Take It Outside (Trailhead #1)

4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Adrian

M aybe it’s not fair that I’ve returned to Trailhead just to find out how much I hate him. Then again, I haven’t fully decided who him refers to, nor whether the past month has damned me to a reality in which I’ll always hate myself, too.

The past several months.

Or the past several years .

It’s probably important to figure that out, but for now, I push my hair back from my forehead and reach for my drink. Returning to Trailhead tonight might be unfair, but washing down bile with a Jack and ginger feels exactly fair enough, and representative of at least a few things, I think.

Beau knows everything now. The same everything I had told Darren, at least. All completely true and only a sliver of the truth, and even attempting to sort through that riddle hurts my head, so I take another quick sip and let my throat burn instead, staring at Beau’s back without knowing what I really want him to do next.

Turn around and look at me, and for the first time ever, fucking see me.

Stay exactly where you are, and let us both pretend Levi and I were never here.

I’m not sure why I bother asking for one thing or another—I haven’t wasted time praying since I was an altar boy a lifetime ago—but perhaps something gets answered by someone up above because Beau stands, and I watch him curl under the weight of a ghost he never really knew. He’s not wearing his cowboy hat tonight, a worn baseball cap taking its place, and when he turns, I see that his flannel was left unbuttoned over a ratty t-shirt. It makes me wonder whether Beau hadn’t planned to be here tonight, only showing up because I had.

If I get goosebumps at the thought of that, ones too obvious on the arms left bare by my own t-shirt, I ignore them as well as I’ve ignored a hundred other things.

The discovery I made earlier in the afternoon remains one of the few I can’t seem to forget.

Beau’s walking toward me now, and it’s not a surprise, but it catches in my chest all the same. Levi hadn’t been wrong, all those weeks ago, when he’d suggested that I was attracted to Beau, but the very memory of that first night is made messy by guilt and grief, and I don’t want to dwell on it now. I track Beau’s steps instead, mad about how perfectly they match the beat of the music around them, and if he notices the way my glass damn near slips from my unsteady grip when he reaches the table, he doesn’t mention it.

It probably wouldn’t have made anything worse, but I think I’m supposed to be grateful for something.

“Hi, I’m Beau, and I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”

Paired with the strong hand held out for me to shake, I can’t make much sense of what is being offered to me in this loud bar with nowhere near enough people to witness whatever is about to happen. The introduction was predictable. The apology was something I expected, too. But somehow it’s too much when they’re tied up in each other, and I stare at Beau’s hand until my hair falls forward again and I get frustrated by one more thing.

And I’m supposed to reciprocate something, but it comes out all wrong.

“What do you think you’re so fucking sorry about?”

His hand drops to his thigh, pressed there because I had waited too long to accept it for what it was—something gentle and kind, probably—and Beau clears his throat because I haven’t accepted anything from there either.

“Darren told me,” he tries again, his voice nowhere near as smooth as his effort would suggest.

“Yeah, I got that much,” I say. “But the apology—you barely knew him, and you definitely don’t know me. It can’t be that hard for you to find a new dance partner.”

“Condolences are a thing.”

“Okay.”

It’s not, of course. It’s not okay to be a dick, except that I think maybe I’ve always sort of been one, and when I was back in New York a few weeks ago, everyone there allowed for it. Clapped me on the shoulder like it was the right way to act. I’m back at Trailhead now, and I need to stop, but I walked through the doors with too many conflicting feelings to know how to keep them from spilling over, and some terrified part of me wants Beau to be strong enough to help me clean up the mess.

I’ve wanted a lot of things over the years.

And I think I’ve cleaned up every mess alone.

Beau looks down at me from where he’s still standing, and I remember that I’ve failed to extend any invitation for him to stay. “Are you mad at me?”

“For?”

“Take your pick,” he says. “Introducing myself now. Never doin’ it before.”

“So, you agree that a hello might’ve been nice.”

“I offered to say hello. He didn’t seem to think it was a good idea.”

