Selfie (48 page)

Authors: Amy Lane

BOOK: Selfie

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I needed time alone with Noah, and time with my thoughts, and time to make sure my good-bye was still solid and real in my heart.

I guessed, by how subdued they were at dinner, that they felt the same way.

But still, we hugged before they got into their car to leave.

“We’ll come see you before the end of the week,” Christine promised, hugging me tight. “And we want to see you two near the holidays. Please, please come see the family in December.” She pulled back and smiled. “You have a house right next door, after all.”

I nodded, and her father walked in for his share. “Speaking of . . .” Mr. Walker said, kissing me on the cheek. “I’ve got to tell you—the houses. The houses make so much sense. His whole life, Vinnie liked clean lines—in his cars, in his room, in his clothes. Even women, when he pretended to like them, Audrey Hepburn was his favorite, because he said other actresses were too gaudy, too messy. You were living in his house, weren’t you? And he was living in yours.”

I looked over my shoulder at Noah, who rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” I said honestly. “We . . . we didn’t do it on purpose. It’s just . . . that’s what each house looked best as, and it was like . . . it was really like . . .”

“Like you were living in each other’s hearts,” Vinnie’s father said. He kissed me again. “I wish,” he began, his voice rusty from crying, “I wish with all my heart my son would have brought you to us and said, ‘Here is my heart, Mom and Dad.’ But he didn’t, and we’ll have to live with that. But he loved you. And . . . that makes us so happy.”

I wiped my face with my palm, so
over
this day I couldn’t even talk anymore.

“And Connor?” Mr. Walker said, making sure I was looking at him. “I know— You and my son, you did a lot of your life living in public. We’ve seen the press, hounding you these past weeks, and you haven’t said a word.”

I shrugged. Apparently the security people had been by, kicking reporters out of our bushes while we were gone. The gay press was especially relentless.

He patted my cheek. “We’ll call your agent and make a press release,” he said softly. “I don’t want this on you—not after everything else. His mother and I will do the interview. We didn’t see Vinnie for who he was when he was alive—the least we can do is support
you
now that he’s gone, okay?”

Oh God. I couldn’t even . . . I’d have to call Jilly later, make sure she told them what this gift meant, make sure they understood the enormity of what he’d just promised to do. I gaped at him, nodding, incoherent even, and that’s when Kevin came in for his hug.

“Everything they said,” he told me, his football player’s build swallowing me up. Kevin didn’t run to fat, like most people in their thirties—he just became more awesomely solid as he aged. “But . . .” Kevin pulled back and stuck his hand out toward Noah, shaking it. “But I need to add that I’m glad you’ve found someone, now that Vinnie’s gone. It really sucks to be alone. Vinnie didn’t want you to be that way, and I’m just glad you’re not.”

With that, the family all bundled into the rental and buzzed away, leaving Noah and me, exhausted and talked out, to make our way home.

We watched stupid television all night, and old movies, and hell no, neither one of us felt like sex afterward. But we did lie in bed, him at my back, holding me around the middle like we always did.

“You okay?” he asked, when the silence of bedtime had seeped into our bones.

“Yeah. I can’t believe I work tomorrow.”

“Saying. I can’t believe they still pay me to drive you around.”

I laughed, genuinely tickled as I didn’t think I could be. “That is so awesome, I don’t even have words for it,” I said after a pause.

“Yeah, I’m going to have to agree.” We giggled for a moment, like naughty children, and then he spoke again. “You’re going to be okay, though. Right?”

I closed my eyes and savored his warmth at my back, and his dark rum and musk, and his deep rumbly voice, and the sex appeal that thrummed like an electric current under the surface. “Noah, I am so okay right now. I . . . I am lying in bed in a house by the ocean, and I’m held by a man I love. You have no idea. When I was a little kid, dreaming about my future—
this
was the future I dreamed of.”

He kissed the back of my neck slowly and sensually, and I shivered.

