Kyle’d had no idea Paul’s mother was so unaccepting. He’d never really paid her any mind, and it occurred to him it might be time to fix that. “And the movies are related to this somehow?”
Corrina touched her nose. “One hint, child. It’s all I’m giving you.”
She waved him goodbye, and he went on his evening rounds. On break, he and Trina ended up talking about Winter Wonderland, which Trina was excited about because she and her friends had always wanted to open a coffee shop and here was their chance to try. By the time Kyle got off work at three, she bustled with plans, and Kyle felt pretty good about himself.
He fell into bed once he got home, but he woke before ten in the morning, too wired to stay asleep. He helped his mother make lunch and watched a movie with Linda Kay. When the restless impatience got to him, he bundled into his winter gear and went outside for a walk.
It hadn’t been his plan to go to Mormor and Morfar’s house, but that’s where he ended up. The front door was boarded up and the back door locked, but Kyle knew the trick of shimmying open the window and climbing inside.
He hadn’t been in the house in years, and he remembered why once he stood in the musty, decayed kitchen. In his mind’s eye, the little house looked like Frankie and Marcus’s place, only more compact. It smelled of dinner and coffee and sweetbread and his grandmother’s perfume. The walls were decorated with quilts and painted with stencils his grandfather had drawn in by hand. No, the hardwood floors hadn’t gleamed, and yes, the plaster had cracked in more than a few places. But the life of the house swelled, enveloping Kyle whenever he visited. Mormor and Morfar were full of stories and legends of his family, of their Swedish heritage, of frontier living.
The house smelled of rot and dust now. When he’d first come home from college, he’d lobbied to turn the house into his home, and his parents had been all for the idea, but when they hired a contractor, they found out they might as well raze the house and rebuild it, as expensive as the upgrades would be. The wiring needed to be redone, the insulation pulled out, the plaster lath repaired or replaced with drywall. They’d talked about doing it themselves, but nobody ever had the time, and somehow the upgrade had never happened.
Kyle feared they’d waited too long as he gave himself a tour, noting new damage, including a large water stain on the second-floor ceiling. He pushed a peeling section of wallpaper back in place, stood in the middle of the bedroom and listened to the scratching sound of rodents in the walls. Then he went downstairs and crawled out of the window again.
As he did so his phone buzzed, and when he pulled it from his pocket, he saw the preview of the message, which was a selfie of Paul, wearing his new hat. Smiling shyly. Adorably.
He sat on the steps of the porch, staring out into the field, thinking. In the quiet safety of the old house, the nagging fears crept slowly out from the corners of his mind where he’d stuffed them. Kyle let them come, facing them like the adult he kept insisting he was.
He was falling in love with Paul. He’d have said so cavalierly a month ago, but now he knew it was true. He knew, too, part of him
had
been chasing Paul because he was handy. Because he fit a script in his head.
As he pulled up the selfie, Kyle’s chest ached with longing. He didn’t want the idea of Paul anymore. He wanted the man. The shy, uncertain, sweet-hearted man. He wanted to make him smile the way he did in that photo every day. Wanted to see the way he lit up when he saw Kyle. Wanted to make dinner with him. Clean up after. Make love.
Maybe with hickeys in less gossip-inducing places.
Kyle wanted all of it. He’d thought he had before, but he understood now what had been missing. Before, the thought of Paul refusing him had been an annoyance. A challenge. Now, fear of Paul shutting a door on him made him freeze inside like one of his snow sculptures.
He had to be more careful. He had to not be clumsy or hurried or selfish. Because the more he was with Paul, the more he acknowledged it wasn’t an option to lose him.
Kyle sat on the steps a long time after, until the cold finally drove him back to the house.
Chapter Twelve
P
aul’s hickey faded quickly enough, but he got knowing looks from everyone in town long after he didn’t have any cause to get creative with a scarf. Some people smiled. Some people gawked. A few of them, same as always when someone was caught being gay, glared.
