by A. M. Riley
Nobody talked while they ate, either, but that was okay with Scott. He didn’t want to stop chewing anyway. The food was delicious.
Uncle Rich finished his meal, put his silverware in a perfect cross on his plate, wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin, laid that down, said, “Excuse me,” and stood. “I have work to do. Thank you so much, again, Mister… Good luck to you.” And he thumped away down the hallway.
Joshua noticeably relaxed. He called out something in Spanish, and the man came back in, this time carrying two highball glasses with some kind of amber liquid, ice cubes dancing in it.
Sighing mightily, Joshua tipped one back and drank it almost all the way down at once. “Christ, I needed that.”
“I don’t drink when I’m driving,” said Scott, sounding prudish to his own ears. But it was the truth.
Joshua just gave him a look and snagged the second glass, setting it by his own. “You want a ride back right away, or you have time for a tour?” he said. His words were noticeably slurred.
Scott figured it might not be a bad idea to let Joshua walk a little of the buzz off before climbing back into his truck. “I could do with a walk,” he said.
Joshua stood, lifting the second glass and drinking down its contents like water. “C’mon, then.”
Joshua led him through the house. It was large but simple. “This is my room,” he said in a bored way, turning on the light. Scott looked around. There were team banners on the walls, some ribbons hanging from trophies on a shelf, a bookshelf with, it appeared, an extensive collection of slim paperbacks, and a signed football on a desk covered with the paraphernalia of adolescence.
This brought Scott to a question he hadn’t really considered before. “How old are you?”
Joshua shot him a look. “Twenty-four last June.”
And he still lived in a child’s room.
“Uncle Rich brought me up after my folks passed. It’s just me and him here.” Joshua stepped to the door and turned the light out again. “C’mon. I’ll show you the barns.”
Barns. Plural. And Joshua wasn’t kidding.
In a dune-buggy-like car, Joshua drove them down the row of two- and three-story buildings, all of which seemed to house some overlarge multilimbed farm machine. “Uncle Rich rents combines and such,” said Joshua. “He used to have cattle, but he got sick of the trouble of ranching.”
“You help him with his business?”
“Ain’t much use to him. Was when there was livestock. That mare you saw, that was our last one. Now he’s sold her, guess you could say I’m the last animal the old man’s got left to burden him.” That was said in the bitterest of tones.
Joshua turned the little vehicle around the end of the last building and up a rise. He killed the engine and sat back. From their vantage point they could see the sun just settling over the horizon, miles of grass and fence and one star showing in the evening sky.
Joshua exhaled, a long, weary sound, and put his feet up on the dash. “You got a girl?” he said suddenly.
Scott was surprised, but just said, “No.”
Joshua turned his head, pushed back his hat, and gazed at him steadily. “But you got a b—friend,” he said.
Scott didn’t drop his eyes, but his face went steadily warmer.
“Don’t worry ’bout it,” said Josh. “I ain’t even got a b—friend. So you’re one up on me.”
Scott didn’t come out to strangers, especially on the road and especially on the road in rodeo towns in Wyoming.
“I don’t want trouble,” he said. “I appreciate the steak dinner, Mr. Miller, but I don’t want to…”
“Oh hell,” said Joshua. “Don’t go off all in a tizzy. I’m not gonna out you, fer Christ sake. I’m just saying.” He kicked at the steering wheel. “I’m just saying I once had a b—friend, and…you’re one up on me, is all, if yours ain’t dumped you yet.”
Oh.
“Shouldn’t even call him that, I guess. I mean, you’d laugh if I told you.”
Scott wasn’t given to putting his feet into other men’s shoes much. But he imagined, for one horrible moment, being gay and living in Redding with Uncle Rich. “Sorry,” he said.
Joshua made a face. And Scott had an uncomfortable twinge of sympathy for the man who had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and apparently painful memories to accompany him.
“You took care of your uncle’s cows?” he said.
“Cows?” Joshua gave him a look. “Yeah, I took care of the cattle. Uncle Rich had a line of cowponies for a while there. That was nice.”
