All Wheel Drive

by Z. A. Maxfield

  “Exactly,” Diego said. “I don’t know what I’d have done without her. Probably given up.”

  “You the type for that?” Snick. Snick.

  “Nah.” Caught me looking stupid that time. “I’m no quitter. Haven’t given up yet, anyway.”

  “Did you ever think,” Healey’s gaze narrowed, “the people who love you should have made the doctors stop? Did you ever wonder, ‘Why is my mother doing nothing while someone hurts me?’”

  “No.” Diego leaned toward him. “I knew doctors needed to do certain things, and it wasn’t always going to feel good.”

  Healey nodded. “My sister was very young.”

  “I’ll bet that was tough as fuck on her.”

  Healey set the camera down, uncapped a bottled water and drank half down. “She was in a coma for several weeks. Sometimes I’d sit with her and talk. She’d open her eyes and look toward me. She heard my voice maybe?”

  It was possible. “They told my family to talk to me.”

  Healey nodded. “What do you remember about the accident?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What about the time you spent in the hospital?”

  Noise. Endless, mind-numbing pain. Nights that turned into days that turned back into nights. “I remember waking up in the hospital. Getting my hand free and yanking out my catheter.”

  “Ow.” Healey winced.

  Diego wished he had a picture of that face, right there.

  “Not for me,” he reminded Healey he couldn’t feel a thing. “I don’t remember what my thinking was, but no man wants to see something sticking out of his junk.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I mean. Sounds. People do—”

  Diego snickered. “You’re a kinky motherfucker, aren’t you?”

  “No.” Healey flushed. “Not me. But sometimes—”

  “Relax. I got you.” Diego put him out of his misery. “I’m kidding anyway. I don’t care what people do. I used to do shit. Plugs sometimes. Cockrings. A little rough play.”

  “Rough play gets me hot.” Healey raised both hands again, as if now they were back to the awkward handwringing and bomb-defusing gestures from earlier. “That’s, uh . . . full disclosure.”

  Without thinking it through, Diego hooked his hand around Healey’s neck and hauled him in for a kiss.

  When they broke apart, he smiled. “You’re going to make someone a great pet someday.”

  Healey glanced at Diego’s still-rigid cock. “In the meantime, I could do something with that. Waste not want not.”

  Diego’s gaze followed his.

  He liked the sparkle in Healey’s eyes. Liked where this was going, despite the fact he didn’t want or need a boyfriend. “This old thing?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve had it for years. I’m not even sure it’s in working condition.”

  “Well, some of those are quite valuable. I could buff it up a little for you there.”

  “No harm in that.”

  Healey glanced up, flushed and eager. “How long can you hang on to those rings?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We walk before we run, cadet.”

  Healey relaxed. “All right. What’s your best-case scenario here?”

  “Can I position you?”

  Healey waved him in like a plane. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

  Diego decided to surprise him by rolling him onto his stomach, cushioning his arm and positioning his legs half off the bed.

  Healey glanced over his shoulder. “You sure about this, Corrigan? This doesn’t seem like the way we came before.”

  “Trust me.”

  Healey’s blue eyes met his, and his flippant words came back like a boomerang. Healey did trust him. Healey surrendered his body and his will. He waited like a penitent, like a student, an acolyte. It was heady fucking stuff.

  Fingers testing Healey’s opening, Diego found him soft and ready. He put on a condom, used a discreetly place wipe—because slipping is never sexy—and reached up to grip his rings again.

  He poised, tensed, and hoisted himself up. It was a test of nerve to do this, to drape his body over Healey’s and have the faith he could make it work . . .

  He hovered there briefly, wondering if Healey could see how tough this was. He deserved an award for this, it was hard to do with any swagger. Diego could make it look easy.

  Healey watched over his shoulder.

  “Be ready to catch me if I fall,” Diego teased.

  “Um. Between my ass cheeks?”

