Of Being Yours[another way 2] (22 page)

When Jen pulled up in her Jeep, she stared at us for a moment over the top of her sunglasses. I refused to let go of Will’s hand as we crossed over to the car, my fingers linked together with his lazily. I wasn’t ashamed of him. Or our relationship.

For dinner, it would only be Jennifer, Will and I, and my parents. Thankfully everyone else was out somewhere doing something else—I decided not to ask. My mama was hard work at the best of times; throw in a big family event like this and she had a tendency to get slightly manic.

Unlike most of my peers, I hadn’t been scared of coming out to my father. Compared to my mother, he was one of the most laid-back people I’d ever met, and it was a constant source of amazement how they were still together after all this time.

I had never sat down and looked my parents in the eye to say, “Mom, Dad, I’m gay.” And I never would. It wasn’t the way our family worked. But they knew, and they accepted me, and that was all I needed.

When we arrived at my parents’ house, Jennifer disappeared up to her room, leaving Will and I to search out my parents. My dad was manning the grill in the backyard and waved a spatula at us in greeting.

“Hey, boys. There’s beer in the fridge. Help yourself.”

We exchanged a manly demonstration of handshakes and backslaps before settling down on the deep chairs set on the deck my father had laid himself.

“Where’s Mom?” I asked as I kicked one foot over my knee.

“Oh, some emergency at your aunt’s. I stopped asking weeks ago. She should be home in a minute.”

As we finished loading up the kitchen table with steaks and grilled chicken, potatoes and salad and bread, my mother bustled through the door, elegant as always in a tailored pale-gray dress and silk scarf. She was, in every way, the modern incarnation of a classic Southern belle.

A Southern belle, maybe, but one who had absolutely no idea of how to address the concept of homosexuality.

“Oh, Jesse, I meant to tell you,” Mama said as she passed me the potatoes. “Auggie Carmichael’s daughter is a dyke.”

I snorted with laughter and managed to disguise it as a cough.

“Is she?” I asked innocently.

“Yes. She… what is it you say, came out of the closet? A few months back.”

“Oh.”

“I baked Auggie a pie and took it over just as soon as I heard.”

Jennifer rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mother. Because pecan pie is the perfect cure for depression regarding your only daughter’s lesbianism.”

“Jennifer, please. Not over dinner.”

“These are fantastic potatoes, Mrs. Ross,” Will said, diverting the conversation and turning on the charm.

“Thank you, dear. Jesse—you need a haircut before the wedding.”

“Yes, Mother,” I said drolly.

When dinner was cleared, Will offered to accompany Jennifer to the seamstress to collect her dress for the following day, leaving me alone with my mother while Dad went back to work in his study. The night air had cooled significantly from the heat of the day, and the bugs left us alone as we sat out with a couple of bottles of beer, citrus candles burning.

“That Neil Patrick Harris is a gay,” Mama said, her voice too light and conversational for my liking. She took a sip of her beer and set it back on the table.

“Yes,” I said.

“And he’s got children,” she added.

“Oh, Mama,” I said. I really didn’t want to get into a conversation with her about children. It had caused too much friction between Will and me already.

“What?” she asked, as if her statement was perfectly normal. “All I’m saying is, your current social arrangement doesn’t exclude you from having children of your own. That’s why I was so upset at first, darling. I thought that it meant I would never see grandchildren from you.”

“What about Will’s mother?” I said petulantly. “Don’t you think she wants grandchildren too?”

“I’ve already thought of that. This Neil Patrick Harris fellow, well, he fathered one of their children, and his boyfriend fathered the other one. They’ve got twins, you see. And they had a surrogate mother carry the babies.”

“You seem to have given this a lot of thought.”

“I have,” she said, taking my statement as a compliment.

“Thank you, for thinking of us. I appreciate it.” I needed to start this statement by keeping on her good side. “But Will and I just aren’t ready to become parents yet.”

“Why ever not?” Mama asked.

“We’re young, we have our careers and friends… it’s just not the right time,” I said gently as my stomach squirmed. I hoped she wouldn’t notice, or if she did, that she’d read my discomfort as something else.

Mama looked put out for a moment; then her expression changed to decisive. “Well, these things take time to arrange, you know. It’s not like knocking up a cheerleader under the bleachers. You have to find the right woman and do all of the medical checks and then go and donate your sperm—”

“Mama—” I interrupted her, but she ignored me.

“And then the fertilized eggs might not take on the first attempt. It could take years, Jesse, years before you actually have the baby. If you start now, then by the time the child is born, you’ll be ready for it.”

“Or it could happen on the first attempt and we’re forced to put our careers, our lives on hold for eighteen years while we raise a child.”

“They never stop being your children, even when they are grown up.”

“I know that.” I sighed, looked away, and took a long pull on my beer. “Maybe in a few years.”

She nodded, appeased for the moment. “I thought, for a long time, that you would have children with Adele.”

We hadn’t spoken about this for years, and not since she’d been introduced to Will for the first time. After he’d charmed her, I thought she had dropped the subject for good.

“You haven’t said that for a while now,” I said, deciding to go with honesty. “She’s having a child with her new partner.”

I realized too late how insensitive that statement was as her expression hardened. Mama looked out at the garden as she lifted the bottle of beer to her lips and took a dainty sip. Then she sighed.

“He’s the one for you, darling.”

“How can you tell?” I asked, noticing that my voice had dropped to a whisper.

She clucked at me. “That Adele. You never looked at her once the way you look at him. You love him.”

