Billy's Bones (3 page)

While Tom entered his credit card information, Kevin wandered off a bit, drifting aimlessly around the living room. There wasn’t much to look at since there was still no furniture and all Tom’s books and other belongings were stacked in boxes throughout the house. The laptop itself was sitting in the middle of the room, and Tom had to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of it to use it.

“Nice place,” Kevin commented.

“Would you like to take a tour?”

“Sure.”

So Tom took him through the house. Even mostly empty, the large rooms and golden pinewood paneling on the walls felt comfortable, and Tom delighted in another excuse to show the place off. His coworker, Sue, had been the only person to come out and look at it, so far. He didn’t have a ton of friends, and even his family wasn’t inclined to fly out from New Mexico until he had a guest room set up. But Kevin seemed properly appreciative, whistling often in admiration as they went from room to room, down and up the cool spiral staircase that led to the basement, checking out the Jacuzzi tub in the upstairs bathroom, talking about which of the upstairs bedrooms would be the guest room and which one Tom intended to turn into a library.

When they were in the master bedroom, where Tom had his sleeping bag laid out on a mat used for camping, with nothing more than a lamp near the bed and a pile of books, Kevin asked, “You’re going to live here by yourself?”

Tom shrugged and prepared to do the gender dance if necessary, avoiding the pronouns “he” or “she” if he was forced to talk about relationships. It had been a tedious necessity since he’d become a professional therapist. “Yeah. It’s just me.”

But Kevin spared him the dance, simply grinning and saying, “That’s the way to do it. You can call me a dick, if you want, but I don’t really miss my ex all that much. Not that I hate her or anything. But I guess I’m not cut out to live with someone else.”

“I’m not going to call you a dick,” Tom replied with a smile. “Some people just like a lot of time to themselves.”

“Is that why you moved all the way out to East Bumfuck?”

“I can’t stand living in Berlin.” Tom had grown up there, and in his childhood, the paper mill had blanketed the small city with smoke that reeked of chemicals and rotten eggs. There was no escaping it. The mill had shut down in 1994, which had been financially devastating to the area, but supposedly the air and the Androscoggin River that ran through the center of the city were cleaner. It still reeked of rotten eggs to Tom, and it always would.

Kevin stepped over to the window, where he could look out upon the long driveway. “Don’t get me wrong. Tracy is a good woman, and I hope she’s happy. She’s seeing the owner of the diner she works at now. Hell, she was seeing him even before we divorced.”

Tom cringed inwardly. So many men slandered their ex-wives with accusations of infidelity, it was a cliché—one he found repulsive. But what he said was, “You think she cheated on you, but you still call her a ‘good woman’?”

Kevin turned back to face him, smiling a little wistfully. “Things weren’t good between us. I can’t blame her for finding someone else. I knew what was going on with her and Lee, and she knew that I knew. It just didn’t matter by that point.”

This was beginning to feel like a therapy session, and Tom wasn’t comfortable with that. He found Kevin interesting as well as cute. Maybe if they became friends, it would be appropriate to have conversations like this. But for now, the guy was supposed be fixing his hot tub, not unloading on him.

Fortunately, Kevin realized he’d crossed a line and quickly backpedaled. “Sorry, you don’t want to hear all this shit.”

“It’s fine,” Tom lied.

“I’ve got to get going. Thanks for showing me around.”

Once again, as they shook hands, Tom felt as though the contact went on just a few seconds too long, and those soft, bedroom eyes seemed to be peering deeply into his eyes. Perhaps that was the way Kevin always shook hands.

“My pleasure,” Tom said.

“I’m busy next Saturday, but I can come over Sunday, if you have the pump by then.”

“That would be great.”

Three

T
HE
water pump arrived by UPS the following Thursday. Tom came home from work and found it sitting on his front porch. Fortunately, the only likely thieves in the area were a flock of wild turkeys that sauntered across his driveway as he was pulling in.

