Life on Pause

by Erin McLellan

  As he was cleaning up his demo area, Denny wandered over. It kind of pissed Niles off that Denny got to wear jeans and a button-down work shirt with his name embroidered on the pocket. Most of the staff had to wear historical clothing, including the docents.

  It made sense; Denny didn’t need to be weighed down by suede or fringe or cowboy boots when he was fixing the HVAC system or whatever it was he did.

  But still, it rankled.

  “You’d have made such a good prairie mother,” Denny said with a grand gesture to the remnants of food left over from Niles’s presentation.

  Fuck that noise. Denny had picked the wrong day to be an asshat.

  Niles stood up to his full height, which was actually quite a bit taller than Denny. The abrupt movement and his sudden anger made dizziness rush through him. Or maybe it was the smoke fumes. Either way, Niles was mad and a little unsteady on his feet.

  He was sick of being walked all over. He was sick of not feeling good enough.

  “You know what? Screw you, you dumb homophobe,” he snapped, then he blew it by frantically glancing around to make sure no homeschool parents or students were within earshot.

  “Hey, whoa! I’m not a homophobe!” Denny had the audacity to look affronted.

  “Bullshit! And you know what? Indicating I’m wussy or weak or a girl because I’m gay isn’t only incredibly unoriginal and sexist, it’s also harassment. I will nail your ass to the wall if you keep it up, Denny. And not in a good way!”

  They glared at each other for several hot seconds before Niles laughed so hard he had to sit down.

  “You okay?” Denny finally asked.

  Niles was definitely lightheaded now. He couldn’t remember ever standing up to a bully, if you could call that standing up. He’d undoubtedly ruined it by laughing afterward. Denny was probably going to beat him up now or give him a wedgie or something.

  “I can’t believe I just said that to you,” Niles sighed once he could catch his breath. He wondered, belatedly, if it was obvious to Denny that he’d been crying earlier.

  “The part about nailing my ass to the wall in a good way? Yeah, I can’t either,” Denny said. “It was weirdly sexual, West Niles.”

  Then they were both laughing.

  “I said not in a good way to indicate it wasn’t sexual,” Niles explained.

  “Yeah, glad you cleared that up,” Denny said drily. “Look, I know I’ve teased you some, but I don’t mean nothing by it. They’re only jokes.”

  “Dude, come on.” Niles went back to cleaning up his workspace.

  “No, Niles, seriously. I’m sorry if you’ve taken my jokes wrong.”

  Niles laughed again. He was feeling a little hysterical now. “Pro tip: An apology doesn’t work if you’re placing the blame on the person you’re apologizing to. It’s not my fault for taking your jokes wrong. It’s your fault for being bad at jokes.”

  Denny stared at him so blankly that Niles giggled. He wasn’t actually mad anymore, just full of adrenaline and, absurdly, pride.

  “All right. I’m sorry, I guess. And I’ll stop.”

  “Sure, man. And I better never catch you trashing me to patrons again.” Niles put his hands on his hips, and Denny continued his vacant, deer-in-the-headlights impression. He probably didn’t remember doing that. “And stop calling me West Niles,” Niles finished. “It ain’t cute.”

  “Well, then stop calling me fucking Denny like I’m ten-years-old. Everyone calls me Dennis except you.”

  “They do?” Christ on a bicycle. Niles had never noticed that.

  “Yes,” Denny gritted out.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  Denny—Niles was always going to call him Denny in his mind no matter what the guy said—hovered awkwardly for a couple of seconds before shooting Niles a weird little salute and moving on.

  Were they friends now? Gosh, he hoped not.

  Niles couldn’t wait to get back to his office and text Rusty about this turn of events.

  He was halfway to the office building—a prefab structure on the edge of the Bushyhead Homestead property—when he realized he wouldn’t be texting Rusty anything.

  He might have stood up to the museum bully, but he was still a coward who’d lost one of his best friends.

  On the morning of the Bluestem Bluegrass Festival, Todd handed over a cappuccino from the 7-Eleven, and Rusty took a hesitant sip. Todd had doctored it with hazelnut something-or-other, and it was way too sweet. Rusty downed it in a couple of large swallows. Sometimes you needed incredibly unhealthy additives to get through the day.

