Hot Off the Ice Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by A. E. Wasp

  It said something about his father, Paul realized, that he had done it. And it said something about their relationship that Paul hadn’t questioned that Stoney would do it; that when Paul called his father and said I need you, please come, he would come.

  Damn it. Maybe Paul needed to rethink his plan. If every damn thought was going to make him teary-eyed, maybe he ought not to be driving seventy miles an hour.

  He took the nearest exit and headed west. No idea where he was going, but he didn’t care. He had a strong need to see the water.

  “Paul,” his father said. “Just say what you need to say, Son, before you end up dragging us all the way up to Alaska. I don’t think Queenie is going to do so good in the snow, and I didn’t bring my winter coat.”

  Paul bark a short laugh. Had his dad made a joke? Okay. Stoney had done so much, reached out so far; the least Paul could do was meet him halfway.

  “Um. Okay. I’ll just say it. I’m gay.”

  Stoney sighed. He reached out and rubbed his hand along the dashboard. “I know, Paul. I’ve always known.”

  Okay. Okay. He hadn’t expected that. He’d expected anything from yelling to denial, and he’d prepared several responses to those. This quiet admission pulled the rug out from under his feet and left him struggling with his thoughts.

  He felt himself reaching for the sign language he used with Robbie, searching for another way to express himself other than with the words rolling and tumbling all over themselves in his brain.

  Fuck it. The time for crafting clever arguments or comebacks was over. He had to speak from his heart.

  “If you know, why did you let them tell me that it was wrong to be gay? That I was wrong? Evil? Going to hell?” Why did you let them hurt me? You were supposed to protect me?

  “Oh, Paulie. I was trying to protect you. That’s my job. I’m your father, and I love you. I’m supposed to protect you, body and soul.” He sounded so sad.

  Paul vaguely remembered saying something like that to Robbie, that his father and his church had done what they had done out of love. He still had serious doubts about Pastor Ruebens’ motivation, but he believed his father completely.

  He’d done what he’d done with the best of intentions. But Paul knew where that path could lead.

  “I know you were. But I think it damaged me. It hurt me in deep-down ways that are going to take a long time to fix.”

  Without realizing it, Paul had driven them to the same beach he had visited with Robbie. It was a cold and gray day. The wind whipped the water into choppy whitecaps, the spray leaving a slick of ice on the rocks.

  He parked the car but left it running. It was safer than driving when he felt like this.

  “Protect me from what, Dad? From people who would hate me and hurt me? That didn’t work. You know what it’s like being thirteen, fourteen years old, finally understanding what gay even meant, and having this horrifying revelation that it’s you? That when the preacher is up there talking about evildoers and fornicators burning in hell, they are talking about you?” Paul’s voice broke.

  Stoney shook his head. No.

  “No. And what kind of …” He shook his head, lips pressed tight. “You had me hating something before I even knew what it was. You had me condemned before I’d even had my first kiss.”

  He couldn’t stay in the car anymore. He’d rather freeze to death than suffocate. When he opened the door, the wind yanked it, pulling it wide.

  Stoney got out the other door. His thin windbreaker did nothing to keep the cold at bay, and he wrapped his arms around himself.

  “Paul. Paul. Stop,” he called as Paul paced the parking lot. “Listen. Just because you’re, you’re how you are, it doesn’t mean you’re going to hell.”

  Paul stopped, curious where his father was going with that line of thought. He was pretty sure he knew. Since the call with Pastor Ruebens he’d done a lot of research on what different churches had to say about homosexuality, what science had to say, what darn near everyone in the world had to say about it.

  What he’d realized was it didn’t make one lick of difference what anybody but him had to say about it. It was his life, and he had to live it in a way that felt true to him.

  Stoney stood next to him, the wind making his jacket flap like a flag. “I know you can’t help being gay, Chip, but you don’t have to give into those urges. God understands. Try to live a normal life, and you’ll be safe.”

