Under her breath, I heard Izzie mutter, “Well, I wonder why he"s here,” when she saw him sitting in his car with the dome lights on, reading the paper. I gave her a look that said I was on to her.
“It"s not smart, Izzie. You know better than to shift his focus to me. He needs to heal and feel whole and find someone his own age from a position of strength, not a position of—”
“I haven"t seen that boy interested in anything but you since he got out of the hospital. As far as I"m concerned, if it gets him out from under his grandmother"s quilts? It"s fine with me.”
“And when his parents find out he thinks he"s in love with his ex-convict masseur and child murderer? What will you tell the police after they kill me when the coroner comes to pick up my body? That you threw him at me? That you hoped he"d fall for someone so completely inadequate that—”
“That"s enough out of you,” she snapped. “Getting pissy won"t make your aura pretty. I don"t know why some people seem to like to hear themselves talk.” She tottered across the parking lot in little mule shoes that made her look more like a drag queen than ever. “I"m late; I"m supposed to meet Andy for dinner.” She folded herself into her car and took off, leaving me staring after her.
I heard a car door open and turned back to see Ken leaning against the driver"s-side door of his car. No crutches, not awkward. Just a man with his arms folded and a hank of brown hair that flopped down over one eye as he looked up at me through lashes so long they really didn"t belong on a man at all. He had the most engaging damn grin on his face.
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I walked over and stood before him, breaking the charged silence. “Hi.”
“Do you have plans?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
Ken shifted his weight a little. He looked serious then, even biting his lip a little as if he was trying to decide what to say next. “I was hoping that maybe you"d want to do something with me,” he said finally.
A car passed by on the street playing loud music, and it startled me for a minute. I wanted to inch toward him to see if he"d lean in toward me, like we would take turns inching toward one another until we were touching, and how sick was that? The attraction I felt for him was like a gravitational pull, drawing me up closer. I could almost feel the heat of his body from where I stood.
“I"m going to Nacho"s,” I said. “The bar.” His face shuttered closed. If I were looking for something to back him off, I couldn"t have done better than the local gay bar. No doubt even though he came on to me like gangbusters, he didn"t want his neighbors in this tiny town to know he"d switched more than college baseball teams.
“I won"t keep you then,” he said, reaching for the handle of the car door.
“Good night.” I walked past him.
He reached out and caught my wrist with his hand. “I just want to know, so I don"t make a fool of myself any further. Is it the fact that I"m a motor moron or is it the whole package you"re taking a pass on?”
“What?” I faced him.
“I guess I hoped that if you were looking for companionship, you might consider looking at me.” He opened the door of his car, and it threw light onto his face. “Have a nice time.”
When he let go of my wrist, I could have just gone. I could have. But the right thing, the thing that would have let him down and put an end to it, was also the thing that dimmed the light in his blue eyes and fucking broke my heart. Before he could get all the way into his car I put my hand on the top of the window frame.
“I"m not looking for
companionship
.”
He stopped where he was. “You looking to get laid?”
“Not this evening, no.” I almost smiled. Was Nacho"s that kind of a place? From what I"d heard, it was more like a neighborhood hangout. “Is that the only reason people go to Nacho"s?”
“Well, no. It"s kind of a cantina. Live music. Brunch on Sundays. In the evenings after ten, it"s mostly a gay bar. I thought that"s why…”
“I have friends who work there. They don"t know I"m in town yet.” I told myself I should have just kept on going, should have let him think the worst. But when I saw the flare of interest light up his eyes again, it ignited something reckless inside me as well.
“Good friends?” he asked. I found myself doing that leaning thing again. For fuck"s sake, I wasn"t twelve years old.
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“Do you want to come with me?” I asked. “I was going to get my car; you could save me a walk.”
He hesitated.
“You"re not out,” I guessed.
“I never had reason to be.”
“Look, I"d rather you didn"t go then. It wouldn"t be right. Just because I"m going. I don"t care what people think about me. You have family to think about.” I wanted to protect him. Ken inspired so many emotions I"d never felt before, it was overwhelming.
