by Parker Skye
“How the hell could you see without the light? Are you part cat or something?” Adam asked, still irritated. He crossed his arms over his chest defensively and tapped one foot waiting for an answer.
“Something like that,” Adam thought he heard, but then Ben said louder, “I just have really good night vision. Always been that way. Sorry, I forget not everyone can see in the dark as well as I can. Here, you take the flashlight.”
Adam took the offered torch and motioned for Ben to continue forward. He figured at this rate he was going to be lucky to make it home by dawn. Adam’s brain started making a list on the way back to the bike, a list of all the weird things he’d noticed about Ben so far. Adam tried to blame it on his underlying paranoia. I mean, who could blame him for having trust issues, right? But, Adam was worried Ben was keeping something from him, something big. Well, he guessed it was something bigger than being gay, anyway, and to his sheltered mind that was pretty fucking big all by itself.
By the time they made it back to the bike, Adam had worked himself back into being pissed off and irritated with Ben. Ben frowned when he saw the scowl firmly in place again on Adam’s face, but thankfully he didn’t push to try to solve all their problems in one night. Adam felt the clock ticking away in his brain and counted down the minutes until the explosion he worried he would find once he got home.
Once they were both back on the bike, Adam awkwardly held himself rigidly straight again, hands gripping his own thighs. Ben shook his head irritatedly and reached back, grabbing both of Adam’s hands, forcibly wrapping them around his own waist again. “Stay,” he admonished Adam.
Ben started the bike and maneuvered them back to the main road. The growl of the engine and the cool wind’s caress seemed to soothe Adam’s frayed nerves somewhat. After a while, Adam stopped holding himself so stiffly and started relaxing into the curves of Ben’s back again. They rode like this in silence, taking comfort from each other as the bike ate up the miles towards home.
Ben pulled up to the edge of the park and killed the engine, not moving from the bike’s seat. Adam waited a moment before releasing his hold on Ben’s waist and climbed off. He took off the helmet, holding it out for Ben to take back. Ben just looked at Adam, almost sadly and shook his head slowly.
“Nope, it’s yours,” Ben said.
“What if I don’t want it?” Adam asked, still holding the helmet out for Ben to reclaim.
“Too bad. It’s yours. Sell it, throw it away, give it away, whatever. Doesn’t matter. It’s still yours,” Ben replied.
Adam’s head tilted slightly to the side as he stared back, silently. Try as he might, he was unable to hide his answering smile as he turned and headed back to home. Adam did not look back, but he knew Ben was watching out for him. As he walked up the drive to his house, he finally heard the motorcycle engine kick to life again and roar off in the opposite direction.
Chapter 12
Ben
Ben slammed into his kitchen and threw his keys on the counter. Damn it. He’d been doing so well with Adam and then that damn protective wall went back up between them. Ben paced back and forth through his kitchen, hands running through his hair until it stood up in every direction. Fuck this.
Suddenly a blonde wolf stood in his place. Oh well, he had packed extra clothes for a reason. His wolf raised its head and howled in frustration. Ben sighed in relief at being able to let his primal side take over for a while. Things were often simpler in his wolf form. He didn’t let the small stuff worry him as easily. Sometimes he would put on his fur just to escape a bad day and stop having to think. Besides, going out and hunting up a tasty treat usually helped put him in a better mood.
He was simultaneously relieved and embarrassed to be using the dog door that let him out into the side yard. He hadn’t been thinking straight when he shifted inside the house. Lack of thumbs made opening door knobs somewhat difficult. Thankfully his rental house came equipped with his more basic needs in mind.
Ben reached out with his wolf’s stronger senses, ensuring none of his neighbors was outside burning the midnight oil . Finding himself alone, he vaulted over the back fence and into the surrounding woods. His wolf was fervent in his need to check on his mate. Ben was unsurprised to find himself tracking through alleys and side yards back to Adam’s side of town.
Finally reaching Adam’s home, the wolf sniffed around the perimeter until he located the window Adam had crawled out of earlier. His scent was still strong in the dirt under the bushes. Nose pressed to the ground, the wolf took in as much of Adam’s essence as it could from the now cold soil. A faint whine sounded and the wolf struggled to see into the dark room through the window. He could just make out a form under the navy comforter, one socked foot sticking out. He sensed his mate’s peace as he slept. A light rumbling sore was audible to his superior hearing. The sound made Ben weirdly happy.
Satisfied in Adam’s safety, the wolf turned and headed back to the woods on the outskirts of town. He picked up a rabbit’s trail off to the south and let his baser needs take over. As dawn broke the horizon, Ben was snapping small bones in his canine teeth. It had been a good day.
Chapter 13
Adam
The ground churned beneath his feet, slippery brown leaves keeping Adam from finding firm footing. He stumbled again, catching himself on an overhanging branch. He lurched back upright, looking over his shoulder again. He was almost caught. Must run faster. He shot off into the dark, moonlight his only guide through the dense forest. The smell of moist earth and damp settled deep in his sinuses. He could hear the cicadas singing, a constant backdrop to the frantic pounding of his heart. Must run faster. He was almost caught.