“He has a name,” I spit. The present tense is acrid on my tongue, and I sigh. “He had one.”

Beau flinches. “Fine. I offered to say hello. Levi didn’t seem to think it was a good idea. Something about you bein’ afraid I might want to dance with you.”

“You don’t?”

“Want to dance with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t want to dance with anyone who doesn’t want to dance with me,” Beau says. “Why? Was he right—was Levi right? Were you afraid I’d ask?”

I breathe through any of the ways I might have responded if I weren’t afraid of a dozen other things, at least a few of them threatening to tie me into careful knots. This conversation bothers me and I wonder how angry I get to be about it, back to the questions of who I might hate and why, or maybe whether Beau can learn to hate someone, too. Then I use my teeth to scrape the word hate from my tongue and uncover whatever else lies beneath it—the guilt and frustration and grief among a dozen other things—only to rid myself of that taste, too. I don’t want to be here, and I haven’t figured out where else to go, but maybe that’s true of both of us, so I do the best I can to seem anything but desperate for answers when I take a long sip of whiskey.

“I’m perfectly capable of saying no to you, Beau,” I tell him once the glass is safely out of my hand again. “And I don’t dance.”

He nods. “I think I should leave you alone.”

“Probably for the best.”

He nods again, and while it looks like he wants to offer me his hand one more time, I know I must be imagining it, Beau nowhere near that stupid. It only takes another couple of seconds for him to walk away, and I think maybe it always would’ve been like that eventually, Levi unlikely to have ever left Beau behind. Being here was too good for him, and then somehow good for me too, and we would have been at Trailhead even after the school year started, and after Levi met new people, and after we didn’t need nights like this just to feel some kind of normal again .

I’m pretty sure I can find normal on my own if I look hard enough, but it’s dark in the bar and I don’t bother to try.

With Beau turned away from me now, I want to tell myself there’s no reason to stay, but admitting that much sounds an awful lot like a confession I’m not supposed to make. I keep an eye on the dance floor instead, maybe a bad habit as much as anything else, and I finish my drink slowly enough to think I’ll stop at one. I change my mind a minute later when a second glass lands on the table.

“This one’s on the house,” Darren offers.

“A pity drink?”

“Nah. We’d go broke if we gave out liquor for every sad story,” Darren says. “But you’re on the verge of becoming a regular here, so I thought maybe I could bribe you to stick around.”

I swap one glass for the other and crack a smile before I look past Darren and back again. “I was pretty fucking awful to him. He’d probably rather I not.”

“Oh, please. I was pretty fucking awful to him for a while, and he still tips me too well. You were understandably unpleasant for a few minutes. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“He told you everything I said?”

“He told me plenty,” Darren admits. “He usually does.”

Darren is gone before I have anything smart to say in response, so I do whatever I can to avoid tracking his path back to the bar, unsure I really want to watch that much of Darren and Riley and Beau. Just the fact that I know everyone by name suggests Darren was right about me being a Trailhead regular, but I can’t tell whether that makes me feel better or worse, so much of my relationship with the world shifting over the past month. I want a lot of things in my life to change—I have for years now—but I’m not prepared for anything to change here, at a place I’ve mostly loved through Levi’s eyes.

It might be good to learn how to love it differently, but I’ve spent the past month remembering how comfortable I’ve been with the bad.

And I blame that comfort for why I don’t leave well enough alone.

After nursing my free drink for as long as I reasonably can, I become unreasonable, because what I should do and what I’m about to do are entirely different things. It would be easy—smart, even—to catch Darren’s eye. To wave him over. To pay for the first round and thank him again for the second. To slide off my stool and push through the ridiculous barn doors and gulp at the fresh air and never set foot inside Trailhead again.

Instead, I pick up my mostly empty glass, only the ice left to remind me of what’s gone, and I stride through sawdust with a confidence that hasn’t been mine in a while.

And a bitchiness I’ve never let go.

