Belonging (23 page)

Nico stuck his head into the family
room, a full coffee mug in his hand and a thick textbook under his
arm. “So, we’re all stuck in here because there’s a media feeding
frenzy outside, right?”

“Right,” I said.

He contemplated that for a moment,
then said, “Might be kind of fun to turn the sprinklers on
them.”

Nana whooped, then yelled as she
darted from the room, “That’s a peach of an idea! I can’t believe I
didn’t think of it myself!”

Jessie took off after her, calling,
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t get into trouble.”

Dante sighed at that and followed them
both, saying, “That’s like having Thing One keep an eye on Thing
Two.” On the way out of the family room he added, “Thanks for the
suggestion, Nick.”

“My work here is done,” Nico said with
a smile. “If anyone wants me, I’ll be in my room with headphones
on. Come get me if the paparazzi sets fire to the building in an
effort to smoke us out.” He went back upstairs.

I turned my attention to the TV,
picking up the remote and hitting record, and said, “I like this
aerial view. It’s convenient. See? There’s my grandmother, about to
make her world debut. I bet this’ll go well.”

Nana and Jessie had appeared in the
side yard. It was sealed off from the front and back by a high
fence, so the only camera that spotted them was the one in the
helicopter. As it zoomed in for a tight shot, Nana looked up, then
flipped them off with both hands. She really got into it too,
pumping her arms up and down to really emphasize her
point.

She then ran to a control box, pulled
open the cover, and cranked a dial. We could hear the yells from
all the way at the back of the house. The cameraman in the copter
zoomed out, just as all the reporters that had been on the front
lawn ran from the onslaught. Nana had turned the sprinklers as high
as they could go, and had done a pretty good job soaking the crowd.
“Just be glad she doesn’t have access to cauldrons of hot oil,”
Skye said cheerfully.

“Don’t give her that idea when she
comes back in here,” I said. “She just might find a way to make
that work and go medieval on the paparazzi.”

Once all of the reporters retreated to
dry land, the eye in the sky zoomed back in on Nana and Jessie. She
was looking around and obviously hatching another idea, while
Jessie took over the important job of flipping off the camera. I
wondered what had become of Dante, and then I saw his arm sticking
out the side door, making a ‘come here’ gesture. Of course Nana
ignored him.

She dashed into a storage shed, then
returned moments later with an open bucket of paint and a wide
brush. She got as far as painting a huge, yellow F on the concrete
and was partway through the U when Dante finally came outside. He
shielded his face from the camera with one hand while trying to
disarm Nana with the other. She ended up smacking him several times
with the wet paintbrush before he finally got it away from
her.

“I love your family,” Zan said with a
grin, watching the screen with the rest of us. “They’re all
completely insane. I really feel like I fit in here.”

“I’m always trying to tell people that
my family’s crazy. Now the whole world gets to see what I’ve been
talking about.” I leaned against the back of the couch with my arm
around him and Zan curled up beside me.

Dante had retrieved a garden hose and
was attempting to hose the F U off the cement before it dried on.
That didn’t sit well with Nana. She and my normally dignified
brother got into a tug-of-war for control of the hose, totally
soaking each other while Jessie darted inside to escape getting
drenched as well.

“I almost feel like I should
intervene,” Charlie said with a huge smile, sitting down on the arm
of the sofa and watching as Dante got hit in the face with a blast
of water, “but this is freaking hilarious. My husband’s going to be
mortified when he sees this. You’re brilliant for thinking to
record it, Gi.”

“I live to get embarrassing footage of
my brothers. I should show you the pictures I got of them wearing
those hideous, furry Sasquatch boots when Nana first brought the
puppy home. Why’d we discontinue those, by the way?” I asked,
gesturing at the dog, who was still chewing on my shoe while
pinning my foot down with one giant paw.

“Because the puppy systematically peed
on each and every pair,” Charlie told me. “When Nana tried to put
them in the washing machine, all the fur molted so she threw them
out.”

