Too Soon For Love (10 page)

Michael found himself in the kitchen, standing by the door to the garage. On a whim he opened it, stepped through and closed it at his back.

It smelled like a garage, all right, that familiar mix of motor oil, something sharp and chemical like fertilizer or maybe pesticides and an underlying greenness like the memory of last summer’s grass clippings.

He took a few cautious steps forward. As neat as Phillip had been about his personal things, the garage had always been somewhat unpredictable. Michael never quite knew what he might step on or trip over when he went out there, so for the most part he avoided it.

Extending his hand, he touched the smooth side of their Jeep.

It was navy blue, Michael knew, less than three years old and still in pristine condition. Phillip had made sure of that.

Going around to the driver’s side, he opened the door and got in. He’d never sat behind the wheel before and it felt strange,
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backwards somehow with the seatbelt on the wrong side and the controls for windows and door locks on the left rather than the right. He ran his fingers over the controls, a lot more of them since the driver could operate all the windows and locks from his panel.

Michael took his keys from his pants pocket and picked through until he found his car key. He’d insisted on having a key, just in case, he’d told Phillip who had teased him mercilessly about it.

“You better not be sneaking out at night and cruising the neighborhood for hot guys,” Phillip had said.

And they had both laughed.

Michael stuck the key in the ignition and turned on the radio.

The oldies station, Phillip’s favorite, filled the car’s interior with the crooning voice of Percy Sledge wailing about what happens when a man loves a woman. Or another man, Michael thought as he let the music wash over him. Back in those days they didn’t sing about stuff like that, but things were different now.

Michael set his hands on the wheel. How ironic it was to be stranded with a perfectly good car in the garage and no way to drive it.

Phillip’s sister Karen and her husband wanted to buy the car from him for their son who had just gotten his driver’s license.

They’d said as much, or maybe hinted was more the word for it, during one of their many familial visitations since Phillip’s death. Brian, Karen’s husband, had gone out to the garage for something. When he came back he’d asked Michael how many payments were left on the jeep.

Michael grinned, remembering how Karen had said, “Oh Brian,” in that way she had, like he’d just farted really loud or hocked something up in the middle of dinner.

“It’s paid for,” Michael remembered saying. At which point Brian, ignoring his wife’s noises about it being no time for such talk, had mentioned that they were looking for a car for Andrew.

Michael wished he could just give the kid the car. But could too soon FoR Love
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he afford to do that? He had no idea. He needed to go through Phillip’s papers, get things in order and make an appointment with the lawyer. Jane had already mentioned the lawyer twice and made noises about getting the estate stuff together. He did not want her rummaging through their personal affairs. Of that he was certain.

Maybe he could ask Alan to help him with Phillip’s papers. It would give him a reason to see Alan again.

Alan
. Michael closed his eyes. They’d had a good time at the game and that had surprised him. He’d thought maybe going to the game without Phillip would be hard. On some level it was.

Talking to Pete, accepting his condolences, that part was hard.

But sitting there and listening to the game with Alan beside him had been nice. Comforting. In fact, Alan was the only person he could be around these days without feeling sad.

Even when they talked about Phillip, it was the good kind of talk, rather than the kind that had him feeling all weepy and broken.

Yeah, he definitely wanted to see Alan Stuart again. And maybe asking Alan for help with Phillip’s papers was the way to do it.

Idly, Michael opened the console. Inside he found the usual car crap—a pair of his sunglasses, an IPod connector, a half-empty roll of breath mints, and Phillip’s cell.

Michael’s fingers closed around the phone. He took it from the console and sat there just holding it. Flipping it open, he lifted it, but not to his ear. He pressed his lips to the tiny microphone, kissed the spot, reverently, as if he were kissing a religious relic.

“I miss you, babe.” Michael whispered the words into the phone and suddenly his eyes filled with tears.

He cried silently there in the privacy of the car with Phillip’s phone still pressed to his lips.

He had no clue how long he sat there. It might have been five minutes or thirty-five with the radio playing and his dead lover’s cell phone clutched in his hand. Not until the music switched to
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commercials did he rouse himself.

What was he doing sitting in the garage crying over Phillip’s cell phone? There were things he needed to do, calls he needed to make.

Heart pounding, he shoved everything back into the console and closed the lid. There. Then, on an impulse, he opened the console, took out the phone and slipped it into his pocket.

No doubt the battery was dead. Maybe he’d charge it up and listen to Phillip’s message. Not the ones people had left for him, he didn’t give a shit about those, but Phillip’s message, just to hear his voice again. Though it had only been a few weeks, he couldn’t recall the precise timbre of his lover’s voice.

And, oh yeah, that had to be the stupidest idea in the history of the world, one that would send him spiraling into the deepest, darkest depths of his own grief. Still, stupid or not, he didn’t return the phone to the console.

Michael shut off the radio, got out of the car and went back into the house. Though he’d never called Alan’s number, he had it committed to memory. Lifting the phone from the kitchen counter, he paused and took a breath. He did not want to sound even remotely like he’d been crying. When he was sure he could sound normal and upbeat, Michael punched in the number.

On the other end the phone rang and rang and rang before clicking over to Alan’s voicemail.

“Hi, this is Alan. I can’t get to my phone right now …”

Michael waited for the message to end.

Beep
.

“Alan, it’s Michael. I hope when you said I could call you, you really meant it because … Well, here I am calling you.” He paused. “Listen, I have a favor to ask. I need a reader to help me get the estate stuff together for the lawyer. I was sort of hoping you could do it. If you can, let me know when would work best for you. If you play your cards right, I might even throw in dinner.”

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After leaving his number, he hung up. And realized that his heart was still racing. Only now it was for a completely different reason.

“If you play your cards right, I might even throw in dinner.”

