“It’s too bad you needed to turn around and drive back here for this,” Bridget said. “Obviously some vagrant wandered in and...” she paused as if she’d just stumped herself, then said, “Well, your fingerprints are all over the Center. They need to be eliminated.”
“It’s a terrible thing that happened. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Bridget gaped for a split second, then said, “Thank you.” I don’t think any one of us had felt actual sadness, not yet, anyway. Shock? Yeah. But grief? I didn’t know if I’d ever feel anything other than betrayal when I thought about Luke and his white, white teeth, and his snaky email.
The police tech stuck her head into the waiting room. I wasn’t on a first name basis with her. She was so young her uniform looked like it still had its original creases. “Ms. Barker? We’re ready for you now.”
Marvin leaned toward me and loud-whispered, “Lookit that.” I really wished he wouldn’t whisper. It was mostly spit. “I’ll bet she’s younger than my grandkids.”
“How many grandkids?” Jesse asked him.
“Oh, let’s see. I got five in Chicago, and a great-grandson there too....”
I stared up at the ceiling and zoned out, because it was easier than looking at Jesse. Not that he wasn’t easy to look at. He was. Probably too easy—and looking at him made me want to grab him by the shoulders, and pull him against me, and beg him to get in that big old truck of his and drive somewhere far, far away. And take me with him.
In a few minutes, Bridget power-walked out of the fingerprint room, twisting a wet wipe over the pinkie of her opposite hand. “It’s a possibility that we’ll have to temporarily close the Center,” she told me, “but I won’t know until I meet with the board. Either way, I’ll have you report for work as usual Sunday night. If I hear anything before then, I’ll call you.”
“Okay. Uh...thanks.”
The tech called Marvin in, which left Jesse and me, in that room that had just been so irritatingly full of other people, suddenly alone.
“Someone bashed Luke’s head in,” I said. Not really the opening line I’d been hoping for.
Jesse nodded slowly, and he watched me, and he waited for whatever else I had to say. Too bad it was nothing intelligent—I followed up with, “Who could do something like that?”
“Well, it wasn’t me.” He was kidding. I think.
When I didn’t answer, his face went serious. “You didn’t think it was, did you?”
“No.” Which really meant that yes, I’d considered it, but really had been hoping that when he described my sleepwalking episode, he hadn’t left out anything grisly.
“Look,” he said, “either we were tucked away by the People of the Plains when whatever happened to him happened, or we were long gone. I remember—Luke was trying to get a progress report out of me, and I made sure I kept you out of his way to stop him from talking to you. Alex said your tumor wasn’t public knowledge, so I figured I should make sure it stayed that way.”
“So, let me get this straight. You saw Luke, alive, after you found me sleepwalking. And you didn’t let me out of your sight until you brought me home.”
Jesse sat back hard in his folding chair. “Wait now, you’ve been thinking that you did it?”
I flipped my baseball cap onto my knees and ran my hand through my hair. “I was mad enough.”
“To kill someone?” Jesse leaned forward so urgently the chair creaked. “Web, we haven’t known each other long, but believe me. You didn’t kill anybody. Sleepwalking, or awake.” He glanced at the door to the fingerprint room. “Now let’s not talk about this right here.”
We sat there without saying anything for a couple of minutes, and then I said, “Who’s gonna pick up your dad at the airport?”
“My uncle will be there. I told him I got called back to the museum. There’s a lot more to the story than that, and I’m not in the habit of lying to them, but I don’t want all of ’em dropping what they’re doing and driving out here to rally around me. I want to get the long view first.”
“See if the F-4’s coming.”
“Well, the sky’s yellow, but sometimes that’ll pass without much fuss. Best not to get the whole mess of ’em worked up over nothing.”
I dropped my voice to a whisper. “A murder’s not nothing.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m a suspect. They just gotta rule out my prints, that’s all, ’cause I touched everything in that building. Same as you.”
The door opened and Marvin ambled out. “Well, we’ll see if I have a job come Monday, huh? Take it easy.”
