Essence of Time (29 page)

He took it, chewed, sipped some more. Rob sighed. He knew the conversational ball was firmly in his court and Blake was going to out-stubborn him on it. But to his pleasant surprise, the other man turned over, laid his head in Rob’s lap, and put a hand up to his face. The man’s deep green eyes were intent. Rob tried to rally the necessary manhood to just fucking open up to him. Blake spoke first, keeping his hand against Rob’s face, using his thumb to trace a line around his lips before he spoke.

“I want a baby.”

Rob blinked, looked out over the incredible expanse of blue-green ocean. “So do I,” he admitted, running his fingers through Blake’s hair.  One of the pitfalls of being a truly bisexual man was picturing yourself in a more traditional relationship with a woman, fathering children, being perfectly content with that sort of life. Of course, the urgency he felt about this particular topic he was now forced to explain. “I’m…I…um…,” he faltered, his heart thudding so hard in his chest he was surprised his shirt didn’t move. 

Blake put a finger over his lips, sat up, and moved over to a chair directly across from him. “I think I know.” He stated, still holding his empty beer bottle. “We’ve never, in nearly seven years together ever had sex without a condom. You insist on it, still to this day. I get it. When did you get diagnosed?” Rob stared at him, trying to compute what in the hell he was talking about. Blake stared at him a minute more. “HIV, right? AIDS? Where do you hide your medicine cocktail anyways?”

Rob blinked, blew out a breath, and stood. His skin was on fire, and frozen at the same time. He couldn’t figure out where to put his hands. Blake just watched him, leaned back, obviously trying to relax in that typical “This is me, relaxing” pose when he was coiled as tight as a wire.  The sight of it made Rob furious for some unknown reason.

“Jesus, no, Blake I don’t have AIDS.
That
I would have told you already.” He paced, the small deck suddenly confining when it had just been roomy, perfect.

Blake leaned forward, elbows on his knees, tension all over his face. “Are you breaking up with me?” The honest question nearly broke Rob’s heart and ignited his fury as if dousing it with kerosene.

“Good Christ almighty, Thornton. How many more ways or times can I tell you that I love you?” He moved away as Blake stood, made as if to step toward him. “Jack is right. You guys are fucking unbelievable. Won’t accept what’s right in front of you as fact. Reading all sorts of shit into things…” He stopped. He couldn’t breathe. Blake stared at him, incredulous. This, somehow, made it worse. Red actually tinged the edges of his vision as a rush of familiar and horrible fear reared its ugly, cancerous head.

How in holy hell was he going to run his restaurant, cope with the day-to-day bullshit and worry about a serious relapse? Who would understand? Who would he turn to? The man across from him? Maybe.
Then again, Rob had been the rock Blake leaned on for so long he just did not trust a role reversal. Not now. Reality nearly crushed his chest. He stumbled forward, pushed past Blake and headed to the bow of the boat. A huge net stretched out over it, obviously meant for lounging, drinking and other, more erotically creative uses.

Rob yanked at it, needing an outlet for his frustration. It didn’t budge, so he sat in the forward most point of the gulet, letting the cool evening air calm his no-doubt beet red face. Swallowing the urge to yell, to scream, throw things, he doubled down on his temper and tried to will himself back under some semblance of control. This was the moment of truth and he’d more or less blown it to hell. Fuck.

After about a ten-minute, calm-down session in his own head, he stood back up and turned, nearly plowing straight into Blake who must have snuck in behind him on bare feet. The wind ruffled the ends of his hair, and Rob had that sudden, odd, breath-taking moment of agony again, as the sounds of strange crying hit his inner ear. He shook his head. He was obviously projecting. Blake stayed away from him. They locked eyes. “I have cancer.” Rob’s throat ached with the telling. He swallowed, realizing that the look in Blake’s eyes right now was the reason he’d avoided this for so long. “I’m sorry.” His voice broke, tears he had held for the better part of twenty years ran down his face. “Don’t be angry, please.”

Blake rocked on his heels, in a familiar, I’m-pissed-but-holding-it-in sort of way. Blackness hovered over Rob’s vision. He had nothing now. It was over. He’d ruined it. All the years of holding back the truth for fear of this very moment, fucking blown to bits in the blink of an eye. He had no one to blame but himself. No longer trusting his knees to hold him up, he sank into a chair, looked up at the purple sky. Blake’s silence spoke volumes.
Now what?
His mind already started cycling through how they’d break up the business, the house, the CD collection. He leaned forward, no longer able to take it. “Go away.” He muttered. “Just, get away from me.”

