Chapter 25

 

Mitch had been quiet since lunch. Of course he wasn't usually much of a talker, but Rico would swear he saw storm clouds gathering behind the blue of his eyes. Rico was tempted to prod him and find out what was on his mind, but he figured he better show some patience and wait until Mitch was ready to come out with it on his own.

In late afternoon, their workday was done and Rico was thinking about dinner. If it was just him, he would have eaten anything that was ready to be gobbled up. But he wanted to make something for Mitch and Sammy.

Finding him going through the kitchen cupboards, Mitch frowned at him. In a gruff voice he asked, "Are you looking for something?"

"Just checking what I have to work with. Since you made breakfast, I'll make dinner tonight," Rico volunteered.

"Are you going to be around?" Mitch said and it sounded significant, like he was talking about more than plans for this evening.

"I'm staying over again tonight," Rico reminded him.

"You're dying to sleep on that uncomfortable sofa?" Mitch asked.

"I'll sleep better there than if I lie awake worrying about you guys," Rico admitted, but he didn't understand why Mitch had such a bad attitude.

"So this is something you take seriously?" Mitch said.

"Of course I do. Why the hell would you even ask?" Rico wanted to know.

"Because you don't want to be here. I heard you talking to Sam when he brought lunch. You don't want to get involved with a guy with kids. That means you're just playing around with me."

"And what do you want from me?" Rico challenged him. "Are you ready for anything more than just messing around with me?"

Mitch didn't answer right away. "I have to think about Sammy first. I can't take a chance on just anyone."

"Just anyone?" Rico said, offended.

"You don't know what you're about," Mitch claimed and Rico couldn't believe his ears.

"Me? Are you kidding me?"

"Keep your voice down," Mitch told him.

"You pick a fight with me and now you want me to keep my voice down," Rico said to him, but he did keep the volume on low.

"Is that too much to ask? I wouldn't want to burden you with too much responsibility," Mitch said meanly.

While keeping his voice down to a harsh whisper, Rico told him, "You're being a dick."

"If you don't like how you're being treated, you don't need to stay here. We wouldn't want to get in the way of you living it up," Mitch said.

"I'm staying," Rico told him through gritted teeth, but he didn't trust himself to say more. He was fuming. His jaw was so tight he thought his teeth would snap.

Rico was glaring at Mitch silently, forgetting all about dinner, when Sammy bounced into the kitchen.

"Hey, missy, want to make dinner with me?" Rico asked her so she wouldn't notice anything was wrong between him and her dad.

"Yes!" she said enthusiastically.

"What would you like to make?" Rico asked her.

She thought for a minute, then she said, "Noodles!"

Rico lifted her up and she grabbed a box from the top cabinets. As he set her back down, Rico looked over to see if Mitch would be helping out too, but he already had his back turned.

Watching him walk out of the kitchen, Rico felt his heart grow heavy. If it wasn't for his big mouth, things wouldn't be like this.

Thinking back to what he said to Sam, Rico remembered that he was talking about the past, not the future. Even if Mitch took what he said the wrong way, he could have talked to him about it instead of just lashing out. But maybe what he heard was only an excuse so Mitch could take back what he said this morning.

 

That night while Rico slept in the rose sitting room, there was no midnight visit from Mitch. Everything was quiet, but Rico slept fitfully, dying to go upstairs and shake Mitch awake, or maybe wake him with a blowjob.

His pride wouldn't let him. The possibility of Mitch angrily kicking him out was too horrifying to consider. Rico wasn't willing to risk a humiliation like that no matter how much he yearned for the man.

In the morning, feeling miserable, he dragged himself off to put in a shift at the café. Yesterday Rico got to feel happy about how things were going for less than a day. Then this thing hit. It didn't make him feel hopeful. Things with Mitch got derailed so easily. Rico thought they had a breakthrough, but now Mitch was distancing himself from him again.

While Rico wiped down the counter after the breakfast rush, Sam came over to him. "You were cheerful the last time I saw you and today you look like this. What is it? A fight with Mitch?"

Wrapped in gloom, Rico was about to say it was, but then he thought about it. "I wouldn't call it that. I'd call it just the way things are."

"Probably a fight," Sam insisted stubbornly then tried to give him a pep talk. "You're very different. It makes sense that you would have a few things to iron out."

Rico denied it. "No. It's not like that. I made too much of this thing with Mitch. I'm nothing to him. I'm just something he's test-driving to see if he likes doing it with guys. Now he might just be done with me and ready to throw me away," Rico claimed and wondered how much truth there was in what he said.

Sam frowned. "Mitch doesn't seem like that kind of man. I can't believe he's someone who discards people."

"You can have your blind faith. I'll just look at the facts," Rico told him.

"You're so gloomy. Do you always get like this about guys or is it just Mitch?" Sam wondered.

"No. Other guys don't do this to me. I got in too deep with Mitch. I got sucked in and now I'm paying for it. I did tell you guys with kids were bad news," Rico reminded him. "That's what this fight was about actually. Mitch thinks I don't like kids."

"Who doesn't like kids?" Wyatt asked popping up next to them all of a sudden. He kissed Sam on the cheek and they smiled at each other.

"This guy," Rico said and pointed to himself while glaring at the two of them with their faces together, being so happy.

"Since when?" Wyatt asked. "You and Sammy have been best friends since you met."

"She's a sweet kid," Rico said with a shrug.

"You get along with the boys too," Sam pointed out.

"They're sweet kids too," Rico said.

"So what kids don't you like exactly?" Wyatt asked him.

"Kids of hot guys that I don't know," Rico stammered.

"You have a well thought out philosophy," Wyatt needled him.

"Fine. Maybe that was just a snap judgment I made when I didn't know any better," Rico allowed. "But Mitch thinks I still feel that way."

