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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
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coincidental.

The Boys and the Bees
Copyright © 2012 by Mari Donne Cover Art by Catt Ford
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ISBN: 978-1-62380-146-5
Printed in the United States of America First Edition
November 2012
eBook edition available
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62380-147-2

Dedication

For my husband.

“DON’T worry,” I assured the client. “We’ll take care of it for you.” The voice

on the other end of the phone line still sounded uncertain.

“It’s really not a problem, Jake.” I made a few notes on some papers sitting

on my desk, multitasking as I explained the procedures. “Just pop out the hard drive
with all the data on it and keep that locked up so there’s no security risk. I’ve
already ordered a new model to be sent to you, and it will work with your current
hard drive.” Unlike the previous model, which was the biggest piece of crap our
hardware group ever designed. “But we’d appreciate your returning the old one so
we can determine what went wrong.” Besides upper management giving the go-
ahead to produce it in the first place, that is.

I swung around to my monitor and answered an e-mail. “Just send it to my

attention at our physical address. Mark Johansen. We’re at 18

Corporate Drive….” I answered another e-mail while Jake repeated the

information back. “Why Yell, Iowa….”

The telephone squawked in a tone of mingled apology and bewilderment.

Damn. I gave Jake my full attention. “I didn’t say you were yelling. It’s the

name of the town.

Capital W-H-Y… space… capital Y-E-L-L. Yes, that’s the name. Why Yell. Oh,

why Why Yell? No one seems to know why.”

I scrubbed my face with one hand. No wonder we don’t celebrate Founders’

Day in our corner of Iowa. Why would a town be grateful to a bunch of people who
guaranteed that every conversation its occupants had about it degenerated into
an Abbott and Costello routine?

Like most locals, I normally referred to the town as Old Yeller or pronounced

the name something like “While,” but neither of those would pass muster with the
postal service.

“That’s right, Why Yell,” I repeated. “Look, just make sure the zip code is

correct.”

While I tried once again to explain my hometown’s stupid name to my valued

if somewhat dense customer, an instant message popped up on my computer
monitor: Your mother is on the phone.

It was from the administrative assistant I shared with three other managers.

AGAIN, she IM’d.

I checked my cell. There were eight missed calls and five voice mails, all from

the same source. Mom had obviously given up on that route to my attention and
started calling the office numbers.

I finished the conversation with Jake as quickly as I could. My mother’s

“emergencies”

usually aren’t any such thing, but I always worry that the latest crisis will be the

exception to the rule. I hit her number on speed dial without taking the time to listen
to the voice mails. She picked up on the third ring.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

“Oh, Mark, it’s your sister!”

My annoyance was immediately replaced by terror. “What happened? Did

that asshole hurt her?”

“No, although, I suppose… not exactly, and it was really her who… Mark, it is

so unlike you to use language like that. I was afraid of this when you stopped
coming to Sunday services or attending Bible Study….”

My heartbeat slowed again. I still didn’t know what was going on, but not

even my mother would fuss about cursing if my sister were injured or worse. “Mom,
I’m sorry. What’s happened to Rachel?”

“She’s left Brian!”

“Good. He’s a jerk.” I worried that Brian was worse than just a jerk, but I didn’t

want to get scolded for cursing or even mention my suspicions again. The last time
I’d brought them up, Rachel had insisted Brian never hit her or the kids. Then she’d
dragged Mom into the argument to defend the overgrown bully who was her
current husband.

“She’s been having an affair! Daddy and I talked to her, and Pastor Steve

came even though I know he had a Bible class, and she said she’d tried to do her
wifely duty but Brian was gone so much, and she’s in love with this Josh person. She
won’t go back home.”

I didn’t follow all that, but anything that got Rachel out of Brian’s house was

good news to me.

“Where is she staying?”

“Here.” Mom sounded less than enthusiastic about that. She babysat for the

kids most afternoons already, and she’d told me that was more than enough to tire
her out.

“I’m sure that won’t be permanent.” I mentally checked my bank balances to

calculate if I’d need to sell some stocks to loan Rachel a cleaning deposit and first
and last month’s rent.

“No… she wants to move in with this Josh person.”

Of course she did. I added checking out the Josh person to my to-do list.

“He’s only got a one-room apartment now, but Rachel says they’re getting a

double-wide at Harvest Meadows, or is it Heavenly Meadows?

You know, that place down past the Hy-Vee? I’m having nothing to do with it.

She’s a married woman, and I won’t have anything to do with adultery.”

Except, of course, that time Rachel remarried after cheating on her first

husband. Mom had had a great time at that wedding. “I understand.” I didn’t, but
any other response would result in a long, convoluted lecture.

“So she’ll need you to move her things from Brian’s to Josh’s new place next

weekend.”

Thus keeping Mom’s hands clean of any adulterous furniture shifting but still

getting the job done. I sighed. “I’ll stop by later this week to see how things are
going. And I’ll help her move.”

She sighed too. “Oh, Mark. I don’t know what I’d do without you, with your

brother and sister straying from the true path again and again. I hope you never
behave like that, because I would just die if all of my children were to offend the
Lord. I could never face Pastor Steve and the congregation again if I couldn’t point
to you as my perfect boy.”

No one can turn a compliment into a threat like my mom.

WHEN Mom finally hung up, I found some ibuprofen in the back of a drawer

and removed two pills from the bottle. The coffee sitting on my desk was stone cold
and my office was a mile or so from the cafeteria, so I went to the bathroom to
rinse the cup and get some water.

After swallowing the pills, I checked my reflection. I didn’t look frazzled, but

I’ve been told I hide my emotions well. I can’t take much credit for that. I’m big,
almost six and half feet tall, and broad-shouldered. My ethnic background runs the
gamut from Germany all the way through several Scandinavian countries, a level of
diversity not unusual in Iowa. I’ve heard myself described as “corn-fed.”

And I’ve learned to cultivate a stolid expression, if only to calm worries that

any male this big must be about to suffer an episode of ’roid rage.

Also, a serious demeanor counters the effect of bright-blue eyes and hair so

blond it’s nearly white, a shade so rarely seen in nature that I’ve been accused of
dyeing it. When I was a kid, I kept hoping it would turn brown, but although I now
have visible eyebrows and eyelashes, it’s still very light. I keep it cropped short on
the theory that if there’s less of it, fewer people will notice and comment. When I
was a child, strangers were always either touching my hair or wondering why I didn’t
act my age. Since I always looked about three years older than I was, I soon
learned to act more than my age, with the result that now, two years short of thirty, I
feel about forty-five. Or fifty.

It isn’t all bad. I got promoted to a management position in spite of my youth,

and getting promoted is good. Isn’t it?

I WENT back to my office, hoping that the painkiller would kick in before any

other problems surfaced. I knew that hope was in vain the moment I saw Jerry

Koenig and Laura Schultz sitting in the two chairs in front of my desk. They turned as
one to stare at me with avid eyes.

Jerry and Laura were the Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan of my

workplace, a dynamic duo who spent their days searching for problems to bemoan
and sins to report to higher authorities like me. There was no misdemeanor too small
to escape their scrutiny and demands for justice. It was usually something like a
violation of the dress code or a fellow employee keeping more than the regulation
five personal items on his or her desk.

But today they looked like they’d really gotten ahold of a high crime, or at

least a case of someone stealing a coworker’s yogurt from the communal fridge.
Laura, the Ferret Face of the duo, narrowed her blue eyes to slits that emphasized
the sharpness of her nose and the thinness of her pale face. She completed the
stern effect by pulling her thin blond hair back in a tight ponytail.

Jerry was the more human of the two, or perhaps his earnest brown eyes and

plump lips made him seem so. I may have imagined the occasional flashes of
compassion I’d noticed. But right now he was twisting his fingers together as if he
were suffering some internal turmoil.

Jerry and Laura were inseparable, at least in the office. I had no idea if the

two of them were also fuck buddies. I would have paid money to ensure I never
found out. That was one image I didn’t need in my head.

“Hi, Mark.” Jerry licked his lips. “Can you talk for a minute? There’s something

going on that I thought you’d like to know.”

I thought you’d like to know is a phrase that is never, ever followed by

something you actually want to hear. It may be applied to things you need to know,
but by no stretch of the imagination can they ever be called glad tidings.

I sat down slowly, wishing I’d taken something a lot stronger than ibuprofen.

BY THE time I left work, I’d decided the only way to salvage anything from the

day was to have something decent for dinner. Which, in Why Yell, meant making it
myself. The heights of culinary excellence to be found in our local restaurants are
the cheese fries at Bob’s and the pork loin sandwiches at Karrie’s Kozie Kitchen.

I tossed my jacket and tie in the backseat of my truck and headed to the

small local food cooperative, the only place in town where I could count on finding
meat that wasn’t pumped full of antibiotics and produce that hadn’t made its way
to Iowa via a huge freighter from Chile. I wanted grass-fed beef and tomatoes that
didn’t taste like ketchup-infused Styrofoam, and I was willing to step foot in an
establishment my father still suspected of communist tendencies to get them.

Besides, my friend Scott and I had talked vaguely of getting together tonight

to watch TV and bitch about our jobs. That would go better over some really good
food. I kept getting bumped to his voice mail when I tried calling him, but I’d get
enough for both of us, just in case.

Five minutes later, I pushed open a door covered with fliers promoting various

socially responsible activities, stopped to smell some fresh herbs, and gave a passing
glance to the display of fruit before looking at the selection of fresh vegetables. But
there I halted, stopped by the sight of Jamie Novotny holding a melon in each
hand.

My lips twitched at the sight. If anyone could be expected to have less

interest in melons than Jamie….

Jamie caught my eye, which made me blush at my sophomoric thoughts.

Oddly, this made Jamie smile more broadly.

Jamie was a couple of years younger than I and… well, he used to be a lot

shorter. A lot skinnier too. He’d filled out a bit since I had last seen him, which had
been… when? My high school graduation? I thought he’d gone to UI, but I couldn’t
recall seeing him there. He must have had a late growth spurt, because he was
certainly over six feet tall now. But he still had the same dark hair falling into his hazel
eyes and the same confused and curious air of someone who had just landed on
Earth from some other planet and had lost his guidebook. He was wearing torn
jeans, ancient sneakers, and an old denim shirt rolled up to his elbows. In other
words, he looked like a typical co-op employee. His stocking produce also clued

me in to his current occupation.

I wasn’t sure where I’d expected Jamie to wind up, but our old hometown

wouldn’t have been on the list of possibilities. But if for some reason Jamie decided
to move back here, he’d naturally gravitate to someplace like the co-op.

As for the melons and my childish amusement… a decade ago, Jamie had

been one of the most notorious kids in school. As the only semi-out kid in a small
town his status was almost a given, but Jamie had carried the role to a level of
drama seldom seen in the halls of Herbert Hoover High.

“Mark! Hi!”

When had he become a baritone? His greeting surprised me because I didn’t

expect him to remember me at all. “Hi, Jamie.” I tried to think of something to say,
but the only thing that came to mind was “I’m surprised to see you stuck back in
Why Yell,” so I just stood there and kept my mouth shut.

“So, you’re back in Why Yell,” he said. “I thought you’d have wound up at

least in the bright lights of Cedar Rapids, if not Des Moines.”

“Yeah.” Now I remembered that tact had never been one of Jamie’s talents.

“I work at Hawktract.”

He frowned. “The Defense contractor?”

I rolled my eyes. “Government contractor.

Not all Defense stuff. And we make computer hardware and software, not

bombs.”

As I reached for a shopping basket, he said, “You should buy some bring-

back bags if you’re going to get more than a couple of things.” Trust Jamie to
move from one confrontation to another without passing Go, and, to judge by his
appearance, without collecting anything nearly like two hundred dollars.

“I have some. But I left them in my truck.” I took a step forward.

He raised his eyebrows and stood, arms akimbo, between me and the

produce aisle. I wondered if he would do battle before he would allow me to use
one unnecessary plastic bag.

Possibly. The environment truly had a stalwart defender in Jamie Novotny.

Sighing, I went back out into the ninety-five-degree heat.

When I returned with a bag, I scrunched it in my hands so he wouldn’t see it

was from a big box store. Then I wondered why I was bothering.

There was no reason for me to want to impress Jamie Novotny. None at all.

His back to me, Jamie was stocking cucumbers. Nice thick ones. And his

position drew attention to his ass, which had matured as nicely as the rest of him. I
averted my eyes with an effort and reached for a tomato.

“The ones on the right are better.” Jamie gestured.

I glanced from one display to the other before answering. “They’re a lot more

expensive.”

Jamie pointed to a handwritten sign noting that the fruit he favored had

been grown less than ten miles from Why Yell. “They’re local. Fewer miles to market.
Less impact on the environment.”

Stubbornly, I held on to my original choice.

“If they’re local, why are they more expensive?”

“They’re grown from heirloom seeds, not the genetically modified kind. And

that farm is still trying to recoup the money they put into the switch to all organically
grown produce. It takes years to do that, you know.” He must have seen my
mutinous expression because he added, “Another advantage of being a locavore is
that the food is fresher.”

“Locavore?” But before he could answer, I figured it out. “Someone who eats

food produced locally? As opposed to locovore, someone who eats crazy people?”

Jamie laughed, showing no sign of offense.

I’d forgotten that about him. He may have joined every do-gooder

movement that came down the track, but he’d never become such a fanatic that
he lost his sense of humor. He’d definitely lost the last of his baby fat, though. The
arms under that shirt looked nicely muscular.

“Okay.” He backed off, verbally and literally, raising his hands in surrender.

“Buy what you want. But the heirloom tomatoes taste better.”

Of course, as soon as he stopped pressing me, I put the first two tomatoes

down and picked up a few of the ones he’d recommended. “What about
peppers?” I asked. “Which are the most politically correct?”

He lobbed a couple at me. I put the green and perfect one into my basket.

But when I gave the lopsided one a second glance, I realized it was firm and a
lovely red that bled into a near purple, so I took that too. I let my hand hover over a
display of red onions and looked over my shoulder.

Jamie had gone back to stocking cucumbers, but he laughed again and

gave a thumbs-up to my selection.

I left him there as I headed toward the meat department, vaguely cheered

by the encounter.

I CAN’T blame Jamie for my forgetting the wine. It didn’t fit in the damn bring-

back bag with the rest of the groceries, but I should have grabbed it before leaving
the checkout area. It had been sitting right there on the counter next to the debit
card swipe machine, but I was tired and maybe a little distracted.

I’d picked out a decent bottle from the sale rack at the co-op. It was

definitely not a locavore’s choice, as it came from Chile, but I wasn’t going to drink
elderberry wine from the Amanas, not even to stop global warming. I didn’t notice it
was missing until after I’d changed into shorts and a Tshirt, started heating the grill,
and begun cutting up the produce for a salad.

I opened the fridge. There was no acceptable beer inside, only something my

brother had brought over the last time we’d spent the evening watching bad TV. I
picked up the phone and called my friend again. This time he picked up.

“Scott, do you still want to come over for dinner? I’ve got two great steaks

and there’s a Doctor Who marathon on BBC America. The entrance fee is a bottle
of red wine or some decent beer.”

“Very tempting, but I’ve got a date.” Scott sounded pretty optimistic about it

too. “Give my regards to Amy. She’s the pushy redhead, right?”

“Philistine. No true Whovians would admit confusion about any of the

companions.” I checked the cabinets again. Nothing but half a bottle of some
cheap Chianti that tasted like vinegar. There was no way I’d drink that with grass-
fed beef. Not to mention those very expensive heirloom tomatoes. Even in the
depths of Iowa, we have some standards.

“At least I don’t remember them better than the last two girls I’ve dated.”

“Ouch.” I flinched at the memory of confusing Heather and Hannah at a

recent church social.

Scott hadn’t been there, but his mother had, and I’m sure the tale didn’t lose

anything in the retelling.

“Well, have a good time with whatever-her-name-is,” I said lamely.

“Jenny. Some guy hooked us up because we both like gaming.”

So being alone was my own damn fault. But when I’d chatted with Jenny at

work, she’d gone on and on about World of Warcraft , so what could I do but
introduce her to Scott? And, come to think of it, Jenny was a pushy redhead.

Probably the only thing I’d have a right to complain about would be if they didn’t
invite me to be best man at the wedding.

I stood in the kitchen, contemplating my steaks and wondering if I wanted to

climb back into my truck and drive back to the co-op. The pickup had been sitting
outside for fifteen minutes, so the interior was probably between 120 and 150

degrees. But the alternative was lite beer.

A knock at the back door signaled unexpected rescue from this dilemma. I

opened it to find Jamie Novotny standing on my small deck, bottle in hand.

“You forgot this,” he said unnecessarily. He was even more rumpled than

before, and sweating heavily, his breath coming evenly but hard. Behind him, I saw
a bicycle leaning against the steps to the deck.

I blinked. “You rode over here with that?”

He just smiled and wiped his forehead with his free hand. I saw that he had

changed into shorts and a T-shirt with “Abolish Corporate Personhood” emblazoned
on it. The shoulders under that shirt were broader than I’d thought when he’d been
wearing baggy denim.

I stepped back, letting him into the air-conditioned kitchen, and replaced my

stupid question with something more helpful. “Can I get you a glass of water or
something? You look ready to melt.”

“It’s not that bad, but thanks, water would be great. Except… you don’t buy it

in plastic bottles, do you?”

I stopped with my hand on the refrigerator door. “No. I get it the old-

fashioned way, from the tap. But I do put it in the fridge to cool, so there is Freon
involved.”

He shook his head, smiling. “No, that fridge is too new to use Freon. A bottom-

freezer model would be more energy efficient, though.”

I poured him a glass of inefficiently cooled tap water, which he drank in a few

quick gulps. He had moved close to me, making me suddenly conscious of his
scent, a combination of male sweat and something herbal. Probably organically
and locally grown aftershave. He flicked out his tongue to catch some of the
moisture on his upper lip, and he smiled, his bright eyes meeting mine.

I stepped back, suddenly self-conscious for no reason at all. “You really didn’t

have to ride all this way,” I started to say.

“I did,” he interrupted, handing me back the glass. “I wanted to. I owe you.”

I blinked. “Owe me? For what? Buying locally grown tomatoes?”

He shook his head. “Way before that.”

“But….” I stopped, the water pitcher held over his empty glass. “I haven’t seen

you for years.”

“Well, it w a s years ago.” He accepted the refilled glass I handed him, and

dropped into one of the kitchen chairs. “Back in high school.”

It was my turn to shake my head. I couldn’t remember even talking to him

then.

He drank some more water, sipping now that he’d slaked the worst of his thirst.

“Back when you were the hottest thing on the football squad.” He actually winked.

“Me?” I blushed. With my coloring it’s very obvious, and knowing people can

see I’m embarrassed has the natural effect of making me even more embarrassed.
“You must be kidding. I was never much of a player.” In fact, I’d only tried out
because I knew my size would make me a shoo-in and I’d hoped being on the
squad would help hide the fact that I was really just a nerd.

“Maybe not. I don’t really care about football.” His eyes grew soft as he

spoke. He appeared to be enjoying a memory. “But I’d watch practice sometimes
just to see you. Especially after you kept Dale Siebels and his friends from trying to
beat me up.”

Dale had been the first-string quarterback. He was always doing really stupid

shit, and yeah, I remembered telling him to use a little common sense and not stick
a sparkler in a light socket and set it on fire, or piss in the lockers of some freshman
geeks, or see how close he could drive to the edge of the gravel quarry without
actually falling in.

Or beat up the gay kid.

And it usually worked, because I had towered over Dale and most of the rest

of the squad. I probably couldn’t have done any real damage to them if it came
down to a fight, but I had discovered early in adolescence that looming and
frowning would win me most arguments without further effort.

Now I felt myself flushing even more. I was probably the color of an heirloom

tomato at this point. “It wasn’t a big deal.” It really hadn’t been.

It was just one more move in the Mark Johansen game plan to survive life by

not making waves.

“To you, maybe. I really don’t like getting hit.

And most of the other closet cases were more than happy to prove their

heterosexuality by giving me a hard time.”

I sort of twitched as if I’d had an electric shock. “I’m not a closet case!”

“The guilty man runs….” He took another sip of water and winked at me

again.

I realized I’d just moved to put the kitchen counter between us, so I snatched

up a knife and began working on dinner to try to make it look as if he hadn’t
spooked me. “I’m not. I—yeah, I experimented a little in college. Maybe I’m sort
of….”

“Bi-curious?”

My knife smacked into the cutting board as I chopped a tomato with a bit

more force than necessary. “I hate that word. And yeah, I’ve been with guys. It just

didn’t….”

This conversation had gotten personal really quickly, and I didn’t know how to

respond. How could I say that sex (at least, the kind you had with other people) had
never really rocked my world?

That I’d felt little beyond release and embarrassment whether I was getting

blown by a guy I’d met in Biblical and Classical Literature or gaining biblical
knowledge of some girl whose commitment to her chastity pledge wasn’t quite
what her parents hoped it would be? The straightest guy in the US would rather say
he was gay than imply he didn’t have much in the way of a libido. I ducked my
head and tried not to look self-conscious. I’m pretty sure I failed.

Jamie set his empty glass on the table and stood up. “No worries. I came by

to say thanks, not to make you feel bad. Enjoy your dinner.” He was no longer
smiling, and he didn’t meet my eyes.

I could see I’d now managed to make him uncomfortable and was sorry I

hadn’t been more generous in accepting his thanks.

“Join me?” I heard myself say the words before I’d made a conscious decision

to utter them.

I gestured toward the counter. “I bought enough for two, but it turns out my

friend had a date. That is…

if you eat beef.” Wouldn’t he be vegan, or at least vegetarian?

He eyed the steaks lying invitingly on the butcher paper next to those ripe

tomatoes and green peppers. “I have no objections to the occasional consumption
of animal products as long as they’ve been raised humanely.”

“Grass-fed and organic,” I assured him.

“Local too.” I wasn’t sure about the last part, but suddenly I really wanted him

to stay.

Jamie volunteered to go outside and check the coals. He came back to

announce that they’d be ready in fifteen minutes, and he was glad I didn’t use
propane, even though too much charcoal grilling wasn’t good in urban areas.

I looked up from rinsing lettuce. “Is this an urban area?”

“Only by rural standards.” While I was trying to figure that one out, he popped

a bit of pepper in his mouth and examined the aluminum-foil-wrapped package I’d
made of chopped potatoes, onions, garlic, and herbs. “How long does this have to
cook?”

“Maybe forty minutes; then we can put the steaks on. We can have salad

while we wait.”

I was surprised to find that after that, conversation with Jamie flowed easily.

“You own this place?” he asked as he began mixing some kind of salad dressing
with ingredients he’d found in the fridge. He didn’t ask permission; I suppose he
thought that if something was in my kitchen, I’d have no objections to eating it.

“Me and the bank. Impressed?” I meant to be funny, because my elderly, tiny

house with its two bedrooms and detached one-car garage was hardly the
ultimate suburban fantasy. And the bank didn’t really own that much of it. Between
my good job and boring lifestyle, I could have bought something bigger, but I didn’t
see the point.

But instead of laughing, he nodded. “It has some character. I like your furniture

too. Family stuff?” He ran a hand over the oak side-by-side I’d crammed between
the kitchen and the dining room.

Some Johansen ancestor had probably built it for a similar spot in a

farmhouse and had carved a simple pattern in the wood to make it attractive as
well as functional. I liked it a lot and enjoyed using it to store glassware, bills, and the
few bits of stationery I still needed in a digital age.

“Yeah. I got most of it when my grandfather died. It’s nothing special,

though.” I watched Jamie finger the pattern as he fetched the wineglasses, and
wondered why I’d felt it necessary to add that caveat.

“Beats IKEA” was all he said.

“I’ve never even been in an IKEA,” I confessed.

He grinned at that, and I supposed he was mocking me. “That doesn’t surprise

me. Even though you work in one of those flat corporate boxes.”

I grimaced and dumped the lettuce in a bowl.

I’d come home for my college graduation party to find my father had sent

my r sum to a friend who worked at Hawktract. Before I knew what was

é

é

happening, I had a job offer and my mother was telling everyone she knew how
thrilled she was that I would be staying in Why Yell. “I’m a computer guy. We work in
boxes.”

Dinner turned out well, the steaks rare and delicious, the heirloom tomatoes as

tasty as promised. After dinner, Jamie helped me clean up.

“Is that decaf?” he asked as I performed my evening routine of filling the

coffeemaker.

“No, I don’t usually have coffee in the evenings.”

He leaned back against the sink, folding a dish towel with slender, capable

hands. “Do you always set your coffeemaker up the night before?”

“You want me to make coffee in the morning before I’ve had my first cup of

coffee?” I shuddered, remembering life before I owned a coffeemaker with a timer.

“Ah. Mark Johansen is not a morning person.

I’ll remember that.” He kept regarding me with an expression I read as

amused and oddly appreciative. It was unsettling but not unpleasant.

It took me a minute or two to wonder why he would need to remember

anything about my habits.

After cleaning up, we went into the living room, where Jamie was perfectly

happy to watch cheesy science fiction television. He mocked the shows in a way
that made it clear he enjoyed them thoroughly, and I discovered we both had an
incomprehensible fondness for bad end-of-the-world disaster movies.

I found myself comparing this man to the boy I’d seen in high school. I was

surprised by just how much I remembered about him, considering we’d never really
interacted. Of course Jamie had been memorable, but his greatest hits—from
holding a sit-in to protest pop machines in the cafeteria, to taking a boy to prom—
had happened after I graduated. I’d heard about them from Rachel or other
people still at school or, once, from CNN.

Strangely, I could clearly remember things like passing him in the hallway on

the way to class or watching him hand out flyers demanding more bike racks or
recycling containers. He’d been cute rather than handsome then, shorter than the
girls he hung out with, his hair even longer and shaggier.

Definitely a kid, and the age difference between us had seemed huge. But I

began to wonder if everyone remembered him quite as vividly as I did.

Maybe those memories were why I felt so comfortable with him. But they

didn’t explain why, after I turned off the television, I heard myself say, “I had to fire
someone today.”

Jamie was very quiet for a moment, and I cringed, afraid he’d call me a

capitalist pig or something equally absurd and retro. But when he said, “Had to?” his
voice was genuinely questioning, not accusatory.

“Yeah.” I took a sip of wine. “He did something that violated not just company

policy but the law. He revealed information to… well, obviously I can’t tell you what
he revealed or who he revealed it to.”

“Corporate spying?”

“No. Nothing like that.” I stopped, unable to say more. I stole a glance at

Jamie’s face. He looked more confused than anything.

“Whistle-blower?”

“No. Ethically, I was right to fire him. I probably would have done it even

without the rules. It’s not just government secrets we have to protect.” I swirled the
wine around in my glass, watching the red briefly coat the sides before bleeding
back down into the base. It was hard to explain to someone who didn’t work in that
kind of situation that the rules also protected ordinary people from having
information about them sold or revealed. There was just no excuse for snooping in
government files about someone and then passing on what he found. “It just…
sucked. He did something really stupid, but I like him a hell of a lot more than I do
the people who narked on him, which made it worse.”

“You can’t make everything all better for everyone.” The gentleness in his

voice surprised and soothed me. “But you know that, don’t you?”

He tilted his head to one side, and his eyes seemed darker than they’d been

just a moment before.

“And knowing it doesn’t make it easier for you to accept.” He got up and

went into the kitchen, then returned with the wine bottle. “Here, drown your
sorrows.”

I tried to get him to share the last of the wine with me, but he pointed out his

glass was still half full. So I drank the rest down. Unfortunately, for a guy my size, even
the lion’s share of a bottle isn’t enough to get more than a slight buzz.

We set our empty glasses down simultaneously, an odd symmetry that made

me glance up and meet Jamie’s eyes as I heard the click of the wineglasses
against the wood of the coffee table. We both straightened slightly, still seated, and
there was something in his expression that kept me very still. I nearly fell off the
couch when he leaned forward and kissed me.

INSTEAD of backing away at my obviously shocked response, he grabbed my

shoulders and pulled me toward him, deepening the pressure of his lips until mine
had no choice but to open. He tasted rich and delicious, like the wine and the meal
we’d just had, and the scent of that herbal stuff he was wearing made me dizzy. I
grabbed his arms and pulled him closer before I remembered that my intention had
been to push him away.

Somehow, in spite of the distractions of his lips and tongue, which seemed to

be waking hitherto dormant synapses in my brain, I managed to pull back a few
inches. “I wasn’t expecting….”

He was breathing hard. “You asked me to stay for dinner five seconds after I

told you I used to crush on you and you said you’d been with guys.” His voice went
deep and those synapses moved from wakeful to fully alert. “Mark, this cannot be a
surprise.”

“Self-delusion is one of my superpowers. But —”

But he kissed me again, shoving me down on the couch and climbing on top

of me, and suddenly I didn’t want to object anymore. He was surprisingly strong,
and I realized I couldn’t easily push him off. No one had ever tried to hold me down
like this before, and I felt a little thrill of something near panic. But instead of fighting
back or objecting, I went limp and opened my mouth to return his kiss.

I felt rather than heard his laugh as it rumbled up through his chest, only to be

muffled by our joined lips. He rose to position himself to grind our hips together. My
own hips bucked up in response.

I wanted to taste his mouth again, but he licked and nipped at my throat as

his hands crept down my arms, fingernails tracing lightly on my bare skin. He
obviously hadn’t shaved since the morning, and the unexpected roughness of his
beard contrasted sharply with the soft sensation of kissing a woman. I’d only been
kissing women for a long time now, ever since I moved back to Why Yell and near
my family. And I hadn’t been doing any kissing at all lately, which meant this much
physical closeness disoriented me, as if I’d downed a tumbler full of hard liquor on
an empty stomach.

My brain was trying to process the sensations caused by his hands, his mouth,

and his cock, and it was having a hard time multitasking. I think I flailed my arms

around at one point, because he grabbed my wrists and yanked my arms over my
head. I felt like a character in one of those bad disaster movies when the North Pole
suddenly moves to the equator. Disoriented didn’t begin to describe it.

He kept one hand on my wrists and used the other to shove up my T-shirt,

then bent his head to tease one nipple with his tongue before taking it between his
teeth.

“Please…,” I heard myself say and wondered what I wanted.

“Please, what?”

I lay with my hands over my head as he kissed his way down my chest, his

fingers tugging at the zipper of my shorts.

When his lips touched the head of my cock, I didn’t so much regain my

senses as rise to a new level of panic. “No!”

Immediately his face was next to mine again, and he stared down at me with

a mixture of concern and lust that would have made me gulp even if I hadn’t
already been gasping for air.

Somehow he’d gotten his own pants down too, and now our cocks were

pressed together. “Want me to stop?”

“God, no,” I moaned before I could think it through. His expression changed

to a broad smile that was the wickedest thing I’d ever seen. Then he wrapped his
hand around our cocks and moved to line them up so the shafts ground against
each other. And that was the wickedest thing I’d ever felt.

“I can’t….”

“Can’t what?”

“Last.” And I came, just like that, from the weight of his body, the friction of his

cock against mine, the pressure of his hand, and the irresistible feel of his scratchy
cheek as his lips moved against my throat.

He stood up while I was still shaking from the aftershocks of that orgasm, and I

found myself staring at a thick, long, very angry cock. “Oh, no, I’m sorry, that has to
be the fastest and lamest….” I stopped, my concern at my breach of etiquette
drowned in an overwhelming desire to take that cock into my mouth and try to
apologize with deeds instead of words.

Before I could do that, he yanked up his shorts and tugged on my hands.

“Don’t you dare be sorry! You needed to release some of that tension.

God, Mark, I hope this was just a really bad day and you don’t walk around

with the weight of the world on you all the time.”

I was confused because he seemed annoyed, but not because I’d jumped

the gun, firing without finesse or warning. Damn, I’d gotten come on his shirt.
Admittedly, it was a crappy shirt, but….

While my brain ran around inside my skull like a deranged hamster, Jamie

kept tugging on my hands. He led me down the hall to my bedroom. A hell of a

host I made, or maybe he was just one hell of an overbearing guest.

I looked around. “Oh. I didn’t make the bed.”

“Good.” He shoved me down onto it and pulled off my shorts and boxers.

Then he knelt on all fours over me, leaning down to kiss me again.

I closed my eyes and groaned. There were so many things I should have been

thinking and saying, but all I could think was that he apparently wasn’t done with
me, and the only thing I wanted to say was “Please.”

“Please, what?” he murmured for the second time that night, barely lifting his

lips from mine.

“What do you like?”

This time, I must have provided him a view of what happens when a man of

Nordic ancestry blushes all over. Well, except for my chest, because I still had my T-
shirt on. But then he pulled that off me as well. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t….” His hands, which had been exploring my belly, stilled. He sat

back and eyed me sternly. “Mark, exactly how far did those experiments in college
go?”

I felt like I’d been asked a difficult question in class when I hadn’t done the

reading. “Well, umm….”

He laughed again. “I can guess. You let a few guys blow you, right? There

must have been a line ready and willing to offer you their services. How many did
you indulge? One?”

“More than one.” I gave in. “Two.” And I’d tried a few other things with those

guys, but none of them had gone well enough that I’d list them on my sexual
r sum .

é

é

“Oh, Mark.” He bent down and bit my earlobe. “You are absolutely adorable.”

I couldn’t remember ever being called adorable, not even when I was a little

boy.

Probably because I had never been a terribly little boy, at least in comparison

to other kids my age. But Jamie seemed to mean it.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

Somehow his reassurance made me more nervous. But he was true to his

word, kissing me all over, teasing, and even laughing a little as he did so. As far as I
could tell, he was enjoying himself, not snickering at me but just happy to be where
he was and doing what he was doing.

I couldn’t imagine what it was like to feel that free to enjoy myself. All I could

manage was trying to relax and concentrate on what it felt like to have a hard,
muscular chest pressed against mine, how the pressure of strong hands could be
simultaneously gentle and demanding, and how quickly a hot and wet mouth could
tease my cock back to life.

Jamie seemed to regard me as his special charge to be led and pampered.

That was something far more novel than just the feel of another man’s body against
mine. It shocked me to admit to myself how much I liked it.

He had to be dying for release himself, but as far as I could tell, he was willing

to take all the time I needed. When he rose up on all fours, leaning over me, it was
to stare into my eyes, his own smiling but watchful.

I avoided his gaze, not entirely out of embarrassment. Instead, I stared at his

body. He was more muscular than I’d realized, with amazing thighs that said he
spent a lot of time on that bicycle.

“Like what you see?”

I jumped a little at his husky tone. “I was just checking. I thought there was a

two-tattoo minimum requirement for employees at the co-op, and I didn’t see any.”

He chuckled. “I’m afraid of needles.” Then he dove down and probed me

with his lips and fingers in a way that no one ever had before. Even though I had
some qualms about taking the graduate course in gay sex, I tried to stop him for
more practical reasons. “I don’t have anything for protection,” I gasped.

“No worries. I do.” He leaned over and snagged his clothes from where he’d

dropped them on the floor. A moment later, he dropped some foil packets on the
bed.

I propped myself up on my elbows, watching him. “You keep condoms and

lube in your shorts?”

“No, I keep them in my backpack. I slip them out while helping clean up after

dinner and stick them in my pocket if I think there’s a chance I can get lucky with
my biggest high school crush, who has turned out to be even nicer and sexier than I
remembered.”

“I….” I couldn’t think of a thing to say to that.

And then his slicked fingers were moving inside me and I couldn’t have said a

coherent word if I’d thought of one. I searched for two brain cells to rub together,
hoping to raise some spark of initiative. Usually people expected me to take charge,
or at least to be as competent and as sensible as it is possible to be when doing
something as inherently ridiculous as sex. But I didn’t have enough experience to
take control, even if I’d wanted to.

“Roll over, Mark.”

I couldn’t imagine why I was obeying him, but I was. And I never doubted for

a moment I was safe. His hands soothed my shoulders and a tense spot in my neck.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to go really slow, and I’ll take care of you. If you want me to
stop, I’ll stop.” The hands worked slowly down my spine. He took his time, helping me
to relax and giving me a chance for second thoughts.

I had plenty of second thoughts. Third and fourth ones too. But they all boiled

down to Yes, this is crazy, but the craziest thing would be to ask for it to stop. I’d
always imagined this would be uncomfortable and humiliating, but lust conquers

embarrassment and floods the body with a magical substance that makes it
impossible to notice that the way you’re pressed into the mattress is hard on your
knees and your neck, and that your ass is sticking up in the air at a ridiculous angle.

I’d thought I’d had pretty good sex before.

With women, and yeah, those blow jobs from the guys had been satisfying, in

spite of the awkwardness and guilt I’d felt afterward. It had been a rush of pleasure,
like the first taste of a sweet, chocolaty dessert. This was like biting into a habanero
pepper. It hurt, and I almost pulled away when suddenly, shockingly, the sensation
turned into something equally intense, but so very different that my brain seemed
ready to short-circuit at the rapid switch from pain to pleasure.

I heard Jamie’s voice. “Okay?” There was no way I was going to utter a

coherent sound. I did manage a kind of groan, and Jamie pulled away. I reached
back, trying to grab his ass and force him back, but succeeding only in rolling us
both over until I was lying on my side, flailing around in a way that would have
embarrassed me had I been able to feel anything other than a desire for more.

“Okay, okay.” Jamie’s voice was different now, laughing instead of worried.

He pushed up against my back, a hand on my thigh. “Here, hold your knee.”

I had no idea what that was going to accomplish, but I did it, and once

again I felt that pressure, that pain, and then that other sensation that made me
groan again. I was afraid it would make Jamie pull back again, but apparently he
was learning the strange dialect Mark Johansen used while being fucked, because
he panted, “Yeah, that’s right, just breathe, just let me….”

I groaned again and let him. He could do anything he wanted as long as it

meant that incredible sensation was not going to stop anytime soon.

