by V. L. Locey
“Nope, it’s not, which is why when we get a second chance, we should take it, yeah?”
A smile played on his lips. “Yeah.”
I pressed a smooch to his bare bicep. He slipped from the bed, padding into the small bathroom, and turning on the shower. I got up as well, my goal the coffee pot then a shower. I’d let him go first since he had work today and I was a man of leisure. Once the coffee was perking, I walked to the sliding door, opened it, and smiled at the new day dawning. Life was shaping up. Davy was in my shower after sleeping in my arms. My skin smelled of him and sex and warm loving things. I stretched and stepped out on the porch. A thin fog lay over the pond. A few songbirds were awake, welcoming the first of August with happy songs. Then Sampson left the pond and saw me breathing in nature. That fucking goose came up the rise so fast I barely had time to get back inside and slam the door shut.
“Miserable bitch,” I snarled and gave her two middle fingers.
“I’m not sure she knows what that means,” Davy commented from behind me. “Also, you have a great ass, just wanted to let you know that.”
I reached back to pat the great orb he so admired. “They’re tight as piano wire, huh? Kind of bubbly but that’s a hockey player ass. Can’t be helped.”
“I like the bubble.” He slapped a buttock, kissed me on the cheek, and then went back into the bedroom, coffee cup in hand, to find his clothes.
“It likes you too.” I spun from the irate goose on my back porch and poured myself a cup of morning bliss. “I think I’m going to try to head out to Effie’s today for those eggs.” I threw a dark look at Sampson preening on my porch. “Not that I should do one damn thing nice for you, you feathered harridan.”
“I thought you did that days ago.”
“I keep meaning to but shit comes up.” I walked into the bedroom just in time to see him tugging his uniform trousers up over his backside. “What about you?”
He glanced up from zipping his fly. “Until we hear from the state police, there’s not much we can do on that poaching case. There’s a repeat offender problem brewing over by the Sunny Days nursing home. No matter how many times we ask them not to feed the birds, those old gals can’t seem to leave a sparrow go hungry. Now we have this bear that’s hanging around day and night, ripping down feeders and getting into the dumpsters. Me and Kirk are taking a bear trap over and setting it up, then once again, we’ll get all the old folks gathered in the community room and explain that feeding the birds in the summer is courting black bears.”
“Need help?” I sat down on the bed, sipped my coffee, and enjoyed the shit out of having him here, dressing and talking to me about mundane things like bad bears and little old ladies who were defying the man with their bird feeders.
He smiled at me as he buckled his belt. “Thanks, but we have it.”
“So Shiny Teeth isn’t the least bit bi?” I had to know if he needed a hip check into the next county or not.
“Kirk? God no. He’s got every female in four counties trailing him like blue ticks on a hot raccoon scent. He’s straight as hell.” He hoisted his gun belt from the floor and cinched it around his waist. Hole. E. Fuck. That was one hot look. “You’re not jealous of that young pup, are you?”
“Pfft. Please. Just wanted to know if he was playing for our team or not. Can you fuck me wearing your gun sometime? Asking for a friend.” I glanced down at my dick coming to life.
“Honestly, are you fourteen again or what?”
“You make me feel young. And virile. And warm inside.”
He walked around the bed, his white T-shirt in one hand and tan uniform shirt in the other, and bent down to kiss me quite thoroughly.
“Warm inside is how I feel too.” He kissed me again, finished dressing, and knocked back his coffee in a few long pulls. “I have to roll. We have to go all the way over to White Falls to pick up the trap. Did you want to try to do dinner tonight?”
“Let me see what Dunny’s like. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay, I’ll be in and out of cell service most of the day so if you can’t reach me via phone or text, call the main office and leave a message.”
“Works for me. Let’s be careful out there.”
“Will do, Sergeant Esterhaus.”
“Can I have your baby?”
He chortled, kissed my brow, and exited the studio, sneaking around the side to avoid goose detection. Chuckling at the sight of him sneaking to his parent’s house as if he were trying to avoid a cougar, I showered, dressed, and went up the hill to Dunny’s.
