Taking Chances (12 page)

“I hate this town,” he’d tell Riley before slamming the car door behind him.

In the end, I’d end up going with them and liking it.

I spent long hours talking to Riley about the guys we went to school with who we both had a crush on while Robbie listened in and, as a matter of sheer principle, hated every name we brought up. After a month or so, I was invited over to their house for a dinner party of sorts, a chance for me to mingle with other homosexuals in their natural environment, as Robbie put it. I asked them a dozen times if this was just a lame excuse for them to set me up with one of their friends. Each time they denied it, which made me ask again. The asking and denying got so bad that Robbie just threw his arms up at one point and exclaimed, “Fine! Don’t come, bitch! I’m sure we can feed another dozen people on what you would eat alone.”

I might have said something to defend myself if I hadn’t had my mouth full of crackers at the time.

So the night of the party, I forced myself not to panic or to chicken out and showed up at their door with a bottle of decent wine under my arm. Robbie answered the door. His smile was as evil as anything I had seen before and didn’t get any nicer when he welcomed me in. “Enter of your own free will, and welcome,” he declared, moving aside and taking the wine. “Oh look! Wine without a screw-off cap. See, we
are
having an effect on you.” I told him to shove it just as I noticed the startling lack of people in attendance.

“Am I that early?” I asked.

Which was when another guy walked out from the hallway, drying his hands. “Hey, you sure this guy is going to show up?” And then he noticed me and paused. He was a decent-looking guy, but not someone you’d turn your head for. He was a little older than me and looked me up and down like I was something in a store window instead of a person.

“Okay, so it’s a lame attempt to set you up with one of our friends. So get over it,” Robbie ordered. I noticed he’d taken a position standing in front of the door.

I was about to turn and push him out of the way when Riley came over. That insanely welcoming smile he had caught me squarely between the eyes. “Hey! You made it,” he said as warmly as could be. “Have you met my friend Jim? He’s the foreman out at my parent’s ranch.”

I forced myself to smile and shake Jim’s hand as if I had been expecting him to be there. “Pleased to meet you,” I said robotically.

“Hey there,” he said, gripping my hand firmly. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Same,” I replied, completely on autopilot.

“Great, so we’re all here,” Robbie added, walking toward the kitchen and staying out of my reach the entire time, I noticed. “How about we pop this baby open and get the night started?” He grabbed a corkscrew and deftly pulled the cork out of my wine bottle with one smooth movement.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Jim added as we walked toward the breakfast nook where Robbie was pouring the wine.

“Oh really?” I said, giving Robbie the deadliest glare I had. He ignored it, of course, and smiled innocently as a baby as he handed me a glass of wine.

“Yeah, these two won’t shut up about you,” Jim explained over a sip of his wine.

“Oh yeah, they can be like that,” I said, downing half the glass in one swallow. “Always full of surprises.”

“Is there a surprise coming?” Jim asked, confused.

“Count on it,” I said, snarling at Robbie before finishing the glass. “Hit me again.” I slid the glass back toward him.

“Someone likes cheap wine,” he muttered under his breath. Nevertheless, he filled my glass again.

“So, Tyler runs the sporting goods store over on First Street,” Riley said in an attempt to break the tension

“Oh? Is that fun?” Jim asked, doing a good job at faking interest. Well, except for the word “fun,” which he hadn’t meant to say, I think. His face pinked up a little when he realized how he sounded.

“It pays the bills,” I said, desperately trying to find a way to get out of this without being a complete asshole.

There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence before Jim offered, “I handle the steers over on the ranch.”

“Oh, is that fun?” I asked him, looking for an escape hatch nearby.

“It pays the bills.”

It took me a couple of seconds to process he had given me my own answer back. I tried to laugh, but it sounded so mangled I just stopped. “I’m sorry. Robbie, can I talk to you for a moment?” He paused in the kitchen and pointed at himself questioningly. “Yes, you,” I growled, striding down the hall to get away from the living room.

We ducked back into one of the spare rooms. “What in the hell is this?” I demanded.

