CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)

by Cora Brent

  In the end we didn’t get there.

  Courtney moaned and Stone roared as they pounded out a tribal rhythm. But Con put his head on my chest and sighed, replacing the condom in his pocket before he even unwrapped it. I threaded my fingers through his hair and kissed his forehead, grateful that the boy I loved knew me better than I knew myself sometimes. Our first time shouldn’t be in the back of a rusty scrap heap while his brother screwed with abandon not twenty feet away. But when I put my hands on him he guided me lower so I could get him off like we’d done dozens of times before.

  Conway had already done everything with other girls before we got together. I never asked him how many there were. It didn’t matter. Yet sometimes I got jealous of the idea that anyone else had ever touched him.

  The power was still off and the house was still silent. My breathing quickened as I thought about the way Con had panted and shuddered as he finished in my hand. Then I thought about the way he’d touched me to return the favor and I had to press my legs tightly together to stifle the sudden ache between them.

  “MOTHERFUCKER!”

  The shout came from next door. Sometimes I couldn’t tell Con’s voice from Stone’s.

  I hopped off the bed and took two steps over to the only window in the small bedroom I’d lived in since I was born. Pushing the eyelet curtains away and sliding the window open, I had an instant view of the Gentry’s property.

  The Gentry house had started to look somewhat shabby these past few years. My father commented on it often enough, even offering to help Tracy Gentry repaint the exterior and do something about the landscaping. She told him to piss off and mind his own fucking business. Con’s mother was not my favorite person.

  The shouting had come from Stone. His back was to me and he seemed to be yelling at a closed window. He wore nothing but a pair of loose boxers and growled another curse as he pulled a cigarette out of his mouth and crushed it against the stucco. If the sharp gravel covering the heavily weeded yard hurt his bare feet he gave no sign. Their house had the same exact layout as mine and the bedroom the brothers shared was the same one my two younger sisters occupied here. The boys shouldn’t have had to share a room; I knew there was an empty one, the same room that was mine. However it had been closed off and unused ever since their father died in it.

  I watched in silence as Conway’s brother stalked over to the front door, tested the knob in vain, cussed another blue streak and then grabbed a cheap plastic lawn chair that had probably blown into his yard during last night’s storms. I recognized the chair. It belonged to us.

  He paused there for a moment, leaning on the back of the chair as he shot a moody glare at the closed bedroom window. The brothers were closer than brothers usually were. Practically twins, they were only ten months apart and in the same class, but they were always hassling each other for some reason or another. I didn’t have any brothers, only sisters, so for all I knew that’s just what brothers did. In any case, Stone had likely jumped out the window to pollute his lungs in the yard and Conway had used the opportunity to lock him out.

  Suddenly Stone yawned and stretched, causing his boxers to slip a few crucial inches and almost offer an x-rated view. Ordinarily I would have averted my eyes right away. Stone was my boyfriend’s brother. He was also a total dog. There was nothing tempting about him.

  At least that’s what my heart said.

  Apparently the rest of me wasn’t so sure because my eyes wouldn’t budge and my breath caught before a sharp inhale.

  Maybe he’d heard me in the midst of the unusual silence or maybe the fluttering of my curtain caught his attention. Stone stopped in mid-stretch and zeroed right in. I saw his gaze travel south immediately. I didn’t have to look down to realize what he was staring at with unconcealed hunger. I never wore a bra to bed and my shirt – thin, white and the victim of laundry shrinkage – strained against my breasts.

  It was an erotic, painfully taboo moment that ended an instant later when Stone’s head snapped up, the naked lust on his face replaced with the look of supreme boredom that he usually wore. He hiked up his boxers and pointedly turned away as if I wasn’t even there.

  I closed the window. I shut the curtains. I leaned against the wall, feeling strange and awkward and somehow completely wrong. My skin tingled and somewhere in my head a hideous whisper reminded me that I knew how to force unwanted thoughts away.

  No. I wouldn’t do that right now, not for this. Already the moment had gone stale and I started to wonder if it had even happened.

  It had though. It had happened. Stone Gentry and I, for the briefest instant, had connected in a way that was unthinkable.

  But that was all. It meant absolutely nothing. I loved Conway. I didn’t have to think about it anymore. I wouldn’t.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CONWAY

  My brother could be such an asshole.

  First he shook me awake before the crack of dawn just to extort some cigarettes. I wasn’t a regular smoker but there were two loose cigarettes in the drawer of my nightstand. I threw them in his direction just to shut him up and then kicked off the bed sheet because sometime in the night the power was knocked out, taking the air conditioning with it.

  That’s when Stone decided to harass me about the morning boner that was making a tent in my boxers.

  “That’s some serious frustration there,” he smirked, lighting up and blowing a cloud at the ceiling.

  I threw a pillow at him. “Fuck you. Like you never wake up with wood?”

  “Not like that, man. You see, I get my wood handled regularly. Unlike you.”

  I rose up on my elbows. All I wanted was for Stone to close his mouth and go somewhere else so I could roll over and get off. But that comment was a deliberate shot and I couldn’t just let it go by.

  “I get my shit handled plenty,” I protested and it was only half a lie.

