Poor Man's Son - 39. Chapter 38

August 18, 2000

Escorial

Palo Alto, CA

Will

“And how are you this morning?” I asked Grand as I breezed into the room. I’d just finished talking to Gathan, and he’d given me a kick-ass idea on how to really show Tony a good time.

“Just fine,” he said as he appraised me. “What do you want?”

“What makes you think I want something? Can’t I just come in here to check up on you?”

“You can, but you didn’t,” Stef said. “Now what do you want?”

“I have a dilemma,” I said, caving to the obvious and getting a smile from them.

“And you think we can solve it?” Stef asked.

“You can. I asked Tony if he wanted to go up and see the City today, since he has the day off and all.”

“Someone has a thing for Italian men,” Stef said.

“Duh. I understand I’m not the only one,” I said, winking at Grand. That got a full laugh from Stef.

“Why is it that I sit here, minding my own business, and I end up as the butt of the jokes?” JP demanded icily.

“Because you are old and grouchy,” Stef said. “So why is going to the City a problem?”

“Yesterday, after I forced Pat to tell me about his date, I told him I wouldn’t need him today. I need your permission to go out with just Tony.”

Stef eyed me carefully. “I think the two of you will be safe enough, but you must stay together.”

“That’s my plan,” I said. I had one more piece of my scheme to finalize, and then I could go drag Tony off and spend some time with him. I got that down, then finally tracked him down. “I was looking for you,” I told Tony as I walked into the kitchen.

“You can usually find me here,” he joked. I sat down and started wolfing down food. “You in a hurry?”

“Yeah, we have to get going,” I said.

“You still want to hang out today?” he asked.

“Why, you got a better option?” I joked, sort of. Didn’t he want to hang out with me? Did I do something wrong?

“No, I was thinking maybe you did.”

I shot him my best smile. “Not a chance. Let’s go.”

He got up and I tried again not to stare at him. He was just such an amazing looking guy. I started to feel insecure again. What chance did I have with a guy this hot? He was four years older than me and starting college, and I was just some punk kid who was barely out of elementary school. Of course, while I was indulging in my insecurity pity party, I was just standing there staring at him. “Did I spill something on myself?” he asked, teasing me.

“No, I just like to look at you,” I said. It was funny to see that freak him out a bit. “You ready?”

“Let’s roll.” We walked out back toward the garage.

“Oh shit,” I said, hoping my acting was good. “You don’t have a car.”

“Nope, I flew out here. Wait a minute. You don’t have a car either?” he asked. That totally blew me out of the water. I figured he knew I was too young to drive. I felt my stomach churning, and I was worried for a minute I might just puke.

“I don’t have my license yet,” I said, probably way too softly.

“Ah. That’s why you’re hitting on older guys.” He smiled at me, and I felt my world normalize. If he could joke about it, then he was cool with it. And somehow, that little interchange helped me to relax around him. Up until then, I’d been on pins and needles, worried that I was making a complete ass out of myself, but now I just chilled out.

“Usually works,” I said. “You’ll have to drive.”

“Drive what?” I tossed him the keys to my dad’s car. I’d had to brow-beat him a little bit to let me take it, but I could usually get what I wanted from him. “A Ferrari?”

“You recognize logos,” I said, as if that were a major achievement for him. Now that I was relaxed, I let my sense of humor and my flirtatious nature out to play. “You can handle a stick?”

“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head at my double entendre.

“I was hoping you’d say that.” He snaughed, a snorting and laughing gesture similar to what Hayes boys made. We walked over to the garage and found one of the staff members polishing the Ferrari with a clean cloth, not that it needed it. Rafael was the guy that ran the garage, and he did a good job. I couldn’t remember a time when we didn’t have clean, shining vehicles to drive us around. The guy polishing the car smiled up at us; he was pretty hot. I decided that Rafael must placate Stef by hiring hunky guys to take care of the cars and the horses.

Tony wasn’t paying attention to any of us. As soon as he saw the car, he all but lost it. “Dude, this is a Ferrari 360 Spyder,” he said. He rushed over and pored all over the car. “Check out the glass hood. You can see the engine. It’s a fucking work of art.”

“And it’s yellow,” I joked. He gave me a funny look.

“I can’t drive this.”

“Dad said you can,” I assured him.

“What if I wreck it?”

“Then you wreck it,” I said, climbing in. “It’s just a thing. I mean, it’s an amazingly cool thing, but it’s just a thing. It can be replaced. Just don’t kill us.”

