by Troy Storm
The kid glowed. “I couldn't believe it. I just could not believe it. Awesome. Fucking awesome. We took one of those donkey ride caravans or whatever they call it to the bottom. Hell on your butt.” He laughed. “But most of the folk were pretty well padded, anyway, so I guess it was okay for them. I thought it was just...awesome. The colors, man! Who woulda guessed dirt and rock could be so…awesome.”
“And so friggin’ scary,” Clay continued, excitedly. “Practically straight down in some places. But those little pack animals packing us, man, they just dug in their little hooves and stuck like glue. They’d been up and down that trail so many times, they knew every rock and rattlesnake.” He chuckled. “They could barely stay awake while I was hanging on for dear life.
“But, man, when we got to the bottom…and looked up. Past all those, like, layers of different colors of rock, all those years, eons, to work its way down to where we were was the river. That cold, rushing water that did it all. And still does it. Man…it’s something else.”
Matt swung his arms down and pulled his legs up. He clasped his knees. “I had a niece who hiked through it with some college buddies. Changed her life.”
“Never went on another hike again, huh?” Clay chuckled. “It’s beautiful, but you’re sharing all that beauty with rattlesnakes and scorpions. I’m too much of a city dude for that. You've got brothers or sisters?”
“Both. Older. They dragged me over the coals too. Very supportive.”
Clay went back to studying the magnificence in front of them. “You're pretty much getting crapped on all over town now, huh?”
Matt let out an exasperated sigh. “Seems you can go from being one of the town's leading respected citizens to one of its most gossiped about in a matter of days. Stupid me. I thought the guys around town would be slapping me on the back and the ladies would continue to line up. Stupid me.”
“Yeah. Stupid you. Do you really give a shit?” Clay pitched a rock off the mountain ledge and watched it sail off into the blue sky, then gracefully descend into the forest below. A couple of birds scattered, annoyed.
“I do. They're my friends. Well...were. Now I’m not so sure. And then again, I don't. It's none of their damn business who I screw. Though,” he continued ruefully, “the school board would say I have a totally different opinion when it comes to whom the high school kids screw. But that's different. We're adults. Me and half the female population of CoveHaven,” he noted, dryly. “We're responsible for our own actions.
“Therefore,” Matt’s tone hardened, “we should be left the hell alone to figure out how we want to live our lives and not gossiped and snarked about all over the goddamned town. I even went to see Andy, that kid at the library. Syble Thornton, the town librarian, said Andy could fix anything that had to do with computers. He told me he could shut down the town sites in five minutes flat for me, but it might take a little longer to screw up the instant faces and twits.” Matt laughed. “Whoa. I had to talk him out of it. He was really getting into the whole idea.”
Clay slapped his buddy on the back. “You're surviving. You got tough nuts. I could tell that when you told me not to use daffodil yellow to attract guys. That takes tough nuts. Unless you're queer, of course, which it doesn't seem you are. Darn.”
Matt playfully boxed the young man on his square jaw, grinning. “Queer, I may be. Gay, I'm not, but I may be dealing with a couple of bi-ladies.”
Clay shrugged, stripping off his T-shirt to fold it and slip it beneath his head as he lay back to contemplate the sky-blue heavens scattered with cumulus masses of water vapor. “Girls are supposed to swing whatever way the wind blows. I don't know where that came from. Guys' fantasies, I guess. Seeing two ladies lapping away at each other is supposed to be a turn on.”
Matt nodded sagely. “Well, yeah, I would say so.” He caught his young companion's smirk. “Okay, okay, it is pretty hot. But it's even hotter when I'm in the middle.”
“When you're in the middle? Wow, Mr. B., then all that talk about you bedding half the women in town is true?”
Matt's look drifted over the handsome young man's finely sculpted torso. “You're looking good, Clay. And,” he preened, rubbing his hands up under his loose hiking shirt and firmly over his own hardening chest and ab muscles, “so am I, thanks to your browbeating. Half the women in town are very pleased with the results of your browbeating. Though a much smaller number actually get a hands-on inspection. No matter what the gossip is.”