“And it just keeps getting weirder,”
Zan murmured. He gave me a little smile and I leaned in and kissed
him, then remembered who was sitting just a couple feet from us and
pulled back quickly.

“Oh come on,” Christian
said. “I’m not going to get squirmy if you two kiss. I’ve already
seen both the live version and the prerecorded one. Actually,
pretty much everyone on the planet has seen the airport footage by
now. We went by a newsstand this morning, and pictures of you two
kissing were on the front page of every single newspaper. It’s a
trip. I knew you were famous, Dad, but I never realized you
were
this
famous.”

“I wasn’t,” Zan said. “Turns out,
mysteriously disappearing at the peak of your career is a sure-fire
way to get boatloads of publicity and catapult yourself into
superstardom. Not that that was what I was going for. At
all.”

Dante poked his head in the family
room. He was soaking wet and paint-smeared, and said, “I’m going to
go upstairs, murder Nick for the sprinkler suggestion, and find
something to change into. Nana and Jessie both went to clean
themselves up, too. For God’s sake, if she gets back down here
before I do, try to prevent her from doing anything that’ll get her
more than six months in county lockup.”

“I’m going to make us a snack while
you kill your cousin,” Charlie said, getting up and crossing the
room to his husband. He grinned and said, “Gi recorded your hose
fight for posterity, by the way. You totally lost.” He stretched up
and kissed Dante’s cheek, then chuckled when my brother sighed
dramatically.

Everyone besides Zan and me relocated
to the kitchen to pursue the snack idea. As soon as we were left
alone, Zan wrapped himself around me and buried his face in my
shoulder, a tremor going through him. I knew then that his calm
demeanor had all been an act. “You okay?” I asked as I held
him.

“I’m trying to be. I’m trying so
fucking hard.”

“You don’t have to pretend for my
sake, or for anyone else’s. If you need to yell or cry or melt
down, you can do that. Or if you need to retreat to my room or a
room of your own and just hide from all of this, you can do that,
too. Just tell me what you need and we’ll make it
happen.”

“I wish I was back home,” he said.
“But I’d want you with me, so that’s where it all falls apart. I
can’t go back to the way I was before and just expect you to pull
up a seat beside me on the couch. I need to get a fucking grip and
learn to live in the world again, not only for my sake but for
yours, too.”

“Give yourself some time. It would be
hard for anyone to acclimate back into society after all those
years, even without that kind of chaos,” I said, gesturing at the
TV screen.

The aerial shot was
picture-in-picture, showing the ever-increasing crowd filling the
street. Meanwhile, a reporter was talking to some of the people
who’d gathered outside. A woman in her forties was being
interviewed, who was wearing a faded Zan Tillane
t-shirt.

When Zan noticed that he sat up,
reached for the remote and turned up the sound. The woman had tears
in her eyes as she said, “I’m so happy he’s alive. I never gave up
hope, I kept praying for this day. I have every single album he
ever made. His music got me through some really hard times when I
was in college, and I’ll never stop loving him. Never.”

The reporter asked her, “What about
the claims that he’s been in prison all this time?”

“I don’t think it’s true, but even if
it is, so what? People make mistakes. If he was in jail, then he
served his time. I’m just so happy he’s out now.”

When the camera cut back to the
reporter, Zan murmured, “It didn’t even occur to me that there
would be fans out there. I assumed they were just curious
onlookers. I didn’t think I had fans anymore.”

“Oh, you do. That documentary I
watched said the number of Zan Tillane fan clubs tripled after you
vanished, it just added to your mystique.”

“And they still remember me, even
after all these years,” Zan said quietly. After a pause he said, “I
have to be honest, I used to take them for granted. In fact, I was
often annoyed by my fans and the way they hounded me for photos and
autographs. Just goes to show how narcissistic I was back then, and
why I desperately needed to step away and gain some
perspective.”

