Second Hand (Tucker Springs) (21 page)

He was angry, and I knew he had a right to be. What reason did I have to hold onto the ring, especially now? Even if I did, how awful did it look to say no, I didn’t want to hock it just yet, when I had to say that to the man I’d made almost constant love to for three days?

It looked awful, yes. Yet the idea of that ring leaving my bedside, of everything being that completely utterly
over
—not just my relationship with her but my whole heterosexual life as I’d known it—felt ten times worse than the cold I could see creeping into El’s face. I held out my hands, placating. “Please—you’re right, I should sell it, and I will. Just . . . not today, okay?”

“Sure.” El tossed the ring back in the dish by my beside, hard enough that it bounced twice before it clattered into a resting place. He pushed himself out of bed and reached for his clothes. “Come on, MoJo. Time to go home.”

“El.” I reached for his arm, but he moved away from my touch and pulled his shirt on in one deft motion. “
El
. Please. Come on. This is still new to me. I’m still not sure exactly what I am.”

I wasn’t sure it was possible, but he closed up even more at that. “Whatever.”

“Give me a day, even. Just a little time to wrap my head around it all.”

“Take as many days as you want,” El shot back, and stepped into his jeans.

Panic and fear whipped up like wildfire, and the chipmunk stood in the middle of the blaze, unsure of what he should be worrying about first. “I thought you said I should take my time. That we could go slow.”

“Absolutely.” He grabbed his bag and whistled. “MoJo, come on, girl.”

I followed him into the living room, panicking full-on now, jealous of the dog as he cuddled her close and let her lick his face. He was still rigid, clearly not intending to spare even one more glance at me. “If we can go slow, then why are you so mad?”

He sighed but didn’t turn around, didn’t look at me. “I’m not.” He did look at me then, and he gave me the most flimsy, fake smile I’d ever seen from him. “I’ll see you later.”

Then he left.

I stood in my living room a long time, feeling like I should go after him, feeling like I should apologize, feeling like I had to do something, anything, to make his anger go away. To get him back. To get us both back to where we’d been. Except if giving up the ring was the only way I could do that—well, I just couldn’t do that. Not yet.

I didn’t know what that said about me, and I didn’t want to look too hard. At anything right now, actually.

I went back to my bedroom, tucked the ring far into the back of my bedside drawer where no one would see it, and then I went to work, determined to lose myself in my new training until it was time to get my mother from the airport.

El would have skipped laundry night, but canceling without a real excuse would have raised more suspicion than showing up and letting Denver ask questions. He tried his only hope for an out, though, calling Rosa to see if she needed any more help getting ready for the party.

She didn’t, because Noah had been over when El had been playing lovey-dovey with Paul, and he hadn’t just finished the cleaning, he’d appeared with a brand-new patio set. Complete with umbrella. In Rosa’s favorite color.

And yet Rosa still talked about going out shopping for a new guy.

“Whoa,” Denver said when El came through the door of the laundry, oblivious, perpetually happy MoJo in tow. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Stuff it,” El snapped, tossing the end of the leash at him. “Watch her, will you? I’m going to go smoke.”

“Hey.” Frowning, almost glaring, Denver scooped up MoJo and scratched behind her ears. “What the fuck’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing.” El bit the word so hard it bled. “Nothing’s gotten into me. Can you watch the fucking dog or not?”

Denver lifted MoJo, his big hands making such a cradle for the little dog she probably thought she was on some kind of shelf. “Daddy’s got something sideways up his ass, pumpkin. You want to tell Uncle Denver what it is?”

El stormed out the door, went around the corner to the dark of the alley, and smoked until his lungs were practically butter.

His clothes were sorted and loaded into the machines when he came back, and Denver held MoJo’s attention rapt with a scrap of lunchmeat he dangled just out of her reach above her head.

“I’m trying to teach her to jump,” he explained when El sat down next to him.

El watched his dog stare in confusion at the meat. “She’s not going to jump. She’s going to sit there waiting for you to give her the turkey.”

“I disagree.” Denver made clicking sounds and bounced the turkey up and down a few times, MoJo tracking the movement as if it were the most important thing in her life. “She’ll figure it out eventually.”

Somehow the whole world seemed wrapped up in MoJo figuring out she should leap up off her hind legs and snatch that lunchmeat. El didn’t coo to her like Denver did, but he sat on the edge of his seat, gripping the plastic, teeth set.
Go get it. You know you want it. It’s right there. Jump up and take it.

“Come on, girl.” Denver lowered the meat long enough for it to brush her nose, pulling it away as she tried to snap. “Come on. I won’t even hold it that high. Stand on your hind legs, honey. You can do it.”

Do it, damn it. You know you want it. Fucking take it!

MoJo continued to sit there, waiting patiently for Denver to move the turkey close enough for her to take it without leaping.

After ten excruciating minutes, El leapt to his feet like someone had put him on a spring. “I’m going to smoke.”

“I’ll have them get the iron lung ready for you when you get back,” Denver replied. “Come on, girl.”

Biting back an expletive, El headed for the door.

He didn’t need anybody, he told himself as his shaking hands fumbled with the lighter, as he coughed up some disturbing phlegm and his mouth ached in dryness. It didn’t matter what the fuck Paul did with his goddamned ring or if they were over before they’d even started. It didn’t matter, because he’d always known it would end like this, and it was just as well it happened now rather than later.