At least he was talking again, thought Scott. And he seemed to like talking about the farm animals more than the human ones. “A line?” he said. “What do you mean?”
“That mare,” said Joshua. “She was a good one, and Uncle Rich, he got a good bit of money for her. Federation stock, you know. Her blood’s got some nice reining champions.”
Scott had no idea what the man was talking about, so he asked and got a history of cutting and reining horses, then a history of bloodlines. Joshua talked and talked, and his face became animated, and the young man Scott had met by the side of the road emerged as he talked.
His words rolled out of him, and he made a story out of each and every question Scott asked him. Scott thought it was a lot like listening to one of those radio men who sometimes would get on the country stations late at night with their long stories.
“But I talk too much,” said Joshua.
“Naw,” said Scott. “You’re fine.”
He got a smile and a warm look from those eyes that, in hindsight, he realized he should have noticed and been forewarned by.
“Thanks for listening to me jaw,” said Joshua. “It gets too quiet sometimes.”
Scott couldn’t imagine it. He thought suddenly of Jim and Brian and Paul and thanked God in his heart for them.
Joshua studied the ground. Then he lifted his hand and just looped one finger around Scott’s. Scott looked up, and those green eyes were just tired and sad and begging.
Christ.
“I got a man at home,” said Scott.
“I know.” Joshua dropped his fingers and looked away. “Well…” Joshua sighed deeply. “Guess I should be offering to drive you back to your truck. Thanks for rescuing me.” He smiled, and his eyes crinkled at the edges.
And then, for no good reason that he could think of later except the man needed it and Scott knew what that was like, Scott leaned forward, took Joshua’s chin, and kissed him. Once. Soft and lingering, and then he let Joshua go.
Joshua blinked at him, eyes wide and hurting.
Oh, man. Scott reached up and touched that too-young face, then all on impulse leaned forward and kissed him again. This time Scott wrapped his hand around Joshua’s neck and held him there so he could open Joshua’s lips and let the kid feel his tongue. Joshua’s mouth opened and just received him, hungry and eager as a young calf, his hands coming up to rest on Scott’s shoulders. When Scott broke the kiss, Joshua’s mouth remained open, his eyes closed, long lashes fanning flushed cheeks. His eyes popped open, and he took a deep breath.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” said Scott.
Joshua nodded. His eyes were wild and hot. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Sorry for what?”
“This.” Joshua’s hands moved to either side of Scott’s face, and he kissed Scott back. It was an inexpert kiss, and that was, finally, what made Scott do what he did next. If he’d felt the man was anything less than an innocent, he would have shoved Joshua away.
Joshua’s hat was pushed askew, his hair sticking up. Scott took it from Joshua’s head, smoothing his hair, and said, “Where can we go?”
Joshua looked at him. “There’s a sofa in the barn.”
* * * *
Joshua was an eager and simple lover. Happy to be kissed, happy to be touched. Running his fingers over Scott wonderingly and crying out like a boy when he came in Scott’s hands, his thighs trembling and his one h
and clutching at Scott’s arm.
Scott was working himself, resting his cheek against Joshua’s cool chest, when Joshua said, “Can I suck you?”
Squeezing the base of his cock and waiting until Joshua got the condom on him, Scott watched in awe as Joshua bent over him, his eyelids fluttering, cheeks hollowing as he sucked. He looked up at Scott, and his eyes were shining as if with tears, and Scott laid his hand on that silky long hair and came in the condom as hard as he ever had.
Then he lay back on the sofa, gazing up at the roof of the barn, Joshua passed out across his chest, and tried to think what he’d done and what he was going to do about it.
* * * *
“Hello, Jim?”
Just outside of some backwater. Twenty-four hours from delivery and still well within schedule, Scott had pulled off at a rest stop for ten minutes to call home.
“Hey, baby. God, Scott, how long till you get home?”
“’Nother thirty hours at most.”
