Ladies' Man - 4. Chapter 4

Clem sipped his drink and lent back with one elbow against the polished surface of the bar. The extreme chill of the ice along with the carbonated cola and sharp bourbon made him suck his teeth quickly as he looked around the club. It was hot, and the glass in his hand sweated like the bodies of the young men who writhed and danced under the flashing coloured lights. Clem couldn’t dance, had never been able to dance, and so he was happy to simply stand and watch, and try not to be caught watching. He drained his drink too quickly, and wished they would play some country and western once in a while.

“You want another?” The barman wiped condensation rings off the bar and smiled at him.

“Can I have a beer?”

“I’ve not got anything on tap,” the barman shrugged, and joined in watching the pretty skinny guys twirl and gyrate on the floor. “All these low-calorie twinks want cosmopolitans and fancy cocktails – I swear bar tending didn’t used to be this much hard work,” he sighed, “I’ve got some fancy imported shit in bottles if you want?”

Clem nodded and smiled tightly as he passed over six dollars for his beer. He sipped the golden liquid from the clear glass and went back to watching the dance floor.

The boys the barman had described as twinks were the same ones Nathan had always called by whatever derogatory term he could come up with, and now standing at the side of the dance floor, Clem wished he was more like them. In the weeks since he and Nathan had broken up, which was the nicest way Clem could think of to describe what had happened; he had tried and failed to broaden his horizons. This was not the first time he had been to this bar, and a fair few around Austin had witnessed his presence, but Clem wasn’t having any luck. He was too different from the colourful and vibrant twinks, and felt like a dull grey hawk against the exotic tableau of their bird of paradise style dance. The only other guys who approached him in bars, and there had been several, were all like himself, like Nathan, and like the barman: all tall, strong, deeply masculine, and apparently dismissive of the skinny boys with their expensive shirts and dyed and styled hair. Only twice had Clem gone home with anyone, and both times had managed to abort the inevitable moment where he was asked to turn around and bend over. Every kiss was a power struggle to see who would end up on top, and Clem was tired of fighting.

But the pretty skinny creatures thought him strange, or dangerous. Clem had discovered that first night out the white cowboy hat put people off, and a ball cap wasn’t much better. Even just in jeans and a checked shirt, apparently his rough country nature was still perceptible, and when he did strike up a conversation, it became clear very quickly that he had nothing in common with them, and they had very little interest in finding any common ground.

The bar tender served someone else with a very bright but false smile, and Clem decided that he didn’t like the man’s attitude one bit, and walked away with his beer. He skirted around the edge of the dance floor, keeping his eyes on his feet lest he tread on anyone’s toes in his thick soled black leather boots – they were the best he owned, since his one pair of westerns were used for working and riding and thus ended up being in no better visual condition than his work boots – until he reached a semi-circular table set against the wall and hopped up onto an abandoned bar stool. As the music changed, from something with a huge amount of bass beat and crazy fast lyrics Clem hadn’t been able to make head nor tail of, into a lighter pitch with slow dramatic vocals, and Clem set to peeling the label from his beer bottle.

He scanned the crowd; he had been hanging on the periphery of the club long enough to recognise certain faces, though he didn’t know any of them to actually speak to, and for a bit he followed the sinuous movements of a skinny boy with bright blue hair and a steel ring through one side of his lip. Clem wondered what it would be like to kiss him. So lost did he become in the hot and lustful vision, mentally stripping the young man from his sweat soaked rhinestone encrusted shirt and apparently painted-on tight black jeans, that he didn’t notice the touch until after it had happened. Clem put his empty beer bottle back on the table and as his hand returned to hang at his side, someone brushed against him.

Sudden, soft, and incredibly warm against his beer chilled palm, the touch sent tremors up his spine like lightning. It was blink fast, and Clem would have thought he had imagined it, but there was also a scent. The club smelt of sweat and bodies, of alcohol and cheap perfume, but as Clem shivered, he inhaled the strong clean scent of vanilla.

