The Handyman's Dream (8 page)

Rick looked somewhat relieved by that, but still worried. “It won’t always be like this, I promise. But all this stuff came up before we met. If you want, I’ll come over early on Sunday and make you breakfast again, and we can spend the whole day together.”

“I’d like that. Don’t worry about it, okay? You’re worth waiting for.”

Rick seemed unconvinced. “I’m glad you think so.” He tightened his grip on Ed. “But if I was some other guy, you wouldn’t have to—”

“Stop that! I don’t want some other guy. I want you. This is all still really new, and we’ll figure it out. Please don’t worry. I’m cool, okay?”

Rick looked at him quietly for a moment, then broke into a broad smile. “You’re something else, baby. My gut told me you were something special, and it was right.” He kissed him again. “Thanks for understanding.”

Ed changed the subject. “So about this trick or treating. What kind of costume will you be wearing? Your postal uniform?”

“No, I think I’ll just dress up as the handyman’s boyfriend. That’s my favorite costume right now. Do you want us to stop by your house?”

Ed shook his head. “I probably won’t be here. Mom’ll probably call and insist I come over and help her hand out cookies. She makes a ton of them, and all the kids on this side of town know about it, so it gets a little crowded at her front door.” Ed rolled his eyes. “The costumes give her fits. I always have to explain to her who Darth Vader is.”

Rick laughed, and Ed was glad to see him back to his usual self. “I’ll call you this evening, I promise.” He gave Ed one last hug and kiss. “But now I have mail to deliver.”

Ed reluctantly let him go. Rick returned to his route, and Ed returned to his yard full of leaves.

He’d been hard at it for another hour when he saw Laurie’s car turn into his driveway. He dropped his rake, grateful to take a break.

“Hey, you,” he called, as she slammed her car door and started across the yard toward him.

“Hey, yourself,” she said, kicking away the leaves. “You wanna come do my yard?”

“Hell, no,” he retorted. “Get your husband to do it.”

“Yeah, right,” she said, meeting him under the maple tree in his side yard. “I’ll probably end up doing it myself.” She took a deep breath of the autumn air, opening her arms to the breeze. “It was so stuffy at work today. This feels great.” Laurie worked part-time as a secretary in a law office downtown.

“What brings you over this way in the middle of the afternoon?”

“I left work early to pick up Lesley from kindergarten. I have to take her for a checkup, so since I had a few minutes, I wanted to stop and see how you are and how your weekend went.”

Ed blushed, and Laurie giggled with delight. “Oh, you still blush as good as you did when we were kids. Hmm, I guess the weekend went pretty well.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled, looking at the ground.

“Good, I’m glad.” She looked fondly at her brother, who was smiling at the ground, shuffling the leaves with his work boots. “You’re really stuck on this guy, aren’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?” he asked, looking up.

“Yeah. I don’t ever remember seeing you like you are these days.” She sighed. “Oh, Ed, I can only imagine how hard it’s been for you all these years, so I’m really glad you’re having a good time with Rick. Just be careful, though, okay?”

Ed looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s okay to think you’re in love and all that romantic stuff, but don’t get too carried away until you’ve known him for a while. Make sure he’s all you think he is before you get too serious about it.”

“When did you get to be Ann Landers?”

“Since I’ve been watching my high school girlfriends getting divorced, that’s when. I sat and watched my friends all get married right out of high school to guys that weren’t ever going to be anything more than they were in school. I vowed I wouldn’t do it, but look what happened: I met Todd and we got married before I was even through secretarial school. I was lucky, ’cause Todd’s a genuinely good guy, but some of my friends are still dealing with regret, and kids they have to raise on their own.”

As a breeze blew more of the yellow leaves off the tree, Laurie sighed again. “I don’t care if you’re gay or straight, relationships are hard work, and let’s face it: I’ve got eight years experience to your zero. So, yeah, I feel qualified to give you advice. Be as crazy about him as you want to be, but give it time to grow.”

“We don’t exactly plan to run off to Vegas or anything,” he grumbled.

