Sex & Sourdough (22 page)

Sunday supper at his parents’ house was awkward from the start.

“You seem worn down, son,” said his father. He was reading the paper while they waited for Michael and his family to arrive. Aaron wouldn’t be at supper because his ship, stationed in nearby Mayport, was underway. Cole technically lived twenty minutes away, but he was usually busy or traveling on business. He only showed up for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Anders sometimes wished he’d skip those too. Cole was such an asshole that seeing him twice a year was more than Anders liked.

“I recall my first week being difficult, but I’d have thought you could find time to shave, at least,” said his father.

“I was camping last night,” Anders said, rubbing the stubble along his upper lip. “I needed to get away after my classes Friday.”

“Law school’s not quite the same as your business classes, hmm?”

“It’s….” Anders couldn’t say stupid, even though it was. “Stupid” was the only way he could describe the process of reading three hundred pages of judicial opinions to learn a rule he could summarize in one sentence. The biggest challenge involved in law school so far was not ripping his hair out. “It’s not what I was expecting.”

“You know it’ll be worth it.”

“I do?”

“Of course. Now that you’re enrolled, you’ll be able to come to work right away. You can technically practice from the first day, so long as you’re supervised by a licensed attorney. It’s a bit of paperwork, but starting with the firm now will give you an edge over the rest of your class. Nothing can beat good scores on the Bar, but you’ll manage that just fine.”

“I will?”

His father shuffled the paper and looked at him over the top. “What’s wrong, Anders?”

“Dad….” Anders rubbed the back of his head.

“Frank!” his mother called out. She was standing in the archway to the kitchen, holding a large Mason jar away from her body with a pair of tongs. “Do you have any idea what might be in this jar?”

“That’s mine!” Anders grabbed the jar from the tongs and cradled it against his chest.

“What on earth is it?” His mother scratched a bit of flour off her manicured nails. Even though this was just having a family supper at home, she was dressed in an immaculate pants suit and heels.

“At the moment, it’s flour and water. The biggest container I’ve got in my kitchen is a cereal bowl, so I raided your pantry.” He loosened the lid to make sure the expanding gas wouldn’t blow the jar up. “Hopefully, it’ll be flour, water, yeast, and bacteria in a few days.”

“Bacteria? Bring it in here. I’ll get some bleach.”

“No! The bacteria are the point. Besides, it’s not even growing
yet.”

“What?”

“It’s sourdough starter. For making bread.”

“What?”

“Sourdough bread. Bread made with sourdough.”

“Anders, you will not leave a growing bacterial culture on my kitchen counter. If you won’t let me clean it up, put it outside.”

“What?”

“It’s not sanitary,” she said simply. “You will not leave something like that in my home. How could you think anyone would want bacteria and mold spores in their home? Honestly, Anders, I don’t understand you sometimes.”

Anders found a safe place on the patio and tucked his infant sourdough starter away. When he returned to the parlor, he found his mother was gone again and his father had folded up the paper so he could work on the crossword.

“So you’re taking up baking?” his father asked, not looking at Anders.

“I’ve got no choice,” Anders insisted. “I’ve tried the stuff from the grocery store—from three different grocery stores—and it’s not the same. The bakery stuff is better, but not quite perfect. And it’s expensive.”

“Is it expensive? Well, then, why don’t we discuss you coming to work for the firm part-time now? I know you’ve got a bit of money in savings to live off of, and I’ve covered your tuition and rent for the semester, but I don’t want to see you starving to death.”

“I’m not starving to death,” Anders insisted. His stomach let out a long, low growl.

“Really? Because you look like you’re not eating enough. You were skinny before this summer’s little adventure, but now you look like you’re all skin and bones.”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“If you say so. I thought we’d put you in our contracts office, get you some experience drafting real-world agreements. It’ll look great on your résumé, and I won’t feel like I’m giving you a handout anymore.”

“Dad, I don’t think that I know enough about contract law to jump right into something like that….”

“Oh, I’ll have a partner supervising you, don’t worry about that. And it’ll be great experience for that legislative internship next summer.”

“Internship?”

“With Congressman Hillman. Remember, you went to summer camp with his daughter Lindsey.”

