Chapter Ten
“I can’t believe Tony is gay,” Xander said, setting his glass down on the old picnic table they’d scrounged up and set up outside on the cracked concrete patio two summers ago.
It was a balmy fall evening in Napa, and even though it was late when Xander and Kian had gotten off work, they’d obviously sensed Wyatt was troubled, and had brought out a six-pack to join him. Or to prevent him from brooding further.
“Maybe you should hook up with him,” Kian inserted slyly, and something in his tone made Wyatt sad.
Melancholy and missing the old, too-innocent boy who never would have suggested that.
Or teased Xander with the knowledge that he didn’t hook up with anyone.
Clearly Nate living here was not good for him.
“With Wyatt’s older, bad-boy brother? No, thanks. I don’t have that much of a masochistic streak,” Xander said after taking a long gulp of beer. “What about you?” he suggested, turning the tables back on Kian. “You’re about the age where making a bad romantic decision feels right.”
Except they both knew that Kian was already making a bad romantic decision, and instead of it being open and then closed, it was ongoing. Never-ending, until it finally, irrevocably ended.
“Yeah, no, thanks. Gross.” Kian shuddered. “No offense, Wyatt.”
“None taken,” Wyatt said wryly, glad he was here, and glad that his friends could distract him from brooding over this afternoon’s reveal.
“Are you going to tell her then?” Xander asked.
He was a huge advocate for bluntness, in just ripping the Band-Aid right off.
In his mind, it might hurt, but then you knew exactly where you stood.
He’d been telling Wyatt to tell his nana for years now.
Wyatt was not entirely pleased that Xander had turned out to be one hundred percent right.
He also fully expected Xander to exploit that, but he hadn’t so far. Maybe he was waiting until it smarted less.
“I think so, yeah.” Wyatt thought about telling them about Ryan, and about Ryan’s offer that he could now accept without fear.
Would Ryan still want him? Was Wyatt okay accepting his offer when he really wanted so much more?
Before, not being Ryan’s fake boyfriend had seemed like the worst thing that could happen, and now that possibilities were opening up, it seemed even more devastating that he might be able to go through the motions, but could never have what he really wanted for real.
“You could have done it years ago. I told you that she wasn’t going to reject you,” Xander said. So much for waiting until it stung a little less.
Wyatt tipped his beer bottle at his friend. “Thank you, friend, for always being brutally honest and for never wasting an opportunity to say I told you so.”
“Those are Xander’s four favorite words in the English language,” Kian said. He sounded edgy and resentful. Wyatt could only imagine what kind of shit Xander was giving him over Bastian. Or what kind of shit Aquino was giving him.
“All I’m saying is that it’s not going to end well for you,” Xander said tiredly. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“You don’t know that,” Kian said stubbornly. Wyatt felt like he’d just been dropped into the hundredth iteration of this particular argument. Maybe the thousandth.
“He’s not a good guy. He’s an asshole,” Xander argued. “You know this.” And suddenly, understandably, they were talking about the Bastard.
“You’re an asshole too, and I don’t want you to be alone. Just because people are tough doesn’t mean they don’t deserve love, and doesn’t mean they’re incapable of returning it.”
Kian, Wyatt realized, was wading in even deeper. He was going to try to “rescue” Bastian Aquino from his lonely, miserable, angry existence.
Yeah, that was going to end really well.
Maybe it was selfish, but Wyatt was sort of relieved that they’d at least forgotten about his own problems, and were back to focusing on their own.
“I can’t talk to you about this,” Xander said in mounting frustration.
He got up from the table, beer bottle empty.
“I worked fourteen hours today. Will probably work sixteen tomorrow. I’m going to bed.
It was good to see you, Wy, don’t be a stranger.
And for god’s sake, go tell your nana you’re gay. ”
The door to the house slammed behind him as punctuation.
“He’s gotten so grumpy,” Kian said, picking at the label on his bottle.
“I think he’s worried about you,” Wyatt said, and it wasn’t even a lie.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kian said.
“You’re in love with Aquino, and he’s right. If he ever returns those feelings, he’s still going to eat you whole, chew you up, and then spit you out. And coming from someone who’s had a fraction of that happen to them before, it’s not fun. It’s not something to look forward to.”
Kian’s voice was quiet. “What if you believed that no matter how much it hurt, it would still be worth it?”
