Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
C harlie hadn’t been sure what to expect when it came to Jared’s parents, but he most certainly had not anticipated being bowled over by a couple of very large chocolate labs and one cocker spaniel, nor did he expect the army of cats that suddenly decided to take up residence on his lap as soon as Jared shepherded him to a small couch.
“I, er, hope you don’t mind pets,” Jared said, as he desperately (and futilely) tried to shoo the cats and dogs away. “As you can see, they’ve got quite a little menagerie here.”
“I love them,” he said, and almost thought he saw something like affection flit across Jared’s face.
Charlie still hasn’t quite forgiven him for the snark about his career at the Romance Network–or for his continued judgment about his choice to leave West Virginia–but he held out hope that Jared would get over his hangups and see him for who he really was rather than what Jared thought he was (or should be).
It wouldn’t kill you to give the guy some grace, even if he’s not always willing to give it to you.
Then it occurred to him to wonder: had Jared even bothered to tell his parents that he was going to be bringing someone along to their house?
“Mom, dad, are you home?” Jared called, wandering away for a moment.
While Jared was trying to find his parents, Charlie took the opportunity to give the house a closer examination. Even though it looked quite small on the outside, it was surprisingly roomy, even though it was also filled with all manner of knick-knacks and trinkets. In fact, it kind of reminded him of the home that he’d grown up in, and he felt a momentary twinge of guilt that he still hadn’t had time to call or text his own mom.
“I can’t believe you’d invite someone here without telling me!” he heard a female voice exclaim from deeper in the house. “Honestly, Jared, I don’t know what gets into you sometimes. I haven’t even had a chance to clean the house properly, and you want me to entertain a guest?”
“Mom, the house looks fine,” he heard Jared say in a voice that somehow managed to be both strained and patient.
At just that moment Jared returned with the woman that Charlie assumed to be his mother.
She looked nothing like what Charlie had been imagining. She was, he guessed, in her late fifties or early sixties, with blonde hair swept up into a bun. There were a few strands of white here and there, and her deep blue eyes radiated kindness.
I wish she was my mom, he thought, and then immediately felt guilty.
As soon as Joyce looked at him, her face seemed to light up like a Christmas tree.
“Oh my goodness,” she said breathlessly, “you’re Charlie Garrett. You’re the Charlie Garrett. I just loved you in A Little Country Romance. You were wonderful!”
It occurred to him too late that she was exactly the kind of person that he would expect to be one of his fans, and that made him a little wary of this whole encounter. Was she going to badger him with a whole series of questions of what it was like to be on the set of one of his movies? Was she going to ask for his autograph?
“Mom,” Jared said, clearly trying to head this off at the pass.
Joyce, however, just waved him off. “Don’t worry, dear, I’m not going to drown the poor boy with questions. I’m sure he gets enough of that from all of his other fans.”
“I mean, yes, sometimes it does get a bit tiring to get asked all sorts of things by people who don’t really have a recognition of privacy, but I think I can make an exception for you. You don’t seem like the type to ask me what type of underwear I happen to have on at the moment.”
“Clearly you don’t know my wife very well,” a man that Charlie assumed to be Jared’s dad asked as he came into the room. He was about the same height as his wife–both of whom were shorter than either Jared or Charlie–and it was clear that Jared had inherited his looks from his father, because Doug had the same bluffly handsome features and dark hair and piercing blue eyes as his son. They were weathered a bit with age, of course, but he still moved and acted like a much younger man.
“Doug!” Joyce exclaimed, slapping him lightly on the arm. “Behave yourself.”
“What?” he said with a shrug. “I’m just telling the truth.”
“Sometimes I don’t know what I see in you.”
“It’s my natural debonair charm,” Doug said at once. Joyce and Jared both rolled their eyes.
“Anyway, that’s enough of that,” Joyce said airily. “As I’m sure Jared’s told you, I’m Joyce, and this is Doug. None of that Mr. and Mrs. Russell stuff, either.”
