18. LUCAS #2
He didn’t look convinced, but he nodded. Then he pulled out his notebook. “Do me a favor and read me the model name, bin numbers, and price for the bed and the mattress?” I did as asked, but when I got to the price, he flinched and dropped his pencil. “Well, shit.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “That’s way too much. Gonna have to pick out something else.”
“It’s not too much,” I protested. “I have the money.”
“Yeah but Luc…”
I gave him a stern look. “I have the money, Max. Don’t pick another bed. This is the one you wanted, the one you liked, and I want you to have that.” And I did. I wanted him to have his heart’s desire. Even if that was other men, as well as an expensive bed.
He scowled, but acquiesced with a curt nod. “Fine. But I am paying you back, as soon as possible.”
I tried not to roll my eyes, but only sort of succeeded. “That’s fine,” I told him, though in reality I didn’t much care how quickly he got the money back to me. I was fine for a few months while he got his feet back under him—both literally and figuratively.
He nodded again, less shortly this time, and pushed himself back onto the walkway that split the display room. “Let’s move on to desks, then.”
He didn’t pay any less attention to choosing a desk than he had a bed; we spent nearly an hour debating options: small or large?
Modular or a single unit? Glass top? Wood?
Solid wood or hollow-core wood? He sat at each one, testing their height with his chair and their ergonomics overall.
My temper grew shorter with each discussion of an option; I could feel the moment I left him at his new apartment drawing closer, and I was raw inside, though I tried my best not to show it.
Finally, he chose a modular design with two chests of drawers as legs and a solid wood top.
It wasn’t the most expensive option, but it wasn’t the cheapest, either, which pleased me.
I was preparing to let out a breath of relief and move on to the part of the store where we actually picked up the furniture’s boxes when he took in a breath, smiled at me, and said, “And now a desk chair.”
Fuck, we weren’t done. I ground my teeth but nodded what I hoped was pleasantly at him.
“Sure.” It was one more reminder that soon he’d be out of his chair and I wouldn’t be around to enjoy it with him, and it hurt.
I felt like I’d shepherded him this far, and it wasn’t fair that I wouldn’t get to see his eventual success and recovery.
But, I reminded myself, he was a grown man, not my child; I wasn’t owed his presence, and his victories were his own, not mine.
Max wheeled over to a one-piece plastic chair. It looked horribly uncomfortable to me, but what did I know? I watched as he transferred to it, the chair spinning a little with his momentum. He wiggled around in it for a second, then winced. “This hurts my ass already.”
I almost made a joke about whether his ass might be sore from other activities and not the chair, and then I remembered that it had been long days since we’d done anything that involved his ass—or mine, for that matter.
So much for that lightheartedness. Instead, I just nodded.
“Yeah, you’ll probably want to go for something padded. ”
Inclining his head in agreement, he transferred back to his wheels and moved on to a pretty basic-looking padded chair, with rough black fabric covering the seat and back.
“This one feels better,” he mused, giving it a spin and a bounce.
“And it adjusts more.” Demonstrating, he pulled the lever and sank almost to the floor, giving an oof as his feet hit the ground with more force than he’d anticipated.
“Ouch. Remind me not to do that again.” He stretched his broken leg out and rotated the ankle.
Suddenly, I couldn’t stand the suspense anymore. I needed to just pull the band-aid off quickly and get away from him. “So,” I said, clapping my hands together briskly, “you want this one?”
He gave me an inquisitive look. “Uh, I was going to try a few more...If that’s ok with you?”
“Oh.” I tried not to show my frustration. “Sure.”
He gave me a tentative smile and went to try the next chair, this one upholstered in faux leather. “Mmm, nice.” He used the arms of the chair to raise and lower his weight a bit to test the seat’s give. “Yeah, I like this one.”
I started to ask if this was it, then, but before I could compose the words, he was out of this chair and on to the next one, and then the next.
He tried three more chairs before he transferred back to his chair and turned to look at me where I had collapsed into the first chair he’d tried.
