14. Gage
14
GAGE
I ’m sewing frilly things on quilting tiles when Mom walks in the front door. I promised her I’d go to the forge with her, but I was too tired and wanted to hit a meeting then quilt instead. She smells like fire, has black smudges all over her arms and face, and drops her purse and all its contents right on the kitchen floor.
It brings me back to the coffee place and that barista’s purse. It feels like so long ago, but the memory is so vivid and terrifying. Great. Just fucking great. I’m triggered by dropped bags!
“Are those mine?” Mom asks, stuffing everything back into her bag.
I tilt my head and look at her from above the reading glasses I borrowed from the counter. “Yes. Do they look good on me?”
“You could make a straightjacket look cute, hun,” Mom says. “Did you eat?” She sorts through my finished sewing jobs. “What are these?”
“Well, they’re supposed to be butterflies, but sometimes I fuck up the wings a bit, so they’re more like… just fucked up butterflies.” I study all the frilly things I’ve sewed on. “I’m not double looping when I should be swooping anymore, though, so that’s progress. How was blacksmithing?”
“I’m making a Katana. Gonna be awesome.” She sits down at the table with me. “How’re you doing, babe? Things going well? You look well.”
I take off her glasses and get up to start the kettle. Tea time with Mom at night is one of my new favourite things. Especially while I’m trying not to hyperfocus on Alexei and accidentally turn him into a new addiction. Moderation. I’m trying that whole thing. Taking note of my feelings and my desires, treating him like a human being I’m falling for instead of a substance I can abuse.
But watching him come is playing on a loop in my mind, and I hope it never stops.
“I ran into Brian on the street. It was… well, it was shit. I felt so stupid and weak. I almost wanted to go with him. Actually, no. I didn’t want to go with him, but I got kind of jealous of his high.” I look my mom in the eyes. “Sorry I’m like this.”
“That’s why you stayed at Nathan’s so late?”
I nod. “Yeah. Just… I don’t know how to act, Mom. Like… I don’t want Nick and Cole to see me like that. They shouldn’t have to worry about me.”
“And you shouldn’t have to hide from them,” she says. “Boys! Tea!”
“What’re you doing?” I hiss at her, smacking her arm so suddenly her chapstick goes flying. “Shit. Sorry.” I laugh.
“No more hiding, Gage. We’re family. Family supports family, no matter what we’re going through.” She’s got her phone pressed to her ear. “Owen? Oh, sorry, Marian. Thought I dialled Owen. Yes. Yes. Gage is working on his tiles.”
“Hi, Marian!” I yell.
When Mom finally gets Owen on the phone to invite him over for inappropriately timed tea, the twins shuffle into the kitchen, bickering about whether a taco is a sandwich or not.
It isn’t.
Is it?
Shit.
“Okay, let’s all yell at Gage about hiding from us,” Mom says when we’re all sipping Oolong and complaining that it isn’t as good as Earl Grey. “He’s trying to protect us from his hard times, but we don’t want him to do that, do we?”
And then I get attacked with love and all that bullshit, and by the time the clock strikes midnight, I’m a crying, venting mess of a loser who doesn’t feel so loser-y anymore because my family fucking loves me. And to make me feel even less loser-y, I find out that all of them are going through shit.
Owen has no idea why he can’t keep a relationship, and even started going to therapy because he thinks it might have something to do with Dad walking out on all of us. Suddenly. Without a word. And then I made it worse by doing the same thing. Shit.
Cole says he feels blank. Like has never had a crush. Doesn’t find anyone attractive. Doesn’t wanna have sex. I told him that’s okay, and Mom, that fucking genius woman, made him comfortable enough to admit he’s trying to decide if he’s maybe aro or ace. Or both.
Nick, on the other hand, has the biggest crush on the absolute wrong person. Owen’s best friend. Owen laughed his ass off at that, but Nick didn’t seem deterred.
And Mom? Despite how busy she keeps herself and how many friends she has, she feels lonely sometimes. And I hate that for her because she’s the best person I know, and I never want her to feel lonely. So late-night tea is a must.
All in all, I’m so glad I moved home. I need this. I think my family needs it, too.
Alexei is glancing around obsessively. He’s checking every mirror, gripping the steering wheel too tight, and pressing hard on the brake and the gas.
“There are people everywhere, Gage!” he yells at me. “And cars. And bikes. Oh, don’t get me started on the bikes!”
I smile at the traffic. “I know, but you’re in your lane, doing fine, in control. Honestly, if you’re timid and hesitant, it gives those bikers the chance to think it’s their right of way. You gotta take it, and they’ll back off.”
