by Octavia Zane
After that, he had a bunch of one-night stands and brief relationships that he could scarcely remember before falling in with Jeremy once Riley moved back to Oregon. That relationship lasted three months. Jeremy was a handsome but plodding guy, addicted to his fitness routines and loath to break them for any reason. He simply could not bend, and it drove Riley bonkers.
Jeremy was not a bad man, and they had a lot of fun together, but his inflexible nature swiftly grew intolerable. There was no such thing as sleeping in on a weekend morning. His daily 5K had to happen between six and six-thirty. Nor could there be an impromptu restaurant visit. His protein shake had to happen, too, and every bite he took was strictly regimented. He skipped parties for his swim practice and worried about his supplements and being so locked in to his little healthy bubble meant that Riley got locked in with him. The more Riley attempted to pop the bubble by inviting in a bit of spontaneity, the more Jeremy fought to stay in it, until Riley was snapping and squabbling and acting out his resentment like a petulant child.
One day he truly heard the way he was talking to Jeremy. It was a bucket of cold water over his head. He wasn’t going to change this man, this man wasn’t going to change him, and Riley was being a dick. He didn’t want to be that guy, and he couldn’t seem to stop being that guy with rigid Jeremy, so he broke it off. Afterwards, it was back to one-night stands and brief relationships until Riley met Dreyer.
Everyone was always so busy. Everyone was always running in different directions. They were looking at graduate programs or moving out of the area to a cheaper location or applying for jobs far away. There was a sense of impermanence to everyone Riley met. This was the place they were, but it wasn’t going to be that way for very long. He hadn’t acted like a man-whore because that was what he was by nature. That was the nature of the world all around him.
“Sixteen,” Rivers murmured, her eyes on Jesse. Riley had told her some of Theo’s story; it was too awful to keep to himself. “He’s halfway there. I can’t imagine kicking him out over that, or for anything. God almighty, what did I understand about the world when I was sixteen? I probably would have gone to a friend’s house and begged their parents to take me in. I wasn’t ready to be out there on my own.”
“You wouldn’t have been on your own. I’d have stormed out with you,” Riley corrected.
“Oh, Riley. Yes, you would have. And I’d have stormed out with you. So, how are we going to get this vet’s phone number? Do you want to call him?”
Riley hesitated. Then he nodded. “Last night was different.”
“I can tell.”
“We just talked. We talked about stuff that runs way deeper than the things you normally talk about on first dates. He’s so bottled up, but I can see why. Even his private journal wasn’t private. He talked about that night and he just looked haunted nineteen years later. He must have a will of steel to pull through it so well, pushing through school and getting his own practice. He comes across as fragile, but he’s not.”
Opening the lid back up and tapping on a key to waken the computer, Rivers said, “Sometimes you find strength in the most surprising places. Did you look online for his number?”
“Yeah. No dice.”
“Hmm. Just call the clinic and ask for the vet to call you back. You don’t have to say it’s personal.”
That still had to wait until Monday. Any other night, any other date, and Riley would have invited Theo over to the guesthouse. All of it was there on the tip of his tongue, asking for the phone number, offering an invitation to move the party somewhere else . . . and then he choked. He felt those lips on his cheek and his mind went as clear as a summer sky.
Maybe that would have been the wrong end to the night. A tumble in his bed, and then parting ways.
“Hobbies,” Rivers read.
Riley scraped at a streak of orange along his arm. It was pumpkin innards crusted on his skin. “Professional gas passer,” he suggested.
“Funny. So funny. You missed a calling as a comedian. Let’s see: baking, reading, avoiding the zombie mommies of the PTA, blah blah blah.” Rivers’s fingers rattled over the keyboard. “Ella sent ghost costumes for the kids. I put them straight in the donation box.”
Riley moaned. Just when his teenage self thought that he couldn’t withstand one more absurd battle between his mother and father, over holidays or multivitamins or curfews, Ella arrived on the scene to make everything ten times worse. “Why did she assume that the kids want to be ghosts for Halloween?”
