Billy's Bones (8 page)

“I guess it’s not really any of my business.”

“No. It absolutely is not your business who I talk to or what we talk about.”

“Okay. That’s cool. I’m sorry I asked.”

“But you want to know anyway.”

Kevin hit him again. “For fuck’s sake! Will you just tell me?”

Tom hesitated, but he knew Kevin wouldn’t want him to sugarcoat it. “Well… she told me two things you probably won’t be happy about.”

“Shoot.”

“She thinks you and I are fucking.”

To his surprise, Kevin just laughed at that. “I’m sure she’d love to watch.”

“And she told me….” Tom was reluctant to say it, but he forged ahead. “She said that you… didn’t want to have sex with her, after the first few times.”

Apparently, that was a bigger deal to Kevin than her thinking he was gay. He was silent for a very long time. Tom didn’t prompt him to say anything. He just lay there quietly, listening to Kevin’s breathing. At last Kevin said, “That’s kind of personal. She shouldn’t be spreading it around to people she barely knows.”

“I agree.”

Another long silence. Then Kevin took a deep breath and said, “It’s not like I couldn’t get hard when I touched her—”

“Stop!” Tom lifted himself up on one elbow so he could look down into Kevin’s face. For the second time in a week, they were in bed together, and the desire to lean down and kiss those full, sensual lips was almost overwhelming. But Kevin was looking up at him with a pained expression, and Tom wrestled his desire into submission. Kevin didn’t need Tom to make a pass at him. He needed Tom to understand. “I’m not your therapist. And I’m not your boyfriend. You don’t need to tell me a goddamned thing about what you do or do not do when you’re having sex. Tracy was looking for some kind of validation. She wanted me to tell her that it wasn’t her fault you weren’t… responsive to her. She wanted me to confirm that you were gay so she could convince herself that she was still appealing to straight men. But I
am
practically a stranger, at least to her, and she had no right to talk about this with me. Sometime, if you want to talk about this as friends, I’ll be willing to listen. But you don’t need to defend yourself to me.”

Kevin looked up at him with those sleepy hazel eyes and asked, “Will you do something for me?”

“What?”

“Will you tell me something about yourself that embarrasses the fuck out of you?”

Tom had to think about that. For the most part, he didn’t have much in his past, or in his life in general, that particularly embarrassed him. He’d wet the bed until he was nine, but that was ancient history. He wasn’t particularly embarrassed by it. Still, one thing came to mind—something he’d never told anybody. “You swear you won’t tell anyone?”

“I swear.”

“When I was at Keene State College, about fifteen or more years ago… I used to hang around in the bathroom at the library.”

Kevin raised one eyebrow quizzically. “The bathroom?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean, for sex?”

Tom nodded.

“Dude! You were giving guys head in the bathroom?”

“Just a few times. I was in my early twenties,” he added, as if that explained it. It didn’t. It had been a stupid, risky thing to do. But he’d been isolated and desperate to connect with other men, even if it was just for a few sleazy moments. “Before you ask, yes, I’ve been tested since then. Several times. HIV, hepatitis, syphilis, the whole nine yards. I’m clean. I was lucky. But it was stupid.”

Kevin looked at him for a long moment, and Tom began to wonder if he’d revealed too much. But then his friend raised his right hand and held it in a fist over his chest. Tom had no idea what it meant, at first, but then he smiled and bumped it with his own fist. “You’re a weird guy,” he said.

“You too, counselor.”

Eight

T
HEY
went out later, briefly, to buy some decent steaks. And more beer, of course. Tom worried that they might be overdoing it in that department, but at the moment he was too caught up in… well, everything about Kevin… to pay much attention to it.

Kevin did the grilling, and the steaks were some of the best Tom had ever tasted. While they ate, Tom said, “It’s the Fourth of July two Sundays from now.”

“Oh yeah,” Kevin said past a mouthful of steak. “You do anything for that?”

“I usually hide eggs and sing carols.”

