The Good Doctor 11

Jase and I are in my mom’s basement going through boxes and she’s going nuts upstairs. It always make her crazy when I prowl around the basement. She’s probably buried someone down here and is afraid that I’ll unearth something that I shouldn’t.

I’m sitting on the floor with my legs crossed and Jase is sitting in my lap because that’s the closest he can possibly get to the main action. We’re looking for my baseball glove but seem to have found a box of games, Clue, Monopoly, stuff like that.

“Can I play these games, Dad?” I remember how when I was a little kid it seemed like the stuff that adults had was the most interesting stuff.

“I think that these games might be for older people, Jase. He twists in my arms to look up at me and I kiss his forehead. He doesn’t bat an eye, he’s used to being kissed.

“How come, Dad? I think that I could play with these.”

“Mmmmm, I don’t think so, Kiddo. Let’s grab that other box.” I lean all the way over to my right and grab the box. Jase comes along for the ride. I pull the heavy box over to us. Pete loves me. He said so.

The door at the top of the stairs opens and my mom yells down. “Are you boys all right?” I can hear the frustration in her voice. “Eric, don’t let Jason hurt himself!” Gee, Mom, I thought that it’d be okay if he played with the axe. It makes her nuts that anyone would take her grandson into a basement where there are, at least to her mind, dangerous things. I guess that I can’t fault her for caring.

I yell back. “Mom! Will you relax? Jase is fine.” She stamps her foot and closes the door. I can’t believe that anyone actually stamps their foot………..about anything.

I kiss the side of his neck and whisper in his ear. “You are fine aren’t you?” Jase never bores me. Maybe just because he’s my son but I could sit and hold him and talk to him all afternoon. He’s still such a miracle to me.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine.” He’s bouncing but unfortunately for me he bouncing on a spot he shouldn’t be bouncing on and I roll him off to one side while I grab a more likely looking box. “Bingo!” I reach in and pull out the glove and ball.

“See, Jase! That’s the glove and ball that I used to play with when I was a kid.”

He takes the glove and looks at me. He’s having a hard time imagining his dad as a little boy. There are a lot of people who don’t find it all that difficult.

“When you were a little boy? When you were like me?” He smells the glove and smiles. Kids aren’t afraid of dirt, at least little boy kids.

---------------------------

Those plastic containers that they sell at the supermarket, the disposable ones, changed my mother’s life. Before they came on the scene my mom was limited to giving away only as much food as she had dishes or Tupperware for, but now the sky’s the limit.

She’s making ravioli and concentrating hard. The pasta has been rolled out into long thin sheets and she’s carefully placing the filling at intervals. Jase ducks in between her and the counter so that he can see what she’s doing.

She talks to the top of his head. “You wanna watch grandma making ravioli?” She bends and kisses his forehead as he looks up at her. “Jason, did you know that my grandma taught me to make ravioli?” She looks at me and smiles. “She was a wonderful woman.”

The memory of my grandmother is like a painting that’s been on the wall for a long time. My actual memories of her are so distant.

“Eric, I got a roast pork in the oven. You’ll stay till it’s done then you can take some home.” Gotcha, Mom, no problem. She stared at me for a moment. “You know, I think Jason could be a cook.”

“Nah, I think that he’s gonna be a baseball player.” She glances at me but correctly assumes that my comment doesn’t deserve an answer. Why do I taunt her?

She waves her ravioli cutter at me. “Are those the only pants you own? Every time I see you you’re wearing those! I thought you bought some new things?” The remembered feeling of his warm arms around me while he kisses me goodbye. He’s so strong. I can feel his cock start to get hard as he kisses me.

“I get em tomorrow, Mom. But I thought that I’d keep em for good, you know special occasions.” She just stares at me. It’s a joke, Mom!

“Special occasions! Eric, you don’t have any special occasions.” Well, that’s true. “You need clothes for every day. You can’t wear blue jeans for the rest of your life.” Why not?

Pete loves me. Commitment.

“Hmmm?” Did she say something?

