Summer Son (5 page)

After more than one screaming argument when Ollie came back to the apartment we once shared, we changed the arrangement so my mom acted as gatekeeper. I hadn’t seen him in weeks. That was absolutely fine by me, but I felt sorry for my mom. She insisted she didn’t mind holding on to Harrison for the extra few hours on a Saturday morning, although that was completely beside the point.

The original arrangement between Oliver and me was that he picked Harrison up on Friday afternoon when he finished work and dropped him back on Sunday night, every other weekend. We’d also discussed him taking our son for a few days during the week. That never happened.

Of all the things I hated him for, letting Harrison down was the biggest one. It had been Ollie who talked me into having a child so quickly after getting married. We were promised by everyone that it would be a long process: finding a surrogate, going through the whole getting pregnant bit. In the end we found a surrogate who was happy to do artificial insemination rather than IVF, which simplified things considerably.

In our happy, naïve little bubble, Ollie and I decided to mix our sperm so we wouldn’t know who Harrison’s biological father was. Genetics weren’t the big factor, we insisted. Our child was going to grow up with two fathers and a surrogate mother who was happy to be contacted by him at any time, if he had questions.

The bubble burst about three months after Harrison was born, and Oliver decided he was leaving. I still wasn’t sure what had happened, or where it all went wrong. My friends insisted he was just a lying bastard and I should move on, but that wasn’t exactly easy when I wasn’t sure what I’d done in the first place.

Since it was Oliver who’d wanted to be a father, who’d pushed for a child, pushed for everything relating to our family, I prepared myself for being a weekends-only dad.

And then he did the one thing we’d promised each other we’d never do—he demanded a paternity test. It was at that point that I hired a lawyer.

I knew the outcome of the paternity test would decide my future for me. If Harrison was Ollie’s child, I’d have to fight to get access to him. I’d be one of those dads in the superhero outfits, trying to shout loud enough for someone to hear and let me have time with my son. Because for me, it didn’t matter if Harrison was created with my sperm or Oliver’s. I’d loved him from the day he was born. Before that, even.

If Harrison was my child, I’d become a divorced single dad before I turned thirty.

It turned out Oliver wanted not
a
child, but
his
child, and he didn’t want to waste time raising someone else’s. Knowing this, I fought against making the results of the paternity test known until a court order demanded it. The divorce got messy, I got handed full custody of the child who turned out to be biologically my own (since Oliver didn’t want a baby with whom he shared no genetic material), and my never-ending battle for child support began.

My life turned into a
Jerry Springer
special—“What Happens When Gay Men Divorce.” Only there was no neat “take care of yourselves and each other” at the end of the episode. There was just my broken heart and a little boy who would grow up with one daddy, not two.

I had my mom keep a notebook, detailing the time Oliver came over to pick Harrison up and what time he was dropped off, so it was all logged if anyone wanted to see it. I hated it, hated that it had gotten so petty, that we were still sniping at each other.

The one weekend, once every two weeks, was my time to do all the things that just took longer with a baby around: laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning, catching up on my work. I wasn’t a hermit on purpose, like Meg seemed to think. I was just a single parent with far too little spare time.

For the first hour after I dropped Harrison off, I always felt lost and wandered around in circles until I pulled myself together and got on with stuff. Going to the gym was something that calmed me down. The routine of an hour of cardio, an hour of weights, and then a long swim relaxed my muscles and my brain and allowed me to think clearly.

Whenever Zane popped into my head, I forced him back out again, replacing long, dark lashes with balancing my savings and checking accounts. In my head they were perfectly balanced. The only problem was, I never went home and actually moved any money around. There wasn’t time.

After showering at the gym and feeling about two hundred times better than I had before, I headed down to a little Asian supermarket to pick up something for dinner and enough beer to get me slightly drunk. I wasn’t going out again, not after the last time, and everyone else had plans somewhere else. I would take my delicious, healthy meal home and work or download a movie for the first time in forever.

My basket was full of pak choi and Chinese cabbage, and I was headed for glass noodles when I ran into him. Literally.

