by TJ Klune
I snapped my mouth closed, almost biting my tongue.
Robert watched Jeremy as he tilted his head back and laughed, Nana beaming up at him proudly. Matty and Larry looked shocked and appalled. I didn’t want to know what Nana had said. “I told you once about Jeremy, that I thought he was lonely. That he didn’t have people who could appreciate him for all he was. And you took my words to heart. You gave him a place to belong. What I didn’t expect was for you all to do the same for me.”
I couldn’t figure out how to form words.
“It wasn’t until Charlie that I realized that I was lonely too. I’ve lived a long life filled with happiness and sadness, joy and heartbreak. I didn’t expect to be the age I am now and find myself with a man who makes my heart sing. And with him came a group of remarkable people who love each other so much it hurts. You opened your arms for a pair of lonely gentlemen, and I can’t thank you enough for it.”
“You belong with us,” I managed to say. “The both of you.”
Robert nodded. “And I understand that. Nana told me that I was an honorary Auster. I was touched by that. Your family has welcomed us into your home. And I need you to know that no matter what happens, I’m welcoming you into mine. While I can’t speak for the future and what it holds for all of us, and whether you and Jeremy become something more or stay as you are now, you’ve changed us, Corey, for the better. And I will never forget that.”
I hugged him. He laughed delightedly as he hugged me back. It was a good sound, one I hoped to hear again and again.
“We’re figuring it out,” I whispered to him. “I think… I think it’s going to be something great.”
“Good,” he said, patting my back. “And if he needs a kick in the ass, you tell me. I’ll take care of it. And if I think you need the same, have no fear: I’ll take care of that too.”
I believed him.
PHOENIX HOUSE emptied as the afternoon wore on. I got hugged and high-fived and fist-bumped by most of the kids as they left. A few threatened to come find me if I didn’t come back as soon as I could. I promised them all they couldn’t be rid of me, no matter how hard they tried.
Kai and Diego were the last of the kids to leave.
“Hey,” I said as they stopped in front of me. “Good day, right?”
Kai shrugged as Diego nodded. “Yeah. Good day. Charlie’s, like, so rad. He’s a leather daddy. I didn’t know what that meant, but now I want to be one too.”
Oh boy. “Give yourself a few years before making that decision,” I said with a straight face. “You’ve still got a ways to go yet.”
“You’re coming back,” Kai said. It wasn’t a question.
“Sure,” I said easily. “As much as I can. You both have my phone number if you need anything?”
“We do,” Kai said.
“I expect you to use it. I mean it. You need me, you text or call me. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“You’re all right,” Diego said, punching me lightly on the shoulder.
I snorted. “Thanks. I think. Be safe, okay? And if I can’t come back in before, I’ll see you all at the Pride parade in a few weeks. We’re going to celebrate our asses off this year. Deal?”
“Deal,” Diego said. “Later, Corey.” He started to walk away but stopped when he saw Kai wasn’t following him.
Kai was watching me with their head cocked.
I arched an eyebrow at them.
They rolled their eyes, and before I knew what was happening, they threw their arms around my shoulders and kissed my cheek. “Thank you,” they whispered. “For everything.” And then they were gone, following Diego out the door.
I stared after them for a long time.
IN THE end, it was just me, Marina, and Jeremy. We sat in Jeremy’s office, watching as he packed up the last of his things.
“How’s the director hunt going?” I asked Marina.
She smiled at me. “Pretty good. We’ve got a couple of prospects. And since we’re now fully funded through 2018, it’s more of an incentive to get someone in here. Funny how that works.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
She shook her head. “It’s… I like being down in the front lines. Getting my hands dirty. I don’t want to be cooped up in this office all day.”
“I didn’t stay in here,” Jeremy pointed out.
“I know. But… I’d like to get someone in here. Someone younger. Fresh blood, if you will. Someone hungry enough to steer this ship. My wife and I are talking about all the trips we’ve never gotten to take and what we want for our future. If I decide to step back at some point, I want to know Phoenix House is in good hands.” She looked up at Jeremy. “Sure I can’t change your mind?”
He smiled. “Pretty sure. Though who knows what could happen in the future?”
She nudged me with her shoe. “And don’t think I’m not going to come after you as it gets closer to graduation. Forewarned is forearmed.”
“Only you can make a job offer sound like a threat,” I muttered.
She stood with a grunt. “It’s how I’ve gotten this far. We’re still on for Pride? The both of you?”
“Definitely.”
“Good.” She looked at us both before sniffling. “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, but here we go.” She wiped her eyes. “Thank you. Both of you. For all that you’ve done. Because of you, Phoenix House will continue to help our community. You’ve given us a great gift, and I will be forever grateful.”
She leaned down and kissed my cheek before rounding the desk and doing the same to Jeremy. She sniffled again as she walked toward the door. “Don’t be strangers, you hear me? And for the love of all that is holy, if you haven’t kissed each other already, get it over with. Time is too short to act so foolish.”
We stared after her as she closed the door.
“Wow,” I said. “That happened.”
