The Families in Rossford

 WHEN SEAN BABCOCK LEFT Rossford in disgrace, some years past, he went to and fro about the earth until he arrived in Elk Grove, Michigan to stay, for a time with Keith Redmond. Keith was coming back to his apartment everyday to share lunch with his temporary roommate. He half hoped that Sean would never go anywhere, though he knew there was nothing healthy about that, and the Sean he loved would never do that.

Because Keith was feeling so chipper, when he asked Sean why he was chipper too, he didn’t press too hard past the answer:

“I just am.”

“Well, that’s good.”

Sean looked like his old self, shaved, in a white shirt open a little at the throat and wearing a touch of cologne. He was going out. Was he looking for a job? Or a lover maybe? Did he know anyone else around here? Well, never mind. The air was so warm today, and the sky was so blue. It was that mid spring thing where one day the sky was full of clouds and then the next, well, who knew?

“Well, I guess I’ll see you before the night is over?” Keith said.

“Not if I see you first,”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No,” Sean thought about it. “I suppose it doesn.t. Nevermind then.”

For the hour after Keith was gone, Sean kept flitting around his computer. He had been talking to Yunus471 for a long time. He came from around here, but he had been living in New England, and a few days ago it had happened that he was here, of all places, and at the same time Sean was, and now they would meet. Sean was silly about what that meant. He hadn’t been silly about that in a long time. This was his perfect online friend. They formed a sort of easy unity.

When it was time, he left the house taking Keith’s expensive Scwhinn. It was an impressive bike that cut through the streets easily, and one push of the pedal took you nearly a block with no effort. It was a shame that Keith was running around in that boxy car all the time. Sean went up Wheeler, and then down Danning and up Main, briefly coming through the traffic before he stopped at the coffee shop beside Dormer Park. On the other side of the park was the last of the campus buildings and then, across the street, an inn.

“You look just like I thought you would, just like your picture!” Sean announced, sitting down in front of Jonah.

“You look better.”

Sean burst out laughing. “I knew I’d like you. What should we get?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’m not hungry either, or thirsty. But we’re supposed to get something. Right?”

“Water?”

“Will that make them mad?”

“Do you care?” Jonah asked.

Sean discovered he did not.

When the waters came, they talked about this and that only for a little while before Jonah said, “This is awkward. Isn’t it? Just sitting in this café, chatting like we’re on a date.”

Sean leaned across him and said, his voice quieter. “We chat everyday. All the important stuff I know. I feel silly sitting here shooting the breeze.”

Jonah smiled at him and reached into his bag. He took out a notebook and a scrap of paper, then wrote on it:

Would you feel less silly if we just went across the street and got a room?

Sean blinked at it. He smiled. He took the pen from Jonah’s hand and wrote:

Yes.

Everything Jonah Layton learned in Catholic school he had jettisoned. He learned it too late anyway, and it seemed something like a different spin on what he’d learned at his father’s mosque. There was this indispensable prize, more or less between his legs, and it wasn’t to be given to anyone but a spouse. This, of course, meant a woman.  For a long time this hadn’t been a real issue in his life. Most of his teen years were spent reading books, sketching, sculpting, praying, living in his head. But after seventeen, he and Jason had come closer and closer, and then, after eighteen, one day at his house, he and Jason had begun to kiss, and when they knew that both of them liked it, Jason got up and locked the door and they kept at it. They took off their shirts and kept at it. Jonah got up and closed the shade and locked the window. They took off their pants and kept at it. They took off all of their clothes, wrapped their arms around each other, pressed their bodies together, and kept at it. They discovered love, and fell asleep together.

“We weren’t supposed to do that,” Jason said later on, in the darkness.

“I don’t really care,” Jonah told him. “And I don’t think God does either.”

“No,” Jason said. “I feel the same.”

He and Jason were a none too steady item, and even before they had broken up forever, there had been others. Jonah knew who to stay away from. For many people sex was a shameful thing. They tried to keep it tamped down, and now and again it exploded in something crazy. They walked away hating themselves. In Catholic school, Jonah had heard about how some people were celibate for love of God and gave themselves to the world that way, but this made no sense. When he wanted to give himself to the world, he gave himself to the world. When he wanted to make love he did it. And it had been, at least by his count, a long while.

He sensed that Sean was much the same. In the Residency Inn across the street, when Jonah took out his credit card, Sean said, “Don’t you dare,” and he paid, and then, with no shame at all, walked Jonah up to the room. He opened the door, closed it, and grinned down at him.

“We should have just done this,” Sean kissed him on the mouth and Jonah placed his arms around his neck.

“My old friend,” Sean said, his voice half a gasp. They stood their kissing and running their hands through each other’s hair, down their backs, over belt buckles, back up again. Jonah held Sean’s face in his hands.

“You are so beautiful.”

This was after his humiliation in Rossford, after his attempt to make things work with Chad.

“Thank you,” Sean said. And they kissed again.

Jonah began to undo his shirt and Sean helped him. And then Sean undid his pants and Jonah helped him, and soon they were naked and coming to the bed, kissing and tasting and touching, and then lying there, linked together.

