Blue E-Book

B.G. Thomas

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 349

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Blue McCoy has lived on the streets for a long time, surviving by his wits and doing what he must, and he's not above using his youthful appearance and air of innocence to his advantage. It's not an easy life, but he's happy. He has everything he really needs: the clothes on his back, a house to squat in, a sweet dog. Everything except that special someone to love him. Six months ago, John Williams's wife left him because she was bored. "Even your *name* is boring" were her last words to him before she walked out. Now he's by himself in a big house, trying to figure out what direction his life should take. He's never been so alone. A chance encounter sets John on a new path, a path that becomes clearer when loneliness sends him to a local animal shelter to get a dog—and he finds an angel instead. An angel named Blue. A crisis brings them together, but it is something else that keeps them there. Could it be love? A love that can forever end two men's deep loneliness and bring them the support and sense of belonging they've searched for all their lives?

Leseprobe

Blue

By B.G. Thomas

Blue McCoy has lived on the streets for a long time, surviving by his wits and doing what he must, and he’s not above using his youthful appearance and air of innocence to his advantage. It’s not an easy life, but he’s happy. He has everything he really needs: the clothes on his back, a house to squat in, a sweet dog. Everything except that special someone to love him.

Six months ago, John Williams’s wife left him because she was bored. “Even your name is boring” were her last words to him before she walked out. Now he’s by himself in a big house, trying to figure out what direction his life should take. He’s never been so alone.

A chance encounter sets John on a new path, a path that becomes clearer when loneliness sends him to a local animal shelter to get a dog—and he finds an angel instead. An angel named Blue. A crisis brings them together, but it is something else that keeps them there. Could it be love? A love that can forever end two men’s deep loneliness and bring them the support and sense of belonging they’ve searched for all their lives?

Table of Contents

Blurb

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

More from B.G. Thomas

Readers love B.G. Thomas

About the Author

By B.G. Thomas

Visit Dreamspinner Press

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

SPECIAL THANKS to F.E. Feeley Jr. for writing a song for me!

And of course to Noah Willoughby, Chris Scully, C.L. Miles, and Angelia Sparrow for your unbelievable help with research.

Thanks to Andi Byassee, which really goes without saying. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have her at my back. Especially with Blue.

Thanks also to Brian Holliday. I mean it, man. Thank you.

Tippy! Thank you so much! You saved me, man. Wow!

And most especially to Lynn. Who saved this book.

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS a chilly evening. Someone had stolen Blue McCoy’s electric blanket, but of course there was no power in the abandoned house on Wyandotte Street. Not lately anyway. So it wasn’t like it would have kept him warmer than any other blanket. Luckily he’d hidden an old quilt in the attic. The room he’d claimed had a little door in the ceiling of the closet. The blanket was full of cigarette burns and a couple of ugly stains, but it gave him something to fight the chill.

That and Chewie.

Chewie was a labradoodle, a big, happy brown furry ball of joy—maybe even purebred—that Blue had met the week before. The stray had been matted and dirty and obviously hungry—Blue could see that even with his thick fur—and he had lured the dog to him with half his McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets.

Which cost nearly five dollars for only ten, and that wasn’t even the meal deal. He would have gone to Wendy’s, which was much better—four nuggets for ninety-nine cents—but now that he no longer had a skateboard, it was a hell of a walk, even though it was also a hell of a savings.

Blue went to bed that night still hungry. He supposed Chewie did too. The labradoodle was far skinnier than he was. But there were people way worse off than them. Hell yes!

Tonight, cuddling with the dog helped. They kept each other warm.

Blue had named the dog after the famous sidekick from the Star Wars movies, of course. Movies his family had never tired of watching.

Back when things were magic.

That was a long time ago.

Not that his life was bad. He knew he had it better than a lot of people.

He kept finding jobs. Crazy, silly ones that didn’t last long, but they paid for the necessities in life.

Selling Christmas trees. He’d been surprisingly good at that one. He’d found that out when he’d done it for charity one weekend. He’d even scored a date with a real cute guy, but it hadn’t panned out. He had a knack for selling those trees and found a place that very Monday that paid him.

