Any Given Lifetime

by Leta Blake

  Grateful Jim hadn’t punched her face, she was able to wipe the tears from her face and stop crying after only an hour or so. She cleaned up in the McDonald’s bathroom, splashing water on her red, tear-stained cheeks.

  When she finally showed up at Marie’s house, Neil was sitting on the front step. His skinny legs were tucked up almost to his chin, and his piercing, intense gaze followed her car into the drive. When she got out, he stood up and ran to her. His arms felt too small and slight around her body. She held him and rubbed his back, and when he peered up at her, he searched her face.

  “So….” she said.

  He stared up at her, and she could feel him assessing her, taking in every detail of her face, body, and hair.

  “It’s over,” she said. “Hopefully he’ll send in the paperwork. And if he doesn’t, then he doesn’t. I don’t care. We’ll never see him again.”

  Neil nodded shortly. “Good. I…I’m sorry.”

  She patted his soft, spongy chestnut brown hair. “Shit happens, Neil. Every Southern girl knows that. But you’re not the shit. He is.” Neil seemed unconvinced, so she grabbed his chin and made him look at her. “You’re special. You’re not like everyone else. And maybe some people will hate you for that. But I love you. God help me, I do. And I’ll do anything for you. You’re my son.”

  Neil looked like he might say something cutting; sometimes he did when she was too sentimental. But he just said, “I love you, too.”

  She cleared her throat and tried not to cry. He almost never said it, but she always knew it was true. Still, it only hurt in the good way to hear.

  “I love you, too,” he said again. “And I promise to make it all up to you. I’ll make you proud.”

  April 2021—Atlanta, Georgia

  Neil sat in the dark in his room, curled up in the bed, an underlying hint of pain softening his usually sharp expression. Alice sat on the floor by his bed, reached out a hand to him, and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t take it. She sat there for over an hour, and it was only when she stood up to leave that Neil spoke. His voice was rough and tired. “He got married. Joshua. Got married.”

  Alice sighed and turned back to the bed, sank down to the floor, and said, “Neil, you have to let this go.”

  “I’m glad,” Neil said, straightening his shoulders. “I’m glad for him. I want him to be happy. At least, I did. I do. I don’t know. He can’t wait around for me to grow up.” He tensed his body as though annoyed with it and said with quiet rage, “Look at me. I’m just a little boy.”

  Alice didn’t know what to say to that. She never did when Neil confided these thoughts to her. If she had more money, she’d seek counseling for them both. Though she couldn’t imagine Neil ever actually talking to a counselor. And there was no way she was going to pay exorbitant fees for sessions she had no doubt would devolve into staring contests and possibly insults. From Neil, not the counselor.

  “Who did he marry?” she asked, not certain if it was the right thing at all.

  “The man he’s been seeing. Lee Fargo. He’s a nice guy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Facebook.”

  Alice knew Neil followed Joshua on social media outlets, but she hadn’t realized he was also tracking Joshua’s friends. Though, of course she should have known that. She still looked at Jim’s account sometimes, following links to his new girlfriend’s page, and she didn’t even love him. Not the way Neil still loved Joshua.

  Neil went on, “He posts pictures of them together and stories about their life. I hadn’t looked at his page in a few months. Because it hurts.”

  “I know, baby.”

  “But when I look, I get to see Joshua’s face at least.”

  “Yes.”

  Neil tensed all over. “So I missed the engagement announcement. But I should have known. They’ve been together a long time.” Neil rolled over so that his small back was to her. “Joshua looks happy in the pictures.”

  “You deserve to be happy, too.”

  Neil shrugged and covered his head with a pillow.

  The next evening, Alice stirred the canned soup she was heating for dinner and watched as Neil signed onto Facebook to look at Joshua’s wedding pictures again. Seeing the pictures of Joshua obviously soothed as much as it hurt. The pot began to rattle on the stove, and she turned the heat down.

  Day by day, moment by moment, she’d watched Neil realize that any hope he’d had of hurrying up into adulthood so that he could be with Joshua again was vanishing. Today that hope was entirely snuffed out. Joshua had a husband now, and a new life. Even if he still remembered and loved his old Neil, the one called Dr. Russell, Joshua had moved on.

