Heartsville 03 - Another Shot (J.H. Knight) (2 page)

****

Closing time didn’t come soon enough. Fifteen minutes before Aaron could flip the sign on the door and turn the lights off, the place filled up with—of all things—a wedding party. Twenty-seven people, including the flower girl, all cheerfully complicated his Thursday night. They were meeting for the rehearsal dinner, but the restaurant they’d picked had unexpectedly shut down due to an electrical problem. Aaron took pity on them and the bride’s puppy-dog eyes and told them they could celebrate for one hour.

He’d already let Simon and Clara go home early, but thankfully, Justin showed up and helped him throw together dozens of hot chocolates, lattes, and Americanos. Aaron fed them what little he had left from the day and a few things he found in the freezer—some tiny quiches, chocolate croissants, and bacon bagels. Maybe it wasn’t the rehearsal dinner they’d dreamed of, but everyone had food and they all seemed happy, laughing it off.

As he locked up, Justin waited for him.

“Look what I just bought.” Justin’s devious grin told Aaron he didn’t want to see whatever was on his phone’s screen, but he looked anyway.

“You bought a paddle and red leather cuffs from your phone?”

Sighing happily, Justin tucked his phone in to his pocket and swung his closed umbrella around as if he were dueling someone. “Technology is a glorious thing.”

Aaron had to agree, though he’d never bought sex toys on his phone. He liked to make those kinds of purchases the old-fashioned way—from the comfort of his own bed with his laptop perched on his knees. “I’m sure the boyfriend will be happy with them.” Aaron managed an honest smile with his words.

“Not as happy as
I’ll
be, but I’ll make it up to him.”

“Please do
not
share the details.”

“You’re such a prude.”

“I’m not a prude. I just have a smaller pool of kinks than you do.” Aaron laughed and slung his arm over Justin’s shoulder. “And I’m not as prone to oversharing as you are.”

“Fine, you’re not a prude. But I still say you should expand your horizons a little. Get online and find a kinky guy, try it on for a night or three.”

“I’ve hooked up online,” Aaron said with a shrug. “It was good, fun, but… I don’t know. I guess I’m just ready for a guy like….”

“You?”

“I guess, yeah. Someone who likes to sit back and watch a good show on the weekend or go for a bike ride by the river and feed the ducks or whatever.”

“Oh my God!” Justin stopped on the sidewalk, eyes wide. “I know the perfect person for you.”

Curious, Aaron asked, “Who?”

“My grandmother.”

He couldn’t help his own bark of laughter. “I hate you.” Aaron softened his words with a kiss on Justin’s cheek.

“No, seriously, you’re made for each other. She even
knits
. It doesn’t get more exciting than that.”

“Why do I put up with you?”

“Because I show up fifteen minutes before closing and help you serve thirty ‘thank God you’re still open!’ customers.”

He had a point. Given the hour and a half Justin had just sacrificed, Aaron could take a little extra teasing. “That was just your good deed for the day.”

“That was my good deed for the
year
, hon.”

Chapter Two

On Friday night, Simon and Clara agreed to close for him—which was another good thing about his lackadaisical employees. They were willing to help out in a pinch in order to make up for their casual association with the schedule.

Aaron was able to pick Mandy up and make it to their folks’ house in time for an early dinner.

“We’re supposed to be sorting our old crap and moving our boxes out of the house,” Aaron said as Mandy slid into the passenger seat. “Why are you dressed like a 1940s pinup model?”

Mandy arched a perfectly sculpted brow at him. “I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt. What are you talking about?”

Aaron looked pointedly at her shoes. Six-inch platform pumps in hot pink patent leather.

“My shoes are my business. I have to break these in, and I’m making you carry all the boxes.”

They found their mother in the kitchen. Between the pots on the stove wafting spicy-scented steam into the room and the thermostat set to seventy-five, the house felt like a swamp. The older his parents got, the hotter the house seemed to get. Their mother blamed it on their father’s poor circulation, and their father blamed it on their mother with no explanation.

“Where’s Dad?” Aaron asked as he kissed his mother’s cheek.

“Two guesses,” she said with an affectionate huff.

Aaron glanced at Mandy, clueless.

His sister rolled her eyes at him. “It’s Friday.” She said it as if it should mean something to Aaron. He waited for more information. When she rolled her eyes this time, she made an exasperated sound. “Temple is playing….”

“Oh. Right.” To say Aaron was uninterested in football—or any other sport—was an understatement. Unless you counted Turkish oil wrestling. He was a huge fan of that one. He did at least know that Temple was his father’s alma mater, so the game was probably an even bigger deal than usual. Aaron asked his mother, “Need a hand in here?” Why interrupt his old man with hellos and risk an invitation to watch?

She put him to work on a pan of enchiladas as Mandy disappeared into the living room. For some unfathomable reason, she followed football almost as eagerly as their father did.

Dinner went along as usual. Their dad complained about the timing because the game was almost over. Their mother told Aaron he needed to eat more. They went through the are-you-seeing-anyone-when-will-I-get-a-grandbaby part of the visit, then moved on to the medical update portion of the evening. This time it was “your father’s doctor gave him one month to lower his cholesterol.” Aaron eyed the cheese enchiladas on his father’s plate and hoped they were going to try harder tomorrow.

Halfway through dinner, his mother said, “We’re converting the garage into a gym.” Her statement seemed random, but at least explained why they had to get all of their stuff out. “We’ve already ordered the equipment, so in a few weeks, you can save all that money you spend on your gym membership, Aaron.”

