The moment finally came when Kevin released the shirt he’d been holding all this time against my skin. It dropped to the carpet, and I grabbed Kevin right away, pulled him against me, and fell back against the bed, taking Kevin with me as my cover. My erection had diminished as he’d spent time filling up the rest of me, but I didn’t care. Having his weight on me, holding me down here in my own bed, was my unacknowledged dream come true.
He didn’t stay on me for long. Kevin slithered down to suck on my left nipple. Then he bit my right one. He went back down onto his knees on the floor between my spread legs, but he pressed against my hips to keep me from sitting back up.
“Stay there and enjoy this.”
The overhead light fixture blurred in my vision as he took my cock in his mouth and set about making me hard again. It didn’t take long. Yellow light cascaded down on us, on Kevin’s bent head, and on me. When he rolled my balls in his hand, my heart pounded. When his fingers strayed into my butt crack, hinting at what he wanted to do without doing it, I hissed in frustration. When he carefully scraped his teeth against my shaft, I grabbed at the sheet.
His breathtaking, noisy sucking…. I threw my arm over my eyes and gasped for air. Another minute and I’d—I was so close to—If he didn’t quit—
Awkwardly, I forced myself up onto my right elbow and looked down at him. “Stop! I don’t want to come alone. Come up here.”
His lips were red and puffy, his skin flushed, but he released me. In a frenzy to get to him, I seized him and wrestled him down to the mattress, gave him a sloppy, all-tongue, open-mouthed kiss. But I quickly tore myself away.
“Wait,” he objected, but I flipped myself on the bed so that we nestled close, head to toe on our sides, and his cock was waiting for my kiss.
“Yesssss,” Kevin hissed.
I felt his hand circle the base of my erection, and then his moist lips covered me.
We’d tried this only once before. The second time in Houston, the morning that I’d relented and had breakfast with him, we’d tried sixty-nining. He’d finished way before I had and my own orgasm had been forced and awkward, which was why I’d avoided doing it with my sex partners; it never worked, was never right, never had the same feeling as when Sean and I had done it as stupid college kids.
Everything was different now. At that moment, it hardly mattered if we came together or one right after the other or minutes apart. What mattered was how incredible it felt as I took Kevin in while his mouth was on me. The confusion of you’re-sucking-me, I’m-sucking-you, I’m-sucking-myself swamped me. For long seconds, for minutes, we fell into a joint rhythm.
I couldn’t tell the two of us, separate men, from the one-of-us we were creating together on the bed. We breathed together, touched together, licked together. Pre-come coated my tongue, and I knew he was close. Kevin fingered my asshole, I gasped, and I was close too.
“Yes, do it,” I choked out. He did. I abandoned his cock and reveled instead in his finger sliding inside me, while he worked his throat muscles against me. I had no chance, but I didn’t fight it. Everything—me, Kevin, Rent, Sean, my one exhilarating step away from my past—compressed into a bright diamond about to explode. “God, yes! Here… here…. Take me!”
I grunted, stiffened, held it, held it, and finally, in one second, the world expanded past my knowing: all was possible, and I came. I could not help but thrust into him, trying to follow that flash of the future. Kevin took me with ease, opening and swallowing as I poured my coming down his throat.
I didn’t even wait for the last glow to start to diminish. I aimed to give to him what he had given to me, and the same as I had, he allowed it to happen. He tilted back onto the bed with his arms spread out to either side, and I followed him, my mouth always full of him. Within a minute he was bucking up uncontrollably.
“Oh, Tommy, oh, yeah, that’s so good. So…. Here I come! Right now! Uhn….”
It felt as if I were coming along with him; though my body was sated, my mind was still flooded with Kevin’s light. I gulped him down, and it was so good.
I stayed on him even as he came down from the high, even as he relaxed and started to soften, even when he reached down and rested his hand on my head.
“Come here with me,” Kevin said.
Carefully I released him and crawled up the bed to where he was waiting for me with open arms. We settled on my one pillow, with me on my right side as always, and he rubbed my top scar with his fingertips.
“Someday,” Kevin said, “I want to sixty-nine with you so we both come at the same time. What do you think?”
Already I was fading. The night, the week, my life was too much for me to stay awake. “Yes,” I said with my eyes closed. “The mirrors in your bedroom… and that. Let’s do it all someday.”
THE SOUND of a car door slamming opened my eyes. My next-door neighbors were coming home from a late-night party or a bar closing. I listened to them in the deep darkness until it was quiet again. Kevin’s breathing next to me changed.
“Are you awake?” I whispered.
He drew a hand across his forehead. “Yeah,” he said thickly. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” But there was something I had to say. I rolled over until I was mostly on top of him, looking down on him. His face was barely visible, but I felt his breath on my skin and the way he held me in place. His hands on me.
“I’m not incredible, like you said,” I told him softly. “No, no, listen to me,” I said when he immediately opened his mouth to contradict me. I pressed a finger against his lips. “I’m still all messed up inside about being attacked. It’s still there.” Sean was still there, my hatred of him, my fear, jumbled with the good memories of what we’d shared, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that out loud.
Kevin soothed me by stroking down my side. “That’s all right.”
