Shy (11 page)

“With you, I do,” he said. “With you, I don’t seem to have a governor. You know what a governor is? It’s an engine part on a tractor that keeps it from going too fast. For safety. But with you I don’t have one. I just go assholing along doing whatever the hell I want. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.” He laughed. “And it’s usually because you’re doing it all before I am, so I just happily follow along. Plus, I really like your torpedo.”

He lifted my foot and placed a kiss on the tip of my big toe. That toe had never been kissed in its life. I wondered if it was smart enough to know what had just happened. Would it lord it over the other toes now that it had been singled out and kissed by Frank Wells, or was it just a fucking toe and didn’t know
what
the hell was going on? Like me.

I also wondered if there was some sort of antipsychotic medication I could take that would make me stop thinking these weird-ass thoughts or was I pretty well stuck with them for the rest of my frigging life?

Frank’s incredibly green eyes homed in on my face. It was like there was nothing else in the room he wanted to look at but me. My heart gave a funny little thump and I knew I had just fallen a little bit more in love. Oops. L word.

“Tom,” Frank went on, “I don’t think I can live with you if we decide to just be roommates. Sleeping in separate bedrooms and all? I’d go crazy. Watching you. Wanting you. Can’t we go on like we’re going? I’m beginning to understand what maybe falling in love is like. And I don’t want to stop understanding it. And I don’t want to fall in love with anybody else, either. I want to fall in love with you. All the way. I already love your body. I already love your humongous cock. I love the way you make me feel. I love the way I think I make you feel. I love the way you come. I love the way
I
come when I’m watching
you
come. That’s love already, isn’t it? I’m already in love with you, aren’t I, Tom? Huh? Say something.”

Tears gathered in my eyes and my throat closed up. “Can’t. Too choked up.” I barely got the words out before Frank fell into my arms. We hugged as tightly as two people can possibly hug without going through some sort of surgical cloning procedure. Then we hugged each other again.

He pulled away long enough to look me square in the eyes again. “I’ll get a job. Don’t worry. I’m not asking for charity, staying here. I can’t pay you anything right now, but I will. You’ll see. I’m a hard worker, Tom. I may be shy, but I can work. I actually
like
working. I’ll be pulling my weight in no time. I promise. So if you can be a little forgiving about the money right now, what do you say about all the other stuff? What do you say about me maybe being in love with you already? Is that what you want too? Please say it is. Please say you want me in the same way I want you.”

I was so happy and so stunned and at such a loss for exactly the right words to say that I was almost glad the phone chose that precise moment to ring. But I couldn’t let Frank hang around wondering what my answer would be. If he was going to be so damned nice all the time, and so damned honest, then I would have to learn to be nice and honest too. After all, I really was nuts about the guy. If we were going to be an item, the least I could do was drag myself up to his level.

I grabbed a fistful of his bathrobe and pulled him to me. Our lips came together as if they were meant to be nowhere else, and when they got to where they were going they felt right at home. “I’m in love with you already, Frank. I loved you the minute you cold-cocked your brother. No, that’s not true. I loved you the minute I almost knocked your towel off in the hallway. No, wait, I loved you the very second I saw that little patch of hair over the crack of your ass. No wait—”

The phone was still ringing.

Frank stuck his tongue down my throat to shut me up. He looked happy doing it. And that made me happy. This was going to be fun. I felt like a dead elephant had just rolled off my chest. I had said the L word and the sky hadn’t fallen in. Frank was still here. And as far as I could tell he was in love with me just as much as I was in love with him. And after only two days! Were we nuts?

Now that I had finally said the L word, I couldn’t seem to
stop
saying it. Even inside my head. L. L. L. What a wonderful word.

Then I thought about all the things that could go wrong. He could cheat. I could cheat. He could really be lazy and never work a day of his life. I could lose my job. Or get shot in the head in a bank robbery. Or Pedro could get fleas.

I picked up the phone just so I’d stop thinking.

I
T
WAS
Jerry.

“What do
you
want?” I asked.

I mouthed the word
J-e-r-r-y
to Frank, who rolled his pretty green eyes and went back to the paper. He didn’t even look threatened. What a guy.

Jerry was using his cheesy, chipper, consoling voice. The one he always used after he did something stupid. Like cheat. Or throw me out of his house. “So have you sent Frank packing?” he asked.

I knew right away that I was going to enjoy the hell out of this conversation. In fact, I would probably remember it fondly for years.

“Nope,” I said. “Frank’s still here.”

“For how long?”

“Forever, I hope.”

“You mean—”

“Yep. I mean.”

Jerry actually spluttered. I love it when exes splutter. “But you just
met
the guy!”

“Yes, I did.”

“You’re too weird for a committed relationship!”

“Yes, I am. So is Frank. We’re perfect for each other.”

“He’s too young for you.”

“Oh please.”

“He doesn’t even have a job.”

“We’re working on that.”

“Look, Tom, don’t do this. I’m sorry about last night.”

“This isn’t about last night.”

“Yes it is. Stanley’s sorry about last night too.”

“Yeah, I got the flowers.”

“Huh?”

“A joke.”

“Oh.” Jerry lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Stanley’s in the bathroom, but listen, I’ve been thinking. Maybe this whole me and Stanley thing isn’t working out. I don’t like the fact that he’s messing around with drugs again.”

