That left Gavin, his parents, Miles, and Grandma Frances at the table. Gavin’s father turned to Miles. “Now that everyone else is gone, I have something to ask you, Miles.”
Gavin felt his heart take a nose dive. What could his father possibly ask Miles at this point? Was he upset that Gavin and Miles had spent the night together? Why would that matter, now that the concert was over?
Miles put his fork down. “Yes, Richard?”
“Do you think there’s enough residual talent in this family to record again?”
“Absolutely,” Miles said. “But as you know, the music business is very finicky. I have a couple of feelers out to people I know. Once I get back to Miami, I’ll see what’s what, and I’ll have a better answer for you then.”
“Fair enough,” Richard said.
“Thanks for everything, Dad,” Gavin said. “What do you want me to do with the loaner car?”
“Give me the keys,” Gavin’s mother said. “I’ll drive it back to Eau Claire for you.”
“Your mother is a sly one,” his father said to him. “This way she gets out of taking your grandmother up to the lake to pick up her belongings.”
“Just giving you some mother-son bonding time,” his mother said and then smiled. “Remember that, Gavin. Even big boys need to spend some time with their moms.”
“You’ll never have to worry about that with me, Mom.” Gavin leaned over and kissed her cheek. “But I have to inspect the car first before I return it.”
His dad laughed. “I trained you too well, my boy. Come on. Let’s look at that car together.”
He paid the bill, and Gavin’s mom left with Grandma Frances to get her luggage while the men walked out to the parking lot and Gavin and his father looked over the car together. “Not a mark that wasn’t there when I gave it to you,” his dad said approvingly when they were finished. “You’re really growing up.” He looked over at Miles, then back at Gavin. “I trust you can make your way back with Miles?”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t get into trouble,” Miles said.
His father raised an eyebrow. “Do you know my nickname for Gavin?”
Miles smiled and began to sing, “
Carry on my wayward son, there’ll be peace when you are done
.”
His father laughed. “As long as you know what you’re getting into.”
Gavin hugged his father good-bye, his dad and Miles shook hands, and then Gavin and Miles walked back to the motel room slowly. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and cloudless, temps in the low seventies.
“You said something about a boat ride,” Miles said.
“Down the river,” Gavin said. “You want to go?”
“I’m in no rush to get back. I’m not leaving for Miami till tomorrow morning.”
“Then I see another boat ride in our future. This one without oars.” Gavin used his cell phone to find the time of the next run and booked two tickets.
There was a ton of summer traffic on the local roads through the Dells, everyone enjoying the holiday weekend, and it took a long time to get to the pier where the boat was docked. Gavin wanted to ask Miles more about what his father had mentioned—the possibility of the Sweethearts becoming a recording act—but he knew he wouldn’t get any more from Miles than his father had.
By the time they parked, they had to run through the lot and managed to jump on the long, low boat at the last minute. They made their way up to the pointed bow and leaned against the railing.
“I can see why people like Wisconsin,” Miles said. “It’s so beautiful.”
With a whistle, the boat left the dock and moved forward slowly through the placid green water.
“You wouldn’t like it so much in the winter,” Gavin said. “Too much snow and ice. I remember growing up in Eau Claire and having to plod through snow drifts to get to the school bus stop. The snow would get down my collar and in my boots, and I’d be soaked through by the time we got to school.”
“Change that to heat and sweat, and you’ve got Miami,” Miles said.
The boat hit a piece of rough water, and he lost his balance, grabbing for Gavin’s hand to steady himself. Gavin liked the pressure of Miles’s hand in his and wouldn’t let go once the boat was moving smoothly again.
The sandstone rock formations were impressive, and in the narrow parts of the river, where the tall trees leaned together to form an arch, it felt almost like being in church.
“You’re probably going to be really busy once we get back to Miami,” Gavin began.
“I already have projects queued up,” Miles said. “But I can’t work every minute of every day. We’ll see each other.”
“It won’t be the same, though. Not like having you in the same house, seeing you and working with you all day long.”
“I think it will be good for both of us to have some time on our own again,” Miles said. “These last couple of weeks have been like living in a terrarium. Amazing, but artificial. We need to be sure we can be together when the rest of the world is around.”
“Do you think we can do that?”
