Beyond Complicated (3 page)

"I keep saying that, and I keep meaning that." I winked just to show no hard feelings. "Maybe if you were in a different office, or something."

I knew he wouldn't jump at the chance to transfer. No one wanted to transfer once they got here.

I knew what's-his-name would give up one day, sooner if I got him a date with one of my friends. Note to self

—hook horny kid in office up with… Darren. Yeah, he was just Darren's type. In other words, a younger version of me.

The meeting dragged on past five. I checked my watch too often. My boss looked at me just as often with murder in her eyes but she never could stay mad at me. "Since Liam seems to have a pressing engagement, I guess we should wrap this up." She went into closing statements, a knowing gleam in her eyes.

"Just a dinner date with my kid. I haven't seen him in a while. I think he has something big to tel me." I played off the post meeting jokes.

"Uh, oh, big Liam is gonna be a grandpa." That comment caught me by surprise.

"Not any time soon." Or ever. Unless anatomy changed. Or if Kel decided he wasn't gay. I didn't tel them that. I kept everything about my private life as private as possible. But they knew I had a son. The jokes about my age and his age and al had long ago become passé.

"And you were how old when you made your parents into grands?" This came from the boss lady who made it her job to know about my life, or as much of it as she could wheedle out of me. My other life was safe unless she'd spent her time troling the gay porn sites half a decade ago.

"Ooh, touché," I said, wincing. She was right. I was proof that under the right circumstances anyone could become a parent. "See you al Monday. Gonna go risk my life to drive across town at rush hour on a Friday."

"Hope your insurance is paid up."

"Doesn't matter if it is, one of you vultures wil find a way to not pay the claim."

"Ah, you know us so wel."

I left the office behind and headed home. I wanted to change out of the suit and noose before meeting Kel. I don't know why but I hated being around him when I stil had the stench of injustice on me. I stripped, showered, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt complete with the official shoe of Florida, a pair of flip-flops, in October.

I missed fal. Not that I had much experience with the season, being a Florida native, mind you. The four years I spent in California sort of introduced me to the concept of cooler weather long before December.

And color-changing leaves. In as much as California can. His name was Seth—stil is Seth, I guess—and we lived al over the state in those years. San Francisco most often. One fal we were in New York folowing a photographer through a series of shoots. I loved that.

I'd do it again. Minus the naked posing part. I loved Seth. Hel, I worshipped Seth. I'd stil be with Seth if the business hadn't interfered.

I sighed. Why the hel was I thinking about this?

Seth was four years gone. I didn't know where he was and I didn't care. I caught sight of the grimace I made in the mirror. I grimaced again. Old. I was getting old.

Faint laugh lines webbed out from my eyes. I needed to shave, the five o'clock shadow was realy more like nine or ten shadow. Black Irish. It's what my mom caled me, just like my dad and his dad. Fair complexion, too fair realy, I did not tan, ever, I burned, peeled, and went back to being pale. Dark hair, deep dark eyes, and a long, but not too long, and somewhat thin, but not too thin, nose. I was taler than anyone on my dad's side of the family. The squat Irish boy trait missed me.

Mom's family was tal and big like me. I got my looks from him and my size from her. My eyes were blue, a deep midnight blue but you'd have to find me in a particular mood to see the blue. Most people thought my eyes were black. I didn't tel them any different.

Kel had crystal clear blue eyes. Wavy blond hair. Everything great about his mother and nothing of me at al. Except his mouth, or rather the words that came out of it. Now that was al me. As was his swagger. He walked like me. Walk and talk. Al learned traits. I shrugged. The paternity test came back with my name on it. Her genes were just stronger than three generations of Black Irish. My dad snorted over that even now.

"How do you know they didn't fix it, the papers?" He had a faint accent that he'd brought down from New York with him to Florida. His grandfather had come off a boat from the Emerald Isle back in the early nineteen hundreds. His dad spoke with an Irish brogue. My dad, born up there, raised down here, had, for the most part, lost his. I could pick it up when I wanted to, but mostly I sounded like everyone around here. Sort of southern country surf bum.

