A feral grin creased Monica’s cheeks. “Why don’t you drive past his house on your way home and keep going. You never said you’d stop, right?”
She earned herself an eye roll and a bad Groucho Marx impression: “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Not as ridiculous as you avoiding a guy you might like.” Dustin opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out.
“Go, get reacquainted, find out what an asshole he is, then you’ll be begging him to go the fuck back home.”
Yeah, right.
Dustin fretted all afternoon, picking up his phone repeatedly to call Seth and make excuses for not visiting. No doubt about it, however; the closer six o’clock and quitting time came, the faster his heart beat.
With no rational excuse coming to mind, he ended up at Seth’s, only to find the man waiting, a cheerful smile on his face. “Want to take a walk again? I promise I won’t make any unwanted advances.”
Dustin struggled, torn between finding the promise comforting and disappointing. “Sure. Where do you have in mind?”
“The pond.”
The spring-fed swimming hole brought back memories.
“Hey, remember that box turtle we found over there by the overflow?” Dustin gestured toward the shallow end of the pond, where runoff flowed down the hill to join the creek.
Seth grinned. “I kept him in a box under the bed until Aunt Irene found him. I thought she’d make me get rid of him. Instead Daddy helped me build a pen.” Dustin had planned to keep the terrapin for himself, but seeing the excitement in Seth’s eyes had inspired him to hand it over. How he’d lived for the smile on his friend’s face. Seeing it now, on a grown-up Seth, brought back those feelings.
A groundhog peeked out from the grass, watching their passing. Dustin paused, studying the creature, but no lucid thoughts hid within the basic instinct to scratch an itch with a hind foot, avoid the two scary humans, and find dinner. In the meadow, birds chittered and sang. Except for Dustin and Seth, the surrounding tableau had remained relatively unchanged since their last visit here.
Seth sank onto the graded embankment. “I remember coming here when we were kids.” He plinked a rock across the water’s glassy surface, causing the reflection of nearby pine trees to ripple. “We used to strip down and hop in on a hot day.”
Dustin gave a nervous laugh, an image coming to mind of the two of them, stark naked, standing waist-deep in water.
“Remember the rope we used to hang from a tree over there?” Seth pointed to the far side of the pond and the towering oak whose branches nearly swept the surface. “Those were the days.” Seth lay back in a bed of clover, arms folded behind his head, staring up at the sky. “The more I stay here, the more I’m in danger of not wanting to leave.”
“Oh, really?” A niggling of hope squirmed to life in Dustin’s heart. While he wanted Seth here, wanted to rekindle the wonderful friendship of their youth, was it wise to wish him to stay?
“Yeah, really. Down here is where I lived with my mom and dad; it’s the only home I remember. My grandmother lived in an apartment, and we moved several times while I was growing up. But here? Here stayed the same. There’s something comforting about things that don’t change, isn’t there?”
You don’t know the half of it.Dustin was older than Seth by a couple of years, and, looking back now, he supposed he’d suspected he was gay even at a tender age. His feelings for Seth back then might actually have been his first crush. “When did you first realize you were gay?” he found himself asking.
“I dunno. I guess around thirteen or fourteen. Scared me at first. The boys at school kept talking about girls, but it wasn’t a girl who stayed on my mind.”
Dustin wanted to ask, “Who did?” but an eye-locking gaze from Seth kept him quiet. If the two of them hadn’t been ripped apart, would young love have grown? A barely audible growl escaped Dustin, aimed at Seth’s cold grandmother. He tried to lighten the mood. “I bet you had to beat the boys off with a two-by-four in high school.”
The light in Seth’s eyes dimmed and he turned away, studying the sky. “No. Not in high school. I was too scared of what my grandmother might say. How about you?”
While the South typically wasn’t the most accepting of places, Possum Kingdom had never cottoned to the norm, except for a few holdouts who managed to make problems here and there. Regardless, Dustin hadn’t freely explored the sexual aspect of himself until he left for college. “I dated a bit in college, managed to snag myself a steady boyfriend or two, but never anyone I’d call a partner.”
“Me either. Came close once, but it’s probably better off we didn’t work out,” Seth mused. Dustin wondered if he meant Michael, the guy from the social site. “Woulda been nice not to be alone.”
Dustin sidled over to the bank and dropped down beside Seth. The loneliness, the isolation, pulsed off the man in waves. An irresistible force seemed to pull them together. Their lips met, a gentle play of tongue on tongue following. “I missed you,” Dustin said, propping up on one arm to stare down at Seth.
“I missed you too.”
Their eyes met and held. Fire danced between them. Dustin broke thesilence. “Is there anyone waiting for you back in Chicago?”
“No.”
“Are you a ‘one-night stand only’ kind of guy?”
“No. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. I can count my former lovers on one hand, and still have fingers left over.”
