Ryder's Boys

by Cody Ryder

  Yeah. This feels right.

  In the kitchen, I took out a couple of the doggie bone treats and fed them to Rosie, stroking her neck as she happily gobbled them down. “Thanks, Rosie,” I said to her. “For taking care of him all these years.” She sniffed my hand and looked up at me with her panting doggy smile. I remembered my dream, and for a moment it felt like she was about to say, “your welcome.” From the way she interacted with Dakota, I got the definite sense that Rosie was acutely aware of her unofficial place as his emotional caretaker. She felt more like a partner than a pet, like one of those guide dogs that blind people have. She’d been given her name after Dakota’s mother, and though I didn’t believe in a thing like re-incarnation, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe a bit of her spirit was a part of her, looking out for her son.

  “Keep looking out for us, okay?” I said to her, unsure if I was speaking to Rosie the dog, or the guardian spirit that I imagined might be there. She gazed back at me, her tongue waggling. “I know it’s sudden. But I really do love him. I really do. We’re exactly where we need to be right now.”

  I stood, and Rosie perked up and wagged her tail expectantly. I smiled. “Sorry, no more treats.” I went to the cupboard, pulled out two pint glasses, and then got out a bottle of the home brew from the fridge. As I was filling them, my phone started to buzz in my pocket.

  Mom or dad? I couldn’t think of anyone else who’d be calling me at this time. Except…

  A response to one of my applications? My heart jumped at the thought—a conditioned reflex, really—I knew the answer I’d be giving. It was strange to think that after nearly a whole year of searching, I was suddenly certain I’d turn down any job offer that came my way. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself. Had love made me crazy?

  I pulled out my phone, glanced at the screen—and froze.

  It continued to ring in my hand as I stared in disbelief at the number written there. I read it again, and again, my heart jackhammering in my chest.

  It was really that number.

  Her number.

  Nine

  Why the hell was she calling me?

  I swallowed, unable to bring myself to answer the phone.

  Is it a mistake? Why is she calling me? It’s been eight months, she’s in South America. Why would she call?

  Why now?

  The phone buzzed once as a voicemail notification popped across the screen, and I nearly dropped it in surprise.

  My body had gone cold, and my palms were clammy with sweat as I stood there, staring at the now black screen. I didn’t know how long it was until I finally woke up the phone and raised it to my ear.

  “Roy? It’s me, Alicia.” There was a long pause. “Hey, um, listen, I’m back home now, and I really, really would like to talk about things. I know, it’s unfair of me to even ask that of you, but…I hope we can talk. I’m taking a flight down to San Diego tomorrow. Give me a call, and we can meet up? I’ll understand if you don’t want to, but I hope you consider it. Well…I hope to hear from you.”

  The voicemail ended.

  My head swam. I couldn’t see straight, I couldn’t think straight. I played the message again. Then once more.

  I set the phone down onto the countertop. I felt numb and confused, like I’d just heard from someone who I’d thought was long dead. My eyelid twitched. Just like that, the rope had been re-secured around my chest, pulling my insides tight again, strangling the breath from my lungs.

  You can ignore it, you know? Just don’t call her back.

  I knew that wouldn’t be possible. Questions that I’d managed to shelve were now back in my mind, pulling me down like weights on my shoulders. Just like that, the resentment and the anger had resurfaced.

  A gentle nudge on my calf broke me out of my daze. I looked down and saw Rosie looking up at me, her ears flattened down and tail wagging gently. She coughed out a quiet “ruh.”

  “You really are something,” I smiled. I picked up the beers, and headed back outside with Rosie following next to me.

  Dakota sat up in the hammock to take the glass of beer from me. “Everything alright?” he asked. “You look a little pale, Roy.”

  I sat down in the lawn chair next to the hammock and put my beer onto the ground, and then rested my chin in my palm. Dakota got out of the hammock and crouched down in front of me, rubbing my knee with his palm. “What is it? What’s up?”

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. Dakota frowned, his eyes searching my face.

  “Alicia called me,” I said, finally.

  It pained me to see the emotions that crossed over his face—surprise, confusion, and then worry. I could see he was doing his best to veil them with a smile. “I see. I had a feeling.”

  “You did?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I had a feeling she’d contact you eventually. Did she say what she wanted?”

  “To talk.” I shook my head. “Talking to her is probably the last thing I want to do.”

  “But it’s what you need to do,” he said soberly.

  “I don’t. I could just ignore her. She said she wouldn’t try me again if I didn’t call back.”

  “Right. But you know that you’ll always have that doubt if you don’t talk to her.”

  I searched his eyes, surprised at what he was saying. “There’s no doubt, Dakota. This changes nothing about how I feel about everything.”

  He took both my hands in his. “Maybe doubt is the wrong word. You need resolution, Roy, I can see that. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so upset about it.”

