Open Net (Cayuga Cougars Book 2)

by V. L. Locey

  “Mom, Dad, I need to tell you a couple things.”

  My father stopped packing tobacco into his old pipe to look at me. My mother stared over her mug of coffee. I cleared my throat.

  “I know you don’t have too much experience with different people out here,” I opened with, my index finger rubbing along an old, smooth chip on the edge of my plate.

  “Different how?” Dad asked as he thumbed some vanilla tobacco firmly into the bowl of his pipe. “If you mean Mexican like your friend Sal, then no, not much, but he seems like a fine fellow, although I don’t get why he’s wearing a peach sweater.” Mom made a sound of agreement into her coffee.

  I had to smile, just a little. “I didn’t mean different because Sal is Latino, I meant different like gay men.” My gaze lifted from the old plate with the blue flowers and the familiar chip. The plate I’d eaten off of for as long as I could recall. “There aren’t many gay men in Martens Bay.”

  “I think Cristian Pont was gay,” Dad said, leaning back to dig into the front pocket of his work pants for his old butane lighter. “Remember how neat his yard always was?”

  Mom made another sound of agreement.

  “Never a leaf out of place. And he always pressed his shirts, even if he were just going to the bar for a gin and tonic.”

  This was going to be harder than I thought.

  “We always liked Christian,” Mom chimed in. I glanced at her and gave her a weak smile. She gave me one back. “Are you trying to tell us that your friend Sal is gay? We’re totally fine with him staying here if he is, August. Aren’t we, Bill?”

  “Oh, yes, fine. We have nothing against the gays.”

  He flipped the lid on his lighter, rolled his thumb over the striker, and got a huge, dancing flame. I stared at the fire being sucked into the pipe, then at the cloud of rich smoke Dad exhaled into the air.

  “As a matter of fact, your mother had a cousin who was a lesbian. What was her name, Nat?”

  “Georgina. She moved to Florida and lived with her friend for years. I should send her a letter, see how they’re doing,” Mom mused, then sipped her coffee.

  Shit. This was so not good. Not at all good. I took a sip of my now chilly coffee as Mom and Dad prattled on about cousin Georgina the lesbian and her “friend” the other lesbian. How was I supposed to dive into this?

  “Georgina was a whiz with engines,” Mom was saying. “One time my father could not get his old Ford truck to roll over. He called Georgina. Everyone in the family knew that if you needed your car worked on, Georgina was the one to call.”

  Dad grunted. “I wonder whatever happened to Cristian. Last I heard he was going to open a flower shop over in—”

  “Sal and I are gay. Both of us. We’re both gay and dating each other. When I leave here, I’m moving in with him. I don’t iron my shirts or anything else, and Sal could care less about the yard outside his apartment,” I blurted.

  My parents sat staring at me as if I’d just said football was better than hockey.

  “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us, August?” Dad asked as I battled to regain some control.

  “Sal’s HIV positive.”

  That one just kind of flopped out of my mouth, but since it was there, on the table, like a guppy out of its tank, we all needed to address it. Someone maybe should toss the poor dying thing back into the water. Obviously my parents weren’t touching it, so I did.

  “HIV is not AIDS,” I said gently, my gaze touching on both of them, seeing the horror in their eyes. I recognized that look. It was the same expression that had grabbed Mario’s face the night Sal had told my friends about his status. Mario had been scared for me. Scared of losing me. Just like my parents. Maybe he still was. Shit.

  I reached over the table, hands open, and slowly, painfully, each of my parents slid a hand into one of mine.

  We talked. For a long time, sitting there with cold coffee and vanilla-scented smoke rings lingering over our heads. I did my best to fill them with good information about HIV.

  “We’re being careful,” I assured them. “Always. Sal is crazy about being safe.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us all this earlier, son?” my father asked, and tried to relight his pipe using only one hand. Mom nodded in agreement, her eyes filled with concern.

  “I’m sorry you were the last to know,” I said, grasping their hands a little tighter. “I guess losing your love was my greatest fear, so I shoved you two to the back of the line.”