“Can’t wait to see you. Hey, Paul sent some pictures from New York. I’m gonna forward them in a minute.” There was a lot of feedback noise and mumbling and then the beep as an image was delivered to Scott’s cell phone. He looked at it and laughed. Brian buck naked, in a collar, with a leash hanging from it, grinned up at him.
“Wow, Jim, that is nasty.” He laughed into the phone. “You gonna get busted by the feds for Internet porn, lover?”
Jim was hooting away there on the line. “There’s more.”
“I bet there is.” Scott sighed, a long heartfelt exhalation. “Wish you were here right now, baby. I need you, Jim.”
“Soon.” Jim sounded a bit choked up.
“Yeah. Soon. Well, I gotta go.”
“Drive carefully.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Scott. He disconnected and looked back over his seat. “Hey, you wanna pee, you better do it now, bub. I ain’t stopping between here and Seattle.”
“Okay.” Joshua climbed over the seat and slid down and out the passenger door, running across the grass to the men’s room in his bare feet.
Scott watched him. He had thirty hours to think of something.
“Wish Brian were here,” he said to himself. Of course, he could call Brian, but truth was he didn’t know how to explain himself. If Brian could see Joshua and maybe talk to him, Scott figured he might understand.
When Joshua had roused from his sex-induced nap and sat up, Scott had still been writing the speech in his mind that would let the boy down easy and somehow leave them both with some sense of peace.
When Joshua woke, he dressed quietly. His brows were serious below the brim of his hat as he drove back to his truck in the dune buggy. Scott wanted to thank his uncle again, and Joshua led him to where the old man was working in his office. There was another man there, and the uncle barely acknowledged Scott when he expressed his thanks.
“Don’t know,” Scott heard the uncle say to his visitor as the doors swung closed again. “Friend of my useless nephew’s.”
Grim-faced, Joshua stopped at his room again before they left. “I have a book to take back to the library,” he said. He must have misinterpreted the way Scott was looking around his room. “Got a lot of books in here for a cowboy, I guess.”
Scott hadn’t noticed the books, really. He was the sort of man who noticed sports gear. “Nah.”
“Alls I got is books,” said Joshua. “Think I’d go stark raving if I couldn’t disappear into ’em sometimes.”
Later, Scott would go over and over it, trying to find the moment when he’d made up his mind. “Come to Los Angeles with me,” he heard himself say. “Can’t live your whole life in a book.”
Next thing, Joshua was sending his truck ahead of him and throwing his little duffel into the back of Scott’s cab, and here they were, barreling along at ninety miles an hour back toward Scott’s family and their exclusive relationship.
Not that he’d done anything to endanger that trust, mind you—just a lot of kissing and handjobs really. Scott was clean, and he planned to stay that way, and he’d told Joshua about Jim. But it still felt like cheating.
Scott looked down at the picture of Brian in his cell phone. He thought of Jim.
Oh hell.
The passenger door opened, and Joshua climbed back in. He’d scrubbed his face, and the long brown bangs fell wet and dark into those grass green eyes. Pink and clean, with a grin stretching across it, his face looked even younger than the twenty-four years he’d admitted to Scott. “Ready?” he said.
Hell no, thought Scott. But he turned the key, pulled the clutch, and put the truck into gear. “Buckle up,” he said.
* * * *
Jim always fought the anticipation and dread that tumbled continuously in his belly in the hours before Scott arrived back home.
Scott was not an easy man to love. He battled one’s affection, battled one’s sentiment. And just when he seemed to have relaxed and decided to trust a man, he’d get some crazy idea in his head, and he and Jim would have to battle past that.
It was worth it though.
Because once the smoke had cleared, Jim would find himself nose to nose and belly to belly with a man 50 percent horny little devil and 50 percent intense pure heart, pretty, tigerlike eyes gazing at him like he was the next best thing.
Jim was sitting on the sofa pretending not to be waiting when he heard Scott’s rig pull up out there on the street.
His heart pounding, hands feeling suddenly cold, he heard the door outside slam and the sound of footsteps. He thought he heard a man’s voice talking, but then Scott talked to himself a bit now and then.
The door creaked open. That golden head peeked inside, a big grin stretching across it.
