Just What the Truth Is (14 page)

He paused to glare at me, his hand making its way to the customary spot on the nape of his neck.

“So then why are you walking away?” I asked in a whisper.

His hands flew into the air. “I’m walking away because I can’t build a life with a guy who thinks that me having feelings for him is a character flaw or something I should be embarrassed about. I’m not a kid, Ben. I’m almost forty years old, and I’m done with the playing around shit. I’ve been done with it for years.” He slumped into his chair and lowered his voice. “Look, I’m not looking for a good lay to share my bed for a night. I’m looking for a good man to share my entire life. And no matter how much I like you, no matter how much I wish you could be that guy, Ben, we both know you’re not.”

I was desperate by that point. I was losing Micah and I couldn’t figure out how to stop it, how to hang on to the person who had come to mean so much to me. I couldn’t go back to my old life. I didn’t want to be that guy anymore, even if it made my parents happy, even if it made my clients happy. I hated that version of me. Panic does not make for effective negotiating.

“Why can’t I be that guy? Because I’m not falling at your feet and saying whatever you want, suddenly it’s over?”

He sighed deeply, and I could see regret and disappointment in his expression. “No, because I have no interest in being with someone who gets off on leaving me unbalanced. Look, you either want to be with me or you don’t. I was hoping you did, but if not, I’ll live. That doesn’t mean I’ll be happy about it. I’m not pretending it won’t suck. But I’ll live. What I won’t do, though, is stay around so you can withhold your affection or your commitment or whatever the hell you’re trying to withhold to make some point I don’t understand. If you want me, Ben, then fucking want me and own it. Don’t give me shit because I’m confident about your feelings. You should want me to be fucking confident about them. Because if you care about someone, you want them to feel good, to feel safe. And if you don’t, well, that’s okay, too, but I’m not in the market for a fuck buddy.”

Chapter Thirteen

I
WON
’
T
drag you down by describing every detail of the next couple of weeks, but believe me when I tell you that they were hell. I kept up an upbeat, positive public front. I’d had a lifetime of experience pretending to be happy-go-lucky guy, after all, so keeping up that persona was second nature. But inside… inside I couldn’t find a way to snap out of my funk and get myself together.

After Micah ended things with me, I left his house in a daze. I don’t remember driving back to my condo or walking up the stairs. I don’t remember the next couple of days. It was only when my secretary called me on Tuesday morning to ask whether I was still sick that I realized I had missed work on Monday. I made it to the office after that, but I found myself reading the same paragraph over and over again and refusing to answer any telephone calls.

On Friday afternoon, I happened to walk by Micah’s office on the way to…. Fine, I didn’t have any legitimate reason to walk by; I just wanted to catch a glimpse of him. Please stop patting yourself on the back. Guessing that little piece of humiliating information isn’t all that insightful. I mean, it’s pretty clear by this point to anyone with even basic reading comprehension that I was a complete basket case. Anyway, I walked by his office and heard him talking on the phone.

He sounded levelheaded and articulate. The point he was making to the caller was logical and well researched. The man was brilliant and completely on top of his game. And that fucking pissed me off.

How could he be so perfectly fine when I was such a mess? Hadn’t I meant anything to him? Had he been lying when he said he was falling for me?

Well, I didn’t need him anyway. I had been fine before him (yeah, total crap, I know, but I wasn’t being very rational at that moment), and I would be fine after him. I just needed to dust myself off and go back to the way things had been before Micah Trains had swaggered into my life.

Now, item number one of my pre-Micah life agenda had always been to find a girlfriend. After that, I could go to a show or a party or any kind of event with her. That would be better than staying at home and continuing my mission of creating a permanent Ben-sized sofa indentation.

Although I preferred set-ups, I didn’t have that kind of time to invest in finding a girlfriend. So after work on Friday, I went to a nice bar downtown. There’d be plenty of women there for happy hour at the end of the week. Finding one to date for a little while wouldn’t be an issue.

That whole fiasco lasted about two hours. Yes, there were plenty of women at the bar. Nice women. Smart women. Pretty women. But they were
women
, and my body staunchly refused to play another round of Hide in the Closet.

I’m not sure what made me drive to a gay bar. I left the bar downtown wondering what I was going to do with my life (not night,
life
). There was no energy left in me to pretend any longer. I remembered a gay bar that I had driven by many times on the way to my brother’s house, so I drove to EC West.

At first, I was nervous about being in a gay bar. I stayed on the perimeter of the space in the darkest shadows I could find, just scoping things out. Odds were that would have been the end of it. I mean, realistically, I didn’t have the balls to go out there and pick up someone with, well, balls. But as it turned out, I didn’t need to make any sort of effort.

Much to my surprise, a guy approached me. He chatted me up for all of thirty seconds before he unfastened my pants, shoved his hand in my briefs, and stroked me off. I was in my car, speeding home in a panic, before the cum had dried on my skin.

It got easier after that first time. So easy, in fact, that I spent almost every free moment over the next couple of weeks at that bar playing grab-ass—well, more like grab-dick—with various guys. I wish I could tell you that I was having a ball, swinging from the chandeliers, but the bar had a contemporary décor, so they had recessed lighting. (Okay, give me a minute to laugh at my own joke—I thought that one was pretty funny.)

Ehm, anyway, what I experienced in that bar was pretty consistent with what I had expected from gay life. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of hooking up, not a lot of talking, and even less of an emotional connection. I was lonely, but, hey, that was nothing new, and at least the sex was good. I would be lying if I said I didn’t get off on it, even though it wasn’t more than a hand job most nights and a couple of blow jobs from guys who had no compunction about going down on another guy in a public bathroom.

