THEY HAD lunch. John made them grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, and they ate in their underwear, which made John feel very daring and not at all boring. What would Vivian think? Had he ever been downstairs in his underwear? He got up after sex and put underwear on, and it had always driven her crazy. But otherwise he felt so… vulnerable. Exposed.
But that wasn’t true with Blue, was it? Every time they’d had sex, John had drifted off to sleep naked and woken naked and cuddled naked and hadn’t even thought about putting anything on. In fact, he hadn’t even wondered about it. Until now.
Blue was transforming him in so many ways, so fast.
Yes, there he was, stodgy John, who wore suits to pet rescue centers, downstairs in the broad daylight in his underwear.
What if someone saw him? What if someone rang the doorbell?
He grinned and realized he didn’t care.
And Blue looked so glorious in those blue underwear that made his cock look huge because of the way it cupped everything and his ass look like proof there must be a God after all, because how could something so majestic be a random mistake of nature?
“Want to eat on your patio?” Blue asked, standing next to the glass sliding doors and taking a bite of sandwich.
Wait. Not only be downstairs in their underwear, but outside?
Blue’s eyes flashed. “Afraid?”
A little.
But excited by the idea as well.
And when he thought about it, John realized they probably couldn’t be seen. There were trees in his backyard, enough to keep his neighbor to the rear from seeing anything. The couple to the south only had one window facing into John’s backyard, and it was upstairs and seemed to always be curtained. And the neighbor to the north was a very old lady who had lived there all her life, and he doubted very much she would even be upstairs this time of day. Her grandson said she slept downstairs most of the time as the steps were too difficult for her.
So John smiled, went to Blue, opened the door, made an after you gesture, and followed him out onto the patio. They sat at the little table under the eave because John wasn’t quite ready to expose himself totally to the world, but he was close. And it did feel so exciting to be outside like this.
Would someone boring do this?
He was just about to tell Blue that he wished he looked half as sexy in his underwear—simple boxers—as Blue did in his tight ones when Blue said, “You look so hot.” He leaned in. “I can just see the head of your cock through your fly.”
John blushed.
“I want to suck your cock right here.”
John blushed all the harder. “Maybe next time,” he whispered.
And then they chatted. It was nice. They just talked. John found he wanted to ask Blue all kinds of things, but he just didn’t know where to start. It seemed wrong somehow to ask him why he was homeless. How he survived. And why he was interested in a man twice his age. Which only made him wonder what he was doing sitting here in his underwear with a man half his age. What am I doing?
“You okay, John?”
He almost startled at the question. Had he not looked okay? Was his confusion written on his face?
“I just can’t believe what’s happened in the last day, Blue. Until… until you, I’d never been with a man.”
Blue nodded. “I figured that.”
He had?
“I’ve avoided it all my life!” And that was true.
“You sure took to it like a duck to water, didn’t you?” Blue said, eyes sparkling, cheeks turning pink.
“I guess I did,” John said with a long sigh.
“You regret it,” Blue said, in such a way that John couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement.
Regret it? “No.” John shook his head. “But I still can’t believe it. So fast. To not have allowed myself…. To have denied myself for so long…. And now I’ve done all I’ve done… I’m like… just sort of drifting here. In a fog or something.”
“You denied you were….” Blue paused. “That you were attracted to men?”
John sighed again and shook his head. “No. I’ve always known. But I figured I was bisexual, and in my mind that meant as long as I was attracted to women, I had a choice. And I wanted a choice. I’ve tried all my life to just… blend in, you know?”
Blue cocked his head, brushed bleached blond hair from his forehead, and leaned back. Somehow John didn’t think Blue had ever “blended in” a day in his whole life.
“I was afraid,” John went on. “I knew if I ever tried sex with a man even once it would be over. I would be addicted.” And was that what this was? Blue was his hit from the crack pipe, and now he was hooked?
Wait…. Crack pipe? Suddenly he was laughing, and Blue gawked at him—of course he did. John shared his inner thought, and Blue burst into giggles and told John he could have a hit of his crack anytime he wanted.
