“It would be my pleasure, sport. Ready to hit it?”
The boys closed up the house and turned off the lights. Hand in hand they walked to Bobby’s boyhood room – one that was now going to be ‘theirs’ on their frequent return trips. They decided to postpone any more sex until they got home.
Monday, Labor Day, was a bittersweet day for Bobby. He hated to leave his family already, but he wanted to get back to his life in Nashville with Grant – even though it meant going back to his boring bank job the next morning.
Grant stayed in bed a while and let Bobby and Kenny have one last shower together. Of course, he worked in a pee trip while they were in there and once again marveled at how much the two younger Rushton brothers looked so much alike – head to toe. He waited until they were done and took his own shower privately.
After breakfast, Bobby again helped Max take a shower and helped him get dressed. The brothers and Grant took a stroll around the neighborhood, and Max watched the others shoot a few baskets at the basketball hoop in the driveway – a staple of most Indiana homes, or so it seemed to Grant. Max got off a few shots from his wheelchair, playing “horse” with the others.
After yet another mid-day meal from the hard-working Barbara – a holiday picnic of sorts – Bobby and Grant decided they’d better hit the road for home, allowing extra time because of the holiday traffic. Barbara, of course, saw to it that they took enough food and beverages with them to feed a small army for a couple of days.
Al nabbed a neighbor to come over for a few minutes to take a few more family photos so that Grant could be in them, too. Grant was humbled that they wanted him in front of the camera rather than behind it. Already he felt a part of this amazing family.
Finally, it came time for the good-byes – always the hardest part. But Bobby and Grant assured them that they would be back in a few weeks, ready to help out in any way they could.
No one could have known then that they would be back even sooner.
CHAPTER 17
Grant and Bobby’s drive back to Nashville was uneventful. They talked about their weekend with Bobby’s family and how much they had enjoyed being there. Bobby’s enthusiasm for his boyhood home and his family was infectious, and Grant found himself smiling as he listened and realized how much they all really mattered to his young lover.
The only problem was that Grant was feeling more envious than ever. He hadn’t seen his parents in Frankfort in several months, and they hadn’t even talked on the phone for a month or so. They knew he was gay, but they hadn’t said much about that since Grant told them five years before, shortly after he had met Marcus. They didn’t say much then and never inquired later on as to how things were going.
They had never met Marcus – all they knew of him was that their son had a strange relationship with an older man who was seldom around. Grant would go to visit them occasionally but never stayed long. His parents worked long hours, and their whole lives revolved around their careers and their travel once or twice a year to professional meetings.
Dinners with his parents were almost formal affairs. They usually ate out at nice places, but even if they ate at home they set the table with fine china and crystal stemware. A cookout or a picnic never occurred at the Collins home, and the only time a pizza was ordered was when they were too tired to go out or cook. Even then, the pizza was served on china with knives and forks – never eaten by hand out of the box. It was almost ludicrous.
In short, the Collins were decent, hard-working people, but they didn’t really know how to relax, have fun, or enjoy life. If it hadn’t been for his four years in a fraternity house at UK, Grant might have turned out the same way. But he rebelled – in innocuous ways – and found his way to a normal, healthy adulthood. He wished he could do something to make his parents happier, but he didn’t have a clue as to how to go about it.
How he would ever be able to make Bobby feel as comfortable around the Collins’ home as Grant felt around the Rushtons’ was beyond his imagination. He might not even try if Bobby didn’t push for it, but knowing Bobby he knew that he probably would eventually. In the meantime, Grant decided he would put that on the back burner and enjoy getting to know – and become a part of – Bobby’s close family.
It was back to work for Bobby on the Tuesday after their return to Nashville. Grant promised to work on his job applications at home, but Bobby found his boyfriend napping when he came home for lunch. He knew that the three-day trip to Evansville had been exhausting in many ways for Grant, and Bobby let him sleep while he fixed himself a sandwich and put his feet up for a few minutes. Before long, he had nodded off, too, barely waking again to return to work on time. The bank was a stickler for employee punctuality, and in the current economy Bobby couldn’t afford to jeopardize his job – as menial as it was. But that didn’t stop him from thinking about alternatives.
Something bigger than job security and a steady paycheck broadsided him a little more than a week later, when he got an unexpected call from Max at work. It was late on a Thursday morning.
“Bobby, I’m sorry to bother you at work, but I think you’d better come back home.”
“What’s up, Max?” Bobby said worriedly.
“Dad is in the hospital. He had a heart attack at work first thing this morning. It’s a bad one, Bobby. He has to have open heart surgery right away.”
“Oh, my god!”
“He’s not going to be able to work for a couple of months, it looks like, and we all need to put our heads together about how to keep the business going and keep a roof over our heads here. Can you and Grant help?”
“Of course, Max. I was about to go home for lunch. We’ll either come back up tonight or in the morning, after I have a chance to talk this over with Grant and my boss. Give everyone my love, especially Mom and Dad of course, and call me back if anything changes.”
“I will, bro, but he’s in good hands. The doctors expect a full recovery.”
“I sure hope so. What would we do without him?”
