Winner: The Mathesons Book 4

by Declan Rhodes

  I rolled onto my back, and Jamie didn’t wake. He lay with his arms and upper body draped across me while his cheek rested like dead weight on the left side of my chest. His low, steady breathing should have comforted me, but instead, I kept thinking about the doubts about Jamie’s character that I’d held close for so long.

  We never did resolve my primary question, but I was too scared to ask. If I found out that Jamie did get bumped to the head of the line for a job at Star One, I didn’t know what that meant. Guilt feelings about having sex with that kind of a guy raised a lump in the back of my throat

  On the other hand, I knew young people getting pushed ahead for reasons that had little to with their job skills happened so often that I wondered if I was too harsh and judgmental when I thought about Jamie. When I read the note in the envelope that Charles gave me at dinner; it muddied the waters even further. All that the letter inside said was how impressed he was with my work and what a “fine young man” I was. Confusion reigned while Jamie slept blissfully in bed with me resting on my body.

  For the rest of our time in Los Angeles, I was quieter than usual, and Jamie recognized it. He asked me at least three different times if I were okay. I fudged the truth and answered, “Yes,” every time.

  I worried that he would corner me and force out a confession, but he remained cool and calm around me for the rest of the trip. We had one more night in the hotel, and Jamie didn’t ask me for a repeat of the night before. I didn’t feel rejected. I was still his work partner, and I knew that we had to sort it out one way or another once we were back in Dallas. I could wait.

  Jamie brought me back to the present on the plane when he asked, “Are you going to look for a management job once this is all over?”

  “I’ve thought about it. I think I’d like to lead the art department for a smaller firm.”

  “Are you planning to leave Dallas?”

  I thought I saw trepidation in Jamie’s eyes, and that made me feel good. He didn’t want me to go. I knew that was the motivation behind the question.

  I said, “I don’t think I could leave any time soon. I know that I want to wait at least until Tony is out of high school before I leave the area. What about you?”

  Jamie nodded, and I watched the tension in his shoulders relax. “Dallas is starting to feel like home.”

  “I think that sounds like a good thing. It must be hard to feel like you’re a stranger where you live.”

  Jamie leaned out into the aisle and looked ahead of us and then behind. I didn’t know what he hoped to see, but when he turned his attention back to me, I listened carefully.

  Jamie asked, “Do you know what I’d like to do when we get back to Dallas?”

  “I don’t live inside your head, so I guess I don’t know.”

  Jamie rubbed the side of his cheek. “I’d like to start cleaning up my act. Staying away from the bars for a while has been a good thing. I’ve got good patterns set up, and I think we’re excellent work partners.”

  I waited for him to move beyond talking about work, but he didn’t. After feeling a twinge of disappointment, I decided to take what Jamie offered and not expect more. The advertising collaborations would give us plenty of time to work out the personal side of our relationship.

  Minutes after we pulled our suitcases off the luggage carousel back at the airport in Dallas, Jamie said, “I guess this is goodbye for now, but I’ll see you in the morning at Star One.”

  “Yep, I’ll be there.”

  I didn’t know whether there was more until Jamie offered a hug. It wasn’t an erotic one. The hug was genuine and affectionate but didn’t come with sexual innuendo. It was enough for the moment.

  I thought I saw Jamie start to choke up, but he turned away quickly mumbling, “See ya, Angelo.”

  When I arrived home and pulled into the family parking lot behind Moretti’s, I was surprised that no customers were gathered on the sidewalk out front along the street. It was already past 6:00 p.m., and the early dinner rush should have been well underway. My parents’ car was there. I thought that was some sort of good sign. All kinds of thoughts began to race through my head. The worst was the possibility that Dad was sick or some other emergency happened for my family.

  As I stepped up to the back door of the building to lead to the staircase up to our family’s apartment, everything was silent. It was eerie. An icy sensation crept up my spine.

  I stopped halfway up the staircase and called, “Ma! Tony!”