Oh, most people in Logan had decided gay was okay, but there was definitely a Fox News-watching faction who felt gay men and women were harbingers of the end of times. Sadly, Paul’s family led the pack of that group. His father never gave him the talking-to his mother kept threatening, but
she
continued to give him earfuls every time he went over to the house. Which led him to go over there less and less. He ran into his sister plenty, however, and each encounter was more unpleasant than usual. She gave him tight-lipped smiles in the grocery store aisles, and when they turned up at the library at the same time, they both developed habits of staring a little too hard at the DVDs.
Sandy, Paul could handle, but it bummed him out to find his niece and nephew gaping at him too. Charity was eleven, David nine—Paul was their godfather, and usually they at least waved. Now they only stared.
Kyle was always touchy-feely, laying his hand on Paul’s arm, kissing his cheek. Perfectly normal stuff—if they were a heterosexual couple. But despite Frankie and Marcus and Arthur and Gabriel paving the way, it made a good chunk of Logan uncomfortable, and it made Paul’s family turn rigid.
One night Kyle and Paul were enjoying an early dinner at the café before Kyle had to go to work. They held hands over the top of the table, and Paul smiled, listening to Kyle tell a story about something his sister had done. Behind Kyle’s carefully styled head, Paul caught a glimpse of his niece, staring at him, unsmiling. Before Paul could read her expression, Sandy turned her daughter away with a glare in Paul’s direction and another firmly placed on the back of Kyle’s head.
Kyle stopped his story and glanced over his shoulder. “Ah.” He turned back to Paul, letting their hands fall apart, his bright expression fading.
Hating the loss of his light, Paul recaptured Kyle’s hand. “Ignore them.”
Kyle’s grip was less sure now, however. “Are they always like that with you?”
“It’s new for them to see me out with a guy.” His mother’s exact words in their last phone conversation had been
throwing it in their faces
.
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “You dated Arthur a long time.”
Paul rolled his eyes. “No. Arthur and I slept and lived together. That was part of what I didn’t enjoy about our relationship, our lack of dating. That and how he often wanted to bring a third person to bed with us.”
He didn’t know what to make of the way this statement made Kyle’s eyes bug out. “You did threesomes?” He poked his fry into his ketchup, looking boyish and wicked. “I did one, once. It was exciting, but also very tense. I always worried I was doing the wrong thing.”
“Arthur bossed everybody around, so that part was easy. Sometimes the ménages were sexy, but mostly I got jealous.”
Kyle kept dunking his fry, but he glanced coyly at Paul. “So does this mean you’re over threesomes?”
“Um…it depends.” He shifted in his chair. “You…want to?”
Kyle shrugged, winked and ate the fry before replying, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m curious, I guess. Mine was with these two guys at school. Do you ever run into the guys? The third leg of the triangle? Is it weird?”
“Not really. Just another hookup.” He considered the question more carefully. “A few of them I did get with individually. But nothing ever serious.”
The next fry Kyle sucked the ketchup off of, which was surprisingly erotic. “See, I’ve never been good at random hookups. I haven’t had a throng of boyfriends, but that’s part of where I went wrong. I always
wanted
to have a relationship, so it frustrated me when the guy wanted me to pump and dump.”
Paul’s heart warmed. “Yeah. It frustrates me too.”
“See? That’s why we’re good together.” Dipping another fry, he fed it to Paul. “I’d almost convinced myself I was over you, that I’d made it all up in my head and I liked the idea of you, not the real you, and then I heard you broke up with Arthur because he didn’t want a relationship. It was my dream come true. I was sure you were just like me, and all I had to do was show you.” He took a sip of Coke. “If I’d have known a snow penis was the way to your heart, I’d have done that a long time ago.”
Paul laughed. He had nothing to say in reply, but he did run the toe of his boot along the edge of Kyle’s.
Kyle’s teasing expression vanished. “I’m sorry if I’m too exuberant. It’s only that I love being with you, and I’m not used to hiding how I feel about people. But I’ve never been on a date in town before either, so maybe I was assuming more acceptance than there is. I don’t want to make anything awkward for you, especially with your business.”
