Coda Books 04 - Strawberries for Dessert (MM)

father look—it was the same look I used to get from him when I failed to do my chores. “You know,” he said sarcastically. “ A date : dinner, drinks, small talk. With another person.”
    I hated it when I gave him an opportunity to throw my own attitude back in my face, and I knew my cheeks were turning red. “It didn’t go well.”
    “Why not?”
    I didn’t want to tell him what had happened. He was always scolding me for letting my work run my life. I wished I could lie. But I’d never been able to come up with untruths in a timely manner, and he would have been able to see it on my face anyway, so I braced myself and admitted the truth, although I couldn’t look him in the eyes while I did it. I looked out at the field instead. “I was getting a lot of phone calls that night, and it annoyed him. So he left.”
    I expected him to start haranguing me right away, but he didn’t.
    He was silent, and when I looked over, I found him watching me with a sad look on his face. “I’m sorry, Jon.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” I said, with feigned nonchalance, because it did still bother me a little that he had walked out on me. “He wasn’t my type anyway.”
    “Are you seeing anyone else?”
    “No, not at the moment.” Not for a depressingly long time, in fact.
    He was quiet for a minute, and when I looked over at him, I saw that his ghosts were with him. Not literal ghosts. Not like in the movies.
    These were only in his mind. But I had learned to identify when he was being haunted by his past.
    I had a sister once. I had no memory of her—only hazy images that I probably formed afterward by looking at her picture. She was six years old when she died, and I wasn’t even two. She drowned in our swimming pool one day while my mother and I were napping and my father was on the phone with the air conditioning company. My dad had the pool filled in after that, and anytime her name was spoken in our house, it was in hushed tones. More than thirty years later, the guilt of her death still followed him around like a shadow. It wasn’t always visible, but when the situation was right, you would see it there in his eyes.
    And then there was my mother. I knew he still missed her all the time. She had died nine years earlier of pancreatic cancer. My dad and I hadn’t spoken much in the years leading up to her death. He was uncomfortable with my sexuality, and I was young and unaware of the fact that my family wouldn’t always be there. Her death hit us both hard. We realized then that, although we may not have been close, we were all each other had. That was when I left Colorado and moved back to Phoenix.
    I was still waiting for him to speak. I knew he had something he wanted to say. He was just trying to decide how to say it. “Jon,” he said hesitantly, “there’s a girl at the office—”
    “No.”
    “I know how you feel—”
    “Then why bring it up?”
    “What could it hurt, Jon? You’re not seeing anybody right now.
    Why not meet her? Why not see where it goes?”
    “No.”
    “I just….” He trailed off, and I could see the weight of the ghosts upon him. His shoulders slumped. His face was sad. I thought maybe he was fighting back tears. “Families should grow, Jon,” he said quietly. “Not shrink.”
    And that was the true heart of the matter. It wasn’t that he disapproved of me being gay. It was simply that he longed for more. He longed for the family that had been taken from him and for the grandchildren he would never have. I couldn’t blame him for that.

    “I know, Dad,” I said softly. I looked back out at the field so he could wipe his eyes without being embarrassed.
    We didn’t talk again until the bottom of the fifth, and although we stayed until the very end, I had no idea who won the game.

    I CARRIED Cole’s number around with me for the next two weeks. It took me a while to admit to myself that I wanted to see him again. He was arrogant and obnoxious and flamboyant and most definitely not my type. On the other hand, he was also smart and funny and cute and undeniably intriguing. Plus, there was the simple fact that he had shown interest and I had absolutely no other prospects at the moment. In the end, I told myself that if nothing else, I really did owe him an apology.
    When I called, he answered the phone in French. “ Allô ?”
    “Hello, Cole. It’s Jonathan.”
    “Well hello , sugar. What a pleasant surprise. How have you been?”
    For half a second, I