Windsong

by Caitlin Ricci

I found Tom standing by my Jeep as we were getting ready to leave a few minutes later. He handed me a bottle of water. Albert and the cameraman waved to me, and I waved back to them. I'd see them at the hotel in a bit after I grabbed some lunch.

  Tom leaned against my Jeep with his arms crossed over his chest. "Your mom and dad miss you, even when they hate you."

  I laughed. That sounded about right. "I miss them too." Admitting that was hard, because I'd been the one to leave. I could have stayed, but only if I had been able to change everything about myself. I couldn't be gay and live with them, so I'd chosen to be myself and make the best of it. "If you want to get a drink or anything before I leave to go back to Denver again, I wouldn't turn you down." I reached into the Jeep through the open driver window and pulled out one of the business cards Albert insisted we always have with us. They were there in case we happened to meet anyone that would want to work with us for a scene or something, or if we could recruit some guys to come join Albert's company. We got referral bonuses and other benefits for doing it, not that I'd ever met anyone who wanted to do porn who didn't already work for Albert.

  Tom hesitated to take the card from me. Maybe because I was practically naked on it with just a thong on to cover up my cock. "It's got my cell number on it," I explained.

  Still, he refused to take it from my fingers. "Is it because I don't have many clothes on in that picture?" I asked. "Because you have seen me naked."

  He laughed nervously but did take the card and put it into his back pocket. "Yeah, I have. But we were teenagers then. You look a lot different now." He did too. I wondered what horrible secrets my neck was saying about me. Damn fae and their curses.

  "I need to get back to work," Tom said.

  I nodded. I had to get back to the hotel too at some point. "See you." If he didn't call me, I wouldn't. But I was hoping that he would. It might have been nice to talk to an old friend for a while.

  He headed off in the direction of the bigger barn, and I got back into my Jeep and drove away.

  *~*~*

  I hadn't meant to come back to Windsong again, but there I was with my fast-food breakfast sandwich half-eaten as I leaned against one of the pasture fences the next morning. It wasn't even eight yet, but I remembered days from my childhood that I would have been working for hours by then. Work started early on the farm, and I didn't miss those pre-dawn days one bit.

  I was so focused on the mares and their foals quietly grazing a few yards in front of me that I missed someone riding up behind me. I turned and covered my eyes against the sun. "Hi." I definitely hadn't meant to run into my father that morning either. But I couldn't do anything about that now as I stared up at him. He'd hated me when I'd been eighteen, and he didn't look any happier to see me now so many years later.

  "What do you think you're doing here, boy?" he snapped as gruffly as I thought he possibly could. His anger still sent shivers down my spine, just as it had when I'd been a child awaiting his punishment.

  "Watching the horses," I quietly replied. My backbone was gone in an instant.

  "You don't belong here."

  He was right. I didn't.

  "And you need to stay away from Tom. He's a good man, despite what you did to him."

  And suddenly my anger had chased away any fear or meekness within me. "Screw you."

  My father could barely speak past his anger, but I saw his tension moving into the horse he was riding as she put her ears back and started tossing her head. As he started yelling, she began to dance under him with her nervousness.

  "Dad…" I tried to warn him. "Dad!" I screamed at him when he only got louder. I tried to grab for the mare's reins, but she pulled out of my reach only seconds before rearing. My father was a great rider, but he lost his balance anyway, and before he hit the ground I had my phone out and I was calling for help.

  It didn't take long for Tom and my mom to come out of the house after that. The mare didn't run off, but she was visibly shaken as she stood there trembling at the side of the road. My father kept pushing me away even as I tried to figure out just how badly he was hurt. "You need to stop fighting me!" I shouted at him.

  Mom rushed up and knocked me aside. I should have been there next to him when the paramedics came to take him to the hospital, but only my mom was. Tom was with me, holding me back against my Jeep with a strong hand around my arm and another pressed against the center of my chest, stopping me completely.

