Chapter Fourteen
Tuesday night Aubrey lay awake in bed for two hours, staring at the ceiling. It was a weird inverse repeat of the night before, when he’d gone to bed with Nate without the obvious pretext of having sex with him, because his apartment was a deep freeze.
He expected it to be awkward, but instead, he’d closed his eyes, was assaulted by Nate’s body heat, and fell asleep within thirty seconds.
Ignoring the consequences of his own bad decisions was a lot easier when he was with Nate, but that was mostly because he kept forgetting the whole thing was fake.
By the time he dropped off to sleep, alone in his own bed, it was technically Wednesday morning.
He woke up after a half-remembered dream that he immediately wanted to purge completely. He needed to get out of his apartment—out of the whole building—preferably to do something that wouldn’t permit any distraction.
When his cell phone beeped an appointment reminder, he smiled. Perfect.
There were seven cars in the arena parking lot when he pulled in. Aubrey picked up the stuffed dog and yellow roses from the passenger seat, snagged his skate bag from the trunk, and hightailed it to the locker room.
Greg groaned when he saw him. “What is this? Aren’t you supposed to be in Hawaii? I don’t need someone documenting my failures.”
“Obviously I should’ve brought vodka for the kiss and cry,” Aubrey said wryly. Greg always got like this before a big skate, and he was always fine. “Come on, suit up. I’ll warm up with you. Take your mind off it.”
“You’re a terrible man and I hate you.”
Aubrey clapped him on the shoulder. “Love you too, buddy. Let’s go break a leg, okay?”
“Don’t think you’re getting out of telling me why you’re not three mai tais deep right now.”
“It’s, like, six in the morning in Oahu.”
Greg had the ice for twenty minutes of warm-up time before his Cirque audition was scheduled. They spent ten minutes stretching and skating, and then Greg’s jitters got so bad Aubrey gently checked him into the boards and called up their playlist on his phone.
“Change of plan. You need to loosen up.” Aubrey’s portable speakers pumped out the opening bars of “Hot Stuff.” “You remember how it goes, right?”
For a few seconds, he thought Greg might really balk. He skated backward away from Aubrey a half meter or so, shaking his head.
Then he shot him the finger and launched into their routine.
For three minutes and forty-seven seconds, Greg and Aubrey dance-fought to Donna Summer.
Greg kept his part simple to conserve his energy, but Aubrey lost himself in the rhythm and the pure athleticism, reveling in the stretch of his body, pushing his limits.
He nailed every landing and couldn’t keep from grinning as he mentally awarded himself top marks.
When the song wound to a close, Aubrey caught sight of a man and a woman dressed in business suits making their way into the stands. He clapped Greg’s shoulder again. “You got this.” Then he skated over to the visitor’s bench.
He was right too—Greg nailed the routine, putting on a very entertaining program for the Cirque officials. Aubrey watched them when he wasn’t watching Greg, and though they didn’t give much away, he thought they were impressed.
At the end of the program, they came down to the ice and shook Greg’s hand, and Aubrey could tell from the mutual smiles that Greg was in.
He grinned and collected the flowers and stuffed animal and skated over to deliver them. “I guess we can skip the crying this time?”
Greg snorted but accepted the gifts. “Yeah. I still want my kiss, though.”
“Smartass.” Aubrey gave him another gentle bump and then a loud smack on the cheek.
“Mr. Chase!” The male Cirque rep extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Lucien Bastille, and this is my colleague, Sharice Kim.”
“Pleasure’s mine. But please call me Aubrey.” He shook with both of them.
Sharice palmed a card and slid it to him.
“We know you have commitments in Chicago. Greg’s been very forthcoming about that.
” Oh, had he? “But if you ever find yourself in need of a diversion or a change of scenery and you think you might like to spend some time in Las Vegas, please don’t hesitate to give us a call.
You’re obviously in competition shape, and your choreography would be a good fit for us. ”
Aubrey blinked and looked sideways at Greg. It had never occurred to him that he might end up with a job offer at the end of this, but judging from Greg’s tiny smirk, he wasn’t surprised. “Thanks,” he said, taking the card. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He held on to his questions until Lucien and Sharice left and they were packing up in the locker room, but they came rapid-fire after that. “What just happened? You looked like you knew something was up, but I thought I was going to be in Hawaii for this until two days ago.”
Greg shrugged. “I knew they were looking for more talent. Your name came up when we arranged the audition.”
“I didn’t book my vacation until last week,” Aubrey realized. “You sneaky bastard.”
“Don’t get me wrong, you were never going to get the gig instead of me, but I know you miss performing with your whole body and not just your face.”
Ooh. That one landed hard enough that Aubrey winced as he wiped down his skate blade.
“Oh, uh-oh, back up, speaking of your face, what’s it doing right now? Aubrey? What did you do?” Greg snapped a skate guard on and shoved it in his bag. Realization dawned, and his eyebrows shook hands with his hairline. “Did you sleep with Nate again?”
“No!” Aubrey said, because that wasn’t the problem. Then, in the interest of honesty: “Well, yes, twice, but that’s… okay, that is how I got into this mess. I—”
His phone buzzed on the bench beside him. The call display lit up. Mom.
Well, saved by the bell, sort of.
“Sorry, I have to take this.”
Greg rolled his eyes, and Aubrey walked out into the hallway to answer.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, Aubrey, sweetheart. Is everything okay?”
Apparently all of his poor decisions were coming back to haunt him today—though he couldn’t decide if the decision in question was limiting contact with his mother or picking up the phone again to call her.
“Everything’s fine, Mom. I just wanted to….” I just wanted to see if maybe we could have a better relationship, since one of the most important ones in my life is in danger of disintegrating at any moment. “I just wanted to check in. I haven’t talked to you and Dad since….”