Dog walker. He’d loved that. He could manage seven dogs at once, even as slim as he was. Dogs liked him. Maybe they sensed a kindred soul in him. He didn’t know. All he knew was that he loved dogs, loved other people’s cats, loved animals in general. Their love was unconditional. Marilyn Monroe had said it so well. “Dogs never bite me. Just humans.” That was sure the truth. She was also rumored to have said “Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.” Wise woman. Just look at what Lady Gaga had done with hers! Especially those gold ones she wore with the short-sleeved red, black, and gold Alexander McQueen at the 2010 VMAs! So hawt. Or those green armadillo shoes from the “Bad Romance” video. God. How he’d wanted to see what they’d look like on his own feet. They might even make him as tall as a normal person. But Vans were probably the best he’d ever have. Of course, his were secondhand….

Another crazy job he did now and then was note taker for college students. There were actually kids who would hire him to go to class for them and take notes. Crazy, but oh so cool. He had neat handwriting, which they liked, and he learned shit besides. Lots of shit. Cool shit. Blue knew lots of shit.

Jelly doughnut filler—that had been fun.

Dressing up as the Statue of Liberty and standing out on Thirty-Ninth Street in front of a tax place. That one could be rough because some of the days were very cold, and standing so close to the street meant that the wind wasn’t broken by buildings and could cut through his thin jacket almost as if it weren’t there. But who else could say they’d gotten paid, cash under the table—and wasn’t that ironic, considering—for dressing up like Lady Liberty?

He’d picked apples. He’d hitchhiked for three days to do that, and it had been easy to get the job. Everyone cried and boo-hooed that Mexicans were “taking jobs from Americans,” but the truth was that most people didn’t want to do stuff like that. The hours were long, it was monotonous, and the average person would consider it very boring. But Blue liked it. Picking apples allowed him to turn his brain off. His brain could go so fast—so very fast. And if he started talking when his brain was going quintuple (or milluple?) speed, then sometimes he couldn’t stop. The words would start pouring out of him, and they just wouldn’t end. They’d go on and on and on and on and on and on. And then he would suddenly realize what he was doing and be so embarrassed.

But it filled the silence.

The silences.

He picked up a lot of Spanish while picking apples. Even his coworkers were surprised how much he learned.

People thought he was stupid. But he wasn’t.

It bothered him that people thought he was some kind of moron, but what was he to do? And sometimes it helped. He learned to let people think he was an airhead. People—especially older men who thought he was pretty—liked airheaded boys. Not that he was a boy. He was twenty-three!

Blue didn’t look for handouts, though. He worked; that’s what he did. Unlike a lot of people he knew, he found some kind of job.

And he moved through the days, one by one.

He peeled potatoes and washed dishes by the billions.

Painted fire hydrants—recently in South Hyde Park—a hideous orange and black.

He’d been a call center rep—he’d liked that job, but they said he talked to the people too much. He wasn’t supposed to ask them about their kids or if they’d seen the new Star Wars movie, and if they liked it or thought it was just a retread of A New Hope. His boss didn’t even like it when he asked what kind of dogs they had. (And why wouldn’t he? The calls he took were for people ordering dog food!) And she certainly didn’t like it if he gave them advice on how to get their husbands to pay attention to them. They fired him, and it was just as well, because he didn’t have a car and getting there every day had been a bitch.

And of course, there were always the men who wanted… things. “Favors.”

Of the… intimate kind.

It had shocked him the first time. When he realized what was happening. “Spend the night with me and I’ll feed you and give you a place to spend the night that has air conditioning”—or heat, depending on the time of the year. That was nice!

The next morning Blue had felt a bit sick, though.

But then he thought, Why not? It wasn’t like he was a whore or anything. He wasn’t charging. And maybe, just maybe, one of them would want him for something besides his body or his… talent.

