“Inspection?”Dean asked, running his hands over a hitching post in front of the General Store and imagining a trio of horses tied up there, their owners (riders?) having ridden into town for a sack of flour and a fresh jar of molasses.
“Oh, yeah,” Sully mused, already on the elevated walkway and reaching his hand down to help Dean up the cracked, warped steps.“Every season they come out here and do a preliminary once-over before giving me the green light for another tourist season.”
Dean nodded, his college boy sneakers crunching over broken glass and dusty floorboards as they inched through the open door into the General Store.“I never thought of all that stuff, I guess.”
“Me, neither,” Sully grunted, running his finger along the dusty sales counter as if smearing time itself.“Until I applied for the original permit to bring guests through here.And then?Holy shit, Paperwork City.”
“No wonder you know so much about it,” Dean muttered, distracted by the shelves full of old jars and cans, the labels so faded they were barely legible.Atop the counter, an old-timey cash register still boasted the numbers of its very last sale: seventy-nine cents.“Is there money in there?”he asked playfully.
Sully chuckled.“Seed money,” he said, reaching across the scarred, dusty county to reveal clearly play money, the kind you might find in a grocery store playset for kids to learn their counting skills.“You’d be amazed at how grubby little tourist hands love to go places they’re not supposed to.”
The sagging floorboards whispered beneath Dean’s feet as he ran his own hand along a furled burlap bag in the corner.Beneath a fine layer of dust, the words “Brown Sugar” had been printed decades earlier.They stood in the middle of the store, windows long since broken, floorboards sagging beneath their feet, jars of long since spoiled fruit and vegetables mottled with dust.
Sully inched toward the open door, scarred cowboy boots looking right at home on the well-aged pine floorboards, sagging with every step as Dean followed dutifully back onto the warped walkway.They shuffled for a bit, cautious footsteps avoiding cracked boards and broken glass, the only sound for miles that of gently rustling trees high above the dusty dirt road that ran through the seven or eight buildings that lined downtown Gravel Gulch.
They paused outside a clothing store, outdated fashions still hanging from a knotted pine pole that stretched across the cracked storefront glass.“May I ask,” Dean began, “why you got so interested in some sad sack ghost town, of all things?”
“I never was, growing up here,” Sully insisted.
“Growing up?”Dean asked as they paused just outside the Gravel Gulch Savings & Loan.Bars across shattered windows.Desks overturned.Chairs sunken in on three legs.Papers scattered across the floors and teller windows long since deserted.
Sully stepped off the wooden walkway back onto the dusty main street.Dean reached for the hand he offered, taking it willingly the way a lover might.Or, perhaps, even a boyfriend?Sully smiled beneath the brim of his ridiculous—ridiculously sexy, that is—cowboy hat, waving his free hand across the crumbling buildings and beyond, to miles and miles of rolling grass, endless green waves under the soft blue springtime sky.
“One of the Grayson clan owned a parcel of land here,” Sully explained, dirt crunching beneath his big, brown boots as they strolled through the long-deserted ghost town.“Back in the day.It got passed on to other Graysons and, little by little, they bought up more parcels as they became available.Then more parcels, until eventually Gravel Gulch became part of the Grayson investment portfolio.My family wasn’t big on procreation, apparently.So eventually Pappy was the last in line and, well, when he passed...”
“It all came to you.”
Sully shrugged casually, effortlessly radiant in his cowboy getup—plaid shirt with the rhinestone buttons down the front, sleeves rolled up to show off his long, veiny arms, big belt buckle glinting in the sun above a smooth, stonewashed crotch and those boots, making him even taller and more towering than usual.“So that’s why you’re interested in Gravel Gulch, huh?”
“I do confess it got me to thinking what kind of a nouveau riche asshole I’d be if I let the county come and bulldoze it just because of a few code violations, right?I mean, whether you believe in the curse or not, it’s historical, you know?”
Sully patted the corner of the stables at the far end of town.The long barn roof was sagging, a patch already broken through and letting a focused stream of sunlight onto long forgotten hay bales.
“And now it’s yours?”Dean mused, subtly impressed with his lover’s newfound VIP status.Or, at least, new to him.“You, Sully Grayson, are the out and out owner of a real, live ghost town.”
“Is it live?”Sully teased, seeming to come back to his old, jaunty, carefree, cowboy self now that they’d reached the end of the tour.He waved big, long, veiny fingers, spooky style, in Dean’s face.“Or is it ...dead?”
Dean batted them away, relieved to be joshing again after the heavy tone of the ghost tour, all those abandoned buildings, frozen in time, broken glass and creaking floorboards.“You know what I meant.”
“I know what you meant, City Slicker,” Sully oozed, one big arm gliding across Dean’s shoulders in a most surprising, and soothing, way.He pulled him close, the sun warm on their faces as they inched back toward the truck parked just beyond town.
“Now what?”he sighed, feeling himself being pulled along by the inexorable force that was Sully Grayson.
“Lunch, duh,” Sully snorted, gently shoving Dean away as he strode purposefully toward the back of the truck.Dean followed dutifully, admiring the way Sully’s high, tight ass swished to and fro in his well-worn blue jeans.
“Is that included in the price of admission?”Dean teased as Sully grunted, tugging the truck’s stubborn, rusty tailgate down.
“It is for you, loverboy.”
Dean blushed, glancing around the deserted stretch of land as if one of his classmates back at school could hear him.“What are you doing?”Sully grunted, sliding a wicker basket closer to the rear door panel.
“Nothing,” Dean lied, wishing his host wasn’t so damned attentive.Fucker noticed everything, didn’t he?
“Yeah, you were,” Sully grunted, opening a big wicker basket chock full of yummy goodies.“You were embarrassed.Just now.”
Dean nodded.He clearly couldn’t hide anything from Sully, so why try?“Yeah, maybe a little.”
Sully nodded, undoing a fancy foil cooler sack before hoisting out a bottle of champagne.“Not of you,” Dean insisted, watching his big fingers scratch and tear at the cheap gold foil.
