Nights in White Satin

[ChrisGibson]

Will Russell and Ralph be a couple? Will Bill quit being a dick? Will Lynn get over Bill's dicl? Will Anigel get her cigarette back? Is Gilead ever going to get those roses? Tune in tomorrow and see.

 

[ChrisGibson]

And Nehru was singing:

And if you see me walking by
head turned up into the sky
don’t come to me,
you know why
you know I’m over you

and if my head seems in a cloud
it’s cause you are not allowed
the devil’s in the details
the devil’s in you and
you
are not
coming in!


“You all sound great tonight,” Anigel said, inhaling a Marlboro. “It’s like a new sound. It is new,” she declared, pushing a hand through her black hair.
“We’re doing Brad New Songs tonight,” said Nehru.
“Brad New?”
“Like Brand, but Brad because Brad wrote them. He wrote this for me and we practiced it together before the band saw it.”
“So you all are serious?” Cody said, bumming one of Anigel’s cigarette’s and lighting his off of her’s. “About the whole album thing?”
Nehru nodded.
“Cool,” Cody’s dark eyes smoldered, and a sullen trail of smoke snaked out of his mouth. “I’m trying to get this radio job in East Sequoya. If I do, I’ll play you guys.”
“Can you do stuff like that?” Anigel asked.
“It’s not a real radio station,” said Cody. “It’s one of those free stations. I forget what you call ‘em. No playlists.” He grinned ruefully. “No real pay check either.”
“You gotta do it for the love,” Rob said.
“Or what is there?” Cody agreed.
Under the table, Nehru;s hand found Cody’s knee. It went up and squeezed him slowly between his legs. His eyes lit just a flicker and turned to Nehru.
“There are other rewards,” Nehru said.
Shane was adjusting the music on his keyboard and he came down to receive Jill’s kiss.
“How much do you love me?” Jill demanded.
“Uh, oh,” Cody said, looking at Nehru with laughing eyes.
“Uh, oh, what?” Shane said.
“She’s gonna ask you for something,” Cody said, and Jill just scowled.


“Um,” Anigel commented, “You’re going to meet the mama.”
“I’ve already met her,” Shane said.
“But dinner...”
“Last time she told me I had a nice ass. I can only imagine what she’ll fit into a whole evening.”
“Oh, God, me too,” Jill said burying her face in her hands. “Say, Ani, can you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Do you think you could come over on Saturday too?”
Anigel stared at her.
“You know, make it a sort of party?”
Anigel shrugged and said, “I don’t know if that’s what your mother wanted... but I guess I can be a friend. Nehru can come too... We’ll tell him as soon as he finishes his man to man talk with Bradley.”




“I miss you!”
“I miss you too,” Nehru said. They were in the men’s room and Nehru thought it smelled like urinal cakes and wished to be someplace else.
“Things have changed though.
“Yeah, I’m gonna be a dad.”
Nehru said to his friend, “You’re gonna get married, aren’t you?”
Brad stopped and cocked his head.
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“You don’t have to look so miserable about it.”
“But I am miserable about it.”
“Well, then…. Do something else.”
“Do what?” Brad said. “Do what because we were going to to be together and you were the one who told me that I needed to be with her.”
“Marissa.”
“Yes, Marissa. You sent me back twice. So… what am I supposed to do.”
“I don’t know,” Nehru said. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s what you should have done. When did you know you loved me.”
“That day. The day here. On that stage.”
“The day you slept with Marissa for the time.”
“Yes.”
“And when did you know you weren’t really in love with her?”
When Brad said nothing, Nehru answered for him.
“The same day.”
And Brad echoed:
“The same day.”
“But it didn’t stop you from fucking her. And it didn’t stop you from doing it enough to get her knocked up.”
Nehru turned away and Brad said, “Nehru, that’s a lie.”
Prepared to be offended,” Nehru began, “What’s a lie?”
“That I knew that day. At the piano. This summer. I think I’ve always known I wanted to be with you.”
Nehru’s face changed.
“So…. During that whole business with Debbie Baynes? Stupid Debbie? You know?”
“Yeah,” Brad said. “On one level.”
Nehru took a very deep breath, then he shook his head.
“Well, shit,” he said, “then I really can’t have this discussion right now.”
“Then when?” Brad asked as Nehru opened the bathroom door.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know,” Nehru said. “Figure it out.”




“I need you to leave him alone,” Rob said.
Brad blinked at him.
“What?”
At the table where there was no one but them for the moment, Rob repeated, “I need you to leave Nehru the fuck alone. You’ve put him through enough.”
“Who are you?” Brad began, “to tell me what to do?”
“I’m what you were supposed to be,” Rob said, reaching for his cigarettes.
“I’m a friend, and probably the only one who knows what’s been going on and how much you’ve put him through so let him find someone else and be happy.”
“Are you fucking him?”
Rob looked at Brad, disgusted.
Rob was boy band sexy in a snug, watery pink silk shirt with rings on every finger, and his blond hair was spiked and frosted. He had come in that night in a puffy, hooded fur coat and it was easy to not take someone who looked like that seriously. But despite the question Brad had just asked, this was Chayne Kandzierski’s boyfriend, and he saw in the hard look in Rob’s face, the same strength as Chayne’s. The clothes, the hair, was an act. This was real.
“You’re right,” Brad said, looking away, looking, in fact, to Nehru who was in the corner talking to Cody.
“You’re right.”



He is the fall of heavy fur like the pelt of a bear as he comes in. He is the jingle of bracelets as he pushes open the door and closes it behind him. He is pink silk shirt and distress jeans slipping off. Boy Jockey’s on his beautiful white boy body. He is slipping under the covers like an eel, like a love fish.
“You’re back,” Chayne murmurs. “I thought you’d be gone longer.”
Rob ignores this, traces the line between breast to stomach with his tongue.
“You just bathed. You smell so clean. You smell like babies in bathwater,” Rob murmurs. “I’m gonna make love to you.”
Chayne is not nearly old enough to be over desire. He thought he’s sleep till midnight, get up and work and Rob would come in. He didn’t know before midnight Rob would wake him with kisses, with his tongue, with expert hands, pushing the thick comforter away. He didn’t know how hard and ready Rob would make him. No one did this to him but Rob who was making him laugh. They were laughing and kissing, touching tongues like serpents, lips pressing together.
Mouth to cock and down the devil’s road to oh my god, Chayne closes his eyes and grips the pillow wile Rob’s tongue darts inside him, while Rob’s hands knead his back. Now they lay together, back to front, like snakes writing, now Chayne’s fingers run along Rob’s sides, delight his nipples massage his groin, stroke the penis into deeper life. Now his mouth does what hands do. Now the room is filled with the low sounds of love.
The back of Rob’s hand along his shoulder, down Chayne’s arm. His penis, bobbing in the night, arched and solid.
“Baby, baby, baby,” Rob murmurs like a soul singer from the time when people still remembered how to love. “Tell me what you you want, show me.”
Chayne has spent his life saying the same thing, being with so many men who barely knew how how to give or take pleasure. In such a fluid move, he takes Rob inside of him and now they move like a merry go round, up and down, up and down, Rob’s hands massaging his shoulders, Rob’s mouth, like his own, open in the pleasure of the fuck, eyes close in the bliss of the fuck.
“This is for you,” Rob murmurs as he presses inside of Chayne, “This is for you.”