Part of the deal, after all, was that he got to spend the night. Sometimes it was even a classy hotel instead of some cheap no-tell motel, and that usually meant at least a continental breakfast of croissants and rolls and muffins and bagels and fruit. At the worst he could expect coffee and those blueberry muffins in the sealed plastic bags (and there usually wasn’t anyone watching, so he could pop quite a few of them in his backpack for later and to share with his housemates). If he was really lucky, he could order room service after the guy left to go home to his girlfriend or wife or—surprisingly—husband. Men who had lives where they couldn’t be gay (or at least thought they couldn’t). Or maybe spouses who wouldn’t understand them or, for whatever reason, were unable to give those men what they needed.

Mom said those men used him.

“Like Kleenex! They blow their loads and use you to wipe it up and throw you away!”

Maybe.

Maybe not.

He and the men both got something out of it. He a nice place to stay and maybe a few bucks—not that he charged! He was right up-front about that. Always. “I’m not a hustler!” But if some guy wanted to slip him a little money, it meant he would eat. At least he had the looks that a lot of men seemed to want. He looked young. Much younger than he was. And oh, weren’t they relieved when they found out he was legal? So yes, he used it. Used his looks and acted young as well. Let them think he was an airhead. And he survived. Thanked God too that life on the streets hadn’t aged him.

The truth was that Blue felt sorry for them. Felt sorry for the men who needed him! Usually—although not always—they were men who couldn’t face who or what they were. Men who had chosen “safety” in a heterosexual lifestyle and then now and again couldn’t stand the loneliness of it one second longer and sought out people like him. Even if it was just for one night.

There was this one regular—afterward the guy would always go into the bathroom and get on his knees and beg his God for forgiveness—who Blue finally had to stop seeing because those prayers made him cry. He couldn’t convince the man that God loved everyone. God loved all his children. All the children of the world.

Red and yellow, black and white….

That’s what they sang at Blue’s grandparents’ church. The songs were the only things he’d liked about their church. “This Little Light of Mine”(… I’m gonna let it shine…), “Jesus Loves Me” (… this I know, for the Bible tells me so…), “Zacchaeus” (… was a wee little man, a wee little man was he…), “Kumbaya” (… kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya…).

Songs he’d liked before everything went really bad.

There was another good thing about those hotels. Blue was able to snitch some towels, sheets, little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion. Stuff like that. He didn’t feel guilty about it—well, a little bit about the sheets—because most of those men could afford the extra charges on their credit cards.

What would it be like to have a credit card? Blue wondered. He figured a credit card was something the likes of him would never have.

Blue was not unhappy. He liked his life. It was usually pretty cool. Sure there was some bad stuff. The incident last summer at camp (that had been pretty damned bad). Or the time he’d almost gotten arrested and what he’d had to do for that cop (there had been handcuffs and a trunk involved) to keep himself out of jail. And of course there was what had happened what felt like a thousand years ago when he lost his other half. Nothing would ever be that bad.

But Blue knew how to look for blessings.

Like tonight. It wasn’t as cold as it was last night.

And if it was, he knew he could always go to one of the other rooms in the house. Ruby had made it clear that he wanted Blue.

Gavel and Sly said he was always welcome to sleep in between them. He had the night before. That had been a regular three dog night. After they had sex, Chewie had even been welcomed onto the mattress to help keep them warm. So a four dog night.

But tonight Blue didn’t want that. He wanted to be alone.

Well, alone except for Chewie.

Hey! He had a place to be alone. So many people slept on a park bench or in an alley or under a bridge. He was blessed to have a roof over his head. And he liked the room he had claimed.

He liked the Grateful Dead poster on the wall. He’d found it at a garage sale for a buck, and it was more than he could afford right then, but he remembered his dad had liked them and he wanted it.

He liked the poster for some group called Electric I that had been on the wall already. Blue hadn’t been sure who they were, but then Sly had played him some of their music on his iPod—

Hey girl, with your eyes so blue

With your hair let down, can I git wich-u

Can I hold your hand and be your man?

Can I be your boy

Friend?

—and while they weren’t the Beatles (who could be?) or even the Backstreet Boys (very cute, especially the oldest one, Kevin Richardson), they weren’t bad, not bad at all.

Blue liked the big table he’d made out of an old door and cinder blocks. It held all his stuff: his books and QuikTrip mug and CDs and candles.

