Cowboy: The Mathesons Book 2

by Declan Rhodes

  Looking across the table at Mom Missy, I blinked. “To answer your original question, yes, today I’ve got the loan interview for the cash I need to open my own interior design office. I don’t want to depend on your money. You earned it, not me. I’m inspired by your example.”

  Mom Tina set a plate in front of me filled with a mystery grain topped with two barely cooked eggs. To the side sat a pile of something wrinkly and dark brown. She spotted the dubious expression on my face. “It’s dulse seaweed. Excellent for your health, and, honestly, it tastes a little like fried pig flesh.”

  “Pig flesh?”

  Mom Missy said, “Bacon to you. Tina likes to be highly specific when she cooks. You know that.”

  “And underneath that?”

  “Quinoa,” said Mom Tina. “High in protein and fiber.”

  As she watched me eat, Mom Missy asked, “If you’re successful with the loan, does that mean you’re planning to move out, too? A few months back, you said that a new job would be the first sign of starting again.”

  Some reluctance about the next step still lingered in the back of my mind. For the past few weeks, I’d been telling myself over and over that I was finally ready to move on with my life. That meant a new apartment. Tate was in the rearview mirror, and I needed to propel myself forward.

  The way I saw it in my head, I was like a young bear emerging from the cave after an unusually long winter of hibernation. I was still rubbing my eyes with my paws while I was trying to adjust to the new light.

  “Yep, I’ve already got the apartment narrowed down to three choices. I want to move as far away from the Shanbrook Design offices as I can without living at the bottom of the East River.”

  Mom Tina sat with us at the table and dug into her plate of grain, eggs, and seaweed for breakfast. “Is it still that bad? Maybe if they moved you into an executive position, it would improve things? You could ask for a promotion.” She was always risk-aware. Mom Missy pushed for the bold steps forward.

  “Isn’t this about the fifth time you’ve asked me?” I didn’t want to sound like I was lashing out, but we’d been round and round in the discussion. “I can’t go a week without profanity hurled in my direction. Almost every meeting I wait for that moment when something over the line gets thrown in my direction, and then I can file a harassment lawsuit. The silver lining for a cloud like that is that it would give me the funding for my own office.”

  Mom Missy drummed her fingers on the table and shifted the topic of conversation. “And…what was his name?” There was only one name she could be struggling to remember. I’d only talked about him at least two or three times a month for the last year and a half. I didn’t want to calculate the specifics and know the actual total.

  I said, “Remember, you met him several times when I brought him with me for dinners and gallery openings. I can’t believe you’ve forgotten his name.”

  She lowered her glasses onto the bridge of her nose. “I’m trying to forget him for your benefit.”

  My moms showed their love for me in unique ways. For Mom Missy, it was always attempting to take my side in any kind of dispute pressed upon me from the outside world. Mom Tina showed that she cared by redecorating my bedroom almost every month. Frequently, she used my favorite scheme of red and black, but one day I walked in after a long day working at Shanbrook to find everything drenched in shades of purple.

  As I stood at the foot of the bed looking around and rubbing my chin, Mom Tina walked up behind me. “Don’t you love it?”

  “I don’t understand it.”

  “Purple for royalty. You’re my prince, Simon, and you always will be.”

  For the next six months, I thought I was living in a promotional video for Prince’s “Purple Rain,” but I knew that period would pass soon, too. The next scheme blazed a fiery red. I never could decide if it was passionate or only radiated the idea of painful inflammation. I kept a small bottle of ibuprofen by the bed just in case.

  Mom Missy stopped drumming her fingers and said, “Tate! That’s his name. There won’t be any reunions once you move out? Are you looking for someone new? I don’t want to think about our boy alone somewhere in the city night after night.”

  I wanted to look for someone new. I gave it a valiant effort. After I filled out a profile for an online dating app, I choked up with a lump of guilt in my throat after viewing only five eligible men. It might have been crazy. We’d broken up more than a year before I tried the online option, but I still felt terrible about considering dating someone other than Tate. Deep in my gut, he always felt like the right man who did so many wrong things.

