Smoky Mountain Dreams (8 page)

“Are you happy here?” Jesse asked.

“Dang, man. That’s a tough question.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. Don’t be sorry.” Christopher wished he hadn’t
pulled his hand away. He cleared his throat. “I don’t know. I like my work. I
love to sing and perform. I guess I’m happy, sure. I could be working a cash
register somewhere like Darla, so it could be worse. How about you? Jewelry
makes you happy?”

Jesse smiled and cast his eyes down. “Not as much as it used
to. But speaking of jewelry—I brought along the design for your grandmother’s
locket. I figured if I managed to finagle some time with you tonight I might be
able to get the go ahead to move forward with it.

Christopher felt his heart sink. It wasn’t a date. It was
business. “Sure, of course. Let’s see it.”

Jesse reached into the inside breast pocket of his coat and
pulled out a folded piece of paper. He smoothed it onto the table between them
and turned it so Christopher could see.

The drawing was in ink, detailed and meticulous. An oval
locket, noted as being two and one-third inches tall and two inches wide, was
pictured with three stones in the middle set together to form an approximation
of a heart. Around the stones and along the sides, oak leaves and acorns were
built up, as though holding the stones in place.

“My friend Matt Crowe lives on the Qualla Boundary—you know,
the Cherokee land? I’ve already emailed him about deer teeth to use here,”
Jesse said, pointing at the three white ovals on the drawing. “Obviously teeth
vary naturally, and they aren’t as easy to shape and polish without damaging
them, so I’ll have to see if the teeth he supplies will actually work to form a
heart, but we can figure out how to use whatever he gives me.”

“The heart’s a little kitsch, anyway,” Christopher said. He
was surprised by how pleased he was with the design, though he didn’t know why.
Jesse had a reputation for a reason, and listening to his clients was probably
key to making them happy.

“I can remove it.”

“No. Gran likes kitsch.”

Jesse chuckled. “Most grandmothers do. But if you feel like
it’s too much…”

“No. Really, I like it. I guess we’ll see if the teeth work.
If they don’t, I’m sure I’ll like the design just as well without the heart.”

Jesse seemed to be measuring his sincerity, and then nodded.
“As you can see, there will be four frames for the pictures inside the locket,
and I was thinking a small acorn at the pinnacle of each frame would be a nice
touch.”

Jesse explained the drawing a bit more, his fine fingers
pointing out the various design elements and features. Christopher ate as he
listened, nodding and asking questions that seemed pertinent but were really
designed to keep Jesse talking. Even if this was just a business meeting,
Christopher didn’t want it to be over yet.

Eventually there was no getting around it. There was nothing
more to be said about the locket, and it was just a matter of giving Jesse the
go ahead, which Christopher did enthusiastically. As Jesse folded the paper
again, Christopher took a final bite of his biscuit and sighed. He supposed now
would be the moment when Jesse took his leave.

Instead, Jesse smiled. “Do you have to head home now? Or…”
his eyes dropped to Christopher’s mouth and lingered there. “Here, you’ve
got—let me just—” Jesse reached out and wiped crumbs from the corner of
Christopher’s lower lip.

Christopher licked the place Jesse had just touched and
watched Jesse’s eyes follow his tongue. He was gay. He had to be. Other guys
would’ve said, “Dude, you’ve got food on your face,” if they said anything at
all. They wouldn’t have touched his mouth. They wouldn’t be looking at him like
that
.

“Want to get dessert?” Christopher asked, his stomach
fluttering when Jesse grinned and nodded.

J
ESSE
OPENED HIS MOUTH, BUT
Christopher put a finger to his lips. “Shh, don’t
talk. Wait a minute.”

Jesse wasn’t sure where they were going, or why they needed
to be quiet, but after Christopher made a show of double checking that the side
path by the grist mill was still empty, he grabbed Jesse’s hand and pulled him
through the rhododendron bushes. Jesse ducked low so as not to get hit in the
face by branches as Christopher pushed on ahead.

