CHAPTER TEN
It’s not a reality check. It’s a punch to the heart.
Travis held up the paper, and I could see the Australian Government insignia in the corner. He held it up, and his eyes scanned as he re-read it. “They’re giving me twenty-eight days, and I need to have left the country.”
I shook my head, trying to take in what he was saying.
“Actually,” he said quietly, “it’s twenty-one days now, given how long the letter took to get here.”
“No.”
Travis looked at me then. “Actually, yes.” He held up the papers. “Says so right here.”
They were making him leave. It wasn’t up to me or him. It wasn’t whether he wanted to go or not, or if he’d had enough of my stupid arse, or if he hated the desert. It was up to some bureaucrat that didn’t even know him. “No.”
“You just gonna stand there and shake your head and say no? Like that will fix anything. Is that all you’ve got, Charlie?” he said, his eyes filled with tears. “Because this is real.” He held out the letter, and he started to cry. “So that’s it, Charlie. Looks like you get what you wanted, no blame on you. You must be so fucking relieved.”
“No,” I said again, moving to him without even a conscious thought. I pulled him against me and wrapped him up in my arms. He fell into me and sobbed into my neck. “Travis, no.”
He held onto me just as tight, the letter now just crumpled papers at my back. “Charlie,” he mumbled my name over and over. “I’ve missed you.”
I pulled back just a little and took his face in my hands. I wiped his tears with my thumbs and kissed his cheeks, his eyes, his nose and his lips. “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
His face twisted and fresh tears fell. “They’re making me leave, Charlie,” he mumbled, like I hadn’t heard any of what he’d said.
“No,” I said, clearly and adamantly. “We won’t let that happen.”
He smiled, still crying, and I slid my arms back around him, a mix of holding too-tight and not-tight-enough. And we stood there in the laundry like that, just all wrapped around the other, until the tears stopped and the temperature dropped. I didn’t want to let him go.
Eventually he said, “So you don’t want me to go?”
I ran my hand through his hair and kissed the side of his head. “Never.”
He pulled back and looked at me. His eyes were puffy and sad, and he whispered, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know to fix this.”
“What? Us?” I asked. “We’ll talk more. I need to talk more, and I promise I’ll make it up to for being such an arsehole, and I need to speak up when things get too much. I just need you to help me learn, and—”
And he was smiling through his tears. He held up the letter. “I meant this.”
“Oh.” I laughed. “Well, that’s easy.”
“Easy?” he asked, his eyes going wide. “Charlie, it’s the Immigration Department!”
I kissed him, soft and sweet. “If you leave here, it’ll be because I’m an idiot and I’m impossible to put up with, not because some pen pusher in Canberra says so, okay?”
He smiled now and pressed his face against mine. He whispered, “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” I replied, holding his face so I could look into his eyes. “And I’m sorry for being a jerk. I really am.”
“You really are a jerk, yes I know,” he said with a smile. “I’ve seen you in all your jerk glory all week.” He put his hand to my face, then looked at me seriously. “Don’t do it again.” The way he said it was very final. There was no or-I’ll-kick-your-arse clause on the end. I knew he meant there would be no second chance.
I nodded and said something I should have said a hundred times. “I love you, Travis.”
He smiled. “I know you do.”
I took his hand and led him out. “Come on. We need to go call the government. Someone’s gonna wish they didn’t answer the phone.”
We only got as far as the kitchen door. When I saw Ma and George in the kitchen, looking all solemn and sad, I stopped. Ma looked at me, then seeing my hand holding Travis’s, she sighed, relieved. “Oh thank God,” she said. “Charles Sutton, you and I are gonna be havin’ a little chat, you hear me?”
Letting go of Travis’s hand, I stepped into the kitchen, wrapped my arms around her and lifted her. “Sure thing, Ma,” I said, putting her back down. “But first I just need to make a few calls and sort out this visa mess, okay?” She kind of smiled, and as I walked into my office with Travis, I’m pretty sure I heard Ma say something that sounded like “bloody kids”.
I stood at the side of my desk and straightened out the somewhat-crumpled letter on my desk and read the whole thing.
Travis’s original visa, the one he came here with, was a temporary working visa. When he’d decided he wasn’t going back to the States, he had it extended. The problem, as we were just finding out, was that it only renewed for six months, not two years like we’d assumed. A six-month temporary visa, in effect from the approval of the extended original visa, meant that in twenty-eight days—now twenty-one days—he was expected to leave. Actually, in twenty-one days, he was expected to be already gone.
