Loving Layne

by V. L. Locey

  I sipped and thought. Then I went out to my car, sat behind the wheel, and thought a bit more. The cold seeped into the Buick quickly, so I cranked the engine over for some heat. “Walk Don’t Run” by The Ventures was playing. Hot air blew into my face and over my feet. Ten minutes passed as I sat there lost in thought when my phone vibrated. I lifted up a buttock, fished my phone from my back pocket, and felt a fluttering in my breast seeing the incoming call was from Layne.

  “Hey,” I opened with, eyeing the road on the other side of a small flower bed.

  “Can you talk?”

  I stiffened a little. “Is there something wrong?” Dear Lord, had someone spied me pulling a Mata Hari sneaking all spy-like out his backdoor this morning?

  “The paternity test results just came back. Well, actually they’d been in my inbox overnight but…”

  I could hear his shrug. Right, so because of me being a slutty fag as Dillon coined me, Layne had missed the news for hours. My forehead met the steering wheel. My hat slid off my head to land on the floor by my feet.

  “Sorry for distracting you from the important things.”

  “There’s really nothing more important than you right now, Roman.”

  I snorted. “That’s sweet but yeah, there kind of is.”

  His sigh was legendary. “Okay, perhaps there are a few things that are equally as important. He’s my son, Roman. Ninety-nine point seven percent. I’m his father.” Another exhalation to rival the first. “Could this possibly get any more convoluted?”

  Eyes open, I stared at Grandpa Frank’s brown hat resting on a tidy floor mat. “I’m not sure how but sure, let’s say it can. Oh! The press can find out that we’re doing the rumba-bumba. That might add another layer of tawdry to things.”

  He snorted in sick amusement. “The way you phrase things…”

  “Yeah, it’s a gift.” A moment passed. “Do you want to stop seeing each other?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Good. Nice to know there might be one thing that’s not a miserable mess to come out of this whole nightmare. So, tell me, are you still in Paramus?”

  I lifted my head and bent down to pick up my hat. “Yeah, I just got done talking to Mrs. North. She spoke well of you.” I plunked my hat back to my head, my sight on a blue van idling at the intersection. “She wants me to go talk to Dillon now. I just…” I rolled my shoulder. “What do you think?”

  “I think we all need to talk to Dillon. Listen, I was thinking, and tell me if this is a stupid idea, but we’re playing Carolina tonight, a good team. It should be a tough game. Do you think if I put three tickets aside for you, Katie, and Dillon, that they’d come to the game? Maybe we could all have a late meal afterward? Or just drinks? I’d try reaching out to them but…”

  “No, I get it. I’m probably the best person to mediate things.”

  “Please tell me if you feel put upon and I’ll call Dillon myself.”

  I shook my head then realized Layne couldn’t see what I was doing. “No, no, let me make the offer. I promised Mrs. North if she sat with me I’d reach out to him. Maybe I can smooth things out a bit, but I am not relaying the paternity test results. That’s all on you.”

  “Yes of course,” he replied, his voice far less strained now. “Thank you, Roman. If they opt not to come, I’d love to have you use the tickets. Bring your folks or some friends.”

  “I’ll be there no matter if the Norths come or not. I’ve never been to a hockey game before. Also, I’d like to go home with you, if that’s not too forward?”

  “Please, forward away. I’d love to sneak you into my house. Good God, this really is pretty tawdry, isn’t it?”

  “Slutty, steamy, and scandalous, that’s us.” I had to chuckle. It was one of those instances where you laughed or you cried and crying sucked. It made my eyes red and my nose stuffy. “Okay, so I’m off to Dillon’s house. Wish me luck. And Layne, I know that you’re in shock over all this, but deep down, Dillon is a good guy, and you’re a great guy. Things will work out.”

  “I sure hope so. I feel as if I’ve been stumbling and falling to my face repeatedly over the past few weeks.” He did sound weary of heart.

  “King Solomon said the righteous man falleth seven times and riseth up again but the wicked are overthrown by calamity. Life is all about adversity and rising when we’re knocked down. Not to get all religious, but the Torah defines greatness not as someone who has succeeded but as someone who has persevered. It’s all about getting up one more time than you’ve fallen.”

