by Sarina Bowen
I snort. “I sense a conflict of interest here.”
“It’s minor,” he says with a wave of his hand. “I won’t let it affect my judgment. My counsel is that you should take a breath. You’re afraid to put pressure on your man. But you’re putting the most pressure on yourself tonight. You wouldn’t rush a sourdough, would you?”
I shake my head. “That’s how you ruin things.”
“Step back, take a breath, leave the kitchen, Roderick. But don’t leave town, or you’ll always wonder what might have been.”
Exhaling, I look up to see people streaming into the church. But Father Peters doesn’t rush. He slows his pace on the sidewalk, just in case we’re not finished yet.
“Thank you,” I say in a low voice. “I’ll try. But even if it all works out, I could never get married in your church anyway, right?” I’m pretty conflicted about stepping over that threshold, even to serve dinner.
“Right,” he says brightly. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t come to your wedding. I could cheer you on from the front row. What kind of cake do you think you’d serve? Just hypothetically?”
“You are not what I expected,” I say with a laugh.
“Good. Now let’s wash up and serve some ham and inferior rolls.”
Kieran
“Are you okay?” my cousin May asks me as she deals out another hand of poker. “You’re quiet, even for you.”
“Yeah,” I say. And that’s all I say.
May shakes her head and deals two cards face up. “Then ante up.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I push a couple chips to the center of the table and try to focus on my cards.
I’m not, in fact, okay. I left things completely unsettled between me and Roddy. He should be here with us playing poker. He should have been here for Aunt Ruth’s pie, and for the game of capture-the-flag we played outside in the dark.
At least he got a good supper. It was Audrey’s idea to send him a plate with Father Peters, since the church is right across the green from our house.
It should have been me who brought it to him, though. Not that I was willing to say so out loud.
Roddy is right, of course. We have a problem, and it seems to have no solution. Before now, I never noticed how much pretending I do just to get through the day. There are conversations I don’t enter, because they’d be too revealing. (“Which model is the hottest?”) The way I listen more than I talk—even with my closest family members—is a habit I picked up so long ago that I wouldn’t know how to break it.
And there’s no way for me to suddenly be more like Rod—someone who dares the world to love him just the way he is.
I don’t like my odds. I really don’t.
Meanwhile, I wish he were here. I miss him like crazy. But I am not about to let everyone in this room know that we’re lovers. That’s just not happening. And I don’t know how to make Roddy understand why I can’t.
It’s not that I’m ashamed of him. I’m not afraid to be gay. But my privacy is basically my life’s work. And fitting in with the rest of the Shipley clan has never been easy for me. Setting myself apart on purpose would feel like peeling off my skin.
“You in or not?” Grandpa asks suddenly. “It’s ten to call. Expensive hand, boy. But you still can’t take all day deciding.”
I glance at the cards on the table, and then at the cards in my hand. I push two chips onto the table almost before I notice that I’ve got three of a kind. “Okay. Sorry.”
Everyone frowns at me simultaneously. “Fricking Kieran,” Kyle says with a sigh. “You can’t tell when he’s bluffing, because he always has that same expression.”
“The original poker face,” my cousin Dylan agrees.
They’re right. Because I’m always bluffing.
Always.
At eight o’clock, it’s finally time to leave. I say goodnight to all the Tuxbury Shipleys, and congratulate my grandpa on his poker wins. “I’ll get you next time, you old coot.”
“Sure you will,” he scoffs. “Bring more cash next time.”
“Will do.” Then I say goodbye to my parents, as my father walks slowly and painfully toward their car.
At last, I hurry towards my truck, eager to go home and see how Roddy is doing.
“Kieran? Can I ask you a favor?” my brother calls.
Uh-oh. “What is it?”
“Well, I know it’s kinda late, and it’s kinda Christmas. But I was hoping you could come home with me for a couple of hours and replace the hinges on the barnyard gate.”
