by S A Sommers
I just had no idea how to approach the “move in with me” conversation. I’d never ever had to think about it before. And I didn’t know if just two months was really enough.
“Well, thank you for taking MC to the vet today.”
“You know he loves her.” I smiled. “He’s always happy to see a happy ending for a street cat.”
“That he is,” Chase said. “I wonder how he makes any money to stay in business.”
“Because there are people like Mrs. Colmanetti who call him all hours of the day asking about Mimi’s hang nail.”
“It’s Marguerite Magnificent. Not Mimi.”
I leveled a gaze at him, and he cracked up laughing. “Okay, fine. Point taken.”
I cleared my throat. “So. I was thinking.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
That was one of the most threatening knocks I’d ever heard. And I had been on the wrong end of police knocks. I looked at Chase, who seemed confused.
“You weren’t expecting anyone?” I asked.
“No…are they looking for you maybe?”
“Shit, I hope not,” I mumbled.
He headed over the door, putting MC back on her perch at the back of the couch. The bang! came again, and he hesitated to pull it open.
“Don’t wait,” I said. “If the cops want in, they’ll break the door.”
“Cops?” His eyes snapped to mine.
“Mistaken identity, or bad address,” I said. “Not that I think you’re dealing drugs or committing felonies.”
“Right.”
He peeked through the peephole and gasped. I saw his hand tighten on the door, but not actually move to open it.
“Chase?”
They banged on the door again.
He finally seemed to come out of his trance and yanked the door open before there was another bang. The person on the other side had their hand up as if they were going to do just that.
“Rider.” There was nothing nice or polite about my boyfriend’s voice at that moment. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’m here to find you.”
“Well, you found me. Now fuck off and lose my address.”
He went to slam the door, but Rider—whoever the hell he was—put his hand out and slammed it back open. “I don’t fucking want to be here, gay boy. So you’re gonna hear me out.”
I cleared my throat and folded my arms. I was a big man, and I wasn’t afraid to use that to defend Chase. “Rethink your words right now, Rider, or I’ll make sure you forget this address.”
“Holy shit…” He stepped back and his eyes traveled up my body, finally reaching my hair.
“Do I meet your approval?”
His eyes snapped back to Chase. “Is that…is he…”
“Rider, this my boyfriend, Marcus. Marcus, this is my brother, Rider.”
Brother. Well.
“You really shacked up with a…guy?”
“We aren’t shacked up,” Chase said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He stared at Chase for a moment and then sighed. “Can I come in?”
“Are you going to dislocate my shoulder again?”
“I don’t want to be here, Chase. At all. I hate the city, I dislike your lifestyle choice, and I have a life back in Illinois I’d like to get back to.”
He let go of the door and walked back toward the kitchen. Rider was a good six inches shorter than me, but his stank attitude made up for it. I watched him walk into the living room and slammed the door behind him.
MC sniffed at him and walked out of the room into the bedroom. She meowed once and Proust and Pollux came running after her.
Ha. Cat had good taste and sense.
I followed behind him into the kitchen where Chase had pulled out three beers and handed one to me, smacking the other on the table.
Rider seemed to get the idea quickly, and sat down. I slipped myself behind Chase and rested one hand on his shoulder, letting him know I was there, and held the beer in the other. He leaned back a bit against me.
“Talk, Rider. The sooner you do—”
“You have to come home.”
He snorted. “I have to do no such thing. Twelve years since you helped literally throw me out the door nothing but my high school backpack and the clothes I was wearing. I had to beg Mom to give me my bank book and my passport! I slept in a barn overnight and waited for you assholes to leave so I could ask for what was mine.”
“You need to come home,” he repeated.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me—”
“Dad’s dying.”
There was a heartbeat of silence. Chase folded his arms. “So?”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“I have a phone.”
“Come on, Chase! He wants to see you one last time before he goes. He’s dying. He’s got less than six months to live. Can’t you give him this?”
“Give him what? The chance to yell at me? To threaten me with conversion therapy? To tell me in person that I’m not his son, and I deserve every bad thing that ever happened to me?”
Rider took a drink from the bottle. “I don’t want you to come back. I don’t. But this is all Dad has talked about. You won’t answer your phone, you won’t return messages, and I had absolutely no choice but to come here and see you. I don’t care. You’re dead to me, choosing to be gay. But Dad…I care about him. I want to see him happy. And making him happy right now means talking to you. In person.”
Chase took a drink of his beer. “How long do I have to think about this?”
“He’s dying!”
“Six months you said?”
“Jesus, Chase.”
He leaned up from me. “Get this straight, right now, Brother. You heaved me out the front door after that shit of a mayor’s son came and told you I tried to make a move on him. I never, ever, never did. You never asked my side of the story. You and Dad just wanted the fag out of the house. You didn’t even know I was gay until Jarrit showed up bitching that I had tagged his ass. And this is the reason why I never came out to you.” Taking a deep breath, he leaned back against me. “So yes. I get time to think about whether I want to grant my father his dying wish because he couldn’t even give me my dignity as a human.”