“Oh no, ma’am,” he countered, taking a step back from me. “Do not come at me like I owe you money or something. You want to have a conversation? That’s fine, but you best check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

His attitude made me want to scream even louder, but I took a deep breath and tried again. “What exactly do you think you’re doing out there?”

He arched one eyebrow. “Well, I was making sure the chicken didn’t get burnt, but I have a feeling you aren’t talking about my culinary skills.” I was about to start yelling again, but he held up a finger and paused me. “What I think I am doing is trying to get you to meet another living, breathing gay man who you can date. You know, in some cultures that might be looked on as a good thing, but leave it to Foster to fuck up even a blind date.”

“I didn’t ask you to set me up.”

He shrugged. “No one asks to be set up. Well, I guess some do, but those are just pathetic losers who aren’t going to get laid anyway, so they don’t count.” I was about to go off again, but he just kept talking. “Yes, we tried to set you up and yes, we lied to you because you are basically a twelve-year-old girl when it comes to anything resembling relationships, and if we told you anything you would have just ran screaming into the night.”

I opened my mouth but he just kept going. “And yes, I know it isn’t cool to just jump out with a guy you don’t know, but that is the price you pay for being emotionally stunted when it comes to the whole dating thing. No one is expecting you and Jim to get married! Hell, I thought he was too old for you, but Riley thought it would be easier to start you out with a pony before you tried to ride a real horse; and no, that isn’t a dick joke.”

I opened my mouth to answer him but he just kept on talking. “It might as well be, since all you know are one-night stands. So just go out there and pretend to like him for tonight, and then we can regroup and grade you on how well you did.”

I opened my mouth again to respond and then closed it again as I realized I had forgotten what I was going to say.

“Good,” Robbie said, grabbing my arm and turning me around. “So let’s head out and learn to play nice with others okay?”

I let him lead me back to the living room in a daze as I wondered when exactly I had lost control of the night.

“S
O
THEN
dump him,” Linda said once she realized I had stopped talking.

I looked up at her and shook the past out of my head. “I hope you don’t give Kyle that kind of advice!” I exclaimed.

She waved her finger at me. “No, do
not
bring my son and his boyfriend into it. So far, they know more about gay dating than you seem to, so keep them out of it. If you are that bent out of shape, tell him he’s moving too fast and break up with him.”

“I don’t want to,” I answered, sounding like I had regressed to the age of six and two thirds.

“Then there’s your answer, isn’t it?” She smiled back at me.

“But I’m freaking out!” I screamed as the music stopped. Everyone in the bar looked over at us, and I felt my face turning six shades of red.

“Drama queen,” she called to them, grinning. “What can I do?”

“You suck,” I said as everyone laughed and the music started back up.

“And you are a chickenshit,” she fired back. “If you like Matt, then like him. He was joking, you know it, and you’re busy creating an excuse to run.” She finished her beer and slammed the bottle down on the table hard, the only indication of how much she’d drunk. “Now, I promised Kyle that I was going to try to fly straight, so I’m calling a cab and going home.”

I felt myself sober up some. “What is going on with them?”

She shrugged as she pulled out her cell. “Kyle’s been obsessed with some guy named Kelly. He won’t tell me what’s up, but knowing Kyle, he’s trying to do something good for someone else. I try to stay out of his way when he’s that set on something.”

“You are a very cool mom,” I informed her, smiling.

She didn’t smile back. “No, I’m not. Kyle has lived through some shit because of me, and that’s on my soul. But damned if I’ll let other people treat him like shit for something like being gay. I saw how it killed you when we were his age. It’s not going to happen, not again.”

She gave the cab dispatcher her address as I finished my own beer.

I had a hard time seeing Linda as a mom. She had always been such a party girl growing up. I had no idea what she’d meant about Kyle, but I had a feeling his being hassled at school might have been the wake-up call she needed.

“You okay?” she asked before hanging up.

I nodded as I pulled on my jacket. “Yeah, the walk home’ll sober me up some. ’Sides, not a lot of street crime in Foster.” I tossed a few bills down for a tip. “Tell Kyle hi and stuff for me?” I said as I turned to walk out.

