Holiday Cheer from Andrew Grey and Amy Lane

The Nature of Things

The Nature of Things

MARK HAD to work the next day, early, and he insisted on Cassidy sleeping in until the nurse got there to help him bathe.

Cassidy conceded, but mostly because he wanted to stay in his bed and pretend the fairy-tale night before still surrounded them both.

After they’d returned to bed, he and Mark had talked, and in a way, it had been much like their other conversations—the meaningful mixed with the absurd, the lighthearted mixed with the real.

Snippets of what they’d said would haunt Cassidy in the best of ways, possibly for as long as he lived.

“I remember being surprised,” Mark said, eyes dark and serious. “I thought my dad was invincible. You sort of make vows not to take your loved ones for granted after that. It’s why I came home to be with my mom.”

“You just keep hoping,” Cassidy admitted, feeling embarrassed in the extreme. “Sometimes I’ll go to sleep and dream about having a family when I was little, and I wake up and I’m surprised my childhood doesn’t feel like the dream.”

“I love being a doctor. I love being able to help people. I know some doctors are super ambitious and want to climb the ladder and be on the hospital board. I just want to treat people. I like the surgery part—I’m good at it—but I’m also good at setting broken bones and diagnosing muscle placement and strains. I… I want to work with people. I know its cliché, but I’m good with them.”

“Putting out the magazine is a blast,” Cassidy said, feeling himself grow animated. “Everybody has their jobs, and then we try to mesh everything like a big jigsaw puzzle, and then we work for aesthetics and trying to fit in as much as possible. I… I could be happy doing something like this for the rest of my life.”

And then, right as they were falling asleep, he remembered Mark’s hand on his cheek.

“You are so pretty,” he’d slurred. “I don’t know how I didn’t notice before. How I thought you disapproved of me for this entire last year. When really you were just taking us all in, my family, my dog, me. You were looking out your window and being a part of us, and we never knew it.”

“I’m sorry,” Cassidy had answered, embarrassed. “I… that’s probably wrong or voyeuristic. I just never had a family before. You, your mom, even your nieces and nephew. Watching everyone play in the front yard this summer, hunt for eggs over Easter—I got to pretend. That’s probably terrible. I don’t know how to take it back or wish I hadn’t done it.”

“Then don’t.” Mark stroked his lower lip with a tender thumb. “Now you know us. Now you’re ours. It’s not voyeurism if you’re ours. It’s watching your family play.”

Cassidy still couldn’t believe he’d said it—God, Mark had probably been too tired to realize what he was so cavalierly offering. A family. His family. A chance for the day before to not be an isolated thing, an embroidered embellishment, but a repeated detail, a true part of the fabric of his life.

It couldn’t possibly be real.

But the touches of Mark’s hands on his skin had been real. Cassidy’s searing orgasm into Mark’s mouth had been real. The taste of Mark’s spend, bitter and earthy and good—that had been immediate and true.

That disparity between what he knew to be real and what he’d always hoped for rode him all day. The nurse had to come shut the shower off because the water had run cold and his skin was pruney. The nurse—a stolid, taciturn man who seemed quite content to leave Cassidy to his thoughts during the shower and breakfast—had to ask Cassidy twice if he’d be okay as he made to leave.

When Yvonne showed up right after lunch—which he’d been able to fix for himself, thanks to her modifications—Cassidy finally snapped himself out of it.

“No kids?” he asked, mildly disappointed. Mark had left Gus-Gus there after briefly walking him that morning, and Gus-Gus too looked behind her in confusion.

“I’m afraid Keith has them at the moment,” she said, sighing. “He’s going to take them to lunch and explain to them that—” She frowned. “Mark told you, right? I mean, I assume he told you. It’s not like we’ve spared you the family business so far.”

