by V. L. Locey
Another stoppage in tying occurred.
“That’s hardly the case. I’m not looking at him any way. I can barely stand talking to him.” I informed the man assaulting me with dirty looks.
“For someone who can barely stand talking to someone you two sure spent a long time locked in your cabin the other night.” Alex snapped, and I pushed to my feet to look him right in the eye.
“We were not “locked in my cabin”.” I threw air quotes around the last four words. “We were sitting inside talking through some issues.” I pointed out. “Secondly, I’m not sure I like the thought of you setting up a stakeout to see when my friends come and go.”
“I wasn’t staking your cabin out. I was cleaning up the fire area. He’s not exactly easy to miss even when he’s trying to be sneaky. If you’re not into me, fine, say so. Stop playing me while you’re drooling over that jock.”
He spun on his heel and stormed away from the softball diamond. My mouth hung open. Someone stepped up behind me, someone who smelled as if they had recently showered in Mrs. Rook’s homemade lemon soap.
“What’s his issue?” Garrison asked. I shut my mouth then turned to face the man behind me. He looked quite concerned.
“He’s feeling put out. I forgot about agreeing to meet up with him to help with the scavenger hunt tomorrow.” I dropped down to one knee to finish getting my sneaker tied.
“Huh,” Garrison said as he looked around me to locate Alex, I assume. “Maybe he needs to just chill out a bit and quit acting like a jealous scrub lord.”
I chuckled despite how the low-grade anger bubbling in my belly. I hadn’t heard that term come out of someone in quite a few years. That was Garrison’s favorite insult for anyone in a video game who pissed him off by beating him repeatedly.
“I’m not sure it was jealousy,” I replied as I straightened and reached around Garrison to get my glove from the bench.
“Yeah, it was. He was giving me that look. Are you two hanging out or something? I mean, if you are that’s totally cool, but I thought you were kind of free of any kind of boyfriend stuff.”
“And on that note, I’m heading to right field.” I threw on the ball cap and stalked past the second baseman, a charming girl by the name of Beatrice, who gave me a smile filled with braces.
“Right field is on the right, Mal!” Garrison shouted at my back. I held up my middle finger but since it was inside my mitt no one could see. I knew it was up though and knowing that made me feel better.
I took my spot under the glaring sun and baked, not just externally either. Just who did Alex, and for that matter, Garrison, think they were calling me out on what I was doing? One I had only known for two weeks, and the other had run me through an emotional juice press. I’d spent months alone and now had two men butting heads over me.
Not that it wasn’t flattering, of course. Both were quite attractive in their own way. Alex had that worn sweater appeal and kissed rather nicely. Garrison was a walking sin and also kissed nicely. Quite nicely if memory served. Had he gotten any better at kissing? I bet so. A searing memory flash popped off behind my eyes. Garrison, one incredibly small and stuffy treehouse, and I were the stars. If I concentrated, I could still hear his groans of pleasure as I—
“Heads up!” Emily shouted while running at me, her right hand in the air. I glanced upward, saw the ball dropping at us with speed and covered my head with my arms. The softball landed at my feet. Some girls cheered and other girls booed. “O’Malley, you’re supposed to catch it not hide from it.” Emily scolded, her long brown pigtails bouncing as she ran over to pick up then throw the softball to second base.
“I told your brother I was better suited to keep score.” I huffed as embarrassment seared my face and the back of my neck.
“Hey, I am super glad you and Gar are talking again. I just knew you two would work things out.” She gave me a glowing smile then ran back to center field.
Not knowing how to respond, I just punched the inside of my mitt as I had seen the big leaguers do on TV and tried to concentrate on the game. It was too hot, though, and my mind was filled with too many things to pay attention. It drifted to a thousand points from men to cars to the sheer terror I felt about my future employability. Would I get the job back home? Probably not. I was right out of college. Should I have strived for a dual certification in science perhaps to widen my chances? I would need to work on my portfolio when I got back home after camp. I also needed to pin down Belshaw and get her recommendation, if she would even give me one. Did I have all my certifications? What about my transcripts?
