The Mating of Michael (27 page)

We’re going to see your grandparents.

I’ll be here when you wake up.

I love all of you.

Fucking promises. Fucking lies.

He looked up at Amanda. He wanted to vomit.

“Oh, James,” she said pityingly, and that was the worst thing of all.

“Let’s just fucking go.” James left the phone charging on the table. If he picked it up again, he’d probably smash it against the wall.

T
HE
AWARDS
dinner was the worst night of James’s adult life. Amanda sat on his left and to his right was an empty place with Michael’s name on a place card. It was humiliating—a glaring signpost to everyone that James’s date hadn’t shown up—had stood him up for a major awards dinner. James was angry, embarrassed, and hurt. He tried to be polite and socialize. There were a lot of authors there whose names and faces he recognized, but whom he’d never met.

People were nice. They introduced themselves. They said glowing things about
Troubadour Turncoat
. But there were the subversive glances at his chair, his legs. There were the constant pitying smiles. J.C. Guise, the cripple.

“I had no idea,” one woman had said with a you-poor-thing tsk, whoever the fuck she was. And once they’d introduced themselves, the other authors mingled with people they knew, people who had been out and about in the scene for ages. James was left to make small talk with Amanda so that he didn’t look like the wallflower he obviously was.

He shouldn’t have taken any of it to heart. Maybe if things had been different, he wouldn’t have. But it was like walking onto a battlefield already shot in the heart. His confidence and spirit had been blasted by Michael’s abandonment, so every little thing stung worse than it had any right to. Michael’s absence at the table, with that empty place setting, was a slap in the face. And all night long, a part of him kept checking the door, imagining Michael slipping into the chair beside him. And of course, he’d left his phone at home in a fit of pique so he couldn’t even check for messages.

The food tasted like cardboard. And when the awards portion started, the only good thing about it was the dimmed lights so James didn’t feel he had to guard his expression every moment. They gave out spaceship trophies for all sorts of things—best character, best debut author, best sci-fi thriller, best space epic, etc., etc., all of which were for titles that had come out in the previous year. James had released two novels that year, which should have qualified for a half-dozen categories, but they were not nominated. He watched other authors, his competitors on the book charts, look humbled or arrogant in turn and give lumbering speeches. His spirits sank and his self-pity climbed.

And then it was time for the big award of the night, the Millennial Award. Michael still was not there.

Amanda put her hand on James’s arm as they read off the nominees. And despite all of his praying he wouldn’t be called up there, at the last moment, he couldn’t help but want it desperately—to have his work matter, to
be someone
.

And he couldn’t help but feel crushed when the winner’s name was called.

Troubadour Turncoat
did not win.

A
MANDA
DROPPED
James off with a lot of platitudes, and James acted as if he’d never expected to win and there was nothing wrong. When he was finally alone in his little house, the first thing he did was check his phone. There were four voice mails from Michael and several texts. The last one said he wouldn’t be able to make it and to call him.

James was debating whether or not to call when the phone buzzed. It was Michael. James was mad, very mad. But he answered it.

“Hello,” he said tersely.

“James, I’m
so
sorry. I know how worried you were about the dinner. How did it go?”

“Fine.”

“Yeah? Did you win?”

“No.”

Michael was quiet for a moment as James’s flat responses sank in. “I’m really so, so sorry. Was it okay, though? Amanda was with you, right?”

James didn’t answer. Michael spoke in a rush. “One of my surrogacy clients tried to commit suicide. He’s still in ICU. I felt like I
had
to be with him and his mother. I hope you’re not too mad.”

James tried to parse what was just said. “Surrogacy clients? What do you mean?”

There was a heavy, tense silence on the other end of the phone.

“What do you mean by ‘surrogacy client’?” James asked again, his stomach knotting up.

“I meant… a patient. His name is Tommy. He’s only twenty-one.”

“You never told me about him.” James was feeling more anxious by the minute. Michael had told him all about Marnie, and a few of his other regular patients, all of whom were elderly. But he had never once talked about some young guy named Tommy. Why would a twenty-one-year-old need in-home nursing anyway? Something wasn’t right.

