Summer Son (10 page)

We almost fought over who had to sleep in the wet patch. Then I found a spare blanket and used that as a barrier until morning. There wasn’t much point. Zane slept practically on top of me anyway.

I
WOKE
to the sound of Harrison singing to himself. The noise carried tinny through the monitor, and I smiled as I hauled myself out of bed, spared a look at Zane sprawled out between my sheets, then went to the bathroom before collecting Harrison.

I changed his diaper then carried him back through to my room. Early morning cuddles were something we did fairly often, especially when I wanted or needed some more time to snooze.

Harrison seemed amused and confused at the sight of Zane in my bed, but not upset. I settled back with him cradled to my chest and pressed a soft kiss to the top of his head. He still smelled like baby, although it felt like he lost a bit more of that every day.

Zane hummed and rolled over.

“Do you mind me bringing him in?” I asked in a low voice. “He’ll just want to get up otherwise.”

“What time is it?”

“A little after five.”

He groaned, rubbed his eyes, then nodded. He grabbed a pair of my pajama pants from the floor and tugged them on, then rolled back and tucked his hands under his cheek.

I curled up on my side, facing away from him, and helped Harrison settle back too. Zane curled around me from behind, fitting his body to mine and pressing a kiss to the space between my shoulder blades. His arm snuck around my waist and over Harrison’s too, resting on my son’s back to keep him safe.

Harrison sighed heavily, seemingly not bothered that we were sharing a bed with an extra person this morning. I knew I wouldn’t sleep deeply again now, not with Harrison sleeping next to me, but I let myself doze away until the alarm on Zane’s phone beeped at seven.

Having never slept late enough in his life to be woken by an alarm, Harrison took exception to this and voiced it rather loudly.

“Fuck!” Zane exclaimed and fumbled with the phone on the nightstand until the alarm was turned off. “Fuck. Sorry.”

I was laughing as I gathered Harrison back up in my arms and shushed him. “It’s okay. It’s okay. The bad noise has gone now.”

“I’m sorry,” Zane murmured, rolling back over to hug us both. “I didn’t mean to scare you, little dude.”

Harrison turned his big, wet eyes to Zane with his bottom lip still trembling. I wasn’t sure how quickly Zane would be forgiven, but Harrison surprised me by going straight into Zane’s outstretched arms for a hug.

Zane looked surprised too, and I gathered them both up, Zane on my lap, Harrison held loosely to his chest.

Wow. I could get used to this
.

I forced traitorous thoughts from my mind—it wasn’t the right time to be thinking about getting used to anything with Zane. It was too new. Too soon.

It had been a long courting period with Oliver. The two of us had met in college when he was studying economics and I was still a design student. We’d danced around the fact that we liked each other for months, then dated casually for months more before making anything official.

The wedding, well, that had been a last-minute decision. As soon as it became legal in New York back in 2011, we wanted to be part of what we’d all been so vocal in campaigning for. It meant different things to all of us: Oliver objected to the idea of anyone telling him who he could or couldn’t marry, Ben had been raised by two moms his whole life, Naema’s parents had been part of the civil rights movement in the sixties, when it was illegal for a black woman to marry a white man, and she saw same-sex marriage equality as an extension of their struggle.

Oliver and I were the only gay guys in a couple in our group of friends at that time, and we sort of bowed to peer pressure in the best possible way when the ban on same-sex marriage was lifted. He still wanted a big wedding, as big as possible, and we booked our slot at city hall only after we’d booked the reception at the Riviera.

Our parents both contributed. His were fairly well off and could afford to cough up to make their only child’s dream wedding come true. I referred to Ollie as “bridezilla” on more than one occasion. He wasn’t the easiest person to deal with in those few months while we made wedding plans.

Hindsight was a wonderful thing, and I’d spent hours since the divorce thinking back, wondering if I should have known, if there had been some clues over the years that it would all break down in the worst possible way. He’d always been my prince, my knight in shining armor. I looked up to him, worshiped him at times, thought he was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

I didn’t look at Zane like that. And I didn’t see that reflected back at me from him either.

Within weeks of meeting Zane for the first time, I was waking up with him and letting him comfort my son in all the different ways he needed comforting. This wasn’t a fairytale romance; it felt solid and real and grown-up, even though Zane was younger than Oliver. He had an old soul in him, one that saw the world in a different way than the rest of us.

“We should get up,” he said.

“No,” I moaned and squeezed him tighter. “I don’t wanna.”

“Come on. We’re wasting the best part of the day!”

Zane hauled himself—and Harrison—out of bed and stood in my pajama pants, which were slipping down on his waist from being too big. He saw my eyes go to his hipbones and smirked, pulling them back up a little self-consciously.

“Do you want a shower?” I asked. “I’ll go get the little dude changed. Then we could swap?”

“Sounds good to me. Go to Daddy,” he said as he passed Harrison back.

I pressed a kiss to his forehead as we traded, and he padded off to the bathroom.

Since Harrison was still clean from his earlier diaper change, I found a shirt and jeans and quickly got him dressed. He had an adorable knitted sweater that went over the top of the shirt, which made him look like the world’s youngest (and cutest) arty hipster kid.

I smoothed the soft curls over his head, knowing I’d need to get his hair cut soon and really not wanting to. The mousy brown ringlets I hated for myself looked adorable on my son, and I kissed the top of his head. The haircut could wait.

Zane emerged from the bathroom wearing just a towel, and I nearly forgot that I was trying to be a responsible parent. He looked too good in nothing.

“What are we going to do today?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t got any plans.”

“Something fun,” he declared as I set Harrison on the floor for Zane to watch while I showered.