Adam’s heart thundered in his chest when he awoke from his dream, the details already starting to fade. He could still smell the forest all around him, but it was quickly dissipating to be replaced by the slightly stale scent of sweat on three day old sheets.
When he spied his alarm clock and saw the time flashing in the bright red LED, he was shocked. Geez, fifteen past ten in the morning. He never slept this late, even on the weekend. He must have been more worn out than he realized from the night before. He ran a hand down his face and dragged himself upright in bed. His elbows resting on his knees, he caught sight of the red helmet peeking from underneath a pile of dirty clothes on the floor of his closet. He couldn’t help the faint smile that graced his lips when he remembered Ben’s refusal to take it back the night before…or this morning, as the case may be. He hoped that meant there would be other rides in the future.
Adam admitted he’d had a great time the night before. Not only had the destination been truly magical, but he found that he felt more at peace in Ben’s company than he had with another person since his mom left. His smile slowly morphed into a frown as he realized there was no guarantee this relationship wouldn’t turn out the same. If his mom would leave him behind, Adam wasn’t truly safe trusting anyone.
Adam still berated himself for how the night ended. Somehow he always managed to ruin things with people. Ben seemed to be made of sterner stuff than most though, having shrugged off most of Adam’s defensiveness. He could only dream that meant he would hang around.
Slowly his innate distrust of all things human worked its way back to the forefront of his mind. He began to wonder what game Ben was playing with him. People like Ben didn’t befriend people like Adam. They sure as hell didn’t want to be in a relationship with people like Adam. He’d do better to keep reminding himself of that fact. Adam reached behind his head and threw his pillow across the room, fully covering the helmet from sight.
Adam groaned and stood, stretching both arms overhead. He retied the string on his baggy green flannel pajama pants. He tugged down the edge of his favorite sleep shirt to cover the strip of skin exposed from raising his arms. Adam caught sight of himself in the full length mirror hanging on the back of his closet door. He tried as usual to tame his crazy auburn locks by running his fingers through th
em several times. After a few moments, he sighed in defeat. ‘Oh well, at least I have nice eyes,’ Adam thought to himself.
Sometimes Adam would catch himself staring into his eyes in the mirror, unsure how long he had been there. It could have been minutes, or hours, or days, he was never quite sure. He had one feature he loved, his bright green eyes, but sometimes he wished they had been a dull brown so he wouldn’t get caught staring into them for so long.
It made him feel even more of a freak when he would wake from his stupor, just staring. He was sure if anyone had ever caught him at it, they would see the inner crazy that Adam worried was starting to take over more and more. He knew for sure if his father caught him doing this he would quickly find his new home had padded walls and doors that locked from the outside. He pushed the thought aside and left his room in search of food.
Saturday was Adam’s favorite day of the week. Charles was always gone, supposedly ‘working’ but Adam was sure he was just taking up space in a different location than their living room recliner. Long ago, when they had been a family, his father had had a real job, working at the concrete plant in the next town over. The plant had closed down right after Adam’s mom had left and Charles had gone from job to job since. Thankfully, Charles had ‘hurt his back’ on the last job, loading trucks and ended up on disability. Now the government paid him to sit on a couch and stay drunk. The only day he was expected to pretend to work was Saturday. Charles spent every Saturday at the area workforce commission learning new job skills that he would never have the desire or motivation to use. Adam was positive he wouldn’t even attend these classes if it wasn’t a condition of continuing to collect disability.
Saturday Adam was free. No school, no Charles, no homework, no cleaning. Charles would stay at the workforce commission until they closed, then go meet up with his equally disgusting friends at Chips, a dive bar on the outskirts of town. There he would play pool and swill cheap beer until the place closed. Sometimes if Adam was really lucky, Charles would hook up with some skank and not come home at all. Most times, though, Charles would be poured out onto the front lawn by one of his so-called buds at three or four in the morning, barely able to make it back into the house on his own. The mornings after, Charles would be even surlier than normal, but too physically impaired to back up mean words with meaner fists.
Adam cruised into the kitchen and scrounged for something to make for breakfast. He managed to put together a makeshift breakfast sandwich out of the last stale hamburger bun and a piece of bologna. He quickly recapped the stench of sour milk just before pouring it into his coffee and tossed the container in the garbage can. He rooted around past the jars of condiments, jalapenos, and pickles, finally finding a lone container of peach yogurt, which surprisingly hadn’t expired yet. Overall pleased with his scavenging, Adam leaned back on the counter, ankles crossed making the most of his meal. He mentally made a list of things to do today, top on the list -- grocery shopping.
Thirty minutes later, Adam was pulling on a lightweight hooded sweatshirt in a deep royal blue. The material clung to his still slightly damp skin as he struggled to cover his torso. His hair was almost black from the lingering water so he ran a towel through it again. He ran a comb through the temporarily tame locks, knowing as soon as he stepped outside, the wind and his hair’s natural unruliness would destroy any efforts he made. He licked his index finger and smoothed down both eyebrows, smiling slightly at his reflection.