“I wouldn’t even want to think about it.”
Bobby rushed home to tell the news to Grant, who had just put a hot lunch on the table for them. Bobby was anguished to think that this had happened to the man who was his rock growing up – a dad who was seldom down with even a cold, working sometimes seven days a week in his business and still finding time to pay attention to his wife, his sons, and his home. To think he was laid up in a hospital now was unimaginable.
Grant knew something was wrong as soon as he saw Bobby’s face and immediately asked him about it.
“Dad’s had a heart attack – I have to go back there right away. He’s in open heart surgery right now.”
“Wow, I’m so sorry, Bobby, but you’re not going alone. I can have us packed up in a couple of hours.”
“You’ll have to pack a lot – he’s going to be laid up for a long time, Max tells me, and he thinks we’ll all need to pitch in to keep dad’s business going. We’ll have to forward our mail to Evansville, stop the newspaper, suspend the cable…oh, my god – so much to think about. And what do I tell the bank?”
“Tell ’em the truth – that you need an extended leave of absence. If they can’t go along with that, then quit. You’ll find another job when this blows over.”
“But we’re both going to be unemployed – and no one else in the house is bringing in money except Dad.”
“I think all five of us are going to be working just to run your dad’s business for him – we’ll just have to figure out an action plan and a cash flow plan. We’ll talk about it on the way up there. Sit down and eat something, and then go back and tell the bank manager what you have to do. We’ll make it work somehow.”
“Thanks for understanding, sweetie. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Don’t try,” Grant said with a smile.
After lunch, Bobby returned to the bank while Grant packed what would be needed for an extended stay in Evansville and took care of
other logistical matters. They decided they would leave Grant’s car in Nashville for now and just take Bobby’s. He gave the perishable food in the refrigerator to Doris and asked her to call him on his cell phone if she noticed anything peculiar about his apartment or his car. He knew she would.
Bobby sat down with the bank manager and explained his situation. The man was not very happy about losing Bobby, even though he tried to be sympathetic to his plight. He was getting a lot of work out of the young man for a paltry salary, and he knew it. He did agree to give Bobby a one-month leave of absence – without pay of course – but he expected him to spend the rest of the afternoon there tying up loose ends. His heart wasn’t in it, but Bobby agreed to it.
Once again, the pair left town by 6 p.m. and arrived in Evansville around 9 p.m., stopping only briefly for a bite to eat. When they got to the Rushton home, Barbara and Kenny had just returned from the hospital, and of course Max was at home. They were all glad to see Bobby and Grant, but Barbara looked more tired and stressed than Bobby had ever seen.
“How’s Dad doing?” he asked, as soon as the welcome-back hugs were over.
“He’s doing okay, I think,” Barbara said, still clearly anguished over the unexpected heart attack that her husband had suffered. “He’ll be in intensive care until they’re sure he’s stabilized. After that they’ll put him in a regular room. He knows you were on your way back up here, so he’ll be happy to see you in the morning. I’m so sorry you had to come back under these circumstances. How long can you boys stay?”
“I’ve got a 30-day leave of absence from the bank, Mom, and Grant’s willing to stay up here and help, too, for at least a month. How long do you think it will be before Dad will be able to work again?”
“I don’t honestly know, but I’ll try to get an answer out of the doctor tomorrow. I imagine it’ll be at least two months. I just don’t know. It’s going to be hard to keep him resting. He’s a type A, you know, and hates to be idle.”
“Yes, I certainly do know.”
“Have you boys had dinner? I could fix you something.”
“No, we’re fine, Mom. You need to get some sleep – all of us do. We’ll have a family meeting after breakfast and figure out what to do until Dad gets better.”
Bobby and Grant slept fitfully, with Grant holding Bobby much of the night. All they could do, it seemed, was toss and turn and worry about this unexpected change in their lives. They showered together in the morning and dressed for breakfast. Barbara didn’t try to cook anything – she was too worn out from her own tossing and turning all night – so everyone had cereal and fruit with their morning coffee. Kenny bathed Max while Bobby and Grant helped in the kitchen and Barbara called the hospital for an update. Nothing had changed since last night.
At 9 they all sat down in the living room to talk about what to do.
Grant offered to run the business end of the operation, especially concentrating on sending out invoices and collecting past-due accounts so they could have some cash flow. Bobby would go with him and handle calls from customers and assign work to Al’s two-man crew.
Kenny decided he would postpone school for at least one term and learn the ropes from the crewmen on the technical side of the business, doing what he could do without an actual license. Max would stay home and handle advertising and promotional materials for the business and try to generate more of it via his computer and the phone.
Barbara would help out wherever she could, but she would have her hands full running the household while staying with Al at the hospital as much as she could until he could come home.
While Barbara, Kenny, and Bobby went to the hospital to visit Al, Grant called his parents to let them know where he had moved temporarily. They didn’t even know the full extent of his new relationship with Bobby, so he had a lot of explaining to do about why he was living and working in Evansville now. He knew he had a trust fund that his parents had set up for him long ago, but he had never needed to tap into it until now, preferring to leave it invested. They agreed that he should now take monthly withdrawals from it to pay his share of the household expenses in Evansville while still paying rent on his apartment in Nashville and making his car payments.
