Belonging (13 page)

“You watch movies and read books. I
already know this, since I’m the person who brings them to
you.”

“I’d go utterly stir crazy if that was
all I did.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m
guessing you also occasionally have dates with Rosy Palm and her
five sisters,” I said, making a fairly rude gesture with my right
hand, “but that’s none of my business.”

He burst out laughing. “For fuck’s
sake, I wasn’t going to confess that I pass the time by wanking! I
haven’t lost all sense of what constitutes polite
conversation!”

“Okay. Then what were you going to
tell me?”

“First the fruit, then the
confession.” I sighed at that, then reached into one of the canvas
bags, pulled out an apple, and placed it on the island. Zan’s face
fell. “That’s it? That’s what you brought me?”

“No. I bought that to eat on the drive
home. Who says I brought you anything? Maybe I decided I was going
to be cooperative and stick to your shopping list from now
on.”

“That seems highly unlikely,” he told
me.

“You’re right. I actually brought you
the single-oddest fruit known to man.” I grabbed one of the bags in
its center and cinched it in my hand, so he could see the shape of
it through the fabric. “You really want to see this. It’ll set you
off on a twenty minute rant! It’s so totally objectionable, in
fact, that you’ll be yelling about it for weeks to come. To see it,
you just have to do two things: swear you’ll ice your shoulder, and
tell me what you do when I’m not here.”

“Why do you care what I do all
day?”

“Because you’re the only crazy hermit
I know and I’m intensely curious about how you pass the time. I
mean, if it was me, I’d have gone stark raving mad at about the one
month mark, but you’ve been at this shit for more than a decade!
What the hell do you do to keep yourself sane?”

He walked around the counter and stood
right in front of me. “I write songs.”

“You do?” When he nodded, I asked,
“But how? There aren’t any notebooks around here, and you don’t
have a computer. If you write songs, where are they?”

He tapped the center of his forehead
once with his index finger. “Right here. I come up with the music
and lyrics and go over it again and again and again, until it’s as
good as I can possibly make it. Then I begin a new one. If I didn’t
have that, you’re absolutely right. I would have lost my mind a
long time ago.”

“Oh.” I was acutely aware of his
proximity again. Zan stood less than a foot away, staring right
into my eyes while I stared back, an amused expression on his face.
God, was he beautiful. It wasn’t as though I’d never noticed
before. But at that moment I was just overcome by it, so much that
I wanted to reach out and touch him.

Fortunately, Zan snapped me out of my
completely misplaced reverie by snatching the canvas sack from me.
He stuck his hand inside and pulled out what I’d brought him, then
yelled, “Bloody hell, what is that?” as he tossed it onto the
counter.

“It’s called a Buddha’s hand. It’s a
citrus fruit.”

“It isn’t! It’s a fat, yellow
octopus!”

“Not even close.”

“The thing has tentacles! Where did
you find this monstrosity?”

“The market,” I said
flatly.

“There’s absolutely no way that’s
fruit, or even edible!”

“It is! I want you to try it, I hear
they’re good.”

“Aha! You
hear
they’re good. That
means you’ve never been daft enough to try one yourself. I won’t be
the first one down that gangplank!” He plucked it off the counter
by one of its long, yellow fingers and rushed for the back door as
I ran after him.

“Don’t you dare throw that thing! It
was expensive!”

“And now it’s doubly crazy! Also, just
look. You yourself called it a thing!”

“Only because it sounds
pretty freaking insane to yell
don’t throw
Buddha’s hand outside!
” He flung open the
back door and went to throw it, but I grabbed his arm as I
exclaimed, “I mean it! Don’t do it!”

A ridiculous game of keep-away ensued,
worthy of a third grade playground. I burst out laughing and told
him, “You’re being really immature!”

Zan was laughing, too. “It belongs
outside,” he said as he twisted his body to hold the fruit away
from me. “That way, it can crawl back to the
mothership!”

“Granted, it’s a little
weird looking, but it’s a
fruit
! Its cousin is an
orange!”

“Maybe you should have brought me its
cousin, then,” he said, grabbing my left wrist while I grabbed
his.

“You’ve
had
oranges! I wanted you to try
something new.”

“So you brought me an octopus
alien!”

“Okay, I’ll concede that I might have
been aiming a bit too high. But try it anyway! I’ll reel it in next
time and bring you some grapes or something.”

“I don’t like grapes,” he
said.

“You can’t make a blanket statement
like that,” I told him. “There are dozens of grape varieties and
they’re all different. If you tried a few, I bet you’d find one you
liked.”

“But they’re all squishy little balls,
and I want no part of that.”

“God you’re weird.”

“You think?”

He executed a surprisingly graceful
move all of a sudden and pinned me to the wall, holding me in place
by leaning against me. “You’re going to injure your sore shoulder,”
I told him.

“It’ll be worth it for the immense
satisfaction of seeing the space octopus become airborne,” he said
with a smile.

My heart was already beating quickly
because of our game of keep-away, and it stuttered when I looked in
his eyes. He let go of my wrist and I let go of his, both of us
becoming serious at the same time. My gaze dropped to his full
lips. I wanted him to kiss me so fucking bad. God I wanted
that.

But he didn’t do it. He
didn’t do
anything
. Zan just stood there, his body pressed against mine as lust
shot through me. He was breathing hard just like I was, his chest
rising and falling, but aside from that, he remained perfectly
immobile.

Was he waiting for me to make a move?
I looked in his eyes again and seriously considered leaning in and
planting one on him. But I just couldn’t do it! What if I was the
only one feeling this? What if I went to kiss him and he pulled
away? How incredibly embarrassing would that be?