Clay chortled and reached over to punch Matt lightly in his crotch. “Ha! Yeah, but it's more what's below your belt than above it that's got all the old jealous queens in a quiver. Is that why you talked me into coming along for a Dude's Hang-out today? And where did you dig that phrase up?”
Matt stood, shaking his bare legs to restore the circulation and brushing off the seat of his hiking shorts. He dug a pump bottle of bug spray from his backpack and began re-applying it. “What do you think, Clay? Am I messing up my best friends' lives because I just like screwing the hell out of them? All this isn't the best thing for their reputations.”
“Well, Ms. Bleached Bombshell Christy—”
“She opted out a couple of weeks ago.”
“No stuff.” The young man pushed himself up onto his elbows. “You mean all this yapping behind your back is just about you and Ms. Dorothy and Ms. Lucy? That's crapola. Those people complaining need to get lives.” He continued. “But, if Christy dropped out, maybe sooner or later either Dorothy or Lucy will too. Then you'll be down to your town-approved allotted love life.”
“I don't want either one of them to drop out,” Matt quietly admonished a gathering of clouds that resembled slow motion rampaging buffalo.
“Well of course not. We all want to get it all. No?”
“I thought maybe you being gay, which is supposed to be a fairly fluid lifestyle, that maybe you might give me a clue as to how I might be able to hang onto both of them.”
Clay shoved himself up to stand, brushing off his butt. “You mean a menage a trois? Jeez, Matt. That's cool. Is that what you guys are doing now? That's awesome. Hell, I can't even keep one regular dude in my bed.”
“Yeah, but that's your choice, you told me. And, no, of course that's not what we're doing now,” he said indignantly. “They wouldn't put up with that. They're still expecting something to happen that will make me pick one or the other. They're still expecting one of them to win that stupid bet or whatever it is they’ve got going between them.”
“Ever thought about saying, 'Hey, ladies, you all want to have one big happy screw? Together. Just the three of us.' Except much more diplomatically, of course. You know, like telling Ms. Brunhilde she should shove that Olds off a cliff.”
“Brunnie loves that Olds and I do too. And besides, it runs like a top. Sometimes you can't tell how well a car runs by the way it looks.” He thought of Lucy. Classy. But nobody expected her to run like the latest model whatever. She would be too inexperienced, they’d think. He'd bet most of the people who knew her would be stunned at the way she was shaping up in bed, and half the time he and Lucy weren't even in bed when they did it. He had wanted to mention how adventurous Lucy had been getting to Dot, but somehow, for once in his life, that didn't seem smart. He kept his mouth shut. “If I could think of a diplomatic way to suggest what I want to suggest,” he laid it out, gathering their discarded fast food wrappings, “I would have, musclehead.”
Clay scooped up the empty beer bottles. He seemed thoughtful. “Which is what, exactly? What do you want to suggest?”
Matt thought hard. “Uh...I thought I made it clear.”
“You said you weren't in a threesome and yet you want to keep both ladies. You've got them both now. What do you want to have differently? A cheating clone?”
“Uh...”
The triumphant masseur pointed a finger. “Daffodil.” Quirking a full lip, he patted Matt on the cheek, then pinched it, then charged from the lookout outcropping back down the short path int
o the picnic area to dump their garbage.
“What the hell does that mean?” Matt yelled, spreading his hands in frustration.
“It's like that paint job of mine,” Clay said, swinging his T-shirt overhead at having thought of so clever an analogy. “I was thinking one thing about the color—make it as bright and chic as possible. My so-called potential customers were thinking another, as Mr. Smart Butt here pointed out—make it as familiar as possible. So they could work up to the idea of my massages slowly.” He tapped his forehead in a follow-my-thinking gesture. “The three of you have been doing it separately, right? Now you just want to move up to doing it together, right? C'mon, let's take this trail.” He guided Matt. “The website says it's the best for sunsets.”
