Just Keep Swimming - 2. Chapter 2

Gabriel

“You’re not wearing that!”

Gabriel winced as dual screeches of soprano level horror threatened both his ears and the beer bottle in his hand—his uncharacteristic attempt to calm the aftermath of his nerves now that Friday was here, and his cell phone hadn’t rung with a cancelation call from Liam. A fact Gabriel was thrilled about in between bouts of nervous tension about getting back into the dating game after being married to the same woman for fifteen years. Despite Harlow and Kora’s assurances that everyone knew Liam was, ‘really into him,’ Gabriel hadn’t, so accepting that he could finally pursue the younger man who’d been on his radar for almost a year, had taken some mental reframing.

Being a single dad meant dating was complicated. Most men his age were generally set in their ways after their decades of various experiences of life and love on this planet, and the ones looking for a readymade family were rare. But Liam was good with Kora and Harlow, as well as all the kids on his soccer team and in his swim classes. He never talked down to them, or over their heads. Despite Liam’s endearing nerd-boy vibes—which Gabriel suspected was almost an unspoken requirement for all cute computer programmers—he was good with people. Since Kora and Harlow were Gabriel’s two favorite people in the world, that had been a quality Gabriel admired. Liam was a good person, intelligent, talented and hot as confirmed by both his ink, and the surprisingly toned body it marked. Gabriel had gotten only a brief peek at the ink but it’d been enough for him to want to see the rest with a gut-deep desire he wasn’t used to. It’d been a while since being potentially naked with someone had appealed to him.

Gabriel and his ex-wife Mary had stopped sleeping together months before they’d even brought up the word divorce. Weekly couples therapy visits for over eighteen months where they’d paid $150.00 per hour out of pocket to tear one another down over problems they’d left uncommunicated for years, hadn’t done much to inspire a new sense of romance, much less passion between them. Gabriel had been fine with the idea of self-imposed celibacy till Kora and Harlow got older, but then he’d gotten to know more about Liam through his kids. He also saw how Liam interacted with other people at the YMCA and at soccer games. Liam was likeable and Gabriel trusted him. Partly because Kora and Harlow did, but mostly because he could see with his own eyes that Liam genuinely wanted to help people in any way he could in their community, even if that meant sitting on Mrs. McCleary’s porch to help her fix her binoculars.

Gabriel smiled to himself. It was a win-win all ‘round so long as Gabriel didn’t get stuck in his head about what could possibly go wrong with starting a new romantic chapter in his life at thirty-eight, with a very desirable man eight years his junior. He was willing to try though—just with a light beer in his hand for tonight.

“Dad…seriously?” The incredulity in Harlow’s voice was topped only by Kora chiming in with, “I thought you liked Liam, Daddy!”

Although they were Irish twins, his daughter’s shared many similarities including competing levels of exasperation when Gabriel made a “Dad misstep.” Kora’s calm, responsible personality usually set her apart easily from her younger, more spontaneous sister despite them both being blonde mini-versions of Mary on the outside except for the color of their eyes which were gray like Gabriel’s. At the moment though, matching expressions of disapproval wrinkled up their pert, freckled noses. Gabriel suddenly felt like he was related to a pair of bobble heads when they shook their heads disapprovingly.

“What?” He looked down at his carefully chosen gray chinos and conservatively striped navy and white dress shirt which he’d left untucked instead of belted in like he usually would for work. He’d also left the top two buttons undone. As far as Gabriel was concerned, he looked date-night-at-home casual. But as his daughters continued to eyeball him with critical scorn, he found himself reconsidering that position.

Gabriel had been out of the dating game for over fifteen years so his remembrance of dating customs was practically stone age. He’d never even tried a dating app and he’d long ago stopped trying to keep up with the slang kids used nowadays that made them sound more like aliens from outer space than humans he had to trust to one day run the world.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Exasperation colored Gabriel’s voice when the girls exchanged one of their patented looks describing his hopelessness without using any words.

“Daddy you just look…” Kora paused, glancing over at Harlow again. Harlow didn’t possess her older sister’s filters.

“You look like a geek, Dad,” Harlow said, shrugging a slim shoulder when Gabriel arched a brow.

