Food for Thought (8 page)

Even Emmett managed to smile—especially when George ran over the carpet treatment by the bathroom and ended up running around in circles, trying to wipe off her paws.

“Oh God—poor thing.”

“Serves her right,” Keegan sniffed. “Do you know, she was on the bed the
entire time
we were there?”

Emmett was so shocked he dropped his carpet scrubbing brush on his toe. “My cat
watched
us having
sex
?”

“She
ignored
us having sex, Emmett. It’s two entirely different things.”

Emmett grimaced. “Little perv. At least we put on a good show.”

“Honey, all she was worried about was the pucker of her own ass.” Keegan gave the cabinets a final swipe with his towel. “Are we done here?”

Emmett picked up the scrubber, listened to the second round of laundry from the bedroom whir in the dryer, and nodded. “Yeah. I… I mean, I’m starving.” In fact, his hands were starting to shake from missing breakfast
and
lunch, as well as all of the interesting, calorie-burning things that had happened in between. “But I’ll probably get something on my way out of town.”

“Out of
town
?” Keegan set the broom down and padded into the living room. It was as close as they’d gotten since Emmett’s little cry, and Emmett wanted to reach out and touch him, casually, like they were lovers, and would be for a long time. But he hadn’t earned that yet.

“Yeah. I’ve got to go do something in Chico. I’ll be back tomorrow night—”

“Oh
fuck
that,” Keegan snapped. “All this bullshit, you think I don’t want in on your ‘little errand’?”

Emmett did reach out now, and he rubbed his finger gently on the tip of Keegan’s nose. “Do you know how much I like to hear you laugh?”

“What?” Keegan scowled at him, and Emmett traced the wrinkles in his nose and forehead. A whimsical little smile replaced the scowl, which let Emmett know whatever he was doing was working.

“I like to hear you laugh. See you smile. It’s like… my best thing. And this Chico thing—it’s all heavy emotional bullshit. And it won’t make you smile.”

“Will it let
you
smile? Will it let you and me be a thing?”

Emmett nodded soberly. “I would very much like to be a thing.”

“You mean you’d very much like to
touch
my thing again.”

“Well, that too. But yeah.”

Keegan sniffed disdainfully. “Then sign me up. I am all
for
emotional clarity and bullshit. Who the hell needs beet porridge when there’s trips to Chico!”

Emmett nodded and dropped his hand, but Keegan grabbed it on its way down. “Here. I’ll make us some sandwiches, you go pack a travel bag for us. Just… you know. Pack me stuff I don’t hate. And make sure we get a toothbrush.”

“But… but
Kee
—you live right next door. Why don’t you just go and get—”

“No,” Keegan said grimly. “Nope nope nope. Do you really think, after eating my heart out for a
year
, that I’d be willing to let you out of my sight
now
, right when we’re about to cut through the crap?”

Emmett felt a reluctant smile tugging at his lips. “Would you really have broken up with your boyfriend via text? For
me
?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?” Keegan squeezed his hand.

“Because,” Emmett said, wishing he could do more than gesture. “I’m… I’m
ordinary
. And sad. And… I mean, c’mon. Guy crying in his underwear—that doesn’t say pathetic to you?”

Keegan shook his head and brought Emmett’s knuckles to his lips for a brief kiss. “You know, until just this minute, I don’t think I could put my finger on why you, but I’ve got it now.”

“What? Why me?”

“Because, when your girlfriend comes crashing in on us
having sex
—which, by the way, has never actually happened to me before—you know what the first thing you did was?”

“Wish I was dead?”

“Shut up,” Keegan snapped. “No. It was protect
me
. Because you were crying in your underwear, heartbroken, and you offered me coffee, and invited me to your table. Because you fed your worthless feline before you sat down to cookies. Because even when you were apparently celibately two-timing your girlfriend, you went out of your way to be nice to both of us. Who can do that? I don’t even hate her. That’s the power
you
, Emmett. She walked out of here not hating you—she probably considers you two
friends
. Because you’re just that decent, and I’ll put actual money—which I don’t have!—down on the fact that today, you and me in bed, was probably the worst thing you’ve ever done.”

