“Baby,” he moaned, his hand stroking my hair as I watched my fingers claim his hole.
“Oh, good.” He shifted his hips, riding my hand, and I added another finger.
Since I knew he couldn’t hear me, I contented myself with kissing the hollow of his abdomen, a sensitive place for him, and murmuring words there, so he knew I was talking.
“Sweet,” I said, licking and blowing the skin in that sensitive place so he felt the cool, wet kiss. His own cock was leaving a trail on his hip that I lapped up, tasting the salty, sticky fluid. It was so erotic, so bittersweet in my mouth it made my own cock leak onto his leg. I added a third finger, and he seemed stretched and full. His hips came off the bed when I touched his spongy prostate gland, and I brushed it again, feeling him jerk against me.
“Oh, yes!” he said, catching my hair and trying to pull me up. “Shit, Cooper.” I slid up to face him, taking one of the condoms that he’d brought from the pillow next to his head. I couldn’t help kissing him. I wanted the moment to last forever. I wanted to crawl inside him. I rolled the condom onto my cock and nudged at his entrance, silently asking permission.
“Shawn?” I asked, when I realized he was waiting for me to look at him.
“Cooper.” He smiled. He interlaced his fingers with mine. “Nobody but you, Cooper.” I froze. “What?” I asked.
“It’s not my style,” he said. “But I don’t want anything between us, nothing unfinished, you understand?” he asked me, not just with his words but with his eyes and his heart.
I nodded. “Shawn?”
“Go, baby,” he said, and I did. Heaven help me, I surged into that sweet ass and stayed, as if glued inside him. “Oh, fuck, Cooper,” he said, clutching my hip with his free hand.
I remained motionless as his muscles eased around me. He winced at the fullness, and I wondered how he was handling the burn I’d no doubt caused in my impatience. A drop of sweat rolled off my nose and landed almost in his eye and he laughed. I could feel the sound of his laughter all the way to my heart.
“Move,” he said, taking a deep breath. He grinned suddenly and said in that awkward voice of his, “Drive it like you stole it, Cooper.” St. Nacho’s
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I dropped my head to his to kiss those luscious lips and let myself go.
By the time our hips were snapping together and I felt that chill in my spine, he was pushing off the tiny headboard with both hands and I had his legs on my shoulders to drive my cock into his ass as hard as he wanted it. I fisted his cock, pumping it and running my thumb over the slit on its head until it rocketed in my hands and his entire body clenched around me. I pumped into him once, twice, and filled the condom on the third stroke as we gasped and shuddered and came down together.
Shawn put both arms around me to embrace me as his legs slid down, and I slipped out a few minutes later and pulled off the condom to throw it into the trash. I let him gather me close and clung to him. I don’t know how long we stayed that way. I knew I would never move again if I had any choice in the matter. He spoke to me in nonsense words as he drifted, and I hummed into his skin. I knew he felt it because he began to rock in time, just fractionally, moving his body to my little tune. I think it was “The Polonaise.”
“You make music all the time.” He sighed.
I nodded.
“What fucking irony.”
I expelled a breath of laughter and nodded again. I could feel him smile against my skin.
“It will make a good story later on.” I could tell he was drifting away; he always fell asleep first.
“What?” I tapped his face and when his eyes opened, I asked, “What story?”
“Our story. Yours and mine.”
That made me smile. It was the first time since I’d held a Hot Wheels in my hands that I showed my naked pleasure to another guy.
52 Z. A. Maxfield
Chapter Nine
I could hear the kitchen starting up and smell the beginnings of breakfast cooking.
Oscar must have been in, sautéing onions and celery, and probably had stock simmering. I was in Jim and Albert’s office, signing my way through foods: pizza, spaghetti, and tacos. I wasn’t registered in my class yet so I was working from the ASL Browser, learning what I could from the list of words there. It seemed impossible to me. I tried not to think about how many words there were; I just concentrated on one at a time. I also took the opportunity to send e-mails to my family, who appeared to be relieved I was alive.
I wanted to send something to my sister Julie especially. Julie answered immediately with big virtual hugs and a picture of her little coffeehouse, Hallowed Grounds. We’d exchanged infrequent e-mails in the past, mostly from library computers, or when I’d borrow a little cyber time from hook-ups. I usually dashed off very brief or even instant messages.
