Little Squirrels Can Climb Tall Trees (13 page)

“It’s okay. I’m a doctor.”

“I’m not a You Break It, You Buy It kind of guy. Now go on! Get out of here, or you’ll be late for work. And somehow I don’t think you’ve ever done that.”

“Never. Bye,” he said as he dashed out the door and down the hall to the elevator.

O
VER
the days and weeks that followed, when we weren’t working, we spent every moment in one another’s company. We ate together. We talked together. We ran together. We debated issues together. We slept together. We had sex like rabid tree squirrels together. We cooked together. We watched movies together.

When he ran out of clean clothes, Kyle went back to his apartment to pick up some things. He asked me to tag along, which I was only too happy to do. One glimpse at the place where Kyle lived was all it took for me to see why the man had never asked me to stay there. “This is where you live?”

“No. I didn’t really start living until I met you.”

“Now you’re gonna make me cry!” I really was afraid of doing just that.

Kyle moved around the apartment, packing up a few things. The place was rather spartan in appearance. The furniture, what there was of it, was used—not secondhand, but something like tenthhand. The tiny place was simple: one room, square, with a rickety bed, a simple wooden chair on which he had piled his clothes, an old sofa with books stacked where one leg should have stood, no TV, and a monster pile of medical journals on the floor next to the sofa. There was no place to sit to eat. The kitchen, if you could call it that, was a tiny corner of the tiny room. The refrigerator was tiny (and ancient), the stove was tiny—everything about the place was tiny. Which was odd because the man who resided there was anything but tiny.

It didn’t take too long for the two of us to collect what few things Kyle needed and return to my apartment. The walk back to my place was unusually quiet; neither of us had much to say, which wasn’t to say that we didn’t have things on our minds—quite the contrary.

When we were back inside my place, I asked a simple question. “When does your lease expire?”

“End of next month.”

“Let it go,” I said decisively. “Move in with me. I have the space. I want you here.”

Kyle looked expectantly at me. I knew what was still to be said, but I was finding that I was unable to get the words out easily.

“I’d say it first,” Kyle half joked, “but it doesn’t count coming from me.”

“
Why the hell not?
”

“Because I’m new at this and probably fall in love more easily. You, on the other hand, are the battle-hardened, dating-weary man of the world. If you say the words, you’ll really mean them.”

“No more so than if you say them,” I objected as strenuously as possible.

“They’ll be harder for you to say. For me, the hard part has been
waiting
to say them. I’ve been working hard to hold them in and not let them fly out and go bouncing around the room at least seventeen times an hour. Now come on! Say them!” he ordered. “It’s starting to hurt having this bounce around inside me!”

I took a deep breath and gave my boyfriend an understanding, loving smile, knowing that the words Kyle had just spoken were true. With no additional hesitation, I took Kyle’s hands in my own, looked up at those gorgeous eyes—which were wild with anticipation—and said, “Kyle, I want you to move in here with me because you wash dishes really well.”

Kyle slapped my arm and yelled, “
Dude!
”

“Sorry! Couldn’t resist. Let’s try this again.” Taking a deep breath and refocusing myself, I once again took both of Kyle’s hands in mine, looked up into his eyes, and said, “Kyle, you came out of the blue and burst into my life so unexpectedly. Before I realized what was happening, you had stolen my heart. And then I realized that I could entrust it to your loving care. Kyle, please move in with me because I love you and want to be with you now and always.”

Tears were shed at that point as we grappled in a hug. I’m sure it was Kyle who cried first. I am, after all, the dating-hardened man of the world. You buying any of this? I’m not. Kyle was able to get out his words. “I love you, Jo-Jo.”

“
Jo-Jo?
Where the hell did that come from?” I laughed.

“I wanted a pet name for you.”

“How about ‘rabid tree squirrel’?”

“I can call you ‘squirrel’, but I think I’ll skip the rabid part when we’re with others. But I still like Jo-Jo and want to use that sometimes.”

After mulling it over for a moment, I relented. “Okay. No one’s ever called me Jo-Jo before. I kind of like it. Now get out of here! Go to work! You’re going to be late!”

And Kyle dashed off to make it to the ER in time for his shift to start at 7:00 a.m.

The days that followed were a blur of activity. Long hours at the ER for Kyle, hard work at the office for me, time to get acquainted in the evenings and on days off. As needed, Kyle moved a few of his things from his apartment to mine. He didn’t have all that much stuff to begin with, and not all of what he had needed to go with him. It didn’t take too much sorting or too many trips to get everything he had arranged and moved. The medical journals were the heaviest of the things. In the end he decided to discard a lot of them since he also had electronic access and actually referred to that more frequently than he did to the paper copies. One evening I asked him, “When do you want to move your stuff in here?”

“Already done.”

“What do you mean?” I asked in disbelief.

“It’s all taken care of. I’ve moved everything.”

“How? Where? When?” Had the man accidentally bumped his head and injured himself? There was no way he’d moved all of his stuff. There was hardly any sign of anything different.

“I didn’t have that much stuff. The furniture was all, um, recycled. The only kitchen stuff I had was rummage sale-type stuff that I just left. All I really had were my clothes—not that many—and my laptop, which has everything. Otherwise, I’ve traveled fairly light so far.”

I stared at the man with utter disbelief that transformed into unbelievable respect. “You are absolutely amazing.”

“Actually, I think the word is ‘awesome’. Remember, I am an
awesome
man.”

“Wise words. You should listen to whoever told you that. Sounds like a smart guy.”

We snuggled together for a moment, enjoying a quick kiss before returning to whatever task we were each doing that evening—one of the many benefits of living together was that we could snuggle whenever we felt the mood strike us. A moment later Kyle looked up at me and said softly, “I love you, Jo-Jo, my little squirrel.”

