Authors: Connor Wright
“Why would he take the celery?” Tanner’s face was pinched. “And yeah, we can check the tapes. We’ll have to, anyhow. I think it’s time we moved this into the office.”
“
T
HERE
you are. I was beginning to worry that you’d been eaten by yams or something,” Jesse said as Chris entered the breakroom. His amusement disappeared at the expression on the other man’s face. “Hey, is everything okay?”
“I was not eaten by anything. I was hit by Kevin.” Chris sat down. “It has been a very bad morning.”
“Kevin
hit
you? What the fuck was he doing here?” Jesse sat up straight and gathered his lunch things together. “Is he still here?”
“Yes. He was making things fall on the floor, and then he was moving celery.” Chris shrugged and unpacked his own lunch, though he wasn’t very hungry. “He may still be in the office. Or—” Jesse was already moving, and by the time Chris got to his feet, he was out the door.
“Kevin!” Jesse threw the door to the office open, heedless of anyone inside. “Where the— What the
hell
is wrong with you? You think it’s funny, coming here and hitting Chris?”
“I, uh—” Kevin’s eyes widened as Jesse stalked across the room and grabbed the front of his sweatshirt.
“You want to see how funny it is?” Jesse tried to punch him in the face, but Kevin moved his head and Jesse’s fist glanced off of his cheekbone. “It’s not, is it?”
“Jesse,” Chris said, “don’t—”
“Pussy,” Kevin said. “You hit like a girl. Fuck like one, too.” And with that he shoved himself up, out of the chair, and the two of them went down in a tangle of limbs and insults.
“Oh my God,” Tanner said, shaking his head. “They do
not
pay me enough for this.”
“Those boys have filthy mouths,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said.
“I’m going home,” Chris said and left.
Chapter Nine
“
C
HRIS
? I’m sorry.”
Chris looked up from the book he’d been paging through. “Sorry? Why?” He frowned; Jesse’s hair was disheveled and his lower lip was swollen, a scab making a dark line down the center. A small smear of blood remained on his chin.
“’Cause Kevin hit you.” He sat down beside Chris. “Sorry I let him get me pissed off. Tanner and Betsy spent an hour yelling at me, and said I’m off for the rest of the week. Like a kid, sent to his room, you know?”
“You did not make Kevin hit me,” Chris said, puzzled by the idea. “So I will be going to work alone?”
“I’m pretty sure he was messing with you because he’s pissed that you spend more time with me than he ever did.” Jesse sighed and crossed his arms, slumping against the cushions. “Part of which is all his own fault, because
he’s
less out than I am. Let me tell you, having a boyfriend who freaks out because someone might know? Not fun. At all. And I’m allowed to walk to the store with you or drop you off, but I’m not supposed to go in and work ’til next Monday.”
“Oh. Out where?” Chris gave up on the book and put it on the coffee table, then turned a bit so that he could see Jesse. “I do not know what it is like to have a boyfriend. I will come home for lunch with you.”
“Out, you know— Oh, right, you wouldn’t. He doesn’t like other people knowing that he likes guys. Not everybody is okay with it, which is stupid, but that’s the way it is.” Jesse put his feet up beside the book and looked at his shoes, frowning as he noticed a round bloodstain on his left toe. “I suppose you don’t. Uh, I never asked you.” He looked at Chris, then went back to watching his shoes. “You’re not, like, completely—I mean, me being gay, liking guys, that doesn’t bother you, does it?”
“I do not like Kevin,” Chris said, rubbing the sore spot on his face. “But Kevin does not like me. Does that make us not guy-likers?”
Jesse made a strange face, but then he smiled a little and shook his head. “It means you don’t like one another,” he said. Reviewing Chris’s words again, he blinked. “You just said that you, uh, like guys?”
“I like you.” Chris’s voice was matter-of-fact. “But I also like Betsy and Ellen and Lucas and Mr. Bunting and your mother and father. So I like people?”
“I like them too, in a general kind of way. What I meant was if, Chris? If a guy wanted to, I dunno, kiss you? Would that be something you’d say no thank you to?” Jesse tilted his head back and watched a chunk of rainbow from the crystal snowflake that hung in the window slide across the ceiling. The conversation was one he’d been dreading and dying to have all at once, but he still had no idea what would happen at the end of it.
“Maybe,” Chris said, thinking about it. “I don’t think I would like to be kissed by Albert.”
