Chapter Four

 

CAY

 

Over the past two weeks or so, Bryan had pulled back. Not a lot. He said he had a lot of work to catch up on, meetings to attend and more than one project to finish, and I had no reason to doubt his word. But it still stung.

The second time—in a row—he wanted to meet at a restaurant instead of go together, I asked if I was moving too fast. He said no, but his voice shook while he said it, so I let it drop. After ten days, I was going through withdrawal. We hadn’t been back to my place once in that time, and I still didn’t know where he lived.

Or his last name.

But I hadn’t told him mine either.

And he hadn’t asked.

Despite the way I felt about him, it was starting to look like my perfect man had something to hide. Or at least a reason to be cautious. Just because he didn’t have a kid in the picture—not a visible one, anyway—that didn’t mean he was completely free to take up with a stranger.

Maybe sleeping in isn’t the best way to start today—especially since I can’t go back to sleep.

I stuffed my worries away and got out of bed. I was going to have breakfast with the gals and then meet him at Pride. If I was lucky, I’d convince Bry to go dancing afterward. Dancing is the best foreplay in the world, and I had started to feel a little desperate. I needed to touch him, to kiss him, to feel his—

Before I could take hold of my morning “hello” from downstairs, someone knocked on the door. I leaped out of bed and barely remembered to grab a pair of shorts to jump into on the way. I yanked the door open and there were the two women in my life, all decked out in their rainbow attire.

“A bit underdressed, don’t you think?” Val drawled. Her wide eyes and the half step she took back when the door burst open said she wasn’t as casual about it as she sounded.

“Dad, are you just getting up?”

“Um, yeah. Come in and I’ll get dressed.”

Mac came in, but Val stayed in the hallway. “I’m dropping her off. Obviously you don’t remember, so I’ll remind you that you’re taking her to Pride and she’s coming with me at six so you can have some…adult…fun of your own.”

“Oh. Sorry. Busy week. Guess I did forget.”

Mac started playing one of her new songs on my guitar so she must have wanted to listen. When she wanted to block us out, she opted for keyboards and headphones.

“He’s not here, is he?”

“No.” I smoothed my hair down the best I could and waited for the rest. Didn’t want to let Val know how much I wanted to end this conversation; she’d smell blood in the water and we’d be here talking about it until she needed to leave and meet the rest of the band.

“Okay.” She looked past me, and I turned to Mac too, grateful for the diversion. “Have fun and don’t ditch your father.”

Mac nodded and looked from her mother to me and back again. I felt like I should have known what she was thinking by the look on her face, but my intuition didn’t feel especially reliable lately.

Val left, and I pressed my forehead against the door for a few seconds. When I turned around, Mac stood and leaned the guitar against the couch.

“You okay, Dad?”

“Yeah. Let me grab a shower and—”

She practically ran into me and wrapped her arms around me.

“You might want to wait until after the shower to do this.”

She made a scoffing sound. “I hugged you after that mud marathon. This is nothing compared to that. And I can tell you need it.”

I rested my cheek on the top of her head and returned her embrace. “Thanks, cupcake. Sorry I forgot you were coming over this morning.”

“You were supposed to come pick me up. That’s why Mom was so pissy. It’s okay. I know you didn’t forget me.”

I squeezed her and she “oofed” like I’d squeezed the air from her. “I’d never forget about you. I love you.”

“Did you and Bryan break up?”

“What? No.” Maybe I didn’t need to say that quite so loudly, but apparently I needed to convince myself.

“Because—I love you, too, but you sound sad.”

“Not awake yet. I’ll get with the program.”

“Will he be there?”

“Not sure. He’s busy…a project for work.”

She pulled back and studied my face. “Did he tell you what he does?”

“No. And I didn’t ask. If he wants to talk about it, then we will.”

