Paternity - 14. Chapter 14

September 29, 2000

Palo Alto, CA

Wade

 

I could tell that he was still seething, absolutely furious. This is where I’d wanted him to get, to see Carl for the shithead that he was, but now that he was there, I typically felt sorry for him. I really loved the guy, probably a lot more than he loved me, although I knew that he loved me a lot. Maybe it wasn’t the amount of love, though, maybe it was the protectiveness. I saw him as kind of a neophyte when it came to people like Carl and the games they played. For someone like me, raised in a world of scheming, they were easy to spot, and easy to deal with. I loved him, and I wanted to protect him from assholes like that.

“I’m gonna kick his fucking ass,” Matt spat. I was so glad we were here in the bathroom, and even happier that we were alone. We didn’t need other people involved in this.

“Dude, calm down,” I insisted. “You’re the captain. You can’t go out there and start a fight. Didn’t you like the food?”

“What the fuck does the food have to do with it?”

“Just answer the fucking question!”

“Yeah, I like the fucking food. I love this place.”

“Then you can’t go out there, start a fight, and trash it. If you do, we’ll never be able to come back here.”

“Oh,” he said.

“You trust me?” I asked him.

His answer blew me away. He looked at me intensely. “With my life.”

“Then let me help you through this. This is my world. We’re a team, remember?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “Can we just get out of here and go home? Just you and me?”

“First we have to close out our party,” I said, smiling back at him. “You’re the captain, and I’m the host. Just be cool.”

“OK,” he grumbled.

He walked back to the tables while I strolled toward the waiter, so we were separated. Carl was still there, idiot that he was. Matt glared at him, but that didn’t faze him at all. He strode up to Matt with his easy, masculine way. “Hey,” he said.

“Get the fuck away from me,” Matt growled at him. Carl stared at him, completely stunned.

“What?”

“I said get the fuck away from me, asshole,” Matt said, much too loudly. I rolled my eyes. Matt the volcano. I looked around for someone to intervene, and found the ideal person: Brad. All it took was a look between us, and he knew exactly what to do. He was across the room and by Matt’s side in no time at all.

Unfortunately, Matt’s loud voice had attracted the attention of a lot of the guys, and Carl got that. I’d made him look like a complete idiot in the locker room, he’d spent the entire game warming the bench, and he’d made an ass of himself when I’d invited him to come to dinner. He couldn’t afford to willingly be faced again, not tonight. “What the fuck is your deal?” Carl demanded.

“You’re a fucking asshole. I don’t want you anywhere near me,” Matt said, getting in his face.

“Let’s go,” Brad said assertively, as he grabbed Matt’s shoulders. Matt tried to shake him off, but Brad swung him around. “I said, let’s go,” Brad said assertively. Brad just resonated power and authority. That, combined with the respect Matt had for him, was enough. Matt was following him away, when Carl spat out a parting shot.

“Douche,” he said.

Before Matt could get involved, Gathan was there. “You’re the douche. Just get the fuck out of here. No one wants you here anyway.”

I walked up to Robbie. “Come on,” I said. We hurried over to them.

“Fuck you, rookie,” Carl said, getting ready to fight Gathan.

“What the fuck is wrong with you guys?” Robbie demanded. “You can’t fight in here. This is a nice restaurant. No class,” he muttered, shaking his head. “No class at all.”

Gathan and Carl glared at each other, but those words had calmed the situation. Carl left, and the other guys started getting their shit together to leave as well. I looked around the restaurant and breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that our two little encounters hadn’t drawn the notice of the staff or the other patrons. Only the guys on the team seemed to give a shit about what was happening. It took me some time to pay the bill, which was huge, and then we were finally out of there, with no damage to repair to either the restaurant or our reputations.

I found Matt sitting in the GMC waiting for me. “You OK to drive?” I asked.

