Nothing but Smoke (Fire and Rain) (21 page)

He searched her face for some kind of comprehension, some glimmer that the day he and Michael had moved her still existed in her mind.

“The house?” She blinked, her eyes landing on the space around her. “Where…?” Her forehead creased like she was both confused and upset. “Where am I?”

Nicky reached for the remote control and flicked to one of the stations she liked. It was airing an old episode of
Friends
that they’d watched together a hundred times. “Look. It’s the one where Joey teaches Chandler how to do nothing all day.”

His mom let out a breath, raspy and thick, but more relaxed. “Oh.” She looked in the direction of the sound from the TV, though Nicky was fairly certain she couldn’t see it.

She calmed, distracted from everything around her. Nicky finally admitted to himself—he wasn’t going to tell her. Not today. Not ever. His opportunity had passed awhile ago. Maybe before he even met Michael. He licked his lips, tasting the salty tears that had gathered on his stubble.

“I’m coming with you, and that’s final.” Michael grabbed the shirt that Nicky had been holding and tossed it in the laundry basket. Nicky was a mess. Understandable since they’d just gotten a call from All Saints that Nicky’s mother had experienced another stroke—this one fatal—but Michael still wasn’t going to let Nicky head out with coffee spilled across his chest.

Fatal…the word echoed in Michael’s consciousness, thrummed in his body. But he couldn’t get swept away in thinking about what it all meant. He needed a clear head for Nicky.

“But…I don’t think…” Nicky stared around their bedroom, like he was looking for the T-shirt Michael had taken, or a replacement, and couldn’t imagine where to find it.

Michael dragged open Nicky’s drawers and pulled out some clothes for him. They had more space now that they’d moved into Lydia’s old bedroom, but the house still felt cramped since Michael had moved all his things in when he’d found someone to take over his lease in the U District.

“You’re not safe to drive.” Michael urged the T-shirt over Nicky’s head. “If you want me to stay in the parking lot, I will. But I’m taking you there, and there’s no point in arguing.”

When the T-shirt had cleared Nicky’s chin, Michael could see that Nicky was crying. Michael wanted to hold Nicky, but if Michael did that, he would start crying too, and they’d never manage to get to All Saints without an accident.

“Come on. Get dressed.” Michael reached for his own pants, finding that his hands were shaking. Even after the months he and Nicky had been together, he’d only met Lydia the one time. Still, Michael felt like he knew her. He saw her influence in how Nicky kept his house clean, or the way he’d make the sign of the cross when he hoped a sports team he liked would score.

“I can’t believe…” Nicky stood there in his briefs, jeans dangling from his hand. “I should have been there.”

“No.” Michael took the pants out of Nicky’s hand and bent to a crouch to get them on Nicky’s legs. Stupid, maybe, to dress him like he was a kid, but Michael knew Nicky needed to be taken care of, and unlike the past months when Michael had seen Nicky miserable and not known what to do, now, today, he could take charge and fix things. “There was no way you could have known to be there.”

At least Nicky had the presence of mind to do up his fly on his own. When he was done, he looked at Michael like he had no idea where he was or what he was doing.

“Come on.” Michael took his hand. There wasn’t any time crunch, really. The folks at All Saints had said not to hurry. But Michael knew Nicky needed to get there, to be by his mother’s side, even if she could no longer see him.

Nicky followed down the stairs and into Michael’s Mustang. Trying to make his brain work, Michael ran through whether they’d left on the stove or if any doors were unlocked. He made sure to watch behind him as he backed out of Nicky’s driveway, especially since some parts of the road were still slick with fallen leaves.

“I’m supposed to go to work in an hour.” Nicky stared out the windshield as he said it, his face full of awe and panic.

Michael checked the clock on the car’s dash and saw that it was seven fifteen.

If Nicky hadn’t been awake and getting ready for work, they would have been asleep when All Saints called. “I’ll contact Hank, okay?” Michael rubbed Nicky’s thigh, feeling nothing but tense muscle under his jeans.