  "You can't help right here," Tom told me as the paramedics got my father on a stretcher and started loading him into the ambulance.

  "I shouldn't have come back here," I whispered as I stared at the frail body of my unmoving father.

  "Why did you?"

  I didn't have a good answer for that.

  *~*~*

  I knew they'd all be angry to see me again, but I went to the hospital anyway. I was lucky that they were at lunch or something when I came into my father's room, though, because it was only he and myself there.

  "Hi," I said as I leaned against the wall.

  "Take those piercings out of your ears. You look like a clown," he snapped at me.

  I smirked. Same old Dad, even if he was attached to various machines by a bunch of tubes. "If you hadn't been so angry, she wouldn't have reared."

  "I wouldn't have been angry if you hadn't come around where you weren't wanted."

  He had me there.

  "What are you doing here?" he snapped.

  I shrugged and came across the room to sit down next to him in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs. "Checking up on you. I wanted to make sure you weren't badly hurt."

  "Broken hip, but I'll live."

  I cringed. There was no way he'd be back to work right away with that kind of an injury. "Tom will take care of Windsong then, I'm sure." Strangely, that made me feel better about things. Even as a teenager, Tom had been extremely responsible with the farm. We'd never even snuck off until after all the horses had hay and water and the stalls had been cleaned, because he'd refused to neglect them, even for a few hours. He was always better about being responsible for them than I was.

  "He'll need help," my father surprised me by saying.

  I snorted. The Tom I'd known didn't need help doing anything.

  "Tom was helping me run the farm. You want to be allowed back into this family and not shot the next time I find you next to the fences? Then you help him out and show me that you're my kid again and not just some mistake."

  I was instantly offended by most of what he'd said. But there was a small part of me that wondered if I did want to be let back into his good graces. Probably not. “Why would you ever offer me that? You and Mom don’t want me anywhere near the farm to begin with.”

  “I’m old, boy, in case you hadn’t noticed. Someone has to take care of the farm when I’m gone.”

  I had an easy answer for that. “Then give it to Tom. He actually wants it.”

  “I already tried. He said he wouldn’t take it unless I offered it to you too.”

  Tom had no way of knowing that I would have ever come back to Windsong so I’m not entirely sure what he’d planned by saying that to my dad. My parents could have called me at some point, to talk to me about taking over the farm, but if they hadn’t then I had a hard time believing Tom would have let it just fall apart after their eventual deaths.

  "You'll probably just fuck it up anyway. Like you do with everything else," he grumbled darkly.

  I rolled my eyes, but my pride wouldn't let that lone insult slide. He didn't think I could add anything to the farm. I'd show him that he was wrong. I'd been worth something when I'd left them as a teenager, and I was even more valuable to him now. I'd show him what he'd lost and then I'd leave with my chin held high and my finger in the air. That was a good plan and one that instantly made me happy.

  “I’ll be there.”

  My father looked surprised. "You won't last an hour."

  I'd prove him wrong. "I'll be there at dawn." I was done tal
king to him, and he couldn't have added anything more to the conversation anyway, so I took off.

  Working the farm was hard, but so was having sex with four other guys while being exhausted and making sure my face didn't look stupid when I came because it was all being recorded. I'd been able to handle anything in porn, and now I knew that I could do the same on the horse farm. I hadn't worked it in over a decade, but it wasn't like horse farming ever changed all that much.

  *~*~*

  At dawn the next morning, I was back at Windsong. I went straight to the barn where Tom was already taking horses out to the different pastures.

  "When your dad told me you'd be coming to help out at the barn, I definitely didn't believe it," Tom said as I put a halter around the horse closest to me.

  "I would hope that you would know me better than that." I followed him with his horse out to the closest pasture with the mare next to me.

  He laughed softly, we released the horses, and then we went back for more. "Back when we were teenagers, sure. But I haven't seen much of you since. I get why, but it would have been nice if you’d made an effort. They do still love you."

