Bitter Taffy (16 page)

Rico realized that Derek needed him. Just seriously
needed
him.

He ventured across the office and leaned over the desk, kissed Derek on the top of the head, and stroked the backs of his hands. “I didn’t know that,” he said quietly. “You… you’ve got all this confidence, Derek. It’s hard to know where the confidence stops and the guy begins.”

“Well, right now he’s beginning to dread watching you walk through the door,” Derek half laughed. “You
swear
there will be a sleepover?”

“Yeah,” Rico said with a gentle smile before nuzzling Derek’s temple.
Please tell me there’s Christmas, please?
“I promise. You and me are moving to the next level. And we’ll stay in bed on that level for at least three days.”

“And there’s no one else,” Derek said, looking up and meeting his eyes.

Rico swallowed. No Ezra in his heart anymore. It was a scary thing to think about.

“No one else,” he promised.
Please let me be telling the truth. I don’t ever want to hurt this guy. That would be the worst thing I’ve ever done.

Derek nodded and sat up straight and organized the stuff on his desk with a meticulousness he usually avoided. “Okay,” he said, pretending he hadn’t completely lost his composure. “We’ll plan on that. I’ll come get you at seven tomorrow.”

Rico nodded, his heart beating about a thousand times a minute. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “I’ll tell Finn and Adam they can have all the monkey sex they want.”

Derek shook his head in disgust. “You know, I really don’t think our sex life and your cousin’s sex life should be so closely related, you think?”

Rico shrugged. “Yeah, well, they’re usually pretty quiet. I like to think sometimes Adam lets loose too.”

Derek grimaced. “I forget. I shouldn’t, but I do. Your cousin… he’s, like, proof, right?”

“That the walking wounded can still fight? Yeah.”

Derek nodded. “Okay, then. We’ll think good thoughts for him. But
not
on our weekend.”

“Deal.”

F
INN
AND
Adam were going out Friday night too. Finn wanted to take Adam dancing, complete with a new shirt, something eggplant purple and tight across Adam’s impressive chest, as well as pants that Rico wasn’t sure would allow Adam to breathe.

Finn wore cutoff jeans and a fishnet tank top, because hello, it was ninety degrees outside, and he spent a good half an hour convincing Adam that, no, he did
not
look like a rejected seventies porn star, before Adam looked at the clock and said, “Fuck, it’s almost seven. Let’s get the fuck out of here so we can get back and shower before ten.”

“Does something turn into a pumpkin I don’t know about?” Finn asked facetiously.

“Yeah, my….” Adam looked at Rico and blushed. “Never mind. I just don’t foresee this being something I want to do for hours on end.”

Finn rolled his eyes at Rico. “Yeah. Mr. Try New Things he is
not
. Have a good time, Rico. When we gonna see you?”

Rico shrugged. “Uhm, unless you need me to take care of Clopper, I was, uhm, thinking, Monday evening?”

Adam blinked, assimilated, and shrugged. “Yeah. Okay. Got condoms?”

“We both got tested,” Rico said, smiling because Adam
would
ask that. “We’re both clear.”

“Fuckin’ awesome. Don’t forget lube.”

“There’s extra in the bathroom,” Finn said helpfully, and then he waved a flirty little wiggle of his fingers. “Bye!”

Adam threw open the door and froze.

“Holy mother of bitch-screaming shit-fucking harpies,” he snapped. Then he slammed the door and turned around, leaning on it like he was fending off zombie hordes outside ready to eat his brains.

“Adam?” Finn asked, concerned. “Adam, baby, who were those women?”

Adam looked at him from big brown eyes in a shock-white face. “Mothers. Everybody’s fucking mother. God, Finn, do we have to go out there? Man, I fucking moved here to get the fuck away from them. Can we just… just hide under the bed until they go away?”

Outside, Rico heard three
very
familiar voices screaming in Spanish and a heavy fist on the door.

“Oh fuck,” he muttered. “Adam, seriously?”

Adam nodded but didn’t look at him. “I’ve got to… I’ve got to….”

Finn, on the other hand, ran to the bookshelf in the kitchen—the one where Adam kept his art supplies—and started to rummage around.

He came back with a charcoal drawing Rico couldn’t quite make out, and then coaxed Adam to move aside, kissing him on the cheek and nuzzling his temple while Rico went over and tried to get the door handle so he could go outside and deal with his business.

