by Leta Blake
Casey laughed softly. “I should thank you, actually. I’ve wanted to kiss you forever.” He slipped gentle fingers through the hair at Joel’s temple, pushing it back, and gazed at him with so much feeling in his eyes that it made Joel dizzy. And maybe a little sick like he’d been the one to smoke too many cigarettes after years of abstinence. It was scary as shit.
Joel stood and threw the barely smoked cigarette into the lake. He didn’t usually litter, and he didn’t usually fail to finish his death sticks, but he didn’t know what to do with all his jail-broken feelings now that Casey was here acting all…
He shuddered. Now that Casey had kissed him. Now that Joel was facing the wretched specter of some kind of fucked-up hope. The thing he’d never let himself indulge in when it came to Casey Stevens, and the thing he’d mostly banished from the rest of his life too.
Casey didn’t rise. He stayed put, studying Joel carefully. “What are you thinking?” Concern thickened his voice.
Joel sounded rough, like he’d smoked a whole pack, when he ground out, “I have to get to the nursing home.”
“My mom told me about your dad yesterday. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. Well. Life happened. Whether you were here for it or not. It happened.”
Casey’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that. It makes it weird.” He’d never liked it when people told him they were sorry about his mother’s death, and he didn’t like hearing that they were sorry about Pop now. It just made things awkward.
“Right. I remember. Sorry.”
Joel shifted to relieve the pressure in his pants where his cock still hoped that the kiss meant more than it did. “Yeah, well, Dad expects me to bring him breakfast by nine, so…” He pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time and waggled it at Casey. “I have to go.”
He didn’t wait for Casey to join him as he walked away. Bruno raced to his side, panting, with muddy front paws.
“Just to be clear, I left you behind because I wanted to kiss you,” Casey called from his seat on the bench.
“And I let you go because I wanted you to kiss me,” Joel called back. He turned around slowly to meet Casey’s eyes for the next bit. “And I wanted a hell of a lot more than that back then.”
Casey bit his lower lip. It made Joel’s balls tighten again. “And now?”
“And now it’s been almost four years and, fuck, Casey. I don’t know. I need to go.”
Casey rose and trotted after him, breathless. “I’m in town until the new year. Can I see you again?”
Joel’s heart leapt eagerly, but he clenched his fists. Hope was pointless. This thrill of joy screaming through his body was stupid. It could never go anywhere good. They could never happen, not really. Casey was, just as Joel had claimed last night, slumming it during his winter break. He was horny and lonely and bored. That’s all it was. All it could ever be.
But Casey didn’t let up. “For lunch? For dinner? For anything?”
“What? You got my first kiss, Casey. You want to be my first everything now?” Joel rounded on him, hands shoved deep in his pockets so he didn’t grab Casey’s broad shoulders and kiss him again. His heart skipped wildly.
“Would that be so bad?” Casey gazed at him with a heat that made Joel’s dick swell and his heart twist up hard.
Joel tried to glare. He was pretty sure he failed. “I don’t need a pity fuck.”
“You think that’s what I feel for you? Believe me, it’s not pity, it’s lo—”
“Don’t say it.” Joel held out his hands, stopping the word halfway out of Casey’s mouth. “Don’t leave for nearly four years, come back here like you’re something special, and think you have any right to say that word to me.” Especially when Casey didn’t mean it. Couldn’t mean it. Not the way Joel wanted him to anyway.
Joel let out a slow breath and called to Bruno, “C’mon, boy. Back inside.”
Casey lingered silently as Joel used a dirty towel he kept by the trailer door to wipe off Bruno’s feet, opened the door, and let Bruno in. Of course Casey followed at Joel’s heels again once he started toward his truck.
“What time do you eat lunch?” Casey asked when they reached their vehicles at nearly the same time.
“Same time as most folks, I guess.”
“I’ll see you then. And I’ll bring you something good.” He pointed at Joel with a commanding finger, forestalling his protest. “I’ll be there.” Then he climbed into his SUV and buckled up.
