The Funny Thing Is - 2. ...I Always Felt Like I Knew What I Was Doing.

Chapter 1: The Funny thing is… I always felt like I knew what I was doing.

When Dallas Morning news first asked me to start this column what feels like a hundred years ago, it was because I was on a journey to balance family, work, friends, and sexuality in the ever-evolving landscape of traditional marriage, and what that meant for a bisexual man in the 21st Century. Through it all, ups and downs, I always felt like I knew what I was doing, that I was in control; that I had the answers. That feeling changed with one simple phone call.

I hung up the phone as soon as he started talking. I couldn’t listen to him. Just listening to him was cheating in and of itself. What the fuck was he doing calling me?

After I hung up, I realized it was a mistake to hang up. What the hell did he want? I looked at my phone to dial him back, but before I could, it started vibrating again. I took a deep breath and answered the phone.

“Hey, sorry. I got disconnected,” I said trying to sound as breezy as possible.

“By your service or what?” he asked.

“What… do I owe this call to?” I asked shortly.

“It’s nice to hear your voice, Cooper,” Chase said. I could tell he was smiling on the other side of the line. He knew he was making me squirm. I took in a deep breath. “Cooper, I just wanted to call and let you know I’m back in Texas. More specifically, I’m back in Dallas.”

“Wow,” I said, my breeziness floating out the window and melting in the warm Texas September air. “Isn’t that nice?”

“I want to see you,” he said point blank. He sounded like he was ordering a hamburger or something off a value menu. I want to see you. With cheese. No pickles.

“How long has it been?” I asked with a little bit more bite than I intended.

“Too long, I know that,” he replied. He sounded sexy and charming, just like he had twenty years ago when he left for the summer games in London and became a world class Olympic swimmer. “What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?”

I couldn’t think of anything quick enough. I had the entire afternoon block free and I planned on tackling those edits for Logan.

“I um… I’m busy,” I said with little to no conviction. I sounded about as honest as Michael Jackson declaring his innocence.

“I’ll pick you up at one. Text me the address of your office and I’ll be waiting,” he said, his voice laced with that same smile I knew he had plastered on his face. He hung up before I had the chance to object further.

“Who was that?” I heard from the doorway. I looked up just as Devon flipped the light switch on and pulled a stiletto off.

“No one,” I said quickly. “Well someone, but no one. It was Chase. Pallendrino.”

The name hung in the air for a second. She knew the implications of his name in my life. She had been there for Chase-gate 1.0 and Chase-gate 2.0. In fact, it was when she picked up the pieces after he returned from London—or better yet, didn’t return— that Devon and I really got serious. Before then, she was my warm body, the interim cuddle buddy. Chase-lite.

“What did he want?”

I looked at her square in the eyes. No lies, I thought. What did I have to lie about?

“He wants to do lunch tomorrow.”

“He’s back?” she said, stepping out of her pencil skirt and standing before me in a pair of panties and a bra. “Are you going?”

The tone in her voice had an unmistakable connotation. We’d been through this before, with both of us on different occasions, but not with anyone I actually cared about at one point. This was uncharted territory. Feelings entering the fray changed things, and we both knew it.

“Honestly, Dev, I hadn’t decided,” I said. She didn’t say anything else that night, but simply slipped out of her clothes and into bed. For the 22nd day in a row, we slept turned away from each other and I started to wonder why we bothered living a life that was plain old fashioned Vanilla.

I woke up extremely early the next morning, went out for a run and was dressed and parked in my faculty spot by 8:15. My first class wasn’t until 10:00, but I was anxious. I felt like a first grader on the first day.

I called Spencer at 9:00, knowing that of the three, he was the only one I could consult with on this.

“What the fuck did he want?” Spencer asked. Little had changed between us in twenty years. I still told him everything as it happened. Things I couldn’t tell Kyle because of our history, and Sebastian because of his relationship with Devon’s best friend, automatically fell onto Spencer.

“He wants to go to lunch.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I… guess I’ll go,” I said with as much assurance as OJ Simpson entering a not guilty plea. The truth was I had already sent Chase the message with my office address. It was done.

“Is that the best idea?”

