For Love and Forever (A Collection of Short Stories)

by Sloan Parker

  “Yeah.” Biggest understatement of my life.

  He laughed. “Damn, I missed you, kid.”

  I never got why he called me kid. He was a year younger. Over half a foot taller, tougher, broader, but definitely younger.

  Wait…

  He missed me?

  Why did he say shit like that? I didn’t want him to play me.

  He had to know how I felt about him. Even if we’d never done much more than sleep touching along our lengths for the extra body heat, he had to know I was fucking in love every time I looked at him.

  “Did you get it?” he asked.

  I nodded, feeling the sting of tears I never let anyone see but him, and he’d only caught them once: after a guy had gotten rough with me, held me down, and fucked me without a condom, which led us to the free clinic for more frequent testing than we’d bothered with before.

  I pulled the paper from my pocket. “I got it yesterday.”

  He took the paper, holding it like that one sheet was more precious than the money he’d just earned. “I knew you could do it.” He examined the words and didn’t let on what we both knew. He couldn’t read most of what it said. “Damn proud of you, kid.”

  “Thanks.” I ducked my head. Of all the people I’d known in my life, I wanted to impress him more than anyone. “You’ll have yours soon too.”

  He handed back the paper and scoffed, kicking at an empty disposable coffee cup on the sidewalk with the toe of his boot. The reaction pissed me off. He was wicked smart. So reading and writing came harder to him than kids half his age. That didn’t mean he couldn’t pass the high school equivalency exam one day. Then he’d have the same GED certificate as the one I’d just shown him, but with his name across the top. Preparing for the test would just take him a little longer. He’d get there eventually. If he stopped running off for a week at a time.

  I studied him. He looked good. Clean and shaved and fed, not a scratch on him. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” He kicked the cup once more, and it flew off the sidewalk onto the street. “Was a sweet deal. Gave me more than he’d promised.”

  “More? Jesus.”

  Gavin nodded and leaned against the wall beside me. “And I have an idea.” The smile was back. How could he spend a week with some old fucker touching him, making him do God-only-knows what, and still smile like that? “Let’s get a room. A real hotel room. Soak in a hot bath. Watch stupid-ass movies. Eat until we explode.”

  “Oh God, that sounds good.”

  “Stay there until after Christmas.”

  Christmas? That was a week away. How much cash did he shove in his pocket? “What the hell did he make you do?”

  The smile fled from Gavin’s face. That stoic, I-take-no-shit-from-anyone-and-don’t-give-a-fuck-if-I-live-or-die expression he usually wore around everyone else slid into place. He shrugged. “Kinky shit.”

  I opened my mouth to ask more but clamped it shut. We didn’t talk about it. Ever.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, but I couldn’t keep from imagining what kinds of twisted stuff the gray-haired old man had made him do. The guy had to have been almost seventy. My heart ached more with each picture that rushed through my mind.

  Gavin shrugged again. “Got enough for a week and then some if we get a cheap place. A warm bed, a shower. We’ll order pizza. You in?” There was something off about him, like he was trying to be nonchalant about this, but he wasn’t exactly pulling it off.

  I hadn’t known him to try at anything. He just was who he was and made no apologies for it.

  “Hey, you two!” The guy who managed the coffee shop glared at us from the open doorway, waving an arm through the air. “Get the hell out of here or I’m calling the cops.” It wasn’t an empty threat. He’d done it before.

  Gavin yelled over his shoulder, “Fuck off. It’s a free country.” He held on to my arm and tugged me with him around the corner of the building. We’d only made it halfway down the alley when he pulled us to a stop and asked, “What?”

  I’d been shaking my head since we’d taken off. “We should make it last longer.”

  “Sean, money never lasts. You know that.” He paused, considered me. His face had taken on a new expression I’d never seen from him. Something tired and lost. He stared off toward the street. “I want a memory that’ll last.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

  He still wouldn’t look my way. “I’m sure.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the rest of the cash I’d earned. “Here. It’s not much.”