Paul took Kyle’s hand, holding it tight. “It’s not awkward to be with you. If people have a problem with me dating you, they must have a problem with Arthur and Gabriel too, so there’s nothing gained or lost as far as the shop. But even if it did matter, I’d say screw it.” Pushing aside the remembered glare of his sister, he drew Kyle’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “As you said. I’ve wanted a relationship like this for a long time. And I’m glad it’s with you.”
Kyle drew their joined hands to his own lips, turning their wrists so he could kiss the mirror of the place Paul had. “Same.”
Patty, their waitress, appeared at that moment with a plate of pie choices and a fond smile. “You two lovebirds want some dessert?”
“Yeah.” Paul nodded to the chocolate mousse, which he knew was Kyle’s favorite. “And two forks to share.”
Things were going great with Paul, better in so many ways than he’d ever dreamed. But Corrina’s comment about his family haunted him, and after the incident at the café, Kyle felt like he had to take some kind of action. The problem was, he didn’t know what that action should be, and no amount of Christmas romance bingeing was going to help him. He knew he should talk to Paul directly about it, but he couldn’t figure out how. Not without either rubbing salt in a wound or asking him to address things he didn’t want to talk about.
In the end, Kyle split the difference. He texted Gabriel and set up a meeting with him and Arthur.
He was nervous, going to Paul’s ex for advice. Probably he’d been watching too many bad romances, but all the way over to Gabriel and Arthur’s house, he couldn’t help thinking this would be the part in the movie where Paul walked in at the worst moment possible and there was some Big Misunderstanding. That didn’t happen, and when he arrived, once the niceties were out of the way, he sat across from them at their kitchen table and addressed the whole talking-about-Paul-behind-his-back thing full-on.
“I really do want to bring it up to him,” he assured them. “But I don’t want to step in anything either. I’m not looking for you to tell tales out of school or betray confidences. I only want some advice on how to proceed.” Hopefully tips that didn’t involve a DVD player.
Gabriel and Arthur exchanged a glance. Arthur looked uneasy, and Gabriel all but threw up his hands, his expression saying quite clearly,
This is totally your turf, hon.
Arthur rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure where to start. It’s no secret I’m no favorite with the Jansens, and to be honest, some of that I’ve earned. But yeah, they’re conservative, in all the wrong ways. They don’t make it easy for him. And yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re a big part of his relationship trouble, including the tension you’re feeling. Paul can want to be with you all day long, and you can be the best goddamned man in the world for him. The real threat to the two of you is the shit his family has put in his head. And nobody in the world can take that poison out but him.”
Arthur’s warning left Kyle cold and impotent. He didn’t like it. “What do you mean? What poison?” This sounded so ominous. “Did they…abuse him?”
“Probably some would say so, but it’s one of those gray lines. Not so much physical but emotional. They hate that he’s gay, to start. But he could marry a woman tomorrow, and they’d still find crap wrong with him. It’s as if they need him to be the boil they poke at. Their resident asshole, bearing all their shit so they can feel better about themselves.”
A tidbit from college lit drifted into Kyle’s mind. “Like the story where the villagers keep the kid in the basement, alone and abused and starved, because his suffering keeps the village safe?”
“‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ by Ursula K. Le Guin.” Gabriel pursed his lips and nodded. “I haven’t had much contact with the Jansens, but from what I know of them, the analogy holds pretty accurately.”
The thought filled Kyle with rage—and helplessness. “What do I do to stop this?”
Arthur grimaced. “You can’t. You’ll have to bury this idea you can be good enough for him. That you screwing up is what will drive him away. He’ll drive
himself
away.”
Kyle wrapped his hand around his mug of tea, hating this conversation so much. “So you’re saying I can’t help him at all?”
Arthur looked flustered, but Gabriel simply grimaced. “Speaking as someone coming from a similar background, no, there’s not much you can do. Not the way you’re asking. That sort of stuff hangs with you. Love helps, but it’s not an eraser. Pain has to be carried and processed. Some of it will never go away. With Paul, though, your first step is letting him get used to the idea of having something good. He doesn’t need his family around to make him second-guess it. He’ll get through it, though. What you need to do most is be patient and willing to wait.”
