52 Panhead

52 Panhead 14

'52 Panhead

Chapter 14

Sunday morning I was awake early, painfully aware that Evan was leaving today for his three weeks in New York. I watched him sleep for a few minutes, running the back of my knuckle lightly along his shoulder, then pulled my shorts on and headed for the kitchen to see about coffee. When I padded silently into the room, Raf was leaning against the counter, his back to me, staring out the window, one hand hooked up over the opposite shoulder, one bare foot propped on top of the other. He was shirtless, wearing only soft old jeans that hung on his hips and hugged that beautiful round butt that I'd recently seen in the flesh. His back was a landscape of brown - hills of muscle sloping softly into the valley of his spine

I couldn't see his face, but his posture spoke volumes, and as I watched, his ribs expanded in a big sigh. I walked up next to him and lay a hand on the back of his neck. He'd heard me coming at the last second and swung his head to look at me, his face expressionless in the pale morning light. I looked back at him, wondering if I'd ever know him well enough to have any idea what he was thinking. We studied each other's faces for a long, quiet moment, and then he turned his gaze back to the window before speaking to me.

"What's it like?"

His voice was soft and low, and I knew instantly that he was asking me about what he'd seen last night. I shrugged, thinking how to phrase something I'd never tried to put into words.

"Really good, physically. Warm and tight. Real smooth. Pretty much what you'd expect, but better." He smiled slightly. "Emotionally - if you care about the guy you're with - it can be amazing. It's pretty damn good even if you don't care about him. Different, but good."

"Do you... always..." He stopped, uncomfortable at discussing the intimate details of my sex life with his buddy Evan at 7am in a bright, sunny kitchen - before coffee - but I knew what he was trying to ask.

"Yeah, I pretty much always top. He, uh... likes it that way." I paused for a moment. Raf's eyes were staring unfocused out at the back yard. "You never...?" I ventured.

He lifted a shoulder. "Evan... wouldn't. Kenny can't."

He spoke with finality, but I felt like we were getting somewhere and didn't want to leave it at that. He couldn't have Evan, not anymore, but, "You're sure he can't?"

He was quiet for a moment or two, deciding how much to tell me, maybe. "We tried it a long time ago, but it hurt his back."

My turn to think for a moment. "Things haven't changed with him? I mean, it sounds like that was years ago. Maybe his back has, like... stabilized or something. Seems like you oughta give it another shot if he's into it." I shrugged at him.

He gave me a half smile back, and then moved away to pour us two cups of coffee. We chatted about life in Patterson until Evan and Kenny got up, and then we made scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. Raf was kind of quiet, even for him, and I noticed Kenny glance at him a couple times. After we ate, he rolled himself to where Rafael was standing at the sink, curled his hand around Raf's thigh, and looked up into his face. Raf smiled down at him, then bent and kissed him, hooking an elbow around his neck and nuzzling into him.

Watching them, I thought about Rafael standing alone in the kitchen this morning, and hoped that seeing me with Evan wouldn't upset their applecart by making Raf want something that maybe wasn't possible.

We went home after breakfast and got Evan packed up, but I couldn't sit still just waiting to go, so we went for a walk. If nothing else, I was getting more exercise since we'd met. As we walked, we discussed moving in together. My house was listed, and Evan's condo would be on the market starting Monday, so we needed to find somewhere to live. I was going to stay at the condo for a few days, and see if I could make an appointment with Tom, the realtor Kenny had told me about.

The drive to the airport was quiet. Evan held my hand where it lay on his leg, but neither of us had much to say. I drove on auto-pilot, day dreaming about our new house. Since we hadn't even started looking yet, the details were a little fuzzy, so I concentrated on the feel of it, the knowing that Evan was just in the next room, or about to pull in the drive.

If the details of the house itself were fuzzy, the thought of the two of us living together was not. We were good domestically; we fit into one another's lives easily, naturally, and I was gonna have a tough time being patient until it began for real.