“Eric, pay attention! I’m cutting the pork into chops. I cooked it with the bones in because it always makes the meat taste better. But they’re big chops, one is a serving and maybe even more than Jason can eat.” We’re surrounded by food, some cooked, some raw and lots of stuff waiting, big cans of olive oil with bright labels, mounds of green vegetables, like a restaurant.

Jase and I both carry stuffed shopping bags full of food to the car. Jase has already been stuffed with pork and ravioli because my mom really doesn’t trust me to make sure that he eats. Actually, in this she’s right, I never force Jase to eat, encourage a bit but never more than that. I figure when he’s hungry, he’ll eat.

My shopping bag also contains my old baseball glove and ball.

-------------------------------

Pete is taking off his sport coat as we walk towards the bedroom; Jase is skipping ahead of us. Pete’s eyes show fatigue but Jase doesn’t see that and eventually Pete pulls him up into his arms. As I’m hanging up his coat I pull a stethoscope out of his side pocket. He has a suit and three sport coats in my closet, clothes that were brought and left, a convenience to save a trip. By accident he’s already got a better wardrobe in my closet than I do. Yes I smell his clothes! Sometimes I put his sport coat on even though it’s too big for me but his scent lingers.

I smile at him. “This qualify as bringing work home from the office?”

He sits on the bed and lays back pulling a laughing Jase with him. I hand him the stethoscope and he puts it on Jase, carefully positioning the earpieces in Jase’s ears. Jase is ecstatic. Pete puts the other end against his own heart.. Jase is almost speechless, a real aha moment. Baseball has lost a potential player and I have a feeling we’ve created a doctor.

While Jase is laughing and playing doctor Pete reaches for my hand and then pulls me to the bed. He’s paying a lot of attention to Jase but his quick glances at me are electric. He’s still holding my hand. He’s said that he loves me and I’ve wondered how that could possibly be true but I suddenly realize that, at least from one point of view, it doesn’t’ matter because I’m totally in love with him. How did that happen? How did these feelings get to be so deep? It occurs to me that I think about him all day long. How can that be? That’s so unlike me but unlike me or not I know that I need Pete in a way that I’ve never needed anyone.

Jase is straddling his chest and being a totally “in you face” kind of little kid.

Pete turns his head to look at me and smiles; his dark blond hair droops over tired eyes. “Whadya say we have a glass of wine? Been a bitch of a day!” I can feel the heat that his body is generating, heat and the slight scent of soap and deodorant

I get up and pull him up with me, Jase giggles and gets dumped on the bed for a moment until Pete scoops him up and carries him into the family room setting him in front of the television.

Once we’re in the kitchen by ourselves everything changes and we’re in each others arms, his tongue deep in my mouth. This passion has been building and it’s not a sudden thing. I think that maybe it’s the mutual realization that we really are in love, that it’s not some freaky coming together thing that’s gonna fall apart next week. We’ve done the physical thing, the sex thing and we know that that works on a couple of different levels and that makes us free to come to terms with the whole love thing. Commitment. Holy fuck this is scary!

He knows how much I love him. He gets it…………and that somehow makes it even better. Normally it might bug me that somebody had an edge, that they knew something about how I felt that put me at a disadvantage but with Pete, I want him to know and his knowing makes it better. Fucking weird!

His hand is on the back of my neck and every time I try to talk he kisses me. Finally I slump back against the kitchen counter and smile at him.

“You’re not gonna let me talk?” We Italians HAVE to talk!

He pulled me forward and pressed my forehead to his chest and pressed his cheek to the side of my head. “You gotta talk?”

I nod my head against his chest and mumble. “Genetic. Can’t hold it back.”

He groans quietly. “Then just talk about how much you love me. Tell me that I’m all that you’ll ever need.” He pulls his head away for a moment and smiles at me. “I wanna be your hero.” He actually means that! Pete laughed and pointed both of his index fingers at me like six shooters. “You know, like the Lone Ranger?” He wrapped his arms around me again and spoke quietly. “Okay, so that’s maybe a bad example. I just wanna be the guy you always turn to, the guy that you know that you can count on.”

