Status Update (#gaymers) (17 page)

“Do you want a turn?” Emily asked, looking right at Noah.

He shook his head. He might shatter into a hundred shards of quartz if he held that precious bundle. And the last thing he needed was to give Adrian’s romantic soul any more fodder for an impossible future.

“Leave the poor guy alone,” Evan said, wrapping an arm around Rachel. “You ladies are trying to give everyone baby fever.”

“What’s the matter, Evan? Can’t handle a fourth?” Adrian teased as he crossed the room back over to Noah.

“No!” Evan looked sternly at his wife. “No more babies here. We’ll just all enjoy this one.”

Rachel coughed, something that sounded a lot like “We’ll see.”

“Better get you out of here before baby dust gets you.” Evan laughed, herding Rachel out of the window seat. “And Emily needs her rest.”

Neither Adrian’s mother nor Deron’s parents looked in any hurry to leave the room, but Rachel murmured her assent. She stopped in front of him and Adrian.

“Poor Noah. Have we completely scared you off?”

Yes.
So much yes.
He shook his head.

“Congrats on the new addition,” he said, more to the room at large. He could still force some politeness out, even though he sounded a bit like a wooden news anchor reading cue cards.

“You guys want to get some food?” Rachel asked.

“Should we leave the boys with your friend so long?” Evan said, saving Noah the trouble of coming up with an excuse. He was nice enough, but Noah could tell he got a bit tired of being the family’s de facto older brother, and he really didn’t seem to know what to do with Adrian’s irrepressible energy.

“They’re probably dying to see pictures of the baby,” Adrian said. “We’ll see you at the Christmas Eve supper.”

“With any luck, Emily’s going to get released late in the day tomorrow. We’ll make her a place on the couch so she can rest, but the whole family can be together. Won’t it be wonderful?” Rachel hugged Adrian so hard that Noah missed his muffled reply.

Wonderful.
Family.
Together.
The words pounded in Noah’s head as they made their way, much slower now, back to the parking garage.

“Wasn’t she amazing?” Adrian asked, his breath white puffs in the crisp night air.

Noah didn’t know if he meant the baby or his sister, but he nodded anyway. “Yes.”

“Do you...” Adrian trailed off, but Noah’s back muscles tightened. He
knew
what was coming.

“Think the dogs are going to need a quick walk?” Noah’s voice had an unsteady quaver to it.
Crap.

“Yeah, probably,” Adrian said distractedly. “Noah? You ever think about kids?” The softness in his voice hit Noah like a fist to his solar plexus.

“No.” Noah kept his voice firm this time.

“Never?” Adrian’s voice had a plaintive note. Dear God, Adrian was killing him syllable by syllable.

“I’m a closeted gay man at one of the most conservative universities in the whole US, in one the country’s reddest counties—”

“But maybe you won’t always be.” Ah. There it was. The hope he’d heard in Adrian’s voice on the phone.

Noah stopped by a beat-up Bronco near the Level 3C sign. He planted his feet, unable to go another step with this charade. He’d fallen hopelessly in love with the man whose heart he was about to break, and he’d been telling himself it was harmless to keep things going through the holidays. Call it friendship. Call it a fling. Call it a holiday boyfriend. Whatever it was, it’d cut Noah to the bone, eviscerated every last lonely inch of his soul. Made him greedy and unforgivably cruel to someone who deserved so much more.

He needed to stop pretending. Now. Tonight.

“I got the book turned in,” he said.

“I know...You texted me, remember?” Adrian’s forehead crinkled.

“My department chair’s already taken a look at it. He says the tenure committee meeting’s only a formality at this point.”

“Oh.” With that little word, all the light fled from Adrian’s face. “Congrats. I guess you’re relieved?”

Relieved? He was so many things, but relieved was absolutely not one of them. “I’ve worked since I was eighteen for this.”

“Yes, but are you sure you still want this job?” Adrian asked. “You don’t have to accept it. Or accept it, but take another job somewhere else as fast as you can. You look like a guy being carted off to the hospice ward, not someone who just got amazing professional news. You have options.”

Oh, Adrian. So full of hope and good ideas. Noah raked his lips hard with his teeth, pulling at the chapped skin. He tasted the metallic tang of blood, but didn’t care. “It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. I’ll be able to—”

“Bullshit.” Adrian kicked a tire. “It’s everything you’ll let yourself want. But you want more. I know it. And you could have it—”

“How?” He leaned against a concrete pylon, eyes squished shut.

“There’s nothing that says you can’t have your tenure and something more. Someone more. And sure, maybe it would be long distance and kinda down-low, but you wouldn’t be locking yourself away for the next forty years.”

“It would be lying
.
And it would kill me to have a secret like that. Being afraid of discovery every day. I decided a long time ago, I wasn’t ever going to live like that.”

