9.11 - 75. Chapter 75

This is way early, but it's Valentine's Day.  I usually hate this holiday, but I'm feeling the love this year. 
 

November 10, 2001

Tribeca, NY

“If you are not going with us, we should at least get your measurements,” Stef said to Zach. He was annoyed, because he’d been excited to spend time playing dress-up with Zach.

“You don’t have to get me anything,” Zach said, even as his eyes were glued to the television, watching the football game.

Stef stared at him for a few seconds, until Zach realized that he was being eyeballed, and finally got that he was irritating Stef. “Stand up.”

“Yes, sir,” Zach said with a grin, throwing some serious charm at Stef to make amends. He pulled off his shirt in one fluid movement. “It’s easier without this on, right?”

“Right,” Stef said, even as he stared at Zach’s impressive torso. My father looked at me and rolled his eyes, but JJ was pretty entranced too. Stef measured Zach’s chest and abdomen, as well as his arms and his biceps, in a sexy but harmless way.

“Now for the inseam,” Stef said, raising his eyebrows. He thought he’d out-flirted Zach.

“Then I’ll need to take these off,” he said, and pulled off his jeans. He was wearing his jock strap, and I had to look away to stop from throwing major wood. Stef and JJ just stared at him, transfixed, while my father started laughing at them.

“I’ll do it,” I said, getting a fake dirty look from Stef. I did it in a pretty mechanical way, and got a frown from Zach,

“You sure know how to get into Stef’s good graces,” Frank growled.

“Where is Grandmaman?” I asked innocently, and then snickered as that freaked them all out, and Zach hurriedly put his clothes back on.

Grandmaman came in conveniently enough after that. “If my company will not bother you, I thought I would join you,” she said to Stef and JJ.

“Good news for you,” Frank said to Zach, implying that Grandmaman would have more reasonable taste. Stef and JJ gave Frank rather unpleasant looks, and then they flounced out of the room.

“We will see you later,” Grandmaman said to us, gave Frank a kiss on the cheek, and then she was gone as well.

We sat there watching the game for a bit, then Frank looked at Zach with a serious expression. “Don’t do that again.”

“What?” Zach asked, confused.

“Strip down like a whore,” Frank said. “You’re with family here, so it’s fine, but you have to watch your reputation.”

“Oh,” Zach said.

“People have cameras,” Frank said. “Seven years from now, when you’re an MVP, you want someone pulling out a picture of you in a jock strap?”

“Got it,” Zach said, and that was it. Frank had said his piece, Zach got it, and the whole deal was over. They refocused on the game. I got bored and went to our room to do some schoolwork. Like a dork, I was working ahead for next week. Every once in a while, Zach would take a break from the game and would come in the room and we’d fuck around. It was a nice, relaxing afternoon, and I liked it. I hadn’t had one of those in a long time.

Stef, JJ, and Grandmaman came home just in time for dinner. We went down to the local pub that my father had ironically claimed as his hang out, and had a fun time there. There were televisions with football games on, of course, and that kept Frank and Zach busy. When we got back to the condo, Stef showed Zach the stuff they got for him and made him model it. They did a pretty good job, with only a few outlandish things, but it really didn’t matter: Zach looked great in anything. I smiled to myself, thinking that he looked best in nothing.

After the fashion show, we were about to head off to bed, when Stef pulled me aside. “I’ll be there in a minute,” I said to Zach. He gave me a sexy wink, making me giggle like a chick.

“Which version of the diary did you bring?” Stef asked.

“The one that Grand edited, labeled Tonto.2,” I said. That was the one where he’d edited out all of the stuff related to Great Grandmaman and Tonto’s love lives. I had a pure copy for myself, locked away safely, but this version would give Zach most of the story. “I could get one of the other editions.” There were other versions that were even more condensed. And of course, Grand had given them all distinct file names, and he had a master sheet for the ‘pure’ diary that delineated which versions had which sections edited out.

“No, I am fine with that. Would you allow me to give it to him?”

“Sure,” I said. “Come on.” I led Stef back to our room, opened the door and found Zach on the bed, striking a sexy pose as he stroked his dick.

