Summer Son (14 page)

I nodded and groaned and shifted Harrison from my belly to the bed. “’Kay,” I mumbled around a yawn. “Have fun.”

The front door slammed, and Harrison fussed a little before letting me soothe him back to sleep. I could tell it was going to be another day of running on too few hours’ sleep, but for a different reason than I was used to.

Zane snuggled against my back, and I listened carefully to the sound of their breathing— both of them content—and mine.

Our circle was expanding outward with people who knew we were together and celebrated the two of us as a couple. Including Zane’s brother. It was weird that that was weird to me, when my own brother was the first person I’d told I was gay. Leo had returned the sentiment a year or so later, although I’d had to piece it together from the host of questions he’d peppered me with.

“Morning, baby,” Zane mumbled against my shoulder when he finally woke, nuzzling against me until I shifted so he could pillow his head on my chest. Harrison was stirring again too, and Zane reached out to smooth down his cowlicky hair. “Morning, baba.”

This was how I’d imagined my life when I became a parent. Lying in bed, early in the morning, my child in my arms and my lover holding us both. I pulled Zane up so I could kiss him properly, thoroughly, not caring that his mouth was alcohol sour and mine probably was too. He stretched into the kiss, giving me all I’d asked for and more, running his fingertips over my cheek until I pulled away with genuine regret.

When I looked down, Harrison was watching us with open fascination, as if wondering what on earth we were doing. When I grinned at him his face broke into a wide grin right back. I took that as his approval.

Chapter 10

I
T
WAS
Oliver’s weekend with Harrison, so we dressed and took Harrison over to my mom’s fairly early, so he was there, ready for when Oliver arrived. I tried not to think about how much easier it would have been the night before if he’d picked his son up Friday afternoon, as was our previous agreement. Thinking about that just got me mad.

Zane didn’t have any work to do over the weekend, at least nothing that wouldn’t wait until classes on Monday, so we were free to do whatever we wanted.

It turned out whatever we wanted was going back to his apartment and taking all our clothes off.

By Sunday afternoon, we were yet to put them back on.

I stretched on his bed, enjoying how different it was from my own. Zane was pottering around his tiny apartment, making tea or something, bare-ass naked. It suited him.

There was music still playing from earlier, some indie crap I didn’t recognize and would not admit that I enjoyed. It was new, but it felt right.

He’d told me, late one night, that he sometimes acted as a life model for his drawing class. I was torn between amusement (that he had to stand naked in a room filled with strangers and friends—I wasn’t sure which was worse) and jealousy (that those strangers and friends got to see my boyfriend naked).

As far as I was concerned, he had the perfect body for nudity. It suited him in ways it didn’t suit other people, maybe because he was so at ease with wandering around without his clothes on.

When he returned to the bed he had a handful of acrylics and one long brush.

“Can I paint you?” he asked.

“You’ve already asked me this,” I said. “Sure.”

He grinned, flashing his teeth. “Excellent. Lay back for me?”

“Will you draw me first? Like one of your French girls?”

That sent him into a fit of giggles that took several minutes to recover from. “I don’t want to draw you at all,” he said.

I was a little confused when he swiped alcohol over my skin, my chest and shoulder and up my neck, cleaning away sweat and dirt with the circular cotton pad. Then he straddled my waist and squeezed a few blobs of acrylic onto my stomach.

“You want to paint me,” I said. “Not paint me.”

“Exactly.”

It was a strange sensation, the rough bristles of the paintbrush and the cold paint swirling around on my stomach, then over my shoulder.

“Tilt your head to the side for me?” he asked.

I couldn’t see what he was doing while he finished the section on my neck. The design licked over my collarbones and swirled around my nipple, making me shudder. He used blue and white and black, then yellow, which made me think of Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
.

“Not dissimilar to that, I suppose,” he murmured when I voiced the opinion. “Did you know you’re hard?” He rocked back against my erection as if to prove his point.

“Mm.”

I watched as his eyes darkened and his pink tongue, which had been poking out the corner of his mouth, darted out to wet his lips.

“Lift your arm for me?”

“Won’t that smudge it?”

“No, the top layer has dried by now.”

More paint made its way onto the mess on my tummy, mixing with the colors that were already there. More blue, more white, then it was smeared along my ribs and up under my arms, tangling with the hairs there and staining them shades of azure and periwinkle and indigo.

The yellow highlights were a harsh contrast, never mixing enough to turn green, darkening at the edges where the lines blurred. Watching him was more interesting than the colors blending on my skin, how his eyebrows pinched together as he concentrated, the little huff of frustration when things didn’t go quite his way. I thought he was adorable, but that was nothing new.

I was reluctant to allow him to swirl the paint up onto my jawbone but let him because I was in love. This was yellow, bright and bold.

“You’re done,” he said. When he climbed off my thighs I noticed he was hard too, or almost, close enough. Whether that was his reaction to my own arousal or something all his own, I couldn’t tell.

While Zane washed his brush in the sink and set the acrylics back in a cardboard box, I wondered when this sort of thing had become normal. It surely couldn’t be. It was strange, no? To the outside world? We weren’t going to let them in, though. This was ours.

“Can I take your picture?” Zane asked. “I’d like to put it in my portfolio.”

I nodded, apparently unable to say no to him, particularly when he smiled at me like that when I said yes.

He fumbled with a white sheet, pinning it up to points in the ceiling and wall that told me he’d probably done it before. The light was failing fast, so he turned on a few lamps and pointed them at his makeshift studio.

“You can come here now.”

“Where do you want me?”

“Right here.”

Zane guided me into position, and I guessed he didn’t want me to put any clothes on. I wondered if I should make a disclaimer—that I didn’t want any pictures of my cock making it into his portfolio or anywhere else. But he wasn’t pointing the camera at my crotch, so I didn’t say anything.

