by Cody Ryder
So what would I do from here?
Change had come—I could either accept it, or ignore it.
I kicked off my clothes and took a quick shower, with memories of the night before floating around my mind. When I got out from the bathroom, I could still hear my parent’s voices from the dining room. They were speaking softly, too low for me to make out what they were saying, but were using a tone of voice that I hadn’t heard from them in…well, I couldn’t even remember. They sounded almost tender.
I smiled and went back to my room and pulled a backpack out from my closet to pack stuff for the night in. I was eager to get back to him, to feel his warmth again. I felt a shiver of happiness.
I needed to see him.
Eight
I picked up my bag and headed downstairs.
My parents still sat across from each other at the dining table, and they both looked over at me as I walked out from the stairs. I was surprised to see that they’d both been crying, a few crumpled tissues sitting on the table. My mom’s hand was stretched over, held by my dad’s. Seeing that startled me more than the crying.
“I’m going back out to Dakota’s place,” I said. “…Is everything alright?”
“We’re fine,” mom said, sniffing. They looked at each other for a moment before looking back over to me.
“Before you head out, can we talk to you for a moment, Roy?” my dad asked.
“Sure, of course.” I went over to the kitchen table and sat down.
“We wanted to thank you for giving us that wakeup call,” dad smiled. “It must have been difficult for you to deal with us acting the way we’ve been, and we’re sorry for that.”
I nodded, waiting for him to continue.
“We’ve talked, and your mom and I…we’ve decided that we’re going to spend some time apart.”
I blinked dumbly. “What?”
“Just a little while,” mom said. “To re-evaluate our relationship.”
“We’re hoping that by doing that, we’ll rediscover ourselves. Rediscover what we mean to each other.”
“And…if you don’t?”
My mom’s eyes sparkled with tears as she did her best to smile. “Then we’ll both know we did the best we could, and we’ll know if it needs to be a permanent thing.”
I swallowed. I was honestly not expecting this to happen, though I’d known it was a possibility. The young Roy inside me wanted to protest and tell them they didn’t need to separate, that they were fine, but I knew that what they had decided was for the best…and I was proud of them.
“Well, I support your decision,” I said. “I think you’re doing the right thing.”
We talked for a little while, and they explained how they had come to the conclusion that they’d started to take each other for granted, but knew that if they just continued on without some kind of big change, things would just go back to how they were. They agreed that this was something that had been coming for a while now, and that it had been in the back of both of their minds, but they’d just needed a catalyst. My mom would go to visit my aunt and uncle up in Los Angeles for a while, and my dad would stay and take care of the house.
I didn’t tell them about Dakota and I, but I knew that they could tell something was up. “You sure you don’t need anything?” I asked. “Are you sure you’re both okay?”
“Yes,” my mom said, smiling. “I feel relieved, actually.”
My dad nodded. “I really think this will be good for us. I have confidence we’ll come back stronger.” He smiled slightly, and his face just barely betrayed that he wasn’t so sure. I could see that he loved my mom, though he’d forgotten how much. This was the wakeup call that they both needed.
Mom smiled. “Go. Don’t keep Dakota waiting for you.”
I hugged them both, then I texted Dakota to tell him that I was on my way back. My head felt foggy from all that’d happened over the past twenty-four hours. I wasn’t worried about my parents. I was really proud of them. They’d been able to address the tension between them without resorting to even more arguments. They hadn’t let the situation get the best of them. I realized that regardless of what they decided, my admiration for them and their marriage hadn’t been unfounded.
When I turned down Dakota’s street, I caught something out of the corner of my eye that made me do a double take—it was a familiar furry brown shape lying out on the lawn of one of the neighbor’s houses. I slammed on the breaks and reversed back, and sure enough, I saw Rosie there, happy as could be.
“What the hell?” I pulled over and got out of the car. “Rosie! What are you doing out here? Come here!” I was still a few minutes’ drive from Dakota’s, so she must have gotten out and gone for a little exploring. Her tail started to wag furiously when she spotted me, and after another call, she dashed over and leapt into the car, slipping over to shotgun like she was ready to go for a road trip.
I gave her a pet on the head, and she licked my hand, looking pleased to see me. “Dakota is probably shitting himself,” I said to her. She cocked her head. “Or maybe he knows you’re doing your own thing, huh?” That somehow wouldn’t surprise me.
I parked the car in the driveway next to his work van, and Rosie waited patiently for me to get out and open her door. As I made my way to the front door, Rosie zipped off to the side of the house and disappeared. I followed her, and found that the side gate was cracked open. There was a moment of hesitation where I thought I should go knock on the front door, but Rosie came back and gave me a single bark, as if to ask what I was waiting for. Then she turned around and dashed off into the garden forest, disappearing into the thickness.
