“WELCOME BACK,” Gary, my manager, said. “We missed you.”
“Thanks, Gary,” I said.
He eyed my black cowboy hat. If he thought it was stupid, he didn’t say and I didn’t care. Not one bit. Now I understood why Owen had always worn his for the first few weeks after he got back from Black Bear Guest Ranch.
And he hadn’t had Cole.
Cole picked out that hat. I reached up and touched it.
Cole said I looked great in it. Like a real cowboy. He said that he meant it. He said, “Grrrrrrrr!” What did I care what anyone else thought?
“Place almost fell apart while you were gone. We—I—really am glad to have you back.” He looked at the hat again, shook his head (at least he was smiling), and walked off down the hallway toward his office.
I went to the break room to put lunch in the refrigerator. Sliced steak on fry bread. The last of it. And a half ear of corn.
“Hey, Neil!” I turned to a nice-looking young man with bright new-penny-copper hair. Sloan. Fairly new guy. Good customer service rep. He could go places at Horrell & Howes.
“Morning, Sloan.”
“The hat looks good.”
I smiled. Or tried to. “You think so?” I asked. You’re not laughing at me?
He leaned in. “You look really good in it,” he said conspiratorially, and then I realized something else. He meant it. He wasn’t talking to me dude to dude. I saw it in his twinkling eyes.
God. Sloan was gay.
How the hell had I not known it?
Because you blinded yourself to knowing.
“You look like a real cowboy.”
The words jolted me. Cole’s words.
“Thanks, Sloan.”
He nodded. “I think that dude ranch did you good.”
“It did,” I said quietly.
“I got to get to my station,” he said and gave me a wave and went down an aisle of the phone-rep cubicles.
“Have a good day, Sloan,” I called after him.
Gay.
And I didn’t think he’d been coming on to me either. It wasn’t like that supervisor at the urinals looking at my dick—showing me his. This was more like… camaraderie.
He smiled and reached for a hat that wasn’t on his head, tipped it like a gentleman.
I found myself smiling. A tiny ray of sunshine in an extremely gloomy day.
I went to my office and hung my hat and then opened my backpack. It made me more comfortable than using a briefcase. I think it made me less “removed” from those I supervised. I didn’t want to be the kind of leader Shelia would have been, treating my employees like I owned them. I’d hated it when I was treated that way through the years, and I thought, I’m not going to do it to anyone else. I knew they’d appreciate it.
From the backpack, I withdrew an envelope, took out several pictures from my trip, and pinned them to the corkboard on the wall to the right of my desk. Me and Amy and the kids, my cabin, me and Crystal on our horses, and finally, one of me and Cole. He had an arm around my shoulder, and we were both wearing cowboy hats and cowboy shirts. It wasn’t an obvious picture—we could have been friends—but what made me smile was the knowledge that it was a “selfie,” and what couldn’t be seen was that neither of us had been wearing pants. My special secret.
Someone knocked at the door, and I turned to see Shelia standing in my threshold. I took a deep, quiet breath.
“Good morning, Shelia.”
She eyed my hat, and I couldn’t help but notice the flash of distaste that crossed her face. She buried it fast. It might have been my imagination, but I didn’t think so. And dressed the way she was—and it was extremely professional; she always looked good—I wasn’t surprised. That and the fact that she hated me.
A week in a place that loved me—really loved me—and that wasn’t just counting Cole. And now, five minutes back and I was already getting some toxicity.
I fought the urge to sigh.
“How can I help you?”
She squared her shoulders.
“Well, as you know, while you were gone, Gary put me in charge….”
Yes, I knew. And why a man as smart as he was did such a stupid thing, I didn’t know.
I nodded.
She stepped forward and placed a folder on my desk. I looked down at it. She didn’t even hand it to me.
“It came to my attention that a number of your employees are breaking company rules. I think it is important that they know that can’t be tolerated. Rules exist for a reason. Without them there would be chaos.”
I was fighting the sigh, fighting the sigh, fighting the sigh.
“Oh?” I asked. This couldn’t have waited? No “Good morning, Neil”? No “Did you have a nice trip, Neil”? No “I like the hat, Neil. It makes you look like a real cowboy”? No “Grrrrrrrr!”?
I didn’t pick up the folder, and she lifted an eyebrow.