  I avoided answering the dating question. “I think I need to focus on my career for now. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, and that’s probably not fair for a boyfriend. Tate’s long hours at work were a problem for us. I don’t want only to see my boyfriend in bed.”

  Mom Tina giggled, “But that is a great time to see each other. You learn so much. Are you at least getting some of—you know?”

  My two moms never hesitated to dive into the middle of my business. They had little sense of boundaries when it came to their only child. If they wanted to know something, they asked—with a straight face. I knew that the only motivation was care for me, but I needed to keep some things to myself.

  “I’m not going to answer that. It’s my life, and that is something kept behind my privacy wall. We talked about that before.”

  Mom Missy stood up, placed a hand on my shoulder, and said, “Of course. You know that your mom only wants to know out of love for you. I have a suggestion, though.”

  As she delivered her plate to the dishwasher, one of their concessions to over-use of natural resources, she said, “One of my colleagues told me the other day about a slow period after her divorce. She said she even considered hiring an escort for a period of time. Some of the people working in the sex industry are very skilled.”

  I groaned and quietly dug into the dulse. To my surprise, it did taste somewhat like bacon.

  “Then she had a revelation.” Mom Missy looked up to the ceiling and raised her arms like she was accepting a charmed gift from the gods. “She hired a masseur for three sessions a week.”

  “I think male massage therapist would be the accepted term today,” said Mom Tina.

  “Whatever. The masseur was skilled in producing happy endings, but my colleague said it wasn’t embarrassing like hiring a prostitute. She told me that he was very professional.”

  I sighed. “I don’t think I understand the difference. Are you saying that prostitutes are unprofessional or that those happy endings should be a common part of societally-sanctioned physical therapy?”

  Mom Missy rubbed her chin. “I think it was more like psychological therapy. You know, you pay a person so you can sit in their office and have them…” She cleared her throat. “Excuse my language—fuck with your mind. This was the physical version of that.”

  Mom Tina laughed out loud.

  “Psychological therapy is socially acceptable,” said Mom Missy. “Why not the physical version?”

  I was thankful that my moms never batted an eye when talking about sex. I learned the unadorned truth about so many things at an early age, and I knew that no questions were out of bounds. Sex was one of their favorite topics to discuss.

  I asked for clarification. “So you would be okay if I hired a guy to give me massages and jerk me off three days a week?”

  Mom Missy said, “My colleague told me that it made a world of difference in her ability to calm down, focus, and feel relaxed. She’d never felt so productive and relaxed in her work. I want all of those things for you.”

  I understood the appeal, but even in the worst of the times with Tate, during the arguments and the long nights waiting for him to come home from work, our relationship was better for the soul than therapy, mental or physical. I wanted the person touching me to love me. I wanted him to be my hero. Tate was close to that ideal. He was right on the e
dge of perfect. I missed him horribly.

  Mom Missy walked up behind me, hugged me close to her body, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “I’ve got to run. A student is stopping in to meet me in my office first thing. I feel good cosmic vibrations about your loan application. I can’t wait to help decorate your new office. Of course, Tina should take a lead role on that. She has that aesthetic sense.”

  Since I was a professional interior designer, I wanted to assert my own skills and claim decorating my office as a solo project. Unfortunately, I knew that would feel hurtful to my moms. I kept my mouth shut on the topic.

  Mom Tina smiled. “We have an independent businessman in the family. We’re both so proud of you.” She reached out and gripped my hands while Mom Missy continued to hug me. With such a great little family behind me, I knew the rest of my future had to be bright. It had to happen somehow.

  I nodded and smiled. “I think it’ll be a good day. I’m having lunch with Hamish, too. He’s helping me out with all of the small business legal matters.”

  “Is that the striking man you invited to join us at Zelda’s gallery opening down in the Village? The one with the jet-black goatee?”