“I drank less than you did,” he snapped. I just stared at him, telling him that I wasn’t his whipping boy, and demanding that he answer the question. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” I said, and smiled at him. When Matt had a failure, or a setback, he needed love and support. He would be beating the shit out of himself internally, so any external crap he got would make the pressure almost unbearable. I knew that, I understood that, so I just sat there quietly while we drove home. I could almost feel the tension ebbing from him as he worked things through internally. We said nothing the whole way home, while he just digested things.

We parked the GMC and he stared at the house, as if contemplating what was waiting for us inside. Brad, Robbie, Will, JJ, JP, Stef…all of them. Neither one of us was ready to deal with them. “Walk with me,” I said, and took his hand. I led him across the drive, and across the lawn, to this area that JP had recently landscaped. It was crowned by a gazebo that sat isolated, like an island, and looked out over the Bay. We sat on a bench and looked at the lights that twinkled off in the distance. It seemed like they were winking at me. “So why did you blow Gathan?” I asked. I figured of all the topics we had to deal with, that was the least threatening, so I started with it.

“It was fun,” he said, grinning. “I don’t know. I’ve been such a dick to him; I wanted to show him that we were cool.”

“And that’s your way? You show him you like him by sucking his dick?” I teased.

“Yeah, that’s my way,” he joked, then got serious. “You knew I was in that stall.”

“Yes.”

“You thought I was in there with him.” He was referring to Carl.

“Yes.”

“And that pissed you off enough that you stayed in the bathroom so we couldn’t leave,” he said, raising an eyebrow. The moonlight highlighted his handsome face, making him seem almost angelic. I laughed more at that than his statement.

“Maybe.”

“You were trying to set him up,” he accused, and that pissed me off.

“I didn’t say anything to him I didn’t say to you. He was the one who was full of shit,” I snapped.

“You gave him enough rope to hang himself,” he said.

He may be just working things through in his mind, but he was really making me mad. “And did you finally get the picture?”

“It’s a hard picture to get,” he said, and slumped forward, his head in his hands.

“Dude,” I said, maintaining my cool. “You have to help me with this. I am so not getting where you’re at with this guy. He set you up for problems with me, he set you up for problems with the team, and he got busted doing it. He was even planning more bullshit.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that shit about my uncle,” I said.

“What the fuck is that about anyway? I don’t know anything about your uncle.” I just blinked at him. How had he missed this? I reminded myself that we’d both been pretty hammered. Maybe he was more wasted than I thought. I wanted to kick myself for letting him drive.

“Don’t you get it? I know that. He said that you told him about my uncle. That’s bullshit, since I never even told you about my uncle. That’s how I know you didn’t do it. He had to go dig that shit up on his own, and he was trying to make me think that you betrayed my trust again.” My use of the word ‘again’ hit him like a freight train, but that was too bad. This was important. “Don’t you get that?” He blinked at me. “He’s trying to cause problems between us.”

“Holy shit,” he said, and put his head in his hands. “Holy shit.” I anticipated the next mood, and had my hand ready to clamp down on his shoulder. “Fuck! That son of a bitch! I’m gonna track him down and kick his fucking ass. Fuck! I might just kill that son of a bitch!” He tried to jump up but I grabbed his shoulder as I had planned. It took all of my energy to keep him seated. Matt is one strong boy.

“Settle down, Russell Crowe,” I said, straining to keep him seated. He loved Gladiator, so the reference kind of calmed him. “We’re staying here. We’re going to talk about this, smoke a joint, and then I’m going to fuck your brains out,” I said, as if I were reading it from a list. He was too pissed to laugh, but he finally chuckled at me, after he worked it through.

“Why didn’t I see that?”

“Because you’re fucked up,” I said, giving him an out.

“Dude, you were right about him. Oh my God, you were right about him.” I nodded. “You’ve been trying to explain this to me, and I wasn’t listening.”

“It hasn’t been easy,” I said flatly.

“This has been ripping you up inside.”

