33. Star of the Week
STAR OF THE WEEK
Connor loved going home, loved how the drive alternated between tunnels of shadowy firs and cedars and incredibly sun-washed river valleys.
The wheels always hummed with promises of abundance, and he always knew there would be Mom and Dad and Jess at the end of the road.
Hugs. Pie. Horses. Roast chicken. He loved all of that, loved it whole-heartedly, but this year his tires seemed to make a thudding sound.
He’d checked the pressure an hour ago, nothing wrong with them.
It was him that was different.
He missed Jonathan already. Would a guy from Los Angeles via New York City see the forest and rivers the way he did?
Too bad there was only a two-story ranch house at the other end of the drive, not a windswept, cliff-top gated mansion.
If he ever wanted to share this drive with Jonathan, first he’d have to tell his parents.
He should have done that years ago, shouldn’t have let his life bifurcate until the point where talking about who he really was felt like staring at the opposite bank of a river with a washed-out bridge in front of him.
He didn’t think he needed to worry. He was pretty sure they’d be fine, probably awkward, but they’d still love him.
Very sure. Still, he’d read enough scenes of hockey players coming out to their teammates to suspect that even if his family easily accepted his announcement, they might be hurt he hadn’t told them before.
As soon as Highway 126 started to climb heading east through the Willamette National Forest, Ribby knew they were going to the most beautiful place on earth, the John Day Valley, and his tail went into hyperloop, if that was a thing.
Connor wasn’t sure. He rolled down the window enough for Ribby to get all the smells, but not enough for him to risk getting ejected.
Prineville, the last place of any size, was where he always stopped for gas and to text his mother, asking again if she wanted anything from one of the big stores. He’d see her in two hours, give or take.
Might as well get coffee and a nice fluffy donut, then text Jonathan while he waited for Mom’s answer.
Connor
Last night I dreamt I went to Prineville again.
Jonathan
Has all that nature tried to kill you?
He pulled the copy of Rebecca that Jonathan had lent him out of his backpack and flipped pages, looking for a quote that he could append to a photo.
Connor
A cloud, hitherto unseen, but not trying to kill me
He added a shot of the bright blue sky overhead and a solitary cumulus cloud, puffy and beckoning.
Would a second donut be too much?
Ohh, he could get a box with a dozen and take them to the ranch.
Jonathan
Yet
Let me know when you get there so I don’t think about creepy trees.
Connor
The Ochoco Highway has some pints wrapped in ivy.
Pines
Jonathan
Should I be worried
He could have bantered with his boyfriend until mosquitoes marked the dusk, but he had to keep driving, and Jonathan had to work, so they said their until-laters.
And then he went all the way home.
After arrival hugs and a half-day of riding Cashew, after leaning against his bay gelding’s side for as long as he could, then demolishing his mother’s welcome home dinner and washing dishes alongside his sister, after all of that, which was basically like being wrapped in a security blanket, he curled up in his old double bed.
His Eugene life felt far away until he scrolled through his texts with Jonathan and saw the comforting evidence of a relationship written in phrases like “I will never say that,” or “What about no, no that,” and even his favorite “My human is a Real Blond Idiot,” and the gift that was “I miss you, too” in the days before they’d introduced Ribby and Pawsley.
Connor’s life was more than okay, better than comfortable. He had everything he could want.
Except.
Except his parents didn’t know yet. His Mom didn’t know.
This fucking adulting.
In the barn just after six, working through morning cleanup, Connor could feel the buzz of two cups of his Mom’s ranch coffee when his phone vibrated.
Had to be spam or an automatic reminder, or maybe Hank about to start a workout, because no way was it Jonathan at six in the bird-chirping morning, but he checked that Jess was two stalls down before he pulled out his phone.
Jonathan
Hello Cowboy
Connor
Good morning!!! Why you up so early?
Jonathan
Can’t I be an early bird? You can be my worm
No way he’d reply to that, it was beneath Jonathan, clearly caused by the unusual time of day. But maybe he’d type in the phrase no reply to be sure Jonathan knew.
A picture dropped into their chat and Connor’s edges went fuzzy, although his vision and certain other parts got a lot sharper.
