“Oh, Gage,” Luis said, “that’s just wrong. I try hard to balance Jase’s and Hunter’s diets. I can understand with Camp. But it hasn’t been easy training Jase and Hunter. They wouldn’t eat anything but toasted marshmallows and chocolate-chip cookies if they had their way.”
“Don’t worry,” Gage said. “They thought it was a fluke because you had a cold and weren’t feeling well. From what I can see, you’ve done a good job training them. Actually, you’ve done a good job with everything in your life.”
After a moment of silence, Luis walked to the window and said, “What do we do now? Where do we go from here?”
“That’s up to you, Luis,” Gage said. “If you call the police and have me arrested for kidnapping you. I’ll understand. What I did was wrong.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Luis said. “First, I don’t want that kind of publicity. I can just see the headlines now: The Virgin Billionaire’s Gay Lover Kidnapped By Twin Brother. No, thank you. Second, you didn’t actually kidnap me, remember? I didn’t even spend the weekend here. I went home, to 95th Street, and slept in my own bed and ate my own food most of the time. I only spent Thursday night and Sunday night in this dump, and it was my choice, not yours.”
Gage stood up and walked to the window where Luis was standing. “Are you saying you want to forget about all this and we go our separate ways?”
Luis turned and put his arms around his twin brother’s shoulders. He kissed him on the cheek and said, “I’m saying I want to remember this weekend and try to act like real brothers from now on. You’re my only family, Gage.” Luis said this as though he still had trouble with Gage’s new name. “I’ve never even told Jase or Hunter about you. I still have my own demons. I’ve never told Jase much about my past in Tennessee. I’ve been waiting for the right time. And right now seems just as good as any time. I want Jase and Hunter to meet you. I want them to know who you are. I want you in my life from now on.” He hugged him tighter and rested his cheek on Gage’s chest.
Gage put his arms around his brother and rubbed his back. He smiled and nodded yes. “I want that, too, Luis. But I think we should wait a week.”
“Why so long?”
Gage laughed; he wasn’t serious. “Because I have a feeling you’re going to be very busy taking care of Jase for at least a week. The man is ready to put his fist through a brick wall, he’s so horny.”
Luis closed his eyes and sighed, his cheek still pressed to Gage’s chest. Growing up in Tennessee, Gage’s family had never shown any physical emotion. Luis and Gage had shaken each other’s hands plenty of times, and they’d hugged each other on occasion, but not with any sincerity. This time it brought a sting to his eyes to hold his twin brother in his arms. So Gage slowly pulled Luis closer and said, “I’m sorry.”
Luis kissed Gage’s cheek again, then caressed the back of Gage’s head with a light, gentle stroke. “I’m sorry, too.”
Then Gage removed his hands from Luis’s body and stepped back. He kicked off Luis’s sneakers and pulled Luis’s black sweatpants off his legs. He stepped out of the sweats and tossed them in Luis’s direction. “We’d better change clothes, so you can go back home and I can get back to the hospital to see Daksha. I promised I’d go back. I hate to leave him alone there. He’s never been in the hospital before and he’s counting on me.”
Luis pulled the large plaid shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. He put on the sweatpants Gage had been wearing and said, “I’ll go to the hospital with you. I don’t have to be home right away. You can introduce me to Daksha. I’d like that, and at least Daksha will know you have a twin brother. And after the hospital, we can go back to 95th Street and I’ll introduce you to Jase and Hunter. You’ll just have to pretend you’ve never met them before.”
Gage, who had just removed Luis’s white T-shirt and black leather jacket and was now stark naked, smiled and said, “I just have to go downstairs to my apartment and make two phone calls first. One to my boss and one to my landlord.” As he wrapped the plaid shirt around his waist so he could step outside and walk down to his apartment, he said, “I want to put on my own clothes. You have some very nice things, don’t get me wrong. But it’s amazing how you can miss your own things when you don’t have them. Hell, it’s amazing how much you can miss your own life once you’ve stepped into someone else’s life.” He planned on wearing his favorite faded jeans to the hospital, and his softest white boxer shorts. And maybe the comfortable white button-down shirt he’d found at a thrift shop.
Luis put on his T-shirt and said, “You go down now and I’ll be there in a minute. I have to put on my sneakers first. I’ll meet you on the landing.”
Gage turned to leave. Before he opened the door of his landlord’s kinky, sexy playroom apartment, he made sure the sleeves he’d tied around his waist were secure. He knew the odds of anyone seeing him naked back there were slim. But he didn’t want to take any chances. He was planning to be in this apartment for at least another year. He wanted to spruce the place up and bring Daksha back there when he was discharged from the hospital. Though Gage wasn’t certain how long he’d continue stripping for a living, he couldn’t just quit, especially now that he knew how much his boss needed him there. He had bills to pay and a life to maintain. He missed his regular customers; he missed everything about his life. Of course he’d have to talk this over with Daksha and see how Daksha felt about him stripping for a living. He knew some men might not like the idea of having a partner who is a professional stripper.
He jogged down the steps to his own apartment, leaving the door to the third-floor apartment wide open so his identical twin brother could join him. He looked forward to meeting Jase and Hunter as Gage, not as Luis. He looked forward to introducing Luis to his new love, Daksha Kalita. And for the first time in Gage’s life, he felt as if he were moving toward something more important than just surviving and getting by as best he could.
And, he’d met the love of his life, a dark, handsome taxi driver named Daksha Kalita who wanted to be an actor.
THE END