  Erin and I fooled around all the time and the fact that we hadn’t sealed the deal yet just proved that what was between us was real. She would have done it. She would have done it to make me happy. Yet when we had sex I couldn’t let the reason be because I’d pushed her into it. We’d get there when she was ready. In the meantime I was getting lots of mileage out of hand jobs and jerk offs.

  Stone wouldn’t understand. He was always full speed when it came to fucking around, like he might not live another day if he wasn’t being led around by a satisfied cock.

  My brother blew another cloud of smoke and grinned with that kind of all-knowing Stone coolness that made me want to hit him something a whole lot harder than a pillow.

  “Shut up,” I ordered.

  “Didn’t say a thing, brother.”

  “I don’t like what you’re thinking.”

  He cocked his head and widened his eyes with mock innocence. “I’m not allowed to think?”

  “Not if it’s something dirty about my girlfriend.”

  “I wasn’t having any thoughts, dirty or otherwise, about your girlfriend.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He laughed. “You think I’m into Erin? Forget the fact that she’s wrapped around your ugly ass, I don’t have the patience for that kind of noise.”

  My anger rose. “What noise?”

  Stone pinched the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, examined it thoughtfully and then set it down on an ancient nightstand that was etched with years of battle scars. He batted his eyes and clasped his hands in front of his chest as he spoke in a high-pitched female voice. “Oh god, I love you. I love you more than ice cream or cheesecake.”

  “Knock it off.”

  Stone wouldn’t stop. He kept on going in a breathy orgasmic way in a voice that was supposed to mimic Erin’s. “Conway, I love you so much that I’m shitting out pink cotton candy and roses.”

  “Stone!”

  “And one of these days I might even reward you with my secret female flower so you can stop staining your sheets.”

  I shot to my feet. “Get up,” I ord
ered.

  He grinned. “No.”

  “You really think you can make fun of my girlfriend like that and I’ll just take it?”

  “I wasn’t making fun of your girlfriend, Con-man. I was making fun of you.”

  I used my shoulder to knock him into the far wall, which was already cracked and dented from other lesser wars. Stone didn’t push back this time though. He calmly resettled himself on his bed and reached for his cigarette while I breathed fire four feet away.

  “You need to be quiet,” he warned mildly. “You’ll wake our loving mother.”

  I snorted. “Not likely. You know when she turns the lights out she takes enough sleeping pills to knock out a horse for two days.”

  “Maybe. But it’s possible her guest is a light sleeper.”

  That caught me off guard. “What guest?”

  “Rover.”

  I didn’t like the news but there was nothing I could do about it. My mother had always run around with various men, even when my father was still alive. Rover, whose real name was Andy Bowler, was probably fairly harmless as men went. He had a hangdog cartoon kind of face that led Stone to stick him with the Rover nickname. Like much of Emblem’s workforce, he was a prison guard. He hung around sporadically but never got in our way. Still, that didn’t mean I wanted to know that he was lying in bed with my mother down the hall.

  Stone watched me with silent amusement. “So, Con-Man it would seem you’re the only member of the household who didn’t get down and dirty last night.”

  I flopped back on the mattress, supremely annoyed. “You don’t know what I did or didn’t do.”

  “Sure I do. I’m worried about you.”

  I folded my arms over my eyes. “Like hell.”

  “I don’t like seeing my brother get neutered.”

  I took my arms away and peered at him. It was a typical offhand Stone kind of comment but it had a serious edge. Stone was frowning at his cigarette as it continued to burn in his hand. He had the look of a guy who was trying to choose his words carefully. “You guys are just so intense,” he muttered and took another drag.

  I shrugged. “Call it love.”

  Stone raised an eyebrow. “Is it?”

  I sat up. I knew Stone sometimes got annoyed that I was so into Erin these days that I didn’t run around with him as much as I used to. I also knew that he and Erin weren’t the best of friends. But aside from the occasional sarcastic comment he’d never hinted he had a real problem with her.

  “Why don’t you like Erin?” I asked with some wariness because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I couldn’t imagine being pulled between my girl and my brother. They were the two most important people in the world to me.

  Stone grimaced and scratched the back of his neck. He started to say something and stopped, shaking his head. “Never mind. I don’t dislike Erin. She’s hot and she’s nice and she worships the ever loving ground you walk on.”

  I waited to see if he would say more but he didn’t. He just stubbed the burning cigarette out on the table and promptly lit the next one.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t really want to get another earful from Mom about making this place stink like an ashtray.”

  He tapped out a few ashes into an empty water bottle. “You’ll get an earful from her whether it smells or doesn’t smell, whether the place is neat or clean, whether you pull A’s or F’s, whether it’s Sunday or Thursday.”

  He was right. Our mother didn’t make a secret out of the fact that she was sick and tired of dealing with two teenage boys. She wasn’t the worst mother in the world. She gave us what we needed and kept a roof over our heads, but she’d always seemed bewildered by her role, forever hot and cold when it came to parenting.

  Well, more cold if I was being honest.