I picked up the phone and dialled the number the letter said to call. It was a Sydney number, and after six different voice activated directions, all I got was “Thank you for calling the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Office hours are Monday to Friday, nine AM to five PM…” I looked out the window to see it was getting dark. “What time is it?”
Travis looked at his wristwatch. “Almost six.”
“Shit.” I sighed. “Where the hell did today go?”
Travis shrugged. “You spent most of it with your head up your arse, remember?”
I heard George’s muffled laugh from the kitchen and Ma’s prompt response tellin’ him to shush.
I flipped my laptop open and quickly searched up the government immigration website. “There has to be another number,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. “One in Perth. It’s not five o’clock there yet.” So after a bit of searching, I found a number for an office in Perth. After speaking to three different machines, I then spoke to two different people who, because I was in a different state, were probably less helpful than the damn machines, then before I could pop a vessel in my fucking forehead, I got put through to some guy who, very calmly, told me that he couldn’t help me and I’d need to speak to the Sydney number listed on the letter.
To which I promptly and somewhat fucking loudly, replied with, “You can’t just upend someone’s life between the hours of nine and fucking five, arsehole.”
He replied with a dial tone.
I growled at the phone in my hand, so Travis took it and put it out of throwin’ reach. “We’ll call them tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Then we call them on Monday.”
I sighed, and feeling deflated and useless, I pulled him against me. I ran my hand over his back, over the nape of his neck and into his hair. It felt so good to just touch him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise,” he mumbled. Then he pulled back. “Actually, you need to go say sorry to Ma and George. And properly this time.”
“I know.”
He frowned. “Charlie, please tell me we’ll get this sorted out. I don’t want to leave.”
“Trav.” I put my hand to cup his face and softly kissed his lips. “I’ll do anything. Everything. Whatever it takes.”
I took his hand and walked us into the kitchen. Ma smiled a little warmer this time, though she still looked sad, and it hurt knowin’ I was the reason.
“Where’s George?” I asked.
“Taking a shower.”
“I am really sorry,” I told her again. “I should have never behaved the way I have this last week.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. It’s not just you anymore, Charlie.”
“I know,” I said. “And I’ll apologise to George when he comes back out.”
She nodded. “Yes, you will. And to the others when they get back on Sunday.”
I felt like a scolded child, and in light of how I’d behaved, it was probably deserving. “And the others.”
She looked at Travis, then back to me. “Nothing like a cold slap in the face from the Immigration department to make you see reason, huh?”
I nodded. “It sure did.”
Trav took a deep breath. “We need to call them on Monday.”
Ma smiled sadly. “I heard.”
I squeezed Travis’s hand. “We’ll sort it out. Surely it’s just a matter of making some phone calls or filling in some forms. I mean, people come to Australia all the time, right?” I looked at Travis. “Right? Was it hard when you applied?”
“I just applied for a temporary work visa,” he said. “Or maybe I filled in something wrong… I don’t know.” He shook his head. “What if they say no?”
I dropped his hand and put my arm around him. “I’d like to see them try. If you think you’ve seen me be stubborn before, then wait to see what I’m really capable of,” I said with a smile, trying to get him to do the same. Which he did, kind of.
“You boys want vegetable soup for dinner?” Ma asked. I kind of forgot we were standing in the middle of her kitchen. “Wasn’t quite sure if you’d be even eating, so it’s all I made. You can help yourself.”
“Oh, sure thing,” I told her. “We can do that. Want me to make a damper?” I asked.
“That’d be nice, Charlie,” she said. Then she looked at Trav and frowned. “You okay, hun?”
He gave her the best smile he could muster, and to be truthful, it made my heart hurt to see him struggle. “Actually,” he said, “a quiet night in front of the TV with soup sounds kinda perfect.”
So Trav sat the table and watched while I made damper, kneading out flour and water into a round loaf-looking thing. I only stopped a few times to kiss him and put fingerprints of gluggy flour on his face.
When George came into the kitchen, I apologised to him for basically being a brat. I know that me hurting Ma hurt him, and I told him for that I was truly sorry. Ma took one look at the kitchen—at the flour all over the table, the floor and all over me—and she just turned around and walked out. My hopes of having a real quick shower with Travis while the damper baked in the oven was replaced by me cleaning up the mess instead, but I didn’t mind. Travis didn’t seem to mind either. He kind of didn’t go too far from me, and I really regretted wasting the last five days.