His chest was plastered against my back, and he filled me now. “Good.” He

was breathing hard too.

I managed actual words. “Yeah. Good.”

For a reward, I got some wet, sloppy kisses on the back of my neck and an

even more electrifying hand on my cock, and I promptly relapsed into
unintelligibility. “Uggh….”

“Just… hold… still.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to himself,

especially when he added, “Want to make sure your dick’s enjoying this as much as
mine is.”

My dick had indeed lost a bit of its enthusiasm as I’d concentrated on

accepting his intrusion, so I was in favor of that, and I tried to grunt my thanks,
because I was pretty sure holding still was not what his cock was urging him to do
just then.

“That’s it… God, Mark, you are so fucking hot….”

How bizarre that in the midst of that overload of physical contact, it should be

his words that made my cock suit up and run out onto the metaphorical field. It had

no intention of settling for a first down, either, and wouldn’t be satisfied with a field
goal, not tonight. It aimed for a touchdown, and…. That’s it, think about football, or
else you won’t last more than two minutes this time either.

“Christ!” I might actually have shouted a prayer of gratitude when Jamie

moved and hit my sweet spot. I gasped and pushed back in a way I hoped
communicated I wanted him to do it again.

Apparently it worked, because he began to thrust slowly as we lay there on

our sides, my hands clenched in the sheets, him doing all the work because I kept
pretty busy just tracking what the hell my body was telling my brain.

I’d always assumed that sex in this position, being entered from behind, would

be impersonal, but although I couldn’t see his face and we weren’t exactly
engaging in witty repartee, it didn’t seem that way at all. It was as intimate
emotionally as it was physically. The fact that he kept kissing my neck and shoulders
didn’t hurt.

His hand on my cock had stilled, but the rhythm he set as he moved inside

me was a revelation. Without warning, my mouth kicked back into gear. “Damn, so
that’s what a prostate is good for!”

Jamie’s laughs came in bursts in between thrusts.

Well, it was a really stupid thing to say. But I’d listened to my dad and some

of my older coworkers complain about theirs, and I had wondered idly if the sensory
benefits I’d read about could be worth any possible annoyances later in life. I was
pretty sure I had an answer now.

I could feel Jamie’s abs clenching and moving against my ass, and without

any conscious decision on my part my body began to move with his. “Perfect,” he
murmured, encouraging my tentative movements. “Perfect.”

“Glad… to contribute.” I would have blushed when I realized I said that out

loud, but all the blood that hadn’t swollen my cock had already rushed to the
surface of my skin. “Damn… such a dork.”

“You’re the… the most gorgeous… I’ve ever….”

I didn’t need to be a Mad Libs expert to fill in those blanks. Before I could say

anything else, either stupid or erotic or a ridiculous combination of both, his hand
started working my cock. Again.

It reminded me of biting into that hot pepper, only this time it was a part of

some delicious recipe that stimulated every taste bud simultaneously.

My brain came back online a few minutes later as Jamie rolled away; I

realized he’d only done so to dispose of the condom and find a discarded T-shirt to
wipe off my stomach. I rolled on my back to make that easier for him and stared up
at his still flushed face. He smiled with an expression of such satisfaction that I would
have called it smugness if I hadn’t been pretty sure I looked just the same.

He tossed the cloth on the floor and pulled the covers over us, snuggling into

my side. I wrapped an arm around him, thinking I should say something. Or that he
would. Instead, he gave a huge sigh and his breathing began to even out.

I felt warm and happy and ever so relaxed.

Most of all, I wasn’t alone. When I realized he’d fallen asleep, I was glad.

Conversation could definitely wait until morning. The really important kind of
intercourse had been taken care of.

WHEN I woke up, Jamie was gone and my alarm was buzzing imperatively. I

sat up and looked around, then ran into the kitchen and checked the fridge and
other obvious places for a message. No Jamie. No note.

Not even the smell of coffee brewing right on schedule could make up for an

awakening like that.

I realized I was standing naked in the middle of my kitchen, with my morning

wood on display and the air-conditioning kicking in and helping cool its enthusiasm.
I didn’t move. I needed all my energy just to wake up my brain.

What had I expected? Jamie had said I’d been his high school crush. Last

night had been his attempt to fulfill a fantasy. And he’d found a marshmallow
instead of a football hero. What had been a mind-blowing experience for me was
probably just a somewhat disappointing one-night stand to him.

I turned and trudged down the hall to the bathroom. I showered quickly,

trying to force my thoughts to the workday ahead and away from the previous
night, which was already starting to feel like a dream. Except my ass was slightly sore
in a very nondreamlike way, and as the water hit my skin, it activated a sense
memory of Jamie’s touch.

By the time I stepped out of the shower, I was disoriented, perhaps from the

hot water, but more likely because of the discordance between my body, which
was singing with remembered pleasure, and my mind, which was fighting a losing
battle against disappointment at what I was pathetically labeling Jamie’s
abandonment.

I wrapped a towel around my waist and padded damply to the kitchen,

enough restored to normalcy that I was craving my first cup of coffee of the day. I
fumbled in a cabinet for a mug and had reached for the pot before I noticed
something strange.

There was a yellow sticky note wrapped around the handle of the carafe. I

pulled it off and struggled to focus on the scrawled words. Damn, you’re a sound
sleeper. Catching bus for demo in DM re marr amend. Bk late. See u Fri. J The last
lines were scrunched on the back of the note, Jamie’s use of abbreviations
increasing as he’d run out of space. Apparently his commitment to conservation
prevented him from using two stickies and sufficient ink to leave me a coherent

message.

But I got it all on the second read. “Demo in DM re marr amend” meant he

was going to a demonstration in the state capital against a proposed constitutional
amendment to ban gay marriage. I remembered reading that some out-of-state
homophobic group had scheduled a rally in Des Moines supporting the introduction
of a bill to put the issue to a popular vote and override the State Supreme Court
decision that had legalized equal marriage. (I’d had to read that article twice, too,
before I understood it.) Jamie intended to wave placards on the side of the good
guys in this byzantine political battle, and he wouldn’t be back in time to see me
tonight.

Today was Thursday, so he would be seeing me the very next day. At least, he

seemed sure that he would, although I didn’t remember being asked about my
plans.

My hand shook a little as I poured coffee into my mug. He hadn’t gone off

without a word. He’d tried to wake me, and when he couldn’t, he’d scribbled a
rushed note before going to meet up with some fellow activists.

As I let my drug of choice flow down my throat, bearing its lifesaving caffeine

into my system, my mind and body came together into one huge smile. I let my
thoughts coast through the memory of the previous night as I sipped, still standing
wrapped only in my towel, dripping on the kitchen linoleum. At last I set down the
cup and went into the bedroom to dress, smiling even more broadly when I saw the
tumbled sheets and scattered pillows on my bed. I even felt fondness for a torn
condom wrapper that had been abandoned carelessly on the carpet.

It was only when I was in my suit and knotting my tie that it occurred to me

that there was one thing I had not felt among the tangled emotions of the morning.
I had not felt guilt. I still didn’t.

I always felt guilty about sex, for one reason or another. Guilty for engaging in

a casual encounter, for giving in to an impulse, or for using someone, even when
that person had emphatically stated his or her desire to be used. I managed to feel
guilty about masturbating, even when I did it in the shower and didn’t make a mess.
Being raised by my parents could do that to a person. But for some reason, not
today.

WORK that day wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared.

Everyone was gossiping about the unexpected absence of the guy I’d had to

fire the day before, while pretending they weren’t doing any such thing. No one in
the work group I managed asked me about it, possibly because I went into my
office as soon as I arrived and shut my door. I told myself that was because I had an
early conference call with some customers, but it may have given the impression
that I was feeling even less chatty than usual. Hot Lips and Ferret Face kept their
distance, at least from me. I was sure they were providing fuel for the gossip, and

equally sure they were pissed off because I hadn’t allowed them to observe the
actual firing or provided them with any details of that nightmarish encounter.

Some of the other managers stopped by to commiserate with me and offer

emotional support, a few of them going so far as to drag me out of the office for a
long lunch. I ate a taco salad and listened as they shared stories of their worst
experiences of firing or laying off employees.

Even the business unit vice president called to offer me condolences.

I’m sure there are people out there who enjoy telling other people their

source of income is about to be cut off, and it was a relief to know that apparently I
wasn’t working with any of them.

Still, it wasn’t an easy day at the office, and I was glad to leave, even though

the next item on the agenda was dinner at my parents’.

“YOU were so right about Brian!” Rachel gave me a quick hug. “I should have

listened to you.”

I took this greeting with a grain of salt.

Rachel’s opinion of me had switched back and forth from “huge jerk who

never understood anything” to her supportive big brother ever since she was three
and I’d told her not to climb the big tree, and then caught her when she fell out of
it after ignoring my advice. I’d have permanent whiplash if I tried to keep track of
where I stood in her opinion at any given moment.

“And Mom said you offered to help me move on Saturday when Brian is at

work!”

I didn’t remember it that way, but I figured that since I was going to wind up

doing the job anyway, I might as well take maximum credit for it. “No problem,” I
said just before two small bodies raced around the corner and crashed into my legs.

My niece Alyssa and nephew Tyler greeted me even more enthusiastically

than their mother.

They were five years and eighteen months old, respectively, and took after

our side of the family.

They were blond and tall for their ages, true Johansens in spite of their

different last names.

Both had been accidents, but even my dad loved them once he got over

the shock of learning his only daughter had broken first her chastity and then her
wedding vows. My mother seemed bothered more by their unbiblical names than
the fact that both had been born out of wedlock.

My sister had married her babies’ fathers eventually, although not, of course,

both at the same time. With this latest move, she was well on her way to a strong
ranking as a serial monogamist.

Look out, Mickey Rooney and Liz Taylor.

Alyssa’s father had been a senior in high school when he got Rachel

pregnant. Ryan had succumbed to pressure and married her once the paternity test
results were in, but a couple of years of dealing with their baby and her infidelities
had driven him off to parts frequently unknown. Every once in a while the system
caught up with him and slapped a garnishment order on his wages for child
support.

Tyler’s father, Brian, was an abusive asshole.

When she married him, Rachel insisted he was the strong, God-fearing family

man she needed after Ryan’s defection. Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh.

I was relieved to find that her opinion had moved closer to mine, but I

couldn’t help wondering if Josh, whom I had yet to meet, would be any kind of
improvement.

The kids were trying to drag me down the hall to see some toy when my

mother came out of the kitchen and hugged me, leaning in so hard that I had to
support her weight. “Oh, Mark, Daddy won’t even talk to Rachel!” She wept as she
went to take the crescent rolls out of the oven.

I briefly admired the new electronic game that Alyssa insisted was hers

because Tyler was too little to play. Ty grabbed it from my hands and tried to show
that he could, indeed, cause it to make all kinds of neat noises, just like his sister
could. I left Lyss explaining vehemently just how he was doing it all wrong in terms Ty
was much too young to understand.

My father sat in the living room, ensconced in his La-Z-Boy recliner, his lean

frame stiff and his lips forming a thin white line. I told myself his rigidity was as likely to
be due to his back problems as a bad mood, but then he looked up.

After one glance at his bleak expression, the guilt that had been mysteriously

absent all day engulfed me. He looked so stricken now as he glared at Rachel;
what would he feel if he knew what I’d done the night before?

I pushed that thought aside as I sat down on the couch. My mother had

gotten me there to help with Rachel’s problems, and the last thing I needed to do
was even hint at my own behavior. Dad was never one for small talk, so I got right
to the point.

“She’s better off away from Brian,” I said. “You never liked the way he treated

her.”

“He’s tough on her, but he’s her husband.

He’s her son’s father, and he’s a good Christian.”

He shifted in his chair, wincing a little.

I tried to think of some way to communicate my very different opinion of

Brian. I rejected my first idea of using statistics about domestic violence or studies
that had shown controlling men could be dangerous. Those were produced by the
liberal establishment and would be ignored accordingly. “Dad, do you remember
Seth and Anne Walker?”

He didn’t answer, but his hand tightened on the arm of his chair, and I knew

he remembered very well. The Walkers had belonged to our church when I was in
elementary school. Seth was a big noisy man who was pleasant when he wasn’t
drinking. One night, a neighbor called 911, an ambulance took Anne and the kids
to the hospital, and the police arrested Seth. My parents watched the scared
Walker kids for a couple of days afterwards. Their son Jude’s stories about a parent
who was the source of pain and terror were incomprehensible to the sheltered kid
I’d been. I still remembered seeing the pattern of stitches on Jude’s face when my
mother helped him change the bandage the nurse put on in the emergency room.

A few days later, while Seth was still in jail, Anne came to pick up the kids.

There was a U-Haul attached to the back of Anne’s car, and after she’d belted the
kids in the back seat, her good-byes had been final. When Seth was released, he
hadn’t been able to find her. As far as I knew, no one in Why Yell, including Anne’s
parents, heard from her or those kids again.

I don’t know if it was the thought of Rachel and her kids getting hurt or the

fear of never seeing them again that did it, but I was glad when Dad spoke to her
as we all moved into the dining room.

“I knew you’d fix it,” my mother told me as she handed me a bowl of green

beans to set on the table.

I didn’t see my father’s willingness to ask Rachel if she’d helped with the

casserole as a panacea for our family problems, but between that and my mother’s
extra effort in making the Pillsbury rolls he liked, the atmosphere at dinner was
friendlier than I’d expected.

Mom became positively chatty, asking Rachel all sorts of questions that had

apparently been taboo until now. “Where are you moving? Do you have a lease for
sure?”

“Yes.” Rachel was watching Ty tear his roll into little bits, waiting for the

inevitable moment when the pieces became mushy projectiles. “We have a place
in Heavenly Acres.”

I bit back a comment that it sounded like a cemetery instead of a trailer park.

I’d been too worried about what Brian might do to her to find the idea of her
moving to a graveyard funny.

Mom fussed. “You should be able to find someplace nicer than that. It’s the

oldest trailer park in town.”

“It’s a good location for Josh. It’s only been a few months since his last DUI,

and this way he can walk to work at the Hy-Vee until he gets his license back. He
stocks shelves at night.”

I managed not to bang my head on the table, partly because it would have

landed in the hamburger casserole, but mostly because there was no point. My
siblings were model children in every aspect except their sex lives. This in spite of, or

maybe because of, the fact that my parents regarded sexual sins as the worst that
could be committed—short of murder and child abuse.

Rachel was not a stupid woman. She hadn’t let a pregnancy in her junior year

of high school prevent her from getting a GED and an AA degree at the community
college. She was working her way up to a good position at one of the local banks.
But she chose one loser male after another, ignoring warning signs so obvious her
daughter could have spotted them.

As for my brother, Matt had a good job with an insurance company in Old

Liberty and never missed a child support payment even though he was left with
barely enough money to rent a small apartment and drive a ten-year-old car. He
had four kids with three women. (The fourth had been conceived with the mother of
the first when he got snowed in during a scheduled visit.) In most ways he was
mature and sensible, but when it came to his social life, he had the attention span
of a furry in Toontown. I’d been giving him gift cards to drugstore chains as birthday
presents for years, but it didn’t seem to do any good.

On the other hand, I was pretty sure neither Rachel nor Matt had spent last

night being fucked up the ass by someone who worked at the produce counter of
the co-op. I vowed to stop worrying about the mote in my sibling’s eye and focus
on the beam in my own. Then I vowed to think of a metaphor that didn’t make me
blush so deeply that my mother asked if I’d choked on something.

Having the kids around was a good distraction. After dinner, Tyler ran around

like a maniac, and Rachel scolded him until I picked him up and tossed him in the
air, making him belly laugh. But when I lowered him for a hug, I smelled something
suspicious, so I carried him down the hall, leaving the rest of the family watching the
antics of some cute kids on the umpteenth season of America’s Funniest Home
Videos.

Rachel’s kids were using the room I once shared with my brother Matt. After a

detour to the bathroom to get a washcloth, I set Ty down on the bottom bunk and
pulled over the diaper bag sitting on the floor.

“Watch out,” said a voice from the doorway.

“He squirts.”

I grinned. “I know, Lyss. I’m a boy too.” I demonstrated my experience in baby

wrangling by dropping the washcloth on Ty’s penis to depress any activity from that
quarter. Then I grabbed a wet wipe and a clean diaper. Ty complained
incoherently around the finger stuck in his mouth, not seeing why he had to stop
playing to submit to this incomprehensible hygienic ritual.

“You have one of those little things?” Lyss was staring at her brother’s

diminutive equipment.

“Uh-huh.” I forbore to enter into a discussion of size, because those never go

well. I grabbed Ty’s ankles in one hand and managed to pull the dirty diaper out

from under him with the other.

“Hmmph.” She thought about this for a bit.

“It’s okay, I suppose.”

“Glad you approve.”

“I don’t want one, though.”

“Girls don’t need them.” I finished snapping the crotch of Ty’s overalls back

together and set him on the floor, where he immediately began to run around
again, yelling so loudly that Rachel called from the living room, asking what was
wrong. So after I disposed of the dirty diaper and washed my hands, I took both kids
out to the backyard where their mother and I had played as kids.

I pushed Lyss on a new plastic swing attached to an ancient metal frame my

father had installed around the time I was born. While she told me a long and
incomprehensible story involving a witch and a dragon, Ty tried to make friends with
the neighbor’s dog through a chain-link fence. It was hard to decide which one
was yapping louder, but after a while the friendly terrier stood still long enough for Ty
to reach a tiny hand through the links and pet his nose.

“Dogs spit,” said Lyss disapprovingly, but she eventually went over to the

fence and begged for the puppy’s attention.

When the terrier’s owner called him inside, I got our creaky old red wagon out

of the garage and wheeled it around the neighborhood, the kids climbing in and
out a few dozen times on the route.

There were other dogs to meet, flowers to be forbidden to pick, and even

another child, who hid behind his mother and sucked his fist before marshalling
enough courage to show off his temporary Batman tattoo.

When I got them home, I put Ty in his pajamas and told Lyss to change into

her own. After coping with a minor emotional meltdown about the electric
toothbrushes that had been left behind in their hasty move, I wiped toothpaste
splatter off the bathroom mirror and herded them back into the bedroom. I read
the same book, something based on a Disney movie, five times. By then Ty was
collapsed facedown on the bottom bunk. I suggested Lyss sleep next to her brother,
but with a defiant look, she climbed up into the top bunk.

I rubbed her back for a few minutes until her breathing was slow and even.

After staring at what seemed to be an inadequate wooden lip on the outside edge
of the mattress, I found some extra pillows to make a better barrier. Once I was
satisfied she wouldn’t roll onto the floor, I went into the living room, where an earnest
discussion about Dancing with the Stars was in progress. At least, Rachel and Mom
were talking. Dad was asleep in his armchair.

Rachel looked around for the kids, and when I told her they were in bed, she

remarked that they always seemed to sleep better at Grandma’s.

Mom preened at this, but then she asked me about a girl I’d dated two or

three times a few months ago. She was disappointed when I said I hadn’t seen her
recently, so I made an excuse to retreat home. The evening so far had been a
success, and I didn’t want to press my luck.

I was absolutely not thinking about the possibility that Jamie had returned to

Why Yell earlier than expected and would stop by my place that night. Which was
a good thing, because he didn’t. He didn’t call either, but then I couldn’t remember
if I’d given him any of my numbers.

THE next morning I woke up unreasonably early and for once couldn’t fall

back to sleep. I decided to use the time to run. My legs were stiff and sore.

I hadn’t had a really good run in weeks because the late summer’s heat

lingered into the evenings and I definitely was not a morning person. But that day I
felt virtuous when I staggered back into my kitchen and swallowed half a container
of orange juice before grabbing the first cup of coffee of the day.

The atmosphere at work still made me uncomfortable. Having a coworker

fired a couple of days earlier had upset the staff more than I’d expected because
Human Resources had issued an edict forbidding anyone to discuss it or even to
speculate on the reasons for the “involuntary separation.” I would have been more
relieved at the lack of the usual drama if I hadn’t seen people looking at me as if I
were wearing a black hood and carrying an axe. I’d disposed of one of them.

They’d been reminded that in spite of my usual mild manners, I was the boss

and therefore The Enemy.

They couldn’t know I’d had no choice. If I hadn’t reported the security

breach, Ferret Face and Hot Lips certainly would have, and once it was reported,
Human Resources had taken the lead on processing the termination, leaving me
with only the task of informing the employee that he was going to be stripped of his
identification badge and marched out the door by Security, never to be hired by
the federal government or any of its contractors again.

I wished I were one of the rank and file. Even wondering in ignorance why

Mike was gone would have been better than remembering the expression on his
face when I explained that he really had committed an unforgivable sin. I hadn’t
even been able to leave him the dignity of cleaning out his own desk. Security had
done it for him after escorting him to the door. The next day Mike had sent his wife
to pick up the box of personal belongings, and she’d looked even more shocked
than he had.

He hadn’t sent her out of cowardice. He had to delegate that task. The last

thing I’d said to him was that if he tried to enter the building again, he’d be
arrested.

He made one stupid mistake and his life was changed forever. A place that

had been his for years locked its doors against him. Poor guy.

AT LAST it was time to quit, and for once no one approached me to

brownnose or complain. (I preferred the complainers to the suck-ups, but was glad
to do without either.) I rolled the windows on my truck down and hit the air-
conditioning control, then waited impatiently for the interior to cool down enough
that I could touch the steering wheel without getting a second-degree burn.

Three minutes later I was at the local Kum & Go. I felt almost dizzy when I got

out of the truck, probably from rushing from the chilly office to the sweltering heat
outdoors, then into the insanely hot atmosphere of the truck, where quickly cooling
blasts of air hit me from the vents on the dashboard. When I reached the gas pump
in the staggering heat of yet another humid day, I fumbled getting my wallet out of
my pants pocket, then stuck the wrong card in the slot. I’d processed the charge
before I realized I wouldn’t be getting at least a small cash-back bonus as a reward
for being one of the oil industry’s better customers.

I waited until the numbers on the gas pump rolled up to an astronomical sum,

looked up, and, in spite of the weather felt a chill up my spine when I recognized
the battered bike parked just a few yards away. I pulled the nozzle out of the tank
and was about to screw the gas cap back on when Jamie turned his head and his
eyes met mine. He was filling up his own transport for the princely sum of twenty-five
cents. And he wouldn’t even have had to pay that if his bike’s tires could have
carried him to the Sinclair station, which had a free air pump.

Damn, he looked smug. Smug and sexy. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt,

and as he squatted next to his bike, he presented me with an excellent three-
quarters view of his extremely excellent ass. He smirked and looked back down at
his tire.

I holstered the pump, finished screwing on the gas cap, and slammed the gas

cap cover shut. At which point I realized I would have been better off watching
what I was doing instead of staring at Jamie with my tongue hanging out. When I’d
pulled out my wallet, the pocket had come with it, a puff of white fabric sticking out
from my gray slacks.

When I’d shut the gas cap cover, I had been twisted around at just the right

angle to let it snare the inside-out pocket. I gave a small tug, then a harder one.
Shit.

“Issues?”

Jamie stood two feet away. I could read the writing on his T-shirt now: “Are

you still hearing those crazy voices? Try turning off FOX News.”

I raised my eyes to his face, swallowed, and confessed my ludicrous position,

since he was bound to notice it in a moment anyway. “I’m stuck.

My pants are stuck in the gas cap cover.”

He craned his head to look around me. “Can’t you open it up?”

What kind of cars didn’t have locking caps these days? The kind Jamie drives,

obviously. If he drives at all. “The release is under the driver’s seat.”

He was trying hard not to laugh. “Not very handy, that.”

“It’s an antitheft device. So no one can siphon my gas.”

“Siphon your gas.” He seemed to roll the words on his tongue. “Why does that

sound dirty?”

“Because of the way you’re saying it.” I tugged at my pants again. It wasn’t

just a matter of not wanting to ruin them. A good-sized clump of fabric was
imprisoned, and I couldn’t get enough purchase at that angle to pull it out. Maybe
if I just jumped as far and fast as I could?

Yeah, that was a great plan if I wanted to rip my pants right off.

I looked back at Jamie. He had made himself comfortable, leaning one

shoulder against the cab of the truck, crossing his arms, and obviously enjoying the
show.

Oh shit, he’s going to make me beg.

I craned my neck to peer through the window at the station attendant. He

was talking to a customer and not looking in my direction. And if he did look, what
then? He’d just see two guys chatting. He had no reason to come outside. My sale
had processed, and it wasn’t as if I was hogging a spot someone else wanted. We
were the only ones on the lot and there were five other pumps available.

I sighed. “Jamie, please release my gas cap.”

“Now that sounds dirty too.” He cocked his head to the side and stared at the

afflicted clothing.

At least, I think he started out looking at the clothing, but after a moment his

gaze shifted a little to the left and he smiled.

“Jamie, when you look at me like that, it just makes my pants tighter and

exacerbates the problem.”

“Wow, a guy who can use words like ‘exacerbate’ when under duress. Be still

my beating schoolteacher’s heart.”

Schoolteacher?

“You really can’t tug it out?” He sounded more tentative now, as if he

suspected I was kidding.

Another careful pull, and I stopped because I heard a tearing sound. “I can’t

get a grip on just the pocket part, and I’m afraid if I pull too hard, the pants will rip
right down the side.”

“Are you wearing underwear?” There was a slight hiccup in his voice. He was

really having a hard time not laughing.

“Yes!” I snarled before I could wonder if that was the right answer.

Apparently it was. “Oh well, and I already know the answer to the boxers or

briefs question.

So….” He turned and walked around the truck, and a moment later I heard

the click of the release as the cap gave up its hold on my clothes. Quickly, I backed
away and slammed it closed just before Jamie snuck up behind me and whispered,
“I should have made you promise to strip for me in private before I rescued you
from public exhibitionism.”

“It….” I tried to hold on to a bit of pride but lost the struggle. “All you have to

do is ask. No blackmail needed.”

“Really?”

I turned, and he tilted his head up to smile at me. “Okay.” My voice was

hoarse. “Can you put your bike in the back of my truck?”

“Why?”

“Um… it would, you know, conserve energy.” Before he could point out that

his vehicle didn’t do much to add to his carbon footprint, I added, “Your energy. For
other things.” I walked over to the tailgate.

Wordlessly, Jamie wheeled his bike over to the back of the truck. Once it was

stowed, he swung up into the cab and looked around disapprovingly as he
fastened his seat belt. “What does this thing get? Five miles to the gallon?”

I liked my truck. I didn’t love it, because I am not a stereotypical male whose

identity and masculinity is tied up in his vehicle, but I liked it.

A lot. It was a red extended cab with a long bed and a good, powerful

engine. Of course, that meant that Jamie had a point. It swallowed gas with the
same enthusiasm that preschoolers gobbled up Halloween candy, but still. It was
big. And red.

“I like this truck,” I said stubbornly. “I use it to haul more than groceries. I’m

helping my sister move tomorrow.

“Uh-huh.” Jamie was unconvinced. “Does she move a lot? Because most

people just hire a truck for the day.”

“Seems like someone in my family always is moving somewhere.” True. If it

wasn’t my brother or sister, there was always a cousin switching apartments or
heading to college.

“Admit it, Mark. You bought it because it’s just like the Tonka truck you had

when you were a kid, only bigger and redder.”

This was so eerily on-target that I almost drove through a stop sign. I left skid

marks on the road as I said, staring straight ahead, “It was Matt’s truck. The toy that I
liked when I was a kid, I mean. My grandfather gave it to my brother for his eighth
birthday. It used to belong to one of my uncles.” And Matt had been damn
possessive of it.

When we got to my house, my hands shook as I unlocked the back door. They

shook even more when I pressed Jamie against the wall of the dining room and
kissed him before dropping to my knees.

It was probably a little abrupt, but suave seduction just isn’t in my repertoire.

“Mark?” His voice was breathless.

“Please. Let me.” I’d only done this once before, and I’d been so obsessed

with being careful of my teeth and not gagging I could barely remember the
experience. But doing it to Jamie had been almost all I could think about the past
two days, and I’d come up with a Plan. Almost everything went better with a Plan.
So now I took a deep breath and made myself slow down. I took a long moment to
just look at him, gauge my reaction to being this close to another man’s cock, and
fuck, what had been that Plan, anyway?

His cock was gorgeous, not as thick as mine, maybe, but a bit longer, taut

and dark red against the paler skin of his abdomen and the dark brown of his curls.
He smelled of that herbal soap he used, sweaty of course, on such a hot day, but a
clean sweat.

“Mark, if you’re going to do this, for God’s sake, do it!” Jamie’s voice was full

of tension, but I gave something that sounded embarrassingly like a giggle before I
leaned forward and just did it.

I started by sucking on the head of his cock, then opened wider, surprised by

how good the shaft felt in my mouth. It was smooth, with a salty taste, and an
astonishing turn-on. I pulled back, then down, and experimented with the
movement a few more times. I became fascinated by the head.

He was cut, and it was so silky soft, I couldn’t resist twirling my tongue around

it over and over. I let my hands creep to his hips, and then I began to play with his
balls. This got me a gasp, and he thrust into my mouth a little. It occurred to me that
Jamie was holding unnaturally still given the circumstances, and I realized he was
trying not to move, not to choke me.

My slacks were starting to feel very tight, and I shifted, wanting to grab myself

but keeping my resolution to concentrate on Jamie. I looked up. He stood rigidly,
with his palms flat against the wall.

His eyes were half-closed and he was biting his lower lip. Damn. Maybe this

wasn’t the time for slow experimentation. So I grabbed the base of his cock the way
I liked to touch myself, while taking as much of it as I could into my mouth and
stroking the shaft with my tongue, which had the strange effect of making my own
dick swell even more.

I also got an excellent reception from Jamie in the form of a few more

uncontrolled thrusts of his hips and a moaned “Holy fuck!” Still, I was caught by
surprise when he came, and I think he was too, because he gasped, “Sorry!”

I choked and pulled back a little, trying to swallow but not doing a very good

job of it. Even the shock of that couldn’t diminish my awareness of his body and
how it shook with the force of his release. Had I really done that to him?

I reached down for the waistband of my slacks and somehow got them open,

then dragged the zipper down. I palmed myself through my boxers and it was over

for me five seconds later.

It was a minute before I could pull myself together enough to wipe my face

with the back of my hand and say, “I think I’m going to need some practice.”

“You… did fine.” Jamie’s voice shook. I looked up and saw his eyes gleaming

gold and green in the poor light. “Shit, Mark, did you come too?”

“Um, yeah.” I dropped my head again.

“Around you, I seem to have the control of a fourteen-year-old who just

bumped into Eva Longoria.” I thought about that and added, “Or Zac Efron.”

Laughing, he slid down the wall until he was sitting with me crouched in the V

of his legs. We sprawled there, him in his tattered clothes and me in my probably
ruined business suit, a sticky and ridiculous and happy mess. “And which is it for
you?”

“Zac.” I dropped my head on his chest. “And maybe Johnny Depp. It’s never

been this good with anyone, and especially not a girl.” I stole an upward glance.
“What about you?”

“Me? Definitely not girls.” He was still chuckling.

“No, who would you want to bump into accidentally?”

“I already lived that dream.” He dropped a kiss on the top of my head. “Mark

Johansen.”

EVENTUALLY we got up off the floor and took turns cleaning up in my small

bathroom.

“Is the co-op just a summer job?” I tried to make my voice casual, calling from

the bedroom where I was changing into shorts. I’d turned up the air-conditioning,
but it was still warm enough in the house that I didn’t bother with a shirt.

“Why do you ask?” Jamie was standing by the open door to the bathroom,

checking the mirror as he finger-combed his hair. The locks immediately sprang
back into the same messy state they’d been in before he started.

“You said before you were a teacher.”

He walked past me and into the living room so that his back was to me when

he finally answered. “Was. I’ve… taken a break from that.”

He immediately changed the subject by picking up the book I’d been

reading the night before. “Ethan of Athos?”

“It’s a favorite of mine. It’s about a gay obstetrician from a planet with no

women.”

“Okaaay.” The stress was gone from his voice and he was teasing me again.

“A little more adventurous than I expected.”

I knew I wasn’t adventurous, except maybe intellectually, so I didn’t argue. I

didn’t say anything at all because I realized he’d only mentioned the book to
distract me. Apparently the topic of his teaching career was taboo. Had there been
a problem at school because he was gay? I really wanted to ask. But I had to

respect his privacy, didn’t I? Yes, I had to respect the privacy of a man who had
been more physically intimate with me than anyone else I’d ever known. It seemed
ridiculous, but I knew I was really bad at dating and I’d never quite grasped the
rules. I wasn’t even sure if you could call what we were doing dating. The bottom
line was that Jamie had definitely put up a wall and I would let him keep his secret,
at least for now.

I sighed. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”

I thought about ordering pizza, but Jamie was already scrounging through my

kitchen and preparing whatever produce he could find. Feeling some responsibility
as his host, I defrosted a couple of pork chops. Their slight case of freezer burn
wasn’t cured by a visit to the microwave, but I chopped them up and Jamie said
he’d stir-fry them with something a little healthier. I ignored the implied criticism of
my overly carnivorous lifestyle.

While I searched for the big frying pan I used in lieu of a wok, I heard him give

a grunt of surprise. He’d found some balsamic vinegar, and he put the bottle on the
counter next to some carrots before diving for his backpack. “I’m running out of
some staples, so I picked a few things up at the co-op earlier….” He pulled out a jar
and added it to his collection of ingredients.

I read the label. “Raw honey? Is that safe?”

I’d heard warnings about raw dairy products and wondered if honey posed

similar hazards.

Jamie rolled his eyes. “Pretty much. Unless you’re allergic. Or a baby. You

can’t give it to kids until they’re at least a year old.”

Since I wasn’t allergic and there were no one-year-olds in the room, I focused

on the first part of his answer. “Pretty much?”

He grabbed the jar, twisting off the lid.

“Mark, are you going to eat crap from the supermarket, or are you going for

the real thing?”

“What’s wrong with supermarket honey?” I demanded, motivated by an

inexplicable need to defend Hy-Vee’s honor.

He scooped out a golden spoonful of the stuff and crooked one finger, which

was all it took to make me move closer. Instead of offering me the spoon, he
dipped his finger in the honey and held it out. “Trust me.”

I took a tentative lick and pulled back as the viscous stuff, almost too thick to

be called a liquid, zapped my taste buds. It was heavy and sweet, but there was
also something subtly deep and satisfying about the flavor. I couldn’t find words to
describe the sensation and uttered an ineloquent “Wow.” It must have given me an
instantaneous sugar high, because when Jamie started to move away, I grasped his
wrist and ran my tongue along the side of his finger.

He stiffened for a moment and then relaxed, letting me suck his whole finger

into my mouth.

The honey had started to drip, of course. The stuff was insidious. It had

managed to coat Jamie’s knuckle already and was trying to ooze down to his wrist.

I closed my eyes, enjoying something tastier than a dollop of the world’s

sweetest honey could provide. I’m sure I looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care, and I
didn’t want to stop. Once I’d verified there was no lingering stickiness on his fingers, I
turned over his hand and carefully laved the palm, teasing it with my tongue. He
twitched a little under these attentions, and I heard a clatter when he dropped the
spoon. But he didn’t move until I stood up, still holding his wrist.

“Mark, that’s….” He didn’t finish his sentence, just reclaimed his hand and

wiped it with a dishcloth. He was breathing hard as he said, “The commercial stuff
always tastes burnt to me.

And they add corn syrup to it sometimes. It’s sweet, but not like this. Did you

like it?” I thought he looked a little flushed.

“Very much.” I seemed to be breathing hard too.

He kept busy mopping the syrupy puddle he’d left on the counter when he’d

dropped the spoon.

“I’ll leave you the jar then.”

“Oh.” I feigned surprise. “You thought I was talking about the honey.”

He snickered at my poor joke and went back to cooking.

I quickly realized my cooking skills, which were mostly confined to grilling meat

and making salads, couldn’t compete with Jamie’s, so I let him take charge. The
best part of his doing most of the work was that I could keep touching him during
the process. I could put my hands on his hips when I moved to get something out of
the fridge and slip my arm around his shoulder when he turned around after
washing his hands in the sink. And he gave me a quick hug or a kiss every time I did
so.

It was only then that I really started wondering where we were going. We’d

connected physically in a way that I never had with anyone else. But for all I knew,
his life was a series of encounters equally or more erotic than what we’d done
together. And I wasn’t sure just how we’d connect outside the bedroom. Well, and
off the couch, and when not pressed against the wall in the dining room…. Let’s just
say that I wasn’t sure we had much more than sex in common, anywhere.

I’d rejected many of the conservative opinions I’d been raised with, but as far

as the way I lived and wanted to live my life was concerned, I was conservative. My
ideal job involved sitting at a desk and working at something I liked, then coming
home to a nice house at the end of the day.

I wanted to marry and have children. I wanted to live quietly, except for the

noise and chaos unavoidable when you have kids.

It occurred to me that I was doing pretty badly when it came to reaching

those goals. My job was full of responsibilities I hated and too much overtime, and I
didn’t feel like I had accomplished anything worthwhile. I never seemed to click
with any of the women I dated, and while I had a nice enough house, my nieces
and nephews were the only kids to visit. And I was falling for someone who probably
didn’t want any of the same things I did.

Jamie was restless. He’d been like that in high school, and it was obvious he

hadn’t changed much. I’d been surprised to find him still in Iowa, but maybe he
hadn’t moved because he’d found plenty of scope for his missionary zeal even
here.

During the few conversations we’d had, he’d talked about half a dozen

organizations he belonged to and the demonstrations and conferences he wanted
to attend. He was all about the outside world, trying to change society according to
a blueprint I thought was hopelessly idealized. I admired him for it, but I cringed at
the idea of living that way myself.

“Mark?”

