BACK AT Ella’s, the healthy adults adjourned to Fred’s man cave to begin the process of curating items of interest for the memorial. Due to the walking boot, Carter was remanded to the kitchen table. Every so often a family member delivered a box to sort through.
Jeff didn’t exactly feel as though he belonged, but he was invited to the study, and he thought Brady even expected him to come in—but Ella took one look at his face when she suggested it and sent him upstairs with Carter.
Mixed blessings—when it was Charlie’s turn to bring up a box, she tromped extra loudly up the stairs, like she wanted to make sure they heard her coming. Every time she slid something onto the table, she smirked at Jeff, but he refused to break first.
Besides, their détente was hilarious.
“Sorry,” Carter murmured as he lifted a forty-year-old LP out of the box to inspect the label. “I’m sure this isn’t exactly what you meant by space.”
Only Carter could sound sincere in that apology at his own father’s memorial. “For once in your life, stop being a martyr,” Jeff grumbled. “Not everything is about you. And despite what you may have been led to believe, not every rock star thinks everything’s about them either.”
Carter’s lips twitched. “All right.”
Jeff had always known Carter’s dad was sentimental. He’d never made a secret of it. But it still surprised him how many keepsakes the man had—programs from Dave’s first hockey tournament, bits of science projects (mostly Carter’s), a shell from a trip he and Ella had taken to Florida when Carter was twelve. A room service menu from their honeymoon. Even, preserved in the pages of a volume of poetry—Ginsberg, of course—two tickets to Howl.
Jeff spent long enough staring at them that Carter noticed, and he wordlessly held out his hand.
Jeff gave them over and watched Carter smooth his thumb over the date and time. Third row. Those seats would’ve cost a fortune.
“I would have gotten him tickets,” Jeff said hoarsely. He would have given the performance of his life if he’d known his hero was in the audience. “VIP passes. Booked his hotel room.”
Carter shook his head. “He wanted to pay.”
They lapsed into silence, sorting—Goodwill, scrapbook, or sale—with the records to be maybe divided among family and interesting tchotchkes set aside to display for this afternoon. Carter put the tickets in that pile. Jeff didn’t argue.
Under the Ginsberg was a Moleskine notebook with yellowed pages. Jeff lifted it out and opened the cover, half expecting another ledger of home improvement expenses—being sentimental did not preclude Fred from being a packrat—only to find, cryptically, a date range from Jeff’s teenage years. When he set the book on the table, it fell open further, and the pages flipped as something in the book pushed them back. Jeff put his thumb in to keep the page as the item fell out.
It was an envelope with a few pictures in it, apparently depicting the day he and Ella moved eighteen-year-old Carter into his dorm in Toronto. Jeff smiled at it. Ella and Fred looked just as he remembered them, while Carter was skinnier, a little gawky. Of course Jeff remembered him being handsomer than he was. The three of them had their arms around each other and were grinning widely at the camera.
Jeff set the envelope aside and pulled the book closer. The page was dated a few years later than the photographs, so they likely weren’t related. Under the date, he read—
Little fish has a big mouth
and bigger plans.
Hook line and sinker:
foolish fishers fling him back.
A gamble, a sting, a breath held,
a barb removed, another scar.
Little fish’s belly fats with wasted bait—
he won’t be little forever.
“Jeff?” Carter asked. “Are you okay?”
Jeff slammed the book closed, his heart in his throat. “I’m—I need some air.”
Running away twice in three days. He was going to beat his old record at this rate.
Carter eventually caught up to him on the back deck, clomping outside with a grimace. “Kind of rude to make me chase after you with a broken foot,” he teased gently.
Pacing frantically, Jeff ran both hands through his hair. “Kind of rude of me to be more needy than a dead father’s sons at his memorial service, so I’m just hitting it out of the park all over.”
Carter frowned and stepped closer, and Jeff instinctively stopped walking. He didn’t want to step on Carter’s foot. “Hey.” He put a hand on Jeff’s elbow and coaxed his arm down. Jeff didn’t relax. “We’ve had six months to process. And Dad… he was your family too. You’re allowed to grieve him.”