“Don’t bikers have the right of way?” he asks.
“Yeah, at crossings and shit, but they aren’t allowed to zip through lanes like that. It’s your lane. Own it, baby!”
He looks over at me. “No, you did not.”
I laugh. Hard. “Call you baby?”
“Yes. That.”
“I was just in the moment. I meant it more like an Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of baby. Like hasta la vista, baby .”
“It better have been that,” Alexei snips, driving so much more confidently now that he’s not over-focusing on the traffic.
“Not a fan of pet names?” I ask, honestly just wanting to get to know him.
“I am, but I selfishly want my pet name to be unique. Like something only for me. You know how many ‘babys’ there are in the world? I don’t want to be one of them.”
I kind of love that. “Oh, I’ll come up with something real special for you. I’ll know it when I stumble across it. But I also love Alexei. I don’t know any other Alexeis.”
“My mom used to call me Alyosha. I never knew why, but I looked it up years later. It’s Russian, but she wasn’t Russian, so I have no idea why she called me that. And weirdly, just because I don’t understand it, it makes it special. Dad doesn’t know either, so I guess it’s one of those mysteries I’ll never find the answer to.” He shrugs. “You’re the only Gage I know, too. Although, I know a Gabe. How’s your sex journal?”
God, he switches gears in a single breath. Always keeping me on my toes. “It’s an arousal journal, but maybe soon it’ll turn into a sex journal. Guess we’re about to find out how I’m doing. Turn here.”
Alexei puts the blinker on and makes the right turn. He follows the map’s commands to the office building my therapist works out of and expertly parks the car, backing into the space because he feels more at ease when the car is ready to go. It’s also a safe car. Nothing flashy. Has all the latest safety features and a middle-aged parent would probably drive it.
“You drive just fine. I know you’re uncomfortable in the city, but I think it just takes practice and getting used to it again.”
“We aren’t skimming over your sex journal comment,” he says, turning the engine off. “Are you sure you want me to go in with you?”
“No pressure if you don’t want to, but yeah. I think it’ll help us both. Don’t you?” I ask.
“Am I allowed to talk? Ask questions?”
I grin at him, taking his hand and joining our fingers together. “Ask anything you want. I’m not hiding, and she knows she’s allowed to tell you anything. This is me being a responsible, reformed man.”
“I’m telling her about the shower show,” he says. “I want her take.”
And for some reason, all I can think about is kissing him. He said I needed to be prepared for the level of intimacy it’d bring, but fuck me, all I want is intimacy with him. And not just the sexual kind. I want to hold him and snuggle him. I want to laugh with him and sleep next to him. I want to get so caught up in a make-out session with him that we forget to eat and my lips hurt after. I want to differentiate him from a fixation, love on him without obsessing over him, and learn new ways to make him smile every single day.
I’m just staring at him, being totally weird and creepy about it, having an epiphany while he stares back, completely at ease with the intense and unnatural eye contact. Alexei isn’t someone who buckles under scrutiny, and I kind of love that he has no idea who he is while knowing exactly who he thinks he is. He’s set in his ways, firm on so many things, confident about not being too confident, and totally in charge of himself. He said no to me. When I told him to press play while I was still physically touching him, he said no until I explained it. I don’t want to look at him as someone who is going to be good for my sobriety, but at the same time… he’s good for my sobriety.
“Will you hate me if I relapse?” I ask.
“Hate? No. Hurt? Yes.” He tilts his head, eyes on me, hair glinting in the afternoon sun. “Why?”
“What if I accidentally start pressuring you to eat fried meat? What if I offer you so many cookies that you get a sweet tooth and change completely? What if you get secondhand smoke from all my cigarettes and, I don’t know, get lung cancer or something? Then I’ll have to get cancer just so I can be sick with you.”
“Gage,” he says, placing a hand on mine. His eyes are unshakeable, but his neck and cheeks still flush from the contact. “You won’t. Wanna know why? Two reasons, really. One, I’m not fucking around when I say you’ll never have that kind of control over me. My heart, my mood, my infatuation, and my sex drive, yes, but not my lifestyle. I am too firm in a lot of my beliefs to ever let you influence them, and I have the history to treat them as important. But secondly, because you barely smoke near me anymore. When we’re walking, you step away. You haven’t smoked in my car. You respect me. So, when we get cancer, it’ll be of our own making. You’ll get throat cancer from your cigarettes, and I’ll get bone cancer because I don’t drink enough milk. We’ll fade away together, but not because of each other.”
