“Perhaps,” she said. After her cursory examination of the wound, she reapplied a fresh bandage.
“Are you this mean to every patient?”
“Not at all,” replied Nurse Ratched. As she wrote in the chart, she looked crossways at him. Dutch got the sinking feeling she was estimating how long it would take to kill him with a hypodermic filled with oxygen. “I just have no sympathy for patients brought in because of a DWI.”
Did she just say DWI? he thought.
Images splashed up from his subconscious. He was at a club, drinking. A lot. He was angry, but he didn’t remember why. There was a hot, dark-haired, dark-skinned Latino. They made out and practically had sex on the dance floor. Afterward, they stumbled out of the club, and he got into his car.
His memory ended there. The next thing he knew, he was adrift in the ocean, alone. At least until his father showed up with their trusted guardians at his side.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
“God?” she asked. Her eyes blazed with ire, as if Dutch’s comment stoked the simmering embers just beneath her surface. “You think God is going to answer you when he did nothing for my sister?” Putting the metal chart on the rollaway table, the nurse crossed over to him. She leaned very close, her breath hot against Dutch’s face. He immediately felt vulnerable. Under normal circumstances, defending himself wouldn’t be a problem. He’d inherited his father’s strength. But doped up on morphine and God knew what else, merely talking drained his meager reserves. If she wanted to do him harm, there was little he could do about it.
“Where was God when my sister was killed by a drunk driving the wrong way?” The anger in her eyes spread to her mouth. She sneered like an attack dog. “She was only thirty-five. She had two kids who will never know how great their mother was all because some dumb fuck got drunk and got behind the wheel of a car.” She paused, putting pressure on his chest, which was bruised. Flares of hot pain surged through his body. “You want to know what happened to him?”
The pain she caused prevented Dutch from responding. Not that he would have if he could. Since her eyes resembled a rabid dog’s, he decided silence was the best response.
“Nothing happened to him,” she finally answered. “Not a fucking scratch. Sure, he did some time and probation, but he’s walking around this earth while my sister is buried beneath it.” Her anger gave way to unfathomable grief as her voice caught in her throat.
He sensed she wanted him to say something, and that his words would determine what further punishment he would receive on her shift. “I’m sorry,” he finally told her. “Nothing I can say will absolve me of my actions.”
“Damn straight!” she replied.
“What’s going on here?” a voice from the door asked. It was his sister.
Backing up, Nurse Ratched stood rigid before him, made of steel instead of flesh and bone. The disgust in her eyes was still palpable. “Your brother has finally awoken,” she informed Heidi. “Isn’t it a joyous event?”
“Lukas!” she screeched. She was the only one in the family to call him by his first name. Everyone else addressed him as Dutch, the nickname his father gave him. “Thank God, you’re awake,” Heidi said before rushing over to his side, oblivious to the previously tense situation.
His sister hugged him gently. Her love and her tears eased his nerves and abated his pain. Still, he eyed the nurse warily as she stepped back into the shadows of the room.
“I’ve been worried sick,” Heidi said, rising up enough to look into his face. “I’ve been here for the past two days, and you wait till I go back to your house for a few hours’ rest to wake up?”
“Sorry,” was all he could manage, still not taking his eyes off Nurse Ratched.
“I’ll inform Dr. Gupta that your brother is awake,” she said.
Heidi nodded her head in reply. Judging from the tears and the wide grin, she was too choked up to speak.
Nurse Ratched turned to leave, picking up the metal chart on the way out. Before exiting, she looked back over her shoulder. “I hope you learn from this situation, Mr. Keller.”
She then opened the door, the light from the hallway momentarily blinding him, before she disappeared into the glow beyond.
“What was that about?” Heidi asked, nodding her head to the closed hospital room door. As always, curiosity got the better of her.
“Don’t worry about it,” he told her. “We were just getting acquainted.”
His sister responded, but he didn’t hear what she said. Instead, Nurse Ratched’s final words echoed inside him. “I hope you learn from this, Mr. Keller.”
The words reverberated inside him, setting off a soul quake that decimated everything he was before this moment.
Although the details were still fuzzy, Dutch vowed to learn from his mistakes. After all, Nurse Ratched was right. No matter how awful she was or how potentially dangerous she might be, the major threat to his continued well-being wasn’t some vengeful nurse. It was him.
That was going to change, starting now.
CHAPTER 12
2005
JUSTIN brushed his teeth, listening to the cold November rain rattling against the bathroom window. As always, rain patter made him horny. Spencer had thought the idea bizarre when he first shared the fact a couple of months into their relationship. He proceeded to ask questions like some grand inquisitor, trying to find Justin’s link between sex and rain.
For Justin, there was no rhyme or reason. All he knew was during a rainstorm, just like during sex, everything changed. Electrical impulses traveled up and down his flesh like an insistent lover’s fingertips, gently tantalizing his skin into sexual awakening. Heavy and moist, the air pressed upon him, trapping him underneath its weight. Waves of sexual frenzy rippled through his body, building up pressure like a thundercloud about to burst.
