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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
What Might Have Been - 1. Chapter 1
“Can I go, Dad? It’s only for a week. Please?”
I looked up from the papers I’d been reading. “What? Go where? What are you talking about?”
“Lee, Jared’s been telling you for the past ten minutes. Jimmy’s going to a camp with a group from the church Ed and Jane belong to. It’s down by Binghamton. And before you start, it’s not a religious thing. It’s just camping. He really wants to go, Lee.”
I stared at Ellen, trying to switch gears. Why did they always have to do this while I was working? “When is it?”
Ellen rolled her eyes and I could tell it was something I was supposed to have already heard.
Jared jumped in. “It’s July 8th through the 14th. It’s only a week. Please, Dad? I’ve always wanted to go camping. Please?”
I frowned. “The 8th?” That was the start of my vacation. We’d already planned some things. “We were going to go to Six Flags that week, remember? I thought you wanted to go there.”
Jared bounced up and down a little. “We always go to Six Flags. And yeah, I love it, but I’ve never been camping and I really, really, REALLY want to go. Please?”
I looked up at Ellen and opened my mouth, but she put her hand on my arm before I had a chance to speak. “Lee, Ed and Jane are inviting us, too. And I know you don’t like camping, but there is a lodge there that Jane says is like a rustic bed and breakfast. It’s about a mile from where the kids will be, so they get to do their camping thing and we get to just relax. And there are things to do nearby. She and Ed went last year and said they had a really nice time and Jimmy loved the camp.”
I scratched the side of my neck and looked at Jared—who had the “I promise I’ll take the garbage out for a month and clean my room and do the litter box andeverything else I really hate to do”look on his face. I looked up at Ellen—who had the “It’s only one week and the insurance world will still be there when you get back and it means so much to Jared” look on her face. It was a hard combination to resist—which they both knew.
“Alright,” I shook my head. “But not so much as a campfire for me, is that understood?”
I smiled as Jared started jumping up and down. “This is SO cool! I’m going to go call Jimmy right now!”
He ran out of the room and Ellen leaned down and kissed my cheek. “You know I love you, right?” she said as she rubbed her nose against mine.
I brushed my lips against hers. “I do, but I never get tired of hearing you say it.” I wrapped my fingers around hers. “So what is this place? Do you have a brochure or something?”
She smiled and slipped her fingers from mine. “Jane does. She showed me this afternoon. It’s called Wolverton Forest Lodge and it overlooks a lake and…”
Wolverton Forest Lodge…
***
“So is there anything to do around here? I mean beside play boy scout in the woods?”
He was sitting on the edge of the dock reading. I hadn’t noticed the book at first, or I might not have said anything. I hated to be interrupted when I was reading.
He looked up at me for a moment, not saying anything. For some reason I got the feeling he was sizing me up. I met his gaze squarely. I wasn’t one to be intimidated by a stare.
He shrugged. “No,” he said and turned his eyes back to the page he’d been reading.
I rolled my eyes and kicked one of the posts on the dock. “Figured that. God, there isn’t even any cable or internet. I can’t believe my dad picked this loser place. He’s such a jerk at times.”
“Yeah, well parents suck most the time.” He shrugged again, not turning around.
I kicked at the post again. What the fuck was my dad’s problem? He knew I hated camping. I hated fishing. I hated the woods. My brother was into all that shit, not me. I didn’t want to be on vacation in Camp Bug Bite. I liked living with my mom. We had a nice place in the city and I could hang with my friends and my girlfriend and do normal stuff.
“There’s things to do in town,” he offered after a few moments.
“Yeah, what?” The “town” we had come through to get here hadn’t looked like much of anything.
He shrugged again. “There’s a movie theater, some stores downtown. McDonalds. WalMart. And the school’s got a pool and some playground shit.” He turned around and looked up at me, and I noticed his eyes looked like they were smiling, like he was amused at something.
“God! McDonalds AND Walmart? In the same town? How can you stand the excitement?”
He laughed. “We don’t. Most of us go crazy and end up in the bin—forgot to mention the mental institution. We have one of those, too. Where you from?”
I laughed. “Great. I’ll probably be in a padded cell by the end of the week.” I sat down and dangled my legs over the water. My feet could touch just enough to get my sneakers wet. “I’m from Albany most of the time, when I’m with my mom.”
“What about the rest of the time?” He had closed his book and was looking at me with a strange look. It was almost like there was no expression in his eyes, like they just rested on me calmly, as if they were waiting.
I shrugged. “My dad moves around a lot. Not really sure where he actually lives this time. He picked us up at my mom’s and brought us here.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, me and my brother.” I rolled my eyes. “He and my brother are tight. Two peas in the fucking pod. I think my mom must have been fucking around when she had me. God, I hope she was.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked at me in that strange way of his. I fidgeted a little. “You from here then?”
“Yeah, my family owns this place.”
“This place” was the Wolverton Forest Campgrounds. We were staying in one of the cabins. And there was a main ‘lodge’ where you could get all the supplies you might have forgotten or didn’t know you’d need—like bug spray.
“Oh.” I had called it a loser place. “Sorry. I’m sure it’s a great place to stay…if you like camping and shit.”
He smirked a little. “Yeah, or playing boy scout in the woods.” He stood up. “There’s some cool spots here, though. Really pretty. If you know where to go.”
He looked down at me. “I’m Dean, by the way.” He held his hand out to me.
I stared at it for a moment then shook it. “Lee.”
“You like to swim?”
I looked at the lake a little dubiously. It wasn’t a pool. People fished in it. “In pools, yeah.”
He laughed. “Pools suck. All that chlorine is bad for your skin. Will turn your hair green, too.” He looked at my dark brown hair. “If you’re blonde anyway.” He was blonde.
“Maybe, but there are fish and shit in there,” I gestured toward the lake.
He laughed again. “They don’t bother you. Unless you go skinny dipping. One guy did that last summer and got his dick bit by a largemouth. Guess it must have thought it was a worm.”
I laughed--and vowed to myself that if I actually DID go swimming in the lake—any lake—ever—I’d wear some tighty whities under my swim trunks. Maybe even a cup.
“But I know a place that’s better than the lake. Better than a pool, too. If you want I can show you sometime.”
“Are there fish in it?”
He laughed. “Yeah, but no bass. Just trout. They have real small mouths. You’d have to have a dick the size of a pencil eraser to have anything to worry about.” He grinned suddenly. “But you can leave your shorts on if you want.”
I blushed. Yeah, I would do that. Not that I had a dick the size of a pencil eraser.
I stood up. “So where is this place?”
He smiled. “Meet me in front of the lodge in the morning and I’ll take you there.”
***
“…and Jane said there is a nice theater in town, not a movie theater, a real one. You’ll see, it’ll be fun.” Ellen was patting me on the shoulder. “Dinner’s just about ready, Lee. About ten minutes, ok?”
I blinked and nodded. “Yeah, fine, hon.” Ellen looked at me a little curiously as she left the room.
I hadn’t thought about that place in years. Not that it had to be that place. There might be other places with the same name. And maybe I wasn’t remembering it correctly. Maybe I had the name mixed up with something else.
I rubbed my fingers between my eyes. Sixteen years was a long time. Easy enough to make a mistake like that. Easy enough to remember things wrong…
***
“Where the fuck is this place?”
We’d trudged through the woods on the north side of the lake and had been climbing over rocks for the past half hour, following what seemed to be a dry creek bed. My shoulders were starting to get sweaty and irritated from the straps of my backpack. Dean said we’d be a while, so I’d brought some chips and some water and a towel and some candy bars. I doubted there would be a snack bar along the way and no way was I drinking any water that had fish in it.
“Not much further,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s a local’s place. If you don’t live here, you don’t know where it is. It’s technically on our property, and my dad thought of making it part of the ‘total camping experience,’ but my mom wouldn’t hear of it. Just before she died my dad promised her he wouldn’t open it up, would keep it like it has always been.”
I looked at his back. His mom was dead. Weren’t you supposed to say you were sorry when someone died? I never quite understood that. Unless you killed the person yourself, you really didn’t have anything to be sorry for. Except maybe you were sorry for the person who didn’t die because they had lost someone. I couldn’t imagine losing my mom. Didn’t really have my dad, so losing him would be a non-event. But my mom…
“I’m sorry about your mom.” I guess I really was.
He shrugged again. “It was a few years ago and she was suffering with cancer. She hurt a lot. I was glad when she died and stopped hurting.”
I considered that. I guess that made sense. Though it was more information than I had expected from someone I’d just met the day before.
I heard the sound before I saw it. It was a rushing that was almost a roaring. I stopped and looked around. All I could see was that the “dry” creek bed was now wetter.
“Come on, it’s only a little further.”
I was beginning to wonder if he had some sort of mental defect that kept him from perceiving distances right. A “little further” seemed a lot further than a little. And I was just about to bitch when I saw it.
It was about a hundred yards away and about 30 feet high and probably the most amazing thing I had ever seen up close.
“Wow! A waterfall!” I had seen waterfalls. I had seen Niagara Falls. Couldn’t get much more “waterfall” than that. But this one was right there, right in front of me. And in front of it was a pool of water that looked so calm and still—even though a waterfall was pouring into it. But I could see why the water in the pool was calm like that. The water fell over the top and hit a series of ledges on the way down. Three that I could count. And by the time it hit the pool it wasn’t crashing vertically, it was flowing almost horizontally.
He grinned at me. “Amazing, isn’t it? Our property line stops about 3 feet before the falls, so technically the pool is ours but the falls aren’t. But no one really cares about that.”
He pulled off his t-shirt and his sneakers. “Come on, it’s a little cold but you get used to it pretty quick.”
I looked at the water and at him. I was hot from all the climbing and hiking. I shrugged off my backpack and set it on a big flat rock, along with my shirt and my sneakers. I stuck my toe in the water. Cold was an understatement.
He laughed and jumped in right in front of me, splashing me from head to toe.
“Jesus, man! It’s fucking cold!” I took a quick step back.
“Cold enough to make your dick the size of a pencil eraser,” he said with a grin.
Great. I needed that thought.
“Come on, Lee; it’s great!” He disappeared under the water and came up in the middle of the pool. He shook his head like a dog and grinned.
I sat down on the edge of the rock and dangled my feet in the water a few moments before sliding off the rock and into the water. It was cold as hell and I yelled. He laughed.
“You squealed like a girl!”
Yeah, a girl with a dick the size of a pencil eraser—perfect. “You fuck,” I muttered and splashed at him.
***
“Lee! Dinner’s been ready for ten minutes. Stop working and come down before I give yours to the cats!”
I shook my head and closed the file I had all but forgotten about. “On my way,” I called down.
Wolverton Forest Lodge… Dean Wolverton…
***
“You seemed distracted at dinner tonight,” Ellen didn’t precisely phrase it as a complaint, but I knew the thoughts behind the words: My head was always in my work. Did I have to bring files home every night? I never spent enough time with them, meaning Ellen and Jared.
And she was right. I did spend a lot of time on work. Not every night, but near enough for it to feel that way. And I could list a dozen reasons why it was important for me to keep on top of my job. But I knew that for each one of them Ellen would have a counter reason why it was more important to spend that time with my family. And she was right. Jared was eleven now. It wouldn’t be long before he became a teenager; and they say that if you haven’t formed good bonds before they’re teens, you never will. That had certainly been true enough with me and my own father. We had never bonded. He hadn’t been there much even when he had lived with my mom. And when he had been there, it had been all him and my brother. I was more my mom’s son than his. I saw now that that had been my choice, not his; but he had never really done much to try to change that.
“You know, Lee, I think it will be good for us to get away, just the two of us, for a change.” She sat beside me on the bed and wrapped her arms around my neck.
I put an arm around her and drew her closer to me. “We’re going with Ed and Jane, remember?” I murmured against her neck. I inhaled deeply. “Mmm, you’re wearing Paloma again.” It was my favorite, not hers. And I knew she only wore it when she particularly wanted to please me.
“We won’t have to spend every waking moment with them—I’m sure they want some time to themselves. And we will have our own room, you know.”
She nibbled on my earlobe. “Just the two of us.”
She slid over onto my lap and her fingers played with the back of my hair. “We haven’t really been alone like that since our honeymoon.”
She ran her hand slowly down my chest. “Remember our honeymoon, Lee?”
I remembered. We had gone to Niagara Falls. It had been what she had wanted to do—the traditional “honeymoon destination.” It had been beautiful and romantic and I had been so very much in love with her. If she had asked me to jump into the falls to prove I loved her, I would have done so without a second thought. I was completely besotted.
I wondered when I’d stopped feeling that way and why. Was it just a natural process, the cooling of the fire, the dulling of the intensity? I rubbed my nose against hers and brushed a strand of hair from her face. I still loved her. Even if that love felt more “warm and comfortable” now instead of “hot and impassioned.”
“Do you think I could ever forget?” I asked as I covered her lips with mine.
We made love slowly, tenderly, beautifully, each of us knowing exactly what the other wanted and needed. Twelve years had given us that. If it had taken away the heat and urgency, it had given us a deep intimacy and mutual understanding.
But afterwards, as I held her in my arms and started to drift off to sleep, my thoughts wandered back to a different time and a different waterfall
***
“You know,” he said, waving a chip in the air, “chips and candy bars are NOT good boy scout food.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, taking another bite of my Snickers bar, “but my dad and my brother took all the trail mix and bird seed.”
He grinned and tipped his head back and shook the chip crumbs into his mouth. “Trail mix isn’t bad if you make it yourself. But if I’m going to do any serious hiking or camping, I prefer jerky. And there are almost always some berries in the woods that you can eat—if you know which ones they are. Don’t want to eat the wrong ones, though. Some will make you pretty sick.”
I shook my head. “No way I’d eat any berry I found in the woods. My luck a bear would have pissed on them or something. And what the hell is ‘jerky’?”
Dean laid back on the rock and stretched his arms out over his head. “Jerky is seasoned dried meat. My dad makes venison jerky. It’s really good, a lot better than the stuff you buy in stores.”
“You can buy jerky in stores?” I asked in amazement. “Like in normal grocery stores?”
He laughed. “Yeah. WalMart even sells it.”
It did? I figured I’d look the next time I was in WalMart, not that I’d ever actually EAT anything like that.
“So how long you staying?” He had shifted and was raised up on his elbow, his head resting on his hand, and he was looking at me with that expressionless look he had.
I shrugged. “Two weeks, I guess. That’s how long it usually ends up being when he takes us somewhere.”
“Will you go home with your dad then?”
I shot him a quick look. “’Home’ is with my mom, not my dad.” It came out a little more angry sounding than I had meant it to. “But no,” I continued in a more normal tone, “I’m not. Tony says he is, but I don’t want to. I want to go home and hang with my friends, you know? And I have a girlfriend.”
“You do?” He looked at me for a long moment, an expression in his eyes I couldn’t read. “What’s she like?” he asked after a bit.
I smiled. “She’s pretty hot, at least I think she is. She has short blonde hair that curls around her face and big brown eyes. She’s nice too, not a bitch like most of the girls at school. Knows how to work me up, too,” I added with a grin.
“Yeah, I bet she does,” he said with a slight smirk.
“You have a girlfriend?” I asked, taking the last bite of my candy bar and putting the wrapper back in my backpack.
He shook his head and stretched. “Nah, I’m not into girls.”
I laughed. “What are you into then, boys?” I thought I saw him flush as he stood up and walked to the edge of the rock and slid back into the pool.
“You wanna know what I’m into?” he asked, a serious expression on his face.
I almost held my breath, expecting some bizarre revelation, something that might even rival the concept of “jerky.” But before I could even nod my head, he splashed me from head to toe with ice cold water. The water alone was cold enough to make me yell—but the fish that was flopping around in my lap was what made me shriek at the top of my lungs.
“I’m into FISH!” he grinned, splashing me again.
I jumped up, slapping frantically at myself as I brushed any and all fish and anything that had even the remotest potential to be fish off of myself. “You’ll pay for that, you fucker!” I yelled, but I was grinning as I jumped in after him.
* * *
A lot changes in sixteen years. People change; that goes without saying. They get older, settle down into a certain lifestyle and behave in a certain way that becomes expected of them. Towns change, too, but in a different way. With a town, it is like there is a period of decline, like growing old, where the buildings age and become outdated and shops go out of business and store fronts become empty. And some towns stop there. Some never recover from that aging process and just remain frozen in that state of decay—or just die.
But others evolve and instead of dying, they undergo renewal, renovation. Badly done and there is nothing left of the old town to trigger memories except a few plaques and possibly an historical marker or two. Badly done and the town is not renewed, it is just replaced. Well done and there is enough of the old town left to have you looking around and pointing at things and saying, “I remember when that used to be old man Johnson’s bait and tackle shop, and those offices over there used to be the library.” Well done and the new blends with the old to make something that keeps the nostalgia warm and fuzzy, but at the same time makes you feel like there is still life going on around you.
I couldn’t help feeling, as I drove into the town I had not seen for sixteen years, that this was a town that had undergone a “well done” renovation. It had grown, that much was immediately obvious. Sixteen years ago the WalMart had stood alone, well outside of the boundaries of the “town proper.” Now it was part of a mall that advertised a ten-theater multi-plex and was located on what was now a built-up extension of the “main drag” coming out of that “town proper.” And several housing developments had sprung up along that same road, with upscale houses I doubted I could even hope to afford.
