Drawn Together (32 page)

He’d been raised by a single mother whose only value to his father was her beauty. He’d scorned emotional attachment and sentimentality as a construct of weaker and less sophisticated people. People like Amelia, who were driven mad by that kind of nonsense.

Now Yamane had a notion of what it was like to live as part of a family, and though it had never seemed important before, he was beginning to long for it acutely. He wondered what it would be like to know that someone was always there for him, like Euphonia, who had some second sight and walked serenely to the porch long before there was any indication that Rory would be coming up the drive.

Yamane’s cab dropped him off at New York Palace Hotel, where the impeccable staff immediately saw to his luggage. He went through the process of registration in hushed tones, awed by the rich and unspeakably elegant hotel entrance. Later, gazing at the beautifully appointed guest room, Yamane remembered some positively awful rooms he’d stayed in with Rory. He hung up his clothes and took his toiletries to the glistening marble bath. He’d grown up in luxury, attended a posh private high school, lived an elegant and understated life in his mother’s traditional Japanese-style country home, but right now, he wished he were sitting on a blanket in front of a campfire with Rory. Yamane didn’t bother removing 196

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his clothes, but smoked a cigarette and stared at the amazing view from his hotel room window. Later, he fell asleep in the chair.

He woke up disoriented when his cell phone rang. “I’m here,” he said. “Hai, moshi-moshi, Ran desu,” he added, wondering if it was his agent.

“Rory to moushimasuga, Ran-sensei wo onegaishimasu,” said Rory.

“What the hell, Rory? Where’d you learn to speak Japanese?”

“Internet,” said Rory. “But that’s all I know so far. As you probably know, I have a facility with foreign tongues. You promised you’d call.” Yamane relaxed against the chair, loving the sound of Rory’s thick accent in his ear.

“Gomen-nasai,” he said, “I’m sorry. I fell asleep. What time is it?”

“Here in Louisiana, it’s time for a little something we like to call phone sex,” said Rory, purring into the phone. “Would you like to know what I’m wearing?” Yamane lit a cigarette, hoping the telltale snick couldn’t be heard. “Yes,” he answered, loving this irrepressible boy/man more than ever. “Tell me.”

“I heard that. You’re supposed to quit.”

“Okay, I’ll quit.” Yamane leaned back and took a shameless drag off his cigarette. “Now tell me. Use that nasty southern accent of yours to tell me what you’re wearing, Rory.”

“Well, I’m wearing big, floppy shoes that are so long I can hardly walk, and they make a slapping sound,” Rory began, his voice a lifeline to Yamane. “And baggy polka-dotted pants, held up by thick…soft…and fuzzy red suspenders…” Drawn Together

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Chapter Thirtythree

Rory looked around at the students assembling in his first-ever class as a teaching assistant. He took his notes and the textbook out of his messenger bag and used a black dry-erase marker to write his name on the whiteboard. This was a simple foreign language class for first-year French students, the most basic class in the department except conversational French. He was glad to teach this one, and always thought he’d be good at it because teaching solely in French to students who didn’t know the language yet required a great deal of mime and exaggerated hand gestures, and he liked to clown around. He blushed, thinking of his obscene clown call to Yamane. Rory cleared his throat and busied himself with papers.

Several students arrived just as the bell rang, and Rory began class, handing out three-by-five cards to each row to be passed back until everyone had one. He began speaking, hearing a groan or two from the back when they realized he would be using only French, and began to describe what each student should be writing on his or her card.

“Première,” he said, writing the numeral “1” down on the board, “votre nom et prénom.” He wrote “last name, first name” on the board and pointed to each one, using the French term for it until he thought the students would know what to write on their cards.

“Bon. Alors, votre adresse et numéro de telephone,” he added, for lines two and three, and went over those again in French, pointing to the English equivalents as he wrote the next item on the board. A ripple of sound washed over him that had nothing to do with the French words for telephone number and address, so he turned to see what had caused such a stir. He looked up to see Yamane walking regally to the front of the class in one of his little black coats, his long hair loose and his sunglasses perched on the tip of his nose. Rory tried to hide his reaction as Yamane sauntered to the teacher’s desk, then placed the largest, shiniest red apple Rory had ever seen on it.

