The Families in Rossford

COMING HOME 

CONCLUSION

His jeans hanging at midthigh, his shirt on the bed, Lance gripped Dylan’s hips and pulled him closer as he fucked him. They both shouted, jarred and surprised by the intensity of their sex. Mouth open, eyes closed, Dylan held onto the backboard and now and again, called out of the deep place, he opened his eyes to see if anyone was coming back to the house. The bed groaned under them as Lance, face approaching his throat, cheek touching his, pushed into him harder and then, with a surprised groan his body jerking violently, he moved away, holding Dylan’s hips, almost unable to keep his balance as, still in Dylan, still fucking him, he came.

“THAT IS UGLY, and that is ugly and that is completely ugly. It makes me wanna say, ‘Bitch, what were you thinking?’”

“Maia, you can’t just stand out in the food court and talk out loud about people.”

“Laurel, we are not in front of the food court, the food court is down that way. We are at the head of the intersection that leads to the food court and, secondly, none of these people can hear a thing I’m saying.

“Oh, my God, did you see that grown ass man with some butter yellow hair—dye job—and a fur coat?”

“More like a fur jacket.”

“Which makes it worse! And ooh, he’s got a wife or a girlfriend. Why can’t she tell he’s gay?”

“My mother says it’s because most women are desperate and will take anything they can get.”

“You think that’s true?” Maia said. Then, “Ooh, lets go to the novelty shop.”

“Given the evidence,” Laurel said, “I think it’s true most of the time.”

“Ooooh! Who do you think would like a sword for Christmas?”

“Nobody, and don’t wave it around or else we’ll have to pay for it, and I can’t afford… Let me see that.”

Maia handed her cousin the sword and Laurel said, “Oh, my God! It’s three hundred dollars.”

Maia looked dubiously at the sword, held her hands out and said, “Let’s put this shit away.”

“I think Dylan would look good in that hat,” Laurel said.

“I agree. He’s stylish like that.” She went to the hat pile and pulled up a brown fadora with white pinstripes.

“And only ten bucks,” she said.

Laurel nodded and said, “I’m getting it.”

“Oh, and I would look cute in that necklace for when we go to Chicago.”

As Maia reached out for it, Laurel said, “I thought we were shopping for other people.”

“I am,” Maia said. “You know how it goes. Something for you, a little something for me.”

“But you haven’t gotten anything for anybody.”

“Damn, bitch,” Maia murmured, taking the necklace with the blue stone hanging from it, “you sure are the moral police today.

“Besides, I want to have something cute so that I can catch a man when we go on our college tour.”

“Catch a man? You’re sixteen.”

“And sixteen years too old to keep all this goodness to myself.”

“Um,” Laurel said, a cunning look on her face.

“What?” Maia turned to her cousin, holding out the necklace. “What smart ass remark were you about to make?”

“Nothing,” Laurel Houghton said. “Nothing at all.

“Only, I thought you had a man.”

“Don’t start that again.”

“I thought Bennett Anderson tongued you under the mistletoe last Christmas.”

Grabbing a bag of cone incense from the rack beside her, Maia said, “Bitch, I hate you.”

“This was the only thing I thought about all the way back on the plane,” Lance said, wrapping an arm around Dylan.

“Fucking me or us being in bed together?”

“I meant us together,” Lance said, his nose touching Dylan’s spine. “The specifics I hadn’t worked out. I mean, I assumed we’d have sex sooner or later or whatever. But I just kept on thinking about when we could be back here in your room.”

Dylan turned around and he said, “I don’t know why, but whenever I know I’m coming to get you, I always try to put sex out of my head.”

Lance laughed a little, looking surprised, and propped himself up on one elbow.

“Really?”

Dylan shrugged. “Maybe because it sounds like I’m just trying to hook up with you or something. Like, would I be as glad to see you if I knew we weren’t going to go to bed?”

“Well, it’s more like if you weren’t happy to see me, then would we go to bed?” Lance differed.

“What?”

Lance opened his mouth to explain and then said, “You know what? I’m not even going to try to explain that. It’s just…. It’s who we are. It’s like… us not making love is like… other friends never hugging or anything. It would be wrong if we didn’t.”

Dylan barked out a laugh at this and sat up, pulling his knees to his chest.

“What?” Lance said, lying on his back with his hands behind his head.

“It’s funny the way you put it is all.”

“Not that it isn’t true. No….” Dylan’s voice was reflexive as his hand went up and down Lance’s chest, to his stomach, touched the brown hairs that grew in a path there.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered.

Lance’s eyes changed. They softened somehow.

