Simply Red

Brody’s Perspective

 We spent a long day drivin’ around the hot, dusty desert lookin’ at properties to get an idea of what was out there. It was worth it. I think Max could finally picture us livin’ in Arizona if it came down to that, so now I could focus on lookin’ at the opportunity at hand. We stopped at The Resort to take a quick shower before headin’ to Kev’s for dinner. Maxwell called Gina on the way to dinner to check on things at home. He made her hold the phone up to Zoey’s ear so he could talk to him.

 When we got to Kev and Randy’s house, they gave us a quick tour; their home was beautiful. The kids were with Scotty and Brad who were comin’ by later for cocktails along with a bunch of the other guys, so It was just the four of us for dinner. Randy grilled steaks and we sat down at the dining room table. I didn’t even take my first bite before Kevin dove into the conversation.

 “So, Max. What do you think about all this?” He asked as he brought his fork to his mouth.

 Max was like a deer caught in the headlights. I had just dropped a bomb on the poor guy the day before and he was still wrapping his head around it. He was happy as hell in North Carolina, yeah, he had a couple of run ins with ignorant rednecks over the past year, but he loved the little world we built… oh hell so did I. We were happy on BroMax Farm, but my job was just that… a job and it felt good to have guys like Kevin, Bill, and Dario see potential in me and offer me a real career opportunity. And the shit they were working on was off the hook… national accounts that everyone recognized, and clients that actually valued creative. THAT’S what I wanted to work on and frankly it was never going to happen if I stayed where I was and I knew it.

 “It’s a lot to take in” Max said after a long silence. “But it seems like a great opportunity for Brody.”

 “It is” Kev responded with a smile. “But, what about you? Could you see yourself living in Phoenix?” Kev had a reputation; when he spotted raw talent, he made an offer… and folks rarely turned him down. He knew I was interested, and he knew Max was the ticket to gettin’ me on board. Max didn’t say much, he just talked about the things he loved about North Carolina, and the things he’d miss. Kev tried to address each issue before Max even brought it up. “We could get you an interview at Matty’s school if you guys move here" he offered.

 “Well, I don’t know if I’d go back to teaching right away if we move” Max replied. “If we actually did this, it’d take a couple of months to settle things up in North Carolina, plus I got a shitload of candles to make” he smiled as he said it makin’ Kev laugh.

 “Seriously, if Jordan buys into this idea, you could be making candles full time. You do damn good work” Kev said with a warm smile. “You guys have a lot of opportunities in front of you, that’s pretty damn exciting.” Damn, Kev was a pro. He was workin’ us both. We talked all through dinner, then Randy and Max cleaned up the dishes while Kev and I went out to the small patio off the dining room to talk.

 I asked him every question I could think of about the work, benefits, growth opportunities, clients, Dario, the other creatives, the suits, Bill, … I wanted to know everything. Hell, if I was gonna fuck up my world for this, I wanted to know what the hell I was gettin’ into. Kev and I talked for over an hour, gotdamn this was a big freakin’ deal. But was it worth leaving our home for? Was it worth taking Max away from a life he loved? Damn, I didn’t know. I didn’t know shit at the moment. I thanked Kev for talking to me and answering all my questions, then we went into the kitchen to refresh our drinks. By then, all the other guys were there and out by the pool in their swimsuits and the kids were splashing around in the pool. It was a good community.

 I walked over to Maxwell who was talkin’ with Mauricio and Marc at one of the high top tables and sat down. Mauricio greeted me excitedly, “Damn little boy, I hear you might be moving by us! I am so excited!” he squealed after he said it. The word was out. The guys all talked to us about the pros and cons of living in Phoenix. We told them about what happened with Ricky and his friends… we hadn’t told anyone about that, not even Daddy and BA. Until then, Dylan and Gina were the only ones who knew. We decided to keep it to ourselves, and off social media so we could just get past it. I’m glad we told the guys that night because they opened up and were completely honest with us. Yeah, they had built a great community but they were still living in a red state and several of them had dealt with discrimination. Marc was a cop and had seen a lot during his time on the force. But Mauricio was probably the most candid (he was also the most flamboyant of the group). He shared a couple of bad experiences with us but ended his story with “the world will always attack people who are different, but at the end of the day I come home to this” he waved his hand around referring to all his friends. “These people are always here for me. THEY are my family. My home.” He wanted us to move there, but he was being honest and didn’t sugar coat the reality; Maxwell hung on his every word.

