Good Bones (19 page)

Dylan realized that he’d been right. Nobody had ever said this to Chris before. “You’re brave. You’re funny. You’re… surprising. In a good way. We haven’t really done all that much together—just remodeling and a little shopping and kind of hanging out—but I’ve been having fun. I feel like I could never get bored with you, not even if I never got in your pants again. You’re a hell of a lot smarter than you like to let on. You’re generous. You’ve never judged me.” He snuffled deeply at Chris’s hair. “You’re a good cook, and you always smell goddamn delicious.”

For a moment, Dylan really was afraid he’d said too much. But then Chris made a desperate sort of moaning sound and began tugging frantically at Dylan’s wet clothes. “You are so gonna get lucky tonight, dude,” he growled.

I already have
, thought Dylan.

Somehow they ended up on Dylan’s bed, Dylan now as bare as Chris, and Dylan’s mouth was everywhere on that citrus-scented skin, and Chris was writhing and bucking beneath him. Usually Chris was fairly quiet when they had sex, mostly just uttering a few blasphemies when things got especially intense, but now he was gasping endearments—“Yeah, like that, baby. F-fuck yeah, Dyl. Please. Oh God, p-please.”—making sexy little rumbles in his chest, and periodically tugging Dylan’s head down by the hair to lick at his jaw line.

The lube was hastily fumbled from the bedside table and cursorily applied to Chris’s twitching, welcoming hole. The condom was rolled on with fingers grown clumsy with haste and desire. Chris hooked his feet over Dylan’s shoulders, and Dylan held tight to Chris’s hips, and it was if Dylan couldn’t get in far enough or fast enough to please them, as if they were both striving for some kind of impossible union that was almost within reach. Chris’s core was as hot as flames. His head was thrown back, his collarbones prominent, and his neck stretched out. He demanded more and more and Dylan gave it, both of them soaring together with mingled howls and then floating down to land in one another’s arms.

Instead of getting dressed and slogging back to his little house, Chris pulled the covers over them both, rolled onto his belly with his arms and legs stretched wide and one arm resting across Dylan’s torso, and fell deeply asleep.

Chapter 16

D
YLAN
woke up three times during the night. Part of it was lunar restlessness—the moon would be full the next night—but more than that, he wanted to stare greedily at the man sleeping beside him. There had been only a handful of times in his entire life when he’d actually slept with someone, and he liked it, even though Chris managed to take up two-thirds of the bed and most of the blankets. Dylan wanted to reach over and pet him, to run his fingers through the tousled hair, but he stopped himself because he was afraid that if Chris woke up, maybe he’d go back to his own house.

But when Dylan’s eyes fluttered open to the daylight, Chris was still there. His head was propped on one elbow as he stared at his bedmate. “You snore,” he announced.

“So do you. And you’re a bed hog.”

“Your mattress is better than mine.”

“Yeah,” Dylan agreed, although he’d never actually slept in Chris’s bed. “You could use a new one.”

Chris reached over and with surprising tenderness pushed the hair out of Dylan’s face. He was wearing his half smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which remained solemn, maybe a little sad. “You ain’t never gonna let me in, are you?”

Dylan blinked sleepily at him, not understanding. “You… you want to top next time? ’Cause that’s fine with me.”

“Ain’t what I meant.” Chris tapped his finger on the center of Dylan’s forehead. “In here.”

“I don’t… I don’t understand.”

With a heavy sigh, Chris sat up, dragging the blankets with him and gathering them around his waist. His upper body remained bare, skin golden in the light that escaped the sheets hung as makeshift curtains. “Don’t matter,” he said.

Dylan was beginning to realize that there were more hazards in spending the night with someone than simply morning breath. He didn’t want to talk about feelings, not before his first cup of coffee and probably not after. And not when he could still smell the bath oil on both their bodies, still smell the traces of Chris’s come on the bedding. Dylan was half-hard and half-lazy, and what he wanted to do was either fuck or go back to sleep. Instead he sighed and sat up.

