Second Hand (Tucker Springs) (22 page)

If the battery had still been in the smoke alarm, I’m sure my face would have set it off again. I’d completely forgotten about that day, but I remembered now. “
Mom.
”

She stopped laughing, but her expression was calm and soothing as she petted my hand, my arm, my knee, whatever she could reach. “Sweetheart, it’s okay. Of course I love you, and so does your father.”

“
Dad
knows?” My voice was so high soon only dogs would be able to hear it. How in the hell was this happening to me? “How?
I
didn’t even know until a few days ago. And I still don’t even know. I think I might be bi.”

“Whichever is fine, honey. So long as you’re happy, that’s what matters. Of course we didn’t
know
, but yes, we suspected. All the literature told us to let you come to us with it, so we were waiting.”

They’d been reading literature? “But I was engaged! To a woman!”

“You did say you might be bi, yes?” When I sputtered, she started patting me again. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Does it matter what you are? Do you really need a label? Can’t you just be Paul, who loves people however they come to him?” She winked at me. “Though I’d love to hear that bitch Stacey was just a phase.”

I kept shaking my head, not knowing what to say. She moved her patting to my back.

“There, there, honey. Go ahead and breathe. I’m still here, and I still love you.”

I pushed her hands away. “That was Stacey on the phone. She wants to come back to me. She begged me.”

For the first time in the conversation, my mom frowned. “Have you tried porn, honey? I hear the Internet is full of it and that the gay stuff is really top notch.”

“
Mom.
”

She flattened her lips. “Well, fine, but please don’t take her back. That woman never loved you, not like you deserve. She used you and treated you like you were something she picked up at that pawnshop.”

The knife that had been hovering over my chest ever since she’d unveiled that damn panini press drove right into my heart. “That—that’s El, Mom. The guy who gave you the panini press. My . . . boyfriend.”

Her face lit up like I’d told her I’d won ten million dollars. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s wonderful! You need to get him to quit smoking, of course, but he was so charming, so kind. And so handsome. Why in the world are you thinking about taking Stacey back when you have him?”

I have no idea.

Except I did, and finally, finally the chipmunk let go of the question I’d been wanting to ask her ever since I came out of the bedroom. “But Mom, what if I don’t
want
to be gay, or bi, or anything but normal?”

My mother’s face turned to steel. “Paul Allan Hannon, you
are
normal. Who you are is not a choice. If you’re gay or bi, you’re gay or bi, and that’s that. You can’t choose to be straight if it isn’t who you are.” She searched my face a few moments, and then hers fell. “I should have told you that when you were younger, shouldn’t I?”

I swallowed against a throat that was suddenly dry and scratchy. “Maybe.”

She kissed me on the cheek, tears running down her face, and when she pulled back, I had tears too.

“Eat your dinner,” she said, “and then we’re going to go buy a few more things for this fantastic yard of yours. Then we’re going to stay up late talking about boys, and girls too so long as they aren’t Stacey, and tomorrow morning you’re going to take me back to that shop and introduce me to your young man.” She tweaked my nose again, smiling through her tears. “Come on. My scalloped potatoes aren’t any good cold.”

Letting go of a weight I thought I’d been carrying since that afternoon with the Hazzard boys, I picked up my fork and ate my mother’s potatoes, dreaming tentative daydreams about making everything up to El in the morning.

On the night before the Fourth of July, Abuela called El over for an emergency meeting: Patti had found out they’d cleaned the attic.

Though he went straight over, by the time he and MoJo arrived, the hysterics were in full swing and the entire Rozal family was on the front lawn carrying on like a bad episode of
Cops
. In the center of it all was Patti, eyes swollen and nose running as she keened for her father’s lost junk like someone mourning the dead.

She looked, he realized, like he felt when he thought about losing Paul.

For the first time in his life, as their gazes met and El saw the sorrow in his mother’s face, as he felt it reflect the agony in his own heart, he understood the truth of his mother’s pain: that mourning the dead and the lost was exactly what she was doing.

“Emanuel.” She wiped her nose with her sleeve and pointed to his uncle. “Emanuel, they took his things.
They took his things.
”

Except this time he heard what she didn’t say as well as the things she did.
They took him, Emanuel. They took my papi away.

El swallowed hard and came closer to his mother, letting MoJo down to run after the kids. “I know, Mami. I’m sorry.”

“They took his things,” she sobbed again.

They took him. They took my papi.

Rosa glared at El, waiting for him to be rational. Lorenzo and Miguel only looked tired.

El closed the distance between his mother and himself and enfolded her into his arms. “They took his things,” he whispered, “but they didn’t take him.”

Patricia Rozal shuddered, gripped El’s shoulders, then sank heavily against him with a new round of sobs.

El held her, swaying from side to side as he let his mother cry. “It’s just things. You don’t need them to remember, Mami. He’s bigger than that. And so are you.”

“But I miss him,” she sobbed.

“I know.” El shut his eyes and thought of Paul hovering over him in bed and smiling. Paul blinking cluelessly as El flirted with him. Paul, eyes falling closed as he gave himself over to the pleasure El made for him.

Paul. Paul, who wasn’t a thing at all, who El did need, who he missed very much. Paul, who was worth the risk of being disappointed, of being abandoned. Because even if it ended someday, if Paul left or they grew apart or something else, having him for a while would be better than not having him at all.