But as we reached what the signs now proclaimed to be “downtown,” I could see the heart and the character of the “town” had not been wiped away by progress. The old storefronts were still there. I didn’t remember the names of the shops that had been there sixteen years ago, but I remembered how the buildings had looked. Back then they had shown the signs of decay, and one or two had been empty. Now they looked fresh, reclaimed, new enough to make them inviting, but still old enough and original enough to give them character.
“Can we stop at Mickey’s, Dad?” Jared’s voice broke through my thoughts. I knew what he was thinking. A week of camping meant a week without a “Double Cheeseburger Mighty Kids Meal.” Not like that would be a bad thing, but I understood that. Nuts and berries couldn’t compete with McDonald’s, not on their best day.
“But what about Ed and Jane, Lee? We’re following them, remember? They won’t know we’ve stopped.”
Ellen had a point. “Yeah, I know,” I agreed, “but the directions on the brochure are pretty clear and we have the cell phone, so we can call the lodge if we miss a turn or something.”
“Come on, Mom,” Jared whined from the backseat, “Dad doesn’t suck THAT bad at directions.”
“Oh, thanks, bud,” I rolled my eyes and glanced at him over my shoulder. “Sure, I get us lost ONE time—“
“You drove us into a swamp, Dad!” Jared exclaimed, and followed the words with what I lovingly referred to as his “jackass laugh.”
“It wasn’t a swamp. It was just some ground that had gotten soft from the rain. If you remember, it had rained that day and—“
“And let’s go to McDonald’s before this turns into an argument,” Ellen interrupted firmly. But she was grinning as she turned to Jared. “You know how your father gets when his navigational skills are questioned. And we have the cell phone, so no worries, right?”
They were both laughing as we pulled into the parking lot.
***
I dipped my chicken strip in the Buffalo sauce and looked out the window. Jared was babbling excitedly about the things Jimmy had said they would be doing this week. Ellen was being the good, attentive mom—while she rubbed my knee under the table. I smiled at her. It would be good to get some time alone with her.
It was Ellen who spotted it. “Oh, that must be the theater Jane mentioned,” Ellen said as Jared took a break from talking to take a bite of his burger. “And look! Rent is playing! We were going to go see that at the movies, remember? It’ll be so much better to see the musical itself.”
It didn’t look much different than it had sixteen years ago, though the movie posters had been replaced by playbills. And I wondered if it had started its life as a playhouse. Had it seen the rise and fall of vaudeville before silent films and “talkies” replaced the stage curtain with a movie screen? However it had started its life, sixteen years ago it had been a small, old movie theater in a small, old town.
***
“Hey, want to go into town with me?” He was sitting on the steps of the lodge.
We usually met there early in the morning, right after breakfast. I made a point of escaping the cabin before my dad tried to get me to go fishing with him and Tony. I would have figured he would have gotten the hint by now and given up, but every day he made the attempt to include me—and every day I told him I didn’t want to go. I often wondered why he didn’t just “order” me to go with them; but then, I guess having someone in a boat who didn’t want to be there wouldn’t have been that much fun for them.
“I have to pick up a couple of things for my dad at Old Man Johnson’s, and Ghost is playing at the movies. Have you seen it?”
I sat down beside him. “You drive?” I asked. He could drive and he hung around here?
He looked at me a little curiously. “Yeah, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “Wasn’t old enough to take driver’s ed this year. Going to take it next year though. I’ll be sixteen in August.” Had he thought I was older? How old was he then?
“My dad taught me to drive when I was fourteen. Used to let me drive around the back roads. Got my license last year though.”
So he was seventeen?
He stood up. “So look, you wanna come? Ghost looks pretty good. And I can show you around a bit, if you want.” He grinned. “Can see the whole town from end to end in about 20 minutes if you walk fast.”
I grinned. “Twenty minutes? That long?” I stood up, too. “Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”
Old Man Johnson’s turned out to be a bait and tackle shop. Dean gave a list to the guy behind the counter--who was way too young to be “Old Man” Johnson—and said he’d pick it up later, and we headed off to the movies.
“Wow! It’s really cheap here,” I exclaimed as we took our seats—front row center, which we had both agreed upon without saying a word. “Back home you couldn’t get popcorn for what it costs here for popcorn, candy, a soda AND the movie!”
He smiled. “See? It’s not all bad here.”
No, some things were good.
I found myself watching Dean more than I watched the movie. Or maybe that wasn’t quite true. I watched the movie, I saw the scenes, heard the dialogue. But to me it really might have been just a sad movie, a love story—a “chick flick” even, something you watch with your girlfriend and hold her hand and sigh in all the right places. Except I could see it was more than that to Dean. And I was fascinated by him, by the openness of his expressions.
I could see his eyes smiling, lighting up in his face, even though the theater was dark, whenever something was good, happy. And when something was funny, his lips would part and his eyes would dance. And when something wasn’t right, when there were moments of tension on the screen, his face would become expressionless, his eyes still. And when there were moments of sadness, his eyes would turn liquid, his lips would fold inward as if he were biting them to hold back tears.
I watched the movie with my own eyes, but I felt it through his. And when I saw him wipe away tears, they nearly fell from my own eyes.
Neither of us spoke when the movie ended. I could see he was lost in his own thoughts and I didn’t think it right to ask him about them. And I had my own thoughts to deal with, though as we walked along the sidewalk, past stores that were mostly closed, mostly empty, I found myself mostly thinking of Dean.
“You know,” he began as we climbed through the hole in the chain link fence that surrounded the school playground, “I’m not sure about ghosts and the whole afterlife thing.”
I glanced at him and saw a little furrow between his brows.
“I’d like to think that when we die, we could hang around and keep an eye on things. You know, look after the people we love.”
He sat down on the edge of the rainbow colored merry go round and leaned against one of the metal bars. I sat next to him. He pushed with his feet, first in one direction, then in the other. I pulled my legs up and sat cross-legged, letting him move us around, back and forth.
I could almost see him thinking, considering. It was different from the look he usually had, the one that I couldn’t read, the one that seemed to just be waiting for something. It was more like it had been in the movies, like everything he thought or felt played across his face.
“My dad always says my mom is watching out for me and that she is always right by me. And I always thought that was pretty cool, to have my mom still there—because I miss her, you know?” He glanced at me and then away.
“But I don’t know now. I’m not so sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it would hurt more, like in the movie. To see someone you love and not be able to even touch them.” He held his hands out in front of him, palms outward, fingers spread. “Like putting your fingers against a glass, when all you want to do more than anything is to feel their hands.”
And it was like it had been in the movies, like I felt that, through him. My throat tightened and I couldn’t think of any words to say. So I slid closer to him and put my arm around his shoulders. He sighed and leaned against me. It didn’t feel strange.
***
“You going to eat that piece of chicken?” Jared asked, his hand already reaching for the piece of chicken in question.
I blinked and almost shook my head to clear my thoughts, but I answered him automatically. “Yeah, I am. You’ve already eaten most of my fries, little pig.”
I didn’t really have to be aware to know that. He always ate most of my fries. And he always asked for one of my chicken strips. Jared was completely predictable when it came to McDonald’s.
“Come on, Dad, you know you never finish your chicken,” he whined, his fingers ignoring my claim on the chicken.
“Yeah, because you always finish it for me,” I said with a scowl that I couldn’t quite keep from turning into a laugh. Completely predictable—probably both of us were.
“Ok, come on, you two. Let’s get going before it gets dark,” Ellen said, starting to gather up the wrappers and bags and napkins. “Really, your dad with a map…dangerous even in daylight. Do youreally want to chance it in the dark?”
“Un uh, no way!” Jared exclaimed, making an exaggerated effort to pick things up in a hurry.
I rolled my eyes and stood up. “Very funny. Ha ha.”
***
Despite the jokes and doubts, I managed to find the campground where Jared and Jimmy would be staying. The map on the brochure was fairly clear and the additional directions Ed had given me were simple enough and we dropped Jared off with plenty of time to spare before dark. I recognized the area immediately. It was on the other side of the lake, across from the lodge. It had been part of the Wolverton Forest Campgrounds when I had been there. The cabins had mostly been on this side of the lake—which really wasn’t a big lake, now that I saw it again, though it had seemed bigger back then. But then there had been quite a few cabins, so many that they had circled around to the south side of the lake. Now there were just two cabins, one clearly marked “BOYS” and the other “GIRLS.” There were already some tents set up near the cabins. Ed and Jimmy had finished setting up the dome tent Jimmy and Jared would share. The cabins would be used, I was told, only in the event of severe weather.
I gave Jared a quick hug and stood there looking across the lake as Ellen fussed and assured herself that her “baby” would be safe from rabid raccoons, marauding grizzlies (they were black bears in the area, not grizzlies, I remembered that—not that it would have made a difference to Ellen) and hurricanes (southern New York rarely got any).
It seemed different, even from this distance. It looked somehow better groomed than it had. There seemed to be an expanse of lawn in front of it and what looked like flowers. And the dock was bigger, with boats and canoes and even what looked to be a couple of paddle boats, all in a neat little line along the dock.
“It looks pretty, doesn’t it?” Ellen said as she came up behind me and rested her chin on my shoulder.
“Mmm,” I nodded. It did. Pretty and well groomed. I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or disappointed by that. I had half expected it to look like it had, though the brochure had clearly shown a place much improved over what I remembered. And I was a little surprised by that, by the fact that after sixteen years I had that clear a memory of what it had looked like.
We “abandoned Jared to the wilderness” and drove around the lake to the lodge. As we pulled into the parking area in front of the lodge, I found myself looking for details, for signs of anything that was the same. The parking area, itself, was new. It had just been part of the grounds before. The little building next to the lodge that had been the bait shop was still there—and it still looked to be something of a bait shop, though the sun-catchers hanging in the window suggested it might lean a little more toward souvenirs now, rather than bait and tackle. But I could have sworn the stairs were the same. And I could almost see Dean sitting there, leaning against the railing post, waiting for me.
Fortunately, I had never actually been inside the lodge back then. So the memories and the comparisons stopped once we went through the doors. We followed Ed and Jane to the desk, where a man in his early twenties greeted us.
“Hi, I’m Steve. Welcome to Wolverton Lodge.”
It was a standard greeting, but the open, friendly look in his brown eyes made it sound genuine, as if he was truly glad to welcome us. I studied him for a moment as Ellen filled out the registration form. He had an outdoors look to him. His skin was tanned and his brown hair had sun-bleached streaks. He was nice looking, friendly looking—but most of all, most important, he was not Dean Wolverton. And again, I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved by that or disappointed.
The room was nice. Very nice, actually. It wasn’t large, but it was warm and inviting and smelled of cedar. The bed was large and the mattress that wonderful combination of soft on top and hard underneath that just made you want to lie down. Which was what Ellen did immediately.
“Oh, I may never want to get out of bed!” she exclaimed, running her hands over the obviously hand-made quilt that covered the bed.
I looked down at her. “Then it will be JUST like our honeymoon,” I said with a smile. She giggled and my heart lurched at how much younger she sounded, so much like the girl I had fallen in love with. I gave her my best leer and jumped on the bed, straddling her thighs with my knees. “What do you say we lock the door and let Ed and Jane fend for themselves for a while?”
Ellen wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me down closer to her. “What do you say you don’t bother wasting all that time locking the door. Who’s going to come in? Jared’s all the way across the lake and I’m sure Ed and Jane are already ‘fending for themselves.’”
Yes, why waste all that time walking to the door…
***
We went into town for dinner with Ed and Jane. I found my eyes searching the restaurant, looking up whenever anyone came through the door, wondering if I would see him. Though maybe he wasn’t even around anymore. Maybe the lodge no longer belonged to his family and had just kept the name. And even if he was still around, would I even recognize him?
I managed to maintain polite, if slightly absent conversation while my head was wandering around. It wasn’t anything new for me, having other things on my mind. Though usually it was work. But Ed and Jane were used to it, almost as used to it as Ellen. Though I could see a little frown in Ellen’s eyes. And I could read her thoughts. “Even on vacation, Lee?”
“You folks are back just in time for the campfire,” Steve said with a smile as we walked past the desk. “We have one out back every night. Plenty of marshmallows and badly sung campfire songs,” he continued with a laugh. “We could always use some halfway decent voices, if you’d like to join us.”
Ellen laughed. “Not me, I can’t sing a note.”
She couldn’t. Neither could I. But that wasn’t why I shook my head. “No, thanks. You’d have every dog or wolf within earshot howling if I were to sing. Would scare the kids across the lake. And it’s been a long day, with the drive down and all.” That wasn’t the reason either, but it was true enough.
Steve smiled, that friendly open smile. “Well, maybe a good night’s rest is all you need. Breakfast is served from seven until eleven in the dining room right over there.” He gestured across the lobby. “And maybe you can join us tomorrow night.”
As we climbed the stairs to our room, Ellen looked up at me. “Maybe you’ll sleep better tonight. I know you haven’t been sleeping all that well lately.”
I hadn’t. As we undressed and got in bed, I thought maybe I might sleep a little better tonight. There had been no sign of Dean Wolverton. Maybe I could just put the memories away and sleep a nice, dreamless sleep. Though as the sound of campfire songs drifted in through the open window, I had my doubts.
***
“There’s going to be a campfire tonight, Lee.” Was that excitement I heard in my dad’s voice?
“Wonderful. Have fun.”
“Come on, Lee, you haven’t spent any time at all with me or your brother. “ My dad’s voice was exactly between whining and resigned. He had a knack for achieving that perfect balance.
I rolled my eyes. “You know I’m not into the whole camping thing. I told you that, how many times now?”
“One night won’t kill you.” I could hear that tone my dad got when he considered something a done deal. Apparently he considered that I WOULD be coming to the campfire with them, and that was that. I didn’t think so.
I told Dean when I met up with him. “If he thinks I’m going to sit around a lame ass fire and get bit by mosquitoes, he’s delusional.”
Dean looked at me with that look of his, his head tipped slightly to one side. “The fire keeps away most of the mosquitoes,” he pointed out. “And I’m going to be there. I don’t really have a choice since it’s Dad’s ‘thing.’ He likes to make everyone feel like we are all together, like one big family.”
I looked at Dean. “Trust me, your dad wouldn’t WANT my family to be part of his family. Though he probably wouldn’t mind my dad or my brother—they like that sort of thing.” I laughed. “He’d be wishing me away quick enough though.”
I couldn’t read the look in Dean’s eyes, but I heard the coaxing in his voice. “Come on, it won’t be that bad. We can toast marshmallows.”
I shook my head. “You ‘toast’ marshmallows? Uh…why?”
He laughed and pushed at my shoulder. “Come on, have I steered you wrong yet? Didn’t you like the waterfall?”
“A waterfall isn’t a campfire,” I protested, but I could tell by his grin that he knew I would go. We had spent just about every day together so far. And I had enjoyed every one of those days. I didn’t miss the cable or the internet or even, I realized with some surprise, my friends.
And I supposed it couldn’t be that bad.
My dad got this look of surprise on his face when I showed up at the campfire, like Christmas had come early. My brother just looked at me suspiciously. I was sure he thought I was up to something, but I really didn’t care what was going on in his twisted little mind.
We toasted marshmallows, and I discovered “why” people toasted them—because they were amazing toasted! Though Dean laughed at me when mine went up in flames.
“It’s ok, you always have to sacrifice at least one to the God of Fire,” he explained with a grin—and gave me his, which was perfectly golden brown on the outside and warm and gooey on the inside.
The marshmallow toasting was fun, but there was no way I was joining in with the campfire songs. For one thing, I couldn’t sing. Really, I could NOT sing. So I just sat there and listened to Dean. He had a beautiful voice, not a voice you would hear on the radio, but a soft voice; and it sounded like it was wrapped in a breath. He caught me staring at him and he flushed, enough that I could see it even in the light of the campfire. He was sitting next to me and he smiled as he sang whatever song it was—I didn’t hear the words, only the sound of Dean’s voice—and his fingers brushed against mine.
And I felt it. It was like it felt when Deb had first touched me, that fluttering low in my stomach that seemed to spread down into my dick. I pulled away and stood up, so quickly I nearly fell over myself. And I walked away. I didn’t run—mostly because it was dark and I suddenly couldn’t focus. That and I didn’t know where I was going. I was confused and I just knew I needed to get away, away from him.
I looked back when I was about fifteen feet away and I saw him looking at me, with that expressionless look of his. He didn’t follow me, he just looked at me. I noticed my brother looking at me, too. I didn’t stick around to try to figure anything out. I just walked off into the woods.
***
It was during breakfast that I saw him. I recognized him immediately. I couldn’t imagine how I could have thought I wouldn’t. His hair was still long, though not as long as it had been, and a darker blonde. He wore it tied back now, which made his eyes seem brighter, bluer. As he leaned forward and reached out his hand to one of the other guests, I noticed his arms were bigger, more muscled, which was how he looked overall--bigger, more muscled. Not body-builder muscled, but it was obvious he didn’t sit at a desk all day. That was also obvious from the tanned skin and the slightly weathered complexion. He didn’t really look older, not to me. He just looked filled in, as if he had been a sketch of a boy before and was now a completed painting of a man.
