Message in a Bottle

Chapter 10

POV BRIAN

Justin notices my discomfort in his hearing all this shit about me and begs off to use the bathroom.

Vic smiles. “Well, I’m glad Justin picked you up at the airport and you didn’t take a cab home. I’ve seen Jack a couple of times while you were gone and he was drunker than ever, and belligerent,” Vic comments.

“Where the fuck did you see him?” I ask, dumbfounded. “Surely nowhere near Liberty.”

“Of course not, I was getting kitchen supplies downtown. And it was only about 3 in the afternoon when I saw him accosting people on the sidewalk. I steered clear.”

“Wise,” I say with irony.

Vic sighs, nods, then looks around. “Well, kiddo, you feel better and get better - it looks like everyone’s starting to mobilize to go. Welcome home! And Justin,” he turns to the kid, “don’t take any shit from this boy. And take good care of him. He deserves it.”

Justin grins and nods eagerly. “I won’t and I will!” he exclaims.

I roll my eyes.

Vic takes my good knee through the blankets and gives a gentle squeeze.

“Thanks for everything, Vic. Justin’s gonna love your cake, I know it.”

“Yes, nice to meet you, Justin. You and Brian have a nice stay here together and again, don’t put up with too much of his shit. He’s even worse than normal when he doesn’t feel well.”

Justin shakes his hand, smiling. “Thanks. He hasn’t been too bad.”

He and the rest of the gang all say their goodbyes and file out. Everyone except Lindsay with Gus. Mel hitches a ride with them. Thank fuck. “I thought you might want to visit with Gus with less of a crowd around,” Linds says quietly.

I smile and take my son when she leans down to hand him to me. “Hey, Sonny Boy. I’ve missed you! You’ve grown so big – you were a wee little pink, squirmy thing when I left 7 months ago. Now you’re a little man.” I’m like a pod person around my son; I never expected to love him so much, but I’d die for him.

“Tell me about him,” I say to Lindsay, feeling somewhat sad that I’ve missed the last 7 months of his life.

“He’s a hellion, screams and rants one minute, then coos and smiles the next. A true little version of his father…”

Justin giggles and I glare at him. “I do not ‘scream and rant.’ And I *definitely* don’t ‘coo and smile’.”

The two of them exchange glances after my little rant and I immediately have to stop myself from cooing and smiling at my son. Instead, I frown. Justin covers his mouth to hide his widening grin, knowing it will just piss me off more. Justin’s two years younger than I am and has a way of stepping on my nerves more sharply than anyone.

Gus starts grabbing for my nose like any kid his age would and both Lindsay and Justin reach for him, not wanting him to throw a mini-fist into my swollen eye by accident. “It’s okay, you two. He’s fine.” If *he* punched me, at least it wouldn’t be on purpose, I think to myself. I look into his little pudgy face and his eyes really kind of look like mine; that funky hazel nothing color that on him looks adorable and on me looks blah. “He’s got your blond hair, Linds. He’s beautiful.”

Lindsay smiles widely. “He actually looks like a little blond Kinney, Brian. He’s going to grow up to be a real lady killer…”

“Or gentleman killer…” Justin and I both chime in together. Justin starts giggling again. Fuck me if he’s not still a boy, I mean, albeit *usually* a very mature one…

When he calms down, he joins Linds who has come to sit by me on the bed. She leans down and gets the baby bag and roots around until she finds a little photo album.

“Justin, would you like to see Gus when he was younger? With Brian?”

Huh? “You made a baby book with me and Gus?”

She nods with a sly smile as Justin eagerly grabs the album from her, not even answering.

“Fuck, Linds. I thought there were only a couple of pictures taken of him and me! That book is filled!”

She just broadens her wicked grin and moves more closely to Justin to point out and explain each picture.

“Shit. Let me see them too. I want to see when you must have snuck up on me and Gus without me ever knowing!” I’m both pissed and touched. Mostly pissed, though. I hate having my picture taken; I always have, ever since I had to sit in for a kindergarten class photo.

Man, that sucked, having that photo taken. When we all got copies a week later, I was genuinely mortified to see what I looked like. I had a swollen black eye and my arm was in a sling. I remember that I’d tried to cover the sling by throwing my jacket over my shoulder - all nonchalant and debonair like I’d seen in a Fred Astaire movie. Or so I thought that’s how I’d look - the photo however, showed differently. I looked like a scared, hurting dumbass trying to cover the obvious.

