The Families in Rossford

“No one will be at my house,” Elias said. “People are always at your house.”

Dylan nodded, though the idea of being with Elias in Paul and Kirk’s house worried him more than being in his own. Elias was right, though. His parents had far more reliable schedules. It was entirely possible that Fenn or Todd might swing by in the middle of the day, and if they did they’d want to know why Dylan was not at school, and why he was busy not-being-at-school with Elias.

“I just hope Layla and Will don’t see us,” Dylan said.

“Snap,” Elias murmured.

“All this sneaking around,” Dylan said, half jokingly.

“What about a motel?” Elias suggested offhandedly.

“Seriously?” Dylan turned to him.

“I can’t think of anything that would spoil this day more than parents walking in, and I can’t think of any better way to get away from that then a motel.

“Okay,” Dylan nodded. “There’s one on Meridian. I got twenty dollars on me.”

“I have my Dad’s credit card.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Dylan said.

Elias rummaged around in his wallet and then said, “Wait… I got thirty dollars.”

“How do you have thirty dollars?”

“How do you have twenty?”

“Grandma Mesda gave me money at Christmas, and I’m really cheap.”

“I have grandmas too, you know.”

“Well thank you, Merilee,” Dylan said.

As they drove up Dorr, Elias turned to look at Dylan. He had put his shades on to keep the sun of out his eyes, but he looked very serious and very cool. He was in his uniform, and the whole effect was a little official. Affectionately, Elias placed a hand on his leg. Dylan placed his hand over Elias’s and chuckled.

“That’s enough. Any more and I’ll crash into something.”

“Did you know?” Dena asked that afternoon when they were in Kenny’s house. “I mean, you must have known.”

“I didn’t want to know,” Kenny said. “I put it out of my head.”

Dena folded her arms over her chest, but she wasn’t angry.

“I was gone for a long time, wasn’t I?” she said.

Kenny said, “Four months. With just phone calls. He was only eighteen. You all had just gotten together.”

“I’m not mad,” Dena said, honestly. “I’m not. I’m just blindsided by everything.”

“Can it really only be twelve weeks since Christmas?”

“I know, right,” Dena said, sitting down. “And now… You and Ruthven.”

“We’re not really together.”

“But you’re not not together either. And Meredith and Mathan and, well damn, Carol’s nice about this. But she’s as nice as I’m going to have to be, right?”

“Well, in Carol’s case, it’s just a little baby. In your case—”

“It’s this straight up bitch,” Dena said.

“Is she really that awful?”

Without thinking, Dena said, “Yes.”

“I swear I’ll pay you back,” Maggie said, desolately, as they sat on the brick wall over the waste bins outside of the Sears.

Ed Palmer shrugged and looked over the cars of the parking lot, then over the cars going back and forth on the Strip.

“Don’t worry about it. I did it. You didn’t make me.”

“Did your mom tell you about that cousin of yours?”

“Yeah,” Ed said. “Dylan Mesda. He plays trumpet at the Five Spot sometimes. He doesn’t know me, but I know him.”

“You should introduce yourself to him.”

“Maybe I will,” Ed said, doubtfully. “I just might.”

Maggie touched his hand lightly.

“You’re a nice guy.”

“Not really. I’m someone who smashed out a stranger’s windows and ruined their car.”

“For me.”

“Doesn’t make it better.”

“No,” Maggie agreed.

“How do you feel? Now, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “I have a dad now. I don’t know. I don’t think he likes me. I don’t know how he can.”

She was quiet. She said, “I don’t feel anything.”

Then she said, “Do you want to have sex with me?”

“So that you can feel something?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I can. Not just like that. I’m a virgin. I mean, aside from what we did. Which means I guess I’m not totally a virgin, but…”

“I am too,” Maggie said. Her voice sounded a little desperate now. “Just like those statues of Mary in church. Cold. I’m just stone. I just want to feel.”