On the TV screen, two men
in their twenties were being interviewed. They had their arms
around each other’s shoulders and were holding little rainbow
flags. The African American guy was saying as tears ran down his
cheeks, “I grew up on his music. My mom played it all the time. She
passed away last year, and whenever I want to feel like she’s with
me, I put on one of her Zan Tillane CDs.” The guy looked into the
camera and said, “Zan, if you’re watching, we love you. We think
it’s beautiful that you came out of hiding for Gianni.” He opened
his denim jacket, revealing a hand-lettered t-shirt. A pink heart
had the words
Zan & Gianni
written over the top of it. “We love you both.
Our entire community is behind you. Thank you for taking your
relationship public and letting the entire world see the beauty of
two men in love.”

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

I turned to look at Zan, who was
staring at the TV. “This is just...this is unbelievable,” he said
as I slid close and put my arm around him again. “I wasn’t making a
statement. I was just kissing you.” The camera was panning across
the ever-expanding crowd. Someone had brought a big rainbow flag
and as they waved it back and forth, the camera zoomed in on
it.

The young female reporter looked into
the camera and said, “They’re calling it the kiss heard ‘round the
world, and as you can see behind me, San Francisco’s gay community
has taken this story to heart, rallying around Tillane and
Dombruso.”

“Blimey,” Zan murmured.

The reporter was saying, “I, along
with the legions of Tillane fans gathering here in San Francisco,
will be watching this story closely as it unfolds.”

“I owe my fans so much,” he said
quietly. “They deserve to know what happened and where I’ve been,
and all those insane rumors need to be put to rest.”

“You shouldn’t feel obligated,” I
said. “Not if it comes at too high a cost to you.”

“But look at that,” Zan
said.

The TV screen was filled with a shot
of a lesbian couple in their thirties, one of whom had a toddler on
her shoulders. All three members of their little family were
wearing rainbow-striped t-shirts, and one of them was yelling over
the noise of the crowd, “We love you, Zan!”

He said, “I had my reasons for walking
away from my career, but now I need to figure out how to make it
right with my fans.” Zan turned to look at me. “I just don’t know
how to make any of this right for you, Gianni. I can’t turn off the
spotlight that I thrust on you. God, how I wish I could. I feel
incredibly guilty for turning your life upside down like
this.”

“Don’t feel guilty,” I said, reaching
up to caress his cheek, which was a little rough with a couple
days’ worth of stubble. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not. None of this is, really.
I’ve been clinging to you, but I’m not completely deluded. I fully
understand we’re not in a relationship yet. In fact, you and I have
never even had a first date! Apparently overnight, the whole world
made all these assumptions about us. They don’t realize that what
they saw was our first kiss.”

“Zan—”

He interrupted me by saying, “I need
you to know you’re in no way obligated to be with me, Gianni. I can
get the security team your brother called to take me away from
here. You don’t have to be stuck with me. All you did was kiss me
back. That shouldn’t mean you have to be saddled with me
indefinitely.”

“You finished?” I asked. When he
nodded, I kissed him softly, then rested my forehead against his as
I said, “I want to be with you. Yes, this thing between us is still
in its infancy, but I’m so excited to see what it grows into. I
knew it was going to have its share of challenges, even before a
few hundred people showed up on our doorstep. But the fact is, I’m
here because I want to be, and because I want you, Zan.” He smiled
at that and gathered me in his arms, carefully, as if I was
something fragile and worth protecting.

*****

Over the next few hours, the crowd out
front grew so large that the police department sent a couple dozen
officers to disperse them. A lot of the fans relocated to a small
park down the block. Some of the news channels continued filming
them. It looked like it was evolving into a fun party.

The reporters were allowed to stay in
front of the house, as long as they didn’t block the sidewalk or
come up onto our property. More lined the alley behind us, in case
anyone tried to sneak out the back, apparently. Jessie appointed
himself media monitor and kept us apprised of all of those
developments as he sat in front of the TV with his laptop and
smartphone.