Beta Test (#gaymers) (23 page)

But he was also a guy who slept alone and ate dinner alone all week and who for the first time resented the hell out of that. And he was a guy who was packing to head to Pasadena for the weekend. A guy who was about to lose what few office friends he had when they saw him standing next to his mother on the podium. And okay, maybe Adrian and Noah and nice guys like that would still talk to him, but things
would
change.

Things
had
changed. He had changed. He wasn’t the same guy he’d been a month ago, that much was certain. But at the same time, he had to force himself to fit into his old mold.

“You sure? Because if you need me to talk to him or run interference—”

“I don’t.” There was plenty of interference already, all Ravi’s fears coming to fruition, and Tristan’s own worries about public exposure validated with every well-meaning conversation like this. “And I talk to Ravi.”

He tried to smooth over whatever rumor said that he couldn’t even be in the same room as Ravi. Not that that wasn’t true, but when they had to talk about a work-related thing, they talked. And it was stilted and awkward as hell, but they weren’t being childish and sending messages via other people or anything like that. And honestly, being professional sucked even worse than a tantrum would have felt. Every time he had to look at Ravi was like little knives to his gut, little reminders of the moments they’d shared, of what might have been.

* * *

An hour later, he had one of those unavoidable encounters with Ravi when Robert emailed him asking that he follow up on some art Ravi was supposed to be working on for brochures going out in the swag packs for their high-level backers.

He knew from months of experience that walking over to Ravi’s cube would get a far faster response than email, but he still procrastinated far longer than he should have, color coding a list of action items and straightening his cube before slowly dragging his heavy feet over to the art department.

“Robert sent me,” he said as soon as Ravi looked up, dozens of questions in his eyes, most of them things Tristan couldn’t even begin to answer.

“Oh, okay. What can I do for you?” Gaze drifting away, Ravi rearranged the Funko
Star Wars
figurines that he’d picked up in Seattle. Memories of wandering around the convention together assaulted Tristan.

I
miss your laugh.
I
miss the way you smell.
Please let us start over
,
go back to when finding cool stuff together was the highlight of my day.
But, of course, he didn’t say any of that. “I need the art for the backer brochures soon. Robert says you’re working on some new conceptual drawings we can include?”

“Yeah. I’m still polishing, but I can email you the finals later. Do you have a list of what all you need?” Ravi held out a hand like he knew Tristan that well.

“Yes.” Tristan handed him the list of action items.

“Wow. Purple
and
yellow. Tris, I’m impressed.” Ravi smiled at him, but Tristan wasn’t sure how to respond to the gentle tease and looked away.

Ravi sighed heavily, then lowered his voice. “This isn’t going to work, is it?”

“What isn’t?” Tristan swiveled his attention back to Ravi, who was rubbing his temples.

“Us. Working together.”

Tristan kept his voice barely above a whisper. “I have tried hard to be civil—”

“We’re both trying. And it’s still hard. This is going to be just like my old job. Damn it, I did
not
want to have to leave.” Ravi rocked back in his office chair.

Tristan hadn’t had a lot of anger toward Ravi until right at that moment. Frustration and hurt in spades, yes, but not anger. But all of a sudden, a giant breaker wave of anger crashed over him. “Now who’s lumping people in with ex-boyfriends? I’m not going to make you leave.
You
are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s what you do. You leave when things get hard—you left New Jersey, left your family, switched schools, left your last job. You’d rather leave than be uncomfortable.”

Ravi’s eyes narrowed to dark slits. “Anyone would want to avoid awkward situations. I mean not you because you’re Saint Tristan, but most people take a clue and avoid going where they’re not wanted.”

“Whatever. But you’re not blaming me for costing you this job. If anyone’s leaving it’s going to be me.” It was hard to be strident in a whisper, but Tristan was doing his damnedest.

“What?”

“Not
happily
, but my mom is already making noises about me needing a different job, and it’s probably not going to be that comfortable here anyway—”

“
Tris.
You’d let them take this job from you? You love working here. And you’re amazing at it.”

