The Broken Triangle (12 page)

Without talking, Riley shut off the engine and sat with his hands on the wheel, staring out at the street. The neighborhood was busy, as always, old men sitting out in rocking chairs on porches, the painted wood under their feet faded and cracked, their soft breath clouding the air; young kids trundling up and down the sidewalks on scooters or bikes, bareheaded, gloveless, and indifferent to the cold. It was a scene being replicated in a thousand streets in a thousand cities, but this street was home, and Vin felt part of it and distanced at the same time, because he’d moved out, after all.

And some people had been glad to see him go.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he told Riley. “Do you want a minute?”

“No. They’ll think I’m scared to come in or something.” Riley looked at the front door, which was still closed, and leaned across to kiss Vin. “Besides, I have it on good authority they’re going to love me.”

Vin was grateful that he wasn’t nervous; taking a first boyfriend home to meet the parents was the kind of thing that fueled nightmares. Still, he couldn’t help but note the peeling paint on the front steps or the way the wood creaked under his weight. He knew the door wouldn’t be locked. It never was. He had a key, but he’d used it so infrequently he wasn’t sure he’d even recognize it anymore. “Hey, we’re here!” he called toward the kitchen and made room for Riley to pass by him so he could kick the door closed again.

“Your mother’s in the kitchen,” his dad shouted from the living room. “I’m watching football!”

“Football?” Riley asked. “This early?”

“It doesn’t have to be on,” Vin explained. “He has some kind of classic sports package. He can watch games from three years ago. Come say hi.”

He caught a glimpse of Riley’s expression as they threaded their way through a narrow hallway made narrower by the overflowing coat hooks on one wall and the bookcase on the other. His mother approached reading with a reverent addiction, rarely letting a book pass out of her hands once she’d acquired it, never leaving even the cheapest paperback facedown. Vin had dropped a library book in the bath as a kid and gotten a tongue-lashing that’d left him quailing. The house had to seem cramped to Riley, but nothing showed on his face but mild apprehension.

Jon raised a hand in greeting when Vin ushered Riley into the room. “Vin. Good to see you, son.” He rose from the couch with an effort, fighting springs his weight had compressed into a concave space over the years. Jon was a big guy, broad-shouldered, tall, his hair showing some gray now. It was a family joke that if he lost an inch of hair as it receded, he found it again on his waistline. “And this is Riley?”

The speculative glance Riley got wasn’t unfriendly, and Jon’s smile and handshake were warm, but Vin felt his shoulders hunch, a prickle of tension running through him.

Riley said all the right things, his manner a shade too polite for the casual surroundings, but that was understandable given the circumstances. This was a big deal for everyone in the room.

Not for the first time, Vin’s mother saved him. She came into the room on a wave of kitchen scents, spicy, mouthwatering, and enveloped Vin in a hug that left him breathless, shattering the awkwardness with a flow of endearments and reproaches for not visiting sooner. Maria barely topped Vin’s shoulder, the beautiful girl she’d once been still visible in the older woman she’d become, every wrinkle in her face formed by a smile. Vin considered himself lucky to be her only son. It was shallow, but he liked knowing he was the golden boy in her eyes. He didn’t have to compete for her shining love with any brothers; the girls were a different story.

“Here he is,” Maria said, letting go of Vin and turning her attention to Riley. “Hmm. I did look you up in Vin’s yearbook—he left it behind with his other high school things when he moved out—but I didn’t think I remembered you. Your hair is shorter now.”

“Mom, that was years ago,” Vin protested, but Riley seemed okay with the conversation.

“I didn’t do a lot of teenage rebelling in high school.” Riley lifted his hands like he was going to straighten his tie again, then lowered them. “Growing my hair to my collar was about as far as I took it.”

“And now that you’re grown, you keep it short,” Maria said approvingly. “I want to hear all about you, but first I need to finish in the kitchen.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Riley probably thought he was being ingratiating. Vin should have warned him not to bother. His mom’s views on some things were liberal, but her opinion of men in the kitchen was downright archaic.

“What? Of course not! Sit, sit.” She gestured at the love seat. “Both of you, sit. I’ll bring food.”

“Not too much, Mom. Not if you want us to eat later.”

She gave Vin a scornful sniff and left without replying, returning at intervals with drinks and snacks until the coffee table was full and Vin’s stomach matching it.