Refusing to look at Casey, Joel tried to steady his frantic mind by taking his time checking the ties holding a wheelbarrow he’d borrowed from Vreeland’s in the back of his truck.
After Casey drove off, Joel sat in the driver’s seat of his Chevy and stared at the Christmas wreath on his door and the colored lights around the gutters. His lips tingled, and his chest burned with a screaming sensation. Fear and excitement combined.
Casey Stevens had left town because he’d wanted to kiss him.
And today Casey had kissed him. With his beautiful mouth that Joel had admired since they were just kids playing in their backyards.
“Merry fucking Christmas to me,” he whispered, touching his lips. He could still feel the sting of Casey’s prickly stubble against his chin. In a daze, he backed out of his lot and started on the road toward the nursing home. His head was a spinning, cascading, maddening mess of amazement.
Casey’s palms sweated on the steering wheel as he drove aimlessly away from Joel’s plot of lakeside property. He turned on a country road and kept going, taking the winding curves, his heart racing and his breath coming in sharp gasps.
When he was a good five minutes into his stunned retreat, he rolled down his window, stuck his head out into the crisp winter air, and yelled as loudly as he could out across the rolling fields.
His engine and the wind rushing down from the Tennessee hills swallowed the sound, but his throat relished the strain. Giddy and wild, he yelled and yelled until his own laughter cut him off.
He’d done it.
He’d kissed Joel Vreeland! With his mouth!
On Joel’s mouth!
Multiple times!
Maybe he should have slipped him more tongue, unbuttoned Joel’s jeans, and taken the kiss to a more passionate place. But that hadn’t seemed right. It’d been a pure moment, vulnerable and sweet. Joel had seemed almost childlike in his acceptance of it.
Eventually he’d kissed Casey back, but barely. Just teased his tongue into Casey’s mouth and then back out again, like a scared thing. The memory of it made Casey’s heart pound. Casey had taken the risk and gone for it. Had opened himself up to possible rejection despite his fear. Goddamn, he was proud of himself. Proud of Joel too.
He laughed, shaking his head. What a fucked-up pair they were, but they’d actually kissed! He stuck his head out the window again and howled with delight.
When he was relatively calm again, Casey drummed his hands on the steering wheel. He had to figure things out. He needed to excavate the truth between them. He wanted to crack Joel open. He wanted to see all of that beautiful, scared vulnerability again and again. He wanted to explore him slowly, breaking down his fears and resistance, until he was soft and sweet under Casey’s hands. That would be amazing. Beautiful. It was all he’d ever wanted.
Casey groaned. His cock grew hard, and he yelled out the window again.
What if this was exactly right? The two of them together. A couple. It could be a thing. They could happen. His entire future opened up in front of him with a brightness he hadn’t imagined possible. His heart flew, his blood rushed, and he pushed the gas pedal down harder.
Ann would say not to get his hopes up. Joel was skittish on a good day, and with his boundaries being tested, he was sure to push back against this amazing, perfect, gorgeous thing that could happen between them. It was his nature.
And yet Casey couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this excited. About anything. Kissing Joel ha
d supplanted every moment he’d previously deemed “best” in his life.
He screamed out his window again. He shouldn’t get ahead of himself. But it was too late. He wanted Joel. And Joel wanted him in return. And it was Christmastime.
They both deserved a miracle.
Chapter Eight
“Casey Stevens kissed me.”
The nine-story tower of the nursing home loomed over where Joel had parked the truck in the gloom of a tall beech tree still clutching some frail, bleached-brown leaves. He adjusted the heating vent and waited for Becca’s reaction to this improbable news.
“Wait, what?” Becca spoke loudly into the phone. In the background, Joel heard women’s voices, hairdryers, running water, and a door chime. “Hold on. I need to go somewhere quiet. I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
Joel pictured Becca strolling past her fellow stylists’ flying scissors as they sculpted beauty out of birds’ nests. He knew she’d be reeking, as always these days, of some new line of expensive hair products and made up in lip and eye colors like a fever-dream. He loved that about her. Becca was beautiful and wild at heart. Something he envied more and more every year.
