Grown-up (8 page)

“Why?”

Austin looked down at the table. “’Cause friends do, right? Adult friends, I mean.” Because honestly, although he had Randy and Colton and a bunch of clubbing pals and fuck buddies, he rarely sat down with any of them just to chat. He knew who had fucked whom, what songs everyone liked to dance to, how many drinks they could have before passing out. But he didn’t know much about their families, what interests they had apart from clubbing and sex, their plans for the future.

“I’m your first adult friend?” Ben asked, his head cocked a bit.

“I think so.”

“I don’t know that I should be. I can tell you a lot about financial things, but when it comes to friendship, I’m not much of an expert.”

“Why not?”

Ben stared several inches to Austin’s right. “I don’t have much practice at it.”

That was a good opening to press for more, but just then the waitress arrived with their food. Their conversation turned lighter as they ate. Austin described Gifted, while Ben talked a bit about Sam’s showroom. Sam had already hired an architect to draw up some plans, and now that he’d made a decision, he was really gung-ho.

“Yesterday he was going on about music,” Ben said with a grin.

“Music?”

“Yeah. He wants to pipe it into the retail space. He’s trying to decide whether to stream from an online source or set up his own mix.”

“What kind of music?” Austin asked suspiciously, because his father had an unfortunate taste for 1970s soft rock. During more than one family road trip, Austin had threatened to throw himself from the moving car if he had to listen to one more song by Air Supply or Neil Diamond.

“Classical,” Ben replied.

“No. No, no, no. That’s all wrong.”

“Really? Sam thinks it’ll make the place seem… well, classy.”

Austin took a big bite of sandwich, chewed it furiously, and swallowed. “Nope. He’s not trying to sell to octogenarians who are furnishing an opera house. Dad’s customers might have deep pockets, but they don’t think of themselves as stuffy and refined. They might go for sophisticated, but they want hip. Stylish but not trendy. They want to think of their houses as the kinds of places that might be featured in a magazine spread. You know the type, right? Where there are two barefoot kids wearing imported frocks, and a dog’s obligingly curled on a color-coordinated rug, and the bowl on the table contains guavas and dragon fruit instead of apples and oranges.”

Ben covered his mouth with a napkin to muffle his laughter. “So what music should we play?”

Austin had to consider this for a moment. “Oh… Vampire Weekend. The Decemberists. Pink Martini. David Byrne. And mix in some world beat, maybe some bossa nova, some French pop, a little Hindi pop. The sound track should say, ‘I am sophisticated but never stodgy.’”

“You have a lot of good ideas.”

A funny little flutter in Austin’s stomach made him blush. “I just have a lot of experience in retail is all.”

“Hmm.”

They chatted some more as they finished their meals. Mostly about music. Their tastes were wildly divergent. Austin favored dance music and some pop, whereas Ben preferred dinosaur rock, of all things. But Austin could forgive that. At least Ben didn’t listen to Barry Manilow.

When they had polished off their sandwiches and the house-made chips, Ben seemed inclined to linger a bit, which suited Austin perfectly. Austin ordered a coffee and Ben got a refill on his iced tea.

“What happened when you were eight?”

The question slipped out so quickly and unexpectedly that it surprised Austin almost as much as it did Ben. That damn annoying voice in the back of his head had likely spit it out.

Ben was normally pale anyway, but now his face whitened and his lips thinned. He clutched his napkin tightly in one hand.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Austin said softly. “I didn’t mean to—”

“My mother died. I never knew my father, and Mom and I moved a lot. She wasn’t very… stable.”

Austin could understand that, considering what his own mother was like. Even when his parents were married, his father had been the steady one, the one who made sure food was on the table and paperwork got to school on time. Mom was fun. She let him stay up really late on a weeknight to watch an old Bogart movie or let him run around their suburban neighborhood in his Underoos with a rope in his hand, in search of cougars to keep as pets. Even though Austin was still in grade school when his parents divorced, he knew he was better off going to live with Sam.

Although Austin nodded, he didn’t tell Ben any of that. In part because he suspected that Ben’s mother’s instability was more than just quirkiness, and in part because it was Ben’s turn to tell
his
story.

