by V. L. Locey
I cupped his ass with both hands as our tongues slid and slipped around each other. Cock rested beside cock, his as hard as mine.
“I want to suck you off,” he said when the kiss ended. “Can I do that?”
“Yes,” I grunted, tasting his mouth once more before reaching over my head to grab the pipe the shower caddy hung from. I cranked the head upward a bit then watched as he went to his knees, his gaze never leaving mine, and kissed the head of my cock with pursed lips. I rolled my hips, fingers tightening on the showerhead, and he took the head into his mouth. His tongue was pink and fast, darting out to lap at water or precum then sliding down one side of my prick and then the other. “Suck me harder.”
He smiled and stretched his lips around my dick, his blue-gray eyes wide. His pupils fat with lust, I rocked into his mouth, gagging him. His eyes closed and he hummed in pleasure, the vibration settling in my balls. Kneeling before me, he gave me his mouth to fuck, and fuck it I did. I pumped hard and fast, my cock gliding down his throat time and again. When he linked his hands behind his back, I gave him all of me in one deep thrust. He moaned and I blew apart, coating his throat with cum before pulling out so he could breathe. The man fell back on my cock, sucking me back into his mouth, his mouth a hot vacuum that pulled every drop of semen from me it could.
“Get up here,” I panted, hands still gripping the plumbing. He stood up. I curled a hand around his neck and pulled him to me, sliding my tongue into his mouth. His hips punched outward, his cock jabbing me in the hip. “My turn.”
“Oh, God, I…yes, please…” We traded places, and when his hands were throttling the showerhead, I went to my knees, cooling water rushing over my feet and calves as it swirled down the drain. I took his dick into my mouth, hollowing my cheeks. I worked him with hand and mouth until he shouted and filled my mouth with cum. Sweet and salty. Perfect. I jerked and suckled until he was as spent as I was. I stood up and pressed him to the wet tiles and licked into his mouth.
I ran my hands over his head, pressing some of the water out of his hair and then held him in place so that I could stare at him.
“I’m falling for you too,” I whispered then dropped a thousand kisses on his jaw and lips and eyes and nose. If we could have stayed in that shower forever that would have suited me fine.
“When the new bed comes, will you spend the night?”
“Mm, yeah, try to make me leave.” I stole another kiss, and then another, and then a hundred more. The water was cold when we actually got around to washing. Even with some eggs and toast in me, I felt washed out all day. Maggie commented on my ashen face a few times but I waved her concern off. Bran made numerous trips to the community garden, his gaze touching mine. After the fourth or fifth pass, I tugged off my gardening gloves and went off to find the hose to water Mr. Milkens’ wilted chili peppers. He’d been admitted to the local hospital with breathing issues, not uncommon with old folks and ungodly hot and humid weather, so I figured I’d tend to his plants until he could come back.
I met up with Bran by the hose. “Lunch will be delivered soon,” he informed me as I deftly lifted the rounds of green hose from the wall-mounted hose holder fastened to the supply shed.
“I’m okay,” I told him. He nodded. “I am, really.”
“You look washed-out. Maybe you should go home.”
“Bran, stop. I’m fine. What will I do at home? Sit around and rehash all the bad? I’m better here where I can forget things.” I hoisted the coils of hose to my shoulder. “Let me deal with things my way.”
He wanted to say something, but he didn’t. He merely inclined his head, touched me on the arm in that reserved way of his, and stepped aside to let me go water the peppers. That was how the next few days passed, with me on my knees in dirt or trying to pump information into the heads of teenage hockey players. I planned on skipping the next meeting simply because I couldn’t deal with looking at all those morose faces. Classes I couldn’t skip, so I went but found myself drifting off as the boredom levels soared. My fingers rested on my journal, the one that I’d not written a word in for weeks. I’d be expected to turn it in at the end of my time in hell…I mean my time in IDP class.