“Am I?” It didn’t feel like it. “I left, Carter. I didn’t—for fifteen years I didn’t call him, I didn’t email. I acted like he was dead to me. Do I really have a right to be here? After everything?”
“Did you stop loving him?” Carter asked. He wasn’t holding Jeff’s elbow anymore, he was holding his wrist. When had that happened? “Because he didn’t stop loving you.”
Fuck. “Maybe he should’ve.” Jeff bit the inside of his cheek hard as he scrambled for composure. When he could speak without his voice breaking, he said, “I know he didn’t.”
“He was proud of you.”
“I didn’t do anything to be proud of.”
“No?” Carter brushed his thumb over the thin skin on the inside of Jeff’s wrist. “You made a career doing what you love. You’ve been successful. Your music is good. A couple Grammy nominations. That’s nothing to be proud of?”
Jeff shivered. He wanted to tug his hand away but couldn’t muster the strength. He felt frozen. “I’m a coward.”
“Are you?” Had Carter moved closer? He was all Jeff could look at now, and he could scarcely breathe. “Your music is brutally honest. You sing something and people feel like they know all your secrets. That takes bravery.”
Did Carter feel like he knew all Jeff’s secrets? “Maybe,” Jeff said. “But when it’s time to act, I run away.” He’d run away fifteen years ago, afraid of what loving Carter might do to him, and he’d run away earlier this month, afraid of what would happen if he let himself continue loving his band.
Finally Carter let go of him, and the rest of the world rushed back in.
“Actually, can we talk about that?” Carter’s eyes went shadowed, and his voice seemed heavy. “About the day you left, I mean.”
Suddenly weak-kneed, Jeff lowered himself to sit on the deck stairs before he could fall. His throat constricted with panic. “I thought you said we didn’t have to talk about that.”
“Yeah, well.” Carter dragged over a chair one-handed and planted himself in it. Even as panic-stricken as Jeff was, he had to admire the sheer strength that took—the chair was solid pine. “That was when I was afraid you’d run away.”
Jeff squeezed his eyes shut, dug his nails into his palms, and leaned back against the deck rail. “And now?”
“Now I know you’re going to run away. The only thing that matters is if you come back.”
Jeff really wanted to come back. He took a deep breath, held it, let it go. He opened his eyes. “All right,” he said. “You want to talk about what happened, so we’ll talk about it.” If he dug deep, maybe he could be as honest as Carter seemed to think he was. After all, everyone knew anyway, didn’t they? Jeff only liked to pretend they didn’t. “I’ll start. I walked outside to get some air after my mom’s funeral, after my life fell apart, and you were sitting on the back stairs of the funeral parlor kissing my cousin.”
If he was being brave, though, truly brave, he couldn’t leave it there. “In case the subtext wasn’t clear—” He swallowed and looked right at Carter. “—that broke my heart a little.”
Carter was the one person Jeff had always trusted not to hurt him. Jeff had no claim to him, but the betrayal of that trust had devastated him all the same.
He thought he’d feel different after admitting it, but he didn’t. Maybe he felt like he’d admitted it so many times by now, onstage in front of thousands, that it was old news.
Carter gave him a pained look, the corners of his mouth tightening and turning down. “I kind of figured.” But he didn’t look away. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to do. Can I… elaborate a little?”
Elaborate? “Is there more to say?”
Carter lifted a shoulder, repositioned his leg, grimaced, repositioned it again. “I don’t want to say something like excuse, because I don’t have an excuse. I have… motivations, I guess? Extenuating circumstances? I want to give you the whole picture.”
For God’s sake. “I think I got the picture pretty clearly,” Jeff said, dry and a bit stung.
Carter opened his mouth.
Jeff cut him off. “Yes, okay? Fine. Elaborate.”
It could hardly make things worse.
“Your life was falling apart,” Carter said. “That’s how you put it. Your mom died, your dad was making you move.
