Page 23 of For Your Heart
Now it’s Saturday and I don’t expect him here at all. This is an after work exercise. Not a weekend activity. So I go for a run and then come home, but I’m far too jittery to sit in the house.
Taking my keys and phone, I head for the door just as my phone rings. This time I have the presence of mind to look at it. My mother. Dread, dark and gripping, settling in my chest. I hit the reject button and stuff the phone in my pocket.
No way I’m letting her bring me out of this good mood. There’s a guy in my bed delivering me more pleasure than I’ve ever felt. In his weird way, he takes into account my needs. My wellbeing. He makes sure I’m taken care of physically.
He accepts that I’m gay!
My phone doesn’t stop ringing as I drive four miles deeper into the subdivision I live in. I contemplate leaving my phone in the car but decide against it. What if someone else calls me? What if Damon texts? He never has before, but that doesn’t mean he can’t, right?
Bounding up the walk, I knock on the door.
It opens a minute later, and River greets me with a smile.
“Hi,” I say and wrap them in my arms. They’re smaller than me by about four inches. Hovering somewhere just under six feet. “Am I interrupting?”
“No,” they say, patting me on my chest and letting me in. “Sparrow just got to sleep, though, so keep your voice down, okay?”
I nod and follow them into the house, where I find Jordan sitting on the couch with their baby in his arms. He looks up at me with a wide grin.
Sparrow is only five weeks old. He’s a tiny little thing. I’m right in love.
“Hey, man,” Jordan says, his voice quiet. “Did I miss your text?”
I shake my head and sit next to him, being mindful not to drop as I usually do. He very carefully places their little bundle in my arms.
For a minute, I stare at the sleeping face. I’m not sure which DNA made this little one; they don’t know either. Sometimes I see both Jordan and River in him. They used IVF to fertilize donor eggs and then a surrogate, emphasizing that they didn’t want to know whose sperm fertilized the egg. They wanted a mix implanted.
The result was this perfect little boy.
“What happened to you?” River asks as they sit on Jordan’s lap. They take my hand from where it rests on Sparrow and touch the still healing part of where the rope chaffed my wrist a week ago. This spot had bled a little. Apparently, I was completely unable to settle while Damon took me. Hell, I can still feel the reminder of him in my ass.
I quickly push that thought away as I glance at the sleeping newborn. Not appropriate right now!
“Nothing,” I say and pull my hand back.
“That’s a lie,” River says, narrowing their eyes on me.
Sighing, I try to contain the excitement inside me. Instead, I focus on Sparrow. I’ve been told that my overeager energy can be disrupting, so I take extra care to try to tamp it down.
“I… I’ve been sleeping with someone.”
“A guy?” River asks, grinning.
My cheeks burn as I nod. I can’t contain the smile. “Yeah.”
“Is it everything you imagined it would be?” Jordan asks, resting his chin on River’s shoulder.
For a minute, I study them. Jordan and I have been friends since high school. He was the only friend who knew me for what I am. Even back then, he knew I was gay and that my family wouldn’t accept that. He knew that my mother insisted that I have a girlfriend and found me one. He knew that I was miserable.
Jordan was the only person who ever truly encouraged me in everything I did. I had his unwavering support in anything that made me happy. It was because of him that I finally went to a therapist and found the courage and strength to admit my truth and live the life I want to live.
He met River in college. I watched him go through his own existential crisis because while River identifies as neither gender (or both on certain days), Jordan freaked out about what’s in their pants. But he loved River with everything in him. Even from the early days.
We used to stay up for hours talking about it. His distress and confusion were painful to watch, to witness, while I was helpless to do anything but lend him my support and my shoulder.
As cliché as it sounds, love won in the end. Jordan loved River far too much to care what they sported under their clothes. That didn’t mean we didn’t have some awkward conversations as he worked out his own feelings on the matter.
I’ve also witnessed a few of their conversations on it. Not just on the sexual stuff, but on other things that might have been better off in a private setting. River explained they had an arrangement. Whenever one of them was uncomfortable, insecure, or otherwise needed to express something, they stopped what they were doing and talked about it.
