Another way (20 page)

“We’ll have the usual,” I said, giving her a warm smile. “Enough for two. And extra plum sauce.”

“No problem.”

I silently sipped at my tea, watching Will watch anything and everything except me.

“How was work today?” I asked him, trying to reestablish some sort of equilibrium between us.

He looked shocked, but answered, “Okay, not bad.” I nodded slowly. “We’re developing new software for a touchscreen computer system for kids to use in schools….”

I let him slowly get into his natural rhythm of talking about something he was passionate about—his love for a job, which had been pressed on him by his father, carving out a place for himself in a company where he could have easily sat back on his name and let other people do the work. But that wasn’t my Will. I knew that he had pressed for more research into learning and development materials for children under the age of seven. I didn’t understand a lot of the stuff that he talked about, but his enthusiasm made listening to him easy and empathizing with his cause a natural conclusion.

Yan came back with plates of food and our conversation seamlessly pulled her in for a few moments. I brought her up to date with what I was doing these days, and she seemed to be really happy for me. When she left again, we fell silent as we dug into the food.

“This is really good,” Will said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I used to come here all the time.”

“Not anymore?” he asked.

“No, not so much.”

I’d always liked people-watching in this restaurant. It was impossible to describe a typical customer—there were young and old people of all nationalities, all classes of society, stopping by with their families or partners or on their own to read a battered paperback novel as they ate.

“You gave up a lot to be with me,” Will said quietly, drawing my attention back to the handsome man opposite me.

“Hmm?”

“I didn’t have to do anything. I just let you into my house, and you fit right into my life. But you gave up so much to be with me.”

I played with a few grains of rice back and forth across my plate. “I
want
to be with you,” I said.

“I know you do,” Will said, reaching across the table for my hand. “I just think… maybe… if I want to be with you, if I want to
keep
you, then maybe there are some things that I have to give up too.”

My eyes lifted and met his steady gaze. I nodded slowly, not wanting to tell him “yeah, you need to give up shit you like if you want to be my boyfriend,” but feeling that way nonetheless.

“There has to be some kind of back and forth with our relationship,” I said. “Give and take. I’ll give you the whole fucking world, Will, but I need a little something back in return.”

“We can do this,” he said decisively.

“It’s not as easy as that,” I said with a heavy sigh. “We have completely different opinions and outlooks on stuff. It’s not going to be this one argument and then smooth sailing from here on out. We’re two different people, and we’re going to keep butting heads, all the time, and we need to figure out how to deal with that.”

“Saying ‘I don’t want you to do that’ isn’t going to be it, then?”

“No, because we need to hang on to the things that are important to us.”

He sighed and looked down at the empty plates in front of us. “Like dinner at your favorite restaurant.”

“And being a respected member of the community.”

“We just need to learn how to do those things in a way that doesn’t interfere with our relationship.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Exactly.”

He sat back in his chair. “Could we ever go back, do you think? To what we were before?”

“No, I don’t think so. After being with you like this, I couldn’t go back to that detachment. I think I need that intimacy between us now.”

“Me too,” he whispered.

“Do you think we can learn to talk about our relationship without sounding like the kids on
Glee
?”

Will snorted with laughter and covered his face with his hands. “Oh god, we do.”

“I wish we were seventeen sometimes.”

“Why? I was horrible when I was seventeen.”

“But you have an excuse to be melodramatic. Right now, we’re just two sad and pathetic gay men who can’t communicate. See—this is why there’s traditionally a woman in a relationship. Women coerce you into talking about your feelings whether you want to or not.”

He openly laughed now and reached for my hand. “But, being gay, we’re supposed to be more in tune with our emotions.”

“Bullshit.”

“I know.” He gave me one of his patented lopsided smiles that made my stomach turn over. “Jesse? Can I take you home?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

It was still strained, that night, climbing into bed and finding the nook between his head and shoulder that these days I called “home.” I think he felt it, too, the strain, and he held me tighter than usual. For much longer than normal, my hands skimmed the length of his torso, reassuring myself that he was solid underneath me and that, despite everything, he was real and he was mine.

Chapter Fifteen

A
FTER
living with Will for a few months, one morning I woke up on the opposite side of the bed from him, although this wasn’t particularly unusual. I didn’t have work, but he did, so I rolled over to gather him in my arms, enjoying the last few minutes before his alarm would go off. He wriggled back into me and sighed sleepily. I kissed his shoulder, then let myself drift.

It wasn’t long until his alarm did sound, jolting us both awake in the rudest way.

“Don’t go,” I moaned childishly as Will tried to move. “Stay here with me instead.”

“I can’t, baby, I have to go to work.”

I grumbled something unintelligible and rolled over, earning myself a smack on the ass. But I liked it. Will left to go shower, but I was awake and determined to keep myself that way so I wouldn’t miss the spectacle of him dressing in a suit.

It was a Friday and I had the day off since I had worked the previous Sunday, but I had a full day of shit planned that I needed, or wanted to do. I joined him in the bathroom once I heard the shower running and quickly brushed my teeth. By the time I was done, we got dressed together, and I went downstairs to start breakfast for him while he fixed all of his stuff for the day. Likelihood was that I was more comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt than he was in his suit, but
damn
if he didn’t look fucking edible in charcoal gray Italian wool. Not many men our age could pull it off, but Will? I could rip it off him.

We rarely ate cooked breakfast except on the weekends, but since I didn’t have to rush off to work, I grabbed the bottle of pre-mixed pancake batter—we were lazy fuckers—out of the fridge and got the pan on to heat up before starting the kettle for coffee.