“Why did she assume that she was picking out our colleges?” Rivers retorted. “Or coming along on my honeymoon to make it a family vacation? She can’t fathom that we aren’t props in the play starring her. The costumes weren’t even the right sizes. One was for an adult and the other was for a toddler.”
“Did she sign the card Mommy?”
“Of course she did. She signed it Mommy and Grandmommy.” Rivers laughed in resignation. “Lady, you’re married to my father but you’re not my mommy, and you’ve met my kids a grand total of three times, one of which was at Ari’s funeral. They couldn’t pick her out of a line-up.”
Riley didn’t laugh with her. He never knew how she could find any humor in it. His throat tightening with anger, he said, “Mom is pestering me for pictures of the kids in their costumes. I’ve gotten three texts now.”
“So predictable.”
“Like I don’t know how this game plays out! If I send a picture, my phone will ring in hours with Dad and Ella wanting to know why they didn’t get a picture first, and Dad will scold me on the side for making Ella feel like less of a mother and grandmother. They didn’t get married until we were finishing up our sophomore year in high school! She really didn’t do that much raising of us.”
“Oh, come on. She picked us up from school a few times before we could drive ourselves.”
Riley blew air between his lips rudely. “She picked us up late, and complaining all the while that we called her Ella instead of Mommy. Dad begged me to do it just to humor her, and I complained about it to Mom without thinking, and then we were back in court for whatever it was.”
“Parental alienation?” Rivers asked. “I can’t remember. It all bleeds together.”
“The whole thing still pisses me off. You know?”
“It just makes me sad.”
Riley couldn’t make any sense of that. “Why?”
“How boring are their lives that this is their only excitement?” Rivers said. “They’ve given up everything, their kids and their grandkids and all their mental real estate, to continue a fight that nobody cares about. Get a hobby, or a therapist. One day they’ll be in assisted living and bitching to the nurses about their horrible ex from days of yore.”
“I guess that is pretty sad.” But it still pissed him off how the two of them were raised in such a toxic homemade stew.
“It’s an obsession with them,” Rivers said absent-mindedly as she continued on with her profile. “Whenever Mom rings me up, I time how long it takes her to say something rude about Dad. She’s never lasted more than five minutes, and then she gets mad at me when I end the call. I used to listen to her before I knew any better, but I won’t anymore.”
It was Dad’s style to ring up Riley just before the holidays and work the conversation around to what gifts Mom was sending so he and Ella could send something more expensive. But Riley didn’t hang up on Dad. He just lied that he didn’t know and puttered around the house until Dad got annoyed at the lack of answers and hung up on him.
Rivers was Riley’s family, and the kids, too. His parents were just two people out in the world that unfortunately shared DNA.
Rivers groaned at her profile. “Perfect first date. Oh, let’s see what somebody else answered. IcedNipples, you’re on.” Her voice became light and lilting and brainless. “‘My perfect first date! You and I will go to a nice restaurant! You will be happy to treat me like a lady!’”
Blankly, Riley said, “Like open
the door and not take carnal liberties?”
“No, dumbass, she means that she expects the guy to pay for her meal. ‘Then we will walk downtown and do some shopping! You will come over to my place and we will watch a movie together or chat!’ Oh God, this just keeps going, every sentence punctuated with an exclamation point. And . . . wow, she went there. IcedNipples must get a lot of gentlemen callers with that long list of sexual desires. Why are there numbers after everything? Blow job, fifty. Standard missionary, two hundred. Anal, three hundred.”
Riley leaned over in the chair to see the screen. “You’re the dumbass. She’s an escort and those are her prices per sex act. She doesn’t include the dollar sign in order to have plausible deniability if the site tries to ferret out the escorts.”
“Really?” Rivers looked askance at the list. “DP? What’s DP? It’s super expensive.”
“I can’t bring myself to tell you. We’re related. Look it up on your own sometime.”