“Don’t you agree?”
“I think it depends on the situation, but yes,” I said. “Rules exist for a reason.” They were, as far as I was concerned, probably different reasons than hers. “Can you give me an idea, though? I have a few things I have to deal with first. Payroll for one.”
“Well…,” she said, nodding, setting her faux-pearl earrings swaying, “that is important.” She straightened her jacket. “Well, Sloan, for instance.”
Sloan?
She nodded again, vigorously, the earrings dancing now. “He used the company fax machine. And Charleen. She made some photocopies. And Thomas.” She stepped closer to my desk and lowered her voice. “He printed some—” She cleared her throat and that distasteful look flashed across her face again. “—pornography from the Internet.”
I am sad to say my eyebrows shot up. Pornography? Now that was something to be concerned about. And how had he even accessed it?
“And every day there were so many taking extra time from breaks and getting back late from lunch. It was appalling. Almost too much to list, but I managed it. Excel is a wonderful program.”
“Thank you, Shelia. I will look at everything carefully.”
She gave me one swift nod. “I’m only trying to help.” She straightened her jacket once more and turned on her very-high-heeled shoes. She froze at the door and turned back. “I hope you had a nice vacation,” she said stiffly.
I didn’t believe a word of it. After all, I had just taken my office back. “Thank you, Shelia.” I almost told her that I hoped she enjoyed being in charge. I didn’t. Because I didn’t feel that way at all.
“Oh. I straightened things up a bit in here. So it would be more organized. I think you will see it is more efficient.”
Now I stiffened. God. What had she done?
Before I could respond, she smiled and walked out of my office.
It took me a little while to see all that she had done. It took me all day to find some of the things I needed and used. For one thing, the postcard with all my passwords that I kept taped to the bottom of my pull-out drawer was gone.
I found it in the folder she left, with a sticky note that reminded me company passwords should never be accessible to the “general population.”
It was going to be a long day.
I pulled out my cell phone. Still no text from Cole. I couldn’t help but be disappointed. But then, it wasn’t totally unexpected. When he was out on the range with guests, coverage was intermittent at best—part of the reason people went to Black Bear Guest Ranch was to get away from technology.
But that kept me from being able to be only a text away from him.
I’d never cared one way or the other about cell phones before, except to be able to get ahold of Crystal at a moment’s notice. I’d never cared about texting either.
Funny how much can change in a week.
THAT LAST morning had been wonderful and terrible and wonderful-terrible all at once.
I couldn’t help but think every second that passed was one second closer to being without Cole. My heart was like a stone, even though it jumped every time he looked at me with his beautiful, dark almond eyes and smiled at me.
He got me up very early and, ignoring our morning erections, insisted we get dressed, ignoring also my pleas that we make love. We didn’t have much longer to make love.
We stopped at the kitchen, where Cole grabbed a couple of warm cinnamon rolls and put them in a brown paper bag. Then we were off to the stables. We saddled Mystic and Madrigal and rode as fast as I dared across a pasture and into the woods. He took me to another of his secret places, a lovely clearing in the middle of the trees where the warm morning sun shone brightly with golden light.
There he spread out a blanket and, without a word, stripped naked. I didn’t have to be asked; I did the same. We were both hard and tumbled to the blanket, face to erection, and brought each other to swift orgasms.
That was when he surprised me again.
He wanted to ride naked.
I was nervous as hell, but we did as he asked—of course—and though the saddle was a little rough on my balls, we rode off into the sunlight. It seemed the clearing was a sort of pocket of grass in a second pasture. It was scary and thrilling at the same time to be riding naked and innocent under the clear sky.
But that’s what life was like with Cole.
And my heart ached knowing it was almost over.
Were we over?
Was this it?
Was this all there was?
How was I going to be able to return to my world? How was I going to leave all this behind? Leave Cole behind.
The night before, he had called me “my love.” Did he mean it? Had that just been some kind of expression? Was it just a rush of feelings because of what had happened that magical week? There was no way he could fall in love with me in just one week, could he?
But looking at him as we trotted along, horses nickering and tossing their heads now and again, looking at him astride that horse like some young but ancient god, I knew….
I was in love with him. Truly in love for the first time in my life.
Truly, madly, deeply….
