Goldilocks: A Man, a Jersey, and a Tight End (17 page)

Scott hadn’t noticed the books, really. He was the sort of man who noticed sports gear. “Nah.”

“Alls I got is books,” said Joshua. “Think I’d go stark raving if I couldn’t disappear into ’em sometimes.”

Later, Scott would go over and over it, trying to find the moment when he’d made up his mind. “Come to Los Angeles with me,” he heard himself say. “Can’t live your whole life in a book.”

Next thing, Joshua was sending his truck ahead of him and throwing his little duffel into the back of Scott’s cab, and here they were, barreling along at ninety miles an hour back toward Scott’s family and their exclusive relationship.

Not that he’d done anything to endanger that trust, mind you—just a lot of kissing and handjobs really. Scott was clean, and he planned to stay that way, and he’d told Joshua about Jim. But it still felt like cheating.

Scott looked down at the picture of Brian in his cell phone. He thought of Jim.

Oh hell.

The passenger door opened, and Joshua climbed back in. He’d scrubbed his face, and the long brown bangs fell wet and dark into those grass green eyes. Pink and clean, with a grin stretching across it, his face looked even younger than the twenty-four years he’d admitted to Scott. “Ready?” he said.

Hell no, thought Scott. But he turned the key, pulled the clutch, and put the truck into gear. “Buckle up,” he said.

* * * *

Jim always fought the anticipation and dread that tumbled continuously in his belly in the hours before Scott arrived back home.

Scott was not an easy man to love. He battled one’s affection, battled one’s sentiment. And just when he seemed to have relaxed and decided to trust a man, he’d get some crazy idea in his head, and he and Jim would have to battle past that.

It was worth it though.

Because once the smoke had cleared, Jim would find himself nose to nose and belly to belly with a man 50 percent horny little devil and 50 percent intense pure heart, pretty, tigerlike eyes gazing at him like he was the next best thing.

Jim was sitting on the sofa pretending not to be waiting when he heard Scott’s rig pull up out there on the street.

His heart pounding, hands feeling suddenly cold, he heard the door outside slam and the sound of footsteps. He thought he heard a man’s voice talking, but then Scott talked to himself a bit now and then.

The door creaked open. That golden head peeked inside, a big grin stretching across it.

“Baby.” Jim forgot all about pretense, and Scott had barely gotten his duffel thrown down before Jim had his man in both of his arms and was tasting his tonsils.

He set Scott down with a thump but didn’t relinquish him. “Welcome home.”

A clearing of a throat made him look up. A slender young man stood on his porch wearing worn jeans, a dark snap-button shirt, long straight brown hair sticking out from under a cowboy hat and big green eyes. “Hey,” said the stranger.

Jim looked down at Scott. His eyes made a question mark.

“Hey Jim,” said Scott. “This cowboy followed me home. Can I keep him?”

Chapter Sixteen

“You want any more potatoes?”

“No, thank you,” said Joshua. “You’re a really fine cook, Mr. Jim.”

“It’s just Jim, son,” said Jim. He shot another look at Scott. They were like tiny little arrows, those looks. Scott figured if they
were
arrows, he’d pretty much look like he’d been attacked by a tribe of angry Indians by now.

Joshua was looking around the kitchen, those enormous eyes rolling. Jim sighed. “I’ve got pie for dessert, if you’d like some.”

“Yes, please,” said Joshua, sitting straight up. Jim dished out the pie, added a dollop of ice cream, and went for the coffee things.

Scott figured this was going to be a long evening.

“So, Joshua, what do you do?”

“I guess I’m kinda a wrangler, sir,” said Joshua. “I can handle most kinds of ranch animals.”

“You have a job set up out here in Los Angeles, then?”

“No, sir.” Joshua looked from Scott to Jim and back to Scott.

“Joshua thought he might go up to Camarillo and around the equestrian center down here, looking for someplace that needs help,” said Scott.

Jim set the coffeepot down on the table with a little
thunk
. “You take cream, Joshua?”

“No, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Jim shot a look at Scott.
Ouch
. Those little arrows were getting mighty pointy.

While Joshua went off to the powder room, Jim said, “So where’s our cowboy going to sleep?”

“In my room?” Scott said a little weakly. “Because I’ll be. Sleeping. In your room. Right?” Jim shot him a look.

Hell.

“How’s your cowboy going to feel about sleeping
alone
, Scott?”