Funny how looking in the mirror messes with your carefuly formed vision of yourself. I checked my watch; nearly six thirty. It would take at least the entire remaining thirty minutes to get to Los Amigos over near the university. I loved that place. I used to take Kel there on my weekends after I finished school and had some money rattling in my pockets. Sabrina was al McDonald's and Pizza Hut. I loved mom and pop places. I shrugged. Time to go.

Why was I thinking so much about those years?

I didn't dwel on that time in my life. I lived mostly for the moment. Never dweling on the past or, by the same token, never planning for the future. The future would take care of itself. Or it wouldn't. And I couldn't change the past.

It was the porn star business. I was one. I was a big one. I made a lot of money screwing men. My porn name was wel known. And I regretted every damned minute of it. Okay, not every minute, those few years with Seth were the exception. With Seth, it was different. We became something other than an unknown fuck. We were real. One of those things that rarely happens in gay porn. We were a couple. We were exclusive. We never used condoms because we were together. If we took a third it was under our conditions, never the studio. Until the last time and then…

Stop thinking about it. Stop wondering if Kel is doing something stupid. Stop, just stop. Sometimes I wonder if people I know ever came across one of my videos. Sometimes I thought about teling my parents.

When I was suicidal. If Kel was dabbling in the life then shit, it wasn't my place to tel him not to. Just to stay safe. Make sure the medical forms are current and stay safe. Don't lose your heart to a fresh faced surfer kid from California. Just don't, okay? Don't.

"I need a boyfriend," I said to the radio in my car. I turned up the music. After the boyfriend confession, I thought about going to a club. It'd been a long time since I'd had a boyfriend, myself. Or a one night stand or a quick jerk in a bathroom. A long damn time.

I wasn't al that interested. Club guys were young. I was thirty-eight. Too old. Too, too something.

I didn't want a lover. Just someone to screw every now and then when my hand got old.

After I sent Kel home, I'd go to one of the less noisy places in the city. Look for some lonely old coot and go home with him. After I met with Kel.

Kel stood in front of Los Amigos. He was such a beautiful kid. My heart always did this proud papa thing when I saw him now. He was tal, not as tal as me but normal tal. He let his hair grow until it touched his shoulders. He liked those choker surfer boy necklaces.

Today's number looked like a dog colar. Black woven leather with beads. He wore tight sun bleached jeans with tears at both knees and under his ass cheek on one side and a tight white T-shirt with a surfing penguin. His lean golden muscles bunched in his arms as he stood with his hands in his back pockets rocking on the bals of his feet. Flip flops. But he wore flip flops in January.

And January could get pretty cold here.

He grinned, sort of shyly, which was unusual in itself. My self-preservation instincts kicked in. The kid smiled like that when he was hiding something. Yeah, a great big porn secret.

I parked and climbed out of my dude magnet, a 1969 Dodge Charger. I loved muscle cars. My dad and I had found this car for my sixteenth birthday. Hel, Kel had been conceived in this car now that I think about it.

Back then it was a beat up piece of junk, today it was cherry. Solid black with red interior. "The pimp mobile.

I love this fucking car. Did I ever tel you that?"

"Naw. As a matter of fact, you used to complain about being seen in it." I stepped up on the sidewalk and hooked an arm around his neck, dragging him close so I could run my knuckles over his scalp. I always greeted him that way mostly because it embarrassed him. I popped a kiss on top of his bleached head and let him go. "Been a long time. You look great. I see you've spent a lot of time down at the beach recently."

"Last weekend, me and a few guys went surfing. No cutting class, I swear. Lesson learned." He smiled his lopsided smile at me, his eyes twinkling with some sort of concealed mischief as he looked me over.

"You look good. I like the hair; you shouldn't cut it for a while."