We all sat in the lounge room and ate our bowls of soup and fresh, steaming hot damper. It was the most familial thing we’d done in a long time, and I don’t think I’d ever felt part of a family more than I did that night.
Trav put his empty bowl on the floor in front of us, hooked his arm around mine and pulled me so we were lying down—his back to my front—and then he pulled my other arm around his waist. He didn’t let go.
We barely fit on the sofa layin’ like that, but I didn’t dare suggest otherwise. I shoved a cushion under my head the best I could, and he snuggled back into me. We watched the footy and every so often I’d kiss the back of his head, but he was restless and withdrawn. Very unlike Travis.
With the letter from the Immigration department and the way I’d behaved these last few days, I was guessing he’d had a pretty horrible week.
I had to make it up to him.
When Ma and George had gone to bed, I wiggled out from behind him, turned the TV off and took us to bed. He pulled off his sweater, then I helped him with his shirt and jeans. While he climbed into bed, I stripped down to my underwear and slid in beside him.
It had been five days since we’d done anything remotely sexual—the longest we’d ever abstained. And as much as I wanted to remedy that, I had a feeling Travis needed something else a bit more.
“I was thinking maybe we could just talk tonight,” I started.
Even in the darkened room, I could see his eyes flicker with something like confusion or amusement. “Okay.”
“You’re so tired,” I said softly, running my fingers through the hair at his temples. “You’ve had a shitty week, and I’m sorry.”
He smiled and closed his eyes for a long moment. “You keep apologising.”
“Because I mean it.”
“I know you do,” he said simply. “You wanted to talk?”
I didn’t really know what to say, and I didn’t want to talk about his almost-expired visa, so I figured it was best to prompt him go first. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
“What?”
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” I repeated. “I dunno. Something from your childhood, something you did as a kid.”
“Um, okay,” he said, giving me a tired half-smile in the moonlit room. “There was a kid at elementary school who used to pick on my sister, so my brother and me loosened every bolt on his bike. He only got half a block home and it fell apart underneath him. He bit pavement and never picked on her again.”
I laughed. “You didn’t?”
“Yep. Front wheel, forks and handlebars. Even the seat,” he went on to say. “I was only in first grade, so about six years old, I think. My brother was about eleven. He took the rap.”
“You got caught?”
“Found the wrench in my brother’s school bag.”
I chuckled. “Did you get into trouble?”
“Nah. Kid deserved it.” Then he sighed. “I think my mom was kinda proud. She was always telling us we had to look out for each other.”
I let go of his hand and shuffled in so he could put his head on my chest. I slid my arm around his shoulder. “Tell me something else.”
“I broke my wrist when I was twelve,” he said. I could tell he was getting close to sleep; his accent was thicker, his voice deeper when he was almost asleep. “We took a vacation to Colorado to go skiing. And I was supposed to go down the beginners’ slope, but I wanted to down the fast slope—”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
I could feel him smile against my chest. “Well, there’s a reason they have beginners’ slopes.”
I laughed. “I guess there is.”
“Broke my wrist in two places,” he said, his voice even sleepier. “Doctor said I was lucky it wasn’t my neck.”
“I’ve never been to the snow.”
Travis kind of pulled me a bit closer and mumbled, “I’ll take you one day.”
I traced circles on his back as he fell asleep and just enjoyed the feeling of him breathing against me. His body heat, his weight, his smell—everything I’d craved these last five days.
I kissed the top of his head and smiled, thinking we should do this talking thing more often.
I was just about asleep when I heard a weird husky clicking noise. It took me a minute to realise I wasn’t imagining it; then it took me another minute to realise what it was.
It was Matilda.
I rubbed my hand up Travis’s arm, but he was sound, sound asleep. He was exhausted and stressed, and I didn’t have the heart to wake him. So I ever-so carefully peeled him off me, pulled on some shorts and went in search of the hungry kangaroo.
I was pretty sure her makeshift pouch would be hanging from the lounge room door handle, and following the noise, that’s where I found her. She had her head poking out, looking around for the human bearing food. She called out louder, that weird clucky-clicky noise they make, when she saw me. I considered leaving her hanging there while I got her bottle ready, but the way she waved her little hands about was kind of cute and disturbing, so I picked her up, pouch and all, and took her into the kitchen with me.
