The Boy Who Came in From the Cold (31 page)

Gabe nodded. “Okay. I get that—”

 

It was only then that Todd realized he had done it. He’d… what did they say? Outted himself?

“—but my point is, homosexual is genetic. ‘Gay’ is a choice. ‘Gay’ is the admitting to yourself that you are not only homosexual, but you embrace it. You find joy in it. You’re thankful for it!”

“Thankful for it?” Todd asked, incredulous. “Thankful for being something everyone hates?”

Gabe nodded. “I wouldn’t be straight for all the tea in China.” “Really?” asked Todd. “It would be so much easier. You’d fit in. Don’t you feel weird at work functions where everybody has a wife and kids and you don’t?”
Gabe shook his head. “I only felt weird when I was alone. And with Daniel, I wasn’t alone. I was happy as could be. He moved in with

me in a week. Not officially. He still had this apartment way out in Terra’s Gate, about an hour from here. But he was spending every night at my place. We made it official a month later. We went everywhere together. People accused us of being Velcroed together. I was on cloud nine!”

“Wow,” Todd muttered. Tried to imagine Gabe with this Daniel person. All dark-haired and brown-eyed with a pretty mouth. A man. “You were in love?”

Gabe’s smile melted away. “I thought I was. At first. Now? Now I see lots of things. I see that maybe what I was… was that I was in love with the
idea
of being in love. Of having a mate. Of having a man on my arm wherever I went. Now I know that I was too controlling. I wanted everything my way. Here I preached that I didn’t want to buy a house until I found “him,” and there I had someone and never thought about actually looking for a house. And Daniel asked. I kept putting him off. And the apartment. I wanted it all my way. I put Daniel’s stuff in storage. I barely let him move anything in. I was a total shit.”

Gabe? A shit? Todd found that hard to imagine. “I don’t believe it,” Todd said. “You’re not a shit.”

Gabe shrugged. “I don’t know. But maybe a part of me knew all along that I wasn’t in love with Daniel. Not really. Why else would I have fallen for Brett?”

Brett? Who was Brett?

Gabe stood up. Rubbed his arms. “I’m getting cold. How about you? You want to get some coffee?”
“Okay,” Todd said. It would keep him up all night. It always did when he had much caffeine after one or two in the afternoon. But Gabe wanted it, so the answer was yes.

They went to Gabe’s car. The beautiful little silver thing still amazed Todd. He wondered just how much the car cost. He could look it up, now, but didn’t really want to. It felt nosy. Invasive. But still. How they’d gotten their purchases—well, Gabe’s purchases for him— in the tiny trunk, Todd wasn’t sure. The little sports car didn’t have a back seat.

It was a short drive to The Shepherd’s Bean. “It’s my favorite place for coffee,” Gabe said. “I used to go to The Radiant Cup, but I like giving my money to a gay business.”

Gay business?
Todd wondered. “It’s gay?” Todd asked.

They walked across a little red-brick patio with several trees surrounded by tables and chairs, and when they got to the door, Gabe pointed to the rainbow sticker just below where a sign showed what credit cards they took.
Ah. Gay
.

“Gay owned. Whenever I can, I use my dollars to support gay businesses.”

 

“Is that a part of the being ‘gay’ thing?”

 

Gabe nodded. “Exactly. Embracing who I am. My community. Sharing my money with other people who are proud of their gayness.” “Proud? Really?” Todd asked.

 

Gabe paused “It’s why I don’t like words like faggot or queer,” he said.

 

And I used those words. I use them!

 

Gabe sighed. “Sit down. I’ll get the coffee. I’ll get something that will knock your socks off.”

Todd chose a table away from the window and sat down. Then thought better of it.
I held hands with a man on the Plaza! What am I

afraid of? That someone will think I’m… gay? Am I?
He looked across the small room toward Gabe, who was talking to a nice-looking man behind the counter. He didn’t hold Todd’s attention long. He found himself staring at Gabe. Such a big man. So tall, his shoulders impossibly wide. He couldn’t see more since Gabe was wearing that coat. But he knew what it hid: those wide shoulders tapered into a narrow waist and a round, muscular ass. A smooth one too. He’d seen it bare. Not at all like Joan’s, which was bigger, so much softer. Who knew men and women had such different bottoms? No. Gabe’s looked solid. Todd would be willing to bet it was as hard as his chest—which he’d had his face up against. Then Todd felt something.
Wow. Again. I’m getting a hard-on just looking at him
.

