Empty Nests (26 page)

He plucked a slice of firm white peach from the fruit tray. “Here, try this.”

James took the peach. He was a little disappointed James didn’t try to eat it from his fingers, but that was a somewhat advanced maneuver. Still, the look on James’s face was compensation enough. He closed his eyes for a moment and a bit of juice smeared across his lips.

Not an exhibitionist
, Gabe reminded himself. He took a slice of peach and ate it, making sure to lick the juice from his fingers with particular care. James flushed and shifted a little.

“I checked my schedule. Barring an emergency, I should be able to make it to Dave’s wedding with you.”

James cringed. “Thank you. I think I’ll need support. I keep trying to picture what kind of wedding Dave could possibly have, and it never goes anywhere pretty. I’m crossing my fingers for a rented tux and nice dress and a friend with a Universal Life Church certificate.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. And even if it isn’t, it’ll be nice to get out somewhere where I know no one is going to talk to me about business.”

“Most of the team is going, so that means you’ll be there as the boss’s date. I’m expecting very polite conversation and good behavior out of all of them.”

“Really? I figure I’m going to be cornered at least once and told to make an honest man out of you.” Gabe could honestly say he’d never had an entire Tech Support team voice an opinion on one of his relationships.

James ducked his head, blushing hard this time. “I am not expecting them to say anything like that. I’m mostly the guy who signs their time sheets.”

“I think you sell yourself short.” It seemed to be a habit of James’s. “As a head of a major multinational corporation, I like to think I can recognize leadership and management skills when I see them.”

“Yes, letting them spend half an hour watching dancing-cat videos online is a great management skill.”

“Sure it is, if it’s just a half hour. It makes them happy, it makes them loyal, it makes them feel like you’re on their side, and happy, loyal employees are the ones who are willing to put in that extra shift when you really need it, spend those extra few minutes finishing up a project instead of clocking out and putting it off for the next day. I bet you do more asking than ordering.”

“I don’t think my team would follow an order.”

“Sure they would. They want to keep their jobs. They’d probably just halfass it.”

James chuckled. “Are you sure you haven’t met them?”

“I’ve bought up a lot of companies. I’ve seen pretty much every flavor of group dynamic and leadership method. TechPrim has a whole management re-education process for when we get in lots of new people. We try to teach them that happy, healthy employees with happy healthy families are loyal, productive employees. And I bet if I asked around, I’d find out you are a reasonably bright spot in what I’m sure is a pretty dreary job for most of them.”

James stared into his glass, his face still red. “I floated up into my spot because I’d been there the longest and knew where most of the bodies were buried.”

“I got my job because the guys didn’t know how to use a spreadsheet and didn’t want to fill out the business loan applications themselves.”

“I hope they’re grateful.”

“They are. But it’s been a long road. We’re kinda like brothers now. We know exactly how to piss each other off. The three of us once did a press conference on how good our next product was going to be and how stable TechPrim was, at a point when we hadn’t actually spoken to each other in a week and were passing bitchy notes around via our PAs.”

James was trying and failing to hold back a grin. “Sounds very mature.”

“That’s us. Mature as anything. Two code monkeys and a business school wannabe. Believe me, I regularly look around at the company and the guys and think, ‘Who the hell was stupid enough to put us in charge of all this?’”

“Day I took Dylan home, I had the same thought. ‘What the hell am I doing?’”

Gabe felt a flash of shame, even though he knew James had had no intention of making him feel that way. He was griping about running a company, something which, frankly, a lot of far less talented people than him did perfectly well, but the idea of having a kid had only crossed his mind on a few occasions and the thought of raising one on his own was the thing of nightmares.

He leaned forward, closing the space between them, and pressed a hard kiss to James’s lips. “Whatever it was you did, you did it right.”

J
AMES
NUDGED
open Dylan’s bedroom door with his hip and set a full basket of laundry on the bed. He’d trained Dylan to mostly pick up and put away his own clothes years earlier, but lately James had found himself doing it again, this time with more nostalgia than annoyance.

