Smoky Mountain Dreams (54 page)

“Naw, I just met her a few times. She was nice, though. Was
a shame what happened to her.”

“So you know she’s still alive? They’re still married?”

“Yeah, I know. The court case was all the talk a few years
back. I guess it all ended right before you came. Why? You didn’t know?”

“No. Well, I mean, yeah. I know now.”

“He kept it from you?”

“No, not really. Nothing like that.”

“Jesse Birch was always a weird dude,” Gareth said
thoughtfully.

Christopher was quiet a moment, taking that in. “Strange. It
never occurred to me that you knew him. But you grew up here, so of course you
know him, just like everyone knows everyone around this place.”

“We weren’t friends. I doubt he’d know me from a hole in the
wall, but as a kid I admired him,” Gareth said quietly, taking the beer from
the waitress with a smile. He scratched at his beard as she walked away. “He
was the first man I ever knew to be out in Gatlinburg. Back when I was just a
dumb, poor, redneck kid scared to death of what I felt. I gotta hand it to
him—seeing teenaged Jesse Birch swan about like a flaming faggot was at least a
promise that I weren’t totally alone.” Gareth huffed. “Then he got married to
her. Blew my mind. I never understood it.”

“He says he’s bi.”

Gareth shrugged. “Whatever he is, it put me back a spell,
until I decided that it didn’t matter what he did, only what I did.”

Christopher felt the urge to defend Jesse against Gareth’s
judgment, but he tamped it down and took a swallow of his drink. He’d need
another at this rate.

“So what happened?” Gareth asked. “Or would you rather just
drink here together. Talk about work? Something boring?” He nudged Christopher
with his shoulder. “Whatever you want.”

He didn’t know what to say about what had happened without
telling Gareth things that weren’t his business. He rubbed at his eyebrow with
a thumb and finally said, “Thanksgiving was bad for me this year.”

“Yeah?”

Christopher shrugged. “I got disowned.”

“Shit.” Gareth sighed. “I don’t need to ask why, do I?”

“Nope.”

“Well, fuck ‘em.”

“I know. It’s just…at first I thought it was going to be
okay, because I had Jesse. But it looks like I might not have him after all.
So, I’ve got basically nobody. My Gran, but she’s old. One day it’ll just be
me. Alone. Lonely.”

Gareth was silent for a long time, drinking his beer, and
keeping his eyes on the table. “You’d never have to be alone, Christopher.”

Fuck, that wasn’t what he’d intended to do. Christopher
stayed silent.

Finally, Gareth cleared his throat. “Holly said something
about you singing at a nursing home?”

“Yeah. I covered for Shannon today because of all that stuff
with Corey and Jeanette. Turns out where Shannon does all her volunteering? Is
at Jesse’s wife’s nursing home.” Christopher took a long swallow. “Everything
was okay. I was singing with the old people and enjoying myself. I’d managed to
decide that no matter how curious I was, I was going to leave the place without
looking for a way to see Marcy. I was just gonna go. Then the director told me
I should go room to room for the residents who can’t get out of bed. And the
first damn room she took me to was Marcy’s! Fuck me!” Christopher’s throat
closed up and he shook his head.

“That bad, huh?”

Christopher swallowed his liquor wildly, trying not to think
about the intimate horror of seeing Marcy. After a few silent moments, the
sounds of the bar filling up the space, Christopher whispered, “Yeah, that bad.
So I saw her. Jesse showed up, and he wasn’t happy about that.”

“Huh.” Gareth took a sip of his beer and put one arm around
Christopher’s shoulder, squeezing before he let go.

Christopher could feel the heat of Gareth’s hand and arm
where he’d touched him. He felt like he needed to explain Jesse’s reaction. “He’s
really protective of her.”

“You weren’t gonna hurt her.”

“No. Of course not. But I think for Jesse it’s not just
about hurting her physically, but…somehow hurting her memory.”

Gareth obviously didn’t get it, but he just nodded and took
another swallow, and then reached to squeeze Christopher’s shoulder again.