“Where’s my goose?” Dunny asked when I stepped into the kitchen.
“Sleeping on my back porch. Shitting all over it too.”
“Good, keep you busy. Did you call Effie about them eggs?”
“Yes, I’m really going to go get them today.” I looked around, pleased to see he’d had oatmeal, coffee, and was dressed. His socks didn’t match, and his shorts were held up by rainbow suspenders over a T-shirt with a llama smoking a hookah on the front.
“I’ll ride out with you. Want to see if Effie has any of that strawberry jam put up like she usually does.”
“We can do that.”
He looked at me. I looked at him. “Well, we going or what? You wasted enough time getting them eggs for Sampson. We need to get her nest full so she’ll set. Takes twenty-eight days for a goose egg to hatch. Damn goslings will be born when the leaves are falling.”
With that he and his cane made a beeline for the front door. Well, if the bee were an elderly bee that shuffled along while making his line. Looked like Dunny was having a good day, good meaning cantankerous. I’d never imagined I’d be happy to deal with his crabby side, but I was.
“Can I grab another cup of coffee?” I shouted.
“No, come on. Damn goose needs her nest set up today!”
Off to Effie’s we went. We came home with fourteen fertile goose eggs, four jars of strawberry jam, and a shopping tote filled with green beans from Effie’s garden. Dunny set me to the egg patrol. He settled himself in his old lawn chair in the back yard under a droopy elm tree, called his damn goose, and worked on his green beans—snapping the beans in half and cutting off the butts which he tossed to Sampson—while I carted my basket full of big white eggs to the Aguirre home. No sooner did I step foot on their property and Mrs. A was there, standing in the flower bed, her arms crossed, and her brow furrowed. She looked nice in a flowery summer dress and sandals.
“Morning,” I called even though it was probably noon. “I have good eggs for Sampson’s nest.” I showed her the Easter basket piled high with eggs. “Any objections to me putting them in the nest?”
“I guess not.” I nodded, dropped to one knee, and wiggled closer to the nest behind the rhododendron. Sampson had started pulling feathers from her breast to line the nest so she was getting close to setting them properly. I carefully lifted the seven unfertile eggs from the big, soft nest and laid them to the side. Then I placed the fourteen fertile—we hoped because we needed more geese what were we thinking?—into the nest and covered them back up with the bark, weeds, and dead grass Sampson had pulled from the flowerbed.
“There.” I smiled up at Mrs. A and got a sour look in return. Right. Good. That sucked. I’d always felt close to Davy’s mother. Now she hated me, with reason of course, but man it stung to be the object of such scorn. After the throw away eggs were in the pink children’s basket, I stood and faced her. “Hopefully she’ll start setting soon.”
“Maybe we should put a fence around her when she does, to protect her from foxes or other predators.”
“Sure, yeah, I can do that. I might just run chicken wire around the whole flowerbed, give her room to move, get up and poop, eat and drink, that kind of thing.”
“Can we talk?”
Here it came. I nodded and swatted at a fly buzzing around my face. “Sure.”
“It’s about David,” she said, shielding her eyes from the blazing sun. Yeah, I figured it wou
ld be. “I saw him creeping from Rose’s studio this morning at the crack of dawn.”
“Not sure he was creeping. He was simply trying to avoid a goose. We’re kind of old for creeping around trying to avoid parental eyes.” I crossed my arms over my chest, basket of old eggs dangling from my fingers. “If you’re going to lecture me about what a jerk I was to him when we were young, I’m well aware of my jerky behavior. Davy flayed me about it several times.”
“Good. You broke his heart.” She was a lovely woman with a lilting Spanish accent that grew thicker the angrier she became. “Then he married that stupid ass who was also a bad match for him. I think he was looking for someone the opposite of you. Now he’s back with you, sleeping in your bed, and I’m not happy to see this.” She waved a finger under my nose. “He’s been through enough heartache. You know how hard it is for a young man to be gay in this little town?”
