The Complete Series Boxed Set (50 page)

Would they let him continue to have a relationship with a child who turned out to be Dylan’s biologically, unless compelled to do so by a court?

“My head hurts,” Mike confessed.

“Mine too. And not just from li
s
tening to Josie’s yammering.” Dylan pushed the bathroom door opened and motioned for Mike to exit. “Let’s go face whatever scheme they’ve concocted.”

“You want them to do
what
?” Alex hissed at Josie as Dylan reached the table, unnerved from his conversation with Mike but grimly determined to face this mess head-on. He didn’t like any of it. Not one bit, but fuck if this wasn’t the way life worked, right?

You coul
dn
’t plan for it. It just all happened at once.

“What does someone want us to do? Sorry, Josie,”
Dylan
said with mischief, “we’re a threesome. Not a fivesome. No experiments with you two.” He gave Alex an over-the-top lascivious wink just as Madge came over to clear the em
p
ty plates.

Alex looked like he was having a stroke. Madge just howled with laughter and said, “Five pieces of cheesecake coming up.”

No one argued, though Laura gave her em
p
ty sundae glass a guilty look. It made Dylan smile. She felt as if her body post-baby was less attractive, but Dylan felt otherwise. More to hold. More to love. More to feel, hot flesh and curves so voluptuous and enveloping when her legs were tight around his hips, or slung over his shoulders, open and—

“…so we think you and Mike should get married.” Laura’s words rang out, whispered as she leaned across the table.

We. You. Mike. Laura was saying the words, so she didn’t mean that she and Mike should get married. She didn’t say
you
and
me
, so she didn’t mean Dylan and Laura should get married.

Who the fuck was getting married, then?

“WHAT?” Mike thundered. “You want me to marry DYLAN?”

That cleared things up.

All conversation in the half-f diner came to a deadly halt. The m
u
ffled sounds of food sizzling on the grill came through, the pneumatic wheeze of a bus’s brakes outside, the sound of a crosswalk beeping…

N
ot even an inhale could be detected from the fifty-plus people in the restaurant.

“Well, that’s discreet,” Alex mumbled.

“Fuck discretion,” Mike roared, and stood, shoving Dylan out of the booth, making his hip twist and his thigh scream, and he was roughly manhandled, nearly poured out onto the floor, Mike’s body outside before D
y
lan could register what had just happened.

“He took that well,” Josie said, slinging an arm around Laura’s shoulders.

Laura stared at the scratched tabletop, just blinking silently. Madge appeared and threw five plates of varying cheesecakes on the table, plunked down a pile of chilled forks, and said nothing.

Nothing.

Ah, fuck
,
Dylan
thought.
This is bad.
 

Everyone ignored the sweets in front of them. Alex tried hard to look everywhere but at Dylan, finally twisting in his seat as if he could catch a glimpse of Mike, who was long out of sight of the restaurant’s window.

“He okay?”

“Would you be okay if your girlfriend suggested you marry a man?”

“No.” The word came out of Alex like a gunshot.

“There’s your answer.” Dylan was spinning on the inside. Absolutely spinning. Of all the scenarios he’d imagined since the topic of custody and what-ifs came up, marrying Mike had been—well, not dead last. Just…not. Not at all. Never an option, never a thought, nope, nada.

Fin
.

Stunned, he looked at Laura, who was doing her best Alex imitation and staring so hard at the salt shaker Dylan thought she might animate it via pure telekinetic will.

“What,” he finally
said
, looking right at the person he knew was responsible for this har
e
-brained idea, “made Josie think of this whopper?”

Alex gave him a hard look, the kind you have when you’re watching someone you’re not sure about.

Smart man.

Josie looked like she was holding her breath, eyes wide with something less than terror, but more than apprehension. She plunged a long-handled spoon into a wet sundae and stirred the soupy mess.

But said nothing.

Laura reached across the table for Dylan’s hand, turning simultaneously backwards, toward the door, as if connecting in t
h
e flesh with
D
ylan would make their third magically appear. The look on her face as she twisted back to look at Dylan made it clear she really expected…something.