I looked up and realized I’d been standing at the table, staring down at one

setting and still holding the plate for the other in my hands.

“Sorry,” I said.

“What were you thinking about?”

Honesty always works best, but that doesn’t mean you have to tell the whole

truth. “You.”

He gave me a long look, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should be flattered

or worried. Then a hint of smoke wafted in from the kitchen and we both ran to
rescue our dinner. Fortunately, only those bedraggled pork chops burnt. The veggies
in honey sauce were perfect.

Later, in bed, Jamie climbed on top of me again, and I expected a repeat of

the previous night’s adventure. Instead, he rolled a condom over my cock and
lubed it. He grinned at my astonished expression when I realized what was about to
happen. “You don’t get to have all the fun.”

“This is fun,” I assured him when he lowered himself down on me. At least, I

think that’s what I managed to say. It was amazing.

Afterward, I pulled him close and kissed him, enjoying the way the rough

stubble of his beard rubbed against my cheek. He pulled away, but only to take
care of the condom and clean us up a bit before rolling in for another cuddle.

“I suppose it’s easier with a woman.” He sounded genuinely curious. “Less

mess afterwards.”

“There’s still the condom.” I considered.

“And there was this girl who always jumped up to pee. She said she could

only come if she had a full bladder, but if she didn’t pee immediately afterwards,
she’d get some kind of infection.”

“Hummph.” He rubbed his face against my shoulder. “And yet you hear

straights complaining that our bodies aren’t made to work together.”

“They fit together just fine,” I said. And I was ashamed that I’d ever led on that

girl, whose face I couldn’t even recall now.

“I’d say spectacularly.” He propped himself up on one elbow and started

playing with the short strands of my hair. “About the other night. I can’t believe I
went that far with a newbie. But you were just so….”

“Receptive?”

He snorted a laugh.

I tried again, with less double entendre and more insecurity. “Needy?”

“Encouraging. Open. As if you’d been waiting for it.”

“Waiting for you. “ I realized how very naked that sounded, and even needier

than I’d been when I’d lain in bed waiting for him to fuck me. I turned away, but he
took my chin in his hand and pulled me back to face him. “It was never like that for
me before,” I said. “I’m usually more… assertive, with a lover.” I was trying to tell him
that I wasn’t really an emotional basket case who would follow him around like a
lost puppy, but it wasn’t working.

His hazel eyes were laughing, and somehow he made me feel like he wasn’t

laughing at me, he was trying to chase away my insecurities. “You made your wants
known. I felt inspired to rise to the occasion.”

“You certainly did.” I pulled him on top of me for another kiss, and just like

that, I wanted him. A body that reacted as if I were fifteen again wasn’t entirely a
bad thing.

And in the morning, he woke me with a kiss and the sweet friction of his body

against mine. We were gentler with each other than we had been the night before
because the sense of urgency was gone. Now we both wanted a slow and sweet
path to release, punctuated by long, openmouthed kisses and wordless murmurs.

At last he lay splayed across my body, and I was glad for once of my bulk,

because it meant I could support his weight and stay in contact with as much as
possible of his smooth, sweat-slicked flesh.

After a few minutes, he breathed into my ear, making me shiver. “So, I wonder

if Circe at the co-op will be jealous if I tell her I achieved nirvana before she did?”

I shook my head, taking advantage of the movement to kiss his cheek.

“Nirvana is a release from transitory emotions and desires, which are the last things I
want to give up right now. I’ll just stay on the wheel of rebirth, thank you very much.”

He chuckled and half sat up so that he could see my face. “Where’d you

learn all that?”

“I took some comparative religion and theology courses when I was in

college. I needed to sort out how I felt about the ideas I’d grown up around.”

“Your family is religious?” He settled himself into a cross-legged position,

apparently happy to engage in serious discussion before his first cup of coffee.

Instead of feeling my usual compulsion to charge down the hall and reach for

a mug, I lay still, content to talk to him. “My parents belong to a really conservative
church. My brother agrees with them on most things, but I think my sister just attends
because she doesn’t want to offend Mom and Dad. The extended family is all over
the map.”

“What about you?”

I grimaced. “I go to weddings and things like that when I can’t avoid it.” And I

very carefully avoided talking about topics on which we disagreed. I wasn’t going
to change their minds, and I couldn’t squeeze mine back into their narrow beliefs.
“How about your family?”

“Oh, they’re all Catholics.” His tone was light, unconcerned.

“Really? I thought your family was okay with your being gay.”

“They are, mostly.” He laughed. “They’re the kind of Catholics who take

whatever the Church says under advisement and then do whatever they decide is
right.”

“Seems pretty bizarre for a religion that believes its leader is infallible.”

“They take that bit of doctrine with a grain of salt too.”

“That sounds really nice.”

I must have sounded wistful, because he bent over to run a hand through my

hair and kiss me gently. “You know, when you started explaining nirvana, I expected
you to say you were Buddhist.

Except under certain circumstances”—his hand drifted down my belly, making

it clear what he meant—“you have this calmness, a kind of steadiness, even when
you’re talking about something that upset you. As if you’ve achieved inner peace.”

“Do I? I don’t feel at peace at all.” I sighed.

“I think I’m just kind of boring.”

“Now, that I haven’t noticed.” He raised his head. “Do I smell coffee?”

“I PROMISED my sister I’d help her move today,” I said later, when we were

both showered, dressed, and caffeinated. The truth was that I’d promised my
mother, but it amounted to the same thing.

Jamie set down his mug. “I’d give you a hand, but I’m scheduled at the co-

op, and then I have an appointment.” He frowned. “And my sister’s family is coming
by later. I don’t know how late they’ll stay, but I should be able to come over
tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

“Of course it is.” The level of disappointment I felt was certainly

disproportionate. We’d only spent two nights together. One night apart shouldn’t
seem like a big deal.

Jamie ran his hand through his hair, and I thought he looked disappointed

too.

My phone rang, and I excused myself to answer. Mom’s voice floated toward

me. “Mark, I need to talk to you before you go over Rachel’s.

I’m afraid she’s going to leave that rolltop desk behind because Brian’s been

using it, but it really belongs to Matt, except he doesn’t have space for it right now.”

“Just a minute, Mom.” I put her on mute and said to Jamie, “I can drive you

to work.”

My mother’s voice continued to list items over the phone’s speaker. “Make

sure you’re the one who packs your grandmother’s jugs, you know the ones we
always used for lemonade and iced tea. Rachel never uses enough newspaper. Oh,
and she borrowed all her Tupperware from Aunt Judy, and you know she’ll make a
fuss if she doesn’t get it back, even though she never cooks enough anymore to
need it, so check the fridge in case Rachel’s using it for leftovers….”

Jamie shook his head, either over my offer or my mother’s monologue. It was

true that he could probably ride the few blocks to the co-op before I could get my
mother off the phone.

“Well, leave me your phone number before you go.” Since my phone was in

use, I looked around for paper and pencil while Mom segued into a reminiscence of
my aunt’s poor behavior the time someone had not returned a casserole dish.

Jamie paused, hand on the doorknob, frowning. “Do you have a landline?”

“What? No. It’s a waste when I live alone.”

I’d found a pen and was standing in the middle of the kitchen with my phone

on the counter as I waited for him to give me a number while Mom went on about
the tablecloth her great-aunt had embroidered.

He shook his head. “I don’t want anything to do with cells. Not until I’m sure

it’s safe for the bees.”

“The what?” My mind drifted to last night and the spoonful of honey. I was

jerked back to reality as my mother said, “And the clock. You know, the nice
anniversary clock that Daddy and I gave her last year. If she thinks it will bother Josh
because it was a wedding anniversary present, then bring it here, or you can use it,
but that Brian shouldn’t have it….”

“The bees. Haven’t you heard of colony collapse disorder? Sometimes they

call it hive death?”

I was about to say no when I remembered something I’d seen on a science

program. “Lots of hives dying for no reason.”

Mom broke in with “But see if you can make her leave that awful picture

behind. You know the one….”

Jamie’s tone was even more vehement than hers. “The thing is, cell phones

may be the reason.

Maybe not, but until we’re sure, I won’t use one, and I don’t like people

calling me on cells either.”

“Mark?” My mother’s voice grew louder.

“Can you hear me? Have I lost you?”

“You have got to be….”

The door slammed behind him.

Mom’s voice stopped abruptly. She must have decided we’d been

disconnected and hung up. Two seconds later the phone trilled again, her picture
popping up on the screen, possibly exterminating a hive somewhere.

Really? Bees? I’m sleeping with a guy who won’t give me his phone number

because he’s worried about bees?

RACHEL met me at the small house she and Brian rented. He was at work,

which was why we’d decided this would be a good time for her to pick up her
things, as well as the various objects she’d borrowed from Mom, Aunt Judy, Matt,
and other relatives.

Rachel showed me the piles of boxes her new boyfriend had picked up from

the Hy-Vee. Josh himself was still asleep because he had worked the night shift
stocking groceries. I grunted at this news and nodded at Cassie, the female friend
who would actually be helping.

It really didn’t take that long to scoop up most of Rachel and the kids’ things

and stow them in my truck and Cassie’s hatchback. Rachel and Brian rented the
bulk of the furniture, so except for the rolltop desk and the kids’ beds, we just had to

put things in boxes and haul them outside.

The kitchen took longest to pack up, and Rachel wanted to work on it while

Cassie and I took the first load to her new place, but I was uncomfortable leaving
her alone there. Things could get ugly if Brian came home early. So I talked her into
coming along, and soon she and Cassie were gathering up things they’d stowed in
the back of the hatchback and staggering through the door of the double-wide
trailer home she was going to share with Josh.

I got my first glimpse of Josh in the living room, where he was sitting in front of

the TV, eating cereal out of a plastic bowl. He looked a lot like Brian, big and
muscular, with dark hair and a few unimaginative tattoos. I shook his hand firmly and
led him outside, where I put him to work helping me carry the desk and beds. I then
set the remaining boxes on the driveway and instructed him to take them inside
while the girls and I went back to finish with the packing.

As soon as we were back in the truck, Rachel started scolding me for being

rude to Josh, and I apologized even though the sight of the guy sitting around
watching sports when she’d been working for hours had really pissed me off.

The rest of the kitchen didn’t take long to pack, Tupperware, jugs, and all.

Rachel and Cassie drove away while I went back to grab the damn clock and lock
up.

When I got to the trailer, Josh was carrying one box at a time from the

hatchback to the kitchen.

I waited for him to come back outside and loaded him up with two boxes

before following suit myself.

Josh dropped the boxes and was heading back to the living room when I

invited him to help me put the kids’ beds together. Whatever Rachel said later, I did
so perfectly politely.

He managed to sneak away while I was looking for the sheets, so after I made

the beds, I gave up and left him in front of the TV. I helped Rachel organize the
kitchen, replacing Cassie, who had to leave to go to work.

She handed me a stack of plates and pointed at a cabinet. “See? Josh

helped.”

I slid the dishes onto the shelf. “Cassie was more help,” I said, throwing any

claim to diplomacy to the wind.

“Do you like her?”

I hadn’t really thought about it. “She’s nice.”

I turned around to see that Rachel was smiling in a way that I didn’t like at all.

“Oh, good. She’s just out of a bad relationship too, and I think you should invite her
out. She likes movies, and she doesn’t mind that science fiction crap, so you don’t
have to take her to a chick flick.”

The shoe finally dropped. Ouch. I was usually more agile when it came to

avoiding these traps, but I’d spent most of the day thinking about Jamie instead of
looking out for social pitfalls.

Jamie. Of course, for once I had a legitimate excuse. I shook my head.

“Rachel, I can’t ask her out. I’m sort of seeing someone.”

She stood up, juggling some of her mismatched glassware. “No, you’re not.

You’re just saying that because you don’t like me setting you up.”

“I’m not making it up.” I really hoped I wasn’t pouting when I said that.

She rolled her eyes, so chances were good I had been. “Okay, then. Who is

she?”

I must have spent a long time trying to come up with an answer, because she

jumped to her own conclusion. “It’s someone Mom and Dad won’t like!”

I nodded reluctantly. That was certainly true.

Few things made Rachel happier than my doing something wrong, or at least

something our parents would perceive as wrong, so she kept asking questions. I
persisted in not responding, so she answered them herself. “She’s married! No, you
wouldn’t do that. She’s divorced or… she has a kid?” Something in my expression
must have changed, because she said, “Okay, no kid. I know!

She’s not Christian. She’s something like Mormon, or….” Her eyes grew wide.

“You’re not dating one of those Muslim women who work with you?”

I winced, remembering my father’s shock when he picked me up at work one

day and found me chatting in the parking lot with a coworker who wore a
headscarf. I’d had to listen to a lecture about Sharia law all the way home, and
nothing I could say would convince him that Janna had never so much as frowned
at someone for eating a ham sandwich. Apparently he’d shared his fear of a
terrorist incursion into Why Yell with the rest of the family.

The wince convinced Rachel that she’d guessed my dark secret, and she was

consumed with scandalized delight. “Dad will shit a brick!

This is worse than anything I’ve ever done.”

I uttered a pathetic little sound in objection. It was as pitifully close to a

squeak as someone with a bass voice can manage.

“You know what I mean! They’ll think it’s worse. If you’re dating her, she’s

probably a virgin who wants to marry you and have lots of babies.”

“I really don’t think lots of babies are in the future,” I stammered.

Another eye roll. “Yeah, any woman you date probably is a card-carrying

member of Planned Parenthood.” Which didn’t exactly mesh with her previous
assessment of a shy virgin, but consistency was the last thing I expected from
Rachel.

“I’m not sure there is such a thing.” I looked at my watch, widened my eyes,

and announced that I was meeting a friend.

“You are so full of shit!” Rachel called after me as I headed out the door.

“You’re lucky I won’t tell Dad!”

I wondered how she’d handle the truth. Better than the rest of the family,

probably. But there was always the possibility she would tell Dad, and I wasn’t ready
for the fallout from that explosion.

JAMIE didn’t show up on Sunday. Or Monday. I started to go crazy. I kept

looking at my phone, thinking that I should be able to just call him and ask why he
hadn’t come. Then I’d start cursing dead bees.

It didn’t even occur to me not to try to contact him. I should have been able

to repress my feelings of loss and near panic and go back to my boring life. I’d
been discontented before. There’d been plenty of mornings when I’d contemplated
taking my truck past the turn to the office, jumping onto the interstate, and just
driving until I was far away from Why Yell. But I’d never felt like I was going to jump
out of my skin if I had to read one more memo about the importance of filling out
time cards daily with painstaking accuracy, except on Fridays before a holiday,
when we should guess and submit estimated hours by 10:00 a.m. so that the
accounting staff didn’t have to work over the weekend. I’d never been so
completely unable to concentrate on the complex formula that determined which
bits of the building’s restrooms and hallways the accounting department
apportioned to my project and added to my overhead costs.

I needed to see him. It wasn’t just the sex, either. Or maybe it was the

connection I’d felt with him during sex. Okay, I had no idea what it was.

But I really wanted to spend enough time with him to figure it out. Even if my

track record with relationships said it was probably doomed.

Whatever it was, it made work more unbearable than usual. On Tuesday

morning, I sat at my desk, listening to one of my direct reports complain about her
performance evaluation. I wondered why people thought I was lucky to get to do
things like this for a living.

“It’s not fair! Everyone else in the group is getting a raise,” whined Marcy.

That wasn’t true, but what everyone else was getting was none of Marcy’s

business. “You aren’t getting a raise because you were put on written warning status
after you insulted a customer.

Company policy is that an employee on warning status is not eligible for a

raise.”

“I’m only on warning because you never back me up. You made me

apologize!”

I’d had to sweet-talk a customer Marcy had offended and then convince my

own boss not to insist she be fired. Human Resources had also backed the
termination option. It had taken three days of almost constant meetings to smooth
things over. “If you look at the warning and the recommendations that went with it,
you’ll see that although I agreed your behavior was out of line, I also requested you
be given another chance.”

“Some chance! You gave me a warning!” She picked up one of the

documents lying on my desk and crumpled it in her hand.

“The warning was the second chance.” I could have sworn I heard some

buzzing in the back of my brain, as if a hive full of angry bees had taken up
residence there.

Thinking of bees brought Jamie back to mind, and the hollow feeling I’d been

fighting all day came back. Marcy’s complaints about my deficiencies as a
manager merged with the buzzing.

She sniffled and her voice moved up an octave. “All I hear is that I have a

bad attitude. My attitude would be a lot better if you’d give me better assignments.
I’ve never even gotten to be a project head.”

“Running a project involves a lot of customer contact, and you have several

times told me that you hate customers.” Not to mention the time she’d told a
customer she hated customers.

She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’ve been here twice as long as Kelsey,

and she’s been allowed to lead three projects.”

Then my own voice rumbled over the whining of hers. “What part of ‘you

were lucky not to be fired’ don’t you understand?”

I sat back, horrified. I’d just said exactly what I thought.

Marcy grabbed her copy of her performance review and stalked out of the

office without another word. I blinked. That was the first time I’d ever gotten rid of
her in less than an hour. I was beginning to see the appeal of acting like a callous
bastard.

My euphoria at routing an employee and sending her off to poison the

morale of the rest of the workgroup with her complaints didn’t last me through a
coffee break. As I sipped the cup I’d poured from my thermos, with my door still shut
against the intrusions of my coworkers, I remembered Jamie leaving me a note on
the coffee pot.

Shit. If I was getting melancholy over the memory of a scribble on a yellow

sticky, I was going through a second adolescence. Not that I’d behaved like this as
a teenager. Maybe I was just past due for a mad crush and a bit of insanity. God
knew my siblings had had their turns. But I didn’t think either of them had gone so
far as to turn stalker.

It wouldn’t be stalking. He said we’d get together again. I’m just trying to

make sure everything is okay.

Who are you kidding? If he wanted to see you again, he’d have found a way

to contact you.

He disappeared because he’s crazy and you own a cell phone.

I pushed that thought away. Jamie wasn’t crazy, just a bit overenthusiastic

about some of his environmental causes.

Maybe he used the cell phone thing as an excuse. Maybe you were one of

his causes. The Get Every Closet Case to Admit He’s Gay cause.

Now that thought was terrifying because it could be true.

I don’t care. I’ll make him see that I’m more than that.

By the afternoon I was barely rational. I swung back and forth between anger

and worry.

Anger that he’d left me. Worry that something had happened to him. Worry

that he’d left me. I kept telling myself that I should just relax and wait. If he didn’t
want to pursue things enough to come back when he said he would, then any
pursuing on my part would be a waste of time.

One last time, I tried to step back and decide what it was about Jamie

Novotny that made me so frantic to see him again. I’d had good sex before, right?
Though, looking back with my recent experiences for comparison, I realized that I’d
had mediocre sex before. Whether I’d been with a man or a woman, the pattern
had been the same. I’d been able to set my anxieties aside long enough to get a
pleasant release before I started worrying about what my partner expected or
didn’t expect, wondering why I wasn’t interested in pursuing the relationship, and
hoping (if my partner was a girl) that my mother wouldn’t find out because she’d
start making wedding plans or (if it was a guy) that my father wouldn’t find out
because I’d either have to abandon my family or go to Bible study every night for
the rest of my life.

But with Jamie, it was as if my libido had screamed at my brain to shut up,

because this time the sex was just too good to brook any interference. Even now, if I
tried to call up some belated guilt and/or anxiety, those feelings melted away at
the memory of him smiling at me with that slightly smug, mostly mischievous
expression that said….

What exactly did it say? Obviously, he liked sex with me. He’d also seemed to

enjoy being with me for the short periods of time we hadn’t been sleeping or having
sex.

That thought called up the image of him crouched above me, joining us, until

we fit together as if our bodies had been created for just that moment. And I
remembered waking up in the middle of the night with him spooning against me. I
felt none of the awkwardness I’d experienced in the same situation with other lovers.

Then my thoughts drifted to the moments before our first kiss. I hadn’t meant

to tell him what had happened at work, and even when I did, I’d focused on not
giving away too many details.

But in my efforts to avoid the facts, I’d let my feelings show. And he didn’t

make me feel like I was whining, or try to convince me that what had happened
hadn’t been awful. He’d just been sympathetic.

I tried to imagine telling anyone else those things and not feeling like a

weakling, a bully, or a fool. I couldn’t. My mother and my siblings would have gone
off on some tangent. Rachel might even have blamed me. My father… I couldn’t
imagine forcing out the words in front of my father, much less guess what his
reaction would be. Even Scott would have focused on the facts of the case,
showing how they justified my actions, which was exactly what I didn’t need. I’d
always known that I did the right thing. It was just that the right thing had sucked.
Jamie understood that.

Jamie and I fit. I kept telling myself that was an absurd conclusion to reach

after just a few days, but it had been true from that moment he’d filled my
wineglass and sat quietly beside me while I came to terms with what I’d had to do.

I stopped pretending I had the least interest in or understanding of the

spreadsheet on my computer monitor. I told my assistant I wasn’t feeling well, which
was in no way a lie, and left work early.

I drove past my house, slowing down just long enough to be sure that Jamie

wasn’t hanging around waiting for me there, and headed to the co-op. A stocky
man with a long gray ponytail was presiding over the produce section, so I nosed
around the tiny meat counter and the ridiculously large selection of vitamins and
herbal dietary supplements. No Jamie. He wasn’t stocking wine or multigrain cereal
either. By the time I reached the dairy section, I was getting desperate enough to
actually talk to someone.

Two women were taking packages of cheese off a cart and putting a lot of

effort into arranging them attractively in a refrigerated case, in spite of the fact that
there is only so much you can do artistically with small white and yellow blocks. I
strolled over, picked up a pale rectangle of white cheddar, and took a breath.

“So, Jamie Novotny’s not working today?” I winced at the sound of my own

voice, and the look on the older woman’s face told me my effort at nonchalance
was a failure.

“Jamie?” The younger woman looked puzzled.

“He’s a volunteer,” said her coworker. “But he’s had to cancel on us.” She

gave me a look so sympathetic I thought I’d collapse out of sheer mortification. “His
father got out of the nursing home, so he doesn’t have the time.”

“His father….” I pulled myself together. “I didn’t know.” I didn’t even know his

father had been ill, but I hoped I managed to make it sound as if I were only

unaware of this most recent development.

She nodded. “You know what those places are like. They push people out as

soon as they can.

Of course, the poor man probably wanted to get home after all those weeks

in rehab.”

I agreed and stopped myself just before asking where Jamie lived. If she had

any sense, she wouldn’t give that information to a stranger, and I’d only manage to
make myself look like that crazy stalker I was afraid I’d become. As a friend of
Jamie’s, I should know where he lived.

I had a vague idea of the neighborhood he’d grown up in, so I retreated to

my truck and pulled out my phone. A very short search, which hopefully didn’t cost
any bees their lives, showed me that William Novotny was still listed as residing in a
house in that area. I thought Jamie’s father’s name was Bill, so I drove there.

On the way, I wondered why I hadn’t found a listing for Jamie’s mother. I

clearly remembered that her name was Linda. I’d last seen her on the local news,
stating that she supported her son in whatever he’d done to become newsworthy,
and cutting off a stupid question from the reporter to rattle off some information
about PFLAG.

I remembered wondering what it would be like to have a parent who stood

behind you to support you instead of to push you. But that was unfair. My parents
might not have gone on the evening news to defend me, but then I’d never given
them any reason to. If I had come out when I was in high school, maybe they’d
have become accustomed to the idea of having a gay son too.

Maybe. But I didn’t think so, and the reflection added some more worker bees

to the buzzing hive that had left my brain and was now lodged in my abdomen.

I parked about half a block from the Novotny house but within sight of it. It

was one of the largest of the older houses that lined the street. It had four, maybe
five bedrooms and could have held a big family comfortably. I couldn’t remember
all the other Novotny kids, but I was pretty sure there’d been several of them, all
older than Jamie.

Trees lined the streets, and their roots had pushed up the sidewalks, cracking

the surface so that it lurched up at odd angles and presented lots of opportunities
to trip. I was looking down, trying to navigate, when I heard a door open and a
familiar voice.

I stopped and looked up. Jamie stood on the porch, holding the door for

someone who was trying to maneuver a walker over the threshold. An elderly man
emerged, moving carefully, the tremors shaking his body visible even at a distance.

Jamie settled the older man, surely his father, in an Adirondack-style chair and

looked around.

As he reached for a smaller chair to pull close to his father’s, he stared right at

me.

Someone my size would look really silly running away, so I stood there.

JAMIE bent and said something to his father, then ran down the porch steps

and across the yard to me.

The grin on his face shook me. As a stalker, I didn’t expect that friendly a

welcome. Maybe he was a hallucination. He wore a T-shirt that read “Support Urban
Chickens,” which seemed pretty unlikely, even for Jamie.

“You came!” he said, and he laughed.

Encouraged by this welcome, I smiled back.

And since I didn’t really believe he was a mirage, I said, “Once I found out

where you lived. I had to go to the co-op. And Google Maps.” Damn, that sounded
whiny.

He stepped back, frowning now. “You didn’t check your mail today?”

Mail? Of course I had. I pulled my smart phone out of my pocket and was

swiping at the screen when he laughed again and said, “Not that kind of mail!”

“Oh.” I hadn’t. Except around Christmas and my birthday, the only things to

arrive in by snail mail were bills and advertisements. Such things hadn’t crossed my
preoccupied mind today.

“I wrote you a letter.” His voice was teasing.

“I used a pen and paper and a stamp. All very old school.”

“I look forward to reading it,” I said solemnly, and I looked up at the porch.

“The woman at the co-op said your dad just came home from the hospital.”

He followed my gaze and nodded.

“What’s wrong? His heart?”

“He was in rehab after a stroke. It’s not the first one. This time… he loses more

each time, Mark. He can hardly talk now.” The amusement disappeared from his
expression.

“I’m sorry.” It sounded really inadequate.

“I didn’t expect them to send Dad home with me on Saturday, but he was

really anxious to be out of there. As soon as the doctor said he could leave, he was
pretty much demanding to go. He still manages to make his opinions known.” He
grabbed my hand. “He’s still there, Mark, he’s just trapped inside a body that
doesn’t work.”

“I’m sorry.” That was inadequate and repetitious, but I hoped he could read

my sincerity in my voice and the way I returned the squeeze of his fingers.

“So when I left your house on Saturday, I thought I’d see you Sunday and we

could exchange e-mail addresses then. Even when I was packing Dad up to go
home, I figured I’d get away for a few hours the next day because my sister Jess’s
family was visiting, but that didn’t happen because she sat us all down at the table
to go over finances.

When everyone left, I got online and tried to find you. Have you got any idea

how many Mark Johansens there are?”

“Not quite as many as there are Mark Johnsons, but yeah, I do. I looked for

you too. On Facebook and a few other places.”

He shook his head. “When I was teaching, I tried to stay off those sites

because I didn’t need my students checking to see what I did over the weekend or
what stupid thing some friend of mine said. So I’m not on Facebook, and if you’re
there, I couldn’t find you in the crowd. Yesterday I tried calling the general number
for your company, and I kept getting bounced around. One woman offered to take
a message, but I think some people around here remember me from high school,
and I didn’t want to out you.”

Jamie had, indeed, been memorable.

“So I wrote you a letter, but I suppose it didn’t get picked up until our mail

delivery yesterday, which is kind of late.”

I was starting to understand. “And I didn’t check my mail when I went by my

house today.”

“Went by?”

“Yeah, just to see if you were there. Then I went to the co-op. I think I’ve now

reached the status of stalker, Jamie.”

“I’m flattered. I’ve never had a stalker before.” He tilted his head to one side.

“Well, maybe once, briefly. But I’ve definitely never had such a hot stalker.”

“Who stalked you?” The idea of someone else daring what I had just done

appalled me.

(This wasn’t entirely hypocritical. After all, I knew I was harmless.) “Never mind,

Mark. He’s ancient history.”

Before I could ask another question, he said, the pressure of his fingers on my

hands almost painful, “My father’s going to need me 24/7 now. I’m afraid I won’t be
able to get away very much, if at all.”

Whining about that wouldn’t have been just pathetic. It would have been

cruel and insensitive.

So I said, “Too bad. I was going to take you to the state fair this weekend to

see the butter cow.”

His lips twitched, but he played along. “What makes you think I’d enjoy that

enormous waste of food?”

“Well, it is biodegradable.”

“Mark, it’s a life-size cow made of butter.

It’s a perfect symbol of our wasteful society and an agricultural system that

overemphasizes animal products, expending enormous resources to provide
relatively small amounts of protein and fat.”

“Then it’s probably a good thing I was kidding. I didn’t want to take you to

the state fair, but I did want to spend time with you. And I still can, if you don’t mind
me coming here.” I looked up at the porch. “If your dad doesn’t mind me coming
here.”

Jamie turned around to look at his father, who might have been watching us

or might have been staring off into space. “He won’t mind your visiting.” He paused.
“Staying the night might be a different matter. He never let any of us have
sleepovers with boyfriends or girlfriends, even after we were adults.”

I had to admit to myself that was a blow, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t

want to be rude. Or appear desperate.

Jamie led the way to his house. “It wasn’t like this at first, when I moved back

home to help. He just needed someone who could make sure he ate right and
didn’t fall in the shower, and to take him to all the doctor’s appointments. I got to
spend time with him, and I realized how long it had been since I did that. It was kind
of nice. We talked a lot. I volunteered too. There are plenty of organizations that
need help, if you know how to find them.”

I imagined that such organizations found Jamie, like metal filings seeking a

magnet.

“I was even teaching. They let me give a course at the state prison.”

He went on, but I was busy having a retroactive freak-out at the thought of

Jamie, who set off gaydar alarms from half a mile away, in the goddamned state
prison for any reason whatsoever, and didn’t hear what he said next. I was going to
have nightmares about him surrounded by criminals, calmly discussing the dangers
of allowing your participles to dangle, while they sharpened spoons and prepared
to attack.

I came back to the present to find I was climbing the porch steps and being

introduced to Jamie’s father.

Mr. Novotny nodded at me but looked back to Jamie immediately and

waved a hand, punctuating the gesture with a hoarse sound. He looked
uncomfortable. I wasn’t surprised. The weather had cooled off quite a bit, but it was
still pretty humid.

Jamie nodded. “You need to go back inside? Do you want to lie down?” A

shake of the head.

“The living room? Want to watch TV? Or are you hungry?”

Some more sounds I couldn’t understand followed, but Jamie carefully helped

his father to his feet, steered him to the walker, and followed him into the house.
Once he settled Mr. Novotny in a recliner in the living room, Jamie clicked on the TV
and scrolled through channels until his father made a sound. “Volume okay?”

Mr. Novotny nodded, and Jamie set down the remote. He looked at me. “If

you can stay a few minutes, I’ve got beer and iced tea.” He looked at his father.
“I’m going to start dinner. And, yes, there will be meat. Chicken.”

I voted for beer and sat on the couch. After Jamie brought me a bottle, he

went to answer the phone, leaving me alone in the living room with his father.

The room was spacious, with shabby furniture that had started out of middling

quality and lived hard. Most of the pictures were family photographs. The one on
the wall in front of me featured Jamie’s mother with her arm around a girl who was
probably a grandchild.

Mr. Novotny looked from me to the TV and back, as if he were assessing me.

After a few minutes, I had to struggle to quiet a nervous twitch.

I’d never been good at the “meet the parents” thing, even when

conversation had been possible. So I focused on the TV, watching some major
American cities being badly CGI’d out of existence. When a commercial for a cell
phone company came on, I ventured a sideways glance.

He was still watching me. He made a shaky gesture towards the screen.

I didn’t think he was asking me to change the channel or wondering which

wireless provider I used. I guessed he wanted my opinion of the show, so I said, “It’s
just not a real disaster movie without at least one shot of the Statue of Liberty being
destroyed.”

It was hard to tell because he had lost so much muscle control, but I thought

he smiled at that.

I wound up staying for dinner, which included vegetables grown in a small but

impressive garden in the backyard. Jamie might take the locavore thing to an
extreme, but the fresh peas were delicious.

I washed the dishes while Jamie helped his father get ready for bed. He came

into the kitchen as I was finishing up. He looked exhausted, so I pulled him into a hug
I hoped he would read as undemanding.

Apparently it worked, because he dropped his head on my shoulder and

relaxed into me. I rubbed his back for a minute, and then he pulled away.

“Jamie.” I wasn’t certain how to phrase my question. “Your mother….”

“Breast cancer. Three years ago.”

I never know what to say at moments like that, so I just gave him another hug.

But I remembered how tired he looked, so I let him go after a few moments and
tried to excuse myself without awkwardness. I failed.

“Mark, it’s okay. I appreciate your staying this long, helping out. I understand.”

He smiled crookedly. “If I can get some time free, maybe if my sister or someone

can stay with Dad for a while, maybe we can get together? We have friends who
stop by to help sometimes.”

I hated that he sounded so tentative. It was so unlike him. “Can’t I be one of

the friends who stops by to help?” I couldn’t read his expression, but I’d gone too far
to stop there. “I can pick up groceries for you. Just make me a list or e-mail me
during the day, and I’ll bring things over after work. Or, if it’s okay with your dad, I
can sit with him while you go out.”

“Would you?” He looked relieved—and something else. Hopeful?

“Of course.” I grabbed a piece of paper. “Let me give you my phone

number.”

He started to say something, but I interrupted with a grin, “My new landline

number.”

“You got a landline?”

“Yeah. The lines to the house were already there. I just had to find an old

phone I had in storage and have a number activated.” I scribbled.

But when I looked up, I saw he was staring at me with an odd expression. “This

is okay, right? A regular phone won’t kill the bees or the squirrels or something?”

“No. A regular phone is great.” He grabbed my dress shirt and pulled me

forward. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he just said, “Are you real?”

I was confused. “I’m pretty substantial.”

“Yes, you are.”

I SPENT a lot of time at the Novotny house after that. I shopped sometimes,

but mostly I sat with Mr. Novotny so Jamie could get out for a few minutes, even if it
was just to run errands. In return, I got fed just about every night and discovered that
the three of us shared a fondness for movies where lots of things blew up. Jamie,
however, completely failed to see the charm of watching lots of people be
gobbled up by improbable monsters. So while he was busy elsewhere, Mr. Novotny
and I relished every bad creature feature we could find on cable.

Mr. Novotny also enjoyed watching Jamie and I fail to build a water

collection system that would let him trap rainwater in a large plastic garbage can
and attach a hose to it so he could water his garden. Neither of us could figure out
the instructions, and Jamie finally admitted defeat and called a much-tattooed
friend. She looked over the mess we’d made, barked instructions, and had the thing
working in half an hour. She couldn’t stay for dinner, so Jamie sent her home with a
bag full of homegrown tomatoes and peppers.

When I told Jamie this kind of thing was actually an improvement on my

social life before I met him, he thought I was kidding. I won’t say I wouldn’t have
preferred it to be just Jamie and me, and not being able to do more than kiss him
good night was painful, but I told myself we were getting to actually know one
another, and that was more important if we were to build a real relationship. I didn’t
convince myself, but I kept putting forth my best arguments.

I knew people stopped by during the day sometimes, friends of Mr. Novotny

and some of the volunteer types Jamie knew, but he still seemed glad to have my
company in the evenings. I wasn’t always able to be there on weekends, because
Rachel had asked me to watch the kids so she could work a second job she’d
picked up to pay off some credit card bills. I didn’t want to insult her by offering
cash instead, and I liked playing with Lyss and Ty.

One night, when his father had been particularly tired and gone to bed early,

Jamie flopped down next to me on the couch and said, “Talk to me.”

I definitely needed more guidance than that.

“What about?”

“Anything that isn’t about being sick. Or politics. And for God’s sake, nothing

tragic.”

I wanted to say that I had nothing, but he looked depressed, so I told him

about the great coffee mystery at work, which had consumed my workgroup for
the past week. Someone had apparently been swiping coffee from the fresh pots
brewed in the break room and not dropping change in the collection tin to pay for
it.

“The horror,” he said, smiling a little.

“You have no idea. The value of the coffee stolen was starting to add up. It

must have been approaching whole dollars. Something had to be done.” I
described how Jerry and Laura had jumped on the case, taking turns staking out
the break room to see who snuck in between the time the pot was set to brew and
the time a legal coffee tippler went to collect a cupful. They had no luck and
sulked when I told them they couldn’t move one of the surveillance cameras by the
door to focus it on the coffee maker. Ferret Face would have transferred the pot to
her cubicle if it hadn’t been one of the restaurant types that hooked directly into
the plumbing.

“I can’t believe you call them Hot Lips and Ferret Face.” He smiled broadly

now, and I liked knowing I’d been able to cheer him up.

“Well, I don’t to their faces. Anyway, I had to tell them to drop the

investigation because they were so obsessed they weren’t getting anything else
done. They were distraught. I think they suspected me of being the thief and trying
to cover up my guilt.”

“Don’t you always bring your coffee to work in your thermos?”

“Yes, but suppose I drank all of that and needed more? Suppose I couldn’t

restrain myself and began swiping coffee fund coffee?”

He snickered. “Unless you also visit the bathroom five times a day, that’s highly

unlikely.”

“Fortunately, before they could go to Human Resources and complain of my

sinister behavior, the mystery was solved.”

He sat up straight, fully invested in the story by that point. “Aha! And who was

the thief?”

I deadpanned the ending. “No one. The water feed to the coffee maker was

clogged and it wasn’t able to spit out full pots.”

He laughed so hard he had to cover his mouth with his hand to keep from

waking his father.

After that he routinely pushed me to tell him stories. It was something I’d never

done before, but I tried. I steered clear of other work problems because they were
rarely as entertaining as the coffee caper, but I did tell him about the woman who
trapped me in the grocery store and insisted I help her pick out a birthday card for

her husband, all the while explaining that he didn’t deserve anything at all because
he was so cheap and only bought her flowers for her birthday. “She kept vetoing
my choices because they cost too much.”

