They walked up and down passing the tall brownstones and going in and out of shops and Kenny said, “Why are we walking around like tourist when we both live here?”
“But I thought you said you were leaving?”
“I got a job at Vine Tech in Gary in the art department. I was thinking of living in Rossford.”
“Or you could stay here?”
“For the joy of Chicago? You’ve got a point. When I was here for you I didn’t love it. But here for me, it’s something else.”
“For the joy of Chicago and for the joy of me,” Brendan said. “I like being with you.”
“Bren, do you realize we’ve never just been friends. That never really happened between us.”
“Are you sure?” Brendan said. Then, “I think you’re right. What does that mean?”
“Maybe it means we should try it and see what happens.”
“I’d like that,” Brendan nodded.
Both their phones rang, and they pulled them out of their pockets, but Brendan said, “It’s Rob.”
“I’ll pick up. Where are you?” Kenny asked him. “Alright. We’re actually around the corner. Come back with you tonight?”
Kenny turned to Brendan.
“Rob wants to know if I’ll come back with you guys to Rossford?”
“Why not?” Bren said. “Don’t you think those pictures can live without for one night?”
Under Kenny’s guidance they rode the Blue Line to Clark and from Clark they walked underground to the Randolph Street Station. They got tacos from a vender that Kenny pronounced as, “Overpriced and absolute shite,” and then they got their tickets and boarded the South Shore for Miller. Dena was there to meet them, and she said, “Oh, hell, which one of you bought Rob a set of paints?”
On the way home, Kenny sat in the front seat and Dena kept looking back at Bren, and he knew what her eyes were asking. After a while it was Kenny who said, “Nothing happened, Dena.”
“I don’t know what you mean?” Dena said in the most pleasant impersonation of a middle class white woman she could muster.
“He means they didn’t have sex,” Rob said flatly.
Rob looked at Bren and murmured, “And God knows I gave you time.”
They decided to eat dinner at Dena and Milo’s. Maggie was coming over with her husband Edward and their baby. Layla and Will would not be there because they were going out with her older sister Caroline. Kenny would stay in the spare bedroom they always kept for him, Brendan said he wanted to run over to Fenn’s real quick, talk for a moment and get a change of clothing. He loved living in Chicago, but it was energizing to be back among his friends in Rossford and still, he reminded himself, he needed to go visit his mother. He was reminding himself of this very thing when he stepped through Fenn and Todd’s kitchen door and saw, gun on the kitchen table, his black uniform still on, Sheridan.
Fenn looked from the gun to Brendan, to Rafe coming into the room, and as if it were nothing at all, Fenn picked up the gun and put it on top of the refrigerator.
“Are you surprised to see me?” Sheridan said.
“I thought you weren’t coming till tomorrow,” Brendan bent down and kissed Sheridan.
Rafe threw an arm around Brendan’s waist and he said, “Hey, little man.”
“Dad said we should come right away and see you.”
“That’s great,” Brendan said. “Sort of a surprise because I was on my way to dinner at Dena’s.”
“We could all go,” Sheridan said. “I’d love to see Dena.”
“I don’t know if its right to surprise her like that,” Brendan said. “I’ll just cancel.”
“No, no, why don’t we all go?”
“I have an idea,” Fenn said. “Since this is a surprise, and since you are here for the weekend a little early, how about Bren goes to dinner, and how bout you all stay here.”
“But I want to go with Dad,” Rafe said.
“Yes, but you have your father all the time,” Fenn said simply. “And sometimes parents need alone time just like you. You and your dad Sheridan can stay here, and Dad Brendan will go and talk to his friends and come back later.”
No one thought of questioning Fenn here, and Sheridan said, “Could we at least talk before you go to dinner?”
“Yes,” Brendan said.
Sheridan walked out of the kitchen, his hands shoved into his pockets and Brendan followed him out of the swinging door into the dining room.
Sheridan pulled out an envelope and Brendan saw Kenny’s address on it. It was the envelope to the letter and Sheridan whispered, “Where the fuck have you been all day, Bren?”
“On the train.”
“I know you’ve been the fuck on the train,” Sheridan hissed.
“Did I need to mention that I made a round trip to Chicago?”
“Don’t fucking lawyer me. Where did you go?”
“To see Kenny,” Brendan shook his head. “You told me I should see him.”
“But it seems like you sneaked off to see him, Bren.”
“How could I sneak off. I took Rob. Everyone knew where I was going. You knew I was going.”
“I didn’t know you were going today. To spend the day with him.”
“I’m not entirely sure where you get off,” Brendan began, “because I’m pretty sure everyone you ever climbed into bed with you still go and visit whenever you want to.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Sheridan said. “But you also know I’m going. They aren’t writing me secret letters, and I’m not fucking them, Bren. In fact, you are. Remember last year. And I remember when you got in the shower after me, smelling like Casey because you’d been fucking Casey.”
“Really, Sheridan?” Bren looked at him savagely. “You’re really going to go back to that night.”
Sheridan turned his head.
“And keep your fucking voice down!” Brendan went on. And I’m not fucking anyone. But you.”
“Then why keep it a secret?” Sheridan demanded.
“I’m not fucking Kenny.”
“Then, again,” Sheridan said, “why keep it a secret?”
“If I’d really kept it a secret, you wouldn’t be standing her bitching and maybe the reason I didn’t tell you exhibits itself in the fact that my crazy husband left work, drove to Chicago and then greeted me with a gun on the table.”
“Or maybe, Mr. High Price Lawyer, the reason you didn’t exhibits itself in the fact that you’re plain, flat out, fucking guilty.”
“Are you guys fighting?” Rafe stuck his head out of the door.
“Yes,” Sheridan said while Brendan lied, “No.”
