9.11 - 61. Chapter 61

Merry Christmas!

October 14, 2001

Escorial

Sunday night dinners at Escorial were usually pretty formal and well-attended, but after the long weekend with Ethan and Joe, this one was pretty mellow. Darius was out on a date, JJ was still in LA with Tiffany, the Hobarts were busy with various shit, and Frank and Grandmaman had gone over to Santa Cruz for a few days to see if that would make Frank any happier. So that left me, Dad, Stef, and Grand, along with Matt, Wade, and Nana, but we were still dressed nicely, as was the custom.

“A smaller crowd tonight,” Grand observed. He liked big Sunday dinners, so I was worried he was disappointed, but he seemed just fine.

“I’m flying out after dinner. I’m heading to Dallas, then to Connecticut,” Dad said. He looked at me nervously as he did, but I wasn’t going to bust his balls about it. He was doing his best.

“Don’t get shot,” I said, referring to his last trip to Dallas.

“That’s not my plan,” he said. “They say things are better, so we’ll see.”

“And have they worked out the security situation?” Stef asked. It was impossible to ignore how pissed off he was.

“So it would seem,” Dad said. “I’ll check when I’m in Connecticut.”

“Please keep me informed,” Stef said icily.

“Ethan seemed to have a good time last night and today,” Grand said. I couldn’t help it, I started laughing. “And that is humorous?”

“That dude was a little bitch until Nana got ahold of him,” I said. She’d ridden him all weekend, and by the time he left, he’d been awfully damn polite. Wade chuckled with me, and seemed relieved that there was hope for him.

“He just needed some training,” she said. “Like most men.”

“You should spend more time with Will,” Matt said, giving me shit. He was still pissed off at me for pulling Tony off his sexual menu.

“I’ll spend time with you any day,” I said to Nana, then turned back to Matt. “If she spends more time with you, will that help you win a hockey game?” That really annoyed him, since they’d lost both games this weekend.

“USC is tough this year,” he said.

“At least you didn’t throw any temper tantrums,” I said, referring to Ethan’s outburst. “I assume that time you slammed your stick on the ice was just some sort of weird maneuver, but then again, no one else did that.” Matt was so pissed off now, his face was red, but I wasn’t going to put up with any shit from him. He’d acted badly at the game this afternoon, and we all knew it.

“So what is your plan for the week?” Dad asked me, to change the subject.

“Pretty much a normal week,” I said. “Tony’s coming up tonight.”

“Maybe I’ll stick around,” Matt said with a leer. I pulled out my lighter and lit it, just holding the flame there while I looked at him with a raised eyebrow. That shut him up.

“Zach sent me an e-mail and told me I should come see him play on the 27^th of October. They’ve got an away game in Oradel, New Jersey, wherever that is. So I’m planning to go out for that,” I told them.

“You planning to fly?” Dad asked absent-mindedly, because he was trying to figure out if I should charter a plane or go commercial.

“It’s kind of a long drive for a weekend,” I said with a smile.

“Maybe I’ll go with you,” he said. I looked at him, telling him with my eyes that the last thing I wanted was him hanging out with me and Zach. “I’ll go to the game, and then leave you alone,” he said, being mildly bitchy.

“Sounds good,” I said. “Maybe we can leave after school on Friday?”

“I’ll set it up,” he said.

“We were thinking of going down to Malibu next weekend,” Wade said. “We’re playing UCLA, and I thought we’d get Ethan to come up and spend the weekend with us there. You want to join us?” He’d directed that last question to me. Matt gave him an annoyed look.

“Are you going?” I asked Nana. “Ethan’s more pleasant when you’re around.”

“I’m planning to go,” she said.

I smiled, and then looked at Wade. “That could work. Can I let you know later this week?”

“Sure,” he said. I got what he was trying to do. He was trying to build a bond with Ethan, not just with himself, but with all of us. I was flattered that he’d picked me to focus on, but Ethan wasn’t all that into being my friend, even if he was nicer post-Nana. Joe, on the other hand, really liked me. The dude had snuck into my room five times during the weekend to get me to give him head. He was one of those guys who were really fun to blow, because he really got into it, and he had a really quick fuse, so I had to work to keep him from cumming too soon.