The kids cheered as the dog hurtled after the ball. “Go, Sherlock! Uncle Riley, look at him go!”
“I’m looking,” Riley called.
Rivers gasped and closed the computer lid. “I should have figured that out. DP. Gross.”
“Where one man is good, two are better,” Riley said.
“You will call him, won’t you?”
He glanced over to her. It wasn’t like Rivers to press. “Why does it matter to you?”
She set the computer on the table between their lounge chairs. “You’ve been there for me like no one else in the universe. I can’t tell you what that means to me. But I don’t want to be what holds you back.”
“You sound like Dreyer. You don’t hold me back.”
“Are you sure?”
“I chose to stay. I said yes to the bakery. You didn’t have an icing gun pointed to my head.”
“But you could be dancing every night away at clubs without any strings.”
He had done that. And he loved it at the time, but now the thought of dancing every night away exhausted him. Now and then it was great fun, but he also had a lot of fun coming home to dinner around the old oak table in Rivers’s dining room. Helping out with homework and being a part of the family noise and chaos.
“I’m lonely,” Rivers said after a quiet moment. “And I know you’re lonely. But Ari and I took a risk. You didn’t.”
“I’m lost. What are you talking about?” Riley asked.
“We always knew there was a chance his cancer could come back. I think . . . I think he and I felt it. Subconsciously, even when the doctors were talking about how great he was doing. Then I got pregnant unexpectedly, and it wasn’t the right time to have a baby.” Rivers formed a temple of her fingers and stared out to the kids. “It wasn’t the right time at all, but I had a feeling deep down that this might be the only time. Our only chance to have a child together. It wasn’t something that I could put into words back then. We convinced ourselves that we had a lifetime ahead, but there was this undercurrent we never alluded to. That time was short. So we chose to have Jesse, and then got pregnant again on purpose . . . and days after I got those two little blue lines, everything fell apart.”
Finally worn out, Sherlock flopped over onto his side. The children flopped over with him and made angels in the grass as the dog wriggled about to scratch his back. Then he saw a squirrel running along the top of the fence and took off again, barking joyfully. The squirrel leaped into a tree and skittered away.
“We took a risk,” Rivers repeated. “We gambled, and we lost. I didn’t want to believe that his cancer would come back, so I refused to seriously consider it. He was healthy because we needed him to be healthy. I’m so glad that he hung on long enough to hold Gigi before he passed away. Sometimes she asks if Daddy got to meet her, and I can say yes and show her the pictures. Daddy got to meet her, and hold her, and sing to her, just like he held Jesse and sang to him. That matters to her.”
She tapped her fingers together contemplatively as the dog trotted back to the kids. “I got side-tracked. My point was that I chose this life, Riley. And I know there isn’t much for a gay guy to do in Weathership. This isn’t a happening place. I just would hate to think that choosing us means you’ve isolated yourself. So, if you like Theo, please go after it? After him? Maybe he won’t be a lover, maybe he’ll be a friend, but then you’re not so alone out here in the suburban boonies.”
“Rivers, Portland is not that far away. When I need my community, I don’t have to travel a thousand miles to get there.”
“But it’s not the same as living there. Are you giving up a chance to meet the guy who would be your husband? Are you giving up a chance to have your own kids because you’re busy helping to raise mine?”
“I’m happy,” Riley said strongly.
“Riley-”
“I’m happy. I like where I am. And yeah, I’d love to meet the right guy, a guy who gets that I’m a package deal, but as far as kids go, I’ve got mine already.”
The kids pried themselves off the lawn and ran to the deck. Sherlock shook himself and bounded after them. “Mom!” Jesse complained. “Gigi says that Uncle Riley is really going to paint underwear all over the bakery van!”
“No, he’s not,” Rivers said. “He’s teasing. Tell them that you’re teasing, Riley.”
“I’m not going to paint underwear on the van,” Riley said. “I have a better idea. You know what I used to do?”
Jesse gave him a suspicious look. “What?”
“I used to help out a plumber friend of mine with unclogging pipes. People always need plumbers. What do you think about that?”
