Pivot

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

I knew after that first night Darren and I spent together that I wanted him in my life. I savored the taste of his c**k in my mouth, I loved being buried deep inside of him, and I enjoyed falling asleep beside him and waking up next to him. I fell hard for Coach Nichols. When we weren’t together, I thought about him constantly and when we were together, I was in heaven. My feelings for him scared me. I’d never felt as crazy about a man as I did for him. My worry was that he didn’t feel the same way about me. I couldn’t tell. He seemed to enjoy being with me and he kept coming back, but I wasn’t sure if I was just his latest greatest thing or if he truly wanted to be with me.

Maybe Darren and I should have done a little more talking and a little less f*****g during our first few weeks together, but we didn’t. After seeing each other for a month, he started bringing an overnight bag with him when he came to my condo. By the second month, he was spending most weekends with me. By the third month, he had keys to my place.

During those first months together, I’d been to Darren’s sister Deena’s house in Evanston only once. She lived in a townhouse not far from the Chicago border and neither she nor her daughter Ashley was home when I came by. I’d always thought Darren was joking about sleeping in his sister’s basement, but he was serious. He really did sleep in the basement on a sofa bed across from the washer and dryer. The basement was finished and the space wasn’t terrible, but I hated the thought of him sleeping there alone on a foldout bed when he could be sleeping with me at my condo in a huge, comfortable bed. The day after I went to his sister’s house, I had an extra set of keys made to my condo and the day after that, I gave those keys to Darren. As tempted as I was to ask him to pack his meager belongings and bring them to my place, I held back because I didn’t want to scare him off. He’d just come out of a live-in relationship and he didn’t seem anxious to get into another one. He seemed perfectly content to spend half the week in his sister’s basement and the other half at my place. At first I thought a lack of money was keeping Darren with Deena but I soon realized that wasn’t the issue. Although Darren didn’t make a six-figure salary as a public school teacher, he certainly made enough money to have his own place. He didn’t have many expenses either. His SUV was paid for and he didn’t seem to have any financial problems. No, I hadn’t seen his credit reports and I had no idea what his FICO score was, but he never complained about bills or debt—at least not to me—and he always had money. He also didn’t hesitate to pay for meals and/or drinks when we went out together. Sometimes I had to insist he let me pay and sometimes he did. He told me he wrote a check to his “landlord,” aka Deena, each month, but I doubted the amount was substantial. “Deena makes more money than I do!” he’d told me, explaining that his sister had a management position for an insurance company, so I figured she wasn’t dependent on the money he gave her. So why wasn’t Darren living alone? I suspected he liked living with someone else whether it was his boyfriend or his sister and niece. He could also be incredibly cheap and paying rent to his sister or splitting expenses with his lover was surely less expensive than covering everything by himself.

* * * *

Darren and I had been seeing each other for almost four months when an unexpected visitor showed up at my dental office. I had just finished filling my last cavity of the day when Lori, the receptionist, told me there was a woman waiting to see me.

“Is she a patient?”

“No. She said her name is Deena Nichols-Bryant and that you two have a dinner date.”

A chill ran down my spine. I’d never met Darren’s sister. I’d never even talked to her on the phone. I’d seen pictures of her and her daughter Ashley, who looked just like her only smaller and with glasses, but we’d never had any contact. I was slightly freaked out that she’d shown up at my office unannounced. Had she and Darren planned this? I couldn’t imagine him just springing his sister on me without any warning. That wasn’t his style, or at least I didn’t think it was. I wanted to call him, but I knew he had practice with his team that afternoon and I didn’t want to disturb him.

“Dr. Cross?” Lori said.

I cleared my throat. “Yes. Tell her I’ll be out in a minute, okay?”

Lori nodded and left my office. I don’t know why I was afraid to meet Deena, but I was. Darren had never given me any reason to believe his sister was a problem, but Darren wasn’t exactly a chatterbox when it came to talking about his family. Then again, neither was I when talking about mine. I would have loved to have met Deena with Darren present. A nice dinner or a few rounds of drinks with just the three of us would have been perfect, but the thought of being alone with her made me uneasy. I wanted Darren to be there as a buffer between us in case things went south. I reached for the phone to call him, but replaced the receiver in its cradle after a few seconds. I’d sound like an i***t if I went crying to Darren that I was afraid to meet with his sister. I had to man up and face her alone.

* * * *

Deena was seated in the lobby, scrolling through something on her iPhone when I saw her. She was dressed entirely in chocolaty shades of brown: a brown wool coat, a brown skirt, and brown leather boots. She looked up at me and rose from her chair. She was tall, just like her brother. No, she wasn’t six feet, but she was pretty damn close. I figured she clocked in around 5’9” or so, close to my own height. She and Darren looked a lot alike. They had the same caramel-colored skin and angular noses. She was very attractive and not just because she reminded me of Darren. She had dark hair that touched the top of her shoulders and pretty almond-shaped brown eyes.

“Dr. Cross, I presume?” she said, extending her hand to me. “I’m Deena Nichols-Bryant.”

“Please, call me Mark,” I said, taking her hand.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Mark.”

“Likewise.”

She told me she’d made dinner reservations for us at a restaurant a few blocks from my office. “I apologize for the short notice, but I really hope you’ll be able to join me,” she said.

“Yes, I will,” I told her. “Just let me get my coat.”

During our walk to the restaurant, Deena said, “Now I see why Darren kept you such a secret. He probably thought I’d hit on you.”

That made me laugh. “Do you often hit on gay men?”

“Only the good looking ones.” She winked at me then and laughed herself.

I liked her already.