He saw Stef and damn near jumped under the covers, “Fuck! You could have warned me!” I was laughing too hard to respond, and so was Stef.

“That is a sight that will be forever etched in my memory,” Stef said to him.

“I’m sorry,” Zach said, giving me a dirty look.

“You’re lucky he didn’t have a camera,” I said. I went over to my bag and pulled out the diary, and handed it to Stef.

Stef took the diary over to the bed and sat next to Zach. “My father kept a diary, starting with his 16^th birthday, and continuing until he died.” A tear fell out of his right eye, and Zach responded by sitting up a bit and putting his arm around Stef supportively. “It delineates his relationship with your uncles: Aaron and Nathan.”

“Wow,” Zach said.

“It is very personal, and very intimate. It is not something that most people would understand, and so it must be kept within our families.”

“I understand,” Zach said.

“Will made a copy for you, and asked me if he could give it to you,” Stef said. “This is for your use only. Gathan is aware of these events, but this copy is more detailed than the one he read.” I watched Zach smile instinctively at outdoing his brother, even in something like this. “I have not shared it with your other brothers, or your father.”

“I’ll keep it to myself,” he promised. “You can trust me.”

Stef handed him the diary. “If I did not, I would not give it to you.” He patted Zach’s cheek, then got up and left the room.

“He’s one amazing dude,” Zach said, staring after Stef. “Didn’t you say I was allowed to fuck him?”

I laughed. “Yeah. He’s allowed,” I joked, even though I knew Stef wouldn’t do that to me, and neither would Zach. Zach looked at the diary, then opened it and started reading it, but I distracted him by sucking his dick. After he blew his load, he immediately reached for it again, looking at me apologetically.

“I’m sorry, but I’m curious,” he explained.

“I’ll give you some privacy to read it,” I told him. “I’ll be back.” I went back out to the kitchen to forage for some food and found Dad and Stef sitting at the table, relaxing.

“I did not expect to see you out here so soon,” Stef teased.

“I took care of things, and now Zach is reading,” I said.

“I still maintain that he is the sexiest of all the Hayes boys,” Dad said.

“Having seen more of him than you have, I would agree,” Stef said. Dad frowned at Stef, going into his prudish mode, so I decided to really mess with him.

“Zach really likes to get fucked,” I said. “But he seemed like he’d be into experimenting around some more. Got any tips?”

My father blushed, which made Stef laugh. “He has a sensitive prostate?”

“I guess that’s what it is,” I agreed.

“There is no one better at manipulating a Hayes prostate than your father,” Stef said, looking at Dad, who frowned back at him.

“So tell me your tricks,” I said to my father, who was blushing, annoyed, and cornered. Stef and I kept giggling at him.

Dad swallowed, as if he were removing his embarrassment, and then started talking. “Some men like firm strokes, some like light touches,” he said. He was really cute when he was like this, trying to emulate Grand and be all academic. And for the next forty five minutes, he taught me more about anally pleasuring another man than I thought was possible. Then for the next forty-five minutes, I practiced on Zach.

November 14, 2001

Escorial

I was lying on my bed, marking time until dinner. I’d tried playing some video games, but the violence freaked me out. It was like I had a whole new level of respect for life after 9-11, and even shooting fake animated people on the screen seemed pretty awful. I thought about watching a movie, but that was kind of a long-term commitment. It would take at least a couple of hours. So instead, I decided to read, which was pretty dorky, especially since I was reading one of Grand’s journal articles he’d done on Post-Vietnam America. It was pretty technical, and I didn’t understand the statistics at all, but the coolest thing was that as I read it, I could almost hear him talking to me. A knock at my door interrupted my train of thought. “Come in!”

I was kind of surprised to see Frank there. “Hi,” he said awkwardly, and looked around cautiously. He never came to my room, and probably didn’t even know what it looked like.

“Hey,” I said, and jumped out of bed. I led him over to the sitting area with the two chairs and the rug.

“Nice room,” he said. I gave him a smile to thank him, and then stared at him, asking him to tell me why he had come to see me. “We have a problem.”

“We do?” I asked, emphasizing the ‘we’.

“Wally and Clara are going to see Zach play this weekend,” he said. “They’d like it if you’d stay home.”

