Sidecar

by Amy Lane

  “And then?” Casey asked, scratching Nick on the head. Nick, always the loudest, purred and fluffed her long orange fur.

  Joe’s hand came up and stroked the hair away from Casey’s face. “And then us,” he said. “Us. You and me. We can watch movies, we can talk. I’ve got some work on the house we can do together, like moving a phone line up here and other shit. We can make love. I’m sure the dogs will suck up some of your time. But we yelled at each other and then you left. If you’re coming back, I want to make sure it’s going to be for a while.”

  Casey nodded soberly. Yes. Forever.

  He wanted to say it then—hell, he was dying to say it for the rest of the weekend and for the next two years. But he didn’t. Joe may have said good-bye to Lynnie, but he hadn’t said good-bye to the idea of children, and Casey hated the thought of Joe ever giving up a dream for him. As much as he would sally forth like forever was what was in his mind, as much as he would hope, he wasn’t going to jinx this moment, this thing he was pretty sure they had, and tell Joe that he’d never be a father because Casey wasn’t going to budge.

  “You’re going to have a hard time getting rid of me” was what he did say, and he said it lightly, and he said it to make Joe smile, because he didn’t want to think of a time or a place where he might ever have to leave this place again. This was his home, and Joe had made it his home, and Joe might have been the one complaining about being old, but Casey was starting to think that he was too old in his heart to ever want to give up home again.

  THE funeral had been on Thursday, and both of them had called in until Monday, so they really did have three days together.

  Three easy days where nothing and everything happened. Three days where they fell asleep after having mind-blowing, achingly tender sex and woke up naked, tangled in each other’s arms. Three days where their time in between was spent working on the property or watching movies that Joe hadn’t wanted to see without Casey and Casey hadn’t been able to watch without a VCR.

  Their conversation wasn’t always profound—but then, it hadn’t been when Casey was living there, either. It was ordinary, just like Joe, which was why every minute of it felt perfect and more perfect.

  On Saturday morning, the brand-new phone next to the bed rang, and Casey was closest to it. He rolled over reluctantly and got it on the third ring, giving a happy grunt when Joe followed him and grabbed him around the waist, pulling his body back to the warm center of the bed. (They were on their third set of sheets by Saturday morning. This set was olive green. Casey liked it very much, but he wanted to put some navy trim on it.)

  “’Llo,” he murmured, and he was actually relieved when he recognized the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Casey? I’m sorry, honey, did I wake you?”

  “No worries,” Casey mumbled, thinking that was always the stupidest question on the planet. Of course someone woke you if you sounded mostly asleep.

  “Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t even know you were staying back with Joe. Good. I think he missed you.”

  Casey blinked hard. “Yeah, I’m back for a couple of nights. Maybe longer at the end of the semester. How are you, Mrs. Daniels?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Just haven’t talked to Joe for a while. Wanted to know if he’s finalized his Christmas plans.”

  Casey yawned. “I dunno.” They hadn’t talked about that yet. “Here, why don’t you ask him?” Casey rolled over a little. “Joe,” he muttered, “it’s your mom.”

  He lay back down then, thinking he could probably fall asleep for another hour or so. They’d worked hard, clearing the foundation for the little mother-in-law cottage Joe was planning behind the chicken coop, and then they’d fucked solidly into the deep a.m. Casey figured they’d earned a nice lie-in this morning, as soon as Joe hung up the phone.

  “Hey, Mom,” Joe said sleepily. “Yeah, Casey’s here. No, we’re in bed, why do you ask?”

  Casey’s eyes shot open and his heart started pounding wonky in his ribs. He rolled over abruptly and saw Joe blinking, like he was maybe just now realizing what he’d said.

  “Yeah, Mom,” Joe said, catching Casey’s eyes and grimacing. “Yeah, together.” He pressed his lips together. “Because sometimes I swing that way.” There was another pause, and Casey winced, because the squawking on the other end of the phone did not sound happy. “Yeah. I know he’s not just a ‘swing’, Mom. Why do you think he moved out?”