“Yeah,” Jeremy said faintly. “I guess it did.”
“How the fuck did she know?”
“Dad says we were so obvious, it could be seen from space.”
“Hyperbole is so stupid,” I mumbled. “We weren’t that obvious.”
Jeremy rubbed his jaw. “I think we might have been. Vince told me he was happy we finally figured things out.”
“What?”
He nodded. “Yeah, and you really don’t want to know what Nana told me.”
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“She said that if I ever needed to borrow one of her paddles to use on you—”
“Never mind! Don’t tell me! Ack! Gross! Ugh!”
He grinned at me. “Larry said that it was okay because Vince was a Dom and Paul was his pony. They seemed very open-minded about the whole thing. I didn’t want to ask what that meant, but—”
“Jesus Christ,” I groaned as I put my face in my hands. “I swear to god, those people are going to be the death of me.”
“Nah,” Jeremy said easily. “They just love you, is all. And they’re right. All of them.”
I dropped my hands. “About what? I don’t want you to spank me with one of Nana’s paddles. I mean, sure, maybe if you had your own we could talk, but—” My eyes bulged as I replayed my own words. “Uh. Forget I said that?”
“Frankly, I don’t think that’s possible.” He had this look in his eyes like he was imagining me bare-assed and over his knee. “You want to—”
“If the conditions were right, I suppose—”
“The conditions? What the hell does that—”
“I don’t know! I haven’t even picked out a safeword! Shouldn’t I—”
“Oh, so now we’re in safeword territory, are we? Seems like we skipped a couple of steps—”
“Tumblr taught me safe, sane, and consensual, and everyone knows Tumblr is where you go to look up spanking—”
“I want to kiss you,” Jeremy said, and all my words dried up. “More than anything. I want to take you home with me. I want to be with you. I don’t ever want to let you g
o.”
I nodded slowly. “Soon.”
He closed his eyes. “Soon. Because we’re going to do this right.”
“God, I hate how responsible we are.”
He laughed, and the tension eased. “I know. But I don’t want anything standing in our way. Because I’m all in, Corey. Okay?”
I swallowed thickly. “Okay.”
“Good. Now, for old times’ sake, how about I drive you home. I got a new CD for us to listen to. It’s Jason Mraz. You ever heard of him?”
“Jesus Christ. What the hell is wrong with you? Do you see a white guy with a guitar and think, ‘oh my god, I need to have this!’ Is that what’s going on? Because that is an illness, Jeremy. A debilitating illness.”
“Just because you have unrefined tastes in music doesn’t mean you get to—”
“Unrefined? You listen here, you pedantic asshole. I’ll have you know that—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re still going to listen to it.” He smirked at me before opening the office door and walking through it.
I stood from my chair. “Always with the last word. You dick.”
“I heard that!” he shouted from down the hallway.
Before I switched off the light, I looked back just once. The office seemed so empty now, but I knew it wouldn’t remain that way. Soon someone would be in here who loved this place almost as much as we did.
“See you soon,” I whispered.
I switched off the light and closed the door.
Chapter 17: Bigots Can Suck My Dick
I HATED to admit it, but Jeremy was right.
Once school began again, I had time for little else. It wasn’t just the amount of coursework or meeting with my academic advisor on a weekly basis while he rolled his eyes at my panicking. (Usually done in a high-pitched voice while demanding he explain to me how the hell he’d let me get this far, the asshole, what was he thinking?)
It was also doing the one thing that many unfortunate twentysomethings had to do, the one thing that was the absolute worst thing in the world: planning for the future, for a life after graduation.
The very idea was paralyzing. While I got back into the swing of things relatively easily, the thought that this would soon all be over and the rest of my life would begin wasn’t something I had prepared for. I hadn’t been much of a procrastinator; I wouldn’t have made it as far as I had if I had been. But frankly, knowing that all my hard work was about to pay off toward… something was almost more than I could take.
Sandy steered clear of me, for the most part, unless I absolutely needed him. And when I did, he was there with food or a back rub or a bitchy clap back, telling me that I really needed to get over myself when I snapped at him a few times too many.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered in the second week of September. “I’m not trying to be an asshole.”
“Good,” he said with a sniff. “Seeing as how you’re not necessarily trying as much as you’re succeeding.”
I bit down the retort, knowing it wouldn’t help matters. And Sandy didn’t deserve it. At least not today. “I’m just… fuck. I don’t know.”
He sat down on the edge of my bed. It was almost ten at night, and he was wearing his ridiculous robe and a green face mask that made him look like he’d eaten out an amorous head of cabbage. “What’s important right now?”
I squinted at him. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Are you worried about school, or homework, or….?”
I snorted. “Homework. Cute.”
“I don’t know what it takes to get your master’s,” he said. “I never went as far as you did. It never interested me, so I can’t imagine the type of work you have to do or the stress you’re under.”
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face. “It’s not just that. I think. It’s… everything, you know? Like some weird existential bullshit. What does this all mean? Am I doing the right thing? Is this what I really want?”
“And do you have the answers to those questions?”