  Fog was settling across the football field, and the early morning sun was barely filtering through the clouds. Rusty had picked up the school bus from the bus barn that morning, and now they were waiting for the choir kids to show. Their call time was 10 a.m. They would bus out to Bushyhead Homestead, sing, and then Rusty wanted to get the hell out of there.

  “Have you talked to him?” Todd asked, leaning against the bus like a damn supermodel.

  “Nah.” It had been two weeks since Niles had broken up with Rusty, and each day had felt like a century.

  “Why not?”

  Rusty threw Todd a dirty glare. He didn’t like talking about this with him.

  “What, man?” Todd lifted his hands in surrender. “We were together for years, and you never stopped talking to me after we broke up.”

  “Yeah, well, we work together. It was pretty essential to figure it out.”

  “Maybe you and I are …” A blush spread across Todd’s cheeks.

  “Are what?”

  Todd took a deep breath and then blurted out, “Important to each other. Maybe we’re important to each other and that’s why we never stopped talking. You’re important to me.”

  Rusty frowned at him. It was too early in the morning to have a serious conversation. “You’re important to me too.”

  “And maybe this thing with Niles was a rebound, you know? That’s normal, right? To have a rebound?” Todd bit his full bottom lip and gazed at Rusty with a strange hopefulness in his eyes.

  Discomfort prickled up Rusty’s spine. “I don’t think we should talk about this. The students will be here any second.”

  “Okay, sure,” Todd said, and then got out his phone and started fiddling with it without actually swiping it on.

  Rusty stared at him. He was not in the right mindset to figure out what Todd’s deal was today.

  He wished he could latch onto the rebound excuse when it came to Niles, but the real reason he hadn’t called Niles, the reason he didn’t really want to be his friend, was because it hurt. It hadn’t hurt like this with Todd. Niles had said goodbye so easily, like their relationship didn’t matter to him at all, which scrambled Rusty more than he was willing to admit. And the worst part was that it was his own fault.

  But now, without Niles in his life, it should be infinitely easier to walk away from Bison Hills. If Rusty believed in signs, he’d have thought Niles breaking up with him was a sign that he should move, like it was the universe giving him the all-clear. Instead, he thought it was simply a painful coincidence.

  He’d talked to Jackie the night before, and they’d decided that the best option was for him to move to Sapulpa once the school year was over, unless a teaching job opened up before then. Jackie and Margo would be moving fairly soon, and while it’d be hard to be apart for a short time, in the end, they’d all be together. It would only be seven months on pause and then he could start over.

  Maybe in Sapulpa he wouldn’t imagine Niles each time he turned the corner at the grocery store or passed the entrance to the gym on Main Street. It was like the man was haunting him. Rusty sensed him everywhere, and it was quickly becoming unbearable.

  And today, he’d actually see him, and he was not prepared at all.

  After about ten minutes of awkward silence with Todd, a jacked-up truck full of sophomore choir girls drove into the parking lot, and the weirdness between Rusty and
Todd quickly melted away in the rush to get all the students situated and ready to leave.

  Less than an hour later, Rusty pulled the bus into a mostly full parking lot at Bushyhead Homestead. Todd wrangled all the teenagers together while Rusty headed toward the registration table.

  Two young men in historical clothing were manning the desk, presumably docents, but he didn’t recognize them from the hallways at school.

  “Hi, Mr. Adams,” one of the boys said, so evidently he was a student at Bison Hills. Man, he needed to pay closer attention to the non-choir kids.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Rusty caught a sudden movement. He turned toward it and saw Niles standing with a group of musicians.

  Niles took a step toward him without saying goodbye to the musicians, and Rusty’s breath caught. The men seemed surprised and amused by Niles’s abrupt departure, and Rusty hated that he was so adorably awkward. At the last second, Niles apparently realized he’d dropped the social-interaction ball because he turned on his heels and apologized to the musicians with too much intensity.

  By the time Niles actually made it over to Rusty, his face was flushed and slightly sweaty.

