by Rachel Kane
Thinking Of You
The Complete Collection
Rachel Kane
Copyright © 2020 by Rachel Kane
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Lost With You
Find You Out
Drawn To You
Wrapped
A selection from ‘Spring Forward,’ my newest gay romance!
Afterword
More Romance from Rachel!
Lost With You
1
Eli
That plane crash saved my life.
I wouldn’t have understood that at the time. In fact, if you’d asked me, Hey Eli, what if this tiny little plane crashes while you’re up in the mountains, I probably would’ve canceled the trip. Because, y’know. Plane crashes are scary.
“I don’t even understand why you’re running off like this,” said Amanda, my sister. She was driving me to the airfield. “It’s one failed book. So what if nobody bought it? Maybe the world isn’t ready for your stories about gay robots falling in love.”
“Okay, first off, they’re not robots, they’re a collection of nanoscale--”
Amanda groaned. “Why, O Lord, have you made my brother a science fiction writer, instead of something nice and normal like a mystery writer? Couldn’t you write stories about little old ladies solving murders? People love that stuff.”
“And second,” I continued, “I’m not running away.”
“Dude, not to contradict you, but you are, in fact, running away. You’ve got your backpack in the trunk, and I’m driving you to an airport. You couldn’t be any more running away unless you had all your belongings tied into a kerchief on a stick.”
I know she was expecting me to sigh dramatically, maybe stare out the window meaningfully, but instead I laughed, which surprised her. “You really think this is about the book,” I said.
“I mean, follow the logical progression,” she said. “You write a book that is all about the wonders of being gay and…uh…nanoscale, whatever that means. Our parents, the only people on earth who didn’t realize you were gay, freak the fuck out. The reading public, not ready for tales of android sodomy, politely decline to buy your book. And then you call me up saying you need to get away for a while. You can see why it looks like you’re running.”
Okay, maybe I did stare meaningfully out the window for a minute or two. “I really wasn’t expecting Mom and Dad to react like that.”
Amanda nodded. “I was shocked that they were shocked. Didn’t they catch you kissing Robbie Barron back in high school?”
“Um, I told them we were practicing for drama class.”
“Our poor, gullible parents. They believed that?”
“I’m not sure they had any choice. They’re clearly not psychologically ready for a gay son.”
She smacked the steering wheel with her palm. “Dude, that’s why you should stay. You need to fight with them about this! You know they’ll come around. They love you. They’re just…not the most observant people.”
I swallowed. I couldn’t leave her here, thinking I was afraid of our parents. Yes, it had wounded me when they realized my book was really about me and my life as A Gay Person. They hadn’t taken it well. More my dad than my mom. He got positively virulent. But that wasn’t why I was leaving, any more than because of my extremely meager book sales.
“Okay, listen,” I said, “can you keep a secret?”
“I knew you were gay long before Robbie Barron, and never told anyone. Of course I can keep a secret.”
Yet I still hesitated. This was such a crazy idea, such a long shot, that she might not understand why I was doing it.
Finally I said it: “I think Uncle Ron wrote a novel. I think it’s in his cabin in the mountains. And I think it’s my duty to find it.”
Amanda didn’t look at me for a minute. Her eyes were on the road, but I saw that her fingers were gripping the wheel more tightly, her knuckles white.
“Oh my god, you’re going to his cabin?” she said. “You really are running away!”
“No! That’s just it! I’m running to, not away!”
“I think I’m going to turn the car around right now, Eli. I think I’m going to drive back home, and we’re going to confront Mom and Dad, and hash this out the normal way, instead of you flying off to the freaking cabin where Uncle Ron spent his last days!”
I reached into my jacket pocket, and retrieved the envelope I’d zipped into a plastic bag. Carefully, so I didn’t hurt the paper, I unfolded the letter that had been inside. “I found this when I visited Mom and Dad last time…right before the big confrontation. It’s a letter to Dad, from Uncle Ron. Listen to this: I know you won’t understand, brother. I know in many ways you can’t, with your perfect suburban world, your perfect suburban wife, your two children whose smiles are as bright as the polished chrome on your car. But when I am alone up there, I feel more together than I do here among you. You told me I don’t belong here, and you’re right. I belong up there, far from voices and cars and perfection. I’ve been writing a little something, too. You know what it is. Hard to write when I’m surrounded by your judgment, but I hope the silence of the mountains will help me finish. I’ll be able to hear my own words, instead of yours.”
Amanda took a deep breath, like she was trying to cleanse her body of the stress. “Babe, come on. Just because Uncle Ron ran away when everybody found out he was gay, doesn’t mean you have to do the same. Don’t you think someone would’ve already known if he’d written a novel up there? And, pardon me for just blurting this out, but what does his novel have to do with you?”