He opened the top drawer of Dylan’s dresser to deposit some socks and found a pair of glass eyes looking up at him from a face of matted, off white fur.

He pulled Squiggle Bear from the drawer and sat down on the bed. The blue felt on the paws, with the strange abstract pattern that had earned Squiggle Bear his name, was rubbed nearly smooth. James noticed his left ear was coming loose. He was overdue for a repatching after a savage teacup poodle attack.

He wrapped his arms around the bear, holding it to his chest the way Dylan had only moments after shredding through wrapping paper with the number three printed all over it. He’d gotten a dump truck and another stuffed bear that birthday, but the white bear with strange blue felt paws had been his instant love.

“Do you two need a moment?” Dylan was leaning against his door, looking amused. James loosened his hold on Squiggle Bear but didn’t put him down.

“Are you taking him with you when you move into the dorms?”

“Well, not if you want him.”

James didn’t rise to the bait. “You used to take him everywhere.”

“I stopped that a while ago.”

“He’d miss you.”

Dylan didn’t reply, but he did sit down on the bed next to James. He took Squiggle Bear from James’s hands and stared at him in quiet contemplation.

“His ear is getting loose again.”

“I’ve been meaning to get to that.”

“I never thought you’d stop crying that day. Thank God your grandmother is quick with a needle and thread.”

Dylan ran his thumb across the chronically lopsided ear before a slight frown pulled at his face. “That day I left him at the merry-go-round up at the park, how did you get him back? I mean, it was after dark by the time I noticed I didn’t have him, and they shut down the park at dusk.”

James sighed. It had not been one of his better evenings. “I may have hopped a gate, hiked a couple of miles, and jimmied open a door with a pocketknife. Thankfully, carousels aren’t known for high security.”

Dylan put Squiggle Bear aside and pulled his dad into a hug. “Thank you.”

“You refused to sleep without him. Didn’t leave me with a lot of options.”

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure Squiggle Bear didn’t want to spend the night in the ticket booth anyway.”

T
HE
SUN
was warm, and there was a cool breeze. The morning fog had floated away from Golden Gate Park, and it was looking like a beautiful, picture-perfect day for a wedding. As Dave’s big day approached, James had found himself looking forward to time out of the house, possibly with Gabe. That it would involve watching Dave get hitched added a level of amusement.

He strolled slowly along as the path twisted around trees as old as the park. They felt like a pinprick of wilderness in the middle of the city. He’d given himself plenty of time to find a parking spot and gotten lucky, finding one right away, so he was comfortably early. He heard steps moving quickly up the gravel path behind him and stepped to the side.

A hand landed on his shoulder. He yelped, jumped, and whipped around. Gabe stood less than two feet from him in a light cream suit with no tie.

“Jesus!”

Gabe raised his hands. “Sorry.”

“You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry about that.” Gabe dropped his hands and put a quick peck on his lips. “But I made it.”

James smiled. “Thank you. I know you’ve got work on—”

Gabe shook his head. “I always have work, but it can be shifted around a little to witness shotgun weddings with my boyfriend.” James was still getting used to hearing the word “boyfriend” applied to him, and it gave him a little thrill. Gabe gave him another kiss. “Come on. Let’s get good seats.”

The path twisted around until it opened up onto a meadow. There were a couple of pavilions set up and a gazebo people were gathering around. The gazebo was draped in long strings of orange and white flowers, and golden fabric. A fire was burning in a small pot in front of it. Men with large drums were getting settled, while three very serious-looking older men waited in the gazebo. There were maybe fifty guests. About a quarter of them looked like they had dug out and dusted off old job interview clothes; the other half were in well-tailored suits and saris. James wondered if perhaps they had wandered into the wrong wedding.

“You should have told me it was an Indian wedding. I would have worn my
veshti
.”

“I had no idea. I was honestly picturing ten people and a shotgun.”

Gabe grinned. “Oh, this could end up being way more interesting than that.”