CHARLEEN’S PHOTOCOPYING had to do with her church. It was for fliers. She had used her own paper. And Horrell & Howes had a policy about that. If you brought your own paper and what you were copying was for nonprofit reasons, all was well with the world. She just hadn’t filled out the request sheet. I told her to fill it out, mark it for the day before I left, and bring it back to me. I would take care of it. Her gratitude was palpable.
Thomas’s pornography?
Classical paintings by the Old Masters for his art history homework. Edouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), Paul Cezanne’s Baigneurs, Sleeping Venus by Giorgione, The Birth of Venus by Botticelli, La Danse by Henri Matisse, the classic sculptures of The Dying Gaul and Lysippos’s Weary Herakles. Hardly pornography. The only one I could even sort of think might get under her skin was Andy Warhol’s Resting Boy. Was Shelia the kind of person who would have books like Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Miller’s Tropic of Cancer burned for the same reason?
It was ridiculous, and I had Thomas fill out some fake paperwork as well.
And finally there was Sloan.
He was using the fax machine for medical paperwork for his mother. It turned out she was dying of cancer. Sloan sat impassive before me as he explained. Except for a tremble I don’t think I would have seen if I wasn’t looking for it, he kept totally in control. I found I felt humiliated. God. To be going through that. How I knew that feeling. No. No, I would never know what that felt like. But I knew death. I could empathize.
I told Sloan to give me any paperwork in the future and I would fax it on my machine. And I assured him I wouldn’t look at it.
He stood up and thanked me and then stopped. Finally some emotion on his face. “Are those photographs from your vacation?” he asked and pointed at my corkboard.
“Yes,” I said.
“May I look?”
“Sure,” I replied, and he came round to my side of the desk.
“These are great pictures. Wow. Look at you on that horse and… gosh, who is he?” He pointed at—of course—Cole. “He’s gorgeous.”
“Yes, he is,” I said before I even realized it. “Th-that’s C-Cole.”
We locked eyes when I stuttered. And why the hell did I stutter? It made me mad at myself.
Then I saw the understanding in his eyes and cursed myself once again for a flash of… what was it? Not shame, surely. Embarrassment? That was just as bad.
Cole was the man I loved and….
“God,” I said quietly.
The man I loved.
And how could I have been surprised at that? Because it was true. I was in love. My heart swelled and ached at the knowledge.
“Summer romance?” Sloan asked quietly, and this time I refused to deny what had happened to me. Summer romance was right. I had shared loving with another man.
“Yes,” I said, and my heart pounded. It was a first. I was telling Sloan I was gay. It was one thing to tell Amy. Another for Crystal to realize it—hell, she had joyfully approved. But Sloan was practically a stranger.
But a gay one.
And that suddenly made me feel very good. I was a part of something very special. An ancient brotherhood.
One I would no longer refute.
“God, those can be a bitch. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I fell in love with a one-night stand.”
“Sloan. I can’t stop thinking about him.”
“Tell me about it,” Sloan said. “I have to be friends with him. I see him all the damned time.”
“Sloan, I can’t even see Cole! He’s six hours away!” My heart was aching now.
Sloan sighed. He looked at me. “Does he feel the same way?”
“I think so,” I said. He hasn’t called. “He called me—” I blushed. I was so new at this!
“Yes?” Sloan encouraged.
“—my love.” I said it so softly I wasn’t sure he heard me.
Sloan smiled.
“Well, if someone that cute called me ‘my love,’ I sure as shit wouldn’t let six hours separate me.”
My heart started to pound. “No?”
“No fucking way,” he said.
My heart took wing.
“Look,” he said, eyes alight. “Let’s have lunch.”
He grinned, and I couldn’t help but do the same.
But he hasn’t called.
“I probably shouldn’t. I’ve got all kinds of stuff to catch up on.”
He shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
And then I realized he was right. I was the boss, wasn’t I?
“Where do you want to go?”
“THERE’S MY bird,” I said and pointed upward.
Cole and I were lying on the blanket again and munching on cinnamon rolls.
“It’s a turkey vulture,” he informed me.
“A what?” I looked at him askance. Vulture? What a letdown. I had imagined something far more elegant. A hawk or falcon or something. And weren’t bald eagles supposed to nest in this part of the country?
Cole nodded. “Ugly up close, but so incredibly graceful. It’s their wings. It’s like they’re floating.”