As Monica droned on about Christmas traffic mortality rates, I opened my journal and flipped past pages about risk and genetic factors, personal development plans, and a gratitude journal—really?! I found the blank, lined sheets in the back and started scribbling shit down. It kind of started off with me bitching about how hot it was in the classroom, how boring Monica was, and how this whole thing sucked a big green dick, but after I got that out, I began to seriously think about shit. First I went back and erased the bit about Monica being boring. At the end of my seven weeks, I’d have to turn this in, and she’d read that and fail me or something. Erasing like mad I cleared the page, blew the eraser confetti to the floor then started writing meaningful stuff. Like how the gardening project had helped me, and how the Pony summer league had helped me, and how Bran had helped me.
I paused when I got to listing examples of Bran’s influence on my life. If this journal made it back to Judge Cavanaugh, I doubted he wanted to hear about his nephew’s love of being fed cock while he rested on his heels in the shower. Yeah, no, we’d need to skip that shit. I glanced out the window at the basketball court and tried to pull up something less pornographic about the man who was emptying out his bedroom so that he could invite me into that most intimate space. He’d said he was falling in love with me. I felt the same. Funny, really, that I’d fall for an older man with so much baggage. But we fit. Somehow, in spite of all our issues and losses, Bran and I worked. Hell, maybe we worked because of those issues and losses. We understood the holes that loss left in a man.
Monica pointed at a chart. The guy next to me yawned. I went back to journaling, writing down how Bran had aided me in my journey to be a better me. I scribbled down how I felt right now, sitting here with sweat coating my neck and balls, as Bran emptied out Jim’s dressers. I wrote and I wrote, the words flowing out of my number two pencil to the lines. When I’d filled the page, I laid down my pencil, reread my thoughts, smiled, and dug out my phone to snap a picture of the last few lines. I’d send them to Bran. We were taking tonight off from each other. His place was in chaos, and I think he was having deeper problems getting rid of his husband’s stuff than he wanted to let on. Maybe some time alone as we worked through stuff was what we needed. Balancing all my crap and a relationship was new to me. Thinking of someone else, and how my actions impacted them. Also new. My past was filled to the brim with parties and men, but now that I looked back to write about them, I couldn’t recall one that stood out.
It was then I realized that I needed to go to my meeting. Loathing that decision, I came to the realization that if I skipped once, I’d skip again and again and again. Looking at what I’d jotted down about my life now—the people who were in it and the good things I was doing—had to take precedence or the darkness of my past would begin to pull me back into the bad place I’d been before.
Monica said something that pulled some laughs from the rest of the group, and I closed my journal and paid attention. It was still as painful as root canal with no Novocain, but I gave it my all. And then, I hauled my ass to my meeting. The walk was shorter than it should have been.
Barron handed me some coffee as I lingered on the fringes before we took our seats.
“I’m glad to see you back,” he said, patting my shoulder before calling the meeting to order.
I sat down on a squeaky chair, with my coffee held tightly in my hands, elbows to knees, eyes on the floor as we recited the serenity prayer. I didn’t really believe in God. I kind of thought our galaxy had energy, as did our planet, and that we sort of absorbed it. But good or bad things weren’t directed by imaginary sky people. We made those choices on a daily or hourly or even momentary basis. Coming here tonight? Good choice. Dating Bran? Good choice.
“Does anyone know the difference between apologizing
and making amends?”
I glanced up from the tile floor when Barron asked the question. No one knew the answer. I took a sip and grimaced. This needed more sugar, less coffee, and more lemonade to be palatable.
“Saying you’re sorry to someone that you wronged,” I finally said.
“Well, making amends is more than an apology. Have any of you started making amends to the people who were negatively impacted by your drinking?”
I looked around. All six heads were moving in the negative. “I tried. I mean, I told the old man whose shed I totaled I was sorry. A hundred times. He’s not buying it so that’s really all I can do, right? I can’t make him forgive me.”
“No, you can’t, but are you trying to make amends or are you just tossing words at the man?” Barron asked, his hair neatly combed and his demeanor ultra-cool as if he had this recovery shit down.
