Place was packed, with folks standing around waiting to get a table. Told the gal at the front I was meeting someone and she pointed off towards the back of the restaurant. Didn’t take me all that long to find Dev in among the ski-bunnies, slope-dopes and shredders. Hard jaw, almost too square and a little jutting, and deep set eyes in a broad, dark face full of angular lines—I always told him he was the ugliest handsome guy I’d ever met.
Dev caught sight of me and gave up a wide mouth grin full of white teeth. While I sidled between tables, he stood. Then when I reached out to shake his hand, he grabbed my forearm and pulled me into a back-slapping bear-hug. “Long time, no see, Joe.”
“Been a while,” I agreed as I tried to untangle myself without either looking too self conscious or coming off like I was pushing Dev away. I didn’t know none of these folks, so I didn’t really care what they thought. But the big ol’ public hugs and such weren’t how I’d been raised and it kinda made me uncomfortable. Plus for one second it felt all sorts of odd, my mind flashing back to nekkid and sweaty moments kinda like it.
Dev didn’t notice, or pretended he didn’t. “Went ahead and ordered a pizza.” Pulling a chair away from the table with his heel, he pointed at the seat. One of the few folks I’d let
order
me around. I sat at the same time he plunked his rear in his chair. He rolled his head and shifted his shoulders. When he moved, the knife blade points of the turtle’s claws from the tattoos circling a set of biceps that could only be described as huge flashed under Dev’s rolled up sleeves. “As I recall you’re not too picky.” I didn’t think it was possible for Dev to throw any more double meanings onto that sentence.
I ignored every last one of them except the most basic, “Nope.” Somehow I knew I was grinning like a fool—couldn’t believe Dev could raise a smile in me right then. “Fine with just about anything as long as it ain’t crazy.” Okay, well, I could play the innuendo game too. It’d been way too long since I’d got together with Devon. “Don’t figure you’re going to go order anything crazy.” He might do a lot of crazy things, but his food choices wouldn’t hit my weird-o-meter. No way would I mention any of the other thirty-thousand crazy things he might do in a room full of folks.
He chuckled, like he knew we both shared in the joke that nobody else around us was privy to. “Meat, cheese, sauce…nothing fancy,” he said, before taking a swig of his fake beer. Dev and I connected on lots of levels…neither of us being drinkers was one of them. We came at it from different directions, but both of us ended up at the same spot.
A glass of lemonade already sat on the table above my plate. Dev and I knew each other like I knew the psalms on Sunday. “Where’s that dang dog of yours?”
“R.K.?” R.K. stood for Road Kill, what the little in-bred whatchamacallit almost became before Dev rescued it from the side of a highway. “With Mom.”
“What, you went somewhere without that little monster?” I teased.
“He’s not a monster.” That was like saying Jeffery Dahmer weren’t a serial killer. I’d seen the stitches in Dev’s hand after that vengeful critter stole a knife off the counter and hid under Dev’s couch with it.
Where Dev went, the dog usually went. “And why didn’t you bring him?”
‘Course R.K. and I had an understanding of sorts; he didn’t mess with me and I didn’t wring his fluffy little neck.
“If I brought him here, he’d just be stuck in the hotel room all day, chew up everything and piss on the carpet, you know.” Dev shrugged. “I mean, with me out on the slopes, I wouldn’t even have time to check in on him.”
“Yeah, not a monster…” I managed not to snort out any of my lemonade as I said that.
Dev glared and then shook his head, likely ‘cause he knew he lost that battle. “You look beat, Joe.”
“I’m okay.” I played with the water beading down the side of my glass, making little faces in the condensation. “Just a lot of things going on, you know.” I took my thumb and wiped all the smiles away.
“Where’s your new thing?” Dev teased. “Left him tied up in your truck?” Maybe he thought teasing with me might bring my spirits up some. “Don’t want him to meet old Dev? The guy who gets you all in trouble?” We ain’t never got in any legal trouble mind you—bad for both our jobs—still, Dev and I’d come through some hairy situations in the day.
I blew out a big ol’ breath. “He ain’t exactly speaking to me right now.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Dev rocked his chair back on the rear legs and just stared at me a bit down the line of that hawk beak of a nose of his. Finally, he asked, “That one of those things going on?”