I hadn’t thought my eye was as bad as it obviously was, either. When I’d left the house for school that morning, I’d just gotten hit so it hadn’t really ‘shown up’ yet. When the photo was shot, though, it was a full blown shiner.

“Brian?” I hear. “Brian? Where are you? You’re a million miles away…” Justin says quietly, waving a hand over my face as though trying to clear whatever fog I’m in. I look down at Gus, who has fallen asleep in my arms, and then I look as best I can at Justin. My body’s gotten stiff lying here, and not the good kind of stiff.

“Just thinking, that’s all.”

“You haven’t focused on the photos at all, Bri,” Linds comments. And she’s right.

“Yeah… can we start over?”

They both look concerned, which I hate. I grin, so hopefully they quit looking at me like that.

Justin still looks worried, but he turns to the first page. It doesn’t look like they’d gotten very far in the album during my reverie. “Brian, you two were and are adorable…” he whispers, concern still etched in his voice.

I look at the first photos that are on the inside of the cover of the album itself. In true Linds fashion, she’s labeled them all with names, dates and stupid little descriptions, like, “Baby Gus with his Dada”. I hate that shit. But I keep quiet and look at the images - these are a few of the *very* few photos I was aware of being taken. Gus had just been born, and all of Lindsay and Mel’s lezzie friends had been cleared out, so Mikey could maneuver his camera the way he wanted. The three photos all have the three of us in them; Lindsay in bed looking like – fuck if I can say it, but I can think it - looking like an angel, aglow with the joy of having a beautiful newborn baby boy. Then Mel on one side of the bed and myself on the other; all three of us are looking at my son. It sounds corny - and maybe it was. But it wasn’t posed. We just kind of did it, and for some reason that night, all my snark was gone or I probably would have scoffed, gotten up and left.

The three pictures only differ in that in one, I’m holding my son, another, Mel is, and in the featured photo, Lindsay is holding him.

As I examine the pictures, I remember that night so clearly. Gus was so small and I had been a little nervous holding him. He seemed so fragile, those tiny hands and pea-sized toes. Justin slowly traces his finger over the laminated image of me holding Gus.

“Brian, you look like you’re in love, awestruck, amazed…” he mutters. I look up from the pictures to his face and he looks mesmerized. Oh, fuck me.

“He was…” Lindsay smiles. “He’d been saying the entire time since he agreed to father the baby that he wanted nothing to do with it – he was just helping me out - well, and Mel. But as soon as he walked into the hospital room and saw his son, he melted and he’s been a goner ever since.”

I don’t deny it - she’s right. But I’m starting to feel like I’m becoming the center of attention, and it should be Gus who’s in that position.

“But Brian, if you wanted nothing to do with the baby, why did you go to the hospital on the night he was born? Wouldn’t you just blow it all off?”

“I would’ve blown it all off- but I went…” Shit, this is all getting way too sentimental… “I went because Linds asked me to.” There, leave it at that.

“I wanted his support; honestly, that’s all I wanted. But I secretly suspected, knowing Brian, that once he saw his son, his heart would melt.” She grins at me.

I scowl. “You didn’t know that, you bitch…” I mutter.

She keeps grinning. She turns to Sunshine. “Justin, I think that you already know Brian pretty well in the short time you two have been together—“

“We aren’t together!” I interrupt.

“Oh, fuck me, Brian. You and your stupid ‘no boyfriends’ thing. It’s obvious you’re falling in love with Justin—“

“Shut up!” I hiss. I am not. “I am not!”

She ignores me and turns her attention back to Justin, who is now grinning from ear to ear after my and Lindsay’s short exchange. “Anyway, Justin, you know that he’s an ass on the outside - grumpy, rude, arrogant, a jerk; but on the inside, he’s a big fat marshmallow, a sentimental soul…”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Lindsay, shut up! I’m not a ‘fat’ anything, and I’m certainly not a fucking ‘sentimental soul’. You’re describing me like I’m some lezzie! You’re going to warp Justin’s mind telling him shit like that!”

Justin and Lindsay give each other knowing glances. Since when did I lose all power? Suddenly I’m a ‘big fat marshmallow’! I’m Brian Fucking Kinney, for fuck’s sake!

Then I notice that I’m thinking this while caressing my son’s pudgy little cheeks as he sleeps in my arms. Sigh.

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