Chapter 5
So, Wyatt’s meeting with Izzy turned out to be less about cupcakes and awkward conversation and more about panic attacks and the realization that the guy used drugs. Which was…which was his business, except for where it was also Justin’s business too, and probably also the business of whichever parole officer who watched over Izzy’s file. It wasn’t Wyatt’s business, was the point. And he knew—heknew—that Izzy only said weed, and weed was like barely anything, and Wyatt didn’t believe that stuff about it being a gateway drug…except he also remembered what weed smelled like. Strange that he couldn’t remember his mom’s face, but the smell of weed, even just a trace of it in a crowd, could take him straight back to that small, dirty house in Oregon when he was small and dirty too. Smell, he read somewhere once, was tied more closely to memory than any of the other senses. Maybe that was even true. But Wyatt wasn’t like a puritan or a pearl-clutcher or anything. He wasafraid. He hated cigarette smoke too, and the smell of beer, and not just because of his past, but because he was afraid of what they might mean for his future too. Like it or not, Wyatt came from a family with a predisposition to addiction. Most of the O’Dwyers had ended up in prison or in the morgue. Wyatt was scared that even though he’d left that name behind, and he’d left Oregon behind, that there was no escaping genetics.
Of which he only had half the story anyway, of course, but knowing what he knew of his mom, he doubted his dad had been a fine upstanding citizen, right?
So like even if Wyatt hadn’t made a hell of a first impression with Izzy by being a teary mess, and even if Izzy was even attracted to guys in the first place—what were the odds?—and somehow miraculously overlooked Wyatt’s disaster of a first impression and actually wanted him—ha!—he was not the sort of person Wyatt could trust himself to be with.
Wyatt tried to put Izzy out of his mind, which wasn’t that easy at all since where did his thoughts go late at night when he was lying in bed jerking off under the covers? Not to whatever porn he was watching on mute on his phone, but to that tall dark-haired guy with a face like sin and a swagger in his hips. To those tattoos Wyatt had barely glimpsed but wanted to unveil like artwork. Wyatt wondered how far they went under his clothes, and imagined Izzy lying underneath him as he straddled him and peeled his T-shirt up, his fingers and his mouth seeking out every piece of ink and worshipping them.
It was a solid enough fantasy that Wyatt came hard and fast every time, but it had no place in the daylight. No place in the real world.
The real world was busier now that Dad was back. Dad was snowed under planning this show. Every day was a new round of phone calls with producers and PR people, and even some of the chefs that were going to be on the show. And then a passport application form landed on Wyatt’s bedroom desk from somewhere, and Dad said they needed to fill it out before too long because the show started filming in four months. So far Wyatt had left it untouched, intimidated by what it represented. He’d be okay traveling with Dad, but the idea of Dad leaving him in Paris was terrifying. Wyatt had weird dreams in which he was a little kid, and he was lost in an airport, or in a city he didn’t know, and he wanted to scream for Dad, but because he was a little kid again he couldn’t make any noise. And sometimes he caught glimpses of Dad through a cold, uncaring crowd, and Wyatt tried to catch him but Dad just kept getting farther and farther away.
He usually woke up in a cold sweat from those dreams.
It was hard to pretend he wasn’t terrified, but somehow harder still to imagine actually telling Dad how he felt. He was so afraid Dad would be disappointed in him.
Dad did this thing when he was stressed out where he went into the kitchen and cooked and cooked and cooked. And Wyatt helped out, because that’s what he’d always done, and because being beside Dad in the kitchen was the most natural thing in the world. And, because Dad was suddenly taking all these phone calls, someone had to make sure the béchamel sauce didn’t burn, right? Wyatt had been Dad’s sous-chef before he even knew what the word meant.
It was Monday afternoon and Wyatt was wondering if they’d even got room in the oven for this third tray of lasagna—”Three, Dad? Really?”—when the doorbell sounded. Neither Wyatt nor Dad moved, but there was a sudden flurry of barking and claws clicking on the floor, and a moment later Lettie peered into the kitchen.
“It’s Jimmy,” she said. “He wants to talk to you, Wyatt.”
Wyatt looked down at his béchamel sauce.
“I’ve got it,” Dad said.
Jimmy was sitting in the living room when Wyatt met him, staring uneasily at the Lettie’s dog pack, all of whom were staring right back at him.
“Lettie!” Wyatt yelled. “Call the dogs!”
“Here!” echoed from the depths of the house, and the dogs streamed obediently away.
“Hi, Jimmy,” Wyatt said. He didn’t know Jimmy very well, and couldn’t think of a reason why Jimmy would want to see him, but he’d had always been friendly to Wyatt. “What’s up?”
Jimmy was a big white guy in his thirties. He rubbed the fingers of his right hand over the knuckles of his left. His knuckles were scarred, and so was his neck and face. There were faint shadows where his tattoos used to be, and Wyatt wondered how bad they must have been—and what terrible things they meant—if Jimmy chose the scars over keeping them.
“Hi,” Jimmy said, and cleared his throat. He dragged a hand through his hair and ducked his head like he was embarrassed. “Um, so my girlfriend and I are having a baby, and she’s doing one of those shower things, and I don’t have a lot of spare cash saved up, but I was wonderin’ if I could hire you to bake some cakes or somethin’ like that.”
“Oh,” Wyatt said. He took a seat on the couch beside Jimmy and pulled his phone out. “What sort of thing are you after?”
“I dunno,” Jimmy said. “This isn’t my wheelhouse, you know?”
Wyatt brought up a Pinterest page on his phone. It was full of cakes with fondant babies on top: glistening fat little sugar creations wearing toothless grins and diapers. “Something like this?”
Jimmy looked at them and made a face. “I dunno. I took home some of those cupcakes you made that time, with like the cream stuff in the middle? And Jenna really loved those. Half these look a bit…”
A bit over the top, Wyatt thought, with prices to match. “Okay, well, I can do the cupcakes if you want. How many do you need? And when do you need them by?”
Jimmy relaxed, his wide shoulders dropping in relief. “The party’s next weekend. Is that too soon?”
“No,” Wyatt assured him. “That’s plenty of time. How many guests have you got?”
“I think about thirty,” Jimmy said, but he sounded uncertain.
“Okay,” Wyatt said. “I can give you my number and Jenna can text me. She probably knows all that stuff.”
Jimmy looked like he’d dodged a bullet for a second, before his expression tightened again. “And how much do you think it will cost?”