I also had to pass on my sister’s regular updates to the list of things Tyler had

broken, and my mother’s corresponding complaints about the things Rachel kept
borrowing. “Some people have Walmart when they need to replace household
items. My sister has my mother’s kitchen.”

I was late one day and instead of just apologizing, I told him why. A woman

from my parents’ church had called, sworn me to secrecy, and demanded I drive
her to a location she refused to specify in advance. “Her car was in the shop and
she said she was desperate.”

“Where did she want to go?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with the same wild

conjecture that had consumed me until I dropped her off.

“Bingo night at St. Ludmila’s church.” He looked so incredulous that I added,

“Pastor Steve would probably call her out from the pulpit and shame her if he found
out she was gambling.”

“Dude! It’s practically a sacrament for Catholics. If it’s not bingo, they’re

raffling something off or organizing a bus trip to one of the casinos.”

Life started settling down into a routine again.

A nice, incredibly frustrating routine that allowed me to look at Jamie and

occasionally even touch him, but for no more than a few kisses and a bit of groping.

It shouldn’t have bothered me much. After all, I’d had more sex in those few

days before Mr.

Novotny got out of the nursing home than I’d had the previous year. I should

be practically sated. Instead, I was ravenous.

NATHAN, one of the software developers at work, was pissed off at me. This

was not a new situation.

I folded my hands in front of me on my desk and fought for a reasonable

tone. “I’m sorry. But you’ve used up all your vacation time, and I can’t authorize any
more paid time off. And that’s not my decision. It’s company policy.”

He flounced, which I found kind of impressive. I hadn’t known it was possible

to flounce while sitting in an office chair. “If you hate me so much, why don’t you let
me go to another department? Because I know that when I apply for a different job,
you tell the managers not to hire me away from you.”

I didn’t waste time telling him I didn’t hate him. At this point, I wasn’t even

sure I could sound sincere. “I tell them that you’re on official warning status,
because another company policy is that you can’t interview for a different position
until the warning period is over.”

At that, he flounced out. He was really good at flouncing. He was good at

software development too, when he actually showed up for work. I tried to console

myself with that thought.

I opened the calendar on my computer and made a note that Nathan

would likely call in sick the week I had specifically forbidden him to take vacation
time, and shuffled a few resources around so his work would be covered.

I read my notes and stopped typing.

Resources. I meant people, and I actually thought of them as resources. I

clenched my fist and checked the time. If nothing horrible happened, I could leave
work in two hours and go see Jamie and his father, whom I was never tempted to
think of as anything but people.

But when I went home to change, I found Jamie waiting by my back door.

He’d left his bike leaning against the fence and gone up on the deck to examine
my neglected tomato plant.

“You really should water this more often,” he commented, frowning at the

drooping green mess.

I didn’t bother answering. For one thing, we both knew I’d forget. For another,

I was too busy looking at him and being happy he was there.

His eyes were tired but bright. He’d been putting off getting his hair cut, and

about half of it was pulled back in a ponytail while the rest was curling slightly in the
humid air. Sweat marks streaked his face. One pocket of his cargo pants was
ripped. His sneakers were on the verge of disintegrating. Today’s T-shirt extolled the
wonders of The World’s Only Corn Palace.

It took some control to make a bit of small talk before dragging him inside

and tossing him on my bed. I gestured at the T-shirt. “Really?”

He looked down at his chest. “Hey, the Corn Palace is awesome.”

Still trying to be suave, I stepped past him, intending to unlock the door. “And

biodegradable.” I had so much trouble concentrating on the task that I dropped
my keys.

“And wasteful.”

“Real art isn’t wasteful. Don’t knock it if you’ve never been. Have you?” When

I shook my head, he promised, “I’ll take you there some day.”

I bent down to retrieve my keys and realized my gaze was now at the level of

his crotch. I wasn’t the only one just going through the motions of social niceties.

I got the key in the lock, wrenched open the door, and had him down the

hall and in my bed in less than ten seconds. It couldn’t have taken five more to get
rid of our clothes and start humping each other with a mad urgency worthy of a
couple of teens who expected parents to arrive home in five minutes.

Jamie came first, spurting come over our chests and my fist. I’d been stroking

us both off together, and the pulse of his cock against mine triggered my own
orgasm. “Fuck,” he said as I rolled over so I wouldn’t crush him. “I wanted that to last
longer.”

“I wanted it to last forever.” I pulled him close and gave him the long, sweet

kiss I’d been too impatient to offer before. “How long can you stay?”

He returned my kiss before answering. “My sister is there with all her kids,

spending time with Dad. They barely noticed I left. But they’re leaving tonight, so I
don’t have long.”

That was pretty depressing until I realized he was factoring in the time it would

take to bike home. “If you let me drive you back, we’ll have a little longer.”

He gave me a slow, sly smile. “Want to watch TV?”

“No.”

MUCH too short a time later, we went outside and I helped him stow the bike

in the bed of the truck, as I had on what I thought of as our second date, when
we’d met at the Kum & Go. When I turned to remind him of that day, he was
frowning.

“Mark, why don’t you keep the truck in the garage? You love the damn

thing.” Meaning the truck, of course, not the garage.

I opened the driver’s side door. “I’m using it to store some furniture Matt

doesn’t have room for right now. No space for the truck.”

Jamie hopped in beside me and clicked his seat belt. “Of course.”

His tone struck me as odd. “Why ‘of course’?”

“Because you never put your needs before anyone else’s.”

“I don’t think a garage for my truck is a need.

More of a want or a nice-to-have. My needs are all met.” I grinned at him as I

turned my head and began to back down the driveway. “And plenty of my wants.”

I’D SPENT a long afternoon explaining to someone in my workgroup why it was

not appropriate to have long, loud phone conversations at her desk about her
husband’s pending trial on assault charges, her son’s meth addiction, or her
mother’s bitter divorce, because those things distracted and upset the people
working nearby, who were then compelled to come into my office and complain. I
pointed out that cell phones existed for a reason (other than killing bees) and that
there were places outside the immediate work area where those conversations
could take place. She mentioned the First Amendment. I pointed out it didn’t apply
to the workplace, and even if it did, I was only trying to relocate her freedom of
speech, not suppress it.

Things went downhill from there.

After work I drove to Jamie’s so he could go to a meeting about blocking

attempts to stop voter fraud, which he had explained was really about
disenfranchisement. It might as well have been about disestablishmentarianism for
all I understood it, because I’d been worrying about some rumors at work. But I’d
promised to stay with his dad.

Jamie was distracted when I arrived, and he explained he hadn’t showered

yet. When he dashed off to the bathroom, I sat down across from Mr.

Novotny and whispered, “I bought one of those pizzas they make fresh, and

then you take them home and bake them yourself. I’ll leave it in the car until he’s
gone.”

Mr. Novotny made a gesture and a sound that for once I found easy to

interpret.

“Pepperoni,” I said.

He grunted and leaned back with his best half smile.

A bare two minutes later, Jamie came charging out of his bedroom, his hair

still wet. As he buttoned his shirt, he said, “There are garlic tofu cubes in the fridge,
and I’ve cleaned some veggies and put the steamer on the stove.”

I carefully didn’t look at Mr. Novotny, who made a harrumphing noise. “Don’t

worry, Jamie.

We’ll be fine. What time is your meeting?”

He looked at the clock on the cable box. “In ten minutes.” He frowned.

“Maybe I should drive.”

“This must be a really important meeting.”

That wasn’t entirely sarcasm. It usually took extreme weather to get Jamie to

leave his bike in the garage.

Mr. Novotny made that noise again. Jamie glared at both of us as he slipped

on his sneakers, but before he answered, the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” I said since Jamie was still tying his shoelaces.

I didn’t recognize the man standing on the porch, but I assumed he was part

of Jamie’s latest cabal. He looked puzzled as he stared up at me.

Not very far up, though. He was tall, with blond hair I was pretty sure was

dyed, and a pleasant smile that faded fast.

“Who….” Jamie came into the hall and stopped a foot or two behind me.

“Kevin?” His expression told me Kevin was no mere picket line buddy.

I looked from him to the visitor and back again. For once I couldn’t read

Jamie’s expression. “Kevin and I lived together in Chicago,” he said at last.

Well, that was a kick in the gut.

“I should have called,” said Kevin in tight voice. “But you didn’t answer my last

e-mails.”

“I didn’t have anything new to say. Come on in.” Jamie looked at me and I

realized I was standing in Kevin’s way. I moved back so he could pass. Slowly, so
that he had to inch by me.

I followed the two of them into the living room, where Jamie was introducing

Kevin to his father. Kevin was obviously uncomfortable and muttered, “Hi,” while
never looking straight at Mr.

Novotny.

I stood in the doorway and watched. Kevin didn’t seem to want to look at me

either. “I have a rental car,” he said to Jamie as held up his keys.

“We could go out to dinner. Talk.” He looked at me. “Alone.”

To my surprise, Jamie nodded. “Yeah, that would be best. I was supposed to

go somewhere, but I’ll call and let Donna know I can’t make it.”

He turned to me, avoiding meeting my eyes.

“Mark, I’m sorry, this isn’t why I asked you to stay with Dad tonight.”

“No,” I heard myself say. “It wasn’t.”

Jamie’s eyes widened at my rudeness, and I made myself add, “But I’ll stay.” I

looked at Kevin. “Until nine.”

Jamie didn’t object to this curfew. But he gave me a very confused look

before he hustled Kevin outside. I stood on the porch, watching them drive off, then
got the pizza out of my truck and took it into the kitchen. I tossed Jamie’s careful
notes about dinner in a recycling bin and got myself a beer while the oven heated
up.

When I went back into the living room, commenting that dinner would be

ready in just a few minutes, Mr. Novotny pointed to the chair I’d used earlier. I sat
and looked at him. He wrestled out a few sounds, and I thought I understood.

“Stay,” I said. “You think Jamie should have stayed home?” He shook his head.

“You don’t want me to stay?” He made it clear that wasn’t what he meant

either. His frustration was obvious.

“You do want me to stay. And you don’t mean just stay until Jamie comes

home.” Another affirmative.

I thought about it. “You don’t want me to leave Jamie alone with Kevin.” He

managed an emphatic nod.

The buzzer on the stove went off. While I cut Mr. Novotny’s slices into small bits

he could manage with a fork, I thought about the nonconversation we’d just had.

After we’d eaten, I tried again. “Have you met Kevin before?” No. “But you

don’t like him?” Emphatic no.

“So there’s history there. You know things about the way he’s treated Jamie?”

Emphatic yes.

Okay, then.

We watched Air Force One, a favorite for its idiotic plot and the scene where

Harrison Ford calls the White House switchboard while hiding from terrorists. Jamie
and Kevin still hadn’t returned, so I put on The Fugitive. Harrison Ford was running
away from a spectacular train wreck when they finally walked in the door.

They didn’t look happy, which I found encouraging. At least, as encouraging

as I could find anything on an evening when Jamie had left me babysitting his
father while he went out with another man.

Kevin flashed an insincere smile. Jamie’s attempt was even worse. He went

into the kitchen and came back with two bottles of beer and a frown. “You had
pizza?”

I hadn’t bothered to hide the leftovers or make it appear we’d eaten any of

his carefully prepared vegan feast. I knew that was passive-aggressive, but I felt
used enough without having to pretend I liked garlic tofu cubes. “Yes.” After a
pause, I added, “Pepperoni.”

Okay, that was even more childish, but Jamie’s expression was more startled

than hurt or angry. “You usually try to hide the evidence.”

So my previous attempts at stealth had been ineffective, making my current

childishness even more obvious. I was too embarrassed by that to retort, even if I
could think of something clever to say.

Kevin laughed, too loudly. “Bad move! Jamie really hates it when you

sabotage his efforts to make you eat organic and fat-free. I never dared sneak in
commercial pizza when we lived together.”

Jamie looked at him somberly. “No, Big Macs are your thing.”

That shut Kevin up and made me feel a little better. Whatever scales Jamie

might be using to compare the two of us, on the “Sneaks Unhealthy Food” ranking,
we were apparently about even.

“Where did you go for dinner?” I asked as casually as I could.

Jamie didn’t appear to have heard the question. “We had to talk, Mark. We’d

left things… Kevin and I still need to sort some things out.”

That was clear. Jamie and Kevin had a lot to talk about, and I was in the way.

The only polite, civilized thing to do was to go.

I didn’t move.

There was a long silence. “Kev, why don’t you sleep in Eric’s room tonight? We

can talk later….” Jamie glanced at me. “In the morning.”

I thought this over and went into the kitchen. I poured myself several fingers of

bourbon, went back into the living room, sat down, and took a few sips. In spite of
the hum of voices coming from the TV, things seemed still uncomfortably, weirdly
silent. I looked from Jamie to Kevin and back again. “Since you’ve got so many
extra rooms, I think I’ll stay too. I’ve had too much to drink to drive.”

Mr. Novotny made a weird noise, and Jamie jumped up. “Are you okay,

Dad?”

His father waved a shaking hand, indicating everything was fine. Jamie sat

down again, watching him anxiously. I sipped my drink. Kevin stared at me with his
mouth open. I didn’t blame him. I couldn’t believe I was doing this either.

Mr. Novotny’s face was red, and for once he seemed to be trying not to

make himself heard. I caught his eye and was sure he was choking back laughter.
That was fine with me. Bringing a little fun into the man’s life was a pleasant side
benefit to what I was suddenly sure was an absolutely necessary stand against a
dangerous intruder. I sat back and continued to watch Kevin.

Jamie stood in the middle of the room, running his hands through his hair.

“Mark, can I see you in the kitchen?”

I fought back the urge to respond that he could see me right where I was.

Slowly, I got up and went into the kitchen, where I poured myself a bit more
bourbon. It was certain I’d be sorry in the morning, but I had no idea if it would be
just because of the bourbon or something much worse.

Jamie glared at the leftovers on the counter. “I can’t even compost this, you

know.” He folded his arms, trying to look stern. He wasn’t very good at it. “So you
decided to chaperone me? You’re afraid my dad isn’t doing a good enough job?”

I nodded, feeling like an idiot but holding my ground.

He relaxed suddenly and reached a hand up to touch my cheek. “I should

be really, really pissed off, you know. I should be furious you don’t trust me.”

I took a step backward, but he grabbed my hand and tugged me back

toward him. “But I’m embarrassed to realize it’s a turn-on.”

I must have turned bright red. I opened my mouth but someone else spoke

first.

“I can be pretty slow, but I think I’m getting the point here.”

Jamie moved away from me and turned, blushing. “Kev, I’m sorry, but….”

He shook his head. “No, my bad. I got mad because you left, and I waited

too long to follow you. You’ve been making it clear all night that I’m too late. That
you’re not coming back.”

Jamie sighed. “You didn’t understand why I had to go.” He went back to

running a hand though his hair. He looked frazzled and more exhausted than I’d
ever seen him. “You still don’t understand.

That… there’s no getting past that, Kevin. There just isn’t.”

Kevin stuck a hand in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a key. “Well, I

haven’t had too much to drink, and I saw some hotels by that airport.” He paused.
“I’ll miss you, Jamie. I’ve been missing you.”

Obviously, or he wouldn’t be here. But Jamie just nodded. “Okay. If you want

to go….” He ditched that line, since this evening wasn’t turning out to be anything
any of us had wanted. “I’m sorry.”

Kevin looked at me but didn’t say anything before walking out. He didn’t

acknowledge Mr.

Novotny either. I realized that he hadn’t paid attention to Jamie’s father at all,

acting as if the man wasn’t even there.

Jamie followed Kevin outside, and I only considered following for a moment.

Even if I’d had a right to object, they were doing what I wanted. They were saying
good-bye.

I’D HAD enough to drink that I did spend the night in a room that had

belonged to one of Jamie’s brothers. After he helped his father to bed, Jamie
slipped in and sat on the edge of the bed. I lay staring at the ceiling, which I
couldn’t actually see because the lights were off.

“I had no idea he was coming, Mark. But we were together for over a year. I

couldn’t just toss him out without hearing him out.”

To my shame, I didn’t say anything in response to this very reasonable

statement. I lay there, sulking childishly.

“He didn’t get why I quit my job and came home. But I had to, and when I

moved home I thought that was it. That it was over for him faster than it was for me.
But a couple of weeks ago he started sending me e-mails, and tonight he kept
saying that he’d been expecting me to get tired of it and just put my father in a
nursing home and come back. He still thinks the only thing he did wrong was to wait
too long to come after me.”

He gave a shuddering breath, and suddenly all I could think was that he’d

loved Kevin and been hurt by the way things had ended between them.

That he was still hurt. I pulled him down beside me, gently, and curled myself

around him, careful not to grope or make any demands, just holding him.

He lay stiffly at first, then relaxed into me.

“Thank you.”

I stroked his hair until he fell asleep.

WHEN I woke up, he was there, but not lying next to me. He held a cup of

coffee in one hand as he shook my shoulder with the other. He still wore the T-shirt
he’d had on the night before. I’d barely noticed it then. It read “Have your Tribble
spayed or neutered.” With Jamie, there was always a cause.

“I didn’t want to wake you, but I figured you’d want to go home and change

before work.”

I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and sat up. My head didn’t like

that move at all. How much bourbon had I drunk so that I’d have an excuse to stay
the night? My mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls, so I drank some of the coffee
before answering. “I don’t want to do anything of the kind. But I should. So thank
you.”

He knelt in front of me. His hazel eyes changed color depending on his mood

and what he was wearing, and right now they were dark, all those pretty gold flecks
subdued, as if hiding from trouble. “Why did you do that?”

No need to ask what he meant. “I couldn’t leave you alone with him. At least,

not until I got you alone and told you I loved you too.”

He sat back on his heels. He’d gone pale.

Shit. I don’t talk about my feelings much for good reason. I suck at it. “I mean,

I was guessing that’s what he was saying, and I realized I hadn’t, and I thought I
had as much right to say it as he did….”

I had gotten completely lost in my own thoughts, but fortunately I had to stop

because he kissed me softly.

But when he pulled back, he said, “Thank you. But it’s too soon, honey. You

can’t be sure.”

“Why not?”

He somehow looked happy and worried at the same time. “Mark, I’m the first

guy you’ve ever really been with. You need time….”

I shook my head. “I need you.”

The cup of coffee had somehow found its way to the top of a nearby dresser

and Jamie had somehow found his way into the bed with me. He opened his
mouth against mine and pressed into me, his strong hands gripping my shoulders. It
was easily the best experience I’d ever had while suffering a raging hangover.

Unfortunately, it was over pretty quickly because his father called out wordlessly
from downstairs.

Jamie left while the room was still spinning.

After a minute I levered myself back to a sitting position and looked around. I

was wearing my boxers, and my work clothes from the day before had been
dropped carelessly on the floor. I barely remembered walking into this room, but I
did remember holding Jamie.

It stunned me to realize that I’d managed to do, if not the right thing, a right

thing in a fraught social situation. That was definitely a first for me.

Of course, I’d immediately screwed it up by saying the wrong thing in the

morning. I grabbed my clothes and headed for the bathroom. Then I did a U-turn to
grab the coffee.

I should really never open my mouth before I finish my first cup of coffee.

I COULDN’T get away from work until late that day, but I couldn’t have gotten

to sleep in my own house after the way we’d left things, so I drove over to Jamie’s
around eight o’clock. He was in the kitchen, cleaning up, and he offered to reheat
dinner for me.

I shook my head, leaning back against the kitchen counter, my hands in my

pockets. I didn’t have anything approaching an appetite at the moment. I looked
at the floor. “I hope your father isn’t upset that I spent the night.”

“No. Not only isn’t he upset, Dad says you can stay whenever you want.”

Jamie sounded surprised. “He really likes you, and I guess he’s decided that we’re
old enough to make our own decisions, under his roof or not.”

I didn’t say anything. I had an idea that Mr.

Novotny wasn’t as puritanical as Jamie thought. I was sure now that he’d

been testing me to see if I’d stick around even when regular sex wasn’t part of the
deal. Apparently I’d passed his test.

But something else was bothering Jamie.

“Mark, that was the weirdest display of jealousy I’ve ever seen. I was

wondering the whole time we were having dinner why you didn’t yell, or leave, or
do something other than just let me go out with him.”

“You wanted me to stop you?” I thought this over. “I can’t tell you what to do.

And I’m not very good at expressing anger.”

“You do, however, excel at understatement.”

He stepped forward and took my hands in his.

“You’ve spent most of your life teaching these beautiful, big hands to be

careful, not to bruise anything, haven’t you? But not everything and everyone needs
to be handled like glass, Mark.

Some of us are sturdy enough to cope with a disagreement or even an

argument. Some of us may even like just a bit of manhandling every once in a

while.”

The pressure of his fingers on mine almost burned. The tenor of this

conversation seemed to be that he still wanted me around, and I wanted to just go
with that. Clearing the air wasn’t necessarily a good thing. But I couldn’t help saying,
“Look, Jamie, about this morning. I realize I spoke too soon. I know you don’t love
me….”

“But I do. I love you too, Mark.” He seemed almost embarrassed to say it.

“Oh” was my brilliant response. Finally I added, “Then why…?”

“I told you. I’ve been out and dating for years.

You know I’ve lived with someone. But you….”

“I’m lame and introverted.”

“No! You’re… you’re shy and maybe a little bit awkward.” His grip grew

stronger. “And hot. I couldn’t believe it when you walked through the door of the
co-op that day. You were even more gorgeous than I remembered, and I was so
freaked that I gave you a hard time instead of jumping you like I wanted to. I
thought I’d blown my chance, but when Circe said you’d forgotten that bottle of
wine, I couldn’t resist trying again.”

I ducked my head and fell victim to my anxieties. “I was afraid I was kind of a

pity fuck.”

He laughed without much humor. “Hardly. I told you, I’d been fantasizing

about you for years, and I wasn’t about to miss an opportunity. But by the end of
the night, I knew you weren’t what I expected, Mark. I thought you’d be as calm
and confident as you seem and that if we did fuck, I’d get my old crush out of my
system, and that would be the end of it, so it didn’t matter that you were buried in
the closet. But there’s so much more to you than that big, gorgeous, smart, gentle
guy, even though you really are all those things. You’re also funny and thoughtful
and even sexier than I expected, and I fell really hard.”

I sighed so loudly it echoed in my own ears.

“Me too. I mean, it hadn’t even crossed my mind in so many words, and I

don’t think I really thought it through for days afterwards. But I knew that I had to
keep seeing you or go crazy.”

“Mark, it’s too soon….”

I put my fingers over his lips. “It’s no good telling someone not to feel

something, Jamie. If you don’t want to make plans, okay. But you can’t tell me to
stop loving you, because even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

That night I slept in Jamie’s bedroom for the first time. Our bodies moved

together slowly, almost gently. We weren’t just being discreet so Mr. Novotny
wouldn’t hear us. The words we had exchanged hadn’t put our relationship on any
level I could have named, but something had definitely changed, and it seemed to
require a measure of solemnity.

However, in the morning Jamie slipped into the shower with me, announcing

that his father was still asleep, and the next twenty minutes involved plenty of
groping and snickering, with strong fingers biting hard into my flesh. My business suit
had to hide a few teeth marks and a small bruise that day. Jamie and I are guys,
after all. You can’t expect us to be all about the mushy stuff, at least not most of the
time.

BY THE time the weather cooled and the leaves turned, most of my DVD

collection was at Jamie’s house. I’d learned to understand more of Mr.

Novotny’s sounds and gestures, but not to the extent that Jamie could. One

day, when Jamie’s sister Jessica visited with two of her kids, I found that the rest of
the family was often as clueless as I was.

Jessica and I watched from the back porch as Jamie adjusted a blanket over

his father’s lap.

Jessica’s kids were playing some idiosyncratic version of tag. Mr. Novotny

couldn’t interact with them, but I thought he was getting pleasure out of watching
them.

“I don’t know how Jamie does it.” She spoke suddenly. “To me, it’s like Dad is

locked up inside somewhere and I can’t even see the real him most of the time. But
Jamie talks to him the way he always did, and he can always figure out what Dad
wants.”

I nodded. “Maybe it’s because he’s been with your dad so much, from the

time he first got sick.

They’ve developed this sort of language of their own. I’ve seen Jamie look up

and immediately know he needed to do something for your dad when it seems to
me he’s just sitting there, resting.”

She put her hand on my arm, and I turned to look at her. She was fairer than

Jamie and a lot shorter, but she had the same hazel eyes. “Mark, Jamie says you’ve
been coming over and helping a lot.”

I shook my head. “Not really. Just hanging out.”

She smiled. “That’s helping. And you’ve stayed with Dad so Jamie can get

out. But I get the impression that what Jamie really wants to do when he gets out is
visit you.”

“Um….” My mind went immediately to that one day when he had come to

visit me, which drove away any rational response I might have made. It would be
bliss to make love in my big bed, being as noisy as we wanted, without worrying Mr.
Novotny would hear or need help and interrupt us by calling for Jamie.

“Jamie used to talk about you when he started high school. He had the

biggest crush.”

Now I was dying of embarrassment. I couldn’t look at her.

“He was sure you hardly noticed him.”

I shook my head. I’d noticed him, but I certainly hadn’t seen him the way I did

now. “I remember him, but he was just this…” Weird was not the best adjective to
use in front of a loving sister, so I dropped it. “…little kid. I mean, he was….”

“A baby compared to you?”

“No.” I laughed. “He was way too annoying for that. Toddler, maybe.”

She laughed too. “So you’ve always had his number!”

“And now he has mine.” I stared at Jamie, probably besottedly. He was raking

up some leaves, less for cleanup than to make a pile for the kids to jump into. I
wished it was a bit warmer, wished he wasn’t so bundled up. I’d have liked to see
the flow of the muscles in his arms and back, but I had to be satisfied with knowing
they were there, smooth and strong, under the bulky sweatshirt he wore. And his
battered but well-fitting jeans provided a great view of his firm butt and long,
powerful legs. “At least, he has my landline number. He still won’t call my cell.”

“I’m going to try to bring the kids over more often so both of you can be

gone at the same time.”

When I looked back at Jessica, she was grinning.

I’d have been a fool to argue with anything that gave me time alone with

Jamie, so I said nothing beyond “Thanks.”

ABOUT a week before Halloween, my mother called to say she was rounding

up costumes for Rachel’s children, and did I know who’d borrowed the Clifford
outfit? “I think it will fit Tyler.”

I vividly remembered the Clifford costume.

“Luke used it last. After he fell down for the fifth time because the feet were

too big and he couldn’t see out the mask, Zoe took it off him. She probably tossed it
as a health hazard.”

“Oh, no! It was so cute! That’s just like Zoe!”

Mom sighed. “But I don’t want Ty to hurt himself.”

I ignored the contradiction, which had more to do with Mom’s dislike of the

mother of one of Matt’s sons than Clifford’s fate. “We’ll find something for Ty.”

“As long as it’s not something, you know, supernatural.”

“Supernatural?” This new requirement confused me, not least because she

didn’t seem to include Clifford in that category. I wasn’t sure where a bright-red
dog the size of a house would fit in the natural world.

“Yes, I made sure to ask Pastor Steve, and he says he has no objections as

long as they aren’t dressed as witches or demons. What was that, honey?”

“Nothing,” I said, reduced to the childish response because I didn’t want to

be scolded for expressing my opinion of her church’s current leader.

I hated Pastor Steve. From my point of view, the only thing he had going for

him was that he wasn’t as bad as my parents’ last spiritual advisor, Pastor Bill. But he
was definitely more annoying than the two previous ones, Pastors Jake and Joe.

I had actually been fond of Pastor Joe. He’d been around as I hit

adolescence, and we’d talked a lot, even read some of the New Testament
together. I’d had thoughts and feelings I could never have fully revealed to him, but
I was more comfortable with him than any other adult. I’d liked many of his ideas.
Unfortunately, he’d been kicked out of the church and my life after he’d sort of
snapped one day and given a sermon denouncing the prosperity gospel. He told
the worshipers that if they came to church and tithed because they thought God
would reward them with wealth, they might be better off playing the lottery or
visiting a casino. Usually the congregation liked thundering rants, but they made an
exception for this one. The last I heard, Pastor Joe had moved to some ungodly
place like San Francisco and was uttering heresies about his refusal to believe in
eternal damnation.

Pastor Steve was a very different kettle of bigotry, but at least he didn’t object

to Halloween, and the kids would be able to enjoy the day. I remembered the years
when Matt, Rachel, and I had been forbidden to so much as eat an orange cookie
at a school party. Even worse than not being able to join in the fun had been
listening to the teacher explain that the other students had to respect our parents’
decision not to allow us to pretend to be superheroes for a few hours. The other
students had, of course, responded by taunting us like the weirdoes we were.

I’d spent a lot of my late teens sorting through the mental detritus left by

listening to various pastors’ sermons and my father’s opinions. In college, I read
about the Catholic Church during the medieval period and the Reformation. Some
of the Catholic students were shocked, but it all sounded familiar to me. Not
because I’d read too many Chick tracts, but because I felt like I’d lived through
something similar.

I’d lost count of the congregations my parents had joined since I was a kid.

Every few years, whatever church they were currently attending would be wracked
with arguments about doctrine, which church ladies were in charge of what, and
who was committing adultery with whom.

Inevitably there would be a schism and Mom and Dad would be worshiping

in a different storefront, basement, or double-wide trailer. For a few years, Pastor
Whoever could do no wrong. But then he would take the wrong stand on the
acceptability or ungodliness of Disney movies, sleep with the wrong church lady, or,
worst of all, disagree with my father, and everything would be turmoil until a new
church was found or started.

True, we hadn’t had any poisonings or burnings at the stake, so the Borgia

Popes were two steps up on us there. No actual warfare either, although one of the
Yoders had brought his shotgun into the church to back up his accusations of Pastor

Jake’s philandering with Mrs. Yoder. No shots were fired, however, and Jake’s
dominion over the faithful had even managed to survive for six more tumultuous
months.

And there had been plenty of de facto excommunications for various sins. I

was sure I’d be one of them if news of my relationship with Jamie reached Pastor
Steve’s ears. He’d make a point of kicking me out officially, even though I never
attended any of his services except for weddings and funerals.

Pastor Steve led the First (and, as far as I could tell, only) Church of the Inerrant

Bible and the Lord’s Covenant, which met in a building left vacant when new
zoning laws forced Boner’s Club to move outside the city limits. The church’s
inexpertly designed but enthusiastic website gloated over this victory of the armies
of the righteous over the evil strip club, but the added distance of half a mile hadn’t
stopped boys from heading out to Boner’s on their eighteenth birthdays. This was
Iowa, where kids started driving at fourteen, if they hadn’t already learned to tool a
pickup around grandma’s farm.

I managed to avoid being dragged out to see the naked ladies when I’d

turned legal age only because I had the forethought to be on a leadership retreat
in Des Moines that week. But my brother, Matt, still talked wistfully about his own
initiation into adulthood. Since Matt had already managed to get his girlfriend
pregnant by that time, I wondered what he had seen that was new to him. Maybe
he and Jennifer had only done it with their clothes on.

I wasn’t about to ask.

However, I looked forward to taking Ty and Alyssa trick-or-treating. I’d asked

Rachel if I could come over for a while, thinking that I’d leave a bowl of candy
outside my front door and hope no one got too greedy. The last time I’d done that I
actually found a few rolls of Smarties at the bottom of the bowl when I returned
home. Which meant either Iowa kids were honorable or no one liked Smarties.

BUT when I drove home to change on the afternoon of October 31, my

phone buzzed and Rachel’s strained voice asked if she could bring the kids to my
place.

“Sure!” I was first pleased, then worried.

Alyssa had been looking forward to visiting the trailers of some friends she’d

made in the neighborhood, so I didn’t think Rachel would change plans without
good reason. “Why?”

“There’s a message on my machine from Brian. He says he’s coming over to

take Ty trick-or-treating in our old neighborhood. I don’t want him to separate the
kids for the day, and… the last time he dropped Ty off, he’d been drinking.”

I concentrated on not throwing my phone across the room. I needed it to

make sure Brian didn’t get anywhere near Ty tonight. “Did you tell your lawyer that?”

“Yes. But it shouldn’t matter right now. This isn’t one of his days in the custody

agreement we worked out. So I could just tell him he can’t have Ty, but then he’ll
start yelling, and maybe… and the kids don’t need that. But if we go over to your
place, I can just say I didn’t get his message. Mom and Dad went to Des Moines to
see Luke, and anyway their house is the first place Brian will go if I’m not home. He
probably won’t think about your place.”

I was more than happy to have Rachel and the kids come over. And both Ty

and Lyss were twitching with excitement when they escaped from their car seats
and ran into my kitchen.

Ty was too little to understand what the preparations for Halloween were all

about. Still, he enjoyed the decorations and loved his hand-me-down pirate
costume that one of Matt’s kids had worn a few years ago. Lyss was a bit sulky
about having to settle for some sort of Disney princess thing that her cousin Amy
had worn last year. She wanted to be a Corpse Bride instead. My mother and sister
had told her sincerely that she didn’t really want that, she wanted to be a pretty girl.
It seemed silly to me to tell anyone, even a kindergartener, what she felt, but it
wasn’t my decision.

Fortunately Lyss forgot about her own costume once she was able to admire

all the others out on the streets. I had to carry Ty at first because he was
overwhelmed by the strangeness of the night. He wrapped one thin, warm arm
around my neck and held tightly to the strap of his hollow plastic pumpkin with the
other, not sure what was happening but too curious to demand to go back to
Mommy, who was handing out candy back at my place.

At the first house, I set him on his feet and squatted down to keep reassuring

hands on his shoulders as he watched Lyss and two neighbor kids ring the bell and
make their demands. He shrank back as a woman in a witch mask opened the
door and admired the children’s costumes before tossing treats into their bags and
buckets.

But as soon as he saw the multicolored circles of candy falling from the

woman’s hands, he jumped forward, shoving his little pumpkin at her.

That did it. For the next half an hour, I followed him as he trotted after his sister,

waited for her to ring a doorbell, and then pushed to be the first one to get more

candy. He never did get the hang of saying “Trick or treat,” even though Lyss and I
tried to teach him as we walked between houses, but he put the principle into
practice without any problem.

We went to one house where some teenagers had gone all-out to change

their family’s two-car garage into a funhouse. The overhead door was up and the
interior looked like a place where a Corpse Bride would be comfortable. Lyss
certainly was. However, Ty’s courage gave out at that point, and he practically
climbed up my leg to be held as the spooky voices wailed over a decent sound
system and horrifyingly made-up high schoolers poked their maimed faces into his.

But any zombie expecting terror met its match in Lyss. She was tough, and the

only reaction they could get out of her was a question about how one girl got her
face to look like it had melted on one side.

I had to take Ty down to the sidewalk while Lyss bonded with the teenagers,

who showed her how they’d covered the boring walls of the garage with sheets
painted to look like the inside of an old house and then draped fake cobwebs all
over.

They would gladly have adopted her as a pet, but I finally pried her loose and

took them both back to my house, where they were allowed to eat a few pieces of
the candy they’d harvested.

Lyss helped her mother answer the door to trick-or-treaters while I walked Ty

up and down until his overworked nerves gave way to exhaustion and he fell asleep
on my shoulder. I sat on the couch with him and Lyss put on the DVD of Nightmare
before Christmas , over her mother’s objections that it was too scary.

“She’s seen it before,” I said. “She loves it.”

Lyss nodded firmly. “Next year, I’m going as Jack Skellington.”

“Jack’s a boy,” said Rachel. But she sounded distracted.

I carried Ty to my spare bedroom and put him down in the middle of the bed,

surrounded by pillows in case he rolled over. When I returned to the living room, Lyss
was enthralled by the TV and Rachel had gone into the kitchen.

I found her pouring a glass of wine, but as I came up behind her, she cursed.

“Fuck. I forgot.

Fuck.”

I grabbed her hand before she could tip the wine down the kitchen sink.

“Hey, if you don’t want that, I’ll take it.”

She surrendered the glass and went back to the fridge to pour herself water

instead.

“Did Brian call?” I tried to keep my voice casual. There was no knowing if

Rachel would be eager to sob on my shoulder or reject any effort to interfere.

“Yeah, but it was okay. He said, and I quote, ‘Fuck it, then. I have a party to

go to anyway.’”

“That’s good,” I said, although it really wasn’t. It wasn’t any reason for her to

be so nervous, either. “Rachel, what’s going on? Is Brian being an asshole about the
divorce?”

“Not really.” She pawed through Ty’s booty, found a Snickers bar, and bit into

it savagely. I waited quietly while she devoured it, and at last she said, “There’s
something I really don’t want him to know.”

She looked as worried as I’d ever seen her, and I tried to think of something

that could be worse than Brian finding out she had been cheating on him with Josh.
That shoe had dropped, so…. I looked at my glass of wine and remembered that I’d
had to rescue it from a watery grave. “Rachel, are you pregnant?”

She nodded, starting to cry.

“Hey, hey, it will be all right.” I set down my glass and hugged her. This wasn’t

the best news, certainly, but it was hardly the first time the family had dealt with an
accidental baby. “Is Brian the father?”

She threw her arms around my neck. “I don’t know!”

Oh fuck. I tried to think of what this would mean morally, legally, and

practically. “Does Josh know?”

Her face rubbed my shoulder in what I thought was a nod. She lifted her head

enough to say, “That’s when he said I should leave Brian and move in with him.”

Because he’d thought fooling around with a married woman was okay before

that? But there was no point in discussing that now. Her divorce would be final in
another month, and Mom was already planning a wedding. Dad scowled every
time the subject came up, but mostly because it reminded him that she was still
living in sin.

Rachel had been oddly evasive about setting a date, something that was

now explained.

“If Brian’s the dad, he should get visitation.”

