by Rick R. Reed
Mac was still groggy, his ass pleasantly sore from the night before. How many times had they made love, anyway? Mac had lost count after the third time. If nothing else, this relationship—and the gift of a dog and the sharing of one cemented it more firmly than any ring could have—would be the hottest he’d ever experienced. Mac couldn’t believe how simply tireless this Flynn boy was.
“How long have you been staring at me like that?” Mac batted at Flynn’s face in feigned annoyance. “It’s creepy,” he said, yawning.
“I love watching you sleep.” Flynn shifted down a bit to give Mac a light kiss, ending with a slight bite to Mac’s lower lip, which caused him to start to get hard again. “I love watching you wake up. It’s like a little sunrise.”
Mac kissed him back. “When I saw you that first day in the park, I was afraid. Afraid because I knew I was lost—in that single moment.”
“Yeah. I get that. I knew from just one look that you were more than someone I was just attracted to—although there’s that, honey, and in spades—but that you were someone I’d lose my heart to,” Flynn said.
“And not just your heart! Your little dog too!”
Flynn laughed and nodded down at Barley, who had turned on his back, paws in the air. “Oh, I didn’t lose him. I gained a boyfriend… and a second dog!”
Mac shook his head in a kind of wonder. “How did I get so lucky?”
“I’m the lucky one,” Flynn said.
“Ah, let’s not get into a pissing contest.”
“I’d win!” Flynn said.
“Well, maybe we can do that contest—someday.” Mac chucked. “It could be hot.”
“Eating Ritz crackers with peanut butter could be hot with the likes of you, my man. Ironing! Ironing could be hot. Flossing! With you, flossing would be the hottest!”
“Oh, I’m going to go into a diabetic coma in a minute here,” Mac said, shaking his head. He rolled over and regarded the wall. Along it was his bookshelf and atop that, the picture his grandma had given him of him and his parents on the Cedar Point roller coaster. He still couldn’t get over the disparity between his memory and reality. The photograph had taken on magical proportions in his mind. He’d never admit it to anyone, but the simple, cheap-framed photo truly seemed to him like a gift from heaven.
It was the reason he felt he needed to get back, in spite of this man he was falling in love with in bed next to him. The pull of roots was strong.
He rolled over on his back and regarded the ceiling. Flynn saw this as a chance and reached down to fondle him. It felt good, but now was not the time, so Mac gently moved his hand away.
“Sore?” Flynn wondered.
“Little bit,” Mac said. “But I want to talk to you about something.”
“Oh?” Flynn scooted upward slightly, his head resting on his hand, looking down at Mac. “No good ever came of someone saying ‘we need to talk’ or words to that effect.”
But then Flynn laughed, and it gave Mac’s heart a little pang because he knew Flynn felt secure in thinking that Mac couldn’t possibly utter words he wouldn’t want to hear.
“Yeah. Being back home—”
Flynn put a finger to his lips. “Home is here now. With us.” He gestured toward the dogs, still sawing logs at the foot of the bed.
“You’re sweet. Can you just let me finish, though? This isn’t easy.”
Flynn’s features darkened. At last Mac bore witness to worry and fear on Flynn’s handsome face.
“What?” Flynn asked, his voice low, the word borne up on a sigh.
“When I was back in West Virginia,” Mac said, careful now with his wording, “I had a kind of epiphany, if you will. A realization.”
“Okay….”
“I knew I just lost my grandma. She was more of a parent to me than anybody. I really, really loved that woman. She was my heart and my soul. I’m so, so sorry I wasn’t with her when she passed. I still love her, though—with all my heart. Always will.” Mac paused to peer more deeply into Flynn’s eyes, searching for understanding. “See, what I realized back home is that love never dies. So even though Grandma is no longer with me in a physical sense, she’s always a part of me. Always there. Never lost.”
Flynn laid his head on Mac’s chest. Mac stroked his dark hair as he continued talking.
