From the Ashes (25 page)

“Yeah, yeah.” Michael pointed across the sales floor. “Oh lovely. He brought a friend.”

Tomas was standing with his friend Rick from the firehouse.

“Shit, I didn’t know he was coming.” Not that Jesse disliked Rick, exactly, but he knew Michael did.

Rick and Tomas looked up, and Tomas waved. When Jesse came over, he touched Jesse’s arm with a big smile on his face. “
Mi amor.
”

“Hi.” Jesse hoped he wasn’t blushing too hard.

Tomas didn’t hold his hand or anything, but the grin he gave Jesse was open and happy and sexy. Anyone who saw them would have known they were in love.

“Hi,” Rick mumbled a greeting at Michael.

Michael nodded back. “Hey.”

“I was thinking about this one.” His excitement palpable, Tomas patted the mattress in front of them. “C’mon. Lie down.”

Jesse checked the area for people they might offend. There were plenty of customers, but none of them were close enough to be paying attention. So when Tomas flopped on the side of the bed he normally took when they lay down together, Jesse climbed on the other side.

Careful not to touch his boyfriend in public, Jesse laid on his back and stared at the ceiling. He couldn’t process whether the bed was comfortable or not because his mind reeled. He was really doing this. Buying a bed with his boyfriend.

The cost wasn’t such a huge deal. He’d already saved enough for two classes next quarter. However, doing this meant he wasn’t just crashing at Tomas’s anymore. He’d be living there permanently, setting his stake in the ground. Jesse might have panicked, except that Tomas’s fingers closed around his hand.

Rolling onto his side, Tomas looked down into Jesse’s face. When they were at home on Tomas’s crummy mattress, the whole thing dipped with Tomas’s extra weight, but not this bed. Tomas must have been right about the quality because the surface stayed level, even when Tomas bounced.

“For fuck’s sake, are you guys gonna make out or something?” Rick asked from the foot of the bed. His face was crumpled like he’d smelled something gross.

“Right?” Michael said snottily. He drew out the word into a couple dramatic syllables.

Snickering, Jesse put some extra space between him and Tomas.

“No one’s making you watch,” Tomas called over his shoulder. With a naughty wink, he rolled on top of Jesse.

“Ach.” Jesse laughed, trying to drag in a breath. Tomas was heavy, and he was making no attempt to keep his weight off.

At the foot of the bed, Michael and Rick grumbled at them to get their heads out of their asses before they got carted away by security.

Jess and Tomas didn’t get a chance to christen the bed until the weekend. They made love all morning, with rain coming down outside. The sheets twisted around their ankles. It was slow and intense, and Tomas never stopped kissing him.

In the wake of it, when they lay side by side on the gray-blue sheets they’d bought themselves as an early holiday gift, Jesse couldn’t shake thoughts of Christmas.

“Do we actually have to go to church on Christmas Eve?” Jesse was cool with hanging out with Tomas’s family for the holiday. Other than the Speedy Christmas get-together at a bar in the U District, he didn’t have anything better to do. He wasn’t sure though whether he should put his foot down about church. In all honesty, it didn’t seem worth making a fuss.

“You don’t have to, but my mom will like you better if you go.” Tomas drew a line up Jesse’s belly with his fingertip. He watched his touch, enthralled.

Tomas never did fight fair.

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Jesse took a breath. “Not about your mom, I mean, but mine.” It had been easy not to think about his parents for the past few months. With school and getting settled, and falling into a relationship with Tomas, he’d been too busy. But the closer they got to Christmas, the more time Jesse spent obsessing about whether he should call home. On the one hand, it seemed stupid. They’d told him they didn’t want him as a son if he was gay. Or at least his father had.

“Do you think I should call my mom? On Christmas, I mean.” Jesse twisted the sheets around the tip of his finger.

“What do you think?” Tomas rested his head on his hand.

“Maybe she’ll be pissed to hear from me, but I think I’ll feel guilty if I don’t call.” Jesse tried to chuckle, but he was pretty sure it came out sounding sad. “How fucked up is that?”

