Come Home

by Raleigh Ruebins

  Just another little thing about Hunter that I hadn’t learned until today. Apparently he fell asleep soundly after he came.

  It was strange, suddenly learning all these new things about my lifelong best friend. How he liked to be touched. What he sounded like when he came. What he acted like after he came.

  He looked like a fucking angel in the light coming in through the window, and while normally it would break my heart a little, tonight I let myself enjoy it. For so long, my attraction to Hunter had been something I tried to repress, even in my own quiet moments alone. But tonight had been ours. He loved me, whatever that might mean to him.

  And watching him fall asleep, so stunning and irresistible, I loved him even more than I had before.

  He wouldn’t be mine after tonight, but for this moment, he was.

  11

  Hunter

  I woke up feeling like I was on a cloud. For a moment, everything was perfect. In a vague, still half-dreaming sense of the world, I knew that things were good—that something profoundly good had happened, though at the moment I couldn’t remember what exactly it was. I had been dreaming about Gavin—very, very explicit things—and I was almost upset that I was waking up and being dragged from my dream.

  When I actually opened my eyes, I remembered that the reality of today was kind of the opposite of “everything is going to be alright” and “things are as they should be.”

  Today was actually a little bit the end of the world. The day of the first public hearing.

  Gavin was at the edge of the bed, fully dressed already in business casual, even though it was six in the morning.

  “Gav,” I said softly, clearing my throat. I reached out, stroking my hand down his back. “You okay?”

  He turned to look at me, and all at once, memories from last night rushed over me: his lips, his cock, Jesus Christ, his incredible skill. He’d made me come like no one ever had.

  And the small, teeny tiny other little thing I’d learned last night: the fact that it had felt like we were made for one another, like our bodies became something more than the sum of our parts when we were together, like I’d had a best friend for my whole life who it turned out was perfect in every way.

  Little, unimportant things like that.

  Gavin’s eyes were strained with worry as he looked back at me. I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to make him feel perfect.

  “I’m nervous. For today, you know?” he said. It was a startlingly vulnerable moment, coming from him—Gavin’s default was to act confident about everything, even if he didn’t necessarily feel confident.

  “Nervous? About the public hearing? Why, I never would have guessed,” I said, trying to lighten the tone with a little humor.

  He smiled softly at me, but it was the kind of smile that someone might make before they were headed to their execution.

  Doubt stirred inside me. Was this it? Was this what I’d been so fucking terrified of? That if Gavin and I acted on our impulses and had sex, it would only end up ruining our friendship? Last night had been incredible, almost perfect, but I would throw it all away just to keep Gavin as my best friend.

  The thought that I may have truly broken things irreparably between the two of us was even scarier than the idea of the bridge being built.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  I wouldn’t.

  I sat up slowly, the sheet still wrapped around my naked body, and I sidled up next to Gavin. I gave him a gentle hug, resting my forehead against his temple as he looked out the window.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “Tonight’s gonna suck. But guess what tomorrow is?”

  He turned to me. “Hmm?”

  “My birthday,” I said, smiling softly.

  “I’m surprised you’re even reminding me,” he said.

  “I know. You should take it as the highest level of compliment.”

  To say I wasn’t a big birthday person was an understatement. I often tried my hardest to get people in my life to forget the day existed. It had always been this way, since I was in first grade and I’d gone full meltdown after the class had surprised me by singing me the birthday song after recess.

  “When I planned for this trip I knew I’d be here for your birthday,” he said. “Wasn’t going to bring it up, though. I figured you’d prefer it that way.”

  “That was a wise choice. But… I want to make an exception. Just for you,” I said. “Let’s go out for a birthday dinner tomorrow? I’m sure we’ll need it after tonight renders the island a smoldering pile of ashes. And then, of course, we can go make ourselves boozy milkshakes in the remnants of Zeke’s, get drunk in the afternoon, and descend into debauchery all night. Sound good?”

  He reached out, running a hand through my hair. His eyes were sympathetic. “Hunter, I feel so bad,” he said. “I… have a TV spot scheduled for midday tomorrow. I’m going to be on All Around Kinley. Channel twelve. We set up an interview about the bridge.”

  “Oh,” I said, waving a hand through the hair. “Don’t even worry about it, then.”

  “No,” he said. “Let me take you out for dinner the day after.”

  “Sunday?” I said. “I’m afraid I have some big plans. Mom’s making me go re-roof the chicken coop. I promise my weekend plans are usually so wild you wouldn’t believe, but this Sunday’s party is just going to be tending to my mother’s hens. And who knows—they might be in the mood to party.”

  He sighed, giving me a half-smile. “Alright, then… next weekend. I know you don’t care about your birthday, but I want to do something special for you.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “And… good luck tomorrow. With the TV spot.”

  He nodded, turning back toward the window. “I’ve been looking forward to it for so long, but now that it’s finally here, I feel like the floor is dropping out from under me.”

  I put my hand at the small of his back. “Why?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I just hope I’m doing the right thing. That’s all.”

