“Yes,” I hissed. “Hell yes. I"m wired that way, all right? I
like
it.” I stuck my chin up, afraid of what he"d say. “I"ve never had an intimate relationship where my quirks came into play, I"ve always kept it separate and almost clinical, but…yes.”
“Do you want one?” he asked. “I don"t mind telling you, I have an answering kink.”
I wanted to die. “This is so embarrassing. I"m really not good at this sort of thing. I don"t know how to do relationships. Can"t you just fling me up against the wall like this when you want me and be done with it?”
Ken laughed and then shook his head. “For a little guy, you sure can be a lot of—”
“Who are you calling a little guy?” I demanded.
“Jordan, look at me,” he commanded, and I did. The voice he used flowed through me like water. It was quiet and earnest, yet so powerful I could feel my body changing even as he spoke. “I know you think you can"t trust what we feel.” 128
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“That"s not true. I just—”
“You said as much at Izzie"s, before the attack. You said you were the first out gay man I"d met, that I was responding to you because of the years I suppressed my sexuality.”
“I didn"t mean that the way you took it.” I tried to move my arms, but he held them fast. “I didn"t mean to imply you don"t know what you want.”
“Sure you did.” He glowered at me, and I glared right back. “I don"t know
everything
I want, Jordan, but I know I want you.” I lowered my eyes so he wouldn"t see what that made me feel. I wanted to shout,
Fuck yes
, but I couldn"t let the doubt go.
“I"m not going to ask anymore.” He continued to hold me, his incredible upper body strength—both comforting and a little frightening—was something I could push against but never be free of unless he chose to allow it. Giving Ken power over me was a revelation. Surrender to him was
electrifying
. Sexy, but it also held the promise of immense comfort if I trusted him and allowed him to exercise that kind of control over me. “If you need someone to tell you what you want, please, let that someone be me.” I wanted it so badly I went rigid. “I"m afraid.”
“Of me?” He brushed his lips against mine.
“Of…everything.” It was true. I
was
afraid of everything; of losing my focus, of breaking the rules, of living for myself and harming someone again. I was afraid of any choice I made that didn"t directly result from selfless service. Something I could understand and perform without faltering and failing people I cared about. “
I’m afraid of
fucking up again
.”
“I"ve got you.” He expelled a breath next to my ear that ruffled the hair there, and I pushed forward, into him, into the strength of his arms and the lure of being controlled by a strong, good man. “
I’ve got you
.” I heard a car pull up outside, even as I watched the passion spark in Ken"s eyes.
When he heard my mother use the key in the front door, he let me slide down the wall, backing away from my body and letting me know with his eyes that he wasn"t through with me
at all
. He sat back down at the table, and I walked to the refrigerator where I could get a grip on myself and find the makings for some sandwiches.
I stared at the shelves in the fridge for a minute as Izzie and my mother came into the room. My entire childhood was in that refrigerator: mayo and mustard, tomato, lettuce, and pickles. A number of different cheeses and lunch meats, big bowls of Jell-O
and three-bean salad. I could hear that my mother was happy from her voice, and it made me smile. If nothing else, St, Nacho"s was bringing her to life in a way I never expected.
“So, what do you think? Everyone loved the pie I made,” my mother chirped proudly. “Oh, hi, Ken, nice to see you again. Is Jordan fixing you some lunch?” Physical Therapy
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I told her I was, and invited them to join us. Izzie was giving Ken and me a piercing look; I had no doubt at all that she knew exactly what she"d interrupted. “So.
Settling in here nicely, I see.”
I"m sure I looked guilty. “It"s very good of Ken to let us stay here. I don"t think it will be as long as the doctor imagines, I"m probably ready to start—”
“Nothing doing.” Izzie stopped me. “If you even try to do an end run around doctor"s orders, I will fire you on the spot.”
I sputtered a little but in the end, I just made sandwiches. The four of us ate and talked, and if I noticed at the time that both Ken and my mother were less talkative than usual, it seemed only to be in contrast to Izzie, who more than made up for any deficit in the conversation. When Izzie and Ken got ready to leave, I wasn"t sorry; they"d exhausted me.