  Safe. Was that the goal? Get through life safely? Unhurt? If that was the goal, Paul had missed it years ago. “But would I be happy?”

  Stoney looked away. “Happiness is beside the point. God put us here to test us, to see what we are made of.”

  Paul threw his hands up. He was so tired of that way of thinking. “Is that really what you think? That life should be some sort of ordeal? If you survive long enough and pass this test, you might get a reward at the end?”

  “Or fail and go to hell,” Stoney said. His words were hard, but the sorrow in his eyes that had been there since he’d gotten to Seattle was still there.

  “What if,” Paul said, “what if we just don’t believe that?”

  “Not believe in God?” Stoney looked scandalized.

  Paul watched two seagulls lift themselves heavily into the air, wings beating as they hung almost motionless over the earth as they faced into the wind.

  It felt like the perfect metaphor for this conversation. Paul could beat his wings against Stoney’s beliefs all day and never get anywhere. But he owed them both his absolute best try. His father hadn’t given up on him yet, and he wasn’t going to give up on Stoney.

  “Not believe in a God that condemns his own creations for something they can’t control. Who would create people full of love and then tell them they can’t ever have love, and the love they feel is wrong. I can’t believe in a God who would be so deliberately cruel. I won’t.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?” Stoney said. Something in his voice told Paul his father had been searching for the answer to that question for a long time. “What if you’re going to go to hell?”

  “Then I’ll be in good company, won’t I? Including your friend Skippy,” he snapped.

  That got a reaction out of Stoney. He staggered a step backward, reaching to the car for support. “What do you know about Skippy?”

  A gust that felt like it came straight from the Arctic Circle whipped across the parking lot. “Get back in the car, Dad. No point freezing to death.”

  The inside of the car was warm and quiet. Paul turned the heater on full blast, aiming the vents at his fingers. “Do you want to drive more or stay here?”

  “Drive. If you don’t mind.”

  36

  Paul

  Paul put the car into reverse and pulled out of the beach parking lot. “I love driving this car.”

  Stoney drummed his fingers against the door handle and then shifted in the seat until he could look at Paul. “So what do you know about Skippy?”

  His voice was so flat; Paul couldn’t get a read on his mood. Might as well lay it all out there. “I know he was your friend. I know he moved to San Francisco, and I know he probably died of AIDS a few years after.”

  Paul concentrated on merging back onto the highway more than was strictly necessary.

  “How do you even know about him?” Stoney asked. “I know I never talked about him.”

  “Robbie’s friend Georgia knew you and Skippy. She played with you at college before she went pro. Said you’d know her as George Simpson.”

  When Stoney didn’t answer, Paul shot him a look.

  Stoney looked like he got hit with a two by four. “What? She? What are you talking about?”

  “Georgia is a transsexual, no, transgender.” Robbie had corrected him on that several times. She’s now Georgia, and she lives with Robbie’s parents. They have some kind of boarding house. She recognized me. Well, you, technically. She thought I looked just like you. And well, the name.”

 
“Simpson is a woman now? What?”

  “I know it’s weird, Dad, but can we talk about that another time? It’s really not the main issue.”

  Stoney’s leg was jittering so hard, Paul felt it through the floor. His father looked out the side window, watching the trees fly by. With a sigh, he turned back to Paul. “Skippy was my Eubee. He was my best friend from high school and through college.”

  “And?”

  “And I loved him.”

  Wow. Based on what Georgia had said at lunch the day they’d met, Paul had suspected that, but he’d never expected Stoney to say it flat out.

  “What happened?”

  Stoney scratched his fingertips across the dashboard. “I’ve never told anybody about this. No one. Ever. No one knew, not for sure. We were so careful.”

  Holy crap.

  “After college, when we knew neither of us was going pro, he asked me to move to California, to San Francisco with him. As, as, a couple.”

  “Wow. I don’t know what to say.”

  Stoney rubbed his face.

  “Are you gay?” Paul pulled into the right lane and slowed down as he waited for the answer.

  Stoney groaned.

