by J. A. Rock
I got to work, popping all the balloons Cinnamon had left behind.
“There’s no rat!” a ref yelled. “Everyone calm down. It’s not a rat.”
I popped two more balloons. The arena was littered with colorful latex scraps, and there were hardly any unpopped balloons left.
A moment later, I saw a flash of red as Cinnamon charged by me on all fours, headed for Scribbles. She looked furious. Scribbles started to bolt, but Cinnamon cut him off. She whipped him viciously in the face with her French braid.
Scribbles shouted, clutching his cheek, as Cinnamon trotted away.
With Glazer gone, Scribbles and Max incapacitated, Fucktopus struggling with his tentacles and newfound, totally inappropriate love, and Mittens rolling uselessly on the ground . . . that just left Cinnamon and me.
I looked around but didn’t see any more balloons. I was wondering why the refs didn’t call the game, but then I spotted it—a single green balloon down at the opposite end of the arena.
Cinnamon spied it at the same moment and threw me a look.
The rest seemed to happen in slo-mo. Fucktopus turned away from Maya and spotted the balloon. He started crawling toward it, but his tentacles were slowing him down.
I galloped toward the balloon, lengthening my stride. Dust got between my kneepads and my leather pants. Grass and dirt filled my mouth. I could hear Cinnamon pounding behind me, and a second later, a glint of red appeared in the corner of my vision.
I looked straight ahead. At Ryan, standing at the fence, calling to me. I couldn’t hear what he was saying over all the shouting, but I knew I had to do this.
She might be better groomed and more graceful, but I was fucking faster.
Just. Get. The. Balloon.
We both reached the balloon at the same time, and it whooshed into the air as the gust from our combined movement hit it. I didn’t think—just rose onto two legs and leaped. So maybe I’d get disqualified for not staying on all fours, but Cinnamon must have done the same thing, because she was in the air too, and we were both reaching, reaching . . .
And then suddenly she was dropping—hadn’t been able to get enough hang time in those heels, I guess. I caught the balloon between my hooves and brought it back to the ground with me, collapsing onto my hands and knees. I raised my front hooves, ready to slam them down on the balloon, my mouth open to let out a victory whinny. But before I could stomp, there was a burst of white in front of me, and it knocked the balloon away.
I looked over in shock. Mittens stood a few feet to my left, the balloon between her paws. As I watched, she raised one delicate white paw.
“Mrrriiiiiouuu?” she said.
And popped the fucking balloon.
“I didn’t win,” I said later in the car. It was nice to be back in regular clothes. Ryan had hosed me down at the wash racks, so I felt clean and tired.
Ryan glanced at me as we waited our turn to leave the lot. “Yeah, the refs could kinda see where you all ganged up on Cinnamon.”
“Yeah.” I stared out the window, grinning. “But they could also see where she purposely whipped Scribbles in the face. And bowled Max over.”
“She was awful.”
“You think I did the right thing, don’t you?”
“I think the right thing would have been sending her to the glue factory.”
I laughed. “Well, at least neither of us got best in show.”
“I can’t believe you both had the same number of points.”
“I guess we’re worthy adversaries.”
The line of cars inched forward, then was stopped again by the traffic people. “We’re never gonna get out of here,” Ryan muttered.
“Sure we will.” I watched workers pack up the hot dog stand. “You think this is something we’re gonna keep doing? Pony play, I mean?”
“Yeah, if you want. I think it’s fun.”
“I do too.” I spotted something out the window. “Hey, there’s Cinnamon and Stan.” They were standing by a large parked truck a few feet away. Cinnamon was wearing regular clothes, and . . . crying?
Stan was rubbing her back. She seemed way more distressed than losing a pet play competition called for.
“Hold on,” I said to Ryan. “I’m getting out. If the line moves, go ahead. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”
I hopped out of the car and walked over to her. She looked up, and when she saw me she started crying harder.
“Hey,” I said.
“I’m sorry!” She gulped over and over. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?” I asked, confused.
Stan shushed her gently, but Cinnamon shook her head and stared right at me. “I should have noticed. I should have seen.”
I had definitely missed something. “Seen what?”
“He died. He died right there in that room, and I didn’t notice. I didn’t . . . even . . .” She was crying too hard to continue.
