The Boyfriend Recipe Read online

  He closed the door to the bathroom, leaving me to change in the room. For some bizarre reason I chose not to explore, I allowed myself to get so absorbed with attempting to knot my new tie in an overly-complex Eldridge knot that I forgot to put on one essential garment. Hunter emerged, fully dressed, to find me mooning him while swearing at my reflection and unknotting my tie.

  “Whoa,” he said, staring at my rear and I may have flexed my glutes a little before turning to grab my pants.

  “Sorry, I… I got caught up in getting my tie right and, well…”

  “A jockstrap is a bold choice,” he said.

  “Hey, my eyes are up here,” I joked, stepping into my pants. “I thought the jock would make me feel more confident. At least, that’s what my cousin always says skimpy underwear does for her.”

  “I’m not the underwear police. In fact, our ties aren’t the only thing that’s coordinated,” Hunter said, sending my mind directly into the gutter. Was it the same brand or the same style or just the same color? He stepped forward and took my tie in hand. “You wear a tie every day. What happened this time?”

  “I was trying for something a little more elegant. Well, I thought it would be elegant, but it just looks fussy,” I admitted. I was impressed that I managed not to stutter, given just how close he stood, the light scent of his cologne filling my senses. I gestured toward my phone, which displayed a diagram and video of the knot in question.

  “Hmm… You’re right. That is very elegant and definitely the kind of thing they’ll expect of a gay man. Well, that or a cravat. But something that complex wouldn’t work with the bright flowers of this tie,” he mused. I hummed in assent because I really wasn’t sure what I could say. “The one you brought is simple and would look great like that. You might have to choose between the fancy-shmancy knot and the tie chosen by the bride.”

  “You’re right. And of course, I’ll have to choose Brooke’s tie,” I said. I would have taken the ends of my tie back, but Hunter was already tying it for me in a full-windsor.

  “There you go,” he said. I reluctantly stepped back so I could see it in the mirror. It was simple, symmetric, and worked with the flowers. “She included coordinating pink pocket squares. I’ll fold them as homosexually as possible. Do you want light pink or dark pink?”

  “Thank you. Maybe dark pink would go better with the pale grey suit and pale pink with navy. And your hair looks wonderful down. I know women who would scalp you out of jealousy,” I told him. He rolled his eyes and began to work on his own tie while I tucked in my shirt. How was this so comfortable? Hunter began texting on his phone while I went into the bathroom to freshen up. After a spritz of my own cologne, I began obsessing over my own hair. Should I comb it down and be conservative? Conservative could look fashionable enough. Unless, of course, my cowlick popped up. I started when I looked in the mirror to see Hunter peeking over my shoulder.

  “We need to get going. Brooke says we have approximately twenty-six minutes before the ceremony begins, which is a weird number to approximate by the way,” he told me. Brooke was Brooke and she was nothing if not precise. “I like the spiky hair. It’s fun and fashionable and your cousin told me she likes it best that way. Stop overthinking this. People are going to find something to compliment or bitch about no matter how you dress or what you say.”

  I abandoned my hair and turned to face him. “Well, that’s comforting. But you’re right. Thanks.”

  Hunter took my hand, interlaced our fingers, and we strode out. I felt strong and powerful… until we reached the country club. At which point I began to lose it.

  “Are you nauseous?” Hunter asked, having doubtless noticed some aspect of my nerves. I was sweaty, shaking, and gripping the wheel like a lifeline… in other words, sexy as hell. I nodded and he said. “Do you trust me? Okay. I have an herbal thing that will steady your nerves. It won’t get you high or loopy or sleepy. Just more relaxed. It’s a trick that Julian learned a while ago from his brothers.”

