Casual Wanderer © 2025 All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and specific other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
"Homecoming"
Jackson rolled his window down to let the crickets in, that old choir he'd known since his feet were small. He could feel the town before he saw it, how Willow Creek gathered itself low to the water and waited, faithful as a porch light.
They came on the sign slowly.
WELCOME TO WILLOW CREEK, white letters, green paint, one corner nicked. Daisy had banked it with hydrangeas gone blue as evening. They had those huge, foolish heads that belonged to no one's sense of thrift, bluer than the sky remembered being. Jackson breathed in, the way he used to before he stepped down into an arena. The breath took its time coming back.
He put his fingers to the little circle of St. Christopher on the dash and thumbed it like a worry stone. The medal caught a scrap of last light and threw it onto Blake's wrist where his hand held the wheel at ten and two. He had a hat on the seat between them and a map folded neatly under his thigh, as if the county line might jump and a man ought to be ready.
Jackson could name this stretch blind. He named it anyway, quiet, the way you count the days you almost forgot to live through. "Magnolia run...the water oak with the lightning scar...old bait shop's ghost… there's where Thelma's hounds get fat off neighbor sins..." A breath. "There."
Blake didn't look over. He didn't have to. "You callin' landmarks like you're sayin' grace," he said, voice low, grin not quite reaching his mouth.
"I might be."
"You hungry for it that bad?"
Jackson's eyes stung, and he laughed it off because a man could carry only so much truth in the cab of a truck. "Reckon I am."
Blake's fingers flexed on the wheel, then flattened. "Town don't owe us nothin'."
"It don't," Jackson said, eyes on the sign, the hydrangeas, the easy bend just past. "I owe it."
He could feel Blake's answer without hearing it: the old heat that lived under the man's ribs, the dog that paced when a gate swung open. Years on the road had made Blake good at belonging nowhere, quick feet, quick exit, the kind of courtesy you pack in a duffel and shake out again at the next place.
"You want me to keep rollin'," Blake said, not quite asking. "We can take the long way. Cross the bridge. Come at it from the south."
Jackson shook his head, small. "No. We take the bend."
The blinker ticked left, like a heart finding an old beat. The sign slid by close enough to touch. Jackson didn't reach out. He'd learned the difference between impulse and reverence. The hydrangeas flashed blue in the side mirror and then were gone, and he felt that tiny grief he always felt when beauty passed through him and moved on.
The road tightened its jaw and then softened again, dipping toward the low stretch where the river ran so close you could smell its brown patience. The air got wetter, thicker. The truck sank into it the way a body sinks into summer.
Jackson watched the turn appear.
The porch light had been burning a circle out of the dark so long it felt like it had learned his name. Before Jackson made it up to the second step, the door swung, and there she was, Daisy Bell in a cotton dress in the color of sweet tea, hair pinned, mouth already set to say something funny so she wouldn't cry.
"Well, Lord help us," she said, one hand on the frame like she was holding the house steady. "If it ain't my runaway beanpole. You got taller out there on the highways? I told the Lord if He kept stretchin' you I was gon' charge rent by the foot."
Jackson laughed once, a useless little sound that didn't touch the ache. Then he was inside her arms, where the smell was hairspray, lemons, and the good ghost of grease. She squeezed until his ribs remembered childhood. The joke left her mouth, and a little sob took its place, quick and mean as a wire. She pressed her thumb to that old fever spot at his temple anyway, as if a mother's job had an expiration date and she wasn't respecting it.
"You eatin' green things?" she asked, voice doing its best to be brisk.
"Yes, Mama," he lied, easy as breathing.
"Mm-hm." She leaned back to study him, eyes shiny, grin stubborn. "Don't you stand there lookin' like a postcard and think I ain't gon' make you take out the trash."
Behind him, a boot scuffed wood. Blake hovered on the plank like the threshold might bite. Hat in his hand, shoulders squared in the way of men who've had to carry themselves like baggage.
Daisy clocked him without moving her hand from Jackson's cheek. "Blake Buckley," she said, sugar poured over steel, "you plan on roostin' out there like a suspicious crow or you gon' come in and be seen? That light ain't a trap. It's a door."
"Yes, ma'am," Blake said, which was almost a step, and then he took the actual step. He didn't cross like a man tamed. He crossed like a man who'd decided to trust a floorboard because the woman on the other side had built it.
"Hat," Daisy said, and lifted it clean out of his fingers like she'd been taking hats from men her whole life, which she had. "We don't wear these in my kitchen unless it's Sunday mornin' or your scalp's in danger. I ain't seein' either."
He ducked, a shy flash, then straightened. "No, ma'am."
"Thought so." She hung the hat on the hook that had always been too high for Jackson when he was small, then turned them both toward the brightness. "Come breathe my air. It's paid for."
The house looked exactly like it did the day they left, except for a few things Jackson noticed immediately. A glass bowl on the entry table was full of St. Christopher keychains like fish in a good bucket. By the clock, a piece of blue-ink paper was taped crooked: Doors, not locks. On the pantry bins: DRY GOODS, GRANTS (ACTIVE), (PRAYIN' ON IT) in label-maker neat. The kettle kept a respectful simmer, as if company had been late before and would be again.
"I ain't cryin'," she announced to the room that was already convinced otherwise. "I'm retainin' water from all these casseroles."
Jackson smiled, throat tight.
She busied herself with the kettle like it required three hands and ten minutes. "Marla's five out with a pound cake she claims is sugar-free and I claim is a lie. Carla's bringin' beans that can raise the dead. Cassidy's gluin' sequins on somethin' unforgivable and callin' it a banner. Y'all got fifteen minutes to eat a spoon of somethin' green and take a breath."
Blake stayed a step off Jackson's shoulder, not leaning, not leaving, eyes learning the room like an arena, exits, lines, the places a man might be useful. Daisy saw it, stored it, and chose tender over lecture.
She went to the stove and came back with two small plates of collards. "Now...you know the house rules," she said, putting one in each hand. "You eat before you argue, you sleep before you make decisions, and you answer when I call, even if you're in the same room. You hear me?"
"Yes, ma'am," Blake said, surprised at himself.
Daisy turned to Jackson with that soft ferocity that could shame a man and save him in the same blink. "And you..." She stopped, swallowed, tried for a joke and tripped right over love. "Come set the table, baby. I can't stand around holdin' you all night or I will forget to be dignified."
They moved into the familiar choreography, drawer, forks, the soft clatter that says a house trusts you. Blake reached for the stack and Daisy let him, then handed him the napkins.
"Folks'll come through that door in a minute and do too much. We'll let 'em. Then we'll breathe," she said.
Jackson slid a fork beside Daisy's plate, the motion muscle-deep from a hundred suppers. The porch light threw its steady coin over the threshold. The little sign by the clock wavered in the fan's breeze and settled again. Daisy squared her shoulders like a hostess and a mother and a woman who'd built a town out of casserole steam and consequence.