At the curb, I hauled his suitcases out of the back while he got his briefcase and jacket from the Jeep. When there was nothing else to keep us busy, our eyes met, and I saw the same resigned unhappiness in his face that I was drowning in. I just pulled him into my arms and held on tight, smelling him, feeling him, trying to store up enough of him to get me through three weeks.

Finally, we eased apart and he turned away, grabbed his bags, and disappeared into the terminal. I got in the Jeep and sat there a moment, waiting for my vision to clear. I scrubbed a hand roughly over my face and dumped the Jeep into first, squawking away from the curb. I'd never had to say goodbye to someone I loved, and it wasn't a pleasant experience. I'm sure my sister would tell me to get a grip, it's only three weeks, but I felt like shit. At the condo that night, in a bed that smelled so much of Evan that I almost bailed to the couch, I tossed and turned, trying to find some way to fall asleep that didn't remind of a position I'd been in while having sex with Evan.

It was damn near impossible.

Just before 9am on Monday morning, I went down to the realtor's office, ready to find our new home. As I walked in, a good-looking woman about Evan's age looked up from her desk near the door. Her long chestnut hair swung as she lifted her head, catching the sunlight.

"Morning. Can I help you?"

"I have a 9:00 appointment with Tom."

"Well, that'll be a problem - he's got the flu. He didn't call you?"

I shook my head and sighed, disappointed beyond words. Probably nothing was going to go right until Evan was back home. The woman made a 'geez, I'm sorry' face and came around the desk with her hand out. "I'm Sharon McGregor. As it happens, I'm free this morning, and I'd be happy to show you some homes."

I shook her hand, thinking that I'd have been more comfortable with Tom, but didn't want to wait until he was over the flu. "Jeff Caldwell. Okay, that'd be great, thanks."

"Tell me a little about yourself. Wife? Kids? Pets?" When I didn't respond right away, she glanced at my bare left hand. "You're single?"

"Uh, not really." Jesus, Jeff, get over it. I'd never been bashful about telling people I was gay, preferring to find out sooner rather than later if it was going to be a problem, but I was having trouble spitting it out to Sharon. "I have a partner."

"A partner..." It took only a split second for understanding to cross her face. "You're gay." I nodded. She didn't miss a beat. "Ok, so do you guys want a house in the 'burbs, or something more country?"

"Country. An acre or two would be great. With a barn or big garage. At least three bedrooms. But I'm not sure what we can afford, exactly."

"We'll figure it out." She banged away at her keyboard, pursing her lips and drumming her red nails on the desk as she watched the search results come up. "Ok... well, there are a few that fit those parameters. Let's go take a look."

She whacked a couple more keys, shrugging into a jacket as the printer spit out several pages, then picked up her keys and led the way to a white Honda CRV, decked out with realtor's signs on the sides. As we drove out of town, she glanced at me. "You don't look familiar, Jeff. New in town?"

"Yeah, I live up north a couple hours."

"But you want to move to Patterson?" She consulted the first print-out and made a right onto a two lane blacktop road.

"My partner grew up here and works in town."

"What's his name?"

"Evan Tanner."

"Maggie Tanner's kid?" She laughed. "My God. Small world. We used to live down the street from them and Maggie babysat me sometimes. Evan was such a shit to me." She clapped her hand over her mouth and turned to me in horror. "Jesus, I'm sorry."

I chuckled; she was bubbly and casual, and I was starting to like her. "No problem, tell me more. How was he a shit?"

She glanced at me, judging my response. "Well... I'm two years younger than him and I think he liked boys even back then, cause he'd never let me hang out with him. He was always off with his buddies doing something way more interesting than homework or baking cookies or whatever Maggie had me doing." She paused, and then glanced at me with a smile. "You and Evan, huh?" I nodded, smiling back. "Then I guess you've heard all about the accident, and Luke. Everyone tell you what an all-American boy he was?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

Hearing something in my voice, she patted my knee a couple times. "Ah, don't let it get to you. He was a neat kid with a lot of potential, but he's gone and you're here. That's what matters now. Have you and Evan been together long?"

"Nine months. We met in February."