Pleasure slid through Alan at the thought of sitting across a candle-lit table in a cozy little restaurant and listening to Michael’s voice. It didn’t even matter what he was saying. Just the sound of his voice …

But then his gaze was drawn to the laptop that sat on his dining room table and suddenly pleasure was replaced by dread.

It was nearly a week since Tommy had reset the password and Alan had yet to decide what to do about those damn pictures.

Now Michael had invited him to dinner and he couldn’t delay any longer. He was going to have to return the laptop.

And tell Michael about those pictures.

Going over to the table, he opened the cover of the laptop and pressed the power button. He’d given his brother shit for snooping, and here he was about to do the same thing. Except if he was going to tell Michael about the pictures, he needed to know what was in them, all of them, didn’t he?

That was his story anyway, and he was sticking to it.

He clicked open the folder titled My Pictures. Under that folder he found perhaps a dozen subfolders identified only by date. He started with the first one.

Phillip was a real shutter-bug. There were hundreds of pictures, most were perfectly innocuous, thank God. Pictures of family holidays mixed in with photos of Philadelphia; places he recognized like boathouse row, the art museum and Penn’s Landing. There were also pictures of places he didn’t recognize, and people he didn’t know doing perfectly ordinary things. With their clothes on. That was another big thank you, God.

And there were pictures of Michael, lots of them. In fact it seemed like Phillip’s lover had been the photographer’s
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favorite subject. And why not? He was beautiful and incredibly photogenic. Though the years sat lightly on Michael, Alan could see their progression in the series of photographs. In a few of them, Michael appeared to be extremely young, maybe no more than twenty, a fresh-faced college boy, just on the edge of the man he would become.

Alan continued to flip through the pictures. He’d had no idea Phillip and Michael had been together for so long.

In one of the pictures, one Alan particularly liked, Michael wore faded jeans, a Phillies sweatshirt and a baseball cap with the bill turned backwards. He was posed next to that famous Philadelphia landmark, the statue of Rocky Balboa, and there was something about his stance, a certain hip-shot cockiness that Alan found incredibly sexy. No wonder Phillip had been attracted to that young man.

He clicked open the next folder dated February, two years ago and froze. The picture, taken at poolside, showed two very attractive young men, one dark and one fair. The dark one was Michael. He wore sunglasses and an easy smile. There was a tall frosted glass in one of his hands. The other hand rested on the thigh of the blond from the other pics. The two appeared to be laughing at some private joke, their heads bent towards each other, their expressions relaxed and happy.

So Michael did know the blond, and knew him rather well if this photograph was any evidence.

Alan felt more than a little relief as he opened the last subfolder and began to click through the pictures. Here were all the pics of the blond kid, innocent, fully dressed shots as well as the less innocent ones. He skimmed quickly, hardly noticing the nudity or the lewd poses. He had nothing against porn, even amateur porn, in fact he enjoyed a good porno as much as the next guy, but there was something sleazy here, something sly and secretive that made his skin crawl. Maybe it was something in the blond’s expression? More than mischievous, it was … he didn’t know exactly, but the word smug sprang to mind, as if the kid were saying, “Hey, want some of this? I know you do, so come too soon FoR Love
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and get it.”

Would he find similar pictures of Michael in this folder?

As much as he’d like to get the man naked, he hoped to hell not.

And he didn’t. In fact the entire folder contained nothing but pictures of the young blond Adonis in varying stages of undress and engaged in various erotic activities. Like these particular pictures had been deliberately kept separate. Segregated. Hidden.

But why, if Michael knew the blond kid, would Phillip have had to conceal the pics?

Not his issue, Alan reminded himself. Though if the subject of the pics came up when he next saw Michael it might not hurt to do some careful poking around to determine just what the relationship had been among the three men.

It was possible that there was a perfectly innocent explanation.

Sure it was. Anything was possible.

The scent of Dijon steak filled the house and Michael inhaled deeply as he came downstairs and made his way to the kitchen.

Alan would be here any time now and he didn’t want to be still screwing around with dinner while his guest twiddled his thumbs.

Checking once more to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, he was satisfied that all was as ready as he could make it.

Meat was in the Crock-Pot, rice in the steamer and frozen veggies ready for nuking at the last minute. He would have preferred a salad along with a nice multigrain baguette from the bakery, but given his current prisoner of the manor status, he had to make do with what was in the house.

He’d set the table in the breakfast room instead of in the dining room, and used the everyday dishes instead of the fancy stuff. It was less formal and less formal was exactly what he was going for. Since Phillip’s death, he rarely sat at the table anyway.

Too depressing, sitting there all alone. Instead he took most of his meals either sitting in front of the computer or standing up at the kitchen counter, a thing he would totally deny if anyone asked. At least he hadn’t reached the point of leaning over the kitchen sink while he ate, though that day might not be so far off.

Opening the cabinet above the sink, he took down two wineglasses and set them next to the open bottle of red he’d left breathing on the counter. It was a cabernet if his taste buds could be trusted, and a pretty good one at that. Beyond that he had no clue what wine he’d chosen to go with the meal.

They had converted a large closet in the basement to store wine--whites on the upper racks and reds on the lower. But beyond that, it was a crap shoot.

When he found himself humming tunelessly, he realized what was missing. Music. He hurried from the kitchen to the living room, pausing in front of the wall of CDs. What kind of music did Alan like? In the car the night of the game, he’d settled
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on some bluesy sax, Michael recalled, and with that in mind, he skimmed his fingers along the shelves until he reached the Ds.

He chose Miles Davis and slipped several discs into the changer.

The music began just as the doorbell rang.

Michael’s heartbeat kicked up a notch as he hurried to answer the summons.

“Hey, Michael. I know I’m a little early. But I honestly can’t help myself. It’s a character flaw. Everyone in my family suffers from it.”