"Sit," she commanded, pointing with the spoon. "Both of you. Let me look at you while I can do it in peace."
Jackson pulled out a chair and obeyed her the way he always had, the way he always would when the order was love in disguise.
But just then, Marla hit the porch.
The screen door hadn't even decided whether to squeak when she was through it, pound cake balanced like a crown and her handbag swinging judgment. "Move, saints," she sang, which was what she called sinners when she liked them. "I brought somethin' with butter and absolution."
"Neither's in the recipe," Daisy said, wiping her eyes with a wrist and turning the wipe into a wave. "Set it by the lemon cloth, before you baptize my floor."
Marla kissed Jackson on both cheeks like he was headed to prom and she had personally invented the institution. "Lord, look at you," she said, hands framing his face, rings flashing like carnival lights. "You got taller and prettier, which is an insult to the rest of us. I'm callin' my congressman."
"He don't have one," Daisy said. "He's got me."
Carla came quieter behind, shoulders soft, smile that believed in tomorrow. She didn't say anything first. She folded Jackson up in a hug the way you tuck a quilt back around a boy who's kicked loose in his sleep. Her hair smelled like clean cotton and from whatever she and Cash had been making the world out of. "Hey, honey," she said into his shoulder. "Good to have your weight on this floor again."
"It remembers me," Jackson said, and the floor did, boards giving the old respectful squeak under his boots.
Cassidy came last, on a breeze of perfume, a paper bag clutched to her chest. "Hold out your hand, blondie," she ordered, and when he did she slapped down a Polaroid with the white still warm. Sunset poured out of it slow as sorghum: the school terrace, four kids with their feet on the railing, a town pretending not to be on fire. Cassidy had written on the border in a wicked hand: Don't forget where up is.
Jackson swallowed. "You always bossy or just on Thursdays?"
"On days that end in y," she said. "Hey, cowboy." She tipped her chin at Blake without asking permission to include him in the mischief.
"Ma'am," he said, lifting himself slightly from his chair, which made Cassidy laugh purely out of principle.
"Don't you 'ma'am' me unless you're fixin' to tug a forelock," she said. "Lord, look at you. Take a chair before the dog starts barkin' at you."
"We ain't got a dog," Daisy said.
"We will if he keeps loom-in'," Cassidy said, and elbowed Jackson in the ribs without the least regard for his ability to breathe.
"Y'all quit," Marla said, carving pound cake into indecent architecture. "A man like him got to sit after fifteen hundred miles of teachin' horses manners."
"Shut up and hand me a plate," Daisy said. She had the kettle going like it was on duty, and it kept a soft hiss that made the room feel like it could forgive anything.
Jackson let his palm find the windowsill. There, driven flush and alone, was that single nail that had lived at his eye-line since he'd been too short to reach it.
"Eat while it's hot," Daisy said, sliding plates like she was dealing salvation. "Marla, don't you slice that cake so thin people gotta stack four to make sense of their lives. Carla, you brought those beans? I owe you cash and an apology. Cassidy, if you brought glitter in my house I'm gon' salt your tires."
"It's sequins," Cassidy said. "Bigger and more expensive. And they only shed if you say mean things about 'em."
"Then we all gon' itch," Daisy said, but she was smiling when she said it.
Blake sat back down. Every time someone shifted too quick, some small thing in him braced and then relaxed when nothing bad happened. He kept reaching for Jackson without moving, tilts of a shoulder, a lean with no lean in it. When Marla pressed a plate into his hand, he remembered to thank her like a man raised right and a boy who hadn't been.
"Where's Cash?" Marla asked, because Marla asked loud things so Daisy didn't have to.
A small, tidy pause set itself on the table. Carla set the beans down and folded the towel over the handle with fussy care. "Shop's open late some nights," she said. "He got backed up this week."
Cassidy cut her eyes at Jackson. "He'll be by," she said, like a nail tapped on principle.
Daisy didn't look away from the stove. "Y'all can ask about folks when they get here to answer for themselves," she said, not sharp but the kind of firm that kept gossip where it belonged. Then, softer, for Jackson alone: "You'll see him."
Jackson nodded.
Carla slid into the chair beside him and set her hand over his wrist. "He built Miss Thelma a screen porch that made me cry," she said. "I sat right there with tea and cried like a fool. Don't tell him. He'll get uppity."
"Baby's already uppity," Cassidy said. "He writes rules in a notebook now like a preacher. Fix, Don't Fight. I almost had it tattooed right here," she pointed to the soft part of her inner arm. "...but the artist said no scripture."
"He ain't wrong," Daisy muttered, making the coffee too strong on purpose. "I might have it carved on the pantry door."
"On a hinge," Jackson said, without meaning to. "Inside, where only certain folks would know to look."
They all stilled a fraction of a second, the way a room does when it recognizes a true thing and resists the urge to touch it. Daisy set the spoon down and put her palm to his cheek again because she couldn't get used to not doing it. "You hungry for supper?" she asked, making the question a joke so the answer didn't have to be.
"Supper," he repeated, and the word took root.
"Then eat," she said, and the command was love like always.
Marla narrated everybody's business for filth and comfort ("Miss Alma done dyed her hair the exact color of a robin's chest. It's biblical, that's what it is"). Carla issued small mercies ("Here, sugar, you take the bigger piece. I don't trust you to eat later"). Cassidy folded napkins into complicated flowers and then threw one at Blake just to see if he'd flinch. He caught it midair like a calf rope and set it on his thigh, startled, then grinning before he could stop.
"You sleepin' here tonight," Daisy announced without looking up from the coffee. "No argue. Room's clean. I fluffed both pillows, 'cause I ain't heartless. Cassidy, stop gluin' sequins onto my dishrag."
"It's not your dishrag. It's art," Cassidy said. "Also, I need the glue gun outlet, move."
Carla stared until the outlet gave itself up in shame. "I'm raising a porcupine."
"You raised a miracle and picked up a porcupine on the way," Marla said. "Be grateful."
Jackson slid his chair closer to the table. The bowl of St. Christopher's on the sideboard threw a scatter of nickel light across the lemon cloth, and he reached to straighten one fork that didn't need straightening just to feel something true under his fingers. The nail in the sill caught a stripe of dusk and held it.
"Y'all eat," Daisy said again, softer. "Tomorrow we let the town stare proper."
Jackson met her eyes, hunger running its two rivers in him, one for food, one for the kind of safety that tastes like greens and clean forks and being told what to do by somebody who loves you.
He plucked up his fork and nodded.
*
Noon laid itself heavy over Main Street the next day, heat thrown flat across the hood so the paint looked wet. The truck's windows were down, and the air came in layered. Blake drove with his forearms tanning on the door, eyes working mirrors. Jackson sat easy and restless all at once, hand on the St. Christopher hanging from the column, thumb worrying a shine into the saint's belly.