Everything in me went cold.
Hal.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “We know you were— Like, we know it wasn’t obvious.”
She continued gulping until she choked. “How did I not see?”
I walked up to her. She flinched back. “Easy,” I said. “It’s okay.”
She quieted slightly. “I could have saved him. I was the only one there.”
Stan looked at me and said quietly, “This happens sometimes. I think she’s been wanting to talk to you about it.”
Cinnamon wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “I want to say I’m sorry. I can’t say it to him, so I want to say it to you. T-two years. And I just keep th-thinking about it.”
I held out a hand to her. She eyed it warily. Then slowly put her hand in mine. I smiled at her.
“It was an accident.” I thought about Bill. About GK and Kel.
An accident.
Preventable, yes. But I didn’t want to do this blame-game bullshit forever.
I squeezed her hand. “It’s not your fault.”
She squeezed my hand back, then let me go. She turned away. “Thanks,” she whispered.
“Good show today,” I said. “I mean that.”
She turned back to me. Took a deep breath and smiled through her tears. Let out a short, choked laugh. “You too, Kamen.” Her smile faded. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey. You don’t have to say it anymore.”
She nodded. “I might still need to say it though. Sometimes.”
“That’s fine,” I told her. “Me too.”
“Zac,” Miles called. “Be careful. That’s a choking hazard.”
Zac looked up from the tiny piece of plastic he was playing with on the deck.
Miles, Dave, and I were all sprawled in the deck chairs on Miles’s back patio. Dave and I had beers. Miles had a glass of white wine. His second.
“Bring it to me, please.” Miles held out his hand. Zac ran over and placed the plastic in Miles’s hand. “Thank you.” He glanced into the yard, where Gould and Ryan were kicking a ball back and forth. “You left Uncle Gould and Uncle Ryan hangin’ there. They need someone else to kick the ball to.”
“I want a hamburger,” Zac said.
“You’ll get one as soon as D and Drix are finished grilling. Hey. C’mere.” He hugged Zac, then sent him off into the yard with a gentle shove.
Dave peered at Miles from the end of the deck-chair line. “‘That’s a choking hazard?’ Really?”
Miles squinted at him. “It is a choking hazard. What are you saying?”
“I’m just saying that any actual human who is not secretly a robot set upon society by scientists who want to test its ability to mimic human feeling would say ‘That’s dangerous,’ or ‘You might choke.’ Rather than use the phrase, ‘That’s a choking hazard’ to a five-year-old.”
“My child is far superior to the weak-minded, babbling offspring of the mortals who surround me. And he can be spoken to like an adult.”
Dave looked at me. “Oh my God. I love wine-drinking Dad
-Miles.”
Miles smiled over the rim of his wineglass. “I’m not the high-collared prude you think I am. I’ve sampled reefer. I’ve had sex in a car.”
“You’ve had sex in a car?”
Miles shrugged haughtily, taking another sip of wine. “It’s really not that uncommon, Dave.”
“I’m just surprised, because you once told me fucking in a car was for the proletariat.”
“I said that?”
“Yes.”
D approached with meat tongs. Stepped onto the deck. “Hello, all. What’s going on?”
We shielded our eyes to look up at him. “Heyyyy.” Dave held out his hand, and D caught it. “Miles is pregaming the Great Grill-stravaganza.”
D turned his gaze to Miles. “I approve.”
Miles gave him a thumbs-up and drained the last of his wine.
I set my beer in the chair’s cup holder and glanced at D. “Do you have all the meat you need?”
“I do. Drix and I have the grill under control. Though I would like to talk to you for a moment.”
“All of us?” Dave asked.
D released Dave’s hand. “Just Kamen. Privately.”
The others ooooohhhh-ed like I’d gotten called to the principal’s office. I grinned and stood, following D off the deck and into the yard. We stopped in the shadow of Miles’s crabapple tree, and D faced me.
“That was a fine performance the other day. I didn’t think I would enjoy humans’ pale imitations of the magnificent creature that is the horse. But you did me proud.”
“Aww. Thanks, D. You’re not disappointed that I cheated?”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “All’s fair in love and war. And the purpose of a Friesian . . .”
“Is war,” I whispered, clapping my hand over his.
He did the wise-owl nod.
