Nothing but Smoke (Fire and Rain) (8 page)

Maybe if Mark had seen not everyone would judge him for being gay…

No.
Michael had to get that out of his mind before he went into the kind of tailspin that had him on antidepressants the better part of his sophomore year.

“I need to go.” Michael had a few things to do that afternoon, and desperately wanted a jog to clear his mind.

“Well, come around next week. The pole beans are just about ready to harvest.”

Michael made it to the door where Henri was lazily picking flowers off a twig of thyme.

“You ready?” Henri tossed the bare stem into a bush.

“Yeah.” Michael couldn’t bring himself to wave to his mom as he left, so he let Henri say goodbye for the both of them. He was being a brat, considering she’d just given him food, but he couldn’t get over her little barb about him sneaking around.

Anyway, going to parks wasn’t sneaking. Neither was hanging around the third-floor bathroom in the sociology building. Certainly, seeing Nicky wasn’t sneaking any more than picking up someone on Grindr. What the hell did his mother want, a phone call every time he was about to put his dick in some guy’s mouth?

His trunk hadn’t opened without a fight since his junior year, so Michael shoved the bags in the backseat and started the car.

“Smells a lot nicer in here now.” Henri’s smile was benign enough, but Michael could tell Henri was struggling not to smirk.

“Whatever. Do you want some squash to take home?” Michael pulled away from the curb, hoping his car didn’t sputter the way it usually did when it first got going. Of course his mom was watching from the yard, waving to them over the fence like he was leaving for college for the first time, not going back to his apartment two miles away.

“The only things I can imagine me and Logan doing with a squash are dirty.” Henri crossed his legs primly.

Michael snorted. Thank goodness his friend had come along for the ride or Michael would have wanted to rip the steering wheel from its stem.

Nicky didn’t have to go to work, so he slept in. Dreams of ginger hair and strong hands blended with the moments he was awake and thinking about Michael, until in the end he gave in to the fantasy and jerked off.

As he lay staring at his ceiling afterwards, he knew he had to come up with some kind of shift in his thinking. He could head to the gym later, burn off some of the stress in his muscles, but with another two days off before his next shift, Nicky would go nuts if he couldn’t figure out what came next with his sex life.

He didn’t want things to stop with Michael. If anything, he wanted things to move faster until the two of them… He didn’t know what to picture. Nicky had never had a girlfriend, so he didn’t know what people did when they were dating. TV made it seem like people went to restaurants and dance clubs and movies, but Nicky didn’t know if gay guys did the same kinds of things.

After pushing out of bed, he made his way downstairs and to the bathroom. A man’s voice, Father MacKenzie’s, carried from the living room, along with the lighter tones of his mom.

Nicky hoped the good Father wasn’t tipping up her coffee with anything. Day drinking with a friend was the right of any person who’d been through as much as his mother, but it couldn’t have been nine a.m. This time in the morning, she was often still nauseous from her antibiotics and painkillers from the night before.

His own face stared back at him as Nicky brushed his teeth. He looked like his dad, or the way his dad had looked in the pictures his mom still had.

Nicolas Senior had seemed like a ghost in the house, coming and going on tours overseas. Until one day his mom got a phone call saying he’d died in a Jeep accident.

His father hadn’t had Nicky’s eyes, though. Not with the roundness and tilt that Nicky had always worried gave him away.

After spitting his toothpaste in the sink and washing the stubble off his razor, he thought about what to say to his clean-shaven self. His mom and Father MacKenzie were talking. They wouldn’t hear. It would just be his ears, and God’s. As far as Nicky could tell, if God had wanted to strike him down, he would have done so already.

“I’m…” He’d meant to say “bi”, but the syllable hung on his lips. That was the kind of half-lie he might have been willing to settle for when he was younger, if he’d had the guts to walk this road when he was still in high school.

“I’m gay.” The words felt foreign enough that he cocked his head at his reflection, wondering if the guy in the mirror was any different from the one who’d faced him the previous morning.