“Jim, nothing like that is going on. I mean, well, maybe something sorta, but not like that. Nothing like…” Jim was stirring cream in his coffee in a manner that Scott thought might turn it to butter in the near future.

“He knows,” Scott said. “I told him.”

“Yes, sir,” said Joshua from the doorway. He looked worried and just like his horse had that day by the highway, skittish, and all hands and big eyes. “Scott told me you and him are an item. I don’t mean nothing, but Scott was kind enough to invite me to stay…” He drifted off, big eyes going from Scott to Jim to Scott to Jim. “I should leave,” he said.

“No,” said Jim. “We have plenty of room, and you’re welcome, Joshua.” He stood.

“Let me help you with those, sir,” said Joshua, jumping to take plates from Jim’s hands. He busied himself at the sink. “You cooked; I’ll clean,” he announced. And when Jim didn’t immediately respond, added, “Go on, now,” shooing them out of the kitchen.

With one more dark look at Scott, Jim went.

“Babe, come on. Let me explain.” Scott followed Jim into their bedroom. Jim had gone to the marijuana forest and begun picking buds. His intent was obvious.

“Please do,” he said.

“I just ran into him. He was stranded. We started talking and… I mean,
look
at the guy, Jim.”

“What I was noticing,” said Jim, sifting seeds and crumbling grass into the bowl of his bong, “was how he was looking at
you
.”

Scott went back and made sure the bedroom door was shut.

“What are you talking about, Jim?”

“That boy has a huge crush on you, Scott.”

“No, he’s just lonely.”

“Hmmm.” Jim lit the bong and took a long hit. He offered it to Scott, who took it gratefully.

“He got dumped recently. And he lives alone with a son of a bitch. Of course he latched on to the first gay man he met. Probably the
only
gay man he’s met up there.” Scott exhaled through his nose and passed the bong back to Jim. “He just needs a friend, Jim.”

Jim studied him. Inhaled smoke. Exhaled. “Friend,” Jim said.

Scott looked across at him with eyes going dark in the dimly lit, smoky room. “Missed you, baby.”

Jim’s eyes narrowed.

Scott went over and sat next to Jim. He rested his chin on Jim’s big shoulder and looked up at Jim through his lashes. “You miss me?”

Jim set the bong down on the table.

Scott leaned against Jim, opening his legs a bit and wriggling. He rubbed at the growing bulge at his crotch and whispered, “Been hard since you kissed me hello.”

Jim’s eyes followed the movement of Scott’s hand.

Scott’s other hand got up under Jim’s shirt and started finding a nest in his chest hair. “Keep thinking about that big cock fucking me.” His hand clutched at his crotch as he said, “Thought dinner would never be over…” and he was flat on his back on the undulating waterbed, Jim’s mouth on him, Jim’s tongue pressing into his own. Warm, calloused hands under his T-shirt and pulling at the little nipple ring there.

Scott moaned and tried to get Jim to press against him where he needed it. He helped Jim strip his clothes from him, loving the smell and the feel of it, and when Jim rolled him and began pushing the lube in, Scott bent his head to the mattress in abject gratitude. Then he heard the snap and crinkle of what must have been a condom wrapper, and he turned his head. “Christ, Jim, you don’t need that.”

“Don’t I?”

It felt like a window shattering in slow motion deep inside him. Scott rolled over and looked up at Jim. “No.”

“You haven’t been having sex with that boy?”
And who knows who else
? It wasn’t said, but it was implied.

“No,” said Scott. “Not sex. Not exactly.” His cock was wilting, and so was Jim’s. Scott rolled over on his belly.

He felt Jim’s warm hand rest then in the middle of his back. There was something about the gesture, something anchoring and sure. Like Jim was saying,
Right now I’m upset with you, but it’s going to be okay
. And Scott just laid his forehead on his arms and said, “I love you, you asshole.”

“Me too, kiddo.”

“Okay, there was…something.”

“What sorta something?”

“Handjobs. I’m sorry.”

Silence. Jim’s hand moved slowly up and down. He was petting that little bit of soft hair at the base of Scott’s back. Scott remembered once when Jim was waxing uncharacteristically poetic, he’d told Scott that he’d fallen in love with Scott the first time he’d seen that little patch of hair.

“I knew it wasn’t right at the beginning. When we first asked you to quit playing. I had a bad feeling.”

