Zipper Fall (23 page)

He didn’t smile back, but gave me a serious look instead. “Don’t go to that shopping mall again, Wyatt.” Then he fed me another piece of naan with awesome things on it, and all I could do was chew and roll my eyes.

As soon as I was done eating, he packed the leftovers and rose to leave.

“Going already?” Disappointment rang clear in my voice.

He nodded. “I have that guy, Izzy Silberman, coming over tonight.”

By then I had completely forgotten. “Okay. Give him my best.”

“And tomorrow I’m picking you up and taking you home.”

“Great. I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed.”

“You’re coming to stay at my place until you can move about on your own.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I want my own bed.” My voice sounded petulant and childish, even to me.

“Okay, then. I’ll make sure you have it.”

He reached into the plastic box containing my personal belongings, and took out my keys. “I could just break in, you know, except I don’t think you’d want any wild surprises.”

I
HATED
getting shot. I hate hospitals and hospital food and hospital regulations against cell phone use, and I hate the way they put you in a wheelchair and take you to the front door as though you couldn’t walk by yourself.

“C’mon, Wyatt, let’s blow this popsicle stand!” Jack took my crutches and put them in the backseat of his car, and then he opened the passenger door and helped me in.

I was wearing a clean change of clothes he brought me, together with a pair of shoes that didn’t have old blood inside them. “I can do it by myself,” I grumbled. My butt hurt a lot. It’s amazing how much one uses the muscles in the buttocks for walking around, and the injured parts were hard to rest.

“I know. I just want to get out of here.” And no wonder—it was Monday already.

He buckled up, gunned his dark-blue Santa Fe, and navigated out of the West Penn hospital complex. I noticed we weren’t going to my place.

“You can’t make me stay by force.” The words just kind of left my mouth without my permission. Inside, I was happy he wanted me to stay. Ecstatic, even. Just… I didn’t like the way he assumed he’d make a decision and I’d be okay with it.

“I know. Give it a chance, Wyatt. You’ll see.”

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to sleep in the same bed with him all the time. It was awkward. We would both want to do what comes naturally, and doing that with a distressed gluteus wouldn’t work. Saying no all the time would be… bad for us, I guess. I also didn’t want to share his living room sofa with all those boxes around me, overflowing with the collectibles his sister and their two aunts had accumulated over many decades of yard-sale frenzy. I wanted a nice, quiet, comfortable place.

A place of my own.

B
EFORE
I knew it, we stood in the hallway outside his apartment. Jack pulled the keys out of his jeans pocket and unlocked the three locks on his door. He held it open for me, and I hobbled in. My goal was to belly flop on the sofa and stay that way for a long, long time. It amazed me how tired I was just from the trip between my hospital bed and his place.

“Before you settle down, Wyatt, I want you to come see something.”

I yawned. “Later?”

“Please.” Even though the word was polite, the tone was far from patient.

Biting my tongue to stay a surly remark, I limped behind Jack across the blue carpet of his living room, navigating my crutches past the pile of boxes and old furniture that seemed to have grown bigger since I saw it last. We passed the little hallway leading to his bedroom and bathroom, heading toward the room full of Celia’s junk.

“Open the door,” he whispered by my ear. Feeling him so close to me gave me a rash of goose bumps on that side, all the way down to my knee.

Confused and just a little curious, I suppressed the shiver as I reached for the antique glass doorknob on the dark wooden door. I turned it and pushed. A sudden sense of vertigo seized me, as though I just stepped through a dimensional portal, entering another world. I didn’t recognize the room at all.

The junk was gone.

The fluffy, pink floral wallpaper had been replaced with fresh paint. The ceiling was dark blue, almost black, with one wall to match it and the rest a pale bamboo green. Old-fashioned wooden trim gleamed pure white under the ceiling and around the floor, snaking its way around the doorframe and the closet and the tall, stately window. Gentle light filtered through venetian blinds and sheer white curtains. But that wasn’t all.

My queen-size bed stood straight in the middle of the room on the brand-new white carpet. It had my own sheets and pillow and comforter on it, and was surrounded by rustic pine furniture I bought at Ikea two years ago. Two lengths of the sheer curtain material were attached to the dark blue wall, framing the top of my bed in that sort of old-fashioned girly treatment, and even though I’ve never considered myself a girly guy, a forgotten part of me stirred. I was being nurtured, and I liked it.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to feel about all this.

Jack’s amazingly sweet gesture was both stunning and intrusive. Keeping in mind he meant well and went into a great deal of effort to make me comfortable, I bit my tongue on the intrusive part.

I kicked my shoes off and shuffled over to my bed, where I did my long-awaited belly flop. The crutches clattered to the ground, but I didn’t care; I just grabbed my very own thick, feather-and-down pillow and mugged it, breathing in its comfortable, familiar scent. It smelled like me and my stuff and latex paint residue. He sure accomplished a lot in two days.

“Well?” Jack eyed me from the door. “How do you like your room?” I peeked at him. He was standing there like it felt unnatural. This was his place, after all.

“Come sit with me?” I mumbled into my pillow. He did; the side of my bed dipped under his weight, making me roll just a little. “How did you manage all this?” I asked.

“Well….” His hand ran up and down my back, soothing me. “Your sister told me what colors you like. Izzy Silverstein and his wife came over and helped sort what was left in here and move some of it to the living room pile, and she did the curtains and such; his friend Silvio painted the room the next day, and a few hours later, the carpet was put down. And… well, I took a bit of a risk with the awning over your bed, but since you liked that kitchen apron so much, I thought I’d give it a try. If you hate it, we can take it down.”

