Beyond Complicated (7 page)

And leaned against the wal. If I got off my ass I was pretty sure the wal would fal over, I'd been holding it up for so long.

"It's not funny," Kel said, giving me a dirty look as he angled his head to check down his back for any evidence of contamination. Then he sighed and came to crouch in front of me. He took my chin in his hand and held my face up, forcing me to peer into his crystal blue eyes. "Wel, I'l be damned, your eyes are blue. Deep dark sapphire blue. How have I missed this little detail al these years? Incredible."

Okay, not exactly something I needed to hear.

Hel, even my parents thought my eyes were black. The blue never shows except when I'm… in love. Fuck me.

I shook his hand off and looked away. "Yeah, no, they're usualy black. Listen—"

"Have you eaten today?" He wouldn't be distracted. He took my face in his hands and held me stil, staring into my eyes with a 'do not fuck with me'

gleam in his. "I take your silence as a no. Or yesterday either, I bet. Liam! Why am I, al of a sudden, the grown-up in this relationship?"

"Pretty fucked up relationship if you ask me?

One of us makes a sucky grown up. Too many stupid decisions to speak of." I didn't like the pity in his eyes.

"I love you. Stupid decisions or not. Parentage or not. I sort of love you a whole lot. So you are going to listen to me, this one time, you never have to ever again after this one time. You are going to haul your ass in to the shower and I'm going to go and find you some food and we are going to put you back together. Do not make me drag you because I wil." Who was this person? I'd never seen this side of him. The bossy domineering side. Sweet, quiet, polite kid who couldn't sit stil for two seconds. That's the Kel I knew.

I laid my hand on his and just sat there for a little bit studying this person who'd grown up while I wasn't looking. He blushed and smiled a sweet embarrassed smile as he tried to pul away but this time I held on, linking my hand with his. "You know, despite everything between your mother and myself, I've never regretted having you. I sort of love you back. And this thing—"

"Pssh, we're not talking about that right now.

We'l talk about that when you are able to fight back. I don't kick puppies or broken hearted dads." He stood up then, his fingers stil linked with mine and with a yank he forced me onto my feet.

"Shit, my legs are numb. So's my ass," I said before I realized how it would sound. "From sitting so long," I hastily added. "And it's freezing."

"Yeah, we sort of had a cold front pass through yesterday, first frost of the year. Don't worry, it wil be beach weather again by morning. October in Florida, never boring. Come on, Liam, go fumigate." He shoved me into the hal bath. His voice cracked a couple of times. His eyes averted, his face flushed, his breath—

he'd just hauled my ass off the floor and I was a behemoth compared to Kel. Of course, he was winded.

"Please tel me you have real food in your kitchen?"

"I have real food in my kitchen. I can't afford to eat out twenty-one times a week."

"Wel, I would say that would explain why you stil live in this dump—the eating out. You make good money, why exactly do you stil live here?"

"Close to work and sheer laziness on my part. I hate moving."

"Yeah, wel, you need a house with a pool—"

"And a pool boy, so you could spend the summers ogling my pool boy, I hear ya. Maybe next summer."

"You owe me a guy, so yeah, I'm getting the pool boy. Shower, now, before I cal an exterminator."

He left me standing in the hal smiling in bemusement. When exactly had Kel grown up? I wondered again, as he disappeared into the main living space of my cramped little apartment. "I'm not sharing the pool boy," I shouted back just for the hel of it.

"Then the upstairs man maid. I'm not picky.

Make sure he knows how to make a bed when you hire him, because I'm realy good at unmaking them." I heard metal clank as he puled a pan off the rack and then water run. TMI, little man, too damned much information. I saw him lying in white sheets his hair mussed, his skin flushed, and I shivered. TDMI.

After the hot water ran out, which I didn't think was possible, I climbed out of the tub wrinkled and pruny but clean. My head cleared while I stood under the pounding jets. This was shit. Letting Seth get to me like this. I knew it. I ached from it. But I couldn't let the ache own me. I wrapped a towel around my hips and stepped out into the hal. The aroma of food cooking kicked me in the gut. Sausage, and onions, and peppers. Did Kel know how to cook?

