Chapter 12 #3
The heat was playing tricks on my mind, making it seem as if the flooring of the trailer was swirling and twirling under my feet. Gray shouted from inside the stockroom. Moments later, the double doors slammed open, causing an extremely distracted Becca to squeal like a stuck pig.
“What the heck is the holdup here? The line hasn’t moved in fifteen minutes. Rhonda? What’s going on?”
My vision went black around the edges. My head felt like there was something inside, just beneath my skull, swimming under the surface.
“Oh my gosh.”
When I looked up, Gray was standing in front of me with his mouth hanging open. His shirt was dripping with sweat, and it clung to him perfectly. In my state of heat-stroke-driven madness, I moaned.
Stumbling back, I caught myself on a box and narrowly avoided toppling over in front of him.
I lifted my hand, raising a finger to motion that I needed a second, but when I looked up, I realized I still had a sock covering it.
My stomach churned, and I worried that if I laughed at the absurdity of it all, I might regurgitate the Jimmy Dean egg scrambler I’d had for breakfast.
My legs gave way, and then there was yelling all around me.
I looked up to see Rhonda at my side. Her beehive had failed her amidst the heat’s ongoing assault on our appearances.
It drooped down the left side of her face like a half-deflated balloon.
She was holding a bottle of water out for me, and I took it, chugging every drop.
As bits of clarity pierced through my mind’s fog, my cheeks burned even hotter.
I’d almost fainted in front of everyone, and the weight of their stares felt crushing.
Trying to make light of the situation, I said, “You know what they say about us gays. Always a flair for the dramatic.” My self-deprecating humor did nothing to alleviate the awkwardness hanging in the air.
Everyone huddled around me, asking over and over if I was alright.
Everyone except for Gray, that is. He stood behind them all with the same look of fear on his face he had the night he caught sight of my cock in the employee restroom.
His eyes were cemented on my chest. For a moment, the surrounding voices went quiet and the people at my sides faded from view. Our eyes locked.
I waved at him. "Hey.”
“Hey,” he whispered, returning my wave. When a smile cracked his face, it felt like sunlight piercing clouds. He walked forward, warning everyone back. He glanced down at my chest, his mouth hanging open. "Gosh, you got skinny."
"Yeah?"
He nodded, kneeling in front of me with a bottle of water in his hand.
“Here, Half-pint. Drink this.” At first, I thought he would simply hand the bottle to me.
Instead, he lifted it to my mouth. I tried to tell him that I was fully capable of holding a bottle on my own, but he took that as an invitation to bottle-feed me like an infant.
Unfortunately for Gray, I was attempting a breath when he started pouring it.
I coughed, hacking it up in his direction, coating his face.
He closed his mouth and shook his head, laughing out through his nose.
When he did, it sent tiny droplets of water back at me, like we were playing water droplet ping-pong.
“I despise you.” He tilted the bottle again, slowly pouring it into my mouth. His other hand was on the back of my neck, and had I not been in the midst of a near-death experience, I might have reveled in the feeling of his thumb stroking my bare skin.
When the bottle was empty, I scowled at him. “Dude. You seriously just bottle-fed me like an infant.”
“Well, if the baby bottle fits.” He shrugged.
I licked my lips, my eyes dipping down to places they had no right staring at. “Suck it?”
Gay panic overtook him, and he jolted up, tossing the empty bottle back to Rhonda.
She was still staring at my chest, and when the bottle bounced off the center of her forehead, she fell back, landing against the metal roller carts that made up the line.
Her arms flailed at her sides like rowing oars as she toppled.
“Son of a goddamn bitch!” she shouted during her descent.
“Everyone take five to cool down—” Gray said to the crowd, breathing heavily.
“You cool down!” I shouted at him, pointing a sock-covered finger in his direction.
“And then we’re getting back to work.”
“Your hair,” I whispered, pointing my sock at the gel pouring down his face.