“Okay.”

“It’ll be okay.” He squeezed Nicky’s hand as hard as he dared. “We’ll take care of everything.” The will, the funeral arrangements—all that Michael could handle, but he had no idea what to say to make Nicky feel any better.

He could have used some flowery words about how Nicky’s mother wasn’t in pain anymore, or that she’d be in a better place, or even that they’d known this was coming for a while. But if Michael’s mother had died, he would smack anyone who tried to tell him how to feel.

“I know.” Nicky gripped Michael’s hand, like it was all Nicky could do to tread water. “I know you will. And, fuck, I… God, I love you so much.”

Michael lifted their hands and kissed Nicky’s knuckles. “I know, baby.” He held Nicky’s hand until he parked at the hospice center.

“Here we are.” Michael got out of the car, wondering if he should go inside with Nicky. “You want me to come with you?”

As scattered as Nicky seemed, Michael needed to ask, because if Michael did the wrong thing today, he wasn’t sure if he could live with himself.

“Um…yeah.” Nicky got out of the car and started toward the hospice center.

Michael followed, opening the door for him when Nicky couldn’t seem to remember how, and walking at his side as Nicky went to the front desk.

“Hi there, Nicky.” The receptionist gave Nicky a sympathetic smile.

Of course she knew him. Nicky had been coming here every day he wasn’t working for months.

“Where is she?” Nicky swallowed, eyes lost. Michael would have put his arm around Nicky’s shoulders, except he wasn’t sure what Nicky was comfortable with.

“In her room.” The woman glanced past Nicky to Michael. “Does your friend need a visitor’s pass?”

Nicky blinked like he didn’t know what she was asking, but then he swung around to look at Michael. The longing and fear and need was written all over Nicky’s face, and if Michael could have right then, he would have pulled Nicky close so Nicky didn’t have to struggle with his feelings alone.

“Yeah.” Nicky reached for Michael’s hand. He caught it in his own and pulled Michael a step closer. “Yeah, could he have a visitor’s pass?”

The nurse, or whoever the lady was wearing pink scrubs, lifted her cheeks in the closest thing to a smile that could be expected on a day like today. She pushed the clipboard Michael’s direction. “Under ‘relationship’, put ‘partner’. It’ll make things easier if you need to help Nicky through paperwork later.”

Michael nodded but kept his attention down. He hoped Nicky was okay with that nomenclature, because Michael would do whatever made things smoother for Nicky. “Thanks.” He scribbled his name, and the time, and “partner” in that place where all things were decided about who was what to whom, and he handed the clipboard back to the woman.

“You can go on to her room now.” The woman glanced down the hall in the direction Michael had taken with Nicky over two months ago. How different things had been then—heady, but rushed, the way they’d been with Mark when Michael was so high on emotion he’d never thought to look down and see that there was nothing holding up their relationship.

Now, as he held Nicky’s hand down the long walk to Nicky’s mother’s room, everything was different. The longing was there, and the love and even the excitement, but the foundation between them was broad and strong. Firm, like the cornerstone of a building.

The door to Nicky’s mother’s room was closed, and a priest stood next to it. For a second, Michael had a strange sense of déjà vu, wondering where he’d seen the guy before. But then Nicky’s hand tightened on Michael’s and Michael remembered.

It was the guy who’d been at Nicky’s house back in August.

“Nicolas.” The priest stared at the two of them with stern eyes, his attention traveling from their faces to their joined hands.

Michael loosened his grip. He didn’t need a showdown. Not now of all times, and certainly not with a man he and Nicky might never see again.

“Father.” Nicky gripped Michael’s hand all the harder, like he’d strangle Michael’s fingers before letting go.

“You’re not planning to go in there like that, are you?” The priest glared as if they were committing some kind of wrong just for showing up together.

“Listen.” Michael hated to get in the middle of this, but fuck if he would let this man make Nicky feel worse. “You don’t have any right—”

Nicky tugged Michael’s arm, soft but sure enough that Michael shut his mouth.