If it seemed odd to her that I was buying a house with a guy I'd known less than a year, she didn't comment on it. She turned into a drive, and pulled up to the front of a muddy-brown, two-story house surrounded by a chain link fence. It looked like a fortress. An ugly fortress. I stared at it in dismay. This was so not what I had in mind in my day dreams.

"Not very inviting, is it?" Sharon said with a grimace. "This one has all the things you're looking for, but..."

We stared at it for a moment, then looked at each other and burst out laughing. She made the `NNNNT' sound of a reject buzzer, put the car in reverse and backed out of the drive until we were on the road again. "Next!"

We chatted easily as we drove around the countryside, with Sharon doing most of the talking as she told me more about Patterson. The next few houses were okay, but they just didn't say 'home' to me. After the last one, she pulled off at a wide spot in the road next to a corn field, and we sat there in the car, me sighing in frustration and Sharon gazing out the window, deep in thought. When she spoke, her voice was quiet.

"Tell me how you want your place to feel. Not how many bedrooms, but describe how it feels when you're both home for the evening."

It was an odd request and I watched her for a moment, but she continued to look out the window. I thought about what I wanted for Evan and myself before I spoke. "It feels peaceful, settled in, like there's a history of people being happy there. Maybe an older place. I want Evan and me to grow old there, with our friends and family nearby. I want it to feel like home right from the beginning."

Sharon was in profile to me, and had begun to smile as I spoke. Now she turned to me with a sparkle in her green eyes. "In that case, I have one more place to show you. It might just be perfect." She drove back toward town a little ways, and then turned into a gravel lane, where she hopped out to open the padlock on a wooden gate and swing it open. As we drove up the long driveway, I looked around.

Uncultivated fields stretched away on either side of us, and tall old trees hung over the drive, lining it on both sides. They were bare now, but I could imagine them in summer, leafed out and shading the daily walk to the beat up old mailbox that sat on a weathered post out by the road.

As we came around a curve, the house came into view. It was one-story, painted a mossy gray-green with white trim, cottage-y looking with little peaks over the doorways and shutters on the sash windows. Three wooden rockers and a couple of benches sat on a deep, roofed porch that started to the right of the front door and disappeared around the left side of the house. A huge field-stone chimney beside the door rose up past the roofline. In the front yard, a rope swing hung from a huge tree in the front yard, swaying in the breeze, and a big red barn with a few outbuildings was visible around the left side of the house.

We parked and got out, standing by the car for a moment to listen to the countryside, full of bird calls and the rustle of the wind in the fallen leaves. As I went up the three steps to the porch, I began to smile. I could imagine sitting out here with Evan on warm summer nights, watching the sun go down as Chewy snapped at fireflies. Or during the fury of a summer storm, safe and dry as the rain poured down, drumming noisily on the roof.

When I got close to the door, I could see that it was carved with scenes of farm life; cows grazing, a chicken coop with hens pecking in the dirt, a woodshed with stacked logs and a saw resting on a stump. It was amazing and I was about to open my mouth to ask Sharon about it when she opened the front door, watching my face as she stood aside to let me go first. To the right was the living room, still fully furnished, looking as though whoever lived here was just out back feeding the chickens or something. The walls were a soft cream color, warm in the pale November light. The room was filled with overstuffed furniture upholstered in a large dark floral pattern, rich and homey as it could be. As I stood there with the late morning sun slanting thru the tall windows, I simply fell in love with it.

To the left of the front door was the dining area, complete with a huge farm table and ten chairs, all made from a dark wood, walnut maybe, gleaming with the rich sheen that comes only from years of use and care. Straight ahead was an archway into the kitchen, and to my right, past the couch, a hallway.

After absorbing the feel of the place for a moment, I moved through the living area and down the hall. The first door on the left was a full bath, done in a soft yellow. The two doors on the right proved to be bedrooms, both good-sized; the corner one in the looked ideal for my office with a view of the yard and field out the front window and the woods to the side.

