by Sarina Bowen
“I’m going to come in your ass,” I threatened. “You’re going to feel my hot seed inside you. Probably for the rest of the day.” His moans got louder, and I stroked him harder. But it was just all too good. The sights and sounds of our fucking were more than I could bear. “Gotta come,” I growled. My hips began to shake, and then I was shooting, and shooting again. I gave a shout against Josh’s pecs.
He whimpered, then froze, and I worried that something was wrong. But then he drenched my hand with his seed. “Mmm,” I crooned, milking him until he finally sagged against my chest.
For a long minute nobody said anything. We were pancaked together, both sweating and breathing hard. Josh’s chin lay on my shoulder, and I flopped a hand onto his bare back.
We drifted on the most wonderful post-sex haze. Until Josh startled me by saying, “I’m going straight to hell.”
My heart seized, because this was exactly what I’d been worried about. Josh’s back shook under my hand, and I feared for the worst. “No!” I whispered. “That’s…” I cut myself off, because I realized he was laughing.
“Caleb,” Josh chuckled. “Thing is, I don’t care that much.” He lifted his body a little, and my exhausted dick slipped out. “We are definitely doing that again. But right now, we need a shower.” Without another word, Josh climbed off of me.
Stunned, I followed him into the bathroom, where Josh was already testing the water’s temperature with his hand.
I squeezed his shoulder. “You’re really all right?”
He turned, rolling his eyes. “Don’t ruin it, okay?” He stepped into the shower stall.
“Ruin it?”
“I hate that you think of me as fragile,” he complained as I followed him under the spray.
“I don’t think that,” I said quickly. He’d always disliked it whenever he suspected me of babying him. “But it was you who said we were a sin.”
Josh put soapy hands on my chest, rubbing me gently. His face was thoughtful. “I did say that. But that wasn’t really the issue.”
“What was it, then?” I closed my eyes as Josh began to shampoo my hair. His hands on my body were pretty much all I wanted out of life. When Josh was touching me, I was able to forget how fucking perilous our life was right now.
“I’ve always been the one they called faggot,” Josh said quietly. “I didn’t even know what it meant until after we’d lived in the bunkhouse for awhile. But I knew that it was a bad thing.”
I hid my sigh under the shower’s spray as I rinsed off the shampoo. “Come here,” I said to Josh after I quit drowning myself. I pulled his slippery body to my chest. “That word isn’t what we are. It’s just a word for everything those idiots wanted to bash. It’s just a putdown.”
“Yeah, well,” Josh grumbled, reaching for the shampoo bottle again. “You weren’t the one getting put down.”
I took the bottle from him and poured some shampoo in my hand. “Still don’t know what that has to do with what we just did on the bed.”
“Everything and nothing,” Josh said. “I don’t like thinking that Ezra was right.”
“He,” I said fiercely, unwilling to even repeat that fucker’s name, “does not exist to us anymore, okay? If you let yourself think like that, then he wins.”
Josh closed his eyes as I swirled sudsy hands through his soft hair. “I know you’re right. But it’s hard to forget.”
Patience, I reminded myself. Josh only needed my patience. “Did you…” I cleared my throat, suddenly shy. “…Enjoy it, though?”
Josh didn’t answer right away, because he was pushing water out of his face. When that was done, he shut off the shower. I could tell from his expression that he was listening—trying to figure out if Maggie and Daniel had come home while we were showering. But it was still quiet.
Meanwhile, I was dying just a few inches away, desperate to know whether Josh had found sex to be as life-changing as I had. As far as I was concerned, we should do that every day. Maybe twice.
Finally, his gaze made it back to mine. Then he smiled. “Next time, I want you to hold me down.”
Next time!
I grinned, and grabbed his waist. “I’m free right now,” I said, kissing him. Backing him up against the shower wall, I pinned his hips to the tiles.
“Mmm,” he groaned.
Then we heard the sound of tires in the driveway.
Right.
