Food for Thought (9 page)

“Do you… I mean… you have a mother, right? What’s that like?”

Keegan sighed and looked out the window. “My mother… well. She sends me cookies and gift certificates on my birthday. She waits until my father is out of the house, and then calls me on my day off. She asks me if I’m seeing anybody, and listens when I am.”

Emmett was floored. “That’s…. Keegan, you have a
mother
? That’s
wonderf
—”

“You know what she doesn’t do?” Keegan asked bitterly.

“No.”

“She doesn’t tell her sister that I’m part of the family too. She doesn’t invite me to Christmas with my sisters and brother, because my dad wouldn’t let her. She doesn’t stand up to Dad about how I’m part of the family too. So, you know. Moms. Not all they’re cracked up to be.”

Emmett sighed. God, he’d had such hopes for having a family. It had been Christine’s primary attraction.

“Vinnie’s is,” he said with a sigh of satisfaction.

He felt a tentative caress at his cheek, like Keegan wanted to touch him but didn’t want to interfere with his driving. “Is that who you ran to?”

“Yeah. And… I didn’t go to my dad. And I didn’t tell Vinnie’s mom the whole story. She just asked me who broke my heart, and I told her ‘Jordyn,’ and she assumed it was a girl.”

Keegan’s dubious grunt fell into the silence like a fisherman’s weight.

“But….” Emmett swallowed. “But this last trip… it was weird. Cause
both
Vinnie
and
his mom said it. They said, ‘If you brought a boy here, we’d still love you.’ And Flora… well, she said, ‘Jordyn is a boy’s name too.’”

“That’s fishy,” Keegan said, and Emmett didn’t have to look at him to picture his frown. God, a year. He’d known Keegan a year, and every expression was printed in the book of Emmett’s mind.

“Yeah—unless they figured it out earlier and were waiting for me to tell them. But see? That’s sort of the point. The… the
thing.
How could I tell Vinnie and Flora when I never…?” He swallowed.

“You never told your father,” Keegan filled in for him.

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Keegan said softly.

“Yeah.”

“So that’s where we’re going.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why you didn’t want me with you.”

“I can leave you with Flora—she’d love to meet you.”

Keegan snorted. “Ohmygod—
Emmett
. I love you, but you are like”—he flailed—“socially disabled. ‘Hi, I know I said I wasn’t gay, but I am, and this is the guy I just got caught banging when my girlfriend walked in, and you don’t know him, but that’s okay, just talk to him while I go to the cemetery and have a….’” And all of a sudden, Keegan realized where that conversation was going.

“A talk with my dead father.”

“Yeah. And no. When I meet them, I want to be invited to dinner, and I want to cook a side dish, and I want to be wearing my best clothes. I want to be
fabulous,
and not just flaming, and I want them to love me.”

“They will love you,” Emmett said with deep conviction.

“My own family doesn’t love me,” Keegan defied, his voice somehow naked, surrounded with broken faith that Emmett had, apparently, been shoring up with every not-date, and every time he blew off Chris, and every time they ate dinner or watched a movie or went out shopping together.

“They’re stupid. I loved you the minute I saw you.”

“Yeah? Took you fucking long enough.”

Emmett grunted. “What can I say?” he mused, honestly wondering. “It was like… like I wasn’t me.”

There was nothing to say to that. They were quiet all the way into Chico.

C
HICO
IN
the summer was like being on the scorching plain of hell. Not the
highest
scorching plain of hell—that was Redding’s calling—but on one of them. Even though Emmett had grown up there, his memories of Chico always seemed tinged with the unmerciful gold of a sun at apogee, and the weary green of the defiant oak trees that fought it.

Even the One Mile Dam, where children swam and tadpoles grew into unapologetic bullfrogs, was hot, the shallow water warmed by the sun and way too many people to play. As the sun did battle with the air conditioning in Emmett’s car, he found himself wanting to take Keegan someplace like that—a picnic place, or to one of the nearby lookouts over the strange and alien buttes. He’d grown up here, and he sort of loved it. He’d like Keegan to see it at its best.

But he wasn’t going to the One Mile, or the Five Mile, or the Buttes.

He was going to a cemetery, and one of the older ones at that.

