Chapter 10
Ten
Jason
I drop my head into my hands as soon as the door shuts behind me.
Mother of God, I cannot believe I just said those words to Victor. Especially after he strongly implied that I’d…
I swallow against the shame rising in my throat.
I had.
I’d wiped that bit of chocolate from his lips, then kissed him. With desperation, not tenderness. He hadn’t responded at first, which I’d taken for surprise in the moment, as he seemed to get into it pretty quickly.
And he’d done everything I’d asked of him. Not that I did much asking. Not with words, anyway.
“On your knees,” was the first and last thing I said to him. Before shoving my half-hard cock into his mouth and pulling his hair while he sucked me to fullness.
I fucked his mouth until his lips were puffy and red, then pulled out and pushed at his shoulder until he turned around.
I fucked in between his thighs while I held him down with a hand on the back of his neck.
The only thing that kept me from fucking his ass was the lack of appropriate lubricant to hand. Well, and I admittedly had no experience with that.
I didn’t ask him what he wanted or whether he wanted me at all. I just took what I wanted in the face of the abyss of grief that threatened to consume me.
From my wife’s best friend.
My stepdaughter’s father.
How can I judge Logan for engaging in a relationship with a boy young enough to be his son? When I’ve done far worse, and worse yet, I am aching to do it again.
I push aside what Victor said about not regretting what we’d done. I can’t think about whether he was telling the truth or just placating my obvious freakout.
Not right now, not when every part of me yearns to go back in the other room and beg him to beg me to do it to him again.
I wash up in the en suite bathroom, crack the door open to tell Victor that he can take his turn if he needs to, and am in bed, covers over my shoulders, back to the door, before he decides whether to do so.
I sleep like the dead, thankfully, after two whiskies at dinner, the glass of wine afterwards, and the emotional upheaval of last night.
A raucous cawing wakes me just before dawn.
In the first light, a flock of birds flies across the patch of sky I can see from the bed.
I grab my phone and open the Merlin bird ID app and record the last of their calls as they disappear from view.
These are crimson-fronted parakeets, the app tells me.
When I look that bird up, they remind me a little of the green monk parakeets that have built elaborate nests in the upper reaches of the Green-Wood cemetery gate in Brooklyn.
I pull on a pair of hiking pants and a long-sleeved shirt, grab my binoculars, and tiptoe out of the bedroom.
Victor is stretched out on the sofa, his long legs hanging over one of the arms. I feel a pang of annoyance at myself for selfishly taking the bed last night.
It was his insistence, but I knew that the sofa is too short for him, and I should have insisted he take the bed.
His eyes are closed and he’s breathing evenly, but something about his posture suggests he’s not asleep.
I take the coward’s way out and leave before he opens his eyes and I have to face him.
The air is cool and damp as I walk along the path from the casita.
I reach the wooden sign marking the turnoff to the birding platform and step off the neat gravel path onto a dirt track that heads into the rainforest. What little sounds of human habitation that accompanied me along the manicured resort path fade away and all I hear are chirps and twitters and the quiet rustling of my own footsteps.
I take a deep breath and let the rest of it fall away—Victor, the confession, everything.
My binoculars hang from the harness straps and bounce gently against my chest as I walk.
Being outdoors, in nature, always soothes me.
It’s Monday, and I spare a brief thought of how my assistant director handled three Masses yesterday at Saint Sebastian’s when she normally only directs the one-thirty Mass in Spanish.
Nine a.m. Mass at Saint Sebastian’s is for the traditionalists, the ones who went to Catholic schools where the Baltimore Catechism was still taught, the elderly ladies who still cover their heads with lacy mantillas in church, and the admittedly small number of younger people who appreciate the full pomp and circumstance of a millennium of Catholic tradition.
The Saint Sebastian Six leads congregants at the nine and eleven-thirty Masses in songs that are part of the Mass, of course, but also performs a cappella sacred choral music before and after Mass, plus a handful of full concerts every year.
I hum a bit of the baritone part of the Kyrie we sing during Mass under my breath as I walk along the path.
Kelsey attended school attached to Saint Sebastian through high school but stopped attending Mass when she came out to me as a lesbian. Not that I blamed her. The Church’s position on homosexuality is…problematic, at best, and getting increasingly uncomfortable for me.
Anyway, God is in nature as much or more as he is in any church building, so I have no issues skipping Mass yesterday.
The birding platform turns out to be a literal wooden platform, raised a few feet above the ground, with a couple of wooden benches, and a rudimentary roof.
The benches face a pair of low trees planted between the wooded section of the grounds and a small clearing ringed with a scattering of low bushes.
Between the trees, there is a rough fence that’s clearly not meant to keep anything in or out.
A trio of large spikes stick up along the top rail and the decaying remnants of a banana peel dangle limply from the center spike.
I settle on one of the benches with my laminated field guide to Costa Rican birds and start an e-Bird checklist.