“Oh. Is Stanley on drugs? I thought that was kabuki makeup he had smeared all over his nose last night. I thought maybe he had been cast as Madame Butterfly to open the San Diego opera season and he was just showing off his stage persona for me and the other guests. You mean that was drugs? Drugs, like in coke? Not like coke The Real Thing, but coke the shit people snort up their noses to fuck their brains up even more than they’re already fucked up? That kind of coke? Well, I’m just full-blown astounded. I thought Stanley was on the fast track to sainthood. That’s going to pretty much blow his chance for
that
,
don’t you think? And the Nobel Prize for world peace will probably go right out the window too. Drugs! Well, I’ll be!”

“Come on, Tom. What do you think? Let’s have dinner tonight. I’ve missed you.”

I thought about that, but not in the way Jerry was hoping I would think about it. “Let me get this straight, Jerry. First you’re married to me, but then you go off and cheat with Stanley, after which you quickly decide you like him better than me and dump me to move in with him, but now you’re saying you want to meet up with me and cheat on Stanley because you’ve taken it into your head to dump Stanley and move in with
me
again.”

“Wow,” Frank whispered around his coffee cup. “Nice sentence structure.”

Jerry stammered, “Uh—”

“Well said, dickhead.”

“See?” Jerry said. “See? You’re just mad about last night. Trust me, Tom, I really think we should get togeth—”

I hung up the phone. Softly. Calmly. Like an adult. Tee-hee.

Frank was smiling. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you,” he said.

I smiled back. “More than you’ll ever know.”

Frank was just about to start on the
New York Times
crossword puzzle when I plucked the paper and pencil from his hand and pulled him off the sofa.

“Get dressed,” I said. “We’re going shopping.”

Frank looked surprised. “Shopping for what?”

“Clothes. You can’t go on job interviews with those tight-ass blue jeans you wore last night. I won’t let you. We’re going to set the farm boy aside and make a city slicker out of you. Externally, anyway. Internally, I would appreciate you staying exactly the way you are. Okay?”

He shrugged. “Okay. But I’m broke. I couldn’t buy a bagel.”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll figure something out.”

“Which means you intend to spring for everything.”

“Right. That’s what lovers do.”

“Lovers,” Frank said, walking into my arms. “I like the sound of that.”

My heart gave a little lurch of happiness when his arms slid around me. “Me too, Frank. I like it a lot.”

He kissed my neck. “Can we at least keep track of the money you spend so I can pay you back as soon as I have a paycheck coming in?”

“If you insist,” I said.

“I do.” Frank cleared his throat. “And when we get home, we’re going to have a long talk about training your dog.”

“If you insist,” I said, this time with considerable doubt in my voice. I had tried to train Pedro before. It was a lot like teaching a goldfish to tap dance. In other words—good luck.

Frank beetled his brows. “I
do
insist.”

And we both gazed down at Pedro, who was looking guilty as hell for some reason.

“Too late,” I said.

“Crap,” Frank groaned.

“Yep,” I said. “That’s what that look means. Crap. Help me find it, will you? Usually if we follow our noses—”

Frank waggled an admonitory finger in Pedro’s face. “Bad dog! Bad dog!”

Pedro yawned and dragged his ass around in a circle on the carpet. Either he was bored and his hemorrhoids were itching, or he was bored and making a statement. I figured it was the latter.

Thus our first day as a family began.

Chapter 7

I
T
’
S
FUNNY
how quickly a person’s life can change.

Frank and I slid without a hitch into the new dynamics of our exploding relationship. It was clear from the get-go that we profoundly
liked
each other. But there was love there too. A lot of it. And our love grew stronger with every passing day. But the
liking
was even more important. Frank and I both agreed on that. It was the liking that gave our relationship a solid base, for with liking came a host of secondary goodies. Respect for each other. An honest desire to please. The willingness to give up a bit of what one wants so that the other person can have a say in what
he
wants. To be able to equally share in the choices we made, choices that would affect us both, either individually or as a unit.

The sexual draw we felt for each other was nothing short of cataclysmic. I mean cataclysmic in a good way. A simple look could pass between us, and we were both immediately aroused. The
hunger
I felt for Frank was astonishing. At the oddest times, I would find myself suddenly weak in the knees, longing for the feel of him. It could happen anywhere—while standing in line at the grocery store, or sitting behind my desk at work, or in the middle of pumping gas, or watching the evening news. A dozen times a day I would find myself aching to see the come explode from his body, to taste it, to smell it, to feel its liquid heat on my skin and on my lips. To watch it spurt from his body and see him gasp and shudder and writhe when it did. It’s a wonder we got
anything
done during those first few weeks together, for as often as I longed for Frank, he also longed for me. And when one of us longed, the other reciprocated. Gladly.

I can honestly say the happiest moments of my twenty-seven years on this planet were spent in Frank’s fuzzy, naked arms during those first incredible weeks the two of us shared as a couple. Geez Louise, love is grand.

Money, or Frank’s lack of it, quickly proved to be a non-issue. Frank found work on the second day of his job search at one of the nurseries in town. He loved tending the plants. Plant-tending is a perfect job for someone with social anxiety disorder. One never feels inferior around a plant. If he does, then he has a much more serious problem going on than SAD. Flat-out insanity springs to mind. While Frank might still feel uncomfortable around his fellow employees at the nursery, his shyness was alleviated by the fact he was doing something he enjoyed, and something he knew quite a bit about, having been raised on a farm and all.

I ceded my car to Frank because the nursery was miles away from the apartment while my bank was only a short bus ride downtown. I was so happy to be able to do something for Frank to help ease him into his new life that the act of giving up my car did not even seem a sacrifice to me. It tickled me pink to think I could rescue him from a daily two-hour bus ride to and from work. And it was good for me too. On nice days I now walked to work. Since almost every day in San Diego is nice, I quickly shed three pounds. And as everyone knows, losing weight is almost
always
a good thing.