Finn got there first.

They sort of slid Adam to the wall, where he was still staring, shocky and glassy-eyed at the ghosts of his past, when Finn shoved out the door and started screaming back at the women
in Spanish
.

That
made Adam’s eyes focus and widen. “Holy crap.”

“He speaks it better than we do,” Rico said in wonder.

“He never had reason to hate it,” Adam said darkly. Then he stood and squared his shoulders. “Okay. I can’t let him do this alone.”

Rico shook his head. “I can’t let you do it
period
. They’re here to see me—fucking with you is just icing to them. Go, get your boy, and leave. They’ll stay here and I can finish this.”

Adam shook his head. “Naw. Strength in numbers. C’mon, man. Let’s go do this.” With that he pulled the door open and stepped outside.

Finn was still yelling—and surprisingly enough, the three women in the hallway of the walkup had stopped talking long enough to listen.

“You see this? This is what you tried to make him into,” Finn shouted, his Spanish flawless. “You wanted him to be small and scared and nobody. But he’s
everybody
to me. So you keep your nastiness and your venom away from our home,
qué
? We don’t need you. We’re
happy
,
and not one of you has ever been happy in your entire miserable lives.”

Adam calmed him down with hands on his shoulders and a whisper in his ear. Rico didn’t hear what he said—he was busy facing the three tiny women who had caused so much chaos.

Adam’s mother was the odd duck out. She wore her long graying hair pulled partially back, with the rest in a wavy mass falling to her shoulder blades. She’d dyed it, but not recently, and about an inch of gray showed, and her deeply lined face showed years of hard living. She was dressed in jeans that hugged tight to her over-generous hips and a tatty pink velour hoodie with a ragged row of sequins on the bottom.

She glared at Rico through two pounds of makeup like it was his fault she’d been hauled on a plane from San Diego to yell at her blood relatives, and Rico glared back. God, she’d been a bitch—
such
a bitch—to Adam.

She stood shoulder to shoulder with Rico’s mom, who, although a few years older, looked about twenty years younger. Lydia Gonzalves-Macias wore sensible black pumps and an elegant, timeless black suit with a gold collared shirt under the suit jacket. It was the kind of thing she’d worn to work every weekday he could remember, and her hair—blown and gelled smooth—was up in an elegant chignon at her nape. She wore her makeup understated and her delicate hoop earrings in gold, and the look on her face was so decidedly neutral that Rico felt a wave of rage. Always the good girl, Rico’s mother. Always the one who did the right thing, who toed the line between Rico’s demanding father and frigid grandmother, never once standing up for anyone in their path.

In the center of the pyramid of hate stood the grand matriarch herself.

Helena Macias didn’t
look
that imposing. She stood shorter than both of her daughters by a good four inches, and her own hair, long since gone gray, was styled in careful short curls around her lined face.

Her little black eyes glittered in the network of wrinkles and scowl lines like a snake’s.

“Hola, harpies from hell,” Rico called, feeling his jaw tighten. “Don’t you have small children to frighten? Husbands to please? Dogs to euthanize?” Clopper was going
ape
shit in the house, and that last vicious dig at Adam’s mother made her flinch. Yeah, he’d never forgiven that woman for putting down Adam’s dog when he shipped out. If nothing else, as a man serving his country, Adam had deserved better.

“We’re being serious, Rico—” his mother began, ignoring the digs at the three of them, but of course his grandmother interrupted.

“Stop this foolishness,” she snapped. “You are no more gay than this one”—she spit
in Adam’s direction—“was a hero.”

Finn leaped at her—a full-body leap—and Adam caught him around the middle before his hands made contact with Helena Macias’s aristocratically boned face.

“
I’ll fucking kill her
!” Finn snarled, and Adam gave Rico an agonized look before throwing Finn over his shoulder and opening the door behind Rico.

Of course, Clopper took the opportunity to make his escape, and Rico had to grab him by the collar as he lunged through the door for the three women.

Finally,
finally
, they took steps back, the two mothers going flat against the doorframe of the apartment across the hall and Grandma Macias ending up practically in their laps.

“Would you silence that fucking animal!” Adam’s mother, Lucy, shouted. “Jesus, asshole, shut him up or I’ll put him down!”