Replacing the pump and fixing all of the duct-taped PVC pipes and dubious wiring took nearly all day on Sunday. Tom did none of it, of course, but he hovered nearby in case Kevin needed help with anything—he didn’t—and to keep the man company. It was a hot day, and a beer would have been nice. But Tom wasn’t rude enough to sit there drinking a Smuttynose without offering one to Kevin, and he didn’t know if Kevin drinking while working on electrical wiring would be a good idea. So he mixed up some artificial lemonade from powder and brought that out in iced glasses, feeling like a ridiculous parody of Donna Reed.

But Kevin seemed to appreciate it. Or at least he appreciated the gesture. “This kind of tastes like battery acid,” he commented after a swig. He screwed his face up at the sour taste, but he was smiling. Tom was beginning to learn that Kevin enjoyed ribbing people.

“Yeah, it does,” Tom admitted. “I’m afraid I don’t have much in the house yet. The only thing in the fridge, apart from water, is milk and beer.”

“I don’t drink while I’m working. This is fine.”

He chugged the rest of it, sweat dripping off his hair like an actor in a Gatorade commercial. Tom couldn’t help but steal a glance at him, while Kevin’s eyes were closed. The man was grubby and dripping with sweat and extremely sexy. More, he seemed unaware of his sex appeal. Or perhaps he just didn’t care, unlike the guys Tom knew at the gay men’s group in Berlin, who seemed to think of nothing
but
their appearance.

Tom couldn’t spend too much time leering at him, or Kevin would eventually notice. So he took his glass of lemonade and sat down in one of the deck chairs.

“Thanks,” Kevin said as he set the glass down on the arm of another deck chair.

“No problem.”

Kevin returned to his work, and Tom sipped his own lemonade—if you could call it that—slowly. After a few minutes of trying hard not to be caught staring at Kevin’s legs—runner’s legs, jutting out from jean cutoffs, lean and muscular and dusted with fine brown hair—Tom got up and went into the house to retrieve a book. He found one of his old favorites,
Ordinary People
by Judith Guest, and settled back into his deck chair to read, feeling a bit like a wealthy asshole, kicking back while “the help” went about its business. But he knew he’d just get in Kevin’s way if he tried to assist him.

After another hour or so, Kevin announced, “Well, it’s almost done. But I’m starving.”

Tom thought about his empty kitchen and offered, “Well, I’ve got some frozen burritos and Hot Pockets. I think I’ve got the stuff for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches….”

“You’re in the country, man,” Kevin chided him. “You need a gas grill out here on your deck.”

The idea was appealing. “How much would that set me back?”

“Depends on what you get,” Kevin said, taking his shirt off and wiping the sweat off his face with it. His chest and stomach muscles were nicely defined and lightly covered with the same fine brown hair as his legs. A darkening trail led down from his belly button into the top of his shorts, which hung low on his hips. Tom’s mouth suddenly went dry, and he tried to take a sip of his lemonade, only to find the glass empty.

Kevin tucked his shirt into the front of his shorts, which only served to pull the waistband away from his taut stomach and reveal a bit more hair traveling downward… and a conspicuous absence of underwear. “A good one might go for five hundred or a little more.”

“Where can I get one?”

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we take a break and drive into town? There’s a good diner we can grab lunch at. Then I can take you to the hardware store, if you have time, and you can look at what they’ve got.”

The boundary between “contractor” and “friend” was beginning to blur, but Tom couldn’t say he minded. He liked Kevin, and if the man was interested in hanging out with him a bit, that wasn’t a bad thing. Provided he wasn’t a gay-basher or something. Eventually, Tom’s orientation would have to come out in the open if they became friends—even just casual friends. Being gay wasn’t something Tom felt the need to announce to everybody he hired to fix things around the house, but he refused to be closeted in his own home.

