After Ben (26 page)

“Oh, Theo.”

He was okay, right up until he saw her. The moment she stepped into his room, just like she had all those months ago after Ben died, stepping over the wreckage that Theo’s devastated whirlwind temper had left behind, the weight of explanation crushed him. He slumped back across his bed.

Her palm was warm across his forehead.

“You’re not sick.”

He shook his head.

Looking around his bedroom as if through her eyes, he noticed the mess he’d made. He didn’t remember pulling open each and every dresser drawer. He had no recollection at all of hauling every single piece of clothing he owned out, hurling them on the floor behind him as he searched. He only recalled the inner lurch and sobbed exhalation as he finally opened the last drawer—the one that held the least—and found Ben’s old pajamas.

Maggie was kind and quiet, just as she’d been the first time, when she helped him out of bed, letting him lean when he stumbled as they made their way to the living room. She didn’t comment at his too-short pajama pants, or the rosary that wound around his wrist and fingers. Instead, she tucked him up in a blanket on the couch and then made him some tea.

When she asked, “Ben?” Theo shook his head again, then nodded, finishing by letting out a weird, hopeless sound somewhere between anger and complete misery. He didn’t resist when she pulled his head down to rest in her lap. He just closed his sore, dry eyes, and sighed as she stroked his hair.

“Your mystery man turned out to have an axe, right?”

Theo kept his eyes shut tight.

A
FTER
Ben died, Theo’s mom found him a bereavement group. He went twice, then couldn’t take the understanding and sympathy any longer. Back then he couldn’t begin to grasp the fact that others who had lost gained anything by attending. He was raw, still bleeding inside, and their stories of resurgence after loss made him rage. He saved his temper for home, slamming around, tearing paperwork, breaking things, until the kitchen floor was a minefield of shards and the study was heaped with drifts of ragged edged paper.

Maggie had cleared it all away without comment. She took away his photo albums from the years before they started to store their shit digitally online, and shut the vacation souvenirs that had escaped his first hollow, ice-cold temper away in the laundry room cabinets, figuring that he wouldn’t think to look there. He was grateful she had protected so many of the things Ben had loved enough to ship home when she helped him set his home back to rights later.

Some of his earliest memories after that first dark time were of his father sitting at his kitchen table, painstakingly gluing back together a fish-covered dish that Ben dickered for at the side of the street in St. John. He had loved Antigua, finding the climate, before the humidity kicked in, glorious. Ben smoked under the same palm tree every morning, smiling and chatting as the hotel staff shed their uniforms before retrieving the long, fine nets they’d stretched across the warm, almost milky-looking shallow water late the night before.

During the previous summer, a hurricane had swept in, devastating homes, destroying schools, even lifting palm trees from the coast before dropping them across inland streets. Theo calculated rebuilding costs and made mental forecasts of project times as they drove along pitted dirt roads. Ben laughed, saying that he should add years to his forecasts and subtract millions of dollars from the cost because these people seemed more concerned with living than with planning.

Later they danced with the hotel staff outside a bar built from corrugated sheets of metal and cinder blocks, wrapped in a haze of marijuana smoke, high on physical contact and cheap local beer.

“Why rebuild when Mother Nature will just send another storm, baby? Maybe getting on with living is better than planning out a perfect life.”

It was ridiculous, fucking ridiculous—pathetic even—to revisit grief, to weather another tree-lifting storm, over what? A figment of his imagination? An Internet stranger he hadn’t even met? Yeah, pathetic was right. Anger, hot and slick, rose from his chest, pushing out between his ribs, piercing his skin. He’d been a fucking fool.

Who did that?

Who fell—and he had fallen, he could see that now, he’d fallen hard—for a faceless, filthy-mouthed, opinionated stranger?

Who based their day, their perspectives, even their mood, on the whim of someone who might turn out to be a kid with an Internet connection and access to Wikipedia?

The longer he spent staring at his own four walls, the easier it was to picture some kid like Evan or Joel, holed up in a college dorm room, getting off on the idea of a man—a grown fucking man old enough to be his father for fuck’s sake—responding to his juvenile dirty talk. In hindsight, what he’d seen as left-wing rhetoric could easily have been a spoiled brat virtually stamping his feet, whining it’s not fair.

