Layla Does It
4
When Chay got back to the apartment, he was already filled with the anxiety Noah held about Steven finding the clip of the video. He wanted to talk to Sheridan about it, but when he came up the stairs and entered the apartment, Sheridan was sitting there with Meredith.
“We were so worried about you,” Chay said to her, and as he sat down beside her, he imagined Meredith was worried about him too. She had a strange look on her face.
“Things are over with me and Mathan, and… I’m dealing with that. But… I should go.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Chay said.
“You should stay as long as you want.”
“I have,” Meredith said, standing up and looking nervous. “I’m going to my sister’s for the night.”
“Well… alright,” Chay said.
He walked Meredith to the door, and squeezed her hand.
“If you need anything just call.”
Then she kissed him and said, “The same with you, Chay.”
Meredith closed the door behind her, and Chay turned
around to look at Sheridan who was wringing his hands. “We need to talk, Chay,” Sheridan said.
Chay looked him up and down.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was getting that feeling.”
The three women collapsed on the bed, heads swimming with booze.
“Are we going to do this shit?” Claire demanded.
“Not us,” Dena leaned across Layla and slapped Claire’s wrist, “Layla.”
“Well, of course, you all will be accompanying me,” Layla said. “After all, how can I go anywhere without…. ”
“Your soul sisters!” they finished.
“You better talk to Caroline about that,” Claire said. “Since she is your real sister.”
Dena covered her mouth and gasped.
“What?” both women turned to her.
“You should have invited Laurel!”
“She will laugh her ass off!”
“Bring her.”
“I will,” Layla said. “All she’s doing is looking after Dylan, and I love him, but that must get dull as fuck.”
Layla thought about the other night, Lance Bishop running out half dressed from Dylan’s room. And then she decided it was better not to talk about that. He was her cousin, Fenn’s child, and she wanted to look after him because Fenn had looked after her.
“What’s that buzzing?” Claire wondered drunkenly. “It feels good. Kind of. But…”
“It’s my phone,” Dena said, “Roll up, bitch.”
“My ass is so fat,” Claire commented as she rolled off of Dena’s phone and handed it to her.
“We love you anyway,” Layla said.
“You’re supposed to say, no your ass isn’t fat at all. And where do you get off saying I have a fat ass?”
“I have a black ass, not a fat ass.’
“Both of you fat bitches shush,” Dena said, answering the phone.
“Hello… Meredith… Honey, I’m not there. Just crash over there. Milo’ll be glad—”
Claire and Layla looked at each other and then at Dena.
“Alright,” Dena said. “Well just come here. Love you too.
“Meredith is coming here,” Dena said, closing the phone.
“Well,” Layla muttered, “she better let herself in, cause I cannot motherfucking stand up.”
Casey Williams chose to ignore what had to be a dream. He could hear the repeated thumping, and then he could hear the bell ringing. Now he was blinking, and he thought, who but an idiot would answer a door this late at night?
He climbed out of bed, feeling the pain of approaching age take its toll on an active life. Putting on his glasses, he looked out of the window and the headlights of Sheridan Klasko’s car were on.
The doorbell rang again.
Casey Williams pulled on sweat pants and reached for his tee shirt as he went out of the room and down the steps.
When he opened the door, Chay Lewis stood there before him with a grin and said, “You don’t look like a porn star.”
“It’s the glasses,” Casey said, opening the door for him, and closing it behind Chay.
“What are you doing here?”
“Uh… Sheridan asked me to move in with him the other day, and then I’d been there a day and he told me that it was over and now he is with—”
“Logan.”
Chay blinked.
Casey nodded.
“I thought so. I knew it. I kind of should have seen it.”
“I didn’t know who else to come to.”
“You come to me,” Casey said, putting his hand to the small of Chay’s back and steering him toward the kitchen. “Nothing’s changed between us. Come on in.”
“Me too. I’m too tired for anything else,” Kenny said.
“I forgot how nice this old apartment was. New apartment, I guess.”
“And they keep in clean.”
“I thought they’d give it to Dylan,” Kenny told Chad. Then he thought, Not much chance of that now.
The coffee was brewing in the maker beside the microwave and Kenny said, “I feel so tired and so dirty.”
“Take a shower. I’m not going anywhere.”
So Kenny nodded and said, “I won’t be long.”
