Page 10 of Bad to the Bone
Chapter Six
ALEXstared at the ceiling, the moonlight filtering through his bedroom window casting shadows as elusive and ephemeral as his thoughts. Every time he tried to roll over and convince himself to sleep, his brain insisted on reliving one of the night’s charged and contradictory moments, leaving him grappling with questions he had no answers to. If he knew why Ricky Lee was back in Freeland and what he really wanted, maybe he’d be able to come to grips with his own unsettled emotions.
Over the years he’d imagined a variety of reactions to his apology, from Ricky Lee decking him with a well-deserved punch, to Ricky Lee’s absolution leading to a renewal of their friendship, even if it had to be at long distance. The one scenario he’d never imagined was Ricky Lee brushing it off as if Alex’s inaction was supremely unimportant.“Getting sent to Lawton was the best thing that could have happened to me,”Ricky Lee had said.“It was better for both of us to let things be the way they had to be.”
That hurt, but if Ricky Lee had left it there, Alex could have accepted the end of their friendship and moved on. But Ricky Lee hadn’t seemed to want to let it go. Alex snorted and jostled his pillow, trying to find a comfortable position. Who was he trying to kid? Ricky Lee had made it pretty damn clear what he was interested in, and it wasn’t mere friendship.“What if I want to make it my business?”he’d asked in a sinfully seductive murmur when Alex insisted his sexuality was nobody else’s business.
And maybe Alex would be willing to accept that—to scratch an itch and satisfy eleven years of curiosity about what it might have been like, if what had been starting between him and Ricky Lee could have developed in the direction it had been headed. In the years since, he’d never felt drawn to another man the way he had to Ricky Lee. The few unsatisfying hookups he’d tried hadn’t been enough to banish the memories. Even if it only lasted the weekend, at least he’d have more to base his future fantasies on than teenage imagination. He wasn’t a teen any longer, and Ricky Lee sure as hell wasn’t either. Alex’s cock tightened at the memory of Ricky Lee moving on the dance floor, at imagining what it would be like to strip away that elegant suit and bare his broad chest and narrow hips and long, strong legs to Alex’s hungry inspection. Ricky Lee didn’t have those muscles back in high school, and Alex wondered what he’d done besides practice Muay Thai with Crae to develop them.
Crae.If anything was holding Alex back from giving in to what he and Ricky Lee both wanted, that was it. Ricky Lee had introduced Crae as“My friend and… assistant,”but judging by the erotic glissade of their bodies on the dance floor, Alex had a pretty good idea what Crae’s “assistance” consisted of. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Ricky Lee was entitled to find his happiness, or just his release, with anyone he wanted to. And Crae seemed like a decent person, someone who, under different circumstances, Alex would like a chance to know better. But getting together with Ricky Lee in front of his… significant other—no matter how intense that significance proved to be—would be beyond crass. It wasn’t something he could do, and he hoped Ricky Lee hadn’t changed so much that it was something he would do either.
Alex sighed and thumped his pillow, but the new alignment wasn’t any better at helping him unwind. The truth was, he didn’t know how much Ricky Lee had or hadn’t changed. The few words they’d exchanged at the reunion weren’t enough to give him more than seemingly contradictory clues.
If all Ricky Lee wanted was a quick fuck for old times’ sake, he didn’t have to hang around for a week in a town that surely held nothing but bad memories for him. Maybe Ricky Lee was as curious as Alex was about what had happened during the years they’d been apart. So they’d have dinner, share their stories, and then… what?“Next Saturday night, your ass is mine,”Ricky Lee had said before mounting that ridiculously phallic motorcycle—Crae holding on behind him—and powering off. Alex strangled his pillow and buried his face in it, trying to decide whether or not he wanted that to be just a figure of speech.
“SOhow was the reunion?” Alanna asked later that morning as they made breakfast before church.
“About what you’d expect.” Alex slid the eggs into his mother’s cast-iron frying pan, hoping his eyelids didn’t look as heavy as they felt. “A lot of people who already know everything there is to know about each other trying to make small talk between dancing to songs they haven’t listened to since high school.”
“Don’t be dense, Xan.” Alanna caught the bread as it popped up from the toaster and spread it with butter, then set it on their plates beside the bacon she’d already taken from the oven. “Did Ricky Lee and his friend crash the party?”