“They’re banning me from going to see him?” I asked, surprised at first, but that shifted pretty quickly to anger.

“I think at this point it’s a request,” he said.

“So you decided to come talk to me to see if you could get me to agree not to go, and solve the problem?” I asked acidly.

“It would make things easier,” he said nervously, getting that his request annoyed me.

“This isn’t really about me at all,” I told him. “You know it’s not.”

Frank thought about it, and realized that Wally and Clara were just trying to reel Zach in, and that they were probably as worried about Frank’s influence on Zach as they were mine. “Maybe,” he allowed.

“Are you going?” I asked him.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Did they want you to go?” I asked.

“They didn’t mention it,” he said.

“I’ll talk to Zach and let you know,” I said. He didn’t like that at all, because he wanted to get me to cave on the spot, but he was smart enough to know that wasn’t happening.

“Let me know,” he said, got up and left.

I called Zach as soon as he was out of my room. “Hey!” Zach said enthusiastically. “You usually don’t call this early.”

“I do when I have something important to talk about,” I said playfully.

“Oh yeah? Does it involve sex toys?”

I giggled for a second, and then got more serious. “It involves your parents.”

“What did they do now?”

“They’re coming to see you play this weekend,” I said.

“Cool,” he said. I didn’t get why he liked it when they watched him play, since his dad would just rip him up and down afterward, but he did. “What’s the problem?”

“They asked Frank to ask me not to go to the game this weekend,” I told him.

“What?” he asked. “What the fuck?!”

“I guess I take up too much of your time,” I joked, even though the whole thing made me pretty sad.

“That’s bullshit,” he said. “I want you to be there.”

“Look, this is your deal,” I told him. “If you want me there, I’m there. If you want me to stay away this weekend, I will.”

“You don’t want to visit?” he asked idiotically.

“Dude, I want to be with you bad,” I said in my slutty voice. “But I’m in this with you. If you don’t want to fight this battle, I can make it until the next game.”

“The last game is on Thanksgiving Day,” he said. “I don’t know how I’m going to do the game and make it home for Thanksgiving dinner.”

“One problem at a time,” I said.

“I’ll call you later on and let you know,” he said. I looked at my clock and it was 5:00pm.

“Sounds good.” I hung up the phone and planned to finish reading Grand’s paper, but I ended up falling asleep.

I was awakened when I felt a hand gently shaking me. “It is dinner time,” Stef said. I looked at my clock and it was almost 7:00.

“Crap,” I said, jumping up, and dropping Grand’s paper on the floor.

Stef picked it up, looked at it, and chuckled. “How ironic that we both use the same sleep aid.”

“It’s actually pretty interesting,” I said. “Thanks for waking me up.” I paused to run my hand through my hair, and decided that I looked good enough for dinner on a Wednesday.

“Gathan is here,” Stef cautioned.

“Figures,” I grumbled. Wally and Clara were calling in reinforcements. He gave me one of his sarcastic looks. “I’ll be nice, more or less.”

“We will see if it is more or less,” he said as we walked into the dining room.

Gathan was standing there, looking annoyed, but I ignored that. I went up and gave him a friendly hug. “Hey! Good to see you!”

“Good to see you too,” he said, kind of freaked out. Grand and Wade walked in, followed by Grandmaman and Frank, so that was our cue to sit down. I sat next to my father, drawing strength just from his presence.

“I found Will sleeping soundly, so soundly I was wondering what could have induced a slumber like that,” Stef said to Grand.

“And what was the cause of this near-coma?” he asked with dread.

“He was reading one of your journal articles,” Stef said. I almost laughed at Grand’s evident annoyance at the thought that his article wasn’t interesting, which conflicted with the pride he felt that I’d actually read it.

“Academic articles often stimulate different reactions,” he said arrogantly, making us all laugh. “Which article was it?”

“The article on Post-Vietnam America,” I said. “I’m not done with it, but it’s really good. I’m having a hard time understanding the statistics.”

He smiled. “When you are done, if you would like, I will explain them to you.”

“Awesome,” I said. It would be, but it would also be confusing as hell. Conversations like that with Grand usually made my head hurt.