I wondered if he would recognize me. Had I changed much? My hair was shorter, though it had never been long like his. It was still dark brown, no grays yet, despite Jared’s best efforts. And while I did sit at a desk all day, I kept pretty fit. But I was one of how many guests that had come and gone over the years? Even if maybe I had been something more than just a “guest,” I had likely been one of many. While he had been one of one.
He started walking toward our table and I looked down. Suddenly I wasn’t sure that I wanted him to recognize me, or even notice me. And I had this stupid thought that if I didn’t look at him, he wouldn’t see me. But even as the thought bounced around in my head, I felt myself looking up—and I looked right into his eyes.
He was a few feet away from our table, which was where everything froze. He froze. I froze. Sound stopped. All motion in the world ceased. Then his smile flickered, just a little, and the moment was over.
“Good morning, I’m Dean Wolverton,” he said with a smile that included everyone at the table. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here to greet you yesterday. I’ve been out of town for a few days.”
He extended his hand to each of us, his smile as open and as friendly as Steve’s. I shook his hand and we exchanged pleasantries. He didn’t say or do anything that would indicate that he recognized me. I didn’t say or do anything that would indicate that I recognized him. To all outward appearances, we were two strangers meeting for the first time.
After he left, I felt strange--disappointed, deflated. And I wondered whether I had imagined it, that moment of recognition, that moment when everything had seemed to freeze. Or maybe the recognition had been there, but it had only been significant to me. Either way…
“Lee?”
I blinked. “Sorry, what?”
Ellen frowned. “We were just talking about going into town this morning, just to have a look around. And I want to see when Rent is playing. I really want to see that.”
I rubbed my fingers between my eyes. My head hurt suddenly. That was what I told Ellen as I made my excuses to her and Ed and Jane. “I think I’m getting a migraine. I didn’t really sleep that well,” I said, which was true enough. “Why don’t you all go into town and I’ll take some ibuprofen and lie down for a bit, get rid of my headache so we can do something later on, whatever you guys decide on.” I accompanied my words with the best smile I could muster at the moment.
Ed gave me a look which clearly said he’d wished he’d thought of that one and Ellen and Jane both looked sympathetic.
“Ok, hun. Try to get some sleep. I’ll bring you back something for lunch.” Ellen brushed her fingers over my forehead.
Housekeeping had already been in to make the bed and replace the towels, which was good since I really did just want to lie down and close my eyes and not be disturbed. I had pretty much convinced myself that Dean Wolverton would not appear. And when he had, I had apparently convinced myself that he had remembered me in a flash of some dramatic moment in which time itself seemed to stand still. But it hadn’t happened that way, not really, not that I could see now. Nothing had happened and he didn’t know me.
Maybe memories were best left in the past. Didn’t they say that you can’t go back again? Did I even want to? Go back to what?
Nothing had happened and he didn’t know me. And I didn’t know him.
***
I didn’t see Dean the day after the campfire, which was fine with me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t sure of anything really, even things I had always been sure of. So I pretended to be sick and stayed in the cabin.
But by the next day I was tired of pretending to be sick. All that got me was a long day alone with nothing to do. But I stayed in bed longer than usual, long enough to miss breakfast completely, long enough to make my dad and Tony think I was still sick—though Tony gave me a look which clearly said he didn’t believe a word of it but didn’t really give a fuck.
By the time I dressed and left the cabin, it was mid morning. Dean wasn’t around, which I supposed was a good thing. I was still feeling confused about him. So I took a walk, not really paying much attention to where I was going. But I wasn’t surprised when I ended up at the waterfall.
I wasn’t there more than half an hour when he showed up.
“Were you really sick?”
“What?” I asked, looking up. I had been sitting on the big flat rock staring into the water.
“Your brother said you were sick.” I could see the little furrow between his eyes.
I shook my head. “No, I guess not. Not really.” I could have lied, should have lied.
He looked at me, that expressionless look in his eyes, which I noticed were a dark blue. I hadn’t noticed that before. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment.
“What for?” What did he have to be sorry for? I was the one who had lied about being sick.
“For whatever I did to make you run away like that.”
He sat down on the rock, next to me. I could sense his closeness. And I felt that feeling again, without even touching him or him touching me. I looked down at my hands, which were fidgeting in my lap. He laid his hand over mine.
“I…I-I’m not…I have a girlfriend.” My fingers shook as much as my voice. I looked at him quickly then looked away, but I didn’t move my hands.
He didn’t say anything.
I looked back at him and he was looking at me in that way of his, calmly, with almost no expression, as if he was just waiting. I noticed his hair hung in his face a little, almost covering his eyes. And I noticed he was wearing a white muscle shirt that had some sort of paint or something on it, and it was a little torn at the bottom. I noticed odd things, things that had no reason to be important but which suddenly were.
He rubbed his thumb over my hand and I looked down at it, staring at his thumb and my hand as if they belonged to two other people. I could feel him leaning, moving closer to me. I could have moved away; I almost wanted to move away, but I didn’t. He pushed my hair away from my face, his fingers brushing over my ear and then resting on the back of my neck. He rubbed his nose against my ear and I turned my head—not away, but toward him, my lips parted, my breath barely touching them. And he kissed me, his lips brushing over mine as softly as butterfly wings. And I felt like that butterfly had gotten into my stomach and into my groin.
He pulled away and stood up. As he pulled off his shirt, I noticed the bulge in his swim shorts. He noticed that I noticed and he smiled a little, just a little smile. And he dropped his eyes and I knew he saw that I was hard, too. Without a word he dove into the water, head first. I took off my shirt and followed him into the water, sliding off the rock, not diving as he had.
The water was cold, cold enough to take the heat out of my dick—but not cold enough to take away that…feeling. He came up from under the water and stayed there, a little away from me, looking at me. I moved a little closer to him. He smiled and moved behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders. I felt the butterfly wings brushing against the back of my neck. I heard a soft moan and realized it had come from my lips. He turned me around and stood there, looking down at me with that look of his. He ran his hands down my arms and over my chest; and I found my hands on his shoulders and then one hand was on his waist and the other on the back of his neck and I was kissing him.
Then we were out of the water and onto the rock and we were still kissing and touching. He ran his hand over the front of my swim shorts and I was hard in an instant. My hand found the front of his swim shorts and he was hard also. And still we were kissing and I was lying on my back and he was pressing against me, grinding his dick against mine—and I didn’t want to stop him.
But when his lips moved down my chest and his hands pulled at my shorts, pulling them down to expose my erection I panicked.
“No, I can’t!” I felt my whole body shaking. What was I doing? “I have a girlfriend. I-I’m not…”
I pushed him off of me and pulled up my shorts. I pulled on my sneakers and my shirt and ran like hell.
He didn’t follow.
***
I had calmed down by the time my dad and my brother returned from fishing. At least on the outside. My dad cooked up the fish they had caught and we were sitting at the table. It was actually edible, and I ate a little of it, even though I didn’t really feel much like eating.
“So where were you today?” Tony asked, his lips twisting into a snide little sneer that made me just itch to slap him. “I know you weren’t here. Where were you? Hanging with that Dean Wolverton?”
“What business is it of yours?” I snapped. Really, I wasn’t in the mood.
“He’s a fag, you know,” he said almost triumphantly. “Was talking to one of the guys in the bait shop. Asked me if you were a fag, too, since you were hanging with him all the time.”
I jumped up, nearly tipping over my chair and knocking over my bottle of water. “I’m not a fag!” I wasn’t. I had a girlfriend. “And we just go swimming and shit.” It was stupid to even say that. Why did I have to defend myself to my shit of a brother?
“Sit down, Lee!” my dad ordered and he turned and glared at Tony. “Tony, watch your mouth! I’ve had enough of this. I told you earlier—“
“What? You were talking about this earlier?” my voice had risen and threatened to crack.
“Yeah, you go swimming. He probably wants to look at your hot bod.” Tony wasn’t listening to my dad, no more than I was. “Has he kissed you?”
I felt the heat rise to my cheeks and there was nothing I could do about it.
Tony laughed. “Oh fuck! He has, hasn’t he? God, you’re such a fag. I knew it!”
I punched him. I reached right across the table, right past my dad and punched him hard enough to knock his chair back. “I’m not a fucking fag, you ass wipe!” I threw my plate at him and ran outside, ignoring whatever it was that my father was saying to me.
***
Over the next few days it was like we didn’t know each other, like we had never met. We would pass each other and he would say hi to me and I would say hi to him and that was it—and I would go off to do one thing or another. I didn’t talk to my brother, not a word. Nor to my father. Which wasn’t all that hard to do since they both pretty much avoided me. I spent a little time on the dock reading, but when Dean would start walking toward me, I would get up and go back to the cabin. Sometimes I would call Deb and tell her I missed her and I would end up jerking off while she talked dirty to me. Yeah, I liked girls. I wasn’t a fag. Fuck you, Tony. It had just been a mistake. And I would just pretend it had never happened and that I didn’t even know him. And it would all just go away.
***
That night we went to the theater in town and saw Rent. Or rather, Ellen and Ed and Jane saw Rent, I just sat there and waited for it to be over. It wasn’t like I sat there “lost in thought” or anything. I had shut thought off. I just sat there and smiled when everyone else smiled, laughed when everyone else laughed and made all the other appropriate sounds in the appropriate places. I suppose twelve years of marriage had given me that, too, the ability to “respond appropriately” without really having to be paying attention.
We had dinner afterwards and it was late before we got back to the lodge and up to bed. But at least my sleep was decent and relatively dreamless, for a change. And in the morning I felt good, refreshed, a feeling that stayed with me through an uneventful breakfast.
“Morning, folks.” Steve’s cheery voice greeted us as we passed by the front desk a little while later. This time there was no question in my mind whether I was relieved or disappointed that it was Steve and not Dean—I was relieved.
Ellen, Jane and Ed were going swimming in the lake. I still didn’t like to swim in lakes, so I brought a book with me and some sunscreen and lounged back on one of the Adirondack chairs that lined the dock.
“Still don’t like to swim with the fish?”
I didn’t precisely jump, at least not outwardly. But my stomach did a triple back flip as surprise and relief raced through me—chased by something that felt a lot like a swarm of intoxicated butterflies. Apparently he had recognized me after all. And there was no question in my mind about how I felt about that.
I looked up and smiled. “I’ve never gotten over the story of the largemouth bass and the ‘worm.’”
He laughed and leaned against the railing. “That never actually happened, you know. I made it up.” He smiled almost apologetically. “I just wanted an excuse to take you to the waterfall.”
I looked at him for a moment, my smile deepening, my fingers absently running along the edge of my book. “Sure, traumatize me for life just so you could lure me off to the middle of nowhere and seduce me.”
He looked at me with that same look, the one he’d looked at me with so many times so many years ago. “I’d do it again, you know. If I had it to do over,” he said quietly.
“You really should come in with us, Lee.”
Was it coincidence? A practiced sense of timing? Or maybe some “wifely instinct” that made Ellen choose that precise moment to come out of the lake and up onto the dock?
“Lee was just telling me that he has a very strong aversion to swimming with fish,” Dean’s eyes warmed as they met mine for a brief second before he turned and smiled at Ellen.
Ellen laughed. “It’s so funny. He has this thing about getting bit by a fish. I’ve tried to tell him that fish don’t bite people, at least not the kind that live in lakes. But he won’t listen to me. Maybe you could tell him how silly he is to miss out on the nice cool water on such a hot day.”
He and Ellen exchanged a few laughs, most of which seemed at my expense. But there was nothing in anything Dean said to give any hint that we had met before. Which I was grateful for. It would only make things complicated, make explanations necessary, explanations which could end up complicating things even more.
I knew that with certainty when Ellen spoke after Dean had left.
“He seems nice,” Ellen said, sitting down on my lap. I wrapped my arms around her waist. She felt good, all cool from the water. It really was a very hot day.
“Yes, he does,” I agreed, rubbing my warm cheek against her cool shoulder.
“Ed says he and Steve are together, if you know what I mean.” She had lowered her voice as if she was passing on a state secret. “They don’t really look…like that…do they? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Ellen, are you coming back in?” It was Jane’s voice.
Ellen smiled and kissed me then stood up. “For a few more minutes,” she answered. “Just a little bit longer, Lee. The water feels so good. Then we can go get some lunch, ok?”
I smiled and nodded. “Sure, go get wet so you can come back and cool me off again.” She covered my head with her towel and I heard her jump from the dock into the water.
“They don’t really look…like that…do they? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
I pulled the towel off my head and closed my eyes. I knew she hadn’t meant anything by it. Ellen wasn’t like that. Not really. Except…what did she think “like that” looked like? It didn’t always look…different, did it? Had it? Had I?
***
He was sitting on the dock, just like when we first met.
“Hey.”
He looked up at me with that look that he had. “Hey,” he said after a while. “Sure you want to talk to me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked the question, but I knew he knew the answer.
He shrugged. “Well, your brother made it pretty clear to me how things were.”
I frowned and instinctively my hands balled into fists. “What did he say?”
Dean looked at my hands and then up at my face. His eyes met mine. I didn’t see any criticism in them or accusation or even any hurt, just that quiet calm that was almost always there. “He said that you weren’t a fucking fag and that you didn’t want any part of me, especially my pencil dick and if he saw me even talking to you, he’d knock the shit out of me.”
I laughed. “He couldn’t. I can take him.” I could. Tony couldn’t fight for shit. He was two years older than I was, but I was two inches taller and about twenty pounds heavier.
“Is that how you feel, though?” Again he looked at me with that “look.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know.” I could have lied, could have said it wasn’t how I felt. But I didn’t know how I felt. I didn’t know that I DID feel that way, but I didn’t know that I DIDN’T feel that way.
He nodded. “Look, you don’t have to avoid me, you know. I won’t try anything.”
His voice was very quiet, soft, and I remembered how it had sounded the night of the campfire.
“I guess I misread things,” he continued after a moment. “I’m sorry.”
Had he? I sat down on the dock and dangled my legs over the water. I kicked at the water with my sneakers a few times. “I don’t think you did,” I said after a while.
“You don’t think I did what?”
I flushed. “Misread things.”
He looked at me again, but the look was slightly different, not expressionless—though I couldn’t quite read what I saw in his eyes. He stood up. “I have to help my dad out for a little while. I’ll be done around three.”
I nodded.
“Meet me?”
I nodded again.
***
I stood up as Ellen came back out of the water. We headed up to the lodge. Steve was behind the desk, as usual. “Enjoy your swim?” he asked with that bright, open smile of his.
Yes, I could see Dean and Steve together. They fit. Though why my stomach chose that moment to feel like it had tied itself up in a knot, I didn’t know. Or maybe I didn’t want to know. Or maybe I was just hungry.
***
Ellen and I spent the afternoon together. This time I took the time to lock the door and we were half and hour late meeting Ed and Jane in the lobby.
“We were going to go into town without you in another fifteen minutes,” Ed wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Figured you two lovebirds were in for the night.”
Ellen blushed prettily and Jane giggled, though when Jane giggled it didn’t transform her into a young girl, it just made her sound a bit like a cackling witch. Though maybe that was just a little harsh.
“Going into town for dinner?” Dean asked as we walked by the front desk. He asked us as a group, though he looked more at me. I caught a look from Steve that had me thinking either Dean had told him or Steve had good radar.
“Yeah, thought we’d try the steakhouse in the mall.” I smiled at both of them, but I knew my eyes were on Dean.
“It’s very good. We go there at least a few times a month.” Steve stepped closer to Dean and laid his hand on his shoulder, his smile warming as he looked Dean. “It’s something of a special place for us. I was working there when Dean and I met.”
Ellen wrapped her arm around my waist. “Oh, I know what you mean. There’s always that one place that’s special, isn’t there?” She looked up at me and I saw the love in her eyes “For Lee and I it’s this one this little park on Washington Avenue,” she confided, completely oblivious to the subtle undertones to the conversation. “It was where Lee proposed.”
I instinctively rubbed my cheek against her hair. “Yeah, there’s always that one special place that you never forget.”
I saw Dean smile and I smiled back. I wondered if he was thinking of the same place I was.
***
I was sitting on the big flat rock with my knees drawn up and my head resting on my knees. The water was even more calm than usual. It hadn’t rained in a while and the creek that fed the waterfall flowed more slowly, causing less of a rushing and more of a slow, steady pouring of water down over the three ledges. By the time the water from the fall reached the swimming hole, it didn’t “hit” the water, it just “slipped into” it, gently, quietly, making barely a ripple.
The relative quiet made it easy for me to hear him coming, but I didn’t look up as he approached. I just kept staring into the water. He sat down on the rock, next to me. I could sense his closeness. And I felt that feeling again.
He sat there in silence for a moment. Then he ran his fingers over my arm and I looked down at his hand, staring at his fingers, noticing how long they were, feeling how strong they were even when they were being so gentle. I looked up at him and turned toward him, my fingers shaking slightly as I raised my hand to push a strand of his hair back away from his face. My palm cupped his cheek and I rubbed my thumb over his parted lips. They were so soft, those lips that kissed like butterfly wings.
