Loose Ends

by Kristen Ashley

  Maddox had never given a woman flowers or jewelry.

  Red asses, spectacular orgasms, foot rubs, but not roses or silver, definitely not gold and diamonds.

  Even though D knew a dozen red roses were highway robbery, but worth that dig when Molly caught sight of them, he still had not been prepared for what it would take to put a ring on her finger.

  At least not one that made a statement.

  And they had to make a statement.

  For Molly.

  “I hear that,” Diesel muttered back.

  And he did.

  He heard it, but it was worse for him.

  They all made good cake, but D’s salary was the lowest of their three.

  He tried not to feel that.

  It wasn’t an issue for Mol or Maddox, then again, they made more than him so it wouldn’t be.

  And usually, he could ignore it, seeing as Molly took care of their finances and was sure to make it equal across the board. She had online access to all their bank accounts and paid bills based on whatever schedule she had in her head that made it fair for all of them. She budgeted for groceries and other shit they needed and had debit cards from both D and Mad’s accounts she used when it was their turn to take the hit. And she was the one that transferred money into all their savings so they could pay for shit for the house, though now those accounts were just getting bigger with nothing to spend the money on.

  Except a kickass commitment ceremony for Molly.

  And a ring.

  For Molly.

  But even if Maddox couldn’t drop that load on his own without feeling the pinch, it was times like these that Diesel knew he’d feel it more and was reminded he was low man on that totem pole of giving them the lives they were living.

  Then again he was that in a lot of ways.

  He’d spent years burying that fact and working hard to bury it deep.

  And it did not feel real great that shit was suddenly surfacing.

  “We gotta go bigger than Dylan,” Diesel told him through a throat that seemed to be closing as they moved down the wide hall.

  They did this dodging teenagers who needed to learn better manners. Also old-timers who’d made the mall their walking track. Not to mention the women with strollers who wielded them in a way that it was clear they thought they’d popped out a kid and the world owed them right of way not only when they should get it, walking down the hall, but when they waltzed out of a store not even looking if they were gonna slam their kid into someone.

  Fuck, he hated the mall. It was almost worse than the airport in its lack of “We’re all in this humanity thing together” zone, firmly entrenched in its “I got shit to do and I don’t give a fuck you’re breathing and probably got shit to do too, the world revolves around me” zone.

  “Yeah we do,” Maddox agreed.

  Diesel had no idea what size ring Holly had and he wasn’t going to ask Dylan. But he was going to make note of it next time he saw Molly’s sister.

  That said, he also had no idea how they were going to manage buying their girl a better rock than her sister had and not just because the fuckers were insanely expensive, but because Molly managed their money.

  She’d see ten thousand dollars gone, for sure.

  She’d even notice a monthly payment.

  “How we gonna do that shit?” Diesel asked, skirting two women, both with monstrous strollers that looked more like dog houses on wheels, both of them looking at each other and gabbing, neither of them looking where they were going.

  “No clue,” Maddox mumbled, purposefully pressing into Diesel to veer them off the course they were on so they’d take a set of stairs, not a ramp, in order to avoid the flow of traffic—elderly and pushed on wheels—coming their way.

  “Have you thought about skincare?”

  Diesel turned his head when it came clear someone was in his space asking him an asinine question, and he looked down at the woman who was shoving a small, condom-size packet in his face.

  “Even men need to take care of their skin,” she shared, lifting the packet farther toward him as she walked with him.

  He stared at her and kept walking.

  “He’s not interested,” Maddox answered for him.

  “He should be,” she replied. “And you should too.”

  Diesel looked to Maddox. “What’s happening?”

  Mad started laughing and kept walking.

  “It’ll only take a minute for me to show you the miracle of . . .” she called after them.

  But they just kept walking and did it not listening, so fortunately she drifted away.

  “I hate the fucking mall,” Diesel muttered, which made Maddox laugh harder. Diesel scowled at his man. “When did they start jacking shit on you in the walkways?”

