Simply Red

Max’s Perspective

When I woke up, Brody was already gone and I was hungover as fuck! I hadn’t been that hungover in forever. That moonshine hit me hard as hell! I looked over at my phone on the nightstand, 9AM… crap. I slept in later than usual but it was still early. I rolled my hungover ass out of bed and took a shower letting the warm water cascade over me, hoping it would wash my hangover down the drain… no such luck. I slowly dried off, took a couple Advil, got dressed and headed down to the kitchen to pour myself a cup of coffee. The kitchen was a freaking mess and Witchy was licking sugar off the countertop. BA and I pretty much trashed the place while we were making pickles the night before, so I spent the next hour cleaning up our mess. It was worth it, I had a great time with her, she made me feel at home here. Brody texted me to make sure I was alive, I texted back ‘barely’, then got into my workout gear and headed out to find a gym to join and sweat out the moonshine.

I jumped in the Camaro and headed towards my school, Brody and I had found a gym that was about midway between there and home, so I was going to check that place out first. The place had everything I needed and membership was reasonable so I joined. I worked out for about an hour then I hit the steam room. I was sitting the by myself sweating out the booze when the door opened and a man entered. He was about 6’ tall and 220 pounds of wall to wall muscle. Not the kind of muscle you get from the gym, but natural, farm grown muscle. Damn, this guy was sex on a stick and was looking me up and down as he sat next to me on the wet tile bench. We were both wrapped in our towels, but he promptly dropped his. I tried not to look but couldn’t help it, holy fuck he was massive. I just sat there sweating, trying to ignore the temptation when I felt the hairs of his knee brush up against mine, then he pushed a little further and his knee was pressed hard against mine. I glanced over and saw he had his hand on his cock and he was semi-hard. Shit, shit, shit! He was so hot, but I wasn’t about to betray Brody. I was his… and only his.

I popped up off the bench quickly and high tailed it out of the steam room and back to the locker room. I pulled on my sweaty jock, then my gym shorts and tank top and got the fuck out of there without even taking a shower. I was freaking out! Since I’ve been with Brody there had been no one else. No one. I hadn’t even thought of another guy since Brody and I got together. We were finally living together in Grammaw’s house and less than two months away from our wedding, all our planning, waiting, and hard work was about to pay off, and I wasn’t about to mess it up. I thought about Brody as I drove towards home. I felt so guilty even though I didn’t do anything. I got the fuck out of there so I had nothing to feel guilty about… right? Shit, shit, shit! I had to talk to somebody about this so I called Seth, one of my best friends from college.

I met Seth my freshman year of college and we became great friends. We ended up living in the same duplex for most of our college careers… he lived on the second floor with his fiancé Zach, I lived on the first with Cam and Eric, and Brody lived on the third floor in a studio. I had the top up on the Camaro, and the Bluetooth connected when I dialed the number. “MAX!!!” He answered with loud booming excitement. “How’s it going in North Carolina?” We made small talk for a while. He and Zach had just moved to St. Louis for grad school and were renting a house from a family friend. I told him about feeling lost here, and a little lonely with Brody at work all day. He completely understood. And said he felt the same way, luckily for him he had Zach home most of the time so he wasn’t lonely, but he still felt lost and out of place in his new city.

Then I told him what happened at the gym and how guilty I felt. He laughed and said “so?” I didn’t expect that answer. “You didn’t do anything, Max. You got hit on and you removed yourself from the situation… right?” He asked. I thought about it and yeah, that’s exactly what happened. “You didn’t lead him on, did you?”

“No. I swear, I was just sitting there…” I answered

“Well, Max… here’s a news flash” Seth said. “You’re hot!” he said with a comforting laugh. “With your muscles, red hair, and beard, guys check you out. This guy got a little bold… and you walked away. You ended it.” Seth was making a lot of sense. “You didn’t do anything wrong! If you feel that guilty, tell Brody. You know him, he’ll shrug it off, he trusts you.” Seth was right, I didn’t do shit. We talked as I found my way down the back roads to my next destination. I felt a hell of a lot better by the time we hung up.

Next, I found a Target that wasn’t too far out of the way and stopped to pick up a few things, it was only about noon when I got back to the house. I was still a little hungover so I made myself a sandwich then went to work on my pickling. BA had showed me what I needed to do with all the stuff from the garden. I hadn’t talked to her very much in the past but we made up for that the day before. She was a freaking hoot! A chain smoking, moonshine guzzling, trash talking hoot! She made me feel so comfortable and at home, who would’ve thought that she’d be the one to pull me through my funk. Anyway, I had a plan. I organized the kitchen do I could get to work making pickles, pickling peppers, canning dilly beans, making tomato sauce and salsa to can, and dehydrating herbs in the dehydrator I picked up at Target. I had at least two days of work ahead of me, but I didn’t care… I was so into this! I was on a mission to stock up that old root cellar in the basement and fill the freezer. Once I had everything laid out, I took a pic of my new dehydrator and sent it to BA, she texted back ‘jealous.’

