Deceit

"It's the summer break," Andy continued. "I stayed on to continue my piano studies—although the oboe is my favorite instrument. I was playing pickup at Club Pantheon to make ends meet. And then Mr. Evans said he'd pay me to be your companion."

"And that's worth being only with me?"

"It's a pile. It's enough to cover my first semester tuition next year too." But Andy faltered here, suddenly realizing what this meant in terms of his budding relationship to Earl. His ready yielding to Earl wasn't an act. "But I didn't know then how it would be with you," he said, speaking shyly and looking into his cup rather than up into Earl's eyes. Earl was close beside him, also only in a robe, arms of the two around each other's shoulders, and one of Andy's legs hooked on Earl's knee. Earl was cupping Andy's balls with his free hand and absentmindedly pulling down on them and stroking the young man's stiffening cock with his forefinger. Andy slid down a bit in his chair and moved his leg higher on Earl's thigh, giving Earl access to more than the dick and balls. Earl's forefinger moved below the balls, between the buttocks, searching for and finding the warm depths of the channel. Finding it and entering. Andy groaned and leaned his face into Earl's for a deep kiss. Andy had been open to Earl like this from the start, no inhibitions, no pulling back—whatever Earl wanted to do, wherever he wanted to do it.

Earl was sitting straight on to the large bow window with a view of the leafy green branches beyond. The extended kitchen was on the second floor of the three-story townhouse. An entrance, study and laundry room and a double garage, opening to the rear of the house, was under them.

When they came out of the kiss and Earl's middle finger joined his forefinger in the depths of Andy's ass cleavage and, to sighs from Andy, he began moving them in and out, Earl looked around the kitchen extending into this dining area and then across the stair landing into the living room, seeing the place for the first time, and admiring the furnishings. They were both stylish and comfortable. This was a place he could live—with Andy.

He took his hand from Andy's channel, but only long enough to untie the sash of Andy's robe, to let his chest be exposed, to run his hand up the hard-muscled torso of the young man, stopping briefly at the taut nipples, before returning to playing with his balls and hard dick and moving to his rim.

"No, keep the money. And I'll be happy to provide more for your second semester." He didn't want to say at that moment what that meant to him in terms of their ongoing arrangement, but he assumed Andy would get the gist of it. He had no idea why Clifford would give Andy so much money to do this, but he didn't want to think about that now. He wanted to think back to when he was a graduate student here and living with Sandy—and aching for that arrangement never to end. But it had. He'd come from an entirely different world and he'd gone back to it. It had been his decision, not Sandy's.

Had it been a good decision? If he had it to do all over again, would he have stayed? Could he just stay here now—with Andy? He certainly had enough money set aside that no one in his other world knew about that he could do that now. Would he let this second chance pass him by?

"Fuck me, please fuck me," Andy murmured. He untied Earl's sash, and reached for his cock, which was in full erection.

"Now, later, tomorrow, always," Earl whispered.

"Are you saying I could stay here with you?" Andy asked. Earl turned his face to him. There were tears in his eyes. He didn't really have to say anything for Andy to understand. Thus far Andy hadn't asked anything about Earl's life. But now he did.

"You're not married or anything, are you? No children. I wouldn't be breaking up a family or anything, would I?"

"No, I'm not married—and I don't have any children." The deceit readily came out of Earl's mouth, but of course this changed everything. This shattered his new world. He could continue with Andy, but now it would be a relationship built on deception. Would that eat away at him? Would it make him constantly think about the responsibilities and obligations he'd walked away from in Delaware? He had been telling himself that it was only a breather, a way to regroup so that he could come back even stronger in fighting Delmarva Pharmaceuticals for control of his company and for arming him better to face his problems with his family objectively and without bitterness.

Would the deception he had just levied change everything? He didn't want to think about it now.

"I think I'd like to go upstairs, now," he said huskily.

There were many things Andy could have done at that point. He could have said he wasn't finished with his breakfast. Indeed, his plate wasn't clean and his coffee cup wasn't empty. Or he could have used the occasion to wheedle more privilege or leverage from the middle-aged man across the table from him. Or he could have whined about just being Earl's sex toy. But what he did—which made him so much like Sandy and which mentally transported Earl back to the days he remembered as so much happier than any time since—was to give Earl a radiant smile.

"Why not right here?"

"Why indeed not?" Earl answered with a throaty laugh "Both here and upstairs. Sit on it."