Dinner ended, and I went to my room to wait for Tony, wondering if he’d bother to show up. He did, right on time, which was a little worrisome since Kyle was that prompt. “Hey,” he said, and put his book bag down on my couch. He gave me a nice kiss. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too,” I said, smiling at him. “How was your week?”

“Good. Really good,” he said. “I ended up hanging out with some of the dudes I met at that meeting Wednesday.” I pretended not to be jealous.

“They didn’t wear you out, did they?” I asked in my quiet, slutty voice, the one that drove him nuts.

“When I’m around you, I’m never worn out,” he said. And then our eyes met, and the lust in us soared. Half an hour later found us lying in my bed, panting, with his chest covered with my load. I slid the condom off of him and took it into the bathroom, flushed it down the toilet, and brought some towels back to clean him off. “That was awesome,” he said with a huge grin.

“Isn’t it always?” I asked, giggling like a chick.

“Yep.”

“I was worried about you on Wednesday,” I said.

“I’m sorry I just bailed on you,” he said, apologizing.

“I didn’t say I was mad at you, or that you had to say you were sorry, I said I was worried about you,” I responded, smiling at him.

“It was a rough day, but now I’m fine,” he said. He didn’t say anything else, and I didn’t pressure him.

October 17, 2001

Connecticut

A knock on my door pulled me out of the studious trance I was in as I digested the latest changes to Zeta, and to our timeline. I looked up to see Jordan peeking in. “Do you have a minute?”

“Certainly,” I said, shaking off the haze my concentration had caused. “It’s good to see you!” He’d been gone, visiting the Triton plant in Florida, and probably working a round of golf in while he was there, I thought with a smile.

“I just thought I’d stop in and say hello, since I just got back in town.”

“How were things in Florida?”

“Very good,” he said. “Everyone responded very well to the plan, and to the changes.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I heard that things went great in Claremont,” he noted, referring to my visit there. “How was Dallas? I don’t see any wounds.”

I laughed. “You said the culture there had changed, and that was an understatement. I almost got as friendly a reception there as I did in Claremont. And at least a hundred people came up and apologized for what happened the last time I was there.” They had really rolled out the red carpet for me.

“That’s good,” he said. “I also wanted to check up on those timelines, and thank you for tackling that project for me.”

“It’s not a problem,” I said. “I’ve almost got them done. I should be able to finish up tomorrow, and then I’m heading home.”

“We’ll talk before you leave. I think Marcia and I were planning to take you out to dinner while you were here,” he said. “I guess tonight is our only option.”

“I’ve got plans tonight, so we’ll have to do it next time I’m in town. Please tell Marcia I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s not your fault. You were here. I was the one out doing the road show,” he said with a slight smile. “She’ll understand.”

I shook his hand, and he left, giving me the opportunity to re-absorb myself in the Zeta timelines. In fact, I was so absorbed; I must not have heard the knock on my door, so I was pretty surprised to hear Chris Mendoza’s voice. “Hi. Sorry to bother you.”

I looked at him and blinked, then got my act together. “It’s not a problem. I was just pretty focused.”

“I noticed,” he said, shooting his killer smile at me. “We still doing dinner?”

“With one condition,” I said.

“What?”

“You pick the place, and I’m buying,” I said, smiling back at him. “But you have to drive.”

“That works for me,” he said. I got my briefcase ready to take with me, then changed my mind and left it. I didn’t need to do work tonight. I followed him down to his car, a BMW 325, probably only a year or two old.

“We could go into the City,” he said. I felt my insides churn at the thought of going back to Manhattan.

“I’d rather not,” I said, and damned myself for being weak and wimpy with this guy.

“I didn’t know if that was something you wanted to deal with, but I figured I’d give you the choice,” he said. He was giving me the illusion of control, and I realized that he must have sensed that control was important to me. That almost pissed me off.

“Well, there’s got to be something out here that’s decent, and that way we won’t have so far to drive,” I said.

“I’ll surprise you,” he said. “You sure shook up the security department.”

