Spirit (12 page)

I was also curious and maybe still a little angry as well. “So why couldn’t I tell Sally you are here? You said you’d explain, so explain.”

We were sitting at the kitchen table with brand new beers in front of us. Timmy was once again sleeping upstairs with Thumper at his side. I could hear their gentle snores because this time I had brought the baby monitor down to the kitchen with me. It was humming its staticky little song from the countertop beside me, assuring us that Timmy and Thumper were just fine, thank you very much.

We had swept up the broken glass and the remains of my poor smashed cell phone and dumped it all into the big wastebasket in the garage, and now Sam was dressing my wound and I was waiting for my promised explanation of why I couldn’t tell Sally Sam was visiting.

With everything going on inside my head, I had never been so awake in my life.

Before answering me, Sam carefully smoothed a Band-Aid over the puncture on my arm. His fingers were gentle and warm on my skin. He was so concentrated on what he was doing, little worry lines had etched themselves between his eyes. He was trying not to hurt me.

When he was finished, I eased my arm from his grip and said, “Thank you. That’s great.”

Only then did he turn his eyes to my face. He studied me for a moment. Then I saw his eyes slide past me to the basement door in the other room. It was just a glance, but I could see he still wondered why the basement door figured so heavily in all the spooky shenanigans going on around us.

I wanted to know about the basement door too, but at the moment, I had other things on my mind. Softly, I said, “Tell me, Sam. What is it between you and my sister? Did the two of you have a falling out?”

Sam dabbed at the cut on his heel with a peroxide-soaked tissue. When he was satisfied the bleeding had stopped, he sat back in his chair and took a long pull from his beer. Setting the bottle aside, he began fiddling with the peroxide bottle and the Band-Aid wrappers and soiled tissues, straightening up the mess while he spoke.

He cleared his throat. His eyes skidded across my face a couple of times before they finally came to rest there. And once they did, he locked me in his stare. “I personally haven’t seen your sister since the day of the wedding. That was five years ago.”

I considered that. “Well, part of that time you were in the Navy. You said so yourself. You must have talked to her on the phone a few times after you got out.”

Sam looked down at his hands resting on the table, then back to my face. “No. Not once. Not since Paul… disappeared. That was more than three years ago.”

“Then it’s your fault,” I said, trying to be kind but still getting a little snippy about it. “You can’t blame it all on Sally. If you want to stay in someone’s life, you have to make the effort to contact them once in a while. Phone calls. Visits. Like I told you once before, Tucson isn’t a million miles away.”

His lips turned down in a frown, and his hand reached out to rest atop my own.

“Don’t get mad,” he said. “It’s not how you think it is.”

I enjoyed feeling his hand on mine, but I was still mightily confused about where this was all leading.

“Then how is it?” I asked. “Stop beating around the bush and tell me.”

Sam heaved a sigh and worked his fingers in between mine, lacing them together. He seemed to need the touch. The connection.

“
No
one in my family has seen Sally or Timmy for years. She cut off all communication. Completely. Made it clear she didn’t want anything to do with any of us.”

I listened as the baby monitor filled the kitchen with a rush of static. It didn’t seem quite so comforting now as it once did. I kept expecting to hear screams, or cries, or clanking chains, or hammerings. You know. Ghostly stuff. Finally, I said, “Sally wouldn’t do that.”

Sam cocked an eyebrow at me. “Well, she did.”

I listened to Timmy’s soft snore way off in another part of the house. Hoping he was safe.

I couldn’t believe what Sam had just told me. Then I realized I
did
believe it, although I certainly didn’t understand it. “Your mom and dad, Timmy’s grandparents, they must be—”

Sam finished the sentence for me. “Crushed. Yes. Timmy is their only grandchild. And the only one they’re apt to get, what with me being gay and Paul being—dead.”

I jumped. “Paul isn’t dead. He’s run off. Why would you say he’s dead?”

“It’s what my heart tells me.” Sam spoke the words with a sadness that seemed to reach all the way into his gut. But what he said wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.

It was my turn to lean forward and bring my other hand into play. I scooped Sam’s hand into both of my own. I loved the way it felt in my grasp, loved the way my fingers played through the hair on his wrist, the feel of his fingers on my palm, cool from the beer bottle. Cool and compliant.

“Sam, you’re wrong about Paul. Someday I hope you’ll find that out. Right now I’m more concerned with Sally. I can’t believe she would do what you said she did. She must be still furious that Paul abandoned her, and being helpless to do anything else about it, she must have taken her anger out on your family. I’ll talk to her. It isn’t right that Timmy should have his grandparents taken away from him. His father’s already gone. He needs more family than I can offer. He needs more…
love
than only I can offer. And he needs more than just a mother and that dickhead his mother’s dating can offer too.”

Sam shook his head, his face forlorn. I had never seen it look that way before. I longed to comfort him but had no idea how to go about it. There was anger boiling away beneath his misery. I could sense it. And when he spoke, I got the first real glimpse of it.

“I’ve tried to talk to Sally a hundred times. She won’t take my calls. I wanted to arrange a meeting with her, try to work things out. For my parents’ sake. She flat out refused. Then she hung up on me.”

“So,” I said, beginning to understand. “You decided to simply show up out of the blue and
force
a meeting, but when you got here, you found her gone. Even if she were here, Sam, it wouldn’t have worked. Sally’s the most stubborn person I know. It wouldn’t have worked.”

Sam nodded. “I know. I didn’t come to arrange a meeting. I just wanted to see my nephew. Make sure he was all right. I told you before I knew Sally was out of town by the message on her answering machine. I knew you were babysitting Timmy. That’s why I came. To see if you would let me spend some time with him. Take some pictures if I could. To tell my folks as much as I could about him. Let them see what he looked like. Give them a face to love. Even if that face was only on paper.”