“Mister...Weber?” said the tech. Probably trying to recall exactly how I was related to Officer Weber. Jesse raised his eyebrows at me as if to remind me that yellow skies could turn blue again. I knew that. The problem was, sometimes a tornado tore your life in half first.
The weirdest thing about getting printed was the ink. It wasn’t on a spongy ink pad like you’d use for a scrapbooking page—and, for the record, that had been Kathy’s weird craft-phase, not mine. It was a slab of metal covered in a thin, precise film of ink, and it was cold. I hadn’t expected it to feel cold. And when the tech girl rolled my fingers onto the pre-printed slots on the card, the impressions they made looked like lumpy, wavy-sided rectangles, and not the whorled ovals you usually picture when you hear the word “fingerprint.”
“So, you’re Kathy’s brother-in-law?” she ventured as she rolled my final pinky onto the card.
“Cousin.”
“Oh.” She handed me a foil packet with a wet wipe inside. “Getting printed’s no big deal. Even bank tellers have to do it.”
I probably looked like a moron as I tried to figure out why she was telling me that. Was she being nice because of my relationship to Kathy, or was it that obvious I was on the verge of pulling a Thelma & Louise? “They do?” I said, after a pause that seemed a smidge too long. Maybe she hadn’t heard I was gay and she was cruising me. Awkward.
“Sure. Notaries, too.”
“Okay, well....” I opened the packet with my teeth, pulled out the moist square and scrubbed at the ink, because it was easier than looking at her.
“And there wasn’t any hair or blood on your flashlight, so it’s probably not the murder weapon.”
My flashlight?
Shit, was that supposed to make me feel better? It meant I’d left my missing gear somewhere at the scene. Fuck.
“Do you need another wipe?” She handed me a second foil pack.
“Thanks.”
She looked me up and down as if she might say something, but then she decided against it and opened the door. “An officer will call you if they need anything else.”
“All right. Uh, bye.”
Jesse stood as I exited the fingerprint room and the tech said, “Mr. Jones?” It seemed like he was trying to catch my eye, but I walked past him and out the front door, where I stood on the front steps and I hovered there with my hands jammed deep in my pockets.
Ten minutes later, Jesse came through the door holding a wet wipe. “You okay?” he said. “You don’t look so hot.” He nodded toward the parking lot and I fell into step beside him.
I waited until we were in his truck with the doors shut and the windows rolled up, and said, “You told me I was raving about him being a prick. Maybe I’ve been storing up all my anger and it just...exploded.”
“That’s a damn long stretch and you know it. And not a prick...a snake.” He smiled. Jesus Christ. Dimples. “Look, he was walking and talking the last time I saw him, and I swear to you, I did not let you out of my sight for even a second after that.”
“You’ve got to admit, it’s weird, me losing a huge hunk of time right when it happened.”
“Is it? How often do you sleepwalk? Every week? Every day?”
I usually tried my best not to admit the frequency of the lapses. “Every day, I guess.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled it into his lap. “More than once a day?”
I looked d
own at his fingers working my hand. They were strong, and sun-browned. “I guess.”
“Then I don’t suppose it’s weird, with you low on sleep and all keyed up about the grant—”
I pulled his hand to my mouth and pressed it to my lips. It felt desperate. I could try and blame George, but come on. It was all me. He stared, as if finally, in his I-see-everything-coming-a-mile-away nature, something had surprised him. I fit his second knuckle between my lips and kissed it, slowly, lavishly, like I would’ve sucked the dick of a hot transfer student I was trying to impress, back in my old life, back before George.
Jesse opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
When I tilted my head and moved on to the next knuckle, I left a trail of wetness behind. I breathed him in, and beneath the alcohol tang of the wet wipe, his hands held the mellow scent of the suede steering wheel cover and, I imagined, Iowa sunshine.
I traced his knuckle with my tongue and sucked on it some more, and he let out a breath he’d been holding—slow, and very, very careful. “Can I stay at your place tonight?”
