“Where are you taking me?” I ask Ladonna, because I don’t have time for Pete’s late-life bi awakening. Johnny would probably kill me dead for calling someone younger than him a late-life anything, but I’m young, unhung, and full of cum, so I know a little more about being youthful than either of them.
“Home, sweetie,” she says to me, her thumb gently brushing my cheek. “We’re going home to Dunsberry.”
“You’ve kidnapped me. I don’t know what part of Bumfuck, Nowhere, you grew up—”
“We grew up in Dunsberry,” Pete interjects. “Why are you acting like you don’t know where we live?”
“I’m speaking in hyperbole,” I argue, my voice quite shrill, because I’m fucking done with Pete. Bringing my voice to a decibel that won’t pierce the eardrums of any dogs within a five-mile radius, I add, “Stop making this about you. I’ve been kidnapped, and here you are, using it as a platform to work out the confusing effects of your shifting sexuality. Knock it off, Pete.”
Pete rolls his eyes. Prick.
“We’re taking you back to the farm.” Ladonna says.
“Why?”
She removes her hand from my cheek, and much to my surprise, my skin feels so much colder without her there. She was caressing me theway a mother caresses her pride and joy. It’s a touch I don’t remember feeling before, and now it’s gone, and all the fear and lonesomeness resigning in my heart magnify tenfold, but then her hand finds mine, and she weaves our fingers together.
“I may not understand all this, but I’ve always known my Johnny was different. He’s always been a bit softer than his brothers.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” both Pete and I say in unison. His eyes light up in the rearview mirror, but I just scowl at him.
“I wish death upon you,” I remind him. A pout settles on his face, but what does he have to pout about? He’s not the one who has been stolen from the men he loves. He’s not lying in the backseat of this hoarder’s nest of a truck, surrounded by farming equipment, fertilizer-covered boots, and random seeds lining the floorboard that reminds me of that steakhouse that lets you throw peanut shells on the floor. Johnny and Bubba took me there a few weeks ago. Oh, what I’d give to go back there, just to see the smile Johnny gave me after I stuck two straws in my nose and used them to make bubbles in Bubba’s clam chowder. Who the fuck orders clam chowder at a steakhouse?
Pete scoffs and breaks eye contact. As he should, because if he even thinks about giving me some sort of sassy retort, I’ll punch his lights out. Okay, maybe I won’t, but the sentiment remains. If he’s thinking about being a prick, he better think again.
He flicks the blinker, veers off the interstate, and pulls into a gas station just a few yards away, parking next to a gas pump. I have one chance to escape, probably, and this is it. I could run. I could sprint across the field behind the gas station, into the residential area just past the fence, and beg a good Samaritan to allow me the use of their phone. I would call Bubba, and he’d make everything okay, because he always makes everything okay, and Johnny would tell me how worried about me he’s been. He’d tell me he wants me to come home, because it’swhere I belong, and then he’d stay on the phone with me the whole trip, much to the dismay of the phone owner.
Johnny and Bubba are the only place I feel safe, and I don’t feel very safe right now. My legs won’t work the way I want them to. I don’t run. I barely move a muscle. Ladonna has to step out of the truck and open the back door just to get me to stir, and when I do, I sit upright, not wanting to leave the car. Pete goes inside to pay the clerk, but Ladonna just stands beside me, smiling sympathetically.
“I want to go home,” I whisper. “Please, just take me home.”
Her mouth ghosts my temple before she puckers and kisses me on the forehead. I don’t know what it is about the Boyd family’s fondness for forehead kisses, but they’re just as heartwarming coming from her as they are coming from Johnny, so it must be hereditary. They should trademark them. Bottle them up and sell them for pocket money.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing, sweetie,” she says. “You’re coming home. All my boys are. Don’t worry. They know where we’re heading, and they'll be right behind. Barbara was very clear that as soon as we get home, we have to give your parents’ address to Barrett.” I blink at her, because her words are stupid. “It’s all part of the plan. You’ll have to trust me on this.”
“You kidnapped me. I don’t have to trust shit.”
“Goodness. Your mouth is just about as bad as Pete’s. I never had to worry about that with Johnny. He’s such a good boy.”
“He really is,” I agree, missing him like crazy. “I didn’t think so at first, though. I hated him at first.”
“I don’t know how anyone could ever hate Johnny.”
“Spend a little time with him. It will become clear very quickly,” I say, but she obviously doesn’t understand my brand of humor, because she just stares at like I told her I fucked her husband. “Don’t worry, it’s our thing. We’re real jerks to each other sometimes.”
“Is that how your kind court each other?”
I wipe away the last tear from my cheek and raise an eyebrow. “My kind?”
She nods. “I don’t remember what it was that Barbara kept calling you. Homosapien, maybe?”
“Homosexual,” I correct, “And I don’t really care for the generalization, but yeah. It’s pretty accurate.”
“How fascinating,” she says, and she sounds like she means it. “I don’t care for cruelty as a form of flattery, but whatever works for you is fine by me. Your journey is yours, it is not mine. All I can do is let it unfold and show as much support as I can find.”
I gape at her. “Good God.”
Her eyebrows scrunch together. “What’s wrong? Did I say something untoward?”
