Chapter 11
THEY drove out to Mueller State Park at the crack of dawn in David’s Saturn, their mountain bikes hung on the rack David had added to the back. The sky was a bit overcast when they got there, but by the time they biked up to the higher altitudes, it was blue with a vengeance. The last two miles were ridden in silence, both of them focused on getting to their destination: a small, sheltered alpine meadow off the beaten track, far away from the campgrounds and regular hiking trails. Zach practically fell off his bike, crawling over to the little creek that bisected the meadow. “Don’t drink,” David called from where he was pulling both bikes off the trail and onto the grass.
“Not,” Zach panted back at him, and splashed a handful of water on his heated face. The water was one degree away from frozen, and he gasped at the shock.
“Bugger, it’s hot,” David said.
“Uh huh,” Zach said. He sat up and gave the meadow a once-over. “Looks the same. I don’t remember the trail being that long, though. My legs are killing me.” He rubbed his thighs through the knit fabric of the bike tights he wore. The tights were more form-fitting than he was comfortable with, but he’d put a pair of gym shorts over them so he didn’t feel quite as exposed, and at least his legs were covered. David, of course, was wearing shorts; ragged denim cutoffs that looked like they’d seen not only better days, but better decades. “You’ve been living in fucking New York for over a year—how come you’re not hurting?”
“You kidding? I rode everywhere in New York. It’s the worst place in the world for driving. Yeah, okay, it was taking your life in your hands every time you got on the bike, but it beat taking the fucking bus.” David pulled off his T-shirt and wiped his face with it. “You thirsty? There’s more water in the panniers on my bike. And sandwiches too—you know Mom.”
“DB’s the best,” Zach acknowledged, carefully not looking at David’s bare chest. He staggered to his feet and limped over to the bikes, pulling out a couple bottles of water and the bag of sandwiches. “You hungry?”
“I will be in a few minutes,” David said, flopping onto his back in the mossy grass. “I just need to cool off a bit.” He rolled the T-shirt up and tucked it under his head.
“Don’t stay that way long,” Zach said, “you’ll burn to a crisp.”
“Yes, Mother,” David said sleepily, and yawned.
Zach took a drink of water and sat cross-legged beside David, his back to his friend, and looked out over the valley. A long way away, he could see the trailhead with its service buildings and parking lot; it was distant enough that people only appeared as small, brightly colored dots. Up here, it was peacefully silent except for the sough of the wind in the stand of trees a half-mile away, the trickling sound of the water, and the faint cries of birds even farther off. And, behind him, a soft, sporadic snoring. He grinned to himself. This had been one of his favorite places when he was a kid; at least two or three times a summer he and his family had hiked or biked up that trail to picnic here. He couldn’t have pinpointed why; there were plenty of places just as peaceful, just as beautiful as this one on his own family’s land. But something about this meadow called to him. No, not called. Spoke. Whispered. Here, it seemed to murmur, in the sound of the wind and the trickle of the water, here was Someplace. Long ago, before he’d stopped believing, he’d thought this place magic, and somehow it still felt that way. Magic. As if the wind and the water and the sunlight were all ingredients in some mystical spell.
The breeze skated over his skin, drying the sweat and cooling him enough that he could lie down in the grass without the blades sticking to him. A few feet away, David snored, his left arm flung over his head and his right sprawled out on the grass beside him. Zach rolled up on one elbow and watched him sleep. The sunlight shot tiny sparks off the little golden hairs on his chest and belly; David was too blond to be hirsute, but in the sun Zach could see what was invisible in lesser light. The hair beneath his arm was thicker and darker, more cinnamon than gold; impulsively, Zach leaned forward and drew in a breath, testing the scent. Sweaty, true, but a clean sweat, not the sour, unwashed stench of Esteban; clean sweat, and the green aroma of grass, and some faint spice that was the smell of David. Zach closed his eyes and breathed in the scent again, then jerked back, thinking, Shit. “Taff?” he called softly, worriedly.
David snored on.
Zach breathed a sigh of relief; he hadn’t woken him with his weird, obsessive sniffing. Jesus. David would really think he was psycho.
