His baggage was a fucking farm.
And I’d be in St. Louis for the summer. Then Oklahoma City for the school year. Even if we could swing long distance in the short term, long term there was no future. He was tied to Elkville forever, and I had plans.
“Are you checking in on me because of the virginity thing? I told you I wasn’t going to catch the love bug because I stuck my dick in you.”
I laughed and scooted closer to him. “Nice, Connor. Real colorful.”
He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and some of the tension in both of us thawed. His fingertips trailed down my spine.
“I have feelings for you,” he said. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t, but I respect that you don’t want this to be serious.”
How could so few words, spoken with very little emotion, set my blood on fire?
“So you’re okay with not being boyfriends? Not being monogamous? Etcetera, etcetera.”
His breath hitched at the word “monogamous,” and my stomach rolled. I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else, and I didn’t want to. But it wasn’t fair for me to ask the same of him when I wasn’t exactly offering him anything solid.
God, maybe I was selling us short? I had no idea.
Why did this have to be so hard?
“We’re on the same page,” he said.
“Good.” I snuggled closer to him. His heartbeat thundered against my cheek. “Tell me a story.”
His tiny chuckle echoed through me, and I sighed in pleasure. I loved his laugh. There was so much about him to love.
“What type of story?”
“A happy one.”
“I could tell you about coming out?” he asked.
I traced my fingertip over his pec and circled his pale pink nipple. “Is that a happy story?” A lot of people’s weren’t.
“Yeah, actually.”
“Then yes. I want to hear.”
He palmed the back of my neck and pressed a kiss to my forehead. Post-orgasm Connor was my favorite Connor. He got all cuddly and chatty, and I wanted to delve inside him and explore.
“It was the summer after freshman year of college. I was at the library on campus when Desi texted me to check the news. The Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality had been announced. Desi was the only person who knew I was bisexual, besides a couple of guys I’d met on Grindr.”
“How’d she find out?” I asked.
“We had College Algebra together, and she’d wear this shirt that said, ‘Nobody knows I’m bisexual’ in huge block letters. I thought it was hilarious. We’re kindred spirits, I guess. We click as friends, so one day I told her. I couldn’t keep it inside anymore.”
I didn’t know Desi well, but she seemed bubbly while Connor was reserved. Gregarious while Connor was shy. It reminded me of how Joel’s personality was utterly opposite of mine, but I’d also known we would click from the first time I’d laid eyes on him.
I rubbed my legs against Connor’s, feeling our hair scratch together. “What happened when she told you about the Supreme Court ruling?” I asked.
“I was so simultaneously excited and depressed.” I tipped my head back so I could see his face. His eyes were closed. “I wanted to celebrate, but I didn’t feel like I deserved to. No one but Desi knew that I had any investment in this amazing thing that had happened. There was a party on the lawn in front of the library. It was really organic—students had started to gather there because they were pumped. Everyone was cheering and dancing. People had signs.”
“I remember seeing pictures.” The campus paper had run a pictorial essay on it. I’d been in Texas at the time and had been jealous that I’d missed it.
“I walked out to the middle of the lawn, and this guy I’d hooked up with several weeks before saw me. He gave me a huge hug. I didn’t even know his name, but he was so happy. I kissed him. It was only a quick, friendly kiss, but still. A kiss. Some girls I went to high school with were there, and they saw me, but I didn’t care. This was a huge deal, and it affected me. It was important to me, and I didn’t want to hide that excitement because I was scared. There was a picture of me in the paper kissing that guy, by the way. The photographer asked our permission to use it, and we both told him yes. So, I was basically out after that.”
Oh God. My heart. “That is the sweetest fucking story I’ve ever heard.”
He touched the shell of my ear, which somehow felt more intimate than the other things he’d done to my body tonight.
“I told my parents that night,” he said. “They weren’t surprised at all. My mom got out a box of wine to celebrate, and she let Lena and I both drink.”
I traced my fingertips over his lips. His face was usually so serious, only allowing small flashes of joy to shine through, but then he told a story like this and I was unable to handle the reserves of sweetness that lurked below the surface.
His hand snapped up and captured my wrist, and any other time, I’d have gone hard, but instead I was gooey and full of feelings.
He kissed the tips of my fingers. “Oberfell v. Hodges made me feel so proud, and I wanted to hold onto that joy. I wanted to believe that eventually I’d be accepted no matter who I was with, and I thought we were moving in that direction, like, as a country. As a state. But I’m not so sure now. As liberal as Elkville and Farm College can seem, sometimes it feels like . . .”
“A tiny fish in a sea of hate?”
“Exactly. Elkville has never been as accepting as the college would lead its students to believe. It’s a college town, so it’s bound to be a bit more liberal, but I’m a townie. I know where the cracks are. I know what’s preached in the churches on Sunday mornings and which farmers stopped shopping at the Feed Store when that picture of me hit the papers. It’s quiet but insidious.” Connor paused and cupped my cheek. “You know that better than me though, huh?”
“Yeah.” I pointed a thumb at myself. “Gay, Black, and from Texas.”
