31 #2
“It’s over there,” Daniel said, pointing to a quilted bag on the counter before launching back into his argument with Jem—apparently, about whether his hair should be parted to the right or the left or down the center.
Tean stared into the bag. There were at least twenty different jars, tubes, and packets, all different brands, all with names and descriptions that made very little sense to him. Mascara and foundation seemed straightforward enough, but what did you do with color corrector?
“I’m not sure I’m the right person—” Tean began.
“Just hand me stuff when I tell you,” Daniel said. “I’ll do it.”
Jem’s mouth tightened like he was trying not to laugh.
“But it’s right here,” Tean said. “You can reach it yourself.”
“Mirror,” Daniel said and held out a hand.
Tean turned to Jem for help.
With a growl, Jem gave a mock yank on Daniel’s hair. “Manners.”
“Mirror, please,” Daniel said in the same tone he used when he told them they were being extra.
Tean found a compact mirror in the bag and handed it over. Then Daniel wanted the foundation. It went on from there.
Jem, meanwhile, was muttering to himself as he finished Daniel’s hair. He moved a lock. He brushed down a flyaway. He scowled and crouched and inspected everything from another angle.
“If it helps,” Tean said, “we could lower the stakes by remembering that this is a small event for teenagers at an LGBTQ youth center and not, I don’t know, a film premiere or a presidential reception or…” He almost caught himself saying a big deal, but he managed to trail off into silence instead.
Daniel looked at him.
Jem looked at him.
Then they looked at each other.
“I know,” Jem said.
“It’s like he doesn’t understand anything.”
“He understands. Different priorities.”
“I’m right here,” Tean said.
“I know, babe,” Jem said.
Daniel held out the mirror. “Put this away.” And then a grin flashed out as Jem opened his mouth. “Please.”
The boy made them both leave the bathroom so he could put on the finishing touches, whatever that meant, and Tean and Jem and Scipio ended up in the living room again.
Jem’s smile was careful, and he wasn’t meeting Tean’s eyes, but his voice was light when he said, “We might have created a monster.”
“We had a talk about figuring ourselves out,” Tean said. “I think a lot of this is a persona.”
“Great. I hope he figures out real quick how annoying the persona of diva bitch can be.”
Tean laughed, and for a moment, the heaviness of Jem’s smile lifted.
Then Scipio hopped down from the couch and began to growl.
A silver Impala was parked in the driveway, and Ammon was getting out of the front seat.
He was dressed in jeans and a blazer over a tee.
Either he’d started going back to the gym again, or the clothes simply fit him well.
He’d cut his hair even shorter, so that it was barely more than a buzz.
He looked middle-aged, and Tean thought with a flash of disbelief that they were, actually, the same age, and he wondered if that was how he looked.
“Not even close,” Jem murmured.
“Hm?”
“You don’t look like a raggedy old man like that,” Jem said.
“How did you—” But then Tean laughed. “Thank you.”
“Okay,” Daniel sang as he swished into the living room. “I’m ready.”
He was already a beautiful child; he always had been.
And over the last couple of years, adolescence had started to strip back the baby fat to reveal hints of the man he’d be.
But tonight, with his hair done to perfection by Jem, with makeup that accentuated his lips and cheekbones and eyes, he looked like an adult.
Young, yes. And maybe even more beautiful.
But impossible to pretend he was a child.
“Where’s your necklace?” Tean asked.
Jem flashed him a look that Tean couldn’t decipher.
With an uncomfortable shrug, and not quite meeting Jem’s gaze, Daniel said, “I didn’t want to wear it tonight.” He gave a turn, and the tulle skirt rose on the air. “How do I look?”
“Wonderful,” Tean said.
“Like you’re trying to get pregnant,” Jem said.
“Jem!” Tean said, but he couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him.
Daniel gave that huge grin again; then he swallowed it and, face set somewhere between mysterious and trying not to look flattered, said, “Good.” The happiness in his face faded, though, when he looked out the window. In a small voice, he said, “Can’t you take me?”
“Your dad’s doing this for you because he loves you,” Tean said.
Daniel’s shoulders dropped. “He’s going to talk shit about my makeup. He’s going to hate my clothes.”
“Fuck him,” Jem said. “Just ignore him. Get to the dance, have a great time, and don’t worry about what he thinks.”
Daniel nodded, but something like despair darkened his eyes.
“Come here,” Tean said. “I need to take a picture of you before you go.”