My breath caught as he closed his lips around my thumb and sucked lightly, his tongue slowly massaging my skin. Then he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled my thumb from his mouth, placing a soft kiss on the palm of my hand before letting go and pulling his shirt over his head. Before I could do the same, his hands were under my shirt, sliding it up and over my head. I laid my hands on his chest, my fingers kneading into his skin, rubbing over his nipples and I groaned as I felt my cock starting to strain against the netting of my swim shorts. His hands responded instantly, sliding down my sides and slipping inside the waistband of my shorts, pushing them down, exposing my now painful erection.
This time I didn’t panic and I didn’t stop him and I didn’t push him away.
He pushed me gently down onto the rock and I could feel our shirts beneath me—and I wondered if he had put them there intentionally, to make it more comfortable for me. He pulled my shorts off the rest of the way then pulled off his own. His erection sprang free and I reached out and took it in my hand and stroked it slowly, gently. He moaned and took mine in his hand and stroked me with the same slow, gently rhythm. Then he pulled my fingers from his cock and kissed them, one by one before letting go of my hand. He smiled at me, a hazy, blurry smile, as he lowered his head and ran his tongue around the tip of my cock.
I gasped out loud. It wasn’t the first time I’d had someone’s mouth on my cock, Deb had gone down on me once, not long before my dad had come to get us. But this was different. As he took me deeper into his mouth, I realized Dean’s mouth felt…well, different. I couldn’t form any word that described it. Maybe “better,” it definitely felt better. But it was more than that.
I wrapped my fingers in his hair and groaned deeply as he moved his mouth over me, his lips stroking my shaft. His answering groan vibrated over my cock and I arched my back, pushing deeper into his mouth. He swallowed as the tip of my cock touched the back of his throat, the muscles contracting around me; and my fingers abandoned his hair and clutched at his shoulders, my nails digging into his skin.
I moaned his name softly as he settled his movements into a steady rhythm, and all the while he sucked on me, his fingers massaged my balls and stroked the base of my cock. I had never felt anything this good. I had never even imagined anything this good. I never wanted it to stop. I wanted to feel Dean’s hot mouth wrapped around my cock every moment for the rest of my life.. But I knew I was going to cum soon. And as much as I wanted to draw the experience out into forever, I wanted to cum, to feel that release from the tension that gripped every nerve and muscle in my body.
Dean must have sensed what I was feeling. “Cum for me, baby. Cum for me,” he urged, pulling his mouth from my cock. He ran his tongue hard around the head, milking out the little drops of precum from the tip. Then, with an intensity that was almost savage, he took me deeply and roughly into his mouth. I cried out in pleasure and pain as he quickened his pace, sliding my cock in and out of his mouth until finally I released into his mouth.
He didn’t say anything. He just smiled as he licked the cum from me. Then he kissed me, a long slow kiss, his tongue seeking out every surface of my mouth, sharing the taste of my cum with me. And suddenly I wanted to taste his. I wanted to taste him more than anything.
I put my hands on his chest and pushed him away. He rocked back on his knees and sat there, looking at me with eyes that looked startled, confused. I wrapped my fingers around his cock, which had started to soften, I assumed from the shock of being pushed away so abruptly without explanation. I stroked it firmly but gently and he moaned as he grew hard again in my hand.
Never letting go of him, still stroking his increasing erection, I moved to my knees and brushed my lips softly over his before moving them slowly down the center of his chest. I paused, my lips inches from his throbbing head. And in that moment, I had no thoughts except how much I wanted to taste him, to have him fill my mouth, to have him run down my throat.
I went down on him and sucked him hungrily. There was no finesse involved, no skill, just hunger. His fingers clutched at my shoulders as he groaned deeply, his head thrown back his lips parted. And in a few moments I had what I so desperately wanted as he reached his climax, sending hot pulses of cum into my mouth. I swallowed and moaned as I felt it run over the back of my tongue and I swallowed, once, twice and licked all but one drop of cum from him and swallowed again. Then I captured that last drop on the tip of my tongue and I kissed him, sliding my tongue over his, sharing the taste of him with him.
We clung to each other for what seemed like forever, both of us still on our knees, both of us taking short, panting breaths. Then, by silent mutual agreement, we got up and slid off the rock into the water. We spent some time cooling our bodies down, him on one side of the pool, me on the other. We didn’t speak, but the looks we shared spoke the words we couldn’t seem to.
When we finally got out of the water and got dressed, he put his arms around me and kissed me, very tenderly, as he had the very first time, his lips brushing over mine like the softest butterfly wings. We walked back in silence, our bodies close together, our shoulders touching. His fingers brushed against mine a few times and I caught him looking at me with that same quiet, almost expressionless look. But I could see something behind that look. Something that scared me as much as it made the butterflies flutter in the pit of my stomach.
About half way back, I finally put my hand in his.
***
I was sitting on the big flat rock, my legs dangling over the edge, my feet not even close to touching the few inches of water that pooled at the bottom of what had once been a deep swimming hole. The waterfall was silent; no water ran over the three ledges. It was like someone had turned off a tap somewhere.
I heard him coming, but I didn’t look up as he approached. Of course, I knew it was him. After the conversation in the lodge last night about “special places,” I had almost expected to see him here. I had certainly hoped. Except now, looking at things, I almost wished I hadn’t come, that I had just let the memories stay memories.
“They put a dam in upstream to make a lake for the new housing development,” he said as he sat down beside me. “It gets about four feet deep in the center in the spring, from the runoff. It’s the only time the creek runs at all.”
I could hear the sadness in his voice. And I understood. It was more than just a loss of a swimming hole.
“We fought it, Dad and I. Had the environmentalists on our side and everything.” He sighed. “But money talks and after three years of fighting, the money ran out and the developers got their lake.”
I looked at him. He was staring ahead, into the space where the quiet, calming water had once been. “Dad died that same year. Felt like he had broken his promise to my mom. Had to sell off half the property just to keep the lodge open.”
I remembered when he had told me about his mom and how his dad had promised her he would keep things as they had always been.
“I saw you go into the woods. Figured you were going here.”
I smiled. “Watching me?”
He smiled, too. “Yeah,” he said simply and without explanation.
“After that conversation last night…” I began.
He nodded. “Special places.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us said anything for a few moments. We both just stared into the nearly empty swimming hole. I figured he was seeing pretty much the same things I was.
“How’d you manage to get away from your wife and the others?” he asked after a bit.
I smiled. “I pretended I was sick.” I was prone to migraines, so it was a fairly easy excuse to use.
He laughed. “You do that a lot? Become a habit, has it?”
I knew he was referring to my bout of “sickness” sixteen years ago. And the fact that he remembered that made my stomach flutter a bit. It was a long time to remember such a small thing. Though the reason for that bout of “sickness” had been anything but small.
“It was either go shopping at the mall or have a ‘terrible migraine.’ A ‘terrible migraine’ is much more enjoyable than shopping with Ellen and Jane and listening to Ed bitch about how much Jane is spending.”
He laughed. “Guess I can see your point there. You and Ellen been together long?”
I nodded. “We’ve been married twelve years now. Met her in college. Married her six months later. We have a son, Jared. He’s eleven.” I smiled. “He’s been spending the week across the lake at the campgrounds with Ed and Jane’s son, Jimmy.”
“Ellen seems very nice. You seem good together.” He paused for a moment. “Are you happy, Lee?” He asked the question quietly, and I could tell it wasn’t an idle question, not something he asked like some might ask “How are you?”
“I have a good life. Ellen’s great. I couldn’t ask for better. She loves me in spite of my faults, which never ceases to amaze me, really. And Jared, he’s smart as hell. And a good kid, too.” I nodded. “Things are good. We have our ups and downs like any other family, but we’re a family. And I have a good job. Things are comfortable, no financial worries. I suppose everything’s turned out pretty much like everyone wanted and expected it to.”
“And you are happy?”
I turned to look at him. He was looking at me with that same look he always had. And I couldn’t read his expression any more now than I could sixteen years ago. But I suppose I didn’t really need to read it. I knew what he was asking. He was asking me if I was “happy.” Not if my life was good and comfortable, but if I was truly happy at the very center of myself. I wasn’t sure I could answer that. Mostly because I wasn’t any more sure now than I had been sixteen years ago about what I really wanted and needed to be happy.
“How long have you and Steve been together?” I asked, hoping he would let me leave the question unanswered.
He smiled and I could see understanding in his eyes. “We’ve been together almost 4 years now.”
I smiled. “And things are good?” I hoped they were. They looked like they were.
He nodded and his smile touched his eyes. “Yeah. I think I’ve finally found someone I can be happy with.”
“That’s great, Dean.” I realized that it was the first time I had said his name in sixteen years. It felt good on my tongue. “He seems really nice, easy going.”
Dean laughed. “He is SO easy going. It is hard as hell to rile him. He’s completely comfortable in his own skin. Nothing fazes him.” He looked at me and his eyes sparkled with a touch of wickedness. “You set off his radar, though, even if he wouldn’t admit it.”
So I had not been mistaken about the “look.” I shook my head and smiled. “He’s good. Did you tell him anything? About…anything?”
He shook his head. “No. I love him dearly, but what goes in his ears tends to come out of his mouth; and I got the impression you probably hadn’t said anything to anyone.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I haven’t. I didn’t see the point. It would just…complicate things. And it was sixteen years ago.”
He nodded and leaned back on his hands. “Yeah, it was a long time ago.”
We sat in silence for a bit. Then he spoke. “Did you ever think of…” he hesitated, “…of things later, of me?”
I hadn’t in a long time. But for a while, a very long while, I had. “I had dreams about you for the longest time.”
He smiled. “Did you? Good dreams?”
I smiled. “Wet dreams.”
He laughed. “Yeah, had those about you, too.” He sighed and I glanced at him and saw his eyes were closed. “You know, I used to imagine that you would come back.” He laughed again, and maybe there was a touch of bitterness in the laugh, or maybe it was just a little self-mocking. “And you would tell me that you loved me and that nothing else mattered—not your brother, not what anyone thought, nothing.”
He sat up then stood up, picked up a rock and tossed it into what little water there was. “You didn’t, of course. And I knew you wouldn’t…couldn’t.”
I sat there and looked down at my hands. I could picture him. I could picture the seventeen year old boy sitting on this very rock, lost in daydreams and fantasies. And I felt guilty. Not because I had left—I had to leave. I hadn’t had a choice in that. And not even because I hadn’t come back—because I had been fifteen and while you might imagine things like that at fifteen, you didn’t actually do them.
What made me feel guilty was how I had made what had happened between us into something that was wrong, something to be forgotten. When I had gotten home I had thrown myself into being what I saw as a “normal guy.” When Deb and I broke up, I went out with just about every girl who blinked at me. I had something to prove, to my brother, to my dad, to just about everyone—and mostly to myself. I had fallen for another boy. I hadn’t just had sex with him—I had fallen for him. And that didn’t fit with how things were supposed to be. And I convinced myself it had been just a one-time thing, an experimental thing. I convinced myself that it had been nothing.
And it had been anything BUT nothing. And THAT was what made my stomach clench and my eyes burn. I had taken something beautiful and made it into something that had never existed.
Except now, sixteen years later, I knew what I hadn’t known then.
“I did, you know.”
He looked at me. “What?”
“Love you.” I laughed shortly, bitterly. “I would have dreams—not just the wet ones—but ones where I would run away from home and no one would know where to find me and I would be with you.” I ran my hand across my eyes and through my hair. “And when I would wake up I would call the girl of the moment and we would meet up and I would fuck you out of my mind.”
But I hadn’t managed—not then, not now—to fuck him out of my heart.
He held out his hand to me. I stared at it for a moment, wondering why he even wanted that much contact with someone who had betrayed him in such a way—because that was what I had done. I had betrayed all that he was by denying all that I felt.
But I put my hand in his and he pulled me to my feet. He raised my hand and held it against his chest and brushed the fingers of his other hand over my cheek. “We were both young,” he said—as if that explained everything, excused everything.
I raised my eyes to his and I could see the softness in them. Gone was the expression I couldn’t read, the one that simply waited. In its place was one of tenderness, of forgiveness and longing—I definitely saw longing. He leaned forward as he slipped his hand around to the back of my neck, and kissed me. And I felt everything I had felt the first time he had kissed me and everything I had felt when he had touched me, when we had made love to each other on that hot afternoon sixteen years ago. Except I wasn’t fifteen and he wasn’t seventeen—we were grown men. I pressed against him and wrapped my fingers in his hair, and the kiss deepened, our tongues hungrily seeking to taste once more the taste that had once held us both captive.
He broke the kiss, was the first one to pull away. My body ached from the sudden separation. Apparently his did, too, because he pulled me hard against him for a moment, groaning as he let me know his body had not forgotten the feeling. I rubbed against him—letting him know mine had not either. Then he let go and pulled away, a small smile on his lips, a smile that held maybe a touch of regret.
“Ellen’s a lucky woman.”
I smiled, a smile that mirrored his. Steve’s a lucky man.”
We walked back to the lodge in silence, our bodies close together, our shoulders touching—but not our hands. And I understood the significance of that. Our hands—especially mine, the one with the ring on the finger—belonged to others and were no longer ours to give.
***
My “headache” extended all through the rest of the day and into the night. I managed to pack my suitcase, but told Ellen I didn’t feel up to breakfast.
“I just want to lie down for a bit. I took some ibuprofen so that should have my head feeling better enough to drive home.”
She looked at me carefully, almost curiously. But all she said was, “Ok, hun. But if you aren’t feeling up to driving home, I’ll drive. And you’re going to make an appointment to see the doctor about those migraines. They seem to be getting worse.”
I smiled and asked her to save me a piece of fruit from breakfast, and she seemed happier that I was at least showing an interest in food. I didn’t have a migraine, but my head did feel off. Though I knew it was more the thoughts and memories that were causing the dull ache.
***
“You didn’t come. What’s wrong?”
I was sitting on the dock, dangling my legs over the side. I didn’t look up and he sat down beside me. I turned away. “Nothing. I just…”
He reached out and turned my face to him. His eyes darkened and he swore, something I had never really heard him do before. “What happened?” he asked softly, tracing the bruise around my left eye with his finger.
I shrugged. “Lucky punch. Tony looks worse than I do.”
He put his arms around me and pulled me close against him. I didn’t care who saw.
“My dad’s pissed. He came in while Tony and I were at it. So it’s over. He’s taking us home.” I laughed a little. “Should have heard him. ‘This is what happens when boys are raised without a man in their lives!’”
I shook my head. “The fuck forgets that HE is the one who walked out on my mom, not the other way around. Not that what he says is even halfway right.”
I laughed again and wiped my hand across my eyes. “Though maybe he is ‘halfway’ right because ONE of us turned out ‘normal’ and only ONE of us is all wrong. Guess half of two is one, last I knew. So maybe he has a point.”
Dean shook his head and rubbed his cheek against my hair. “No, he doesn’t. There is nothing ‘wrong’ about you. Your brother—and your dad—are the ones who need some serious fixing.”
He held me close for a long moment then sighed. “I’m sorry, Lee. I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble for you.”
I looked up at him and shook my head. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not.”
***
I packed the few things I had brought with me and threw the bag in the car. I wasn’t going to stand around listening to my dad and my brother arguing over why they couldn’t just “send fag boy home on a bus or something.”
Dean was sitting on the steps of the lodge, like he always was at this time, the time I usually came by.
“I’m never going to see you again, am I?” he asked as I sat down on the steps next to him.
I didn’t answer; I just looked down. I knew it was no. So did he. I looked up after a while and he was looking at me in that way, though I could see something else in his eyes—sadness, resignation.
“Be happy, Lee.” And he held out his hands, his palms out, his fingers spread just a little. I knew what he meant. I pressed my hands against his. I knew we both could feel the pane of glass between us.
My dad drove up and I glanced at Dean one last time. He was still sitting there, still holding his hands in that way.
As I got into the car, my brother whispered in my ear, “Faggot.”
***
Ed and Jane had already checked out and had headed on over to the campground to make sure Jimmy and Jared had the tent picked up and had everything ready to go. Ellen was waiting for me at the front desk, talking to Steve.
“I’m sorry to hear about your migraines. Hope you managed to enjoy some of your stay with us.” Steve smiled as openly as always, though I thought I detected a hint of “Glad you are going now” in his eyes. Though maybe I was just looking for that.
“It’s been very nice, even with the migraines,” I smiled back at him.
“Maybe we’ll see you back here sometime?” Dean walked in from the room behind the desk and laid his hands on Steve’s shoulders, standing behind him.
“That would be lovely,” Ellen replied brightly. “You have such a beautiful place here, so nice and relaxing.”
I just met Dean’s eyes and smiled and nodded slightly as I picked up our suitcases and headed toward the door.
As I got into the car I looked up at the lodge and I could have sworn I saw him in the window, his palm pressed against the glass. As I backed the car out of the parking space and turned to head down the driveway, I looked up at the lodge once more.
“Be happy, Dean,” I mouthed silently, and pressed my palm against the car window.
Copyright © 2011 Luc; All Rights Reserved.
I looked up from the papers I’d been reading. “What? Go where? What are you talking about?”
“Lee, Jared’s been telling you for the past ten minutes. Jimmy’s going to a camp with a group from the church Ed and Jane belong to. It’s down by Binghamton. And before you start, it’s not a religious thing. It’s just camping. He really wants to go, Lee.”