“I thought you said that’s the type of guy Liam goes for?”

Harlow grinned. “No, we said those are the kind of guys who usually like him—guys that are even geekier than he is. Though there was that one guy who was sorta cool looking with the blonde ponytail who rode a motorcycle, but Amber’s mom said he was too sketchy for Liam.”

Gabriel could only imagine what Amber’s mother meant by “sketchy” since the entire neighborhood pretended not to know that she usually showed up to afternoon games guided by the happiness that came from having access to her physician husband’s prescription pad. Gabriel however, agreed. There was no way Liam was the type to date an actual drug dealer, even a happy natured slacker kind.

“Hey, that’s not nice. Liam’s not a geek.”

The girls exchanged another one of those looks that would haunt their future husbands one day, before Kora moved over to take Gabriel’s hand and usher him toward his room with Harlow helping by keeping both of her hands on Gabriel’s back like she was herding him.

“Liam’s a total geek, Daddy,” Harlow said. “But he’s the cute kind of geek that’s pretty hot when he takes his glasses off—like Clark Kent before he becomes Superman.”

“And he’s really nice,” Kora added as they walked Gabriel into his bedroom before Harlow started looking through his closet while Kora raided his dresser. They moved with the efficient concentration of people trying to save the world, not just their dad from humiliating himself. In matching jean shorts and white-socked feet, they were buzzes of sun-kissed skin and blonde hair, though Harlow was sporting her favorite Rangers hockey jersey and Kora was wearing a sleeveless black top decorated with bright sunflowers and butterflies.

“All the girls on the team except us, have a crush on him, but the gay thing is kind of a factor,” Harlow said.

Gabriel watched with amusement as Kora pulled out a pair of dark rinse jeans that he’d never worn because Mary had bought them for him a few years ago just before they’d divorced. The rise was lower than he normally wore. They weren’t anywhere near plumber’s crack potential, but Gabriel had felt they might make him look like he was trying too hard not to look middle-aged. Most of the time, Gabriel was generally fine with a few more lines on his face than he was twenty because it meant he was living long enough to earn them. Working some extra hours of exercise into his routine every week to keep his aging dad bod from looking like one, was just good for his health in general since he liked living and didn’t want to end up having a heart-attack at forty like his father had before he’d drastically changed his lifestyle choices. Gabriel was good with the passage of time, but Liam was gorgeous in an avantgarde way and looked even younger than the eight-year age gap between them, not a gray hair on his head of endearingly wild curls. It made Gabriel feel a little self-conscious about his own optics. The girls had zero sympathy for him though as Harlow pulled out a soft, long-sleeved blue Henley that she assured him made his eyes look grayer. Gabriel never wore it unless he was lounging around with them at the house or doing chores, so their pick made sense now that he thought about it. Tonight was about trying to make Liam feel like part of their family, so it was probably a good thing to let him peek at the man behind the curtain.

There had to be a certain irony in the fact that Gabriel was getting Dating for Dummies tips from his daughters. But between the long hours he’d been keeping the past few years to build up his contracting business, while also trying to be sensitive to the girls’ feelings after Mary had announced her engagement, Gabriel had started turning down even the few sporadic offers he did get, not wanting the girls to feel like they were losing both parents to changes they couldn’t control. Even casual dating had stopped being a priority and Gabriel could admit—at least to himself—that he was out of practice. Not that not dating had been that big of a sacrifice anyway. Liam was the only man in a very long time who Gabriel had been tempted to possibly complicate his life for romantically, even when Liam had been dating someone else.

Every time Liam’s then boyfriend Matt, had spent the night at Liam’s place, Gabriel had been tempted to call in a few favors with his friends at the local fire department to have the gas lines and fire alarms checked. Not that Matt had looked like the type to inspire much heat in the bedroom with his heavily slouched shoulders, primly styled hair, polo shorts and bland apple pie features. But sometimes people were more than they seemed on the surface. Liam looked like the friendly, unassuming nerd next door, but his tousled curls, vivid ink and warm sense of humor—especially when he’d handled his nephew like a pro—spoke to possibilities 180 degrees out from boring.