I found three made-up bottles in the fridge, heated one up in the microwave, and sat at the kitchen table while she guzzled it. “Do you need to pee after a bottle at night?” I wondered out loud. She didn’t answer, of course, just stared up at me with those big brown eyes. “Because it’s cold outside and I ain’t taking you.”
I shivered, being only half-dressed and away from the fire. I considered taking her into the lounge room, but she was almost done. I waited for her to drain the bottle, tossed it into the sink and hung her pouch back on the lounge room door handle.
I climbed back into bed and quickly wrapped myself around a very warm Travis, and I now realised why he would put his cold feet on me when he got back into bed. I kissed his shoulder blade and closed my eyes.
I swear I’d only been asleep for a minute when that damn clicking noise woke me again. I fell out of bed and stumbled out to the lounge room, wondering if Matilda did in fact need to pee and found it was actually two in the morning. And it was freezing.
I threw some more wood on the fire, left Matilda in her pouch and went and got her bottle. This time I sat in the lounge room next to the fire and started to feed her. About a minute later, Travis walked out, still half-asleep and still just wearing his undies. He mumbled something that sounded like “bed cold you gone”, and then he sat himself next to me, tuckin’ himself into my side. There was a knitted blanket that hung over the back of the lounge, so I reached up and pulled it over him.
I had Matilda under one arm, Travis under the other and the next thing I knew, it was morning.
I woke up to kink in my neck and the feeling of being watched. I opened my eyes slowly, realising I wasn’t in my bed, and found Ma standing there looking at me, smiling. “Look at you,” she whispered.
Travis was now kind of lying across me, and Matilda was awake but happy enough. Well, she wasn’t clicking at me for food. “What time is it?” I asked.
“Five thirty.”
Ugh. I tried to move my neck and shoulders, but my muscles protested.
“Here,” Ma whispered, reaching out for Matilda. “Let me take her. She’ll want a bottle soon.”
Once she’d picked her up, pouch and all, I shivered at the loss of warmth. I tried to pull the blanket over more of me, making Travis stir. He sat up, clearly confused as to where he was or why.
“I came out to feed Matilda, and you followed me,” I explained.
He frowned, his eyes not adjusted to being open yet, and shrugged. “Oh.” Then he blinked until he was awake. “I didn’t feed her!”
“I did,” I told him.
He slumped back into the lounge and sighed. “This is not a comfortable sofa.” Then he looked down at himself and peeked under the blanket. “I have no clothes on. That’s not embarrassing.”
I laughed. “You have undies on.”
“I’m sure Ma wouldn’t appreciate it like you.”
I flicked back the corner of the blanket that was barely covering me. “I have shorts on at least. I put ’em on when I got up the first time.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t hear her. Sorry.”
I put my hand on his leg. “You were exhausted. And that’s my fault. It was the least I could do. Why don’t you go get dressed, and I’ll make you some coffee?”
“Yeah.” He groaned as he stood up and gave me a full frontal view of his morning wood as he readjusted the blanket around him.
“Jesus.”
He chuckled as he walked off, leaving me to think of nasty things, like the smell of disembowelling a kill beast for meat, before I had to go into the kitchen to face Ma. The last thing she needed to see was me with a semi.
Shaking it off, I went into the kitchen and flicked the coffee machine on to warm up. I threw on a coat at the door, then went out to feed the dogs. The first thing I noticed was the new garden bed. Travis had all but finished it, and I had no idea. I really had missed so much these last few days.
With the dogs fed, I was coming back inside when Ma was hanging Matilda’s pouch on the clothes line. “This needs some air,” she said.
“He did an incredible job,” I said, looking at the new garden.
“He certainly did,” she said with a fond smile.
“I’m really sorry, Ma,” I said again. “I made a big mess of everything.”
Ma nodded. “Yep. You almost lost him, Charlie.”
“I know.”
She seemed pleased, be it with my answer or my sincerity, I wasn’t sure. “Come inside. It’s freezing out here. Let’s have a hot breakfast and a little chat.”
I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be exactly pleasant—the chat, not the breakfast—and I wasn’t far wrong.
It wasn’t unpleasant like shovelling horseshit; it was unpleasant in an oh-God-I-want-to-die kinda awkward.