Rider sipped the beer again, thinking. “Do you think you’ll need a long time?”
“Are you for real?” he asked.
“I was coming to get you and go right back home,” Rider said. “I have no interest in being here longer than I have to.”
“Afraid you might catch the gays?” I lifted an eyebrow.
“You people are disgusting.”
I bit my tongue. There was nothing good going to come out of my mouth.
“I need time to think. And I would never go back in the same car as you, Rider. Not in a million years.” Chase rubbed his hand up and down his arm. “You can stay here overnight because I know you can’t afford a hotel in the city—and won’t try to find one, or you can turn around and leave right now. Either way, I won’t be riding with you.”
“If I stay here, where are you sleeping?”
He cocked his head. “At my boyfriend’s. Across the hall.”
“You share a bed?”
“Seriously? Do you share one with your wife?”
“Yeah, but like…we’re not gay.”
I blinked a few times. “I’m not even sure what the hell that means.”
“It’s not natural.”
I was pretty sure I sprained my eyes rolling them. “You can crash here. Or you can leave. But one thing is for sure. Stop making idiotic homophobic comments like that. We’re gay, it doesn’t spread like ebola. You’re not going to suddenly want to hump every male you see.”
“You shared…Chase’s bed?”
I merely lifted an eyebrow.
“Ew.”
“We’re normal healthy males with a pretty good sex drive,” Chase said. “And we don’t owe you our sexual history.”
Rider c
hugged the beer. “I’m not staying. Answer your fucking phone. I’m heading back to Illinois and you can either show up for your dying father or not. Either way, I am done with you.”
“I was done with you a long time ago.” Chase nodded.
Rider slammed the beer bottle on the table and headed for the door. Neither of us moved to see him out, and the door slammed a moment later.
In the next heartbeat, Chase had his face buried in my neck, and I could feel the sobs racking his body. I wrapped my arms around him, and just held him against me. It took him a good long few minutes to start to calm down.
“No time limit,” I whispered. “Just breathe for me.”
His breath was short, more gasps than breaths at first, but slowly, as I ran my hand up and down his back, his breathing started to normalize.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“No,” I answered. “Absolutely not. Sorry is not allowed. You did nothing wrong. Your brother just barged into your life after…twelve years?, and there’s no reason to be sorry.”
“I cannot believe he showed up here!” Chase’s voice went from upset to indignant. “How dare he? Just invite himself back into my life after all this time! It doesn’t work that way! He doesn’t get to come back and treat me like shit and think that I’m going kowtow to him!”
I nodded. “You’re right. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“I didn’t get a single call from him. I never got a voice mail. And I know they have the right number because my mother has called me on and off for the past twelve years. So he is a liar, and I don’t know what he thinks he’s trying to accomplish.”
“He seems like every other homophobe I’ve ever met,” I answered. “They think you are less than human and by deigning to come into your life again he has somehow made you better. Toxic hyper-masculinity.”
“Is he fucking crying?”
I whipped my head up to see Rider standing in the doorway of the kitchen. I pulled Chase behind me. “Who the fuck let you back in?”
“Door was open—”
“You just fucking walked out! In this part of the world, you always knock and ask permission. And right now, you do not have permission to be in here!”
He threw something on the table. “For the record, the only people in town who ever want to see your face again are Mom and Dad. Everyone else is perfectly happy having the town fag gone for good.”
“Get out!”
“Fuck you, cocksucker,” he snapped.
I stepped forward and drew up to my full height. “Would you like me to show you how good I am at that? Because, honey, I’ll have you screaming my name in a under a minute.”
He ran. I was surprised there wasn’t cartoon dust behind him as he fled.
I heard a sob-chuckle from behind me, and turned back to Chase leaning against the counter, a hand over his mouth. He was wiping tears from his eyes while he was trying not to laugh. “Honey?”
I chuckled too. “Sometimes, I play the gay card.”
“Well, honey, you can make me scream your name any time,” Chase said, grabbing the envelope on the table. “Lock the door?”
With a grunt, I hurried to the door before the shithead reappeared. Chase was standing next to the kitchen table holding the contents of the envelope in his hand.
Pictures, and a short note.
Chase,
I have no idea if your brother can convince you to come back, but I thought you might want these pictures before I throw them out. I don’t want to, but I don’t know what to do with them anymore.
Mom
And in his hand were dozens of pictures of baby Chase, from birth to high school. Him and his father, his mother, his brother. Candids from parties, summers, holidays, first day of school.
“These are all freshly printed,” he whispered. “Mom had a digital camera from when we were little. She printed these off.”
“To manipulate you?”
“I…I don’t think so. I think she did it to remind me.” He looked up and there were tears in his deep blue eyes. “I don’t need to be reminded. I never ever forgot them.”
I pulled out the phone in my pocket.
Marcus: Dad. I need a favor.
Daaaad: What’s up, Son?
Marcus: We need someone to watch the animals and can we borrow a car? Family emergency.
Daaaad: One of us will be down tomorrow.
