Carte blanche, p.11
Carte Blanche, page 11
Tara raised an eyebrow. “Basement. Everything okay?”
Richard didn’t answer her, instead grabbing Sunny’s elbow. “Don’t follow me.”
“I’ll follow if I want,” Sunny scoffed. “But sure, I’ll hang out with Tara.”
He turned on his heel toward Gabe’s basement, where most of his gaming consoles and his PC were kept, along with the damn pinball machine that had taken up half of Gabe and Phin’s dorm room.
As he descended the stairs, he found a sweatpants-clad Gabe nursing a glass of wine on the futon.
Gabe raised his glass in greeting. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“What the fuck, Cooper.”
“That one’s yours.” Gabe nodded to another glass next to the bottle. “Figured you were eavesdropping on that conversation. You’re so predictable.”
“First you’re having a kid, now you’re not cis? What else are you keeping from me, but telling everyone else?” Richard sat down in a huff and poured far more than the standard serving.
“Dicky, dude, you’re such a lightweight!” Gabe took his almost-spilling-over glass and handed Richard his half-empty glass. “I wasn’t intentionally keeping anything from you. I just…didn’t know how to bring it up.”
“I think ‘Hey, I accidentally knocked Tara up’ would be a start!” Richard downed the swallow of wine Gabe had handed him. “And ‘I’m having complicated feelings, similar to what you experienced, and I want to talk about them’ would be a great follow-up conversation.”
Gabe groaned and snatched the bottle up to refill Richard’s glass. “I’m sorry. But you’ve always wanted to start a family since before we met, and I never even thought about it. Like, having kids was so far in the future. Isa and I might have gotten there eventually, but things got offtrack with her so quick, and kept going further offtrack as my whole life derailed.” Gabe shook his head. “Thank the Creator that Emily didn’t want kids, otherwise I’d probably still be with her. But I’m glad it happened, especially with Tara. I love her so much.”
Gabe smiled into his wine, before looking at Richard with far too much familiarity and vulnerability in his brown eyes. Richard’s chest tightened.
“But you’ve had a damn cost-benefit analysis, planning how many kids you want to have and when you should have them, since you were sixteen. And you’re thirty-two. That’s half your life that you’ve planned Option A through Z so you can be a parent—a dad!” Gabe huffed. “And here Tara drank some tea that messed with her birth control, and I hate that I’m not as excited for this as I want to be. Instead, there’s this cloud of gender fuckery hanging over my happiness.”
Richard shook his head. Gabe was right. He wasn’t handling Gabe’s news well. He was making it about himself, when Gabe needed his support. Even if Richard was salty that half the office knew before he did. “So are you trans? Non-binary? Agender?” He paused. “Two-Spirit?”
Gabe winced. “I have no idea. Thinking of myself as a mom is just as weird as dad, so probably not trans fem. And I don’t know if I should call myself Two-Spirit without knowing my dad’s ancestry, because every tribe is different, and what if ours has some entirely different concept? I dunno. Nothing feels right. Maybe gender nonconforming?” He snorted. “I don’t think it matters, really. I’m just Gabe, and that’s all I want to be. Even if everyone else is putting their weird gender role shit on me.”
“Why did you tell everyone but me?” Richard hated the way his voice trembled at the last two syllables. Here he was, making it about himself again, but Gabe was his friend. And yet he’d been hearing about everything in his friend’s life from other people, namely Sunny. Sitting here with Gabe, the two of them in their fucking sweatpants and t-shirts with a glass of wine, like they were in college again… Richard resolved not to become the guy who relied on his girlfriend to maintain his friendships for him. He took a too-large swallow of wine to fortify his voice. “Why have this conversation with Sunny, instead of me?”
“Richard, you do so much for me.” Gabe laid his head back on the futon. A heavy swallow made his throat bob. “I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you. And I don’t know the extent of how you’ve been protecting me since we moved back to Bellamy—and I don’t want to!” He held up a hand as Richard opened his mouth. “I trust you to keep me ignorant of whatever fuckshit Emily might have tried. I just…I can’t rely on one person, and I don’t want to burden you.”
Richard bristled. “You’re not a burden.”
