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  He was quiet for a moment as I skillfully navigated up and over a big hill that led east out of town. “Thanks, man,” he said. “I do owe you one. Two, actually, since you helped me so much last Saturday with that damned truck.”

  “Those girls were close to useless, weren’t they?” I said, again hoping I hadn’t overstepped a line. There were so many lines that other guys knew about but I hadn’t been told about, and I spent my entire life afraid I was violating some guy code.

  I guess that I was doing okay, because I heard Bill laugh. “Yeah, they were.”

  About another mile down the road, which was literally down the road since the hill we had gone up had to come back down, I slowed when I spotted flashing lights in the middle of the road. Proceeding slowly, we noticed that it was a police car with a cop standing in the road, waving two flashlights to get us to stop.

  Rolling down my window I asked, “What’s happening?”

  “Sorry, guys, but the road’s closed. Two plows and a couple of tractor-trailers all came together in a bad wreck. No one’s getting through here for some time tonight.” The cop had flagged us down at a crossroads. “You can go left, right, or you can head back, but no one’s getting through ahead tonight.”

  I looked over at my passenger and asked, “Is there another way to your house?” I knew that the road to the right might work but would easily add twenty miles to the drive, and over some nasty back hill roads.

  “Yeah, but you’re gonna let me out here,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt.

  “And where do you think you’re going?” I asked, knowing full well that we were back to the “I’m independent and don’t want to put any of my friends to any trouble” guy.

  “I’ll walk from here.”

  “How many miles is it to your house from here?” I asked.

  “About eight.”

  “You got boots on?” I asked, knowing full well that he didn’t. “And a coat?” Same answer.

  “Afraid not,” the cop said as he listened to our debate. “Nothing is getting through up ahead. The wreck took out some power lines, and the whole place is a mess. I can’t let you go through in a car or on foot. It’s just too dangerous until the power company can get out to deactivate the lines.”

  “Damn,” Bill muttered.

  And I made a decision. “Okay, thanks,” I said to the cop. “Stay warm.” I rolled my window back up and started to turn around. Rather than ask, since I knew what he would say, I simply said, “You’re coming home with me. I live in town, and we can get back there. I’m sorry it’s nothing special, but at least it’ll get you inside out of the storm for the night.”

  I hadn’t dared to risk looking at him for fear that he would tell me something like “Hell no! If any of the guys knew I stayed at your house I’d never hear the end of it!” But he didn’t say anything like that at all. When he did speak it was to say, “Thanks. I feel bad for putting you to so much trouble tonight.”

  “Not listening,” I said to him as I drove us back the way we had come. After a minute or two of quiet, except for the sound of the car dragging through ever deepening snow, I said, “Well, that explains why the roads haven’t been plowed, if two of the four plows are out of commission. I wonder how bad it was.”

  “Me too. But if I had to guess, I’d be willing to bet I know exactly where it happened. There’s one stretch of road where everybody goes too fast just as the road takes a big curve to the right. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like an accident that’s been waiting to happen for years.”

  In another ten minutes we were back near town. We crossed the rickety old bridge that was not so rickety and came to the same damned traffic light, which was predictably red once again. The roads were empty, and again I was going to turn left. But this time I threw caution to the wind—I must have had a rush of testosterone or something—and I went ahead and said, “There’s nobody else on the road. I’m going.”

  “I would too,” he offered, which made me feel less anxious.

  More unplowed roads, still no traffic, several turns, and a mile later I said, “Hold on,” because I knew that I was gonna have to step on it to make it into my driveway. As I expected, the driveway itself was clear, but the passage from the street up into the driveway was dicey. My dad had clearly been out and plowed out the driveway—he was obsessive about such things, even going so far as to get up during the night to plow the driveway during big storms.

  “I can’t wait to move someplace warmer,” I said without thinking.

  He chuckled as I parked and said, “I absolutely agree.”

  I led the way toward the house, hoping that I hadn’t left anything embarrassing out in my room. I knew that I kept my precious porn tucked away for fear that my mother might find it, so there was little chance of that. But I didn’t have guests over very often. No, actually, never. I didn’t have a lot of friends, probably because I didn’t have much self-confidence.

  You could get into my house through a front door which was up a flight of steps or through the basement that was on ground level. I led Bill in through the cluttered basement to the steps up into the house.

  The first thing I heard was my mother demanding, “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Sorry, Mom, I was giving somebody a ride.”

  “Who?” she demanded. Then she saw that I wasn’t alone, and she turned on her host smile and said, “Oh, I didn’t know you had a guest with you.” We left our wet shoes in the basement by a heat duct and walked upstairs.

  “I was giving Bill a ride home, but the roads toward his house are closed because of some big accident, so we couldn’t get through.”

  Bill turned on his smile and charm and worked his good looks to his advantage. He introduced himself and said, “I’m so sorry to cause trouble. I got out of school and my car wouldn’t start. If your son hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  Maternal concern had replaced the previous upset. “You both must be cold. Have you eaten? I’ll warm something up for you two.” She turned on the light in the dining room. Bill looked around, taking in the house he had never seen before. Our house wasn’t huge, wasn’t elaborate, and wasn’t a showplace, but it was home. I was hoping that he would be okay with what we had to offer.