T
HE
town of Stark had a very quaint bed-and-breakfast called the Stark Village Inn, located near the covered bridge that crossed the Ammonoosuc River. Together with the Stark Union Church on the other side of the bridge, it presented a very picturesque scene, but one noticeably devoid of anything resembling a diner. It turned out that by “town,” Kevin had actually meant Groveton, which was less than ten miles down the road from Stark. There was a place Kevin frequented called Lee’s, a small, typical New England diner with cheap prices and enormous servings. He insisted on driving since Tom had no idea where to go.

“I should warn you,” Kevin said as he parked his truck directly under the unlit neon sign of the diner and pulled the emergency brake, “Tracy works here.”

Tom laughed. “She’s your ex, not mine.”

“It’s cool. We can run into each other in public without getting into a fistfight or anything like that.”

The inside of the diner was bright and clean, and Tom warmed to it immediately. Hopefully the food was good because he suspected he’d be eating here a lot. Kevin led him to a booth near one of the front windows, and almost before they’d sat down, he gave Tom a conspiratorial smile and said under his breath, “Here she comes.”

Tracy was a lovely woman, with reddish-blonde hair, cheerful blue eyes, and a nice smile. She also had a figure a girl ten years her junior would have been proud of. Tom could certainly see why a straight guy would be drawn to her. She came over to the table as soon as she’d caught sight of Kevin and greeted him. “Hey, sweetie. Who’s your friend?”

The smile she turned on Tom was flirtatious enough to make him uncomfortable, especially with Kevin watching, but Kevin didn’t seem to mind.

“Tracy, this is Tom Langois,” he said. “He just moved into a house in Stark, and he hired me to fix some stuff.”

“Well, you did good there,” Tracy told Tom. “Kevin can fix anything.”

There appeared to still be some affection between the two of them, and Tom was glad of it. Warring exes were tedious. Tracy left a couple of menus and said she’d be back in a minute with some glasses of water. But before she wandered off, she asked Kevin, “Can I have a word with you in private?”

Kevin excused himself and went off to talk to her, while Tom did his best to keep his curiosity in check by skimming through the menu. It was all pretty typical New England diner food—burgers; all-day breakfasts with three-egg omelets, pancakes, and plenty of bacon; steak tips; steak dinners; biscuits and gravy; chicken-fried steak with gravy; pork chops and gravy; basically, anything that could be covered with gravy, cheese, butter, or all three. Not a place to hang out if you were watching your weight or your blood pressure. In fact, some of those things, like biscuits and gravy and chicken-fried steak with gravy, weren’t traditionally from New England, but the locals had enthusiastically adopted them because they fit the theme.

Kevin came back alone, and he looked a little agitated, but he didn’t offer an explanation, and Tom wasn’t going to press him for one. He just pretended to be fascinated with the menu for a couple more minutes until Tracy returned to take their order. Kevin hadn’t even bothered to look at the menu; he just said, “Same thing I always get,” and Tracy wrote something down on her pad. Tom ordered the steak tips and fries.

When they were alone, Kevin said quietly, “She’s pregnant again.”

It didn’t sound as if he was happy about it, but Tom couldn’t just sit there staring blankly at him. He tugged at his beard a moment and then simply said, “Ah.”

Kevin was silent for a long time before he seemed to rouse himself. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he made an attempt at smiling that wasn’t entirely successful. “That’s good. I’m happy for her. For both of them.”

He picked up the saltshaker and fiddled with it, but Tom noticed his hand was trembling, almost imperceptibly. Tom resisted the completely inappropriate urge to reach out and place his hand over Kevin’s. He was more convinced than he’d been a week ago that Kevin had wanted to have a baby. Perhaps he’d been conflicted about it, but part of him was still grieving over the loss.

When Tracy brought their food over—it turned out what Kevin always got was a cheeseburger and fries with a chocolate milkshake—they ate in silence. The steak tips were good and plentiful, if a bit on the salty side, and the “fries” were real sliced potato wedges instead of cheap frozen fries. Tom had no doubt he’d be back.