“What? Why?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Dad hit the gate with the tractor this morning. His mobility is still pretty bad.”
“Even for driving? Shit.” I glance toward my parents’ car and see my mother at the wheel. If he let her drive, it must be bad.
“Yeah.” Kyle sighs. “He wanted to fix it with me tomorrow. But if we fixed it without him, we could pass it off as a Christmas gift. I kinda don’t think he should be lifting anything. And we’ll need to manhandle that gate.”
“Sure,” I agree. It won’t be fun in the dark. But farming always throws you these challenges at the most awkward times. “Let’s go.”
It’s eleven p.m. before I can head home. But the gate is fixed. And Kyle and I strategized about how to keep Dad busy until he’s healed enough to work comfortably.
“I told him it was a good time to fix that baler connection that’s been acting up. He can tinker with that thing while he’s sitting down.”
“Maybe,” I’d hedged. “Or maybe he just needs another few weeks off.” The truth is that there aren’t a lot of desk jobs on a farm, except for keeping the books and ordering seed.
“You try telling him that,” Kyle had muttered.
The house is completely dark when I get home, except for the Christmas tree in the living room window. This morning I was so excited to give Roddy his gift. And then we had epic sex. Inside the walls of this house, my life is exactly how I want it to be. Keeping my joy behind walls is something I’m used to, but Roddy isn’t. And I’m the jerk who’s asking him to do it indefinitely.
I enter the house quietly, dropping my coat on the rack, and putting a piece of pie I brought home for Roddy in the fridge. I stop by the living room to turn off the tree before I go to bed, and that’s where I find him, curled up on the sofa, his sleeping bag over his body, his head on a pillow. Instead of my bed—the bed I’ve come to consider our bed—he’s tucked himself in on the couch.
I feel sick. All I can do is stand here, frozen, wondering what’s happened to us. Is this it? Have I lost him already?
My worried gaze takes in two empty bottles of wine on the table. But then I notice that there are three wine glasses and a soda bottle, too. And a mostly eaten bowl of popcorn.
I want to wake him up and ask a hundred questions. Who was here? How are you? Why aren’t you upstairs in our bed?
But instead, I turn off the Christmas-tree lights and climb the stairs alone.
Things don’t improve the next day. At all. Roderick goes to work before I get up. When we’re working the coffee counter together during the morning rush, I ask him if his evening was okay.
“It was surprisingly nice,” he says, then gives me a sheepish smile. “I served two hundred helpings of ham and got drunk with the priest, Sophie, and Jude the mechanic.”
“Jude doesn’t drink,” I say stupidly.
“Right.” He nods. “But he didn’t mind that we did.”
“Oh, you mean after the community supper,” I say slowly. And now I understand. Father Peters is a top-notch recruiter of idle hands. “That’s cool.” Except I spent all of yesterday worrying about poor Roderick alone at home. Meanwhile, he was getting wasted with new friends.
“Father Peters is nothing like I’d expect him to be,” Roderick says, frothing a pitcher of milk. “He’s a good time.”
“Can we talk?” I ask suddenly.
Roderick looks up at the line of people in front of
us and raises an eyebrow at me. As if to say, Is this really the time?
It isn’t, of course. But later, when I go looking for Roderick on his break, I find him standing outside the kitchen door on his phone, ordering a twin-sized bed from the mattress store.
That evening after work, I watch, depressed, as the same delivery guys who brought my mattress set up Roddy’s in his downstairs room. I feel blindsided, and after they leave, I stand in his doorway and blurt, “Why are you doing this?”
He’s silent a moment, busy unwrapping his new sheets. Then he drops them on the mattress, turns around, and sits on the edge of the bed. “We need a little distance, I think.”
“Why? One minute everything was great, and the next minute you’re like a stranger again.”
