Come Home

by Raleigh Ruebins

  Come Home

  Raleigh Ruebins

  This is a work of fiction. Names, businesses, places, and events are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 Raleigh Ruebins

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover design by Resplendent Media

  Contents

  1. Hunter

  2. Gavin

  3. Hunter

  4. Gavin

  5. Hunter

  6. Gavin

  7. Hunter

  8. Gavin

  9. Hunter

  10. Gavin

  11. Hunter

  12. Gavin

  13. Hunter

  14. Gavin

  15. Hunter

  16. Gavin

  Epilogue

  Thank you!

  Sneak Peek

  More from Raleigh Ruebins

  Social Media

  1

  Hunter

  The first rule on Kinley Island is that all you talk about is Kinley Island.

  Even when you’d rather talk about anything else. Even when you’re making a walk of shame into Tallis General Store at seven o’clock in the morning, shirtless, with another guy’s cum still dried on your chest.

  I knew I was a hot mess. But at least I embraced it.

  I thought for sure I could sneak into Tallis General early and buy some cheap, generic T-shirt without being seen. I was wrong, of course—because there were no secrets in this town, and Kinley Island wasn’t going to let my biggest mistake of a one-night stand go by without a fight. But I at least had a good few minutes where I existed in a comfortable bubble of reckless optimism.

  I’d woken up approximately six minutes ago in Marshall Barrowfield’s house to the sound of Marshall clanging a spoon inside a metal pot, just inches above my sleeping head.

  “Am I being murdered?” I said feebly.

  “Hunter! Wake up! Now!”

  I’d pulled the sheets over my head, hunkering down into the dark warmth of the bed and covering my ears.

  “Please—no?” I squeaked, knowing my efforts were entirely futile.

  “Out!”

  A moment later the precious cocoon of sheets and comforter was being yanked away from me, leaving me naked and cold in the fetal position on the bed. The sun was so bright I briefly considered that it might be mid-explosion, and I was waking up to witness the end of the world. Squeezing my eyes shut like a frightened prey animal definitely wasn’t helping.

  I groaned helplessly, and against my better judgment I peeked one eye open. Marshall was looming above me, fully dressed, eyebrows raised, waving his arms to shoo me like a stray dog. Shame filled my insides like sludge.

  I had to stop hooking up with people I hated or who hated me.

  “Rude,” I said. I slid my legs off the side of the bed slowly, reluctantly sitting up. “Normally I prefer being woken up with a blowjob, but I’m willing to negotiate—”

  “You’re not funny, Hunter. Just get out,” Marshall said, circling around the room. “Jerry is going to be here in four minutes to fix the faucet in this bathroom. You can’t be in here. I need you to be gone, like, an hour ago.”

  “Why so early? Can’t he fix a faucet during a real time of day?”

  “Our appointment is at seven,” Marshall said.

  “Exactly. Seven in the morning is offensive. A time of day I really don’t want to associate with.”

  “You’re a teacher,” he said, not hiding his disgust.

  I glared at him. “And you’re a bartender. And also a self-righteous prick, but we don’t have to talk about that this early, do we?”

  “Don’t you have to get up early every day?”

  “Yes, Marshall,” I said. “Five days out of the week, I am a perfectly responsible adult man. I work hard, and I do it well. But on Saturdays, I sleep in.”

  Marshall rolled his eyes. “Get up. Get out,” he barked. “I need Jerry to finish his work fast so I can get over to the city. I have a meeting with a self-made billionaire in ninety minutes, and frankly, he’s worth my time more than you are.”

  Well, fuck you very much, too!

  “What does a bartender possibly have to talk about with a self-made billionaire?”

  “I’m not a bartender, Hunter. I’m an entrepreneur.”

  Marshall had always been trying to create businesses on the island—he’d had a failed coffee shop, a failed cycling gym, and now was trying his hand at a bar. He’d inherited his money and was spending it all on trying to make Kinley Island something it wasn’t.

  Someone like him belonged in the big city, but I had a gut feeling Marshall was too fearful to ever actually leave the island. Here, he felt like a big fish in a small pond, when in reality, he was more like a tuna sandwich sitting in a hot car.

  “Have fun with the billionaire,” I said. “I’ve got things to do today, too.”

  I didn’t tell Marshall the details. I wasn’t ready to say that I had a meeting with someone far more important that day, too—a self-made millionaire, a meeting that had been looming over me all week.

  A meeting with my best friend.

  It was already bad enough to be waking up in Marshall’s bed. The last thing I needed was to tell him I was going to be seeing Gavin for the first time in two years.

  Marshall had hated me and Gavin in high school. We were twenty-nine now, and enough time had passed that high school drama didn’t affect our interactions, but when I thought about how he used to treat Gavin, my stomach churned. “Gavin Bell” had been “Gavin Smells” in elementary school, but by high school, Marshall had ditched any silly nicknames. He was just cold toward Gavin, insinuating that he was gay anytime he had the chance.

