The Other Foot

Chapter One  

Whenever something like this happens they always say that they didn’t plan it, that they would never have done it in a million years if they’d had any idea where it would lead and what the repercussions would be.

I swear to God that I never planned this.

I didn’t think it would happen, at least not to me.

I mean, shit. It took me thirty years to fall in love the first time. Who know that the second time would be so much quicker?

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Eight months earlier

I was in the diner with Ben about seven on a Saturday night. He was waiting for Mikey to close up the store. Since I didn’t really have anything better to do at that point, we were both just sitting there waiting before we’d order some diner shit to eat.

Justin was busing that night and I have to tell you, he looked like shit warmed over.

He was wearing clothes that had pretty obviously been slept in—or not judging by the circles under his eyes. He hadn’t cracked a smile all night and he wasn’t wearing that cheap ring the Chinrat had given him.

OK, this wasn’t hard to figure out.

My only question was whether it was just a bit of a tiff or was this really the breakup I’d been expecting?

When he came over to hand us some glasses of water I made some comment, something about how he was wearing the same stunning outfit he’d had on the day before. He snarked back that he had slept at Daphne’s and I sort of got the idea that he wouldn’t be going to any violin concerts for a while.

OK.

You want to know something? I wasn’t 100% happy about that.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I had known that the two of them wouldn’t last, just like I knew that Mikey and the Doc weren’t destined to live happily ever after. It was just that he looked so damn—what?—devastated isn’t the right word. Disappointed? No, that’s not it, either. He looked like he knew it would happen, that he’d end up hurt and here it was and it was worse than he’d expected. He was sad. I know, that sounds like a kid who lost their kitten, but that’s how he looked. Like he had just found out that sometimes things weren’t fair and he had always heard that they should be.

Whatever had happened, whatever had caused the break up must have been a big one.

I felt sorry for him, OK?

I know. I know.

Look, I love him and I want him to be happy. I wanted him to be happy with me but if that wasn’t in the cards, I wanted him happy—somewhere with somebody and now he was miserable.

The path was clear for me now. I just had to decide how to make my move when I thought that he was ready to accept delivery.

Well, we know what happened, don’t we? A couple of weeks later he showed up at Vanguard one day as the new intern. Fuck me. He actually called me ‘Mr. Kinney’ with a straight face.

Within days we were doing it in my office and a couple of weeks after that his shit was back right where it had been in the loft. His computer was back on the desk, his clothes were back in the drawers, his crappy soda was back in my fridge and he was back in my life.

This time is was different. We were more careful with one another. It was like we both knew what we could have and we both knew how shitty it was when we had screwed it up the last time.

Fuck me. You should have seen the looks on the boy’s faces the night we walked into Babylon together for the first time. You’d have thought that we were parting the waters or something. It was like returning royalty.

I don’t know how many times we laughed about that.

Then there were the reactions from the family. Linds was thrilled, threw her arms around him and kissed me. Mel snarked, but who gives a shit? Debbie screamed and actually kissed him then told me not to fuck it up again—I didn’t tell her that he was the one who had left me the first time, but it didn’t matter. Mikey got that constipated look he gets. You know the one.  Well, he’ll just have to get used to it.

Jennifer looked sort of pained, but I think she knows that we’re fairly solid this time around. I know she’s not thrilled about it, that she thinks I’m a bad influence on Justin, and maybe I am, but fuck—we belong together and that’s just the way it is.

Molly is still waiting for me to get over Justin so that I can take up with her. You know what? I like the kid. Oh, and Daphne, she’s always been in my corner. I think it has something to do with the fact that she’s seen me naked a few times.

So things settled down after a few weeks. We were living our lives. I went to work every day, he went to classes. You know the drill. We saw various friends and his family. We made a point of spending time together. I tried to do some of the shit that he thought he wanted. I brought home flowers a couple of times to surprise him and we had a couple of romantic dinners either at the loft or at some little places I knew about.

The third or fourth time we did that he seemed quiet about it, not unhappy, but not really pleased, either. He didn’t say anything though and I decided not to pursue it. Maybe he had a headache or something.

A few days later I stopped of and got a bunch of flowers and a decent bottle of wine to celebrate his latest report card—he made the dean’s list, that scamp.

Anyway, I walked in with the stuff and he just looked at me then said, quietly, a little sadly that he knew what I was trying to do and he loved me for it, but it was alright. He had thought once that he needed the flowers and all of that, but that after Ethan he knew that it didn’t really matter. What mattered weren’t the flowers, but the idea that I was thinking about him. He didn’t care about the wine, though he’d be happy to drink it—he cared that it had occurred to me to consider that he might like it and that he mattered enough to me that his accomplishments were worth celebrating.

