Bitter Taffy (10 page)

Rico’s smile took him by surprise. “Derek—man, good to hear from you.”

“Really? Wow. That’s the best greeting I’ve gotten yet!” Suspicion crept into Derek’s voice. “Who died?”

“Nobody,” Rico replied, “but I did just come out to my mother.”

“Wow,” Derek said, sounding as stunned as Rico felt. “Really?”

“Yeah. Surprised me too.”

“Why… why now?” Derek’s voice rose and fell like they were still bantering, and that made it better. Keep it light, keep it flirty—make it not the end of the world.

“Because I came back to California, but I didn’t want to come back into the closet,” Rico said, and this was true. “And because damn, I really wish my family would get off Adam’s back.”

“So what are you doing to celebrate?” Derek asked. “Champagne? Caviar? Clubbing?”

Rico grunted and looked at the tablet he’d set aside. “Finishing my work for Mr. Stewart?” he suggested.

“What, you don’t believe in celebration?” Derek jibed. “What would I have to do to get you on the dance floor?”

“A lot of fast-talking
before
eight o’clock at night,” Rico returned. “Why were you calling?”

“Well, since I’m not going to see you dance—
tonight
—maybe we can go do something tomorrow. I happen to have tickets to the River Cats’ spring training and exhibition game. It’s not the Giants, I know, but, you know, first date. Thought I’d start modest.”

Rico laughed. “So, River Cats practice? That
is
modest—”

“What else were you going to do?” Derek wheedled. “C’mon… I happen to know Adam and Finn both work—you can’t hide in their skirts forever.”

“I’ve been back for a week and a half!” Rico defended. “I got me a new job, a new pain in the ass—that’s you, by the way—and I came out to my mother. Dude, I’m calling it a win and going to bed. In an hour.”

Derek’s low laughter rippled up his spine, and for the first time—
literally
the first time—since he left New York, Rico wasn’t haunted by Ezra Kellerman’s fathomless blue eyes even a little.

“So, River Cats game? I can’t molest you there. Mostly I can just ply you with beer and belittle your choice of first basemen.”

“That’s cute that you think I know baseball that well.”

Derek sounded scandalized. “You
will
!” he gasped. “When I’m finished with you, you’ll be—” Suddenly his voice dropped and a filthy laugh echoed over the phone. “Heh heh heh… thoroughly debauched.”

Rico laughed in spite of himself. “You just keep hoping. But I’m good for some beer and some sun and some company,” he said, his chest growing lighter with every word. “You promise to keep your hands off my ass and it’s a deal.”

“Oh my God!” Derek whooped. “That was
way
easier than I planned!”

Rico had an uncomfortable image of Derek jumping up and down in his underwear. He’d have a six-pack—he worked out after he left the office every day; Rico had seen him carrying his gym bag. And sandy brown hair, probably, on his chest and his happy trail, probably to the waistband of boxers.

Yeah.

Boxers.

Derek would wear white cotton boxers.

And he’d have a tan.

“You, uhm, planned more?” Rico asked, just to get that image of Derek frolicking in his underwear of choice clear of his dizzy brain.

“Well, I’ve got you on the phone—I can talk for at
least
another half an hour. Can you?”

Clopper whined, and Rico realized that Finn and Adam had been so wiped they’d actually left the dog walking to him. It was the first time he’d gotten to walk his dog since he’d arrived home.

“Yeah. Yeah—I’ll be taking the dog out for a walk, do you mind?”

“No, not at all. Tell me about your neighborhood while you’re out. It’ll be… sexy.”

“My neighborhood is
so
not sexy,” Rico said, sliding on his sneakers and finding Clopper’s lead. Adam hung it neatly from the hook on the wall. Finn dropped it wherever he was standing when he unlatched it. Oh, there it was, under the table!

“There’s not a lot of sexy neighborhoods near where you live,” Derek agreed.

“Wait a second.” Rico grunted while he juggled the phone and snicked the lead on the dog’s collar. He stood up, huffed, and then said, “How do you know where I live?” before heading out the front door.

“Worried I’ll stalk you?” Derek teased.

“Yes. You’ve already announced your plan to hit on me—haven’t you heard of escalation?”

“Hey, you agreed to go out with me. Haven’t you heard that no means no?”

