by Amy Lane
So Ethan was sure that was it—he was a pill bug, all alone—but after he parked the car at the Regal, Jonah swung his slender body around the car and caught up as Ethan was striding to the entrance. He fumbled for Ethan’s hand, and Ethan… God, it just wasn’t in him to let that shit go. So, yeah. Movie. Popcorn, candy, soda.
And then he took Jonah home.
Jonah sat in the car for a moment, the big bag of manga books Ethan had bought for Amelia perched on his lap. “I have your phone number, you know.”
“Please don’t,” Ethan said quietly. “Please. This is hard. I… I thought I could have a friend—”
“I am your friend—”
“But don’t you see? Not after what we just did. I am not in the place where I can have a real boyfriend, Jonah. I’m not. And doing that—” He thought of Tommy, sick and in the hospital because Chase kept him on a string. “I’m trying to be a good guy here,” he said, but his throat was swollen and it didn’t come out right. Three dates? Was that what they’d been? But he liked Jonah, and he wanted so much for him, and his little sister, and his quiet, suffering family. “Look, tell Amelia I said hi, okay? Don’t tell her I’m a douche. I….” He thought about Danni and Belladonna and how very easy it had been for them all to just walk away from him. “I had sisters. Their opinion matters.”
Jonah grunted. “I’m going to phone stalk you until you cave,” he said with determination.
“I’ll change my number.”
“I’ll get it from Tommy.”
“Please—”
“Look,” Jonah said quietly, “I’m not even having this argument tonight. It was a really decent day. I got my first hand job, gave my first blowjob—it was a dear diary moment, and I’m keeping it that way. But I’m not giving up on you, okay?” And with that, he leaned forward and probably would have kissed Ethan’s cheek, but Ethan turned his head to tell him to stop. Their lips met, and Ethan’s mouth was open anyway, and Jonah’s tongue just slipped right in. Ethan closed his eyes and let him and told himself it was good-bye.
Sweet. He tasted sweet, and it was hard to remember he’d had Ethan’s cock in his mouth that afternoon, because he tasted like chocolate and popcorn and damned near like sunshine and puppies and lollipops, and when Ethan pulled away, he felt like he was giving those things up forever and ever, amen.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Jonah said blithely.
Ethan’s smile was weak and he knew it. “I won’t answer.”
“You’ll have to eventually.”
“Please don’t make this hard,” he whispered.
“It should be hard,” Jonah said, and for the first time, his voice cracked a little. “You and me—we’re… we click. I don’t feel as good with anybody as I feel talking to you. And you—your hands shook in my hair, Ethan. For all the sex you’ve undoubtedly had, look me in the eyes and tell me that happens every fucking day.”
Ethan gazed out the window and felt stupid and spineless, because he couldn’t even lie like that. “Say hi to your family,” he rasped, and he pushed his palms against his eyes so he didn’t have to watch Jonah walk away.
He heard the slam of the door, though. That was a fucking statement if he’d ever heard one, and he kept his eyes closed until he heard Jonah’s feet on the stairs
The next morning, he couldn’t even remember what movie they saw, or how many calories he had to work off, or if there was anything in the trailers he wanted to see. But he remembered the feeling of Jonah’s hand clasping his, and that no matter how sweaty his palm got or how tightly he squeezed, Jonah hadn’t let go.
Step 7—throw away the fucking handbook
HIS father was the only one up when Jonah got home.
In spite of the fact that sometimes it seemed like Seth Stevens sort of up and deserted them, it was hard to hold a grudge, especially when he came over on the weekends and let their mom sleep, and made sure they had groceries, and played Nintendo. Jonah had memories of a mostly happy childhood. Who wanted that to go away, in spite of the pain that came with it?
So when he got home and his dad was up, sitting in the recliner and reading quietly from a tablet, Jonah was able to forget that horrible, huge mix of frustration and ache in his chest and smile at him.
