Bowerbirds Page 15

  “You know he’s not going that far? Stanford’s an hour from you if the traffic isn’t too bad. Twenty minutes from here.”

  “I know. That’s what he keeps telling me too.” James rubbed his face. “I’m sorry. I should let you sleep.”

  “Don’t be. What else is going on in your head?”

  “Just… nothing,” James lied. “Nothing interesting.” He didn’t have words for everything that was going on in his head or twisting around his body. The way his body turned toward Gabe the moment he stepped onto the porch. The strange way his chest and throat kept getting tight when Gabe told him he was smart or attractive. He couldn’t even explain to himself the urge he had to lean over the edge of the building and just scream his throat raw until the whole Bay was awake with him.

  Gabe put his arms around him. James closed his eyes. It had felt wonderful the first time Gabe held him on that little bridge at the country club, and each time after that was different, but as good if not better. And each time it happened, James felt himself slide deeper into Gabe’s warmth and peace.

  “Do you think you’ll ever get around to building yourself a house?” he asked.

  “I hope so. I think so. I don’t want to be an old man puttering around this place. Rather be an old man puttering around someplace that I built and designed. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Gabe didn’t reply. He just set the swing to slowly rock. “Every time I sit out here now I think of us and chocolate pudding.” James smiled, then suddenly yawned. A second later Gabe yawned as well. “Okay. Maybe we should go back to bed.”

  “In a minute,” James mumbled. He was enjoying the contrast of the cool air and Gabe’s warm body pressed against his.

  Gabe pulled him tighter. “Okay. We still have plenty of time before morning.”

  9

  Gabe watched the slow rise and fall of James’ chest. It was obvious James had been lying when he said everything was fine and that he wasn’t thinking about anything important. The small hitch in his voice was always the giveaway. He wished James would tell him whatever was wrong, especially if it was something between the two of them that had him bothered.

  He brushed aside a stray bit of hair that had fallen across James’ face. In the faint light, he could see the outline of James’ features. He smiled into the dark. He had felt it that night, a squeeze in his chest, and something locked into place in his mind. It had been building for a long time, but now it was at a point where it couldn’t be ignored or mistaken for anything else. It was love. Clean, bright, and fully formed, like a star first bursting into life. He’d wanted to tell James the very second he clued in, holding himself over James’ body, looking down into his eyes. He’d been told by many that declarations of love midsex don’t count, but that hadn’t stopped the sudden and overwhelming need to confess his heart.

  He would have to tread carefully. James could very well bolt at a grand declaration of love, and Gabe still needed to get a solid handle on exactly what he was feeling before he could. But there would be a time, soon, when he would be able to say it to James, and if he was lucky, James just might say it back.

  And maybe after that, James would let him in. Maybe he would share the worries that woke him in the middle of the night and start accepting some of the nicer things Gabe wanted to give him.

  James muttered in his sleep while his eyes fluttered about under the lids. A frown came across his sleeping face. Gabe gave him a squeeze. “It’s all okay,” he whispered.

  James shifted a bit but still slept.

  He let his own mind wander to idle fantasies of love immortal. It was something he hadn’t done since he was much younger and far more foolish. Usually when he looked into the future, it was full of meetings and product releases for technology that hadn’t even been conceived of yet. If there was anyone else in those images of the future, it was Frank and Nate, Margaret, and maybe Sarah or Harry’s kids, if they have any. There was no one just for him.

  If he had time to go to a therapist, he was sure they’d have a lot to say on that. As it stood now, things were changing rapidly. His mind was racing ahead, tracing out possible futures. The one he was clinging to had James by his side. It had a home that looked out over the ocean instead of a tangle of freeways. It had vacations and slow Sunday breakfasts. It had Dylan’s kids rushing around, calling him Grandpa.

  Gabe yanked his thoughts up fast and hard. Thinking about grandchildren before even saying “I love you” was rushing too far and fast ahead. If his car crash all those years ago had taught him anything, it was that going too fast was a good way for everyone involved to get hurt.

  He took a deep breath and wrapped himself around James. He would be careful; he would keep to the pace James set, not add extra pressure. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a million and one other things to consider. After all, the Russians were coming.

  In the morning when the sun started to arc over the Bay, burning off the fog, Gabe was still in love. When his phone started pinging at him to tell him he had a dozen urgent messages, he was still in love. When James got up, wrapped himself in that sexy blue robe, wandered into the kitchen and returned with two cups of coffee, Gabe very nearly proposed on the spot.

  He took a sip of coffee, excused himself from the particular phone call he was on, and gave James a long, slow, dirty kiss that tasted of sweet coffee. He leaned back and pulled James close to him. “I could do this forever, you know?”

  “Do what?”

  “This. Wake up next to you, have you bring me coffee, then I pull you back to bed.”

  “You would get bored of me.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” He kissed James again and ran his hands across any bit of skin he had access to. He wanted to relearn James’ body through this new filter of love. “Tell me you don’t have anything to do today.”

  “Not really. Baseball is over, Dylan is mainly just studying and working on papers, the laundry can hold off for a day.”

