Better Than Chance (22 page)

I
T
IS
a well-known fact among those who know me that I am a nervous talker. I have always hated stilted uncomfortable silences and over the years, I’d become a master at filling the void, as it were. Peter listened patiently to me as I launched into a story about buying bad fish years ago and the unfortunate results. I embellished the tale a little, thinking for a moment that Rebecca would appreciate my story, because I could tell it was falling a little short with my companion. His gorgeous self may have been walking beside me, nodding every once in a while in acknowledgment, but his head was obviously elsewhere. Probably with Jack. I fought back the crushing wave of disappointment I could feel trying to envelop me. I could make it to my house without breaking down. In the meantime, I would talk.

“So then I said to the guy who sold me….”

Peter stopped suddenly on the street in front of my place and put his hand over my mouth. He looked into my eyes intently without speaking and then removed his hand before lightly brushing his lips over mine. I swallowed hard, not sure what he was trying to convey. Hello? Good-bye? My inability to read him now that he was back in a controlled mode frustrated me to no end.

“I can tell you have questions….”

“Really? How?”

Peter chuckled softly and looked away from me at some unknown point in the distance.

“Let’s get your stuff together and head over to my house. If I’m going to make homemade pasta, we need to get a move on.”

“You sure you want me to come? I mean, it’s cool if you need….”

“Jay. Nothing changed because we ran into Jack and Kelly. Nothing. And I want”—he shook his head in frustration before turning back to me—“a lot of things, I guess. Look, I’ll answer whatever questions you have.” He shrugged as if that really was all there was to say. The rest was up to me.

I nodded in agreement and led the way toward my front door.

W
E
WERE
at Peter’s house within fifteen minutes, schlepping our fresh produce, meats, and cheese purchases into his awesome kitchen. Peter let me do the bulk of the talking as usual, but his head seemed back with me now as he answered my questions about what type of noodle he wanted to make and whether or not his pasta was made with egg or just olive oil. He warmed to the topic at hand, which I figured meant he really was interested in doing a little cooking with me on a scorching sunny day in the middle of summer.

“Do you want to put everything away for now and go do something outdoors? I mean, it’s a beautiful day and….”

Peter just smiled, and this time it reached it his eyes.

“What’s the matter, Jay? You think I’m all talk, don’t you? You’re probably thinking I can barely boil water for store-bought pasta let alone make it from scratch. Admit it,” he teased.

“Well….” I loved his playful side and was so relieved to see it back that I abandoned any inane suggestions I was thinking about doing something that would just leave us hot and sweaty in a less than fun, sexy way.

“Just follow the master’s instruction, Padawan. You’ll soon learn to make fresh pasta too.” He winked and lunged away from my attack.

“I never would have pegged you for a
Star Wars
geek,” I observed as I set out the ingredients he said he required for his recipe.

“I am.” Peter’s eyes lit with unabashed humor. He obviously was a big fan. “I’m a Trekkie too.”

“Oh boy.” I rolled my eyes and neatly dodged the carrot he threw at my head. “It’s got to be the uniforms. Is that it? Did you lust after Captain Kirk as a boy?”

“I know I’m older than you, but I’m not that old,” he countered as he placed flour, eggs, and olive oil on his massive kitchen island. He used the small island sink to wash his hands and looked up to give me a bashful grin as he continued his Trekkie conversation.

“I loved
The Next Generation
. I don’t think ‘lust after’ is quite the right phrase, but I definitely thought Captain Picard was hot.”

“Wasn’t he the old bald guy?” I sat down on the kitchen stool across from him as I tried to even remember the old television episodes. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn Peter blushed.

“He was hot.”

I laughed out loud, thoroughly charmed by Peter’s boyhood crush on the much older
Star Trek
captain and the fact that he was sharing it at all with me.

“So basically you’re into older guys?” I teased.

“At one point in my life… yes. I was.”

I looked up at him and cocked my head to the side in question, hoping he would continue. His tone had changed. I wondered if he was ready to start talking about Jack, who I could tell from our earlier meeting was older than Peter. I wondered if it was something I should bring up at all or let him share in his own time.

“Jack was older than you, right?”