  Joe actually sat up in bed and clutched the covers to his chest like a virgin girl. “No, not because I wanted it and he didn’t!”

  Casey sat up in outrage and grabbed the phone before Joe could even protest again. “Mrs. Daniels? Yeah?”

  “Casey?” Oh God, she was obviously upset. “Casey, you and Joe—”

  “I’ve loved him since I’ve known him, Mrs. Daniels. He just finally stopped fighting.”

  There was an absolute silence on the phone, and Casey felt like every pore of his body was breaking out in a sweat. “Mrs. Daniels?” he said hesitantly, and Joe shook his head and rolled his eyes, grabbing the phone back with a muttered “Give me that!”

  “Mom?” he said, pulling his hair out of his face with one hand and shaking it down his back. “Mom? You, uhm….”

  Finally, a quiet question. “Yeah, Mom. I know. I know what this means. Yeah, I’ll ask him. Bye.”

  Joe handed the phone to Casey, who put it in the cradle without a word. Then Joe lay back down on his side and gestured imperiously for Casey to scoot in back against him, and Casey did. There was no question here who got to be the little spoon—Casey wasn’t going to argue. When he was tucked securely against Joe’s naked body, clutching Joe’s hand to his chest, he finally got up the courage to say something. “So?”

  “So what?”

  “What does it mean? That I’m here?”

  “Well, Casey, I think it means we’re gay.”

  Casey grunted and sat up again. “Well I know I am. God, Joe, don’t be dense. You just came out to your mom! What did ‘I know what this means’ actually mean?”

  Joe sighed and sat up next to him. “She gets ‘gay’, Casey. I know we think of California as the Left Coast, but there is actually a fair amount of liberalism back where I’m from. And my parents belong to that branch of Quakers that are usually, by definition, tolerant. Their lives are about kindness and service and seeking the truth of God’s word.” Joe sounded glum. “It got them burned as witches a lot back in the day—all the shit the Puritans said was the work of Satan, the Quakers simply accepted as human.”

  “So…,” Casey said, his heart so high up in his throat it was hard to swallow. “Your mom….”

  “She’s happy for me because she knows I love you. If that love’s changed, well, she knows me. She knows it’s still love.”

  “But what does ‘I know’ mean?”

  Joe sighed. “Are you really going to make me state the obvious?” His brown eyes were mild, and accepting, and sad.

  Casey felt his mouth wobble, which went with the chin quiver, which went with the fact that all of his muscles seemed to be wrapped around his throat. “Say it,” he whispered. “I want to hear you say it so it’s not between us ever again.” Of course it wasn’t that easy. But for the moment, he’d pretend.

  “Fine,” Joe said, resting his face on his knees. His hair fell behind him, and not for the first time since Casey had seen this big, burly biker on a foothill back road, Casey saw past the mustache and the soul patch, saw beyond the hair, and saw a relatively young man, probably as vulnerable in his gentleness as Casey had been in his youth. “It means that you don’t have a functioning uterus, so we’re probably not going to have children.” Yeah. This was not going away, whether they talked it to death right now or not.

  Casey suddenly felt that loss almost as keenly as Joe. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his eyes burning with real, sudden, unanticipated pain.

  “That you fell in love with me? That you made it stick until I loved you back the same way
? Don’t be.”

  Casey nodded and wiped his face with the back of his hand, and was reassured when Joe reached out and grabbed it and squeezed. “Okay,” he said, lying badly, “I’m not sorry at all. What are you supposed to ask me?”

  “If you’ll come with me back east for Christmas.”

  Casey scooted over close enough to lean on him as they both sat up in bed, carefully not looking at each other, the blankets in their laps. “You’re going back east for Christmas?”

  Joe shrugged and looked sheepish. “You weren’t going to be here,” he said gruffly. “And my mom could tell I was grieving. She actually just wired me the plane tickets and told me to make sure I had the time off work—that’s what the phone call was about. I didn’t really have a whole lot of choice in the matter.”

  Casey just looked at him. “I have no money,” he said practically, “so it’s all you. Am I going?”

  Joe reached out and smoothed the hair from his face, then cupped his cheek. “Are you?”