“Aw, man, it's higher,” Matt groused. “My poor thighs.”
“Yeah,” the young man grinned. “Those thighs are getting a workout these days.”
Matt chuckled, trudging behind, huffing up the trail. “I assume the paint thing will eventually make sense?”
“You're daffodil. The girls are mahogany.”
Matt leaned against a tree. The trail was indeed steeper and more rugged than the path to the boulder outlook.
“Meaning I'm getting too ahead of the game—daffodil—by wanting them both, when I should try letting them work up to the idea themselves—mahogany?”
For his efforts, he received a thumbs up from a beaming Clay.
“Now you owe me one.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know that cute dude in your shop?”
“All the dudes in my shop are cute. That's all I hire. They get fat and slobby later.”
“Waco. The lanky Texas drink of water. Talk him into getting a massage.”
“Clay, he's straight.”
“Yeah? So are you.”
Matt was dragging in deep breaths, clawing at the enveloping trees for a handhold, hoping to God they were almost there.
“You let me massage your dick,” Clay reminded him.
Suddenly, they came out on the landing, higher on the mountain, facing in a slightly different direction. He had never been to the spot before. The view was breathtaking. Space. Air. Miles of forests and farm-filled valleys backed by receding mountains melding into the late-afternoon sky. Totally, awesomely breathtaking.
“That was different,” he managed to answer Clay, taking off his shirt and letting the cool late-afternoon air wash over his heated torso. “Your hands on my…me…we worked up to that slowly.”
“I'll make it different with Waco,” Clay grinned. “I can be patient.”
“You'll get smashed, man.” Matt was truly concerned for his friend.
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“A boyfriend.”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Buddy knows all and tells me all.”
“Then nobody'll get hurt but me. Waco will get some great sex and be happy and I'll get my heart broken because he'll only want me for my sexual expertise.”
“Clay, I don't want you to get hurt.”
“Well, gee whiz, big daddy, that's fucking sweet.” He slipped his muscular frame behind Matt and hugged him close as they stared at the sun-streaked landscape, slowing melting into burnt golds and grayed blues. “Not too many people pay that much attention to my lousy choices. Thanks for caring.” He kissed Matt on the cheek.
“Stop that, you pervert. What would the town biddies think?”
“Do we care? Some of us are just more demonstrative than others.” He took Matt's earlobe between his soft lips and gently nibbled with his perfectly whitened teeth.
It was nice, Matt had to admit. Clay's mouth on his ear was nice. As was his finely sculpted muscles pressed comfortingly against Matt's naked back. But he preferred Dorothy...and Lucy. No offence to Clay. The soft golden mountains in front of him were as awesome as their golden breasts and soft hips. All miracles of nature. The streaks of light grew longer. The blue-gray shadows deepened, elongated, and fused together. The gold slowly, slowly morphed into dusty russet.
“Have you got a boner? Are you shoving a hard dick against my ass?”
“Sorry. I was thinking about Waco.” Clay started to pull away.
Matt tugged him back, holding the strong, muscular arms firmly around him.
“Oh, so you like this man cuddling stuff, huh?” the young man asked, slyly.
“I'm starting to get chilly. You're warm.”
“I'm hot.”
“So I've been told.”
“You got it figured out? How you’re going to handle the ladies?”
“I'm working on it. You can go back to that ear thing, but don't get any ideas. I know where your nuts are.”
“Now who's being a pervert?”
“A menage, huh?”
“A trois.”
“Okay, then you suggest it to 'em, smart assed, French talking, city massage dude.” Maybe it was the sunset, maybe it was his groin, maybe it was the thought of getting everything he wanted, maybe it was the comfort of having a singularly good buddy’s powerfully protective arms around him to know that if he screwed up royally at least he’d have someone to cushion the shock when he fell flat on his ass.
“No, that'll be your job. To ask nicely.”
The sun set. The sky erupted in rays of afterglow and underlit clouds of pink and mauve and 24-karat gold. Matt felt an ineffable surge of hope. His chest swelled.
