So this day, Pat took Tenner for Indian food. They both sat on cushions and ate tandoori chicken and naan, and Pat rambled on about how much he loved his kids for a solid twenty minutes.
Tenner sort of loved him like this, because he wanted to think that his own excitement at being Piper’s parent wasn’t an anomaly. His own parents had been fine with him, but not particularly excited or indulgent. Just… fine. He’d produced a grandchild—that had been his best thing. And then he’d gotten a divorce and come out, and he hadn’t even existed anymore.
So having Pat talk about things like unconditional love and surviving events like a daughter’s first pimples and training bras and buying Kotex and going to every school activity known to man like it was why they were put into this world, made Tenner feel like he’d accomplished one really awesome thing in his life.
And then without changing expression, Pat brought up Ross.
“So, sorry about my brother-in-law the other night,” he said, all conversation, zero intent. “I mean, I love the guy—he’s great with the kids, you know—but he’s like Des. Competition brings out the, uh, more interesting side of the two of them.”
Desi had once baked fifteen dozen cupcakes for the school bake sale—ten dozen regular, two dozen gluten-free, two dozen sugar-free, and one dozen completely vegan. Nina had brought store-bought cookies, and while Tenner hadn’t seen what the big deal was, Nina assured him there had been one, and that she’d lost. It had been shortly after the divorce, so Tenner had been grateful to Pat’s wife. At the time, Desi’s showing up Nina had seemed like a gesture of support, but even he could see that level of competition would be tough to live up to.
“Makes things fun,” he said lightly, thinking about Ross getting excited about Mario Kart. “I was sort of wound up. Late picking up Piper, you know?”
Pat sobered. “That went okay?”
“Oh, yeah.” Tenner shrugged. “Nina doesn’t like it when plans change, but once we get a routine established, she’s fine. And she knows how much I love playing softball. She’s not a monster.”
Pat smiled slightly. “No, but she does have you over a barrel, datingwise, doesn’t she?”
Tenner couldn’t look at him. “It’s just so… ambiguous,” he said after a moment. “I mean, when I do decide to date, it would be nice to know that it’s not going to screw me over.”
“Ten, would you like me to have a lawyer look over that custody agreement for you? So you, uh, know exactly what it could mean?”
Tenner swallowed. “What, uh, exactly could it mean?” he asked, uncertain.
Pat gave him one of those looks—one of those patented Dad looks. One of those looks that said, “I know you think you’re cute and you have this all handled, Junior, but I don’t know who in the hell you think you’re fooling.”
“It could mean that eventually my brother-in-law won’t have to sleep in the guest room.”
Tenner choked on his black lentils. “I, uh, I mean, I assume as long as Piper isn’t there, it doesn’t, uh… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He wasn’t sure how Pat did it. He tilted his head, raised one eyebrow, and widened his eyes, and Tenner was suddenly ready to confess everything from the first time he got laid in college to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and both Kennedys.
“Tenner.”
“It was the guest room,” Tenner said when he’d had a drink of water and washed down his lentils. “The guest room. He’s a, uh….” He couldn’t say friend and really couldn’t say fuckbuddy. “We ate dinner with Piper and played video games. It was perfectly innocent.” Aside from that first, uh, thing that was, or the kisses…. Oh dear God, the kisses had caused his head to spin and his body to sing—making the bang behind the bathroom seem more like an amuse-bouche than a cheap hot dog in the car.
“I know my brother-in-law,” Pat said, barely blinking. “Innocent, he is not. And you know what? Innocent is over-fucking-rated. Involuntary chastity is boring. You’re young, at least chronologically. You’re healthy. Why shouldn’t it be more than that?”
Tenner breathed in evenly. “You know why. You just said it yourself.”
Pat shook his head. “No. I know what you’ve been using as an excuse since the divorce.”
“An excuse?” Tenner fought a flicker of irritation. “Piper is not an excuse—”
“No, she’s not an excuse for you to be careful with your romantic attachments, Ten. But you have been celibate for a year and a—”
“Two and a half. Almost three,” Tenner muttered, miserable. Somehow, that hadn’t come out in the first horrible months after he’d asked Nina for a divorce.
Pat dropped the piece of naan with tandoori chicken and lentils on it into his lap, and kept staring at Tenner.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I… well, I told her I was gay about a year and a half before the divorce,” Tenner muttered. “She… she sort of stopped touching me, period. I was like, ‘Honey, this isn’t your fault. My body doesn’t do that, but I love you as a friend. Can we just keep raising our child together as friends?’” Patrick’s expression didn’t change, and Tenner gestured rather desperately at his lap. “You… aren’t you going to pick that up?”
“Sure,” Pat muttered and went about cleanup on automatic. “But first tell me how you haven’t been laid in three years. I’m riveted.”
“I thought you said involuntary chastity was boring?” Tenner asked bitterly.
“Imagine my fucking surprise!” Pat snapped. “It took you a year and a half to ask for a divorce after that?”
“I thought we could be friends!” God, Ross hadn’t gotten this either.
“Well, if she’s your friend, talk to her like a friend!” Pat argued. “Tell her you would like to have a relationship with a perfectly nice guy who plays softball and is trying to save the world!”
Oh God. “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, cut the bullshit, Tenner. He stayed the night at your house, and I don’t care if he was on the roof, we both know that the entire game, where he was trying to get under your skin, was foreplay.”
Tenner tried not to gape. “I, uh, never thought of that,” he said weakly.
Pat got rid of the last of the food on the napkin in his lap and gave Tenner another one of those Dad looks. “Sure, sure you haven’t. Look, you send me a copy of the custody agreement, and I’ll have my lawyer look over it, when directed by someone not full of unnecessary guilt and fruitless remorse. You talk to your ex-wife and see if you can get her to give you the go-ahead to date quietly, agreeing not to tell Piper until it’s something permanent that will impact her life. The world has shifted a lot in two and a half years, and Nina might have thawed a little bit too. Are we agreed?”
“Why?” Tenner asked bitterly, his excitement over Wednesday evaporating like soda bubbles. “Why would I do all this for someone who’s leaving in two months anyway?”
Pat’s Dad look stayed, but it morphed somehow, gentled. Tenner had seen him wear that look of pure patience when one of his children had done something really stupid… for all the right reasons.