Scott thought maybe he’d never felt more awful in his life. “I don’t want anybody else, Jim. That’s not what this was about.”

Jim was silent again, his hand petting. Sometimes, Jim just understood. It was a toppish characteristic of his that Scott frequently cursed. But Scott was hoping and praying this would be one of those times when Jim just understood.

“I would have appreciated it if you’d spoken to me first,” said Jim.

“Would you? You get a long-distance call sayin’, ‘There’s a young man here near dying of loneliness in the middle of Buttfuck, and I just want to give him a body to hold on to and a kind hand around his aching dick,’ and you would have said, ‘Go for it’?”

Jim was silent for a long while, and then he said, “Was it really like that?”

“He was like a puppy somebody kicked out onto the road, Jim.”

He heard Jim sigh, a long thoughtful exhalation through his nose. Then that big warm hand moved, just stroking the place at the bottom of Scott’s spine. “He’s a good boy,” said Jim. “Maybe he can teach you some manners.”

“Like hell,” said Scott and got a nice swat on the behind for that. He rolled over. His cock popped up like it had never been down, and he could see that Jim’s cock was feeling better about things too. Dark red and jutting up there from between Jim’s thighs.
Man
. Scott licked his lips. He always forgot just what a thing of beauty Jim’s cock was.

“You gonna stick that in me, baby?” he said hoarsely. “’Cause my ass is so lonely for you.”

Jim growled and manhandled Scott back onto his belly a little roughly. “Been thinking about that ass a lot…”

“Baby, slow down. It’s been weeks.”

“Deal with it,” growled Jim, climbing up on him and pushing it in fast and hard, because he knew that was what Scott wanted. Because Scott knew Jim knew.

Scott moaned long and loud. “You’re breaking me, Jim.”

Growling, Jim pumped into his lover. “So fucking tight.”

“Yeah,” said Scott, gripping at the rolling mattress with both hands. “Oh, fuck, yeah.”

Skin slapping against skin, their voices rose together.

* * * *

Joshua looked up from where he was seated on the sofa when Scott came padding out.

“Hey,” said Scott. “I’ll show you where you can sleep. And I’ve got you clean towels.”

“Thank you.”

Joshua followed him down the hallway. At the bedroom, Scott put the towels on the bed. “This is my room, except I hardly ever sleep here. The bathroom’s just there, second door on the left. Jim and me are the fourth door down there on the left. You want something, come on and knock.”

Joshua was looking down at the towels and nodding. He pushed the hair out of his face in that nervous way of his and said, “Jim’s a nice man.”

“He’s a real son of a bitch,” said Scott. “But that’s what it takes to handle a son of a bitch like me.”

“Oh,” said Joshua. “I don’t think you’re a son of a bitch, Scott.”

Oh hell.

“Well, I am.” Scott went to the door. “See you at breakfast, Joshua.”

He heard the kid mumble “good night” as he shut the door.

Scott crawled into the nest that Jim and his waterbed made for him. He curled up around his lover just like a squirrel and said, “That boy needs a top worse than an old jar of jelly.”

Jim chuckled. His fingers traveled over Scott like he was Braille, little needles and pricks of good feelings following them. “You applying for the position, baby?”

“No way,” said Scott. “I’m a brat. A spoiled brat.”

“That you are.”

“Not spoiled enough, though.”

“No?” Jim’s fingers found a part of Scott of which he was particularly fond, and Scott vibrated a little against him.

“Mmm,” said Scott into Jim’s chest. “Do that again.”

“Do that again, what?”

“Do that again, Sir,” whispered Scott, snuggling in a little closer to give Jim better access. “Please, Sir, thank you, Sir…”

* * * *

Joshua seemed content in a kind of yearning, heartsick way, to follow Scott around but not ask for more than friendship. He eagerly helped out with whatever housework he could find to do, was respectful and sincerely grateful toward Jim, and two weeks down the road, he actually got a part-time job at a ranch up off Cucamonga. A man kept steer for cutting classes and needed someone to take care of them.

Jim’s reserve at the wisdom of letting the young man live with them was abated somewhat. Of course, Joshua had no idea how things really were between Scott and Jim. Partly because Jim wanted to keep things low-key and partly because Scott was on his best behavior.

Jim smiled to himself as he dumped the mayo into his tuna spread. A sorry, grateful Scott was a joy in more ways than one. Every time Jim thought about what they’d done the previous evening, his head felt warm, and his balls ached.