  “Where’d you get all that? You were supposed to eat while I was gone.”

  “I did. I just… there was this new kid at the park. Barely a teenager.”

  Gavin closed his eyes and a tense sigh escaped from between his lips.

  “He would’ve froze without a coat.”

  “So you gave him our money and then you…”

  I nodded.

  “You promised—” He stared off down the alley again and swallowed hard. The disappointment on his face was impossible to ignore.

  Before he’d left, he’d made me swear I wouldn’t hustle until he got back. Which I didn’t get. After all this time, why would he ask that of me now?

  Unless…

  My breath caught in my chest.

  Did it make him as sick as it made me to think of someone using him like that? Someone touching him? Someone doing the things I wanted to do with him?

  For the past few weeks, he’d been the one to go off and get us some cash whenever we were low. He’d come back to the abandoned warehouse or the alley by the shelter or wherever we were “staying” for a few days, carrying food and bottles of water. Then, when we ran out, he’d sneak off again while I slept like he was trying to protect me from what I’d been doing since before I’d met him.

  Gavin shook his head. “Doesn’t matter now. Where to?”

  “There’s a motel not far from the shelter. It’s cheap but not bad, kinda nice.” I paused, kept my head down. “Mitch always takes me there.”

  “No.” Gavin stood taller. “Nowhere we’ve been like that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You ever been to that hotel on Summit a couple blocks north of the shelter? Might be more expensive but should have a TV and plenty of hot water.”

  He smiled and started for the end of the alley. “Let’s go.”

  I followed. “Now?”

  “Right now. Before someone has a chance to jump us for the cash.” He exited onto the sidewalk, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. I followed, trying hard not to let my thoughts wander too far into the possibility of what the next week would bring.

  Or why he wanted this so badly.

  * * * *

  “Here, you first.” Gavin handed me one of the bags with the clothes and other supplies we’d purchased at the discount store on our way to the hotel. We’d gotten enough junk food and some healthier shit to last longer than a week. He’d said he didn’t want to leave the room once we got there.

  In the hotel bathroom, I brushed my teeth, showered, and shaved, wishing we’d splurged on something I could buzz my hair with. At least I’d thought to get a pair of scissors so I could chop the fucking curls off. I’d wait on that for later. I didn’t want to hold up Gavin any longer. He’d want to scrub away the week he’d just had—not that it could be washed away that easily.

  We traded places, and I decided to do something I hadn’t done in a long time: unpack our shit like we we’re staying there indefinitely and wouldn’t have to take off at a moment’s notice. After all, they couldn’t kick us out. We’d pre-paid for the week.

  The tiny room didn’t have much. One double bed with what looked like half dead weeds growing all over the red bedspread and a TV that sat on a lone dresser at the foot of the bed. The wall over the headboard had a disturbing painting of a pond with a pack of Labrador Retrievers chasing down a flock of ducks. Half the ducks were already in the air, wing
s flapping as they fled for their lives. Most of the dogs were barking like mad. One had the limp body of a duck clenched in his jaw.

  I didn’t care about those about-to-be dead birds or anything else in the place. The room was all ours until Christmas.

  If only I had the money to show Gavin what the holiday could really be like. With a tree and gifts and lights and cheesy Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman decorations. What it had been like when I’d spent every Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ house growing up, and what it had never been like for Gavin.

  He’d spent most of his childhood in and out of foster homes after his mom had OD’d when he’d been five, and by the time I’d met him, he trusted no one and had never known what it was to be loved. That was why he amazed me. Despite all he’d been through, he hadn’t started using or ended up in prison—or dead—and for some reason, he’d reached out to me as we’d eaten the free holiday meal at the shelter that night we’d met. He’d watched me from across the room, and instead of walking away as soon as I’d made eye contact with him, like he’d done with everyone else, he’d connected with me in his own way. Probably the only way he could in that moment.

