couple of times. “To be honest, I was worried I might find a bald guy with a paunch.”
Kadin was thirty-five. He’d been noticing flecks of white near his temples and a
few lines at the corners of his eyes. But he wasn’t going to ruin a compliment from the
most attractive twenty-five-year-old he’d seen in a long time. So he smiled and said,
“Thank you.” Gregory looked at the house again and asked, “Do you live in this huge place all
by yourself?”
Kadin knew he was asking this for a reason. He was trying to find out if there was
someone in his life now. “No,” he said. “I live here with my family. They’re all in Florida
for the week visiting grandparents.”
“I see,” he said. “Did you reconcile with your wife?” He didn’t look him in the
eye this time. He twisted his lips, turned to the right, and stared up and down at the trunk
of an oak tree, waiting for him to answer.
Kadin frowned. It wasn’t an extraordinary assumption. He sighed and said, “A
few years ago, my ex-wife was killed in an automobile accident, and now I’m raising the
children alone. They live here with me. I have a housekeeper. I’m not married or
involved with anyone.” He wanted to tell him there hadn’t been anyone serious since the
summer he’d met him, but it was too soon for that. He still wasn’t sure why Gregory had
come to see him.
“I’m sorry about your ex-wife,” he said. “It must have been awful for the
children.” Gregory had only met her once, the morning they’d taken the kids to The
Valdosta Snake and Wild Animal Farm.
“It hasn’t been easy,” Kadin said, “but we’re doing okay now.” Then he bent
down to pick up a bicycle lying on its side next to the front walk. He laughed and said, “It
gets a little crazy sometimes, but we get by.”
Gregory looked into his eyes again and said, “They’re very lucky to have you for
their father.” Kadin didn’t take compliments like that well. He was doing what he was
supposed to do as a father, and even though it was difficult, he was enjoying every
minute of it. So he changed the subject and asked, “How long will you be in town?”
“I’m not sure,” Gregory said. “A couple of days, maybe.”
Kadin knew Miles had moved away, and that Gregory didn’t have any ties to
Savannah. So the next question he asked was the one he’d been thinking from the minute
Gregory stepped out of the car. “Why are you here?”
Gregory shrugged his shoulders and stared down at his shoes. “Ah, well,” he said,
“I wanted to see you again is all. I’m engaged to be married this June and I’m starting a
new job in Atlanta, and I just wanted to touch base with you again.” He hesitated between
sentences, as if he wasn’t telling the whole truth.
When he said he was engaged, Kadin’s stomach turned. But he forced a smile and
said, “Congratulations. I hope you’ll both be very happy.” Kadin knew what Gregory was
doing. He was trying to be something he wasn’t just to please his family and society.
Kadin had done the same thing, and he knew it never turned out well.
But his smile must have appeared forced, because Gregory looked at him as if he
was reading his mind., “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not like that. Betsy, my
fiancee, and I are more like brother and sister, if you know what I mean. We have an
unspoken agreement, and she’s fine with that. She doesn’t expect anything but
companionship. We’re both architects and we have a great deal in common. You’d like
her.”
“I’m sure I would,” Kadin said. He didn’t know how to respond to the fact that
Gregory was getting involved in a loveless marriage. He knew guys from the picnic area who were in marriages like that. They lived simple, contented lives and everyone was
happy on the surface. But it was really none of his business, so he changed the subject
and said, “I’m glad you finally became an architect. I always wondered about that.”
Gregory’s expression became serious again. He frowned and said, “I didn’t go
right back to school. After we left so suddenly that summer, I enlisted in the Army and
went overseas to Japan. I needed time to think and I needed to get away from my family.”
It sounded as if he was dropping hints, allowing Kadin to probe. Kadin had never
fully comprehended how devastating it must have been for him the day they forced him
to leave Savannah. So traumatizing that he’d dropped out of school and joined the Army.
But then he laughed at the thought of Gregory in the Army. He had always been so
delicate and refined. Trying to picture him in fatigues wasn’t easy. “Did you make any,
ah, really good friends while you were in the service? I hear there are a lot of good
looking guys there.”
Gregory squared his shoulders and gave him a blank stare, as if that wasn’t any of
his business. He said, in a proud, defiant voice, “I made several very good friends, all
attractive men with strong hands. But nothing you’d call serious.”
He knew Gregory was talking about sex with other men. He was telling Kadin in
a subtle way that he’d experimented more than once. He wasn’t ashamed of it, but he
wasn’t bragging and he wasn’t about to go into any details. Kadin appreciated his honesty
and smiled. He hadn’t been a saint either—far from it—and he certainly wasn’t going to
tell him about his trips to the picnic area for anonymous blow jobs, or about the time he’d
fucked kinky little Eddie in high heels. So Kadin scratched the back of his head a couple of times and looked to the left. “Do you have time to take a short walk down to the
creek?” he asked.
Gregory smiled and raised one eyebrow. “I think I have time for a quick walk.”
Kadin lifted his left arm all the way out and said, “After you.”
They walked in tandem to the creek. The natural dynamics between them hadn’t
changed. Kadin was still the one who held the door open and Gregory was still the one
who went in first. And while Gregory led the way, Kadin stared at his ass all the way
down to the creek. His hands were in his pockets, and when the beige cotton fabric
stretched across his backside, his firm buttocks rounded and bubbled like the smooth ass
on a nude bronze. Kadin’s penis grew with each step he took. He had to reach down into
his pants when Gregory wasn’t looking and adjust his erection so it would point up—a
penis as big as his pointing down could be painful.
