by Eden Myles
I got out and helped Alexei navigate to the front door. He wore his glasses and carried his cane, but he was mostly relying on me to guide him in this new and unfamiliar environment. I’d phoned my mom at the airport, so within seconds she and Chloe burst from the house to greet me. My mom hugged me and rubbed her arthritic hands carefully up and down my shoulders. “You’ve gotten so big, Danny!” she said in wonder. I hugged Chloe next and asked her how the baby was. And then, as I had expected, they turned to look questioningly at my companion.
I immediately thought, Oh God, the moment of truth. I had rehearsed what I would say a thousand times since getting on the plane, and I had thoughts of all different, creative ways of saying it, but then I thought of Simon, who would likely never come out, would spend the rest of his life running from who he was. I didn’t want to be Simon, so I said, “This is Alexei Karenina, mom. He’s my partner.”
She looked Alexei over with some concern. “Your business partner?”
“No, Mom. My life partner. My boyfriend.”
I watched her take that in. She blinked, as did Chloe, but then, to both their credit, they offered Alexei a hospitable smile and shook his hand. He greeted them both in that formal, almost courtly way the gentleman of the Dollhouse Society did, and even kissed my mom’s hand, which made her blush. She turned to me and said, “We’re putting you up in your old room, Danny. But we weren’t sure if you would have a…companion or not.”
“My room’s fine, Mom,” I told her.
“Your dad’s around back with the boys, but I’m not sure if you want to make introductions at this time.”
“I understand, Mom,” I said, happy and thankful for my mom’s warning, and the fact that she and Chloe were being so good about this. I guided Alexei up to my room, which was exactly the same way it had been when I left for college five years ago, except for the bedding, which she had thoughtfully changed. I returned from fetching our luggage to find Alexei moving around the room, familiarizing himself with the small space we would share for the next two days. “I have my own bathroom, so we won’t have to venture into the house too often this weekend…I mean, unless you want to.”
Alexei picked up one of my geeky essay awards and lovingly ran his hands over it. “Are you ashamed to have me here, Daniel?”
I blushed. “It’s not that. But you haven’t met my dad yet.”
“But I have met your mother and sister, and they’re lovely. I look forward to meeting your entire family,” he told me, which didn’t make me feel much better. I wondered if my dad was going to be as understanding as my mom and Chloe. Probably not.
My mom was putting on a huge banquet dinner for my entire family, all the hearty Midwestern fare I’d grown up on. Of course, by the time Alexei and I went downstairs, my entire family was aware I had a boyfriend. A few of my younger cousins chatted me up, but the older family members made a point of avoiding me. I spotted Melissa, Chloe’s maid of honor, and my high school sweetheart and ex, across the room, but she avoided even making eye contact with me when she saw me standing by the punch bowl near Alexei. It was beginning already.
I knew that sooner or later I’d need to see my dad. It was unavoidable. After dinner, I left Alexei in the care of my mom and sister—they both seemed enamored of him by then—and went down into the den to see my dad. He and Chloe’s fiancé Jason were watching a game on the big-screen TV and talking sports, along with a few of my cousins. He was no longer the robust man I knew; he looked so shrunken since his fight with cancer, like it had stolen away a part of his spirit. I wondered if Alexei had felt the same way about Elizabeth as she slowly withered away. My dad had won that fight, but at what cost? The chemo had robbed him of his thick, beautiful auburn hair, and his blue eyes looked faded, his face drawn and as craggy as stone. I decided it wasn’t true that all men come away from a brush with death with a better appreciation of life. If anything, he looked almost bitter, as if life had let him down.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, and went to give him a hug.
“Hello, Daniel,” he answered formerly. He didn’t hug me back. Jason and my older cousins shifted away almost like I was carrying the plague, and I had a thought then, that I should just tell him it was good to see him, and discreetly escape the room. But in years past, I would always sit in as my dad talked about the latest Jayhawk’s game. I used to be part of this group of men, my family. So I sat down and asked them about the game they’d all seen.