“That’s not true,” he says, fiddling with the piping on the edge of his new mattress. “But we have a problem. And the problem is that I love you.” He looks up, gutting me with his sad expression. “And I know you also care about me. But I’m not in the right place in my life to have a secret relationship with you.”
I love you. The words reverberate through my chest as I stay there in the doorway, struggling with what to say.
“—And you’re not in the right place in your life to come out. It isn’t anybody’s fault. It’s just true.”
“But maybe I will be someday.” Not that it’s easy to picture.
“See, I know you mean that. You’re one of the most honest people I know.” He folds his arms in close, as if trying to warm himself, and it seems like there are five miles between us, instead of five feet. “But I refuse to put pressure on you. And I refuse to ignore what I need, too. What if there’s some guy out there who’s ready to be my other half?”
Ouch. Times a million. The thought of him meeting someone else tears me to shreds. But I’m suddenly too angry to give him the satisfaction of saying so.
“It’s not your fault that I’ve been down this road before,” he says. “But I cannot make the same mistakes again.”
“But I’m not your jerkoff of an ex.”
His smile is sad. “Nope. You’re a hundred times more worthy. And thank you for reminding me that I don’t have to shop at Jerks Are Us anymore. Even so, I’m going to look around for another apartment, Kieran. It will take me a while, because Jude says my car needs even more work, and cash is always tight. But it’s better if I live somewhere else. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“No,” I grumble. “You don’t have to move out.” That would make it final.
“Look, I am not trying to upset you. But there’s one more thing I have to say. I’m not sure I feel right about keeping this.” He stands up and moves to the corner of his room, where the guitar I gave him is balanced against the wall. “Maybe you want to return it.”
“No. Just no. I wanted you to have it and I still do. I want—” I break off again, because talking was never my strong suit. I’m failing at it right now, anyway. Nothing I say is getting through. “I want a lot of things. But I don’t want that back. Keep it. Sell it. Whatever you have to do.”
And then I leave the house and eat a takeout sandwich in my truck, because I’m too upset to be at home while Roderick plans a new life without me.
Kieran
Usually I drive to work at the ad agency straight from the bakery. But today I make a quick detour up the hill, where I swing by the house and check the mailbox. University classes start in four days, and I’ve been waiting for my financial aid award to arrive. I’ve already been admitted to the program, but it doesn’t mean much if I can’t afford to enroll.
When I pull down the mailbox’s metal door, I find a grocery-store flyer and a single fat envelope. Right here—behind the wheel, with the engine idling—I tear open the envelope and read the enclosed letter.
Dear Mr. Shipley, we are pleased to offer you the following tuition assistance package. This greeting is followed by a grant number that looks awfully generous, plus a student loan for two thousand dollars. The result is that I’ll have to pay upfront… Seven hundred and two dollars per course.
I read it twice more. The number remains entirely affordable, and I let out a whoop.
My first thought is: It worked! I can totally afford to become the oldest freshman on campus.
My second thought is: I can’t wait to tell Roddy.
And then—splat—I fall back down to Earth. Because Roderick and I aren’t a couple anymore.
It’s been over a week since Christmas. He’s spent every night downstairs in his new bed. While I’ve spent every night alone and upset.
He’s trying hard to be my friend. At work, he’ll bring me a bagel. Or one of the slices of pizza he’s been testing. His smile says, I’m sorry.
But I don’t know how to go back to being friends. So I avoid him. My subconscious hasn’t gotten the message, though. Every time I hear something funny, or I read something interesting, my first impulse is to share it with him.
He’s already looking around for another apartment. I heard him making a phone call last night, inquiring about a room for rent on a farm in Tuxbury.
“That would be a terrible commute,” I couldn’t help pointing out.
“I know,” he’d said quietly. “And they found a tenant already. But the price was right.”
The price is right here, I’d wanted to argue. But we’ve had that discussion a few times already, and he’s still determined to put some distance between us.
