Page 33 of Sass in the Grass

Dixon sent him and Bernie on their way, but he could tell that Jovian was scared. “I should probably go with them.”

“We’re all hanging together tonight, Jovian. You won’t need a buddy.”

“It’s not that,” Jovian started, keeping his eyes from Dix. “He’s…he’s the only one…”

“That likes you?”

Jovian turned to face him but still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Yeah.”

The sight of that was heartbreaking. The man thought no one liked him, and he had every reason to think that. But Dix couldn’t take that sadness from a usually confident young man. Dixon set two fingers under Jovian’s chin and lifted his head tenderly until Jovian’s eyes met his and Dixon watched a little shiver run through him. “I like you. I just don’t like your shitty attitude sometimes.”

Jovian pulled away from him, turning to face the other way. “Yeah, well, I’m trying!”

“I know.”

As Jovian spun back around, his dark, sculpted brows drawn hard. “You know?”

“Yeah. You’ve been trying since you got here, telling yourself you were doing it to get my attention. You have it, so now what?”

“How the hell do you know all this? You’ve barely spoken to me!”

“Jovian, as mysterious as you think you are, you’re really not,” he said, chuckling and with that, he walked away from the young man, still laughing as he made the announcement to all the rest of them gathered. “Bernie is heading down now, and we have plenty of food after we’ve passed out all the bags. Remember, no tossing the bags. You’re carrying down the trash with you, and we’re stowing whatever isn’t eaten up in a tree tonight, so we attract nothing bigger than a few mosquitoes.”

Tears gathered in Jovian’s eyes, and his bottom lip quivered. There was nothing more in the world Dix wanted to do than totake the man into his arms and hold him through those tears, but he had the entire group to think about.

Once the campers disbanded and talked in little groups, Dix went to Jovian and mentioned, “You’re without a buddy, and that’s fine while you’re with the entire group, but not so great when need to go off in the bushes.”

Brows raising high, Jovian used his seduction voice to ask, “Into the bushes?”

“To piss.”

Deflated, Jovian grunted, “Oh.”

“I’ll be your buddy for the rest of the trip.”

The smile that bloomed was real, and not part of his act. He knew this because it was wide and a little goofy, and he was a thousand percent sure Jovian was the type to practice smiling in front of the mirror for hours. “Okay, well, when I have to go into the bushes, I’ll be sure to holler.”

And the moment was over as Jovian contorted into what he surely thought was a sexy pose.

“When you need to piss, Jovian. That’s all.”

“Sure. Okay,” he said with a wink.

As the afternoon turned into evening, the stars were bright in the sky, and everyone sat around the fire, talking, telling stories of their lives. All of them except Jovian, who deflated more and more as the stories wore on.

What had been a casual talk around the fire had become a support group. Dix had seen it happen a hundred times. The comfort people felt when they got back to instinct instead of learned behaviors of a modern world made them more at ease to be their real selves.

It was that thinking that had prompted True, Bernie and True’s brother to send Jovian to the camp. Getting him in touch with a person who hadn’t been surrounded by expensive things and that took him from his comfort zone.

Well, they knew what they were talking about, and they’d done it, at least at the beginning of it, although Dixon suspected they had an ulterior motive for bringing Jovian to the camp.

Him.

Dix couldn’t count on both hands how many times they pushed him to meet someone. He told them he met lots of guys, but none he had wanted to keep for longer than a night. Still, they pushed. They felt he had to be lonely at the camp during the off season, which was ten and a half months long.

Jovian was just his type. Even that sass that came with him.

Carrie, a trans girl that had just recently gotten top surgery, told her story. Dix watched Jovian’s reaction. It was illuminating.

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