Ben poked the straw around inside his glass as if he were spearfishing. “After my mother died, they sent me to live with my grandmother. I hardly knew her. I’d only seen her twice before. She seemed ancient, and she was sick, and… she couldn’t handle taking care of a kid. I went into foster care.”

“Shit.”

What would it be like to lose everyone and everything you knew while only in third grade? To have to live with strangers? Impulsively, Austin reached across the table to squeeze Ben’s free hand. “You’re amazeballs, man.”

“Huh?”

“To start off like that and still have your shit so goddamn together. Look at me. I have Sam and I can barely tie my shoes.”

Ben looked uncomfortable. “Foster care wasn’t a horror movie. Nobody abused me or anything. But I got shifted around pretty often. And wherever I was—hell, even before foster care, even when my mother was alive—I knew that in the end, nobody was really going to take care of me but me. And who the hell wants to adopt a teenage gayboy? I always knew I’d age out when I hit my eighteenth birthday and there’d be no safety net for me to land on.”

No safety net. That was so fucking terrifying that Austin’s gut clenched. “So that’s why you’re so organized and so, uh….”

“Anal. Yeah. Because I had to be.” Ben stabbed at his ice a few times.

Austin felt like stabbing something too, but he wasn’t sure what. He settled for glaring at his cooling coffee. “A lot of people fall apart under those circumstances. They can’t handle it—not that I blame them. But you just made yourself stronger. That’s really cool, Ben.”

Ben stopped playing with his straw and stared at Austin instead, his eyes narrowed. “You really think that?”

“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

“And you don’t think that I’m a boring, uptight asshole?”

At that, Austin had to give Ben’s hand another squeeze, and this time Austin allowed his palm to linger an extra moment or two. “You are none of those things.” He grinned. “Although you could stand to do your shopping somewhere other than the Gap.”

The corner of Ben’s mouth twitched just a little as he looked down at his pale blue shirt and khakis. “Yeah. I’m afraid I don’t have much fashion sense.”

“Well, what kind of a homosexual are you? We’ll have to revoke your membership card!”

Just then the waitress came by with a coffeepot in one hand and iced tea pitcher in the other. As she poured, she unsuccessfully tried not to smile at Austin’s comment. He winked at her, which made her snort an inelegant laugh and hurry away. If he weren’t in the middle of talking with Ben, he’d have stopped her to discuss some of the more embarrassing conversational snatches he’d overheard while waiting tables.

He turned his full attention back to Ben, who was using his straw to drink instead of to murder his ice cubes. “Fashion sense or not, you’re definitely not an asshole, Ben.”

“Maybe not. But I know what guys like you think when you see me.”

“Guys like me?” Austin said, taken aback.

“Yeah.” Although color rose in his cheeks, Ben forged ahead. “Hot guys. Cool guys. Guys who know how to dress and know where all the hip places are to eat, and who go to clubs, and…. You barely notice me. It’s like I’m negative space.”

Austin wanted to dwell on the part where Ben had called him hot. But there was too much pain in Ben’s voice. “I notice you.”

“Now. Because you want something from me.”

Shit. That hurt. And maybe the reason it cut so deep was because it was pretty much straight-on true. Ben had worked for Sam for years and Austin had seen him dozens of times, but it wasn’t until Austin decided he needed a mentor that he paid the guy any attention. And even then, well, Austin had gone two weeks without so much as texting a thank-you. He tried to think of a way to apologize that wasn’t totally lame, but nothing came to mind.

Ben sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t… I’m not very good with people. I moved around so much as a kid that I never really learned how to do friendship.”

“Don’t say sorry to
me
, Ben. I’m the one…. Look, I was stupid. About a lot of things, but you already know that. And I was blind, because you’re great. Not just because you know how to balance a checkbook either. You’re nice.” Okay, that was a pathetic thing to call someone, even if it was true. He needed to try harder. “You’re… sweet. You’re not a shallow screw-up like me. You’re
real
, solid. Like a mansion made of stone. And I’m just a mobile home that’s gonna fly away in the first big windstorm.”

Ben paused with his straw in midstab, his eyebrows raised. “Did you just say that I’m a brick house?”

“Sam likes the Commodores, as you probably already know. And I said stone, not brick.” Austin shrugged. “You’re goddamn adorable, actually.”

And he looked even more so when he blushed.

