EXPRESSING MY LOVE

- 3 -

House Call

Logan didn't even know why he was putting so much effort into his appearance, but there he was, standing in front of the mirror...making sure his hair was just right, making sure his skin was smooth, making sure his teeth sparkled, making sure he looked his absolute best. He'd put on a pair of dark blue skinnies that hugged his curvy, hourglass shape and a tight heather-grey shirt.

I look like a prostitute.

He drug his comb through his hair one final time, and then he sprayed a few pumps of his most expensive cologne. He still didn't know why he was wasting such a gorgeous fragrance and sexy outfit on a straight country bumpkin who probably wouldn't even let him in the house the way he was dressed...but hell, if he was gonna do this, he might as well do it big.

"Oh my," Joanna Mitchell remarked, impressed, when her son joined her and her husband in the living room. Her eyes quickly went from his head to his toes, her face expressing overwhelming approval. "You look amazing!"

"Someone must have a hot date," Mr. Mitchell cracked. He and his wife were sifting through a large stack of paperwork in front of Wheel of Fortune. "You don't waste any time, huh?"

"Believe me, guys, it's...it's so not like that," Logan said. He would have been lying if he'd said that he didn't appreciate his parents' compliments, though. "I'm helping a friend with dinner, and that's it."

"Sure," Mrs. Mitchell patronized mid-sift. "What's this friend's name, sweetheart?"

"His name is Kendall."

"Uh-oh!" Mr. Mitchell childishly whooped. "It's a 'he!'"

Logan blushed and grabbed his keys from the mantelpiece. "I hate to burst your bubble, but...yeah, he's not gay."

"Who is he, then?" Mrs. Mitchell asked, finally taking a break from the pile of documents and sitting back on the couch. "And where did you meet, how old is he, where is taking you, and what time will you be back?"

"We met at a diner," Logan answered. He took the time to review his looks in his grandma's old-fashioned full-length mirror. "He paid for me 'cause I didn't have any cash. He's also the one who helped me with that tire, and he...well..." He faced them. "Like I said, he's not gay. Just very nice."

"And you like him," Mr. Mitchell stated. It wasn't a question, because he knew his son all too well.

"I don't even really know him all that well yet, Dad," Logan whined.

"Well then, how do you know he's not gay?" Mr. Mitchell asked, adopting a serious "dad" tone.

"Because," Logan said, punctuating his answer with a chuckle. "Look at this town. You grew up here. How many gay guys were there when you were my age?"

"That was a different time, though, son," his dad sighed. "Things have changed. Even in good ol' Autumn, Kansas."

"Well," Logan asserted, "that remains to be seen."

He started for the door. "Have a good time," his mom ordered, and his dad offered a similar wish.

"You manage to stay in perfect shape." He said that. He totally said that shit. That's gotta mean somethin', right?

Kendall dashed nervously around the trailer, making sure everything was neat and organized to his standards, which were admittedly not very high. He picked up socks from the middle of the living room floor, threw away old soda cans, and cleared about three weeks' worth of newspapers from the kitchen table.

His mobile home was like a relic from the past. The wallpaper was a burnt orange pattern from the 70s, the carpet was dull and lifeless, the furniture was faded and worn-out, the TV was a 13-inch set with an obsolete antenna sticking out of it. Kendall didn't have the time or the interest to really change anything. His life had gone through its biggest change just a year and a half earlier, so what would be the point in changing anything else?

This is how Mama left it.

He, too, cared about making a good impression tonight, but his appearance didn't show it. He wore an old, comfortable pair of jeans and a non-distinct old T-shirt emblazoned with an Autumn High "Go Falcons!" logo. No, his careful planning and preparation was all internal.

I better not say nothin' stupid. I better be cool and calm and collected. Like a damn cucumber. I need to be a damn cucumber.

Kendall didn't know if any of this would amount to anything, but he had plans. After his home was looking welcoming enough, he went into the cabinet next to the TV and pulled out a VHS tape. What's Eating Gilbert Grape? starring Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio. It had been his and his mom's favorite movie, and he wanted to share it with his new friend after dinner.

With the tape sitting on top of the VCR and everything else in place, Kendall gave himself one last look over, but then there was an nonthreatening knock on the front door.

He's here.

