Best Gay Romance 2013 (19 page)

Seth pulls my face down to his, offers me that big bottom lip to suck on. It shushes me.

“Just fuck me,” he says against my mouth.

I do, oh, god, I do. Rising and falling inside him. Seth pushes his hips upward to meet my thrusts. We are greedy together, wanting it all.

And then I close my eyes, just for a second, and see Thom's face. For some reason, it's okay, though; he looks happy. Or at least he doesn't look unhappy.

When I open my eyes, Seth is pumping his cock at the same rhythm as I'm fucking him. His head is thrown back, and he moans low. It's visceral: the sound, the feeling of his hot skin around me. I come.

Coming is like this: Everything emptying. Everything filling. The long, slow release of something I've been holding on to for too long. It is liquid leaving and me becoming liquid and the way Seth says “Aw, god,” and Annie's low whine from the other room.

 

When I wake up, I've got a big white paw in my face, and I realize that while we were sleeping, Annie must have crawled in bed.

Seth's already awake. His fingers are back in the fur at Annie's ear.

“I need to tell you something,” he says.

My soul says:
Oh, shit
. My mind says:
Wait and listen
.

“I got assigned to you on purpose,” he says.

“What?”

Seth drops his eyes, pretends to pick something out of Annie's fur. And then his words come out in a tumble.

“Thom came into the shelter in person when he signed up. He was so sweet, told us the whole story. He wanted you to have something after. It was supposed to be sooner, that's what he wanted, but there wasn't a good match. I asked to be assigned to you.”

I shift Annie's paw off my shoulder, lean up a little. “Is that kind of creepy?” I ask.

The tips of Seth's ears are growing a dark red. I can't help it. I think of his cock.

“Maybe,” he says. “But Thom was so nice, and I thought, ‘A man who's in love with this man must be amazing, too.' I just wanted to see if it was true.”

“And?”

He swallows audibly. The sure man who was in my bed minutes ago has disappeared.

“And…you were not only nice, but you were so sexy. I got sucked in.”

His lip is pouting out so far I'm tempted to bite it.

Instead, I ask, “Would you like to get sucked in again?”

The tips of his ears still showing red, he nods.

I run my finger along the edges of his lips.

“Let me feed the small horse, then,” I say. “And when I come back, I'll see what I can do.”

 

It's been three months and two days, and Seth has moved in. He's brought his life with him: paperwork and photos from Pawspice, a shed full of gardening tools, his ability to grow herbs and tomatoes like he's made of fertilizer.

Annie's days are switching from mostly good to mostly bad. Something has speeded up inside her, is pushing her quickly toward the end. Five times a day, we coax her to eat by cupping Alfredo sauce in our palms and letting her lick it out.

This morning, while Seth cooks breakfast, I mix up the solution to wash Annie's coat—mostly water, a little lemon juice, and hydrogen peroxide. She lies on the rug in the kitchen, the ball between her teeth. She has it almost all the time now, and still she needs the meds.

I wring out the sponge—my skin is permeated with the scent of lemons—and I run it carefully over Annie's face. She closes her eyes when I get near her nose, and I talk low to her, tell her I'm sorry if I hurt her.

Seth chop-chops the onions on the board. The room smells of acid and tears.

“I think it's almost time,” I say. I'm talking to Annie and to Seth. Somehow, they both nod.

Not today, not tomorrow, but soon, we will lose Annie and all she has brought to us. Well, not everything she has brought to us. We'll still have: Memories. Tennis balls filled with holes in every room in the house. A bed that sags on one side. Each other.

Michael Bracken

 

 

 

 

 

 

Political correctness hadn't reached my part of Texas back then and the locals still referred to me as a mailman. As a substitute letter carrier, I covered rural routes on a rotating basis, a different one each day when the regular carriers had their days off. Saturdays I ran RR#2 southwest of town, puttering along the shoulder in a right-hand drive Jeep that had seen better days, stopping every so often to fill roadside mailboxes with bills and bulk mail.