  “Um . . . I don’t know. Nineteen ninety-eight?” Maddox answered.

  “That should be illegal,” D told him.

  Maddox spoke, continuing to grin like he thought Diesel was hilarious. “You need to get out more, my brother, and not just to sports bars.”

  “Not if some chick is gonna shove a prophylactic packet of male skincare in my face.”

  Maddox started laughing again, D quit grumbling and they walked and rode escalators in silence to Maddox’s truck in the underground parking.

  They did this while D mentally made the decision to kick in on whatever ring Maddox picked (obviously), no matter how deep it dug, but he was not going back to the mall to help him pick it.

  He could order a vase of roses or pick out a necklace at a booth at a festival.

  But he was never going back to the mall.

  And it was when he had his ass in the passenger seat and slammed his door that he realized they’d gone out to breakfast. They’d gone to see a movie. They’d gone to look at engagement rings for Molly.

  And it had all been good.

  It wasn’t awkward. They shared a life. They’d been sharing that life for years. If they didn’t let anything fuck with it, they were comfortable in it. They had things to talk about. Molly’s sister’s bullshit. Who was gonna check the salt in the water softener (Maddox). Who was gonna take Molly’s Escape to get the oil changed (D).

  They were just Maddox and Diesel.

  Like always.

  Mad had started up, pulled out and begun to negotiate toward the ramp that led to the exit when he said, “I could get a loan from my folks. They’d help us out, knowing we’re good for it, especially knowing what it’s for, catching them on the flipside.”

  He was talking about Molly’s ring.

  And he was right.

  His folks would do that.

  Maddox’s mother was counting down the days until one of her children got busy and started to give her grandkids. Even though Mad was thirty-four, and his little sister thirty-one, it was only last year they’d downsized from the home where Maddox and his sister grew up to a house in a development with three golf courses.

  But they’d gone for a three-bedroom, which was one bedroom they didn’t need but they got it, “So Bob can have his man cave and the grandbabies can have a room when they sleep over,” Erin had said.

  She didn’t even care if the kid who came out of Molly was Diesel’s. That was the woman Erin Vega was. Hell, Erin was so grandbaby crazy, she’d talked to them about finding a surrogate before Molly had even entered the picture.

  That thought made something tighten in his lower gut, something that hadn’t hit him back when Erin had brought that up, because then it was straight-up not an option in Diesel’s mind.

  But Erin had been okay thinking it would only be Mad and D together raising a baby. Same with Mad’s old man, Bob. When Molly had come along, neither of them had acted like they were relieved, just curious, not confused, curious, and like always, welcoming.

  And they weren’t hippies or in-your-face liberals or shit like that.

  They just wanted their kids to be happy.

  Sure, Bob had shared early on over beers with D that, “T
he first couple boys Mad had around, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But whatever. I love the Rolling Stones. My father hated Mick Jagger. Thought he was a skinny, drug-addled waste of space. We got into rip-roarin’s about it. Not once. All the friggin’ time. I mean, he’s a rock ’n’ roll singer, not the leader of a cult I’d joined. But he’s also a genius I admired. Dad didn’t have to like ole Mick, but he didn’t have to get in my face about it. And I remember after one such go ’round tellin’ myself I’d never do that to one of my kids. But have to say, I started to get that way with Maddox having girls, and guys, and then girls, and then guys and me thinkin’ what the hell? But then I realized I don’t have to get it. Just Maddox does.”

  Just Maddox does.

  Remembering those words, D’s gut felt tighter.

  And as for Erin? She simply didn’t care. From the beginning. Like she didn’t care her daughter had blue hair and a year’s worth of tattoo parlor piercings in her body.

  “Far’s I can see,” Erin had said the only time she’d mentioned anything like that about her kids, “me and Bob did it up right. Both Maddox and Minnie feel all kinds of all right being just who they are. And what works for my babies works for me.”

  D’s gut got even tighter as more thoughts hit him and these thoughts hit him harder.

  Not thoughts, exactly.

