You & Me

Homecoming arrived at the end of October. Traditionally in Texas, the homecoming game is the easiest matchup of the season. It’s supposed to be a guaranteed win for the home team. The point of the game is the presentation of the homecoming court, the dance routines from the drill team, and the cheerleading tumbling exhibition. The alumni returning. Football, for once, comes second to the pageantry.

For Landon and me, that meant extra volunteer work as we helped set up the sideline and the midfield for the homecoming court. The kids and their parents would be parading down a red carpet on the fifty-yard line before the game.

“Is Bowen on the court?” I asked Landon as we kick-started the red carpet’s great unrolling. On either side of us, the marching band directors were marking off positions for the band.

I could picture Bowen striding down the red carpet, flashing that winning smile and escorting a beautiful young lady beside him. Emmet would be nowhere near. He was a product of me and his mother, two people who’d never managed to scrape together more than a single handful of friends between us. Neither of us had been socialites.

Landon laughed. “No way. Bowen is far too shy to run for the court.”

I looked askance at Landon as the last of the red carpet rolled out like a tongue. “I still haven’t seen this shy Bowen you talk about.”

“You know, he’s never been shy with you.” Landon tipped his head and smiled. “He normally keeps his head down. Most of the time, I hear from teachers that he’s the quietest one in class. His participation grades in elementary school were always low.”

I couldn’t picture it. Bowen, like Landon, was larger than life in my mind. It was Emmet and me that were the silent ones. Awkward, not fitting in the right ways. Emmet was serious, stern, and severe, where I’d been rootless and aching, drifting on winds that grabbed me when I was a younger man. Landon and Bowen seemed to have it all figured out.

“Bowen is my son,” Landon said.

He’d said the same thing weeks ago, the night we first met. “I still don’t believe you’re shy, either.”

“Not with you.” He winked as we straightened the carpet. Shifted it so the parade of the court wouldn’t clip the edge of the marching band. “You always saw me and Bowen at our best. I guess we never felt like we had to hide from you.”

I pulled him to me. The band directors had vanished and the stadium was empty. I took a chance and kissed him on the lips.

The rest of the night was a blur. The court processed, and the king and queen were crowned. Bowen and Emmet stayed on the sideline. Annie’s son, Jason, was one of the homecoming court—a prince, when he didn’t win the crown—and the whole team cheered for him when his name was announced. Annie, dressed up like homecoming royalty herself, stood beside her son and beamed.

Homecoming mums were everywhere. It was a tradition I’d never fully understood, something uniquely Texan. High school girls wore giant, pie-shaped floral arrangements from their necks, bedecked with ribbons festooned with tinkling bells, charms, and light-up baubles. Most of the ribbons were scrawled with glitter script, long calligraphy that spelled out their names, their activities—cheerleading, drill team, math club, theater production—and the names of their friends and sweethearts.

The boys wore smaller versions around their biceps like a cuff. Same flowers, same ribbons, same bells and glitter and gilt. For the girls, the very best mums went to the floor. For guys, it was ostentatious for the ribbons to drift past the wrist.

Now, loose ribbons, flower petals, and glitter drifted from the bleachers and settled on the field and the Last Waters players like Renaissance favors bestowed on dueling knights. The stands were swollen with alumni, mostly college students returning to reminisce with classmates who hadn’t graduated yet. Tailgates peppered the parking lot. The party was in the crowd and the stands, not under the lights.

The game went quickly, Bowen putting up two touchdowns before the half, with Emmet playing a soft defense that gave the other team a lot of time on the field. He made them work for a touchdown and a field goal, and after the half, Bowen and Emmet were on the sideline, assistant coaching their second-string players on the field.

The sideline was cramped. Coach Pierce had given field passes to a half dozen alums, big names from Last Waters who were now bigger names at Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, and the University of Texas. One alum came all the way from Alabama. The college players towered over most of the high school kids, except for Bowen and Emmet.

Was I looking at our sons’ future? Both boys headed for star-studded college careers and then a shot at the NFL draft? Landon and I, football dads for life?

How would the NFL feel about a player with a gay father?