They made the slow loop. Jackson pointed with two fingers, lazily. "There's the barber. He still tilts that chair toward the window so he can judge the traffic proper." In the glass, the pole turned stripes into water and threw them back again. He grinned. "Courthouse...don't matter what you bring in there. It comes out smaller. The willow that named us...she's bigger every year, like she's draggin' the river up into herself. Spur sign still actin' funny...like it's holdin' the town together outta habit. Mama says it listens."
Blake clocked different things. "Cross street on the left's clean," he said, more to the wheel than to Jackson. "Back way to the highway's two lights down. If you needed to, you could be past the feed store in under five."
"I ain't runnin'," Jackson said, not mean, not even a correction.
"Wasn't sayin' you were," Blake answered, jaw easy, hand not. "Just countin' doors."
"Exits," Jackson said, smiling sidelong.
"Same difference if it's hot enough."
They rolled past the church with its white steps and the door Cash had set true two storms ago. Jackson watched the pastor's old palm land on the panel, watched the door hush and catch, and felt a small, clean satisfaction in a place behind his ribs. He didn't know why.
"Miss Alma's got hydrangeas showin' out," he said, pointing across the green to a bloom.
Blake huffed a smile he didn't quite trust. "Porches and plants," he said. "Y'all file your joy under nouns."
They idled at the light by the café. Two teenagers with skinned knees hurtled through a game nobody had explained to them yet and didn't need to. Old men angled chairs out under the awning, practicing patience. The sheriff tipped his chin from a cruiser, public nod that cost him nothing yet, unbeknownst to Jackson, bought a great deal behind it. And then, sliding into view like a thing he'd dreamed too hard, there it was.
DOOR & LIGHT CARPENTRY in hand-painted letters, the ampersand fat and friendly, a tomato-red bike leaned respectfully by the door. Through the glass, he could see a pegboard neat as a hymn and, on a bench, the corner of a level catching the sun. There was no silhouette at the back.
There was no man at the vise.
Jackson's hand came up before he knew it, a small wave a man makes at a ghost who isn't one. He stopped it halfway and set his palm flat on his thigh. The light held them there a beat too long. The ache that rose wasn't sharp. It was wide, the good kind that made room for breath.
"You want to go in?" Blake asked, quietly, eyes forward, like offering a door without touching the knob.
"Nah...maybe later," Jackson said. He took a breath and felt it hit bottom.
Blake nodded once, a movement you could miss if you weren't looking. He scanned the intersection again, counting, like a man who'd learned safety by doing the math every time.
"You ain't gotta guard me in a town that raised me."
Blake chuckled nervously. "Sometimes it's the ones that know your middle name," Blake said, and the way he said it had years on it.
Jackson let that sit. He watched the breeze flop the Willow House flyer on the café board, HYDRANGEA SOCIAL faded but still bragging.
"Porches ain't traps, Blake," he said, low. "They're places to set things down."
"Porches got neighbors," Blake returned, half-joke, half-doctrine.
"Then learn their names."
The light blinked green. The truck crept forward, and the shop slid past. Jackson kept his eyes on the road until the urge to look back passed through him and left something steadier in its place. He touched St. Christopher once, more habit than hope, and found his hands quiet on his knees.
"Straight or right?" Blake asked, thumb on the signal, voice gentler than his hands.
"Straight," Jackson said. He tilted his chin toward the long heat ahead, the lunch crowd, the river air that would be soup by three.
Blake clicked the blinker off and let the truck do what it had always done best: go.
Beside him, Jackson settled into the seat like a man who'd found a rhythm he hadn't lost after all.
The Willow House doors were propped with river stones, and the room breathed like a chest before a good cry.
Weston stood at the line with a hotel pan of cornbread and a knife he'd sworn to Daisy he wouldn't use as a mirror. Today, he'd brought the cardinal cane, red head proud on the handle, propped easily against the flour sack like a bird that had found good seed. Levi slid in behind him with the last of his day's stride still on him: scrubs wrinkled, badge reel bobbing a tiny red bird with every move, smile warm enough to make a man sleep.
"Look what the river let me keep," Weston said when Jackson stepped into the kitchen's heat. He tapped the cardinal's crown with one knuckle, eyes bright and fox-quick.
Jackson laughed and then just looked, greedy for the sight. Weston steady at a line in his own town. Levi leaning a shoulder close. He reached, palm hovering over Weston's shoulder before he set it down, careful. "Lord, Wes. You look..." He searched for something better than pretty. "Right. Like you fit your own name."
Weston's grin put a dent in the room. "Took me long enough to find where it went." He cut the cornbread clean, squares even as hymn notes. "You made it back," he added, like it wasn't one of the understatements of the year.
"Just last night," Jackson said. "Mama near broke my ribs, so I guess I earned it." He angled his chin at Levi. "You takin' care of my friend?"
Levi wiped his hands, planted them on his hips, and put on mock offense. "Boy, I am a licensed professional of the takin’-care arts. Also I make a gumbo that has been declared a controlled substance in three counties."
"Two," Weston corrected. "The third was just talk."
Blake hung at Jackson's back a step, polite, taut as wire. He shook Levi's hand with a nod and gave Weston an honest, spare smile that said what needed saying without getting in the way. His eyes did their old work, doors, lines, escape routes, as if the fellowship hall were a corral that might spook.
Jackson kept his focus on Weston. "I've been thinkin' about you," he said, plain as bread. "Proud of you. Not just for survivin'. But...for livin'. Here. Loud."
Weston's jaw twitched like a man bluffing his own blush. "I ain't brave every day."
"I didn't say every day."
"Some mornings," Weston went on, low enough not to bruise the air, "I stand in the mirror and practice sayin' 'be proud' till it stops soundin' like I'm lyin'. And some nights...the river runs through the hall and I have to tell it to use the back door." His mouth quirked. "Levi's got a badge reel that hypnotizes me into rememberin' who I am."
Levi flicked the little cardinal with a finger. The red blinked, a comic heartbeat. "Medical-grade reassurance," he said. "Also, I park under a light and put my keys in the same bowl."
Jackson's smile wobbled. He studied Weston's face gently, expertly, like you check a board for hairline cracks. " You sure you all right?"
Weston's eyes went to the door when the bell gave a bright little ding for nobody in particular. The flinch was small and practiced, gone before the sound died. Levi's hand found the small of his back and pressed once, a code, a password. Weston breathed, shoulders settling. "I'm all right," he said, which was true enough to stand. Then softer, for Jackson alone. "Most days."
Jackson opened his mouth to ask the next question, the real one, the one that would put a hand on the sore and keep it there. The kitchen made room for him to try. But the room is a living creature in Willow Creek, and it decided to change keys.
Cassidy burst through the roll-up with a crate of tomatoes announcing themselves like alarm bells. "Make way! The Lord has provided nightshades and mischief." She hip-bumped Jackson on instinct, then threw a wink over him at Levi. "Cardinal Boy, you still writin' your number on the board like a billboard? Good. People need to pester you."
