ELEVEN

 

 

It had been a hell of a few days.

Jade had brought home some sort of bug from school, or maybe from dance, and she spent three whole days lying in bed, burning with a low-grade fever, coughing until she choked. Only the fact that she was still eating a little and drinking enough kept Justin from bringing her to the hospital.

Just when he was thinking that he should do just that, just when the sense of overwhelming helplessness that threatened to overtake him almost had him scooping her up and bringing her to someone who could help, she started to get better.

Finally, she was resting comfortably, sleeping deeply and less fitfully, and Justin finally left her side. He should check his messages, he realized, and dug his phone out of his pocket only to find it completely unresponsive, the screen dark and dead. The battery had been completely drained, and no wonder. He hadn’t even considered plugging it in for days.

Well, aside from Lester, who might want to yell at him again, Justin couldn’t think of anyone who would be overly worried about him dropping off the grid for a couple of days. When he plugged his phone in, though, and it had charged for a few minutes, he was surprised to see that he had quite a few text messages when the screen lit up, and the icon that said that he had voicemail was lit up, too.

“Fuck, really, Lester? I’m writing your goddamned songs,” Justin snarled, and it was then that he realized just how much stress he’d actually been under. He had been writing, though, around taking care of Jade, and Lester needed to back the hell off and let him work.

He always had before, but then, Lester hadn’t been trying to find an excuse to fire Justin before, either. Apparently, it made a difference.

Sighing, rubbing at his face, Justin picked up his phone, though he left it plugged in and charging. Bowing to the inevitable, he started to go through his notifications, but to his surprise, the vast majority of them weren’t from Lester at all.

He had one each from Jamie and from Lance, asking where he was and if he was okay. That was a bit of a surprise to him because he would never have thought that they would care enough to reach out like that. They knew him, but were they friends?

That was a nice thought. Justin didn’t have a whole lot in the way of friends.

Mostly, though, the texts were from Ken, and Justin found a smile stretching his lips as he read them. Ken asking about the song, Ken just checking up on him, Ken not so subtly hinting that he’d like to meet up again. Most of the texts were at least a little bit flirtatious, too.

So what did that mean? What about Aaron? Justin shook his head, putting the phone down to let it charge up a little bit more. He could wait until tomorrow to call back, he decided. It was only eight o’clock, but he was pretty worn out from taking care of his sick daughter. Now that she was sleeping, he needed to get some rest, too.

Still, what did it mean, if anything, that Ken had tried to reach him so many times? Even thinking about it had Justin’s cheeks feeling sore, and he realized, with a sense of wonder, that it was because he was smiling so much. Not a problem that he usually had.

His phone, which he had abandoned for now, suddenly started to ring, and Justin looked over at it with some surprise. These days, it seemed, phone calls were pretty rare, and when he saw that it was Ken’s name showing up on the call display, that grin on his face got wider than ever.

What was this strange, unaccustomed feeling that he had? This galloping, racing emotion surging through his body, making him feel like maybe everything could be okay? That he hadn’t actually given up his whole life, that he still had some of it left to live?

Well, that would be hope, wouldn’t it? Not something he was really used to feeling, but it was real, and maybe very dangerous, but it seemed like it might just be harder to kill than he would have thought.

“Hey,” Justin greeted, picking up the phone, carefully avoiding tugging the cord free from the almost dead device. His voice sounded good, he thought. It sounded casual, not as euphoric, nor as exhausted, as he would have thought it might.

“Justin! Oh my God, where have you been?”

There was actual real worry in Ken’s voice, Justin realized. How long had it been since someone had been worried about him? His job, as a father, was to worry about Jade, to take care of her, and it was strange to listen to that concern and to realize that Ken actually cared. He was the caretaker, that was his role and had been since before Jade had been born when he’d been taking care of her mother.

“It’s just …” Justin considered for a moment, trying to think of how he could explain this. But maybe it was time. He couldn’t think of a single reason anymore not to tell Ken about Jade, not when he had seen how good Ken was with kids, not to mention Justin’s growing, evolving feelings for the young man.

“Is it about your kid?”

Okay, now that was weird. Had Ken developed some sort of weird telepathy in the last couple of days? Justin shook his head, just trying to clear it. That was the weirdest timing.

“How did you know about her?” Justin asked, and the question directed at a lot of people would have been actively hostile. To Ken, though, it was just curious.

“At the store, when my mom came by with all the kids?” Ken started, and Justin immediately picked up on what he was saying. But he would have been willing to swear on a whole stack of Bibles that Ken had been far too occupied to notice. Ken always seemed so oblivious.