When they were next to the creek, Gregory closed his eyes and inhaled the early
spring. Then he turned and faced Kadin. “It’s just as I remember it,” he said, “It’s the one
place where I’ve always felt completely relaxed.”
Kadin smiled and put his right hand in his pocket so he could hold his dick down.
It was fully erect now and he didn’t want Gregory to see it sticking out of his pants.
When he looked up at the trees, just beginning to come to life with pale green buds, he
sighed, realizing how lucky he was to live there. He didn’t have a favorite time of year
there. Each season contained its own glorious miracle.
Gregory bent down and picked up a few small stones. He pitched one and it
landed in the water. There was a soft plunk and the smooth surface rippled out in perfect circles. Then he pitched another and said, “Are you sure it’s okay that I came down here?
I’ll just leave right now if it’s not okay. I don’t want to intrude in any way.”
Kadin stared at the back of his head and said, “Of course it’s okay. Why would
you even ask that question?” He saw Gregory was serious now. He was holding
something back and Kadin wasn’t sure why.
Gregory dropped the stones and straightened his shoulders. Without facing him,
he lowered his voice and said, “Because you never wrote or called. I sat there and waited
for a week, thinking surely you’d at least send a letter. But there was nothing. I couldn’t
eat or sleep. I thought about calling you, but I was terrified you’d give me a lecture about
how it was best that I went back to school and forgot all about you. I was terrified you’d
tell me I was just a kid with a crush and I’d forget all about you in time, or that I was
going through a phase. Because that’s what my parents were thinking. So I waited for
you to make the first move, and that never happened. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I
wasn’t sure what I was feeling. I’d heard about men who fell in love with other men, and
they wound up in mental hospitals. So I joined the Army and ran away from everything.”
Kadin’s erection began to shrink. He opened his mouth to speak, but Gregory
turned around and faced him. He wiped a tear from his face and tried hard to steady his
trembling lips. Then he looked Kadin in the eye and said, “All you had to do was call or
write and say something. I wasn’t expecting much.”
Kadin stepped forward and shook his head back and forth. “You never received
any of my letters?”
“What letters?” He grabbed Gregory’s shoulders and shook him gently. “I wrote you every single
day for one solid year.” he said. “I wrote the first letter the day you left. And by the end
of that year, when you didn’t reply, I stopped writing. I felt like an old man making a
complete fool of himself…the old married guy chasing after the cute young stud who
wasn’t interested anymore. I was so utterly devastated I took a year off from my practice
and buried myself in renovating the house. And I have never written anyone else a letter
since then.”
“I never received any letters,” he said, shaking his head. Then he raised his
eyebrows and sighed. “It must have been my mother who took them. She was always the
first one at the mailbox.”
Kadin pulled him closer and pressed his palm on the small of his back. He didn’t
care about old letters or the past. Gregory was a man. He was here in his arms now, and
that was all that mattered.
Gregory’s body went limp and he wrapped his arms around his shoulders. Then
Kadin’s hand went down and he squeezed Gregory’s ass hard. He pressed his nose into
his soft neck, took a deep breath and said, “I’m so glad you finally came home, babe.”
Then he grabbed his ass with both hands and they kissed. When Kadin shoved his
tongue into his mouth, it was still as soft and sweet as he’d remembered. He gobbled his
lips and sucked his tongue. A warm sensation passed through his body and the world
stopped moving. While he explored the inside of his mouth, he took deep breaths through
his nose because he was on the verge of panting. His heart raced and his penis grew to a
full-sized erection again. When he bucked his hips forward and pressed it into his groin,
Gregory lowered his left hand and placed his palm on the shaft. He rubbed it up and down while they kissed, then pulled his head back and said,
“Let’s go back to the house.”
Kadin stuck his tongue out and licked his lips with two quick strokes. He said,
“You’re really going to think this is weird, but I still have the same mattress from our
first time.”
“The old mattress with the yellow corners?” Gregory asked. “That’s actually a
little disgusting, if not creepy.” Then he licked the tip of his index finger and ran it down
the length of Kadin’s torso. “You’re a very peculiar man sometimes.”
Kadin shrugged and tilted his head sideways. “I couldn’t get rid of it, and it really
wasn’t that old. Maybe it is creepy, but I’ve been sleeping there every night since you left.
Don’t worry, I had it thoroughly cleaned and fumigated a long time ago.”
Gregory smiled a real smile for the first time since he’d arrived, as if knowing this
one simple fact about an old mattress somehow validated all the pain he’d been through.
He pushed Kadin off his body and said, “I’ll race you. Last one back to the house has to
be the bottom.”
They ran fast, Kadin pulling the back of Gregory’s shirt the entire time. When
they reached the front door, Gregory purposely slowed down and said, “After you,” so he
wouldn’t be the first one in the bedroom. They kicked off their shoes and pulled off their
socks in the front hall and went barefoot up the grand staircase. Kadin had to hold his
crotch because his erection was rubbing against his pants. Halfway up the stairs, Gregory
unzipped his pants and let them drop on a middle step. He pulled of his shirt and his
underpants at the top of the stairs and ran into the master bedroom naked. Kadin was already flat on his back on the bed. By the time Gregory jumped up on the mattress and
straddled his waist, he had an erection, too.
“Close your eyes,” Gregory said.
When his eyes were shut, Gregory lifted his shirt and pulled it over his head. Then