“Uh, yeah, I don’t think anyone wants to kiss Albert, except maybe his mother,” Jesse said with a laugh. “But then, Albert is also a stuffed and mounted moose head, so it’s not likely that he’d try to kiss you.”
“True.” Chris smiled at him.
“So, anyway,” Jesse said, still looking at the ceiling and missing the expression, “you didn’t tell me. It’s okay with you that I’m gay?”
Chris tilted his head. “Am I supposed to be unhappy about it?”
“No! Well, I don’t know, I mean, you get to make up your own mind, that’s all. If it’s cool with you, that’s great. If it’s not, well, I don’t know what we’d do, but we’d figure something out.” Jesse folded his hands behind his head.
“Oh. I suppose I am cool with it. I don’t see why I should
not
be.” Chris decided to keep the thought to himself that it meant Jesse might someday kiss him. Other than discovering that Jesse had kept Chris’s gifts and the end of the trip to the market with all the other eggs, Jesse had seemed oblivious to his interest. “Okay?”
“Awesome,” Jesse said, and sat up. “Hey, uh, since we have the rest of the afternoon free, you wanna take a drive?”
“Okay,” Chris said, “let’s.”
T
HE
two of them looked up at the oak tree.
“I thought maybe coming out here might help, or something,” Jesse said.
“Help what?” Chris picked up an acorn and shook it, dislodging an ant.
Jesse shrugged. “Help you remember or something. Like I said, I don’t know what I was thinking, really.”
“Oh.” Chris turned the acorn around and around, then dropped it again. He wandered toward the tree, looking up into the branches, but whatever he was looking for didn’t seem to be there.
“Chris?” Jesse followed him, indecision tugging at him. Now was probably
not
a good time for it, but the desire to kiss Chris was almost enough to drown out his good sense.
“Yes?” One of the lowest branches had grown out to nearly touch the ground, and Chris seated himself upon it.
“I….” Jesse sat beside him, close enough that he had to put his arm around the other man to really be comfortable. “Uh….”
Chris stopped peering up into the foliage and blinked as he focused on Jesse. “You?”
“Yeah. Um.” He sighed and gave up on words, turning and putting his free hand on the side of Chris’s face. He leaned in, then pressed a kiss to Chris’s mouth.
Jesse was— Jesse was
kissing
him! Startled, he leaned away and covered his lips with his left hand. “You… you
kissed
me.”
“Yeah.” Jesse let him go and scooted over a couple of inches. “I wasn’t on the list of people you didn’t want to be kissed by, was I? If I was, I’m sorry and I won’t—”
“No!” Chris slid off the branch and stood in front of him, resting his hands on Jesse’s shoulders. “No, you are
not
on that list. Please kiss me again.” A terrible thought occurred to him and he stepped backward, crossing his arms. “Unless you don’t want to.”
“It’s less about wanting and more about what my lip will let me do,” Jesse said, getting to his feet and putting his arms around Chris. “I hate the way blood tastes.”
“Oh,” Chris said, gently putting a fingertip on Jesse’s chin. “I didn’t think about that.”
“That’s all right.” Jesse tipped Chris’s head back and kissed him again, but Chris made an annoyed sound. “What?”
Chris put a little distance between them, but not enough that Jesse had to let go. “I want you to kiss me again. But I don’t
know
about mouths and kissing. I don’t remember.” Chris closed his eyes as he thought about it. “Other than Sings-like-water, I don’t remember anyone else. And no kissing, because if I was a bird, birds don’t have lips.”
“Oh, well, there’s not much to know,” Jesse said, brushing dark hair out of Chris’s eyes. “Do whatever it is you feel like. Just be careful with my lip, okay?”
Chris sighed. “Kissing needs pictures. A
map
.”
Jesse pulled him close again, laughing and resting his forehead against Chris’s. “Pictures aren’t nearly as nice as figuring it out on your own, though, trust me.”
“Which means there
are
pictures. Good.” Chris nodded as well as he could. “Show me.”
“We’d have to go all the way home,” Jesse said, wondering if kissing Chris a little more enthusiastically would be enough to derail his train of thought. “Which means we couldn’t kiss until after we got back. Besides, you’re brilliant. You’ll figure it out in no time.”
“Hmm.” That was a problem. On the one hand, pictures. On the other, kissing. Chris’s dithering was interrupted by the trill of Jesse’s phone.