On the other side, Jesse found himself up close and personal
with the side of the mill. The gray wood looked almost fuzzy in the moonlight,
and the sound of the water slap-slapping as the wheel turned struck him as
somehow sensual.

“What are we—”

Christopher hushed him again and whispered, “Trust me.”

Jesse flashed back to a time in Prague when he’d followed a
guy he’d met in a club through the city’s winding streets, unable to
communicate with him since he spoke no Czech and the man spoke almost no
English. In the end, he’d found himself on his knees in an alley beside a
church, sucking the guy’s cock like his life depended on it, while the man
whispered a foreign word that sounded like, “Trust, trust…” over and over.

Jesse recalled the thrill of swallowing the man’s cum, of
shooting his own over his hand as he’d jerked himself off, and the man’s gentle
kiss when he’d deposited Jesse outside of the night club again before walking
away. Marcy had been so pissed he’d gone off alone with a stranger. Brent, her
boyfriend at the time, hadn’t been impressed either.

Jesse swallowed hard, remembering those days as remarkably
easy. It hadn’t been long after that when Marcy had sent Brent packing, and
shortly thereafter things had changed between him and Marcy too. But he wasn’t
going to think about Marcy right now. Not tonight. Not here with Christopher.

“This way,” Christopher whispered.

He led Jesse toward the slowly revolving water wheel. The
grist mill had been part of Smoky Mountain Dreams for as long as Jesse could
remember. The gingerbread and cookies had been one of the big draws of the park
when he was a kid, back when it had been still mostly a craft fair rather than
the full-fledged amusement park it was now. As an adult he rarely came to Smoky
Mountain Dreams without taking home a loaf of gingerbread to enjoy over his
morning coffee.

“Down here,” Christopher said, ducking just behind the wheel
and through a well-hidden door beneath the mill.

Jesse followed him, keeping silent as instructed since they
clearly weren’t supposed to be here. Underneath the grist mill, it was
surprisingly dry given how close they were to the pond and the splash of the
water wheel. It was also tall enough to stand fully upright, though it was
incredibly dark, and Jesse couldn’t see Christopher in the pitch black.

Suddenly there was a small burst of brightness, and Christopher’s
face was visible above a flashlight on a key ring. “Dessert is straight ahead,”
he said, gesturing with the beam at a set of wooden stairs that led up about
half a flight to a door which obviously went into the mill and the bakery
inside.

Carefully, Jesse followed Christopher up the stairs, feeling
each riser with his foot before taking the step. “They just leave it unlocked?”
he asked.

“Nope. But I’ve got the key.”

“Why?” Jesse asked.

“Because I asked nicely.”

Jesse scoffed, but Christopher turned the key in the lock
and opened the door. Jesse followed him through.

“Here, let me…” Christopher reached past Jesse, and a low
light flickered on, just enough that the room was safe to traverse. There were
still looming shadows. Christopher locked the door again behind them.

They had entered by the millworks themselves, and Jesse took
a moment to run his eyes over the old gears and axle, and admired the metal
equipment that sorted and poured the flour after it was ground.

“Nice, huh?”

“Beautiful,” Jesse said.

“I thought you’d appreciate it. My Gran used to work here
when she was a teenager. She started when she was fourteen. It was a long time
before Smoky Mountain Dreams bought the property, obviously.” Christopher ran
his hand along the polished wood of the banister that was erected to keep the
tourists away from the equipment when it was running. “Well, more accurately,
she was married to the owner.”

“Wow. It’s hard to believe how
young
people got married back then.”

Christopher looked thoughtful. “Yeah. She was forced into it
for money reasons. He was fifty.”

“Oh,” Jesse said, a feeling of repulsion rocking through
him. He’d met men like that when he was younger. Chicken hawks, they’d called
them, and he’d let one take him home only once when he’d been desperate and
full of self-destructive recklessness.