  Tom was blushing as he turned away from me, and I frowned. I ignored him telling me that I should have come back sooner to focus on the bit of information that had caught my attention. "You haven't seen me at all except for this week."

  He busied himself with getting the next horse haltered and ready to leave the barn. "I've… uh… seen a few of your movies."

  That made me snort. I kept working right alongside him as we finished getting the horses in the barn out to the pastures. I didn't care that he'd seen my movies. So had potentially millions of other people.

  "Are you going to finish that tattoo on your back? It might distract people from that mess on your neck."

  I laughed. "You've seen a more recent video of mine then."

  He wasn't looking at me anymore, so I figured that was confirmation enough.

  "I will be as soon as possible," I said, answering his question.

  He nodded, and we were soon done with that part of the morning. There were still hours of work left, and we started mucking out the stalls.

  Within the hour, I was sweating despite how cool it was outside, and I had to take off my shirt. I found Tom looking at me minutes later, and I smiled over at him.

  "I really wish you'd grown up to be ugly," he muttered.

  He made me laugh again with that. "Sure. But then I wouldn't be such a top porn star." And the curse around my neck showed just how ugly I was anyway. I might have been good looking, but that only got me so far when my ugliness was on display for everyone to see.

  He didn't say anything to that, and we got back to work.

  *~*~*

  Hours later, we were sitting on the porch with glasses of lemonade. I was sweaty, exhausted, and for once I didn't care what my neck was saying about me because it was probably just saying that I didn't want to muck another damn stall or fix another fence, for the rest of my life.

  "It's nice to see what you became," Tom said idly.

  I glanced over at him. "You're exactly as I would have pictured you. Still good looking. Still kind and hardworking and the perfect person to work this farm. We may have been a fluke, but at least your work ethic when it came to the horses wasn't."

  "We were never a fluke."

  “You fooled me then. You deserve an Oscar for your performance back then.”

  “I still love you.”

  His words were so quiet I was half-certain I hadn't heard him. But he was blushing as he looked away from me. I kissed him as hard as I could. I put every bit of the need and desire I'd always felt for him in that kiss as I crashed our lips together. I never should have done it. And kissing Tom was wrong. But hearing him say that we hadn't just been some childhood mistake, that the years I'd spent mourning my relationship with him hadn't be for nothing… that struck me hard.

  He was soft and hesitant under my mouth. I had to pull back on how roughly I was kissing him. I wanted to drag him into the dirt and get his clothes off, but that wouldn't have been the right thing to do. I wanted him, but I didn't want the life he had. I didn't want Sunday-night dinners with my family. I didn't want to live in Montana again, and I sure as hell didn't want to live at Windsong again.

  I pulled back while those thoughts were rushing through my head. I was quick to get to my feet. Kissing him had been wrong, and a mistake. "Have fun here and forget all about me," I told him softly. My voice broke on the words. I didn't want to say them, but I needed to. I was done. I'd go back to the hotel and spend the rest of the week in the pool. I wouldn't come back down this way again, and after this week was up I wouldn't ever come up to Montana again. I probably wouldn't even be going above Wyoming.

  He grabbed my wrist as I started to walk away. "I can't do that."

  "I can't be who you want," I said as plainly as I could. "I'm a porn star. I live in Denver. Do you really want me in your life? Do you want to be that worried about whether or not I enjoy sex with the guys I'm working with more than I do you?" I was being harsh but that was the reality of our situation. He had his life here, and there was nowhere for me in it.

  He shook his head and let me go.

  Without another word, I walked across the fields and between the pastures. I got back in my Jeep, and a few minutes later I was back on the road and heading toward the hotel.

  *~*~*

  After shooting multiple photo sessions with different guys from the company all over the hotel, I was exhausted and just getting into bed around midnight. I was pretty close to being asleep a short time later too when my phone started ringing.

  I groaned and answered it. "Hello?" I sounded like shit. Groggy, annoyed shit.

  "Jamie?"