“Look, don’t get all defensive. I’m just playing sister here, because I strongly suspect you don’t have anyone else to talk to about this, or at least anyone who cares enough about you to be as honest as I am. Give it time. Eventually you’ll either get tired of him, or you’ll find out how much you really care about him.”

Ed sighed. “You’re right. I guess I am feeling a little carried away by the whole thing. I wish you knew him, though. You’d see why he’s worth getting carried away over.”

“Bring him by the house sometime. And don’t worry about Todd. I’m sure he won’t have a problem with it. One of his cousins in Chicago is a lesbian, so it’s nothing new to him.”

“I’ll do that,” Ed promised. “That is, when I get over wanting him all to myself.”

Laurie rolled her eyes. “Oh, brother. You’ve got it bad. Okay, you do that, when you start getting bored enough to remember you have a sister. Meanwhile, I’ve got a date at the pediatrician with the Wicked Witch of the West. I hope she doesn’t try to slap his ass with a broom, too!”

* * * * *

Rick did call that night, and they spent a half hour on the phone, just talking.

“At least I’ll be able to see you every day when I drop off your mail,” Rick said.

“Not tomorrow,” Ed said sadly. “Mrs. Heston has me for the whole day. After I deal with her groceries, I’m spending the rest of the day raking her leaves, after I spent all afternoon today on mine. She’s even making lunch for me. Can you believe that? A seventy-nine-year-old woman who uses a walker is making me lunch. You gotta love the old girl.”

“How many other yards do you have to do?”

“None. Oh, I try to make it clear to them that I’m not a lawn service. If I raked and mowed and pulled weeds for all of them, I’d never get anything done, but Mrs. Heston is special. I probably wouldn’t have this business if it wasn’t for her support in the beginning. I know she won’t tell anyone else about it, either. I’ll shovel their snow in the winter, but they’re on their own the rest of the year.”

“Well, I’m disappointed I won’t see you tomorrow, but I’ll call you tomorrow night,” Rick said before hanging up.

* * * * *

The week passed quickly, a lot faster than Ed expected. They had brief visits when Rick delivered the mail, and phone calls in the evening, but Ed couldn’t wait to spend some serious time with Rick. As good as his word, Rick hauled a bag of groceries into Ed’s house Sunday morning and made a huge breakfast that Ed thoroughly enjoyed.

“Is there anything special you want to do today?” Ed asked him, clearing the table. He groaned. “Oh, I ate too much. But it was wonderful, every bite.”

Rick patted Ed’s belly. “Nothing like a well-fed handyman. Oh, there’s nothing really special I’d like to do, but I was thinking about something.”

“What?”

“I was thinking it would be fun for you to show me Porterfield, or at least the Porterfield you know. Where you went to school, the house where you grew up, that sort of stuff.”

Ed snickered. “A tour of Ed’s Porterfield. That should take about five minutes.”

“Okay. How ’bout this? After that five minutes we can drive out in the country, find a deserted road, and neck for a while. What do you think?”

“You mean, like we were in high school or something?”

“Yeah! I never got to neck with anybody in high school. I’d love to pretend I was in high school, and you were my boyfriend, and we were sneaking around behind everyone’s backs. I always felt like I missed something.”

Ed paused at the sink, staring out the window. He turned to Rick and smiled.

“I know just the place.”

* * * * *

“A cemetery?” Rick asked in disbelief. They were in Ed’s truck, sitting on a narrow gravel road several miles west of Porterfield. He looked through the wrought-iron gates of the small, country cemetery and frowned. “I was picturing a cornfield or something. Cemeteries we have in Indianapolis.”

“First off, city slicker, if you were paying any attention to the scenery, you would notice that all the corn has been harvested and we’ve passed nothing but fields full of stubble. Secondly, this isn’t just any cemetery.” Ed put the truck in gear and drove through the open gates. “Up here by the road is the modern part, but back behind that hill is the old part. All the graves are from the 1800s, and no one ever goes back there. You can’t see it from the road because of the hill, and the trees hide it on the other three sides. We used to come out here in high school to drink and smoke and act like idiots. It’s perfect. You’ll see.”

