“Oh buddy, you can be as loud as you want, if you keep talking. Don’t hide how you feel from me. You can tell me anything.”
He hugged Jacks close, loving the little boy smell of him.
Jacks gave him a hug back, then unzipped his jeans. “I have to pee.”
“I’ll be in your bedroom with your pajamas.” Carter hurried out of the bathroom to Jacks’s room and smiled when he saw Helen had already set out a pair of pajamas for Jacks. He heard the toilet flush and the water in the sink run and thanked God he ingrained proper hygiene practices in Jacks. Watching Jacks dragging his feet as he entered the bedroom, Carter bit back a smile. God, he loved this kid so much.
“Here you go, buddy.”
“Thanks.” Jacks took off his clothes and put them in the hamper at the foot of his bed, then slipped on his pajamas. Carter noted he still had the skinny, wiry frame of a little boy and recalled the physician making a point at his last checkup that a bone-age test should be done to see if Jacks was delayed in that respect. Before he forgot, he pulled out his phone to make a note, then slipped it back in his pocket.
Jacks had already climbed into bed and lay snuggled in the pillows, his eyelids drooping, half-lidded with impending sleep. “Henry asked me again if I could sleep over this weekend. He’s having a party, and I really wanna go. Please, can I, Carter? I promise to go to bed on time from now on.”
Despite knowing it would be good for him, Carter still hesitated but couldn’t pinpoint why. Was he afraid of letting go because it meant possible hurt for Jacks, or was he being selfish to try and keep Jacks close to stave off his own inevitable loneliness when Jacks was gone?
“Please?”
Resistance proved futile under that sweet pleading.
“Okay. Tell Henry tomorrow you can go. I’ll bring you over on Saturday.”
Jacks flung back the bedcovers and hurtled himself in Carter’s arms. “Thank you. I love you.”
Dazed and holding back tears, Carter hugged Jacks tight. “I love you too, buddy. So, so much.”
***
It felt strangeto be without Jacks on a Saturday evening. He’d dropped him off around lunchtime and made sure to speak with Michelle, Henry’s mother, about his medication and gave her his cell phone number.
“Don’t hesitate; if you need to call me, it doesn’t matter what time.”
“Don’t worry, Carter. Go have fun with your boyfriend.” She gave him a wink. “Maybe you can have a sleepover too.”
“We broke up.” Damn. What was it about this woman that he kept revealing pieces of himself to her?
“Oh, I’m sorry. Well, that offer to fix you up with my brother still stands.”
“Thanks, but—”
“You miss your boyfriend. I saw how much you cared about him when you mentioned him weeks ago. It showed in your eyes. Well,” she said with an impish smile, “now you have the whole weekend to try and get him back. If that’s what you want.”
He had no fucking clue what he wanted anymore.
Carter spent the rest of the afternoon listening to Michelle’s words run through his mind. Giving up all pretense of finishing the work he brought home on Friday specifically to keep him busy on Saturday night, Carter vacillated between going to Reed’s bar, plunking himself down and refusing to move until they talked it all out, or downing the bottle of vodka staring at him from atop his liquor cabinet and passing out on the sofa.
“Fuck it,” he said and grabbed his leather jacket. Before he could change his mind he shoved his keys and phone in his pocket and ran out the door, hearing the lock click behind him. He walked the two blocks to where the stores were and only had to wait a few minutes before a cab came by with its light on.
“52nd and Seventh,” he told the driver, and the cab sped off. Traffic was a bitch as usual, especially getting through the mess in downtown Brooklyn, but soon they were over the Brooklyn Bridge and heading north on the West Side Highway. For about the tenth time Carter checked his watch and saw the time hadn’t moved much past the last time he looked at it. Still not yet eleven p.m., and Saturday night in the city barely got its feet wet to party at this time. He wondered how Jacks was doing and checked his messages. The last picture he’d gotten was all the boys in the basement, having pizza and ice cream.
Jacks looked so happy Carter’s heart squeezed. Never having had this as a child himself, it was what he worked so hard for these three years to accomplish. Still, he couldn’t help but worry, and the fact Michelle sent updates every hour made him her number one fan for life, even with her well-intentioned nosiness.
Forty-five minutes later the cab pulled up in front of Reed’s bar. “Here you go.”
“Thank you.” Carter swiped his credit card and slammed the car door behind him. For a moment he stood on the sidewalk gathering his wits, heedless of the annoyed glares from the passing crowd, getting bumped by various elbows. What was he thinking? He had no right to come here when he wasn’t any more certain things had changed from the last time he saw Reed. Yet that didn’t stop him from walking in and pushing his way through the crowd until he reached the bar and spied Reed chatting up a good-looking man drinking a beer from an iced glass.
Fucking poser. He ground his teeth and sidled up next to the preppy douche who, from the smirk on his face, thought he had Reed in the bag.
Think again, asshole.