Jared was right about that, at least, Charlie thought.
“We have to figure out where the two of you are going to sleep,” Joyce went on. She wagged a finger at the both of them. “I don’t know what type of shenanigans the two of you have been getting up to, but I want you to know that there will be no hanky- panky in this household, at least not until the two of you are married.”
Charlie wished he could take a picture of the mortified look on Jared’s face. He looked like a fish out of water, with his mouth hanging open and his skin turning several shades of pink.
It made him want to kiss him.
“Mother,” Jared finally managed to choke out, “I don’t know what idea you have about the two of us, but I can tell you absolutely that the two of us haven’t been getting into any ‘hanky panky.’” He made a point of using scare quotes to exaggerate how ridiculous he found the situation. All of that just made Charlie want to kiss him even more.
“Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes,” Joyce responded. “I may be your mother, but I’m also pretty up-do-date on how things work these days.”
“Joyce,” Doug said gently, “are you going to go on about this all day or are you going to show the boys where they’re going to sleep?”
She huffed.
“Well, I guess we can have Jared stay in the guest room, though the only thing we have in there is the fold-out bed at the moment.”
“Don’t put yourself out on my account,” Charlie rushed to say. “I don’t want Jared to not be able to sleep in his own bedroom. I’m totally fine with sleeping on a foldout.”
Joyce shook her head. “Absolutely not. You are the guest in this house, and that means that you will have the best accommodations.”
Charlie could tell that Jared wasn’t particularly happy about this, but he got the feeling that Joyce wasn’t the type of person whose wishes could be thwarted, either by her husband or by her son.
“I guess I’ll just have to get used to having a backache for the next couple of days,” Jared said not-very-graciously.
“There are always sacrifices that we have to make when we have guests,” Joyce reminded him.
“In that case we’d better not wait around. Come on, Charlie, and I’ll show you my room.”
“Coming, dear,” he said, as they made their way upstairs. The upstairs, like the rest of the Russell house, felt cozy and lived in, with the sort of comfort that could only come from a place that had been home to the same family for years. Even Jared’s room still had little reminders of him, including a poster from a ‘90s movie and a book of the collected poems of D.H. Lawrence.
“So,” Charlie said, looking at the room around him, “this is where you grew up, eh? I like to think about all of the hours that a moody and melodramatic young Jared spent listening to Patsy Cline and writing bad poetry.”
“What makes you think that my poetry was bad?” Jared asked.
“Because every little gay boy writes bad poetry when they’re a teenager.”
Jared couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I guess you may have a point. Fortunately I threw most of it away, so that no one would have to see the embarrassing things that I was writing about and all of the many crushes that I had as a teen. I did keep most of my journals, though, but mom might have thrown them out. She’s not the type of person who likes clutter.”
“I heard that!” Joyce shouted from down the hall. “I may like a clean house, but I know when not to throw out something that’s actually valuable.”
Jared shook his head as his mom was speaking.
“Don’t listen to her,” he whispered. “I’ve lost count of the number of things that she’s thrown out without even asking me first.”
They stood there in a somewhat awkward silence for a few minutes, before Jared finally shrugged and started moving toward the door. “I hope that you’re very comfortable in my room, Charlie Garrett,” he said.
“You know,” Charlie said, hardly believing the words that were coming out of his mouth, “you could always sneak out in the middle of the night and come back into your room. If, you know, you wanted to have a good night’s sleep.”
He knew that sounded like he was asking Jared to come hook up with him in the middle of the night. In his old bedroom. In his parent’s house. It was like the beginning of almost every romantic comedy situation gone wrong. Of course, that was exactly what he was going for, and the thought of Jared crawling into bed with him in the middle of the night made him feel all kinds of ways, and he had to shift position to keep from embarrassing himself.