“I’m not over it. I don’t know that I’ll ever be over it.”
“But maybe you can go past it, right?”
“Instead of being stuck where I am. That’s what I’m going to try to do. But I can’t pretend it’ll be easy or pretty. I know what I want to do with you, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to do it.”
“I think I’ll take my chances. From the day I met you, you’ve been putting yourself down. Maybe it’s time to stop that.”
I bit my lip and then let it out. “What do you see in me?”
“I wish I could turn you around to look in a mirror and introduce you to yourself.”
I bumped his chest with my chin. “Idiot,” I said fondly.
“You might be a teacher, but you’re dumber than dirt about some things.” He guided my head down against his shoulder, and the rest of me slipped off him onto my side. I lifted one leg over his and relaxed against him. “We’ll figure things out as they come along, okay?” Kevin said. “Do you think you could sleep like this?”
I swallowed at the marvel of this night: this man wanted me so close, and I had grown so that I wanted Kevin just as much.
“I’ve never slept like this,” I said. That wasn’t true. I had slept with Sean this way, but Kevin was not Sean, and I was not the man I used to be. “But we can try.”
“Exactly.”
I felt his lips against my hair and his arms around me.
“Good night, professor.”
It took but a minute for Kevin’s breathing to even out, and I knew he was asleep. I stayed awake a little longer, thinking… and touching the happiness at my core. I could barely allow myself to express it even in my thoughts, but Kevin and I had a future together. The only thing I shared with Sean was my past.
Languidly, indulgently, I rubbed my cheek against Kevin’s shoulder, feeling myself sink deeper into the mattress as sleep inched closer. Sean would be thirty-eight years old now, like I was. Funny, I’d never thought about that. In my mind, he’d always been that careless, carefree twenty-two-year-old. During that long-ago phone call, I’d wished him a shitty life. Is that what he’d had?
Had he been consumed with guilt the way I’d been consumed with rage and fear? Had that one night twisted his life the way it had ruined mine?
Sean? You’re fine, aren’t you? You weren’t going to let a little something like raping your best friend and lover stop you. I bet you’ve laughed your way through life, have lovers and friends and smiles all around. I’m the one who’s had the shitty life.
I’m done with it now though. Here, take it back. I don’t want it anymore.
That felt… right. I thought I could sleep then, and I did.
IT WASN’T until we were halfway to Big Bend, driving across the arid west Texas landscape, that Kevin and I started talking seriously.
“I know you couldn’t say last night with everybody around,” I said into the comfortable silence that had fallen between the two of us. “But how’s Channing really doing?”
Kevin took his time answering, but that was all right. Every moment since he’d walked into my house last night had been all right. Driving with him west along Interstate 10 had been relaxing; Kevin was easy to talk to. It’d been reassuring; our intense compatibility was real. And it’d been liberating; I’d taken the wheel of the Miata with him in the passenger seat and driven through Gunning with the top down. The world had not ended. Instead, it felt as if the world were opening up before me with every mile that passed under our tires.
The highway was practically deserted this early Thanksgiving afternoon, since everybody was off at Grandma’s house eating turkey or glued to the TV for the football game. Kevin and I had gotten a much later start than we’d bragged about the night before. It was past ten before we even dragged ourselves out of bed to share a shower. Packing had been problematic. There was no way we could get the camping gear we’d need into my car’s tiny trunk. I solved that by going online and making us reservations at the Chisos Mountains Lodge, the only motel in the park; I didn’t want to try to make love with Kevin in a tent in a crowded campsite anyway.
Then there’d been breakfast in my tiny kitchen and the drive over to Kenneton, and so we were still on the road. I didn’t mind, and I knew Kevin didn’t either.
We drove under the brightest blue sky with the Miata cutting through the air, creating its own wind on a windless day. The flat land stretched all around us, hardscrabble ranch land that was mainly scrub brush and the occasional ravine to show that spring rains did sometimes visit here. A few cows kept us company as we zipped by, going an easy eighty toward the haziest hint on the horizon that proved some sort of mountain range waited for us.
“She hasn’t decided what to do yet,” Kevin said. “It’s early days, so she has some time.”
“What do you want her to do?”
“It hardly matters what I think, but…. She and JJ made a mistake. I think they should own up to the consequences of what they did, and she should have the baby. Then she should give it up for adoption. But I’m not sure that’s what she and Julianne will decide. It’s really not up to me. I won’t be around much after I move.”
He gave me a significant look and reached over to rest his hand on the seat behind me. His fingers danced along the back of my neck. “And that brings up an interesting subject, doesn’t it?”
I glanced over at him, at his stylish sunglasses and his navy blue jacket zipped over a white T-shirt. Kevin looked like a rock star. “You want to talk about that now?”
“Yeah, I do. What are you thinking about? Will you come with me?”
The last time he’d asked me had been wild and impossible. This time Kevin asked as if he confidently knew the answer already.
We drove past what looked like an abandoned, broken-down church that hadn’t been painted in fifty years. It was out in the middle of nowhere.
“I have a contract with the district,” I said. “And more than that, an obligation to the students and my fellow teachers not to abandon them in the middle of the year. Plus…. You and me. It’s a big change for me.”