I stared at Ellen, trying to switch gears. Why did they always have to do this while I was working? “When is it?”
Ellen rolled her eyes and I could tell it was something I was supposed to have already heard.
Jared jumped in. “It’s July 8th through the 14th. It’s only a week. Please, Dad? I’ve always wanted to go camping. Please?”
I frowned. “The 8th?” That was the start of my vacation. We’d already planned some things. “We were going to go to Six Flags that week, remember? I thought you wanted to go there.”
Jared bounced up and down a little. “We always go to Six Flags. And yeah, I love it, but I’ve never been camping and I really, really, REALLY want to go. Please?”
I looked up at Ellen and opened my mouth, but she put her hand on my arm before I had a chance to speak. “Lee, Ed and Jane are inviting us, too. And I know you don’t like camping, but there is a lodge there that Jane says is like a rustic bed and breakfast. It’s about a mile from where the kids will be, so they get to do their camping thing and we get to just relax. And there are things to do nearby. She and Ed went last year and said they had a really nice time and Jimmy loved the camp.”
I scratched the side of my neck and looked at Jared—who had the “I promise I’ll take the garbage out for a month and clean my room and do the litter box andeverything else I really hate to do”look on his face. I looked up at Ellen—who had the “It’s only one week and the insurance world will still be there when you get back and it means so much to Jared” look on her face. It was a hard combination to resist—which they both knew.
“Alright,” I shook my head. “But not so much as a campfire for me, is that understood?”
I smiled as Jared started jumping up and down. “This is SO cool! I’m going to go call Jimmy right now!”
He ran out of the room and Ellen leaned down and kissed my cheek. “You know I love you, right?” she said as she rubbed her nose against mine.
I brushed my lips against hers. “I do, but I never get tired of hearing you say it.” I wrapped my fingers around hers. “So what is this place? Do you have a brochure or something?”
She smiled and slipped her fingers from mine. “Jane does. She showed me this afternoon. It’s called Wolverton Forest Lodge and it overlooks a lake and…”
Wolverton Forest Lodge…
***
“So is there anything to do around here? I mean beside play boy scout in the woods?”
He was sitting on the edge of the dock reading. I hadn’t noticed the book at first, or I might not have said anything. I hated to be interrupted when I was reading.
He looked up at me for a moment, not saying anything. For some reason I got the feeling he was sizing me up. I met his gaze squarely. I wasn’t one to be intimidated by a stare.
He shrugged. “No,” he said and turned his eyes back to the page he’d been reading.
I rolled my eyes and kicked one of the posts on the dock. “Figured that. God, there isn’t even any cable or internet. I can’t believe my dad picked this loser place. He’s such a jerk at times.”
“Yeah, well parents suck most the time.” He shrugged again, not turning around.
I kicked at the post again. What the fuck was my dad’s problem? He knew I hated camping. I hated fishing. I hated the woods. My brother was into all that shit, not me. I didn’t want to be on vacation in Camp Bug Bite. I liked living with my mom. We had a nice place in the city and I could hang with my friends and my girlfriend and do normal stuff.
“There’s things to do in town,” he offered after a few moments.
“Yeah, what?” The “town” we had come through to get here hadn’t looked like much of anything.
He shrugged again. “There’s a movie theater, some stores downtown. McDonalds. WalMart. And the school’s got a pool and some playground shit.” He turned around and looked up at me, and I noticed his eyes looked like they were smiling, like he was amused at something.
“God! McDonalds AND Walmart? In the same town? How can you stand the excitement?”
He laughed. “We don’t. Most of us go crazy and end up in the bin—forgot to mention the mental institution. We have one of those, too. Where you from?”
I laughed. “Great. I’ll probably be in a padded cell by the end of the week.” I sat down and dangled my legs over the water. My feet could touch just enough to get my sneakers wet. “I’m from Albany most of the time, when I’m with my mom.”
“What about the rest of the time?” He had closed his book and was looking at me with a strange look. It was almost like there was no expression in his eyes, like they just rested on me calmly, as if they were waiting.
I shrugged. “My dad moves around a lot. Not really sure where he actually lives this time. He picked us up at my mom’s and brought us here.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, me and my brother.” I rolled my eyes. “He and my brother are tight. Two peas in the fucking pod. I think my mom must have been fucking around when she had me. God, I hope she was.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked at me in that strange way of his. I fidgeted a little. “You from here then?”
“Yeah, my family owns this place.”
“This place” was the Wolverton Forest Campgrounds. We were staying in one of the cabins. And there was a main ‘lodge’ where you could get all the supplies you might have forgotten or didn’t know you’d need—like bug spray.
“Oh.” I had called it a loser place. “Sorry. I’m sure it’s a great place to stay…if you like camping and shit.”
He smirked a little. “Yeah, or playing boy scout in the woods.” He stood up. “There’s some cool spots here, though. Really pretty. If you know where to go.”
He looked down at me. “I’m Dean, by the way.” He held his hand out to me.
I stared at it for a moment then shook it. “Lee.”
“You like to swim?”
I looked at the lake a little dubiously. It wasn’t a pool. People fished in it. “In pools, yeah.”
He laughed. “Pools suck. All that chlorine is bad for your skin. Will turn your hair green, too.” He looked at my dark brown hair. “If you’re blonde anyway.” He was blonde.
“Maybe, but there are fish and shit in there,” I gestured toward the lake.
He laughed again. “They don’t bother you. Unless you go skinny dipping. One guy did that last summer and got his dick bit by a largemouth. Guess it must have thought it was a worm.”
I laughed--and vowed to myself that if I actually DID go swimming in the lake—any lake—ever—I’d wear some tighty whities under my swim trunks. Maybe even a cup.
“But I know a place that’s better than the lake. Better than a pool, too. If you want I can show you sometime.”
“Are there fish in it?”
He laughed. “Yeah, but no bass. Just trout. They have real small mouths. You’d have to have a dick the size of a pencil eraser to have anything to worry about.” He grinned suddenly. “But you can leave your shorts on if you want.”
I blushed. Yeah, I would do that. Not that I had a dick the size of a pencil eraser.
I stood up. “So where is this place?”
He smiled. “Meet me in front of the lodge in the morning and I’ll take you there.”
***
“…and Jane said there is a nice theater in town, not a movie theater, a real one. You’ll see, it’ll be fun.” Ellen was patting me on the shoulder. “Dinner’s just about ready, Lee. About ten minutes, ok?”
I blinked and nodded. “Yeah, fine, hon.” Ellen looked at me a little curiously as she left the room.
I hadn’t thought about that place in years. Not that it had to be that place. There might be other places with the same name. And maybe I wasn’t remembering it correctly. Maybe I had the name mixed up with something else.
I rubbed my fingers between my eyes. Sixteen years was a long time. Easy enough to make a mistake like that. Easy enough to remember things wrong…
***
“Where the fuck is this place?”
We’d trudged through the woods on the north side of the lake and had been climbing over rocks for the past half hour, following what seemed to be a dry creek bed. My shoulders were starting to get sweaty and irritated from the straps of my backpack. Dean said we’d be a while, so I’d brought some chips and some water and a towel and some candy bars. I doubted there would be a snack bar along the way and no way was I drinking any water that had fish in it.
“Not much further,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s a local’s place. If you don’t live here, you don’t know where it is. It’s technically on our property, and my dad thought of making it part of the ‘total camping experience,’ but my mom wouldn’t hear of it. Just before she died my dad promised her he wouldn’t open it up, would keep it like it has always been.”
I looked at his back. His mom was dead. Weren’t you supposed to say you were sorry when someone died? I never quite understood that. Unless you killed the person yourself, you really didn’t have anything to be sorry for. Except maybe you were sorry for the person who didn’t die because they had lost someone. I couldn’t imagine losing my mom. Didn’t really have my dad, so losing him would be a non-event. But my mom…
“I’m sorry about your mom.” I guess I really was.
He shrugged again. “It was a few years ago and she was suffering with cancer. She hurt a lot. I was glad when she died and stopped hurting.”
I considered that. I guess that made sense. Though it was more information than I had expected from someone I’d just met the day before.
I heard the sound before I saw it. It was a rushing that was almost a roaring. I stopped and looked around. All I could see was that the “dry” creek bed was now wetter.
“Come on, it’s only a little further.”
I was beginning to wonder if he had some sort of mental defect that kept him from perceiving distances right. A “little further” seemed a lot further than a little. And I was just about to bitch when I saw it.
It was about a hundred yards away and about 30 feet high and probably the most amazing thing I had ever seen up close.
“Wow! A waterfall!” I had seen waterfalls. I had seen Niagara Falls. Couldn’t get much more “waterfall” than that. But this one was right there, right in front of me. And in front of it was a pool of water that looked so calm and still—even though a waterfall was pouring into it. But I could see why the water in the pool was calm like that. The water fell over the top and hit a series of ledges on the way down. Three that I could count. And by the time it hit the pool it wasn’t crashing vertically, it was flowing almost horizontally.
He grinned at me. “Amazing, isn’t it? Our property line stops about 3 feet before the falls, so technically the pool is ours but the falls aren’t. But no one really cares about that.”
He pulled off his t-shirt and his sneakers. “Come on, it’s a little cold but you get used to it pretty quick.”
I looked at the water and at him. I was hot from all the climbing and hiking. I shrugged off my backpack and set it on a big flat rock, along with my shirt and my sneakers. I stuck my toe in the water. Cold was an understatement.
He laughed and jumped in right in front of me, splashing me from head to toe.
“Jesus, man! It’s fucking cold!” I took a quick step back.
“Cold enough to make your dick the size of a pencil eraser,” he said with a grin.
Great. I needed that thought.
“Come on, Lee; it’s great!” He disappeared under the water and came up in the middle of the pool. He shook his head like a dog and grinned.
I sat down on the edge of the rock and dangled my feet in the water a few moments before sliding off the rock and into the water. It was cold as hell and I yelled. He laughed.
“You squealed like a girl!”
Yeah, a girl with a dick the size of a pencil eraser—perfect. “You fuck,” I muttered and splashed at him.
***
“Lee! Dinner’s been ready for ten minutes. Stop working and come down before I give yours to the cats!”
I shook my head and closed the file I had all but forgotten about. “On my way,” I called down.
Wolverton Forest Lodge… Dean Wolverton…
***
“You seemed distracted at dinner tonight,” Ellen didn’t precisely phrase it as a complaint, but I knew the thoughts behind the words: My head was always in my work. Did I have to bring files home every night? I never spent enough time with them, meaning Ellen and Jared.
And she was right. I did spend a lot of time on work. Not every night, but near enough for it to feel that way. And I could list a dozen reasons why it was important for me to keep on top of my job. But I knew that for each one of them Ellen would have a counter reason why it was more important to spend that time with my family. And she was right. Jared was eleven now. It wouldn’t be long before he became a teenager; and they say that if you haven’t formed good bonds before they’re teens, you never will. That had certainly been true enough with me and my own father. We had never bonded. He hadn’t been there much even when he had lived with my mom. And when he had been there, it had been all him and my brother. I was more my mom’s son than his. I saw now that that had been my choice, not his; but he had never really done much to try to change that.
“You know, Lee, I think it will be good for us to get away, just the two of us, for a change.” She sat beside me on the bed and wrapped her arms around my neck.
I put an arm around her and drew her closer to me. “We’re going with Ed and Jane, remember?” I murmured against her neck. I inhaled deeply. “Mmm, you’re wearing Paloma again.” It was my favorite, not hers. And I knew she only wore it when she particularly wanted to please me.
“We won’t have to spend every waking moment with them—I’m sure they want some time to themselves. And we will have our own room, you know.”
She nibbled on my earlobe. “Just the two of us.”
She slid over onto my lap and her fingers played with the back of my hair. “We haven’t really been alone like that since our honeymoon.”
She ran her hand slowly down my chest. “Remember our honeymoon, Lee?”
I remembered. We had gone to Niagara Falls. It had been what she had wanted to do—the traditional “honeymoon destination.” It had been beautiful and romantic and I had been so very much in love with her. If she had asked me to jump into the falls to prove I loved her, I would have done so without a second thought. I was completely besotted.
I wondered when I’d stopped feeling that way and why. Was it just a natural process, the cooling of the fire, the dulling of the intensity? I rubbed my nose against hers and brushed a strand of hair from her face. I still loved her. Even if that love felt more “warm and comfortable” now instead of “hot and impassioned.”
“Do you think I could ever forget?” I asked as I covered her lips with mine.
We made love slowly, tenderly, beautifully, each of us knowing exactly what the other wanted and needed. Twelve years had given us that. If it had taken away the heat and urgency, it had given us a deep intimacy and mutual understanding.
But afterwards, as I held her in my arms and started to drift off to sleep, my thoughts wandered back to a different time and a different waterfall
***
“You know,” he said, waving a chip in the air, “chips and candy bars are NOT good boy scout food.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, taking another bite of my Snickers bar, “but my dad and my brother took all the trail mix and bird seed.”
He grinned and tipped his head back and shook the chip crumbs into his mouth. “Trail mix isn’t bad if you make it yourself. But if I’m going to do any serious hiking or camping, I prefer jerky. And there are almost always some berries in the woods that you can eat—if you know which ones they are. Don’t want to eat the wrong ones, though. Some will make you pretty sick.”
I shook my head. “No way I’d eat any berry I found in the woods. My luck a bear would have pissed on them or something. And what the hell is ‘jerky’?”
Dean laid back on the rock and stretched his arms out over his head. “Jerky is seasoned dried meat. My dad makes venison jerky. It’s really good, a lot better than the stuff you buy in stores.”
“You can buy jerky in stores?” I asked in amazement. “Like in normal grocery stores?”
He laughed. “Yeah. WalMart even sells it.”
It did? I figured I’d look the next time I was in WalMart, not that I’d ever actually EAT anything like that.
“So how long you staying?” He had shifted and was raised up on his elbow, his head resting on his hand, and he was looking at me with that expressionless look he had.
I shrugged. “Two weeks, I guess. That’s how long it usually ends up being when he takes us somewhere.”
“Will you go home with your dad then?”
I shot him a quick look. “’Home’ is with my mom, not my dad.” It came out a little more angry sounding than I had meant it to. “But no,” I continued in a more normal tone, “I’m not. Tony says he is, but I don’t want to. I want to go home and hang with my friends, you know? And I have a girlfriend.”
“You do?” He looked at me for a long moment, an expression in his eyes I couldn’t read. “What’s she like?” he asked after a bit.
I smiled. “She’s pretty hot, at least I think she is. She has short blonde hair that curls around her face and big brown eyes. She’s nice too, not a bitch like most of the girls at school. Knows how to work me up, too,” I added with a grin.
“Yeah, I bet she does,” he said with a slight smirk.
“You have a girlfriend?” I asked, taking the last bite of my candy bar and putting the wrapper back in my backpack.
He shook his head and stretched. “Nah, I’m not into girls.”
I laughed. “What are you into then, boys?” I thought I saw him flush as he stood up and walked to the edge of the rock and slid back into the pool.
“You wanna know what I’m into?” he asked, a serious expression on his face.
I almost held my breath, expecting some bizarre revelation, something that might even rival the concept of “jerky.” But before I could even nod my head, he splashed me from head to toe with ice cold water. The water alone was cold enough to make me yell—but the fish that was flopping around in my lap was what made me shriek at the top of my lungs.
“I’m into FISH!” he grinned, splashing me again.
I jumped up, slapping frantically at myself as I brushed any and all fish and anything that had even the remotest potential to be fish off of myself. “You’ll pay for that, you fucker!” I yelled, but I was grinning as I jumped in after him.
* * *
A lot changes in sixteen years. People change; that goes without saying. They get older, settle down into a certain lifestyle and behave in a certain way that becomes expected of them. Towns change, too, but in a different way. With a town, it is like there is a period of decline, like growing old, where the buildings age and become outdated and shops go out of business and store fronts become empty. And some towns stop there. Some never recover from that aging process and just remain frozen in that state of decay—or just die.
But others evolve and instead of dying, they undergo renewal, renovation. Badly done and there is nothing left of the old town to trigger memories except a few plaques and possibly an historical marker or two. Badly done and the town is not renewed, it is just replaced. Well done and there is enough of the old town left to have you looking around and pointing at things and saying, “I remember when that used to be old man Johnson’s bait and tackle shop, and those offices over there used to be the library.” Well done and the new blends with the old to make something that keeps the nostalgia warm and fuzzy, but at the same time makes you feel like there is still life going on around you.
I couldn’t help feeling, as I drove into the town I had not seen for sixteen years, that this was a town that had undergone a “well done” renovation. It had grown, that much was immediately obvious. Sixteen years ago the WalMart had stood alone, well outside of the boundaries of the “town proper.” Now it was part of a mall that advertised a ten-theater multi-plex and was located on what was now a built-up extension of the “main drag” coming out of that “town proper.” And several housing developments had sprung up along that same road, with upscale houses I doubted I could even hope to afford.
But as we reached what the signs now proclaimed to be “downtown,” I could see the heart and the character of the “town” had not been wiped away by progress. The old storefronts were still there. I didn’t remember the names of the shops that had been there sixteen years ago, but I remembered how the buildings had looked. Back then they had shown the signs of decay, and one or two had been empty. Now they looked fresh, reclaimed, new enough to make them inviting, but still old enough and original enough to give them character.
