Page 60 of The New Guy
“I don’tthinkso.” But the idea makes me ill. “Probably not. So if I just say no out of misplaced paranoia, does that make me an asshole? I don’t have a plan for August yet, either. I’ll be working here for training camp and my sister will be on tour. What if this thing in New Hampshire is heaven on Earth? I could be depriving her of something amazing. I can’t even get her into the good camp in Brooklyn. Her new friends go to this Academy of Arts thing, but it fills up fast with Academy members.” I realize I’m babbling, so I clamp my jaw shut.
“Hey.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “You got, like, four months to figure stuff out, though.”
When Hudson is really sweet to me, I don’t know how to handle it.
“Everything okay?” Henry asks, striding into the room. “Is the trainer hurt this time?” He laughs at his own joke.
Hudson drops his hand, but not in a startled way. “Nah, Gavin was just having a stressful day. Family shit. We’ve all been there. Hang in there, man.” He walks out of the room, leaving me more emotionally unstable than when he entered it.
“Anything I can help with?” Henry asks. “Nice job on the restock, by the way.”
“Thanks. I just wish I knew what my husband would have wanted me to do about his overbearing parents.”
Henry wipes down his table. “That bad, huh? You guys never got along?”
“Eddie’s parents are overbearing. My husband did most of the things that his father wanted him to do. Except one—I was the thing his father didn’t want him to do.”
Henry laughs. “He wasn’t okay with the whole gay thing?”
“Actually, Eddie was bi. And his parents assumed he’d marry his medical school girlfriend and have kids in a nice suburban house somewhere. But she left him. He adopted Jordyn the following year. And then we met at the park—he was running with Jordyn in a jogging stroller, and I was working out with some college athletes near the playground. He stopped to let Jordyn play in the sandbox just so he could watch me work out.”
“Good play, dude.” Henry laughs. “Let me guess—he came back to the park again every day for the next week?”
“He only had to come back once.” The memory makes me smile. “He asked me out, and that was that. We only dated for six months before he proposed to me.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He was nine years older, and ready to make all these big decisions. I was only twenty-one when he proposed to me, but I was all in. Kid and all.”
Henry’s face falls. “And then you lost him. What a lonely way to become a dad.”
Hudson flickers through my mind, because lately I haven’t been lonely at all. But then I push that thought aside. “I’m glad we had the time we had. He was a really good husband, and a great dad. Much better than me, honestly.”
“Hey,” Henry argues. “Don’t scare the clueless guy who’s about to become a dad. You look pretty competent to me. Some of us don’t even know how to change a diaper yet.”
I laugh. “That’s the easy part, trust me. It’s answering their questions that will really mess with your mind.How big is the world? Who made God?”
He shakes his head and grins. “Good talk, Gavin. I’m already terrified of this fatherhood thing. I guess we just muddle through? Maybe that’s what everybody does.”
“Guess so.”
TWENTY-ONE
Hudson
Hey.
Yo. You home safe?
Yeah. Come over?
I would but Reggie’s not here.
Doh! Shot down.
Hey, I’d rather see you than sit here and flip channels alone. Watching anything good?
No, I just got in, hung up my jacket and texted you. Be flattered.
