Sizzle

by Whitley Green

  “Please tell me it was Anna,” he finally whispers, making me laugh.

  “No,” I say. I tip back my drink, draining the glass once more. “It was Alex.”

  I wait in silence for my brother’s reaction. I don’t know what to expect and the suspense makes me feel ill. When I can’t stand it anymore, I look over.

  He’s smiling.

  “What the fuck are you smiling at, Steven?”

  He picks up his own glass, sipping, still smiling. Actually, now it’s more of a smirk.

  “Cheryl owes me five bucks, that’s what,” he says. Steve looks at me and laughs.

  Fucker actually laughs. Whatever reaction I expected, it wasn’t this.

  “We made a bet, years and years ago,” says Steve. “Cheryl swore Alex would never come out to you, but I knew he would.”

  “Hang on. You’re telling me you guys knew he was bi? And you never said anything?”

  “I don’t know about being bi,” says Steve, helping himself to more whiskey. “But I knew he was into you.”

  My turn to gape.

  “Seriously?” says Steve. “You seriously didn’t know? Jesus, Elliot. The guy’s been in love with you for years.”

  “He’s not in love with me.” I know the lie for what is it the minute I hear myself utter those words.

  “Dude.” Steve raises an eyebrow. “Don’t even start with that shit. The real surprise here is you. Since when are you into dick, too? Something in the water over at that house I should know about?”

  “I… I don’t…”

  Steve sits up fast.

  “Shit, you’re in love with him, too,” he says.

  “Fuck off already.”

  “I most certainly will not fuck off,” he says. “Talk me through this. How does Joelle feel about all this?”

  “She’s, uh—” I stammer, my face going hot. “She’s okay with it.” The memory of Joelle’s definition of “okay with it” has me hard in seconds.

  “Then what’s the problem? All systems go, right?”

  “Mom and Dad—”

  “Oh,” says Steve. “Okay, yeah. That might be a small problem. Though personally, I think it hardly matters. They’re not exactly around much. If you’re worried about family in general, I think you already know what I think. And Cheryl flat out loves Alex.”

  “She’d love Joelle, too.”

  “Then once again, for the cheap seats—what’s the problem?”

  “I fucked it up, that’s the problem.” I push away from the bar to walk circles around the pool table. I’d kill for a damn cigarette right now. Quitting is bullshit, even if it’s been more than five years.

  “So fix it. Get her back,” says Steve, watching me pace as he pours us another round. “Or him back. Which is it?”

  “Both. I lost them both.”

  “Okay, well, that was dumb.”

  I stop pacing to glare at him.

  “Well, it was. How can you be so dumb you piss off two lovers at once? Seriously, man.”

  “Do I need to remind you about all those years before Cheryl finally agreed to marry you?”

  Steve stops at that and studies his glass. “Point taken.” He sips again. “So what are you going to do?”

  That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Because I can’t just show up begging them to take me back.

  Can I?

  No, they deserve more than that. If it weren’t for Joelle, I’d wouldn’t have even stood a chance at saving the Duckbill. Maybe we lost anyway but none of that blame lands on her. I owe her more than just a crummy apology.

  And Alex. He’s never let me down, not once. Not since the minute I met him.

  It occurred to me sometime during those deathless hours of driving that when I told him I couldn’t do without Joelle that maybe he misunderstood what I meant. It would definitely explain the look on his face when I left.

  God, that look had gutted me. And still, like a coward, I’d walked away. He deserves more, too—more than just me showing up empty-handed. But what can I do?

  “You’re thinking awfully loud over there,” says Steve. “Any brilliant ideas yet?”

  “Not yet.” I pull out a barstool and take the seat next to him. “Any suggestions?”

  “Might help if you tell me what happened,” says Steve.

  I flash back to Alex on his knees before me, sucking me off, and Steve must see something in my face because he’s waving both hands and shaking his head.

  “Never mind, belay that, abort, abort,” he says. “I do not need to know.”

  “I’m going to miss this place,” I say a little while later. The whiskey is disappearing more slowly now and the darkness outside seems endless, like gazing into a black hole.

  “Me too,” says my brother. “Where will you open the next one? Or do you have a place picked out yet?”

  His question snaps me out of the jaws of the looming abyss outside.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The next Duckbill, or whatever you end up calling it. Duckbill Part Two. Duckbill Junior. The Second. Whatever.” Steve pushes his glass away. “If you use one of my awesome suggestions, I better get a fucking royalty check.”

  “What makes you think I’m opening another restaurant?”

  “What else would you do, El?” He’s looking at me like I’ve escaped a psych ward. “Go back to consulting?” He scoffs.

  “I hadn’t really thought about it much.”

  He snorts. “Considering the other stuff you’ve got going on, I’m not surprised. But we’ve got time now. You’ve got time now.”

  In that moment, I’m dumbfounded. I’ve spent all this time thinking about how my world is falling apart—I never considered it from Steve’s point-of-view.

  “A fresh start,” I say. “A do-over.”

  “A clean slate,” says Steve.

  A clean slate. I like the sound of it.

  An idea sparks.

  “Steve, you’re a genius.”