“The Jayhawks did better in the latter half of this season,” my dad answered, and then turned back to tell Jason something. I sat there and listened for a while in silence before giving up and retreating to the kitchen to make myself a drink. At that point, I needed one.
A few moments later, my dad stepped into the room and said, “We need to talk about your situation, Daniel.”
“What’s there to talk about?” I said as I mixed a scotch and soda, heavy on the scotch. I didn’t offer him one; Dad wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol anymore.
“I think you should come back home after graduation. New York hasn’t been a good influence on you, son. And Melissa has been asking after you.”
“Dad, I broke up with Melissa,” I said.
“There’s nothing wrong with Melissa,” he argued, sounding almost insulted. “She’s a good girl, Daniel, hard-working, pretty. What more do you want?”
“I don’t love her,” I said in a small voice.
“No,” he said quietly. “But you love that queer?”
I turned then and looked at him. I played with the angel charm around my neck and swallowed hard against the lump forming in my throat. “Yes,” I answered quietly, trying not to let my voice break. “I love Alexei.”
“Not just a queer, but an old queer.”
“Dad…” I began, but he cut me off.
“Daniel,” he said, giving me hard eyes. “There’s no future for you there. If you stay with him, you’ll never have kids. You’ll never have a life of any kind.”
My trepidation was immediately washed away on a tide of anger. “Actually, Alexei and I are planning to move to Martha’s Vineyard. I’m going to work for Alexei’s corporation as a CPA until I can finance my own firm. And we’re thinking of adopting. I don’t think that’s ‘no life of any kind,’ Dad.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Daniel,” he said steadily, shaking his finger at me, his eyes boring holes into my skull. “So you’re going to be two queers raising a kid up to be queer too.”
I looked at him sadly and realized that I was never going to get through to him. He was never going to understand.
Dad reached for a bottle of beer he shouldn’t be drinking and twisted the cap off. “You took a year out of your college education to care for me during the cancer, and for that I’ll make an allowance. You can stay here this weekend with your boyfriend, but I want you out on Monday morning. And I don’t want you back here with him, embarrassing the hell out of me.”
“Dad…”
“Don’t call me that, Daniel. You’re no son of mine,” he said and stalked from the kitchen.
***
I went out back where we had a few acres of land. The stable was out there, with Chloe’s horses put away for the night. I stood in the hay-strewn aisle, fed her big, aging, dun-colored barrel-chaser alfalfa pellets, and thought about what Dad had said. For a while I felt nothing, just this big, empty hollowness inside of me, and then it all started exploding out of me. I retreated to the tack stall, sat down on a bale of straw, and started to cry like some stupid kid who had fallen down and skinned his knee—except that this hurt a lot more, and it seemed the more I cried, the more powerful the pain became until I was nearly hiccupping with sobs and my stomach hurt like hell.
“Daniel.”
I looked up, surprised and embarrassed someone had taken me unawares in my present state.
Alexei stood at the entrance of the stall, sweeping the ground with his cane while he made his careful way inward. I rubbed at my cheeks, sat up s
traighter, and said in a strong, unwavering voice, “Sorry. I just needed a breather is all.”
He navigated to my side, sat down beside me, and put his arm around me, saying nothing. We sat like that in silence for a spell. Then I turned my head and buried my face against his shirt and sobbed out all the pain. I understood what he meant about silence. I didn’t want to hear lame excuses or assurances. I didn’t want him lying and telling me everything would be okay when I knew it never would. I just wanted him to hold me until this pain passed.
Finally, after some time, he rubbed the back of my neck and said in a whispery voice, “Do you want to leave? We could get a return flight to New York tonight.”
