As told by Eli McBride

“Hey, Li.”

He half-smiled, as always, but he looked deadly tired. I recognized the subtle wrinkle between his eyebrows, even though he was making an effort to look cheerful. Something had certainly happened at home.

I'd find out during the evening. He would do his best to put on a happy face for as long as possible so as not to ruin our night and pretend everything was breezy, but I knew he needed to vent. I was there for him, and I would do whatever I could to make him feel better. I just needed to be patient and let him process whatever it was until he was ready to tell me. With some gentle encouragement, he'd let it out.

His asshole father was surely behind it. I hated that guy so much that just thinking about him made my heart race. The haunting fear that I might again have been part of the reason why his father belittled him this time turned my stomach. He noticed my discomfort at once.

“Are you okay?” he asked with so much concealed concern in his voice. Oh, my love. He shouldn't be worrying about me.

“Of course I am,” I chirped, grabbing his hand and leading him to the living room. “Pizzas are on the way, and I was thinking we could order some ice cream.”

“That won't be necessary,” he said, showing me a bag of groceries with great pride. I smirked. I knew what he was up to, but I played along anyway.

“And what's this, if I may ask?” I said, peeking inside and pretending to be deeply interested in the contents of the mystery bag.

“Just junk food,” he said, nonchalantly, waiting for me to realize what I already knew.

“Junk food. Right. That's funny. This looks like a selection of ingredients meant specifically to make… let's say…”

I peeked one more time and clicked my tongue. He giggled like a kid.

“Raspberry cheesecake brownies?”

“Guilty as charged. Now move,” he said, smiling widely as he pushed me away. “You're blocking the way to your beautiful kitchen.”

“Hey!” I whined. “And here I was, thinking you came for the pleasure of my company.”

“Aren't you naive,” he answered, winking at me over his shoulder with a mischievous smile.

My heart skipped a beat. Or two.

I took a quick glance at the mirror and frowned. My hair was starting to go wild again, and now it looked greasy under the weight of the hairstyling cream. Damn it. I pushed it down and followed Nathan into the kitchen.

He had spread the ingredients on the table and was preparing everything with evident pleasure. I enjoyed seeing him so relaxed. He loved baking, but his father wouldn't allow him to cook at home. The bigoted jerk controlled Nathan's levels of manliness almost compulsively and considered that gastronomy was not macho enough for his prehistoric standards.

I jumped on the counter and crossed my legs. He barely noticed me. He was absorbed in his craft. 

“I'm here if you need me,” I offered, as I always did. “Although you know I'm pretty much useless when it comes to making that sickeningly sweet stuff of yours.”

“Just stay there and watch. Who knows, you might actually learn something this time, Mr. Takeout.”

I punched him lightly on the arm. He chuckled.

Then hesitated.

And hesitated some more.

“My… my mom says hi, by the way.”

Oh, boy. There it was.

“Awww, that's sweet,” I said, looking away. “So… how's Adela doing?”

He whipped the cream with a little more energy than needed.

“The usual,” he answered, his voice rasp. He cleared his throat and continued. “She and my father argued today. Which means that she wept in my arms while he screamed at us.”

Oh, Natei. I wanted to curse that man. I wanted to use every foul word in the dictionary. But I knew this was a delicate conversation, and I had to be as composed as possible if I wanted him to tell me the whole story.

“What happened?”

“It was my fault. Again,” he sighed. I cringed. He was so quick to blame himself for everything that jerk did. “My dad had a meeting, he was supposed to be out all day. It was my day off, so I convinced ma to let me make her favorite cake.”

He poured the contents of the bowl into a container and put it in the fridge, carefully taking longer than necessary, so he could hide his face behind the door.

“As it turned out, his meeting got rescheduled, so he came back home early.”

“And caught you red-handed.”

“Red velvet-handed, actually,” he joked. There was no humor in his voice. “He lost his shit. He blamed her for the disgraceful state of her son. He made me throw away all my baking supplies.”

“What?”

He emerged from the fridge, closed the door, and looked at me, somber.

“My apron, my blender, my wooden spoons, my cupcake molds, my cake pans. Even that awesome set of spices you gave me for my birthday. It's all gone.”

I stared at him, mouth open. He looked away and went back to his brownies.

“He said baking is forbidden in the house from now on. And I cannot use the kitchen anymore, not even to help ma with the dishes. So yeah. That's that.”

I couldn't hold my anger any longer. It was ridiculous!

“OH. MY. GOD!” I whined, furious. “I can't believe your father actually forbade baking! It’s insane! And he threw all those things away? What if your mother needs to use them?”