  Sighing, I sat back up in bed. "Hi, Tom." I'd thought I'd made myself clear earlier at the farm, but apparently not.

  "Can I stay with you tonight?"

  He sounded miserable, and I didn't want to be a jackass. "Why?” I didn’t wait for him to answer me. It was so late that I didn’t actually care anymore. “Whatever. Sure. You know the hotel your mom used to work at when we were kids? I'm there. Room 275. Just come on up."

  "Thank you."

  "Sure." I hung up after that, and waited for Tom to join me in my hotel room. Normally the idea of sharing a room with him would have made me at least half-hard. But tonight I was too tired, and I'd already spent the afternoon wrapped around enough guys not to want to be doing it any more than I already had been.

  He was there shortly, and I let him in while I tried to hold back a yawn. "Hi," I said. When I caught him staring at me, I realized that I was just in a pair of low-hanging lounge pants. I'd been in bed, after all.

  He swallowed thickly and looked away from me. "Hey. Thanks for letting me crash here."

  I shrugged and shut the door behind him. It locked on its own. I didn't offer him the couch, since we'd shared a bed for years when we were kids. It wasn't weird for me, but he just sort of hung there by the side of the bed as I got under the covers again.

  "What's wrong?" I grumbled as I looked up at him. Why couldn't he just make this easy for once and get in bed too? Then we could go to sleep.

  "You're okay with this?"

  "Of course I am." I had no reason not to be. "Look, it's not as if we're going to be having sex here or anything like that. You need a place to sleep, I've got a king-size bed. It's simple math. Just lay down too so that we can get some sleep and stop worrying so much."

  He didn't say anything more to me after that as he got into bed, which I was grateful for. I wasn't up to talking, or doing anything more than sleeping. But once he was beside me and we were looking at each other, I couldn't help but remember the times when we'd been teenagers and he'd slept over and we'd been just like this. We'd just been kids trying to figure out who we were, well before we'd ever started experimenting with sex. We'd been best friends innocently sharing a bed and loving each other and trying not to le
t the other one know.

  "I missed you," I told him sleepily. If I hadn't been so exhausted, I would have never been able to say something like that to him. But being tired, it was like all my normal defenses had left me there and I was simply this lump in the bed across from him.

  And I had missed him. I'd missed how we'd been as teenagers when he'd been my best friend and I'd been able to tell him everything. I missed how he'd been my first love and everything we'd done together had been special because we'd always loved each other. We had promised each other and we'd be together forever, no matter what. He'd said that, and I'd agreed, and only six months after that I'd been told to stop being gay or get out. And he'd just stood there. He'd made his choice and he'd chosen his family, and pretending to be straight, over me.

  "I know. Your tattoo says so. I'm sorry for what happened when we were teenagers. And I’m sorry for being an ass when you showed up at the farm too. It was a shock to see you there again. I didn’t know how to react and I handled myself badly," Tom said as if he could read my mind somehow and know what kind of a hole his rejection had left there in my heart.

  I sniffled and wiped at my eyes. "It doesn't matter. Not anymore."

  "I think it does. I wasn't as strong as you. I was scared. I should have said something, but the idea of being on my own was too much for me."

  He was wrong there though. "I was on my own. You wouldn't have been, because I would have been right there with you." Back then, I'd been so naive and idealistic, but I had known that together we would have been better off. We were always stronger, and smarter, when we were together and that wouldn't have been any different at all.

  “Would you give up porn to be with me? If we could be together on the farm?”

  I answered him without thinking. “Yes.”

  Tom wrapped his arms around me and pulled me across the sheets until I was wrapped tightly against him. I should have fought back, or at the very least told him what an idiot he was being by touching me. But I didn't. I closed my eyes, rested my head against his chest, and I savored those quiet moments between us. I thought about the choices I'd made and how much different my life would have been had he run away with me when he'd had the chance. We would have struggled and it would have been harder than hell, but at least we would have been together then.