Harrisburg Railers Box Set 3

by R J Scott

  THE END

  Tennant

  I dipped my hand into the bag of peanuts and nodded. I’d been nodding at a steady rate for about twenty minutes now. I’d tried to speak a few times, but my attempts to slide into the conversation had been trucked, but in the prettiest and sweetest ways possible.

  “… added that picture of that triple-layer fudge cake to the food board. Did you see it?” That was Mom, high priestess of the Tennant & Jared Pinterest wedding boards. Noting the “S” on the end of that word board made me sigh.

  I cracked the peanut shell and bobbed my head. “Uhm, no, I haven’t been to Pinterest for a few days…”

  All three women participating in this FaceTime morning meeting gaped at me.

  “Tennant,” Mom sighed and gave me her I’m-slightly-put-out-with-you stare.

  “Maybe we could just pick out our top three choices for the cake patterns and send them to you? Would that work, Ten?” Brady’s Lisa, the lovely blonde legal aide, asked.

  “Uhm…”

  “Oh! We could make a vision board and send him that when we whittle down the choices! My girlfriend Penny did that for her wedding, and it really helped us figure out what to buy as a gift,” Jamie’s Lisa, or Lisa #2, the tall brunette who worked as a dental assistant, chimed in. My niece Sylvia sat on her lap chewing on her fingers, her green Rowe eyes wide and happy.

  “That’s a great idea!” Mom and Lisa #1 exclaimed.

  I took a swig of chocolate milk to wash down the peanut and dipped a toe into the rapid-fire conversation. “What’s a vision board?” I inquired.

  Six slim eyebrows flew up three smooth brows.

  “Tennant,” Mom said in that voice again.

  “Sorry, what? I don’t do a lot of pinning or vision-boarding. Help a guy out here,” I begged, giving the women a piteous look. It worked on my sisters-in-law but not so much on my mother. She was far too used to seeing my puppy dog face.

  “Well— Girls no! No, do not feed that to Bourque! I’ll be right back. The oldest twins are trying to medicate the dog with their doctor’s kit. I think they’ve gotten into the liquid stool softener I had to take after Leah and Lanie were born. No! Do not give that to the dog! Bourque, no!”

  Wow, okay. That was information about after-birth stuff I did not need to know.

  Then mom joined in. “Ugh, I remember being so constipated after I had Tennant. I strained so hard I tore a few of my episiotomy stitches and had to—”

  “Mom! Please, give a dude a break here, would you?” I pleaded just as Jared walked into the living room, all freshly showered and shaved.

  “Oh for goodness sake, Tennant. Your fiancé puts his wang into your butt, and you’re getting squicked out about a little discussion about hootchie stitches?”

  “Mom! Oh. My. God.” I slapped my hands over my hot cheeks. Jared raced into the kitchen, the coward. Lisa #2 was laughing so hard she was crying. Lisa #1 was heard in the distance yelling at her first set of twin girls. The second set were too young to feed the dog stool softener yet. “Can we not discuss what Jared and I do in bed? How do you even know about anal sex?”

  “Tennant, for the love of Pete, I’ve been around the block a few times. Your father and I were quite adventurous when we were younger. One time before Brady was born we found some flavored lube and—”

  “And no, nope, no way!” I shot to my feet, peanut shells tumbling from my lap to the carpet Jared had just vacuumed last night. Oops. “Mom, can we go back to talking about wedding boards?”

  “Well, you looked bored so I thought we could talk about things that were important to you,” she said innocently.

  I rolled my eyes, sat down, and spent another fifteen minutes with all the Rowe gals, being talked at and around. Finally, when Mom called an end to the meeting to go to her tai chi class, I slapped the lid on my Dell shut and whimpered.

  “Is it safe?” Jared called, peeking around the doorframe.

  I waved him in. “Chicken,” I huffed as he rounded the couch, then glanced down at the mess on the floor. “I’ll clean that up. Come sit down with me. I have a headache.”

  That wiped the humor from his face. He dropped down next to me, his light blue eyes filled with worry.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, taking the bottle of chocolate milk from my hand. “I still say that hit Peterson gave you during the finals should’ve been—”

  I leaned over and put my lips on his. He chilled a bit then. But just a bit.

