Chapter Twenty-Four
LEWIS IS a few minutes late with his evening watering rounds because he’s been texting Taylor about the Mancini-Sommer family Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow. There are always too many relatives, too much noise, too many cousins who Lewis only sees a couple times a year. He kind of loves it. Like, he’s happy he doesn’t have to deal with it all the time—he’s good with their nuclear family—but seeing everyone else once in a while is nice.
Taylor isn’t looking forward to it. Her latest IVF treatment was unsuccessful, and everyone in the family knows she’s trying to conceive, and on holidays they all air their opinions about her choices.
Sorry but you KNOW Aunt Jean is going to tell me to fInD a MaN and get pregnant the old-fashioned way
Tell her you leave the finding a man stuff to me
She’ll think you’re vetting potential husbands for me
Oof yeah you don’t want that
Poor Lew
Does that mean you’re still not dating?
Is he still not dating? Because he’s staying in a guy’s apartment taking care of his plants, and he’s sleeping with that guy, and that guy has pretty much occupied all of his thoughts for the past few weeks.
Also he’s still wearing the wedding band.
It’s complicated
So you’re definitely seeing someone but you don’t want to call it what it is because you’re afraid you’re going to get burned
Shut up
Nailed it
I’m such a smart big sister
Vegas guy?
No comment
Lewiiiiiiiiiiiis
He refuses to tell her anything over text, but she extracts a very serious sibling promise that he’ll tell her everything tomorrow.
The thought is actually kind of… exciting? Telling Taylor about Tad makes the whole thing real in a way that’s terrifying but also thrilling. He’s always told his family about his boyfriends, so keeping Tad a secret was definitely part of the Dating Break.
He yawns and stretches. It’s almost midnight, and if he’s going to get to his parents’ house in Weehawken on time tomorrow and also not be a zombie, he needs to get to bed.
But first, plants. He’s pretty sure he’s been doing a good job—at least, none of them look dead—and he’s determined to keep it up so Tad comes home to an apartment full of healthy greenery. And maybe he’ll throw himself into Lewis’s arms in gratitude, and Lewis can push him into the bedroom to show him how long the week felt without seeing him.
Smiling at the daydream—which is quickly becoming pornographic—Lewis picks up the spray bottle and starts making the rounds.
There’s a noise at the door. A key turns in the lock and he whirls, heart pounding. His brain whirs through possibilities —break-in? Tad’s boss, Callie? Maintenance? Landlord?—as he stands there, feet planted, and raises his hands defensively.
Only to realize he’s holding the spray bottle.
The door swings open. It’s Tad, Hetty cradled in his arms.
Right, yeah, Tad . This is Tad’s apartment, and Tad has a key. But Tad isn’t supposed to be back until Saturday?
“It’s Wednesday,” Lewis blurts.
Tad eyes the spray bottle. “I can see why you’re in law, with that attention to detail.”
“What are you doing back?” Lewis asks. That’s a little better.
“What are you doing with that spray bottle?” Tad shoots back.
Hetty meows and Tad sets her on the floor. She streaks to Tad’s bedroom. Lewis puts the spray bottle down. “I was watering. I heard the key in the door.” The fact that it’s 11:55 at night settles in Lewis’s brain as an oddity. Furthermore, Tad’s in a button-up, there’s a hint of cologne wafting off him, and his hair is sticking up in a way that suggests it was, earlier in the day, heavily tamed by product.
Also, Tad’s eyes are red-rimmed and his lips are pressed into a thin line. Dark purple circles shadow his eyes.
“Is everything okay?” Lewis asks.
“Um.” Tad lets out a high-pitched, strained laugh, not sounding at all like himself. He shoves a hand into his hair, and Lewis can see exactly how it ended up sticking up. “Um,” Tad repeats—then crosses to Lewis, grabs his head, and pulls him into a hard kiss.
It’s not exactly Tad throwing himself into Lewis’s arms for taking such good care of his plants—Lewis doesn’t think Tad even noticed how healthy the plants look—but he’s super okay with it.
It’s a desperate, grasping kiss, and it’s hot until Tad lets out a wounded whimper and fists Lewis’s hair hard enough to sting —and Lewis tastes salt and realizes Tad’s crying so hard the tears are running into their joined mouths.
Lewis breaks the kiss and puts his hands on both sides of Tad’s face. “Baby—baby, don’t, it’s okay. You’re okay, I’ve got you.”
Which is apparently the wrong thing to say, because Tad cries harder. Lewis pulls him into a tight hug and holds him, whispering nonsense and rubbing his back. He’s trying to surreptitiously check Tad for injuries or something—god, he’s dressed up, could he have been assaulted or something at a club? Are there clubs in Watertown?—but he can’t find anything.
