“… so, anyway, if you could just … just call me back. I miss you. Um, bye.”
Ace sighed and disconnected the call.
Erik had silently come in just as Ace was finishing his latest message for Paul. Erik’s face probably reflected his own, he thought — sad eyes, downturned mouth, worry etched into every muscle.
“No word from Paul,” Ace said. “On the plus side, also no word from Tanner. Think he’s given up?”
“He’s been quiet at work lately.” Erik sat next to Ace on the couch. “But then again, I gave him a shitty, complicated assignment to punish him.”
“Such a good friend you are.”
Erik squirmed in his seat.
“He’s not answering any of my calls or returning any of them,” Ace moaned, back on his Paul obsession. “He must absolutely hate me.”
“I doubt that. I’m sure he’s just hurt. We all do stupid things when our heart gets stomped on.”
“But I know I can fix this hurt,” Ace fairly wailed. “It will take exactly two minutes, using small words even. I’m afraid he’s going to cut me out of his life and start over in another Sparks, another back room.”
“You don’t really think that.”
Ace made a face. “Fine. I don’t think that. I worry that. I fret that. All I think about are the worst of the what-ifs. What if he never talks to me again? What if he’s changed his mind about coming out? What if he tells Steven he’s going to try to be straight, just so his brother will talk to him again and he starts fucking some slutty blonde who looks like me but with boobs? And then he gets trapped in a loveless marriage and starts trolling the back room for anonymous blowjobs?”
“Wow, that’s…” Erik said slowly. “That’s not the worst of the what-ifs. That’s the weirdest of them.”
“I can’t help it.” Ace planted his face in his hands. Lola, as the official comforter in residence, twirled around Ace’s feet and meowed up at him. It was almost as if she was saying, ‘Snap out of it.’
“But you know what’s the worst one?” Ace groaned. “The worst of the what-ifs is the one where Paul’s so hurt that he gives in to goddamn Tanner. Who doesn’t mind fucking in a closet because he’s twenty-two and horny and doesn’t give a fuck about anyone else.”
Erik’s face twisted with pain and guilt, but he didn’t respond.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Ace said. “Tell me that’s impossible.”
Erik didn’t respond.
“You can’t, can you?” Ace cried. “Oh, God! Has Tanner said something to you? Is that why Paul won’t call me back?”
“Not exactly.”
“What then?”
“Promise you won’t hate me?” Erik said in a small voice.
“Hate you? How could I hate you? You’re my best fr-” Ace stopped himself. “Wait. Why? Do I have a reason to hate you?”
Erik stood and started pacing. “I might have accidentally let Tanner know about you and Paul.”
Ace blinked. “What? What does that mean, accidentally?”
“It sort of slipped out once.”
“It slipped out,” Ace said flatly. “You told my freelance Web monkey — the little stalker who’s been bugging me for a second ride — about my secret boyfriend? A guy who’s taking tiny baby steps out of the closet and you told a 22-year-old perpetually horny fag about him?!”
“Remember that time when I said don’t hate me?” Erik whispered.
Ace gaped at his best friend for a long moment while Erik squirmed.
“Why,” Ace said finally. “Why would you ever –”
“I missed you, okay?” Erik interrupted. “You were off with your hot secret boyfriend having hot chiropractor sex and I was back to staring at my own walls on Sundays.”
“So, you did this to get back at me?”
“No!” Erik barked, frustrated. “Just let me try to explain this. I don’t have many non-Richard-related guy friends in this town. Just you, actually. My social life ended when I broke it off with Richard. So for months and months, it’s been you and me on Sundays, working on your beautiful cocoon here, protecting ourselves from getting hurt again.”
“Hey,” Ace protested, “you never had to-”
“Let me finish!” Erik sighed deeply. “It’s been great. Wonderful, really. Just you and me. I can’t tell you how much I looked forward to every Sunday. And then it disappeared.” He ran his hands over his face. “I was losing you to a guy who was still in the closet, just like your last asshole boyfriend, the man I’ve been verbally ripping apart with you for a year, and I had no one to talk to about how it was killing me.”
“You sound jealous.”
Erik ducked his head. “I guess I do.”
Ace wasn’t sure how to process that. So he did what he always did: ignored the stickier friend-or-lover issue and focused on his anger.
“So you told all this to Tanner, of all fucking people?” Ace growled.
“I didn’t seek him out or anything! He kept asking questions about you. I don’t know, I thought maybe if he knew about Paul, he’d back off. Like I –”
Erik stopped himself, but Ace knew how that sentence was going to end.
“I didn’t know he was going to –” Erik broke off again. “I’m really sorry, Ace.”
Ace squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head. “I can’t talk to you right now.”
Erik nodded and silently walked out the door, leaving Ace to process everything. Ace reached for Lola, but the comfort ambassador immediately sauntered out the kitty door in the kitchen.
Ace poured himself an unnecessarily tall glass of Jameson and took a long, burning pull from it.
It felt like everything was unraveling this week. The last time he’d felt this way, he’d quit his job and moved to Kansas. A brand-new thirty-year mortgage kept him from thinking seriously about doing that again.
Stupid mortgage.
But it was more than that. It wasn’t just a whim that made him plant roots in Lawrence; he wanted those roots. Craved them. Needed them to help derail his usual pattern. His whole life, every time things got weird or awkward or painful for him, he ran. Every time.
He couldn’t do that this time. Didn’t want to, either. Not really.
So, running was off the table. The only option left was to clean up the mess his life had become. Starting with Erik.
A second gulp of whiskey went down a little easier than the first.
It was easy to blame Erik at this moment, but it didn’t solve anything. Though it was comforting to have someone to blame other than himself.
At this point, Ace knew two things: He needed Erik in his life, and he needed Paul to forgive him.
The real question was: could he keep Erik as a friend — and keep Paul as a lover? Without hurting his best friend?
Time to find out.
Ace went outside to head for Erik’s place and found him on the porch swing with Lola curled on his lap.
“Well?” Erik said in a low, sad voice.
Ace sat down next to Erik and pushed them both in a slow swing. “I’m still kind of pissed, but I’m still here,” he said finally.