When I reach the bar, Darren is leaning close enough for Beau to touch, though they’re not, and I have to remind himself that it has nothing to do with me either way. Riley hovers nearby, waiting for the tension to break, though I already know I’m making it worse when I slide next to Beau and ignore him entirely. Our shoulders are pressed together, and maybe either one of us could move away, but I let the contact sear me instead and stop myself from asking Beau where he feels it most.

“Here for round three?” Darren asks.

“No, thanks. Just closing out my tab before I head home,” I say, handing him the glass and correcting what wants to be a frown. “And I want to thank you and Riley for everything, but I—I’m not so sure the whole ‘becoming a regular’ thing is going to work out for me.”

“You know I wasn’t forcing you to make a formal commitment to us, right?” Darren grins. “I’ve kinda been there, done that, and I don’t think those vows ended well for anyone.”

It’s an easy opportunity to acknowledge Beau—to even thank him, too—and maybe that’s why Darren glances in that direction now, even if I won’t take any of what’s right there. I could explain myself, but it’s not a habit of mine and I have no plan to make it one tonight. Trailhead was never supposed to be mine.

“I was only ever here to watch someone else dance. I’m not sure why I came back when there’s nothing left to see.”

Beau tenses against me, but I’m gone before I can worry about it, desperate to be outside for the warm night air I’d denied myself a few minutes ago. I think Darren might’ve shouted one more goodbye, the sound of it lost to a too-loud twang from overhead, and I forget about it as soon as the sudden silence of the parking lot hits harder than it probably should. Apart from a few dishonest moments in New York, I haven’t smoked in years, but I want a cigarette now, and by the time I step off the curb and onto the asphalt, I’m barely talking myself out of stopping for a pack .

But I get no further than that.

“Why’d you lie back there?”

I freeze where I am, better instincts failing me at the sound of the voice a few feet back. I keep myself from turning around, at least for the first several seconds, and I take a deep breath while I count the handful of cars in front of me.

“What do you mean?”

“You told Darren you don’t know why you came back,” Beau says. “I’m callin’ bullshit.”

“Well, well, well,” I sneer, finally pivoting more dramatically than necessary. “He’s not just a pretty face, boys and girls. Everybody’s favorite cowboy reads minds, too.”

“If I could read your mind, I wouldn’t be asking you why you lied.”

I take a step toward him, mostly because it allows me to climb back up the curb and pull myself closer to his height, even if I’ll remain at a disadvantage everywhere else. Another step is unnecessary, but I take that too, and I’m not sure where I’m supposed to focus any of my anger when Beau’s eyes have yet to still, pools of deep, dark brown swallowing me whole. I despise the dim parking lot lights for letting me notice that much, and then I damn them again for flickering enough that I lose Beau for split seconds I can’t get back. I think maybe if I could just stop blinking, it wouldn’t matter anymore.

“I already told you, you didn’t really know Levi, and you don’t know me, so why do you care?”

There’s an admission of guilt for anyone reading between the lines, but Beau lets it go. “Because if I can help fix it for you, I will. If I need to leave, I will.”

“You think this is all about you?”

“I’m the only one you tried to ignore all night.”

I shake my head. “And yet here we are, having our second scintillating conversation of the evening.”

“Did you start to get a little too numb at home? Did you need to feel something again, even if you already knew it would hurt? Is that why you came back?”

“I’m not numb.”

“Just hangin’ out with your Jack and ginger and a bunch of shit kickers was probably enough, huh?” When I flinch, Beau smirks. “Relax, just because I know your drink order doesn’t mean I know you . The rest of it, though—I don’t know. I’d assume that sitting in the same place and listening to the same music was all it took to remind yourself that this is real. That there’s no nightmare to wake up from. I guess telling Darren had to sting a little, but it’s not the first time you’ve had to do it, and sometimes sharp feels better than dull anyway. But then I showed up and made you bleed in all the wrong ways.”