Marla was right behind with a colander on her head for reasons unknown, declaring, "We need someone with forearms to open this jar." Carla slipped in quietly after, laying out spoons like she was setting a metronome for mercy. A teenage volunteer asked Daisy three questions at once and dropped four forks trying to catch the fifth.
Daisy clapped twice above it all. "All right, saints and sinners, point your feet where your hands are needed. Jackson, you take rolls. Blake, napkins...you look like a man who knows how to fold a corner square. Levi, if you ain't wash-scrubbed already you better pretend you are. I can't afford to lose my liability coverage. Weston, plate that bread like it's a love letter."
Weston shot Jackson an apologetic half-smile. Jackson returned the look. He quickly squeezed Weston's forearm, the kind boys used to pass along messages under desks, then moved into the river of tasks. Blake brushed his shoulder without grabbing it and set about folding napkins with concentration he usually saved for bulls and exits. Levi elbowed Weston just enough to make him roll his eyes and stand taller.
The bell at the door dinged again, the hydrangea flyer over the board trembled in the conditioned breeze, and Daisy's kitchen settled into its work.
*
The heat had started to fold itself up for the day, tucking light into the hedges. Daisy's front steps became an office, a pulpit, and a train depot all at once, with women with clipboards, phones, and opinions, and the air smelling like tomato vines, Pine-Sol, and the first brave moth.
Daisy and the gals were hands on deck for Jackson's welcoming party.
"Roll call," Daisy said, sitting two steps down where she could see the street. She had her legal pad balanced on her knee, the top page labeled in block letters: WELCOME HOME, FOOD / FOLKS / FIRE EXTINGUISHER IF COLTON SHOWS. She clicked her pen. "Marla, you work the phones. Carla, you're my handwriting because mine is honest but not legible. Cassidy, God help us, you text people who won't pick up when they see me callin'."
Marla already had her purse under her arm like a holster, dialing with the speed of a woman who could sell rain to the river. "Miss Alma? Baby, it's tonight. Yes ma'am, on the lawn, not in the sanctuary...no, you can still wear your hat, nobody's tryin' to kill all the joy...deviled eggs? Bring the ones that taste like somethin' we can gossip about." She hung up and dialed again. "Peabody! Tune that guitar and behave yourself. We're feeding the prodigals and I mean that plural."
Carla sat with her ankles neat, writing names in a script that made even "paper plates" look elegant. "Cas, hand me that pen...no, not the glitter one." She looked up at Jackson and smiled the way quiet folks do when the right kind of noise finally came back. "You all right, honey?"
"Yeah," he said, and meant it enough to feel it land.
Cassidy sprawled sideways on the step, thumbing texts with the speed of a sinner on Sunday. "Calling in the glam squad," she muttered. "Tasha says she's bringing a tray and her ex's new boyfriend, which is honestly iconic." She flipped to another thread and chewed the corner of her lip. The contact read CASH like it was both name and oath. She typed: Tonight? She hit send and watched the bubble swim away. Three dots blinked. Blinked. Disappeared.
Jackson watched the non-answer. It didn't surprise him. It still managed to rearrange his ribs, though.
Blake stood just behind his shoulder, a hand braced high on the porch post as if keeping the house from walking off with the rest of his nerve. Every time Jackson leaned forward, Blake's fingers flexed, ready to catch a fall that hadn't happened. It was sweet and it was a warning.
Daisy squinted down her list, mouth moving as she did the math between tables and mouths. "Sheriff's office? They're comin' by to 'check on the peace' and eat three plates they'll call 'samples.' Put 'em down for two jugs of tea and restraint." She lifted her head and hollered toward the open door. "Weston! Levi! Y'all need anything down there besides ice and purpose?"
"Purpose's hot," Levi called back from the kitchen. "Bring ice."
"On it." Daisy scribbled ICE, JACKSON, and looked up, thumb braced under the line. "You hear me, baby?"
"Yes, Mama."
Cassidy tried again, fingers flying: You comin' or not? She hit send and flopped backward across the step, her hair fanning like a warning flag. Nothing.
Carla ticked down her column. "We've got: Thelma with biscuits, Miss Alma deviled eggs, Mr. Peabody and guitar, Tasha plus entourage, Sheriff & Sample Squad, church ladies with five casseroles and one opinion apiece. Weston and Levi have cornbread. We're out of pickles unless Marla's been hidin' them."
"I have a jar at the back of my soul," Marla said. "I'll decant it."
Blake shifted, shading Jackson from a sun that didn't need shading. "You want me to run the ice?" he asked, already ready to escort.
Daisy answered without looking at him. "No, sir. Let the boy walk his own street." Then, kinder. "You can carry the second bag if your hands are just itchin' for purpose."
Blake nodded, throat moving like he'd swallowed something truer than he liked. "Fine."
A kid on a bike careened by and clipped the curb, righted himself with a yip, kept going. The willow at the end of the block leaned like a woman listening at a door.
Cassidy's phone buzzed. She snatched it up like a cat catching a moth and then let her arm go boneless again. "Not him," she said to no one. "Tasha says her ex's new boyfriend is wearing mesh. Now I have to save the town twice."
Daisy watched Jackson read the gap between texts like scripture and set her hand, warm and bossy, on his knee. "You and Blake go fetch that ice."
"Yes, Mama," Jackson said, standing.
*
Willow House wore its lights like pearls.
People came sideways at first, then all at once, porch-talkers who needed to see before they believed, children with elbows too sharp for their sleeves, old boys who had to put two palms on the door and bless it before they crossed.
The room found Jackson the way light finds a mirror.
Kids came first, a knot of them with napkins and Sharpies, eyes big in the way of small towns that know how to be proud of homegrown things. "Jackson, can you sign mine to 'Tay-Tay but real name Tessa'?" "My daddy says you stayed on eight like it owed you child support." "You gonna ride at our fair?" Jackson took each napkin and made a small ceremony of his name, kneeling once to an angle that didn't make the child crane. "To Tay-Tay, the realest," he wrote, and the girl made a sound like a pan cooling.
Old men clapped his back with the softness they save for sons of friends they love. "Your mama say you eatin'?" "Boy, you got your daddy's walk and your mama's better sense." Mrs. Sims cried a little by the pound cake and blamed the onions she hadn't chopped. "You look good," she said, as if her judgment had the weight of law, which it did.
Daisy stood near the pass-through with a ladle like a scepter, grant stamp on her tongue, laughter in her holster. She watched the town eat and forgive itself a bite at a time. When the room felt full enough to hold what she meant to say, she tapped her spoon to the edge of the roaster, bright as a bell.
