Love is Alive
Mark called me to let me know he’d hand-delivered the letter. I waited for one week, two, then three, but Grady never wrote back. I was sad, of course, but just writing the letter and telling him how I felt helped me sort through my feelings and start thinking about other things and other options. I didn’t start anything up with Andrew, or anyone else. I figured that would come naturally with time, but I was more open to the possibility now. It was nice to start feeling like there was a possibility of something or someone beyond Grady Kinsley.
Physio was making a real difference. Although I sometimes still had pain, my arm was starting to get strong enough for me to start working out a couple of times a week, even though I was still self-conscious about the scarred divot of muscle they’d had to cut away, especially when I was wearing a tank top at the gym. I even took up running—not much, but enough to get my heart rate up and slow my racing thoughts. My mood improved, too. Calls home were better, and Mom mentioned a couple of times that she could tell I was getting back to my old self.
Bite Club kept me busy. We’d started doing weekend adventure trips, and Angie launched our popular “Freak Accident Survivor Book Club” at the Unitarian Universalist church in town that focused on memoirs of people who’d made it through experiences like we had, though we extended this to things like avalanches, forest fires, tropical typhoons, and other natural disasters. We ended up with about fifteen semi-regular members, and some of my best times at school were with that crew. Between that, physio, and school, I didn’t have a lot of free time to mope around my room, and that felt good.
Because I couldn’t drive, I’d had to leave my car at home, so I hadn’t been home since the start of the semester. But Mom made it clear in no uncertain terms that she expected me to be back for Thanksgiving break. I didn’t have class on Fridays and had an early day on Wednesday, so I was able to come for a good long weekend, and she said she's send Mark or Dad to pick me up.
It felt like life was finally turning a corner. I was looking forward to just relaxing at home, cooking with Mom and eating myself into a turkey stupor, going target practicing with Dad and playing video games with Mark, and doing nothing but hanging out and not being worried or stressed or sad. No exams, no assignments, no pining away. I was so ready.
Mom said to be outside my dorm at 3, so at 2:50 I threw on my winter coat, grabbed my knapsack with my clothes for the weekend, and locked the door. I’d already said goodbye to Andrew and Tawnesha, who weren’t leaving until the next day, as their Thanksgiving feasts were on the weekend. I made my way to the parking lot and started scanning for Mark’s Bronco.
I staggered to an abrupt stop. Not fifty feet away, standing in front of his freshly washed white Ford F-150, stood a vision of a man I’d dreamed about for months, blue eyes shining in the late-day light, that half-smile creasing on his perfect face. I just stood there, mouth agape, not quite processing what I was seeing.
Grady.
“What…what are you doing here?” I stuttered, half expecting him to vanish like he’d done so many times in my dreams. But he was still there, still looking at me with those damned eyes that reached clear to my soul, those gorgeous lips that had drifted over every square inch of my body, that chiseled physique that had held me in the air and protected me from the world. He wore a tight white dress shirt, new black jeans, and well-buffed black cowboy boots. He looked like he’d dressed up for a date. Even his hair and beard were trimmed.
“I heard from your Mom that you needed a ride back. I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d save Mark the trip.”
I looked back, thinking maybe he was talking to someone else. But it was just the two of us in the lot. My heart was racing, but I wasn’t quite ready to believe this yet.
“Really? Two hours away and you were just ‘in the neighborhood’?”
“Yup. Figured I’d get the truck detailed while I was here, too. Smells nice—very pine fresh.” He was maddeningly calm and flirty for someone who’d upended my life just a few short months ago.
“So you’re my ride, then?”
“Unless you’d rather walk.” He walked over and opened the passenger door for me. “This is faster and more comfortable, though, I promise.”
Strength came back to my trembling legs, and I walked over slowly. The last time I’d been in his truck I was on death’s door, but I put that thought out of my mind. He stepped aside as I got in without acknowledgment, then he gently shut the door. I put my bag down to the floor as he slid into the driver’s seat and started the truck.