“I know,” he said soberly. “It’s going to take some time for you to get used to….”
“Not being afraid,” I said flatly.
“To get used to living the life you want to live.”
“If that’s how you want to put it. I’d rather not beat around the bush.”
“You need to get more comfortable with the whole idea and see how far you can go with it.”
I nodded. “I do. I need to take this at my own pace.” One drive around Gunning with Kevin did not create liberation. I was realistic enough to know that. This was going to take a while.
“I think maybe George knows about me,” I said thoughtfully. I’d been slowly accepting that fact over the past weeks. And if George did and Channing did, then others probably did too. Or they guessed. No one had treated me any differently this semester. That was hard to believe, because I’d feared the repercussions of being outed for so long, but it was true. Maybe I could get used to… being known.
“Are you okay with that?” Kevin asked. “George knowing?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I can cope.”
“Good. You know, I’m sure two of the guys at the bank know I’m gay, and so far it’s been all right. Even so, I still want us to move somewhere else and live openly from the beginning. Do you understand why I want to leave? How I don’t think we can do it here?”
“I couldn’t do it here,” I said, shaking my head. “I couldn’t. I don’t have a problem with moving. I need to get out of Gunning and start over again.”
“So, when? End of the school year?”
“Early June. Can you wait that long?”
He tugged on a strand of my hair. “I’ve waited thirty-seven years to meet you. A few extra months before we head out together won’t make me sweat. You know, this is a lousy economy for both of us to be looking for jobs.”
“I know.” I smiled over at him. “We’re crazy, aren’t we?”
“Certifiable.”
“I want to teach wherever we go. So, get the job first, and after that….” I shrugged because I didn’t know what else to say. How a gay man went about living that kind of life, I didn’t know. But I’d try.
“Any ideas about where we should go?”
“A few.”
“Where?”
I stretched my left arm to relieve the strain of driving for hours and then rested it again on my thigh. I still felt Kevin’s kisses on my scars. “I hate to sound so predictable. I’m a cliché. To one of the coasts? I’m ready to try a big city, I think.”
“Perfect. Me too. Which one?”
I lifted my shoulders. “Take your pick. I don’t think I’m crazy about New York. Too big.”
“We need to do some research.”
“Right. Los Angeles? I like the idea of living by the water. That would be new.”
“How about Boston?” Kevin asked.
Where a Massachusetts-styled Prop 8 had never passed and presumably gay men and women were… comfortable. If people like Kevin and me could marry there, then surely life would be easier for us. I nodded. “That sounds good. It’s about as far from Texas as we could go.”
“I like the idea of Boston. Great seafood, by the ocean, lots of history. I bet they could really use a history teacher like you.”
“Let’s keep an open mind but start by looking there.”
As easily as that, we agreed. I had six months to learn how to navigate my way in a new world. I didn’t think it would be easy. But I did think it would be worth it.
ON SUNDAY morning, our last morning at the park, we got up way before dawn and drove down from the high Chisos Basin, where the lodge nestled, into the Chihuahuan desert. No other cars paced us or passed us on the road that cut through Big Bend; our headlights led into splendid, natural isolation. The stars overhead were still bright. Kevin drove, so I pitched my head back and feasted on the sight. Civilization was far away.
“Beautiful,” Kevin said, not for the first time.
“Hmmmm.”
“Maybe we should becom
e park rangers and live here.”
I smiled to myself at the thought. Kevin would look great in a ranger uniform.
The day before we’d climbed Emory Peak, the highest point at Big Bend. It’d taken us seven hours to make the round trip. My legs still ached from the last fifty feet of the climb, which had taken us over torturously jumbled rocks to the top, but the effort had been worth it. As Kevin had said, most practically, why hike all that way only to fall short because the rocks wanted to stop us? We’d easily seen into Mexico from the summit. Layers upon layers of mountain ranges stretched as far as we could see into the mist, repeating themselves endlessly, as if they went on forever.
Now Kevin was taking me to one of his favorite places to view the sunrise. Big Bend was huge, one of the biggest of all national parks. Already we’d driven forty minutes, first along the paved road and then along a dirt one, past the usual paths that tourists regularly hiked and into the wilder reaches that the rangers and the animals knew.
“I found the best place to see the sunrise with my dad when I was twelve, right before we left for Little Rock,” Kevin had told me before we’d fallen asleep the night before. He hadn’t needed to say it was special to him; I could hear it in his voice.
He parked along the side of the road and shrugged into the Camelbak. He prized it, I think, because Channing had given it to him. I stuffed a plastic water bottle into my pocket, and we found the faint trail that disappeared into the wilderness.
Kevin led. I followed behind him. Flashlights lit our way because there still wasn’t even the hint of light in the eastern sky. The dirt under our hiking boots was hard packed and made for easy walking even in the dark, but after a while it became softer and sometimes slid out from under our feet. Low desert plants surrounded us, and I was careful not to brush against any cactus.
I kept my eyes open for mountain lions, although it wasn’t likely they’d be prowling in the open desert. You never knew, though. We’d come across unmistakable footprints along the banks of the Rio Grande River on Friday.
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