And the Next Thing You Know . . .

by Chase Taylor Hackett

  And the frigging weirdest thing happened. I suddenly had this huge lump in my throat, I could hardly breathe. I had no idea where it came from, but all of a sudden it took everything I had not to shake with crying—I didn’t want Theo to see this. And why? You’d think somebody had died. And then I knew.

  I knew in that instant that I was in love, stupid in love with Theo.

  I squeezed him tighter, pressed my head against his and closed my eyes.

  I’d clearly never been in love before, and now, without a doubt, I was. God help me, I had fallen in love with this little fiend, this hell-puppy, this wolverine cub.

  He was like a feral kitten, you wanted to take care of him, but he could explode in all directions, a fierce ball of hissing and claws. And this was what I had picked to fall in love with.

  There he was, leaning up against me, and I couldn’t get him close enough. I was tempted to whisper something to him, to tell him what I’d just realized, to say the famous three little words, but how would he react? To be honest—Theo sometimes scared the piss out of me, and this little epiphany I’d just had on a boat deck left me that much more vulnerable. Vulnerable—not a word I normally used to describe myself. But if I told Theo how I felt, and he laughed at me? I’d die. And of course he’d laugh at me. So instead, I squeezed him again, and I kissed his cold ear, and he pressed his head against mine, and I said what I had to say silently. Maybe he was telepathic.

  It was about then that Dave called up to us, telling us we were nearly back to the harbor.

  I was freezing, and Dave’s prissy little sandwiches hadn’t begun to make a dent in my hunger—but I was still sad to hear we were turning back. Would we ever have this closeness again? Or would we immediately revert to the sparring, the teasing, the yelling, just as soon as we were back on the dock and this strange magic was broken?

  I fished in my jacket pocket for my phone, held it out and did something I hardly ever do anymore—I took a selfie. Of us, his face so close to mine. He looked genuinely happy to be where he was. At least for this moment, yeah, maybe he was a tiny bit in love too?

  “What was the selfie for?” he asked.

  “Just—felt like it.”

  “Do one on Snapchat, with the dog ears,” he said, sitting up. “I love those.”

  “No,” I said, closing the camera on my phone.

  “Oh c’mon. I did one of those with Tommy last week—thought I’d bust a seam, it was so funny.”

  “No.” I slipped the phone back into my jacket pocket.

  “You’re no fun,” he said, smiling, squeezing my arm, and leaning back against me like a cat, getting comfortable.

  “Nope, not the tiniest bit.”

  He leaned his head back, his temple against my cheek and I thought, yeah, maybe he was a little bit in love, too. And just thinking about the possibility of that, I was afraid I might blubber like a baby.

  Or just bust a seam.

  Back at the dock, Michael and Theo swapped plans about seeing some show, and we said our thank-yous and good-byes, and walked to the car. Theo scrambled in, still really cold and shivering and I hadn’t realized how wet he’d gotten from the spray when the waves had kicked up. Now it was starting to drizzle. I heard deck shoes running on the wet asphalt behind me. I turned and it was Dave. He glanced in at Theo through the car window, and then turned to me.

  “I’m glad I caught you. I just wanted to say—I’m really sorry about before. You still mad?”

  Was I? No. No, I couldn’t be mad.

  “We’re good, bro.”

  “Good.” I thought we were done, but he had something else to say, so I waited, both of us squinting a little in the light rain. “I gotta tell ya. Watching you guys out on the bow this afternoon? I was so jealous.”

  “Jealous?” I chuckled. “Of what? Me? Or Theo?”

  “Of you both. You guys—you’re so obviously head over heels for each other. And I sat there wondering if I’d ever in my life been that much in love, like you two.” I had no idea what to say. He looked back toward the boat. “If I ever was, I don’t remember.”

  I glanced at Theo, who had his sweater pulled up over his nose, trying to get warmer, completely oblivious to how adorable it was.

