Salvation (23 page)

“What do you mean?”

“What happens when we’re both back in
San Francisco? These last few days have been so intense and intimate that it’s
hard to imagine dialing it back to simply dating.”

“I don’t know if you’ll even want to
date me. As soon as you leave this idyllic environment and get back to reality,
you’ll be reminded that I’m still the guy that took you on a dangerous car
chase the day I met you, the one who’s involved in all sorts of questionable
things that necessitate carrying a gun. You might find yourself having second
thoughts, which would be understandable.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

A black town car pulled into the
circular driveway just then, coming to a stop a few feet from us, and I made
myself let go of Vincent. He picked up his bag and turned to me again as the
driver got out of the car and opened the door to the back seat. We just stood
there for a few moments. A million things still needed to be said, but we ended
up saying nothing at all.

Vincent leaned in and kissed me on the
lips. It was quick, maybe because we had an audience. He took one last look at
me, reaching out and running a fingertip lightly over my lower lip, some sort of
intense emotion burning in his dark eyes. He turned from me then and got in the
car. The driver closed the rear door before getting behind the wheel. I raised
my hand in a little wave and watched as the car pulled away, soon disappearing
down the private road.

I missed him immediately, the second the
car door closed, as a matter of fact. It made me wish I’d invited myself along
so I could spend tonight with him before catching a ride back here with River
in the morning. But Vincent hadn’t offered, and had said there were things in
the city that needed his attention. So here I was.

I went back inside, intending to stay
out of the way in the guestroom Vincent and I had been sharing. To reach it, I
had to cut through the kitchen. Jamie was in there, unpacking some of the
numerous shopping bags they’d brought along, and intercepted me with a
cheerful, “Hey, Trevor. Do you have any idea how to make Sangria?”

“Kind of. I read a recipe for it once.
You’re going to need some citrus fruits.”

Jamie dug around in a canvas bag, then
hauled out two big handfuls of limes and lemons. “Check!” He tossed these on
the counter and they started rolling everywhere, so I quickly caught a few that
were bound for the floor. “Any idea where a cutting board is?”

I’d gotten very familiar with the
kitchen over the last few days, and retrieved a board and a couple knives for
Jamie. I began helping him slice the fruit without being asked, while he rifled
through the bags and pulled out a few oranges and a green plastic basket of
strawberries. “These could go in there, right?” he asked.

“Sure.”

An unfamiliar voice said, “Oh, hey. I’m
going to assume you guys are with the wedding party, and not a couple of
epicurean burglars.”

We both looked up at the handsome,
dark-haired guy in the doorway, who had a garment bag slung over one shoulder
and a suitcase beside him. He was in his early twenties, a little over six feet
tall with collar-length black hair. A pair of sunglasses were perched on his
head, and a white polo shirt showed off his tan and big biceps. “I’m Gianni, by
the way. My family has the odd habit of calling me Johnnie, but don’t feel that
you have to.”

“Oh! I’m Trevor, the caterer, and this
is Jamie, one of the groomsmen,” I said.

“Hi Trevor. Jamie, you actually look
familiar. I think I met you at my brother Dante’s wedding.”

“That’s right, nice to see you again,”
Jamie said with a smile. “I heard you were going to be gone all summer.”

“Change of plans,” Gianni said, frowning
just a little. He draped the garment bag over the suitcase and joined us at the
kitchen island. “Please tell me whatever you’re making is alcoholic, because I
could seriously use a drink right about now.”

“It is!” Jamie said cheerfully. “Thank
you for letting us invade your beautiful home, by the way.”

“You don’t say no to Nana,” Gianni said
with a grin, taking a seat on a barstool. “But I was glad to do it anyway.” He
pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “Shit, I’m completely jetlagged. I was
in Santorini twelve hours ago, and now my body doesn’t know if it’s day or
night.”

When we’d mixed up two big pitchers of
Sangria and grabbed a stack of glasses, Gianni followed us out to the pool. I
felt a little less like a third (or ninth) wheel now that he was here. Dante
was in the water making out with his husband, and when he spotted his brother
he bellowed, “Johnnie!” He was out of the pool and embracing his brother not
five seconds later, completely soaking him.