He liked his candles. He had a ton of them, and he especially liked the ones that he’d cast from real men’s penises. It didn’t take much to convince a guy to let him cast his cock to make a candle. Men liked it when a big deal was made over their dicks. And it gave him something to remember them by. It showed that it had really happened. Someone had wanted him for at least a night. Someone had been willing to take the time to let him take a mold of their hard-on. And he had the added fun of making sure they stayed hard while the plaster of paris set.

It was sexy. And fun. And silly.

Silly was good.

If only he could get some famous people to let him cast their cocks! Maybe he’d get famous someday because of them. Some lady named Cynthia Plaster Caster—although her real name was Cynthia Albritton—had gotten famous casting cocks way back in the sixties. Rock stars and their road managers. Even Jimi Hendrix. Today she had a museum in New York. And not just Hendrix, who was famous to Blue as the guy whose “’scuse me while I kiss the sky” lyrics sounded like “’scuse me while I kiss this guy.” Lots more. A list of names Blue recognized even though he didn’t know who most of them were. Zal Yanovsky from the Lovin’ Spoonful, Ricky Fataar of the Beach Boys (who hadn’t heard of them?), Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys. And Frank Cook, Richard Cole, Bob Pridden, Danay West, Eddie Brigati, Harvey Mandel, Lee Mallory….

That list went on and on (a list he couldn’t help but remember because that’s just the way his brain worked). And it was kinda cool to look at all those candles and even cooler to look at his own candles and marvel at how many men let him make molds of their dicks. The candles really were… well, gorgeous.

If he had the chance to cast famous cocks, it would be—and as he lay there on the piss-stained mattress it gave him a hard-on to think of them—Justin Timberlake and Adam Levine (oh fuck!) and Bruno Mars and Nick Jonas and Austin Mahone (ggiiiirl!) and Jared Leto (oh!!!) and Zac Efron (those eyes, those abs, and if there was a God, then those pics on the Internet of Zac jacking off were real) and Michael Bublé (whose voice made Blue’s skin tingle) and Justin Bieber (a bit of a douche, but he had a huge dick) and Adam Lambert and Connor Jacobus of the Districts and Tobias Jesso Jr. and Keith Urban and LennyKravitzandUsherBillieJoeArmstrongZaynMalik—

Chewie began to lick Blue’s face in huge, desperate, sloppy doggy kisses, and—whoa!—it brought him back to the here and now.

Blue had done it again.

His brain had started going faster and faster, thoughts piling on thoughts, overlapping, going into overdrive so that he didn’t know what was coming next. Even without people around for him to try to impress….

Or maybe, as he’d begun to suspect (realize?), it happened so he could fill in the silences.

Maybe he didn’t want to be alone tonight after all.

He got up and slipped into his jeans, and Chewie looked at him with big puppy-dog-eyed concern, and Blue said, “Come on, little man, let’s go,” and the labradoodle was up and at the door, tail wagging in anticipation. Blue put on his purple Converse high-tops (just to be sure; he didn’t want anyone taking them) and went to Ruby’s room, but he wasn’t there. So he tried Gavel and Sly’s room, but shit, they already had someone—they were all arms and legs and thrusting butts. Sly grinningly told him to join the party, but Blue wasn’t looking for an orgy tonight, only bodies to help keep him warm and feeling less alone. They only had a full-sized mattress anyway, and there wouldn’t be room for him after everyone was done.

Blue shook his head, mouthed a “Thank you,” and flashed them the “hang loose” sign, and then he took Chewie for a walk. The labradoodle approved of this decision and happily peed on half of Kansas City. Blue bummed a cigarette off a guy walking his own dog—a big shaggy red something—and he and Chewie walked on for a half hour after that, and then it really was just too cold.

He took Chewie home. They climbed into bed, spooned very close, and Blue hoped the weather forecast was right and that warm weather would greet him when he got up. He fell asleep fast and dreamed of better times in much sweeter places.

CHAPTER TWO

JOHN WILLIAMS had first seen the angel six months before on a late autumn day when the leaves were a fiery riot of orange and red and yellow. In fact, he almost hit him. He was backing out of his driveway in his Lexus, and suddenly something, someone, rushed behind him—

Damn kids not looking where they were going. Think they’re immortal!

