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Maybe sitting down together around the kitchen table was overly formal. It gave the whole thing an air of being yet another Pied Piper management meeting, which was probably why Jared was sitting up straight in his chair, looking keen and alert and not at all like the stuttering, panicked mess he’d been five minutes ago. That was almost enough reason for Erlich to suggest moving back to the living room – how dare Jared look so calm about this when Richard was clearly distraught – except then they’d have to sit on the couch. And he wasn’t sure he’d be able to look that couch in the face again.
Two minutes ago, Erlich had been ready to rage at the both of them. But no matter how justifiably angry he was at the desecration of his furniture, his heart couldn’t help but go out to Richard, crimson-faced and eyes downcast and, thank God, now with his shirt buttoned.
That compassionate impulse was what reined him in, made him keep his voice level and calm.
“Anything you want to tell me? Not you,” he snapped, as Jared opened his mouth. “I’m sure you have a Powerpoint presentation ready to go with all the numbers on exactly how long you two have been fucking in secret, but I was talking to Richard.”
“I actually don’t, but if it would help I could probably...”
“We weren’t fucking.” Richard was barely audible, still staring shamefully down at the tabletop. “We were just... Dinesh and Gilfoyle have their vid-tech meetup tonight, and I don’t know where Jian Yang is but he’s not in his room, and you weren’t supposed to be back till nine.”
“The board meeting finished early,” he said. “As it turns out, Laurie’s a very efficient chair. She keeps everyone on-topic.”
“I get that impression from her,” Jared said.
“Monica says hello, by the way.”
“The board meeting aside,” Richard said, his mouth stretching into a thin, pained line, “we were just making out. I’m sorry you walked in on it, but honestly, if you’d come back and I’d been making out with a girl, you wouldn’t be acting like this.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Richard. You only know three women, and two of them were with me. Are you suggesting there’s any possible universe where I’d come back to this house and find you grinding on a couch with Carla?”
“That’s very unlikely,” Jared put in. “She said she was going to the meetup group with Gilfoyle and Dinesh. That was why we thought we’d have the house to ourselves.”
That we, ourselves, made Erlich bristle. He’d thought he was being deliberately provocative with that ‘fucking in secret’ thing. He’d assumed this was a one-time moment of madness. Maybe they’d been drinking, or high, although if it was the latter it’d better have been Gilfoyle’s stash they’d raided or there’d be a world of fucking trouble. Maybe Richard had been upset about being asked to stay away from the board meeting and a comforting hug had taken a non-platonic turn. Maybe a particularly erotic music video had come on VH1 and they hadn’t been able to contain themselves.
All of that seemed more likely than the idea that out of the four other men in the house, not to mention the millions more in Palo Alto at large and the ready access to same through any number of hook-up apps, Richard would choose to give his awkward heart and scrawny coder’s body to... to...
Erlich took in Jared’s watery blue eyes and baby-giraffe physique and slowly shook his head. Jared smiled tentatively back.
“Maybe it’s good that this is out in the open,” Jared said. And then he leaned in to address Richard directly, his fingers brushing Richard’s wrist, and Erlich felt like he wasn’t part of this conversation any more. “Richard, you’ve been so stressed about keeping this from Erlich. The circumstances might not be ideal, but isn’t this better than sneaking around?”
Richard finally, reluctantly, lifted his head. “That’s actually true,” he said. “I’ve honestly barely slept in a month.” Erlich was overhauling his mental image of Jared – somewhere under those button-downs and khakis must be a goddamn machine – when Richard went on, “Between the lawsuit, and getting fired, and then lying to you after you let us stay here when you didn’t have to... or not lying, exactly, but not being honest. I’m sorry, Erlich. I should have told you, but I just wanted...” His eyes flickered to Jared. “I wanted to have one thing in my life right now that was good and that was just mine.”
Erlich was touched, despite himself, so he didn’t roll his eyes at the puppyish adoration that blossomed across Jared’s face. Richard looked away, smiling a little. “Plus I really didn’t want to tell Gilfoyle and Dinesh, so can you please just not say anything to them. Please.”
“So I’m the first person you’ve told.” That was an honor, really.
“Uh, no. Big Head was.”
Or not. “What? Why did Big Head get to know about this before me? It’s not Big Head’s house you were fucking in. Wait, was it? If Big Head invites you over to his new place I insist you bring me along. Not to join you in the bedroom, obviously, but I want to see how someone like Big Head spends a CEO’s salary.”
“We’ve never done anything at Big Head’s place, God...!”
Jared said, “He did invite us both onto his boat, but I’m not very comfortable on the ocean since my island experience? So we went to the coffee shop at the marina instead.”
Richard said, “Look, I told him what was happening because he’s my best friend, and I was starting to have feelings for a guy, and it was confusing. That’s it.”
“And just to be clear,” Erlich said, “were these feelings for Jared, or is this more of a settling-because-the-man-I-want-is-straight-and-out-of-my-league situation?”
Richard gave him a hard look, which seemed unwarranted since Jared was looking interested in the answer too. “For Jared.” He’d have to say that, of course, with him sitting right there.