  “Striking—a good word for him." In a different environment, with his narrow chin and slightly hooked nose, Hamish might be the villain who crept up behind an unsuspecting victim and carried him or her off to await rescue by the intrepid hero. I said, "Yes, that would be Hamish.”

  3

  Tate

  Sagebrush, a country line dancing club which catered to gay customers three days a week, was one of my favorite places in the city. It was one of the few corners of the teeming urban jungle where I felt entirely at home. Dancing cowboys in a converted warehouse in New York City were my idea of a little corner of heaven. I visited for the first time at the suggestion of one of our Matheson and Greene employees two weeks after Simon left. He said, “The guys are great, and if you like to dance, it’s a great place to be.”

  I thought it sounded great. I enjoyed dancing, but I didn’t know anything about lines or two-step practiced at country music bars. I’d never done it before.

  I heard, “They always give lessons to the new guys. It’s a very welcoming crowd,” and I decided that I’d give it a try. I was lonely, and I needed to do something to find company.

  Sagebrush joined the gym as one of my two primary places to find some semblance of a social life in the wake of the breakup with Simon.

  My cowboy obsession started early. When I was five years old, Bentley Greene, my dad’s best friend and now one of my Matheson and Greene bosses, bought me an old-fashioned cap gun as a birthday present. It was one of many gifts I opened at a party put together by my mom, Petra. The little silver pistol landed in a pile of toys that included wood trains, puzzles, and kid-sized sports equipment. I grabbed the one digital video game and stared at the screen entranced until Mom ushered me into a group of the other kids while kicking off an hour of games to entertain us.

  Late in the afternoon, after all of my friends went home, Bentley walked up to me, squatted down so we could be face to face, and said, “Young man, I wanted to tell you something about that cap gun. It’s not an ordinary toy.”

  Bentley wasn’t nearly as warm as my dad, John. Sometimes his gruff manner was even a little scary. I asked, “It’s not?”

  He started to talk about the gun, and I was a little bit distracted. Mom was putting away the remains of the cake, and I wanted one last piece before it disappeared. Bentley reached out for my chin to insist on complete concentration. He meant business. I had to let the cake go.

  “I’ve had that gun myself since I was seven years old, not much older than you are now. It was magic for me. I used it to chase away all the bad guys.”

  Bentley said the keyword—magic. A few months before the birthday party, my dad introduced me to a real-life magician, one that he hired for an advertising campaign. His tricks blew my little boy mind away.

  Bentley knew what he was doing when telling little boys stories. He said the gun was so magical that he didn’t even have to shoot it to make the bad guys go away. He told me they were scared of good cowboys, like the Lone Ranger, and all I needed to do when I was worried about bad guys was to hold the little cap gun close to my chest. He poked my chest. “I guarantee you they’ll be gone, Tate. That’s all it takes.”

  I’d seen the magic tricks, and, even as a five-year-old boy, despite sometimes finding him scary, I admired Bentley, too. He was my dad’s best friend, he started Matheson and Greene, and his son, Kyle, was one of my older brother Mason’s best friends.

  About ten days later, one of the mean kids at school threatened me. He took my dessert away at lunch and told me that he would beat me up if I told anyone. That night at home I did what Bentley told me. I held the silver cap gun against my chest and closed my eyes. The next day, the principal called the mean boy to his office and suspended him from school for a week.

  The little cap gun worked. I started to obsess about cowboys, and soon my life dream was to meet the Lone Ranger. My dad took me to a fan event in L.A., and I got to meet Clayton Moore, the TV Lone Ranger, in person only a few years before he died. He shook my hand and signed a glossy photo. I watched entranced by him as he spelled out my name.

  I eventually grew out of using the cap gun to defeat my enemies, but my love for cowboys never went away. As I grew into adulthood, I always made sure I had at least one Western outfit in my wardrobe and a high-quality pair of cowboy boots even if I rarely wore them.