How could I explain it to her? How could I describe how, when we were little kids, Uncle Ron had fascinated me? He was the smartest guy I’d ever met, always dropping off books for me and Amanda. Not baby books either, but big fat books full of chapters. “Oh, they’re too young for those,” my mom would say, but I would hold those books in my hand, feeling their heft and thinking one day I would conquer them all. Then when I found out that Uncle Ron had written books too, it just cemented my admiration for him. Before that, books had seemed mysterious and grand: Where did they come from? How did all these words end up sprinkled in just the right order across the page, to work their magic on me? And now I knew: People like Uncle Ron, scowling over their typewriters and legal pads and computers, slowly building stories out of nothing.
Then he had left town, and no one would tell me why. Amanda and I would try to listen in to the grown-up conversations, to try to crack the mystery. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to accomplish up there,” said my dad one night.
I’d grown up, and the mystery surrounding my uncle had faded. His leaving was just a fact of life, like Christmas or Pizza Night, an established Thing That Happened. And when word came that he had passed away, I was sad, but in that distant way you feel when you haven’t seen someone for most of your life, and all you have of them is dim memories.
Later of course, I found out why he’d left. When he came out of the closet, my family had turned against him. Other people might have stayed. Or maybe would have moved to a more accepting city. Not Uncle Ron.
“Nobody went back to the cabin after he passed,” I said, here in Amanda’s car. “Nobody went through his things.”
“That was two years ago,” she said. “Don’t you think nature would have destroyed everything in the cabin by now? It’s not like there’s a caretaker up there, keeping things clean and dry.”
“Or, you could give up this idea right now. You could run off to a tropical island instead of a deserted mountaintop. Maybe that’s what you need instead. Some sand between your toes. A sickly-sweet drink with a ton of alcohol and fruit juice. Maybe…some cute boys in their little Speedos?”
But it was too late. We were pulling up to the airfield. It was tiny, hardly more than a couple of strips of tarmac and a tower that looked like a toy. Yet it felt important, like I was on the verge of a new chapter in my life.
“Oh my god,” Amanda said, looking out over the airstrip, and the array of small planes parked there. (Did planes park? Were they docked?) “Those aren’t even real planes. They’re minuscule. Eli…”
“Come on, it’s fine.”
She parked, and we both got out. The place looked deserted. Suddenly I was having second thoughts. Those planes were awfully small.
“Where’s your pilot?” she whispered.
“He should be here,” I said. “He said he’d meet us here.”
“Who is this guy? Can you really trust him?”
I wasn’t sure why we were whispering, except that it felt appropriate to how small and quiet everything was. The only sound was the wind whipping the orange windsocks around, filling them with air, causing them to flap.
But I nodded. “This is the same guy that used to ferry Uncle Ron back and forth. Old guy. Looks like a mountain-man version of Santa Claus. Big white beard, lots of plaid. He’s going to fly me up there, help me get settled in.”
“I’m serious, it’s not too late to get back in the car and go home. I don’t like the look of those tiny planes,” she said. “Are you sure they’re safe?”
I pulled my backpack and supplies out of the trunk. “I can’t exactly take a passenger jet to a deserted mountain peak.”
“And I’m not sure I trust your safety to some random old man, just because he knew Uncle Ron. How do you know he’s not going to force you to be a drug mule or something?”
A gruff voice startled both of us: “Which one of you am I carrying?”
I admit it: I jumped. Which is a great way to make a first impression, I know. But I never even heard him walk up.
We turned, and my eyes widened.
The man standing there didn’t look like Santa at all. He was tall, hot, and looked angry as hell.
2
Jacob
“Let me call this guy,” I said to my pop. “We’ll just cancel the trip. You’re in no shape to go up today.”
Stubborn as ever, he shook his head, before the coughing started up again. I put another pillow under his head, and handed him his glass of water. When the coughing subsided, he said, “I already took the money. Besides, this boy is a friend of the family, Jacob. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re running a temperature. You ought to let me drive you over to the doctor, instead of sitting here talking about how you’re going to fly today.”
I checked my watch. I wouldn’t have even come by this morning, except that when I spoke to him earlier, I could tell Pop wasn’t feeling well. He’d never say that to me. Pop never admitted weakness. He still chopped his own wood for the stove, still flew at least once a month, still took tourists up to the river when summer came. But he couldn’t hide that cough, and when I got here, he looked like shit, still in bed, his eyes with that watery look that a fever brought on.
After the next bout of coughing, he must have realized he couldn’t argue with me about his plan for the day. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. A rare concession.
“Good,” I said. “You want me to call him, tell him the trip is off?”
“Nah,” said Pop. “You take him up there.”
“What?”
I could list off the objections one by one: I didn’t have time. Marcia had asked me to come over this weekend and help her move furniture. We’d broken up a year ago, but had somehow stayed friends. Her call for help meant more to me than some entitled college boy’s desire to rough it in the woods for a weekend.
