September Mornings
THE THING about Sacramento, Luca thought, was that September could be as gawdawful hot as August.
Except it stayed dark longer, so he could stay in bed while Isaac ran around and tried to do all the things before he ran out of the house with wet hair, no lid on his travel cup of coffee, and at least one sheaf of papers he really needed still on the couch where he’d left it when he’d fallen asleep the night before.
Yeah, the first four weeks (so far) of school were everything Isaac had promised they’d be, but harder.
Poor Isaac.
Allegra had started cooking two days a week—no ask, just cooking.
Sometimes it was something great and healthy.
Sometimes it was frozen manicotti covered with sauce from a jar and big handfuls of shredded cheese.
Isaac was always distractedly grateful, sometimes at ten o’clock at night because he’d been supervising a game or a club or something and then attended a PTA meeting before he came home to eat for the first time all day.
On the days he was going to be gone until late, Luca would hang in the house with Allegra, not only to keep her company, but also to help her pick up the living room and sort the junk mail off the kitchen table and generally do the big cleaning things that Isaac would spend all weekend doing if they didn’t pick up the slack.
Luca could see what he’d been talking about, that hot, sticky day in August—but he could also see what he hadn’t.
That Isaac hadn’t needed to worry about his relationship—he’d needed his relationship to support him!
A little bit of work—picking up the living room, sorting the junk mail, making sure the trash got taken out, or even Allegra’s most half-assed cooking—reaped big rewards.
The first week Luca had taken the trash out, Isaac had literally sunk to his knees in the bedroom and given him the best blow job of gratitude Luca could ever recall receiving.
He hadn’t even known such things existed, but apparently a teacher in the first six weeks of school had a lot more energy to expend toward sex if his partner and roommate didn’t make him do all the other work.
It was amazing—Luca needed to write that little bit of wisdom on the inside of his eyelids so he never forgot.
And this morning, Luca was going to really up his game.
He rolled out of bed while Isaac was in the shower, crept down the stairs, and tried to remember his list.
Okay—first thing, make coffee. He’d seen Isaac make it before for the two of them, special little French press and all—voila. Coffee was working.
Second thing, fix lunch. He’d seen Isaac do this sometimes by shoving a cup of noodles in his lunch bag, throwing a yogurt in afterward, and then running out the door.
Luca had shopped for this one. First he made a nice sandwich in two parts and used a sandwich container to separate the pickles, tomatoes, and lettuce from the slathered bread and lunchmeat.
Then a yogurt, a container of sliced apples, two big bottles of soda (one for Roxy), a bag of cookies, and two bags of chips.
He’d worry about Isaac actually eating all that, but he knew that often the things like the cookies or the chips or even the yogurt or cottage cheese got given to a student who had forgotten their lunch.
Today was Chess Club during lunch and an IEP meeting after school, so that food was going somewhere, Luca was positive.
Then, while Isaac was running down the stairs, muttering to himself, Luca pulled the bagel out of the toaster and spread a smear over one side and avocado on the other, then handed it to Isaac to eat while Luca pulled his travel mug out of the dishwasher and added coffee to it, with an unhealthy dollop of cream and sugar.
Isaac stared at him, his mouth full of bagel, his eyes wide. “Wha’ di’ ’oo do?” he asked before swallowing. “What is all this?”
“You were looking a little ragged there,” Luca said kindly. “I thought I’d, you know, help out this morning. Sorry it took me so long to figure out what you needed.”
To his horror, Isaac’s eyes got shiny. “I yelled at Allegra yesterday,” he said in a small voice.
Luca snorted. “Yelling” had been an overstatement. Isaac had gone to sit down on the couch, and Allegra’s yarn work wasn’t only on the couch, it was all over the couch, and he’d said, “Allegra, can we just… you know!”
And Luca’s sister had said, “Tell me to get my shit off the couch, Isaac. You gotta right to your own furniture.” She’d been sitting in one of the armchairs, facing all the yarn on the couch, and she’d struggled to her feet, because her “emerging volleyball,” as Isaac had called it in August, was now an “emerging beachball” in mid-September.
“No, no, no,” Isaac had said, sounding horrified.
