Of course, my mouth didn’t listen to my brain. I was pretty sure I needed to be medicated.
“And I wonder why you… what?” I asked Vince.
He watched me for a moment before shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. Not right now.” His face went blank again, and I hated it. I hated the look on his face, and I hated not touching him when he was right in front of me. I hated feeling like I wasn’t good enough to be there to help him, like he didn’t think I could handle the shit he was going through.
“Why didn’t you just tell me about your mom?” I asked him quietly, cringing as I yet again made it about me without meaning to. I began to look for a way to make my exit.
His mouth thinned. “Not now, Paul. Please, just go. I can’t do this right now. I can’t focus on you and the rest of this shit at the same time. I just can’t.”
I nodded, but anger flared dangerously. “I see.” I wasn’t able to keep it from my face.
His eyes softened slightly. “It’s not… it’s not like that. I just… it’s not like that.”
“I don’t know how else it could be like,” I said, my voice hardening. “Obviously you don’t want me here, for whatever reason. You don’t think I can handle your shit. You don’t trust me enough to let me help you. But then, you’ve only known me a week, so I guess I can’t blame you.”
He took a step toward me, raising his hand. But then he stopped and dropped it back down to his side.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I get it. I’m sorry about your mom, Vince. I hope you’ll be okay. I really do. You know where I am if you need me.”
I turned and walked away.
I could hear Darren’s angry voice as he snapped at Vince, but I didn’t hear what he said. My face was burning and I needed to get out of his apartment. The entire time the awkwardness was taking place, I kept thinking how it was just the day before when he’d been above me, thrusting into me, a look on his face that suggested he’d found the only place that he ever wanted to be. It’s funny, really, how quickly things can change. A week ago, I didn’t even know his fucking name. A week ago, I was plain, boring, ordinary, bland Paul.
I envied that Paul. That Paul didn’t have anything in his heart that would have allowed it to break. That Paul was still blissfully unaware that opening up meant getting punched in the gut.
I thought about slamming the door behind me, but hell, I’m not that melodramatic, even if I’d already sunk down into the cliché that I was so desperate to avoid. You know the one: toward the final act when everything should be peachy and rosy but instead comes crashing down for a stupid reason that sounds really trite but hurts like a fucking bitch anyway.
So I just shut the door quietly, hearing Darren’s voice get louder before it got cut off.
It was hot outside, and I took a deep breath, taking in that heat. I rested my back against the door for a minute, trying to clear my head. Once I was sure I could walk without falling down, I moved toward my car. But I didn’t make it.
“Paul!”
I turned.
Darren was jogging toward me. For a second, I thought he was going to have his revenge for the way I sucker-punched him in the mouth, and I frantically looked around for any kind of weapon I could use to defend myself. But I was standing on the only patch of grass that must have existed in the state of Arizona, and I didn’t think grass stains were an effective defense, so I prepared myself to get my ass beat.
“You may take my life,” I sputtered at him as he approached, “but you’ll never take my freedom!”
He arched an eyebrow as he stopped a couple of feet away. “Did you just quote Braveheart at me?”
“Of course not,” I scoffed, even though I sort of did. “I’m sorry I punched your face.”
He rolled his eyes. “You didn’t even split my lip, Paul. It wasn’t that bad.”
“I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“Now you’re quoting Michael Jackson? What the hell did you smoke on the way over?”
Aha! Another chance! “Your dad’s pole,” I snarled at him. Then I winced. “That doesn’t work anymore considering your dad is Vince’s dad and the mayor of Tucson and has conservative evil running through his veins. No offense.”
“None taken? I think?”
“But, man, that must have really stuck in his craw to find out he had two gay sons.”
“Stuck in his craw? What are you, a steamboat captain?”
I grinned, forgetting for a moment that Vince was shut up in his apartment and that I was in the presence of the Homo Jock King. “No, but wouldn’t that be awesome? I’d wear a bow tie and have fancy facial hair and everything.”
“Andrew Taylor doesn’t know about me,” Darren said evenly.
My eyes widened. “He doesn’t even know you exist?” I whispered, feeling awful. “That… sucks.” In my head, I had this image of Darren’s mother being a young secretary who used to work for Andrew Taylor’s construction company and thought she was in love with a powerful man, only to get cast aside after a rough tryst in the bathroom of a Denny’s after a business meeting where they talked about different types of concrete. Saddened that she could never have the love of the man she needed, she quit her job, only to find out two months later that she was with child. Instead of blackmailing Andrew Taylor with it, she kept it to herself, wanting to have a connection to the only man that ever made her feel alive. To complete her sad, sad story, she must have died during childbirth just as Darren was born, and the last words on her lips would have been professing her love for Andrew. And then she died.
“You’ve been hanging around Vince too much,” he said with a scowl. “I don’t think you were this dense yesterday. He doesn’t know that I’m gay.”