The pain of his parents’ faces, his doomsday doctors, the friends who faded on him over the years as he essentially dropped out of middle school, leaving the soccer team he’d led since third grade, the fucking god-forsaken odors of a hospital room after you’d lived in it a good long while, all rushed in on him. He sucked in a breath, but it didn’t help. His chest constricted, his skin tingled. He yearned with everything he had for one thing. The feel of Blake’s hands on his shoulders made him look up, gasp when Blake dragged him forcibly to his feet. He stared into the deep green depths he’d come to love all those years ago, in spite of his own natural predilection to avoid relationships. This man had worn him down, somehow. He looked up, but Blake thumbed his chin, forced him to make eye contact.

“Seriously. That’s it?” Blake smiled, and Rob sucked a ragged breath. 

“I had cancer. Leukemia. Diagnosed after a t-ball game. I had six months to live, well, sort of every six months, you know? I lived eight, nine, almost ten years in hospitals with chemo and radiation. Then poof! I was cured. But now,” he gulped, “I go every year for checkups and, this thing, called a PET scan. I had such harsh treatment as a kid they kept telling me to not expect much out of my life. I’d be lucky to see twenty, then thirty.” Blake tried to speak but Rob rushed in, needing to fill the void, to confess, all of it, finally.  “I’m nearly forty-one. And I love you and I want to have a family with you and I’m fucking finally able to admit what I want… with you, Blake.” He gripped the man’s shoulders. Looked down, then back up into eyes that were shimmering with emotion. “I have a ‘shadow’ on my lung. I have to go for a biopsy when we get back. And I am so scared...” He broke then, let it just have him, unwilling to be the rock, the foundation, the always-reliable Rob. Sobs tore through him as he collapsed to the deck.

Blake went with him, holding him close, dragging him into his arms as he moved to lean against the bow-length benches. “My love. It’s fine. It will be fine. I have you. I will take care of you. Always.”

Rob let Blake hold him, as a decade’s worth of tears poured from his soul. He’d held it all in. Never cried, not even as a ten-year-old puking his guts up from the poison they used to kill the cancer, with second-degree burns from the radiation they used to burn the cancer out of him. Not once. His mother cried constantly. His father even cried once; one night when Rob was flat-out not supposed to live through the next twenty-four hour period. When Christine broke his young heart, when he’d left René, abandoned Kyle, he’d never shed more than a few tears. A burst of emotion shot through him as he looked up, and Blake slanted lips over his. Tears mingled, tongues tangled, and Blake helped him to his feet.

“I need you,” he muttered in Rob’s ear. “Be with me. Be completely with me, for once.” Rob nodded, understanding what Blake meant. He slipped out of his shirt, slid his jeans down and unzipped Blake, shoved everything away until it was a puddle of cotton and denim around their bare feet.  With just the soft caress of a finger across his jaw, Blake brought Rob’s entire body to attention, hardening him all over, making his brain go into overload, thanks to the emotion and stress and residual bullshit of the past months. “Kiss me?” Blake asked, his normally rough voice even lower, soft, yet incredibly sexy to Rob’s ears. 

Rob leapt across the foot of space between them, grasped Blake’s neck with one hand, his ass with the other, covered the other man’s lips, forced them open with his tongue, probing and demanding.  The feel of Blake’s thick cock against his, the velvety sensation of bodies rubbing together, made him groan. His mind kept trying to do its usual “oh but you aren’t really being honest with him” song-and-dance but he put the mental brakes on that. He broke the kiss, gripped Blake’s handsome face between his hands.  “No more lies. No more hiding. You have all of me, now. If you want it.”

“I’ve never wanted anything but that.” Blake insisted, running his hands down Rob’s back, clutching him close. “Why would you think anything else? Jesus you know everything about me. All my dysfunction. Seems only fair I get to know yours.” He ran a finger over Rob’s lips, stared deep into his eyes. “Now,” his gaze darkened, and Rob’s body zinged in immediate, visceral response. “Turn around. I need to be inside you. So badly I am about to fucking explode.”