Clem’s eyes flashed up, and he glanced in the direction the brief touch had gone. Vanilla hung in the air, just for a moment, and Clem made out a shape, a slender figure moving in the gap between strobe lights, stepping through the crowd like they weren’t even there. Clem couldn’t look away, and the figure turned, bright eyes flashing back at him just for a second. One more moment and Clem knew he would have followed. He was half out of his seat anyway, just to find out whom the touch and scent belonged to. And then the angle of the strobe changed. Clem couldn’t help but blink and wince, raising his hand against the sudden glare: by the time he looked back, there was no picking that one slender shape out of the crowd of pulsating bodies.

Clem waited until he would have missed his pre-booked taxi, and with one last look at the club, he took his jacket from the bored and adorable skinny guy at the coat-check and smiled as he was wished a good night. The cab driver was all too pleased to get a nice thirty minute fare out of the city, because Clem simply tucked himself up in the back and lost focus, staring out the window and up into the stars.

Lying back on his mattress, clean and damp from a fast late night shower, Clem licked his minty fresh teeth and smiled. At that moment, he would have given anything for there to have been someone with him. In his head, that someone was soft and warm, straddled his hips and kissed him for hours. Clem might have been having sex for years, but he hadn’t made love since he was a teenager. Wrapping his fingers around his semi-erect member, he groaned; this was not how things were supposed to go.

*

The pay was good and the work was hard. When people asked Clem why he was happy to spend his life hauling in hay and trimming the cloven hooves of sheep, it was always what he said. Television was full of people griping about their day jobs, crammed into suits and offices, stacked up and living on top of each other, bitching over water coolers and turning office politics into a blood sport. Clem knew that there were people whose lives were made and broken by what appeared in newspapers, but the best thing the Lockhart Register could offer Clem was a seven day weather forecast. He liked his job, and he was happy to spend his days outside in the sunshine, or the rain, or the snow, caring for the animals, bringing in the harvest, and saving to one day have a little place of his own.

“Linton!” Riley always called them by their last names when they were working. Clem looked up from the baling twine he was coiling up for storage and smiled at his boss. “I need you to take a delivery out. Cole ranch’s grain delivery is a day late and they want to tide the horses over with another seventy bales. Truck’s all loaded up; take the John Deere and get over there!”

“Yes sir!” Clem replied quickly, and watched the older man hurry away. He set the baling twine down and turned up his collar against the stiff wind. It had been blowing all day, not enough to cause worry, but certainly enough to take the lingering end of summer warmth out of the air, and Clem was back in long sleeves for the first time in a long time.

Since he had sworn not to see Nathan again over a month previously, Clem had managed to keep his private promise. The Cole ranch was one of their main contracts, but Clem had let Cruz and Malik take those runs, when before he had always jumped at the chance to drive across town and see his boyfriend. Because Riley had come and asked him personally, Clem knew he didn’t have a choice. He pulled his John Deere ball cap low over his eyes as he pulled himself up into the high cab of the tractor, and scowled at himself for feeling nervous. He had nothing to be ashamed of, and it wasn’t like he wanted Nathan back, even if it had been pretty lonely in bed in the last few weeks. As Clem started the big engine, he knew he’d rather have lonely than vicious any day.

The drive over was uneventful, which with a fifteen foot trailer and nearly two tons in bulky hay was exactly what every farmer wanted, and Clem drove through the gates of the ranch just as he’d done countless times before, and set the trailer to rest directly between the long length of the two main barns. If they were on emergency extra feed, Clem had no doubt they would want this load of hay direct to the stalls. A pair of Nathan’s ranch hands were already walking out to meet him as he jumped down from the cab.

“You want it here?”

“Yeah, thanks,” the leading man smiled at Clem tightly. “Dunno what happened with the damn grain, though boss says he ordered it. He’s been distracted since you stopped coming around.”