“I talked to Zach,” Frank said, changing the subject.

“What did he have to say?” Gathan asked, barely masking his disdain.

“He said if you don’t go, he’s not playing,” Frank said, looking directly at me. I just stared at him, amazed. Was Zach bluffing: would he really not play if they banned me? If that was true, that was huge, because that meant that he was putting me before football. Did he care about me that much? I let myself dance down that road for a bit, daring to think that he loved me too, but then I reeled my mind back in. I knew how things were with us. We were really good together, we were amazing together; but it was a shallow kind of togetherness because it was so secret.

“I’ll bet Wally and Clara were thrilled with that,” Dad said, visualizing how annoyed they’d be.

“They weren’t thrilled at all,” Gathan said. “But they know that Zach’s full of crap, and that nothing is more important than football.”

“Perhaps,” Grand said thoughtfully.

“You think he loves you enough to trade football for you?” Gathan asked me, but not in an asshole way.

“I don’t think he loves me at all,” I said honestly. “I think he’s tired of his father giving him crap about his games, and I think he’s tired of his parents making stupid rules and decisions for him.” I managed to not look at my father when I said that, even though we both knew that he and I would be having a similar conflict if we went back in time a year.

“So are you going?” Gathan asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“I wonder if we could table that topic for a minute, and discuss a different one,” Grand said. We gave him our attention. “While I love having Thanksgiving here at Escorial, I have been thinking that perhaps a change of venue this year would be nice.”

“Really?” Dad asked. “You’re serious?”

“I did not seem serious?” Grand asked him sarcastically, which made the rest of us chuckle.

“And if we are not here, where will we be?” Stef asked nervously.

“I was thinking that it may be nice to have Thanksgiving in Claremont,” Grand said. “Between our house, and Tonto’s old house, there should be ample room.”

“And it would irritate Reverend White and his followers,” Dad said. They liked to keep track of when we used our ancestral home and bitch if we violated the terms of Tonto’s bequest. “What did Claire say?”

“I spoke with her this afternoon, and she thinks it will be interesting,” he said. I laughed at that.

“That means she knows it will be cold,” I said.

“Possibly,” he allowed.

“Maybe I’ll go to Zach’s game on Thanksgiving, and fly him back,” I suggested. “Assuming that’s OK with Wally and Clara,” I said, giving Frank and Gathan a snarky look to match my tone.

“Maybe I’ll go with you,” Gathan said.

“I haven’t decided if you’re invited,” I told him, continuing on in my snarky mode. “It seems to be the cool thing to do in your family, to uninvite people to Zach’s games.”

“Whatever,” he said, mildly annoyed with me.

“Why don’t you go to the game this weekend,” I said to Frank, “And then Gathan and I can go next weekend.” I looked at both of them firmly. “And you can explain to Wally and Clara that they’re not welcome to ride along with us next weekend.” It was almost funny, like we were dividing up custody of Zach. They got him this weekend, but I got him over Thanksgiving.

“We’ll see if that makes everyone happy,” Frank agreed.

“Actually, it makes everyone a little unhappy. You can thank Wally for that,” I told them. I was baiting Gathan with that line, but he didn’t bite, so the topic pretty much ended on that note. I talked to Zach after dinner, and he grudgingly went along with it too.

November 20, 2001

Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

I sat in the library, with books spread out in front of me. I had an exam tomorrow, and a project due, which I thought was a pretty shitty thing for professors to do right before the Thanksgiving break, but I’d learned during my time here that their minds worked differently. They were closing out topics, on the assumption that we’d forget shit when we got back. I sighed and focused on studying my notes. I’d work on the project later.

“Hey,” I heard a familiar voice say.

“Hi,” I said to Matt. He took a seat without me inviting him to. I was in a part of the library that allowed quiet discussion, so I guess I’d set myself up for this.

“You want to get some lunch?” he asked.

“I’ve got a ton of shit to do,” I said, gesturing at my books.

“Yeah, but you have to eat,” he said, shooting his smile at me, the one that used to melt me. Now I just found it annoying, probably because it was so boyish, and it just accentuated to me how immature he was. I was going to turn him down, but I read his mood, and got that he wanted to talk to me. And regardless of how that talk went, it would be better to do it off campus.

