Second Chances (4 page)

The news was always worse, so I needed to know someone besides my family cared, even if it was someone I didn’t really know. Maybe that’s what made it easier. Work, at least, had eased off some. The two big events were over, and there was only one more fancy, schmancy fund-raiser on New Year’s Eve left, but I knew that Mom’s battle would be over before then.

So we’d spend about an hour talking, shooting the shit about my day, my life, growing up in Atlanta. Anything. And I learned about him. How he was originally from Los Angeles. Stayed out of the gang stuff, joined the Army after high school. Was a Ranger but hated authority, so only stayed in for one tour.

Moved around the country. His favorite place was Arizona. He hinted he did illegal things—gunrunning, low-level organized crime shit. Made tons of money then turned around and blew it as soon as it got in his hands. “I was a wild man, fucking out of control,” he said. Partied wild and crazy in Vegas, fucked every girl he could find, sometimes two or three at a time. Lots of drinking and drugs and who knows what else.

“So what got you in the massage business, then? You can’t be making the bucks you made then doing this. Especially if you take three hours with every client,” I finally asked him one night. It was late, after he gave me another killer massage—strictly massage—that drained every last bit of tension from my tired and sore body.

He looked at me a little funny. “I don’t take three hours with all my clients. Just you. You aren’t just a client. You’re a friend.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just kept quiet. He waited a minute before going on with his story.

“It was all good, then I met this one chick when I was here in Atlanta making a delivery. Jeanine was hot, and I needed to get laid. I fucked her and forgot the damn rubber. Fucking tequila.” He stopped and drank some wine.

“She got pregnant and then I had a kid on the way. Sooner or later the shit I was doing would’ve caught up with me, and no kid of mine is gonna go without a dad.” He sounded fierce, his eyes burning.

His hands clenched and unclenched as he remembered. “So I said fuck it, and moved here. Married her. Bought a house. I had a lot of the last payoff left and that got us settled. It worked for a little while, but when Jason was born, it all went to hell.”

He stopped and took a long drink of his wine. “Want some more?”

“No, I have to drive home soon and work tomorrow. I’m so damn mellowed out it’d make me fall asleep right here,” I said.

“No problem,” he told me. “You want to take a nap, I’ll wake you up.”

I sure as hell didn’t need that. I didn’t know why, and was too tired to think about it, but it really wasn’t a good idea. “No, that’s cool, I’ll be fine. Just give me a bottle of water and finish your story.”

He settled back down after pouring himself another glass of red wine on the rocks. I shuddered.

“Her dad is some big shot doctor and he kept talking to her and telling her what a piece of shit I was. She finally listened to him, I guess. Let’s face it; I’m not the easiest guy to get along with. I couldn’t find a job. Who the hell’s going to hire a guy with no college, gangstered up with all the tattoos and no fucking résumé? So we split up, and she took Jason with her.”

He sat there for a few minutes lost in his memories. His face was blank, but I could see his jaw worked with emotion just under the surface. Those blue eyes were stormy.

“She wanted to keep him away from me. She was fucking this guy, and I came in on it when I went to pick Jason up. I beat the shit out of the guy for doing it in front of my boy. She had me arrested, filed a restraining order, and social services kept me from my baby.” His voice was gravel. I didn’t dare say anything.

“
I had to hire a private detective to prove she was screwing around while Jason was in the house. After I had proof, I hired a lawyer and fought her
. It took me two years and three months, but I sat in the courtroom and faced her and her fucking father and all their shit down and I won. I get to see my son every week and two weeks in the summer and two weeks in the winter.”

This was the most I’d ever heard him say at one time. I hung on every word though, wanting to know more about this guy. I told myself it was because he was so kind and concerned about me and my mom. But he fucking fascinated me.

“I was broke, but I’d gotten my massage license after I got out of the army. This girl I was with at the time liked it when I massaged her. It took me a while but I’m building a pretty good client base. Lots of repeat business. I use some of the gay hook up sites for travelers and advertise there. I do outcalls to the hotels and charge those guys double, do a massage, and then get my ass out of there.” He threw his head back and laughed.