Gabe laughed sardonically.
“You’re not,” Richard muttered. “You saved me first.”
“I really didn’t. I just gave you the support you needed to save yourself.” With a sigh, Gabe ran his hand over his face. “All the same, your life has revolved around helping me for so long, and while I appreciate that, you can’t do everything for me. If I told you that I needed to add Tara to my insurance, you would have been on hold with HR in seconds making it happen. I need to do that shit for myself, or let Tara help me. You have your own life.”
“Not really,” Richard muttered, his thigh itching under the bandage.
Gabe snorted into his wineglass. “Don’t let Sunny hear that.”
“I don’t mean like that. Of course, I have a life, and Sunny is most of it.” Richard shook his head. “But it’s different with her. She doesn’t let me help as much as you do.”
Gabe snickered. “Bet that bothers the shit out of you, doesn’t it? You’re so controlling.”
“I am not,” Richard scoffed, grumbling as Gabe waited expectantly. He should have known Gabe would want him to be vulnerable too. He tapped his wineglass with a finger. “Fine, I might be a little controlling. But I have all this time and money and energy that I want to put into our future, and she’s not ready yet. And I’m fine waiting however long it takes for her to be ready. We both want the same thing eventually.” He huffed. “I need something to do, to focus on. Until then.”
“So focus on you, not her or me.” Gabe bumped his head against Richard’s. “You’ll have Confession to keep you busy soon enough.”
Richard pushed him away. “Don’t start with the cuddling. Why are you down here anyway?”
“Moping and waiting for you to come and yell at me.” Gabe drew his feet up to curl around his knees instead. “It’s easier for Tara if I keep the wine out of sight, so I’ve been having my sad bitch nights down here.”
“How does she feel about that?” Richard asked hesitantly, unsure if he should be worried. Probably not, considering Gabe had just told him to mind his own business. In a kind and supportive way, but the message was the same. Besides, this was hardly “moping” by Gabe’s standards.
“She likes it when I come upstairs wine-drunk and horny,” Gabe laughed, leaning back to rub his belly under his shirt. “And I’m emo often enough that she doesn’t mind me taking a night to myself down here sometimes. She wants me to keep living my life, even after the kid gets here. Gaming, and the gym, and my sad bitch nights. Let’s see how it turns out though.”
“Sounds healthy,” Richard muttered, taking another swallow of wine he’d probably regret when he woke up with a headache later. Tara really was the polar opposite of Emily.
“It is. Strange that drinking by myself in the basement is healthy, but Joy supports me processing my emotions independently, instead of relying only on her or Tara.” Gabe finished off his glass of wine. “We good?”
“Yeah.” Richard finished his glass, too. “But just know you’re never too much. Whatever you need. Seriously. You were there for me when I needed you. Let me return the favor.”
“You have. A thousandfold, dude.” Gabe tucked him under his arm and hugged Richard far too tightly. “And I’ll keep you abreast of the gender situation. Still figuring it out.”
“Get off!” Richard ducked out of his elbow, shaking off the crawling sensation along his skin. “You can do that with your naked baby mama upstairs.”
Gabe sat up with a grin. “Tara’s naked?”
Richard snorted. “Yes, other than your boxers, which is unsanitary.”
“Isn’t she great?” Gabe laughed, jumping off the couch and practically skipping to the stairs. “She says since she can’t drink anymore, she needs a new hedonist outlet. We spend pretty much every weekend naked.”
They found Sunny reclining on the couch, and Tara grumbling while she painted Sunny’s toenails. Hippo had curled up behind Tara’s bare back; his tail thumped the cushion when he saw them come up the basement stairs.
“How did we end up here?” Tara asked. A pillow was hugged to her chest as she bent over, squinting to carefully apply red polish to Sunny’s toes. “I don’t want to touch your nasty ass feet ever, and here you got me painting them?”
“Bitch, my feet are clean as hell!” Sunny smirked as Tara finished up her little toe. “Richard washed them during our scene.”
“Whoa, TMI,” Gabe coughed, giving Richard a confused look.
