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Jensen woke up to the shrill tones of his cell phone ringing way too close to his head for comfort. He turned toward the sound and forced his eyes open a crack to see the phone sitting on the edge of a coffee table. Oh, yeah. New Year’s Eve.
Chris & Steve had played a private party thrown by some pals of theirs and invited Jensen along. He had only vague memories of being loaded into Chris’s truck along with the sound equipment after the show. Probably should have skipped the shots--or at least the last five or six of them.
The phone rang again, and Jensen flopped his arm out to pick it up. He had to hold it in front of his face for a moment until his vision cleared enough to read the display. Home. Again. Jensen turned the phone off before it could ring again. His mother could leave a message. Another one. He’d call her back later.
“Hey, look who’s up.” Chris’s voice behind him startled Jensen into sitting up too fast, hungover headache slamming into his head as soon as he was vertical. He cupped his head in his hands and asked, “What time is it?”
“Two-thirty, my friend.” Chris sat down on the unoccupied end of the couch. “I was starting to wonder if you were just going to sleep here until your damn plane leaves tomorrow.”
“Two-thirty? Jesus, I’m sorry.”
“Nah, it’s okay. Just, you showed up here last week, and that’s cool, man--you know you’re welcome--but I gotta say--“ Chris broke off, looking uncomfortable with the conversation. “You seem kind of twisted up about something.”
Jensen looked down at the phone in his hands, thinking about the family nightmare back in Texas, the messages from his mother, the script pages he’d been e-mailed that let him know Jeff would be up to film some scenes soon after they got back from hiatus. Silence stretched out around Jensen, and not just in the room with Chris.
Chris continued talking, when it was clear Jensen wasn’t ready to answer. “And, as much as I do dearly love whiskey, you know, sometimes talking to a friend helps.”
Jensen nodded, tasting the bitter dregs of alcohol in his mouth. “I gotta go get cleaned up.”
“Yeah, okay. Shower’s all yours.”
Jensen stood up and walked away from the couch. When he got to the doorway leading out of the room he stopped, with his back turned to his host. “Chris, I just--I can’t. But being here helped. I, uh--I appreciate it.”
“Like I said, man, always welcome. Now, go take a shower and stop stinking up my living room.”
~~~
In the bathroom, Jensen stripped down and brushed his teeth and then drank tiny cup after tiny cup of ice cold water until his stomach clenched up. Once in the shower, he wanted to stay for hours--long enough to wash away the headache and the grogginess and the general reek of patheticness that apparently permeated the air around him. When the smell of sweat and booze was gone and the muscles in his neck had relaxed enough to bring the pain in his head down a notch, he figured that was about as good as he was going to get.
Twenty minutes later, dry and dressed and clutching a huge mug of Chris’s killer coffee, Jensen sat on the back deck with only his phone for company. Time to face the music. Door #1 or Door #2? He called his parents number and prayed that nobody was home.
“Honey!” His mother. Great.
“Hey, Mama, sorry I missed your calls.”
“You must be awfully busy out there.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot going on.” Jensen winced, knowing he didn’t sound particularly convincing.
“Now look, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“What?” Worry flashed through him. “Is everything okay?”
“We’re fine, sweetheart. But I’ve been concerned, since you left here last week.”
Oh, shit. The coffee churned inside Jensen’s gut at the thought that she might have figured it out--what he’d done. “I told you, my agent--“
“I know what you said, but I had a feeling you might have been upset. From the awful business Ralph was talking about.”
Awful business. Aw, Mama. “No, no it doesn’t matter.”
She continued on. “Because, I think it’s terrible that he goes on and on about something that’s none of his business. I do love my sister, but I just hate listening to that jackass.”
“Mama!”
“Well, it’s true. And I thought, well, you must know all kinds of people like that out there in California, and maybe you just wanted to leave before you punched Ralph in the nose.”
Jensen held his breath for a minute, trying to decide what to say. “Yes, ma’am. I didn’t really like listening to it.”
“I knew it.” She sounded satisfied. “You inherited that from me, you know? When you did all those wonderful modeling jobs, years ago?” Her voice dropped down to a stage whisper. “I did always think all those stylists were awful sweet.”
“Mama,” Jensen sighed, playing up his exasperation for her.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I just hated to think that you felt unwelcome in your own family home because of that fool Ralph insulting your friends.”