“Take a seat,” Ma said. Travis was already sitting at the kitchen table, holding a bright-eyed Matilda in my old sweater, which was her new pouch, apparently.
“Now, I was gonna say this just to Charlie, but I think you both need to hear it,” she said seriously. “Charlie, the way you treated Travis last week was disgraceful.”
“I know,” I agreed. “I’ve apologised—”
She patted my hand. “Listen, hun, I ain’t finished.” She took a deep breath and started again. “The honeymoon period kinda came to a screeching to a halt, didn’t it?”
“The what?”
“The honeymoon period. The beginning of all relationships, when it’s all new and exciting,” she explained. “Then reality kicks in and takes the shine off. You two live and work together. That’s not easy. Once the getting, you know, the hot and heavy—”
I cringed. “Ma, you don’t have to have this conversation. Like, seriously, you don’t. Please…”
She shrugged and rephrased. “Once you stop fucking like bunnies.”
My mouth fell open. “Ma!”
She tried again. “Once the intensity—”
My face was burning with embarrassment. “I like intensity better than the bunny thing.”
Ma sighed her losing-patience sigh. “Charlie, once the intensity wanes a bit, you need to work on the communication side of your relationship.”
“I’m not very good at talking about feelings and stuff,” I said, deliberately not looking at either of them. At least talking about emotions wasn’t talking about sex. “I mean, I’m trying, but it’s easier to spend the day out in the desert chasing cattle than it is for me to do that.”
Ma waited for me to look at her before she replied. “You need to learn. Relationships are hard work, Charlie. But they’re worth it.”
“You and George don’t need to work on anything—”
She raised her are-you-fucking-kidding-me eyebrow. “Charlie, you need to work on your heart and head, before your sex life.”
We’d just nosedived into awkward again.
“Don’t make a face,” she chided. “And don’t be a child.” She was now serious. “Do you want to spend your life alone? Do you want him to leave?”
Dread and fear ran cold through me at the mention of it. My eyes were wide, and I looked at Travis. I shook my head. “No.”
“Then you start putting his needs before your own. You start thinking ‘what would Travis want’ before you say and do something stupid. And Travis, you too, hun. You’re not on my shit list like Charlie here, but you’re not innocent in this. You both need to work on this, now, or there will be nothing left to fix. You hear me?”
We both nodded.
“Now go and spend the day somewhere away from here. You two need to talk, and I need a day of peace and quiet.”
I stood up quickly, keen to be anywhere but there, and Travis wasn’t far behind me. “We might take the horses up north,” I suggested.
“Great idea,” Travis chimed in. He handed Matilda over to Ma’s waiting arms, and we got the hell out of there. We headed straight for the shed that joined the stables, quickly saddled Shelby and Texas, and rode up through the Northern paddock without so much as a word.
I was embarrassed and not exactly sure what to say. Everything Ma had just said was the God’s honest truth, and having it said out loud, it was a bell that could not be un-rung. It was a good ten minutes before Travis spoke. He looked about as uncomfortable as I felt. “Well, that was…”
“Awkward?” I finished for him.
He exhaled, relieved. “I thought for a minute there she was going to give us the birds and the bees talk.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Bit late for that.”
Travis smiled, but it slowly faded. “Do you think she might be, you know, right?”
“Right about what? That we need to talk more?” I asked, not really expecting him to answer. “Because we’d kind of already agreed to that.”
“No,” he said with a smirk. “That we’ll ever stop fucking like bunnies.”
I groaned out a laugh. “I can’t believe she said that.”
Travis laughed. “It was almost as bad as my parents’ talk with me on gay sex.”
I stared at him. “They didn’t?”
“They sure did.”
“Oh my God. Did you want to curl up and die?” I asked. “I sure as hell would have.”
Travis laughed again, looking all sorts of happier than he had all week. “I’m pretty sure my dad wanted to vomit. He was kind of green.” He shook his head, smiling at the memory. “Mom started to tell me about the importance of protection and lubrication—”
“Oh man. Really?”
He nodded and grinned. “When she asked if I knew if I’d prefer to catch or pitch, my dad looked horrified. He threw the book Joy of Gay Sex into my lap, told me read it as he was runnin’ out of the room, basically.”
“Was he okay with it?” I asked. “I mean, there’s just no way my dad would have ever, ever done that.”
“Yeah, he was okay. Just didn’t like the logistical aspects of it, ya know? Like insert tab A into slot B kind of thing.