I didn’t say anything. This was exactly the kind of interchange that I hated, the kind where I was supposed to admit my emotional vulnerability. But for some reason, he seemed to think it was important. “It bothered me,” I said, hoping that would suffice.

“I’m sorry. I am so sorry.” For some reason, despite being so pissed off about this for a while, and despite him finally getting it, I really didn’t want to dwell on my own issues, and I really didn’t want some long, drawn out apology. He got it now. He fucked up. He was sorry, he said it, and he meant it. That was enough.

“What was it about that guy that made you vulnerable?”

“Vulnerable?”

“Yeah. You have to figure this out so it can’t happen to you again,” I said earnestly. At least that’s how I approached this stuff. If I fucked up, I had to figure out why so I didn’t do it again.

“I don’t know,” he said, going into his philosophical mode. “He just has so much raw, like, you know, masculine power.”

“Power? I don’t see that. Everyone hates him.”

“Not like that,” he said. “And not everyone hates him.”

“Dude, it’s like in high school,” I said, being just as philosophical as him. “Remember those guys who would like only hang out with certain people, so then those people all felt really cool. The whole clique thing? Well he takes that and makes it evil,” I told him.

“He’s like the high school dude from hell, transported into college,” Matt said, and then we cracked up. “I didn’t have to deal with that in high school.”

“Neither did I. And do you know why?” He shook his head. “Because we were those guys. Only here and now, he made it seem like you weren’t, and that you needed to be. If you weren’t his friend, and not just one of his friends, but the friend, you weren’t shit. He threw in sex to tease you along, to tap into the power of your hormones too. That usually works with you.” He snaughed at that. “Add to that the bullshit about you being captain of the team, and he got to you.” He stared at me blankly as he thought about that.

“How is it that you know me better than I know myself?” He looked at me with that romantic, loving look of his, the one that made me do whatever he wanted.

“Because I’m smarter than you,” I joked.

“You are,” he said, playing me perfectly. “You’re the smartest guy I know.” And then the other part of this came into play. The part I’d missed through this whole thing. He thought I was smarter than he was, more on the ball. Somehow, he’d put me up on a pedestal. But Carl was definitely not smarter than Matt was. With the exception of the hard sciences, Carl was pretty much a dumb fuck. It was like men back in Victorian England: They’d marry a virgin and worship the ground she walked on, but then they’d find a slut to have fun with. I was the virgin on the pedestal that he loved, but Carl was the slut he could be a man with. I’d have to think about that later, and figure out a way to climb down from my pedestal. “What?” he asked.

“I’m not smarter than you,” I insisted. “I’m better than you at some things, and you’re better than me at some things.”

“What am I better at?” he challenged.

“Hockey,” I said instinctively. “And sex.”

“Yeah.” I tried not to be frustrated that he agreed with me so easily. It would have been nice if he’d at least argued about them a little bit. “But that’s physical stuff, not mental stuff.”

“You don’t think hockey is mental? Sex? You mean you just do that shit instinctively?”

“You don’t?” he asked.

“Hell no,” I said. I decided to tease him. “I have this mental handbook. If you’re going to fuck me, I have to blow you for at least three minutes, and while I’m doing that, I have to play with your balls five times, and finger your hole for at least thirty seconds.” He started laughing his ass off, and so did I.

“You probably do that. I’m gonna check and see if you do.”

“Shit. Now that I said that, I’ll be all worried that I’m doing it,” I said.

“Dude, I thought we’d be sitting here, fighting and shit. I figured that you’d tell me what a dumb fuck I was, and you’d be right, and I’d have to suck up and tell you how wrong I was. I’d have to tell you over and over again that I was sorry,” he said. He paused and looked at me meaningfully. “I really am, you know.”

“I know.”

“But instead, I’m having a blast, talking to you about this really fucked up shit we’re dealing with.”

“See, this is where I was at. This is the big problem.”

