"This doesn't count, right?"
"Of course this doesn't count. You have a girlfriend. I have a girlfriend. We aren't fags or anything. Just a couple of guys…"
J. Paul's words trickled off, the silent ellipses hanging in the desert air.
Looking out the windshield, the steeple of First Baptist shone above, the spotlight on the cross a reminder of everything a person should be.
He knew where he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be with Carrie Anne. Long haired, tight-waisted, Miss Odessa 1999 Carrie Anne.
.
Carrie Anne was lovely.
Carrie Anne taught Sunday school right there at First Baptist.
Carrie Anne was a veterinary science major who could castrate a calf faster than most guys could tie a bow tie, and rope a goat from ten yards away. She could cook a great steak. Even by the inherently attractive standards of TCU cheerleaders, she had really nice breasts…a fact that the ESPN cameras took note of during every halftime performance.
There was only one little problem with Carrie Anne.
Carrie Anne was a she.
And Dwayne was a he.
A he who liked other hes.
.
Except, of course, that he did not like other hes. Because that would be gay. And being gay was not okay. Not in 2001. Not in Texas. Not for the son of a cattle rancher.
.
"So where's Marcy tonight?"
"Sisterhood retreat over in Denton."
"Nice"
"Carrie Anne?"
"Dunno. Told her I was going to be hanging out with the guys."
.
"This isn't gay." He reminded himself, J. Paul hard against his thigh. "If Marcy and Carrie Anne were here, we wouldn't be doing this with each other. We'd be doing it with them."
….
He remembered the strange tightness in his size 11 Wranglers when he'd see the Calvin Klein ads with Marky Mark standing there in white boxer briefs, smiling playfully for the camera. That first day in Coon Rapids, meeting the rest of Team USA, and looking out across the ice at Charlie. Beautiful, fun Charlie, with flowing brown waves and the most gorgeous brown eyes he'd ever seen; Marky Mark had been a fantasy, a two dimensional figure stuck within the glossy pages of Sports Illustrated. Charlie was real, and as he watched him joking effortlessly with Adam, he wanted more than anything to be another person. To be the person Charlie was laughing with.
That crush was short-lived enough, but from then on, there was no denying the truth.
The next summer at church camp, he and Sean Baker met up at the canoe racks after everybody else had said their goodnight prayers and gone to bed. There, under the stars of Lake Travis, he and Sean got to know one another in ways that they were fairly certain that the bible discouraged, but that they were also fairly certain was worth it.
Hell, after all, was theoretical. Sean Baker's rippling abs and the delightful cleft in his chin were right there, as was his hard, throbbing cock that just begged to be explored. For two lovely weeks, they did all of the exploring they could before Sean went back to Cedar Park, and Dwayne went back to Hutto.
Every morning for the rest of the summer, as he'd get up at dawn to feed the cows, he'd think of Sean's pillowy lips. His tight, toned ass. That last kiss stolen behind an oak tree as distracted youth counselors focused on making sure that the right bags went to the right buses. Sean had tasted of Skoal Wintergreen and Mountain Dew, and for months, Dwayne had tried to hold onto that feeling; that feeling of being held tightly as the Texas sun baked them to a golden brown.
Of course, he also spent months trying to forget that feeling. To convince himself that it wasn't Sean he'd enjoyed, so much as simply the touch of another person. That he would have felt that way with anybody. Even a girl.
Especially a girl.
That Brooke and Mary Catherine and Jill were even better than Sean had been.
.
The next summer, he went back to church camp, half hoping Sean would be there, and half praying that he wouldn't.
His prayers won out.
Sean was gone.
...
A month or two earlier, after a fight with Carrie Anne, he'd found himself unable to sleep. Logging onto one of the computers downstairs in the Kappa Sig study room, he'd tried searching for Sean.
Staring at that glowing screen, his heart sank past the parquet floors.
.
Sean was married.
Beautiful, sensitive Sean-Sean with one of the most exquisitely toned asses in central Texas-had met a nice redhead from Pflugerville.
Megan.
They'd married the summer after high school; happy to go off to Baylor together as one. Apparently Sean was planning to study business, just as his dad and brothers had all done before him. He and Megan were looking forward to a nice life together; both standing there at the altar of Pinecrest Baptist with their toothpaste commercial-smiles.
..….
"Fuck you're hard." He muttered to nobody in particular.
He and J. Paul had moved to the backseat of the Tahoe, their Wranglers and T-shirts crumpled in a heap on the floor. As he dug into J. Paul, he savored the smell of Marlboros and sweat. The hints of Jack Daniels and Lone Star beer that could still be smelled, even though his face was buried against the leather of the backseat.
Unlike Carrie Anne's Clinique and AquaNet, J. Paul smelled like a man; nothing but testosterone and bad decisions and sex. As he gripped J. Paul's broad shoulders, he remembered what it was like to feel alive. To feel the way he'd felt seven years earlier at the lake with Sean.
Glancing through the cut of the front seats, he stared back up at that gleaming cross for a moment, trying to shake the thoughts out of his head.
This isn't gay.
If Carrie Anne were here, I'd be with her right now.
But she's not. And J. Paul is.