The Lovers in Rossford

Outside the bungalow with the yard lights shining on its yellow walls and the bushes, Sheridan parked the car and said, “So when are you going to tell them?”

“Not tonight,” Chay said. “Com’on.”

“I know,” Sheridan said. “I’m just so excited. This is the next step. We’re moving in together.”

“The next step to what?”

“Now you sound like Meredith.”

“I don’t know,” Chay said. “It’s just… We never defined us, and I’ve always felt like that was just a way to give us the excuse of sleeping with other people.”

“That’s because when we finally realized there was an us we were sleeping with other people. You remember that?”

“I remember that, yes. I never really formally broke up with Casey. I mean, Casey and Logan—their job was to have sex with other people. Logan was an escort. So… I remember, when we first realized how we felt about each other we weren’t exclusive. and we never put a name on what we had. But you have to know, things ended with Casey a long time ago, and I haven’t been fooling around with anyone. You and I have had an open relationship, but—”

“Not really,” Sheridan concluded. “Right.”

“Well, I want us to keep progressing toward… whatever. I…” he stopped. “There’s a lot for what Fenn and Todd used to say. About bucking convention.”

“But they are conventional.”

“They are now. More or less. But, listen,” Sheridan said. “I spent so many years of my life trying to be straight. Making myself have sex with girls. Having lots of sex with girls. Putting myself in real danger. When I think about what a slut I was… And I was like that because I didn’t want to be who I was. I just don’t want us to be in such a rush to act like straight people that we put limits on us. You know?”

Chay nodded. “Chay?”

 “Huh?”

“You wanna make it formal? You wanna be my boyfriend and we’ll be like husband and wife and all that? Or you still want us to just be best friends? Best friends who sleep together, but… who are open to other people?”

When Chay didn’t say anything, Sheridan said. “There’ve been times, for both of us, when we went off with other folks. When we were open and honest about it. I’m glad. You didn’t just get up and leave Casey, and I think that was right. But if you think the time is right for you and me to just be you and me, I think that’s right too.”

Chay sighed. “We’re so young.

“No, you’re right. Let’s keep it like it is. For now. I don’t feel like I’m making us solid when I say I want rules and restrictions. I feel like I’m being greedy.”

Sheridan leaned in and kissed him, and when Chay came into the kiss and his arms were around Sheridan’s neck and they were pressing their bodies together in the car, he remembered he’d always felt this way about Sheridan. He remembered that first time, on a Christmas night, when they’d stripped and made love. He remembered this morning. No, he didn’t want to own him.

Chay parted from him, watching Sheridan, face red, mouth opened.

“That’s why we need to hurry up and move in together,” Sheridan said.

He leaned across Chay and opened the car door.

“Go on. I won’t drive off until you’re safe in the house.”

It was silly, but of course Sheridan wouldn’t. And Chay realized he’d be pretty miffed if Sheridan did.

As Chay was walking away he heard the window roll down and Sheridan call his name.

“Yeah?” he said, returning to Sheridan who was leaning toward the window.

 “I don’t think about any other guy but you. You know that, right?”

Chay hadn’t known that. So he just said, “I love you,” and walked to the porch.

 

When Sheridan got home that night, the first thing he did was take a long shower. When he was in sleep pants and a tee shirt and he smelled fresh and was feeling in love, he remembered to check his messages.

He called the last number and waited. He’d probably just get an answering machine, and then they’d play phone tag for a few days. But the phone picked up.

“Sheridan?” the voice said. “Uh… yeah…?”

“Oh, my God, you don’t even know me,” the man’s voice chided.

But when he paid attention, Sheridan did know him. The recognition made him tremble and remember really falling in love, becoming himself. It made him remember the violence of killing for love, and the tenderness of being opened up, of one hundred seventy pounds laying across his body and a thick penis entering him.

“Logan?” he croaked, his penis stretching out and hardening.

“Sher,” Logan said tenderly. “What… How are you?”

“I’m back in town. I wanted to know how you were,” Logan said. “I wanted to see you.”

 

“I love you too,” Fenn said, and yawned as he hung up the phone. When Fenn yawned he looked at Todd who was looking at him.

“What?”

“I was just thinking,” Todd said, turning off the lamp on his night stand, and snuggling up to Fenn. “I have the best husband in the world.”

“You know I feel weird when you call me your husband.”

 “Would you rather be the wife?”

Fenn kissed Todd on his head and said, “I’d rather be Fenn.”

“I hope,” Todd said, as Fenn turned off his light, “that when Maia gets that age—and she almost is—I’m half as good a father to her as you are to Dylan.”

“Well, you do have the benefit of being Maia’s actual father.”

“You think that makes a difference?” Todd said turning on his side, and turning Fenn with him. “If you do you’re dumber than I thought.”

