Spark (3 page)

None of his family were in Austin anymore either. When Hugo had left for the University of Minnesota, his mom and sister left Austin too. His sister Charisse found a job in Minneapolis so she could continue to baby her younger brother, which Hugo was glad about but would never admit to anyone, least of all to Charisse.

Charisse had cared for Hugo during the three-year battle their father had with cancer. It was a tough time for them, Hugo only thirteen and Charisse just nineteen. While his parents spent weeks at a time driving up to Mayo Clinic for tests, biopsies, treatments, and surgeries, looking for any way to treat the cancer that had luckily been found early, Charisse cooked for Hugo, helped him with his homework, and made sure he got up in time for school. She did all that while being a full-time college student herself and holding down a job waitressing.

She was the one who was there during Hugo’s emotional realization that he was gay too.

Eighth grade gym class was where he fully discovered what turned him on, barely dressing fast enough to keep the other boys from noticing what showering with them had done to him. Hugo had always known something was different about him, but to lose control of his body in such a public place where his secret could’ve so easily been discovered was terrifying, especially when he considered he had to shower after gym again and again with these boys for years to come. When he’d arrived at home, he uncharacteristically mouthed off to his sister, telling her to stay out of his life when she simply asked about his day as usual.

He was vile to her for weeks, but Charisse didn’t take it personally. Instead, she showed him she still loved him with gentle touches to his shoulders or a soft smile over the dinner table after making him his favorite meal, Tater Tot hotdish. Everyone was on edge at the time, but somehow, his sister had found a way to let Hugo’s shitty attitude roll of her back.

When they finally found out their father’s diagnosis was Stage I pancreatic cancer and that the prognosis was grim even though it was discovered early, Hugo broke down and finally let his sister back in. Being gay seemed like nothing compared to the near-certainty of losing his dad. He told her he was gay that night while they lay together in their parents’ bed waiting for them to come home.

“I know, baby,” she’d said, soothing him with broad strokes of her palm over his forehead and hair. “I know.”

Charisse.

Summer and Charisse were the two most important people in his life. They were the only ones that he ever shared how his father’s death made Hugo wonder who was going to show him what being a man was really about. He was gay and already a bit on the femme side if he didn’t watch himself too closely—especially on the femme side for a rural town like Austin. He had no uncles, no close male friends, so he worried.

When Hugo was sixteen, his father finally succumbed to the cancer. Rather than grieving, Hugo decided he would put his energy into being the man of the family, putting others’ needs before his own, working hard at school and his job, doing what he could despite being the youngest. He was very thankful for the help his dad had provided the previous summer by talking to the laboratory manager about finding Hugo a job. Even though Hugo wasn’t sixteen until the middle of August, he was able to work the summer between his sophomore and junior years in high school at Hormel, well-known in southern Minnesota and the world for making SPAM.

“H
EY
.” Summer’s breath washed across Hugo’s ear as she spoke. “What’s going on? You look a million miles away.”

Hugo bit his lower lip then brought his wine glass back to his mouth and took a lazy sip before shaking his head and resting his forearms on his bent knees again. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

Hugo shrugged and wrinkled his nose, embarrassed to admit where his mind had gone.

“Come on, Hugo. If you can’t tell me, who can you tell?”

By that point, several pairs of eyes were directed at the night-and-day pair as if attempting to eavesdrop, probably to see if there was more to their relationship than the mere friendship Summer had touted. Summer seemed to notice and pulled on Hugo’s arm as she rose and walked toward the water’s edge. He followed, not really interested in having their conversation overheard, let alone speculated about.

After he kicked off his shoes and submerged his toes in the cool water, Hugo looked to Summer, the friend who knew almost all his secrets. He took a deep breath and gave her a crooked smile, which spoke volumes about how reticent he was to share his thoughts.

“I guess…. It’s embarrassing to say, but I think I’m jealous you still talk to people from your hometown. I don’t talk to anyone. It makes me sad, actually.”

Summer reached for Hugo’s hand and threaded her fingers through his as she rested her temple on his arm. “I’m sorry. I thought you stopped talking with people from Austin because of what you’d experienced there, how you couldn’t really be yourself.”