Every thought I had for Emmet’s future was tangled with my own. My choices influenced Emmet’s life like a plucked guitar string. He’d feel the reverberations of me forever. Were parents and children ever truly parted? Or were our lives braided together, he and I linked always, no matter what? Cut the braid that bound us and we may unravel, but the frayed spots where we’d spent years together would always be inside our souls.

Bethany hadn’t flown down for the homecoming game. It was Bowen’s weekend, Landon said, and Bethany didn’t want to intrude. The game and the dance were for the kids, not for the parents. And, he told me, Bowen and Bethany had seemed to fix the tension that had filled their relationship since spring. They were chatting on the phone in the evenings, Bowen casually speaking with his mom about his day and football practice and what homework he was doing. Sometimes they video chatted at the dining room table, and Landon had said hello to her from the background. She was all smiles as she said hello back.

There was a wistful edge to Landon as he told me about Bowen and Bethany, like he wanted to fix what was broken, find the place where he and Bethany could connect on their high fives again.

Jealousy tried to crawl out of its hole inside of me. I shoved it back. Bethany had been Landon’s best friend since they were kids. She smiled at me when she saw me from the stands.

On Saturday, we helped our sons into rented suits and fixed yellow roses to their lapels. A group of boys from the football team were going to the dance together, one big mass of friends, and they were meeting up in Old Town and by the river for the required photos.

The spot du jour for homecoming pictures was a bend in the river just beyond Old Town, where the water burbled over a long line of river rocks and the last cluster of oak and cottonwoods brushed the sky before the endless prairie took over. Green met blue met gold, with the gentle swells of the river in the foreground.

Everyone looked amazing. No one more so than Emmet, I thought, and coming in second, Bowen. They cut dashing figures in their suits, young men on the cusp of their futures.

The parent group was mostly made up of the booster moms, plus Landon and me and a few other scattered parents who preferred to watch the games from the stands rather than sweating it out with the volunteers. Annie and Marianne were there, with Jason and Jonah.

Annie took charge, herding the boys into position along the riverbank. They posed together, then broke into offense versus defense groupings, and then into best friend sets. She wanted candid shots, too, and asked the boys to be themselves. They tried, stiffly, until Annie tossed them a football and they forgot they were nervous.

After, the boys started to scatter, but Bowen called to me and Landon before he and Emmet made the delicate climb up from the riverbank. “Dad, can you and Mr. Hale come down here?”

Annie’s face was a question mark as we negotiated the dirt path down to our sons. “What’s up?”

“I thought we should get photos.” Bowen gestured to the four of us. “Just us, you know? One big group?”

I looked at Landon. He looked at me. We smiled.

Annie was ready with her camera. We got into a line, Landon and me in the center, our boys on the outside, and wrapped our arms around each other’s waists. Landon’s thumb stroked over the small of my back. “Smile!” She took different shots while we shuffled positions. Boys on the inside, dads on the outside. Me and Emmet alone. Landon and Bowen alone. Emmet and Bowen alone.

“C’mon, you guys get one.” Bowen nudged Landon’s shoulder. “I’ll take it with your phone.” He held out his hand.

Landon and I wrapped our arms around each other and smiled for the camera. Bowen and Emmet were staring through Landon’s phone at us.

What were they seeing? Could they read everything between us in the way our hips and our knees and our shoulders were touching? Was my head tilted too far toward Landon’s? Was my smile too bright? After the first picture, Landon turned to me with a smile on his face and laughter in his eyes. Anywhere else, I would have kissed him, right then and there. Was the longing to do so etched on my face?

“Got that, too!” Bowen called. “That’s a great one.” He passed Landon’s phone back. Annie looked down at a scramble of blooming black-eyed Susans.

I swallowed hard when I saw the picture. Landon and I looked like we were in love. Head over heels, out of this world, soul-deep in love. Landon’s smile was one of the biggest I’d seen, and I was gazing at him like he’d filled in all the missing pieces in my life. When he’d turned to me, his hand had flattened on my back, and he was holding me like we were dancing. We looked like we were a moment away from kissing.