“And nothing’s changed? Nothing
?
” Adrian paced in front of him, face a mask of pain. Noah quickly shut his eyes again.

“You deserve more.”

“You’re damn right I do.”

Well now.
He hadn’t expected Adrian to be quite so emphatic.

Adrian didn’t wait for Noah to reply before charging ahead. “We both do. And you are choosing to not let yourself have any of it. Maybe you’ve studied rocks so long, you’re turning into one. Noah, how can you not feel?”

“I feel.” His voice was a bare croak, but it seemed to echo across the cavernous space.

“Prove it.”

“I love you.” There. It was out, the awful emotion threatening to choke off the rest of his air. Not feel? He felt everything
.

“I love you too.” Of course he did. Adrian was the one who had been brave enough to name it, the one who ended every phone call with “Love you!” Adrian was brave enough to fight for it, right here in this freezing parking garage.

“I’ve known you a month
.
I love you and what am I supposed to do with that? Rearrange my whole life? How do I reconcile loving you with what I’ve always chosen?” Noah was bleeding out on the pavement, a river of feelings, not stone at all, despite his best efforts.

“You start by choosing something different. If you love me, don’t do this. Don’t push me away.” Adrian grabbed Noah’s hand.

Noah swallowed hard. He hadn’t quite realized until that instant that he was shoving Adrian away. All he knew was that Adrian deserved his truth, that he couldn’t keep pretending there would be a spring—or anything else—for them. This was an argument. A fight. Look at him, instigating a breakup scene in a public place, with raised voices and angry words. His head swam.

“You’re trying to make me be the one to say the words, aren’t you?” Adrian shook his head, disgust rolling off him in waves. He dropped Noah’s hand. “Congratulations. It worked.”

Chapter Seventeen

Adrian’s skin felt as damp and chilly as the stupid parking garage. The winter wind whipped through the darkened space, but the wind howling through his soul felt twice as lonely.

Another gust made Noah clutch at his coat. Adrian didn’t care if the wind carried him away, took them both to a distant island where this was not happening.

“You want me to end things? Want me to walk away?” Adrian dug at his hair. “Fine. This is me grabbing my dog and going.”

He headed to the stairwell at a fast clip.

“Adrian!” Noah called.

Like an idiot, he spun around, heart lodged somewhere up around his sinuses. “Yeah?”

“You don’t have keys to the RV.” Noah caught up with him. “I’ll uh...walk you back.”

“Big of you.” Adrian took the stairs two at a time, not looking to see if Noah was behind him.

At the landing, he swiveled around, unable to keep his questions back any longer. “Why are you doing this? Why tonight?”
I
wanted my holiday boyfriend.

“The chair called yesterday—”

“I get that. But why tell me now? We could have had Christmas, at least.” Damn it. He was not going to cry.
Lie to me
,
please lie to me.
He knew the impulse wasn’t a reasonable one. He wasn’t some little kid trying to save an awkward family holiday. Clinging to the pleasant little fantasy of a holiday with Noah wasn’t going to help anything. But he’d thought Noah at least shared that fantasy. Noah wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t fickle. He’d raced across town to the hospital—

Bingo.

“You were going to wait to tell me about your tenure, weren’t you?”

“I couldn’t keep it back any longer. You’re right, you deserve better—” Noah’s mouth was as shifty as his eyes. He was a pitiful liar, and Adrian cut him off.

“Bullshit. You’re scared. More than usual. Tonight scared the ever living fuck out of you. Enough for you to ruin my Christmas—
our
Christmas. The one we waited all month for. What? Are babies that scary?”

“No,” Noah said softly. Adrian made the mistake of catching Noah’s eyes right at that moment, and he saw all the pain, all the longing Noah was stomping down.

“Oh, Noah.” He went to him then, arms out to hold him, but Noah stepped around him, taking the stairs to the roof at a fast clip.

Adrian caught up with him at the RV. “That’s it, isn’t it? You saw something you wanted tonight, didn’t you?”

“You’re the one—”

“No, not me.” Adrian wasn’t going to let him turn this around, not when they were so close to uncovering Noah’s truth. “Not what I want, but you—what you want. You saw something you need, and now you’re running from it, because you refuse to even let yourself have desires outside your carefully scripted little life. You’re telling yourself that this is all about me and how we want different things—”

“We do.” Noah unlocked the RV. “Shall I drop you back at your mom’s place?”

“No you
shall
not.” Adrian scooped up Pixel. “We want the same things. That’s what you’re so scared of. You want a family, and maybe even my big, wacky one. You love me, but you won’t try to make things work?”

Noah shook his head. “There’s nothing to work out. I’m taking tenure. I’m staying at Landview. It was cruel of me to lead you on. This...holiday fling idea, it’s hurting both of us.”