When Nehru came, he came like an oil derrick, pumping up and down, his legs wrapped about Cody’s waist. In the small room on Colum Street, amidst discarded clothes and piles of books Cody had sat on the old chair, and then Nehru had sat on him, and in silence they pumped up and down, Nehru running his hands through Cody’s hair, smelling his patchouli cologne, and kissing him deeply. When Nehru came it was in a honey spurt between the walls of his stomach and Cody’s. Cody gave a cry and lifted Nehru, and Nehru could still fill the bruise of his thick cock when it was before them both, shooting clear arcs before them, Cody trembling, almost laughing, Nehru trembling and actually laughing from his unsteady perch on Cody’s lap.
It was when they had wiped down and lay side by side, the light of the room orange from the orange shirt tossed over the lamp, that Cody said, “You know…. If you went back to Brad, I would understand. I mean, I know what this is.”
“It’s love,” Nehru said, stretching comfortably.
Cody looked reflective.
“You can have all sorts of love,” Cody said. “People are so afraid. I mean, you can love someone you’re making love to. You can love everyone if you’re will and they’re willing. And your heart is open.”
“What about Russell?”
“Russell’s off the table.”
“But what if he weren’t?”
“Do you blame me? Am I wrong for feeling that way?” Cody asked.
“You’re never wrong for feeling,” he sighed. “And we feel so many things.”
“Whatever happens,” Cody said. “Whoever else happens… Im glad we have each other.”
“Oh, yes,” Nehru agreed, running his hand over Cody’s hip bone, looking at his dark penis, the darker scrotum, the chocolate cloud of hair with tenderness, with absolute love, drawing closer to him.
“I’m so glad we have each other too.”

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! A lot was confessed and although Nehru knows how Brad feels it doesn’t seem like things will get less messy anytime soon. I am glad that Rob said what he said to Brad, I think Nehru does need to move on. Nice to see some Anigel too. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Aw yeah, I agree with everything you said, and it's always good to have a little Anigel in there. but damn, Rob was good on every level too Anyway, thanks for reading.commenting and enjoying.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Hello?” Ross Allan picked up his phone.
“Are you awake?”
“I am now.”
“Oh, Ross,” Anigel said, “Did I wake you?”
“No, no. It’s fine he said, but did not say if she had awaken him or not.
“What’s going on?”
“I had a dream,” Anigel started, and then she corrected herself.
“Well, no I did not. That’s the thing. I did not have a dream.”
“Not quite a speech to give in front of Lincoln’s Memorial, but—“”
“the Virgin Mary appeared to me.”
“The fuck.”
“The—Virgin—Mary showed up in my room last night. And she smoked one of my cigarettes. I mean, it lit up and she smoked it and when she puffed smoke came out, but when she was done with it, it was…. Untouched.”
“Like the Burning Bush?”
“Oh, my God, yes!”
“Shit.”
“Ross, am I crazy?”
“Yes,” he said. “But not for this.”
It had never occurred to Ross to dismiss his friend. Anigel had said she was an atheist and meant. When she was more agnostic she admitted that too. She was not into grand declarations, and she was not given over to fancy. She knew if she was asleep or if she was awake. She wasn’t delusional. All the dumb things people would say to make the world smaller never occurred to Ross Allan.
“I heard,” he began, “that Cousin Chayne and Cousin Terrence and a bunch of other folks stole a statue of Mary for shits and kicks, and then someone they broke her and when they were going to admit it. Presto and goddamn, the statue was back together again.”
Anigel kept nodding over the phone and Ross continued, “I heard that in India there was this statue of Ganesh, and everyday he is given a bowl of milk, and that people saw the trunk move. Saw the statue drink the milk. The milk disappeared. It does every day whether people see the statue drink or not. Now, you can say the milk evaporates, but milk turns into yogurt in the sun, not evaporates. You can say people are crazy and stupid and delusional. You can say what you want to make the world small. Or you can admit that the world is big.
“What did Mary say?”
And then Anigel realized why she had told her old friend.
“She said God liked me.”
“Oh.”
“She said he loved everyone because God is God. But that he liked me, was fond of me. And I was a good girl, which surprised me. And then he told me to say hello to Russell.”
“Oh.”
“And you too! I’m so stupid. You first. She said say hello to Ross and Russell.
“And then she said, pray pray pray. Cause that’s her thing.”
“Goodness,” Ross said in a breathless tone.
“Well, what the hell does it mean? It’s not like… a prophecy or anything? What does it mean?”
“Maybe it means what it says,” Ross said. “Maybe it means heaven says hello and wants me and Russell and you, most certainly, to not take it for granted.”
Anigel sat in her room on curtain street, twisting the phone around her fingers.
“Do you think that’s all it means?”
“Really?” For the first time Ross did sound like his friend was an idiot, “Don’t you think that’s more than enough?”


Anigel couldn’t stay on Curtain Street. When she was dressing to go she told Chayne.
“This is home, but it’s not home to my thoughts. Does that make sense? There’s something happening to me ,and I need to go back to where it first happened.”
“That makes perfect sense,” he said.
She drove all the way across town, passed through the Breckinridge, went south down Market until she reached downtown. The more she drove the more familiar things became. The more she was like herself. When she reached downtown and Brigham Street and crossed over the wide river into Little Poland, the bungalows and the upright, clapboard two and three story apartments welcomed her back. The little shops and bars surrounding Saint Celestine’s took her back to being a teenager just moved in with her sister and she came into the shop on Nassau where her brother in law was at the tiller.
“Hey, Ani.”
“You need help.”
“I’m good, the handsome little man said. “Caroline’s upstairs with the kids.”
“Oh,” Anigel said, “She could probably use help then.”
She was glad to see her sister, but she didn’t talk to her about how she felt. Caroline wasn’t that kind of person. If she said, “There’s something different about you,” while Anigel changed diapers, Anigel just shrugged and said, “It’s almost Christmas. It’s a beautiful day.”
She understood now that almost four years ago, in this house, she had been given the almost mystic sense that there was no God, or at least that the God she had been taught to believe in was a fiction. She had not grown up in this neighborhood all the time, but she could hear the bells of Saint Celestine, and it had been where she’d gone to school. On a Sunday in Spring, on Palm Sunday she had felt all of her belief shedding away and rather than being frightened, she had been free.
Now, dawning in her was the sense that there was something else, something that was hers, calling to her, wanting to be known. The appearance had been so ridiculous Anigel was convinced it was just that, appearance. She did not think the Virgin had come to tell her that Catholicism was absolute reality. She thought that, had she been a Hindu, it would have been Lakshmi or Kali, and that the Lady had appeared in the guise of the religion she had always known, not to tell her that this religion was reality, but rather to tell her that there was, indeed, a reality, that the world was not empty of God, but full with Him. Him? Ridiculous pronoun. Maybe Her, or Them. Maybe a word not invented. But the world was throbbing with wonder, and as she sat with her sister who, not feeling that wonder, settled for belief, Anigel throbbed with it.


When Ralph and Russell arrived, Anigel was full of joy because they should have been together, because things were right between them, She wanted to throw her arms around them, so she did.
“Well!” Russell said as Anigel released him.
“What’s going on, Ani?” Ralph asked.
She took a deep breath and clasped her hands together.


“So the Virgin Mary spoke to you?” Russell said when he and Ralph turned up at Balusik’s.
“I know it sounds strange,” she said. “It sounds....”
“Like you’re cracked.”
They both took out Marlboros.
“You think I’m cracked now?”
“No,” Russell clarified. “I said it sounds like you’re cracked.”
“She even left that one cigarette out of the pack.”
“Can I see it later on?”
Anigel nodded. “I hid it. It’s nothing special, looks just like a cigarette. You can see it, but you can’t smoke it. It’s sort of a relic.”
Russell laughed. Anigel was about to say, “What’s so funny?” But then, this just proved that everything was.
“You know,” said Russell. “I might not even know you if I hadn’t put that cigarette in the statue’s hand back in school. So... maybe she’s trying to tell us something.”
“Oh,” Anigel suddenly remembered, slapping the table multiple times with her hand. “And she said hi.”
“To me?”
Anigel nodded.
“Ain’t that something,” said Russell.
“And to Ross too. She also said pray, pray, pray. I think she has to. It’s in the contract or something.”
They were both quiet for a few moments and then Russell said, “So the Virgin Mary is Black.”
“Well, she was when she came to me. It’s kind of a relief.”
Russell nodded his head.
“I agree.”


