“Sounds good.” Austin grabbed up a dry, white t-shirt and his oldest, softest blue jeans, his belly tightening, something in his chest jumping. “My turn, I think.”
Taking a shower with someone other than Mona waiting for him was just about as new and strange as it had been waiting for Clay while he’d been in the bathroom. His body tingled with the sensation of standing in the shower tub, where Clay had just been, using the soap Clay had just used.
But that wasn’t right. He wasn’t supposed to get worked by simply that, wasn’t supposed to be having those kinds of thoughts about his new roommate. Working this through his head, he focused his mind away from that and onto the age of the grout, peeling away in places from the old, yellow bathroom tiles.
At least there was hot water. At least they weren’t stranded by the roadside, standing in the pouring rain. They’d been helped by a highway patrolman and now, warm and fed, showered and safe, they’d spend the night in relative comfort. It was something to be grateful for, all of it, even if he’d be sharing his bed with another man, something he’d not done since he’d gone camping with his pals in the days before Mona, in the days of long ago.
When he’d dried off and gotten dressed, wishing he’d thought to bring in his shaving kit, he exited the bathroom amidst his own cloud of steam.
Clay was bending over to grab the remote, and the stretch of his body exposed a length of his hip, showing quite clearly that he wasn’t wearing underwear. Which only made sense. The rain had soaked him all the way to his skin, so of course he’d be draping everything he’d been wearing over the back of the chair to dry.
Austin gave himself a shake, as he needed to get over any stray thoughts he might have, and just continue on as though this was the normal way of things. Which was hard, as Clay, scrolling through the channels with his thumb on the clicker, standing two feet from the TV, absently scratched his belly, exposing the same vulnerable skin he’d exposed before.
“Anything good?” asked Austin, doing his best to act as-if, which was hard because Clay was a handsome young man by anybody’s standards. Good looking even in the eyes of a newly divorced straight man sharing a bed with said handsome young man. “There’s always something good on the History Channel.”
“There is,” said Clay. He thumbed through the channels faster till he got there. “Looks like something on prairie grasses, but after that, it’s pyramids and mummies. Sound good?”
Anything was better than what Mona liked them to watch together, which were shows about rich families and the one about the five guys digging deeper and deeper on an island off Nova Scotia, which could have been fun except they never found anything.
She also liked to watch football, but that was mostly because she enjoyed looking cute in an oversized player’s jersey and posing for selfies for her Instagram account. Enough of that, enough of her. Austin turned and looked at the bed, as they might as well get this over with as soon as possible.
“Flip for the side?” he asked.
Clay turned, clutching the remote to him as though Austin had threatened to take away his control.
“I’ll take whoever,” said Clay. “Though I prefer—” he pointed at the side furthest from the door. “That side.”
“Sure,” said Austin.
He pushed the suitcases to the wall with his feet, thought about calling Bea while he plugged in his phone, and then decided against it. She was nine and resilient as all kids were, but there was no need to torture her with the fact he wasn’t there to tuck her in and kiss her goodnight.
8
Austin
Climbing into bed with Clay felt a little like getting ready for bed at a sleep-away camp. There was a sense of needing to be on alert, being in bed with a stranger for the first time. There was also a sense of Clay’s nearness, the way the sweatpants just didn’t fit quite right and exposed the length of Clay’s side as he slithered beneath the sheet and single just-about-plastic motel room blanket.
“Is it too hot or too cold?” asked Austin as he figured it’d be better to get that taken care of before they settled in to watching something banal on the TV.
“No, I’m good.”
Austin lay back, head on the too-flat pillow, hands laced across the folded down bedsheet, which was arrayed almost primly across his belly. He was lying there like a monk in a single cot when next to him, Clay shifted and moved this way and that, nudging Austin’s leg first with his toe and then with his knee.
“Sorry,” said Clay. “I might not snore, but I am what you call a sprawler.”
“A sprawler.”
Images, like unbidden fireflies, rose above the banality of the anonymous shades that colored everything in the room, beige and white and cream and, except for the wildly overdone print of a bad watercolor, made him feel like he was sinking into a vast nothingness.
Except for Clay, vibrant and moving and alive. Austin knew wasn’t likely to wake up in the middle of the night wondering who was in bed next to him, because there was no way he was going to forget it was Clay. Not with Clay’s blond hair drawing faint shimmers of light on the pillowcase, not with Clay’s whoosh of breath as he sighed his body into relaxing. Not with Clay’s scent, warm from the day, traces of soap, traces of hard work he must have done at the ranch earlier.
All of this surrounded him, unlike any night he’d ever spent with Mona, including their wedding night. It was like a door had opened into another world, strange and new and vibrant. And most of all, when Clay must have felt Austin looking at him, he looked over at Austin, drawing the sheet up to his chest as though he was shy and not sure about Austin’s intentions.
Austin had no intentions, not one. And, to some strange degree, no real thoughts about anything other than where he was, in bed with another man, a gay man, who had treated him, from the very start, with dignity and kindness and a kind of joy at meeting him.
“Should I set an alarm on my phone?” asked Austin, his mouth rather dry, like it couldn’t remember how to make spit, let alone say something more interesting than that.
“I tend to wake up when the cock crows,” said Clay, then he snickered under his breath. “What I mean is, I get up when I get up because I’ve got a full day of work ahead of me. Leland doesn’t like it when I work twelve-hour days, though, so I probably could sleep in. Except you’ll want to get to the ranch as soon as possible, I expect, so you can hit the books.”