Ed drove past rows of tombstones, over a gentle rise in the land, and below them was an old, tree-shaded graveyard.

“My great-great-grandparents are buried back here. That’s how come I’ve always known about it.”

He parked the truck behind a tall, spreading pine tree. When he shut off the engine the only sounds they could hear were a couple of feuding crows and the wind in the trees.

Rick looked around, taking in the leaning tombstones, their engravings almost worn away, and the sheltering trees. He nodded, smiling. “You were right. It’s perfect. I’ll never doubt you again.”

Ed reached out a hand to him. “How about you slide over here a little closer to me, huh? It’s kinda cold out there today.”

Rick obliged, sliding across the seat, kissing him when he was by Ed’s side. “Man, this is great. I really feel like we’re in high school, hiding out here from everyone.”

Ed turned the key to accessory so they could listen to the radio. “Well, if it’s high school, I sure wish I could hear some Guess Who or Blood, Sweat and Tears or something,” he said.

Casey Kasem, one of Ed’s radio favorites, was counting down the biggest hits in the land for that week. Casey was up to the Devo song “Whip It” and described why the group wore flowerpots on their heads. Ed punched his other FM presets, but the sounds of 1980 were dominating the airwaves.

“You need a cassette player in here, baby,” Rick murmured, kissing him again.

“Well, come to think of it, all we listened to back then was AM.”

Ed switched the radio. He dialed past a football game and a church service, then to their great joy and surprise, landed on the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.”

“I love this song,” Rick said. “Remember Pet Sounds? I had that album. I think someone stole it from me in college. Now, this is more like it. I always wanted to make out with a cute guy to this song.”

“I’m right here.”

Ed moved closer to Rick. They blissfully indulged in some serious high-school-style necking through the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, and Del Shannon. They had stumbled onto a Sunday afternoon oldies show on a weak AM station from the next town over.

They both sighed when the Four Tops came on with “Baby I Need Your Loving.”

“Oh, baby, I do indeed need your lovin’.” Rick ran his hands under Ed’s sweatshirt, kissing him hungrily.

Ed kissed him back, just as hungrily. He reached for Rick more aggressively than he had allowed himself for over a week.

Rick moaned, saying, “Are you sure, baby? Here and now?”

“It’s okay. Our parents don’t know where we are. And I’ve spent a whole week dreaming about being this close to you.”

The world outside of Ed’s truck faded away. The old songs washed over them from the static-filled AM radio signal as they did things they could only dream about when those songs were new.

Later, as they huddled together by the steering wheel, Ed started the motor to get the heater going. They had created quite a bit of their own heat, but the sky was clouding over, the wind was blowing harder, and it was becoming much colder.

“Almost seems like it’s going to snow,” Ed remarked, watching the gray clouds racing across the sky.

Rick sighed and snuggled closer to Ed. “Baby, being with you is so incredible. It was worth waiting for all this week. Oh, I could have snuck out of the house, gone to your place for a half an hour, but that would have just been some physical thing. This afternoon, right here, was the real thing. I’m so glad I found you.”

It was on the tip of Ed’s tongue to say “Me too, Rick,” but the Beatles song playing on the radio caught his ear. “Me too, darlin’,” he said, as “Oh! Darling” fought through the radio static.

Rick smiled. “Good old Abbey Road.”

“Remember all the ‘Paul is dead’ rumors?”

“Just because we’re parked in a cemetery is no reason to talk about death,” Rick said, still smiling. “And anyway, am I really your darlin’?”

“Yes.” Ed kissed him. “And I’m your baby, right?”

“Absolutely,” said Rick, returning the kiss.

The air blowing from the vents warmed Ed, but not as much as the words they spoke. As light snow began to fall over the long-neglected cemetery and they sat together quietly, serenaded by the songs of their past, Ed thought of their future together.