We went camping and mountain biking and geo-caching. We went out to dinner or had dinner with Brian and Lizzy or just sat on my couch drinking beer and watching bad TV. Some nights we even cooked dinner at my house, and then he would help me do the dishes afterward. It felt strangely domestic.
One afternoon I found an old Battleship game in the closet, and we spent several days challenging each other until he caught me cheating. In my family, cheating was always part of the fun, but he was appalled by my blatant disregard for the rules and wouldn’t play again after that.
Most of his evenings and days off, he spent with me. I knew he occasionally went to Cherie’s house after leaving mine, but true to his word, he did not seem to be interested in pursuing anything else with her. He never mentioned her at all. The couple of times that I half-heartedly suggested he invite her to join us, he looked at me like I had suggested the unthinkable. I didn’t mind.
CHAPTER 13
“I BROUGHT stuff to make nachos,” Matt said as he came in from the kitchen and handed me a beer.
“You’re making nachos?”
He gave me the pseudo-grin. “I thought you were making nachos.” I threw my bottle cap at him. He ignored it and looked over at the TV. “Pre-season football? What’s the point?”
“It’s better than no football at all.”
“You know,” he said teasingly, “I don’t think gay guys are supposed to like football.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. But so far, nobody’s come by to revoke my ‘Gay Guys’ membership card.”
He laughed and then turned back to the TV. “The Cowboys and the Broncos? Damn, I might actually have to cheer for your Broncs on this one.”
I laughed in surprise. “Really? I’m amazed.”
“I always root against the Cowboys just to piss my dad off.”
“I forgot he was a Cowboys fan. I’ll have to cheer against them from now on, too, just on general principle.”
“Only one more week,” he said, and I knew exactly what he was talking about. We were counting down the days until regular season started. He was the first person I had ever met, not counting my father and Brian, who was as excited about pro football as I was. “And the week after that, we’ll be watching my Chiefs kicking ass all over your Broncos,” he said. As division rivals, our teams would play each other twice in the season.
“We’ll see.”
“Loser buys dinner for a week.”
“Deal.”
He held up his beer, like a toast, but winced a little as he did.
“Are you still sore from that bike crash last week?”
“Yes. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except now I can’t sleep right. This morning I woke up with a huge knot in my shoulder. I think it’s a sign of impending old age.”
I said, without really thinking about it, “I can help you with that, you know.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners, which meant he was almost laughing. “With old age?”
“No, smartass, with your shoulder.”
“How?”
He was sitting forward on the edge of the couch, so it was easy for me to get up and sit on the back of it behind him. “Take off your shirt.”
“What?” He twisted around and looked at me in horror like I had just suggested he strip naked and dance for quarters.
“Settle down.” I smacked him on the back of the head. “I’m good at this. I used to do it for my mom. She would get knots in her shoulder from painting for hours at a time.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Look, you don’t need to feel weird about it or anything.” He looked skeptical. “I’m not making a pass at you, I swear.”
“Okay.” Maybe a little less skeptical now.
“It hurts, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So stop being freaked out and take off your shirt, you baby. This will help. Trust me.”
There’s nothing as good as calling a big tough guy a baby to get him to do what you want. He thought about it for a second and then shrugged a little. “Okay.” He pulled his shirt off and turned back to the TV. “Nothing below the belt.” He said it so I knew it was at least halfway a joke, and I laughed.
“I promise.”
He was still sitting forward on the couch, not leaning back against me, which made it easier. His back was broad and very muscular. It was certainly nothing like rubbing my mom’s small, lax shoulders, and I quickly started to appreciate how strong a person’s hands would have to be to do this for a living.
He was tense at first, but as I worked, he started to relax. His head fell forward, and he made a low rumbling sound almost like purring as I worked at the knot, carefully avoiding the huge bruise on the other side from our last bike ride. There was an old scar midway down his back, from his left side to just past his backbone. I had seen it before but never asked him about it. I brushed one finger over it and felt him shudder a little.
“What happened?”
“I was climbing through a barbed wire fence on my grandpa’s ranch.” He stopped short, and I thought he was done, but a minute later he started talking again. “I was just a kid. It was Easter, and my mom had me dressed up in my nice clothes. I wasn’t supposed to go into the pasture, but I wanted to see the horses. I figured she wouldn’t ever know, but I kind of tripped going through the fence and got caught on the wire. Ripped a huge hole in my new shirt and got blood all over my pants. I thought for sure my dad was going to tan my ass for that one.”
“He didn’t?”
“No. My mom sure was mad, but for some reason, my dad just laughed.”
“Really?” That was surprising.
“Yeah.” He was quiet for a second and then said quietly, “It was a long time ago.” And I knew by the way he said it that he didn’t want to talk about his dad anymore.
“Brian and I once managed to knock over the entire rack of bulk nails at the shop. Hundreds of loose nails, all different sizes, all over the floor. Maybe thousands, I don’t know. A fucking lot of nails, I know that much.”
“Did you get in trouble?”
“Dad was pissed as hell, but my parents were always big on the idea of punishment fitting the crime.”
“So what happened?”
“We spent the next five hours picking them all up and sorting them back into the correct boxes. Customers would come in and see us and start to help, and my dad would say, ‘they made that bed of nails themselves, they can clean it up themselves too!’”
Matt laughed a little, and I kept rubbing. His skin was darker than mine and, except for the scar, completely flawless.
“Your grandpa has a ranch?”
“Had, past tense. It belonged to my mom’s parents, but they’re gone now, and the ranch went to my uncle, and he sold it. I had so much fun there as a kid with my cousins. But we didn’t go there often. My mom’s family never liked my dad much.” It seemed we kept coming back to his dad tonight without really meaning to. “For two years, we lived less than thirty miles away from them, and I got to see them almost every weekend. But then we moved again. We never stayed anywhere very long. The longest we stayed in one place was three years, ninth grade through my junior year. And then we moved again two weeks into my senior year. I hated it.”
“Is that why you didn’t join the military?”
There was a brief hesitation and then, “Part of it.” But I knew from his voice that topic wasn’t going any further either. “It must have been nice living in the same place your whole life.”
“In some ways. But coming back here after college felt a little bit like failure. Like everybody else was moving away, and I was just coming back to my parents. It seemed like only the losers were still stuck here. Like Dan and Cherie.” I stopped short, realizing maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but he didn’t seem to notice, so I went on. “I guess I got used to it. I love it. I love Colorado. I don’t think I could ever live away from the mountains. Whenever I get far enough east that I can’t see them, it just feels wrong. I can’t explain it. It’s like losing sight of home base. Like I have a compass inside, but it points west instead of north.” I stopped short and wished I hadn’t said all that. “There. Is that better?”