Chapter 3
The Italian restaurant was small but crowded to overflowing. But even though there were a ton of customers, either seated or waiting for a table, the moment that Pike appeared the pretty hostess smiled widely and called out to him. “Pike! Gino’s in the back! Did you come to see him?”
“Not tonight, Angela,” Pike told her. “I’m here on a date. I need a table.”
Astonishment ran over her pretty face, and she looked at Rupert as though trying to see what about him was so special as to have caused this unheard of phenomenon. “Well, then, come with me,” she said, and led them to a tiny table in a corner shaded by a plant. “I’ll bring you menus,” she said. “Although you’ll probably get your normal, right, Pike?”
“Probably,” he replied. “Thanks, Angela.”
“No problem. Have fun on your…date…tonight,” with another incredulous look at Rupert, she departed to snag them some menus.
“Sorry about that,” Pike remarked to him. “They’ve never seen me bring a guy in here before.”
“Well, since you said nobody’s ever asked you out on a date before…did you mean that you’ve never actually gone on a date before when you said that? Ever?”
Pike nodded. “That’s right. Never saw the point of it before this.”
“Then why did you say yes when I asked you out?” Rupert asked in puzzlement.
Pike shrugged. “I dunno. Curiosity, I guess. I mean, not only did you keep my number for two months, you actually called me and asked me out. Why? I can’t be your usual type of man, Rupert.”
“Well, you’re not,” he conceded. “But I guess I asked you out for the same reason that you said yes - curiosity. I’ve never met anyone quite like you before, Pike.”
“Yeah, I’m unique,” Pike agreed with a grin. “So we can satisfy each other’s curiosity. As good a reason as any to go on a date, I suppose.”
The girl Angela returned with menus, which Pike took from her with a smile. “Thanks, precious. Tell Gino to come out and say hi,” he told her.
“I will, but he’s really busy. He might not be able to.”
“Well, if he can’t, he can’t. Thanks for the menus.”
She returned to her hostessing duties, and Pike flipped his menu open. “My friend Gino’s family owns this place,” he explained to Rupert. “They make great Italian food, and almost everybody in the family works here in one capacity or another. I think they consider me another son, since I’m Gino’s friend. What do you want to eat? Everything is good, I swear.”
Rupert studied his menu. Pike scanned his, but finally closed it. “Think I’ll have my usual,” he commented. “Calamari. Gino’s Momma cooks it just right.”
“The lasagna sounds good,” Rupert said.
“It is. Ah, Antonio, how’s they hangin’, man?” Pike said cheerfully to the waiter who’d arrived at their table.
“Pike! Good to see you. How’s your bar?”
“Shitty, as usual,” Pike said with a grin.
“So what’ll it be?” he poised pen over paper, glancing curiously at Rupert.
“My usual. And bring me a beer. Rupert here wants the lasagna. What do you want to drink?” He asked with a glance at Rupert.
“Err, water will be fine,” Rupert said.
Pike eyed him. “You don’t want any wine or beer?”
“No, thank you,” he replied politely.
“Okay. One fried calamari, one lasagna, one beer, one…water,” Antonio the waiter remarked, also giving Rupert a rather sideways stare. Then he grinned at Pike. “Coming right up.” he departed with their menus, as Pike looked at Rupert across the table.
“Don’t you like wine, Rupert? Or beer?”
He fiddled with his napkin. “I don’t know whether I like them or not,” he said slowly.
Pike’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
Rupert sighed. “I don’t drink.”
“Not ever?!” Pike said incredulously.
He shook his head. “I’m afraid to,” he confided unhappily. “Alcoholism doesn’t run in my family - it gallops. My father, my uncles, my grandfather…they were all lushes. So are most of my male cousins. It seems to be something in the male side of the family only. Not only that, they’re mean drunks. When my father would get plastered, he’d hit me and my mother. I can’t take the chance of becoming like him, so I don’t drink.”
Pike stared at him. “That’s tough, Rupert,” he said sympathetically, much to his surprise. “I can see why you’d avoid booze, then. Same reason I don’t take hard drugs.”
“What do you mean?”