He’s mostly wrong about that—I think I’ve bled rather perfectly tonight, and if it weren’t for my inability to know how to stanch it, I’m pretty sure I’d still be inside—but the details are dangerous, and I dodge them now.

“My wounds aren’t your problem.”

“How long did you stare at the dance floor before you remembered that Levi’s not gonna dance there anymore? ”

I shove him hard for that, my palms flattened against his chest until he hits the brick exterior of the building behind him. “Take his name out of your fucking mouth.”

“You sure?” Beau asks, pausing to drag his tongue over his lips. “Earlier you wanted it in my mouth.”

There’s so little room to move, but I growl and do my best to push him again, stopping only when the bar door opens and a couple walks out, a curious glance aimed our way before the two men move on. Then Beau looks up, and I follow his gaze to a small camera positioned on the far corner of the overhang to cover any trouble caused by someone coming or going, and while that’s probably exactly what this is, I close my eyes when his hand wraps around my wrist.

“What are you—”

“We’re not doin’ this here,” he says.

His grip is too steady for anything I’m feeling, and Beau uses it to tug me away from where we’ve been standing, leading us around the side of the building and into the dark. I hate that my first reaction is some kind of grief over my inability to see, and I squeeze my eyes shut like it might help. Just as I open them again, he backs me into the wall, far too gentle about it, but I speak first, my reins tight on my fury because it’s all I’ve got left.

“Pinning me against a wall so you can talk about my dead boyfriend some more?”

“Everything I’ve said tonight has been about you.”

“So I should be thanking you?” I scoff.

“Not even close. ”

My hair has fallen over my forehead again, and I almost want to tear his baseball cap from his head in response, my own messiness seeking anything that might balance it out. I force a hand between us instead, and brush the hair back until it might stay, Beau tracking every second too closely, and his stare dropping to my mouth just as I speak.

“I think I hate you.”

Beau’s breath catches at that, and I hate myself too, and then Levi, and maybe that’s how it was always going to be.

Then he nods. “You can hate me if it helps.”

I try to shove him again, but Beau’s ready this time, my hands left to curl into furious fists against him. “Why are we here?”

“Because we don’t need an audience.”

“For?”

“Whatever you need,” Beau says. “Maybe you had a hundred reasons for comin’ back here tonight, but I’m not sure it’s made anything better for you. You’re leaving with the same restless energy you probably arrived with, and it’s not gonna get washed away with a thousand whiskeys, except for the time it’ll take you to drink ‘em. And time helps—it does. But while you wait around for that, everything you’re feeling is just gonna keep tearing you up unless you let some of it out. And being a dick is a nice start, but you’re still gonna go home unable to sit still. So, whatever else you need tonight, use me for it.”

“Use you?”

Beau’s entire body presses me into the brick, the unforgiving scrape of it against my back exactly the kind of thing he’s already clocked as a want and a need. Then he leans in to whisper in my ear, probably because he’s clocked that want and need, too. Either way, I haven’t decided how it makes me feel to realize he might want and need me , his voice dripping with something not kind enough to be cruel.

“Fight me like you’ve wanted to since the night Levi first asked me to dance or fuck me like you wish you were still fucking him.”

I almost laugh because anything else might be worse. “Fight you or fuck you?”

“They’re the most obvious options outside a place like this,” Beau says, and with his beard still at my jaw, the way I shiver is impossible to hide. Or maybe he’s the one shivering. “But if you’ve got other ideas, let’s hear ‘em.”

I want to ask him why he’s so sure either is an option when I’m still neck-deep in mourning and everyone else has mostly left me to it, but I’m afraid Beau would tell me, and my traitorous cock is eager to listen. My last argument is half-hearted at best—a way for him to stop what I can’t.

“You wouldn’t let me.”

Beau finally pulls back, and maybe there should be some kind of smile from him, but the moment isn’t quite generous enough. “You can throw the first punch, or you can reach into my back right pocket for my wallet.”

