by David Connor
“Barring any unforeseen circumstances such as nighttime travel or inclement weather.”
“We’re screwed,” Spencer said.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Jennifer asked.
“Can you bake a thousand cookies and decorate ten wedding cakes?”
“I’m afraid I cannot.”
“Then we’re all good,” Spencer replied, his cutting Scrooge tone back in full effect.
“Have a good night, mister, sir.”
“You too, Jennifer. Sorry. Merry Christmas—or whatever.”
“Thank you.”
Spencer hung up. “Three to seven hours!” He tried the door again. “What the hell are we going to do for three to seven hours?”
Getty’s eyes offered a suggestion. “Maybe we should just try to sleep.” His mouth offered something different.
“Sleep.” Spencer thought about it. “Sleep.” He slid down the front door of the cooler and settled onto the floor. Sleep sounded wonderful, and also a long way off.
Getty stretched his legs out right across from him, sitting against the opposite wall in what little space there was there. He untied his boots, and then slid them off, reaching across to poke Spencer’s with his socked foot when done. “May as well get comfortable.”
“I’m suddenly too tired to work shoelaces.”
Getty got up on his knees and untied the left one. He pulled it off. “Better?”
“As long as you stop with boots.”
“I’ll do my best.” Getty did stop, at first, but the next thing Spencer knew, the same toes that found the tread of his boot ran up his less protected foot.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t help it.”
“Try.”
If Getty tried at all, he failed. Before the big hand on the large clock over his head moved from the four to the six, he was next to Spencer instead of across from him, his lips were on Spencer’s neck, and he started unbuttoning his quilted flannel shirt.
“If I don’t put a stop to this, is it goodbye sex?”
Getty stopped himself then. He turned Spencer by the chin to face him. “I’m afraid so, because I can’t be near you if I can’t be with you.”
Chapter 8
Getty looked a bit different. He was a few pounds heavier than the last time they’d lain naked side by side. More noticeable now than when Spencer had seen him in the shower, it was only because Spencer was comparing the present to the distant past. They were stretched out atop the mover’s quilt the cake had sat on in the van, and it was almost just like old times, in the back of Getty’s old, rusty red one from 1996.
“Do you still like to be kissed behind the ear?” Getty asked.
His mouth felt the same, though, and just like almost twenty years ago, it still sent a tingle to Spencer’s heart and his dick, hard and wet from Getty’s mouth. Back then, the order had usually been sexual acts and then kissing. Little had changed, except release was now delayed as if the romance was a sweet, gentle break to prolong the interlude. Conversation came along with it now, quite serious talk.
“The one time I cheated on Kirstin… one time, Spencer… one… I want you to know it was all about sex. I was twenty years old. Half of my life ago, almost. I haven’t even been with anyone since Kirstin and I split. Three people my whole life, you, her, and some guy whose name I don’t even remember. Have I changed? I know you worry about that. I’m worried right now too, because it feels like I’m still the same man I was two years into my marriage. I can’t present myself as a good guy, because here I am doing it again. I feel like I’m cheating on Isabelle now, and I don’t know if it’s better or worse, because with you it’s about so much more than the sex.”
Spencer was torn up with emotion himself. Part of him wanted to push Getty away, even though they were already way beyond remaining virtuous, both nude and aroused, both having tasted the other’s most intimate parts.
“I was downright wrong,” Getty declared. “Unforgivably wrong, when I cheated on you with Kirstin and when I cheated on her. I’m going to claim the first time was youth… confusion… fear… I’m going to admit I was afraid. It may be a copout, because braver men did it back then. Long before then, two men found a way to be in love. But maybe I wasn’t ready to be that brave at eighteen years old. For every accepting parent, teacher, or talking head on TV, there was and always will be a Grayson Devries telling kids they’re feelings aren’t natural, but wrong. It’s not an easy thing to shove aside. I didn’t know how to be in love with a man in a world—in a town—that didn’t seem accepting of it. Remember the church we went to as kids? Remember the signs? Those stupid little letter squares going up one at a time to reveal a damnation message on the light board so the anti-gay sentiments could be seen at night as well as daytime? ‘Homosexuals must repent or go to hell’ it said.”