  “Dave, I—”

  “Hey. Hang on to him. He’s special.”

  “Yeah. He is.” He tapped me on the upper arm, and turned to go. “Hey,” I said. “So’s Michael. Don’t forget.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” He turned and jogged back to the boat.

  I got in the driver’s seat.

  “What’d he want?”

  “Your phone number.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I didn’t want to give it to him, but I do owe him for throwing me the birthday party and all—” He looked like he was about to vesuvius any second, so I jumped in quick before he could. “He said he thought we made a cute couple. Or something like that.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “More or less.”

  I couldn’t believe I was blushing, and I tried to cover my embarrassment by starting the car. I reached and turned the heater on. The broken heater.

  “No,” said Theo.

  “No heat!”

  “Christ-on-a-cross-dressed-nun, we’ll die before we get back.”

  I pulled out of the parking lot, drove straight across the road into another lot in front of a small souvenir store, and opened the car door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “They have homemade ice cream. Want some? I sure hope they have butter brickle.”

  “Shut up.” He shivered even harder.

  “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

  And within a couple minutes, I was. I tossed the plastic shopping bag in his lap and climbed back in the car.

  He opened the bag and pulled out the jumbo white sweatshirt, a souvenir of beautiful—Sag Harbor.

  “Is this Sag Harbor?”

  “Not even close, but that was the sweatshirt they were selling. Don’t ask me.”

  Theo wasted no time and quickly pulled his damp sweater off and he tugged the XXL sweatshirt down over his head. I watched as the red curls appeared in the neck hole, and then his head popped through.

  Even at our first terrible meeting when he was such a scowling brat, I’d still recognized how pretty he was, the almost girlish features, delicate, and of course the whitest skin. But now, as his head appeared suddenly out of the sweatshirt, the straight, narrow nose, the freckles, the soft, teasing lips, and of course those mocking eyes—he was heartbreakingly beautiful. I had literally stopped breathing, watching him. There was no way he’d been this good-looking a week ago. I’d have remembered that.

  He turned to me, obviously wondering why I was staring at him like an idiot.

  “What?” he said laughing. “What?” And he ruffled his hands through the curls, in case maybe that was it. Every word, every gesture, every nuance that played across his face, every glance from those laughing eyes seemed perfection, seemed designed to make me want to hold him still closer. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked finally.

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  Chapter 38

  April Showers

  Theo

  Fortunately the drop-off for the car was close to Rebecca’s, and we raced back to the apartment. Jeff and I were both desperate to try to get warm again, if that was even still possible.

  “I got dibs on the shower,” I said, fumbling frantically with keys and frozen fingers at the apartment door.

  “No way, Jose!”

  “Mais oui, Henri!”

  “I got the car, I drove, it’s my friend’s boat—”

  “Your friend’s hand on my knee.”

  “And I defended your knee valiantly. I get first shower.”

  By now we were kicking off o
ur shoes and pulling shirts over our heads and pushing each other as we fought in front of the bathroom door—and then we stopped and looked at each other. There was an obvious solution that occurred to us both in the same instant. Without a word, we went back to pulling off clothes, and in no time we were standing together under the steaming shower. Merciful heavens.

  And of course, after a while, once I’d stopped shivering, there we were. Two naked guys, close proximity, and—biology being what it is—one thing led to another, and the next thing you know…

  Shower-sex is, I think, generally over-rated. Far better in concept than in execution. It sounds like this incredibly romantic, sensuous experience. In practice, there’s never enough room, nothing lines up right, and you could seriously break your neck in the wet tub. When you factored in my five-foot-six and his six-foot-something, certain options were struck right off the menu. But, after some considerable trial and error and lots of laughing, we found a couple or three things that worked. Then we just stood together under the water, talking a little, kissing a little, holding each other until the ceiling was dripping with condensation from the steam and our fingers were long-since pruned. For the longest time I just let the warm water run over me while I pressed my face against his collar bone and neck, one arm around him and one hand on his chest.