I gave him a long look. “But you aren’t gay. Or bi.”

“Nope, but these guys don’t know that. And all I ever promise is a massage. Cash up front. I get my money, they get their massage, and I get out. I’m a good-looking dude. If they wanna jack off afterwards….” He shrugged. Jacking off. No elephant in the room about
that
.

That made me think for a moment. He didn’t exactly lie, but he didn’t tell the truth, either. And from what he told me of his past escapades, if I believed ten percent of it, he liked playing fast and loose with the rules.

I needed to keep that in mind. I knew about men who skirted around the truth and looked me in the eyes and lied by omission. Fucking Brian Jacobs. That burned the light buzz I had from the massage and the wine right out of my blood. I needed to remember that as much as I liked this guy, I was still a client.

“Right. Well, it’s late and I guess I better get home. I need to check my messages and make sure everything’s okay.” I pulled my cell phone out and turned it back on and saw I had fifteen missed calls.

My stomach dropped and my head swam. I slowly dialed into voicemail and waited to hear the news I’d been trying to escape tonight.

“I
T
’
S
okay, you can let go now,” I crooned softly over and over as I stroked her hair.

Mom was in a hospice, because no matter how much we loved her, there was no way our family could deal with the ugly fucking reality of her dying at home. How could my dad ever sleep in their bed again knowing she died in it? And from what the home health nurse said, it could be bloody if… well, we made the decision for hospice and let her go where someone could help us.

It was about five in the morning, the day after my parents’ wedding anniversary. It had snowed. She always loved the snow. In Atlanta, we don’t get it very often, and it was a big deal. She’d scoop it up in a bowl, add vanilla and a little milk and sugar, and make snow ice cream. I adored her and now my heart was in ashes.

She held on through the night, as if to keep Dad from having to deal with her dying on their anniversary. After sitting and holding her hand for the past four days, would it really have mattered in the long run? Maybe, in the years to come, we’d remember it differently, but now? Fuck it. It’s funny where the mind wanders when you’re waiting for death to take someone you love.

The best thing about knowing what was coming? I got to sit and talk and let her know every damn thing about me and say what I needed to say and hear what I needed to hear. And so did she, and we cried and hugged and she said she loved me. She knew I needed to hear that. She’d told me that every day of my life, in one way or another.

On my birthday, every year since I turned eighteen, she called me at twelve twenty in the morning to wish me happy birthday and tell me how much joy I brought her. She’d told me she was sorry she couldn’t do it when I turned thirty, and handed me a box filled with little bits of paper. She’d written
Happy Birthday to my baby boy
on every one. There must have been fifty of them.

We sat in the darkened room, just a few of us touching her where we could. Christmas lights I’d draped around the head of her bed swirled red and yellow and green slowly around the room. No Christmas tree. She wasn’t going to make it to Christmas, and no way did we want to associate Christmas with her death. We took turns talking to her, telling her she could go.

I knew
she
was gone; she’d been for a couple of days. Her body just didn’t know it, but I figured she was still connected to it somehow. She just needed to let go and leave. It really was okay, and I was ready for it.

I stroked her hair, sitting there next to the head of the bed. Leaning in, I kept my voice soothing. “It’s okay, Momma. Let go. Just let go.”

She drew one more breath, let it out, and didn’t take another one.

I
DIDN
’
T
go back to see Antonio for another month.

The funeral was fucking horrible, of course. How do you sit there and watch the shell of someone who gave you life get put in the ground?

And the cherry on the shit sundae of the clusterfuck that this nightmare had become? Linda’s pastor was going to do the service. And he evidently didn’t like
The Gay
. Linda, my sister, the one who shared blood with me and sat next to me holding my hand while we cried and said prayer after prayer that Mom would go quickly, that family betrayed me.

Yes, I said prayers. When you stand at the abyss, you fall to your knees and you fucking grab for any comfort, any little thing to keep it from swallowing you whole. You grab it with both hands and you wrestle the bitch to the ground and you force mercy from it.