Cassidy gave a faint smile and remembered Mark’s pointed observations about perfect and imperfect. If anybody asked, he’d reply staunchly that Yvonne and Mark were perfect. But if anyone were to outline their faults, he could concede that spilling the family business on a dime was one of them. “No, he told me. I’m so sorry—for the kids especially.”

Yvonne grimaced and swung the giant bag at her side onto the kitchen table. Brightly colored noodles of fiber trailed from the top, and Cassidy’s smile bloomed. Apparently she took her promise to teach him to crochet seriously. He was grateful—he really did miss the detail work and craft immersion of woodworking.

“Well, I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m really not. Tanya and Keith were young when they got together, but I always got the feeling she had children because they were expected of her and not because she really wanted them. With any luck—and if she has any decency—she’ll take the alimony and leave Keith with the kids. She can go off and do whatever she wants with her life, and the children can be with the parent who is more interested in their growing.” She growled. “Gah! There is no way to talk about this without sounding like a shrill harpy! I don’t mean she doesn’t love them—I just mean she doesn’t seem equipped with the tools to help them right now at this age.” With a groan, she sank into the kitchen chair next to him and banged her head softly on the table.

Cassidy patted her back, surprised that he had that much instinct for comfort. “Keith is your son,” he said. “I think there’s probably a rule out there that says you get to be partial.”

She paused in her banging and turned toward him, managing a watery smile. “That is a very good point,” she said after a moment. “I’m going to take that to heart.” She sniffed a little and took a napkin from the holder in the middle of the table, used it to wipe under her eyes, and then delicately blew her nose. “I think Keith and the kids are going to be living with me for a while, which, you know, makes for a full house. It’s good, because the kids can go to the same school—I’m in district—but it’s going to be crowded.”

Cassidy nodded. “Well, you know—I’ve got a guest room.” He could feel his face heat so hard and so fast that he was pretty sure sweat beaded on his hairline. “Mark, uhm, is welcome to stay. In the guest room. Until Keith and the kids have their own place.”

Yvonne’s lips quirked, and he felt the sudden weight of her regard. “The guest room,” she repeated mildly.

“Yes,” he said. “The, uhm, guest room.”

“That’s certainly handy, isn’t it? That he can stay here. In the guest room.”

Cassidy managed a smile, but he also knew a bead of sweat had gathered and actually dripped down to the back of his collar. “Very convenient,” he said. “Uhm, you two have been so kind and done so much for me. It would be… uhm, natural, really, for me to return the favor.” Wow, that was a whopper. It should have been the truth, but their activities—and that beautifully intimate conversation—were strobing behind his eyes, and he knew it for the biggest, most decadent lie he’d ever told.

“A favor?” she said archly, barely containing a smirk, and he broke and covered his face with his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I’m… I’m a bad person?” His voice rose at the end because he felt guilty—guilty and wicked for despoiling her baby boy, even though every recollection from the night before seemed to indicate that much of the despoiling had been Mark’s idea.

“No!” she protested, finally laughing. “You’re not a bad person at all! But you certainly do seem to fit in with our lack of discretion. Forget lying to save your life; you can’t even let a secret hide behind your eyes.”

“I don’t even know how to deal with it,” he confessed, welcoming her pat on his back much as he’d hoped she’d welcomed his. “I… I’ve never done a grown-up relationship. There are rules. Probably lots of rules. I don’t understand any of them!”

To his horror, his own voice was breaking much as hers had been.

“Sh, sh, sh,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pulling him in. “Honey, it’s fine. Mark is a grown-up, and he’s had a couple of these. He’s going to guide you, but you need to give him input, okay? Yes, there are rules, but they’re unique between couples, and you both need to make them. Just remember that. You both need to make them. Okay?”

Cassidy nodded, feeling somewhat reassured. “I just… just really liked it when he stayed… in the guest room,” he whispered. “I… I would like him to feel comfortable there.”