“Nah.” Tomas touched his hand. He smelled so good—like sweat and cinnamon. His chain danced against dark skin as he shifted up onto his elbows. “Family’s like that. Do you think they’ll call you?”

Jesse shrugged. “They don’t have my number. I haven’t spoken to them since I moved.” The morning he’d left, his dad had grunted his usual goodbye. His mom had waved nervously the way she’d done every day.

He’d waited until they pulled out of the driveway to drag his suitcase out from under his bed. The note he wrote them was the only real goodbye they got. His old cellphone, the one on their family plan, he’d left on the kitchen counter.

“Well…” Tomas stroked Jesse’s arm. “If they can’t reach you, maybe you want to call them.” He worked his touch to Jesse’s shoulder. “You never know. Maybe they’ll be happy to talk to you.”

Jesse doubted that. Fuck, Jesse wasn’t even sure he wanted to talk to them. But he’d feel like crap if he didn’t call. “Maybe I should do it today. Get it over with.” He bit his fingernails, one by one. If he waited until the holiday, he’d be stressed for the next week. No. Jesse needed to go through with it sooner rather than later.

“Okay.” Tomas smiled. The sky outside was gray and dark, and the weather chilly, but their bedroom was cozy warm. Jesse dreaded getting up. “Do you want me to stay here, or should I go to the other house?”

Jesse exhaled a long breath. He’d have to shower first if he was going to do this. “I think I’d rather be alone.”

“Okay.” Tomas pushed off the bed. “But I’ll be right next door. If you need me, just text. I’ll come back. Take you to breakfast, suck you off—anything you want, okay, Jess?”

“I love you, you know that, right?” Jesse sat up and hung his feet over the side.

“Yep.” Tomas winked and then disappeared into the bathroom.

Jesse padded into the kitchen and set some coffee to brew. The phone call would be quick. Maybe his parents wouldn’t even be home and he could just leave a voicemail. No, that would be worse, since he’d stress nonstop about whether they’d call back.

He wouldn’t leave a message. If they didn’t pick up, he’d try again on Christmas Day.

“Mmm… Coffee.” Tomas stumbled out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel slung around his hips. A couple drips of water ran down his rich, smooth skin, and Jesse wished they could go back into the bedroom and pick up where they’d left off.

“You want to shower?” Tomas took a mug out of the cabinet, hinting with his tone for Jesse to get a move on already. Tomas probably figured Jesse was thinking of wussing out.

“Sure.” Jesse carried his coffee cup into the bathroom with him, needing the caffeine to bolster his courage.

With shaking hands, he set the cup on the sink and started the water. It was funny showering in Seattle in winter. The warmth felt good, but Jesse always seemed to be a little damp already.

He scrubbed shampoo through his hair, twisting under the fall. When he was done with his normal soaping, he grabbed a washcloth and started to exfoliate. All over. He didn’t leave a corner of his skin unscrubbed. If he was stalling, at least he’d be smooth.

“Hey, someone might still need hot water,” Tomas called from outside the door.

Feeling more tired than he had when he got up, Jesse stepped onto the bathmat and wrapped a towel around his waist.

“I’m heading to my folks’ house,” Tomas said through the door. “Text when you’re ready for me to come back.”

“Okay.” Jesse was glad Tomas left before he could clear the bathroom. If he saw Tomas’s face, Jesse wasn’t sure he could go through with it.

He spent longer than he needed fixing his hair. Jesse styled the longer bits, even though he knew five minutes in the rain would ruin the look. Before he could lose his nerve, he marched out to the living room and picked up his phone.

He dialed the number without even realizing he’d done it. Adrenaline thrummed through his system. When the first ring sounded, Jesse’s fingers trembled.

“Hello?” His mom sounded just like she had through his childhood, warm and reassuring.

Fuck, Jesse was going to cry. He stood there like an idiot, his tongue thick and his throat closed, not knowing what to say.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Oh my God, Jesse?” Her voice quivered.

How did she know it was him and not a prank caller? Maybe she recognized the way he breathed.

“Don’t hang up, okay? Where…? What…?” She trailed off, sounding like she was in tears. Her voice broke when she said, “Just don’t hang up. Please.”