“As my mom said, we run a clean establishment here,” Jared said with a twisted little smile, breaking the tension in a flash. “And for that reason I will be suffering through the ignominy of sleeping on the couch in my own parents’ house.
Even so, Charlie couldn’t stop thinking about that image of Jared getting into bed with him. The harder he tried to put it out of his mind and think about something else–preferably something far less stimulating–the more insistently it kept intruding on his thoughts.
He was saved from any further thinking by Joyce’s voice calling from downstairs.
“Okay, boys, you can come down now. I think you’ve had quite enough time to get unpacked and get everything in order.”
Keeps a clean establishment indeed.
“I told you,” Jared said, reading his mind. “And one thing you will very quickly learn is that what Joyce Russell wants, she gets. And she most certainly doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
They started down the stairs, their arms barely touching one another as they did so. Even though Jared flinched away, Charlie still felt that same little pulse that he’d felt on the few other occasions when the two of them had come this close.
I just wish that Jared would quit pulling away like he’s been shocked, he thought.
Joyce was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, her hands on her hips. She looked like every mother from every sitcom that Charlie had ever seen.
“I hope that the two of you weren’t doing anything naughty upstairs,” she said. “Like I said. There’ll be no hanky panky under my roof.”
“Joyce, for heaven’s sake, leave them alone. They’re adults and they can do whatever they want to,” Doug chimed in.
She shook her head. “Don’t listen to your father. I make the rules in his house. Now, come back to the living room. I want you to tell me everything.”
“Joyce, don’t you think they should at least have a chance to catch their breath?” Doug smiled indulgently at his wife as they made their way back to the living room.
“I think we should at least find out what’s going on with these two. It’s not every day that you have a celebrity in your house, is it?”
“It’s okay, Mr. Russell. I don’t mind explaining a bit about what happened.” He took a deep breath, because he had the feeling that the elder Russells weren’t likely to be very approving of his decision to punch another person, regardless of his reasons.
“It’s like this,” he said, as they sat down in the living room. “Jared and I were at this bar, and there was this guy, and he was being a jerk–on top of saying all sorts of nasty, homophobic things to me earlier in the day–and he shoved Jared and, well, I punched him. Of course there were a lot of people standing around, and they managed to record it all, and, well, here we are.”
It all came out in a jumbled rush of words, and for a moment he was afraid that he’d spoken too quickly and that they hadn’t really absorbed what had happened.
To his surprise, it was Doug who spoke first.
“Serves him right,” he said bluntly.
“Doug,” Joyce said. “We don’t advocate violence in this house, no matter how awful people behave.”
“If someone is going to go chasing after another man and start calling him names right out in public where everyone can see it, and if he’s going to push our son, then I don’t see why he shouldn’t be taught a lesson.”
Charlie was starting to see where Jared got his fighting spirit from.
Joyce just sighed and shook her head.
“Go on, Charlie.”
And so he told her the rest of what had happened that night and why he was sitting here in her living room.
Just as he finished, however, Joyce leapt to her feet. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but I just noticed how dusty that shelf is!” With that she was off.
“Don’t worry,” Jared said, leaning in. “She’s always like that. All it takes is one speck of dust and she’s off like a rocket. She can’t stand even the idea of anything being out of place, particularly when we have a guest in the house.”
“You have no idea how exhausting it gets,” Doug said with a rueful shake of his head. “I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve had a cup of coffee whisked away while I was in the middle of drinking it, just because she wanted to get the dish washed and put away.”
If Joyce was offended at all of this talk about her cleaning proclivities, she didn’t show any sign of it. If anything, all of this commentary just made her clean even more fervently.
“I just can’t believe that I have the Charlie Garrett sitting in my living room,” she gushed as she bustled around making sure that everything was where it needed to be. “I also wish that my son had bothered to tell me that he was bringing home a movie star, or that he was working with him in the first place.”
Said son had the good grace to look at least a little bit ashamed.