“Floating,” I said. “Just like that. So free.”
“It’s so they can look for food. Dead things.”
I looked at him again. “Not very romantic, Cole.”
“You telling me I’m not romantic?” He looked at me, his eyes so deep, so breathtaking.
And then we made love.
Afterward, holding each other, we heard the camp bell.
“Jesus,” he said sitting up. “That’s the one-hour warning!”
And fighting back tears, I scrambled to dress. We jumped onto our horses, and they snorted their disapproval at being taken from the fresh wisps of new grass they had found.
Cole helped me pack, and it was all I could do not to cry. When I looked at him, he seemed so crisp, so efficient. All business. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought he had affairs with all his guests.
I knew it wasn’t true.
Somehow it hurt anyway. I was dying. He looked so… so nonchalant.
But then, just as we were snapping my suitcase closed, he turned to me, and I saw that his eyes were wet. “Neil. Daddy. D-don’t….”
When he didn’t finish his sentence, I asked him, “Don’t what?”
“Don’t forget me?”
“My God!” I cried out while another part of me marveled that I had been using His name for days—something I had refused to do for years. “I will never forget you. Never! You set me free.”
He shook his head. “No. That was you. I… I….”
“Yes?” I asked, heart dying. Hoping.
We looked at each other for what felt like forever. “N-nothing,” he said.
Then he took my suitcase, and we walked to the main hall.
We’d missed breakfast entirely, between riding naked and making love and packing. He took me to the kitchen and was able to get the cook to assemble me a big sandwich made of egg and bacon—those thick Black Bear Guest Ranch slabs. Heart attack between two slices of homemade bread.
Then we joined the others.
And there were a lot of them. Sixty people at least, and that wasn’t counting the wranglers.
We got there just in time to hear Darla say, “Good morning, everyone. To everyone who is leaving today, we hope you had a wonderful time.” And her eyes found mine in the crowd. “I hope we’ll see you again.” She looked away. “Vincent and I loved having you, and our staff did too. They tell me you’re about the best darned group we’ve ever had.”
“She always says that” came Amy’s whispered echo in my ear.
“For all our new guests, welcome! I’m Darla Clark….”
I couldn’t listen, and I pulled away from Cole and headed as fast as I could to Amy’s car. It was parked in a handicapped space.
“Neil!”
Cole.
I froze and his hand fell on my shoulder. He turned me around.
There were tears in his eyes.
And he kissed me.
It took my breath away.
“You did set me free,” he said when we broke away.
“And you” was all I could manage.
Then we were packing the car. Cassie pushed through to give me a hug, and then Leo surprised me by shaking my hand.
“It was nice to meet you,” he said. “I’ll miss you.”
“You will?” I asked and couldn’t help but glance at Cole.
He gave me a brave, flickering smile. “You helped Cole. That’s all that mattered. And you gave us a story we’ll talk about for years. The black bear of Black Bear Ranch!”
Then Vincent and Darla were there, Vincent surprising me by skipping the manly handshake and hugging me roughly instead—“You’re a hero,” he said—and Darla taking me into her arms, and if she didn’t hug me as tight, she hugged me close and long. As we parted she looked up into my eyes and told me not to be a stranger. “Please,” she said.
“Really?” I asked.
“Really,” she said.
I cleared my throat. “I guess that depends on Cole.”
Her eyes grew sharp. “It takes two, Mr. Baxter.”
“Neil,” I said automatically.
“You come back and I’ll call you anything you want.”
And then with one long look, I climbed into the car, and when all were aboard, we backed out of the parking spot. But Cole…? He was already gone.
Amy shifted the car into gear and then looked at me.
“You sure?”
I took a breath and almost sobbed. I couldn’t answer. I nodded instead.
She shrugged. “Okay.”
“What else can I do?” I managed.
“Whatever you want,” she replied, and when I didn’t answer, she started the car into motion and down the road away from Black Bear Guest Ranch.
“WHAT DID she mean by that?” Sloan asked.
“I don’t know. And I wasn’t in the frame of mind to ask. Especially with the kids in the backseat.”
We were at a local hamburger joint that put McDonald’s or Burger King to shame.