When Tad’s sobs quiet, he sniffles and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “Pathetic,” he mumbles wetly.
“Tad, you’re scaring me,” Lewis says, refusing to let go of him. “Are you okay? What happened?”
There’s a long silence. Finally, Tad raises puffy, red-rimmed eyes, though he doesn’t quite meet Lewis’s gaze. He’s staring somewhere in the vicinity of that spot between Lewis’s nose and upper lip. Does that spot have a name? You never hear anyone call it by its name.
Jesus, not important.
Tad wets his lips and says, “My mom set me up with a woman.”
“Like for a date?”
“Like for a date.”
“Awkward.” Lewis winces.
Tad’s jaw tenses and his Adam’s apple jags. Lewis pulls him back into his arms, and Tad’s body goes soft and pliable. “It was horrible,” he whispers. “And that’s so stupid .”
“It’s not stupid.”
“You don’t even know what happened.”
Lewis rubs a hand slowly up and down Tad’s spine. “I know your feelings matter, and I know it made you feel like this.”
With a watery laugh, Tad says, “You must make an incredible boyfriend.”
That startles an answering laugh from Lewis. “No one else has ever thought so, but thanks.” He tugs Tad toward the sofa and sits him down. Tad curls into him, lanky torso and long legs folding up into a surprisingly small, sniffling, Tad-shaped lump.
Lewis keeps an arm around him. “You bailed on Thanksgiving with your family, I guess?”
“Well, I’m not driving back there tomorrow.” Tad laughs humorlessly. “I’m sorry. I should’ve let you know I was coming back so I didn’t freak you out. But I had to turn my phone off so they couldn’t call me. I only went back to the house to get stuff. And Hetty, obviously.”
“It’s okay. Luckily I didn’t fire on you with that deadly spray bottle.”
There’s a little snuffle of genuine laughter against Lewis’s neck. Lewis kisses Tad’s forehead gently, an ache radiating from his chest, clutching his guts and strangling him. He wants very badly to keep Tad from ever feeling like this, but he also knows he doesn’t really understand why Tad feels like this. He just—he hates it. He hates feeling so helpless when a person he loves is in pain.
“You wanna talk about it?” Lewis asks quietly, turning his face into Tad’s hair. It smells like drug store styling mousse.
Tad worries at the laces of Lewis’s hoodie before he starts twisting one around his index finger. “My mom set me up with the sister of a girl I used to be really good friends with. So I—god this sounds stupid—I decided the universe must be giving me a sign. It was a perfect opportunity to come out to my family. I was gonna walk into the restaurant and meet this woman, and I’d sit down and thank her for agreeing to my mom’s matchmaking attempt, and then”—he takes a breath—“I was going to tell her I’m gay, so a relationship between us obviously wouldn’t work. And then I was going to tell my parents when I got back.”
By the end of this, Tad’s voice is thick and raspy, and Lewis can tell he’s about to cry again. He doesn’t push him to go on, just waits.
Every couple seconds there’s a tug on the neck of Lewis’s hoodie as Tad wraps his finger tighter in the lace. Finally, Tad continues, “But I got in there and she was sitting at the table, and I—”
His shoulders tense. Lewis strokes between his shoulder blades, down the knobs of his spine, and Tad loosens a little. “I couldn’t say a word,” Tad mumbles. “I stood there and I just stared at her like an idiot. And everything I wanted to say just got stuck in my throat, like it always does.”
“It does?” Lewis asks, genuinely confused. The Tad he’s gotten to know over the past few weeks hasn’t ever seemed shy. Has he? Maybe the first time Lewis came over, but that didn’t seem out of the ordinary. A lot of people would be shy in that situation.
Something seems to go out of Tad. Some kind of fight, or maybe a burden he was resigned to carrying. “I’m like. Painfully, pathologically shy,” Tad says tonelessly. “I know you haven’t noticed. But do you know how drunk I had to get before I could talk to you in Vegas?”
“No,” Lewis answers honestly. He’s trying to reorient a bunch of assumptions about Tad. None of it is bad, but pathologically shy wasn’t a phrase he would have used to describe the man who invited Lewis to ride a mechanical bull with him.
Tad lets out a surprised little laugh. “Well,” he says. “Really drunk. The only way I can talk to hot guys is by getting drunk.”
The fact that Tad just referred to him as a “hot guy” is a high, but it’s not the thing to focus on right now. Lewis puts his hands on either side of Tad’s face and draws him back so he can look Tad in the eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with being shy,” he says.