—and he slammed on his brakes—

Thank God for the rearview camera!

—and jumped out to see if whoever-the-hell was okay and maybe rip them a new one and….

He froze, electrified.

For one split second, John didn’t even know if the kid was male or female. Young, definitely young. John’s son was probably older, although they looked nothing alike. Hair so blond it shone white in the morning sunlight, and eyes so deep and such a lovely brown John could fall into them. Mesmerizing, just like an angel would be. Slim, narrow waisted, wearing a hoodie that hid his torso, short, but with the longest legs and a full crotch and—oh!—this was a man. Quite a young man, to be sure, but very much male.

“Sorry, dude!” the kid exclaimed. “I wasn’t paying attention. My bad—totally.”

John gulped and tried not to stare, and his upper lip broke out into a sweat.

Move. Do something. Say something. Anything.

“No, no… I….”

You’re acting like an idiot!

“I should’ve been watching closer,” he sputtered.

There. Something.

“Man!” The kid smiled, and John’s heart seemed to stop at how dazzling the smile was: beautiful white teeth and sweet dimples and….

Whoa. He’s a guy. Get yourself together!

“Thank God you were watching! Otherwise I’d be paste right now. A big smear in your driveway. A gone kitty. Roadkill, man! Thanks for making sure I’m still breathing.”

And John was aware that the young man was breathing. Alive. So alive! He couldn’t take his eyes off him.

Him. The kid was a him.

Not that John wasn’t aware that he was sometimes attracted to men, but for God’s sake, this kid was hardly a man. Was he even legal? Was he even eighteen? Get your tongue back in your mouth!

Then, quite suddenly, the kid leapt forward and threw his arms around John’s neck and gave him a kiss on the cheek. An electric jolt flashed through John at the young man’s touch. He smelled like mint gum and youthful sweat, and John was immediately aroused, his cock surging to life in his suit slacks, and he blushed, and dammit, what if the kid noticed?

He folded his hands in front of him the second the kid stepped back, but that only served to make him look down, and John hoped, hoped, hoped he was covering things down there. But….

The kid looked back up, and his smile grew ever bigger. Those brown eyes flashed, and he said, “See you ’round. I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.” Then he turned and dashed down the sidewalk after a skateboard John hadn’t seen and hopped onto the thing and, with a knowing grin cast over his shoulder, winked, and away he went.

“God. He kissed me.”

John looked around desperately—had anyone seen?—and toward the house. Remembered Vivian was gone. Gone for a month today (happy anniversary), and the desperate shock of that impossibility came back again, but then….

Then he felt the kiss on his cheek, and it was….

John didn’t know what it was.

He reached up to touch the spot and froze, finding that he didn’t want to do anything to make the ghostlike tingle that still rested there go away.

A boy kissed me.

It was one of the most erotic moments of his entire life.

John stood there for he didn’t know how long, and when he finally realized it and told himself once more to Get it together and got back in his car, he wiped his mouth with the handkerchief in his suit pocket, backed out of the driveway—carefully this time, for God’s sake!—and headed to work.

THAT NIGHT—

(the one-month anniversary of Vivian leaving him)

—he ate a small steak he made on the grill on the island in his kitchen (he was just getting a grasp on cooking for one) along with some leftover rice and a third of a premade salad he’d gotten with pizza the other day from Papa Murphy’s. He had a glass or two (or three) of wine and watched some television (sort of—he marveled that with so much to watch on Netflix, he couldn’t find anything he could stay focused on), and then, without warning, the angel came to mind.

That hair—it was hard to tell in morning sunlight if it was natural—and those brown eyes and that smile and those dimples and those flashing white teeth and the amply stuffed crotch of his well-worn jeans and….

No!

John shook his head and gulped half the contents of his glass.

It was a good wine. He was sure Vivian would love it and thought he should see if she wanted some, and then he remembered, again, that she wasn’t here anymore. The shock hit once more—it wasn’t grief exactly, just a stunning disorientation—and the only good thing he could say about these returning slaps of reality was that, in this case at least, it had gotten him to stop thinking about the kid for a moment.

