Chapter 9
Chapter nine
“Uncle Sergio! Wake up!”
“Oof … morning, buddy.”
“Hiss …”
“Dad said to come get you. Breakfast is almost ready.”
“You know,” Sergio begins, thinking about how he’d rather be kissing Jeremy Owens than eating pancakes, bacon, and fruit yet again, “I don’t think I’m that hungry today.”
Henry pouts. “But breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Did your mom tell you that?”
“No.” Henry laughs. “My dad did.”
“Probably because that’s the only meal he can cook.”
Henry holds his hands at shoulder height and shrugs.
Sergio pats him on the head. “Breakfast might be the most important meal of the day for you now, but when you’re older, you’ll learn there are far more important things than breakfast.”
For one, getting more intimate with Jeremy, who he’s been kissing every day for the last however many days, with no release.
At least, that’s what’s on Sergio’s brain this morning over pancakes.
After all, how long has it been since Sergio last hooked up with anyone?
He’s lost count at this point. That’s like taking heroin away from a junkie.
Lou Reed should be playing softly in the background to soundtrack his detox.
“Like brunch!” Henry yells.
“What?”
“Something more important than breakfast,” Henry says, nodding his head with his lips pressed tight as if he’s understanding Sergio on a soul level. “Mommy gets very excited to have brunch with Jeremy.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Sergio smiles.
Henry’s eyes go large, and his mouth drops open. “Are you and Jeremy having brunch?”
“Do you think he would want to go with me?”
“No.” Henry shakes his head.
“Yeah.” Sergio laughs. “I don’t think so either.”
“You should go tell him you're sorry.”
“Why do you think I’m skipping breakfast?”
“I thought you weren’t hungry.”
“I’m hungry for something besides pancakes.”
Henry shakes his head again and hops off the bed. “I don’t understand grownups.”
“You and me both, kid,” Sergio says as he flings the covers off himself and gets out of bed as well. “Go wake up Adrien, then tell your mom and dad I’m skipping breakfast, will ya?”
“Okay,” Henry agrees, then goes running out of the room with both of his thumbs held enthusiastically over his head, thundering towards Adrien’s room.
Sergio pokes his head out the door. “Gently!”
Running, Henry raises his thumbs up even higher, then bursts into Adrien’s room.
Shaking his head and feeling magnanimous, Sergio changes out of his sweatpants and into his jeans and long-sleeved Henley.
After returning from the bathroom to brush his teeth, he steps into his boots and loosely laces them.
He sneaks out of his room and creeps down the stairs to head outside through the front door.
This way, he can avoid Rose and her judgmental eyebrow and whip-like ponytail that she’d definitely aim in his direction if he had to tell her face-to-face that he was skipping breakfast in favor of sweeping Jeremy off his feet.
She’d see right through him and block any and all Sergio’s attempts to spend more time with Jeremy, leading to perhaps even more satisfying results beyond kissing.
At the door, before he goes through it, he looks towards the kitchen. Holden and Rose are readying breakfast and are completely oblivious to his presence. Gus, however, spots him and hisses. Sergio flips him the bird, then ducks out the door. He’s careful to close it with the quietest of clicks.
Once outside, the cold crisp morning air hits his lungs, so he blows into his hands then slides them into his pockets.
Even though he’s barely been outside, his hands are freezing, and he wishes he would have thought to have Henry sneak him a cup of coffee to hold between his palms to keep them warm.
Not that Henry would have been capable of being discreet or delivering the coffee to him without spilling it everywhere.
Nevertheless, as he approaches the barn through the trees, he’s jealous of the steaming, warm mug he sees Jeremy grasping.
With any luck, Jeremy will offer him a cup and a multitude of warm-up activities inside his lofted abode.
“Hey! Jeremy!” Sergio calls out as he approaches.
Jeremy looks at him with his brow furrowed and his lips pressed in a hard line. A puff of air escapes through his lips as he lets out an audible sigh. “What are you doing down here?”
Stopping a few feet from him, Sergio brings his hands to his mouth and cups them before he blows into them again. “I came to talk to you.”
Jeremy rolls his eyes and turns his focus back to looking between the trees. “About what?”
