From the Ashes (7 page)

“Wow.” Tomas flopped over, so they lay side by side on the bed. He hooked a hand around Jesse’s nape and dragged him into a kiss. This time it was more tender. Like they were lovers instead of a couple guys getting their rocks off.

Jesse smiled, his heart thudding fast.

“You want to take a shower?” Tomas held Jesse’s hand, rubbing rough fingers over his knuckles. “I bet my mom is cooking dinner tonight.”

His guts twisted with nerves, and just like that, Jesse crashed to reality.

Chapter Six

“You want to have dinner at your parents’ place?” After the day he’d had, the last thing Jesse wanted was to play it straight in front of strangers. Strangers whose house he was currently living in.

Tomas shrugged. “Sure. Why not? My mom’s a great cook.”

“Because they don’t know I’m gay? Or that you’re gay? Or…this?” Jesse looked around for the towel he’d used the day before, but didn’t see it.

“What are you looking for?” Tomas stepped off the bed.

“A towel.” Jesse was buck naked and didn’t want to argue with his dick out.

Tugging him off the bed, Tomas urged him toward the bathroom.

Jesse hated when Tomas got all macho like that. It made it impossible for Jesse to argue.

“I hung it.” Tomas pointed to the towel rack, where the towels were folded.

“Wow. You’re really neat.” Jesse wasn’t some kind of slob or anything, but the best he’d done at his own place was hang his towel on the hook next to the shower.

“Grow up with a woman who cleans people’s houses ten hours a day and you learn to keep things looking nice.” Tomas handed Jesse a towel.

“Hey.” Jesse touched his arm. “Do you want to have dinner with your parents on your own? I can walk somewhere or just stay here.” Jesse didn’t want to be in Tomas’s way.

“No.” Tomas backed out of the bathroom. He picked up their clothes off the floor and threw them at a laundry basket.

“Oh, come on.” Jesse didn’t know why Tomas was upset. “Do you
want
me to have dinner with your parents?” The very thought made his skin crawl. He hadn’t been to a family dinner with his own parents since that night his dad found him with Bobby. The screaming match that followed was enough to put him off family dinners for the rest of his life.

“It’s not just my parents. Maria will be there too.” Tomas must have noticed Jesse’s confused expression because he explained, “She’s my sister. She lives with my parents.”

“Well…” He bit at the edge of his lip. He
would
feel better with more people at the table. Maybe he’d survive.

“And Diego comes by sometimes, when his wife works late at the hospital. He brings the kids if they’re not with their other grandmother.”

Jesse assumed Diego was a brother or cousin. He remembered Tomas mentioning him but couldn’t quite keep all the names in order.

“Are you sure your dad won’t mind?” Jesse stared at the carpet.

“Why would he mind?”

Jesse toed the bathroom threshold, where the pile of carpet was uneven in places. “Because of…how I am.”

“Well, as long as you and I don’t kiss or anything, I don’t see why he’d know.” He stroked Jesse’s arm.

“I guess.” Jesse held the towel in front of his groin, feeling extra naked. “But…well, you don’t think he’ll know just because…” Jesse wasn’t overly feminine. He didn’t know what it was about him that tipped people off, but they generally knew. The kids in high school had figured out he was gay before Jesse had.

“Nah.” Tomas shook out his jeans and stepped into the legs. He buttoned the fly, looking rough and butch and like sex on a stick. “I’ll tell him you work at a coffee shop in the city. He doesn’t have any idea about things like that.”

Jesse steeled his will. He could do this. If nothing else, there would be enough people at the dinner table to deflect attention from him. “Okay. Let me shower and take Chardonnay for a walk.” He took a deep breath, finding his center. “Then I’ll be ready.”

“You didn’t need to come with me.” Jesse walked on his heels, leaning against Chardonnay’s pull.

“I wanted to walk.” Tomas’s section of SeaTac wasn’t dangerous, but Jesse stood out, and not just because he was white. He didn’t want Jesse scared by a car full of assholes shouting “
Maricon!
” out the window. “So, where in Eastern Washington are you from?”

“Pullman.”