“In the interests of full disclosure,” Jared said, “and Richard, I’m sorry, I didn’t think to tell you this before – I told my friend Gloria about us too.”
Erlich was disgusted. “Big Head, now Gloria; if I hadn’t come home early tonight would the whole Valley have known about this before me?” Maybe it was for the best that Monica was still playing hard to get and had rejected his offer of a post-board drink. The first he would have known about this romance blossoming in his own incubator would have been when he got a Save the Date in the mail.
Richard was looking puzzled. “Gloria is... the lady you play checkers with at the senior center?”
“No, that’s Gloriana – well remembered! – Gloria is in my birding group. I sometimes help her with our newsletter.”
“What a life you’ve led, Jared.”
Richard glared a shut up at him. So this was how it was going to be, now, him taking his boyfriend’s side all the time.
“I should have checked with you first, but she’s been trying to set me up with her grandson for months, and I didn’t know how else to say no.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s... fine.”
Uh-oh. Jared, the poor dope, looked pleased, like he thought it really was fine.
“So, uh, what does he do? The grandson. You haven’t mentioned him before. Is he in the birding group too?”
“There’s no grandson,” Erlich said. “She was testing the waters for herself. Trying to find out if Jared was gay. You know these elderly bird-women, Richard.”
Jared continued, oblivious: “I haven’t met him, but he’s my age, and he’s a chef somewhere in Menlo Park.”
“Sounds great,” Richard said, and his tone was joking but his expression really wasn’t. “He can cook and he has a job. And you like his grandma. This guy’s totally a catch, Jared.”
Erlich pushed back from the table. “I’m going to get some air,” he said loudly. He objected to being run out of his own kitchen, but the alternative was staying and looking at that sudden dumb concern all over Jared’s face. “I’ll be roughly ten minutes,” he told them, but turned at the door: “Oh, and, new house rule. Pants and shirts are mandatory in the common areas.”
Thirty seconds later he came back. “Kimonos are an acceptable alternative.”
**
He hadn’t technically promised not to text everything that had just happened to Monica, but it felt like a betrayal of Richard’s trust, somehow. Instead, he snapped a selfie in a lawn chair and sent it to her with a hilarious comment sure to make her regret being at home right now instead of getting mojitos at Nola. Or somewhere just as good but less expensive. Monica didn’t seem like a Cheesecake Factory sort of girl, but you never knew. Richard hadn’t seemed so much as bi-curious till just now, his obvious latent attraction to Erlich himself aside.
The house door opened, light from inside spilling into the yard, and Jared came to stand by the side of his chair.
“We were about to watch a movie, if you wanted to join us.”
“What movie?”
“Richard’s picking one now. We watched my choice last time, and he insists we take turns.” Jared said this like it qualified Richard for some kind of Boyfriend of the Year award, and Erlich didn’t ask if the same system applied in the bedroom. He doubted Jared would get it. Or Richard either; he made a mental note to do some internet research, make a few handy notes to push under their door.
“Did you kids kiss and make up? Feel free to not tell me details, especially of the former.”
“Richard’s fine. He’s been under a lot of pressure.”
“Yeah. I’m aware.”
“I’d hate to think I’m making it worse,” Jared said, almost to himself. “That’s the last thing I’d ever want in the world.”
Erlich rolled his eyes. “Don’t be an idiot, Jared. You heard his gushy ‘one good thing in my life’ speech. Richard adores you. God only knows why. Maybe Satan could explain it, but I agree with Richard that the less Gilfoyle and Dinesh know about this, the better.”
“Agreed. And I think he’s a little embarrassed about what just happened, so if you could just not say anything...?”
“Loathe as I am to be censored in my own incubator,” he said, “I won’t mention you potentially leaving him for some Menlo Park fry cook.”
“I’d never leave Richard,” Jared said.
Erlich looked up at him. He was too tall, and too anxious, and he’d chosen to wear one of those awful fleece vests he liked so much despite this being some kind of date night, although how much of that was personal choice and how much some weird fetish of Richard’s, he couldn’t say. If Richard had listened to Erlich’s wise warnings that first night when he’d come sniffing around, all tentative advances and awkward hope, they wouldn’t be here now.
He said, “Richard being Richard, I didn’t expect to ever have this talk with anybody, so I’ll have to sit down and think about exactly what I’ll do to you if you hurt him. Beating one with a shovel is traditional, but I find that a little prosaic. My own retribution, details to be determined, will make Gavin Belson look like Mother Teresa. Post-Peace Prize.”
“Of course. He’s your family.” Jared said that easily, the same way he talked about other nonsense like value and magic.
Erlich grunted an acknowledgment of that, not a yes, not a no.
The thing about families, he could have told Jared, who of course wouldn't know this himself, the thing that separated them from friends or employees or incubees, was that you didn’t choose them. The universe rolled the dice and you were stuck with some gangly, over-earnest stick figure in a sweater vest who loved your friend. Who loved you, if not necessarily in the same way.
Goddammit, he thought, he was going to have to shovel-talk Richard, too - and he rolled off the lounger and followed Jared back into the house.