Page 34 of What You Own
Dad ordered a sirloin steak salad with dressing on the side and stared at the server’s ass again while she walked away. A little part of me that still missed my mom was offended at his blatant appraisal of another woman. But Mom had died six years ago, and I had no illusions that Dad had been celibate for more than a few months after. He’d never introduced me to a girlfriend, but that meant next to nothing. He probably wouldn’t bother until he’d put a ring on her finger.
I tried to see the server as he might see her: average height, thin waist, curvy down below, with big breasts. Blonde hair tied back from her pretty face. She was attractive, sure, in her own way.
Dad snickered and sipped his martini. “Fancy her too, huh?”
Lie and say yes. Lie and say yes, you idiot.
“She’s pretty,” I said. “I like brown hair better, though.”
“So you do have a type after all. I was starting to worry, son.”
“Of course I have a type.” I thought about sipping my soda to stall, but wasn’t sure if my hand would start shaking. “I’m just so busy with school, I don’t have a lot of time to look.” I grabbed the fallback argument. “Plus, you know how hard it is to find a girl who wants me for more than the size of my trust fund.”
“Amen to that.”
Dad had inherited the company from his father, who’d already made a fortune for himself by the time he died of a heart attack at fifty-nine, a year after I was born. Dad’s partnership with Joe Quartermaine sent us skyrocketing. The money was nice and all, but it definitely kept me from making any good, solid friendships growing up—until Ryan.
“You have plenty of time to settle down, Adam. You won’t be twenty-one until January. You still have a year of college left. You’ll find your feet in the dating world soon enough.”
I was glad when our appetizers arrived, because conversation stalled while we ate the cheese and crab stuffed mushrooms. They were delicious—add crab to anything and I’ll eat it—but I barely tasted them, too conscious of all the conversational mines I was stepping over. And we still had to get through the entrees.
“Lucinda says you’re going out more,” Dad said the moment we’d worked our way through the plate of mushrooms.
I took my time drinking some soda, stalling, unsure how to address the unasked question. Lucinda had been our housekeeper since I was a baby, stopping by four days a week to clean and do laundry. For the first few years after my mom died, Lucinda stepped in and made sure I ate, did my homework, and stayed out of trouble. She was there every single day while I recovered from my skull fracture. I loved her, and I wanted to throttle her for paying such close attention.
“I’m not seriously dating any girls,” I replied, “but I’m not a monk, Dad.”
A single eyebrow lifted, then flattened as he smiled. I’d said exactly the right thing and I hadn’t even lied. He’d cheer me on for slutting around with a different girl every night of the week, but if I told him I wanted to be in a monogamous relationship with another man, he’d disown me.
“You’re protecting yourself?”
“Of course.”
“A girl who will sleep with a relative stranger once has certainly done it before.”
Oh God, I wanted the conversation to stop. I needed the topic off of my sex life and onto something less problematic. “So how is the Linderman deal going?”
Dad launched into a long tirade on the ins and outs of this particular acquisition, which I listened to with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. He lost a little steam when our entrees arrived, speaking more carefully around bites of his steak salad. By the time we were finished, and he’d drunk his second martini, I probably knew as much about the deal as anyone actually working on it. My eyes might have glazed over a little bit.
The server collected his credit card to process. While we waited, the hostess seated a pair of men at the table next to ours. To the casual observer, they were business associates out for a working lunch—both well dressed, well groomed. Then the man on the left reached across the table and touched the top of the other man’s hand. The gesture was subtle, affectionate, and the second man turned his hand over so their fingers clasped, palm to palm. My stomach burned with awareness.
“Amazing what they allow in here,” Dad said, his voice a harsh whisper I heard but which didn’t carry to the other tables. “I thought this restaurant had standards.”
The warm burn turned into bitter acid. I didn’t have the guts to defend the couple one table over. Dad would have preferred to find a fly in his salad to sharing dining space with a gay couple, and I wanted to run. My only saving grace was that we were a few minutes away from leaving. Had this happened at the start of the meal… disaster.
Fucking coward. You’ll never be brave enough to hold Ryan’s hand in public like that. Never.
One day I would but not yet. I had to get through college first. The biggest issue was whether or not Ryan would wait for me. Was I worth it? Was what we had worth waiting nearly a year, so that we could be together and have a financially stable future? I thought so. I hoped Ryan did too.
I was glaring in the general direction of that couple’s table, and Dad must have misunderstood the whole thing, because he was smilingat me with this “you get what I’m saying” expression that nauseatedme.
We parted ways on the sidewalk. Dad went back to work, and I headed for the parking garage. I shot Ryan a quick “I survived” text. He’d be heading into work soon, so we had no chance of seeing each other again until tomorrow’s class at the center. I wanted to see him badly, to talk about all of the fears lunch had stirred up. Fears of the future and my father’s reaction to us. Ryan needed the money, though, and he couldn’t afford to miss a shift because I was having a small meltdown. I could handle this.
I could.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Ryan