  Another strange thing to hear from Gavin. This wasn’t full-throttle confident at all. Hell, it wasn’t even an attempt to fake it.

  Something was different this morning.

  And while I secretly felt a little hope at the fact that he might be questioning the bridge project, it still made me worry about him.

  I had to say something to clear the air.

  “You know… I don’t regret what we did last night,” I said softly, rubbing his back.

  He was silent for a while. I listened to the faint sound of his breathing. He’d already showered and put on cologne—that cologne I loved so much though I couldn’t figure out if it smelled of pine or musk or just pure pheromones.

  “I don’t regret it either,” he said.

  Thank fucking God. Finally, I could breathe a little.

  “It was hot, too,” I said.

  “It was,” he agreed.

  But his voice was far away. He didn’t move, didn’t turn toward me. He kept looking out the window, like he was certain the entire population of Kinley was about to burst through and attack him at any moment.

  My heart was already breaking into a million pieces for him, and the hearing hadn’t even come.

  I knew that today was everything to Gavin. It was selfish of me to expect that he’d still be focused on last night, that he’d want to chat with me about how amazing and transcendent it had all felt, like we were some teenagers that had just discovered sex for the first time.

  It didn’t necessarily mean that he’d hated it, or that it was going to obliterate our friendship.

  It was silly that in the face of today, all I wanted to do was bat my eyes at Gavin as I told him that he was fucking incredible in bed. Tell him that while I’d slept, I’d dreamed about him bending me over and fucking me, and that I’d be more than willing to have him do it in real life. That actually, it suddenly seemed necessary, like if I couldn’t be that close with him again I might lose it.

  But I wo
uld rather lose my mind than lose him as a friend. Nothing was going to get solved in the next five minutes—I had to go to work too, and we had a long day ahead of us.

  The public hearing was happening tonight, whether we wanted it to or not.

  After my last class of the day, I went straight to the gymnasium lobby. The hearing wasn’t even set to begin for three more hours, but I needed to see him.

  Gavin was with his team members in the lobby with a handful of other people I didn’t recognize—probably DOT and other government workers. It was even scarier seeing them all there together. Having visual proof that the governments wanted this: that there was a massive outpouring of monetary and political support, and really the only people going against the project were the people of our tiny island.

  “Gav,” I said, and he whipped around, skittish as he eyed me.

  “Oh, Hunt,” he said, relief in his voice. It was like he was already anticipating everyone to be his enemy—he was on edge more than I’d seen all week.

  “You okay?” I said, keeping my voice low. Vance was on the other side of the room, and he shot me a glance before continuing on setting up a poster on the wall.

  “I’m great!” Gavin said, his eyes wide, but with a smile that looked more like a grimace.

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Be real with me,” I said.

  “This is going to go great,” he said, nodding quickly. He reached over to the long table he’d been standing in front of, grabbing a sheet of paper and holding it out to me.

  The paper shook slightly in his hand. I wondered how many cups of coffee he must have had that day.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Fact sheet,” he said. “Has all of the bullet-point information about the bridge project. Two different proposals for where the bridge’s terminus will be, the environmental steps the county is going to need us to take, the projected impact on growth.”

  I scanned the sheet. It was glossy, thick paper, and the satellite images of the island were covered with neon lines, blocking out where the proposed bridge would be. It was slick, detailed, and laid out perfectly. At the top of the sheet was a professionally designed logo: The Kinley Bridge Initiative.

  It gave me a pit in my stomach.

  “It sure... looks pretty,” I said.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous?” he said, nodding quickly.

  I folded the paper and slipped it into my pocket. “Have you had anything to eat today?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure!” he chirped. “I had a… a… well, I’ve had a lot of coffee. And double my usual vitamins and supplements.”

  “Alright,” I said with a nod. “I’m going to go get food and bring some back to you.”

  “I never forget to eat,” he said, rubbing his temple.

  “Well, the last thing you want is to pass out on stage.”

  “You’re exactly right, Hunter,” he said.

  It was the strangest thing, getting this version of Gavin again, after the night we’d shared. He was fully back in business mode, even with me—the vulnerability shoved deep down again like it had been when he first came to the island.

  This was the same man who’d worshipped my cock last night. Who had called out my name, his voice breaking, as I’d made him come over and over.

  I’d slept in his arms, so comfortably, and dreamed sweet nothings about him.

  “I’ll bring you some food,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I can have Vance grab it—”

  I shook my head. “Vance is busy. I’m just waiting around. I’ll bring it.”

  “Bell, can you take a look at this, please?” one of Gavin’s team members—Natalie, I think her name was—called out from the far end of the room.

  Gavin gave me a sympathetic look. “Thank you,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand before slipping away.

  After bringing back a bag full of a dozen sandwiches from Luna’s and dropping them off with Gavin and his team—at least half of them seemed very grateful—I had another hour left to kill. The energy in the gym lobby was too much, but I pushed through a set of double doors into the gym itself, and found it to be altogether pretty peaceful. There was a small stage that had been set up with a huge projector screen, ready for the presentation, but other than that it was the same gym as always.

