Who I Used to Be

by Alexa Land

  He surprised me by saying, “You’re right.”

  “Oh my God, you’re actually agreeing with me!”

  “I have to. It’s just like you said, we’ve been more than friends for quite a while, and when you kissed me again, I knew I couldn’t keep fighting it.” He got up and circled the work bench, and when I tilted my face to look up at him, he kissed me, slowly and tenderly. It was our third kiss, but it felt like a beginning.

  He traced my jaw with his fingertips and said, “We’re going to make sure your recovery comes first. I want our relationship to be a source of support, not a distraction. And we really are going to take it slowly. If we can do that, then I see no reason to keep denying this.”

  I smiled at him and said, “I guess we just need to decide what taking it slowly looks like. Do we need to make up some ground rules?”

  TJ grinned a little and said, “Nah, we’ll just do what we’ve been doing. We’ll make it up as we go along.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  TJ and I paused on the sidewalk in front of Nana Dombruso’s huge Victorian mansion the following Sunday night. It was a sight to behold. The trim and all the elaborate period details were white, and the façade had been painted top to bottom in a sheer, shimmering rainbow. The stretch limo in the driveway matched the house. Nana became an ally when a couple of her grandsons turned out to be gay, and that had blossomed into a fierce love of the entire community.

  My companion muttered, “Tell me again why I agreed to this.”

  “Because you love Trevor, and you want to spend time with your son and with his husband’s family, since they’re important to him.”

  He sighed quietly. “I can’t even argue with that.”

  I turned to look at him. There was worry in his eyes, and he sighed quietly when I gathered him into my arms. I asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I guess. I’m not going to have a panic attack or anything, but situations like this make me anxious.”

  “I’m sorry, TJ. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard.”

  “No, it’s good you did. I’ve become so withdrawn over the last few years, pretty much to avoid exactly what I’m feeling right now. But I don’t want to keep doing that. So far it’s just big, out-of-control social situations like this that freak me out, but what if it snowballs? What would I do if it got so bad that I couldn’t even leave my apartment?”

  “Have you talked to Murphy about this?”

  “Nah. He spends all day listening to people’s problems. He shouldn’t have to listen to mine, too.”

  “Why would you ask him to help me, but not try to help yourself?”

  “He’s a drug and alcohol counselor, so it made sense to ask him to help you. On top of that, he and I have been friends for years. It wouldn’t be appropriate for him to provide counseling for me when we’re so close.”

  “Okay, makes sense.” I brushed his dark hair back from his face as I asked, “So, what do you want to do about tonight? If you’re too nervous, we don’t have to go in. You could text Trevor and ask him to come to dinner at your place tomorrow night instead.”

  “No, I can do this. I just need a minute.”

  He rested his forehead against mine, and after a moment he kissed me gently. His lips were so soft, and they tasted slightly sweet from his lip balm. I ran my fingers into his hair while he held me in his arms. The kiss was tender and undemanding. It made me feel good, so warm and safe and cared for, and we both got lost in it for a while.

  TJ and I might have kept kissing on the sidewalk for the next hour if we hadn’t been startled by the sound of Nana’s front door banging open. Trevor’s husband Vincent ran out of the house and took the stairs two at a time. He darted across the yard and vaulted over the waist-high wrought iron fence (surprisingly gracefully, for someone dressed in a suit). As he crossed the sidewalk less than ten feet from us, we could hear him muttering something that sounded an awful lot like, “I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him.” He didn’t seem to notice we were there. Vincent got behind the wheel of a big SUV parked at the curb and the engine roared to life. The tires squealed as he took off like a shot.

  “I wonder what that’s about,” I said.

  “No clue.”

  A moment later, about a dozen people spilled out the open front door. I glanced at them, then did a double-take. TJ’s mouth fell open, and I muttered, “What the actual fuck?”