That made the despair burn off into a familiar mixture of gratification and annoyance. “We don’t have time,” Daniel said. “I’m going to be late.”
“You shouldn’t have spent so long on your eyelashes, then,” Jem said. “Tean gets to take a picture of you. We’re your gay uncles. This is your first gay prom. Don’t be a little bitch about it.”
“While I appreciate the support,” Tean said, “maybe don’t call a child a bitch—”
“Fine,” Daniel snapped and flounced over to the closest wall.
“I called him a little bitch,” Jem said, “because he’s acting like a little bitch.”
“Just take the picture!”
It wasn’t quite that straightforward. Tean took a few pictures of Daniel—who had apparently gotten over his concern about being late and was now trying out various poses. Then he wanted a picture with Jem. And then Jem insisted they get a selfie of the three of them.
As soon as they finished, though, tension tightened Daniel’s body again. He stared at the floor, picked at the fairy lights, and shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“You’re going to have a great time,” Tean told him.
Daniel gave a miserable nod.
“Be good,” Jem said as he gave the boy a hug. “Don’t make me drag you out of a crack house tonight.”
For some reason, that actually made Daniel look happier, and he even smiled as they separated. To Tean’s surprise, Daniel kissed Tean’s cheek. And then he squared his shoulders and opened the door.
Jem caught the storm door as Daniel moved down onto the porch, and Tean stood next to him in the doorway, watching the boy follow the path to the driveway.
Ammon waited as his son approached. He didn’t say anything.
And his face was unreadable. But his attention was fixed entirely on Daniel; he didn’t so much as glance at Jem and Tean.
Daniel, for his part, moved with a familiar mixture of wariness and defiance—not quite standing straight, not quite looking at his dad, but with a challenge written in every line of his body.
The street was still. No cars. No kids out playing. Not even the wind.
Daniel started to go around the car, but Ammon put out a hand, and Daniel turned toward his father.
His shoulders shrank as Ammon put hands on his arms, moving Daniel to stand in front of him as Ammon inspected him.
The hair was alright. The clothes—if you got rid of the skirt—he probably could have gotten away with.
But there was no mistaking the makeup, the glitter, the mascara.
Next to Tean, Jem’s body radiated tension.
Ammon must have meant the words for Daniel alone, because they were quiet, and on any other day, they wouldn’t have carried. “You look beautiful.” And then he drew his son into a hug.
For a moment, Daniel stood stiffly, as though uncertain of what to do. And then he leaned into his father. He pressed his face against Ammon’s blazer. Turned his head into Ammon’s neck. And he looked, for a moment, like a child again.
Tean went back into the house. He couldn’t see anything, and he bumped into Scipio, and he had to catch himself—by chance, really—on the sofa. He kept going.
Once, in the Uintas, he’d been out with a team after a bad storm, monitoring for bacterial outbreak after the floodwaters went down.
He’d been on his own when he spotted the bobcat kitten.
She had been tiny, the size of a stuffed animal, like she might have fit in his cupped hands.
She’d climbed onto a fallen tree and was standing there—not making any noise, but staring around, obviously frightened and unsure of what to do.
Kittens needed to be with their mothers.
The mother, an adult bobcat, had come out of the brush silently.
Maybe a hundred yards away from Tean. She had crossed the clearing at an easy trot, not exactly rushing but not slow either, and leaped up onto the fallen tree.
The mother moved around the cub sniffing, checking.
And the cub pressed into her: her little face nuzzling at the mother’s flank, and then, as the mother curled up around her, rubbing against her mother’s muzzle, pressing her head to her mother’s jaw.
The tears came so hard and fast that for a moment, Tean felt like he was being ripped apart from the inside.
He shuddered and pulled his glasses away and wiped his face and cried harder.
Strong arms wrapped around him, and the smell of that unfamiliar soap came in on his ragged breaths.
Jem didn’t say anything. He just held Tean, their bodies fitting together, as they rode the waves of the storm.
Tean got himself under control. He squeezed Jem’s arms, and Jem let him go, and as he wiped his face, he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why—” But that was a lie, and he couldn’t bring himself to finish it.
Jem sat him on the sofa. He disappeared and came back with a box of tissues.
Tean sat, wiping his eyes, staring off at nothing: at a window full of light, and beyond it, life. “I just want to hate him. He’s horrible. He was cruel to me. He used me.” More, but it wouldn’t come out. Finally, he said, “Why can’t I just hate him?”