Chapter 8 #2
“Grab that iodine spray and give his toes a blast,” Mason said, nodding at the bottle on the counter. “Yep, that’s the one.” He bundled Dog back to me when I was done. “Now don’t let him down for a couple minutes, or he’ll leave sticky yellow footprints all over the place.”
“And I’ll have to mop them,” I said.
Mason laughed.
We had our pastries while I held Dog like a baby and tried to make sure the pastry went into my mouth and not his.
“You know you don’t have to bring me breakfast every day,” Mason said. “Though I do appreciate it.”
I shrugged, heat rising in my face. “I like to.”
I wasn’t sure those scant words told the whole story.
It was rare for me to feel comfortable anywhere outside of home or Sunny Fields.
Hell, even Sunny Fields could sometimes be a mixed bag because not all the staff and residents were patient with the janitor who struggled to get his words out.
But between Grandma Jane and Mr. Conrad, things were pretty good there.
But here was different. Here, I didn’t have anyone already on my side and looking out for me like Grandma Jane had when she’d gotten me the job at Sunny Fields.
Here I wasn’t anyone’s unofficial grandson and whoever messed with me would have to deal with Jane in Angry Grandma mode.
Which I hadn’t seen often, but it sure was a sight to behold when it happened.
Here, it was just me—not Jane’s unofficial grandson, and not half of the package deal of Chase and Cash—and it turned out that just me was enough. That was new. And new usually meant scary, which it still was, a little bit, but it wasn’t just scary. I was proud of who I was here, and I liked that.
I liked having breakfast with Mason and Dog, and I liked that I felt at home here. And I liked that it felt like I was making Mason’s day better too.
I wasn’t sure yet if I liked this weird new sensation that felt like attraction to Mason, but maybe I’d know the answer to that when I understood it some more. And I figured Mr. Conrad, who knew more about my past than anyone except Chase, would be a good place to start.
My shift technically ended at four, but a half hour after that I walked past Mr. Conrad’s door for the fifth time, unable to bring myself either to knock or to run away.
It was like I was attached to his doorknob by a piece of elastic, and as soon as I got too far away, it retracted and brought me twanging right back.
I walked to the end of the corridor, thought hard about leaving, and then turned around and walked back.
This time Mr. Conrad’s door was open, and he was leaning there, eyes crinkled with a smile. “Something bothering you, son?”
I shook my head.
“Your sneakers squeak on the linoleum,” he said. “You sound like a doggy chew toy.” He stepped back from the open door. “Come on in.”
I followed him inside.
Mr. Conrad sat down at his table, and I took the seat opposite him and automatically reached for the closest tub of Lego blocks. I didn’t bother to look at the instructions yet. I just liked the feel of the blocks, clicking them together and then pulling them apart.
“I might be gay,” I said at last.
Mr. Conrad took a sip from his mug of coffee. “You don’t sound sure about that.”
I nodded, studying a block like it might have all the answers printed on it somewhere. “I didn’t think I was anything before now.”
“That’s a thing too,” Mr. Conrad said. “There’s a word for everything these days.
You listen to half the folk in here and they’ll go on for hours about how they’re tired of woke nonsense.
” He shrugged. “They’re fools. Having more words to describe ourselves, to understand ourselves, is an incredible gift.
It makes us think, and that’s no bad thing. More people oughta do it.”
I turned his words over in my head for a while. Turned the blocks over in my hand. “Chase is gay. When I was a kid, I thought I probably was too, since we’re like, the same. But when he started messing around with guys, I didn’t want to do that. Not with anyone.”
I thought of Brad from high school. Chase had hooked up with him a bunch of times and had come back afterward all flushed and sweaty.
The way things had been at home, we’d sneaked out together because no way in hell was I staying in our bedroom alone, and no way would Chase expect me to.
So while he was off meeting Brad, I would wait in the vacant lot by the tire place near our house, and Chase would collect me on his way back.
I’d just sit there. Sometimes I’d read a book, if I had a flashlight with me.
Sometimes I’d count cars. Sometimes I’d just look at the stars.
And not once would I have preferred to be in Chase’s shoes instead of mine.
The idea of letting someone touch me—someone apart from Chase, and in a way that wasn’t familiar to me—made my stomach hurt.
I’d never wanted to do what Chase was doing.
I wasn’t wired that way. At least, that was what I’d thought.
Mr. Conrad leaned back in his chair. “Has something changed recently?”
I nodded, then shrugged.
“I’ll take that as an unequivocal maybe,” Mr. Conrad said with a smile, then nodded in the direction of his small kitchenette. “There’s soda in the refrigerator if you’re thirsty.” He gestured at the tubs of blocks. “We might be here a while.”
I stood and got a soda, then sat down again. “Mason’s keeping the dog.”
Mr. Conrad nodded slowly.
“It’s good,” I said, swallowing around the ache in my throat.
“Is it?” Mr. Conrad asked.
I nodded. “It makes sense.”
“It does,” he said. “But you can still be upset about it. Two things can be true at the same time.”
“I shouldn’t want to kiss the guy who stole my dog,” I whispered, and immediately felt stupid for saying it aloud because Mason hadn’t stolen Dog. I had. “I just wanted to keep him, that’s all.”