I knew more about the people on my routes than they realized. Five-foot-two, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound Ethel May Raditz told everyone she was on a diet but received a package nearly every week from Godiva. Tom Jobe seemed to be preparing for the apocalypse because he subscribed to a dozen survivalist magazines. And Vince DiMarco, at that time the newest stop on the route, had something to hide because he received more than the usual amount of mail in plain brown wrappers.

He wasn't the only one around town with something to hide.
I was so deep in the closet I wasn't sure I would ever find my way out. I'd suspected I was different in high school because I snuck glances at the other guys when we showered, and had no interest at all in the girls—even after Billy Roy Johnson found a way to sneak peeks into their locker room through a hole in the wall of the equipment room—but I'd never told anyone about my proclivity and I had certainly not done anything about it at the time. Not where I lived. Not in rural Texas.

My family didn't have the money to send me off to college, so I worked various jobs around town until I got on with the USPS. Once I had a steady income, I rented a small house three blocks from the station and proceeded to lead a double life. Derek to my family, Rick to most everyone else, I shot pool with my friends at Gully's on Saturday nights, attended the Methodist church Sunday mornings, and spent all of the holidays with my family.

Sexually frustrated because I wasn't interested in the available women my age—most of whom had been through at least one marriage and were either available to every man who bought them a drink or were seeking baby daddies—I sought release during occasional trips away from town. Dallas and Austin became my favorite travel destinations, but after a few years of casual encounters with men who had no interest in sharing phone numbers or last names, I resigned myself to the probability that I would never experience the kind of relationship that my parents—married thirty-five years and showing no signs of wear—enjoyed.

As much as I desired sexual congress with a hard-bodied young man, I wanted something more. I wanted a relationship measured in years and months, not hours and minutes. I wanted the total package. And I despaired of ever finding it.

One Saturday morning, about two months after he moved into the old Denton place, I found myself with a plain brown
envelope addressed to Vince DiMarco that had been stamped with a postage due notification. I knew most of the people on my route—I'd gone to school with them or their kin, worshipped in church beside them, or was related to them in some way—so I usually left postage-due mail in their boxes. Charlie Waterson, the carrier who worked Monday through Friday, would find the appropriate amount of money waiting in the mailboxes the next delivery day. But I didn't know Vince. I'd never met him—had never even seen him—and the only things I knew about him, other than what I could discern from casual glances at his mail, was what my second cousin Sally Jo, the real estate agent who'd sold him the old Denton place, had told the family during one of our occasional Sunday afternoon cookouts. He was handsome, single, and worked out of Waco as a claims adjuster for an insurance company.

I glanced at my watch. I was ahead of schedule and nosey, so I eased the Jeep past Vince's roadside mailbox, turned up the short drive, and stopped behind a recent-model Lexus. After killing the engine, I unfolded myself from the Jeep, walked past the Lexus and up the steps to the porch, and leaned on the bell. I heard it clang somewhere deep inside the house. I waited a few minutes and then I leaned on it again.

Just as I was getting ready to leave a pink form telling Vince when he could collect his postage-due envelope from the post office in town, he opened the front door. Wet, ripped, and wearing nothing but a royal blue towel wrapped loosely around his hips, he seemed as surprised by me as I was by him.

His gaze quickly traveled from my white pith helmet down over my blue short-sleeve sport-style knit shirt with the U.S. Mail emblem above the left breast pocket, over my navy blue shorts—worn the regulation three inches above midknee—with the dark blue stripe on the outside seam, over my calf-length
blue-gray socks with two navy rings at the top, on down to my polished black work shoes, and then back up to my eyes. Unlike many of my coworkers, I looked good in my regulation uniform. I groomed myself appropriately, took care of my body, bought uniforms that fit, and cared for them as well as I cared for my street clothes.

“I'm sorry,” he said, apologizing for his appearance. “You caught me in the Jacuzzi.”