When he thought back, Morgan’s online arguments could be defined as simplistic. Did he ever take the bigger picture into account until Theo pointed it out to him? Had his argument only developed once Theo showed him alternatives, sending him links, talking to him privately, endlessly, investing in a relationship no more substantial than smoke?

Theo’s spoon clinked against his bowl of reheated soup, his hands still shaking as he watched Maggie walk across his kitchen. She sat across the table from him, her face drawn.

“What happened, Theo?”

He shook his head, unable to explain how something as ridiculous as an online friendship had ended with him feeling as he did at Ben’s cremation, like some terrible mistake had been made. He remembered—and it was his only clear memory of the whole day—sitting between his mother and father, wondering how come both he and Ben had died, but only Ben had a casket.

It was wrong, he knew, to feel that old, awful ache again, which went so much deeper than his bones, over something so pointless and pathetic. It was wrong to worry Maggie, to wreck his home, to waste a single fucking minute thinking about a kid who had no idea what he’d done.

“Please, Theo, tell me.”

He shook his head again.

H
E
LOST
days.

He wasn’t sure how he managed to lose track so quickly. He remembered his mom calling—yeah, that definitely happened—but he had no recollection of what they talked about. Maggie stopped by, making sure there was food in the refrigerator, piling up his mail on the kitchen counter. Theo woke up one morning, certain he’d already spent too many days dwelling on conversations he’d had with a kid who was probably half his age. Working his way through the apartment room by room, setting his home aright, he realized that he had done this all before. He was back to square one.

Desperate to escape his own head, he went back to the gym, grateful that Peter was away. If he had seen him, he would have taken him home and fucked him—anything to stop his brain from think, think, thinking about how empty his life was, first without Ben and now without his projection of Morgan.

Peter didn’t deserve that.

A fuck wouldn’t solve anything.

Instead he worked out, went back to work, then fired Joel.

It hadn’t been his intention to fire anyone.

There was so much work to catch up on that Theo was trapped behind a wall of paper for most of the day. Maggie did her usual thing of shielding him from distractions, so apart from his staff meeting first thing, where he lied again about sickness, keeping his eyes averted from the interns, he hadn’t left his office. It wasn’t until the end of the day, when he was racing to meet a pressing deadline that he visited the archive room, thinking it would be quicker to find the files himself rather than explain to anyone else which documents he needed. Besides, everyone else except for Maggie had already left for the day.

The archive room door swung open, revealing Evan up on the counter, leaning back on his elbows, eyes shut as Joel buried his face in his neck. Theo backed out immediately, but the image of Joel’s hand rubbing Evan’s dress-pants-covered erection as the blond arched under him, groaning, followed Theo back to his desk.

He put his head in his hands.

When Joel backed out of the archive room later, pink cheeked and loaded with boxes, Theo called him into his office. Joel stared, his face leaching of color as Theo told him to go clear his desk. By the time Evan came back from finishing his own work, Joel had already left. Theo swallowed as he saw the small blond’s face fall, then flush with confused anger. He wasn’t surprised when he tried to get Theo’s attention.

Theo closed his blinds.

Maggie was pissed off with him. She wasn’t quiet about it either. Nor did she listen when he told her that he was looking out for Evan, and that people weren’t always what they seemed.

“But why, Theo?” she demanded. “Why Joel? I don’t understand. He’s such a help, so much fun, and a real hard worker. What do you mean ‘people aren’t what they seem’? You know he’s Evan’s boyfriend now, right? He’s so upset. What the hell did Joel do?” She walked toward him, making as if to come around to his side of the desk.

He held up one hand, palm facing her, and then she left him too.

One by one, the lights were shut off across the office, leaving Theo sitting alone in the dark.

H
IS
parents were waiting for him when he got home. Instead of asking them in, he took them for an early dinner. Somehow he came up with conversation; at least he was fairly sure he did. His mom talked and talked. He had no idea what he might have told her during the week, so he sat, much like his father, smiling and nodding while she filled in their silent spaces.