I closed the door to my room and just leaned there looking at the stripped bare bed without realy seeing it. I was dressed in a pair of old jeans and a long sleeve T-shirt before I processed what I was seeing.

Kel had stripped my bed and picked up a little. It was that or the bedding had disintegrated. I stopped at the mirror on the back of my door and ran my hands through my wet hair. I needed a trim, curls were starting to appear and I hated the damned curls. I caught sight of the bruise on the curve of my neck and lifted my colar for the ful effect. Teeth marks. Shit, he'd bitten the hel out of me. The blush I couldn't control as the memory of exactly what we were doing at the time came back ful force. Like a freight train on a rainy night when you didn't know you'd broken down on the tracks. Screeching, out of the dark with no warning.

POW.

My fingers shook as I tugged the colar high up my neck. Kel would see. I should go find something else… Kel had already seen it. He'd seen everything.

Just go out there like nothing happened and try to eat, and smile, and pretend you're a human being and everything wil be fine. I did as I told myself. Lingering in the hal too long to take in the man standing confidently in my kitchen. My heart ached at the sight.

"There you are, I was about to come check, you know, in case you drowned or something." Kel looked at me from in front of the stove. He was barefoot, his flip flops behind the sofa, his leather jacket thrown over it. Thick blond hair puled back behind his neck, long tendrils trying to escape. He'd grown into a beautiful man. Sometime. Somehow. When I wasn't looking. "You look better. Hungry?"

"I guess. I didn't know you knew how to cook.

Smels good." I went to the fridge and took out the orange juice and grabbed a couple of glasses from the cupboard as he roled a perfect omelet onto a plate.

"Oldest child. I had to learn how to do a lot of stuff. I can clean a toilet too. Mom and Dad were never around much and Kace and Kim needed someone." He shrugged as if that was something inconsequential. "I cook, I can braid hair. And iron. Just don't ask me to—

because, dude, I'd rather be shot. Or have a root canal with no anesthesia or something, anything than iron."

He set two plates on the table, cheese omelet with onion and peppers with pieces of sausage and toast. It smeled heavenly. "Why didn't you ever tel me?" I sat across from him at my little bistro set by the window and wondered for the first time ever, what kind of life he had when I wasn't there.

"Didn't matter. We had clothes and food and extracurricular activities, friends. What the 'rents did or didn't do doesn't matter now. Kim is sixteen and Kace is almost fifteen, they don't need me anymore. Not like Sabs or Ken wil let me come home anyway. They blame you by the way." He ate as if none of that meant a damned thing. As if it was the most normal thing in the world to live that way.

"Where were Sabrina and Ken?" Curiosity swirled in my overloaded mind. And anger.

"Work, mostly. When I was about twelve they started going out at night, one became two became five.

We didn't see them much. The kids got shuffled off to the grandparents on the weekends I spent with you. His one week, hers the next. Look, don't go getting bent out of shape, it wasn't like we were abused or anything.

Ken only hit me once. And he never did again because I hit him back."

"Ken hit you? When?" I clenched the fork I didn't know I was holding.
Why the hell did that asshole hit
Kel? I'll kill him.

"Calm down, Pops, before you give yourself a coronary. Shit, Liam, I didn't know you cared." He tried to laugh it off. But my head was spinning and I could just see Ken's scrawny neck as I twisted it for hitting my Kel. "I can take care of myself. Come on, Liam, quit it. You're sort of scary when you bow up like that." His hand on mine brought me crashing back to reality.

"I'm sorry. I couldn't be there, I couldn't do anything. I took what she gave me and I worried. But you always seemed happy, and I thought everything was fine. When did he hit you? Just answer that and I'l let it go."

"In August, the night after my birthday party.