“And the best,” Emmett said, because he couldn’t deny it.

Keegan nodded. “See? Even when you probably feel like shit about it, you’re not going to let me feel like that. So yeah. I would have broken up with my worthless ex for you in a second. I’m going to follow you to Chico now. But first go pack your bags and let me make sandwiches. God, you’re white as a fucking ghost.”

Emmett released Keegan’s hand and went to take his cleaning supplies to tuck under the sink. On his way he said, “Are ghosts doing that now? I really thought all of their ghostly… uhm… hard things were soft.”

“Ha-ha!” Keegan fake laughed. “Look who’s all punny all of a sudden. Now
scoot
!”

A
N
HOUR
later—after putting the last load of laundry in the drier and leaving extra food and water for George—they were on their way. Emmett had to stop for gas, and for more food, because, well, he had to catch up, but eventually they were on their way, the sun trying to cook them dead through the windshield in a molten blast of gold light.

They were probably halfway there when Keegan asked the hard question.

“So,” he said after a slurp of soda, “are you ever going to tell me? I mean, something broke your heart.”

Emmett sighed and wished this road had more curves, but it was pretty much a straight shot, the whole two-hour drive. It helped that the highway was pretty busy, but, well, scenery there was not.

“Jordyn was my college roommate,” he said after a minute. “Freshman and sophomore year. We… we clicked. Played Frisbee, played football, saw movies. For our first year, we just… got really, really close. I… I sort of knew I was gay by then. I mean, I’d recovered from my crush on Vinnie, which, yeah, once you meet him you’ll know—you sort of have to have a crush on Vinnie, it’s a requirement—but Jordyn was my first crush that really… you know. Seemed like it was going somewhere. So, one night—”

“After a few beers…,” Keegan quipped.

Emmett pursed his mouth and shook his head.

“No. We were both stone cold sober. But I was reading some… well, fan fiction, really—”

“
Avengers
?”

“Spork—it was before
Avengers
came out and after the new
Star Trek
. But it was really dirty, and I was getting hard, and suddenly, well, Jordyn was there with his hand down my pants, and….” There
was
no forgetting your first time. Jordyn’s gray eyes intent on Emmett’s, the almost aggressive way he’d stroked Emmett off, and the fear and the need that had driven him to move his lean mouth closer and closer….

They’d kissed as Emmett came, and they’d spent the rest of their night not talking, just doing as many of the things Emmett had read about as possible.

And the next night they’d done more.

“By the end of the year, we were….” Emmett shook his head. “We were inseparable. We were necking in every corner of the campus, we’d both looked into joining the GSA during rush the next year, we held hands across the quad—I mean we were—”

“Married!” Keegan said in horror.

Emmett shrugged. “Yeah. Married. And he was going to go home and tell his parents, and text me, and I was going to tell my dad.”

“And….”

Emmett glanced at Keegan, feet propped up against the dashboard, seat tilted back so his face was out of the sun. Keegan, who seemed to enjoy being gay, and who put up with the family disapproval and who was absolutely square with Emmett every day of the year.

“And the text never came. So I texted him. And he said, ‘Just forget it. I’ll see you in September.’”

Keegan straightened up and clicked his seat forward. “Just forget it?
Just forget it
? You were going to come out and be together and
just forget it
?”

Emmett shrugged. “That’s not really the worst part.”

Keegan whooshed out a breath. “God. I need to get ice cream. I need some motherfucking ice cream for this. Can we stop and get ice cream? Cookies?
Raw processed sugar.
I need to hit something.”

Emmett reached out and grabbed his hand. “There’s a Wendy’s at the next stop. We can get a Frosty.”

“Fair enough,” Keegan sulked. “What’s the worst part?”

“The worst part was that when I got back to school, Jordyn had changed our room assignment so we both had different roommates and—”

“Just like
that
?”

Emmett laughed a little. It was vindicating, somehow, to hear Keegan getting so angry at what Emmett had tried to convince himself was all just natural, the course of things.

