Tipping the Balance (35 page)

Brad inhaled to retort, but Philip caught his eye, shaking his head fractionally.

Knocked off balance by that, all Brad said was, “Gosh, Randall, I missed the warm and nurturing environment of home.”

Randall nodded. “Just so. We’ll have brunch. See to it, Philip.”

Randall strolled out of the kitchen, leaving the brothers to stare at each other.

“I’ll start calling around,” Philip sighed.

“Don’t bother,” Brad said. “I’ll see what I can scare up at the store. Just be prepared to help me when I get back.”

“What’s it going to take to get out of here?” Philip muttered, and he headed into the kitchen.

“I’m working on it,” Brad said on his way to his bedroom for shoes, keys, and his wallet, “believe me.”

Philip grabbed his arm. “Wait.”

“Yeah?” Brad said with annoyance.

Philip looked like he wanted to say something, but they weren’t the kind of brothers who talked. Closeness and sharing didn’t come easily. “Good,” he said at last. “I’m glad one of us can.”

Brad looked at Philip for a moment, unsure what to say. “I better get to the store. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

An hour and a half later, the Sundstrom boys had a complete morning meal ready. It wasn’t fancy, but they weren’t chefs. Eggs, bacon, pancakes, and fruit salad assembled from pre-sliced fruit from the deli, plus juice and coffee. If that wasn’t good enough for Randall, he could go find someplace else to eat, Brad thought.

There was a knock at the back door, and Alex Beltran walked in. “Hey, Boss,” Beltran said. He was Randall’s oldest employee, the first person he’d ever hired. Brad wasn’t sure what to make of him. He’d always been unfailingly polite, but no one who’d worked for Randall Sundstrom that closely for that long had clean hands, and Brad had always thought of Beltran as his dad’s sinister henchman. “The city finally assigned the contract for renovation of the Bayard House.”

Brad sat still, waiting to see his dad’s response. He remembered well Randall’s dismissive comments earlier in the summer and so had made little mention of his own work on it.

Randall made a rude noise. “Such a waste of time. Why they don’t just light a match to it and start over with something built totally to the city’s needs I’ll never know.” He grabbed the paper from Beltran and read. Then he looked up at Brad, totally expressionless. “St. Charles Renovations,” Randall said at last. “Isn’t St. Charles the name of that fag you work for, Bradley?”

Brad felt all eyes on him, Philip’s and Randall’s and Beltran’s. His hands clenched. He stood up, overturning his chair. “Drew’s not—!”

“Don’t raise your voice at me,” Randall boomed.

“Drew is not a fag,” Brad said, righting his chair. He threw his napkin down and stalked off. He knew Drew was showing homes, but he also knew that with his key, he could hide out there any time.

“They should light a match to that wreck,” Randall said, folding the paper and handing it back to Beltran, “and to the fag they gave the contract to.”

Early
October in the Sacramento Valley. It didn’t get any better than that, Drew thought with satisfaction as he ambled along the sidewalk toward to the CalPac field, home of the Titans, the losingest team in the division. But that was okay. That wasn’t why anyone went to the games. They went for the same reason Drew and Brad went. To see and be seen. To enjoy the cool—but not cold—fall air now that the leaves had finally started to turn. To root for the home team, even if they didn’t stand a chance in hell of winning. You didn’t cheer for them because they’d win. You cheered for them because they were yours. Or Brad’s. Drew, along with Nick, had graduated from UC San Diego. Tritons, Titans, they sounded the same, or would after a few beers.

Drew trailed along in Brad’s wake. That was one advantage to dating a big guy. Crowds were a lot easier to manage with a big moose to clear the way. A mutinous part of his mind whispered that was just about the only benefit, but he squashed the thought as quickly as it had surfaced. Brad had a lot to deal with. Too bad personal growth meant more than a hard-on….

Still not much progress on that front, Drew thought. He tried to be patient, but when it came down to it, he failed to understand Brad’s hang-ups. All he could do was accept them as long as Brad worked to change them. Drew told himself that a lot these days.

“It’s a beautiful night to get out, isn’t it?” Drew said once they’d found their seats.

“Yeah, I guess,” Brad said. He scanned the crowd, eyes darting here and there. “I just can’t shake the feeling it’s our last bit of free time for a long time to come.”

They’d completed the last of the pre-construction that afternoon. Brad had spent the first week after they received word of their successful bid helping Emily with the detailed plans for the design and build, from the obvious things like furniture and flooring and wall coverings all the way down to the little things like the molds for the glue-and-sawdust egg-and-dart detail for the ceiling moldings in the ballroom, the things that people would only notice if they were wrong.

It was the first time Drew had really seen Emily in action, and it gave him a whole new appreciation for the designer’s art. But there’d been little time for him to appreciate her work, since he’d been swamped with his own. He had crawled over just about every square inch of the mansion while he addressed the requested changes.

Despite those requested changes, not that much was being destroyed wholesale, but plenty was being changed. With the list of approved changes in hand, Drew’s subs had been called in for a final walkthrough. Plumbing, gas, and sewer upgrades were all fairly straightforward, improvements in what had been installed originally, really, new pipes for old and bringing the various plumbing systems up to code, things of that nature.