"Neighbors," she called, and the word gathered in the rafters. "I ain't gon' sermonize, 'cause y'all know I save that for board meetings." Laughter, fond. "My boy went and ran the roads awhile, like boys do when they think God put horizons there to be chased. I let him go because I raised him to be a door, not a lock, and doors swing, Lord help us. Tonight he's home. He's still mine and..." she lifted a shoulder, smiling through the welling. "I ain't greedy. Thank you for lovin' him in public like you been doin' in private. Eat, sit, brag on your grandbabies. And if anybody tries to fight, I have a fire extinguisher and Scripture."
Applause felt like hands on shoulders. Jackson swallowed around something stubborn and met Daisy's eye. She gave him the tiniest nod, and he went, because he always had when she pointed him toward kindness.
Blake kept a step to the side, pride cinched under his ribs like a belt. He'd taken off his hat and set it on the end of the table, but he wore his rodeo smile like a habit, a pretty mask that had saved him from worse rooms. Every time Jackson drifted an inch, Blake shadowed. When a hand on Jackson's shoulder stayed a breath too long, heat walked Blake's jawline, and then he sat when he told it to sit. Daisy clocked all of it and slid an extra roll onto Blake's plate like a truce. "Put butter on that temper, cowboy," she said under her breath, not unkind.
Sheriff Calvin did his rounds with two cups and an effort not to linger near the cake. He nodded in public, a small thing that mattered. Miss Alma floated a hydrangea from her yard into a mason jar on the window ledge because good sense loses to beauty sometimes and ought to. Mr. Peabody tuned a guitar that could never quite decide if it was born in church or a honky-tonk, and when he struck the first chord, even the AC seemed to hush to listen.
Not everybody approved out loud. A pair of mouths near the coffee spoke rumors like they were doing their civic duty.
Them two traveled close…
Daisy got brave with those saints...
A volunteer with a name tag that said "HELLO MY NAME IS TRY ME" wandered by with a refill and the gossip turned into work, as gossip will when handed a spoon.
Cash's chair at the end of the long table sat empty, an absence that kept catching light like a fish. Carla smoothed a napkin there without knowing she'd done it. Cassidy chalked DOOR & LIGHT in the corner of the job board and drew a fat ampersand, then erased it, then drew it again. Jackson didn't look long, but he looked enough for the ache to find its shelf and set itself there tidy.
Blake drifted in and out of the circle, never quite in the middle. A woman with too much perfume and a nephew on the football team asked him to hold her phone for a picture with Jackson. He took it and took the picture and gave it back without letting his hand brush hers. A man Jackson vaguely remembered from Little League said something about boys in hats that might have been praise and might not. Blake let it register and then set it down. When somebody younger, handsome in a soft, fragile way, asked Jackson what motel they were at, "for a cousin's cousin, no reason", Jackson smiled church-warm and said, "We sleep where my mama tells us," and Blake's mouth did something complicated and then came back to center.
Daisy clapped once and the room obediently changed key. "Mr. Peabody," she said, "play us somethin' that belongs to everybody." He did: an old tune that made the floor want to sway even if your knees were liars. Couples found each other's hands. Kids found the beat they were born with. Weston leaned into Levi's shoulder for exactly the length of a chorus and neither of them died.
Jackson stood there, awash and anchored, the medal warm in his pocket where he'd clipped it because Daisy had told him to. The smell of rolls and soap, the sound of forks and soft laughter, and the sight of his town doing right by a simple thing put him back together in ways the road had not known how. He felt Blake's presence at his shoulder like weather. He didn't move him, didn't soothe him, didn't ask him to be someone he'd spent a life not being. He reached back once, casual, let his knuckles find denim, made contact without spectacle. Blake's fingers answered quick and then let go, like a man practicing.
Mr. Peabody changed keys. The room lifted, like something inside it had been waiting all night to find its feet and finally did.
And that's when it happened.
Colton came in.
Heat first, then noise.
The door breathed him into Willow House on a wave of cheap cologne and bourbon he'd borrowed from somebody meaner. He paused in the threshold the way men do when they want the room to measure them, chin pitched, smile cut thin as a switch. Sheriff Calvin noticed without looking up. Daisy clocked him, too, hand settling on her ladle like it could double as a gavel.
"You best behave, you little..." she said to no one in particular.
Colton slid through the crowd with a shoulder that practiced brushing folks on purpose. He'd dressed for the reflection, pressed shirt, hat tipped just enough to pretend at manners, boots polished to a lie. When he found Blake by the far end of the line, he hung there at his elbow like a burr you can't quite get your fingers on.
"Well, look who brought the carnival," he said, words damp with drink and triumph. His eyes skated off Jackson and came back to Blake with the hot-cold of a man who can't decide what he wants to break. "You miss me on the circuit, Buckley? Or just miss the way folks look at you when you walk in? Heard you've been...busy."
Blake didn't give him a hook. He kept his tone low and his jaw quiet. "Evenin', Colton. Move it along."
Colton laughed, head thrown back just enough to show off his throat. "Ain't you a gentleman. Plan to share that courtesy or keep it for your...friends?" His gaze flicked to Jackson, then back, liking how a good room went still around a mean question.
Jackson leaned into the silence without stiffening it. "There's food on the table if you came hungry."
"Oh, I'm hungry," Colton said, eyes not leaving Blake's face.
Daisy's smile didn't change, but the light behind it did. She reached for a pitcher, set it down where it needed to be, and stepped forward just enough to put herself near the men whose names she said in her prayers whether she liked it or not. "Colton, you eat yet? You always make worse decisions on an empty stomach."
"I'm on a liquid diet," he said, pleased with his own wit.
"Then hydrate," Daisy snapped back, ladle pointing to tea, not to hell, though it had the same energy. "And don't make me call your auntie."
Snickers bubbled. Tension shifted its feet. For a second, Colton's mouth twitched toward something human, old embarrassment, the memory of a woman with a wooden spoon and a lot of love. Then the drink put its hand back on his neck and steered. He leaned in closer than the air would prefer, voice lower, aiming for Blake's ear.
"You used to know how to leave a party before the lights came up," he murmured. "What changed? Figure out you liked bein' seen?" His breath smelled like malice.
Blake set one palm on the table, anchoring. The other he lifted just enough to draw a boundary in the air. "Back up."
"Or what? You'll teach me manners?" Colton's laugh came out thin and expensive. "Heard you been givin' lessons after hours."
The words landed like pebbles on a tin roof, loud and small, meant to startle. Jackson felt the room tilt toward him and chose not to tilt with it. He reached for a roll and split it with methodical care, as if his hands could teach the room. "Colton," he said evenly. "Go fix yourself a plate."
But Colton wasn't here for food.
He was here for a stage.
His eyes, restless as skeeters over water, found the little portable mic Daisy had set up for announcements. Mr. Peabody had been nursing it between songs, telling stories about guitars that had outlived four marriages. Now the stand leaned unattended by the pass-through while Peabody retuned, head bent, fingers searching a stubborn chord.
