Wayward

by Gregory Ashe

  “Even that one,” Somers said, but the words sounded a little slippery at the end, a little hysterical.

  “But I want you to have friends. I don’t know how to do that, but I want that for you. I know it’s important for you.”

  The hills flattened out into fields already furry with alfalfa; Somers guided the Mustang onto the shoulder of the road, and then he stopped the car. The engine ticked; a beat-up old Ford barreled past, and a whiff of diesel exhaust floated through the windows. Somers sat still, staring out the window, while Hazard continued flattening that errant tuft of hair above his ear.

  “Coming out is stupid,” Somers said. “It’s . . . it’s so upside-down crazy that I can’t even wrap my head around it from the inside. I mean, I’m me. Why do I have to tell people who I love?”

  “You don’t,” Hazard said, “but it’s not like we’ve tried to keep it a secret.”

  “I know. That’s not what I mean. I’m trying to say that when we started dating it just . . . happened. I mean, it was such a smooth transition.”

  In spite of himself, Hazard raised an eyebrow.

  Somers laughed. “Ok, maybe not smooth. But one day we weren’t dating, and the next day we were.”

  “That’s usually how it happens for most people.”

  “I guess.” Biting his lip, Somers let his hands crawl up the steering wheel. “People said things. Cora said something. And a couple of guys at work have given me shit. Foley, for example. Jokes, you know. But most people have just kind of pretended like nothing was different.”

  Hazard’s hand stilled; that errant tuft of hair over Somers’s ear popped back up again.

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Here’s the thing,” Somers said. “In theory, coming out is stupid. Nobody should have to state their sexual preference or their gender identity. It’s nobody else’s business, and it shouldn’t matter. We should just get to be people, and if I want to bone a guy, I’ll bone a guy. And if I want to bone a girl, I’ll bone a girl.”

  Tugging once on that little tuft, ignoring Somers’s yip, Hazard said, “Dulac didn’t give you any ideas, did he? This is not about to become an open relationship. Period.”

  Somers laughed for almost five minutes. Hazard didn’t laugh. At all.

  When Somers had finally settled down, he said, “I’m talking my way in circles. I’ll just show you, I guess. But I wanted to tell you, here’s one reason I think coming out might not be stupid: everybody has to face facts. Once it’s out there, it’s out there, and nobody can pretend anymore.”

  Hazard squiggled his fingers through the blond mess and said, “For me, it was about taking back the power of that dynamic. I didn’t have the right words to understand it in those terms, not back then, but I knew that as long as I played by everyone else’s rules, I was going to lose.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. My dad, Sackeman, assholes like Drew Klein and Donny Lamar, everybody who wants to close their eyes, like one day I’ll get over this or grow up, and then I’ll be the guy they remember again. They can figure it out for anybody else, but for me it’s like . . . it’s like it’s not real. It’s kind of funny you were reading Proust. You know, he was gay. And you know what he said? ‘One can say anything so long as one does not say I.’” Somers propped his elbow on the door, his head in his hand. “I don’t want to be that guy Drew and Donny and my dad want me to be. Not again. I hated being that guy. I want to say I.”

  “John,” Hazard said, “what did you do?”

  Somers grinned, but he looked tired as he started the car.

  “Are we running away?” Hazard said. “Was I supposed to pack a bag?”

  They eased out onto the state highway; the Mustang’s tires kicked up dust, and then Somers accelerated, and the tires hummed along asphalt. They drove another quarter mile, and Somers eased onto the shoulder again. This time, he left the Mustang running; in the field of spring wheat to the right, a stout man was working on the wheel of an irrigation line. Hazard barely noticed any of it. His eyes were locked on the billboard ahead of them.

  “Oh my Christ,” Hazard said.

  “I know. I know you think it’s crazy, but I had to do it. I was so tired of being in limbo.”

  On the billboard ahead of them, a twelve-foot-tall Somers was holding out his hands in a what can you do gesture. Next to him, in huge letters, the sign said, YEP. I’M A HOMO.