Still, he didn’t move away from David. Instead, he shifted around so that he sat beside his friend, unable to make himself move away, his eyes exploring what his hands couldn’t. God, David was lovely, lying there like a sleeping prince in a fairy tale. A prince in ragged denim cutoffs that had slipped low on his narrow hips, a cinnamon-colored line of hair running from below the elegant dip of his navel to vanish beneath the loose edge of the shorts…. Zach swallowed, and was glad for the baggy shorts over the snug bike pants he wore; it would be embarrassing as hell if David woke up just then to see Zach sporting wood. But David slept on, the occasional soft snore fluttering past those silky, rosy lips. Lips the same color as the perfect, rosy nipples on that perfect golden chest. “Taff?” he whispered again, then at the silence leaned forward, his hands braced on either side of David’s chest, and laid his mouth gently against the perfect right nipple. It tasted of David, sweet and spicy and sweaty, and he needed more of the taste, so he touched just the tip of his tongue against the softly pebbled surface, feeling the skin tauten and grow stiff against his mouth. He licked again, tasting him. Then he leaned further forward to brush his lips over the curve of David’s shoulder, the hollow at his throat, the thin skin overlaying his jaw, tasting him, tormenting himself.
The shoulder beneath his lips shifted, and warmth and weight settled at the back of Zach’s head; he looked up to see David’s dark eyes watching him from beneath shuttered lids. The pressure cupping his skull drew him forward but he turned his head at the last minute so David’s lips skittered across his cheek. He closed his eyes. “Zach?” David whispered.
Zach pulled away from David’s hand, sitting up and turning his back to David. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I should always get woken up that way,” David said. He sat up, too, and put his hand on Zach’s back, rubbing gently through the knit of his T-shirt. “Why did you stop? That was nice.”
He shrugged David’s hand away and reached for the sandwiches. “I was hungry,” he said.
“So am I, but not necessarily for PBJs.”
Zach didn’t answer. David reached past him and he stiffened, but it was only to grab one of the sandwiches. “You know,” David said, a minute later, his mouth sticky with Annie’s gourmet homemade cashew butter and home-canned grape preserves, “you keep up with that sort of thing and I’m going to think you want me after all.”
Zach turned, frowning. “What?”
“Well, you want to be friends, I get that. So I wasn’t exactly expecting you to make a pass at me.”
“You weren’t supposed to be awake,” Zach muttered. “I kept checking, but you were still asleep. I thought, I didn’t want….”
“You thought you could make love to me and have me not wake up?” David chuckled.
“I wasn’t making love to you. I was just….” Zach trailed off. “Curious,” he said finally.
David cocked his head and studied him thoughtfully. “Curious.”
“Yeah.” Zach thought fast. “I fuck a lot of guys and I just wondered if you felt any different just cuz I don’t, like, have a thing for you.”
There was dead silence in the meadow. Even the wind had stilled. Finally David said, “Oh. Guess that’s why you didn’t let me kiss you.”
“I don’t let anybody kiss me,” Zach said curtly. He finished his sandwich and washed it down with half a bottle of water. “Are you rested? Because we should probably start back.”
“Right,” David said.
ZACH took the lead on the way down, and David let him, figuring he probably didn’t want to have to look at David after he’d caught Zach experimenting. Zach was probably embarrassed; he hadn’t expected David to wake up and misinterpret the whole thing the way he had. Curious. Right. Of course he was curious—David had never been into the pickup scene; he’d only ever gotten physical with guys he had a relationship with, but he’d heard about the kind of sex that went on, and it wasn’t the kind that encouraged exploration of the sort that Zach had been about. Well, tough shit, David thought angrily. He wasn’t some kind of blow-up doll that Zach could use to explore his sexuality or whatever he was doing. Zach’s sexuality was his business, and David’s was his own, and never the twain shall meet and all that crap.
But for a moment, when he’d drifted awake to the sensuous pleasure of Zach’s tongue on his nipple and lay silent beneath Zach’s questing mouth, he’d let himself dream. Let himself fantasize that this was what Zach wanted, that his soft tastes would lead to soft kisses, then harder and hotter ones, until they were naked together here in this sunlit meadow. But he should have known better. Romantic as making love like that would have been, it wasn’t Zach’s style. Hot and hurried and anonymous fucking in a dark room, that was Zach. David’s eyes stung. Shit.
“I’m sorry,” Zach’s voice came from beside him. He’d slowed his frantic pedaling and was riding parallel to David.
David blinked away the threatening tears and said gruffly, “For what?”
“For being a dick. I….” Zach hesitated, then went on, “I shouldn’t have done that to you. It wasn’t—it was rude. Personal space and all.” He was silent a moment, then said bitterly, “I’ve always had a problem with personal space where you’re concerned. I guess it’s cuz I must have imprinted on you like a baby bird when I was little or something. I know you’re your own person and I don’t have the right to just push myself into your life like that, and I’m sorry. I don’t have the right to touch you like that.”
“No, you don’t. Not unless you’re serious,” David said acerbically. “Only my lovers touch me like that, and you’re not one of them.”