For a moment.

The angel.

Then the beautiful young man (emphasis on “young”) returned to his mind’s eye, and he saw him jump on that skateboard, saw him look at John over his shoulder and—God!—that bottom. Perfect. It put Vivian’s to shame, and he had always admitted his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s bottom was perfection.

But the kid’s!

John closed his eyes, not to try to envision it but to make that image go away.

When was the last time he’d looked at a guy’s ass?

At the gym a few months ago.

There had been a client of the bank who came from out of town, and he had asked if John knew where he could work out. John had invited him to be his guest at the Gold’s where he was a member and hadn’t realized the young man was flirting with him until they went to the locker room afterward. The kid—well, at least this one was more than a kid; late twenties anyway—had announced he needed a steam and a shower and bent over with exaggerated slowness as he peeled off his gym shorts to reveal a beautiful, round, smooth butt.

Later, John had started to tell Viv about what had happened and then couldn’t. She would only shake her head and ask him how naïve he really was. Not mean. Just surprised at him, as always. He frequently surprised her, but never in an exciting or romantic way. She would sigh and ask him if the hotel his client was staying at had a gym, and then he would have to admit that it probably did. That the way the guy was undressing—slowly, ever so slowly, unveiling that smooth, muscular ass, lifting one foot and resting it on the bench so that he was practically showing John his asshole—there was nothing else it could have been but an attempt at seduction. John had seen part of his smooth balls hanging down before he forced himself to look away.

How does he know?

Not that John was attracted to the client. He wasn’t. The guy was too polished, his nigh-on perfection manufactured rather than natural. But how did the young man know that sometimes John was attracted to men? Had John done something? Implied something with a look or a lingering handshake? He didn’t think so, but then he realized that the client had let his hand remain ever so subtly in John’s. And hadn’t he stroked John’s palm with a finger as he let go?

John had never slept with a man in his life. Not in college (although he’d had more than a few advances directed his way) or even the normal rutting fumblings with high school friends in the showers after wrestling practice or during a sleepover. (Like the evening when two of his buddies decided it was time to watch porn and jerk off, and he’d gone upstairs to his friend’s room and made himself a place to sleep on the floor with a quilt from the end of the bed and his arm for a pillow. The only thing that had been said the next day was a whispered, “Hope we didn’t freak you out. We’re not gay or anything, man.” And John had waved it off and quickly asked if they were going to be watching the Royals game that night, and of course the answer had been yes.)

All the dodging hadn’t been because John didn’t want to be sexual with those boys. The problem was he did. He really did. The very idea made sweat break out across his upper lip, and he knew—he knew—that if he had sex with a guy even once, that would be it. It would be like those people who tried crack cocaine or meth just once. He would be addicted forever and never have a chance at a normal, incognito life.

That was what John wanted more than anything. Not anonymity per se, but just to be a quiet part of things. Normal. Like everyone else. The only reason he had the Lexus LS 600h L (and wasn’t that a stupid name for a car?) was that Vivian had insisted. She’d wanted him to get the Bentley Bentayga, but it came with a price tag of $230,000 to $300,000, and he couldn’t do it—couldn’t justify a good two years’ income while living in a world that had diseases to cure and starving children and people sleeping in the park not a mile from where they lived. It jarred him to the very marrow of his bones that a half-dozen houses or more could be bought for that kind of money in certain parts of the city.

“Honey, there will always be homeless,” Vivian had said. That reminded him of the line from A Christmas Carol about shelters and surplus population, and he told her so, and she had frozen at that and left the room. He’d felt like shit, because she wasn’t a bad person, hadn’t deserved the comment. Viv had simply grown up with money and didn’t understand what it was like not to have it. Couldn’t, really. She’d just had so much that she had nothing to compare her life to. Living with him had been the poorest she’d ever been, and they were more comfortable than he’d ever dreamed of being.

What did she ever see in me? he wondered for about the billionth time.

“You were safe, I guess,” she said, standing in the foyer with her suitcases, their cockapoo, Moxie, on his leash.