  It had gotten a lot worse since Elijah’s death. Somewhere along the way she’d just kind of thrown her hands in the air and given up. Hardly a day passed by when she didn’t let us know that after we graduated next year we were on our own. I didn’t know if those were just words or if she really meant it, but she’d always had even less patience for me than she had for Stone. My brother and I didn’t talk about that, not even to each other. We didn’t talk about the gossip that hinted about things that happened before we were born. If Elijah ever heard it as well he never let on. He was a good father. I missed him.

  I watched my brother as he cheerfully discovered a forgotten pack of cigarettes in a pair of discarded jeans. Great. That meant he’d be puffing away in here all morning, inflicting his personal philosophies on me when all I wanted to do was jerk off and take a fucking nap before I had to be at work at Carson’s Garage.

  “Come on,” I complained, “take it outside. It’s bad enough it’s hot as an armpit in here. I don’t feel like sitting in a smoke cloud.”

  He didn’t argue. He opened up the bedroom window and hopped through it. I stayed where I was for a moment, listening to him kick rocks as he wandered out to the yard. Then I jumped up and slammed the window closed, locking it. Stone whirled around, shouted a few obscenities and glared while I grinned and slowly extended my middle finger. He cursed again and walked away while I reclaimed my mattress and stuck my hand down my boxers.

  I wouldn’t leave him out there for long, cursing and smoking in his underwear. Just for a little while. Just long enough to remind him that payback between brothers was what kept the world turning.

  I forgot about Stone as I closed my eyes and thought about lips and skin. I thought about a girl telling me she loved me and how much I wished she was here in the room right now. With me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ERIN

  At least twice a day it occurred to me that this was the last summer.

  Not the last summer ever, just the last free summer.

  Maybe the last good summer.

  This time next year high school will be finished and people will already be starting to go their separate ways. The few who would be heading out of Emblem to the exotic college world would already be mentally checked out. Those who couldn’t imagine leaving would be calling in whatever favors their folks had banked to try and get hired on at the prison or at any of the locally owned businesses lining Main Street. If they were really intrepid they would pack up their crappy cars and head out of this dustbowl in the hopes that a better life was somewhere beyond the town limits.

  I didn’t count myself among the intrepid. Or among the future labor force of Emblem. My father had sacrificed a lot to save what little life insurance money had come his way so there was some left for us girls to go to college. My grades were good and I wouldn’t have a problem getting admitted to Arizona State, or so my guidance counselor told me. I had no idea what I was going to study when I got there but my counselor, a whisker-faced woman names Mrs. von Vechten who’d once been a friend of my mother’s, patted my arm and assured me that getting there was half the battle.

  Speaking of battles, there was one going on behind me. I didn’t want to watch so I had drifted out of the tunnel, away from the drunken hoots and the bawdy cheers.

  A bunch of us had ended up here once the sun went down. Whatever force of nature had knocked out Emblem’s power supply last night was apparently not easy to fix. Fourteen hours after I’d opened my eyes in my bedroom to the sound of silence the town remained silent. And now it was dark too, except for the prison, which operated on some kind of emergency generator. A halo of garish fluorescence made the Central State Penitentiary look like a cruel oasis. It was ugly to look at in the daylight. At night it was downright ominous.

  The hangout everyone called ‘the tunnel’ was just an old railroad overpass. The line itself hadn’t been active in decades and the single lane road that cut beneath it had been abandoned around the same time as the town’s roads were reconfigured. My dad had once told me that before the days of asphalt this old road was lined with wooden plank boards and stretched all the way to Tucson, some seventy miles south. He said when he was a kid you could st
ill find a lot of the old rotted planks half buried in the desert sand.

  “Ah, you’re slipping, you’re slipping!”

  “Shut up Stone!”

  “Why are you fighting it, little brother? Just let go. It’s okay.”

  “Fuck you.”

  There was a lot of shouting, cheering and half drunk laughter. The Gentry brothers were fighting their latest war of wills. They’d climbed up to the bridge and were hanging from the old tracks by the skin of their fingertips. Some of the other boys had tried it as well but they’d already fallen into the sand, leaving only Stone, Conway, and one of the Cortez boys to fight it out to the silly, pointless end.

  I rolled my eyes at the sound of the action, but I was facing away and no one was watching me anyway. I’d been listening to the noise of those two trying to outdo one another since I was a toddler. Since all I’d ever had were two sisters I didn’t know much about how brothers were supposed to be with each other, but it seemed like they should have outgrown juvenile nonsense like this. Somehow I guessed that the Gentry brothers never would, no matter how old they got.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I’d been careful about using it all day since there was no way to recharge at the moment. I smiled when I saw the text was from Roe.

  “Kicked Anton to the curb. Hallelujah chorus.”

  That girl went through boyfriends like they were paper towels. She had shitty taste. The ones she picked were all macho pigs who treated her like she owed them money. I was glad to hear that her latest mistake was history.

  I texted back. “The chorus echoes all the way down here in sandy Siberia. Miss you.”

  The reply came back in seconds. “Want some company? I could take a drive down this week.”

  “YES! Imagine emojis galore.”

  “You know I hate emojis. Thursday afternoon okay?”

  “Perfect and you’re staying the night. No arguments.”

  “Awesome. Dad’s away on business and stepmonster won’t even notice.”