  More than half of Nana’s family and friends, including Nana herself, were dressed in big, inflatable dick costumes, some pink, others brown. The costumes covered them head to toe, with only their arms, feet and faces sticking out. Everyone was in a big hurry, and the dick contingent had to waddle to keep up, since the costumes fit pretty snugly around the ankles. The faster they tried to go, the more the huge, inflated balls at their feet bounced and jiggled.

  A strangled exclamation from across the street caught my attention, and I glanced over my shoulder. Nana’s neighbor, a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit, was standing in his driveway, staring at the spectacle. He was bright red, and a vein bulged in his forehead. I knew he and Nana had a long history of conflict, stemming from the fact that he was an uptight, bigoted douche, and I grinned as I turned back to my friends.

  Jessie spotted TJ and me as he shuffled to the limo in a dick suit and called, “Come on, guys, get in! We need to go after Vincent!” He opened the driver’s side door, thought for a moment, and shimmied the costume up until the balls were at his waist, revealing a pair of red briefs and turquoise sneakers. It took a bit of doing to stuff himself behind the wheel, and in the process he popped his suit. As the dick went limp, Jessie said, “Aw!”

  We hurried to the limo’s back door, where Nana was struggling to hop inside. She was barely five feet tall, and the giant pink suit completely engulfed her. “Damn, this shit is hard,” she complained. Her husband Ollie was also dressed like a pink willie, and he was already in the limo. He grabbed her hands and pulled, but her giant, inflated head bounced off the doorframe and she exclaimed, “I can’t get it in!” I fought back a laugh.

  Her grandson Dante appeared at Nana’s side. Since he was about six-foot-four, his brown dick costume only came to mid-calf, revealing bare, hairy legs and black dress shoes and socks. He picked up Nana and tilted her horizontally, and she put her arms out like Superman as he tried to insert her into the open doorway. But he couldn’t get close enough in that inflated suit, and they bounced off the limo a couple times. Finally, he ended up tossing her inside. She landed on top of Ollie and three of her little senior girlfriends. Since all of them were wearing inflatable suits, they provided a soft landing. Nana bounced off, then rolled onto her backside and flashed a thumbs-up.

  As Dante awkwardly inserted himself into the rainbow limo, Josh, Trevor, and Josh’s best friend Emma rushed up to us, dressed in street clothes. Josh was texting frantically, and Trevor told us, “Get in. We need to go corral my husband.”

  I asked, “Is there enough room?” The interior of the limo appeared to be wall-to-wall dicks.

  “We just have to squeeze in. Hurry! This is an emergency,” Emma yelled as she pushed into the back of the vehicle.

  The rest of us followed her and sat on the floor. The moment the door was closed, Jessie backed out of the driveway, whipped the limo around, and took off down the street fast enough to make me grab for something to hold on to. Jessie’s husband Kai sat up front with him, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He grinned at us through the connecting window, then looked at Jessie and pulled up the tip of the deflated dick costume, which made it stand in a point on Jessie’s head.

  As I held on to TJ with one hand and the limo’s mini fridge with the other, I asked, “What exactly is happening here?”

  “Well,” Josh said, finally putting his phone down and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “one of my dads is on a blind rampage. He’s headed to the mall at the south end of town so he can murder my boyfriend. Emma here let the news slip that I was dating a senior, a
nd it was like waving a red cape in front of a bull.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Emma said. “I wasn’t thinking!” She turned to TJ and me and explained, “I was rambling on about a cute Harry Potter-themed purse I want for my birthday, and Josh said he’d seen them at Trendz. That’s a store in the mall. Then stupid me said, ‘Maybe your boyfriend can get me a discount since he works there.’ And his dads were sitting right next to us! Duh! I totally forgot Josh was keeping him a secret. After I let it slip, Vincent demanded details, and I totally caved. He can be so intense!” She put her arm around Josh’s shoulders and rested her head against his. “I’m so sorry. I’m a terrible friend.”

  Josh gave her a hug and said, “No you’re not. You just made a mistake tonight. Before that, you did an awesome job keeping it a secret.”