I barked out a laugh. “The poor guy.”
“Poor him?” Travis cried. “How do you think I felt?”
I laughed at the look on his face. “So what was it like?”
“I just told you. It was mortifying.”
“Not the talk. The book,” I clarified. “The book on gay sex.”
Travis grinned. “Awesome. That book taught me more than any fifteen-year-old kid should probably know. I used it for… research.” He sighed. “For years, actually. It fell apart, I used it that much.”
I burst out laughing. “How did you know, you know, whether you liked to catch or pitch, as your mum put it?”
“A carrot.”
“A what?”
He snorted out a laugh. “A carrot. It was a very well-endowed, well-rounded carrot. I had to heat it up a bit first.”
I laughed so hard I almost fell off my horse.
He just grinned without shame. “I was alone in the house, so I thought I’d see if I could roll a condom on with my mouth like they did in porn movies, which I couldn’t, by the way. My fifteen-year-old self thought the taste was disgusting.”
“My twenty-six-year-old self thinks the taste is disgusting.”
He snorted at that. “So I was alone, the carrot was already dressed, and I thought why the hell not. I wasn’t sure at first, but was curious enough to try it. The book said it could be extremely pleasurable if done right.”
“Carrots are my new favourite vegetable.”
Travis laughed this time. “So I had the book, I had the house to myself and the lube my parents gave me.”
“They gave you lube?!”
“And the condoms.”
“Ma’s conversation about fucking like bunnies doesn’t seem so bad,” I mumbled. “They really gave you all that?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
“Jeez, and I thought most folks from Texas were conservative. Sounds fairly open to me,” I said. “You’re very lucky to have such open-minded folks.”
“I know,” he said seriously. It wasn’t a biting reply, but there was something to his tone.
“So you’d come out to them already?” I asked. I had never asked the details. I knew his parents didn’t care either way about his sexuality, just like he knew my father hated mine. “When did you know for sure that you liked boys?”
“I think I always knew,” he said simply. “But fourteen for sure.”
“For sure?” I asked. “Sounds kind of definite.”
“Well, I made out with my best friend, so…”
“I guess that’d do it.”
He smiled, but it wasn’t strictly a happy one. “My first boyfriend. We’d kind of hedged around the subject a bit, but he was sleepin’ over one time and we got to wonderin’ about first kisses—our friend Jackson had kissed Louisella and she told everyone he was bad at it—and I said, ‘There should be practice first-kisses before the real first-kisses,’ and he said, ‘Maybe we could practice,’ and then he tried to run away, but I caught him and told him, ‘I’d really like that,’ and I kissed him.”
I could just imagine a fourteen-year-old Travis doing exactly that. “So how was your first kiss?”
“I was so nervous, and everything in my head was saying it was wrong, but it felt so right.” He sighed and was quiet for a while. “What about your first kiss?”
“I told you already. I turned eighteen, the boys took me into town to get drunk and get laid. I ended up in the bathroom stalls with some random guy, drunk, kissing and sucking dick.” I shifted in my saddle. All this talk about sex and not having had any for five days was starting to take its toll. “I mean, I was sure I was gay, but yeah, getting busted by George when I was on my knees in front of some dude pretty much sealed the deal.”
Travis snorted. “So classy.”
“I was eighteen! I had a lot of catching up to do.”
“Some dude,” he mimicked me. “Did you even get a name?”
“Nope. I was drunk. I remember looking twice at a guy, and he kinda nodded and walked into the bathrooms. I followed, he pushed me into the cubicle. At first I thought he was gonna punch me, but he undid my jeans…” I stopped at that. I figured he didn’t need details. “George came looking for me.”
“And he found you.”
I remembered the look on George’s face and cringed. “Not my finest moment,” I said. “So, names. What was your first boyfriend’s name?”
“Ryder Newell.”
“Ryder?” I scoffed. “Did his parents not like him or something?”
I meant it as a joke, but Travis certainly didn’t laugh. “Well, not in the end they didn’t.”
I didn’t like how that sounded. “In the end?”
“Ryder’s dad wasn’t very—” He seemed to struggle with the word. “—tolerant. He used to make fag jokes, and he’d preach about sinners. Not just about gays, but about swearing, drinking, sex before marriage. He was very strict.”
“He was a religious man?” I asked.