“If you’re mentioning it, then it does matter.”

They were sitting next to each other, backs propped on pillows, both staring at the opposite wall. Dylan hated the wallpaper in here even more than he’d hated the chickens in the kitchen. At least someone could have argued that the chickens had retro kitsch value. This room had malformed brownish flowers. He wondered whether Chris’s great uncle had picked out the paper and why he’d chosen that pattern.

“You’ve always known I’m just a redneck,” Chris said quietly. “Kinda guy who pees off his back porch. I didn’t even finish high school. Thought for a while about gettin’ my GED but never bothered. And after those assholes in the tavern, you know what I… what I used to be. You know about my dumbass family and my ugly shack and… and you know everythin’.”

“Yeah, and I told you: I like you just as you are. None of the bad stuff bothers me—well, maybe your taste in music. But really, most of your stuff’s all good with me.”

“But that ain’t the point. You know me, know everything that’s important. But you got somethin’… this place you go to in your head… and I can’t come in. Some big fucking secret and I can tell it’s goddamn important, and you won’t tell me what it is.”

Dylan hunched his shoulders. He wanted to explain, he really did. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“You don’t trust me.”

Dylan twisted his body to look at Chris, who was staring angrily away, jaw clenched tightly. “No! That’s not… goddamn it, that’s not it. It’s not you, Chris.”

Chris’s laughter held no humor. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say when you break up with a chick? ‘It’s not you, it’s me’.”

Dylan’s stomach twisted, and he suddenly felt very cold. “Is that what we’re doing? Breaking up?”

“Can’t break up if you ain’t really together,” Chris answered. Finally he turned to face Dylan. He looked sad, pitying maybe, but not angry. “I’m still gonna do this, Dylan. Still gonna work for you and cook for you, and we can still fuck, because I’m willin’ to make do with that little. It’s more’n I’ve had before, anyway. And maybe it’s for the best, ’cause then you won’t break my fuckin’ heart when you leave. But—”

“I’m not going to leave!”

“But you deserve more, dude. And you ain’t never gonna get more if you keep yourself locked up.”

With that pronouncement, Chris pushed off the blankets, stood, and padded to the bathroom.

C
HRIS
would have stayed and worked with him that day. It’s what Dylan had planned, originally. With the kitchen and downstairs bath complete, they could tackle the master bath next. Or maybe they’d get rid of that fucking ugly wallpaper instead.

But Dylan was unsettled by Chris’s comments and hated himself for not being able to tell the goddamn truth, making him even more restless than usual this time of month. So he told Chris he needed to work on the Beaverton project, which wasn’t a lie, but then he added untruths. “No dinner tonight either. I’m just going to work on through.”

Chris’s eyes searched Dylan’s face, and even though Chris was a grown man—almost two years older than Dylan, in fact—and fully capable of taking care of himself, for a moment he seemed lost and vulnerable. Dylan wanted to gather him in his arms and tell him everything would be all right, but that would be another falsehood.

“If you’re done with me, fucking say so,” Chris said quietly. “Don’t take off like a fucking coward, like—”

Like everyone else has.
Dylan knew that’s what Chris had intended to say. The poor bastard had abandonment issues, and he’d fallen in with a monster.

Dylan cupped Chris’s cheek in one hand. “I’m not done with you, and for the hundredth time, I am not going anywhere.”

Relief washed across Chris’s features. He nodded once and walked out the back door, letting it slam behind him.

After standing there for several minutes, Dylan walked into the living room, sat down at his drafting table, and booted up his computer. He was likely to end up fired anyway, but he might as well give the project a concerted effort. The minutes ticked by as the blank screen mocked him. He was distracted by the birds zooming and twittering outside his window. After a while he stood and paced the room. Stender might have opined about the inspirational powers of nature, but at the moment Dylan felt as inspired as a chunk of rock.