  My buddy, Ted, nudged me to bring me back to the present. “You seem to be daydreaming even worse than normal tonight. Is everything okay in Tate’s world? There’s a two-step coming up next. Would you like a sexy partner?”

  I grinned. I’d sat out the first two line dances since I walked through the stylized swinging saloon doors. Ted found me leaning on a stool at the bar sipping a gin and tonic and musing about the sharp, lurching turn my life took when Simon walked out.

  With a smirk on my face, I looked around. “Sexy? I don’t see him.”

  Ted grabbed his package and laughed. “Look down, buddy. Right there.”

  Unlike me, Ted decked himself out in full cowboy gear at Sagebrush. I usually wore my cowboy boots and jeans, but that was it for my Western wear. Until a few short weeks ago, Simon was the cowboy in my world. I never wanted to steal his thunder.

  Ted was sexy. He was right about that. He had a solid, muscular body. I hoped I could keep my body as fit when I was pushing 40 like Ted. I said, “I think I’m still getting my sea legs back. I just got back to the city two days ago after my trip for the California wedding.”

  “Your brother, right? Did it go off well? Is he into men like you? Or was this one of those hetero unions?”

  I chuckled. “Guy’s straight, and his new wife, Lily, is a friend of the family, too. Everything was great, but you know, it makes me think more about the fact that I’m wandering through the city single like a castrated zombie.”

  “Ouch! That hurts to even think about.”

  “I guess it’s not as bad as all that. Someday my prince will come. Isn’t that what Snow White said?”

  Ted poked me in the gut. “Put the drink down, and get out here and dance with me. The music’s starting.”

  He whisked me onto the dance floor, and I let him take the lead. We were both experienced dancers, and I didn’t mind being the Ginger to his Fred. I scanned the room looking for new cowboys while we stomped our boots and then spun around and circled the floor.

  Ted was a great buddy. He divorced his husband, Dodge, around the same time I broke up with Simon. We both found our way to Sagebrush to drown our sorrows in drink and dancing.

  That first night I met him, we did a two-step together, and we shared our stories. I asked, “Did you really have a boyfriend named Dodge? Was that a nickname? He sounds like some guy out of a Western movie. Was it Brokeback City?”

  Ted laughed. “He’s a real cowboy who moved t
o the city. He grew up in South Dakota, and Dodge is his real name. I think I came here to torture myself with memories.”

  “Yeah, I understand that. Until a week ago, I had a Jewish cowboy with two moms.”

  Ted and I tried dating, and it was a minor catastrophe. He was fussy, and I was, well—me. I was late for our second date, and he nearly lost it. We decided after the third date that spending a couple of nights a week as dance partners was our destiny.”

  Eighteen months later neither of us were very far along the road of setting our romantic pasts behind and moving on. As I hugged him at the end of the first two-step, I asked, “What has you so chipper this evening? Did you sell one of those million-plus condos?”

  “No, Dodge is moving back to South Dakota. He sent me a text about it. I asked to meet, and he said no. That was like a dagger to the heart, but it’ll be good to have him out of the city. At least I think so. I’m trying to look on the bright side, you know.”

  The DJ decided to spin one more two-step before returning to the lines. “One more? I’ll volunteer to be Ginger again.”

  Ted grinned. “She always did it just as well as Fred, and she did it in reverse.”

  “Sounds like the best bottoms in bed.”

  “Of course!”

  As the song came to an end, I asked, “Would you like one more drink? I’ll buy. We’ll celebrate Dodge’s exit.”

  As we climbed aboard the stools at the bar, Ted asked, “And Simon? Is your past over yet?”

  I rolled my eyes. “At the wedding, everybody found out that we’re over. It was a huge scene.”

  “Wait! They didn’t know? How’d you manage that?”

  “Stupid excuses. It wasn’t my finest hour. Maybe we should drop it. Anyway, my big brother, Mason, is coming for a visit soon.”

  Ted’s eyes opened wider. “Is he as handsome as his brother?”