  Memories.

  Memories of Tommy Barnes.

  A year older than him in high school, both of them on the football team, offensive line. They got on, pals, best buds, went on double dates, hung out all the time.

  Including that time in the back of Tommy’s pickup out in the fields by that huge stand of trees where they went often to drink beer, smoke pot, look at the stars, talk about the babes they’d banged and otherwise shoot the shit.

  It wasn’t like D hadn’t had thoughts, thoughts he jacked off to a lot, thoughts he hid and they messed with his head, until that night when he kept catching Tommy’s eyes straying to his crotch.

  The drunker they got, the more Maryjane they smoked, the more Tommy’s eyes on his junk made that junk stand up and take notice until the feelings he was feeling he couldn’t deal with. That made him get pissed and he grabbed Tommy by the throat and shoved him against the side panel of the bed of the truck.

  He got in his face, Tommy looked in his eyes, and before D could say anything, both of them close, breathing hard in each other’s faces, Tommy’s hands had gone to his jeans and he’d shifted up to his knees.

  D didn’t even think.

  Tommy got out a condom and handed it to D before he moved around, giving Diesel his back, yanking his jeans and shorts over his ass.

  D just put on the condom and went in.

  Tommy had come all over the side panel the minute he took D’s cock and D didn’t last long up that tight ass.

  After that two minutes was up, they’d both knelt there in the bed of the truck in the moonlight, connected, breaths coming deep and fast, and he was about to threaten Tommy with what would happen if he said dick about what had just gone down when Tommy spoke quietly.

  “Our secret, man. No one knows. Never. Not ever. Swear it.”

  He’d then shifted D out of his ass, turned toward him, pulled off the condom and knelt in front of him, sucking down Diesel’s softening dick.

  Not surprisingly, that visual of Tommy, a big, muscled, good-looking son of a bitch with a sculpted ass that was right then bared to Diesel’s gaze, rhythmically swallowing down D’s dick, and just the feel of Tommy’s mouth around his cock, that cock sprang back to life in a nanosecond. And ten minutes later Tommy took D’s load down his throat like he’d been waiting for it for years.

  And D had given up that load knowing he’d waited for that, and what had gone on before, for what felt like centuries.

  From that night on, they’d still hung out, double dated, and fucked . . . a lot. Tommy liked D up his ass but D could get him in the mood to give as well as take.

  And it had always been their secret.

  It remained their secret even after Tommy was caught in a raid on a gay bar in Indianapolis when he was twenty-two and his personal secret came out.

  “D?”

  Diesel jerked when Maddox called him and then he blinked because they were out of the garage, on Scottsdale Road, in the sun, and he was so up in his head, he hadn’t noticed.

  He lifted a hand, flipped down the visor and the Ray-Bans he’d put up there before going in for the movie fell into his hand.

  He slid them on and looked out the side window.

  “Do you want me to ask my folks about the loan?” Maddox asked.

  “Sure,” D muttered distractedly.

  This was met with silence.

  Silence that Maddox broke.

  “Brother, what’s on your mind?”

  “Tommy.”

  Yeah.

  Fuck.

  That just came out.

  It just came right out.

  He didn’t share.

  Ever.

  He had nothing to share, nothing to give.

  Nothing.

  Nothing but his cocky, good ole boy self, creativity with giving orgasms, ability to take whatever was dished out to get his own, and as much love as he could shower on Molly, doing that along with Mad.

  “Say what?” Mad asked.

  “Tommy. Tommy Barnes. First ass I had. I was seventeen. He was eighteen. It was at night in a field in the back of his pickup after about ten beers and two joints.”

  When D quit talking, Maddox gave him time to keep going, and when he didn’t, Mad prompted, “Yeah?”

  “After that, I fucked him, he fucked me and we did it as regular as we could get away with it. Mostly I fucked him and he blew me. Loved sucking cock, Tommy. Loved taking it too.”

  D shut up again.