This was Mike, though. Dylan sighed, letting a little of the tension in his chest release. Mike was long gone by now, a mile down the road, running his heart out.
P
ounding out the confusion and pain.

Not that Dylan didn’t have his fair share, but running off like that wasn’t how he handled conflict. He faced it, head-on.

Laura leaned across the table and gave him a hard look. “It was my idea.”

“
Y
ours?” His own explosion was more contained than Mike’s, but no less emotional. Her face was hard, eyes narrowed, the skin underneath pulled high and tight, like she dared him to question her.

He took the dare.

“You think me and Mike are gay?”

Her face crinkled in a look of utter disbelief. “What? No! Of course not.”

“Well,” he said slowly, like he was explaining this to their one year old, “when two men get married legally, it’s gay marriage.”

“The label doesn’t make you gay,” Josie said, interrupting.

“
Nothing
makes me gay.”

“Why are you so touchy about the gay label?” Josie asked mildly, head tilted like she was questioning an experiment volunteer.

“
Because it’s not the right word to describe my sexuality.
Why are you so touchy about letting Alex marry you?”

That shut her up.

“Explain,” he growled at Laura, who jumped slightly in her seat, startled, as he squeezed her hand hard and pulled his own back. Right now, touching her felt like a violation. A sick feeling filled the back of his throat, coating his stomach, burying deep in his bones. He didn’t like any of this. Not Frank, not Mike’s reaction, not the talk about custody of Jillie, his parents, biological fathers—

None of it.

And certainly not the idea that
neither
he nor Mike would marry Laura, but instead that they would—

“No,” he whi
sp
ered.

L
aura’s confusion filled her flushed cheeks, eyes wild with panic, calming periodically and ramping back up to something just shy of anxiety. “No?
Y
ou don’t want me to explain?”

“No, I don’t want to marry Mike.”

Closing her eyes, Laura took a deep sigh, then said, “If we go on and have more kids, and I have kids by both of you, legally I’m their mother, and legally the biological father is their father. But—”

He felt like this was
d
éjà vu
, like Laura, Josie, and Alex had been eavesdropping on his conversation with Mike just minutes ago in the bathroom. When did legalities become so important?
 

When Frank showed his fucking face in their goddamn house.

“I know,” he said. “The non-biological father would have no legal rights over the other children if you and one of us died.”

“Yes,” Laura and Josie said in unison. Alex just stared dumbly at Dylan and gave a single-shoulder shrug, as if to say,
Sorry, bro
.

Yeah. Right. Sorry.

He had let himself imagine marrying Laura, and had tortured himself by thinking about Mike not marrying Laura. Pretzeling his mind in every contorted way you could imagine, he’d tried to think of a way to have a long-term show of commitment to her and one that protected custody of Jillian and their future kids.

H
e had never—not once—thought about
m
arrying Mike.

“My parents will
pass out
. We’re Catholic!” he groaned.

“Your parents are Catholic. You’re lapsed,” Josie pointed out.

H
e gave her a look that made her mouth snap shut like a coin purse.

“You know, for once could you just shut it? We’re talking about my life here. Not your helpful little sarcastic do-bee mouth.”

“
Dylan.” Alex’s voice was calm but firm. “Let’s go for a walk.”
 

“I don’t—”

Alex stood, then splayed his hands across the spare end of the table. “I think you need some air.”

The room felt like it was on fire, the oxygen seep
ing
out, his internal sense of self gasping for air, stifled and unable to think.
Like he was caught in a raging house fire without any equipment.
Attacking Josie would be easy. Comforting, even. But Alex wasn’t about to let that happen, and from the way
L
aura was looking at him, maybe stepping away from the epicenter of this seismic shift was a good thing.

He said nothing, just stood and marched outside, Alex on his heels.
As he pushed the glass door open, a shower of color greeted them both, filling the sidewalks and the streets.
 