“It needed to be shaken up,” I said. I didn’t feel bad about that, or necessarily proud of that. “You haven’t been bothered at all?”

“No,” he said. “They finally figured out I’m not an Arab. You’d think with a name like Mendoza, they’d get that, but that guy Bock was such an idiot, anyone with brown skin was suspicious.”

“It’s unfortunate that he has such a narrow mind,” I said. “I thought they stopped you because you were gay.”

“You were hoping?” he asked, showing me some game.

“Just curious,” I said, pretending to be uninterested. “So you’re not Arabian?”

“Puerto Rican,” he said. “Someday when you have more time, I’ll take you to New York where they have awesome Puerto Rican food.”

“You’re assuming I’ll want to go out with you again,” I said.

“You will,” he said, and shot me his grin. “I’m good at sales. I assume the close.” I laughed at that.

He drove up to this nice restaurant. I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “German?”

“I figured with a name like Schluter, you’d appreciate some German food.”

“I haven’t really eaten much German food,” I said.

“We don’t have to go here,” he said, and seemed mildly flustered.

“No,” I said hastily. “I’m sure it’s great, and I like to try new things.”

“That’s good to know,” he said, majorly flirting with me. It was incredibly pleasant to be out with this handsome guy, and to have him pay attention to me. If he really hit on me hard, that would change the game, but right now, this harmless flirting invigorated me.

“I’m an innovative kind of guy.” We walked into the restaurant and got a table right away, even though it was crowded, so evidently he’d made reservations. That was odd, since he’d asked me if I wanted to go into the city. This guy was hard to read.

“So what happens when we go public?” he asked, as soon as we sat down and got a drink.

“We’ll see how our capital structure looks after Zeta is fully launched, or at least well on the way, and we’ll issue enough new shares to get our debt levels down to the level we want them to be.”

“What about you? Will you dump a bunch of shares?”

I shook my head. “There’s almost always a pop in an IPO. If it’s done right, there’s not too much of one, but we’ll wait to reduce our holdings, if we decide to do that, until after the stock lists.” The waiter brought out salads, so I paused and took a bite, then went on after I swallowed. Nana’s boot camp on manners this weekend had been a good reminder for all of us. “We’ll also have Rule 144 limitations to deal with.”

“I thought you’d be out as soon as you could?” he asked curiously.

“In a normal IPO, the kind we usually do, we often reduce our position considerably, or completely, but in this situation, that may be different. We signed on to Triton for a longer haul.”

“How is this different?”

I could have told him about the entire nightmare battle with Alexandra Carmichael that had brought us into Triton in the first place, but I didn’t know him well enough to do that. “Most of the time, with venture capital deals, we’re in for funding first through third stages. That’s high risk, but high reward, and those are the returns we generally look for. So unless we really feel confident in a company going forward, we take the profits and roll them into the next deal.”

“But you have more confidence in Triton?”

“We do,” I said, but there were a lot more reasons for us to stay invested than that. “And with a war on, it’s probably a very good time to own stock in a defense contractor.”

“Only since it’s not public, normal people like me can’t really go out and buy it,” he said, and seemed frustrated.

“You don’t want to do that anyway,” I cautioned. “You’ve got opportunities for ownership through the stock bonus plan. And you’re in the finance department, so any trades you made in the stock would open up the possibility of insider trading.”

“If they catch me,” he said, grinning; only I didn’t smile back.

“You can fuck around with a lot of different people and groups out there, but the SEC and the IRS are two you definitely don’t mess with.” He nodded, but I didn’t know if he’d heard me or not. I ordered Wiener schnitzel, and it was really good. We spent the rest of the dinner just enjoying the food and talking about finance stuff. We finished eating, and got in his car for the ride back to my hotel.

“So when’s the last time you’ve been out on a date?” he asked, switching back to wolf mode.

“What do you mean?” I asked, more to stall than anything.

“A date. You know, you meet someone, and you go out for the first time.”

I thought about that, pondered that, trying to remember the last time I’d had a real first date. “Probably about three months,” I said, counting my lunch date with Alex Danvers, even though that wasn’t exactly what he was talking about. “It’s not all that different from a business meeting.”