She’s taking the dog?

“I love you, John. I do. But I can’t take this anymore. I am dying of boredom.” Then she winced and ducked her head and apologized again. “I feel like a total shit saying that. But it’s true. I’m forty now, and dammit, there are things I want to do and see while I’m still young enough to enjoy them. I don’t want to be like my mother, stuck and thinking that what is done is done.”

Stuck.

That hurt. Hurt like a knife, if not a sword, because he didn’t think he was boring.

Boring.

But how could he be surprised? She’d been saying these things bit by bit, more and more, for years now. He just hadn’t been paying attention. Not really.

“I want to go to Carnival in Rio de Janeiro!” she was wont to say. “Or Barcelona.” Over the years she had all but begged him to take her to St. Tropez or Amsterdam or Berlin or Mykonos or Paris. “I want to go snorkeling somewhere that just might be dangerous.” Or “I want to get a tattoo, even if it’s someplace only you would see.”

On that day, that last day, she’d said, “We never traveled, John. And we have the money. We can afford it. So I’m going. I’m going to take my friend Lillian, who can’t afford anything. Someplace with a live volcano or voodoo priests or lions running about in the brush. You remember that scene in Out of Africa I love so much? Where Meryl Streep encounters that lion, and if Robert Redford hadn’t been there, she might have gotten eaten up? I wanted something like that to happen, but with you rescuing me instead. But you never wanted anything like that, did you? To save me from a lion. Never wanted to be my Denys Finch Hatton.”

That had hurt too, because they had traveled. They’d gone to the Virgin Islands on their honeymoon, and then only a few years ago—maybe five?—they’d gone to the Grand Canyon, and what could be more beautiful than that?

A pained expression came into her lovely, incredibly dark eyes (he had always loved her eyes), and she said, “See? I’m hurting you, and I don’t want to. I’m leaving so I will stop hurting you and so I can do what I want to do while I still can.”

“Tell me where you want to go,” he’d quietly replied, frozen, shocked, feeling more helpless than he ever had in his life.

“Bora Bora!” she cried. “Bali. Indonesia. India—to where those ruins are with all those people having sex carved into the buildings. I want to spend the night in a pyramid. Or go to Dracula’s castle for Halloween. I want to parachute. Or visit the fleshpots of Bangkok. I want to experience a three-way!”

He’d stiffened at that, and she’d shaken her head. She’d suggested it more than once recently and told him she didn’t care if it was with another man or another woman. “Isn’t that a man’s number one fantasy? To watch his wife with another woman?”

But God, no, he didn’t want to see her with another woman! The idea frankly made his stomach cramp. And another man? What might happen then? Either him standing there watching, left out, or him and the other man each taking a side of his wife and maybe accidentally touching or…. Or something much more involved than anything accidental at all?

And when Viv would whisper the possible scenarios to him, he would feel the color drain from his face even as hers became flushed with excitement. Her kissing another woman, bare breast to bare breast, grinding against each other and then placing him in the middle. Or him and another man, one fucking her from the front and the other from behind. Or… and she would get out of breath saying, “Or you fucking him while he fucks me. Christ, that would be hot. You, John. Fucking a man.”

None of that sounded good to him. He didn’t want to see her with another woman. And what if they took a man to their bed and… and he liked it? Liked it too much?

He knew he very well could. Would.

On that final day, when he’d just stood there listening to her apologize, hardly saying a word himself because he didn’t know what to say, she’d kissed him and said good-bye, took Moxie—she took the dog!—and climbed into her Tesla S P8FD and was gone.

Just gone.

He didn’t hear from her for two weeks and then not directly. His father-in-law called and explained that John shouldn’t try to contact her. In fact he insisted. Told John that when she was ready, she would call him.

She didn’t.

And now he was alone, alone, alone.

Sitting by himself in the dark with only the light of the TV, John thought of all these things. And seeing that thinking was doing nothing to help, that it only brought confusion and hurt and loneliness, he decided to go to bed. He had an early day tomorrow, what with the following Monday being a bank holiday.