“But—God, this sounds awful with this much hindsight, don’t think I don’t know that. But I was seventeen, and my life was falling apart too. My best friend’s mom died and there wasn’t anything I could do to help him. And he was going to move, and all the plans I’d had for that last summer before university were gone too. On top of everything, I knew I wasn’t the person everyone thought I was, but I wasn’t ready to tell them so.”
Well, that cut some of his resentment off at the knees. Jeff licked his lips. “You’re right, that’s a lot to deal with.” Was he saying…?
“I know it doesn’t excuse the way I hurt you.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “But when I kissed—oh God.” He stopped and dropped his head into his hands. “Crap.”
His ears were bright red, and Jeff wondered what had him so flustered. And then he realized—“Oh my God, you forgot her name!”
“This is so embarrassing.” He lifted his head just enough for Jeff to see his eyes. “But I guess it proves my point. I didn’t want to be different. I did a shitty thing trying to convince myself I didn’t have feelings for you, and then you caught me and any chance I had went up in smoke.” He dropped his hands again and let Jeff see his sad, resigned smile. “At either thing, or so I thought.”
Okay. He was definitely saying that. Jeff pressed his lips together and waited for him to come right out and admit it.
“Nothing to say?” Carter said.
He cleared his throat. “Uh, doesn’t seem like you’re done.” His mouth tried to make a shape, but it couldn’t pick one. The lower half of his face just sort of twitched aimlessly. “I mean. I’ve pretty much said it all. Publicly.”
But Carter wasn’t going to let Jeff off easy. He reached forward, and Jeff automatically reached back until Carter was holding his hand. “The thing is, I should be over it, but I’m not. When you showed up again, I thought, well, it’s been years and people change, and I wasn’t going to risk losing your friendship again if it turned out we’d changed too much or I’d just been romanticizing the past.” He glanced away and then back again. “I figured this was my chance to figure out what might’ve happened if I didn’t mess it up the first time.”
Jeff swallowed. “What makes you think it would’ve worked out?” he asked, because somehow talking about the past felt a lot safer than talking about now. “You weren’t ready to come out. I was a grief-and-hormone-fueled ball of resentment. And you were leaving for university anyway. I would’ve hated being the boyfriend back home.” He’d have felt like a kid. “It was doomed. Like, don’t get me wrong, I’d have been into it. But it would’ve been a train wreck.”
“Then maybe we’re lucky we waited.”
Jeff’s fingers clenched reflexively and his heart thudded in his throat. How could Carter be so sure about this, so calm? “What makes you think now will be any different? I came here because I’m a mess, Carter. Again or still.”
“Well, we’ve basically been dating since you got back,” Carter said gently, and he smiled when Jeff started in surprise. “I’m confident that my feelings haven’t changed. I can be patient while you draw your own conclusions.”
Jeff stared at him, sure that he couldn’t possibly be real. Saint Cinnamon Roll Carter Rhodes, the world’s sweetest and most patient man—unless he was getting a blow job.
But now that he thought about the past few weeks, he felt stupid. The lunches, the T-ball games, the hikes in the woods. The way he’d touched Jeff’s face. Romantic campfires just for the two of them and the park’s sixteen billion mosquitoes. “You were stealth dating me?”
Carter laughed, which was unfairly devastating at this distance. “I really didn’t think I was being that sneaky. But yes. I’ve had feelings for you since before I could acknowledge I’m bi even to myself. So I thought, you know—you’re here for the summer. Why not give it a try? I’m not willing to spend the rest of my life wondering if we could’ve had more. I want to know for sure.”
“Fuck.” Jeff weaseled out of Carter’s grip and steepled his hands in front of his mouth. “You really… for that long?”
“Maybe not as long as you,” Carter admitted, which was more of a blow to Jeff’s dignity than his ego. It had been nice believing Carter had been oblivious to his feelings, at least before Jeff started singing about them on the radio. “But yeah.”
“Jesus.” He shook his head, and a smile started to creep over his lips despite his misgivings. Maybe things had gone to shit fifteen years ago, but Jeff had forgiven that, consciously or not. And maybe his life was still a mess, but his life would always be a mess. That shouldn’t stop him from living it. “You know, if you’d told me this in high school, I wouldn’t have lost my V card to that guy from robotics club.”