“Alright, but we have to make it fast,” I agreed. I put my books and notes in my backpack in an organized way, then followed him out of the library to the parking lot. “What were you doing in the library?”

“Looking for you,” he said.

“That’s a pretty lucky coincidence,” I said. There were a lot of places to study on campus, and off.

“This time of year, with the last minute crap, that’s where you normally go,” he said, as he hopped into the GMC. I got in as well, even though I chafed at that reminder of how well he knew me.

“So where are we going for lunch?” I asked.

“How about a burger joint?” he asked.

“Fine with me,” I said. He drove down the El Camino until he found a place that looked good. I wondered if he’d been here before, and if so, who he’d been with. In the past, thinking about him being out with someone else would have bothered me, but this time, it didn’t. And all of these signs were pointing to a pretty big realization in my mind: I didn’t love him anymore.

We sat down, and since it was after the lunch rush, the waitress arrived and pleasantly helped us order. After she left, he looked at me really earnestly. “I miss you.”

I swallowed hard, because I didn’t want to hurt him, but I knew I was going to have to. “We’ve been busy,” I said.

“What would you say if I told you that I wanted to move back to Escorial?”

“I’d say that wasn’t my call,” I answered honestly, if not a little disingenuously.

But he wasn’t going to let me avoid the topic. “But what do you think?”

“I think it’s a bad idea,” I said. I felt so bad, at seeing his expression deflate like it did.

“Why?”

“Because we’re not together, and so things will be strange, and because Will is there, and he doesn’t like you,” I said. That was an understatement. Stef had pushed Will about Matt last night at dinner, and had gotten to witness one of his rages first hand.

“What if I can make things better with Will?” he asked.

“I don’t think that’s possible, at least not right away,” I said. “I tried to raise you as an issue with him, and he bit my head off. And he ripped into Stef yesterday when he tried.”

“He yelled at you and Stef?” he asked, really shocked.

“Since this thing happened with you and Tony, he’s started to get these rages, where he gets really mad and just loses it,” I explained.

“Doesn’t he usually do that anyway?” he asked sarcastically. He beat a hasty retreat when he saw my expression, something we communicated non-verbally.

“His psychologist thinks that he views the situation as a betrayal at a time when he needed you and Tony the most,” I explained. “His nickname for you is Brutus.”

“Like that dude in Popeye?” he asked. “I’m not trying to fuck Olive Oyl.”

I laughed, especially at his reference to that lame-ass cartoon that neither one of us had watched much as kids. “No, in reference to the guy in Julius Caesar,” I said.

“Oh,” he said sadly, starting to get how incredibly pissed off Will was at him. Our food came, providing us with a nice interruption to move beyond that unpleasant moment. “So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

“Tiffany, Riley, Maddy, and I are flying to Goodwell tomorrow after school,” I said. “Will and Gathan are coming with us, and then they’re flying on to New Jersey to see Zach play football.”

“Will is really into Zach,” Matt said, like he knew something about that. “Gathan says Zach is bad news.”

“Will is really into Zach,” I said, agreeing with him. “But I’m not sure if Gathan is right about Zach. I think there’s more to this than simply Zach being a douchebag.”

“I trust Gathan’s judgment,” he said, which annoyed me, since it made it sound like I wasn’t being as good of a friend to Gathan if I didn’t believe what he said unconditionally.

“I do too, but not on this,” I said. “I think there’s a lot of sibling rivalry shit going on there, way more than any of us know about. And there’s a lot of crap in the background, based on how Wally and Clara treat their kids.”

“Yeah, well if Will doesn’t listen, and he gets burned, Gathan gets to tell him he told him so,” he said. I stared at him, completely amazed at how he was approaching this. He was treating it like some high school romance, which at face value was reasonable, since Will and Zach were in high school. At the same time, both Will and Zach were way beyond where most high school guys were, both emotionally and physically.

“That would be a really helpful and compassionate thing to do,” I said snidely.

“Well if he won’t listen…” Matt began.