“Good book?” he asked, pulling off his sweatshirt almost before the door closed behind him. They kept the apartment warm, for Amelia, but he actually didn’t mind the cold. November, December, January—those were his favorite months of the year.
“Jack Reacher—he always leaves the girl. Asshole. Anyway, how was the”—Dad blushed—“not date? Was that what your mom said? You weren’t out on a date, but it was really a date, so I wasn’t supposed to ask you about a date?” He shook his head. “Whatever. Did you have a nice time?”
Jonah laughed. That was his dad’s superpower. He was sort of ordinary to look at—slightly built like Jonah, sand-colored hair and gray eyes like both Jonah and Amelia—but he was really good at making people smile. Jonah thought that might have been why his relationship with Amelia broke him. He wanted to make her smile, and he kept making her cry.
“I did,” Jonah said quietly. After kicking off his shoes, he moved to the corner of the couch nearest the recliner and curled up, resting his chin on his elbow. He set the bag full of manga next to him. “And all things considered, I think we’re going to call it a date.”
His father grimaced. “Do I want to know details?”
Jonah half laughed. “Not all of them, no. But….” God, his dad had always been so easy to talk to. This would be a really good time for that not to fail.
“But what?” Seth closed the case on his tablet and pulled his knees up so he and Jonah could look at each other and talk. Seth had an open beer on the end table between them, warm enough that all of the condensation had evaporated, and Jonah picked it up and took a swallow. They weren’t big on alcohol, but twenty-two should have its perks, right?
“Dad, I’m a twenty-two-year-old virgin.”
His father snickered. “Wow. That’s sort of fucking awesome, did you know that?”
“Yeah. But see, Ethan is… not.”
Seth’s eyebrows were darker than his curly hair, and he raised them now, inviting the confidence, and Jonah was grateful. “How much ‘not’?”
“I get the feeling he’s done some… some bad stuff. Stuff that, you know, you don’t tell parents and little sisters about.”
Seth made a little O with his mouth and gnawed on his lower lip thoughtfully. “Does he want you to do this?”
Jonah took another swallow of beer and shook his head. “Not even a little. That stuff that made it a date? He felt bad about that. But he looks at me like… like a greedy kid with an Easter basket, right? And when he tries to walk away, it just seems, I don’t know. Unnatural. I mean, I’m not gonna spare your feelings, Dad—I wanted to be his frickin’ chocolate bunny today, but really, he popped a couple of jelly beans and said, ‘This isn’t right’ and walked away. I mean, I think he was starving for chocolate bunny—but he walked away. Who does that?”
Seth reached out an accountant’s soft hand and took his beer back, and then killed it. When he was done, he smacked his lips thoughtfully and stood up. “I’m getting another one. Want one?”
Jonah nodded. “That sounds awesome, Dad. Thanks.”
“Good.” Seth’s voice faded in the refrigerator for a moment, and Jonah heard the clatter of bottles in a six-pack. They didn’t do alcohol a lot, but when they did, it was the good kind, with the sloped brown bottles and the name of a brewery no one had heard of on the side.
“Another thing dads don’t always say,” Jonah told him when he surfaced with the beer.
Seth pursed his lips. “Well, when your gay son wants to talk about his sex life, I think that gets another beer.”
Jonah giggled and remembered when he’d come out. He’d been a freshman in high school, and it had been his birthday. His mom had playfully asked him if he had any pretty girls he liked in
school, and he’d replied, “There’s a guy in my class that I like, but he’s on the swim team and would probably beat me if I hit on him.”
Mom had gasped, Dad had raised his eyebrows, and then they’d both shared a long, meaningful look over Jonah’s head.
“Yeah,” Dad said, “probably better if you wait for him to hit on you.”
And that was it. The whole family knew about his crush on Connor Watson, and nobody, not once, ever said it should have been any different.
“Well, knock yourself out. I mean that,” Jonah said, keeping a straight face. “As long as you can answer my question.”
His dad popped the top of the beer and handed him the church key. “Who walks away from a chocolate bunny? Well, that is a conundrum. But you know who should be grateful for not getting demolished?”