  He said this with such strength and confidence, but I could see the conflict in his eyes. He wanted me to go because he knew it was something that I needed, but didn’t want me to go because he knew what could happen. “I love you, Dakota. You got that? I love you.” I kissed his hands. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you. Finding you again was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “I love you too, Roy,” he said quietly.

  With Dakota’s encouragement and urging, I decided that I would speak to Alicia. I guzzled down my beer, and after taking a few more minutes to mentally prepare myself, I tapped her number on my phone in my missed call list.

  She picked up almost immediately.

  “Hi, Roy,” she said. “Thanks for calling me back so quickly.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How are you?”

  “Great. How are you?”

  “Oh…I’m okay. Look, um, I just wanted to know if you could meet tomorrow? To talk?” She spoke cautiously and cordially, like she was taking extra care to not to say anything that I might not like.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Okay. Great.” She sounded relieved. “Where should we meet?”

  “There’s a coffee shop on Powlton Road. Mr. Coffee. How about there? At eleven?”

  “That sounds fine.”

  “Do you need the address?”

  “I think I can get it.”

  “Okay. Eleven at Mr. Coffee.” I waited for her to respond, but there was only silence. “See you tomorrow then,” I said.

  She spoke up quickly. “Roy?”

  “Hm?”

  “I…Sorry. Nothing, see you tomorrow.”

  “See you.”

  I let out a sigh, and pocketed my phone. Dakota sat on the edge of the hammock, his arms crossed on his thighs.

  “So I’m meeting her tomorrow,” I told him.

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  I was going to say something to try to reassure him about my feelings for him, but spoke first.

  “Hey.” He stood up from the hammock and grabbed my hand. “You know what we should do this evening? Let’s take the Volvo out east through the mountains, just like we used to do back in the day. We can pack dinner and after sunset look at the stars…and then I’ll put the back seats down.” He grinned and raised an eyebrow suggestively.

  I laughed, and immediately felt better about everything. It was amazing how he could do that. “Th
at sounds like a perfect idea.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon working in the garden, doing some basic maintenance and seeing if there were any new growths. Afterwards, we made a huge salad filled with just about every single vegetable that Dakota had growing in his food forest, along with a variety of nuts and seeds, and a homemade vinaigrette dressing, and then drove east on the old country highway that lead out of Powlton and into the mountains that bordered the desert. It was a familiar route that we’d used often back in high school to go stargazing in the mountains or camping out in the rocky landscape of the Anza Borrego Desert.

  The road wove into the mountains and was shaded by twisting oak trees and lined with drab chaparral, parched by the drought. It was an environment I’d grown up with, and so I felt some nostalgia for it, but I much preferred the greener environment of Northern California. Surrounded by this chapped and harsh landscape, Dakota’s backyard paradise only became more enchanting.

  We drove for an hour, and turned off the highway onto a mountain road that was seldom used and was the perfect spot for stargazing. Dakota pulled over onto the dirt, and we got out of the car and sat on the hood to watch the sun go down as we ate our salads. Afterwards, he brought out a blanket and spread it over the front windshield so that we could lay back and enjoy the stars. We lay in silence next to each other, my left hand clasping his right, as the sky turned from a vivid orange to deep purple, and then to dark blue. The first stars started to peek out, like tiny Christmas lights on a velvet backdrop. The call of crickets filled the air, and the scent of sage and dry earth filled our noses.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to lose you again,” Dakota said suddenly, breaking the long silence. He was always so stoic, so centered about things, that hearing him admit this shocked me.

  I looked over at him. The moon was out, just a curved sliver in the sky, but it cast a pale light on his face. He squeezed my hand and kept his eyes up at the stars, and I could just make out the shimmering of tears forming in them.

  “You won’t,” I said. I wanted to reassure him, but I had the feeling that there was nothing I could say that could completely do that. “I promise.”

  He squeezed my hand and smiled sadly. “It just…feels like last time. When you left. I wanted to you to go, because I knew that was what you needed. I knew I had to let you go, but God, Roy. I spent so many nights wondering if I should’ve just been selfish. If I should’ve just told you to stay. I thought that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I tried to logic my way out of it, you know? But it always was a regret. Always.” A stream of tears streaked down his cheeks.

  “Oh, Dakota…” I murmured, and I drew my arm around him and pulled him against me. “I don’t have to go and talk to her, you know? It’s okay to be selfish.”

  He smiled—that centered, knowing smile of his. “Thanks, Roy. But I know you have to. If you didn’t, I’d regret it, because I know you will in the future. And I just couldn’t have that. I guess I just can’t be selfish, even if I wanted to be.”