“It’s okay. I-I love you.”
“I love you too, baby. Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year.”
He clicked off the phone and dropped it onto the table beside him. The look of disgust on his mother’s face, the look that had haunted him this past week, had been for Ralph? Disgust for Ralph’s endless polemics on the evils of homosexuality rather than disgust for the people Ralph was talking about? He had to hand it to his mother--she could still surprise him, even after 28 years.
One more phone call to make, but Jensen needed something more than coffee to fortify himself first. Breakfast. Lunch. Something that never saw the inside of a liquor cabinet..
~~~
Back on the deck, after taking just about as long as humanly possible to heat up and eat three piece of leftover pizza, Jensen scrolled down though the names in his phone again.
Jared. Jay should be back from skiing now, probably hanging with his boy Chad until it was time to fly back to Vancouver tomorrow. He could call--no. No, he could hear Jared’s voice mocking him in his head. “Stop being such a pussy, Jen. Keep on scrolling, just a couple more.”
So he hit the button down, down--Jeff. This time, as he waited for the call to connect, he very much hoped for Jeff to pick up on the other end. He was going to be making this up as he went along, and that never worked out very well over voicemail.
“Hello?” Jeff’s voice sounded cooler than usual, but still deep, resonating inside Jensen even over the cell connection.
“Hey, uh, it’s me. Jensen.”
“Hey. How’re you doing?” Jeff didn’t sound overly thrilled to hear from him, not that Jensen could blame him. The last time they’d seen each other, Jeff had given him pleasure and acceptance, and Jensen had taken that and left and, so far as Jeff could tell, never looked back.
“I’m…shit.” Jensen sighed. “I’m sorry, Jeff. About not calling you back.”
“I was kind of wondering about that.” Jeff’s voice sounded warmer now than when he’d first answered. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I think I am. It just all kind of, you know, threw me for a loop.”
“I’d understand if you want to pretend it never happened,” Jeff offered, his voice sincere.
“No, I can’t. I don’t want that.”
“What do you want?” Jeff’s voice dropped, dark and hot like coffee.
Jensen couldn’t help but answer from his heart. “I want to see you again.” He swallowed hard. “If you’re not too pissed at me to consider it.”
“I’m not pissed. I was confused, but I’m not pissed. And you’re going to be seeing me in a couple of weeks.”
“I know.”
“Tell me the truth: did you only call because you knew you were going to have to face me soon?”
“No, I-- Well, yeah, getting the script made me have to go ahead and grow the balls to call you, but I wanted to before. These last few months, ever since.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you call? I must have left you half a dozen messages.”
Jensen didn’t know how to explain that he hadn’t listened to the messages, that he had deleted them unheard because he didn’t deserve to listen to them when he was too much of a wimp to take Jeff’s calls.
“I don’t know. It’s like I’m some kind of a fuckin’ retard or something. I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”
“Okay, just, in the future, if you don’t want to talk to me, just send me an e-mail or something and let me know I should go to hell. I don’t like wondering. Or worrying.”
“Okay. Tell you to go to hell. Gotcha.”
“So.” Jensen could hear the grin in Jeff’s voice. “Have a good Christmas? See your family?”
“Family, yeah. Good, ah, not really. Kinda sucked shit, actually.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing special, really. Just--it’s better now, anyway, and I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.” Jensen coughed to clear his throat. “How about you? What did you do?” Jensen recalled his mental image of Jeff cuddling up with Mary-Louise Parker under a brightly lit tree.
“Drove up to Seattle to see my folks. Took my little girl along. Bisou loves road trips, don’t you baby?” Jeff’s voice changed tone, clearly talking to his dog. “Did you at least get some use out of that camera of yours over hiatus?”
“Yeah.” Jensen smiled, remembering that he did have some good days in Texas before everything went to shit. “Actually, I drove out past the suburbs and took some landscape shots, tried out a new lens. Some of them came out really good.”
“Well, cool. I’m glad you’re doing okay.”
“You too, man. I’ll, uh. I’ll see you soon.”
“Tell Jared hi for me.”
“I will. Bye.”
“Take care.”
Jensen put down his phone and leaned back in the deck chair, looking up into the late afternoon sky. He took a sip of his cold coffee and realized that his head didn’t hurt anymore, not at all.