"Come in, come in," Kendall welcomed when he opened the door, but he practically froze in place when he got a gander at Logan's outfit. The shirt...Jesus, the shirt was just right. His little nipples were even poking out, and Kendall was more than okay with that. And the jeans...Kendall didn't know guys could be shaped like that, but he liked it...a lot.

"Uhhh...you look nice."

"Thank you," Logan replied. Wait...did he just come on to me?

Kendall very quickly regained his bearings and let Logan in. "Uh, make yourself at home," he offered, taking Logan's keys and hanging them on the hook next to his own.

"This is a...cozy place you've got here," Logan said, looking around at the interesting and quirky decor of the trailer. Not what he would have picked, but it was charming. "Very kitschy."

"Heh, yeah," Kendall said. He flipped a switch on the wall to turn the ceiling fan on. "What's that mean?"

"It's fun," Logan shortly explained.

"Oh...well. I've never thought of it as fun before, but I'll take your word for it."

Kendall couldn't just stand there and talk to him. Not the way he looked. His eyes would have been all over that body, and then his hands would have wanted to be, too. A straight boy doesn't show his ass off like that. He gathered up some paper clutter that was scattered across the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.

"I was just doin' a lil cleanin' up," he commented under his breath. "I can't stand to see it get dirty."

"Oh, you don't have to do that on account of me," Logan said with a friendly voice, but he was somewhat flattered.

"I don't really get visitors, you see. Well, 'cept for some of my buddies from work. They come on Saturdays, but I swear, they'd all be happy in filth."

Logan sorta half-smiled as Kendall nervously balled up the perfectly harmless clutter, but then he noticed just how nervous this guy really was. "Well, you can, um...you can relax. I'm not too crazy about filth, but I don't really see anything that's filthy."

"All right, I'm done," Kendall said, throwing the last of the trash away. He faced Logan, and, for a hot second, there was this flash that shot through the both of them, like for a tiny split second, they were on the same word of the same sentence of the same page of the same book.

He's too freaking cute, Logan thought.

He's so pretty, Kendall thought.

But then they weren't so sure of each other anymore. Logan broke the awkward pause by making his way to the refrigerator, with Kendall hovering over his shoulder. "May I?" he asked with his hand on the handle.

"Be my guest," Kendall allowed.

"Okay." He opened the fridge and was pleasantly surprised to see all of his work from that morning still in tact. "Good. Nice to know you didn't dump it as soon as you got home."

"Heh."

"But anyway, I figured we'd do something simple and easy, just so you can remember it and do it yourself." He started to take out the necessary ingredients, handing them to Kendall, who put them on the counter. "You said something about liking chicken wings or some other crap this morning, right?"

"Chicken wings ain't crap. But yeah, I like 'em."

"Well," Logan said, "you're right. They're not completely crap. But there are better ways to eat chicken than with tons of flour and fat caked on it. And so, tonight, I'm gonna show you how to make baked chicken breasts, with a nice little salad to go with it."

"Hmm," Kendall thought once all of the components of the meal were out. "How about this. You have the salad, and I'll have the chicken."

Logan sneered at him. "You said you were serious about this."

"I am," Kendall said, immediately feeling like a fool for constantly making jokes. Cucumber!

After Logan briefly went over the principles of washing your hands thoroughly before handling raw food, he unwrapped the chicken breasts, washed them, and placed them in a casserole dish. Kendall listened and watched carefully as he sprinkled salt and pepper and cut little slices of butter over the chicken, all the while giving what seemed to be a biology lesson on how digestion works.

Finally, Logan put the dish into the oven and thoroughly washed his hands again with soap and water.

"And there you have it," Logan announced. "It'll cook for a little while, and when it's done, it'll be juicy and delicious and all of those good things." He looked up at Kendall, and for the first time, he realized that the other guy was slightly taller than him.

"Sounds good," Kendall said sincerely, which made Logan smile unwillingly. "So...we start on the salad now?"

"Oh, no, no," Logan said. "We want the chicken to be cooked and cooled before we do that. That way, it doesn't wilt the lettuce when we put it all together."

"Oh. So...what now?"

"We wait," Logan beamed. "Cooking good food means having tons of patience."

They checked on the chicken one last time before Kendall invited Logan to have a seat in the living room. He was quickly faced with a quick decision: sit on the couch with Logan, or sit on the recliner on the other side of the room? He went with his instincts and sat on the couch, though he made sure to leave enough comfortable space between the two of them.