“I can’t explain. I know it doesn’t make sense.”

“It don’t need to. Just talk it out,” Gareth said. “I don’t
need to get it. I just need to listen to you.”

Christopher couldn’t help but feel a little choked up at
that. He so craved being seen, being heard, and Gareth was offering just that. “I
think it’s about dignity,” Christopher whispered. “There’s just no dignity in
what I saw. I think he wants to give her that, and I took it away from her
without even asking.”

“He’ll get over it,” Gareth said, his voice tender and close
to Christopher’s ear.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him that angry.”

“Mark my words: he’ll get over it unless he’s stupid. And
that man ain’t stupid. He won’t make the mistake I did and let you go.”

Christopher smiled at him, feeling the edges of his mouth go
wobbly with drink and emotion. “Yeah?”

“Of course.”

Christopher sighed, remembering the cold rage on Jesse’s
face. “It’s all tied up together, you know? Thanksgiving. My family. Jesse. Him
being angry with me. Maybe dumping me. I just want someone to be proud to call
me theirs. I have Gran, but…” He sighed, knowing she wasn’t going to be around
forever. “But I want a family, you know? The kind of family where you sit down
at Thanksgiving and everybody’s happy you’re there.”

“Normal thing to want,” Gareth said, swallowing beer.

“But I don’t have that. Not with my family, for sure. And
not with Jesse now.”

Christopher got a refill and they drank silently for a few
minutes before he started talking again. “When I saw her today with my own
eyes, she was so different from what I’d thought.”

“Ugly.”

“No…well, yes. Just, well, really fucking sad and kind of
naked. Not physically naked, but like she was stripped of everything and I was
seeing it. It was awful. Just fucking awful.”

“Poor bastard,” Gareth said. “Dealing with that.”

Christopher nodded. The memory of Marcy haunted him. “When
he came in? Saw me there? Fuck, he was
not okay
with
it. He made it pretty damn clear that I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t family.”
He turned to Gareth. “
She
is his family and I’m not.
At all.”

“Truth is, you haven’t earned it yet.”

Christopher huffed a bitter laugh. “Yeah, I guess not. Now
who knows if I ever will.”

“I don’t know a lot about relationships. I fucked up with
Rick pretty good, not once, but twice.”

“What happened there?”

“Well, the first time we broke up because he got shipped
out. Speakin’ of earning it. I didn’t think he’d earned me waiting for him. And
maybe he hadn’t.”

Christopher got up the nerve to ask what he’d wanted to know
for a long time. “So why did you go back to him? That night we had…I thought…it
hurt a lot when you ended it.”

Gareth groaned and rubbed a hand over his beard. “Wish you
wouldn’t say that kind of shit, Christopher, because it just makes me want to
ram my head in the wall when I know you ain’t comin’ back to me.” He sighed. “I
know I look tough, but you can break me with a word.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. And I went back to him because you scared me.”

“How? What did I do?”
Have I scared off
Jesse too?

“I’d never felt like that before. Not with Rick. Not with my
first boyfriend. Not nobody. I’d never wanted to throw myself in someone’s arms
and never let ‘em go. Scared the shit out of me. So when Rick called, it was
easy to say yes to goin’ back to him. So much easier than saying yes to how I
felt about you. I never thought I was a coward until then. But I guess I am.”

“Gareth…” Christopher swallowed hard, his heart aching for
the vulnerability in Gareth’s expression, his wounded eyes that had lured him
so strongly from the beginning. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. And I meant what I said at the Christmas
tree farm. If it’s over with him, I want another shot. But it ain’t done yet,
Christopher. You’re in love with him and I can see that. So, you gotta see if
you can make this right. I care about you too much to let you break your own
heart.”

“Fuck,” Christopher whispered, his throat going tight. He
forced another sip down, and rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand.