“While I’ve appreciated everything you’ve done for my mom…” Nicky took a deep breath, rubbing his jaw with the hand that wasn’t gripping Michael’s. “I don’t think you understand—”

“Oh, I understand perfectly well.” The way the priest narrowed his eyes was crueler than anything Michael would have expected.

Sheltered as Michael had been in his mom’s liberal bubble, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen such blind hatred in a person’s gaze. It forced him back a step, made him want to shake his hand away from Nicky’s and play it cool until he and Nicky were somewhere else.

“What do you understand?” Nicky advanced on the priest, meeting scorn with outrage. “That Michael is my boyfriend? That we’re together? Lovers? Partners?”

Michael held Nicky back, because the way Nicky’s hands were fisted bordered on frightening.

“Your mother never would have approved.” The priest blustered, wiping his forehead, but he retreated until he hit the pale blue wall behind him.

“You have no idea what my mother would have thought.” Nicky leaned toward the priest, like he was fighting Michael’s grip, but just enough to make sure Michael still had a firm hold on his biceps. “And now neither one of us will know. But I do know this—my mom loved me.” The pain in Nicky’s face was hard to watch because it made his handsome features twist into a mask of pure sadness. “And she would have wanted to know me… If she’d lived, she would have wanted…” His voice cracked, broke. Nicky’s shoulders shook hard enough that Michael wrapped his arms around him to hold him lest Nicky’s emotions spill out and tear him apart. “She would have wanted to know me.”

Nicky twisted to let Michael take some of his weight. Michael couldn’t bear to look at Father MacKenzie. And there was nothing he could think of to say. So he closed his eyes and buried his face in Nicky’s hair, rubbing his back while listening to the footsteps that meant the priest had finally stormed off.

“She would have still loved me,” Nicky murmured into the crook of Michael’s neck.

For the first time since they’d gotten that phone call, Michael knew the right thing to say. “Yeah, she would have, Nicky. She would have told you she loved you no matter what, and that she’d always be your mom.”

The words came easy to Michael because he still remembered the things his own mother had said. At the time, they’d seemed almost canned. Maybe trite. He’d been raised with the notion that people of all races and sexes and orientations were equal and had been treated to speeches on it every few days at dinner.

Now Michael understood why people used the phrase “count your blessings”. Sometimes a person didn’t know all the ways they’d been lucky until they saw someone who wasn’t. “She and I would have been great friends.” Michael continued his soft words, rubbing Nicky’s back as they stood outside his mother’s door.

He said them over and over until Nicky loosened his hold on Michael’s shirt.

Wiping his face, Nicky pulled away. He glanced down the hall like he was worried someone had seen him crying. Funny, because what in the hell else was a guy supposed to do when he’d found out his mother was gone?

“I guess I should go in.”

Michael rubbed Nicky’s arm. “You want me to go with you?”

“No.” Nicky stood up taller. He sighed, seeming to lose most of the panic he’d been harboring all morning. “No, I want to go in alone.”

“Okay.” Michael stepped back, and with one last squeeze and caress of Nicky’s arm, let go. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.”

Nicky took his mother’s hand. She looked almost the same as before, though all the machines that used to buzz around her were turned off and stowed, leaving the room eerily quiet.

If there was a little more coolness to her skin, and more rigidity to her tissues, Nicky ignored it as he sat at her side like he’d done every day he’d had off since August.

“Hey, Mommy.” He rubbed a thumb across her knuckles, thinking that somehow she could still hear him. “I…I want to tell you something…”

The image of her hand blurred as his eyes filled with wetness. Nicky waited for the tears to drop. “You know that friend of mine you met? Michael?” He shook his head because he could almost imagine her butting in and saying something that would stop him from getting it out. “Well, he’s not really my friend.”

He’d said the words so many times, it was funny how hard it was to say them to her. “I love him. I’m in love with him.”