Jonah sighed. “The bunny?”
“There are no two ways about it,” Seth said and took a pull.
Jonah popped the top of his own beer and traced the condensation on the side for a moment. “But at the risk of making you spit up your beer, what if this particular bunny has waited twenty-two years to get eaten? I mean, getting eaten is supposed to be a pretty big deal for, you know, chocolate bunnies. This bunny is dying to get—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” his dad said after swallowing hurriedly. “I hear you. That is a whole lot of waiting for, well, the experience of getting eaten, I’ll give you that. But the guy walking away from the bunny—if he wants the bunny as bad as you say, maybe he thinks that the experience would be better for someone else. Maybe he thinks that he’s had so many bunnies, he couldn’t appreciate this particular one.”
Jonah set his beer down with a thump. “That’s bullshit,” he said, his frustration bubbling up to the surface all over again. “He needs this bunny. All of those other bunnies were just bunny bodies—this bunny means something to him, and the fact that he’s stupid enough to walk away from me, this bunny, fuck, it just pisses me off!”
Seth sighed. “Okay, Jonah, we gotta stop talking about bunnies. For one thing, I’ll never look at an Easter basket again. For another, this means something to you. It’s not a chocolate bunny, it’s a potential lover, and that’s important, and I know you know this, so we’re done. Why is he walking away from you?”
Jonah looked down at his hands miserably, remembering the feeling of Ethan’s cold, sweating palm in his own. “Because he thinks I’m too good for him and he doesn’t want to touch me when he’s been touching five thousand other guys for different reasons than the one reason he should want to touch someone.” He looked up and met his dad’s eyes for a second, and then felt the burn behind his own and looked away. “And because his whole family just left him because they found out about the gay, and probably about this other thing he’s not talking about, and he’s… he’s all alone. He’s got this batch of fabulously gloriously beautiful gay friends who are seven kinds of fucked up, and he’s got this apartment that smells like mildew and cat pee with….” He took a deep breath and tried really hard to get through this. “He bought like, new prints, from Michaels and shit, to put on the walls, and they just look like a fake smile. And he’s got this comforter with these colors that’ll zap your eyeballs, and it looks so brand-new, and you can just tell he’s trying to put a good face on this, but, God, Dad, it just looks so lonely.”
Jonah had seen Ethan pushing his palms into his eyes as Jonah had walked away, and now he was doing the same thing, but Ethan didn’t have anyone to pat his back and tell him it was okay. But that was what Jonah’s dad did—he was suddenly right next to Jonah on the couch with an arm around his shoulders. Jonah rocked against him, wishing that Ethan could have this just for a moment, this feeling that someone would be there to catch him.
TWO weeks later, he was still trying to catch the guy via text.
It’s me again.
Dammit! I thought you’d quit!
Ha! Got you to respond!
Jonah—please.
No.
God you’re being stubborn.
I’m also sarcastic, and my mother tells me I’m passive aggressive.
You think?
I’m not perfect.
Great. Go find someone not perfect.
That would be you, asshole.
I’ve got shit to do.
Yeah, dodge me.
Ethan?
Ethan?
Ethan?
Ethan?
I could do this forever.
What are you doing now?
Taking an enema so I can go fuck someone else.
Gross. Really?
Stop texting me. I’d rather have the enema.
Think of me.
I’m starting to hate you.
At least you’re thinking of me.
If you really cared about me, you’d stop doing this.
If you really cared about me, you’d let me decide.
Gotta go. Please, just stop.
You’ll think of me. I know it.
That’s not gonna be a good thing. Bye.
JONAH probably would have kept going with the texts all day, even two weeks after their “date,” but he wasn’t stupid. He felt it. The hurt. How badly Ethan didn’t want Jonah to know what he was doing. How much Ethan craved the contact anyway. He hoped, anyway. God, it was so hard to tell, wasn’t it? But Ethan didn’t change his phone number. And he didn’t tell Tommy to warn him off.