Andy rose from his chair, straddled Earl's thighs, and reached back to how Earl's cock steady and upright so that he could descend on it. Earl reached over to the tabletop to retrieve one of the many condom packets he kept around the house.

Later, Andy was lying on his back at the foot of the bed, his legs spread and bent, his heels pressed into the edge of the mattress when Earl came out of the master bath. "Shit, it's big. God, I want it deep inside me," he murmured at Earl advanced, naked toward him, the young man's words making Earl's erection harden even more.

The young man lifted and spread his legs. He also spread his arms in total welcome for the mature man's body moving between his thighs. Andy had the condom ready and reached down and used both hand to roll it on Earl's cock, as Earl grasped Andy's ankles and wishboned his legs. Andy rolled up his hips and, still grasping the long, thick shaft in both hands, pulled Earl into him—deep inside him. Andy's hips began to move and so did Earl's. Until now it had been all Andy's instigation, leaving no uncertainty what he wanted from Earl, that he was willing to yield all to Earl.

Earl began a long, deep pump, his mind moving back thirty years to his time with Sandy. Tomorrow he would think about where he was and where he should be going from here. For now he was content to live his past with Sandy.

"Oh shit, oh fuck, I'm gonna come," Andy cried out as he did just that.

So did Earl.

* * * *

Earl continued for another week, but he couldn't get his deceit out of his mind. Andy's only expressed concern with living with him was an unselfish one for others they might hurt. Earl tried to rationalize that neither his wife nor his children cared where he was and what he was doing—he was unaware of any effort to find him. But he knew that wasn't fair. The women in his family were just spoiled—and he had spoiled them. And he'd done everything he could to keep them from finding him. The secret bank account in itself was proof of his deceitfulness.

His untruthfulness with Andy festered. There wasn't anything in what Andy was doing—he was as yielding and vocally grateful for their relationship as ever. And there was never a hint that he didn't want Earl when Earl wanted him.

After a few days, Earl was increasingly aware that he was letting not just his family but also his workers down by not fighting for his company. As far as he knew Delmarva Pharmaceuticals only wanted it to gut it and do away with the competition—and its workers. He found he was giving himself the same pep talk of his responsibilities and that he was the one to save the day that his father had given him more than thirty years ago when he hinted that perhaps he would stay in Charleston and not come home to Wilmington to work in the family business.

He had left Sandy then. Toward the end of the week, Earl realized he would leave Andy too—just like he left Sandy. Not because he wanted to but because of his sense of obligation. The inevitability of it festered and then he was gone.

Andy was going to the college in the afternoons now for piano lessons and to practice on his oboe. He seemed quite happy, and the two of them were settling into a routine. They still had sex, but not as often as at first and certainly not with any atmosphere of frenzy, as if it were fleeting.

One of those afternoons Earl took his suitcase to the Lexus and drove out of town, without a look back. He wanted to think it wasn't leaving Andy just as he had left Sandy—without an explanation that he didn't have the fortitude to give face to face. It wasn't like that, he rationalized, because there were five months left on the lease and he had arranged for Andy to be able to stay on in the house, and because he had left a hefty sum of money—enough to see Andy through to the next summer—on the mantel in the living room, with a note assuring one and all that it was Andy's to use as he saw fit.

But, really, it was just like how he had left Sandy. He had been given a second chance at the lifestyle that made him feel alive. And he had given it up.

He made it nearly as far as Georgetown, south of Myrtle Beach, on highway 17 when it hit him how stupid he was. He turned the car around and sped back toward Charleston. He turned the corner of Radcliffe Street, ready to enter the alley behind his row of Simonton Mews townhouses, when he saw Andy get into the back of a limousine parked on the side of Radcliffe. It was Clifford Evans' limousine.

When he entered the house, Earl found his note to Andy crumpled and laying on the floor in front of the fireplace and the money he had left intact on the mantel. Nothing had been taken from the house other than what Andy had brought there with him—including none of the gifts Earl had given him over the past week and a half.

Earl remained in the house for two nights thereafter before getting in his car and driving north. But Andy didn't return. Neither could Earl find him at Club Pantheon in the evenings.

* * * *

"No, I certainly won't sign it," Earl yelled. He was standing behind his desk at his Washington Street company administrative offices in Wilmington, Delaware, and facing down his bank of lawyers who were telling him that the takeover had been finalized in his absence.

"You weren't here, Earl," his chief lawyer said. "They had all of the cards. Your wife said to go ahead."

"I'm here now."

"It's too late, Earl. Perhaps if you'd been here last week—"

"They will have to take it without my signature," Earl declared.