We were silent as we made our way out of Durango. I didn’t know what to say, and he seemed to go from almost cocky to increasingly insecure, like this wasn’t at all the way he’d expected things to go, like he'd thought I'd fall lovingly into his arms and everything would be okay.
After about twenty minutes, he cleared his throat and said, “Classes going okay?”
I gave him an annoyed look. “You did not drive all this way to ask me about my classes. But yes, they’re going well. Thanks for asking.”
He nodded. “You look good.”
I stared straight ahead. “Thanks. You do too.”
Silence again. He reached for the radio dial but pulled his hand back to the steering wheel. Finally, after another awkward period of silence, he said, “I got your letter.”
My jaw clenched. “That’s nice. I didn’t get yours.”
He sighed. “Ben….”
“No,” I said, my voice hard with hurt. “You don’t get to pretend like things are normal right now. I poured my heart out in that letter, and nothing—not a note, not a call, nada. You broke my heart, Grady, and not once but twice: the first time was when you dumped me, but the second was when you didn’t respond. It’s been weeks, on top of months. You don’t get to just show up and be gorgeous and charming and go on like I haven’t been picking up the pieces of my world for the last three months.”
He didn’t respond immediately, but I could tell he’d felt my words and was trying to figure out what to say. When he finally spoke, his voice was so quiet I could barely hear him. “I started writing to you so many times. I just didn’t know what to say. I…I didn’t know how to make it right, Benji.”
His hands gripped the wheel tightly, like he was afraid he was going to lose control. “You were right. I fucked up. I tried to do the right thing, and I hurt the person I loved the most. I really didn’t mean to hurt you, Ben. Please believe me—that was the last thing I wanted. It just seemed like…you’d be so much better off….”
“But that’s the problem, Grady—you can’t make that decision without me. I should be part of that conversation. It’s not up to you to decide whether or not I’d be better off without you, like you’re some all-seeing oracle. That’s so goddamn condescending.”
He flinched at the anger in my voice. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re sorry, but now what? What does your sorry mean?” I could feel his hurt and confusion, and my heart ached for him, but he needed to understand. I needed him to understand.
He thought for a bit. “It means…you were right. I was trying to do it on my own, like always, and I thought if maybe I could just fix this for you, it would make all my fuck-ups okay. But it just made them so much worse.” He flicked the turn signal and slowed down, pulling over into a wide turn-off on the side of the highway and bringing the truck to a full stop. He left the engine running for the heater, as November was sunny but still cold. He looked directly into my eyes but he didn’t reach for me.
“Ben, when I saw you on the ground, that snake staring you down…my heart stopped. And when it…when it bit you, I swear I've never been so scared. The idea that I almost lost you, that you almost died, kind of broke me. I still wake up sometimes thinking about it, thinking about what might have happened.”
“Really?” I swallowed. I’d never really thought about the effect that had on him, but our positions had been reversed, I’d have felt the same.
“Yes, really. Every fucking day I think about it. And you. I couldn’t protect you then. But I thought, maybe if I could help you out, get you back to school and help you achieve all your dreams, help you do all those things you talked about, take away the pressure a bit, maybe it would be like protecting you in a different way.” He took a deep, ragged breath. “I just didn’t want my mistake to destroy you.”
There it was. So much shame, so much self-blame. He’d been tearing himself up inside ever since that day.
“Grady,” I said as I reached out to take his hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was an accident. And without you, I’d be dead. We all know that. You can’t keep punishing yourself for not being perfect—you still did a good thing.” I took a deep breath. “You’re part of me and my life. When you punish yourself, you’re also punishing me. I know that isn’t your intention, but that’s how it feels. Haven’t we both been punished enough? Can’t we just…be happy? Is that so bad?”
His eyes were focused on my fingers, now lacing into his own. “I don’t know if I know how,” he said softly.
