Hopelessly Devoted (2 page)

We hadn’t been apart since, so when Paul said he was taking Dave to a shelter, to
abandon
him, I was furious.

I slammed the cutlery on the counter, making Paul jump and turn from the end of the kitchen where he’d been pacing. Metal against granite can be quite loud if you put enough force behind it. “
We
will do no such thing! If you want him gone, then you’ll have to say goodbye to me too.”

Would I have actually chosen Dave over Paul? I don’t know, but at that moment I had one foot out the door, ready to leave. I knew what it felt like to be unwanted and unloved, and I wasn’t going to abandon the one creature that didn’t care if I was gay and loved me regardless, unconditionally. Like parents are supposed to love their children.

Paul’s eyes went wide at my words, and his broad shoulders slumped a little. “Babe?”

“If you want him gone, then I’m going with him.”

“You’re serious?” he whispered.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” I said with much more conviction than I felt. When it came down to it, if Paul pushed to get rid of Dave, then I’d have to leave too. I wouldn’t be able to stay with him knowing he threw my cat out. My chest constricted at the thought.

I turned away from Paul, not wanting to see the indecision in his eyes, grabbed my plate of Chinese, and sat on the sofa with as much indifference as I could muster. I tried to concentrate on what I was eating, but I was all too aware of Paul still standing silently at the end of the counter, his jaw probably flapping in the breeze. I flicked the TV on and pretended to watch the news. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dave sitting at the top of the stairs, watching us. He had probably heard everything we said and was waiting to see if he still had a home or not.

After a long few minutes Paul sat next to me, resting his dinner on his knees as he pushed a piece of broccoli around his plate. Our legs brushed together, and I moved away slightly, putting some distance between us.

“How was your day?” he urged, not looking at me. Sadness and confusion colored his tone. When I didn’t answer, he asked, “You would leave me?”

I sighed. I couldn’t back down now; I had to fight for Dave. After placing my uneaten dinner on the coffee table, I turned and faced Paul. He looked so sad it almost broke my heart, but he didn’t know how Dave and I came to be. He didn’t know that as much as I saved Dave, Dave had also saved me.

I took Paul’s plate from his hands, placing it on the table next to mine, then threaded our fingers together. “Let me tell you a story....”

It was the following morning as I was talking to the concierge of our building—yes, I now lived in a building that had one of those, and honestly, it took some getting used to whenever Raoul said, “Good morning, Mr. Jennings. Your car is waiting,”—that he suggested one of those self-closing door thingies.

That afternoon Paul had one installed on the closet door, and he and Dave became best friends—much to my chagrin. Dave was
my
cat, after all, but you wouldn’t know it. If Paul and I were both in the kitchen, Dave would give me that look of disdain only cats can give, then turn and stick his ass up at me before rubbing himself against Paul’s legs. The traitorous bastard.

THE WEEK after the Dave Debacle, I stood at the bathroom sink trying to make my hair stay down when Paul came up behind me and kissed the back of my neck.

“Why don’t you come with me to my stylist? Pierre will cut your hair so it sits right and doesn’t resemble Harry Potter, The Early Years.”

“Your
stylist
is named
Pierre
?”

“Yes, what’s wrong with that?”

“I suppose he charges, what, two hundred dollars for a shampoo and trim?”

Paul pressed his lips together tightly, not answering.

“My barber,
Eric
, charges twenty.”

“I know. I can tell.” Paul smirked.

I huffed. “And there is nothing wrong with Potter. He’s kinda hot.” I waggled my eyebrows at Paul in the mirror, my hair misbehaving just as much as the character it resembled.

His eyes went wide. “You have a crush on a twelve-year-old boy? That’s just sick.”

Abandoning my hair, I turned to face him. He gathered me in his arms before placing a chaste kiss on my lips.

“No, you idiot,” I said, slapping his arm. “Daniel Radcliffe. Have you seen him lately? He’s buff.”

“Yes, I’ve seen him. But he’s not nearly as hot as Jason Jennings-Connor.”

“‘Jennings-Connor’? You want to hyphenate our names?” I thought we were talking about my hair, and I wasn’t sure how the conversation got turned around so quickly.

“I don’t know. I thought I’d throw it out there and see if it’d stick.” Paul eyed me cautiously. “Do you like it?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it. Can I have some time to digest?”