It was hot as hell in that kitchen, so I stripped down to my jockstrap and put on an apron. The music was blasting, the pots were boiling, the house smelled like vinegar and spices, Witchy was cleaning herself in a corner of the kitchen, and I was just lost in my new obsession singing and dancing as I tended to my jars getting the spices just right. Suddenly, I felt two hands on my buttocks and two soft lips on my neck. “SHIT!” I screamed as I turned around and my eyes met Brody’s “I didn’t even hear you come in.”

“Day-um, lookit you!” He chuckled with a huge smile, what the hell is all this?” He asked with wide eyes as he looked around.

I pointed as I called out what was what. “Those jars are dill pickles” I said pointing, then moved my finger to the right “bread and butter pickles” moving my finger down the line, “pickled peppers, dilly beans, dried spices, and tomorrow I tackle marinera sauce, salsa, and roasted tomatoes” I said with a lilt in my voice and an unexpected proud smile on my face. Yeah, I was proud as hell of my new obsession.

“I joined a gym today too and got in a good workout” I said.

“Oh good” He said as he reached in the fridge for a soda. “How was the place?”

I told him it was decent and would work, then added, “Some guy sat next to me in the steam room and made a move on me.”

His eyes got wide, “well that’s no surprise, you’re hot. What did you do?” He asked seemingly fine with it, Seth was right.

“I got up and left. I didn’t even take a shower” I said.

“Good for you, baby.” He said as he came over and cupped my bare ass cheeks and kissed my neck again. “The gay population may not be as out and obvious as you’re used to, but their everywhere and you’re hot as hell. He won’t be the last guy to hit on you. Just remember you got me.” And that was the end of it. Brody wasn’t mad, it wasn’t a big deal, he trusted me. He untied the apron string as he kissed my neck tenderly. The apron fell open and Brody licked down from my neck to my back, all the way down to my ass crack and took a whiff. “Damn, you smell ripe” he laughed. I figured that would be the end of his seduction, but he kept going and started to lick my sweaty ass.

“Brody, I didn’t even shower after my workout, and I’m sweaty as fuck” I said in protest.

“Like I fucking care, I can’t get enough of you, Maxwell.” He kept going, eating my hole, he reached around with one hand and up under the untied apron, stroking my cock and giving me a raging hard on. The pushing and prodding of his warm, moist tongue into my hole had me writhing in pleasure as I he bent me over the sticky countertop and got comfortable on his knees with his face buried deep in my sweaty ass crack. It felt freaking heavenly. I pushed my ass back to meet the thrusts of his tongue.

After several minutes he stopped and flipped me around so that my back was leaning against the cold countertop. He lifted me up and sat me down so my bare ass cheeks once again met the cold, hard surface for the second time in less than a week. He moved his warm mouth over my hard member and took me deep until his nose was buried in my red bush. I heard him inhale, taking in the scent of my workout and a hot day working in the kitchen as he pulled off me slowly, then went all the way back down repeatedly. I put my hands on the back of his head and pushed all the way down as I lifted my hips to plunge deeper into his throat. I face-fucked him as hard and fast as I could until I exploded down his throat, feeding him my load. He gulped down every drop of my seed, his throat contracting around my cock sending even greater sensations through me. I grunted and huffed several times, shaking as I did and holding his head firm with my cock planted deep down his throat. I finally let up on him when he started gagging and choking on me.

He stood up and looked at me, his eyes full of tears and his mouth full of cum. He gave me a forceful tongue kiss as he grabbed the back of my head and smashed out faces together. “Welcome home, honey” I said giving him a final peck on the cheek.

Brody laughed as he scratched his head in amazement and asked, “So, what we gonna do for dinner tonight?”

“Shit! I didn’t even think about it” I said. “I got so engrossed in all this” I said waving my hand.

“It all looks great, but the kitchen looks like a gotdamn category 5 just hit” He laughed, then suggested, “Let’s take a quick shower, then go to the bar for dinner.” I jumped down off the counter, pulled off my apron and left it on the floor as I ran up the steps buck naked with Brody chasing me and shedding his clothes as he did. I got into the shower and adjusted the water temperature, Brody came in behind me and started soaping me up, I turned around and did the same to him. Face-to-face, covered in soap with the water falling over us, I dropped to my knees and took his soapy, flaccid cock in my mouth. Bad move… I spit out the soap, let him rinse then tried again. I loved the way he grew from soft to hard in my mouth. I bobbed my head up and down on him as he leaned back against the wall of the shower with his hands behind his head. We were pretty much out of the water now as the stream just barely hit my back. It took me several minutes before I finished him off and he exploded down my throat. I swallowed every drop before we got back under the water and soaped up again. We were both hungry, so we rinsed off quickly, dressed and headed out to dinner leaving the kitchen a mess.