“I remember.”
“I was old enough by then to think for myself. I didn’t altogether believe a stupid sign on the front lawn of my ex-church, but I knew my parents did, especially my mom. She’d dropped hints about you and me. Maybe she heard us during one of your sleepovers.”
“You never told me any of this.” Spencer rolled away. He looked upward, not at Getty.
“I get how Isabelle feels, because part of why I slept with her mother was to try to do something right for mine. The world is changing, Spencer.” Between statements about the past and the present came kisses, sometimes sweet, sometimes ravenous. Getty was practically on top of him. “My mother, she sees things differently, now. I talked to her before I talked Kirstin, before I admitted I was gay to my wife. My dad too. Their words made me feel a little better, but it wasn’t until their actions matched them—not until my dad started joking with me about my bowling average and my mom started complaining about the length of my hair again—that I felt as if I was still their same son and everything could be normal. And fuck this place! That place we live, I mean. Forget the ones who still that can’t see it. Screw the hateful politicians who try to discriminate, and the vermin who throw stones through windows. I’m stronger, and braver. I’ll take them on like you do. I’m certainly less stupid than I was in ninety six.” Getty sat up suddenly.
“What?”
“I can’t say that,” he decided. “I can’t put down being with Kirstin to that degree. I wouldn’t trade Isabelle for the world.”
“Of course not.”
“Things didn’t work out for you and me together, but they worked out for me in that way. I can’t take back that night.”
“No.”
“Some people might never forgive me. Good people, not the type I just swore to take on, whose opinions are just wrong. Kirstin and I… there were good times. Maybe I wouldn’t take back any of it, except the part where I hurt you. I think about that show Modern Family sometimes. You watch it?”
“All the time.”
“I think a real modern family would be for one of the gay guys—Cam or Mitch—to have another family too. That’s how things went for generations back, ya know? Older guys than us... guys our age… it’s not that unusual for us to come out later. Women too, I bet. Cam or Mitch should have a teenage kid with a woman, like my Isabelle or your Troy.”
“Yeah.” Spencer liked that idea.
“And we should all get together… maybe we should have all lived together, like we planned back in high school, after you forgave me.”
“That would have been interesting.”
“I know one thing, though,” Getty said. “I want you to look at me for this.” And when Spencer did, first Getty kissed him. “If we were together, if we ever get that chance, nothing will be missing, Spencer.” The tips of Getty’s fingernails raked all the way up and down Spencer’s body, crossing over Spencer’s hard-on, going down one hairy leg and up the other. “It’s not fair to play the victim, really. I shouldn’t blame society or church signs for making me unfaithful. I hurt two people, but I swear on any chance of ever being content and f
ully happy I have, from now on, all I need is you.”
“And still, after this we walk away from one another. That’s the plan, right? After tonight, no matter how much talking we do and how much sex we have, we’re all done.”
Getty kissed Spencer desperately, out of lust, perhaps, or maybe to quiet him, because the thought was too much to bear, as it was for Spencer too. “Do you hurt?”
Inside or out? Spencer wondered.
“There’s a bruise.” Getty kissed it gently, the mark on Spencer’s ribcage, and then the one on his hip. “I’ll be careful.”
“Doing what?”
Getty lifted Spencer from under his buttocks and spread his knees to get between them with his face. “I need to make love to you.”
Getty’s mouth on Spencer’s most sensitive, hot, yearning parts, there were memories there as well, but when Getty entered him, the thickness of it, the way it filled his tight opening as Getty eased it up inside and then thrust with wild abandon, that was all new, because it was their first time.
Spencer had always hoped finally making love to Getty would be an experience filled with hope for the future, no matter their age. The beginning of it was bittersweet, and he could only imagine the end would be worse.