I held up the heavy envelope. “This came postage due—”

A black-and-white Border collie shot out the door and grabbed the envelope. My free hand instinctively reached for my pepper spray before I realized the dog wasn't attacking me; it was attacking the plain brown envelope and whatever was inside. For a moment we played tug-of-war with it. Then the envelope tore open and its contents fell to the porch, revealing a familiar magazine, one that I received at my post office box two towns north of the town where I actually lived.

“No, Elroy, no!”

Vince grabbed the dog's collar and wrestled it back into the house as I bent to retrieve the magazine. As he struggled with the dog, Vince's towel dropped to the floor. He wore nothing beneath it and I found myself eye-to-thigh with his muscular legs. His thick phallus and heavy scrotum hung mere inches from my face. If he had experienced any shrinkage from his time in the Jacuzzi, it wasn't evident.

I licked my lips and slowly straightened up with the magazine in my hand, unexpected desire flooding through my entire body.

Vince, still struggling to control the Border collie, made no effort to cover himself. He asked, “How much do I owe?”

I told him.

“I'll get it. Wait here.”

He pulled the dog back and closed the door, which pushed
the wet blue towel onto the porch at my feet. I nudged it with the toe of one black shoe, wondering if I should pick it up. I decided instead to step away from the door, and I waited on the edge of the porch near the steps.

When Vince reappeared, he wore chinos and a pale green polo shirt that hugged his thick chest and trim waist. He stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind him to prevent the Border collie from darting out again.

He handed me the appropriate amount of change.

I handed him the magazine.

As he took it from my outstretched hand, our fingers touched. The warmth spreading through me turned into a raging fire. I felt myself stir within my uniform shorts. I said, “I—”

“Yes?” He waited expectantly for me to continue.

My throat was dry, so I swallowed hard and tried again. “I subscribe to the same publication. I—”

Vince looked at me, his dark eyes narrowing as if seeing me for the first time. He cocked his head to one side. “Really?”

I wet my lips. “I rented a post office box a couple of towns over so no one around here would know.”

“You haven't told anyone?”

“Not even my family.”

“So why tell me?”

I motioned toward the magazine he now held.

“Because of this?”

I nodded. Had I made a mistake? Had I jumped to a mistaken conclusion? “I need to get back on the road,” I told him. “I have lots of mail to deliver.”

As I turned to go, he stopped me.

“How about dinner?” Vince suggested. “I was going to grill and it'll be no trouble to throw on another steak and couple more ears of corn.”

A date? He was asking me on a date? I had planned to drink beer and shoot pool at Gully's with my friends—my clueless friends—that evening, just like I did most Saturday nights. We certainly couldn't go anywhere in town.

“Maybe you can join me in the Jacuzzi after,” he continued. “You don't need a suit, and I have a towel big enough for two.”

“I—” I hesitated while my mind raced in a dozen different directions at once. I had always sought companionship outside of town. Did I dare take advantage of an opportunity that came to me? Did I dare risk the possibility that someone might see my car parked in front of Vince's later that evening and question why I was spending time with an outsider? I did.

I asked, “What time?”

 

I returned to Vince's house that evening. I had changed from my uniform into a form-fitting polo shirt, skin-tight Wrangler jeans starched and ironed to put razor-sharp creases down the legs, and well-worn, but not worn-out ropers. Vince wore a light blue, short-sleeve seersucker shirt; tan-colored, pleated-front chino shorts, and slip-on deck shoes without socks. It couldn't have been more obvious that this was a case of country boy meets city boy.

My host led me through the house. I had not been in the place while the Dentons had owned it, but I suspected the interior had never looked so good. The white walls had been recently painted, the hardwood floors had been polished to a shine, and the furniture was sparse but tasteful. Elroy spotted me as soon as we stepped onto the back porch, but the Border collie didn't seem nearly as interested in me as he had been when I was standing on the front porch in my uniform.