MORE NEXT WEEK!

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to have an Anigel centric portion! Her vision if the Virgin Mary has certainly sparked a change in her and a conversation with the others. I look forward to seeing what else changes with her. Excellent writing and I look forward to more next week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

WHILE SOME NEW LOVE IS FOUND, OTHER LOVE IS TESTED, AND THE DWYER FAMILY MOVES CLOSER TO A BREAKING POINT...


Dena Dwyer did something she hadn’t done in a long while. She drove down to Lake Chicktaw. This place reminded her of Idlewile. At least a little. She’d hated this town so much when she had first come here with Bill and the only saving grace had been her brother and Lee. Maybe this lake. She used to come here and cry when Cameron and Niall were very small. Sometimes she would sit blankly and stare at the water and wonder what had become of her life. Sometimes she would wonder if she had—long ago—ever actually wanted something. Sometimes she would want to die. And sometimes she would understand that looking into the water and being tempted to sink and sink and sink like Ophelia was probably a sign that things needed so change. Sometimes she would think this.
Sometime like now.




“Roses,” Mark said over the phone.
“Flowers, actually. She said flowers.”
He was half lying, half sitting in the little window seat of his room, the phone cord tangled up in his hand laughing.
“Come courting,” he repeated. “That’s a bit much. Does your mom think I’m a bit much?”
“I think you’ve been a bit much for a while,” Gilead said from his bed.
And then he said, “But why is that a bit much?”
“What?”
“Flowers. You said all this good stuff the other night and held my hand and whaddo you want?”
“I thought you knew what I wanted.”
“You better say it, Mark Young.”
“Well, if you’re gonna be that way about,” Mark sounded to Gilead like Jimmy Stewart arguing in an old movie. Was he Barbara Stanwyck? He hoped not.
“I want you to be my guy. There, I said it.” Mark sat up, he had crossed his feet under him.
“Well, then when I make a joke about you doing some kind of extraordinary gesture, the thing you’re supposed to say is, no Gil, nothing’s too much for you.”
“Alright!” Mark said. “Alright.”
“I’m a Wynn. We don’t put up with less.”


THERE WAS NO CLINIC IN Geschichte Falls. They’d almost had one but that had not been allowed. Niall, full of a marvelous silence quit school at a little after nine o’clock, right after Jeff Cordino’s geography class. He went out the back,and around the pool, always thinking each window of the school was an eye staring at him, that a teacher would open one up and shout for him to come back inside.
He rounded the school and walked up Lincoln Street to catch the Number 10. The ride seemed like forever. At Main Street he hopped the Number 5 which took him to Rosary, and as he got off the bus he wondered if he couldn’t have walked and got here just as quick. Sonia had said to be early so that she wouldn’t have to wait out in the lobby too long. One of the nuns might call her back in then.
Niall entered the terrazzo floored lobby of Mary Queen of the Rosary High School. In the middle of the floor, sympathetic to any plight but his own there stood a statue of of the Mother of God with a rosary held out in her open hands, and as Niall contemplated it, he heard the staccato of heels and Sonia came out with her backpack over her shoulder in her knee high navy socks and green plaid jumper.
She was white as a sheet and a little wet, and her vocie was overly excited.
“We’ll go to the corner of Nassau and catch the 5 back to Main,” she said. “We don’t want anyone seeing us standing out in front of the school.”
Niall nodded. They linked clammy hands, in plaid skirts and dress pants and jackets, book bags over their shoulders, faces in a daze. They looked like refugees from Catholic land. By something that could not appropriately be called grace, the bus back to Main arrived at the corner as soon as they did. They rode the bus over potholes in a rumbling silence and at Main caught the Number 3 which took them across the river into East Sequoya. That whole winter day was so beautiful, and crossing the river Niall could see how wide and blue it was, how it glistened under the sun like golden and sapphire scales. How many times before, on beautiful days like this, had people like him been doing ugly things, he wondered, like he was about to do?
The bus touched ground again on the other side of the river. They were not in East Sequoya yet, but in Little Poland, the South end of Geschichte Falls. As they passed the old bungalows and wound themselves about the massive structure of Saint Celestine’s, Niall looked at Sonia.
She was looking at nothing.

Cameron was on her way to calculus when she got summoned to the principal’s office over the PA system. Sister Fredricka told her, “It’s your brother. He says only you will do.”
Cameron nodded with a mix of relief and fear and took the phone on Sister’s desk.
“Niall?”
“Cameron, I need you to come and get me.”
“Where are you?”
There was silence as if Niall had forgotten where he was, and then he said, “In East Sequoya. We’re at… It’s a care facility.”
“A care facility?
“Like… a Planned Parenthood or something.
“We—” Cameron started, then said, “Sonia?”
“Yeah. Could you—”
“I’ll be there right away,” Cameron hung up the phone.
“Sister, I gotta go.”
Sister Fredricka didn’t even ask why, she just nodded and let the girl walk out of the office and down the hall to the parking lot behind the school. Cameron was like a robot. She was numb and tingly, and her face felt dry. She was trying to push away all thought from her mind. She resolved just to pay attention to walking very quickly down the hall and, out the door, through the parking lot to the car. To getting in the car, driving, looking around, obeying signals, staying in the right direction. It did not occur to her until she was across the bridge and into Little Poland that she didn’t know where the Planned Parenthood or the place that “like Planned Parenthood” was.
Cameron pulled over on Brigham Street at the first phone booth she saw. The day was windy and kept whipping her yellow hair in her face. She shut the door of the telephone booth and looked through the Yellow Pages. It was on the corner of Luckey and Brigham, which was good because this was the only street she knew. So she kept driving down Brigham, hoping she hadn’t passed Luckey before she’d come to the phone booth. Even when she found it, especially when she found it, Cameron Dwyer could only parallel park and not think too much. She went into the place that had always terrified her and asked for Niall Dwyer and Sonia Cormorant. she could not believe she remembered the little bitch’s name.
“I’m not sure we can give that—” started the woman as the desk, and Cameron walked right past her. Before she could make a scene doors came open. Niall came out and he said, “Thank God you’re here. We took the bus here, but we didn’t know how weak she’d be af—”
“Get in the car,” Cameron said quietly. She spoke very slowly. “Get her first and then come to the car. I will be outside.”
The ride back to Geshichte Falls was silent. Niall sat in the back with a pale Sonia. Cameron’s ability to remain numb was fading.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
Sonia mumbled the address. Cameron had never known it was just the block behind them and three blocks down.
Cameron drove to Keyworthy and told Niall to walk Sonia in and be back in five minutes. He was back in about three, Cameron estimated. He sat beside her.
“Thanks,” he mumbled.
Cameron said nothing. She only drove back to 1733 Breckinridge Avenue.

Patti Lewis opened the side door and said, “Good evening,. Cameron. Staying for dinner?”
Cameron nodded and then remembered herself.
“If it’s alright?”
“Of course it’s all right. I’ll just set another place. Thom should be home in a few minutes. Is your father driving or you uncle. I can’t remember.”
“Uncle Dave,” said Cameron. “Dad had to go to his health spa tonight.”
Patti stopped her eyebrow from rising. In the tone of the girl’s voice she discovered that Cameron, in fact, did not believe in the health spa anymore than she did.
She called up the stairs, “Russell! Cameron’s here!”
After that she said, “Why don’t you just go up and meet him. He probably didn’t even hear me.”
Halfway up the back stairs, in the dimness of the unlit hallway at five-thirty in the evening, Cameron bumped into Russell coming down the stairs.
“Cam!:” he said, “Come on up.”
Upstairs in his room, the west light let him see her.
“My God, you look like death. What happened to you?” he demanded, shutting the door.
And Cameron Dwyer sat on his bed and burst into tears.