A heavy door at the end of the hall appeared to made from the same wood as the dining table. I glanced at Sharon, but she was still a few feet behind me, gazing into the corner bedroom. The door swung smoothly and silently as I pushed it open and when I stepped through, I stopped in amazement. A four-poster bed dominated the room, and this time I thought I recognized the wood as cherry. The carved motif on the posters matched the smaller bedside tables and the front edge of the dressers – a highboy and a shorter one with a mirror. A long closet took up the right wall, and another full bath was through a door to the left.

God, I loved this place, but it was way more house and land than we needed. I realized I really should have talked money with her before setting out to look at things we couldn't afford. I headed back down the hall and turned into the kitchen. It was big too, long and narrow with a built-in table and benches on my left and a big butcher block island in the center. A real butcher block, made from on-edge 2x6s of a light wood, slightly shallower in the center from decades of use, sitting on thick, turned legs. The cupboards, tons of them, were painted white, and the upper doors were 6-pane, like the windows of the house. The window behind the large apron sink looked out on the back yard and the field beyond, so you'd have a great view as you did the dishes. No dishwasher, I noticed.

A door to the right opened into a room that you'd never have known was there. It was all tucked away back here by itself with a small fireplace on the outside wall. Painted pale yellow like the first bathroom, it glowed in the noon light. When I turned back into the kitchen, Sharon was standing at the back door, looking out at the field that seemed to stretch away forever to a dark line of trees.

"Lotta space," I commented.

"Just under 3,000 square feet."

We were silent for a bit, me trying to figure out how many banks I'd have to rob to be able to buy this wonderful house, her just staring out the window. Finally, she spoke. "Well?"

"You're right, it's perfect. I love it."

She didn't say anything, so I walked over to stand next to her, looking into her face as a big tear dripped off her lower lashes and rolled down her cheek. Suddenly she gave a hearty sniff and dug in her pocket for a tissue, wiping her eyes and nose impatiently.

"Christ, I thought I was over this."

I watched her. "You know this place, don't you?"

"Yes." She heaved a huge sigh. "I own it. I grew up here." She was silent for a minute, and then turned to face me, her lashes wet and spiky with unshed tears. "My folks died when I was eight, right after we moved away from the house near Maggie. After that, I came here to live with my grandparents. That used to be my grandma's sewing room." She pointed to the cozy room just off the kitchen. "And look." She opened the back door, showing me a series of lines and dates running up the edge. "My height on each birthday."

I looked at the pencil marks, a yearly ritual between an old man and his granddaughter, then at Sharon. "Are they dead?"

"He is. She's worse than dead. Alzheimer's." She sighed heavily. "She's in a home in town."

"I'm sorry." I didn't know much about Alzheimer's, but what I did know was pretty grim.

"Me, too." She blew out a breath. "I'm her only relative, so..." As she let the words trail off and gave me a tremulous smile, I decided I liked her a lot.

"Why are you selling it? Don't you wanna live here?"

"Not anymore." Her smile was more sure this time. "Anyway, are you really interested? There's ten acres; the parcel is two wide and five deep. You're on a well and septic out here, and propane, but you can get satellite TV and high speed internet. And there's a year-round stream about two thirds of the way back the property. It's beautiful."

"Ten acres? Jesus, I'm not sure we can afford it. This is already more house than we need."

"I'll make sure you can afford it. I want you and Evan to have it. I haven't shown it to anyone because I couldn't stand the thought of strangers living here, but you said just the right thing back there in the car, and Evan's no stranger." She walked back through the kitchen, trailing a hand along the counter. "When can he come see it?"

"Shit. He's out of town for three weeks."

"How about you email him some pictures? I have a bunch back at the office."

"Yeah, let's try that, and then I'll call him."

We walked outside, past a garden where forlorn carrot greens peeked up through the weeds, and looked into the outbuildings. In a corner of the barn sat a tarp-covered vehicle. I lifted a corner and was surprised to see the square grill and round headlight of an old Jeep. From the small piece of it that I could see, it looked like it was in good shape.

"Grandpa's Jeep," Sharon informed me. "He bought it new in 1960. I have no idea if it still runs."