  I kissed his hair, his forehead, the back of his hand and then his lips, channeling every little bit of the love I felt for him into it. There was an aching longing in the way he kissed and held me—his hands gripped my shirt and pulled me in close, almost forcefully, not wanting to let me go. I pushed on top of him and intertwined my fingers into his, pinning his hand against the blanket on the windshield. I was afraid that the glass might shatter under our weight and the heavy fervor that we went at each other. Our breaths were heavy when we finally broke apart, and he looked up at me with dark eyes that still held tears. I kissed his forehead, brushing back a strand of his dark hair that fell there. “Should we go to the back?”

  He nodded, his voice breathy. “Yeah.”

  We put the seats down and spread the thick blanket over the back of the station wagon, just like we used to do back then. Dakota kneeled, with his shins to the ground and his butt on his heels, and I came behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and burying my face into the side of his neck. I soaked in his warm aroma and kissed him lightly, my hands exploring beneath his shirt and tracing the lines of his abs. He rested his hands on the back of mine, moving with me as I explored his body. Then I tugged his shirt over his head and allowed my fingertips to lightly glide against his skin, moving over his pecs and then to his nipples. He tilted his head to kiss me as I did this, reaching up to slide his hand around the back of my head, his fingers moving through my hair.

  I was impossibly hard already, and I knew he could feel me against his back. I wanted to feel him too, but I went slowly this time, moving my hands down to his thighs and exploring them through his jeans. Dakota couldn’t wait, and he reached down and started to undo his belt. After he had the buckle undone and the button loose, I tucked my thumbs into his waistband and helped him to wrestle off his jeans and underwear. Dakota rested back against me, completely naked in my embrace. I let my hands explore and tease him again, moving close to his cock but never touching it, my fingertips dancing around his bellybutton and his inner thighs.

  I knew just how much to tease him, and when I felt he was just at the limit I wrapped my fist tightly around his hot girth. He moaned with satisfied yearning and then kissed me deeply, his tongue intertwining with mine and exploring my mouth as I began to stroke him. Then I felt his hand making its way down to the waist of my pants—he was reaching around behind his back—and then his eager fingers made contact and I shifted my hips to give him access.

  We matched each other’s strokes, the desire to finally take him building with each one until it was too much for me to hold back. I pushed him forward by his shoulders so that he was on his elbows and knees, and he pushed himself up to me, wide and ready. The only sounds were our grunts of pleasure and our heavy breaths of effort. With a quick twist of my hand, I lubed my cock and pushed it up against his opening, resting my right hand on his ass cheek and my left at his hip, and began to move inside of him.

  My eyes fluttered and my mouth opened slightly as the painfully good feeling of his warmth encircled me. I moved forward into him slowly, taking my time to enjoy every single inch, and let out a long and satisfied sigh. I felt him rippling around me, waves of tension and release as he did his best to keep himself relaxed. He clenched his fists at the blanket on the floor and groaned loudly, both in gratification and a just a bit of pain.

  I must’ve been moving too slowly for him, because he began to push back on me, taking me deeper into him until I was finally all the way in to the hilt. I waited there inside of him for a moment without moving, basking in every little pulse and squeeze of him against my rigid length. I closed my eyes, and let my other senses take over. I ran my fingertips along the smooth skin of his back and around his ass cheeks, took in the scent of his musk that lingered in the cramped air of the car, and heard the trembling of his breath. Then I began to stoke the flames.

  I pumped in and out of him, going faster and faster until I was slamming in deep, taking him hard, my cock plunging all the way to the core. Dakota grinded up against me, slamming back to meet me we pumped together. The car was filled with the cracking slap of skin on skin as I bucked my hips against him, diving deep until I suddenly felt the climax surging closer and closer.

  I pulled out of him and muscled him onto his back, and he held his knees back to his shoulders and pushed his hips up so that I could take him that way. His face was flushed and his eyes locked seductively with mine, and neither of us broke away as we came to the finish at the exact same time. I let out a ragged groan, tossing my head back as my body tightened with the climax. My cock throbbed into him, and I felt him tighten around me in response as his body shuddered and tensed, and his cock released onto his chest.

  I sagged down onto my forearms over him, my breath heavy and my head spinning from the intensity of my climax, and still we didn’t break our gaze. I felt Dakota’s body trembling, and we came together for a long and breathless kiss.

  After we’d cooled down
, we brought the blanket back out to the hood of the car and cuddled up into each other’s arms to look at the stars. The sky was black now, and in the clear mountain air unpolluted by city lights, the stars formed a magical tapestry above us.

  I was in love, a strength of love that I’d never experienced before, even with Dakota all those years ago. It was a brand new love, an evolved love, a mature love that could only have formed from the tempering of my soul through trial.

  I’m not going anywhere, I thought, and I kissed him on the side of his temple. I knew this, and yet…I felt Dakota’s words. They’d crept in and somehow taken root, and now I felt his fear too, that we were spending our last night together—again.

  Ten