“But what a way to die,” he said as he sat in the driver’s seat. “Behind the wheel of this car.” He took a few minutes to just look at the interior, configure the mirrors and seat, and just appreciate the car. I cleared my throat, finally, to tell him to quit fucking around. He fired up the Ferrari and pulled carefully out of the garage; he was so paranoid it was cracking me up. I laughed even harder after he stalled it.

“The clutch takes some getting used to,” the garage guy said.

I snickered. “San Francisco is so not on our agenda today.”

“Why not?”

“Dude, you can’t even make it down the driveway. How are you going to handle the hills in the City?” He gave me a dirty look, so I laughed at him. I made him go south when we got to I-280.

He got the hang of driving the car pretty quickly. I was starting to wonder if this wasn’t a huge mistake. He was so engrossed in the Ferrari, he hardly noticed I was there. I decided that I was being a little high maintenance, so I opted to relax and just enjoy the weather and the car, and looking at him while he was driving. I pulled out my dugout and packed a oney for him.

“No thanks,” he said. I looked at him, a question on my face. “Not while I’m driving this car. You can go ahead though,” he added hastily.

“Nah,” I said, and put it away. “I’ll wait until we park somewhere.”

“We may never park,” he said as he revved the engine to pass a truck.

“Take this exit,” I said.

“It says that’s the way to Santa Cruz. That where we’re going?”

“Yeah. I probably spend half my life in the ocean. We have a house there. I want to show it to you.”

“Cool,” he said.

“That and they tell me that this road is really fun to drive if you have a hot car.”

“I have a hot car,” he said, grinning, and gunned it. We left Los Gatos behind and rose up into the hills, with the Ferrari taking the climb and the curves effortlessly. If it weren’t for the traffic, it would be paradise. “It’s fucking crowded.”

“Dude, it’s only 10am. Wait until the Valley fucks wake up and decide to head to the beach around noon. Then this freeway turns into a parking lot.”

“No thanks. Bad enough now.”

We got to Highway 1 and I had an inspiration. “Go south.”

“Where we going now?”

“What the fuck do you care? I thought you liked driving?”

“I just like to know where I’m going,” he said, a little abashed.

“To Monterey.” He looked at me funny. “It’s an awesome place, but the tightest thing of all is their aquarium.”

“You mean like in fish?”

“Isn’t that what they usually have in aquariums?” I asked him sarcastically.

“Sometimes they put snakes and lizards and shit in aquariums, smart ass,” he said, making a good point.

“They have fish at this one.”

“So how old are you?” he asked.

I swallowed hard. “I’ll be fourteen in a couple of weeks.”

“Fourteen?” he asked. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“Dude, you seem so much older than that.”

“Yeah, I seem older, but I’m not,” I groused, opening up to him about it. “Everything about me feels about 17, but my passport says I’m 14.”

“Yeah, but if you didn’t look and seem that old, you wouldn’t be as cool to hang out with,” he said, flashing me a smile.

“So you’re cool, hanging out with me, even though I’m 14?” I asked, like I wanted confirmation.

“You’re a stupid fuck,” he said dismissively. “I don’t give a shit. As long as I don’t fuck you, it’s not a problem.”

“Dude, no risk, no reward,” I joked, to hide how much that bothered me. “You so want me.” I was being slightly flirtatious, but it was mostly the same kind of banter you’d hear from straight guys.

“Dream on,” he said. Gathan said getting in his pants was a possibility, but this guy had given off no signs that he’d be up for anything. Was he straight? I made a mental note to corner Cody and have him help me with my gaydar as soon as I got back to Malibu.

After that, we pretty much just bullshitted like two guys do, talking about people we saw, the looks we got in the Ferrari, and the amazing scenery. With traffic, it took us almost two hours to get to the aquarium.

We parked the car and then got high. “Let’s go see some fish,” I said after we’d done a couple of hits, and led him off to the aquarium. We ended up having a really good time. I love the ocean, and I love marine life, so I pretty much showed him around the place.

“How’d you learn so much about all this stuff?” he asked me as we were leaving.

“It started with the first shark I saw while surfing. It kind of freaked me out, so I figured I’d learn about it. I’ve read pretty much every book you can on sharks, and from there I just started reading about the other creatures that live in the ocean. It’s like my habitat. I need to know about it.”

“Dude, you see sharks when you surf?” he asked.

“Yeah. Haven’t been attacked yet, though,” I said as if it wasn’t a big deal.

“Doesn’t that freak you out?”

“The risk of me getting bit by a shark is lower than us having an accident in this car. You wanna not drive?”

“Yeah, but they’re fish with big teeth,” he joked.

“Not all of them,” I said, being technical. “The scary as fuck ones are the great whites. You see them, and you get out of the water.”