“Just like that,” he confirmed, keeping his voice as light as he could. “And he accidentally took some of my books. So I tracked him down and knocked on his door.”

“And?” Keegan asked.

Emmett realized that the hand holding Keegan’s had grown clammy.

“And he was alone. He let me in, and started telling me how it was okay to fool around when you’re kids, but we were both going to graduate in two years and we needed to grow up. And the thing was, he was crying—just out and out crying when he said it. It was like he was reciting someone else’s words. So I hugged him, and he fell apart on me, but he just kept talking. And I guess he
did
tell his family, and they told him… it was a phase. And then they introduced him to a family friend and….”

“Oh God.”

Emmett wanted to shrug. Kid’s stuff, right? First crush, you forgot about it, right?

I thought we were married.

“Yeah.” He grimaced. Hell. “Remember how you said you’d never been walked in on by a girlfriend before?”

“Jesus.”

“I
wish
Jesus had walked in.
He
was supposed to be very gay friendly. No. Jordyn was crying on me, and…. God. I’d just missed him. And you know—right out of the movies. He looked at me, all big eyes, and parted lips and….”

“You started fucking like monkeys?”

Emmett had to laugh. “No—but we did start kissing. We were… well
I
was naked, and he was on his knees, and that’s when she walked in.”

From the side of his vision, he saw Keegan pull his hand through his hair. He’d managed to put it into order before they left, but now it was sticking out all over his head, like a porcupine. When he spoke, though, he sounded completely put together.

“God, forget sugar—I need
popcorn
. This right here is a movie moment, you know that?”

“Not so much fun when you were living through it, no.”

Keegan let out a sigh. “You protected me. When Christine walked in, you protected me. Did he do that for you?”

Emmett could see it so clearly. He’d been leaning back on the dorm room bed and Jordyn knelt in front of him, mouth warm and welcoming and greedy. The door opened, and Paula had walked in, Aryan perfection—blonde, blue-eyed, legs up to her chin—the perfect bookend to Jordyn’s blond, American-boy good looks.

“Jordyn?” Unlike Christine, Paula didn’t sound put out, or angry, or even shocked. “Jordyn, I thought you and I agreed—this was kid’s stuff. You know. It’s time for all little boys to grow up.”

Jordyn had melted at the first word, rolled away, huddled on the floor, an absolute misery of shame.

And Emmett had been left, naked and subject to Paula’s scathing gaze.

“You can go now,” she said, dismissing Emmett, his withering erection, and all his hopes for the future in a single glance. “Jordyn isn’t doing this anymore. He’s a big boy now.”

One look at Jordyn, crouching in the corner, looking at her like a whipped puppy, confirmed it, but Emmett hadn’t been going to give up that easy.

“Jordyn? Baby? You… we
loved
each other!”

“Oh come on, Emmett,” Jordyn choked. “You haven’t even told your father!”

Well, there was no arguing with that.

“I will,” he said, meaning it. “We were going to be together—”

Jordyn was clutching his knees, eyes closed, shaking his head, and Emmett was caught completely unaware when Paula threw his own pants at him, catching him in the face.

He managed to zip up and grab his shoes and shirt before he stumbled out of the dorm.

“No,” Emmett said, yanking himself into the present, into squinting through the blinding summer sun through his windshield, into a possible future with a man who had just stayed through the girlfriend visit, and who had helped him clean up his mess. “No. We didn’t protect each other.”

His hand was growing uncomfortable, and he pulled it away from Keegan’s grasp and grabbed his soda from the cup holder so he could take a big swallow. He put it back, keenly aware that Keegan hadn’t stopped looking at him.

“So… so what did you do?”

Emmett gave an almost humorless laugh. “I almost flunked out of school, for one thing. But first I went running home. But not to my dad. My dad and I… we… we didn’t….”

“Talk. I got that.”

“Yeah—but… I mean. He loved me. I
know
he loved me. I just….”

“You needed a mommy?” Keegan asked, not ironically in the least.

Emmett risked a glance at him. In the past year, he’d spoken sparingly of a family that disapproved of him, but not once had Keegan mentioned his mother.