  “Good.” He wrapped his arms around James’ body and squeezed tight until James gave a little cough. “Sorry. I really do wish we could do this forever.”

  “If we stayed here doing this, that might put a dent in your trying to save the world.”

  “I’ll just send a memo to Tam. She’ll take care of it.”

  “I have no doubt of that.”

  “Tam, staying in bed with my boyfriend for the next year or two. Please remind me to pick up a Father’s Day present, and save the world while you’re out.”

  James laughed, then kissed Gabe again and didn’t stop for quite some time.

  Gabe whistled as he bounced into the office on Monday morning, despite some lingering tiredness. He’d managed to ignore or deflect a sizable amount of work and kept James in bed for a good deal of Sunday, driving him home only late Sunday night.

  He’d skimmed through the gossip blogs. There were several very good pictures of him and James. James’ last name was still spelled wrong, and they were still claiming he was a professor, and there were still rumors about wedding bells, but that bit of false reporting annoyed him far less than it had the first time.

  Nate and Frank slinked into his office, looking amused with themselves. “Did you see the gossip pages this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then when are the wedding bells?”

  Gabe shrugged and changed his desktop background to a photo of him and James dancing close.

  “Wait a second.” Frank squinted at him. “That wasn’t a denial. That wasn’t even an eye roll. You’re not actually engaged, are you?”

  Gabe did give them an eye roll this time. “Do you think I’d get engaged and not tell you two first?”

  “Yes,” they answered in unison, then Frank nudged Nate. “Look at that face of his.”

  “Oh my God. We haven’t seen that face in a long, long time.”

  “You see my face every damn day.”

  “Not that particular face.” Frank reached across the desk and tr
ied to pinch his cheeks. “That is your ‘I’m in love’ face.”

  Gabe batted Frank’s hand away while trying to frown but failed at that. “It’s none of your business.”

  Both Frank and Nate giggled, sounding like a couple of teenaged girls. “For the record, we approve of this development,” Frank stated primly. “Have you told him yet?”

  This time Gabe did frown and tried to look like he was focusing on the documents in front of him. “I’d rather not send him running screaming into the night.”

  “Oh no. You need to tell him. He needs to know where he stands. Listen to the guy who’s already screwed up two marriages and is not putting money on his third. You need to be honest with your feelings. All of them. Good, bad, or otherwise.”

  Gabe looked up at Frank. Frank didn’t discuss his interpersonal failings often. He was the playboy of the three of them. He and Nate just rolled with it and made sure there were mountains of legal documents that kept Frank’s third of the company in Frank’s control only, no matter what. They actually all had documents keeping the company just between the three of them. It was the TechPrim tripod.

  “He’s…. He’s very new to the whole relationship thing. I don’t want him to feel pressured into saying something he doesn’t mean.”

  Frank stretched his long torso over Gabe’s desk until they were nose to nose. “You are an idiot. He is really into you. Tell him.”

  The picture taped over James’ monitor had been taken at some point when he and Gabe were dancing. Their hands were clasped together, and their bodies pressed close. Perhaps closer than was really appropriate for the situation. James’ head was tilted up ever so slightly, and Gabe was looking down at him. Their lips were just a few inches apart. It was, all told, a pretty good picture of the two of them, but someone had written across the top ‘Can I Haz a Kiss?’ James sighed, pulled the picture off his monitor, and cleared his throat loudly, keeping his face grim.

  “This is unacceptable.” He held up the picture. “I will not allow such things in my work area.” He watched everyone on his team squirm. “I refuse to allow this bastardization of spelling and grammar in my department. The English language is a lovely thing, and I do not appreciate its mistreatment in this manner. Am I clear?”

  Everyone nodded seriously while trying to smother smiles.

  “Good.”

  James sat down and set the picture carefully aside. He checked his e-mail. Then, thinking on it, he pulled out his phone and took a picture of the picture.

  My team left this for me. I yelled at them about the bad grammar and spelling.

  He sent the picture and the message to Gabe.

  A minute later his phone pinged, and he opened a picture file from Gabe. In it Gabe was making a silly kissy face to the camera. James laughed, felt that squeeze in his chest, then set about figuring out how to make it the notice image for calls from Gabe.

  10

  Russian property law is still boring and confusing. Would much rather be making out with you. Miss you.

  James looked down at the text message. It was just a stupid little text, but there had been that same squeeze in his chest, hard and tight. For a moment he could barely breathe. He was pretty sure he knew why, but his mind skittered around the thought, looking for another explanation. Any other explanation. He paced his living room, feeling claustrophobic. He was tempted to go running or something, except he’d never gone running in his adult life, so instead he was bouncing off his own walls.

  Dylan called out from the kitchen. “You know I can hear you pacing out there. Whatever it is, you need to chill.”

  James stepped into the kitchen to possibly grumble at Dylan about telling his father to chill. Dylan was hunched over a book, and it hardly seemed worth it. “Can I ask you a question?” James regretted the words the second they came out of his mouth, but he had to ask someone. He could ask the ladies, but he wasn’t up for another round of building gossip. He already knew it would be less a question and more of a confirmation.

