Jock Auction (35 page)

Instead, I rubbed my scratchy eyes with the back of my sleeve and got out. Slowly

made my way down the familiar path. It’d only been yesterday that I’d been here last, but in some indefinable way it felt strange and foreign. Like I was no longer walking into somewhere that would be welcoming.

I paused with my key by the lock, swallowed, lowered my hand, and pressed the

bell instead.

When my dad opened the door, I realized I’d been holding my breath. He looked

at me, expression unreadable, and I watched as his eyes flicked around behind me, to the side, as if to see if I was there alone or I’d brought my queer cavalry along too.

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“Hello, Kyle,” he said eventually. My mouth was dry, tongue feeling thick and

sluggish.

“Hey, Dad,” I managed.

He stood to one side, and I walked in stiffly, that odd air of formality still clouding the house I was so familiar with.

“Your mom…” he started, paused. “Your mom isn’t here right now. Maybe we

should go into the kitchen.”

We faced each other across the counter, me toying with my keys in my hoodie

pocket, him absentmindedly stacking and spreading the few pieces of mail that had

been left out from the morning. Stack, and then spread; stack, and then spread again.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked. He’d started round the counter before I stepped

across to the fridge myself.

“I’m not a guest, Dad, I’m your son,” I pointed out, pulling out a bottle of water and then sliding one across the marble to him.

He nodded, perhaps winced a little. I suddenly realized that he was just as

uncomfortable, just as uncertain as I was. That he was probably dealing with the same fears of losing me that I was of losing him.

I took a deep breath, looked down at the bottle on the countertop, cradled in my

fingers.

“Look…I know it’s not what you expected, and it’s not what I expected, but it’s

who I am at the moment, and I don’t need your permission, but I would like your love and support, and I think you need to trust me, okay, not to do something that’s wrong for me.”

The words all came out in a rush, tripping over themselves once they’d started to

spill from my mouth, and I didn’t dare look up to see his expression as I talked and he heard them.

Silence.

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“I do trust you, Kyle.”

His voice was shaky, and for the first time I suddenly thought of him growing old

and feeble and then of how it might feel to lose him, to lose both him and my mom. The lump in my throat that had started to swell when I stopped speaking felt big enough to choke me.

“I can’t say I understand what’s happening, or that I ever had any inkling that you might…you might be… Well.” I glanced up, saw the frown and the grimace

momentarily cloud his face. “But I know I made decisions that my father didn’t

understand, and yet every day I knew he loved me and supported me and would never

knowingly let harm come to me. And that’s exactly what I want to provide for you.”

He twisted the top off the bottle but left them both on the counter, staring at them side by side.

“So this…this young man…”

“Craig,” I filled in, voice a hoarse croak.

He nodded. “This…Craig. He’s someone special to you.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement, but the pause that followed it

seemed to need something to break it.

“He’s special, yes. I’m…I guess I’m happy when I’m with him, and I think he’s

happy when he’s with me.”

My dad’s smile was small, pensive. “You can make people happy without being

their boyfriend, son.”

I smiled at that too. Wishful thinking, or true advice, or something else? Either

way, allowing him to believe that Craig and I could be in the throes of some noble camaraderie rather than a relationship wasn’t going to help him in the long run.

“It’s more than ‘just good friends,’ Dad,” I said quietly.

His nod was slow, thoughtful.

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“When I met your mother,” he said eventually, “I don’t think her father thought

too much of me. He wasn’t a snob, but I was loud and didn’t hold my tongue, and I

think he worried that I’d not be good for your mom.” He raised the bottle, and I saw his throat gulp down water. “Not that I wasn’t good enough for her, necessarily, but that he thought I might shout her down, overshadow her somehow.”

He looked over my shoulder at some distant point of memory that wasn’t really

here with us in the kitchen. “Your mother was his little star—hell, I thought she was a star too—and he didn’t want anything to eclipse that. Certainly not some outspoken kid with a big mouth. And he showed that in how he was with me when I was round there, through all the time we were courting, and even when we were married. I always felt like your grandfather wasn’t quite pleased with me.”

I tried to dredge up the few memories of my mom’s dad that I had, to compare

these reminiscences against what little I could recall of a man who died of cancer when I was still quite young.

“Anyway, I liked to think I meant a lot to your mother at that time, but I never felt like I meant much to him. And I’m very aware that we—I—probably left Craig feeling the same way yesterday.”

I let out the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. “He…understood,” I told

him.

My father shook his head slowly. “Then he’s obviously a very wise young man.

Because he shouldn’t have to. To understand, I mean. He shouldn’t have to come into his…his partner’s house and feel under attack from his partner’s family.”

It was only when the tears splashed onto my hands that I realized I was crying. I’d never heard my dad talk about his relationship with my grandfather before, never

really known him to discuss anything so serious as this.

“I hope you can tell him…” Something caught in his throat. “I hope you can tell

him that I’m sorry he was met with that. Or that I get the chance to tell him myself.”

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And then I was moving round the counter and into his tight hug, ignoring the

bottle of water as it toppled and spilled across the floor.

“I’m sorry,” I found myself saying, chin pressed against his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

I could feel him shaking his head. “Nothing to be sorry about, Kyle. I love you,

okay? You’re my son, and I love you.”

We stood that way for a minute or so, the kitchen silent, aside from my occasional sniffs and the slow tap of water dripping onto the floor. Eventually, I stepped back.

“What about mom?” I asked, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. My father made a face

somewhere between a grimace and resignation.

“Your mother needs…time, I suppose. She loves you; don’t forget that. But she

just needs some time to get used to everything.”