“I’m sorry, mom,” he mumbled under his breath. “I guess time just got away from me.” Jared was so cute when he blushed that Charlie wanted to reach out and cup his face and kiss him until he made him turn completely red.
“Well, next time you decide to bring home one of the biggest stars of the Romance Network, why don’t you take a moment to call ahead for reservations, hm?”
“Well, since you’re both here, you can help me with some of the canning that I was planning on doing this weekend,” Doug interjected. “I have a whole bunch of frozen cherries in the freezer, and I want to make sure I get them made into jam as soon as possible.”
“You’re canning again? ” Jared asked. “Didn’t he just get done doing that a few weeks ago?”
“Well, dear, you know how your father is when it comes to that damn canning machine. He says that you can’t have too many jars of jam waiting for you in the cellar.”
“I can speak for myself, you know.”
“I know you can, dear,” Joyce said as she passed behind Doug, patting him (more than a little patronizingly) on the arm. Looking at the two of them, it was pretty clear that Jared had gotten various aspects of his personality from each of his parents. While he had Joyce’s fussiness, he also had his father’s dogged determination.
What’s more, looking at them he found himself wondering what it would be like to be in a long-term relationship with Jared, whether they would bicker like this when they got old.
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Jared said, interrupting his thoughts. “My dad isn’t some kind of doomsdayer or survivalist or anything. He just doesn’t like to be caught unprepared for any eventuality, no matter how unlikely.”
“You never know how likely or unlikely something is until it’s actually happened,” Joyce said.
“There’ve been a few times when someone in the house lost their job, and it was a bit touch and go there for a while,” Jared said.
Charlie could see at once that this was the kind of conversation that made Joyce and Doug uncomfortable, so he decided to smooth things over and keep it moving.
“I always say that you can never be too careful when it comes to money and being prepared. I sometimes think that a lot of people in California should learn that lesson.”
Joyce nodded her head approvingly at this, and Charlie congratulated himself on once again being able to get on well with a set of parents.
“You’re a very nice young man,” Joyce said, reaching up and patting his cheek. “I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of you.”
Charlie didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.
Doug, not being one to stand on ceremony, announced, “There’s no time like the present. Let’s get canning!”
He got to his feet and stepped swiftly to the kitchen, leaving Jared and Charlie no choice but to follow him.
As he’d promised, two bags of cherries were already laid out on the table, along with sugar and jars and everything else that making cherry jam required. It wasn’t long before Jared and his dad were elbows-deep in the process and trading light-hearted jokes and jabs while Joyce reminded them to clean up the kitchen when they were done.
There was something almost magical about watching the way Jared interacted with his family. Theirs was clearly a deep bond, and while he had no doubt that they had their fair share of stresses and strains like any family, they’d clearly found a way of working through them and creating something powerful and unique. It was especially refreshing to see Jared be able to let his hair down a little and become a little less guarded. True, he’d begun to open up a bit on the drive here, but Charlie could sense that he was always keeping a little something back. Here, though, he truly looked carefree and joyful, and that made Charlie happy.
Suddenly Jared seemed to remember that he was standing right there and that he had yet to meaningfully contribute to any part of the canning process.
“Charlie, would you mind handing me that bag of sugar?” he asked. “I know this is a bit out of your wheelhouse, but you could at least try to be a little more helpful.”
“Jared, be nice to Charlie. He’s a guest in our house,” Joyce said reprovingly. “Honestly I don’t know who raised you to act like that in front of company.”
Jared rolled his eyes good-naturedly. As Charlie had still not handed him the sugar, he made to do it himself, and as they both reached for it their hands just barely brushed each other. Jared’s face turned that delicate shade of pink again, and even Charlie felt himself feeling a little blush creeping up the back of his neck.
“Sorry,” they both said in unison, followed quickly by “jinx.”
Charlie’s gaze flicked to Doug to see if he’d noticed anything, but his attention was strictly on the bubbling cherries. He could swear, though, that he saw the ghost of a small on the other man’s face.