“Are you treating me?” Will asked as he joined me.

“Yeah, it doesn’t take long to make, so….” I shrugged as he set his stuff down on the table and made coffee for us both.

It really didn’t take long for me to make a batch of pancakes, and I covered mine in butter and syrup, promising myself I’d take an extra twenty minutes on the treadmill to work it off. I kissed Will good-bye at the door then headed back upstairs for a sweater, before leaving myself.

I had plans.

The first stop of the day was possibly my least anticipated.

“Jesse Ross,” I told the lady at the reception desk. “I have an appointment with Dr. Green.”

“No problem, take a seat,” she said. “She shouldn’t be long.”

I nodded and sat down, flicking through a two-year-old copy of
Men’s Health
for a few minutes before my name was called. I dumped my magazine and nervously wiped my palms on my jeans, then followed the nurse through.

“Hi, Jesse, take a seat,” Dr. Green greeted me. It had been years since I saw her last, but she had always been my doctor in Seattle. “What can I do for you?”

“I, um, I need to get a STD test,” I mumbled.

“Okay,” she said, flipping through some paperwork quickly. “Is it a general checkup, or do you have any concerns?”

“Adele and I broke up,” I started, and Dr. Green interrupted me with an “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” I said noncommittally. “It was for the best. Anyway, I’m seeing someone new, and I want to make sure I’m healthy before we progress.”

“Okay. We can run blood tests for you today, which we can usually get back within a week. Others we can run today and again in six months; for things like the HIV virus, we may not get an immediate response.”

I nodded. “There’s nothing to suggest that there would be a problem, I just wanted to be responsible.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “And your partner? Will she be getting tested too?”

I tried not to bristle at the assumption. “Yeah, they have their own doctor.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Green said, not looking up from her paperwork or commenting on my awkward phrasing. “Any concerns about birth control?”

“None at all,” I said, trying not to snort with laughter.

I tried not to be a baby when she drew the blood samples, choosing to look away until after she was done labeling them to send to the lab.

“I’ll get Kate to give you a call when we have the results,” Dr. Green said. “You’ll either be told you have the all clear, or that we need to see you again and to book another appointment. The reception staff don’t know what we’re even testing you for. If you do need to book another appointment, don’t panic, it’s usually because we didn’t get a good sample from you.”

I nodded and thanked Dr. Green for her help, checking my watch to make sure I’d make it to my next appointment on time.

“
J
UST
… fucking… something different. Cut it all off,” I said, waving my hand at my reflection in the mirror, much to my barber’s amusement.

“Okay…,” he said slowly, drawling the word out and clicking his tongue ring against his teeth. He was gay, clearly, and a queen with it. So much not my type it made me cringe. But he’d been cutting my hair for years, I trusted the fucker, and yeah, I got along with him well.

Federico ran his fingers through the length of my hair a few times. I had let it grow to chin length, and it was scraggly, too, so that what once was curls was just as often a mess. It’d grown out past sexy and tousled, and if I was getting it cut, then I might as well go with something completely different.

“Against my better judgment, I trust you,” I said with some amusement.

“Honey, you’re gonna look fantastic,” Federico told me.

I was slightly concerned about the amount of hair that seemed to be falling to the floor and therefore, by process of deduction,
not
staying on my head. I’d told him I wanted a change, but I wasn’t prepared for him to bring out clippers.

“Don’t be a baby,” Federico said in a warning voice as the clippers started to buzz. “Trust me.”

And with that, he grabbed the back of my head, pushing it down so he could attack the sides. In truth, my head being down helped with the growing feeling of nausea. I tried to keep my eyes low as Federico finished up, rubbing gel through the hair that I had left, and I had to admit, it looked pretty good.

On top, it was still pretty long and, being shorter than it was, some of the curls were more obvious, but the sides were short. Like, really short. My neck was cold. It hadn’t been cold in about fifteen years.

“Wow,” I said, rubbing at my cold neck.

“Thanks,” Federico said with a wide grin. “Do you reckon the wife will like it?”

I gave a dry laugh. “I don’t have a wife, dude. I have a boyfriend.”

“What!” His screech brought silence to the rest of the shop. “You’re…
gay
?” he hissed in a lower voice.

“Um, yeah.”

“Why have I never seen you out before? You look straight,” he added with an accusatory tone.

“I don’t go out on the scene.” I shrugged. “Sorry.”

I managed to get away from Federico, who I could tell was brimming with questions, by insisting I had another appointment to get to. In truth, I had plenty of time to get across town, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. It had taken longer than I expected for the haircut, which didn’t give me enough time to really stop for lunch, but I still managed to grab a sandwich and a Coke for physical strength and inner steel. That was the idea, at least.

W
HEN
I finally got home, Will’s car was already parked outside. I rolled my eyes and smiled to myself as I went in, calling out into the house.

“Don’t you ever do a full day’s work?”

“It’s Friday,” he called back defiantly.

“Still,” I said, kicking off my shoes. “Some of us don’t work for Daddy.”

“Ooh, low blow, Ross,” Will laughed as he rounded the corner with two bottles of beer already with the tops popped off. “Holy mother of shit.”

“Hey, baby,” I said teasingly, hanging up my jacket. Will had stripped off his suit jacket and tie, leaving him in the wool pants and a slightly rumpled white shirt, which he’d rolled the sleeves up on.

“Hey, yourself.”