“Can we stop at Mickey’s, Dad?” Jared’s voice broke through my thoughts. I knew what he was thinking. A week of camping meant a week without a “Double Cheeseburger Mighty Kids Meal.” Not like that would be a bad thing, but I understood that. Nuts and berries couldn’t compete with McDonald’s, not on their best day.
“But what about Ed and Jane, Lee? We’re following them, remember? They won’t know we’ve stopped.”
Ellen had a point. “Yeah, I know,” I agreed, “but the directions on the brochure are pretty clear and we have the cell phone, so we can call the lodge if we miss a turn or something.”
“Come on, Mom,” Jared whined from the backseat, “Dad doesn’t suck THAT bad at directions.”
“Oh, thanks, bud,” I rolled my eyes and glanced at him over my shoulder. “Sure, I get us lost ONE time—“
“You drove us into a swamp, Dad!” Jared exclaimed, and followed the words with what I lovingly referred to as his “jackass laugh.”
“It wasn’t a swamp. It was just some ground that had gotten soft from the rain. If you remember, it had rained that day and—“
“And let’s go to McDonald’s before this turns into an argument,” Ellen interrupted firmly. But she was grinning as she turned to Jared. “You know how your father gets when his navigational skills are questioned. And we have the cell phone, so no worries, right?”
They were both laughing as we pulled into the parking lot.
***
I dipped my chicken strip in the Buffalo sauce and looked out the window. Jared was babbling excitedly about the things Jimmy had said they would be doing this week. Ellen was being the good, attentive mom—while she rubbed my knee under the table. I smiled at her. It would be good to get some time alone with her.
It was Ellen who spotted it. “Oh, that must be the theater Jane mentioned,” Ellen said as Jared took a break from talking to take a bite of his burger. “And look! Rent is playing! We were going to go see that at the movies, remember? It’ll be so much better to see the musical itself.”
It didn’t look much different than it had sixteen years ago, though the movie posters had been replaced by playbills. And I wondered if it had started its life as a playhouse. Had it seen the rise and fall of vaudeville before silent films and “talkies” replaced the stage curtain with a movie screen? However it had started its life, sixteen years ago it had been a small, old movie theater in a small, old town.
***
“Hey, want to go into town with me?” He was sitting on the steps of the lodge.
We usually met there early in the morning, right after breakfast. I made a point of escaping the cabin before my dad tried to get me to go fishing with him and Tony. I would have figured he would have gotten the hint by now and given up, but every day he made the attempt to include me—and every day I told him I didn’t want to go. I often wondered why he didn’t just “order” me to go with them; but then, I guess having someone in a boat who didn’t want to be there wouldn’t have been that much fun for them.
“I have to pick up a couple of things for my dad at Old Man Johnson’s, and Ghost is playing at the movies. Have you seen it?”
I sat down beside him. “You drive?” I asked. He could drive and he hung around here?
He looked at me a little curiously. “Yeah, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “Wasn’t old enough to take driver’s ed this year. Going to take it next year though. I’ll be sixteen in August.” Had he thought I was older? How old was he then?
“My dad taught me to drive when I was fourteen. Used to let me drive around the back roads. Got my license last year though.”
So he was seventeen?
He stood up. “So look, you wanna come? Ghost looks pretty good. And I can show you around a bit, if you want.” He grinned. “Can see the whole town from end to end in about 20 minutes if you walk fast.”
I grinned. “Twenty minutes? That long?” I stood up, too. “Yeah, sure. Sounds good.”
Old Man Johnson’s turned out to be a bait and tackle shop. Dean gave a list to the guy behind the counter--who was way too young to be “Old Man” Johnson—and said he’d pick it up later, and we headed off to the movies.
“Wow! It’s really cheap here,” I exclaimed as we took our seats—front row center, which we had both agreed upon without saying a word. “Back home you couldn’t get popcorn for what it costs here for popcorn, candy, a soda AND the movie!”
He smiled. “See? It’s not all bad here.”
No, some things were good.
I found myself watching Dean more than I watched the movie. Or maybe that wasn’t quite true. I watched the movie, I saw the scenes, heard the dialogue. But to me it really might have been just a sad movie, a love story—a “chick flick” even, something you watch with your girlfriend and hold her hand and sigh in all the right places. Except I could see it was more than that to Dean. And I was fascinated by him, by the openness of his expressions.
I could see his eyes smiling, lighting up in his face, even though the theater was dark, whenever something was good, happy. And when something was funny, his lips would part and his eyes would dance. And when something wasn’t right, when there were moments of tension on the screen, his face would become expressionless, his eyes still. And when there were moments of sadness, his eyes would turn liquid, his lips would fold inward as if he were biting them to hold back tears.
I watched the movie with my own eyes, but I felt it through his. And when I saw him wipe away tears, they nearly fell from my own eyes.
Neither of us spoke when the movie ended. I could see he was lost in his own thoughts and I didn’t think it right to ask him about them. And I had my own thoughts to deal with, though as we walked along the sidewalk, past stores that were mostly closed, mostly empty, I found myself mostly thinking of Dean.
“You know,” he began as we climbed through the hole in the chain link fence that surrounded the school playground, “I’m not sure about ghosts and the whole afterlife thing.”
I glanced at him and saw a little furrow between his brows.
“I’d like to think that when we die, we could hang around and keep an eye on things. You know, look after the people we love.”
He sat down on the edge of the rainbow colored merry go round and leaned against one of the metal bars. I sat next to him. He pushed with his feet, first in one direction, then in the other. I pulled my legs up and sat cross-legged, letting him move us around, back and forth.
I could almost see him thinking, considering. It was different from the look he usually had, the one that I couldn’t read, the one that seemed to just be waiting for something. It was more like it had been in the movies, like everything he thought or felt played across his face.
“My dad always says my mom is watching out for me and that she is always right by me. And I always thought that was pretty cool, to have my mom still there—because I miss her, you know?” He glanced at me and then away.
“But I don’t know now. I’m not so sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it would hurt more, like in the movie. To see someone you love and not be able to even touch them.” He held his hands out in front of him, palms outward, fingers spread. “Like putting your fingers against a glass, when all you want to do more than anything is to feel their hands.”
And it was like it had been in the movies, like I felt that, through him. My throat tightened and I couldn’t think of any words to say. So I slid closer to him and put my arm around his shoulders. He sighed and leaned against me. It didn’t feel strange.
***
“You going to eat that piece of chicken?” Jared asked, his hand already reaching for the piece of chicken in question.
I blinked and almost shook my head to clear my thoughts, but I answered him automatically. “Yeah, I am. You’ve already eaten most of my fries, little pig.”
I didn’t really have to be aware to know that. He always ate most of my fries. And he always asked for one of my chicken strips. Jared was completely predictable when it came to McDonald’s.
“Come on, Dad, you know you never finish your chicken,” he whined, his fingers ignoring my claim on the chicken.
“Yeah, because you always finish it for me,” I said with a scowl that I couldn’t quite keep from turning into a laugh. Completely predictable—probably both of us were.
“Ok, come on, you two. Let’s get going before it gets dark,” Ellen said, starting to gather up the wrappers and bags and napkins. “Really, your dad with a map…dangerous even in daylight. Do youreally want to chance it in the dark?”
“Un uh, no way!” Jared exclaimed, making an exaggerated effort to pick things up in a hurry.
I rolled my eyes and stood up. “Very funny. Ha ha.”
***
Despite the jokes and doubts, I managed to find the campground where Jared and Jimmy would be staying. The map on the brochure was fairly clear and the additional directions Ed had given me were simple enough and we dropped Jared off with plenty of time to spare before dark. I recognized the area immediately. It was on the other side of the lake, across from the lodge. It had been part of the Wolverton Forest Campgrounds when I had been there. The cabins had mostly been on this side of the lake—which really wasn’t a big lake, now that I saw it again, though it had seemed bigger back then. But then there had been quite a few cabins, so many that they had circled around to the south side of the lake. Now there were just two cabins, one clearly marked “BOYS” and the other “GIRLS.” There were already some tents set up near the cabins. Ed and Jimmy had finished setting up the dome tent Jimmy and Jared would share. The cabins would be used, I was told, only in the event of severe weather.
I gave Jared a quick hug and stood there looking across the lake as Ellen fussed and assured herself that her “baby” would be safe from rabid raccoons, marauding grizzlies (they were black bears in the area, not grizzlies, I remembered that—not that it would have made a difference to Ellen) and hurricanes (southern New York rarely got any).
It seemed different, even from this distance. It looked somehow better groomed than it had. There seemed to be an expanse of lawn in front of it and what looked like flowers. And the dock was bigger, with boats and canoes and even what looked to be a couple of paddle boats, all in a neat little line along the dock.
“It looks pretty, doesn’t it?” Ellen said as she came up behind me and rested her chin on my shoulder.
“Mmm,” I nodded. It did. Pretty and well groomed. I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or disappointed by that. I had half expected it to look like it had, though the brochure had clearly shown a place much improved over what I remembered. And I was a little surprised by that, by the fact that after sixteen years I had that clear a memory of what it had looked like.
We “abandoned Jared to the wilderness” and drove around the lake to the lodge. As we pulled into the parking area in front of the lodge, I found myself looking for details, for signs of anything that was the same. The parking area, itself, was new. It had just been part of the grounds before. The little building next to the lodge that had been the bait shop was still there—and it still looked to be something of a bait shop, though the sun-catchers hanging in the window suggested it might lean a little more toward souvenirs now, rather than bait and tackle. But I could have sworn the stairs were the same. And I could almost see Dean sitting there, leaning against the railing post, waiting for me.
Fortunately, I had never actually been inside the lodge back then. So the memories and the comparisons stopped once we went through the doors. We followed Ed and Jane to the desk, where a man in his early twenties greeted us.
“Hi, I’m Steve. Welcome to Wolverton Lodge.”
It was a standard greeting, but the open, friendly look in his brown eyes made it sound genuine, as if he was truly glad to welcome us. I studied him for a moment as Ellen filled out the registration form. He had an outdoors look to him. His skin was tanned and his brown hair had sun-bleached streaks. He was nice looking, friendly looking—but most of all, most important, he was not Dean Wolverton. And again, I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved by that or disappointed.
The room was nice. Very nice, actually. It wasn’t large, but it was warm and inviting and smelled of cedar. The bed was large and the mattress that wonderful combination of soft on top and hard underneath that just made you want to lie down. Which was what Ellen did immediately.
“Oh, I may never want to get out of bed!” she exclaimed, running her hands over the obviously hand-made quilt that covered the bed.
I looked down at her. “Then it will be JUST like our honeymoon,” I said with a smile. She giggled and my heart lurched at how much younger she sounded, so much like the girl I had fallen in love with. I gave her my best leer and jumped on the bed, straddling her thighs with my knees. “What do you say we lock the door and let Ed and Jane fend for themselves for a while?”
Ellen wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me down closer to her. “What do you say you don’t bother wasting all that time locking the door. Who’s going to come in? Jared’s all the way across the lake and I’m sure Ed and Jane are already ‘fending for themselves.’”
Yes, why waste all that time walking to the door…
***
We went into town for dinner with Ed and Jane. I found my eyes searching the restaurant, looking up whenever anyone came through the door, wondering if I would see him. Though maybe he wasn’t even around anymore. Maybe the lodge no longer belonged to his family and had just kept the name. And even if he was still around, would I even recognize him?
I managed to maintain polite, if slightly absent conversation while my head was wandering around. It wasn’t anything new for me, having other things on my mind. Though usually it was work. But Ed and Jane were used to it, almost as used to it as Ellen. Though I could see a little frown in Ellen’s eyes. And I could read her thoughts. “Even on vacation, Lee?”
“You folks are back just in time for the campfire,” Steve said with a smile as we walked past the desk. “We have one out back every night. Plenty of marshmallows and badly sung campfire songs,” he continued with a laugh. “We could always use some halfway decent voices, if you’d like to join us.”
Ellen laughed. “Not me, I can’t sing a note.”
She couldn’t. Neither could I. But that wasn’t why I shook my head. “No, thanks. You’d have every dog or wolf within earshot howling if I were to sing. Would scare the kids across the lake. And it’s been a long day, with the drive down and all.” That wasn’t the reason either, but it was true enough.
Steve smiled, that friendly open smile. “Well, maybe a good night’s rest is all you need. Breakfast is served from seven until eleven in the dining room right over there.” He gestured across the lobby. “And maybe you can join us tomorrow night.”
As we climbed the stairs to our room, Ellen looked up at me. “Maybe you’ll sleep better tonight. I know you haven’t been sleeping all that well lately.”
I hadn’t. As we undressed and got in bed, I thought maybe I might sleep a little better tonight. There had been no sign of Dean Wolverton. Maybe I could just put the memories away and sleep a nice, dreamless sleep. Though as the sound of campfire songs drifted in through the open window, I had my doubts.
***
“There’s going to be a campfire tonight, Lee.” Was that excitement I heard in my dad’s voice?
“Wonderful. Have fun.”
“Come on, Lee, you haven’t spent any time at all with me or your brother. “ My dad’s voice was exactly between whining and resigned. He had a knack for achieving that perfect balance.
I rolled my eyes. “You know I’m not into the whole camping thing. I told you that, how many times now?”
“One night won’t kill you.” I could hear that tone my dad got when he considered something a done deal. Apparently he considered that I WOULD be coming to the campfire with them, and that was that. I didn’t think so.
I told Dean when I met up with him. “If he thinks I’m going to sit around a lame ass fire and get bit by mosquitoes, he’s delusional.”
Dean looked at me with that look of his, his head tipped slightly to one side. “The fire keeps away most of the mosquitoes,” he pointed out. “And I’m going to be there. I don’t really have a choice since it’s Dad’s ‘thing.’ He likes to make everyone feel like we are all together, like one big family.”
I looked at Dean. “Trust me, your dad wouldn’t WANT my family to be part of his family. Though he probably wouldn’t mind my dad or my brother—they like that sort of thing.” I laughed. “He’d be wishing me away quick enough though.”
I couldn’t read the look in Dean’s eyes, but I heard the coaxing in his voice. “Come on, it won’t be that bad. We can toast marshmallows.”
I shook my head. “You ‘toast’ marshmallows? Uh…why?”
He laughed and pushed at my shoulder. “Come on, have I steered you wrong yet? Didn’t you like the waterfall?”
“A waterfall isn’t a campfire,” I protested, but I could tell by his grin that he knew I would go. We had spent just about every day together so far. And I had enjoyed every one of those days. I didn’t miss the cable or the internet or even, I realized with some surprise, my friends.
And I supposed it couldn’t be that bad.
My dad got this look of surprise on his face when I showed up at the campfire, like Christmas had come early. My brother just looked at me suspiciously. I was sure he thought I was up to something, but I really didn’t care what was going on in his twisted little mind.
We toasted marshmallows, and I discovered “why” people toasted them—because they were amazing toasted! Though Dean laughed at me when mine went up in flames.
“It’s ok, you always have to sacrifice at least one to the God of Fire,” he explained with a grin—and gave me his, which was perfectly golden brown on the outside and warm and gooey on the inside.
The marshmallow toasting was fun, but there was no way I was joining in with the campfire songs. For one thing, I couldn’t sing. Really, I could NOT sing. So I just sat there and listened to Dean. He had a beautiful voice, not a voice you would hear on the radio, but a soft voice; and it sounded like it was wrapped in a breath. He caught me staring at him and he flushed, enough that I could see it even in the light of the campfire. He was sitting next to me and he smiled as he sang whatever song it was—I didn’t hear the words, only the sound of Dean’s voice—and his fingers brushed against mine.
And I felt it. It was like it felt when Deb had first touched me, that fluttering low in my stomach that seemed to spread down into my dick. I pulled away and stood up, so quickly I nearly fell over myself. And I walked away. I didn’t run—mostly because it was dark and I suddenly couldn’t focus. That and I didn’t know where I was going. I was confused and I just knew I needed to get away, away from him.
I looked back when I was about fifteen feet away and I saw him looking at me, with that expressionless look of his. He didn’t follow me, he just looked at me. I noticed my brother looking at me, too. I didn’t stick around to try to figure anything out. I just walked off into the woods.
***
It was during breakfast that I saw him. I recognized him immediately. I couldn’t imagine how I could have thought I wouldn’t. His hair was still long, though not as long as it had been, and a darker blonde. He wore it tied back now, which made his eyes seem brighter, bluer. As he leaned forward and reached out his hand to one of the other guests, I noticed his arms were bigger, more muscled, which was how he looked overall--bigger, more muscled. Not body-builder muscled, but it was obvious he didn’t sit at a desk all day. That was also obvious from the tanned skin and the slightly weathered complexion. He didn’t really look older, not to me. He just looked filled in, as if he had been a sketch of a boy before and was now a completed painting of a man.
I wondered if he would recognize me. Had I changed much? My hair was shorter, though it had never been long like his. It was still dark brown, no grays yet, despite Jared’s best efforts. And while I did sit at a desk all day, I kept pretty fit. But I was one of how many guests that had come and gone over the years? Even if maybe I had been something more than just a “guest,” I had likely been one of many. While he had been one of one.