Josh and I toweled off in a hurry, then got dressed. “I hope they don’t notice that we both have wet hair,” I whispered, jumping into my jeans.
“I don’t think they’ve looked twice at us since the baby was born,” Josh said in a low voice. Then he opened the door and went out.
* * *
After waiting a little while, just to make the timing seem random, I walked into the kitchen. Josh was holding the baby, and Daniel had already departed for his workshop.
“I really liked this doctor,” Maggie was saying as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “She said no question was too dumb. And she gave me her cell phone number, and said I shouldn’t be afraid to use it.”
“That’s nice,” Josh murmured. He stood on the wide pine floors, bouncing his knees in a little maneuver that was part of his baby-soothing technique.
“I’ll take her now,” Maggie said. “No, wait. Let me pee first.”
“Good call,” Josh said, rocking his chest from side to side while little Chloe’s eyes fluttered shut.
Maggie ran out of the room, and I just stared at Josh, fighting hard to keep my distance from him. He was so fucking cute.
“What?” he asked, his eyebrows arched in confusion.
I smiled. “You amaze me, that’s all,” I whispered. At the Compound, I only ever saw Josh doing the work that everyone else did, always careful to keep his head down. I didn’t know that he would like babies, or cows. Or that he’d always choose the blue coffee mug, with the luminous glaze, but an unfortunate chip on the rim. Here in Massachusetts I got to see more of him, and not just his skin.
Now he was looking at me as with confusion. “Why?”
“Nothing.” There wasn’t time to explain. But there was time to move nearer to him, while listening closely to the sounds of the house. A toilet flushed somewhere, so there was an opportunity to sidle up to him and kiss his cheek. He gave me a startled look, and pink spots appeared on his cheeks. “Nobody saw,” I argued.
“Chloe saw,” he joked. We both looked down at the sleeping baby in his arms. “And it’s true, by the way,” he whispered.
“What is?”
“I can still feel you right now.”
My stomach did a dip and a roll, and my neck heated. But Maggie’s footsteps were coming closer, so I moved away from him, over to the counter.
She entered the room looking wearier than I’d ever seen her. Today she’d put on nicer clothes than usual, and they accentuated rather than hid her exhaustion. Without a word, she took the baby in one arm and her coffee cup in the other, then retreated upstairs.
* * *
The next morning, I heard Maggie answer the phone upstairs.
“Caleb?” she called. “You have a phone call.”
My heart leapt into my mouth. Could it be…? I picked up the kitchen extension. “This is Caleb.”
“This is Joe from The Perry Garage,” a man’s voice boomed into my ear. “I got an application with your name on it. Can you come back down here this afternoon and talk about the job?”
“I sure can, sir,” I said, hoping that was true. “What time?”
“Wander by any time after one o’clock,” he said. “See you then.” He hung up.
Josh came trotting out of the laundry room, where he’d been folding towels for Maggie. He was sneaky like that — taking over tasks for her whenever he saw an opportunity. “Who was that?”
“The garage called. They want me to come in this afternoon.”
His face lit up. “Awesome.”
“What did I miss?” Maggie asked,
making a rare appearance at the bottom of the stairs. Her arms were empty, so the baby must have agreed to take a nap.
“Caleb might get a job this afternoon!” Josh crowed.
“Can I, uh, use your car?” I asked, wishing I had my own wheels.
“Sure,” she said. “All I need to do is hit the drugstore at some point. We’re almost out of diapers and wipes.”
“Is there one near the garage?” Josh asked. “Caleb could save you the trip.”
“Oh, would you?” Maggie asked. “I’ll make a list, with the brand names and everything.” She went back upstairs.
“Is that okay?” Josh whispered. “I could go with you and do the shopping.”
“No problem,” I said.
* * *
A couple of hours later, I parked Maggie’s car at the drugstore, which was about two hundred yards from the garage. “So…” I said.
Josh and I locked gazes for a moment. “I’ll take my time here. Give me the keys, okay? I’ll wait in the car when I’m done.”