  “This much, we know,” he says with a boozy grin. “But maybe you better tell me why in this specific instance.”

  “Hang on,” I call out, already heading back to the office. I grab a couple of the inventory binders and a fresh legal pad. Steve’s pouring us another round when I get back to the bar.

  “That’s all you, little brother,” I tell him as I start up the coffee maker behind the bar. “I’ve got some work to do.”

  26

  Alex

  The smell of coffee is the first thing I register. Welcome though it is, the strength of it is enough to make my stomach twist and that’s before I manage to open my eyes.

  A single shaft of sunlight burns across my face from where I apparently didn’t close the curtains last night.

  I don’t get hangovers all that often but I’m pretty sure I earned this one. Drinking to forget seemed like a good idea at the time. It had even worked—for about five minutes.

  “Never again,” I groan, rolling to sit at the edge of the bed. Drunk me at least had the foresight to set a sports drink on the nightstand. I twist the cap and sip at it until I’m sure my stomach will tolerate the rest.

  By the time I get out of the shower twenty minutes later, I’m almost human again. I say a prayer of thanks to the automatic timer on the coffee pot and pour a cup. My supervisor already knows I’m working from home today and he couldn’t care less, thank God. This close to the holidays, hardly anybody comes into the office anyway, but I usually prefer to be on site in case a client needs me.

  So Elliot and Joelle can’t see a way for us to be together, not even just to be with me? So be it. It was a revelation I’d had, drunk and alone in the dark last night. Yeah, this was going to suck. Probably for a long time. And it hurts, so damn much more than I thought it could. Certainly more than it ever did after Diana left.

  I set up my computer at the table and make a halfhearted attempt to get some work done.

  It’s not a magic bullet, but it does dist
ract me for a minute. Long enough for the aspirin to kick in and the coffee to perk me up some.

  I’m rooting through my coat pockets for a pen when I look out the window and see Elliot’s car isn’t here.

  He didn’t have to work last night—I know that much. That means he never came home last night.

  It’s almost enough to bring me to my knees.

  I’ve ruined it. I’ve ruined us. I lost my friend, because I couldn’t keep my damn feelings to myself.

  Elliot was there, too.

  It doesn’t matter. I knew he was straight and worse, I knew he didn’t feel that way about me. And now he’s gone and apart from coming to fetch his things from his apartment, I don’t know if he’ll be back.

  My phone rings from the table some undetermined time later, forcing me back to the kitchen. I check the display before answering the only person I actually want to talk to this morning.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Alex,” she says. “Is everything okay? I tried your office but they said you weren’t in today.”

  “I’m okay,” I say, already knowing she’s going to call me on the lie. “What’s up?”

  “You tell me,” she says. “Because ‘I’m okay’ is a copout, and a crummy one at that.”

  It takes me a minute to get the words up.

  “I… met somebody.” It’s technically the truth. Even though I’ve known Elliot for years now, we only just met Joelle.

  Christ, was it only been a few weeks ago?

  “Oh, Alex,” says Mom, her voice going soft. “I’m so glad to hear it.”

  “It’s not like that,” I tell her. “At least, not anymore. I messed it up.”

  “I seriously doubt you messed it up alone, son,” she says. “What happened?”

  “Um… You remember Elliot?”

  Mom laughs.

  “You mean your roommate and best friend since college who’s been in and out of our house on a weekly basis for the last ten years or so? That Elliot?” She laughs again. “I might remember him.”

  My throat is too tight to speak. The silence drags on until Mom gasps.

  “Oh! Oh, honey.” I can hear the tears in her voice and it’s that sound that finally pulls a tear from me. I swallow hard.

  “It’s already over, Mom. I’m so sorry.”

  “What in the Lord’s name are you apologizing for?”

  “I know how much you like him,” I fumble for the words. “I guess I’m sorry he’s not going to be around much now.” If at all. God.

  “I’m not quite convinced that’s how things are going to go,” she says. “Maybe you’d better tell me the rest of it first.”

  That’s my mother. Growing up, all my friends thought she was psychic.

  I clear my throat.

  “There’s also a girl,” I say awkwardly. “Um, a woman. Her name is Joelle.”

  Mom is quiet. Really quiet.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m still here, Alex,” she says. For a second, I swear I can hear her smiling. The hell? “Just processing.”

  She’s smiling. It’s unmistakable in her tone.

  “So, yeah,” I say because I don’t know how to make this less awkward than it already is. “It’s a bit complicated.”

  “I can imagine,” says Mom. “My poor child. Did you and Joelle fall out too?”

  “Sort of,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “It was kind of all three of us.”

  “All three of you together, or all three of you falling out?”

  “Both.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to apologize again when, a moment later, mom speaks.

  “Alex, do you remember a friend of mine named Jamie?”

  “Vaguely,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “She died when I was little but I called her Auntie J.” It had been some kind of cancer, I think. Mom had been devastated, though it was years later before I worked out what all the crying had meant at the time.

  “Jamie was the first woman I ever loved,” says Mom, her voice tight with emotion.

  “Sorry, what?” I can’t have heard that right. Mom laughs softly.