“Want a hit right now?” Blue asked, eyes flashing, and he started to rise to his feet, hands at the waist of his blue underwear.
John held up a hand. “No,” he said quietly. “Give an old man a rest.”
And there it was, wasn’t it? Old man. What was he doing? Not only had he had sex more times with a man in only one day than he could count, but with a man who was the same age as his son. Hell! What would Alistair say?
Of course, it had been forever since he’d even talked to Alistair, hadn’t it?
But Blue was shaking his head. “Old man? I don’t see any old man!”
“I’m twice your age,” John exclaimed. He’d caught himself looking at his image in the mirror this morning and being struck once again that it wasn’t a man in his early twenties (Blue’s age!) who looked back, but a man in his midforties. With lines around his eyes and the beginnings of a paunch. And he’d wondered then what he was doing. “I could be your father.”
Blue leaned in, eyes flashing again. “John… you most definitely aren’t my father.”
John swallowed hard. “I… uh….” Confused. Blue confused him so much.
“You’ve got to let go of this father/son worry you’ve got going. I see it in your eyes. Let it go, okay? Please? I’m not your son.”
“Not my son,” John whispered in reply.
“And I’m not looking for some daddy-thing either.”
“What are you looking for?” he asked quietly.
“What are you looking for?” Blue asked just as quietly.
The question startled John, but as he thought about it, he supposed it shouldn’t have. Why wouldn’t Blue ask? It made sense. He’d just been realizing that he hardly knew anything about Blue, but what did Blue know about him? That he was a banker? What kind of car he had? The LS 600h L that Blue said was like a robot from Star Wars. Where he lived? That he liked the music of his namesake?
What was he looking for? Hell. He had no idea. All he could do was think… Blue. Did that even make any sense?
“I don’t know,” John whispered. “I have no idea.”
“Are you looking for a son?” Blue asked.
John jolted back. “No!” I have one.
“Are you looking to replace something you don’t have in your life?”
Like my son? No!
Alistair’s image came to his mind once more. Alistair the way he had looked the last time John had seen him. Indifferently saying that he was moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to pursue his dreams, and if John didn’t want to help him with the expenses, that was okay. He didn’t need the money; he could afford it himself. Then a new image. Alistair graduating high school. And Alistair showing him and Vivian some of his art on parent-teacher night one year. His sophomore year? Junior? Unusual pieces. They’d surprised him. They weren’t just pots or bowls like the ones he’d made as a kid—and oh, the hours he would sit in the basement over his wheel, spinning pot after pot after pot when all John wanted him to do was get out of the house. Have fun. Join Little League. Play football.
But Alistair wouldn’t. Wouldn’t even throw a few balls with his “Old Man,” a phrase John hated but would gladly have accepted if his son had just played a little ball with him.
He’d never known how to relate to Alistair. And that rested inside his chest like a stone. Sometimes it was like his son was a changeling, switched at birth by fairies.
And yet John missed him. He felt it hard and strong quite suddenly, and it almost took his breath away. God, he missed his son. To his surprise the thought threatened to bring tears. But no! He would not cry.
And looking at Blue, he knew something else. He might not know how this all happened or why it had happened or how it’d happened so fast. But Blue was not his son, and he was not trying to replace Alistair with Blue. This was something entirely different.
Blue nodded. “Maybe we should just take it one day at a time?”
“Maybe one hour at a time?” John asked, and he suddenly thought he didn’t want to imagine more than the hour he was living in this very moment. It was all just too big.
“Sounds good to me,” Blue said.
AFTER THEY ate, they cuddled on the couch—I am cuddling with a beautiful young man!—and watched The Clone Wars on Netflix because, dammit, Blue liked Star Wars too.
Then for God’s sake, Blue was massaging his cock through his underwear, and how could John help but get hard? Blue pulled his hard-on out through the fly (right there in the living room) and sucked his cock (Blue looked so hot on his knees between John’s legs), and he didn’t last long at all despite the fact that he’d cum about a million times in the last (in less than) twenty-four hours.