  “I tried. Keeping quiet for three whole months was a personal record,” she said.

  “Three months,” Trevor yelled as his eyes went wide. Josh dropped his head and sighed, and his father said, “Once we get Vincent calmed down, the three of us are going to have a long talk. Since when do you sneak around and keep secrets from us? I was just telling Zachary a few days ago that you and I always talk about everything. Apparently I was dead wrong!”

  “Is it any wonder I kept it a secret? Look what’s happening right now!” Josh waved his hand around to indicate his surroundings.

  Trevor exclaimed, “Half the reason Vincent’s so upset is because this was a total blindside! We didn’t even know you were dating anyone, let alone a senior!”

  “Who cares if he’s a senior?”

  “You’re only fourteen, Josh!”

  “So? You’re six years younger than your husband! Plus, you seemed okay with Zachary and TJ getting together, and talk about an age gap!” Josh glanced at us and said, “I’m not judging. I think it’s awesome you two are dating. I’m just saying.”

  His dad sounded exasperated as he explained, “But we’re all adults, so our ages don’t matter!”

  “Pretty hypocritical, if you ask me,” Josh said, crossing his arms over his chest. Trevor sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face.

  An awkward silence descended on our group. After a moment, I asked, “Um, why are half of you dressed like dicks?”

  Nana chimed in from the other side of the limo, “Because I didn’t have enough costumes to go around.”

  Dante pressed his eyes shut for a moment, then took a deep breath and told me, “Nana’s helping plan a fall carnival at the LGBT community center. She bought these costumes for relay races and wanted to see if anyone could actually run in them. Little did we know my brother would fly off the handle and we’d all have to chase him down while dressed like a pack of peckers.”

  I just had to ask. “Are all of you wearing nothing but underwear beneath those costumes?” Dante fought an eye roll and nodded, and I said, “Why is that, exactly?”

  “When we tried them fully dressed, our clothes kept jamming up the fans that keep these things inflated,” he explained. “So Nana had the brilliant idea to try them this way, even though I explained that people at the carnival aren’t going to want to strip down before they do a relay race.”

  “Sure they are,” Nana told her grandson. “Not everyone’s a stick in the mud like you, Dante!”

  While the two of them bickered, Emma turned to Josh and tucked her long, brown hair behind her ears as she asked, “Did you get a hold of Darwin?”

  Josh shook his head. “He has to turn his phone off when he’s working. I was hoping he might be on break or something, but he hasn’t texted me back.”

  “Maybe you should call the store. He needs a heads up,” she said.

  “I thought about that, but he’ll get fired if he receives a personal phone call at work. His boss is evil.”

  “Dar might be the one who answers, though. If someone else picks up the phone, just ask what time they close.”

  “Good idea.” Josh found the number, and when the call connected, he said, “Darwin! Thank God. So, um, one of my dads is on his way there, and he’s pissed because he found out we’re dating. I’m so sorry.”

  Emma leaned over and yelled into the phone, “It was my fault! I accidentally let it slip! I’m sorry, Dar!”

  Josh said, “That was Em, in case you couldn’t tell. Can you maybe say you don’t feel well and go home early or something? He’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.” He listened for a moment, then said, “I don’t know what he’s going to do when he gets there. I just know it’s going to be completely embarrassing. I’m about five minutes behind him, along with way too many of my relatives. If we’re lucky, he’ll park at the wrong mall entrance, so I might be able to get to you before he does. It’s not like he knows where the shop’s located.” He listened for a few more seconds, then said, “Okay. See you soon.”

  When he disconnected, Emma asked, “Is he going home early?”

  “He can’t. He’s the only one there.”

  “Crap.”

  “You know,” Nana said, “it’s not like Vincent’s going to murder the boy. He’ll probably just put the fear of God into him to make sure he doesn’t step out of line.”

  Josh said, “How would my boyfriend step out of line? It’s not like the big, bad senior has been taking advantage of the dumb, innocent, naïve freshman or something. Give me a little credit!”