  Both of them had been gay and in the closet, of course. Marshall had since come out, apologized profusely to me about how he used to act, and admitted that it had just been a defense mechanism. I’d tried to take the high road and forgive him—everyone did dumb things as a kid, especially when they were fighting their own identity at the time.

  But now I wasn’t so sure that he had actually been sorry. I already felt the defensive instinct rising up in me, a need to protect Gavin from this asshole that I’d been dumb and desperate enough to hook up with last night, just because he’d been the person bartending at the party.

  Mistake, mistake, mistake. My search for The One was an ever-dwindling list of prospects, and Marshall was truly the bottom of the barrel. At this point, I was pretty sure my Prince Charming was going to end up being my own hand. At least that never woke me up early.

  “Okay, I’m going, I’m going,” I grumbled, still half-conscious as I tugged on the baby-blue boxers I’d drunkenly cast onto the floor the night before. “Y’know, if we could all just relax, maybe you and I and Jerry could all have a nice, big breakfast together, catch up on things.” I pulled on my socks, nearly losing my balance and crashing into the wall.

  “Very funny.”

  “It’s okay, I don’t want to be seen with you, either,” I said. My tone was jokey, but I actually meant every word.

  “Don’t take it personally. You know how Kinley is,” Marshall said, casting the fluffy white comforter back over his bed with a snap. “Jerry sees you here, and by sundown tomorrow, the whole island will know we hooked up.”

  “Ew,” I said. I quickly darted my eyes toward him. “I mean, no offens
e, but—”

  He glared at me, waving a hand. “No. Ew is right. You’re good in bed, Hunter, which I wouldn’t have guessed, but… anyway, put a fucking shirt on, would you? And get rid of that hard-on.” He stomped back down the hallway.

  “Wait—what do you mean, you wouldn’t have guessed?” I shouted, incredulous. “Why the hell not?” He ignored me, and I heard the sound of the coffee grinder from the kitchen.

  I stared downward. My morning wood was poking through the fly in my boxers. Apparently even the cold reality of the morning and Marshall’s sneering face wasn’t enough to get rid of my erection. There were faint red marks peeking out from the top of my waistband where Marshall had gripped my hips last night as he fucked me, hurriedly and impersonally.

  I felt a little sick to my stomach. The sex had been… fine. Marshall had been one of the last people left at the party last night, and I was lonelier and hornier than I’d been in a long time. Ending up at his place felt better than going home alone, and each of us had no other options and too many beers in our blood.

  I’d just needed a distraction. Any distraction to keep me from thinking about my meeting with Gavin later today. He hadn’t visited me in over two years, and suddenly he’d called me up, out of the blue, saying he had to see me to give me important news? Nothing could be more ominous.

  For all I knew, Gavin might have been planning to tell me that he was moving to China, putting even more miles between us. Or maybe he was deathly ill. Or worse, for God’s sake, he might have been getting married.

  And that’s why Marshall McPompous Dickhead had been my awful but necessary distraction last night.

  I needed to get my shit together.

  “Yes. Right. Clothes,” I mumbled, shuffling around the room and running my hands through my unkempt fluff of hair.

  A minute later, there came a loud knock from the front door. Within a split second, Marshall reappeared in his bedroom doorway, his gaze a twin set of flamethrowers directed at me.

  “Why is your cock still out?” he whisper-hissed at me.

  “I can’t control it!” I whisper-hissed back. “Morning wood is a natural, biological process that can’t be reasoned with. You see, those of us who actually have warm blood in our bodies—”

  “Shut up and put on your clothes,” he said, a little too loudly.

  “Marshall? It’s Jerry. You awake?” came the muffled voice from behind the front door, just a few feet down the hallway.

  “I can’t find my shirt,” I whispered.

  “Fuck the shirt. Just get the hell out of here,” he said, picking up my jeans and shoving them into my hands.

  “I have such poor taste in hookups,” I said.

  “This really is an all-time low,” he agreed, as weary as I was.

  “But I—”

  “I will murder you,” Marshall said.

  “Fine,” I said. More knocking came from the front door as I tugged on my pants, surveying the room one last time and seeing no sign of the shirt. “If you find it, please don’t throw it away?” I asked him. “It’s one of a kind. I got it at a thrift store and I’m pretty sure I’m never going to find another shirt that has Bigfoot holding hands with Garfield—”

  “Get. The fuck. Out,” Marshall said. His hand was at the middle of my back then as he began to usher me at a quick clip toward the back of his house.

  “You’re not even gonna make me pancakes?” I joked as he pushed me onto the back patio, and I turned to glimpse his scowling face before he slammed the door shut.

  Thank God Marshall’s house was on the street directly behind Tallis General. All I had to do was cut through the alleyway, past the dumpsters behind the store, and make my way through the narrow brick walkway at the side of the store up to the front entrance.

  I craned my head side to side on Hill Street before ducking under the front awning of the store. The street was still fairly quiet, and a tall fir tree on the sidewalk provided some cover.

