Page 69 of Center of Gravity

“What did she say?”

“She asked me if I would check on him after she was gone. If I would take care of him.”

I was glad to be facing away from him then, because it sounded so very much like something my mom would do that tears sprang to my eyes. I stared at the horizon until the sting went away. My shoulders sagged under a whirlwind of emotions and strangely, anger was only a small part of that. “What did you say?” I asked.

“I agreed. Of course I agreed. It was what I’d wanted all my life and could never have. Understandably so, but when I talked with your father next—I called him that time—he refused. Said he was too old, had nothing left to offer me aside from the letters and his affection.”

I shook my head.

“He always wanted to do the right thing, Robert.”

“The right thing would have been to not get involved with you in the first place. The right thing would have been to cut off what clearly sounds like a long-standing emotional affair. Or to have accepted his sexuality or…any fucking number of other things besides what he did. He was a coward.” I twisted the cap on my water bottle and pitched it into the trash, ready to be out of there, regretting coming at all. “How couldyoueven stand it? It sounds parasitic to me.”

“Perhaps.” Michael nodded evenly. “And I can’t explain it, really. Not to you. But suffice it to say that regardless of your own perception, the three parties involved had found a resolution that worked for us, and as two of them are dead, and it was personal, I don’t think it’s something that can be easily explained to you. My choices are my own cross to bear, but I suspect you’ve been in love before, and you know all too well.”

I sighed and nodded.

I left a half hour later, numb. I’d gone in suspecting I’d leave disliking him, but mostly I felt sad for him. He was right. Whatever convoluted relationship had existed was between the three of them. It wasn’t as if my family had been torn apart. Quite the opposite. Michael seemed like the sacrificial lamb in this story. Or perhaps all three of them were in some way, but I still couldn’t help but to think of my father as a coward.

I stayed up longer than I should have that night, thinking about what Summer had said, and Scott, and then my own father and Michael—architects of their own loneliness, all of them convinced they were doing the right thing.

22

Alex

Rob had a bug up his ass about something, and it wasn’t me, though I wouldn’t have minded being in his ass. I wanted it, but we’d kind of fallen into the pattern of me bottoming and though I didn’t get the impression he hated bottoming or anything, I liked getting fucked by him just fine. That was neither here nor there, though. He’d called rather than texted this time, and when I said I was free for the weekend—because, who was I kidding?—he instructed me to arrive at seven on Friday dressed “nicely.”

I wasn’t sure if there was a difference between my kind of “nice” and Rob’s kind, so I met in the middle and showed up at his place at seven in a gray button-down and jeans free of holes, paint, and streaks of charcoal. That alone was a feat; since I’d started school again, most of my wardrobe reflected that. It’d taken three wash cycles to get my jeans clean.

The door was unlocked, as it usually was, so I let myself inside, walked through the quiet house and found him and Winslow out on the back porch, which was also the norm. I’d often find him drinking a beer and he’d have one out waiting for me. There’d be take-out in the kitchen. We’d hang out, shoot the shit. I’d tell him what I was working on in school. He’d give me any updates about the house and talk so little about his job that I sometimes wondered if it was a cover story and he was really CIA. Then we’d eat and screw around, sometimes watch TV. Rinse, repeat. I was kind of starting to feel like we were stuck in a spin cycle, but the sex was still so good that my dick overrode any lingering doubts about what exactly we were doing.

He gave me a long look that I couldn’t read as I stepped out. That was beginning to frustrate me, too, that I still couldn’t read him. And it wasn’t that he was moody, he was just reserved. Until we got into the bedroom. That was another thing that kept the sex so hot for me. I couldn’t get enough of seeing his armor peeled off, watching him writhe and come apart in my mouth, my hands, my ass.

“Should I turn around? Make a pedestal out of that table right there so you can admire me better?” I quirked a grin and picked up the beer he’d left out for me, twisting off the cap. The beer went down refreshingly cold as I guzzled it, his eyes still upon me.

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” A glimmer of a smile crossed his lips before he hid it behind the mouth of his beer bottle.

“When in doubt, I always assume the most flattering option.”

“Unsurprising.”

“You could just tell me I look nice,” I said, dropping into one of the wrought iron chairs that decorated the back porch.

I continued to eye him as I picked up my beer again. The sleeves of his button-down were rolled up to his elbows, tan still clinging to his forearms, though over the past week Mother Nature had let us know the season was changing. His hair was damp from the shower, his neck flushed. He must have gone running before I arrived. If I leaned in, I knew exactly how he’d smell: the scent of soap and his shampoo and beneath that, the subtle metallic tinge of sweat and exertion.

“Did that admission hurt?”

“Only because you wrenched it from me.” Rob’s lips curved into a smirk.

“So maybe next time you should just offer it freely.”

“I have this funny idea that you’re well aware of how attractive you are, whether in paint-spatter or linen.” His brow rose and I turned my answering smile aside to Winslow, leaning lazily over the chair to scratch his belly. “That doesn’t mean a guy doesn’t like to hear it every now and then.”

“I see.” Rob sounded amused, but his eyes softened. “Did I fill your daily quota or do you need more?”

“I imagine my tank will be full by the end of the night.”

The slight flush of his cheeks that followed my comment was satisfying. I cracked up, then settled back with my beer. “There’s no take out in the kitchen. You want to head over to The Tap House instead and grab a bite?” There was a trio of nearby restaurants we’d sometimes haunt before getting down to the business of fucking. None of them required me to dress this nicely, though.