“And your mom died giving birth to you,” I said knowingly. “It’s almost romantic.”
“What? My mom lives in Phoenix. She’s a nurse. Seriously, I never thought Vince’s brain could be contagious, but you should really go get yourself checked out.”
“Why doesn’t he know you’re gay?”
Darren snorted. “He doesn’t know a damn thing about me. I’ve talked to him a handful of times in the past few years. The last time he said anything to me was to remind me to keep my mouth shut around election time. Something about having a bastard child as the result of an affair not looking good to his constituents.”
“You should have told him you were gay, too,” I said, “just to see the reaction on his face. He should probably know that since homosexuality is hereditary, then he’s the common factor here and his spunk causes gayness.”
“I really don’t want to think about his spunk,” Darren groaned. “Why are you walking away right now?”
I was startled at the abrupt change in conversation. “Vince didn’t want me there. My turn. Why were you pressing him against the wall and making me think you were macking on each other when in actuality you’re brothers?”
He eyed me warily. “Vince was upset. I was trying to calm him down. This is harder on him than you realize.”
“Yeah, obviously I don’t know how hard this is on him because he hasn’t told me a thing.” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but it didn’t work very well.
Darren sighed again. “Paul… it’s not like… look. I’ve known who Vince was practically my whole life. We didn’t actually meet until a couple of years ago, but that’s still a couple of years I have on you. I know him, or at least I think I do. He hasn’t been able to find the words to tell you that he compartmentalizes everything about his life. Everything is cordoned off into its own section, and while they do converge, it makes him uncomfortable. But none more so when it comes to Lori and Andrew. They’ve given him shit all his life, or at least their indifference, and he doesn’t deal with that well. And then you came along and….”
“And what?”
He shook his head. “How can you not see it? Paul, whether you know it or not, you’ve changed everything about him. The way he sees things. The w
ay he reacts to them. He wants to make you proud, but he doesn’t want you to see his past.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat, only because I didn’t think breaking down in front of the Homo Jock King was the best course of action. “Everyone comes with a past,” I told him gruffly. “It helps make you who you are.”
Darren nodded. “And I agree with you. And that’s what I’ve told him. But Vince… he doesn’t see it like that. He sees you with your perfect family and your perfect life and he doesn’t know how he’s going to measure up to it, given where he comes from. He thinks you’re going to just focus on the bad instead of seeing all the good he has. And he has a lot of good, Paul.”
“He thinks my family and I are perfect?” I said, incredulous. “Jesus Christ, he’s spent time around all of us. How can he think we’re perfect? Every single one of us should probably be on Zoloft just to even us out! My grandmother has a homophobic parrot named Johnny Depp. We’re so far from perfect that perfect might as well be on the other side of the fucking moon. There’s a word for people like us. It’s called insanity.”
“Who needs normal when abnormal is the greatest thing in the world?” Darren asked with a shrug.
“That’s some bullshit reverse psychology you’ve got going on there,” I growled at him. “Has that ever really worked for you before?”
“Works on Vince all the time.”
I laughed, even though it felt kind of douchey to do so.
“He’s doing his damnedest, Paul, to keep you away from them, not because he’s ashamed of you, but because he’s ashamed of them. He thought if you knew who they were, you’d judge him based upon their actions and not his own. It might not have been the most levelheaded of thinking, but then Vince doesn’t think like most people. He didn’t want you to see them because he doesn’t like to show when he’s hurting. And he is hurting, regardless of how much they’ve offended him in the past. Vince can’t hate. He could never hate. And losing his mother is still hard on him.”
“I know,” I said, even though I didn’t. I never had to go through what he did. I never had to wonder if my parents cared about me or not. I never had to go through the drawn-out experience of losing one of them. I couldn’t know. I couldn’t have any idea. “Why are you being so nice to me? You haven’t said a damn thing to me in years.”
He rubbed his hands over his face. “Vince is important to me. You’re important to Vince. By proxy, you’re important to me now. If you do anything to hurt him, I’ll kill you. But….”
“But?”
“But what he’s doing to you now makes me want to knock him upside his head. Even if he thinks it’s for your own good, you don’t deserve to be treated this way, Paul. And I’m trying to make him see that.”
I was touched, more than I thought I could be. “You’re pretty weird yourself,” I told him, meaning it as a compliment.
“Thanks. I think. I just want you two crazy kids to make it.” He gave me a small smile.
“Uh-huh. And that’s the only reason?”
He blinked. “What else is there?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I teased. “A certain drag queen? One who happens to be my best friend in all the world? You could be using me to get close enough to spit some game.”
“I don’t spit,” he assured me. Then he blushed. Jesus, what is it about men in that family and blushing? It was pretty fucking hot. Er… from an empirical perspective. “Wow… that’s not what I meant to say.”
I almost choked. “I’m sure Sandy will be happy to hear that.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re such a horrible liar.”
“Vince was right about you, you know. I can see that now.”