“Nope.”
He nodded. “And you know that’s not a bad thing, right?
“But—”
“You don’t have to have all the answers now, Kori. I know you think you might, but I don’t know if you do.”
“I know that,” I admitted. “But I’ll need those answers sooner rather than later.”
“Which is why I asked what’s most important. What’s the thing weighing on you the most?”
I looked down at the papers spread across my desk, at the screen of my laptop with seven different tabs, all unrelated but necessary. My hands were shaking, and I was exhausted. “I’m worried.”
“About?” he asked promptly.
“After.”
“As in after all is said and done.”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Okay. That’s a good place to start. What happens after?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
He smoothed out the robe over his thighs, not that it hid much the way he was sitting, the skank. “Then let’s work through it. Next spring, you graduate.”
“Yeah.”
“And before that happens, you’ll hopefully have an idea about what you want to do next.”
“Hopefully. Supposedly.”
“The first day of the rest of your life,” he said. “How exciting. I’m proud of you, you know? I don’t know if I tell you that enough. I need to be better at it.”
I slumped back in my chair. “I know you are. Thank you.” I hesitated before finding the words that had been buried under everything else. “You and Darren.”
He cocked his head at me. “What about me and Darren?”
I shrugged as I picked at a hole in my sweatpants. “You’re going to want to… you know. Move on. Move in. Or whatever.”
“Ah,” Sandy said. “I see.”
“Yeah.”
“Do the whole cohabitation thing. Be Paul and Vince.”
“Sure.”
“We might.” He shook his head. “No, I take that back. We will. At some point. Isn’t that the point of a relationship? That you eventually combine your lives? Darren and I will get there. For now we’re okay with how things are.”
“I just….” I rubbed a hand over my face, frustrated with how this sounded. “I don’t know what that means for me. And I know that’s ridiculous and selfish, but I can’t help but feel that way.”
Sandy laughed, though it wasn’t mean. “I get it, Kori. I do. Can I tell you a secret?”
I looked over at him.
“When Paul and Vince got together, I was happy for them. I mean, how could I not be? Here was this man, this beautiful, wonderful man who didn’t know his own self-worth. We’d grown up hiding behind our snark and sarcasm. I had Helena, and she was a shield. Paul used his weight for the same thing. I think we were both under the impression that if anyone were to care about us, we’d have to change who we were in order to make ourselves more appealing.”
I scowled. “That’s stupid.”
“It is,” Sandy agreed. “But when you’re one way for so long, you don’t really know any other way to be. And then Vince came along and saw Paul for everything he was and, even better, cherished every part of him. I don’t know what, exactly, caused Paul to take a chance. If you asked him, he would probably say Vince wore him down. But I don’t think that’s it. I think that Paul finally saw that he didn’t have to be anyone else but who he was. He didn’t need to change his attitude; he didn’t need to suddenly drop forty pounds to be happy or appealing. That kind of shit didn’t matter to Vince. And while I was happy for the both of them, I was also jealous.”
“You were?” I hadn’t known that.
“Yeah. I was jealous of Paul for finding someone who could make him smile in ways even I couldn’t. And I was jealous of Vince because I thought he was taking my friend away from me. Silly, right?”
I looked away. “Not so silly.”
“Maybe. But th
e point is that I didn’t need to feel that way. Because even though Paul had found the love of his life, it didn’t mean he would forget me. Oh sure, maybe we weren’t wrapped around each other as much as we’d been, but that was a good thing. Vince brought out a side to Paul I didn’t know existed. And we’re all better off because of it. And I like to think Darren has done the same for me.”
“He has,” I said. “You’re… softer. A little bit.”
Sandy snorted. “I’ll let that slide because of what we’re talking about. However, if you say that to me again, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”
“Duly noted.”
He stood up from the bed and came toward me. He turned my chair until I was facing him before he crouched down in front of me. If you’ve never had a drag queen in a frilly robe with cabbage jizz on their face hunkering down at your feet, you haven’t truly lived. “What I’m trying to say is that while some things change, it doesn’t mean we’ll forget all the other important stuff. We’re always going to be together in one way or another. It might not always be like this, like we are now, but I promise you that you will never be alone.”
I felt scraped and raw. I said the only thing I could. “I love you.”
He grinned at me. “I know you do. And I love you too, baby doll. Finding you that day in the thrift store is one of the happiest days of my life. Look at you. Look at all you’ve become. You took a shitty hand and made such a wonderful life for yourself. And while I can’t promise that Darren and I won’t want to move to the next level in our relationship, I can promise that you’ll be one of the first to know. We’ll make these decisions together. Okay?”
I sniffled. “Okay.”
He patted my knees. “Good. Now how about you take a little break and we go watch some trashy TV. Just you and me.”
“And Darren, right? He’s over.”
He stood. “Oh no. Darren is a little worn out at the moment. I gave him the dicking of his life, so he’s down for the night. Homo jocks are predictable that way, even their king.”
I grimaced. “That’s what that sound was. I thought those cats next door were in heat again. There was yowling.”