“You’re afraid. You’re afraid to sit there tomorrow and play video games with the boys and snuggle that baby and eat my grandmother’s eggnog cheesecake. You’re afraid you might like it enough to want to change this tightly held vision you have for yourself. You’re afraid of wanting to come back.”

“Yes.” Noah nodded, which Adrian hadn’t expected. Noah collapsed on the couch next to Ulysses, before continuing, “I’m a coward. But I’m one who knows my limits. These are mine. I can’t do this. I can’t lie. I can’t pretend. I was a fool to think I could.”

“Some...someday—” Adrian’s voice broke. “Someday you’re going to look back and you’re going to see what you could have had. And I’m not going to wait around.” He had to force himself to say that part, because truth was he would wait. But Noah was right that he deserved more. Maybe Noah had been scared by a glimpse into a possible future, but Adrian had never been surer about what he wanted. And he was going to go out and get it. Preferably with Noah. But he wasn’t going to mortgage his whole future on the chance of Noah unbolting his closet door. For the first time in his life, Adrian was going to put himself first.

“I love you, Noah. I really do. But I deserve all of you. I thought about us the whole plane ride out here...” He shook his head. “I had this stupid plan. I was going to talk you into continuing in secret, with stolen weekends here and there. I’m good at distance. I’ve done it before, and I’d do way worse for you. But I can’t do it. Not if you’re not willing to meet me partway.”

“I can’t.” Noah’s face was buried in Ulysses’s neck. Adrian wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around him. “I’m sorry for ruining your holiday.”

“Fuck that. I wanted our pretend holiday together, but at least I’m man enough to admit I want the real deal. I fell in love. You fell in love. We don’t have to pretend. We could be adults and work out a future together, but you can’t let yourself see that future. Don’t be sorry about ruining my Christmas. Be sorry about ruining your life.”

He grabbed his backpack and his dog and let the door slam behind him before tears could ruin his speech. He walked away slowly, willing the universe to whisper his name one more time, this time for real. But Noah didn’t call him back and he found his way to the stairs on autopilot.

* * *

The evening air had an icy bite to it, angry gusts blowing through the parking garage as Adrian dug out his phone. Zero bars. Gee. This was familiar. Alone, cold, with a shivering dog and not a damn clue what to do next.
God.
How could one of the best months of his life contain so much suck?

He made his way back through the garage, walking blindly through the levels, absentmindedly stroking Pixel, his mind a dull roar.

“Adrian?” It took a second for him to register the sound of his mother’s voice. Her heels clacked noisily along the pavement as she quickly covered the distance between the two of them.
Fuck.
That was her car right behind him.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking my dog for a walk, mother.”

“Did you and Noah have a fight?” She came closer, touched his arm. “Did he leave you here?”

The moment of complete humiliation he’d tried so hard to avoid a month ago had arrived, and surprisingly, it didn’t hurt as much as he’d feared. Didn’t even cut into the raw pain of the fight with Noah.

He’d been so messed up over not wanting to disappoint the family that he didn’t really have a plan for how to handle it when he disappointed himself.

“Don’t take this badly, but I don’t really want to talk right now. And I really, really can’t handle a lecture.”

“Lecture?” His mother clicked to unlock her car, then gestured regally for Adrian to get in. “I don’t lecture. I merely point out that your choices—”

“Are not really up for discussion.” He surprised himself by standing taller, voice firmer than usual when dealing with her. He loved her, but they were years overdue some boundaries. Hanging out with Noah had shown him how unbelievably lucky he was to have his family and their support, but now was one of those times when the support felt like an ace bandage slowly cutting off circulation to his bruised heart.

He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I love you. And I’m going to show up for Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow, but tonight I need to be alone.”

“What? Are you getting a hotel? How will you get there?” His mother’s voice rose dramatically, a nervous trait they both shared, but she was the queen of using her tone to make Adrian second-guess himself. “Let me take you back to my place? You can have the guest room all to yourself—Cousin Bernice doesn’t arrive until tomorrow, and we’ll just tell her that your...arrangements didn’t work out. Wallow in your heartache if you must, but be reasonable.”

I
must.
“Mother. I don’t do reasonable.”

“I know.” She smiled sadly and touched his cheek. “What you really mean is you want the freedom to go get inebriated and make questionable body art decisions.”

He laughed—a bitter, hacking sound. “You know me well.”

“Yes. I do. Will you at least let me give you a ride to the hotel by my house? They’re pet friendly—Uncle Merv and Aunt Char stayed there with the poodles last year.”

He wanted to dig his heels in and insist on finding his own way to his own goddamned pity party, but an unreasonable fear of asking her for any sort of help was what had started this whole mess.

