Kabe’d come over for dinner. I don’t right remember exactly how we arranged that’d he’d come on back to my place once he and T took the rifle home—I knew it happened when I asked him to bring it by that morning. As for the why, he’d said something about needing to talk and I’d jumped on it.
I’d shoved the chicken that we hadn’t had for Christmas—rubbed with spice and an onion, apple and celery jammed inside—in the crock-pot that morning. That and succotash thrown together from things in the freezer and cans in the pantry made up our meal. We didn’t hardly say nothing as we ate.
But then, as I filled up the sink to soak the dishes, Kabe hit me with, “Why the fuck would you have sex with me if you knew it could cost you your job?” Okay, so it was going to be both guns a blazing. “What the fuck was going through your mind?”
Wiping my hands on a towel, I turned around to face him. “I don’t know.” It was all I had to offer. ‘Course the fact that he’d started with that question…well, I guess it spoke a lot to the problems we had.
First, he glared, then he spat. “You had to know something!” He leaned against the edge of the breakfast bar and stared, hard.
I thought about it. Then I thought about it just a might longer. Finally, I heaved up a sigh. “I was lonely.”
Kabe looked at me like I’d done lost my mind. “Lonely?”
“Don’t make it sound so stupid.” Tossed the rag back onto the counter without looking. “I don’t mean like I just don’t got no one to hang out with.” I stepped up and rested my weight on my knuckles propped on the kitchen table. “I’m talking deep down,
why am I bothering to get up every day?
lonely.” Hoped he understood, ‘cause I had to rush it out just to get past that thought. “I’d come home from work and I got my house and its empty.” I swung my arm out to indicate the space. “This big hollow shell.”
“That’s worth losing your job over?” He rolled his eyes. “Seriously?”
Okay, so he didn’t get it. Growing up where he did, San Francisco and the heart, if not soul, of the gay world, I could see it. “Do you know how empty, empty it is?” I had to remind him that those of us between coasts often lived different lives. “I mean, I’ve been living here since I was little and there ain’t nobody here I can really talk to.” I stood, stuffed my hands in my back pockets and heaved up another deep breath. “About me. The only one who ever figured any of it was Fred.” Lord knew I’d never spoken a word to Fred about my predilections. “Not like I ever talked to him about nothing, he just guessed about me. But it’s like I was all alone on this island surrounded by folks I just couldn’t talk to. The closest real friend I got is seven hundred miles west of here.”
“And that,” Kabe slid his glare to study the grain in the logs making up the exterior wall. “That’s supposed to make you being a jackass okay? Hiding big shit like losing your fucking job from me?”
“No. You’re right, doesn’t make it right.” It didn’t mean I’d done right. It did mean I had to explain. “See, look, you don’t know how black it got.” I stepped up next to him. Didn’t touch him, but my voice dropped low. “I’d get so, I don’t know, but I’d get to a point where I’d head into Vegas, maybe meet up with Dev and go hunting tail.” I’d never, ever told nobody what I was telling him. “It felt so desperate. I’d come home and well, while I didn’t have blue balls anymore, I probably felt worse than when I left.” Black times then. I’d kept at it, because that’s all I’d ever hoped to have.
“Oh, come on.” Kabe rolled his eyes and tossed his head. “It’s not special…” He whined that last bit out, like he was taunting me about being too emotional.
“No.” I corrected. “I cain’t say I’m one that feels I have to have some connection to every guy I do.” I didn’t. I mean, I wanted someone special, but I’d never figured to find him. “Still, year, after year of half the time hardly remembering whether the last buck’s name was Craig or John.” Sometimes the sex made it worse rather than better.
I started pacing. Maybe my feet might keep pace with my thoughts. “Only thing that kept me from going over was prayer.” And, Lord knows, I’d prayed three, four times a day about it. I spun and stared at him. “Then I’d get back on the beat and pull a buckload of overtime. I volunteered for every type of special training I could think of.” Gave him a little shrug. I felt helpless trying to put it in words so’d he’d understand. “Figured if I didn’t have nothing at home, well at least I had the department and could treat all the people ‘round here as family.” Still, that weren’t the half of it. Real quiet, I added, “I’d get to where I’d feel I just couldn’t go on no more.’
That unwound all the attitude out of Kabe’s body. More sincere then I think I’d ever heard him, he asked, “What do you mean, ‘couldn’t go on?’” The boy’s voice was darn near a whisper.