  And that was only right. Alice couldn’t begrudge Joshua that, even if it killed her to see her little boy grieve.

  “Neil,” she said gently, snapping him from his obsessive clicking through the photos. “Soup’s ready.”

  Neil rubbed at his eyes, turned his computer off, and stood up. “Not hungry. Going to bed.” He left the kitchen and headed down the hall to his bedroom.

  Alice bit her lip as his bedroom door shut. With a sigh, she sat down at the table to eat. But the soup didn’t seem very appealing to her anymore, either.

  August 2011—Nashville, Tennessee

  Loving Joshua was frustrating as hell.

  But Neil was accustomed to frustration. He was a scientist, after all. Patience, calculations, and re-tries were what his life was made of. It didn’t mean being stuck with blue balls for the fourth day in a row was any fun. But he could wait. For Joshua.

  “Can I see you tomorrow?” Joshua asked, his ripe, soft lips swollen from the teenage-like make-out session they’d just engaged in for the past hour and a half. His eyes were dark and hooded, his expression soft and sweet.

  If only he’d agree to go to the bedroom and let Neil into his hands, and mouth, and ass. Neil would make everything so good for him.

  “Don’t you have to work?” Neil asked, brushing his thumb over Joshua’s mouth, letting it sink into the wet heat. “Bring home the bacon?”

  Joshua groaned and sucked on Neil’s thumb, closing his eyes. He panted softly when Neil pulled it free. “I hate my job.”

  “Most people do.”

  “I want to stay here with you.”

  Neil smiled. “You can come back over after work. I’ll be here with Magic. You could spend the night.”

  Shit. He’d pushed.

  Conflict warred in Joshua’s eyes, and Neil knew the moment he’d shut down against the growing lust between them. Sadness combined with shame as the young man he loved whispered, “I can’t do that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.” Joshua squirmed. “My family won’t understand. I can’t be gay. It’s not—”

  Neil stopped his words with his thumb again, letting Joshua suck on it a moment. He wanted to tell him that nothing was going to change about his feelings. That ignoring them, repressing them, would backfire eventually. But he didn’t want to end the night on a sour note. He loved Joshua too much to send him off angry. It used to be that he valued the truth; now he just valued Joshua. He kissed his mouth. “Go home. You’re tired.”

  “And I need to jerk off.”

  Neil groaned. “Asshole.” He bit back the suggestion that they take care of it together.

  “Will you jerk off, too?”

  Neil swallowed and nodded.

  “I’d like to see that.” Joshua’s voice was soft, full of yearning.

  “You could.”

  Joshua’s eyes lit up and then the fire guttered out again. “I have to go. C’mon, Magic. Paul’s home.”

  The giant roll of fur, more like a log than a dog, really, huffed from the bed in the corner and didn’t move.

  “I guess she’s staying here.”

  Neil stroked his fingers along Joshua’s jawline. “Come back after your shift. Stay with me tonight.”

  Joshua backed into the hallway, his mouth still red but his eyes flashing danger. “I can’t. I’ve
told you. And I probably won’t come over tomorrow, either. I have the late shift. So I guess I’ll see you and Magic… I don’t know.” He winced. “Later.”

  “Later,” Neil murmured, watching Joshua unlock the door to his apartment and rush inside.

  Joshua’s loud, angry cry of frustration that came as soon as the door was shut was expected, but it still made Neil tense up. He hated how Joshua hated himself. But what could he do about it except wait…and love him? He hated to admit it, but he’d fallen for the kid from the start, when Joshua had bitten into his lip and stared innocently down at him while wrapped in nothing but a towel.

  And that was why he wasn’t going to pressure Joshua anymore. Not for another kiss. Not to spend the night. Not for anything physical at all. Neil could wait.

  When the time came, he’d show Joshua how good it could be between men. How wrong his parents were to call it sin. He’d have Joshua begging for him to go beyond their current lust-soaked, fully clothed gropes. Yes, when Joshua finally asked to have sex with Neil, he would make him sing out in gratitude and praise.

