I walked in the front door of the office. Nick stood behind the counter, checking something on my computer. When he saw me, he smiled. “Hey, Paul. How are you this fine Monday?”
“I’m gay,” I replied.
Out loud. I’d said it out loud. I froze, the heart-in-throat feeling so intense I thought I’d pass out.
Nick blinked a few times, then winked at me as he grinned. “Congratulations.” He turned back to the monitor. “Just printing something and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
Eventually I was able to move, but my legs felt like jelly as I came behind the counter. “Sorry. I—I don’t know why I blurted that out.”
“I think a little more blurting things out would be good for you, Paul, especially things as important as that.” He hit a few keystrokes and stood up, stretching and grimacing at his watch. “Brooke already called in. I probably should have out-and-out fired her, but . . .” His gaze slid to me. “Well, to be honest, I wanted to talk to you before I did anything.”
I was still reeling from my confession, and I couldn’t keep up with such an abrupt conversational shift. “Me?”
“Yes, you.” He leaned against the file cabinet and gave me an almost scolding look. “I’ve been waiting for you to suggest this yourself, but clearly you need a bit of a nudge. What would you say to taking Brooke’s place?”
“Sure. I never mind filling in.”
Nick’s smile lifted at the corners. “I mean taking her place permanently, Paul. How would you like to be my vet tech?”
I’m pretty sure my jaw fell open. “Me?”
“Yes, you. I know you did at least some vet school, so you have to have most of the classes for the associate degree already. It might seem weird, going back for an undergraduate degree when you already have one, but really, I think that will make it that much easier for you, having played the game once before. I’ll be able to give you more to do if you go back for the full four-year program, but even that you should be able to complete with a patch job. If you aren’t comfortable with student loans, we can negotiate some kind of advance or I can help you look into scholarships.”
When I remained speechless, he laughed and nudged me with his elbow. “Come on, say yes. I don’t want to hire another flake. I want to hire you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Between El telling me—and showing me—he wanted me and now Nick offering not just to hire me as a tech but also to help me go back to school for the official degree, I wondered if I was dreaming. Next thing I knew I’d be winning the Curb Appeal contest. This wasn’t my life. Things like this didn’t happen to me.
And yet, it appeared that at least for now, they did.
“Okay,” I said at last, and Nick clapped me on the back.
“Great. Put out an ad for a new receptionist, and as soon as we get you a replacement, we can start your technician training in earnest. Meanwhile, put in your application for the fall semester at East Centennial, and we can talk about how you want to pay for it over lunch.”
I told El about my new job when he came over to my house after closing up the shop for the night. It seemed a little early to me for him to be closing, but we were so focused on the job thing, I forgot to ask why.
“He acted like he’d been waiting for me to volunteer for the job,” I told El as we maneuvered Detroit Daisy to the back of the house. He’d told me he’d be over in a few days to pick it up with his friend’s truck. He seemed oddly happy about it, too. MoJo was also filled with joy, but it seemed to be more about a pair of butterflies that kept dancing around her head while she wrapped her lead chain round the tree we’d tied her to.
“Probably he figured out that waiting for you to realize he wanted you would mean waiting until Doomsday. Shit, this is crazy heavy.”
I stopped, peering around the sculpture at El. “What do you mean, he’d wait until Doomsday for me to figure it out?”
“Because that’s how you are, Paul. The last one to know when someone wants you.” When I opened my mouth to protest, he rode over my objection, nodding to Bill’s yard. “That girl over there is the same one you went to lunch with the other day, right?”
How did he know I’d been to lunch with Lorraine? “Yeah, why?”
“She keeps casting these longing looks your way, but they don’t seem to register with you at all. I bet she thinks you’re not interested, but I’m betting you don’t even have a clue that she is interested, do you?”
My eyes widened as I glanced over to where Lorraine huddled with Bill over a flat of annuals. “Lorraine is interested? In me?” I frowned. “No. She’s picking favorites for the contest, is all.”
“Like I said. Doomsday.” He slid a hand around my waist and brushed a kiss on my cheek.