  “It’s stress. Nothing more, my brain is good. Ninety-seven percent normal, which is a twenty percent improvement from how I had been before the injury, according to Brady,” I teased, dropping little smooches along his smooth jawline, then nibbling his ear. “Wedding stress.”

  “Ah, the women.”

  I kind of melted into him like a candy bar on a dashboard. “The women. Oh my God, you’d think they’ve never planned a wedding before.”

  “Well, they’ve never planned a wedding for two men before. They want everything to be perfect. And you are the baby so…”

  “Mm,” I murmured as I wiggled a bit so I was curled under his arm, my cheek on his shoulder. I inhaled the scent of his Dior Homme shower gel and felt the tension ease from my neck. “I don’t care about cake toppers or the color of the flower girls’ barrettes or the proper spices for the grilled trout. I just want to marry you and go away for a few weeks so we can fuck ourselves into comas.”

  “Such a simple man,” he said with a chuckle, his fingers slipping through my hair.

  “Simple man, simple needs. What the hell is tulle anyway, and why would they think I’d have an opinion on it?”

  That made him laugh out loud. I felt my bones softening as we cuddled on the couch. “They mean well,” he said as he continued to play with my hair. “And we do need to make some final calls on things. We have three weeks.”

  “Right, yeah, I know. I have no clue about any of it. Should we hire a wedding planner?”

  “We could, I guess. Do you know any?”

  “Me? Uhm, no.” I chortled and reached for my phone. “I can hit up the guys in the group chat. Lots of them are married. Maybe they know someone?”

  “Okay, go for it. Perhaps if we call in a professional, she or he can rein in the Rowe women a bit.” He tipped my head back by pulling gently on my hair. I wriggled up just an inch for the long, wet kiss. He fisted my hair when I rolled my hips, a low growly sound rumbling out. Hungry for more, I slid around until I was on top, my hips grinding against his, my phone slipping to the floor, wedding planners forgotten.

  Then my stupid phone rang. I moaned at the Elvis song played, the one set by my best buddy so I’d know it was him.

  “Ignore it,” Jared said, sliding his hands down the back of my shorts to cup my ass. Elvis sang on and on and on and on.I rocked my dick into his, trying to block out That’s All Right Mama but failing miserably.

  “Let me just… ugh, sorry, watch your balls.” I shifted around on the couch, picked up my phone, and slapped it to my ear. “Stan, my man, what is it?”

  “Why is phone ringing seventy-two times? Is brain being bad? I call police at eighty rings, so worry is making my fingers find other phone to send police over for checking on your head.”

  “Dude, my head is fine. I didn’t pick up because Jared and I were getting into it.”

  Jared made a sound of impatience. I was with him on that sentiment.

  “Getting into what?”

  “You know… getting into it?”

  “Getting into car?”

  “No, Stan, we weren’t getting into the car. We were about to go heels to Jesus.”

  Jared snickered.

  “But is not Sunday, is only Friday. Is new thing for Jesus on Friday?”

  That one made me snort loudly. “Dude, no, we were going to fuck.”

  “Ah fucking, yes, now this I know! Well, you can go fuck boots for Jesus in but minute. I am working on speech for wedding dinner as is fitting best friend. My w
ords are good, but I am not sure if this is correct phrase. You will help me? Erik is burning out, and his words are not good right now.”

  “He’s burning out?” I asked, glancing at Jared with confusion.

  Jared just shrugged.

  “Has been much bad day with kids. Eva is making womanly time and cried because Pavel ate all the butterscotch ice cream. Pavel and Noah painted the shower stall. I am not sure how they get paint from garage or open can or carry pink paint to Mama’s shower, but they are now seeming like Pepto-Bismol hatchlings. Even hair is pink. So Erik and I wash boys while Eva cries and Mama makes good soup that no child will eat because it is beet soup. Much screaming and tears, and now Erik is burning out, and I am searching for good word help for best friend’s wedding speech.”