“That’s a strange deal you have going there, Dad. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. But whatever he’s doing, it’s gotta be more important than customer service crap—”

“Hey. What is it you always tell me? About the importance of specific jobs…”

I groaned, but a small part of me was glad she’d been listening. We can’t all be doctors or lawyers or legal assistants like Val who gets paid for sticking it to the man—in the form of the Social Security Administration, which routinely denies even the most disabled and destitute applicants—and the last thing I wanted was for Mac to hate on herself for the way she earned a living.

“No small jobs, only assholes who make you feel bad for not making as much money as they do.”

“Good boy. Now go take your shower and take me to Pride.”

 

By the time we got to the Waterfront, there was a long line at the gate. As we gradually closed in on the festival, Mac’s chatter became higher pitched and she talked faster. Her head had been swiveling since we got there, so I guessed she was looking for someone. I didn’t guess, though, that she’d turn to me with a serious expression and say:

“Dad. I’m bi. And I have some gender things going on too, but am not ready to talk about that yet.”

It only took me a second to wrap her in a hug. “Thanks for telling me, Mac. I love you.”

She hadn’t stopped wiggling, so I let her go, and she smiled at me. “Mom knows.”

“I’m glad.” I kissed her forehead and brushed a string of rainbow feathers she had clipped into her hair away from her face. “Anytime you want to talk—about anything—let me know.”

“Thanks, Dad.” She smiled and then whirled and raised her hand to wave. “Bryan! Over here.” She grinned at me as she stepped clear of my embrace.

Before I could decide whether to scold her for playing me, I saw him. My brain stuttered on Mac’s news, but only for a few seconds. If Mac didn’t want to talk about her coming out, I was fine with that. Well. Fine for now.

Okay. Not really fine. But if she needs time, she gets it. It’ll give me time to get my head around my little girl growing up, plus…everything else.

I hope.

When he stepped out from under the tree and came toward us, it was all I could do not to meet him halfway. Bryan was wearing his lavender T-shirt; it and his salt and strawberry hair made a stunning combination. More than just my head turned as he neared the line, but I didn’t think that’s why he was smiling. He strode up to me and slid his arms around my neck, and I grabbed his waist as our lips met. The kiss wasn’t the kind that could get us doused with water, but it was enough to make it clear he’d missed me too.

We parted, and I brushed my hand across his cheek before turning to Mac. I couldn’t resist touching that sexy shadow on his face.

“Nice to see you again, Bryan.” Mac smiled. “This is my ‘coming out’ Pride, so I’m glad you could join us.”

“It is? That’s cool. Congratulations, Mac.”

Bryan hadn’t joined us in line, not completely, and as he turned to face front, some kids ran by, making him flinch. The shadow that raced across his face vanished when I rested my arm across his shoulders.

“Thank you. What about you, do you have a cool coming out story?”

I frowned at her. Hopefully if he didn’t want to share he’d say so.

“Um…it’s not very interesting. My dad asked if I wanted him to take me to rent a tux for junior prom. I told him no, and he said, ‘Ladies appreciate a smart dresser.’ So I told him I wasn’t going because everyone would freak out if I danced with my boyfriend.”

“What year was that?”

“Mac, it’s not polite to ask how old someone is.”

“Nineteen eighty-nine.” Bryan grinned at me. To my surprise, he also gave me a short, chaste kiss. “I think the hair gives me away as being a child of the seventies.”

“Besides, Dad, I know how old you are. No offense, Bryan, but I didn’t think you were far behind.”

“No offense taken. I’m surprised you didn’t think I was older.”

Mac shrugged, and we reached the front of the line. “Could’ve gone either way, really.”

Bryan laughed. He sounded so relaxed and happy, all my doubts from the past two weeks melted away. Mac ran ahead to the first booths and we hung back a little.

“It’s good to see you. Get your project finished?”

His smile, already bright, turned up a few hundred watts.

“Not yet, but it’s getting close. Sorry I had to put you off so long. I really didn’t want to.”