“O’MALLEY!” Several young girls screamed.
The ball streaked past me. I ran after it, scooped it up and then threw it home. It missed the catcher by a country mile, the ball bouncing and rolling until Lake Amalie swallowed it up. I felt the heat of embarrassment returning to the back of my neck. The heavy weight of all those dirty looks settled right on my shoulders. One of the senior campers who had been swimming found the ball and chucked it back. Garrison caught it when it took a high bounce off one of the rocks that bordered the gravel walks. He tossed it back to our pitcher. I pulled my ball cap down until it rested on my eyebrows as the last runner made it home.
Those were the longest seven innings I had ever lived through, with the exception of one game in tenth grade gym. That time I cost my team a win and got a sound thumping in the locker room from the town bully, Crocker Arnold. I was relatively sure my girls wouldn’t beat me up over the loss. That tenth grade whipping probably would have been much worse if Garrison hadn’t shown up when he did.
“Hey, I think I know what your problem is when it comes to sports,” Garrison said as he and I gathered up mitts, bats, and one soggy softball after the humiliation had been completed. Emily ran over to join us. I loved seeing her and Garrison together. They were so similar in looks that it made me smile. I predicted Emily would grow into her beauty much like Garrison had.
“And what is that?” I enquired as a bee buzzed around my head. I took off my ball cap and waved it at the bee.
“You can’t focus on the game because you’re always thinking of other things.” Garrison explained then hoisted the bag with the ball, bats, and bases onto his shoulder.
“You know that could honestly be what’s wrong with you, Mal.” Emily chimed in. I gave the man in the gray tank top and matching shorts a dark look. His sister got a less intense glare. She giggled and Garrison chuckled. A smile escaped me right before Garrison pulled his sister and me into his chest. My nose flattened against Garrison’s chest. A sensual cloud of sweaty Garrison and lemon soap filled my sinuses. His strong arm around my back was nice. I hugged Emily and Garrison in return, a wonderful feeling of coming home settling in my chest. Emily wiggled out of the embrace, a wide smile on her sun-pink cheeks. “So, are you two boyfriends again now?”
The arm around me disappeared. The bee returned and buzzed by my ear. I glanced through rather smudgy glasses at Garrison. He looked like someone had just slapped him in the face with a day-old mackerel. I suspected my slack-jawed expression resembled his.
“Well, are you?” Emily prompted the two dullards staring blankly at her.
“To be honest, Emily.” I managed to push out since the young miss was waiting for a reply. “Garrison and I were never really boyfriends. He was just starting to question his sexuality and—”
“Whoa, okay, just whoa.” Garrison had snapped out of his daze. His cheeks were bright red under the appealing blanket of new brown whiskers. I really needed to stop admiring things about Garrison like whiskers, the alluring smell of his body mingled with lemon soap, and the way his brown eyes were sparkling right now. A person who dislikes another person as I claimed to dislike Garrison didn’t use words like appealing or alluring. “We are not going to stand here at home base and talk about my sexuality or how I was questioning it.”
He stalked away from his sister and me. She gave me a puzzled look.
“He’s ha
ving some trouble coming to terms with who he is.” I told her. Garrison must have heard because he came storming back, his bag of sports equipment slapping his attractive ass. Ugh. I did it again. From this point on, I vowed to stop using any adjectives starting with the letter A to describe Garrison Rook.
“You are not to talk to her about my sexual struggles either! They’re my sex struggles, O’Malley!” He barked at me, gave me a dark look and then jerked his head at his sister. “I’ll talk to her. Come on, Emily.”
She shrugged one thin shoulder then merrily bounced along at Garrison’s side. I stared after them, reaching up to swat at a bug that had landed on the back of my neck. The sting to my neck made me howl, dance, and curse bees to hell and back.
“Bees are quite beneficial.” A little girl of perhaps nine years of age informed me as she strolled past in her purple G.R.A.M.S. t-shirt. “You shouldn’t call them shitty little bastards.”
Hidden under the brim of my ball cap I slunk off to the nurse’s cabin for a cold compress, Tylenol, and some time away from adjectives, sports, and sexy athletes.