  “I agree, wholeheartedly. You’re a smart man, Roman, thank you for coming into my life.”

  I felt the blush all the way from my toes to my kinky brown hair. “Not sure how smart I am but I do read a lot, and it was either quoting the Torah or tossing out some obscure statement from Captain Janeway that only I would get.”

  “You mean Kathryn Janeway, captain of the USS Voyager, NCC 74656, an intrepid class starship, who was the first Star Fleet Federation captain to successfully traverse the Delta quadrant?”

  My heart soared. “I so want to raise a puppy with you right now. We could name him Borg.”

  He laughed a little. “I like dogs. I have to go shower and grab a nap. Thank you for…well, for a lot of things but mostly just for being you. I’ll leave the tickets at will call for you. Why don’t we meet up at the Cinnamon Heart Café around eleven for a nightcap? It’s a small but secluded place with a large LBGT clientele.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll talk to Dillon but…”

  “I understand. Just let him know that I’m not the demon that he seems to think I am.”

  “I will trust me. See you tonight then.”

  We ended the call. I felt bereft and anxious, but my course lay before me. I took the left at the intersection in front of the strip mall instead of the right. Right would take me back to Trenton, left would take me to the Regency Hill low-income apartment building where Dillon and Mrs. North lived. They had a small two bedroom on the sixth floor of the older brick tower. I rode up with my hat in my hand, the elevator smelling a bit like dog and onions. The hall runners were worn, the walls in need of fresh paint. I shuffled down to 6-B and rapped on the door. The weight of a person coming to the door made the floorboard creak.

  I lifted my face so that Dillon could see me in the peephole. I knew he was on the other side since the floor had given him away, so I waited patiently. I would give him a few minutes, and then I would leave and that would be that. He pulled open the door, meeting me with crossed arms and a rather dark scowl. His clothes were wrinkled as if he’d slept in them, his hair lank, and his eyes red-rimmed.

  “Let me guess,” he said, slipping his bare foot behind the door in case, I guess, I pushed my way in. As if that would happen. I was too polite to barge into a home I wasn’t invited into. “Layne sent you.”

  “Actually, no, your mother did.” I took the same stance that he was in, and there we stood, looking at each other like two dimwits who were too proud to give an inch.

  “Why were you talking to my mother?”

  A baby down the hall started to wail then a small dog joined in. “To get some of the facts for a story I’m doing for our school paper. I’d like to talk to you.”

  “For the story?” His brows were tangled in confusion.

  “No, not for the story, for our friendship.” That reply took some of the starch out of his pinafore, to quote Grandpa Frank. The hard set of his jaw eased. He took a moment to think it over then moved his foot and stepped back. I pattered inside, smiling a little at the worn but clean apartment. The sofa where I’d spent many a night over long weekends or when Dillon and I were out too late to return to campus. The kitchen where Mrs. North had fed us too many times to count. The door to his bedroom, smaller than Harry Potter’s cupboard under the stairs which is why I bunked on the couch when I slept over. Nothing had changed yet everything had changed.

  I turned to look at h
im. He seemed as ill-at-ease as I did. The staring match went on for ages it seemed until he spoke up.

  “I’m sorry for saying you were slutty,” he murmured as he plunged his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, jeans that were too long for him and hid most of his feet. He liked his pants dragging on the ground. Why? I don’t know. Straight guys simply did not possess fashion sense. I placed my brown Fedora on the coffee table before I replied.

  “And I’m sorry for sleeping with Layne.” I wasn’t—not really. “Well, let me clarify since we’re hopefully being honest here.” Dillon nodded. “Okay, so I’m not sorry about the fact that I’m sleeping with Layne.”

  “Still?”

  “Yes, and if I’m lucky for a long time to come.” His face screwed up into a dark grimace that stayed for only a few seconds then it faded. Willfully I was sure. “We’re good together and he makes me happy. I am sorry that our being a couple is upsetting for you. I can see how it would be, and if there was anything that I could do to ease your pain, I would, but I’m not breaking up with him for you. I guess that’s callous but there it is.”