After another chaste kiss, we ambled closer to the row of booths where Mac was spinning a prize wheel and laughing with a group of kids who looked to be her age. Mac had always been a butterfly, like her mom—everyone was her friend. I couldn’t help but worry, though, now that she was at least partially out. It wasn’t a surprise—well, maybe the gender thing—but still…

“When you told your dad you had a boyfriend, what did he do?”

“Yelled. A lot.” Bryan winced, but when he leaned against my side, he still seemed relaxed. “Especially after I told him I was bi. He tried to convince me I’d be much happier if I found a nice girl. I wished I had a sibling then, to take some of the pressure off me. The rest of the time I lived at home I was under a microscope.”

“Must not have been fun.”

He shrugged and then rubbed his arm against my side and sighed. “I missed you.”

I stopped and turned him to face me. “I missed you too. I have Mac until six. After that, how about we go dancing?”

He laughed and rested both hands on my hips. “I’m not much of a dancer.”

“I don’t care.” I leaned in to whisper in his ear, and he shivered. “I want to rub against you for a couple of hours and then go somewhere and get naked.”

“Mac’s coming.”

I pulled away and frowned.

“I’m in.” He winked, and it was all I could do not to swoon.

 

The three of us walked up and down each aisle checking out the booths while commenting on everything and everyone, and I restrained myself admirably. Not one word of anti-capitalist or anti-assimilationist rhetoric crossed my lips in three whole hours. Finally, Mac turned to me and squinted.

“Who are you and what have you done with my dad?”

For the first time since he’d arrived, I released Bryan. My side felt cold, even though the day was a balmy seventy-nine degrees.

“I’m being nice, so shush.”

“Don’t shush me. Don’t you think Bryan deserves to know what he’s gotten himself into?”

I said “no” at the same time he said “doesn’t matter.”

“Ugh. You two are giving me cavities. Speaking of food, I saw a Mexican place near the stage. Let’s go.”

The crowd had grown steadily thicker as morning turned to afternoon. We had to walk faster to keep Mac in view, so that cut down on our conversation. Sort of.

“What did she mean?”

I grunted. “Pride has gotten so commercial. It’s like Queer Christmas now. Or maybe Black Friday with rainbows. But my anti-assimilationist leanings are only half serious.”

“Really? So if mine are fully serious, will that be a problem?”

“Nope. I don’t care if you’re a flaming capitalist.” I pulled him closer for a kiss, and he made a nice yummy noise.

We caught up with Mac, standing at the end of the line for Mexican food, and I excused myself to the porta-johns. Val’s voice in my head wasn’t pleased, but I wanted Mac and Bryan to start creating a relationship that didn’t completely rely on me being in the same room. The closer they got, the better it would be for me and my long-term hopes where Bryan was concerned. Besides, I needed a john—porta or otherwise.

The lines weren’t long, and when I returned to the food line, only two people stood behind Mac and Bryan. They were deep in conversation—Mac and Bryan, not the couple between them and me, those two guys were having a spat, currently in the “silent treatment and hairy eyeball” stage.

So I did the sensible thing. I eavesdropped on my daughter and my boyfr—on the man I was seeing.

“I’m glad you and Dad are together. He’s needed a good man who won’t flake on him for a while.”

“Really? You don’t hope he and your mom will get together?”

“No. I did, when I was little. But it’s not practical. They’re best friends, but there’s no spark. Nobody should settle for life without the spark, y’know? Those two have no fire, no magic.”

Jeez, kid, enough already.

“Very insightful.”

“You mean, ‘for a kid my age.’”

“No. Not really. I mean, you do seem older than…”

“Fifteen.”

“Wow, yes. Very insightful for a kid your age.”

Bryan grinned, and Mac shook her head. At least she was smiling.

“But you’re uncomfortable talking about your relationship with my dad with me.”

“Not exactly.”

Mac laughed, but politely, which was as surprising as it was gratifying.

“I mean, not only with you.”

“You’re not closeted in general, are you?”

“No. It’s not that. It’s been a long time since I’ve been serious about anyone, and that last time…didn’t work out well.”