The longing on Tad’s face breaks his heart. It doesn’t take a mind reader to know Tad’s heard this before—probably from everyone he’s ever cared about.
“When you freeze up and can’t choke out a single word, there is,” Tad replies.
Gently, Lewis wipes away a tear track bisecting Tad’s cheek. “Does it happen all the time?”
Tad leans into Lewis’s touch. His eyes flutter shut, eyelashes fanning against his cheek, and Lewis notices for the first time that they’re mostly brown, except at the tips, where they lighten to a light reddish-gold. “Not at work, really. When I was a kid, school was… not awful. I was just quiet. I think it’s like, if I have a script, kind of, it’s not so bad. That’s why I can handle job interviews. It’s like playing a part.”
His eyes open, and the blue is like a punch to Lewis’s chest. “I just realized something,” Tad says.
“Yeah?” Lewis runs a thumb over Tad’s cheekbone. He wants to feel the fan of Tad’s gold eyelashes against his skin. This moment feels as delicate as that sensation would be—gossamer and so easily crushed, and Lewis knows right then that if he ever hurt Tad, he’d never forgive himself.
And that is not consistent with keeping it casual. That’s not consistent with the Dating Break.
He expects panic, but none comes. He waits for panic. All he feels is Tad’s warmth, the sharp jut of his cheekbone, and how right and good this is.
Tad straightens, slipping an arm around Lewis’s shoulders. “I got really shy the summer between eighth and ninth grade. That was when I realized the way I was looking at boys was how other boys looked at girls.” He falls silent, thinking. “I never knew what to say or how to act when I talked to people. I was always afraid that people could tell. Like, in the locker room, boys were always talking about which girls had big tits who they could tell gave good blowjobs, and I was like, how do I interact with girls when I don’t notice that?”
Idly, he smooths Lewis’s shirt over his chest. “I was terrified a boy would notice me noticing him. I used to change in the bathroom stall for gym so no one could say I was checking them out. And I almost got suspended because I’d wait till everyone else was done showering before I’d shower, and I was late for the next period.”
“Did your parents make the school give you extra time to shower?”
“My dad told me to stop being such a girl and shower faster,” Tad says—in a tone that isn’t exactly easy but doesn’t exactly convey how shitty this actually is. “So I just stopped showering after gym. That didn’t make me popular, either.”
Lewis holds him tighter. “You didn’t have a script for how a gay boy should act.”
In his arms, Tad stills. Lewis is afraid he said something wrong until Tad pulls back enough to look Lewis in the eyes. There’s a small but genuine smile fighting for purchase on Tad’s face. “I’ve had a lot of therapists over the years and not one of them has ever come up with that.”
“Maybe if I get sick of being a paralegal, I can consider a career change.”
Tad laughs a little and buries his face in Lewis’s chest again. Having him there, snug and encircled in Lewis’s arms, feels so right.
“Missed you,” comes a mumble from his collarbone.
Lewis’s heart jumps, then swells to fill his entire rib cage. “I missed you too. I know it’s only been like, five days since we saw each other, but—”
Before he can get another word out, Tad’s mouth is on his. Lewis makes a noise and melts into the embrace, into Tad’s soft lips and his lean body, all angles and edges that somehow soften into this beautiful man who just trusted him. Trusted him! Lewis is the one who trusts too fast, who throws himself all in, but Tad revealed part of himself tonight.
Lewis wants to make sure he knows he can reveal any part of himself, and he’ll never judge him or make him feel bad. Lewis wants to be a place of safety for Tad, just like Tad was safety to him when he was freaking out about the marriage, or when he almost died while they were hiking.
He sinks into the kiss, trying to put everything he’s feeling into it— you can tell me anything. I want to be here for you.
Tad slides his fingers over the back of Lewis’s left hand. They stop on the wedding band Lewis can’t take off, which probably should have been a sign he was lying to himself about this all along. “Still wearing it,” Tad says quietly.
Catching Tad’s hand in his, Lewis interlaces their fingers. “So are you.”
Tad pushes up to kiss Lewis. His tongue traces the line of Lewis’s bottom lip. “I really missed you.” Tad shifts and something hard that definitely isn’t an arm or leg presses against Lewis’s hip.
“Me too, baby,” Lewis says, running a hand over the back of Tad’s neck and into his hair. He’s been planning on scrubbing Tad’s shower walls really well, in fact, because he’s really missed Tad, and the evidence might still be lurking in the grout. The air plants dotting the walls in the bathroom have seen some things. “But you’ve had a long day, and I’m going to be a gentleman.”
“God, so chivalrous.” Tad leans in again, and this time, when he runs his tongue over Lewis’s lip, Lewis can’t help parting his lips on a breathy groan.