Dylan looked down at him, waiting for an answer.

“No one ever made me believe that except for you,” Lance told him. “The way you look at me.”

“I bet everyone looks at you.”

“Now they do,” Lance told him. “They look at my arms, my abs, my shoulders, my legs. But that was even in high school.”

Lance sat up, so that he and Dylan were on a level, he began to play with a toe on one of his very long feet.

“But even when we were kids, when I was just a weedy kid with a big forehead and floppy feet-”

Dylan snorted.

“No, listen,” Lance told him. “Even then when my hands were just as big as they are now, you would look at me like I was perfect. I remember that. I think that’s why what happened with us happened all those years ago.”

“You mean the first time we had sex?”

“If you must absolutely take all of the poetry out of it,” Lance said.

“We were so young,” Dylan remembered.

“I was so happy,” Lance said. “You stayed over and we were together and we had both showered and everything, and I remember what your shampoo smelled like and I just wanted to hold you and then you were holding me and I just wanted to be as close as I could, and there wasn’t any limit. You know how there are always lines you don’t cross? We didn’t have them. And after it was over we were just holding each other.”

“I was terrified.”

Lance looked down at him.

“Seriously? Of me? I mean, I was bigger. I was older—”

“No one had loved me so much before,” Dylan said. ‘I mean, my parents. And Laurel. But that’s not the same. You looked at me with so much love and I was so afraid that… that I would hurt you. That I would… be unworthy of that love.”

They were quiet for a long time and then Lance said.

“In a way we couldn’t have helped hurting each other. There wasn’t any air between us.”

Dylan had thought the same thing today and was amazed that Lance said it

“When we were boyfriends you were my brother and my father and best friend and my son and everything all together,” Lance remembered.

“That’s the way I felt.”

“I mean, that’s still the way I feel,” Lance told him.

He put in a laugh and touched his unshaven jaw, breaking the moment.

“That’s why we need to keep it light.”

“That’s why you need to live two states  apart,” Dylan laughed, getting up, but Lance pulled him slowly back to bed.

“We got some time for a little more, don’t we?” he said

Dylan looked at the clock and said, “Time enough for something quick and a shower before folks come home.”

“Alright, then,” Lance said, pulling Dylan tightly to him and kissing him deeply.

“We’ll see where this goes.”

Dylan lay down and pulled Lance on top of him, stretching his legs to hold Lance in firmly while he ran his hands up and down Lance Bishop’s back.

“How the fuck are we going to keep this light?” Dylan murmured.

In the quiet semi darkness of love, in the bed that hardly moved because of the depth of the fucking, where Dylan’s hand reached around to hold Lance’s neck and his fingers curled in the small curls of Lance’s hair while they came together, their bodies pressed and sweating, Dylan, almost breathless, let out the same phrase Lance had been mumbling into his shoulder while he fucked him.

“I love you.”

“They looked healthy from the outside,” Todd said.

“They are healthy from the outside,” said Fenn. “And on the inside. They just want more.”

Layla asked her uncle, “Are we even supposed to be talking about this?”

“Probably not,’ Fenn conceded.

“What do you think is the most important thing in a significant other?” Will asked Fenn.

“The same thing Brendan and Kenny did,” Fenn said. “Which is why they’ve been together so long.

“You have to be reliable.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s a lot,” Todd said.

Will looked at him.

“Now look,” Todd said, peeling the orange as he leaned against the sink. “You can find a guy who is reliable to… say, come over and fuck you in an hour. Or two. Or be with you once a week a few times a week. You can find someone who is reliable for a month, two months, maybe a year.”

“Or a man who is reliable all the time,” Fenn chimed in, “as long as you don’t expect too much.”

Todd nodded, “Or reliable as long as it’s okay for him to sleep with other people and you always have to use condoms.”

“It’s a lot of strings,” Fenn said.

“Well, I think women are unreliable too,” Layla said. “I mean, I feel what you’re saying, but Claire, Radha and Dena are my oldest girlfriends. However that’s three women out of all the women I’ve known, and two of us are related. So, what’s that say?”

“And then,” Fenn thought on this, “after the reliable part, after you’ve found the one you can call at two in the morning—or for that matter ten in the morning—and you know he’ll be there, you have to also like him.”

“Because sometimes there is someone who really, really wants to be in a relationship and they’ll always be there even if you don’t want them.”

“We call that being needy,” Fenn said. “So you’ve got to have someone who is reliable, and who is your friend. But for a romance…”

“You need the romance,” Will said.

“Exactly.”

“And that’s the part where Brendan and Kenny are stuck.”

