He gathers the T-shirt’s fabric between his large hands and stretches the neck opening wide enough to get over my head. I’m perfectly capable of dressing myself and I probably should, but I let my Daddy lift each arm into the shirt sleeves and pull it down over my stomach. He smoothes the blue fabric over my chest and kisses my forehead.
“Dinner,” he says firmly. “Come on.”
I follow him downstairs to the kitchen and perch on the same stool I’ve been using since the morning after I got here. I feel like I’ve spent the whole weekend either eating or having sex. Which I guess is what I came for, right? The sex part, anyway.
It’s been a super hot interlude in the midst of the disaster my life has suddenly turned into, but it ends tomorrow and I still don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.
“So, where have you been staying?” Logan’s buttering the other half of the baguette left over from last night’s dinner. I focus on his hands as he peels a clove of garlic, cuts it in half, and rubs the cut side along the buttered bread.
“With my friend Chloe,” I say. “On an air mattress that takes up most of the floor in her tiny bedroom. Believe me, she hasn’t been missing me this weekend.”
“Oh, to be young enough to be able to sleep on an air mattress again,” Logan murmurs almost to himself. He slides the garlic buttered bread under the broiler and scoops out two bowls of the meat and bean stew he made last night.
“How much stuff do you have to move?”
I sigh. “My clothes and shit. Laptop, monitor, all my computer stuff. My keyboard and French horn. This chair that I found in a secondhand store in Brooklyn that’s super comfortable but Lance hates because he says it’s ugly as fuck.”
Lance picked most of the furniture. Or, the decorator who furnished the condo when his trust fund bought it did. She did a fine job—she didn’t go overboard with anything and most of it came from Room and Board or Design Within Reach. It’s this whole mid-century modern aesthetic and it looks nice and all. It’s just not my style.
Not that I’ve had much opportunity to figure out my style. I went from home to the dorms to Lance’s apartment. I’ve never actually lived on my own before. Shit, I’m going to have to find a roommate, aren’t I? Maybe Chloe knows someone who’s looking for one.
“The main thing is my books,” I tell Logan. I read a lot and I also collect books about Broadway musicals. The hardcover, coffee-table kind of books that are filled with photos and annotated librettos and interviews with the original casts and things like that. “There’s a wall of shelves in the living room of Lance’s condo that’s filled with mostly my books.”
“I’ve seen it,” Logan says. “That’s a lot of books.”
“And crap, all my sheet music.” I’ve got a big, wooden, lateral file cabinet that’s nearly filled with sheet music, method books, and scores. I started taking piano lessons in second grade and took up the French horn in middle school, so I’ve acquired a lot of music. Most of my own stuff I’ve composed is digital, at least.
Logan pulls the garlic bread from the oven and sets a heated-up bowl of stew in front of me. He pours himself a glass of wine but gives me a tall glass of water, which I drink without argument. I start eating when Logan settles in the stool next to me.
“Silas, will you let me help you?”
Logan sounds surprisingly hesitant, especially after taking charge of everything this weekend.
“You’d let me stay here?” I ask. “And store my shit? Like Lance suggested?”
“Well, I was thinking—” There’s a sharp trill of a cell phone ringtone. It’s not mine, since I turned the ringer off, so it must be Logan’s. He gets off the stool and goes to the little alcove where he keeps the charger, turns the phone right side up, and then lifts it to his ear.
“Give me two minutes and I’ll call you back.”
Whoever it is says something affirmative that’s cut off when Logan hangs up and then he looks at me with an expression I can’t read.
“I have to take this, but when I’m done, we’re going to have a talk.”
“Um, okay.” I’m definitely not in a position to demand all of Logan’s attention this weekend. He said on Friday night that he was going to have one of his associates do the research he’d been planning to do this weekend. Probably that’s them, reporting on their work. Of course I can entertain myself while he does the work I’ve been keeping him from.
“Finish your dinner.” He points at my half-eaten bowl of meat and beans. He’s already finished his.
“Yes, Daddy,” I say.
He snags his half-drunk wine glass, then kisses my cheek when he passes me on the way to the stairs. “I won’t be long, sweetheart. I promise.”
Twenty-Three
Logan
I tap the name in the recent calls list on my phone as soon as I leave the kitchen. “Sorry about that,” I say when the call connects.
“No prob,” James says.