Getty leaned over, pushing himself in deeper. “You seem sad.” He kissed Spencer hard. “The point was to distract you.”
Spencer flipped him. “I though the point was to fuck.”
The taste of him, the heat and the saltiness, the sour pleasure of his ass, Spencer almost could forget it was also to say goodbye, at least until after he came, which felt awfully close. “I need you inside me again.” He fell against Getty, savoring his sweat and musk. Still moving below, he tempted his own dick to erupt inside Getty’s warm wetness, even as his brain said slow down.
“Mmm.” Getty moaned. “I don’t want you to stop.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
How many times they swapped back and forth, one thrusting up inside the other, how much time they purposely took up delaying any sort of finality, it didn’t matter in the end, as reason took over and Spencer remembered someone would be coming to interrupt them eventually. He took Getty’s climax in his mouth, savoring the memory and present joy of it. Getty emptied up into him, and the feel of that wet heat was euphoric.
They allowed a few more minutes, naked in each other’s arms, exposed and vulnerable, except for the corners of the utility blanket pulled up partway over them. “Whatever doubts I had,” Spencer said, snuggled against Getty’s damp shoulder, “they’re gone.”
“Because whatever chance we had is too,” Getty said glumly.
“No.” Spencer licked his lips. “It’s some other reason I can’t explain. Maybe because we finally gave ourselves to each other all the way. I trust if we could have been together, we would have been—exclusively. I believe we would have been enough for each other this time. We know ourselves now.”
“You mean I do. You always did.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“I’m glad either way. It was worth it. It was frigging amazing. Even if it’s one and done, even if we have to lie about it.”
Spencer got up on one elbow. “I don’t think I can lie to Troy… not intentionally. Knowing him, he’ll ask.” A slight laugh escaped Spencer’s open mouth. “Knowing him, he’ll know.”
“I can’t ask you to. I wouldn’t. I only hope—”
The alarm technician’s truck was noisy, lucky for Spencer and Getty.
“Shit.” Spencer scrambled to his feet. He cringed against the pain. Further conversation would have to wait. They had barely enough time for underpants—in fact, they ended up in the wrong ones Spencer noticed as Getty zipped up his jeans.
“It’s hot in here,” Spencer said, putting on his shirt as the door swung inward, hoping for a believable cover.
“Hmm. Smells like it was,” the sexy dark skinned rep said. “We’re you screwing in the van when the tree fell on it?”
“You mean the branch.”
“No… I mean the tree.”
And so he had, at least a good part of its top half.
“Damn!” Getty said, as he and Spencer stood outside in the snowy coldness, staring in awe at what was left of the huge oak and the battered Holiday’s Bakery van.
“I suppose I should have moved it,” Spencer lamented, as big fluffy flakes fell upon them. “Poor tree.”
“Poor tree?” Getty asked. “It can grow a new limb. Your van can’t grow a front end.”
“Maybe Santa will bring you a new one,” the stranger said. “Happy holidays! Drive safe!”
They followed the suggestion, traveling carefully, but also loudly.
“For the twelve gays of Christmas my true love gave to me, twelve cakes in three weeks, eleven happy couples, ten thou van totaled, nine sexy inches, eight hundred repairs, seven on the TV, six light bulbs busted, five ho-urs traaaaaped! Four foot window smashed, no three-way with Kev, two guys coming hard, and an asshole named Ste-fan No-oir!”
It took Spencer and Getty most of the return trip to come up with their reworked carol. Laughter often interrupted the songwriting process, especially regarding numbers nine and two. Since they couldn’t fuck and drive it was the best form of distraction available, seeing as the three hour journey home took four and a half. Not only was there ice and slush, there were also limbs and wires down too. Troy had mentioned a power outage. “It went on and off a hundred times, but then stayed off for good,” he’d said hours ago during one of their calls. Spencer had reminded Troy to make sure the generator didn’t run out of gas. His brother had promised he would, but Spencer was glad when they pulled into Holiday’s, so he could check it out himself.