Is it possible to love someone without fully knowing them? “Are you making casual jokes about cancer?”
“I never joke about cancer. I’m being serious. Our lifestyles and our genetics determine our future, and you smoke while I avoid the calcium in dairy. They are unrelated to each other, but the end result could still turn up cancer. Anything could turn up cancer. You respect me and worry about these things, so I trust you,” he says. “It’s you who doesn’t trust yourself. So, let’s go learn how to do that.” He nods at the building. “Everything in life has risks, Gage. Just gotta find the ones worth taking.”
I’m thinking about kissing him again. A soft, gentle, long and drawn-out slow kiss that gets my heart pumping but not my dick hardening. That’s what I want with him. As we climb out of the car, I take his hand, joining our fingers together while we walk.
He unlinks them. “I prefer this kind of hand-holding.” He just holds my hand, palm to palm, no linking. “More of a natural fit, don’t you think?”
So fucking natural. I smile at him. “You know, there are plenty of other foods to get calcium from.”
“Don’t educate me on nutrition, Gage. I’ll win.”
There’s no waiting room breather when we walk into Natalie’s office. She brings us right into her room, introduces herself to Alexei, and he introduces himself as ‘the guy’ I referred to, then we both sit back and watch him pull a tiny notebook and pen from his pocket, readying it on his thigh.
“You brought notes?” I ask, grinning at him.
“I brought notes, and I am going to take more notes,” he confirms. “How do we start?”
So, Natalie asks me how I’m doing and if I’ve been struggling with anything, and Alexei listens intently while I tell her I’m confused because I’m horny but not compulsive about it. We’re back on the ‘sobriety can affect sex drive’ topic, Alexei is jotting notes, and then she adds that my rationalization skills are improving with my recovery, and it’s a great step in my progress. I’m still on the fence about it because I don’t understand how I can be a sex addict if I’m not addicted to sex. Nothing makes sense, and when I tell her that, she tells me that addictions, especially non-substance ones, don’t always make sense.
When Natalie looks at Alexei, nodding to his list and giving him the green light to go for it, he clears his throat, straightens his back, and clicks the pen. “We had a sexy encounter. Shall I explain it?”
“Gage should,” she says, looking at me. “I want to hear your take.”
Alexei smiles at me. So, I go for it. “Well, I’ve been keeping the arousal journal, right? And the other night, he got me all worked up, and I told him I’d show him the entry. I said it to him instead. In a voicemail. But before he could listen to it, I went to his place, put us in the bathroom, touched him a little, and then we listened to it together with the glass shower door as a barrier.”
“While masturbating,” Alexei adds helpfully.
“To absolute completion,” I add, winking.
“That’s fun. And respectful. Can I ask why you put the barrier between you?” Natalie asks.
“Because I don’t understand anything!” I kind of yell at her. “I’m so confused about this diagnosis. Old me fucked until I dropped, but new me barely gets a stiffy unless it’s over him, and even then, none of it feels out of control or anything, so it’s like I’m just waiting for it to spring up on me and turn me into a sex monster.” I huff, feeling better about letting that out. “Am I an impulsive sex addict or not? I don’t get it.”
Alexei nods beside me. “Yes, that. That is also my question, and how we can be responsible about it when I don’t really understand what he needs.”
“Mindfulness,” Natalie says easily. “When someone recovering from disordered eating makes meal choices, they do it with mindfulness. The same way someone recovering from compulsive sex acts approaches sexual activity again. Usually, there are steps involved, exercises, journalling, and practice phases, but since I’m seeing you after a year of abstinence, and you’re already in your journalling and practice phase, I think it’s okay to move into actual activity. If you feel ready, Gage, you’re ready. All you can do to prepare is be aware, trust your partner, and trust yourself. Do you?”
“I trust Alexei,” I say.
“And I trust myself,” Alexei says. “But I’m also just a person. I get urges. What if I get carried away?”
“That’s not your responsibility,” I tell him. “It’s mine.”
“It’s both of yours. Awareness. That’s the key. You’re allowed to get carried away. It’s sex. It’s supposed to feel good. We want it to feel good! You’re allowed to enjoy it and get swept up in it. It’s the addictive, compulsive mindset we’re watching for. Honestly, Alexei, you don’t seem like someone who’s intimidated by conversation, am I right?”
“Not even a little,” he says, and I laugh, remembering when he bluntly asked me what I’m addicted to.