He wondered if she was also wearing one of her trademark dresses with the sweetheart neckline that revealed the giant Korean magpie tattoo on her chest, a nod to her biological family’s roots. He rubbed his arm where his upside-down heart was inked, remembering how they’d gripped each other’s hands from adjacent tattoo chairs, enduring the pain.
“Heading outside for my break,” she said to someone in the store, and then there was the door chime again, followed by a cessation of salon noise and a burst of traffic sounds. “Okay, I can talk.” She sounded breathless. “What did you say when I picked up? I think I hallucinated or something.”
Joel let out a shaky laugh. Half the reason he’d called her was to prove to himself he hadn’t hallucinated the kiss either. Because if he told another person, it had to be real. “Casey Stevens kissed me.”
“What?” she gasped. “I don’t understand. Our Casey Stevens?”
“I don’t recall us owning him, but yeah.”
“I thought he was—wait, you said—okay, hold up. He’s supposed to be in New York.”
“Home for the holidays.” A leaf flittered down from the beech tree and landed in the parking lot.
“Wow. Holy shit. Tell me the whole story. Beginning to end. And start now because I only have a fifteen-minute break, and I don’t have time to pull the truth out of your snarling face.”
Still shaking with disbelief, Joel told Becca about Casey’s visit to Vreeland’s the night before and how he’d showed up at the trailer that morning. And then he told her about the kiss, glossing over most of the conversation that led up to it.
She whistled. “Well, hot damn, our Casey is all grown up.”
“He’s twenty-two. The same as you and me.”
“With smooth moves. And soft lips. And you said he put his fingers on your chin to hold you steady. Swoon!” A car honked in the background on her end.
Joel chuckled. She was right. His trembling knees and racing heart told the whole swoony story.
“Do you have to work today?” she asked. “I’ve got a light load this morning. Want to come over and tell me more in person? Strategize about how you’re going to get into his pants?”
Joel left aside the question of whether he even wanted in Casey’s pants and glanced at the clock on his car dash. His dad’s Egg McMuffin cooled in the bag next to him in the passenger seat. “Sorry. Wish I could, but I’ve gotta go into the store, make up to Angel for last night, and get everything set up for Brandon’s return. And right now…” He glanced at the clock in his car dash. The sweet giddiness in his gut soured. “I have to go in and see Pop.”
“Ah. Right. McMuffin time.” She clucked her tongue to chide him. “You’re gonna be late. It’s past nine. Better hustle.”
Joel didn’t say goodbye, though. “He’s bringing lunch to me today at Vreeland’s.”
“Your pop?”
“No. Casey, duh.”
“Oh my gosh. He’s courting!” She laughed, and he could just imagine her leaning against the painted concrete blocks at the back of Salon Bohème, her eyes crinkling up with her smile. “Sounds like we don’t need to strategize at all. He’s got his aim set on your cute bubble butt. Someone won’t be a virgin for long!”
“Screw you.”
She crowed, laughing even harder.
Joel waited patiently in silence, trying to figure out if she was right. Did he have a chance of getting laid? With Casey Stevens of all people? Maybe this was a dream after all and he’d wake up any minute now.
After Becca stopped laughing, she asked, more seriously, “Honestly, though, didn’t he turn out handsome?”
“God, yes.” He knew she kept up with Casey on social media. She must have seen all the pictures with Theo and knew exactly how gorgeous Casey was. She just wanted to hear him say it.
“Is he still into art?”
“He’s still…” He couldn’t find the words.
“Oooh, he’s still your shiny, isn’t he?”
Joel grunted. “Whatever that means.”
Becca teased, “One day you’ll be a grown-up boy and learn to express your emotions without insults or deflection.”
“And on that day, we’ll also achieve world peace.”
She laughed again. “Can’t wait. Hey, as much as I’d like to continue talking with you, the clock is ticking. I have to get back to work and, well, Daddy Asshole awaits.”
