Talker by Amy Lane Page B

that now, okay?”
    Tate nodded, a sort of wonder on his face, and Brian lowered
    his mouth, thinking once again that Tate’s lips were surprisingly
    soft. “I promise. I’m going to take such good care of you.”
    The kiss was brief, and Brian forced himself to go put on a pair
    of sleep shorts and a T-shirt. As he walked out of the bathroom,
    though, he heard Tate start to sing “And our love would have
    soared, over treetops over rooftops.…” to himself, and Brian
    wanted to turn around and hug him just for that alone.
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    O h G od, he’d missed hearing Talker sing.
    He restrained himself, and got the food from his trunk and
    made them omelets (which he was real y good at), and by the time
    Tate came down the hal , wearing brightly colored Iron Man boxer
    shorts (he had a collection—he seemed to favor superheroes and
    Scooby-Doo) and nothing else, there was food on the table, and the
    last of their milk in two glasses, and a bunch of pinks and daffodils
    and buttercups that had been growing up around Lyndie’s little
    cabin that she’d cut and sent with Brian in a wet paper towel.
    Brian had put them in a Big G ulp cup, because it was what
    they had, but they made the kitchen smel good, at least, and they
    made Tate smile.
    Brian smiled back and ducked his head, shyly, and turned
    around to dry his hands on a kitchen towel that had once been a
    tapestry calendar. Without warning, he felt Tate’s arms creeping
    around his waist, and Tate’s bare chest pressed up around his
    back.
    Brian brought his hand up to touch Tate’s hands, and Tate
    whispered, “Tell me I didn’t imagine it.”
    “You didn’t imagine it.”
    “Tell me it will be true in the morning.”
    “It’s been true for the last nine months—hel , the last two and a
    half years—I don’t know why it would change now.”
    Talker nodded, and rested his cheek against Brian’s shoulder.
    “O kay. I can eat now.”
    “G ood,” Brian said gruffly. “You’re getting too thin.”
    They sat and ate, much like they used to, and Talker told him
    about work and about the new DJ and about the cooks in the back
    who kept trying out new shit that tasted exactly like shit, and then
    he stopped.
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    “This is how it happened,” he said, looking at Brian. Brian
    stopped mid-bite and looked back.
    “This is how what happened?”
    “This is how I never knew. You just… you sit and listen. You
    never talk.”
    “I only talk when I’ve got something to say,” Brian said
    logical y, not sure how to fix this. He was talking as much as he
    could, now—it had to be enough, right?
    Talker nodded, and took a thoughtful bite of Brian’s omelet—
    he’d cleaned his plate, and Brian stil had butterflies in his stomach.
    “You know, I was thinking about C hristmas.”
    Brian flushed. “My gift was pretty lame,” he apologized. When
    they’d moved in, they couldn’t afford both the PG &E and the SMUD
    deposits. As a result, they’d had to make a choice between heat
    and light. They’d chosen light, and had spent much of their winter
    wrapped up in blankets. Brian had borrowed Lyndie’s sewing
    machine and a bunch of her old sheets and put together triple
    layers of old sheet, old fuzzy blanket from a thrift store, and another
    old sheet, and sewn it together into a sort of a poor man’s
    comforter, since he and Tate hadn’t ever seemed to get warm
    enough.
    “It was perfect,” Tate said, and Brian doubted it. “I especially
    liked the list of music you put on the card, the shit you’d buy me
    when you had the money. That.… Jesus. But that wasn’t what I
    was thinking about.”
    “Then what?”
    “The tree.”
    “What about it?”
    “I mention to you once, in like two years, that I’ve never been
    in my own home with my own C hristmas tree, and one night I get
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    back from work and you went out to your aunt’s and chopped down
    a tree. And you decorated it with club