“Sure, babe. Take all the time you need. In the meantime, I’ll make an appointment with Pierre for both of us.”

Back to the hair. “It’s just hair. It doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t get in my eyes and bother me. It will just grow back to the same sticky-up mess anyway and I don’t see the point of spending that much money on it.”

“You won’t be spending money on it. I will.”

“No.”

“Come on, babe, let me treat you.”

“It’s just hair. It doesn’t matter, and if you want to treat me, I need some new socks.” Paul tried the puppy-dog eyes on me, but I wanted to show him that spending that amount of money on something you could get for a tenth of the cost wasn’t the issue here. “Tell you what. I’ll take you to
Eric
, the
barber
, and he’ll cut both our hair. Then you can tell me if
Pierre
the
overpriced stylist
can cut any better. If you don’t agree with me, I’ll go with you to Pierre.”

My good, albeit frugal, intentions didn’t quite pan out that time, and Paul went to work the entire following week wearing a fedora and looking like a much-more-masculine-and-hotter Justin Timberlake until he could get a “fix up” appointment with Pierre. I thought the hat rocked, and just to show him how much I loved the new look, I took an early lunch, cornered him in his office, and blew him under the desk. By the time I left, Paul was rethinking the hat.

Paul Senior caught up with me while I was walking to the elevator to go back to my office after my mid-morning delight.

“Jason, I haven’t seen you lately. How are you, son?” Paul Senior and I got along well. We didn’t see a lot of each other, but as far as future fathers-in-law went, I thought he was a pretty good one and our relationship was casual and friendly.

“Fine, sir. And yourself?” I followed my Paul’s lead and always called Paul Senior “sir” when in the building. In private he was Paul, or sometimes, when I had imbibed a few too many shots of his single-malt whiskey, it was Dad.

“Good, good. Can you tell me why Paul is wearing that hat to work? He refuses to take it off, and whenever I ask him, he grunts and says he’s never listening you to again. What did you do?”

“Um, I took him to see Eric, my barber. Paul has a habit of paying exorbitant prices for things, and I wanted to show him that he doesn’t always need to pay top dollar. It kind of backfired this time,” I said sheepishly. I couldn’t imagine what the clients thought of his new look.

He laughed and clasped a hand on my shoulder. “You are so good for him. He needs someone like you to keep his feet on the ground. The hat adds a level of sophistication I haven’t seen before. I’m thinking of asking him to keep it.”

I smiled, thinking of how Paul had looked in the hat when I had my mouth around his cock, his eyes dark and blown, the fedora tilted just a little. “I think it rocks.”

“Well, if anyone can convince him, it’s you.”

Paul Senior grinned, then turned and strolled down the corridor with his hands in his pockets, laughing. As I turned around to push the button for the elevator, I caught my Paul leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed over the broad expanse of his chest and a scowl on his face.

I knew that look of annoyance, so I made a beeline for the stairs.

Later that night, after Paul had fucked me until I was a sweaty, boneless heap, he brought up the subject of Dave again. I told him a little bit more, about how for most of the past eight years it was only Dave and me, and how Dave didn’t like any of my previous boyfriends—if you could call them that—until Paul had shown up.

“Dave really saved you, didn’t he?” Paul whispered against my skin.

“Just like you did,” I answered honestly.

He leaned up on one elbow and looked down at me, his eyes glinting with just-fucked bliss and humor. “Aww, am I your prince charming?”

I snorted. “Not with that hair.”

THE NEXT
disagreement
came as we were talking about the guest list for the wedding.

“No,” I said firmly.

“But they’re your parents. Don’t you think they’d want to know who you’re marrying?” Paul questioned on the way home from work one day. We were sitting in the back of the town car, our driver weaving his way slowly through the New York rush-hour traffic.

“Trust me, my parents won’t give a shit. You could be Donald Trump and own half of New York and they still won’t care.” I silently begged him to drop the subject. My parents kicked me out when I opened my closet door, and before meeting Paul I had been on my own for the better part of ten years. Even as a skinny, awkward, and obviously gay man, I knew how to look after myself. I had mastered the art of shrinking into the shadows, after all. I also knew how much my parents despised me, as I had attempted to reconcile with them on a few occasions when I thought their bigotry might have subsided and they might actually miss their only child. The last time I tried was about six months prior to meeting Paul, and I couldn’t handle the rejection again if he made me contact them so soon. It wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation, but I hadn’t told Paul I’d already tried to see them on numerous occasions.