  “Nobody here but us chickens,” Paul said with a strained laugh.

  “And God.”

  “And God. But God already knows.”

  Stoney laughed, surprised. “Then yes. I think so. I am gay. Wow.”

  “It’s hard to say out loud, isn’t it?”

  Stoney nodded. “Almost as hard as telling you kids your mom wasn’t going to survive that last bout with cancer.”

  Paul reached over and grabbed his father’s hand tightly. Stoney covered Paul’s hand with his, squeezing back.

  “Robbie made me say it to him,” Paul said. “Now I know why he needed to hear me say it. Saying it makes it real.”

  “I loved your mother you know.”

  “I know,” Paul said automatically, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t wondered about it.

  “Please, never think I didn’t. Barbara was an amazing woman who deserved more than I gave her. I took her from her family. Did you know that? You have grandparents and aunts and uncles you don’t even know.”

  That was news to Paul. He’d assumed his mother was an only child. Wow.

  “But Skippy, Nathan, was my first love. I loved him like I’ve never loved anyone else.”

  “So why didn’t you go with him? I know it was a different time, but people did it, lived together. Why couldn’t you? Was it the church, your family?”

  “No, I didn’t get saved until after he was gone.”

  Holy shit. Another thing Paul had never known. Everything he had ever thought about his dad had crumbled. He felt like he was sitting next to a stranger.

  Stoney hadn’t lied to him, not directly, but he’d left so much out, he might as well have.

  “Then why?”

  “I was scared. Terrified. I saw the pictures and films of what it was like out there.” He looked out the window like he could see it even now. “I didn’t want to live like that. I didn’t want to die.”

  “You don’t die from being gay.”

  “You did back then.”

  Paul started to object, but Stoney cut him off. “You don’t get it. You can’t get it because you don’t know, because no one ever showed you. Pull over.”

  “What?” Paul looked to his dad and back to the road.

  Stoney pointed to the truck stop looming over the highway. “Pull over. I want to show you something, and you can’t be driving.”

  Paul took the exit ramp, and Stoney surprised him again by directing him to the parking lot of a Denny’s.

  “I’m hungry. I don’t think I’ve eaten since you called me,” he explained. “Is that okay with you?”

  “Yeah. Fine. I love Denny’s,” he said inanely. In a million years he never pictured his dad wanting to talk about any of this in a public place.

  By unspoken agreement, they picked a booth near a window where Paul could keep an eye on the car. The waiter, a smiling young man with the dark hair and dark eyes Paul was starting to associate with a Native American background, handed them their menus.

  They both ordered coffee and Paul looked through the menu while his dad got lost looking for something on his phone.

  Paul was dying to know what his father was going to show him, but he kept his impatience in check. Nothing had gone the way he’d expected this morning, and he felt a little like he had slipped sideways into a parallel world.

  This Denny’s looked like every other Denny’s he’d ever been in, but he’d never been in this exact store, never seen that exact view out the window. His father looked almost the same as Paul remembered, but he had no idea how this man across from him would react to anything. He didn’t know this version of his father.

  It was unsettling, terrifying, but it also held the promise of something Paul never thought he would have – an honest relationship with his dad, where they could both be authentically themselves and know that they were loved unconditionally.

  Paul held the menu up to hide his face and wiped his eyes with the napkin. If he had any tears left after today, he’d be surprised.

  “You gentlemen ready to order?” the waiter asked cheerfully.

  “Grand Slam with biscuits and gravy on the side, please. Over easy eggs,” Stoney said. “And some more coffee.”

  “Dang, you are hungry,” Paul laughed. “I’ll have the same thing but with scrambled eggs.”

  “You got it. And I’ll bring you some more coffee.”

  Stoney watched the guy leave. When he seemed satisfied the waiter was out of earshot, he handed the phone to Paul.

  The browser was open to the AmFar website. Paul had never heard of the organization, but he realized quickly it was an AIDs/HIV research organization.

  “AIDs?” he asked Stoney, puzzled.