“These are so good,” Riley said around a chile relleno square. Maria didn’t confine herself to cooking Mexican food, but she knew how much Vin enjoyed it when he came home. “Too good. Don’t let me have any more.”

Vin sipped at his ginger ale, sharing the sentiment. Maria would be hurt if they didn’t touch the snacks and offended if they didn’t clear their plates and ask for seconds when it came to the main meal. They were doomed to leaving with uncomfortably full stomachs.

Jon patted his belly. “Won’t hurt either of you to put on a few pounds from some good home cooking.” He nodded at Riley. “Your mom the same when you go home? Feed you like you’ve been starving?”

Riley looked bemused. “Not really,” he replied, choosing his words with obvious care. “She’s sort of on a permanent diet, so she kind of assumes the rest of the world is too. My dad eats out a lot, so he doesn’t care.”

“What does he do?”

“Construction,” Riley said. “Wells Construction. We’re small potatoes nationally, but we’re getting a good reputation in the state, I think.”

“Riley put in a lot of work on the museum renovation,” Vin added, anxious for his dad’s approval. He didn’t want his parents to think of Riley as a freeloader, pulling a salary based on his relationship to the boss. It wouldn’t have been fair. He knew how many hours Riley worked at the office or out on the building sites.

Jon grunted. “Good. Make sure you wear a hard hat. You ever seen—”

To Vin’s relief, the arrival of his older sister Anna interrupted the anticipated horror story.

The bustle as she came in with her two kids, Vin’s nieces Sophia and Ella—the latter swinging from Anna’s arm in her car seat, chubby hands clutching a toy giraffe—was overwhelming. It reminded Vin, not for the first time, how grateful he was to be gay. He loved the girls because they were family, but he couldn’t have honestly said he liked them very much. They were like little alien life-forms. Knowing he’d never get anyone pregnant was comforting.

“Unca Vinnie!” Sophia wrapped her arms around Vin’s knees as soon as he stood. “I’m a princess!”

That was nothing new. “Yeah?”

“See? I have a crown!” It was more like a tiara, cheap rhinestones glittering in what looked like plastic instead of metal. Sophia tossed her head. “Ella isn’t a princess. She’s just a baby.”

“Right.”

Anna set the car seat at her father’s feet, leaned down to kiss him, and said, “Keep an eye on her for a minute? I have to put this in the fridge.” She had a plate covered with foil balanced on her other hand; how she’d opened the front door was a mystery.

“Hi, Vin. This the new boyfriend?”

“New?” Riley widened his eyes at Vin and turned to Jon, who’d taken Ella out of her car seat and was unzipping her snowsuit. “Can I hold her?”

“She doesn’t mean—” Vin gave up on his explanation and sat again. Jon, his expression indulgent, the way it always was around his grandchildren, was telling Riley that Granddad got the first hug from his treasure, but sure, after that, why not.

He handed her over a minute later. “Don’t drop her.”

“I won’t,” Riley assured Jon and settled Ella on his lap, cradled in the curve of his arm so he could coo down at her. “I like babies. They’re not complicated. They want love, food, and a diaper change now and then. That’s all easy. And you’re beautiful, aren’t you, sweetheart? A little angel.”

“She’s teething,” Jon warned him. “If she starts yelling and arching her back, those wings disappear, and it’s like holding an eel.”

Ella’s small face crumpled, the delicate rosebud mouth stretching into an alarmingly wide circle.

“She needs feeding!” Anna called from the kitchen as the first wail hit the air. “Bottle’s in the side pocket of the blue bag, Dad.”

Jon fished it out and handed it over. “See if this works. It might be too cold.”

“No, she likes it,” Riley said, the frantic, greedy sucks the bottle got backing him up. “That’s what it was, huh? You were hungry?”

Watching his boyfriend dissolve to mush was disconcerting. Vin rubbed his thumb over the tattoo on his forearm, tracing the lines over and over and trying not to feel excluded. Babies. They were cute and all, but they didn’t do anything. They were the ultimate in selfishness. Ella wanted feeding, so she cried and got a bottle. Telling her to wait would have been as futile as ordering a cloud to stop raining. And it wasn’t as if things improved once they got older and could talk, because Sophia was just the same.

“I’m sorry,” Riley said, nudging Vin’s knee with his. “I grabbed her, and I bet you’re dying for a cuddle.”

