Belonging (14 page)

“Not a damn thing. I always wanted
one, though.”

Mikey wrote back:
Bring me every kind of chew toy you can find. We
went to the pet store before the animal shelter and got a couple
that look like stuffed animals, but Cujo doesn’t want
them.

I told him I’d be over shortly, then
called home. Jessie answered. “Nana can’t come to the phone right
now,” he told me when I asked for her. “Her girlfriends are here
and they’re doing something called Jazzercise. There are little old
ladies in day glow leotards and legwarmers as far as the eye can
see.”

“Do you know the name of the dog
trainer Nana hired? Mikey adopted a puppy and he’s freaking out.
It’s chewing on him and the kids. It’s also peeing everywhere and
he’s such a neat freak that he’s probably about to blow a
gasket.”

“Yay, another puppy! Can I come see
it?” he exclaimed.

“Yes. But focus, Jessie. Do you have
the trainer’s number?”

“Yeah, it’s in my phone, which is
upstairs. I’ll call Marie as soon as we hang up and see if she can
do an emergency consultation. She’s so great, she’s like that dog
whisperer guy on TV. Only, she’s a girl. And blonde. Oh, and
southern. She says things like, ‘fuck me runnin’ with a stick.’
It’s a riot!”

“Great. Mikey will love expanding his
kids’ vocabulary,” I said.

When Jessie disconnected, I told
Chance, “You’re welcome to come with me. I need to go to the pet
store and my brother’s house. Not that any of this promises to be
very exciting, but you were planning to come over for dinner
tonight and that’s where we’ll eventually end up.”

He smiled at me and said, “I’d love to
tag along. Your family cracks me up.”

While we were at the pet
store, Yosh texted me. For some reason, he’d made it his mission to
find someone for my brother. He told me about his friend Anton’s
sister and capped it off with:
She’s
basically a female Mikey, a hot accountant. It couldn’t be more
perfect.

I texted him back and told
him about the current dog situation, adding:
The hot accountant sounds great, I’ll see if Mikey’s free
Friday night.

Yosh wrote:
Like Mikey would be busy on Friday! I’ll set it
up. Also, I’m great with dogs. I’m actually at Anton’s apartment
right now and it’s not far from Mikey’s house. I can meet you there
if you want.

Sure. Sounds like my
brother needs all the help he can get,
I
wrote before putting my phone away
.

Chance and I were among the last to
arrive and by the time we got there, Mikey’s house was total chaos.
Jessie had brought Nana and her leotard-wearing cohorts with him.
The ladies had all put on demure little cardigans over their
workout-wear and seemed to be having a party right there in the
hallway, complete with martinis. Meanwhile, Jessie was sitting on
the floor in the center of my brother’s formal living room with my
three nephews, laughing delightedly. Both doors to the living room
had been blocked off with baby gates, and most of the living room’s
contents, including two huge area rugs and several pieces of
furniture, were piled up in the hallway.

The new puppy turned out to be a tiny,
multicolored fuzzball. He and Tom Selleck were running laps around
Jessie and the boys, yipping and skidding on the hardwood. Yoshi
appeared to be trying to reason with the dogs every time they ran
past him, and Mikey stood off to the side, rubbing his forehead as
if he was trying to fend off a migraine.

“God, I love this family,” Chance said
before going through the baby gate and joining Jessie and the boys
in the eye of the hurricane.

My phone buzzed in my
pocket. Surprisingly, it was a message from Jason Jax. I’d been
seeing him five nights a week on average, but he tended to text me
after he got home from his various social obligations.
I need to see you, Gianni,
the message said.
Will you please
come to the hotel? I’m out right now but I can be back there in
half an hour.

I texted:
Sorry, can’t. I’m at my brother’s house, along
with some friends and family.

Jason shocked the hell out
of me by writing:
Would it be okay if I
came by?

Once I picked my jaw up off
the floor, I texted:
Doesn’t that kind of
go against the whole nobody knowing you’re gay thing?

