“Because he might come back and stay, Tenner. There’s no guarantee you guys will hit it off so well that he’ll come back and stay for you, but what if you do? Give him a reason, kid. He’s getting old enough to settle down, and God, aren’t you old enough to hope again?”
Tenner concentrated on finishing the last of the sauce on his plate. “After I, uhm, come to your guys’ practice Wednesday night…. He was going to come over afterwards.”
“No Piper?” Pat seemed to know exactly what that meant.
“No Piper,” Tenner confirmed. “Aren’t you going to say that’s moving a little fast?”
Pat snorted. “I am not the person to judge the fast or the slow. I just want to see your train leave the station. Piper’s a great kid, Ten-Spot, but she can’t be the be-all and end-all of your existence. Maybe it’s time to let someone else in?”
Will he be careful? Will he not derail my entire life? Or will he jump around and change things and leave wreckage in his wake?
“Sure.”
Pat frowned. “I think I deserve a better answer than that. I’m going to have to go home and change—the stain may never wash out of these pants.”
Tenner managed a crooked smile. “I’ll see you on practice Wednesday?” he said, some of his earlier hope returning.
Pat let out a long breath through his nose. “I’ll take it. I don’t like it, but I’ll take it. The rest of this we’ll have to leave to Ross. That kid better not let me down.”
Tenner rolled his eyes, feeling like a teenager. “I have to ask you. What gave you the impression that the two of us couldn’t manage our own lives?”
And Pat’s eyeroll made Tenner’s look pathetic and sad, the forlorn imitation of a child trying to be the parent. “Are you kidding? That kid won’t stop playing around, and you won’t stop working. Neither one of you can wipe your own asses. You both make me tired. Fix each other, dammit, so I can work on my own kids.”
Tenner shrugged. “Nobody’s as perfect as you are, Pat.”
“Yeah, sure, tell that to my daughters. I’m gonna go get some soda water, then head to the bathroom so it doesn’t look like I’ve got a killer kidney infection. Stay here and think about the error of your ways.”
But as Pat bobbed his way back to the hostess stand like the evil little leprechaun he was, Tenner thought about how Pat’s children gave him T-shirts about farting every Father’s Day, and saved their baseball hats and foam fingers carefully in their room so they could go to a River Cats or Giants game on a moment’s notice. Sure, they had their normal problems—a little bit of sass, dragging feet on homework, the occasional “Oh my God, Dad!”—but for the most part, he was pretty sure Pat’s kids knew. They all had to know.
When Tenner grew up, he wanted to be just like Patrick.
TO THAT end, Tenner got back to work and attempted to finish enough of his project to let him off early Tuesday so he could watch Piper dance. He was midway through running a test to see if the chip was making its benchmarks when his phone pinged.
I am thinking about you every second of the goddamned day. Please tell me I’m not alone.
His chest buzzed with what he had to admit was excitement.
Not alone.
That’s it? I practically wrote you a love sonnet on the phone and I get “Not alone”?
God. Ross. Handsome. Golden. Vain as a lion. Lots of roar and bluster. Of course, Tenner missed him.
Wednesday’s a long way off.
Be still my heart. I may die of too much affection.
Yeah. That’s likely.
Wow. The schmoop just keeps on coming.
If you got any more pets, you’d get static shock. Tenner smiled a little with that last one. So true.
If you don’t give me some goddamned affection, I’m sending you a dick pic!
Tenner’s eyes went wide. No! Piper plays with my phone!
Thought bubbles appeared, and Tenner stared at the screen with horror. When the picture showed up, though, it was of a middle-aged man with a bright shiny head and a fringe of dark brown hair.
Meet my friend Richard.
You. Dick.
No, he’s Dick. I’m Ross. I’m dying to see you again.
And Tenner couldn’t help it. He was laughing quietly at his desk, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt.
So am I. You made me feel really special.
He read the text about sixty times before he pressed Send.
Good. I like being that guy. See you Wednesday.
It can’t come soon enough.
TENNER WOULD never admit it to his daughter, but he loathed dance class. He liked watching the kids dance—they were cute as hell, even that one kid who’d liked to dangle from the barre when she was four and sing the theme song to Shrek at the top of her lungs. He loved that kid, in fact, because as it turned out, she was his.
No, it wasn’t watching little girls wander around the stage, get lost, and pick leotards out of their bottoms that bothered him. It was the damned sound system that made it Purgatory. The music was too loud, piped through an ancient speaker, and after a long workday, it reverberated around Tenner’s head like a nuclear-powered ping-pong ball, smashing his good mood into bits and making him yearn for a sensory deprivation chamber and long centuries of silence.
It wasn’t the greatest venue to talk to Nina, but his date with Ross had been buzzing around his stomach, the thought of practicing together, giving each other shit, then going back to his house to… what?
More banging?
Maybe some Mario Kart afterward?
Ice cream?
Tenner didn’t remember how any of this worked. Not at all. He’d dated in college. There’d been lots of midnight blowjobs in the dorms, the occasional sleepover, and then that fumbled attempt to come out to his parents over Christmas vacation when he’d finally thought, “Hey, I’m gay, I’m in love, and they keep asking about girls!”
The silence had been… glacial. He’d had to get his own ride to the airport. And as he’d taken a cab from his folks’ little white farmhouse in Nebraska back to CSU Sacramento, it had occurred to him that coming out had isolated him from everything he’d ever known.
The next time he’d contacted his parents, he’d been dating Nina.
So he didn’t know how to date as a grown-up, and he might very well have wrecked all attempts at dating by launching himself onto Ross McTierney like some sort of spring-loaded stuffed toy. But suddenly, he hungered to know that he could date. That appearing in a restaurant with a friend (Ross) who was well-dressed and looking at him like he was important (definitely Ross) and holding his hand and winking (oh my God, could it please be Ross?) seemed like something he’d needed for a long time.
Was it because he was lonely? Or could he have stayed celibate his entire life if he hadn’t had that surprising moment of yielding in the dark?
He had no idea. This thing he was about to do outside the dance studio with Nina was a nice way of maybe investigating this new and hidden—or long forbidden—side of him further.
The dance teacher called all the little girls into a huddle to teach them a new skill, and Tenner gave Nina a nod.
Together they walked gratefully into the balmy spring night, and Nina gave an audible sigh of relief. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “That sound system. I love this teacher, but for sweet fuck’s sake!”