“I'll get right on it. Thank you, Dr. Ruth.”
“Dr. Who?”
Matt chortled, breaking free. “Put it in a search box, you uneducated whippersnapper.” He charged down the mountain trail, swinging happily from one precarious handhold to the next.
“Search box!”
* * * *
“No!” Dorothy wailed, instantly breaking into choking tears. “No! No!”
Matt recoiled as shocked as she was. They were happily entwined on his bed. He was still in her, more or less. How on earth could she have gone from cozy post-coital completely happy to instant hysteria frantic when he hadn’t even finished his little prepared speech?
He held her tight. Pressing his waning self deep as she sobbed into his shoulder.
“Everything was so perfect,” she wailed. “How could you? Why couldn’t we just keep going the way we were?” Angrily, she pulled back to pound on his chest. “Lucy! Lucy! Lucy! Damn her!” Racking sobs overtook her anger. She collapsed into him again.
He held her tighter. Unsure of what to do. At least by holding tight he wouldn’t let her fly apart. He wouldn’t fly apart.
“No, that’s not true,” she gasped, appalled at her outburst. “I love Lucy. Forgive me, Lucy.” Her tone hardened. “I knew you’d pick her. She’s perfect for you. I’d drive you crazy. You bastard.” She slugged him again. Then re-clamped herself around him desperately.
Deep inside her, he was getting hard again.
“Uh…sweetie? I didn’t pick Lucy. I just said we needed to talk about her.”
“What do you mean you didn’t pick her? You pick me? That’s ridiculous. We’d kill each other.” She snuffled grotesquely. Matt began to get her drift. “Then why the hell bring up Lucy when we’re in the middle of making love?” Dorothy demanded. “That’s pretty lame. Have a little respect, for God’s sake.”
The doorbell rang.
“Uh…that’s maybe Lucy.”
“Maybe? You told her to come here? Now?”
“Well, it’s not exactly like you two don’t know what our schedules are. You pretty much laid them out for me.” He was desperately trying to remain serious. She was definitely serious.
The doorbell rang again. Twice.
Dorothy began to wiggle out of his arms.
“No, let’s meet her like this. This is what it’s all about anyway.”
“What? Let her find us here on the bed? You’re sick.”
Hey, he flustered her. So far, so good. Grabbing Dorothy’s legs, he
pulled them around his hips, locked his arms around her back and slid them both off the bed.
“Aaagh, what are you doing?” She was startled, annoyed…and beginning to get into it.
He lurched the both of them upright, pulling her tightly to him, and lumbered into the living room. “Damn, woman, you are a fulsome lass.”
Dot began to giggle at his struggle to keep himself inside her, while she herself, legs locked around him and wide-eyed at the prospect of what they were about to present to the poor unsuspecting Lucy, struggled to hang on as Matt waddled to the door, which she had to swing wide since his hands were occupied holding up her bottom.
“Ohmigod!”
Thank God it was Lucy.
The young woman dashed inside, shutting the door quickly behind her.
“Are you two…what?...are you drunk? Or just being silly?”
“Just disorderly. And being silly,” Dorothy grinned as Matt swung her around so she could bend down to kiss Lucy on the cheek. She stared at her friend for a moment. Suddenly her face contorted and she buried her sobs against Matt’s shoulder.
“Dorothy! What’s the matter? Matt, have you…?”
“My back’s killing me,” the carrier of the sobbing burden complained, backing into the sofa and slowly sitting. “Oh, God yes, that’s better. Somehow that looked a lot more fun on the computer than it is in real life. I have got to get to the gym more often.”
“Is there some kind of problem?” the young woman asked, averting her eyes. “Uh…do you guys have to stay like that? Like…stuck together? I mean, am I interrupting something?”
Matt began to laugh. Heartily. Dislodging the sniffling Dorothy from his chest. “Take off your clothes, Lucy, and come sit with us. We three need to have a little talk and nobody should have an advantage.”