He crooned to his mother, smoothing her hair, promising himself as soon as this was settled that he’d drive across town to get Paul back.

Noah was there too, he realized as they finally convinced Patti she should sit down in her rocker (after Lorenzo cleaned out the crap from it and moved it into a space where it had room to rock) and drink some tea. When he asked Rosa about it, she shrugged.

“He was helping me set up and insisted he come over with me when I got the call from Abuela.”

El glanced over at Noah, who watched, hovering and ready to jump in and comfort Rosa in case she needed it, or to get her a glass of water or the moon or whatever it was she decided she wanted. And El decided it had all gone far enough.

He turned his sister to face Noah, holding her firmly by the shoulders. “What is it you see, Rosa?”

“What the fuck, El?” She glared at him, but when he wouldn’t budge, she sighed the sigh of the perpetually weary little sister. “I see Noah. So what?”

“Yes, Noah,” El said. “Noah who babysits your kids whenever you ask him. Noah who buys you grills and patio sets and sets them up in your yard for you. Noah who came over tonight with you. Noah, who I would jump in a hot minute except he’s straight and only, you might notice, has eyes for you.”

Rosa went still. “No.”

“Yes. I know you didn’t meet him in a bar and that his IQ is fifty times higher than the slugs you usually hook up with, but you might want to give this one a try.” She swatted at him, but only halfheartedly, too stunned and fixated on Noah, who was fixated right back and looking really, really hopeful. El kissed her on the cheek and patted her backside. “Go get him, tiger.”

El wove his way through the backyard and the house. He was done pouting and being determined that Paul was going to go back to women or simply get tired of him. He’d find a way to make it work. He’d wait until Paul was ready to let go of the ring and anything else.

He’d adopt fifty dogs and maybe even a cat, if that’s what it took.

His mother protested when he kissed her goodbye. “You just got here,” she complained. “And Miguel already had to leave because he had to go to a fire.”

“I know, Mami, but I’ll be back tomorrow.” He squeezed her hand and smiled, though it was a little shaky. “Maybe with a handsome young man on my arm.”

His mother smiled broadly and squeezed his hand back. “You do that, Emanuel. You do that.”

He kissed her soundly on the lips. “
Te amo, Mami.
”

“
Te amo, Emanuel
,” she whispered back, hugging him tight.

MoJo leaned enthusiastically out the driver’s side window all the way over to Paul’s side of town, and if El could’ve done it while driving, he would have, too. He settled for scratching her behind her ears instead. “Let’s go see if we can find you another daddy, huh, sweetheart?” MoJo barked enthusiastically and wagged her tail.

El’s heart beat hard as he rounded the corner to Paul’s street.

But not half as hard as when he heard the sirens.

“Is there supposed to be smoke like that?” Mom asked, pointing.

I craned my neck around the sun visor she’d lowered and squinted at the horizon just below the mountains, where indeed there was a nasty, black plume of smoke. “I don’t think so. If someone’s burning trash with this drought, they’re going to get one hell of a fine.”

“That’s an awful lot of smoke to be a trash fire,” Mom observed.

“Maybe the trash fire has already gotten out of hand,” I said, hoping it wasn’t on my block and that if it was, the fire trucks weren’t blocking my house.

But when we turned onto my street, we found out the fire wasn’t just on my block. It was my house.

My
house
. My house was
on fire
.

I didn’t remember parking the car, only that one minute I was looking at fire roaring out of my house’s windows, and the next I was on the street, a female firefighter holding me back as I stared, dumbfounded, at my life going up in flames.

Suddenly someone was hugging me hard and sobbing. It was Stacey.

“Oh, Paul.” She buried her face in my shoulder. “Paul, our house!”

“Stacey, why are you here?” I wasn’t even sure she actually was. Everything seemed muted and far away.

“I came over to talk to you, and the house was on fire! Oh, Paul, how could you let this happen?”

She was clinging hard to me, and I didn’t like it. I pushed her off, and before she could reattach, my mother swooped in and drew her away.
Thanks, Mom.

I went back to staring at my house, watching it burn.

It felt . . . oddly good.

Really good, actually, and the longer I watched, the better I felt.
Things. Just things
, El’s voice whispered inside my head. All my things were burning up, and Stacey’s too, everything we had built together, everything that was nothing more than a lie I never needed to have told. That and a couple of pairs of scrubs. And my phone. And my iPod.

Things.

I laughed, quietly, raising my hand to my mouth to hide my smile.

“
Paul.
”

It was El’s voice again, but this time it wasn’t in my head. It was behind me, and when I turned, there he was, face pale and eyes wide as he ran toward me, his shoes slapping against the water in the street.

“El,” I said, smiling. “You’re here.”

You’re here, and you’re the only thing I really need.

He crushed me to him, holding me like he would never let me go. “You scared me half to death. I thought you were in there. I even called you, but you didn’t pick up your phone.”

“I left it in the house.” I shut my eyes and pulled him closer. “El, I’m so sorry.”

“You should be.” He was shaking. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“
Paul?
”

We both turned to Stacey, who stood next to my mother with eyes as big as her
Detroit Daisy
, watching the two of us embrace.