"Maybe you should explain that to him," Sam suggested.

"Grovel, you mean?" Rico didn't want to explain himself. Why couldn't Mitch give him the benefit of the doubt? If he cared about him, he would. He'd fight to keep him, not jump at every chance to push him away.

 

As he went to the Dunbar house to do some work, Rico dreaded seeing Mitch again—his angry face, the glowering look in his eyes. At the same time he ached to see him, craved it like some kind of sweet agony. This thing with Mitch had turned him into such a moron.

When he arrived, Sammy was in the back yard chasing the kittens around in the grass. Mitch was further on, already working on putting up the new fence to close off the back yard from the wilder areas beyond. At first Mitch didn't notice Rico as he arrived, but then he heard him talking to Sammy. Mitch gave him a quick glare then he continued working.

Rico's first instinct was to go over there and tell him off, but he sat in the grass instead. He wouldn't go over until he cooled off a little. Playing with the kittens should do that.

While Sammy was running around with Veronica, he picked up Natalie. She was looking at him funny though, like she was calling him a coward for not confronting Mitch.

"You're a cat. You don't get to judge me," Rico told her and she meowed.

Running over just in time to hear him, Sammy asked, "Was she judging you, Rico?"

"Yeah, a little bit," he said.

Sammy peered at the kitten's tiny face as she scolded her. "No judging, Natalie." She then turned to Rico. "Is judging bad?"

"Sometimes," Rico told her with a grin, and he gave Mitch a sideways look, though he didn't know if he heard any of that.

It was time he got to work, so he stood up, brushed himself off and went over to Mitch. While using the posthole digger, Mitch ignored him right up until he was almost face to face with him.

"So you're back," Mitch said.

"Yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment," Rico told him bitterly.

Mitch gave him a piercing look, but didn't say anything, just handed him a pair of work gloves. Unfortunately that reminded Rico of the last time they worked together and how Mitch had put them on him. That was a nice moment, but it seemed like that kind of thing was over now. This time Rico just gritted his teeth in frustration and put the gloves on himself.

 

For a while they just worked without speaking, and Rico felt like the silence between them might stretch on forever. He couldn't take it. Breaking the silence, he told Mitch. "So you have no trust in me at all?"

Mitch fixed him with a glare then said cryptically, "In some ways."

Rico groaned. He didn't plan to mention what was on his mind or have it out with him. He wanted to pretend he didn't care, but he couldn't hold back.

"So because you overheard something, you think you know everything you need to know about me," Rico said.

Mitch turned to him and told him exactly what he thought. "You're not serious. This is all just a game to you."

"A game? Like let's see if I can turn you gay, is that what you're saying?" Rico asked him.

"I would never say something so fucking stupid," Mitch said under his breath.

"I don't know you say a lot of stupid crap. Like that I don't like Sammy. I love that kid," Rico said making sure to keep his voice low so Sammy couldn't hear him.

"I never said you didn't," Mitch said. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. "But does it matter. It seems to me that we're always fighting..."

"We're always fighting because you don't really want to be with me and you'll use any excuse to dump me," Rico shot back.

"When exactly did I dump you?" Mitch asked harshly, but his words rang inside Rico like all those unexpected things he said that seemed to mean something. It had to be wishful thinking.

He stared at Mitch, tried to read him, but he couldn't. Leaning on a section of fence they had finished, Mitch told him. "Fine, explain it to me. What are you doing with me if you don't want to get mixed up with a guy who has kids?"

"Do you think I ever hooked up with a guy who had a kid before? I just thought getting anything going would be too hard. I turned out to be wrong, OK?" Rico said feeling embarrassed.

"So you changed your mind about that because of me and Sammy?" Mitch asked still sounding doubtful.

"Sammy is great. Who wouldn't love her? And you... Whatever," Rico said. He just couldn't declare himself about Mitch, not right now.

"Yeah, you're kind of whatever too," Mitch told him and Rico had to laugh.

Staring into his blue eyes, Rico wondered if they just made up. There was only one way to make sure. "This is where you kiss me," he demanded.

Without missing a beat, Mitch pulled him behind the fence. Holding Rico tight against him, Mitch kissed him with so much passion and need. Rico lost his head for a minute, forgetting what they were fighting about this time.

As the kiss slowed then ended, Rico was left with his heart racing, trying to get his breathing under control. "You need to stop pushing me away over every little thing," Rico panted.

"You got mad at me over Stella and wouldn't listen to what I had to say," Mitch reminded him.

"You keeping score?" Rico asked him. "Anyway, I hope you get it now. I am serious and I don't think Sammy is in the way. Actually she's how I know you're a halfway decent guy."

"Oh?"

"You're scary and closed off, but seeing you with her, I knew you had a heart in there," Rico said and he tapped his chest.

"I think it's more than that. I think she made me who I am," Mitch said as he went back to working on the next section of fence. "When she was born, and I first held her, she didn't weigh anything at all. I thought my heart was going to stop beating. I felt overwhelmed, and that was before I knew I would be raising Sammy on my own. Then it was years of just getting by, taking any job I could get, always being afraid the money would run out. Working all the time, I couldn't give her the attention she needed, but she was still so wonderful and loving. She taught me how to be a dad. She taught me what's important."

"She is a great kid because of you," Rico told him. "And just so you know, I had it rough too. One summer we went on vacation and Mom forgot to pack my Hulk beach towel. So my first day on the beach, I had to use just a regular, hotel towel. I felt like such a dweeb."

Mitch could tell how he had suffered. "That is a hardship."

"I know. But it made me stronger," Rico told him. "And from what I can tell, Sammy made you a great dad." He clapped Mitch on the back and watched him smile. Damn him, his smile made Rico's heart skip a thousand beats. That man was going to be the death of him.