  As a rule, I didn’t go out with big guys. I had sort of a knee-jerk prejudice against them. Big guys who thought I was cute invariably thought I was cute because they could pick me up and throw me down on the bed. Enrique, the trainer guy everybody was so hot about? I could tell—one of those guys. That guy had ‘he-man’ written all over him. I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell you how much I hate being picked up and thrown down on the bed. The last guy who tried that won’t try it again soon. For all I know he still can’t straighten up. I have no use for he-men.

  Got a caveman fetish? Go hump a mammoth.

  So that’s where I stand on guys who are a lot bigger than me. Like Jeff. And I suppose, if I’m going to get all revelatory here, I would maybe admit that I didn’t go out with big guys because big guys—okay, I don’t want to say they scared me, but let’s face it, the big ones could hurt you, and they probably would, just because they could. That’s what I’d thought anyway, and I’d just stayed away from them.

  But now, with Jeff? Feeling all of this in my arms, the size of him, the shoulders, the breadth of his chest, the muscle, this bit of coarse chest hair under my hand, and his amazing arm around me—I wasn’t scared. I felt somehow safer than ever.

  I knew I could be a little overly wary with people—hence my general spikiness. Like Madison said, I guess.

  But I was starting to think I could trust this guy, this suit, this—shudder—lawyer. Jeff wasn’t going to hurt me. I was sure of that.

  And somehow just saying that to myself, I felt like I’d set down a weight or something. Like I could finally relax. I pulled him even closer and he held me tighter too, almost as if he knew.

  We hadn’t really been planning ahead when we started this whole shower adventure, and when we finally turned off the taps, we realized that there was only one small towel on the towel rack. We tried drying each other off with it, giggling. I should mention that Jeff had a fantastic body, which I was only just starting to appreciate. I don’t know why I hadn’t been sneaking peeks at him earlier. I was about to go out and get another towel when we realized, between giggles and fighting over the towel, that we could hear someone else in the apartment.

  “Theo! I’m home,” yelled Rebecca all sing-songy.

  “Shitballs!”

  “Ooops,” said Jeff.

  “Quick—climb out the window!” I said. Remember, we were on the fifth floor, and this sent us into a further wallow of giggles.

  “Tell her it’s the plumber,” suggested Jeff. “Checking your pipes.” Funniest thing on earth.

  “Shhhhh!”

  “We didn’t bring the robes,” Jeff pointed out. I glanced around. Fuuuuuck! “Go get them.”

  “Okay, hang on,” I said taking a breath. “Ready?”

  I wrapped myself in the one very wet towel and opened the bathroom door juuuust far enough to stick my head out. There was my sister, sitting expectantly in a chair in the middle of the room, facing the bathroom door.

  “Hey, Becca.”

  “Heeeeeeeey, Thee-o.” Then she added, still sing-songy. “Whatcha doooo-in’?” Like she didn’t know.

  Obviously she had heard us—God knows how long she’d been in the apartment—and now she was sitting there, hands folded in her lap, looking like the cat who just swallowed the Canary Islands.

  Chapter 39

  Quelle suprise!

  Rebecca

  I’d expected to be in the office until six or seven, but I just couldn’t do it. At three I’d finally bagged it and grabbed a car service home. After a quick stop at Whole Foods, I staggered in, dropped the groceries on the kitchen counter—and noticed a pile of wet clothes on the floor in front of the bathroom. Obviously Theo needed a little talking to. It was then, as I seethed, that I heard something that made me forget all about Theo’s lazy carelessness. I heard laughter. Male laughter. From the bathroom.

  More accurately, male laughters.

  Okay, it was Theo. But there was another voice in there, and it took me a bit to recognize it. Of course I’d have recognized it sooner, if it hadn’t been so impossible. It almost sounded like Jeffrey Bornic. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that was…you get the picture. Because unless they were re-enacting a scene from Psycho in there, complete with real blood, the last person I expected to hear laughing in the shower with my little brother was my best friend Jeffrey. WTF, as they say.

