| |
“Fuck you, lard ass!” Rory lambasted Hank. “You couldn’t steal a base if it was like six inches away!” The bickering was well into its second day. Russell had worried that a more athletically gifted, more-assertive little brother joining his average-skilled, less-motivated big brother’s Little League team might become the source of fraternal friction. Since yesterday’s game, Hank had ragged Rory relentlessly about his choice to steal second base without receiving a cue from the coach. What made Rory’s act of self-determination particularly irksome to the elder boy was that it had made his upstart pipsqueak brother the game’s MVP.
Russell was about to chastise Rory for this profane taunting of his pear-shaped older sibling when the doorbell rang. To evade discipline, Rory streaked to the foyer to welcome the evening’s guests. Seeing Rory at the door, Carter exuded, “Whoa, Dude! You’re a badass!” The two boys engaged in double high-, then double low-fives, while Hank looked on from the stairs, wearing a hangdog expression. Diane remained outside on the porch, smiling like a prom queen, a Bing Cherry pie cradled in her arms in a perfect portrayal of the docile southern homemaker. No one else noticed Bryan and Russell locking eyes. Bryan shot Russell that amazing smile. Russell wanted to send one back in return. His expression, however, remained blank and unchanged.
“Come on in, you guys!” Tess called out from the kitchen. “Make yourselves at home.” Carter followed Hank to do battle with monsters in the virtual world. Diane glided to the kitchen to deliver her pie. Bryan put his arm around Rory’s shoulders, and proceeded to extol the kid’s tenacity as they strolled toward the back patio. Russell was left standing alone in the foyer, feeling like an invisible guest in his own home.
≈ ≈ ≈
“My Lord, Tess!” Bryan exclaimed, wiping his perpetually smiling lips with a red-and-white-checkered cloth napkin. “This chicken is to die for!”
“Well, there’s plenty left, if you want more,” Tess announced, tongs in one hand and a tray of legs and thighs in the other. Unlike most typical patriarchal American households, the king of the Deacon family barbecue was the queen of the house. Tess was the grill master. Russell was the clean-up crew.
“You know I’d love to,” Bryan responded. “But I’m stuffed. I guess my eyes are bigger than my stomach.” Bryan’s big eyes may have been looking up at Tess as he turned down another thigh. His fingers, however, had found Russell’s thigh under the patio table and were inching slowly but surely toward more private parts. Like Rory’s choice yesterday to steal second base, Bryan’s brazen move came without permission from the coach. There could hardly have been a more inappropriate setting for such an advance. And that, for Russell, is precisely what made it even more exciting. As Bryan slid his palm under the leg of Russell’s cargo shorts, the edge of his pinky brushed against the tip of a rapidly inflating erection. Only the cotton fabric of Russell’s tighty-whities prohibited direct, finger-to-glans contact.
“Who wants dessert?” Tess asked. “Diane brought a beautiful pie. Homemade, right?”
“Baked from scratch, of course,” Diane drawled, as if any other answer would do.
“We’ve got Dryer’s French Vanilla, if anyone wants theirs á la mode,” Tess announced. “Russ...”
“Yes, My Love,” Russell dreamily responded, as Bryan’s smallest digit surreptitiously massaged the tip of his raging boner.
“Maybe you could get off your lazy rump,” Tess half-joked, “and fetch the pie and ice cream.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Russell said, tossing a subtle side glance at Bryan. “Doncha think we could wait a few minutes? You know, to give this scrumptious meal a chance to settle down.”
“Okay, then,” Tess countered, “maybe you could make yourself useful by brewing up some of your world-renown free-trade java.”
“Oh, my!” Diane cooed, a la Scarlet O’Hara. “Coffee sounds absolutely divine.”
“Alrighty,” Russell responded, with a note of surrender, “I guess I can fulfill that wish. And, on my way to the kitchen, maybe I can make myself even more useful, by bussing a few items.”
“At last,” Tess said, exhaling a mock sigh. “The man of the house justifies his existence.” At this, Diane tittered like blushing nun, to think that any wife could express such overt disrespect for her hubby, especially in the presence of company. While scanning the table for an adequate crotch shield, Russell removed Bryan’s meandering mitt from his leg, giving it an affectionate little squeeze in the process. The salad bowl seemed best for screening the tenting in his groin area. He was sidling around the table, holding the bowl strategically, like a vaudeville fan dancer, when Diane reached for the salad tongs.
“I just love fresh fruit in a summer salad, don’t you?” she said. “Wouldn’t want any of these yummy goodies to go to waste.” She then proceeded to pick out the remaining half-dozen green grapes, placing them, one by one, on her empty plate. Aware of what Russell was hiding under the bowl, while witnessing his wife pluck out select testicular shaped pieces of fruit proved enormously amusing to Bryan. Russell, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to commence bow-legging his way across the patio and into the house.
“Your back bothering you, Babe?” Tess called out.
“Little bit, yeah,” he fibbed.
≈ ≈ ≈
“You know that can’t happen again,” Russell informed Bryan. The sun was sinking into the western horizon as the two men stood on the furthest edge of the backyard, beyond earshot of their spouses. Bryan’s choice earlier in the evening to play under-the-table pocket pool had been nonconsensual, poorly timed, and came with a risk Russell found unacceptable.