“Yeah.” He scrubbed his jaw, chuckling. “I am.”

Somehow before this, there’d always been a doubt in his mind, despite all the evidence. Maybe it had been Michael’s dick in Nicky’s mouth that did it, but Nicky didn’t think so. The night before last, he’d felt powerful and desirable, like he was gaining this whole side of himself that had been locked away.

Next to the mirror hung a picture of fields stretched out and leading to a lake—a cheap knockoff of some famous painting Nicky didn’t know the name of. He could see why his mom liked it enough to keep it somewhere they’d both see it every day. The painting was about hope.

“Nicky?” Father MacKenzie called down the hall.

“Yeah?”

“Your mother needs to talk to you about some things.” That sounded ominous enough to set Nicky on edge and make him forget about the shower he’d been about to take.

He grabbed a shirt out of the hamper and pulled it over his head. “I’ll be right there.”

For once, the TV was off. Father MacKenzie sat in a hard-backed chair, his hands folded between his knees.

“Good morning, Nicky.” Father MacKenzie stood. He’d known their family forever, married his parents and baptized Nicky. Though Nicky hadn’t been to weekly mass since he was in high school, he still went to church for Christmas and Easter.

“G’morning, Father.” Nicky ducked his head in respect.

Father MacKenzie held his hand a little longer than Nicky would have expected. His fingers were bony and cool, but the warmth in his face was undeniable. “How are you holding up?”

“Oh, fine.” Nicky pulled his hand away. Those searching eyes saw way more than Nicky wanted. Sure, his buddies at the station knew about his mom’s condition. The home healthcare aides and the nurses and doctors at the hospital knew as well. But Father MacKenzie was the only person he considered like a friend who saw Nicky’s day-to-day life.

“Well, you’re doing a great job around here.” Father MacKenzie nodded at the house. Nicky guessed he meant that the place wasn’t a complete disaster and Nicky and his mother weren’t living in squalor.

Nicky had seen a couple of his friends’ bachelor pads. Dirty dishes and old pizza boxes sat on their coffee tables, and their carpets hadn’t been vacuumed in weeks. Nicky couldn’t imagine his mom living somewhere like that. She’d exhaust herself trying to clean.

“Thanks.” Nicky grabbed a chair from its spot against the wall and pulled it to the opposite side of the couch from where Father MacKenzie was sitting. “So what’s up?” He forced his tone to be light and conversational, even though he could feel tension churning in the room.

“Your mother…” Father MacKenzie started, but his mom reached from her spot on the couch like she’d take his hand.

Father MacKenzie met her halfway so she didn’t have to lean so far.

With her hand linked with the priest’s, his mother turned to him. “Nicky, I think it’s time we talked about my living somewhere else.”

Something clicked in Nicky’s chest, pumping adrenaline through him as hard as if the alarm had just gone off at the station. Trying to keep his voice even, he answered, “You want us to move?” Maybe she wanted them closer to the hospital. They could sell the place and move into an apartment, though Nicky wondered if the stress of seeing all her belongings packed in boxes might be too much for her.

“Nicky.” Her eyes sparkled as she teased him. She must have taken a pain pill pretty recently, because her smile was more relaxed than he’d seen from her since she came back from the hospital. “You know what I’m talking about. It’s time we started talking about residential care.”

So fast he got a crick in his neck, Nicky twisted his gaze away. A statue sat on top of the television—Virgin Mary nested in a couple of doors that opened on hinges. Most of his mom’s artwork was tasteful, but the background on this statue was gold and the folds of Mary’s robe hung in bright shades of pink and blue that Nicky was fairly certain hadn’t existed in the ancient textile industry. The baby in her arms had curly hair.

Nick wiped a hand across his eyes.

“You’ve been better, though.” Nicky couldn’t drag his attention away from his mom’s menagerie on top of the TV set. When he was little, his grandma had visited and told him the name of every one of those saints. She’d passed when he was in high school, and Nicky wished so badly now that he’d paid attention enough to remember.