I was apparently
wrong
about the no-sex thing, and rolling in his arms so I could find his mouth with mine reaffirmed my point about life.

I wanted to live it.

Tomorrow I would wake up and go play somebody else, and I loved doing that—I was
blessed
to be doing that.

But tonight, in the sweet and holy darkness, I was skin to skin with my lover, and I was myself, and I was blessed, more than blessed, to be doing that as well.

I didn’t say good-night to Vinnie; we’d said our good-byes already.

And Noah and I had some more lovemaking to do before it was our time to say good-night. I wanted to be there for every moment.

It was what living was all about.

Vinnie’s parents made their press release a week later—and my life exploded again. This time, I talked to the gay press, and oh yeah, I made it really fucking clear that I was not excited with their pressure to out someone without his family’s permission.

And then I told the truth, gave the “No more interviews!” edict, and peaced out. Jilly told me that Viv spent three hours a day fielding calls for the next week—but that it eventually died down.

It was a week after that last interview, at least, before I felt able to go through the box of shattered dreams that Vinnie’s brother had dropped on our front porch. I waited until Noah was out running other actors around and I had a quiet moment in the house.

Most of the box was toast—there was no denying it. The last few steak plates were rubble, and the figurines from the mantel, every adorable kitten and big-eyed dog of them, were broken in three or more pieces.

One thing survived.

It was the Precious Moments figurine, the one with big-eyed Connor and big-eyed Vinnie, standing at the bus stop, ready to face the wide world. There was a chip on the base, and little Connor’s hand had broken off, but for the most part? It was sound.

I very carefully placed it on
my
mantel, thinking that when Noah and I went shopping for a house and not a rental, we would very much have to make sure we had a place to put adorable figurines. It was necessary. Noah would understand.

I took the rest of the box out to the trash can in the garage, cringing when it
bang-smash
ed into the bottom of the can. God, it was a good thing I’d gotten all my tears out of the way, because that was a final sound if there ever was one.

I’d just turned back when the garage door opened, and Noah pulled the town car in. I waited by the inside door for him to get out, pleased because he could help me make dinner, and because just having him in the house made me happy.

“Hey, stranger.” He greeted me with a kiss, and I wrapped an arm around his waist—and then grabbed for the package he was holding behind his back.

“What’d you get me?” I asked, excited and suspicious.

“What’d you just do?” he asked, just as suspicious.

“I threw away the box of broken stuff that Vinnie’s family brought,” I told him, making my way in, because the garage is
not
romantic. “What are you holding behind your back?”

“Yarn,” he said pertly. “And a how-to book.”

I turned toward him so quickly I almost knocked him down the garage stairs. “Oh my God! You did? You
did
? That’s
awesome
!”

I reached for the bag, and he held it out of my reach. With his other hand he captured my chin and kissed me. “I’m sorry it was all broken,” he said softly.

“One thing survived,” I said. “C’mere and see.”

I dragged him to the mantel, and showed him the ornament proudly, and he laughed like I knew he would.

“Perfect.” Then he pulled out the bag—which was visibly full of yarn, the pretty fiber smooshed up against the plastic—and rooted around in the center.

He produced a small box, of the tchotchke variety, and I almost pee-pee danced. “Really? I get presents?”

“Yeah, Con. You get presents.”

I took the box eagerly and scrabbled it open.

And gasped.

It was a lot like the Precious Moments ornament, but a different company made it, and the colors were brighter, bolder, and more present.

The little boy with the dark skin and the curly hair fishing with the little boy with the yellow hair and the pale skin were unmistakable.

“I couldn’t find one with mountain bikes,” he apologized.

I couldn’t breathe it was so perfect.

“Oh . . .” I said, voice shaking. “This is
so
gonna get you laid.”

His laughter was throaty and beautiful. “Yeah, well. Anything—” he said. I looked up, and he was biting his lip. “Anything to make you happy.”

I smiled, feeling all sunshine, and put me and Noah next to me and Vinnie.

“This makes me happy,” I said softly.