When the rain finally fell, when the heavens suddenly released the contents of its pendulous, dark clouds, the forceful collisions of one wet substance against another sparked his desire like a flash of lightning. The splatter of water, the rivulets of rain, traveling down drenched bodies like sweat, urged him to seek the flesh of another, to find similar release within the warm folds of another’s body.
He longed to build up his own sexual storm, to churn up the atmosphere with the heat of his desire. He sought to pound his sweaty flesh against the dripping flesh of another, to mimic the fall of the rain with his own rhythmic thrusts until the storm he created reached its own climax and he could relish in the culmination of his own deluge.
Whenever it rained, he and Spencer had some of the best sex of their lives. The first time was shortly after they moved in together, and a huge storm system rolled into San Antonio one Sunday afternoon. Spencer was busy working on his dissertation, but Justin convinced him to give it a rest for a few hours. Justin topped him against the sliding patio door, blinds open for all to see. Sliding in and out of Spencer’s ass as he watched the rain fall outside brought him to climax quickly. Which meant they did it again. This time Justin bottomed for Spencer in the study, where the wind was slamming the rain hard against the window. Spencer’s frenzied thrusts timed perfectly with the onslaught of rain and wind against the window.
There were other times. The time they did it in the car on the way home from a Houston trip. The heavens opened up on I-10, and Justin just had to have some. They pulled off into a hotel parking lot, parked toward the back, and crawled into the backseat. They traded fucking each other during the entire storm. When they were done, their bodies were as wet as if they had been running around in the deluge.
In New York, they had a quickie in a restaurant bathroom. There was the hot tub in Cape Cod, the balcony of their hotel room in Hawaii, and the rainforest in Costa Rica with the rumbling Arenal volcano as a backdrop.
Those were extremely hot times.
These days, though, they rarely had the energy for such impromptu sexcapades. Although, I could be persuaded into a good fuck right about now
, he thought. He squeezed his cock, which pulsated at his touch.
“We going to sleep or having sex?” Justin asked Spencer who entered the bathroom. He cocked his head to the window, where the rain clicked against the glass.
Spencer looked at him and laughed. “You and the rain,” he said, feigning exasperation. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I can think of a few things,” replied Justin. Standing behind Spencer, he rubbed his hard cock against Spencer’s ass.
Spencer leaned back and kissed him. “For now, your fetish will have to wait,” he told Justin. “I have a routine to perform.”
Justin sighed. Knowing the routine all too well, he backed up and perched at the end of the claw-foot tub. Spencer had already brushed his teeth. Now it was time for the applying of his nightly lotions to keep his skin vibrant and taut. Vanity and Spencer were best friends, and together they kept a strict, nightly beauty regimen. Nothing interfered with that. Not even ball-busting rain sex.
First, Spencer applied the body lotion to keep his skin from getting ashy. Then he went to work on the eye cream to stave off crow’s feet and prevent bags from forming under his eyes. There was an assortment of other products in blue, white, or cream-colored tubes and containers, all designed to battle saggy skin and unsightly wrinkles.
Spencer was only in his early thirties, but he feared looking old before his time. He was intent on doing anything he could to keep his age from marching across his face, something Dolly Parton’s Truvy declared to her friends in Steel Magnolias.
“Would you be terribly angry if we went to bed?” Spencer asked while putting his eye cream away. He then picked up another container, this one blue, and proceeded to rub its contents across his cheeks and forehead. Justin had no idea what that one was for, but he caught a whiff of mint. “I’m beat.”
“I understand,” Justin replied. He did his best to hide the disappointment. “It’s been hectic for both of us.”
They were both tired from a long week of work and had an even longer week of household renovations ahead of them.
They were currently in the process of remodeling their master suite, a project they had put off for a few years but were now tackling. Spencer was finally getting the French doors he wanted. They were replacing the pocket doors that used to lead to the sitting room just off their bedroom. For the past year, Spencer had complained how much of an eyesore they were, whether open or closed. They were outdated and unworthy of a gay couple such as themselves.
Justin didn’t really care about them, but Spencer did. New doors were therefore picked out, and plans were made to install them. Since they were tackling the doors, though, Justin felt it was time to add on a master bath to their bedroom.
He wanted a shower very badly. He had lived without one for five years. And while the baths he and Spencer shared were romantic, they weren’t commonplace.
Their lives were busy, and bathing together started becoming an inefficient use of their time, especially since they both primarily bathed in the morning before work. For the first few years, they bathed together twice a week and were often late to work as a result. Sudsy, naked flesh was simply a temptation they couldn’t avoid during the first couple of years in the house. They didn’t care, though. At least not then.
Now that they were more firmly entrenched in their professions, being late was not the wisest career move. Justin was in the middle of his first year as a high school principal, and not just the principal of any high school, but of his own alma mater. Some of the teachers who taught him were still working there, and regrettably the students were the children of some of his old high school classmates.
Those two things combined with his relatively young age prompted him to be extra cognizant of his professionalism. A principal in his early thirties was just not usual, but Justin had worked hard in his previous assistant principal position. The school district had taken notice of that.
