13. Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Oak
A fter the meeting, I went to continue my normal workday. I wasn’t sure how to feel. For one, I was incredibly fucking happy to know that the cabin was mine to keep unless I wanted to move out. That was one thing off my mind for sure.
The thing that I wasn’t so sure how I felt about was Law. The way he’d come to stand next to me and then made sure I was fine even though I didn’t want him to? That was kind of hot. Also, a bit of dad behavior. He was trying to take care of me, and I didn’t know how to make my brain understand that it was fine for a crush to do that without it meaning anything more than friendship. Just because I was crushing on him meant nothing.
As I changed the sheets in one of the rooms, I thought back of my limited experience with anything like relationships or even sex. I hadn’t had a boyfriend. I’d had a couple of friends with benefits type deals at college, but they hadn’t gone anywhere mostly because neither of us had wanted that.
My normal was a quick mutual jerking off or blow job in someone’s bedroom or bathroom at a party. Those encounters started quickly and ended by the time both of us had come. There was no taking care of the other guy. Only getting off as fast as possible and that was it.
Even the first guy I’d had a crush on and then ended up having sex with—big mistake on my part for various reasons—hadn’t felt like anything else than perfunctory-getting-off-partner. Not that I got off. Or that he cared. Yeah, those were a couple of the mistakes there.
This crush on Law? I already felt more cared for by him than I ever had with anyone I’d actually been intimate with. And that fucked with my head.
It made me think there was something there, for one. It made me feel more, because even though I found myself wanting him every time I saw him, none of this would go anywhere and I needed to try and stop these fucking thoughts.
I hummed along with one of my dirty country songs, when there was a knock on the open doorway.
Startled, I put my hand on my chest and glared at Law. “What the hell, man?” My heart was trying to escape through my sternum.
I paused the music and gave him an expectant look.
“I just wanted to let you know that I went to the kids’ school earlier,” he said, looking a bit awkward for whatever reason.
We’d all known that was where he’d been, so I just kept frowning at him questioningly.
“Right, so I don’t think it’s going to be an issue, but just in case, I put you on their pickup list.”
Well, if anything ever would pour a bucket of cold water over my dreams of Law, it was this. I was clearly a potential childminder. An almost-live in nanny. Nothing more.
I jerked into action, nodding. “Okay.”
“Like I said, I don’t think it’ll come up, but just in case.” He smiled. “I don’t have that many people who I trust them with.”
It didn't feel completely shitty to be trusted like that, so I smiled back even if I was experiencing why a crush is called a crush. “Okay,” I repeated.
“Okay,” he parroted, then rapped the doorframe with his knuckles twice, before vanishing from sight.
Sighing, I went back to work. At least I knew where I stood with him now.
Because I now knew that I would be staying at the cabin for a while, I decided to decorate a bit more.
I started with getting new curtains, including a shower one, because why not. I got pillows for the couch and a few plush rugs for the floor. Then I decided to get a couple of plants and ended up with two different colored Pothos, because I could put one in the bathroom and the other would sit on a little shelf Uncle Teague made for high up on the wall, so that once the vine started to grow, it wouldn’t be in the reach of certain black cat I expected to cat sit whenever needed.
Seeing my boxes of stuff that needed storage, Uncle Teague suggested that we’d lift my bed a little bit with risers, so that I could put the stuff underneath. He made me custom risers, too, and then put them in. That led me into buying a skirt for the bed so I could hide the new storage area, but all in all, it all ended up looking even cozier somehow.
As I was putting the boxes under the bed, I opened the one that had my favorite things. Including my fairy doors.
I still felt the same about them as I felt about thinking about having sex with a guy. I knew both were beautiful things that gave me joy and satisfaction—in different ways, I wasn’t that kinky, thank you very much—but that my parents would never approve of, because they marked me as exactly what I was, a gay man.
Of course I knew, logically, that plenty of straight men liked pretty, whimsical things, too. Hell, some of them even liked to have sex with men. It was just hard to get my parents’ teachings out of my head sometimes. A lot of times. Ugh.
I certainly wasn’t having one of those things anytime soon, but at least I could take one of the fairy doors and put it near the corner by the bathroom doorway. I could see it from the couch, then.