  Diego snorted, his concentration broken. He had to regroup after that. “You do not want to make me laugh while I’m vertical like this. Just saying.”

  “You have done this before, right?”

  “I can hang from a single ring too,” Diego muttered. Smack. “That red-hot handprint on your ass is going to feel great against my skin.”

  Healey grunted happily and even gave a bit of a wiggle. “Do it again.”

  So Diego smacked that fine bubble ass a few times, listening, getting used to the sweet sound it made, skin over muscle over bone, solid, earthy. Strong and real, like Healey himself.

  Diego put one hand in the middle of Healey’s back, and let himself go.

  He braced on Healey’s shoulder. Pulled up so he could wrap both arms around his lover and position himself at Healey’s entrance, gripping Healey’s shoulder from beneath for leverage.

  “Okay?” he asked when he was a simple biceps curl away from plunging into Healey’s tight heat.

  Healey shivered all over. “This is different.”

  “It works, mostly.” Effort roughened Diego’s voice. “Grab my hips.”

  “If I could visualize the angle better—” Healey did as he was asked “—I could calculate the combination of our separate weights, which, theoretically, could be really useful when it comes figuring out the amount of energy—”

  Diego gave an experimental shove. “Should you really be making plans out loud right now?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Healey encouraged, “Okay. Go—”

  “Wait.” Why did this feel like an amusement park ride? “You’ve gotta compensate for the fact I can’t roll my hips.”

  “Like this?” Healey tried twisting slightly and pushing back.

  Sweat burned Diego’s eyes. “Sweet Fred Wallenda. Fly, if you have to. As long as we keep my dick in, we win.”

  “Okay.” Healey hesitated. “But you can’t feel any of that, right?”

  “Later you lick my armpits again and we’re golden.”

  “Got it.”

  Healey lifted his hips and pushed back.

  Things looked up after that. Way, way up.

  Diego couldn’t feel that part of the action, but Healey had one hand wrapped around the back of his neck, and he was dotting kisses over whatever skin he could touch, which turned out to be a whole load of other places like his upper arm and his biceps and the inside of—

  “No, stop, not there.”

  Healey froze. “How come?”

  “Too sensitive. Not fun.”

  “Kay.” Healey tried another place. “Better?”

  “Oh, Christ yeah.”

  And later, when Healey was so slick with sweat Diego could hardly hold on to him: “Oops, wait.”

  Healey reached down to capture Diego’s dick and reinsert it. That? Should have been awkward, but nothing seemed like a big deal with Healey.

  “Okay, we’re good, go.”

  “This good?”

  “I don’t know if— Christ. Ah, yeah. That’s good. You can stay there all day, baby.”

  There was no watching Healey’s face for cues, but Diego’d never been with such an uninhibited guy. Healey was open to anything. Game to try anything. He treated sex like a conversation they were having together. It evolved while it was going on.

  And holy cow. Everyone got their say.

  Diego’d gone to a great deal of trouble learning how to safely shove a hard dick into somebody’s ass, but it was h
is partners who had to make the magic happen. Healey was fluid and graceful and quick to pick up on cues. He understood he had to be careful, but he was easy to get off—he fucked like he had nothing to lose, flashed over quickly, and chased the finish line with the dedication of an Olympian.

  Diego gave him a reach around, and as soon as he touched Healey’s dick, Healey tensed and drenched his fingers with a delightful, fragrant splash of hot come.

  That’s how it’s done, fuckers. Fierce pride filled Diego. He allowed himself the moment. ’Cause fuck yeah. Who wouldn’t? He rolled off. Healey turned over, hair hiding his face like Cousin Itt. Diego had to brush it away to see his eyes. He looked almost giddy.

  “You’re perfect.” Healey’s eyes closed slowly, and just like that, Diego realized he was in way over his head.

  They were fucking, weren’t they?

  Fucking, for God’s sake.