 As the night went on the kids all went to bed. Scotty and Brad’s kids were sleepin’ over and spendin’ the night with their cousins. Once the kids were down and out for the night, the atmosphere changed. The music got just a little louder, and some of the guys stripped nekkid and jumped in the pool. Max and I eventually joined ‘em, but I still wasn’t used to how comfortable they all were with just bein’ nekkid around each. They were so casual about it and I was nervous as hell but like Daddy always said… “When in Rome…” We hung out (like literally hung out) for a couple of hours before we went back to The Resort. We talked to everyone there and got a much clearer picture of what our life might be like if we moved… this would be our community. The party died down and we all left around the same time. Mauricio walked us to the car and said, “I would love to have you guys here, but I follow your website and am jealous of your life on the farm” His words were sincere. “Make sure this is what you really want before you give that up” then he hugged us goodnight. These were good people, and we’d be lucky to be part of their village.

 We went back to The Resort and talked some more. Gotdammit there was so much to consider and there was no easy choice. Leavin’ BroMax Farm… Grammaw’s house… our home… would break my heart, but so would turning down this opportunity . Gotdammit! Maxwell fell asleep in my arms, but I was up all night again. I just couldn’t sleep.

 We had an early flight and I had packed our bags while Max was still asleep. I was anxious to get home to see if it changed my perspective on everything. When Maxwell finally woke up, I brought him his coffee in bed and got in next to him. “Morning babe” he said with a kiss then added, “you look like hell.”

 “Thanks” I said with a sarcastic smirk. “I couldn’t sleep again.” I hadn’t slept for shit since Kev made me the offer. I wanted that job so bad, it was a freaking dream job, but I didn’t want to leave Bromax Farm, I loved it there. I pretty much grew up in that house and we had turned it into our version of paradise… was a career opportunity worth giving it all up? I didn’t know. Hell, I was so tired I didn’t know shit. We got up and took a shower together. Maxwell held me as the warm water cascaded over me.

 “Are you okay?” He asked.

 I sighed “Yeah, just freaking overwhelmed” I said.

 “Me too” he said smiling as he kissed me softly. “But hey, we got each other no matter what happens next, and damn I love you more than anything.” Gotdammit, he was right. We had each other. We started to grope each other as we kissed under the running water. He dropped to his knees and took my cock all the way down his throat in what seemed like one fell swoop. Gotdammit, it felt amazing! Maxwell worked my manhood giving me an incredible blowjob. His hand followed his mouth as the head of my cock hit the back of his throat and my balls slapped his face. His throat muscles massaged by cockhead doing their best to coax a load out of my balls. The weird thing about The Resort was that it was sexually charged. It’s like I got horny the second we walked through the door and was up and ready for sex the entire time we were there. Max was making me forget all my stress, his mouth felt amazin’ on my dick and I couldn’t fight the urge to grab the back of his head and face fuck him. I looked down on his beautiful face, his red locks wet from our shower. He looked up at me as I planted my hands on top of his head and prepped to fuck his face. Hard! We’d been together a long time and he knew what was coming next. With his lips still wrapped around my manhood, he shot me a huge smile as he grabbed my wet ass cheeks and pulled me deeper down his throat. I started to fuck his face hard. It felt so good… an escape from all the stress and decision makin’. Our eyes locked as I started fucking his face… they were smilin’, he loved it. And I fuckin’ needed this! I pumped in and out of his mouth as hard as I could without hurting him… but he didn’t seem to care. It didn’t take long before I shot my load down his throat with a grunt. He cleaned the cum off my cock then stood up and kissed me. I could taste my own load. We soaped each other down, then rinsed off. We had a plane to catch.

 The flight home was blissfully uneventful, I was finally able to fall asleep… I needed it bad! When we landed, I had a text from Eric telling me he was sober. I also had a voicemail from Hunter asking me to call him back… that scared me. I called him back immediately as we made our way towards baggage claim.

 “Hey Hunter, it’s Brody. Is everythin’ okay?” I asked when he answered.

 “Yeah” he said in a cheerful voice. “Everything’s great. In fact, Eric’s getting his 30 day chip at an open AA meeting next week. I’m gonna be there, and… I know it’s short notice, but I thought it would be cool if you guys could come too. I’ll pay for the tickets.” He offered.

 “Um… That’s awesome” I replied. “When?”

 “Next Tuesday night” Hunter answered. I told him we just got back from Arizona, but I’d look into flights and taking time off work. It would probably need to be a quick in and out. I had taken a lot of time off lately between the Arizona trip and Seth and Zach’s weddin’, but I’d be damn proud to show up for Eric. I promised to call him in a couple of days, then told Maxwell about it. He thought it was a great idea.

 We grabbed our luggage and found the Gladiator. I was happy as hell to jump into the driver seat of my own vehicle. We drove the familiar roads towards home and pulled into our driveway. I stopped the Jeep halfway up and we both just looked at the home we had built together. We both sighed, then I put the Jeep in first, headed up to the house, and parked next to Gina’s Toyota. Before we even got out, Zoey and Roscoe came out and attacked us with dog kisses and Gina and Dylan came out to help unload the car.