But I would also be lying if I said it was enough. I always knew sex with men would feel good. Hell, all those fantasies had left little doubt in my mind about what got me hot. But I wanted more from life. I wanted someone to come home to at night and to wake up next to in the morning. I wanted someone to laugh with and talk with. I wanted a family.

Knowing I could never have those things with a man was one of the reasons I hated my desires, hated the fact that I couldn’t find some way to feel connected on every level with a woman. And the time I spent in that bar didn’t do a thing to change any of those feelings. I still wanted men, and as a result, all of the hopes and dreams I’d had for my life seemed so far out of reach that I had almost completely given up on wishing for them.

“
B
EN
? What the hell!”

The guy who was pressed against me was suddenly yanked away, leaving me standing in the corner of the bar with my pants open and my dick hanging out. My hands immediately covered my groin, and I quickly turned to face the wall and put myself away.

“Jesus, Noah! I wasn’t completely dressed.”

When I turned back around, my brother was looking at me like I was the stupidest person on earth. It wasn’t the first time he had graced me with that particular expression, so I recognized it well.

“You did not just complain to me about leaving you exposed. You’re in a fucking bar with your cock hanging out, dumb shit!”

Okay, he was right, but I was flustered, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of winning yet another argument. “Well, nobody could see that it was hanging out until you pulled… uh, until you pulled… him away.”

Noah winced and closed his eyes. Then he took a deep breath. “You didn’t even bother asking for a name, did you? Damn it, Ben!”

Before I could formulate a response, Clark walked up and took his customary spot by Noah’s side. “Ben, hey! What are you doing here?” He smiled broadly at me.

Noah rolled his eyes. “As far as I can tell, he’s doing everything possible to complicate his life.”

Clark looked back and forth between us. “Hey, I have an idea,” he finally said. “Aaron and Zach were just saying we could go to their place to hang out, since it’s so crowded here tonight.” He turned to me. “How do you feel about joining us?”

“Uh,” I stammered. “I feel like a college girl being asked to go out with Ted Bundy.”

The pained expression in Clark’s eyes made me stop and shake off my exasperation with my brother. Clark and I had been good friends once, and I was the one responsible for crippling that friendship. Shocker, isn’t it? Hey, this whole put-my-foot-in-my-mouth-and-act-like-a-class-A-deranged-lunatic shtick wasn’t new. I had been honing that particular skill for years.

“I’d love to come hang out with you guys. Thanks for the invite, Clark.” I got a grateful smile from Clark and then turned to my brother. “Noah, that okay with you?”

He nodded briskly. “It’s fine. It’ll give us time to talk about when you went from being a buttoned-up lawyer to being a complete slut.”

C
LARK
and Noah had come to that bar with their friends, so they didn’t have their car. They insisted on riding with me back to their friends’ house, presumably because they figured I would have ditched them otherwise. They were probably right.

Door to door, the trip took no longer than twelve minutes, but by the time their friend Aaron pulled his front door open, I was already ready to strangle Noah. I mumbled something about being thirsty, stomped into the kitchen, and collapsed onto a chair.

“So, I take it your brother wasn’t too happy about finding you making out with that guy at the bar tonight?”

I looked up to identify the person talking. It was my brother’s friend Zach. He walked over, pulled up a chair, and sat next to me. Great, now Noah’s friends were going to lecture me. I glared at the small guy, hoping he would back off. “Hey, I’m not judging you,” he said. “No matter how much fucking around you’ve been doing, if we compare the number of notches on our bedposts… well, all I’d have left is sawdust.”

I was ready to lay into him for making fun of me. It wasn’t like I knew Zach well, but he was pretty close friends with Clark and Noah, so I had been around him at least a handful of times, and I knew he was in a serious relationship. Whenever I saw him, he was always sitting in Aaron’s lap or sucking on his face. And the blond couldn’t look at Zach without getting all dreamy-eyed. It was sweet and romantic and it made me want to put my fist through the wall. No way was Zach the hook-up type.

“I can see that you don’t believe me, but I’m not being an asshole here. I’m not like your brother and Clark. I didn’t meet my soul mate in high school and declare my everlasting devotion or some shit. Believe me, I did a lot of playing around and had a lot of fun before I met Aaron and he settled my ass down. Well, not literally, ’cause he gives my ass a solid workout very regularly, but you get the idea.”

I started coughing and tried to pretend that something had gone down the wrong pipe. I’m pretty sure he didn’t fall for it, though, because there hadn’t been anything other than my tongue in my mouth. He waggled his eyebrows, and I couldn’t help but laugh. The guy was charming, in a really odd sort of way.

“Right. So you played the field and then you met Prince Charming and figured out what real happiness means, right? That’s the moral of the story,” I said.

Zach got up, walked over to the freezer, and dug out a bottle of vodka. Then he got two glasses out of the cabinet and came back over to sit down next to me.

“Yeah, in a sense. I mean, I’m really happy now. Satisfied deep down, you know? But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy before I met Aaron.” He poured two glasses, pushed one over to me, then downed his in one gulp. “I was living in LA. I had a fun job, lots of friends, different guys every night. And the plural isn’t an accident.” He paused and winked. “I was having a great time and I was happy. Not the same as I am now, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t enjoying myself, ’cause I was. I was having fun.”

I felt vindicated somehow, even if his description of his life pre-Aaron didn’t sound exactly like mine. It actually made me a little uncomfortable, truth be told. Like he was living on a porn set, but maybe he was exaggerating, the way guys sometimes do. Anyway, I felt better. “See, you understand. So why does my brother have to be so uptight and get on my case all the time?”