  While the food warmed up in the microwave, my mother brought us something to drink and asked Bill about his family. My mother had lived in the valley her entire life and seemed to be related to half the people around; the other half she knew in one capacity or another. When Bill told her who his parents were, my mother said she knew Bill’s mother, and proceeded to give the names of the woman’s parents. Bill was surprised, but I wasn’t—my mother was a walking genealogy encyclopedia. Lineage and heritage were important to her in some way. In her way of thinking, one’s family determined whether you were decent, upstanding folk or disreputable bums. I didn’t tell her that a lot of our family fell into the latter category. I guess in her way of thinking, once a bum always a bum, or something like that.

  At my mother’s suggestion, I showed Bill where to drop his backpack and showed him the bathroom. She raced down the hall to grab towels for him before racing back up the hall to do something in the kitchen. I returned to the dining room. Bill returned a moment later, taking a quick stop to check out the bathroom.

  Dinner turned out to be some of my mom’s lasagna and her homemade Italian bread, both of which she did really well. She kept offering more things until we were both stuffed. Bill tried to call his house to let his family know he wasn’t going to make it home that night, but the lines were apparently down so he wasn’t able to get through to them.

  My mother was not a late night person, and it was already nine o’clock, so she went to bed after asking for about the hundredth time if Bill needed anything.

  After she was gone I was just about to apologize when Bill said, “Your mom is great. My folks wouldn’t react as well if I just showed up with somebody out of the blue.”

 
; As much as neither one of us were in the mood, we both had homework to try to do before we could head to bed. We were both really beat, though, so after half an hour we both had reached the conclusion that it was a lost cause.

  Bill had said something about sleeping on the couch, but that idea went out the window when my mother had told us that one of her brothers hadn’t been able to get home that night and was camped out on the couch in the living room, already sound asleep. I guess early to bed, early to rise was a family trait.

  So when we were ready for bed I was again a mixture of gleeful and terrified that the hunk of the universe was about to sleep in my bed! My bed where he starred nightly in my masturbatory fantasies. My very own double bed. My bed where he would probably be forced to brush up against me sometime during the night. I liked that thought until I realized that his touching me would probably give me a boner to end all boners and that if he saw it—or felt it—I would be finished, my secret would be out, and the jig would be up.

  After one more trip to the bathroom, we went into my bedroom and I closed the door. Apparently Bill was no more accustomed to sleeping over at someone’s house than I was to having someone sleep over at mine. We both sort of looked at one another and weren’t sure what to do.

  “You okay sleeping on the right?” I asked.

  “Sure. Whatever,” he said, seeming to feel about as uncomfortable as I was at the moment.

  “You… um….” Damn. How did I ask this? “You sleep in anything? You want some sweatpants to wear?” Oh, please! Oh, please! Oh, please! I was secretly begging to anyone who cared to listen. Tell me you sleep buck naked and can’t stand to have any covers over your sultry, smoking hot body!

  “No, thanks. I’m good with just my underwear.”

  Privately I wondered if the man had underwear on today, but apparently he did this time. Too bad the man didn’t go commando all the time, although if he had and he slept naked I’d probably be in need of CPR. In a way I was something like the dog that chased the UPS truck. He didn’t have a clue what he was gonna do with it if he caught the thing, but don’t get in his way when the truck comes by. This was a little different because I was a man and I had instincts. That, plus I’d read a bunch of porn stories, which were a teenage male’s handbook on how to have sex.

  We each stripped off our pants, socks, and shirts before jumping into bed. As Bill climbed into bed I caught a really incredible glance at his smoking hot ass and legs. This was the first time I’d seen his legs uncovered, and they were looking mighty fine.

  Before I turned off the light I made sure that there was a nightlight, so that if he needed to get up during the night he’d be able to find his way to the bathroom without tripping over too much stuff. As I reached for the light, Bill put his hand on my arm—oh crap! Boner alert! Boner alert! Warning!

  “Hey, I really can’t thank you enough for this. You’re right that I’d be walking until spring to get home if I had tried. This is much more comfortable than being out there in that storm. I really owe you big time,” he said, looking earnestly at me. Damn, dude! Tone down the sultriness a few hundred degrees! I wondered if the man had a clue how much he just exuded raw sexuality and manliness.

  “Don’t worry about it. There was no way I was gonna just leave you there.” The storm was continuing outside the window. We both heard the wind blowing. When we had looked outside a few minutes ago it was very hard to tell if it was still snowing or just blowing. Whatever it was doing, it was pretty ferocious.

  Quite unexpectedly there was a knock at my door. My dad was getting ready to go to bed but had heard some news he thought we’d want to hear. Without opening my door he called out, “Just heard on the news that your school is closed tomorrow. They’re predicting another eight to ten inches tonight. They’ll be no plows on the streets until maybe twenty-four hours from now. Good night.”

  I looked over at Bill and said, “Guess you’re gonna be here for a little while.”