Arthur took Gabriel’s hand in his, kissed the knuckles and kept hold of it on top of the table. “The more I watch the two of you together, the more I think you’re right for one another. He’s always been a hot mess of wanting to be the boss right up until he doesn’t want to be in change anymore, and I can tell you, it’s a real bitch to sort out. Yet you seem to ride that tiger no problem. So stop worrying he’s going to change his mind about you. He wonders the same damn thing. We all do, when we’re faced with the one we want most.”
“I’ll second that.” Gabriel smiled at him. “Up to and including the part where you’re right for Paul, and he for you.”
Kyle flushed, mostly with pleasure. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted their approval of him until he had it. “I just want everything to be okay. With every day that passes, I feel more and more like if he decides he doesn’t want me the way I want him, it’ll devastate me.”
Gabriel bumped his head against Arthur’s before winking at Kyle. “Welcome to a serious relationship.”
Kyle groaned. “Can you at least feed me some pap about how it gets better?”
Arthur ran a thumb down his fiancé’s cheek. “It gets different.”
Not exactly the world’s most winsome reassurance. The glance Arthur gave Gabriel, though, packed enough punch to make Kyle look forward to finding out what
different
meant.
Dating
Kyle was tricky, Paul quickly realized, but not for the reasons he’d fretted about ever since he’d seen the man putting the finishing touches on the snow penis. The age difference was only a problem when he thought about it. The bedroom wasn’t any kind of an issue. They had no problem agreeing on what to do for their dates, usually agreeing to stay in and watch a movie.
The problem Paul hadn’t seen coming was how difficult it was to arrange so much as a meal together at the café. Kyle’s schedule was erratic, but he was largely evenings and overnights. This meant if Paul got a call for a late repair job, he was likely to miss Kyle entirely, or they’d have to settle for a quick fuck against the door before Kyle hurried off to his shift. Every so often Paul suggested Kyle sleep at his place if he got off at three in the morning, but they tended to stay up for hours fucking when they did that, and Paul ran the risk of hammering his thumb the next day.
Arthur, surprisingly, had stopped all objections over Kyle and liberally offered to take late jobs alone so Paul could go home. Paul tried to reserve his acceptance of those offers for nights Kyle went in at eleven or had the evening off altogether. Usually Kyle let himself into Paul’s place and had dinner waiting when Paul got home, though a few times Paul had surprised him with dinner waiting in the Crock-Pot. He loved how grateful and moved Kyle was whenever that happened.
Sometimes their whole date was cooking together. Paul’s favorite evenings in were ones where they went to the grocery store together, selected what they’d eat, then worked side by side in his kitchen to make the meal.
It blew Paul’s mind how little they fought. Outside of that night of the blizzard after Paul had kicked Kyle out, they never really so much as raised their voices. After so many years with Arthur, always fighting over things as simple as who drove the truck to work, it was good but slightly unnerving for Paul to feel so easy with Kyle. It wasn’t so much that Kyle was laid-back, more that he was sneaky about how he convinced you to go along with his idea without conflict. Kyle was graceful in all things. Charming. Flirty. Funny.
The only times Paul didn’t care for Kyle’s manner was when they were out in public together, because he noticed sometimes other people seemed to write the script for Kyle on how he should behave, and all too often Kyle let them. Paul suspected Kyle didn’t fight because it was easier to give in, though it could also be because he was too polite to point out they were being assholes. Sometimes Kyle played up the camp, yes, but for him to
not
do that meant actively resisting other people’s assumptions and expectations.
Paul got a bit of eyebrow over being gay, mostly comments running from teasing slights against his manhood to awkward glances and frowns in the men’s restroom. Kyle got something different. For that matter, so did Gabriel and Frankie. Gabriel got testy when women assumed all he wanted to do was go shopping, and even Frankie was known to grumble about how everyone talked like he was the woman in his and Marcus’s relationship. Kyle got all that too, but Paul quickly realized why he’d panicked about Kyle being too young. People treated him like he was teenage Kurt from Glee, some kind of gay Peter Pan. They might treat Gabriel and Frankie as if they were women, but they treated Kyle as if he were a
boy.
A sexless boy.