Paul let the subject drop for the remainder of the drive home, only to pick it up again when we entered the penthouse.

“They still live in the same house, don’t they? Maybe we could take a drive on the weekend. We don’t have to go in if you don’t want to, but—”

“Why would you put me through that?” I yelled. My fear of being rejected again by the people who were supposed to love me the most mingled with my anger. I threw my keys on the granite counter, making Dave run off down the hall. I turned and faced Paul. “You’re supposed to love me and support me, not make me do shit that will inevitably break my heart.”

Paul took a step closer, his voice softening when he saw the fury on my face. “I just want you to have what I have. I want you to know your parents and have a relationship with them. Maybe they won’t come around straight away, but how will you know if you don’t try? I don’t like the thought of you not having any family at the wedding.”

My anger vanished at the pleading look on his face. He had my best interests at heart, and I needed to remind myself of that every now and then. “I already have what you have. I have
your
family. They love me, don’t they?”

Paul nodded. “Of course they do.”

“Then that’s all I need. I’ve tried to see my parents a few times over the years and it’s always ended the same way. They disowned me a long time ago, and as far as they’re concerned, I’m already dead.”

A couple of weeks later Paul said he was meeting his dad for a business lunch and wouldn’t be home till late in the afternoon. It was Saturday, and although Paul tried not to work on the weekends, sometimes it was unavoidable, so I didn’t think anything of it. I wondered if there was a show I could get a ticket to at late notice.

It wasn’t until he returned later that day that he said he’d lied to me and had actually been to see my parents—to deliver their wedding invitation. He grabbed me in a tight hold as soon as he came through the door and buried his face in my hair, whispering apologies.

“I’m sorry I’ve been arguing with you about this. I guess I just didn’t believe how bad it was. I thought you were exaggerating.”

I stiffened in his arms. I was mad as hell, but I forced myself to shut up and listen while he told me what happened.

Paul led me to the couch and entwined our fingers as he told me the story.

He drove with his dad to the little house I grew up in, in a borough far enough away to have to take a packed lunch.

“Your dad knew who I was as soon as he opened the front door. It seems your parents follow the gossip columns and had seen the engagement notice. He said he’d been expecting something, but I think he was a little shocked to see me
and
Dad standing on his porch.”

“What did my dad say?” I didn’t want to know, not really, but it was one of those things you know you shouldn’t ask but can’t stop yourself. It seems when it came to my parents, I was a glutton for punishment.

Paul’s hands tightened around mine. “I’m sorry, babe. When I handed him the invitation, he didn’t even look at it. He just ripped it up and threw it on the ground in front of me. There was a little gray-haired woman standing in the shadows behind him. It was as if she didn’t want to come any closer in case something happened and she got caught up in it. Meek would be a word for her, I think. At least that’s how she appeared to me. Her eyes shone a little, and I could tell she was keeping her distance. She didn’t say anything. Your dad went off on a tirade about the scourge of the city and the ‘gay agenda’—because we have one, right? Anyway, that’s when Dad stepped up and put him in his place. I haven’t seen him get that mad since I was bullied off the soccer team in high school for being gay.”

Paul’s description of Mom was spot on. She didn’t like any kind of confrontation and would never stand up for herself. Or her son. “I can’t imagine your dad getting angry. I’ve never even heard him raise his voice. He’s always been collected and in control.” I guess seeing his son being yelled at by a homophobic, religious bigot brought out the alpha male in Paul Senior.

“Dad usually is. He wasn’t at all happy that you were brought up in that house and talked about it non-stop on the way home. He’s proud you’ve turned out so normal.” I almost snorted. I’d been made to feel
abnormal
most of my life, so to hear someone like Paul Senior say I was normal was pretty funny, in a non-funny way. Paul continued, “You can’t get emotional in business, but you really don’t want to see him worked up. I could see your dad shrink and cower a little before he slammed the door in our faces.” Paul’s voice softened as he played with my fingers. “I’m sorry. Can you forgive me for not listening to you?”