“I said I was sorry,” I tossed out again.
Barron smiled. “Yes, you did but making amends is different. Making amends to this man might be going to his house to rebuild the shed that you destroyed. That might make him see that you’re really trying to make up for your actions instead of fobbing platitudes at him.”
“I’m pretty sure the insurance company will rebuild his shed.” Some new girl next to me snorted in amusement. I stared at the globs of creamer that hadn’t dissolved fully in my cup. When no one spoke, I looked at Barron who motioned at me to continue. “Uh, I guess I could maybe think of something else to do for him? I volunteer at a garden center, old folks community garden and shit,” I explained to the group. “I could buy some flowers and plant them around his new shed?”
“There you go,” Barron said then grinned. “And that is the difference between apologizing and making amends. All of us have to make amends as we recover. Nate planting flowers for the man whose shed he ruined is a form of making a direct amends. Sometimes we can’t do that, but we can make indirect amends. Say if you hit someone who’d been jogging while you were intoxicated you could possibly volunteer for a marathon or donate time at a…”
I drifted a bit then, my mind loving the idea of doing the landscaping for Barney’s new shed more and more. Maybe he’d finally see that I was sincere if I did more than mouth the expected words at him. Maybe that would make me feel less like an unwanted loser even though I was a champion.
“Hey, thanks,” I said to Barron.
“You’re welcome,” he said back.
Chapter Ten
I hadn’t been out to Cazenovia since the night I swerved to miss a dog and hit Barney Witkowski’s old shed. Pulling up to the doublewide two days after my last meeting and seeing that brand new tan shed set free a flock of butterflies in my gut. Did butterflies do flocks? Was it a murder of butterflies? No, that was crows. A pride? A coven? A gaggle?
“Nate, you okay?” Bran reached over to lay a hand on my bare knee, his gentle touch leading me back to the inside of the Apache as it idled. “We can put this off for another day if you want?”
“Nope, let’s do this.” I shook off the trepidation and was out of the truck before Bran could turn off the engine. I slid on some shades and then walked around the back of the truck and lowered the tailgate. There sat four flats of flowers, marigolds and zinnias and cockscombs as well as shovels and rakes and a mound of rich red mulch.
“Here.” Bran threw some garden gloves to me, bright green ones with the Sunflower Acres logo on the back of the hand. “I’m proud of you for doing this.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, thinking of stealing a kiss but opting not to because Barney had just exited his white doublewide and was locomoting toward us with a full head of steam. I stepped away from Bran, plastered on a wide smile, and walked up to Barney with my gloved hand out.
“What’s going on here?” the old turd asked Bran, ignoring me and my hand.
“Ask Nate,” Bran called as he began unloading flowers flat by flat.
Barney’s narrowed eyes flew to me. “I’m here to make amends.” I offered him my hand again. He ignored it, again. “I realize that I screwed up. I know now that what happened here could have been so much worse. I am truly sorry. I’d like to replace the flowers that your wife had planted around the shed with some new ones. I’ll also come out and weed when it needs it. Do you accept my offer of amends?”
He looked at Bran, then back at the house, then at the sky, then at a car creeping past his place, and then finally his gaze met mine.
“You promise to never get behind the wheel when you’ve been drinking again?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
Again his vision darted to Bran. I couldn’t see what my…Bran was doing back there but Barney grabbed my hand and shook, just once but that was enough. A weight the size of a Zamboni lifted off me.
“Thanks, that…well that makes me feel better, worthy.”
“Betty had them cock combs things planted. You got them?” Barney asked, releasing my hand to shout at Bran.
“Yes, Barney, we have them. And the zinnias she likes as well,” Bran yelled back.
“Okay then. Make sure it looks good. I’ll want you here every Sunday at four p.m. sharp to weed,” Barney told me then returned to the coolness of his house.
I turned to look at Bran who gave me a big green thumbs up.
“Yay for Sunday weeding with Barney until snow flies,” I sighed then grabbed a shovel out of the truck and got to work.