  “Take a look at the numbers. Remember, I graduated high school in 1984. College in 1988. You were born in 1993.”

  “That I know,” Paul said absently as he scrolled through the timeline. He stomach dropped with every year that he saw.

  1982, the first year on the chart, showed sixty-two cases of a mysterious ‘gay cancer.’ 1983, the very next year, there were 771 reported cases and 618 deaths. The numbers grew exponentially, horrifically. And this was just cases and deaths in the United States.

  By 1984, the year Stoney graduated high school, there had been nearly 2000 deaths, most of them in the San Francisco area, almost all of them gay men.

  1988, four short years later, and over sixty-thousand people had died from AIDS, and virtually all cases of HIV infection lead to full-blown AIDS and death.

  “Oh, my, God,” Paul said, covering his mouth with his hand. “I didn’t know.”

  He was afraid to look, but he had to know. By the year he was born, over two hundred thousand people in the U.S. had died of AIDS. In 1995, the New York Times reported that AIDS was the leading cause of death among all Americans ages 25-44.

  “Holy shit. How did I not this? No wonder you were terrified.”

  Stoney took the phone back from Paul. “It was horrific. And the numbers don’t even do it justice. It was everywhere. The gay plague, people called it. God’s judgment on sinners. And the photographs. God, the pictures. If you’d seen what those poor men looked like. What Nathan must have looked like.”

  Stoney covered his face with his hand.

  Paul looked away to give his father a small bit of privacy for his old grief.

  “I - I didn’t see any pictures,” Paul said softly.

  “I couldn’t find any,” Stoney said, voice rough. He cleared his throat and took a sip of his coffee.

  He looked older than Paul had ever seen him, but softer, more real.

  “It’s gone. Erased like it never happened. None of you kids, gay or straight,” he said with a small smile, “knows about it. But we remember. Men my age and older, we remember. We were there.”


  “I’m sorry,” Paul said, absently, thinking of Robbie. Paul wondered if Robbie knew. He probably did, Paul realized. He probably knew all about gay history, something Paul had just this second realized was a thing.

  Paul felt himself shift from thinking of himself as a guy who just happened to be gay to realizing he was a gay man. Whether he wanted to be or not, he was part of a group with a shared history and a story that bound them all together despite all other differences.

  No wonder Robbie had been so incensed by the idea of an essential part of his identity being distilled down to a single sex act. It was dehumanizing.

  “Looking at you and Eubee,” his father was saying, oblivious to Paul’s worldview being realigned, “It almost killed me. It was like looking into a mirror. I loved you both so much, and all I could see was you both dead, ravaged.”

  “Eubee died anyway, Dad. He left me, and he died, and I never got to tell him I loved him.”

  “I’m sorry, Paul. Truly. If I could go back in time,” his father said.

  The waiter brought their food and set it down in front of them. Paul didn’t think he’d be able to eat a bite.

  “Why are you sorry? You didn’t make him join the army. You didn’t make him skip out without even talking to me.” Paul stabbed viciously at his gravy-covered biscuits. Or what passed for gravy on the wrong side of the country.

  “No,” Stoney said slowly, “I didn’t. But I didn’t dissuade him either. When he came to me, I encouraged him. Told him some time apart might benefit both of you.”

  “Oh, Daddy,” Paul said softly, near tears again.

  Stoney reached across the table for Paul’s hand. “Can you forgive me?”

  Why did there have to be so much pain around something so basic and simple as love just because they were two men?

  Being with Robbie had been so easy. He felt something important tickling his brain, something almost making sense.

  “Paul,” his father said.

  “Ssh,” he said, shocking them both. “Just…I need to…” He closed his eyes and gripped his father’s hand. He reached out with his other hand, and Stoney took that.

  Please, help me out here, Paul asked silently, talking to God like he hadn’t done since he was a child, not concerned with getting the words exactly right. What am I missing? I know there’s something. Why does it have to hurt so much? Why is there so much pain and fear around who I love?”