Seven
That night I was unsettled. Maybe it was the hot red welt on the back of my neck, maybe it was the dust-up with Alex, maybe it was the fact that my future was up in the air, or perhaps it was just because it was so damn hot. I rolled over and stared out the window. Would I return home with over ninety thousand dollars in student loans and end up working in a fast food restaurant? Should I go seek out Alex? What had Garrison and Emily discussed? What kind of lesson plans should I outline for my portfolio? What was my issue as Garrison would ask?
Whatever the problem was, I kicked off the sheet at midnight, pulled on a pair of gym shorts, shoved my phone into a pocket, pushed my feet into my ratty old sandals, and made my way to the lake. I had planned to circle the body of water in hopes of tiring myself out. As I drew closer to Lake Amalie, I could hear the steady splashing of someone swimming. I strolled out onto the dock, a thousand stars overhead, and watched Garrison slicing through the spring-fed lake with strong, steady overhand strokes. I dropped down into a crouch when he approached the dock.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” I asked when he threw his forearms over the edge of the dock and gave me a smile.
“Nope,” he replied as water ran down his face and neck. It was hard to see the fine details and I thought to pull out my phone but decided against it. There was no need to alert the other counselors or campers that we were here. He pulled himself out of the water then sat on the edge of the dock. I sat down beside him then removed my sandals. He shook his head like a dog. The cool droplets felt great speckling my bare arms and chest. I dragged my toes through the rippling water. “Did you see Emily?”
“No, well, yes, I saw her of course, but we didn’t have time to talk. How did it go?”
“It was the most awkward conversation I have ever been a part of.” He confessed then gave me a sideways look. “Even worse than the sex talk my father gave us.”
I screwed up my face as the memory of that embarrassing discussion came flooding back. “I’m not sure anything can be as bad as that talk was.”
“Trust me, talking to your baby sister about your gayness is. She kept asking when we were going to get back together because she could see that we loved each other.” He shook his head gently this time. I wished the moon were brighter so I could see his features better. Then again, maybe not being able to see into his eyes so well was a good thing. I tended to get stupid when I gazed into Garrison’s eyes. “I told her that she was pretty far off base about what she was seeing in your eyes.”
“I don’t hate you, Garrison.” It was out before I could stop it. He rolled his head in my direction. Yes, not being able to see into his eyes was for the good. “I don’t think I could ever hate you. I hated your actions.”
“That’s good to hear,” he said. “Well, anyway, I told her that you and I were never boyfriends. It was hard to try to explain to her what she had seen in the treehouse, I mean, shit, I’m not even sure what that was.”
“Me either to be honest.” I mumbled although deep down inside I knew damn well what had happened in that treehouse. Garrison had taken the first step toward knowing himself as a bisexual or gay male and I had experienced my dreams coming true. “Does she understand where you and I are? That we’re just trying to come back together as friends?”
“Yeah, yeah, she does now. She still claims we’re destined to be together. I told her she reads too many of those young adult romance novels.”
“She really does.” I agreed then kicked up a little water with my toes.
“It’s so nice to have two people to talk to about this.” He confided as I entertained myself with my tiny little water kicks. “I swear there were times in college when I thought I’d sooner drive my car into a tree then have to figure out how to stop feeling like I did.”
My sight flew from the dark lake to the man at my side. “I know how hard it is to be gay in this society.”
“See, I’m not even sure I am gay. I think, well, there are times that I think I might be more bi but man, I really like dudes, you know? They’re all I think about. Even when I’m doing it with a woman, I’m pretending she’s a dude.” He paused. “Okay, that is pretty gay. Yeah, I’m thinking that I am gay.”
“Yeah, I can fully relate, well aside from the doing it with women thing.” We both chortled over that. “You know, it’s okay to like both sexes. It’s like getting a vanilla-chocolate swirl at the soft ice cream stand, I imagine.”
“You were always all about the chocolate with sprinkles,” he said with a playful tap on my side with his elbow. I couldn’t argue. “I mean, you never got anything else. Always chocolate with sprinkles.”