  “August, you’re the brightest light in our lives. We could never not love you, no matter who you date. Just please promise me that you will always be safe. Dad and me, we don’t care if you’re gay or straight, we just want you to be happy and healthy.” She swiped at a tear.

  That was it for me. I jumped out of my chair and moved around the table. I hugged her and then my father as tightly as I dared.

  “Now why don’t you go upstairs, move Sal from the guest room to yours, and take a nap with him?” Mom patted my face. “You look exhausted.”

  “I’m still not sure about a peach sweater on a man, though,” I heard my dad telling my mom as I left the dining room.

  Chuckling with relief, I pounded up the stairs, grabbed Sal’s bags from the spare room, and jogged to my old bedroom. Sal looked up from an old copy of The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett that had been resting, with a couple of other books, on a shelf over my old wooden desk.

  “You sure love your post-apocalyptic stuff,” he said, then tossed the well-read paperback onto the bed beside him.

  “I thought you were napping.”

  He shrugged.

  I closed the door behind me and walked over to the bed.

  “I did lie down for a while.” He reached for me and pulled just once on my wrist. I sat down beside him on the double bed. The ancient frame creaked loudly. We both winced at the grating sound. “Did you know that if you open that vent on the floor by your dresser, you can hear everything that’s said in the dining room?”

  “How do you think I knew what my folks were getting me for Christmas every year when I was a kid?” I fell back onto the bed, the box springs groaning as my weight settled. “Fooling around in this bed is not happening,” I pointed out.

  Sal settled beside me, his arm lying over my stomach, his head on my biceps. “Your parents are hysterical.” He pushed my shirt up so he could rub my abdomen. “You lay all that on them—and Aug, that was a shit ton of stuff to pile on them—and the biggest issue your dad has after the dust clears is the color of my sweater. Do you know how amazingly funny and cool that makes them?”

  “Yeah, I do. I should have told them way before now. I was just scared, you know?” My lashes drifted down onto my cheeks.

  “Trust me, I know.” He patted my belly.

  I fell asleep, feet dangling off the side of the bed, Sal curled up beside me, my parents’ voices and my dad’s vanilla pipe tobacco smoke filtering up through the heating grate on the floor. It was great to be home, and to be accepted, even if Sal had a “girly sweater” going on.

  After two days of my mother’s huge meals three times a day, Sal and I set off for a run in the evening. We had to. We were both in misery from eating so much. Also, I got concerned about Sal when he didn’t eat right. Sure, I knew a couple of days wasn’t going to spike up his viral load, but still…

  “You know when you make that face you look just like your mother?”

  I threw the man jogging at my left a dark look. Sal’s laugh was a sharp bark.

  “You do recall that I’m adopted?” I asked with attitude as we ran up to the border of Lake Marten.

  Sal slowed and then stopped when the lake came into view.

  “Pretty, huh?”

  “Wow,” he panted, his sweaty hair stuck to the side of his head. “Oh my God, is that a moose with a baby?”

  I trotted up to stand beside him, looked at where he was pointing, and nodded.

  “Yeah, it’s a moose.”

 
; I bent down to touch my toes and stretch my hamstrings. When I straightened, Sal was taking pictures with his cell, his face glowing from either the two mile run or the sight of the mama moose with her calf. Maybe both.

  “Not too many of them wandering around Elmira, huh?”

  “Not a one.” He laughed, then walked to the edge of the lake. I moseyed up to stand beside him. A gentle wind moved over the water, moist and fresh, kind of chilly when it rustled over damp clothing. “It really is beautiful here.”

  I studied his profile. “Yeah, it is.

  He threw me a sideway glance, smiled, and returned to snapping images of moose, lake, towering pines, and a long pier that ran out into the water.

  “You about done taking pictures?” I asked while pulling my shirt over my head.

  “Um, maybe?”

  Sal turned to face me. I toed off my sneakers, then bounced around on one foot then the other, peeling off my sweaty socks. His dark eyebrows shot up his brow when I wiggled out of my running shorts and briefs.

  “Is this some sort of pagan Canadian tradition?”

  “Sure, we can call it that. Or we can call it skinny-dipping.”

