by Ariel Tachna
He’d thought Chris was okay with the way things stood in their relationship. Chris had never said anything to suggest he wanted anything more from Jesse than exactly what they had. Seth’s words, though, implied differently.
They implied Chris wanted a relationship, a family, the white picket fence and all the trimmings. The thought clawed at Jesse’s brain, making him crazy with panic. That wasn’t his life, his future. He couldn’t have that. He didn’t want that. He never had.
“So what are we going to do for Chris’s birthday?” Seth asked, interrupting Jesse’s thoughts. “If you won’t dance with him now, we may as well start planning the next party.”
“When is his birthday?” Jesse asked, ashamed to admit he didn’t know.
“End of May,” Seth replied.
“I won’t still be here then,” Jesse said automatically. “The season ends before that.”
“You mean you aren’t staying?” Seth asked. “But I thought….”
He ran away before Jesse could say anything else.
“Bloody hell,” Jesse muttered, going after him, but Seth had disappeared outside before Jesse could see where he went. “Fuck.”
“Is there a problem?” Macklin asked from the doorway.
“No… yes… I don’t know… I….” The crazy roil of his thoughts intensified as he struggled with his need to find Seth and make things right and the warring need to run away while he still could. He could feel responsibilities closing in around him like a net, ready to hold him prisoner until they sucked all the life out of him. He took a deep breath and pulled himself together. “I need a week off. I can’t think here. Everything’s all messed up in my head, and I can’t get it straightened out.”
“Running away never solved anything,” Macklin said.
“I’m not running away. I just need to figure things out, and if I stay here, I’ll end up making things worse. I can’t do that to Chris and Seth.”
“And leaving will be better?”
“They deserve better than me, Macklin. I’m a no-account drifter with no plans beyond the end of the season. They’re a family. They need someone they can depend on to be a part of that.”
“So be that person.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Jesse said honestly. “It’s not as easy as just making that decision.”
“Actually, I think it is,” Macklin said. “It wasn’t that long ago I was standing right where you are, feeling just as lost and confused. You just have to decide what you want.”
“I only signed on for the season.”
“Contracts can be renegotiated.”
Jesse shook his head. “I just need to think.”
“Be back in a week,” Macklin said, “or you won’t have a job to come back to.”
“Thank you,” Jesse said, bolting for the bunkhouse. He grabbed a bag, dumping things into it haphazardly, and dug out his keys. He hadn’t driven his car since he got to the station, preferring to use the station’s utes out on the rough roads and in the paddocks, but he couldn’t drive off in one of those. Tossing his bag in the boot, he headed toward Taylor Peak and Boorowa.
“HAVE YOU seen Jesse?”
Chris’s words interrupted Macklin’s dour thoughts. He’d wanted to shake the younger jackaroo and tell him he was making a mistake, running away like this, but some lessons had to be learned the hard way.
“Yes,” Macklin said, staring at the taillights disappearing out of the valley. “He left.”
“What? Where is he going?”
“He didn’t say,” Macklin replied, wishing he had a better answer for Chris. He should have told Jesse to suck it up and be a man, but it was too late for that now.
“Is he coming back?”
“We’ll see in a week,” Macklin said. “I don’t know what happened tonight to set him off, but from what little he said, I think he suddenly saw a future he never knew he wanted staring him in the face and got scared. If you’ll take a little advice from someone who’s been where he is, give him some time to figure things out, but not too much time. Sometimes a swift kick in the pants is a good thing too.”
“Kind of hard to do when I don’t know where he’s going.”
“Then we’ll have to hope he comes back,” Macklin said, “or that you can figure out where he’d run to if he needed to get lost in a crowd for a while.”
“I… I ought to say fuck him and forget about him,” Chris said, his voice breaking on the words.
“You can do that,” Macklin agreed. “Nobody would blame you if you did, least of all Jesse, since he already thinks he’s a ‘no-account drifter’ to use his words. You can write him off as exactly that, chalk up whatever happened between you to experience, and move on. Relationships end, people learn from them, and life goes on.”
“He’s not no-account,” Chris protested.
“I didn’t say he was,” Macklin replied, smiling a little at Chris’s defense of Jesse even in the face of Jesse’s desertion. “I said he thinks he is, and that’s why he wouldn’t try to stop you if you decided to forget about him.”
“Is that what you think I should do?”
Bloody hell, Chris was so young. Macklin wanted to pat him on the head and send him to bed, but Chris was asking for his help.
“I don’t know what you should do,” Macklin said honestly. “I don’t know what’s happened between you, what promises you made or didn’t make to each other. I don’t know what you want. I can guess what Jesse thinks he wants, but I don’t think he really knows what he wants either right this second. He said he needed to think. My advice is for you to do the same. While he’s gone, figure out what you want from him if he comes back. Ideally, but also what you can live with if you can’t have your ideal. And if he does come back, you have to talk to him about what you figured out or all your thinking won’t do either of you any good.”
Chris nodded slowly.