Edward Palmer moved closer to her on the wall, and held her hand tight. He kissed her on the top of the head.

“I won’t go,” he promised her. “I’m right here.”

“It’s a nice room,” Elias said, touching the fibrous cream colored curtain, and pulling it back to look at Meridian Street.

Dylan pushed it back, and from behind he wrapped his arms around Elias. He kissed him on the cheek. Elias pressed his back into Dylan and Dylan’s mouth went to his neck. Elias turned around and let Dylan kiss him, and then Dylan turned around and walked him to the bed, pushing him onto it, laying across him and kissing him. His hands went around the other boy’s neck, and they began to kiss like they often did. There wasn’t a tutoring session or a conversation that didn’t end with them twisted on the bed or on the floor, but it always stopped there. Today Elias’s fingers began to work at Dylan’s shirt, and when Dylan realized it would just be easier, he got up in a hurry, unbuttoned the shirt himself, and then pulled it off. Suddenly, neither one of them could wait to be naked and quickly, almost clumsily, they undressed, and then came together, Dylan pressing his body against Elias’s, Elias’s legs wrapping about him and pulling him in. They lay side by side, holding faces, kissing, stroking hair. Elias turned Dylan on his back and kissed his throat, the place over his heart, down, down. He placed his cheek softly on the dark secret hair under his stomach, and ran his hands up and down Dylan’s sides. Dylan closed his eyes and turned his head on the pillow, and then Elias went further and Dylan opened his mouth, and his breath came out in a rattle of shock and pleasure. He looked below, almost in disbelief, watching Elias go up and down on him, his mouth doing this amazing work.

 Almost unconsciously, he moved his hips. Tenderly, afraid of offending Elias, he took his head in his hands and guided. But Elias didn’t mind. His hands took Dylan’s hips and they moved like that until it was too much. Until they changed position and Dylan did it to him, until Elias pulled Dylan back onto the bed and turned around for him.

“Do you want me to?” Dylan said. He was so hard, and so amazingly large. He’d never seen himself this large.

“Yes,” Elias told him.

“I don’t have any…”

“Don’t be simple. I have some in my school bag.”

Dylan moved against him, savoring his body, running his erection between the firmness and the roundness of Elias’s cheeks.

“You carry lube and condoms in your school bag?”

“I had lube just in case. I didn’t bring condoms because I didn’t think we needed them. Unless there’s something you need to tell me.”

Dylan slapped his ass for that, and then rummaged around. Elias turned Dylan on his back and said, “It’s easier for me if I do it.”

Dylan nodded.

Elias, white as porcelain, his thighs hot, straddled Dylan, catching his sides between those legs.

Dylan felt Elias’s hands firm on his penis, guiding it, and then, suddenly, a tightness, Elias pulling him in into the tight hot inside. The last time Dylan had been fucked was at Christmas. If he had been the last person Elias was with, it had been longer for him then, and he watched the color drain from Elias’s face as he, pulling Dylan in slower and slower, navigated between initial pain and pleasure. His breath had stopped and his face changed. His mouth opened, his eyes almost went dead, and then a little wet. He licked his lips as he settled down on Dylan.

“You alright—?” Dylan began.

But just like that, Elias planted his hands on Dylan’s chest, and face looking up in triumph, he began to move up and down on Dylan, grasping his penis, as if by a secret hand. Dylan lost his breath, and then let it out in a high shudder as, pulled deep inside by the other boy, he let Elias ride him.

Dylan took after both of his fathers in the respect that he would never be very tall. He was, at eighteen, slightly taller and stockier than his natural father, Tom Mesda and exactly the height and build of Fenn Houghton. The profundity of curly hair, sometimes grown out to Beethoven extremes, that his musical father had, made Tom appear taller than Fenn, but this was not true. By the time he was eighteen, Dylan counted that he had been with—not counting Elias—five men. Ruthven, Lance, Nick Ferguson—who had taught him trumpet and—there was no getting around it—two of Ruthven’s friends back one night when he had gone to California. After Ruthven, and before he and Lance had come to their arrangement, some other things had happened, but Dylan’s generally honest mind shied away from those encounters. For an eighteen year old five was a high enough number and Dylan rounded up by simply saying “five and a half” when he thought of the others.