“Compared to me, you seem so focused,” he said. “You’re into surfing, school, and other stuff too, but the water seems to dominate your life.”

“Yeah, at least my spare time,” I agreed.

“I’m into mechanical things, things that move. Modes of transportation. I love cars, bikes, planes, boats. I love all that shit,” he said.

“So what do you do with your free time?” I asked, trying to narrow that down.

“Work on my car, ride my bike, and watch movies,” he said.

“See, that’s pretty focused.”

“I guess it is,” he said, grinning. We snagged a late lunch and then started driving north.

“You got any plans tomorrow?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. “There’s a scrimmage, but I can miss that.”

“Let’s stay here tonight,” I said. “You up for that?”

“Why not.”

While Tony drove us north toward Santa Cruz, I called Stef. “And are you having fun?” he asked.

“I’m having a lot of fun,” I said. I knew he could tell I was smiling. “We ended up at the aquarium in Monterey, and now we’re heading to Santa Cruz. Is it OK with you if we stay there tonight, and come back in the morning?”

“Tony is OK with this?” he asked.

“No, I abducted him and I’m forcing him there against his will,” I said with a blend of sarcasm and humor. “I’m making him drive a Ferrari convertible to stay at one of the nicest beach houses on the coast.”

“Your charming personality might possibly offset those other benefits,” Stef joked.

“Yeah, but I’m hot,” I joked back. Tony rolled his eyes.

“Well I have some unpleasant news for you,” he said.

“Oh?”

“JP and I are going to head over to Santa Cruz. We should be there this evening.”

“So we’ll have chaperones,” I said, winking at Tony. “We’ll see you there.” I ended the call and put my cell phone in my pocket.

“Chaperones?” he asked.

“JP and Stef are coming over to Santa Cruz too,” I told him.

“Cool,” he said. “So they make you check in all the time because you’re, uh...”

“Fourteen?” I asked, challenging him. He didn’t answer, because that’s what he was going to say. “No, they make me check in when I’m gone without Pat, or one of the other guards.”

“So I’m your guard?” he joked.

“Yeah, even though you’re a big pussy.”

“Right,” he said, and gave me his look. I noticed that when he was being dismissive, he’d do this thing where he’d kind of look up while his face made the motion of eye rolling. I called it the Tony look. “That would be weird, having a guard around all the time.”

“I’m getting used to it,” I groused. “It’s just gotten more intense since the kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping?”

“Yeah.” I was annoyed at myself for bringing it up, but now I’d have to go into it. “This guy was pissed at my dad and kidnapped us in Paris. There were three of them who did it, and they were such fucking dumbshits we weren’t even in captivity for a whole day.”

“Did they hurt you?” he asked, his eyes flashing with fire. He almost reminded me of Gathan at that moment.

“It wasn’t the best experience,” I said, trying to block out the memories of Gustave. “It could have been worse.”

“I can see why they’re all paranoid now,” he said.

“Yeah, it makes complete rational sense, except now I get to live my life with people tagging along after me. If I want to go for a ride, I have to take someone with me, or they have to keep an eye on me.”

“A ride? I thought you couldn’t drive?”

“Horses, dumbass,” I said. “You ride horses?”

“No. No wheels on a horse.”

“No wheels on a boat either,” I observed. “I think you’ll like it.”

“You’re not getting me on a fucking horse,” he swore.

“Wanna bet?” I asked, and smiled at him.

“We’ll see,” he grumbled. We stopped and had lunch in Santa Cruz, did another couple of oneys, then stopped at the store to buy some groceries. “They may get here around dinner time, I’m thinking.”

“So?”

“I’ll make dinner,” he announced.

“You cook?” I could microwave stuff, but that was definitely the limit of my abilities.

“I can cook.” We went through the store and bought a bunch of food to take to the house with us. I wasn’t sure what kind of supplies were there, so we had to buy all the spices and shit he claimed he’d need.

“Do we really need to buy fresh garlic?” I asked. We’d spent about ten minutes looking for it, although it may have been harder to find simply because we were stoned.

“I’m making sauce the way my grandma makes it,” he said to me. “We use fresh garlic.”

“Fine.” We were finally done, and back on the road, with the groceries barely fitting in the tight confines of the Ferrari. We drove up to the gates and I hit the remote control, causing the gates to swing open as if welcoming us home. He drove down the road to the house. “Dude, this place is sweet!” he said, as he took in the view of the house and the ocean.

“It’s the bomb,” I agreed. I led him inside and showed him around, then pulled out some pictures of the house when JP had bought it. “Look at this place, how it was,” I pointed at one of the photos. “It was about a third of the size it is now.”