“No,” I answered honestly. “But how can I not? I mean, it’s been long enough. Those feelings are carefully filed away. Plus, I already told Devon I would meet him, so there’s nothing to lose.”

“And what did she say?”

“She didn’t say anything.”

“I know nothing about married life,” Spencer replied. “But I feel like that’s a passive aggressive way of saying don’t go. Color me naïve, but that’s what I think.”

“I have to go,” I said.

“But you don’t, Cooper. You really don’t.”

I did. There was no use pretending like I wouldn’t or even shouldn’t. Thinking like that would only make me feel guilty afterwards. I hated feeling guilty and I hadn’t done anything to warrant that feeling.

My first class was LGBT Literature, which was surprisingly full considering it was an elective on alternative lifestyles on one of the last campuses in the country to embrace them. My history at SMU told me that the campus was crawling with closet cases, but I didn’t think this many would show up for my class. A few probably thought as a new teacher, I’d be easy and they could fly right through the bird course. They learned by the end of syllabus day that that wasn’t going to be the case.

The lecture distracted me from my impending meeting at 1:00. I repeated my spiel to my 11:00 creative writing seminar, a much smaller and more intimate round table course with only twelve students.

After that, I was on my own to agonize for an hour. What did he look like now? What would he sound like in person? Would he even recognize me? Would our natural chemistry still be there? A million questions. No answers.

At 1:00, I finally made the trek down to the drop off in front of the English building. The second I stepped outside, I saw him.

He looked the exact same: tan, tall and gorgeous. His face was a little harder than I remembered. His hair was lighter than usual and wavy, fingered softly back. He wore sunglasses so I couldn’t see his light blue eyes that jumped out beautiful against his sun darkened skin. His frame was in incredible shape, but I wouldn’t have expected anything less from a guy who was once dubbed The Human Submarine.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Monsieur,” he said. I wanted to say something quippy and rude, but I was at a loss. Instead I smiled, my excitement to see him far outweighing any feelings of resentment about the split.

“Where to?” he asked once his Audi was heading slowly towards the highway.

“Tavern on Victory,” I said. It was my favorite spot to eat downtown, not that I thought I’d be able to keep anything down, I was so nervous. They did, however, have strong cocktails. Even at lunch.

“So,” he said looking at me with a smile. “How are you?”

“I’m good. Devon’s good, the kids are good.”

“I read about the kids. And the book. Congrats on that, by the way.” I didn’t respond, but continued my glare. “So, I know you like to cut to the Chase, so to speak. What am I doing here?”

“That would be the perfect place to start,” I said with just a hint of attitude.

“I’m back, Coop. For good,” he said. “My dad wasn’t doing well for a while, and so I was in San Francisco with him. When he died, I wanted to get out. I wanted to go to a place I loved.”

His lips lingered on the L word. He’d been back in the states long enough to take care of his dad and then bury him and he hadn’t called? My excitement was melting and resentment was settling in again.

“So you’re moving here?”

“That’s the plan,” he said with a tentative smile and a sharp breath. We crossed Highway 75 and rolled slowly onto Victory Lane.

“I hope that works out well for you,” I said, breaking my gaze and turning forward. Suddenly, I realized I shouldn’t have come to this lunch. What did I think would happen? A magic reunion of rainbows and sunshine? So much had changed in both of our lives; I didn’t even know if we could recognize ourselves in each other anymore. I bit my bottom lip, wondering what to do next.

“Second thing on my agenda,” he said casually. “Is my apology to you.”

“Seems like ‘I’m sorry’ is a dime short and two decades late,” I said.

“You’re right,” he said, reasonably. It annoyed me how polite he was. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I am. And that I have been for the better part of twenty years.”

“Bullshit,” I finally lost it as he pulled into the parking garage across from the Tavern. “Sorry people pick up the phone and call once in a while. Just to check in, maybe.”

“I had to make a clean break, Coop,” he said.

“To protect you or to protect me, Chase?” I replied.

“What do you want me to say? If I’d called you when I was in London, I would have come back. If I had called you when I was back from London, I would left everything in LA and come to find you. If I had called you at any point before the games in Rio, I wouldn’t have gone, Cooper. My life and my career depended on me not calling you, not thinking about you, and not desperately wanting to come back to you.”