Many of the ideas that turned his previous school around were his. He’d started a community mentor project that paired at-risk youth with a successful alum. The mentor and mentees all developed strong bonds that not only increased academic performance but decreased truancy and a relatively high dropout rate for an inner city school.
Their scores on the mandatory statewide test increased, largely due to his curriculum-enrichment plan that set aside school time for students to seek extra assistance in subjects they were struggling in. Teachers were no longer teaching to the standardized test but were focusing on teaching students skills to master concepts that had previously eluded them. As a result, the students naturally scored better on the standardized tests.
Parents also became more involved when they saw how much their children were learning. The Parent Teacher Association for his former high school raised $100,000 to outfit the new school with updated technology and a secured Wi-Fi system.
Now, Justin had been charged by the district to recreate his magic on the Luther Burbank High School campus. The district had been considering closing the school based on its declining enrollment and plummeting test scores. Upper administration had given Justin four years to turn the school around. Justin hoped to accomplish the task in half the time.
Doing so meant less time at home recently. Most nights were filled with committee meetings, and Justin often didn’t get home until after 8:00 p.m., which was about the time Spencer was getting home these days.
Spencer had recently received tenure at St. Mary’s University. As a result, the expectations placed upon him by his department chair and dean had increased threefold.
He was chair of the university reaccreditation committee, which was a huge sign of respect and an even greater burden. Spencer’s success meant the university would maintain its accreditation status and continue to be a degree-granting institution.
Spencer was also Director of Graduate Studies in the Foreign Language Department, where he taught two undergraduate classes and one graduate class each semester. He had six students in the graduate program who had requested him to chair their master’s thesis. Naturally, he accepted all six requests.
He was secretary of the faculty senate and served on at least four other university committees. Spencer was a bright, shining star on campus, beloved by students, faculty, and administration.
Being so beloved took a lot of time.
Finally finished with his lotions and potions, Spencer joined Justin in the guest bedroom, where they had both slept since the renovations on the master suite began.
“I’m so tired,” Spencer told Justin while resting his head on the pillow. He stared at Justin from his side of the bed. “I’m really sorry about not taking you up on the sex. It would have been hot.”
“It always is,” Justin told him. Spencer’s green eyes still captivated him, holding him in their power and causing blood to once again engorge his cock. Then he yawned, and like an outtake valve, the blood rushed out of his manhood, leaving it flaccid once again. “Don’t worry about it, though. I’m tired too.”
For a few moments, they stared into each other’s eyes, wanting to get closer, needing to feel each other’s flesh, but their weary bodies prevented them from movement.
“Dinner was good tonight.”
“Yeah,” Spencer laughed. “Sonic is awesome.”
Justin laughed too. Spencer used to make gourmet meals every night. Recently, takeout had become their shared meal. It wasn’t fair for Justin to expect a home-cooked meal when Spencer was working as many long hours as Justin was. And since Spencer insisted he not cook, since he was so bad at it, something had to give.
Now they took turns picking up dinner. Tomorrow night was Spencer’s choice. It was likely to be something Italian.
“I miss you,” Justin said. He reached over, bridging the chasm between them, and stroked Spencer’s face. His snow-white skin and his haunting green eyes still seemed like magical forces to Justin.
“I miss you too,” Spencer replied. He smiled as Justin rubbed his sm
ooth chin. “How about we plan on some hot sex this weekend?”
“It’s a date,” Justin said. He leaned over and kissed Spencer good night. The kiss was warm and comfortable.
“Sleep tight,” Spencer said while switching off the bedside lamp. He then rolled over and faced the opposite wall.
In the darkness, Justin watched Spencer sleep. He wanted to scoot over and lie behind him, to feel his naked body against his own, but he was so tired. He lacked the strength to move one inch. Instead, he listened to Spencer’s breathing. Outside, the rain continued to pelt the windows. Eventually, he closed his eyes and fell asleep to the soothing sounds of the man he loved and the hypnotic drum of the rain.
CHAPTER 13
2010
RAIN fell in slow, sad drops from the sky as Justin sat in his car outside of his mother’s house, his car’s engine still running. The water ran like tears down the windshield, snaking lazy, cheerless paths across the glass. A few years ago, such a rainstorm would have sent him into a sexual frenzy. Now, he felt lost and alone.
Outside, parked in the driveway in front of him, sat Spencer’s black Ford Explorer. He had found him at last.
After the hospital and his encounter with that damn Nurse Ratched, he didn’t know what else to do, where else to look. After exhausting all the likely destinations Spencer might have fled to—Tyler’s, Carolyn’s, and the hospital—he was clueless about where to go next.
The answer arrived to the tune of “Stop! In the Name of Love” by Diana Ross and The Supremes, his mother’s favorite group and her assigned ringtone on his cell phone. When she told him Spencer was with her, relief descended upon his body, relaxing his tense muscles and almost releasing a flood of tears.
Within minutes, he was pulling into the driveway of his childhood home, anxious to see Spencer. Now that he was actually here, he was too scared to venture inside.
3 Page 9