Ken pulled me aside as he was about to follow Izzie out the front door and leaned in, brushing his lips to mine and pressing his lean, unshaven cheek against my temple as though he didn"t want to let me go.
“Have faith, Jordie,” he whispered. “I can be strong enough for both of us.” I searched his face then, not understanding exactly what he meant. His blue eyes held such warmth that I lost myself in them for a minute. I wanted to tell him he was; that he"d always been strong enough. I started to say something, my focus entirely on him, barely noticing when my mother cleared her throat and put a hand to my back, nudging me to let him go. He winked at me and left through the front door with a spring in his ungainly step that hadn"t been there before, even though he still used two canes.
After he left, my mother went back toward the kitchen, muttering under her breath, “Like a couple of teenagers—at your age.” Absurdly, in my imagination I heard the Darlene Love song, “Today I Met the Boy I"m Gonna Marry,” and it made me feel like I"d been hit over the head all over again.
* * * * *
Given how we"d left the subject open, it was a surprise when a week passed during which I didn"t hear from Ken. Izzie, Andy, my Red Hat ladies, Cooper, and Shawn came by every day, in some combination of what I was beginning to think of as a vast conspiracy to convince me that the world was really a better place than I"d ever imagined it could be.
My mother was pink-cheeked and happy and had turned her hand to making pies for everyone as a way of saying thank you. She put the word out that anyone who brought over a pie plate could come back the following day and find it filled with something delicious, and she made good on her promises, even drafting me into the process when she found herself staring at a minuscule kitchen table stacked with 130
Z. A. Maxfield
fourteen pie plates. She and I looked at each other, and I don"t know who thought it first, but suddenly we both knew how she could stay here, if she had the courage.
“Pie,” she began, as though thinking out loud, “isn"t a terribly expensive thing to make.”
I didn"t want her to get ahead of herself. “There are probably a million rules about how things have to be made, what the ingredients need to be, where you can and can"t make it.”
Her brows drew together. “Don"t Cooper and Shawn work for a restaurant?”
“Yes. They do.” I felt my heart begin to beat faster. “They serve a pretty extensive brunch on Sundays.”
“Do people like pie at brunch, I wonder?” she asked.
“I don"t know. But guests might want to take one home after a nice meal out. For later.”
“I"ll bet they like cinnamon rolls.”
“Oh my G—”
“Don"t take the Lord"s name in vain, Jordie,” she admonished automatically.
“But I just remembered your cinnamon rolls.”
“Only now?” I could tell she was insulted.
“Mom, I don"t remember much from when I was a kid,” I admitted. I picked up a couple of the pie plates and looked at them. They were from a famous chain of pie restaurants where the pies were nowhere near as good as my mother"s.
Out of the blue she said, “I"m so sorry, Jordie. I didn"t do a great job of picking your father.”
I really
saw
her right then, and she didn"t look like my mom. She looked like one of my Red Hat ladies or my customers or my friends. She looked like any number of people I"d met in rehab. She looked like a nice lady, and I wanted to get to know her because I realized
I had no clue
.
We went to work in Ken"s tiny, well-scrubbed kitchen, getting out the ingredients for her specialty, apple-pecan pie. She made the pie dough with such a sure hand it boggled my mind. She was rolling it and dropping it into pie shells, fluting the edges so they looked like the pies on a magazine cover. I turned on music, and while we peeled apples and made her custard fillings, she let loose and danced a little.
It was the first time I"d ever seen my mother happy like that, hopeful and confident, and I hated to admit what I might do to see to it that she stayed that way. We went to bed that night after all the pies were picked up and exclaimed over. The following day I was going to see if Cooper would come with me to talk to Jim, the owner of Nacho"s Bar. Maybe we could pick his brain about how to start a small bakery business in town. I knew there was a lot to think about, a lot to learn. I knew there would be money involved and maybe more than we could come up with. But when my Physical Therapy
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mother went to bed that night, I could see that for once she wasn"t unhappy or afraid.
Nothing else mattered to me but that.