You can tell everyone I’m a
friend
, he replied.
I hope there’s some truth to that.

I sent him the address and he said
he’d be over soon. He wasn’t kidding. Jason knocked on the door ten
minutes later, and when I answered it, he gave me a hug and
whispered in my ear, “Hi, beautiful.”

Yosh, Jessie and Mikey knew about
Jason, but everyone else looked stunned as I made some
introductions. My grandmother exclaimed, “Sweet baby Jesus! Nobody
told me I was gonna be meeting a famous movie star today. If I’d
known, I would’ve worn my red leotard. It’s a lot sexier than this
one!” She was covered head-to-toe in purple Lycra, topped with a
little white eyelet sweater. Her red leotard was identical to the
one she was wearing, apart from the color.

While he proceeded to completely charm
Nana and her girlfriends, I took a couple things out of the
shopping bag I’d brought and went through the baby gate. I was
immediately attacked by the puppies, who teamed up to try to take
down one of my sneakers. “His name’s Gizmo,” Mitchell told me with
a big smile, catching the little dog in his arms. “Markie named
him.”

“That’s an excellent name,” I said.
“He looks just like a gremlin.” When I tried to pet the puppy, it
immediately started chewing on my hand. I produced one of the toys
I’d brought and miraculously, he went for that instead. Tom Selleck
tried to take it away, so I gave him one, too.

“He doesn’t look like a gremlin,” MJ
told me. “Those are the gross things the cute furry pet turned into
in the movie.”

“Oh, you’re right. He looks like
whatever they are before you get them wet and feed them after
midnight.”

I snuck a look at Jason. He had two
eighty-year-old ladies hanging off each arm, and was making Nana
and her friends giggle like schoolgirls. When he caught me looking
at him, he flashed me a dazzling smile.

My friends came over to me and Jessie
whispered, “I thought he was just a booty call.”

“He was, but then this happened. Go
figure.”

I found out the reason for Jason’s
visit about fifteen minutes later. He got me alone in the kitchen
and said, “I need to talk to you about something, baby.”

I turned my attention away from the
coffee pot I’d been filling for my grandmother and said, “What is
it?”

“Filming wrapped a few days early.
That almost never happens. My agent was so excited when he found
out I had most of the week off that he immediately booked me on
talk shows in L.A., Chicago and London. I’m flying to Los Angeles
tonight to do a morning show tomorrow. They had a last minute
cancellation.”

“Oh.”

“
I don’t want to say
goodbye to you, Gianni, so I’m going to throw something at you from
out of left field. It’ll probably sound kind of nuts, but here
goes.” Jason took hold of my shoulders. “Come to New York with
me.”

“What...um, what are you suggesting,
exactly?”

“It’ll be kind of like what we’ve been
doing. We’ll still have to be discrete, so I’ll put you up in your
own apartment. I have properties all over the city, including a
gorgeous loft on the Lower East Side that’s currently standing
empty. You’ll love it. Best of all, it’s just a few blocks from my
place. We can see each other all the time.”

“But my family’s here, and my friends,
and my job....” Zan flashed through my mind but I tried to push the
thought of him away.

“I know. As far as a job goes, I’ll
put you on the payroll. We can call you my assistant publicist or
something. Also, I’ll buy you tickets to San Francisco whenever you
want to visit your family and friends. I’ll take good care of you,
baby.”

“Why would you offer me this? You must
have guys back in New York.”

“I don’t have
you
there,
Gianni.”

“But you barely know me.”

“Here’s what I do know: I’m really
enjoying what we have and I want a lot more time with you. It’s as
simple as that.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Just think about it. I know it’s a
lot to consider, and I don’t need an answer right now.” He pulled a
folded envelope from his back pocket and put it in my hand.
“Because I’m an optimist, I went ahead and bought you a plane
ticket. First class, nothing but the best for you, baby. It’s for
this Thursday, which is when I’ll be returning to New York. I’d
love it if you were there waiting for me when I got home. No
pressure, though. If you decide not to take me up on my offer, just
throw it away.”

