Rhys
BACK AT THE store across from Kendall’s apartment, I grabbed a few last minute items Josie had texted me about that we’d need for the parade.
I didn’t mind playing errand boy, since I was the only person around without a job.
Benjamin worked in software development, and Josie was housing an entire human being inside her for the time being.
On top of being an elementary school teacher the rest of the time. When it wasn’t summer, anyway.
There were a trillion different sunscreens, but I scoured the labels until I found the one she’d specified in her text, raising my eyebrows at the astronomically high SPF number.
Guess that’s what pale redheads needed to keep from becoming lobsters.
I wondered if the baby, gender and name still yet undetermined, would inherit more of her looks or Benjamin’s.
We were brothers, but we didn’t have much in common in terms of appearance.
He had what I’d always thought of as kind of a baby face, boyish and innocent.
The perpetual smile he sported, along with his shaggy mop of sandy hair, didn’t do much to dispel those vibes, even though he was in his mid-twenties now.
I’d inherited our dad’s features, darker and more defined, which I’d always been pretty happy about.
And my skin didn’t glow like white-out and blister with sunburn, so that was always a plus.
I’d been forced into more conversations in the few weeks I’d been back than I’d had in the entire decade I’d been gone.
People were friendly, but nosy. The usual.
Gossip was like a currency in this town.
People talked to me hoping to gain a new little tidbit of information about why I’d come home, what caused my divorce, and what I was going to do now that I was back.
I figured he wouldn’t bug me, if he even recognized me.
We’d only interacted a handful of times in my entire life.
I was fairly certain he and Kendall’s mom hated my parents for the whole taking in their son and accepting him, nurturing his personality, and convincing him it was okay to be himself thing.
From what I knew about them, that had been pretty contradictory to their mission statement.
Anger sparked up inside me and spread, like my veins were made of tissue paper and igniting through my whole body until I forced myself to relax.
Kendall was fine. He’d survived it and he had my family now.
He wasn’t suffering. He was a veritably perfect little ray of well-adjusted sunshine, and he had people in his life that really cared for him.
Still, the idea of torturing someone like him was just criminal.
I couldn’t wrap my head around it, and especially by his own parents.
“Kensington.”
Hayward’s gruff voice yanked me out of my thoughts and I had to suppress a guilty grimace before I remembered he couldn’t read my thoughts and didn’t know I’d been thinking about what a shitty dad he was. Or that I’d recently been granted a stunning orgasm, courtesy of his son’s mouth.
“Heard you were back in town,” he went on, before I could think of how to respond. He was a total dick, but at the same time I didn’t want any problems. Better to keep the interaction as brief and neutral as possible.
“For a couple weeks now,” I confirmed.
“You get tired of the big city life?” He wondered, and I could barely keep from scoffing.
“I’m in the middle of a divorce.”
He sniffed, giving a barely-there nod in acknowledgment. “Heard that somewhere, too. Sounds like you’re better off.”
“Looks that way,” I said, just as the guy ahead of him finished paying and walked off toward the exit.
As Hayward started loading his items up onto the small counter, the unmistakable rumble of a dual exhaust system cracked through the air outside.
We both looked out through the glass wall to see a sexy little muscle car pull up to the stoplight just outside the parking lot.
He let out an appreciative whistle through his teeth as we stared.
“Sure is a pretty car,” he said.
“1970 Chevelle,” I commented, trying not to drool.
I’d wanted a car like that once, something cool I could have fun driving in, before my ex-wife had forced me into a snobby BMW we’d barely been able to afford.
Which was still sitting in the garage of the house I’d helped buy, where I was no longer welcome.
“Kept it up real nice,” he said. “Something about those 454 big block engines. 450 horsepower, you know.”
“More like 500,” I commented, tilting my head as the light flicked back to green and it roared off. “That belong to someone around here?”
Hayward snorted, before turning back toward the counter. “Hell no. Gotta be just passing through.
“Bummer.”
“Boys and their toys,” the woman at the register sighed, and I finally noticed her enough to realize who she was.
Sonya Crawford, mostly known around town as Mrs. Crawford, was more or less a pillar of the constitution of Cherryvale.