“Spenny!” Troy met him at the bakery’s front door. “Officially, we’re open. I opened on time. No one is out and about, though, plus no electricity… I figured someone might come in to warm up with hot drinks I can make on the gas stove since we have a few lights on, but no one has so far.”
“It was a thoughtful thing to do,” Spencer said. The generator couldn’t run the entire shop. Its real purpose was to keep the four coolers going and a couple of emergency lights.
“I didn’t want to just sluff off, though, so I measured a bunch of dry ingredients for stuff into bowls, so all we have to do when the power comes back on is dump them in and start up the mixer. See?” Troy took Spencer by the arm and showed him all of the labeled lidded bowls. “Good deal, huh?”
“Very. We should do this all the time.”
“We could even package and sell them to home bakers with a recipe for the rest.”
“That’s an idea.” Not a bad one, Spencer thought.
“And, I’m not as good a drawer as you, but I came up with a few new cookie designs I thought we could try out. I left the paper upstairs. Oh! Come look upstairs.” Troy tugged his brother some more, as if it was Christmas morning already, and both were years younger.
“Spenny! Let’s go see if Santa came!”
“It’s too early, Turkey!”
Like that, when Troy was only six and Spencer was already twenty-one, and home from college.
“I should check the coolers.”
“The generator is running.” Spencer couldn’t recall ever going up the steps from the bakery so quickly. Troy was that excited. “Your precious wedding cakes are fine. Hey. You can work on them all day. You don’t need electricity for that, assuming you’re well rested from your night in the freezer alcove.” A literal ribbing courtesy Troy’s elbow accompanied the verbal kind.
“Ow.”
“I didn’t poke you that hard. What ow?”
“Arthritis.” Spencer side-eyed Getty. “Old age.” That would quiet the questions.
“You both look tired,” Troy said.
“I was too nervous to sleep.”
“Really bro? That’s the story we’re going with?” Different questions would keep on coming, apparently.
“Yes it is.”
Troy most likely missed the “shut up” look as he flung the door to the living room open. “Nice, huh?” The halls were decked with boughs of holly and everything else one could imagine.
“Sweet! I didn’t even know I had half of this stuff.”
“Gettysburg brought up everything marked Christmas from the basement.”
“Mom and Dad’s stuff,” Spencer said quietly, his heartstrings tugged by a felt covered Santa Claus he remembered from his childhood. “Dad stopped bringing a lot of this out after mom died. You were still pretty little.”
“Yeah. I remembered some of it, though, and this seemed like a good year to put up every holiday decoration the Holidays had ever owned.”
“I didn’t know,” Getty said.
“Don’t apologize.” Spencer went to kiss him. Then he realized he couldn’t. “It looks good. It feels good. I can’t wait to see it lit up.” There were an awful lot of unlit lights strung about. “You sure that wasn’t the cause of the power failure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Until we can test it again, let’s go for some of that hot chocolate. We’ll steal some Christmas cookies, and then come up here and just sit and look at everything a while.”
“You just want to get back down there and look at your cakes.”
“You’re right, Turkey. I do.”
“Pretty soon, he’ll be saying that to you.” Troy’s elbow met Getty’s ribs this time.
“Not if the state legislature has anything to say about it.” Why not lay the blame on them, Spencer figured as he headed back downstairs.
“That blowhard Devries will get a federal beat-down soon enough,” Troy said. “Then we’ll just have to wait for him and his cronies to crawl back under their rocks.”
“They don’t give up easy.” Spencer reached for the handle on the cooler.
“Thankfully, neither do we, bro. I wrote a letter during my down time too, telling his highness we—”
“Oh my god! It’s not running.”
“What’s not running?” Getty asked.
“The freezer… the motor.” Spencer went in. “It hasn’t run… for a long time.” He felt the closest cake. Troy did as well.