Fuck me; I loved him more when he said that than I thought I could love anyone.

After that we just kind of fit together.

Oh, sure, we argued and we fought now and then, but we both knew that they weren’t going to break us up or anything. We argued, we made up.

The sex—did I mention the sex? Do I even have to?

Amazing, mind blowing, incredible, frequent, exhausting, and fabulous sex.

After a while I noticed something about that, too. I knew, I’d known for a long time that what we had in bed—or in the shower or on the couch or wherever—was better than just good fucking. It really is different, better, with someone you care about. I cared about his satisfaction, about whether it was good for him. I used to care because my own rep was at stake, now I cared because I wanted his to have the best fucking orgasms of his life. It was like a gift I could give him and something that we could share with one another and no one else.

With no one else.

I saw you raise your eyebrow at that. Yeah. It’s true. I did it. I agreed to stop tricking. He didn’t even ask me, but one day he came home early because some class was cancelled and I was fucking some trick when he walked in. He didn’t say anything about it, either then or when the guy left, but I could see the look on his face and I knew that I’d hurt him.

Before, that would have pissed me off. Who the Hell was he to dictate what, who I could do?

The thing was that he didn’t dictate, he didn’t even ask. He was hurt and I knew it and I was the one who had hurt him.

So I stopped tricking. It was as simple as that.

I didn’t say anything to him about it, it’s not like I told him or anything but he knew. He figured it out and he was just so happy after that. He would come up behind me and put his arms around me or he would wrap himself around me in bed or just look at me across the room and get that sunshine smile on his face and I just knew how good it all was.

That’s the killer in all this. We were so Goddamned happy and it was just going so well. I was even starting to think that his hints that we should go up to Vermont or even just stay around here and gate married—legal or otherwise—might not be a bad idea. I was seriously starting to think that maybe over Christmas or something we would do that.

OK, so it didn’t quite turn out the way I planned.

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Six months earlier

It was a nothing Tuesday at work; I was looking over the storyboards for the new campaign for Mellon Bank that I had to pitch the next morning when Vance wandered into my office.

“So, Brian, I need you go to New York on Thursday”

Gardner was known to do this sort of thing to try to throw me. It never worked. “Why? What’s in New York?”

“You know that I’ve been talking with Steve Brenner for a few weeks now, right? Well, it seems that Brenner, Inc is available for the right offer. I’d like you to go, spend a few days there, tell me what you think of the operation and then we’ll discuss it when you get back on Monday.”

“Do you want to buy them outright or merge?”

“I haven’t decided that yet. I’m leaning towards a merge, though. I’ll name him a full partner—don’t worry, you’ll get the same title—then he can still run the New York office for us, we can go back and forth and we’ll expand ourselves with a ready made client base.”

“Why is he selling? If his place is worth having, why doesn’t he just keep it?”

“He wants to cut back on his hours and throw some of the pressure onto us. If we have overall control, and I would want a controlling interest or nothing, then we can call the shots and he can do most of the legwork.”

“If the place is worth having.”

“That’s for you to form an opinion on.”

“Would you expect me to do the commuting back and forth?”

“Well, Brian, I know that you’ll find this difficult to believe, but Brenner seems to think that I’m hard to work with. Perhaps he’ll find you more amenable.”

Well, whatever. If it worked out it would be a good business move, at least on the surface.

“Fine. I’ll have Cynthia get the tickets—I’d like her to come with me—we’ll leave here tomorrow night so that we can get in a full day with them on Thursday.”

Vance was already half out the door. “Good.”

I remember thinking at the time that there was more here than Vance was telling me. If this thing went through, and with it as far along as it seemed to be, it was probably a done deal. Someone would either have to be spending half of every week going back and forth or one of us would have to likely move there at least for the transition period.

And guess who the most likely candidate would be for that, boys and girls.

Well, there would have to be some serious bonus bucks for me to do that and Justin would just have to understand that it was business.

I told him about it that evening and he actually took it pretty well. He told me that he was really busy with school and he had some big projects coming up over the next few months and that we’d just have to spend as much time as we could together while I was home. Maybe he could come to New York a few times to gallery and museum hop while I was working.

It wouldn’t be forever, and he’d be alright.

I gave a mental sigh of relief when he said that. I was expecting one of his tantrums, but since we’d gotten back together and were solid they had been happening less and less frequently.

Thank God.

That night we made love in the shower.