CHASE
DAWN ROMANO FOLDED HER ARMS around me and pulled me into a tight hug.
“Chase, I’m so glad I finally got to meet you. I wish this could be a better time,” she said.
I could feel her sincerity in my very bones, and since I had been an emotional wreck anyway for the past eighteen hours, my brain decided it was fine to start crying.
Again.
“Oh, Chase,” she whispered.
“Mrs. Romano—”
“It’s Dawn, darling,” she said.
“I’m sorry I’m such a mess, Dawn,” I said. “I don’t know how to feel about any of this.”
“Don’t try to figure that out right now,” she said. “You’ll have plenty of time to do that on the drive and while you’re there.”
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay with all these animals?”
“Psht. Whatever,” she said, waving me off. “We have three dogs, four cats, and chickens. Damn chickens. Thanks to Christy’s new abandoned hobby.” She looked around the apartment. “At least I won’t have to hear that fucking rooster every morning.”
I choked. Marcus’ mother swore.
“So, I’ll be sleeping in my son’s place, but since he seems to have no ability to decorate, or hell, even purchase furniture, I’ll probably be over here most of the time. Are you all right with that?”
“I can’t say no—”
“You most certainly can,” she said.
“I don’t want to say no,” I amended with a smile, smearing the remains of the tears off my cheeks.
She nodded. “Do either of the cats need special care?”
“No, just a lot of petting. Proust can get very kitteny.”
“Pollux still for his twice a day minimum walks?”
“Yes, and a quick pee break before bed.”
She smiled and took a quick peek in the cabinets. “I hope you don’t mind. Since I’ll be over here and my son still eats off paper plates in his place…”
“Of course,” I answered. I really should have been offended by this woman coming in here and taking over, nosing through my cabinets, opening my fridge, but I was not. Not in the least.
“What time will Marcus be here?”
“Just about five-thirty,” I answered.
“You’re driving tonight?”
“First thing in the morning.” I cleared my throat. “So, Marcus will just crash on the couch tonight and we’ll—”
“Why?” Dawn cocked her head and looked at him.
“Why…what?”
“Why would my son sleep on the couch?”
“Because…you’re taking the bed…and…”
She smirked. “And you have a single bed?”
I choked again. “What?”
Pulling out two coffee mugs, she set about making the brew. “I graduated high school in 1979, Chase. I graduated college in 1983. I know all about sex. More, I know all about unmarried sex.”
“Holy TMI,” I mumbled.
“And if my son hasn’t gotten to know you in the Biblical sense, and make it worth your while, you walk away from him, you hear me?”
I wasn’t sure I could stop choking on the air—it was all me trying not to laugh and die from embarrassment at the same time. “The Biblical sense? Don’t they always say that God hates—”
“Figs, Chase. God hates figs.”
The laugh bubbled out of me and I didn’t want to stop it. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind why Marcus was the way he was. This woman was amazing, and whether he and I hung on and made it work, I wanted this kind of
acceptance in my life.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “Marcus will crash with me. The animals can hang here, and this actually works better because we won’t wake you up. Are you sure that you’re okay with us taking the car?”
“I have his hostage upstate, so if he crashes, eh. I get the Shelby.”
My eyebrow shot up. “He has a Shelby?”
“Fully restored 1965 with his grandfather,” she said. “Metallic blue with a white racing stripe.”
My mouth fell open. “I had no idea!”
“That’s our insurance policy when he borrows one of ours. He can’t drive that to Illinois, so he borrows my Camry for the trip.” Dawn smiled and poured two mugs of coffee. “Works for me, I don’t mind driving the Shelby. Sexy ass car.”
“Ohgod, pleasedon’ttellme youanddad defiledmycar?”
Marcus was standing in the doorway with a hand over his eyes. Dawn lifted the mug of coffee and sniffed before taking a sip.
“Mom?”
She put the mug on the counter enthusiastically. “Oh, for God’s sake, Marc, of course we didn’t. Jesus. We only take it out to Make Out Point.”
“Mom!”
“When it comes to sex, my son is a prude.”
“I’m a prude when my mother is telling my boyfriend about her sex life.” He walked over and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Thank you for coming down, Mother. Please stop talking about sex?”
“One more question,” she said, and looked between us. “Condoms?”
“Yes! Of course. Always,” Marcus said.
She patted his cheek. “Very good, Marcus. I approve of this one.”
Marcus ran his hand down his face. “Mom… Did you give him the ‘don’t ghost my son’ speech yet?”
“No, because I don’t feel like I have to give him the ‘don’t fuck my son without a condom’ speech.”
Marcus whirled and stared at me. “Do you have whiskey? I need whiskey. Or stronger. Moonshine? Rubbing alcohol? Sterno?”
I had no idea how to handle this. His mother swore, she was open with sex, and she was a total mama bear—don’t fuck with her cubs.
I loved her already.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “You don’t. We’re always safe and I have no intention of ghosting your son. I’m afraid I’ve rather come to like him and I need his support trying to deal with my family.”