I swallowed dry, taking it all in. “Keep it. For now, anyway.” I let my eyes wander around the room, and my words came back to me. “But… my stuff! You went and got my stuff!” I vaguely remembered him having taken my keys.

“Yeah. Silvio has a pickup truck. I brought your laptop and phone charger and all that. Your toiletries are in the bathroom across the hall.”

“I never agreed to move in with you!”

“True.” His hands never stopped tracing their hypnotic pattern up and down my back. “You can always move back when you feel better.”

“I’m perfectly capable of staying on my own! I’m not a cripple.”

“Also true. Although….” His hand stopped over my right shoulder blade. “Your father insisted that you go stay at his house. With his office right next door, he would have been very happy to take care of you.”

I groaned. Not with Dad again. Especially not since Carl and DeeDee were off in college, living on campus. As much as I appreciated the truce he and I currently enjoyed, staying at the house in the placid suburbs would have resulted in discussions I wasn’t ready to tolerate, let alone embrace.

“I guess staying with you is nicer….” I should have thanked him, but wrapping my mind around all he had done was just too much at the moment. Not to mention the small detail of having been moved into his place without my consent.

“Did you and your dad talk?” he asked.

“Not much. He showed up, though. I didn’t expect that.”

“You can catch up with him at your own pace.” He sighed.

“What? Why do you care about my dad so much?” Irritation tinged my voice; fatigue and pain eroded my patience.

“Well, he’s still alive, Wyatt. If my dad were alive, I’d love to talk to him. Sometimes I think of him and Mom… like when something goes well and I’d like to share that, and I can’t anymore.”

“Like what?” I asked, chastised.

“Like you and what a nut you are.” Jack leaned down and kissed the top of my hair much like Paul had. “I’m working from home today. I have to answer some phone calls and check my e-mail. Any special wishes for dinner?”

“Something simple, with flavor in it.”

“
T
HERE
’
S
a lot of artwork in the living room pile,” Jack said. “Pick anything you want and I’ll put it up. Unless there’s something you’d like from your apartment?”

“I’d have to go there and look.”

And bringing more stuff here sounds kind of… permanent.

“Go take your shower, Wyatt. Paul will stop by on the way from his nightshift at the hospital and show me how to do your rear.”

I pushed at his shoulder, failing to rock him back much. “I thought you knew how to do that all by yourself, wiseass.”

Jack grinned. “Just a slip of the tongue,” he said, his eyes still on me as he ran the tip of his tongue across his top lip. The sight of it stirred me in places I didn’t want to think about right now. Not unless I wanted my shower to be cold.

Everything took too long, so by the time I stepped out of the bathroom with just a towel around my waist, Paul was sitting in the dining room with Jack, drinking coffee.

“Hey, Wyatt, where should we do ya?”

I rolled my eyes. “On my bed,” I yelled back. The phrasing was, apparently, just another slip of Jack’s pointy, agile tongue.

Before I made it to my underwear drawer, the two men filled the doorway to my supposedly private domain.

“How are you doing, Gaudens?” Paul asked, sounding detached in a professional sort of way.

I had to think about that. I was doing a lot better, actually, and said so.

“Good. Lie down on your stomach and I’ll show Jack what to do.”

That’s how I ended up lying down on my already made bed on top a towel, with those two particular guys sitting next to me and discussing my posterior and its well-being. I felt Paul’s cool hands apply an antibiotic cream, and Jack’s warm ones place the wound dressing in the right place, as directed; both of them taped it down, stroking the adhesive strips down so they stayed.

They were touching me. Simultaneously. All four hands at a time.

I sneezed, the mucous tissues of my sinuses suddenly irritated by excess blood flow.

Oh no. Not now.

This was no time to become aroused. I tried to think of something else. Hospital food, my dad’s stubbly chin, my second-grade teacher with her strict glare. Nothing worked; I tried hard to keep my hips still, and I guess I succeeded, at least for the most part. I didn’t make a sound. I swear I didn’t.

The guys must have noticed my almost-suppressed wiggle anyway.

“You okay, Wyatt?” Jack asked, curiosity overwhelming the concern in his voice.

“Uh-huh.” I didn’t dare to speak as I tensed up.

His hand stroked my patched-up cheek. “As good as new, right, Dr. Hinge?”

I felt Paul’s cool hands leave the surface of my skin rather fast, and the way he cleared his throat told me he had readjusted his rectangular eyeglasses and he was aware of my involuntary reaction.

“I better get going. I want to catch Michelle before my wife takes her to daycare.”

“Oh? Does she work?”

“Yeah… started two months ago. Just part time for now. It’s good for both of them to get out of the house.” I would have raised my eyebrows at that—knowing Susan, that tidbit of information surprised me—except my face was buried in my covers to disguise my tomato-red blush.

“I’ll see myself out. Bye, Jack. Bye, Wyatt.”

I didn’t move or say good-bye.

“Wyatt. What’s wrong?”

The hands of two of the most desirable men ever on my butt at the same time. Oh, God.

I sneezed again. “Tissues.”

Jack handed me the whole box, and I blew my nose, only to find out I had a nosebleed.

“Look at me.” Hesitation gripped me, but he didn’t wait; he rolled me over to make sure I was all right, and in doing so, exposed the red tissues pressed against my nose. His expression went from amused to confused to alarmed. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“That’s not nothing, Wyatt. You have a nosebleed!”

“Just some extra blood circulation.” He watched me get another clean tissue and frowned, thinking hard. I watched the penny drop.

A sudden, hard expression replaced his former smile. “I see.”

I reached my hand to his, twining our fingers together. “I am only human, Jack.”

He only looked away, the little green monster peering through his brilliant, blue eyes.

“Having you touch me is very erotic.” My voice was calm, matter of fact.