Her snort of laughter rebuked the “guest room” ruse—but gently. “Well, you need to discuss that with him. But give him a moment if he seems to forget that you get input. I love my son, and his intentions are the best, but he can be incredibly self… involved, I guess, but even that’s the wrong word. It’s not so much that he’s self-absorbed as it is that his plans and hopes for people and relationships seem to wrap everyone else inside. On the one hand, it makes him pretty attentive when he puts his mind to it, but on the other….” She sucked air through her teeth. “Well, it makes him oblivious.”

She was obviously holding back, and he tried to remember all of his newsroom interactions, watching as Rose and the other reporters teased the guts of a story from a few cosmetic details.

“You’re trying not to dish about his last boyfriend, aren’t you?” Cassidy hazarded.

Her relief was palpable. “God, yes. I just—I would have liked Brad, I think, if he hadn’t hated us so much. Not letting the kids visit, when Mark has loved them since before they were born. Threatening to euthanize poor Gus-Gus. Yes, Mark can be a little self-involved, but Brad wasn’t listening to who he was in the first place. And I guess that’s what you both need to learn from. Listen to each other. Try not to jump to conclusions.” She sighed. “And don’t put too much stock in what Mark’s busybody mother has to say about things, because you’ve already seen me stick my nose into everybody’s business to an embarrassing degree.”

Cassidy nodded and allowed himself the comfort of leaning against her shoulder. “I can see why you do,” he whispered. “You just want them all to be happy, and you can’t… can’t make their other people do what they should do.”

Yvonne gave a bitter laugh. “Well, it’s not my place, is it? If I could have accepted Tanya as easily as I accept you, maybe Keith would have had an easier time of it.” She gave a sigh. “And maybe not.” She pulled away enough to grin at him and ruffle his carefully water-combed hair. “Maybe I just like you,” she said simply. “And that would be a first, because I haven’t approved of any of Dani’s beaus either.”

Cassidy grinned back. “Well, I feel lucky, then,” he said—and he meant it.

“Excellent.” She took a deep breath, and they separated, which was a small relief because his wheelchair was not made for hugs like that. “So, how about we learn to crochet, and then we’ll have an excuse to gossip, and you can learn what it’s like to have a craft you can carry to all the rooms of your house and even to work with you.”

As Yvonne dug into the big canvas tote bag, pulling out balls of wool in various colors and then hooks in an array of sizes, Cassidy thought of the pleasure he got from woodwork and how wonderful that would be to put in a bag and carry around.

He straightened and smiled, the possibilities flowing through him, and suddenly he understood what she’d been trying to tell Mark about yarn in the first place.

Potential. Every color and skein had potential .

TWO HOURS later, he was staring critically at the six inches of lumpy fabric in his hands. He hadn’t changed his mind—he still thought the yarn and the hooks and the craft had potential—but he understood that he was in the middle of the fidgety, irritating phase where unlocking that potential got to be hard work.

“Ack!” he said, pointing to the sides of the fabric. “I’m doing it again!” The thing was going to be a scarf, because he understood that scarves were what beginners did. It was either scarves or hot pads, but Yvonne seemed to feel hot pads meant working too tightly with yarn that was hard on the hands. In this case, the sides of the work were “coming in”—instead of a potential rectangle that would just get longer and longer and longer, he had a trapezoid, where the width of the thing was narrowing and he was threatening to make a triangle, which as far as he knew had no use at all.

“Well,” she said patiently, “count it, honey. How many stitches did we start with?”

“Thirty-six,” he said automatically. It had taken them half an hour to get those perfectly sized, not-too-loose-and-not-too-tight stitches worked into his beginning chain.

“How many do we have now?”

He went back and counted. “Thirty,” he sighed. “I’m forgetting to work the first stitch of the last row, aren’t I?”

She nodded. “Yup. Beginners often do. It’s because you chain three to get that stitch and it doesn’t look like the others.”

“What do I do now?” he asked, although he knew the answer.