But my flesh and blood pulled me aside and asked me not to let the pastor know I was, you know, like
that
. Like I was gonna wear a rainbow suit? Blow a strange man on the altar while the eulogy went on? Offer to fuck the pastor?

“Fine,” I finally agreed, so disgusted I couldn’t look at her. “He says one word out of line, though, and you don’t even want to know what I’ll do. Our mother, the same one lying in there waiting to be buried, loved me for who I am. If you and this pissant fuckwad can’t, that’s
your
problem, not mine. I’m here to bury my mother.”

Then, oh yes, then Brian came in. The fucker had to look good, didn’t he? Dark blue suit, almost black, like his hair, tight across that chest of his. Those pants, not really hiding that nice, tight, round ass. Somber, red-rimmed blue eyes.

And that’s what snapped me out of whatever the hell I was thinking, paying attention to how he looked. How dare he cry? How fucking dare he?

He made his way over to me, walking very slowly as if he knew what was going through my head. Hell, he probably did. He’d known me for almost ten years after all. Not all of that was as my lover. We’d been friends at one time, but not now.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I growled at him. Yes,
growled
. “I didn’t call you. I thought you and what’s-his-name were in New York.”

My body trembled with rage. I gripped the back of a pew to keep my hands from reaching for him.

“Mark, I came as soon as your dad called me,” he murmured so quietly, his face so sad.

My head imploded, so bury me too. There might just be two funerals today. Or three, if I killed either Dad or Brian. Maybe both, I thought a little hysterically. We can have four funerals and they can just stack us all in that one plot and it’ll all be over with. And I won’t have to see this, this
fucker
again.

“I don’t want you here. I’m burying my mother,” I rasped out, the words sticking like burrs in my mouth.

“I loved her and she loved me,” he said with dignity. “She called me the last time she left the hospital and told me she forgave me.” And with that his composure cracked. He looked… lost, and I saw the hurt. In spite of my own grief, I ached for him.

His father hadn’t wanted him when he found out his son was a fag, and left. Then his mother went off looking for his father one evening and left Brian to fend for himself. After three days, the neighbors saw Brian was there alone and called the police. He was twelve, and the authorities put him into foster care ’til he turned eighteen.

And my mother, with her huge and loving heart that we were there to celebrate on that cold and windy fuck of a day, welcomed him into her home from the moment I brought him by. This was when we were still just friends, introduced by a couple we knew. We kept running into each other at parties and dinner and even shopping.

She invited him in, feeding his body with breakfasts and suppers, and his soul with family. She sent him home with leftovers and pie, and made sure he knew he was loved.
Because there was always enough love in her house for another one of my strays.

I forgot. Jesus fucking Christ, he loved her. And I couldn’t deny him the chance to let say good-bye. Even I wasn’t that much of a cold-hearted bastard. If she could forgive him, and Dad could call him in the middle of all his grief, then I could unclench my heart for an hour and let him grieve too.

“Fine. She’d want you to sit with the family. Come on.” I grabbed him by the hand and turned around to take him to the front pew to sit with the family. With me. And ran right into my loving little bitch of a sister.

“Linda.” I let my voice get cold, like a glacier sliding up the aisle.

“Mark, I thought we talked about—” she started, her face pinched.

“Get the fuck out of my way,” I stopped her, each word an icicle. Brian looked back and forth between us and started to move backward. I still had him by the hand and pulled him right up beside me.

“We’re going to sit down now. Daddy called him and asked him to come. If you have a problem with that, I’ll throw your sorry ass out in the parking lot with the rest of the trash,” I told her, and she flinched. “He’s here, he’s staying, and he’s coming to the reception at the house. Momma wanted it. Daddy wants it. I want it. Got it?” The icicles became stones.

She recovered from her shock at me talking to her like that and narrowed her eyes. But she wisely moved aside and turned to talk with Patty, who was watching the exchange with interest and not a little amusement. Good fucking choice.