“As a matter of fact I do.” That took some of the starch out of her bloomers. “Which is a large part of why I didn’t come out until last month. I was dealing with things too, secrets that could have ended my career. Now I’m not saying that was any kind of excuse. I should have been braver, stood up, come out and faced down my mistakes years ago. That’s a mistake I have to carry with me forever. But I’m back home now. I’m planning on staying, and a large part of the reason I’m putting down roots here again is Davy.”
She assessed me for a long, long, long moment. “I’m going to be watching and waiting. The first time you hurt him, I will come looking for you, and it will not be pretty. We understand each other, yes?”
“Yep, totally. For what it’s worth, I plan to make him as happy as I possibly can from here on out.”
“Hmm, that means little. Actions speak louder than words, Kye.” She peeked around me. I looked back over my shoulder to see Stella wobbling out to her garden.
“Are we done here?” I enquired and got a crisp nod. After I was freed, I hustled over to assist Mrs. Macklemore pick some summer squash. Just the small ones. The big ones she said Sampson could have. Once she was back inside, I gathered up my pink basket of old eggs and several yellow squash that could have been used for softball bats and made my way back to Dunny’s, making a wide berth of the pond to avoid the goose that was napping beside some cattails.
“You have a long talk with Sophia,” Dunny commented when I dumped the squash by his feet. “She chewing you out for how you dicked over Davy?”
“That she was.” I flopped down on the grass, pulled out my jackknife, and started cutting the squash into small chunks that the goose could handle. Dunny was snapping beans, and I was cubing squash. It was humid as hell. Sweat gathered on my neck and brow, yet I was disinclined to move. “You understand why I didn’t come back, right?”
“Ayup, gay brashers.”
I didn’t correct it this time. “I care about him a lot, Dunny. I think I still love him.” He flicked a bean at me. It bounced off my ear, and I shot him a glower. “Why the bean attack?”
“Why you telling me how you feel about the man? Tell the man.”
“I plan to when the time is right. Did you think more about the price on the studio?” I extended my legs out in front of me, the sun making me feel lazy like an old hound dog. Stretching out here in the grass and taking a nap sounded really good.
“Said we could dicker. So, make me an offer.” He tossed a rotten bean out into the yard where it landed with the squash cubes. Damn goose was going to be stuffed to the bill on garden scraps. I eyeballed Stella’s garden. Maybe I should offer to run a short fence around it when I was doing the nest fencing. If the goose got in there and found the veggies, it might start eating them. Maybe I should build a small coop for her as well so she could take the goslings in at night after they hatched. Another bean hit me in the ear. “Ouch!”
“Make me a damn offer. I could croak any second, and there you are daydreaming about having butt boy sex with Dave.”
That amused me. “I wasn’t thinking about butt boy sex, I was thinking about building your nasty ass goose a shed to live in.”
“Oh, well, that’ll be fine.”
“Thought so,” I mumbled to myself. “How about thirty thousand for the studio?”
“How about you go jump in that lake.” Dunny flicked a bean in my direction, but I was ready for it and leaned out of the way.
“Okay, what do you think would be fair? It’s got no land. It’s a fancy she shed with two rooms, three if you count the kitchenette as a room which no one would as it’s part of the main room, but I’ll be generous and call it a room. The siding is going to need to be redone, probably the roof as well.” He gave me a sharp look. “If you say a million dollars, I will make you eat these damn tough squash instead of your goose.”
“Not even hogs will eat squash,” he countered. His wrinkled face a mask of disgust. “Give me fifty thousand dollars, and it’s yours. The pond is community property, so you can’t have that, but you get to look at it.”
“Deal.” I wiped seeds and squash juice from my hand and offered it to him. We shook. And that was the end of the dickering. Now I had to get this all wrapped up legally and line up tradesmen for what I wanted to have done. New heating system for sure before winter blew in. Add that to the siding and roofing list. Might as well have both houses done if I were having one. A bean hit me in the cheek.
“…talking to you about that stupid ass stair chair idea. Get your mind off your boyfriend’s pecker for ten seconds.”
I laughed aloud at that and then had a rousing argument about the need for a stair chair. I won—just—and was feeling pretty good about maybe taking Davy out for a bite tonight. Dunny was his old self again. I thought to ask Stella to check on him, but she was wobblier than Dunny, which was pretty damn wobbly.