“Baby.” Jim forgot all about pretense, and Scott had barely gotten his duffel thrown down before Jim had his man in both of his arms and was tasting his tonsils.
He set Scott down with a thump but didn’t relinquish him. “Welcome home.”
A clearing of a throat made him look up. A slender young man stood on his porch wearing worn jeans, a dark snap-button shirt, long straight brown hair sticking out from under a cowboy hat and big green eyes. “Hey,” said the stranger.
Jim looked down at Scott. His eyes made a question mark.
“Hey Jim,” said Scott. “This cowboy followed me home. Can I keep him?”
Chapter Sixteen
“You want any more potatoes?”
“No, thank you,” said Joshua. “You’re a really fine cook, Mr. Jim.”
“It’s just Jim, son,” said Jim. He shot another look at Scott. They were like tiny little arrows, those looks. Scott figured if they were arrows, he’d pretty much look like he’d been attacked by a tribe of angry Indians by now.
Joshua was looking around the kitchen, those enormous eyes rolling. Jim sighed. “I’ve got pie for dessert, if you’d like some.”
“Yes, please,” said Joshua, sitting straight up. Jim dished out the pie, added a dollop of ice cream, and went for the coffee things.
Scott figured this was going to be a long evening.
“So, Joshua, what do you do?”
“I guess I’m kinda a wrangler, sir,” said Joshua. “I can handle most kinds of ranch animals.”
“You have a job set up out here in Los Angeles, then?”
“No, sir.” Joshua looked from Scott to Jim and back to Scott.
“Joshua thought he might go up to Camarillo and around the equestrian center down here, looking for someplace that needs help,” said Scott.
Jim set the coffeepot down on the table with a little thunk. “You take cream, Joshua?”
“No, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Jim shot a look at Scott. Ouch. Those little arrows were getting mighty pointy.
While Joshua went off to the powder room, Jim said, “So where’s our cowboy going to sleep?”
“In my room?” Scott said a little weakly. “Because I’ll be. Sleeping. In your room. Right?” Jim shot him a look.
>
Hell.
“How’s your cowboy going to feel about sleeping alone, Scott?”
“Jim, nothing like that is going on. I mean, well, maybe something sorta, but not like that. Nothing like…” Jim was stirring cream in his coffee in a manner that Scott thought might turn it to butter in the near future.
“He knows,” Scott said. “I told him.”
“Yes, sir,” said Joshua from the doorway. He looked worried and just like his horse had that day by the highway, skittish, and all hands and big eyes. “Scott told me you and him are an item. I don’t mean nothing, but Scott was kind enough to invite me to stay…” He drifted off, big eyes going from Scott to Jim to Scott to Jim. “I should leave,” he said.
“No,” said Jim. “We have plenty of room, and you’re welcome, Joshua.” He stood.
“Let me help you with those, sir,” said Joshua, jumping to take plates from Jim’s hands. He busied himself at the sink. “You cooked; I’ll clean,” he announced. And when Jim didn’t immediately respond, added, “Go on, now,” shooing them out of the kitchen.
With one more dark look at Scott, Jim went.
“Babe, come on. Let me explain.” Scott followed Jim into their bedroom. Jim had gone to the marijuana forest and begun picking buds. His intent was obvious.
“Please do,” he said.
“I just ran into him. He was stranded. We started talking and… I mean, look at the guy, Jim.”
“What I was noticing,” said Jim, sifting seeds and crumbling grass into the bowl of his bong, “was how he was looking at you.”
Scott went back and made sure the bedroom door was shut.
“What are you talking about, Jim?”
“That boy has a huge crush on you, Scott.”
“No, he’s just lonely.”
“Hmmm.” Jim lit the bong and took a long hit. He offered it to Scott, who took it gratefully.
“He got dumped recently. And he lives alone with a son of a bitch. Of course he latched on to the first gay man he met. Probably the only gay man he’s met up there.” Scott exhaled through his nose and passed the bong back to Jim. “He just needs a friend, Jim.”
