Michele kissed Evan on the cheek and said, “Sure I can. You can drive.”
Then Evan reached for her arm and asked, “Did anyone let Jeffery know I was coming home today?” He knew Jeffery had ways of finding out information he wanted without anyone’s help. But Evan was curious about whether or not Jeffery had been in touch with anyone while he’d been at Havilland.
“I left a message with Jeffery’s assistant,” Michele said. “I couldn’t get through to him.”
“The Werewolf?” Evan asked. Jeffery’s assistant was an ambitious young man with tons of facial hair, and thick wiry hair on his forearms. Evan always joked that he probably had hair on his back, and all over his ass, too. This personal assistant always seemed to be flirting with Jeffery, and he couldn’t wait to get involved in his personal business. Evan would have preferred him not knowing he’d been discharged from Havilland that day.
Michele shrugged. “What else could I do? The Werewolf manages Jeffery’s entire life these days.”
Evan ignored that remark and walked them to the door. He knew Jeffery better than anyone and he knew Jeffery would never be attracted to the pushy, aggressive werewolf. Jeffery only used him as a minion.
He hugged them both and thanked them for being there for him again. Cadin offered to stop by and check in on him on his way back to Brooklyn later that afternoon but Evan told him he would be fine. He loved them both dearly, but he wanted them to leave. It was his first day back and he needed time to be alone with his thoughts and to sort out his feelings. Although he loved his apartment, he still had to face a few demons he knew would never disappear. Most of them were in his bedroom, in a cabinet where he used to stash all his booze, next to a window with a view of a solid brick wall.
Chapter Three
When he was finally alone, Evan locked the door, leaned back against it, and took a deep breath. He’d worked hard to show his friends his spirits were good and he was happy to be home. Smiling for long periods of time tended to hurt his face, especially when he didn’t feel like smiling. It had been work, not fun. He needed to be alone for a while now and think about what he was going to do next. Being in an isolated environment like Havilland where no one had expected him to smile or pretend to be happy tended to distort reality. There had been times when he’d thought about never leaving.
As he crossed to the dining table where Michele had left his bags, he glanced around the living room and smiled. It was evident Cadin had tried to spruce things up in his own haphazard, clumsy way. He’d tossed pillows on the cream sofa upside down, he’d opened the blinds in the front window crooked so that the one on the left was higher than the one on the right, and he’d rearranged a few side chairs that only made the room look smaller.
Evan’s collection of furniture wasn’t spectacular, but everything in his apartment reminded him of an event that had happened in his life over the past ten years. The modern cream-colored sofa had been a gift from Jeffery the first month they’d met. Evan had just graduated from college and he’d signed a lease for his first real-life adult apartment. Though Jeffery hadn’t been a billionaire at the time, he’d been doing well on Wall Street with tech stocks and he’d purchased the sofa as a gift for Evan. Evan could even remember it had arrived on a Friday afternoon. They’d made love on that sofa that same Friday night. About a week later, Jeffery moved in with him and remained there until they both moved out a few years later when Jeffery could afford to buy a townhouse uptown.
Evan smiled and lifted his bags from the table. He crossed through the dining area to a small hallway that led to two bedrooms. This was another reason he didn’t want to move. It had become impossible to find an apartment this large, with two full bedrooms, anywhere in Manhattan without paying a small fortune in rent. He had a separate bedroom for Kenny when he spent the weekend there. This building was one of the last rent controlled buildings in his neighborhood. He knew he could never get a deal like this again, and that was the reason he’d sub-leased the apartment and held on to it when he’d moved into the townhouse uptown. This apartment gave him independence, a sense of security, and he could afford it without Jeffery if he had to. In hindsight he often wondered if he’d ever believed he and Jeffery would live happily ever after.
But his relationship with Jeffery was too complicated to deal with that day. He didn’t want to think about it and get himself stressed out on his first day home. He opened a small Gucci bag and emptied the contents on the bed. The Gucci bags had been a gift from Jeffery, too. He’d given them to Evan two Christmases ago before they’d left for Switzerland. Evan would have been happy with anything Jeffery had given him. It didn’t have to be designer bags. But Jeffery had a way of tossing money around in a vulgar way without giving it a second thought. And when he did this Evan knew there was no use arguing with him.
Evan smiled at the personal items on his bed: a blow dryer, underwear, hair product, and a few other toiletries. The other small bag contained a few pairs of jeans, sweatpants, and T-shirts. He could have packed it all in a shopping bag and still had room left.
The room felt stuffy, as if no one had lived there for years. As he moved to the other side of the bed to open the window he heard a knock on the door and he stopped short. He wasn’t expecting anyone. As far as he knew no one knew he was home yet other than his closest friends. He heard a louder knock, almost a bang. Then he heard Jeffery’s deep voice say, “Are you in there?” and his chest caved in.
He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t home, so he took a quick breath and went back into the living room. By that time Jeffery had begun to bang on the door and shout his name aloud. Jeffery wasn’t the kind of man who liked to be kept waiting. But the moment Evan unlocked the door his cell phone rang. He’d left it on the dining table when he’d pulled it out of his jacket pocket.
He opened the door, stared at his husband for a moment, and said, “Come in.” Then he walked over to the table and answered his phone without bothering to look at the caller ID first.
“Hey, Dad. Are you home now?” Evan sent Jeffery a glance. Jeffery was standing in the middle of the living room watching him. He nodded at Jeffery and said, “Hey, Kenny. Yes, I’m home. Hell, it’s so good to hear your voice. I was just about to call and leave you a message. I figured you were in class now.”
When Jeffery heard that Evan was talking to their son, he smiled and sat down on the sofa. Evan figured he’d come right from his office on Wall Street. He wore a gray suit, a starched white shirt, and a navy blue tie. He was one of those men who looked just as good in a suit as he did jeans and a T-shirt.