“And now with all the convenience in the world,” I said, the fight I’d seen coming for twenty years playing itself in my mind over and over like a broken compact disk. He parked the car and I suddenly felt trapped. “You can finally call me now. Let me drop everything; Chase Pallendrino is back.”

“It isn’t like that.”

“Then what the hell is it like?” I glared at him, realizing that I had a tear in my eye. I had felt like meeting him for lunch was the right thing, but I was realizing quicker than ever that it wasn’t.

Without answering, Chase leaned over and kissed me. It was like no other kiss I’d experienced in a long time. It was filled with sadness and passion. My tear fell and laced the kiss with a saltiness that said so much for so little. Instinctively, I pulled his face into mine and kissed him back. I sucked his tongue deep into my throat, my vigor a mixture of raw passion and intense anger.

Before I knew what was happening, my seat was pulled back and Chase was lying on top of me, grinding his body into me in a way that a 6’1 guy with an incredible build shouldn’t have been able to do in a compact car.

“Let’s skip lunch,” he said with a wicked smile. I could feel his gear shaft poking into my thigh and I was instantly taken back twenty years to the happiest place in my life.

I looked up at him. Fifty percent of me wanted to say yes. The rest of me couldn’t see past the guy that had hurt me so badly, I had wondered how I’d love again after him.

“I can’t,” I said, swallowing hard. I pushed him off of me, back into the driver’s seat.

“You’re right. I got carried away,” he said, wiping my saliva off of his lip.

“God, you sure know how to complicate things,” I said with a sheepish smile and a big sigh. We both got out of the car and had a hands-off, cordial lunch. Chase regaled me with the details of his two Olympic journeys. He told me stories I’d read a million times in Sports Illustrated and Time Magazine. He was the six time gold medalist... the ‘Boy that could be Chased, but that couldn’t be caught.’ I tried not to let my resentment creep up and my exuberance to see him show.

I took a cab back to my office in time for my 3:00 class.

One seminar and a million emotions later, I texted Devon that I wanted to take her out for dinner that night. When she asked why, I told her I knew I would be busy for a few weeks while I got into my new schedule and I wanted some us time before it got crazy. She bought it.

After that, I called Sebastian and he said he’d pick my kids up for dinner after work. I explained that CJ had tennis league and that the final round of tryouts ended at six for Liz. He said he was on board without asking why I needed the favor.

I stayed at work until 6:00, doing nothing but twiddling my thumbs and dreading the next few hours. It took an actual physical effort to keep Chase from permeating my thoughts and it was harder than ever.

With no time to spare—or chicken out—I drove to Silver Fox Steakhouse in Richardson and sat down at my reserved place. I ordered a bottle of wine while I waited on Dev to show up.

By the time she did, I was a glass and a half in. One look at my face and she knew something was wrong. She poured herself a glass while she greeted me.

“This is different,” she said, taking a deep breath. “What’s the occasion? Good or bad?”

“Dev, when was the last time we were happy?” I asked, point blank. I decided to take the band-aid ripping approach to the conversation.

“Cooper, what are you talking about?”

“I’m saying that we haven’t had sex in twenty-three days. Before that it was twenty-nine days,” I said, forcing myself to maintain eye contact. I wanted to crawl under the table and die.

“What are you counting days for? Are we on the rhythm method?” Her eyes narrowed.

“I’m just curious. If you had to pick a number from one to ten on how happy you are with our marriage, what number would it be?”

“It would be a seven,” she said after a few seconds hesitation. She took a sip of the wine. “What are we doing here?”

“Is seven good enough for you?”

“Cooper, you’re scaring me.”

“It isn’t good enough for me, Devon,” I said softly. I watched her eyes well up right before my eyes and it broke my heart. “And the reason it’s not good enough is because we were at a ten once, and you know it. When we first started going out, we were at a ten all the time.”

“We were twenty years old and horny, Cooper. We have kids now and responsibilities. There isn’t time to be at a ten anymore.” Her voice was an inch away from faltering. I thought about pulling the plug and stopping the conversation, but I had to be the bad guy. For me to leave my family and not want to kill myself over it, I needed to be the bad guy and absorb all the blame. To me, that was my punishment for throwing in the towel.