More importantly, I needed to stay in town so I could keep an eye on Pop. If this was more serious than a cold, I didn’t want to be out of touch up in the mountains.
“It’ll be a quick trip,” Pop said. “He wants to see one of those old cabins up there. Short hike from the landing strip. Take him up, fly back home. I’ll be better tomorrow, and I’ll pick him up then.”
“Look, give me his number. I’ll tell him we need to postpone.”
Pop coughed and started to swing his legs over the edge of the bed. “Hell, boy, if you can’t be bothered to help me keep a commitment, I’ll get out there and do it myself.”
Shit! That was the last thing I needed, Pop trying to get himself into the air in his condition. It was just like him to try to make this into an issue of character, like watching out for your father’s health was nothing.
“Get those legs back under the blanket,” I said, “and stop trying to paint me into the goddamn corner. Fine. I’ll take your tourist boy up. I’ll let you do the explaining to Marcia.”
He gave me a sidelong look. He’d been curious about why Marcia and I had broken up, since the day I told him. But Pop knows how to mind his business. Keeping quiet and asking no questions, that’s how he used to make his living.
“Why don’t you send her over here, tell her a visit would do me good,” said Pop. “Sure do miss seeing her.”
“I’m sure she misses you too,” I said, “but if she comes over, don’t you try to treat her like a nursemaid. Now give me the where and when on your tourist.”
“Hey,” I said to Marcia when she picked up the phone, “can you do me a favor and look in on the old man?”
“Wait a second,” she said, “how am I supposed to do that, when you’re on your way over here to help me move?”
Ruts in the road shook the truck. “So, about that—”
“Oh, come on Jake! You promised. If I can’t get out this weekend, the landlord’s going to charge me for another month!”
“No, no, it’s okay,” I said. “I have to make a run for Pop, but I’ll be back in plenty of time. Might be tonight, but if I get back too late, I’ll swing by your place tomorrow morning. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry, he says. You know I worry every time either one of you gets in that plane.”
“The air is safer than the road,” I said to her, the truck rattling over a pothole. “Especially here. But Pop has a bug, and he could use a little company I think.”
“He’s not going to ask about us, is he?”
My hands tightened on the wheel. “I hope not. No, he won’t. He knows better than to pry. Besides, I trust you.”
She scoffed. “I’m not talking about trust, Jake. Jesus, I’m not going to tell him your big secret. But I don’t want to be nagged about it either.”
“Pop doesn’t nag.”
“He’s a different man around you, Jake.”
That was true. Quiet, grimly competent, that’s how he was with me. But send a woman into his midst and he became slyly talkative, chatty even.
Still. He knew something had happened between me and Marcia, something huge that I didn’t want to talk about. He knew better than to ask her.
Right?
Of course he did.
I thought about what she’d just said. My big secret. She didn’t have to put it as dramatically as that. But then, maybe your ex is allowed to be a little dramatic about the thing that broke you up.
The tourist had gotten to the airfield first, I saw. I slid the truck into neutral and rolled into the service entrance, far enough away that he wouldn’t hear me. I wanted to get a look at this guy, the one who was about to ruin my weekend.
At first it was a little confusing, because there were two
of them, a man and a woman. Just your average city folks from the look of them, nice pretty people, like Mama used to say. Pop hadn’t mentioned taking a couple up the mountain.
They weren’t paying any attention to me, stuck in their own conversation, so I was able to get closer without them hearing. That’s when I realized they had to be related. They had the same nose, the same eyes. You’d probably call them cute. He was a little taller than her, with his hair parted on the right, the top carefully mussed. Soft jacket, shirt tucked in. He was pulling a big pack out of the trunk. That was my tourist.
“I’m serious,” said the lady, hand on her hip. “It’s not too late to get back in the car and go home. I don’t like the look of those tiny planes. Are you sure they’re safe?”
She sounded as bad as Marcia. I glanced over at the planes. There was Pop’s Piper Cherokee, in use since before I was born, more reliable than my truck.
Mr. Tourist said something I didn’t catch, and the lady didn’t like it. “I’m not sure I trust your safety to some random old man, just because he knew Uncle Ron. How do you know he’s not going to force you to be a drug mule or something?”
You have got to be kidding me, lady. Do you talk like this about everybody you do business with?
Well, that was my cue, if I was going to get in on this conversation before our family name was completely dragged through the mud. I walked up to them. “Which one of you am I carrying?”
That got ‘em. I was a little amused to see how surprised they were.
I was less amused by the intensity of the look the guy was giving me. I felt…checked out.
I’m not an insecure person. I’m used to getting second glances from people once in a while. Not being vain when I say that, not bragging, just saying it happens sometimes.