Joel glanced toward the miserable-looking building ahead of him and sighed. “You’re a bitch. But I love you.”
“Love you too, Joely.” She disconnected her end of the line.
Joel smiled at the little nickname she’d blessed him with. She’d started calling him that after she’d returned home from Nashville once the dream of a record deal fell through. She was a fantastic drummer, and RJ was a great guitarist, but their songs together had only been so-so.
RJ had chosen to stay behind and start up a career as a touring and studio guitarist, but Becca had had enough of people trying to change her for the sake of a brand. She’d hightailed it home to start cosmetology school. Though she still drummed with some local groups for fun and extra cash, she’d otherwise let music fall by the wayside.
Joel was grateful to have her in his life. She made everything brighter just by being herself.
The nursing home smelled like horror, cleanser, and a spritz of death. It always gave him the creepy-crawlies whenever he came to visit. Merry Hills Towers wasn’t the best nursing home in town, not even close. Joel wished he could afford better for his father, but at this point, his father was a Medicaid patient.
They’d had to sell off everything, and Joel had been forced to buy Vreeland’s with his savings to get his pop’s net worth down low enough to finally get the government support they needed. Hell, even bringing him an Egg McMuffin every day was potentially suspect to auditors, but the nurses turned a blind eye to small violations like that.
“You’re late,” Katie, his pop’s morning nurse, whispered. Her brunette hair was pinned up tight, and her bright-red, Taylor Swift-esque lipstick shone like a beacon under the fluorescent lights. “He’s pissed.”
“I figured.” Joel rolled his eyes as rushed past with the cold breakfast.
She winked at him and smiled encouragingly. He smiled back. The nurses always treated him with extreme sympathy, not because his father was on the verge of death like so many in this place, but because, Joel assumed, they felt bad for him growing up with such an asshole as his only parent.
In that way, the stroke had been a relief. For the first time ever, everyone finally saw the real Charlie Vreeland. The one Joel had grown up with. The one who raged. The one who punched him hard enough to see stars when, at twelve, he’d said something about Casey being a cute kid.
Before the stroke, everyone knew Charlie as the sweet old
man who ran Vreeland’s Home and Garden. Funny, charming to the old ladies, and good with children too. The stroke had robbed Joel’s pop of the ability to put on that show. For that, and that alone, Joel was grateful to the stroke. Relieved. Validated. Because, yeah, Charlie Vreeland was an asshole.
Joel was very late, and Pop’s room was empty. That meant they’d already taken him down for his physical therapy and he wouldn’t be back up for—Joel looked at the clock—twenty minutes.
Pop’s room on the fifth floor had a view of cars zooming past on Papermill Drive. The tan walls were sparsely decorated with photos Joel had torn from an old album and hung around the room with putty stuck to the back.
There were pictures from his pop’s time in ’Nam and a wedding photo of both of his parents. His mom, Jennifer, looked so young and happy. Her curly black hair had been tamed to straightness for the day, and her dark-brown eyes glinted with joy. She wore a strapless white gown with beading down the front and a veil that made her look like a princess. Joel wished he remembered more about her. He only had a few precious memories, and sometimes he worried he’d made those up.
And his father? Well, he looked like an old man marrying his daughter. Fifty-eight to his mother’s twenty-six, he was already balding, but he had a handsome grin and a possessive arm around Jennifer’s shoulders. His knuckles were white with the force of his grip, and Joel sometimes wondered if he’d ever hit her too.
He hoped the violence was just for him. Somehow it made Joel feel better to think his mother never knew how mean Pop could be.
In the end, he supposed it didn’t matter. His mom was long dead, and soon enough his pop would be as well. Inexplicably, given how much of an asshole Charlie was, Joel still kind of hoped Jennifer would be waiting for him on the other side. Becca had asked him not long ago if he even loved his pop, and Joel guessed that was love, holding that hope for him. It was the only kind of love Joel gave the man who raised him. Unless you counted the Egg McMuffin. And he did.