By the time we made it back to where we’d parked the cars, the other parents had left, taking their boys with them. Only Jason and Annie still waited. Bowen was driving Jason and Emmet to the dance and then out to the lake for the post-homecoming campout, where juniors and seniors kept the party going until they collapsed on sleeping bags beneath the stars. Off-duty firefighters volunteered to camp nearby, keeping an eye on things. One of the sheriff’s boat patrols floated on the lake all night.

Before we loaded the boys into Bowen’s car, each of us gave our son a talking-to. “Be safe, Emmet,” I said. This was the first year Emmet was going to the campout.

“I know, Dad,” he said, throwing in a little eye roll for good measure. “I don’t drink at these things. You know Bowen and I watch out for the other guys.”

“Don’t forget to have fun, too.” I squeezed his shoulders. How did I end up with this serious, no-nonsense kid? “Text me when you go to sleep? And in the morning, when you wake up?”

“I will. I’ll see you tomorrow, Dad.”

Then they were off, driving to the high school, where the cafeteria and the quad had been converted to a dance hall. The boys had painted their numbers on Bowen’s windows in burgundy, white, and yellow. 16. 99. 35. Go Rodeo Riders was almost illegible on the back.

Annie was uncharacteristically subdued as she said her goodbyes. She gave Landon a long, lingering hug, long enough that Landon shot me a quizzical look over her shoulder. “Well, I would invite y’all for a glass of wine,” she said, “but I’ve got to run. My gal friend called. She’s sobbing into a half gallon of Blue Bell Rocky Road, and I need to yank that spoon out of her hand and tell her there are more men in the sea.” She smiled. “You guys go on. Have a glass for me.”

We said we would, wished her all the best, and waved as she drove off.

We were alone.

We’d been planning our own homecoming night for weeks. Ever since I first heard about the lakeside campout, and I’d been convinced that it was safe, or as safe as it could be, from Landon. Bowen went the year before, and he’d come home exhausted, covered in sand, and beaming. It was one of those rites of passage for the kids in this town, he’d said. Party at the lake until dawn.

Which meant, without Bethany, and with the boys gone, we had a night to ourselves again. To be ourselves again.

Landon stopped me at his front door when we got to his house. “Give me five minutes,” he said. “Then come in.”

I set a timer on my phone and waited. The sun was setting, scattering marigold and blood orange over the long arms of the old oaks. Wispy clouds were strung like pearls. Distantly, I spotted the stadium lights over the empty football field. It was a tradition to keep them lit through the weekend when the home team was victorious. A darkened stadium meant a darkened town.

Beep, beep, beep. Time to head inside. I knocked, waited. The door was unlocked. I walked in.

Candles burned in clusters, little groups of four and five together on the hall table, the dining room table, the kitchen continent, and the coffee table. Music played, soft love songs filling the dim living room. Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love” turned into Elton John’s “Your Song.”

Landon waited at the end of the couch. His eyes glittered, caught on the flickering candlelight. He had a single red rose in his hand, tied in a ribbon stamped with the Texas flag. I grinned. That ribbon was a homecoming mum staple. I took the rose in one hand and cradled his face with the other.

“Surprise,” he whispered against my lips.

I kissed him as I wound my arms around his neck. The rose draped down the center of his back. The song changed again, to a cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

He broke the kiss and looked me in the eyes while he took me into his arms.

We didn’t need to speak. Our eyes said everything we needed to. Our fingers, too, when we threaded them together in the space between us. Our bodies moved in perfect harmony, perfect synchronicity.

This was our night. We’d known for a while now. I’d told him I was ready. He asked if I was sure. I’d told him I was, more than anything. Was he ready? Yes, he’d said. It was almost a whisper in my truck, his voice an octave deeper and rumbling out of him. Yes, Luke. Yes. We talked through the logistics over text. I’d had several checkups since Riley died. Landon’s physical was A-okay. We were both healthy.

We made the choice together.

And now we were here. This was the night. We were going to drop every barrier and boundary between us. Merge, become one. For a moment, for the night, or for forever.

Waiting had filled what was to come with potential, with a poignant promise that hovered like an unuttered wish. We could be making love for the first time for the rest of our lives. If this was it, if Landon was The One for me, then this wasn’t merely heat and hormones surging, us grasping for pleasure from each other.