I kinda snaked my hand out to slide it along his leg. “It was like I was standing at the bottom of this big well and I couldn’t even see the sun or any little bit of light.” Wanted, no needed, to touch someone when I dredged this all up. “Honestly, it’s why Dev’s like my big brother or something.” When Kabe didn’t pull away, I leaned into him and nuzzled into his neck. “‘Cause when I’d get that low somehow he’d pop up and have some cockamamie reason to drag me off somewhere.” Almost dime-on, Dev would hound me on the phone or online and get me pulling junk outta my closet. “Pretty much, one of the few people that kept me sane.” Dredged up a big ol’ huff of breath. “But, you know, he’s got his own life, job and family…in and out of boyfriends like some guys change shirts. So it weren’t like I could count on him to always be there.”
Kabe twisted and mumbled, “Shit,” as he tucked his hands in my back pockets.
Now that I’d started, I couldn’t quite stop. “Look, you go out to that scene that’s okay—for what it is. No way, no how would I ever get involved with anyone I met like that.” The words had been locked inside me for so long they bubbled up like hornets out of a knocked down nest. “The real life stuff, Lord, I cain’t claim to have been exposed to the best parts of that. Show up to some bar or bathhouse in Vegas. Sometimes with Dev, lot more times on my own.” I wrapped my arms around him and held on like a gale was about to blow through. “Do a few quickies, but they ain’t guys I’m interested in for more than just, well, sticking my dick somewhere. No place to even start to get to know someone. At least not for me.”
All gentle, he asked, “I was different?”
“Well, there you were,” I shrugged, the gesture lost in how close I was to his body, “you up here and not me down there. I mean, when I first saw you, I was hot for you. But that I stuck in my pocket.” I had. Getting with him just seemed too risky on a hundred different levels. “Two months I lusted from a far and didn’t do no more than have you in my dreams. I never figured to do more than that. Not then, not ever. Just figured I couldn’t risk it and it weren’t worth it no how. If I wanted my pecker sucked, there were a lot less risky places to do it.”
When I fell silent for a bit, Kabe prodded, “What changed?”
I knew—exactly—the moment I fell for him. “When we’re up on the mountain getting ready to go down for that woman’s body, you remember, you smiled at me.” It was like the sun had touched the earth and been born in his body. “That’s when I think I really lost my reason.”
“Because I smiled?” Kabe just sounded confused at that. “That made it all worth it—risking getting kicked off the force?”
“Because,” I tried to tame that whole whirlwind into a sentence, “when you smiled at me right then, I saw something.” I’d seen more than just
something
, I’d seen a possibility of
everything
. “See, there’s this light I feel inside of me whenever I look at taking on a mountain and pitting my soul against the rock. It’s like a passion, like I sometimes get for you.” Rubbed my face against his and just breathe in his smell. “And that light, that I feel down in here,” I pushed my fingers against his sternum, “there it was, all up in your face. And I’m thinking, he understands.” Oh, Lord, did he ever. “He feels the same thing I feel. When we went back up on the mountain the next day, I really wasn’t planning anything other than to actually go find that camera, but also just kinda be with you.”
I’d been playing with fire, I’d known it, but I hadn’t figured on getting burned by it. “By the end of the day…” How to put it in words so’s he’d understand? “See there was this ache inside me and it had been there so long that I didn’t even really notice it anymore, until the moment it wasn’t there.” It’d been like someone unfroze my chest and my heart finally started beating. “I’m sitting with you, not doing much of anything at all except talking and being out under the sky and I realized I liked you. I could be your friend. And then a part of my mind starts thinking on, well he’s gay and he seems to like me and I could actually be together with someone.”
I don’t think Kabe could quite handle all that at one go. His voice got a little loud and he snapped my arm with his fingers. “So it was just the sex.”
“No.” Hadn’t been at all. “Not just about bumping uglies. I’m thinking things like I’m going to have to take you down the Navajo Trail to see Wall Street Canyon ‘cause you’d think it was just as awesome as I did. One reason that, no matter how hard she tried, Jesse Dane never had any chance with me—”
“You mean besides she has tits.” Well, that was just nasty and still spot on.