“Not all religious people are bad, Charlie.” He frowned. “My folks are religious. They go to church and say grace before Sunday dinner, and they’re not bad people.”
I started to apologise. “I didn’t mean that…”
Travis shrugged me off. “No, Ryder’s father was a cruel man. He used the Bible to disguise his hatred, and that’s the worst kind of person.”
There was a different tone to Travis’s voice. One I’d not heard from him before. I decided to just shut up and listen.
“Ryder and I were kinda inseparable by this point, but he struggled with what we did. He loved being with me, and he’d talk about us running away together, but we were just kids. I didn’t really know what it all meant at the time. I was just doing what felt right and good, you know? But he… struggled.” He sighed, long and deep. I kept my eyes on Travis, not able to look away. I could feel it in my stomach, in the hairs on the back of my neck that this story didn’t end well.
“Ryder hung himself from the tree in his own backyard,” he said. Just ever so casual, like he was describing his friend leaving for summer camp. I pulled on the reins, bringing Shelby to a complete stop, but Travis mustn’t have noticed. He kept on going. “They were two ranches over, but my momma said she heard Mrs Newell screaming as the sun came up.” He stopped talking when he realised I wasn’t alongside him. He looked back over his shoulder, and all I could do was sit there in shocked fucking silence.
He pulled Texas around and came back to where I was. I tried to think of something to say, but my mind was swimming. Travis swung his leg over and dismounted. He put his hand up and patted my thigh. “Charlie, hop down.”
Mechanically, I did as he asked. I slid down off Shelby, and he put his hands up to my face. “You okay?”
“Am I okay?” I asked him. “Never mind me. Are you okay? Jesus, Travis, that’s… the worst thing I’ve ever heard. And you’re just telling me now?”
He smiled. “I made my peace with it a long time ago.”
I shook my head, trying to process this information. “I don’t even know what to say.”
Travis took my hand and, looking around for somewhere suitable, led me over to small clearing and sat down. He patted the ground next to him. “Take a seat.”
I looked around. We were in the middle of nowhere. Nothing around us but red dirt, saltbush and blue, blue sky. “Here?”
He laughed. “Right here.”
I sat down next to him, and he took my hand. “What happened to Ryder changed my life. I was just fifteen years old, and I took his death really hard. It was horrible. The weeks after were the worst. My mom suspected there was more to it and asked me if I loved loved him. She said she saw the way we looked at each other. She said she didn’t mind.” Travis took a deep breath. “She said she saw what Mrs Newell went through, and my momma swore to me right there she’d love me regardless. I asked her what my daddy would think of such a thing, and she said it didn’t matter, she refused to lose a child like Mrs Newell did.”
I didn’t realise I was crying until Travis wiped my cheek.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered. “It was horrible, like life-changing kind of horrible, and I went through the whole what if I had listened more and what if I’d run away with him scenarios in my head. I did that shit for a long time, but you know what I realised?”
I shook my head. “What?”
“What happened to Ryder gave me my life.”
“Your life?”
He nodded. “The life I have now. It let me to be true to myself, to be completely honest with who I am and not apologise for it. I often wondered if Ryder hadn’t died, if my mom wasn’t so petrified of me choosing the same fate, would she have been so understanding?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Even she admits she doesn’t know.”
“You talk about it with her?” I asked. “About her accepting you being gay?”
“We talk about everything,” he said. “That’s my point exactly. Would I have that relationship with my parents now if Ryder hadn’t taken his own life? I’m not rationalising it or putting a price on his life, but if I can take anything good from his death, then I can see what that is.”
I squeezed his hand and just sat with him for a while, processing what he was saying. “It gave you freedom.”
“In a lot of ways, yes. It wasn’t as easy as I’m making it out to be,” he said. “I mean, I was gay, fifteen, in junior high and lived in Texas. But I never apologised for it, and I had my family… including a big brother who would have punched the shit out of anyone who gave me hell.”
I chuckled at that and looked at him. He was just sitting there in the sunshine, looking like he was made just for me. His light brown hair was longer now, shaggy even, his skin looked sun-kissed and his eyes were piercing blue.
He took my hand in both of his and held on, like he was scared I was gonna run. He swallowed hard. “It’s why I understand what happened between you and your dad,” he said quietly. I went to pull my hand away, but he had a hold of it. “Charlie, what happened with Ryder, well, that’s a bit like what happened with you. And when you were telling me what your dad said to you, it sounded familiar. And I knew I had to get you to talk about it, to try and let it go. I had to do something…”
Oh. “I, um…” I swallowed down the lump in my throat, not sure what to say.