  “I’m really sorry about that,” he said.

  I’d had enough, so I reached over and playfully punched him in the arm and said, “Will you shut up about that! Just lie back and enjoy it!” I complained, a split second later realizing how my words must have sounded.

  “Isn’t that what you usually tell a reluctant girl you’re about to have sex with?” he asked with a chuckle.

  “You don’t look like a girl, and this probably isn’t your first time,” I said in response.

  “Okay. My secret’s out. I have had conjugal relations with members of my own species,” he said with a smile.

  I wanted to ask him a thousand questions, but somehow I kept my mouth shut and just looked admiringly at the man. He had a very interesting choice of words: “conjugal relations with members of my own species.” He carefully didn’t say, “I’ve had sex with women” or “I’ve done a woman” or “I’ve been with a dozen women.” No, his wording choice was most interesting. At the same time there was just no way I could ever buy the fact that Mr. Super Jock was gay—no way on God’s green Earth. Still, I wondered why he had chosen the words he had used.

  Weren’t teenage boys supposed to brag about the number of women they had been with sexually? Wasn’t there a trophy you got, like frequent flyer miles, for every five women you bagged? I, of course, had not been given a copy of the guidelines, so I could only surmise. But I had heard my peers bragging enough to know that talking a big game was probably more important than actually doing anything. Most likely none of them had ever even seen a woman naked, let alone taken one to bed, but no one would ever admit to such a colossal failure. To admit such a thing was akin to letting down the entire brotherhood and making all men somehow inferior. Quantitative indicators seemed to matter more than qualitative indicators when teenage boys bragged.

  “Well, I guess we don’t have to worry about that calculus test tomorrow. It’ll be pushed back to Monday, which gives us the weekend to study and get you more comfortable with calculus.”

  “Really? You’d help me study for the test?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Of course,” I said. “But I’d really rather sleep first.”

  “Sorry!”

  I turned out the light, and we each lay on our backs quietly for a moment. I felt his hand gently move over onto my arm, squeeze a little, and he said, “Thanks so much.” I hoped he didn’t feel the hairs on my arm all stand on end and practically purr at his gentle touch.

  I put my hand on his while it was still on my arm, squeezed gently, and told him, “No problem.” Most straight guys would have bounded out of bed by that point, yelling “faggot!” at the top of their lungs, almost afraid that being in the mere presence of a gay man was somehow going to cause them to go gay as well. Sorry, guys. Doesn’t work that way.

  “If you snore I’m going to tickle you awake,” I said.

  He laughed quietly. “I don’t snore. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Do you have sworn statements from people you’ve slept with attesting to that fact?” I asked in my best imitation of lawyer fashion.

  “No, your honor. Sorry. Anonymous sex with strangers doesn’t lend itself to signed affidavits.”

  Damn! Anonymous sex with strangers? Who the hell was this man I was sharing my bed with that night? He was not turning out to be anything like I had expected. I had thought he might name off a couple of dozen girls’ names that I would immediately recognize.

  “So the question is whether the court will accept sworn statements signed ‘Anonymous’ or not. Hmmm. Interesting legal tangle. Perhaps I’ll have to take it under advisement. In the meantime, the tickle punishment still stands pending my decision. Court adjourned.”

  He laughed again. Damn, his laugh was infectious. “It is so ordered,” he said. I felt his hand on my arm again for a moment in acknowledging touch. “Thanks,” he whispered.

  “For you, anytime. For anybody else, screw ’em.”

  We laughed, and then finally he was quiet.

  Chapt
er 3

  LONG after Bill stopped talking and his breathing evened out in apparent sleep, I lay awake, my mind spinning like a top that was wound as tight as it could possibly go. I was in bed with Bill Cromwell! I never, ever, ever in my wildest dreams thought such a thing could ever happen. This man was sex on two feet. He was a walking, talking wet dream come to life. And he was in my bed, one foot from my body, that was about to explode from pent-up lust and excitement. It was too bad men were so ruled by their dicks. They got us into so much trouble and made us make such horrible decisions half the time. They didn’t contribute anything to calculus exams or memorizing lines for a play, but still they wanted to rule the world and direct our every move, or at least the most dangerous ones.

  Bill was clearly asleep. With the nightlight I had plugged in to help him if he woke up, I was able to see his face clearly. He lay on his side toward me, curled up in almost a fetal position, seemingly making his muscular body smaller, safer, less vulnerable.

  The man was so incredibly gorgeous it nearly left me speechless. I lay in bed facing toward him, not more than a foot from his face, studying him intently. His eyes moved, and his facial muscles jerked lightly as if he was dreaming. For the first time I noticed that he had a scar just above his right eye. Unless you looked closely you wouldn’t see it, but since I was a foot from his face and studying him like the Good Book, not much was escaping my notice.

  Eventually fatigue proved to be too much even for my testosterone-addled brain, and I too fell asleep. I was not accustomed to sharing my bed with anyone. This may have been the first time I had ever done such a thing. As a result, I stirred from sleep anytime my bedmate moved.