“Sorry, honey. You’ve got two choices. One is to work an extra three stitches into each end of the work, which will make it as wide was it was at the beginning, but you’ll have big lumps in the side—”

“Ugh.”

“Yes. But the other option is to frog it.”

“Frog it?” he asked.

“Rip-it! Rip-it!” She made the motion of pulling the live end of the yarn as she said it, and Cassidy gave an exasperated sigh.

“Of course.” But he had to admit, making the noise did make him smile as he ripped out half the work. By the time he’d made up the lost inches, his body was a little sore from not shifting his weight and his fingers were cramped—and he was so proud. He looked up, holding six inches of scarf that were not trapezoidal, and felt triumphant indeed.

Then he realized Yvonne had been cooking dinner for the past half hour, and the thin winter light from outside had dissipated, allowing the complete dark of December to blanket the sky. The bushes outside his kitchen window moved frantically, scratching at the glass, followed by a patter of droplets.

It seemed to be raining.

“Oh no!” he said, looking around frantically. “It’s dark! It’s late! I’m late! I didn’t realize—and where’s Mark?”

“Calm down!” she laughed. “You can’t be late for anything—except maybe using the bathroom, because you’ve been sitting for hours . And it is dark—you were really involved, but then, so was I. I thought I’d let you work because you seemed so happy.” She gave a little shrug. “And as for Mark? Well, he’s late, but he’s late a lot. I’m sure you’ve heard of doctor’s hours by now, right?”

Cassidy nodded and swallowed hard. Of course. Of course he’d heard of doctor’s hours. Everybody had heard of doctor’s hours, right? “Yes,” he whispered, his heart hammering in his throat. “Yes. He wouldn’t think to call.”

“No,” she said, frowning. “He wouldn’t. Especially not because he was used to living with Brad through his internship and first year of residency—from what he told me, neither of them checked in, even if they had plans.”

“No?” Cassidy hated the way his voice cracked. God, he had to calm down. This was what he’d been afraid of, the thing in himself he’d thought would destroy any relationship he attempted.

“No,” she said, keeping her voice gentle. “And the past few months he’s been living with me. He has the room above the garage so he doesn’t feel trapped, you know, like he’s living with his mother. So… so he’s not going to be as thoughtful as he should be—not at first. You’re going to have to speak up, remember? Negotiate rules.”

Negotiate rules—she was right. He had to remember that. He had a plan. He wasn’t late. He hadn’t done anything wrong. This wasn’t his fault. He just needed to…. He squirmed violently in the wheelchair and remembered he needed to use the facilities.

“I’ll be back,” he rasped, and wheeled himself back to the bathroom as quickly as possible.

It was a struggle—he’d needed Mark’s help the night before and the nurse’s help that morning, but God, after exchanging hugs and confidences with Yvonne and trying so hard to squelch his panicky anger toward Mark, he was sweaty and irritated and shaky with emotion and repressed anxiety when he finally cleared the bathroom.

Yvonne had put down place settings for them both by the time he came out, and he settled himself at the table and tried to pull himself together.

Every second ticked loudly in his brain, only partially tuned out by the roar of blood in his ears.

He worked hard at dinner conversation and tried to keep his panic at bay, but toward the end of the meal, she took a deep breath and put her hand over his, telling him he’d failed. “Would you like me to call him?” she asked softly. “I—”

He shook his head. “I’m being stupid. He’s a grown man and I don’t have any claim on him and—”

At that moment, the door burst open and Mark blew in, his face red from the cold and his hair tousled and windblown. “Wow, it’s blustery out there!” he said. “Did you guys notice the storm coming in?”

And all of Cassidy’s careful rationalizing broke loose from its moorings and he shouted, “ I can’t do this !” before backing the wheelchair out from the table and setting his own personal record for getting down the hall and into his bedroom.

He slammed the door on Mark’s surprised face before he allowed the full-blown panic attack to take over. Mark knocked frantically on the door and called his name, but he was sobbing too hard to answer.