I put my head back where it had been. “You are my hero.” I laugh because I can’t believe how true that statement is. “You actually are you know.” I can feel the heat of his skin through his shirt. God! I can’t believe that I’m saying this to anyone! And the weird thing is that it’s fucking true.

“Should we be feeding Jase?” Pete’s thumb is massaging the back of my neck.

“He’s been fed, actually more like force fed. We stopped by my mom’s house.” I push my crotch into his, not that I’m looking for sex, well at least not right at this moment but it’s nice to know that I can keep him at least half hard. I’m pushing thoughts of his long, immensely hard thick cock, out of my mind.

Pete reaches over to where I’ve left an uncorked bottle of wine, he pours with his left hand while his right is holding onto the waistband of my pants.

“I made a reservation for tomorrow evening at that new Chinese restaurant downtown.” Pete looks at me. “You do remember I committed us to that?” Because I’m a fucking idiot.

“Your mom likes Chinese food?”

“She tolerates it…………..barely. More importantly, my dad loves it. Which, of course, drives her crazy but it’ll be better if he’s enjoying himself. And she’ll have to deal with dad and his love of Chinese food and I figure that that’s gotta draw a little fire from us.” Taken in the context of my mom’s love of Italian food, actually it’s more than love, it’s a wonder that they never got divorced over my Dad’s whole Chinese food thing cause I just know that my mom could like bury a ten inch chef’s knife into his chest every time he take a bite of that stuff. Surviving my mom is a question of balancing myself somewhere between what she hates and what she loves. How do I not have an ulcer?

He dropped his shoulders and held out his hands palms up. “Eric! She can’t be that bad. You sure that you’re not building this up in your mind to more than it is?”

It’s a question that I’ve asked myself a thousand times. My mother loves me. That’s something that I’ve never doubted and yet………..and yet there’s this need in her, this need to control. She would have a made a good man. Well, maybe not.

I dished us out salads and took our glasses of wine to the table. Jase came galloping into the kitchen just as we were sitting down and pretty much forced his way up onto Pete’s lap. Geez that kid is pushy! Clearly Jase is crazy about Pete and this is what I really really want………..really! Yet there’s this tiny little bit of my brain, just maybe like five cells that gets jealous when Jase goes running past me and climbs up on Pete. I mean, I’m his dad so isn’t he suppose to like me better than anybody in the whole fucking world? Yeah……I know that he does and I know that Pete is just this cool new person in his life and he’ll always be coming back to me. I’ll adjust to this………..I know that I will because I love Pete too, so we’ll work it out. I’m nuts! Jane is right!

Pete has a forkful of salad in one hand and a glass of wine in the other and Jase kneeling on his lap facing him.

“Pete, can we go see your house?” Jase’s hair is dark dark brown and is getting a little long. I should probably get it cut but it looks pretty good on him.

“Jason, give Pete a chance to eat his dinner.” Jase gives me a quick look, expertly judging just how necessary it is to pay any attention to me. Jase points toward the garage. “It’s just down the street, right?” Pete has put his food down and his hands are resting lightly on Jase’s shoulders steadying him so that he doesn’t fall.

Pete looks seriously at Jase, he never treats him like a kid, never dismisses him. “We can, Jase, but it’s pretty much like your house. Most of the house on this street are about the same.

Jase is not to be deterred. “I just wanna see it, Pete.”

“How bout after your dad and I eat? The three of us could walk over there and you could look around as much as you want.” Where is Jase going with this? What’s percolating through that little head?

Jase looks quickly at me again and then nods yes. “Okay………..but as soon as you guys are done, okay?” His eyes never leave mine. “Is that okay, Dad?” I must have a look in my eye because he turned on Pete’s lap to face me. He looks very serious and he’s twisting his fingers. “Don’t be mad at me.” Am I mad at him? I don’t ever get mad at Jase………..but he’s reacting to something.

I get up and walk around the table. I kneel down next to Pete and gently place my hand on the Jase’s back. I keep my voice not just low but also soft. “It’s okay, Sweetheart.” I grin at him. “We’ll go over to Pete’s house and poke around.”