  He deflated, just like a balloon with a small pinhole. All the fight went out of him. He dropped down into a second-hand recliner, the one his mom usually sat in to watch TV and buried his face into his hands. I sat on the couch and waited, tension making my leg bounce uncontrollably.

  “I just don’t get it,” he mumbled into his palms before he picked up his head to look at me. “Not you and him, but yeah, I don’t get that either. He’s so fucking old, but whatever, if you get into wrinkled balls…no, not even then. Thinking about you and him makes me want to throw up.” I thought to argue my side but didn’t. There was no way to make a person see what you saw in a current lover. Hell, Dillon and I had been there a time or two when the tables had been turned, and it was him giving some girl I disliked the one-two-skippity-doo. “I just thought, well, I thought you’d have my back.”

  “I do!”

  “No, you have his back!”

  I crinkled my nose in aggravation. “I can support both of you, three of you if you include your mother, which you really should as she’s the one who hid this from you for twenty-two years.”

  His eyes drifted shut. He listed back, falling into the recliner like a felled elm tree. “There’s just too many secrets, too many reporters, too many damn ways to hate him.”

  “Maybe, and this is just a suggestion, you could try not hating him. He honestly did not know.” He gave me a regally nasty look. “He didn’t, Dillon, I’d swear on a stack of Bibles.”

  “Come on, Roman, he’d tell you the sky was purple, and you’d be skipping all over campus chirping about the pretty lilac sky.”

  “I resent that. I’m here to gather facts. Facts that your mother and I suspect, Layne’s mother, have been harboring for years. Now that it’s out, and yes you were a dick to come at him like you did at the auction,” he had the good grace to look ashamed at least, “maybe we can all work on getting things righted. He’s willing to try.”

  “Fuck him.” I opened my mouth. “No, don’t even go there.” I closed my mouth. “What could he possibly offer me, or Mom, at this stage?”

  “I don’t know, and neither will you if you summarily shut him out. Just give the man a chance, that’s all I’m saying. I know everyone is raw,” I said as my thoughts raced to Layne trying to play his game and deal with the news that he’s a father. “Maybe we could all meet somewhere and talk. No yelling or accusations, no hatred for things that took place before we were born. Just four adults trying to get to know each other, for each other’s sakes as well as our own. I know how much you yearned for a father, Dillon, you told me all the time. Well, you might have one now. Give him a chance.”

  He scowled at the ceiling, his arms lying over his chest. His long runner’s legs stretched out, and his toes bared to the world. When he didn’t reply, I stood then poked him in the sole of his foot. He jerked violently and threw a glower my way.

  “Layne has an olive branch. He’s going to leave three tickets to the game tonight at the will serve or will call or will do something window. I’m going. If you and your mom talk and decide to come, great! We’ll all chill and watch the game then go meet Layne for drinks at this discreet little club he knows. If you don’t show up, then so be it. I know he’ll be upset, and so will I, but I’ll also understand that you’re not ready. Whatever the case, I hope you do come.”

  I held out my hand. He studied it then grabbed it, giving it a crisp shake.

  “We’ll see,” he said and that had to be good enough. “Listen, this story you’re writing, don’t make my mother out to sound like some kind of whore. The papers and shit are twisting it around like that, and it’s pissing me off. Layne Coleman played his part.”

  “I would never do that, and maybe, just maybe, you should have considered the bright light this was going to shine on your mother before you acted like a brat and confronted Layne in front of a room full of people.”

  “Wow, someone is still mad.” He slumped down in his chair a bit further.

  “Someone is torn between three people he likes a great deal. Someone is trying to do right by everyone while working to maintain his journalistic integrity but still relay all the facts about someone’s friends and hopefully maybe boyfriend.”

  “Really? You see him as serious relationship material?” He shuddered theatrically.

  “I said the same thing about Jennie Zendo if you recall.” I gave him a shudder in return. “At least Layne isn’t following me around campus with a voodoo doll fitted with tiny running shoes.’

  “Okay, point made. Christ, Jennie was a lunatic, but she was great in bed. Don’t let him be your Jennie.”

  “There’s no chance of that. I’m off. See you…well, when I see you.”