“About last night,” Sergio says as gently as he can.
This is rapidly not going as well as he had envisioned.
Where’s the gracious Jeremy of the days he spent kissing him?
The Jeremy who smiles at his charms. The Jeremy who lets his guard down.
The Jeremy who would have been possibly more amenable to the idea of Sergio tearing his clothes off and ravishing them both to orgasm.
Jeremy takes a sip of his drink. Apple and cinnamon tea by the smell of it. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, and takes another sip, still not looking at Sergio.
Damn it, this is not going well. Where’s Henry when I need him? He begins to panic and changes the subject. “I hear you’re skating again,” he tries, hoping that acknowledging something Jeremy loves will bear better fruit.
“And you care about that? Why?”
“I … I guess I would … I imagine it’s freeing for you to skate again.”
Jeremy turns his head to look at Sergio again and takes another sip of his tea. “Freeing from what? Failure? Disappointment? My life as everybody’s pet pity project?”
“No.” Sergio hangs his head and rubs his temples. “Why is this going so badly?” He looks back up at Jeremy. “You’re not understanding me.”
“Oh, I’m understanding you perfectly well.” Jeremy takes another sip. “You thought you could come down here and butter me up by showing some faux sympathy. But I don’t need your sympathy, Sergio. Nor do I want it.”
Sergio looks around, stunned. “That’s … that’s not what I was doing at all. I really only came down here to apologize and see if you wanted to spend the day with me or something.”
“And why would I want to do that? You think I want to get tangled up with you again? So you can ditch me the moment things are out of your control?”
Sergio, looking back at the successful days he’s had with Jeremy, nods.
Jeremy takes one last gulp of his tea, emptying the contents of his mug into his mouth, then swallows thickly.
Staring right at Sergio, an eyebrow raised in a manner frighteningly similar to Rose, he says, “Look, you’re hot and, in the past, you have shown rare signs of being a human being capable of caring about somebody else.
However, until I see that more sincerely from you, we’re not spending any more time together than we have to.
” He pauses, tugs the corner of his left eye, and stares at Sergio.
And now it’s Sergio’s turn to swallow. His pride slides down his throat like a frozen, jagged rock.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get ready for Allison’s practice. Enjoy your day, Sergio.”
Mouth agape, Sergio watches Jeremy turn around, open the barn door, and disappear behind it before it shuts with a slam.
“What the fuck was that?” Sergio asks no one, then turns and walks back up to the house with his tail between his legs.
How did everything go so wrong so quickly?
He can get it right in the afternoon. Maybe Jeremy isn’t a morning person.
Maybe Sergio chose the wrong outfit, even though this one works fine in the afternoon. Who the fuck knows?
Or maybe, what works in the afternoon is that Sergio comes to Jeremy at a moment when both of their guards are down.
Henry is always there, which brings out Sergio’s softer side.
Jeremy is on the ice, and though that is his element, having an audience at this point in his relationship with figure skating is not something to which he is accustomed.
And both of them, always in that moment with one of their metaphorical walls broken down, are able to see each other more clearly.
This morning, it was right back to Sergio feeling cocky after a few solid days of success and Jeremy feeling exhausted by the arrival of the man who has managed at every turn—as far as his memory and knowledge of their history goes—to disappoint him. Fuck, Sergio curses his damn ego.
“Well, look who decided he wanted breakfast after all!” Holden exclaims around a mouth full of pancakes as Sergio enters the kitchen through the back door.
“Jeremy didn’t want brunch, did he?” Henry says from his chair.
“No. No, he didn’t,” Sergio says and takes a seat, and then pours himself the last of the coffee.
“That’s because Jeremy Owens is smart,” Rose says over the brim of her own mug, with her eyebrow raised.
“Yeah,” Sergio says, defeated, and avoiding everyone’s eyes on him at the table.
Holden claps him on the shoulder with one hand and shovels more food into his mouth with his other. “Don’t worry, Sergio. You’re smart, too.”
“Smarter than a bag of hair,” Adrien adds, then takes a sip of his coffee.