Those words hung there for a few minutes as neither of them said anything more.
Adorable
. It echoed in Austin’s skull, and he realized it could mean several things. A kitten was adorable. Kyle’s girlfriend, who was teeny-tiny next to his bulk and who wore a lot of pink and had dimples when she smiled but didn’t take any shit from anyone? She was adorable. The armoire Sam had custom-made for a client the previous year to look like the Narnia wardrobe, complete with carved faun and lamppost—completely adorable. But that sexy guy across the dance floor, the one with the toned body and perfect hair, he was adorable too.

Which kind of adorable was Ben? Austin wasn’t sure.

“Sometimes I wish…,” Ben began. But then he stopped and bit his lip.

“What?”

“I don’t mind being stodgy most of the time. I love my job. I love my home. I sleep better at night knowing I have insurance.”

“You built yourself a safety net.”

“Exactly. And I’m glad.” He huffed a heavy breath and pushed his glass farther away. “But sometimes I wish I’d had a chance to be an irresponsible kid. Just for a little while.”

“Not twenty-eight years?” Austin asked.

Ben grinned. “Maybe just a month or two.”

And another epiphany rocked Austin’s world. He knew how to repay Ben for his assistance and friendship. He knew how to become Yoda.

Austin leaned forward and grabbed the straw out of Ben’s glass, then waved it like a magic wand. “I have an idea.”

Chapter Seven

“T
HIS
IS
a bad idea,” Ben said miserably.

They were standing in his living room, which was as tidy as Austin had expected. Naturally most of the furniture came from Sam’s, and artsy black-and-white photos in minimalist frames hung on the cream-colored walls. The area rug was Ikea. Ben didn’t own many knickknacks and maybe the colors were a little muted for Austin’s taste, but at least there wasn’t a stoner on the couch or a mess of barbells and dirty muscle shirts in the corner.

“No,” Austin said, shoving a stack of clothing into Ben’s chest. “It’s an excellent idea.”

Ben left his arms dangling at his sides and didn’t take the clothes. “But it’s Tuesday. I have to work tomorrow.”

“Exactly. That’s what makes you irresponsible and immature tonight. And I, on the other hand, have tomorrow off, so I am being adult. It’s win-win, really.”

Almost a week had passed since their lunch at Upper Crust, giving Ben perhaps too much time to mull over his objections. But it had taken that long for Austin to get another day free of work… and to complete his shopping.

“C’mon,” he wheedled. “Put ’em on. I want to see if they fit.”

After another moment of hesitation—and with an expression like a young child about to get a tetanus shot—Ben took the clothing. But he almost threw it away when he got a closer look at the top item. “I am
not
wearing that!” he squawked.

Austin picked up the little piece of neon red fabric and stretched it out. “They’re briefs.”

“They’re… ridiculous.”

“They cover everything yet show off your package. They have maximum frontal enhancement. Not that I’m implying you need enhancing.”

Ben’s cheeks flamed, which had possibly been one of Austin’s goals. “Nobody is going to see my package. Or my underwear.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But even if you keep your pants on all night, you will feel the cotton spandex hugging you and you will feel extra sexy.” When Ben pursed his mouth stubbornly, Austin sighed. “It’s just underwear, and just for one night. Live dangerously, Benny. Wear something besides the stuff you got on clearance at Target.”

Austin expected a minor tantrum but instead got a very strange look. “Nobody’s called me that since— Not in a long time.”

It took Austin a second to understand what he meant. “Oh. Should I not call you Benny?”

“No. It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

After that he became less argumentative over the outfit, although he bitched a little about the shirt size. “It’s a small, Austin. I don’t wear a small.”

“You do tonight, and you’re going to look amazing.”

The proceedings nearly came to a halt again when Ben couldn’t decide where to change. He must have realized that ducking into another room to strip was a little silly, but he was hesitant to undress in front of Austin.

“I can close my eyes or turn around if you want,” Austin finally said. “But I assure you, it’s nothing I ain’t seen before.”

That made Ben scowl, but at least he unbuttoned his khakis. Austin hadn’t seen Ben’s bedroom, but he imagined a closet filled with tan trousers and button-down shirts, all hanging neatly, and a dresser containing folded tighty-whities and balls of navy socks.