I roll my eyes. “That prepared, huh? Guess you’re a whole goddamn boy scout.”

“Or the furthest thing from it.”

And suddenly it’s just that easy, because if Beau is admitting that he does this all the time, then I mean nothing to him, and he doesn’t have to mean anything to me, and the worst of the rage I’d brought into Trailhead doesn’t have to go home with me, too. I’ve never once fucked someone like this—pissed off and confused and eager to forget and desperate to remember—because it’s been Levi for so long and only a bunch of misplaced lust in the years before he and I had met.

I’ve never fucked a stranger I want to get to know.

I’ve never fucked a stranger while lying to him about exactly that.

Before I can dwell on it, I summon the strength to push him backward one more time, just far enough to grab on to him in the next heartbeat and turn us around. Once we’ve switched places. I spin Beau too gracefully, a dance move that must’ve belonged to him, and make him face that harsh brick wall while my trembling fingers pull his wallet free. The condom and lube are right there, and I hold both with my teeth when I return the wallet and reach around for his belt and button and zipper. There’s been no foreplay, but Beau is half hard already, and that knowledge has me rocking forward to relieve the ache I’ve failed to wish away, my own cock straining against my boxers and weeping for more.

It would be possible for me to come like this, just grinding against him without a grip on reality or myself, and it’s a pathetic thing to admit to the moonlight watching us from afar. I slow my body and focus on Beau’s again, careful not to lose the wallet when I work his boxer briefs and jeans down to mid-thigh. Then I touch him there, his bare skin warm beneath my fingers when I take my time with something that should be rushed, and he lets me have it because he’s given me permission to leave some of my anger everywhere. Eventually though, he widens his stance and braces himself on the brick, and I finally unfasten my own jeans and hurry to shove them out of the way before I can get lost in the rise and fall of Beau’s broad shoulders, pulling the condom packet from my mouth a second later. I haven’t worn one in years, and it’s strange that it’s the thing that almost makes me walk away, this sense of tumbling backward to a beginning I’d never considered before.

Starting over too close to the end.

But then I’m sliding it on and tearing at the lube too, and I pour some onto my fingers before I’m pushing into Beau to open him up. He’s tight, and nothing about that is unexpected, but I’m trying so hard not to think about the last time I touched someone like this, nor about how fucking good it will feel to sink deep inside him. Forgetting to mourn means I’m back to my wants and needs again, and I haven’t decided where the exact overlap lies, but I don’t want to acknowledge either of them when one finger becomes two and then Beau breathes some kind of plea.

He’s going to get so much of what he’s asking of me, but I don’t give him anything more yet, the intimacy of restraint mine to have and to hold. I stretch him slowly, ignoring the time working against me, and I find myself wishing I had my camera, just to help me remember one minute among a million I keep trying to forget. When Beau doesn’t stop clenching around me, I respond by leaving him empty long enough to add the rest of the lube to my hand and toss the packet aside. A string of obscenities leaves his mouth and I can’t care, stroking my cock as lazily as possible before I engage in this act of love and war, everything about it sure to be over before either of us can be declared a winner. Then I guide myself forward, filling him with one demanding roll of my hips.

If Beau minds my lack of grace, he doesn’t say, only arching a little more for me and changing the angle until my dick is deep enough to make both of us gasp. I hold myself there for a moment, the last careful one we’ll share for a while, and I wipe my fingers on Beau’s flannel and grab his waist and withdraw almost completely before I thrust again.

“Christ,” I hiss.

It’s an invocation, too reverent for what’s happening, but I can’t manage to apologize for it now, Beau even tighter around me when he takes my cock that second time and barely lets me go. I’m overwhelmed by the desire to kiss him, and I don’t want to be, and all I can do is start to fuck him a little harder for it, chasing a high neither one of us deserves while I grow frustrated at the thought. I’m too close to losing myself to a single night with this man, and it’s all so slick and hot and perfect when I’m inside him that I should be grateful for any sensation the condom has dulled. For a few seconds, I’m grateful for the noise too, the clatter of his belt buckle as notable as the slap of skin on skin, while the hum of country music spills toward us from the beer garden. It’s not long before we’ve raced past the rhythm of it, though, and it becomes easy to ignore, especially when Beau begins to meet me halfway.