  “We were both in our mid-thirties when we met,” she said. “I thought the world was ending, falling for her even though your dad and I had been married for nearly a decade by then.”

  “I’m sorry, wait. Does dad know about this?” It’s the first question I can think of and I’m not proud of how high my voice gets when I ask.

  “Of course he does,” says Mom. “He’s my best friend and has been since about the day I met him. He understood what I was feeling long before I was able to make sense of it.”

  “And he was… okay with it?”

  “You could say that.” Mom laughs. “It wasn’t the same as what you’ve told me about Elliot and your Joelle. Your father and Jamie had affection for each other but it was friendly love, not what I feel and felt for them.”

  I don’t know what to say to any of that. It’s like I’ve accidentally stepped into an alternate universe.

  “My dear Alex. My point is, love is love. I brought you up to know that for yourself, and I’m so proud of the man you’ve become.” She sniffles a little at that but mercifully doesn’t start crying. I couldn’t handle her tears, too, right now. “But loving someone, loving two someones—it doesn’t excuse us from having to make choices. If these two are the ones for you, then you have choices to make. If they’re not… well, that’s a different set of choices, isn’t it? But you’re the only one who can decide one way or the other.”

  It’s several minutes before I can speak again.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I know you do, Alex. I love you too. You’ll come for dinner soon?”

  “Soon,” I tell her, brushing moisture out of my eyes. “I promise.”

  “I’ll let you go, then,” she says. “If things go the way I think they will, plan to bring your friends over for dinner one night soon. I’d like to be introduced properly.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say. “Mom… you said Jamie was the first woman...” I can’t bring myself to say the rest, and Mom just laughs and laughs.

  “Honey, I think that’s something you kids would call ‘TMI’ so I’m going to hang up now. Bye, son.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  TMI indeed.

  It takes me an extra beat to shove aside the weirdest parts of the last ten minutes, so I pour another cup of coffee and take it back to the table, checking my phone just in case either one of them texted.

  No such luck.

  But that’s what Mom was saying about choices, right? So far, I’ve chosen to let Joelle blow me off. I’ve chosen to let Elliot keep running. And I keep choosing to put my heart in their hands with nothing to say about what they do once they have it.

  Part of that I can’t control. I fell in love with Joelle just as hard as I fell for Elliot all those years ago. They have my heart, both of them. I still don’t understand how it’s possible, but it’s not some half-and-half split.

  Maybe God just gave you a heart big enough for two.

  I smile, because that’s my mother’s voice in my head. But maybe, just maybe, she’s not wrong.

  And maybe it’s not the end of the world. I can see that, maybe I can convince Joelle and Elliot of it, too. At least enough that they’ll give us a real shot. It looks like I’ve made my choice. They’re it for me.

  The constant weight that’s been pressing down on my chest the last couple of days lifts and suddenly I can breathe again. Yeah, they’re it for me. Nothing in the world has ever felt more right in my world than that thought, except the three of us, being together. Now I just have to get Joelle and Elliot to see it, too.

  I’m dressed and halfway to the front door, keys in hand when the doorbell rings. I don’t recognize the car out front, so I check the peephole before yanking open the door to find my ex-fiancée shivering on my doorstep.

  “Diana? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Hi Alex,” she says, bru
shing her white-blonde bangs out of her eyes. “How are you?”

  “Right this minute, I’m confused,” I say before manners kick in. “I’m good. How are you?”

  “I’m good. Freezing,” she says with a smile. “Can I come in?”

  “Ah, I’m actually on my way out right now.”

  “Oh,” says Diana, clearly disappointed. “Well. I just thought I’d stop by. You didn’t return my calls. Or my message.”

  I stay busy, zipping up my coat and pulling the door shut behind me.

  Shouldn’t I bet upset right now? We haven’t seen each other since she screamed and called me a freak and threw her engagement ring back in my face. I was depressed for months after she left. Looking back now, our breakup wasn’t the reason I was so upset—which is a pretty terrible thing to realize about someone I’d once planned to spend my life with.

  “What do you want, Diana? I have somewhere I need to be.”

  She bites her lip, just the bottom left corner. She only does that when she’s really nervous. It used to make me hot. Now all I want is for her to spit out whatever she came here to say so she’ll leave and I can go find my lovers.

  Lovers. Lovers plural. Who’d have thought? I can’t help the grin and Diana spots it immediately. It prompts her to speak.

  “Okay. Okay. Alex, I came here because I want to give us another shot.”

  I’d been watching the road just in case Elliot was on his way back, but that declaration gets my full attention.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” she says, lifting her chin, regret all but written across her face. “Before we talk about that, though… I owe you an apology.”

  I can’t even speak because my surprise is so great.

  “I messed up,” she says, dropping her gaze briefly before meeting my eyes again. “I should never have said those things to you, or called you… those names. It took me a long time to realize it, and I’m so sorry for that. For all of it.”

  “You’re saying you’ve changed your mind about me being bisexual.”

  Diana nods. “It should never have taken me so long. I’m not a bigot. I have nothing against gay men, or lesbians, or whomever anybody wants. It’s none of my business, you know?” She wraps her arms around herself, hugging tight against the cold.