 “Let go of me, you soggy maniac,”
Gianni yelped, but he was laughing.

Dante released him and exclaimed,
“You’ve been away too long, brother! It’s been six months since we saw each
other, you know.”

“God, has it been that long since your
wedding?”

 “Yup. Come say hi to Charlie.”

Gianni went to the edge of the pool and
crouched down, then extended his hand to his brother-in-law. “Great to see you
again.”

“You too,” Charlie said, shaking hands.

Dante made some introductions, capping
it off by summarizing, “Brian and Jamie are Kieran’s groomsmen, and Hunter and
Charlie are Christopher’s. Dmitri and I are the plus-ones.” He grinned broadly.

Jamie poured the drinks as Gianni
flopped down on a lounge chair and pushed his sunglasses into place. I’d
started to feel a bit self-conscious and had begun drifting back to the
kitchen, but Gianni’s hand shot out suddenly and grabbed mine. “Come and sit
with me, Trevor,” he said. “Without you, I’m the odd man out, and I just hate
that!”

I perched on the edge of an adjacent
lounger as Dante toweled off, then sat at the foot of his brother’s chair. “So,
what happened to your three-month world cruise?” he asked Gianni.

“My travelling companion and I had a
difference of opinion, so she sent me packing.” Gianni raised his drink and
called out, “Cheers to the happy couple!” He then drained half the glass before
coming up for air.

“What sort of difference of opinion?”

“She didn’t think I should be blowing
the entire shipboard wait staff. I disagreed.” Gianni flashed his sibling a
brilliant smile, and Dante burst out laughing.

“Wow. Okay. I didn’t know you did that
kind of thing.”

“Well, I wasn’t always so candid about
my bisexuality,” Gianni said. “But since you came leaping oh-so-gracefully out
of the closet and even found yourself a hot husband, I figure, eh, why not be
upfront about it?”

“What are the odds?” I hadn’t actually meant
to say that out loud. When both brothers turned to look at me, I felt an
insta-blush warming my cheeks and stammered, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to
interrupt. I just thought, you know, it’s surprising that out of four brothers,
two are gay and one’s bi. I don’t know about the fourth one. I mean, I assume
Mikey’s straight, since he was married to a woman and has kids.”  

“Wait, Vincent’s gay?” Gianni asked.

My eyes went wide and I exclaimed, “Oh
God, did I just out him? I assumed you knew. It wasn’t news to Nana, so I
figured it was common knowledge.”

Gianni grinned at me. “Don’t panic,
Trevor. We knew that. You just cut my bad joke off in midstream. I was going to
claim he was asexual, since as far as I know, he’s never actually dated.”

“Oh! Well, that’s a relief.” I felt like
a moron, but still mumbled, “And he
is
actually dating someone,” before
I made myself shut up.

“Really? Who?” Dante asked.

Well, I’d stumbled that far down the
path, might as well go all the way. “Me.” I looked down at the dark red drink
in my hand and poked at a floating lemon slice with a fingertip.

“Well, damn,” Gianni said, beaming at
me. “Good luck with that.”

Dante lightly smacked his sibling’s arm
and said, “Way to be supportive, you nub.”

“What? I’m just saying that Vincent
isn’t the easiest person in the world to warm up to. I mean, I love my brother,
but you know as well as I do that he’s spent his whole life building walls
around himself.”

“But when he lets you behind those
walls, it’s absolutely amazing,” I said quietly.

“What are we talking about?” Charlie
came up to us, drying off from the pool, and dropped onto the lounge chair
behind his husband.

“Trevor here is dating our brother
Vincent,” Gianni told him. “Which was fairly shocking to us, since ol’ Vinnie
isn’t exactly the dating type.”

Charlie flashed his perfect smile at me,
his green eyes sparkling. “Oh man, wait until he drags you to a Dombruso family
function. They’re a riot!” As he was talking, he wrapped his arms around
Dante’s broad shoulders. “I was totally overwhelmed when I first went to one,
and that’s even after growing up with my ex-boyfriend Jamie’s huge
Irish-Catholic clan.”