Richard shrugged, cheeks burning. “Sensory play.” Gabe didn’t want the details, but the scene—with Sunny blindfolded and tied up in the sex swing—had actually been quite sweet. At first. Lots of feathers and silk, a hot cloth and a scented oil massage. Followed by nipple clamps, a gag, and flogging, but still. Sweet.
Tara leaned back to greet Gabe with a sloppy kiss. Richard and Sunny exchanged a bemused look when Gabe’s hand drifted places best left untouched in front of company. But then again, those parts should also be covered, and Tara still hadn’t put on a shirt.
“Oh, were you drinking wine?” Tara asked, wiping her lip as Gabe pulled away. “Cooper house red?”
“You should become a sommelier,” Gabe teased as he pet Hippo. “Sunny, you snitched? After I specifically told you not to?”
“I did not!” Sunny pressed a hand to her chest. “He eavesdropped!”
“You asked me to eavesdrop on you, anyway.” Richard sprawled in an armchair, resigned to wait for Sunny’s toes to dry, adjusting his itchy thigh and looking anywhere but Tara’s chest. Gabe’s home was certainly more lived-in, now that he shared it with Tara. Her camera and a laptop took up half the coffee table, along with several empty plates.
Gabe tsked. “Eavesdrop on Emily, not everyone else.”
Richard grinned as he stacked the plates into a tidy pile, the knot in his chest a bit looser now that he and Gabe had finally talked. He’d been expecting Gabe to open up to him, but he did feel a bit better after opening up to Gabe in return. “Just be glad I don’t read your texts with Tara.”
On the way home, Sunny propped her feet on the dash of his Range Rover, admiring the red polish. The streetlights, enhanced by the steady drizzle, cast shadows throughout the car. “I think we should have kids.”
Richard coughed. “Yeah. We will. I hope.”
“No, I mean, like, soon.”
“Oh.” Heart racing, Richard forced his eyes to stay on the lanes as they approached downtown, the white stripes bright and glowing in the headlights. The wiper blades squeaked. A trickle of water ran down the side of the windshield. “I wish we weren’t driving for this conversation.”
“Why, you want to do things to me?” Sunny’s smirk could be heard in her voice.
“You have no idea, Sunshine.” He reached over to squeeze her thigh, pressing hard into a bite mark he’d left earlier. He would have left her covered in the bruises she loved, if he’d known they’d be having this conversation.
With a squeak, Sunny tangled her fingers with his. “I have almost enough saved for my surgery, thanks to you and your secret plotting with Miriam.”
“It’s called networking, not plotting.”
Almost timidly, Sunny murmured, “I should have enough saved by the middle of next year to get my upgrade, even with Luna’s tuition. And a team lead position is opening up soon at work, and my boss gave me an action plan to make me a good candidate for it. So maybe we start talking about what’s next.”
Richard’s ears roared with his heartbeat. “Does your insurance cover your surgery?”
“That’s my Dicky, starting off the sweet talk with insurance!” Sunny laughed. “But hell no! Are you kidding?”
“Mine does. We could add you,” Richard mumbled, his mind already lost to his spreadsheets—which tabs needed updating, which lines could be moved up.
“This better not be you proposing!”
Richard shook his head, trying to focus on the here and now. “We don’t need to be married for me to add you to my insurance. Gabe added Tara, and they’re not married.” Yet. “But it would ease the expense, and we’re planning on that eventually anyway, so why not? Enrollment is in November.”
“So, let’s say I have my surgery. What’s next on your plan, sir?” Sunny asked, her voice growing husky the way it did when she was trying to turn him on.
Richard bit back a grin, playing along in his dom voice. “If it’s early enough in the year, we’ll do a summer wedding. A long honeymoon wherever you want to go. Then we make an appointment at the fertility clinic.”
Sunny laughed. “Let me guess, you already have a spreadsheet for this.”
Richard snorted as he pulled into the parking garage of his condo—their condo, even if Sunny hadn’t moved in officially. “I might have a few. I never expected that you’d beat me to the proposal.”
“Dicky, if you think any of this counts as a proposal, you got the wrong idea.” Sunny’s hair brushed his arm as she flipped it over her shoulder. “You need to do it properly. Get down on one knee. Cry a little. I want a ring and romance.”