  Like after sex. Fuck.

  “Hey,” Niles said a little too brightly.

  Rusty gave him a tight smile, and Niles wilted.

  Well, good. Served him right.

  Niles took a clipboard from one of the docents, glanced at it, and then gripped it to his chest like a protective shield. He was radiating hurt all over the place, and the two docents were watching them with wide eyes. Rusty couldn’t have that. It hadn’t been a secret to their coworkers when he had been with Todd, and they had been seen around town often enough that some people had probably started to put two and two together. But Rusty had always managed to keep his drama away from students, and he didn’t plan to change that now.

  He didn’t need to worry because Niles clenched his jaw and straightened his spine like someone had shoved a rod through it.

  “The risers for your performance are currently in the West Barn. We have docents and volunteers who will help set them up before your choir performs. There will be about fifteen minutes between the Creek Bed Pickers and you. During that time, we’ll do a sound check, and help you get the digital piano and acoustic guitar hooked up.”

  Niles rattled off the information like an auctioneer, but Rusty already knew all of it. He’d received an email earlier in the week that was practically verbatim to that info dump.

  “You and your students all get a wristband, which are good for free admission today and tomorrow,” Niles continued. “The food trucks should open by eleven. Do you have any questions or need anything?”

  “No.”

  Niles nodded once, like he was steeling himself, and walked back to the group of musicians. Rusty’s heart went with him.

  Todd grasped his shoulder, and he jumped.

  “Come on, Rus. Let’s get the wristbands handed out.” Todd’s sympathetic eyes indicated he’d heard all of their conversation.

  Rusty took one last look at Niles, who, he realized, was wearing fucking chaps, and followed Todd.

  Niles practically ran away from the registration table. That had totally sucked. He’d hoped that Rusty would give him at least a small opening to initiate their friendship again, or at least a conversation, but it couldn’t have been more clear that he was uninterested.

  Which Niles deserved. He had bailed as soon as he’d found out about The Todd, and he still couldn’t explain why that bothered him so much. Over the last week, he’d tried to explain his reasoning to Victor, but no matter how he spread it, he came off as petty and insecure. Which he was. Maybe it was that Rusty had lied about his years-long relationship, or maybe it was the Todd-sized hole Niles had sensed when he’d been at Jackie’s for dinner. Or it could be that the whole time Niles had been talking to Rusty just now, Todd’s eyes had been glued to Rusty as if his mere presence was water in a drought.

  If Rusty couldn’t see that Todd was hot for teacher, then he wasn’t paying a lick of attention.

  And of course The Todd had on Ray-Bans and a chambray shirt rolled up his muscly forearms, like the quintessential gay wet dream, and Niles was wearing his freaking chaps like a total loser. He would never measure up.

  Niles hid out in the hay barn, which held hay and their overflow chairs for events, until the Bison Hills High School Choir took the stage. Once the kids were singing and Niles was sure Rusty would be preoccupied with conducting, he made his way to the back of the crowd. The students all seemed half-awake, which was hilarious considering it was 10 a.m., but their voices were as impressive as the first time Niles heard them.

  But he hardly noticed. His entire focus was on Rusty and the taut line of his shoulders as he conducted, the precise sway of his body to the beat, and sunlight sparkling off his stubble each time he turned his head.

  Niles remembered how Rusty had felt pressed against him, the scratch of his beard, and the smell of his aftershave, sweat, and come. He remembered the way Rusty’s eyes had burned with affection and lust, and how they’d helped mend his insecurities, even if only for a moment.

  So yeah, it wasn’t the teenagers’ awesome performance that made Niles’s eyes prick with tears.

  God, he had screwed up so badly. And that horrible knowledge had to have been all over his face when the seniors stepped out to sing their ensemble piece, but Rusty kept his eyes on his students this time. He didn’t once scan the audience, didn’t search out Niles’s eyes like he had during the dress rehearsal.

  Every breath hurt as Niles watched, so he clenched his fists, his fingernails digging into his palms, to try to distract himself from the overwhelming emotions battering against his chest. Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore, so he retreated back to the registration table before the seniors made it halfway through their song. One of the docents flagged him down as soon as he was within sight because there was some confusion with a group over the schedule.