This was the beginning of something that could last forever.

The song changed again, to Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E.” It was lighter, more upbeat, and Landon took the moment to spin me and bring me back into his arms. I mouthed along with the words, and he kissed me whenever I said “love.” I was made for you, I thought. You might have been made for me, too.

Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful” began while we kissed on a smile after the soaring end of Nat King Cole. I nuzzled his forehead and looked Landon in the eyes.

Landon spun me again. We danced our way into the darkness, toward the flickering candlelight that tickled down the hallway and out of his open bedroom door. He backed me across the threshold with his lips on mine.

We couldn’t stop kissing, not even as we worked the buttons on each other’s shirts or tore the clothes from each other’s bodies. My lips were everywhere as I ran my hands over him. I was shaking, my need surging.

He guided me to his bed, and then his fingers worked my belt and fly. He pulled off my pants, my socks, my boxers. Landon’s flush darkened his skin to the color of the rose he’d given me. Candlelight wrapped silk-laden shadows around him. His eyes, glittering diamonds piercing the dark, gazed down at me. The look in them—hunger, longing, certainty—pinned me in place.

He popped the button on his fly, then hooked his fingers in his jeans and his boxers and pulled them down as one. His cock popped free, already so hard it bounced against his belly, left a trail of precome on his skin. I saw it glisten, there and then lost to this cradling darkness that held us.

I held out my hand to him.

He climbed into my arms, his body to mine, pressing all of himself against me. Thighs to thighs, hips to hips, cock to cock. His arms enveloped me, his elbows landing on the mattress beside my head. He rested his cheek against mine as he fought to breathe.

We were touching in all the places that two men could, every part of him and me connected. I saw his pulse leaping, felt his heart racing. It matched my own.

I took his face in my hands. We’d made love so many times this way. I knew exactly how to move against him, how to tease out a symphony from him, how to get him to squeeze the sheets beside my head and gasp my name as he trembled apart. I knew how we fit, how each part of me seemed to move with him and into him like we were made to love each other.

We could make love like that until the sun rose, but we were going further tonight.

His lips caressed mine, a delicate brush of skin against skin, before he kissed a path down my body. Jaw to neck, a kiss to the hollow of my throat, a slow line along my collarbone. Down to my chest, where he brushed his stubble against my nipple before he laved at the nub. I clung to him, my hands in his hair, holding him to me as he alternated sucks and bites before he kissed a crescent path across my pec. He swiped his tongue in my belly button like he did to my hole. He sucked on the edges and gently bit the tender skin beneath my belly button.

I groaned as his mouth sank over me and he swallowed my cock. I was so hard he needed three tries before he could get me down his throat. My thighs spread, my hips bucked, and I tugged at his hair, my head thrown back as I panted. He was swallowing, fucking my cock with his throat, short bobs up and down that made my vision blur and my ears roar.

As he sucked, his fingers slid behind my balls to my ass. I was caught between chasing sensations: push into his fingers or rock up to meet his deep sucks? I moaned his name as my skin burned.

Oh-so-fucking-slowly, he sucked off my cock, exaggerating the deep suction as he pulled his lips from my root to my crown, his cheeks hollowed, his eyes on mine. He gripped my thighs and rolled me up, his voice thick as he said, “Legs up.”

His voice had dropped again, so deep it almost merged with the darkness.

He scooted forward, his thighs under my back, my knees hooked over his biceps. He took my ass in his hands, his thumbs spreading my cheeks. He trembled as he held me, before he dove in.

I fisted the sheets, arched my back, tried to fuck myself on his face, on his tongue spearing me, on his lips and his mouth that kissed my hole open. I panted, one long, desperate chant of his name. Too much, it was too much. His tongue inside me, moving in my hole, opening me up. I reached blindly for my cock. If I didn’t touch myself, I was going to explode.

Landon grabbed my hand and pinned it beneath my back. He bit down on the curve of my ass, and then his lips latched onto my hole again.

He lowered my legs, grabbed me around the waist, and rolled us both until he was on his back and I straddled his hips. My fingers sank into his chest hair, clung to his thick pecs. Candles flickered. Shadow and flame, and Landon beneath me. I draped over him, our mouths fusing. I tasted the musk of myself on him.