  There was no sound at all. I listened for the TV and heard nothing. As soon as I stepped into the living room, my heart stopped when Tony leaped from behind the recliner followed by my parents and my cousins from Fort Worth, six of the eight, along with Uncle Lorenzo and Aunt Sofia. They all shouted, “Welcome home, Angelo!!”

  I mumbled, “Oh, my God…” as Tony stepped up to me, offering a powerful hug that nearly knocked me down.

  My dad was next with a big hug. “My son, the successful businessman!”

  I asked, “Is this for me?”

  “It’s all for you, my angel,” said Ma. “I made the gingersnap tiramisu just for you!”

  I couldn’t believe there was such a celebration for me. It was almost like I’d gotten married or something. Everyone congratulated me on the trip to California and success with advertising campaigns for Star One.

  Ma went all out in collaboration with Dad to create a grand dinner fit for a king. Aunt Sofia brought three large salads to add to the mounds of food on the antique buffet table set up along one side of our family dining room.

  Tony stepped up to me holding a bottle of Pop Orange in his hand. He asked, “So did you survive a trip with Jamie?”

  I pointed at the bottle. “Where did you get that? I thought they only sold it out in California.”

  Tony grinned from ear to ear. “I showed one of my friends the little clip I did for you. Star One mounted it on YouTube. One of them told me they’d seen Pop Orange at a little fancy food shop. It’s not bad stuff. Do you want a bottle?”

  “Of course! And yeah, the trip with Jamie was fine.”

  All of the hoopla with my family managed to push him out of my mind for almost an hour, but Tony brought it all back. I wondered how Jamie was doing alone in his apartment. For the first time since I’d met him, part of me missed his company.

  Jamie didn’t leave my mind for the rest of the dinner celebration. I wondered what it would be like with him at my side. I didn’t know whether my family would welcome him or not.

  As I took a huge bowl of pasta bolognese passed by Tony, the reality of being in the closet with my family and its conflict with thoughts about Jamie clouded my thoughts even further. Ma leaned partway across the table and asked, “Angelo, are you in there? Your thoughts look far away. Did you leave something in California?”

  I sighed and shook my head. Immediately, I was disgusted at my dismissal of her comment. She was honest with me and concerned. Ignoring her interest in my wellbeing wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t like me. If my thoughts about something I was hiding took me away from such a fantastic family event, I needed to do something about it.

  Looking around the table at the cheerful faces of my parents, my closest aunt and uncle, six cousins, and Tony, I wondered if the time was near. When I thought about the possibility of coming out in the past, I always pictured the spread of the news from one relative to the next, and it chilled me to the bone. I hated the lack of control over stories about me that spread that way. If I told everyone at the same time, I knew that they would all hear the same thing.

  While I dug I twirled a bite of pasta onto my fork, I looked at my hand, and it was shaking. I knew that they wouldn’t kick me out of the family like happened in some coming out stories I heard, but I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. Although some young men my age moved far away from their parents both geographically and emotionally, the Morettis were still close, and I loved it that way.

  Tony, sitting next to me, elbowed me. He wh
ispered, “What’s wrong with you? You almost look scared.”

  I couldn’t wait any longer. A special moment for the news wouldn’t arrive. I spoke up about twice as loud as necessary. “Ma, Dad, I have something I need to tell everybody.”

  Dad looked up with noodles hanging halfway out of his mouth. He slurped them up between his lips and dabbed with his napkin without saying a word. Ma gingerly set her fork down beside her plant.

  Uncle Lorenzo asked, “Is this a private matter? We can all step out for a few minutes.”

  Aunt Sofia started to scoot her chair back from the vast dining room table holding twelve diners. I held my hand up. “No, stay. I need to tell everyone.”

  I smiled when Tony put a hand on my thigh under the table. My little brother was already there for support without even knowing what I planned to say. It gave me that added little boost I needed to open my mouth and share with the most important people in my life.

