Page 2 of Where the Pines Kiss the Sky

She stalked off toward the gym at the back of the house. My poor weight bag was going to get a workout it would never forget. Hell, maybe it would get knocked clean across the room ala Steve Rogers.

“Okay, now that she’s busy, let’s talk sensibly.” Elle plucked a cherry tomato from the platter and then dunked it into a monkey dish of ranch dressing. Light. I was sure it was light. Not even full calorie salad dressing for the man watching his life spin down the shitter.

“Punching something sounds sensible. I know a mouthy little twink that I’d like to throat punch.” My jaw worked faster just thinking about popping My-Key in the face.

“No, it doesn’t. That would just add fuel to his fire. The videos have been taken down after our lawyers jumped on him for defamation of character.”

Cool. But the damage was done. The videos had been up on his Tic-Toc for over twelve hours. That was an eternity. They’d been downloaded and viewed all over the world tens of millions of times.

“What we need to do as a team is take a breath, let the fires burn themselves out, and then have you address the world as a gay man who has been cruelly and horribly outed against his wishes by a vindictive little cow patty of a child.”

“He really is a cow patty,” I whispered and sighed dramatically. “I mean, it was one little fight. I really did like him, you know?”

“I know, baby.” She patted my bare thigh. “But you need to get up, shower, put on some clean boxers, and get moving like Katy said.”

“Move where?” I asked in utter desperation. “I can’t leave my house without the throngs of paparazzi swarming me like angry killer bees!”

Elle’s cell phone buzzed. She glanced down at it, then leapt on it. I’d turned off my phone when the first image of myself posed in a highly personal boudoir shot meant for someone I had thought cared had been shown on CNN.

“Hello, Marcus, yes, he’s right here.” I cocked an eyebrow. “It’s your father.”

Well fuck. This was a conversation that I had sidestepped for about twenty years. I shook my head. Elle shoved the phone at me as if she wanted to press the damn thing through my chest like some dark wizard.

“Elias, you have to start facing this situation and who better to open up dialog with than your father?” My eyes closed as I drew in a shaky breath. “He loves you beyond reason. He will understand. Trust me. Marcus is a good man with a loving heart.”

Knowing she was right, my fatherwasa gentle soul who deserved so much more than the shitstorm now raining down on him, I blew out a breath.

I lifted her phone from her hand and stood up, hoisted up my saggy boxers, and padded outside. The patio was a huge square of redwood with benches set up around a square firepit. Water pools flowed behind the benches as a roof over top provided shade from the hot California sun. I’d not had a fire in the pit for years as I was too scared that a spark would fly upward and set the whole hillside aflame. I did enjoy the burbling waters that flowed around the area and ran down to my inground pool, though. It circulated from the pool, was filtered, and then pumped back up to the deck. An extravagant setup for sure. It fits with the other mansions on the private road, trust me. Actually, it was nothing compared to the helipads, dog mansions, and moats. Yep. Moats. Only in Hollywood, baby.

“Hey, Dad,” I said as I flopped down on a bench, leaning over the back with one arm to dangle my fingers in the cool water. The trickle of cool water over my fingertips was doing little to soothe the upheaval in my stomach. I’d been hiding this secret for so long that I had no clue how to even open up a conversation about it. How did someone explain why they’d kept a part of themselves locked away for so long? And from someone who had given up so much and worked so hard to be both a mother and a father to a young, fragile child? My throat felt like it was closing up, my heart was thundering. Was this what a panic attack felt like?

“Elias…Son,” he said, his words thick with emotion.

“Dad,” I croaked, unable to say more as tears flooded my eyes. Crying was so not a manly man thing to do. What would Connor Days think if he could see me curled up on a plush peach cushion sobbing like a child with a skinned knee? He’d be appalled. And would probably slap me silly and tell me to grow a pair. “I never…” I stalled out, gulped in some warm air, and tried again. “I never wanted…you to find out…I had planned to tell you a thousand times.”

“Son, I so wish you had shared this with me,” he replied, clearing his throat before he could continue. “It might have given me a bit of a shock, but I would have accepted it. All of it, Son, not just the gay thing but the cross-dressing thing. Is that the right term? I’m so behind on the letters and gender things.”

That made me cough/laugh. Yep, I was pretty sure that the whole of Kesside Isle was behind on gender things. The natives were salt-of-the-earth folks, good people for sure, but many were happy to live on that rocky wild island for their entire lives and never venture from the norm. Norm being a man, a woman, marriage, kids, the sea, grandkids, death.

I drew my fingers from the water, wiped at my wet cheeks, and then sat with my back to the plush cushion, staring out at Los Angeles.

“I think that’s an okay term, Dad, but I’m not sure if that’s me. Sometimes I feel…” My sight moved over the city as the sun began to set. Such a beautiful sight. Or it had been. Now when I looked over the sprawling metropolis, all I could see was a den of vipers. A town hiding people who took great glee in building you up and then tearing you down. Somehow, the glitter of living where I could see the Hollywood sign on my drive to the studio was forever tarnished now.

“What do you feel, Elias? Tell me. Son, I only want to help. You know I don’t care that you’re gay.”

“I know, Dad, I know.” And I did. Deep down I’d known he would be okay with my being queer, but something always held me back. Some vile voice in the back of my head whispered that he would only love me if I were the man the studio had crafted me into being. That man was who everyone wanted. Elias Lake, action star, man about town, women love him and men want to be him, the last bastion of pure machismo and proud of it. If they only knew. Well, I guess they know now. My safety net was gone, and I was free falling. “I just…I’m sorry. I should have talked to you about it years ago. I was scared, I guess. And now it’s just a fucking mess.”

“Sure, sure, I understand being scared, Son. I surely do.” That was true. He’d been terrified of being a single parent after my mother had died. I’d been a little tot, five years old, when she’d gone out boating with friends and drowned. Horrible accident, the cops had said, leaving us to cope with a life now void of her warmth and humor. “There were years where I stumbled around this old inn in absolute horror.”

I had to smile at his accent. Thick as chowder it was. Pure Maine. Christ, I had workedsohard to lose that accent with my voice coach when I’d come to L.A. years ago. Now I longed to hear more of it. I yearned to run back to Kesside Isle and ask Portman Keyes, the harbor master—a title he had bequeathed to himself forty years ago—to swing open the tiny metal mechanical bridge that linked our island to the coast of Maine near Jonesport. The choppy seas called me as they had when I had been a boy running wild over the island. I could smell the brine, taste the saltwater on my tongue, and hear the wind whispering through the pines that dotted the rocky coast. God yes, I wanted to return home, to my old room, and hide from it all. I wanted my father so badly it hurt to breathe.

“Dad,” I asked with trepidation, making my voice waver. “Dad, can I come home?”

“Yes, Son, of course. You are always welcome here. Come home, my boy. We’ll sort this whole mess out together.”

“Thank you.” I did manage to push that out before I hung up and collapsed in on myself. Elle came out after a few minutes, sat down beside me, and hugged me to her side.

“I’m going home,” I finally coughed out after the worst of the crying jag had abated. She handed me tissues, smiling kindly, as I worked on gathering myself.

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