I glanced over at Lorraine a lot after that, trying to decide if El was right. We were doing some more work together on my yard, taking out Stacey’s edging and putting in a few things El had found at the shop, some of them actual lawn ornaments, some of them nothing more than interesting items he seemed to believe would help my cause. The jewel-colored, glass-studded birdbath was great, but I wasn’t sure about the old bicycle until he had it propped up against the side of the house in front of an old window, with, of all things, some broken pots. But once it was all arranged, it didn’t look too bad.
“It’ll be better with a few plants in front of it, and maybe some pea gravel. My abuela has some plants that need thinning, and my sister has a pile of rocks on a slab in her backyard from some project that never got finished. She needs those gone anyway, so I’ll bring them over tomorrow night. Hey. That reminds me.” He tucked a hand in his pocket, looking almost nervous. “What are you doing on the Fourth?”
“My mom will be in town. She’ll be here on Wednesday, actually. Why?”
“No reason,” El said, sounding relieved, and turned away.
I didn’t press him because I was too busy realizing I’d have to tell my mother I was gay. Or did I? Maybe I could do it the next time she visited. Unless El kissed me or something in front of her. Would he do that, though?
What were we doing, anyway? Dating? We weren’t boyfriends, we’d said, but . . . I thought of what we’d done together the night before, and blood pooled in my groin.
How would we be able to do anything at all with my mother here?
“Slow down, tiger,” El said, laughter in his voice. “You’re going to short your brain out with all that thinking.”
“Sorry.” I relaxed from the crouch I’d been holding in front of a flowerbed and sat hard on the ground, my brain still moving as fast as ever. “This is all just . . . overwhelming.”
“This what?”
“This.” I gestured between the two of us. “Us. Being together. Like we were last night.”
El raised an eyebrow at me. “Why?”
I swallowed hard. “I just . . . I still have a hard time believing it, I guess. That you would . . . want me.” That anybody would, but I wouldn’t be pathetic and admit that.
“That seems to be a theme with you, not knowing people want you—in lots of ways.” He cocked his head to the side. “I wonder how many people have tried to get your attention, only to wander off in despair of ever achieving it.”
The thought startled me, and I endured a few terrible moments of combing through my memories, wondering where he might have been right, wondering how I’d ever find out.
He chuckled. “They just have no staying power, in my opinion. Anyway, their loss is my gain.”
I looked at him levelly. “Because you want me.” I felt silly saying it out loud, but somehow, the moment seemed to call for reassurance.
He leaned in close, drawing my earlobe into his mouth before whispering, “Yes.”
I was dizzier now, but in a very good way. “So that means you want to . . .”
He chuckled and nuzzled my ear again. “Take you to bed? Yeah, Paul. I do.” The kiss he placed on my temple was so light it made my stomach fill with butterflies. “Would that be
okay with you?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
I thought he would laugh again, but he didn’t. Instead, he put his hand on my thigh and squeezed. “Would you like to go to bed with me right now?”
“Yes,” I said quickly, eagerly, and the next thing I knew, I’d been lifted to my feet, and I followed El as he led me inside by the hand.
I glanced at Lorraine again as El let go of me to rescue MoJo, and I kept my eye on her as we rounded the corner to the front door. She had a very odd look on her face, and I felt my face heat as I realized what she’d seen.
It dawned on me that being with El in any way at all truly would mean I’d be telling everyone I was gay. Not just Nick, but my neighbors and everyone. Random people who saw us kissing or smiling at each other. People in the supermarket, maybe. My mom—if not this week, then eventually.
I’d have to tell Stacey.
I didn’t know what to think about this. I didn’t want to think about this, but something told me there was no way El would keep us as a secret. Or if he would, he wouldn’t like it, which would almost be worse. Thinking about announcing it, though, made it all so real, breaking the chipmunk out of his paralysis to ask me how I knew I really was gay, or whatever, how I didn’t know this wasn’t some kind of hallucination and I’d come out as gay but then not be gay later and wouldn’t that be a mess?