One side of Connor’s lips tipped up. There was so much sadness in his eyes when he was talking about Elkville, like it was a train headed straight for him and he was strapped to the tracks.
I’d had an idea in my head of how Elkville would be, how it was presented by the pamphlets and the professors on my college visit. Those things hadn’t been wrong, exactly, but Farm College was such a small microcosm compared to Elkville and the rest of rural Oklahoma. I couldn’t imagine staying here forever. Couldn’t imagine feeling tied down like that.
I wasn’t sure what to say to make that hunted look disappear from Connor’s eyes. I kissed him lightly. “I came out to my parents when I was twelve and to friends at school pretty soon after.”
“That’s young.”
“I was very dramatic about it. Made a big production about announcing it around the dinner table. I even asked my mom if we could eat off the good plates that night.”
“Was your family surprised?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “They didn’t react at first, just stared, mouths open. It scared the shit out of me, but they rallied. Hugs all around. Then we went out for ice cream afterward.”
Everyone deserved ice cream after coming out.
“Was there a reason you came out when you did?” he asked.
“My middle school had an after-school GSA club. You had to have parental permission to join. I wanted to attend and thought my parents needed to know why it was important to me.”
Coming out had opened all kinds of doors for me. I was able to be myself. I became more outspoken, stopped hiding, and threw myself full force into books and poetry and running. My parents had encouraged me to be creative and find things that interested me. They’d taught me not to feel beholden to stereotypes or other people’s expectations. It was a gift, and I was lucky to have received it.
“You’re fearless.” Connor rubbed a thumb over my chin. “Brave.” His soft smile lit my heart up. “You’re going to get out of here and change the world. Make it a better place.”
Heat sprouted
behind my eyes, and I had to blink several times. Such a sweet thing to say. Too sweet and intense for what we were to each other, but his words reverberated through me like I was a drum and he was my drummer.
“And you’re going to be the most badass bisexual farmer in all the land,” I said, trying to make a joke that would quiet the wild beat of my heart.
It was also a reminder. His life was here.
Mine wasn’t.
I needed to stick with the plan. Undergraduate school to law school to a job with SAFE Asylum someplace where I could make a difference. I’d had my dreams crushed before—when I was eighteen and took a dive off a skateboard. My heart had broken right along with my ankle. Running had made me feel happy and free, and I’d been fucking awesome at it. Losing it had been like losing a piece of myself. I never wanted to go through a loss like that again.
Connor rested his hand against the side of my throat, his thumb on my pulse, and I banished that line of memories from my thoughts and kissed him. This time, I controlled it. I threaded my fingers into his auburn hair, held him steady, and poured all my emotions out, so when I was done, I’d be empty and we’d be back to normal.
Easier said than done.
I’d considered asking Connor to keep me company as I checked out apartments in Oklahoma City on Saturday afternoon, but that seemed too couple-y. I had to start sticking to the boundaries we desperately needed.
Instead, Joel came along for the ride. He’d found our current rental house for us, which was cheap and perfect for two messy college guys. I assumed he’d be helpful.
He wasn’t.
We were touring the fourth apartment complex of the day, and he was nose deep in texts to Paulie, which was odd because Joel hated texting. Normally, he acted like texting me back was as awful as getting teeth pulled.
Our tour guide was explaining that I could choose one of five predetermined colors for an accent wall in the living room—dandelion, purple haze, blood red, sea breeze, or spruce tips—when Joel glanced up and said, “Why not beige like the rest of the walls?”
The poor guide jumped when Joel spoke, as if he’d forgotten Joel was there. Which was easy to do, since Joel had literally not said a word or paid attention for the last ten minutes.
“Beige?” the guide repeated, evidently confounded. “Why would you choose beige when you could choose purple haze?”
“I think blood red might match my current aesthetic better,” I said, “but I like having options.”
Joel laughed, which always felt like a victory, not because he was serious like Connor, but because he hid his emotions.
And I really needed to stop thinking about Connor.
I glanced down at my spreadsheet—which Connor had made, because he was sexily good at spreadsheets—to see what else I needed to ask. Wall color wasn’t exactly a priority.
“Washer/dryer hookups?”
“We have a communal laundry room. It takes quarters, but half the machines eat your money.”
Not exactly selling this place, kid.
I scribbled an angry face in that cell of the spreadsheet.
“Do you enjoy living here?” I asked the guide. He looked young, so I figured he was a college student.
“It’s all right,” he said with a shrug. “No one throws loud parties, which is nice, and there’s a pool.”
I perked up at that. Even Connor hadn’t thought of aquatic recreation.
Joel and I finished up our tour of that apartment, and went to one more, which had a dumpster full of mattresses with the words “Bed Bugs” scrolled over them in permanent marker, so it was a hard no.
Afterward, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant in an area near campus. I ordered vegetarian tacos after seeing them on someone else’s plate, and Joel got chicken enchiladas. After a few bites, I said, “This settles it. Moving to Oklahoma City for law school was a brilliant idea.”
