Sunday Gardening

The basket is full of tomatoes now, and the plant is almost bare of fruit. I see the garter snake again, winding itself around the central stalk. I'm happy to see him, and I give him a two fingered salute before I move over to the green onions.

And Lane embarrasses me so. Or he makes me feel embarrassed, when I tell him things I don't mean to and don't want to just because he asked and he's beautiful. I don't know what to say or do to get my bearings back when I'm with him, and it's like I'm in a free fall and I'm not sure whether or not I have a parachute. It's scary, but it's good, too, because I've been sitting in the plane doing nothing for too long, I think.

I sigh.

I'm getting horny, again, thinking this much about him.

I set a few green onion stalks on top of the tomatoes. Most of them aren't as ripe as I thought, so they'll have to wait. I carry the basket into the house and set it on the table. The potting mix is still out there, and I should probably re-pot some of the hanging flowers on the patio, but I suppose they can wait until I get back from the cemetery.

I shower and dress and I'm driving down the highway when it occurs to me for the first time since the Fifteenth that maybe I should do something else, and just not go to the cemetery at all. I expect to feel guilty about this, at least a little, but I don't, and then I feel guilty about not feeling guilty about not wanting to visit them. My head starts to hurt, so I take the next exit and sit in the parking lot of a coffee shop and tell myself I ought to be ashamed, abandoning my friends, after everything they had been through, that we had been through together. I try to drive in the direction of the cemetery, but my hands and feet won't let me, and soon I'm on my way back toward my house. They'll probably chew me out the next time I go, but even that's not enough to turn me around.

Perhaps I'll go to the movies.

*****

It's Monday and Lane is here, handing me coffee, and trying to pretend nothing's weird between us. It isn't working.

"...so she told Greta that she wouldn't, but then she did, and now Greta wants to file a complaint against her for sexual harassment, of all things, even though she didn't do anything sexual to Greta, at all. But Greta says that Lina only went out with Sam to piss her off and make her jealous, so she thinks she can make a case of it to Human Resources. I told her it was ridiculous and it would just make things awkward for everyone but she-"

"You should come over later," I say. The sun is burning the skin of my forearm because Lane insists on opening the blinds in the office all the way, but somehow I don't mind when I'm looking at him. He's so damned gorgeous. It's impairing my judgment. And it's even worse now that I kind of almost had sex with him.

He looks surprised, then grins and blushes, I'm shocked to see. I blush, too, and I wonder what someone would think if they came in and saw us like this, blushing at each other like idiots. Middle school idiots with crushes.

"Yeah, okay, sure," he says. He says it in the nervous voice, the I-love-scones! voice, and the size of the smile on my face must be astounding, because Lane leans across my desk and kisses me. It's a short and sweet kiss, but we're actually in the office, and I'm his boss, so it feels long and dirty.

"We should be careful," I tell him. "You're last job got awkward when they found out you were gay, right? Imagine if people here found out you were screwing your boss."

"I'm not screwing my boss," he says. "Not yet."

"I'm serious."

"Okay, yeah." He pulls a cookie out of his pocket and takes a bite. He's very good at keeping things hidden on him, I've noticed. "Which, by the way, what happened to you? Why did you leave your last job?"

The question strikes my chest like a phone book shot from a cannon, and I feel whatever expression is on my face slide off. My hands are tingling like they're asleep, and there's something slithering in my guts.

"Hey," he says. He looks like someone who's broken something he hopes isn't too expensive. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry..."

"It's okay." It's not okay, but I think it will be, in a few minutes. Maybe. "It's just that nobody really asks me about it and so I'm not used to talking about it out loud that much. I'm okay. Really." I nod vigorously.

He backs away from my desk, and I want to say something to let him know I'm not angry, just shocked, but I don't think he'll believe anything I tell him.

"Come over," I say. "Please. After work. You can follow me home, if you want to."

"Are you sure it's okay?"

"Yeah," I say. "I want you with me."

He still looks apprehensive, but he nods.

"I have some papers for you from accounting, and Paulson from the mailroom needs to meet with you this afternoon. Are you free around three? He said that would be best."

"Make it three fifteen. I have to stop by H.R. at two thirty, and I want to have enough time to sort everything out over there."

