Wild Horses (21 page)

“She won’t allow it. She won’t let me have the car.”

Kai nodded, shoveling manure. He moved to the next stall and Lindsey followed, pushing the half-full wheelbarrow behind him. “Oh, thanks!” He beamed. “But you didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to. Anyway, there are virtually no buses in this area, and I don’t have enough money for a car of my own.”

“Ask Hal to give you a ride.” Kai said. “He lives like, what, ten minutes away from you?”

Lindsey blushed and her angry expression turned to mortified embarrassment. “I could never! Besides, he lives ten minutes in the wrong direction.”

“That’s perfect, then,” Kai reasoned. “This will give him an extra twenty minutes in the car with you. And with Brent there, you won’t have to feel awkward. Nothing could make him happier. He’d be thrilled to drive you around all day long for no reason at all.”

“Kai!”

He turned to face her, schooling his face into an expression of a kicked puppy. “My nose was broken because of you. Won’t you at least give the guy a chance?”

Lindsey turned from mortified-embarrassed to mortified-guilty. “Oh. Oh! I’ve never thought of it like that. I am so sorry….” Two cleaned stalls later, she broke the comfortable silence. “So you think he’s an okay guy?”

Kai shrugged. “I don’t know him really well, but yeah. I think he’s a stand-up guy who wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you.”

Lindsey thought for a while. “But I don’t even have his number,” she said with a stubborn set to her chin.

“No problem. I do.”

Hal and Brent walked into the barn just then, arguing over a finer point of what superhero powers should be permissible in some online game. Hal saw Lindsey push the almost-full wheelbarrow to the next stall, following Kai with faithful determination. “Hey, you two. Kai, are you letting a lady wheel your shit around? Seriously, man—that’s bad form.” He grinned, turning to Lindsey. “Please allow me.”

She blushed. “I’m strong enough.”

“I know,” Hal replied. “If I don’t help, though, I won’t be the man I want to be, so… would you please let me push this wheelbarrow full of manure for you?” He looked serious and determined to do the right thing. After a brief hesitation, she nodded and stepped away.

“So what’s new?” Hal asked.

Kai paused. A lot had happened, but most of it was none of Hal’s business.

“Kai rode Cayenne today,” Lindsey piped up.

“No shit? Are you grounded again?” Hal laughed.

“Yeah, I rode him. Saddle and halter, just letting him run and get used to my weight on his back. Attila helped.”

Hal remained silent for a while. “You’re crazy, man. That’s one wild horse.”

“Nah… just a bit misunderstood,” Kai replied. “And he’ll take apples from Attila now, so that’s a step in the right direction.”

“That’s great! I wish I could have seen it.”

“You will—I’ll do it as long as Attila lets me.” Kai’s excitement turned into a pensive look, and he changed the subject. “So, Hal, you and Lindsey should talk.”

“What about?” Hal asked, directing his question to the young woman next to him.

“She’ll tell you. I have to go dump this load.” Kai lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow and headed out of the barn.

T
HE
pool water felt balmy after another hot, muggy day. The previous storms left just enough moisture behind to convince Attila to turn on the house AC unit. When the heat was dry, he preferred to rely on fans.

“So Hal will be driving her—I saw them exchange phone numbers and everything,” Kai said, reclining against the pool steps.

“Your assistance is invaluable,” Attila replied. “Now I can schedule her and Mona apart again. Although… this means Mona and I will have to discuss the matter.” His slender fingers reached out, touching Kai’s in a brief caress. “We should go shopping,” Attila continued. “Maybe we could stop for dinner out today, to celebrate your success.”

“Success?” Kai frowned.

“You rode Cayenne, and it was a good experience for both of you. Both of you seem happy at the idea of doing it again in the future. I call that a great success, especially with a horse like Cayenne.”

“A dinner out?” Dollar signs flashed before Kai’s eyes along with a vision of a half-eaten sandwich someone had once left behind. The fact that he had then taken and devoured someone else’s leavings would not be banished quite so easily.