He leaned in and went to kiss my cheek, but I caught his lips with mine and kissed him properly. It was a slow, thank-you kind of kiss, which he returned with a you’re-very-welcome kind of kiss back.
I pulled back before I got too carried away. It had been a long five days since we’d been intimate, and even the sweetest of kisses were testing my resolve.
“Ugh,” he groaned, adjusting himself. “I know we’re supposed to do this talking thing, but do you think we could possibly take an intermission and make out a little?” He looked hopeful. “Maybe even come a little, because you’re driving me insane.”
I laughed but wasted no time launching myself at him, pushing him backward so I was on top of him. I brushed the hair back from his forehead, settling my weight on him. “I want to get this right with you. This being-in-love thing. I want to make it right.”
His smile faded. “I don’t want to leave in three weeks, Charlie.”
I leaned down and kissed him. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He held onto me, his arms around my back and his boots hooked around the backs of my legs. I slid my hand under his neck and held his head as I swept his mouth with my tongue. I rolled my hips, grinding our cocks between us through the denim.
But it wasn’t enough. I needed more, and from the way he whisper-begged me, it was clear he did too. I’d barely got my hand down the front of his jeans, wrapping my fingers around him for one thrust before he came. He bucked and cried out as he spilled his load between us, and that was all I needed. I didn’t even get my jeans undone, just rutting against him and watching him unravel tipped me over the edge. I collapsed on top of him; he wrapped his arms around me and kissed the side of my head.
And there, lazin’ in the red dirt with the winter sun on our faces, we spent the rest of the day talking about all sorts of things—inconsequential things, important things—and making out and making each other laugh.
It wasn’t until Shelby walked over, staring down at us and dangling the reins in my face, that we thought we should go home. We got up and dusted ourselves off the best we could and realised that Texas had wandered off a little.
And by a little, I meant a good few hundred metres. At least he was in the direction of home. Travis tried whistling to him, which of course didn’t work. Texas just shook his mane in an I-ain’t-listenin’ kind of way.
I got up on Shelby and held my hand down to Travis. “Come on, we’ll go get him.”
He grumbled a bit, but gave me his hand. He jumped up and settled in behind me in the saddle, putting his arms on my hips. I gave Shelby a rub on the neck and told Travis, “Just be careful where you put your feet. She might be extra smart and placid, but she’s still a horse. You kick her in the flanks, and we’re both walkin’.”
We headed toward Texas who, when he saw us approaching, headed toward home. “That sonofabitch,” Travis cried. “He’s leaving without me!”
“Leaving?” I said. “He’s already gone.”
About a hundred yards ahead of us, Texas was prancing in that I’m-something-special way horses do, and every time we got to within closin’ distance, he’d gallop off again, pigrooting and bucking. I laughed and Travis got pissed off, but I wouldn’t run Shelby with the both of us on her back. By the time we got home, Texas was already waiting at the gate, like he’d done nothing wrong.
George was at the shed, and Ma was crossing the yard to join him. She shook her head. “Thought something was wrong until we heard you laughing and we saw you coming down the yard,” she yelled.
Shelby stopped at the gate, and Travis slid off, grumbling about his horse. I laughed as I got down and took the reins of both horses. Travis pointed his finger at Texas. “If you think I’m feeding ya, you’ve got another thing coming. How about I give double to Shelby and none for you, considering that’s how we came home.” Travis took both reins off me and still mumbling, lecturing Texas, led the horses into their stables. It sounded like he said, “Bastard of a thing he is. Not worth the oats to feed him.”
I was still smiling at him even though I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and Ma was smiling at me. “You’ve had a good day,” she said, not really a question.
“The best.” Then I added, “Thank you. We spent the entire day talking ’bout stuff. It was great.”
“Glad to help,” she said. Then she looked at my clothes and finally at my hair. “Talking, huh?”
I brushed my coat and jeans, then my hair and smiled as clouds of dust billowed off me. “Mostly talking, yes.”
She rolled her eyes but smiled warmly. “Go and help him settle the horses, then clean up. The others will be home soon.”
I nodded and turned to leave, but she stopped me. “Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s good to see you smile.”
I’m sure I blushed before I walked in to where Travis was still swearin’ at his horse.