“I think it’s melting, Gray.” The heat was still fucking with me something fierce, and I fell into a frenzy.
“You’re melting!” Craning my neck toward the dispersing crowd, I shouted at my coworkers, who were making their way down the ramp, back into the air-conditioned stockroom.
“He’s melting, and you’re running off to guzzle Coca-Cola.
You should all be ashamed of yourselves! ”
“Stop it,” he hissed at me.
I reached for him, rubbing my sock against his cheek. “Please don’t melt.”
He slapped my hand away from his face. “Stop that. Stop it.” He stood up, pulling another water bottle from his oversized smock pocket. “You’re delirious. Drink the dang water and pull yourself together.” He turned around and walked down the loading dock slope leading to the stockroom.
When he reached the doors, he shoved his palms into them, sending them flying open with a crash. Rhonda let out another shriek as boxes toppled down around her.
Once the truck was finally unloaded, I made my way to the break room, looking for Gray. He was sitting in a chair, sweat pouring down his face, and he had his head resting against the wall with his eyes closed.
“Knock-knock.” I rapped my fingers against the break room door.
He kept his eyes shut as he told me to close the door. Once it latched, I sat across the table from him, cracking open another bottle of water.
“Well, that was certainly something. Sorry for almost dying in front of you.”
“We need to talk.” His eyes opened and found their way to me.
“Uh-oh, Kent’s in trouble.” I laughed. And then I stopped laughing because the expression on his face was serious. “Wait, am I? For nearly fainting?”
Pointing at my still shirtless chest, he said, “You can’t do that. Not here.” He peered over my shoulder as if he expected someone else to be hiding behind me. "This isn’t a whorehouse.”
“Did you just call me a whore?”
“Those comments out there, about the sucking thing—you can’t say stuff like that. And all of the touching has to stop, too. This is my team. My career. I’ve spent twenty years building it, Kent.”
“Do you know what I spent the last twenty years doing?”
He held his hand in front of his chest, telling me to stop. “No. We’re not going down that road again. This is serious. It isn’t a chance for you to have another pity party.”
“Another what?”
“It’s not always about you. You act like you’re the only person who’s been through stuff, but you’re not. You’ve been out of this city longer than you were even in it, and now you’re just coming in, making things—”
“Making things what? What exactly am I doing to you? It sounds like there’s something you want to get off your chest.” I held my arm out to the table like a showcase model on The Price is Right. “By all means, lay it out there.”
“I have a life here. One that I enjoy. It might not be fancy like yours, and I may not have been to bigwig events like the Republican National Convention—”
“First of all, I was a Director of Finance for a hotel chain, not some millionaire jetsetter living it up in the lap of goddamn luxury. Secondly, if you ever insinuate that I’ve stepped foot inside a Republican event again, I will literally fight you.
I’m not joking. I’ll deck you right in the face.
I don’t play when it comes to politics.”
He rolled his eyes. “This is my life, and I’ve worked dang hard to get to where I am.”
“Oh my God.” I leaned forward, banging my head against the table. “Just say what the hell you’re trying to say. I swear to God, you talk in circles, but you get nowhere.”
“Stop flirting with me, Kent.”
“Flirting? You think I’m—You want me to stop … I don’t know how many times I have to tell you.” I enunciated every word to make the meaning crystal clear. “I—am—not—here—for—you. I—do—not—want—you.”
He shook his head. “I’ve seen it. Rhonda’s seen it.
Everyone working the dang line today saw it.
You were staring at me like you wanted to mount me.
And you were looking at my butt the day you started.
You tried to feel me up in my office and then pretended to grab a picture when I pushed you away. ”
“What the hell? Are you composing a dossier of my dirty gazes?” Realizing I’d essentially just admitted to eye-fucking him, I course-corrected.
“Not that I’m giving you dirty gazes, you arrogant little shit.
And anyway, what about you? You were looking right back at me.
Your eyes didn’t leave my nipples for ten minutes on the loading dock, dude.