  He nodded. I let myself out. The ball or maybe that should be the puck was in his court now. Ice. The puck was in his ice. Was that right? No, the puck didn’t go in the ice. Did it? Ugh. I was going to have to learn sport now that I was dating a sporting person. Lord watch over us all…

  Chapter Nine

  I like to pride myself on being a relatively smart man yet for some stupid reason, I came to a hockey game without arctic gear to swaddle up in. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I found my seat four rows back from two long benches where, I assumed, the teams sat surrounded by glass, and noted that lots of Jackals fans were in thick coats, hats, gloves, winter boots, and wrapped in blankets, all purple of course. Well, not all the Jackals fans were dressed for an expedition to the North Pole. Mostly it was the women. The men seemed to be impervious to the cold. Some had foregone shirts. Obviously those men with the bare chests that sported hand-painted letters that spelled JACKALS were about as intelligent as a bag of wet bread.

  Huddled up in my snappy tweed coat and a Fedora, I bemoaned my lack of fur-lined footwear or headgear as I sipped hot chocolate to try to bring the feeling back to my toes. I’d be a frozen block before the game even started. The things a man does to support the man he…

  My eyes widened. I blew into my drink. Wow, that was close. I’d almost used the L word. It was too soon for that, much too soon, and not at all the proper place and time. Layne’s and my lives were a churned chum bucket of upheaval and uncertainty. Maybe, someday, when things settled down and we were able to be open about this thing we had going, then perhaps I could drop the L word into a light dinner conversation. Perhaps it would go something like this…

  “So, Layne, good job making hockey last night. I think I am madly in love with you. Can you pass the pepper?”

  As wrapped up as I was in my thoughts, I never noticed the subtle shift in the fans until the lights in the Boynton Paints Arena dropped. Cup of cocoa cradled in my hands, I waited, the crowd growing restless, for what I had no idea. The excitement in the air was palpable. The eighteen thousand seat rink was nearly sold out. Probably the two empty seats on my left had ruined that achievement for the team. A sadness crept
into me, making my drink taste a bit bitter, but I forced the disappointment away. The choice had been Dillon’s. Obviously, he was not ready, but boy I had sure hoped he would—

  “Holy fuck!” I screamed in shock when the opening chords for some metal song made me lurch and spill my hot chocolate all over my loafers. The crowd jumped to their feet, purple towels whipping over their heads and pumping the air as the walls and floors thumped along to the song about kickstarting his heart. Shaking off my scalded fingers, I stood as well, wiping one hand then the other on my slacks, as the Jackals skated out onto the ice. Oh, okay. So the song was to introduce the team to the home fans. Got it. Oh and look, Layne’s face was up on the Jumbotron. Mm, he was just as breathtaking on the big screen as he was close-up and cuddled close.

  “Excuse me, sir, but can you tell me what number Layne Coleman wears?” I shouted over the boos that were now raining down on the Carolina Cobras, who were in bright green that made my eyeballs melt. The guy gave me a look that made me feel like a slug in a flower garden.

  “Are you serious, kid?” the man asked, the foam-rubber jackal face on his head looking down on me as well.

  “This is my first hockey game,” I shouted and his demeanor changed. A smile replaced a frown, and he dropped a meaty arm over my shoulder.

  “Well, you’re seated next to the right man. Been a season ticket holder since the expansion draft back in ’67 when the Jackals joined the league. Coleman wears number four, chosen way back in his high school days in homage to the great Bobby Orr, one of his idols growing up.”

  “Ah, well, good then.” He grinned widely, his thick mustache nearly covering his nose. “What’s an expansion draft and who is Bobby Orr?”

  He laughed so long I feared he might pass out and fall over the skinny lady in front of us. It took five minutes of dry, boring explanations about how hockey teams came to be and what the original six were, but we did get around to Layne’s number, his greatness, and how this man, whose name was Rob, thought the current bullshit about Layne running out on some chick twenty plus years ago was some kind of hatchet job by the rival Jersey team to sully the name of one of the greatest D-men to ever play the game. What did he care what Layne did when he was a sucking pup? Guy played his heart out. Who cared if he swung both ways because as long as he was still tapping women, he wasn’t totally gay.