  “Oh my Christ,” Hazard said again.

  Somers made a little humming noise, hands sliding along the wheel, and then he said, “There’s, um. More.”

  Hazard shook his head, but he said, “Ok.”

  They drove another mile.

  “No,” Hazard said. “Absolutely not.”

  This billboard featured Somers, twelve feet tall again, pointing toward the opposite side of the billboard. A twelve-foot-tall Hazard stood there, arms across his chest, staring out at the driver. Between them, text read, AND I LOVE THIS MAN.

  “It’s coming down,” Hazard said. “In fact, I’ll do it myself.” Unbuckling the seat belt, he reached for the door.

  “Hold on,” Somers said, laughing as he caught Hazard’s arm and dragged him back into the seat. “Ree, just hold on. I do love you. And I don’t care who knows it.”

  “I don’t care who knows it either,” Hazard said. “I’ll take out an ad in the Courier if you want me to. I don’t give a fuck who knows. But we’re taking that goddamn billboard down right now.”

  “Why?” Somers said, laughing more as Hazard tried to pry his hands off and as Somers continued to grab him and drag him back into the car. “Ree, stop it and talk to me. Why?”

  “My face does not look like that.”

  “You’re very handsome. You’ve got a very handsome face.”

  “It does not look like that,” Hazard said, stabbing a finger at the billboard. “Like I’m having bad gas. And they did something to my chin. I do not have a double chin.”

  “Well,” Somers said, stretching across Hazard to grab the seat belt, then dragging it back and buckling Hazard in place, “you’d be surprised how hard it is to find a picture where you’re not making that exact face. In fact, you’re kind of making it right n—you know what? This is an easy fix.”

  “I do not make that face.”

  “I know.”

  “I do not look like that.”

  “I know.” Somers eased out onto the road; a minute later, he added, “But when people are taking pictures, you know, just remember: chin up.”

  Hazard couldn’t help himself. He flipped down the visor and checked himself in the mirror. He craned his head. He raised his chin. He patted the underside of his chin with the back of his hand.

  When he caught Somers watching him out of the corner of his eye, Hazard muttered, “Say a fucking word.”

  Somers was apparently smart enough not to do that.

  “There’s more?” Hazard said after another minute of driving.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you do this all the way back to St. Louis?”

  “No,” Somers said. “Just one more.” He ran his hands along the wheel again; his thumbs bumped together at the top, and then he started again.

  “And just so I’m clear,” Hazard said, “the grand idea behind these billboards is that now, no one will be able to pretend you’re just going through a phase. Something like that. Did I get it right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Jesus, John,” Hazard said, leaning out the window, letting the breeze whip his face for a moment. “We could have just leaked a sex tape.”

  The Mustang drifted onto the shoulder for a moment before Somers could jerk the wheel and bring them back onto the road.

  “You didn’t—” Somers said. “I mean, you never said—”

  Hazard checked himself in the visor mirror again.

  “If you made one without telling me,” Somers said.

  Hazard patted the underside o
f his chin again.

  “God,” Somers said, dropping back into his seat hard. “I hate you sometimes.”

  Another mile, and they pulled onto the shoulder again. This time, the twelve-foot-high Somers was on one knee, holding out something small and black toward the viewer. The text next to him said, AND I’M GOING TO MARRY HIM.

  When Hazard looked over, Somers was holding a small black box in one hand. His face was pale except for high spots of color, and he was chewing the inside of his cheek.

  “This is the part,” Somers said, “where we get out of the car, and I go down on one knee, and I ask you to marry me. I really thought it was a great plan. I know you like your privacy, and it would just be the two of us, and I had a whole speech prepared about how much I love you and how I’m a better man because of you and how I finally get to be me, and I get to be me with you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  “We’re already engaged.”

  “I know, but I wanted to ask you too. I want you to have a chance to say yes.” Somers scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Especially after this week. After all the mistakes I’ve made.”