He started walking toward our table and I looked down. Suddenly I wasn’t sure that I wanted him to recognize me, or even notice me. And I had this stupid thought that if I didn’t look at him, he wouldn’t see me. But even as the thought bounced around in my head, I felt myself looking up—and I looked right into his eyes.
He was a few feet away from our table, which was where everything froze. He froze. I froze. Sound stopped. All motion in the world ceased. Then his smile flickered, just a little, and the moment was over.
“Good morning, I’m Dean Wolverton,” he said with a smile that included everyone at the table. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here to greet you yesterday. I’ve been out of town for a few days.”
He extended his hand to each of us, his smile as open and as friendly as Steve’s. I shook his hand and we exchanged pleasantries. He didn’t say or do anything that would indicate that he recognized me. I didn’t say or do anything that would indicate that I recognized him. To all outward appearances, we were two strangers meeting for the first time.
After he left, I felt strange--disappointed, deflated. And I wondered whether I had imagined it, that moment of recognition, that moment when everything had seemed to freeze. Or maybe the recognition had been there, but it had only been significant to me. Either way…
“Lee?”
I blinked. “Sorry, what?”
Ellen frowned. “We were just talking about going into town this morning, just to have a look around. And I want to see when Rent is playing. I really want to see that.”
I rubbed my fingers between my eyes. My head hurt suddenly. That was what I told Ellen as I made my excuses to her and Ed and Jane. “I think I’m getting a migraine. I didn’t really sleep that well,” I said, which was true enough. “Why don’t you all go into town and I’ll take some ibuprofen and lie down for a bit, get rid of my headache so we can do something later on, whatever you guys decide on.” I accompanied my words with the best smile I could muster at the moment.
Ed gave me a look which clearly said he’d wished he’d thought of that one and Ellen and Jane both looked sympathetic.
“Ok, hun. Try to get some sleep. I’ll bring you back something for lunch.” Ellen brushed her fingers over my forehead.
Housekeeping had already been in to make the bed and replace the towels, which was good since I really did just want to lie down and close my eyes and not be disturbed. I had pretty much convinced myself that Dean Wolverton would not appear. And when he had, I had apparently convinced myself that he had remembered me in a flash of some dramatic moment in which time itself seemed to stand still. But it hadn’t happened that way, not really, not that I could see now. Nothing had happened and he didn’t know me.
Maybe memories were best left in the past. Didn’t they say that you can’t go back again? Did I even want to? Go back to what?
Nothing had happened and he didn’t know me. And I didn’t know him.
***
I didn’t see Dean the day after the campfire, which was fine with me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t sure of anything really, even things I had always been sure of. So I pretended to be sick and stayed in the cabin.
But by the next day I was tired of pretending to be sick. All that got me was a long day alone with nothing to do. But I stayed in bed longer than usual, long enough to miss breakfast completely, long enough to make my dad and Tony think I was still sick—though Tony gave me a look which clearly said he didn’t believe a word of it but didn’t really give a fuck.
By the time I dressed and left the cabin, it was mid morning. Dean wasn’t around, which I supposed was a good thing. I was still feeling confused about him. So I took a walk, not really paying much attention to where I was going. But I wasn’t surprised when I ended up at the waterfall.
I wasn’t there more than half an hour when he showed up.
“Were you really sick?”
“What?” I asked, looking up. I had been sitting on the big flat rock staring into the water.
“Your brother said you were sick.” I could see the little furrow between his eyes.
I shook my head. “No, I guess not. Not really.” I could have lied, should have lied.
He looked at me, that expressionless look in his eyes, which I noticed were a dark blue. I hadn’t noticed that before. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment.
“What for?” What did he have to be sorry for? I was the one who had lied about being sick.
“For whatever I did to make you run away like that.”
He sat down on the rock, next to me. I could sense his closeness. And I felt that feeling again, without even touching him or him touching me. I looked down at my hands, which were fidgeting in my lap. He laid his hand over mine.
“I…I-I’m not…I have a girlfriend.” My fingers shook as much as my voice. I looked at him quickly then looked away, but I didn’t move my hands.
He didn’t say anything.
I looked back at him and he was looking at me in that way of his, calmly, with almost no expression, as if he was just waiting. I noticed his hair hung in his face a little, almost covering his eyes. And I noticed he was wearing a white muscle shirt that had some sort of paint or something on it, and it was a little torn at the bottom. I noticed odd things, things that had no reason to be important but which suddenly were.
He rubbed his thumb over my hand and I looked down at it, staring at his thumb and my hand as if they belonged to two other people. I could feel him leaning, moving closer to me. I could have moved away; I almost wanted to move away, but I didn’t. He pushed my hair away from my face, his fingers brushing over my ear and then resting on the back of my neck. He rubbed his nose against my ear and I turned my head—not away, but toward him, my lips parted, my breath barely touching them. And he kissed me, his lips brushing over mine as softly as butterfly wings. And I felt like that butterfly had gotten into my stomach and into my groin.
He pulled away and stood up. As he pulled off his shirt, I noticed the bulge in his swim shorts. He noticed that I noticed and he smiled a little, just a little smile. And he dropped his eyes and I knew he saw that I was hard, too. Without a word he dove into the water, head first. I took off my shirt and followed him into the water, sliding off the rock, not diving as he had.
The water was cold, cold enough to take the heat out of my dick—but not cold enough to take away that…feeling. He came up from under the water and stayed there, a little away from me, looking at me. I moved a little closer to him. He smiled and moved behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders. I felt the butterfly wings brushing against the back of my neck. I heard a soft moan and realized it had come from my lips. He turned me around and stood there, looking down at me with that look of his. He ran his hands down my arms and over my chest; and I found my hands on his shoulders and then one hand was on his waist and the other on the back of his neck and I was kissing him.
Then we were out of the water and onto the rock and we were still kissing and touching. He ran his hand over the front of my swim shorts and I was hard in an instant. My hand found the front of his swim shorts and he was hard also. And still we were kissing and I was lying on my back and he was pressing against me, grinding his dick against mine—and I didn’t want to stop him.
But when his lips moved down my chest and his hands pulled at my shorts, pulling them down to expose my erection I panicked.
“No, I can’t!” I felt my whole body shaking. What was I doing? “I have a girlfriend. I-I’m not…”
I pushed him off of me and pulled up my shorts. I pulled on my sneakers and my shirt and ran like hell.
He didn’t follow.
***
I had calmed down by the time my dad and my brother returned from fishing. At least on the outside. My dad cooked up the fish they had caught and we were sitting at the table. It was actually edible, and I ate a little of it, even though I didn’t really feel much like eating.
“So where were you today?” Tony asked, his lips twisting into a snide little sneer that made me just itch to slap him. “I know you weren’t here. Where were you? Hanging with that Dean Wolverton?”
“What business is it of yours?” I snapped. Really, I wasn’t in the mood.
“He’s a fag, you know,” he said almost triumphantly. “Was talking to one of the guys in the bait shop. Asked me if you were a fag, too, since you were hanging with him all the time.”
I jumped up, nearly tipping over my chair and knocking over my bottle of water. “I’m not a fag!” I wasn’t. I had a girlfriend. “And we just go swimming and shit.” It was stupid to even say that. Why did I have to defend myself to my shit of a brother?
“Sit down, Lee!” my dad ordered and he turned and glared at Tony. “Tony, watch your mouth! I’ve had enough of this. I told you earlier—“
“What? You were talking about this earlier?” my voice had risen and threatened to crack.
“Yeah, you go swimming. He probably wants to look at your hot bod.” Tony wasn’t listening to my dad, no more than I was. “Has he kissed you?”
I felt the heat rise to my cheeks and there was nothing I could do about it.
Tony laughed. “Oh fuck! He has, hasn’t he? God, you’re such a fag. I knew it!”
I punched him. I reached right across the table, right past my dad and punched him hard enough to knock his chair back. “I’m not a fucking fag, you ass wipe!” I threw my plate at him and ran outside, ignoring whatever it was that my father was saying to me.
***
Over the next few days it was like we didn’t know each other, like we had never met. We would pass each other and he would say hi to me and I would say hi to him and that was it—and I would go off to do one thing or another. I didn’t talk to my brother, not a word. Nor to my father. Which wasn’t all that hard to do since they both pretty much avoided me. I spent a little time on the dock reading, but when Dean would start walking toward me, I would get up and go back to the cabin. Sometimes I would call Deb and tell her I missed her and I would end up jerking off while she talked dirty to me. Yeah, I liked girls. I wasn’t a fag. Fuck you, Tony. It had just been a mistake. And I would just pretend it had never happened and that I didn’t even know him. And it would all just go away.
***
That night we went to the theater in town and saw Rent. Or rather, Ellen and Ed and Jane saw Rent, I just sat there and waited for it to be over. It wasn’t like I sat there “lost in thought” or anything. I had shut thought off. I just sat there and smiled when everyone else smiled, laughed when everyone else laughed and made all the other appropriate sounds in the appropriate places. I suppose twelve years of marriage had given me that, too, the ability to “respond appropriately” without really having to be paying attention.
We had dinner afterwards and it was late before we got back to the lodge and up to bed. But at least my sleep was decent and relatively dreamless, for a change. And in the morning I felt good, refreshed, a feeling that stayed with me through an uneventful breakfast.
“Morning, folks.” Steve’s cheery voice greeted us as we passed by the front desk a little while later. This time there was no question in my mind whether I was relieved or disappointed that it was Steve and not Dean—I was relieved.
Ellen, Jane and Ed were going swimming in the lake. I still didn’t like to swim in lakes, so I brought a book with me and some sunscreen and lounged back on one of the Adirondack chairs that lined the dock.
“Still don’t like to swim with the fish?”
I didn’t precisely jump, at least not outwardly. But my stomach did a triple back flip as surprise and relief raced through me—chased by something that felt a lot like a swarm of intoxicated butterflies. Apparently he had recognized me after all. And there was no question in my mind about how I felt about that.
I looked up and smiled. “I’ve never gotten over the story of the largemouth bass and the ‘worm.’”
He laughed and leaned against the railing. “That never actually happened, you know. I made it up.” He smiled almost apologetically. “I just wanted an excuse to take you to the waterfall.”
I looked at him for a moment, my smile deepening, my fingers absently running along the edge of my book. “Sure, traumatize me for life just so you could lure me off to the middle of nowhere and seduce me.”
He looked at me with that same look, the one he’d looked at me with so many times so many years ago. “I’d do it again, you know. If I had it to do over,” he said quietly.
“You really should come in with us, Lee.”
Was it coincidence? A practiced sense of timing? Or maybe some “wifely instinct” that made Ellen choose that precise moment to come out of the lake and up onto the dock?
“Lee was just telling me that he has a very strong aversion to swimming with fish,” Dean’s eyes warmed as they met mine for a brief second before he turned and smiled at Ellen.
Ellen laughed. “It’s so funny. He has this thing about getting bit by a fish. I’ve tried to tell him that fish don’t bite people, at least not the kind that live in lakes. But he won’t listen to me. Maybe you could tell him how silly he is to miss out on the nice cool water on such a hot day.”
He and Ellen exchanged a few laughs, most of which seemed at my expense. But there was nothing in anything Dean said to give any hint that we had met before. Which I was grateful for. It would only make things complicated, make explanations necessary, explanations which could end up complicating things even more.
I knew that with certainty when Ellen spoke after Dean had left.
“He seems nice,” Ellen said, sitting down on my lap. I wrapped my arms around her waist. She felt good, all cool from the water. It really was a very hot day.
“Yes, he does,” I agreed, rubbing my warm cheek against her cool shoulder.
“Ed says he and Steve are together, if you know what I mean.” She had lowered her voice as if she was passing on a state secret. “They don’t really look…like that…do they? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Ellen, are you coming back in?” It was Jane’s voice.
Ellen smiled and kissed me then stood up. “For a few more minutes,” she answered. “Just a little bit longer, Lee. The water feels so good. Then we can go get some lunch, ok?”
I smiled and nodded. “Sure, go get wet so you can come back and cool me off again.” She covered my head with her towel and I heard her jump from the dock into the water.
“They don’t really look…like that…do they? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
I pulled the towel off my head and closed my eyes. I knew she hadn’t meant anything by it. Ellen wasn’t like that. Not really. Except…what did she think “like that” looked like? It didn’t always look…different, did it? Had it? Had I?
***
He was sitting on the dock, just like when we first met.
“Hey.”
He looked up at me with that look that he had. “Hey,” he said after a while. “Sure you want to talk to me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked the question, but I knew he knew the answer.
He shrugged. “Well, your brother made it pretty clear to me how things were.”
I frowned and instinctively my hands balled into fists. “What did he say?”
Dean looked at my hands and then up at my face. His eyes met mine. I didn’t see any criticism in them or accusation or even any hurt, just that quiet calm that was almost always there. “He said that you weren’t a fucking fag and that you didn’t want any part of me, especially my pencil dick and if he saw me even talking to you, he’d knock the shit out of me.”
I laughed. “He couldn’t. I can take him.” I could. Tony couldn’t fight for shit. He was two years older than I was, but I was two inches taller and about twenty pounds heavier.
“Is that how you feel, though?” Again he looked at me with that “look.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know.” I could have lied, could have said it wasn’t how I felt. But I didn’t know how I felt. I didn’t know that I DID feel that way, but I didn’t know that I DIDN’T feel that way.
He nodded. “Look, you don’t have to avoid me, you know. I won’t try anything.”
His voice was very quiet, soft, and I remembered how it had sounded the night of the campfire.
“I guess I misread things,” he continued after a moment. “I’m sorry.”
Had he? I sat down on the dock and dangled my legs over the water. I kicked at the water with my sneakers a few times. “I don’t think you did,” I said after a while.
“You don’t think I did what?”
I flushed. “Misread things.”
He looked at me again, but the look was slightly different, not expressionless—though I couldn’t quite read what I saw in his eyes. He stood up. “I have to help my dad out for a little while. I’ll be done around three.”
I nodded.
“Meet me?”
I nodded again.
***
I stood up as Ellen came back out of the water. We headed up to the lodge. Steve was behind the desk, as usual. “Enjoy your swim?” he asked with that bright, open smile of his.
Yes, I could see Dean and Steve together. They fit. Though why my stomach chose that moment to feel like it had tied itself up in a knot, I didn’t know. Or maybe I didn’t want to know. Or maybe I was just hungry.
***
Ellen and I spent the afternoon together. This time I took the time to lock the door and we were half and hour late meeting Ed and Jane in the lobby.
“We were going to go into town without you in another fifteen minutes,” Ed wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Figured you two lovebirds were in for the night.”
Ellen blushed prettily and Jane giggled, though when Jane giggled it didn’t transform her into a young girl, it just made her sound a bit like a cackling witch. Though maybe that was just a little harsh.
“Going into town for dinner?” Dean asked as we walked by the front desk. He asked us as a group, though he looked more at me. I caught a look from Steve that had me thinking either Dean had told him or Steve had good radar.
“Yeah, thought we’d try the steakhouse in the mall.” I smiled at both of them, but I knew my eyes were on Dean.
“It’s very good. We go there at least a few times a month.” Steve stepped closer to Dean and laid his hand on his shoulder, his smile warming as he looked Dean. “It’s something of a special place for us. I was working there when Dean and I met.”
Ellen wrapped her arm around my waist. “Oh, I know what you mean. There’s always that one place that’s special, isn’t there?” She looked up at me and I saw the love in her eyes “For Lee and I it’s this one this little park on Washington Avenue,” she confided, completely oblivious to the subtle undertones to the conversation. “It was where Lee proposed.”
I instinctively rubbed my cheek against her hair. “Yeah, there’s always that one special place that you never forget.”
I saw Dean smile and I smiled back. I wondered if he was thinking of the same place I was.
***
I was sitting on the big flat rock with my knees drawn up and my head resting on my knees. The water was even more calm than usual. It hadn’t rained in a while and the creek that fed the waterfall flowed more slowly, causing less of a rushing and more of a slow, steady pouring of water down over the three ledges. By the time the water from the fall reached the swimming hole, it didn’t “hit” the water, it just “slipped into” it, gently, quietly, making barely a ripple.
The relative quiet made it easy for me to hear him coming, but I didn’t look up as he approached. I just kept staring into the water. He sat down on the rock, next to me. I could sense his closeness. And I felt that feeling again.
He sat there in silence for a moment. Then he ran his fingers over my arm and I looked down at his hand, staring at his fingers, noticing how long they were, feeling how strong they were even when they were being so gentle. I looked up at him and turned toward him, my fingers shaking slightly as I raised my hand to push a strand of his hair back away from his face. My palm cupped his cheek and I rubbed my thumb over his parted lips. They were so soft, those lips that kissed like butterfly wings.
My breath caught as he closed his lips around my thumb and sucked lightly, his tongue slowly massaging my skin. Then he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled my thumb from his mouth, placing a soft kiss on the palm of my hand before letting go and pulling his shirt over his head. Before I could do the same, his hands were under my shirt, sliding it up and over my head. I laid my hands on his chest, my fingers kneading into his skin, rubbing over his nipples and I groaned as I felt my cock starting to strain against the netting of my swim shorts. His hands responded instantly, sliding down my sides and slipping inside the waistband of my shorts, pushing them down, exposing my now painful erection.