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“Priez de vous m’excuser,” Yamane said. “Continuez.” He sat down in the third row, and one of the students handed him a card.

It was a contest to see who was more disturbed by Yamane’s appearance in his class, Rory or his students. They had clearly never seen anything like Yamane in their lives.

Leaving aside his physical beauty, he had a way of sitting and just swinging his foot that called the attention of every person in the room. At one point, one of his shoes balanced precariously on the end of his toes, and the entire class seemed spellbound by it, breathlessly waiting for it to fall, which it did. Yamane slipped it back on, to the satisfied sigh of the people around him, looking just a little flustered to be the center of so much attention.

The little shit, thought Rory, smiling to himself.

By the end of the class period, Rory, satisfied that each of his students knew his or her name and how to say it in French along with a smattering of other nouns, said à bientôt to his class and started packing things up to leave. Those students who had petitions for him to sign waited patiently for their turn as he spoke to each one individually. Finally, he was left in the room with his unrepentant third-row troublemaker, and a few students who watched curiously to see what would happen between them.

“I’d kiss you senseless in front of all these leering teenagers,” said Rory under his breath, “but you don’t deserve it. Why didn’t you tell me you were in town? I’d have picked you up from the airport.” He and Yamane ambled out into the warm late summer day and walked together.

“I didn’t know I’d be here this soon,” said Yamane. “But things happened faster than I thought in New York and I had a break, so here I am.”

“I’m delighted.” Rory hugged him and threw an arm around his shoulder. “Daiki will be thrilled; he’s missed you.”

“Right, the dog missed me,” said Yamane. “I’ve got some shopping to do, but I wanted to know what time you finish up here; I thought maybe we could go somewhere for dinner or something.”

“You have to see my apartment,” said Rory. “It’s awful, but it takes dogs. How about I make dinner? I’ll call you at, say, five? Then I’ll pick up Daiki and meet you wherever you are, okay?”

“Sure,” said Yamane. “I’ll be waiting.” Rory walked Yamane to the visitor parking lot and waited while he got into his rental car. Yamane waved brightly as he drove away.

* * * * *

Rory spent the rest of the day in happy anticipation. A surprise visit from Yamane seemed too good to be true. He had eaten that enormous apple at lunchtime, laughing as he remembered the dazed looks his students gave him when he and Yamane had left together.

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He worried that his apartment, so much poorer than what Yamane was used to, would be a big letdown, and decided that if he knew Yamane was coming in the future he might rent a room in one of the nicer hotels. With a little planning, he could leave Daiki with his grandmère.

Above all, he wanted Yamane to want to come back, and not to dread the inconvenience of the unattractive apartment he would endure when he visited. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of that before. Poor motels were a fact of the road, but having nothing better to offer Yamane in his home made him feel kind of sad.

By the time he called Yamane, he had worked himself into such a state of nerves that Yamane had trouble understanding him.

“Rory, what are you saying? Aren’t you going to pick up Daiki and fix us some dinner?

Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes, but I thought, since you’re visiting, maybe we should leave Daiki with Mrs.

Stephens, who is watching him, and go to a hotel or something, you know. Nicer than my place.”

“Nicer? What’s wrong with your place?” Yamane sounded tired. “Why leave Daiki with someone else?”

“My place is a total dive,” admitted Rory. “I didn’t think about it till you left. You’ll hate it. I’ll feel bad bringing you there.”

“Are my lover and my puppy going to be there?”

“Yeah,” said Rory, “but --”

“No buts; I want you to meet me at this address.” He gave Rory an address in east Baton Rouge. “I’ll be waiting. Bring my dog, or don’t bother coming.”

“Your dog!” Rory said, but Yamane had already hung up. “His dog,” he added, to no one in particular.

Rory went to the department offices to MapQuest the address Yamane had given him, wondering what the heck Yamane was doing way out there. He printed the page and went to get his truck, the long walk easing the tension in his shoulders a little. Sooner or later, Rory was afraid Yamane would get his fill of his pedestrian life. It might begin with his apartment or his job, thought Rory, but would include his summers working at the Ragin’ Cajun and his grandparents’ manufactured home. He might even meet Rory’s mother and stepfather and decide that it was fun to visit Rory’s world, but he wouldn’t want to live there. All those things were fine in a knight but spelled doom for any kind of wannabe prince.

