Hoyt #2
I’d made him uncomfortable clearly. This was why I didn’t do things like this.
Being alone with a man I found attractive.
Playing at being a normal person who knew how to act normally in a social setting.
I’d blockaded myself in so much to ensure no one ever found out I was gay that I’d rotted like a forgotten potato in a root cellar.
He tugged on my left boot. It slid off with ease. They were well-worn boots. Very well-worn. Smiling widely, he dusted his hands off then shot to his feet, which were clad in little black ballet slippers half the size of my boots.
“There, now we can go eat. I whipped up a little box of corn bread to go with the chili. Gee-Gee, that’s my grandmother who passed last year, always made corn bread with chili verde.
Let me give you the tour. It’s a short one.
” He laughed nervously, waving his slim hands about.
“Living room, bedroom one there, bedroom two there, bathroom, kitchen. And the tour is done!”
“It’s a nice little place,” I replied since I had to say something. “You fit in here good.”
“Thanks. It feels quite homey now I’ve added a few things here and there.
I dug out all of Gee-Gee’s favorite santos figurines.
” He motioned to a small cupboard in the corner of the tidy living room with several carved wooden saints.
“She was quite fond of the Virgin of Guadalupe.” We paused so he could lift the carving of the Virgin Mary.
“She made the trek all the way from Mexico City to Guadulupe as a young girl. When I would fret over something, and I do fret a great deal over many things, she would tell me to whisper my worries to the Lady of Guadalupe for she would banish them for me. To this day I tend to tell the lady my woes.”
“Your grandmother was Mexican?” I asked and got a nod.
“Yes, she came to America at sixteen and got married to a handsome American farmer. They had my mother who married my father, a factory worker in Austin, and they had me. They passed when I was four in a car accident.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. I was very young. Gee-Gee raised me. She was a delight. Really, I know most people say their grandmothers are precious but she really was. She always accepted me no matter what. Never blinked an eye when I told her I was gay. Never said a negative word about my college courses. She just loved me wholeheartedly. I miss her terribly.”
He hugged the worn wooden statue to his chest. I felt the need to do something so I placed my hand on his shoulder. Okay so he was gay. And alone. Like me. Talk about peas in a pod. Well, I did have a brother that kept trying to wiggle into my life. Guess I wasn’t as alone as I tended to think.
“She sounds lovely.”
With a quick sniffle he nodded before placing the virgin back among the other carvings.
“She was. Come, let’s dine on her chili verde.
I need to hear about how a lanky drink of water like you found your inner poet.
” My hand fell from his shoulder. He clasped it as if it were the most natural thing to do then, suddenly, dropped it.
“Oh, sorry. I just…that was forward of me. Sometimes I forget that people don’t like to be touched. ”
“No, I like it.”
He gave me a shy smile but fled into the kitchen chattering about the cat and the chicken and a juicy cantaloupe he’d had for lunch as I followed along in his wake, breathing in the smell of his lemony cologne and the eyewatering aroma of hot, hot chili.
Both made my body react in two very different ways.
It was the hottest chili I had ever eaten.
Hand to God it made my eyeballs perspire.
Aubrey, surprising little shit that he was, gobbled it down without breaking a sweat.
He laughed softly as I downed several glasses of milk and half the pan of cornbread to try to put out the fire.
Even though my trips to the bunkhouse in the morning to use the toilet may be horrific, I’d never had a more enjoyable meal.
Aubrey as a delight. He was funny, clever, well-read, and sending out so many mixed signals my libido wasn’t sure if I were dining with a siren or a saint.
One minute he batted lashes, the next he stiffened up like a nun.
I had to wonder if he was feeling the same warring emotions I was.
Being attracted to someone while scared to be attracted to someone.
By the time we were clearing the table the sun had set. The night air was cool still, and he trotted around the cottage closing windows while fretting over the cat and the chicken.
“I wish they would go into the shed to sleep,” he lamented after we made a trek to said shed to see if the twosome were inside.
They were not. “They spent the winter in there as the place was covered with poo from two different species. The fact that they made it through one of our harsh winters…well, I just wish they would let me capture them and take them into the house.”