If tuning out Trailhead means we get caught against its brick wall, maybe I’ll have a better reason to stay away for good.

And if one of those thoughts turns my stomach, I’m too far gone to worry about which it is.

My grip on Beau is probably fine at his waist, but after another dozen blissfully filthy thrusts, I’m stupid about it anyway, shifting to wrap my arms around his entire body for the leverage it gives me. I miss the fists I’d made before, but now I can get caught up in his t-shirt and hold him close enough to press my nose into his flannel, something soothing there slowing me down when my hips rock forward again. Beau slows too, giving me the time I need to settle into an excruciating back and forth, warm and panting and fitting together with someone in a way that hurts.

In a way that makes me want to hurt.

“I’m not him. I never will be.”

The low rumble of Beau’s voice startles me and has me biting into his shoulder just to keep from whimpering. I’m a widower, more or less, and my cock is buried in this beautiful stranger because burying the man I love wasn’t enough. None of it’s enough, actually.

I want to hurt Beau, too.

We’re both sticky with sweat, but my fingers claw at him now, something notably weightless doing its best to distract me while I fuck him relentlessly, and Beau takes it because he promised to. He talks me through it, in fact, hushed when he begs me for things he’s had since the moment I followed him into the dark, and I almost ask him if he’s grieving Levi before I turn my head and spit the question onto the dirty ground. I want him to mourn me when he wakes up tomorrow, and I don’t want to remember a goddamn thing about how my cock throbs for him now.

Focusing on Beau’s body again, I watch his hands move against the brick, the veins in them stunning when the night allows me a glimpse, and his strength obvious even when it meets something unyielding. I stop myself from thinking about how easily they could bend me to their will, especially when I’m the one fucking him into the wall, but something makes me groan about it all the same. We still need to be quiet out here, and I’m not sure we’re succeeding, but I don’t think it will matter much longer when Beau drops one hand to his cock and I don’t have the words to stop him. Actually, there’s a lot I would say if I could— fucking you feels so good; I want to hear you come for me; I wish it didn’t have to be like this —but I press a scream into his back instead, my teeth and tongue left with nowhere to go.

Then Beau’s body clenches around me, and he damn near shudders in my arms, and I want things I can’t have, and I miss Levi terribly. The music gets louder, and I think my heart might leave my chest just to chase the sound, but then I slam into Beau until I start to come too and I can’t hear a fucking thing.

I pull out after that. A shiver rattles me from head to toe as every damp spot turns cold. My hand shakes when I reach for the condom.

“Beau—”

“Tie it off and give it to me. I’ll throw it away back there,” he says, pressing his shoulder against the brick and jerking his head toward the beer garden. “I know you’re goin’ the other way.”

I blink, suddenly aware that he’s already put himself back together, a crumpled napkin in his hand that might be more of his boy scout preparedness or just a touch of good luck. With another blink, I try to remember what I’d been about to say, but then I do as I’ve been told and try to ignore how loudly the rest of Beau’s comment echoes in my head.

Of course this is it. Of course he has somewhere else to be. Of course I won’t be escorted to my car for some kind of goodnight kiss.

We haven’t kissed at all.

I lick my lips and pretend I can still taste Levi there.

Then I refasten my jeans and tug my shirt downward and nod as I slowly back away, stepping toward the same parking lot I’d tried to escape to once before.

“Beau?” I try again. “How long do I have to wait before the pain goes away?”

We’re already so far apart, but I watch Beau try and fail to hide a dozen things, and I wish I could stay long enough to learn about every one. I can’t though, and he knows it too, only shaking his head before he offers a sad smile.

“If I ever find out, I’ll let you know.”