Couldn’t look at him for a bit. When I did, I read the sympathy stamped on his broad features. I shook my head and managed to get out, “Not really up to talking about it.” Kinda glanced around the room. “Not with all these folks around.”
“Look, pizza ain’t here yet.” He let the front legs of the chair drop with a thud. “Why don’t I tell them to put it in a to-go box?” Dev rested his elbows on the table and his chin on his fists. “We’ll go back to my hotel and chew the fat there. It ain’t the Ritz, but I got a mini fridge and a microwave. Can actually hear each other and not have to yell over all this noise.” We didn’t, exactly, have to yell. But the volume we had to speak at to be heard…well I normally reserved that for ordering suspects around.
Licked my lips before answering. “I don’t want to put you out.” Something told me that I might not be ready to be that up close and personal with Dev. I mean, we were just friends. But we were a certain kinda friends.
“Joe, I ain’t seen you in going on almost a year. I’d rather hang out with you and catch up than soak up the surroundings of some high-end pizza joint.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. It’d be okay, I guessed. “I ain’t so good with being around all these people right now anyway.” Not like he and I always got to fooling around—actually most times we didn’t. “If it weren’t you, I’d have blown it off. Like you said, it’s been too long.”
“Great.” Dev reached across the table, grabbed my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Give me a moment.”
I just nodded. It took us a little bit after he caught the waiter’s attention to get ourselves squared away and out the door with a large pizza. Hustled across a plain of asphalt littered with swaths of grayish snow banks. I left my truck where I’d parked since the pizza place shared a lot with an IHOP and the big lodge. All three of them were owned by the same guy. The arrangement let visitors think they had some choice in where they hung out.
The temperature outside hovered just above colder than Hell’s last half acre. I tugged up the zipper of my old plaid field coat then shoved my hands into the slash side pockets. I’d bought fancier jackets, but I’d never found one warmer. Dev muttered curses into his chest until we made it to the side door of the lodge. He fished out his card key, slid it into the reader and yanked open the secure back door into the hotel. The hallway weren’t all that warm, still it felt twenty times toastier than outside. Dev led me down one hall and up another until we reached a door that look just like every other one.
After shoving the keycard in the reader, Dev shouldered the door to his room open, balancing the pizza in one hand and trying to shove his key back in his pocket with the other. “Welcome to my stunning accommodations.”
I caught the door with my arm and pushed it open for him. For all of a second, up against his back like that, I smelled him; warm and kinda musty, like good leather. I swallowed and mumbled, “Not too shabby,” while trying not to breathe too deep. And honestly, it wasn’t too bad. The room, I mean…if you liked fake wood beams and sage green—carpet, paint and basically anything not made of wood or metal.
“Yeah, better than I could have afforded on my own.” Dev walked through the room and dumped the pizza box on the table under the back window. “Picked up the room and a pair of three-day lift tickets in a raffle for the community center.” He shucked his jacket and hung on the back of an armchair that looked better than one that belonged in a doctor’s lobby, but not quite nice enough for your own living room. He plunked his rear down, flipped open the pizza box and grabbed a slice. “I guess one of the fire department guys knows someone out here. Gave the spare lift-ticket to some college kid.”
I grabbed the only other chair in the room, a padded desk chair, and wheeled it up to the table. “What, you didn’t bring a date with you?” I mean, I figured that since I only saw stuff I kinda recognized as belonging to Dev: suitcases, kit and all. That and there was only one set of ski clothes drying on the luggage rack in the corner.
He shrugged. “I ain’t seeing anyone right now. So I figured I’d just take the time and get away for a weekend. Then I remembered you’re up this way.” He pointed to my chair. “Sit yourself and dig in. I think the guy threw in a couple paper plates.”
Like I needed a plate? I reached over and snagged a slice. “So, what you got going on in your life?” Managed to cram half the slice in my mouth as I talked.
“Same old shit, different day.” Dev talked around a mouthful of food. Neither of us felt like we had to pretend we were at Sunday dinner. “Ain’t been to Vegas in a while.”
I shrugged. “Neither have I.”
“But you’ve had a reason, huh?” Like he just realized he hadn’t offered me nothing to drink, Dev hauled himself up, took a few steps to the mini-fridge and popped it open. “So tell me about where you’ve been sticking that beer can dick of yours.” After rummaging a bit he held out a can of store-brand pop for me. “What’s he like?”
I took the can and popped the top. “Could you be more crass about it?”