“Chris,” Macklin said as Chris started to walk away, “whatever you decide, whatever happens with Jesse, you and Seth have a home here for as long as you want it. If that includes Jesse, that’s fine, but you’ve earned your place on the station and so has Seth.”
The muffled sound that reached Macklin’s ears might have been a sob, but Chris bolted before Macklin could figure out how to determine if it was and what to do about it.
“Are you all right?”
Macklin sighed as he turned to pull Caine against his side. “It’s a good thing we called off that stupid bet or you’d never get to top.”
Caine frowned. “Trouble in paradise?”
“Jesse left, and I’m pretty sure Chris is hiding in his house crying, and I don’t know what to do about either of those things.”
“I guess we take your advice all along and let them find their own way, unless they ask for help, of course.”
CHRIS STUMBLED into his room, blinded by the tears he was fighting not to shed. He took one look at the rumpled sheets of his bed and lost the battle.
Jesse had slept with him last night. Not fucked him and then snuck back to the bunkhouse like usual. Just held him through the night like he didn’t ever mean to let Chris go. They hadn’t had sex, so mercifully his sheets didn’t smell of it, but he’d let himself start dreaming when he woke up this morning with Jesse’s arms around him.
Everything had seemed fine between them all day. They hadn’t spent a lot of time together. Jesse had ridden out to the north paddock with Ian and Kyle while Chris worked with Neil and a couple of others closer to home, but Jesse had been all smiles at breakfast and again at dinner as they laughed and joked with Seth. Nothing in any of those interactions had implied Jesse was at all concerned about anything between them.
Had it been seeing Caine and Macklin dance? Chris had cheered along with everyone else when Caine’s mother pushed them together. If Caine and Macklin chose to be more open, it could only make things easier for Jesse and Chris if they decided to stay on the station. He hadn’t noticed Jesse’s reaction at all, thoug
h, so he had no idea if it had bothered Jesse for some unknown reason.
It didn’t really matter what had set Jesse off. He had left without an explanation.
“Fuck him,” Chris said, righteous anger welling up inside him. “If that’s the way he’s going to be, I don’t need him anyway. I’ve got better things to do than waste my time on someone who runs away at the slightest sign of a problem.”
“Chris?”
The sound of Seth’s voice, nearly as distraught as Chris imagined his own must be, derailed the train of Chris’s thoughts. “Just a minute,” he called to Seth as he slipped into the bathroom to wash his face and recover his composure. He didn’t expect it to keep Seth from noticing, but it might give him a little more self-control when his brother asked him what was wrong.
“Hey,” Chris said when he came into the living room a few minutes later. He took another deep breath, determined to keep his voice level and his emotions under control while he talked to Seth. “What’s up?”
“I fucked up,” Seth said, looking at Chris with such contrition that Chris knew he’d never manage to be angry at Seth.
“What did you do?”
“I thought you and Jesse were a thing,” Seth said. “I asked him about helping me plan your birthday, and he said he wouldn’t still be here then because the season would be over. I, um, kind of told him you loved him.”
That explained the running away. Chris closed his eyes as he fought the urge to scream at the unfairness of the situation.
“You probably should’ve let me tell him that first,” he said when he thought he could speak evenly.
“How was I supposed to know you hadn’t?” Seth asked. “He’s over here all the time. You’re always kissing and stuff when you think nobody else is around. He slept here last night. That looked like a couple to me.”
“I know,” Chris said with a sigh, “but Jesse didn’t see it the same way, apparently. He left tonight. Macklin gave him a week of vacation.”
“Is he coming back?”
That was the million dollar question.
“I don’t know,” Chris said because he wasn’t about to lie to his brother. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
“What will happen if he doesn’t?” Seth asked.
“We’ll stay on here and keep working,” Chris replied, determined to accept that possibility so he’d be prepared if it happened. “You still have to get your HSC if you want to go train to be a mechanic somewhere, and I have a job to do. Jesse’s decisions don’t change any of that.”
“What if he comes back?” Seth said, his voice small.
“Then it’ll depend on what he has to say,” Chris answered. “I won’t be with someone I can’t depend on.”
“I’m sorry I scared him off.”
Chris pulled his brother into a tight hug. “If he was going to be scared by us, it would have happened eventually. Better we know so we can get over it instead of planning a future with him in it. I’m sorry we messed up your party with our drama.”
Twenty
JESSE STARED at the neck of the bottle of beer he held, the only alcohol he’d been able to find in Boorowa at the time of night he’d arrived. He was lucky anything was still open, even the hotel, but he’d gotten a six-pack and a room, so he was set for the night. Now, three beers in, he’d lapsed into self-pitying misery. He hadn’t signed on for this. He’d signed on for a summer of work and a bit of fun with another jackaroo. He’d gotten both, but apparently he’d gotten more than he realized.
He took another gulp of his beer.
He liked his life as it was. He liked being able to leave a place at the end of the summer and not have to go back if it wasn’t somewhere he felt like returning. He liked the freedom of knowing no one was depending on him beyond his work as a jackaroo. He could handle sheep; he didn’t have a good track record with people.