“Oh, come on, Coach,” Bryan teased, tilting his head slyly to one side and assuming an ultra-lascivious leer. “You know you loved it. Your dick was standing up like a flagpole.”
“Look,” Russell insisted, “I’m dead serious. What happened earlier can never happen again.”
“You mean,” Bryan presumed aloud, “that it can never happen here... at your house, on the patio, in the presence of the ladies. Right?” Russell attempted to utter an unambiguous “No!” They could never engage in such shenanigans, not here, not anywhere, not ever! His recalcitrant tongue, however, refused to formulate the word. A sexy, irresistible man was offering an open invitation to be his fuck buddy. At least, that’s what Russell was reading in the not-so-subtle subtext. It was something he’d only fantasized about, while placing such an appealing arrangement light years beyond the realm of possibility. Seeing the silent longing in Russell’s befuddled eyes, Bryan stated, matter-of-factly, “Look, I like you. I’m attracted to you. You have needs. I have needs. Where’s the problem?” Never before had Russell experienced such a strong desire to kiss another man. Never had he felt such a powerful urge to rip the buttons off the front of a guy’s shirt, to run his palms over forested pectorals, to lick an armpit, and bite a nipple. Once again, Russell tried to speak. But words were still caught in his constricted throat. It was as though a flutter of sparrows had invaded his chest. “I don’t know, Russ,” Bryan said. “Maybe I’m wrong.”
This was the very first time Bryan had called Russell by his name. Russell’s knees buckled. He nearly swooned. Finally, he was able to mutter something audible. “Say it again,” he demanded quietly.
“Say what?”
“My name,” Russell insisted. “Say my name.”
“Okay,” Bryan responded, obviously perplexed by this peculiar plea. “Russ.” The thrill tremor traveling down Russell’s spine sent his feet into a wiggly, cartoonish dance step. Observing the weirdness of this herky-jerky movement made Bryan titter. Russell looked at Bryan. Bryan looked back at Russell, then broke into a full-fledged guffaw. Russell, in turn, couldn’t hold back his laughter at the absurdity of it all. So, the two men stood there on the lawn, under the twilight sky, for several consecutive minutes, belly laughing uncontrollably. By the time this prolonged spate of levity began losing steam, Russell’s abdomen was aching and tears were streaming down his cheeks.
“I’d better go in now,” said Russell.
“You okay, Buddy?” Bryan inquired.
“Yeah,” Russell managed. “I’m good. I just have to...” His voice trailed off as he set out tottering, weak-kneed across the lawn toward the house.
≈ ≈ ≈
“So,” Tess offered, “that wasn’t so bad, was it? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong. But it looked to me like you and Bryan were really enjoying each other’s company.”
Bryan, Diane, and Carter were gone. Russell was on kitchen-scouring detail, wiping up the last bit of cleaning solution from the granite counter top. “Yeah,” he agreed, keeping his head down, concentrating on the job at hand. “He’s okay I guess.”
“What were you guys laughing about?”
“When?”
“When? I thought you were going to wet your shorts.”
“Oh, it was a joke,” Russell claimed. “Stupid actually.”
“Care to share? I could use a good laugh.”
“You wouldn’t get it,” responded Russell. “It’s...” He needed to avoid this line of questioning. “Besides, I can’t really remember the whole thing.”
“I see,” Tess quipped. “I’m just a mere female. I could never...”
“That’s not what I meant,” he declared. “And, you know it.”
Tess grabbed a large, stainless steel pot from the dish rack and began drying it with a dish towel. “Such a good-looking man,” she remarked, as she hung the newly dried pot from its hook above the range top.
“Really?” Russell replied, as if he’d never noticed.
“Oh, come on, Russ! Don’t tell me you wouldn’t die to have those blue eyes.”
“Next time I see him,” he promised, “I’ll take a closer look.” Imagining when his next encounter with his hunky, potential fuck buddy might be and under what circumstances sent blood rushing back into Russell’s genitals.
Meanwhile, Tess had bellied up from behind, slipped her hands under her hubby’s biceps, around his torso, and over his chest. As she laid her head tenderly against his back, she said, “I love you.”
“Love you, too, Babe,” was the automatic reply.
Tess’s hands wandered down under Russell’s apron to discover his soldier, now standing at the ready. “Well, well, well,” she purred. “Looks like someone has been feeling neglected.” Russell swiveled around, looked his wife in the eyes, took her cheeks in his hands, pulled her lips to his and kissed her with a passion he hadn’t shown her in years. Not wanting to squander the moment, she took him by the hand. Leaving his apron on the kitchen floor, Russell obediently followed her upstairs to their bed.
It had been at least seven months since they’d made love. In the aftermath, the couple lay there for a while under the sheet, like they often did before the kids came along, bare skin pressed against bare skin. Finally, Tess broke the silence. “Why do you suppose you didn’t cum?” It was a reasonable question. In her mind, Russell must have been as dammed up with love juice as she’d been.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m really tired,” he theorized. “There’s a lot of stress at work. And I’m a little worried about Hank. He’s having a hard time with his little brother outperforming him on the ball field.”
“I get that,” she said, before giving him an affectionate little neck smooch just below the earlobe. “Well, you just let me know when you’re in the mood again... and we’ll give it another shot.”