“Then you’ve had some boring dates,” he joked.

I laughed. “When we start talking to a new company, that’s what it’s like. You slowly get to know them, trying to figure out if you can trust them, if you want to give it up to them. Only instead of sex, or love, it’s money.” I grinned at him. “I’ll bet you find money just as erotic as sex.”

“Sometimes,” he said, chuckling. “Maybe not tonight.”

“I thought you were Puerto Rican, not gay,” I responded.

“I can’t be both?” he flirted.

“I don’t know. Can you?”

“I can,” he said.

“I can’t,” I said, shutting him down.

“You can’t be gay or Puerto Rican?” he joked, hiding his disappointment.

“I am gay, I’m not Puerto Rican, but I can’t invite you up to my room tonight,” I said firmly. “Not that you’re not tempting.”

“Duh,” he said, joking about it to take out the sting of rejection. Even wolves got hurt when they got shut down.

“You work for Triton. It’s not that I can’t be with someone who works there, but if I do, it has to be more than just a hook-up.” No way I was going to admit to him that I wasn’t emotionally ready for that kind of involvement, so I pulled out the working together card.

“I’ve hooked up with guys who work at Triton,” he said. “Just ask Alec.” That was intensely hot, the vision of those two going at it, but I forced it to the back of my mind.

“It’s about a power differential,” I said.

“You think I’d accuse you of sexual harassment?” he asked, and started laughing. “Everyone at the whole company would laugh their asses off if I tried that.”

“Probably,” I said, laughing with him. “It means that if I decide to sleep with someone there, it has to be more than just a fuck.” I internally pondered how many times I’d heard and said that phrase ‘just a fuck’ and how it was rarely that simple.

“It would be the best fuck you ever had,” he said, being cocky. He pulled up to the front of the hotel and stopped to let me out.

He leaned in a bit, like he wanted to kiss me, but I just smiled at him and kept my distance. He was really adorable. “It may very well be. And it’s probably worth a few more dates for me to figure out if I want to go there.”

He smiled back. “One of your better investments.” I shook his hand, then went to get out of the car. “Call me when you’re in town next time.”

“Bet on it,” I said. I went up to my room, and tried to beat off by thinking about Chris, but by the time I got into it and was ready to shoot my load, my mind was firmly fixed on Robbie.

October 24, 2001

Escorial

“You’re getting a lot better at this,” I told Austin, as I finished helping him out with his homework.

“Thanks to you,” he said, smiling at me. He put his books away and we walked up to the main patio to get high, our reward for finishing up our homework. We ran into Darius and dragged him along with us. I think he got along with Austin almost better than I did. We bullshitted while we smoked, laughing more as we got more stoned.

“So how’d your date go?” I asked. He’d gone out with Chelsea again last night. They were a couple at school now.

“Not great,” he said somberly.

“Why? I thought you got laid.”

“Getting laid isn’t everything,” he said.

I put my hand on his forehead, like I was checking him for a fever. “Dude, are you alright?”

“Ha ha ha,” he said sarcastically, pushing my hand away. “I just don’t like her all that much.”

“I don’t get it?” He’d talked about her all the time, and now he didn’t like her?

“I was really into her, and the sex was fucking awesome,” he said, leering at me, “but the more time I spend with her, the more she does shit that annoys me.”

“What does she do that bugs you?”

“Little shit,” he grumbled. “She sings out loud to songs on the radio. I hate that.”

I laughed. “You didn’t figure that out before?”

“I don’t know,” he said, getting pissed at me for making him think about it.

“You move too fast,” Darius said, speaking up on the topic for the first time. If he’d made that kind of pronouncement to me, I’d be pissed off, but Austin took it in stride.

“What do you mean?”

“You get all into the girl, cause she’s new to you. You’re like an explorer. You find this exotic new land, and it seems all cool, only after you’ve been there for a while, you start to notice the weeds and shit that make it kind of ugly.” Darius was pretty profound, and hilarious, when he was stoned.

Austin nodded, as if he got it. “So you don’t do that?” I asked.