I get it. He isn’t willing to put himself back into the closet, and I can’t see a way out of mine. Sometimes I lie awake in my lonely bed and imagine things are different. That I’m some other guy who can make his own rules.
Meanwhile, it’s killing me to have him so close, but to only be friends. My heart can’t stop hoping for more.
So I don’t call him with the good news about my financial aid package. He’d be happy for me, but I refuse to be that needy. I’m back to being a loner, and it feels very familiar to me. I’ve kept my deepest thoughts and my personal victories to myself for twenty-five years. What’s one more?
To celebrate, I turn on the radio as I pull away from the curb. The truck’s cab fills with the music from the country station that Roddy hates. Now I can listen to it whenever I want.
When I get to Burlington, I find that everyone at the office is in a crappy mood. “You’re late,” Mr. Pratt barks as I take my seat. “You said you were going to start work at twelve thirty.”
“Yeah, next week,” I remind him. That’s when the schedule shifts. That’s when classes start, and when I’ve cut my Busy Bean hours.
He frowns down at me, possibly because he’s not used to me ever arguing with him. But I’m not taking any more crap from the Pratt family, I’ve decided. Not after the fiasco of Deacon’s portfolio.
“Look,” Pratt says. “We need to get these logo drafts ready for the client’s eyes before four o’clock. I have a conference call.”
“Sure,” I say coolly as I log in to the computer. “What changes am I making?”
“Deacon has my notes,” he says before heading back to his office.
Well, that’s going to slow things down. With a sigh, I cross the room to find Deacon in his dickweasel office. It’s taken extraordinary restraint on my behalf not to bring up Deacon’s treachery on his art-school portfolio. But the Pratts haven’t mentioned his application to me, and if I say anything, I could get the dean in hot water. That’s really not the way I want to start things off with the college.
So I say nothing. Mr. Pratt wrote me a recommendation, as promised. And it must have been decent. I can only guess that he pressured his son to apply, too. I wonder if he was rejected.
Since I’d like to keep my job, I guess I won’t ask.
“Hi there.” I lean against the doorframe. “Your dad said you had some notes on the Mayer Farm labels?”
“His notes are here.” He points me toward a sheet of paper in his father’s careful script. “He wants you to try some different typefaces.”
“Okay, sure.” That sounds easy.
“But I don’t like these cows you drew.”
My blood pressure jumps. You think you can do better? The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I bite them back. “What about the cows?”
“Those splotches look dopey. I was thinking we need something more like this.” He wakes up his computer monitor to show me two drawings from a stock-art site.
I let out a bark of laughter when I see them. “Oh, man. Not happening.”
“Think again,” he says with typical defiance. “This is the direction I’m taking it.”
This jerk. “Okay, the first problem is that those are bulls. This art is for a dairy farm, and you can’t get milk from a bull.”
His chin jerks toward the screen. His mouth gets tight, but he doesn’t acknowledge the mistake.
“The second problem is that the Mayers raise Randall cattle. It’s a specialty breed. And just because you think the patterning on their faces looks ‘dopey’—” I use air quotes. “—doesn’t mean you get to repopulate their herd.”
His lip curls, and I know he’s not going to back down. “Just do half the sketches the way I’m asking for, and the client can decide.”
And, yup, that’s when I sort of snap. “Seriously? You’re going to waste my time just so you don’t have to admit that you didn’t do your homework?”
“When you’re here, your time is my time,” he says in a low voice. “So just do what we pay you for.”
“Your father pays me,” I say, digging in. “He mostly pays me to clean up your messes. But a check’s a check.”
“You arrogant prick. Get the fuck out of this office and do your JOB!” Deacon shouts.
Well, fuck. I should have seen that coming. With my face reddening, and my pulse ragged, I turn around and walk back to my desk. I never argue with him, because there’s really no point. And it only leads to more of his bullshit.
The truth is not always an option. Nobody knows that better than me. So why did I just step in that? Helen, the receptionist, is sneaking nervous glances at me.