A rainbow of brightness, people dressed in costume, riding decorated bikes, carrying folded-up banners, all headed for the T station to take the subway into Boston.

“What’s this?” he said to no one in particular, though Alex was closest.

“SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE,” one of the signs screamed, carried in the arms of a woman who could have easily been Dylan’s mom, white-haired, wrinkled, yet walking with a ramrod straight backbone and a look of grit and determination, her arm around a man about Dylan’s age, with facial features that instantly told Dylan he was her son.

“Pride,” Alex said with a sly smile. He was clearly trying not to laugh. “They’re on their way to the Pride Parade.”

The gay rights parade. That’s right. Dylan
had
forgot
ten that was today
.

His eyes took in the line of signs. “Stand On the Side of Love,” one of them said. “Love knows no gender,” another called out in rainbow colors. “Love people, not genitals,” said yet another. The flow of signs and costumes and—
smiles!
So many smiles, grins, and laughter filling the scene, and all making Dylan’s fury and confusion die down slowly, tamped by the sheer weight of love out here.

Alex gave a rowdy group of college students a thumbs-up as they strolled past, making them cheer and wave.

“Support gay marriage,” Dylan mumbled.

“You don’t have to do it,” Alex said
in
a n
eu
tral tone, running a hand through his hair, sheltering his eyes with an outstretched palm as the sun burst out from behind a cloud. The two men backed up a foot or so, closer to Jeddy’s, as a huge group poured out of a bus on the corner. People dressed in pirate costume
s
tumbled out of the bus.

“Do what? Protect my and Mike’s rights to Jillian?” Dylan sighed. “Until the law catches up to threesomes, we don’t seem to have a choice.”

“You always have a choice,” Alex said reasonably, placing a friendly hand on Dylan’s shoulder, turning to look at him.

“Out and proud!” one of the college kids screamed, giving Alex and Dylan two thumbs up. To Alex’s credit, he didn’
t
flinch, didn’t pull away from Dylan. Just laughed.

“They think we’re a couple,” Dylan said seriously. “You don’t care?”

“Why should I care what the world thinks? I’m secure in knowing who and what I want. People will think what they want to think. Can’t control that. All you can control is what you do and why you do it. If you need to marry Mike to secure Ji
l
lian’s future, then that’s what you do.
O
n the outside, it means one t
h
ing. To you, it means something completely different.”

“
I know that.”
 

“But can you
live
it?”

Just then, Mike burst through the throng of people, a vision in pale
blue
amidst a sea of primary colors. He jogged over to them, carefully making his way through the crowd, his face covered in sweat, pits soaked through and neckline wet.

Dylan knew him so well.

Mike was barely panting, though Dylan imagined he’
d
r
u
n a few miles in the short period of time he’d been gone. Alex acted like it was no big deal for Mike to reappear, and let go of Dylan’s shoulder, crossing his a
rm
s over his chest and taking in the people.

“So,” Mike said, huffing out the last little bit of exerted breath in him.

“So?” Dylan asked.

Mike’s eyes burned, his nostrils flared, but it wasn’t with anger. Something deeper and unknown, something that made Dylan’s inner self go calm, was in those eyes.

And then:

“You ready to make an honest man out of me?”

The actual process of marrying Dylan turned out to be remarkably unremarkable. Thank God for that, too, because if it had been too complicated he might very well have exploded and disintegrated into a million tiny pieces, carried off in the wind.

I
nstead, he signed his name a few times, filled out a million forms, went to the town hall for a license, and took care of it all before a judge.

Wham, bam, thank you…
man
.

Married. Not to Laura. And Dylan wasn’t, either. But in a court of law, they were now the legal stepfather to each other’s children, and that provided a modicum of protection.
Mike had consulted with a family law attorney who had thrown out points of law and terminology like
psychological father
and
stepparent rights
and
next of kin
, and who had concluded that while they did not
need
to marry, it couldn’t hurt to bolster a case should the worst-case scenario happen, should Laura and one of the fathers died.