But even after what had turned into four glasses of wine, he simply stared by turns at the insides of his eyelids and the bedroom ceiling (with lots of looking at the seemingly unmoving red numbers of his alarm clock).

He’d done a lot of that in the last six months, even after he’d moved out of the master suite he’d shared with Vivian and made the guest room “his” bedroom. Granted, the full-sized bed there was only as comfortable as it was because he was the only one in it. John was a big man at just over six foot, and wide in the shoulders. A football player’s build, they called it—a real one, not just a euphemism for being overweight (although he did have a bit of padding on his stomach). He’d played football in high school—tight end—twenty years ago, and he hadn’t been bad at all. Good enough to get a scholarship for college, although it was clear he’d never be a professional. He’d thought of going out and getting a new king-size bed, but that seemed like so much work, and he just wasn’t up for it. Picking out a bed all alone seemed like the ultimate “The End.”

Then, abruptly, the angel boy appeared in his mind’s eye again, and John almost instantly began to grow hard.

Hell, no.

But cursing to a God he really didn’t believe in did nothing to distract or dissuade his cock, and soon it was painfully erect.

Picturing the boy’s dimples, wondering what those jeans hid on such a slim kid, and yes, remembering that ass were what clinched it. So he did the only thing he could. He took his hard-on in hand, and although he tried to envision Vivian, soon he was thinking about the angel’s sweet, high, round ass instead, and a moment or so after that, he cried out in release and drenched his chest and belly like a teenager.

He didn’t even have time to punish himself for it, for he was asleep almost instantly afterward.

And dreaming of angels on skateboards.

CHAPTER THREE

BLUE STOPPED by Mom’s house to see if she wanted some help with her garden. He hadn’t seen her in weeks, not since it had snowed last and he’d shoveled her driveway and sidewalk for twenty bucks. That evening she’d insisted he spend the night on the couch.

“That place is too fuckin’ cold for you without electricity.”

“It’s not so bad,” Blue had argued. “The next-door neighbors went to Florida for two months, and we hooked up a couple of those big orange power cords to their outdoor outlet.”

She’d furrowed her brows at him. “Who paid for those power cords? Those things are pretty frigging expensive.”

“Sly got them cheap at a garage sale last year,” he’d explained.

“You sure one of ya didn’t steal them?” She was leaning forward then, the blanket she’d been crocheting for the last hundred years or so in her lap.

Blue had laughed at that. “Wouldn’t stealing those huge things be kinda hard?”

She lifted a brow and then leaned back on her couch. “I guess if you don’t have a dress. I put a lot of things up my dress in bad times. I put a frozen goose in there once for Christmas dinner. I got frostbite between my thighs.”

Blue had looked at her agog and exploded into laughter so hard he’d almost peed his pants. In fact, he did a little bit. But just a squirt.

She’d rolled them a rockin’ jay then. She grew marijuana in her backyard, behind her biggest flowers and shrubs. She kept the plants tight and trimmed and hidden, and it was good shit. A product of keeping them so small, all the THC—sticky and quite lovely—gathered heavy in the big buds. She didn’t sell it and shared it only with those she cared about. She grew it for her fibromyalgia, claimed that was the only reason, and while Blue believed the first part, he doubted the latter.

Mom rolled a joint like a champ, and it took them an hour to finish it, because if they had smoked it any faster, it would have put him in a coma—it was that good. Another reason he didn’t go home, even though it was only a few blocks away. He was too fucked up to move.

“You might not have stolen those cords,” she said and took a hit. “But you are stealing electricity.”

“At least we won’t get frostbite on our thighs,” he shot back.

She nodded. “Touché,” she said in that way someone does when they’re holding in a hit, and then she blew out a cloud of smoke so big it reminded Blue of one of the dragons from Game of Thrones. That image had sent him into new peals of laughter.

But today he saw there really wasn’t any gardening to do. It was still early in the year, and right now all that was growing were daffodils, hyacinth, the beginnings of tulips, and the end of the crocuses. There were hardly any weeds yet. But the leaves needed raking. She left them where they fell in the fall for mulch, but now seemed to be the time to get rid of them.

Besides, Mom hadn’t met Chewie.