The server brought their order. Theo couldn’t remember what he’d ordered. His dad indicated which dish went where, then watched Theo as he plowed through his meal methodically.

“You’ve lost weight, son.” Theo looked across at his dad, chewing, tasting nothing. He swallowed, then shrugged.

His mother talked about people he didn’t know and had no interest in. Theo nodded and smiled, nodded and smiled, nodded and smiled. When his mom excused herself, his father gripped his feet under the table between his own.

“What is it, son? What’s happened?”

He wouldn’t accept Theo’s headshake as an answer.

“Is it Ben? Is it work? Are you okay?” Theo knew what the last question meant. His dad had seen him at his worst after Ben’s death. He hadn’t been entirely rational. “Tell me, son, or I’m going to worry myself fucking sick.” His dad’s face was pale, and Theo wondered when he’d gotten so old. It was seeing his father’s hands shake as he reached across the table to hold his own, the same hands that had hauled him up from the ice so many times when he was a dumb kid who thought skating should be easy, that finally made Theo talk.

He held his dad’s hand and said, “I met someone. He wasn’t who I thought. I was a little upset. I’m okay now.”

“Who did you think he was, son? Tom Cruise?”

Theo snorted, half sobbing, half laughing. He nodded, yes.

“Who did he turn out to be?”

It was a valid question. Theo didn’t know the actual answer.

“I have no idea, Dad.”

Watching his father suck in a breath, Theo took a moment to try to explain. Maybe if he could find the right words to describe what had happened, he might be able to get a grip on his thoughts. He still felt caught, trapped inside, as if a hurricane had blown up in the Gulf and had torn up the world he’d only just started to rebuild after Ben died.

“I made a friend online. We talked so much that I thought I knew him. More to the point, I let him know me. All of me.”

His dad’s voice was low. “Is that a bad thing, son? Letting people into your life? It’s been hard to see you so lonely.”

He squeezed his dad’s hand again, trying to smile. “No, it would have been good, I guess, if I’d known… if I’d guessed.” He shook his head, looking across at his dad’s confused, sweet face. “I think he’s a lot younger than me.”

“So you can’t be friends?”

Theo closed his eyes, remembering Morgan’s words: I want to think about your ass clenching, thrusting, fucking me.

Fucking me.

“Not now, Dad. I’m not sure friendship was exactly what he had in mind.”

“Oh.” His dad’s cheeks pinked a little, and Theo felt badly. His dad had supported him right from the very first time Theo stood at the foot of his tallest ladder, asking him if it was okay to like boys that way. It hadn’t occurred to Theo as a thirteen-year-old to hide that shit. His dad always had the right answers.

“Oh. Well, you and Ben seemed to manage just fine, son.”

Theo felt his face twist.

“Is it Ben? Do you feel guilty about liking someone else?”

Theo had plenty to feel guilty about already without even starting to think about Ben. He considered Evan—so slight, a bruised angel—then he thought about Joel—all idealism, breathtaking smile, and huge, huge heart—and he wondered just what he’d done. What had he been thinking? What a fucking mess.

“Who feels guilty?” They both jumped at his mom’s voice.

She sat again, looking between her men before settling her gaze on Theo.

“Guilt is a terrible waste of energy, Theo. You can’t do a single thing with it. Not a thing.” She reached for their hands until all three of them were linked.

“I don’t know what it is that you boys find to talk about the minute I turn my back, but please don’t dwell on guilt.” Her gaze flickered away, then returned to Theo. “Guilt means you know you made a mistake. Don’t live with it. Set things straight, as quickly as you can.” She nodded firmly. “Set things straight, Theo.”

Under the table, his dad squeezed his feet.

H
E
LEFT
his parents at the restaurant, splitting a dessert like they always did, claiming that he had work to do. He took the long route back, listening to talk radio, hearing nothing, not wanting to go home. When he eventually pulled into his slot in the parking lot, he took his cell phone from his pocket and switched it on.