Chapter 11
Even though things between Lance and me had never been better, they had also never been weirder. There was this unspoken sense that we’d turned a corner in our . . . friendship, but neither of us was bold enough to want to define what that really meant. He was around a lot more, and I had to keep reminding myself not to get used to him being there.
Saturday afternoon, he surprised me by coming back after his delivery to help me with prep.
“I should study, but if I see another chem formula my eyeballs are going to pop out,” he said as he helped me dice vegetables for mixed veggie hash in the morning.
“We don’t want that.” I smiled at him. He was wearing a “Keep Portland Weird” T-shirt and tight jeans with boots. He looked much more suited for a fun Saturday night instead of one stuck in a kitchen with me.
“You know, if you want to go out with your friends or something, I’d understand you needing to blow off steam after your hard week.”
“I’m certainly planning to blow something later.” He looked me up and down, made me feel like I was wearing something far more attractive than flannel and an apron. “You got beer? I could go for some of that ale you had last week.”
“We can get some.” I wanted to do something nice for him. “Maybe instead of pizza we could go by the brewery.”
I’d let him get his carnivore on, maybe bring back some beer for later. In all the meals we’d shared, we had yet to actually eat at a restaurant together. A few weeks ago, I would have worried about what message that would send about our supposedly casual thing, but my desire to do something nice for Lance outweighed such doubts.
“Maybe.” He gave me that look again that said he was planning on jumping my bones the second we were done here. That worked for me, too. I chopped faster.
“Hey,” he said a while later. “I was curious. When’s your birthday?”
“July fourth. My dad was bitterly disappointed that I didn’t fulfill my patriotic destiny with military service. Why? When’s yours?”
“Two weeks from tomorrow.” His smile was tentative.
“You another year old is a definite win.” Thick sweat gathered in the small of my back.
“You’re not that old.” He flicked an onion piece at me, which did nothing to defuse the ticking bomb in my gut.
“Anyway, I told you how my family is huge on birthdays, right? My mom will do a big meal. It won’t be just family either—a few of my other friends will be there.” He said the last part carefully, like he was trying hard to lump me in with his buddies, but the tension in his shoulders gave him away.
“I’m not sure—”
“I’d really like you to come.” His eyes had gone all chocolate Labrador on me, and I had to look away. My gaze landed on his hands, which were shaking ever so slightly. Fuck.
“I wouldn’t want to ruin your birthday with your family lighting into you for . . . seeing someone so much older.” No matter what either of us called it, I was pretty sure neither of us could play things completely platonic.
“If you mean my parents, they already know about us.”
“They do?” I whacked a carrot far harder than I needed to.
“Uh, Chris? I’ve been over almost every day for a couple of weeks. And I’m not exactly ashamed of being friends with you.”
“More of that common courtesy of keeping them informed where you are?” My knife hit the counter with a loud clatter. Crap.
“Something like that.” He let out a huff. “They’re always interested in my life. Just how family is, you know?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I busied myself scraping vegetables into the prep tray. For the first time since I’d met him, my kitchen felt too small for the both of us.
“Shit. I forgot about your folks.” Dropping his knife, he came behind me, rubbing my back. His sympathy was almost more than I could bear.
“It’s no biggie.”
“My family’s not like yours. You’d like them. I swear. My cousin Dana married this Muslim dude and everyone still danced at her wedding. Some people might tease us about the age difference, but it would all be in fun.”
That was what bothered me the most—not that they would make a scene but the possibility that I would like them. I’d liked Randy’s family; his mom had always given me a shirt at Christmas and his sister made great coconut cake at Easter. But, in the end, it hadn’t mattered how much I enjoyed his family. They’d rolled up the welcome mat as soon as Randy and I started having problems.
Lance was still leaving in August. And his leaving was going to kill me. I could admit that to myself. He was a drug I couldn’t quit and I knew withdrawal was going to be a bitch, but hell if I could make myself cut back. But what if I actually liked his family? I was already losing Lance. Nothing could change that. And getting more entangled would only give me more things to miss.
I honestly wasn’t sure which would be worse—a glimpse of something that would never be or a reminder of all the ways in which I was terrible for Lance.
“This is important to me,” Lance said softly, talking to my shoulder blades.
Aw. Hell. All my careful reasons galloped away in the face of his sadness. “Can I think about it?”
“I guess.” He stepped away, going back to the cutting board, his shoulders slumped.
My gut churned. I remembered being a kid and how much I’d hated “we’ll see” answers. And when Randy and I were together, I’d quickly learned that “let me think” just meant “I haven’t thought of a good enough excuse.” And here I was doing that to Lance.
“Hey.” I went over to him, wrapping my arms around him. “Don’t be sad. Just let me . . . get my head around the idea. I’m not trying to brush you off.”
“Okay,” he said to the floor.
“I promise we’ll do something special to celebrate no matter what, okay?”
He’d been stressed most of the week with tests, but now he seemed downright morose. And I hated that it was my fault. Hated knowing that I could have fixed things with a single word, but a million small doubts kept me from uttering the one he most wanted to hear.
“It’s not a big deal.” He shrugged in my arms.
“Would you like to go out tonight?” The thought I’d had earlier of doing dinner out seemed inadequate, but it was all I had.
“You mean dancing?” His voice lightened considerably and he spun in my arms to offer a tentative smile.
Oh, hell. I’d meant dinner, but I couldn’t disappoint him twice in a single evening. I nodded. “Yeah. We could get a drink after dinner, if you’d like.”
“I’d like.” He wound his arms around my neck. “Can we go to Slaughters? Some of my friends will probably be there. It would be nice to say hi. I haven’t been out with them in ages.”