“James….” Michael’s voice was desperate, but nothing more was forthcoming.

“Look, I have to go. I need to say good-bye to Amanda,” James lied.

“Okay. I’ll be at the hospital a while longer. Call me. Please?” Michael hung up, sounding shaken.

James stared at the phone for several minutes.

Surrogacy?
What the fuck was that about? Obviously, Michael wasn’t carrying some infertile couple’s baby. James had never heard nurses referred to like that. And there’d been something guilty in Michael’s tone, as if he’d been caught out. Something was wrong, something awful.

James booted up his laptop. He sat looking at the screen for a long moment. Did he want to know? A sick feeling in his stomach told him the answer was
no.
But he couldn’t just leave it. He intended to google different types of surrogacy, but once the search window was up, he decided to try a direct approach. He typed in
Michael Lamont Seattle surrogate.

The webpage that came up was for a group called IPSA that certified sex surrogates. Michael’s name and photo and a brief bio were listed under the state of Washington. The website claimed surrogates helped individuals overcome social and sexual problems—through intimate therapy.

Michael had sex with his patients. He was a sex surrogate.

Hot bile burned in James’s throat, and he barely had time to grab a nearby wastebasket before he was losing the wine and salmon he’d consumed at the awards dinner. He sat there, sweating, black threatening the edges of his vision, and the smell of vomit ripe in the air. When he could finally move, he rolled into the kitchen and put the entire waste can in a big trash bag and set it outside the back door. Then he rinsed his mouth and washed his hands at the kitchen sink before going back into the other room and picking up the phone.

He typed out a text message:
I found a website about your sex surrogacy. You lied. Please don’t contact me ever again.

He pressed SEND, unplugged the phone, and powered it down. His hands were shaking as he took two valium at the bathroom sink. He took off his award dinner clothes, put on pajamas, and went to bed.

All he wanted was to hitch a ride with Morpheus and escape his broken heart.

M
ICHAEL
KNEW
he’d blown it the minute the words “surrogacy client” left his lips. But he was so strung out from the horrible day, and from Tommy, and from hearing the cold tone in James’s voice. He’d just opened his mouth without thinking.

God, he should have told James
weeks
ago. But he just hadn’t been able to do it. He kept telling himself that when they were more stable, when they’d been together longer, when James trusted him more, when Michael was sure they were for keeps, he’d find a way to break it to James and offer to quit if that’s what James wanted.

Too late? Please God, don’t let it be too late.

He went back into Tommy’s room with heavy footsteps and more than one reason for the dread chilling his bones.

The other reason was lying in the bed in ICU. Tommy had taken a bottle of prescription sleeping pills he’d gotten out of his mother’s bathroom cabinet. He’d not regained consciousness since his mother found him early that evening. Several of his organs, including his liver and kidneys, were failing. The doctors weren’t sure he would recover.

Do you think a guy like you could ever love a guy like me?

Was it Michael’s fault? Should he, could he, have handled that conversation better? He’d been back to see Tommy twice since that day, and things had seemed pretty normal, but were they? Had Tommy been hiding his heartbreak? Michael had discussed it with Jack, and Jack had advised him to tread carefully, see how Tommy progressed. But Jack wasn’t there; Michael was. Maybe he hadn’t taken it seriously enough.

Was Tommy’s suicide attempt a result of unrequited love? Or, even if not, had Michael’s gentle rebuff left Tommy even more depressed than before? Should he have been more concerned with Tommy’s mood the past few weeks? Had he been too over-the-moon with his own life to be paying the best attention to his client?

Whatever self-doubts he had, Mrs. Chelsey didn’t seem to share them. She was a wreck, alternatively sobbing and angry. But for some reason, she latched onto Michael as soon as he’d arrived at the hospital, and she seemed to need his presence specifically, despite the fact that several of her friends had come and gone. It was Michael’s hand she clung to, Michael she was leaning on emotionally.

There was no way Michael could leave Tommy and his mother, not like this. He just had to hope that he could make it up to James later.

Please, God, let it be okay.

