“Where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Belize, Mexico…somewhere warm where I could get lost on the beach and tune out the noise. What about you? If you could go anywhere right here, right now, where would it be?”
“Hmm. It depends,” I replied thoughtfully.
“On what?”
“Lots of things. The weather, who I’m traveling with…or do I get to be alone?”
“You gotta make everything complicated, don’t you?” he huffed in amusement as he twisted to face me. “Just pretend you get to do whatever you want and answer the question.”
“Okay. Um…Paris in the spring with the man of my dreams.”
“Who’s the man of your dreams? Besides me, of course,” he teased.
“To be determined. Hopefully it won’t take forever to meet him, though. My internal clock is ticking like a time bomb. If I want kids before I’m thirty-five, I need to get on it.”
“You want kids too?”
“I want it all. Marriage, kids, dogs, cats…everything. Right now I have a cat. But I’m hopeful,” I said, raising my glass in a mock toast.
“I like that about you. When life gets tough, you get tougher.” He quirked his lips in a lopsided smile. “I used to think you were a spoiled brat, but you’re not. You’ve worked hard for everything that matters. And you don’t like leaning on anyone else. That’s why I’m not worried about the record label bullshit. You’ll figure it out, Char. We trust you.”
“Uh…thank you.” I grinned, surprised and pleased by the unexpected compliment.
“Don’t mention it.” Ky shrugged, then polished off the last of his beer and let out a huge belch.
“You’re disgusting.”
“Maybe, but I’m growing on you. Admit it.” He hopped to his feet and held out his hand. “Let’s go inside. You’re cold and I need another beer.”
“I’m not cold.” Total lie. I was freezing. I blew out the candle and rolled the Cheetos bag shut and followed him inside.
“Are you done with those?” Ky asked, gesturing to the Cheetos. When I nodded, he stuffed them into the pantry and grabbed another beer. He set it on the counter and peeled his sweatshirt off, exposing a sexy trail leading south from his belly button. I glanced away quickly, hoping to keep my insta-boner at bay. “Hey, you’re shivering. You should have told me you were cold out there sooner.”
“I’m f-fine.”
Ky brushed my arms briskly. “Take off your suit coat. I’ll give you my sweatshirt to wear. There’s a blanket on the sofa too.” When I hesitated, he added, “Unless you were gonna go?”
“Um, no. I can stay.”
“Good. Do you want more wine?” he asked, peering into my mug before nudging me toward the living area.
“No, thanks.” I set the mug on the coffee table, then shrugged my suit coat from my shoulders and sat on the far corner of the sofa with my back against the armrest. I slipped the red blanket over my legs and smiled. “So where were we?”
Ky settled against the cushions with one knee on the sofa and his legs spread wide in an uber relaxed dude pose.
“Something about cats and kids and a trip we’re taking to Paris someday,” he teased.
“Ah yes. Things I’ve been dreaming of since before I came out.”
“How old were you when you came out?” he asked conversationally.
“Oh honey, I was born out. My dad likes to joke that I had a diaper full of rainbow glitter when he found me on his doorstep,” I chuckled.
Ky cocked his head and frowned. “Found you?”
“Mmhmm.” I played with the tasseled fringe on the blanket. “My mother left me on Dad’s doorstep when I was two months old with a note. I think it said something like, ‘He’s yours.’ One paternity test later and my poor twenty-year-old dad had a kid.”
“Holy fuck. That’s intense. And so biblical.”
“God certainly has a sense of humor depositing a gay baby on a closeted gay man’s doorstep.”
“I thought your dad was out.”
“He is now. But when I was growing up, he kept his sexuality on the DL. The people who were close to us knew Gray was his boyfriend, but his work associates at the studio thought they were just ‘good friends.’” I winked, hooking my fingers in quotation marks. “It had to be so weird to hide who he was while five-year-old me colored my eyebrows with glitter and sang ABBA songs at the top of my lungs. On the other hand, it’s not like my dad wanted to put a Dolly wig on and do karaoke with me. We’re nothing alike.”
“He seems like a good guy. He stops to talk about Oliver’s skateboarding progress every time he picks him up. He’s intense and kind of intimidating, but I can tell he loves his family. I’ve seen the way he looks at you and Ollie when you’re not paying attention. It’s sappy and sweet. He adores you, you know?”