And what if Stacey came back again, this time for good?
El’s fingers teased my wrist, and I remembered all the things we’d done the night before, that we were about to do all over again and maybe more. I remembered that I didn’t want Stacey anymore, even if she wanted me. I stopped wondering about whether or not I was really gay, and I forgot, at least for the moment, that I was supposed to care.
As El followed Paul inside, he thought about the pensiveness he’d seen on his lover’s face and acknowledged they were in a kind of honeymoon phase, a happy little bubble before the other shoe fell and reality set in. Even if Paul wasn’t voicing his concerns out loud, Paul’s lack of a poker face was on par with his obliviousness about who was interested in him. As Denver would say, Strawberry Shortcake hadn’t even begun to grapple with the complexities of coming out. El would lay even odds that Paul was deep in the “maybe it’s a mistake and I’m confused, not gay” stage. He didn’t want to think about Paul being bi, which was probably unfair, but man, he wanted to hear Paul say, “Stacey was a mistake. I only want you.” Which could happen either way, but boy it would feel good to give the woman that kind of kick in the teeth.
Okay, so he was an asshole on that count. Bi, gay—whatever way Paul went, he had quite a road ahead of him.
El thought about telling his own coming-out story: how he knew in high school but kept it on the down-low until he’d graduated, how he’d sweated bullets over telling his family, how they’d cried when he had. That left him feeling far too vulnerable, though, so he considered offering up the tale of losing his virginity, of the terrifying and wonderful experience of being pinned down on a hotel bed by a biker daddy. He thought about simply assuring Paul this was a journey, that he should take his time. He wanted to reassure Paul and emphasize that he shouldn’t let anyone rush him, not even El.
When he came into the bedroom after setting MoJo up with some water and her favorite toys in the kitchen, though, one look at his lover on the edge of the bed, shoes off and bare toes curling around each other protectively as he hunched his shoulders, his eyes radiating the now-heady cocktail of want and terror and naked lust, El found he couldn’t say anything at all. He simply tugged his T-shirt over his head, kicked off his shoes, and reached for his fly.
He loved the way Paul’s gaze raked him, greedily taking in every inch of flesh as it appeared. Paul’s hands echoed the path of the denim, fingers ghosting over El’s flesh as Paul’s lusty gaze burned. “Your skin is amazing. It’s like the color of coffee with just the right amount of cream.”
El smiled and let his own hands sink into that beautiful red-brown hair. “And you’re Snow White, perfect porcelain skin. Except for where you have those adorable freckles. Then of course there’s this delicious strawberry hair.”
Normally that would have made Paul blush, but he seemed too fixated on El’s abdomen. His lips parted, his tongue stealing out to wet them. “I just want to lick you,” he whispered.
Inside his briefs, El’s cock twitched with a surge of arousal. “Go right ahead.”
Paul’s gaze, drunk with lust instead of rum, lifted to El’s. For long moments they regarded each other, El daring, Paul . . . well, El didn’t know what Paul was doing.
Paul’s pink tongue darted out and traced a circle around El’s belly button. Their eyes stayed locked the entire time.
It took everything El had, though, to keep his stomach muscles from flexing, to keep from grabbing Paul’s head and pulling him close, to not groan and drag Paul’s head to his nipples or his cock and beg him to suck. It was delicious torture, watching Paul explore and being the terrain on which he did so.
When the licks turned to nips and cool fingers tugged the elastic of El’s briefs down, freeing his fully erect cock, he shuddered, tightened his grip on Paul’s hair, and held on as Paul took his cock firmly in hand.
When El found himself longing to guide Paul’s greedy fingers around to the back, he drew away with a kiss, padded naked to the bag he’d brought over and left by the closet, and came back with a tube of lube, which he handed to Paul. “Use it if you want to,” he said, directing Paul’s hand to the crack of his own ass, which had begun to ache with yearning for what he hoped was coming.
“You—you’d let me—” Paul trailed off, clearly embarrassed, but he had lust in his gaze.