“I kissed Chase today, Dev,” I said. This time my voice faltered and the tear that had been lingering finally fell. “And it was a ten.”

Devon swallowed hard, wiped her face and looked at me with a hardened gaze. She entered ice queen mode. Her stoniness had attracted me once. It made her seem powerful and kick ass. Being the recipient, I now knew why it worked so well. She just seemed stoic and scary.

“What are you telling me right now?” she asked in a surprisingly sure voice. “Just say it. Say what you dragged me all the way to Richardson to say.”

“I’m saying that if we ask ourselves the tough questions here, Devon, the answers are pretty plain. We had a good run for a long time, longer than most people get. But we’ve gotten comfortable and tired and there are tens out there for us.”

“No, there’s a ten out there for you,” she said. That was fair enough. I wanted to crawl under the table again. I prayed that she wouldn’t make a scene, but I wouldn’t have put it past or. I also wouldn’t have blamed her for it.

“I just… I want out,” I said finally. It wasn’t a simple thing to say. It wasn’t like kissing Chase had turned on a switch and I was back to my old ways. It would have been easy for me to sneak around and have my cake and eat it too. I’d been that kind of guy before. But since then, I’d been the kind of guy who committed and stuck to his commitments. Kissing Chase didn’t flip a switch, but it did turn a dial.

“How long have you been waiting for this day, Cooper?” she asked me with a bite to her voice that sent a chill down my spine. “How long have I been a place holder for the one that got away from you?”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “I loved you every single day we were together. Don’t act like I didn’t, please.”

“Don’t treat me like I wasn’t always second chair in the band, then, Cooper. Show me some respect. I mean, come on, Carpenter. Chase is back for a calendar day and you’re bringing me here to what? Tell me you want a divorce? Walk me through this, please.”

There was no way around it. I had to answer her questions. I had to be the bad guy. I had to take my lashings and bear them.

“For a while when we started dating, I did think that maybe things would work after London,” I said. “And when they didn’t, I put every single egg into your basket.”

“What about when you were writing the book?” she asked, pouring another glass of wine.

“When I wrote All Cooped Up, our problems had nothing to do with Chase or guys,” I said defensively. “Our problems had to do with us and how both of us were too selfish in our careers to foster a healthy relationship and a healthy home for our kids.”

“Don’t get author on me, please,” she said, shaking her head. “I get that. But you spent the last two years writing The List. Where was I to you then?”

“Why do you need me to answer that?” I said, my eyes narrowing. I felt like I was stuck in the battle scene from Closer and I couldn’t escape.

“Just answer it.”

“I… I don’t know. It was downhill from there,” I said with a shrug, unable to pinpoint the exact moment our rut began. All I knew is that things were long past due before Chase showed his perfect face, but he was the perfect scapegoat for pulling the plug. Who knows? Maybe if I had waited a couple of months or a year even, Devon would have pulled it for us.

We talked for another forty five minutes and another bottle of wine. The whole time, I thought that I was doing the right thing. Letting her blame me for giving up. Letting her think that my all consuming love for Chase was the cause. We had fought a good fight, Devon and I, but that fight had to end. The flint had been there the entire time. Chase came along and provided the spark.

“So what do we do now?” she asked as we stood. I helped her into her blazer.

“I dunno,” I said quietly. “I guess I tell the kids and we both consult our attorneys.”

I dreaded the thought of breaking my children’s hearts. I knew divorce rates were high, and most kids suffered through them, but still. I’d wanted for them to grow up like I did, with two loving parents who made sure they wanted for nothing. This would kill them and they would hate me forever.

She looked at me with a tiredness I hadn’t seen in her eyes before. Devon had been full throttle for as long as we’d been together, balancing mother/wife/DDS and this one bomb was what had shaken her. For the first time in a long time, I saw a woman who wasn’t infallible and it reminded me of what we’d had at the beginning.

“I don’t want this to be a huge dramatic thing,” I said as we walked out of the restaurant. “You get whatever you want. No fights over anything.”