He disappeared into the half bedroom and, as Chad took off his coat he thought a little bit about going in and taking a look, and then Kenny came out in a towel and slipped into the bathroom. Chad sat down on the couch and a few moments later Kenny was laughing and there was a cup of coffee, and Chad was inhaling its deep aroma.
“You completely passed out,” Kenny told him. “You didn’t even take your coat off. Let me help you.”
Kenny put down the cup of coffee on the little table before Chad, and took his car coat away to hang on the hook by the door.
“You smell nice,” Chad said to Kenny.
“Well, now I’m clean.”
Kenny was wearing sweatpants and a tee shirt, and his dark auburn curls were springing back after the shower. “You don’t smell so bad yourself,” he grinned at him.
“Well, I had the chance to wash before I came to the show, you see.”
He sipped from the cup. “Excellent!”
“Well, I was a barista for three weeks.”
“I don’t know why I thought I had a right to Bryant.”
“Do you want him back?”
“I want us to be friends again.” Chad shrugged. “I don’t know.
“How do you feel about Brendan?”
“I don’t feel anyway about him,” Kenny said. “Not now.”
They sat there a while and then Chad said, “I’m glad I haven’t been drinking, that way you know this comes from the heart…”
“Yes?”
“You’ve got the reddest fucking lips I’ve ever seen, Kenneth McGrath.”
Kenny laughed out loud and said, “Thanks.”
“Can I kiss them?”
Kenny blinked, and then Chad went a little red, waved it off and said, “I overstepped. I was just—”
“Yeah,” Kenny said, lightly. “You can.”
Without missing a beat, Chad reached up and pulled Kenny by the collar, then kissed him on the mouth.
“That’s nice,” Kenny said.
Chad looked down at Kenny’s erection pitched a tent in his joggers.
“Apparently…”
Chad kissed him again and then Kenny came down so they could make out better.
“Are we going to do this?” Chad said, pulling away from Kenny’s mouth, and then kissing him again.
As Chad’s mouth sucked on his throat, and Chad’s hands went up and down his body, Kenny’s hands went to Chad’s back, running his hands over the fabric of his shirt.
“It seems like we are,” Kenny said.
When they were both naked, Kenny tried not to think because thinking too much about making love to Chad North scared him. They’d known each other a long time, and he knew that Brendan had been involved with him long ago. He’d been curious about Chad, and now here he was; small and slim and sort of beautiful, beautiful for his ordinariness, for the little bit of belly and his body trimmed in black hair. Chad was kissing him on his mouth, and down his neck, up and down his chest, between his thighs, all up and down his legs. Gently, Chad took Kenny’s penis in his hand and then, deftly guided it into him, placing his hands on Kenny’s chest. Their bodies moved together slowly, rocking as Chad craned back, and Kenny leaned up so that their faces were pressed together, so that they held on to each other wanting the particular warmth of the other, wanting to press themselves together as much as possible. Slowly they increased their fucking, Kenny’s hands running over his shoulders, Chad’s hands reaching up to grasp his. They didn’t leave the sofa. They wanted it right here. As Chad got up and moved so that he leaned over the sofa, so that Kenny could enter him from behind, for a brief moment he wondered if they would be alright, if they could survive this. Maybe it would make them better friends. Chad made noises like being stabbed while Kenny fucked him, and as the noise quickened and Chad reached back to pull him in, Kenny thought that he had been thinking entirely too much, and he’d been living his life for the future. Now, as he and Chad rose to the edge of orgasm, Kenny bending to kiss his neck, Chad leaned up to kiss his mouth, and knew that the time for thinking had passed.
IN THE MORNING, NOAH discovered, as he got dressed and showered, that he was not angry. The old Noah Riley, he reflected while straightening his tie would have been angry at Steven for being stupid, at his mother for being spiteful, at Guy for leaving the videos up. He would have directed his temper toward anyone in the world but himself.
James was just as different for, usually even tempered, as he dressed he murmured, “Close minded…. wanting to stick cameras in everyone’s bedroom…”
This last wasn’t quite true, Noah, thought. After all, he had been the one who all too eagerly went before a camera.
“These people,” James was declaring as he sat on the side of the bed, “are so concerned with what you did in your private life, long ago, they don’t even care about good teaching.”
Noah tried to make a joke of it and shrugged, his curls bouncing a little. “Who says I’m a good teacher?”