But apparently not as much as it seemed. Justin had been having a quiet conversation with Maria, and yet, it seemed that Ken had been paying at least enough attention to notice that.

“I was going to tell you,” Justin admitted. “I don’t talk to most people about her. She’s sort of a secret.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and Justin listened anxiously. Was Ken mad about it? Justin took a deep breath and prepared to defend himself. He’d done what he thought was best for Jade, he hadn’t known Ken very well at the time, and he really didn’t talk about Jade to anyone …

All that defensiveness faded away as soon as Ken spoke again.

“I can see why you wouldn’t. This is a weird business,” Ken spoke so casually, and just like that, it seemed, Justin was forgiven. “What’s her name? How old is she?”

Justin smiled and rested back on the bed, cradling the phone to his ear as he listened to Ken’s words. From a lot of people, Justin would have felt a bit threatened, but for whatever reason he’d come to trust Ken.

“Jade. She’s eight,” he admitted. “Her mom split before Jade even had her first birthday. Said she didn’t want the responsibility.”

If it was strange for Justin to talk about his daughter, it was downright bizarre for him to mention his ex. He tried his best not to even think about her because once, he had been in love, but that had all died when she had walked out the door and left their kid.

She’d been talking about putting Jade up for adoption, while she was still young enough that someone would want her. Justin had refused, and in a very real way, he’d picked Jade over his relationship with Jade’s mother. It wasn’t a call that he’d ever had a reason to regret.

It wasn’t like that relationship had been all that healthy to start with, honestly.

“Oh man, that’s rough,” Ken said, and the words might be a little bit awkward, but the tone, the emotion, behind them was sincere. “So you’re a single father?”

“Yeah,” Justin admitted, closing his eyes so that he could focus entirely on Ken’s voice. “I wasn’t really around because my phone died. I was taking care of Jade. She had the flu or something. She’s getting better, though.”

How could he have been prepared for how amazing it felt to talk about it? To have another adult to share some of the burdens with? For most of Jade’s life, it had just been the two of them, and Justin had gone it alone. But now, Ken knew, and Justin didn’t have to keep that secret anymore.

“Look, I wanted to ask you something,” Ken said, his voice coming out slowly, far more so than his usual energetic tones. “But maybe now isn’t the time, if your daughter has been sick. I can call back tomorrow, maybe?”

“No, it’s fine. Ask away.”

What could it be? About the song, probably, since Justin was fairly certain that was Ken’s main use for him.

“I was wondering if you wanted to go out sometime.” Now Ken was speaking all in a rush, the words tumbling over each other, one after the other. “I mean, I get it if you can’t because of Jade, but I’d really like to see where this goes.”

For a moment, it felt to Justin like Ken might have started speaking a completely different language, one that Justin only sort of knew. It took him a second to make those words make any sense because they just weren’t the sort of thing that was said to him, much less by Ken, of all people.

“Hello? Are you there?” Ken asked, anxiety clear in his words. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. I know that I’m too young for you. I just thought that in the changing room, we sort of had, you know, a moment. But if I was wrong …”

“You weren’t wrong.” Justin had been silent for too long, so he just opened his mouth and blurted out the first thing that he was thinking, feeling. “And I’d like that. So let’s go out.”

“When?” Ken asked, and Justin was pretty sure that he could actually hear the smile in the younger man’s voice. Was this really happening? Dating, spending time with someone, that wasn’t the sort of thing which had figured into Justin’s life at all for eight years. Did he even remember how? How much had it changed in the decade or so that Justin had been off of the market?

“Now?” Justin sat up, glancing at the time. It wasn’t even 8:30 yet, early enough that he could count on his neighbor to come over, not so late that she would be asleep yet. Jade was passed right out, and as exhausted as she was he was sure that she would easily sleep right through the night.

“Now?” Ken repeated, and Justin was sure that he had gone way, way too far, tipped his hand too soon, shown too much. He was going to scare Ken away by being too into this. “Okay. Now sounds good. Where do you want to meet?”

It seemed so quick, and yet so inevitable, somehow. Justin found himself with plans to meet up with someone that he had been interested in for far, far too long, even if he had barely let himself know it.

Ten minutes later, he was out of the house, with his lovely, elderly neighbor watching television in his living room instead of in hers. She had his cell phone number, he told himself firmly. His phone had even charged up enough that it should last, at least long enough for this date. She could call if anything happened and he was needed at home.