He writes makes note of it on his iPad. "I'll tell him you'll be there at fifteen after, then."

"Thanks."

He leaves, but spares me a quick smile before he passes through the doorway.

*****

He comes over after work. We talk about our childhoods and our twenties, our mothers and our broken bones. He tells me about the more interesting people from his last job, and I tell him about my best training designs and most useful data sets. He actually listens, and I like him more and more with every word spoken. He tells me about a guy he knew at his last job, his best friend, and how they fell apart after he came out. I tell him I had a falling out with the people at my last job, too. I don't tell him my cousin killed them all, of course.

It would ruin the mood, I think.

*****

It's Friday again, and I'm here, talking to Dr. Rondan.

"He's really great," I tell her. "He comes over almost every day now. I haven't had any more dreams since I met him, and I don't have to take the sleeping pills anymore. And, I didn't go visit them this week. I know you said it was unhealthy for me to be there all the time, and I didn't get it before, but now I do. Going there every week, it just made me sad and nervous all the time. I think I'll only go once a month now. Or maybe twice. I don't know."

She's smiling, and it's genuine, I can tell, but there are tears in her eyes.

"What's wrong?"

She takes a deep breath.

"I'm sorry I'm being so unprofessional, Jeremy, I really am. But I'm so proud of you. Of how far you've come."

"Thanks, I guess." I'm proud, too, though I don't say this out loud. It might make me sound full of myself.

"So," she says, "have you told him?" She pauses. "About Crandall?"

It's been a while since she brought him up by name, so I know she's serious. I hate when she brings him up.

"No..."

"Do you want to?"

"Maybe." I stop, thinking. "I think so."

"Why haven't you?"

"I don't know." It's true. "I don't think he'd be...averse to hearing about it. And he's a great listener, and I can tell he wants to know. What I've been keeping from him. Sometimes...I want to tell him, but I just don't. At the last minute."

She shifts in her seat. "What do you think is stopping you?"

"I don't know...I guess, he's the only person who I'm close to that doesn't know. And I...I don't know...I don't want to ruin it. With this...this thing."

"You don't have to tell him right away," she says. "You do that whenever you feel ready. But if you see a future with him...if you're falling in love with him, and it sounds like you are, you'll have to tell him eventually. It's part of being in a romantic relationship. You have to trust him. Are you willing to do that? At some point?"

It's a hard question. I can always count on her to ask hard questions. Sometimes I resent her for it, but now, I appreciate it.

Our time runs out before I can think of an answer. She tells me she'll see me in two weeks, and sees me out.

*****

Two weeks have passed since our last appointment, but Dr. Rondan cancelled the one for today. I'm in the garden again, digging out some new grass and fertilizing the dirt to expand it.

I've picked all of the green onions and the last of the Swiss chard. I pull out the roots; the plant isn't thriving here, and there's no reason to leave them in. I have new pony packs of flowers on the porch, and I'll plant them as soon as I'm done clearing more space.

We've gone home from work together nearly every day since the first time, and now we're in love. At first I was terrified it was just me, and that he would break it off if he knew. But he didn't break it off, and he told me he loved me too, last Thursday night.

The garden is really coming along, and I look around at it, proud. There are four tomato plants now; two new ones showed up when I wasn't looking, though I suppose they've just been hidden by the bigger one. Some of the flowers I thought had died are back, and their seeds have spread all over the place. There are small marigolds right beside the green onions and some nameless purple hybrids creeping toward the tomatoes. I should transplant them so they don't choke each other out, but they're so beautiful and alive that I just leave them there, at least for now.

We're getting comfortable together.

It scares me some, just like everything about him scares me, but I'm not going to end it. Not this. I'm sure of it now. Even though I know it means I'll have to tell him about Crandall and the Fifteenth. I've thought about it some - a lot, really - and it doesn't seem half so awful or impossible as it once did. I'm moving on. I can't believe it, but I'm moving on, and not even the occasional jump at a loud noise or confusing nightmare can stop it.