“No,” Fenn said. “No, I don’t think it makes a difference and I know it doesn’t to Dylan. The funny thing is, I always thought it would make a difference to me. I always thought I would be a terrible parent and I feel as if that boy came from me. I’m almost sure he did. It’s so strange. I don’t think any mother could love him more. That’s what I feel like. Like his mother. I think this is what he thinks I am. And good thing, given what his real mother is like. Here again, gone again. I’m glad I took care of her as best I could.”

“I’m totally in love with you when you talk like this,” Todd said. And, business like, he inquired: “You wanna fuck?”

“I’m tired,” Fenn told him. “But I feel like I could overcome it for a little something.”

There was a thump downstairs.

“What the hell is that?” Fenn’s eyes flew open. Todd sat up.

The thump came again.

“I don’t believe this,” Todd moaned pushing back the covers and going to the door for his housecoat.

“It’s eleven o’clock, I’m going with you,” Fenn insisted. Together they went down the steps, Fenn behind Todd in the threadbare black housecoat Todd had bought him twelve years ago. The living room lamp was still on, and Fenn muttered, “I wish Bren and Kenny still lived here.”

Todd put his eye to the keyhole and Fenn tried not to shout out a warning. Years ago a former gang member on the West End had gotten a knock on the door in the middle of the night. When he put his eye to the keyhole, someone had shot him in the brain. There was no reason for any of this to happen now or here, but it still went through Fenn’s head.

 “Who is it?” Fenn demanded.

However, when Todd turned to him with a mystified grin, the actual visitor was as much of a surprise as a bullet, and by the time he unlocked the door and opened it, Todd’s answer was unnecessary.

“Fenn, he’s back. It’s Bryant Babcock!”

 

“So you were the first people I came to see,” Bryant spread his hands out from where he sat on the sofa in the living room.

“At eleven o’clock at night,” Fenn noted as he moved about the room, lighting jar candles.

“I could leave.”

“Well, you’re here now,” Fenn yawned.

“I think what Fenn meant,” Todd said as his partner lit the candles around the large icon of Mary, “is that we were wondering if you were all right.”

“No,” Fenn objected, blowing out the stick, “that’s not what I meant.”

“I just got in,” Bryant said. “And the first thing I thought about was coming to see you guys.”

Fenn sat at the edge of the sofa.

“We didn’t even know you were coming. I mean coming to Rossford.”

“Bryant talked about that already,” Todd reminded him.

“He talked about it, yes,” Fenn said. “But he didn’t say anything about … Did you get the job?”

“I am the head of the music department at Loretto College.”

“Good for you, man,” Todd said.

“Why are you back?” Fenn asked.

“Fenn!”

“Fenn’s just being practical,” Bryant said.

“Damn right. There are a ton of places he could go. He comes back here? To the scene of the crime.”

“Which crime?”

“I was thinking of the more recent one committed by Chad North. And Chad North is gone by the way,” Fenn told him.

“I know,” Bryant said.

“And so’s your brother.”

“Yes.”

 Bryant’s face had grown thinner, and there was grey at his temples. Fenn didn’t say, “And your uncle’s dead,” but Frank Slaughter had passed a year ago, the last time they’d seen Bryant.

“But I don’t really have anywhere else to go,” Bryant told them. “This town is the most family I have. And Shelley’s having her first kid.”

“Right,” Todd remembered.

“Imagine that. Shelley Anderson. I mean, not Shelley Anderson yet. She and Matty have decided to be untraditional—”

“Also known as fucking around,” Fenn said.

“But that means that my new nephew is Paul and Claire’s nephew—”

“You’re sure it’s a boy?” Todd said.

Fenn looked at him as if he were missing the point, and Bryant said, “Yup. A boy. And that boy is the cousin of Claire’s kids and Claire’s kids are Fenn’s cousins and…Well, it really does mean you all are the closest family I have.”

Fenn said nothing about the Babcocks and Slaughters back home in Pennsylvania. Bryant never liked going back there, and the happiest he had been was when Sean and Shelley lived here in Rossford, and Frank was pastor at Saint Agatha’s. Chad had been living with him for seven years and everything seemed so stable then.

“Well, of course you’re family,” Todd said. “Now, I just have to find a way you’re related to me.”

“Through me, dummy,” Fenn said. He yawned and knuckled his eyes. “Whoever thought you’d be related to Bryant Babcock? And through me at that?

“I’m going to bed. No ass for you tonight, Mr. Meradan. Bryant, where are you staying?”

“I got a hotel room out near the airport.”

“You mean where all the strippers and junkies are? That’s a dicey idea.”

“It’s a cheap room and I can’t move into the house—”

“You got a house?” Todd said.

Bryant nodded. “But I can’t move in for a few days.”

 “Well, you might as well stay here,” Fenn said.

With that Fenn trudged up the steps and Todd told Bryant, “That’s as close to a gracious invitation as you’re going to get.”