“What’s the big problem?” he asked, all confused.

“You are the guy for me. We are too good together to ever lose our connection. That just won’t ever happen. We just fit together perfectly.”

“That’s for sure,” he said, with a leer.

I shook my head at him but grinned. “Remember how I told you that, how I can’t ever imagine you not being a part of my life?” He nodded. “That’s what I was talking about. So even if I wanted to dump you on your ass and find someone with a bigger dick, I can’t. You’ll still be there, in my life. It’s like you’re chained to me or something.”

“Dude, chains. Let’s try that sometime,” he said, making us laugh again. “Seriously, a bigger dick? My dick is big.”

“I’ve had bigger ones,” I said dismissively, like I was a slut.

“Better ones?”

“No,” I said, and smiled at him. “Yours is the perfect size.”

“Oh yeah. Now you’re just trying to make me feel better,” he said, pretending to be bitchy.

“See. All you think about is your dick,” I accused. We laughed some more, then got serious again.

“I don’t know. This is all so fucking weird. It’s all my fault. If I’d just make a commitment, said I’d be with you, then we’d be just fine. And you know, Wade, if that’s what you really want, and what you need to be happy, I’ll do it. I really will. Other guys, and the occasional girl, just aren’t important enough to me to hurt you like this.”

“Look, I’m not trying to bust your balls, and I appreciate what you said. I know you love me.” I could feel his anxiety growing as he waited for the inevitable ‘but’ to come along. “But did you hear the key phrase in that? If it’s what ‘I’ really want. That’s what you said. That’s not what ‘you’ really want; you’d just be doing it to make me happy. You’d be trading your happiness for mine.”

“But isn’t that what you really want? Don’t you want to be like Brad and Robbie are now? Don’t you want to be an exclusive couple?”

“No.” He looked at me curiously, as if he didn’t believe me. “This is the first time I’ve said that when I truly believe it.”

“Explain that to me.”

I sighed. “For the past few years, I’ve been going with the flow, just more or less ignoring that you’re fucking around with everyone you can.” I sounded bitter, and we both caught that. “I guess I was doing what you were just talking about. It bugged me, but not all that much, so I traded that for your happiness, because I knew that meant a lot to you.”

“Why didn’t you say something about it if it bothered you?”

“It bothered me, but not that much. It would have been a lot harder for you to give up other people than it was for me to put up with it. Like I said, it bugged me, but not that much, not until Carl came along.”

“And when you told me that he bothered you, I blew you off,” he said guiltily.

“Yeah. Now that really bothered me. That fucking bothered me a lot,” I said, and I was so pissed off, even now, that he figured out how much. “I mean, we have to have a deal that if we’re messing around with someone the other person can’t stand, that has to mean something. That has to count for something.”

“You want veto power over who I fuck?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “I mean, it sounds really unreasonable, but I’ve only done it once. I mean, if I was picking off every other guy you wanted to do and saying you couldn’t fuck him, I think it would be bullshit. But I don’t do that.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, in that guilty tone again.

“So when I saw this one guy, and told you there were issues, I really expected you to say that you got it, and that it was over. I wasn’t being a fucking drama queen. I’m not a fucking drama queen. I’m not trying to chain you down. I’m not trying to take your balls away from you.”

“I didn’t know that. Riley had just come along, and you were acting all different. It was like you wanted to be this 1950s guy with a house with a white picket fence and shit.” He shook his head. “I’m so not there.”

And then I said something that I didn’t want to say, but he had that effect on me, the unpleasant effect of making me spill my guts. “You haven’t ever even held him, held Riley.”

“I’m not good with babies,” he lied.

“I’m wondering if you think I believe that.”

“No, but if I tell you what I really feel, you’ll think I’m a complete asshole. And you’d be right.”

“Yeah, but now that you said that, you have to tell me,” I joked.

“You’re all pissed at me for putting Carl above you, for doing shit with him instead of you. I felt like you were doing that to me with Riley.”

