Page 17 of Shades of Henry
“Zzzzomigod!” Henry burst out. “What are you doing? Stop! No! Put your clothes back on! We’re not doing that here! That’s not what this is about!”
Cotton stopped and frowned. “Then what are we doing here?”
His chest was a thing of alabaster beauty. Pale skin, riding the muscle groups so tight, Henry could mark the places you’d shade the shadows in with a pencil. His shoulders were wide and his elbows had been moisturized, a curiously vain, vulnerable gesture that hit Henry more in the solar plexus than the groin. He had giant fucking Bambi eyes, luminous and brown and vulnerable—dammit, couldn’t this kid stay out of the goddamned rain?
“You are getting dressed first,” Henry said. “Then we’re sitting on opposite ends of the bed, and we’re going to talk like people.”
Cotton grabbed his T-shirt—a Johnnies promotional one, with the model on the front and everything—and curled up in the far corner of the bed, his back against the corner of the walls. He looked, if anything, more naked now.
Henry sat down on the end of the bed with a sigh. “Cotton, son—”
“I’m not your son.”
“No, but you’re too young to be my boyfriend, so we’re going to roll with that, okay?”
Cotton swallowed. “Too young?” he asked. “I’ve fucked guys way older than you—”
“And shame on them. I mean, I get—sort of—why the people you do on set may be older than you. That’s a professional relationship, and those cross age boundaries sometimes.”
“Most of them aren’t much older than you or Lance. You’re sort of, you know… old.”
At twenty-seven. Fantastic. Henry couldn’t control his glee. “Thank God,” he muttered, wishing for Galen’s dagger-like dryness. “Anyway, if I’m so old, why are you looking to hook up with me?”
Cotton started to pluck at Lance’s comforter, which looked like a homemade thing in vibrant magentas and blues. Henry wanted to touch it too. “I dunno,” Cotton muttered. “You were… warm. And safe. It feels good when it’s safe.”
Oh. “Well, yeah. It should feel good. It should be safe. But—and this isn’t for work, mind you—but maybe you should have some action… someagency,when you pick your warm and safe. You were going to sleep with me because I was there, Cotton. Maybe don’t sleep with guys because they’rethere.Sleep with them because youwantto.”
“But how will I get anybody to like me if I don’t put out?”
Henry’s swallow was audible.
Mal, can’t we just, I don’t know, hang out?
C’mon, Henry—I wouldn’t have asked you over to my folks’ house if I didn’t want to fool around.
A thousand years ago. That had been a thousand years ago. And Henry had bought that line and bought it until what he was doing wasn’t wrong because it was with Mal—it was wrong because Mal was married to his sister, and she’d had Mal’s baby.
“You can’t do that,” Henry said, his throat so tight, he almost couldn’t talk. “You putting out—that’s not a condition of a relationship, Cotton. That’s….” What did he want it to be? “That’s like, yourrewardfor letting the rest of the relationship work. I mean, I get it. Some people hook up and they walk away and that’s okay for them.” Martin—wasn’t that his name? Martin had been a prime example. “But not everyone is built like that. I don’t thinkyou’rebuilt like that. I just….” Henry blew out a breath, because God knows, his adult decisions hadn’t been any more awesome than this kid’s. “I just think it would be kinder to yourself if you kept the sex on set for a while, and decided what you wanted for yourself when you’re not there.”
Cotton swallowed, looking smaller and smaller in his corner. Oh Jesus. Once again, he wanted to call Lance, and then he saw the kid wipe his face with his sleeve.
“Look, Cotton—if I come sit next to you, do you promise not to come on to me?”
The kid took one of those deep shuddering sob breaths and nodded, and Henry did what he promised. Sat next to him. Warm and safe.
Cotton put his head on Henry’s shoulder and cried. Not racking sobs—silent, cleansing tears. Eventually, he slid down Henry’s arm, falling asleep, his head on the pillow, and Henry covered him with the yellow-and-green crocheted blanket at the foot of Lance’s bed. He emerged from the room to find the dishes done—he’d insistedsomebodydo them after dinner, because yuck!—and the living room surprisingly empty. Lance was reading under the lamp at the end of the couch.
“Where is everybody?” Henry asked, looking around.
“Well, Zep and Fisher were going to sleep, for once,” Lance said, “so Randy asked if he could spoon with them. Curtis is in there doing homework. Billy is staying at a friend’s house—”
“A friend?”
“Apparently so. There was nothing about a hookup in his voice. Old high school buddy. And you sort of took my bed.”
Henry made a sad-clown-horn sort of sound. “And the answer to whether or not Lance gets his bed back is….”
“No!” Lance filled in, laughing softly. “I get it.”