“Come back in the kitchen,” Fenn said, tiredly, and Rafe obeyed him.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” Brendan said, “I’m going to go upstairs, take a leak, splash some water on my face, get a hit of cologne and go out and—so you don’t think anything else is being hidden from you—Kenny will be there. Yup. He’s gonna be there.”
“Well,” Sheridan followed Brendan out of the dining room, into the living room and to the stairwell, “I hope you enjoy him sucking your dick.”
“Yeah, Sher,” Brendan said offhandedly, “I hope I do too.”
While they sat eating pot pies because, said Fenn, when you just showed up in town to hunt down your husband, that’s what you got, Sheridan said, “He says he didn’t do anything with Kenny.”
“If he says it then it’s true,” Fenn said.
“But he should have told me.”
“Yes,” Fenn agreed. “I do agree.” In the living room, Rafe was watching television with Liam, Layla’s son.
“But that is a conversation for grown ups, when children are asleep, and nobody is angry.”
A few hours later Sheridan’s phone rang and he picked it up.
“It’s me,” Brendan said. “I’m still at Dena’s. I’m not coming home. I mean to you. Not tonight. I’m staying here.”
Then Brendan added, “And It’s not because I’m sleeping with Kenny.”
“I know you’re not.”
“I shouldn’t have kept it from you. But I’m here with my friends and I haven’t had this is a long time and neither have you so… I’m staying here.”
“Brendan please come home so we can talk,” Sheridan said.
There was a frustration exhale of breath, and then silence. At last Brendan said, “I’m leaving in a few minutes. Is Fenn going to let us have the downstairs.”
“Yeah,” Sheridan said, “and Rafe is staying with Will and Layla.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with them too?”
“Yes. I’m sure. Just come home. Alright?”
Sheridan listened to Brendan take an especially long shower, and when Brendan was finally coming out with deodorant and a long towel wrapped about his waist, Sheridan watched him go about his toilet half asleep and then climb onto the bed in boxers and a tee shirt.
Brendan did not look at Sheridan when he spoke.
“It’s that party. It’s last year coming back to haunt us.”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“What the fuck kind of couple does what we did? What the kind of couples goes to a party and… fucks other people. No wonder we’re throwing stones at each other? No wonder you don’t trust me. You watched me fuck half the people you knew in a night. I knew.. I…who the fuck does that? And we’re broken. We’re broken because of it.”
“We were broken before that,” Sheridan said.
“Yes,” Brendan, whose face was in his hands, pulled his hands over his head and looked at Sheridan, anguished, “You’re probably right.”
“I don’t mean our relationship. I mean us, individually. I am a broken person.”
Brendan opened his mouth.
“Just listen,” Sheridan said. “That party didn’t do anything but make us stronger, and I will forever stand by that.”
“How can you even say that?” Brendan demanded.
“Because I honestly don’t care. No, because I am honestly glad about it. It wasn’t just an orgy. It was something else. It did something to us. You made love to Logan, Bren. You were with Chay. For real. You were with Casey. So was I. It healed something. It’s weird, I can’t explain it. I would not have planned it, but there it was, and I wasn’t threatened and I never have been because in the morning when we left we left together.
“I treated a lot of people very badly,” Sheridan said. “I treated Chay the worst. By the time I was finally able to commit to him, or thought I was, Logan came back into my life. I had Chay moving in with me when Logan showed up, and I didn’t tell anybody about Logan. I told Chay nothing because I wanted the chance to do whatever I wanted to do with him. I wanted the chance to have an affair. And I did, and then I left Chay. For Logan. And that went where it went. I could say I left Logan for you, but it was already over, and Logan knew I loved you.”
“See, Bren, you were the love of my life. After you I never looked back, but I know what it is to look back. And it would serve me right if you did have sex with Kenny, if you did leave me for him.”
“Sheridan,” Brendan placed a hand over his.
“Just let me finish,” Sheridan said.
“Alright.”
“I could watch you have sex with a billion people, but Kenny…. I’m afraid of the two of you sitting at table. I spent my whole life watching the two of you, loving you, wishing you were mine and I… I’m afraid. We left Casey and Chay’s house together. I’m afraid that if Kenny came back into your life….”
“Oh my God, baby, I’m so sorry,” Brendan pulled Sheridan to him. He was so bird thin, even after all these years, those little boy shoulder blades.
“I’m sorry,” Sheridan began to cry. “I’m jealous and I hate myself for it. I’ve never felt this way.” “If you’re attracted to him that’s whatever,” Sheridan separated from Brendan, wiping hisface. “It really is. It just means you’re breathing, but if you loved him more than me. If you left me…” Sheridan shook his head.”
“I thought we were so… modern,” Brendan said “I thought whatever came up we would just work out.”
“Like Lance and Elias and Dylan?”
“Or like last year. Or something. But… it’s not going to be that easy, is it.”
“No,” Sheridan, red faced, said.
Brendan shook his head.
“You have no idea how much I love you. On how many levels.”
Sheridan looked like the little boy he had wanted to protect so long ago, like the teenager he’d protected in a different way, who his heart always went out to. This was his lover, the young man he had not dared to desire until that night after Fenn’s grandmother died, when, away from Kenny and half drunk, Bren had finally made love to him. And this was his inspiration, who had gotten him over Kenny, who shared that same mind that no one else understood, the father of his child. How to make him know, how to make him know on how many levels he was loved.
“Bren, can we go to bed?”
Brendan pulled Sheridan to himself.
“Yes.”
“Bren,” Sheridan said, linking his fingers with Brendan’s.
“Yeah, babe.”
“I know you love me.”
“Of course I do.”
“If you want to sleep with Kenny, its alright. You can.”
“Alright,” Brendan said.
Thank you for reading. Please take a look at my very temporary gofund.me for assistance after the passing of family members.