Daisy saw where Colton's gaze went and moved, three quick steps, a breezy repositioning of a tray that put her between man and mic with the ease of a woman who runs traffic as a spiritual gift. "Baby," she said sweet as arsenic, "you ain't on the program."
"Never stopped me," he said, and the way he grinned made the sentence mean more than its words.
He tried to sidestep.
Daisy mirrored.
The room noticed, without acknowledging, the collective hush that towns do when they sense the weather changing and refuse to feed it. Sheriff Calvin put his tea down.
Blake tilted his head at Colton, voice low enough that it could have been respect if you didn't know better. "Not tonight."
"Why not tonight?" Colton's words had lost their edges. The rounded drunkness made them worse. "Man leaves, man comes back, man thinks he can pretend the rest of us didn't have to sweat out five summers with our mouths shut."
Something old and raw flickered under that, a different story from a different night, but Colton didn't own it enough to tell it. He wanted crowd, not truth. He wanted a mic.
"This is a kitchen," Daisy said. "We feed people here. That's the show."
Colton stepped left.
Daisy stepped left.
He stepped right.
She stepped right.
And then he smiled, big and empty, and took a different path, up onto a chair, onto the bench, onto the end of the long table with a boots-on wood thunk that made every woman over fifty put a hand to her heart and every man under thirty itch for a reason to make a scene.
"Colton," the sheriff said, finally letting his voice be the room's spine. "Down."
"I got a toast," Colton announced, swaying, arms wide like a preacher who'd found the end of the sermon and couldn't bear to sit. He jumped down not to obey but to reach, two quick slick steps, and he had the mic in a fist before anyone could pretend they hadn't seen it coming. The speaker popped, one of those ugly little squeals that makes the fillings in your teeth report in.
Half the room flinched.
The other half set their jaws.
Colton licked his lips, pleased at the size of his own echo. He tapped the mic again for nothing but the satisfaction of the crackle.
"Y'all," he drawled, dialing his voice up to Sunday and his eyes down to mean. "Ain't it somethin'? We got our golden boy home...Jackson Bell in the flesh, hair like a country song and a jaw that don't quit. And his...traveling companion." He let the last words sit oily on his tongue, turned his chin toward Blake. "Y'all know Blake Buckley. Yessir. Rode him into town like a parade float."
A few laughs, nervous, wrong, skittered along the edges and died.
Colton licked his teeth. "See, some of us done seen the road show up close. Not just the bulls. Back corridors. Motel lots. Bathroom stalls with the lock half broke 'cause somebody couldn't wait." He slanted a look at Jackson that wanted to bruise. "Ain't that right, pretty boy?"
Daisy stepped once toward him. "Colton," she said, all honey over razors, "you put that down and you pick up a plate."
He sailed past her voice. "No, ma'am. I'm servin' somethin' tonight. Truth. Y'all like truth, don't you? Let's have it." He walked the cord taut so the mic squealed, enjoying the flinch it made in the room. "Boy leaves town with a man old enough to know better. Comes back with them hands still sticky from whatever they been doin' on the interstate."
A hiss of breath from somebody's aunt. Sheriff Calvin shifted his stance, one foot a half-inch forward, patience put on like a uniform. Weston's grip slid to the cardinal cane's neck. Levi's hand hovered mid-back, not taking, not leaving.
Colton rolled on, words slurring just enough to show the poison's proof. "Maybe that's what it takes to ride, huh? Eight seconds and then eight minutes and then eight hours...swap hats, swap beds, swap..." He said a word that made two old men look at their shoes. "Maybe that's how you break a colt, too, teach him to open up when a real man..."
"Hey." The sheriff's voice, calm and built to carry. "Put it down."
Colton grinned wider, tipsy on his own echo. "No. Folks been whisperin' for years. Let's talk out loud." He swung his arm toward Jackson and Blake like a carnival barker unveiling a trick. "Jackson Bell and Blake Buckley ain't just ridin' bulls...they ridin' each other. Y'all seen 'em. I seen 'em. Heard 'em. Boy's got the kind of mouth make a saint backslide, and Buckley...Lord, Buckley...he'll take anything if it keeps him in the center of a ring."
Blake's hand went flat on the table, tendons high as fence wire. The old armor climbed his shoulders a notch, eyes narrowed to slits he could hide behind. Jackson felt his own blood rushing his ears and made it stop. He willfully made it stop. He stepped forward, not big, not performative, just enough to put his body between the bad weather and the people he loved. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"Colton," he said.
Colton looked at him and laughed in a way that belonged on asphalt, not in a kitchen. "Aww, sweetheart. Look who learned to talk." He dropped his pitch to a coo that was designed to humiliate. "You kiss him like you kissed that camera in Amarillo? You make little sounds for him? You say 'sir' or you make him? Which one's the saddle and which one's the fence, pretty boy?"
A few souls gasped.
A few pretended not to understand.
A few tightened their jaws around the familiar hurt of it.
Jackson didn't flinch. He took the last step that put him in the path of whatever else Colton thought he had left and reached behind him without looking. He found Blake's hand and took it. He didn't squeeze for rescue. He offered anchor, palm open, steady.
For one beat, Blake let him. For one beat, there was weight in Jackson's hand that wasn't just his own.
But then, slowly, the old fear, taught, rehearsed, and bone-deep jerked, and Blake's fingers slipped free. A pullback the size of an inch that turned into a mile because of where they were and who was watching.
The room felt it.
The sound that followed wasn't a sound.
It was a hush with edges.
Daisy moved. Not fast, not furious. She walked straight and human to Colton, face arranged into the kind of pretty people put on for weddings and court dates and truces. She didn't touch him. She touched the cord, and in touching it, took the mic from his hand with the kind of tender that shames. "We don't talk like that in my house," she said. "We don't talk like that anywhere if we intend to be people tomorrow."
Colton tried to laugh it off and failed. The ugliness had burned too much oxygen. Sheriff Calvin came then. "Time to go, son."
"I was just..."
"Going," the sheriff said. He wasn't asking.
Colton stepped back, did a little bow that wanted to be charming, and nearly tripped over his pride. A few chuckles rose, sharp, mean, not generous. Daisy shot them a look and they shut their mouths. The door took Colton the way a river takes what doesn't want to learn its shape. The air he'd used up rushed back in.
Daisy stood there with the mic and did not make a speech. She looked at her boy first, then at the man who had let go of his hand, then at the town that kept insisting on being itself.
"Eat," she said into the mic, voice even, no tremor, no sermon. "Sit with who you came with. If you got extra shame in your plate, scrape it in the trash...we ain't servin' that tonight." She set the mic down on the pass-through like a hot skillet and went to the sink to run cold water because hands need something to do after they've done something hard.
Jackson stood very still, breath measured on purpose. The soundless part of the room, that first minute after a bruise, shimmered. He turned to Blake because that was the kinder thing, even if kindness was going to cost.