Carter’s eyes went molten in an immediate and obvious tell.
“Oh no,” Jeff said, wagging his finger. “No, okay. Ground rule, no jealousy shit. Except for hot sex purposes. I live a public life. No nonsense or we might as well give up now.”
He expected Carter to react with chagrin or defensiveness, but instead he got a brilliant, wide smile. It took Jeff a second to recover from it and ask, “What?”
“Just—yes?” Carter said. “You set a ground rule, so that means yes, right? You’re going to date me for real?”
“Apparently we were already dating anyway,” Jeff said. He was going for mock sour, but he just sounded… smitten. He was so screwed. He’d never been able to say no in the first place, and now—
“Do you still—um, I mean, we can take it slow if you still want space.”
For God’s sake. “I mean, yes, I’m probably going to need a little space. But how much slower can we possibly go? It took fifteen years to get to second base. At this rate if we ever move in together it’ll be at a nursing home.”
“We can get matching slippers,” Carter promised, eyes dancing.
Jeff gave up. The man was actually perfect. “You’re not going to be wearing slippers for a while,” he pointed out as he stood up. That put him between Carter’s knees.
Carter moved his hands to bracket Jeff’s hips and looked up, his expression inescapably fond. Jeff kissed him, curling one hand around the back of his neck. He tasted the curve of his smile and drank in the sun-warm scent of him as Carter tucked his fingers into the back pockets of Jeff’s jeans.
It was probably for the best, Jeff thought distantly as Carter nudged his mouth open to deepen the kiss, kneading and pulling at Jeff’s ass until he stumbled closer, that he hadn’t known Carter would be like this. He would never have learned to play guitar if he’d known. He’d have been too busy jerking off all the time.
He was debating whether the deck chair could hold both their weight when he heard the soft rumble of the patio door opening. “Carter, sweetheart—”
Jeff jerked reflexively out of the kiss, mortified, and he might have stumbled down the stairs, except Carter had a solid grip on his ass. Carter just chuckled and dropped his head against Jeff’s chest.
“I’ll come back later,” Ella said, all amusement. “Just wanted to let you know that guests are starting to arrive.” And she closed the door again to leave Jeff to die of embarrassment in peace.
“Tell me now,” Jeff said, “before I get in this any further—does being a cockblock run in your family?”
Carter wrinkled his nose. “That seems unlikely, biologically speaking. Kind of against natural selection.”
“So we’re just unlucky.”
“Well.” He smiled and pulled his hands out of Jeff’s pockets, but only far enough that he could rub his thumbs into the divots of Jeff’s pelvis. “I don’t know if I’d go that far.”
Jeff shivered involuntarily and offered his hand instead. “Unfortunately, I think I have to take a rain check on proving it.” He “helped” Carter to his feet, which mostly meant they held hands while Carter stood under his own power and then loomed sexily. “Come on. You need to go greet people, and I….” He took his phone out and looked at the time. “I only have another twenty minutes before I need to leave for the airport, and I should actually offer my condolences to your sisters-in-law.” Preferably without an awkward boner.
He ended up standing in the living room with the family to greet the guests. If any of them found it strange to see Carter’s former best friend or the frontman of a famous band in the Rhodes family home, Jeff couldn’t tell.
People were still arriving for the open house when Jeff finally couldn’t delay leaving anymore and got up. “I’d better go or I’ll miss my flight,” he said wryly.
“You literally chartered it,” Carter pointed out, but he didn’t otherwise object. He didn’t get up either, which would’ve been fine even if he didn’t have a broken foot, because Katie had handed him the baby—thus fulfilling Jeff’s prophecy—so she could prepare something in the kitchen. Carter took the baby’s arm and gently waved it.
Jeff was absolutely fucked. “I’ll see you in a couple days.”
“Bye!” Katie poked her head out from the kitchen. “Safe flight.”
He caught Carter’s eyes for one last lingering smile. Then, more reluctantly than he wanted to admit, he got in the truck and drove away.