Garrison
Idon’t know how bad Jameson’s visit with his dad went today, but I know I’m going to be able to cheer him up. So, when I bounce through the door of the shitty motel we’re staying in, I don’t waste any time.
“I have good news.”
“You do?” Jameson is sitting on the bed, flipping through channels.
“Yeah.” I don’t ask him how the talk with his dad went. I will later, but for now I want to reassure him that this is going to be okay. I walk over to the bed and flop down next to him. “I got a job.”
He looks confused. “We already have jobs.” Yeah, we do.
“This is better. Well, I mean it’s pretty much the same. It’s going through our current job, kind of.”
He puts the remote down and turns to look at me. “What are you talking about?”
Yeah, I should probably get to the damn point, but I’m way too excited. “Oakley’s dad knows a guy in Hayes.” Hayes is about two hours away from here and a little bigger than Kensley. And it has its own movie theater. “Anyway, the guy needs help, and we have experience.”
“We have less than a week of experience.”
I kick my shoes off and kick my feet out on the bed, leaning against the headboard. “Eh, we’re fast learners. It’s perfect. He even has a house we can rent out close to work.”
“Uh, Garrison?”
I don’t like the nervous way he sounds and swivel my head to look at him. “What? Isn’t that perfect?”
“It sounds like it.” He’s hesitant though.
“Is this about your dad?” I should have asked him about that first. That was kind of dumb. “How did it go?”
He grips the back of his neck with his hand, and I watch him closely as he looks at me, seeming almost guilty. “It went a lot better than I expected.”
That’s surprising as hell, but why is he frowning? “O-kay?”
“He still wants me to farm with him. Still said I can build a house for me and my”—he takes a deep breath—”maybe husband someday.”
“Husband?” I get stuck on that part.
“Well, he was talking about it for me and my wife.” I wince, but he keeps going, “But I said that’s not what I want, and that I’m dating you.
And I said what about with my future husband.
I was just trying to show him that it might not be a woman I end up with.
I wasn’t trying to agree to his plan . . .”
“But?” I ask because I think I see where this is going now, and I don’t think it’s good.
“He accepted the husband part, Garrison.” His hand drops, and he looks defeated, a look I don’t like on him.
“But the farm part is still on the table.” He nods his head slowly. “Is that what you want?”
His shoulders shrug slightly, and he won’t look at me. I hate it. “I don’t know. I mean . . . Fuck, Garrison. He’s trying. Maybe I should try too.”
Anger soars through me, and maybe it’s not fair, but my tone grows sarcastic. “Oh, that’s just fucking great. He definitely gets a gold star for not forcing you to marry a woman. Maybe. Probably.”
Now he’s pissed, his eyes on me. “I didn’t say that.”
“No?” I stand up and pace the room, so beyond frustrated.
“That’s exactly what you’re saying, though, Jameson.
That he what?” My hands flail, and I can’t seem to get myself under control, it all bubbling up as I face him.
“That he’s putting up with you being bi, so you owe him? You need to do this for him?”
“That’s not what I said.” He climbs off the bed too, his big body stalking over to me, his chest heaving and puffed out.
But so is mine as we stand toe-to-toe. “I just don’t want to run away.
This was always my destiny. What I was supposed to do.
Then you and I start fucking. And now, I’m supposed to throw it all away? ”
“Wow. Tell me how you really feel, Bates.”
“I am, Dixon.”
We stand with our feet touching and our faces so close, I can feel his breath fanning over my face. “So moving away with me and doing something you actually want to do is throwing it all away?”
“To my father, it would be.”
“Right.” I’m seething—so damn angry at him because maybe yeah, I do things impulsively, but he overthinks everything to death, and he’s killing us. “We can’t be us here.”
“Says who?” He asks the question, but I can tell he also knows that. We grew up here, but this will still make us outsiders. Everyone will whisper about us everywhere we go.
“I do. I don’t want to do it here. I want to visit, sure, but I want out. Even if it’s just for a while. I want to move away and figure ourselves out, and I want to do it with you.”
“So that’s it? I choose you or my family? You said you didn’t want to do that to me.”
Damn it. I don’t want to do that to him, and my shoulders slump because that’s the last thing I wanted to do. “No. You don’t have to choose.”
He softens too, his shoulders falling. But he’s not standing up so tall. He’s not ready to fight anymore, but we both look like we lost. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. We were talking, like actually talking, and he went on about the plans to build. And I don’t know, it threw me off.”
I walk away from him and sit on the bed but gesture for him to come to me. I’m relieved when he does, straddling my lap and grasping my hair on both sides with his hands.
“I love you, Dixon.”
“I love you too, Bates.”
I wrap my arms around him and hold him, his forehead resting against mine. “What are we going to do?”
My chest aches with the knowledge that I have no idea. “I really wanted us to move to Hayes. The job pays more than the one here. The house is pretty cool.”
“It sounds nice,” he says, breathing quietly, holding onto my hair as he rests in my lap. “I don’t know if I can do it right now though.”
“Okay. So we stay here.”
“No.”
“What?” I lift my head and look into his eyes.
“You can’t stay here. You got a job and a house. You have your own plan.”
“No plan makes sense without you.” And I mean it. I don’t want to go without him. It doesn’t make sense to me.
“I’ll still be in the plan. We’ll still be together. I just can’t move.”
“So, you’re going to stay here and build a house while I move two hours away? That makes no sense. We won’t make it.” I won’t make it without him.
“We will. We’re stronger than distance.” I think he actually believes that.
“So you build a house here, and I rent one there? So what? If we work out, I move back here and become a farmer?” There’s no way I’m going to farm. I’m not cut out for that, and I’m pretty sure I’ve proved that many, many times.
“No.” He laughs at that. “I don’t know. But no to the farmer thing.”
I shake my head, but he’s still holding onto my hair. “We’ll make it work.”
He nods at that. “Yeah. We’ll make it work,” he repeats.
But I don’t think either of us really believes it.