  Ten minutes later, he was still talking to the hilarious elderly fiddle duo who were confused about which day they were supposed to play—tomorrow—when the high schoolers filed past the registration desk. Some of the teenagers seemed to be staying at the festival with their parents and some were leaving with their parents, so the group heading to the bus was not large. Rusty, Todd, and the two senior boys were carrying most of their equipment, and Rusty gave him a stilted wave when they walked past.

  “Good golly, check out those handsome teachers. They didn’t make ’em like that when we were young, let me tell you,” whispered one of the fiddlers. She was probably about seventy and wearing a sweatshirt that said Liberal Granny. Suck It. Niles was in love with her—if only she had showed up for her gig on the correct day.

  “Don’t objectify the young ’uns, Franny,” the other fiddler said. She was wearing a long flowy skirt with a marijuana leaf pattern. She faced Niles. “So you’re telling me we play tomorrow at 1 p.m. and not today at 1 p.m.?”

  “That’s right, ma’am. I’m very sorry for the confusion or miscommunication.”

  “Ah, kiddo, don’t worry about it. I’m sure it was our fault. Gives us a reason to skip church!” said Liberal Granny Franny.

  Yeah, if he weren’t so heartbroken, he would be fangirling over these two.

  “Niles.”

  Niles turned at his name, his heart jumping into his throat. Rusty was standing behind him holding a handful of cords.

  “One of my students packed these amp cords. They’re Bushyhead’s. Someone’s probably going to miss them eventually.” Rusty glanced behind Niles and caught an eyeful of his new best friends. A grin cracked across Rusty’s face as he took the two goddesses in, and Niles wanted to stare at his smile forever.

  “Rusty, I’m sorry. Can we please talk?” Niles took a hurried step toward him, but Rusty’s eyes shuttered so completely that Niles froze in his tracks.

  The fiddlers must have been able to see the drama brewing between them bec
ause the ladies made a hasty exit. One of them called over her shoulder, “See you tomorrow, cowboy!”

  Niles smiled and waved before turning his attention back to Rusty. “You know, maybe we can watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica? I’m having Cylon withdrawals. I haven’t watched any without you.”

  Rusty held the cords out to Niles and pulled his hand away quickly after Niles took them. “I’m not sure I want to do that.”

  Anger flushed through Niles. He knew he’d screwed up, but Rusty had screwed up too! And Rusty had promised friendship. Niles couldn’t stand that it was being torn away.

  “You said we would still be friends if it didn’t work out.”

  “Yeah, well maybe I lied,” Rusty said through gritted teeth.

  “Par for the course then!”

  Rusty’s eyes were thunderous, and he glanced toward the registration table where Niles’s docents were lounging in the sun. “I didn’t lie to you.”

  “You just said you’d lied! And not telling me that you were in a three-year relationship with a man you work closely with every fucking day is a lie.”

  “I meant about being friends. I didn’t lie about wanting to remain friends. But I … can’t right now. Maybe someday we will be, but not yet. It hurts too much.” Rusty took a deep breath and then leveled Niles with a glare. “I know I lied about Todd, but maybe if you weren’t so insecure all the time, I wouldn’t have had to.”

  The words were like a physical blow, and Niles stumbled back. Nausea swept through him.

  Rusty growled a little bit in his throat and rubbed a hand wearily over his face. “I have to get back to the bus.” He sighed, like this conversation was such a waste of his fucking time, so Niles turned around and walked away.

  Watching Niles walk away would have been hard if Rusty weren’t so damn angry with him. Niles acted like they could just go back to Netflix and canned soup and air-popper popcorn. And yeah, Rusty had been promising him those things all along, and it probably made him the biggest asshole in the world to rip them away from the guy, but Jesus Christ. What else was he supposed to do? It hurt that Niles only wanted friendship. It hurt that Niles’s heart didn’t seem to be breaking, not the way Rusty’s was. All Niles seemed to want was to go back to how it was before Rusty fell for him.