  I did as he asked, and he sprayed some mint-flavored horribleness under my tongue. Within a minute, I was already feeling better and able to leave the car just as Brooke texted that we had three minutes to get our asses in our seats. We walked through the club to the back, as directed, and just before we walked out to the ceremony area –or whatever you call it– behind the club, Hunter turned me to face him. He straightened my tie, brushed his hands over my shoulders, and then kissed my nose. It was intimate and sweet and I wondered if he’d done that for me or for whomever might have been watching. We sneaked into the back row mere seconds before the procession music began. The service was sweet and simple. My cousin was gorgeous and radiantly happy. I began to tear up and Hunter pressed a handkerchief into my hand. One look at him and I knew I wasn’t the only one so affected. I dabbed his eyes before attending to my own, and he took my hand in both of his and held it on his lap.

  We averted our faces from the bridesmaids during the recessional, but we stayed in our seats until the very last minute. Since my parents were in the front row, they didn’t see us until nearly everyone had left. If we had to have a confrontation, at least we could do it without every single one of the hundreds of guests as an audience. My sister or grandfather or cousin had forewarned my parents of my presence, so there was no shrieking or hysterics. At least, not immediately. Instead my father looked from our faces to our joined hands and simply said, “You are making a spectacle of yourself. It is time for you to leave.”

  “We cannot leave without upsetting the bride. This is Brooke’s day and she insisted that we both attend the ceremony and the reception.” I said in as controlled a voice as I could muster. “By the way, this is Hunter Greene, my boyfriend.”

  “He’s not your boyfriend,” my mother said, surprising me. “He’s Tonya’s. And there is nothing funny about what you’re doing.”

  “Tonya and I broke up quite a while back,” Hunter said. “I bumped into David a couple of months ago and we’ve been seeing each other ever since. Your son is a remarkable man and I’m lucky to have him in my life.”

  Silence greeted Hunter’s words. Hunter had never had the displeasure of meeting my parents’ before, but Tonya must have shared a picture of Hunter at some point in their relationship (they had been living together, after all). My mother shook her head as if Hunter had just claimed to be a vegan while wearing leather pants and devouring a steak. No, maybe a burrito. Those also had sour cream and cheese on them. And… dammit, I was hungry and my parents were standing between us and platters upon platters of tiny food.

  My father’s lips curled into a cruel smirk as he said, “But David, I thought people can’t turn gay, that they’re born that way.”

  “I’m not gay, I’m bisexual,” Hunter said, before I could respond. “I am attracted to both men and women, and always have been. I’d suggest some resources to better inform yourself, but you have a gay son and still choose to be embarrassingly ignorant, so I won’t bother.”

  “Are you going to let your boyfriend fight your battles?” my father sneered.

  “The only person making this a battle is you,” I said calmly. “I’m just attending my best friend’s wedding. Feel free to spend the entire night ignoring us. I won’t tell anyone we’re related. If you think Tonya will make a scene that you can’t control, we can find someplace out-of-the-way to talk to her.”

  I wasn’t sure what my parents would have said next, if anything, because a bridesmaid ran up to us. “You’re David and Hunter, right? I recognize the ties. I helped Brooke pick them out. Brooke needs you for the photos! And I am prepared to use force if you try to resist!”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Hunter said. “It was… interesting meeting you, Mr. and Mrs. Kimball.”

  The cheerful bridesmaid led us to the area at which the obligatory posed wedding photos were being staged. She had managed to time things such that the bridal party had already left for the cocktail area (thereby forestalling any con
frontation with Tonya). Despite my aunt and uncle’s objections, Brooke insisted on taking a picture with me while Hunter happily chatted quietly with my grandfather.

  “Stop worrying. He’ll be okay,” Brooke said. So we smiled and posed and then I abandoned her to several dozen more stiff poses, this time with the groom’s family.

  When I returned to Hunter’s side, my grandfather said, “We were just discussing the validity of the Kinsey scale versus taxonomic methods for defining sexuality. I believe they help people like me better understand something outside my heteronormative assumptions.”

  “Whereas I believe that they may cause more misunderstandings than they clear up,” Hunter said.