They were both in the kitchen when I was done getting ready, sharing a bowl of Zane’s magical banana and yogurt breakfast. I swiped an apple from the bowl on the counter and stuck a few pieces of bread in the toaster.

“Wanna go to the zoo?” Zane asked.

“Which one?”

“Don’t care. But it’s not going to be too hot today. We could take him to Central Park.”

I nodded around a mouthful of apple. “We haven’t been there yet.”

“Really? Cool! We could take a picnic.”

“You’re adorable,” I said. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

I left Zane in charge of sandwiches and snacks while I looked up the zoo’s opening hours online and booked our tickets in advance. The subway was easier than the bus as far as navigating the stroller was concerned. With two people, Zane could carry Harrison while I carried the folded-up stroller.

Harrison was happy with this arrangement too. It meant he could sit on Zane’s lap the whole way.

Things like days out in the city were so much easier with two people to watch the baby. It meant I could relax just a bit more, letting Zane share some of the responsibility I was used to shouldering on my own.

He was a natural around kids, even though he claimed to have hardly any experience dealing with them outside of his art classes. He was more than happy to sit Harrison on his hip and explain about the meerkats and anteaters, which Harrison seemed to be fascinated by. I let my hand linger on Zane’s back, happy to watch, more than happy to listen to him.

It was still a little strange, being out in public with him like this, the three of us just another couple with a kid to anyone looking on. We were surrounded by couples with children—most of them older than Harrison. No one looked at Zane and me any different, though. We were just two more people and a baby in a throng of other adults and kids.

Sometimes being unique was important. And other times, there was nothing better than blending into the background until I was indistinguishable from the chameleons.

Chapter 7

“I
NEED
food,” I said, mournfully looking into a fridge that was almost bare. With Zane around more and more, my fridge seemed to empty far quicker than I was used to. It wasn’t that he ate a lot, more like he convinced me to actually eat regular meals.

“Mhmm. And diapers,” Zane added. He was sitting on my counter eating a cookie. “What? I changed him earlier, and there’s only a few left.”

“Come on, then,” I said. “Get dressed and we’ll go to the supermarket.”

“The cool Asian one?”

“No, the large international conglomerate one.”

“Boo.”

“I know. But I don’t know if I trust the Japanese diapers. I can’t read the packaging.”

Zane snorted with laughter and hopped down. “Won’t be long.”

While he put some respectable clothing on, I gathered up Harrison and Rory and strapped him into the rarely used car seat. It slotted neatly into his stroller, although I mostly didn’t bother using it like that anymore. He was too big.

“I didn’t know you had a car,” Zane said as we took the elevator down to the basement.

“That’s because I hardly ever use it,” I said. “I bought it when I was a student, and it’s useful for vacations and stuff. Plus, I don’t have to pay to park it here since we own the unit in the building.”

I got Harrison strapped into the backseat and laughed at Zane when he pouted about being sent to the backseat too.

“You can keep him company back there so he doesn’t scream the whole way,” I said, and he relented.

“MJ?” Zane asked as my stereo started with the engine.

“Tell ’em that it’s human nature,” I warbled. He laughed and leaned through the gap to give me a kiss. I responded with much enthusiasm.

The parking lot at the supermarket was fairly empty, and I let out a little sigh of relief. Harrison got bored quickly when I was grocery shopping. I liked to get in and out as fast as possible. I let him sit in the cart—that bit he liked—and put Zane on Rory-watch. We’d had a couple of near misses, and I didn’t want to lose the stuffed dinosaur forever.

Zane snarled at me when I added chicken and pork to the basket and tried to get me to exchange it for tofu. I strongly opposed this, even when he gave me his pouty, big puppy-dog eyes. Apparently the fish on ice freaked him out, so he took the cart and went in search of vegan-friendly chips.

It didn’t take long for me to get my fish cleaned and portioned out as I liked it, and I carefully balanced the package with the other bits I’d collected as I wandered through the aisles, trying to find Zane.

The familiar sound of my baby shrieking turned my wander into a jog. Even as my logical side calmly said that Zane had probably just told him “no” to chocolate cereal, the freaked-out dad shouted “kidnapper!”

I rounded into the snacks aisle and stopped dead. Harrison was crying—really crying, distressed crying—and trying to squirm out of Oliver’s grasp.

“What the fuck’s going on?” I demanded as I stalked down to them, threw my fish in the cart, and swiftly pulled Harrison away from Oliver. He was still wailing and trembling, and I held him close to my chest, feeling my heart beat hard against his.

Oliver glared at me. “I was going to ask you the same thing. Who the fuck is this? Why has some stranger got my son?”

“
Your
son?” I asked, my eyebrows raised up to my hairline. “You get to call him that when you put the effort into being his father, Oliver. This is Zane.”

“I’m sorry,” Zane said, reaching out to wrap his fingers around my forearm. “He just came up and snatched Harrison out of the cart. I—”

“Look, kid,” Oliver interrupted. “You can’t just wander around with someone else’s child.”

“He wasn’t,” I snapped. “I was just at the fish counter, right over there. Right now I’d be happier leaving Harrison with Zane than with you.” I shook my head. “I’m not doing this here. You can call my lawyer if there’s a problem.”

Oliver glared at me and looked like he was steeling for a fight, then stalked off in the other direction. I hoped he’d leave.

“I’m sorry,” Zane said again.

“I’m not mad at you. You haven’t got anything to apologize for,” I said and pulled him closer with my free hand, the one that wasn’t still holding my son close. “I promise. He just makes me so angry.”

Zane kissed me on the cheek and took control of the cart while we finished shopping. I kept Harrison in my arms, even though he was growing heavy. He’d stopped crying and was taking deep, snuffly breaths every few minutes. Instinctively, I stroked his soft curls.