“Fuck me? Yeah.” El pressed Paul’s fingers directly against his hole. “Let you? I’ll beg you, if you want.”
When Paul’s grip pulled El open, something deep, deep inside him let go, let want and desire flood through his whole body. Paul, oblivious to this, stared at El’s eager cock as his fingers played tentatively at El’s ass. “I thought . . . I figured—well, that you’d want to do me again.”
“Oh, I do. Believe me. But I’d love this too.” The fingers at his back door got braver, knocking his cock against Paul’s neck. “That’s the fun of gay sex, you know. Everybody gets to try everything, if they want to.”
The fingers exploring El faltered, and Paul ducked his head. “Sorry. I’m still . . .”
“Getting used to hearing the word gay attached to you and the sex you might have?” When Paul flinched, El stroked his hair. He should have brought up the bi possibility, but he could only manage, “It’s okay, baby. I understand.”
“It’s all so new still,” Paul whispered. His fingers weren’t moving at all now. None of him was, except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he drew nervous breaths. “It feels like a dream, like I’ll wake up.”
God, yes. “It’s okay.”
“I want this.” Paul gripped El’s cheeks. “I do. But I don’t want—well, what if this is a dream? I mean, what if I’m not? What if I’m . . . curious, or whatever?”
“It’s okay.” That reassurance was a lie, but El made himself say it anyway. It wasn’t okay, but he’d have to find a way to make it that way. Sliding his hands to Paul’s face, El tipped his lover’s mouth up for a long, slow kiss. By the end of it, he had Paul on his back while he fumbled with the other man’s fly. No sooner did he have that beautiful cock free, though, than he was the one flat on the mattress, Paul undressing with shaking hands before crushing their bodies together, catching his own long, thin cock with El’s thicker one, sliding their heads together, arching against El’s chest, gasping into his ear.
El nipped Paul’s jaw and whispered, “Fuck me, baby.”
He loved the way Paul groaned and fumbled for the lube. He pulled his own knees up, giving Paul’s slicked fingers access, gasping when the tip of Paul’s index finger breached him. In stuttering whispers, he coached his lover through the mechanics of
anal sex, of stretching and coaxing muscles, of where he’d tucked the condoms into his bag. He helped Paul’s trembling fingers navigate the condom, though his own hands weren’t exactly steady either.
He sucked in his breath, both from the pain and the catch in his heart when Paul entered him, because El’s gaze never left his lover’s face. He caught the wonder there, mixed with lust, peppered liberally with euphoria and the triumph of sex, real sex, of fucking done right, of figuring out that the jigsaw puzzle pieces really could line up, of discovering there wasn’t anything in the world like being encased in the tight, dry heat of another man’s ass.
When Paul began to move, El let his eyes close, let his ankles wrap around Paul’s waist, his arms around the slim barrel of Paul’s chest. He let his body open all the way as he took Paul inside him, as the rhythm became deeper and harder and faster, until his lover tensed over and inside him, preparing to fly. Without opening his eyes, El slipped a hand down between them to help himself along, and he caught the wave too, letting go of absolutely everything as he came, including the lie that if Paul did close the door on this for fear of what it meant or for any reason at all, it wasn’t going to burn El like nothing ever had before.
I wasn’t sure if it was pent-up lust or the need to get as much of El as I could before my mother arrived, but the days before her flight landed in Grand Junction saw us together almost all the time I wasn’t working. We had plenty of—at least for me—inventive sex, but we hung out a lot too, making dinner and watching mindless TV together.
It was great, and I tried to enjoy myself. I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that any second now it could all turn, that something would make this beautiful moment end.
One night the lights flickered while we were making spaghetti, and when the stove snapped as I turned a burner off, El got very concerned. “It shouldn’t do that.”
“I know. I’ve called the landlord I don’t know how many times.”
He had the top of the stove lifted up before I got done speaking, and he wouldn’t eat until he’d checked all the wires. Eventually he was convinced my kitchen wouldn’t go up in flames the next time I made lunch, and after filling our bellies, we went back to bed, even though it was still light outside.
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