The rest of the canning process passed in a bit of a blur. As Jared had said, this was very much out of Charlie’s realm of experience. However, there was something almost magical about the way that Jared and his dad went through the various steps of the process, from the pouring of the cherries into the little mason jars to setting the jars in the canner. Soon enough the kitchen was filled with numerous pops as the jars sealed.
There came a ring at the door just as the last jar went pop! .
Oh crap, Charlie thought. Here it comes.
Even though, as he’d told Jared, he wasn’t exactly the type of person to have paparazzi knocking down the door to get to him for a scoop, there would always be those who wanted to get a good story on him. After what had happened at the Stonewall, he had no doubt that there would be at least a few publications who would pay top dollar to figure out where he was, what he was doing, and who he was seeing.
Sometimes I wish I could just disappear .
As it turned out, though, the new arrivals weren’t some story-hungry reporters from TMZ or some other gossip rag. Instead, they were a cluster of people that Charlie could only assume were members of Jared’s family. Or some of them, anyway.
“I cannot believe this,” Jared said. “Mother, did you call anyone?”
Joyce put her hands in the air. “I promise that it wasn’t me. Besides, when would I have had the chance to call or tell anyone? You’ve been with me the whole time since you got home.”
I guess this is just some cosmic joke at my expense, Charlie thought wryly.
Jared shook his head. “Honestly, this family. Doesn’t anyone ever bother to announce when they’re going to be dropping by for a visit? And yes, mother, I know how ironic it is that I am the one saying that.”
“When you’re as right as I am, you don’t have to say anything. People just get it.”
Jared rolled his eyes at that.
“I guess there’s no getting around it. Can we just do the best we can to make sure that everyone keeps this to themselves? In case you missed the memo, the whole reason that we’re here is so that Charlie can lie low for a few days and let the chaos of the past day blow over. That’s not likely to happen if everyone in the family tells everyone else who isn’t here that Charlie Garrett is in your kitchen.”
Joyce looked like she was going to have something smart to say, but Doug deftly intervened, which Charlie had a feeling was a fairly regular occurrence in this household.
“Don’t worry, son. We’ll make sure that everyone knows to keep their lips sealed. You can trust us.”
Jared still looked skeptical about that particular claim, but thankfully he didn’t push the issue.
Soon enough the Russells’ small house was filled to bursting with a surprising number of people. It turned out that both Doug’s brother and Joyce’s sister had shown up, along with their kids. It was immediately clear to Charlie that this was a family that truly cared about each of its members, as everyone smiled and asked all of the right (and thoughtful) questions.
One of them, a young woman who seemed to be about Charlie’s and Jared’s age, sauntered up to him.
“So, you’re Charlie Garrett,” she said nonchalantly.
“I am,” he said, trying to keep from blushing. “And you would be?”
“I’m Hannah. And before you ask anything else, I’m Jared’s favorite cousin and his protector. If you want to do anything to him or hurt his feelings, you’re going to have me to answer to.”
“Trust me. The last thing that I would ever want to do is hurt Jared’s feelings. He’s…,” he tapered off, not quite sure just how much he was willing to say to this person he had just met and who was already giving him a very intense look.
She snorted, as if she knew what he was thinking and what he didn’t dare say out loud.
“So it’s that way already, is it? I can’t say that I blame you. Jared is pretty great, even if he has a hard time seeing it sometimes. I meant what I said, though. If you even think about hurting him in any way, I will make it my life’s mission to make sure that you never have a moment’s peace. Do I make myself clear?”
He gave her what he hoped wasn’t too mocking of a salute. “Yes, captain!”
“Oh, knock it off. You might be Mr. Hollywood, but that doesn’t mean that you get to be dramatic here. Trust me, there are enough hams in this family without adding you into the mix.”
As they settled into a conversation, Charlie felt a warm feeling flowing through him, and it took him a few minutes to figure out just what it was.
It felt like home.