Tomas pictured a map. “The other side of the mountains, right?”

Jesse nodded. “Yeah. Almost in Idaho. South of Spokane.”

“Isn’t there a school there?” Tomas had thought about college briefly. He’d had the grades to go, but his Firefighter Recruit Training had been free, and once he’d started working, he’d loved his job.

“Yeah. Washington State University. That’s where I did my first two years of school.”

Tomas waited for him to explain more. In his family, people talked until someone jumped in. He wasn’t sure if he should ask Jesse questions about why he left, but Jesse’s clouded expression told Tomas not to pry.

“My dad teaches there.” Jesse switched the leash from one hand to the other. There was a red streak across his palm from the pressure of the rope.

“We need to get a real leash tomorrow.” Tomas frowned at Jesse’s hand. “And a collar.” His mom and dad probably had those things around the house, from the days when Chester was a puppy and he and Diego had taken him for walks, or when Maria had first found Sushi by the side of the I-5, but Jesse would want Chardonnay to have her own stuff.

“I can pick some up between work and class in the afternoon,” Jesse said.

“Nah. We should go together. We can go to one of those fancy pet stores where they sell collars with little diamonds on them.” Tomas imagined his mom’s horror when she saw Chardonnay wearing something like that. Maybe it made him a bad son, but Tomas looked forward to the expression on her face.

Jesse gave him a flirty smile from behind the fall of his long hair. “I think we can find something just fine at Target.”

“It’ll be my treat.” Tomas wanted to hold Jesse’s hand so badly his palm itched. Instead, he bumped into Jesse’s side. “Some sucker’s going to cover half my rent for a while, so I’ve got extra cash.”

“Fine.” Jesse rolled his eyes. “We could either go to U-Village or to Petco. Petco’s way cheaper, but they have frozen yogurt at U-Village.”

Tomas imagined ice cream and sprinkles, and licking both off Jesse’s smooth, flat belly. “We’ll go to University Village.” With that settled, they walked up the Perez driveway. Tomas opened the door and let Chardonnay pull Jesse through to the back.

“Do you think we have time to give her a bath before dinner?” Jesse set her free on the stretch of land that connected the back of Tomas’s house to his parents’ place.

Sushi ran up to her immediately and started humping on her, as if to make sure Chardonnay hadn’t gotten any big ideas during her walk.

Jesse jogged over to the dogs and patted each of them, even Chester, who was ignoring the two girls and sleeping under the picnic table.

His mom opened the door and told him it was time for dinner. Tomas smiled at her, but out of the corner of his eye he saw how Jesse flinched. “They don’t bite, man,” he said once his mom had left. He rubbed Jesse’s arm, and then rubbed Sushi behind the ears. “It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.” Jesse stared at the back door with wide eyes, as if he thought the house was going to explode.

“What’s the problem? Are you worried about something?”

Jesse shook his head, though his eyes stayed glued to the house. “No. They seem…nice.”

“They are.” His family could be a pain in the ass like any other, but they were cool with strangers. “Don’t be offended if we speak Spanish sometimes, okay? My mom’s and dad’s English is good, but they feel more comfortable—”

“Oh no. That’s fine. Let’s do this.”

Tomas rested his hand between Jesse’s shoulder blades. “You’ll be fine,” he murmured, trying to calm Jesse down. “It’s only dinner.”

“What are you studying?” Tomas’s sister, Maria, asked. She was younger than Jesse—in her late teens—and the friendliest of the bunch.

“My major is biochemistry. But I have to take some core classes to graduate from UW.” Jesse picked up his sandwich and hid behind a bite. He would have expected dinner to involve tortillas and spice, but Tomas’s mother was serving a type of long submarine sandwich cut into sections, and rich, meaty soup. Maybe it was shallow, but Jesse had assumed Tomas’s family was from Mexico. Now he wasn’t so sure. Jesse made a mental note to ask Tomas his nationality later.

“And what job is your aim?” Tomas’s father asked. He had a deep voice and a stern manner.

“I want to work in biotech. There are a lot of growing companies around here.” Jesse held his voice steady, trying not to feel too intimidated.