  The water turned off.

  Voices. Giggles. Jeffrey could giggle? I’d known him how long? And I’d never heard him giggle. Was this a miracle ? Or a harbinger of the end times?

  I decided I really needed to watch and see how this played out. The boys would have to come out sooner or later, wouldn’t they?

  “Theo! I’m home!” I called. I wanted to give them a little warning, if only to spare myself the spectacle of one of them prancing out here with a dangling participle.

  Did Theo just say ‘shitballs’?

  “Ooops,” said Jeff.

  And then there was some whispering and muttering and more giggles.

  I decided to pull up a chair in the middle of the room facing the bathroom door. This should be fun.

  Finally the door opened a smidge and Theo stuck his face out.

  “Hey, Becca.” He had the best case of beard-burn I’d ever seen.

  “Heeeeeeeey, Theo. Whatcha’ doin’?” I asked, all childish innocence.

  “Ehhhhhhhhhh—could you do me a huge favor, and hand me my robe from over there?” It was on a hook with some other things.

  I got up.

  “This one?” I said, holding up the green robe that Jeffrey had bought him.

  “Yeah. And the other one—it’s still right there?”

  “Oh. You mean this one? Jeffrey’s robe? You need Jeffrey’s robe, too?”

  “Hey, Rebecca,” said Jeffrey, sticking his head out over Theo’s.

  “Wow, nice shiner!”

  “Oh yeah I’d almost forgotten about that,” he said.

  “Have a good day?” Theo asked.

  “Maybe not quite so good as yours, but yeah, it was okay.” I handed over the robes.

  “Thanks,” said Theo, and the bathroom door closed. There was more whispering, some more giggling, and finally they appeared. Theo seemed a little sheepish, which was totally out of character; but Jeffrey had apparently decided he was going to gut this out. He plopped down on the couch, and pulled Theo down next to him, both arms around him, and he grinned at me. I’d never really seen Jeffrey grin before when it wasn’t downright menacing. There were associates in
the office who were terrified of his smile. But now—he looked positively gleeful. And something else. Proud? Yeah, that was it. He was holding on to Theo and proud about it.

  “So hey, boys,” I said. “What’s new?”

  “Not much,” tried Theo. “What’s new with you?” And they burst into sputtering laughter.

  “First,” I said, turning to look out the windows, “if you’re going to sit around in robes, you need to sit like ladies, okay?” Knees slapped together and those beautiful robes were tugged in place. “Thank you. So. How’d you get the black eye, Jeffrey?”

  “Theo.”

  “Hey!” objected Theo. “You promised not to tell!”

  “The kid has a vicious right hook,” Jeffrey explained to me.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “No, of course not,” he laughed. “He can’t reach that high. Owwwwwwww!” Theo had reached around behind him and was pinching Jeff where he’d have a spare tire if he didn’t run umpteen miles every stinking day. “Damn!” said Jeff scowling seriously. “That is going to leave a huge bruise!”

  “You’d been warned. You should have known better.”

  No remorse there.

  “The black eye?” I asked.

  “It’s a long story,” said Jeff, still rubbing his side.

  I waited.

  “Somebody got—understandably—pissed off at Theo, so he, the somebody—not so understandably—punched me in the head.”

  “That’s the truth, isn’t it,” I said, recognizing what had been more or less Theo’s life story.

  “Yup,” confirmed Jeff.

  “Yup,” added Theo.

  “So did you guys go sailing today after all?”

  “Oh yeah. Sailing!” said Theo.

  “We did!” said Jeffrey.

  They looked at each other, grinning again.

  “It was fun,” said Jeffrey.

  “But cold,” said Theo.

  “So cold. Really cold.”

  “And there was no heat in Jeff’s crappy rental car.”

  “True. And Theo was wet—”

  “The waves kept splashing up—”