My stomach dropped at the thought. I already hated the idea of him taking

Ty for weekends. Would Brian even be able to cope with an infant on his own? I
couldn’t remember seeing him changing a diaper, but maybe he’d just handed off
the chore whenever someone else was around, and was competent enough when
alone with a baby.

Rachel pulled away from me and said in a defiant voice, “I don’t want it to

be Brian’s.”

I fought an impulse to assure her it wasn’t. I couldn’t change reality. I could

only help her cope.

“Can you have a test? To see if Josh is the dad? If he isn’t, that will tell you

Brian is.” I realized I was making an assumption. “Won’t it?”

To my relief she responded immediately. “Of course. And I’m far enough

along that they can do it. But we can’t afford it. We could wait until the baby is

born. Taking a sample of the baby’s DNA will be easier then.”

I shook my head. “You can’t do that. How much will it cost to have the test

now?”

She sniffled. “I shouldn’t ask you to pay!”

But what was the alternative? Letting this drama play out on the Maury Povich

Show?

I CALLED Jamie later and told him about Ty’s epiphany when he learned

what trick-or-treating was, and he told me about some of the kids who’d come by
his house. Then I told him about Rachel.

“Wow. That’s some complication. I can’t even imagine finding out you’ve

accidentally created a new person.”

“Yeah, but she’s got lots of practice with babies. She got pregnant with Alyssa

her junior year in high school.”

There was a long pause. “Mark, I don’t want to be snarky, but do Rachel and

Matt understand about birth control?”

I couldn’t blame him for asking the question.

“They do. I made sure they did. I even offered to pay for a vasectomy for

Matt once.”

“What did he say?”

“That he wouldn’t get one because he wanted to get married and have kids

someday.”

The silence this time was even longer.

“Yeah, that was my reaction too,” I said at last. “I’ve even started to wonder if

they do it to punish themselves. We were all taught any kind of extramarital sex was
a huge sin, so….” I hated following that thought to its conclusion.

“So they let God punish them with babies?”

“It’s what my father says every time it happens. That they’re being punished.

But at the same time, all of them love the kids once they’re here.”

“Well, that’s good.” He seemed to feel his response was inadequate, because

he added a few seconds later, “I mean, I don’t know what I would have done,
especially if I’d still been in high school.”

“I don’t think I could have coped if it had been me,” I agreed. “Of course,

there wasn’t any likelihood of that happening. I didn’t even have a sex life in high
school, with boys or girls.”

“Me either.”

I snorted at that. “Jamie, you took a guy to the prom!”

“That was just before graduation.” He laughed a little at the memory, though.

“I’d met this guy who was a sophomore at Grinnell, so I decided to start the college
phase of my life a little early. It didn’t really count as a high school thing.”

“You called in the American Civil Liberties Union when the principal tried to

stop you. The story made CNN. I think it counts.”

“Okay, I’ll give you my second semester senior year. But before that? Do you

remember when someone wrote ‘Jamie Novotny sucks cock’

on the bathroom wall, and then someone else wrote ‘I wish’ underneath?”

“Yeah.” I’d cringed at that.

“Well, I was the second graffitist… graffiti writer… whatever.” He chuckled.

“Not that I’d have known what to do if anyone had offered me the opportunity at
that point.”

I was amazed. He’d been, what? Fifteen? And he’d been able to deal with

something like that with humor?

Jamie might just have been the bravest kid I’d ever known. In a very scary

way, a way terrifying to someone who worried about his safety. I thought again
about his stint teaching at the state penitentiary and was very glad it was over
before I ever heard about it.

JAMIE’S entire family showed up for Thanksgiving, increasing the population at

the Novotny house so much that not only did Jamie stay with me for the long
weekend, I offered his sister Iris my guest room.

But I went to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner, bearing some of the

vegetarian stuffing Jamie had made the day before and one of the pies I’d made.
My father came out of the living room, where he was watching TV

with Matt, to stare at the dishes suspiciously.

“What’s the point of vegetarian stuffing? What do you stuff it in?”

“The oven.” I fled the familiar rant about vegetarianism, which was inevitably

linked with environmentalism, climate change “fraud,” and rising oil prices. I’d
stopped arguing with him years ago. It just got him angry, and the last thing I
wanted was for my mother to call Pastor Steve and have him come pray with us to
resolve the conflict.

In my old bedroom, I found Alyssa trying to play Candyland with Ty and their

cousin Amy.

Amy was one of Matt’s kids, and I was surprised to see her. Her mother, Tiffany,

was not a huge fan of the Johansen family. But Amy was definitely one of us, with
her sturdy build and blue eyes. When she and Lyss sat next to each other, I could
see their hair was nearly the same blonde shade. They could have passed for twins.
But while Lyss chattered about the rules and took back the game pieces as quickly
as Ty could grab them, Amy was quiet and didn’t even look up at me.

I found Rachel setting the table in the dining room and asked her if Tiffany

had come too. “No.

Matt says he thinks Tiff had some big plans for the day, so she let him have

Amy. Mark, that’s one weird kid.”

I started arranging silverware around the place settings. “How so?”

Rachel shook her head. “I don’t know what’s up with her.” She moved closer

to me and whispered, “I had the test to collect the baby’s DNA. We should know
the results soon.” Plates clinked together in her hands. “It’s a good thing I don’t show
early.”

It was true. Rachel was built like an Amazon, and she could probably hide her

pregnancy for a few more months just by avoiding tight waistlines.

I smiled as reassuringly as I could, but before I could say anything, Alyssa

came out of the bedroom and tugged on Rachel’s sleeve. “Mommy, something’s
wrong.”

In the bedroom, Amy was sitting on the lower bunk, crying. Ty looked almost

as distressed as she was. He patted her arm with sticky fingers, but that just made
her cry more and shrink back toward the wall.

I sent Alyssa and Ty off with Rachel and sat down on the floor facing the bed.

After a few minutes, Amy’s sobs disintegrated into hiccups and I asked, “What’s
wrong, honey?”

She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “You’re my uncle, right?”

I sighed. Amy really didn’t spend enough time with my family. “Yeah. I’m

Uncle Mark. Your daddy and I are brothers.”

She still looked puzzled. “Are Lyss and Ty my brother and sister?” Her voice

dropped to a whisper. “Because I’m not supposed to play with my brother and
sister.”

It was a moment before I could speak. I squashed down anger and said as

gently as I could, “They’re your cousins, sweetie. Your sister and brothers live very far
away, and they’re not here right now.”

“You’re sure?” Her eyes were wide, and now she leaned forward toward me.

She looked so needy that I carefully squeezed myself onto the bunk bed so I

could sit next to her, careful not to actually touch. She didn’t move away. “Sure I’m
sure. Alyssa and Ty have different dads from you. They’re part of your family
because their mom is your dad’s sister.”

She collapsed against me, shaking with relief.

I rubbed her back for a minute. “Honey, why aren’t you supposed to play

with… the others?”

“I shouldn’t have a brother and sister.”

No need to ask who had told her that. I knew Tiffany had cause for complaint.

Matt’s third child, Luke, had been born just a few weeks after Tiffany’s Amy. Tiffany
had taken the news of Luke’s impending arrival particularly hard because she’d
been expecting Matt to marry her.

Seven years later, this resentment still flavored every encounter between

Tiffany and my family.

But to tell Amy that her siblings should never have been born? I needed to talk

to Matt about this.

I explained carefully how the people in the house right now fit together into a

family. I realized Amy still didn’t know that Matt had a baby son, and that she had
two half brothers now as well as a half sister. I didn’t enlighten her. It wasn’t the time
to challenge her mother’s instructions.

She gave a huge sigh, and her body went limp. We sat there for a few

minutes, and I think she even napped a little until my mother stuck her head in the
door and called us to dinner.

I sat Amy next to me and tried to catch Matt’s eye, but he was at the other

end of the table, talking sports with Josh. So I brought Alyssa into a conversation with
Amy, discussing subjects like the yuckiness of green beans and whether the jellied
cranberry sauce would leak into the gravy and spoil the taste. By the time I went
into the kitchen to get them special little cranberry sauce bowls to prevent this
disaster, they had said a few words to each other instead of talking exclusively to
me.

After dinner I taught Amy to play Uno, and she didn’t object when Alyssa, still

confused but too curious to keep her distance, asked to be dealt in. Soon they were
united in complaining about Ty’s efforts to join the game. I picked him up and took
him out to the living room, where he did his best to distract attention from the
football game and eventually fell asleep in my father’s lap.

I couldn’t catch Matt alone. I couldn’t even find him when it was time for

Amy to go home, so I drove her in my truck. As soon as we left the house, she
became very quiet. When we reached the complex where she lived with her
mother, I helped her down and she led me to their apartment.

Even before I knocked on the door, I could hear a noise inside. It was just one

voice, and I realized Tiffany was on the phone. She was screaming at someone,
violent cursing that made me want to snatch Amy up and run. “Maybe we should
go for a ride until your mom calms down.”

She shook her head. “She yells a lot. It’s okay.” She reached up and knocked

on the door.

It flew open. “What?” Tiffany stared at me.

Her eyes were red and her face flushed. Instead of addressing me, she yelled

into the phone in her hand. “Forget it! You’re so fucking late my kid is back.” She
hung up as Amy scooted under her arm and through a messy living room to some
room at the back of the apartment. “What happened to Matt?”

“He had a few beers.” It was possible, but the truth was I had simply been

unable to find him and my mother had said Tiffany didn’t like it if Amy was late.

“Figures. He’s probably off getting someone else pregnant.” She shut the door

in my face.

I’d known Tiffany was difficult, but I hadn’t seen much of her because she

disliked my family so much. I’d had no idea she was this bad. Poor Amy. I don’t
know how long I sat in my truck in front of the apartment building, trying to think of
some way that I could help her.

Could I get Matt to fight Tiffany for custody?

Hell, he wouldn’t even stick around through a temper tantrum or face his ex’s

anger at the end of a scheduled visit. And I was just an uncle. I headed for home,

discarding one bad idea after another.

WHEN I got back to my house, Jamie was in the shower and Iris had taken

over my television remote. Iris reminded me a lot of her father in looks, but her
expression right now was closer to my father’s when he’d looked at the vegetarian
stuffing. “So why didn’t we see you today?”

“I was at my parents’ house.”

She grunted.

While I was trying to think of something to say, Jamie came out of the

bathroom wearing sleep pants and a sweatshirt that read “Your gaydar should be
going off right about… now.” His hair was still wet, just beginning to curl up a little at
the ends as it dried. (His environmentalist principles didn’t allow him to waste
electricity by using a hair dryer.) He looked so delicious and so pleased to see me
that I forgot Iris was even there until she grunted again and went past us into the
spare room and slammed the door.

“What’s going on?” I dropped the hands I’d been reaching out to Jamie.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Iris has moods.”

He grinned. “Come on, Mark, are you going to waste tonight worrying about

my sister?”

I most certainly was not. I might have permission to stay over at his house now,

but Jamie never seemed fully relaxed, and with good reason. His father might call
out two or three times during the night, and Jamie was always listening for him. Of
course, that didn’t stop us from having sex, but it always felt rushed and not as
satisfying as those times when he was able to get away and visit me.

We’d made love twice the night before. The first time we’d feverishly jacked

each other off.

We were so excited to have all the time we could want that we both came

quickly. The second time was much slower and sweeter, with Jamie taking charge
again.

This time I pushed him down on the bed.

“Roll over,” I said, and he did with a happy sigh.

I started massaging his shoulders and back. I relished the chance to admire

his body this way, looking at him and touching him while he lay still, doing to him the
things he had done to me.

He insisted on asking questions about dinner.

I glossed over Amy’s situation, not to hide it from him, but because I didn’t

want to spoil the mood. I told him everyone had liked his stuffing. Even my father
had eaten it, in spite of his concerns that it represented all things liberal, from dovish
foreign policy to the insidious gay agenda.

“Ha! Little does he know those water chestnuts were communist, and….”

“Sssh. Just lie still and spread your gay agenda for me, will you?” I rolled him

onto his back and bent to take him in my mouth. I was getting much better at this
and enjoying it more each time. I knew now just how taking him as deep as I could
and then slipping back to tease the head of his cock with my tongue made him
moan. I’d realized that gripping the base of his cock tightly made up for the fact
that I still couldn’t deep-throat him. I managed to multitask to the extent of slipping
a slicked finger inside him without forgetting to suck gently and then suddenly
harder so his hips bucked up off the bed. I knew I still had plenty of room for
improvement, but my practice seemed to be paying off. At least, I didn’t get any
complaints that night.

I SPENT most of the rest of the weekend with Jamie’s family. Jessica’s husband

was as laid-back as she was. They had four kids ranging in age from three to
sixteen, and it took a monumental temper tantrum (something the oldest supplied
twice) to move them from calm to mild irritation.

Eric looked a lot like Jamie, but he was a manager for a large corporation in

Omaha and joked that his brother considered him a capitalist pig. His wife fussed
about everything from what to do with leftover turkey to the remote possibility of
their car breaking down on the return trip. Jamie and the others ignored her, which
may or may not have helped the situation.

Jason, the middle child, was recently divorced. He seemed to be the most

shocked at his father’s condition. I couldn’t tell if his long silences were in character
or a reaction to the grim circumstances.

Iris, the prickly one, lived in Chicago. She kept eyeing me in suspicion. I stayed

on my best behavior, but she showed no sign of approval, not even when she
suggested Jamie and I go out alone on Saturday evening.

“I should have thought of that.” Jessica smiled at us. “You two certainly

deserve some time alone.”

But in spite of having initiated the plan, Iris looked surprised when I accepted.

When Jamie went off to look up movie calendars, she cornered me in the kitchen.
“Aren’t you afraid someone will see the two of you together?” she asked, arms
crossed as if she expected me to try to bolt past her into the safety of the living
room.

I didn’t respond immediately. I honestly hadn’t thought about it. Being seen in

public, I mean. I’d definitely considered trying to escape to the living room.

“You’re in the closet, aren’t you?” She went over to the sink and started

washing some of the dishes that had been soaking there. “Will you dry?”

I didn’t dare not. I picked up a dish towel.

A saucepan and a serving spoon later, she spoke again. “Jamie’s life was so

different when he lived in Chicago.”

Of course. When Iris and Jamie had lived in the same city, they would have

spent time together.

They must have a lot in common even though their personalities were

different. They were the closest siblings in age. I wiped a platter and put it away.

“He was so out and proud. Always doing something and dragging me along. I

didn’t like that jerk Kevin, but at least he didn’t hide that he was happy Jamie let
him move in. It hurts to see my brother like this. Not as much as it hurts to see Dad so
sick, but it hurts. To see him settling.”

She didn’t mean Jamie was settling for a life taking care of his Dad. She

meant settling for me. I swallowed hard. Was that what he was doing? I realized I’d
broken the wooden spoon I was rubbing and I tried to toss it away surreptitiously.

She scrubbed a pot viciously. “I offered to quit my job and take over here,

you know.”

I didn’t.

“He turned me down. So did Dad. I think Dad’s most upset at the idea of me

helping him in and out of the bathroom, things like that, but I know it’s also because
Jamie’s easier to get along with, even with all the tree-hugger crap.” She looked up
at me. “He’s just the best guy. He deserves someone who is proud to be with him.”

I wasn’t ashamed that I was with Jamie, but saying so wouldn’t exactly

convince her of anything. I picked up the big turkey roasting pan and took it down
to the basement, where the family stored it with other infrequently used items.

BY THE time Jamie and I got into my truck that night, I was wondering if he

thought going to the movies together was some kind of statement. But when I asked
where he wanted to go, his answer made me forget the subject entirely.

“Your bedroom.”

Well, that was that. An hour or so later, as we lay side by side, I said, “We

could still make a late movie.”

“Do you really want to?” There was tension in his voice.

“Do you?”

“It’s up to you.”

I sighed. “Let’s not play that game. Do you want to see a movie?”

“No.”

“Me either.” I pulled him closer and rubbed his back as I gathered my

courage. The issue really needed to be addressed directly, not in passive-aggressive
negotiations that pretended it didn’t exist. “Jamie, does it bother you than I’m not

out?”

There was a very long pause. “Yes.”

Suddenly it seemed like I didn’t have the right to hold him at all. Perversely, I

hugged him closer.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

After an even longer pause, he spoke slowly, as if the words were dragged

out of him. “It isn’t because I was afraid of what you’d say, even though I am. It isn’t
even because I was afraid you’d leave if I insisted, even though that’s a recurring
nightmare. I knew I should bring it up, at least get the subject out there. But I knew it
would wring us both out emotionally, and I just didn’t have the energy.”

Bizarre as this response seemed, I couldn’t doubt it. He sounded exhausted.

He rolled away from me, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. “You’ve

been so great about everything else, it seemed like asking one more thing of you
would be just too much, especially because I have an idea what your family’s like
and I know how much they mean to you.”

“That’s the only reason, Jamie. Not wanting to lose my family, I mean.” In spite

of having managed to avoid thinking about the matter for months, I realized that
was the absolute truth. I only cared about the opinion of a few people. My few
close friends would accept the information with no more than some teasing, and I
thought Scott might have guessed already. But most of my family would be upset or
even reject me.

Of course, I disagreed with my parents about many things. I’d been hiding

myself from them for years, and my sexuality was only one aspect of my personal
closet. I suppose I’d known for a long time that eventually they’d realize who I was
and it would create a rift. The fact that my falling in love with a man would
precipitate it seemed silly to me and underlined just how different our priorities were.

He lay there in silence, stiff and unresponsive, and it occurred to me that

maybe I needed to say something I thought he understood.

“And if it came down to losing you or coming out, I’d come out.”

Jamie sat up and stared at me. “Just like that?”

“Of course.”

He lay back down and hugged me again.

“Don’t. Not now, not for me. Yes, I want you to, but it’s not like we ever have a

chance to go anywhere together, and I also don’t want to cause you any more
grief than I already do.”

“What grief?” I had no idea what he meant.

He sat up again, staring at me as if he thought I was teasing. As if I would,

during this conversation. “My having to be with my dad all the time,” he said. “Not
being able to go places with you or even have sex as often as you’d like….”

He had a point, but it’s not like I’d had an exciting social life before we met

either. “Yeah, but I get to be with you all the time. I love that.” I added, a bit
embarrassed, “It even makes it kind of exciting not knowing exactly when we’ll be
able to… you know. Not getting farther than the kitchen.

Or the hallway. And there was that time in your garage….”

He chuckled. “So that wasn’t just being too horny to wait, huh? You’ve got a

tiny bit of an exhibitionist streak!”

“No!” I was appalled. And getting hard, which he could not possibly have

failed to notice.

He straddled me, hands on my chest, and smiled down at me in the twilight. “I

am so going to do something about that someday. Maybe give you a blow job in
that truck or….”

“Shit!” My hips bucked up under him even as I said, “No!”

The back door slammed, and I realized Iris had come in. That should have

destroyed my sex drive, especially after my conversation with her earlier in the
evening. At the very least, her presence in the room next door meant trying to be
quiet when I really wanted to just let go. Only….

Jamie jerked us off with one hand while holding the other over my mouth,

whispering the whole time that we couldn’t let Iris hear. I came so hard I couldn’t
think of anything else afterward. Or maybe I really just didn’t want to relive that
conversation about coming out.

ABOUT a week after Thanksgiving, a virus that had been making the rounds of

the office wrestled with the flu shot I had dutifully gotten the previous month. The
virus won. I had to call in sick, and even if I could have dragged myself out of bed, I
couldn’t go anywhere near Jamie and his father.

Jamie said he would ask Jessica to help him get away for a few hours, but I

couldn’t let him risk passing my germs on to Mr. Novotny. He agreed reluctantly, but
he had Jessica bring over a big pot of free-range chicken and organic vegetable
soup he’d made.

I huddled in bed, subsisting on over-the-counter medications, sports drinks,

and Jamie’s soup. When I started to go stir-crazy, I moved to the couch, even
though I got dizzy after sitting for more than a few minutes and it was too short for
me to lie down comfortably. That hardly mattered because I couldn’t get
comfortable in any position unless I also lost consciousness.

My mother came to the rescue, bringing more food, cleaning the house, and

doing my laundry.

Rachel called and I believed her when she said she’d be there too if she

weren’t pregnant. She also passed on the glad tidings that Josh was the baby’s
father, and if I hadn’t already been lying down, I would have collapsed with relief.

My father sat in the armchair in my living room and watched football with me.

I found his lack of conversation restful. Matt drove in from Old Liberty twice. He
drank the beer he’d brought me, and let me pick out the movies we watched
together.

Someone must have let my grandmother know I was sick, because she called

for a long chat. She did most of the talking, telling me about her friends in Arizona. I
listened, as grateful not to have to say more than a few words as for the attention.

One day my mother came alone and explained that it was because my

father was in a bad mood.

He’d heard about some judge refusing to marry straight people until gay

marriage was legal.

“But gay marriage is legal here.” I hadn’t dreamed that during my fever, had

I?

“Oh, this is in another state. But it’s the principle of the thing.”

“What principle?”

“That this judge is too arrogant to do his job because he’s gay.”

“But Mom, you and Dad think that pharmacists shouldn’t have to give out

birth control if it’s against their religion.”

She went on to explain why that was different, although it didn’t seem so to

me. I only half listened because I was too busy wondering how arrogant my parents
would think I was if I asked them to accept that I was gay. Somehow I thought
they’d use words other than “arrogant.”

I was fit again in a week, and I managed to convince myself the flu hadn’t

really been so bad and had even offered a comforting reminder that when I
needed them, my family was there for me.

“More than I was,” said Jamie while we cleared off the dining room table. It

was the first night that I’d been able to visit him again, and he’d made my favorite
stir-fry in honor of the occasion.

I shook my head. “You did what you could without risking hurting your dad.”

“It wasn’t much. Not compared to what you’ve done for him. And me.”

That made no sense to me. “But that’s the way it works. You do what you can

when it’s needed.

And I’m pretty self-sufficient most of the time.” I grinned. “Except for a crying

need for your affection.” I reached out for him but dropped my arms when I
realized Mr. Novotny could see us from his chair in living room.

He was staring at us, but I couldn’t tell if he knew what he was watching. For

longer and longer periods now he seemed to be in a daze. The medication he took
was partially responsible, but I had the impression that a hazy barrier was growing
between him and the rest of the world. In just the week I’d been away, it had
become more noticeable.

Then he raised a shaking hand, one of his signals that he needed Jamie’s

help, and I saw that he had been watching us. I grabbed the last of the dishes and
went into the kitchen while Jamie knelt by his father’s chair and they engaged in
one of those charade-like communications that made sense only to the two of
them.

I wished I could communicate half as well with my father.

CHRISTMAS was a near repeat of Thanksgiving.

Jamie’s father was frailer, his brother Jason was less neurotic, and his nieces

and nephews were a lot more hyper, but I enjoyed being with the Novotnys.

I also spent time at my parents’. My mother’s happiness at having Rachel’s

wedding date set wasn’t tempered in the least by the news of the new baby.
Instead, she scolded me for not having a wife who could be producing yet more
grandchildren for her, and tried to set me up with yet another Hester or Heather,
whose mother brought her by for dessert one night. Fortunately she didn’t seem very
interested either, and we had an uninspiring chat about pie, ignoring our moms’

hints about some recent movies we might enjoy and a new restaurant that

had opened downtown.

My father’s back bothered him more than usual, and he was angry about

Rachel’s baby or, at least, at the timing. He refused to talk about the wedding and
had forbidden Josh to watch TV with him, which had effectively driven my sister’s
fianc from the house. Instead, Dad spent a lot of time with some men he’d met at

é

church, who had convinced him the economy was collapsing. I couldn’t talk him
out of following their advice to buy gold, but I did manage to steer him to a more
reputable dealer. One of his new friends kept pushing me to invest as well. He also
told me the government was oppressing him with grammar and he was fighting
back with colons and hyphens. My father assured me this all had to do with FDR
selling my birth certificate before I was born. I thought I must have heard him wrong
until I went online and discovered an entire movement based on the belief that you
could get out of paying taxes if you drafted your complaint with excessive
capitalization.

I tried to talk to Rachel about it, but she just shrugged and said Dad wouldn’t

listen to a woman about money. So I pulled Matt aside. “See if you can get Dad
away from these crazies.”

His shrug echoed Rachel’s. “If he doesn’t believe you, he sure won’t listen to

me.”

“Remind him that you’re an accountant.”

Matt rolled his eyes. “I’m not setting myself up for that. He’ll say that if I’m so

smart, I must have lots of money in my bank accounts, and he knows I’m broke

because I borrowed half of last month’s rent from him. And it’s not like he’s buying a
map and prospecting equipment. He’s buying real gold, and even if it loses value, it
will still be worth something.”

So I had to give up my attempts to get my father off the gold standard. To

clear my head, the next day I drove out to Des Moines to visit Luke, one of my
brother’s middle children, and his mother Zoe. I even saw Amy once over the
holidays, and she seemed more cheerful.

Somewhat to my surprise, we survived the gift-giving portion of the holiday

without any emotional outbursts. My mother provided unsubtle commentary on my
marital status and poor church attendance with a subscription to a Christian dating
service and a book called Returning to the Fold: How Bible Study Will Change Your
Life . When my parents weren’t watching, Matt gave me a couple of six packs of
my favorite beer. From Rachel I got DVDs of some of my favorite movies, complete
with labels that said she’d spent a long time scrounging through the Hy-Vee
bargain bin to find them. And my grandmother mailed a check for twenty-five
dollars, leaving me to wonder if she thought I was still in middle school.

My Christmas present for Jamie was a parka that was warmer and in a lot

better shape than his old one. I assured him I wouldn’t mind if he exchanged it, but
he assured me right back that he loved it. I was glad; I’d chosen a green that
turned his eyes dark as emeralds.

Because wrapping paper is wasteful and hard to recycle, my Christmas

present from Jamie sat under the tree in a sturdy canvas market bag that bore a
logo proclaiming its purchase price was helping fund clean water in Africa. It
contained a very welcome assortment of organic coffee and a fancy grinder to
replace my old one, which was on its last legs. His nieces and nephews looked
relieved to find that their bags contained books, video games, and other fun
nonorganic toys I’d helped him select. There were no cell phones in the mix. Mr.
Novotny got an incredibly soft blanket woven from brightly colored alpaca yarn.
Jamie’s siblings all got letters stating that various farm animals had been purchased
in their names and given to third-world families. Their lack of surprise told me this
wasn’t the first year they’d gotten proxy goats and pigs instead of sweaters.

At no time during the holidays did I let the Novotny and Johansen parts of my

life touch anywhere except in my head, where they created a near-constant
headache as I tried to think of a way to be fair to Jamie without freaking out my
own family.

As we were about to leave my house one morning, my neighbor Mrs. Dvorak

caught Jamie and me in the driveway. Iris had been staying in my guest room
again and she’d run back to get some accessory, so we were blowing on our hands
and waiting for the truck to warm up when there was a knock on the window on
the passenger side.

“Cookies?” Mrs. Dvorak held up a plastic plate.

“Kolachy!” Iris squealed in enthusiasm behind her. “I haven’t had kolachy in

years. My mother used to make them.”

Mrs. Dvorak turned. She was a diminutive and stern-faced woman a few years

older than my mother. She used a cane sometimes, so I’d made a practice of
clearing her driveway and sidewalk whenever it snowed. She’d responded with
cookies and stock tips. At that moment she was eying Iris with obvious curiosity. “Hi. I
haven’t seen you before.”

I introduced them, explaining that Iris was visiting from Chicago. “And this is

her brother, Jamie.”

Mrs. Dvorak reached into the cab to shake Jamie’s hand. “So you’re Mark’s

boyfriend. I’ve seen you around, but you always seem to be in a huge hurry.”

Jamie explained about his father and his lack of spare time. She nodded

understandingly and mentioned her husband’s final illness, gave Iris the plate of
homemade pastries, and went back to her house.

I couldn’t get that short encounter out of my mind. Mrs. Dvorak, whose first

name was a mystery to me, knew something essential about me that no one in my
family knew. By New Year’s Eve, I’d made my most important resolution. I had to
begin coming out.

AFTER thinking it over a few thousand times, I decided to tell Matt first. Rachel

might be a little more receptive, but her life was difficult right now, as Brian had
learned of her pregnancy and disputed the DNA results that had shown Josh was
the new baby’s father. I called Matt up and invited him to spend some time at my
house the next time he came to visit our parents or Amy. I almost lost my courage
when he rolled in, obviously upset by his latest argument with Tiffany.

Matt unloaded on me over a couple of beers, and I gathered that Tiffany

now blamed the lack of money for dance classes for Amy on the existence of

Matt’s other children. Which was simultaneously true and a really distasteful

attitude.

“I could probably chip in for dance lessons.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I want to.” If I did, maybe I’d see Amy more often. The memory of that little

girl shaking with fear that she’d be in trouble for playing with one of her siblings
haunted me. I’d spoken to Matt about the incidents at Thanksgiving, and he assured
me he’d questioned Amy closely and Tiffany never hurt her physically, but there
were other kinds of harm. Matt sank back against the sofa cushions.

“Thanks. It will make things a lot better.” I doubted that, but it might improve

them somewhat.

Matt started talking sports, and I tried to pay attention. I kept trying to think of

a way to bring my own news into the conversation, but every time I opened my
mouth, it shut itself again and my legs decided on their own to go to the kitchen for
another beer or more chips. I should have served something healthier, but there
wasn’t much food in the house beyond what I’d picked up for the evening. I spent
so much time at Jamie’s I didn’t keep the fridge stocked anymore.

I was halfway through a bowl of chips and busy missing Jamie when Matt

complained I wasn’t listening to anything he said.

“Sorry.” I set down the chips. “I have something on my mind.”

As a gambit to get my brother to ask some nice leading questions, this failed

utterly. Matt snagged the chips and said, “If my staying over is any problem, I can
go visit my girlfriend.”

I seized on this distraction like a man who really didn’t want to bare his

deepest, darkest secret to someone unlikely to be sympathetic. “You have a
girlfriend in Why Yell?”

“Yeah. Mom introduced us last time I went to church. And yeah, I know what

you’re going to say. I need to be careful or I’ll wind up in trouble again. But you
don’t have to worry. Heather and I use condoms.”

“Heather?” I vaguely remembered a girl with that name.

“Yeah. Like I said. Heather from church. You dated her once, didn’t you?”

Ouch. She was the one I confused with Hannah. Or Hester. It didn’t matter. A

girl I had unintentionally insulted was seeing my brother.

This had the potential to create some very uncomfortable family dinners.

“You’re dating?” I asked again, idiotically.

Matt seemed oblivious to any problems this situation might cause. I would

have envied him his easy social assurance if I’d had any desire to date half the
female population of Iowa, impregnating a fair percentage along the way. “Every
now and then, when I’m in town.”

Obviously “dating” in this context was a euphemism for fucking.

“And don’t worry, there won’t be another baby,” Matt went on, his expression

gloomy. “I didn’t think she’d be okay with being careful. Lots of the girls I meet in
church aren’t. But it was her idea. Zoe insisted on condoms, but she got pregnant
with Luke when one broke. She said that from now on, she’s not trusting condoms,
she’s using something.”

His tone put the “something” Zoe chose to use in the same category as meth

or heroin. Or worse.

A few months ago, my father had explained to me, perfectly seriously, that

taking birth control pills was the equivalent of having an abortion or even a series of
monthly abortions. Now I dodged away from the topic, afraid of hearing Dad had
convinced Matt of this latest insanity. Zoe didn’t need Matt lecturing her about her
sex life, something he hadn’t been actively involved in since before Luke was born.
And as much as I liked Zoe and wanted Matt to get along with the mothers of his
children, I wasn’t going to get in the middle of that argument.

It was time to distract him with a discussion about my own sex life.

“Matt, you know how you always say I don’t understand about your… love

life?” He looked up.

“I think it’s going to be at least as hard for you to understand what I’m going

to tell you.”

He grinned and took a slug of his beer. “You have a love life at last? Who’s

the lucky girl?”

“Yeah, I do. But… it’s with a guy.” It was abrupt and inelegant, but I’d said it. It

was out. I was out. Okay, maybe it was more like I was peeking through the blinds to
get a view of the back porch, but it was a start.

A pause followed. It went way past uncomfortable and well into shocked,

maybe even as far as horrified.

“Shit.” Suddenly he seemed really pale, even for someone with our ancestry.

“You’re….” He couldn’t get the word out. Any of the words. Well, I hadn’t managed
to say the word “gay,” so I supposed I should be glad that at least he hadn’t used
any of the impolite synonyms.

“Yeah.” I forced myself to keep my eyes on his. “I’m gay.” One of us had to

use the word.

He shook his head. “Mark, I thought you were going to say you’d gotten

someone pregnant, or….”

This wasn’t too bad, I told myself. Denial was normal. I’d denied it myself for

long enough. I couldn’t blame Matt for this reaction. “I don’t think I can get my
boyfriend pregnant.”

Somehow he managed to get even paler.

“You’re not kidding.”

I thought he was going to throw up and wondered if I should pitch the chips

on the floor and hand him the bowl. But before I could do anything, he dashed
across the room, ending up with his back against the wall and his hands balled into
fists.

“It’s not infectious.” I stood up and then sat down again when my movement

made him twitch.

“Whatever Pastor Steve says, you can’t catch it.” I tried to smile. “And if it was

infectious, you of all people should be immune.”

His hands curled into fists. Apparently we’d gone past Denial, and, after a

detour through Total Freak-out, entered the Anger stage. “Who did this to you?”

I didn’t think my response through. It just came out. “God.”

“Shit, Mark, that’s a fucked-up thing to say.

You know it’s a sin.” He looked a lot like my father at that moment. I half

expected him to start raging about blasphemy.

“It’s the truth.” I made a pitiful attempt to defuse the situation with humor.

“Look, Matt, I know this is a shock. But I’m still just me. I just like dates who shave their
faces instead of their legs.” There was no way I was mentioning I was in a
committed relationship with Jamie Novotny, not while Matt was standing there in
fighting stance.

“Just give yourself time to get used to the idea, and —”

“Don’t!” He interrupted me, holding out a hand in warning, even though I’d

been careful not to budge from my seat again. “Just, whatever you do, don’t tell
Mom and Dad.”

He turned his back and completed his rejection of my news by calling

Heather or Hannah and inviting himself over to her place for the night.

I refrained from asking if he had a condom before he left. He refrained from

saying good night.

Well, I thought, that went worse than expected.

I DIDN’T tell Mom and Dad. I didn’t tell Jamie about the conversation with

Matt either. When I stopped by after work the next day, Mr. Novotny looked worse
than usual. He hadn’t been eating well, and Jamie had made an appointment with
the doctor to discuss various gastrointestinal issues.

The last thing Jamie needed was more drama, so I just let things go, and we

fell back into the same pattern we’d found before the holidays.

Also work was turning into a big distraction.

A huge corporation bought the company I worked for. Almost the first thing

our new overlords did was announce layoffs. Managers I’d been used to working
with left. The reorganization involved cumbersome new procedures, and the benefits
policy changed for the worse.

Small indignities began to add up. After almost a year of quiet negotiations,

final approval for a lactation room had been in sight. But the new Human Resources
chief said “Yuck,” and just like that, the item dropped off all the agendas. For the
first time, I encountered resistance when I tried to schedule a conference room for
the Muslims in my workgroup to pray. New attendance rules made it harder to help
people work their schedules around doctor’s visits and their kids’ school activities.

My name didn’t appear on the list of people to be fired. I could afford the

higher charges for health and disability insurance. I’d worn suits to work since my last
promotion, so the change in dress code didn’t force me to buy new clothes. The
lack of a room for prayer or breastfeeding mothers didn’t affect me personally. But I
could feel a chill that wasn’t entirely due to the coming of winter.

Before the takeover, I hadn’t liked my job because I regretted accepting a

management position. Now I didn’t like the place I worked much either.

The atmosphere at my parents’ became more strained. I watched the Super

Bowl there, and it struck me how careful everyone was around my father. Since it
was practically a holy day, Josh had been granted temporary access to the living
room, but Matt pulled him into the kitchen before the game. I overheard an
emphatic explanation of exactly what Josh could and could not say about each
team. It seemed silly at first, but then I noticed everyone looked at Dad after
expressing an opinion to make sure he hadn’t been annoyed.

Dad and I were both quiet men. I’d always thought that meant my father and

I had a lot in common. Now I wondered. I didn’t think people reacted that way
around me, watching their words because they feared some short, cutting
comment or even, as happened to Matt, an instruction to stay where he was and
not slip away to another party at halftime.

Matt took his sulks to the kitchen, motioning me to follow. “He’s pissed off

because he found out I’m dating again. He wants me to get married.

Whatever you do, don’t. Just don’t.”

I said as little as possible for the rest of the evening.

So a few months passed before I faced up to the fact that I’d been really

bad about keeping that New Year’s resolution. One day a new manager cracked a
joke and I reminded him for the second or third time that we had antiharassment
policies.

He shook his head at me. “Geez, Mark, you’re such a fucking Boy Scout. ‘No

blond jokes.’ ‘No ethnic jokes.’ And now, ‘No gay jokes.’ You’d think I was insulting
you personally.”

I didn’t know if he was insinuating that I was blond, ethnic (yes, here in Iowa

people actually tell Scandinavian jokes), and gay, or if he was just whining. I almost
told him he had just insulted me.

But he didn’t deserve to hear that from me before I told people I actually

cared about. I tried to think of someone to tell who would be marginally more
accepting than Matt. By now Rachel was not only very pregnant, she was busy with
wedding plans, and I didn’t think anything short of a new Supreme Court decision
outlawing heterosexual marriage would get her attention.

I hadn’t actually mentioned my gayness to Scott, even though he’d been my

closest friend for the past couple of years. Granted, he’d been preoccupied with
my coworker ever since I’d introduced them, but I realized that while I had listened
to him gush about Jenny quite a bit, I had neglected to respond with anecdotes
about Jamie.