Pike sighed. “My parents were crackheads,” he explained. “Always lookin for their next hit. When I was ten, my stupid shithead father got the crap beat out of him by his dealer because he didn’t have any money. They were going to come after my mother and me, too, but a guy came along and saved us. His name was Harold Shaw, but everybody called him Tank. He was an ex-biker, who owned a bar near where we lived. He heard the commotion when the drug dealers were beatin on my old man, and he came to see what was what. He didn’t try to stop em from wailing on my dad, but when one went after me he stepped in and busted heads. He was the scariest thing I’d ever seen, but also the coolest. When the dust settled, the drug dealers were all either broken or had slunk away. Tank called an ambulance and the cops, but my mom begged him to take me away because she was scared that CPS would put me in foster care. And she was right; it had happened before, and this time they’d probably have taken me away for good. So Tank took me to his bar - because he lived above it - and gave me some food and let me watch TV. He kept me for a few days, then tried to send me back to my parents.”
“But I begged him not to make me go back. I was tired of being half-starved because there was no money for food, and always being scared all the time. Tank didn’t know what to do, but in the end he kept me. He told my mom that he wasn’t letting me go back, and that if she tried to get me back he’d call CPS himself. So I lived with Tank from then on, and that’s why I would never touch drugs even if somebody paid me a million dollars to do them.”
Rupert listened to this story in fascination. “That bar - is it…?”
“Pike’s Peak? Yeah. Tank left it to me when he died of prostate cancer three years ago. He was a great guy, and he had no family. I was the son he never had. I still miss him,” he added with a sad, faraway look in his eyes.
“I can see why you would. He must have been a good person, to take in somebody else’s kid,” Rupert remarked.
“Yeah. Hell, he even used to show up at some of my school functions. It was kind of weird, having this big, grizzled ex-biker with his tattoos sitting on the sidelines when I ran on the track team, not to mention the parent-teacher conferences…” he grinned. “Those were pure entertainment. My teachers always looked like they didn’t know what to do or say when Tank strolled into their classrooms. It was funny.”
Rupert tried to imagine the scene, and found himself smiling. “So I guess we DO have something in common,” he began. “Dysfunctional early childhoods,” he added for Pike’s sake. “My mom divorced my drunken father when I was nine, and we moved three states away. It was heaven, being away from him.”
“One whole thing. Works for me,” Pike murmured in amusement.
Antonio the waiter returned with a basket of breadsticks, a bottle of beer and a glass, and a little carafe of water with another glass. He set these on the table and departed after informing Pike that his mother wanted to see him in the kitchen after he’d eaten.
“She wants to kiss me and mother all over me,” Pike said dryly after Antonio had left again.
“What’s wrong with that?” Rupert asked hesitantly.
A shrug. “Nothing, I guess. I’m just not used to it. My own druggie of a mom never hugged me or kissed me. And Tank was affectionate in his own way, which didn’t include hugs or kisses or that kind of thing. Mostly slugs on the shoulder when I did well at something. Hugging weirds me out.”
Rupert felt a lance of sympathy shoot through him as he remembered the many hugs his own mom had given him over the years. Pike had missed out. He realized something that made him laugh a little. Pike stared at him. “What’s so funny?”
“I just realized that we’ve sort of fast-forwarded this date,” he told Pike, shaking his head. “Most people who go out on a date talk about stuff like their careers, their likes and dislikes, that sort of thing. They don’t usually get into the hard core stuff like their bad childhoods until they’ve gone out a few times at least.”
Pike snorted. “Well, I don’t know a thing about it so I don’t know the rules,” he said dryly. “Do you want to talk about our careers and that sort of thing?” he continued after a moment.
“I suppose we could, but since we’ve already broken ’the rules’ I guess we can talk about anything we want to,” Rupert said.
“Sounds good to me. So here’s a topic - who was the first guy you ever slept with?”
Rupert’s mouth dropped open at this question. “What?!” he yelped after a moment’s stunned silence.
Pike grinned at his expression. “Don’t be so shocked, Rupert. It’s no big deal. I can tell you about the first guy I ever tagged, if it will help.”
“How can you…I mean…” Rupert spread his hands out helplessly on the tabletop. He realized that his face felt hot.
Pike’s lips twitched. “You’re blushing, Rupert. I don’t think that I’ve ever made a guy blush before. Especially not by asking him about a guy he slept with.”
“I just happen to think…that that’s too personal a question,” Rupert said with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Is it? The way you reacted, it’s like you’re a virgin or something,” Pike remarked sardonically.
Silence. Rupert was frozen in his chair, his hands gripping his water glass and his eyes slightly too-wide. Pike blinked. “Rupert?”
His throat worked, but no sound came out. “No way,” Pike said flatly, disbelief thick in his voice. “No fucking way...Rupert, you’re a virgin?”
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