“Thanks.” Tristan’s throat turned to sandpaper. His sinuses started burning, and he had to blink. Back when they were friends, Ravi had complimented him a lot, but somehow this meant a thousand times more because he couldn’t be lying. “I...need to go.”

Even his words sounded scratchy to his ears, barely escaping, just like him, who barely made it to the restroom before he lost his composure entirely, breathing hard, stupid moisture escaping the corners of his eyes. He went to loosen his tie, then realized he wasn’t wearing one and all the suffocating feelings were of his own doing.

* * *

“Ravi. You aren’t listening to me.” Avani tossed the long curtain of her black hair over one shoulder. It landed in perfectly straightened, gleaming sheets. Everything Ravi knew about hair products and tools, he’d learned watching Avani. But right now he was too wrung out to take notes as she finished primping for their dinner. As usual, she hadn’t been ready when he’d arrived at her Silver Lake condo.

“Sorry.” Ravi shook his head, trying in vain to shake loose some of the mud of the past few days clogging up his brain.

“I asked if Flore was good or if you want to try something new?”

“Flore’s fine.” The vegan restaurant was walking distance from Avani’s condo, and they’d been there enough that he could pretty much order in his sleep. He didn’t have nearly the brainpower to work up an opinion on someplace new.

“What’s bugging you?” She grabbed her large quilted leather purse, keys and sunglasses despite the late hour. “You’re always the one teasing me about my loyalty to Flore and wanting to branch out.”

“Nothing’s bothering me.” He followed her down the stairs. Her towering heels put them at the same height as they made the short trek from her building over to Sunset.

“Liar.”

This section of Sunset was all older businesses and smaller eateries. Avani had moved into the neighborhood after law school to be close to her Hollywood job, but she and Balan were in the process of purchasing a larger place in Malibu more fitting their flashy image.

“Why did you come to LA?” he asked, spilling out part of what he’d been mulling over since his argument with Tristan earlier. She’d gone to law school back East, so he’d already been out here half a decade when she arrived.

“Because I knew from when I was a baby girl on that I was going to Hollywood. Of course, back then, I also planned on being a princess.”

“And now you’re a shark.” He laughed. “Princess shark. So you would have come even if I hadn’t been out here?”

She stopped a few feet from Flore and turned. “You being out here helped, sure, but I wanted to go into entertainment law for
years
, and this is the epicenter for it. And I have to admit, the distance from Mummy and Dadi didn’t hurt any. You were totally smart to run away west.”

Run away.
That’s what you do.
“I didn’t run away,” he protested. “I just went with my top pick college—”

“You totally ran.” She patted his cheek. “And I love you for it. But that’s part of what I’ve been trying to talk to you about for
weeks.
I get why you left the family behind, but I need you to make an effort.”

“You know I love you and I want to be at your wedding. I do. But I can’t go with them all wanting to introduce me to single girls and still refusing to believe me that I’m gay.”

“You’re focusing on the wrong things.” She strode into Flore and had secured them a booth along the rear wall before he caught up to her.

“The wrong things? Other than you,
everyone
wants to fix me up.”

“That’s what I mean. You’re focusing on Mummy and Dadi.
Again
.” She patiently set her menu aside. She always ordered the exact same thing anyway. “We’ve got two hundred and fifty other guests coming. Far more of the family is...tolerant than you might think. It’s really just Mummy and Dadi who are the big issue. I want you back in the family, Ravi. And I’m not alone in that.”

“So I come and what...hope for the best?”

“Yes.” She nodded with a superior smile. “Because you have me and Balan and other people in your corner.”

The purple-haired waitress came by to collect their orders. She had Avani’s order down before she spoke, and Ravi made things simpler by just ordering the special. Whatever it was, it wasn’t like he’d taste it anyway. All week, food had turned to sawdust as soon as it hit his mouth, and he wasn’t even that hungry either despite skipping lunch.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked as the waitress left. “I’m not talking about strong-arming me into coming. I mean, why have the traditional wedding in the first place? This isn’t really
you
any more than it’s me.” He finally voiced something that had troubled him for the last year as he traced the condensation on his water glass.