  “John, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “And now is probably the most inappropriate time in the world to do this because of how I’ve been acting and because of your dad, and—” Somers blew out a shaky breath. “And the real problem is that my plan is crap because I can’t get out of the car, I can’t feel anything below the waist, because I’m so freaking terrified. But I want to ask you right here, right now. Will you please marry me? I’ll spend the rest of my life showing you that you’re the most important person in the world.”

  “The ring,” Hazard said.

  “Oh, damn,” Somers said, popping open the box. It was a simple band of black metal, the only ornamentation a line engraved in the center.

  “What is it?”

  “Ree, will you please just answer me?”

  “I want some details first. I want to make an informed decision.”

  Somers made a strangled noise.

  “It’s a simple question, John: what metal is the ring made out of?”

  “Tungsten. It’s tungsten.”

  “That’s a good choice.”

  “Ree!”

  Hazard pulled out his phone, tapped to the notes, and examined them.

  “I’m dying here,” Somers said. “I’m literally dying.”

  Reading from the phone, Hazard said, “In the event that John decides to ask me to marry him, I agree under the following conditions: item the first, John agrees never to iron any clothes, ever again; item the second, John agrees never to try to learn French again with those CDs from the library—”

  “Hey, I was getting pretty good at French.”

  “Item the third, John agrees to subdivide all future grocery lists into eight categories, those eight categories being: fruits, vegetables, dairy, other refrigerated animal products, refrigerated plant products—”

  “Ok,” Somers said, laughing, one hand coming down over the phone to push it away. “I agree.”

  “I’m not finished,” Hazard said, lifting his hand to read: “—frozen plant products, frozen animal products—”

  “I agree, I agree,” Somers said, laughing some more as he plucked the phone and tossed it on the dash, well out of Hazard’s reach.

  “There are a lot I didn’t get to.”

  “I agree. Any of it. All of it.”

  “Really? Because some of the ones at the end are a little quirky.”

  “Good God. Yep. Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”

  “Then yes, I’ll marry you.” Hazard felt a crazy grin spread across his face. “Because I love you.”

  Somers worked the ring out of the box, and then he slid it onto Hazard’s finger. The touch was intimate and strangely unnerving; a kind of helplessness came with the ring, a sense of how much power and control Hazard had surrendered to this man. When Somers looked up, Hazard said, “I do love you,” and kissed him.

  “I love you too,” Somers said.

  “Good,” Hazard said. “Because I didn’t finish my list.”

  He stretched for the phone, but Somers grabbed his shirt and dragged him off course for another kiss. And then another. And then another.

  Hazard’s hand slid down Somers’s chest. Slid down. Slid down. Somers made a soft little cry.

  When Hazard pulled back, he was frowning to keep a smile from breaking his face.

  “Are you sure,” he asked, “you can’t feel anything below the waist?”

  THE KEEPER OF BEES

  Keep reading for a sneak preview of The Keeper of Bees, the final volume of Hazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords.

  CHAPTER ONE

  JUNE 30

  SUNDAY

  6:12 PM

  EMERY HAZARD WAS LOSING AN ARGUMENT.

  “I did not say dancing was stupid.”

  They were gathered in their neighbor’s kitchen. Nominally, it was a party.

  “No,” his fiancé, John-Henry Somerset responded. “I believe your exact words were ‘It’s pedestrian.’”

  “And,” Noah, their friend, put in, “he said it’s just a way of distracting people from serious concerns like the International Monetary Fund’s leadership blunders from 2010 to 2017.”

  Hazard was seriously reconsidering the friend part. “You’re not helping.”

  “And he said it was the opiate of the masses,” Gray Dulac, Somers’s partner, said, elbowing into their conversation around the island in Noah and Rebeca’s kitchen. “That’s from Marx, bitches.”

  Hazard decided Dulac needed some friendly advice, so he said, “Stay the fuck out of this.”

  “Language,” Rebeca said as she walked by, and then a passel of kids shot through the kitchen. “And Emery also said dancing was a frivolous use of calories, and it was particularly unethical in light of all the malnourished people across the world.”