“Dad, I really don’t want to do an internship with the state legislature.”

“I was waiting for you to find that ambition again!” His father filled in a word on his puzzle. “I’ll see if I can arrange something in DC. It’ll be hard as a first-year student, but I’m sure we can find something worthwhile.”

“Dad, I already had plans for next summer….”

“Anders, you can’t afford to throw away another three months of your life. All this summer has gotten you is a ridiculous dent in your savings, a gaping hole in your employment history, and no work-marketable experience. You had your entire undergraduate education to run wild. Now it’s time to start acting like a grown-up.”

Anders watched the nib of his father’s fountain pen hover over the newspaper for a moment, then jot down a few wet letters that bled across the page. He had once asked his father why the man didn’t use a pencil to fill in crosswords, and his father had explained that, since everything he did at work was on a computer, the crossword was his only chance to use the dozens of fountain pens in his desk at home. Anders wasn’t even sure if his father enjoyed doing crosswords.

Anders heard the front bell ring and glanced up. His father didn’t get up. His brothers didn’t ring the bell, and neither did he, but his father wasn’t acting like there might be an unexpected visitor on the front porch, either.

“Anders, darling, your guest is here,” his mother called from the foyer.

“What guest?” Anders glared at his father.

“Your mother and I invited someone on your behalf.” His father smiled.

“Please tell me you didn’t invite Congressman Hillman’s daughter?”

“No, no more girls. I understand now.”

“You do?” Anders stood up, sudden panic settling in his stomach.

“I wish you would have introduced us to your boyfriend yourself. He’s really a charming young man, and I’m sorry you’ve spent so long feeling like you’ve got to hide like this. Your mother and I decided it was finally time to get everything out in the open.”

“Dad, I told you I was gay when I was in high school.”

“But you never seemed gay. You never acted gay. You never talked about dating, or about a significant other, so I wanted to believe it was just a phase. Something you said just to be defiant.”

“All this time and you never told them about us!” Joel appeared in the doorway. Anders’s mother had her arm linked through Joel’s elbow.

Anders dropped his head into his hands. “You’ve got to be kidding me….”

“It really is for the best, baby. I’ve seen what keeping this a secret has done to you over the past year. How it left you so stressed that you took off into the middle of nowhere this summer.”

“I did not take off into the middle of nowhere. I was hiking.”

“Anders, you went off into the wilderness alone. Denying how reckless it was is just ridiculous,” said Joel, sounding so reasonable Anders wanted to smack him.

“He’s right, son.”

Anders stood up and ran his hands through his hair. It was getting so long it was going to start tying itself in knots if he didn’t get it cut. At the moment, he was grateful for the extra length because it gave him something to tighten his fingers in. “Joel.” He shut his eyes for a moment and tried to drag his fingers through the tangles. “Come outside and chat with me?”

He took Joel by the arm and dragged him out to the patio, ignoring his mother’s startled gasp as they left the room. As soon as the front door swung closed, Anders turned on Joel. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

Joel cupped Anders’s cheek, and Anders wasn’t sure if Joel intended to kiss him or slap him. He forced himself not to flinch and shoved Joel’s hand away. “Anders, I know we had a fight, but if we’re going to move forward, we’ve got to come to terms with what happened this summer. I thought your family might be able to help me talk some sense into you.”

“No.
You
need to come to terms with what happened this summer. We broke up. I thought I clarified things pretty damn well on Friday. Give me back the key to my apartment, stop leaving random shit on my kitchen counter, and get over it.”

“We didn’t break up.” Joel chuckled. “You know we didn’t. We had a fight, that’s all. I’m not going to let you end things like this!”

“Let me? You think you can stop me? By manipulating my parents into thinking you’re not an asshole?” Then he thought about how Joel had fed off his parents’ trepidation over the Appalachian Trail. So many of the stories Joel had told him as they’d been planning their hike had turned out to be total bullshit. “You know what I’m really curious about? I wonder whether you were trying to scare my parents, or if you were lying to me when you said you’d hiked part of the Appalachian Trail before. Were you lying to me all winter, or lying to them now?”

“What?”