You'd left and he was drunk. He came at me swinging, caling me
that
word. How no son of his could be a
that word
. He hit me in the jaw. And I popped him back. Knocked him on his ass. It was because I was around you. You turned me into
that word
. I haven't been home since," he sighed looking more like a kid now than he had a few minutes before. "Are you going to eat? Omelets don't taste good cold."

"Faggot," I sighed, spearing a bite of omelet.

"He loved that damned word. After he came home from the service…" I shoved the food into my mouth. Hot and cheesy and, "this is delicious."

"You say that with surprise on your face. I'm an excelent cook." Kel smiled that smile again that made his eyes light up. And I shivered again. "I'm great at a lot of things. Science. For one. Cooking for two, felatio for three."

"Jesus, Kel, man. I do
not
need to know these things." I choked on my breakfast while he laughed, his eyes gleaming with wicked amusement.

"Payback is a bitch with puppies." He hooked his lips into a lopsided grin and leaned back the chair back into a patch of sunlight and I caught a glint of something in his hair. The shit had an earring. Since when? "Now you were saying something about when Ken-dad came back from the circus?"

"Nothing about it realy. A friend and I were in the mal, just a friend, not a boyfriend. I wasn't out and wanted to stay that way. Anyway, this guy, shaved head and angry, just comes up and starts shouting
that
word
at me. 'Goddamned faggot. I ought to kil your candy ass. And your little fuck buddy too. I don't want you coming around my kid.' I didn't know who he was.

Ken was three years older than me, and a dropout on top of that. I'd never actualy met him before. He came after me and I just stood up tal and prepared myself. I was a linebacker. I can look pretty big when I want to.

Security showed up before he could do anything. But we were al ejected from the mal. Brandon never spoke to me again after that. And everyone knew. So yeah, that word should be banned from existence."

"He outed you? How did he know—if you were keeping it quiet?"

"I told Sabrina, before she got me drunk and had her wicked way with me. Hel, I was scared as hel and trying to get her out of my car. I told her I wasn't interested. That I had a girlfriend. Finaly, I told her I was gay and she just laughed and said she knew it. If I was straight I'd already be in her panties. Christ, she's your mother. I shouldn't be teling you this."

He shrugged that off. "You were how old?

Seventeen?"

"Sixteen. I was a chicken-shit sixteen-year-old gay virgin when the Homecoming Queen handcuffed me to the steering wheel of my car and took me for a ride.

You came along eight months later, right after my seventeenth birthday." I finished off my breakfast aware of Kel's brooding scrutiny. "I should learn to keep my mouth shut. Listen, I harbor no il wil toward your mother. Ken, yeah, a little, but not much. She was a selfish girl back then, but Kel, we al do stupid things at one time or another. And we had you so it evened out in the end."

"Liam, you are a good guy, probably too good," Kel said, I could have sworn he was going to say something else. But he didn't. He did, however, gather up the dishes and take them to the ancient dishwasher and start it running. After that he leaned against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at me as if he'd never seen me before.

"What?" I stared back, loving how the sun from the only other window in the main room seemed to bathe him in golden light.

"Nothing." He looked away quickly his face glowing pink.

"No, it's something, so tel me." I braced myself for the falout from a weekend of king of the bad decisions.

"I need a favor. Sort of. And since the favor I sort of need is sort of your fault, I'm going to ask so don't get mad," he said quickly, much like he had Friday night when he told me about his wrecked bike.

"Is this about the bike? I can give you some money—"

"It's not the bike, Liam, dammit shut up and let me get this out okay, wil you? I'm not proud of this but…" he ran a hand through his hair, forgetting he had it puled back and just made a mess. "I was going to move in with… you know, asshole. I let my dorm go and now I have no place to live the rest of the semester.

I can't go home. I won't go home. I've got to be out by the end of the week and—"

"You want the extra bedroom?" I said without thinking. It was his room anyway. Some of his teenage shit was stil in it along with a bed. "I don't mind if you want it. It's yours for as long as you need it."