“Cool.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “What about you?”

“I know a guy who sells fireworks if you want some cheap.”

Tom didn’t particularly relish the idea of setting his house or his woods on fire. Maybe some sparklers might be fun. He set his empty plate down beside his chair, picked up his beer, and took a swig of it. Then he belched loudly before responding. “I guess what I was asking was, are you doing something with your family or something? Or did you want to hang out here?” He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of hanging out at Kevin’s place, truth be told.

Kevin laughed. “They don’t allow fireworks at Riverview. It’s not really a holiday my family ever gave a fuck about, anyway. I mean, Yay! We escaped religious persecution and killed off all the Indians.”

“We didn’t kill them all off.”

Kevin finished his beer and got up to walk to the edge of the deck. “I’m actually part Indian, on my mom’s side. Don’t know what tribe, though. I should ask her sometime.” He unzipped his fly and asked, “Is it okay if I go off the edge of the deck?”

Tom thought that was a bit crass, but he just said, “If you want.”

While Kevin was pissing, Tom leaned back and closed his eyes. He was happy right now. Sitting on the deck of the house he owned, on a warm summer night, with a full stomach, the taste of good steak and beer still in his mouth, and Kevin nearby. If it weren’t for that nitpicky little detail of Kevin being straight, everything would be perfect.

He heard the sound of the hot tub lid being lifted up and opened his eyes. Kevin was standing over it, engulfed in a cloud of steam. “Want to get in?” He folded the padded lid back on itself, and then lifted the entire thing off and set it against the deck railing.

It was tempting. “I only have one pair of swim trunks,” Tom hedged.

“Don’t be an ass. You don’t wear a swimsuit in a hot tub.”

And with that, Kevin stripped out of his T-shirt and shorts and climbed into the water. Tom was dumbstruck. Just like that, the guy he’d been fantasizing about was stark naked. As far as Tom could tell, Kevin wasn’t even drunk.

Tom stood and walked over to the hot tub. The blue lights inside the tub illuminated the water and cast an eerie glow up into Kevin’s grinning face.

“Don’t tell me you’re shy,” Kevin teased.

“Fuck you.” Tom stripped and climbed into the water. It felt wonderful, especially when Kevin fiddled with the control console and started the jets pumping.

Tom found one of the built-in seats and slid into it, where two of the jets could massage his lower back. He sighed in pleasure. He expected Kevin to stay on the other side of the tub, but the other man swam through the center of the tub and took a seat beside him.

They sat there in silence, eyes closed while the jets massaged them. Tom was intensely aware that Kevin was naked and within arm’s reach. He couldn’t touch, but Kevin didn’t seem to mind if he looked.

Hot tubs were awesome.

K
EVIN
seemed to agree with him about the wonders of hot tubs because the man was over the next night and the night after that, ready to fire up the grill and jump in the hot tub after eating. It went on like that for the next few days. Not that Kevin was obnoxious about it. He didn’t exactly invite himself over. He would just call to chat after Tom got home from work, or Tom would call him. And before either of them really knew what was happening, they were finding an excuse for Kevin to swing by.

Apparently they’d become friends, and that was just fine with Tom. He loved Kevin’s company, and he loved Kevin’s cheeseburgers, even though he was beginning to worry that nightly cheeseburgers and beer might not be so good for his waistline.

And he certainly didn’t mind Kevin getting naked in front of him on a nightly basis. Especially since Kevin, once out of his clothes, tended to
stay
out of his clothes. He wasn’t the least bit shy about bopping around the deck in the nude for the rest of the evening until he headed home and seemed to expect Tom to do the same. Whatever Kevin’s issue had been the night Tom first came out to him, he seemed to have gotten over it.

Most of the time, their conversation was light and inconsequential. Every now and then, Kevin would talk about his work or his life with Tracy. Nothing particularly personal. Tom noticed that Kevin never volunteered any stories about his youth or his family, but although he was curious, Tom had no real reason to probe him about those subjects.