Rico had to chuckle. Derek was audacious and fun—and not threatening in the least. “I’m going to a baseball game. I guarantee the only ones getting to home are the players.”

“Ouch! I am miffed, sir, miffed, I tell you, that you would think I could be had on the first date.”

Rico paused at the bottom of his apartment steps, suddenly curious. “You can’t?”

“No,” Derek said, just as suddenly serious. “I’m actually—I mean, for a gay man in the city—sort of an old-fashioned guy. I mean… no cheating, no one-offs. Not even when I was younger. I just….”

“Wanted what your parents had,” Rico said, but he didn’t say it mockingly. If he’d had a functional family, he would have wanted what they had too.

“Well, yeah! I mean, when you meet my parents, you will too.”

“Yikes!” Clopper took off at a good clip to the left, and Rico followed, because hey, it was his dump!

“Yikes what? Meet a mugger?”

“Are there muggers in this day and age?”

“There’s theft everywhere.”

“Yeah, well, my cousin puts out packages for the homeless on all the dumpsters in our area once a month. Sandwiches, clean socks, toothbrushes, that sort of thing. I think that buys me karma.” Rico hadn’t figured out what he was doing until the day before, when Adam had been making the packages, and he’d been…

Touched. Terribly touched.

As he passed the dumpsters that had been set out for trash collection that morning and not dragged back in yet, he saw that nine out of the ten packages had been picked up. As he looked at the one about a block away, a man wearing rags and pushing a shopping cart picked up the last one, looked left and then right and clutched the bag to his chest before he grabbed his cart and ran away, pushing as fast as he could.

“Okay, two things,” Derek said, unaware of the little drama Rico had just seen.

“Yeah, hit me.”

“One, why did you say ‘Yikes’?”

“Why would you think I’m meeting your parents?”

“Oh,” Derek said softly. “I was hoping. Well, that and planning. Finn’s parents asked me and mine to their big shindig opening. Some of my people did decorating work in the new store. I was going to go, and I figured you would be too.”

“Oh.” Rico hadn’t thought about that. In fact, if anyone had asked him, he would have assumed that Derek—the boss of the company—would have blown off the invitation, and probably wouldn’t have mentioned it to his parents.

But then, that was what Kellerman would have done. Or Ezra.

“Oh what?” Rico heard genuine curiosity.

“I’d… I don’t know. Hadn’t assumed I’d be going. But yeah. I guess I’ll meet them there.”

“You thought I was going way too fast.”

“Yeah.” Clopper walked up to a crosswalk post, sniffed to see who’d been there, and then peed to introduce himself. When he was done, he looked from Rico to the post and then back again, and Rico took the hint and pushed the button.

“Well, now that I know how deep your fear of commitment runs….”

“It… it hasn’t been long enough,” Rico said. The mild spring night smelled like willow and eucalyptus trees and the nearby river. Pleasant—familiar—but not the concrete jungle of New York. Rico had been looking forward to walking through Central Park in the spring, but he’d never made it.

Well, Sacramento in the spring wasn’t bad. True, it only lasted about a week, but it wasn’t bad.

The silence on the other end of the line hung heavy, though, and for a moment, Rico thought Derek might be having second thoughts about the next day.

Turned out he was only gauging his prey.

“So, tell me what I’m fighting here,” Derek said after a fraught moment. “What sort of damage did he do?”

“Nothing horrible,” Rico confessed, realizing he had to say this out loud to believe it. “Just… just, you know. The boss’s kid. He’d been around the walk-in closet; I mostly just knew the cupboard under the stairs. I just, you know. Thought when the time came, he’d fight for me.”

“Not so much?” Derek asked softly.

“I think he forced his dad to write me a good letter of rec, so that’s something.”

“That was probably a lot.” It was so kindly said that Rico had to remind himself that this was the guy who wanted to replace Ezra.

“Well, his dad wasn’t a prince,” Rico murmured. Clopper trotted along past the reconditioned Victorian houses—and past some not so reconditioned ones with sagging porches and peeling paint. In the background a siren wailed, not too close—just close enough to give ambiance.

“Yeah, well, it’s hard to be yourself when the people who are supposed to love you aren’t behind that person you’re trying to be.”

Rico grunted, and in the silence over the phone, he heard a siren wail.

Wait a minute.