“Shit, sorry.”

“Sorry. Oh. Ellis!”

“Hi,” I said, rubbing my arm and feeling supremely awkward.

“I’m so sorry,” Zane said immediately. “I was going to call you, then—”

“It’s fine,” I said, cutting him off before things got worse.

“No,” he said, and he looked so thoroughly miserable I decided to let him off the hook. “I tried to get hold of Meg, but she told me to fuck off—apparently she’s working on a massive project at the moment. And I keep meaning to call Nae, but I had assignments due yesterday, and I tend to fall into a black hole when I’m working on something.” He took a deep breath. “Can I take your number now? I really did mean to call.”

“Sure.”

Even though I wanted to be mad at him, it was hard when he looked up at me with those big brown eyes, looking so sorrowful and apologetic. I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and found one of my business cards. They had my cell number printed on the front, as well as my website and e-mail address.

“Thanks,” he said, pocketing the card. “Are you making something in particular?” He nodded at my basket.

I shrugged. “Um, something Thai, maybe. I’m not sure. I like buying a load of ingredients and finding out what I can make with them.”

Zane beamed at me. “Let me cook for you,” he said. “To apologize for being a total asshole.”

“You weren’t an asshole. And you don’t have to do that.”

“I want to,” he insisted. “Where’s Harrison?”

“He’s with Oliver for the weekend.”

“Oh. Well, then, you don’t really have an excuse.”

I wondered if I’d ever build up a resistance to his smile, guessed probably not, and conceded.

“Okay. I’ll buy the stuff, though.”

Twenty minutes later we were back at the scene of The Kiss, outside his apartment building, and I’d learned that he was mostly vegan but made some exceptions. I was not even a little bit vegan. I liked my steak cooked so that when it was cut into, I could still faintly hear it moo. Still, I was already wrapped around Zane’s finger, and he insisted I’d like what he made for me.

I could see lying and not eating much in my future.

“It’s not a lot,” Zane said as we climbed up the two flights of stairs to his studio. I hoped to God the inside was better than the staircase, because I really wasn’t feeling the damp or the mold or the peeling paint. “But, you know. It’s home.”

“How long have you been living here?”

“About two years now.” He unlocked the door in two places and let me in first, which was just as well since I was pretty sure two people couldn’t fit side by side in his hallway. “It’s way out of the way for classes and shit, but there’s no way I can afford anywhere in Manhattan, and I like this neighborhood. Plus, I can get a place of my own here, and if I lived anywhere closer, I’d need to share.”

There was a door to the right, which I guessed at first was a closet but turned out to be his bathroom. The apartment was long and narrow, with a kitchen under the window at the front, looking out onto the street. There was a futon stashed in the corner and just one dresser, which was overflowing with clothes.

“I wasn’t really expecting company,” Zane said apologetically. “I probably should have tidied up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a smile. “I’ve got a kid. My place is usually the same, or worse.”

There were two barstools at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living area, and I slid onto one as Zane started unpacking the groceries, putting his own things in the fridge and leaving out what he’d need for making dinner.

“I’ve got a few beers that are already cold,” he said.

I was trying not to stare at his ass as it wiggled back and forth while he dug the bottles out.

“We can swap for these later.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said, and then I cleared my throat.

“So, tell me about him,” Zane asked as he pulled a heavy wooden cutting board from where it hung on the wall, along with an impressive knife.

“Who, Ollie?”

“No, Harrison. You can tell me about your ex-husband as well, if you like….”

I laughed, relieved. “Oh. Harrison’s awesome.”

“How old is he?”

“Nearly eight months now,” I said. “He changes so quickly, it’s crazy. At the moment it’s like he learns something new every day. He’s in the process of trying to pull himself up.”

We settled into an easy conversation as Zane cooked, and I watched as he threw ingredients together with a skill I certainly didn’t possess. Within minutes there was a wok heating on his two-ring stove, the window open to let the smoke out, and a pan of water ready to heat the glass noodles. Oil, vegetables, Thai curry paste, coconut milk, and bam, he’d made a fucking curry. From scratch. With what looked like homemade curry paste.