Joel smiled. I’d yet to find an adequate Tex-Mex restaurant in Elkville—another point against the town.
“Which apartment did you like best?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I’ll probably go with the one where I can paint a wall dandelion yellow and be done with it.” It was a straight shot to the library on campus and didn’t seem like it’d be creepy at night.
We ate in silence for a couple of minutes. Joel was good at silence, and I was good at letting him have it. That was why we worked as friends. He’d changed a lot in the last year, though. He no longer approached life like it was going to punch him at any moment.
“Do you want to talk about your plan for next year?” I asked him.
“No,” he grumbled, then he glanced up guiltily. “I should talk about it, acknowledge my fears, and all that jazz. That’s what my therapist says at least.”
The therapist was a new development. Joel was taking advantage of the free counseling services on campus before we graduated.
“Well, I’m here to listen, anytime you need to talk.”
He took a sip of his water and scowled, like he was thinking hard.
Each time I’d brought up graduate school with Joel, his anguish increased. He and Paulie were having trouble figuring out how to mesh their life and career goals. Paulie was already enrolled in the one-year master’s program for accounting at Farm College, but Farm College wasn’t necessarily the best fit for Joel’s master’s in history. There wasn’t an easy answer.
“If I go to Farm College for grad school like Paulie, I’m worried that will force Paulie to get a job in Elkville after he gets his master’s. He’ll finish in a year, and it will take me three, at least. Neither of us wants to stay in Elkville longer than necessary, so it doesn’t make sense to put down roots there. We both want to go home.”
Elkville was never going to be home for them. Their hearts were full of the rolling prairie of the Kansas Flint Hills. Joel’s option in the Flint Hills was Emporia State.
I cleared my throat. “So if you go to Emporia State, Paulie would stay at Farm College for one year while you were in Kansas. Then he’d move to Emporia after he gets his degree while you finish yours, and you’d both be in the place you want to spend the rest of your lives? It sounds like a no brainer to me.”
“I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of?”
Joel glared at his enchiladas. “I love Paulie. He’s the glue that holds my heart together. What if I screw a long-distance relationship up? What if he realizes that he’s better off without me? Then I’d be in pieces without the glue.”
Admiration tripped through me. Joel would never have so easily admitted that fear a year ago.
“Paulie is totally nuts about you. That’s not going to change because he doesn’t see you every day.”
“I know. The idea of long distance freaks me out though.”
I bumped his knees with my knees. “You and Paulie are a One True Pairing. You’ll make it work. And honestly, if you can’t outlast a year of long distance, then you probably can’t outlast, period.”
“That’s a bit reductive, I think.”
A fair assessment. I was not the best person to give relationship advice. I’d never kept a boyfriend for longer than a few weeks, and it had been over a year since I’d tried. I’d definitely never felt as strongly for someone as Joel and Paulie did for each other, and I couldn’t, in a million years, imagine considering someone else while planning my career trajectory right now.
The image of auburn hair and a stern mouth flashed through my mind, and I almost choked on a tortilla chip.
“What’s the deal with you and Connor Blume?” Joel asked, as if he could read my fucking mind.
“There’s no deal.”
“Sounded like a big deal the other night.” A grin flirted across his face, and my cheeks burned.
“We’re friends-with-benefits, but that’s all.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Shut your mouth,” I hissed. “That’s the truth.”
“You spend a
lot of time with him. That’s all I’m saying.”
“We’re friends, and the sex is good. Of course I spend time with him.”
“That’s a bit reductive, I think,” he quipped. Again.
I shouldn’t have brought Joel.
He was a traitor.
“Connor and I can’t work. We graduate in, what? Less than eighty days. Then I’m moving to St. Louis for the summer. After that, I’ll be here in an apartment with a blood red wall, and he’ll be taking his place as the heir to a cow dynasty or whatever in western Oklahoma. Permanently.”
“It’s not a cow dynasty. They’re more farmers than ranchers.”
Sometimes I forgot that Joel understood agriculture shit like that.
“Whatever.”
He studied me. “If Connor wasn’t tied to Elkville, what would your relationship be?”
My tacos turned over in my stomach, and my heart galloped off like a herd of those cows.
Did cows gallop? Or was that horses?
Either way, the question made me feel strange.
“What’s the point of thinking about that? It’s not reality. He is tied to Elkville. It’s his family legacy we’re talking about here, not some ho-hum, take-it-or-leave-it job.”
I was getting fired up, which made Joel smile wider. The bitch.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you torn up over a guy until last year,” he said. Something happened between you and Connor last spring. Then you moped for weeks. And now you’re friends, and class partners, and have matching cockroaches, and your eyes light up when he’s in a room. You should have seen your face when you came in guns blazing the other night to pull him out of Paulie’s clutches.”
“Your point, buttercup?” I said dryly.
“It’s okay to admit he’s important to you. And, you know, there’s long distance.” His smile was decidedly self-satisfied.
“I have plans, Joel.” I needed him to understand the pull in my gut, this desire to make a difference, to not miss out on another dream. “None of them involve being tied to rural America.”
Clean Break Page 14