  I didn’t spend much time in the Kinley High gym other than during a few mandatory pep rallies throughout the year. I hadn’t been in it in at least a couple months—definitely not since Gavin had been back in town.

  The gym had smelled the same since I’d been a kid. The scent of the plasticy lacquer along the hardwood floors, the faint scent of basketball leather, a fainter scent of sweat. Long before I’d been a teacher or even a student at Kinley High, my mom had taught English here, and it had been like a playground for me. I’d walk here after elementary school and come to hang out in the gym, playing with my Hot Wheels along the bleachers, pretending I was a big, strong, popular high-schooler when I was really five years old.

  Later on, when I actually was a moderately sized, relatively fit, sort of popular high-schooler, the gym hadn’t seemed so mystifying.

  Except on prom night. Gavin and I had snuck under the bleachers, clutching that damn bottle of schnapps. Neither of us had come to prom with anybody else—I’d just broken up with an on-again-off-again boyfriend who didn’t really love me anyway, and Gavin sure didn’t have anyone to go to prom with.

  So we’d gone as friends. And there couldn’t have been any better way to do prom.

  I’d wanted to kiss him that night, actually.

  I hadn’t even really thought about it until now, as I walked there, in the semidark tunnel between two of the sets of bleachers. A latticework of metal and wood was above me, and I leaned against the back wall, looking up.

  At the time I’d just thought it was the alcohol, the excitement of prom, a weird, teenage hormone-driven impulse. But I had really wanted to kiss Gavin that night. We’d passed the plastic bottle back and forth between one another, Gavin getting sillier and sillier with each shot. It was the first time I’d seen him relax in months, after he’d been studying his ass off each day and night.

  It was the first time I’d realized that Gavin was going to be an incredibly handsome man. He was just starting to grow into his jaw and his nose, his body was just starting to fill out.

  “You’re the best prom date ever,” he’d said to me, his face cracking into an involuntary grin before he burst out into laughter.

  When he’d laughed—that’s when I’d wanted to kiss him.

  “You’re the best prom date,” I’d said back, pushing him sloppily and taking another swig of liquor.

  “We’re still going to be friends in college, right?” he’d asked, gathering his knees to wrap his arms around them, then resting his chin on top of them.

  I had furrowed my brow. “Why do you think I even tried applying to Eastendale?” I said. “Of course we’re going to be friends. We’re going to run things at that place.”

  “Good,” he said, his face serene. “I’m so happy you’re coming.”

  “I cried when I got the acceptance letter,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d be able to go to the prestigious school that Gavin Bell would be going to.”

  He giggled. “Just remember, when you’re the number one biology student in college, that it all started here.”

  “Under the bleachers with half a bottle of schnapps?” I said.

  He picked up the bottle, holding it up to the light. “A whole lot more than half of this bottle is gone.”

  “I love you,” I’d said.

  “I love you, too,” he had replied.

  I was in that exact same spot now, over a decade later, but this time I was very alone and very sober. I’d stopped at Tate’s Liquor on my way back to the school and purchased a tiny, four-shot bottle of schnapps—it was in my bag right now, actually—but it didn’t feel right to drink it alone.

  I was going to give it to Gavin as
a joke along with the sandwiches, but when I’d dropped them off, he’d been so embroiled in a conversation with his team that I didn’t bother.

  It was probably a bad idea, anyway.

  Gavin wasn’t here to reminisce like I was doing. He was here to change the island forever.

  Back then, in high school, it had been easier for us to tell each other “I love you.” We’d said it every day, multiple times a day, though Gavin had asked me not to say it in front of other people. But over the course of adulthood, we’d started saying it less and less. When he’d first returned to the island, I’d still said it, but more as a vestigial, hollow ghost of what it had once meant. Did I still love him? It had been hard for me to tell.

  But last night, there hadn’t been a shred of doubt left in me.

  After being so close with him in bed, telling him I loved him had felt more intense than it ever had before.

  By the time the hearing was approaching, the gym lobby was becoming a lot more active.

  The number of people inside had at least tripled, and it was already separating into distinct groups: the Businesspeople, some in suits and some—like Gavin—who knew that they were better off not wearing suits, and the Islanders, who already looked like a hodgepodge of weirdos and familiar faces. Iggy Chapman had showed up, the retired, long-haired old hippie who lived on Sparrow Street and shredded on the electric guitar. I waved to Nancy Stern, who had come in a homemade shirt that had a bridge painted on it, dripping with red marks that likely signified blood. A handful of my coworkers were already here, perusing the reading materials provided in the lobby.

  As more and more people filtered in through the front doors of the school, following through to go sit on the gym bleachers, I felt a hand on the back of my arm.

  “Hunt,” Gavin said, his voice low. “Can I have a minute?”

  We went to the hallway at the side of the lobby, where the long row of red-painted lockers sat.

  “Tell me it’s going to be okay,” he said quickly, as soon as we were out of earshot. His eyes were panicked, and he took a deep breath, raking his fingertips through his slicked-back hair.