Something in his voice when he mentioned his last relationship got my attention. Just like the last time it came up, he became guarded, maybe even fearful. Maybe we should talk about it. Sometime.

“Cool. Shows you have great taste that you’re serious about my dad. He’s cool. And he digs you.”

“Oh. I mean…great.”

They had reached the front of the line, but I didn’t think Bryan noticed. When Mac raised her hand to point to something, he flinched and took a step away from her. I couldn’t see his face, but his ear turned red. Luckily, Mac didn’t seem to notice. She went ahead and gave the pretty boy behind the counter her order.

I should probably have been at least a little ashamed, eavesdropping on my kid and my…the man I was dating. But I wasn’t. I wished she would have asked what he did for a living, though. That I was ashamed of. If I wanted to know—and I did—I should ask. But then I’d have to tell Bryan—sweet, smart, sexy Bryan—my day job involved the electronic equivalent of pushing paper from one stack into another while I facilitated orders for overpriced flying toys modeled after weapons. In other words, things people didn’t need. A drone butler? Seriously?

My feelings about the products I helped to sell didn’t change the facts of my life: I was a high school dropout making pennies over minimum wage to keep Mac on my insurance. That I also worked for a crazy-man who thought other companies—other people—had ripped-off his IP made it even less likely I’d be the one to start that conversation. What if Bry recognized the name?

Nope. If he didn’t want to talk about work, that was fine by me. We had a surprising number of things in common: music, books, movies, comics, sex. I could argue those things were more important than what either of us did for a living, but I’d only be arguing with myself.

Or maybe Valerie’s voice inside my head.

They both noticed how close I was as soon as they turned away from the counter, but neither commented. Mac grinned and said she was stealing my boyfriend, but if I wanted to join them in the shade tent to eat that would be okay. After lunch, we watched the performers until six. While Always Forward! played I got the stink eye from Val, but as far as I could remember I never promised to hang out with only Mac.

Bryan didn’t dance, even when Mac used all the tools in her impressive arsenal. He wouldn’t even be shamed into dancing, which impressed the hell out of me, but he hadn’t been wrapped around her little finger for the past fifteen years either. Still, it worried me a little—what if he didn’t want to go dancing?

The answer came to me quickly. We’d go back to the Westside and do the Horizontal Mambo instead of profiling to a dance mix amid a crowd of sweaty queers.

Either sounded good to me, as long as we ended up sweaty before the witching hour.

 

It took a few songs and a beer, but Bryan relaxed and loosened up. We danced in a crowd of men outside one of the trendiest gay bars in Portland. The sun had almost set and stars twinkled above us while paper lanterns and rainbow flags rippled gently in the breeze coming off the river, but all I could see was Bryan—his face flushed, smiling, his eyes always on me. I got my wish to rub against him to the music. After he was good and loose, I leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“I knew you were a good dancer.”

He blushed and laughed.

“Did you drive?”

He shook his head, and his smile turned naughty.

I couldn’t help myself, I pulled him close and spun around. And that’s when I got the first real surprise of the weekend, when I saw him.

“Shit.” If I could have, I would’ve grabbed that word back. As soon as I said it—or shouted it, I might have shouted it—Bryan tensed.

“Sorry. Did I step on your foot?” Bryan’s smile was history, and he seemed smaller somehow.

Just my imagination.

“No. You didn’t do anything.” The music quieted so my words sounded loud. But, as soon as I went on the next song started, so I had to repeat myself. Poor me, I had to press my lips to Bry’s ear to be sure he heard. “My boss. I think I saw my boss.”

Bryan leaned back—as much as he could in the sea of dancing bodies—and our eyes met. His were wide.

“Are you not out at work? Oh, will this be bad for you?” He froze.

He looked genuinely concerned. No. he looked afraid. I tried to shrug it off.