As a scholar of tales of knighthood and the chivalric code, Rory knew better than anyone that a true knight could only love his princess from afar. For the knight who dared to touch his princess, there could only be tragedy and despair.

Rory got into his truck and got on the road, first picking up a grateful Daiki from the home of his even-more-grateful puppysitter, Mrs. Stephens.

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“You’re lucky she’s so patient,” he told Daiki when they were driving. “Wait till I tell your mom.” He wondered what Yamane would think of motherhood but decided he never wanted to find out. He drove his truck for a while, with Daiki sticking his nose out the window, using the MapQuest page as his guide until he came to a large house with a U-shaped driveway.

Rory’s first impression was that it was simply a mistake; he must have ended up at the wrong place accidentally. He took out the map and got his phone out of the pocket of his blazer when Yamane opened the front door and came out to greet him.

“Hi.” Yamane’s hair blew around in the breeze. “You found it.”

“I didn’t think you were here at first; I didn’t see your rental car.”

“The realtor dropped me off,” said Yamane.

“What?”

“I said the realtor dropped me off. She brought me here so I could see it before I signed a lease.” He waited for Rory to understand.

“You’re going to live here?” asked Rory stupidly. “In Baton Rouge?”

“Yes. It turns out my talent goes with me wherever I go. I don’t have to give up my work when I move.”

“Yamane?”

“Princess Celendrianna is complete in Japanese. It hasn’t been translated yet, but it’s finished… My art book is selling well, and I have this gallery opening. If I wanted to, I could retire now. I could have retired after the Snoggs if I’d wanted. I love my work, but I love you too, and I can do my work anywhere.”

“I don’t understand.” At that moment Daiki made his presence known by whining and scratching in the window of the truck. Rory unlocked the cab. Daiki jumped straight into Yamane’s arms.

“What’s not to understand? You are my home. I can only be home wherever you are.

You’re in Baton Rouge, so I rented this house. When you decide where you want to work, we’ll buy a house together. If you want.” Yamane swallowed. “Was I wrong to think this way?” asked Yamane in almost a whisper. “Was I mistaken?”

“Oh, hell no, cher.” Rory was immediately contrite. He pulled Yamane to him in a dog-crushing embrace and kissed him like he meant it. “There goes the neighborhood.” He grinned ruefully, looking around. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” said Yamane. “I want to pick curtains and go to the washer/dryer place with you.”

“As if you’d ever put your clothes in a coin-operated machine.” Yamane started to say something, but Daiki jumped from his arms to the flower bed.

“Oh, no! Daiki!”

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Rory looked around him, then at Yamane and Daiki. “I was so embarrassed for you to see my apartment. I was worried all the way here.”

“Why? I’m sure it’s fine. Well…for tonight.”

Rory laughed. “Show me around, cher.”

Rory declared the whole house a no-smoking zone. Yamane tossed his cigarettes into the outside trash and left his lighter by the fireplace.

“We can stop on the way to my place and get you a nicotine patch so you don’t get us killed while you’re quitting. I’ve seen how you get.” Rory nuzzled Yamane’s neck and watched Daiki roll on the grass. Rory sighed. “I can’t believe it.”

“What?”

“I would’ve taken whatever you had to offer me, be it a week or a day or an hour. I would have taken scraps, and you’ve given me everything. I just don’t… It’s not what I expected.” Rory’s voice broke a little. He held Yamane as though he couldn’t get enough, and truly, he couldn’t.

Yamane embraced him just as tightly. “You’re not just my knight; you’re my prince.

You’re my hero. When I look at you I see all the beauty the world has to offer wrapped up in you like a gift. I know it’s stupid.” Yamane turned away, but Rory caught him and turned him back. “You’ve taken all the sharp edges off of me.” He saw Daiki nudge his paws under an ornamental cabbage and shrieked, “Daiki!” He tore off after the dog.

“Whoa. Yeah, no sharp edges there anymore.” Rory shook his head to get his hearing back.