  “Okay, just give me a minute,” I said, then looked down at Jared. “Erik’s burned out, and the kids are hellions. Can we do this in, like, ten minutes?”

  “Sure. Grab the strawberries when you come to bed.” He kissed me with fiery promise, then slid off the sofa, his dick tenting his lounge pants.

  I wet my lips, palmed my own stiff cock, and focused on Stan and his wedding words. Forty minutes later, I was able to hang up. My head throbbed. Trying to untangle mangled English on top of working to figure out what it was that Stan was trying to get on paper had been like trying to work out some sort of advanced algebraic equation. The math would have been less taxing. We’d not gotten very far.

  I sent a quick note to our Pokémon group that I was not going to be training tonight, rolled my eyes at the snarky comment from Adler about being an old married fuddy-duddy, and tossed out the wedding planner question before I chucked my phone to the coffee table and put my bare feet down on the carpet. Finally, I spent ten minutes picking up, then vacuuming peanut dander off the floor with that little handheld Dirt Devil vacuum Jared was so fond of.

  Close to an hour after Jared had gone to bed to wait for me, I raced into the bedroom, container of juicy red berries in hand, dick throbbing, to find my fiancé snoring softly, his glasses on his nose, the book written by a gay Indiana mayor facedown on his chest.

  A drawn-out exhalation emptied my lungs. Padding to my side, I placed the berries on my nightstand, peeled off my shorts, and slipped under the soft print sheets. The lure of him drew me to the middle of the bed after I turned off the light on my nightstand. His nightstand lamp still glowed soft white. Lying there staring at him, I felt a hundred thousand things all at once. Love, of course, tons of love, but also things like pride, desire, happiness, joy, hope, inspiration, satisfaction, amusement, and awe. It still blew me away that a man like Jared Madsen would love a guy like me. Aside from having some minor skills with a stick and puck, I couldn’t see what it was that he found so alluring about me and my not fully normal brain cells.

  “Always liked a Studebaker,” Jared mumbled, then blinked awake, his gaze flying to me spread out beside him. “Ah, shit, that made no sense, did it?”

  “Not much, no.” I chuckled as he closed his book.

  “This book takes place in South Bend where they used to make Studebakers. My grandfather had an old Studebaker truck. Black and white it was, with a manual transmission and AM radio.” He yawned widely, his eyelids droopy. “I learned how to drive in that old truck. I was twelve. How boring am I?”

  “Not boring at all.”

  He pulled me into his side, then drifted off. After he was sound asleep, I wiggled out from under his heavy arm, removed his DILF glasses, and put them and his current read on my nightstand, my fingers bumping the plastic tub of strawberries. I smiled when he spooned up behind me a moment later, his chest to my back, one arm flung over my hip. The light on his side was still on, but with a clap—yeah, we were that kind of couple—his light dimmed. I fell asleep wondering if I should refrigerate the berries or not, but as it turned out, Jared woke up with some tasty ideas for those warm berries. After he wrung a mind-blowing orgasm out of me with only strawberries, his fingers, and the tip of his tongue, I fell back to sleep sated and sticky.

  Jared shook me awake sometime after the berry love fest. “Trent is on the phone. He’s slightly… uhm, well, how do you describe it?”

  “Slightly Trent?” I said, my voice thick and slurred with sleep.

  “That works.” He handed me his phone. I sat up, berry bits glued to my balls and back, and rolled my head in a circle. Things in my neck cracked and popped.

  “Is he just slightly Trent or totally Trent?” I asked, phone jammed under my armpit to mute my conversation with Jared.

  “Bordering on totally,” he whispered, rose from the messy bed, and walked to the bathroom, a small green strawberry cap stuck to his sweet ass. That made me smile to myself. Good thing, because the figure skater on the other end of the phone was in full Trent mode, which is something that really should only be dealt with after a shower and some coffee.

  “Hey, Trent, what’s up?” I croaked.

  “You’re asking for a wedding planner three weeks before the big day?!”

  “We thought we could do it ourselves?”

  “Oh my sweet gods!”

  Yeah, coffee was so needed for this.

  Jared

  I found Ten exactly where I expected to find him. Hiding.