 “I’m so happy the meeting went so well!!!” Gina said, “We’re going out to dinner, I wanna hear all about it!”

 Before we brought the bags into the house, Max made a detour to check on Jimmy. He swore Jimmy knew who we were and missed us… maybe he did, but either way it was cute as hell watching Maxwell hug a goat. Max loved our life here… So, did I. We finally made it to the house and dropped our bags off, then back into the Gladiator and the four of us drove to dinner.  At dinner Gina grilled Max about our trip, she wanted every detail. Max kept looking at me for some kind of signal… he wanted to tell them but he was waiting for me, so I finally gave in. “Hey, y’all” I said. “Um… we got some news.” Dylan and Gina stopped eating and gave us their full attention. “Um… I got a job offer…”

 Maxwell cut me off, “A fucking amazing job offer.”

 Dylan and Gina both got excited and started to congratulate me when I dropped the bomb “In Phoenix” I said. “We’d have to move.” Their faces dropped and they went silent. “You guys, it’s a career making opportunity” I said telling them about the jump in title, the clients, the work, the agency.

 “Yer talented, Brodes, you deserve it” Dylan said. “I’m guessin’ they’re throwin’ you a buttload of money too.” I nodded; Dylan just nodded back. “Well, whatcha’ gonna do baby bro?”

 I just shook my head “I don’t fuckin’ know.”

 “We drove around and looked at a few places” Max said, but his face gave us away. It was obvious he was torn… shit WE were torn.

 “And…?” Gina asked.

 Without hesitation Maxwell responded, “There’s only one BroMax Farm.” Shit. He didn’t want to leave here. I knew it all along, but that was confirmation. If we moved across country, he’d been doing it for me… again. 

 “Um… if y’all sell Grammaw’s house, I want first dibs” Dylan said looking me square in the eyes.

 I nodded, “but I thought you didn’t want it.” I said remembering that I had offered it to him when I first inherited.

 “Well, I wanted you back home more than I wanted the house. Plus, that was like almost four years ago… shit changes” He said. I knew he was talking about Gina.

 We talked to them for over an hour, the more we talked, the harder it was to decide, I loved having my family so close. After dinner it was back to our place to say goodbye to Gina and Dylan left.

 “Congratulations Brody. You deserve it” Gina said as she hugged me goodbye. Then She hugged Maxwell and I heard her whisper, “don’t go.”

 That night in bed we talked about the future… a-fuckin’-gain. That’s all we had done for the last three days, talk about the gotdamn future and we weren’t any closer to a decision. As we laid there, face-to-face Max declared “Listen, I can be happy any place as long as we’re together. This is about your career… you need to decide what’s best for you, and I’ll support you no matter what.” I just held him.

 “How ‘bout if we don’t talk about it until Wednesday night” I whispered back. “Let’s go back to normal life for the next couple of days, then go out to dinner on Wednesday and make a final decision.”

 Maxwell laughed at first, but then said “Deal. Let’s just get back to normal and see what happens.”

 The next day it was back to work for me and back to the barn for Maxwell. He couldn’t do much on The Resort order until the custom containers came in, but he was pouring as many of his own candles as he could so he’d have enough stock for the farmers market and online orders to carry him for a couple of months while he focused on The Resort. He had this under control, I was proud of him. My day sucked… I hated my job more than ever. After seeing the stuff Kev’s agency was doing, I had my mind set on working on more high-profile accounts with better projects. The piddly-ass shit my agency was puttin’ out just couldn’t excite me anymore.

 The next couple of days flew by. Maxwell worked his ass off in the candle studio and the garden, he seemed happy as a pig in shit. As for me, I just couldn’t get motivated at work.  But being home at night with Maxwell was great. So, to sum things up; work sucked, home was perfect… fuck, that just made this decision harder.

 I found a flight to Wisconsin to see Eric. Small airport-to-small airport with short notice was expensive as hell, and asking for more time off ruffled a few feathers, but it was important to me. Wednesday night came up on us fast. We both promised we wouldn’t think about Arizona for two days, but it’s all I could think about and I was pretty sure it was the same for Maxwell. When I got home from work, we went out to dinner at our usual place. I sat in the booth across from Max.

 “So, what are we gonna do?” He asked.

 “I’m bored with my fuckin’ job” I said then took a long pause. “But I aint ready to leave our home.”

 Maxwell breathed a sigh of relief, “You sure?” He asked and I nodded.