  In the weeks that followed, somehow I’d gotten him to trust me.

  And someday I’d get to show him everything he’d missed out on in his youth. A real Christmas. A real home.

  I stashed the extra clothes in the bottom drawer of the dresser, then dumped the food and other supplies into the top two drawers. I tried not to focus on the boxes of condoms and lube that tumbled out of the last bag.

  Gavin had always been adamant about spending some of any money we had on condoms. I didn’t want to think about how we’d need those again in a week.

  I slammed the dresser drawer shut, and for once I skipped putting on my shoes and instead went with only a new pair of socks. I tried out the bed, lying on my side and snuggling into the pillow. My hair was still damp, but for the first time in over a year, I felt warm in the middle of winter. I couldn’t remember when I’d last been in a real bed where I wasn’t getting paid for it.

  I awoke some time later. The bedspread had been folded over on top of me. Gavin was sitting at the foot of the bed, fully dressed in a new pair of jeans and the blue Superman T-shirt he’d found on the discount rack. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep. His hair was dry, yet the scent of the coconut from the cheap soap we’d bought still lingered in the air. It gave the room a summertime feel that didn’t fit the winter storm outside. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped before him. He had his head hanging low, and his broad shoulders held more tension than I’d seen in a long time.

  I threw back the blanket and scrambled to a sitting position. “What’s wrong?”

  He slowly lifted his head. The tension seemed to ratchet up another notch as he made eye contact with me over his shoulder. “Nothing. Let’s order food.”

  I gave a nod that he missed since he’d already taken off for the phone on the dresser.

  Nothing, my ass. There was something eating away at him.

  I watched him for a minute, but he didn’t say anything else. I was always wanting him to say more, watching and waiting for the words or emotions that rarely came. Why’d I have to fall for the strong, silent type?

  I guess it wasn’t just him who held back. We’d both learned to bury our feelings.

  And maybe that’s what was wrong. He’d been holding on to something for too long now.

  * * * *

  “Oh God.” Gavin rolled onto his back on the bed. “My stomach’s gonna bust.” He lifted his T-shirt and laid a palm over his abs like that one light touch would keep him from exploding.

  I ate another bite of the last piece of pizza, my gaze locked on the expanse of skin between his shirt and the low-riding jeans. I didn’t get to see him when he wasn’t fully clothed nearly often enough. Despite feeling as stuffed as Gavin sounded, I shoved another bite into my mouth, anything to keep from leaning forward and kissing all that warm, clean skin, breathing in his scent—with no trace of some other guy.

  I dropped the rest of the piece of pizza into the box on the bed between us and moved around to lie facing him. “We’re gonna get spoiled staying here.”

  He gave me a long, conflicted look, like he wanted to bring something up but wasn’t sure how or where to start. Then he broke the stare and sat up in a rush. “Wanna watch a movie? Something with big-ass guns and shit blowing up?”

  I nodded. I wanted to ask him what his deal was, but something told me not yet, that whatever it was about, I couldn’t push him on it. Not that I had any experience getting someone to talk about anything other than what they wanted me to do for fifty bucks.

  I sat up and leaned back against the headboard. “I haven’t seen a movie in forever.”

  He grabbed the remote off the dresser and dropped to the end of the bed. He flipped through channels as he asked, “Did you go out a lot back home? To movies and shit?”

  I paused with the empty pizza box in mid-air. We never talked about home. All I knew of Gavin’s past in the foster care system was that he’d taken off when the last foster dad had decided his fists were the best way to get Gavin to “stay in line.”

  I set the box on the floor beside the bed. “I used to go to the movies with my grandpa. He’d take my cousins and me almost every week.”

  “That’s cool.” Gavin kept searching channels. He stopped on a cooking show, some old guy in a chef’s hat talking in a near whisper about placing a lobster into a freezer for a few minutes before plunging it into the hot water. The most humane method for boiling the creature to its death since it would be numb first and would also help reduce the twitching of the lobster’s tail as it died.