“You good?” I asked, forcing another smile.
He nodded and pointed to the third chair he’d tried, the faux leather one. “I’m gonna go for door number three.”
I gave him a salute and jotted its information down in the notebook we’d been passing back and forth all morning.
I was torn now between trying to rush him through the rest of the process and get it all over with, or slowing down and trying to draw out the limited time I had left with him.
Finally, I settled on drawing it out. My emotions were see-sawing wildly today.
“Anything else you want to look at while we’re here?
Remember, you’ve got my credit card to use until you’ve saved up some cash. ”
He wrinkled his nose. “I feel like you’re my sugar daddy when you say it like that.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Dude, if you think I’m equipped to be a sugar daddy, just wait until you hook up with someone who’s actually got a lot of money.
” Ah, hell, and now I was thinking about him getting with a rich man who could give him everything.
Max could be spoiled instead of living on the edge of poverty; a rich boyfriend would buy him everything he wanted and take him out to the musical theater shows that he loved so much and that I couldn’t stand.
Max’s normally expressive face had gone impassive when I gathered myself to meet his eyes.
“Right,” he said shortly. “Well, I’m not looking for an actual sugar daddy.
I can take care of myself just fine. The fact that I had to let you take care of me for a while was an...
an anomaly. But I’d hope you know me well enough by now to know that I’m looking for compatibility, not wallet size, in a man. ”
Great, I’d insulted him. “I was kidding,” I said weakly, knowing I hadn’t really been kidding at all; I’d just been letting my incipient bitterness and fear of inadequacy shine through.
He gave me a curt nod. All was clearly not forgiven, no matter what he was about to say.
“Anyway, I think I’ve picked out everything I needed.
Let’s go down to the warehouse.” He flipped his chair around, navigated out of the maze of desks, and started down the path that split the showroom into two sides.
I trailed him in a daze of self-recrimination, down the path and around corners and through shortcuts between departments.
Eventually, we came to the end of the showroom, which was set up as a vignette of a child’s bedroom, complete with toys, storage containers, and a bin of lunch bags off to the side.
Max gestured to the elevator in front of us, which had just opened. “After you.”
I wanted to urge him in first, so I could catch the doors if they started to close on him, but I didn’t want to piss him off any more or make him think I didn’t believe he was self-sufficient, so I just did as he indicated and stepped into the metal car.
He followed in behind me with no problem and I hit the button for the lower floor.
We rode down in tense silence, Max giving his wheels unusually jerky little pushes that indicated that his ire was still up.
I passed him his notebook over his shoulder and he set it on his lap as the elevator arrived downstairs.
I followed him out of the elevator into a huge warehouse with displays of furniture down the center.
We both stopped and took a moment to gawk at the sheer size of the place before I cut to the side to grab one of the sledges the store provided to haul your boxes.
“Lead on,” I told him as I pushed it back toward him.
He flipped open the notebook to the first page of our shopping notes. “Ok, first we’ve got the desk. The legs are bin 392.10. Which should be…” He paused, looking around the room and trying to spot any numbers that looked close.
“There.” I pointed to a row halfway down and across from us. “Those are 350 through 400, according to the sign.” I gave the sledge a hard push to get it moving, and Max followed.
It turned out that negotiating getting heavy boxes on the sledge was tricky when only one of us had a set of fully functional legs; eventually we figured out that if I could yank the boxes off the shelf, Max could set his brakes and support them on the way down, then guide them toward the sledge.
We worked in silence, broken only by grunts and curt directions—“To the left,” “Hold on, I need to fix my grip”—until the last thing left on our list was the desk chair.
The sledge was piled high, the stack teetering a little precariously, and Max was resting one hand atop it and pulling himself along with his feet while I steered the sledge.
“Hold on!” he barked suddenly, and I pulled back with my full body weight to force the sledge to a stop.
“What?” I asked, trying to get my feet back under me after being dragged a bit along the floor.
“The chair should be down that aisle.” He pointed toward the row we had been about to pass. “And then we can get the fuck out of here!”