I left the Jeep behind and walked around the interior of the big barn. Some farming equipment was neatly lined up against one wall, gardening implements hung along another. In a side room, I spotted an old board leaning against the wall. As I picked it up, Sharon came over to me.

"Mmm, I haven't seen that in years."

I held it up to a shaft of sunlight coming through a high window. `Brookside Farm' was carved into the board and there were flakes of old red paint in the grooves. It had once been stained dark, but it was old and faded now. I looked at Sharon as she traced a finger around the loops of the `B'.

"Grandpa did some woodworking, and he always had a sign out on the fence by the road. He carved this one for Nana just before I came to live here, so it's almost twenty years old. That's what they called this place when they bought it, just before they got married. They built the house and lived here their entire married life. My dad was raised here." Another big sigh. "I guess he brought it in to repaint it and just never got to it."

'Brookside Farm' I thought to myself. I liked the sound of it, the thought that Evan and I would be only the second owners of this beautiful farm. I put the sign carefully back where I found it. If we actually got this place, I would fix it up and hang it on the fence out at the road where it belonged. Then it hit me – woodworking.

"Did he... he didn't make the furniture in the house, did he? The bedroom furniture?"

She laughed at me. "Yeah, actually, he did. And the butcher block, and the dining room table and chairs. Took him a few years, but like I said, they built the place themselves and he made almost everything in it."

"Jesus," I muttered as I thought about the bed, the dressers, the carved front door.

As we drove back to her office, she went back to the subject of Evan and the wreck. "Have you met Evan's old buddies, Kenny and Rafael? The guy who got burned? I had the biggest crush on him in school."

"Apparently everybody did. They're a couple. Tom sold them their house."

She nodded. "I see them every now and then around town, and I figured they were together."

Her easy acceptance of me and Evan, and Raf and Kenny, as gay couples was nice, giving me a feeling of legitimacy that I shouldn't have had to look to other people for, but it still mattered to me. I squeezed her shoulder gently as she turned to take one last look at the house, and she patted my hand in a silent 'thanks.'

By the time we got back to her office, I had mentally hung the sign, moved our furniture in, built a dog run, cleaned up the barn for a workshop, and had a good time feeling up Evan's butt as I pushed him on the rope swing.

We emailed pictures off to Evan and to my home email, and then talked money. She was willing to take whatever we were comfortable with as a down payment, and then work out a schedule for the balance on a land contract - no banks - and the price she wanted was more than fair. I was pumped.

I offered to buy her dinner, and after considering the offer for a moment, she accepted. We made plans to meet at six-thirty at her office; she said she'd take me to a small, locally-owned restaurant down the block that she swore had great food.

I went back to the condo, but I was so wound up about Sharon's house that I couldn't sit still, so I put on sweats and drove out to the edge of town. The city had made a long stretch of riverbank into a park, complete with jogging trails, exercise stations, and the occasional bench in case you wore yourself out. I set off at a brisk pace, fast enough to give me a workout, but slow enough that I could keep it up for a while. I'm more a gym guy than a jogger, but I'd been running at least once a weekend with Evan and decided it wasn't that bad. After what the sign told me was six miles, I slowed to a walk, wandering my way through the woods back to the parking lot, thinking about money and Evan and a warm, cozy farm house out in the country. I spent another 30 minutes going through the workout stations, trying to tire myself out enough that my mind would take a break.

After a shower, I passed the late afternoon on Evan's couch reading the latest Nelson DeMille novel. The guy cracks me up, and I thought if I ever tried my hand at writing, it would be the type of stuff he does – a smartass hero who can back up the talk with a `fuck the system, get the job done' attitude. Kinda like me. Ha-ha...

Sharon was shoving papers into her briefcase as I came through the door and looked up at me with a smile. "I know you like the farm, but I found a couple other places you might wanna see. No, I didn't change my mind," she added when I raised my eyebrows at her. "But Evan may not be as nuts about it as you are. Or... whatever. It's just good to have options."