If he accepted what Seth said, he’d be taking on not just Chris, but Seth as well. He might think about it if only Chris was involved. Chris was an adult, responsible for his own choices the same way Jesse was, but Seth was still a kid, and he’d be affected by both Chris’s and Jesse’s choices.
The devil on his shoulder pointed out he’d already affected Seth by leaving, but he rationalized the choice by arguing that this way he’d only hurt Seth once instead of every time he made a bad choice, as he was sure to do if he stayed.
Of course he’d told Macklin he’d be back in a week, so he’d have to face Chris and Seth eventually, unless he just didn’t come back. He’d lose half his pay that way and the possibility of returning to Lang Downs in the future, not to mention the lack of references when he tried to get a job elsewhere next summer, but it would almost be worth it not to have to see the hurt in their eyes at his desertion.
He could get a job waiting tables or something in Melbourne to make up for the lost income, and he still had his references from other summers. It wouldn’t be ideal, but it would be better than nothing.
Better than hurting Chris even worse than he’d already done.
When had Chris fallen in love with him? When had Seth started seeing them as a family?
Jesse had no idea, and drunk as he was getting as he opened the fourth bottle, he doubted he could figure it out, but the guilt remained even through the haze of alcohol. Had he done something to lead Chris on? Said something to make the other man think Jesse was offering more than they’d originally agreed on?
They’d been very clear early on, talking about how they weren’t Caine and Macklin, how they were just friends with benefits. Chris had repeated that more than once himself, and Jesse hadn’t noticed any doubt or hesitation in his voice as he’d spoken.
Sure, he’d helped Chris out in Yass, but he’d have done that for any friend in need. Granted, he didn’t have any other friends who needed that kind of support, but he wouldn’t have hesitated. Had Chris misread his presence at the hospital? Had he taken it as more of a commitment than Jesse had intended?
Jesse supposed it was possible. Chris had used the word friend when talking with the doctor, but that could have been as much self-preservation as anything else. After all, he’d been bashed in Yass once. Opening up to a stranger about being gay a second time would have seemed incredibly risky, especially since just a group of teens walking down the street was enough to trigger a panic attack for Chris.
They’d shared a hotel room in Boorowa that night, but they hadn’t had a choice. There hadn’t been a third room available, so it was either share or sleep in the car. Jesse had done that a few times. It wasn’t an experience he’d care to repeat if he had a choice. But again, he’d have shared with any of the Lang Downs jackaroos rather than sleep in the car, so surely that wasn’t what had made Chris’s feelings change.
They spent a lot of time working together on the station, but that was Caine or Macklin’s doing, not Jesse’s own. He and Chris made a good team, and he didn’t mind showing Chris the ropes, so assigning them to work together was a logical choice, and Jesse hadn’t complained since it meant they could sneak in the occasional kiss (or blow job if Chris had his way), but Jesse hadn’t taken that to be anything more than Chris having the typical horniness of a guy in his early twenties. Had Chris seen it as more? As a sign of a commitment Jesse hadn’t intended to make?
God, he hoped not.
He could deal with a lot of things, but leading Chris on, however unintentionally, would eat at him. He had always prided himself on being upfront about his intentions. If he’d somehow said something or done something to suggest he wanted more, he’d hate himself even more than he already did.
He gulped down his beer. He wanted to stop thinking so he could sleep, but his mind wouldn’t shut down. He took another deep gulp, hoping he could lose himself in the oblivion of drunkenness if he couldn’t lose himself in sleep.
“YOU SHOULD know something about Aussie stockmen.”
The words startled Chris so much he nearly dropped the pitchfork he’d been pretending to
use to muck stalls while he turned Jesse’s desertion over and over in his head.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said there’s something you should know about Aussie stockmen,” Caine repeated. “Come walk with me. The stable is not the most conducive place for a heart-to-heart conversation.”
“Is that what we’re going to have?” Chris asked warily. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea. He didn’t doubt Caine could give him good advice, but it would mean telling the grazier about him and Jesse, and Chris had never had anyone he could really confide in about anything concerning his sexuality.
“I think it’s time we did,” Caine replied, leading Chris out of the barn and toward the veranda on the big house. “Macklin convinced me not to say anything earlier in the season, but you obviously need a friend right now, and the man who filled that role since you got here is the reason why. I love Macklin, but he isn’t the talking type, so that leaves me to fill the role.”
“You say that so easily,” Chris said with more than a little envy.
“I didn’t grow up here. You have to remember that. Like you could forget it listening to me talk, but it’s more than just an accent or a choice of words now and then,” Caine said. “I came out to my parents when I was in high school, and it was a complete non-issue. I was out in college, and other than one guy in my dorm who was a little weirded out by it, nobody cared. I moved to Philadelphia, met a guy I thought I’d be with forever, got an apartment in the Gayborhood—yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like. Sure, I ran into the occasional asshole, but I lived a pretty uneventful life as an openly gay man.”