“Being back home—and it is home to me—made me realize that’s where I belong. Do you believe that a place can call to you?”
Flynn didn’t lift his head. “I don’t know. I’ve always been here, never loving it or hating it, just never questioning it.” Flynn felt a twinge, a deep sorrow right at his core. “I’m not really even sure what home means.”
“I’m sorry, Flynn. But I do. I know that a place can sink its grip into you. And that place, back in West Virginia, with the river and the hills and my history, wants me back. It’s calling me to make a life there. I already have a place to live—my grandma’s trailer.”
“You want to live in a trailer?” Flynn asked.
“Don’t put it down, Flynn. It makes you sound like a snob. My happiest memories, up until I met you, were spent in that little trailer. It’s a palace to me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. Most people look down their noses at trailers, anyway. They’re almost synonymous with ‘white trash.’ But I don’t see it as anything other than home, you know?”
Flynn sighed. And he didn’t say anything for the longest time. Long enough for the air in the room to chill. Long enough for a distant grumble of thunder to announce itself. Long enough to finally hear the hiss of soft rain outside on the pavement.
“I guess I can understand where you’re coming from, even if it’s not true for me… yet,” Flynn said, voice deep and sure. “Believe it or not. You know I grew up pretty well off. But you know what? That big house, with its pool, and its… everything, was never home to me. I spent my childhood, my teenage years with parents who didn’t love me, not really.” Flynn looked away from Mac for a moment, blinking. “My mom may have somehow managed to love an image of me, an idea of what she wanted in a son, rather than who I really was. My dad? He didn’t even know me. And I really believe if he did, he wouldn’t want to. I go against his grain.” Flynn shifted so he could look once more into Mac’s eyes.
“That’s why something clicked when I saw you for the first time. Before I had even any reason to know you were the ‘one’ or anything like that. There was just this deep sense that I connected with you on some level deeper than logic could ever explain.”
Mac chuckled softly. “Even though you thought I stole your dog?”
Flynn laughed. “Even though. Maybe because of. Barley brought us together. It wasn’t an accident. He made me see that even life’s darkest turns can lead to something right. If we only have the courage—and the patience—to wait.”
Mac sighed. “That’s beautiful, Flynn.” He couldn’t bring himself to go on, not for a little while anyway. The dogs jumped down from the bed. Barley flopped on the hardwood floor, legs stretched out behind him. Luz waited by the door, a subtle hint. Human conversations or not, she had needs that must be attended to.
Mac felt pressure to say what he needed to. This moment became like ripping a bandage off. It’ll hurt, but make the pain swift and get it over with, he thought. “Flynn, don’t you understand what I’m trying to say here?”
Flynn only laughed. He grabbed Mac’s cock, squeezed it, and let it go. “Of course I do. What do you think I am? Stupid?”
“No, I—”
Flynn cut him off, and all at once, Mac felt like light, pure, white, and warm, exploded inside him. He knew where this was going.
Flynn said, “You’re going to tell me you have to leave Seattle. I get that.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Well, there’s only one way I wouldn’t be.”
Did Mac dare hope? “You’re not saying….”
“I am saying, Mac. I am saying—” And he drew in a
deep breath, let the words out on the exhale. “—I’ll come with you.” Flynn’s blue eyes shimmered with tears. “If you want me to.”
“Really? You realize my home town is, like, ten thousand people, and we’d be living in a—”
“Trailer. I know,” Flynn said. “So? Given the choice between living in a McMansion in a cosmopolitan city or in the boonies with this man and these dogs I love—honey, there’s no contest.”
Mac stared at him. He truly felt as though he were waiting to wake up. This was too much. Too good. Flynn would poke him soon—and not in a good way—and tell him he was joking.
But all that happened was that Luz turned and stood up against the door on her hind legs, scratching rather desperately at the wood.
“We need to get these doggies outside,” Flynn said, flinging back the sheet and quilt.
Mac felt a curious mixture of sadness, numbness, and joy as he followed Flynn around the room, throwing on shorts and T-shirts, sliding into flip-flops.