Fuck. Deep in my chest, something throbbed. If I made an excuse, he would give me a tight smile. The sadness in his eyes would linger. We’d probably go get a beer, maybe come home and have halfhearted sex. Or he might walk out. The throbbing pain worsened. If he was smart—and he was a fucking genius—he wouldn’t stick around with an old dude like me. He should be out with his friends every weekend. This could be it—the moment when he’d wise up.
“Okay.” Or it could be the moment I said yes, prolonging the pain for both of us.
“Thank you.” He kissed my cheek. “It’ll be fun. And if Everest and Lane are there, this way you’d already know them at my party. You know, if you come.”
“Yeah,” I said much too sharply, and his smile wavered. I tightened my arms around him. “Tell me about Everest and Lane. Is Lane the one you were telling me about with the Vespa?”
“You remembered! Yeah, that’s him.”
We went back to our work, with Lance telling me all about his friends. His movements were noticeably faster now that he had the incentive of going out. My own motions felt as futile as trying to carve a winter squash with a butter knife.
Had I known dress up would have been part of the deal, I would have made an excuse not to go dancing and suffered the consequences. But a long shower with Lance left me sated enough that I let him talk me into wearing a hunter green shirt that had been hiding in the back of my closet. I wasn’t even sure it was my shirt, but I wasn’t about to go mentioning Randy. The evening already had enough conversational land mines.
“I love this one because the sleeves are short enough to really show off your tats,” he said, touching my arm as I grabbed my motorcycle jacket from the rack in the hall.
Yeah, it was definitely Randy’s shirt; he was both shorter and a little slimmer than me.
“Is this all because I won’t let you post a pic of my ink on the Internet?”
“Yup.” He leaned up to kiss my neck. “You won’t let me show my friends the hotness, so you force me to produce the in-person version.”
“In-person interaction? Does your generation even know how to do that?” I turned to face him, making my eyes go all big.
“I dunno. Do they even let people of your age drive still?” He waggled his eyebrows at my bike keys.
And then we were both laughing and kissing at the same time. The ride to the bar was similarly pleasant, and we kept the good mood going until it was our turn to give our drink order. He got his fruity little cocktail, I got my whiskey, and the say-hi-to-Lance-sweepstakes got started.
Lance seemed to know everyone. He was like a human mobile hotspot, drawing a small crowd of people who all wanted a part of him. Straight girls, twinks, drag queens, even a few middle-aged fools like me—everyone had a hug for Lance. He seemed to eat up the attention, preening and joking. Through it all, he kept an arm around me, but I figured it had less to do with possession and more with making sure I didn’t bolt.
Which I wasn’t in danger of doing; while young, his friends were fun. It reminded me of the best parts of being out with a group—I got to chill and watch their interactions and little jokes while not being pressured to make small talk of my own. It was weird how being with Lance reminded me of parts of my younger years I kind of missed—the very things I liked most about hanging out with him were another set of reasons why I needed to let him go. He needed to be free to have this stage of his life without some old hippy holding him back.
After a bit, we danced, the two of us together and then in a group with his friends. That I kind of hated. It made my limbs feel too long and heavy and my head hurt. I felt like a poser dancing with a bunch of twenty-year-olds.
But watching Lance dance was far from a chore. I got another drink and hung out at the rail watching him groove. He laughed and spun and made people around him smile.
All that sparkle is mine. Ice water landed smack on top of that happy little thought. Not for long. I couldn’t own him. He wasn’t mine. It was just a beautiful illusion, one from which I was powerless to look away.
Leaving the crowded floor, Lance came and wrapped his arms around me. “You having a good time?”
“Yeah. Just tired. I was thinking I might head out soon.”
His giddy smile wavered. “Oh. Yeah. I guess I’m tired, too.”
“No, you’re not.” I kissed his forehead. “Stay. Have fun with your friends. Sleep in tomorrow.”
“Oh.” He sucked on his lower lip, working it with his teeth. “Would you want me to go home after, or could I come over? Wake you up?”
The sane thing would be to send him home to his own bed. But I could tell from the uncertainty in his eyes what he needed to hear from me.
“Come over. Give me a dirty wake-up. But you’d better put me back to sleep.” I tried to make my smile bright enough to push past all his doubts.
“If you’re sure . . .”
“You deserve some fun.”
“Well . . . okay. But . . .” His eyes darted around the hallway. “You can trust me. You know that, right? I mean, I might dance with some people, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“You’re sweet.” I kissed him. Randy would have taken my disappearance as tacit permission to get fresh tail. “And yeah, dance with people. Then come home and whisper all about it to me.”
“That would turn you on?”
“Knowing I’m the one who gets you at the end of the night? Hell yes.” I’d never had this particular fantasy before, but now my dick throbbed and I couldn’t wait for him to crawl into my bed.
“Okay, then.” He gave me a nervous little grin. “And uh . . . the same goes for you, right?”
“What? No hooking up with other people?”
He nodded, hope and uncertainty at war in his eyes.
“You don’t have to worry about that, beautiful.”
“Good. I . . . don’t think I share well.”
“You won’t have to.” I gave him a lingering kiss, sweeping my tongue into his mouth. He tasted like fruit and rum and like mine.
I headed home a bit weirded out—I had never in any of my relationships, whether years’ long or quickie short, promised exclusivity to someone. But as much as I knew I was disappointing him with the birthday thing, I knew I could easily give him this. Hell, I hadn’t so much as looked at anyone else since our first hookup. As I walked up the steps to my apartment, a ticking clock echoed in my brain, its chime reaching all the way down to my marrow, counting the seconds until this was over. But until that moment, knowing he was mine, all mine, almost made the coming pain worth it. Felt like I was stockpiling all the joy of spring against the reality of a long cold winter without him.