“I really hope that’s not one of my parents,” Jesse grumbled, digging his phone out of his pocket and checking the screen.
Withheld
. “Not helpful. Hello?”
Chris stepped back as Jesse’s face went dark, then just as quickly took on a rather different expression, one Chris hadn’t seen before.
“Funny you should call,” Jesse said, looking at Chris and trying not to smirk, “I was just thinking about you. I’m a little busy, just now, but I’ll get back to you in a minute, okay? Awesome. Mm-hm. Bye-bye.”
That
was a strange tone, too, and Chris didn’t remember hearing it before. “Jesse?”
“Just a second,” he said, fiddling with his phone. “Okay, c’mere.”
“What—” Chris’s eyes went wide as Jesse put his free hand around the back of his head, holding him in place. Jesse’s mouth came down against his and his
tongue
was pushing at his lips, wanting
in
, and the idea was so strange that he couldn’t decide what he should do. On top of that
,
Jesse had gotten a leg between his own and it was
rubbing
against the front of his
pants
and he simply could not
think
. He tried to say something, but all that came out was a kind of squeak.
Jesse’s lip stung, but he ignored it in favor of kissing, in favor of moving his hand from Chris’s hair to his hip, hitching himself closer at the sound Chris made. He answered with a hum of his own, but as his overtaxed lip split again, he jerked his head back.
“And yeah, that
was
a giant fuck you,” Jesse said, to his phone. “I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. Here’s your proof that it’s
over
.”
Chris blinked stupidly at Jesse as he fiddled with his phone again, licking his lips and breathing fast. “Jesse?”
Guilt smashed into him, hard, and Jesse looked at the tree instead of at Chris. “I’m sorry, Chris, I shouldn’t have— I’m sorry. That was really, that was— I’m sorry for being a dick. For dragging you into it.”
“Your lip is bleeding.” Chris sidled up to him, then blotted at Jesse’s chin with the cuff of his shirt.
“Don’t do that,” Jesse said, shaking his head and gently pushing Chris’s hand away. He felt strange, his guilt mixed up with remorse, horror, and disbelief that he was at all concerned about laundry. “You’ll stain your shirt.”
“But you’re bleeding.” Chris pressed cloth against the cut. “You’re not food yet. Blood means you might be.”
His guilt poked more sharply at him. He’d childishly thrown more at a possible lunatic than he should have and Chris was
worried
about him. “Chris, I—” His phone rang again.
Withheld
. Taking a deep breath, he answered anyhow. “H’llo? Oh.” He dropped his hand again and pressed the end-call button. “Christopher, I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Answered your phone?” He moved his hand, frowning as more blood welled up.
“No. Well, yes and no. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.” Among other things. “I should’ve been slower.” Sweeter. Kinder. Less selfish.
“Oh. Well….” Chris moved his hand away from Jesse’s mouth and tilted his head. “You could try again?” It had been overwhelming, yes, but not so much that he was frightened. The thought of trying it again, moving more slowly, intrigued both himself and his little voice.
“I’d love to,” he said, touching his lower lip, “but I think I’d better not.” Jesse wrinkled his nose as he looked at the blood on his fingertips. “Not until things heal up here, anyhow.”
“All right.” Chris nodded, dabbing at Jesse’s chin again. He could smell the coppery-ferrous scent of Jesse’s blood; it reminded him that he had other, more vital concerns. “I never ate lunch. Could we go find some food?”
“Really?” Jesse took Chris’s hand. “And I never finished mine, so yeah. Let’s go find something to eat.”
Chapter Ten
“S
O
EXPLAIN
this new look of yours,” Desmond Swanson said, his mouth twisting as he lifted his chin in Jesse’s direction. “Have you two not been getting along?”
“Kissing is getting along, yes?” Chris said, frowning in thought.
“I would say it was, as long as you didn’t hit him because of it,” Leanna said, glancing from Chris to her son’s split lip.
“No! I didn’t hit
anyone
, even when Kevin hit me.” Chris put his fork down and touched the sore spot on his face again. “And he was moving celery.”
“Kevin hit you?” Desmond glanced at Jesse again. “Maybe you should explain.”
“Kevin came to the store, today, to mess with Chris,” Jesse said, tiredly, not looking at his father. “Somewhere in there, he hit Chris a couple of times, over the celery. I have no idea about that, though. When I found out, I kind of lost my temper and Kevin and I, uh, got into a fight. I, um, got told to stay home ’til Monday.”