The dug-out grass sits in a chunky pile beside me, and thirty square feet of rich and brown earth is laid out before me. Beetles and earwigs crawl over parts of it, and there's even an earthworm or two even though I haven't seen many of those here before. I bring the pony packs from the porch and set about digging holes for them.

It's been easy to keep my word about visiting them less frequently. I went seven days without thinking of them in the time since my last appointment, and when I realized their memories were slipping from me I went to visit them and cried and told them I was sorry. They didn't say much, and what they said was vague and hard to hear, like they were speaking to me over a bad Skype connection. I haven't been back again. I'm afraid they'll be gone completely when I do, and I'm not sure if I can handle that.

I pack the plants in neat rows, leaving some space for when I move the strays from under the tomatoes. They're so delicate and soft and vulnerable, and yet year after year they exist and grow in nurseries and in stores and in gardens throughout the world, completely oblivious. I wish I could be like that. It's easier not to know how vulnerable you really are, I think, and once you do you never forget. I'll never forget, I know, but Lane helps. I figure, two delicate flowers in a garden are safer than one. Or, at least, they're vulnerable together.

"Almost done?"

He leans against one of the posts, shirtless with jeans. He's barefoot, too, and his hair is disheveled in a pile on his head. He doesn't bother looking presentable when he's not at work. He thinks it makes him lazy, but it's sexy, if only to me.

"Yeah. Just gotta do something with this grass."

"Just throw it out. Come inside."

"I could use it for-"

He sighs. "We can just buy more," he says. "Just leave it until later."

He can be impatient, I've learned. I think it might be something we'll fight over the longer we're together, but I'm not going to worry about that now. We're in the stage of our relationship where everything seems cute, and I'll linger here as long as I can.

"Fine."

I track mud onto the porch as I follow him inside, but I stop to wipe my feet on the mat so it won't get in the house.

"So I was thinking," he says, "that tonight, we should..."

I've been nervous and unsure and completely desperate to have sex with him since that first thing in the kitchen, but he insisted that I wasn't ready yet and that we had to do stuff to prepare. Mostly he stroked and fingered and teased me until I was blue in the face, and maybe some other places. He'd taught me how to touch him, too, and I had returned the favor, double.

"You should see the look on your face right now." He's grinning at me from a chair at the table. I step inside and slide the glass door shut behind me. "Dirty bastard."

"It's your fault." I straddle his lap, and he moves the chair away from the table so I can fit. "You started it."

He takes handfuls of my hair and plants a kiss on me.

"I know."

We press our foreheads together.

"What are we waiting for?"

"It's not night yet." I like it better at night. It's more romantic.

"It's sunset. It's practically night."

I give an exaggerated sigh and roll my eyes. "Fine."

He kisses me again and I slide off his lap. He stands and wraps his arm around my waist, kissing the back of my neck, and walks me down the hall. I start for the guest room; he really likes the squeaky bed. But he pulls me back toward my bedroom.

"I thought you didn't like the foam bed."

He buries his nose in my hair. I lean into him. "We should do it in your real bedroom," he says. "Not the guest room."

I fall a little deeper into love with him.

We lay on our backs, hands entwined. He strokes my palm with his middle finger. It's just an affectionate gesture at first, but then he begins to stroke in circles and press harder, and I'm getting aroused. The teasing and petting has had me on edge all week, so that even his fingers in mine can make me want him.

I moan.

He's not an aggressive lover.

He starts behind my ear, one of his favorite places, moves down my jaw. His bare chest rests atop mine, and his chest hair tickles my nipples, just like before, in the kitchen. I moan again and run my hands up and down his back, and I let myself go, because I know we're going all the way this time.

"I love you," he whispers into my ear.

"I love you, too."

He starts on my neck and I whimper, running one hand through his hair and the other down his back again. My legs and feet are coated in dried mud and his jeans rub against them as our legs winds themselves about each other.

He kisses his way down my chest, leaving a shiny trail of saliva from my collarbone to my waist. I'm fully hard inside my shorts, and I worry that I won't last very long after this week. He palms my cock through my shorts and I hump against him. I can feel my orgasm budding already, stirring in my groin.

"Lane..."

"Shh," he says. I take a deep breath and shudder at the touch as he tugs my zipper down and slides my shorts down over my hips. "Don't worry about it."