I nodded.
“Then we’d best not do that here.” He glanced back at the building. “The cousin who’s gonna hand my balls to me works here. Right?”
I reluctantly let him lower his hand and rest it on my thigh, and I had to admit, Kathy would probably catch hell if anyone saw her cousin “fagging out” in the parking lot. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go home.”
13
I SLAMMED MY APARTMENT door and grabbed Jesse by the shirttail. I was so fatigued I was shaking, and damn, he was probably just as beat—he’d been up all night and driven more than eight hours himself—and it didn’t matter, none of it mattered. Our exhaustion just made the encounter seem all the more surreal.
He slung his arms around my shoulders and pulled my head down so my mouth met his, and I felt his strong fingers weave through my hair and cradle my defective head.
No more shyness, not this time, now that we could finally, fully connect. Our tongues met, slid, learned each other’s mouths. My hands burrowed under his jacket and three shirts, and I gasped against wet lips when my fingertips finally connected with hot, smooth skin.
His hands roved my body, finding my shoulders and arms like he had back in the conservation room, but aggressively now. For someone who hadn’t had many gay guys to practice on, he really seemed to know what he liked.
I worked at his clothes, so many clothes. His baseball cap dropped to the floor, and his shirts landed on the computer desk, the radiator, the TV. His tan stopped at his neckline and around his biceps, and his left arm was darker than his right. I yanked off my khaki uniform shirt and dropped it on the floor. I had a nocturnal creature’s skin, the same color through and through, and my dusting of chest hair was stark against my pale body.
He touched me, tracing the shape of the hair, then he dragged a finger down over my nipple. I’d never been much for nipple play—but that single touch made my cock heave against my fly. I grabbed him by the wrist and said, “Come to bed.”
I slung Jesse down on his back, and his hair fanned to one side in glossy, dark waves. His knees were bent and his feet hung over the side of the mattress. His big jeans had ridden down, and the place where his trail began to broaden into something way more private showed over the top of the waistband. I put my face to his lean stomach and traced the curve of the muscles with my lips, and felt them bunch as he got his elbows under him to watch me.
Once I pulled Jesse’s belt buckle open, his jeans and boxers slid right down, but before I could dive in and finish what I’d started back in the truck, he hauled me up by the armpit and said, “C’mere.”
He rolled us so that I was on my back, and him half on top of me. He seemed pretty big on eye contact, watching me with those blue, blue eyes of his as he smoothed the front of my hair out of my face. A now-familiar gesture. I said, “You did that to me the first time you saw me sleepwalk. Touched my hair.”
“I did?”
“Uh-huh. So how’d you know right away I was gay—especially in that ugly uniform.”
“Nothing wrong with a man in uniform. I’ve appreciated many a fine gas station attendant in my time.” He flashed dimple, and my heart stuttered. “I didn’t know, not until Bridget told you to give me your number, and you turned red.”
“Great.” I felt my cheeks heat up again.
“Yeah, well, I’m glad you did.”
I unzipped my fly and shoved everything down, kicked off my pants and socks, and there we were, together, naked—and it somehow felt like an entirely new naked, because it was this new me who’d stripped down in front of him. I was already hard, and he was halfway there. He took hold of his dick and stroked mine with it, dragged the crown of his up and down the side of my shaft, and I stared at the two of them side by side like I didn’t know what to do with a dick anymore.
Downstairs, a door slammed—Alex or Kathy? The TV followed, droning the news. Alex, then. He’d want to talk to me, both of them would, but hopefully they’d see the 4X4 with Iowa plates and let me be, so this one good thing could finally happen.
“What’s wrong, someone gonna come up here and lynch me?”
“No, don’t stop.” I pressed my hips closer to his, lined up our dicks and slipped my hand under his to stroke them both together. He stiffened in my grasp.