Damn it! I did it again. I felt my cheeks redden and hoped I hadn’t killed our easygoing vibe. A chance look up a Peter told me he was amused, not angry or worse… sad.

“Yes.”

I couldn’t believe how hard it was to get him to talk about his past. I’d been warned about shit like this, though. If you have a present lover who never got over a past lover, forget about him. It’s not healthy to compete with other people’s ghosts. It made complete sense. There was something more here than Peter not being over Jack, though. In fact, I didn’t think that was true at all. He hadn’t seemed melancholy when we ran into him earlier. It was something else I couldn’t quite place.

“You’re doing that thing where you’re thinking so hard I can practically hear you.” Peter had a mound of flour in front of him. He was in the process of making a second one when he motioned for me to join him. “Wash your hands and then come get dirty with me. I promise you that there really isn’t much to tell, but I’ll answer whatever it is you want to know about the elephant in the room.”

I rinsed my hands, thinking to myself that “elephant in the room” was an interesting choice of words.

“Okay, tell me about him. About you both. He is damn hot by the way. I totally get it. Where did you meet? How old were you? Is he way older? He looks older but not significantly so, you know?”

Peter’s hands were full of the flour, egg white, and olive oil mess when he looked at me sideways. His hair had grown a little longer recently, and it fell into his dark, piercing eyes. He sighed deeply and turned his gaze back to the pasta mixture. He spoke quickly with a somewhat bored tone as though the story he was going to tell was not interesting in the slightest.

“Jay, honestly it was a lifetime ago, but you are nothing if not persistent.” He sighed. “Kelly and I met in junior high. I think I told you that. We were just friends. She was the prettiest girl in the class by far, and all the boys were after her. We were at that awkward age when you give a shit about what everyone else thinks. You want to be cool or at the very least, you want to stay under the radar to avoid getting bullied. Anyway, I decided that since she was pretty and everyone agreed that she was, we should ‘go out.’ Remember this was junior high.” Peter chuckled at the memory. “I really don’t think I was truly aware that I preferred guys at that point. I was slow in that sense, but Kelly wouldn’t have anything to do with me anyway, so I had to get more aggressive in my tactics. I called her house all the time. I followed her home from school. She blew me off. This went on for a month or so, until one day I called and a male voice answered and told me Kelly was expecting me and I should come on by after school the next day. I smiled at her extra hard the next day, but she ignored me as usual. I tried to walk her home, but she ran away. I would have truly given up if I hadn’t basically been invited to her house. So I went as promised.”

Peter set his dough aside and took mine from me.

“Wash your hands and open us a bottle of something cold, babe. All this talkin’ is making me thirsty.”

I did as he asked, noticing his strong southern drawl was back. Wisely, I refrained from saying anything.

“I knocked on the door and her big brother, Jack, opened it. Jack was five years older than us, so at eighteen he was pretty damn intimidating to my thirteen-year-old self. Not to mention the fact that he was fully grown while I had yet to fully hit puberty. He probably had me by eighteen inches. He looked down at me and told me to stay the fuck away from his baby sister or he’d kick my ass. I was surprised. No one had ever talked to me like that before, and I didn’t think I was harassing her but his size alone made me reconsider doing anything but exactly what he said. I turned tail and ran like a jackrabbit. The next day at school, I asked Kelly as politely as possible why her brother threatened me, and she told me ‘Peter, you’re a bully, and you won’t leave me alone.’ I was shocked. I apologized and asked if we could be friends. We have been ever since.”

The room fell silent as I waited for him to continue to the part about Jack and their relationship. I took a sip of the chardonnay I’d poured for us and waited patiently. Peter laughed at the expression on my face. I guessed my attempt at patience wasn’t what I hoped.

