Finding Zach (8 page)

Still smiling, Zach stepped forward and took the shoes, then dropped them on the ground. “I’ve been waiting for you to look at me like that,” he said, and kissed him, his mouth soft and warm on David’s.

For an instant, David fell into the kiss, barely feeling Zach’s hand curling around the back of his neck, only aware of the scent of Zach and sweat and mud and the taste of his mouth, peanut butter and chocolate from the candy bar he’d eaten after the game. Zach’s tongue licked inside, teasing his.

Then he jerked away and stared at Zach in disbelief. “What…?” he stammered.

Zach laughed delightedly. “The look on your face!” he chortled. “What’s the big deal, Taff? You’re gay; I’ve known that for a long time. Well, so am I.”

“You aren’t gay,” David said. “You’re
fifteen
.”

“Since when are the two mutually exclusive?” Zach asked. His smile faded. “So—what? You’re not interested?” He swallowed. “Gee, sorry. Didn’t mean to infringe on your personal space or anything.”

“No,” David said, putting out a hand. “Zach… Jesus, Zach, you’re fifteen. It’s—it’s like hero worship, or a crush, or something. You’re too young—fuck, Zach, you’re
jailbait
.”

“You’re only three years older than me,” Zach retorted. “And I’ll be sixteen in two months. I’m not stupid, Taff. I’m not imagining things. And I didn’t imagine the way you just looked at me. Hell, the way you’re looking at me now. You want me, Taff. I can see that.” He reached down and palmed the thick, heavy ridge of David’s erection through his jeans. “You want me like I want you. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“It
ain’t
okay,” David snarled, grabbing Zach’s questing hand. “You’re fucking jailbait, Zach, if nothing else.” He took a deep breath, but that didn’t help; all he could smell was sweet, sweaty Zach, all he could feel was the taut muscles of his wrist under the silkiness of his young skin, all he could see was the beautiful curve of Zach’s cheek and the arch of that wickedly sweet mouth. “Christ,” he muttered, and despite himself reached up to stroke that silky cheek. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Zach. Yeah, I want you, but you are too. Fucking. Young. And here I am perving over you. Jesus.”

“‘Perving’? Is that what you think? Like you’re some old man and I’m just some kid?” Zach’s voice was hurt.

“Not ‘just’ some kid,” David said miserably. “But you are a kid, Zach. You got time… Jesus, think about it. Just—think about it.”

“I’ve
been
thinking about it for two fucking years,” Zach snapped. “Ever since I figured out that girls just don’t do it for me. You know what my wet dreams are about, Taff? Dicks.”

David covered his ears. “I can’t hear this. Fuck, Zach, your parents are gonna go berserk. They’re gonna blame me for this. I am so dead.”

“Fuck you,” Zach had said, and walked away. David had walked back to the car but hadn’t gotten in; he just stood beside the driver’s side door and rested his forehead on the warm metal of the roof.

Richard’s voice had come out of the gathering twilight. “David.”

David looked up to see Zach’s father standing with Zach’s forgotten soccer cleats in his hand. It didn’t take a genius to see that Richard knew exactly what had just gone on between David and Zach. “I’m going,” David said curtly. “I won’t talk to Zach again.”

“That’s not necessary,” Jane said from behind Richard.

David groaned. “I take it you heard everything?”

“Enough,” Jane said. “Enough to hear you discouraging him. David, we’ve known—or suspected—that Zach was gay for a long time, but he never seemed to think of you as anything but a big brother, and so we didn’t worry about it. He never seemed interested in sex of any kind….”

“Which in itself was a little weird for a teenage boy,” Richard said, “but Zach is hardly your average teenage boy.”

“We meant to have this talk with you sooner or later,” Jane said uncertainly. “We just thought we had a little more time.”

“So, what?” David asked, looking from one to the other. “You want me to leave, right? Take that scholarship you offered me? And go—where, someplace like the Sorbonne? University of Moscow? Is that far enough?”