“Very smart.” Tomas’s father pointed to him with a spoon then swung it to point at Tomas, spraying a couple drops of soup in the process. “You should think about doing more classes.”

“I like my job.” If Tomas was bothered by his father’s criticism, he didn’t show it.

“I’m finishing my associate’s degree,” Maria piped up.

“That’s great.” Jesse refocused on his soup, hoping they’d slip into conversations about their own lives, preferably in Spanish too fast for him to understand.

“And why do you need a place to live?” Tomas’s mother had the same look on her face as she had when she’d first seen Chardonnay. Suspicious.

“Um…” Jesse glanced at Tomas for direction.

“I go into the coffee shop where Jesse works and heard he needed a roommate.” Tomas shoveled food in his mouth as he spoke, possibly in the hopes that chewing would hide the fact that he was lying. “He’d always been nice, so I offered.”

His mother narrowed her eyes.

“It’s only temporary.” Jesse held up his hands in retreat.

Unfortunately, Tomas chose that moment to add, “I get lonely.”

Silence settled around the table, but Maria snickered behind her sandwich. “Yeah. I bet.” She darted Jesse a smile that was sneaky and appraising.

His face got so hot he must have been turning bright red.

Tomas balled up a paper napkin and threw it at his sister. “Stop being a smart-ass.”

With an indecipherable grumble, Mr. Perez went back to eating. He couldn’t have paid less attention to his children if he was ignoring them on purpose.

Maria seemed like she was going to say something, but a knock sounded on their front door. From outside the house, little boys’ voices carried like an angry swarm of bees.

“Oh, great.” Maria set down her spoon and sulkily crossed her arms. “Mr. Sunshine has arrived.”

Mrs. Perez got up to answer the front door.

Leaning across the table, Tomas pointed a finger at his sister. “Shush, you.” Apparently, not only did Maria know Tomas was gay, but Tomas knew that Maria knew he was gay.

Quite possibly the oldest brother knew as well. Or at least suspected. The whole thing might have been funny if Jesse were invisible.

“
¡Bendición!
” A guy who looked like an older, angrier Tomas pushed into the kitchen and reached across the table to grab a piece of sandwich.

For the first time in a while, Mr. Perez lifted his head from his food. He said something to Diego in Spanish that Jesse assumed meant, “Get a plate, if you’re going to eat,” because Diego made a face that showed grudging respect and sat at the end of the table where Mrs. Perez was setting him a place.

“
Ey, Tomas.
” Diego jutted his chin at Tomas but rolled his gaze over Jesse in a way that felt lecherous. “
¿Quien es el?
”

Tomas held Diego’s stare, and tension simmered. Everyone else at the table pretended not to notice, but Jesse couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“None of your business,” Tomas said in English.

Jesse scooped up his soup and ate a few bites, though he could hardly taste it with the force of Diego’s scorn radiating down the table.

Like a couple of bulldog puppies, Diego’s kids barreled into the room. One of them jumped on Tomas’s lap while the other tugged at his sleeve. They spoke in a mix of Spanish and English. The older told Tomas about his first-grade teacher while the younger cuddled into Tomas’s lap.

“Have you fought any fires this week?” the older one asked. “Any big ones?” The boy was thick and swarthy, and his manner was so quick that he seemed like a force of nature.

“One.” Tomas winked at Jesse.

Jesse hoped it was subtle enough that no one else had seen.

“But no one got hurt,” Tomas said. “That’s what matters.”

Wide-eyed, the smaller boy peered up at Tomas. “Not even any firefighters?” Tomas’s younger nephew was thin, with a narrow face.

His brother socked his arm. “Don’t be a baby. Firefighters are tough. They’re not afraid of getting hurt.”

Tomas grabbed the older boy’s arm. “Hey. No picking on your brother.” Maybe it was because the boy was still young enough to listen to adults that he dropped his attention to the floor and nodded.

“Nelson, Pedro…” Diego said something in Spanish. He must have told them to go to Maria because the boys darted nervous glances between their dad and Tomas before running to the other side of the table and gathering around their aunt.