Michael sat back down next to Mrs. Chelsey, and she immediately took his hand.

“Everything all right?” Mrs. Chelsey asked.

Michael nodded and forced a smile. “I’m okay. Just worried about Tommy.”

Mrs. Chelsey nodded. “You don’t have to stay, you know.” She so completely didn’t mean it.

“Yeah, I do. I’m staying.”

She squeezed his hand. “Thank you. This has been a long time coming. I think he would have done it sooner if not for your visits.”

Michael didn’t answer. He was thankful for her faith in him, but he wasn’t sure it was justified.

He’d nearly dozed off when his cell phone beeped. He wasn’t really supposed to have it in ICU, and he gave Mrs. Chelsey a sheepish look before he glanced at it.

He read the text from James, and his life disintegrated in an instant. It felt as though a nuclear bomb had been set off in the desert of his heart.

I found a website about your sex surrogacy. You lied. Please don’t contact me ever again.

He put the phone back in his pocket very slowly, his fingers completely numb. He stared at the floor.

“Michael? What is it?”

Don’t contact me ever again.

It was the last, devastating straw in a really, really awful day, and he just couldn’t help himself. Pain choked his airway and burned his eyes.

There was nothing worse than being rejected for who you really were. Michael was a surrogate. Yes, he liked to help people like Tommy. Yes, he used sex to do it. Was that really so wrong? Did he deserve to be punished by never having anything of his own?

Don’t contact me ever again.

And he realized that deep down inside, he had nursed the hope that James would understand, because of his disability, because of his upbringing in the children’s home, because of his innate compassion and intelligence and liberal nature.

You lied.

“Michael? My God, what is it?” Mrs. Chelsey tried to get a look at his face, which was probably purple because he could not breathe. The sobs finally began to escape his throat, and they were so loud and so horrible he clasped his hand over his mouth and ran from the room.

J
AMES
SAT
at his computer staring at the screen. He had to finish the last ten thousand words of this novel, and he simply couldn’t do it. His characters had run out of steam twenty thousand words ago, and were now stillborn in his head. Everything about the ending he’d planned felt fetid and trite.

God. How could he find the motivation to write when even forcing air to move in and out of his lungs was a Herculean challenge?

He felt lifeless, barren, destroyed. It had been five days since the disastrous night of the awards dinner. Michael had left him a number of voice mails and texts that James did not listen to or look at—he couldn’t. It hurt too much. He’d expected Michael to show up at his door, but he hadn’t. Like that day at the pool, when James had insulted Michael and stormed out, Michael respected his space. James felt a weird mix of relief and disappointment about that. But what good would it do if Michael did come? After all, there was nothing to explain. Michael had
lied
. He flat-out lied about what he did for a living, from day one. He’d hidden something that anyone in a romantic relationship with him would find extremely relevant. Michael had no doubt cheated, too, by having sex with other men, with his clients, the whole time he’d been seeing James, and he’d never mentioned a word.

True, they’d never explicitly said they were exclusive, but it was understood. It was as plain as the light on a sunny day. And if Michael thought it was okay they weren’t exclusive, then why did he hide what he was doing?

James wished to God it wasn’t so black and white. He wished there was an easy explanation. But there really was no way to sugarcoat it. Michael had lied, and he’d cheated.

Since that terrible night, James had researched sex surrogates. He couldn’t help the part of his brain that had to try to understand exactly what Michael had done,
was doing
. He bought a biography written by a female surrogate for his kindle and rented a documentary. He found websites and a forum.

As he read about the sorts of clients sex surrogates worked with—people with physical problems like erectile dysfunction or frigidity, or mental blocks like extreme shyness or fear of intimacy, he found he could easily see Michael in that role. Sex came so naturally to Michael, and he was an innate empath. It even explained why Michael had been able to overlook James’s legs and be sexual with him. But that only made it worse somehow, that James was in the category of “freak” that Michael was trained to deal with. He wasn’t special after all. Michael didn’t see him as a whole man. He was just another gimp body through the revolving door for Michael Lamont, magnanimous slut. The thought was so vile he wished he could open his skull and scrub it from his brain.