“Thanksgiving,” his mother supplied. “In October.”
Aubrey winced. “Right. Sorry, I know… I know we don’t talk much.”
But instead of the response he expected, his mother just said, “Oh, honey. I didn’t call you either. But I wanted to.”
For a moment all Aubrey could do was flap his mouth soundlessly. He’d been expecting accusations, veiled rancor. This hurt in a different way. “Why?” he finally managed. “I mean, not why do you want to talk to me—I’m delightful and you love me—but why didn’t you call? If you wanted to.”
His mother exhaled a long, slow breath. “Honestly, Aubrey? Even my therapist can’t work that out.”
Aubrey’s brain did a record scratch. “Wait, you’re in therapy?”
“You don’t have to say it like that.” Ah, there was the mother he knew. “There’s nothing wrong with getting the help you need.”
Bizarrely, Aubrey found himself smiling. “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, I’m also in therapy.” Was that rude to say to your mother? Did that imply some kind of judgment on her parenting skills? “I was just surprised.”
His mother huffed. “Well. Perhaps going forward, we can spend a little time talking to each other instead of talking to our therapists.”
“Is yours terrible?” Aubrey asked. “Who gave these people license to be right about everything?”
She laughed, and Aubrey felt the power of it zing through him. For years he’d craved his mother’s attention and approval while she was busy pursuing other things. But now, making her laugh—genuinely laugh—was enough.
Therapy. Who knew.
“They’re the worst,” his mother said. “Although I think they do actually have a licensing body, so your question isn’t as rhetorical as you think.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He shook his head. “So, what’re you in for, Mom? You may have guessed my main issues are attention-seeking behavior and poor coping mechanisms.”
“Ah, well, that’s a personal question, Aubrey.
” He could almost see her deliberating, tapping her perfectly manicured nails on whatever was nearest—a table, an armrest, a steering wheel.
“The usual suspects for a woman my age. Guilt, regret, nostalgia.” She said all these flippantly enough that Aubrey could guess none of them was the real issue, but she was right, it was a personal question.
She didn’t have to tell him, especially not when their relationship was just starting to find its first solid footing in years.
A month ago he’d have snarked at her. Today, though, he just agreed. “The usual.”
Greg poked his head out of the locker room, one skate bag slung over each shoulder, and Aubrey realized he was holding him up. “Look, Mom, we’re obviously not going to solve our multiple issues in one phone call, but I’m willing to work on them if you are.”
“That….” For the first time he could remember, his mom’s voice grew tight, almost to breaking. “That would be really nice. I’d like that.”
Aubrey found himself blinking back tears of his own. “Okay. Well. Then let’s keep the lines of communication open, yeah? Meanwhile I’ve got to go, because I’m being terribly rude to a friend who needs to celebrate a successful audition.”
“All right. I love you, sweetheart. I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah,” Aubrey agreed, his throat too thick to squeeze out what he wanted to say. “Me too.”
He pulled his phone from his ear as Greg handed over his bag. “Hey. Sorry about interrupting.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’ve done enough character development for one day.”
“Good. Because I just lined up a job for you, so I think you owe me a drink.”
“It’s not even noon on a Wednesday.” Aubrey was no stranger to a champagne brunch, but he was thirty now. He saved that stuff for weekends. “How about we start with lunch?”
The restaurant they chose was quiet. Aubrey figured half the city was knocking off work early for the holiday, rather than going out to lunch.
That suited him fine. The longer he spent away from his apartment building, the more likely he could forget what was happening with Nate and how much it was great and sucked at the same time.
Greg let him off the hook until he’d eaten half his weight in fish tacos. Then he said, “So, you’re sleeping with Nate. That’s an exciting new level of stupidity and reckless disregard for your emotional health.”
Aubrey looked forlornly at the last half of a fish taco, but no, the moment was gone. “Yeah, well. The second time was an accident, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I went to a bar to pick up. He went to the same bar to pick up. We just… went home together.”
“Uh-huh.” Greg sipped his mimosa. “And the third time?”
“Yeah, the third time was the problem.” He blew out a breath.
“So you know how the heat in my apartment building went out a couple nights ago? We’d just gotten back from Tampa after a day of flight delays.
Nate offered to let me crash with him. I was too weak to say no.
The next morning, one thing led to another… .”
“Say no more.” Greg stole one of Aubrey’s fries.
“Oh, I’d love if the story stopped there, believe me.”
“Wait, the stupidity extends past sleepy domestic morning sex?” Greg gave up the pretense that he wasn’t going to consume the rest of Aubrey’s fries and pulled the whole plate toward himself.
Aubrey felt a headache coming on. He closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, only half so he didn’t have to look at Greg while he said, “I got up and took a shower, and while I was looking for a towel, Nate’s parents showed up.”
Greg inhaled a fry and spent a few seconds coughing into a napkin. He reached for his water glass and took a deep gulp. Then he managed, “That was awkward, I assume.”
“Not as awkward as the fist-bump she gave Nate after.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah.”
“So that’s it? You made a bad decision—three bad decisions—and then your crush’s mom saw you naked?” He dunked a fry in ketchup.
Aubrey knocked back the rest of his beer. “No. Then Nate asked me to pretend to be his boyfriend so his parents wouldn’t think he was having a midlife crisis.”
Greg stared at him, speechless.
Aubrey didn’t have much to say for himself either, but the buzz of his phone with an incoming text saved him yet again.
Well, sort of.
He looked at the screen and groaned.
“What?”
“It’s Nate,” he said. “He needs me to pick up butter and sage for Thanksgiving dinner.”