As he pulled off the highway to Mangrove Avenue, he reflected that
all
cemeteries seemed to cause a giant psychic darkness in a city. From the air, they were big blank spots of light and technology. From the ground, they were a constant reminder that you didn’t ever have as much time as you thought.

Emmett parked down the street, because he wasn’t sure if the place would be open or not, and then found the hole in the fence that all schoolboys knew to exploit when they grew up in a small town.

Just walking the two blocks had drenched him and Keegan in sweat, and Keegan complained bitterly that they’d forgotten to stop for the Frosty on the way.

“I’m sorry,” Emmett told him sincerely. “I just… you know, got into drive mode.”

“Well, that is something to keep in mind the next time we go on a trip.”

“I’m just so glad there’s going to
be
a next time,” Emmett told him, just as he found the fence.

Keegan’s retort died aborning, and he followed Emmett through the hole in the fence, and through long evening shadows, dripping in humidity.

They made their way through the older portion of the cemetery, through family plots from a hundred years ago—a mother, father, and child all gone on the same day, or the same week, brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and grandchildren and so on, their lives traced by the state of decay of their headstones.

“Families…,” he said softly.

“Are overrated.”

Emmett looked at him, hands in the pockets of the trendy cargo shorts with the half-mesh legs. “You don’t believe that,” Emmett said seriously. “Because if you did, you would have had a lot more boyfriends in the last year. All families start with a family of two.”

Keegan grimaced. “So, what was
your
family of two like?”

“I already told you,” Emmett said, spotting the rise of the hill where the new plots with the flat headstones began. “It was lonely. Nobody talked. I told Dad I wanted to go to Sac State instead of Chico State, and he said, ‘We can definitely afford that.’ I told him I’d visit on the weekends, and he said, ‘That would be nice.’”

“Was it?”

Emmett let out a breath. There it was. Three plots up, two plots over. He’d been up on Memorial Day, but they’d cleared the flowers he’d left long since.

“Yeah,” he said, looking at the stone.
Ira Gant.
Born and died. It had never surprised him that his dad didn’t have a middle name—he’d been born at a time when that wasn’t really necessary, socially. But now he looked at the name on the headstone and asked himself if there wasn’t a story or something in the silences? His parents had passed away, his wife had left him—it had just been him, his job as a factory foreman, and Emmett.

“After my mom left,” Emmett said, looking at that stark name, “he used to take me to the park on the weekends. He didn’t play, but he’d take me. He’d take me to the library—he never read me any books, but he’d take me. Or shopping. I’d get home from school and stay home until he got home, and he’d smile—it was like I was the best part of his day, but he just… he didn’t have any words. Nothing he felt important, you know? When I started to wander over to Vinnie’s….”

His voice broke, remembering what Vinnie had told him, the day they’d buried his father.

“He always knew where I was. And I’d call him and say, ‘Hi, Dad! I’m coming over for dinner.’ And he’d be out on the porch, waiting. And I had it all….” Oh hell. His head ached violently, and his throat was closed up and thick, but he was still talking.

“I’d been planning it for months, you know? ‘Dad, I’m gay. I’ve always been gay. It’s nothing you did. I hope that’s okay.’ And I think it would have been. I think he still would have met me on the porch, and I think he still would have been happy to see me. I mean… I don’t think it would have just… just…
gone away
. But now I’ll never know.”

He couldn’t talk anymore. Was this his punishment? For stringing Christine along for months and Keegan along for a year? Was he going to have to grieve his father and his boyfriend all over again? Because,
fuck
, he wasn’t sure he had the strength.

“Oh hell,” Keegan said thickly. He grabbed Emmett’s hand and kissed the palm, and then turned his face toward the purpling sky. “Mr. Gant?” he said, clearly, like there was someone listening. “Mr. Gant? Your son is gay. And he loved you. And he’s the best boy I’ve ever known, and he deserves to be loved. And I’ll always tell him. He’ll never have to guess with me, okay?”

“Dad,” Emmett managed, taking some heart from Keegan’s boldness. “Dad, this is Keegan. And he’s awesome. And he’s never silent. And that’s okay—you and I were quiet enough to last my whole life. I’ll
always
know if he loves me or not. I…I think you’d love him. I think Vinnie’s mom will. I… I just… you know. If you’re still checking up on me, like you used to when I went over to Vinnie’s house? This is where I am. And I needed you to know.”