You stared at my dick like you wanted to devour it in the restroom that first night.
” I stared at his eyes, which were now focused directly on my nipples. “My eyes are up here, Grayson.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.
” He darted his gaze around the room, searching for God knows what.
“You were overheated. Your mind must still be playing tricks on you.” Before I could object to his bastardized retelling of the morning’s events, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the two bent sticks of gum I’d given him earlier.
“You’re saying you don’t want this, but guess what?
I don’t either. I never did. You always did this.
You took the smallest things and made them into something lurid in your mind. ”
“Something lurid in my mind? Do you want to talk about lurid? Because we can.” I stared at him. Defiantly. Deliberately. “Do you?”
His entire face went white and he locked his gaze on a very interesting, laminated OSHA job safety sign that was hanging on the wall.
I slammed the side of my fist on the table. “Answer me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No. I’m sorry, I know that you’re struggling with me being back—I can understand why that’s difficult for you, what with the whole happy heterosexual act that you’re trying to pull off—but I’m not going to let you sit here and make it seem like I imagined what happened that night.”
“Maybe you did,” he said, as if the thought had just miraculously come to him.
“Did I imagine you telling me you loved me? Did I imagine you going down on me? Is that what I imagined? You begged me to break up with Kate.”
“I’m warning you—”
“Seventeen reasons, remember? It wasn't the same without me by your side. You missed me."
“That’s enough.”
“Number four. Do you remember number four? That you didn’t know what Kate and I did with each other when you weren’t around?
” I sat silently, waiting for an acknowledgment I knew would never come.
“You told me you loved me, Gray. You told me you loved me, and then you dragged me back to your house, snuck me into your room, and had your legs over your shoulders before I even closed the door. Don’t tell me I just imagined that night.
I fucked you, Gray. I fucked you, and you begged for it. ”
Gray leaped from his seat, sending his chair slamming against the wall.
He walked toward the lockers, rearing back his arm.
His fist crashed against the metal, filling the tiny break room with a deafening sound.
When he turned toward me, there was a level of anger on his face I’d never seen before.
For a second, I thought he was going to hit me next.
I rose to my feet and nodded. “If you want to punch me, then do it. Come on,” I said, tapping my cheek.
“Give your brother a run for his money. I can pull a twenty out of the ATM for you if you want to go grab some gas while you’re at it.
” I took a step forward. “You think I’m flirting with you?
You have nothing I want.” I pointed at the door, my eyes never leaving his.
“Now, I’m going to go back out there, and—”
Before I could react, his hands were on my chest, shoving me against the lockers.
He lunged forward, his face inches from mine.
His lips parted, his thumb grazing my nipple roughly.
The realization of what he was doing struck him, and he froze, his face so close I could taste the flavor of mint on breath.
Gray stumbled back, walking until he bumped into the wall behind him.
He slammed his eyes shut, squeezing them together. “Go home. Just go home.”
I sidestepped until I reached the door. Grabbing the handle, I shook my head. “I’m scheduled until three. I’ll leave at three.” We were both stuck in rushes of disbelief, our eyes locked. “Don’t ever touch me again. You keep your goddamn hands to yourself.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, his breathing heavy and harsh. “Kent,” he whispered. “Kent, please.”
I didn’t want to know what the hell he had to say next, so I spun around and reached for the doorknob. When I opened it, Rhonda’s prying eyes darted to the ceiling, and she pointed at a burned-out lightbulb.
“Well, would you look at that,” she said with all the subtlety of a tap-dancing dachshund.
I wrung my sweat-drenched shirt out onto the concrete floor and slid it back on before making my way toward the freight we’d just unloaded. Rhonda trailed behind me, placing her hand on my shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
I turned toward her and shook my head. “I will be.”
Gray didn’t speak to me for a day and a half.
I didn’t speak to him for a week.
When Aunt Jeanie left, she snuck an ounce of pot into my sock drawer. It helped.