He reached out and snatched up one of the pictures, and got a really sad look on his face. “That’s my dad,” he said, pointing at a guy in the picture.

“You look a lot like him,” I said, and got no reaction from him. “Grand said your dad was the one who was with him when he bought the place. He said it was always special for both of them.” I put my arm around him and smiled, but that seemed to make him more uncomfortable, so I pulled it back.

“It’s pretty fucking weird,” he said. There were so many things that were weird about this situation, I didn’t know which one he was referring to, and so I just nodded sympathetically.

“We don’t have to look at these,” I said.

“No, it’s cool. I like to look at them, but it kind of weirds me out.”

“The movies will really freak you, then,” I said.

“You have movies? Of my dad?”

“Yeah. I’ve got an idea.”

“Go on,” he said skeptically.

“It’s still early enough to go in the water,” I said.

“You want to surf,” he accused.

“Fuck yeah,” I said. “Come on. Let’s hit the waves, and then we’ll make dinner and watch some old family movies. It will be fun with JP and Stef.”

“Surfing eh? You’ll just make fun of me.”

“Hell yeah, I will,” I joked. We did a couple more one hits, and then I led him down to the beach shack and found a wetsuit that would fit him. I tried not to stare as he put it on. He did it with his back to me, so all I got to see was a view of his gorgeous little ass. Damn! Soccer built that ass, that’s for sure.

“Alright, now what?” I showed him which board to grab and then we walked down the path to the water. “This is fucking gorgeous! I love the way the ocean is so active!”

“Active?”

“Yeah. You go to Florida, and it basically is like a big lake. This is active, with waves crashing against the shore. It’s like a titanic struggle between the water and the land.”

“Dude, you are so stoned,” I said, laughing, and got a knowing grin from him. “Come on.” I rushed into the water and he followed me.

“Fuck! It’s fucking cold!”

“Pussy,” I chided. “That’s why you’re wearing a wetsuit.”

“Fuck!” he said again. “Maybe there is something to Florida.”

“You want some gain, you get some pain,” I quipped. “Follow me.” Normally, teaching someone to surf bugs the shit out of me. It’s not like I’m a selfish person, or at least I don’t think I am, but I’ll be trying to tell the person what to do, and an awesome wave will come along. Then I’ll either have to play it safe to help them, or go for it and leave them in a lurch. For some reason, being out there with Tony didn’t bother me at all. Maybe that’s because he was a pretty fast learner. We were out in the water, paddling and waiting for the next wave. “Dude, you’re getting the hang of this really fast.”

“I’m pretty good at sports,” he said. “I can pick most up pretty quick. It’s a blessing and a curse.”

“How is it a curse?”

“I’m good at a lot of sports, but not great at any of them. That’s why I probably won’t make the soccer team. I’ll probably end up on the IM squads.” I looked at him curiously. “Intramural,” he explained. “Sports just for fun.”

“So. What’s wrong with that?”

“It would be nice to be really good at something, like you are. You really are incredible. It’s like you mold yourself to the wave.”

“Thanks,” I said, blushing and grinning. I loved surf praise. “I thought about trying to go pro, but decided not to.”

“Why? I bet you could do it.”

“Because I watched my brother get into figure skating and it dominates his life. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like he’s having fun, he’s just so driven to win and to compete. I love surfing too much to have it become something I’m doing because I want to win a competition.”

“So you let your talent go to waste?”

“Why is it a waste? I have fun. I enjoy it. Sometimes I even recruit new surfers,” I said, smiling at him.

“It’s fun, but it’s still fucking cold.” We finally caught a mediocre wave and rode it in to the beach, then went back up to the house, lugging our boards along.

I showed him where my room was, and then gave him the one next to it that connected through a bathroom. “You shower first,” he said. “I want to call my mom.”

“No problem,” I said. I almost made some stupid ass comment about how he could shower with me if he wanted to, but he was too big of an enigma. I really didn’t know what to think of this guy. I showered quickly, threw on my clothes, and then walked out to find him in the kitchen, chopping up some vegetables. “What are you doing?”

“Making dinner,” he said. He finished chopping up some peppers and put them in a pan that was simmering, then wiped off his hands. “I’ll let that sit while I shower.”

“Cool,” I said. I walked outside to look at the ocean, and was distracted as I saw a car driving up the road. It was Stefan’s Porsche. I ran through the house to the garage to meet them.

“Look, JP, a welcoming committee!” Stef exclaimed, giving me a hug.

I went to help JP out of the car, and he let me, even though he gave me a dirty look while I did. “We were going to call and have you meet us for dinner.”