Jonah lay on his side, looking at Sean lying on his side. He ran his hands over Sean Babcock’s side, stopped on his hip. He kissed Sean and Sean waited for the kiss sweetly. He kissed his chin, his throat, he gently fondled a nipple, and Sean moaned. The back of his hand traveled down Sean’s belly. It had been so long since he had tasted a man, he never got tired of tasting men. He placed his face in the softness of the hair under Sean’s stomach and then, tenderly kissed the shaft of his penis, kissed down, while Sean shuddered. Jonah tasted, licked, took him slowly in his mouth.

Sean opened and closed his eyes and the light through the curtains filled him. Jonah, down below, was pulling light and fire from him. He felt, his hands on Jonah’s back and  hair, so loved, so accepted. Then Jonah’s face was before him, and he kissed it. They were kissing and sharing fiercely. That was the only kind of sharing that mattered.

They stopped, breathing lightly, Sean’s body across Jonah.

“What?” Sean said.

“Nothing,” said Jonah. “Only… I’m so happy now.”

“I know what you mean.”

Sean’s penis, tapered, was firm between Jonah’s thighs. Jonah rubbed his hands through Sean’s hair that was damp with musk. The older man’s body was hot and moist.

“Sean?”

“Yes?” Sean’s voice was soft.

“Fuck me.”

Sean’s mouth kissed his throat deeply, and then went to his mouth. He pressed his body hard against Jonah, hugging him. He placed his cheek on Jonah’s chest.

“Yes.”

When it was over they both lay trembling and shaking, Jonah’s thighs around him, his hands deep in Sean’s hair. They didn’t want to leave that position. They didn’t want to stop holding each other. Slowly, Sean rose up, and lay on his back, his side pressed to Jonah’s. They didn’t speak again for a long time.

“I haven’t been with… not for a while. Not like that,” Sean said. “People don’t understand. They think…”

He stopped talking.

Finally he turned around and looked at Jonah.

“Are we friends, or are we not? Because I think we are.”

“I think we are too.”

“I’m just saying there’s nothing casual about casual sex. People don’t understand. You’ve got to be comfortable with someone to do what we just did. And I don’t really know who I can talk to about this and they’ll understand.”

Jonah turned on his stomach, and he put his chin on Sean’s stomach while Sean grinned and tapped out a piano tune on Jonah’s head.

“They will say, Oh my God, you met someone online, and then you all just went back and had sex! Oh, my!”

Sean laughed.

“I figure, who cares? If we’re both having a good time. If we’re both giving each other pleasure. God knows no one on this earth wants to give anyone pleasure anymore.”

Jonah could still feel Sean in him. He kissed Sean’s stomach and his navel and his right hip and his left hip, saying.

“Well, you did. You have me great pleasure, and as long as you’re here we can keep giving each other pleasure. We will delight each other, and you will be my constant friend.”

“I like that,” Sean said.

Jonah came back up and lay his head next to Sean’s.

“How long are you free?” Sean said.

“Till six.”

“It’s nearly five. Will I see you again?”

“I just said you would.”

“People say so much. Men are so brave… For all of thirty seconds.”

Jonah said up, becoming much graver.

“I am always brave,”

Sean sat up and smiled at him, fiercely.

“I believe it!”

SEAN BABCOCK TURNED OFF the shower, and stood behind the glass, toweling his face and his hair. He pushed open the door and began to dry his body. Jonah pushed the door open more, and stood before him.

“Are you sure you still want an old man like me?” Sean asked him, wrapping the towel around his waist.

“Well, you weren’t old when I met you,” Jonah explained. “I think getting to be an old man comes with the territory.”

“You were supposed to say,” Sean told him, as he kissed him on the cheek, “that I’m not that old.”

“How well do you know me?”

“I had thought pretty well,” Sean said.

“Then by now you should know I’m the last person to go to for idle compliments.”

“What do you want to do today?” Sean asked him.

“Right now I want to go to the bathroom, which is why I came in here.”

“Oh, alright,” Sean said. “Oh, I probably should have called Shelley. To let her know where I was.”

“She probably assumed you were at Kenny’s,” Jonah shut the door.

While Sean was dressing, Jonah came out, the sound of the toilet flushing behind him.

“So, Kenny?”

“Yes.”

“You were going to replace me with him?”

“That is not the way I was looking at it,” Sean said. He added, “And I still can’t believe you’re here.”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Jonah differed. “What are you doing here? Church organ again?”

“No, Chad has the job I had.”

“Well, what? Because if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were running again.”

“You’re like my conscience, you know that?”

“Your conscience doesn’t drop to its knees and suck your dick, and I don’t look anything like a cricket. Now what are you looking at?”

Jonah sounded annoyed because Sean, who was taller than him, was looking down on him with an indulgent smile.

“When I came to Evan Park eight years ago, trying to escape the pain of everything I had done here, you just showed up in my life. Such a surprise. I didn’t want to take you away from Keith. I didn’t want to repeat what I had done here.”

“I wasn’t with Keith when we met, and I wasn’t something to be taken away.”

“But I was falling in love with you. I’m still falling in love with you, Jonah Layton.”

