Page 26 of Under His Sheets
He seemed to lose the wind in his sails, so I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him to keep him from blowing away.
“How can Inotaccept that?”
He trembled and pressed our foreheads together. “My family doesn’t know me. I tell them I am serving, I am gone, I will be out of contact for some time…Mama says I break her heart. Papa is angry with me for upsetting Mama. Felip is angry that I’m upsetting our parents, thinks I am being selfish. The other two are glad it’s not them in my shoes. I’m trying to do what’s right for not only my family, but my people…I know that sounds dramatic.” He laughed then, but his trembling grew stronger under my hands.
“And then I come along with my whys.”
He laughed again, but it came out more like a gasp. He caressed my jaw then and ran a thumb over my bottom lip. “Can you and your whys forgive me?”
“Forgiveness is the easy part,” I said, running my hands up under his shirt, causing him to shiver. “The rest of the whys can wait. What Idon’tknow about now is the hows.”
“The hows?”
“Mmm. How am I supposed to act around you? How can I be here for you?CanI be here for you?” Then I laughed a little harder than I think he was expecting. “How do I get home since everyone in that house is wasted?”
That was the right thing to say, at least it seemed that way, as Alonso laughed with me, burying his face in my neck. I held him tight to me, but he held me tighter, and he took several deep breaths as though he were trying to put himself back together.
“Hows are easier than whys. How you act depends on what you want the others to know. How you act depends on whether or not you want to be the center of a Segura bomb like we saw tonight. My family doesn’t do anything small…and I’ve never talked to them about who I see. They do not know that I am bisexual. They never ask, I don’t offer.”
“That’s so sad, Alonso. I’d want them to be just as happy for you as they were for Felip and Cecilia in there.”
“But Felip is the golden boy. Well, he was a little tarnished because he got divorced from his first wife and he has not given Mama grandbabies yet. Anything I do will be met first with frustration about how I never tell them anything, how I’m never around. After a while it was just easier to stay away.”
“Is that what you want?”
He shrugged and pulled back to look into my eyes, to brush my hair out of my face.
“That is a separate issue. What I want is right here.”
I broke out into a huge grin of triumph.“Thatis excellent.”
He exhaled again. “Randall, what this means is that tonight we can forget whys and hows. But away from here, where we are not safe from prying eyes, we have to go back to not knowing each other, to me being Alonso the custodian. For now. Until…until I do not have to be Alonso the custodian any longer. I am hoping that my days of…not being AlonsoSeguraare near the end, but until this why is no more, that is all I can offer you. You deserve more, but I am asking you to hold on to your whys and hows.”
I took my chance, with our closeness and his openness, to press my lips to his, hoping it was the right move.
Andoh, it was.
We. Made. Out. In the grapes. Not far from his family’s home where any of them could have seen us. Any whys and hows I had lingering could just sit back and wait their turn because this man. Was. Kissing. Me. There was groping. Heavy. Petting. And I never wanted him to stop. Though he did. And he smiled that full toothy smile again as we laughed nervously. There was that wonder…how far did we take this? Did the other person want to keep going, and where would we do that?
Now I was thinking about wheres?
“I think,” he finally whispered, “that everyone will stay here tonight. Usually that is the case. There is a guesthouse where Felip and Cecilia stay when they come to visit, and there is a bedroom there for June. Tomás and Mateu still have their room, and I have the room I shared with Felip as a boy. It’s not fancy…”
“Are you asking me?”
He rolled his eyes and laughed. “Would you be my guest?”
“Are you kidding me? A slice of Alonso history to explore? I would never pass that up. But…is that strange? Will your parents wonder?”
“Not when they find me on the couch in the morning.”
“But until then…”
“Until then…”
He kissed me once more, took my hand and then led me back to the house. He sent me in first, and as I was passing the bathroom, I ran into Cecilia.
“Oh, Randall. I hope you don’t mind, but we’re all going to stay here tonight? If you have to be back in the morning, we can leave early?—”