“Oh…” Clem kicked the ground with one ochre-yellow boot, “well, then.”

He jumped up into the trailer and started to throw bales down for the two guys waiting for them. As the ranch hands stacked the bales in cubes ready for feeding, Clem checked often to make sure he wasn’t in danger of crushing anyone with a fifty pound block of hay. Being told his ex-boyfriend apparently missed him was not what he wanted to hear, but it wasn’t until he heard Nathan’s voice, that he froze in the act of tossing another bale.

“Well thank fuck for that!” There was the sound the Nathan’s western boots scuffing against the concrete. “Grain’s gonna be here crack of dawn tomorrow, an’ I had to bully the delivery guy for even that. We’d be dead in the water without extra hay. Keep ‘em coming!”

Clem took a breath, and let go of the bale he was holding.

“Head’s up!”

“Clem?”

Clem didn’t answer him, but kept on tossing bales down until he was down to the last two layers, and there was nowhere he could reasonably look except directly at Nathan as he handed the hay over.

“Leave the lads to it, come on.”

“Nathan…”

“Boys!” Nathan twirled three fingers around his head, “do it!”

Clem followed him as his place on the trailer was taken by one of the other hands, and he wedged his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans as they crossed the yard. As they reached the dark entranceway to the stable block, Nathan turned and reached for him, but Clem stepped backwards sharply.

“Nate!”

“Aww c’mon Clem, don’t be like that.”

Clem glared at his ex, and Nathan’s expression hardened.

“You want me to tell you I missed you? I fuckin’ miss you Clem, don’t do this to me.”

The farm hand stared at him levelly. He wondered when he’d forgotten that he was actually half an inch taller than Nathan: when he’d let it slide that the other man was by default stronger and more powerful than himself. Clem could have kicked himself for letting his brain trick him into thinking he actually missed Nathan, when all he missed was a warm body in his bed and the idea of the relationship they’d never actually had. Clem shook his head and sighed.

“I never did anything to you, Nate: quite clearly.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Nathan shot back, anger already in his voice.

“Nate…” Clem couldn’t help but smile sadly at the man he had tried to convince himself he had loved, “if I thought for one minute that anythin’ was gonna be different between us, then I’d walk over there an’ kiss you ri’ now. But it ain’t.” He took a deep breath, and exhaled without breaking eye contact. “You don’t want me to be as strong as you, and I want someone who needs me like I need him; and you don’t.” Clem jerked his chin in the direction of the John Deere. “I gotta get back.”

Clem turned around and walked away. A tiny part of him regretted the decision, hurt in sympathy for Nathan and what he’d said to the other man, and just as he was climbing into the cab, he heard Nathan’s boots, loud and angry on the concrete, his voice full of spite.

“Well good fuckin’ luck, you gutless pansy!”

Clem shut the door, turned the key, and the tractor roared to life. As he turned the radio to his favourite country station, he realised that he didn’t mourn his words one little bit.

*

Clem fiddled with the curved and slightly fraying brim on his cap in his fingers, and wondered what on earth he was doing. It was his day off, and rather than stay at Four Corners and get asked innocent yet probing questions by Penny, Clem had taken his very dusty Ford truck and driven to Austin. Now he stood in a clothes shop several brackets of price above his usual wardrobe choices, and touched hesitantly at the cuff of a silky, white button down shirt he would never find an excuse to wear.

“Oh, not that one.”

Clem glanced up at the light tenor voice. Standing on the other side of the shirt rack from him was a young man, but not a man like Clem had ever seen before. At first glance, he took in the smooth olive skin, the narrow lines of his shoulders, and curve of his smile, the super shiny pinkness of his lips, the incredibly long dark lashes, and the collar length chestnut brown hair, his bangs held back on one side by a pair of brightly coloured hair clips. Then the young man met his eyes, and Clem forgot about everything he’d seen. They were butter-toffee coloured, and perhaps anyone else would have called them brown, but Clem could not look away from the bright gaze.