If that’s what it was, a date? The way Ken had talked about it, it had certainly seemed that way. Or was that just wishful thinking, that someone as young and vital and energetic as Ken could actually want a boring old single father like him?

They had arranged to meet at a cafe not so far away, and Justin hopped into the car, swallowing hard to try to tamp down the nerves that insisted on crawling through his stomach and making it clench hard. This was no big deal. He’d seen Ken before, and they’d even hung out. Once. This wasn’t so different.

Only it felt different. It felt like they were both trying something new, and Justin would be damned if he knew how it was going to turn out.

When was the last time he could actually say that? When was the last time he’d taken much of a risk at all? This was as irresistible as it was dangerous, and there was no way in hell he was going to be able to back away now.

 

* * *

 

How was this so easy? Justin had been so nervous, but when he glanced down at his phone, he saw, to his surprise, that several hours had passed. Hours in which he and Ken had just chatted, so easily and openly, about every topic under the sun. His body was jittery with more than just the many cups of coffee that he’d drunk during their date.

There couldn’t be any doubt to Justin—not anymore—that it was a date. At least to him. Ken might not feel the same, but then there was a strange, intimate look in the younger man’s eyes that made Justin wonder. A look that suggested that this thing that was going on between them, maybe it wasn’t just on Justin’s side.

“Sorry, guys, we’re closing,” the friendly, pink-haired barista called, and Justin frowned as he looked at Ken. It hadn’t been long enough. The cafe closed at two in the morning, Justin had checked before they’d arranged to meet here.

His phone, though, informed him in brightly glowing white numbers that it was already five minutes after two. Impossible as it seemed, they had been there, chatting and laughing and drinking coffee, for almost four hours.

“Okay, we’ll get out of your hair,” Ken agreed, giving her an easy smile, one that Justin immediately envied. Ken was so good at interacting with people. He seemed to do it without any effort at all, and in general, they seemed to like him. Justin certainly couldn’t say the same about the people that he himself talked to.

“Not for too long, I hope.” The barista’s smile had turned flirtatious, and Justin gave a wry little shake of his head. She was barking up the wrong tree with that, but she shot a wink at Justin which made him think that she probably knew that. She was young, and cute, and probably got hit on all the time. A gay guy, particularly an oblivious one like Ken, was the safest person in the world for her to flirt with casually.

As they walked out into the night together, Justin looked up. A silvery glow seemed to make everything around them shimmer, and he softly whistled as he saw why. The moon was full, or not far off of it, anyway, and it bathed everything in the sort of beauty that normally would have made his fingers itch for a pen so he could write about it.

Oddly, the urge this time was a passing one, and his gaze slipped back down to Ken, who was watching him with a sweet little smile on his face. Ken in the moonlight was beautiful, far more beautiful than the silver orb itself, even though Ken clearly belonged under the light of the sun.

“Uh, where’s your car?” Ken asked, averting his eyes, as though ashamed to be caught looking at Justin. The guy was just so adorable. Justin couldn’t get enough. He’d had crushes on people before, but none of them were really able to weather actually being around the other person as much as he was around Ken these days.

With Ken, though, he just wanted more, craved more, couldn’t get enough. Felt the urge to be around him more than he wanted to be around anyone, with, of course, the exception of his daughter and that was a very different thing.

“I walked over. It’s not far, just ten minutes or so,” Justin admitted, and Ken grinned at him and nodded.

“Okay. Well, in honor of our first date, how about I walk you home?” Ken suggested, and Justin felt his lips twitch and then turn up at the edges until his cheeks felt like they might crack with the unaccustomed movement. Ken made him smile and laugh, and no one other than his daughter could easily do that.

“Sounds good,” Justin murmured, then set off down the street which was still and quiet, for once. As they went, the light changed between the silver of the moon and the golden of the streetlights, and Justin studied Ken and tried to figure out which lighting made him more beautiful.

“So how did you end up with a daughter, anyway?” Ken asked, and then—adorably—he actually flushed a little bit when Justin looked at him with an eloquently raised eyebrow. “I mean, I’m assuming you did it in, uh, sort of the normal way. But where is her mother? Were you married?”

Justin felt his smile slip, and he finally glanced away from Ken, staring down at the cracked, dirty gray of the sidewalk. This wasn’t the sort of thing he talked about. Ever. He rarely let himself even think about it, much less put words to it.

“Too much? Everyone always says that I don’t know when to shut up.” Ken was trying to make his voice gentle, Justin realized. It was a strange sound for him, but he was trying, and that touched Justin’s heart in unexpected ways. He hadn’t noticed Ken trying to do that for anyone else, which hopefully meant that Ken cared for him as he cared for Ken.