“Because I love Balan,” she said simply. “And Balan loves his family, his mother especially. He wants to have the big wedding for her. He’s an only child. This is what he wants.”

“So what, love means giving in?” Ravi’s voice had all the bitterness of the past week.

Sighing heavily, Avani signaled the waitress back over and ordered some sort of fresh juice concoction before returning her attention to Ravi. “No, love means not forcing the person who means the world to you to choose between their family and you. And really, is it that much to ask? A few days for a lifetime with the man I love?”

Her words felt like a poke from a sharp spear, not an idle declaration about her fiancé.
Whoa.
I’ve been so damn selfish.
He nodded reflexively. “You really do love Balan, don’t you?”

“Of course. He gives me a space where I can be myself. And I get to give him the same gift—the place where he doesn’t have to be the perfect son or the bigshot doctor. We...” She paused as her juice and their food arrived. “It’s...different when you’re in love. You’ll see some day.”

I
already do.
He hadn’t wanted Tristan to choose him over his family—he’d wanted Tristan to choose himself. But in urging him, he’d sent the wrong message. Avani hadn’t rejected Balan because he brought demanding future in-laws to the table. Ravi shouldn’t act like Tristan’s family situation made him less attractive—not when they’d bonded so strongly over crappy family in the first place.

“What?” Avani regarded him like he was an errant piece of kelp.

“I...I’m not very patient, am I?”

“Nope.” She grinned at him before spearing a piece of salad. She had the same smug smile Ravi was sure many a jury saw from her as she wrapped up her case. “But I love you anyway.”

I
love you anyway.
That was where he’d gone wrong.

“I...I’ll think about the wedding. Okay?” All of sudden the world seemed less like a stark black-and-white ink drawing and more a subtle pastel watercolor of endless muted shades. One where he was no longer sure of the right course of action in any arena—not work, not the wedding and not Tristan.

Later on his drive home, Ravi wasn’t any more certain about what to do. Maybe he wasn’t very patient or understanding, not like Avani was, but damn it, he wanted to be for Tristan. And he thought he’d made that clear at the LAN party, but maybe he’d been focused a bit too much on what Tristan could do for him. And maybe Avani was right and he
did
tend to run away.

Not this time
. Time to figure out what he could offer Tristan, scary as the prospect was.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Whenever Tristan made the drive from Santa Monica to Pasadena, he liked to take the longer route that avoided downtown traffic and let him stop in Glendale to see Maria at her retirement home. The large bustling complex full of retirees totally suited the always-active Maria. He found her out in the gardens. She’d never complained about her rooms in his family’s Newport Beach home, but she used to ask permission to do gardening projects with him and Derek, and thanks to her they’d had far more fresh produce than any of their neighbors. She’d been recently divorced with two college-age kids when she started working for his parents, and now she was well settled into the sort of retirement lifestyle Tristan dearly wished his parents would adopt.

And heck, unlike Maria, who lived with her sister and frugally grew her own vegetables and herbs, his parents could afford to travel or spend every day on the golf course if they so chose. But no, his mother had goals and plans, and her driven nature wasn’t retiring anywhere. Thus Tristan had his tux in the car for the fundraiser right next to a pile of doubts and regrets. The latter had made him stop at the bakery in Santa Monica for some of the lemon poppy-seed muffins Maria liked.

“Tristan!” She slowly walked over to give him a hug.

“Bad arthritis day?” he asked, noticing how gingerly she moved.

“Oh it’s a day. Some are better than others.” Maria wasn’t one to dwell on her limitations. She accepted the bakery bag from him with a smile. “You’ll share one with me, won’t you,
jan
?”

“Of course. And there’s one for Lilit too.” He waved hello to the quieter sister who hung back with the roses and didn’t follow them to one of the patio tables.

“I will bring some tea,” Lilit called to Maria. Her Armenian accent was more pronounced than Maria’s.