WE'LL HAVE MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

Poor Dena. I feel so sorry for her and I hope that she can make a change in her life. So Sonia had an abortion. It looks like it is affecting a lot more people then maybe she thought it would. I am glad Cameron was there for Niall even though it clearly wasn’t an easy thing to go through. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

The Dwyers have certainly reached a dark point and Dena really does need a change. Right now it seems like they all do. And everyone is off on their way toa vacation together. What good can come of that? Well, we'll see.

 

[ChrisGibson]

AS WE RETURN TO GESHICHTE FALLS, ANIGEL TAKES A PHONE CALL AND NEHRU MAKES TAKES MORE THAN THAT


“But like… you are coming home for Christmas?”
“Eventually,” Ross said. “After a few days. I mean, I plan on being home by Christmas.”
“But before that…”
“A convent,” he said. “I’m on my way. I’m just going to hang out there and get my mind back. They got a little hermitage and everything.”
“That’s so weird. You’re so weird.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Ross said to Anigel, “But the Virgin Mary just showed up in your house and smoked not smoked one of your cigarettes, so you haven’t left much room to talk—”
“True.”
“And I was asking because I thought that maybe you might want to go to.”
“To a convent? With nuns?”
“And monks. It’s what they call a double monastery.”
“Well, that shit makes me double nervous.”
“You wouldn’t be hanging out with them. You’d be hanging out with yourself. Getting a break from things. Catching your breath.”
“I don’t know,” Anigel said, shaking her head.
“Well, know by Saturday, because that’s when I’m stopping through town on my way there.”
Ross put down the phone and looked up to see Flip Sanders, black hair in his face, hands jammed in his pockets, leaning against the door sill.
“You’re going to Geshichte Falls?”
“I am,” Ross said.
“You gonna see Russell?”
“Probably not.”
Ross made it his business to not ask to many questions, especially since he knew Flipper had gone back to sleeping with Andy Lagger. His turning back to his own business and not looking at Flipper was so complete he was surprised when Flipper, still present, made a noise and scratched the back of his head.
“You could call him, you know?”
Flipper stood up straight.
“Would that be appropriate?”
“It would be as appropriate as sleeping with him,” Ross said.
“What?”
“Goodnight,” Ross said, and closed the door.


























He felt it when he came in the house. When Bill pulled into the parking lot and then walked up to the kitchen door, opened it and slid inside the house he could feel the sadness. He couldn’t sleep beside Dena tonight. And he knew he wasn’t wanted anyway. It was only nine o’clock on a Friday night, but all the lights in the house were out except for in the kitchen.
Bill went upstairs to get blankets and a pillow from the cedar smelling linen closet. As he tiptoed back down to the den, flicked the television on and made a pallet for himself to its blue-grey light, his eyes welled up and his heart felt very heavy because there was just no denying how sad this house was. He hoped that maybe by some magic—he had forfeited the right to pray for a miracle—something might happen tomorrow in Idlewile to change everything.



It was getting on toward eleven, and the Noble Red was winding down. As the members of Chilli Comet Sunday were packing away their equipment, and Hale was talking to Brad, Nehru saw the snow beginning to fall. They hadn’t had the big snow just yet, and Nehru reflected that they never realy did until after Christmas. Half furtively, so casually that anyone who saw would not have seen, Cody squeezed Nehru’s ass.
“Where are we off to after this?”
“I’m on vacation,” Nehru said wishing for the squeeze again, wishing for much more than a squeeze. “We can do whatever.”
But it was Brad, who had helped with drums and now was closing his guitar case, who said, “What’s everyone up to?”
Cody and Nehru looked at each other. Nehru, who knew how to say everything, did not quite know how to say that he planned to sneak off someplace with Cody, and it was Cody who said, “I guess we could hang here for a little.”
He was looking to Nehru with a question in his face and Nehru nodded and said, “Yeah. We could do that.”
His friendship with Brad hadn’t really suffered. There had been no time except for those rough few days after Brad had moved in with Marissa where he hadn’t wanted to see him, and whatever people said about whatever people called casual sex, sleeping with Cody had made him able to be with Brad again. Brad, Nehru reminded himself, was in an—if not loveless—then certainly ultimately mismatched relationship with a baby on the way, and that was nothing to be jealous about.

They were drinking beers in the half emptied hang out, and Nehru was with two of his favorite men, dark haired Cody and dark haired Brad. He’d been with both of them and he felt alright, more alright than ever before. They would probably end up closing out the bar. The staff would go home and leave them to lock up and put glasses in the dishwasher.
Now that the band was done playing, the radio did their work. Faintly, they could hear Adam Duritz singing:

“Mr. Jones and me
Tell each other fairy tales
And we stare at the beautiful women
She's looking at you
Ah, no, no, she's looking at me
Smilin' in the bright lights
Coming through in stereo
When everybody loves you
You can never be lonely…”

“Is Leon gone for good?” Nehru asked.
“It does seem like it,” Brad said.
“He just…. Was it because of Jill?”
“If it was, he deserved it,” Brad said. “You don’t tell lies about a lady.”
“Jill’s no lady,” Cody chuckled, and then he said, “Ironic, I take the place of a guy who talked shit about my sister after she exposed him. Should we go by and check on him or something?”
“Robin did,” Nehru said. “So did Hale. He just says he’s not interested anymore.”
“Quite frankly, if he isn’t interested in coming back, I can’t lie and pretend I’m that interested in him being here,” Brad said, running a finger around the bottom of his pint glass.
“I always thought he was like the yelpy pet that everyone complained about but everybody loved,” Cody said.
Nehru furrowed his brow.
“That may not be true,” he said after a moment.
When Cody lay back and yawned, stretching out his tee shirt over his well made chest, Nehru thought it was time do something and said, “Well, maybe we should call it a night.”
He leaned in to hug Brad and said, “Give Marissa my love.”
But instead of Brad giving the pat and expected: alright, a strange look came over his face, and Nehru said: “What?”
Brad seemed to be thinking something over, and then he said, “We’re not together anymore.”
Brad said, “We’re not going to be together.”
It was Cody who said, “What?”
Nehru said nothing.
“When did it happen?” Cody said. Then he added in a quieter voice, “If I may ask.”
“A few days ago.”
“A few days ago!” Nehru exclaimed. “And you didn’t say anything?”
“And I still wasn’t,” Brad said, “going to say anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Brad said. “I felt like I’d done enough, and you didn’t need to be involved in all that. You needed to do… whatever you and Cody are doing.”
Cody nakedly blinked at Brad, and Nehru tried to keep the surprise out of his voice.
“You knew?”
“Yeah. And Rob sort of insinuated it.”
Nehru was about to say something along the lines of “goddamn Rob,” but couldn’t really understand why he’d say that, or why he’d feel caught out.
“It’s just us being friends,” Cody said, rubbing Nehru’s thigh under the table.
“Yeah,” Brad’s greenish eyes were warm, turned a little golden as he looked to Nehru. “That is how it was with us.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Cody said, though his hand was still caressing Nehru’s thigh, and Nehru’s penis was becoming firm.
“Huh?”
He shook his head at Brad.
“I don’t think you were ever just being friends. Some people are like that. They’re meant.”
Neither Brad nor Nehru looked at each other after Cody had said that, and while Tori Amos sang in the background, Nehru said, “Well, what do we do now?”
“What were you guys going to do before?” Brad said.
“We were going to hang out,” Cody said. He thought of the English phrase: “Mess about.”
“Oh,” Brad said, pushing his bottom lip out.
Nehru felt as if things were happening all around him very quickly and he had no control of them. Brad got up. Cody got up. Nehru got up and Brad pushed his chair in.
“I’m gonna head out,” Brad said.
“Yeah,” Cody said. “We all should.”
“Where were we going?” Nehru asked Cody.
“Thompson Street,” Cody said, by which he meant the gas station, by which he meant that house behind the gas station, that dark and private place where they’d gone upstairs and made love only days ago.
And then Nehru said, steadily, though his brain was racing and his blood was pumping, “But Brad, what about upstairs?”
Upstairs was the apartment where he and Brad had been together. Upstairs was the apartment where Brad and Cody had been together. Nehru knew this now.
“You have the key, don’t you?” he said to Brad.
“Uh,” Brad’s voice had changed as if he was waiting for something to happen, but didn’t know what the something was.
“Yeah. Yes. I’ve got it.”
He added, “There’s beer in the fridge, too.”
Cody’s face changed. He was the last to catch on.
“Will you show us?” he said, his voice low.
“Yes,” said Brad.
The Noble Red was empty now, and the snow had ceased so Kirkland Street was all blue black night. Brad led them through the hallway that went past the bathrooms and alongside the kitchen where they could hear the last of the dishes being washed. They were outside in the cold at the nearly empty parking lot, and then going up the back stair, and now Brad Long was on the back porch and unlocking the door, and they were in the apartment that had once smelled musty, but after all the recent use, smelled something like a home, had the remnants of cigarette smoke and the smoke of Black and Milds, the green and sagey pungent memories of marijuana.
Brad knew this place. It was his secret place like Thompson Street was Cody’s. He went into the kitchen and brought out beers and Cody took out of his pocket marijuana. They were drinking and Brad was rolling joints, better at it than Cody. Now and again Nehru got up, and first he turned the radio on, and he started at jazz, but found a tonal music, like a throbbing heart beat, and he was going to turn on more lamps, but he turned on the fairy lights Brad had strung up. They were the remnants of what was used downstairs and they twinkled in low amber lines all about the room.

