“Slacks and a button-down,” Ross finished sympathetically. “Yeah. I do jeans and a button-down, but that’s because I’m a consultant and I can flaunt the bullshit like a rock star.”
Tenner rolled his eyes. “You’d wear jeans if you knew the dress code stated specifically that anyone wearing jeans would be skinned like a fish.”
Ross had to shrug. “Yeah, that’s fair. I mean, when you’re tramping through deforested wastelands and trying to save the world, you don’t really think about the clothes on your back.”
Tenner’s narrowed eyes told him he’d caught the self-important swagger added in there for spice. “You gonna tip your hat, pardnuh? I mean, you can’t be John Wayne of the wasteland if you don’t got a hat to tip.”
Ross smirked and barely refrained from just pouncing on him right there, in the living room, bent over the couch like he’d planned all along. “Busted.”
Tenner sniffed the air. “Did you put the steaks in to broil?”
“Yeah.” Ross turned and grabbed his hand, pulling him into the kitchen and the set table and the flowers. “I figured those had our name on them, right?”
“You’re very astute,” Tenner mumbled.
“Well, you’re very sweet. I haven’t been wined and dined in quite some time.”
“I’d ask about that other thing, but it’s none of my business.”
Ross laughed quietly. “Sure it is. Here, sit. Let me pour you some wine. It’s tasty stuff, by the way. California has some of the best.”
Tenner made himself comfortable at the table, swinging the chair around so he could watch Ross work. “I like it. White, not red, though. Sorry. Red gives me a headache.”
“Yeah, it does that for lots of people. White’s fine.” Ross poured Tenner a glass and topped off his own before putting the bottle back in the fridge. “Here. You had carrot sticks so I figured we’d amuse-bouche.”
“Is that really a verb?” Tenner challenged, and Ross had to laugh again.
“God, you’re a handful. Now sit and let me regale you with my many sexcapades, so you might judge me for the manwhore I am.”
Tenner laughed outright at that. “This is a sales pitch? Buddy, I might want my steak back.”
“Too late, steak’s mine. I licked it before I put it in to broil.”
More laughter, and Tenner hadn’t even had a sip of chardonnay. “You did not!”
“You’ll never know,” Ross returned primly. “Now, let’s see… how many ways are there to get laid in the Amazon jungle?”
“Not that many, I’d wager,” Tenner said, sobering.
Ross waggled his eyebrows. “You’d be surprised.” But Tenner was just regarding him with that intent expression, so he figured he needed to stop dancing around the point. “Okay, fine. I’ve been doing fieldwork since I’ve gotten out of college. I go somewhere for a few months, then I come home to the most lucrative consultant job, I get my grant written, and I go back out. Most of the time, I avoid entanglements. We work damned hard out there, and male or female, everybody needs sleep.”
“But when you’re here in the States?” Tenner prodded.
“Well, it’s like vacation. I’m in, I’m out—everybody knows the score. This time’s different, though,” he acknowledged. “This time I’m coming back to the same place.”
“Are you waving that in front of me like a carrot?” There was bitterness in his voice, and Ross had to take a breath.
“I’m… I’m telling you not to judge a relationship before it starts. I mean….” He bit his lip, finding himself in deep water. “What I do, it’s an act of faith and hope, Tenner. We have not been kind to our environment, and I have to scrape and money-grub and kiss a lot of ass to convince corporations to help me go out and fix things. And it could take a price out of my soul if I let it. But it’s worth it, because what’s the alternative? Give up? It’s the same thing with a relationship. What’s the alternative? Give up? Assume there is no happy ending… ever?”
Tenner took a thoughtful sip of wine. “No,” he said.
“It’s like fixing the planet. Reduce carbon emissions. Stop fracking. Stop dumping toxic chemicals into our food supply. So many small steps we can take. So, you know. A glass of wine, step one. A steak, step two.”
“I hear you,” Tenner said. “What made you decide to do what you do? I mean, it’s amazing. Just knowing that you go out into the world and tramp the jungle and look for ways to reforest and clean water supplies and revitalize growth, I think that’s really awesome. But how did you get started?”
Ross checked the timer on the steak and took his own thoughtful sip of wine to try to track the memory.
“Did you grow up in California?” he asked.
“No. The Midwest.” Tenner breathed in thoughtfully. “Nebraska. Nina used to call it Nebransas, and she wasn’t far wrong.”
“Lots of flat land there,” Ross agreed.
“It was like a prison of farmland,” Tenner said with a shudder. “God, that scholarship to Sacramento—of all places, right? There’s still a lot of rural in Sacramento. But there’s also the ocean and the mountains. It really is still like an escape.”
Ross smiled a little. “Yeah. So farmland—were your parents farmers?”
“No. Dad’s in law enforcement. Mom worked at the school. Why?”
“Because… you tend to be attached to the seasons here in California. I mean, we just got out of one of our longest droughts in history, and when there’s no drought, areas are flooding. Well, when I was a kid, there was a drought. And it was… scary. Really scary. I remember washing my hands—my mom was going on and on about how filthy they were because I’d been looking at bugs—and the water came out of the faucet, and I’d heard adults talking about the drought for a year, and here I was, wasting precious water on hands that didn’t seem all that dirty.” He winked, and Tenner laughed like he was supposed to. “And it hit me. We could run out of water. The world could run out of water. And I asked my dad, and he… he told me the truth. That it could happen—places could run out of water to drink. And… and I cried myself to sleep that night. And the night after that. My parents finally asked me what was wrong, and… I had a hard time putting it into words. It was like… like the sun going out. Like the stars extinguishing. The threat was that real to me. So….”
He drained his glass of wine, realizing that this was sort of a buzzkill. “Are the steaks done yet?”
“No, you’ve got five minutes. Finish.” Tenner leaned forward, eyes fastened hungrily on Ross’s face, and suddenly Ross felt naked, more naked than he’d been in front of another human being since his first time—Gabby Raines in the eleventh grade, and Paul Wright in college, if you were counting. But in the midst of all that nakedness, he felt safe.
Tenner wouldn’t laugh or judge. Tenner just wanted to know him better. It wasn’t a crime.
“Well, you know my sister, and you’ve probably guessed my parents are big barrels of awesome.”