Richard smirked. “But you usually like my spreadsheets.”
“Dicky!”
“You’ll get your ring, Sunshine. And your romance.” She would get far more than that if Richard had anything to say about it. He’d been holding off on any ideas over the past year, beyond knowing he’d do it at home, in private (certainly not on stage like Antonio had). Finally, Sunny had given him permission to plan.
“And a strong, masculine tear or two?”
“I’ll get down on one knee.”
“Dicky!”
Richard bit his lip to hide his grin. After months of projecting all over Gabe, this conversation alone brought him so much relief, excitement, and no small amount of terror. He’d be surprised if he wasn’t a blubbering mess by the time he actually got around to proposing. “Fine. I’ll consider a tear or two.”
Sunny flicked his ear affectionately. “Then I’ll consider saying yes.”
Sunday, September Twelfth
Chapter Eight
Antonio
Leland Sr. glowered at the veggie burger on Jazz’s plate, brow furrowing further when Jazz poured an abundance of ketchup next to her fries. “Jasmine, there can’t be much protein in that. And you should watch your sodium intake.”
Jazz and Antonio exchanged a look; they’d ordered the same thing, yet Leland hadn’t commented on Antonio’s meal. His father-in-law had barely acknowledged Antonio’s presence at all, let alone struck up a conversation with him about his dietary choices. Strange that they sat across the table from each other, and yet Antonio might as well be a stranger on the other end of the crowded diner.
But it was Leland Sr’s birthday, so Antonio would sit quietly and eat his veggie burger and fries—the only vegan option at the restaurant in the outskirts of Eastside, where Leland had opted to celebrate—and get ignored by his father-in-law, like he had since the wedding. Antonio gave Jazz a sympathetic wince as he drowned a fry in his own ketchup lake. At least he and Lee hadn’t had to go to church like Jazz.
“It has fourteen grams of protein, Dad.” Jazz smiled tightly, scratching her hairline under the turban she’d worn to cover her hair for church. It still blew Antonio’s mind how different Jazz was around her parents—the picture of modesty. No hint of crop top or nose piercing (or nipple piercings, but he was sworn to secrecy on that) in sight. “And a side of fries isn’t going to kill me.”
Leland opened his mouth to say more, but Althea put her hand on her husband’s, cutting him off to force him to shut up. “So, Antonio, how’s work going?”
Antonio looked up from his fries, pleasantly surprised that she’d asked at all. Althea usually only asked Lee questions, and fussed over Jazz. “Oh! Great! The middle schoolers seem somehow even smaller than they did last year, but it’s a good group of kids.” That was probably all Althea was asking about, but Antonio pressed on. “And Chas—who was the emcee at our reception—has been giving me more responsibilities at Confession since she’s due in a couple of weeks but honestly, she looks like she could pop any day. And,” he grinned at Lee, who tried to hide his excitement behind a warning look, but a giddy smile played at the corners of his mouth. “I have a feeling like our music career is about to take—”
“When are you doing your student teaching, Jasmine?” Leland asked, before taking a bite of his grilled chicken.
Lee and Jazz both frowned, their nostrils flaring in sync. Jazz met Antonio’s gaze and gestured for him to go first. Antonio looked at Lee to step in, already low on patience.
“Yeah, we have some really exciting opportunities coming up for us,” Lee said as if his father hadn’t spoken, resting his hand on Antonio’s thigh under the table. Antonio leaned against his shoulder in support and appreciation. “More so Antonio, but if things go the way we expect, I’ll finally have a foot in the door for more production opportunities.”
“That’s great, sweetie!” Althea beamed. “Do you have new music coming out? Anything I can listen to this time?”
Lee and Antonio laughed. Antonio busied himself with a big bite of his burger, not trusting himself to keep anything inside. He hadn’t even allowed himself to think about The News, just in case he blurted something out.
“No new music, but,” Lee considered his words carefully, “you might want to listen to the radio in a few weeks.”
“We don’t listen to secular radio,” Leland said sternly.
Antonio froze mid-chew as Lee stiffened, his hand growing clammy on Antonio’s thigh. He quickly covered the flare of his jaw with the same tight smile Jazz always wore around their dad.