“Their broken relationship is better than most together relationships I’ve seen,” Will said after Layla has spoken.

“They just want to be in love again,” Todd said, sitting his lanky body down beside Fenn. He straddled his chair like a grasshopper.

“How long was it before you felt that way about me?” Will looked at Layla.

She turned to him and tilted her head.

“We were lucky. Our feelings grew with us. I think in a way I always loved you. Even after we split. I always measured others—”

“Against me?”         

“No,” Layla said. “I mean, let’s face it, Aidan and Kevin had it going on. But I measured the us I was with them against…. The us I am part of with you.”

Will smiled and said, “I was waiting to hear how much hotter I am than them, but you just won’t lie to me.”

He pounded his fist in his hand and Layla, ruffling Will’s hair, said, “William, you are always hot to me.”

After basking in this, Will looked at Todd and asked, “What about you all?”

“Well, for starters I was much younger than I am now. I had my good looks when we got together.”

“Shut up,” Fenn told him. “You’re just fishing for compliments.”

“I never get them,” Todd said sadly, touching his graying temple. He had always had short hair and long sideburns, but now the occasional streak of grey showed up.

“However, you do get blowjobs,” Fenn said soberly, “and I think you prefer those to compliments.”

“I think,” Layla said, “I will never get used to you, Uncle.”

“I think,” Will said, leering at Layla, “your uncle has a good idea.”

“I think,” Layla said, “I’m going to ignore this whole segue until we get home.”

Fenn beat the table softly, as if to call everyone back to order.

“Todd was utterly and completely reliable and always has been, and he was deeply in love with me. And he was tall and handsome. And then I finally realized I was in love with him as well. It was as simple as that.’

Todd gave him a pretend scowl and said, “I just don’t know why it took you so long to realize you were in love with me.”

“Because I had been in love with someone who left me for the priesthood and in love with someone who had simply left,” Fenn said. “And looking back on both of them I was pretty much out of love. So I didn’t trust myself or other men enough to fall in love and I thought, well what is the point in falling for another fool?”

Fenn looked at Layla and Will before saying:

“And then one day I realized that it didn’t matter if I wanted to fall in love or not, or even if he was a fool or not. It had already happened. There was nothing I could do.”

It started to rain on the way home, half icy drops hitting the windows, swished away by windshield wipers. Layla stopped herself from saying, “Baby be careful. It gets slippery on the snow.”

“Honey,” Will said, as they drove on in the dark.

“Um hum?”

“I didn’t bring it up earlier because so much has happened today—”

“But?”

“I have another conference. Right after the new year.”

“Seriously?”

She tried not to whine. After all, the new job came with new money, and it meant Will was rising in the world, the chemistry world that she did not understand.

“Yes, seriously.”

“But you just got home,” she said. “And you know how much I hate it when you’re gone. Not that I’m complaining though, damn, I just did.”

Will chuckled and said, “Well, you did. A little.”

“Well, where is this conference?”

“In London.”

“Damn.”

“But see, that’s where my new idea comes in.”

“Which is Skype? Cause I’m tired of that shit. I need my husband here.”

“That’s the second time you’ve called me your husband today.”

“You’re too old to be my boyfriend and I’m too old to have a boyfriend.”

“Well, what I have in mind is better than Skype.”

“Better than Skype?” Layla murmured sarcastically. “What could be better than Skype?”

“You coming with me?”

She shrieked so that Will nearly lost control of the car, and then she threw her arms around him.

“If we get killed on our way home, it really makes this whole conversation a little ironic. I love you, Layla, but you gotta… move over a little.”

“Oh, my gosh! London. And us together in London. Can you imagine?”

“Yes, I can,” Will said. “And here’s another thing: From now on I don’t ever want us separated. I don’t want to take any trips without my wife.”

They drove on quietly for a while, and then Layla said, “William?”

“Yes?”

“I know I said it wasn’t my style, and it wasn’t. And before how we lived wasn’t my style either.”

“What are you talking about?” Will spared just enough time from the road to give Layla a raised eyebrow.

“Do you think it’s time we got married?” Layla said. “Officially? Do you think it’s time I was Mrs. Klasko?”

He smiled, but he didn’t look at her.

“I would like it. I like to hear you say that.”

“Are you in a hurry?” Layla asked him, looking out of the window at the rain slanting into the passing night.

“No,” Will said after a time, such a long time it was almost as if he were proving he was in no hurry. “Only… it’s nice to hear you say that you would like to be my wife.”

“I just wanted to give it time and see what the probability of us lasting was.”

“And after eight years?”

“I decided our chances are pretty good.”