“It’s hiking in the woods, I’ll admit that. But it’s not exactly being alone in the wilderness. Thousands of people hike that trail every day. The only time I was ever more than a dozen feet from another hiker was when I left the trail to go pee. And half the time, it was in an actual toilet. I was never alone. There were stores or towns every three days. So either you never actually spent more than one weekend on the trail, or you’re being an asshole. You’re scaring my parents so they’ll be more likely to believe you. Did you tell them you were supposed to be with me, Joel? Did you tell them that you had to petition for a spot in a summer class just so we wouldn’t get out there together and I’d realize you’d never been backpacking before?”

“Anders, baby.” Joel approached him carefully, raising both hands in a placating gesture.

“It doesn’t fucking matter. The voice mails were excessive. The gifts were out of line. This—” He gestured toward his parents. “This is psychotic. I’m not going to let you fuck with my parents the way you fucked with me. You need to leave. Now.”

Even as he said it, he saw the wheels turning behind Joel’s eyes, and he realized he’d miscalculated. Joel just took his blunt rejection as an insult, shifted gears, and became offended.

“Anders, you’re going to listen to me.” Joel grabbed the front of his shirt and jerked him forward a foot. “Do you think that you can get away with this?” he hissed. “With acting like what we have is over just because I’ve embarrassed you? You have to at least sit down and talk to me!” Joel tightened his grip on Anders’s shirt and tried to lift him up.

“No,” he whispered, meeting Joel’s eyes. He needed to get Joel out of here before he got violent, before Joel terrified his parents, or worse, convinced them he was as worthless as Joel had always said he was. He touched Joel’s fists gently. “I don’t have to sit down and talk to you. But I will,” Anders promised. “Not here and not now. You can’t drag my parents into this. If you leave tonight, we can have lunch together tomorrow. I’ve got a break between classes from two to four, all right?”

Joel relaxed his grip slightly, but he didn’t let go. “Baby, that would be rude. Your parents did invite us to dinner.”

Nausea and fury were suddenly fighting for dominance inside of Anders’s body, and the fury was winning. He mentally ran through the elements of assault and battery he had learned in criminal law, recalled the statutory maximum sentence each crime carried, and felt like cursing. One week in law school and he was analyzing the consequences of kicking Joel’s ass rather than
actually
kicking his ass.

A late-model blue Lexus drove through the gate and pulled around the long, round driveway.

His oldest brother Michael, along with Michael’s wife and daughter, were in the car. Anders wasn’t sure why the idea of Joel meeting them made him angrier, but it did. He wasn’t going to let Joel anywhere near Michael’s family.

“No,” Anders whispered. He pried Joel’s fingers off his shirt, shoved his hand away, and stepped back. “I told you—you will never have anything to do with my family.”

“So your family’s too good for the likes of me? The high and mighty Blankenship family can’t even stand to associate with a penniless writer from Ocala, is that it?”

“If you leave now, my offer still stands. I’ll meet with you tomorrow afternoon, in the food court, and we’ll talk. But if you don’t leave, I’ll call the police.”

“Anders.” Joel shook his head, his smirk growing into a wide, toothy grin. “After everything you’ve put me through, do you think the police are going to do shit for you? What are they going to arrest me for? Being invited to dinner? Trying to show my boyfriend how much I care by giving him gifts that he throws back in my face? You think just because you’re Anders fucking Blankenship the police are going to jump at your every whim?”

“Fine.” Anders pulled out his cell phone and began dialing.

Joel ripped the phone from his hand and flung it against the front door, where it shattered.

“Anders?” Michael called from the bottom of the steps. “Everything okay?”

“Call the police, Michael.”

“Anders, what’s going on?” Michael asked again.

“Come on, Joel.” Anders reached for Joel’s elbow and turned him toward the steps.

“You condescending, worthless little whore,” Joel hissed. “You’re not getting away with this, Anders.”

Anders tightened his grip on Joel’s left arm and tugged him into the driveway. By the time they reached the gravel, Joel was pulling against his grip and fumbling with his keys. “This is about that hiker, isn’t it? He’s a homeless, idiotic loser, Anders, and even he deserves someone better than you!”