After I got the old coot inside and his beans on the stove to cook for his planned beans and taters dinner, I moseyed around the pond, eye locked on the goose who was eyeballing me. Mrs. Aguirre answered my rapping on the basement door with a most displeased look.
“I’m sorry to bother you but I was hoping to go out to dinner tonight and was wondering if you or your husband could check on Dunny this evening?”
She folded her arms over her breasts. If I’d been wearing a tie, I would have tugged on it.
“Is this a date with my son?”
“Yes, ma’am, it is. Dunny’s having a good day so there shouldn’t be any issues, but the past few days have been bad ones, and I’m not fully comfortable leaving him all alone tonight in case he slips back into a foggy state.”
Her flat lips worried me.
“Sure, I’ll walk up to visit with him.”
“Thank you, I appreciate it.”
“You be on your best behavior, you hear me?”
I crossed my heart with my finger. “Scouts honor, I will not sully your boy’s reputation.”
“Far too late for that.” She sniffed then gently closed the door.
I was winning her over. Soon she’d be baking me those little powdered sugar cookies—pastissets she called them—and calling me Ky-Ky like she had when I was ten. Yep, life was coming up roses.
Chapter Eight
Life fell into a sweet kind of symphony. August dragged along, the summer heat and humidity making everyone logy and lazy. Davy had become a fixture of sorts in the studio and I was happier than a seagull with a French fry. The work on Dunny’s roof was complete and the roofers were ready to start peeling off the old, brittle shingles on the studio’s roof.
I was sitting out on the patio, sketching out goose coop plans on a yellow legal pad, when my new landline rang, the cordless phone’s soft purr rather pleasant. I reached for it sitting beside my bottle of beer, which needed to be made into a new one.
“Kye, what the hell is this?” Arn asked.
I leaned back in my seat, sighted the goose in her little pen taking a short break to grab a bite, drink, and shit. Those flowers were going to grow like weeds next year given all the fertili
zer Sampson was dropping.
“Since I cannot actually see what it is you’re looking at or have any clue as to what you’re speaking of, I can honestly reply that I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. And hello to you, Arn.”
“What is this paperwork from lawyers about closing on your house in Pittsburgh?”
“Oh, that. I told them to send you copies of everything.” I drew a rough picture of four fat geese waddling around the new goose coop. It was going to be one hell of a place. Just needed the lumber and I could get building. I was good with my hands, always had been. Just ask Davy.
“When did you decide to sell? I thought you were going back to the city when you had Dunny situated.”
“Well, there’s been a few changes in that plan.” Arn’s huff traveled clearly all the way from Manhattan to my ear. “Just a few. Like…I’m buying my grandmother’s studio so I can stay close to him. And I’m not going back to the Burgh unless it’s for something important. Like my jersey rising to the rafters thing in November or closing on the house.”
“Can someone please explain to me why it is that the agent is always the last to know. Are you sure about this? Does this big life change have to do with a man?” He shifted the phone as he moved around his office. Probably pacing and moving his headset closer to his mouth or something.
“You’re not the last to know, just not the first. Yes, I am sure about this. And only part of it has to do with a man, the biggest part has to do with me and where I want to spend the rest of my days.”
“And that would be in Spruce Lake, Maine as opposed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? Dare I ask why?”
“Family, love, community, Spanish cookies. I’ve not gotten the cookies yet, but they’re coming. I can feel it in the air.”
“You have officially lost your damn mind. It’s dick, isn’t it? I mean, no urban dweller like you tosses aside city life for the boonies unless there’s pussy involved, or in your case, dick. This is a dick-induced decision, right?”
I chuckled a bit. “No, not entirely. My life has just kind of led me here. I’m really feeling my hometown now. I want to settle down here, get Davy to move in with me maybe, who knows, get married somewhere down the line. I have kids here that I’m teaching. Granted most of the time I’m teaching them not to lay down on the blue line and throw a tantrum, but it’s a start. I’m feeling at peace finally, way down deep. Does that make sense?”