“I know what I like.” I told him then glanced at my feet to Garrison when he stood up. “Going back in?”
“Yeah, why don’t you join me?”
“I don’t have my swim trunks on,” I replied although going for a swim sounded fantastic.
“So swim in your underwear. You are wearing underwear, aren’t you?” he asked then dove into the lake cleanly then came up about ten feet from the dock. “Come on, Mal.” He called softly. “I’ve seen you in your boxers before.”
True, he had back when I was ten. I rather doubted he or I looked the same in our underwear as we had back then. Hell, even when we had been in high school our bodies were not what they are now. Garrison had packed on serious muscle at college and me, well, I didn’t have his mass but what I had was firm and tone from walking.
I stood up and unzipped my shorts. Then I pulled my glasses off and slid them into the same pocket my phone was in. Holding my unzipped shorts around my waist, I gave the area a fast look then let my shorts hit the pier. Garrison clapped then hooted as I leaped off the end of the dock. My cannonball was perfection. The water was cold as hell at first but by the time I broke the surface my overheated skin was already adjusting.
Garrison started the shenanigans by dousing me with water as soon as my head popped out of the lake. I splashed back. Then the war was on. We kicked and flailed, shouted, and laughed, and slid from trying splash each other to trying to tug each other down. We pushed, shoved, pulled, and wrestled as we worked to get each other under the water. Garrison and I were both laughing and panting when we finally called it a draw. I slowly swam to the dock to try to catch my breath. Garrison followed.
“You’ve bulked up since the last time we did that.” I threw Garrison a look as I hung off the side of the dock, my fingers resting lightly on the slippery wooden edge. “I mean it,” he said when I replied with a “meh” sound. “You’re a lot stronger than you used to be. It shows – I mean it. I’m not just dicking around either. You look really good, Mal. Hot, you know?”
I looked in his direction. Without my glasses, the man hanging off the pier beside me was just a blurry blob.
“Thanks. You look good too, totally hot.”
“So hot and yet so all alone,” he sai
d jokingly but there was no real humor behind the words. “Sorry, no, I’m okay, really. Thanks for saying that.”
“I mean it,” I quickly said. “You’ve always been so damn good-looking. I was always torn between being completely jealous or totally in lust.” Shit. That was not supposed to come out. I was glad the moon wasn’t shining brightly. I could hide my grimace and pretend I hadn’t just said something totally moronic because what I had just said made everything change. The air, the stars, the lake, the gentle call of small frogs, everything got sharper and more clearly defined.
Garrison released the edge of the pier. One big hand came to rest on the back of my neck. I sucked in some air and his hold gentled. He pulled me closer. I held onto the dock for dear life but, in the end, the need to face him and see where this was going spurred me to let go as well. The soft muddy shore of Lake Amalie swallowed my bare feet.
He pulled me to his chest and held me against him. Despite how cold the lake was as soon as our flesh touched, my body flamed to life. Yes, it was me who slid my hands up to rest on his shoulders. It was also me who then threaded my fingers into his soaking wet hair and guided his mouth to mine. He was hesitant. I bounced up to my toes to get more pressure. Garrison slid his arms around my waist and pulled me up and into him, sealing our wet chests, lifting my feet from the muddy lake bottom and securing me to him. I tasted his lips with the tip of my tongue as shudders of sheer pleasure raced through me. My pulse pounded then nearly stopped when he shyly opened for me. I crawled up over him, using the buoyancy of the water to give me some height. He groaned into my mouth as my tongue swept over his. My fingers dug into his scalp. His hands slid down to cup my ass.
The kiss was long, hot, and brilliant as a new star, plus a few million other explosive descriptors. It was just as I had dreamed it would be…how it was four years ago only with more knowledge and passion. I now knew how to entice a man, how to move against him, how to suck and lick and fuck a man until he was no longer capable of adding two and two. I suckled on Garrison’s tongue hungrily. He spun us around in the water then took a step or two. My back bumped up against one of the mossy pylons under the dock. He leaned into me and his cock, thick, hard, and hot, pressed against mine. I moaned over his lips.
