by Dale Chase
By the time he emerged clean, shaved, and freshly dressed, I’d become determined. “Want some breakfast?” I asked.
“I’ll cook,” he said, heading for the kitchen.
“I’ll help.”
Over the years, especially before Reece, I’d learned the best way to get over something was to keep going on as if the issue wasn’t there. Do the usual things, follow normal routines, and in time it would feel natural again. The problem would either disappear along the way or be rendered small enough to tolerate. I tried this now. While Glenn fried bacon, I poured orange juice and made toast.
“Scrambled?” he asked.
“Please.”
I wondered if he was doing the same thing as I was, acting like all was well so it would be. As we ate, I tried to read him, but couldn’t. No matter how much of him I thought I’d gained, I’d never really gotten inside. Was I to be like his old lover Dave? Living with an emotionally closed-off man?
Food goes quickly when there’s no talk. Soon, Glenn was clearing dishes, and for some reason, I could no longer bear it.
“I’m sorry for what I did. I went against your wishes, did something in secret, and I regret that. I thought I was doing something for you, not realizing it would be seen as to you.”
“It’s okay,” he said, moving past me to put away the butter.
“Glenn,” I said, taking his arm. “Talk to me, please.”
He shook me off. “I said it’s okay. Let it go.”
I threw up my hands, then walked away. A dozen last words rushed to mind, but I held them back. I did as asked, let it go.
* * * *
But it wasn’t gone. We went back to normal routines. In the weeks ahead, we painted the dining room, but a cloud hung over us now, a faint chill present even during sex. His kiss was different, and mine, in response, was, too. When we spoke of everyday things, it was with efficient agreement, even humor, but a spark had gone out. I stood it until I couldn’t.
We were at Findlay’s Patio Furniture store when I reached my limit. We’d come to buy new patio furniture and I couldn’t stand doing what should have been a fun thing minus the fun. We were looking at a white iron table when I said, “It would help if you talked about it.”
“The furniture?”
“No, not the furniture. The thing that’s been between us these past weeks. Ever since you found the album you’ve been different. It feels like we’re just going through the motions.”
“Here? You want to talk about that here?”
“I’ve wanted to talk for days, but I’m afraid to because I don’t want you to drop me like you dropped Dave for wanting you to open up.”
“I don’t like this table,” he said as he started out of the store. I didn’t chase after him. Instead, I made a slow exit, pleased to find he hadn’t driven off without me. He sat behind the wheel in his truck, and when I got in, he didn’t start the engine.
“What do you want?” he asked, hands gripping the wheel.
“I want to understand why the mistake I made was a mistake. I thought it a good thing, a caring thing.”
“It was.”
“Okay, now you’re confusing me. Was it the album itself or something in it?”
His breathing had noticeably increased to the point where I could almost feel the pressure inside him. He appeared ready to explode, and maybe that was it. Maybe the lid on so tightly all these years needed blowing off. “Tell me,” I said. “Please.”
He shut his eyes, flexed his fingers, and regripped the wheel. “Don’t you get it? I hated them.”
“Your parents.”
“Who else?” Eyes now open, he looked straight ahead.
“Go on.”
His mouth was clamped shut, jaw muscle flexing as words fought to get out.
“Nobody else will know,” I said.
“I’ll know.”
“Tell me.”
He turned to look out the side window, watching people get into the car next to us and drive away, shaking his head all the while he spoke. “I’ve thought it a hundred times but never said it because it’s so wrong.”
Another pause, then he began, but still he didn’t look at me. He looked at the steering wheel instead, gripping it again, as if for ballast.
“Eighteen years in that stinking house, realizing at an early age that other kids’ houses didn’t smell. I couldn’t have friends over, and when I went to their houses, the parents gave me funny looks because the smell was in my clothes and they thought I smoked. Bad influence, you know? Nothing was ever said, so I couldn’t explain, so I stopped having friends. I was miserable, Noah, miserable the whole damned time.”
“Did you ever tell them?”
“No, I never said a word, even when I was in my teens, and by then, disgusted at their filthy habit. They took care of me, taught me right and wrong, all the good stuff, except for this weakness they had. I was afraid if I spoke, I wouldn’t stop.”
Tears ran down his face as he spoke, and when he stopped, he didn’t wipe them away. He just sat, having now let go of the wheel.
“I’m so sorry, Glenn. That’s an awful burden to bear.”
“When my mother got sick, I was angry with her because she’d caused it. She didn’t have to ruin things like that. You’d have thought my dad dying of lung cancer would have stopped her, but no, she kept on and do, you know…”
He shook his head, thrashing around as much as the truck seat would allow.