"Gentlemen. If you give Mr. Hastings and me the room for a few minutes, I think this can be resolved."

All turned to the door, where a member of the Delmarva Pharmaceuticals team Earl's lawyers had been negotiating unsuccessfully with over the past week stood in the doorway to Earl's office.

The lawyers looked displeased and apprehensive. For his part, Earl looked apoplectic. The man standing in his doorway was Clifford Evans.

"It's all over, Earl," Clifford said after the lawyers filed out. "You might as well sign. The opposition is fruitless and, if you don't put an accepting face on it, your employees will start deserting before we can merge the work. If they do, there won't be compensation packages for them."

"You set this up. You and Andy."

"Not Andy. He didn't know anything of what was happening. But, yes, I set it up. Did you think I was giving you a free ride down in Charleston? Surely you knew there would be a piper to pay."

"You devil."

"No, just a good businessman, Earl. Now, I think it would be in your interest to sign the documents. You wouldn't want your family and colleagues to know what you were doing down in Charleston, would you? Do you really want to face that on top of everything else?"

"How did you find me?"

"We do very good research on the companies we acquire, Earl. Our psychologists told us you would likely retreat to where you had been happy in a gay lifestyle. And that's where we found you. Charleston. The research also revealed what sort of man attracted you. Both Tony and Andy were selected on that basis. But I repeat that neither of them knew why we were buying their time to service you. And we made it very worth their while to do so."

"You bastard!"

"Just sign the documents, Earl. I'm sorry it had to be done this way. I liked you. After you've signed, go home. I think you'll want to go home."

After he signed, Earl didn't feel like staying around in the office any longer—this despite the arrangement being that he would stay on as vice president of the division of Delmarva Pharmaceuticals that his company was becoming. Evans told him he would be needed for the transition, and Earl knew that that was the truth—that it would be very difficult for Delmarva to figure out his company's processes and functions without him. But he had news for them. He fight for his employees compensation packages and all of his energies would go into finding work for any of them who Delmarva wouldn't take.

But he wouldn't stay in Wilmington. He didn't know where he'd go, but he could fight for his employees from anywhere in the States.

He got in his car and drove home to the house in Wawaset. His wife wouldn't be there. She obviously hated the house so much that she had already gone to one of her family's homes. And the girls were on summer holiday skiing in Switzerland. His absence had not exactly broken the family out of their normal routines.

As he drove down his street, ready to turn into his driveway, he abruptly stopped and then slowly pulled the Lexus over to the curb. He got out and turned to look toward the sidewalk over the hood of the car, not quite believing what he saw or coming closer for few that the specter of Andy would vanish before his eyes.

"Hi," Andy said in a low voice.

"God, I'm so sorry, Andy. I never meant to . . ."

"I know. Mr. Evans told me that my job had been to keep you from going back to Delaware before some sort of business deal went through. I swear I didn't have anything to do with that."

"I know you didn't, but how did you find me?"

"Back in Charleston. When I came to care—not just for the fucking, but to care for you—I found your wallet and looked in it and saw who you really were, where you came from, what your address here was, and . . ."

"And that I lied to you. I deceived you. You found that I had a family. Photographs in my wallet."

"Yes," Andy said in a small voice. He was looking at the ground. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have looked in your wallet. I just wanted it to be . . ."

"But it wasn't, was it, Andy? I told you I was free—because that was what you wanted to hear and because I didn't want to lose you—and I lied. But you stayed then."

"Yes, by then it didn't matter. By then I would do anything you wanted, no matter who else might get hurt. And I lied too—Mr. Evans told me to. My name's Erick, not Andy."

"How did you get here from Charleston?"

"Mr. Evans brought me. He said something about regretting what he had to do and at least giving you an option. He brought me right here and told me to stand here until you came home. If you didn't come, or if I have to go now, he'll take me to the airport. He's parked down the street."

Earl looked down the street, and, sure enough, Clifford's limousine was parked at the curb.

"And you did that? Even though I deceived you and abandoned you?"

"Yes. None of that matters."

Earl came around the hood of the car and embraced Erick, who no longer was Andy, not caring whether his neighbors saw him embrace another man or not. When they pulled away from a kiss, he put his mouth beside Erick's ear and said, "Can I give you a lift back to Charleston? I have a six-month lease on the townhouse but an option to buy."

"Yes, please," Erick answered. Both men were crying.

Earl heard the engine start up in Clifford's limousine, and his heart raced as the car pulled away from the curb, happily closing out on his options.