In my dorm room, I’d had them all over the place because my roommate had found them funny and he was a chill kind of dude anyway. A bit geeky and a lot friendly but not in an overbearing way. One time, I found a new fairy door in a secondhand store and put it on one of his shelves by his desk. The sound of pure delight he made when he saw it had given me hope in humanity.
So yes. I might’ve taken another one and taken it outside to the porch. I set it so that it looked as if there was a door into the cabin there and knew the kids would find it great if they ever noticed it.
As I turned to look toward the pond behind the cabin, I tilted my head. Huh.
I dug out my phone and called Uncle Teague.
After enough rings to let me know that I’d caught him at work, he answered, “Oak?”
“Everything is fine. I just had an idea.”
“Tell me more.”
The next day, while the kids were at school, Uncle Teague, Law, and I shoveled a path to the pond. Then we cleared the snow off the surface, and deemed the ice pretty damn smooth.
“You know, this might actually work,” Uncle Teague panted, tossing one last shovelful of snow out of our makeshift rink.
“I think so. I’m pretty sure it won’t be expensive to get secondhand skates,” I mused, jumping up and down a few times.
Law looked worried but tried not to show it. “Are you sure the ice is thick enough?”
Uncle Teague jumped a few times, then shrugged. “Feels like it. I can ask my dad if he has his old ice fishing gear somewhere. He should have an ice drill if you really want to know. The pond isn’t that deep though, so it should be pretty solid. It’s not a lake or anything.”
“I don’t know how these things work, but making a hole in it just to check feels weird,” Law admitted, grimacing a little.
“Aww, desert boy,” I teased, grinning. “Don’t you worry. If you give me shoe sizes, I’ll get all your kids cheap skates. I think I can get them sharpened somewhere for sure.”
“Sharpened? Isn’t that dangerous?”
Uncle Teague smiled. “No. It’s much more dangerous to try to skate with dull blades. Sharp ones glide better.”
“Can you get helmets, too? Do they need other gear?” Law asked, still looking troubled.
“Look, we don’t need to do this at all. None of us need to get skates,” I said gently. “But I promise it’s not dangerous.”
Law took in a deep breath, then nodded as he came to a conclusion. “Okay. But helmets are a must.”
“I would’ve gotten them those anyway.”
And that’s how my grandparents helped fund the endeavor enough for me to be able to get the kids skates, helmets, and knee pads. Just in case. They were all secondhand, and it took me a few days to find everything, but when I finally had it all and tried out the ice, I realized how much I’d missed skating.
I hadn't done it a lot, and I’d always had hockey skates—because boys weren’t allowed figure skates in our family—but that was fine. Here, I could glide on the ice as much as I wanted and even the fact that I was still in hockey skates now didn’t bother me.
The pond was the size of maybe half of a hockey rink, so it wasn’t big enough to get real speed going, but I circled it leisurely, until I heard an excited squeal from one of the kids.
Soon, they ran on the path we’d made down to the pond, looking impressed and excited and—in Marlie’s case—a bit scared.
“You’re skating!” Tristan yelled as he slid onto the ice in his shoes. “That’s so cool!”
I waited until they were all standing on the ice, then circled them, sped to the other end and back, stopping abruptly right in front of them. I didn’t do the spraying the ice trick, because Marlie was already worried and I didn’t want to startle her.
“It is kind of cool,” I admitted, grinning. “Would you guys like to try it, too?”
Marlie shook her head immediately. Harper looked thoughtful. Tristan on the other hand?
“Can we?” he turned to look at their dad. “For real life?”
“Uncle Teague knows how to skate too, and he and Uncle Charlie should be here in a bit. Oak thought it might be fun for you. If any of you want to try, Grams and Gramps helped out with getting you guys gear that Oak found. There’s skates, helmets, and knee pads on his porch over there.” He pointed to my cabin.
“I really wanna try!” Tristan practically screamed, at which Law told him to calm down.
“I think I want to try? If someone helps me?” Harper asked timidly, but I could tell she was into the idea.
“Uncle Teague and I will be there every step of the way, I promise. Now, I can’t promise that you won’t fall, so you’ll likely have a sore butt tonight, but once you get the hang of it, it’ll be pretty easy.”
Marlie went to Law and took his hand. She was clearly not going to even try, at least not yet. That didn’t surprise me at all.
Uncle Teague and Charlie arrived with the dogs in tow just as I was putting my blade guards on to walk to the cabin with Harper and Tris.