Her husband owned the local diner, appropriately named Crawford’s, a place that was almost always busy despite the relatively tiny population.
I didn’t know if it was because of that, or because she had her ear to the ground in other ways, but she usually had a firm grip on what all the current gossip was.
I had a feeling she had this job just for something to do, since she and her husband lived in a big, beautiful house and the diner was thriving as always.
Hayward grunted, like he didn’t totally appreciate her assessment of our admiration of the car.
“Men are supposed to be interested in cars,” he informed her shortly. “We have our toys, and your kind has yours. Makeup and ear bobbles and the like.”
“Whatever you say, Hayward,” she responded, giving him a wry look. I was pretty sure she didn’t appreciate his assessment of her kind and their interests either.
“And sports,” he tacked on, before glancing back at me with an approving nod. “Like this one here. They never did break your record for touchdown passes in a season, Kensington.”
“Seriously?” I asked, trying not to wince as my stomach clenched with a mix of feelings I didn’t even want to attempt to identify. I loved football. I always had. But talking about it these days made me feel queasy and embarrassed. “How do you even know that?”
“Still go to the games on Friday nights,” he admitted, before his lips thinned in obvious displeasure. “Cardinals ain’t too hot this year. Year before, either,” he said. “Not like when you were QB.”
“Ah,” I acknowledged, though I didn’t know what to say. It was both nostalgic and depressing to think about what the Cherryvale Cardinals had been like when I was in the game. “Sucks.”
“Yeah, well. People don’t know what’s important anymore. It’s all participation ribbons and coddlin’ now. And this damn parade tomorrow nobody’ll stop yapping about.”
“Oh, hush,” Mrs. Crawford cut in, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “Let the kids have their fun and stop crying about it.”
“Not crying,” he denied gruffly. “Just don’t see the need to go out and celebrate a thing like that.”
My brows drew together as I started to comprehend his words. He was complaining about the pride parade.
“We’re all going to the parade,” I cut in, because the idea of not defending it, when really what he was probably complaining about was queer people as a general concept, felt incredibly disloyal and shitty.
Two things Kendall had never, and would never, be towards me.
“It’s going to be… fun,” I said, even if I wasn’t exactly convinced.
“See?” Mrs. Crawford said, giving him a pointed look.
I could tell she was irritated with him, but it seemed like she was trying to educate him rather than straight out call him an ignorant bigot.
I wasn’t sure which one I would have preferred, but I really didn’t want to start drama with Kendall’s dad and have it end up coming back on him and causing him any more stress.
“Things are different now, Hayward. You need to get with the times. Even my boys are going with their wives.”
“It’s not right. It’s not natural,” he insisted.
“Wasn’t too long ago that you and I wouldn’t be allowed to drink from the same water fountain or go to the same school, on the grounds of the same argument you’re using right now,” she said flatly. I watched her words affect him physically, as he tried not to squirm with guilt.
“That’s different,” he mumbled. “A man can’t choose the color of his skin.”
“Nobody chooses to be gay either,” she retorted, her dark eyebrow popping up into her silver ringlets of hair. “Your son sure didn’t choose it. He’d have to be a real glutton for punishment to do that, with a dad like you.”
My stomach muscles clenched at the direct mention of Kendall, but I didn’t know what I could say.
“He’s sure choosing to go out and prance around with the perverts and weirdos, ain’t he?”
“Kendall’s great,” I blurted out, immediately regretting it when both pairs of their eyes snapped over to me. “I-I mean, he… He carries dog treats in his pocket when he goes for a walk, just in case he runs into someone with a dog.”
Heat started to crawl up my neck as I realized how stupid I sounded, but I hadn’t known what else to say.
He always knows what to say when I’m feeling like shit about myself, and lately I’ve been thinking about him all the time, and his hair smells like strawberries?
That probably wouldn’t have landed too well.
Hayward blinked a few times, before letting out a scoff that suggested carrying dog treats around didn’t hold much weight for him in terms of what made someone a good person. But he didn’t say anything else, just gathering up the bags Mrs. Crawford had rung up for him, and marching out the door.
Clearing my throat, I lugged my basket up onto the little counter so she could ring me up. She shook her head and sighed, giving the door he’d walked out of one more glance before directing her attention back to me.