"So..." Logan gulped, noticing how empty and quiet the house seemed. It suddenly dawned on him how, should something awful happen, no one would be close enough to hear his screams. "Your parents are out of town or something?"

"Yeah," Kendall answered. "Well...it's a long story."

"Oh. You don't have to get into it if you don't want to."

"No, it's okay. I'm good with tellin' it now. It's not really that long when you think about it. Just...I don't know. It's whatever."

Kendall sorta hung his head down as the memories came rushing back to him - there was a set group of specific memories that would always come back to him first, and they had the power to pretty much make him cry at the drop of a hat. But he kept it together.

Logan could sense that this was much more than his parents being "out of town." "You really don't owe me any explanations. I'm sorry for even bringing it up..."

"No!" Kendall insisted. He stared at the unused scented candle on the coffee table. "It's just that...my mama got real sick 'bout two years ago. Cancer. They got it just a lil bit too late, so...she didn't make it."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Logan said compassionately. He couldn't help but stare at Kendall's melancholy face as he tried to come to grips with sharing this intimate information.

"Thank you," Kendall said graciously, making a quick glance at Logan and getting himself together. "Well, my ol' man didn't want to take care of no kids on his own, so my lil sister got shipped away to my aunt and uncle in Nebraska. It was just me and him for a few months after Mama died, and then one day...he was gone, too."

Logan didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry" would never be enough. Jesus Christ...I had no idea. He thought back to the assumptions he'd made about Kendall's life - the "huntin'" and the "baby mama," etc. - and he felt like a complete jerk. Still, though, it was jarring to know so much about a person he'd only really talked to for a couple minutes at a time. Was this normal in small towns?

"I'm good now, though," Kendall suddenly said, obviously faking his cheerful demeanor. "I've been here on my own for eight months now, and I ain't heard from Daddy in six. I'd say I'm doin' pretty good for myself."

He looked Logan in the eye as a plea to show that he was truly fine now, and Logan gave him the satisfaction of believing him. "Yeah, except for your diet," he snickered under his breath.

"Hey! Hey! Remember, I still manage to stay in shape!"

Oh God, he remembers that I said that. "Well..."

"I work hard all day, and I stay active. I figure I can eat whatever the hell I want."

"Not if I can help it!"

There was a pleasant chorus of their laughter, and there it was again - that flash shooting through the both of them, as if they were both suddenly aware that this, whatever it was, was the beginning of something...as if there was something just below the surface that would soon reveal itself.

"So, where do you work?" Logan asked. "It must be a pretty demanding job if you're able to support yourself."

"I get help from a few friends," Kendall told him. "Some of my mama's old friends check on me to make sure everything's okay. But I work at the mill."

"Mill?"

"Yeah, the Autumn Wheat Factory. It's about two miles outside of town. I work about ten hours a day, four days a week."

"That's a forty-hour week!" Logan exclaimed, astonished.

"Yeah, that's pretty normal," Kendall nodded as if it was no big deal.

"But you're like...you're my age! You're no older than twenty-one or twenty-two, and you work a full time job at a factory."

Kendall just shrugged his shoulders. "I gotta do what I gotta do. Other people can only help me so much."

This sobered Logan a little bit, and it hit him just how fast this guy probably had to grow up in the last few years.

"So, umm..." Kendall fiddled with the curtains on the window behind them. "What about you? What's your life story?"

"Hmm," Logan pondered. "Mine is pretty boring, to be honest. My dad's from here, but he left to go to college in Dallas. He met my mom, they got married, had me, and here we are."

"No brothers or sisters?"

"Nope. I'm Team Only Child."

"You're what?"

"Team Only Child...you know...you put 'team' in front of something... It's an internet thing."

"Oh," Kendall said. He quietly accepted that he had absolutely no idea what Logan was talking about. "So, it's just you?"

"Yep. I don't mind it one bit, either. Sometimes I used to get lonely, but now I'm more than okay with being an only child. I like the privacy, I like the peace and quiet. And my parents can afford to help me pay for college, too."

"Oh, that's right! You said somethin' 'bout plannin' to be a doctor."

"Yep. I got two more years to go before I get my degree in biology, and then I'll be ready for the real deal - med school."