“Love you too, big guy. Can we maybe drop the ‘little’ part?”

“From my perspective, everyone is little.”

“How about ‘big, ferocious, man-eating squirrel’?” I knew it was a long shot, but I had to try.

“Man-eating? Hmmmm. I think I’d need to gather some data first to verify your claims.”

“I can oblige.”

“I know you can. But I need to finish this first. I only need a few more minutes.”

I didn’t know what he was doing, but I could see that whatever it was, it involved his calendar. I moved over behind the man as he sat at the table, put my arms around Kyle’s shoulders, and asked, “What are you working on, or is it private?”

“I have no secrets from you. I’m checking out my schedule for the next few months. I got notice today that I have some annual leave that I have to use or lose by the end of the calendar year. I’ve never had ‘annual leave’ before, so I hadn’t thought anything about taking time off. I’ve been just focused on work.”

“How much flexibility are they giving you about when you can take it off?”

“Not much, as it turns out. I’m apparently junior in the leave-taking priority schedule, so I have to work around everyone else’s schedule. Here’s what I’ve got,” he said as he held up his calendar. “There’s a two-week block available in early November and then another two-week block in early December.”

“No Thanksgiving or Christmas?”

“Sure. Just not for me until I’ve got more seniority in the pecking order. And besides, if the schedule they’ve got me on holds true, I’m going to be off on Christmas Day. I have to work Thanksgiving Day, which sucks. But then at least I’m off the next day and all that weekend.”

“Hmmm. We can work with that.”

Kyle looked up at me with a suspicious look on his face. “What are you thinking about, Jo-Jo? I can always tell when you’re plotting something.”

“Who? Me? Never! I am a pure, innocent, demure little creature!”

“Talk!” he ordered, not buying a word I was saying. Neither was I, for that matter.

“Okay. I’ve had all of thirty seconds to plan this out, but I have two ideas. One, I need to drive up to Vermont to see my family for a couple of days, and it would be
fantastic
to have you come along with me on that drive and have a chance to meet everybody.”

“You want me to meet your family?” he said as if it were akin to sacrificing baby seals or something equally hideous.

“Yes. I want you to meet my family. They’re all dying to meet you.”

“How do they know about me?” he asked with a look of utter appalled disbelief on his face.

“Because I’ve told them, doofus! I’ve told everybody about you. I practically shouted it from the rooftops. My mom can’t wait to meet you. My dad said he wants to show you all of his maple syrup facilities—in Dad-speak that’s
really
a high honor—and my sister said it was about time I stopped being a fucking whore and settled down with a nice guy. She loves your smile as much as I do.”

“Wait wait wait! How has she ever seen my smile? Or my anything? Has she been stalking us or something?”

“I sent them a picture. Remember the night we were out for Italian and I asked the guy in the booth next to us to take our picture? It came out great, so I sent a copy to them by e-mail. My sister thinks you’re sexy as hell!”

Kyle simply stared at me for a moment or two. “You’ve really told your family that you’re gay?”

“Oh, they’ve known I sucked dick for twenty years. I think my mother knew before I had figured it out. They’re good people.” I thought quickly, deciding it was time to pull out the big guns. “And remember—my folks make maple syrup… and other maple products. Maple candy among them. Have you ever had maple candy? Oh my God, it is fucking fantastic!”

“Maple syrup?” Kyle asked, hesitantly considering the idea. “The real stuff?”

“The real, honest-to-God stuff. Straight out of the trees each spring and into the sap arch for cooking and bottling.”

“Where do they get the sap?”

“They’ve got a couple hundred acres of sugar maples that they own, or own the rights to, that supply the raw material. My mother looks forward to making her pancakes for you so that you can taste their maple syrup, even though she knows you’ve already tasted it here.”

It was obvious to me that Kyle didn’t know how to process all of this new information. It was all so absolutely contrary to his family. From everything he had told me, he could never have such an open and honest conversation with his family. I could only guess at how sad he must feel. I know how bad it would make me feel if my family couldn’t know about the real me, the man I had become, the man I was so proud of becoming, not to mention the man who was such an important part of my life.

Kyle took a deep breath and simply agreed. “Okay. Let’s do it. It’s all new to me, but somehow it feels right at the same time. Is there a hotel near them that we can book?”

“No need to. My folks live in this huge old country house with a gazillion bedrooms, so we’ll just take one of them, probably my old room.”

“Do they have a room I can use too?”

“No. You and I will stay in
our
room. We will sleep together in
our
room in
our
bed. We are together. We are a couple. That’s what we are. That’s what they expect. And you don’t want to know the grilling I would get if we slept in separate beds in separate rooms.”

On this Kyle seemed really doubtful, but he said, “Okay.”

“Great. But that’s not all. I was thinking that that would only be a couple of nights. I thought maybe we could drive back here and then fly down to Key West for a week so you can relax and get some sun. You’re starting to look as white as Casper the Friendly Ghost—you could use a little sun to give you a nice golden brown color.”

Kyle looked—well, I don’t know exactly how I would describe his look. I couldn’t read the man’s face. “Okay. I need some words to interpret.”

“Ummm….”

“Start anywhere.”

“Flying to Florida.” He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, clearly about to say something profound. When he spoke, the words he gave me were words I would never, ever, in a million years have expected. “I’ve never been on an airplane before.”

I just looked at him for a few seconds. My brain was processing his words, not believing them. They were not remotely what I had expected. I had thought that maybe he didn’t like Key West, or he didn’t like the beach, or something like that. But “never been on an airplane”? No, I never expected that.