“She said working in the mill saved her sanity, though. She
loved it. It kept her mind off the rest of her life. And when her husband died
of scarlet fever when Gran was seventeen and pregnant with Uncle Rodney, she
sold it for enough money so she could start a life in Gatlinburg.”

“Wow. That’s a sad story in a way.”

“It gets sadder because Rodney died in Vietnam.”

“Your poor Gran.”

“Yeah. Appalachia is full of sad stories. Great ones too.
Triumph over adversity and all of that stuff. Like this park and what Melissa
Mundy’s done for the people around here. But you’re from this area. You already
know that.”

Jesse agreed. His own family was a perfect example. They’d
been mountain folk too, and when he’d been very small, his grandfather had told
him stories of the first time he’d seen the electric lights, fueled by power
from the TVA dams, turn on in the Tennessee Valley. It’d been beautiful, and it’d
blown his mind.

Christopher went on, “Her life wound up being happy enough,
I guess. She met my grandfather when she was twenty-four and had a good life
with him. She’d used the money from selling this mill to open a store. She sold
fudge…and books, because, well, why not?”

“No way. She owned Books and Fudge? I loved that place as a
kid.” Jesse grinned. “I mean, where else in the world could you buy books and
fudge
?”

Christopher laughed. “You’d know better than I would.”

“I guess I knew your grandmother. She was there every day,
right? Sweet lady. She used to help me and my sister pick out cool books from
the kid’s section, and then she’d give us a piece of fudge to split for free. I
don’t really know why she did that. I’m sure she knew we could afford to buy
it.”

“Gran liked to see kids smile. Maybe she thought you didn’t
smile enough.”

“Probably not. Hell, we probably didn’t.” Jesse looked
thoughtful. “My sister cried when Books and Fudge went out of business.”

Christopher’s lashes dropped down, making a long shadow on
his cheeks. “Yeah. That was my fault. Sorry about that.”

Jesse couldn’t imagine that it could have been Christopher’s
fault. The place had shut down long ago, when Jesse was eighteen, and though
Christopher looked a little bit younger than him, he didn’t think that
Christopher could have been more than fourteen, if that. “How could you have
been responsible for a shop going out of business?”

“It’s a long story.” Christopher shrugged. “Come on, let’s
get some cookies. Libby puts those on the verge of going stale out in the
kitchen. They’re up for grabs. If Libby likes you enough to let you have a key
that is.”

Jesse followed Christopher over the freshly swept, wood
floor, and into the dimly lit kitchen that had been built onto the mill proper.
It was impeccably clean. Sure enough, there was a tray of gingerbread men,
women, and eagles—the Smoky Mountain Dreams mascot—covered with plastic wrap on
a table.

Christopher wrote on a pad sitting next to the tray under a
short list of other names:
Christopher Ryder—4

Then he peeled back the plastic wrap, handed two gingerbread
men to Jesse, and took two for himself before turning to the stack of paper
cups next to the sink and pouring them both a drink of water.

The cookies weren’t stale yet, and as Jesse chewed his first
bite, he moaned at the perfect blend of sweet icing, nutmeg, molasses, and
ginger. It was truly divine. Christopher’s reaction to the sound of Jesse’s
pleasure was immediate. It both amused Jesse and sent a surge of heat through
him to see Christopher’s cheeks pink up and to watch his pupils dilate wide. It
was like he wanted to take Jesse inside in every way.

“So…” Christopher’s voice sounded rough, and he cleared his
throat. “Your family’s from here?”

“Mm-hmm.” Jesse felt the familiar inner turmoil associated
with talking about his family to anyone who didn’t already know. It didn’t
happen often now that he was back in Gatlinburg, but when he’d traveled in his
early twenties, escaping the reality of his family name hadn’t been as easy as
he’d hoped. “They are.”

“I take it you’re not close.”

“I don’t know. We’re as close as we can be at this point in
our lives. My folks live in Florida now. I’d say they were retired, but my mom
never worked, and my dad wouldn’t
stop
working if
someone held a gun to his head.”