Normally that’s the kind of thing I can do, especially on a crowded dance floor with a hot partner whose bones I wanted to jump. That time, it wasn’t so easy. His reaction seemed out of proportion to what had happened. I embraced him and swayed to the beat while I spoke against his ear. “I’m not out at work, but neither is he. I doubt it’ll be a problem, so don’t worry about it. Okay?”

Bryan actually took a couple of slow, deep breaths before he said “okay” back. I found myself tensing with the desire to make whoever had made Bryan afraid tremble in his boots, because it came to me that his flinching and the tone he used while talking about his ex could be related.

But being wound up wasn’t the way to help Bryan relax—I’d learned that from Mac when she was a baby—so I took my own cleansing breath and then stepped back. I hadn’t expected to see my boss—Will Holden, the owner of Holden the Tech, the cheesiest-named startup in the Silicon Forest and quite possibly in the world, and creator of a line of cheap household drones that reminded me of flying Roombas. To be honest, it made me shudder to think of actually owning the things I was helping him sell to people. I mean, who wants something that’s routinely used as a weapon prowling around in their home? It had been easier when he sold stupid game apps, even if the profit margin for the drones was higher.

It’s official. I’ve watched The Terminator too many times.

Holding Bryan’s hips loosely, I danced us faster and faster until we’d caught up with the beat. When he smiled at me, I kissed him. His lips trembled a little and he might’ve been pale, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

When we’d both relaxed enough to almost forget about seeing Will, I asked if he wanted anything. “Thirsty? Hungry?”

He pressed the length of his body against mine and grabbed my ass. “How about I give you directions to my place?”

“Where’s the exit?”

Bryan kissed the grin from my face, and when I walked him backward, he moaned. Or sighed. With all the noise around us, I couldn’t hear the actual sound he made, but felt it tickle my lips and vibrate against my chest.

The Buick didn’t have a bench seat—damn, I miss bench seats—but no console to get in the way either so Bryan practically sat on my lap the whole trip. His hands roamed across my chest and down my arms; he kissed my neck and bit my earlobe. Every so often he’d look up and tell me to turn or to watch for something, but otherwise, we could have been in his living room making out.

Well, we didn’t actually make out until I jumped off the highway. We might have spent the night at one intersection if someone behind us hadn’t honked when the light turned green.

The whole way, though, he was careful not to go too far. I noticed that much—only because my dick ached to be touched and it didn’t happen.

When I pulled into the parking lot of a nice-looking apartment complex, though, he nuzzled my shoulder and then slid away. I reached out and he took my hand, resting it on his thigh. His leg felt so warm, something inside me swooned.

It took a full turn around the parking lot to find an open space, and it was far from the building. As soon as I killed the engine, Bry leaned across my lap and kissed me, his hand pressing against the front of my jeans.

“Oh, fuck, Bry. I’ve missed you.”

He pressed harder and rubbed, moaning against my mouth as he nibbled on my lower lip.

“Inside.” I groaned in frustration and a second later he pulled away and grinned.

I followed him across the parking lot, wanting to touch his adorable ass and barely restraining myself. I didn’t have a clue what his neighbors knew about him, but even more than that I didn’t want to startle him, to make him flinch by grabbing him when he didn’t see it coming. My feet slowed while I processed the thought, but I took the stairs two at a time so I wasn’t far behind when Bryan stopped at a door and opened it, his hand holding the key shaking hard enough to be noticeable.

Bryan pushed the door open and gestured for me to go inside first. The front door opened into the living room, and in the short time while he closed and locked the door, I saw all there was to see: a sofa along one wall with a coffee table in front of it, opposite a blocky wood cabinet holding a turntable and flanked by two large speakers. I’d just thought that the space under the turntable was probably filled with records when he took my hand and pulled me down the hall.

His bedroom was nearly as minimalist, but he did have a plant on the window sill that crept up over the curtain rod and cascaded down, peeking outside. Before I had a chance to figure out which direction the window faced, Bryan dropped to his knees in front of me. The plant could have started speaking, and I wouldn’t have noticed.