“It"s not just because of you. I haven"t lived here for four years. When I came home I moved back in with my folks. I wasn"t well. There was no point in rocking the boat.
But if I live here, buy a place, then there"s no point in hiding who I am either.”
“I"m scared for you,” I told him honestly. “Too much is changing for you too fast. I think you"ll regret it. Go home and rest. Get strong. Buy your house. Put coming out away for the time being. Maybe I"m selfish. I know this whole town is going to blame it on my influence. Once they start looking closely at me, they"re going find other things out and then there will be nothing but trouble.”
“Are you scared for me or scared for you?” he asked me quietly.
When I didn"t answer, he used his key remote to unlock the passenger door.
“Someday, I"m going to walk around and open that door for you.” He turned away and got inside. Before he closed the door, he smiled. “But not today.” I walked around and let myself in. I leaned over and caught the seat belt automatically, pulling the straps out and looking for the slot when Ken reached out both hands and cupped my face, bringing me in for a kiss.
What started out tender and tentative almost immediately turned into something else entirely. Even before I thought about it, I"d dropped the belt and put my hands in his dark hair. I"d wanted to do that since I"d first seen him come into the gym. I
had
done that in the guise of massage. His hair was soft and thick and curled rebelliously around my fingers.
Ken made a sound that rumbled through both our bodies as he deepened the kiss.
He broke it off and rested his forehead against mine, speaking in a low murmur. “I wanted to get that out of the way…so stupid…always seems so awkward…first-date kiss.” He bumped my face with his and moved so that our cheeks were touching. His was smooth, and I smelled a hint of citrus, like he"d just shaved.
“You"ve kissed me before.” I caught my breath. “And that one wasn"t awkward.”
“Well, yes.” He smiled against my skin. “And no. I just wanted to do it again.” I brushed my lips back over his and pulled away a little. Ken sighed and started up the car. We drove through town again in silence. I could have asked him about the house, whether he"d made any decisions. For that matter, he could have asked me if I"d given any thought to moving in with him yet. I don"t know why he didn"t, but I admired him for it. He took my hand about halfway to Nacho"s and simply brushed his 54
Z. A. Maxfield
thumb over the back of it. It soothed and aroused at the same time. When Nacho"s came into view, he parked some little way down the street. I got out of the car first and came around while he reached over the seat and fished in the back for his crutches. He opened the door and stood, slipping his hands into the arm brackets and gripping the handles.
“The doctor says it won"t be long before I can ditch these and go to two canes,” he told me, walking along beside me. “Thanks to Izzie"s torture.”
“Yeah? That"s great. I"ll bet you"ll be glad to get rid of those.”
“Not nearly as glad as I was to get rid of the walker.” I laughed. “Not exactly a
GQ
top-ten accessory. My clients always hate using a walker, young or old.” As we neared the bar, I could hear music. There were a number of people on the sidewalk, standing around smoking. Some were holding beer. I hadn"t consciously given that much thought, that everywhere I"d look tonight someone would be drinking. It was for damned sure not going to be me. Ken broke into my thoughts.
“I started in a wheelchair. So…progress.” I looked at his feet, imagining how hard it would be if my body didn"t do what I told it to do.
“Izzie told me your prognosis is good, that you have every reason to assume you"ll recover almost completely.”
“Yep.” He grunted, negotiating around the people who loitered near Nacho"s entrance. “I"ll even play the violin again.”
“Really?” I thought of Cooper. “I didn"t know you played the violin.”
“I don"t. It was a joke.” He looked at me. “You know the one?”
“Yeah.” I was distracted at that moment by the music I was hearing, a Mexican mariachi tune played on a violin. It could only be Cooper playing.
“What is it?” Ken turned back when he realized I"d stopped walking alongside him.
I don"t know why hearing Cooper play like that caught me so unprepared. I knew Cooper entertained the patrons of Nacho"s with his violin before the management pushed the tables back and the DJ turned on the dance music. He"d told me. But when I heard Cooper again—something so impossibly familiar to me—memories caught my heart in a vise that physically hurt until my throat practically closed. I had to stand still for minute while shock traveled through my body. I hadn"t realized, hadn"t understood how much I"d missed Cooper until right then.