“It’s not going to be about stuff, Cooper,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly strong for woman who’d just been told her marriage is over. I’d seen Devon in these situations and she always held up well. Resilient is how I’d describe her. She handed the valet her ticket. “Although I might clean you out.” She smiled.

“I’m just a lowly professor,” I joked. “I have little to my name.”

“A professor with a best seller and another on the way,” she said. “And a lake house, two Volvos.”

“Wait till my lawyer gets his hands on your clinic,” I said, laughing.

“I will eat Kyle for breakfast, you know that,” she said with a wide grin. I was confident that everything would work out. A divorce would be tough, but mine and Devon’s relationship had been built on friendship first. I was sure it could return to that. Eventually.

I woke up the next morning after a fitful night on the couch. If it hadn’t been for a bottle of wine coursing through my veins, I wouldn’t have slept at all.

I had stacked my classes in such a way that I only taught on Mondays and Wednesdays to facilitate any travelling that I needed to do for the book. If I had to miss a Monday for some reason, I could make up for it on the Friday that my three credit course would normally be scheduled. Regardless, my Tuesdays and Thursdays were always left wide open.

I had a slow breakfast after driving the kids to school, and enjoyed my empty house for a change. I went out for a midmorning swim in the backyard. At 11:00, I showered and dressed and drove into downtown, straight to the marble tiled law offices of Wriggs and Streck.

“Hey,” Kyle said looking somewhat surprised to see me. “What’s the matter?”

It was rare that I saw him during the week with the absurd amount of hours he worked. If he hadn’t earned his way to the top now, it would be impossible to do so. I almost felt bad asking for the favor I needed.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said having a seat in his plush leather chair. I couldn’t understand why he needed the title of partner. He already had the salary, the office, and the expense account of a partner. I guess it meant something for him to earn his rightful place atop the family dynasty.

“Okay,” he said sitting down across from me. A moose’s head hung about six feet above Kyle’s. “You’re in my office on a Tuesday morning. Something’s wrong. Is it hookers? Oh, God, Cooper, I warned you about hookers.”

“We have attorney client privilege, right?” I asked casually. I leaned back and propped my feet on his center table.

“Yes we do, and now you’re actually scaring me.”

“I need you to represent me,” I said with a dramatic pause. “For my divorce.”

Kyle’s eyes widened and I knew that he knew the root cause.

“This has nothing to do with Chase coming back to town,” I said quickly.

“Bullshit,” Kyle said tartly.

“Did Spencer tell you?”

“He called last night. Are you fucking kidding me? You’re leaving Devon over a guy that left you two decades ago and has been back in town for 24 hours?”

“Kyle, I swear to you it isn’t like that. Devon and I have always had our issues,” I said.

“Chase isn’t just an issue. He’s the whole fucking newsstand.” I hadn’t expected Kyle to be pleased with the news, but I certainly didn’t expect him to freak out on me like he was. “This is typical Cooper. I mean, seriously? The guy’s in town for a twenty-four hours. One day and you’re already running back to him like a sick puppy.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I raised my voice.

“Then break it down for me, Cooper. How is this any different than what you did to me, jumping on the next shiny new toy as soon you got bored? And then to Riley, and then to Chase. I mean, his Speedo hadn’t even dried off before you were in bed with Devon.”

“Completely different circumstances,” I said, my face getting hot. He irked me by pushing all of the wrong buttons. Did he think I didn’t know what my pattern was? Did he think I just didn’t care? I knew that what I was doing wasn’t the boy’s scout way, but it was my way. And it was the only way I knew.

“You’re unbelievable,” Kyle said shaking his head.

“Are you going to represent me or not?” I asked, suddenly very upset.

“I’m your lawyer, aren’t I?” his voice was laced with unbridled attitude. Anyone else would have cowered when Kyle got this way, but the little fucker didn’t scare me. I’d seen him worse.

“Yeah.” I stood to leave. “And sometimes I would appreciate it if you would just be a friend.” I crossed the vast office for the door, stopping just short.

“And I know why you’re so upset about this and it isn’t because you feel for Devon so much, Kyle, so drop the fucking act. It was never going to be you,” I said, hitting below the belt. I shrugged my shoulders. “At the end of it all, you and I both know that I was never going to choose you.”