“He said her duty is to cook for meals, not wasting money and time on pastries. Dude's so terrified of having a sissy son that he tries to remove every feminine influence on me. Because you know, a woman's place is in the kitchen… and I gotta be a man.”

He spoke quietly. Expressionless. The small surge of anger at the beginning of his story had died. He was resigned to his circumstances, or even worse, he felt he deserved them.

My heart shrank. 

He was in a fragile state of mind now. It had taken all he had to tell me the whole story. I wanted to hug him tight and comfort him, but I knew that a pity fest would do more harm than good. It might even trigger him. We both knew that there was no real solace in words. So I chose to play jester; try to lighten the mood before continuing.

“Goodness! It's good he caught you making just a plain cake…”

He turned, confused.

“His brain would have imploded if he knew about last week… The Night of the Fifty Seven Rainbow Muffins.”

He stared at me for a couple of seconds and burst out laughing. He had indeed baked fifty-seven muffins in my kitchen the previous Saturday, in an unhinged attempt to master the rainbow dough technique. I had spent a week providing colorful afternoon snacks to my whole office.

The laughter drowned his sadness; moreover, now that he had talked about it, he felt light. I knew him so well. I could tell from his expression. The wrinkles between his eyebrows were gone. Making Nate laugh was healthy for him and an endorphin thrill for me. So I doubled the bet.

“You laugh, but your father is a wise man, you know,” I declared, imitating the hoarse voice of a very respectable, very homophobic gentleman. “Don't you underestimate the evil power of sugar, boy!”

“Damn right, old man!” he answered, chuckling. He leaned on the counter, next to me. “Sugar is a one-way street… a street that apparently leads to dick.”

We kept making up stupid sugar-dick jokes for a while. He didn't look grim anymore. He was back on his feet. He looked so young, so… his own age, when I managed to make him forget the heavy burden he carried, even if it only was for a couple of minutes.

I stared at him, as he blabbed pun after pun, and I forgot to listen for a moment. I loved him so much. I wondered how he could be blind to it. I felt so strongly I feared it would come through, and reach out to him.

As if he had read my thoughts, he looked at me and stopped talking. He smiled. With that strange, impossible-to-decipher expression that he showed me sometimes.

We looked at each other's eyes in silence for a couple of seconds that felt eternal, and I realized I had to snap out of it or I'd lean in and screw up 14 years of friendship.

“Anyway!” I chirped, jumping down the counter to go check the oven as if I had the slightest clue of what to check for. “There must be something wrong with the sugar-dick theory, though. Look at me, gayspecimen number 1. I only get sugar when you drag me to Darcy's.”

He cleared his throat and went to the fridge to get the cream.

“Then you're gaying wrong, man. At least according to Robert's New Testament.”

I scoffed and crossed my arms as dramatically as I could.

“Doubt it. I've been great at it for 24 years now, thank you very much.”

He shook his head and laughed. He seemed relaxed. Now he was in a better place to actually talk about what worried him, so I dared to pick up the topic again.

“Natei, your father… he's gotten worse, hasn't he?”

Nate hesitated and thought about it.

“Not really. He actually calmed down a bit when I cut my hair short and started dating Amanda.”

“Don't mention your hair, please. It's too soon,” I begged, clutching my chest and pretending to be in pain. He shrugged, smiling. I loved his unruly mane, and he knew it. He was indifferent about my grief; he was clearly tired from all the not-taking care of it and had chopped it all off without a  warning.

“His firm is about to score a big fish, and he wants to have his conservative ducklings in a straight row. Pun intended.”

“Who's the big fish?”

“Senator Ainhardt Wentsworth.”

“Whoa!” I exclaimed. I recognized the name; it appeared on the news constantly. He was linked to dubious situations a little too often. “Isn't he the golden boy of the city's Conservative Party?”

“Yup. He's got all the virtues: hardcore Christian, public political activist against gay marriage and pro-choice, enforcer of the new No-Outsiders immigration law…”

“And I assume, a big believer in the sugar-dick theory.”

“Most likely.”

“That's a big-ass fish.”

“It's a fucking shark, man. These are ready,” he announced, taking the brownies out of the oven with a proud smile.

As he busied around the brownies, something clicked. Why was he telling me so much about this senator guy? Why on Earth did he know so many details? He was so uninterested in politics he’d actually hesitate if you asked him who was our current president.

Oh. Wait.

Senator Ainhardt Wentsworth.

Amanda Wentsworth.

Oh, my God.