The exception to keeping it casual was talk about sex. Kevin seemed to delight in giving personal details about how many times he’d masturbated that day or describing techniques he’d tried that would make most men blush to admit to. And he had no qualms about asking for intimate details from Tom either, despite his professed lack of interest when the subject had come up the night they’d been hanging out at his trailer.

If Tom had felt his interest was at all homophobic—along the lines of “How can you let a guy fuck you up the ass?” accompanied by a look of disgust—then he would have been annoyed and put a stop to it. But Kevin’s interest seemed genuine. He liked talking about sex. If anything, his interest in the details of Tom’s masturbatory and sexual habits seemed prurient, as if hearing about Tom jerking off somehow turned Kevin on.

Maybe it did. Sexuality was complicated. Straight men often enjoyed masturbating with other men and couldn’t always explain why.

Tom found he didn’t really mind answering Kevin’s questions. When Kevin was in this mood, it often lent a surreal eroticism to their time together that Tom enjoyed.

One evening, Kevin asked him, “Do you like the smell of come?”

Tom laughed. “Yes, I do. I like the taste, too, if I’m horny enough.”

“I think it smells really gross,” Kevin said. “I always have to wipe up right away and get that damned paper towel as far away from me as possible.”

“I take it you’re not one of those guys who has a favorite rag or sock, then,” Tom said, amused.

“Hell no! Throw that shit away!”

Well, Tom mused, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about finding any little “surprises” if Kevin stayed the night in his guest room someday.

But then Kevin surprised him by saying, “I’m not sure I really like sex.”

“Says the man who talks almost constantly about jerking off.”

“I like jerking off,” Kevin amended. “But whenever a girl touches me, I feel kind of… cold inside. I don’t like it.”

Suddenly they were on dangerous ground again, and Tom squirmed in his chair. He got up to get himself another beer, using the action as an excuse to formulate his thoughts coherently. But when he turned around, he saw Kevin watching him with a broad grin on his face.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Kevin said.

“Do you?”

“You’re thinking, ‘Maybe the reason Kevin doesn’t like making it with chicks is because he’d secretly like making it with a guy.’”

Tom fetched another beer for Kevin, too, and then went back to his deck chair. “I don’t think I’ve ever used the word ‘chick’ in my life. And although I’ll admit that the general thought did flash through my mind—it’s kind of hard to
avoid
that thought—but…. Are you sure you really want to talk about this?”

Kevin took a swig of his new beer. “Fuck it. Yeah. Let’s talk about it. Unless it makes you uncomfortable.”

“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable,” Tom said, although that was only partially true. This was getting pretty personal, considering they’d only known each other a few weeks. “But… okay. So you have an issue having sex with women. But being gay isn’t about aversion to women, no matter what you might have heard growing up. It’s about being attracted to men. The two have nothing to do with each other.”

“So the question is, am I attracted to men?”

“Yes. Are you?”

Kevin took another swig of beer, and this time Tom was aware the man was scrutinizing him intently while he did so, no doubt trying to gauge whether he had any kind of sexual reaction to Tom’s body. It wasn’t something Tom felt comfortable with, but he endured it patiently until Kevin spoke.

“I think you’re attractive,” Kevin said simply.

Tom felt a brief flutter of hope spring up in the back of his mind and quickly stomped it down. “Thanks. But it’s possible to find people attractive without being turned on by them.”

“Dude… I’m more comfortable with you than I ever was with Tracy.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Tom said, “but a lot of straight guys are more comfortable hanging out with other men than being with their wives. It’s one of the consequences of a culture that raises boys and girls to have very little in common.”

Kevin was beginning to grow frustrated, as if he wanted Tom to just come out and slap a label of “gay” on him. “Hell, I don’t know. There were times when I caught myself watching other guys in the locker room in school. And when I look at porn, I don’t like the stuff that just has women. I like to see a woman and a guy going at it.”