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel
and kiss the ground”:

Cody said.

That was beautiful, Nehru thought, but also thought it silly to say so.
Brad said,

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel
and kiss the ground.”

Nehru did not ask whom they were quoting. He assumed it was Rumi, and thought asking would take them out of their mood. Cody reached into his jacket pocket and put two bottles of poppers on the table before them. Plainly, he reached behind him and took out a bottle of lubricant. Nehru felt like a high priest who must get this ritual right. All of the desire that had built up in him since earlier tonight compelled him. Knowing there was a moment and knowing what was the ruin of that moment compelled him. He kissed Cody quickly, kissed him long and deep and could almost hear Brad’s whimper of desire. But Nehru desired Cody right now, and the strength of his kiss and the feel of his hair, and now Cody was lifting up his tee shirt and Nehru pulled it off running his hands up and down Cody Barnard’s body, inhaling the pungent scent of patchouli, bergamot and young man. He pressed his face to Cody’s chest, inhaled deeply. Remembered what he was about. Best not to lose the thread of this magic.
He turned around, and Brad was standing up, and his face was lost in shadow so Nehru could not see his expression, only the fullness of his lips and his black soul patch, the mutton chop side burns lining the plains of his face. Cody had lain out the poppers and lube on the table to plainly state what would happen and Nehru unbuttoned Brad’s jeans and then unzipped them and took out his heavy penis, With care, gently now, he began to massage it from half life to full life, watching it rise like a long arc. As if polishing a precious instrument, with the lube he rubbed and stroked Brad, watching the veins rise up on the shaft of his penis, watching the head swell. Because he loved him, because he desired him, he took him in his mouth. Because he loved him more than he knew, he stayed there. Nehru felt Cody’s hair brushing his shoulders, felt Cody’s mouth on his throat, on his back, felt Cody’s arms embracing him, heard Brad’s jeans dropping. They remained like this before Brad stepped out of his jeans, lifting up his tee shirt with a groan, and they watched him, tall, black hair sticking up, penis like a bobbing arch, move to the bed where they followed. They followed, Nehru considered, while Cody took up the poppers and the lube, and they moved the long short distance in the midst of low throbbing music and low amber stars. But he knew he led.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Brad, Cody and Nehru together I did not expect that! And Brad and Marissa are done, I saw that coming. I hope Flipper gets in contact with Russell. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

He wanted to see this, was sure he’d never see it again. He didn’t know what he was doing, what he was allowing what he was, in fact, instigating, or how they would feel in the morning. In the old chair that was covered by a bed sheet, Nehru watched, Brad, semi on hands and knees, fucking Cody, watched the undulation of his beautiful, hairy buttocks, the pulsing opening and closing of his thighs as he rode Cody, listened to Cody’s cries and Brad’s low satisfied moans. He wanted to see what Brad looked like when he was fucking another man, when he was fucking him, something that, of course, he could before only feel. They were in a place away from time where no one was ashamed, where Nehru could stand up and run his hands over Brad’s ass, caress him, run fingers up the small of his back, rub his shoulders, kiss this man over and over on his dear shoulders. He came around to the front of them no longer able to remember the awkward Catholic school boy who could never take his clothes off in gym class. Brad’s face was indistinct with sated lust, Cody’s eyes were rolled back while Brad stuffed him, and suddenly Nehru leaned in and took Brad’s head and they kissed and Brad’s tongue went deep into his and the harder he kissed Nehru, the harder he fucked Cody, and then Cody gripped the pillow and moaned deep as the earth.
Nehru stood up straight and parted from Brad’s mouth the same time he inserted his penis in Cody’s…

They were outside of time, and outside of all things. Nehru remembered Cody beginning the poem and Brad continuing it. It was Rumi. In a flash he remembered the other lines from that same poem.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.

He lay between these two beautiful men, dark and slightly hairy with Mediterranean blood in the their olive bodies, Cody holding him, kissing him up and down lazily, Brad sucking on his lips, thrusting his tongue in his mouth. He can still feel Cody inside of him, the gentle trusting that, after the snort of poppers became the steady pounding. They move in concert as if it is planned and as they did a while before, Nehru strokes Brad, only, in the darkness of early winter mourning, lit by amber light, now Brad kneels over him as Nehru makes his cock grow. All night, but for the moment he sucked him, he has given himself mostly to Cody and let Brad and Cody have each other because to do what he is about to do is surrender, and he knows there isn’t really any turning back. Deftly, Nehru opens the lube and rubs it inside of him as he has made Brad’s cock glossy with it. Deftly he opens the popper bottle and inhales deeply, the warmth dissolves his solidity and he turns over while Brad murmurs, kissing him, “I have to fuck you.”
And then, as they both groan and Brad, groans, “I… have… to fuck you,” Brad is in him, and he is laying down and being completely penetrated, and Brad’s hands are grasping his hands and their bodies are pressed into one and Brad is throbbing in him and Cody moves away to sit in the chair to get high, to drink, to stroke himself, to watch the surrender, knowing, as the bodies of Brad and Nehru bunch together, tighter and tighter, this moment is for them. He is not displeased. He is satisfied to watch bodies jouncing on the bed, to see Brad’s long ivory body pound Nehru’s smaller caramel one and know that, even while Brad pounds, he is pounded, even while Nehru surrenders, he wins the victory. Cody is honored, watching his own penis rise higher and fuller, to be witness to it. Everything in this night has led to this moment. There is no quietness on this bed. There is cursing, shouting, sobbing, rejoicing in the creaking bedsprings. Cody is scarcely conscious of his stroking himself as someone almost screams, as bodies bunch, he comes, an arch of semen erupting from his penis, caught golden in amber party lights. As Cody is taken on the edge of orgasm, he sees Brad’s face changed, his kneeling body looking as if he’s been stabbed while he comes outside of Nehru, a steam of jutting life to match Nehru’s own arc. They are moaning together, staggering in the three part miracle, blacking out nearly. Darkness, amber lights, darkness, darkness, relief, delight… night.

