The Mating of Michael (15 page)

“Yes, I want a refund on the gas money I haven’t yet contributed,” James deadpanned. He turned to give Michael an arched brow, and Michael felt a wave of relief. James was joking. That was good, right?

God, he probably should have let James stay in the car, but Michael liked him so much. He had this urge to share everything with James. For God’s sake, soon he’d be showing James his fifth grade report card and his dental work. How desperate was he acting? He had to be cooler than that.

“If you’d rather stay at a hotel tonight or have dinner out, that’s fine with me,” Michael offered, trying to sound casual. “I can call my mom and let her know. She won’t mind.”

“No, I’m a cheap bastard,” James said. “Besides, disappointing your mother would probably ding me major karma points, and I’m saving up for my next incarnation as a porn star.”

Michael chucked. “Well, I definitely wouldn’t want you to miss out on that. But seriously, this trip is for you and me. I can come back to see her another time.”

James looked back out the window. “It’s fine.”

I
T
WAS
another two-hour drive from Ellensburg to Steamboat Rock State Park, but it was a fine, clear day, and the drive was pretty once they got on WA-17. The landscape there had an Old West flavor. Scrubby brush, reddish brown earth, and unusual rock formations stuck out of the flat ground. The scenery held good memories for Michael—field trips with school or excursions with his mom. And when they drove along the Columbia, it was like a picture postcard. James seemed to be soaking it in, watching out the window with a pleased smile.

To fill the time, they took turns doing voice impressions and quotes from sci-fi films and challenging the other to name the film. James, it turned out, was an impressive mimic.

“Yes! En-Ger-Land!” he gasped in a rough, throaty voice.

Michael laughed. “Thunderbirds! God, that show is so perfectly cheesy. Okay, here’s one….” Michael cleared his throat and tried to flatten his voice. “This ‘child’ is about to wipe out every living thing on Earth. Now, what do you suggest we do? Spank it?’”

James chuckled. “On my God, that’s the worst Spock impression I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah. Voices are not my forte.”

“‘Please, Captain, not in front of the Klingons’,” James said in a voice eerily similar to Leonard Nimoy’s.

“Shit! That’s amazing,” Michael said with a gasp.

“Or possibly pathetic if you think about the hours I spent watching that show. What about this? ‘Another one of them new worlds. No beer, no women, no pool parlors, nothin’. Nothin’ to do but throw rocks at tin cans, and we gotta bring our own tin cans.’”

“Hmm.” Michael was stumped for a moment. “
Forbidden Planet
?” The guess was as much from the context, and James’s fifties style voice, as remembering the line itself.

“Gold star for you!” James said, sounding impressed. “Your turn.”

“Okay. Let’s see. ‘You know what they say, human see, human do.’”

“
Planet of the Apes
. You need to try harder, padawan. What about this one: ‘I’m scared, Fif. It’s that rat circus out there, I’m beginning to enjoy it.’”

Michael felt a little zap of a thrill at the line from
Mad Max
. “Wow, you sound just like Mel Gibson. That made me a little hard.”

“Everything makes you a little hard.” James sounded cynical, but a red flush appeared on those high cheekbones.

“Not everything,” Michael murmured. It came out more seductive than he intended. When James didn’t answer, Michael launched into another quote. He tried to affect a robotic voice, “‘Dead or alive, you’re coming with me!’”

“
Robocop
. God, Peter Weller was hot in that.” James seemed to realize what he’d just admitted, because his blush deepened. “Er—we need to up the stakes here. You’re too good at this. Let me think of something really hard….”

“I’m thinking of something really hard,” Michael laughed.

James rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Jesus, you have a one track mind. Okay, I’ve got one. ‘A man is defined by his actions, not his memories.’” His voice was breathy and slow.

“Kuato!
Total Recall
!”

“How the hell do you know all these movies? You probably weren’t even born when that came out!”

“You’re only a few years older than me, oh ancient one. And there’s this amazing invention called Netflix.”

“Hmm.” James looked doubtful. “You know, I had a parasitic twin.”

“You did?” Michael asked with surprise.

“No.”