“I used to, I don’t anymore,” he said. He sighed. “Here’s how I look at it. If I go out with a chick, and I fuck her the first time, I try to play it really low key after that. Not enough to make her think I’m blowing her off, because that makes her feel bad, but enough that she gets that we’re not a couple, that we’re just people who are deciding if they like each other.”

I thought about that. “That could work for dudes too.”

“Dudes are people,” Darius said to me, being all snarky.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Austin said.

“You have to learn to control yourself,” Darius said, like it was easy. “I’ll bet you have lots of girls that you’ve been with, but you haven’t had a long relationship.”

“Pretty much,” Austin said.

“So if you play it cool, and don’t go all crazy apeshit after you fuck her or she blows you the first time, and you keep things low key, then if you decide you don’t like her, there’s a better chance you’ll still be friends,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to do that in college.”

“That makes sense,” Austin said. “Still means I have to dump Chelsea.”

“Don’t commit your heart until you’re sure,” Darius said. Even as he said that, I could see the pain leaking through his tough shields, the pain that Ella had caused when she’d dumped him. He’d held back all those years, found her, and let himself go, and then he’d ended up shattered. It was going to be really hard to be nice to her when I saw her again. “And don’t lead her on, into thinking you’re doing that, unless you’re ready to go there.”

“Good advice,” Austin said, and then stood up. “I gotta go.”

“See you tomorrow,” I said. I watched him walk off, and then just kicked back with Darius.

“He’s a good guy,” Darius said.

“I agree, but Chelsea probably won’t,” I joked. “Between him pissing her off, and Marie pissing Noah off, there’s going to be all these different groups in school that don’t like each other.”

“They’ll get over it,” Darius said, meaningless words.

“Chelsea probably will, but Noah won’t. He tried so hard to get Marie to take him back, and now that he’s figured out that’s not happening, he pretty much pouts all the time.”

“Ouch,” Darius said, visualizing the situation. “It’s probably just as hard on Marie as it is on him.”

“No shit, since she carries all this guilt for being the one who hurt him,” I agreed. I could see how it weighed on her.

“It’s like the shit we have to deal with,” he said. “The only real cure is time.”

“I can see that. It gets a little easier every day.”

“You still getting your tear seizures?” he asked. He called my little spells tear seizures to give me shit, but I could tell by his tone he was really worried about me.

“Not as often as I did,” I admitted. “How come you never have shit like that happen to you?” I asked almost belligerently, jealous that he didn’t break down like I do.

He didn’t let my attitude bother him. “I get them, but I get them when no one can see me. Alone, especially at night, I get them.”

“I’m here if you need me,” I said unnecessarily.

“I know,” he replied, and gave me a soft smile. He held out his hand and I fist-bumped him. Ironically, that reminded me of Robbie, and brought on one of my spells, but when I realized why, it made me laugh. “Dude, what the fuck? You’re laughing and crying at the same time?”

“When we fist-bumped it reminded me of Robbie, and that made me sad, but then it was funny that a fist would do that,” I said, and cracked him up. We were laughing pretty hard when Dad came out.

“You two are in good spirits,” he said formally.

“More or less,” I said. He was really uptight. “What’s wrong?”

“I did something, and it didn’t work out how I planned, and now I’m worried that you’ll be all pissed off at me,” he said. He was doing this, setting things up so I wouldn’t lose it, so I mentally resolved not to.

“So how were you planning to tell me about it? Were you just going to spill it, or were you going to try and butter me up first?” I joked. Darius chuckled.

“I figured I’d just tell you,” he said. I looked at him, telling him to go on. “Wally and Clara called me to talk about money for Zeke. He wants to do some study abroad thing.”

“Where’s he want to go?” I asked. Zeke was going to school at Claremont Tech, or CIT as they called it, so I didn’t blame him for wanting to broaden his horizons a bit.

“He’s into geothermal energy, and they’re doing a lot with that in Iceland, so he wants to go study there during the summer,” Dad explained. Zeke was a total dork. Figures that he would pick a place like Iceland. “It means he won’t be able to work, and they were worried about that, and it means that he’ll need money to pay for the trip, and they were worried about that too.”

“Why would they worry about that?” Darius asked. He was as confused by Wally and Clara and their attitude about money and kids as I was, he just didn’t have a direct involvement in it.