The morning came as a surprise. It was a thing out of dreams. The fairy lights were off, given way to the pale sunlight rhrough the window overlooking Kirkland Street, and the apartment was warm. In another world, Nehru thought, this was his place and right now he could smell coffee brewing and he was in Brad’s arms and Brad Long was looking down at him. It felt so good, like that first night when they’d believed they were together before Marissa had told Brad her news, and Nehru looked around the room that still smelled faintly of bud, looked at the evidence of last night, poppers like squat soldiers on the little table beside the bed, the tall lube bottle
“Where is Cody?” Nehru’s voice was hollow and his mouth was dry.
“He must have left,” Brad said. “He must have left us to be together.”
Nehru could still feel Brad throbbing inside of him. He ached but liked it, ached but he needed it, thrilled to be entwined with him, felt himself rising, knew before an hour passed, before they were through coffee, the morning would see him riding Brad the way Brad had ridden him.
“We should… call him. Or… something,” Nehru said.
“I will,” Brad assured Nehru. “I will. But he understands. He’s like that. He understands.”
Nehru, turning on his back said, “It’s not right to always think people understand.”
“No, but Cody does. Just like I understand Marissa is talking to Hale now.”
“Hale? Our Hale Weathertop?”
Brad nodded.
“And just like, even if Marissa doesn’t understand how I loved you, she understands my love wasn’t enough for her.”
Nehru nodded his head. It hurt a little, but he didn’t mind. Brad climbed out of bed, and Nehru looked on his body, so long and tall and dark haired. and the darkest hair the triangle where his sex hung. Brad went into the kitchen and Nehru made his way to the bathroom. When Nehru was done, Brad held a cup of coffee out to him and they both went back to the bed.
Nehru could smell the smoke of Brad’s cigarette now.
“And now do you understand?” Brad said.
“What?” Nehru said, sipping, surprised at the goodness of the coffee, its strength and sweetness. He remembered hearing something about how a good lover always knew how to make his beloved a cup of coffee.
“That we are together now, that you are not driving me away. That this is the way it’s going to be from here on out. Do you understand that?”
“But the….”
“Do you understand that?” Brad said again.
Suddenly, the only thing Nehru wanted to do was lean up and kiss Brad’s mouth, to linger over those lips, to look forward to the sex that would happen in this bed. More than that, to sit with him and drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and make new songs forever.
“Yes,” Nehru said to Brad Long, “I do understand.”



David Armstrong was over at about seven thirty the next morning. He wore his fisherman’s cap and an outdoor man’s vest despite the weather, and Cameron thought that her uncle looked stupider than usual, but kept this judgment to herself.
“Come on guys, times awastin’. We gotta go.”
It really seemed to Cameron, as she dressed herself, that her uncle truly believed that all the answers to his problems would be discovered in Idlewile. and then, wondered Cameron, beginning to brush her teeth, what were her uncle’s problems anyway?
Uncle David had wanted them to all go in one car. Dena had flatly said no. Dad was indecisive and frankly indifferent about the whole thing. He reminded Cameron of Niall today, of how Niall had done nothing but mumble and look broken since yesterday. She wondered if men were always like this. Russell wasn’t Gilead wasn’t. No—Uncle David was strange, but he wasn’t like that either. But maybe they were the only three. Maybe she was doomed to a life celibacy then.
“Cameron,” her mother said, “you don’t need to take all of that with you.”
Cameron said something and Bill muttered, “Don’t be sharp with your mother. Do what she says,” as he put the sleeping bags into the back of the van.
It seemed to Cameron like an enormous betrayal.
She sat in the back beside Niall, who said nothing but sat looking blankly out of the window the whole time. She felt too near him. Once she thought she’d known him. Then she thought she loved him. Now she wasn’t sure. He was her brother and Cameron really didn’t want him to be. She didn’t want any part in Niall. The last thing she wanted to do was spend this weekend with family.
Ironically enough, Cameron remembered Niall trying to get out of this weekend and saying, “Me and Sonia want to do something.” He had complained the whole week about the trip to Idlewile.
Since yesterday he had said nothing.
Cameron watched her younger brother looking out of the window as they passed the fields, When Niall turned in her direction, Cameron turned her own head quickly, not wanting to make contact with him. She was still a virgin. Her little brother had made a baby. Then he had unmade it. Just like that. She was fascinated with him like a scab.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to get back to this story! Well Nehru, Brad and Cody have had a sexy time together and it looks like Brad and Nehru are back together. I don’t know how I feel about that but I am hoping it works out this time. Meanwhile Cameron and Niall are going on a trip and along with Sonia have been through a lot. Excellent writing and I look forward to seeing what happens next!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, of course, Brad and Nehru never got to be together, but now Brad is insistent upon it, and so this is sort of the climax of thier story, or of the story we've known them in where they are struggling toward being something. Brad claims that Cody understands, but unless they have a very different king of relationship, Cody is effectively out of the loop so.... Let's see what happens to him.

Poor Cameron, and poor Niall who is just a kid and really caught up in some really big actions and knows his sister can't look at him. I would say poor Sonia--I do say poor Sonia--except she wasn't really a part of this portion.

 

[ChrisGibson]

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER, AND WHILE CAMERON DEALS WITH HER FAMILY, JASON CONFRONTS RUSSELL AND MANAGES TO DRIVE HIM AWAY.


Uncle David and Aunt Lee drove ahead of the Dwyer van. Usually on the road one saw the farm fields at either side and off in each distance the trees. Now they began to drive into the trees, and then the trees cleared away to reveal a lake large and blue amidst the snow, more blessed with sun than Cameron could remember. They had driven so long, the sun was so high in the sky that Cameron thought they nearly had to be in Canada. Here the houses were large and Victorian, and all lined the lake with large tracks of land. It was here that her mother had grown up, and looking at the wan, lifeless haired woman in the passenger seat, she found that hard to believe. Or maybe, thought Cameron as they passed the general store, taking her from this place had done this to her. Maybe one day Cameron would wake up married to someone she didn’t know and Niall, if they were ever friends again, would say the whole family should go to Geshichte Falls. And maybe Cameron would be some washed up old hag—no, don’t say that about… Well, she’d said it, and her children would say, “Could mom have once been pretty? Dad said she used to.”
When they pulled up on the gravel road to a wheat colored Victorian with a deck that looked out over the freezing lake and a huge tract of land, Uncle David’s car stopped first and the tall, narrow man ran out and exclaimed as his brother-in-law, with an exhausted look on his face, was shutting off his own van, “Isn’t it good to be home!”

“Hum,” Chayne remarked lifting his coffee cup to his lips.
“Really?” Anigel demanded.
“Really, what?” Chayne said to her.
“All you can do is say: hum?”
“Whaddo you want me to say?”
“Aren’t you…” she gestured toward Nehru and Cody, “surprised?”
Nehru had come been walking over from the Noble Red when he had run into Cody coming over from Thompson Street who’d told him to hop in the car. They’d talked about the night before, and Nehru had told him about the morning after.
“It’s good,” Cody said. “You guys should be together.”
“Well, I’m telling Chayne. And everyone. That’s my family.”
“I’ll go with you,” Cody said. He added, laughing, “We don’t have to share every detail of last night.”
Now they sat in Chayne’s kitchen, and Rob, in a pink dress shirt and white khakis, looking more normal than usual, stood behind Chayne’s chair, arms folded over his chest.
“I don’t know,” Chayne said, shrugging. “It’s just not a lot surprises me anymore. And… I feel like other things are coming and I just can’t let myself get knocked down by surprise over this one.”
“Are you sure, Nehru?” Rob’s voice was more severe than he meant it to be.
“I know you don’t like Brad—”
“I like Brad just fine. I just don’t like what he did to you.”
“Brad,” Chayne said, pacifically, “is a good man.”
Rob made a noise and gave Chayne an irritated look, which he ignored.
“Is is true Gilead is with that Mark boy now?” Nehru said, more to change the subject than anything.
“I think so,” Chayne said.
“Well, what the hell is happening?” Rob said, still upset by Chayne’s lack of upset. He reached over his head and took his cigarettes, pulling one out for himself the thing that Chayne hated, and still Chayne did not care.
“I’m going off to a monastery with Ross,” Anigel said.
“What?” Chayne looked at her dumbly.
Shocked himself, Rob overcame it long enough to plop down in a chair smile in Chayne’s face.
“At last!” he said, “Something got to the old bastard.”