“You lay a hand on my dog, lady, I’ll have you arrested,” Rico snapped. “You three flew out from San Diego to do what? Yell at me? Threaten my dog? Piss Finn off so bad he practically commits battery? What in the
hell
are you doing here?”

“Your father doesn’t like this, Ricardo,” his mother said, making her voice strong. Well, yes, all of her clients thought she was strong. They had no idea she was just doing as she was told. “He says for you to stop this… this
gay
thing right now and come home, and we’ll find a nice girl and—”

“And I won’t sleep with her,” Rico said, still pitching his voice above Clopper’s. Jesus, the dog wouldn’t shut up, and Rico didn’t even want to make him. “So you either accept me as I am and let me come down for Thanksgiving and Christmas, or you don’t, and I’ll stay here and you can live back down south and we
never
have to see each other again.”

“It’s
him
,” Grandma said, pointing her sharp little chin at the door. “
He
made you this way. I told you, Lydia, you let your boy lie down in trash, he’ll pick up the stink!”

“Adam’s the only family I care about!” Rico yelled.

“Rico!” his mother protested, and the hell of it was, she sounded truly wounded. Her eyes glittered with tears and her chin trembled.

“Dammit,
Mami
—you couldn’t have come here yourself to talk to me? You had to bring
them
? Just once, couldn’t you have been brave enough to want to love me for me?”

“Instead of what?” his mother demanded. “What
he
made you do?” The venom—and disgust—were unmistakable, and Rico fought the urge to vomit.

“That’s
gross
,” he snarled. “Oh God—no. He’s my
brother
—”

“He’s the little bastard
she
wouldn’t give up for adoption,” his grandmother pronounced, and Rico—God help him—almost let loose his death grip on Clopper’s collar.

Suddenly Clopper calmed down, whining subserviently, and footsteps sounded on the stairwell.

“Jesus, Rico, what’s wrong with Clopper? He doesn’t bark like that at
anyone
!”

Derek took the last few stairs, his face open and pleasant, because he didn’t expect to find a Mexican soap opera on Rico’s front door. Rico could only be grateful the lady who lived across the way was either asleep or shopping, because she could have given Grandma Macias a run for her money as far as vicious old bats were concerned.

“Derek,” Rico said, the relief in his voice a little pathetic. “Oh my God.
Derek
.
I am
so
glad you’re here.”

He looked good. Loose jeans, a microfiber shirt—sort of casual dating at its best. But Rico could tell he’d just shaved, and probably just brushed his teeth, and maybe even changed his shirt a couple of times. He wanted this to be nice, and Rico had been… oh, God, he’d wanted to erase the memory of anyone else’s touch on his skin.

“Yeah?” Derek put a calming hand on Clopper’s head at the same time he leaned forward for a kiss.

Rico didn’t even think twice. Just leaned in and touched lips with him, smiling in gratitude. In front of them, he heard three shocked gasps, and Derek’s eyes widened as he pulled back.

“So, uhm, ladies? Are you related to Rico?” He smiled winningly at Rico’s mother. “
You
look like you could be his sister, but I know he doesn’t have one. Are you his mother?”

“Rico, who is this
bastardo
?” his mother asked in Spanish.

Rico flinched from the obscenity. “
Mami
,” he said, continuing in Spanish, “either talk to him in English or—”

“Ma’am, I promise you, my parents are happily married and living in Woodland,” Derek replied pleasantly in Spanish. “And I was
so
looking forward to meeting Rico’s family. I think very highly of Rico, and of Adam, and I was hoping the apples hadn’t fallen far from the trees.” Derek narrowed his eyes. “I understand now that they were apparently catapulted to the other side of the state.”

“
Mami
, this is Derek. He’s my boyfriend. We were on our way out—and so were Finn and Adam. We’ll be out in five minutes, and if you don’t want to see any gay people holding hands or kissing, you three had better be the
holy fuck
away from my place.”

“But Rico!” his mother complained.

Rico shook his head, thinking of Finn and Adam and Derek and how much he loved them all. “You can’t be mean to these people,
Mami
. And if you can’t be mean to them, you can’t be mean to me. If you got something to say that’s not mean, you come back and say it to me yourself.” He glowered at his grandmother and Adam’s mother. “You two—if you ever come here again, I’ll let my dog loose on you.
Nobody
treats Adam that way. Not anymore.”