“Yeah, I did. I think that’s what makes me sad. I lived there for half my life, and what’s there to show for it besides my mom and my sister? There’s no one who remembers the awkward Hugo lumbering on stage as a tree in the sixth grade musical.”

He sighed and felt an ache that seemed to open up anew. Why was this bugging him now? He was probably reacting so strongly because of his daydream of Kevin earlier in the day. Normally, something like this wouldn’t bother him nearly this much.

“Come with me,” Summer said, leading him down to the end of the long dock where they then sat. It was quiet and private there, the noises of the party muffled to nothing by the sound of waves crashing against the shore and the added distance.

“I’m sorry, Summer. This is your weekend. Please. Don’t let me take this and turn it into something about me.”

“Shut up, Hugo,” she chided with a playful push to his shoulder. “Geez! It’s okay to feel these things, and who said I had the monopoly on feeling melancholy? Huh?” She lowered her chin and raised her brows showing that she expected an answer.

“No one,” Hugo droned as if well rehearsed. He took a few seconds to work out his thoughts before sharing. “Okay. So I feel lonely when I see people who’ve known you forever telling stories you don’t even remember. I don’t have anyone to do that with except my sister. It just makes me wonder what I missed out on by leaving my childhood friends behind. That’s all,” he said with a shrug.

“Makes sense. But for the record, it’s not like I’m good friends with any of these people anymore. They know me like I was at seventeen, not at thirty-five. A few funny stories are all they really have of me.”

Summer lay back, pulling Hugo along with her so they both rested against each other. Hugo looked at the darkening sky just starting to be pinpricked with the first stars. The low wail of a loon calling for its mate echoed eerily across the water and was answered. Hugo stilled, waiting to see what would happen. After a few more calls, Summer sighed and snuggled into Hugo’s side.

“This is just what I needed,” she whispered as Hugo made a comfortable pillow for her in the crook of his armpit. “I didn’t come home because of the people. I wanted to come home because of the water. It seems to know what I need better than anything.”

“How so?”

“Do you know loons mate for life?”

“Yeah. I remember learning that in my Minnesota history unit in whatever grade I was in when we studied that. Miss Moen’s class. That’s all I remember.”

Summer smiled up at Hugo and brushed a strand of hair away from his eyes. “Jason wasn’t the one I was supposed to be with. I just need to keep looking, calling, if you will. I’ll find the right man for me… unless you’ve decided you could really do the girl thing,” she teased.

“I wish I could, for you,” Hugo admitted genuinely, “but I’d rather have you as my friend than ever risk losing you.”

“I know. I wasn’t serious.”

They were quiet for a long stretch, listening to the water lapping, the murmured conversations in the distance, and the calls of the insects coming out at night. Summer drew random shapes over Hugo’s shirt-covered stomach, and he relaxed into her touch. It felt good to be touched intimately again. It had been so long.

Just a year ago Hugo had walked in on his boyfriend Michael in the middle of him fucking another guy. Not hearing the door open, Michael didn’t stop but continued to thrust into the barely legal boy beneath him, chasing his climax that was obviously near. Hugo had been stunned into inaction, unable to turn around like he wanted to do or even to pull Michael away to get him to stop. So, in the end, he’d watched as his boyfriend of over three years spent himself into another man. That was bad enough. But there was more. There always seemed to be more with Michael. Hugo watched as Michael pulled his unsheathed cock out of the other man. He’d been fucking him raw.

Hugo had stood in the doorway of his own bedroom and felt sickening hot tears slide down his cheeks. The stranger caught his eye and somehow indicated to Michael they weren’t alone. When Michael turned to see Hugo, he looked at him with surprise, but not shock, and had the audacity to say, “Hey? Been home long?”

Michael had known exactly when Hugo was expected home. It was as if Michael wanted to be caught. The coward.

“Been home long,” Hugo muttered as he lay with Summer in the waning heat of the July day.

“Uh-oh. You’re going to a dangerous place, huh?” she asked knowing exactly where Hugo’s thoughts were with only three words.