I sat back and swiped my sleeve over my eyes. “No,” I told him. “I’m not running away. Dad said I could stay till Monday, so we’ll stay.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not running away, Alexei,” I told him in a stronger voice. “I’m not ashamed of you, or of who I am.” I sniffed and looked at him. He had that look that he so often had when we made love, that look that softened his face a little, that made him look young. After a long moment of breathy silence, he put a hand on my face, leaned forward and licked at the tears on my cheeks. Then he angled his face down and kissed me, sweeping his tongue across the seam of my lips. Sighing, I relaxed into his kiss. “That feels so good,” I said, melting against his warm, solid chest. I parted my lips so he could glide his tongue into my mouth. He flicked it against the roof of my mouth and his hands traveled down to my waist, under my dress shirt, to cup and rub the muscles of my abs reassuringly.
I reached up and buried my hands in his hair even as his tongue flicked in and out of my mouth teasingly. I sucked on his bottom lip until he gave a low, sexy groan, and soon his right hand moved down between my legs to fondle my growing erection.
“I want you,” he told me.
“I thought you weren’t going to take advantage of me?” I said, smiling teasingly against his lips.
“I lied.” His hands undid my jeans and he groped my cock and balls as he kissed the side of my neck. “You’re such a beautiful boy, Daniel, and I love you and want to ride your ass hard. Now.”
My ears burned. “Well, we are in a stable.”
He kissed my ear before telling me in explicit detail what he wanted.
I listened to make sure no one was creeping around the stable, then I slid to my knees and undid his trousers. I took his cock in my hands and guided it into my mouth, giving the sweet, meaty head a few loving strokes of my tongue before swallowing him down greedily and gently squeezing his swollen scrotum. I moved up and down on his girth, lathering him generously with my saliva while his fingers stroked over my hair and he grunted and thrust himself a little deeper into my throat. When he felt I had spit-lubed his dick enough he yanked on my hair and said, “Now, Daniel. Give me that beautiful ass of yours.”
I stood up and turned, resting my hands on the scratchy surface of the hay bale as he mounted me from behind. With strong, gentle hands he tilted my hips at the angle most convenient for him, then stroked and kneaded my ass, first in my jeans and then out of them. He leaned against my back, arched my spine, and muttered in Russian in my ear, his voice and burring accent tickling me.
He guided my legs apart and fondled me gently between the legs. He pushed up hard against me, his slippery cock rubbing against my crack. He rubbed and rubbed until I moaned and thrust backward against him, almost lulled by the now familiar, comforting feeling of him. I arched my ass up to meet each of his gentle thrusts, mewling like a kitten as he made gentle love to me, still muttering his endearments in my ear. And then he forced the swollen head of his cock into my hole and I cried out and started rocking my hips back against him.
“My beautiful angel,” he said in English as he hugged my lower body against him and started thrusting in and out of me, the exquisite feel of him making me gasp as my muscles clenched down around him and my body attempted to hold him deep inside. His fucking slowly increased, and the friction that came from his sudden, sharp thrusts was enough to make my gasps turn to whimpers. My body naturally resisted him, challenged him, and before long we were straining against one another. His teeth finally caught the sensitive skin on the back of my neck, nipping me, and I lowered my head as I submitted to him. My ass relaxed, taking all of him at once, slowly, sensuously, until I felt his balls rubbing against me. His hands slid down over my sweating stomach, and his fingers snagged my cock as he started to milk me slowly toward climax. My body seemed to melt against him, and I began to tremble as a multitude of different emotions overwhelmed me at once—the fear of being caught like this, my rage at my father, my love and raw hunger for Alexei.
As both our climaxes built, we started grunting and growling like wild animals in heat. I felt the pressure build until I thought the tender skin of my rock-hard dick would split from the stimulation of being fondled while Alexei continued to pound me from behind, harder, faster. I could scarcely breathe and all my emotions had coalesced into just one thought: I loved Alexei, and no one, not my father, not my family, could make me ashamed of that. I loved him and I would go to the ends of the earth with him, for him, to be with him.
Sensing I was near my end, Alexei wrapped an arm around my torso and pulled me up so I was crushed against the front of his body. My cock ached with the need for release, but his continued to buck deep inside me, fucking me fast and hard, finding that depth that erased all thoughts from my head, that turned me into nothing more than a primal creature of need and desire. I convulsed in his arms and let out a cry as I came over the hands that still stroked me.