He stopped in the corner of the room and banged his head against the wall three times. That didn’t help either.

Okay then. Maybe Stender was right, or maybe a change of scenery would help. Dylan pulled on his jacket and found his boots where he’d abandoned them the night before. Then he headed across the backyard, glancing at the little barn as he went. Maybe he could design a barn house for his clients, something with soaring ceilings and exposed beams. No. You could find plenty of those in Beaverton already.

The ground was still muddy from the previous night’s downpour, so he stepped carefully down the path. Maybe when the blackberries were ripe, he could pick a bunch and bring them to Kay and beg for more pie. Hell, he’d have enough berries for a thousand pies, even after he cleared the brambles from the trail.

Everything was so lush and green down by the pond. He felt that if he stood still too long, he might start sprouting moss himself. It was a time of verdant growth, and he very much looked forward to hunting later that night. The woods would be teeming with new life.

At some point in the distant past a storm had felled a tree near the banks of the pond. Dylan sat on the broad trunk, not caring too much about the damp that seeped through to his butt. The ducks were back, paddling around at the opposite end of the water, this time with a half-dozen fluffy balls in their wake. A part of him thought
prey
, but he smiled as another part, just as adamant, found the ducklings adorable.

If it wasn’t going to be a barn house maybe it could be a miniature castle. There would be stone facing throughout—stucco if the clients wanted to save some money—and crenelated towers. He would put in faux arrow slits and a drawbridge over a miniature moat. He’d include a courtyard, of course, maybe with a low fountain for the dogs to splash in, and the interior would have massive timbers and curved archways and a fireplace big enough to roast a pig. Fit for the futon queens. But also clichéd and maybe a bit too Disneyfied for the clients’ tastes.

Maybe the key was to think outside the box geographically. He could design a house that would look perfectly at home in, say, Tuscany or Tokyo, in Lima or Lusaka. “A giant yurt,” he said out loud, because when you owned thirty acres you could talk to yourself, and there would be nobody around to call you crazy. “A trullo or a yaodong or a mudhif or an izba. A Soviet-era rabbit hutch or a row house without the row.” He could put his comparative architecture college course to good use. But no, still too theme-parky, and besides, he doubted any contractor in the Portland area had experience in building structures made of reeds or cow dung.

He could base the house on a historical model. Fake Tudor was overdone, but what about something a little more radical? A Chinook longhouse. An Aleut ulax. A Greek temple or Roman villa. A pyramid. Now the project was starting to sound like something from the Vegas Strip. “How about a goddamn cave?” he shouted, and the startled ducks quacked at him with disapproval.

His ass was getting cold. He stood and stretched, then scowled at a clump of ferns as if it were to blame for his predicament. He trudged back up the path and—instead of heading straight to the house—he skirted the edge of the bramble, heading for the rows of overgrown Christmas trees. He leaned back against one of them and inhaled deeply. He’d always enjoyed the scent of evergreens, even when his nose had been an ordinary human one.

Although he found this part of the farm slightly unsettling, it drew him nonetheless. It was like a display of entropy in action: the neat, artificial rows of trees gone blurry with seedlings and underbrush and fallen limbs, the trees themselves grown much too tall to fit inside any home. He wondered whether they regretted their missed opportunity to be briefly decorated and worshiped, or whether they reveled in their freedom, like an animal escaping from the slaughterhouse back to the wilderness. Maybe a little of both.

Somehow that line of thought led him to considering Chris, who was also a juxtaposition of domestic and untamed. “Wild one” read the tattoo of the man who used to give blow jobs to straight men in rural tavern men’s rooms, who lived without a plan beyond the next few weeks, who lived in a rundown shack and sometimes found it easier to urinate off the back porch than to listen to his toilet gasp and gurgle. But Chris was also a man who knew how to cook, who could build a kitchen or repair an engine, who read Kurt Vonnegut and worried about his lover abandoning him.