There was a knock, or more of a thump downstairs, and James said, “I’ll get it.”
When he came down it was Paul at the door with Kirk beside him.
“We’re coming for support.”
“Great,” James said, and closed the door behind him.
But when Noah came down, he said, “Well, that’s just too much. All three of you, and Chay? Where is Chay?”
“He said he’d be here,” James noted, and because it wasn’t like Chay to not keep his word, James really began to wonder where his son was.
“What time’s the meeting?”
“At ten,” Noah said.
“Well, then we’ll just wait a few more minutes.”
Paul asked, “Who’s taking your classes today?”
Noah, a little stunned, shook his head and shrugged. “A sub, I guess. I don’t know.”
A few moments later, Sheridan’s car made a dangerous pull up to the house and then, disheveled, Chay hopped out and came up the steps to the house.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Noah, instantly recognizing something wrong with his son, replied, “It’s all right. What happened to you?”
Chay shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m ready to go…” He looked around “Seems everyone is ready to go.”
James touched Chay’s hand, and guided him into the next room.
“What’s going on?”
“Whaddo you mean?” Chay’s attempt to lie made him look vapid.
James’ face hardened.
Chay was blunt: “Sheridan ended it.”
“What?” James honestly felt like he hadn’t heard.
“Sheridan ended it,” Chay repeated.
“But he just started it—and I mean, he was the one who just started it—a few days ago.”
“I know, but then Logan came back, and he’s in love with Logan and—”
“That little son of a bitch,” James commented.
“It’s not like that,” Chay said in a tender voice.
“Of course it’s like that,” James’ voice was low and matter of fact.
He stood there, making a decision.
“You need one of your parents right now. Maybe I should tell Noah to go on with Kirk and Paul.”
“Tell Noah what?” Noah had come into the room now.
“It’s nothing,” Chay said.
Noah looked to James and then said, “Is it the sort of nothing you should stay here for?”
“It’s the sort of nothing where I’ll get in the back of the car and go with you,” Chay decided, standing up. “Let’s go. I can’t just sit here by myself.”
Paul and Kirk drove in the blue van behind them, and Chay was in the backseat of the car as James drove. The drive was short, but long enough for Noah to learn about Sheridan and he only said, “Well, we’ll come by and help you take your stuff back.”
It made Noah feel better to be a father, to get away from his immediate troubles and turn to nurturing someone else. By the time he came into the school and then to the dean’s office, he was almost calm.
“It’s just like being called into the principal,” Paul whispered.
“It is being called into the principal,” James told him.
“Principal Brown will see you now,” Marsha said, and even though he’d met her a thousand times and this wasn’t her fault, Noah hated her a little.
The five of them, Chay at the rear, went in, and a prim, disapproving man sat on the desk facing them. He held a jewel case containing a DVD that he patted nervously against his thigh, and this was his only sign of agitation, or life for that matter.
“Mr. Riley,” he said, handing him the DVD. “I have seen this, and this is not the appropriate place for viewing it. Please take this home, and if this is you, then call me as soon as possible.
“It probably is me,” Noah found himself saying, “So when I call you, what is the next step?”
“The next step is termination of your employment by the City of Rossford School system.”
Even though Noah thought he was ready for that, he still blinked. In his gut he shivered a little.
“All right,” he nodded. “Well, I guess you might as well do that.”
“I need you to confirm it,” Principal Brown said.
“Well, alright,” Noah shrugged, taking the DVD.
“Can I say something?” Chay spoke.
The principal blinked, seeming to just notice the younger man.
“Chay Lewis?”
“Yes,” Chay stepped beside his father. “You saw this, right?”
“I saw it in private.”
“Then that makes you like ninety percent of the people who saw it, and if you saw it with some lotion and a sock, it makes you like a little bit more.”
“Chay,” Noah murmured.
“If you spent more time concentrating on getting good teachers and less time on tattle tales about the past, this school system might not be crumbling around our ears.”
Noah was about to lightly reprimand his son, but James murmured, “Here, here.”
“Well, if you’re quite through,” Mr. Brown began, “then good day to you.”
“I’m almost through, which is not the same as quite,” said Chay.
Then he said: “Kiss my black ass and rot.
“Now, I’m through. And good day to you.”
Chay saluted him, and then turned around and walked out muttering, “I’ll be in the car.”