“Very much so,” I agreed.

“So you should marry him.”

I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or groan; in the end I managed a combination of both, tipping my head back and covering my face with my hands.

“Oh, Lord, Mother.”

“You can go to New York and get married. It’s legal there now.”

“A big family wedding, of course.” I let my words drip with sarcasm, not that my mother listened to it.

“New York is the perfect place. We can leave all the old crones and bigots here—they wouldn’t want to make the journey anyway. I won’t let anything spoil your special day, darling, don’t worry about that.”

“Have you ever considered that maybe we don’t want to get married?” I asked, picking up my beer so I could take another long pull.

“Why would you not want to get married? You always did before.”

“Mama. Please.”

“Don’t
Mama, please
me, Jesse. I want to see you married and settled and happy before I go.”

“I don’t need to be married to be settled and happy. And you’re no nearer to going now than you were at twenty.”

“I’m a delicate woman, as you well know. My heart is weak. I need the happiness of my children to secure my own.”

I leaned over the table and took both her hands in my own. “Mama. I’m happy. I’m settled. I have a fantastic career and a wonderful partner and amazing friends. I’m sorry that Will and I can’t give you grandchildren yet. You’ll probably have them from Jennifer before you have them from me, and I know that upsets you, but it’s just the way it is.”

“I certainly don’t know where you get this stubbornness from,” she said, pulling her hands from mine and fluttering them to her throat, looking away from me. “It must be from your father’s side of the family.”

“It must be,” I echoed, appeasing her. “But it doesn’t change those facts.”

The front door slammed shut and Jennifer’s voice called out. I laid my hand over my mama’s briefly before standing to search out Will and find out whether he’d had any easier a time with Jennifer. I seriously suspected not—Jen and Mama were definitely cut from the same cloth.

W
HEN
we arrived back at the hotel, the bar was still open, and it didn’t take much persuading to get Will to stop off for a last drink before we headed to bed. The bugs outside would definitely try to eat us, so we stayed inside; besides, the bar was air-conditioned.

There were a few other couples and groups around, but no one particularly paid us any attention when we found a low, wide leather sofa to lean back in. I sighed and dropped my head to his shoulder.

“Thanks,” I said.

“What for?”

“Putting up with them. And Auggie Carmichael and her dyke daughter.”

Will snorted. “No problem. Is Auggie her real name?”

“Mm. I expect it’s short for Augusta or something.”

“Ah. I see.”

The sofa faced one of the side windows in the bar, meaning no one could really see us unless they came over our way. Feeling safe, and slightly bold, I laced my fingers with Will’s over his knee. My conversation with my mother had left me feeling philosophical and insanely grateful for the man I had.

“You know, I love the fact that you’re the only man I’ve been with.”

Will smiled and sort of laughed, then kissed my forehead. “Yeah. Me too.”

I frowned and pulled away. “Huh?”

“Never mind.” He shook his head.

“No, tell me,” I said, poking him in the side. “You told me you’d been with other men before me.”

“Drop it, Jesse,” he said lightly.

I leaned over and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Please?”

Groaning, Will ran his fingers through his hair. “I had fucked other guys before. But you were the first guy I bottomed for, okay?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He drained his beer and set it down on the table. “Let’s go upstairs. I’ll tell you, I promise.”

I nodded and followed him back through to the lobby and the bank of elevators, my mind going crazy as I thought back on the first time I’d fucked him. Or made love to him, I should say. That’s what it was—I told him, for the first time, that I was in love with him. Then we made love. Even now the memory of that night made me hard. It had been incredible.

“I can almost hear you thinking,” Will whispered as he shut the door to the room behind us. He pulled me close and kissed down the side of my neck, his hands rubbing slowly up and down my sides.

“Nuh-uh,” I grunted. “Not gonna let you distract me.”

His lips curved into a smile against my neck. “Damn. Okay.”

After we stripped down to our underwear, Will threw the heavy duvet on the bed back and we lay down facing each other. I wrapped my arm around his waist and he tucked our feet together.

“You were a virgin?” I prompted him.

“Ugh,” he sighed. “Yeah. If you like.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’d used plenty of toys before, so I wasn’t scared of you hurting me,” he said. “And I felt guilty.” The last few words were mumbled. So I kissed him.

“Why did you feel guilty?”

“Because… fuck, Jesse. My first time was in our bed with the guy I loved and, you know, proper making love. When I took your virginity, you were strapped down to a leather table with a ball gag in your mouth to stop you screaming.”

I smiled at the memory. “Yeah,” I said. “It was amazing.”

“Shut up,” he said, laughing, and pushed at my shoulder.

“It was,” I protested. “I was
desperate
for you by that point. You had been teasing me for weeks, but I was too scared to ask for it. Or to ask for anything from you, to be honest.”

“That’s certainly changed.”

“Shut up,” I echoed.

“You screamed anyway,” he said in the sort of voice that told me he’d thought about it plenty. I wondered if he’d ever get over his fear of causing me pain.

“And I came so hard my come hit my chin,” I told him, shaking him slightly to get him to listen to me. “It was the best orgasm of my life, up to that point. Don’t feel bad.”

“I wish it could have been for you like it was for me,” Will said.

I rolled my eyes. “How well do you actually know me, Will Anderson?” I demanded. “If you’d tried to make love to me back then, I would have run for the hills. In fact, I demand right now that as soon as we get home, we recreate that night.”

“We don’t have the table anymore.” His tongue was lodged in his cheek.

“Well, improvise.”