  “It isn’t the categories that cause confusion,” Grandpa argued. “It’s binary thinking. African-American or Caucasian, straight or gay, male or female, employed or unemployed… the list goes on and on. When anything is in between, it’s hard to comprehend. What do you think?”

  “All of the above?” I hedged. “I mean, I think in binary terms too. Or at least in categories. And when someone doesn’t fit into a box, we try to argue them into one, or else we get confused.”

  “Which is why I tend to keep quiet about being bi. It just weirds people out,” Hunter said as he put his arm around my waist. “But David’s taken it all in stride.”

  Hunter looked at me with such an expression of true appreciation and gratitude that I was taken aback. I brought my hand up beneath his hair to knead the back of his neck and did my best to sound just as honest when I said, “Men, women, whomever… I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you’re with me.”

  That was completely true. Whether a partner was interested in men or women wouldn’t change how insecure I was. But I still felt like an ass who was taking credit for something that I hadn’t done. It had taken me far too long to finally create that bridge in my moronic, binary thinking to finally make sense of everything I knew of Hunter, every comment his friends made, and all the signals he sent my way. And, generally, I tended to think of bisexual men as unready to be honest with themselves.

  If I hadn’t had the cognitive dissonance of his relationship with Tonya, I still would have made that assumption. But, as I told Julian, no boyfriend would put up with my sister’s nonsense unless he was sexually attracted to her. I loved my sister, and friends and family could appreciate that she was smart and funny, but she’d always demanded a lot of time and attention from her boyfriends and gave little in return. She was insecure, believing men only wanted her for her body, and she’d assumed that Hunter’s lack of attention meant he was interested in someone else.

  “You two are so adorable. Do you want me to send Tonya over to you, to get this out of the way,” Grandpa asked us, “or do you want to get a drink in you first?”

  “That’s a pretty good idea. Hunter, would you like to try one of those ultra-special pomegranate cocktails?” I asked him. I wasn’t sure how else to get the message across, that we could avoid her entirely if he wanted. We could just leave. Of course, I could have just said that in front of my grandfather, but I wanted to give Hunter a graceful out.

  “Only if… you… want to,” he said.

  My grandfather laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “Your grandmother and I used to do the same thing. Go, have a moment alone, grab a cocktail, and I’m sure Tonya will find you.”

  My cousin had suggested an out-of-the way area where we could have a private conversation, so I led Hunter to it. He laughed and asked where we were going, but didn’t hesitate in following me. When I finally found the coatroom –unused on this sunny summer day– I pulled him in with me and closed both the top and bottom door.

  “I’m an idiot,” I said without preamble.

  “If I was as gifted as you, I’d raise one eyebrow. But no matter how hard I practiced, I never managed to learn how,” Hunter said, looking very put-out. “So I’ll just have to ask. Why are you an idiot? No, that’s not right… Why have you decided to take this moment to tell me you’re an idiot?”

  “I’ve spent all week being really confused,” I admitted. “You really are bi? Or pan? Or questioning? Or…”

  “I call myself bi. I don’t know why, but I’m just not comfortable with the term pansexual. So… hold on… I never actually said that? When you first mentioned me coming here as your date, I mean?” I wasn’t sure what response I’d expected, but it wasn’t quiet self-conscious laughter and an adorable blush. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I should have said… Oh my god, you must have thought I was so weird…”

  “Kind of. I just assumed you were really secure in your sexuality or were using this as an opportunity to experiment,” I explained. “That’s me, though. You were pretty clear, and I just assumed you were saying that for –I don’t know– how you planned to explain our relationship to others? Really, I’m the jerk who assumed you were either straight or gay and there was nothing in-between.”