I was wet between my ass cheeks. He’d soaked my hole. I was open, and wanton, and needy. That desperate edge I’d found was aching for him. I wanted him inside me so fucking badly.

He reached beneath a pillow over his head and pulled out a bottle of lube.

My eyes met his. He whispered my name. His cock pushed against the back of my thighs, the curve of my ass. I nodded.

Lube ended up everywhere. He used so much. He spread my cheeks and circled my hole with his soaked fingers as we shared wild, hungry kisses and breaths. When he sank his finger inside me, we both moaned.

More lube. He poured it down my ass and rubbed it in, drenching me. He worked my hole, fingering me open and circling the inside of me. Watched my face for every flicker, for a sudden spike in raw pleasure as he moved deeper.

One finger, and we kissed. I fucked myself on his touch. Two fingers, and I buried my face against his, breathed hot in his ear. He stilled, waited. Ran his dripping hand up my back, trailing lube along my spine.

When I was ready, I pushed back, and he began to finger fuck me again. His other hand squeezed my thigh, curved over my ass cheek, ran up and down my leg. He kissed me everywhere he could reach. My throat, my shoulder, my chin.

“Lube me?” he finally whispered. “I don’t want to take my fingers out of you.” His voice was shaking.

I grasped the lube he’d tossed to the mattress beside us. I poured a half-dollar amount into my palm. “More,” he said. “It’s your first time. More.”

He gritted his teeth as I stroked his cock. Panic filled his eyes for a moment, and he breathed in, held his breath. I took my hand away. He’d almost come. Just from this, he’d almost come. I was right there with him, so hard my cock was leaking all over his belly.

We kissed slowly, trying to come down from this edge we hovered over. Candle flames were caresses on my sweat-slick skin. Every nerve in my body was aflame. Landon’s breath burned my face, gasps and pants and whispers of my name. Our hearts pounded.

He looked me in my eyes. “Luke, I love you.”

“I love you, Landon.” God, I loved him so much, more than I believed it had been possible to love another person. He was the other half of me. I’d been incomplete until I’d found him.

His fingers were still inside of me, circling, stroking, rubbing the outside of my hole. I saw stars floating in the darkness, glitter falling in the candlelight. “Make love to me, Landon. Please.” I needed everything. I needed to feel him inside me. I needed us to be complete.

He slipped his fingers out of me and brought his cock to my hole. Our eyes locked.

I sank onto him as he pushed into me. White-hot heat knifed up my spine, a spark that ignited a slow burn and wrapped around the ache of the stretch. He clenched his teeth and grasped my ass, all ten fingers digging into the meat of my cheeks.

I should have gone slower, but I’d been chasing this moment since Landon and I met. Us, together. Us, one. I couldn’t have stopped myself for anything.

Each fraction of an inch I moved brought him deeper inside me. I understood the drenching lube. I kept moving, kept going, as Landon’s nails dug into my ass and he threw his head back, his throat moving, swallowing air, his legs quivering beneath me as his heels kicked the mattress. “Luke, Luke.”

Finally, he was in, all the way in. I tore his hands from where they’d clamped to me and brought them to my lips, kissing the backs and threading our fingers together. My breath came in erratic, frantic gasps, nothing inside me working right. I was full, achingly, perfectly full, joined all the way with Landon.

My thoughts twisted. My blood was burning, this wildfire he’d built inside me now out of control. I was shaking. Landon was shaking. Our eyes found each other. My breath escaped me as I moved, as the feel of him sliding through my hole stole every thought. I froze, his cock half inside me, my thighs quaking as I held myself suspended on him.

And then I moved, dropping back down until I ground into his hips, all of him inside me again. He cried out, clenched down on our threaded hands. I rose again, again, again, riding him.

Noises fell from me, pants and moans, his name, declarations of love, a babble I couldn’t control. I pitched forward, dragging his hands over his head and holding them to the mattress as I draped myself across his chest. Yes, this angle, oh God. Fuck, he was going deeper now, every thrust arrowing into me. My forehead dipped to his. He kissed me, wild, his lips everywhere, on my face and in my hair. My hips kicked in, and I rode him hard. He bent his knees, got his weight beneath him, and flexed upward, meeting me deep, thrust for thrust.