What do you think of that, Vivian?
Then Blue crawled up his body and whispered in his ear, “That’s so you can relax.” And when John reached for Blue’s crotch—he should return such a favor after all—Blue shook his head. “Later. I wanted that to be all for you.”
So they got dressed instead and went for a walk, and John was surprised by the urge to hold Blue’s hand but couldn’t quite yet (it would almost be shouting from the porch, after all). Then Blue—as if reading his mind—asked him to take him to Liberty Memorial (what Blue called Kansas City’s great erection in the sky). John had never thought of it that way, but the words were no sooner out of Blue’s mouth than he wondered why it had never occurred to him before. The monument couldn’t have been more phallic without being obscene. He chuckled and then wondered what else Blue would show him. Tell him. Teach him.
The first thing was that Liberty Memorial used to be a big gay hangout. There had been lots of what he called cruising (which wasn’t what John thought of as cruising), driving up and down the main drive and up and down the surrounding hill looking for someone who wanted to go off into the bushes and have sex. Had Blue done that? And then, even if Vivian might think it was boring, his gentleman’s instinct kicked in and John did his best to sweep the thought from his mind. He certainly didn’t ask. It really wasn’t any of his business.
Should I worry about his sexual past? Is it something I should be concerned about?
And then he decided to not worry about it.
What was past was past. The only Blue he needed to be concerned about was the one walking at his side. Still, gay people walked the great length of the plaza before the towering pillar of concrete—a tribute to all who had died in “the Great War”—with the rest of the crowd. Blue nodded at a few of the men now and again. Almost all of them young. Blue’s age. Some of them skateboarding. Friends, John supposed, and fought off a tingle of jealousy that some of them might be more. And if they were? None of his business. But then he did think to ask what had happened to Blue’s skateboard. Hey! Something to ask.
“I had to sell it,” Blue said. “It was that or starve.” And then he shrugged and rolled his eyes comically, and that kept John from feeling sad for his new friend.
I’m one of his friends now. He hoped. He smiled.
And realized they were holding hands.
Outside.
Where people could see them.
It was thrilling. Scary. Exciting. His heart started to pound.
When had that happened? And then he remembered Blue lightly slipping his hand into John’s, and it had been so natural, he hadn’t even noticed.
It felt right.
And if anyone thought it was weird? John’s heart skipped. If someone thought they were father and son? If Blue’s friends thought something bad?
Oh, John. Fuck it! He’s here with you now. Live in the moment. Live!
And enjoy just how wonderfully right this felt.
WHEN THEY still hadn’t heard from H.D., they went to dinner at Gates Bar-B-Q, and it was wonderful even though the waiter gave them that look—that are-they-father-and-son-or-what? look. John didn’t give a shit. How delightful!
The waiter should be so lucky as to be with Blue.
While they were eating, it suddenly hit John that he had told Blue he loved him. It just came out of nowhere. Hit him between the eyes. Rocked him back in his seat.
Why the hell had he said that?
And did he?
He looked at Blue. Could he love someone, especially another man, after so short a time? He didn’t know.
What he did know was all this was going to turn his world upside-down.
But no, not upside-down. This was certainly turning his life around, no doubt, even if it ended today. But upside-down? Somehow that implied something bad, and John didn’t think this—what he was experiencing—could possibly be considered bad. Experiencing not just with Blue, but with himself.
He was leaping. He was doing something he’d never dared do. He was taking a chance. Now would the net appear?
He knew one thing: he was happier right now than he had ever, ever been in his entire life. That made him smile. It made him smile so big that his heart swelled until he thought it might burst.
Then, as if being polite, Hound Dog called just as John was signing the check for their dinner.
THEY DASHED off to Four-Footed Friends, and when they got there, it was time for the decision whether they could take Chewie home.
Chewie was very happy to see Blue; that was for sure. John smiled at the dog’s antics.
H.D. took Blue’s shoulders in his hands and bent slightly so he was looking him in the eyes. “Now you see how he’s bouncing?” he asked.