As they approached the gathering, James spotted a couple members of his team, who waved at him. There was a bit more waving, and eight people slid their way through the crowd to meet them.

“Hey, boss,” Clare greeted them. A child of radical labor activists, she was usually the spokesperson for the team when they were all together. “Hey, boss’s plus one.”

James gave her a quick, hard look. “Gabe, this is my team—Clare, Sasha, Ying, Martin, Chris, Alex, Elijah, and Zippy. Everyone, this is Gabe Juarez. My boyfriend.” Those last words felt odd coming out of his mouth, like his lips were still trying to feel the shape of them. Gabe, always the professional, made a quick round of handshakes.

James looked his team over while Gabe was shaking hands. He seldom, if ever, saw them outside the stifling confines of work. Clare, Ying, and Chris were actually in dresses, and the guys were all in shirts that had at least a few buttons. Zippy had gone all out and found a tie. A hideous, avocado-green one, but a tie nonetheless.

“Wow. You all scrub up pretty well.”

Zippy adjusted his tie. “Dave begged us. Like properly begged.”

“Did you all know about…?” James waved his hand toward the decked-out gazebo and the bride’s side of the aisle.

“Nope,” Clare answered for the group.

Zippy was shaking his head. “We knew Kara was Indian, but we figured Dave would have a gaming buddy get one of those online priest things, and just do it.”

An old man approached the fire. People started taking their seats. “I think it’s going to be more complicated than that,” James said.

“Yeah.”

Everyone started moving toward their seats. A young Indian man of maybe twenty-five approached as James headed toward a pair of empty seats. “James Maron?”

“Yes?”

“Your seats are up here.”

James gave a quick shrug to Gabe before following the young man. In the front row, there were two seats with neatly folded name cards, bearing his name and Gabe’s.

Gabe smiled at him. “It’s good to be the boss.”

James took his seat with a chuckle. Being the boss might get Gabe front row seats at weddings, but it was new to James.

The old man began speaking. James didn’t understand a word. Gabe leaned close. “I’ve been to a few of these. This is going to take a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“Last one took about three hours. Though I’m told you can squish it down to two if you really need to.”

James had only ever been to one wedding. He’d been ten, it had been for some cousin, it had taken all of fifteen minutes, and his abiding memory was of being allowed to have cake even though it wasn’t his birthday.

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

He looked over his shoulder at what he assumed were Dave’s family and friends, including his team. They all had the same looks on their faces: polite interest, masking total confusion. After some time there was music, and everyone looked over their shoulder. Dave was being led up to the altar by an older Indian man who didn’t look terribly happy. Dave was as clean as James had ever seen him, in a white shirt, white silk scarf, and a white sarong-type thing. There wasn’t an orange stain in sight. Dave was deposited in his place to the right of the fire pot, where he stood, looking uncomfortable.

Then everyone craned their heads back around. At the far end of the aisle was a young woman in a deep red sari trimmed with gold. Her hands and feet were covered in intricate
mehndi
patterns of henna, and her fine-boned face was framed with gold jewelry. James looked at Dave. Dave, with his mushy, white-bread complexion and bad posture. He looked shell-shocked.

James looked at the bride, then whispered to Gabe. “Am I hallucinating, or is she attractive?”

“Yes. She falls under the category of hot.”

James took one more look at Dave. “Okay. Just checking.”

The bride was brought up to the altar by her family, and the old man began to speak again, still not in English. James quickly lost track of the ceremony. He didn’t feel too bad about it. Dave looked completely out of his depth, but so did his almost-wife, who was receiving as much nudging and whispered instruction as Dave. The people he assumed were Dave’s parents looked just as confused.

Gabe, on the other hand, was keeping up a soft running commentary as the ceremony progressed. “They’re exchanging the garlands as a sign of unification of souls. But they’re really supposed to be on their uncles’ shoulders to do it.” James tried to picture anyone lifting Dave to their shoulders and was glad that bit had been skipped.