“We can sure as hell try,” Miles said. “Now come on. I want to go to the upper level and see if I can get some pictures.”
Miles snapped photos with his phone, and they lounged together until the boat returned to its dock. They stopped for dinner at a roadside diner, where nearly every dish had cheese in it, and they laughed together about what a nightmare the state would be for someone who was lactose intolerant.
It was late evening by the time they got back to Starlit Lake. The house was quiet and dark, no cars in the drive, no lights in any windows. For the chance to stay there one last night, Gavin had volunteered to take care of closing the house up until the family made a final visit over the Columbus Day weekend. He and Miles stripped all the beds, and Gavin ran a couple of loads of laundry. He cleaned out the fridge while Miles packed up his equipment and loaded it into his SUV.
Most of the beds in the house at Starlit Lake were twins or doubles. As Gavin emptied the dryer, he made up the beds, saving the queen-size bed in the blue bedroom on the second floor for himself and Miles. He figured he had enough time in the morning to do a last load of laundry and wipe out all signs he and Miles had shared the room.
Once he’d finished everything, it was nearly midnight, and he walked down to the studio. The room was empty of everything Miles had brought, and seeing the space as just another room in the big house gave Gavin a pang of sadness.
Miles sat on the bed with his laptop open. “Come look at this,” he said, motioning Gavin over.
It was a YouTube video of Gavin and his family singing “Apple Cider Time” the night before, and it already had nearly twenty thousand hits. It was a very professional video, not from someone’s cell phone, and it was strange for Gavin to watch himself on stage.
When the song was over, he looked at Miles. “Where did this come from?”
“I hired a guy,” he said. “He did each of the numbers.”
They went through “Down in the Valley” and “Milking the Cows,” and Gavin marveled at each one. The hits were all around the same number.
“Wait till you see this,” Miles said. He clicked on the last video, for “I’m Yours,” and as the music started, Gavin’s jaw dropped as he saw the counter at nearly a hundred thousand.
“Oh my God,” Gavin said when the song was finished.
“Fortunately my video guy has taped a few of Jason’s Mraz’s concerts, and he got permission before he posted the clip.” He looked at Gavin and smiled. “Mraz’s people liked your cover, and they’re willing to license the song. My video guy can pull the audio track from the video and create a high-quality MP3 from it. I just e-mailed everything to your dad for his approval.”
“He
has
to approve it,” Gavin said.
“I’m sure he will. And as soon as he has the paperwork vetted, I’ll put the song up on iTunes for download. We need to catch this wave as soon as possible.”
Miles leaned back against the wall, his legs out in front of him. “It’s official,” he said. “You guys are stars.”
Awesome Numbers
Miles closed the laptop, and they walked out to the dock, where they sat, dangling their legs above the water. It had cooled down, and there was a full canopy of stars above them.
“When I was a kid, I used to lay out here at night,” Gavin said. “I’d look up at the stars and wonder who else was out there, someplace else, watching those same stars, and if I’d ever meet them. I never left Wisconsin until I was about fifteen, and though I knew my grandma and her sisters had been singers and been to Nashville and to California, the rest of the world was so strange to me.”
“That’s funny,” Miles said, taking his hand. “When I spent summers in Guatemala, I’d lay out on the tin roof beside my bedroom window and look up at the stars too. I never knew where I belonged—with my
tio
and
tia
in Chimaltenango, with my Goodwin grandparents in Chicago, or with my parents in Miami. I didn’t know who I was.”
“Even in Miami? There’s such a range of people there.”
“Back when I was a kid, there wasn’t as much crossover as there is now. Anglos were with Anglos, Cubans with Cubans, and there weren’t as many Latin Americans or South Americans. The Cubans spoke a different kind of Spanish than I did, faster and with more slang. And I used these words I’d learned in Chicago, like calling soda ‘pop,’ so the Anglos looked at me like I was a foreigner.”
“When I was a kid in Eau Claire, we were very aware of ethnicity. The Olsons were Swedish and the Agnellos Italian. The Krogers were German, and my dad’s family was Polish, though so far back that nobody ever spoke the language. Then I got to Miami, and we were all thrown together as Anglos and there were all these ethnic groups I’d never even heard of. I met a model who was from Eritrea, and I had to ask him where that was on the map.”