It’s only moments after I sit down that the first few birds fly in. A pair of Baltimore orioles and a bright red summer tanager are migratory birds that winter down here and I’ll see in Central Park in May. But there are several birds flittering around the trees and bushes that are new to me.
Using my field guide, I’m able to identify two blue-gray tanagers, a small handful of scarlet-rumped tanagers, and a Tennessee warbler, which also migrates in the spring to breed in Canada, but somehow I haven’t managed to see one yet.
I’m juggling my field guide and the Birds of the World website on my phone, trying to identify a tiny bronzy green finch-like bird with a yellow forehead patch, when a man clears his throat at the edge of the platform.
“Am I disturbing you?” Logan asks.
“No, not at all,“ I reply. I re-fold the laminated guide and set it on the bench next to me, my phone on top. “Please, sit.”
Logan steps up on the platform and sits next to me on the bench. He’s wearing a pair of muddy hiking shoes and there are splashes of mud on his pant legs.
“I think the resort has a selection of rubber boots you can borrow,” I tell him.
He stretches a leg out and rotates it, revealing mud splashed halfway up the back of his calf. “I should have taken them up on that.” He stretches both legs out in front of him “The trails are muddier than I expected.”
“Do much hiking at home?” I ask. “You live in New York City, right?”
“I have a condo on the Upper West Side,” he says. “But also a house in Connecticut. I used to do a fair bit of hiking and camping in the state parks in New York and Connecticut, when I was younger and had both more time and energy.”
He looks to be around my age, with graying hair and a close-shaved beard.
He’s got an air of quiet confidence about him, like he’s equally at home in the wilderness or a boardroom, and large hands that are currently resting on his thighs.
I look at them and remember that Victor said Logan was a Daddy Dom, whatever the hell that means.
Not that I’m going to ask this almost-stranger to explain his relationship to me.
“Does Silas like hiking?” I settle for asking.
Logan chuckles, a low, pleasant sound, and for a second, I see exactly what Silas must see in him.
“Ah, no. Silas doesn’t like being too hot, or too cold, for that matter.
He prefers eating in restaurants to cooking over a campfire, and sleeping in his own bed rather than in a clammy sleeping bag with rocks for a pillow. ”
“That sounds like a quote,” I say.
Logan tosses a smile at me, which I return. “It is. I took my son and him camping once, shortly after they started dating. Lance and I used to do a father-son camping trip every summer, and that was the one and only time we invited Silas.”
“And you haven’t been camping with your son since?” It’s none of my business, really, but I’m morbidly curious about this unconventional relationship.
“Lance and I went on our own the next summer, but then Lance cheated on Silas a few months ago, and well...” He shrugged. “Silas told you at dinner how we ended up together.”
“Oh, so you haven’t been together long?”
Logan shakes his head. “We’ve only been lovers since December, but Silas and Lance dated for two years, so I’ve known him for a while.”
Knowing him as his son’s boyfriend and knowing him as a lover and partner has got to be completely different things, I think.
“The transition’s been a bit strange,” Logan says, as if he read my mind. “I haven’t been hiding him or anything, but I admit we’ve spent the past few months mostly holed up together and not mixing with other people. You know what a new relationship is like.”
I…do not, actually. I haven’t had a new relationship since Leah. I do remember that Leah and I spent the better part of the first couple of months after we started dating in bed, so maybe that’s what Logan means.
“I hadn’t really thought whether we might need an origin story that’s something other than Silas telling people ’I revenge-banged my cheating ex-boyfriend’s dad.’”
I laugh loud enough to startle the perched birds on the fence, and Logan grins at me. “And you and Victor? How long have you been together?”
My laughter turns into a sputtering cough. Logan looks at me with concern, then hands me a water bottle he’d apparently brought along on his hike. I wave it away and compose myself. “Victor and I are not together.”
I sound shocked and Logan lifts his hands in surrender. “Sorry. Adrienne said Kelsey’s dads were going to be at the wedding and I just assumed… Which I shouldn’t have, forgive me.”
“No,” I sigh. “I mean, we are both her dads. Victor is her biological father and I married her mother when she was a little girl. We’ve both been involved in raising her for most of her life. But we’re not...“ I wave my hand in front of me, meaning Victor and me. “I don’t...Victor and I are not…”
I trail off because everything that springs to mind is a lie.
We’re not together. True now, but we were together that one night.
Victor and I are not involved. Depends on what you mean by “involved.”
I don’t feel that way about Victor. Lie. Though I don’t know exactly what I feel about Victor.
When I collect myself and look at Logan, he’s gazing at me with a cool, assessing expression. He seems like the kind of man who can read people, and I look away before he can see too much. “Okay,” he says mildly.
I can’t tell if he’s accepted my explanation of what Victor and I are or has his own opinion. He looks at his watch and slaps his hands on his thighs. “I think sunrise yoga should be finished by now and I’m going to meet Silas for breakfast.”
“I’ll be there shortly.” I say. That little bronze green bird is back and I’d really like add it to my checklist.
“Happy birding,” Logan says with another chuckle and leaves me to it.