Well, that took a little of the wind out of my sails. I really couldn't imagine Evan not liking Sharon's place, but we'd never even lived together, so I wasn't totally dialed in to his likes and dislikes when it came to choosing a house. After we ordered, Sharon pulled out several papers and showed them to me one by one. They were all nice houses, much better than that first fortress we'd stopped at, but I couldn't get excited about any of them. I was hooked on the overstuffed couch in front of the fieldstone fireplace; the big 4-poster bed, carved by a young man with a new wife and big dreams; the old Jeep out in the barn that I'd bet anything I could get running again. I wanted the farm.

Over dinner - lamb chops for me, beef stew for Sharon – she told me about life in Patterson; where the best deli was (on E 10th St. between the Junque Emporium and Patterson Bowl); the reason the huge tree at the edge of the town square had a big divot in the bark about ten feet up (in 1910, the wife of the first guy in Patterson to own a car crashed it into the tree when he was teaching her to drive); why the parking meters were free on Wednesdays (the first and only Patterson resident to hit the Lotto jackpot liked to shop on Wednesdays cause that's when the weekly sales started, but hated to have to worry about the meter, so she funded Wednesdays forever with a huge donation that the city invested). Sharon was good company, and by the time I said goodnight to her at her car just after eight-thirty, we had the beginnings of a friendship going.

Evan called that night, and I told him all about my day with Sharon. He remembered her, but hadn't seen her in years. He loved the house, and told me to proceed with buying it.

"Are you sure? You don't wanna see it first?" I asked him. I felt it was a huge step to take by myself, and I wasn't real comfortable with it.

"Of course I'm sure. It looks perfect and I trust you. Buy the damn thing before she changes her mind. What are we gonna do with ten acres?"

"Fuck if I know. Raise cows?"

"We don't know anything about cows."

"Evan! Who gives a shit about cows? We'll find something to do with it. Or not. Whatever!"

We talked about the nuts and bolts of it – I'd give Sharon a check in the morning, Evan would contact his bank to get a matching deposit made to her account – and then we turned to imaging what it would be like to live there.

"Did you see the stream?" he asked me.

"No. It's back a ways, I guess, and we didn't hike around at all, we just looked in the house and the out buildings. There's an old Jeep in the barn,1960 I think she said. I need to ask her if she'll sell it to me. It'd be great to get around the property, in case we wanted to haul a picnic table back into the woods or something."

"Tell me about the house again."

So I described each room to him, telling him about the corner bedroom that I thought would be a great office for me, the room off the kitchen that could be a den or library maybe. The longer we talked, the more I missed him and he hadn't even been gone two days.

My realtor called as I was driving back to my place the next morning - my house had sold at asking price to the second couple who had looked at it. I had mixed feelings as I pulled into the drive; I had five years and a lot of work invested in this house. And it was where Evan and I had spent that first incredible weekend.

Those three weeks without Evan did go by, but it wasn't much fun. I packed up my worldly possessions, leaving out only the basics to get me through until Sharon got the paperwork processed and Evan got home, so we could move in. She was going to take a few more things from the house, but agreed to sell us the Jeep and the living room furniture. It fit the space so well, much better than Evan's brown leather couch, or my funky old plaid bachelor thing.

And I got back to my poor clients. I'd put a lot of work on hold and turned away new jobs while I was trying to get the house finished, so there was a lot to do. One job I'd been putting off for weeks was a batch of macros, big, long macros that involved tons of keystrokes and required that I be in top form, mentally. I worked my way through the first one, making notes as I planned the most practical way to type it. Then I practiced it a couple times, took a deep breath, pressed 'record,' and went for it. I flubbed it the first time, but nailed it perfectly the second.

I tested it a couple times in the client's data base, wondering, as I watched it run, how many of those I'd have to crank out to pay for my share of the farm. Lots, I expected.

Four more macros, equally as lengthy, and I'd used up an entire day. Rolling my stiff shoulders with a groan, I took a long pull on a cold beer as I thought about what to have for dinner. Chewy eyed me from his spot under the table. Since I usually shared my meals with him, I figured he had a say in the matter "So whaddaya want, Chew, pizza or... pizza?"