  I ran out into the lake. The water swirled around my thighs and splashed up over my balls. It was brutally cold. My nuts ascended into my body as fast as they could. I heard Sal laughing at my squeals from the shore. Needing to show him that I really owned my shit, I drew in a deep breath and dove into the freezing water. When I surfaced about six meters from the rocky shore, I cleared the water from my face, then paddled around to face Sal, who was still on the shore, the coward.

  “You coming in or what?” I shouted while treading water. He stripped and, with a shout that scared the moose and her calf, leaped into the water. He came up right in front of me.

  “Holy fucking shit, this water is frigid!” Sal gasped as lake water ran down his face and neck. He swam a little closer. I stole a kiss. Then another. And then one more. “You think we could get out of this ice plunge?”

  “Will you fuck me on the shore?”

  “If my junk hasn’t frozen off and fallen to the bottom of Lake Antarctica here, sure.”

  “Drama queen,” I tossed back at him as I broke for shore.

  He followed with ease. I reached the soft shore first. Lake Marten slapped around my thighs. I turned to watch Sal rise out of the cold, clear water like some kind of ancient aquatic god.

  He stepped right into my arms. He was cold, his skin pimpled with gooseflesh, but his mouth…oh, his mouth was hot. As was his touch. Every caress of his hands over my skin set me on fire. He cupped my naked ass while rubbing his tongue over mine. Our cocks, rising slowly now that we were out of the bitterly cold lake, bumped together.

  I was hot and so horny. We hadn’t had sex for something like a week. I grabbed his hips, pulled with a grunt, and ground my cock against his. Sal groaned into my mouth, his teeth dragging over my tongue.

  “Fuck me.”

  I took him by the arm to the first tuft of grass we could find. There wasn’t much—it was still mostly mud—but who cared? I needed to get off so badly I would have let him fuck me over on the dock. Shit. Were there people here? Sal reached between my legs to cup my balls as we dropped to our knees on the springy soil. At that moment, I wouldn’t have cared if the Prime Minister had been wetting his line that evening.

  “Fuck me right now.”

  I was on my back with Sal between my legs before I could blink. I ran my hands over Sal as he fished inside his wallet, his fingers fumbling as his cock rested beside mine.

  “My fingers are so cold I can’t feel a damn thing.”

  He snickered, then pulled the condom out with a grin. It fell from his fingers. He cursed. I rolled my eyes. A bug bit my bare chest. Then another. It took Sal three tries to get the packet out of the goop, and then another two tries to get it open.

  “Let me,” I said.

  I swatted a black bug feasting on my side, then rolled the lubricated condom down over his prick. Sal worked up some saliva and spat on his hand, then smeared the spittle over the condom. A little more lubrication was never a bad thing. He really did have a beautiful cock. I know people say a dick can’t be beautiful, but Sal’s was. It looked even more beautiful because it had been seven days since I’d held it, or sucked it, or felt it breaching the tight ring of muscle inside me.

  Just like it was now.

  I slapped my hands to the mud. Sal threw my muddy leg over his shoulder and thrust deeply.

  “Fuuuuuuuck,” I ground out, my fingers curling into the sloppy dirt that was now packed into my fingers, toes, and the crack of my ass.

  He rotated his hips, pressing against my prostate for just a second. Rough sounds of pleasure escaped me. Something bit the sole of my foot, the one resting on Sal’s shoulder, hard. I wiggled my foot as Sal pulled out. He punched his hips forward and up, pushing his cock deep.

  “You’ve got the tightest ass,” he said through gritted teeth.

  I tried to grab him, tug him deeper, but my hands were slick with mud. He made a large, round motion with his hips that made my eyes roll back into my skull and my toes curl.

  “I have to go faster now.”

  “Yeah, faster.”

  My leg slid off his shoulder, smearing mud and green slimy stuff down his arm. He threw my leg back up beside his ear, lowered his head, and fucked me as hard as I had ever been fucked. There was no traction to be found, so I slipped and slithered back with each powerful thrust.

  “Make yourself come.” Sal growled, then shimmied upward, his knees constantly sliding out from under him.