Michael took a nickel out of the car’s ashtray and threw it at him. “You suck. And it’s my turn.”

They went on like that until the game devolved into both of them moaning out “Soylent Green is people!” over and over in increasingly cartoonish voices. Fortunately, it was about then that Steamboat Rock came into view.

Steamboat Rock was a stunning natural formation of rock and water. The flat, blue surface of Banks Lake nearly surrounded an island with a high, flat-topped plateau that looked, if you really squinted, a little like a steamboat. It was a weekend, and there were plenty of other visitors at the state park, but it wasn’t overcrowded. After using the handicapped-friendly facilities, they looked around. They found a paved trail to a day-use area by the lake where there were picnic tables and a great view of Steamboat Rock.

“You can go hike for a bit if you want. I’m fine here.” James tilted his face back to catch the sun.

“No way. I’m good.”

James frowned. “I really don’t mind.”

“Me neither. I wanted to show you the scenery. If I’d wanted to hike, I would have found a place with better accessible trails. So are you starving? I didn’t bring food ’cause I figured we’d eat in Coulee Dam. It’s just another twenty minutes or so up the road.”

James seemed to relax. “I can wait. Let’s hang out for a bit. This place is… mildly acceptable.” He said the last with a great show of cynical reluctance.

It made Michael smile. “Glad you like it.”

He felt absurdly pleased by the small smile that tugged at the corners of James’s mouth and the way his eyes roamed over the scenery with an inner light. Michael took his role as a secret muse very seriously, after all. He also hoped to make himself so indispensable to James that he wouldn’t, well, be able to dispense with him.

It was his plan, and he was committed to it.

They hung there for an hour. They didn’t talk a lot. It was nice after all the chatter in the car to just soak up the sounds of the water and some really loud-ass birds. The sun was warm without being too hot, and the other tourists left them in peace.

After a long silence, James started talking about how he researched landscapes for his books and some of the strange places on Earth he’d based his planets on, which Michael found fascinating. They talked about some of the places sci-fi movies had been shot like the San Rafael Swell and Carlsbad Caverns.

After they’d drunk in their fill of the landscape, and James took pictures with his smartphone, they headed back to the car and continued up WA-17 to Coulee Dam for lunch.

The Grand Coulee Dam had been built over the Columbia River in the mid-to-late 30s. It was an impressive spectacle, and the little town that sat around it was quaint and touristy. They stopped at a viewpoint that overlooked the dam, and then decided to have Mexican for lunch.

Over soft tacos, James asked about Michael’s workweek. Michael filled him in on Marnie’s most recent antics, including ordering a vibrator called a ‘rabbit’ for her straight-laced daughter on the Internet. He felt a strong urge to talk about Tommy, too. Michael was really attached to Tommy. Or to tell James about Lem Peterson and the heavy guilt he carried from his upbringing. But of course, he really couldn’t talk about his surrogacy clients to anyone, and James didn’t even know he was a surrogate. And although Michael recognized that this would be a good time to tell him, he just couldn’t make himself do it.

They were having a great weekend, and James was loosening up around him more and more—making more eye contact, even allowing his gaze to linger in a way that Michael recognized as attraction, even if James probably wouldn’t admit it. They were starting to build a real friendship. And Michael was so afraid that if James heard about the surrogacy, all of that would be wiped down to ground zero—or at least, any possibility of it ever becoming something more. And he especially didn’t want James getting upset when they were hours from home and he couldn’t throw Michael out or get away.

So Michael said nothing about his surrogacy work or clients.

James insisted on getting the bill. As they were waiting for the waitress to bring back his card, he said, in a somewhat uncomfortable voice, “Thanks for suggesting this. I really like to travel, but I almost never get a chance to. I guess that’s why I like to invent worlds.”

Michael forced a smile even though it made him feel sad that James hadn’t had the opportunity to get out much.
I wish I could show you the world.
But Michael himself was no globe-trotter. He’d been to Canada and Oregon, and that was it. So for now, central Washington was the tiny sliver of the world he had to give to James.

“I’m really glad you came with me. None of my friends want to do stuff like this.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Probably because we’ll spend the evening in a little house in Ellensburg. Big excitement.” Michael made a funny face.

