual kidnapping.”
“Oh, but you want to.”
“Says who?”
“Says your back. Because, baby, unlike your chair, I do have about sixty million massage settings.” He tucked his hand back into Lee’s elbow and turned him toward the car. “That recliner will be kindling once you’ve had me.”
Lee tripped.
Pete tightened his grip but waited for him to have his feet under him properly before he moved forward again.
“Hey. Wait.”
“Why?”
“I’m not one of your actors. You can’t tell me what to do.”
Pete stopped. Partly because Lee was right, he was being heavy-handed, and partly because he wanted to see Lee’s face. If Lee was in real distress, he’d walk him up to his place and leave him alone. But he needed to look into his eyes. He had to be sure.
Lee stared back at him, face still, lips downturned and brows drawn tight over his eyes. He was balanced on the balls of his feet, like he’d bolt, given the right incentive, but his fingers twitched as he lifted his arm toward Pete.
“On one hand,” Pete said, “you can go upstairs, heat something up, and eat and sleep in your precious chair. Get up, trudge down again and walk to work tomorrow. On the other,” he took Lee’s outstretched hand, “you can come home with me, take a hot bath while I bake the lasagna I made today, eat said lasagna, lie down on the bed with the clean sheets I just changed, and let me rub some citrus oil and pain relief into your back, then go to sleep. When you get up, there will be coffee and breakfast burritos and a ride into the office with Vince. Of course it’s your choice. I’ll accept whatever you want to do.”
Lee stared at him.
Pete studied him as he waited.
Lee’s eyes shone a transparent brown that the afternoon sun slanted right through. A breeze tossed up strands of black hair that was glossier than it had been when he’d arrived back from Vancouver. Maybe he’d used the treatment Pete had picked up for him. His lips curled down in a deeper frown accentuated by his square jaw, but he looked more confused than angry.
“Why are you doing all this?” he asked at last.
“All what?”
“Being nice to me. Helping me.”
Pete smiled. “Keeping you?”
Lee’s eyes got big. “Why?”
“Because I like you. Obviously.” He lifted his hand a little bit higher. “You coming?”
Lee didn’t speak further, just slipped his hand into Pete’s and followed him to the passenger side of the car. Once he was in, Pete leaned down to look into his eyes again. “Does that bother you?”
“What? That you like me?”
“Yeah.”
“You have Vince.”
&nb
sp; “And?”
“Won’t he be . . . hurt?”
Pete sighed. Lee just didn’t get it yet. “He’s the one who brought you home in the first place, remember?” Pete straightened and went around to the driver’s door, got in, and buckled up. “Do you want me to run upstairs before we go? We might as well pick up anything you need while we’re here.”
“No.” Lee sank into his seat. “I have everything. Thanks.”
“Good. Can you please text Vince and ask him to pick up the wine and cheese? I just want to get you home and into a bath right now.”
“Oh. Okay.” Lee dug out his phone and busied himself with the text as Pete drove them back to his house.
Once he’d parked, Pete turned off the car but didn’t get out. “Lee, I don’t want you to think you can’t say no to any of this. Or that either Vince or I are doing anything behind the other’s back. We don’t work that way.”
“So . . . what? You have an open relationship?”
“No. Not exactly. We have a . . . an opening . . . in our relationship, I guess you could say.” He looked over at Lee. “It’s sort of turning into a Lee Bradshaw–shaped opening, if you haven’t figured that out yet.”
Lee swallowed audibly. He gave Pete a faint nod. “Maybe I had an idea.”
“Well, I want you to know, because pretty soon, I’m not going to be around as much. I have to get the shoot done for your boss, and that takes long hours. You’ll be dealing mostly with Vince, and he isn’t as good at this part as I am.”
“What part?” Lee asked, voice on the shady side of faint.
“The talking part. He’s better at expressing himself by doing. But some things its best to talk about before you do. Some things, you imperatively have to talk about first. And Vince can forget that people don’t read minds, even if he’s pretty good at it himself. If he doesn’t say something to you he should, it could get dicey, and I don’t want him to spook you when I’m not around to interpret for him.”
“Vince and I do okay.”
“At work, sure. He lets you boss him around because there, it doesn’t matter. At home, he cares. At home, sometimes, you have to listen for what he doesn’t say.”
“I don’t get it.”
“No. I suppose you don’t yet. Just that . . . Well. Before you ever go away mad at him, please talk to me?”
“I guess?”
Pete nodded. Probably he’d said too much. But Lee was obviously more skittish than Vince had thought. Pete could see it. Lee was on the edge of running, and Pete didn’t want that, but he wasn’t sure if telling him what was what would make him stay or chase him off all that much faster. And farther.
“Come on,” Pete invited, gentling his voice and managing to smile. “I’ll run you a bath and you can relax for a little while.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
They went inside, going about their business mostly without talking. Lee seemed thoughtful. Maybe less jumpy, it was hard to tell. Pete left him in the bath on his own and went to finish getting their supper ready. He didn’t want to think it was a good thing he was between Lee and the door.
He also wasn’t looking forward to explaining to Vince why he’d basically told Lee they wanted to keep him, when he hadn’t yet had that conversation with Vince. That wasn’t how they did things. They were supposed to be a partnership.
Pete set down the pot he’d been standing there holding. “What if adding Lee fucks that all up—how we work? Shit.” He glanced at the hall, imagining the closed bathroom door. He didn’t want to lose what he had, but maybe it was already too late.
The bath had been the perfect thing. All the cold from that walk had dug its way down into Lee’s marrow was leached out by the hot water and eucalyptus bath salts. Hunger drove him out of the tub before the water cooled, but by then, Vince was back. Lee heard the clatter of a pan sliding into the oven.