Cameron could tell that this was going to be a long and potentially ridiculous day. On all of this property, in all of this large house, it seemed to be nowhere to get away from anyone and no one else to go see. Who lived in this town that she knew? So she walked around the house a lot, being avoided by her father and trying to avoid her brother who walked around looking pitiful the whole time.
Cameron went to the lake, pulling on her boots and tramping through the crusty snow. The edges of the lake were frozen, and she fantasized about putting her foot on the ice and hearing it break slowly. She turned around and saw Niall, his hood off, cheeks red, heading her way. He did not speak. The only noise was the geese. Those tough fuckers never left. Cameron had a sudden urge to get away from him. She had a ludicrous urge to actually run. Being around him made her feel as if what had happened was her fault. She felt an accomplice to something she didn’t want to know about.
“I was looking for you,” he told her in the quiet voice he hadn’t used in a while.
“Here I am,” she said.
“I wanted to thank you,” he told her.
“Please don’t.”
“Cameron, I was so scared yesterday. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get her home. I thought everyone was looking at me and I hoped you’d still be at school. I was so glad to see you.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Cam, please don’t shut me off,” her little brother said. He took a breath and said, “I can’t tell anyone. and I feel,,, like I’m going to hell. Or something.”
She reached out and hugged her little brother quickly. She couldn’t feel a great deal of affection for him at the moment, but where affection wasn’t enough, duty prevailed.




“Oh, my gosh, Dad, hurry up. We should be there by now? Mom, are you sure you’re not coming?”
“I wasn’t invited,” Patti said, sitting down on the sofa and turning on the TV.
“Patti, I’m sorry,” Cody said. “I just panicked. I didn’t mean only Thom and Russell and—”
“Cody, relax,” Patti said.
“If you think Mom’s offended, you have no idea how much she’d love a night to herself.” Russell said.
The doorbell rang and Thom called from upstairs, “Russ, I’m almost ready. Please get the door.”
This was what he had been on his way to do. He didn’t open it far was surprised to:
“Jason.”
“Russ, we need to talk.”
He smelled good, like tobacco and cedar, the like the sex they’d been having all late summer and fall and into the last few days. His green grey eyes matched his green checked scarf and his olive skin was blushed by the cold.
“You can’t do this to me,” Russell said.
“Please, can I come in?”
“I’m leaving. Can you not see I’m dressed? We’re all on out way out, which you would have known, had you called, which you didn’t because the last time I saw you was when I came back and you were banging some chick on the side of the bed.”
“I can explain.”
“If you could have explained you would have done it already.”
“Russ!” Thom called, “I’m ready. Who’s at the door.”
“Will you come over later?” Jason asked.
“Hell no.”
“Can I call you?”
“You could have called for the last week.”
“Can I call you?”
“Uh… Fuck. Sure.”
“Goodni—”
Russell shut the door.

“You’re early.”
“Do you mind?” Russell asked.
“No,” Cody was sitting on the edge of his bed in his small room, his dark chocolate hair handing over his bare shoulders. He was shirtless and Russell could see that he was, in fact, beautiful with his shirt off, and he sat there in baggy blue jeans.
“Guess what?” Cody said. “I was with Nehru and Brad all last night... and it looks like they're going to be a couple.,”
"Russell had been almost sure that Nehru and Cody were, if not a couple, doing something, and he wanted to ask about this, but chose not to.
“That’s… great,” Russell said instead. “I mean, it really is. It’s great.”
Cody frowned.
“What’s up?” he said.
"Eh?"
“Something’s fucked up about you. I can tell because something is slightly fucked up about me.”
"Oh," Russell said. Then Russell said, "Jason came over.”
Cody patted the bed for Russell to sit down, and Russell closed the door behind him.
“That Jason kid’s confused,” Cody said.
“Yeah, well, maybe I’m confused too.”
“Howso?”
Cody didn’t coddle him. Russell said, “My cousin Jimmy, you all are a lot alike, said I didn’t love Jason. He said that I shouldn’t be surprised it it doesn’t last. He was right of course.”
“Maybe he’s worth meeting.”
“You’d like him.”
“Cody, I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know how you mean. I’ve always loved you. You shouldn’t have had to say it to me.”
Cody leaned down and put his mouth on Russell’s. He also leaned out and locked his door. He put his hands on either side of Russell’s face, and Russell was actually a little taller than Cody, so Cody had to rise a little.
“We had said this would be… difficult to manage.”
“I’m five years older than you,” Cody interrupted this with a kiss, “so yeah, it’s going to be difficult to manage.”
“I…”
“Let’s not talk right now,” Cody said. “Talking gets in the way of things.”
And Russell knew it did, and he knew he wasn’t interested in talking, and he wanted what Cody wanted and they lay on the bed, linking arms and legs, lifting shirts, unbuttoning pants. This was love, and it wasn’t that Jason wasn’t love and Ralph wasn’t either, but they had been a sort of shadow. When he had lain on his back and held Ralph to him, running his hands up and down his back, watching his buttocks flex and unflex, he had thought of Cody. When he had fucked Jason in his bedroom, he had thought of Cody too. Now, with Cody there was only this hot, soft, fragile moment. He didn’t want so describe it. He just wanted to be there for it. He started to cry. His tears obscured his view of Cody over him, the trembling in him, obscured Cody inside him. When he was about to come, Cody’s back was a broad and beautiful plain, his ass two brown hills that that held him, that pulled him in deep, hardened him, wouldn’t let him go When Russell finally came it was like his whole skin, his whole self was a brittle shell and it was truck and disappeared. He was shooting out light, burning as light. When he came and came, he was nothing but light, until he at last collapsed, his penis still hard, still deep in Cody, and the two of them lay exhausted together, red hair tangled in brown hair, no longer light, but sweat and flesh. And this was good too.

TOMORROW, JUST KING OF ALL THESE RUINS

 

[CharmedFan28]

Wow so much going on! Cameron and Niall are going through a lot. I am glad they have each other even if Cameron doesn’t really want to be around Niall at the moment. So Brad and Nehru are definitely a thing? Good for them. I am glad Russell and Cody have each other and as for Jason he should have tried to talk to Russell earlier, not when it was too late. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Jason is kind of a moron for taking so long to come to Russell, but one can scarcely call their love the love to end all ages. Also, even though there's been a lot of story going on, it's really only been less than a week since Russell got back from St. Albans where he was, after all, boning Flipper. Brad and Nehru are together. Cody, who was with Nehru in a sort of way, is now not and Russell, upset about Jason has just shown up in his room. And things happen.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT BILL CONTINUES ON HIS DOWNWARD PATH, AND A TRIP TO IDELWILD FAILS TO SAVE THE DWYERS WHILE THOM RECONNECTS WITH HIS PAST AND DAMAGES RUSSELL'S PRESENT


By the time Justine Barnard had said, “Shane, I just hope you’ve got my girl on the pill,” prickles of horror were popping up all over Jill and she was cursing her friends, wondering how much longer it could be until someone arrived. When the doorbell rang it vibrated through Jill’s spine, and she leapt to answer it.
“Oh, my God, I’m so glad to see you!” she told Anigel and Nehru, and yanked them in.
“Hey people,” Justine saw saying, “Jilly never told me you all were Black. Thank god she added a little color to her life!”
“I grew up around here,” Thom said at last.
“That’s right,” Russell remembered. They weren’t far from Thompson Street and the River. As they made a turn on Moringham and arrived at Colum Street, Thom Lewis sat up. Cody pulled up to 7815. The truck stopped. He and Russell got out and Thom remained.
“Thom,” Cody called.
He didn’t respond, and then he blinked a few times and looked down at them.
“I know this house,” Thom told them.
“See,” Cody smiled. “It just proves that everything is linked.”
Russell was not quite so satisfied with this answer, but he loved the feel of Cody’s hand slipping into his..
Thom did not appear to be either. He frowned a little and then climbed out of the car on Russell’s side and rounded it to climb the steps with Cody. They all went in. Thom was looking around as Cody was introducing Russell to his mother. Russell was a little confused because Mrs. Barnard was paying entirely too much attention to his father who was staring at everything in the room with a hard eye.
Cody said, “And this is Thom Lewis—”
And Justine Barnard said, “Oh, my God.”