“We’re not asking you to leave, Davey,” Richard said. “Particularly after hearing what we did.”

“And what was that?” David asked in confusion.

“You said just what we would have asked you to. That Zach is too young for a relationship—with you or with anyone else—and that he should wait until he was older. Zach’s brilliant, but he’s still emotionally a kid. He’s not ready for anything like that. And when he is—whether it’s with you, or with someone else—we’ll deal with it then as appropriate.” He hesitated. “Zach was accepted by the early admissions program at MIT. We weren’t going to let him go because he
is
so young, but we’re reconsidering it. It would mean relocating to Boston for the school year, but there’s no reason I can’t work from there; it’s just been more convenient to be so close to home. I’m not saying this because we plan to keep you two apart, but because hopefully the excitement of college will distract him from feeling resentful of us trying to rein him in a bit.”

“I’m not in favor of the idea,” David said bluntly. “At MIT, he’s gonna be meeting and working with guys even older than I am, who are used to students who aren’t as young as Zach. They’ll think of him and treat him like a contemporary, particularly since he doesn’t talk or act like your average fifteen-year-old. If you don’t want him in a sexual relationship, keep him away from that kind of environment.”

“You have a good point,” Jane said, nodding. “Zach is not the only brilliant kid around here, Davey.”

David shook his head. “Not brilliant. It’s just common sense. I’ve visited friends at college and I know what kind of crazy-assed shit goes on. Jeez, guys—you aren’t that old—don’t you remember how it was?”

Richard actually flinched. “Shit.”

“See?”

“Yeah. So we deal with it as is.”

“Zach’s upset, though,” Jane said. “He’s angry with David, and hurt.”

“I’ll apologize,” David began, but Richard shook his head.

“No, don’t. Zach needs to learn that he can’t get everything he wants.”

“I wonder….” Jane said thoughtfully.

“What, Jenny?”

“Well, my sister Alicia’s been asking for Zach to come visit her. She’s the one who’s got a grant to study climate change at the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. Zach was excited at first when she invited him, but then he lost interest.” She glanced at David. “I think I know why, now. But maybe it would be good for him to go see her after all. It would be a distraction….”

A
ND
how
, David thought wearily as he watched the sun slip behind the mountains.
Quite a distraction for all of us, particularly after Zach disappeared from the San Jose airport in Costa Rica….

Still, that was all over.

Right.

A wave of grief as strong as any he’d had during Zach’s five-year absence washed over him, and he clutched the porch railing. The grief didn’t care that Zach was home, safe, recovering. All it cared about was that Zach was as irrevocably lost to David as if he had died in that jungle.

“Shit,” David said angrily, wiping tears from his face. “Shit.” He slammed into the house, went to the kitchen, and turned on the little under-cabinet TV, switching channels until he found a loud, mindless game show to keep him distracted until his mother came home.

Chapter 5

H
E
MANAGED
to make it through dinner with Annie without breaking down. Afterwards, they watched a movie on HBO; then when Annie announced that she needed to get to bed, he said, “You go ahead. I’m still antsy. I think maybe I’ll take my new wheels out for a drive.”

“Don’t drink,” Annie said automatically, then yawned.

“Maximum one beer,” he promised. “I just need to reconnect with the old neighborhood. I won’t be late.”

“You’re an adult, Davey,” she said, then dimpled. “Okay, that’s a bullshit line. You’re still my baby, so don’t be late, don’t talk to strangers….”

“And I’ve got on clean underwear in case I fall off my bike and need to go to the hospital. Yeah, Mom, I know the routine.” He kissed her cheek. “It’s good to be home, Mom. Even if you’re a total whack job.”

She smacked his butt. “What a way to talk to your mother. Go. Have fun. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t, he said, and kissed her again.

H
E
DROVE
around for a while, seeing what was new and what had changed in his old stomping grounds. After an hour, that wasn’t helping anymore, so he pulled into a Wesley bar he used to hang out in occasionally. It looked pretty much the same—more or less a local pub, but friendly to the gay community in Wesley and the Springs. It didn’t have the little back rooms some of the more blatantly pick-up places did, but David had met a guy or two he’d liked here.