Besides, if he wanted to kiss me, he
would. It wasn’t like he was shy, given what he used to do for a
living. There was just no way.

Zan stepped back from me abruptly and
muttered, “Sorry.” Then he (and the fruit) went back to his cave.
He closed the door to the den behind him. I stared after him for a
moment before I retreated too, heading straight for my
car.

I rolled the window down and took a
few deep breaths, trying to calm myself as I drove back to the
city. Traffic was thick when I got to the town of Larkspur, and on
the Golden Gate Bridge, it came to a dead stop. It was a beautiful
Saturday. That basically meant that everyone who lived outside the
city was going to San Francisco, while everyone who lived in the
city was going somewhere else. I swore under my breath and leaned
against the headrest.

What the hell happened back there? Did
Zan and I have a moment, or did I totally imagine it? The more I
thought about it, the more I became convinced that it must have
been completely one-sided. After all, he usually barely spoke to me
and had never shown the slightest interest in me.

And good lord, why was I even drawn to
him in the first place? Zan Tillane made my life miserable. He was
stubborn and argumentative, and a real pain in the ass.

Well okay, he had his good points,
too. For one thing, he was undeniably fascinating. How did someone
go from performing in front of thousands of people to totally
cutting himself off from the rest of the world? He was such an
enigma.

Zan was beautiful too, especially when
he was happy and the light came on in his eyes. He was also
incredibly damaged and vulnerable, but in a weird way, that added
to his appeal. I kept finding myself wanting to protect him and
take care of him. Not that he wanted that (or anything at all,
really) from me.

That alleged ‘moment’ must have just
been a product of my imagination. I’d been right not to kiss him.
Zan didn’t want me. He didn’t even like me. He’d been making that
abundantly clear for months.

Traffic started to move and I sat up
and tried to concentrate. I only rolled forward about three inches,
though. I sighed as I ground to a halt once again.

Chapter
Eight

Over the next couple weeks, Zan
completely withdrew from me. Apparently whatever had happened (or
totally didn’t happen) between us had made him really uncomfortable
around me, so the few interactions we had after that were formal
and stilted. Mostly though, he just stayed in the den when I came
over and avoided me entirely.

One Sunday afternoon while I was at
Christian’s apartment, I asked him, “How has your dad seemed to you
lately?”

“Fine. We were just over there
yesterday and he was in a good mood. Why do you ask?”

We’d been sitting on the living room
floor sorting through a bunch of paperbacks, and I looked up from
my task. Christian and Shea were in escrow on the house and would
be moving in just a couple weeks, so I was helping my friend go
through his stuff. We were packing up unwanted items to donate to a
local thrift shop that supported hospice patients. “I was just
wondering if he was in one of his downswings with his bipolar
disorder.”

“No, it’s been a few months since the
last one,” Christian told me. Then he asked, “Is everything okay
between you two?”

“I guess. I’ve never exactly been his
favorite person, and lately he’s just really been keeping his
distance. I mean, more than usual.”

“I’m sorry,” Christian said. “I know
how difficult he can be. I’ll talk to him if you want.”

“No, don’t. That’ll make it worse. I
was just concerned about him, so I thought I’d ask.”

A few minutes later, Shea came home
with a couple bags of groceries. “Hi guys,” he said, then bent to
kiss his fiancé. “Making any progress?”

“A bit.” Christian smiled up at
him.

I got to my feet and gestured at a
cardboard box as I said, “That’s pretty full. If you want, I’ll
drop it off at the thrift shop for you since I’ll be driving right
by there. I’m supposed to meet Chance in half an hour for another
photography session.”

“Thanks, that’d be great,” Christian
said as he shifted himself from the floor to an upholstered chair.
It was nice to see he was getting his strength back. “Say hi to
Chance for us.”

“Will do, and you’ll be seeing him
tonight since all of you are coming to Sunday dinner. That reminds
me, you might want to eat before you come over. Nana is threatening
to get ‘experimental’ with tonight’s dinner and film it for her
cooking show. I’m just going to go ahead and guess it won’t go
well.”

Shea smiled at that. “Thanks for the
heads-up.”

*****

After a quick stop at the thrift shop,
I met Chance at the Sutro Baths. At one time, they’d been grand,
indoor pools just steps from the ocean. The lavish nineteenth
century buildings were long gone, and all that remained were some
concrete ruins. It was an interesting setting, and my friend had
thought it would make a good backdrop for some black and white
photos.

Unfortunately, because it was a sunny
weekend in April, the place was overrun with tourists and they kept
getting in the shots. We only lasted about twenty minutes before
giving up. “If we come back on a weekday, we’ll probably have the
place to ourselves,” I told him as we returned to my
car.

“I’m sorry to waste your time like
this,” he said. “I should have realized it’d be crowded
today.”

“It’s totally fine.”

My phone buzzed and I
pulled it out of my pocket and looked at the screen. The message
from Mikey said:
I’ve made a terrible
mistake. We went by the animal shelter today and I got the boys a
puppy. Dear God, what was I thinking?

I grinned and showed Chance
the screen, then wrote back:
That good,
huh?

His next text said:
The thing won’t stop chewing on our hands and
he’s peeing everywhere. I’m going to have to burn all my area rugs.
What did Nana do to get her dog to stop hosing down the house? I’ve
had this thing for an hour and I’m ready to have a nervous
breakdown. Oh, and of course the boys love the little shit already,
so I can’t trade him in for a less defective puppy.

I chuckled at that and
wrote:
He’s not defective, that’s what
puppies do. Nana hired a dog trainer to come to the house, I’ll
call and get the name. Do you want me to bring you anything?
While waiting for his reply, I asked Chance, “Do
you know anything about dogs?”