Unbidden, the image of Liam’s eyes widening behind his nerd couture glasses as Gabriel dropped to his knees in front of him, popped into his head. Gabriel could easily imagine himself slowly lowering the younger man’s zipper to draw out Liam’s cock with his lips and tongue so he could worship it until Liam’s knees went jelly weak and Gabriel didn’t feel so out of practice anymore. Sucking cock had always been something he’d gotten off on before he'd married Mary, but not something he’d done in over fifteen years since he hadn’t hooked up with anyone since the divorce. This was a brand-new ballgame and it scared the piss out of him. But he’d raised Kora and Harlow to be bold and confident when needed, so Gabriel had to lead by example.

Gabriel’s own legs suddenly felt unsteady as he imagined the sounds that Liam might make when Gabriel worshipped him with his already watering mouth. Would he be shy, or a more vocal lover telling Gabriel exactly what he wanted with explicit directions that would singe his ears? Right now, it was a toss-up in Gabriel’s mind. It was also wholly inappropriate to sport even a semi around his kids, so he held the jeans in front of his crotch like a shield before escaping with both it and the Henley into the bathroom to change. When he returned, pushing up the sleeves of his shirt which seemed to fit more tightly across his chest than he remembered it fitting before, the girls, who were sitting on the edge of his bed, grinned at him like adorable, satisfied minions of Satan.

“MUCH better,” Harlow said. “Scaring Liam away on your first date, even if it’s a weird first-date since we’re here, would suck. We need him to coach our game next weekend, not like totally ghost you.”

“Liam's not going to know what hit him, Daddy,” Kora said with a sweet smile, trying to defuse the sting of her untactful sister’s words as she discreetly elbowed Harlow who squawked in protest.

“Just make sure to keep him away from any water glasses unless you want a shower,” Harlow said, just to get the last word in. Kora rolled her eyes. Gabriel hid a smile as they all went back downstairs to the kitchen together, the girls obviously pleased with the results of their makeover mission. Gabriel wasn’t surprised. After hearing on a daily basis how “cool, nice and awesome” Liam was, Gabriel hadn’t expected anything less than a fully mounted assault to make sure he didn’t mess things up.

Gabriel had thought he’d been discreet about his attraction to the younger man. Like the girls had pointed out earlier, the men Liam dated seemed to be a 180-degrees from blue collar men like Gabriel, and crashing and burning was bad enough when you didn’t have to see the object of your unrequited affection several days a week. With Liam living just a few houses down from them and coaching the girls’ games every weekend during soccer season, Gabriel had wanted to avoid any awkwardness if Liam wasn’t interested. Thankfully, Kora and Harlow were more aware of the world around them than Gabriel was. His lips twitched. If the U.S. government wanted to recruit successful future spies, they only had to look as far as the female tween and teen population. His daughters had picked up on every sign of Liam’s interest that Gabriel had missed.

All the times that Liam had stuttered when he and Gabriel had spoken at the soccer field, or Liam tripped while practically standing still when Gabriel had startled him, had been personality quirks that Gabriel had attributed to a lack of social graces-possibly from too much time spent behind computer screens. Somehow it’d bypassed him— until the girls had clearly spelled it out—that Liam was only ever awkward around him.

In hindsight, it was stupidly obvious that although Liam was all low-key confidence when he was around kids, and friendly toward other parents, he seemed to occasionally morph into an adorable spaz whenever Gabriel was around. The fact that he’d seemed to instantly relax once Gabriel had clarified his exact position on wanting to bring Liam into his inner circle, made it clear that the attraction between them was definitely a two-way street. Gabriel was all on board with that.

With the lean, broad-shouldered build of a swimmer and his pale blue eyes always slightly magnified behind his black-rimmed glasses to give him an unintentionally startled look, Liam wasn’t Gabriel’s usual type either, but that didn’t feel like a bad thing. One benefit of his divorce was embracing change in its many different forms. Dating a substantially younger man was definitely a change.

When Liam had come to the door yesterday, his t-shirt and jeans had looked deliciously rumpled, like he’d just gotten out of bed—or wanted to be dragged into one. Gabriel would’ve been happy to oblige that scenario a dozen different times over the last year, and now, with all the pieces falling together into place, Gabriel was ready for some melding of both their minds and their preferred body parts if things went well between them, starting with tonight.