“Who’s ready to skate?” Uncle Teague asked, sounding as excited as Tristan. He also had a pair of skates hanging around his neck so that was kind of funny.
He and Tristan started to the cabin, while Charlie chuckled at their enthusiasm.
“You regretting hitching your wagon to a former jock yet?” I asked him.
Charlie, who was for some reason lugging a traffic cone with him, shook his head. “Nah. Let them have fun. It’s good for Teague to get to do this.”
He squeezed Harper when she went to hug him. “What’s what for?” She pointed at the cone.
“Oh, this is apparently a good support for skating, go figure. Gramps had one in the garage and we picked it up.”
We left the cone, Law, and Marlie at the pond, and went to sort out the gear. It was funny how easy I found walking with my skates on, when I hadn’t done it in a few years. Some things were muscle memory, I supposed.
It took us twenty minutes to get the kids’ skates and gear sorted, and then Charlie carried Tristan while Uncle Teague and I held onto Harper’s hands as she walked down to the ice. I stayed with Harper and let Uncle Teague handle Tristan. Charlie helped, too, and the dogs stayed with Marlie when we told them not to come on the ice.
Charlie couldn’t skate, but he was good at emotional support and had those spike things you put around your shoes so he didn’t slip around too much.
“Yeah, just like that!” he encouraged Harper, who beamed as she managed to glide five feet from Charlie to me after only ten minutes of trying.
Of course, she promptly fell onto her butt when she fist pumped, and we all laughed, even her and Marlie who had looked worried for a moment.
Tristan kept falling but got up every time. At first with the help of Uncle Teague and then by himself by using the cone.
After a while, Marlie got tired of cheerleading, so she and the dogs went exploring around the cabins. Law kept an eye on her as much as he could while also looking after the other two. It was kind of cute. He knew everyone was perfectly safe, but I guess you couldn’t turn parenthood off like that.
When Charlie was walking around the pond with Harper holding onto his arm, I skated to Law.
“Good idea?” I asked him, smiling slightly.
He grinned. “Definitely. Thank you for doing this, Oak. It means a lot for you to include them like this.”
I blushed lightly, but I hoped it didn’t show with how I likely already had red cheeks from being outdoors for so long. “People need new experiences, especially kids.”
I watched how Uncle Teague and Tristan did some stops from a short glide. Half of the time, Tristan tripped and fell into the snow lining the cleared area and they both laughed like lunatics.
Harper was explaining something to Charlie, gesturing with her free hand as she held onto his arm with the other. She didn’t even realize that she was skating, and I wondered if she’d stay upright when she figured out she was doing it.
When I turned to look at Law, I found him staring at me.
“What?” I blurted out.
Suddenly there was this charge between us. For a few seconds, my brain suggested he was about to kiss me. Then Tristan let out a loud whoop, and the moment was broken.
I looked back at the ice and ignored my galloping heart. It hadn’t been a moment. He was just happy that I’d included his kids and that was all. Besides, I knew Law well enough by now that he wouldn’t have kissed me there even if he’d wanted to, which he definitely didn’t.
I took a step forward, then rapidly a few more to pick up some speed, and called out to the kids, “Watch out!”
Theatrically, I sped up as much as I could, and then took a leaping dive into the snow at the other end of our little rink.
Snow rushed inside my collar as I sank, and I felt like I deserved that.
As I rolled over, I saw Charlie and Harper peering into my Oak-shaped hole in the snow.
“We’re not going to help you up,” Harper stated, grinning at me. “You did that on purpose.”
Yeah, yeah, I could get myself back up after a fall. Or a swan dive, as it may have been. There was some kind of metaphor for my life there somewhere, but I ignored it on purpose as I rolled dramatically until I was back on the ice.
I was having fun. I’d initiated this whole thing and brought joy to the kids and adults alike. I had a rink where I could skate whenever I wanted until the weather got too warm.
I could have a crush on the unattainable man and see things that weren’t actually there, and I could ignore those as much as I did the metaphor. I felt happy, finally, or at least as close to it as I’d ever been. I felt me in a way I hadn’t been before. That had to count for something.
“Wanna race?” Uncle Teague asked me.
“Teague…,” Charlie said with a groan.
I smirked. “You’re on.”