  One of Nana’s senior girlfriends said, as she fluffed the tip of her dick costume, “I didn’t even know you were gay, Joshie.”

  The teen turned red as he muttered, “Technically, I’m not. I’m pansexual.”

  The senior thought about that, then said, “So you got a thing for Peter Pan? I guess I could see that. I had a thing for Tarzan once. Made no difference that he was a fictional character.”

  Nana sighed dramatically and said, “I thought I explained this, Gladys. If you’re pansexual it means you’re attracted to everybody!”

  Gladys echoed, “Everybody! What, like even Freddy Krueger, and Nixon, and men that wear socks with sandals?”

  Josh fell forward and face-planted on the floor of the limo while Trevor explained, “If you’re pansexual, you’re attracted to individuals regardless of their sex or gender identity. Right, Josh?”

  His son sat up and raised an eyebrow as he said, “Why are you asking me? Like I’m suddenly the official spokesperson for pansexuals everywhere?” Trevor sighed and began rubbing his forehead, as if a major headache was brewing.

  When we reached the mall, the limo pulled right up to the door Josh indicated, and Jessie told us he and Kai would meet us as soon as they found a place to park. Josh threw the door open, and he and Emma took off at a dead sprint with Trevor right on their heels. TJ picked up my hand and we hurried after them, while Nana and the rest of the dick contingent tried to untangle themselves from the back of the limo.

  “This isn’t how I expected dinner to go,” TJ told me as we jogged through the mall.

  “Me neither. This is way better.”

  He smiled at that, then looked around and asked, “Did you see which way they went?”

  “They took a left just past the food court.” The mall wasn’t very crowded on a Sunday night, but everyone we ran past stopped and stared. I had to grin. Just wait until they got a look at the dick parade bringing up the rear.

  When we rounded the corner, we spotted Josh and Emma way ahead of us. A tall, thin teenager dressed all in black was standing in front of one of the shops and looking around like he was waiting for someone. He was pale, and his face was partly concealed by a shock of jet black hair, so he probably would have looked Goth even without the black jeans and T-shirt.

  He held his arms out when he saw Josh. The two of them embraced, and Emma got a hug too before Josh’s dad caught up to them. Trevor went right up to Darwin and yelled, “Do you want to explain to me why you thought it was okay to sneak around with my fourteen-year-old son behind my back?”

  Josh looked shocked, and asked, “What are you doing? I thought you
were the rational one! And here I was, worried to death about what my other dad was going to do!”

  “This isn’t about being rational, it’s about keeping you safe! Obviously this punk knew what he was doing was wrong,” Trevor said. “Otherwise why would he feel the need to sneak around?”

  Josh got between his father and boyfriend and said, “We had our reasons, Dad!”

  “Great! You can tell me all about them while you’re grounded for the next three months!”

  “Three months! Come on!”

  “That’s one for every month you snuck around.”

  Josh exclaimed, “That’s insane!”

  “Want to go for six?”

  “Stop taking it out on Josh,” Darwin yelled, stepping around his boyfriend. “I’m the one you’re mad at!”

  “Damn right I am,” Trevor growled.

  “Well, bring it on, dude!” The boy squared his shoulders and got right in Trevor’s face, like he was trying to provoke a fight. Trevor took a step back, narrowed his eyes, and lunged forward.

  Just then, Vincent appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed his husband and lifted him off his feet as he asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m about to teach this delinquent a valuable life lesson about what happens when you mess with our family!”

  “You need to take a deep breath,” Vincent said.

  Trevor turned to look at his husband when Vincent put him down, and asked, “What, suddenly you’re all Zen about this? You ran out of the house ready to kill that punk.”

  “Oh, I’m still ready to kill him. But that doesn’t mean you should.”

  “Why do you get to kill him, but not me?”

  Darwin turned to Josh and said, “Your dads are arguing about which one gets to kill me.” He then glanced over his boyfriend’s shoulder and exclaimed, “What the hell?”