I reached under his bearded chin and raised his gaze to mine. His eyes were filled with so much pain braided with so much obvious love. This man loved me so much he’d given up his dreams, the ranch, everything for me.
“Then let’s figure it out together. You don’t need to do it by yourself. There’s enough hurt and loneliness in the world—we don’t need to add more to it. Can’t you just love me, Grady? Can’t we just love each other?”
He pulled my hand to his lips and I could the warmth of his breath on my skin. I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against his.
“It’s a miracle we found this, Grady. Please don’t throw it away.”
He reached out and slipped off my glasses, then took my face in both hands and touched his lips to mine with such tenderness I almost started crying. “I won’t, Benji,” he whispered. “Not again. Never again.”
He kissed me once more, and I opened my lips. His tongue entered, tentative at first, and then with more certainty. With that second kiss the dam finally broke, and there was no more hesitation, no more holding back for either of us. We were in each other’s arms with abandon, kissing and touching and tasting one another’s salty skin, our spirits burning with such desperate hunger, like it was the first time all over again, but our hearts remembered what our bodies had denied for so long.
I gasped as he pulled me close and latched onto my neck, teeth, tongue, and lips pulling hard together, making the skin swell and bruise, a love bite that bloomed and spread as he pulled my shirt up and moved down, swirling around my collarbone, scraping along my sternum, then sliding over to my jutting nipple, hard and tender. He growled and bit down—not hard, but enough to make me cry out in exquisite torment—then moved over to ravage the other. I squirmed and bucked under his touch, but I didn’t try to get free. I needed to feel all of this—I’d been needing it for so long.
Grady stopped, reached under me, and pulled me toward him. I let his strong arms lift me out of the driver’s side of the truck, his mouth locked on my neck again as he carried me over to the passenger side, where fewer people could see us from the highway. The air was cold and there were piles of plowed snow at the edge of the turnoff, but we were so ablaze with desire I barely felt the chill.
He held me, panting, as I reached over and fumbled through my knapsack until I found the half-full bottle of travel lube I’d carried back during our frolics at the ranch—I was grateful I hadn’t gotten rid of it. I then swung around, dropped to my knees, and fumbled at his belt buckle, jerking on his zipper until his cock finally sprang loose. I didn’t know how it was possible, but it was even more beautiful than I’d remembered: dark thick fleshy cap dripping with pre-cum, wide, veiny shaft that tapered toward the base, ending in a thick bush of black hair with that familiar musk, so entirely his fragrant essence.
I didn’t hesitate. I took the mushroom head into my mouth and started sucking with desperate hunger, like my whole life depended on taking him down as deeply as I could and bringing him to screaming release. Even oxygen seemed an unnecessary distraction. I bobbed up and down, gagging, coughing, and gasping as I drooled down the thick shaft and over my hands, alternating each suck with a spit-slick twist of my palm.
Grady groaned loudly, nearly at the edge, but he stopped me before he could fully release. I knew what he wanted, and I wanted it too, fiercely. He lifted me up again, this time pushing me up against the door, guiding my legs around his hips to keep me in the air. My right hand clawed at the back of his neck, my left arm draped over his shoulder. We were oblivious to the passing traffic on the other side of the truck—the only things that existed in the world were his mouth, his hands, his hardness beneath me, the salty-sweet smell of sweat and desire.
I held him tight, still aloft against the door, as his hands moved across my body. One reached underneath me and pulled the back of my sweatpants down, my ass exposed to the chill air. His cockhead was still wet with my saliva and a hefty flow of pre-cum, but Grady still popped the lid on the bottle with the other hand and squirted the slick fluid on his aching cock, frantically coating the shaft as he maneuvered the tip toward my quivering hole. I gasped as he pushed in, the muscled ring clenching but quickly remembering the familiar feeling of his firmness inside me. I screamed then, not in pain but in long-waited surrender.