  I’d been that cold—and afraid—far too often in my short life. I think I’d rather they kill me first before the torture of the slow freeze-and-boil routine. I made a silent promise to myself. No matter how much money I ever had in my life, I’d never fucking eat lobster.

  “He was nice to you?” Gavin asked.

  “Grandpa? Yeah.”

  Maybe it was the normalcy of a full stomach and being clean, watching TV in a hotel room, or maybe it was that I’d always wanted us to be like this together—sharing all of ourselves. In either case, I kept on talking. “There was this theater in town, only had one screen, but they showed a different movie every week. He’d take us on Saturdays after he finished in his garden. He always smelled like wet dirt and this organic fish fertilizer he used on his plants, so my asshole cousins never wanted to sit by him. But I didn’t mind.” I ran my hand through my hair, wishing the memories wouldn’t come back so easily. “I liked it best when it was just him and me anyway.”

  We’d seen every superhero movie released since I was in the first grade, and we’d watched a ton of the classics he had on DVD too. How many of those Saturday movies had I missed since I’d been gone?

  Gavin hit mute on the TV, tossed the remote aside. “Where’d you grow up?”

  “Just a dinky little town. It’s nowhere special.”

  He lowered to the bed on his side, his head propped in his hand. Something about that action and the quiet stillness of the room around us gave the moment a different feel from any other we’d spent together.

  More private.

  More real.

  Which was odd. Sometimes I’d felt completely alone with him when we were surrounded by men at the shelter.

  Or at least, I’d thought that’s how I’d felt. Maybe I’d never been alone with the real Gavin. The one who was watching me now.

  He reached out and laid a hand on my right thigh. “You came from there, so yeah, it is special.” He paused as if he wanted to make sure I got his meaning.

  I wasn’t sure I did.

  “In Ohio, right?” he asked. He rubbed my thigh, his hand so warm I could feel it through my jeans. The only time he’d touched me even close to the same way had been about warming me up after I’d trudged through the snow to t
he warehouse from the park in a worse snowstorm nearly a year ago. That touching had been clinical. Or at least I’d tried to pretend it had so my heart wouldn’t be crushed when he rolled over to go to sleep.

  I nodded, my next words catching in my throat. I swallowed and tried again. “Angola, Ohio. This time of year, every house and all the shops lining Main Street are decked out in Christmas lights. There are giant stars on the telephone poles and reindeer pulling a sleigh in the town square. Like someplace you’d see on a postcard.”

  “Pretty?”

  “I guess. More like it has this quiet, polite normalcy. But you have to look close to see the real place. I mean, the kinds of people who actually live there.” I pulled at a loose green thread on the bedspread beside me. The thread kept on unraveling. Maybe I could pull all those ugly weeds out and leave behind something plain but more beautiful. “The people—they’re not so pretty.”

  His hand stopped moving. “Like your parents?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you ever tell them or your grandparents you were gay?”

  I gave up on the weed whacking and crossed my arms over my chest. “Thought we were gonna catch a movie?”

  “Right.” He removed his hand from my leg, and I immediately regretted my words as he returned to the end of the bed and reached for the remote. He pointed it at the TV but paused before clicking on the sound, his back to me. “You are, though, right?”

  “What?”

  “Gay.”

  “Me?” I choked out a laugh. Was he serious?

  Apparently so. He clutched the remote like it was a grenade, and if he let go, the room—and the two of us—would explode into a thousand pieces. I wasn’t sure he was even breathing.

  “Oh, God yeah,” I said. “I’m gay. It’s why I left home.”

  He sighed and eased up on the remote. He started changing channels again, stopping when he hit some action, one of those low-tech time-travel movies with the former governor from California.

  Gavin kept the sound muted, and the time-traveling cyborg guy didn’t seem as threatening without the sounds of his guns going off. It’s amazing what silence will do to a moment.