Oh God. Tears. He was so tired of them. But that didn’t seem to matter, because they had taken over his eyes again, taken over his body. But just like his tears over Christine had felt like the cleansing of a pent-up dam, this felt healing too.

Keegan held him, the sweat seeping between their clothes because the wind had died when the sun disappeared. Finally, Emmett felt like he could step away and continue. Like he could leave the doubt here, and that he’d finally achieved closure—and clarity.

“Kee?”

“Yeah?”

“This has been the weirdest fucking day.”

Keegan laughed semihysterically into his shoulder. “Oh my God. You’re telling me.”

“But you know what?”

“What?”

“There’s probably a burger place still open. I’ll get you some carbs and a Frosty now.”

“You
do
love me.”

Emmett pulled back and smiled at him, knowing he probably looked ghastly, because Keegan’s nose was swollen and his eyes were red, and they’d both cried probably a gallon and were
so
ready for some happy.

“I really do. Let’s go eat and find a hotel. I’d… uhm….”

Keegan laughed throatily. “Did you pack the lubricant?”

“Hell.”

“Well, we can find a drugstore if we need to. But yeah. Man, I am too old to be necking in a cemetery, can you feel me?”

“Not right now. We’re too old to do that too.”

“Oh man, shut up.”

“Never.” Emmett paused for a minute, and looked behind him, wondering again what sort of pain and stories his father held, that would never be told. “No, Kee. I solemnly swear to you that I will
never
shut up. Ever. That’s the best promise I can make.”

Keegan shook his head. “Okay. Now I
know
it’s love.”

Emmett laughed, feeling lighter, scoured clean inside, ready to start a new life with Keegan, who would never shut up either.

“But first, we eat.”

B
Y
THE
time they were done trying to clean up the grease from the burgers and the melted ice cream from the Frosty, they were drooping, both from the heat and the day. Emmett found an inexpensive hotel and checked them in, and the first order of business was showers—separate showers—for both of them.

By the time Emmett was done with his shower, Keegan was asleep on top of the covers of the king-sized bed, curled like a kitten with a towel around his waist. Emmett smiled, looking at him, and put on a clean pair of briefs, then set about turning off the lights. His final order of business was to pull down the comforter and roll Keegan in, stripping him of the towel as he did so.

“No, dammit,” Keegan mumbled. “There was… sex. Wanna sex.”

“Cuddles, Kee. Let’s do cuddles.”

Emmett slid into bed next to him and started kissing the bare skin of his shoulder. His own eyes were drifting closed, but he wanted a taste—the silken rasp of skin, the warm feel of flesh. Keegan lay, sleepy and barely responsive, and Emmett ran his hands over his back, his arms, his bare bottom, his flank, and then back up where he massaged Keegan’s scalp under his hair.

“You give good cuddles,” Keegan mumbled. “I’ve never had a boyfriend who’s cuddled.”

“Are we boyfriends?” Emmett asked, a sort of enchantment in his voice. “Because that would be….”

Keegan rolled over and greeted him with a warm, sleepy kiss. “Awesome,” he said, when he was done. “It would be awesome. Go to sleep, baby. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Emmett’s eyes were already closed.

T
HE
NEXT
morning, Sunday morning, Emmett woke up knowing exactly where he was. He was in a hotel room in Chico with Keegan next to him, and his father was dead, but it was okay. Ira Gant was at peace, and Emmett was at peace with him.

It was all good.

In fact, as Keegan rustled and stretched next to him, Emmett thought it was better than good. Sleepily, he slid his hand over Keegan’s taut stomach and palmed the smooth skin there, the silk of his chest hair, the vulnerable rasp of his beard at his throat.

“Kee?”

“Hm?”

“You’re sort of vain, and I like that.”

“Yeah? Good. Not changing.” Ooh, and a sleepy, aroused Keegan was almost sinful—the almond paste
and
the chocolate on the shortbread.

“But why don’t you wax your chest?”

Keegan rolled over and arched an eyebrow at him. “You don’t like the chest sweater?”