That afternoon after working at the shed, we went to the Inner Harbor, not so much to drop me off but to spend some time there among other people who weren’t drunks. Meetings and classes were okay, sort of, but it got depressing being around other people who abused alcohol. Here we could be a normal couple…if that’s what we were.
“So, Mrs. Barney seemed to like the flowers,” I commented as we strolled brick walkways while eating lemon Italian ices. The wind coming off Onondaga Lake was brisk, tickling the damp hairs on the back of my neck as it whipped the Inner Harbor banners attached to lamp posts.
“Mrs. Barney likes everything. How she ever married Mr. Barney is a mystery,” Bran said around a spoonful of frozen treat. “Want to sit down and people watch?”
“Sure.” We found a bench facing the water and sat down, our hips and thighs touching. Time drifted by pleasantly. Bran snickered steadily as I gave a color commentary of the Syracusans who were out and about. The man found me humorous, and I really liked the way he sniggered at what I said. He took our empty paper cups to the nearest trash can, gulls taking to wing as he waded through a flock of them milling about. Someone stopped to talk to him, a couple, and they handed him a camera. Bran grinned and nodded and took several images of the young guy and his girl with the water behind them. I sat and watched the man chatting away with the strangers, his hands moving as he spoke, the wind tugging at his shirt, and felt myself getting lost in his mannerisms. The way the wind lifted and played with his hair or the manner in which he stood, everything about him pulled at me, pulling feelings from deep inside and tossing them into the blustery summer air, spreading them like wispy seeds.
I smiled up at him when he sauntered back to our bench. The sun beat down, unrelenting, baking skin and grass.
“They were from some little town in North Carolina,” he explained as he dropped back down next to me, sweat making the brown skin on his neck glisten. Licking that tan flesh was all I could think of as he chatted about the couple and their family here in Syracuse. “…to make sure they took a boat ride on the canal. We should do that someday.”
“I have something to show you,” I said, making him blink at the rapid change in conversation. I slid my phone out of my shorts and opened the photo gallery, thumbing through the tons of pictures until I found the ones of my journal. I’d been sitting on them because…a thousand reasons, really, mostly fear of revealing too much of the real Nate to him. Once he saw those pages there would be no going back, not for me. I handed him my phone.
“Did you take pictures of my ass again?” he asked and I
shook my head. He quirked an eyebrow playfully then turned a bit on the bench to get the phone out of the direct sunlight. My right foot began moving, up and down, as he read and read and read. How long could it take a man to read a stupid journal page? I tipped my head a bit, angling so that I could see his expression better, but his face remained blank.
“I hope it’s not too soon to lay that kind of shit on you but—”
He looked up from the phone and the pages that said how much he had come to mean to me, how much I desired him, how deeply I’d fallen in love with him even though our time together had been short. How I prayed that he might be able to love a scrubby, obnoxious weed like me.
His blue-gray eyes shone with high emotion. “You know that dandelions are considered weeds by some, but I love them. They’re rebellious and vibrant, strong yet delicate, delicious when handled properly, and they fill the air with clouds of beautiful white puffs that carry the wishes of children.”
“Yeah?” I replied breathlessly. “You, uh, you love dandelions? You know that for a fact?”
“I do.” He placed my phone in my hand then rested his over it. “Would you like to go to my place? I have it ready for us.”
“I live literally like four minutes away,” I said with a smile, jerking my chin in the direction of my apartment building.
“Four minutes not five,” he said with affection. “I know you do, I just…I’d really like our first time to be in the space that I’ve created for us. It means a lot to me to show you—”
I silenced him with a kiss then stood. “Come on then, let’s go to your place.” I offered him my hand, a dirty hand with soil caked under the nails. He slid his hand, stained and earthy as mine was, into mine. The walk to the Apache seemed to take an eternity. The drive out to his place a lifetime. Keeping my hands to myself lasted only as long as he was driving. As soon as the engine of the antique truck silenced, I was unbuckled and on him, claiming his mouth in a kiss that left us both gasping for breath.