I ran my hand through my overgrown business cut and nodded. "Sort of gotten tired of button-down and upstanding lately. So tel me about the bike? Were you hurt? Why didn't you cal me?"

"Fuck, Liam, can't you let me ease into it?

Sheesh." I just glared at him and he did that smile again as he slung his arm over my shoulder and sighed. "Fine.

I wasn't riding it. I let a friend take it for a ride on the coast and the dumb fuck laid it down on the highway. I would have kiled him if he hadn't torn his leg to hel and back."

"Insurance not pick up the tab?" Ironic statement coming from my mouth.

"His did, most of it anyway. I covered the rest out of pocket. Nothing major, just a paint job. Oddly the bike wasn't realy damaged, just scraped."

"And my insurance just doubled, didn't it?" I didn't want to think about him being hurt and lying bleeding on a busy highway so I did the dad thing and got angry.

"Naw, Clay is a rich snot, his insurance covered it. I didn't even cal it in to ours. The rest is just cosmetic; I decided I wanted to paint waves on the tank."

By now we were inside the restaurant. I hadn't noticed that Kel stil had his arm around me until the hostess gave us a funny look. "Table for two, I take it?"

"Yeah, me and the old man are celebrating,"

Kel said giving her a wink. "He finaly divorced my old lady and he's a free agent again so I thought I'd take him out and show him the ropes, you know… old people dating." He managed a delicate shudder that had the little hostess smiling.

"I know, right? When my folks split, my dad bought a convertible and started chasing girls not much older than me." She puled out a couple of menus, bundled silver, and started into the restaurant with Kel hot on her heels. "Enjoy your meal and don't be too rough on him, he'l figure it out on his own, you know."

"Yeah," Kel laughed and sat down with his back to the crowd so he could look out the window.

"Thanks, sweetheart."

Gay or straight, it didn't matter, the kid could charm the socks off anyone. Me included. He was so unlike his mother, good-natured, happy, and easy to be with, easy with the joke. I loved this kid.
Loved him
.

"What? Stop looking at me like that; she was thinking we were hooking up. I had to say something."

"And I'm so hideous you don't like being seen with me?" I laughed, I didn't mind and it was funny, sort of. The idea that we could be a couple. If only she knew how wrong that was.

"Hel, Liam, do you know what you look like?

Most of the people in this room checked you out. I'm used to it. Al my damned life I've watched people, al people, stop and look at you. Women, old women, young women, teenage girls. Guys. Oh my fucking god, do you know how embarrassing it is to catch some guy scoping your dad? I mean come the fuck on. Grand Da wouldn't have been as hot as you are at your age. He's too short and too Irish looking. Gawd, man, if I weren't related to you, I'd be al over you."

"You so aren't my type and besides you are too impossibly young." I knew what I looked like. I knew what the photographers thought of me. But hearing from Kel made me blush.

"What is your type? I've never seen you with anyone. Sometimes I sort of wonder, you know, not wonder, wonder, like, eww, just hel I don't know what I'm saying." He raced the words together stopping when the waitress came.

"What can I get you to drink?" She looked from Kel back to me with a huge smile on her face. She wasn't as young as the hostess or as naïve.

"Dos, Dos Equis." Kel held up his fingers in a split v and flashed a grin at me.

"Oh, yeah, that's right, you are legal now. First beers and al that. Should I haul out the baby book to honor this occasion?" How had I missed this? Birthday

—check. I remember the birthday, you don't forget things like that especialy when your kid had to be taken by C-section because his little heart had stopped. "I sat in the waiting room the night you were born. I'd never been so scared in my life, or since. You nearly didn't make it and now you're ordering beer. Aww, how sweet."

"'rents, you can't take 'em anywhere." Kel leaned over to whisper to the waitress. "Weird older brothers either."

"See now I didn't think he was your dad, and realy you don't look a thing alike so I think you might be trying to pul a fast one." The waitress wasn't impressed. "Let me see some ID?"

"Happily." Kel dragged his walet from his pocket and displayed his shiny new legal age license.