Jonah turned his head and Sean thumped him in the shoulder.

“Yes?” Jonah said.

“Do you know how rare that is? To be in love? To stay in love.”

“Of course I do,” Jonah told him. “Why do you think I, who hates driving, drove two hundred fifty miles to find you?”

“No one’s ever driven two hundred fifty miles to find me.”

“No one drives two hundred fifty miles to find anyone,” Jonah told him, trying to sound sensible. “It just isn’t done.”

“Shut up,” Sean said. “What I mean is, after all this time I feel it, I know it.”

“Know what?”

“That you love me as much as I love you.”

Kenneth McGrath yawned and stretched, pushing his arm out and encountering bare space.

He blinked, looking around in the empty room, and then a moment later heard whistling, and half opened his eyes to see Ruthven, naked, come back into the bedroom, turn back the covers, and climb into bed.

“You awake?” Ruthven said.

“A little.”

“Cool,” he said, and then turned over, his broad back to Kenny.

“Were you just asking to ask?”

“Yes,” Ruthven said.

Here was a strange and vaguely annoying trait about Ruthven. His questions often didn’t seem to go anywhere. Kenneth said, “Why did you come back last night?”

Ruthven turned around and faced him.

“Whaddo you mean?”

“I meant…” Kenny seemed slightly frustrated now. “That’s what I meant.”

“Nothing deep,” Ruthven told him.

He sat up.

“Look, I don’t know who the last guy in this bed was. Maybe he was into mindgames and all that. I’m a really simple person. I wondered how you were. I enjoy kicking it with you. I came back. Okay?”

Kenny nodded, and sat up in bed.

“That is simple,” he said.

“Yeah,” Ruthven agreed.v“And you could probably use simplicity right now.”

Kenny didn’t say anything. The night before Sean had been here, and there was the revelation that Sean would not be the next man in his life, his destiny. And then this Jonah had shown up at the door, and taken him away. And now Ruthven, good looking, amiable, simple, a skilled lover, was in bed beside him promising something completely uncomplicated.

“I haven’t had anything like that before,” Kenny explained.

“See,” he said, “I was in this relationship for years. I mean years. And so when you talk about something that’s just simple…”

“And fun,” Ruthven added. “Don’t forget fun.”

“Well,” Kenny said, “that’s just completely new to me.”

“Great,” Ruthven said, stretching out in bed and clutching the pillow as he pushed his ass into Kenny’s side, “then its settled.”

Kenny lay back down, and Ruthven reached over to pull Kenny’s arms tight around him.

“That’s right,” he said. “It is settled.

“And for the record,” Ruthven added.

“Yeah?”

“This is kind of new for me too.”

“So I need to understand this,” Tara said late that morning at the playhouse. “You two just saw this little boy, picked him up, and put him on an airplane?”

“What about his passport?” Tom demanded. “How did you get out of England?”

“There are ways,” Lee said.

Tom looked at his partner.

“There are ways,” Lee repeated.

“There really are,” Noah said.

“Yes,” Layla agreed, “and we used them, and now Liam is here.”

“But you can’t just willy nilly adopt children from all over the world,” Tom was saying.

“Of course you can,” Lee disagreed. “People do it all the time.”

“But with governments and orphanages and—”

“And the law,” Brendan said quietly, tapping the table they sat around with a finger.

“So whaddo we do?” Will turned to his friend.

“Oh by the way,” Fenn stood up, rapping on the table.

They all looked at him.

“I would just like to announce to everyone that Sheridan Klasko and Brendan Miller are officially together.”

“Really, babe?” Todd looked up at him. “Is this the time?”

“Is there a better time?” Fenn demanded, sitting back down beside Todd while Sheridan raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Brendan said, awkwardly clearing his throat, “that’s right. But back to Liam.”

“Do we even have to do anything?” Layla said. “I mean, we could just keep him here and never bring it up.”

“Layla!” Adele said.

“You said people used to do things like that all the time,” Layla reminded her mother.

“But what about when he needs a birth certificate and a social security number?” Will said.

“You and Will need to officially adopt Liam.”

“Good,” Will thumped the table and planted his elbows on the table. That’s just what we want to do.”

“And,” Brendan continued, “That means you and Layla need to finally get married.”

There was a space of silence, and then Will walked around the table.

“What the hell?” Layla began.

“Call Dena,” he said.

Layla reached into her purse and obeyed.

“What’s up?” they heard Dena’s voice from the phone, but Will said, “Dena, get Milo, just stay by the phone.”

Next he took out his phone and called Claire.

“Yeah, get Jules.”

They waited a while, and then he put the two phones on the table.

“Meredith is with us,” Dena’s voice shouted through the phone. “Is that alright?”

“Even better,” Will said.

He sank to one knee and told Layla, “I’m only going to get to do this once, and I wish everyone was here right now. Layla Lawden, will you marry me?”

The room was quiet, but the phones were screaming.

“Yes, Will,” she said. “Yes, goddamnit, yes.”

As she bent to kiss Will on the mouth, Adele dabbed at the corner of her eye. But what she said was, “It’s about time.”