132
Z. A. Maxfield
Chapter Twenty
I had the dream again. It was taking its usual course; I was walking across the heartland clothed in nothing but a hospital gown, but that wasn"t what woke me up. A staccato noise began to invade the dream itself, and I woke, startled, to realize it came from the window of my bedroom. I listened for a minute, thinking I was mistaken, but the sound, sharp and insistent, came again. There were no curtains, and I could see someone was out there, tapping a fingernail on the glass.
When I got closer, I made out Mark"s face and motioned for him to meet me around at the back door. I tried to go quietly through to the kitchen but heard my mother"s sleepy voice.
“Jordie? Is that you?”
“Yeah,” I answered just outside of her bedroom door. “It"s nothing, Mom, go back to sleep. Ken"s little brother is here, probably playing a prank or toilet-papering the house or something.”
“Tell him he"s cleaning it up if he does. No pie for him,” she murmured, and I grinned. As I walked away I heard her chuckle. “He shall have
no
pie.” I opened the back door and let him in. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“I want you to come with me.”
“Where?” I asked. “Can"t this wait until morning?”
“No, it has to be now.” He bit his lip. “I want you to see something. My friend Katy brought her car so we can go, but we have to go
now
.” I locked the back door behind him and led him toward the front. I was wearing flannel drawstring pants and a T-shirt. There wasn"t anything wrong with them; if I wanted I could wear them outside.
He followed as I went to the front to get a jacket out of the coat closet. From the look of him, wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and a down vest, his cheeks stained pink and his Physical Therapy
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hair damp, I thought it was probably a little crisp. I pushed my feet into a pair of canvas shoes I kept by the front door.
“Is this going to be okay?”
“You"re fine,” he said. “Just come with me.”
I closed and locked the front door behind me. I didn"t leave a note, but Mark was in such a hurry that I just reacted. An older-model white Mazda was parked at the curb, and by the interior light I could see a pretty girl sitting inside, putting on lip gloss. She was a wonderful creamy brown color, with a mane of thick, curly hair. She turned when she saw us, and I saw that she had a pretty face, high cheekbones, tip-tilted eyes, and full, now shiny, lips.
“This is Katy,” Mark said, without the kind of reverence she should have inspired in a boyfriend. “She"s a friend from school.” I got into the front seat after he tilted it forward and slid into the back.
“What are we doing?” I finally asked. There was a rhythm to my life these days that didn"t include being kidnapped by high school children.
“I want you to see something,” Mark said. He didn"t elaborate.
“Is it bigger than a bread box?” I asked, and Katy giggled.
“Ken"s been sneaking out at night, and I followed him to see where he"s been going. He"s really starting to worry me.”
I frowned. “It isn"t right to invade his privacy, Mark. If he"s going out at night, he has that perfect right.”
Even after the last time I"d seen him, when I thought we"d settled at least that we wanted each other, even after his declarations, I was afraid that whatever Ken was doing in the middle of the night wasn"t something
I
wanted to see. Whatever he was up to was his business, but what my mind conjured, Ken fucking rent boys up against alley walls or Ken meeting a lover to have sex on the beach, bothered me far more than I was prepared to admit. I didn"t believe it of him, but in my heart I was afraid that I"d misjudged him. I shook myself out of it. If Ken needed me, for whatever reason, I was there.
“I"m worried about him,” Mark reiterated. “He works out with free weights constantly and only leaves the house for therapy. Pull over here, Katy,” he told his friend. She did what he asked, turning the car engine and the lights off about a block and a half away from Nacho"s Bar. “Then I realized he was slipping out at night.” I sighed. “Look, when your brother came out, I know how hard that was for you. I know how disappointed you were. But for a lot of reasons, you can"t be following him around. He has a right to a life of his own. Who he sees, whatever their gender, has nothing to do with you.”
He looked past me like he wasn"t listening at all. “Just get out, okay? I need to show you.” We all got out of the car and stood for a minute. I looked to Mark for instructions. He motioned I should follow him. “Come with me.” 134
Z. A. Maxfield
We started off walking, and although I didn"t have my watch on, I knew it had to be about three or four in the morning. Nacho"s was closed up tight. The only light came from the streetlamps, shrouded in fog, and the moon, which showed the barest hint of something orb like illuminating the clouds from behind.