Brady immediately took Donnie’s dick in hand and started stroking him. They’d done this stuff before, too. Kissing and hand jobs, and even blow jobs. All kinds of touching. That stuff was easy to do in a hayloft, even if their butts got itchy sometimes. They’d wanted to save this, though, for a bed. Someplace soft and sweet, instead of hard and dusty.
“I wanna do you first,” Brady said, giving his balls a good rub that made Donnie sigh. “You can do me later, if you want to.”
“Okay.” Donnie would have agreed to anything in that moment. “I want you to do me.”
After another demanding kiss, Brady said, “Then get on the bed, cowboy.”
Donnie laughed. Brady thought it was hilarious to call him cowboy, even though he worked on a farm, not a ranch, and they didn’t even own horses. Just some cows, pigs, and chickens. Donnie was even a little bit afraid of horses, ever since he was a kid and saw one kick a real cowboy in the face.
The ancient box springs creaked beneath his weight. As the oldest, he got the single bed, while his brothers had to share the bunk beds on the opposite wall. Knowing what he was about to do in a room he shared gave him a funny little thrill, so he wiggled his bare butt at Brady, then settled over the towel on his hands and knees.
“Use that, okay?” Donnie said, pointing to the Vaseline. “It’ll help.”
“Good idea.” Brady grabbed it. Donnie heard the lid twist off, then a wet, sticky sound. “Can’t believe we’re finally doin’ this.”
“Me too.”
“Read somewhere it can hurt a little so you gotta relax, okay? But if it hurtsreallybad, you gotta tell me. I don’t wanna hurt you for real.”
Donnie didn’t want that either, and his heart fluttered at how careful Brady was being when all Donnie wanted was for him to shove it in already. “I’ll tell you, I promise.”
Something hard and blunt pressed against his backdoor, and Donnie gasped.
The bedroom door flung open hard enough for the knob to crash into the wall, and Donnie yelped. Pop appeared in the doorway, his face contorted in rage and so dark he was almost purple. “What in the name of Christ Almighty are you doin’ to my son?”
Donnie’s insides turned to ice and his bowels got watery.
Behind him, Brady moved so fast the bed shook. He tried to go for his clothes. Pop picked up Donnie’s guitar case with both hands and swung. Donnie screamed. The case smashed into the side of Brady’s head, sending him sprawling to the wood floor on his stomach. He moaned, but stayed down.
Donnie tried to get past him and out the door, but Pop was faster. He swung the case again, catching Donnie in the small of his back. He cried out as he fell. The second blow landed on his bare ass, harsher than any lash with a belt or paddle.
“Goddamn city boy come out here to corrupt my kid,” Pop roared. “Goddamn city queer. You’ll be fuckin’ sorry, with your devil instrument.”
All Donnie heard was thudding and Brady crying, and he wanted to run, to get away from the horror but he couldn’t leave Brady. “Pop, stop, please!” His voice was rough and full of tears, so he tried again. “Stop! It’s not his fault.”
The guitar case clattered to the floor. Then Pop loomed over him, a seething mass of man Donnie didn’t recognize. “I knewsomethin’ was off between you two, I knew it. Why do you think I came back?”
Donnie couldn’t hold back a sob.
“You wanna cry like a woman? I’ll give you somethin’ to cry over. You and that devil’s instrument? You’re done with it.”
He didn’t understand until Pop put all the force he could muster into slamming his size-fourteen work boot down onto Donnie’s right hand. Bones popped. Pop dug in, and Donnie screamed.
He screamed for a long time as he clutched his mangled hand to his chest. Long after Pop dragged Brady out of the room. Long after the back door banged. After a while, the scream turned internal, and it wrapped itself around Donnie’s heart. Wrapped it hard and tight in pain and anger and grief.
Even after Pop drove him to the hospital with a story about a farm equipment malfunction and got his hand bandaged, even after the physical pain dulled behind narcotics, even after Pop got him to swear he’d never speak of this to anyone, not ever, or he’d be sorry . . . his heart continued to scream.
TWO
Joshua Lansingnever would have guessed that a bar existed behind the barbershop façade of the strip mall, and he probably never would have found it without Lincoln’s help.
He’d heard of Off Beat from many of his friends, including his long-term boyfriend Benji Moore, but he’d never managed to visit the bar/live music venue until tonight. When Benji had visited the shore back in July, their three-year relationship was in a rocky place and Joshua didn’t go with the group, so he missed the outing that had seen Benji’s band performing live at the club.
Tonight he and Lincoln West, one of Benji’s former band mates, were braving a Thursday open-mike night. Being the first Thursday after Labor Day weekend, Joshua didn’t expect a packed house. Most tourists went home after the holiday, didn’t they?
He followed Lincoln through a heavily tinted front door and into the kind of eclectic meeting room he’d expect to see at a hookah joint. Big, funky couches, bright colors on the walls, piped music. A chalkboard wall in the back with all sorts of drawings and messages, and above it, a sign that said “No Fucking Swearing.”
That made him chuckle.