“They think it will seem like he’s just playing around, instead of doing his part to work for his education,” Dad said. “I know, they don’t get that the two are related. I spent about twenty minutes on the phone explaining to them that this is exactly why Robbie left money for Zeke; not so he didn’t have to earn his education, but so he could take advantage of educational opportunities like this.” I almost chuckled at that, at how tedious that discussion must have been. Dad hated long phone conversations, and he really hated unnecessary ones.

“Well, none of that pisses me off. Zeke’s kind of a tool, so I don’t have much to do with him anyway,” I said, bringing us back to the topic at hand, specifically, at what he’d done to piss me off.

“I told them we were going out to see Zach play on Saturday,” he said.

“They didn’t want us to go? What did they do, forbid us from attending the game?” Darius shuffled his feet to get my attention, and when I looked at him, his eyes told me to calm the fuck down, so I did.

“No, they were very happy that we were going to see him play,” Dad said, then swallowed hard. “They were so excited because they don’t get to see him play very often.”

And then I got it. My eyes zeroed in on his. “So you invited them to go with us.”

“It just sort of happened...” he whined. I raised an eyebrow at that. He never whined, he hated whining, and he truly detested it when he did it. Darius snaughed at him, to confirm that he was busted. He gave us an irritated look. “I didn’t mean to do it, it just sort of ended up that I had to.”

He braced himself for a firestorm from me, but I’d promised myself not to lose it with him if I could avoid it, so I manfully controlled my temper. “Sounds like you were backed into a corner,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’ll be back.”

I got up and walked away, strolling out toward the gazebo, as I pulled out my phone. I could feel both Dad and Darius staring at me, totally surprised by my reaction. I dialed Zach’s number. I didn’t like talking on the phone much, but for some reason, I did when I was talking to him. We talked usually at least every other night and usually for at least half an hour. That wasn’t counting our phone sex. “Hey,” he said when he answered. “You usually don’t call this early.”

“I have a real reason this time, instead of wanting to just hear your sexy voice,” I said.

“You don’t want to hear my sexy voice?” he asked, lowering it so it was even sexier.

“Well yeah, but I actually have to talk to you about something,” I said. He could tell that I was serious.

“Sup?”

“So my dad was talking to your parents and told them we were coming out to your game this weekend,” I said. He didn’t say anything, so I just plowed ahead with the topic. “He ended up inviting them to come along.”

He was quiet for a bit. “That was a nice thing for him to do.”

“You’re OK with them being there?” I asked, and there was no way he could miss the surprise in my voice.

He laughed. “Yeah, I’m OK with them being there. I like it when they come to my games.”

“Cool,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment.

“You think that if they’re along, we won’t have time, just the two of us, where we can sneak off and you can sink your massive dick into my ass?” he asked, in his sexy bedroom voice. I felt my dick getting hard as a rock.

“Maybe,” I said, echoing his tone.

“It actually makes things easier. Book rooms at the same hotel, and I’ll share with you. They go to bed early anyway. They’ll think we’ll want to go out and hang out with my friends, so they won’t expect us to be around all that much. Plus I can tell my host family I’m staying at the hotel with my parents.”

“Sounds good,” I agreed. “I just wanted to make sure that was cool with you.”

“It’s good,” he said. “I really am looking forward to seeing you. And I have a big surprise for you on Saturday.”

“What?”

“If I tell you, it’s not a surprise,” he flirted.

“Fine. Surprise me,” I said.

“Call me later, when you’re in bed, stark naked,” he said. He was into phone sex, and he was good at it.

“I will,” I promised. We hung up, and I adjusted my erection, and then walked back to where Darius and Dad were sitting. “So we still leaving after school?”

They both looked at me, amazed. “That was the plan,” Dad said.

“I think I can miss my last two classes,” I said. We really didn’t have anything major going on, and the school had been really easy with me on time off, what with all the shit I’d dealt with. “If you pick me up at noon that gives us more time for the stop in Claremont.”

“I can do that,” Dad said. I nodded, and walked back to my room, took off my clothes, pulled out my dildo, and called Zach back.