  Casey nodded. Yeah. Yeah. No bullshit, no letting Joe pretend (as if Joe would!) that this was something he did in California but not at home. “I want official. I want Mom and Dad and family. I want to meet your brothers and sister and play with their kids. I don’t want a soul on the planet to doubt I’m yours. How’s that?”

  Joe smiled a little. “Yeah. That’ll work.”

  “Good.” Casey took his hand then and held it to his chest and tried to smile, but he couldn’t. It was huge. It was an amazing gift, and he wasn’t going to look it in the mouth. But he wasn’t going to forget this cost, either.

  SUNDAY evening, Casey put on his slacks and dress shirt (which he’d freshened in Joe’s dryer) and a pair of underwear for the first time in three days. Joe put on his jeans and a button-up Hawaiian shirt, and Casey braided Joe’s hair back and made sure his soul patch and mustache were trimmed, feeling intimate and privileged as he did so. They went out to dinner at The Black Angus, and although neither of them were up to the scrutiny of holding hands, Joe kept his knees pressed against Casey’s the whole time.

  They went to see The Last of the Mohicans next, and Casey ogled Hawkeye’s chest, and Joe ogled both leads, and finally, finally, Joe took Casey back to his crappy little dump in Roseville.

  “You’ll ask him?” Joe said as they were parked outside the tiny duplex off Vernon Street, and Casey looked at him, sitting in the November dark.

  “Alvin?”

  “No, some other roommate!” Joe sounded unaccountably tense.

  “About watching the house over Christmas, or about moving in after finals?”

  “Both.”

  Casey looked at him, but Joe was carefully looking outside the truck into the moonlight. “Yeah,” he promised, but something about Joe’s urgency bothered him. He went to say something, ask, find out why, but Joe beat him to it.

  “You know,” Joe said, almost overly casual, “I lived alone in that house for almost a year before you came along. I had a few women there, a few men, parties every now and then—I was fine. I was. I loved the silence and the trees and the feeling of being all by myself. I actually thought of getting a dog of my own but thought that might be too much company, really. I liked it quiet. I liked being by myself.”

  Joe turned to him, and something about the way his hair fell out of his braid and forward into his face made Casey see that vulnerable mouth, those even cheekbones, and remember that Joe had only been twenty-seven when he’d picked Casey up off the side of the road, and that thirty-three was really not that old.

  “But not anymore?”

  “You left,” Joe said softly, looking down at the steering wheel and picking at the vinyl cover with his fingers. “You left, and I thought I could hear my heartbeat in the house. If it wasn’t for the dogs, I could have heard it echoing in our little valley. I missed you. I missed you so badly it was like I couldn’t breathe. Like my heartbeat just expanded, squashed my lungs, stopped up my chest. I woke up in cold sweats, missing you. After Lynnie moved in, I woke her up four, five times, half-asleep, groggy as hell, asking her where you were, because you weren’t in your room.”

  Casey swallowed hard. All those years of loving him, of caring for him—that didn’t just go away because Casey got pissed off and moved out. Even if Casey and Robbie had stuck, it hadn’t been right, just yanking himself out of Joe’s life.

  “I’m sorry.” He mouthed the words, but his throat was so tight that he wasn’t sure if Joe heard him.

  “I mean, one fight and you just disappeared.” Joe finally faced him, the one thing still unspoken between them making him as bare and as naked as a baby’s powdered bottom. “God, Casey. I’d always thought that at the very first, you and me, we’d at least be friends. I—I want you home with me because if I leave you here, I’m not sure who we are.”

  “Friends,” Casey said, swallowing hard. “We’re friends. If I never go back home, if this weekend just disappears and never happened, I swear, Joe. I swear it. We’ll still be friends.”

  Joe nodded. “Good,” he said, and some of that nakedness disappeared. “Although it’s probably pretty good we’re gonna keep fucking—because that’s sort of what we told my mother, right?”