He had an old SLR camera, a film one, rather than a digital version, which made me smile. God knew, if Zane was going to have a camera, it was going to be a classic.

“Is there black and white film in that?” I asked.

“Not in this one.”

“Not in that one.”

“Right. I have one that is better for black and white film. This does really good color. It’s old film, so the colors come out differently from modern stuff.”

“How the hell did you get your hands on that?”

“I found it,” he said, lowering the camera from his face, “in a box of my mom’s things. The film I found in it had pictures of my dad. I’m still not sure whether I want to take her the prints or not.”

I nodded, unsure of what else I could say.

“The rest of the film was unused,” he continued, “and I liked the way they look, so I shoot with it. Sometimes. Could you give me one of your angry looks? Like you’re really pissed off.”

“I don’t have an angry look,” I protested. “And I’m really not a model.”

“I disagree. You look incredible when you’re all grumpy and miserable and…. Oh fuck, like that.”

When he knelt in front of me I had to swallow hard and give my dick stern instructions to behave. He nudged my hands away from where they were covering my almost-erection and photographed the makeshift color palette, with all the smeary paint on my abdominals.

“Can I look at myself now?” I asked when he was done.

“Oh. Yeah. Of course.”

The only mirror was the one in the bathroom over the sink. It wasn’t very big, so I had to move around to look at different parts in turn. From what I could see of the painting, it was beautiful and strange and unique. I was impressed.

“I’m hungry,” Zane called from the living room, where I could hear him taking down the sheet.

“What do you want?”

“Not pizza.”

“Okay,” I said, laughing and walking out to join him. “Anything more specific than that?”

“Not pizza.”

I pulled him against my chest and gave him a hard kiss, waiting until he submitted before easing off into something sweeter and slower.

“Something from that Jamaican place? They deliver now, did you know?”

“Ooh. Sweet potato curry with mushrooms and chickpeas.”

“Jerk chicken,” I countered, just to see if I could get a rise out of him. His response was particularly
bitch, please
.

I put on a pair of boxers, not as familiar with my own nudity as Zane was, and called to order the food.

He turned the music off and put the TV on and protested at the addition of my boxers. When the delivery guy arrived, he frowned at the painting on my chest before taking my money without comment.

“Let me give you half,” Zane said as I set the boxes of food down on the counter. He fussed for a moment, looking for his wallet.

“It’s fine. I’ve got it.”

“You don’t always have to pay.”

“I know. If I thought you expected it, I wouldn’t offer.”

“Oh.”

“Come get your dinner.”

We ate, then made love again, the movement of my body sending deep fissures into the paint. I was full of food, so it was a slow, intense affair. He licked the spice from my lips, and I liked it.

“We need to go pick up Harrison,” I murmured.

Zane stretched and groaned, then nodded and rolled off the bed to pull some clothes on. After spending most of the weekend naked, it was a damn shame to see all his skin covered up. I silently vowed to get him out of his clothes again as soon as possible.

I wasn’t convinced anyone looked good in Aladdin-style pants, baggy, knee-length things made out of a red-on-red striped fabric, so my theory that he looked good in anything was tested. He looked like a Disney prince, not that it was a bad thing.

Since the weather was warm, he wore a loose tank and flip-flops and held my hand the whole way back to my mom’s.

Even though I had my own key, I still knocked rather than letting myself in. She answered, looking worried.

“He’s not back yet,” she said nervously.

I frowned and dropped Zane’s hand. “What?”

“Oliver usually has him back by now,” Mom continued. Her gaze flicked to Zane.

“Hi,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Zane.”

“Nice to meet you. Leo’s told me about you.”

My hand was already in my pocket for my phone, and I called Oliver’s cell with trembling fingers. The line beeped steadily, telling me the number had been disconnected.

“Shit,” I muttered, then called Meg, the only person I could think of who might still be in contact with Oliver. I hadn’t tried to call him for a long time; she’d probably spoken to him more recently.

“Hello?”

“Meg, it’s El,” I said as Mom ushered us into the house. “Oliver hasn’t dropped Harrison back yet, and it’s getting late. Do you have his number? I want to call him.”

“Shit,” she muttered, and I heard her clanking about for a moment. Then she rattled off his number.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Ellis,” she said before I could hang up. “Let me know when he’s back, all right?”

“Of course.”

I went to dial Oliver’s number, but Zane stopped me with a hand on my arm and gave me his phone.

“He won’t recognize this number,” he said.

“Thanks.”

The phone rang a few times; then a strange voice answered. “Hello?”

“Can I speak to Oliver Price, please?”

“Who’s asking?”

“This is his ex-fucking-husband.”

“Oh. Oliver doesn’t want to speak to you.”

“I don’t want to speak to him either,” I snapped. “I just want him to bring my son back when we agreed he would, for once.”

There was a small scuffle, and I could hear Oliver’s voice in the background. For the first time since we split up, I regretted not knowing where he was living.

“Hello?”

“Oliver. It’s El.”

“Yeah, Harrison’s going to stay here with us.”

“No, he’s fucking not,” I said, trying to keep the ire out of my voice. And failing.

“You’re all shacked up with that terrorist kid,” Oliver said. “Josh and I can give him a safe home. Who knows what sort of danger he’s in with you.”

I forced myself to take a few deep breaths to calm down before responding.

“Oliver,” I said. “There is a court order, which has been signed by a judge of New York fucking City, which says I am Harrison’s legal guardian. You have visitation rights, which you’ve been shirking for the past few months. You do not have custody. If you don’t bring him back, right fucking now, I will call the cops and get you arrested.”