“No wonder you were pacing back and forth out there.” Mr. Conrad unfolded the Lego instructions. “It sounds like you’re having a lot of conflicting emotions right now. You like Mason, yes? And you trust him?”
I nodded.
“And you’re attracted to him?”
“I think so. Maybe.”
“Well, the good news about attraction is that it’s your choice whether or not to act on it,” Mr. Conrad said.
“Just because you feel something for him, that doesn’t mean anything has to change, unless you want it to and unless you’re ready for that.
And you can take as long as you want figuring that out. ”
I fiddled with a piece of Lego. “What should I do?”
“Oh, son.” Mr. Conrad shook his head. “I can’t tell you the answer to that because you’re the only person who knows exactly how you’re feeling.
And Mason’s the only one who knows how he’s feeling, which means that if you want to see if you’re on the same page and explore this attraction, you’re actually going to have to talk to him at some point. ”
Talk to him.
Like it was that easy.
Except when I thought back to the times I’d spent with Mason, I realized that, okay, it hadn’t been easy talking to him at first, but I was doing it more and more now, and I didn’t have to push the words out while they fought against me the whole way.
I didn’t talk to him much, but the words I did speak came out a lot easier than they had at the start, and even if the idea of talking to Mason about how I maybe felt—and how he maybe felt in return—made my stomach clench and my palms sweat, at least it didn’t feel totally impossible. And that was huge for me.
“I can do that,” I said, nodding. Then I shrugged. “Maybe not right away, but I can do that.”
“I know you can,” Mr. Conrad said. “Because you’re not afraid of the work, and there aren’t too many people out there who can say the same thing.” He nodded at the Lego. “Now, talking of work…”
I reached for the instructions, and we got back to reconstructing the Colosseum.
That night I sat on the back porch with a beer in the dark and just listened.
The television was on inside, a background hum of car chases and gunshots and explosions.
Chase liked some really dumb movies. I heard Lee laughing at one point, which ended in a sudden “Ooof!” and then some other muffled sounds, and then both he and Chase laughed.
The floorboards in the kitchen creaked before there was a blast of water into the sink, and Danny said, “Just let it soak, and it’ll come right off tomorrow.”
Miller’s reply was too low for me to make out the words.
Next door at Avery and Wilder’s place, the lights were on, spilling out of the windows into the yard.
They had a little flower garden under the kitchen window now, where Avery and Gracie had planted marigolds and zinnias.
In the moonlight, the flowers looked ghostly, but during the day they were bright and attracted bees and butterflies.
Out on the street, an unseen car drove past, bass thumping through closed windows.
In the distance, a screech owl trilled.
I thought of Dog and how much I’d wanted him to be mine.
Then I thought of the bill that came along with him, and how it would have taken me months of mopping the floor at the clinic to pay it off.
It wouldn’t have been so bad; I liked going to the clinic.
I liked visiting Dog twice a day and was glad I could keep doing that.
I liked Kayla, who was sarcastic and sharp at times but never mean about it. And I especially liked Mason.
Liking someone the way I liked Mason was new, and new things were frightening, but experience had taught me they weren’t always bad.
There was a time when this house and the people in it, my brothers now, had been new and frightening as well.
I’d been terrified to take a risk in trusting Danny back when he’d found Chase and me at Goose Run Gas, but we’d been desperate.
It had been life and death, literally. I’d trusted Danny because I’d had to, and I’d pushed Chase into trusting him too, and it had worked out because Danny was a great guy.
But it just as easily could have gone bad.
Trusting Mason felt different. I hadn’t made a conscious choice to do it.
It had crept up on me instead, in slow increments, just by hanging out with him and sharing breakfast—his first and my second—and watching him work.
Watching him smile almost against his will when Dog did something naughty, like he knew he shouldn’t encourage it, but it was just too funny, so he couldn’t help laughing.
The serious expression he got on his face when he had to go and deliver bad news to a client.
The way that expression dropped into something sad and hurting when they were gone.
That twenty-one seconds he said he allowed himself to cry—though I’d never seen actual tears—before he got back to work.
Being with Mason was like sitting here in the dark at night.
If you were patient, whole different layers revealed themselves to you.
Another creaking floorboard—the bathroom this time—as Miller brushed his teeth before bed.
The scrape of a chair on the kitchen floor—Danny studying his college textbooks there so the light from the desk in his room didn’t keep Miller from sleeping.
And footsteps coming my way a moment before the back screen door creaked open.
“What are you doing out here?” Chase asked.
“Just thinking. I’m going to bed soon.”
Chase stared at me. I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel it. Then he said, “Make sure your shit is off my old bed. Lee’s snoring is driving me nuts.”
He was such a liar.
“Okay,” I said, knowing that he’d only stay in my room as long as it took me to fall asleep. Then he’d go back and sleep with Lee. “You’d better not snore either, though.”
“Fuck you,” he said. “And hurry up. I don’t want you disturbing me by coming in late.”
Chase had layers too. Like, he sounded like an asshole, except everything he’d said was bullshit. It wasn’t his sleep he gave two shits about; it was mine.
I flipped him the bird, because that was what we did, and took one last look at the night before following Chase inside to go to bed.