Every move I made drew a cry from him, like the pleasure was too much, too searing, too huge to contain. I kissed him, frantic and needy. He kissed me back, chasing my lips when I turned away and moaned on a particularly amazing thrust. My eyes closed—

I was moving again, flipping to my back. He’d broken my hold on his hands and wrapped his arms around my waist, taking me to the mattress with his cock still deep within me. He grabbed my legs and spread them wide, lifted each over his shoulders. He wrapped his hands beneath my back and dug his fingers into the muscles around my spine. Surged forward and kissed me, ground into me. Hard thrusts, as deep as he could go.

I threw my arms over my head and flung his pillows to the floor. Found his headboard, leather and carved wood, and dug my hands around the bottom edge. I pushed upward on each thrust, my toes curling behind his head. One of us was keening. Him or me, I couldn’t tell anymore.

Sweat dripped from him onto my body. He dropped a kiss to my knee, slid my thigh off his shoulder, and held it hitched against his ribs. He lifted my ass off the mattress and held me suspended as he rose to his knees. Yes, there. Somehow, he’d found a way to go deeper inside me.

We were beyond the place where Luke and Landon were separate men, far into a new place where we’d merged. We breathed together, surged together. The sparks in his eyes echoed in mine, a burn looping between us. My wildfire surged in his veins.

I couldn’t hold on. Fear slipped into the corner of my mind. The ferocity of this orgasm was going to tear me apart. I’d never felt anything like the way he was moving inside me. I was clenching, every part of me trembling. My thighs gripped him. I squeezed my ass around his cock. His eyes went wide and his thrusts sped up. I did it again. Again, and then moaned as he moved inside me faster, harder.

I reached for him, cupped his face. His eyes closed as he leaned into my touch. “I’m close,” he breathed over my wrist. “Luke, I’m so close.”

I nodded. I couldn’t speak anymore. He nodded back, kissed my wrist, my palm. He threw my legs around his waist, grasped my ass in his hands. Crashed down to the bed and pinned me, lips finding mine, hips thrusting, driving, pounding. He stared into my eyes as he breathed in—

He screamed my name, his eyes wide open like he was searing the sight of me beneath him into some forever part of his mind. He kept thrusting, his cock swelling, hot and hard and so fucking huge inside me suddenly, impossibly deep, until I felt a heat around my hole, a hot slickness. He kept grinding his cock into me as my own orgasm erupted, one long, endless rush of come flooding out of me as I shattered in his arms.

We collapsed together, him on top of me, my arms around him, holding him to me. Raw, aching pleasure still burned between us, shared from his soul to mine. I shivered, and he moaned. Sweat made us slip against each other. I ran my fingers up and down his spine and his shoulder as he kissed my neck.

The silence between us was comfortable, like a shield holding the world at bay. We existed in a cocoon, safe inside this darkness. He shifted sideways, slipped out of me. My lips opened on a soundless cry.

I’d be sore soon. I hadn’t been stretched like that, inside or out, ever. No one had made love to me that intensely. With all of them, and all of me. I never knew making love could be anything remotely like that.

He took my hand in his and ran his fingers over mine, down to my palm, over my wrist, and up my forearm, following the path of his touch with his lips. His eyes were still diamond bright when he looked at me. Shimmering fractals, like they were soaked in unshed tears.

We’d bridged a divide that separated two human beings. I was connected to him on an atomic level, like his kisses were sinking into my skin and merging with my DNA. Like my touch went deeper than a caress, like my fingers were dipping into the waters of his soul.

“Luke.” He whispered my name and kissed my palm. He hesitated before he spoke again, as if he was pulling a secret out of himself, putting words together he’d never spoken aloud. “I think,” he began, “you’re the man I was dreaming about.” Another kiss, folded into my hand. “You’re the man I dreamed about all those years ago when I was struggling to find myself. You’re him. You’re the man I’ve been searching for my whole life.”

He pressed my hand to his cheek and closed his eyes as his tears started to fall.