They stayed out there for a while, then walked back up to the house, hand-in-hand. Miles turned to him, his face illuminated in a shaft of moonlight. He took Gavin’s face in his hands and kissed him, slowly and with a passion that made Gavin’s blood race. “I just want you to know that I am very much looking forward to a life with you.”
“Aw, you’re sweet.” Gavin leaned in and kissed him. “I feel the same way about you.” He took Miles’s hand and led him up to the blue bedroom.
“What are we doing here?” Miles asked as Gavin opened the door.
Gavin pointed to the bed. “Need an instruction manual? You sure didn’t last night.”
“Last one naked’s a rotten egg.” Miles began to pull his polo shirt over his head.
Gavin took a second to grasp what was going on, and then they were both a blur of shirts being tossed off, pants dropped, wiggling out of underwear. Miles made it to the bed two or three seconds before Gavin did, lying back against the pillows with his legs spread wide and his stiff dick waving like a flagpole.
Gavin jumped on top of him, and the old bed’s springs groaned, squeaking and rattling as they wrestled around on top of the covers. Gavin discovered that Miles was ticklish, and they both laughed as they squirmed around. When they finally ran out of steam, they collapsed together. After a moment, though, Gavin popped up and straddled Miles. He slapped his stiff dick against Miles’s stomach a couple of times and felt Miles’s dick beneath him.
Miles just lay there and groaned.
“What?” Gavin demanded.
“What are you, sixteen?” Miles said. “I’m twenty-nine, and you have at least twice as much energy as I do. You’re like a little puppy.”
“And you’re a big dog,” Gavin said, stroking Miles’s dick. He flopped beside Miles. “But we can just cuddle for a while if that’s what you want.”
“Just till I catch my breath.” Miles turned on his side and faced Gavin.
“Do you think we should have waited to get started until now, until after the show was finished?” Gavin asked.
Miles sat up beside him. “I did think that at first. But we’ve worked so well together that I guess I was wrong.”
He turned quickly, pinned Gavin to the bed, and leaned down to kiss him. This time there was no wrestling or squirming, just long, slow kisses. Miles explored Gavin’s chest with his hands and his tongue, and the raw emotion coming from Miles knocked Gavin for a loop. He’d had great sex, but he’d never before felt what he felt with Miles.
The lovemaking was equally slow and sensuous. Miles rubbed against Gavin, took Gavin’s dick in his mouth, licked and sucked. Gavin felt like he was swooning with ecstasy. Miles grabbed a condom, suited Gavin up, and then ever so carefully began to lower his ass down.
For Gavin, it was incredibly hot seeing Miles’s face as they fucked. Sweat dripped down the side of Miles’s tanned skin, and a stray black curl fell over his forehead. Gavin pushed up into Miles’s ass, saw his mouth contort into a grimace and then relax into a smile.
He picked up the pace, lifting his ass up off the bed and driving upward into Miles, and Miles welcomed the intrusion, squeezing his muscles around Gavin’s dick, driving him crazy with lust and emotion. Miles didn’t even have to touch himself; he spurted onto Gavin’s chest as Gavin pushed against his prostate, and then Gavin spasmed and shot his load into the condom.
Miles collapsed again beside Gavin, and they both fell asleep. Gavin woke to sun streaming in the east-facing window, and the rest of the morning was a blur of action. He did one final load of laundry, made sure the water was turned off and all the toilet seats were down, and then squeezed his bags into the back of Miles’s already stuffed SUV.
Neither of them spoke much as Miles drove away from Starlit Lake. Gavin’s brain was filled with so much, from the performance to Miles to wondering about the future. They rode past acres of farmland, cows in fields, iconic red barns, and silos. Gavin felt an odd sense of homelessness—was this his home? Or Miami Beach? Where did he belong?
Miles pulled up in the departure zone at the Milwaukee airport. “It’s going to take me about two days to get back to Miami,” he said. “But I’ll call you when I get in.”
“Coolness.” Gavin leaned over, and Miles turned his head for a kiss. “I’ll miss you.”
“You too. See you soon.”
While he waited for his flight, Gavin played back the YouTube video of “I’m Yours” and once again felt that weird sensation of watching something separate from himself.