“My bad. I’m sorry. Here, I can just, you know…
.” And he shooed her to sit back down while he bustled around the couch, reducing the area she was using to the corner so he could sit and pick up his own work, which he seemed to be keeping secret from Luca and Allegra, which was funny since he worked on it while they were both watching him, but he wouldn’t tell them what it was going to be.
The blanket had been completed—and it was quite stunning, Luca thought.
He’d wanted to hang it up in the nursery, but Isaac and Allegra had both said no, it would be sturdy enough to be loved to tatters, and that’s how they thought a good yarn object should be treated.
He’d taken pictures, though, and Isaac had shown them to his students, and there was interest in doing another blanket design in the spring, maybe this time giving the blanket to charity.
Isaac and Roxy were already floating ideas, which was great, and Luca suddenly got that the tangle of September in school was like the tangle of yarn in Isaac’s stash.
It was all about the great potential everybody had to create something better with the materials at hand.
The fact that Isaac respected that for Luca’s sister as she tried to create more of her own yarn things made Allegra absolutely adore him.
And not just Allegra.
Luca had heard that whispered confession of love that sticky night in August. He’d wanted so badly to respond, to tell Isaac that he wasn’t alone, that Luca loved him too.
But he’d seen that night how these weeks—they were a test of the Isaac emotional support system.
Isaac had been let down so badly before.
He needed to make sure Luca wouldn’t run, and Allegra wouldn’t emotionally ghost him, and these people he’d let into his life—into his home—wouldn’t simply disappear because Isaac was too damned much work.
Isaac’s job, well, that was a lot of work.
Luca could see how good teachers burned out in a minimal amount of time.
But Isaac? Isaac had been so grateful for the smallest bits of support.
The week before, he’d muttered about how he knew he had some more of the yarn he was working with—a really lovely purple—and how he’d have to go into the stash that weekend and search.
Allegra had found it while doing her own search of the stash (it was sort of a mutual stash, now that she kept adding to it) and set it on his knitting basket, and he’d been so happy he’d almost cried.
Such a small thing. Such huge dividends.
Between that and watching Isaac trying not to lose his temper with Allegra’s mess (the yarn on the couch wasn’t the only time all the seat space had been taken by her stuff by any means), Luca thought that he really needed to up his game.
He slept over most nights of the week. Most of his clothes were at Isaac’s, his laptop was usually there, and the only food in his fridge in his apartment was beer, and even that had expired.
He’d gotten a feel for Isaac’s morning routine, and the night before, as Isaac had tried hard not to yell at Allegra, Luca had gotten an idea.
“I…,” Isaac said, looking at the lunch, the coffee cup, the bagel that he seemed to regard as deepest magic, “I can’t believe all of this.”
“It’s no big,” Luca said with a shrug. “I should have started doing this in August, I just….” He gave a sheepish smile. “I’m a big doofus, and I didn’t realize what your routine would be. But don’t worry—I’ve got it sorted now.”
“But….” Isaac swallowed. “But you didn’t have to….” To Luca’s horror, Isaac’s eyes grew red-rimmed.
“It’s okay, Isaac!” Luca said. “I swear, I’ll get the hang of things. I told you I wanted to support you—this is, like, the least I can do. And if the lunch is too big or you don’t like the coffee—”
“I yelled at your sister,” he said again, and this time he finished with a wail, and before Luca knew what was happening, he had an armful of tearful teacher, brought to his knees by a bagel and smear, absolutely leveled by somebody else handing him his coffee and telling him to have a good day.
A FEW days later, Isaac got home shortly after Luca and Allegra, looking…
well, beat, was the only way Luca could describe it.
He got home, dropped his briefcase on the ground next to the door, and stumbled to the couch, where Euclid was sleeping.
Isaac picked up the boneless cat and held him, just held him.
And cried.
Luca and Allegra stared at each other for a moment, and Luca took a few steps toward him, only to be put off by Allegra motioning to her phone. She disappeared down the hall to make a call, and after a moment of watching Isaac, Luca followed her.
“Oh,” Allegra was saying, her voice subdued. “Oh. Oh no. Oh, Roxy—that’s so awful. Okay. Okay. We… we just didn’t know what to do.”