"That's great," Kendall congratulated. "I wish I had a future like that."

"It's actually part of the reason why I'm ready to go back to Dallas," Logan explained, seemingly ignoring the last little piece Kendall said. "I can get back and get started on finishing up this first degree."

"Yeah," Kendall nodded. "You probably got a lotta friends you're wantin' to see, too."

"Eh..." Logan blushed. "Friends don't really mean much nowadays, it seems..." Friends like to fuck around too much. Especially with your boyfriend. Especially behind your back.

Kendall could feel his next question coming naturally, but he hesitated to even ask. This would make or beak any fantasies he had of this cute, good-looking, nice-dressing, smart, cultured gentleman ever thinking of him in a warm way. What could I possibly offer him, anyway? His life is all set.

"A guy like you...you must have somebody special waitin' for you...huh?"

Logan's forehead got hot all of a sudden. A guy like me? What does he mean by that? He struggled to come up with a good answer to Kendall's question. "No," he said, and it was the god honest truth. "No one's waiting for me."

There was a lull in the conversation. No flashes being shot anywhere, but just a quiet moment where both reflected on the direction Kendall had steered their conversation in.

Logan wondered...should he go there? Should he honestly go there? "There was someone," he said, "but that's pretty much over with."

"Oh?"

"Yeah...it's a long story, too, and unfortunately, I'm not as brave as you in telling long stories." Should he really, really go there? Did he trust this guy, still a perfect stranger, enough to be completely honest? Did he even owe this guy honesty? He decided he didn't. "To sum it up, I wanted something...and I thought she wanted it, too. But she said she was confused...and so I ended it."

"Good for you," Kendall said, though it kinda stung to hear that dreaded pronoun "she" so much. Well, that's the end of that.

"Yeah. It was hard at first, but sometimes you just have to accept that not everything's meant to work out, right?"

"Yeah," Kendall agreed. "Absolutely." Like this?

"I mean, I still have her number in my phone," Logan admitted, "and I still have 'my love' in parenthesis behind hi-her name. You know, it's one of those little things that you think means absolutely nothing, but it turns out it means everything." He tried to keep himself in check, though, because even though he felt he'd successfully played this "she" charade, he didn't want to get too soft or too mushy or too "gay."

"I know the feeling," Kendall said, but the only feeling he felt now was failure...defeat. "I've had my fair share of girls who broke my heart. And the other way around." He flashed an impish grin.

"Ha..." Logan let trail.

An awkward silence fell upon the two of them, but it was accompanied by yet another flash, only this one wasn't as much of a flash as much as it was a long, painful realization. Logan still had "her" number in his phone. Kendall had had his fair share of "girls." Both silently thought, I guess we'll just be friends, then.

"This is weird," Kendall commented. "I ain't had a conversation this deep with anybody in a long time."

Logan kinda scoffed. This is deep? "I thought you said you have some friends from work?"

"Yeah, but those guys...ha, to them, talkin' 'bout who they're sleepin' with is deep. They think tryin' to figure out how to make their own beer is deep! We don't really talk about...you know, feelin's and stuff like that."

They both laughed, and Logan could see that there was something different about Kendall that could set him apart from the humdrum town around him. He's sweet. Straight, but sweet. He'll help make the summer go by.

"Well," Logan said, "if you ever want to talk about something deep, I'm game. If I couldn't be a surgeon, I'd settle for being a psychologist."

"Still a doctor," Kendall laughed.

Soon, the chicken was done, and the aroma enveloped the room. "Shit, that smells good!" Kendall called out when Logan opened the oven. He bit his lip, though, disappointed with himself for sounding like such an unsophisticated hick.

"Better than 'Good, that smells like shit!'" Logan called back, and Kendall forgave himself just a little.

They set the chicken on the stove to cool, and Logan instinctively washed his hands again, but the sound of the faucet instigated a rumble in his bladder. "Hey, where the bathroom?" he asked. "I've been drinking Arnold Palmers with my grandmother all day, and I guess it's finally catching up with me."

"It's gonna be down the hall at the end, last door on your left."

While Logan went to relieve himself, Kendall admired the chicken. There was something special about it...the fact that they'd made it together. Sure, he'd only watched, but Logan had made it for him, and that was enough to make it special. An idea popped into his head - he knew how to throw together a salad. He'd have it started and surprise Logan with it when he came back from the bathroom.