  “But you believe me now? Because I really am bisexual. I like men as much as I like women, and it’s been something that’s caused a lot of arguments with friends and strangers and-”

  “I believe you know yourself,” I assured him. I had a lot of questions, of course, but I didn’t want to insult him or make assumptions. We were only playing around this weekend. He was only pretending to be my boyfriend. Maybe more could come of it, but I had no expectations. He was in this to get back at my sister, and maybe a weekend fling. Hunter was… Hunter. And I was me: a little smarter than average, not overwhelmingly ambitious, couldn’t dance, had an acceptable amount of style, and I looked good in a suit.

  Hunter’s hands cupped my face and he kissed me. It wasn’t tender or friendly or exploratory, but hot and hungry. His tongue delved into my mouth, our tongues dueled, I wrapped my arms around his back, one hand tangling in his hair. The hand in his hair must have set Hunter off, because he backed me into the door with such force that the top half of the door swung open. I groaned into his mouth and…

  “Oh, come on! A coat check? Really? Could you be any more clichéd? Well, I guess there weren’t any fur coats this time of year. That would have been the logical next step…” My sister couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate or irritating time to make an appearance. Hunter and I both started laughing and I hid my face in the crook of his neck.

  “At least it’s not a hot tub,” Hunter grumbled.

  “She’s right though. We should be more original. Tonya warned me that you were boring,” I said into Hunter’s neck. This wasn’t the reaction I’d expected from her. I opened the bottom half of the coat room door and we stepped out and I addressed my sister directly. “You’re… taking this well…”

  “Well, I did let you take my Ken dolls, too,” Tonya joked. “But seriously, Brooke talked me down and I’ve had a few hours to get used to the idea. I don’t understand it and I don’t want to see it and I can’t pretend it doesn’t make me upset, but… I don’t know. Our opinion isn’t going to magically change who you are, is it? And at least Hunter’s a nice guy and so are you even when I’m being a bitch so… you can make each other happy or miserable or whatever.”

  “Really?” I said stupidly, because this was the one response I hadn’t counted on. My sister looked at her shoes.

  “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed you until you visited and then left again. I mean, you’re my big brother, David.” I stepped forward and she backed away in horror. “Oh no, you are not hugging me! My ex-boyfriend just gave you a boner and I don’t need in on that.”

  “Sorry. I forgot about that. It’s gone, though,” I said, as though that erased the fact that she was correct in her assessment of what had just been happening.

  “Hunter, you could have told me,” she added and then, at whatever that sound was that just came out of him (a squeak-snort-laugh?), my sister rescinded her statement. “Okay, you’re right. It would have weirded me out and I was jealous enough and you’d heard me talk about David so i
t probably hadn’t been… I did have my suspicions after the whole three-way thing.”

  That was news to me. Of course, she’d always been quick to say a man who’d dumped her was probably gay, and this time she hadn’t. I still had to ask, “The three-way thing?”

  “After the third gay guy she chose, we decided it wasn’t meant to be,” he said through his silent laughter. “I didn’t know them I just… knew that the way they looked at us meant that it wasn’t going to happen the way she’d hoped.”

  “Again, Tonya?” I asked. When we were in high school, she did have a habit of hitting on men who didn’t lean in that direction.

  “Shut up, Davey,” she snapped good-naturedly. “So, Hunter, are you out now?”

  “Bi,” he said and his shoulders hunched a bit. We both knew what was coming.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Just admit it. I’ll get over it, I promise.”

  “I really am bisexual. Bisexuality is a real thing. I’m attracted to men as much as I’m attracted to women.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes, just nodded, so Hunter stepped to her and took her hands in his. “Tonya, I’m not lying to you or to myself. I really was attracted to you and I did care about you. What we had was real. Whom I date after you can’t change that.”

  “That wasn’t your line. Now I can’t yell at you,” she pouted and I couldn’t keep from laughing.

  “I’m sorry we missed one of your glorious tantrums, Toto.”

  “Ugh! Don’t call me that!” She smacked me and stuck a finger in Hunter’s face. “You did not hear him call me that and so help me if I hear you use that nickname…”

  “What, Toto?” he asked innocently. “You don’t want me to call you Toto? Are you sure?”