“It looks awesome,” I said as he served it up into two bowls and pulled a stool around to sit on the other side of the breakfast bar.

“Thanks.”

I clinked the neck of my beer bottle against his and grinned.

It tasted awesome too—I didn’t have to lie even a little bit. Which was good, because I was a terrible actor. Things didn’t feel forced with Zane. I could just be, and he let me.

Too young
, a treacherous voice whispered from inside my head. I decided to ignore it.

After we’d finished eating, I insisted on helping him with the dishes, which took longer than they should since we kept stopping to make out, constantly flipping sides so his back or mine was pressed against the sink. The back of my T-shirt got wet, and I didn’t care at all.

“Do you need to rush off?” he asked as I kissed up the side of his neck. I’d trapped him between my arms and was also occupied with scooping the last few bits of kitchenware out of the sink to set them on the rack.

“No.”

“Good.”

There was a TV hung on the wall opposite his bed—no space for it anywhere else—and Zane grabbed two oversize cushions from the floor and tossed them on the bed for us to lean against. I guessed he’d made them himself. The fabric was a bright, unique color that blended with the different fabrics and colors he’d used to decorate the apartment.

He tugged me over to the bed and used the remote to turn the TV on to some movie that was playing—I hadn’t seen it before and didn’t want to watch it. Not when I had Zane next to me to keep me company.

Instead of diving straight into making out, which I was all in favor of, we talked. I wanted to know more about his art, and he took my hands in his to draw pictures in the air, explaining how artists weren’t made, they were born, and he just had to figure out what his medium was. He still didn’t tell me about any of his own work, and that was okay. I’d learn about it in time.

Talking about art made him look and sound like a kid in a candy store, like there were too many different things to try, so many different flavors to experience, and he wanted it all at once, rather than working out what was his favorite and sticking with it. He told me about sculpture and painting and charcoals and how he never got bored of the smell of acrylic or the feel of clay under his fingers.

When I kissed him it was because I couldn’t stand to look at his face for a moment longer, not when he was so animated and alight and alive, and I wanted to suck some of that into me, because I hadn’t felt that way in what seemed like forever. He was soft and warm and pliant beneath me, welcoming my touch instead of fighting against it.

Zane skimmed his hands from my shoulders to my waist, then back up to lightly grip at my arms. Any thoughts of being in control slipped away at his gentle touch. He was leading this, not me.

My T-shirt was tugged up and off and away by sure hands, and then I was half-naked and he was taking advantage of it as his hands made the same path again, over my skin instead of loose cotton. Not wanting to be the only one shirtless, I encouraged him up, then stripped off his shirt.

His skin was butter smooth and the most gorgeous cinnamon-cookie color that made me just want to lick it. I felt justified in attaching my lips to his collarbone, leaving long, wet swipes of my tongue down to his nipple, then back up to his earlobe.

“Beautiful,” I mumbled.

He laughed beneath me.

I pushed back up onto my hands so I could get lost in the depths of his rich brown eyes again. He cupped my face in the palm of his hand and drew me down into another kiss. My nose bumped against the tiny silver hoop in his nose, and that shouldn’t have been erotic, but it was.

“I’m not usually this easy,” he said softly. “You’re making me wild.”

“I’m following your lead.”

“I want you.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

He chuckled softly. “I’m trying to think of reasons not to do this.”

“Stop,” I said, punctuating the word with a kiss. “Stop thinking.”

“Then be with me, for fuck’s sake.”

We stripped off until we were bare, letting hands follow eyes to learn what each other felt like, as much as what we looked like. His legs were thick with muscle and his tummy soft, a combination I found I adored. His nipples were tight and sensitive and his cock achingly hard when I took it into my mouth.

“Ellis, please,” he groaned, and I swallowed around him.

There was lube and condoms under the bed, and Zane fished both out and laid them on the sheets next to us. It was dark outside now, the only light coming from streetlights and the flickering television.