  Without a whisper, and in a surprisingly strong tone of a voice, I said, “I’m gay. I’ve known for a long time, and I want all of you to know. I won’t be dating women because I’m gay.”

  I closed my mouth and stared down at my plate, waiting. I didn’t know who might speak first. Nobody did. Instead, Tony made the first sound. He started to clap. After a few seconds of the sound of one person clapping, the whole table joined in. I looked up and saw only smiling faces. As I turned toward Dad at one end of the table, he nodded, and I saw a smile on his face.

  When the applause began to die down, I spoke up again. My voice was more hesitant than it was for my announcement. I asked, “Does this mean it’s okay?”

  Glancing in the other direction across the table, I saw my cousin Anna looking first in one direction and then in the other. She said, “I hope it’s not embarrassing to say it, but I don’t think this is a big surprise.” Tony chuckled at my side, and Anna added, “I’m glad you said it in front of all of us. I feel honored. This is a big thing for you, isn’t it?”

  I whispered, “Huge.”

  Dad held his hands out to either side to calm the chatter that started to rise around the table. He said, “Angelo, you’re my son. I’m proud of you. This is who you are, and you wouldn’t say it lightly. We all love you.”

  As soon as he stopped talking, Ma leaned across the table and asked, “Are you in love?”

  After all of the relatives were gone, before Tony went to bed, he stopped me outside the door to my bedroom and said, “It wasn’t a surprise to me, but congratulations big brother. I’ve got a question, though.”

  I looked back into his eyes and wondered if my little brother had a confession to make, too. “Sure, go ahead and ask.”

  He didn’t have any secrets to tell. He said, “I understand why you backed Ma out of your personal life, but is there a thing with Jamie? Is that what part of this is about?”

  I nervously bounced back and forth from one foot to the other. “Damn, I bet you can already tell. The truthful answer is I don’t know. We have some things to discuss.”

  “But you hope so?”

  “Yeah…maybe.”

  Climbing into bed later that night after I’d finished talking to Tony, I thought harder about Ma’s question. I wasn’t in love, but I had feelings that I needed to sort out. I had a lot of affection for Jamie, and I didn’t want our time in bed to be a one-time thing. I knew that I wanted a chance to go on a date like a real couple, but I thought I needed to wait for a couple of weeks before I rocked the boat. It might not work, and it could disrupt our work, but we needed to give it a chance.

  Jamie was the best thing about going to work every morning. We made sure we spent some time together every day even if we didn’t eat lunch together. The rest of my time at work was growing more complicated. The compliments in the letter from Charles were only the beginning. He was practically showering me with words of praise any time he saw me. It was so frequent that it embarrassed me. As I thought about him while lying in bed, I calmed down by reassuring myself there were worse things than having a serious fan of my work in upper management.

  I slipped further under the sheets and pulled a blanket up my chin. Slowly, a huge smile spread across my face. At the moment that I said I was gay, a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I thought that I could float to the ceiling if somebody didn’t hold me down.

  Despite the confusion about Jamie, the world looked like a perfect place. My career was on the fast track upward. I didn’t know where it would ultimately lead. I only knew that I was on the rise, and that was a great thing.

  I also didn’t have any secrets left with the most important people in my lives. They knew who I was, and they all still supported me and loved me. All of my cousins at the dinner chimed in with praise. Anna, the oldest, was 23, and Eddie, the youngest, was only 10, but he still understood that he’d seen something extraordinary. He gave me a warm hug before his family went home to Fort Worth.

  17

  Jamie

  I tried to be as calm around Angelo as he was around me, but it was difficult. We had some of the best sex I’d ever had out in Los Angeles, and I tried to put it out of my head. Our work was intense, and it called for concentration.

  We worked nearly 12-hour days the first week after returning from our trip. The pace was intense. Angelo and I had the demands of our regular Star One projects plus the special efforts supervised by Blackmoor. He kept our noses to the grindstone.

