After the cold snap of November, this Sunday it was nearly fifty degrees, and only getting warmer. Elias woke up with a little too much energy, wishing he could sleep and trying to make himself sleep longer on Bren and Sheridan’s bed but, at last, getting up to make coffee. Rafe and Rob were already up because, Elias imagined, you had to be eighteen to appreciate sleeping in.
“He’s fed,” Rob said, pointing to Rafe.
“We had Mc.Donalds.”
Elias frowned.
“I got you a sausage biscuit and an orange juice,” Rob said, and Elias smiled.
“Thank you. Who wants coffee?”
“Coffee’s gross,” Rafe decided.
“I want it, but I don’t know how to make it, and I didn’t think about it.”
“I will make it,” Elias promised, “if I can just find the coffee and the filters.”
Elias mused, “No matter what, things are never where you thought they would be in someone else’s house.”
After a little while, Elias found both coffee and filters in a cupboard that made him murmur, “Why the fuck would you put that there?” and set to making the coffee. By now he was slightly frustrated, and in need of the toilet and, he decided, going back to bed.
Elias sat up in bed, drinking coffee. He had made a pallet on top of Sheridan and Brendan’s made bed, and knees drawn to his chest, his sipped the coffee and reflected that, all in all, last night had been a nice vacation from his strange marriage. Rob came into the bedroom and said, “I’m going to cook.”
“Yeah,” Elias decided. “I could eat again. What’s in the cupboards?”
“I’m making pancakes and sausage and eggs.”
“What part do you want me to do?” Elias asked, putting down his coffee and climbing off of the bed.
“Eggs? I always want them fried and get worried when I turn them over.”
“I can fry and egg,” Elias said.
“But Rafe will want scrambled. Cause… he’s a kid.”
“Bennett only eats scrambled,” Elias reflected, “but he has the mind of a kid.”
The day was full of sunlight. When Brendan and Sheridan entered the house smelled like breakfast and the television was on with Rob half asleep on the couch. Rafe was sitting at the table and he jumped up, but Elias wagged his finger and wiped the boy’s mouth.
Rafe leapt up onto Brendan and then to Sheridan, telling them, “Rob wanted us to see scary movies, but Elias said no. And then we did and there was this little boy, but his mother was a dog and he had a baby sitter and she jumped off a balcony because she loved him so much.”
“You let our kid see The Omen?” Brendan looked at Elias and Elias couldn’t tell if it was amazement or reprimanding, and then decided he didn’t really care. If they wanted their child to watch something better, then they shouldn’t go to all night parties. Elias took Rafe’s plate to the sink.
“You don’t have to clean,” Sheridan said. “We got that.”
“But I already got it,” Elias said, “And now that you’re here, we’re about to head home.”
“That’s crazy!” Brendan said. “Visit a little. We don’t want to toss you out.”
“But you forget,” Elias said, “I’ve been here since last night, and I’m ready to get back.”
He almost stopped talking. There was something different about Brendan. Negligently, he touched Sheridan affectionately and Elias was reminded of those those times when he was separated from Lance and Dylan, like when he would return to them in an hour or so, and he would see that something had changed between them. They had remembered something.
“Rob probably wants to see some more of the city before he leaves,” Elias added, shouting:
“Rob, what time is the train?”
“I don’t know!” he called back, followed by, “4:43. Mom said it would be too late, and she didn’t want me traveling in the dark, but I told her the only one before that is like 1:30. I dunno.”
“What are you guys cooking?” Elias wondered as he was preparing to leave, hoisting his bag over his shoulder.
“Nothing,” Sheridan said. Then he said, “For dinner?”
“Yes,” Elias said as if Sheridan was stupid, “that is what I meant.”
“McDonalds most likely,” Brendan told him.
But Elias was looking from Brendan to Sheridan and Brendan said, “What?”
“There’s something about you two,” Elias said. “You two… I know how it is with me and Dylan and me and Lance. I…” Elias shook his head.
“How about I take Rafe with me and you can come down and have early dinner with us? How’s that sound? You know it might even be quicker if you get in that squad car and drive.”
“We couldn’t,” Brendan started, but Sheridan touched his hand. “We could.”
Brendan looked at Sheridan. He said, “We’ll be down after four.”
Now, why had he done that? Did Elias just need to feel needed. Or, Elias wondered, did he want to have a child and a little brother? Was that, in some way what having Lance and Dylan was like? Was he so used to be a sort of a mother? And, he wondered, wasn’t that king of an insult to them?
“Fuck it,” he murmured.
“Huh?” Rob said as they were going toward the El station.
“Nothing,” Elias said.
Neither Dylan or Elias thought in much detail about the weeks afterward. They wanted two different things. Elias took to sex like a fish to water. He had already seen porn and knew his staid Christian father had been involved in it. They went to Saint Barbara’s most of the time, but there was this gay Christian church his parents dragged them too—which he kind of hated—and there were a bunch of former tricks there. Elias, who prized having his own room—late at night watched porn and was glad that his dad had ended his career so long ago he wouldn’t be easy to find. He’d watch pornos where two svelt hot things were fucking in a chair, a guy with an oily tight ass swiveling up and down on the other guy’s large dick, and then they would switch positions and he’d be getting fucked doggy style.
“Oh, yeah!”
“You like that shit?” the other guy would pound him harder.
“Fuck, yeah!”
Elias realized this is what he wanted. He would have loved if Dylan would hold his hips and fuck him mercilessly, and he understood just as quickly that this was something Dylan would never do. Even that first time, even the other times that weekend, Dylan had tried to be so gentle with him, and when the weekend was over he had left Dylan, knowing his friend was uneasy and uncertain. Elias didn’t have anyone to tell. Dylan was his closest friend. But he felt like he had used him.
Elias avoided Dylan that week, chiefly because he did feel like he’d used his friend. As Friday night approached, he knew he would have to make some sort of decision. He came Thursday night and told Todd and Fenn, quite loudly. “I haven’t seen Dylan in a week, and we have a lot to talk about. I think I might have some apologies to make.”
But that Friday night he didn’t make any apologies. They went to bed early, Dylan wearing a tee shirt for once, and Elias climbed into bed next to him and pressed himself into Dylan’s arms. It was a closeness they’d never experienced before, and as they drifted into sleep, neither one of them said a thing.
END OF CHAPTER THREE