  You don’t look at a guy like that when you’re fucking. You look at your boyfriend like that, and Diego didn’t think he could be a boyfriend. Not like Healey wanted, anyway. Not like his ex, whose education and backgrounds dovetailed with Healey’s. Whose future was as certain and full of promise.

  Diego could admit now, maybe, that he’d been hiding in Bluewater Bay too. Doing grunt work—stuff he could have done straight out of college—to get by because he didn’t believe he had his old job in him anymore.

  All people saw when they looked at him were his limitations and no photojournalist wants to be noticed. In his chair, he became the story often enough that it sickened him to contemplate even trying again.

  Trying anything.

  Why did he keep torturing himself with possibilities when life had handed him one great big nope?

  Long after he kicked Healey to the living room couch, he frowned into the darkness.

  The darkness frowned back.

  Awake, Healey studied whatever he found in plain sight. Magazines, books, photographs. Even when he did nothing but lie there, he felt like an intruder. Eventually, he left Diego’s house and started for home. He simply stepped into the foggy, sea-scented darkness and made his way back to the B&B.

  On the way, he stopped for a drink.

  He recognized the bartender as an old friend from school, Sana. She smiled brightly when she pulled his beer, and let him know she had a break coming up. He found a nice quiet corner table and waited for her.

  Alas, it was fighting flannel night—in one corner, you had your Pendleton, and in other, L.L. Bean. East Coast–West Coast rivalry, alive and well. These were not hipsters, though, for the most part. They were people he’d known all his life. They dressed the way they always had. The rest of the world had simply climbed on board.

  “So . . . Healey Holly.” Sana finally got time to stop by. “As I live and breathe.”

  “Hey, hi.” He stood to give her a kiss on the cheek. She didn’t look any different than when they’d been mathletes together.

  “You’re are my twofer today. I saw Nash earlier.” Brainy as hell and way too beautiful for her own good, Sana was the Lebanese Christian girl who challenged everyone’s rhetoric about women, about the Middle East, and about stereotypes. Since then, she’d undergone a retro-pinup-girl transformation, and it didn’t seem weird at all. He took her hand in his and saw her wedding rings.

  “Married? You look great. Sit down. How are you?”

  “Fine.” She glanced around fondly. “Better than.”

  “But you’re bartending?”

  She rolled her eyes. “While I get my MFA, yes. I’m bartending.”

  “You’re—”

  “Still in school.” She sat across from him and used both hands to fluff out the crisp, puffy skirt she wore, before taking out a phone. “I’m a mother now.”

  She showed him pictures of a beautiful boy and girl. The girl appeared older. “A brilliant one, no doubt.”

  She blushed. “It makes sleep torture a daily reality.”

  “And you are more beautiful now than you have ever been.”

  Her nose crinkled, and he remembered that about her. She was a face maker.

  “I read about your accident in the paper. Are you okay?”

  “I walked away.” He shrugged. “Can’t ask for more than that, right?”

  She nodded. “You’re done with school?”

  “All done.” Scratching the label from his beer, he said, “Unless I decide to teach, I’m finished with school.”

  “Future plans?”

  “None, except to supplement this—” he jiggled his bottle “—with a double shot of Maker’s Mark when you’re back on duty.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  He turned his chair toward hers. “Catch me up on Bluewater Bay.”

  She grinned. “You probably know everything you give a shit about. Your dad sold your house?”

  “Yep.” He asked too casually, “You ever meet the guy who bought it?”

  “Diego? Sure. He’s hot. Well-liked. Plays for your team.”

  There’s always an advantage to knowing a small-town bartender.

  “I tried to rent Nash’s old apartment. For a lot of reasons, that was a crap idea.” He leaned forward. “What do you think of Diego, though? He party a lot?”

  “Not at all.” She cracked the cap on her water bottle and took a healthy swig. “He comes in with the postproduction crew during filming. Always sits right where you’re sitting. Gets one beer and nurses it all night. Tips great, though.”

  “By himself?”