“Yes.”

“Like… like a date?”

Attila’s blue eyes darkened to black in the setting sun. “Yes. Like a date.”

“But then we go Dutch, yeah?” Kai’s shoebox now contained over fifteen hundred dollars. He could afford a date.

“No. This is my treat. However, if you would like to see a movie, we could see what is playing, and that could be your treat.”

Kai had not seen a movie in a theater since his QC technician job moved to Asia. The theater would be nice, cool, and dark. The idea held a lot of appeal. “Okay, sounds good. Dinner and a movie.”

T
HEY
sat in a small Thai restaurant on Seventh Street, right off Main. Ambridge did not boast many establishments, so their choices were limited. Little Bangkok was a family-owned place where the staff knew Attila and knew he’d request the spice level to be nuclear by local standards and normal by theirs.

“This is Kai.” Attila addressed the front-end manager. “Kai, meet Tom. He and Gina opened this place five years ago. Where is Gina?”

“She will be back… please, come sit. How are things?”

Kai listened to them exchange gossip. Tom congratulated Kai on being Attila’s new assistant and recommended Pad Thai for dinner. Attila didn’t order; Tom knew he would want a spicy green curry with extra basil and cilantro.

“I’ve never had food like this before,” Kai said as he poked the translucent noodles and contrasting, crispy bean sprouts and ground peanuts. He speared a shrimp and ate it. “This is really good. I wish we could make it at home.”

Their eyes met as they both realized the significance of Kai’s statement.

Attila set his chopsticks to the side and held his gaze. “Feel free to experiment when you get home.” Attila rolled the word “home” on his tongue like a rare delicacy. “We can research the recipe and buy the ingredients….” A tug of an incredulous smile toyed with the corners of his mouth. “Would you like that, Kai?”

“Yeah.” Kai exhaled. “I’d love to look it up online… when we get home.” His eyes softened and he quirked his lips in an embarrassed smile. “I really want to kiss you right now,” Kai said in a voice that was barely audible, reserved for Attila’s ears only.

Attila fought hard to break the spell of Kai’s making. They were, after all, in public. “Our movie begins soon. We should go.”

T
HEY
remembered very little of the movie, an average mélange of bad plot and computer-assisted action sequences. Sitting next to one another in a crowd of strangers and being unable to touch led to incredible frustration. Kai stared at the screen, glancing at Attila every so often. He slouched a bit lower and let his knee fall to the side, letting it touch the shapely leg of his companion. Attila pressed back. His contact was fraught with longing, and Kai embraced the opportunity to invade Attila’s space, using his broad shoulders as an excuse. The briefest brush drew them together and they were stuck and inseparable. Half an hour later, their fingers were entwined. The place was dark, illuminated only by the screen before them, but the ambient light revealed enough to keep Kai from slinging his arm around Attila’s shoulders and pulling him closer.

“We could just leave,” Kai whispered.

“It’s almost over,” Attila replied. They sat, suffering the din and the onslaught of images, feeling one another’s knee and shoulder and their warm, supple hands while yearning for so much more.

The end of the action flick brought a physical sense of relief as the crowd let out into a little plaza. The public area was dotted with trees and benches, and there was also an ice cream stand.

Kai’s eyes brightened. It had been a long time since he had had any. “Let’s get ice cream. My treat,” Kai offered.

“You already got the movie tickets,” Attila objected.

“They cost a lot less than dinner, and the movie sucked.”

“But… Kai, I do not really care for sweets. Not unless it’s dark chocolate.” Their fingers brushed under the street lamps as they negotiated their options amidst a throng of moviegoers.

“Let me see what they have,” Kai decided. He examined the menu and pulled Attila to stand in line with him. When their turn came, Kai negotiated his specifications with the high school girl serving them.

She thought for a bit, nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She soon returned with a large milk shake almost black with chocolate. Kai thanked her and paid. “Oh, two straws, please.” He saw her glance at Attila and twitched her eyebrows up as she handed the extra straw over.