“No lectures. Not even a hint of one. I mean it.”

“You mean I can’t ply you with eggnog and tell you about the nice clerk in our office? The one who would never abandon someone?” His mother cracked a rare joke, and he had to join in laughing.

“No, no you can’t.”

“Darling, my baby just had a baby tonight, I’m missing the Sponovitches’ holiday gathering where I’d hoped to corner a handsome ad exec I’ve had my eye on under the mistletoe, and the number of guests for tomorrow’s dinner is fluctuating hourly. I’m an overemotional mess right now, but I think I can manage a quiet drive.”

“It doesn’t have to be complete silence,” he offered as he got into the car. “You can tell me how long you knew about Noelle’s middle name.”

He waited until they were pulling up at the hotel—a nice, mindless discussion about the baby behind them—to ask the question that had been bugging him for twenty minutes. “You have an ad exec you’re interested in?”

“Don’t sound so shocked. You know I date.”

“Why didn’t you ever remarry, like dad did?” Oh he was so going to regret asking this, but like their too-dramatic voices and arched eyebrows, he and his mother shared a tendency to go for the unavailable or at least out-of-town men.

“Oh, Adrian.” His mother sounded weary, but not in the usual Oh-Adrian-what-have-you-done-now way. “I don’t know. Dozens of reasons really. I like being on my own too much, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

“Honestly, sometimes it’s easier not to try, you know? You can’t fail if you don’t really try. And I didn’t want to fail again.” His mother rubbed the bridge of her nose where her reading glasses usually perched when she wasn’t being vain about a social event. Her eyes looked away, as though she instantly regretted the rare candor.

“I get it.” And man, did he ever. Misery swamped all his senses. Misery he’d thought he could avoid by sticking to long-distance guys and casual friendships. How wrong he’d been. He’d been afraid of fully committing to someone, thinking on a deep level that because his parents’ marriage had fallen apart that he’d be doomed too. He’d ripped on Noah for hiding away, but in truth he’d done it too. He’d hidden behind relationships that never really required all of him, didn’t ask more of him than he was willing to give.

“Not everyone lives their lives as...fearlessly as you. Remember that.” His mother said quietly as he got out of the car.

“Yeah.” His throat tightened. He wasn’t brave like she thought. Not where it really counted.

He’d glimpsed something real and precious with Noah—a chance they could have had a family, a shared life together, and for the first time, he’d been willing to push past all his fears and insecurities and go grab it. But now it was lost and he was left with absolute confirmation that love did indeed hurt. Giving everything and having it rejected sucked way more than holding back. Only question now was whether he’d be brave enough to go after the future he deserved or go back to almost-living.

* * *

When Noah was younger, he used to shut out his parent’s arguments by climbing in bed, pulling the covers over his head. Sometimes Ruth would make them a blanket tent, and they’d huddle together, blocking out the scary adult world. Now he was an adult man and he had no business languishing in his bed like some heartbroken Victorian maiden.

He’d driven back to Landview in something of a fugue state Christmas Eve, doing the seven-hour drive in five and half, stopping only for gas. He’d had the notion that he needed to be home before he fully collapsed, and he’d pulled into the mobile home and RV park he hadn’t seen in six months, found his space and crawled into bed. He hadn’t left since other than to let Ulysses out. So languishing it was.

His phone had buzzed insistently Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but he’d shut the stupid thing off without looking at it. Didn’t matter who it was, he couldn’t deal. Part of why he’d raced home was to get away from the temptation of doing something stupid like showing up at Adrian’s Christmas, begging forgiveness. But that would be the height of foolishness—seeking another hit of the drug of Adrian’s companionship, knowing he was only delaying the inevitable pain.

Ulysses growled at him, nudging his limp carcass with his nose before giving up. He returned a few minutes later to drop an empty food bowl on Noah’s face.

“Oh crap. Did I forget breakfast?” He made his way to the kitchen on unsteady feet. He found some kibble for Ulysses, gave him a generous portion. When was the last time he’d eaten something himself? Yesterday? He opened the fridge but he was out of almost everything and nothing that was left looked good. A package of gluten-free waffles mocked him in the freezer.

What he wanted was something greasy and heavy. Something he could take back to his bed nest. He couldn’t even watch any of his usual movies—too many memories of Adrian—so he’d been streaming bad documentaries that didn’t come close to filling the silence in his heart. He pulled his phone off the charger. Powered it up. He could call for a pizza—

Buzz.
His phone vibrated as he unlocked it.

“Noah? Noah is that you?” Ruth’s voice echoed in the room.

Oh crap.
He’d accidentally answered the call. Reluctantly, he put the phone to his ear. Ignoring his phone was one thing. Actively hanging up on his sister was more than he could do.