I remember it especially because it was the first time he had me there. I’d done him countless times up against that glass, but he’d never done me there. I had to bend my knees a little because I’m so much taller and my legs got tired, but I tried not to let him know. He had topped me a few times in the bed and on the sofa, but never in the shower and I think he really liked it. I hoped that he did. Maybe it was just the idea that I’d let him or something, but after we were in bed he wanted me to do him, sort of like a payback, I guess.

He held onto me all night and in the morning he wanted me to have him again before we had to get up.

He dropped me off at the office since I wouldn’t need the car. Cynthia and I would be taking a limo to the airport from work. He kissed me good bye—a few good ones that threatened to turn into a make out session right on Forbes Avenue, but I cut it short with him laughing at me.

He told me that he loved me when I got out and I told him the same thing. He said that he’d give me a homecoming that I could look forward to. He was laughing as he pulled back into traffic.

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We were met by the driver at Newark Airport and were taken directly to our hotel. Brenner had sprung for the Plaza with park views. Either he was trying to impress us or get us off guard.

Neither would work.

There was a message from him when I checked into my room. Could we meet him for dinner so that we could get acquainted under informal circumstances? Sure, fine with me.

I called his number and we agreed to meet at O’Henry’s at seven. Cynthia should come, too. It wouldn’t be fancy, dress was comfortable.

At exactly seven we walked into the restaurant. It was fairly crowded for a Wednesday but the hostess had already seated Brenner and took us right over to the booth. Standing, we shook hands and made the introductions.

OK, let’s get the obvious out of the way right now. The man was as attractive as anyone I’ve met and that’s, as we know, saying a lot.

Oh, and he was gay. Did I mention that?

He wasn’t handsome in the classic sense, he didn’t have movie star looks or resemble a Greek god, but he had charisma that you could have sold stock in. He had this smile that even made Justin’s look a little dim—like I ever thought I’d see that happen. He had these eyes that absolutely held you. They were black, you know how that looks and I’ve always been a sucker for nice eyes. He had that black Irish look about him. He looked to be around thirty-five, maybe forty but you could see that he worked out. He wasn’t overdone like Ben, he was just right and he was about the same height as me, too.

Shit.

Cynthia saw the look I was giving him and just shook her head enough for me to see. It was a sort of ‘don’t do this’ headshake.

He was looking right back and I knew then and there that we had trouble right here in River City.

We sat down, him across from us. The waiter showed up, we ordered drinks, but nothing too hard since we all knew that, jeans or not, this was a working dinner.

The talk was general and we all ordered steaks. He offered to get us tickets to whatever Broadway show we were interested in for the next night and Cynthia said that she had been dying to see The Producers, if that might be possible. He agreed, saying that he had already seen it, but it was so funny that he’d be happy to join us if we wouldn’t mind.

The talk wandered along, he mentioned that he was single, having just suffered through a breakup and when he asked about me Cynthia saw the look on my face and threw in that I was with the most wonderful young man and that we’d been together for quite a while. She just loved Justin to death.

I was about to snark something to her when she gave me this innocent smile like she was just sharing, what was my problem?

Thanks, bitch, if I wanted a nanny I’d fucking hire one.

Steve caught what was happening as well as we did and it was awkward when the dinner was over and we were all about to leave.

I’ve experienced my share of sexual chemistry, but this was a lot even for me.

Normally, if Cynthia hadn’t been there—Hell, even if she was it didn’t used to make any difference—I would have taken him up on his offer for a late drink somewhere. OK, a late drink at his place, I know that was what he meant. We all knew that was what he meant.

Biting the bullet, I thanked him for dinner and his generous offer, but said that I wanted to be sure that I was rested for the next day and that we’d all see each other in the morning.

He understood, Cynthia looked relieved and we took separate cabs when we left. Cyn and I went together to the Plaza, Steve to wherever his place was.

When we got upstairs I called Justin, but got the answering machine. He had told me that he might be late tonight, working a late shift at the diner. The pisser is that I had no doubt that was where he was. If I called him there, he would have come to the phone. I left a message about how I was sorry that I’d missed him and would try again the next day.

After taking a shower I pulled out a book I’d brought with me and settled in to read myself to sleep.

I know, who would have thought I’d do something like that?

I made a mental promise, though, after I finally turned out the light and was ready to nod off. I knew that one of the things that had destroyed Justin and Ethan was that the prick had screwed around when he was away for just one night. He couldn’t restrain himself for even twenty-four hours and that had about killed Justin.

I wouldn’t do hat.

I wasn’t going to fuck up what I had for a fuck.

I wasn’t.

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