There was a pause, and then Allegra nodded at Luca. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, I’ll tell him. I… he’s devastated.”
Another pause, and this time Luca could hear sobbing.
“I guess you both are,” Allegra murmured. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”
After a few moments, she hung up the phone and looked at Luca helplessly.
“A carload of kids was driven off the road by a police cruiser last night. They… they weren’t doing anything wrong, but the cruiser tried to pass them and then swerved back into the lane.
Two of the kids were”—her voice caught—“killed. One of them was someone Roxy and Isaac had both taught.”
Luca’s brain shorted out. “Marcelle?” he asked. “Sheryl?”
“No,” Allegra said, shaking her head. “No—nobody we’ve met, but… but you’ve seen them. They love those kids and… and Roxy said something like this shakes up the whole school. Luca, what do we do?”
Luca gave a small smile. “Well, you go ahead and order pizza,” he said, “because nobody here is cooking tonight.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
He stepped close enough to hug his sister and kiss her temple. “I’m going to go sit next to my boyfriend on the couch while he stares into space. I think it’s my job.”
She nodded and wiped her face on his shirt. She was his sister, but that didn’t make her perfect.
“Two pizzas,” she said, her voice choked. “It’ll be easier to make his lunch tomorrow.”
“There’s the spirit.”
Isaac was still holding the cat when Luca got back, but he’d stopped crying.
Luca sank his weight into the couch cushions, and Isaac leaned against him, just that simply, his head on Luca’s shoulder.
“Roxy told you?” he asked, after the late afternoon shadows through the drapes had turned into early evening shadows.
“Yeah.”
“Her name was Delilah. I had her as a freshman. I… I was looking forward to having her in my junior class next year.”
Luca wrapped his arm around Isaac’s shoulder. “Isaac, I’m so sorry.”
Isaac nodded and turned his tearstained face up to Luca. “Do you… do you even have any clothes left in your apartment?” he asked.
Luca blinked at the change of subject. “Yeah, why?”
“Bring them over. We can put your bed or your desk or whatever in Todd’s old office and the rest of your stuff in storage. Move in with me. Make it official.”
Luca gaped. “Uhm….”
Isaac gave a fleeting smile. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” He shrugged sheepishly. “I, you know, wanted to wait until you were less stressed to say it. Maybe, uhm, a date with wine, a pricey dinner, all the romance stuff we haven’t done yet.”
“Save it for some day in March,” Isaac said, obviously not caring about wine and dinner and romance.
“After the Valentines Day bullshit has cleared the stores. I don’t…
I’ve had the proposal and the appropriate romance, and that led to a really unhappy marriage and a man I still get mad at for dropping dead because he thought he was smarter than his blood pressure medicine.
My life would have been so much… so much better if I’d gotten a divorce instead.
So I don’t need to do the ‘appropriate’ thing.
I love you. You sat next to me and stared out into space for an hour, just…
just being there. That’s more emotional support than I got from Todd in the last three years of our marriage.
Tonight’s going to suck. I’m going to cry again.
I-I don’t have any idea how to get through the next few hours, or tomorrow, or next week.
But I know that you haven’t left my side yet.
Move in with me. We can be a family. Don’t leave my side until you can’t stand me anymore.
Life’s unpredictable. Fuck it. Let’s be together. ”
Luca had never smiled through tears before. “That’s some goddamned romance,” he murmured and pulled Isaac even tighter to his side.
The night was awful, as predicted. They had a sitcom marathon, which Isaac cried through, and Allegra sat next to him when Luca was off doing things like dishing up pizza and cleaning up the kitchen.
But at the end of the night, Luca took Isaac upstairs and undressed him, slowly, with purpose, and then kissed him and touched all his skin until he wasn’t thinking about sadness or grief anymore, but was pulled out of himself, pulled to a place where sadness couldn’t touch him.
And then they were moving together, quietly, until Isaac’s back arched, and he let out a soft cry and came.
Luca followed, and in the harsh breathing and roaring heartbeats that followed, Isaac murmured, “See that? That was some fucking romance.”
Luca’s eyes burned even as he laughed, and he held Isaac even closer. He thought they might make it through the six weeks after all.