He’d been able to hear through the bathroom door as Pete rushed around the house, footsteps sounding like a leprechaun on speed. He had no idea what Pete was doing, but it gave him the impression Pete was so cranked he couldn’t bear to be still for more than a heartbeat. Lee would have thought Pete as actually on something, but Pete was too pure to be a druggie. Even a Hollywood one.
And Vince would never accept a drug habit in a life partner. It wasn’t his vibe in the least. Lee had worked with him long enough to realize that. Now, when Vince walked in the front door, it was like the whole house took a breath and relaxed. Pete’s frantic runaround halted in the kitchen as Lee was ready to leave the bathroom.
He had to sneak from bathroom to bedroom while the two of them canoodled near the back door. He wanted no part of that.
Although the way Vince slid a hand up Pete’s back, up into his hair, held him still by the back of his head while they kissed . . .
Lee shivered. “Wow. Very creepazoid, Bradshaw. Nicely done.”
But he couldn’t get the idea out of his head that no one had ever held him like that when they kissed him. Contained—controlled—while they took what they wanted. Held down wasn’t the same thing.
Then again, he’d never had that kind of kiss. Not like a “honey I’m home” kind of kiss. More of a “will it get you onto your back faster if I pretend to care” kind of kiss. Lee refused to think about those. It had been a long time since he’d even included kissing as a necessary part of getting off. He spread his legs easily enough without that intimacy and getting a cock into him was the end goal anyway. He didn’t need the buildup.
By the time he had dressed and returned to the living spaces of the house, Vince was in the shower and Pete was setting plates and utensils on the table.
“Need help?” Lee asked.
“No, it’s fine. Take a load off.” Pete pointed to the couch.
“I’m not crippled, you know.”
“I know.” Pete set the last knife down and turned to face Lee. “Can my wanting to make things easy on you be about me wanting to—” he huffed and cocked his head “—do stuff for you, and not about you needing stuff done?”
“Is that why you made this?” Lee asked, waving vaguely at the oven.
“I cook when I’m not working. I hardly ever get to, because when I work, I work ten- and twelve-hour days, so when I have time to cook, I maybe go overboard. But I want to ser—look after Vince. He lets me.”
“You want to serve him?” Lee’s gut tightened. Had that been what Pete stopped himself from saying? “Is that what it’s like between you two?”
Pete stared at him, big-eyed and silent.
“Shit,” Lee whispered. He wasn’t ready for that. He didn’t want that. He had no idea how to be . . . that. Not in a way that left him with any pride or self-worth. He’d become used to being the one ordering people around, at least in business. In bed he didn’t take shit, either. He got what he wanted and got out. No intermingling of anything other than a few body parts. He’d learned his lesson and wasn’t going there again. If he stayed on top—even if he was the one getting fucked—he didn’t have to worry about the other guys getting any ideas about thinking they would or should come back for more.
“Don’t freak out.” Vince’s voice draped over Lee, a heavy cloak of stay and still that rooted him to the floor and smothered his impulse to bolt. His jaw tightened past speaking. A hand feathered over the small of his back. A crop of goose bumps flourished in its wake as it trailed over his back and arm. “We’re going to eat,” Vince said, coming around where Lee could see him. “Pete, you want to get the food from the oven, please? Lee, there’s salad in the fridge. If you can get that, I’ll get the garlic bread out of the warmer.”
Lee tried to swallow, but nothing seemed to be working properly.
Vince settled his hand at the small if Lee’s back again. His heat seeped through Lee’s thin shirt to his skin. He tried to reconcile that strong pressure with the lanky, fresh-scrubbed guy in thick glasses who had first appeared in their office . . . Had it really been over a year ago already?
“Vince,” Lee tried, willing himself to take just one step away from that comforting touch.
“Yes?”
“Pete said something . . .”
Across the room, Pete paused, almost imperceptibly.
“Pete likes to say things,” Vince chided softly. He didn’t sound angry at all, but was there warning in his tone? Some soft, pillowy censure?
“I’m a little lost,” Lee confided, very quietly, because it was more than enough he was making such an admission to Vince, who had already seen him at his worst, laid flat on his back and helpless. He wasn’t sure he wanted Pete to overhear it too. What if it made him change his mind about . . . well. About wanting Lee, if Lee was too lost.
“I know.” Vince stepped closer so his breath was warm over Lee’s cheek. “So let me help. Just get the salad out of the fridge, and the dressing. Put them on the table, and sit down. We’ll eat. You’ll feel better.”
Lee should have protested that he wasn’t five and didn’t need coddling. But Vince pushed ever so gently at his back, propelling him that first step forward, and it was like the world revved back up to full speed again where it had momentarily lapsed into slow motion.
“Okay,” he muttered. It wasn’t like he could lose himself again between where he stood and the fridge, seven paces away.
But as he fetched it, he noticed Pete’s methodical progress, and took a cue from that, doing one small thing at a time. Carry the salad to the table. Sit. Spread his napkin. Accept the serving Pete offered. Chose a slice of bread. One small thing. Don’t get lost in your head. Don’t overthink it. Don’t. Freak. Out.
And it worked. It got him into the meal, and eventually, through it. The food being delicious didn’t hurt. He was tempted to go for a second helping, but Pete reminded him about the massage and that it was likely to hit some still-tender spots. They didn’t want to take a chance an overfilled belly might lead to unfortunate results. Not that he tended to puke when he was in pain, but he understood why Pete might worry. Besides, it was easier to take the direction just then. No thinking. When he thought about what he was doing here, he got defensive and bitchy. He’d turn prickly, and he didn’t want to stick Pete with a barb of misplaced temper.