I hear the denim plop onto the floor, and I'm naked and harder than I can remember being in a long, long time. He spreads my thighs with his hands and rests his head on one, and I can feel his warm breath on the base of my cock. I let out another whimper.

"You don't have to hold it," he says. His own words are a bit slurred, his breathing labored. "We have all night..."

I grunt and close my eyes as his tongue touches me mid-shaft and he sucks gently at the side of my cock. The pleasure is otherworldly; the mattress beneath me is like a cloud and his tongue on me...

He licks the length of me, lingering under the head of my cock before darting his tongue into the tip. I jerk and my thighs try to close but he holds them open with his hands and body.

"Oh, god..."

He gives the tip a butterfly kiss, and them he swallows me.

"Ah!"

I thrust into his mouth as hard as I can; I can't help it. If he minds it, it doesn't show. He holds my thighs open wider and bobs on me. He can't deep throat me, and only makes it half way to the base, but it's more than enough. It's too much.

I watch my cock disappear into his mouth, and his lips purse and his cheeks hollow and precum shines under his nose. The inside of his mouth is like molten velvet, squeezing and stroking and caressing me.

"Lane oh god please Lane..."

His tongue is doing some kind of dance on the underside of my cock, just beneath the head, and I know it's over with just a few more bobs of his head. His hair shakes and moves with every downward stroke, and it drives me insane to see him put this much effort into pleasing me. The he does the tongue thing again, and it's just like that first time, leaning against the stove.

My entire being explodes into his mouth, and the darkness behind my eyelids goes white. There's a delicious twisting and writhing in my belly, and sound rushes past my ears like I'm on a roller coaster near an ocean. I try to take a deep breath, but I can't, and I have to ride it out and hope I don't lose consciousness before it's over.

I'm still in his mouth, I can feel, and he's still sucking, more gently than before. I'm floating down now, and he comes back into focus, his blond head angled up toward me. My cock slides out of his mouth and the cool air of the room touches it and the hairs on my thighs stand up, for some reason. His face is floating toward me and then I feel his body press against mine as he pulls me into an embrace. He kisses me on the cheek.

"Better?"

He giggles into my ear, and it's such a sweet sound, part of me wonders if I'm imagining it.

"Yeah."

He pulls me onto my side and our chests are touching again. He's so warm, and so safe, and I lean into him, reveling in his embrace.

We lay there in silence for almost an hour, kissing and touching occasionally.

"Tell me about her."

His words are measured, and spoken carefully. At first, I think he's talking about Dr. Rondan, but that doesn't seem right. Then, I understand.

"Her name is Mairi," I tell him. "We met at a coffee shop when I was twenty six. Dated, got married, the whole nine. Divorce four years later."

"That must have been hard."

"You'd think so, but it wasn't. We just...grew out of each other. We were friends for a while after that, too."

"Were?" He shifted, nuzzling my neck again. "You're not now?"

"Well, after..." I swallow. "After...uh..."

I knew I'd have to tell him about it sometime; I just didn't expect it to be today. But I realize I don't want to put it off any longer. I'm tired of it hanging over my head like a guillotine.

"After what?"

I pull slightly away from him so that we're facing each other on the pillows. I can tell he's anxious for more information; his eyes are full of compassion, and no small amount of lust. But there's the curiosity, inquisitiveness, too, that's so much a part of him, even when it's a bit inappropriate, like at work. I find myself grateful that he has it, though. I might never talk about anything if he didn't ask me questions.

"After my last job."

"What does your last job have to do with anything?"

He's quick to respond, and he's hungry for information. It annoys me a little, how aggressive his questions are, but it's time to answer them.

"There was...and incident. It...changed me, to say the least."

"How?"

"I used to be a bit of a loose cannon, unorganized, late for things. But not afterward. I never wasted a moment afterward. It might be the only thing even close to good that came out of that day. I'll never waste time again."

"What happened?"

I look into his bright, brown eyes, and wonder if they'll see me the same way after this conversation is over. I hope so. I don't know what I'll do if they don't.

"There was a shooting. And office shooting. It was a Saturday. August fifteenth. It was just a few of us, there to catch up on some spillover from the previous week."