He went to the fridge and got out all of the usual salad components. Lettuce, cucumber, tomato, eggs for boiling, etc. Just as he was about to hack off a good chunk of lettuce, though, a vibration on the kitchen table scared him shitless. It was Logan's phone, left there earlier, but Kendall was so used to being alone that he automatically went to grab it, thinking it was his.

New Text Message
from Ethan (my love)
"please call me baby i miss u"

Oh, it's his phone, not mine, Kendall thought first, and he put the phone down, but when he went back to the lettuce, he narrowed his eyes like he'd just discovered a long-held secret.

"My love?" But...I don't know any girls named Ethan!

He was about to go back and look at it again, but he heard the bathroom door close and Logan's footsteps coming through the hall. Instead, he just played it as it went. He started chopping the lettuce, trying to digest the fact that Logan had lied to him - "she" was really a "he." This means he goes the other way after all, right? But he was too confused and blindsided to say anything about it.

"You definitely keep the bathroom clean," Logan said as he dried his hands with a paper towel. "It's spotless!"

"Yeah," Kendall said, his back to his guest. Wow, he kept thinking.

"Oh wow," he could hear Logan say, "I didn't realize I got a text."

"You did?" Kendall asked, bravely looking over his shoulder. "I didn't hear it."

"It's on vibrate," Logan said quietly as he read the contents of the message. His whole mood changed instantly, and Kendall could sense it. "Uh...yeah...it's actually from my parents."

Kendall's heart sank as his hand almost got too weak to hold the knife.

"Is it?" he asked in a deep voice, trying to sound like a man who wasn't bothered.

"Yeah...uh...they need me to help with grandma. They don't really know a lot about her medicines like I do, so...yeah..."

"Well, um..." Kendall said, very slowly and meticulously cutting the lettuce. "If you need to go, you should go." He never turned back to face Logan.

Logan looked up at his back, and he could almost tell that Kendall knew he was bullshitting, but how could he? Wouldn't he say something he knew the truth? "I...yeah...I think that might be the best thing for me to do."

He's probably got some trashy girl on speed dial anyway. He'll be fine.

"The chicken's done, just let it cool. You look like you already know what you're doing with the salad, so...that's that. I guess you can take my part of it and save it for another day or something. Just make sure you put it in an air-tight container." He was tossing all of these words out, but there were really meaningless.

"Sure thing," Kendall said, not wanting to be a burden. "You better get goin' before somethin' happens."

"Yeah..."

But Logan didn't leave immediately. He just stood there and watched Kendall chop...waiting, he guessed, for Kendall to turn around and give him a proper goodbye, but it never came.

"See ya," Logan offered as some kind of consolation prize.

He grabbed his keys from the hook and went out the front door, leaving Kendall to chop...chop...chop.

Outside, Logan looked at the text message again. Nice to hear from you after three months. But he wasn't mad...on the contrary, he was excited. He went down his contact list and chose "Ethan (my love)" to call. You're gonna have to do a lot of apologizing if you think you're gonna get me back, Ethan Collier. But you might get lucky.

As he got into his car and waited for Ethan to pick up, a pang of guilt pricked him. Okay, why am I leaving? Why did I lie to this guy and leave? I never truly thought it'd be anything more than just a friendship, so why am I ditching him now? He looked at the kitchen window, and he once again found comfort in the strong belief that Kendall was some kind of incognito playboy who was already inviting some random girl over. He will be fine!

Ethan didn't answer, so Logan left a voicemail. "Hey, Ethan...it's Logan. I'm just calling to say I got your message. Uh...you know I prefer to talk rather than text, so call me when you can? I, um...I miss you. So talk to you soon. Bye."

He hung up the phone and backed out of the driveway. Once he was on the road and ready to speed away, he looked one more time at Kendall's lonely trailer. Well, he probably won't be too lonely for long. But then...one-by-one, every light in the trailer that was visible from the road was being turned off...until the home was engulfed in complete darkness. Logan pretended he didn't see this as he drove away into the setting sun.

NOTE: Poor Kendall, right? Before anything can even start, his poor little heart is broken. But how easy will it be for him to walk away from what seems to be a once in a lifetime opportunity? And Logan...sometimes the sure thing isn't the best thing.