The heat of Gareth’s presence next to him was a nice
distraction. He could lean over and kiss him. He could push his fingers into
Gareth’s hair, whisper a plea against his mouth, and they could get the hell
out of this bar and go fuck somewhere, and he could forget for a few minutes
how much he wanted Jesse to text or call or walk through the door of the bar
and grab him up and take him home and declare him family. To declare his love.
Which, Christopher realized, he’d never done. He’d said a lot of things, but I
love you had never been one of them. What if that was because he didn’t, couldn’t,
and wouldn’t?

Don’t be a chowder-head, boy.

It was Gran’s voice in his head for the first time in weeks.
Christopher laughed softly, tears pricking his eyes, and he drank more gin
while Gareth rubbed his back.

“S’gonna be okay,” Gareth crooned. “I saw how he looked at
you. He knows what he’s got. And he’ll make up with you.”

Christopher wondered what it cost Gareth to be here with
him, comforting him and encouraging him to have faith in another man’s love. If
Gareth had been a coward, he was sure making up for it now. Brave and loving. A
good man. Christopher would be a complete dick to take advantage of his
affection just to soothe his own pain.

“I should get home,” Christopher said. “Drinking isn’t going
to make this better. I should just go to bed and maybe when I wake up tomorrow
it’ll be a better day?” He ended as though asking a question, hoping that
Gareth would assure him that it was likely to be just that.

“I don’t think you should drive.” Gareth scooted out of the booth.

“I’m okay.” Christopher stood, his feet tangling under him
so that he tipped sideways into Gareth. “Fuck. Okay, so maybe not.”

“I’ll drive you.” Gareth dropped some money on the table.
Christopher did the same, noting that misery-drinking was pretty expensive.

“I don’t know—I mean, maybe I should just hang out here
until I’ve sobered up.”

“You could. Whatever you want.”

Christopher remembered the last time Gareth had been to his
house and flushed hard, his nipples going taut and his cock fattening. He sank
back down. “I think I’ll wait it out.” He didn’t want to say it was too
dangerous to let Gareth take him home. But that was the truth. Christopher knew
what he wanted and Gareth wasn’t it, but being drunk and heartbroken had led
lesser men to make mistakes. He wouldn’t be one of them.

“Water,” Gareth called out to the waitress, motioning at
them both. “Then let’s get you sobered up.”

Christopher settled in, checking his cell phone again. He
sighed into his freshly delivered glass of water. There was nothing from Jesse.

But there was a new text from Jackie.

J
ESSE
WOKE THE NEXT MORNING
with a hangover and a fuzzy mouth. He rolled over,
looking around at the deep burgundy of the master bedroom walls and the empty
space in the bed beside him where Marcy had slept. Groaning, he stretched and
got up to take a leak, grabbing his cell phone on the way to the bathroom.
Nothing from Christopher. Not that Jesse deserved any messages or calls.

He padded down the hallway to the guest room he’d been
spending most nights with Christopher. He’d resolved, though, to get a designer
in to redo the master bedroom in the new year.

Jesse noticed the copy of
American Gods
on the bedside table, and remembered how Christopher had pulled it from his
bookshelf downstairs and taken it to bed with him the other night. He’d looked
so adorable tucked up in the bed with it in one hand, his face still pink from
the heat of his pre-bed shower, and his lower lip pulled into his mouth as he’d
read. And then there’d been his smile when he noticed Jesse in the doorway:
radiant, shy, sultry, excited. So many things. But mostly happy.

Fuck. Had he ruined that? His stomach churned. He wasn’t
going to work today—he was going to Christopher’s and making this right.

Shower, clothes, and coffee, and then he was out the door,
twining around the mountain down to the main drag, only to turn by his closed
jewelry studio to head back up to Christopher’s place.

When he arrived, the little red Yaris was gone, but there
was a blue, beat-up Chevy Avalanche parked where Christopher’s car usually sat.
Jesse’s palms went sweaty. He slid the gear into park and swallowed, his mind
racing with the possibility that Christopher might have…but, no, he wouldn’t.
It was a friend’s truck. Or maybe his sister’s husband had come up from
Knoxville. It wasn’t anything to get worried about. So why was his chest aching
and blood rushing in his ears?