Blue nodded solemnly—looking ever so much like a boy instead of the young man he was.
“That is just what Dr. Lee was afraid of. Chewie needs rest. Lots of it.”
Blue nodded.
“Can you promise me he won’t be jumping up and down on things?”
“I can try,” Blue said, looking even more like a little boy. Maybe it was that button nose and the fact that he was sticking his lower lip out ever so slightly.
“How about going potty?”
Potty? Had H.D. really said “potty”? He didn’t seem like the type.
It’s Blue, John thought. As if he were a child that needed to be taken care of. But John knew one thing: Blue was no child, even if he needed some protecting. He brought that out in people.
Just like he brought me out. John’s cheeks warmed at the thought. But it wasn’t the boy in Blue that had done it. Young Blue might be, but it was the man in him that had done that.
Made me want to suck cock.
John blushed all the more.
Made me like it.
Of course, he’d wanted it for a long time, hadn’t he? Blue hadn’t made him suck cock. He’d let him.
John stepped forward. “I can take charge of the potty stuff, at least most of the time,” he volunteered. “While I’m at home. And Blue is going to stay with me for a bit.”
H.D. stood up and eyed John, raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“At least until Chewie is out of the cast. I’ll carry him out to the lawn and back inside.”
Blue looked at him in surprise. “You will?”
“Do you know that is going to be two months?” H.D. asked, the other brow rising to join the first.
John fought to keep his mouth from falling open. Two months?
It was a little shock.
Blue live with him for two months?
He gulped, looked at Blue, and saw the expression on his face.
Expectation. But not the good kind. Like he was expecting to be hit. Like he was expecting John to say “No way!”
Hitting Blue was the last thing he wanted. Telling him he didn’t want him around was a close second. In fact, his heart was suddenly doing weird and wonderful little pirouettes. Two months to get to know Blue. He figured in that amount of time he would know what this was. This crazy turn of events in his life. Midlife crisis? The wild rebound? Meeting his destiny? That last felt the best.
He smiled, and so did Blue, and the pirouettes turned into grand jetés and tours en l’air, and what would Vivian think if she knew he knew what those words meant? Boring?
John found he didn’t care. His heart was too busy making an entrechat.
Leaps of joy and fear.
He was going to grab and hold on to every minute of joy he could get.
And he might just get two months of it.
“Two months sounds just fine,” he said.
In fact it sounded like… well, heaven.
JOHN CARRIED Chewie out to the car effortlessly—and a labradoodle wasn’t a small dog. Somehow it was one of the sexiest things Blue had ever seen.
“Why don’t you get in the backseat with him,” John said. “Even in this car there’s not enough room up front if poor Chewie gets upset and gets to thrashing.”
H.D. had warned it could happen, but somehow Blue didn’t think so. His dog was all woggy with painkillers, and that was a good thing. For now at least.
They had gotten a quilt from the closet this morning so that Chewie could be more comfortable. He looked up at Blue with complete trust and then at the back of John’s head and back at Blue. He blinked contentedly, lowered his head, and went right to sleep.
Good drugs.
But something told Blue that wasn’t all it was.
And then he looked at the back of John’s head—even that was sexy. Who would have thought the back of a man’s head could be sexy?—and something skipped around inside him and made him feel wonderfully content.
How could all this be happening?
Blue decided not to worry about it.
They got back to John’s (wonderful, big) house, and John scooped up Chewie (who gave only a slight little yelp), carried him to the door, and had Blue unlock it with his keys. “I’ll have to give you a set,” John said, and Blue’s heart did some more of those delightful skips—
He’s going to give me a key to his house!
—and then John told him the code for the alarm system.
The code for the alarm system!
Then John told Blue to dash upstairs to the bedroom and arrange the blanket on the floor for Chewie—
“Which bedroom?” Blue asked.
“The big one, of course,” John replied easily. “Our room.”
Our room!
—and John followed Blue up the stairs carrying Chewie as if he weighed no more than a stuffed toy.