“Jack left for college soon after, and I honestly never saw much of him during our high school years. When I came home from college after my first semester away, I knew I wasn’t the same guy I was when I left. I had been with men… sexually and knew that’s who I was. I didn’t know how to come out really, but I couldn’t keep it to myself either. So I told my best friend who shrugged her shoulders like it was no big fuckin’ deal because didn’t I know her brother Jack was gay too, as if that alone made my own revelation somewhat anticlimactic. Of course I didn’t know Jack was gay. I couldn’t believe it. Jack was so masculine, and I admit I was young and dumb enough to stereotype what I thought other gay men were like. I was an athlete. I was masculine. Hell, no one knew from looking at me that I preferred men. But I was sure I was an anomaly. And Jack was… well, I had steered clear of him since he’d warned me away from Kelly all those years before. The next time I saw him, I….” Peter chuckled at a long ago memory, his gaze fixed on the dough in front of him. “I basically came on to him and once again, he put me in my place. I was a puppy, a baby, and he was not interested. I had a crush on him all through college. I rarely saw him, but I never stopped thinking of him.

“During my college years, I began to figure out that the gay part of me was absolutely the real part and I stopped even pretending to be interested in girls. But I didn’t come out to my family until I was about to leave Georgia for good and move here.”

Peter moved to the sink to wash his hands. He paused to take a sip of the wine I’d poured him earlier and sighed. He bit his bottom lip thoughtfully before he moved away from the island and pulled a pasta cutter from a nearby cabinet.

“My mother is Italian and Roman Catholic. Let’s just say that my coming out wasn’t met with a ‘good for you, son’ pat on the back. My parents were surprised. My dad asked a couple of ‘are you sure?’ questions.” Peter stopped to wink at me, letting me know he thought it was interesting that had been one of my questions for him. “But he was relatively cool about it. My mom, on the other hand… she was upset.” He gave a humorless half laugh. “Actually, it’s more accurate to say she went ballistic. She said I had to be confused. She was sure Kelly was the girl for me. We were perfect for each other. I was always with her and maybe I needed to tell Kel my feelings to move things along. I tried to calmly tell her that she was wrong. Kelly and I were friends only. I assured her I wasn’t confused and that this wasn’t something that was going away. Her response was—” Peter paused and looked over at me. “—that I was no longer welcome in her home.”

“Fuck. Peter, I’m sorry.” I set my wineglass down wanting to offer comfort, but the man in front of me didn’t want or need my sympathy. His eyes were hard; however, I understood that it wasn’t me he was angry at. It was a painful memory. One he visibly tried to shake off, if I was reading his body language correctly.

“Don’t be. It was a long time ago. But I won’t deny it was a difficult time. I can’t tell you all the bullshit I’ve had to hear over the years about my despicable behavior and how I could no longer be a part of the church so my soul was damned. The worst part about all of the coming out to my family bullshit was that… it fractured us. We’ve never been the same as a family since.” He shrugged helplessly.

The silence stretched uncomfortably, and I wasn’t sure if I should prod him to continue or leave it be. I had asked him months ago about his coming out, and he made it sound like a nonevent. Obviously that wasn’t true. The water was murky and ran deep here.

“The church was such a large part of our lives growing up. When my mom left Italy to come to the States, she always said it didn’t matter where she lived because she had the Lord.”

“Huh?”

“Well, it made more sense in Italian maybe but the gist was that her God and her church come first. Even before family.” Peter stepped back and turned away to rinse his hands again. When he faced me, he leaned against the counter drying his hands methodically. He must have seen the sadness in my eyes. “Hey. Don’t feel sorry for me. It was a long time ago, and I’ll never be close to my parents again. It is what it is. Over the years, we’ve learned how to dance around who I am. My mom asks me about work and brags about her son the lobbyist to her friends. She even occasionally tries to set me up with nice young women she knows from church too,” Peter said wryly.

“So she doesn’t acknowledge that you’re gay.”

“Bingo. It’s easier to leave it for the sake of peace. And that’s why Jack and I were never going to make it.”

He picked up his glass, took a sip, and moved back over to the dough declaring it was time to shape the dough into noodles.

“Hold on. What about Jack?”

Those were two separate stories, right? Was he seriously going to stop there? I saw his eyes twinkle with humor as he lightly floured the pasta machine.

“Geez, Jay! Fine…. The story in a nutshell is that Jack and I were together roughly from the time I was twenty-two till I turned twenty-seven. We’ve been over for five years. We are friends still. Shane is his partner now, and I think they’re happy. The end.”