He turned his head and bit the side of my neck, letting out a guttural grown of satisfaction as he came inside me. I came a second time with his bite, and that triggered his own second release, so he continued to thrust and twitch inside me long after my body had milked him of come. He licked the little wound in the side of my neck and whispered how I was his angel in the dark, and in that moment, I never felt more connected to another human being.
***
We held Chloe’s wedding in the field adjacent to the farmhouse. My mother had been in charge of decorating, and she and her small committee of friends had set up two long rows of chairs to accommodate my extended family, with an aisle running down the center covered in white paper and strewn with tiger lilies. White, orange and black balloons were fastened to the seats, and she had set up a reception tent further down and covered the banquet tables in white and orange crepe paper. I thought it looked simple and elegant, and Chloe didn’t at all mind my mother’s homemade decorations, but then, she and Jason were in a hurry to marry before her pregnancy ruined her chances of fitting into her wedding dress.
Chloe emerged looking beautiful in her long, form-fitting, strapless gown and white netting veil, orange and black tiger lilies pinned in her bright auburn hair. Jason looked as star stuck to see her in her wedding finery as the rest of us as he stood nervously down in the front before the priest.
Alexei and I sat in the back row, which was mostly unoccupied, except for my old Aunt Ethel, who had been married five times, and who kept stealing glances at Alexei behind her fan and smiling flirtatiously at him. I didn’t bother to inform her that her friendly display was a gesture in vain. My father gave Chloe away, and he made a point of ignoring me as he passed by our row, but Chloe offered me a bright, approving smile as she joined Jason down in the front, her arms full of white roses and orange tiger lilies, and that lifted my heart somewhat.
The priest began the ceremony, and it immediately became something of a challenge for my family, whose attention was equally divided between Chloe and Jason’s nuptials and my boyfriend and me in the back row. But after the tenth family member had offered me a disapproving glance, I’d had enough and took Alexei’s hand and entwined my fingers with his in plain sight of everyone while the priest finished marrying my sister.
While Jason was slipping the ring onto Chloe’s hand, I watched Alexe
i reach into his inside pocket and withdraw a ring of his own, a sterling silver promise ring with two stones in it—one a red ruby, the other a blue sapphire—and slide it onto my ringer finger. He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it at the exact moment that Jason kissed Chloe. My heart burst with love and I leaned forward to kiss him in plain sight of every member of my family.
I had a powerful premonition in that moment. I knew then that, despite all adversities, as long as we were together, everything was going to be all right.
***
Bonus Story:
FAMILY MAN
Sheri dropped her luggage on the gravel drive, ran up the stairs to the front porch of the house Alexei and I called home, and threw her arms around my neck. She kissed my cheek and said, “Is this it? The house I keep hearing about in emails?”
“This is it,” I told her, spreading my arms to present the looming, two-story, fully restored white colonial farmhouse I’d been telling her endlessly about by email and phone for two years. The house was a half mile from Edgartown in Martha’s Vineyard and within walking distance of Kate’s house, just down the road. It wasn’t exactly rural in the sense I was used to, growing up on the open prairie, but it was a private, gated community, and we did have a few acres out back that we were still trying to decide what to do with. I was thinking it would be nice to have our own in-ground pool, but Alexei was thinking about horses—and only because I knew he wanted a stable. He had no good intentions, that was for sure. Our trip to the Midwest to see my family, and the intimacy we had known in my sister’s stable, was one of his fondest memories.
“Let me give you the grand tour,” I said, sounding excited even to myself, and, snatching up her luggage, I walked her inside.
“It certainly took you long enough to invite me!” she said, punching me in the shoulder.
It had taken us two years to get the house fully restored and just the way we wanted it, and during that time, I hadn’t wanted Sheri to see it. I thought that was like showing someone a work in progress.