My eyes drifted out the window, toward the garage across the intersection. Yesterday I’d given Josh a speech which was meant to convince him that there wasn’t a thing wrong with us. But the ugly truth was that I did need him to stay out of sight for the next hour. I needed this job, whether or not the garage was staffed by an entire team of Ezras. “I guess that’s a good plan. I’m sorry that I can’t say exactly how long I’ll be.”
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’ll be fine.” His clear eyes regarded me trustingly. It made me want to kiss him, but of course I didn’t do it.
“Knock ‘em dead.” Josh grinned. “But not literally. Because they wouldn’t like that.”
I held up a fist, and Josh bumped it. We’d seen that little maneuver on television, our new favorite vault of cultural knowledge.
Then we got out of the car and went our separate ways.
I crossed two busy streets and walked into the front of the garage, where an older man with bushy eyebrows that I hadn’t seen before was standing over the receptionist.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “I’m Caleb Smith, and…”
“Caleb Smith!” the man boomed. “I’m Joe Perry. Glad you could come in, son. I got back from my vacation and the guys told me you’d come in twice to fill out an application.”
“Yes sir.”
Joe Perry snorted. “You hear that!” he hollered over his shoulder. “The new guy calls me sir! Y’all should show a little more respect, like he does.” He chuckled. “Follow me, Caleb Smith.”
The older man led the way into the service bays, where five or six mechanics in Perry’s Garage jumpsuits had three cars up on lifts. “This is our operation. We’re open six days a week. Can you work Saturdays?”
“I can work any day, sir.”
Joe chuckled. “New rule, boys! The rest of y’all have to call me ‘sir.’”
Great. Now they would all hate my guts.
A red-haired guy raised his head from the engine of an F-150. “Sir? You can kiss my ass, sir.”
Joe Perry threw his head back and laughed. He jerked a thumb at the redhead. “That there is Danny. Stick with him, okay? He’s smarter than he looks.”
“Yes…” I caught myself before adding the “sir.”
“Now let’s get you some paperwork. Can you start tomorrow? I’ll give you twenty hours a week to start, but it could go up. You’ll have to do a lot of oil changes at first. Somebody’s gotta be on the bottom of the heap, you know? You got a plan to get your certification? There’s more jobs I can give you if you’re certified.” He stopped in front of a very messy desk and turned around.
“I want to get certified, but it’s going to take me a little time. Been working on engines my whole life, but nobody cared about paperwork.”
The old man’s giant eyebrows lifted. “Why not?”
Self-conscious now, I rubbed the back of my neck. “Well, it was a kind of crazy religious place out west. Most people would call it a cult, I guess. I ran away from there last month.”
“Jesus H.! That’s a hell of a story, I bet.”
Not one I’m sharing.
“You do have a place to live, though, right?” He looked worried, probably wondering if I was going to be a drifter.
“Absolutely,” I said quickly. “I’m staying with a friend out in Cheshire. She ran away from the same place five years ago. Maggie is a real help to me. She’s like family.”
That seemed to appease him. He lifted a clipboard off the desk and handed it to me. “Fill out this W-9, and we’ll see you tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock, sharp.”
“Yessir,” I said automatically. And he grinned.
Fourteen
Working for Joe Perry was awesome. In spite of his messy desk, he ran a solid operation. I liked the guys there, too. They were relaxed in a way that was unfamiliar to me. On the Compound everyone was always jockeying for position. The garage was calmer, and it took me a week or two to figure out why. The guys there punched in, worked (reasonably) hard for eight hours, and then punched out again. For their trouble, they got a check every two weeks.
So even when the place was a little too busy or a customer got snippy, nobody minded too much. It was just a job. And when you clocked out, you could go home to whoever you wished, and say whatever you wanted.
To me, this was nothing short of revolutionary.
And Joe had been right about Danny. He noticed everything that went on at the garage, and had a kind word for everyone. Between Danny and his sidekick Jakobitz, there was always somebody telling a story, or making a joke.