“Where do you
live
?” he asked, and Derek’s throaty laughter told him his guess had been on point.

“About two blocks away from the offices. You’re on your way there, right?”

Rico looked around and realized that yes, he was wandering that way. “So how did you know where I lived?”

“I’m your boss, I have your address, and I know the area. Are you impressed with me?”

Without meaning to, Rico relegated Ezra to the back of his mind, where the azure of his eyes faded. “No. You’re way too impressed with yourself for me to make any difference.”

Derek’s throaty laughter followed him—with more conversation, of course—around the block as he finished his walk.

When he got to the foot of the stairs of his own building, he paused.

“So, uhm, signing off now.” Unaccountably, he blushed. “I’ll, uhm, see you tomorrow. What time?”

“Eleven thirty. We can go get something healthy before we fill up with dogs and beer.”

Rico smiled. Derek had ordered chicken and sprouts on whole wheat when they’d gone out to lunch. He really was as wholesome as he looked. “Yeah, okay,” he answered. “I’ll, uhm—”

“Rico?”

“Yeah?”

“You, uhm, like the way I look?”

Rico grinned and patted Clopper’s head as he tried valiantly to run up the stairs. “Yeah. Nothin’ wrong with the way you look. You know that.”

“But I like that you look at me. I like to look at you too.”

Rico was stuck, tongue-tied, for three or four breaths. “Uhm, I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Say you’ll look at me tomorrow the same way you’re thinking about me now.”

“Yeah,” Rico whispered, mesmerized by his voice, by his confidence, by the humor and kindness that had permeated their conversation. “I can do that.”

“Good. Night, Ricardo. It’s been a good convo.”

“Backatcha.”

“Night.”

Derek hung up, and Rico stood at the steps, trying to catch his breath. Clopper nosed his hand, and he took the first step up and then turned to look out into the night.

It was like the sky was a special shade of purple and orange for the sunset in Sacramento. It might not have been better than the colors in New York, but Rico felt like those colors were
his
colors. They were made for him here, when he’d always just been visiting in Manhattan.

How was it he was going to go sleep on the couch of an apartment he’d never made his, but he’d never felt so much like he was home?

“Y
OU
THINK
?”
Rico asked after carefully tucking his polo shirt into his slacks and spinning around with his arms out.

Finn’s eyes were like a cartoon character’s, they were so big. “Uhm….”

“Fine, fine, fine,” Rico muttered. He stripped off his polo shirt and folded it back into the dresser.

“The pants too,” Finn instructed, arms crossed in front of him.

Rico looked over his shoulder. “Aren’t you being a little per—”

“You asked for my help,” he said, strawberry brows arched over his blue eyes. His mouth was drawn into a little pout, and Rico wondered for the umpteenth time whether this kid dropped out of a basket full of chocolate bunnies from the clouds.

“I did, but—”

“Are you going to work, Rico?”

“Uhm, no, but—”

“Why would you want to put that kind of distance between yourself and the guy buying you hot dogs?”

Rico stopped, just dead stopped, there in his boxers, his slacks pooled at his feet, while he stared at his cousin’s boyfriend. “What?”

“It’s fuckin’ California!” Finn said, gesturing. “Jesus, Rico—you’re going to a baseball game! What would you wear to a baseball game with Adam?”

Rico scowled and started going through his drawers. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he and Derek needed all the distance between them they could get because Ezra was still looming between them like a big fucking shadow. But he didn’t. He’d agreed to this date and he’d stick by it.

He rooted some more and came out with a pair of slim gray poly shorts that he’d just bought in New York because the new spring collection was out and Ezra had taken him to shop for leisure wear. He didn’t stop to watch Finn’s reaction—he was on a roll. He rifled through his drawers some more and came back with a gray shirt with pinstripe black checks on it. He slipped them on quickly and held his arms out to Finn in triumph, expecting praise.

Finn’s horror appeared to know no bounds. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” He reached into his pocket, took a picture, and sent it, presumably to Adam.

“What’s wrong with this outfit?” Rico asked, at his wits’ end.

“Nothing—if you’re a fifty-year-old father with Nordic ancestry,” Finn said. He stopped waving his arms for a moment. “In fact, you should give it to
my
father! But… God, Rico. You’re
Mexican
. Do you know what that
means
?”