Something Beautiful (7 page)

"How can you not like banoffee pie?" said Dune, who had no idea what it was but liked the name.

Jamie smiled at him. "Exactly. So is that all that's bothering you? Your mums are moving?"

"Yes," said Dune, then said, "No. Not all. I called Daniel this morning to see if he wanted to hang out and he -- well, he dumped me, in essence."

"Really," Jamie said without any surprise at all.

Dune straightened up. "What? You knew he was planning to?"

"No, not planning. I know he's not been happy with the state of things for a while."

"So why didn't he say anything about this to me?"

"What would he have said: 'Dune, I'm unhappy because you don't love me?' He's not a teenage girl." He sat at the table with Dune. "You -- and I say this with complete and utter love and devotion to you, Dunie -- you love everybody and nobody, you know?"

"Oh," Dune said.

Jamie watched him, expression worried. "Most of the time it's perfectly okay. People know what to expect from you. We're just happy to have you around. Just, you know, at some point people like to feel cherished and special and there's not really anybody who is cherished and special to you. That I can tell, anyway. Maybe I'm wrong."

"No," Dune said softly. "No, you're not wrong."

"I mean, loving everybody is something most people aspire to, yeah? But Daniel's ready to be in love. And one-sided love is no fun, Dunie." He touched Dune's cheek tenderly and Dune was grateful. It made his words feel less like slaps. Jamie said, "Dunie?" again in that whiskey-rough voice, and Dune smiled as much as he could.

"I don't set out to hurt people," he said.

"I know. I think we all know that. I think Daniel knows that. When we met I figured that out about you pretty quickly, but that was fine, it's what I needed at the time -- but there does come a time when it's good to be special. You see?"

"Like you and Ben," Dune said and leaned his head on his hands a moment. "Well."

Jamie wrapped his arms around Dune and rested his chin on Dune's shoulder. "It is not a bad thing. It's you."

"People like to feel special," Dune murmured and leaned his head against Jamie's. "Like they're the center of your universe. Jamie," he pulled away to look into Jamie's eyes, "I've only been in love once in my life, and it ended badly, and I --" He'd never told anyone the whole story, not even Leo, and he couldn't bring himself to do it now. "I don't want to do that again."

"It's okay, Dunie," Jamie said gently. "Nobody's asking you to change. It's just hard sometimes, you see, to want more and know you're not going to get it."

"Yeah," Dune said and pulled out of Jamie's arms entirely.

"Dunie --"

"It's okay," Dune said. "It is. Really. I'm not heartbroken. Daniel was good in bed and fun to be with, and that's all I've wanted from anybody. Which is the problem, isn't it? It should be about more than sex and fun."

"Sex and fun is a large part of it."

"You're not helping."

"Don't you want me to be honest about it? Sex and fun are great. But there are other things, and I'm glad for those other things." He still looked worried, and Dune smiled to reassure him.

"It's okay. Seriously. Who can you trust to tell you your shortcomings more than your friends? Though I hope you'll understand if I don't want to stay for lunch."

"Oh, don't be upset," Jamie said, distressed.

"I'm not upset. Scout's honor." He held up two fingers in a Boy Scout salute. "I just need to be alone for a bit." He stood and kissed the top of Jamie's head. "I'll talk to you later."

"Okay. If you're sure."

"I'm sure. See you." He let himself out of the apartment. In the elevator down he thought about stopping at Leo's -- his father could always cheer him up -- but then he'd have to explain everything, and if there was one thing he could count on it was Leo being perfectly honest with him, even if it hurt.

And really, he didn't feel like being pummeled anymore today with his shortcomings.

Dune walked home, passing familiar book shops and restaurants and clubs -- places where he knew he could walk in and be greeted like a friend. He wondered as he walked if it wasn't all just a put-on: if he was tolerated because people liked to look at him, not necessarily because they actually wanted him around.

Jamie had explained to him once how his face worked from a purely aesthetic point of view: "It's the symmetry, you see. The more symmetrical a face is the more pleasing it is to the eye." As he spoke he'd drawn a quick sketch of Dune's face with a diagram across his cheekbones and down the center of his face to show the proportions. "You've got a nearly perfect face, plus the big eyes and the full mouth -- God outdid himself the day he designed you."

Dune thought it was just a face, himself. It wasn't an accomplishment like his writing or his degree. It was just the luck of genetics. Leo was handsome, Frances was pretty, and together they'd made him. Simple.

On his walk back to Russian Hill, he stopped at a coffee shop for a mocha to bring home, and when he reached his loft he popped some bread into the toaster to go with it. He opened all the curtains in the loft that covered the big, square windows, and turned on his stereo. All this contemplation didn't change the fact that he'd been dumped, for reasons he understood -- sort of -- and that he still was looking at a Sunday on his own.

He would be all right, of course. He'd been raised to be resilient. There was always work to occupy him, books to read, movies to watch, and tomorrow he'd be ready to be around his friends again.

Or perhaps sooner,
he thought when the front buzzer rang. He pressed the intercom button. "Hello."

"Dunie, it's me," said Micah, his voice tinny from the intercom, and Dune smiled and pressed the button to open the front door.

Micah was upstairs in a few minutes, looking tired from his travels but cheerful as he wrapped himself around Dune and noisily kissed Dune’s cheek. "I thought you'd be sleeping today," Dune said.