“Christ, Matt,” I said, seriously annoyed. “He’s only been alive for two weeks. I’ve had all kinds of things to deal with, especially with my mother and all her bullshit.”

“I said I was being an asshole. I didn’t say you were wrong,” he said sheepishly, staring at the ground. “I just don’t feel like I’m part of it.”

Now it was my turn to put my head in my hands. Fuck. I’d been so focused on being a daddy; I’d totally blocked him out of it. I blew him off on the weekends to run down and see Riley, and just assumed he’d be fine with that. He was a lot higher-maintenance than that, and I should have figured that out. “I’m sorry Matt. I wanted us to do this together, but I didn’t handle it really well.”

I felt his hand on my back, gently stroking. “He’s only a couple of weeks old. I don’t think we’ve completely fucked things up.” I looked at him and he was smiling at me.

“I guess we haven’t. Yet.” I sighed. “I guess I was so excited about him being here, and so caught up in all of this shit with my mother, that I really didn’t think about you all that much.”

“You thought about me, you just didn’t let me know that you did,” he said, getting it perfectly. God, how I loved this man. “I was an idiot for not letting that be enough.”

“I’ll have to work on that,” I told him, making a mental note of that in my brain organizer.

“I feel like I’ve been walking around with a blindfold on and you just took it off. Now I have all these things to do.”

“What do you have to do?”

“Well, first I have to fuck you, so you’ll blow me for at least three minutes and finger my hole for at least 30 seconds.” I really laughed at that one. “Then I have to go find Carl and kick his ass, and then I have to go and really meet my step son.”

“You know what’s going to happen,” I said.

“What?”

“Riley’s going to end up liking you better.”

“Most people do,” he joked. We sat there, and I sensed that he wasn’t done working through things, so I just moved closer to him so I could feel his warmth. It wasn’t cold outside; I just wanted him near me. He put his arm around me in that protective way that he does, the way that makes me know I’m not alone in the world, that I’m in this with him, that we’re together. “It’s important to me that you’re on the team.”

Wow. That was a leap in topics. “Why?”

“Because we’re good on the ice together, and we’re good in the locker room together, and because the team needs your leadership.”

“You’re a good leader when Carl’s not fucking with your mind.”

“Dude, I have so fucked this up, I’m not sure if I can turn it around,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve really let those guys down. Fuck. Look what I did to Gathan.”

“You mean you didn’t blow him very well?” He gave me a dirty look that was mostly contrived, for taking him off his super-serious diatribe.

“You know what I mean.”

“So fix it.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It is,” I said. “Just go in tomorrow and be positive, upbeat, and encouraging. Treat the guys who perform their best like gold, and ignore the guys who don’t. They’ll get the picture.” He stared at me. “Dude, it’s the coach’s decision about who plays. You’re just there to add the peer pressure. So when some idiot is too hung over to play, he knows you’re pissed at him. The rest of the team will respect you enough that they’ll make him feel like shit too. Then he won’t do that shit again.” I held his hand. “You had a great example. You had Turner. Just do what he did.”

“You’re still jealous that I got to blow him.”

“God damn right I am,” I said, pretending to be outraged. “I suck dick just as good as you do.”

“This much is true,” he said, and then he kissed me. “The other thing about you being on the team is that we’re really good on the ice together. It’s something that we do, that no one else can really fuck with.” In other words, that was my time with him. When I’d threatened to quit the team, to him, that was probably tantamount to me breaking up with him.

“You’re making me believe that things on the team will change,” I said, letting him know that I wasn’t going to be around if the change he was talking about wasn’t real. “And that makes me want to stay.”

“They have changed, they will change, but I need your help to do it. Will you help me?”

“Dude, you know that if you ask me for help, I’ll do it.” And that was true. I couldn’t think of something I wouldn’t do for him if he needed my help. “You play dirty.”