He gulped audibly.

“Not this one?” Clem was proud that he kept his voice from shaking, because his stomach was flipping from side to side in time with his rapid heartbeat. His brain searched through what he had seen, trying to work out what was so different about this particular young man.

“It’s a lovely shirt, don’t get me wrong, but the white won’t do anything for you,” he smiled beautifully, “and you’ll never get it that clean ever again.”

“Oh,” Clem looked down at what he was wearing, semi-clean blue jeans and a dusty Big Machine Records t-shirt under his slightly beaten up leather jacket, and realised how pathetic he must seem, “yeah…”

“Oh, Sugar,” the young man moved around his side of the rack, and Clem followed the slim shape of his torso to his hips and the length of his legs, “you’d still look beautiful in it. But this one would be even better.” The young man pulled out a shirt Clem hadn’t seen from near the back of the rack. It was black, and made in a traditional western style with blue piping and blue and silver pearlescent snaps on the cuffs and down the front. Clem took it from him carefully, but even so, the young man’s fingers brushed his knuckles as he held the shirt up again his chest.

“You think?”

“Oh yeah, the blue matches your eyes.”

Clem scanned his new companion up and down. He was wearing relaxed dove grey chinos, smart shoes, and a dark green oxford button down which appeared to have an acid green colour lining the collar and button holes. He was not wearing a name tag.

“You work here?” Clem asked nervously.

“No Sugar,” the young man smiled broadly, “but I’m kinda hopin’ that if you try the shirt on I might get to watch.”

Clem swallowed again as his heart rate jumped up another notch.

“W-where are the fitting rooms?”

Clem could barely keep up with what was happening, because every time he blinked, his brain presented him with new and wonderful images, each of which he would have happily dwelt upon for hours. The young man smiled, a wonderful and open gesture that Clem could barely even believe was directed at him; he took Clem’s hand, and his skin was so soft and smooth, his fingers gripping tight but carefully against Clem’s own; turned away and lead him across the shop towards the fitting rooms. Clem could have spent a very long time indeed reflecting on the wonderfully curvy shape of the young man, and on the way his hair moved, the ends flicking around his collar. He stood in a rather fancy cubicle with the door open and pulled his t-shirt and jacket off over his head as one piece. As he emerged from the fabric and ran his fingers automatically through his hair, he could feel the young man watching him. Neither of them said anything as Clem took the fancy black shirt and pulled it on over his shoulders. He managed the front studs fine, but as he fiddled with the cuffs, his new companion stepped in close to him and took his hand again before working the snaps at his wrist. When he finished, Clem tucked the shirt into his jeans, and as he turned, he felt the beautiful man smooth the fabric over his broad shoulders.

“Will I do?” Clem bit his lower lip as he smiled. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cared so much about someone’s opinion, unless he counted little Penny.

“Oh Sugar, you’ll do jus’ fine. You look great, go look!” the young man shoved him gently towards a long mirror, “suits you.”

Clem stood in front of the mirror and saw himself. His new friend was right, and the shirt fit him well, showed off the broadness of his shoulders and his tight narrow waist. But Clem couldn’t spend too long looking at his own reflection, because he was much too distracted by the young man standing just behind him. His smile was still super soft and friendly, his eyes bright, and Clem could not imagine walking away from him. He cleared his throat and smiled.

“Would you, um… maybe like to go for coffee with me?”

The young man tucked a lock of hair behind his ear, and Clem couldn’t help but think the gesture was adorable.

“That would be great. I still have plenty of time left on my lunch hour.”

Clem felt his heart do something wonderful and almost violent in his chest. He hoped it didn’t explode as he turned around to face the beautiful man.

“Clem Linton.”

The boy took his proffered hand and looked up at him from under his immense lashes.

“Ashlee Charles, it’s lovely to meet you.”

As Clem changed, paid for the shirt and followed Ashlee from the store, he realised what it was that was so different about the young man.

He was wearing eyeliner.