I made sure to show up on time for all my shifts, and work hard each and every hour. Danny called me Caleb the Great, and said that I was the biggest ass-kisser the place had ever seen. “I’ll bet you five bucks that Caleb the Great is managing this joint in five years. He’s going to rule over us all,” he told his friend Jakobitz.
At first, it bothered me. But pretty soon I realized that this was just Danny’s brand of smack talk. He teased everyone, but not too much.
So I continued to do the work my own way. Because this job was everything to me, and I intended to do well at it.
* * *
The fact that had a job meant that I wasn’t home with Josh and the family as often. And so I wasn’t very focused on the fact that Maggie still wasn’t doing well.
I’d never paid much attention to newborn babies or their mothers before. At the compound, men weren’t encouraged to help or even notice them. And I hadn’t lived in a house with women since I was sixteen.
So I didn’t know what to expect for poor Maggie. All I could do was hope that things got easier for her. That she’d start smiling again.
She didn’t.
Daniel was clearly worried, but he didn’t say much. And they were both so tired. Josh and I would often roll over in bed to the sounds of a screaming baby, or the footsteps of someone pacing upstairs. Or both.
Sometimes we heard Maggie crying when she was upstairs with the baby. More than once, Josh had gone up there and taken Chloe from her, coming downstairs with worry in his eyes. He’d pace the floor, singing hymns for forty minutes until the baby slept.
I didn’t think much of it, probably because I was preoccupied. My new job was exhausting. My twenty hours at the garage quickly became more, because Massachusetts got a nice heavy snowfall, and half the state showed up to get snow tires put on. I clocked thirty hours during my third week on the job, and was giddy at my own good fortune.
Commuting to work in Maggie’s Prius was no problem, because she never went anywhere. That should have been a clue.
Things were tense at home, but I wasn’t around much to notice. I had Mondays off, though, which left Josh and I standing around in the kitchen drinking coffee together after he finished the milking. That should have been relaxing, except that Daniel and Maggie were fighting upstairs.
“You’re not eating, you barely shower,” Daniel said. “And it’s starting to
freak me out.”
“What do you care?” Maggie argued. “I’m feeding the baby all the time. When I’m not doing that, I sleep. You would too.”
“Look, I know it’s hard,” he said. “But you have to buck up a little, okay?”
“Buck up? You don’t know a thing,” Maggie yelled.
There was a small crash, which froze Josh and I in place. Daniel must have kicked a shoe or a book or something, but where we come from, a fist to Maggie’s face would not have been all that unusual. So we were both bracing for the worst.
“I know plenty!” Daniel yelled, “Not that you’ll give me any credit! I’m tired, too, okay! But at least I’m trying.” He stomped down the stairs so fast that Josh and I were still just standing there, mugs in hand, looking horrified when he appeared.
Daniel banged through the kitchen and into the mudroom. “And I have a fucking audience when I lose my shit and yell at my wife,” he spat.
The door opened and shut as he fled for the workshop.
From upstairs came the sound of sobbing, followed shortly by the sound of a baby wailing.
Josh set down his chipped blue mug and marched upstairs, returning a moment later with the fussy baby on his shoulder. At three weeks old, her face was beginning to get round, and her eyes were open wide. Even screaming, she was really pretty cute. But who knew such a little person could be so much trouble?
Using his trademarked singing and walking past the windows, he got her calmed down quickly enough. But the look on his face was troubled. “Something’s not right,” he said, pacing into the kitchen again. “Maggie isn’t right.”
“She’s not sleeping,” I argued. “That would make anyone crazy.”
“I know,” Josh sighed. “But even then, you’d smile sometimes, no? And make popcorn, and watch TV? She just sits up there, Caleb. It’s weird.”
“Shhh,” I said. “She can hear you.”
We were both quiet for a moment, and unfortunately the muffled sound of Maggie’s crying was still audible.