 He ground these last words out and Rob felt his body respond, but more importantly relief poured through every nerve ending he possessed, enveloped him, warmed him as he let Blake turn him, use his spit slickened fingers to penetrate and spread his body in preparation. He groaned as Blake’s fingertip teased his gland, made his cock stiffen, then retreat. Consciously relaxing his muscles he gripped the back of the chair as Blake slid into his body, possessing him, grunting with what Rob knew was the most exquisite sensation of being gripped, held close by someone else’s body.  Blake grabbed his hips, went deep, moaning the entire time.

“Jesus Christ, Rob.” He gasped. Rob tilted his hips, grabbed his cock with one hand. It didn’t take long. On the next stroke Blake reached deep, and Rob cried out and felt warmth covering his belly. His body stretched, accommodated his lover, and they both groaned with satisfaction as Blake gently pulled him up so their joined, sweat-slicked bodies were together, arms entangled, Blake’s lips at his ear as he filled Rob’s body in exquisite release.

Later, entwined so close Rob didn’t know where his arms and legs ended and Blake’s began on the huge net covering the bow, with large striped cushions underneath their naked skin, he kissed Blake’s shoulder, his neck, check, and lips. “Thank you.” His heart pounded. Blake sighed and pulled him even closer if that were possible.

“No. Thank you. You saved me. From myself. And now,” he paused to press his lips to Rob’s forehead. “You have to believe I’m here for you, always.” Within minutes, Rob was gratified to hear a light snore as the man he loved beyond all logical reason eased into a satisfied, well-needed sleep.

Part IV:  Lila

Chapter One

One Year Later

Lila started when someone called her name. She’d been sitting alone for the better part of the season, unable to mix with the rest of the much wealthier, more nuclear families populating the sidelines of her daughter’s soccer team. No one had really been friendly at all except one woman. Katie’s mom. They all went by their “somebody’s mom or dad” designation, as if learning real names was a waste of energy. And being “Maddie’s Mom” did not bother her in the slightest. Actually she liked it.

“Hey, uh, ‘Maddie’s mom,’” the thin, attractive woman touched her leg again. “Do you know anything about this end of year party thing? I can’t get a straight answer out of anyone over there.” The woman jerked a thumb at the well-dressed crowd of parents.

“Yes. We’re supposed to donate ten bucks per family and a pot luck dish suitable for a cookout. And bring squirts guns.”

The other woman grimaced. “Squirt guns. Sounds awful.”

Lila couldn’t help but giggle at her dismay. She’d heard the other paretns whispering about “Katie’s Mom” before. And about all the “Uncles” that came and went on behalf of Katie. She stuck out her hand. “Hi. My real name is Lila by the way.”

The other woman looked at her hand a half second then smiled and took it. “I’m Sara. Good to know someone else has a real name.” Sara sighed and leaned back in her pop up chair. “I suppose this is where we start talking about next year and what team our daughters will be playing on and stuff.”

Lila narrowed her eyes and looked across the field at the girls, just finishing up a game. “No. Not really. I’m not sure Maddie will be playing. Too expensive.” She held up a bare left hand. “My ex isn’t sure he wants to pay for it anymore and my salary at the book store will never cover it.”

Sara shot her an odd look, then smiled. “Sorry, don’t mean to be nosy.” She heaved a huge sigh. “I hate this shit. I wish Katie would quit. But her…well, she’s good and I guess I’m stuck with it for a while longer.”

Lila jumped right in, feet first, not realizing why but later glad she did. “Katie has a lot of uncles. What’s up with that?”

Sara laughed, and smacked Lila’s knee. “I like you Maddie’s Mom. Maybe when you have five or six hours, I’ll tell you about it.”

Lila grinned back at her. “I have some time tonight. Want to come over for dinner? Let the girls mess around a little more?” She had no frame of reference for why she even asked. Her heart pounded nervously when the other woman stared at her.

Then Sara spoke, “I’d love it, Lila.”

By the time the girls were flopped on Lila’s threadbare couch in the tiny living room, the two women had consumed two bottles of wine that Sara had brought. Well, Sara had consumed most of it. Lila was a self-avowed lightweight.  But it didn’t seem to affect Sara much. Lila watched her sip, saw how her face changed as she talked about the man who was likely Katie’s father.

She put a hand on Sara’s. “Sounds like you guys need to get your act together to me.”

Sara’s barking laughter was harsh. She stared at Lila. “Yeah. You and Blake and Rob and…” She stopped, her face paling.