How to respond? His mother didn’t need to know the details of his… multiuse gym. “That’s great, Mom. But… I like to socialize there too.”

Mandy smirked at him but thankfully didn’t comment.

“Oh,” his mother answered with a shrug. “I hadn’t thought about that. Could you still come by and show your father and me how to use everything?”

Aaron couldn’t help but smile. “Sure, of course.” He’d probably have to look up a tutorial on his phone since the only equipment he used was a treadmill and a rowing machine.

Later that evening, he and Mandy stood in the garage opening dusty boxes, sorting things into piles as they decided what they wanted to keep and what they needed to get rid of.

“This one is yours,” Mandy said, passing a small box to Aaron. The words “Freshman and Sophomore Year” were written across the top.

Aaron didn’t want to open it. Freshman year had been fine, pleasant even. He had a lot of friends and, that summer, got his first “let’s keep this a secret, my mom doesn’t know I’m gay” boyfriend. His sophomore year, though…. That could’ve ended better.

He started to toss the entire box on the garbage pile, but Mandy stopped him. “Hey, I know it sucked. But… it’s part of you, ya know? Your history. At least keep the yearbooks.”

She was probably right. Not that he would admit it. But he opened the box and pulled out his old yearbooks. He flipped through the first one, looked at some of the signatures, laughed softly to himself. Aaron set it aside in a “keep” pile and then thumbed through the pages of his sophomore annual. There weren’t nearly as many messages in that one. He’d only managed to keep two friends by the end of that year. It took him a moment to find his own picture, somewhere in the middle of the entire sophomore class—nearly two hundred other students with him. He’d changed a lot since then: filled out, gained the ability to grow facial hair if he wanted, grown several inches. When he was fifteen, his body was still clinging to boyhood, still scrawny and awkward, with pimples on his face. Grunge was nearing its end, Kurt Cobain had already died, but when the school pictures were taken, back in September of ’95, sophomore-Aaron—along with half of his class—still sported a ratty flannel over some band T-shirt. His greasy hair, bleached and then dyed blue, hung limply over his forehead. “I was a real catch back then,” he said with another laugh, shaking his head.

Mandy leaned over his shoulder. “You looked like a pissed-off baby bird.”

“I wasn’t pissed off at this point. I was just… hormonal.”

“Oh, the angst. Back before we knew there were things to be angsty about.”

“Well, I mean. I was still in the closet then, so I had a little bit to be angsty about.”

“True.”

Aaron set the yearbook aside and looked into the box again. He sifted through a few stray reports he’d written and stuff that seemed to be garbage, old receipts that had somehow found their way into the box. Crumpled at the bottom, he found a piece of paper. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he must have known what it was because his hands shook slightly as he picked it open, pulling the corners free until he had it unfolded.

The black-and-white image, even twenty years later, still made his heart race as he looked at it. A photocopy of a picture, him making out with a guy—the secret boyfriend who was luckier than Aaron because his face didn’t show. The word
faggot
was scribbled across the bottom in bold red letters. He’d found it taped to his locker one morning. There had been about a hundred more like it all over the halls in the school.

He turned it around so Mandy could see it. “Should I keep this too?”

Mandy’s lips curved downward into a tight frown. “You could donate it to a museum. Maybe we could put together a ‘Before Cyberbullying Was a Thing’ collection.”

Aaron laughed, maybe a little bitterly, but he dropped the picture into the recycle can. “I should donate this with it,” he said as he picked up his old CD player. “It weighs more than my TV.”

They didn’t talk much for a few minutes as they sorted through all the crap they’d collected over the years, things that weren’t good enough to take with them when they moved out but still didn’t want to part with at the time.

Aaron thought about his parents, though. He remembered the meeting with his principal after the picture had circulated the school. He’d been dreading telling his parents he was gay—especially his father—and had decided to wait until he graduated. Just in case. Instead, the first his father heard of it was that damn picture passed to him by the principal, a disgusted look on his face, as if he were showing Aaron’s parents a test he’d cheated on.

“What are we going to do about this?” the principal had asked.

His father sat there for a long moment, his face red—with anger or embarrassment, Aaron had no idea. After he let out a deep breath, he said, “Find out who did this and kick their ass?”

Not the reaction Aaron—or his principal, probably—was expecting.

“Your son chose to…
flaunt
his lifestyle. That’s hardly—”

“My son’s privacy was violated. He didn’t
flaunt
anything.” Without another word, his father stood up, flipped off the principal, and tugged Aaron by the sleeve before pulling him out the door. In the hall, his father said, “That guy makes me wish I had more middle fingers.”

His mother didn’t get a chance to say a word as they stormed out, but before she ducked into the car that afternoon, she squeezed Aaron’s hand tight and said, “I’m sorry you had to go through all that. You’re a wonderful son.”

It only took four months before they moved. His dad had wanted him to try and stick it out, put up with the teasing and harassment, not let it beat him. But after two fights and a broken nose, that was enough. They moved to Heartsville that summer and never looked back.

That night, as he and Mandy left, Aaron hugged his parents and told them he loved them. He’d never meant it more.

****

As he drove home, Mandy turned in her seat and looked at him for a beat. He could see her out of the corner of his eye as he turned onto her block.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Marathoning
Rome
and wishing I could lick James Purefoy’s chest. You?”

“Book club. But your… weird
Rome
fantasies will have to wait. You’ve got a date.” Mandy sounded happy. Way happier than usual. He must have misheard her.

“I’m sorry,
what
?”

“A date. I made a date for you.”

“You made a date for me? With the only gay guy in your book club?”