Double Blind (46 page)

Randy stared at the ceiling for a while.

“He was probably cruising when they killed him. For a while I worried—when I was old enough to get it, to understand that he was gay and who all those men were and what they were giving up to play poker with a snot-nosed kid—I worried I’d gone over too much and he’d had to go out to get laid, and if I’d just stayed away he’d still be alive.” He had to stop there for a minute, and he caught himself going to stone, so he decided,
Fuck it. Peaches, watch this, because this is how it’s fucking done
, and let out a breath and let the tears roll down his cheeks.

“I know that isn’t true, that he was just taking a risk for sex, maybe even for love, like so many men have done and still do, and he got a bad beat. I’ve known that for a long time. But that one bit. It hurt, thinking that I might have inadvertently sent him to his death. I can’t shake it completely. Probably because I always think I could have stopped it. I know I couldn’t have, but I wish I could have. I would have done anything to keep that from happening, would have given up anything. And somebody should have stopped it. At the very least, people should have cared more than they did, shouldn’t have fucking said he deserved it, the pieces of shit. That was almost as hard as losing him—nobody stood up for him, so I lost everybody else along with him. It sucked. It sucked, sucked,
sucked
, and I was only ten years old. It was like everything stopped. Every fucking thing.” He wiped at his eyes, but he was mad now, really fucking mad. “It’s just wrong, so fucking, fucking wrong, as wrong as Sam’s mom dying, as wrong as Ethan’s stupid lover stealing the money, as wrong as so many goddamned things—but this is my wrong, and when I think about it, it really fucking hurts.”

He let out a breath, then let out another one, then wiped his face again and looked up. Laura was smiling.

“I never had a dad,” Sam said. Whispered. And he didn’t sound like Sam. He sounded like a little boy.

Sam wiped at his eyes, then went on. “I never had a dad. I never had an Uncle Gary. I never had anybody like that.” He bit his lip, but the tears were coming out now, just rolling, and he kept looking at Randy—at his cheeks, Randy realized. Where he hadn’t wiped his own tears away yet.

Randy didn’t let himself touch them, after that.

Sam took a deep breath, then let it out and stared at the floor as he spoke.

“Mom was great. She really was. She was everything to me, and I know how hard she tried. But no matter what she did, she could never be a dad. She tried to find a dad replacement, like the big brother programs, but they were always run through churches, and she didn’t like that. I didn’t understand what that meant until later. It wasn’t the church exactly—some are good, I’m sure. But not these. The types of churches we had in Middleton, the ones that did those programs”—he smiled, a wry smile, and his voice went high as he mimicked—“‘with federal money, too, those bastards’, she’d say. They were all anti-gay, and later she told me they kept telling me stuff that she could tell made me feel bad, so she got rid of the surrogate brothers.” His eyes flicked up to Randy. “She was like your uncle, protecting me before I even knew I needed it. But it meant I never got to have a guy around outside of
my
uncle. Who, if you remember, is nothing at all like yours, Randy.”

Randy made a face. “That man is a fish if ever there was one.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. But I used to ache for him to say something to me.” He looked at the therapist. “It’s stupid, or it feels stupid, to want something so specific. I don’t know why my mom couldn’t be enough for me, but no matter how she tried, it wasn’t the same. I needed a guy. A guy, any guy, to tell me I was okay. Somebody to look at, somebody to copy, like you did with your uncle, Randy. A dad. An uncle. A brother. Somebody.
Anybody.
But he had to be a guy, and there wasn’t one, not even a best friend. Just my uncle. I’d have taken a crumb from Uncle Norman and lived off it for a month.” He looked at Randy again, his eyes so full of longing it made Randy hurt to look at him. “I couldn’t wish away my mother. But if I could have had an Uncle Gary, even for a long afternoon—”

He shut his eyes and tucked his head down, going quiet again.

And Randy had this weird fissure of awareness, this momentary sense that he had it, that he understood—it wasn’t his mom, it wasn’t that at all, it was… it was—

But it was gone before he could name it. Was it… guys? Male attention? He turned to the therapist, ready to tell her to start doing her damn job here, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was focused on Sam, and something about the way she was looking at Sam made Randy sit back and wait.

She gave him a few minutes, then said, “Sam, would you tell me about your husband? You’ve spoken about him in passing, and it’s clear you love him very much—but if you wouldn’t mind telling me, I would be honored to hear what Mitch means to you. I would love to hear you talk about what a gift it must have been to find the person you knew you wanted to spend your whole life with.”

Sam looked up at her, measuring for a moment. When he spoke, he was surprisingly defensive. “Are you trying to tell me that I married Mitch for a father figure?”

Whoa.
Randy slid his eyes back to the therapist.

She held up her hands and shook her head. “No. I’m sorry if that’s what you heard me say, Sam, because I didn’t mean to tell you anything like that. I didn’t want to tell you anything at all, in fact. I sincerely meant to ask. It seemed a natural extension to me, because after wanting to find a male model for so long, you have not a model but a partner. And I would love to hear about him.”

Sam relaxed a little and began to talk about Mitch, hesitantly at first, but the therapist was encouraging, and Sam quickly warmed to his task, telling about meeting his husband—skipping the X-rated bits, Randy noted with a wry smile—and his proposal, and their life in Iowa as they waited for Sam to finish school. It was, Randy had to admit, with or without the gay porn parts, quite a romantic tale. And he didn’t need a therapist to show him they were true partners. Yeah, there was an age difference. Yeah, Mitch liked to cocoon Sam. But he was not his dad, or his brother, or his uncle. He was his friend and his lover. His life partner.