She seemed relieved to know where she could reach me. I even gave her the phone number of the bar in case she needed me or had news about our folks that couldn’t wait.
I tried to explain Santo Ignacio, but there were no words. I only said that I had found a job and a place to stay, and that I was happy. Julie would understand.
Julie had been the one to hold me when I’d puked and cried. Julie had attended the family counseling sessions at Hazelden in my parents’ stead. Julie had been there when I got out of rehab, waiting with balloons and flowers, and had returned home shocked and alone when I’d gotten on my Harley and roared off toward the Pacific. Seven million and fucking one amends to make.
Thinking, I sat with my eyes closed for a minute, and before I opened them, a pair of strong hands found the knots that were building in my shoulders, between the blades.
I reached back and found Shawn’s face and pulled him in for a kiss. He didn’t speak. I pressed my cheek against his newly shaven one and held it there. He smelled like limes, I St. Nacho’s
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guess from his shaving cream, and I wanted to start something. He brushed against me and left. I knew he had classes and Kevin was probably waiting outside. I logged off the computer and went to help in the kitchen.
“Oh, hey, m’hijo,” said Oscar. “Let me make you a cup of coffee with a little foam heart on the top.”
Tomas grinned and joined in. “I thought maybe we should just peel him some grapes, papi,” he teased. “Shawn looked pretty happy when he left just now.”
“I make him happy,” I said, gathering a big bowl of garlic to peel and chop. “’Cause I’m all that and a bag of chips.” I waved the chef’s knife around a little.
“Yeah, m’hijo, buffalo chips.”
“Are you talking to me?” I asked.
“Watch it, papi,” said Tomas. “Boy’s got a knife.”
“I can see we’re having fun this morning,” said Jim, who went to get himself some coffee. “Are we waving knives around this early? Must be spring. So, how’s our tattooed love god? Shawn left you a message.” He grinned, and I got a bad feeling about it.
“What?” I asked, and all three of them leaped on me, knife forgotten, and kissed my face.
“Jeez!” I said. “Watch it; somebody’s going to be a eunuch, man.” I laughed but felt my face burn.
“Holy crap,” said Jim, staring. “If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“What?” I started on the garlic, figuring the peppers would wait and I’d have to use gloves with them anyway, which I hate.
“You laughed. And blushed.” He took a chip that Oscar pulled from the fryer and waved it around, blowing on it. “Santo Ignacio, man, it’s in the water.” He left the kitchen.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked Tomas, who shrugged and dumped the tortilla chips into the chilaquile sauce.
Oscar was breaking eggs to scramble them. “He means that Santo Ignacio? It’s the kind of place a man can drop his shit. It’s a place for healing, m’hijo. And you looked like you could use it, back when you came.”
“Yeah,” I said, mincing the garlic and catching it up with the knife for him to use with the eggs. “I guess I needed a place like this.” I felt an unfamiliar sensation in the muscles of my face and realized it was a goofy grin.
“Stop that smiling, bro -- you’re creeping me out. Man smiles like that… He’s getting some.”
“Oh, hell yeah.” I laughed. I kept cutting garlic into small, even pieces. What I had with Shawn was coloring the rest of my life like a red T-shirt in the laundry with white 54 Z. A. Maxfield
socks. I didn’t have a thing to compare it to in my experience. Thinking about him made me smile, no matter what I was doing or where I was doing it. No matter that he wasn’t with me. When I thought of Shawn, a well of something boiled up inside me that hit my heart like an air bubble and stopped it, metaphorically speaking, making me feel dazed. All I could think was, What the hell is that all about?
By the time I started playing for the tables that evening, I was pleasantly tired. I wove between the customers playing requests, and much to Jim’s dismay they were mostly for the Irish fiddling tunes I’d begun to introduce a few nights before.
I heard him shout, “You’re turning my cantina into a pub, gringo,” but I shrugged it off.
I played what the customers asked for, and he knew it. Someone was having an anniversary party, and they had a lovely cake. Grinning, I played “Hava Nagila” at their request and turned to find Jim shaking his head. Shawn came in with some of his friends and acknowledged me with a jerk of his head and a smile. I noticed Kevin was absent from their group. At about seven I was playing “De Colores” when Jim motioned me to the bar. I finished up and walked over. He told me there was someone on the phone for me.