“Jeez, the gossip in this town is even worse than I thought.” Which was another reason to be circumspect about anything to do with Ricky Lee. “How did you hear about it already?”
“Not stupid, remember?” Once Alex spooned some of the eggs onto her plate, she took it to the table and sat across from him. “Why else would he show up in town right before the big night?”
“Yes, he showed up.” Alex pondered how much to tell Alanna, but she’d hear it anyway, and her bullshit detector was in perfect working order. “I got him in by claiming he and Crae—the person he brought with him—were my guests.”
“So what’s the story there? Are they a couple?”
“Hell if I know.” He shook his head, and she gave him a sympathetic smile. “Crae identifies as nonbinary, by the way. A couple of idiots tried to start something in the parking lot after things broke up, and Crae kicked their asses. It was really something to see.” That didn’t answer Alanna’s question, though. “The way they were dancing together, I assume so.” Or he’d assumed so, but he still hadn’t come to any conclusion about exactly what Ricky Lee’s comments to him meant in light of whatever relationship he shared with Crae.
Alanna bit into a slice of bacon and chewed before answering him. “And you’re not happy about that.”
“It’s none of my business, Lan.” She started to speak, and he cut her off. “There’s a lot of water under the bridge since high school. And I’m not sure it’s a good idea to open that door again.”
“Mixing your metaphors there, bro. So is Ricky Lee sticking around?”
Alex ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe. He’s staying at least this week, and we’re going to have dinner Saturday night and talk.Talk,” he insisted when Alanna waggled her eyebrows and grinned.
“Talking’s a good start.” She mopped up the last of her eggs with her toast and popped it into her mouth. “Just don’t make up your mind about anything before you hear him out,” she said after swallowing. “I know you, Xan. You’ll talk yourself out of even having dinner with him if you give yourself half a chance.”
“Nice to know my sister thinks so highly of me,” he muttered as he gathered their plates to load into the dishwasher.
She blew him a kiss. “Nobody knows you like your family.”
THEreunion, and Ricky Lee and Crae’s surprise appearances, were a prime subject of discussion after Sunday services at St. Michael’s church. “I don’t think I know this Ricky Lee Jennings,” Father John Nally said to Alex after greeting him and Alanna following mass. “But he seems to have the whole town buzzing.”
“He left Freeland before you came to the parish.” Alex wondered exactly what gossip Father John might have heard. He had found the priest’s viewpoint to be relatively progressive, though compared to their previous pastor, that wasn’t a hard distinction to reach; Father Wasson had been ordained in the sixties, but the liberalism of the era had definitely passed him by. “We were friends in high school, but we hadn’t been in contact for over ten years.” And since Alex didn’t expect Ricky Lee would stay in town much beyond the week ahead, he expected the buzz would die down quickly once its subject was no longer around to feed it.
“Well, to paraphrase Socrates, strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and weak minds discuss people.” That still didn’t give Alex a clue as to whether any of the gossip Father John had heard included him, short of asking outright, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. “I’ll see you at the Habitat for Humanity build this Saturday?”
“I’ve got the caulk and caulk guns ready to go.” The parish had been working on their current project since early summer, and barring any significant delays, the home would be completed before the end of the year. “If the Acostas serve the same enchiladas they made last weekend for lunch, we’ll have no shortage of volunteers.” He’d forgotten to mention the build event to Ricky Lee, but they usually finished up well before it started to get dark, so it shouldn’t interfere with the dinner he’d committed to Saturday night. And if the thought of that made him flush slightly, he hoped Father John didn’t notice.
“It’s good to know we can always count on you, Alex. Have a blessed week.”
AFTERdropping Alanna back at home, Alex headed to the high school to help dismantle the decorations from the gym. If he’d hoped for a respite from the prevalent chatter about the previous night—not that he’d really expected it—he was doomed to disappointment.
“I still don’t know what he’s doing back in town,” Ashley Rogers said as they dismantled the plywood backdrops in preparation for moving them to storage. After a fresh coat of paint, they’d be raw material for the next drama department production. Of course, there was no question who “he” was. “Do you, Alex?”