James smiled and shrugged as if to indicate it was fine, but he didn’t say anything.

T
HE
BATHROOM
doorway in the house where Michael grew up was too narrow for James’s wheelchair.

James had a moment of sheer panic. Then Michael’s mother was there, apologizing, sounding genuinely chagrined. She told him she’d suspected it might be the case, so she brought a walker home with her. She ran out to the car to get it.

The walker was the kind with four wheels and a seat, but it was much lighter and smaller than his wheelchair. She put it at the open bathroom door for him. Grateful, James wheeled up to it, set the brake on his chair, and then leveraged himself up, grasping the walker with both hands and lowering himself into its small seat.

It was awkward, but both Michael and his mother hung back and didn’t watch, for which he was stupidly grateful. He pulled his backpack off his wheelchair, made it into the bathroom, and shut the door with a sigh of relief. He stared at himself in the mirror, his heart beating way too loud.

James was in fucking Ellensburg. He’d really surprised himself this weekend. He was surprised he’d agreed to come on this trip in the first place, surprised that he hadn’t subsequently made up an excuse to get out of it, and surprised he’d agreed to spend the night in Michael’s mother’s house. Why? Why was he doing this?

Michael.

James knew the answer. He wanted to be around Michael. Somehow, the idea of taking a weekend trip with him sounded so normal, so fun, and James wanted that. He wanted to feel normal, and to show Michael he could be like everyone else, which was, a) untrue and b) way too needy. But really, everything had been fine on the trip so far. He could hardly complain. In fact, he’d
loved
the drive and the state park and seeing that huge Roosevelt-era dam. Yet now that they were back at Michael’s house, he suddenly felt uncomfortable and vulnerable. It made him uneasy to be so dependent on other people.

Tomorrow, we’re going home. All I have to do is get through dinner with Michael’s mother and sleep in the same room as Michael tonight. I can do that. Right?

Michael had briefly shown him the room—his childhood bedroom—and there were two single beds so it wasn’t as if they had to sleep
together
together. And if he did something embarrassing in his sleep, like snore or get an erection, Michael would be too polite to mention it.

But James hadn’t slept in the same room with anyone since leaving Children of God, and never ever around a super attractive male. His stomach was tied in knots. Worse, his dick was already half hard. God, he was lamentable.

Nothing’s going to happen. Michael wouldn’t do anything unless you wanted him to, and you don’t want him to. So chill.

He almost believed it. He used his plastic urinal, flushed the contents, and rinsed it. Then, sitting on the walker’s seat, he brushed his teeth and washed his hands and face at the sink. The bathroom light was a bit yellow and oddly flattering. He pulled himself up to stand at the sink and studied himself in the mirror. The counter reached his hips, and he looked perfectly normal. With his palms flat on the counter, holding himself up, his arm muscles corded and bunched and he looked built. He was not bad looking on top. He knew this. His hair was thick, and his face wasn’t bad.

For a moment, he stared at himself and allowed himself the brief fantasy that he was whole. That he could saunter into Michael’s bedroom on two good legs, jump on the bed, pull Michael down to him roughly, kiss him and make love—no,
have sex
. Maybe even raunchy, filthy, headboard-pounding sex.

His cock swelled further.

He took a shaky breath. Okay. That
was not helping. He considered masturbating, just to get rid of any potentially embarrassing reaction later. But the thought of doing that in Mrs. Lamont’s bathroom, where Michael or his mother might pick up the scent of semen, or wonder why he’d taken so long…. No.

He ran the water in the sink to a nice icy cold and splashed his face with it until he had his body under control.

“S
O
WHERE
did you grow up, James?” Kathy asked politely over lasagna and salad.

James chewed his mouthful very slowly to buy himself a moment. These were the sorts of questions parents asked, and hence why he hadn’t wanted to be here.

“Mostly in a children’s home in Portland.”

Her expression changed, as people’s inevitably did, from polite interest to sadness and a sharper perusal, a look James interpreted as “wow, I had no idea you were an orphan, poor thing.” Most people would have left it at that, immediately scared off the topic as something distressing. But not Kathy.