“So, have the sex when you’re ready. Take slow steps. Start with something less invasive if you want. And then talk about it. Check in with each other. Create a channel of openness. It’s not like you’re hiding your situation from him, Gage, and that is a huge factor in taking ownership of something. It makes it possible for you to communicate about it.”
She’s right. I’m being honest about everything. Alexei knows my darker past, and he isn’t afraid of it. Plus, he’s a fucking gremlin with willpower, and I trust him so much more because of it. I… “I feel ready.”
Because maybe this kind of addiction was fuelled by my others, and now that I’m healing, progressing, I have what it takes to have a normal sex life with an icy blue-haired guy who makes every part of me come alive so much more than drugs ever did.
“I’m thinking about having sex with your son!” I blurt, immediately sinking behind the hoist of Nathan’s shop. “Don’t kill me!”
I’m a hypocrite and a liar because I literally just told him the other night that there would be no sex, but now Natalie is encouraging me to enter the practice phase of my treatment, and Alexei is letting me lead by being responsible for the both of us, and I’m just a sober asshole with urges that feel manageable instead of out of control, so… yeah. I want to try things. I want to make Alexei feel good. I want to connect with him in a new way. I want to experience him sexually and then sit up, half naked in the blankets of our beds, scribbling our thoughts into my journal. It’s not just the sex I’m looking forward to. It’s the whole experience. The build-up, the act, the silliness that will come after, when we jot-point down all the important bits and then get serious about the awareness parts. I feel comfortable enough to do that with him. I’m excited about doing that with him. And I think I know Alexei well enough to know he’s excited about the after parts as much as the sex itself.
Nathan has a big, ominous metal tool in his hand, and maybe I should have waited to blurt that until we were away from all the mechanical weapons. He lifts a brow, saying nothing.
So, naturally, I over-explain.
“It’s just, he’s amazing, right? And I’m learning to be better and look at life differently, and basically just start over. And here he comes, all angry at me when you forced us to have breakfast together, which, by the way, makes this whole thing your fault, and now I’m dreaming of things I’ve never dreamt of before. Because I used to want a partner who would be my caretaker so I could just get fucked up and have a safe place to go, but now I want… like, I wanna be his caretaker. I wanna make him happy and smiley and all that shit, and since he’s so strong-willed and a bit snippy, if I’m being honest, I feel like he’s the perfect person to be around me without me rubbing off on him. But now I’m making it sound like he’s just good for me and I’m not good for him, and I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to be good for him. I will be. Because I care about him more than I’ve ever… and you know? Like… he’s Alexei.” I should have just led with that part. He’s Alexei. There’s no better explanation.
“Jesus,” Nathan groans. “Pass me that and stop hiding.”
I pass him the part from the trolly, backing up a step in case he gets any ideas about smacking me. “He’s Alexei,” I repeat.
“I’m aware,” Nathan says. “Which means he knows what he wants. No one is going to deter him until he changes his mind about it.”
“You saying he’s going to change his mind about me?”
Nathan huffs. “Not unless you hurt or mistreat him. He won’t tolerate that, which makes him…”
“Alexei,” I fill in. “And I’m being very self-aware about how I’m treating him.”
“I know you are,” Nathan admits. “He’s… happy. All I want for him is happiness, and if you help that, I can’t really complain. But…”
Oh, anxiety! The but! I gear up to listen to all the ways I’m bad for his son. About how I’m a junkie who has fucked up rehab seven times, stole a frappé and snorted a baggy of not-glitter just because it was there, ruined the lives of everyone around me because I’m a selfish asshole who gets easily hooked on destructive behaviour. My heart is sinking already.
“But your happiness is just as important. So is your recovery. Alexei can be… stress-inducing, so you better be mindful of that is all I’m saying.”
Oh. My eyes burn and my chest tightens, and I don’t know what to say because nobody’s really ever told me I’m important before. Outside of my family, I’m just… that guy who got messed up and stayed messed up. To Brian, I was a fun party friend. To my teachers, I was a letdown and someone they worried about. To Paul, I was someone who needed to be hidden.
That boy is troubled.
He’s such a bad influence.
His poor mother.
Did you hear what he did?
I’m Gage Rossum, the disappointment.
Until now…
“And as much as I hate adding this part, and we’re not talking about it again, it better be more than just sex with my son,” Nathan adds while I’m still suffocating on kindness. “He likes you.”
“I like him too,” I whisper to the hoist. “I like him so much.”
Nathan sighs. “His birthday is tomorrow. In case you didn’t know.”