“I just don’t get it,” he admitted. “How is it that people like Michael and Jason can cheat and do it without any realization of what they might be doing to the person they’re
supposed
to be with? I’d get it if they’d never said ‘I love you’ and meant it or even told us they really didn’t want to have an exclusive relationship. I might’ve been open to that if I’d been given a choice, but I don’t get how they could come home to us day after day and lie right to our faces. You know?”

Summer gave a weary sigh and squeezed Hugo’s waist. “I do know. It’s the ultimate betrayal, and it somehow sinks in really deep. Deeper than we even realize for a really long time. Now I get what you meant after you kicked Michael out. I feel dirty, like something’s wrong with me, but there’s nothing wrong with me. It was Jason. He was the fucking cheater, not me.”

“Yeah. But I also felt dirty because I wasn’t sure if he gave me anything. I’m still kicking myself for letting him talk me into going raw. Why would I risk my fucking life for a guy like him?” He knew why he trusted Michael. Michael used to be a really good guy, and Hugo loved him, but love wasn’t enough. Michael stopped being trustworthy after their first two years together, and if he’d been paying closer attention, Hugo would’ve noticed. Not long after they moved in together, something happened, and Michael changed. It didn’t do a bit of good to remember that Michael once had good qualities, though.

Hugo tensed and felt the urge to growl he just barely restrained. “But yeah, I sure felt like something was wrong with me initially. Thanks to you, those thoughts were beaten out of me. Jason and Michael were just incapable of thinking about other people beside themselves for the long haul. They were the classic definition of narcissistic assholes.”

Summer chuckled into Hugo’s chest and then sighed. “Exactly,” she agreed. “We both need to find men who know how to mate for life, I think.”

“I’m too fricking tenderhearted to deal with that cheating bullshit again,” Hugo said. “And too old. Fuck. I’m going to be thirty-five next month.”

“Gah! Don’t remind me. At least your sperm aren’t getting old and starting to mutate like my eggs are,” Summer joked, though Hugo knew it was a grave concern of hers.

“You wouldn’t want Jason’s DNA to be a part of any child of yours anyway. It’s a good thing the last scare you had was just that, a scare.”

“So, what am I going to do? What if I’m getting near my fortieth birthday and I still don’t have a special someone?” Hugo could hear the fear in her voice and pressed his lips to the top of her pale hair.

“Shhhh. Let’s not borrow trouble, okay?”

Summer clutched Hugo’s shirt in her palm. “Would you…?” She left the question hanging.

“Would I what?”

Summer sat up, shifting on her bottom so she faced him with a serious face painted on. “I know we talked about this when we were naïve twenty-three-year-olds, before we even knew what we wanted from our futures, but maybe…. Would you ever consider having a baby with me if I don’t find someone I want to be with?” Her voice was soft and unsure.

Hugo lifted himself to rest on an elbow so he could look Summer in the eye. His rocky history with men never allowed him to really, seriously think about having kids. No one had ever been worthy of even considering as a life partner, let alone someone he’d want to parent with. “The life of an actor isn’t very conducive to raising a family,” Hugo said with a sad smile. “My schedule is never consistent. I travel a lot and keep odd enough hours that I’ve even put off getting a dog. At this stage, I just assumed I’d never have kids.” Hugo felt his brows draw close together as he seriously considered Summer’s request, gaze heading toward the waves.

Would relieving the pressure of finding the right guy before her maternal clock stopped ticking actually help her find a man she truly deserved? She’d been putting herself under a lot of pressure to find the right guy because of her desire to have babies, and it hadn’t done her or her relationships a bit of good. He’d watched his best friend make many of the same dating mistakes over and over again, much like he did with his own hang-ups. She rushed in too quickly. If he could be of some help by putting aside those concerns for a child, maybe, just maybe Summer would allow herself to cast a wider net and find a man who could really and truly be a life mate.

And while he never allowed himself to seriously hope for kids to be in the picture for himself, the thought was far from unappealing. As a young, idealistic man, he’d had dreams he’d become a dad with a man he intended to spend the rest of his life with, but those were just dreams that he always woke up from when the guy he dated ended up being an asshole.