“Here, Jonah—I’ll do inventory this side, you do that side. We can be done in ten minutes, you can go home early.”
Jonah took the clipboard and they both started, side by side, in the giant dog aisle in the back of the store. Tommy was on the side with the dog food and Jonah was on the side with the dog beds and collapsible crates, and as they spoke, they took pauses so they could finish a count and enter it into the board.
“That’s awesome—why we going home early? Red fleece pads, seven.”
Tommy’s smile was almost shy. “’Cause I’m going to go get Chase and take him home. We’ve got….” The smile faded. “Three deep, five up, Alpo. We’ve got lots of work to do, right? But he’s so much better, and we might have a chance for something really awesome. And anyway, he gets to come home. I can’t wait. Three deep, five up, four over, Purina.”
“Aren’t you having, like, a party and everything?” Jonah did the next count in his head.
Tommy nodded. “Yeah. That’s why I want us out early. And I got a friend dropping by to get the receipt for the cake too.”
“Yeah, who?”
Tommy paused for a minute and did two counts silently, entering them with quick thrusts of the pencil. Then he sent Jonah a sharp look. “Kane. Why?”
“Oh.” Count, count, enter—oh crap, was that box open? Nope, it had the tape over it that showed it was a return. “No reason. I just wouldn’t mind seeing Ethan again.”
“Yeah?” Tommy shook his head. “You know, maybe you shouldn’t get too fond of any of my friends, kid. We’re sort of fucked up. You probably noticed.”
Jonah looked at his profile—that fierce chin, held at an angle—and thought of the wistfulness when he’d been excited about his boyfriend. “I noticed,” he said softly. “But you’ve still all been nice to me. Everyone’s fucked up. Not everyone’s nice.”
Tommy rolled his eyes. “You need better friends,” he muttered, but they were getting too far apart to talk much, which worked, because it spared Jonah from pointing out the obvious: his home life was so intense, his only friends were from work. Jonah ripped through his inventory, though, because he wanted to ask Tommy more about Ethan, and that was how he happened to be there when Tommy’s friend stopped by to get the cake receipt.
Jonah had seen Kane before, and he’d always thought he had Ethan’s build, but he was a little shorter, and more gorilla than man. He had a lower brow and, sometimes, this sort of simple, peaceful look Jonah had seen in larger primates. But that didn’t mean he didn’t like to talk.
“Okay, Tango—”
/> “Tommy, you psycho, could you remember that?”
“No.” The syllable came out flatly, without compromise. “Two years, I know you as Tango. That’s not just going away. It’s not like Dexter, where I feel his other name. It’s gonna be a process.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tommy said, not even sounding surprised. “Do you think you could remember my boyfriend’s name, at least?”
Jonah could see them both talking through the corner of the endcap, and Kane nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, Chase never really seemed like Chance anyway.”
“Great. But I’m Tango? That is so weird.”
Kane shrugged. “Knew you longer. But you’re making a big fucking stink about it. Now I’ll remember. So, Tommy, do you want me to go get your cake now?”
“Yeah, Carlos. Do you think you can get back before I’m off?”
Kane wrinkled his nose. “You know, I think nobody better call me that but Dex.”
“Whatever. Now go!”
Kane went, and Jonah brought the inventory to Tommy, who signed it off and smiled at him. “So, you got something to do tonight?”
“Nope,” Jonah said, his mind swimming with all the names for not that many people. “Mostly just surfing the Internet.”
“Well, you enjoy that.”
“Yeah, I will. And Tommy?”
Tommy looked up, and Jonah gave him the same smile he’d give any friend. “Congratulations. I’m really glad your boyfriend is getting better.”
Tommy’s grin had all his teeth—including the supersharp canines that were probably scary as hell when he was mad—and his dark eyes practically crackled with joy. “Thanks, Jonah. That’s nice of you. Me too.”
Jonah went to the break room then to fetch his coat. Regina was in there, pounding a coffee before she worked the evening shift.