Blue fluffed and twirled the blanket and tried as best he could to make the blanket a nest he thought Chewie might like. As John effortlessly settled Chewie into the midst of it, Blue wondered if his dog might like his own blanket more. If it would help him feel more at home.
Home.
More heart skips.
John stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed, and Blue got down on his tummy, propped his chin on his upturned hands, and watched Chewie watch them both before resting his head on his paws and seemingly going to sleep.
After a moment John said, “I should go down to the car and get his food.”
Blue looked up at him and said he could do it—surely he could do that much—but John shook his head and got to his feet.
“Nah, I got it,” he said as Blue tried to build up the courage to ask if they could go to his place and get his blanket for Chewie.
He didn’t succeed.
And he didn’t know what to do. Stay up here with his sleeping dog or go downstairs. His indecision meant he was still there when John came back into the room carrying the big bag. He’d insisted on the fifty-pound bag. “A dog his size can eat a lot of food in two months,” he’d said.
Then to Blue’s surprise, John got down on the floor with him, rested his chin on one propped-up hand, and after a long moment said, “How shall we do this?”
Blue looked at him. Do this? Do what?
“I mean, I brought Chewie up here because I figured he’d want to be near us. So we probably need to set up everything up here. We could make the guest bathroom his. That way if he goes to the bathroom on the floor if we’re not here, it will be on tile instead of the carpet. Do you know if he’s paper trained?”
Blue didn’t think so. After all, H.D. had said he hadn’t liked going to the bathroom in the kennel at Four-Footed Friends. “I always take him outside, and he does his business there. He’s never made a mistake inside.”
“Hmm,” John said. “The guest bathroom seems so far from us. Of course, we could just put him in there if we’re both gone. Matter of fact, we could put him in the master bath then.”
Blue didn’t know what to say. This was all in John’s court.
“Yeah. I think that would be best,” John continued. “We’ll have to find a better bed for him too.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then one of his eyebrows rose. “I bet Alistair….” He paused, a funny look on his face. John took a very deep breath. “I—I bet Alistair’s baby mattress is in the attic. Viv had some crazy idea about saving it for his kids, but I don’t know if he has the slightest idea we have it, let alone if he wants it.”
“Alistair?” Blue asked before he could stop himself.
“My son,” John said quietly. He sat up.
Son? John had a son? He hadn’t mentioned him, and… and now John had a sad look on his face.
“He lives in Santa Fe,” John said very quietly.
Blue nodded, at a loss for what else to say.
“He’s your age,” he said even more quietly. Gave a deep sigh. Got to his feet.
“We don’t have to use his baby bed,” Blue said.
John looked at him, and oh, the look on his face!
I did something wrong! What did I do wrong?
John has a son?
“WE DON’T have to use his baby bed,” Blue said.
John looked down at him and saw the strangest expression on Blue’s face.
“It’s okay,” John said, at the same time wondering what the fuck he was doing.
I am sleeping with a man who is the same age as my son.
Stop it! Let go of it. Blue is not Alistair.
But….
Holy shit. Am I trying to replace the son I’ve lost? Is all this affection I’ve built up some kind of fucking redirection of my emotions?
His stomach clenched in aversion at the thought.
Is that what I’m fucking doing?
But looking at Blue’s lovely face—filled with confusion that John knew he’d put there—he was certain Blue wasn’t some attempt to fill in for an apathetic son.
No! He’d thought about it already, and he knew that wasn’t what was going on. Yes, he missed Alistair. Yes, he wondered why they had never seemed to have a real relationship—as if there had always been a little chasm between them that they couldn’t cross.
You couldn’t cross came that inner voice of his, and it all but made him gasp.
No. Don’t even go there. Not right now. Because all that had nothing to do with Blue. This was something else—he just wasn’t sure exactly what. Not yet.
Was it like all those men he’d known through the years who had cheated on their wives with women so much younger than themselves? Something that had always made John feel rather contemptuous of them.
Was he doing the same damned thing?