To avoid lingering on the erotic visuals that suddenly popped into Gabriel’s mind of Liam in his shower with him—warm water streaming down that lean, rangy body while Liam’s long, nimble fingers curled around Gabriel’s cock to work him with the same skill he coded with— Gabriel cleared his throat, ignoring his daughter’s curious looks as he walked over to the fridge and opened the freezer to cool his cheeks under the guise of checking to see if they still had the half gallon carton of vanilla ice cream he’d bought on Wednesday for tonight. Harlow and Kora hadn’t entered the no-carbs stage of female life yet, so ice cream tended to die quickly in their house. The ice cream was predictably missing, but thankfully there was still a full can of whipped cream in the side door of the fridge where Gabriel had hidden it behind the Worcestershire sauce only he liked. He set it on the counter as the girls set up the kitchen table with plates, cutlery and an overabundance of napkins that suggested they were already privately salivating over Liam’s culinary contribution.

Gabriel moved closer to supervise, gently knuckling Harlow’s head just because he had dad privileges. His younger daughter scowled at him between protests that Gabriel was messing up her hair- hair that was in its usual long, straight blonde ponytail. Kora smirked. By contrast, her equally long blonde hair was hanging loose down her back, pulled up at the sides with simple silver clips.

“Are you guys really all right with this?” Gabriel asked as he set two trivets onto the center of the table for the Pyrex Liam had texted to tell him the French toast was in.

“Eating French toast? Get real, Dad.” Harlow grinned at him, her braces glittering beneath the recessed lights like the teeth of a pretty piranha.

“You know what I mean. I know your mom getting engaged felt sudden, so if you’re not comfortable with me dating Liam, you can tell me.”

And he’d honor it even if it killed him—which it likely would now that he knew that the reality of Liam as a potential partner was so much better than his fantasies. But the responsibilities of Dad-life trumped his personal life.

Kora broke the silence first. “Daddy, it’s totally okay. We love you and want you to be happy, which is why we told you about Liam crushing on you. We like him. He’s nice, smart, doesn’t treat us like infants, and he really, really likes you.”

Which was true of course, but the whole putting your kids first, especially when they tended to change their minds about most things like which pop star was hotter or which brand of soda was better, was important to Gabriel.

“Liam’s so much cooler than Pedro who bought us paint by number kits of unicorns last Christmas,” Harlow added with an eyeroll. Gabriel couldn’t tell if she was more offended by the fact that paint by numbers had stopped being cool in their eyes by the time they were four, or that the painting in question was a unicorn and her bedroom was themed with sports memorabilia and wall posters from the Twilight movie series.

Kora nodded in agreement with her younger sister, probably on both counts. “Liam used to stare at you during the games whenever he thought no one was watching.”

“It was actually pretty funny,” Harlow chimed in again, after squirting a mouthful of whipped cream into her mouth from the can. She washed the tip off in the sink when Gabrel shot her a disapproving look. He’d always assumed that only teenage boys did that, in addition to drinking orange juice from the carton, but Harlow had always marched to the beat of her own unique drummer.

“Daddy, just an FYI, don’t wear that tight black t-shirt to practice again,” Kora said with gentle admonishment as she placed a simple glass vase Gabriel had never seen before, on the center of the table. It was half filled with water and a random assortment of flowers she’d obviously picked from the garden Mary had started with them in the backyard on one of her few visits since they’d moved into the house. “Liam almost took out half of us with his soccer ball drill kicks that day.”

Harlow snickered as Gabriel made a face, skillfully ducking the balled-up napkin he tossed at her head, before running to the door when it rang.

His younger daughter’s voice was a familiar sound in their home but Liam’s wasn’t, and Gabriel felt his belly churn nervously. He grabbed another light beer for himself, then one for Liam, just in case. Gabriel took a large, calming swallow of his beer as Liam and Harlow’s voices became clearer the closer they moved to the kitchen. Harlow was laughing. So was Liam, so Gabriel took that as a sign that while the upcoming teenage years would probably be iffy as the girls got older, tonight they had his back and new memories would be made.