“I don’t need anybody, dammit,” he murmured out loud, then swore and tossed his lighter and then his last three cigarettes against the wall before shutting his eyes and resting his head against the bricks.

It should have been good, having my mom around to distract me while I tried to sort out why El had gotten so upset, why I still had no intention of taking that ring out of my bedside drawer, why part of me was devastated by his silence and part of me was relieved.

Having her around should have helped, but it didn’t.

She had my entire house cleaned by the time I came home from work the first day she was there by herself, and a fresh loaf of bread and a rack of cooling cookies waited for me on the counter. I took her out to dinner that night and gave her a walking tour of the Light District, pointing out shops she might like to visit.

“Since you’ve already run out of things to clean at my place,” I teased her.

She tweaked my nose, but she smiled too. “You’ve really cleaned up the clutter, I see. That’s good. They say if your house is cluttered, so is your life.”

I thought of the ring burning a hole in the back of my drawer and said nothing.

When I came home the second night, she had several bags on my kitchen counter from her shopping adventures, and she took me on a tour of where she’d bought them. “I got this bag at the cutest boutique on the corner by that coffee shop, and I got your father a new golf shirt and a pair of loafers for church. But wait until you hear this. I got this”—she pulled something out of a bag and presented me with my very own panini press—“for free! It was at this pawnshop, where the owner had the most darling little dog. I tried to pay him, and at first he was all set to take my credit card, but then all of a sudden he gave me this funny look and a wink and told me redheads got one item free today. I thought he had to be joking, but he wouldn’t take so much as a penny no matter how I tried to pay. Oh—Paul, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “Just tired from the day.”

Mom patted me on the shoulder and kissed me on the cheek. “You poor thing. You go soak in a hot tub and let me fix you some dinner.”

I took a shower, not a bath, but I stayed in there a long time, thinking of the time we’d had sex there. I’d thought of him all day, in fact, and all night, and all the time ever since he’d walked out the door. He hadn’t so much as sent me a text, and I hadn’t texted him either.

All because of that ring, that stupid, stupid ring.

While I was getting dressed, my phone rang. I leapt for it, thinking it would be El, and I tried to scramble an apology together, anything to get him back again, even though I still wasn’t quite sure I’d actually lost him. Or had him in the first place.

My breath caught as I realized it wasn’t El—it was Stacey.

“Hey there,” she said when I greeted her. She sounded like she’d been crying. A lot. “I was wondering—could I come over? Just to talk?”

No. No, because I don’t want El to find out you were here.
“Um, my mom’s here.”

“Oh.” That should have sent her off, no problem, so the fact that I could all but hear her trying to decide if she should still come over meant something big had happened. “Oh. Maybe you could meet me somewhere for a little while? There’s something I need to say to you, and I can’t do it over the phone.”

No. No way, not in a million years.
My grip on the phone became sweaty. “Mom’s got dinner on.”

Why couldn’t I say it? Why couldn’t I tell her no? Why was I even considering telling my mom something had come up and I’d be right back?

Why was that ring in my drawer? What the fuck was wrong with me?

“I want to come back to you,” Stacey blurted out, her voice breaking on a sob. “Larry’s cheating on me. I never should have been with him at all. I never should have left you. Please, Paul, can I please come home? I want to come home.”

No. No, no, no, no, no!
“Um . . .”

“Please,” she whispered. “We can get married at the courthouse right away. I’ll do whatever you want, only please take me back.”

No!
But another voice whispered, as desperate as Stacey,
Yes, oh yes, thank God, just tell her yes so everything can go back to normal.

“Paul?” my mother called from the kitchen. “Paul, honey, dinner’s ready.”

“I have to go,” I blurted into the phone, and hung up before I could change my mind.

Then I turned the phone off and buried it in my bedside drawer next to the ring.

“Paul, sweetheart. You look worse than when I sent you in to have your soak,” Mom chided when I came to the dining room table. The lights flickered and the smoke alarm began to bleat. I got up wordlessly, climbed on a chair, took the battery out, and went back to my seat.

I stared at my plate for several seconds, hearing my mother’s voice of concern as if from very far away. Eventually I lifted my head, looked at her, and said, “Mom, would you love me no matter what? No matter who I said I was or”—
what my orientation
—“whatever I thought would make me happy?”

It didn’t surprise me when she teared up and sat down beside me, taking my hand and pressing it tight against her chest, over her warm and rapidly beating heart. “Yes. Absolutely.” She said the words like a vow.

“No matter
what
?” I said, wishing I could let the cat out of the bag without letting her know there was a cat at all.

She caught my other hand too and drew it to her mouth. “Paul, sweetheart—yes. Yes, I will love you even though you’re gay.”

I blinked for several seconds, sure I couldn’t have heard her right. Except I was also, contrarily, sure I had. “Mom?” I said, my voice cracking.

She made this funny cooing sound and stroked my cheek. “It’s okay, baby. I know. I’ve always known.”

“Mom, I haven’t even said anything yet.”

She hesitated. “Well—you
are
gay, yes?”

“I don’t know!” I leaned back and shoved my hand into my damp hair. “How—?”

She laughed. “How did I know? Paul, I’ve known since you were eight and I caught you masturbating in front of the TV to Bo and Luke Duke.”