I was curious. “What did he say?”
Darren laughed. “Well, when he finally stopped gushing like a little girl, he said you were, and I quote, ‘Pretty damn awesome.’”
“I am pretty damn awesome,” I told him confidently, feeling a warmth that had nothing to do with the heat of the day.
“Paul?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t give up on Vince, okay? You can’t. You just can’t. You have to promise.”
I took a step back. “I….” I didn’t think I was in a place to promise anything, though I wanted to. Darren could have been full of shit for all I knew, even with the earnest expression on his face that he’d had through almost the whole conversation. “That’s a big thing.”
He eyed me sadly and then opened his mouth and said stupid shit that I really didn’t need to hear. “He loves you, you know. I don’t know what you did, or what went through his mind when he first saw you, but he loves you. Already. He’s never done anything like that in his life. He’s never actually let anyone into his life, aside from me. And that took months before he had any sort of trust with me. You’ve changed him, Paul. And you can’t let him change back.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said as honest as I could, still reeling from Darren’s blunt words.
“You listened to him, which is more than he could say about most people. You didn’t find him to be ridiculous—”
“Yes, I did. Because he kind of is.” Awesomely so, but still ridiculous.
He glared at me. “Are you always this difficult?”
“Pretty much. It’s kind of my curse. I tend to take the road less traveled just to be a pain in the ass.”
“He’s going to need you.”
“So you and everyone else in the free world has said. He doesn’t seem to know that.”
He shook his head. “It’ll happen. Trust me. About thirty minutes after you left, his mom took a turn for the worse. She’s in a coma now. Her doctor doesn’t think she’s going to wake up. That’s why Vince was a little… distraught. I was holding him up to keep him from punching the wall.”
My jaw dropped. “I was just talking to her a couple of hours ago. How could she…?”
“It’s been expected,” Darren said. “His dad is there now, and Vince had to leave for a bit to clear his head. He’s going to go back.”
“Did she get to talk to him? Did she… say anything to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“I should go with him,” I decided. “I should be there for him.”
“He won’t let you,” Darren said kindly. “He doesn’t want you to—”
“Maybe I don’t give a fuck what he wants,” I interrupted. “Maybe I should just do what I think is right.”
“Don’t push this, Paul,” he warned. “He can’t be worried about what you’re thinking when he’s starting to grieve.”
I was pissed off again. “So what the fuck do you want me to do?”
“For now? Nothing. I’ll have his back until he needs you.”
I couldn’t help the jealousy I felt at that, but I couldn’t ignore the logic, either. Darren knew him better than I did. Darren had cared for him longer than I had. Darren was his family. I was not. It burned, but he was right. “Fine,” I relented. “But you call me if something happens and I’m needed. You promise?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I will. I promise.”
“Does he know you’re out here?”
He looked down at his feet. “I kind of yelled at him for being a dick to you and he went to his room and slammed the door shut. He doesn’t know. We’re supposed to go back to the hospital in a few. I think he just needs time to cool off.”
I thought fast. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Yes.” No hesitation as he looked back up at me.
“Will you tell him something for me?”
“What?”
“Just… can you tell him that I said it’s real? That if I have to, I’ll tell him every day that it’s real. Just… can you tell him that for me?”
“Sure, Paul.”
I nodded.
And then I left.
Chapter 20
Lost And Found
SANDY was still at my house when I got back. H
e looked up from the couch as I opened the front door, and I swear to God, it was like he could see everything all at once. My face screwed up tightly as I began to shake, and he leaped up and surrounded me, whispering quietly in my ear like he was my shelter.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel like crying. I don’t think I was sad. I don’t think I was angry; at least, not fully. I think I was tired and worried and sick to my stomach. I was trying to fight, as I’d done the entire way home, the urge to say “screw it” and drive to the hospital almost overwhelming—promises and Vince be damned. I knew that if something had happened to my mom, he would be one of the few people I’d want to be there. This led to spending a few minutes considering just when I’d started thinking of Vince as part of my family. It was made worse when I realized I didn’t want to think of a time when he wouldn’t be.
Sandy petted my hair as my head was in his lap. I turned to lie on my back, staring up at him, and he smiled sweetly down at me. Wheels was asleep on the floor near my hand, where he’d been since I got home, and I stroked his fur. I felt better. Well, a little better.
“I already called in to work,” Sandy said quietly. “I let them know that you both would be needing some time off, at least next week. Vince will be good to go a little longer than you. You have vacation time saved, right?”
I nodded. “Didn’t really have plans to use it, so that’s okay. Thank you.”
He smiled softly. “Of course, baby doll. I know this is hard on you too.”
“It’s not about me, though, and I think I kind of made it that way.”
He snorted. “You mean you asked for something for yourself for the first time in your life? You’re right, Paul. That’s so selfish of you. How dare you.”
“Har har. Hysterical it had to happen right at this moment.”