  Hand caked with mud, I grabbed my cock. Sal nodded down at me when I began jerking myself off. The wet, sucking sounds of the mud was weird, kind of gross, but incredibly hot. I came fast and hard. Semen flew over my chest, dotting my neck and chin. Sal said something that got lost in my shouts, the slurping sounds of the mud we were rolling around in, and the buzz of bugs. Back bowed, I rode out my orgasm in delight, shuddering and moaning. Sal fell over me when his knees went out to the sides. I groaned. He got to his elbows, captured my mouth, and then came like a wild man, his body tightening up, his cock kicking, his tongue knotted with mine. I grabbed his head, tipped it, and sucked on his tongue like a man starved.

  “Shit, ow.” He pulled away from the kiss to slap a hand to his neck.

  I snickered. Then felt a sharp bite on the back of my thigh. And then another on my big toe.

  “Fucking hell, what is with the bugs?” Sal tried to get to his feet. He slewed around, finally landing on his ass with a splat.

  I sat up. My head was instantly surrounded by a horde of small, black gnats. The bastards were hungry. I opened my mouth to tell Sal to get into the lake and inhaled about four dozen flying black specks. Spitting and hacking, I slipped and stumbled to the water, Sal tripping along at my side. We dove in, came up, teeth clattering, looked at each other, and started laughing like a couple of loonies. I noticed he was holding the used condom tightly in his hand. Guess he’d have to carry that home in his pocket. That made me laugh even harder.

  “That was the dirtiest sex I’ve ever had,” Sal chortled as we circled each other.

  “For sure,” I replied, then swam to him.

  His lips were cold when I pressed mine over them. He smiled dreamily after the kiss ended. Someday, I might be old and not able to recall who I’d scored my first goal on, but I knew for certain I would never forget our time in Lake Marten.

  We were halfway home, at a little gas station in the middle of a town known as Ruddy Corners, Illinois. Sal was snoozing in the passenger seat while I pumped gas and scratched the fifty-seven or so bug bites covering my body. We’d switch here so I could sleep, which was badly needed. The last fifty miles had been a blur. Yawning, eyes on the sun slipping down, I glanced over when Sal opened his door and climbed out of the Mustang.

  “Hey,” I said over the roof of my car. “Good timing.” I released the trigger and returned the
nozzle to its rest. “I’m going to go in and grab something to eat—want anything?”

  “No, my gut’s a mess.” He looked pained. Worry began to wriggle into my mind. “Too much of that bland Canadian food,” he teased when he saw me staring at him.

  “Should we stop and try to find a doctor?”

  “Aug, it’s okay, really.” He walked around the front of the car, rubbing his upper abdomen. “Sometimes a cold or flu is just a cold or flu. It’s probably just some wicked indigestion.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Baby, it’s just some killer gas. See?” He lifted the hem of his button-down shirt. “I’m all bloated. If I were a woman, I’d suspect my period was coming.” He gave me a faulty smile.

  My eyebrows dropped low over my eyes. “How do you know so much about premenstrual stuff?” I placed my hand on his slightly rounded belly and rubbed in a soft circle.

  “Two sisters, remember?” He stepped away from my tender touch and released his shirt. “I’m going to find the men’s room. See you inside.”

  I watched him walk away, his shoulders riding high around his ears. Knowing guys, he was probably in a lot more discomfort then he’d ever let on.

  We bought some food for me, nachos and a couple of hot dogs from one of those rolling hot dog heater things, and a bottle of ginger ale for Sal. As we settled into our seats, he took a long drink, then belched.

  “Nice one,” I said, then dove into my gas station fare.

  “Feels a little better,” he said while recapping his bottle. “Told you it was just gas. Now you, on the other hand, will be suffering some major food poisoning before we cross the border into New York State. How can you eat that shit?”

  “I’m hungry,” I said around a mouth filled with warm hot dog, mustard, and relish. “Just drive.” I waved at the open road with my half a wiener. “I want to get home so I can start packing and get moved into your place.”

  He leaned over, kissed me, then burped right in my face. “Sorry, baby.” He patted my thigh and cranked over the Mustang. She rumbled like a contented leopard. “You eat then sleep. We’ll be home around morning.”