“What about my family?” Jamie wanted to
know, strolling over with a drink, hand-in-hand with his husband.

“I was just saying that the Dombruso
family somehow manages to be even more loud, boisterous, and generally drunken
than the Nolans, and that’s no small feat,” Charlie said.

“Think so, huh?” Jamie said with a grin.
“Team Nolan is going to be descending on Kieran’s wedding in force, so we’ll
just see, won’t we? I mean, I’ve never been to a Dombruso gathering, but
there’s almost no way that they could be wilder than my family. Our shindigs
usually end up right on the brink of the National Guard getting called in.” He
sat down beside me, and Dmitri settled in behind us on the wide lounge chair.

Hunter and his boyfriend joined us.
Brian was back in his wheelchair after the pool, a towel wrapped around his
waist. He was a former Marine, and had lost both of his legs below the knee in
Afghanistan. “What are we talking about?” Hunter asked as he sat on his
boyfriend’s lap.

“Who’s the more boisterous, wild, and
totally inappropriate family, Dombruso versus Nolan,” Dmitri told him.

“That’s a close call,” Christopher said
as he and Kieran came up and settled down on Dante’s lounge chair. A slight
southern accent was creeping into his speech that I hadn’t noticed before.
“I’ve been to numerous gatherings with both families. They each feature an
insane number of cousins, rampant drunkenness, frequent threats to shoot
someone, and the TMI dial turned up to eleven.”

Everyone chuckled, and he added, “If I
was forced to pick, though, I’d go with the Dombrusos. But only because they
have a really horny drunken cousin named Rachel that tries to dry hump me at
every single family get-together. That scores bonus points in overall
inappropriateness.”

“Well, shit,” Gianni exclaimed. “If all
it takes is a little dry humping to declare a family the winner, come here!” He
flung himself at Christopher and pretended to try to climb on top of him while
everyone burst out laughing. When he sat back down, Gianni said, “Now that I’ve
dry-humped one of the grooms, can I come to the wedding? I can do you too if
you want, Kieran, so you don’t feel left out.”

“Of course you can come to the wedding,
you didn’t even need to ask!” Christopher exclaimed.

“See? A little dry humping works every
time,” Gianni said as he wiggled his eyebrows.

“Oh man, we need to change the subject
away from dry humping. That expression grosses me out,” Hunter said with a
smile and a little shudder.

“This from a former porn star.” His
boyfriend grinned at him.

“
That’s
why you look familiar!”
Gianni exclaimed. “You’re Hunter Storm!”

“I
was
Hunter Storm. Now I’m just
Hunter Jacobs, unemployed soon-to-be college student.”

“Oh hey, did you hear about your
application for late admission to S.F. State?” I asked.

“Yup. I’m in. I don’t have a clue what
I’m going to major in, but it’s a start. Brian got in too,” Hunter said. “We’re
going to be study buddies.” He shot his boyfriend a huge smile.

“Wow,” Kieran exclaimed, “that’s
terrific! You didn’t tell me you were doing that, Bri!”

“And that’s exactly why,” Brian said,
drawing a circle in the air around his brother. “I knew you’d be a little too
excited about this whole thing, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to wash out after
about two weeks anyway. I was never the academic type.”

“You did fine in high school,” Kieran
said.

“If you mean I played football, got
stoned, and pretended to chase girls, then yeah, I did awesome,” Brian told him
with a grin.

“You’ll have fun taking classes
together,” Charlie said. “Dante and I have taken several through University
Extension while waiting for our restaurant to open.”

“Speaking of which, when’s that going to
happen?” Jamie asked.

Dante shrugged and said, “Hopefully at
the end of summer. The earthquake retrofit on the building and the remodel have
both hit snags, so it’s been tough to pin down an opening date. Everything else
is going great, though. I even think I found a chef, after months of searching.
His name’s Tyler Remmy. He’s coming back to the U.S. in August after a year in
Rome and we’ve already begun contract negotiations.”