He closed his eyes.
I’m homosexual. I’ve fought it all my life, but it’s true. My stepdad was right. I’m a faggot. How did he know?
“Todd?”

He looked up into Gabe’s face, those lovely eyes looking down into his. Proud of who he is. Gabe sat down, took a sip, held his paper cup up in salute. Todd took a sip of his own, blowing first and remembering to close his eyes. And God he was glad he did. What wonderful coffee. The aroma was somewhere between herbal and floral—
and would I have thought to make a comparison like that even a week ago?
Gabe was teaching him about taste and how to treasure flavor. What was really powerful was that Todd realized he’d always known this, always appreciated it. Something he knew that he knew, but had rarely had the opportunity to indulge. The coffee was heavy bodied, with simply tons of cherry and lemonade sweetness coming through. And again, would he have ever thought an unflavored coffee would taste of cherry and lemonade? His stepfather would have said such comparisons were snooty, that coffee was coffee. Now Todd saw Gabe was educating his palate. It was exciting.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s some damned fine coffee.”

“Roasted yesterday,” Gabe said, smiling. “Ground minutes before it was made. It’s grown on a small cooperative from the Mukurweini District of Kenya.”

He’s stalling, avoiding telling me the rest of his story
, thought Todd. He took another sip.

Gabe didn’t say much for quite a while. Just drank his coffee and talked about the guy who ran the shop. The man used to work for one of the big coffee monsters, traveled the world, made friends on more plantations than could be believed. Finally he didn’t want to work for “the man” anymore and moved to Kansas City to start The Shepherd’s Bean.

Todd let him blab. He knew Gabe was only delaying what he had to say. Maybe he’d changed his mind. Or maybe it was something bad? Something really bad?

O
NCEmore Gabe found himself reading Todd’s face.
He’s starting to worry. Starting to think that my story is something bad.
Isn’t it? It’s pretty bad
.
But not the kind of bad Todd’s beginning to think about.
“I met Brett by the Liberty Memorial,” he said. “A bunch of us were hanging out that day in protest of Gay Pride.”
Todd’s brows came together. “You were protesting Gay Pride?”
Gabe nodded. “It had been amazing for years. It was huge, and thousands of people showed up and there were all these booths and vendors and grass. The kind you lay on,” Gabe quickly added. “Hundreds of us would lay out our blankets and watch the acts—Chaka Khan, RuPaul, Crystal Waters, Martha Wash—and it was free. Then some ass got a hold of it and took it downtown to the Power & Light District and started bringing in acts no one had ever heard of and charging an arm and a leg as well. It was horrible. So a bunch of us decided to have our own day of it at the park where Gay Pride used to be. That’s when I met Brett.”
He could remember the day so well. He and Daniel were having a nice day. Several of their friends had joined them; they were sharing with each other, passing around cocktails. Tommy was there, and that meant his wonderful cosmos. Harry and Cody—were they there as buddies or new lovers? Gabe couldn’t remember. They got together right around then. In fact it had been their volleyball net that had been set up, hadn’t it? And it was the volleyball that had made him notice Brett the first time. Pink tank top and black shorts with little pink stripes down the side. Somehow he’d gotten away with the look.
“He was cute as can be, and young. Younger than you. Mixed. He had this beautiful cafe´ au lait skin and big pretty eyes. He was playing volleyball. Was good at it too. Then when everyone took a break, he started to wander off. Somehow I just knew he didn’t have anything to eat, and I called out to him and asked him to sit down with me and Daniel, and we shared our lunch with him.”
Like I did with you
, Gabe thought.
Just like that.
And had it been just generosity that made him call out to Brett? Or had he just been wanting to get a closer look at him?
“He’d run away from home. His dad…. Well, his father had been molesting him for years, and he couldn’t take it anymore, so he ran away. He found out about Gay Pride, and that’s where he ran to. Kid was sad. Broke my heart.”