Sergio sighs and loads a plate up with a small amount of food, wondering how and why this day always seems to devolve into pick-on-Sergio day.
He supposes that maybe he deserves it. And also supposes that tomorrow he’d be better off going back to what he knows works instead of trying to reinvent the hamster wheel he’s on.
But since he’s here, and he’s feeling pretty shitty, a thought crosses his mind.
There’s another way he can release some of this tension in his body.
Another way he can get a jolt of adrenaline and serotonin.
Something he can do with Holden and Adrien that will bring them all together, even if it is only for one day, the other two will forget.
But he’ll have it, and maybe if he can get past the guilt of that, it will be enough to get him through these repeated failures.
“Hey, Holden,” he says. Holden turns to look at him and gives him a goofy grin while he chews his food. “You got any helicopter hookups around here?”
Holden’s grin seamlessly morphs from goofy to serious. He wipes his mouth with his napkin, then places it onto the table. “Heli trip?”
Sergio nods his head up and down and stares right at Holden, grinning like the devil. “Heli trip.”
Standing at the top of the world while snow and wind whip around them from the helicopter blades whirling back into the air, Sergio no longer feels defeated. He swings his arms over Adrien and Holden’s shoulders. “Isn’t this great?”
“It’s amazing,” Holden says.
“It’s a terrible idea,” Adrien says.
Holden reaches around Sergio with his long arms and jostles Adrien by the back of his neck. “Don’t worry so much, Adrien.”
“I’m not worrying,” Adrien says.
“Yes, you are,” Sergio and Holden say and laugh together.
“You’ve got this,” Holden says. “You’re a better skier than almost everyone else on the Adirondacks today.”
“My track record on these types of trips says different.”
Sergio looks around. “Are we still even in the Adirondacks?”
Holden shrugs. “This might be Canada.”
“Great,” Adrien says. “I’m sure the mounted police will be super stoked to see me get tomahawked down this ridge.”
“You’re not gonna tomahawk,” Holden says, then looks at Sergio. “But just in case, should we set up the drone to make sure we catch it on film this time.”
“Way ahead of you, my friend.” Sergio laughs, swinging his backpack forward off his back and pulling out his gear.
He holds the camera out in front of them and clicks a picture, then turns it around to look at the captured moment.
Despite his nerves, Adrien did manage to smile for the shot.
“See? It’s not so bad. Now who’s going first? ”
“Holden,” Adrien says. “Let the professional carve the first line.”
“You better be right after me,” Holden says. “The helicopter is waiting for us at the bottom.”
“I’ll push him if I have to,” Sergio says.
“Please don’t push me,” Adrien says. “That’s how I went ass over teakettle last time.”
“I didn’t push!”
“You didn’t not push him,” Holden says. “Now quit arguing. There’s a few more untouched runs I want to hit.”
“How about this?” Sergio puts his camera back into his backpack, then swings it over his shoulders. “No filming. No pushing. Let’s hit this first run together.” He pauses and holds his hand out to Adrien. “Deal?”
Adrien eyes him up and down, then grabs his hand and shakes it. “Deal.”
“Good,” Sergio says, then turns to face the edge of the slope and points down. “I’ll take center line.”
“Perfect,” Holden says. “There’s a cliff to the right I want to flip off of.”
“And I’ll be staying as far away from that as I can on the left.” Adrien uses his poles and pushes himself forward and away from the other two men. With a quick look over his shoulder, he says to Sergio, “And by the way, I quit!” Then, like he’s pulling off a Band-Aid, he takes off.
Sergio shrugs. He should have seen that coming. He chooses to ignore it and looks at Holden. “Race you to the bottom?”
“Last one down buys the first round of drinks,” Holden says with a clap to Sergio’s shoulder before he propels himself forward, leaving Sergio alone at the top.
He waits a moment before he follows and reserves this day as a memory, a snapshot in his mind only for him.
Because after all, he is the only one out of the three who will remember it.
He admires Adrien’s perfect switchbacks and catches the moment Holden does a double backflip off the dodgiest cliff.
“If I ever make it out of this loop,” he says to the glimmering snow. “I promise to pay for the three of us to do this together tomorrow.”