It being a Wednesday, the lot wasn’t as full as it would have been on the weekend, but there were still more than a few cars parked there. Cars, and an amazingly hot-looking Ducati motorcycle. The sodium lights in the lot didn’t give a true impression of the color, but David thought it might be red. Wow, he thought, looking the bike over. He didn’t know much about motorcycles, but he knew that Ducatis were the top of the line, and kind of rare here in Harley country.

He picked out the owner the minute he walked in. The guy stood with one foot on the brass rail, leaning forward on the polished black surface of the bar. He was tall; taller than David by a couple of inches, from what David could see. He paused a moment to admire the way the broad shoulders tapered into a lean waist, a taut, fuckable ass, and long legs in black denim. A black leather jacket was thrown on the barstool beside him.
Ducati guy,
David thought.
Only a biker would wear leather in this weather.

The guy had his hair buzzed, but what was there was thick and black as the T-shirt that stretched over those wide shoulders and muscled arms. There was something entirely too sexy about the way the shirt bagged loosely where it brushed the narrow waist of the jeans. The T-shirt and buzz cut left his neck bare, and David frowned as he came closer and saw the ridge of scar tissue that marred an otherwise perfect view. It looked like the guy had been strangled or something.

Then he was standing at the bar next to the guy ordering a beer, and when he turned he saw the man’s profile, the strong jaw set and the face expressionless. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “
Zach
??”

“Fuck off,” the man said, and took a drink of his Scotch.

“Jesus, it is you,” David said. “Zach….”

“What part of ‘fuck off’ don’t you understand,
David
?” Zach replied, still looking straight ahead, still expressionless.

“Zach, can we talk? Please?” Here it was, his chance to make amends, his chance to find out what was going on in Zach’s head. “I’ve been wanting to see you….”

Zach’s eyes closed briefly, then he set his Scotch back down on the bar, picked up his jacket and turned to leave.

David stepped in front of him. “No, Zach, please. I just want to talk….”

Pale eyes flicked up to his, cold and empty. “I don’t talk. You want to fuck, that’s another story. But no talking. No kissing. No follow-up phone calls. I don’t suck dick, and I don’t bottom. Interested?”

David stared at him, uncomprehending.

Zach smiled thinly, humorlessly. “Didn’t think so.” He brushed past David and out the door. A moment later David heard the roar of the motorcycle.

“What did you do to piss off the Ice Queen?” a voice said behind him.

Dazed, David turned to the young guy, a stranger. “What?”

“The Ice Queen. He’s cold, but he’s always polite. Helluva fuck, though.”

Rage roared through David and he grabbed the guy’s shirt. “What. The. Fuck?”

“Hey! Don’t get all pissy, dude!” the guy protested. “I just asked what you said to piss him off. He don’t get mad, ever. Never saw him react like that to anybody.” The guy relaxed as David released him, and gave him a once-over. “You look like his type,” he said meditatively. “Mine, too.” He broke into a grin. “Lemme buy you a drink.”

“Got one,” David said curtly, and walked back to the bar.

The guy followed. “I’m Brian,” he said. “And you’re David? I heard the Ice Queen call you that.”

“Yeah.”

“I figured when you walked in that you’d walk out with him,” Brian said thoughtfully. “Like I said, you’re his type. But you guys, like, know each other, huh?”

“What do you mean I’m his type?” David asked. His fingers closed hard around the glass of beer in front of him.

“Blond surfer dude.” Brian waved his hand to indicate himself. “Like me.”

“You met him here?”

“Nah, at the Goose. You know it?”

“Gray Goose on Sheffield? Yeah. I know it.” Shit, David thought. That place was a meat market. Zach was hanging out there? Some of the patrons referred to it as the Dirty Duck—or Dirty Dick, as the case may be.

“He’s there a lot. Doesn’t do repeats too often, though—more’s the pity.” Brian ordered a beer.