  For that, Neil could wait. Because he was in love. And when love came for a man, there was no denying it. Love was big, powerful, and strong as fuck. And he—serious, focused, never-loved-anyone-before Neil Russell—was flattened by it. He’d wait as long as it took for Joshua to love him back.

  He’d wait forever.

  Chapter Four

  April 2022—Scottsville, Kentucky

  Joshua was surprised by the message he got from Paul. He and his boyfriend Fisher were going to be coming up from Nashville to visit with Paul’s grandma and wanted to get together. Joshua was excited to meet Fisher. After all, he’d been with Paul for quite some time now.

  Paul had invited Joshua to meet Fisher once before—in Nashville—and asked him to bring Lee.

  It they’d gone, it would have been the first trip that Joshua and Lee had taken together.

  Well, except for the visit to Lee’s sister in Louisville. That had been a tough trip. She was still grieving for her lost child, and just the sight of Lee, with all of his scars, seemed to undo the year of therapy that she’d gotten under her belt. When she’d lost her crap, yelled at Lee, and then slammed upstairs to a bedroom, her boyfriend had asked them to leave, and they had.

  Joshua had held Lee while he cried, rocking him back and forth on the hotel bed and rubbing his scarred back. Their mom had died when Lee was twelve, and their dad had abandoned them when Lee was sixteen. His sister was the only family Lee had left. And now she couldn’t bear to be near him.

  “You’ve got me,” Joshua had whispered. “You’ve got me.”

  It was as he’d held Lee on the hotel room bed, the vacancy light shining red outside their window, Joshua had finally understood why Lee couldn’t forgive himself, and it broke his heart. Because he understood all too well. He hadn’t even been there the morning of Neil’s death, hadn’t had a single chance to save his life, but he still blamed himself for living.

  He and Lee were both survivors, and they both struggled with guilt.

  The Nashville trip to meet Fisher and see Paul had never happened though. Joshua couldn’t lie to Lee about the reasons why, not like he could lie to Paul. The truth was he’d let perfectly normal issues at Stouder Lumber become emergency-sized in his mind, until he’d been able to convince himself that it was right to put the trip off indefinitely in order to resolve them. When, in fact, the problem—a few of the Mennonites struggling with the newest computer program he’d installed—wasn’t a big deal in the scheme of things, and could have easily waited a few days. He simply couldn’t make himself go back.

  Maybe if Paul wasn’t still living in the same apartment, the one they’d shared beside Neil. Maybe if Joshua hadn’t held Lee on that hotel bed as he sobbed, and understood in his own heart how impossible it would be to ever go back to the places or the people death stole from them.

  Still, Joshua had always wanted to meet his old friend’s new lover, and so he was excited by the fact Paul and Fisher would be coming up to Scottsville this time. He didn’t even know what Fisher looked like since Paul wasn’t on social media, and neither was Joshua, really. Lee was on Facebook, though, and posted tons of pictures and videos of them online, but Joshua only updated the Stouder Lumber account when there was news to impart, and clicked ‘like’ on things Lee told him he should. So he was curious about the man who’d stolen his old friend’s heart.

  Over the phone, Paul told him, “I’ve been wanting to show Fisher around Scottsville and Bowling Green anyway. I’m grateful Grandma’s still alive. I’ve told Fisher about how she and Gramps took me in when I really needed a home after Dad kicked me out. Fisher wants to thank her.”

  Joshua had always admired the blasé attitude Paul’s grandparents had taken when he’d jumped out of the closet by making out with the town’s hotshot quarterback when he was fifteen. Eric, the quarterback, hadn’t fared as well, being cast out of his parents’ house, too, and then bullied by his own team until he finally left for college the next year. Eric had stayed with his former girlfriend’s family in the time between. It’d been a cold, awkward, scary time for every young queer in town. But Paul’s grandparents had been steadfast. Evidence that there could be warmth even in a blizzard of fear.

  In the end, Joshua’s own folks had been surprisingly chill about his coming out, too. Maybe because he’d been so devastated by grief at the time that his homosexuality was the least of their concerns. Besides, they said, they’d suspected when he’d moved in with Paul after leaving for school, since Paul was out already. Though they’d hoped since he was attending a religious school, he’d keep it to himself.

