Sugar and Ice - RJ Scott Page 0,46
I opened with once we’d moved into our own space.
“Hello, my friend back for you. Please, we must speak in English for my glowing improvements in the language is making big hits,” Stan replied, holding his phone upward so that I was looking down at him. “Is making good selfie position for to talk. My neck is making like a turkey my children say.”
“Your neck is not a turkey at all,” I replied, pushing to my feet to go to the kitchen. I passed Frank tormenting my neighbor through the screen.
“Your bird has big bad mouth!” Stan roared at the filth coming from Frank.
“Yes, I have given him a wide vocabulary of dirty words,” I tossed out, trying to ignore the cussing as I padded to the fridge for a bottle of water. “I wished to speak to you of private matters. Are you childless at the moment?”
“Yes, I am home alone like that movie with the two bandits who get paint cans in the forehead.”
“Ah, good.” I had no idea what movie he was speaking of. I pulled out a bottle of lemon-lime sparkling water, shut the fridge, and sat at the island. Perhaps I needed to watch more mainstream movies. Maybe if I did things that others did—like watch silly movies—I’d not feel so left out and upset about Tennant Rowe. Which was stupid. Tate and Tennant were friends, that was all. Yes, he had been attracted to him, but now he was my lover and I was sure he was well pleased. Wasn’t he?
“Vlad, do you wish to speak soon or should I go make a sock puppet as you stare at water bottle?”
My attention snapped back to my phone resting on the countertop. “Sorry, I am…there is this thing that I am wrestling with. A…sort of attraction to someone on my team.”
Stan’s gray eyes flared. He glanced at the sock on his hand, then back at me. “I did not know you were gay.”
“Mm, well, it has been a secret. My family back home…”
“Ah yes, I know that worry well. Say nothing more. So, you are mad worried over the press people finding out and the news going back to Russia?”
“Yes, that, and the…” I glanced from the phone to the bird in the window. “I have…forever I have always been in control of my life. What was said about me, what I projected, what I let the world know, what men I had relations with. Then Tate…”
“Ah yes, then Tate. I understand. Mine was “then Eric” although Eric and I had known each other previously but still when he came to Harrisburg things went flopsy and mopsy for a bit.”
“How do you do it? How do you play with a man you’re in love with?”
A moment went by as I listened to that word bouncing around my kitchen like a fly trying madly to find an open door. Love.
“You find way. If you love him, then you find way. Is simple, no?”
“No, it is not simple. It is complex.”
“Only because you make it confused. Love is not complex; we people make it so. Love is easy and freeing once you stop seeking to control it. We humans cannot control love. We must just ride along on it, hands in the air, like big roller coaster ride with many shouts of joy and tears of upset. Maybe you need to let go of the bar and throw your hands in the air?”
I sat back in my stool, gaping at the man with the warm gray eyes and his hand inside an old sock. Let go of the bar. That was simple to say. I had held the bar tightly my whole life. What if I let go and fell out, plummeting to my death as Tate rode another ride. Like that tilting whirly thing. Tate seemed a tilting whirly sort.
“Vlad, you are staring Superman holes in water bottle again,” Stan said, pulling me from the amusement park setting up inside my head.
“I am sorry. My mind is tangled. You have given me much to think on.” I paused, still lost in thought. “Tell me of how you managed things back home. Is your family safe? Has your marriage come back to harm them? I fear that if I am forthcoming with my sexuality that it will hurt my loved ones.”
Stan sighed as if he carried the weight of the world on his wide shoulders. “Yes, it is a concern that makes me heavy sad. So far