The last time I had seen Cooper, he"d visited me at Hazelden in Minnesota when I went for my second stab at rehab. He"d held me and we"d cried, and then I had him thrown out and taken off my list of approved visitors. At the time, he understood. I wanted him to move on, to go back to California with Shawn and to cut his ties to a past that could only drown him in remorse.
Yet suddenly I worried that maybe he"d seen that differently. Maybe he thought I didn"t want his friendship anymore. That maybe I was cutting ties forever.
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55
So now, faced with the prospect of telling him I"d come to St. Nacho"s and that I really cherished his and Shawn"s friendship and needed it, I thought maybe I"d gone about building up to it rather badly.
Ken turned to face me, concerned. “What?”
“I don"t know if I can do this. My friend and I, we left it a little…open-ended.” Ken"s face went blank. Like a mask. “Open-ended how?”
“Like maybe he won"t want to see me open-ended.”
“There"s only one way to find out.”
“And if he"s unhappy I moved here?”
“Is he the mayor?”
I laughed. “No.”
“Then he probably can"t have you kicked out of town.” Ken grinned and then sobered. “You didn"t move here to get back with him?”
“No.” I was quick to reassure him of that. “He has someone, and they"re happy.
It"s good.” I bit my lip.
Didn’t that sound like I wanted to get back together, but he was taken?
“It"s not like that between us anyway.”
“Was it ever?” Ken asked.
“Yes.”
“I see.” He had that blank look again, the one I didn"t know how to deal with. He was too young, I thought, to hide his emotions well. Maybe he was just too new at feeling his way with his attraction to men.
“If I promise to tell you the entire story sometime, you have to promise to learn to hide your emotions better. Everything you think shows up on your face.” He shrugged. “Fair enough.” He took my hand again, pulling me back against a building as a small group of men walked past. “I just want you to know I don"t think I"ve ever cared what happens to my face before. You"re probably the first person who has ever made me feel this off balance.” He looked down at his legs. “So to speak.”
“Ken, have you ever been with a man before?”
He kept his eyes down, and even in the spotty illumination of the streetlights, I could see that his cheeks were burning. “Yes. Well…groping. Furtive exchanges, mostly related to sports. Locker-room stuff.”
“You"ve never had a lover?” I asked, point-blank.
“No.”
“Oh, for fuck"s sake.” I wanted to go home. Not just to the motel, but back to Wisconsin. “You don"t make things easy, do you?”
He backed me up against the concrete wall of the building next to Nacho"s and pressed his hand into my groin, lighting it on fire as though he touched a match to a fuse.
“It could be,” he whispered. “It could be very easy, Jordan.” 56
Z. A. Maxfield
I huffed in a panting breath and was just about to reply when from over Ken"s shoulder I heard my name called in a voice I"d recognize simply as the most unique and perhaps bizarre I"d ever heard.
“Jordan?”
Cooper"s lover, Shawn, stood behind Ken. For a moment I held my breath, and then, despite the fact that Ken still had his hand on my dick, Shawn picked me up and squashed me in one of the most enthusiastic hugs I"d ever felt.
“Jordan! It
is
you. Cooper will be so happy!” He shook me like a doll and then let me slump back up against the wall. “Why didn"t you
tell
us you were coming?” Physical Therapy
57
Chapter Nine
Shawn was still staring, looking from me to Ken and back again. I wanted to explain, but it would take me hours to finger spell for him, and I didn"t know enough sign language to even begin. I knew Shawn read lips, and he spoke very well, although without the normal inflection you get when hearing people talk. I understood that he wasn"t born deaf and had a memory of speech that made it easier for him. I didn"t trust all I had to say to that, so I just grabbed him and hugged him back and hoped for the best. In the short time I"d known him, he"d been a solid and nonjudgmental friend and was hopelessly, passionately devoted to Cooper.
In my less valiant moments, I was a little envious of them, but right now I was just grateful to be welcome.
“Ken,” I finger spelled his name awkwardly, and Shawn rolled his eyes.