“No, it’s fine. She’s happy with you.” Vin was glad for the ready excuse. “I can hold her anytime.” Not that he wanted to.

Ella was drinking from the bottle and staring up at Riley’s face, eyes wide. She’d dropped her giraffe and was holding on to Riley’s pinky finger instead. Sophia was struggling with the zipper on her little pink backpack; Vin considered offering to help but decided she could handle it. His sister and mom were talking in the kitchen, Anna happy to let her father supervise the children.

“She’s so cute.” Riley wrenched his gaze from Ella’s and glanced at Vin. “She looks like you.”

Vin laughed. “She looks like my grandfather. Same bald head.”

“Maternal or paternal grandfather?” Riley asked absently.

“Paternal,” Vin said.

“Good. That means you’ve got a better chance of keeping your hair.” Riley grinned at him, and Vin, not getting it, smiled back. It was easy to smile back at Riley.

“You see yourself with a family sometime down the road?”

It was a shock to hear the question, another to realize his dad was asking it of Riley.

Who was answering without embarrassment or awkwardness, as if the subject under discussion were as trivial as the game Jon was watching, the outcome already settled.

“Well, sure. Being gay doesn’t rule that out, not these days. You’ve got options like adoption or surrogacy.” Vin didn’t think he’d whimpered with horror, but Riley cleared his throat and shot him a sideways glance, adding, “Not for a long time, though. When I’m thirty or so.”

That was years away, but it still sounded way too close for Vin’s liking.

“Ever think about settling down in a more traditional way?” Jon asked. It took a few seconds for Vin to realize what he was really asking, and by the time he had, Riley was already answering that question too.

“When I was younger,” Riley said. “When I was still pretending I was straight. But I gave up on that a while ago. I wasn’t happy. Even if it was the only way I could have kids, I’d have to go without kids. It wouldn’t be fair to the woman. Or to me.”

Jon nodded. “Best you know who you are. My brother’s gay. He cried like a baby when he told me, and we were in high school at the time. Vin’s sister Celine had a girlfriend too. We’ve known about PFLAG forever.”

Riley seemed a little stunned by all this, even though Vin was sure he’d told him some of it before. Maybe it was different hearing it from the older generation. “Your sister’s gay?”

“Bi,” Vin said. “As far as I know. She’s got a boyfriend now, but in college she had a long-term girlfriend. Um, not Anna—she’s the one in the kitchen.”

“With the husband,” Riley said. “And the ridiculously cute kids.”

Sophia tugged at Vin’s pant leg. “Unca Vin, look at my picture.” She held up a page covered with crayon scribbles.

“Wow. Good job.”

“It’s a fairy with wings.”

“Blue wings,” Riley said, glancing over at it without dislodging the bottle from Ella’s mouth. “Nice.”

Vin could see some blue squiggles, but given that they were floating a good way from what did, he guessed, look vaguely like a figure, he wasn’t sure how Riley had come to that conclusion.

“Sparkly blue wings,” Sophia added with an approving smile directed at Riley.

“You’ve got a place of your own, Vin tells me,” Jon put in. “That’s good. Owning property gives a man roots.”

“It’s an apartment, not a house like this, but it’s good to get on the property ladder young, my dad says.” The self-deprecation sounded genuine, though Vin guessed Riley’s place would sell for three times the price of his parents’ house. “I’ve got a loft over on Princes Terrace.”

Jon’s face hardened, the skin around his mouth bunching into tight lines. “That was developed by that asshole Carter, wasn’t it?”

Riley ducked his head, pretending to adjust the angle of the nearly empty bottle. “Uh, yeah, I think that’s the company behind building it. I just live there.”

“Dad!”

Jon raised his hand in apology. “Sorry, sorry. I get so damn angry when I think about Carter. Him and his arrogant son risking killing you so they could make more millions to go on top of the ones they already have. People like that make me sick.”

“I don’t— It’s just a place to live—” Riley sounded stifled, what little Vin could see of his face flushed red. Ella jerked her head away from the bottle and began to cry, loud and high. Riley swung her up, her head over his shoulder, patting her back until she burped between wails loud enough to derail the conversation.

It wasn’t that Vin didn’t agree with his dad, but why put Riley on the spot? This visit was turning out to be stressful as hell, and he hated that. Coming home should feel as comforting as slipping into a hot bath. This was more like a crab’s final moments in the pot.