I heard her voice rise to a pretty good impression of a gay lisp as she recited, “‘Kyle, I saw your aunt Tyler last night and she said, between having a panic attack because a boy likes her, hi and stuff.’”

My answer was a lone finger as I walked out into the bracing cold of the December air. I hunkered down into my jacket as I began the long walk. I had no freaking idea what macho bullshit had convinced me I didn’t need a ride home. The second gust of wind tore through me, chilling me as if I was naked. Bullshit or not, there I was nonetheless, and home I’d better get. Quick.

“It’s tough being a stubborn queen,” I said to myself as my teeth began to chatter from the cold. My feet wandered toward my neighborhood while I pondered how much of my “success” in sports had been because I had been determined not to come off gay in any way, shape, or form to even the sharpest eyes. Not that I had believed I was obvious from the outside or anything, but I had been terrified back then that someone would be able to clock me from the way I looked at a guy too long or licked my lips unconsciously. My fears seemed silly now, but when I was just a pup, keeping my shit secret was my entire life.

Most of the time I like to think I’ve grown as a person, but then I find myself walking home when it’s colder than a witch’s tit because my ego thinks it’s what a straight guy would do.

I had walked five blocks so far and hadn’t seen a soul, straight or otherwise.

My thoughts began to drift, which was the problem with thinking about Riley and Robbie when drunk. Once the Pandora’s box that was my brain opened, there was no getting that crap back inside until I finished the entire story. I wish I could. I wish I could just go in and erase the last part of the story and end it there at the memory of being set up for an incredibly bad blind date by two friends who were only trying to make me happy. That’d be a nice story, right? There were these two boys and they fell in love. Who couldn’t enjoy that?

My “agreement” to that first blind date implied a silent consent to others, as far as Riley and Robbie were concerned. My consent resulted in about two months of sporadic dates with gay, single guys Robbie and Riley knew. The whole dating thing was surprising in a couple of ways. One, I had to acknowledge I might have been more than a little picky when it came to dating. Some of the dates were with guys I’d met since I’d been going to the Bear’s Den, but who hadn’t set anything off in my mind interest-wise. Robbie told me I could afford to be picky as long as I kept myself in shape. He also informed me that personalities wear pen protectors sometimes. Two, there were far more gay people around Foster than I would ever have guessed. Most of them weren’t from Foster proper but worked around the area in oil or on one of the ranches. How the dynamic duo found them, I never asked; I just agreed to meet the boy
du jour
and be as nice as I could manage. The third surprising thing was how they never gave up on finding me a man.

I don’t know if it was pity or if they were trying to earn some weird gay Boy Scout badge, but the two of them were determined to find me some romance; they wanted to see me happy more than I did. I had long ago given up the ghost as far as finding someone in Foster and had just moved on, or so I liked to think. But not these guys. Before Riley and Robbie, I would have found that kind of intrusion into my carefully hidden personal life offensive and annoying. However, for some reason, I felt neither. It was nice to have gay friends; it was something new for me, and I planned on enjoying it.

So it made what happened next that much more god-awful.

We had all agreed to meet at the Bear’s Den one Friday night to see if we couldn’t figure out a better way of finding me a guy, since the local population was not getting the job done. Even though I was known at the Den, I still waited in my car for them to show up so I could walk in with them. I have no idea why I still did it—most likely a defense mechanism in case someone saw me out there. I could say I was friends with Riley and was being an open-minded friend instead of a fellow gay man.

And yes, that excuse sounded just as lame to myself then as it does to you now.

I saw Robbie shake his head at me when I got out of the car once they showed up. Riley never said anything about me staying outside and acted as if he didn’t notice, but not Robbie. “Oh look, it’s Foster’s very own Goldilocks. Oh no! That boy is too old, that boy is too gay, oh, when will I ever find one who’s just right?” Robbie had a hand on his forehead as he stuck a damsel-in-distress pose.

“You do know I can kick your ass, like, fifteen different ways, right?” I said, grinning.