“It’s not that simple,” I said. “Will knows there are risks, but he’s willing to take them because he really cares about Zach.” I didn’t use the ‘L’ word because Will hadn’t really admitted it to me, and I didn’t want to breach his trust. “If Zach does screw him over, it won’t be a deal where it’s OK to just say ‘I told you so,’ it will be really sad, and really hard on him.”

“Well, doesn’t really matter what I think, since he doesn’t like me, and he’s not listening to me,” Matt said. He was irritated with me now, for pointing him out as being pretty boorish and insensitive. I didn’t care.

“Good point,” I agreed.

“You haven’t been to any of the club meetings lately,” he said, referring to the GLBT organization on campus. I wanted to tell him that was because I considered that to be his turf, and because I knew all the dipshit twinks in the club were spending all their time swooning over him and Tony.

“I put a lot of time and effort into it in the past, so I figure I’ll stay out of it and let the new officers run the show,” I said.

“You might enjoy some of the new members,” he said, then started laughing. “There’s this one guy…”

I cut him off. The last thing I wanted to hear about was the latest gossip from the GLBT club. “I’m not really into that crowd.”

He gave me a nasty look. “Fine.” We ate in silence for a bit. “We won our last game against Santa Clara.”

“I heard. You got two goals,” I said. “Congrats.”

He smiled broadly, proud of that achievement. “It was a kick ass game. It’s not that we don’t miss you,” he added hastily, “but the team has adapted to you being gone.”

“I’m glad,” I said, and meant it. I hadn’t meant to leave a void in the team.

“Klip says he talks to you a lot,” he said, probing. Klip wouldn’t say that at all; he must have found out from someone else I was hanging out with Klip a lot. We’d met pretty much every night at the hotel, and had a blast, but I’d checked out yesterday, and I’d known that when I did that the fling with him was over. It was one of those things that was really fun, but it had been temporary, and now it was done.

“We’re friends,” I said simply.

“Just friends?” he asked, and that bothered me a lot.

“You really don’t have any right to ask me who I’m with,” I said rudely. “But for the record, Klip is a good friend, and he’s straight.” All three of those things were true, even though Klip was taking a walk on the wild side with me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. I shrugged, because I was already over it. We finished eating, and I looked at my watch, our prompt to pay the bill and head back. He picked up the tab, and I thanked him, but I could tell he was disappointed. He was thinking this would be a big romantic lunch, and that we’d start to repair our relationship, so he could go off on his Thanksgiving break and feel good about where we were. Instead, it had been pretty tense and uncomfortable.

We drove back to campus in silence, other than him telling me he was going back to Cleveland to spend Thanksgiving with his parents. He parked the car, and then looked at me. “So you don’t want me to move back?”

I sighed lightly. “I told you that’s not my decision.” He stared at me, demanding that I answer his question. “No.”

“You won’t even give me a chance?” he asked.

I looked at him, completely surprised. “A chance for what?”

“A chance to be with you, to be together,” he said earnestly.

I shook my head, and felt sad inside, because he had me backed into a corner, and I knew I’d have to hurt him. “I don’t see that happening.”

“What?” he asked, really upset. “Is there someone else?” I found that particularly irksome, that I would only not want to be with him if there was someone else, but I let it go.

“No, there’s no one else right now,” I said. “Look, we’re just in very different places right now.”

“We belong together,” he said, almost pleaded. “We’re perfect for each other.”

I bit my lower lip and shook my head again, gestures which told him how upset I was. “I’m on my own now, doing well, and you’re on your own, doing well. I don’t want to go back to the way things were.”

“We won’t go back,” he said. “We can go forward.”

“That’s what I thought a month ago, but I’m not there anymore,” I said.

He grabbed my hand, and held it firmly. “Wade, I love you. You’re my soul mate. My partner. We have to work things out.”

“No,” I said simply, shaking my head yet again. “You’re very important to me, and when we’re through this whole thing, I want us to be friends. But that’s it.”

“Friends?” he asked.

This time I nodded. “I care about you; I care about you a lot. But I don’t love you anymore.” I felt the tears forming, so I pulled my hand away from his, opened the door to the GMC, grabbed my backpack, and all but sprinted out, heading back to the library.