  “Wait.” She wagged a long, purple-tipped fingernail in his face. “Oh, I see where this is going. You like him.”

  The smile fighting his face was probably just idiotic. “Maybe.”

  “You are still such a pumpkin.” She sighed. “I could eat you up.”

  He shot her a look that said how well that would go over.

  “That man you were with,” she asked, “in the accident. He was your boyfriend, wasn’t he?”

  Healey drained his beer. “I can’t talk about that.”

  “My husband’s on the job.” She leaned forward. “I know it’s wrong, but he has friends and they talk. Because it was you, I asked.”

  Alarmed, Healey thought of the gag order and what it might mean if Ford’s lawyers thought he’d violated it.

  “Can he do that?”

  “He asked around privately. Friends of friends. You know how law enforcement is. I’m only saying because if you need the name of a therapist who specializes in that kind of trauma, I could—”

  “I’m fine.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “It’s not the way it seems from the outside,” he insisted. “Really. I was never scared.”

  He paused. Waited.

  No lightning.

  He was probably right about God not existing. Or God didn’t mind liars.

  “I know Ford,” he continued. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone, so it was really only a matter of waiting him out.”

  She listened patiently while he excused the inexcusable.

  She was not buying it. “That’s some fragrant bullshit there.”

  “It’s too easy to judge something you don’t understand.” Aware he sounded like every other sap, he finished feebly, “Anyway, I lived with him for years, so I think I know what I’m talking about better than people who don’t know him. He would never hurt me.”

  “Oh, sweetheart.”

  He tightened his grip on his bottle. “For the last time, I’m fine.”

  “All right.” She fretted. “Anyone tries that shit here, they’ll have to go through your family and friends.”

  “I’m really not stupid.”

  “No one ever said you were. God, if it were only a matter of brains—” She shook her head. “But naive? Yeah.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Take care of yourself like you take care of others. Build some walls, honey. That’s all.”

  “The minute I do that—” he jutted his chin out “—f
ear wins.”

  She stood, leaned over, and kissed his cheek. He let his head fall against the wall. The bricks were rough against his neck.

  They smiled at each other. When she took away his empty, longing rose in his belly like the smoke of an abandoned cooking fire. He ached for home. For normal. For a place with no excuses or blame. For his pop, and what he now understood was unconditional love.

  When Sana brought his drink, she said, “The world can be a nice place.”

  “One Maker’s Mark at a time. Thank you.” His mother used to look at him like that. At least, he imagined she did. Which reminded him he needed to thank Clara Underhill too. “I’m planning to ask Ms. Underhill for brunch at the Resort at Juan de Fuca some Sunday. Want to come? You could bring your family.”

  “God, why would I bring those heathens.” She pulled her phone from her pocket. “Lemme text Sahil and ask if there’s a Sunday that works for both of us. It’d be great to get together. Should I see if anyone from school wants in? Make it an unofficial reunion?”

  He must have flinched, because she patted his back.

  “All right, we save that for later,” she crooned. “It’s all good.”

  “Thanks.” He squeezed her hand before she left.

  As she slipped behind the bar, he studied the way she handled the bottles, the glasses, and the customers. She’d learned to juggle in middle school, they all had. It had been some project designed to keep their bodies as active as their minds, probably. But now she’d found a way to use it to supplement her income.

  She was a bright spot.

  She was fresh air.

  There were really good people in Bluewater Bay.

  When she brought him his third drink along with the business card of a local medical practice, he took it, thinking maybe she was right about that too.

  “This is last call, sweetie. Where are you staying?”

  “I’m at the B&B.” He took his drink and downed it. The cool air would surely wake him up once he got outside. He put a few twenties on the table and thanked Sana.

  “I’ll be done soon. I can run you home.” Her expression was concerned. “You can pick up your car tomorrow.”

  “I’m not driving. No worries.”

  “You’re such a boy.” She laughed. “It’s no trouble, really.”

  “I need the walk. Thanks.”