“Is it still raining?” Mac peered out the window. The lakefront path below looked dark gray and slick, but it was hard to tell if the rain was still coming down.
“Who cares?” Flynn asked. “Let’s get the kids out.”
“Let’s get the kids out,” Mac repeated, following.
There was a lump in his throat the size of a tangerine. And he didn’t care because he felt joy.
Together, two men and two beasts tromped down the stairs to go outside—toward their future.
Epilogue
Eight Months Later
THE PATH through the woods seemed like something that had always been with Mac, in reality and in dreams. The maples and pines causing the sun to fall in dappled light on the dark soil, the stream babbling and running through the woods’ heart—these were magical to him, a place of not only awe but of reverence. These woods were where he’d grown up, where he’d retreated to when times were rough. And if ever things in life were going poorly, he could escape here in his dreams and in his imagination, even from as far away as the Pacific Northwest.
But he wasn’t in the Pacific Northwest, not anymore. He was here, in the woods behind Grandma Grace’s trailer, tromping through the forest, up and down hills and alongside the brown-colored creek, in a kind of heaven.
It was late spring, just after Memorial Day, and the area was in the midst of an early heat wave. That morning, Mac had checked the weather app on his phone, and the local temperature was already hovering in the mideighties.
Now, as he walked along with Flynn in companionable silence, their two dogs leaping through the woods just ahead of them, he was content. Seattle had been a great place for him, and he knew Flynn had grown up there, but it had never been home, not for either of them. They’d settled into the trailer six months or so ago, and Mac was now taking freshman courses in English and education at a nearby state school.
He said a silent “thank you” for about the thousandth time to Dee. The old woman had been so sad to see him leave—him and Barley—when she’d gotten out of the hospital with a clean bill of health. But Mac believed his leaving, and her heart attack too, of course, had much to do with what Dee had done next—made amends with her kids. She’d written to him several times after he and Flynn settled in. She’d told him that building those bridges wasn’t easy, and at times the task seemed insurmountable. But Dee, like Mac, knew that the love we have right here, right now, was all that really mattered. Through persistence and the sheer force of her own indomitable personality, she made her kids see the light—that she was a mom who loved them wholly. Eventually she’d sold the house on Green Lake Way and moved in with Frank in Phoenix, where she was now, learning to golf and, as she put it, “basking in the desert heat.”
She’d surprised him after the sale of the house had gone through and gifted him several thousand dollars, on the condition he would use it to get his degree.
Even though Dee’s gift made going back to school possible, it still didn’t cover all the costs of life. So Mac was also waiting tables at a local diner—along with a certain someone who meant a lot to him. It was his goal to eventually teach English at his old high school, but that was a few years off. But one step at a time, right?
“What do you say we take a break here?” There was a fallen tree near the stream that beckoned to Mac. He and Flynn had been out hiking since early that morning, and he was feeling it in his calves. He plopped down on the log and set down his backpack beside him.
“I say that’s a great idea.” Flynn seated himself next to Mac and draped an arm casually over his shoulders.
They sat in silence like that for a few minutes, birdsong and the chatter of insects providing a soundtrack to the moment. Over their heads, above the canopy of trees, a few lazy clouds, striated, scudded by. The sun was yellow, buttery and warm, penetrating even through the trees.
“You ready for lunch?” Flynn asked, tugging at the opening to his own backpack.
“Oh, you know me—always hungry.”
“And always horny.” Flynn grinned. He began unloading their picnic, packed in separate Rubbermaid containers. Since they’d moved back, Flynn had been unable to find any work that even remotely related to his publicist work in Seattle, so he’d combed the want ads and found himself a job that surprised him—as a short-order cook in the local diner. Mac had encouraged him, knowing from his days waiting tables that the job was hard work, hot, but one that could be easily picked up. Especially for a guy as smart as Flynn.