Ken cared enough to ask, too, and that was something else. The guy seemed to be fairly self-focused, but he was asking about Justin’s life now, about his story, and for whatever reason, Justin felt like he could trust him.

“No, it’s fine. It’s just it’s been a long time. Jade’s eight and a half, and she hasn’t seen her mother in almost eight years,” Justin admitted, his voice so low that it was probably a good thing that there was no traffic to drown him out.

“So what happened?” Ken asked, and Justin raised his eyes and deliberately looked over at Ken, trying to figure out how much to say. But once he had started talking, once he trusted someone, it was pretty damn hard to get Justin to shut up. It was one of the reasons that he didn’t speak very often.

“She left. Found someone with more money,” Justin said bluntly. “Didn’t want me and Jade holding her back, I guess. We never got married, so she just walked away, it was pretty easy.”

How much of what Justin wasn’t saying was Ken picking up on? The fear, the absolute terror, that Justin had felt when he realized he was on his own, that he was looking at giving his daughter the same childhood of poverty that he had experienced himself?

“Pretty easy to walk away from her daughter? What a cow,” Ken commented, and perhaps as a way of breaking the tension, Justin found himself laughing softly. The comment wasn’t that funny, he supposed, but it struck him as amusing at the moment. Not to mention accurate. He could never, not in a million years, imagine walking away from Jade. Not since the moment that he had found out that his ex was pregnant.

“Yeah,” Justin agreed. As they walked, the back of his hand brushed lightly against Ken’s, and to his shock, Ken took Justin’s in his own and slid their fingers together into an intimate handclasp as they walked.

It was that touch that broke down even more barriers. Justin had so carefully closed himself off, tried so hard not to let himself feel anything, and yet Ken took all of that work and tore it down without even seeming to try. And the worst part was, Justin couldn’t even seem to mind that much.

“I mean, I guess that’s why I’m where I am today,” Justin admitted. “Because I had to work to get here. I grew up poor, and with a single mother, you know?” Justin glanced over at Ken, then shook his head. How could Ken, with his nine million siblings, and his loving, if overbearing, mother know that?

“Right,” Ken simply said, just that one word, plus Ken’s earnest face, encouraging Justin to continue on.

“I didn’t want that life for Jade. I worked all the time so that I could give her what she wants. I didn’t date, because I didn’t want to have people in and out of her life like my stepfathers were. Mom was always dating someone. Usually someone new every couple of months.”

Justin fell silent because he had said way too much already, hadn’t he? But Ken was nodding, just looking at him and letting him speak, and that helped.

“Well, you made it, right?” Ken commented. “I mean, you’re the biggest deal songwriter in the country. Jade’s doing good, isn’t she?” Ken actually seemed to care, and Justin shook his head, not in denial but in sheer wonder.

Somehow, he’d always thought if he talked about his past, people would pity him, not known what to say. But Ken had said the exact perfect thing, and for a moment, Justin couldn’t say anything around the lump in his throat.

The buildings had started to look familiar, and Justin realized, with some surprise, that they’d been walking for far longer than it had seemed to him. Ten minutes had passed like a couple of seconds, and he pulled Ken to a stop and gazed up at him, standing outside his condo building, still holding his hand.

Justin still couldn’t speak, and he could see worry dawning on Ken’s face. In a second, he somehow knew, Ken would start to babble, to ruin this perfect moment between the two of them, and that was something that Justin couldn’t allow to happen.

So he did the only thing that made any sense. He turned to face Ken, reaching up to hook his free hand, the one not cradled in Ken’s large, warm palm, on Ken’s neck. He stretched onto his tiptoes and pressed his lips against Ken’s. The kiss was supposed to be just a brief one, a brush of lips together, but then Ken’s tongue slipped out and into Justin’s mouth, and he lost track of time, of everything else.

“I can’t invite you to stay the night,” Justin admitted, finding that the kiss had melted away the knot in his throat that had kept him from speaking before. “But I do want to invite you in.

Did Ken know what Justin was asking for? Or how big a deal it was that Ken would let him into the house at all? It had been a long time since Justin had hooked up with anyone, and the few times he had had sex, he had done it away from his own house.

“Okay.”

It was just the one word, but it was spoken with a slight, seductive, understanding little smile. Whatever this thing between them was, it seemed that it was about to go to the next level, and that should have been far more terrifying to Justin than it was.