I took the phone, plugging my ear with a finger so I could hear over the crowd.
“Hello?”
“Cooper?” asked a male voice. He cleared his throat and said my name again. “Cooper?
Is that you?”
“Jordan?” My heart slammed against my rib cage.
“Yeah.” He chuckled. “You still know my voice.” I said nothing; shock made my blood drain to my toes.
“Hey… Julie gave me this number; she said you were staying in some bar in California?”
“Yeah.” Right then there was an explosion of sound from the anniversary party as someone gave a comic toast.
Jim’s concerned eyes were on me. “You can take that in the office, line one.” He pointed to the phone on the wall. “It’s quieter.” He had to shout to make himself heard.
I nodded. “Jordan,” I said. “Don’t hang up, I’m going someplace quieter. Okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. I gave the phone back to Jim.
As I walked to the office, a thousand things went through my head. I sat in Alfred’s chair and stared at the phone for a full minute before I leaned toward it. I knew my past. I knew my heart. I picked up the phone with a shaking hand. “Jordan,” I said.
“Cooper, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Yours too…” I fumbled. “Are you out?”
“Out? Yeah, I got out about a month ago.” The silence between us was thick and ugly.
“You never visited.”
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“No,” I said. “I didn’t. I didn’t stick around.”
“I know. You went to Minnesota and then out west. I got the postcards,” he said.
“My parents…”
“I know. They wanted you gone.” There was a long pause on the line. “I got it. I was sorry not to see you, but I understood. Julie told me.” Julie. Still cleaning up my messes. “Jules is a brick,” I said, not feeling the love at that particular moment.
“Yeah.” I knew he was squeezing the phone, I could feel the pressure he was putting on it from my side. “Listen. I…I wonder if you’d think about coming back.”
“No, I don’t think so.” No.
“Things have changed though, now. You know? I’ve changed. I went through stuff, man. Stuff I can’t even tell you, and you know I love you. I need you.”
“Jordie,” I said, automatically going back to the old name, the old ways… No.
“Coop, I’m sober now. I go to this church, babe. You’d laugh so hard, but they’re good people. They don’t care if you’re gay or straight; they say we’re all who we’re supposed to be if we just follow…”
“Jordie --” I began again, but he cut me off.
“No!” he said, and I could hear the old desperation in his voice. “No, just hear me out, Coop. I got that you didn’t get in trouble, and I was glad! We didn’t both need to go to jail.
But, man, I’m out and I need you. You said you loved me. You said we were partners. I’ve done everything for both of us for the last three years. I took it for the team. I need you.” I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. They burned. “What do you need, Jordie?”
“I need help. I’m sober, but I’m scared. I’m staying at Mom’s now but I’m moving out soon, and I’ll be all by myself. Nobody’s going to want to hire me, an ex-con who killed a kid… I’m afraid. Nobody gets it but you. I need you with me. I need my partner back. You’re sober, right? You’re clean?”
“Yeah, I’m clean.” Except cigarettes, I was so fucking clean I squeaked.
“I need you to help me stay sober. I need someone to be there for me. I know why you couldn’t be there when I was in jail. But now it’s different, right? Now we can live like we always thought we were going to. But better, right?” I couldn’t answer him.
“Cooper?” He reached out to me with his voice. “I think you owe me at least this… I think we owe ourselves, and we for damned sure owe that kid. I want to try to be something better. Please say you’ll help me.”
“Yeah,” I said, finally accepting the inevitable. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be in touch.” He said something, maybe a lot of stuff, and hung up. I held on to the phone for a while, listening to it make that awkward electronic hum when the connection is broken, then begin a recorded 56 Z. A. Maxfield
message because I didn’t hang it up quickly enough. I was taking stock, hands and feet cold, brain numb, stomach faintly sick, when Shawn came to find me. Since I had my head in my hands, he probably had a clue to my mood.
“Hey, Cooper?” he asked, as he entered. He turned the office chair around and he bent so we were at the same level. “Jim said you were in here. You got a phone call… Bad news?” I turned to him. “I’m going home,” I said.
“What?” he asked. “What?”
I didn’t have my phone, so I searched around for a piece of paper. “I’m going home,” I wrote.