Jesse took that in. “That’s okay. Kind of boring. So, the van will say plumber?”
“No, I’m going to put toilet repairman in big block letters on the sides, so everyone can see it a mile away, and paint toilets and rolls of toilet paper all over it.”
Gigi went to pieces.
Jesse was aghast. “No! That’s worse than underwear salesman!”
“I think it’s a great idea,” Rivers said. “Rivers and Riley Carder. We’re just a flush away.”
“That is the worst idea ever, Mom!”
“Why does your name have to go first?” Riley argued. “Riley and Rivers Carder. Poo Patrol.”
“Carder Family Plumbers,” Rivers amended. “Skid Mark Specialists.”
Thoroughly disgusted, Jesse went into the house to watch cartoons with Gigi. Sherlock put his head on Riley’s leg, panting as the twins gave him pats, and then trotted into the kitchen to visit his water bowl.
“It’s like the dog has always been here.” Rivers swung her legs off the lounge chair. “I need to start dinner.”
“Anything but your mystery soup,” Riley said.
“Hey, you’ll eat what I put in front of you or you can go to your guesthouse, young man.”
“Do you mean the guesthouse where I have a pantry full of non-mystery cans of soup? What a punishment that would be.”
“Yeah, that guesthouse. Bring over some of those cans. I don’t have any energy to be creative in the kitchen and I doubt you do either. Soup and buttered bread and scoops of ice cream and voila, we’re good.”
Riley got up and took the pathway to the guesthouse. Opening the door, he glanced around his small living space in satisfaction. All of the projects that he had been so happy for so long to ignore suddenly seemed pressing this morning when he rolled out of bed. So had getting through the heaps of laundry around the base of the washing machine, and the dirty dishes taking up residence in the sink. He’d even gotten the vacuum from the big house and the long brush that Rivers used to dust the ceiling fans and knock down cobwebs in the corners.
The place was as clean as a whistle. Like he had a guest coming over, but he didn’t. He hadn’t had a guest since Dreyer.
Picking through the cans in the pantry, he took down two jumbo-sized chicken noodle soups as his mind drifted to Theo. Should Riley call him?
There were guys that
he should have called back. Plenty of them. When everything felt so ephemeral, he stopped reaching out so much. He and the guy of the moment had their fun, and then returned to their everyday lives.
He picked up his cell phone and scrolled down his contacts to the clinic. Theo hadn’t asked for Riley’s number either. But if there wasn’t any interest on the veterinarian’s part, he wouldn’t have kissed Riley before driving away from the restaurant.
Why was Riley acting like a nervous junior high school kid noticing a cute boy for the very first time? His indignation made the decision for him. Pressing down on the screen, he put the phone to his ear.
It rang twice, and a recorded message picked up. “You’ve reached Sullivan Veterinary Clinic. We’re closed right now, but if you’re having an emergency, please dial one to be connected to the Weathership Emergency Animal Clinic. Otherwise, leave a message after the tone.”
Beep.
Riley almost hung up. Awkwardly, he said, “Hi. Uh . . . this is Riley Carder. I brought in Sherlock last week. I . . . I had a question for the veterinarian. It’s not an emergency or anything like that, but please tell him to give me a call at his earliest convenience.” That sounded so formal. “Thank you.”
He hung up in relief.
What if Theo didn’t call him back?
What if he did?
Amazed at himself for being so tied up in knots over a man he just met, Riley gathered up the cans of soup and carried them back to the big house. Then he dashed back for his cell phone.
Just in case.
Chapter Six
Theo
Theo was in the shower when he heard a faint, rhythmic buzz.
It was his cell phone on the nightstand. He couldn’t imagine who was calling him at seven in the morning, unless it was the clinic. But Joleene wasn’t due to come in today until seven-thirty. Unless she was sick and calling to tell him that she would be out for the day. A nasty cold was going around, and a lot of the people bringing in sick pets last week were coughing and sneezing themselves.