He trailed his fingers down my arm while I jacked us both, then back up again, over my collarbone, my jaw, all those places he seemed to like so much, where vein or sinew stood out against muscle, where planes met and angles formed. He lingered there, touching my face, then tilted my head toward his for more kisses, slow and wet. His hips began to flex to the rhythm of my hand, and we rocked together, thighs brushing. Our mouths roamed one another, leaving wet trails on cheeks and chins. His hair tickled against my shoulder, just like I’d imagined, only so much better.
We moved together, breathing hard, as the strokes grew quicker and more urgent. Jesse’s thighs started to shake. He clenched all over and gasped into my mouth, and the wet splash of his jiz took me in the chest. Yes, I thought, and I kissed him harder, stroked our cocks harder, until the feel of his hips bucking pushed me to that sweet, sweet brink, and then over.
I gave his dick a final stroke, then eased my arm around him. He pulled me close and held me, with our come slippery between us, growing sticky, and he breathed a contented sigh into my mouth. “About the other day,” he said drowsily. “When I didn’t stay, and you wanted me to...it was lame of me, but you took me by surprise. I never pick up guys when I’m at work. Taxidermy freaks people out. Scares ’em off. Makes ’em think they’ll walk in on me someday with my hand up the ass of a twenty-four point buck.”
“You’re saying I won’t? Damn it—what about my deer fetish?”
When he kissed me again, he was smiling. I could’ve kept on kissing him like that forever—and more. I wanted to start round two, show him I really did remember how to make a guy happy, but when I tried to move, he held on tighter and mumbled something against my cheek that didn’t much sound like words. I was relaxed. And content. My arms were like lead. My eyes felt sandy, and I realized how good it would feel to rest them, just for a second.
I woke up once, around 8 p.m., because we were in the bed sideways, on top of the covers with our feet hanging off. I rolled Jesse against the wall, pulled the covers over us and curled up to his back. The warm scent of his hair lulled me back into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The knocking on my door pulled me right back out. I looked at the clock. Seven. Was that right? Seven in the morning?
“You’re on my hair,” Jesse groaned.
“Sorry.” I found a pair of sweatpants next to the bed and pulled them on. The knocking continued, evenly spaced raps, loud and firm. “Okay, okay,” I called. Luckily, I glanced down at myself before I opened the door covered in the dried remains of our mingled semen. I pulled the flannel shirt off the radiator and buttoned a few buttons somewhere in the
middle, then opened the door.
“Yeah?” I asked Alex.
He was in a T-shirt, boxers and flip-flops, and his eyes looked squinty. If he’d had enough hair, it would’ve been sticking up. “Did you eat dinner last night?”
I wanted to snap at him for waking me up to ask if I’d eaten, but something in the urgency of his tone told me to hear him out. “No. I went to bed.”
“How about your pill, did you take your pill?”
“Shit.”
“Listen, get yourself together. I think you’re in for a long day at the police department.” He looked over my shoulder and said, “You too.” I glanced back at Jesse. He had on his jeans and one of my T-shirts. “Come down for breakfast, both of you. Kathy wants to make sure you know what not to say when Bobby questions you.”
“But we didn’t do anything wrong,” Jesse said.
“Hey, what do I know about police work? I’m the copy machine repair guy.”
Alex turned and flip-flopped down the stairs, and I planted my hands on my hips and looked at Jesse. “This can’t be good.”
“What do you mean? The museum’s full of cameras—worse thing it’ll catch us doing is...you know.”
“But I went on his computer—I pawed through his garbage.”
“You didn’t steal anything, you didn’t hurt anybody, and you didn’t take a whiz in the coffee maker.”
“As far as I know,” I muttered.
“You’ll be fine.” His eyes dropped to the plaid flannel shirt. “And no one ever borrowed my clothes before. I could get used that.”
I could get used to lots of things—to waking up sideways on the bed, to blue eyes and freckles and deep, greedy kisses. But it looked like Jesse would get his way, and we’d end up taking things slow even though I would rather spend the weekend in bed, getting off on the way he touched me, mapping every inch of his body in return so I could learn every last spot that made him gasp and shudder.
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