He washed a bowl then handed it to me to dry. It was very domestic.
“I know you like the rooster, and he’s a fine chicken, but you can’t housetrain a chicken to my knowledge.
What you could do was make a little coop out of that shed or take a corner of it for a coop.
Set up a roost, a nest box, and get him some ladies to hang out with.
Chickens go home to roost like the saying goes.
If you let the hens get used to the coop, and lay eggs in the nest box they should go in every night. What?”
His big dark eyes, even bigger behind his glasses, were locked on me. “How do you know so much about chickens?”
“Oh, well, I was raised on a ranch. When I was a kid Walter had some chickens. Yep, Old Man Barrett always liked chickens, said they poop breakfast.”
His snort of amusement was loud. “That they do!” He ran the washcloth around the inside of another bowl, tiny bubbles floating skyward.
He’d used way too much dish soap but the little bubbles sticking to his chin or hair then popping were cute.
Every damn thing about this man and his bungalow was adorable.
“I’ll have to see if I can get Mr. Yates to convert a corner of the shed into a coop for Roberto.
I hate to separate him from Ruggerio. Should cats sleep with chickens? ”
“Love is love,” I replied while placing one dry bowl inside another.
“That is very true. Maybe once Ruggerio is fixed he’ll want to spend the cold nights inside with me.”
“Probably be hard for a cat to perch on a roost all night,” I commented.
Aubrey gave me a soft hip check. I gave him a tender nudge back. He began scrubbing on the crock pot in earnest then, sending a shower of bubbles into the air. One landed on his cheek, a small rainbow sitting there for the longest moment before it popped.
“Here, let me get that.” I took the corner of my towel to dab at the soapy spot so close to his eye.
He turned his head to me as I did so then caught my eye. I should have been looking at where I was drying his face but I could not gaze from his deep brown eyes. He wet his lips, his gaze turning hot as the chili he’d fed me. Did he want something more?
“You are so handsome,” he whispered leaving the crock pot in the sink to move around to face me fully.
“You’re so pretty,” I replied as I wiped at his cheek with tenderness. “I like you.”
“Like like like or like like buddy like?”
“That was a lot of likes.”
“I know. My mind is mush.”
“Ah. Well. Like like then. I’m…I like men. Only men.”
Sweet Jesus. I’d told him the secret. The.
Secret. And nothing bad happened. No flash of lightning, no tidal waves, no fickle finger of fate flicking me on the forehead.
Nothing. Just a glow in his gaze which set off a fire low in my belly.
I cupped his cheek with my hand, the towel falling to the floor.
A long moment ticked off as we stood at his sink staring at each other.
“This is not…” he said, stopped, bit down on his cheek, and then sighed as if he carried one of the Herefords up at Snow Creek Ranch on his lean back. “I’m the very worst postulant in the world.”
Caught in worry over the fact that he might be a novice priest or something I was bucked off harshly, but oh so very pleasantly, when he threw his arms around my neck then pulled my mouth to his.
The kiss was…hell, I had no words to describe it but it was the most wonderful thing I had ever experienced.
I’d not kissed many men. None in years. Kissing was for lovers not fast fucks in grimy men’s rooms. His tongue found mine, slid over and around it, as he attempted to climb me like a coconut tree.
Fingers sliding up into my hair he knocked my hat off, fisting my hair he hoisted himself from the floor.
Cradling his ass in one hand, which threw him off a little sideways, head swimming in lust, cock hard as a corral post, I kissed him back with close to thirty years of pent-up passion.
“Will you take me to bed and fuck me?” He panted when the kiss broke so we could suck in gasping breaths. “Please?”
Rocked to my core, I spun from the sink, Aubrey hanging off me, and toted him to the bedroom as he made sweet little sounds of joy beside my ear.
“You sure?” I asked at a doorway. Hoped it was to his bedroom and not the bathroom although bending him over the sink then filling him with my cock while we watched in the mirror would be incredibly hot. Holy hell, this evening had taken a turn.
“Yes, yes, yes. So very sure.”
“Then yeah, I’d love to.”
I bumped the door open, saw the bed, and carried my darling bookseller over the threshold.