Following her trail, I found her sitting outside of the greenhouse that sat behind the hammocks, and I could see Dakota inside. I tapped on the glass and laughed as he jumped up in surprise.
“Your dog got out,” I said, going inside. The air was moist and thick with the rich aroma of soil.
Dakota smiled. “Roy! Rosie went on an adventure, huh? She’s been restless ever since you left this morning. I saw her sniffing the side of the bed you slept on. I think she missed you.”
“Really? Aw, Rosie.” I ruffled her ears.
He came over and gave me a kiss, which spread a warm tingle through my body. “And I missed you too. Were you stuck up at the front door?”
I shook my head. “She showed me the way in. Does she do that a lot? Get out? I found her all the way down the street, she went pretty far.”
“As obedient as she is, I think she’s gotten so used to exploring back here that she thinks everything is part of the yard. She’s gotten out a few times before, but she’s always found her way back on her own. Maybe she was just out looking for you. Wanted to bring you home.” He smiled and kissed me again.
I squeezed his hand and looked around the greenhouse. “What are you doing in here?” It was the first time I’d been inside. It was about three hundred square feet, with several tables set up with rows of small, gridded plastic planter boxes filled with soil. In some of them, I could see little green shoots growing up out of the earth. On the ground were several in-line rows of different types of young vegetables, with small green leaves sprouting out. The uniform lines of crops were what I had expected to see when I first walked into the Heart Lifespring Gardens.
He gestured to the lines of plants growing in the earth. “I’ve got some crops that don’t do so well in our climate, so I’ve got them growing in the greenhouse. Then I’ve got these little guys.” With a kind of gentle reverence, Dakota picked up one of the plastic planter boxes and held it up to inspect the little shoots poking out of the soil, like a prospector inspecting a find. “They just started coming up. Eggplant, cherry tomatoes, daikon radish. I’ll get them growing in here, and then transplant them outside when they’re strong enough. Aren’t they adorable?”
His face held an eager excitement that warmed me, his eyes soft with a nurturing kindness. He would make a great father, I realized, and I smiled at the thought
. Forever after. Settling down here with him. A new dream for the future.
Dakota had revitalized me. In the short time we’d been back together, he’d shown me that I could take a new direction with my life, that things were always changing. He’d cleared the fog that had clouded my mind for so long, and perhaps the biggest thing of all—he had showed me that I could still fall in love again…and be loved back in return.
I suddenly felt a welling of emotion that surged to the surface and completely overwhelmed me. I threw my arms around him his waist, hugging him from the side and burying my face into the crook of his neck, and to my surprise, I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I tried to fight them back, but they came pouring out down my cheeks and onto his neck. I squeezed him tighter. It was the culmination of everything that had happened over the past few days—and especially the past few hours.
“Roy? Are you crying?” He set down the tray of plants onto the bench and stroked my back. “Hey,” he said in a soft voice. “What is it?”
I was shaking. The feelings came in great waves that swelled out of me, and vivid memories seemed to pop into my mind like the flickering of a film reel. How I’d guarded my heart after my failed relationship. The pain from those months. The confusion. The buried sorrow. The newfound happiness. All of it was coming up now, like the release of a floodgate or the bursting of a dam.
Dakota held me tightly, stroking my hair and my back, kissing me on my head. “What’s the matter? Tell me.”
“I just…can’t believe you and I…” I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand. “It just seems so impossible.”
He smiled and squeezed my arm. “Trust me, I can hardly believe it either. It’s…” He looked away, obviously struggling to say what was on his mind. “It’s almost too good to be true, you know? You have no idea how much I’ve missed you, Roy. You have no idea.” He stared off, unable to meet my gaze, and tears started to well up in his eyes. It was in that moment that I realized just how Dakota had felt during those years after I’d left. I realized just how hard he’d had it – and how strong he was.
He finally brought his eyes to mine. “I’m happy we’re able to be together like this,” he said. “Even if it’s just for now. I know you still have a lot on your mind, about your future and everything.”
My future.
“I think…I think I know where my future should be. I’ve been so focused on this idea I’ve had since I was a kid that I haven’t taken a moment to look at what I want right now. I’ve been blindly chasing it for years, I think. Having given it some thought, Alicia and I, we never would’ve worked out in the end. If she hadn’t broken it off with me, I would’ve charged into something that would’ve made me unhappy in the end. Both of us. I wasn’t ready for that situation. I’d hardly taken the time to get to know myself. To really get to know myself.
“I needed those months of reflection. Of realization. Of clarity. I was meant to come back here again, I think. You know why? Because you’re here. I was meant to come back to you, Dakota. That’s where my future lies. Here, with you.”