He knew, Wyatt realized. He knew that it was going to end, and he was never going to get a happy ending with Bastian Aquino, and he didn’t even care. He loved him that much. So much for this being some sort of puppy-love crush that Kian would eventually get over.
And, Wyatt realized, as Kian patted him on the shoulder on his way inside, it even made some kind of twisted sense.
It would absolutely hurt like hell whenever the professional relationship between him and Ryan ended.
It would hurt if it ended and nothing ever happened between them again.
It wouldn’t hurt worse if he got another taste of something more personal.
At least if it ended then, he would have gotten something good out of it.
He would have been able to love Ryan for the time he was able, up close and personal, instead of staring in the window, wishing for something he couldn’t have.
“Hi,” Wyatt said, placing his drivers license on the front desk corner with a decisive click, “I’m here to visit Bea Blake. And I don’t know if he’s available, but I’d like to talk to the doctor in charge of her case.”
“Dr. Martinez? I’m not sure if he’s in today,” the front desk attendant said sympathetically. “But you can speak to the nurse on call?”
“That would be fine,” Wyatt said with a certainty he didn’t feel. He’d spent most of the night sitting outside at the rickety old picnic table, downing beer after beer, trying to drown out the fear that kept insisting he was making a mistake.
Finding out Tony had told Nana and she hadn’t thrown him out, or told him he was going to hell, or that he wasn’t lovable anymore—even though he was Tony—should have swept all Wyatt’s insecurities clean. But it turned out that it wasn’t as easy as deciding to do it and doing it.
Fear still held him back, still whispered things in his ear. It didn’t matter if his head knew they weren’t true, his heart still felt the echo of them.
“I’ll go get the nurse,” the young lady said with a smile. “Do you want to wait in the lobby?”
Wyatt wiped his damp palms on his jeans.
He’d hoped for a quick, five-minute conversation, and then he could go find Nana and finally tell her the truth.
But he’d also promised himself he’d talk to someone on her case about her memory loss patches recently.
He needed to know what to expect. Online research was only getting him so far.
“Sure.”
“There’s coffee if you’d like some,” she said, gesturing to the carafe set up in the lobby. “Help yourself.”
The last thing he needed was more coffee, and he’d had the coffee here before and knew it was awful. He wished he’d asked to talk to the doctor on the way out, and then he wouldn’t be spending more time waiting. Waiting until visiting hours today started had been hard enough.
The dark evil sludge that came out of the coffee carafe was the same as he’d remembered it, but optimistically he thought that at least it must be strong. He stirred in a sugar packet, looked askance at the fake cups of creamer, and grimaced when he took his first sip.
Still, it had wasted at least two minutes. Two minutes was good.
Two minutes he didn’t have to think about what Nana might look like when he finally told her the truth.
He’d wanted to text Ryan since last night, since he’d made up his mind, and it might have been easier to focus on the good things that would probably happen after he took this step.
But he hadn’t known what to say to him. After all, he’d already unequivocally told him no, with no hope that he might change his mind.
Ryan had probably already moved on to someone else. And considering how fixated he was on a fake boyfriend, how could Wyatt possibly hope to win him as a real one?
“Mr. Blake?” He turned, and a woman, mid-thirties, with blonde hair and kind eyes was standing at the entrance to the lobby. “They said you wanted to talk about your grandmother’s case?”
“Yes, I did,” he said, thankful that he hadn’t had to wait long.
“She’s in her art class now,” she said. “I’ll walk you down there and we can talk. I’m Gretchen, by the way.”
He shook the hand she offered. Noticed it was trembling a little. Hoped that she’d put it down to the caffeine in the noxious liquid they passed for coffee.
“I’ve recently moved away for work,” he said.
“I can’t get here as much as I’d like to.
I know consistency and routine are really important for her mental state.
But I can only get here maybe once a week.
I’m still calling regularly though. And last week, she didn’t recognize my voice or my name right away.
” His voice broke on the last few words, and he gritted his teeth, knowing that couldn’t be explained by the terrible coffee and hoping that he wouldn’t actually burst into tears in the middle of the lobby.
She took his elbow and steered him down one of the wide hallways. “I’ve consulted extensively with Dr. Martinez about your grandmother’s case,” she said. “I’m sorry to say, that’s not a huge surprise. She’s going to have lapses.”
“I didn’t think they’d come so quickly.”