Five minutes later, I knock lightly on Austin’s door before entering. He’s lying in bed, his phone screen aimed at him, FaceTiming his stepfather-slash-boyfriend, probably. The theory is proven accurate when I cuddle up next to him in bed and see Dallas welding stuff together at Bubba’s new machine shop. In the background, Johnny walks out of the bathroom, zipping his coveralls up. I guess he has to unzip them completely when he uses the bathroom.
The call timer says they’ve been talking for over three hours. Well, talking is a bit of an overstatement. I’m pretty sure Austin’s just been watching Dallas work all day.
As I spoon him from behind, Austin looks over his shoulder at me and smiles. “How was filming?”
“Good,” I answer. “At the end, I ran out of people to do readings for, so I pulled your cards. The cards say you’ve got genital herpes, by the way.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me. “Which one of your tarot cardstold you that?”
“That’s none of your business, Snoopy Snooperson. The point is, you’ve got it. Don't feel bad though. I think Bubba has it. I’m fairly confident he's mentioned it before, but I tend to tune him out most of the time. Either way, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I don't hold it against him, and I won't hold it against you. It's not the end of the world, it's just an STI.”
“Dallas and I get tested regularly. I tell him over and over we don’t need to continuously test, but he’s terrified he’ll prick his finger and catch something, so he likes to stay on top of it. I literally do not have herpes.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, Aussie.”
“Yes, I know there’s nothing wrong with it,” he hisses. “But I don’t have it. If Dallas hears you saying it like it’s true, he’ll think I’ve been cheating, and he’ll never fuck me raw-dog again. He’ll probably break up with me and everything. I’ll kill you, Ezra. I’ll kill you so fucking dead, you won’t even know it.”
“If you ever kill me, I’ll haunt you until you die,” I tell him. Bored with this exchange, I roll on my side and reach under their bed, blindly searching for the little treat I left for them yesterday. “What the hell are you doing?”
“One Daddy, two Daddy, three Daddy, four,” I sing-song in an ominous tone. “Eat my load, you cum-guzzling whore.”
He barely has time for the rhyme to register before I strike. His mouth is open, and he manages to get the words, “Don’t you dare,” out before I maneuver my hand like a catapult, lifting a cum-filled balloon from the floor, thrusting it directly at him, sending one of my signature Ezra Specials™ his way.
Don’t ask me why I started filling party balloons with my own semen and throwing them at unsuspecting men, because I can’t remember. It’s been years, and for some reason, it still makes me giddy.There’s a sense of purpose to it. The act of continuously filling them. Keeping them in the freezer until they’re full, then thawing them before throwing. Each strike is like a blast of bleach-scented goodness when it pops, kind of like those Gushers gummy candies that shoot in your mouth when you chew them, but with cum instead of sugary goodness.
Austin slowly drags his hand down his face, removing the leftover load before holding it out for me. “Get me a towel.”
Since I’m feeling a little stir-crazy from spending months in this goddamn home with no real outside source of human connection, I take my fun where I can get it, and I know it’ll be real fun to make Dallas mad.
“Dallas!” I shout, hoping it will get his attention over the sound of his welding equipment. Sure enough, he looks over his shoulder, letting his blowtorch die down, and lifts his welding helmet.
“Yeah, Little Man?”
“I got Austin. I got him right in the face with one of my balloons.”
Dallas snorts a laugh, which surprises me, because I kind of expected him to scream at me. “Wash it off, Aussie. Dad’s going to give you his own signature blend when he gets home.” He lowers helmet, shielding his eyes from the torch’s flame, and returns to work.
As Austin cleans his face, I unlock my phone and head to OnlyFans. My mind is still wandering back to Daddy McSnack. Maybe it’s just aside effect of the hypnotic state his ass holds me in, or maybe it’s more. There’s just something about him, and I want to know what that is. So, I initiate a new message, and I type, “Don’t go quiet on me again. I liked talking to you.”
Moments later, he replies, “I think I liked talking to you too.”
It’s funny, because in the background, Johnny’s got his phone in his hand.
I guess I don’t have anyone to blame but myself. I’m the reason he’s here. If I had just kept my cool the day Bubba kissed me, we’d be alone in this bed right now. I wouldn’t have Ezra’s stupid sleeping face only inches from mine, resting on Bubba’s chest. I wouldn’t have to smell his death-breath because he sleeps with his mouth open like a caveman. I wouldn’t have to see him throw himself at Bubba like I know he will the second they wake up. He usually wraps his arms and legs around my best friend, holdingon like a koala bear. One of these days he’ll kiss Bubba right on the mouth. I know it’s going to happen. For fuck’s sake, he stares at Bubba like he’s god’s-fucking-gift, and Bubba stares right back at him the same way. Ezra probably thinks it will be his way of claiming Bubba, stealing him away from me for good, but the joke’s on him, because I’ve already kissed Bubba. Well, I guess he kissed me, but the point is, our lips touched. He kissed me like he meant it. It wasn’t a long kiss, but it felt true. Truer than any that came before. Truer than the kisses I shared with my ex-girlfriend.
“I think I might be some shade of bisexual, bro,” he said that night, and he never looked away. I wanted him to. I needed him to look away from me, because it felt like he was speaking the truth for both of us. The intensity in his eyes said it all, but that didn’t stop Bubba from saying it anyway when he added, “And I think you are too.”
I knew Bubba was right, because Bubba has always been right about everything. Always has, always will. Before that night, I never once questioned my sexuality. I had trouble getting hard for my girlfriend, but that’s to be expected. It happens to a lot of men. That’s what Annie used to tell me before she got fed up with saying it so often. Toward the end of our relationship, she would just sigh and roll over when I couldn’t get hard enough to fuck her.
But I was hard for Bubba that night.
Scared and confused, I did a runner. I ran and ran, driving my pickup truck all the way home to Dunsberry, spending time with a girl I met on a dating app, staying at my mom’s house. For a month, I stayed around the farm, helping with the crops and picking up chores here and there. It felt like falling into familiarity, and I knew if I didn’t try to find myself a girl to settle down with, I’d wind up running back to Bubba with all his truths that were still too scary to hear.
So, I found a girl online. Jessie was sweet enough. She had really pretty red hair that hung halfway down her back. She wore these tightclothes that didn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. She was the apple of every man’s eye whenever we went out, and I tried to light a spark with her, hoping it might prove Bubba wrong, but the spark never caught. When she tried to kiss me after our second date, my entire body went tense, and I had to swallow a sob, because I knew my mouth wasn’t hers to kiss. It wasn’t anyone’s to kiss anymore. Not after Bubba showed me what a true kiss felt like.
So, I went back to what felt right. The only thing that ever felt right. I went back to Bubba, but he had already replaced me with Ezra. I wanted to rip the brown-haired son of a bitch limb from limb, but my buddy Clint was there to hold me back. Bubba’s eyes bulged as I bared my teeth, probably foaming at the mouth like I had rabies or some shit, ready to straight-up murder Ezra Edwards.
Bubba threw me away like I meant nothing, but then he brought me into their tangled fold, and I’m in too deep to pull out now. I have to watch Bubba make a fool of himself, picking Ezra up against his wishes, wearing him on his hip like a fanny pack. Don’t get me wrong, he shows me affection too, but having to see him give that same attention to another man hurts my heart more than it’s ever been hurt before.