He cocked his head left at the first 'pizza' and right at the second, so I took that as a pizza vote and grabbed my keys and jacket as we headed out the door to the Jeep. Half the fun of getting a pizza from the local joint was watching the good-looking kid who made them. He was probably eighteen or so, very Italian-looking with his dark skin, and black hair and eyes. He'd started working there about a year ago. I'd never seen him in anything but a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and an apron tied low around his hips, and I never tired of watching the muscles in his arms as he stretched and tossed the dough.

He worked in the front window of the store, so I parked where Chew could enjoy the show and went in to order my large pepperoni. I watched the kid appreciatively, laughing at myself when he gave me a grin, then took my pizza home and ate it with Chewy sitting in Evan's chair. As long as I kept the pepperoni coming, Chew didn't seem to miss Evan much. Too bad pepperoni didn't do the trick for me...

Evan called me each evening and, oddly, our calls were full of those silences that had made me so uncomfortable at the beginning of our relationship. You'd think, since we couldn't talk to each other much, that when we finally did get the chance, we'd gabble like girls; but the silences were comforting, if expensive, letting us just feel the other's presence. Sounds weird, I know, but it worked for us.

One night after he'd been gone nearly two weeks, he didn't call until almost 11pm. I was in bed reading, just waiting for his call before turning out the light.

His voice was low. "You in bed?"

"Uh-huh."

"Naked?"

"Uh-huh." I was starting to smile, but tried to keep my voice as serious as his.

"Hard?"

I wasn't yet, but I was rapidly headed in that direction. "Gettin' there."

"Mmm, me too. Stroke it - get it real hard for me."

I reached over to snap off the light, sliding down into the pillows with my eyes shut. "God, it feels good, so hard in my hand, hard enough to fuck you with."

"Shit, I miss you." He was silent for a moment. "If I was there, I'd be pushin' your slick cock slowly up my ass right now, slow enough that you'd feel every inch of it."

"Ah, Jesus," I moaned, feeling the tight heat of his hole even though he was halfway across the country. I was stroking myself steadily now, straining into my hand as I listened to his voice.

We were both quiet for a bit, except for our progressively heavier breathing. Evan broke the silence first. "I'm gettin' close. I want you to come with me, I wanna hear you."

"Thirty... seconds," I grunted out, jerking quickly on the head of my cock.

"Unh...unh...unh," Evan grunted into my ear. "Awww, fuck!"

That did it for me; my cock exploded in a splatter of cum that plastered my chest and belly with the first three spurts, then flowed out onto my hand for another several seconds. My body relaxed back into the pillows, and I curled up on my side, wishing desperately that Evan was here to hold me through the recovery stage, something I hadn't realized I loved so much. We talked a little longer, mostly about how wonderful it would be when he was back again and we were together in our own home. Then we started saying goodnight. That was always the hard part - actually hanging up the phone – and it usually took us at least five minutes.

I started saving my daily jack off session for his calls.

Evan was supposed to land the second Friday in December around noon, and then drive to my place, but I figured I'd come to him instead and save him the drive. I pulled into the back lot of his condo around 1pm and parked one building down so he wouldn't see the bike, smiling to myself in anticipation of surprising him.

Well, I was the one who got the fuckin' surprise.

I'd been watching for Maggie's Volvo since she was supposed to pick him up, but a blue VW pulled in at the far end of the lot and parked in what looked like Evan's guest spot. As I watched, Evan got out of the passenger side with his briefcase, and a young guy with sandy hair and a big smile climbed out of the driver's side. The guy was a few inches shorter than Evan, and muscular, just shy of being stocky.

They met at the back of the bug, talking and laughing, then Evan threw his arm around the guy, kissed him on the mouth, and they started to walk toward the condo. As he turned to the kid to say something, Evan happened to glance my way and our eyes met. For a split second, I couldn't move.

Evan with another guy?

That couldn't be, it just couldn't be - yet there it was, right in front of me.

***

Many thanks to David of Hope for helping me sort this one out.