Sam dragged my hand closer to him and pressed his lips to it. The kiss startled me, but he didn’t give me time to react or respond.

He just kept talking, as if he needed to get the words out. Needed to make me understand. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Jason. It was the only way I could get close. By the way you reacted to meeting me, I sensed right away you knew nothing about Sally cutting us off. So seeing an opening, I took it. I didn’t know what else to do. Then you invited me to stay, and I jumped at the chance. Not to take advantage of you, Jason. Just to be with Timmy. Just to spend some time with my nephew.”

His eyes were bright and wide. “Forgive me,” he said again. “Please.”

“Forgiven,” I said.

This time it was my turn to bring his hand to my lips. His skin tasted heavenly. When my mouth slid over the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, his thumb came up to stroke my cheek.

“God help me, I’m glad I did it,” he said. “I’m glad I took advantage of your kindness.”

Surprised, I gazed into his eyes, my lips still pressed to his hand. “Why? Why are you glad?”

He didn’t hesitate. The words seemed ripe for plucking. They were hanging there inside his mind ready to be reaped. Reaped and shared.

“Because I like being here, Jason. I like
you.
I want to….” His voice trailed away; his eyes slid back to the basement door.

“What?” I asked, my pulse accelerating, wondering what it was he was about to say. Praying I knew. Praying I knew all along. “You want what, Sam? Look at me. Tell me what it is you want.”

His eyes fell once again on mine. I could feel the pulse in his wrist hammering in my grasp. It was pounding as hard as my own. His lips were slightly parted as if he was building up the courage to say what he wanted to say.

Finally, the courage came.

“I want to be with you for a while,” he said, his words barely audible. “It’s more than just Timmy now, Jason. I want to be with
you
.”

My own heart was thudding away like crazy. I scooted my chair back, stood, and leaned across the table. I slid a hand to the back of Sam’s neck, almost gasping at the heat I found there, and then I pulled him close.

When my mouth alit on his, he closed his eyes, and our two hearts commenced rattling away inside our chests.

I swear. I could hear them both.

S
AM
PUSHED
my T-shirt up out of the way and slid his tongue across my nipple. I trembled and closed my eyes. Sweet Jesus. The next thing I knew, Sam had tugged my shirt over my head and thrown it across the room. We were in the formal dining room with every light on in the place. That was as far as we had gotten from the kitchen when we started fooling around. We hadn’t had time to turn out the lights before things got out of hand.

Sam had me up against the dining room table in just my lounging shorts. He was bent over in front of me with his lips now sliding across my stomach. He was headed south like a Canada goose in winter.

I figured a little tit for tat was in order, so I yanked his wrinkled muscle shirt up over his head, damn near ripping his nose off in the process, and flung it aside. I stroked his lean shoulders and pushed my fingers through his thick head of hair while his tongue continued to snail-track its way down my torso. He was at my belly button now, and my legs were shaking like I had malaria.

“You’re trembling,” Sam muttered, his voice hoarse with hunger. I could feel a smile on his mouth where he kissed me.

I simply nodded. Speech was beyond me.

Sam dropped to his knees in front of me, and I felt my shorts being dragged down across my hips. The next thing I knew, they were at my ankles and my cock was standing free. I looked down just in time to see Sam slide his hands to the back of my thighs and pull me toward him. He nuzzled my balls.

“You smell good,” he muttered. I could feel his hot breath stir the hair on my balls when he said it. My dick was so hard I could have pounded nails with it.

Taking a detour and heading north for a change, Sam slid his tongue from my balls all the way along my shaft to the head of my cock. He lapped away a drop of precome that was dangling there by a thread of ooze and gazed up into my face with a smile as he licked his lips.

I gripped him under his armpits and pulled him to his feet, clamping my mouth over his, wrapping my arms around him so tightly I could feel every bone, every sinew in his body. We kissed for the longest time. He still wore his rooster shorts, but his own personal cock had flown the coop through the front flap. It was poking at me, trying to worm its way between my legs. Or maybe it was just reconnoitering the terrain, looking to see what it could find. Buried treasure and stuff.

It was my turn to do some exploring. I dragged my lips off Sam’s mouth and slid them over his stubbly chin, across the rocky tor of his Adam’s apple, and on down to that little patch of dark hair on his chest. I nestled into it, breathing in the scent of him, tugging at the hairs with my teeth.

My hands were at his hips. I sneaked my fingers under the waistband of his rooster shorts and pushed them down until they were far enough past his ass that they slid the rest of the way to the floor without any help from me.

The muscles in his stomach tensed as I dropped to my knees and pressed my mouth to his belly button, at long last sliding my tongue inside where it had wanted to go since the very first time I saw Sam standing at the foot of my bed. His fingers were tangled in my hair, and he held my face close to him, enjoying the ministrations of my tongue, my mouth. Enjoying my breath against his skin. Just as I was enjoying the taste and smell and heat of him.

I went a little farther south and felt his warm, hard cock bump my chin. I nudged it aside with my cheek and burrowed my nose into his pubic hair. He still smelled sweet and clean from the shower. I cupped his balls, feeling their weight, their heat. They were dark with hair and heavy with pent-up come. Then I slid my hand between his legs and foraged north, dipping the heel of my hand into the crack of his ass. I dragged my fingertips over his moist, hot sphincter. He bucked beneath my touch, then spread his legs a little wider, letting me go where I wanted to go. The tip of my index finger nudged the satiny slick heat of his opening, and I looked up to see how he was reacting.

His head had fallen back. His eyes were closed tight, and his mouth hung partly open. I could see his Adam’s apple duck and bob as he swallowed. Once. Twice. He clutched my hair a little tighter as I continued to stroke his opening.