“Everyone was inordinately quiet for at least the first half hour we were on the road.” And that made it overly uncomfortable as well. Todd kept his face ridiculously close to his electronic game, Robin and Crystal whispered between themselves, and Amy stared at the road. “It was horrible,” I said.
“I bet.” Sloan nodded sympathetically. “And he hasn’t called?”
I shook my head. “We talked last night for a few minutes before he was cut off.” It had felt like my heart was being cut out. “He was funny.” Warm and distant at the same time.
“Funny?” Sloan asked.
“Like…. Like…. It felt like he didn’t want to be on the phone. God, Sloan, I was suddenly reminded of when Crystal—my daughter—had her first kiss when she was a sophomore.” This was just a few months before Em died. “I was beside myself, and Emily thought it was so sweet. I wanted to get me a baseball bat with nails sticking out of it, but Em calmed me down.” I realized suddenly that Sloan had no idea who “Em” was, but thankfully he wasn’t asking. “She said it was normal. But then that was all it took for Crystal to fall in love and fall hard. But the boy? He’d lost interest within a day or so and had moved on, and my daughter cried for a week. That really made me want to get that baseball bat, and Em calmed me down about that too. She told me that was normal and that you had to fall in love once and have it end badly. It was a part of it.”
My chest grew heavy.
I put my fork down and clenched my hands tightly in my lap. Otherwise I might’ve started acting like a fool. God! Tears were wanting to come.
“Sloan… is that what this is? My ‘fall in love and have it end badly’?” Please have it not be so. Please! I couldn’t stand it.
“I don’t know,” Sloan said. “I don’t know enough. I’m sorry, Neil. I hope not.”
He hoped not! Me, it was the worst nightmare I could imagine. I had finally found myself. I was truly happy for the first time in my life. How could I bear getting through this? And after that, what? Go to gay bars and find someone? Look on the Internet? The idea was too horrible to even think about.
“I’m acting like a high school girl, aren’t I?” I said.
“Well, I don’t know if girls have any exclusivity on what you’re feeling, Neil,” Sloan said.
And the realization hit and hit hard. “It’s just like Amy said….”
Sloan looked at me, waiting for me to continue.
“She said that in a way I am a teenager because I never went through what was natural for me. That what I was going through with Cole was my inner twenty-something trying to get out. Except it’s worse than that. It’s my inner fourteen-year-old.”
God, I didn’t like this. I hated it. How did anyone cope with—
My cell phone made its little bah-rrrrring sound. I’d just gotten a text.
I looked at Sloan. He looked at me.
“Well, are you going to look?” he asked.
“It’s probably just Crystal.”
Sloan sighed. “You won’t know if you don’t look. Dammit, Neil. The anticipation is killing me.”
I waited one more heartbeat and then couldn’t stand it anymore.
I activated my screen, clicked the message button and…
Missing you more than I can stand—Cole
A joy so immense passed through me, I thought I might faint. I laughed. I was a fourteen-year-old!
Me too, I typed back.
There was a long pause while I forgot to breathe.
Bah-rrrrring!
And oh!
I love you was the reply.
The relief was beyond imagining, and I really did think I might cry.
“Well?” Sloan asked.
I showed him.
He grinned. And finally he said, “Are you going to type it back?”
I grinned back. Then I did it. I typed it back, heart skipping.
I love you too.
The day went a little better after that.
WE TALKED every night thereafter. Once or twice at lunch. There were a few places he could ride to get good reception, and he didn’t want to use the office phone. Especially the night we masturbated together. Who knew phone sex could be so hot?
And we said, “I love you,” a lot! Oh, it was heaven.
And hell.
He was so far away.
But as Sloan said, I wasn’t going to let a mere six hours keep me from Cole. Not when he felt for me what I felt for him.
We made plans for six weeks from then. That’s when his season had a brief calm period and he hadn’t been assigned to any guests. I had no idea how I was going to wait that long.
Crystal teased me about it.
Amy loved it.
Then around seven o’clock Friday evening my doorbell rang. I’d already gotten the pizza—pepperoni—so I couldn’t imagine who it was. I went to the door, and there stood Cole.
I was stunned. Numb.
Noises amplified.
Boys several houses down playing basketball in their driveway.
Mr. Mulhaney mowing his yard across the street.
An old lady walking her dog.
And then I leapt forward and took Cole by the collar and pulled him to me and kissed him. Hard. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me.