“No. No, I’m not.” Zach’s voice was very small.
Relenting, David said, “Just don’t ‘experiment’ with me anymore, dweeb. I’m your friend, not your fucking guinea pig.”
Zach flashed him a quick, embarrassed grin, then sped up. “Come on, Taff. Beat you to the bottom.”
David chuckled. “You wish,” he said, and put on some speed.
THERE was a strange car in the long drive in front of the house, and as David drove the Saturn past on the way to the garage to drop off Zach and his bike, he saw that Jane and Richard were standing on the terrace talking to a tall man in olive-drab T-shirt and cammies.
“Mike!” Zach said delightedly, then, “Stop, Taff. Stop here. It’s Mike….” and he was out of the car and running across the patio toward the house. He stopped short of throwing himself into the man’s arms, skidding to a halt and thrusting his hand out for the stranger to shake. Numb, David put the car in park and got out slowly, watching as Zach started talking a blue streak, waving his hands in illustration while the stranger, a handsome, dark-haired guy in his late twenties, and Jane and Richard all grinned at him. Well. That explained a lot of things, particularly Zach’s penchant for fatigues, his frequent comments about the Army, and the buzz cut.
He unlocked Zach’s bike from the carrier on the back of the Saturn and walked it toward them, watching the group on the terrace. The guy looked up and met his gaze, then said something to Zach.
“Oh, yeah, Taff! It’s Taff, Mike. He’s, like, my oldest friend. I grew up with him. Taff, this is Mike Pritzger—Lieutenant Mike Pritzger. He’s the guy who found me.”
David’s world crashed and burned. He stood amidst the flames, smiled, and held out a hand that was amazingly steady and unblistered. “Lieutenant. Pleased to meet you.” Well, he thought. Now you know why Zach only wants to be friends. “Thanks for bringing Zach back to us.”
“Well, it wasn’t only me,” Pritzger said, a grin lighting his handsome, olive-skinned face. “It was our whole team. I just happened to find Zach where he was hiding after all the shooting was done.”
“You also stayed with me all the way back to the States,” Zach objected. “You took care of me the whole way. And you cut the collar off me.”
“Yep, regular hero with the pinking shears,” the lieutenant said, laughing.
“So how long can you stay, Mike?” Zach asked enthusiastically.
“Just overnight. I’ve got a flight back to Bragg Monday afternoon and I promised my sister in Gunnison I’d stay tomorrow night with her.”
“Great! I gotta show you the Dodge Charger I been working on—she’s cherry. And Dad’s grilling steaks tonight, right, Dad?”
“I am indeed,” Richard said.
“And this new video game. Dad, can I show Mike World Domination?”
“Sure.”
Zach turned to David. “You’re gonna stay for dinner, aren’tcha, Taff?”
David froze, then said gently, “No, thanks, Zach. I… have a date.” He shot Mike an insincere grin. “Gotta get home to shower yet.”
“A date, Taff?” Was it his imagination, or did Zach sound a little… off? “With who?”
“I don’t know if you remember him… Brian? From Terry’s?” Into the silence, he flashed a quick smile. “See you all later. Nice to meet you, Lieutenant,” he said, then he turned and walked back to the Saturn, making sure to put a little extra swing to his hips as he sauntered away.
ZACH watched him go, shock blocking any possible response to David’s statement. Brian? The guy he’d fucked just a week or two ago? What the hell interest could David have in someone like Brian? Just cuz the guy was hot, and kind of bright, with a little bit of a sense of humor, and hot…. He pressed his fist to his stomach.
“You okay, honey?” Jane asked in concern.
“Yeah, fine. I think I’m a little tired out from the ride.”
“How was it?”
“Good. We got up to the meadow and ate our lunch there before coming home.” He turned to Mike, who was watching him thoughtfully. “It’s this high alpine meadow people hardly ever go to, so it’s pristine, you know. But it’s a long ride. I’m gonna hurt tomorrow for sure.”
“You look like you’re in pretty good shape,” Mike said clinically. “Better than the last time I saw you, anyway. You were still pretty skinny then. Though a’ course nothin’ compares to what you looked like in Venezuela. Crap.”
“Yep,” Zach acknowledged. “I’ve seen the pictures.”
“You boys have about an hour before dinner,” Jane said, “so if you’re going to look at the Charger, go do it now. The only way I’ll know you’ll ever leave the garage is if you’re looking for food.”
“Aye, sir,” Zach said, and snapped her a salute. Pritzger laughed.
“You’re not supposed to salute a civilian, Zach.”
“I’m a civilian myself,” Zach said. “Come on, the garage is this way.”