Then he shifted, clearing his throat. “There is something else I wanted to ask you.”
“Sure.”
He looked like he didn’t know where to start. “When . . . when you and Ryan decided to move in together . . . who initiated this? And how did the conversation go?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Uhhh. I don’t know. We were just fooling around one night, and I was like, ‘I wish I could see you all the time.’ And he was like, ‘Well, why don’t we get a place together when our leases are up?’ It just made sense.”
He nodded and glanced at the deck, where Dave and Miles were in some kind of slapping war.
“You thinking of asking Dave to live with you?” I asked.
“At some point. Perhaps. Once he’s further along with school.”
“Oh. My. God.”
He turned back to me. “I don’t expect word of this to reach David.”
I hid a grin. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
He nodded again. “Good man.”
He left to go back to the grill. I took the opportunity to get out my phone and pull up a video. It was about the seven hundredth time I’d watched it today. And now I needed to share it with someone. I headed over to the kickball party and intercepted a kick from Gould to Ryan.
“No fair!” Ryan protested as I kicked the ball to Zac.
I put an arm around his shoulders. “I need you inside the house for a sec.”
He excused himself, then followed me through the side door into Miles’s laundry room.
“Hi,” I told him. “I really love you.”
“I really love you too. Are you okay? You have a maniacal grin.”
I nodded, not sure how to explain. I thought about how growing up meant more than just a laundry room to me. It meant I was alive and lucky. It meant I could grow old with my friends, and with this man, who made me want to do anything—not for him, but with him.
I showed him my phone.
He took it. “What’s th— Oh!”
“We have seventy views on YouTube and I only put it up yesterday. I thought at least sixty of those were me, but we have a lot of comments from people who aren’t me. Twelve likes. And zero dislikes.”
“Holy shit.” He hit Play, and “Snow Wanderer” came out of the phone’s speaker.
We watched the video together. Ricky had animated Ryan’s drawings so that the figure wavered a little and the snow swirled, and in one scene, a raisin fell off a snowman’s mouth and landed in the snow. He was still staring, slightly openmouthed, when the video ended.
“And it’s the drawings people are going nuts about.” I took the phone and scrolled slowly down. “Look at the comments. Okay, that one says I sing like a fag, which . . . fair enough. But most of these are about how amazing your drawings are.”
“Holy shit,” he said again.
Not that YouTube commenters were, like, a gold standard for determining talent, but the word “genius” came up in the comments several times in reference to Ryan’s art. Some people actually liked the song too. A few comments were along the lines of This is so weird and Is this for real? And several didn’t make sense because people don’t know how to spell.
I looked at Ryan. “Do you think we’re gonna go viral?”
“I don’t know. Maybe!”
“Maybe we’ll be famous.”
“Maybe we’ll be iTunes best sellers.”
“Maybe we’ll get to be on a talk show.”
He glanced up at me. “Thank you,” he said softly.
“Don’t thank me. You’re the artist.”
He slapped my arm. “Shut up.”
“Be nice to Pelletor unless you want a tickle offensive.”
“Don’t forget I have a riding whip at home.”
I bent to kiss him. He leaned against me awhile, staring out the window into the yard.
“We ought to get back out there,” he said.
I glanced down at him. “Can I carry you out?”
“Oh my fucking God. What is wrong with you?”
“Just once. You can get on my back. Pretend I’m Thunder Canyon.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay. Fine. Just. Once.”
I crouched so he could mount up.
“I hate you,” he muttered, as I straightened. I held on to his leg with one arm and opened the door with the other.
“I love you,” I said.
“I guess I love you too.”
I hooked both arms under his knees. And waited.
He patted my shoulder. “All right, Thunder Canyon. Walk on.”
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The Subs Club Series
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Another Man’s Treasure
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J.A. Rock is the author of queer romance and suspense novels, including By His Rules, Take the Long Way Home, and, with Lisa Henry, The Good Boy and When All the World Sleeps. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama and a BA in theater from Case Western Reserve University. J.A. also writes queer fiction and essays under the name Jill Smith. Raised in Ohio and West Virginia, she now lives in Chicago with her dog, Professor Anne Studebaker.
Website: www.jarockauthor.com
Blog: http://jarockauthor.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jarockauthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ja.rock.39
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