Rhys #3
My dad gave me a concerned look, silently reaching out and giving my arm a supportive pat. I wondered if he was thinking about that conversation we’d had, about how you knew when you were with the right person.
“It’s Kendall,” I finally managed to shove out his name, even though my throat felt like it was clogged with glue. “I’m, uh… moving in with Kendall.”
The silence that fell over the room felt like an eternity, but could probably be measured in just a few frantic beats of my heart.
My mom spoke first, blinking a few times like it would help clear her head. “You’re moving in with my Kendall?”
“You mean my Kendall,” Benjamin piped up.
“Uh, no,” I said, a bit sourly as I shifted the bag of peas to the other side of my swollen nose. I hoped the ibuprofen would kick in soon. “I was actually referring to my Kendall. My boyfriend, who I’m moving in with.”
“Hold on just a minute,” Dad said, raising his palms up to illustrate his need for everyone to focus on the important parts of the conversation. “How did this happen?”
“You know what?” Benjamin said, before I could decide how to start. “I actually need to get home to Josie and the baby. I only came by to pick something up for her.” I had a feeling he was going to get his own version of the story from Kendall, anyway.
“Well, who the hell is going to tell me why you punched your brother in the face?” Mom asked, planting a hand on her hip to show she was still annoyed with him, even after my big reveal.
Benjamin glanced over to me, our eyes locking for a moment of unspoken agreement. I highly doubted Kendall would want my parents knowing he’d had a habit of hooking up with closeted guys, or that Benjamin had assumed I would be in the same vein as those pricks.
“Ah, it’s nothing,” I said quickly. “It doesn’t matter. Just a misunderstanding.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, giving me a look tinged with what I could only describe as a tiny droplet of apology. That was fine. I wasn’t going to hold it against him for trying to protect the person he’d been so close with for so long. Much longer than I had.
“We’re good,” I said, watching him walk out as my mom let out an aggravated sound.
“Men,” she muttered, shaking her head in disgust.
Once he was gone, I went through a heavily edited version of how things had progressed, focusing on the part about how we’d connected over not feeling good enough, him with his parents and me with my ex.
I left out the parts where I’d drunkenly stumbled into his apartment to beg for the world’s shortest blowjob and jerked each other off in an alley during Pride.
By the time I was done, my mom was hugging me tightly, holding my head against her chest while I struggled to keep the stupid peas against my nose.
“Oh, honey. We’re so glad you told us. You know you can tell us anything.”
“And you know we love you no matter what. Gay, straight, bi, whatever,” my dad tacked on, and I nodded.
“Yeah, I know. And I know it’s kind of weird, since you guys see Kendall as, like… you know, your other kid, basically.”
“We love Kendall too,” he confirmed. “This doesn’t change any of that.”
“You better not screw this up and make things weird for Kendall with us,” Mom warned me, and I snorted, immediately wincing at the pain that shot through my face.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Part of me worried that I would mess things up like I’d done in my marriage, but Kendall was too important. I’d never felt so completed by another person before. I’d do anything to make him happy, and to keep him in my life. He was my heart.
After all the emotional stuff, she let me use her laptop to sign the NDA documents and send them back over to Jay. He let me know we’d probably missed the cutoff for the wire transfer today, but it should be available for me by tomorrow. That was fine with me. I had other errands I needed to run.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket as I made my way back to my dad’s car, sporting a fresh shirt, I dialed up the number I’d recently saved in my phone.
“Hey, Ryan? It’s Rhys. Yeah. You gave me your card at Underdogs the other day.”
I PUSHED MY no-longer-spare key into the lock of Kendall’s door, carefully holding the gift I’d cobbled together for him under my arm.
The moment I was inside, he put his laptop down and launched himself against my chest, wrapping his arms around my torso.
He’d already had it out with Benjamin on the phone, and knew what had happened between us.
I knew Benjamin had apologized to him, probably a way more sincere and heartfelt apology than the one I’d gotten. But I could live with that.
“Poor baby,” he cooed in sympathy, blinking his long lashes as he stared up at me. My nose did look pretty gnarly already, but luckily it didn’t seem like anything was out of alignment. “That looks so painful.”
I started to deny the pain out of habit, before I remembered how much I liked being coddled and fussed over by him. “It does hurt pretty bad.”
He whimpered, nuzzling his face into my chest and squeezing me. “Come sit down. I’m going to take care of you all night.”
“You did that last night.”
“I might do it every night,” he countered matter-of-factly, and I grinned, plopping down on the comfortable pink couch I loved, stretching my legs out across it, with my back against the arm.
He settled onto my lap, clucking his tongue over my bruises, before his eyes finally drifted to what was in my hand. “What’s that?”
“Ah, it’s a gift. For you. Well, it’s a simulation of a gift. Kind of.”
“A simulation of a gift?” He repeated, tilting his head so his bangs shifted to the side. God, he was cute.
“A replica,” I corrected myself. “Uh, sort of. This isn’t really the gift. This kind of just represents the idea of the gift.”
“I’m confused but intrigued,” he said. “Gimme.”
“Okay, but first I should warn you that basically everyone in town is probably talking about us right now, so you might get some funny looks and questions next time you go out.”
“Really? Why?”
“Ah, so I might have gone to four different stores before coming back here.”