But the gig had ignited in Flynn a passion for food he’d never realized existed. He’d told Mac he’d grown up in a house where eating out and ordering in were the order of the day, and he’d never had the chance to experience the joy that came from feeding others.
“What have we here?” Flynn asked, peering mischievously into the containers. “How does baby kale salad sound? With apples, red onions, and a little fresh mozzarella? And those ginger-soy-brown-sugar-marinated chicken breasts from dinner last night?”
“And those chocolate chip cookies you made?” Mac asked hopefully.
“We ate all those! How could you forget? It was in the middle of the night.”
“Oh.” Mac leaned over to sniff the container with the salad. “That smells amazing. Apple cider vinegar?”
Flynn nodded. “I was worried about this stuff with the heat, but it seems to be okay.”
They balanced their meals on their laps, sharing the containers of food between them. A warm breeze, sweet, surrounded them. The fresh aroma of the breeze and sound of the water nearby made them feel like they were the only people in the world.
Once the container of chicken was opened, though, Luz and Barley were suddenly no longer interested in seeing what they could ferret out in the forest undergrowth. They charged over, tails wagging. Both of them were panting hard—although it looked like they were grinning.
“I told you. We’ll never lose track of them if we always have food on us.” Mac smiled at Flynn. The statement was a subtle reminder of how Flynn had once lost Barley in a forest like this one.
“You and your dog training. You’re going to be the next Cesar Millan one of these days. Mark my words.” Flynn took a bite of salad.
“Maybe. And you’re going to be a great chef.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Sometimes I think we’ll move on and I’ll find myself in a cubicle again somewhere. It’s in my blood.”
Mac leaned against him. “As long as you follow your heart.”
“As long as I follow you.”
Flynn tried to kiss Mac, but Barley stuck his nose in between them. Luz had already stolen an entire breast of chicken, but Barley knew he got better results from begging.
“This makes me think of the theme song from Mary Tyler Moore,” Mac said. He used to watch reruns of the show in the afternoons with Grandma Grace. Thinking of her brought a tear to his eye.
“Oh, let’s not get all cornball here,” Flynn said, shifting a mouthful of salad to one
side of his mouth to speak. “Were we even born when that show was on?”
“But you know what I’m talking about, right?” Mac asked, humming a bit of the theme song.
Flynn pushed Barley away for a second so he could kiss his man properly. When he pulled away, he said, “Of course I do.”
More from Rick R. Reed
Teacher Dane Bernard is a gentle giant, loved by all at Summitville High School. He has a beautiful wife, two kids, and an easy rapport with staff and students alike. But Dane has a secret, one he expects to keep hidden for the rest of his life—he’s gay.
But when he loses his wife, Dane finally confronts his attraction to men. And a new teacher, Seth Wolcott, immediately catches his eye. Seth himself is starting over, licking his wounds from a breakup. The last thing Seth wants is another relationship—but when he spies Dane on his first day at Summitville High, his attraction is immediate and electric.
As the two men enter into a dance of discovery and new love, they’re called upon to come to the aid of bullied gay student Truman Reid. Truman is out and proud, which not everyone at his small town high school approves of. As the two men work to help Truman ignore the bullies and love himself without reservation, they all learn life-changing lessons about coming out, coming to terms, acceptance, heartbreak, and falling in love.
With the couple next door, nothing is as it seems.
Jeremy Booth leads a simple life, scraping by in the gay neighborhood of Seattle, never letting his lack of material things get him down. But the one thing he really wants—someone to love—seems elusive. Until the couple next door moves in and Jeremy sees the man of his dreams, Shane McCallister, pushed down the stairs by a brute named Cole.
Jeremy would never go after another man’s boyfriend, so he reaches out to Shane in friendship while suppressing his feelings of attraction. But the feeling of something being off only begins with Cole being a hard-fisted bully—it ends with him seeming to be different people at different times. Some days, Cole is the mild-mannered John and then, one night in a bar, he’s the sassy and vivacious drag queen Vera.