  My next big surprise arrived on Wednesday after the return from L.A. I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket to see if I had any notes from Angelo. We’d planned to meet for an hour after the regular Star One Day ended to discuss the next steps forward. As I stared at the screen, a brand new message appeared, but it wasn’t Angelo. It was my oldest brother, Mason. I read:

  “Hey, Jamie! I know this is last minute, but you know me. I’m flying into Dallas on Friday. I have a client meeting on Sunday (yeah, I know, crazy), but I’d love to spend the weekend with my little brother. Would that work for you?”

  I stared at the message for a moment and re-read it. My big brother was like a hurricane on the horizon. I didn’t need anything else to keep me busy, but Mason was flying in and expected to be a last-minute guest.

  For a hasty moment, I considered saying that I was too busy, but I knew that it would be challenging to turn my brother down. They’d never let me forget it at the holidays. Mason considered himself the younger generation leader of my family, and often he was correct in his analysis. Before concentrating on the impact on the rest of my life, I typed back:

  “Sure! Would you like me to meet you at the airport? It’s your fault if my place is a mess. I’ve only got two days to clean up.”

  Mason was full of energy and excitement when he emerged from the airport concourse to greet me. He wrapped me up in his long, muscular arms and nearly lifted me off the ground. My big brother was about half an inch shorter than me, and he had broad shoulders like all of the Matheson men. The primary difference between us was Mason’s bulky frame like Tate instead of the slim-waist build that Benji and I got from Mom.

  Mason exclaimed, “Jamie! It feels like a long time, but I know that I saw you at Christmas. That was only a couple of months back. How’s Dallas? So far it’s a lot warmer than Shady Valley, and there’s no snow.”

  I chuckled softly. “I still always think about you living in L.A. I forget about you and Kyle up there in the mountains. At least that makes me not feel guilty about missing you last weekend in California. How’s the ski season?”

  “Plenty of snow, so it’s great. The business client I’m meeting here in Dallas isn’t one for Matheson and Greene. I’m here representing Kyle’s business at the resort. One of those ultra-wealthy Texans is considering a long-term contract for an annual retreat he hosts for a group of his similarly-loaded friends. They might choose the Hideaway as their headquarters. It would be a huge boost to the business, so I’m going to charm the man into a contract. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to wor
k. Once in a while, the best plans fall through.”

  “I’ll wish you all the best. You know that you’re a little hard to resist. I’m sure that’s why Kyle sent you. He understands your charms, and he couldn’t tell you no either.”

  As we waited for Mason’s luggage, he said, “I hate to talk all about me, but one more thing. You have to promise you won’t tell Kyle that I said anything. We’re still discussing it.”

  I cringed. I didn’t know whether I wanted to hear about something Mason did that he couldn’t tell his husband. I knew that his ability to resist handsome men when he was single was about as low as mine. I hoped he’d changed as a married man, but I curled my fingers in tight at my side while I waited for the news.

  “I won’t tell anyone. You know that.”

  “You wouldn’t tell anybody but Benji. In this case, that’s okay.”

  I exhaled slightly. I didn’t think that Mason would tell me about an affair and say it was okay to tell Benji about it. Maybe he was discussing something entirely different with Kyle.

  Mason shook his head. “I can’t keep it all to myself. It’s about this wedding stuff. I understand Kyle wanting to have it and all, but it’s driving me crazy. Not only do we have to sort out the details for our marriage, but we also have to coordinate everything with Tate and Simon. Do you know how long it takes for Tate to decide on anything? I think paint dries faster.”

  I relaxed. Wedding stress as a topic of discussion was something I could handle. “You didn’t hear it from me if anyone questions you, but I’ve got a suggestion.” I asked, “Why don’t you work around Tate and have Simon make the decisions? I don’t mean that you should keep secrets from Tate, but if he sees you moving forward, he’ll speak up about any concerns. Tate isn’t quiet. You know that.”