 “I’ve been thinkin’, I just need to find freelance projects that excite me, I guess. There are no bigger agencies here so I just gotta deal with it.” I said. The truth was I was kinda defeated. Kev’s words stuck with me “if you want to take your career to the next level, you’re going to have to move on to move up” He was right. Maybe someday. But not now. I couldn’t do that to Maxwell. Since Phoenix was three hours behind us time-zone-wise, I called Kevin as we waited for our food. It was the hardest call I ever had to make… I wanted that job so badly, but leaving wasn’t the right thing for US. Kev was disappointed, but he understood. He also told me that he hoped we could make it work in the future, I was happy that he didn’t just write me off.

It took me a few days to get over it, but by the end of the week things were back to normal. Maxwell was working his ass off in the gardens and the candle studio. His commercial wax melter arrived and he had updated his set-up to accommodate more work and more helpers in the barn. He set-up a couple of stations so that Gina and Ricky could both help him. The containers and scent were due by the end of the following week, so he’d be able to start on the initial order and have enough candles made and ready to ship to cover at least the first three locations before school started in August… he had it all planned out (Maxwell was good at that stuff).

 On Tuesday Morning Gina came over and moved back into the house for the night, Dylan was gonna join her with Roscoe after work. Max and I jumped on a flight to Wisconsin to surprise Eric. We left late morning and flew through Atlanta to Green Bay. Hunter and I had been in touch, the best we could do was get there about an hour before the meeting and stay the night… but we made it. The meeting was held at a local community center and we pulled into the parking lot about fifteen minutes early. I texted Hunter that we were there and ust a few minutes had gone by before they pulled up in Hunter’s truck. They both got out and Hunter looked around to find us. Our eyes met and he gave me a subtle wave… Eric didn’t even notice. Max and I got out of the rental and walked up behind Eric.

 “Y’all ready to go in?” I asked. Eric turned around to see who was there.

 He looked at the two of us, then back to Hunter, then back at the two of us again and finally he spoke, “What in the actual fuck are you guys doing here?” he asked almost yelling.

 “I’m so damn proud of you. I wanted to be here when y’all got your 30-day chip” I said with a huge smile. I WAS damn proud of him. Eric grabbed me and pulled me into a bear hug. Y’all know I hate huggin’, but I loved that one. I hugged him back, we held each other for a good minute… day-um that was one a’ the longest hugs of my life. He finally let me go and hugged Max, the four of us talked and I told him how Hunter had invited us to come up and be here when he got his 30-day chip. Eric was overcome with emotion, but it was time to step inside. The four of us sat together and the leader started the meeting, at one point Eric was invited up to share. He introduced himself and announced that this was his thirtieth day sober. He told about his journey so far admitting his problem, throwing out his booze, and the few times he almost fell off the wagon. He talked about the support he had gotten from the people who loved him; he bared his soul up there and his pain was on display. The whole experience was hard to watch… Eric had been a pain in my ass for years, I had no idea what he was dealing with. I felt so many emotions, but at the top of the list were guilt for not seeing the problem sooner, and pride for all Eric had done to change his life. At the end of the meetin’, his sponsor presented him with his red, 30-day chip. The meetin’ ended with the serenity prayer. We hung out there for a few minutes and Eric introduced me to his sponsor. He seemed like a good guy and Eric had told him that he texts me every morning. I was glad we made the trip.

After the meeting we went to dinner with the guys and the four of us talked about everything but Eric’s problem. Just four friends catching up. We shared our story about almost moving to Phoenix… that’s what it was now, just a story. We spent the night at Hunter and Erics place. It was a cute little house in the middle of nowhere with a couple of acres. They didn’t have any pets, which surprised me. I dunno, I guess I expected a large animal vet to have a bunch of large animals or somethin’. We got up early the next morning and left. It was a tearful goodbye and Eric whispered in my ear as he hugged me “I couldn’t have done this without you.” I believe he could have, but I was proud to be part of the team. We drove to the airport and were at the terminal when I got my morning text from Eric letting me know he was sober. Then a second text that just said, ‘thank you.’

 When we got to the airport Maxwell walked me to the Jeep then waited for Gina to pick him up so I could head into the office for the rest of the day. On my way in a got a call from Kev.

 “Hey Brody, listen. We want you on our team.” Kev said. I just mumbled something like ‘okay’ and listened. “Dario, Bill, and I talked about it and we still agree that the Associate Creative Director needs to be on site. But… would you consider a Senior Art Director role?”

 “Working remotely?” I asked.

 “Yup” Kev said and gave me the details. A little less money, they’d pair me up with an on-site copywriter, I’d need to come to the office every couple of weeks, and travel for client meetings as needed. He said that once I learned how to navigate the agency process and knew all the players that maybe they’d consider making the Associate Creative Director position remote for me if it opened up again… so there was even room for career growth.

He outlined everything and then said he’d send an official offer via email if I was interested. I. Was. Interested!

 

To be continued…