Blake couldn't meet him right away. When he did, everything in his face was true: the old fright, the kind of sorry that doesn't have enough hands, the instinct to move his body out of the light and hold his love where nobody can name it. It was not villainy. It was a wound that had learned to walk.
Jackson nodded once, small, less permission than acknowledgment. Then he stepped back from the long table, set his empty hands on the edge to steady, and walked toward the roll-up. It rattled up on its tracks and the night pushed in: dumpsters, wet cardboard, jasmine, a slice of moon thin as a thumbnail. Jackson was already halfway down the narrow strip of gravel behind Willow House, shoulders squared like a man walking off a ride he'd made the bell on. He didn't look back.
"Jackson," Blake called, voice low from inside the metal mouth of the doorway. When Jackson didn't stop, he came after him, boot scuffs in the grit, hat in his hand because he couldn't think what else to hold.
"Don't," Jackson said without turning.
Blake stopped two steps off his shoulder. "I'm tryin' to talk to you."
"Now you are." Jackson pivoted then, slow, as if his muscles didn't owe Blake a single gesture. The porch light from the alley threw his face half into shadow, half into gold. "You had my hand."
Blake flinched like the sentence had a hook. "You saw what that room did."
"I saw what you did."
Blake set his hat on the cooler so his hands could talk. "I...I ain't got that in me, not the way you do. You know I don't. That's...ten thousand miles a' learnin' when to be gone."
Jackson let out a laugh with no humor in it. "You taught me how to run. Mama taught me how to stand. I'm pickin'."
"That room ain't safe," Blake said. "This town ain't..."
"This is my town," Jackson snapped, stepping into his space so Blake could smell the soap off Daisy's sink on his shirt. "You don't get to tell me where I belong like you're guardin' me from a fire. You put my name in your mouth when it suits you, then spit it when it costs. That ain't protection. That's a leash!"
Blake's jaw worked, old fight, old fear looking for a door. "You don't know what it is...to be looked at like that and still be expected to ride in the mornin'."
Jackson took that in without giving an inch. "I do, actually. Been looked at for five years right next to you. Rode anyway. And I ain't hidin' from it no more. Not for you. Not for anybody."
Blake's shoulders lifted, armor he couldn't put down. "You think I ain't proud? Christ, I'm proud enough to choke on it. But there's a difference between proud and stupid. There's a way of lovin' that don't put a target on your back every time you walk into a room for ham and beans."
"Say it right," Jackson said, voice clear as cold water. "There's a way of lovin' that keeps you from feelin' the fear you don't wanna feel. You call it keepin' me safe 'cause that word sleeps better. But it ain't about me. It's your panic askin' me to be smaller."
Blake's hand came up, palm open, useless. "I pulled back one inch."
"That inch was everything," Jackson said. "You know it. I know it. Everybody in there knows it. You can ride a bull blindfolded but you couldn't hold my hand in a fellowship hall."
"They set us up," Blake said, reaching for the easier enemy. "That boy's been on me for years, runnin' his mouth. He wanted a show. I ain't givin' him one."
"You gave him what he wanted. You made me alone."
Blake's eyes flashed mean for a heartbeat, the wolf he'd spent a life training showing its teeth. "You want me to swing on him in your mama's kitchen? That what you want? You want me to break my life on your doorstep so you can feel seen?"
Jackson stepped closer until there was no room for misunderstanding. "What I want is a man who keeps his word. Truth on the table. No disappearin'. Hands when it counts. You wanted to be mine? You were...till you weren't."
"I'm tryin' to keep us from gettin' killed," Blake said, quieter, hoarse in the way of old prayer. "You think this town don't got men who will..."
"This town's had me since I was small," Jackson said. "It raised me and broke me and fed me and taught me. I ain't leavin' it so you can feel safe inside your skin. I got friends here. Family. A mother who'll take a switch to God Himself if He talks sideways in her house. I'm not leavin' my name at the county line so yours can stay clean."
Blake shook his head like he was trying to lose gnats and history. "You talk like ya ain't never had to wake up sorry."
"I wake up sorry plenty." Jackson's voice softened a shade, then sharpened again. "But I wake up brave, too. And I'm done lettin' your fear rent a room in my mouth."
They stood in that thin back alley, the roll-up door yawning like a hungover jaw. The sign inside, TOOLS RETURN HOME, was hit with its own shadow, adding another black hairstroke to the T.
FOOLS RETURN HOME.
Blake rubbed his face, dragged his palm down hard. "You wanna be famous and righteous and loved all at once. That ain't how it works. Pick two."
Jackson's answer was soft and lethal. "I pick honest and home."
Blake went quiet, because that landed, and he knew it. He took a half-step back and set his hand on the sill like a man steadying himself on a ship he couldn't captain anymore. "I can't do it," he said finally. "I...can't be who you're askin'. I can't stand in a room full of faces that learned my name when it was a slur and let 'em clap while I hold your hand."
"I know," Jackson said, and it was worse for being kind. "I been knowin' for a while and pretendin' I didn't. Tonight you told the truth. Good. Me too." He swallowed, and when he spoke, it was the sound of a hinge catching true. "I love you...but I'm not gonna live on sparks. I want a porch. I want my name in my own mouth without spittin' after."
Blake's face broke for real then, not the dramatic kind, just the small collapse of a man who sees the shape of the hole he's about to carry. "Don't say that. Please... don't say it like I hurt you on purpose."
"I ain't," Jackson said. "I'm sayin' we're different people. You want to hold love hostage so it don't get hurt. I want to let it stand under a light and take its chances." He stepped back a pace, the alley longer all of a sudden. "You taught me how to run toward what I want. Turns out it ain't the road. It's me, here. It's mine."
Blake's hand lifted and fell, reaching for a ghost, the habit of fixing what couldn't be fixed making a last try. They stood there and watched the sentence finish itself in the air between them. Then Jackson started moving.
Blake turned his face because a strong man knows when to take a hit while standing. "Where you goin'?"
"Walkin'," Jackson said.
He turned and walked toward the gap between buildings where Main Street waited with its ordinary lights and its honest dust. He didn't hurry. He didn't look back. He passed the hydrangea in Miss Alma's jar on the Willow House sill and didn't pick it. At the corner he put his hand briefly to the St. Christopher at his belt loop because Daisy liked to be humored. The town breathed slower after nine, storefront glass turned to black water, neon thinning to a patient hum, the river's brown breath finding its way up the streets.
He wandered.
And before he knew it, it was there.
Where it had been all day and all his imagining: DOOR & LIGHT CARPENTRY in hand-painted letters, the window throwing a low rectangle onto the sidewalk like a rug rolled out for one pair of boots. The tomato-red bike stood leaned on the brick with its bell quiet and cocked. Inside, a bench lamp burned at the back, the kind of gold that makes honest work look like a blessing. Beyond it, there might have been a shadow moving or it might have been hope.