I nodded, even as the knot of uncertainty still twisted in my stomach. Would she

really come around? How could he be so sure? Suddenly I had visions of being the

wedge that drove my parents apart, the insurmountable problem that ended up making them both unhappy.

The tear of paper towel jolted me out of my worst-case thinking, my dad

scrunching a handful and bending to mop up the spilled water. I snatched off a half-dozen sheets myself and went to help him.

“I’d say there’s no point crying over spilled milk,” he suggested, “but this isn’t milk.”

I rolled my eyes at him. We were back to the bad dad jokes, clearly. I felt a warm, relieved glow in my chest at the familiarity of his awful sense of humor.

“So…tell me about Craig,” he asked. I looked up in astonishment. “Honestly,

Kyle, I think that’s the goofiest expression I’ve ever seen!”

I told him a little then, just the basics, leaving out the auction and the mixed

messages and the unexpected subplot with Louis and the others. Focused instead on

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how my boyfriend made me feel and what he was interested in and how we’d been

pretty lucky with the reaction from the people at school.

And I told him about Jeff and how I’d ended up in the nurse’s office and he called me “the dumbest ass in the backfield,” and Dad said to me that if I ever kept anything like that from him or my mother again, he’d personally lock me in the basement

wrapped up in a sleeping bag and wearing a crash helmet made of cotton balls. I

cracked up at that one, only stopping when I saw the serious expression on his face.

“You’re very precious to us, Kyle,” he told me, eyes bright and intense. “We want

to help and protect you any way we can. That can sometimes get expressed in the

wrong way, I know, but it’s our guiding star as parents. So if shit happens, you tell us and we help you get out, okay?”

My eyes went wide. My dad was not one to use profanity, even a relatively mild

word like “shit.” I couldn’t even think of the last time I’d heard him say anything like that.

“Okay, Dad,” I said, smiling at him. This “fierce father” was not a persona I was

especially familiar with, but I could appreciate his earnestness all the same.

“I’d like to meet him. Properly, this time, I mean.”

“Sure, Dad. I’d like that too.”

I thought about what he’d said, while I was upstairs doing a slightly more careful than the last time selection of what clothes I might need. I figured I’d stay with Jake and Jackson at least another night, give my dad time to talk to my mom and at least calm her down some. He’d said he thought she just needed a chance to simmer and that

she’d come around, but I wasn’t sure I could be under the same roof while that

happened.

Digging through my drawers also gave me a chance to think through what had

happened with Jackson. Somehow, even though I ended up getting off, it didn’t feel like we’d been intimate. He was a flirt; I understood that from just a few minutes with him the very first night, but he was an equal-opportunity flirt. He’d been the same with JOCK AUCTION | 257

Craig, and I was pretty sure he’d be like that with other guys and most likely girls for that matter.

That probably meant I should be a little more careful around him in future, but I

still hadn’t given up on the idea of putting Jackson and Louis in the same room and seeing what happened.

It also meant that I picked out a pretty cute pair of boxer briefs and a form-fitting T-shirt to wear down to breakfast tomorrow morning.

I gave my dad a long, tight hug before I left, the two of us sharing only a couple of casual words—what we’d spoken about in the kitchen had been enough to set us back

on an even keel. Halfway down the path I looked back over my shoulder and saw him

still in the doorway, watching me leave. He was still there when I started the car and pulled away from the curb.

Somehow I drove unknowingly back to Craig’s place. Only really realized I was

headed there when I was stood at his front door, a sense of déjà vu as he looked at me for a beat through the screen door, barefoot and dressed all in black.

“Hey,” he said, expression bright.

“Hey yourself,” I told him.

Following him up the stairs, I took the opportunity to admire his ass, narrow and

curved and compact in his skinny black jeans. The fact that he looked back and caught me doing it made it even more fun, somehow.

“So how did it go?” Craig asked me as he sat on the edge of his bed. I ran my

hands through my hair, sighed.

“I made up with my dad. My mom wasn’t there. He was really…okay about it.

And he wants to meet you.”

Craig frowned. “I guess that’s okay…if that’s what you want.”

I nodded at him, moved over, and sat down next to him.

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“They need to get used to having you around.” My hand found his, our fingers

lacing together. “You’re going to be a frequent visitor, after all.”

He chuckled at that. “Careful, they’ll start charging me rent.”

I pulled his arm toward me until he got the idea and straddled my thighs. Nudged

at his nose with my nose until he tilted his head up and our lips could meet.

“Can’t have that, especially since you spent all your savings buying me.”

He pulled back, looked at me half-earnest. “It was worth it.”

I drew him back in with a hand on the back of his neck. His mouth was so soft I

had to resist the temptation to bite his lips as his fingers gently pressed into the muscles across my shoulders.

“Oh,” he said suddenly. “I did have a little left over…but I spent it.” He pulled out his phone—with a little difficulty—from the tight pocket of his jeans, thumbed it

unlocked, and turned it to show me the screen.

It was the website for some online store full of wrestling gear. I looked at the dirty grin plastered across his face and shook my head.

“Let me guess, blue and white?”

Craig mimed zipping up his lips, tossed his phone onto the bed, and slipped his

arm back around me. “You’ll have to wait and see. I think you’ll look incredible in it.”

I turned us, flipped him onto his back, felt his legs wrap around my waist

automatically.

“Well, then,” I told him in between kisses, “I’d better start practicing my pinning technique. Wouldn’t want you to get away.”

He giggled, his fingers already working their way under my T-shirt. Smooth

fingertips gliding across my nipples until he eased the shirt over my head. I was

reaching for his fly when he stopped me, running his palm across my growing bulge.

“You never did tidy up this room in the end,” Craig pointed out.