“There’s a place to sit. You might like this. Come on!” Kai led on, leaving Attila to follow him to a wooden park bench in the deep shadow of a large maple tree. The streetlights barely made their way through its canopy, giving them an illusion of privacy.

Kai removed the lid, stripped both straws, and plunged them in. “Try it and see!”

Soon, a mixture of bittersweet chocolate and a hint of mint tickled Attila’s palate. “Mmm….” Kai could barely see his lover in the darkness, and was gratified to see his eyes close halfway in appreciation. He bent forward and wrapped his lips around his straw.

Hell, yeah!

He had missed these so much. They were just so bloody fantastic, and now Attila liked the same thing. Their foreheads touched.

“We are in public, Kai,” Attila murmured, straightening to keep his distance.

“We are in the dark, too.” Kai wrapped his long arm around Attila’s shoulders and pulled him in, the way he had wanted to for the last two hours, and kissed his forehead. “Am I still in charge of your pleasure?”

Attila froze. “Well….”

“Let me be nice to you. Let me do things for you. Let me feed you chocolate milk shakes with mint.”

Responding to the longing in Kai’s voice, Attila nodded. “Okay. Just… not many people know. This is a small town, after all.”

Kai shrugged, his gesture of utter innocence barely visible in the dark. “It’s just a milk shake.”

Attila took a deep breath, then nodded. “All right, then. It’s just a milk shake.”

They sipped some more, and Kai heard Attila utter a contented sigh in the darkness. “See? It’s not so bad. Just a milk shake.” He was aware of Attila’s presence, even though the man was barely more than a shadow. Without having to look, Kai took Attila’s hand in his and lifted it to his mouth. His lips, still cool from the cold treat, brushed the top of Attila’s fingers.

“What was that for?” Attila whispered.

“That was for you being so kind, and generous, and sweet. So handsome and strong and knowledgeable. Amazingly patient with beginners and horses, and stupid homeless guys who don’t know much.” Kai’s eloquence ran out as suddenly as it appeared, and he stuttered. “That… that was just for you being, you know… you.” Kai sat still, wary of Attila’s reaction. He wished he could see him better in the dark. Now, all he could see was a dark head in the dark night, and that head bent lower than before. Kai heard the slurping sound of a thick milk shake being sucked up a thin straw, and he didn’t know whether to feel dismissed, or whether Attila felt so flustered that he sought the distraction of the cool drink.

“Ah!” The exclamation of Attila’s pain was as sudden as it was unexpected.

“What is it?” Kai leaned even closer.

“Ice cream headache,” Attila gasped.

“Also known as brain freeze,” Kai grinned in the dark. “There is a cure for that, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. C’mere.” Kai leaned in and captured Attila’s cold lips in a thorough kiss. His fear of being rebuffed dissipated, when he felt Attila respond, and when his warm tongue brushed against Attila’s cool one. Then Attila freed his hand and cupped the back of Kai’s head, pulling him in even closer. They became lost in one another, engulfed in the secure darkness of the deep shade under the tree, until the bright lights of a car passed over them. Both of them turned away from the bright light source, only to look toward the trunk of the tree whose shade had, until now, provided them with a measure of privacy.

Lindsey Putney was leaning against the trunk, wearing a flowing summer dress. She was being pressed into the rough bark of the tree by Attila’s nephew Hal. They each had a half-eaten ice cream cone in hand, and they were both standing as if frozen, staring at Kai and Attila.

The car did its turnaround and the darkness descended on the two couples again.

“They saw us,” Kai whispered.

“And there was no mistaking what we were doing, either,” Attila said as both of them got up and started across the square and toward the parking lot.

“Although, to be fair, it’s clear they were enjoying one another’s company as well,” Kai pointed out. “I don’t think we have to worry about any disclosures from the two of them.” They were at the truck when Kai stopped and asked something that had been on his mind. “Suppose the word gets out that we’re together. Would you really mind so much?”

“Not for my own sake,” Attila said. “It might increase the tension between Mona and me—but I’m sure she would get over it.”