This time I didn’t panic and I didn’t stop him and I didn’t push him away.
He pushed me gently down onto the rock and I could feel our shirts beneath me—and I wondered if he had put them there intentionally, to make it more comfortable for me. He pulled my shorts off the rest of the way then pulled off his own. His erection sprang free and I reached out and took it in my hand and stroked it slowly, gently. He moaned and took mine in his hand and stroked me with the same slow, gently rhythm. Then he pulled my fingers from his cock and kissed them, one by one before letting go of my hand. He smiled at me, a hazy, blurry smile, as he lowered his head and ran his tongue around the tip of my cock.
I gasped out loud. It wasn’t the first time I’d had someone’s mouth on my cock, Deb had gone down on me once, not long before my dad had come to get us. But this was different. As he took me deeper into his mouth, I realized Dean’s mouth felt…well, different. I couldn’t form any word that described it. Maybe “better,” it definitely felt better. But it was more than that.
I wrapped my fingers in his hair and groaned deeply as he moved his mouth over me, his lips stroking my shaft. His answering groan vibrated over my cock and I arched my back, pushing deeper into his mouth. He swallowed as the tip of my cock touched the back of his throat, the muscles contracting around me; and my fingers abandoned his hair and clutched at his shoulders, my nails digging into his skin.
I moaned his name softly as he settled his movements into a steady rhythm, and all the while he sucked on me, his fingers massaged my balls and stroked the base of my cock. I had never felt anything this good. I had never even imagined anything this good. I never wanted it to stop. I wanted to feel Dean’s hot mouth wrapped around my cock every moment for the rest of my life.. But I knew I was going to cum soon. And as much as I wanted to draw the experience out into forever, I wanted to cum, to feel that release from the tension that gripped every nerve and muscle in my body.
Dean must have sensed what I was feeling. “Cum for me, baby. Cum for me,” he urged, pulling his mouth from my cock. He ran his tongue hard around the head, milking out the little drops of precum from the tip. Then, with an intensity that was almost savage, he took me deeply and roughly into his mouth. I cried out in pleasure and pain as he quickened his pace, sliding my cock in and out of his mouth until finally I released into his mouth.
He didn’t say anything. He just smiled as he licked the cum from me. Then he kissed me, a long slow kiss, his tongue seeking out every surface of my mouth, sharing the taste of my cum with me. And suddenly I wanted to taste his. I wanted to taste him more than anything.
I put my hands on his chest and pushed him away. He rocked back on his knees and sat there, looking at me with eyes that looked startled, confused. I wrapped my fingers around his cock, which had started to soften, I assumed from the shock of being pushed away so abruptly without explanation. I stroked it firmly but gently and he moaned as he grew hard again in my hand.
Never letting go of him, still stroking his increasing erection, I moved to my knees and brushed my lips softly over his before moving them slowly down the center of his chest. I paused, my lips inches from his throbbing head. And in that moment, I had no thoughts except how much I wanted to taste him, to have him fill my mouth, to have him run down my throat.
I went down on him and sucked him hungrily. There was no finesse involved, no skill, just hunger. His fingers clutched at my shoulders as he groaned deeply, his head thrown back his lips parted. And in a few moments I had what I so desperately wanted as he reached his climax, sending hot pulses of cum into my mouth. I swallowed and moaned as I felt it run over the back of my tongue and I swallowed, once, twice and licked all but one drop of cum from him and swallowed again. Then I captured that last drop on the tip of my tongue and I kissed him, sliding my tongue over his, sharing the taste of him with him.
We clung to each other for what seemed like forever, both of us still on our knees, both of us taking short, panting breaths. Then, by silent mutual agreement, we got up and slid off the rock into the water. We spent some time cooling our bodies down, him on one side of the pool, me on the other. We didn’t speak, but the looks we shared spoke the words we couldn’t seem to.
When we finally got out of the water and got dressed, he put his arms around me and kissed me, very tenderly, as he had the very first time, his lips brushing over mine like the softest butterfly wings. We walked back in silence, our bodies close together, our shoulders touching. His fingers brushed against mine a few times and I caught him looking at me with that same quiet, almost expressionless look. But I could see something behind that look. Something that scared me as much as it made the butterflies flutter in the pit of my stomach.
About half way back, I finally put my hand in his.
***
I was sitting on the big flat rock, my legs dangling over the edge, my feet not even close to touching the few inches of water that pooled at the bottom of what had once been a deep swimming hole. The waterfall was silent; no water ran over the three ledges. It was like someone had turned off a tap somewhere.
I heard him coming, but I didn’t look up as he approached. Of course, I knew it was him. After the conversation in the lodge last night about “special places,” I had almost expected to see him here. I had certainly hoped. Except now, looking at things, I almost wished I hadn’t come, that I had just let the memories stay memories.
“They put a dam in upstream to make a lake for the new housing development,” he said as he sat down beside me. “It gets about four feet deep in the center in the spring, from the runoff. It’s the only time the creek runs at all.”
I could hear the sadness in his voice. And I understood. It was more than just a loss of a swimming hole.
“We fought it, Dad and I. Had the environmentalists on our side and everything.” He sighed. “But money talks and after three years of fighting, the money ran out and the developers got their lake.”
I looked at him. He was staring ahead, into the space where the quiet, calming water had once been. “Dad died that same year. Felt like he had broken his promise to my mom. Had to sell off half the property just to keep the lodge open.”
I remembered when he had told me about his mom and how his dad had promised her he would keep things as they had always been.
“I saw you go into the woods. Figured you were going here.”
I smiled. “Watching me?”
He smiled, too. “Yeah,” he said simply and without explanation.
“After that conversation last night…” I began.
He nodded. “Special places.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us said anything for a few moments. We both just stared into the nearly empty swimming hole. I figured he was seeing pretty much the same things I was.
“How’d you manage to get away from your wife and the others?” he asked after a bit.
I smiled. “I pretended I was sick.” I was prone to migraines, so it was a fairly easy excuse to use.
He laughed. “You do that a lot? Become a habit, has it?”
I knew he was referring to my bout of “sickness” sixteen years ago. And the fact that he remembered that made my stomach flutter a bit. It was a long time to remember such a small thing. Though the reason for that bout of “sickness” had been anything but small.
“It was either go shopping at the mall or have a ‘terrible migraine.’ A ‘terrible migraine’ is much more enjoyable than shopping with Ellen and Jane and listening to Ed bitch about how much Jane is spending.”
He laughed. “Guess I can see your point there. You and Ellen been together long?”
I nodded. “We’ve been married twelve years now. Met her in college. Married her six months later. We have a son, Jared. He’s eleven.” I smiled. “He’s been spending the week across the lake at the campgrounds with Ed and Jane’s son, Jimmy.”
“Ellen seems very nice. You seem good together.” He paused for a moment. “Are you happy, Lee?” He asked the question quietly, and I could tell it wasn’t an idle question, not something he asked like some might ask “How are you?”
“I have a good life. Ellen’s great. I couldn’t ask for better. She loves me in spite of my faults, which never ceases to amaze me, really. And Jared, he’s smart as hell. And a good kid, too.” I nodded. “Things are good. We have our ups and downs like any other family, but we’re a family. And I have a good job. Things are comfortable, no financial worries. I suppose everything’s turned out pretty much like everyone wanted and expected it to.”
“And you are happy?”
I turned to look at him. He was looking at me with that same look he always had. And I couldn’t read his expression any more now than I could sixteen years ago. But I suppose I didn’t really need to read it. I knew what he was asking. He was asking me if I was “happy.” Not if my life was good and comfortable, but if I was truly happy at the very center of myself. I wasn’t sure I could answer that. Mostly because I wasn’t any more sure now than I had been sixteen years ago about what I really wanted and needed to be happy.
“How long have you and Steve been together?” I asked, hoping he would let me leave the question unanswered.
He smiled and I could see understanding in his eyes. “We’ve been together almost 4 years now.”
I smiled. “And things are good?” I hoped they were. They looked like they were.
He nodded and his smile touched his eyes. “Yeah. I think I’ve finally found someone I can be happy with.”
“That’s great, Dean.” I realized that it was the first time I had said his name in sixteen years. It felt good on my tongue. “He seems really nice, easy going.”
Dean laughed. “He is SO easy going. It is hard as hell to rile him. He’s completely comfortable in his own skin. Nothing fazes him.” He looked at me and his eyes sparkled with a touch of wickedness. “You set off his radar, though, even if he wouldn’t admit it.”
So I had not been mistaken about the “look.” I shook my head and smiled. “He’s good. Did you tell him anything? About…anything?”
He shook his head. “No. I love him dearly, but what goes in his ears tends to come out of his mouth; and I got the impression you probably hadn’t said anything to anyone.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I haven’t. I didn’t see the point. It would just…complicate things. And it was sixteen years ago.”
He nodded and leaned back on his hands. “Yeah, it was a long time ago.”
We sat in silence for a bit. Then he spoke. “Did you ever think of…” he hesitated, “…of things later, of me?”
I hadn’t in a long time. But for a while, a very long while, I had. “I had dreams about you for the longest time.”
He smiled. “Did you? Good dreams?”
I smiled. “Wet dreams.”
He laughed. “Yeah, had those about you, too.” He sighed and I glanced at him and saw his eyes were closed. “You know, I used to imagine that you would come back.” He laughed again, and maybe there was a touch of bitterness in the laugh, or maybe it was just a little self-mocking. “And you would tell me that you loved me and that nothing else mattered—not your brother, not what anyone thought, nothing.”
He sat up then stood up, picked up a rock and tossed it into what little water there was. “You didn’t, of course. And I knew you wouldn’t…couldn’t.”
I sat there and looked down at my hands. I could picture him. I could picture the seventeen year old boy sitting on this very rock, lost in daydreams and fantasies. And I felt guilty. Not because I had left—I had to leave. I hadn’t had a choice in that. And not even because I hadn’t come back—because I had been fifteen and while you might imagine things like that at fifteen, you didn’t actually do them.
What made me feel guilty was how I had made what had happened between us into something that was wrong, something to be forgotten. When I had gotten home I had thrown myself into being what I saw as a “normal guy.” When Deb and I broke up, I went out with just about every girl who blinked at me. I had something to prove, to my brother, to my dad, to just about everyone—and mostly to myself. I had fallen for another boy. I hadn’t just had sex with him—I had fallen for him. And that didn’t fit with how things were supposed to be. And I convinced myself it had been just a one-time thing, an experimental thing. I convinced myself that it had been nothing.
And it had been anything BUT nothing. And THAT was what made my stomach clench and my eyes burn. I had taken something beautiful and made it into something that had never existed.
Except now, sixteen years later, I knew what I hadn’t known then.
“I did, you know.”
He looked at me. “What?”
“Love you.” I laughed shortly, bitterly. “I would have dreams—not just the wet ones—but ones where I would run away from home and no one would know where to find me and I would be with you.” I ran my hand across my eyes and through my hair. “And when I would wake up I would call the girl of the moment and we would meet up and I would fuck you out of my mind.”
But I hadn’t managed—not then, not now—to fuck him out of my heart.
He held out his hand to me. I stared at it for a moment, wondering why he even wanted that much contact with someone who had betrayed him in such a way—because that was what I had done. I had betrayed all that he was by denying all that I felt.
But I put my hand in his and he pulled me to my feet. He raised my hand and held it against his chest and brushed the fingers of his other hand over my cheek. “We were both young,” he said—as if that explained everything, excused everything.
I raised my eyes to his and I could see the softness in them. Gone was the expression I couldn’t read, the one that simply waited. In its place was one of tenderness, of forgiveness and longing—I definitely saw longing. He leaned forward as he slipped his hand around to the back of my neck, and kissed me. And I felt everything I had felt the first time he had kissed me and everything I had felt when he had touched me, when we had made love to each other on that hot afternoon sixteen years ago. Except I wasn’t fifteen and he wasn’t seventeen—we were grown men. I pressed against him and wrapped my fingers in his hair, and the kiss deepened, our tongues hungrily seeking to taste once more the taste that had once held us both captive.
He broke the kiss, was the first one to pull away. My body ached from the sudden separation. Apparently his did, too, because he pulled me hard against him for a moment, groaning as he let me know his body had not forgotten the feeling. I rubbed against him—letting him know mine had not either. Then he let go and pulled away, a small smile on his lips, a smile that held maybe a touch of regret.
“Ellen’s a lucky woman.”
I smiled, a smile that mirrored his. Steve’s a lucky man.”
We walked back to the lodge in silence, our bodies close together, our shoulders touching—but not our hands. And I understood the significance of that. Our hands—especially mine, the one with the ring on the finger—belonged to others and were no longer ours to give.
***
My “headache” extended all through the rest of the day and into the night. I managed to pack my suitcase, but told Ellen I didn’t feel up to breakfast.
“I just want to lie down for a bit. I took some ibuprofen so that should have my head feeling better enough to drive home.”
She looked at me carefully, almost curiously. But all she said was, “Ok, hun. But if you aren’t feeling up to driving home, I’ll drive. And you’re going to make an appointment to see the doctor about those migraines. They seem to be getting worse.”
I smiled and asked her to save me a piece of fruit from breakfast, and she seemed happier that I was at least showing an interest in food. I didn’t have a migraine, but my head did feel off. Though I knew it was more the thoughts and memories that were causing the dull ache.
***
“You didn’t come. What’s wrong?”
I was sitting on the dock, dangling my legs over the side. I didn’t look up and he sat down beside me. I turned away. “Nothing. I just…”
He reached out and turned my face to him. His eyes darkened and he swore, something I had never really heard him do before. “What happened?” he asked softly, tracing the bruise around my left eye with his finger.
I shrugged. “Lucky punch. Tony looks worse than I do.”
He put his arms around me and pulled me close against him. I didn’t care who saw.
“My dad’s pissed. He came in while Tony and I were at it. So it’s over. He’s taking us home.” I laughed a little. “Should have heard him. ‘This is what happens when boys are raised without a man in their lives!’”
I shook my head. “The fuck forgets that HE is the one who walked out on my mom, not the other way around. Not that what he says is even halfway right.”
I laughed again and wiped my hand across my eyes. “Though maybe he is ‘halfway’ right because ONE of us turned out ‘normal’ and only ONE of us is all wrong. Guess half of two is one, last I knew. So maybe he has a point.”
Dean shook his head and rubbed his cheek against my hair. “No, he doesn’t. There is nothing ‘wrong’ about you. Your brother—and your dad—are the ones who need some serious fixing.”
He held me close for a long moment then sighed. “I’m sorry, Lee. I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble for you.”
I looked up at him and shook my head. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not.”
***
I packed the few things I had brought with me and threw the bag in the car. I wasn’t going to stand around listening to my dad and my brother arguing over why they couldn’t just “send fag boy home on a bus or something.”
Dean was sitting on the steps of the lodge, like he always was at this time, the time I usually came by.
“I’m never going to see you again, am I?” he asked as I sat down on the steps next to him.
I didn’t answer; I just looked down. I knew it was no. So did he. I looked up after a while and he was looking at me in that way, though I could see something else in his eyes—sadness, resignation.
“Be happy, Lee.” And he held out his hands, his palms out, his fingers spread just a little. I knew what he meant. I pressed my hands against his. I knew we both could feel the pane of glass between us.
My dad drove up and I glanced at Dean one last time. He was still sitting there, still holding his hands in that way.
As I got into the car, my brother whispered in my ear, “Faggot.”
***
Ed and Jane had already checked out and had headed on over to the campground to make sure Jimmy and Jared had the tent picked up and had everything ready to go. Ellen was waiting for me at the front desk, talking to Steve.
“I’m sorry to hear about your migraines. Hope you managed to enjoy some of your stay with us.” Steve smiled as openly as always, though I thought I detected a hint of “Glad you are going now” in his eyes. Though maybe I was just looking for that.
“It’s been very nice, even with the migraines,” I smiled back at him.
“Maybe we’ll see you back here sometime?” Dean walked in from the room behind the desk and laid his hands on Steve’s shoulders, standing behind him.
“That would be lovely,” Ellen replied brightly. “You have such a beautiful place here, so nice and relaxing.”
I just met Dean’s eyes and smiled and nodded slightly as I picked up our suitcases and headed toward the door.
As I got into the car I looked up at the lodge and I could have sworn I saw him in the window, his palm pressed against the glass. As I backed the car out of the parking space and turned to head down the driveway, I looked up at the lodge once more.
“Be happy, Dean,” I mouthed silently, and pressed my palm against the car window.
**********************
What Might Have Been
Little Texas
(Porter Howell/Dwayne O'Brien/Brady Seals)
Sure I think about you now and then
But it's been a long, long time
I've got a good life now I've moved on
So when you cross my mind
I try not to think about
What might have been
'Cause that was then
And we have taken different roads
We can't go back again
There's no use giving in
And there's no way to know
What might have been
We could sit and talk about this all night long
And wonder why we didn't last
Yes they might be the best days
We will ever know
But we'll have to leave them in the past
So try not to think about
What might have been
'Cause that was then
And we have taken different roads
We can't go back again
There's no use giving in
And there's no way to know
What might have been
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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