He’d spent the bulk of his time with the structural engineers. Drew had expected to have to dig into the walls to bring the mansion into compliance with seismic codes, which hadn’t existed back in the day, and the engineers marked out just what needed to be done to keep the mansion from collapsing like the proverbial house of cards during a temblor.

But Drew’s electric subcontractor had been over the wiring plans, and she’d sprung some nasty surprises for him. None of the wiring could be salvaged, not even the circuits added later in the mansion’s history. Since she couldn’t guarantee it would carry the loads demanded by modern technology, she recommended yanking it all out and putting new copper wiring in. Drew had agreed. He didn’t have much choice, after all, since he knew nothing about electricity except that it could kill him. That was why he hired subs.

Between the seismic upgrades and the electrical work, the original horsehair plaster and lath didn’t stand a chance. Just how much would need to be replaced was one of the big unknowns in the project. The masons had some idea how much could be saved, but the final tally depended on the damage from, among other things, the structural engineers and electricians.

If these turned out to be the only cost overruns, then this renovation would go down in the annals of construction. It was par for the course, which struck Drew as a bizarre figure of speech. He’d always hated golf.

“You’ve got a point, but we can’t let the Bayard House swallow all our time. Professionally, sure. We’ve all got a lot riding on it, but personally?” Drew said. “Definitely not. It’ll make us crazy.”

“It’s already doing that,” Brad muttered.

Drew looked at him. “Is everything all right?”

“It’s fine,” Brad snapped. At the look of hurt on Drew’s face, he softened. “Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “No, it’s not.”

Drew waited while Brad gathered his thoughts. Around them in the half-filled stands, the crowd erupted with distracted cheers as the teams took the field. They weren’t the only ones using the game as a backdrop for their evening rather than the main event.

“All your friends keep threatening me,” Brad said at last.

“They what?” Drew laughed. Then he saw how defeated Brad looked. “What do you mean, threatening you?”

Brad looked around like he wanted to be anywhere but there and talking about anything else. “They keep telling me they’ll maim or hunt me down if I hurt you.”

Huh. Wasn’t that interesting, Drew thought, wondering what his friends saw that he didn’t. He chose his words carefully. “Well, the reality is I’m dating a guy who’s just coming out,” he said, holding up a hand to forestall the protest he knew was coming, “who’s bi or just into me or whatever. But that’s why they’re worried.”

“But I’m not even being given a chance,” Brad said. “They just assume I’m going to screw you over. I’d never do that.”

Not on purpose
, Drew found himself thinking. He put a hand on Brad’s arm and felt him jump. “They’re just worried, that’s all. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re going to hurt me, and I’m the only one who counts, right?”

Brad smiled at him. “You’re the one I’m dating, yeah.” He exhaled noisily. “Sorry to be a downer on our night out. I guess I’m worried about the big job coming up. There’s a lot riding on it professionally for us both.”

“And personally? I mean, you’ll be my boss for a while, and I’m technically your boss,” Drew pointed out.

“I hadn’t thought of that, so thank you very much,” Brad said, a flash of his usual sense of humor shining through.

“Hi, guys,” Nick Bedford said, climbing the grandstand steps to where they sat.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Morgan added. “Can we join you?”

“Sure,” Drew said. “That okay, Brad?”

“Oh sure, like I can be honest now?” Brad said. “Of course, guys. Have a seat.”

“You know, in polite circles, people would actually get up and move down so we didn’t have to trip over those barges you call feet.”

Brad made a show of looking around. “Don’t see any of those here, so it sucks to be you, doesn’t it?”

“Still keepin’ it classy, Brad. Don’t ever change,” Morgan said.

“Shouldn’t you respect your elders or something?” Brad sniped.

Morgan shook his head. “There’s a five-year minimum. So Drew, sure. You? You’d better not linger in front of my car when you cross the street.”

“I miss you too. Oh wait… I just saw you this morning. You know, that makes it real hard for the heart to grow fonder,” Brad said.

“How can I miss you if you won’t go away?” Morgan shot back.

“Who’s crashing whose date?” Brad said.

Nick and Drew just smiled as their boyfriends sparred, their jibes and digs lost in the general roar of the crowd.

“So who’s winning?” Nick asked.

“Whoever’s playing CalPac,” Brad said.

“Your faith in your alma mater’s touching,” Drew said, laughing.

Brad shrugged. “You know I’m right.”

That was interesting. Nick and Morgan showed up, and Brad seemed to relax. Two guys together looked like a date, but add two more guys, and it was just four guys out to watch the CalPac Titans get stomped. Never mind that two of the guys made up the most notorious couple on campus.

“Don’t you guys worry that you’ll be spotted or found out or something?” Brad asked.

Morgan shook his head. “Not really.”

But Nick, the more practical of the two, shrugged. “It’s a concern, given that the school’s policy toward us seems to be deliberate blindness. If we call attention to ourselves, that could change.”