So the next time I drove to the next town to meet him for lunch at our favorite

Tex-Mex place, I broke the news.

He listened to my tangled explanation and immediately started putting the

situation in terms we could both relate to.

In fact, his reaction was downright casual as he munched chips and salsa at

La Casita. “Uh-huh.

So you’re bi? Like Captain Jack Harkness.”

Naturally. Because there was no way we could get through this discussion

without a sci-fi reference.

But sci-fi references beat Biblical references to flinders on this topic, and I

found myself grinning. “Captain Jack isn’t bi, he’s pansexual.

He’ll do anything with a pulse and a phone number. And probably make an

exception for certain members of the undead class. I’m just gay.”

He set down his menu and gave me a skeptical look. “Come on, Mark, I think I

remember a few girlfriends.”

“None of whom lasted more than a few weeks. Being with girls was one thing,

but with a guy… let’s just say I’m pretty sure I’m almost entirely gay. Which is good,
because I’m definitely entirely in love with Jamie.”

“Well, thanks for sparing me the gory details.” He laughed. “So, if you’re really

not completely gay, at least you’re most sincerely gay?”

“Look, if you’re going to do riffs on lyrics from the Wizard of Oz , I’m going to

do more wondering about you than I ever did about myself.”

He shook his head, not in the least offended at the implication. “You wish!”

Then he asked if I wanted to order the bean dip.

A few minutes later, I asked, “You guessed?”

He shrugged. “It crossed my mind. For one thing, I’ve seen you with your

nieces and nephews, and I wondered why you didn’t take the first opportunity to
get married and have some kids of your own. I must have seen a dozen girls who
pegged you as good husband material, but you never seemed to notice.”

“Scott, I can guarantee that no girl has ever pegged me.” I saw his confusion

and realized he had no idea what I meant, and I added, “You don’t need to get
married these days to have kids. And with adoption, you don’t even have to get
someone pregnant.”

He nodded. “Is that the plan, then?”

“I don’t have a plan. I can’t have a plan while Jamie’s got to take care of his

father, and my family doesn’t know.”

Scott had met my parents, and his mother had been a member of their

church for a time. He was wholly serious for the first time in the conversation. “Are
you going to tell them?”

“I haven’t figured out how yet.”

The silence that followed was long and became uncomfortable. Scott ducked

his head and I realized he’d pulled out his cell phone. I was going to accuse him of
cruelty to bees when he yelled, “Holy shit, Mark!” so loudly a few people turned to
look at us.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, exactly.” He shoved the phone back in his pocket, blushing furiously.

“I just looked up ‘pegged’ on Urban Dictionary.” I had to laugh. I was going to tell
Jamie about that conversation, but when I got back to the office, I found he’d left
me a voice mail. He’d called 911 because his father was vomiting blood.

I WENT straight to the hospital and was glad I did, because none of Jamie’s

siblings had arrived yet. I sat next to him as the doctor explained that his father’s
ulcers were worse and the blood thinners he was taking were exacerbating the
problem.

Jamie looked blank. “But if you take him off the blood thinners, he could have

another stroke.”

The doctor looked at me, and I knew he was hoping that as a nonfamily

member, I would have an easier time accepting the implications of this.

Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I did. If the treatment for one problem

was causing others almost as serious, we were on a very bad road, and given Mr.
Novotny’s already fragile state, the journey wasn’t going to end well.

I took Jamie’s hand. “Let them take care of the immediate problem, and then

they’ll consider alternatives for stroke prevention. One day at a time.”

He was almost too willing to take my advice.

Jessica rushed in half an hour later, and by late evening Eric and Iris had

arrived. “How long will he be here?” asked Iris immediately after hugging her siblings
in greeting.

“He isn’t getting enough nutrition, so they’re going to try to build him up. That

may involve feeding him through a tube for a while.” Jamie gestured helplessly. “I
don’t know.”

His siblings spent some time in their father’s room and came back looking very

grim. “We’re going to stay a few days, at least. We’ll take our stuff to the house.”

Jamie started. “I need to go back there. He…

he vomited, and there’s a mess to clean up, and….”

“We’ll do that,” Jessica said firmly.

I thought Iris looked less certain, but she didn’t contradict her older sister. From

the look on Eric’s face, Jessica was going to be doing most of the cleaning. But he
said, “You look awful, Jamie.

Really tired. Why don’t you let Mark take care of you for a while?”

“Good idea,” I said. “Jamie can come home with me for tonight at least. I’ll

make sure he eats and sleeps, and tomorrow we can all get together here and
decide what comes next.”

Jamie protested, but the women practically shoved him into my arms, and I

hustled him out to my truck, where he collapsed in the passenger seat. Even getting
away from the horrible hospital lighting didn’t make him look much better. He was
pale with dark circles under his eyes.

“How much have you been sleeping? Or how little?” I knew he had to get up

a few times in the night to help his father, but until recently he’d also been able to
rest a bit during the day. From the looks of things, that had changed.

“Not much. Even when he’s asleep, I’ve been pretty tense.” That was

obviously an understatement.

A WEEK later, they moved his father to a nursing home for another bout of

rehabilitation, and the rest of his family returned home. However, Iris announced she
would be coming back the next weekend so she could visit with Jessica’s family
and make regular trips to the nursing home.

“And you’re not going to visit with me?” I heard Jamie laugh into the phone.

Then he listened quietly for a while and said, “Thanks, I’ll let you know.”

After he hung up, he explained that Iris and Jessica wanted him to take a

weekend vacation.

Presumably with me.

“Absolutely!” I said. “Where do you want to go?”

He seemed surprised I was so eager, but after thinking a bit, he said, “I think

there’s some kind of festival in Iowa City.”

“There’s always some kind of festival in Iowa City as long as it’s not exam

week and the temperature is above freezing for at least an hour a day.” I grabbed
my laptop and started a search.

“I’ll get us a hotel room.”

Jamie jumped into plans for the trip, contacting some college friends who still

lived in the area and checking out events at the theaters.

One evening, as we were mourning the damage to Hancher Auditorium in

the 2008 flood, he said, “How are we getting there?”

This had seemed so obvious I hadn’t thought about it. “Driving.”

“In the big red truck?” He always referred to it that way.

“Well, yeah. Your dad’s car needs new tires, and I’m not sure about the

transmission.”

“You know I like to drive about fifty miles an hour to save gas.” His expression

was challenging, and I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or not.

I tried to visualize idling my truck down I-80

while the rest of the traffic rushed by at anything from twenty to fifty miles an

hour faster. I decided two could play at this deadpan environmentalist game of
chicken. “No problem.”

“No problem?” He looked astonished.

Hah! I’d won that round. “Of course not. Fifty miles an hour, max.” I noted it

down on the paper I was using to make a list of things to do for the trip.

The note was a bit over the top, and I wasn’t surprised when he narrowed his

eyes in suspicion.

I changed the subject.

TWO days later I drove the truck down Main Street and passed the ramp for

the interstate without a glance.

Jamie looked over his shoulder. “Mark, where are you going?”

“Iowa City.” I handed him a map I’d printed out because I knew there was no

way he’d check the GPS on my phone. “You can navigate.”

I watched out of the corner of my eye as he looked over the route that

would take us mostly along county and state roads. He started to chuckle.

“You never even considered driving twenty miles under the speed limit on the

interstate, did you?”

“Not for a nanosecond.” I set the cruise control as we reached an open

stretch of road, and turned my head to grin at him.

“You’re not always a pushover.”

“I’m glad to hear you think so.” I thought about the edge in his voice for a

moment and added, “But I came out to Scott and my brother. So you can push me
over on some things.” Which wasn’t exactly fair, since he’d been trying hard not to
push, but I hoped he’d understand my point.

He sat up, and when I risked another glance, he didn’t look as pleased as I’d

hoped. “How did it go?”

“Good. And bad.”

“The bad being with Matt?”

“Yeah. I don’t think he’s going to tell my parents. In fact, he forbade me to

talk to them. I’m still trying to figure out how to handle that.”

“Yeah. Mark, I’m sorry. I know you love your family, and I don’t want to get in

between you and them.”

I’d been thinking this through for a long time, and I said, “This isn’t just about

you, Jamie. It’s about me, really. And I had to do it. It’s just, once I tell my parents,
I’m afraid they’ll never talk to me again.” I realized that probably wasn’t true. “At
least, I’m afraid my dad will never talk to me. I can’t imagine my mom not having
anything to say, but it won’t be anything I like.”

That made him smile a little. “Most parents do freak, you know. But most of

them get over it.”

“Most of them.” But I changed the subject. I didn’t want to think about my

parents that weekend.

IT WAS strange to be back in the place where I’d gone to school for the four

years of my life that hadn’t been spent in Why Yell. Walking around downtown with

Jamie made me realize I’d changed. A few years ago, I’d have been dragged to
bars with friends who were trying to pick up girls, and might even have let a girl pick
me up.

But I’d never been here with anyone, male or female, who felt like a partner.

In fact, I’d hardly ever done anything that felt much like dating.

But taking Jamie to dinner at Devotay and other restaurants neither of us

could have afforded when we were in school felt very much like a date.

So did going to a show by some comic Jamie liked, and even wandering

around looking at arts and crafts on display in the pedestrian mall. I listened to him
talk to a vendor about working with the indigenous peoples of somewhere to
provide a fair trade environment for their work, and it struck me again how earnest
he was about trying to save the world. Somehow he managed to worry about
everyone and everything and still be more cheerful than most people who ignored
bad news.

Maybe he avoided cynicism by doing something about all those problems.

Whatever it was, the woman he was talking to reacted to it, smiling and happy to
have someone share her enthusiasm for her work. She also seemed to like today’s
sweatshirt, which read “Save the Earth.

It’s the only planet with chocolate.”

As he turned back to me, stowing a bit of jewelry he’d bought for one of his

nieces in his pocket, I leaned down and gave him a quick kiss.

His smile broadened, and I knew it was at least in part because I hadn’t

hesitated to kiss him in public. Not that anyone in Iowa City would care or even
notice.

Being with Jamie had changed me. The change had been gradual and not

at all dramatic, because his father’s illness had forced our lives to be slow and quiet.
But it had also been thorough.

I’d never be content to live alone and lonely again.

When we met some of his friends for dinner, I realized that all but one of the

seven people at the table were paired up. The seventh was the six-month-old baby
of one of the other couples.

I had always felt like the odd man out in these situations, or, worse, I’d been

trying to escape the assumption that I was paired up with whatever girl I’d been
with. There had been a wrongness to those situations that I hadn’t wanted to name.
Now I was comfortable. I leaned over the baby carrier, smiling at the little boy
snoozing inside, and asked his parents questions about the adoption process. It had
been complex, they admitted, but worth it.

They looked exhausted but happy, and that particular happiness was the only

thing about our dinner companions that I really envied.

But there were still limits to what I felt comfortable with. I was embarrassed

when one of the baby’s dads started teasing Jamie about having snared a hottie,
and excused myself to use the restroom.

After washing my hands, I checked my reflection. “Hottie” was certainly an

exaggeration.

However, Jamie had encouraged me to let my hair grow out a little, and I

hadn’t had time to shave that morning. As a result, I thought that instead of being a
shoo-in for the part of Nazi Storm Trooper, I might be eligible to respond to a casting
call for Sven, the slightly dissolute ski instructor. I let my silly too-blond locks fall over
my forehead. Oh, yeah, I was bad. And maybe just a little bit hot. At least, Jamie
thought so, and that was the important thing.

When I got back to the table, Jamie was frowning. One of his friends was

saying, “I’m sure it was Hawktract. Hey, Mark, didn’t your company get taken over a
few months ago?”

“Yeah.” I slid into my seat, still watching Jamie and wondering why he looked

upset.

“How’s that gone?” asked the friend.

I shrugged. “Could be better.”

“You haven’t talked about it.” The tension in Jamie’s voice confused me.

“You’ve got a lot to deal with, and it’s just work stuff.” I wasn’t sure what I’d

done wrong, so I leaned over the baby again and asked one of the dads about
how well he slept.

Later Jamie asked me again why I hadn’t said anything about changes at

work.

“It’s work.” I shrugged. “Not much to talk about.” I didn’t think it was. I

couldn’t remember my father talking about his job as an HVAC tech when I was
growing up. He’d made some generic statements about the importance of doing
what you had to do to support your family, and that was it. It never occurred to me
it was a topic for the dinner table.

“Mark, you spend at least eight hours a day there! And all I ever hear is which

coworker’s kid got a scholarship and who is going on vacation to Hawaii. When I
ask, you say it’s all meetings.”

“It is.”

“Shit. You’re miserable there, aren’t you?”

He stopped.

We were standing in the middle of the pedestrian mall, with people passing

by on either side, and I started to feel conspicuous. “It’s no big deal, Jamie. Most
people don’t like their jobs.”

He stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “Do you have any idea

how much it drives me crazy when you say things like that?”

I shook my head too, because I didn’t know and I couldn’t understand why. I

just knew I didn’t want this quarrel. “Please, can we not fight this weekend? It’s the
first time we’ve really been able to be together and away from… everything. I really
don’t want to talk about my job right now.”

He made an exasperated noise but nodded. I relaxed a little.

As we started walking again, Jamie took my hand. I gripped it hard. I’d never

held hands with a man in public before this weekend, and the experience was
enough to drive that bizarre little argument out of my head. I smiled at him. I had no
idea where we were going, and I didn’t care.

We wound up at Prairie Lights, because neither of us is the kind of person who

can walk past a bookstore. Jamie wandered upstairs, and I found my way to the
LGBT section, which was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I was actually
looking for something to buy this time so I was more critical of the selection. There
weren’t any books titled A Fail-Proof Guide to Coming Out to Evangelical Parents
without Heartbreak and Drama, but I kept skimming spines and covers.

“Looking for something good?” I glanced up and saw a handsome dark-

haired man smiling at me. He appeared to be in his early twenties and a little
nervous, and there was an expression in his eyes that even I wasn’t too clueless to
interpret.

There was no point in letting him waste his time, so I said, “A gift for my

boyfriend,” and watched the smile fade.

“Good luck,” he muttered as he turned and resumed hunting.

I browsed a little more, then went to the basement, where I quickly found half

a dozen books for nieces and nephews, including the most recent volume in a series
I’d discussed with one of Jessica’s middle children. I carried them up two flights and
found Jamie leafing through some books on a display table. I circled around by the
coffee shop, came up behind him, and saw the one on top of the pile was The
Suburban Beekeeper. “Hi there. Any chance I can get you to teach me about the
boys and the bees?”

He snickered but didn’t jump. He’d obviously known I was there. “Why, are

you interested in apiculture?”

“Why don’t we start at the boys part and work on the rest later?”

A large book thumped down next to me. I looked up and saw the guy who’d

hit on me earlier. “So you’ve got a boyfriend, huh?”

Oh, damn. I realized he thought that Jamie and I were strangers.

“If you thought that was a real pickup line, no wonder you’re not having

much luck,” Jamie snapped. “I am his boyfriend.” He looked over his shoulder and
smirked at me. “Sorry, Mark, but it really was pretty lame.”

The guy gave Jamie a disgusted look and slunk off. “Sorry about that,” I said,

embarrassed.

“Him, I mean. Not the lame pickup line. Although it was lame.”

“Why?” He dropped the book back on the table. “It’s pretty obvious you

didn’t encourage him, and it’s not like it doesn’t happen all the time.”

“Huh?” was my brilliant response.

He gave me the look he reserved for when I was being particularly dense

about something. It was more affectionate than anything else, so it didn’t bother
me. “You do realize that every time I’ve moved more than a few feet from your
side, someone has hit on you? It wasn’t just that guy.”

“You’re exaggerating.” I smiled, thinking this time he was the one being dense

if he thought there was any reason for jealousy.

“No, I’m not.” He was quiet while we went down the narrow stairs and I

bought the books I’d picked out, but once we were on the street again, he said.
“Mark, you know you could have picked anyone. I wonder all the time, ‘Why me?’”

I stared at him in disbelief. How could he ask that? “Why would you think

that?” was all I could stammer out.

He took my hand as we walked back toward the pedestrian mall. “Let’s see.

I’m not ugly, but I’m not Johnny Depp either. I have all sorts of ideas you think are
crazy. I don’t have a job.

Instead, I have an obligation to my dad that means I couldn’t even take the

time to take care of you when you were sick.”

That all seemed backward to me. “You’re gorgeous and smart, and you care

about people.

You don’t just care, you do something about it.

You’re always trying to make things better. And you make me feel like I

matter, even when we can’t be together.”

He surprised me by latching on to the first thing I’d said. “You think I’m

gorgeous?” He sounded honestly astonished.

“Of course!” How could he not know that?

Was it possible other people looked at those hazel eyes and… okay, his nose

was a little bit crooked, but it suited him, and there was all that dark hair that was
probably too thick to style properly even if he bothered going to a stylist, but it felt
wonderful between my fingers. Maybe someone else would consider his mouth a bit
wide, but that was only if they weren’t imagining it pressed to their own lips. He was
tall and fit, and who cared that he always dressed like he was preparing for a long
protest march?

He shook his head. “And they say I’m the one with the bad grasp on reality.”

He gripped my arm tightly.

This wasn’t a conversation that could end properly on the street. By tacit

agreement, we headed back to our hotel, walking fast. When we reached the
lobby, an elevator door was about to close. A very pleasant woman held it for us,
and I tried to repay her courtesy by not groping Jamie in front of her, although

something about the way she smiled at us made me think she wouldn’t have been
all that shocked.

I practically shoved him through the door to our room, yanked off his clothes,

pushed him down on the bed, and started sucking him off without any kind of
foreplay. I reached for the bottle of lube we’d left on the nightstand, and started to
use it on his rim with no more than a passing panicked thought of The maid must
have seen that! Once I had him stretched and moaning, I flipped him over.

Only then did I realize I’d been humping the bed through the fabric of my

jeans, and I stopped just long enough to peel off my clothes.

It was deliciously wicked to slide into him without a condom. We’d done the

tests and had the talk a few weeks before, but I still hadn’t gotten used to the lack
of barrier between us as we melded together.

He said my name over and over, and that was such a turn-on I had to focus

on not coming too soon. He gripped the headboard and pushed back into me
hard with every thrust, his body tightening around me. And oh, damn, the
headboard was slamming against the wall and I could only hope there was no one
in the room next door, because I certainly couldn’t stop.

Finally we both collapsed bonelessly, and I rolled off before he could

complain I was too heavy. We looked at each other and we both started laughing.
There was nothing sly or teasing about it. It was just happiness.

This was the relationship I’d imagined when I’d left home for college over ten

years earlier. It hadn’t happened then. I’d found willing partners, but I’d never been
able to let myself go the way I could with Jamie. I realized now it wasn’t a lack of
passion on my part. It was my nature only to let go with someone I really cared
about, someone I could connect with on this level. With Jamie, who was all I ever
wanted or could want.

There really was nothing terribly wrong with me after all.

THE next day was slow, lazy, and sweet. As we sat in a coffee shop in the late

afternoon, trying to decide if we should resist some of the pastries on display, Jamie
said, “I used to think I’d live here. I never imagined moving back to Why Yell.”

I hadn’t either. “Why did you move to Chicago?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t find a job in this area, and I found out I could get my

student loans reduced if I worked with disadvantaged kids. And I was ready for the
adventure.”

“Do you want to go back there?”

“Not really. I liked it, but the traffic about drove me crazy. Maybe the city is

just too big for a small-town Iowa boy. At least when places like this are the
alternative.”

I drove us home late Sunday, taking the same back roads we’d used on the

way to Iowa City. We listened to something alternative but not wholly obnoxious on
public radio. It was a clear night, and the only other sounds were the purr of the
truck’s engine and the gentle patter of thousands of bugs committing suicide
against the windshield.

Jamie dozed next to me. If the weekend had to end, and of course it did, this

wasn’t a bad finale.

But I was mistaken in thinking it had ended there. The next day at work, I

noticed that Jerry and Laura, aka Hot Lips and Ferret Face, were underfoot even
more than usual. Twice I saw them huddled together and glancing at me as they
talked, and once I was sure I saw Laura nudge Jerry in my direction. Finally Jerry
stopped me in the hall as I was returning from a meeting.

“Hi!”

“Hi,” I responded, trying not to sound suspicious of what was, after all, a

perfectly friendly greeting.

“Was… uh, I thought I saw you this weekend.” Jerry’s eyes shifted up, down,

and sideways, every direction except one that would meet my gaze.

I tried for an impassive tone. “I was out of town this weekend.”

“Um… so were we. My wife and I, I mean.

We went to Iowa City. I thought I saw you. And you were with someone. A

man. I… my wife said it looked like you kissed him.” He licked his lips, obviously

titillated by the mere possibility that I was a sodomite, but still enough of a coward
to throw the blame for the accusation on his wife. “I told her that she was wrong, of
course.”

As I met Jerry’s avid stare, I suddenly felt very tired. “No, she was right,” I said.

“That was my boyfriend.” And I turned and walked back to my office, then closed
the door without bothering to see his reaction.

But it still hadn’t ended. I should have realized it was going to happen sooner

or later.

Why Yell isn’t a small town by Iowa standards, but there are plenty of people

who know my family. It wasn’t until I drove home that night and saw the pickups in
my driveway that I realized Jerry was part of that particular gossip web.

My parents had come to visit. And they’d brought Pastor Steve.

My father looked up from his seat on the couch and stared at me blankly.

Pastor Steve was next to him, looking down. He was holding a copy of Mother Jones
that Jamie had left on the coffee table. From his expression, he’d previously been
unaware of the magazine’s existence, but had now decided that it was proof, if
he’d needed any, of the devil’s existence. At least there weren’t any copies of The
Advocate lying around.

My mother was squeezed into a corner of the couch next to my father, her

hands clasped, her eyes blank. “Mark!” Her voice was rough, as if she’d been crying.
“Susie at church got a call from Diane, who’s married to someone named Jerry at
your work, and she told Pastor Steve….” She looked at me, then at Jamie. She’d
come over here hoping to hear a denial, and instead she’d found my boyfriend,
obviously at home, folding laundry and wearing a T-shirt that read “Gay Borg
resistance is fabulous.” I just hoped he hadn’t been watching Queer as Folk reruns
when the doorbell rang.

Mom shrank back into her chair, making no move to kiss me. I couldn’t

remember the last time she hadn’t kissed me when we met.

I nodded. My own throat was suddenly sore.

“I’m going to get something to drink. Does anyone else want anything?”

This is nearly always a good stalling tactic, and it worked even better than

usual because it was so normal as to be outside the expectations of anyone else in
the room.

Our guests pulled themselves together enough to reject any offer of

refreshment in tones that suggested they feared some kind of transmission of gay
cooties via iced tea. Hell, they probably thought they could pick up HIV just from
being in the house.

I wanted a beer, but I figured things were bad enough without getting Pastor

Steve started on the evils of alcohol. So I poured a couple of glasses of water and
carried them back to the living room, where I set one down in front of Jamie and

sipped the other. Then I moved the laundry basket and sat down on the love seat
next to Jamie. He was rigid and still, so I took his hand and squeezed it.

My father flinched visibly.

“Mom, Dad, I’m sorry—”

“You should be!” started Pastor Steve.

I spoke loudly and repeated, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you learned about

Jamie and me the way you did.” I glared at Pastor Steve. “That’s the only thing I’m
sorry about.”

Mom was crying now. Okay, I was sorry about that too.

I didn’t have to say anything at all for quite a while. Our guests had plenty on

their minds. Pastor Steve was at his smarmy worst, insinuating that Jamie had lured
me onto the path of homosexuality.

Which, come to think of it, he sort of had, but as soon as he’d shown me the

way, I’d pretty much galloped down the road as fast as I could.

“But you are both victims,” he assured us.

“Victims of prohomosexualist indoctrination by an anti-Christian culture.” He

was wearing his usual costume of a dress shirt, blue tie, and ill-fitting brown sports
coat. The humorless eyes buried in his plump cheeks gleamed with excitement.

“Not really,” said Jamie, who looked both repelled and fascinated. “Because I

figured out I was gay when I was about ten years old and attending church
regularly.”

My father glared at him. “And what kind of a church was that?”

As bad as the situation already was, I cringed at the thought of veering off

into the “Are Catholics Christians?” argument and was almost relieved when Pastor
Steve interrupted. “It’s not surprising that some are led astray when they are never
told the true word of God, while the secularists try to normalize sexual perversion.”
He began reciting all the usual Bible passages, which we had all, of course, heard
thousands of times.

I could ignore Pastor Steve and his lines from Leviticus and misquoting of Paul.

But I couldn’t ignore my parents. I didn’t know what worried me more, my father’s
silence or my mother’s string of objections. They all boiled down to “Not you. You
can’t be doing this.” Mom’s words hurt because all her worries were for me. “Mark,
you’re my baby,” she said with gut-wrenching simplicity. “I want you to go to
heaven.”

I replied with what I thought was logic.

“Mom, Jesus said that to go to heaven you have to care for the sick, feed the

hungry, and visit people in prison. Jamie is the only person I know who actually does
all those things.”

I don’t remember everything that was said after that. I’m ashamed to say that

I pretty much stopped listening because it just hurt too much. But when Pastor Steve

started in on Jamie again, harping about his having lured me into sexual immorality,
I’d had enough.

I stood up. “No one is going to change their minds today. Why don’t we step

back, and maybe we can talk when I come to dinner on Sunday.”

“No.” That single word from my father shook me more than all the speeches. I

stared at him, knowing what his next words would be. “You don’t enter my house
until you renounce this sinful path and prove to me that you intend to repent.”

“But Dave….” Even my mother was shocked by this, but her voice trailed off

and any momentary hope I’d had that she would stand up for me at least this far
died. Instead, she followed my father and Pastor Steve out to the car without
looking at me again.

In fact, the only one of the trio who looked in my direction at all was the

pastor, and his gloating expression was almost more shocking than my parents’
rejection. The damned Pharisee was enjoying the opportunity to stand in judgment
over me. I wondered if it was something I’d done in the past or the fact that I didn’t
attend services at his bigoted little church that fueled his Schadenfreude, but it
probably wasn’t. He was the kind who would rejoice at the fall of every sparrow
because it raised him that much further in his own estimation.

“Shit.” Jamie turned pale. “Mark, I knew your family was conservative, but I

had no idea it would be this bad. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry….”

I headed to the kitchen to grab a beer. But before drinking it, I held the cool

bottle to my forehead, hoping to ease what was promising to be a tremendous
headache. “Don’t be. I should be sorry for not realizing that Jerry was part of the
local Bible network and that this would all come down on you. How bad was it
before I got here?”

“Not too bad.” He leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed in a

defensive posture, staring at the ugly vinyl flooring I kept meaning to replace.

I lowered the bottle. “By what standard of comparison? Sitting through a

boring sermon bad or running into a Westboro Baptist demonstration bad?”

He smiled crookedly. “Somewhere in between the two. No, something a bit

different from either. Mark, your parents were wrecked.

When I came out, my mother was all ‘Yeah, so what else is new?’ and my Dad

was ‘Give me time, maybe I can get used to it.’ They were a lot more worked up
the time I crashed my bike and got a concussion because I wasn’t wearing a
helmet.

This was….” He waved his hands, at a loss for words.

I nodded. I’d seen it all in my mother’s face.

“I think it was worse than when they found out Matt, and then Rachel, were

going to be parents before either of them graduated from high school.

I’m hoping that’s just because they don’t have the silver lining of a grandchild

to spoil in this case.” I was hoping, but I had doubts. I’d assumed that there would
be a shit storm, but I thought that eventually they’d agree to disapprove. It would
be too much to hope they wouldn’t argue and lecture, but I hadn’t braced myself
for complete rejection.

After hearing my father’s ultimatum, I didn’t know anymore. His terse

statement was unprecedented. He’d certainly refused to talk to Matt and Rachel
from time to time, but he’d never banished them from the house.

I set down the bottle without opening it and took refuge in Jamie’s arms.

BY THE next afternoon, I knew things were going to get worse before they got

better. I got an angry visit from my sister, who said she’d been ordered to disinvite
me from her wedding. It stunned me to realize that not only was she following
orders, she was angry at me, not for being gay, but for letting my parents find out.

She stormed into my kitchen without knocking, and I cut myself with a paring

knife. I held my finger under the faucet as she snapped at me. “Can’t you just tell
Dad you’ve stopped seeing him? Then you can go to a few Bible studies and they’ll
get over it. Maybe even in time for the wedding.”

“Rachel, I can’t break up with Jamie. Could you break up with Josh?” I wished

she would, of course, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. At least not before the
wedding.

“You could just say you’d broken up. Then they’ll probably let you come to

the wedding.”

I stared at her. “You’re kidding. Someone would see us together and tell them.

That’s how they found out in the first place. And even if they didn’t find out, how
could I do that to Jamie?”

“Do what?”

Did she really not know? How could she not see how wrong that would be? I

just shook my head.

She stomped down the hall, and I wondered if she was searching for Jamie to

include him in her rant. I barely had time to give thanks that he was visiting his father
before she came back with a box of Band-Aids.

“Damn it, Mark, why are you always so freaking honest?” She sighed as if she

were describing a serious character flaw.

I stood still as she wrapped a bandage around my finger. “I’ll just wait them

out, Rachel. They’ll come around. They always do.”

“This is different. This is you.” She almost snarled the words.

Now I was really bewildered. “Why is it different for me?” Had I somehow been

the least favored child and never noticed?

She looked at me the way she looked at Ty when he’d climbed up on the

kitchen counter for the apparent purpose of breaking her best mixing bowl. “Mark,
do you realize that just about every time Dad forgave Matt or me for something, it

was because you talked to him? I’m not sure it would have happened without you.”

I shook my head again. “That’s not true. You guys can talk Dad around.”

Although when I thought about it, I couldn’t remember any time they had.

She exhaled in a huge exasperated sigh. At least now she didn’t seem so

angry. “Mark, he’s not going to change his mind. He’s going to keep talking to
Pastor Steve and the rest of the Inquisition until he fossilizes. You have to go to him
now and get him to forgive you before it’s too late.”

“Forgive me for what?” I said, because although I knew exactly what she

meant, the idea that I was the guilty party made me angry. I understood that my
parents, and my father especially, had been presented with a situation that
challenged their worldview and that it would take time for them to come to terms
with it. But surely the fact that I was their kid would force them to reevaluate and
consider my side!

“Mark, you really just don’t get it. They’re not going to come around.”

I hoped Rachel was wrong. Because I could hardly do anything to convince

my father when he wouldn’t even talk to me.

I had a few phone conversations with my mother, which mostly consisted of

her crying and me explaining that I did not have AIDS or any other dreadful disease
she associated with deviant sex. She also mailed me a packet of information about
organizations that claimed they could “cure”

gayness by various means. The mildest of these programs encouraged me to

wear a rubber band on my wrist and snap it every time I had an erotic thought. I
thought that was more likely to add masochistic tendencies to my sexual baggage
than anything else, so I gave it a pass. The scariest tactic was exorcism, which, under
the unfortunate label of “Deliverance,” promised to expel my demons from my
rectum. That image was too terrifying to dwell on for more than a few seconds.

But even more bizarre was the advice to gain a lot of weight, because

apparently fat people have no sexuality at all.

I looked through this literature and googled some of the authors. Two of the

articles were written by men who had since left the movement and were now ex-
ex-gays. A third had been arrested for molesting one of his patients. I wondered if
mentioning this to Mom would change anything. Remembering her insistence that
despite all evidence to the contrary, Rachel and Matt could settle down into happy
monogamous relationships, I didn’t think so.

Instead, I tried sending her my own packet of information, but I had no illusions

that she’d be joining PFLAG any time soon.

It wasn’t all bad. Scott had told Jenny that the veil of secrecy had been lifted,

and Jenny liked to talk, which meant that all the people at work who didn’t bother
gossiping with Jerry also knew I was gay. Since they were also mostly younger types
who really didn’t care, I didn’t notice much of a difference in the way I was treated.

But oddly, more of the girls flirted with me than ever before. I didn’t even try to
understand that. I was now officially not obligated to comprehend the workings of
female sexuality. It was an unexpected but very welcome benefit of coming out.

With everyone else, I was at a loss to explain.

So much so that I didn’t even try with most people I knew. I let them find out

through the small-town rumor mill and watched for reactions. They ranged from
ostracism to wide-eyed curiosity, and I wasn’t sure which end of the spectrum was
more painful.

Frankly, the most annoying thing was that Hot Lips and Ferret Face didn’t shun

me. I’d had high hopes, but they came around as often as ever, bearing bad
tidings and staring at me as if they expected to see the mark of the beast appear
on my forehead.

But even with the whispers and the ever-present knowledge of my family’s

rejection, it astonished me how relieved I felt. A burden I hadn’t fully realized I was
carrying had been lifted.

ONE Saturday morning, Jamie and I visited his father in the nursing home. Mr.

Novotny was more alert than he had been recently, and we stayed long enough to
watch a movie with him. I’d stopped bringing him recent releases because he
seemed to have lost the ability to assimilate new information, so we sat through Day
after Tomorrow for perhaps the tenth time. Fortunately, the bit with the ship and the
wolves never gets old.

When Mr. Novotny dozed off, Jamie and I went to the co-op to do some

shopping. At least, he did the shopping while I wandered around, not really paying
attention to much of anything, even when I was trapped in the vitamin aisle by a
woman who wanted me to understand her personal spiritual journey to holistic joy. I
couldn’t figure out if she was just nuts or if she was trying to sell me dietary
supplements.

Eventually Jamie rescued me and I helped him carry the purchases back to

the truck. As I pulled out of the parking lot, he said, “You can talk about it, you
know.”

I almost drove up onto the curb. “What?”

I wasn’t looking at him, but I swear I could hear him rolling his eyes. “About the

fact that your sister is getting married today. Come on, Mark, I know you hate not
being there.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay if I miss this wedding. I went to her first two. And maybe

I’ll be invited to her next one.”

This feeble effort at humor worked about as well as it deserved. “What if you

call and say you won’t bring me or….”

“First of all, I won’t. Second, it wouldn’t do any good.”

My phone rang before he could answer, and I took the call, even though I

usually let it go to voice mail when I’m driving. I wasn’t trying to cut Jamie off, or not
entirely. It was my sister’s ringtone.

But it wasn’t a belated invitation. It was Alyssa’s voice saying, “Uncle Mark?”

“What’s up, sweetie?” I slowed the truck, and it was a good thing, because

her next words almost made me forget where I was and what I was doing.

“Ty’s daddy is here, and he hit Mommy.”

“Shit!” I pulled the truck to the side of the road, ignoring Jamie’s startled

response. “Where are you?”

“In the bedroom with Ty.” Her voice was shaky. “What do I do if he comes in

here and wants to take Ty?”

I pulled across the road, then slammed the truck into reverse and started

making a K-turn.

“Lyss, take your brother and go into the bathroom and lock the door. Can you

do that?”

“Yeah.” She sounded relieved. Lyss liked having a plan.

“I’m calling the police, and I’ll be there in just a few minutes. You go into that

bathroom and stay there.” I completed the turn and headed for Rachel’s. “Are you
in there yet?”

“Yes.” I heard a door slam, and Ty said something I couldn’t make out.

“Okay, sweetheart, just don’t move. I have to hang up now to call the police.”

I did have to. Jamie didn’t have a cell phone.

But my hand was shaking when I hung up on Lyss, so he reached over, took

the phone, and dialed 911

for me as I explained to him just why he was doing that.

I have no memory of that drive to Rachel’s. I know it seemed to take forever

at the time, but I was so focused on my destination it’s a miracle I didn’t get into an
accident on the way. I do remember parking the truck, but only as a shrieking of
gears when I rammed it into park somewhere in the vicinity of the curb. I jumped
out and ran for the rickety porch attached to the front of the double-wide trailer.

I think they heard me coming, because Brian tore down the stairs as I raced

toward them. I balled my hands into fists, which did me no good whatsoever,
because before I even raised them, he hit me so hard I reeled backward.

I didn’t actually land on my back, but I did stagger and drop to sit on the

grass. I raised a hand to my face as I struggled to get back up before he could hit
me again.

I shouldn’t have bothered. By the time my vision cleared, Brian was lying on

the ground next to me, his face in the dirt and his arm wrenched behind him at
what looked like a very painful angle. Jamie stood over him, Brian’s thick wrist in his
hand, and Jamie’s sneakered foot planted firmly on Brian’s beefy back.

Brian was cursing, but Jamie just said, a little breathlessly, “Don’t move. If you

move you’ll break your arm.” I didn’t know if that was true, but it looked more than
likely.

By the time I managed to get on my feet, two police cars pulled up in a wail

of sirens and Rachel burst out of the house, crying and disheveled. She succeeded
in ratcheting the drama level up to eleven by wearing a torn wedding dress over
an obvious baby bump.

As soon as I was sure the cops were relieving Jamie and handcuffing Brian, I

ran into the house, calling for Lyss and Ty. The bathroom door was shut and locked. I
sighed in relief and knocked on it. “Alyssa, honey, it’s Uncle Mark. Everything’s all
right. You can open up now.”

The knob turned and I heard a click as the lock released. Lyss stared up at

me, her face pale and terrified. I snatched her up. Lyss, my brave Lyss, who had
stared down zombies on Halloween, was frightened. And the people responsible for
scaring her were the ones who were supposed to take care of her. I stood up with
her in my arms as Ty rushed out to find his mother.

No matter what else happens between us, Jamie and I will never do anything

like this to our kids. I don’t know where the thought came from, but it felt like a
solemn vow.