In the photo, Jonathan wore the same wide-legged white pants he’d worn the night they’d met, unbuttoned so they hung lower on his waist to show what looked like an impossibly smooth expanse of skin below his navel filling in the vee where the pants gaped.
This time instead of a shirt, his chest was bare except for a red bandana tied at his neck and a red, white, and blue sash draped so that it went from one shoulder to the opposite hip.
His nipples were flat, dark circles and Connor’s mouth watered with the desire to lick those nubs and stroke the skin over his ribs, down to his waist.
Jonathan’s right arm was raised over his head, and Connor needed to suck a mark right there on his sweet exposed triceps, right now, and make sure that everyone who looked at his man’s delicious arms understood they could look, but they were not going to be graced with touching, not as long as Jonathan wanted Connor.
Connor
When did you
What is this
I need to see
Jonathan
Ta-da, off to do things before work. Must exercise and do lots of things! Later
Connor
Where do you have my boyfriend
What is the ransom
And then Jonathan added a photo of Pawsley in a tiny toy cowboy hat, snapped in the moment when the kitten was starting to raise a paw to bat it off his head, but it looked like he was waving.
“You’re spending a lot of time texting, not just scrolling, if I can be so bold as to comment.” His sister was hanging over the stall door, staring hard at the phone in his hand, as if she wanted to take it away.
Connor shoved it in his back pocket and picked up his pitchfork. Each of their four horses donated about forty pounds of manure a day, so there was a lot of forking and shoveling. “What?”
“Just noticing you’re on your phone more than usual.”
“I have friends. Not a crime.” He continued removing last night’s waste from Cashew’s stall and didn’t let himself think about whether people around here, people he’d known all his life, thought the type of friend he was texting, a boyfriend, was or should be a crime.
Jess wouldn’t think that. He knew her. He should tell her first, before Mom.
“Friends plural, or friend, singular, like a special friend?”
“Like a not-your-business friend.” He heard the grumpiness in his voice and tossed more manure. He wanted to look at his phone. Jess needed to fuck off.
“My big bother likes someone!”
This morning the familiar nickname irritated him, and he kept silent as he pitched another load into the wheelbarrow.
“Come on, tell me!” Jessica continued.
“No. It doesn’t matter.” That felt like lying. Everything he said to his family felt like lying.
“I think it does.” She took a deep breath and closed the distance between them until she could put her hand on his shoulder, which was weird enough anytime, but at six a.m. in the barn? Really fucking weird. “I think maybe we both like the same type of people, big bother.”
Connor retreated two steps but knew he shouldn’t ignore Jess. She hated that as much as Jonathan did and never quit if she was being ignored. But he didn’t have a joke to make, and he really couldn’t say she was wrong either, because—lying.
“Hey.”
He lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow and pushed it away, heading for the doors, even though he hadn’t finished the last stall.
She kept talking and walking, walking without stopping the talking. “I didn’t mention it, but I was looking you up the other day, wanted to see your school mug shot or something, and it turns out your softball team had some pretty good press when they won the Eugene championship.”
He knew exactly the article she’d seen, the one where Trixie said they were queer power and they weren’t going back.
The photo had been taken in that golden moment after their victory but before Jonathan had overheard the conversation that almost broke them.
That night had sucked, and here it was, coming around again to gut punch his life plans.
Acid churned in his stomach. He should have grabbed a couple slices of sourdough before coming to turn out the horses and start the chores.
He put one foot in front of the other and headed out of the barn to dump the manure.
“Looked like a great bunch of people. Fun,” Jess said from behind him. Still following him and still talking.
“Just people.” He’d concealed the team and the championship from his family precisely so that no one would look them up. His friends, his entire summer, was another thing he’d been lying about. He was a man made of lies, wrapped in lies, because even lies of omission were still lies.
The ramp to the manure dumpster was only about thirty feet past the back door of the barn.
When the wheeled trailer filled, every three or four days, they pulled it out to the big compost pile farther from the buildings and paddock.
Horse shit composted well. His mother’s chickens loved the fly grubs, her huge garden loved the compost, and they spread it in the fields, too. Win-win.
“I get that, I do. People. And love is love, you know.”
She didn’t need to keep following him, but in the twenty-four years since she’d learned to walk, he’d never managed to get her to stop.
He tipped his load into the trailer parked below the ramp. “Say whatever you’re trying to say.”