“Okay” was the only thing he could force out. His breath was shallow enough to make him dizzy. “Um…” He wracked his brain for what he’d been planning to say, why he’d called in the first place. “I wanted to say Merry Christmas. I know it’s early. Um, maybe I should have sent a card instead—”

“No,” his mom rushed. “No. I’m so glad you called.” She paused, and Jesse was reminded of just how different his mother was from Tomas’s. His mom probably wanted to say stuff or ask a bunch of questions, but she didn’t. Mrs. Perez would have been spouting nonstop since the start of the phone call.

“Are you okay?” his mother finally asked.

“Yeah.” Jesse looked around Tomas’s place, at his new bed and new life. It wasn’t perfect, but it was something. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“I…” His mother’s voice broke again, and with it Jesse’s heart cracked in two. “I love you.” Sniffling, she sounded so upset Jesse wished he was there so he could do something to make her stop crying. “I was so worried.”

Jesse’s anger reared up, coming to his defense so he didn’t have to deal with all the feelings batting around in his guts. “You guys said to get out, so I did.”

“What?” his mom said. “No, I never—”

“Dad did.” Jesse refused to get sucked into guilt, to feel like it was somehow his fault. They’d told him to leave. Shouted that they wanted him out. Well, okay, his dad had, but his mother had been standing right there, and she hadn’t said anything to the contrary. “He told me if I was gay, I couldn’t live with you guys.” Jesse took a deep breath, letting all the indignation and thwarted rage of that last year at his parents’ house fill his chest until he felt like he’d done the right thing. “And I am. I’m gay. I have a boyfriend.”

“Jesse, don’t say that,” his mom started.

That was all it took for Jesse to lose his shit. “Don’t say that? Are you kidding? I’m gay. I’m a gay man. I’m living with my boyfriend. We have a dog, and a bed we just bought together, and—”

“If there’s someone taking advantage of you, Jesse, you can get out.” His mom was all earnest concern, and it only made Jesse more pissed off.

“No one is taking advantage of me. Tomas is…” He didn’t have words. “We love each other.” Even if neither of their parents ever accepted it, nothing could break his and Tomas’s bond. “But if I wasn’t with Tomas, I’d still be gay.”

His mother went very quiet. Jesse knew she hadn’t hung up because he heard her breathing. “Okay,” she said.

Only that. But it was more than he’d ever gotten from either one of his parents.

Jesse dropped onto the couch. The nubby fabric rubbed his bare skin. It smelled like Tomas, and Jesse, and a little like Chardonnay since she made a habit of rubbing her muzzle along the edge of the seat when Tomas wasn’t looking.

“Okay.” The room shifted around him, the same but somehow totally different—as if the world had stopped rotating dead in its tracks and was waiting, building potential energy, to turn the other way. Not knowing what to say, Jesse fell back on the easy stuff. “Well, Merry Christmas. Maybe next year I’ll get it together to send a card.”

“No, stay,” his mom said. “I want to talk to you.”

“Not if you’re going to get on my case about my being gay.” Jesse sweated from the stress of the conversation and could smell his armpits as his nerves seeped out through his pores. “That conversation is closed, Mom.”

“Okay.” Calmer, his mother started in on the questions. “Where are you living? Are you still going to school?”

There was no harm in being honest. Still, Jesse put on his defensive voice. “I live south of Seattle. Going to school at UW.”

“That’s wonderful. UW’s a great school, right?”

“Yeah.” Jesse nibbled a loose piece of skin on his lip. He didn’t like agreeing with his mother, but he had worked his ass off so he could get in. “I have to go back and take a couple freshman requirements, but they accepted credit for most of my classes at WSU.”

“That’s great, honey.” His mom sounded so warm and caring. It made him want to rail against her, blame her for taking her love away.

“I gotta go.” Shifting on the couch, he prepared to stand. Jesse didn’t know why, but he couldn’t be sitting when he finished the call.

“Can I see you?” his mom blurt out. “I…I could fly out to Seattle. Or if you wanted to come home for Christmas—”