  Maddox didn’t say anything. Even when he stopped at a stoplight, he didn’t say shit.

  Maybe this was because, in all their years, D had never told him this and now he had no clue why D was spouting this shit.

  No, probably because of that.

  When the light turned green and Maddox turned right on Camelback, D started talking again.

  “Bar got raided in Indy. They said it was about drugs being dealt there but it was a gay bar and it was in Indy so everyone knew that was bullshit.”

  “Right,” Maddox said low.

  “He was outed, Tommy was.”

  “Bet that didn’t go well,” Maddox noted.

  “It totally did.”

  He could hear the surprise in Mad’s, “What?”

  D looked forward, out the windshield, but not to Maddox. “His parents disowned him. Said they never wanted to see him again, and they said that to anyone who would listen, including Tommy. Everyone in town had an opinion and there was a consensus that Tommy was a pervert. Shit was said everywhere, it was ugly. Tommy just packed up and took off. Moved to Chicago. Didn’t look back. As far as I know, and it’s been at least ten years, he’s never gone back. He didn’t act like he was run out of town. He acted like he couldn’t wait to go. Like he was finally free.”

  Maddox gave it another beat before he asked, “So you never saw him again?”

  “Saw him, yeah. For about a year, went up every few weekends to hang with my bud and also get my rocks off. My parents thought I was in Cleveland banging some girl. Every time I went he told me to get the fuck out of there. He knew where my dad was at, the shit that came out of Gunner’s mouth.”

  Nothing for you there, man, Tommy had said. It isn’t about narrow minds. It isn’t about closed minds. It’s about hate. You don’t love the parts of a person you get that fit into your view of the world. You love all of a person and if you don’t, you don’t love them at all.

  “D,” Maddox said quietly.

  “About a year in, he got a job, a good one. They transferred him to Boston. He still lives there. Got two kids with his man. They got married last year.”

  “So you’re still in touch,” Madd
ox stated flatly.

  That made D look at him. “Not hiding that shit. It isn’t like we’re best buds anymore. We mostly lost touch and did that a long time ago. He just calls every once in a while. Checks in.”

  Maddox had nothing to say to that.

  “Maddox, it isn’t that big of a deal,” Diesel reiterated.

  “I was still in touch with the first cock I had and you didn’t know it, would you think that was a big deal?” Maddox asked tightly.

  “You are still in touch with Gavin. He was over for dinner last month.”

  “Yeah, so you know about it.”

  “I left because of him,” Diesel announced.

  “Come again?”

  D looked back out the windshield. “The great Hoosier state. I left after Tommy got transferred to Boston. Took everything I’d saved, packed up my truck and took off to Phoenix. I didn’t pick Phoenix because of the year-round sun or me liking saguaro or shit like that. I picked it because it was the farthest away I could get.”

  “’Cause you had no one’s ass to fuck that was within driving distance that might not get you caught?” Maddox guessed. “But the bottom line was, you wanted ass to fuck and not get caught fucking it.”

  “No,” Diesel returned instantly. “Because I was suffocating, it was going slow, but I knew if I stayed a part of me would die and what was left, even as much as I got off on it, it wouldn’t be worth living anymore because I was a selfish fuck. I wanted it all.”

  The air in the cab got heavy and Mad left it at that for a few beats before he said, “That isn’t selfish, Diesel.”

  “How you think Gunner’s gonna be when he rolls up to our commitment ceremony?” Diesel asked.

  “I think Gunner’s gonna get his head out of his ass, and if he doesn’t, he’s not invited.”

  “He’s my brother, Mad.”

  “He’s a cocksucker, the bad kind, D. He treats everyone like shit, even you, and he doesn’t even know you’re bi. That also includes Rebel, who’s a damned handful but she’s golden to her core. No one can dislike that girl. She’s Molly in little sister form whose hearts and flowers can turn to kicking ass because she’s got more moral fiber than anyone I know and isn’t afraid to shout the walls down when she feels like someone’s fucking over someone she loves or doing the wrong thing.”