  “I swear if you leave me alone with him,” I warned my fiancé, who at least had the grace to act ashamed.

  “Jared, please don’t make me,” he whined and pushed himself a little farther back into our bathroom, pocketing his cell phone as he did so. “I can’t take any more.”

  I shut and locked the bathroom door, then crossed my arms over my chest and gave him my patented coach stare. He couldn’t meet my gaze, and instead he stared at the floor and scuffed his toe on the cream tiles.

  “You told us you were going to the bathroom,” I pointed out.

  Ten sent me a smile and then gestured at the room around him. “And here I am.”

  “No, you implied you were using the bathroom and then coming straight back.”

  That made him wrinkle his nose, which I normally found adorable, but which at this moment in time, stressed to hell, I found annoying.

  “I said I was going to the bathroom. I never said anything about coming back.”

  “Tennant Rowe, you will get your ass back out into our living room, and you will listen to Trent, and you will nod your head at Trent, and you will not leave my side for the next hour.”

  “An hour!” Ten had gone back to that low whine, with added slumped shoulders. “Who even has green roses?” he was so forlorn I almost backed down.

  “Green goes with your eyes. Trent said so.”

  “But he spent twenty minutes talking about different varieties, twenty long soul-destroying minutes where I swear my brain leaked out of my ears.” He pressed his fingers to his temples and then sent me a calculating glance. “Maybe it’d be bad for my brain,” he suggested and almost seemed happy at the idea that he had come up with some kind of excuse.

  “Oh no, you are not pulling the brain damage defense.”

  A knock on the door made us both jump.

  “Let me in,” someone whispered. Well, not someone exactly, we both knew who it was, and cautiously I opened the door in case it was a trap. There was no sign of Trent, so I let a pathetic, grateful Dieter Lehmann into the bathroom and then shut and locked the door. We had a big bathroom, big enough for Ten and me to get our sexy on, with a large walk-in shower and a corner bath. But add in another hockey player, one who seemed just a little agitated, and things started to get tight.

  “You need to save me,” he implored. “Send me out for food or something. I can get us Chinese or go to that Italian place, and I promise to come straight back.”

  I saw him exchange a look with Ten. Dieter was the only one who could help us to get Trent to leave.

  Another knock on the door and we all turned to face it guiltily.

  “Boys, unless you’re having a three-way, in which case I want in, you all need to ge
t your asses out here now.” Trent sounded determined.

  “I can’t,” Ten said in a low whisper.

  “I can’t either.” Dieter had a small whimpering note to his voice.

  “Please don’t make me,” Ten added.

  Dieter crossed to the window. “What are we here? Two stories? I can jump that.”

  Ten joined him, and the two of them peered at the patio below.

  This was getting out of hand, and even though I wanted to find it amusing, I was kind of tense and headachy, and just wanted to snuggle up with Ten on our sofa and watch some crappy film on Netflix. I threw the door open with dramatic flair, and Trent nearly fell in. As it was, I had to catch him when he toppled where he’d been leaning on the door, and got an armful of silk and satin for my efforts. Ten and Dieter were frozen by the window, and I had Trent in my arms, and we all stood there staring at each other.

  “What are you doing?” Trent righted himself, then brushed glitter from my Railers’ hoodie, looking around, wondering what to do with the flecks of silver, then tapping them back onto his top.

  Ten said nothing. Dieter said nothing. Which left me.

  “I came to find Ten,” I said. “He was hiding.”

  “I have a headache—”

  “I needed to use the toilet—”

  Dieter and Ten spoke at the same time, and I left the three of them to it, heading back out to the place that used to be our living room with its cozy sofas and widescreen television. Now it was wedding central, or at least that is what Trent called it. He’d installed whiteboards. Three of them right in front of the television, one for the venue, one for guests, and the other for what he liked to call incidentals. One of which was green roses to match Ten’s eyes. Or something.

  I bypassed the room and headed for the kitchen, grabbing as much beer as I could, plus a healthy supply of non-healthy snacks, and sat on the sofa.

  Ten came back first, slinking into the room, and sat next to me.