Brody jumped in the driver’s seat of my car and we sped off to the bar. When we walked in, the same waitress we had on our last visit greeted us and took our order. Brody ordered his usual, and I got the fried chicken. I decided that since this was the closest place to home and we’d probably be eating here a lot, so I would work my way through the menu. “So,” Brody started, “while you and your new bestie BA were drowning yourselves in moonshine last night, Daddy told Dylan and me that Momma moved back to the area.”

Brody never talked much about his mother, all I knew was that she cheated on his father and then pretty much disappeared after they divorced. Dylan and Brody lived between their dad’s place and Grammaw’s place, but his mother wasn’t really in the picture. He thought she lived in Florida somewhere. “Is that a good thing?” I asked.

“Probably not” Brody said before taking a bite of his burger, and washing it down with a sip of beer. “Patty James is a scam artist. She has no conscience and survives by taking other people’s money from them. If she’s back here it’s because she smells money.”

“You and Dylan?” I asked.

“Could be. I’m sure she heard that Grammaw left us both a little bit of money. Or it could be the wedding… a bunch of relatives and old friends along with some new marks all in one place. The perfect opportunity to score.” Brody said between bites.

“So, what do we do?” I asked.

“Nothin’, Patty’s gonna do what Patty’s gonna do. If she shows up at the house or at the wedding, we ignore her. That’s the best way to shut her down. If she causes trouble Daddy will escort her out.” Brody said firmly, then for the next several minutes we talked about what she might pull, and how to deal with it. He told me a bunch of stories about different scams she had pulled on family and friends over the years, including him and Dylan. We came from such different worlds. “Now that I think about it, It might be a good idea to tell your parents and grandparents about her. She’ll be all over them.”

My parents were upper-middle class. They were both high-level execs with good jobs, great bonuses, and plenty of money put away in investments. I grew up in a nice house in the suburbs, they didn’t spoil me rotten but I never wanted for anything either. My grandfather Harrington had his fingers in a bunch of different businesses and was worth several million. He would have gladly given our family anything we wanted, but my dad wanted to make it on his own and wouldn’t take grandfather’s money. He was self-made and proud of it. He was also proud of me. I worked my way through college (I got some help from them, but I worked hard), and landed a job before I graduated. He wanted to give me a car for graduation but, like my parents, I wanted to make my own way so we settled on them giving me the down payment.

My family met Brody for the first time a couple of years ago and fell in love with him. My parents and grandparents were all great judges of character and what they saw in Brody was a charming gentleman with a good head on his shoulders who worked hard for what he had. He showed up at my grandparents’ house (oh hell who am I kidding… it’s a mansion) on Christmas with a big jar of homemade Moonshine from his Daddy’s still. He walked into the giant foyer holding his jar with the bow on it as I introduced him to my grandparents. I could tell Brody was overwhelmed by the place, and a little embarrassed by his homemade gift. I didn’t warn him about my family’s wealth and could tell he felt completely out of place. He shouldn’t have. My grandfather excitedly accepted that moonshine as if it were a rare, expensive bottle of wine. Then he told Brody about a friend of his from college whose family made moonshine and all the great times they had together drinking it. He and Brody clicked, two self-made men with a lot more in common than met the eye. Brody learned quickly that my family didn’t judge people by their wealth, but by their character. My whole family loved Brody, but my grandfather absolutely adored him. He saw something special in him… a hardworking, genuinely good soul. The same thing I saw in him.

The truth is that my grandfather likely already knew all about Patty James. I’m guessing that once we announced our engagement my grandfather checked out Brody and his family as a precaution. When you have that much money, you’re the mark of every scam artist out there. My grandfather often did background checks on people not to be nosey, or to judge, but to protect his family. He was a good man who always saw the best in people, but always hedged his bets to make sure he wasn’t missing something. Anyway, after dinner I called my dad to let him know about Patty James, he didn’t seem worried and just advised “ignore her, and don’t let her ruin your big day.” Brody felt better now that my family had been warned, and that was the end of that discussion for now.

The rest of that week I spent most of my time in the garden and the kitchen, I was so into all this stuff, growing, canning, dehydrating, pickling, etc. I even started to draw out a schematic of next year’s garden, expanding the size, growing different types of cucumbers for pickling, etc. One morning I went out back to check on the apple trees, then did some research on how to care for them and what to do with all the apples. I found some tools in the old shed and started to trim and prune the trees to aid in growth. Brody got a kick out of how into aal of it I was.