  And he had kept it to himself. Until he hadn’t.

  Seeing Paul again, after all that Joshua had been through, after all the changes in his life—well, he was kind of nervous. What if Paul didn’t like Lee? What if Joshua didn’t like Fisher? What if Paul wanted to talk about Neil and Magic? And what if that was more than Joshua could handle in front of a stranger?

  Lee, though, was relaxed, saying, “He knew Neil, and you knew Neil. That’s a blessing, isn’t it, babe? Were there any other people who really knew him?”

  “Not really. Just Chris, but he’s…” Joshua raised a shoulder and let it fall. “He’s Chris.”

  Most people in Scottsville knew Chris from his job at the nearby resort, and also as the swishiest queer in town, but only a few really knew about Chris’s background in Nashville.

  “Chris at Barren River?” Lee asked, surprised.

  “Yeah.”

  “Knew Neil?”

  “They were friends.”

  Lee blinked. “There’s a story there. I can’t believe we’ve been together almost four years now and I haven’t heard it.”

  Joshua laughed. “I don’t know why I never told you about it. I guess there isn’t much to say. If you know Chris, then you know he’s friends with everyone who doesn’t treat him badly because of his, you know, everything.”

  Chris was…Chris. He’d been a drag performer in Nashville, and a pal of Neil’s from the years when Neil had hung out at gay bars—a pastime he’d given up as ‘boring and stupid’ by the time he’d met Joshua. But Chris he’d never given up. They’d been friends until the end.

  “I still remember the first time I met Chris,” Joshua said, a smile on his lips. “He was hanging out at Neil’s place, Magic on his lap, and a big old plastic cup in his hand. It was full of rum with a dash of some kind of juice so he could call it a cocktail.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “He didn’t stand up when I came in. He just put out his hand, and said, ‘I’m Chris. And who are you, sugar-tits?’”

  “Sugar-tits!” Lee laughed. “I can see him saying that.”

  “Yeah. I think when he did drag shows, he used female pronouns, but otherwise…” Joshua trailed off, remembering the ease between Neil’s snark and Chris’s sparkle. He’d been jealous at the time. Which seemed s
illy now that Chris had married a big, beefy Kentucky farmer and taken on a passel of stepsons. Talk about complicated.

  “How did Chris end up in Scottsville?” Lee asked. “I always assumed he’d been born here and never got out.”

  “No, he’s a transplant. Like you. He came up to check on me after Neil died. Stayed a few days and somehow met Dale Richards while pumping gas—I know, right? They exchanged numbers, started texting, and the rest is history.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then, if it’s just you, Paul, and Chris in the world who really knew Neil, then we should be grateful for this visit,” Lee said again. “I’d like to hear Paul’s take on the guy who loved you so well.”

  Joshua kissed Lee then, grateful and sad all at once. He loved that Lee didn’t want him to forget Neil, and that he never suggested Joshua should ‘move on’ or ‘get over it.’ His patience was beautiful. But sometimes he felt like Neil’s humanity, the reality of him, got lost in Lee’s near-hero worship of the man who’d donated his skin, and the ideal that Joshua had loved. The reality was that Neil could be a pill, and sometimes it weighed on Joshua that he let Lee believe in Neil’s purity.

  A week later, when Paul stepped out of the giant, white SUV and onto the fresh green, rolling field that extended out from Joshua and Lee’s small, white farmhouse, Joshua couldn’t stop smiling. Paul looked the same as he ever did: big, tall, and like he lived on a bench press. His tanned skin and blond hair glimmered in the Kentucky sunshine.

  “This your new place?” Paul asked, nodding toward the house Lee and Joshua had moved into not long before, taking over the only empty place already built on the Stouder family property—the others were already spoken for by aunts, uncles, cousins, and Joshua’s parents. “No wonder I could never lure you back to Nashville if you had this waiting for you.” He grinned and gave Joshua a big hug.

  Fisher followed right behind him, and his steely, firm gaze met Joshua’s. “Glad to meet you,” he said, putting out his hand.