But the point was, with the exception of Elias, every man Dylan had been with was older and bigger than him. He and Lance, bound up in a sexual relationship since childhood, had few boundaries in the bedroom. Their love was fierce and there was no holding back. It took Dylan to the edge, but he was okay with it. He was a match for a strong man with a healthy sex drive.

Elias was slighter, younger, and maybe a little shorter. When he saw guys and girls together he wondered if straight men were pussies because their girlfriends were always so much smaller than them. Dylan had been afraid about being with Elias. The few times it had happened—the very few—Dylan had never fully let himself go. He was always conscious of holding back, of protecting the younger boy. All of this ended that afternoon.

Elias was no virgin. Of course he’d been with Dylan, but there was someone else, Dylan knew that now. And he had forgotten that Elias was as physically strong, and as voracious as himself. That afternoon Elias’s eyes and hands and cock and ass and heart demanded everything from him. It was five o’clock, and the covers were gone from the bed. The room was hot with the heat of their bodies and they were both red and panting, hair damp and ragged, bodies a little bruised, grinning at each other, hugging, kissing.

“I told you,” Elias told him, pressing his face into his chest.

Dylan pulled one of Elias’s legs over him, and ran his hand over his boyfriend’s body.

They didn’t talk for a long while.

“What now?” Dylan asked.

“Can we sleep? And hold each other?”

“I’d like that.”

“And then get something to eat?”

Dylan nodded. But he lifted his armpit and sniffed.

“Should we shower before we eat?” Elias said.

“I think it might be a good idea.”

“Oh my God!” Dylan shouted in the middle of his shower.

“Sorry sunshine,” Fenn said, pulling his head from behind the curtain.

“Dad, I’m eighteen. You can’t just do crazy shit like that.”

“I didn’t see anything. Too much steam. Besides, I already know what you look like. You probably look like Tom. Now when Tom was in his twenties, my God! That was a sight.”

Dylan lathered his head and stuck it under the hot water.

“Are you trying to make me hurl?”

“A little. Yes. And make you hurry up. Train leaves in forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll be ready. My stuff is already laid out. In fact, I’m about to turn the shower off.”

Dylan did, and Fenn handed a towel through the curtain.

Dylan smacked it to his face and began drying vigorously.

“We haven’t talked about the new discovery.”

“What new discovery?”

“That Eileen Wehlan’s sister is—”

“The ex wife of Meredith’s boyfriend, and the mother of some psycho bastard who busted out Milo and Dena’s windows.”

“Well, more than that,” Fenn said. “That’s merely interesting.”

“Dad,” Dylan stuck his head out of the curtain, and his dark hair was sticking up. “You’re driving me crazy right now. What else do you know?”

“I—” Fenn began. And then he said, “No, I think this is a train ride confession. In fact,” Fenn decided, “this might actually be a when we get to the apartment confession.”

Dylan looked strange, and then said, disappearing under a rustle of shower curtains to finish drying himself, “I’ll let you have your way. But are Sheridan and all of them supposed to be coming with us?”

“They’re coming to Chicago today as well,” Fenn said. “And we might eventually even all see each other. But they are not coming with us.”

“Good,” Dylan said decisively. Then he said, “And now I have to get out. So you need to get out too.”

Fenn nodded, and then he said, “Dylan?”

Pushing back the shower curtain, Dylan raised an eyebrow.

“I think this woman would like to meet you, and Charlie Palmer’s kids probably would too. They’re your family.”

Dylan’s face suddenly grew hard and he said, “I’ve got a family.”

Fenn knew to drop it then, and imagined he should have felt touched and grateful. He nodded his head, and exited the bathroom.