But one look from those beautiful brown eyes banished that idea as well. He didn’t think it was that either. He always figured those men had done what they had done because they were feeling old and having a young girlfriend fed their egos. Those young women made them feel young again. John wasn’t sure he even had an ego. And he was content with his own age. Didn’t feel….
Wait….
Blue was sitting up now, the look of worry on his face growing stronger.
Could it be something far simpler?
John’s mouth almost fell open at the idea.
Content with his age as he was, sometimes the man who stared back at him in the mirror made him want to say, “Who is that guy?” As if the college picture of him that hung on the wall in the hallway should be staring back instead. Because in truth, that college guy was the best of who he’d been. If he’d ever been happy, that was when it had been. If he’d ever dreamed of seeing the world, or at least the country, it was with dreams of being a professional football player. It had been crushing to discover he just wasn’t good enough. And yet still he’d been happier than he’d ever been at home. Home had meant a weak mother who bowed to his father’s whims. Home had meant a father who thought he was the lord and master of his house. And a small little house it had been.
Ugly place. Squat and square, missing siding showing black paper beneath. But the real ugliness was his father, a man who had never been happy a day in his life. And shit rolled downhill. John had figured that out after he’d left to make his own life. The man hadn’t been happy and didn’t want anyone else to be happy either.
Home had been all those things and worse.
Happy had meant getting away from all that and beginning his own life, no matter what that was. Not football after all. But he found that once he was out from under his father’s thumb, he had an affinity for both people and numbers. An unusual combination, he’d been told. Maybe something like being an investment banker was in his future. A switch in degree to finance, accounting, or mathematics.
And he hadn’t quit football. He figured he’d never be carried off the field on the shoulders of his team. But so what.
John had been happy.
He’d even been tempted by another player. A long-haired blond who gazed at him across rooms with big brown flashing hope-filled eyes. They’d even had a drink at a party. The kid—Marty! His name had been Marty—had asked him if he wanted to go back to his dorm room and showed him a half-concealed half-bottle-size container of some cheap scotch.
They were heading for the door when a friend pulled him aside.
“You ain’t going off with Marty, are you?” the friend had asked, his own alcohol rolling off his breath.
“What?” he’d replied and glanced over at Marty, standing at the door with those hope-filled eyes.
“Marty’s a faggot,” the so-called buddy had said, and John had frozen as if turned to ice. “You go off with him and he’ll be trying to suck your dick. Anybody sees you going off with him and everyone will think you’re a fairy. You ain’t a fag, are you, John?”
“Of course not!” John had cried, yet somehow muffling his voice. Felt for sure the shame that could come with words like fairy and faggot and fag. And knowing—knowing—that wasn’t what he wanted to be. Someone to be spoken of with such derision. Hell, looking at that “friend’s” face, he’d seen outright horror. Even hatred.
John hadn’t gone off with Marty. He’d turned his back and felt shame for it and yet relief at the same time. Along with a heavy, hard need in his groin, a pounding in his chest, and some difficulty catching his breath. Simply from the thought of sharing a few swallows of cheap scotch with that boy. If he’d have gone to Marty’s dorm room, he would have been lost.
Lost? But I would have been happy. How different would my life be today if I had spent that night with Marty? Would I still be with him today?
With all these thoughts in the forefront, he looked into Blue’s eyes, and an idea—very powerful—began to form.
Maybe it wasn’t that this young man made him feel young….
It could quite simply be that he’d actually never let himself be young.
Whoa.
His heart skipped a beat.
By turning his back on Marty, had he cut himself off from being… himself?
Looking at Blue and trying not to stare, he wondered, Are you my youth?
John got off the floor, sat back down on the bed, and patted the space next to him. “Come here,” he said.
Blue slowly got to his feet and came to him only a little hesitantly.
Oh God, Blue.
Then before Blue could sit down, he put his hands on Blue’s narrow hips and pulled him between his open legs and kissed him. He meant it to be light—like those first kisses Blue had given him—but instead it was much more. He opened his mouth, and after a moment Blue followed his lead. Then John moaned and Blue echoed the noise and they had sex again.
Only this time they made love.