  “Sure.” Dylan didn’t look up from his book.

  “I mean a serious one because I’ve got no one else to ask, and our relationship is just way too backward some days.”

  Dylan set the book aside. “Shoot.”

  James froze. He looked down at his son, his sweet baby boy, and just couldn’t speak. The level of wrong in the conversation was just too high, and the level of fear was higher still.

  “You know what, never mind.” James turned to head to his room. Maybe an early night, a very early night, was what he needed.

  “Oh no.” Dylan jumped up, rushed ahead of him, and easily blocked the hallway. “You don’t get to walk out after an opening like that.”

  James dropped his face into his hands. “I can’t do this,” he muttered.

  “Do what?”

  He closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was talking to just about anyone other than Dylan because he needed someone to tell him what was going on before he just started screaming.

  “Is there a moment,” he started carefully. “When you’ve been with someone for a little while, when it suddenly feels different?”

  “Define different.”

  “I don’t know…. Like asthma, or a heart attack, or some bit of your brain just starts going funny and thinking about different things it didn’t think about before?”

  Dylan tipped his head and squinted at him. James felt like a bug under a magnifying glass. “That sounds more like something you should go to a doctor for.”

  “Great, yes, thank you, must be asthma, step aside.”

  “Nope.” Dylan folded his arms and peered down at his father. “Tell me, do these funny mini–heart attacks and brain cramps only happen when Gabe’s around?” James didn’t answer. “And there’s a weird kind of twitch behind your eyes and some part of your brain is locked into some other part of your brain that you didn’t even know was there before but it just likes to run off on its own?”

  James started to fold in on himself.

  “Dad.” Dylan crouched down so he could look his father in the eye. “You’re an idiot. It’s called being in love. Massively, head over heels, painfully in love, and I’m pretty sure you knew that already.”

  James had known that of course, deep down. There really was no other explanation, but that knowledge was not making the experience any more pleasant. “Fuck.” He sat down on the couch, planting his face firmly back into his hands. He’d been in love, once, maybe, at age fourteen, with Benjamin Steven. That had ended less than well, and they’d been hardly more than children at the time. That was the sum total of his relationship with love. Dylan sat beside him, the couch sagging and creaking under his size.

  “Every time Catherine smiles at me, it’s like someone has reached down my throat, grabbed each lung, and is using them to squeeze my heart. Been like that since we were seven. It is the worst fucking thing on earth, and I never want it to go away.”

  Dylan’s voice was full of sympathy. James wanted to cry, scream, and laugh all at once. For some reason his teeth hurt. “What the fuck do I do now?”

  “I suggest calling up your really great boyfriend, who is actually majorly into you, and setting up another date, and when it feels right, tell him you love him.”

  “Right. ‘Hi, Gabe, I’m thirty-two, you were my first, I wouldn’t know a proper relationship from a hole in the ground, but I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you. How’s your day going?’”

  “I’d phrase it better.”

  “And then what?” A full awareness of what his love would mean pressed down on him. It was hard to breathe again. “He’s the head of a multinational, multibillion-dollar… kingdom. He does not need some…. He does not need me dropping all this on him.”

  “You watch way too many telenovelas, and what’s to say he isn’t madly in love with you?”

  A headache flared up right behind his eyeballs. “I’m going to bed.”

  “It’s seven in the evening.”


  “Then I’ll get plenty of sleep.”

  “Dad—”

  “No. I can’t… I just can’t.” James pushed past his son and into his barren little room. He flopped onto his bed, not even bothering to undress. He hadn’t changed his pillowcase since the last time Gabe had come over, and it smelled like Gabe’s hair gel and green-tea shampoo.

  He hadn’t changed that pillowcase specifically because he liked the smell. It felt relaxing, warm, and safe. He rested when he was enveloped by it. Usually. Now it just reminded him of something he was trying to push away.

  He growled, tried breathing through his mouth instead, and attempted to sleep.

  James poked at his chili verde. Gabe had made the lunchtime trip north, and they were tucked into the corner of a little Mexican place off of Shattuck. The food was good, but it had been almost a week since they’d seen each other face to face. James thought that would be enough time to rein in his emotions. But as soon as Gabe had stepped out of his car, James felt the breath drawn from his body. He wanted to throw himself at Gabe, to whisper in his ear and hear very specific words whispered back. It hurt.

  “Is everything okay?”

  James’ head snapped up, a smile jumping to his lips. “What? Yes, everything’s fine.”

  “Are you sure? Is the food okay?”

  “It’s good.” James proved it by taking a bite. “I’m just thinking too much again. Dylan’s prom is tomorrow,” he added, since it technically was something he was thinking about, a bit, at least.

  Gabe smiled. “Is he excited?”

  “He’s pretending not to be, but he cleaned out the car and spent a half hour in front of the mirror yesterday trying out new ways of combing his hair.”

  “And how are you?”

  “Trying not to panic. Mrs. Serrano and Mrs. Avila have their girls going to prom as well, so the three of us are going to get together, drink coffee with a little too much rum in it, and pretend like we’re not feeling old.”