  Casey nodded. He was still a little blown away by that. A mother who still loved her son, because that was what mothers were supposed to do. He’d seen it work with Dev, but that had been different somehow. That had been Dev; Dev was spoiled in almost every way. Nothing about Joe had ever screamed “entitlement,” but apparently that wasn’t what you needed when you came out of the closet. Apparently all you really needed was someone who just loved you because that was who you were.

  Someone like Joe.

  “Either way,” Casey said into the rainy darkness. Their breath was starting to steam up the windows of the pickup truck, and Casey sighed. His car’s defroster had gone out two weeks ago. Joe was going to start the engine and all this fog was going to disappear. Tomorrow Casey would be driving to school and Alvin would be in constant motion, wiping the moisture off the windows as they went.

  “Either way what?”

  That pause had gone on a little long.

  “Either way—friends or lovers. I won’t just bail on you again, Joe. You’ll always know I’m coming back, okay?”

  Joe nodded, and then he looked up and smiled, a sudden heat in his eyes and the fullness of his mouth. “C’mere, kid, and prove it.”

  The words were all bravado, but the kiss? Was all sweetness, all tender touches of skin, gentle, tentative sweeps of tongue. It was a kiss that begged, and that said good-bye for now and not forever, and Casey sighed when Joe pulled back.

  “I work a twelve tomorrow. Are you two going to be home in the evening?” he asked, and Casey shook his head no.

  “I work tomorrow night.”

  “Spaghetti Factory?”

  “Yeah.”

  “’Kay. I’ll be by to switch keys with you. I have Tuesday off, and I’m going to work on your car.”

  Casey flushed. “I don’t need you to fix my—”

  “Casey, what do I do for a living?”

  Trick question? “You’re a nurse.”

  “Who do I see every day?”

  “Are you still working in the NICU?”

  “Sometimes. But sometimes I pick up shifts in the ER. Would you like to know who I see?”

  Okay, so he knew where this had been going in the first place. “Crash victims,” he sighed. “Yeah, Joe. Go ahead and fix my car. Alvin will be thrilled.”

  Joe pulled Casey close again and gave him a kiss on the cheek, a sweet, intimate gesture between two people who would see each other again. Casey turned to him and kissed him on the lips quickly and then wiggled out of the car before they ended up having sex on the first date. “Joe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you. Drive safe.”

  “I love you too. You too.”

  Joe waited until Casey got to the foyer, and then roared off into the night, an
d Casey opened the door to their duplex without any ceremony at all.

  “Hey, Alvin!” he cried, waiting for Alvin’s muffled “Yeah?” from his room. Casey stayed outside and talked through the door. It was best not to go into Alvin’s room without a lengthy introduction. They had no television, no computer, and very few books. Alvin had one diversion, and he was apparently going for some sort of world record in it, and although he was hung like a hippo, Casey didn’t want to see it. Unfortunately, that ship had sailed. At least three times. “Alvin, how do you feel about living rent-free in Foresthill?”

  Alvin’s voice was strained and breathless. “Will there be free cable?”

  “Yeah—all the Skinemax you can ask for.”

  There was a grunt and a faint groan, and when Alvin spoke through the door next, he was panting like a sprinter at the line. “Sounds… great! How’re we getting to school?”

  Casey smiled a little. “Give Joe time. He’ll take care of that too.”

  And he would. Joe didn’t talk about God a lot, but Casey was pretty sure he was out there, or Casey would never have met Joe.

  I Still Haven’t Found

  What I’m Looking For

  ~Joe

  THE look on Casey’s face as the plane circled La Guardia was worth the cost of the plane ticket alone.

  “Joe, look! That’s New York! That’s New York City!”

  “Yeah, Casey, I know. It’s been there for a while.”

  Joe looked over Casey’s shoulder and tried not to shudder. Everyone knew that skyline. His parents had taken them into the city a lot when he’d been a kid—Statue of Liberty, with her close little double helix stairwell? Yeah, Joe had done that. Top of the Empire State Building? Joe had done that too. He’d stood at the base of the Twin Towers and looked breathlessly up, and, the summer he was thirteen, his mom had taken him into town to see a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. He’d come away with a greater appreciation of rock and roll but had still quietly refused to participate in the Sunday meetings.