“Do you know,” he finally managed, “at the end, when she was on oxygen, breathing her last, she begged for a cigarette, saying what did it matter? What was I to do? I unhooked everything, got her away from the oxygen tank, and gave her a cigarette. And the look of pleasure on her face. God, that said it all. There was her life.”
Now I started tearing up. When I reached for his hand, he didn’t pull away, and I counted that as a start. The start of us, the real one.
On the drive home, he said, “You’re the only one who knows how it was.”
“Besides you.”
“Yes, besides me.”
Unburdening takes a lot out of a person. That night, he went to bed at nine-thirty and I left him to it. Nothing more had been said about his parents, which was fine with me. I understood now. He did, too.
* * * *
Next morning, he appeared hungover. He had only toast and coffee, which he took outside. I left him to his solitude, knowing it would take time to recover from the unburdening. And it did.
A week passed with him moving about like he’d lost the ability to speak. He worked in the garden, washed his truck, and did the laundry while I cleaned the entire house, secure in the knowledge that he’d come back to me once healed.
As we started the second week, he began to speak about his childhood, finding good beneath the bad. His father had tinkered in the garage, fixing things while Glenn looked on. And his mother had taught him to cook. She’d always said she didn’t want to produce another man like his father, afraid of the stove. I learned he even knew how to sew, again at his mother’s insistence, though he’d stopped her when she tried to teach him quilting.
I thought at one point to mention how his telling me the awful part had freed him to find the good parts, but saw it best for him to come to this on his own. I’d had just enough therapy to know discovering an inner truth was best when found on one’s own. I was happy to have him back, all of him.
* * * *
I didn’t want to call Reece, but feared if I didn’t he’d make another appearance, and that would be disastrous because he’d spill everything. So one day when Glenn had gone out to run errands, I made the call.
“Noah! How wonderful to hear from you…at last. How are you?”
He sounded so upbeat, I wondered if there was a new man in the vicinity. Encouraged by this, I waded in. “I promised to call you, Reece, so that’s what I’m doing. After lots of serious thought, I can’t come back to you. I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, b
ut my life is here now, with Glenn, the ruffian. We’re happy and I’m quite content.”
He issued a sigh that I knew was for my benefit. It wasn’t a sigh of reluctant acceptance, it was a sigh meant to let me down easy from what could have been a difficult situation, had I accepted his invitation. I had to chuckle.
“What?” he asked.
“I know you, Reece, maybe more than you do. There’s a new man, isn’t there?”
He giggled, which made me smile.
“Tell me about him,” I said.
“You don’t know him. John Tinsley. He’s in a new film with me and, oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? I’ve been cast in Bret Sager’s new romance. Can you believe it? I’m not the romantic lead, unfortunately, but the part is a good one and John is proving to be wonderful company. We’ve hit it off and he loves the house.”
“I’m happy to hear that, Reece. I didn’t like hurting you.”
“Nor I you, dear boy. So I suppose this is it, exit stage right, bring down the curtain.”
“With applause,” I replied. “So long, Reece. Have a happy life.”
“You too, love. I’ll never forget you.”
When I put down the phone, I found myself laughing, and then it hit me. I’d disposed of the past just as Glenn had, though mine wasn’t quite so wrenching. But still, we’d both dealt with things and were now both free. A celebration must be had.
* * * *
An hour later, I heard Glenn’s truck pull in. I’d arranged things in the bedroom, wine breathing, two glasses at the ready. I’d also arranged myself, lying naked. He called out to me, but I said nothing, wanting him surprised. When he came into the bedroom, he stopped short.
“What’s this?”
“I’d think it obvious,” I said, taking hold of my cock. “A little love in the afternoon?”
For a few seconds, he just looked at me, eyes scanning my body up and down. His smile was as much amusement as interest, but that soon faded as he began to undress. Soon, he was lying atop me, up on his elbows, staring down into my eyes.
“I was going to fix the broken faucet,” he said, grinding against me.
“Later. Much later.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Maybe so.” I pulled him to me and kissed him while savoring the feel of him getting hard. “Or the next day,” I said before things got serious.
THE END
ABOUT DALE CHASE
Dale Chase has been writing gay men’s erotica for seventeen years with nearly two hundred stories published in magazines and anthologies. In addition, Dale has three published story collections and two novels: Wyatt: Doc Holliday’s Account of an Intimate Friendship from Bold Strokes Books, and Takedown: Taming John Wesley Hardin from Lethe Press.
While Dale occasionally ventures into contemporary fiction, her primary interest remains the old west. She is presently at work on a novel about two cowboy detectives working out of a San Francisco agency in 1876. A California native, Dale lives near San Francisco.
For more information, visit dalechasestrokes.com.
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