“Did you eat?”

“No,” he groused, and looked at his watch. It was getting close to seven, his anointed dinner hour.

“Good. Tony is cooking dinner for us,” I said.

The three of us headed into the house and found Tony back in the kitchen, looking pretty spruce. He must have taken a really quick shower. “That smells wonderful!” Stef said. He went up to Tony and gave him a hug, which Tony returned a little reluctantly. I noticed that he wasn’t big on physical affection; it was like he had this personal space around him that he didn’t let people into. That didn’t bother Stef at all, but JP was more sensitive, and gave him a more classic “man hug”.

“Give me another 15 minutes and we’ll eat,” he announced.

“I’ll set the table, and Stef can do the dishes,” I joked.

“If you are relying on that, I think you will find that they are still here, dirty, in the sink, when you next visit,” he said airily. They left and went to get settled in.

“I feel like we’re a married couple hosting a dinner party,” I joked.

“Dude, I’m cooking, so in my family, that makes me the wife,” Tony said.

“I can do that,” I joked, winking at him.

“Right,” he said, and gave me that Tony look again. “Here, taste this.”

“I can do that too,” I joked, cracking him up. I tasted his sauce, a tomato-based concoction. “This is fucking amazing,” I said sincerely.

“Thanks,” he said, and looked down shyly.

“See, you do have exceptional talents. You could be a chef.”

“It’s kind of like surfing is for you. It’s something I like to do for me, but wouldn’t want to do it as a job.”

We had a great dinner. “I must say,” Stef said as he dabbed his mouth with a napkin, “that I have had the privilege of dining in some of the best restaurants in the world. This dinner compares favorably with those experiences.”

“Really?” Tony asked, stunned.

“I have to agree,” JP said. “Although my tastes are a bit more pedestrian than Stefan’s.” He took a sip of wine. “I think you make this better than your grandmother does.”

“That’s heresy!” Tony said, but with a big smile. “Wait, you weren’t in St. Louis last month. When did you have this?”

“When I went back to visit your grandparents with your father,” JP said.

“I told Tony we could watch some of our old movies with his dad in them,” I announced.

“Now that could be fun,” Stef said. Tony and I did the dishes together, while JP rummaged through the library to find the tapes with Sam in them. He’d had all our old home movies put onto VHS cassettes years ago. When we were done, we reconvened in the family room and sat on the couches like two couples: Stef and JP on one, Tony and I on the other. Only they snuggled up together, while we sat with a sizeable space between us.

JP showed us clips in chronological order, starting with some shots of him and Sam here at the beach house. “This was right after we bought it, before Isidore started remodeling and expanding it,” he said.

“Did she do all of this?” Tony asked, gesturing to indicate he meant the whole house.

“No,” JP said. “She just started the ball rolling. The rest of it was done by Claire and Stef.” Stef smiled smugly, proud of their creation.

“You look so much like your father,” Stef said. Tony just watched the screen intently, much as he’d done when he watched a regular movie. He was unique to me in that he didn’t show his feelings, but even then I could tell his emotions were churning inside of him.

“I didn’t know him very well,” he said. “He died when I was real young, just three years old.”

“He was an amazing man,” JP said. “We were partners for 12 years. Even now I miss him. You remind me so much of him.”

“Hopefully I’ll live up to my commitments better than he did,” Tony said bitterly. “It would have been nice to have him around when I was growing up.”

“He wrote me a letter right before he died,” JP said. “He told me that not being able to see you and your sister grow up, not being there for you, was the biggest regret of his life.”

“He said that?” Tony asked. “I always thought he didn’t love us, otherwise he wouldn’t have fucked that piece of shit and gotten AIDS.”

“And now that you are a young man, perhaps you can understand how sometimes urges can overwhelm common sense,” JP said.

“No, I can’t. If I make a commitment, I live up to it. If I can’t, I don’t make it. I’m not going to do to someone else what he did to me.”

“I think that living up to your commitments is a very noble goal,” Stef said, eying him carefully.

“I’m kind of tired. It’s been a long day,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn in.”

“Me too,” I chimed. I’d had enough of family time, and I figured that I’d check my e-mails and fuck around with my computer. We said goodnight and headed back to our rooms.

When we got to his door, he turned and looked at me with a forced smile. “Thanks for a great day, Will.”

“I had a good time,” I said sincerely. He nodded at me and went into his room, shutting and locking the door behind him. I felt so bad, and wished there were something I could do for him, but he seemed to hold everyone, me included, at arm’s length, and I didn’t want to intrude into his personal space.