I carried Lyss outside, where I found my parents and additional cops adding

to the existing crowd. Mom had probably been running last-minute errands,
because she and Dad arrived separately. Brian was standing up and in handcuffs
while Rachel, who was clutching Ty, threw herself into my mother’s arms. Josh was
nowhere to be seen. Jamie stood a little off to the side.

When a cop asked, apparently not for the first time, what had happened,

Alyssa spoke up. “Brian hit Mommy. He said no kid of his was going to be raised by a
fucking whore and he hit her.” She was still shaking, but her voice was firm.

I tightened my arms around her as Brian said, “She’s only saying that because

the fag told her to.”

One of the cops looked at Jamie. “He’s been out here ever since we arrived.”

“He means me,” I said. When the cop turned around, I added, “I’m the fag in

question.” I saw my mother wince in embarrassment, but I went on, “I didn’t tell Lyss
to say anything. She called me and told me what was going on, and that’s when
Jamie and I called 911 and came over here.”

“And you’re Jamie?” The cop looked at him with what seemed like approval.

“Yeah.” Jamie smiled grimly at my father, who had just joined the party. “I’m

the other fag.”

My father stopped dead in his tracks. I worried for a moment that he was

going to have a heart attack.

Brian kept going on about “stupid interfering faggots,” which got him a steady

look from the cop. My gaydar is crap, but this guy was pinging it.

I had the feeling that Brian was not doing himself any favors.

Josh finally showed up and Rachel grabbed him, which left my mother free to

take Lyss from me. My father still hadn’t said anything. He was staring at my chest.

I looked down and realized I was wearing a T-shirt that read “Obama is not a

brown-skinned antiwar socialist who gives away free healthcare.

You’re thinking of Jesus.” I looked up at my dad. I couldn’t even blame this

one on Jamie. I’d bought that shirt myself.

“Dad,” I said. I didn’t get any further. He walked away from the whole

screaming, crying mass of people on the lawn, climbed into his pickup, shut the
door, and drove away.

IT WASN’T until we got home that I remembered to ask Jamie where he’d

learned self-defense.

As soon as we got through the door, Jamie found an ice pack to put on my

eye. “You really have no idea how to fight, do you?”

I shook my head. The truth was that I’d never had to. “It was worth it, though.

Getting hit like that. Brian hit Rachel inside the house and he can make up all kinds
of stories about that, but about a dozen people saw him knock me down and go
after you. And even if she decides she can’t press charges against the father of one
of her children, that isn’t going to stop me.” I heard the bitterness in my voice. Had
Rachel really thought pretending Ty’s father wasn’t violent was going to make the
little boy’s life better? “She isn’t going to have any trouble getting full custody of Ty
and a restraining order, even if Brian manages to stay out of jail.

That’s got to be worth spending what was supposed to be her wedding day

at the police station.” Regulations had required that they bring in both Rachel and
Brian, but they’d let her leave fairly soon. I suspected that her pregnancy had as
much a role in that as Brian’s equally obvious guilt.

Jamie sat on the couch next to me and shook his head. “Talk about making

lemonade….”

“What about you? Where’d you learn those moves?”

“When was twelve I told my mother I might be gay. She hugged me and

started looking up martial arts in the yellow pages. She drove me to lessons
downtown three times a week until I reached a level where she had to drive me to
Iowa City instead. She did that until I was old enough to drive myself. I’m out of
practice, but I’m a third-level dan… that’s a black belt.”

I’d never felt quite so useless. “So you never needed your big football player

protector at all back in high school. You could have beat up Dale and his trolls all
by yourself.”

“No! Setting aside the fact that I wasn’t that good at sparring the first few

years, you protected me from the verbal bullying, which hurt plenty.

And while you were there, I knew someone was on my side. By the time you

graduated, I was good enough that getting cornered by three or four at a time was
something I could handle, at least well enough that they decided I wasn’t an easy

target.

They mostly stuck to calling me names after that.”

I was horrified. “That happened? Three or four people attacking you?”

He nodded, very matter-of-fact. “The thing about that is that if you literally

back yourself into a corner, they can’t come at you all at once. By the time the first
two went down, the others lost interest. It only happened once, and after it was
over, I cut class and brought my mom flowers.”

“You didn’t go to the principal?” As soon as I said it, I realized how ridiculous

that would have been.

“Things were different then, Mark. The school administration looked at things

differently.

You know that.”

“Yeah, and one of the reasons it changed is that some amazing kid was

brave enough to do things like call the ACLU when he couldn’t take his date to the
prom because they were both boys.”

He really had been amazing. He still was. Not for the first time, I wondered why

he was interested in a wimp like me. I hunched over, my head in my hands. I
couldn’t meet his eyes. “You’ve always been so brave, Jamie. Coming out when
you did, defending yourself. I wasn’t even able to admit to myself I was attracted to
men until I was almost twenty, and even then I pretended I was bi. I feel like… I’ve
felt like a coward for a long time. Now I feel like a weakling too.”

He gave me a little shake. “You’re not a weakling. You just don’t know how to

hurt people, and that’s something I love about you. As for coming out? I’m so glad
you didn’t.” He added vehemently, “I’m so glad you hid it from everyone, including
yourself.”

I lowered the ice pack and stared at him, wondering if I had a concussion,

because that just didn’t make any sense.

He was on his knees on the couch, hands on my shoulders, forcing me to look

at him. He looked frightened now, much more so than when he’d faced Brian. “It
wasn’t cowardice, sweetheart. It was a good survival instinct. It terrifies me to think
of what you would have gone through back then.

Christ, what would that have been like for you?”

It didn’t take much imagination to come up with an answer to that question.

If I had defined myself as gay when I was a young teen, I would have been sure I
was evil and probably damned.

Later, as I questioned my religion more, I would have been merely ashamed,

miserable, and lonely.

I knew what Jamie was thinking. But it wasn’t my nature to try something

desperate like suicide. I would have gone on, but instead of just being repressed
and unhappy, as I had been, I would also have been living in terror of my parents

finding out. And if they had found out, they would have confirmed my suspicion that
no one could possibly love me. Antigay therapy would have appeared not as some
pamphlets my mother sent in the mail but as a harsh reality. I’d likely have wound
up at one of those soul-destroying camps. It was hard enough to take my family’s
fear and rejection now.

Fourteen or fifteen years earlier? Yeah, I might have gotten that desperate

after all.

“Pastor Joe.” It wasn’t until I saw Jamie’s puzzled reaction that I realized I’d

said that aloud.

“He was the pastor of the church my family went to when I was around

twelve or thirteen. He was the only one I ever liked. He spent a lot of time with me,
not in a creepy way, just as a kind of mentor. I remember telling him I was really
confused and he said it was normal to have lots of crazy feelings at my age, but I
should just wait them out. That I shouldn’t trust my hormones. I should stay calm and
centered and wait and not rush to grow up.

When I was an adult, it would start to make sense.”

“He knew.” Jamie sat back.

“He must have guessed. And he tried to put me in a holding pattern.” I

grimaced. “And because I wanted approval so much, I did it.”

Jamie kissed my temple on the side of my face that wasn’t swollen. “You did

it because you trusted him and you knew instinctively it was good advice. You did it
because at some level, you knew that anything else would lead to danger and
heartbreak.”

“Maybe.” I sighed. “It didn’t hurt that he was the only adult who ever came

close to having a conversation with me about sex. Or that trusting his hormones was
already getting Matt into so much trouble it validated Pastor Joe’s advice.”

“What happened to him? Pastor Joe?”

“The church kicked him out. I heard he moved to… San Francisco?” I heard

the incredulity in my own voice and started to laugh softly.

Jamie snickered a little too as he snuggled in beside me on the couch, his

head on my shoulder.

We sat there together for a long time until finally he shifted his position a little

and changed the subject dramatically. “I’m getting a cell phone.”

“What?” I sat up. “What about the bees?”

“The bees… it’s probably not the cell phones that are causing the hive death

after all. It’s probably the genetically modified crops. But that doesn’t matter. If I’d
had one today, you wouldn’t have had to hang up on those poor kids hiding in the
bathroom just to call the police.”

I shook my head. “What are the odds of a situation like this happening

again?”

“Not as high as the odds something happens to my dad and the nursing

home can’t reach me.

That’s pretty damn likely. And what if you need to get hold of me and I’m out

of the house somewhere? It could be hours before someone tracks me down.” He
stood up. “Yeah, people got along without them for a long time, but now that
they’re available….” He shrugged. “I’m getting one.”

ABOUT two weeks later, Jamie was planning an exciting evening stocking

shelves at a food pantry and I was going to watch Rachel’s kids while she and Josh
went to a movie or something. Things had calmed down and they’d finally
succeeded in getting married, but they’d had nothing resembling a honeymoon, so
I figured the least I could do was treat them to a date night. I’d gotten a DVD of
the latest Pixar production and looked forward to watching them watch it. Kids’
movies are always much more entertaining when you can see them through an
actual kid’s eyes. But when I got back from a meeting that morning, I found a voice
mail on my cell.

“Mark, I’m going to have to cancel on dinner tonight.” There was a pause,

and I almost pushed the button to skip to the next call when she added, “I hate this,
I really do, but Dad says Mom can’t babysit the kids or the new baby if I let you see
them too, and I won’t be able to work if Mom can’t watch them in the mornings
when Josh is sleeping, and… I really hate this. I’m sorry.” The beep ending that part
of the message was final.

I stared at the phone. When I’d spoken to Rachel two days ago, I’d

mentioned that hanging with kids in the evening would be a relief after the childish
behavior sure to be on exhibit at the marathon status meeting I’d have to attend
that morning. So she’d deliberately called when she knew I wouldn’t be answering
my phone. So that she could cut me out of her children’s lives via voice mail.

I suppose I should have been glad it wasn’t a text message.

BUT three days later I got another voice mail, this one from Zoe, my favorite

not-sister-in-law. “Hey, Mark, your brother is visiting two of his other sprogs in
Wisconsin this weekend, I have to travel to a stupid convention for work, and my
mom bailed on babysitting because she’s got some kind of hot date in Vegas. Can
you take Luke on Friday morning and keep him for the weekend?”

I called her back. “Um, have you talked to Matt lately?”

“Sure!” Her cheerfulness sounded like it was about to shatter into an

avalanche of cursing.

“Uh, is my taking Luke overnight sanctioned by him?”

“Nope.” There was a pause. “Look, Mark, maybe I called partly as a ‘fuck you’

to your parents and your sister, and partly because I know Matt would have missed

more than one support payment if it hadn’t been for you, not to mention I’m pretty
sure I know who funded most of the Christmas and birthday presents he sends. But
mostly I’m doing this because I need a babysitter, Luke loves you, and I like you,
even though I’ve finally had to drop my fantasy of redeeming my huge mistake in
dating the wrong brother.”

I blushed, and I think I made some incoherent noises.

“Please, just take Luke for a couple of days, and yes, he can be around the

boyfriend as far as I’m concerned. I got a vivid description of how impossible and
crazy he is, and that makes me think Luke will like him. If Matt wants to take a stand
on this, he can man up and decide whether he’s going to knuckle under to his
parents and cut you off completely or stand up for someone who’s always
supported him, and we both know he’ll do neither for as long as he possibly can.”

“Matt’s in a tough position—” I started.

“Tougher than yours?” She sounded about as angry as I’d ever heard her.

“Okay, Mark, I won’t talk him down to you any more than I do to Luke, even if you
won’t save my butt by taking my kid this weekend. But I wish you would take him.
You can do something manly like hiking or fishing or whatever if you think it will
make Matt feel better when he finds out.”

I could have managed either of those, but I didn’t think Luke would be

thrilled. “Will a trip to Adventureland and watching some movies and TV

where lots of things blow up do?”

“The kid will think it’s perfect. Just make sure he doesn’t live on fried butter

sticks and gets off the couch once every couple of hours.”

“Gotcha.” I filled Friday in as a vacation day on my work calendar and e-

mailed my coworkers.

IT DIDN’T surprise me when Luke climbed into my truck wearing his Jedi

regalia. Even though I hadn’t warned Jamie, he didn’t blink either.

My nephew admired Jamie’s Captain Planet T-shirt and saluted him with a

lightsaber. “I’m named after Luke Skywalker,” he announced, waving his mother
good-bye as I pulled out of the driveway.

“Uh….” I wasn’t sure where this tidbit of information had come from, and even

less sure if I should challenge it.

“Oh, and some guy in the Bible, but Mom says don’t worry about that.”

“I won’t,” Jamie promised.

Apparently my parents’ suspicions that Zoe was not taking Luke to regular

church services and Sunday school were correct. And I had to admit that my tow-
headed nephew did look a bit like a baby Skywalker.

Luke kicked the back of my seat a couple of times, and when I told him to

stop, he leaned forward and stared at Jamie. “Are you and my uncle married?”

I nearly choked, but Jamie responded calmly.

“Just dating.”

“So you’re, like, boyfriends?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good. ’Cause my friend Nate has two mothers. They’re married.”

“Uh-huh.” Jamie and I exchanged glances. We were both child-wise enough

to realize we couldn’t be sure what track the kid’s train of thought was chugging
along.

“So if you and Uncle Mark like boys, that evens it out, so everyone will still have

someone to date.”

“Okay.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to say to that bit of kid logic.

Zoe lived near Des Moines, so it didn’t take long to get to Adventureland. We

talked Luke into leaving his lightsaber and robe in the truck, and no one in the ticket
line blinked at his tunic or boots.

Of course, there was a girl a year or so younger behind us, and she was

wearing a tutu. It must be nice to be able to dress according to your fantasies and
have everyone shrug and say it was just that phase.

I mentioned this to Jamie in a low voice, and he said, “Yeah, but what if it was

Luke who wanted to wear the tutu?”

I was enough of a coward to be glad I didn’t have to deal with that issue.

While we were waiting in line for some ride I was sure would make me want to

puke, Jamie said quietly, “I’m proud of you.”

“For what?”

“For letting the kid work out adult mating habits with that mathematical

precision. For not trying to explain that women and men aren’t equally represented
in the population, that not everyone wants to be monogamous, and that for some
reason there are more gay men around than lesbians.”

I rolled my eyes. “I do know something about kids.” Then I thought about what

he said. “Wait, there are more gay men than lesbians? Really?”

“I should have known you’d be distracted by the statistics.” Jamie raised his

voice slightly.

“Mark is a colossal nerd, Mark is—”

Luke, who was standing in front of us, turned and looked up. “Is that a bad

thing?

“Nope.” Jamie winked at him. “Because nothing about your uncle is a bad

thing. He’s perfect.”

Luke giggled. “That’s what Daddy says. But he says it’s really annoying.”

“Hey!” But I wasn’t as annoyed or embarrassed as I should have been. It

made me happy that Luke and Jamie got along. In fact, except for Jamie’s rants
about the food and souvenirs, the whole afternoon went well.

“He gets really excited about stuff, huh?”

asked Luke after a lecture on the amount of crap being tossed into garbage

cans instead of recycled.

“He cares about making the world better.”

Luke nodded. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean I don’t like him. I talk too much too.”

I laughed.

Jamie, on the other hand, confided to me, “That is one weird kid. I really like

him.”

WHEN we got back to my house, it was past dinnertime, and in spite of the

amount of horrific crap Luke had eaten at Adventureland and Jamie’s nauseated
horror at the realization there were far worse things in the world than corn dogs, we
were all hungry. I went into the kitchen to reheat some vegetarian chili Jamie had
made earlier in the week. When I joined them outside, Luke was informing Jamie
that he was to be known henceforth as Han Solo. Jamie took this in good grace
and asked if I was Obi-Wan.

Luke laughed. “Uh-uh. Uncle Mark is always Chewbacca.”

He then ran off to get his lightsaber so play could commence, and Jamie

grinned at me. “I can guess why you got that job.”

I grunted, gesturing at my own bulk.

But Jamie shook his head. “No, it’s not just because you’re big. That’s a smart

kid. He knows you don’t have much to say, but when you do raise your voice, it’s
time to listen.”

I blushed, of course, and shook my head, but he took my face in his hands

and spoke seriously.

“Mark, who taught you that you’re not worth listening to? There’s so much

going on inside your head, a lot of it insightful and even more of it funny, but you
almost never let it out. With all the ideas you have, you should babble like Luke
does, but I have to prod you to find out what you’re thinking.” He moved closer.
“Not that prodding you isn’t one of my favorite things.”

I tried to imagine chattering like my nephew, or even being allowed to.

“When I was Luke’s age, I looked a lot older. People even thought I was the older
brother, not Matt.”

“There’s a shock.”

I ignored Jamie’s dry tone. He didn’t know Matt well at all, and I could

understand why the things he did know led him to dislike my brother.

“I remember being told to act my age, but they may have meant the age I

seemed to be.”

“They? So you grew up fast to please strangers? Or did your parents nag you

as well?”

“They didn’t nag,” I defended them. “But they had three little kids, and Matt

and Rachel were always kind of… rambunctious. I actually remember getting

praised a lot for staying out of trouble.”

“For being the good boy.” Jamie smiled slyly.

“I will just have to devote myself to bringing out the bad boy in you.”

“I thought you already had.” We stood on my deck while Luke fought

phantom Imperial stormtroopers. Jamie’s hands slid down to my shoulders, and
when he pulled me forward gently, I bent down for what I expected to be a peck
of a kiss.

Instead, he opened his mouth and gave me a little shove so that I was

standing with my back to the kitchen door, his knee working its way between my
legs.

“Umm.” I glanced at Luke. He was attacking the Death Star, the role of which

was currently being played by my charcoal grill. Jamie turned my face back to him
with one hand. The other now rested on the door behind me, and his thigh moved
upward, short-circuiting every babysitting neuron in my brain and leaving me
capable only of the reflexive movement of wrapping my arms around him and
kissing him back with great enthusiasm.

Then, suddenly, Jamie shoved me away.

“Later.” He licked his lips.

I realized in horror that Luke was now watching us critically. “Do you think Han

and Chewie ever did that?” His voice indicated nothing other than curiosity.

I nearly choked, and stumbled inside the house to check on the chili. I kept

checking on it until a certain body part calmed down. Even though I was burning
with embarrassment, it took some time.

When Jamie and Luke came back inside, I was putting the salad on the table.

I sent Luke to wash his hands and glared at Jamie.

He didn’t need to ask why, but he only laughed. “What’s wrong? My parents

used to make out in front of us all the time when we were that age, and all we ever
noticed was that the people who took care of us loved each other.”

“It’s different for us.”

“Why? Because we’re gay?”

“Because his father doesn’t approve of us being gay.”

“Well, his mother doesn’t care, and she has primary custody or whatever they

call it, right?”

Luke came back just then. But even if he hadn’t been there, I didn’t want to

argue with Jamie about this. I couldn’t remember my parents hugging and kissing,
and the mere idea of using the phrase “making out” in reference to them was
enough to make me turn paler than Jamie when faced with a funnel cake or fried
butter stick. It didn’t seem a natural thing at all. But my traitorous brain insisted on
asking which set of parents produced the happiest adults. And would Rachel and
Matt handle their relationships more like adults if they had an affectionate and

joyful model for marriage?

LUKE went to sleep in my spare room after only one story, two requests for a

glass of water, and three trips to the bathroom. After bringing the second glass, I sat
with him for a few minutes. The closest he came to mentioning the obvious reason
for his anxiety was when he confided, “My mom’s at a convention, but she says it’s
not cool like Comic-Con. Have you ever been to Comic-Con?”

I had to admit that I had not.

“I’d like to go when I’m bigger. My friend Nancy says her sister goes to Anime

Iowa and that the costumes there are great. Maybe I can go there instead before I
get really big.”

I tried to be noncommittal. I didn’t know what Zoe’s opinions were about her

son parading around a hotel full of androgynous teenagers wearing swords, but I
could guess what Matt’s would be. It didn’t really matter. Luke rolled over and
tucked his hand under his cheek, probably slipping into dreams about Jedi knights
and brave little robots.

THE next morning the young Skywalker blindsided me at the breakfast table.

“Are we going to visit Grandma and Grandpa today?”

I almost poured orange juice on my Raisin Bran. “Uh, no.” I threw a panicked

look at Jamie.

But Luke blithely answered his difficult question with a rhetorical one. “Oh, did

they go to Wisconsin with my dad?” He looked so tiny. The previous evening Jamie
had found a “May the Forest be with you” T-shirt in his apparently limitless collection.
Luke had instantly donned it in lieu of the pajamas Zoe had packed, in spite of the
fact that he had to hike the shoulders up every ten seconds. He was such a baby
that I couldn’t have made myself tell him the truth, even if I could have found the
words to explain.

He turned to Jamie. “I have a new brother who I haven’t met yet. His name’s

John.”

“Ah.” Jamie quickly led the conversation down a different path. “Your

grandparents have a full set of Evangelists now, Mark. What’s the next name on the
list?”

“Paul, probably,” I said.

“And then George and Ringo?”

I choked on my cereal.

Luke was either not a big fan of the Fab Four or, more likely, he’d never heard

of them.

“Ringo’s kind of cool. But Han would be better.

Or Obi-Wan.”

“You’ll have to suggest Obi-Wan to Aunt Rachel as a name for her new

baby.”

In spite of my promise to Zoe, I’d half expected we’d wind up spending the

day playing video games, but after Jamie stopped by the nursing home, he
dragged us out to a farm to visit some friends. On the way there, Luke sulked in the
backseat with his Game Boy, but he grew wide-eyed with excitement when we
arrived and he discovered the friends raised alpacas. He announced that the
beasts were a lot like the tauntauns from The Empire Strikes Back, but they probably
smelled just a little bit better. He was disappointed to find out that they couldn’t be

ridden until Jamie’s friend introduced him to an ancient, sedate horse. Luke was
ecstatic when he got to sit on its back as she led them slowly around in a circle.

He even enjoyed feeding some chickens and listening to Jamie and his

friends discussing the difficulties and rewards of raising poultry in an urban
environment. Our current environment didn’t seem particularly urban to me, but I
learned with some alarm that they were discussing “urban chickens,” creatures I’d
never heard of outside of one of Jamie’s T-shirts. As part of the locavore movement,
environmentalists were keeping chickens in their backyards, something that was not
always greeted enthusiastically by neighbors.

Jamie, naturally, wholeheartedly supported the idea and criticized towns that

passed local ordinances to forbid the practice. I hoped silently that Why Yell had
passed such an ordinance.

By the time we dropped Luke off at his mother’s the next day, he was tired

and slightly sunburned and so full of tales of outdoor things that Zoe joked she
almost expected him to ask for a puppy. “Or a skateboard.”

“You should be so lucky. He’ll demand his very own alpaca.”

JAMIE pretty much moved into my place without any discussion about it. It

seemed odd at first, because before that we’d spent all our time at his father’s
house. Then I realized that was the reason for the change. When he was home, his
father’s absence made him a kind of living ghost, so that Jamie couldn’t think of
anything else. But at my place, he could relax a little.

He could, and did, also do the laundry and most of the cooking. He’d started

volunteering at the co-op again, which earned him a discount on groceries, and he
often salvaged overripe produce and dairy that was hitting its sell-by date. He’d
cook them up somehow, resulting in rows of casseroles and enough tomato sauce
to keep us in spaghetti dinners for months. At least, it would have if he didn’t always
find some family having a hard time making ends meet and beg them to take the
food off his hands.

I mentioned this to Matt when my brother made a comment about

freeloading during one of our now rare phone conversations. Matt responded with
an even more offensive remark about Jamie making a good wife. “I guess you got
yourself a nice girl after all. And one you don’t have to worry about getting
pregnant.”

One of the reasons I try hard not to get angry is that when I do, my mouth

moves on its own. This time it said, “He fucks me, you know.”

“Jesus, Mark!” Matt sounded even more freaked out than he had when I first

told him I was gay. “What kind of thing is that to say?”

“It’s true, at least. Unlike your bigoted insult.” I hung up.

It was true, but not the whole truth. I topped sometimes too. More often now,

because Jamie was under a lot of stress, and there was something about taking
care of him in bed, slowly preparing him, and then holding him while we made love,
that seemed to help him sleep better.

Not that it was always like that. The first time Jamie bottomed made me

discard a few misconceptions about “active” and “passive”

roles. I hadn’t realized sex could be so versatile not just in the number of acts

but in the feelings that went with them. Oral, frottage, even hand jobs in the shower
could be everything from sweetly caring to rough and wild.

But I also understood why things had happened the way they did that first

night we spent together. I’d been stressed out, not to mention being embarrassingly
inexperienced, so Jamie had taken all the responsibility. And now I’d learned to do
that for him.

It wasn’t a chore. It was a joy and an honor to ask him to lie down so that I

could massage the tension out of his shoulders and then kiss my way down his spine,
treasuring my right to touch his strong, beautiful body. I loved opening him first
gently, then insistently, until I knew I’d made him forget anything but that moment
and his need for me. I loved sliding into him as he lay on his back so I could watch
his face while we moved together. On those nights I could coax him out of the
harsh world and its problems into a safe place inhabited by just the two of us. For a
brief time, my arms really were strong enough to protect him.

Nothing else had ever made me feel so powerful or righteous.

Some people say gay sex is wrong because it has no purpose. I pity them,

because they’ve clearly had never found with another person what Jamie and I
shared in those moments.

Afterward I’d hold him while he slept and wonder how long his father’s ordeal

would continue. It should have been horrible to wish for someone’s death, but I
found myself praying that he wouldn’t linger, for his own sake and for Jamie’s.

Because Mr. Novotny’s health wasn’t improving.

When I stopped to see him on my way home from work, half the time he was

asleep and the rest of the time I wasn’t sure he knew who I was, or even that
someone was there.

Jamie smiled less and less often. After a while I realized it wasn’t just his

father’s condition making him anxious. I confronted him, and he admitted it.

“When he was classified as a rehab patient, the insurance picked up most of

the bills. But now that he’s considered just a nursing home resident, it’s not covered
anymore. I’ve been trying to figure out some way to either pay for the nursing home
or maybe build a ramp and have the bathroom remodeled so I can bring him
home.”

I might not visit the nursing home as often as Jamie, who usually went twice a

day, but I’d seen enough to know his father wasn’t coming home again. I also knew
it was going to be hard for Jamie to accept that he wasn’t able to provide the kind
of nursing that would be needed, even if he could find the money to fix up the
house.

Tackling the money issue might actually be the easiest way to approach the

problem. “I’m pretty good with financial stuff. Not as good as my brother the
accountant, but I had to learn quite a bit for work. Can I take a look at the bills and
the insurance information?”

I was afraid he’d be insulted, but instead he grabbed me and buried his head

in my shoulder.

He was shaking a little, and I cursed myself for not realizing just how worried

he’d been.

I spent an evening learning everything I could about Mr. Novotny’s finances.

The next day Jamie and I sat down with the doctor and asked for a realistic
prognosis. Jamie’s face was pale when it was over, but he turned to me and said, “I
think we need a family meeting.”

The next weekend the Novotny house was full. Both Jamie’s sisters and their

families and his brother Jason were there. Eric couldn’t get away on short notice,
but Jessica kept filling him in by telephone.

I was proud of the calm way Jamie presented the problem, because I’d seen

how hard it had been for him to face the facts. But now he was ready to be strong
for the others. “The main asset left is this house. It’s almost completely paid for and
should bring enough money to cover the nursing home bills for some time.”

“Sell the house?” Jason sounded horrified.

“There has to be another way. What about those reverse mortgage things?”

Jamie hesitated.

“That’s an option,” I said slowly. “But the reality is that you will raise more by

selling the house outright and investing the money conservatively.”

“Why is that?”

“Closing costs are a lot higher, for one thing, so you’d lose a lot of money right

at the start.

You’d still have to pay real estate taxes and insurance too. Then there are

maintenance costs.”

“Mark and I have done a lot of research on this,” said Jamie. “We’ve got all

the numbers, and I’d appreciate any suggestions you can make after you look at
them. But I think we should sell the house.”

He showed none of the distress he’d felt when I’d first laid out this option. I’d

also suggested refinancing, something he’d initially liked but rejected after some
thought. I’d been a bit surprised at how practical he was at heart, but I shouldn’t
have been. Things weren’t as important to Jamie as people, and it hadn’t taken him
long to see what would create the biggest fund to provide for his father’s long-term
care.

“But when Dad comes home….” Belatedly, Jason realized what everyone else

sitting at the table had come to terms with already. He looked around vaguely and
added finally, “What about you, Jamie? Will you find a teaching job somewhere?”

“Not right away. Oh, I’ll look for a job at least part-time, or sub, but I’d like to

stay nearby so someone from the family can visit Dad every day.”

“But where will you live?”

“With Mark,” said Iris, as if that was a given.

It was, of course, but from Jason’s expression, he hadn’t accepted that reality

until this moment either. He looked at me uncertainly.

“Mark’s family now,” said Iris impatiently.

“For heaven’s sake, he’s sitting here while Eric’s wife came up with reasons not

to let him fly out and help with these decisions. He’s been helping take care of Dad
for months. If he’s stuck around for all this, I’m sure we can trust him to look after our
little brother.”

Jamie snapped, “I can look after myself!” He looked at me and added in an

apologetic tone, “I didn’t mean… Mark, you know I appreciate everything you’ve
done and the offer to let me move in, but—”

I interrupted, giving him a hug right there in front of his family. “It’s okay. I get

it. And you’ll be looking after me too, right? Making me eat right and keep my
carbon footprint small.”

Jamie looked down at my size-thirteen shoes and grinned. “I don’t know if I

can manage that, but yeah.” He kissed me and hugged me back, and none of the
family seemed to mind in the least.

I could understand how Iris had offended him by implying he couldn’t take

care of himself, but she had just raised herself in my estimation, and as soon as I
caught her alone, I thanked her.

She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Mark. You’ve been Jamie’s dream date since he

was barely five feet tall. I can’t believe that not only did he finally manage to catch
you, you didn’t run away. I have to say it for my brother, he may be crazy, but he’s
not stupid. He had enough sense to fall in love with possibly the only guy in the
universe who could put up with him long-term.”

I didn’t know whether to blush or grin. I compromised and did both. Sisters. “I

can imagine he was an annoying baby brother, but trust me, plenty of guys do
want Jamie.”

“Sure they do. Until they’ve had to deal with the fucking bee fetish or get

dragged to the thousandth rally for whatever cause is going to save the world this
week, or they just get sick of all the damned tofu and natural fabrics dyed with crap
that runs in the wash. That jerk Kevin wouldn’t have lasted even if Jamie hadn’t
moved back here. The only people in the world I’ve ever seen have enough
patience for him are you and my Mom. Even Dad couldn’t cope a lot of the time
until….”

She really surprised me then, because she hugged me hard before turning to

deal with her niece’s demand for a ride to the mall.

I would have been more encouraged by the Novotnys’ acceptance of me if I

hadn’t started to worry that Jamie himself was pulling away. On the surface,
everything was fine between us, so much so that I wondered if I was imagining the
distance I sometimes felt. I’d introduced Jamie to Scott and Jenny, and the four of
us had gone to the premiere of the latest big-budget popcorn movie. That had

gone well enough that we’d gone to a cookout at Scott’s. Jamie and my next-door
neighbor Mrs.

Dvorak bonded on the unlikely topic of mixed martial arts, and I sometimes

came home to find them discussing clinch fighting and submission holds over cups
of tea.

Jamie also introduced me to some of his friends and fellow do-gooders. At

first I was cautious, but it turned out to be a blessing. There was an elementary
school at the end of my block, and for the past couple of years, I’d joined the
Saturday cleanup crew that fixed up the playground each spring. This year,
however, a representative of the PTA called to disinvite me for obvious reasons. So I
wound up spending that time picking up trash along the highway with a gaggle of
co-op employees and volunteers, most of whom were reassuringly normal. Several
of them even had cell phones.

ONE afternoon at work, I was pretending to review an expenditure report

while counting the hours until I could go home. My desk phone rang, and I saw it
was an internal call from a conference room near the Human Resources area. “This
is Mark.”

“Mark! It’s Pete. Pete Grundy.”

The last name was unnecessary. I recognized his voice even though we didn’t

speak that often.

Pete reported to me, but he rarely visited with problems of his own or made

any for the rest of the staff, so I could go days without doing more than nodding at
him when I passed his cubicle. He was my favorite employee. “What’s up?”

“I’m being fired.”

“What?” I thought I must have heard him incorrectly.

“I went to the restroom a while ago, and I left my jacket in my cube.”

I blinked. Even under our new dress code, that wasn’t an infraction. Unless….

“My badge was on the jacket, and when I came out of the bathroom, the

new head of Security was there. He told me I was fired and marched me up here,
and now….”

“I’ll be right there!” I hung up and raced to the front of the building after

verifying that my own badge was hooked to the lanyard around my neck and
plainly visible.

Pete had worked for Hawktract almost since the company’s founding. He

wasn’t just quiet and competent, he was a walking repository of useful information.
He could remember why software had been written a certain way fourteen years
ago to conform to a requirement in a now defunct federal regulation and knew
how we could fix the code to keep from screwing up a current project. He knew
the name of some guy we could call to find out what had been done with some
antique government-owned equipment we hadn’t been able to track down. He
could navigate the company’s complex procurement process like a master video
gamer taking Mario through the Mushroom Kingdom.

Now someone who had been hired two weeks earlier by our new Corporate

Overlords wanted to fire him for needing to pee. Unbelievable.

Several hours later, Pete and I sat in my office, trying to decompress. I’d have

liked to think I was responsible for his reprieve, but the real turning point had been
his call to a woman he’d once trained who was now a corporate vice president.
She’d said firmly that she could do nothing officially, but that she’d never forget
how much Pete had helped her when she was just starting out. Ten minutes later a
flustered Head of Security had given us a garbled explanation of why he’d suddenly
decided to drop the whole issue.

Pete had his security badge back, but he was still regaining his composure.

“Unbelievable,” I said for about the tenth time.

He laughed shakily. “Thanks for rushing to the rescue. When I called you, all I

could think was that I was losing my health insurance and my retirement plans were
likely being blown to bits.

There’s no way I could get another job at this level at my age.”

I looked at him. That was probably true. He was about sixty, and while he

seemed invaluable to me, his r sum wouldn’t be impressive enough to get him

é

é

many interviews at similar companies.

Not that a similar company would even consider someone who’d been fired

for cause, as the Security Moron had wanted to do to Pete. “I didn’t rescue you.
Your track record rescued you.”

He leaned back in his chair, loosening his tie. His blue eyes were calmer now.

“I think you underestimate the effect you had on that young storm trooper. He’d
have had me hustled out the door in under fifteen minutes if you hadn’t glowered
at him and threatened to lodge a complaint. Who would you have lodged one
with, by the way?”

“I have no idea. He hasn’t been around long enough to know either.”

“Ah, a bluff. Well played.” Pete ran a hand over his bald head and reached

for the bottle of water I’d set on the desk for him. “Thanks for this too.” He took a sip.
“If he’d managed to process my termination, I’m not sure even Brenda’s influence
could have gotten me back in. That would have meant admitting a mistake on
paper, and you know how they hate to do that.”

“True.” I closed my eyes. “Do you ever think this isn’t worth it?”

“Working here? I like my job. I’m willing to put up with the little bit of bullshit I

can’t ignore to keep doing it.”

“Sometimes I feel like my job is all bullshit,”

I heard myself confess. Damn, my defenses must have really been down.

“Then it probably isn’t worth it for you.”

I sat up, opening my eyes, and stared at him.

“You’re good for this company, Mark. But I’m not sure it’s good for you.” He

stood up and straightened his tie. “I need to get home. I’m going to have to explain
to my better half why I’m late for dinner. But maybe we’ll go out after, have a beer
to celebrate the resurrection of my corporate existence.” He winked as he walked

out the door.

“Maybe at Warren’s.”

My jaw must have been hanging open. I certainly wasn’t using it to say

anything. That mention of dinner was the closest Pete had ever come to talking
about his personal life to me. And although I’d never been to Warren’s, I knew it
was the only gay bar in a twenty-mile radius.

JAMIE laughed when I told him the story, but he also took it seriously, only not

for the same reasons I did. “I’m glad you told me something about what’s going on
at work.”

“It’s usually a lot more boring than that.” It was so good to be home, sitting on

the couch next to him, drinking a beer and taking in the scent of the casserole he
was making for dinner.

“I don’t want to know about work to be entertained. I want to know about

you.”

“I sit in an office, go to meetings, and look at spreadsheets.” I took a sip. “This

stuff is kind of crap. We should get some of that other microbrew next time. What’s
that one in Cedar Rapids?”

“That may be a record for changing the subject, even for you.” He’d been

holding my hand, but he let it go.

“What? We’ve been talking about my job for twenty minutes.”

He sat back, crossing his arms. “No, we’ve been talking about one of your

coworkers for twenty minutes. When I try to talk about you, the conversation hits a
brick wall.”

“There’s just not much to say.” We’d gone over this before, and these talks

always left me feeling bewildered.

“How about this: How much do you hate being there? Why do you hate being

there?”

“Hate’s a strong word,” I said, as if it wasn’t one that ran through my mind half

a dozen times a day.

“Okay, then, let’s talk about what would be better.” He sounded exasperated.

“What do you want, Mark?”

“That’s easy. You.” It was true. I got through the worst of my days by

remembering I could go home to Jamie.

“No, I mean, if you could have any job in the world, what would it be? If you

could live anywhere, where would you go?”

“I’m happy where I am. But….” I began to wonder if he was hinting that he’d

like to move eventually. “Where would you like to live?”

Instead of answering, he slammed his forehead with the palm of his hand and

stomped off to the kitchen to do the dishes.

The whole conversation left me puzzled. I felt like I’d done something wrong,

but I didn’t understand what. And as if to confuse me even more, that night Jamie
shoved me down on the bed and fucked me with something like fury, then pulled
me close and said in a shaking voice, “I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you,
Mark. I only wish you could believe that.”

I thought I must have misheard him. “Why do you think I don’t?”

But he didn’t answer me.