“Oh. Wow,” I stammered.

“I realize I’m asking a hell of a lot,
Gianni. You’ll have to uproot your entire life, all for some guy
you’ve known less than a month. I really hope you’ll use the ticket
though, and at least give this a chance. I think we have something
special here, and I want to give it the opportunity to
develop.”

“I promise I’ll think about it,” I
told him as I slid the envelope in my pocket.

“Thank you, baby.” We could hear my
grandmother and some of her friends coming down the hall, probably
to see what was taking so long with the coffee. Jason winked at me
before stepping back and directing a big smile at the onslaught of
tiny seniors that began flooding the kitchen.

He had to leave about twenty minutes
later to catch his flight. Marie the dog trainer arrived just as he
was on his way out. She was about a foot shorter than Jason and put
her hands on her curvy hips as she looked up at him, narrowing her
eyes behind her glasses. “I know you. You were on that crappy show
with all those kids, the one where you needed to take your shirt
off every time you chopped some wood. You did that movie too, the
one where you were always blowin’ shit up.” She had a thick
southern accent that instantly made me grin.

Jason tried to lay on the charm,
hitting her with a million dollar smile. “I blow shit up in most of
my movies.”

Marie didn’t seem impressed. “Don’t be
sayin’ that like you’re proud of it. How many times can a grown man
dive toward a camera in slow motion while some giant-ass truck or
buildin’ blows up behind him? That shit’s so old it probably once
yelled at Methuselah to get off its lawn.” When Jason just blinked
at her, she added, “It’s really freakin’ old, that’s the only point
you need to take away here.”

Jason took that in stride, his smile
never wavering. “Duly noted.” He called, “Pleasure meeting all of
you,” then gave me a hug before making his exit.

“Hey there, Nana. Hi Jessie. Where’s
this new puppy?” Marie asked as she came inside. Mikey showed her
and introduced himself and the boys.

She stuck her head in the living room,
then took a look at the furniture piled up in the hallway and
asked, “What’re you preparin’ for here, exactly? You expect the
puppy to start throwin’ grenades?”

Mikey grinned at that. “I expect him
to eat my furniture.”

“What did you adopt, a wolverine?”
Marie went through the baby gate and closed it behind her, and was
instantly charged by both puppies. As soon as he recognized her,
Tom Selleck sat down and started thumping his long tail on the
floor. She was wearing a black hoodie with a green zombie and the
words ‘Got Brains?’ on it, and she pulled what looked like a little
bit of bacon from its kangaroo pocket. Tom Selleck vibrated with
excitement, then caught the treat in midair when she tossed it to
him.

Meanwhile, the fuzzball grabbed the
cuff of her jeans and started gleefully tugging at it. “Yup, a
wolverine.” She smiled at Mikey. “Good call clearin’ your stuff
out.” To the boys she said, “Why don’t y’all come here and I’ll
show you how to get your puppy to follow instructions.”

“Maybe you can teach Markie how to do
that, too,” MJ said as he got up and stood beside her. “He doesn’t
follow instructions at all.”

As the puppy class got under way, I
told Yosh and Chance, “Come with me, okay? I need to talk to you
guys about something.”

We said goodbye to everyone and drove
to my house, Yosh following Chance and me in his truck. Once we
arrived, I immediately made us some drinks, and when we were seated
around the kitchen table, I said, “Jason asked me to move to New
York.”

“Wow. I didn’t even know you were
seeing anyone,” Chance said. I filled him in on Jason’s and my
brief history, and on his offer. When I finished, he asked, “Are
you considering taking him up on this?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“But why? It doesn’t sound like you’re
in love with this guy. Why would you be willing to pack up and move
to the other side of the country for him?”

“It’s a good opportunity for someone
like me. I mean, sure, I’d miss my friends and family. I’ve moved
away before though, and I know I can come home and visit a
lot.”