I went back to the gym almost every day and managed to avoid the guy from the steam room. I would do my workout, then get in the car in my sweaty clothes and clean up at home. I was getting into a routine.

Gina finally arrived the following week, I was so fucking happy to have her there!!! I needed a friend. We had a mandatory week of orientation and designated teacher workdays before school started. Gina couldn’t get into her new place until a couple of weeks later so she stayed with us. On her first night in town, I invited Dylan (and Roscoe) over for dinner as promised. I’m sorry, but Gina and Dylan were cute as fuck together, and Roscoe and Gina became best buds. I saw a whole new side of Dylan that night; he dropped the good ole’ boy routine and out came this intelligent, bright guy. Brody was right… he was way too smart for the dumb, pretty girls he usually brought home. There was a spark in his eyes when he talked to Gina and she couldn’t stop smiling. Brody and I kind of faded away as the two of them got lost in each other, laughing, and talking about everything from politics to night clubs. Before dinner was over, Gina got Dylan to commit to taking her furniture shopping and showing her around town. She had arrived with just her clothes, some linens, a TV, and her laptop packed into her new Corolla. She left all her old college furniture behind and planned on starting fresh… even if it meant maxing out her credit cards.

She walked Dylan out to his truck with Roscoe leading the way. Dylan sat behind the wheel with Gina leaning in the window talking to him for about a half hour as I kept peeking through the blinds. “Just let it happen, Yenta” Brody said.

“What?” I shot back innocently.

“You’ve been pushing those two on each other ever since Dylan asked about her last week” He responded. “You set ‘em up, now just sit back and let nature take its course.” In my head I already had them married off and was imagining Gina and me hanging out with the family on holidays. I loved them both and wanted them to be happy, but Brody was right it was up to them not me.

Brody had an early morning, so when Gina got back into the house, he kissed me goodnight and went up to bed. Gina and I stayed up and caught up on everything. She told me it was rough saying goodbye to everybody, especially her ex, Teddy. They were together for about three years and had broken up about a year before. Teddy is an awesome guy, but they just wanted different things from life… to be blunt, Gina was growing up and Teddy wasn’t ready for that. He liked partying and goofing around with the guys, and now that he was making a little money, he could afford to go out more and was loving it. Gina, on the other hand was ready to focus on her career, meet someone and settle down. Our conversation turned from our friends and Teddy to Dylan. Gina asked a million question about him and I did my damnedest not to push it. After a couple of hours, we finally headed up stairs to bed. Gina took Grammaw’s old room and I stripped down and got into bed with Brody.

We didn’t start work until the day after next, so we had the next day to ourselves. First, I showed her around our place including the gardens and my newly acquired stash of canned goods and pickles in the cellar. She gave me so much shit about my recent domestication… I expected nothing less and figured that when the rest of my friends showed up for the wedding, I’d catch even more shit.

After the tour of our place, we went over and looked at her new place, she LOVED it! It was a cute little loft-style apartment with hardwood floors and high ceilings. She had a separate bedroom and bath, but the rest of it was open and bright. She took some measurements before we left so she could go furniture shopping over the weekend (with Dylan of course). After that we hit the Waffle House a few blocks from her soon-to-be home for a greasy breakfast, and tried to figure out grocery stores, etc. nearby. Her place was in downtown Wilmington so she was a lot closer to civilization than we were. We ended up spending most of the day driving around the area with the top down trying to find our way around. We went through the city, out in the country, past the school, even down by the beach. It was really a nice area and it was fun to have a friend to explore with. I ended up taking her over to Brody’s Daddy’s place to introduce her to BA. The three of us sat on the porch and had a couple of beers, the two of them hit it off great.

As we were leaving BA took me aside and whispered, “You need to snag that one for Dylan.”

I smiled and said “I’m working on it… I’ll give you the details later.” Her face lit up; she’d been trying to find him someone for years.

Over the next week Gina and I learned a lot about our little school. The first thing I learned was that there was only one other male teacher and the hiring of a second male teacher was apparently a big deal. The first day of orientation they showed us around the small campus, went through the basic performance expectations, our benefits, the school schedule for the year, etc. The second day we spent talking about curriculum and working on lesson plans, the third day we spent getting our classrooms ready for the first day of classes.

I was surprised at the number of parents that stopped by to meet the new teachers before school started… especially Mr. Harrington, the new male teacher (Yeah… me!). The parents (mostly moms) seemed to love me, but I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d still love me when they found out I was gay.

To be continued…