And the real kicker was, Mitch was
better
with Sam. Mitch might coddle Sam, but Sam carried Mitch too, probably more than he knew. Sam was Mitch’s rudder. He’d calmed down. He’d settled down. He still had seriously kinky fantasies, but loving Sam and living with him had made Mitch better and stronger. Seriously, intensively better. Sam hadn’t changed, not that much. But Mitch had been transformed. Sam wouldn’t know the difference, because he hadn’t known him, before.

And that was when Randy got it. It was right there, so obvious. He stared at Sam a minute, just basking in it. So
fucking
obvious. So amazing.

So
brilliant
.

So much so that, even though it wasn’t exactly appropriate, he said it out loud. “You didn’t need a role model, Sam.”

Sam, who had been in the middle of a sentence, stopped and turned to Randy, disoriented and even a little irritated. But Randy couldn’t seem to make himself stop.

“You didn’t need one,” he said again, still mystified by the discovery. “You want one, yeah, I get that. And you should have had one, and that’s as bad as losing your mom. It’s worse, maybe, because it’s like this guy you never even met.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam said, his irritation turning hard. He was going to stone again, or trying to.

And Randy had fucking had enough of that.

“Sam,” he said, gentling a little, but not letting him slip away, “Sam, can’t you see it? Can’t you see that you
had
that model? That great guy? That amazing brother, the perfect dad, uncle, best friend—you had the best of all, the most amazing you ever could have had. Because only somebody who had somebody that perfect, that great, could turn out like you. And you had him. You had him all along.”

“I don’t understand,” Sam said.

“You had you, Sam,” Randy said. “You had that guy because you had you. Your model was
you.
Because you are
amazing
, Sam. You are absolutely amazing. You can’t see it, because you’re standing in it, but I see it. I see what you are to Mitch.” He smiled, trying for wry, but he was pretty sure it was shy. “I know what you are to me. He calls you Sunshine, Sam, because you are a fucking sun to him, and honestly? You are to everybody who meets you. You are so gentle, so kind, and so
strong
, and so much has happened to you, so much is against you in so many ways, and yet you’re always there, shining. You’re great because of
you
. Sam. Not because somebody showed you how to be a man. You’re a man because you showed yourself. No dad or uncle or anybody could have made you any better than you are, Sam. You made yourself great.
You,
Sam.
You.
”

Sam was crying. Fuck, Randy was crying. The therapist wasn’t, but she looked like she was working hard to keep herself even and professional. Which was good, because Randy had no fucking idea what anybody was supposed to say now.

But he tried anyway.

“Sam,” he said, reaching out across the couch to take his hand. “Sam, you are the best guy I know. I swear to fucking God. You’re a better guy even than Ethan. The best I’ve ever met. I’m glad you brought Mitch back to me—and that was you who did that, just so it’s clear, it wouldn’t have happened without you—but I look forward to you
both
coming now. I love you, Sam, so much. So many people do.” He squeezed his hand. “So—just remember that, okay? I know it doesn’t give you the dad you should have had. I know you still wanted to have somebody, a guy, some guy, even a half-rotten guy, to have him tell you what a good job you were doing when it mattered. I know. But—shit, Peaches, I’m telling you now. You’re great. You’re fucking, fucking great.”

He was a big, fat, slobby mess by the end of that little soliloquy, and Sam was too now, so when he ran out of air and then words, Randy just took a deep breath, then gave up and pulled Sam across the couch and into his arms, and he hugged him.

As they sat there, rocking a little from side to side, he let himself remember. He let himself remember the days he’d come home from school and somebody had hit him, when someone had made fun of him or he’d screwed up and hurt somebody else, every time when the world had been wrong, and he’d gone to Uncle Gary and the big, loving man had made it right. He replayed those moments as he held Sam, every single time that he could remember.

He wondered if he had done what Sam did too. He wished he had, but he couldn’t quite tell. He hadn’t done as neat a job of things, that was for sure. There had been a lot of rough spots, and a lot of mistakes. His life had been a lot harder without his uncle, that much he knew. He did okay, though, in the end, he thought. He liked who he was. He liked who he’d become, overall.

But while he sat there, while he rocked Sam and wandered down memory lane, because he could, he wrote in a few more memories too. The times when he’d been older and wished for Gary—it hurt to do it, but he was already a fucking mess, he was already so fucking exposed, how could it get worse? So he wrote them in, as if his life were a movie he could fix in the editing room. He pretended that Gary hadn’t been killed. He pretended that Gary had explained sex to him, had told him how to not make it hurt. He pretended that Gary had told him that first fuckwad he let have him was an asshole and not to give himself away so cheaply.

He pretended Gary had been there to take him in when his dad kicked him out, that he hadn’t had to run away and sell himself. Not that he was all broken up about that, because it had worked out okay, and it had made him tough and smart and lean—but he pretended for a minute that he hadn’t had to do it. He pretended that he’d finished school and gone to college and taken science and math classes like Gary had told him he should. He pretended. He didn’t know how to pretend after that, because it would have been a really fucking different life, and he didn’t know if it would have been better or just different. But he played those parts that he knew damn well had been bad over, and made them better. It hurt—for a minute. Okay. For a few minutes.