A FEW weeks after my sister erased me from her kids’ life, I helped Jamie’s

family move the last items out of their old home. I hadn’t been surprised when the
house sold quickly. It had been well maintained and was in a good neighborhood,
just the kind of place a growing family would want, and the local economy was
doing fairly well.

Several companies, including the one I worked for, were expanding, so

people were actually moving into the area.

I was impressed by the way the rest of the family helped Jamie and me clear

forty years of furniture and clutter from the house and garage. It took weeks, but it
seemed like every weekend at least one brother or sister showed up to clean,
supervise a yard sale, or sort items to be taken to Goodwill.

One person who was not involved was Mr.

Novotny, because we hadn’t told him about selling the house. Most likely he

wouldn’t have understood if we’d tried to explain, but there was no point in risking
upsetting him. At first I expected him to guess something was going on, but illness
had weakened even his shrewd mind. He never gave any sign that he suspected.

There were other reasons for stress. Jamie’s insistence on sending as little as

possible to the landfill slowed down the process and prompted Iris to call him a
recyclopath. We had more conversations than I cared to remember about the
relative benefits of bringing the front-loading, energy efficient washer he’d gotten
his father a year earlier to our house or giving it away. “If we use it, we’ll give away
your old washer, and someone else will be using an inefficient machine, but it would
be crazy to throw it out, because it’s only a couple of years old….”

Eventually he decided that the front-loader would give the most benefit to

the environment by serving a large family instead of just the two of us, and it found
a good home with a shamefacedly grateful woman Jamie had met when working
at the local food bank. I chatted with her when we dropped it off and discovered
she was seriously underemployed, so I got her a job interview with the company I
worked for as well. Hanging with Jamie was turning me into a do-gooder.

Jason was even harder to deal with than Jamie, because he resisted throwing

out, selling, or recycling many things that neither he nor anyone else in the family
had any space to keep. A stack of Rubbermaid containers full of keepsakes with
Jason’s name on them joined Matt’s furniture and Rachel’s stash of children’s
clothes in my garage.

My poor truck was never going to see the inside of the structure.

Lisa, whom the family had a tendency to refer to as “Eric’s wife” instead of

using her name, divided her time between sulking because she thought she wasn’t
getting her fair share of valuables and doing her best to pretend she was above
such petty thoughts. Jessica kept shoving a few extras to Eric’s pile of keepsakes to
smooth things over, but that just annoyed Iris, who wanted her sister-in-law to man
up and stop being paranoid.

The last weekend before the closing, everyone was there to finish emptying

the house and garage. Predictably, even though we’d been moving items out for
weeks, there was still a mountain of junk lurking in every closet and corner.

As Jamie shoved a couple of boxes into the back of his father’s aging Camry,

I heard Jessica’s teenage daughter complain to her mother that she should have
gotten the car. “Uncle Jamie doesn’t even like to drive, and I could use it for school,
and—”

I heard Jessica’s voice raised in anger for the first time. “Your Uncle Jamie has

put his entire life on hold to take care of your grandfather, and he’s been using that
car to get back and forth to the nursing home when the weather is bad. He’s not
going to bike miles in the rain because you don’t want to take the school bus.”

The exchange made me feel better. Oh, the girl was selfish, but teenagers are

self-centered, and the way Jessica stood up for Jamie told me how much his family
valued him. Even if he was a bit of a recyclopath.

I looked to see if Jamie had heard the exchange, but he was arguing with

Jason over the disposition of a mismatched and cracked set of dishes that
apparently evoked memories of family dinners past. They were both dressed for the
occasion, Jamie in a T-shirt with a recycling symbol while Jason’s read “Go green.”
No one could have mistaken them for anything but brothers.

I snagged an old sink Jamie was sure some agency could use to fix up an old

house even though Habitat for Humanity had turned up its organizational nose at
the cracked, paint-stained thing. I caught Iris’s eye and we exchanged a look.

Quietly, we slipped the sink into the back of my truck and shoved a plastic

garbage can full of holes in front of it. We tossed in some more crap, threw an old
tarp over the lot, tied it down, and then turned to look at the empty garage.

“I feel like we should leave an old bike or some empty flower pots here to

keep it company,”

she said. “It looks… lonely.” She shook her head.

“Never mind. Let’s make a trip to the landfill before one of my brothers

decides that garbage can is some kind of heirloom.”

We made our escape and Iris leaned back in the passenger seat, propping

her sneakered feet up on the dashboard. She sighed deeply and surprised me by
saying, “Are you okay, Mark? I know I was mean to you because you were in the
closet because it wasn’t fair to Jamie. But I didn’t want you to lose your family
either.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, even though I worried about it almost constantly. “They

haven’t cut me off. My father’s not talking to me, but everyone else is. I took my
mom to the doctor’s yesterday.

I’m helping my sister fix up her place when Mom’s watching her kids. I spend

time with my brother’s kid too.” I’m still allowed to see one of my brother’s kids.

Her voice was even sharper than usual. “Oh, so they let you help them?

Hooray. And what do they do for you, Mark? Shit, what does anyone do for you?
Who does anything for you?”

First, I was shocked that she thought my family didn’t help me out as well. But

when I thought about it, I could only come up with one name in answer to her
question. “Jamie. Jamie cooks and generally makes sure I eat right, does most of
the work around the house and the shopping because I’m working full time and he
isn’t, and… lots of other things.”

“I bet.” She smirked.

“I didn’t mean that.” Shit. That brought out a megablush. “Well, not exclusively.

I mean, he thinks of things for us to do together.” I blushed even more. “Like movies I
might like even though he doesn’t as much, inviting my friends over, things that are
mostly for me.”

“And that’s rare in your life, isn’t it?”

Damn, I was beginning to hate her again. “No, no. Before… they got so upset,

my family used to invite me to do things all the time.”

The amusement had faded and she was back to her verbal shark attack.

“Like what? Babysit?

Move furniture? Go to church? Meet nice girls who would give them even

more grandchildren?

Yeah, that’s really helping you, Mark.”

By then I wished desperately that the landfill wasn’t located quite so far out in

the back of beyond. “Wait, that’s not true. There’s more to caring about people
than just doing things for them.

I don’t need much, and family chips in to help whoever needs it most, not

because they care for that person most. Well, look at your family.

You’ve been caring for your dad, and now you’re caring for Jamie too

because he’s gone through a lot lately.”

She had been leaning toward me, staring intently, but now she sat back. Her

voice was suddenly very soft. “And you haven’t been going through a lot lately? Of
course, your family is responsible for a lot of that, so… don’t worry.

We’ve got your back now.”

I clutched the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at the unchanging

landscape of corn and soy fields along the flat country road, and wished very much
I were back in the driveway arguing with Jamie about the damned sink. “You have
to understand. It’s so hard for them because of their faith. They don’t think they can
accept me and be Christians.”

She snorted, her voice taking on its usual edginess. “Mark, you are the only

Christian in your family.”

It seemed silly to keep insisting there was nothing virtuous about wanting to

take care of Jamie, but the truth was that if anything, I was being selfish. I loved
having him living with me, even if I suspected he was eyeing my backyard for a
good spot to set up a chicken coop and that he did the cooking to ensure I didn’t
buy too much genetically modified imported food with carbon footprints the size of
Sasquatch’s. He also did the laundry, and I was positive that was because he didn’t
want me using the dryer. He’d long since installed a clothesline in back of the house
and a drying rack in the basement. And the laundry room shelf now looked like part
of the pantry. Jamie somehow managed to wash clothes in products like baking
soda and vinegar.

I wouldn’t have minded mac and cheese and piles of dirty laundry lying

around as long as he smiled when I walked through the door and I could end a
rough day by pulling him into my arms. I wanted to be able to do that every day for
the rest of our lives.

I just wished I could be sure that was what he wanted.

AT LAST I got a phone call from Josh letting me know Rachel had had the

baby. He carefully parroted a few visiting hours, which I recognized as occurring
during times my parents would be at church. I’d learned Josh was willing to do
whatever Rachel asked as long as it didn’t require too much effort, so I guessed he
was following her strict instructions. And I wasn’t surprised when he hung up after
providing basic details like the baby’s health, sex, and weight. It wasn’t overly
friendly, but it was better than most of what I got from my family these days.

The next day Rachel handed me a pretty baby boy. “We’re calling him Paul.”

I rocked him gently. Inasmuch as he showed any emotion at all, he seemed

bored. “So Mom and Dad won out on the name.”

Rachel made a face. “These days it’s easiest just to go along with whatever

they say.”

The baby yawned. I smiled down at him, but I felt an overwhelming sadness.

“So will I ever see him again?”

“Of course! I can’t let you come over, but I’ll bring him to visit. I’d bring them

all, but Ty and Lyss might mention it to Mom. They’re too little to remember they’re
not supposed to.”

So much about her words seemed terribly wrong. “I don’t want you teaching

your kids to lie.

It’s okay, Rachel.” It wasn’t, and we both knew it.

“You’re not going to break up with him ever, are you?” she asked suddenly.

“Why would I break up with Jamie?”

She rubbed her forehead. She looked very tired, and I almost offered to leave,

but she went on. “It’s just like you. I always imagined you seeing someone, falling in
love, and having that be it, for life.”

I remembered walking into the co-op and seeing Jamie stocking produce

that first day.

“That’s pretty much the way it happened.

Sometimes I think that I knew subconsciously way back in high school, when

he was much too young, and that’s why there was never really anyone else.”

She shook her head. “Shit. That would be so perfect if he’d been a girl.”

“It seems perfect to me.”

“But not to Mom and Dad.”

I looked away from her and watched Paul for a while. He was still wrinkled

and red, but I could see the resemblance to Tyler already. I hoped the brothers
would be close. A two-year gap was problematic. They might bond, or there could
be a lot of jealousy. Alyssa would be good with her new baby brother as long as he
didn’t challenge her position as alpha.

I wouldn’t be able to watch those relationships develop. But at least I’d get to

enjoy Paul’s babyhood a little. Still, I left the hospital felling depressed.

That was nothing new. Jamie and I had both been moody lately. He tried to

hide it by rushing from one volunteer activity to another, to the nursing home, and
then back home to cook elaborate meals that left me feeling protein deprived. He
was flirting with veganism, which was bad for my health. Whenever I knew I’d be
coming home to veggies and soy, I found myself driving up toward the interstate at
lunchtime. There was a Culver’s there, and I’d down ButterBurgers and custard,
feeling almost as guilty as if I were cheating on Jamie instead of just his choice of
cuisine.

I knew I should tell him dairy and eggs were necessary to my happiness, but I

couldn’t bear to.

For all his outward activity, he seemed adrift.

He’d tried to get work as a substitute teacher, but they never called him. He

couldn’t take a full-time job because he met with his father’s doctors several times
a week, and he hadn’t been able to find a part-time position with flexible hours that
wasn’t with some soul-destroying multinational corporation like the one I worked for.

One afternoon I found him on the deck, staring at my backyard. I gestured at

his T-shirt. “I brake for manatees?”

He sighed. “A friend from Florida gave it to me. You’re supposed to wear it

boating.”

His tone was so glum, I asked, “What’s up?”

“I was wondering if I should put in a garden.”

I remembered the food he’d grown at his father’s house. “Of course you

should.”

He turned to look at me, his head tilted to one side. “What if I wanted a

beehive?”

I blanched a little. “I’m not allergic to bee stings, so I don’t see why not.” I

realized my tone had emphatically lacked enthusiasm, and tried to joke about it.
“Honey is vegan, isn’t it?”

He turned slightly away from me. “I think so.

Some people think it’s bee rape.”

“What?”

He repeated it. I boggled at this, and he looked back at me, grinning. I

realized I’d inadvertently found a way to trigger his sense of humor. “Don’t worry,
sweetheart, I won’t ban honey if you’ll be honest with me.”

“About what? The beehive? I admit I’m not crazy about the idea, but I can

live with it.”

“The way you live with the vegan meals? And buy hamburgers and milk

shakes on the sly?” The smile disappeared.

No kid with his hand in a cookie jar could have looked guiltier than I did at

that moment.

“Um….”

He tried to smile again, but his heart wasn’t in it. “You may have been careful

to toss the bags and cups, but you leave things in your pockets, Mark, and I check
them before taking your suits to the cleaners. Receipts and napkins tell the tale. If
you don’t like the food I’m making, why don’t you just tell me?”

“Because you do like it.”

“I like lots of things, Mark. I especially like you. But half the time I’m not sure if

it’s the real you I’m talking to or the person you pretend to be because you want to
keep the peace.”

I didn’t know what to say. He looked so tired, and in spite of trying so hard, I

realized I’d failed him somehow.

He sighed. “Let’s go in. Dinner should be almost ready.” He managed a weary

smile. “It’s beef stew.”

Dinner was delicious, but my stomach kept knotting up. I shouldn’t let the

conversation we’d just had end there, but I didn’t know how to continue it. The
strategies I’d used successfully to keep peace with my family failed utterly with
Jamie. My attempts to avoid confrontations actually caused them.

I watched and waited over the next couple of weeks, but although he set a

few pots of herbs out on the deck, he never put in a garden, much less a beehive.
As if he wasn’t sure he’d be there in the fall to harvest. As if he didn’t really consider
it home.

I knew then that I had to change the way I approached problems or run the

very real risk of losing Jamie.

I KNEW I was failing to make Jamie happy. I only wished I had a clue what I

could do differently.

Was I boring him? Was that why he always prodded me to talk more about

work? Was I taciturn? I’d certainly never been inclined to chatter. But he’d known
that from the start and it hadn’t seemed to bother him then.

Maybe I wasn’t satisfying him sexually. After all, the closest thing I had to a

kink was a recent addiction to squirting some honey on his stomach and licking him
clean while he giggled insanely.

But, no, Jamie wasn’t shy in bed. If he wanted something more, he’d say so. I

couldn’t solve this problem with a few sex toys.

I was still brooding when we got the phone call we’d been dreading. I’d

been staring at the TV

and hadn’t paid much attention when the landline rang because I could

hear Jamie moving to pick up it up. He always answered without checking the
caller ID and would converse with anyone from pollsters to wrong numbers. So it
took a few minutes for the quality of his responses to strike me. He was monosyllabic,
his tone flat and almost cold.

I got up and reached his side as he set the phone down. I pulled him to the

couch and held him. I didn’t need to ask what the news was.

“I have to call the rest of the family,” he said at last, but he didn’t move.

I wanted to say I’d do it for him, but that would have been wrong. His brothers

and sisters deserved to hear from him. So I sat there with him, waiting until he was
ready. At last he sighed and said, “I wasn’t there.”

“Yes, you were!” I heard the shock and indignation in my voice and softened

it. “You were there every day for over a year. You were there when it mattered.”

“Tonight mattered.”

THE next few days were difficult. A long illness places a terrible emotional strain

on a family, one that doesn’t end with death. Mr. Novotny had been losing himself
bit by bit for years, and the family had truly been in mourning since before I’d met
them. Instead of the shock that follows a sudden death, they felt relief that it was
over, and guilt for that relief.

Most of the arrangements had been worked out ahead of time, but when the

family met with the local priest, his attitude reminded me of Pastor Steve. His cold
blue eyes kept snapping in Jamie’s direction, and he muttered about the lack of
church attendance by the family over the past few years.

I thought we’d have to put up with him in order to honor Mr. Novotny’s wishes,

but Iris and Jessica scowled and made some phone calls.

Suddenly a small ancient man whom everyone addressed as Monsignor

appeared and announced he would be officiating at the funeral. The original priest
seemed annoyed but impotent to resist the change.

Monsignor shook my hand and hugged Jamie, assuring him that he’d been

the joy of his mother’s life and the rock of his father’s old age. He talked about how
strong and loving both Jamie’s parents had been and praised their willingness to
fight on behalf of their children and others who might be “bullied and
marginalized.”

When I asked Jamie about contrast between the utter disapproval of one

priest and the coded acceptance of the other, he shrugged. “I told you, lots of
Catholics treat the Church’s orders as if they’re just suggestions. I don’t know how
they manage to do it, considering just how much they disagree with, but I suppose
they’ve got so much invested in their identity as Catholics….” He shrugged again.
“This may be the last time I go into a Catholic church, and I’m glad I can say good-
bye to Dad on good terms.” He added after a moment, “It’s easier for me, I think.
I’m not a believer like you.”

I blinked. “Am I a believer? I thought I was an agnostic.”

“Well, you may be agnostic about whether Christ even exists, but that doesn’t

stop you from being a follower.”

This struck me as funny, because I didn’t think that was true about me at all,

but it seemed to describe Jamie perfectly.

But before the funeral, we had to survive the wake, a trial conducted in a

funeral home, where the family lined up as dozens of relatives and friends filed by to
make awkward comments. Most of them repeated similar platitudes. Others made
the torture worthwhile by telling stories about Jamie’s father that gave me a more
vivid picture of the man I’d only been able to glimpse through the veil of his
infirmity.

At one point an old family friend commented to Jamie, “I heard you put him

in a nursing home.”

Jamie looked like he’d been struck, and I heard myself respond, “Where he or

someone else in the family visited several times a day, as you’d know if you’d
bothered to visit yourself.”

She turned and walked away, and before I could move from anger to guilt,

Iris punched my arm. “Way to go, Mark. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

This reassured me for a moment. Then I worried. Was it so hard for her to

imagine me defending someone I loved? If Iris, who claimed to like me, thought that
way, I really had overdone the Keep Calm and Carry On thing.

THE day after the funeral, I received an unexpected call. “Mark, sweetie.” I

gripped the handset so hard I nearly broke it.

“Grandma?”

“How are you, dear? I got a call from your mother.” I closed my eyes. “She’s

having a litter of kittens because she and your father finally figured out you’re gay.”

I opened my eyes. “You knew?”

Her voice, as calm and affectionate as always, fluted over the wires from her

retirement community in Arizona. “Oh, I guessed a long time ago. You reminded me
of my cousin Jack in some ways. I don’t think you ever met Jack. After she married
your father, your mother never came to any parties when he was there. And they
didn’t invite Jack and his partner, Bob, to her wedding, which upset more than just
me.”

It was a good thing I was sitting down. “I never knew this.”

“She never told you Grandpa and I didn’t go to her wedding, did she?”

Grandma sighed. “My own daughter. We had such a fight. I really didn’t want her to
marry him, especially after the things he said about Jack. As if I could stop loving
someone who’d been like my little brother all my life, just because of the way he
was born. It was a terrible thing, and even after you kids came along, your father
was so… inflexible. He didn’t even like it when you came to visit us, because he
thought we were a bad influence.”

I remembered the times Grandma and Grandpa had come to visit. My father

had never seemed to be around then. I’d loved going to stay with them in Des
Moines, but that hadn’t happened very often. And I’d been in middle school when
Grandpa had a heart attack and they’d moved away to Arizona. I hadn’t seen
much of them after that, although there’d been Christmas and birthday presents,
and phone calls. Those had gotten less frequent since Grandpa had died.

“Damn” was all I could think of to say.

“Your mother wouldn’t tell you all this, of course. She always tried so hard to

keep everyone happy, and I’m sure she still hasn’t realized that’s impossible. You are
a bit like her that way, Mark.”

It was official. Even my sweet, absentminded grandmother thought I was

spineless.

“It’s the flip side of your being such a caring person,” she went on in a

reassuring tone. “Do people say ‘flip side’ any more, now that you have CDs and
mp3s instead of records? Or does it refer to coins, which are pretty much
disappearing too with debit cards everywhere?”

I waited this out, knowing her tendency to be distracted by words. And sure

enough, she returned to her original point. “It’s always that way. A person’s very best
traits are also the reasons for their weaknesses. And while you were solid as a rock,
Mark, you were always the peacemaker too. I used to get tears in my eyes,
watching you try to keep Matt and Rachel from fighting.”

She sighed again. “I’m so sorry, dear. I should have fought your father to be

more involved. I didn’t because you were happy little kids in spite of all his rules. But
once you grew up, you all seemed so confused.”

“I’m not confused any more, Gran.” And I was suddenly happier as well.

“I gathered that, from what your mother said, although she doesn’t agree

with me. But, sweetie, is this the reason you haven’t called me in months?”

“Um, yeah. I’m sorry. I sent you a birthday present.”

“I’d have appreciated some news more. But you’re forgiven if you promise to

talk to me from now on. Your Jamie sounds like quite a character.”

“He is.” I realized I was gripping the kitchen counter with my free hand so

tightly that my knuckles were white.

“I can’t handle Iowa winters any more, but you should bring him out here.”

“I… I’d like to do that. I’m not sure when, but I’d like to do that.”

MY GRANDMOTHER’S tolerance made me realize I wouldn’t be able to

surmount my parents’

intolerance. I’d believed my coming out had been the first time they’d had to

confront this issue with someone they loved. But not only had my grandmother
failed to change their minds all those years ago, Mom had made a conscious
decision to accept her husband’s values instead of her own mother’s. As for my
father, I began to realize he wouldn’t for a moment reconsider his beliefs.

I forced myself to examine those values from their point of view and apply

their reasoning to my situation. By the time I was done with that mental exercise, I
knew why I’d been subconsciously avoiding it.

Not all sex was sinful. Intercourse between married people was acceptable,

although there might be some disagreement about contraception, any activities
other than vaginal penetration, and even whether women should have orgasms. But
anything outside “opposite marriage” was definitely a sin.

Of course, you could repent of a sin. Rachel had returned to the fold by

marrying Josh and promising not to sin again. Matt could be the perpetual prodigal

son. All either of them had to do after each failure was try not to sin again. If they
failed, they would be pardoned again. And again. Their errors were sad but
understandable, their desires natural even when unsanctioned.

But the only way my family would come close to accepting my sexuality

would be if I promised to fight it. I could fall again and again, as long as I identified
each and every sexual encounter as a mistake. Absurdly, promiscuous, anonymous
encounters with men I met in bars would be preferable to committing myself to
Jamie. Whereas Rachel washed away all her past sins by marrying Josh, my
marrying Jamie would be unpardonable. Unlike Rachel, I couldn’t repair a sin with a
wedding. I couldn’t even attend her wedding.

I remembered how my parents had looked that day when they’d come to

my house and confronted Jamie and me. I’d seen fear in their eyes. I suppose I’d
known for a long time that they hung onto their beliefs because they were afraid of
the dark, the unknown. If any one tenet of their religion was wrong, then it could all
be wrong. Instead of being on what Pastor Steve liked to call the interstate to
eternal life, they might have veered onto a dirt road to perdition. Even worse, there
might be no salvation. Death could be the abyss.

I wasn’t fighting against something as simple as uninformed prejudice. My

opponent was the promise of eternal life. I wasn’t going to win that battle any time
soon.

I opened my laptop. I had some research to do.

JAMIE was quiet and slept a lot the first few days after the funeral. Then he

stepped up his activities so that it seemed like he was stocking shelves at the food
bank, helping plant community gardens, or tutoring special needs kids about
eighteen hours a day. I let him be. He was trying to fix a world that had taken away
his father, and there were worse ways to grieve.

One morning, before he set forth on whatever good deed he had planned

next, I mentioned as casually as I could that I had a meeting out of town and might
be home late. He nodded with the vague expression I’d sadly been getting used to,
and headed for the door. He stopped with his hand on the knob and said, “I’m
going to find something constructive to do soon, Mark, I promise.”

I managed not to laugh. “Jamie, you do six more constructive things before

breakfast than most people manage in a month.”

“You know what I mean,” he muttered.

“Something to earn money.”

“There’s no rush.” I said it as emphatically as I could. The last thing I wanted

just then was for him to accept a job offer.

“Yeah, there is.” He looked over his shoulder. “I can’t keep taking advantage

of you.”

And then he was gone.

With an effort, I managed not to run after him.

Instead, I got in my truck and headed to the interstate. I drove considerably

faster than fifty miles an hour.

WHEN I got home late that afternoon, he was in the kitchen, staring at a large

eggplant that sat on the counter. His T-shirt asked the metaphysical question, “Who
looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ‘Ooh, this could be a little more sonic’?” It was the
only whimsical thing about the tableau. Even his eyes looked sad.

“Meditating?” I asked.

He frowned at me from underneath his shaggy bangs. “I can’t decide what

to make for dinner.

And I thought you’d be late.”

“The meeting went really smoothly.” I squashed my nerves and smiled. “Really

great, in fact.”

I was obviously doing something wrong, because now he looked suspicious.

“You enjoyed a meeting?”

“It was a special meeting.” As I took off my jacket and tie and tossed them

over a kitchen chair, I saw my hands were shaking. No wonder he’d realized
something was going on.

“Mark, where were you?”

My back was to him. I straightened my shoulders. “I had a job interview.” I

turned around.

“In fact, I got a job offer.”

He’d actually turned pale and was gripping the counter hard. “A… where?

What job?”

“It’s near Iowa City.” The excitement I’d felt on the drive home flowed back

into me. “They do contracting work, but it’s mostly educational and health related.
And, Jamie, the economy there isn’t too bad. It may still be hard for you to get a
teaching job right away, but there are other things you can do. Maybe work for a
nonprofit. If you don’t want to live in Iowa City because they don’t allow urban
chickens, we can get a house somewhere nearby and you can have all the poultry
you want.” I took a deep breath. “Please, let’s go.”

“Damn it, Mark, you’re doing it again!” He looked furious.

I’d spent plenty of time wondering what he’d say, but I hadn’t anticipated

that reaction. “Doing what?”

“Thinking of everyone but yourself! Jamie disapproves of the company you

work for, so you find another job. Jamie can’t get a job in Why Yell because
everyone remembers him as the high school troublemaker, so you’re going to
uproot yourself and move. And is this because I said I needed to find a way to
make money? Or because I said once that I liked living in Iowa City? You think I
can’t manage… fuck!” He slammed his hand down on the counter, turned, and
stormed out the front door.

I was halfway across the lawn and grabbing hold of his arm before I even

realized I’d moved.

“Where the hell are you going? You need to listen to me!”

He shoved me away. “Why? So you can fix my life because I’m too pathetic

to fix it myself?”

I balled my hands into fists so that I wouldn’t grab him again and bellowed

my response. “Did you stop to think that maybe this isn’t about you?

That I didn’t do this just to please you?”

He stilled. “What, then?” His voice was suddenly quiet.

I tried to lower my own voice to match his, because we were standing on my

front lawn and I was vaguely aware that people were staring at us.

But I don’t think I was successful. The words were so important, and I couldn’t

really concentrate on anything except getting them out as quickly as possible.
“Jamie, the thought of living in this town forever makes me sick. Rachel’s the only
relative left here who will talk to me unless they’re delivering a sermon or
demanding a favor, and even she won’t speak up for me. I love them, but until they
get past their bigotry, I can’t stand to be around them. And if they ever do accept
me, they can visit me somewhere where at least half the population isn’t going to
give a damn if I hold another man’s hand or kiss him in public.”

He was staring at me with wide eyes now, standing rigidly in place. His grim

expression should have increased my fear, but something in his eyes had the
opposite effect.

“Besides, Jamie, I hate my job, and I love the idea of this new one. I’m sick of

being a manager and listening to people whine all day and not getting to do any
real work. Jamie, the new place is going to stick me in a cubicle and let me code! I
may even be able to work from home a lot, so I’ll be away from the office politics
for days at a time.

And if I can make my own hours….” I paused for a long breath, because this

next bit was really important and therefore incredibly hard to say. “If I can make my
own hours, that will help with something I’ve been dreaming about since I first
started looking up adoption and foster care requirements about five years ago.” I
needed another deep breath or ten. I was remembering holding each of my
nephews and nieces when they were born, playing with them, and the impact of
being cut off from that hit me hard again.

When I focused again on Jamie, he was listening intently but made no move

to speak. I had to go on, though.

“I know we’ve never talked about kids, so I don’t expect you to say yes to

that right away, or maybe ever. But for the rest, yeah, I thought you’d want it too.
That’s why I didn’t tell you about the interview. I didn’t want you to be disappointed
if I didn’t get the job. And I assumed you would be disappointed for me, as well as
for you, because I thought you’d understand that I wanted this.”

He broke his uncharacteristic silence with a long-suffering sigh that nearly

threw me into panic, and his next words were exasperated. “How am I supposed to
know what you want when you never ask for anything? You just give all the time,
you’re always there, and when I ask, you give. You give even when I don’t ask.” He
shook his head, his expression and tone so at odds with his message that I could
barely take it all in. “But damn, Mark, that was the longest speech I ever heard you
make, and I loved every word of it.”

I took a step back. “I… so you’re mad at me, but you’re… not?”

He followed me, holding my arms to keep me from retreating again. “I’m

about as far from mad at you as it’s possible to be. Mad about you…

that’s another matter.”

“Then, you’re glad I did this?” I still couldn’t follow his thoughts.

“I’m glad you did this. I’m ecstatic that you did it for yourself.”

“For me. Just for me? Then… you don’t want to come?”

He shook his head, looking exasperated again. “Mark, why can’t you

understand just how important it is to me to make you happy? And what a relief it is
that I finally know how to do that?”

I was still having trouble keeping up. “It is? I mean, you do?”

“Of course I do! It’s been driving me crazy to know that you’re unhappy at

work. But not only wouldn’t you talk about it, you absolutely hid the fact that your
company got bought out and things were getting worse. And you’re so damn stoic
about the way your family’s been acting, it breaks my heart. Haven’t I been asking
and asking you what you want to do, what I could do to make things better for
you?”

He had, now that I thought about it. But it had never occurred to me to

confess that what I wanted was to take a couple of steps down the corporate
ladder. Although in retrospect, if anyone could understand that, it would be Jamie. I
didn’t have time to wonder at my own stupidity. Too much was still at stake. “So…
you will come? If I take the job?”

A cloud drifted away and the late-spring sun brought his features into sharp

relief even as its warmth soothed and steadied me.

Jamie’s smile was warm too. “Oh, you’re taking that job. You want it, and

you’re going to have it.” He was standing really close now, and his hazel eyes were
alive as they hadn’t been for weeks. “And I’ll come. But there’s something I want to
ask you too. It’s not a deal-breaker, but….”

The relief was so overwhelming, I began to burble out rash promises. “You can

have a garden.

Bees. Alpacas! Anything.”

He gave me a little shake, laughing, and then let me go. “It’s not about

livestock, you idiot!”

And there, on my front lawn, watched by half a dozen kids, a very pleased

Mrs. Dvorak, some other less-pleased adults, and at least two dogs, he went down
on one knee.

BARELY two weeks later, we exchanged what my brother referred to as

“sodomy-based wedding vows” in my backyard. I tried to tell myself Matt was just
pissed off because I’d moved all his stuff from my garage to a self-storage unit and
handed him the key and the bill. I didn’t do it to be mean.

There was just no place in my life for it anymore.

At first I thought Jamie and I would go down to the courthouse and have a

brief civil ceremony with a couple of friends for witnesses, but as soon as she heard
the news, Iris, of all people, announced that we needed a “real” ceremony. I
pointed out that there wasn’t time for that, because I had to put the house in Why
Yell on the market and find a place to live near my new job, all while training my
replacement at my old one. And Jamie quite literally had his hands full with
packing. We didn’t want to put the ceremony off because a dozen things, from
adding him to my health insurance to buying a house together, would be easier if
we were married.

Iris promptly took a week’s vacation, drove down from Chicago, and started

making arrangements. “I said we’d take care of you, Mark. We’re going to do this
right.”

“Let her,” said Jamie. “She needs this for some reason.”

I didn’t think even Iris could pull together much of a reception in a week, but

she found a collaborator in Mrs. Dvorak. Then Jessica got into the act and Mrs.
Dvorak drafted her son, who had chosen the wrong time to pay her a visit. Iris and
young Mr. Dvorak seemed to spend most of the time quarreling, but somehow plans
were made for a casual but surprisingly large affair that filled our house and the
backyard.

Then my maternal grandmother announced she’d be traveling up from

Arizona with two guests. When I got to the airport, I found two men helping her find
her baggage. She introduced me to her cousin Jack and his husband, Bob. “Not
legal in Arizona,” Jack admitted as he shook my hand.

“But we got married in Cali before Prop 8.”

I liked Jack a lot. Bob and Jamie bonded over a mutual fascination with

clean energy, much to the detriment of the packing. They almost missed the
rehearsal dinner because they got lost on the way back from a visit to a wind farm.

Grandma and Luke hit it off immediately, and soon Zoe was promising to

bring him to Arizona for a visit. He was disappointed to discover that Phoenix wasn’t
close enough to San Diego to combine it with a trip to Comic-Con.

It was worth all the horrific fuss just to feel like I really had family again,

although that didn’t completely dull the pain when my parents and siblings refused
to attend. I tried not to think about it and thought I’d succeeded until I looked up
during the ceremony and saw my sister standing just outside the backyard gate,
half-hidden by the garage. She met my eyes, then turned and walked away.

Fortunately I wasn’t in the middle of my vows at that moment, and I

managed to drag my attention back to the minister before anyone, except perhaps
Jamie, noticed. (The minister was a representative of some progressive
denomination, and he’d worked with Jamie on a committee to reduce gun
violence. Or maybe it was reducing litter. Or spaying and neutering feral cats.
Possibly all of the above. Anyway, he was a nice guy and he wore a rainbow sash
as he pronounced us married.) Mrs. Dvorak regaled our guests with a dazzling
display of baked goods, while Jamie’s friends from the co-op showed up with more
nutritious but less sweet fare. Scott and Jenny provided an excuse for more toasts by
announcing their own engagement. Iris and Mrs. Dvorak’s son snarled at each other
with so little apparent reason that Jamie and Jessica placed bets on how soon
they’d wind up in bed together.

Some of the other guests enjoyed themselves so much that Mrs. Dvorak

confiscated their keys and found them beds in my house and hers. She promised
Jamie and I that she would keep an eye on them, make them coffee in the
morning, and get them to clean the place up before they left. Jessica announced
that her family’s wedding present would be to finish the packing and oversee the
movers who were coming during what Iris insisted on calling the honeymoon, even
though we had no time to go anywhere before I had to start my new job.

We spent our wedding night on a mattress on the floor of the crappy

apartment I’d rented in Iowa City. It was the only furniture in the place so far, and
all we needed. We made such good use of it that the people next door pounded
on the wall.

“We need to find a house,” I said. “That one we saw the other day was far

enough away from the nearest neighbors.”

“The one with the huge yard and garage and the rusty trailer out back?”

Jamie sounded surprised.

“Room for you to grow a garden and set up a beehive if you wanted.” I

figured chickens were probably inevitable too, but didn’t want to bring them up on
such a perfect night. “We can have the trailer hauled off, and I’m sure we can do
something about that mudhole in the front yard.

Grass seed isn’t that expensive.”

“Prairie grass?” He sounded hopeful. “We could try to restore some of the

natural ecosystem that was destroyed by homesteading. I know where I can get
seeds and even some plants that would flower the first year.”

“We could.” Bees and chickens in the backyard and weeds in the front. Well,

I’d known I wasn’t marrying the kind of guy who kept a manicured lawn with a
couple of well-behaved shrubs for decoration.

“Really?” He laughed.

“Well, you could. I’ll help out a little.” I took a deep breath and invested in

that honesty thing he liked so much. “I admit I’m not excited by the idea, but I don’t
really care what the yard looks like, and since you do, it should be your decision.”

He wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily. “What do you care about,

then?”

I was tempted to say, You, but I knew that would annoy him in context, so I

really thought about it. “A big hot water heater for long showers, a good Internet
connection, comfortable furniture, and a big flat screen.” The TV that had been
adequate in my tiny living room in Why Yell might not be so impressive in a larger
house. “Oh, and a room for my weights.”

“But what about color schemes?” he teased.

I snorted, that being all the remark deserved.

“You’re really not the fussy sort.” He snuggled up closer. “Speaking of which,

sorry about the wedding. I don’t know why Iris and the others went so crazy.”

“I liked our wedding.” It was true. For the first time since my parents had found

out about Jamie and me, I’d felt like I belonged. I’d been surrounded by people I
knew would come to my assistance whether I needed it or not, and who wouldn’t
hesitate to ask me for favors, not in return but because that’s what you do when
you’re family.

And our marriage was an official thing, recognized by the state. That was

worth celebrating. I had a ring on my finger and everything I owned was community
property. And not the neat little property—or the neat little life—I’d had a year
earlier, either. At work, instead of having an office with a door and managing other
people’s time, I’d sit in a cubicle and have assignments handed to me. Instead of
going out to dinner on a whim or eating junk while I sat in front of my TV, I’d have to
let someone know if I was going to be late. I’d have to talk to him before making
any plans. I could count on him pushing all sorts of crazy plans on me. He’d
probably be hosting political and environmentalist meetings in my living room, and I
certainly hadn’t been on my last protest march. My meat intake would be closely
monitored. I’d have to hope like hell I didn’t develop an allergy to bee stings. Most
unsettling of all, I’d have to be honest about my desires not just in the bedroom, but
in every aspect of our lives.

I’d never felt so free.

About the Author

MARI DONNE was born and raised in New Jersey, but after more than twenty years
in the Midwest has finally learned to relax and enjoy the slower pace of life.
Although the appeal of tractor pulls still escapes her, she loves many other things
about her adopted state of Iowa, not the least that it is the first in flyover country to
legalize same-sex marriage.

Fascinated by books and stories from an early age, Mari always wanted to be

a novelist but fell victim to the dreaded demon of Practicality. She worried that
years of producing mundane, reality-based prose in an office environment would
make it impossible to go back to fiction writing. But when she finally tried, she found
it immensely liberating to be allowed to just make stuff up. Even more thrilling was
the discovery that fantasizing about hot men was actually part of the job
description instead of just a way to survive boring meetings.

Mari and her husband have two grown children and are empty-nesting

happily together.

Visit Mari on her website: http://maridonne.com or on Twitter: @MariDonne42

or e-mail her at [e-mail].