Chapter 21
The first time that Wyatt topped, it was a messy disaster and was over in about ten seconds. Wyatt wasn’t even sure he managed to bottom out before he came, and his face burned with humiliation as he blurted out his stammering apologies. And Izzy only laughed, and rolled over, stretching his inked body like a cat luxuriating in the sun, and grinned up at him.
“Guess you think I’m really hot, huh?”
“It’s not funny!”
Izzy’s smile vanished, and he tugged Wyatt down beside him. “It doesn’t matter, sweetheart. We’ve got all the time in the world to build your stamina up.” He kissed him. “You wanna finger me while I jerk off?”
Fuck. Izzy was so shameless when it came to sex, and Wyatt really hoped he could learn to be like that as well. And it would also be good if he could last longer than ten seconds the next time he tried to top.
He was eager to try again the weekend after Harper left, because Dad and Justin were taking Lettie to some dog expo thing in Ventura, and since the speaker she wanted to see—an expert trainer Lettie followed religiously on YouTube—wasn’t giving her talk until late afternoon, they’d decided to stay overnight and make a weekend of it.
Justin was slowly coming around to the idea of Izzy spending time at the house. He knew now that Izzy hadn’t been lying about his panic attacks, but sometimes Wyatt figured he was still stubbornly clinging to his first impressions just because he didn’t want to admit he’d been entirely wrong about Izzy, even after that whole speech he’d given Izzy after his attack:“I’m so sorry for everything that has happened. But you’re going to be part of the family and we take care of our own.”
There was wiggle room, Wyatt figured, between accepting someone was part of the family, and being overjoyed about it, and Justin was determined to exploit it as long as he could. Justin might never be Izzy’s best friend, but he’d taken him to the family doctor and got him a recommendation for medical marijuana. Getting the card seemed like a waste of money and time to Wyatt since it was legal for Izzy to buy weed anyway, but Izzy didn’t complain about all the hoops he had to jump through for the card. The card was more for Justin’s peace of mind than anyone else’s, Wyatt figured, and allowed him to let Izzy stay on the property in good conscience.
It would take a while to get the card, but in the meantime Izzy had bought a couple of edibles and kept them in a tin beside his bed. He hadn’t used any yet. He’d thrown out his old weed.
“I messed up a lot when I was younger,” Izzy said one night, tapping his fingers against his knee as he and Wyatt watched a movie. “I made a lot of bad decisions. I don’t want to do that again.”
“You won’t,” Wyatt said.
“You don’t know that.”
Wyatt shrugged. “Maybe I do.”
“I was angry a lot of the time,” Izzy said. “At my mom, and my stepdad. At my teachers. At fuckingeveryone. I was angriest at myself, I think, and now I look back and wonder why I couldn’t give myself a break, you know? Why’d I hate myself like that? I was just a messed-up kid.”
“What would you tell that kid now?” Wyatt asked softly.
Izzy was silent for a long while. Then he leaned over and took Wyatt’s hand. “I’d tell him to be patient, because some day he’s gonna meet someone who loves him a hell of a lot more than he deserves.”
“But I don’t deserve you either,” Wyatt said, lifting Izzy’s hand and pressing his lips to his knuckles. “I was messed up too. I still am. Maybe I didn’t act out like you did, but I hated myself too. And then this guy came along who didn’t care about the difference between a baker and a pâtissier—”
Izzy huffed out a laugh at that.
“And he didn’t care that sometimes I’m a boy and sometimes I’m a girl and sometimes I’m in-between.” Wyatt’s eyes stung with unshed tears. “You didn’t know why you hated yourself, but I always knew. And the thing I hated the most? You don’t even care about it. Izzy, you’re nicer to me than I’ve ever been to myself.”
“So this is us then,” Izzy said at last. His voice sounded scratchy. “Just two people who are nicer to each other than we are to ourselves.”
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “I think we can make that work, right?”
Izzy laughed quietly. “Yeah, I think we can.”
* * * *
Dad and Justin and Lettie left for Ventura early on Saturday morning, and Wyatt started planning dinner immediately. Dad’s kitchen was always well-stocked, so there was no danger that he’d need to race out and grab ingredients. He just wasn’t sure what to make. He went and inspected the recipe books on the shelf in Dad’s study. He avoided the ones written by Dad—Dad had made his name with kid-friendly family recipes, and Wyatt wanted something a little morespecial.
He flicked through a few books and found himself coming back to the sticky fig lamb cutlets with warm bean and couscous salad. That seemed special without being too extravagant, and he hoped it wouldn’t be too intimidating for Izzy, whose tastes didn’t seem to run much beyond the basics at all.
He called Harper to check.
“No, that sounds good,” she assured him. “What about dessert? Oooh, you make amazing vanilla bean panna cotta!”
“I’m going to make cupcakes.”
“For a romantic dinner?”