I needed this like oxygen, like water, like life. His thrusts seemed to get more frenetic now, harder, relentless, and I gasped in time with each smack of his hip against my ass cheeks, his balls slapping hard against my skin.
“Close…so close,” he moaned in my ear. In response I bore down, clenching my sphincter tight and pushing myself hard against his jerking hips, pulling him as far into my body as I could. He let out a low, long growl, and his whole body shuddered and bucked as he came inside me with such ferocity it made my own cock start shooting. I cried out again, breathless, my body trembling all over, unsure if I’d ever walk again and not really caring if I did.
Grady slumped against me, his lips lightly tracing the edge of my collarbone until I stopped quivering, then slowly pulled out. Cum and lube dripped from my swollen hole, and he helped me stand, as I was too shaky to do it on my own. We leaned on each other, still panting, still finding our equilibrium. We didn’t speak—words seemed inadequate to the moment.
He opened the door and pulled some napkins from the glove compartment. We both wiped up as best we could. I pulled up my pants and got back in the truck, and after a quick piss Grady joined me in the cab.
We sat there in silence for a few minutes, until I started giggling. “Did we just fuck on the side of the highway in broad daylight in the middle of November? I guess that means we’re back together?”
He stared at me in amazement, then he joined me, his laughter clean and open and free. We laughed like we hadn’t laughed in months, like we never laughed with other people, like we were the only souls in the whole world who got the punch line of the funniest joke ever written. We laughed for all we’d left behind us and all we were discovering about each other again. We were still laughing when he pulled back on the road for the two-hour drive back.
He turned the radio to a classic country station that faded in and out as we drove through increasingly rugged terrain, but we didn’t bother changing it. Somewhere along the way I slid over and lay my head on his right shoulder. He took my hand and laced our fingers together again.
The afternoon wore on. I’d been down this road a thousand times growing up, but I’d never noticed how beautiful it was until we were on this drive together. Colors had never seemed so clear, so saturated, so fully alive as they did today; it felt like we were living, breathing subjects from one of his paintings. He squeezed my hand; I reached up and kissed him on the cheek.
----------
It was just getting dark when we finally made it to town, but to my surprise Grady kept driving past the exit to my parents’ place.
“I thought you were taking me home?” I said.
“I am,” he said, pulling onto County Road 12. “Your mom said they’ll all come by our place for breakfast tomorrow, and we’ll head over there to help get ready for Thanksgiving dinner. If that’s okay with you.”
My voice was thick with emotion. “Yeah, it’s okay.” He smiled and stroked my palm with his fingers.
Something suddenly occurred to me. “But I thought…I thought you were selling the ranch?”
He shook his head. “I was going to, but then Mark came by with your letter and a six pack. We started talking, or rather, he started telling me that I was a dumbass for how I treated you. Said I needed to get my shit together or he’d drive back out and kick my butt back to Tucson.”
“Sounds like Mark,” I admitted. For all his annoying straight boy habits, he really was the best brother a queer country kid could hope for. “So, the ranch…?”
“Yeah, so he and I started talking about options, and I told him your ideas about partnering with a conservation alliance. Turns out his boss John at the Bar Stacked had already been thinking about some of these partnerships for a while, too, and their work in improving sustainable land use practices. He’d even done some of the groundwork contacting a few of them. But he wasn’t sure that he wanted to test it out on his own lands, which are still doing okay and are staying profitable right now. But Saddle Mountain has already gone to seed, so it’s a good testing ground for trying something new. Couldn’t hurt, right? So Jack and I met up and talked it over, then we reached out to some of the professors you mentioned, who hooked us up with a new group looking to expand. He’s co-signed a loan for me to get the last repairs done, too, because he thinks this could really be something. Long story short, Saddle Mountain Ranch is going to be part of a new environmental consortium, the first trial site in this part of the state.”
My jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
“Yup. Signed the papers two days ago. If it works out, the ranch is off life-support, you’ve got a place to come back to between semesters and on holidays, and we’ve proven that it can be done in this region and at this scale. If it doesn’t, I sell the place, give John his investment back, then get an apartment in Durango with my hot boyfriend while he finishes college. Maybe I’ll start roasting coffee again, or who knows what else. Not sure there’s a downside, whatever happens. Either way, we’ll figure it out, the both of us.” He put his arm around me and I snuggled in.
“Hey, there’s something else I want to show you before we get home,” he said. “Check the glovebox.”
Intrigued, I popped the glove compartment open and pulled out a folded piece of newsprint.
He turned on the dome light above us. “Read it.”
It was a page from a queer newspaper from Denver I’d subscribed to for a while. Halfway down, in the middle of the page, I saw a prominent photo above a few feature columns. Though a bit grainy, the black and white image was clearly of a painting in Grady’s style. The subject matter, however, was both brand new and intimately familiar. It showed a mountain vista, the same one we’d seen on our Saddle Mountain camping trip, but with his trademark swirls of what was no doubt wild color in the background.
But it was the figure in the front that caught my attention.
It was me. I was standing there in my jeans and t-shirt and glasses, arms outstretched, reaching outward in total abandon, as if ready to embrace all of creation and all of life in that singular moment, my face beaming.
The photo caption read, “‘King of the World’ Wins Queer in Colorado Art Prize.”
“‘King of the World’?” I read.
“It’s a typo,” he said with a shy smile. “I actually called it, ‘King of My World.’”
I took a shaky breath. “So you finally watched the movie.”
“I did. It was pretty good. I get it now.” He turned the radio up. “But I’d have made sure there was room for both of us on that door.”
“I have no doubt of that, physics be damned,” I laughed.
He shut off the interior light and cool darkness embraced us as fence posts flashed by us in the night. “I finished the piece when I got back from the hospital. Put it up in the kitchen for a while. Your family came over for steaks one day—I wanted to thank them for looking after the place while I was…away. Your mom really liked the piece. She said it captured something real about you, a light that only those who really loved you could see. She’s the one who found out about the contest and said I should send it in. I figured it couldn’t hurt, but I didn’t expect to win the damned thing. Looks like I’m an ‘award-winning artist’ now.”
He cleared his throat. “You…you were never gone, you know. You’ve always been with me. Now you always will be. If you want to stay.”
I squinted hard against the brimming tears, but I was smiling. “Just try to stop me! I didn’t pine away the first part of this semester and drive everyone up the wall for nothing. Besides, Andrew and the crew are desperate for us to have a happy ending, and I can’t disappoint my Bite Club buddies. Official Bite Club rule, you know.”
Grady pulled me close and I nestled into his warm body, my skin tingling, my heart full to bursting. Another song came on the radio, one of my favorites, the gentle guitar riff, soft rhythm, and soulful harmony pulling us forward. I turned it up, singing along with the chorus: Love is alive, and here by me.
Family, school, the future—we’d figure it all out. And we’d do it together.
We drove the rest of the way in quiet contentment, the familiar shadow of Saddle Mountain in the distance, waiting to welcome us back home.
-The End-
Ben's Saddle Mountain Playlist
- “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad),” performed by Dolly Parton
- “Hey Good Lookin’,” performed by Hank Williams
- “Hello Walls,” performed by Faron Young
- “It’s All Wrong, But It’s All Right,” performed by Dolly Parton
- “How Can I Help You Say Goodbye,” performed by Patty Loveless
- “Ring of Fire,” performed by Johnny Cash
- “Islands in the Stream,” performed by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton
- “Angel of the Morning,” performed by Juice Newton
- “Fishin’ in the Dark,” performed by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
- "If Tomorrow Never Comes,” performed by Garth Brooks
- “For the Good Times,” performed by Ray Price
- “Blue Moon with Heartache,” performed by Rosanne Cash
- “Always on My Mind,” performed by Willie Nelson
- “Love is Alive,” performed by The Judds