“Yep,” he said, and then kissed me really hard, and really passionately. “I’m a dirty, nasty boy.” He pushed me off the bench and onto the ground, which was covered with wood chips, and fell gently on top of me. He started grinding his hips into me, rubbing his groin against mine. I could feel us both hardening as he did.

“Dude, I’m wearing a suit,” I objected, as I tried to push him off of me. He pinned me down, both arms above my head, with just one hand, and grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground and smeared it all over my face. “Fuck!” I yelled. I struggled against him, but that just increased the body contact, and made me even harder. He grabbed more dirt and rubbed it into my hair, and all over my suit.

“Fucker,” I said, finally breaking free. I grabbed some dirt and did the same thing to him. We rolled around in the wood chips and the dirt, wrestling, getting amazingly dirty, and it was glorious. Finally, I pinned him down, no easy task, so I was straddling him, with my dick tenting out my dress pants. He looked at it and raised his eyebrows. “You’re gonna get really dirty now,” I said.

I undid my zipper and took out my cock, and started stroking it. “Oh yeah, Wade. Oh yeah,” he said, watching me. I let him have his arms and hands free so he could do the same thing. I heard his zipper open, and looked behind me to see him stroking his own dick while he watched mine.

“I’m gonna shoot my load all over your face,” I said, sounding pretty slutty.

“Shoot it. Shoot it!” he urged me on. I felt my orgasm rising, and then I came, blasting my cum on his nose, his mouth, his cheeks, his forehead, his hair… he was covered with my jizz. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Oh yeah.” I felt his pace pick up. I took my hand and smeared my semen across his cheek, mixing it with the dirt. He moaned and arched his back, so I did it more. “Gonna cum. Baby, gonna cum,” he cried urgently.

“My turn,” I said, and moved down so he could blow on me. His eyes bulged, and his dick began to spew out his load. Damn, did he shoot. I felt his cum hit my face, then felt it sliding down my cheek even as the next wad hit. When he was done, I went down and sucked the last bit of cum out of his dick, then moved up and kissed him hard, making sure that our faces were smashed together.

“Dude, we seriously need a shower,” he said, laughing. We stood up and looked at each other, and I laughed even harder.

We strolled across the lawn, laughing almost hysterically, and snuck in the back door of the house. I thought we might actually make it to our room with no one seeing us until we rounded the last corner and ran into Stef and JP.

“Uh, hi,” Matt said nervously. Stef started laughing, while JP just took his hand and dragged him off. I was blushing furiously. “It’s OK baby. It’s OK. They thought it was hot.”

“Whatever,” I said, being bitchy. He looked at me and raised his eyebrow. “I thought it was hot too,” I admitted. We went back to our room and stripped off our clothes. “This suit is definitely going to the cleaners.”

“Are you going to write them a note, telling them about all the stains?” he asked, making fun of me. I’d done that after we’d gone to a party this summer and I’d spilled barbecue sauce on my pants leg.

“Yep,” I said. “The blotches on the lapel are semen stains from my boyfriend. The dude blows massive loads,” I said, as if I was writing it down. We were laughing some more as we got into the shower. It was one of those sensual showers that I love, where I get to wash every part of his magnificent body, that body that I knew almost as well as my own.

We dried off and then walked back to the bed, climbing in on our separate sides. We rolled over so we met in the middle, facing each other. “Seems to me you promised me a fuck?”

“Let me get my timer out,” I joked. He kissed me again, and that stopped the laughter. “I don’t want to fuck.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” I said. “I want you to make love to me.” I sounded like a chick, and that kind of bothered me, but he understood me, and what I needed.

“That’s what I want, too,” he said. We took our time, hitting the zones we knew would stimulate each other, and just enjoying each other, and the physical aspect of our love. We joked, laughed, and had fun with it, and by the time he entered me, I so wanted him, it just made me feel complete. Whole. I was one with him.