His mouth hung open, and his face was scrunched up in an expression of shocked confusion. “Here?” He pointed to the ground. “With me, in Powlton.”
I laughed. “Yes, here.”
“What about your job? About moving back to the bay?”
“I’ll…find work down here. I don’t know. I don’t even know what kind of work I want to do anymore. All I know is that I want to be with you.”
The shock slowly faded from Dakota’s face, and was replaced with a familiar look of serene content. His smile made me feel like everything would always be alright. “You have no idea how happy that makes me.”
I slid my hand around the back of his neck and drew him in for a kiss. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” I said softly.
“What made you decide this was what you wanted to do?” he asked, still with a hint of disbelief. Dakota probably knew better than anyone just how much my vision of my future meant to me. He knew the full weight of this decision.
I thought about it for a moment, and then told him about what had happened with my parents. “Something about that, about seeing them confront such a difficult thing so readily, and decide that was what they needed—it was something you’d think I’d be sad about. But it actually gave me hope. It made me realize I was being afraid to confront the situation right in front of me. To see what I had right there. That I needed to stop living in the past, and to stop dwelling on things that could’ve been. When they’d agreed to sit down and talk, I’d already had the realization—but their decision only solidified it in my mind. I want to be here with you, Dakota. I want to take care of the Heart Lifespring Gardens with you, and make it grow, and make our love grow right along with it.”
We held each other close, neither one of us wanting to let go. I could feel Dakota’s hot tears on my neck, and I felt the gentle tremble of his body as he wept.
We went back to the house, and had barely made it through the door before we started to strip each other’s clothes off until we were stumbling naked into the dining room, our lips locked in passion. I muscled him up onto the dining table and got between his legs, his cock stiff and ready in my hands, and then dropped my face between his thighs and gulped him down. It wasn’t long before he came, and let out a strained bellow as his cock throbbed into my mouth. I sucked down every last drop, then turned him around so that he was bent over the table and took him from behind.
“You know,” Dakota mused, his head resting on my chest. We were cuddled up in one of the hammocks in nothing but our jeans, rocking slowly and enjoying the sounds of the garden. “You could live here, if you wanted. You could move in with me. You wouldn’t have to get a job, at least not if you didn’t want to. I’ve got plenty of money, and enough coming in from this place.” He shifted so that he could look up at me. “It’s not too early to be talking about this kind of thing, is it?”
I laughed. “It make me happy,” I admitted. “I think that living together with you is exactly what I’d want to do. But not working…what if we, I don’t know, wanted to start a family?”
Dakota’s expression changed—he looked surprised.
“Too early to talk about that?” I asked, a little embarrassed.
“Never,” he said, kissing my chest. “We could support a family here. Might need to work a little harder, sell at more markets, but we’d be okay.” He grinned. “Though I guess it depends on how many kids you want to have.”
As I laughed, I was filled with a weird mixture of giddiness and nervous energy, like I had just won the lottery. It all didn’t feel real. How many kids I wanted. Family. Moving in. Starting life together.
It had happened so suddenly, but it felt so perfect. So right. This was how it was supposed to be.
“At least two, like you wanted,” I said. “A brother and a sister. Rosie can help babysit them. Think we can swing that?”
“I think we can.”
“I could find work down here, if we needed it.”
“Whatever you want, Roy. If we’re together, we can make anything work. I’m sure of it.”
My lips bent up into a wide grin, and then I found myself chuckling with laughter. Dakota looked at me quizzically. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It just all feels so surreal. Talking about a family. Planning life together. Jesus.”
“I know, Roy, it’s crazy. Trust me, I can hardly believe it either. Are we going too fast?”
I shook my head. “No, not at all. I like it. It’s exciting.”
Dakota gave me his handsome, lopsided smile and ran his hand along my chest. “Okay.”
I felt that lightness, like a rope that had been tied around my chest had been loosened, allowing me to breathe again—to be myself again. It’d been a long time since I’d felt like myself.
“You know what I could go for?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“One of your beers. You’ve got me hooked on those. It’s too bad we can�
�t sell those at the market.”
“I’ll go get us one,” he said, moving to get out of the hammock.
I stopped him, pushing him gently on his chest. “I’ll get it. You relax.”
He looked surprised for a moment, and then smiled. “You know where everything is?”
“’Course.” I slipped out from the hammock and then gave him a kiss. Rosie, who was laying in her usual spot on the ground, looked up to see what I was doing. “C’mon, Rosie, I’ll give you a treat.” She quickly jumped to her feet and followed along right beside me.
This is where I’m supposed to be.
As I walked back to the house, I felt that giddiness still thrumming through my body, making everything seem a little brighter and a little lighter.