  “Rebeca,” Hazard said, unable to control the wounded tone.

  She shrugged. “You did say that.”

  “My point,” Hazard said, “is that we can do something besides dancing.”

  “It’s a wedding,” Somers said.

  “He probably can’t dance,” Dulac said.

  “He’s Emery Hazard,” Noah said, “of course he can dance.” Then he added, “He’s probably just really bad at it.”

  “Emery can dance,” Nico, Hazard’s ex-boyfriend, put in. “He’s a really, really good dancer.”

  “Suck up,” Mitchell said. The red-headed kid had been crushing hard on Nico, and now he gave him a playful shove. Nico, who was gorgeous and all arms and legs, pretended to tumble into the refrigerator.

  “I’m with Emery,” Wesley, the local pastor, said. “There’s absolutely no reason to have dancing.”

  “See?” Hazard said.

  “It’s godless and immoral.”

  Hazard groaned.

  “And,” Wesley said, grinning as he pulled his girlfriend Susan against him, “even though godless and immoral things can be tremendously fun, Emery’s obviously just a bad dancer.”

  “I’m a fine dancer,” Hazard said. “It’s all about rhythm and rhythm is all about counting. I’m a great dancer.”

  Somers groaned.

  “And,” Hazard said, “the only reason I’m against dancing is that to be a good dancer, a really good dancer, you have to have an ass. And some people in this room have absolutely no ass. Zero ass.”

  Total silence; then, from upstairs, a thunderous crash from the kids.

  “Dude,” Dulac whispered.

  “Ok, folks,” Somers said, gesturing with a can of Pepsi, “nothing to see here. Move along.”

  “Maybe you guys should waltz,” Noah said.

  “That,” Rebeca said, “is the whitest thing ever.”

  “What’s wrong with a waltz? It’s easy, and like Emery said, you can just count the steps.”<
br />
  “He could manage a waltz,” Dulac said, frowning over his beer. “Probably.”

  “Emery, you should just grind up on him,” Nico said, “you know, like when we’d go to the Pretty Pretty—” Mitchell clapped a hand over Nico’s mouth and both of the younger men giggled as it turned into wrestling.

  “Move along,” Somers said, gesturing with the can again. The gathering in the kitchen broke up, with people drifting into Noah and Rebeca’s living room.

  “You’re right about the ass,” Rebeca said as she passed Hazard, flicking a gaze at Somers’s backside. “Is he aerodynamic or something?”

  “A little less commentary, please,” Somers said.

  Hazard held himself rigidly on the stool, his thumb flicking up and down the bottle of Guinness.

  “They’re teasing you,” Somers whispered in his ear.

  “I know.” Flick. Flick.

  “Because they love you.”

  Hazard’s thumb stopped on the side of the beer. He rolled his eyes.

  “And I love you too,” Somers said, kissing his neck. “Although I’m going to make you take back that comment about my flat ass.”

  And then Somers pinched Hazard’s butt and headed for the refrigerator. Hazard’s gut tightened the way it still did, even after a few dry months, but Somers just grabbed another Pepsi. When he turned around, something must have been on Hazard’s face because Somers blushed lightly, and then he shrugged and displayed the can like a The Price is Right showgirl. Then he laughed, and the moment broke, and he moved into the living room.

  Hazard finished his beer and left the empty in the sink; then he moved to the living room and took up a spot along the wall. Mitchell and Nico were giggling together on the sofa, heads close together, Nico’s hand casually on Mitchell’s leg. Wesley was standing by the door, talking to Susan; her head was down, shaking in a negative, while Wesley said something low and hurried. Dulac had cornered Darnell, a big man in overalls and a Carhartt tee, and was peppering the bigger man’s face with the kisses. Darnell was fire-engine red and kissing back. Somers stood in a loose triangle with Noah and Rebeca, all three of them laughing. And then another passel of kids stampeded through the living room, and Hazard smiled in spite of himself; his daughter, Evie, three years old, was hot on the tail of Robbie, almost eleven, who was shrieking and pretending to let her catch up.