“Well, yeah.” I conceded. “But there weren’t anything we had in common.” I moved us back to where my thoughts didn’t butt up with the ugliness of her and what happened. “With you, that day, I got the sense that you were like me…perfect way to spend time together is hiking thirty miles through the forest hauling forty pounds of gear so when we get there we can spend a day shredding the skin off our hands while we’re climbing up some rock that caught our fancy. I’d never met anyone like you. Someone I connected with like that.”
Kabe snuggled up against me. “So why,” his voice was a lot more insistent with the question this time, “did you think I was different?”
“Oh, heck.” I rolled my eyes up towards the ceiling. “You’re hitting me with hard questions and we ain’t even had sex.”
“Yeah, I know,” he teased. “I’m evil that way.”
I took a minute to consider just tossing out some half-baked version of things. Then I recollected what he’d hit me with during this throw down “Let’s see…” Time to come clean, although I weren’t right sure where to start. “All these years I’ve been in a church where I love my God and believe in the why of what I’m doing—’cept figuring they got to have some of it wrong ‘cause Heavenly Father don’t hate nobody to put them in a Hell of being born this way and it being a sin.” Figured ‘round about the beginning probably wouldn’t hurt. “So it’s like I’m standing in a sea of people just like me and still all alone and different.”
Kabe twisted and ran his hand through the fur on my chest, at least what was poking through the half undone bit of my shirt. I liked it when he did that. “Different?” He snorted. “We’re gay. We’re different.”
“Not quite the same thing.” Shook my head as I thought it through. “I’d go be around other gay guys and because I’m religious and I don’t like the city and don’t drink and I like being this country boy that I am…and there again I’m standing in the sea of people just like me and still all alone and different.” Huffed out a breath I’d probably been holding heading up on twenty years. “See, you’re the first person, ever, that I could share both of those lives with.” I rubbed my knuckles against his forehead. “Lord knows you tease me about my faith…but I don’t have to hide it from you. I can just be Joe, all the parts of Joe around you. And that was worth more than my church or my job to hold onto.”
Kinda serious, he asked, “And Dev? You shared your life with him.”
“Devon,” I blew a hard breath through my lips. Dev and I, well it was complicated. I spelled it out the best I could. “Let’s see, I met him through a friend of some friends.” Thought back all those years. “And we’re at this place and the waiter brought over a cranberry and club soda.” Tended to drink that ‘cause then guys saw it and assumed it was something else…meant I didn’t have to explain why I weren’t drinking. “We both reached for it. Knocked the darn glass outta the guy’s hand. Once we stopped laughing, we talked some.” It had been pretty funny, mostly ‘cause the place we was at was all uppity and tense. “Upshot is, he ain’t LDS although Dev’s got religion in his background, he’s from a small town, like me he’s law enforcement and neither of us drink. We’re odd ducks in that pond.”
“And you both are gay.” He pointed out the obvious.
“Yeah.” I agreed. “It’s a heck of a base to build a friendship off of. And like I told you, if we ain’t got nobody, we’ll mess around.” I pulled him into my chest. “But it ain’t never gonna be serious between us.”
“You know.” Somehow Kabe managed to shrug all wrapped up in my arms. “I don’t really give that much of a rat’s ass if you screw around some.”
“I do.” I did. I wouldn’t ever do that to him. “Weren’t how I was raised.” Among Mormons, when you got married, you stood in front of a dozen mirrors and looked into eternity with your chosen. “I don’t see you as a gal…but I see you as a commitment.” And, even though I’d never get that out of my former Church, the sealing my soul to someone else’s, I could see eternity next to him. Didn’t think Kabe was anywhere near ready for that talk. Instead, I goosed him in the ribs and teased, “I know, I’m an odd man out again.”
“Man.” Kabe laughed some. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk so much as you have tonight.”
“You said you wanted me to talk with you.” I pushed away from him and leaned up against the counter. “So I’m doing it. And I’m gonna try to keep doing it.”
“Verbal diarrhea?” Kabe rolled his eyes. “All the time?”
“Oh, heck no.” I pushed at his chest with the flat of my palm. “But I thought you needed to know why I do sometimes the things I do.”
He grinned, and it was a little wicked. “I guess.”
“Yeah.” Stopped talking right then, ‘cause I needed to kiss him. All the words in the world wouldn’t tell me what I’d feel through that touch. And what I felt, it weren’t one hundred percent right, but we edged closer.