Jackson walked to the glass and stood a second with his breath not fogging anything because the night was kind. Up close, he could read the chalk on the doorjamb, Cassidy's hand, he'd bet money: Ask about hinge mortises. Some fool had drawn a little heart in the loop of the g. He put his fingertip to the curl and felt dumb for doing it and better after.
He straightened.
He didn't practice anything on his face. He didn't rehearse the first word. He let the town settle around him, then put his hand to the handle. The bell over the door didn't even bother to ring. The room knew him. Lamplight made a warm coin on the bench, and Cash looked up into it like a man surfacing. No startle. Just a breath you could hear.
"Hey," Jackson said, because there wasn't a better first word in the world.
"Hey," Cash answered, and it fit like old denim.
They stood a little ways apart at first, letting eyes do what hands used to, taking inventory slow, careful as a check with a straightedge.
Cash had a pencil tucked behind one ear, graphite smudge on his cheekbone like a thumbprint God forgot to wipe off. The white tank clung where the heat still had its way, dirty at the hem, sawdust sifted down the ribs. His shoulders sat broad and easy under the light, forearms corded from a thousand turns of a screwdriver, old knuckle-scar pale against new work. Sweat had found the hollow at his throat and decided to stay. He looked like the answer to a question Jackson hadn't let himself finish in five years.
Jackson, road-thick and sun-browned, carried the miles the way a good rope does: coiled but ready. St. Christopher winked at his belt loop when he moved. There was a rope burn that had never quite let go, a new nick along the brow, the mouth he never managed to keep from telling the truth. His eyes did that shy, stubborn blue that had started fights and finished some.
"You cut your hair," Cash said, almost smiling.
"You learned hinges," Jackson said back.
Cash's mouth tugged. "I did."
Silence, but not empty, just the kind that lets a room get used to two men in it again.
They moved without quite deciding to. The space between them shortened by a tool-length, then a breath. Cash reached for the hinge. Jackson reached for the same. The backs of their fingers met and stayed like that half a beat longer than the reason called for. Heat climbed the inside of Jackson's wrist. Cash didn't pull away.
"Door swung true when I came in," Jackson said, voice quiet as planing.
"Had practice," Cash said. His eyes were on Jackson's mouth. He didn't apologize for it.
They could have talked about the road. They didn't. The name that had to be stepped around didn't even lift its head.
"You look...good," Cash offered, rough as grit paper.
"You do too." Jackson swallowed around a smile that tried to be brave and turned out real. "Better than good."
Cash set the hinge down like its weight was too delicate for what came next. "Come here," he said so gently that Jackson felt his bones answer before his boots did.
They met in the aisle between bench and pegboard, where everything useful hung within reach. The first touch wasn't a grab. It was a granting, palms to shoulders, then jaw, then the back of a neck where teenagers used to stand to take down sins and summer heat. Jackson put his forehead to Cash's for a breath, the old kid thing they never stopped doing, and the shop tilted into focus. Close, Cash smelled like cedar dust and hand soap and July.
"I missed you," Jackson said, plain as bread.
"I know," Cash said. "Me too." He huffed a laugh that died halfway up his throat. "Thought I'd get smart enough to not. Didn't."
"What'd you figure out?" Jackson asked, thumb finding the ridge of Cash's shoulder and staying.
"That I kept a porch for you in my chest and sat on it like a fool," Cash said.
Jackson's breath hitched, heat rising like a good fever. "I kept you like a coin," he said. "Pocket-warm. Always there when my hand got to wantin'."
Cash's eyes closed at that, lashes dusted with saw. When he opened them, the light hit the blue and made it bright enough to hurt. "Five years and I ain't learned how to want less," he said.
"Maybe we ain't supposed to," Jackson whispered.
The kiss wasn't careful.
Careful had had its turn and wasted it.
Cash took Jackson's face in both hands like a board he meant to read and leaned in, mouth sure, not shy, not sorry. It started slow just to learn the lay of the land again, then found the old road and floored it, tongues laced. Jackson answered with his whole back, palms sliding to the hard planes of Cash's shoulders, the tank top warm and soft under his fingers, skin alive under the cotton. He tasted salt and pine and the end of a long drought.
Cash made a sound deep in his chest, low, helpless, grateful. Jackson answered with one of his own and pressed closer, hip to hip, crotch to crotch, the bench nudging his thigh like a reminder of gravity. Their mouths broke, found, broke, found, breath shared and taken, the kind of kissing that rearranges a man's memory of where his body begins and ends. Jackson's hand slid up into the hair that had grown a shade darker in the years, gripped, let go. Cash's palms found the small of Jackson's back and held there like he could pin five seasons with his thumbs.
They didn't say please or now because the shop said it for them. The lamp made a little halo on their joined mouths. Tools looked on like congregation, shining. The hinge leaf on the bench caught a stripe of gold and kept it.
When they came up for air, it was sloppy, a string of spit keeping the connection. Jackson laughed, embarrassed by nothing. Cash pressed his brow to Jackson's temple and breathed in like a man on the good side of danger.
"What did we miss?" Jackson asked, still smiling, thumb at Cash's jaw where stubble rasped sweet against the pad.
"Time," Cash said.
Jackson's mouth went soft. "I love you," he said, the way you say a door's true after you set it and step back.
"I love you, too," Cash answered, hoarse.
They kissed again, ardent, visceral, claiming. Jackson opened under him like a man not afraid of his own roofline. Cash met him with the kind of hunger that doesn't bruise, just proves. Hands found ribs, shoulder blades, and the notch above a hip. Breath went wild and decided that was fine. They pressed each other to the bench edge and didn't tip anything but a can of finish rolling a lazy circle to bump a vise.
Cash pulled back only far enough to look, eyes drinking in the road's new lines on Jackson's face, the way his lashes caught light, the little scar by his brow. He cupped the back of Jackson's neck and shook his head like he couldn't quite believe the geometry of the moment had finally solved itself.
Then he moved.
Not away.
With a purpose that made Jackson's knees go soft for a second, Cash slid a hand down Jackson's arm, squeezed once, and stepped past him down the aisle.
Jackson's palm lifted, wanting him back. "What are you doin'?" he asked, breathless and a little dazed, mouth swollen and wet, voice half-laughing like a boy caught in a summer storm.
Cash crossed to the door in three easy strides. He flipped the deadbolt with a sweet, small thunk. He reached up and tugged the blinds. They slatted down in a tidy hush, shutting the street off with the politeness of a man closing his own eyes. He turned back with a smile that had teeth and tenderness both, shoulders set, tank top a sin against sweating, eager muscles.
"Just makin' sure you ain't fixin' to light out on me again," he said, voice gone velvet and sawdust. He came toward Jackson slow as a drawl and sure as a promise, like a man offering a reign he meant to share. "Reckon it's time we finish what we started five years ago."
(To be continued...)
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