  Goosebumps rose on my skin. The air outside was crisp—on Kinley Island, it wasn’t surprising for an early June morning to be this chilly.

  And so here I was, half-naked on Hill Street in a town where gossip was practically a currency. In some ways, Kinley was different than anywhere else: we were a floating town of twenty-nine square miles and eight thousand people, and I was pretty sure we were the only island in the world with a statue of a naked fisherman in our town square. The island was nestled in the water just west of Seattle, but we might as well have been lightyears away. Many other boating islands dotted the water in the sound that lined Seattle’s coast, but here’s the thing: those islands were connected to the mainland by bridges.

  We weren’t.

  Most of the other islands were basically just small offshoots of the massive city, all entwined in one big ecosystem.

  Kinley was different. The island was accessible only by ferry boat, and as such, the small town had developed a character fiercely its own. Sometimes it felt like we were another country entirely, let alone just wildly different from Seattle.

  When it came to gossip, though, we were exactly like every other small town, on steroids, and complete with more drama than a goddamn high school play.

  So I knew if I didn’t get inside Tallis General and grab a shirt quickly, someone was bound to walk by and wonder why their beloved teenager’s biology teacher was standing half-naked on the street at seven in the morning.

  I tried to push open the heavy door slowly, but as it reached the midpoint of its arc, the telltale jangly bell sounded out throughout the whole store.

  “Mornin’!” came Edgar’s voice from the other side of the store, where he and his wife Maureen always sat behind the front counter.

  “Morning, Edgar,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t notice how quickly I darted toward the side of the store where the clothing racks sat.

  And of course, right when I thought I was all clear, Maureen stood up from behind a rack of baseball caps.

  “Fuck!” I called out.

  “Hi, Hunter,” Maureen said, her voice neutral.

  “Why were you hiding?” I asked.

  “Restocking. Not hiding.”

  Her gray hair was in braids at the sides of her head, and she furrowed her brow at me, giving me a quizzical smile.

  “And I didn’t think it was summer vacation yet,” she said, eyeing my shirtlessness. She was bedecked in her usual metric ton of jewelry—a silver ring on every finger, dangling turquoise earrings, a big statement necklace with a sun-shaped medallion hanging from it.

  “No, not summer vacation for another couple weeks.”

  “Hm,” she said. “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it says right on the front door—no shirt, no shoes, no clearly hungover thirty-year-old men strolling in after one-night stands.”

  My jaw dropped. “Maureen,” I said dramatically, “I can’t believe you’d say something so vile to me. You know I’m twenty-nine, not thirty! I’ve still got another year of youth before the osteoporosis kicks in.” I hoped she didn’t notice the heat that had crept up to my cheeks—she’d known exactly why I was here, so quickly, but even I couldn’t let my dignity get in the way of my vanity.

  She snorted, rolling her eyes. “Oh, please. I’ve known you since before you were born,” she said. “When I put my hand on your mom’s belly, you kicked me so hard I told her she was pregnant with a vengeful goat.”

  “I’m ninety-eight percent sure I’m not a vengeful goat,” I said. “They still need to run some tests.”

  “How is your mom?” she asked.

  “She’s doing well,” I said. “She and my dad got three new chickens for the coop last week.”

  “More for the menagerie?” she said.

  “Yep. The new ones are named Hendrix, Jagger, and Page.”

  “I’m sure Starr, Harrison, McCartney, and Lennon are happy to have new siblings. Can chickens squawk in a British accent?”

  “I sure hope so,” I said. “I tried to tel
l them to get with the times, name the new ones Ariana Grande or Justin Bieber or something, but then I realized I’m the one who sounds like an out-of-touch old person, not them.”

  A jingle rang out from the front of the store and I instinctively moved behind a rack of hoodies. I hoped to God it wasn’t one of my students walking in, cell phone camera out and ready to embarrass me until the end of time.

  “Sweetheart,” Maureen said, “I love you, but I do need you to wear a shirt in my store.” She really had perfected looking at me with a mix of kindness and pity.

  I nodded once. “Not only am I willing to put on a shirt, but I’m willing to pay you to help me with the process.”

  She clicked her tongue. “You look like you just stepped out of a wind tunnel,” she said, reaching out and smoothing the mess on top of my head. “Dare I ask what happened to your shirt?”

  I scratched the back of my neck. “Well, I’m guessing the bed must have eaten it, because I’m telling you, it was there last night and this morning it was just gone.”

  “The bed ate it?”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “It’s the only explanation I can come up with.”

  “So that’s what they taught you at that fancy university,” Maureen said, turning to the rack of T-shirts and flipping through them, the plastic hangers clacking against one another. “Beds eat shirts?”

  “Right,” I said. “I studied biology, so you can trust me. The species Beddus mattressum is widely known to subsist on men’s clothing.”

  “And that’s what you’re teaching the good kids of Kinley High,” she said.

  “Gotta teach them the facts early. It’s a shame, really. The B. mattressum species is otherwise very tame.”