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And now I had another one because while I was frying up our catch for dinner, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Tristan and Memphis as they set the table. They teased and laughed one another as they argued over what the proper place setting should look like and Memphis finally won out by grabbing Tristan and kissing him senseless.
“You’re going to burn those,” Memphis said as his gaze shifted to me and I forced my attention back on the fish. I hoped like hell my staring at them hadn’t ruined the moment, but I knew all was good when Memphis came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I forgot about the fish entirely as his lips skimmed my neck and then his mouth was on mine. The kiss wasn’t nearly long enough, but the feel of his cock against my ass had me imagining what it would be like if he bent me over the kitchen counter while Tristan knelt between my legs.
“Not in my dads’ kitchen,” Tristan said with a gentle slap on my arm to get my attention and then he was smiling and pushing both me and Memphis out of the way so he could take over the cooking. I’d been surprised that Memphis had agreed to spend the night at Dom and Logan’s house so that we could cook the fish and not have to worry about trying to catch the last ferry to the mainland.
I turned in Memphis’s arms and languidly kissed him as Tristan finished cooking our dinner, and only managed to tear myself away from the other man when I heard the alarm on Tristan’s phone go off reminding him to take his medicine. I automatically began searching out the pills when Memphis said, “Already got them,” and held up Tristan’s pill storage container.
It took just a few minutes to get the food on the table, but I actually didn’t relax until Tristan took all of his medicine. But if he noticed the extra attention, he didn’t say anything. I couldn’t help the worry that was going through me as my thoughts drifted to what it would mean if Tristan’s test results in a few days proved it wasn’t just a blip and that the HIV in his system had started to multiply despite the antiretroviral therapy that had been controlling the disease for most of his life. I was surprised when I felt a hand on my knee under the table and I turned to see Memphis watching me with understanding. I dropped my hand to grab his and squeezed hard in response to his silent message. Yes, we would handle it, no matter what happened.
“Memphis,” Tristan said after he swallowed down nearly his whole glass of milk. “I have to know – did your parents name you Memphis because you guys lived there or something?”
Memphis released my hand and at first I was worried that the question bothered him, but he simply picked up his knife and began eating with gusto. “No, my parents were living in England when I was born.”
“Really?” I asked.
He nodded. “They were both studying at Oxford. My mother was studying English and my father was studying history. My mother found out she was pregnant with me six months before they graduated.”
“Were they both from the US?” Tristan asked.
“No, just my mother. She grew up in Maine. My father was Syrian. After graduation, they moved to the US and settled in Oregon where my mom had gotten a teaching job at a private college.”
“What happened to your dad?” I asked.
“There was a lot of unrest in Syria even back in those days, so he went back there to try and get his mother and younger sister out and bring them back to the States. They were all killed when the military targeted their apartment building because they believed rebels were hiding out in it.”
I was glad to see that Memphis wasn’t shutting down as he spoke, though I could hear the pain in his voice.
“How old were you?” was Tristan’s next question.
“Three. My mom remarried when I was ten – my stepdad owned a printing shop in a small town along the Columbia River. He and my mom got married and we moved in with him. My mom left her teaching job after Janie was born and when my stepdad retired early and sold the shop, they bought a house near Mt. Hood…I bought some land a few miles away years ago when I was looking for a place to eventually build a house. I’d wanted to be able to help out with Janie, especially as my parents got older.”
Tristan had told me about Memphis’s sister and that she’d been developmentally disabled, but neither of us knew what had caused her death and that of his parents, and we instinctively knew not to ask. Even now, I could tell Memphis had said as much as he was probably going to on the topic. The fact that he was even talking about himself at all was nothing short of a miracle.
