Page 92 of Two for Charging

Chris took a deep breath and pushed an unruly curl of hair out of his face. The movement forced the top button of his shirt open, revealing a hint of chest hair. He was always sexy, but right now, in a suit Luca had picked out and paid for, standing up for himself and holding firm, Luca could barely restrain himself from climbing into his lap and licking his throat.

Matty elbowed him in the side. He might lack Chris’s muscle tone, but not his strength. “You want a glass of water, man?” he asked in a whisper. “You’re looking a little thirsty.”

“Shut up,” Luca said, not taking his eyes off Chris and his parents.

Chris’s mom patted his cheek. “Such a good son,” she said. “I knew I raised you right. No matter what your dad and his mother—”

“Mom, no.” Chris pulled her hand away. “You need to stop that too. Stop using me to win fights with Dad. I don’t like being put in the middle.”

She withdrew with a huff. Mr. Calabrese looked far too pleased she had been rebuked as well.

“What’s gotten into you?” Matty asked. “Don’t get me wrong; I love the new attitude, but where’s it from?”

Chris shook his head. “Nowhere. I should have said this years ago.”

His dad snorted. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s finally met a girl he wants to stick around. The only time a man tells his mother off is when he has another woman telling him to.”

What century did these people hail from? Luca knew they thought they were Italian, but their worldview predated Italy as a nation-state.

“No girl,” Chris said.

“Oh, I knew you would get along with Lisa—remember I met her at the farmer’s market?” Mrs. Calabrese asked her husband. “I gave her Chris’s number, told her she should give it a try even if he ‘isn’t dating.’” She exaggerated the air quotes with a roll of her eyes.

Chris closed his eyes. His fingers brushed against the back of Luca’s hand under the table, and Luca twisted his wrist so Chris could grab on if he needed to.

He did.

“I never met Lisa,” Chris said.

His mother’s face fell.

“I’m not going to meet Lisa. And I asked you three times to stop giving out my number to every girl you meet.”

“I only give it to Italian girls!”

“Well, I don’t want to meet any Italian girls. I don’t want to meet any girls at all.”

Luca swallowed. There it was. The truth he’d been ignoring every time he and Chris hooked up. Chris didn’t want anybody. Not in the desperate, sweaty, bodily way Luca couldn’t seem to stop wanting him. Chris wanted a friend to hold and cuddle sometimes. He wanted someone to come home to, but he wasn’t interested in sex. Luca had hoped he wanted romance because of his penchant for romantic films, but he had been kidding himself based on his own urgent desire to kiss Chris. Hell, Luca could live without sex if Chris only wanted to kiss him every day, but Chris didn’t want to kiss him. He didn’t want to kiss anyone, and if he was finally telling his mother to back off, he’d accepted his own asexuality. Luca wanted to be happy for his friend, but first, he had to get it through his own thick skull that whatever they’d had was over.

Mr. Calabrese scoffed. “You’re twenty-three. You might think so now. But you’ve gotta settle down and have a family someday, kid.”

“No, I don’t.”

The notion appeared to be a shock to the whole table.

Chris pushed his chair away and dropped Luca’s hand. “Look, I know this is a lot for you to take in, but I’m not going to do things the way you want me to. The way you did them. I might find a partner someday—who knows?—but I’m not getting married, and I’m not having kids.”

Luca spared a thought for a future where he would be introduced to whoever Chris found as a partner, someone more compatible with his needs. He would have to be so strong. Maybe by then, he’d have managed to get over Chris. Maybe he’d have found someone else. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much as it did now.

At least he wasn’t alone in reeling from the words. Chris might as well have slapped his mother.

“Why would you say that?”

“Because it’s true, Mom.” Chris folded his arms. “I know it’s not the life you have or the one you want for me, but I really…I don’t want kids, okay? I have a fun time playing hockey with them, but I don’t want any. I’m not cut out for it. They stress me out, and I don’t think I’d be a good dad.”

“No one is born a good dad, son,” Mr. Calabrese said, definitely true in his case. “You learn on the job.”

“Well, I don’t want to learn, okay?” Chris looked first at his father and, when his father met his gaze, his mother. “I know you want me to be happy. But introducing me to every Italian girl in Québec will not change my mind.”