Al came home a week after the surgery. Bobby and Grant offered to trade bedrooms temporarily so that Al wouldn’t have to climb stairs, but he was able to do so with some assistance. The doctors told him it was good to gradually get some exercise and that stair climbing would be a boon to a quicker recovery. His color wasn’t good at first, but within a few days he looked and felt much better and was eating more.
Though still weak from his ordeal, he tried to gradually do a little more around the house over the next few days and went for very short walks with a family member by his side. Barbara fussed over him constantly to take his meds and eat a healthier diet. It was good to see the worry lines diminishing from her face as she became more confident of his recovery.
A few weeks after surgery, Al was quite a bit better but still wasn’t feeling back up to par. It was about killing him to think that he couldn’t work, but he was impressed and grateful for the way his sons and Grant had taken over the business during his recovery.
He was very proud of how they had all pitched in to keep the house and the business running in his absence, and he told them so – over and over. The boys filled him in daily on how things were going, and he tried hard not to give them too much advice. Al was well known in Evansville, and loyal customers were showing that they wanted his business to remain viable.
Grant was a tiger when it came to getting the invoicing and payment collections up to speed. Al had been behind by several weeks in his invoicing, and he had neither the will nor the time to dun past-due customers. Grant had plenty of both, and in just a month he had generated more revenue for the business than it had enjoyed in some time. Max’s promotional efforts were paying off, too, and the crew was never idle. Bobby kept them on a short leash, and soon they were complaining, good-naturedly, that they were working harder than Al had ever worked them. As long-time employees, they were loyal to Al and sympathetic to his current medical and family situation.
Kenny’s assistance made it somewhat easier and quicker to deal with customer needs, although they could have used two of him. Kenny had already learned a lot by helping the full-time crew, and he was surer than ever that he wanted to do this for a living after he finished school.
Max’s bathing ritual had had to change, along with a lot of other Rushton family routines. He was used to having it done for him early in the morning, but now it had shifted to evenings after dinner, and sometimes as late as bedtime – whenever someone could work it in to their crazy schedules. Kenny and Bobby were taking turns doing all of it, but one Friday evening neither was able to. Kenny was out late on an emergency job, and Bobby went to bed early with a headache, so Grant volunteered. Max had no problem with that, even though he’d never been bathed by anyone but his dad and brothers.
When they were in Max’s bedroom, Grant asked him how it was going to work. He’d never actually witnessed one of Max’s baths, not wanting to embarrass him.
“Well, I alternate between sponge baths in my bed one night and a shower the next night. Tonight’s a shower night if you don’t mind – it takes longer, but I need it,” Max said, removing his shirt. Let me put this thing in park and you start by pulling my pants, socks, and underwear off while I push myself up on the arm rests. You’ve never seen me naked, have you, Grant?”
“Uh, well, no. Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“Better you than Mom, right?” Max replied with a grin.
“I guess so. At least you and I have the same equipment. Do I get undressed, too?”
“That’s the only way I can take a shower. Kenny said he’s seen you naked, so now I guess it’s my turn. Then we can both be embarrassed at the same time.”
“It’s cool with me if you don’t mind,” Grant said, stripping off his clothes. When they were bot
h nude, they just laughed at each other to break the tension. Grant was impressed with the way that Max always made the best of things with good humor.
“So that’s the ‘weapon’ you use on my brother, huh? Is he man enough to take it?”
“You’ve seen what he’s got – he gives as good as he gets.”
“Too much information, Grant,” Max said with a smile. “Wheel me into the bathroom so we can get this over with and get to bed.”
Max told Grant how to get him out of his chair and into the shower and how to spray him down with the shower wand and wash him. By the time Grant had soaped him up good, Grant was starting to get a little uncomfortable with the intimate situation they were in.
“Can you wash yourself down under, pal?”
“Not very well, buddy. You’ll have to do it, if you don’t mind. If I let loose of these grab bars, I’ll be on my ass on the floor and you’ll have a harder time getting me back in my chair. Don’t worry about touching me where the sun doesn’t shine. I’m used to it – someone’s done it for me every day since I was 12. I hated it at first – I mean what bashful kid just coming into puberty wants his dad washing his junk? But I didn’t have any choice, and pretty soon it was no longer a big deal.”
“Yeah, but I’m not your dad – or even your brother.”
“Listen, Grant, as long as you and Bobby are partners, you’re my brother, too. I’m even starting to kind of like you,” Max said, with his characteristic grin.
“Well, thanks, Max. It’s mutual. I think I’m turning into an honorary Rushton now. But not quite – then what I’m doing with Bobby would be incest, wouldn’t it?” Grant replied, with his own grin.
Grant soaped up his hands again and started washing the parts of Max that he’d been avoiding. He was surprised at how much the guy had down there. For someone with underdeveloped legs, he had a sizable dick and balls. But as he washed them, something unexpected was happening. Max got hard – about as hard as he ever got, in fact.
Someone to Bank on Page 15