“Yeah.” He grinned as he walked back to his chair with his own pop. “Want me to try?”
I almost snorted pop up my nose at that. “No thanks.” I’d heard Dev when he got on about somebody. I can tell you that listening to him discuss his sex life would burn your ears come Sunday. “Kabe’s smart. Hotter than heck.”
“Yeah? Big dick?” Trust Dev to take it down to the lowest point in the river.
I hedged. “Big enough.”
“Don’t want your old hunting buddy, Dev, to meet him though.”
Time for me to get in my own dig. “Yeah, ‘cause you poach.” Not like I’d cared much back then, but there were a couple of times I’d latched onto something hot, went to take a leak and came back to find them with Dev’s tongue stuck down their throat.
“Hookups maybe, but not someone my
Little Bro, Joe
is serious about.” Actually, he sounded kinda soulful when he said that…’cause, I think, Dev really did see the world that way. Then he laughed and tossed a napkin he’d just balled up in his fist at me. “What’s this hot Kabe with the kinda big dick look like?”
“Darn, should have brought a picture.” I hadn’t been thinking about that when I’d left the house. I had a couple grainy things on my phone, but, as Kabe said, the thing was
so ten minutes ago.
“That your computer?” I pointed at this little gadget on the desk that weren’t thicker than my thumb and hardly the size of a sheet of paper. I mean, it looked like someone washed a regular laptop and it shrunk in the dryer.
“Computer?” Dev almost choked. “Computer? Don’t you dare insult my new shiny toy like that.”
Lobbed that piece of trash back at him as I asked, “Got ‘net?” I used my heels to steer my chair up to the desk.
“Does a bear shit in the woods?” Dev grabbed another slice. “Why? Am I so boring you have to surf for porn?”
I cycled my fingers across the little pad and the dinky log-in screen popped to life. After a moment of me just staring at it at a loss for what to do, Dev huffed, hauled himself up and got the darn thing open and onto the ‘net. I muttered, “Yeah, I’m dying of boredom here,” as he messed.
I started typing. My fingers were almost too big for that tiny little keyboard. I went onto my account on the big ol’ social site. Mostly, I got it for keeping up with my family since we’re spread all over creation—could wish my sibs a happy birthday, congratulate the next boy to get his mission call or check out the newest string of baby pictures of my nephews’ and nieces’ kids. Sitting in my notifications was a friend request from Kabe that I hadn’t acted on for ages. Took a deep breath and accepted it.
Maybe a bit too little too late, but I’d know in a while.
Never been able to do it before, ‘cause I knew, as nosy as some of my brother’s wives were, they’d be checking out who I had on my list. Still, ‘bout time I just come clean. I mean, I’d already been kicked out of the church and they would have all heard some version of my fall. If not, time that they did, I guess. Certainly easier than calling each one on the phone and telling them,
I’m gay.
Once that was done, I clicked into Kabe’s profile and his pictures. Figured there’d be one of him—if not a hundred. There, looking me in the face was a whole folder titled:
My boyfriend, Joe.
Good Lord…well that would spell it out for anyone who checked. I might just have to kill him for that.
In there I found one of us together, at Fred’s place on Thanksgiving, I think Nadia’d taken it. I sat in a chair, looking as amused as a cat left out in the rain. Kabe, one of his soul smashing grins plastered across his face, draped himself over my shoulders.
I looked up to find Dev staring over my shoulder. “There. Happy?” I finished the last bit of my slice with sauce and cheese and all, then tossed the crust into the box.
“Whoa, smoking.” Dev crammed the last bit of his pizza in his mouth and wiped his hand on his jeans before he pulled this smart phone out of his pocket. “You could have just showed me one on your phone, though.” He waggled the thing in front of my face. Then he went to playing with it.
“Hard to see on the tiny screen.” Shot him a glare back. “I just need my phone to make calls.” I never saw the need for most of those fancy gadgets, especially since half the places ‘round here barely got reception, much less those fancy networks you needed to run the movies and chats and such. “All those bells and whistles don’t do me no good.” About a second later a notification popped up. Some idjit named Devon Blackthorn wanted to be on my list. “Really?”
“You’re out now.” Grinning, Dev reached over my shoulder and messed with the tiny keypad, accepting the request for me. “This way I can find out what you’re up to when you don’t use that ancient cell phone of yours to call me.”