“We both know that’s not true.” When his mother scooted forward on the couch, Father MacKenzie rushed to help her. His mom closed her hand around his, squeezing, though her grip wasn’t all that firm. “We’ve talked about this, Nicky. Back when I first got sick.”

“What about Saundra? And Jessica, and Miguel. I’ll have to pay part of it out of pocket, but we can keep their rotation.” Even as he said it, Nicky knew he was being unreasonable. They’d been through all this before, crunched the numbers and looked at all the angles back when his mother’s end-of-life plan had still seemed far away.

“You know that won’t work with your schedule.” His mother’s voice was quiet but firm with the kind of strength Nicky had heard so many times in childhood. Any time he misbehaved or his mom needed a quiet moment to herself, all she’d had to do was use
that tone
and Nicky knew she meant business.

Nicky wanted to rail against her, shout at her to stay, beg her not to leave.

“I get it.” He patted her hand, rubbing as hard as he dared on her crepe-paper skin. “It’s okay. We can start looking at places.”

Maybe once he showed his mother what her options were, she’d realize she didn’t want to go. They’d figure out how to pay for an aide who could be at the house during Nicky’s twenty-four-hour shifts. There had to be a way Nicky could get more time off work, or take another leave of absence.

“Actually, Father MacKenzie’s recommended something.” His mother smiled gently.

“Good.” Nicky made his face as blank as possible. “That’s great.” He had to get out of there. Work out his anger in the pump of metal in his hands and the scream of his muscles.

“Wonderful.” His mom relaxed onto the sofa. Her eyes drooped like the conversation had taken all her strength.

Nicky felt like shit for making her worry. Of course he’d support her decision. “I love you, Mom.” Nicky bent over the couch to kiss her on the cheek.

Chapter Seven

Michael still hadn’t heard back from Nicky’s mechanic about what was wrong with his engine. Stupid as it was, he kept worrying that it boded poorly for his car, and that was why he took it upon himself to clean under the espresso machine and behind the cabinets at Speedy Coffee. His nose was stuffy from the dust, but once he’d taken all the displays apart and hauled everything away from the walls, he was able to get behind the cabinets with a spray bottle of Windex and a Swiffer.

His phone rang in his pocket, and Michael set his rag on the table to answer.

“Hello?”

“Hey. Um…it’s me. Nicky.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Michael grinned. “Hi.”

“Yeah.” Nicky cleared his throat, his voice dropping deeper. “I was just wondering if maybe… I don’t know if I could get away for as long as a movie. But maybe dinner?”

“I’m not sure there was an invitation in there.” Michael used a paper clip to clean between keys on the cash register, cautious in his response. “And what do you mean you can’t get away?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I bet.” Michael had been looking forward to Nicky calling. More excited than he should have been. But he had to ask. “If you’re seeing someone, I don’t think—”

“I’m not dating anyone else.” Nicky’s voice picked up strength. “I’ve just got a lot going on.”

Maybe it was the annoyance in Nicky’s voice that set Michael off, but Michael had been through the ringer of
I’ve been busy
and
there’s a lot going on in my life
enough that he wouldn’t settle for excuses.

“So much going on that you can’t go to a movie? Funny, you seem to have the time to get your dick sucked.” Okay, that was a low blow, and probably something Michael had wanted to say to Mark so often that he was spewing it at Nicky for no reason.

But shit, Tomas was a firefighter and had plenty of time to date Jesse. And Logan didn’t do anything beside work and hang on Henri’s every word.

“My mom is sick.”

Michael wasn’t sure he’d heard right. Some part of him wanted to snap off a remark about how that was
a likely story
, but Michael held back. “Oh.” Not knowing how close Nicky was with his mother, Michael wondered whether to ask for more information. He didn’t have a right to all of Nicky’s personal details, but it seemed rude not to say something. “Like…is she okay?”