“Get the salt, Niall. The salt. Don’t be a dummy. It’s right in front of you,” Bill said. “If you were a snake it would’ve bitten you.”
“:Bill, that’s enough,” his mother-in-law said.
No one else had said anything. Cameron did notice that her father was grouchier than usual in regards to his only son. Niall was far less together than usual. It seemed as if he were not really seeing what he was doing, and he knocked over the salt he placed on the table and he stood there a little stupefied watching the salt run across the cloth.
“Niall,” started his father. Then Bill stood up and with one hand began to scoop salt into the palm of his other muttering, “Diddown, dummy.”
“William!” Mrs. Armstrong clapped a hand to the table.
“Bill,” Dena warned, “that really is enough. Go sit Niall.”
“Niall, are you alright?” asked Uncle Dave, who was on the other side of Niall, opposite Cameron. Niall nodded, but their grandmother said. “Why don’t you go take a walk or watch some television.”
“I’m fine.” Niall said.
“Then go watch TV,” Dena said in a voice that was quiet, but not to be denied, and Niall nodded, folded his napkin, and left the wide dining room with the glass doors that looked out over the lake.
“Something’s wrong with that boy,” Bill murmured as his son trudged down the hall.
“And you’re helping the something by growling at him like a son of a bitch?” Dena asked him. “Sometimes you’re just like your father.”
“Don’t say a word about my Dad,” Bill warned.
Lee grimaced, but Dena continued, “What are you going to do, slap my like he slapped your mom. I dare you too, Bill Dwyer.”
“Please,” Lee begged. “Please, guys. This is supposed to be a good weekend.”
“You made this weekend, Lee,” Bill turned on his sister. “You decided this, with no one’s permission.”
“We all decided,” Dena said. “Sit down.”
Bill glared at his wife.
“Sit,” Dena said, feeling a power she hadn’t felt in a long time, “down.”







The house had been different then. But then so had they all. The neighborhood was still run down, but then, not as run down as it was now and also, what did he have to compare it with accept an equally run down Thompson Street. That and West Virginia?
This was the house of growing up. Was that twenty-three, twenty-four or twenty-five years ago? Long enough ago for it to be another world that could not intrude on the real one, the modern one.
She had looked a great deal like Jjll back then he remembered. Only she was never tall, never quite as stately. He overpowered her and back then he was shorter than now. He confessed to himself as they passed the food around the table, buttered the rolls and talked of niceties, that he was a short man.
There had been an elicit thrill in all of the to-hell-with-what-the-priest-says. And maybe if they’d had to go to confession once a week that might have changed things. But that business had been done away with. and then it wasn’t just fun. It was actual love. There was a tenderness in the way the two fifteen year olds sat in her bedroom upstairs necking and taking each others clothes off, and then fucking gently and then harder and harder until he came and she let him give a broken tenor yell because no one was at home yet.
Mom and Dad were never at home.
There had been a day. one of the last days, when Justine said that they were moving away. Dad had a job down south. This was the thing they had not counted on. Eventual marriage, a white picket fence was what they’d assumed. It hurt to realize that long before Patti there had been someone else, a childhood away, that he’d planned to share a life with.
That day they’d kissed wetly and stripped with urgency, and he still remembered it,her straddling him on the floor. Him pounding her gently in front of the TV. The noises of happiness and fury and sorrow and pleasure, her hands grasping his back, his small chest, his face, the sweat from the west sun through the window, on his back, on his head, her hands running frantically up and down his buttocks....
And he remembered a few days after she was gone. He was being fifteen and riding bikes with some of his friends. They’d come down here. He remembered his friends telling sex stories, wildly overblown, anatomically and physiologically impossible, and looking at him and saying, “Tommy’s so quiet. Tommy’s such a good boy.”
Then he, like the rest of them, took one more look at 7815 Colum Street and rode away.

Throughout the whole dinner Thom Lewis’s eyes went from face to face, and his mouth made conversation. Anigel Reyes. Beautiful, beautiful girl, she could capture anyone’s attention. And this Nehru, a cousin of Chayne’s. He could see it in the laughter as well as the spectacles. That added to the fact that he just didn’t seem to give a damn. And so young not to give a damn! And Jill he’d seen several times, swinging her hair and alternately chiding and praising Shane. These were all Russell’s friend’s.
And he looked from Cody to Russell. Like and yet unlike. Jackie had said that. and she’d said that Cody looked a lot like Finn. Jackie had said that Cody actually resembled Thom. So had Patti. And so had his mother. And Cody resembled Russell. In hair length, in composure, in the cigarettes they smoked—that Thom smoked. But Thom acknowledged fot the first time that Russell did not resemble him at all. Russell resembled his namesake who was living over in an apartment on Royal Street. Russell and Cody both looked like R.L. He looked from one to the other. He didn’t look at Justine, the only other person in the room his age.
Justine got up and went to the kitchen. Thom’s eyes followed her departing back.
“Thom, what’s wrong?” Cody demanded.
Thom turned Cody what he knew must be a ridiculous look, and then said, “I need to talk to your mother for a second.”
He went into the kitchen, and the door swung shut behind him. He crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Justine.”
The red headed woman who had bothered to make herself attractive today turned around.
“My eyes almost fell out of my head when I saw Cody walk in with you.” she said.
“Does he ever talk about me?”
Justine put down the platter she was cleaning, “You and that Russell.”
“Did he ever give you our last name?”
“Eventually.”
“Then why didn’t you—”
“I didn’t see the point in all of that.”
“But I... am....” Thom said now.
Justine nodded her head. “You are Cody’s father.”
Thom didn’t say anything. His brow just furrowed deeper and his arms crossed tighter around his chest. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth.
“I should probably explain,” Justine told him.
“That...” said Thom, “would probably be a good idea.”
“Let me take out the dessert and all that,” Justine said. “I’ll make some coffee. If we stay in here the kids’ll get suspicious and wonder what’s going on.”
Thom nodded and let Justine do what she was going to do. He went back into the dining room and sat between Russell and Cody feeling like somehow he was cheating Russell out of being an only child and the oldest son and getting all the love. And he felt suddenly very guilty that for twenty-three years he’d never been around for Cody at all. Both of the boys looked at Thom and then exchanged glances with each other. In one evening Thom Lewis had gained two sons, and he felt like he’d cheated them both.



MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Wow so Russell and Cody are related, I did not see that coming. That is a lot to process for both of them. So much for what they has together. Bill continues to be a dick and I don’t know if that will change anytime soon. Great writing and I eagerly await more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

So yes, Thom's revelation does kind of put a wrench in Russell's plans with Cody, and here is Bill still being an asshole. I imagine I could have gone a few more pages, but that would have been a lot of reading,, so just wait wait till tomorrow.