Adam raided the green coffee mug that contained spare change in the kitchen until he’d found about 15 dollars’ worth of singles and coins. Shoving the money into his front pocket, he headed out the door for the long walk to the grocery store.
Thankfully, the weather was being cooperative for once. The usual humidity was thankfully suppressed, maybe only 70 percent or so, instead of the usual 110 percent found in East Texas. In most places in the country, there would be snow on the ground in late February. In Lakeland, they were lucky if they had a day in winter that reached freezing, much less held the hint of snow.
Adam had seen snow once with his mom on vacation. He thought he might have been about 5 or 6 at the time. The memory was faded and blurry, but he still remembered the sound the snow made as he walked across it in heavy snow boots -- the squeaky crunch that can’t be duplicated by anything else. Adam smiled faintly as he remembered that day, making snow angels and trying to make his first and only snowman, his mom’s smile and melodious laugh ringing out. He remembered later that night, when they finally went indoors, how his nose, fingers, and toes tingled and burned when they were heating back up again. He remembered how the hot chocolate felt like lava heating him from the inside out. His cheeks had stayed red and stinging until the next morning when they had to leave for home.
He also remembered how his mother’s face had looked that next morning as she had answered the hotel room phone, when he knew they were going home again. She had looked so sad and broken. She had looked at Adam like it was the end of everything good in the world. He didn’t remember what happened after that just that he had found himself home again, back in his hot, sticky hometown, back to dodging fists and thrown curses. He didn’t remember his mom laughing like that again for a long time.
Pulling himself out of the past, Adam realized with surprise that he had reached the grocery store already. There was only one on this side of town, an old Food Court. It didn’t have as nice a selection of produce and meats as the supercenter on the opposite side of town, but it was cheap and had enough for two people to get by with. Adam grabbed a cart from the queue outside the front door and started his usual challenge, trying to make fifteen bucks stretch into enough food to last a week.
As he wheeled through the store, Adam almost cheered in glee, finding chicken thighs on sale buy-one-get-one free. He stocked up on rice, frozen broccoli, and a marked down bag of apples, hoping he could make a few meals in the crock pot to tide them over for the week. Once he figured he had done the best he could, Adam made small talk with Elmer, the older man who usually worked the front register on Saturdays as he counted out his change.
Elmer didn’t blink an eye as Adam tallied up his money, obviously not caring the denomination. His face wore its own deep lines and Adam suspected that he had had plenty of hard times himself. Adam would be hard-pressed to guess Elmer’s age, but he doubted he was as old as he looked. Adam helped load the groceries into plastic, double bagging so they wouldn’t break on his long walk home. He nodded to Elmer as he hefted the bags and turned for the door.
“See ya next week, Adam,” Elmer said, his words twanged with his deep East Texas accent. “Hope the weather holds ‘til ya get home.”
“Thanks, Elmer. See you next week,” Adam replied, looking reflexively up at the sky. Weather? What weather? It was going to be beautiful today as far as Adam could tell.
Halfway home, Adam knew what Elmer had been referring to. The sky had quickly darkened to a cold dreary grey. The clouds overhead had opened and poured forth not just rain, but needles, frozen needles. How had it turned so fast? Adam shivered and clenched his teeth together to prevent the chattering. He cursed himself for not thinking to check the weather before leaving his house.
Adam had not dressed appropriately for this at all. His jeans and thin cotton hoodie were soaked completely through and clinging to his skin. His beat up red converse were full of cold water and squished with every step. He wasn’t even wearing socks for Christ sake, but he figured that might actually have been a good thing as they would have been soaked and clinging, too.
He had stopped and tied the inner bags of his grocery sacks closed to keep his meager purchases as dry as possible. Adam was thankful that he hadn’t found enough money to buy cereal or anything that would be too ruined by getting wet. He was a little worried about the rice, but figured he could cook it all and freeze it when he got home if he had to. Worried about the integrity of his phone in this downpour, he had sacrificed one of the outer bags wrapping his phone up as t
ight as he could. He hoped it would protect the electronics enough until he got back under cover.
Another ten minutes into his journey and Adam felt like he had been walking backwards. He didn’t seem to be making any progress towards home. Scarily, his shivering had calmed down and he could no longer feel his feet much at all. Each step was like moving a block of clay. The pins and needles sensation had been replaced by a much more frightening deadness in his extremities. There’s no way he could be getting hypothermic, he thought to himself. He knew it had been at least 60 when he had left the house.
Adam began to regret walking this way home from the store. It was the shortest path and, therefore, his preferred, but it was also the least populated, the buildings surrounding being mostly warehouses and auto repair shops closed for the weekend. He began to hope for any place under cover to hide out from the freezing rain. He suspected he’d take an abandoned car at this point really. He hadn’t seen a single passing car all morning.
Adam continued to pass locked storage facilities fenced in razor wire and barren lots with no sign of life. After dark, this area would be too dangerous for a stroll to the store and back, but during the day, Adam had been unconcerned with the desolation until today. Even the guard dogs that usually stood at the gates and barked as Adam walked past were absent, likely hiding out from the rain somewhere further back in the yards.