"I did for a while, but now I'm awake and I didn't want to hang around the house all day. Everybody else is at church, and I wanted to be someplace else."

"I'm glad you chose here," said Dune and closed the door. Micah held onto him, slim, strong arms around his neck. "You're much less likely to be pestered."

"Exactly. You're like -- my laughing place, you know?"

Dune tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"Like in the story. It's a place to be yourself."

Dune looked at Micah a moment more and then kissed the top of his head. "That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me, I think."

Micah smiled and ducked his head. "I missed you a lot this summer."

"I missed you, too. It was much too quiet around here without you."

"Are you saying I'm noisy?"

"Yes," Dune said and laughed when Micah pounced on him and tried to tickle him. They wrestled, laughing. Dune was taller by nearly half a foot, but Micah had a lot of wiry strength in that slender body and soon had him pinned to the floor, hands over his head.

"I win, I win, I win!" Micah crowed.

"Oh yeah?" Dune said, still trying to pull up his hands -- but not very hard. "And what are you going to do about it?"

Micah grinned down at Dune and bit his lip. There was something in his face like he wanted to say something but didn't know what -- but he only laughed and released Dune's hands and flopped down onto the floor. "I'll let you know when I think of something. C'mere, Dunie. I missed you." He put his arms around Dune and pulled him close.

Dune rested their foreheads together. "Daniel dumped me today," he said quietly.

"Oh, Dunie, why?"

"Because I'm not in love with him."

Micah frowned and played with the buttons on Dune's shirt. "Is he in love with you?"

"I don't think so. He didn't say he was. Jamie thinks he's ready to be in love with somebody, though."

"Just not with you." He looked at Dune seriously. "I don't want to be in love again anytime soon. It's too painful."

"I've never had much fun with it myself," Dune said. "Do you miss Lucas?"

Micah sighed and leaned his head on his hand. "I don't know. A little. I miss -- I don't miss him, really, but I miss being with him. Does that make sense?"

"You miss the sex," Dune said.

Micah blushed. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Poor baby. Did Lucas leave you high and dry?"

Micah blushed pinker. "There were some others after Lucas left..."

"Tell," Dune commanded. "I want all the details."

Micah's face was nearly scarlet now and he said, looking intently at the buttons he was playing with, "There was this guy in Madrid. His name was Paolo. He said my Spanish wasn't completely incomprehensible."

"How very generous," Dune murmured. "So there was just Paolo?"

"There was a guy in London, too, on the way home. At a dance club. That gay Europe guide book you gave me really came in handy, you know."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Dune said, and laid his head on Micah's shoulder with a sigh.

Micah kissed his hair and said in a fake and dreadful English accent, "C'mon, love, give us a snog." Dune laughed and lay down on the floor again, folding his arms under his head. Micah lay down at Dune’s side and propped his head on his elbow. "Am I cheering you up?"

Dune smiled, surprised both at the question and at his answer, and said, "Yeah. You are."

Micah laughed and pounced on him. "I win! I win again! I make Dune happy!"

Chapter Five

The Marcuses were one of the few people Dune knew whose house had a yard. Most of his friends lived in apartments -- condos, at most. Real estate was much too expensive in the city for yards, though some, like Ben, grew herbs in window boxes or had small planter gardens in sun rooms or on roof tops. The Marcuses had the real thing: a back yard big enough to hold a barbeque pit and a picnic table, lined with a long, curving stone bench where guests could comfortably sit with their plates and cups. Laird was roasting corn on the cob and skewers of vegetables along with the burgers and hot dogs, and there were slices of watermelon and bowls of chips and salsa to eat while the main course cooked.

Tristan greeted Dune with a kiss and said, "Drinks are to the right, food to the left, and dinner will be ready in half an hour or so. You look tired," she added.

"Long weekend," Dune said, and went to the table to prepare a drink. There was soda and fruit juice, and cans of beer shoved into buckets of ice. He poured a Coke, dropped in a few lemon wedges, and looked around at the other guests. Leo was handling the music -- his taste was always impeccable, even when he played bands none of the others had heard of -- and people were already dancing on the lawn. Dune knew some of the other guests, but not all, and went to Jamie and Ben, who were laughing together as they danced.

"Dune!" Ben said, and hugged him, pulling him between them so they were dancing hip-to-hip. Jamie gave him an "everything's okay, isn't it?" look, and Dune smiled and kissed his cheek.

"I'm fine," he said, and gave Ben a brief kiss, too. "And it's a perfect day for a barbeque, don't you think?"

"Beautiful." Ben slung an arm around Dune's neck. "You've been burning the midnight oil."

"I've had a lot of thinking to do." He leaned his head against Ben's shoulder a moment, warm between them. "Thinking and writing."

"That novel you've been talking about?" said Jamie.

"No. Other things. Non-fiction." He ran fingers idly through Jamie's blond hair. "Next week's column, pretty much, though it's going to be a lot more introspective than it usually is."

Jamie raised his eyebrows. "Introspection? I'm looking forward to this."

"It's nothing you haven't heard before." The three of them were dancing slowly, and Dune had an idle notion about how nice it would be to go home with these two. It was a thought he'd had many times before; he'd slept with Jamie when they first met, and had entertained the possibility of sleeping with Ben, but it had never come together before Jamie and Ben's commitment had become solid and permanent. He tried not to mourn that lost chance much.