The glare Kyle gave me could have shattered the glass behind me. He swallowed his rage as I walked out and closed the door.

I had been in one other shooting match with Kyle before. There was only one other time when our words had brought each other to the brink of blackout rage, and the last time was my freshman year of college after a fight with Kyle about his then boyfriend Rusty. After that fight, I went to my boyfriend’s house for a much needed tension relieving fuck. This day was no different.

I pulled into the W Hotel, handed my keys to the valet and stalked to the front desk.

“Hello, sir, may I help you?”

“I need to see Mr. Pallendrino,” I said.

“Okay,” the clerk said. “Is he expecting you?”

“He is,” I replied, barely able to keep my eyes from burning with anger. The concierge punched Chase’s room number, the phone rang once and Chase answered it.

“Mr. Pallendrino, there is a gentleman caller here to see you.” I mouthed my name. “Mr. Carpenter. I will send him up.”

A second later, I was riding the elevator to the presidential suite on the 39th floor of the W Hotel. I barely had a chance to knock before Chase opened the door and I fell into his face with my lips.

My kiss was so magnetically aggressive, it pushed him back into the suite. Without any hesitation or complication, we fell back onto his king sized bed and Chase climbed on top of me, our lips not once skipping a beat. I hadn’t kissed like that in ages and it felt amazing. I felt his tongue survey every inch of my mouth, dancing around like we were school children making out for the first time.

Before I could even explain my actions, both of us were stripping out of our clothes and panting.

“Oh my god, I have been dying for this for ages,” Chase said, peeling off his slacks. His cock was already rock hard and it sprang up out of his briefs when he dropped them. I dove for his cock like a dick starved homeless person.

I lay on my stomach on the bed, perfect height to slip Chase’s dick all the way to the back of my throat. I watched his toes curl as I swallowed hard, creating a vibration that coursed through his entire body. The guy was leaking precum as if he hadn’t shot his load in days. It tasted just as good as I remembered.

A minute later, probably because he was afraid he’d shoot too soon, Chase pushed my head back and pulled me up to meet his kiss.

“What changed your mind?” he asked as he pushed me back and fell perfectly into the space between my legs. It was like we’d been doing it for years, our movements were so in sync.

“I’m giving up a lot of shit because of you, Mr. Pallendrino,” I whispered with a wicked smile. “I just want to make sure my investment is worth it.”

He smiled down at me, dove in with his lips and second later, Chase was slipping seamlessly into my tight hole.

I hadn’t been fucked in longer than I could remember and my first reaction to Chase’s cock was to push him off. Instead, I relaxed, took a deep breath and let the pain subside slowly. It was like riding a bike.

Before long, not only was the pain completely gone, but in its stead was a pleasure I’d almost forgotten. It was one of my rules when I was with Devon. No matter how many times I fucked around with Logan, I never kissed him and I never fucked him. We were purely oral buddies, giving the occasional blow job. This was completely different.

I knew immediately that all of the love I’d watched go away was still there. And on my part, everything I felt about Chase that I had buried away was rushing back like a time capsule being opened. It felt amazing as he slid in and out of me so delicately at first. My fingers dug into his chest and my legs curled around his pelvis, pulling him in even deeper.

Chase grunted into my mouth as he picked up his pace. The sounds were animalistic and short, but passionate.

“I fucking love you, Cooper,” he panted, his speed gearing up. I could see the signs forming. His eyes rolled back, his head bucked backward and a second later, I felt a warm stickiness coat my insides. The sensation was enough for me. As if we’d choreographed it for TV, I came a split second after Chase, erupting all over both of us.

I just lay there post-orgasm, unable to move for several minutes. Every nerve ending on my body felt like it was on fire. When I rolled over to put my hand on Chase’s chest and find his nook area between his arm and his torso, his skin was hot to the touch. It was like every pleasure particle in our body had been singed.

I took a deep breath and snuggled into him, upset that it was early afternoon and we couldn’t fall asleep together.

“So what does this mean?” he asked softly.

“I wish I knew, guy,” I replied. “I really wish I knew.”