Rough Road (8 page)

“Elvis?”

“Tina’s dog. He’s one of those so-ugly-he’s-cute critters. She brings him everywhere. Ben’s folks probably didn’t come down from Georgia, but I’m sure he invited them.”

“So how do you know Ben?”

“We’ve been friends since high school—and he works for me. He was a professional wakeboarder. Now he’s retired and he runs a pro shop out of my boat dealership.”

In the kitchen, I start throwing Cokes and bottled water into a cooler, and I give the coffee machine a longing glance. Ben will have energy drinks on the boat, but it really isn’t the same.

“He does this every year?”

I shrug. “Some years he feels more celebratory than others.” Like years when he gets engaged versus years when he’s having a big fight with his boyfriend and facing possibly life-destroying surgery. Last year, nobody dared even bring up the idea of a celebration. We were all focused on keeping him too busy to wallow. “One of the reasons this is a big deal: He had spinal surgery last fall—he’d been putting it off for years. So it’s more than his sobriety, you know?”

Wish nods. “Yeah. I get it.”

Cooler full, I dump the contents of my ice maker in it, and we head out the back door, across the perfectly manicured lawn and down the dock to Dave’s waiting boat.

“About time, Ed.” Dave stands up and reaches for the cooler. I hand it over and step into the boat.

I feel Wish step behind me, bracing himself on the wake tower with one hand, and wrapping the other around my waist. No time like the present to make this introduction.

“Ben, Dave, this is Aloysius Carver. My date, darlings.” My face heats up, and I notice Ben is blushing too. Dave, usually the blushy one, only grins. I’ve always suspected Davis has a voyeuristic streak, but Ben won’t confirm or deny.

“Nice to meet you, Aloysius.” Dave sticks out a hand.

“Call me Wish.”

The niceties are repeated, and then, finally, we can get on our way. I stretch out as best I can on the boat, letting the hot vinyl and the sun warm my skin. The scents of sweat and sunscreen and Ben’s energy drink roll over me and the muscles in my body start to relax, giving up their tension to the lake and the sunshine and that special magic the combination works on my soul. I close my eyes and breathe it all in. God, I love the lake.

“Are we picking up Tina?” I tilt my head toward Ben and open one eye.

“No.” Ben frowns. “Her washing machine flooded her kitchen. She’s waiting for the repair guy, said she’d call around noon.”

Ugh, what a way to ruin a Saturday. “She’s still coming, right?”

“Said she wouldn’t miss it.” Ben flashes his megawatt grin.

Ridley pulls up alongside the boat to wave hello and then goes back behind us, jumping wakes and hooting and hollering and in general clowning around. It makes me smile. I grew up on this lake, same as Ridley, and I feel a weird kinship with him. Even if his world is markedly different than mine was thirty years ago, we’re both a product of this town in a way even his brother and Ben are not. Lake Lovelace is our home and our legacy. My grandfather and his great grandfather had both been among the group of developers who created the lake and founded the town around it. I wonder if he feels the same responsibility toward it that was nurtured in me.

Ben and Dave’s house is tucked away on a little cove—it’s not great for wakeboarding, but it’s mostly deserted, so it’s a great place to hang out. Ridley and his friends have built a long rail along the side of the cove, and one of them is sliding along it on a wake skate. We slow to a stop and watch as he attempts to dismount and crashes, his skate flying out in the opposite direction.

Ridley whoops and hollers, “Sick slide, Cade!”

“I can’t believe they built a rail there.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe you let them. Aren’t they loud as hell all the time?”

Dave shrugs. “He’s not loud, he’s my brother?” he offers, and yeah, I get it. I don’t have siblings of my own—I’m such a cliché, the spoiled only child of wealthy parents—but I know a few people on this planet I’d do anything for, and most of them are sitting in this boat.

Ben lounges in the driver’s seat and studies Wish. “You ride?”

Wish shakes his head and puffs out his chest a little. “Willing to give it a try though. Might be fun.”

Oh, dear.

Ben bristles at the suggestion that his beloved sport might be anything less than the best fucking thing since actual fucking. To someone who didn’t know him, it wouldn’t show. No, he’s still got that big, amiable grin on his face, and his eyes are hidden behind mirrored shades, but I can tell it’s there.

Macho posturing.
So
my kink.

“You can wear Dave’s vest. Mine’s probably too big for you. Newbie up first.” Ben reaches under a seat and digs out the vest, then hands it to him. “What size shoes do you wear?” He glances down at Wish’s feet. “Nines?”

“Ten and a half.”

“Oh, baby. Be nice.” Dave sits down behind Ben and drapes an arm over his shoulder. “I know you’re grumpy ’cause you can’t ride yet, but don’t pick on Eddie’s boyfriend. It makes you look jealous.”

“I ain’t jealous.” Ben folds his arms across his chest. “Eddie and I aren’t like that.”

“Right.” Dave rolls his eyes and winks at me. “And Eddie never once told me if I hurt you again, he’d ‘rip my spleen out my piss slit with an ice cream scoop.’”

Ben lifts his sunglasses and meets my eyes. “You did that?”

I shrug. “I might have.”

Ben snorts. “Surprise, surprise. And why is it always the spleen? All right everyone, no more hazing the newbie.” As if the rest of us had been doing any such thing. He turns to Wish. “My bindings will fit you, you can ride my board.”

Wish takes to wakeboarding like a fish to water. It seems Ben barely has time to get wet before he’s got Wish up on the board. He’s strong, he’s young, and he’s apparently fearless. When Ben finds out Wish used to get annual lift tickets to go snowboarding in Minnesota, they’re immediately “bros” even though Ben has seen snow about three times in his whole life. The talk gets technical, occasionally punctuated by a whoop or a yell toward the boat carrying Ridley and his friends.

While Ben and Wish go over the process of turning into a backside slide, Dave plops himself down next to me and hands me an energy drink. “So. You two are what, dating?”

“Nothing so simple as that.”

“He do that to you?” Dave gestures to the bruise curling up the side of my thigh. Keith hadn’t been holding back on that one. Hell, on any of them if the delicious ache all over my ass and thighs is any indication.

“No, Bedhead, he just watched. Then he took me home, pinned me to the wall, and fucked me hard.”

“And you like that?”

There’s no judgment in Dave’s voice, only a simple curiosity.

“I fucking love it. The adrenaline when I’m itching for a fight, the endorphins when I get tied down and hit, the feeling of being overpowered? I
love
that. It’s better than anything.”

Dave nods, then glances back to the swim platform, where Ben is miming snowboarding to prove some point. “I can see why you and Ben never . . .”

I grin. “Ben couldn’t swat a bee if it stung him.”

“Yeah. But if it stung me?”

I bump his shoulder with mine. “Marriage, eh?”

“Yeah. Marriage.” His smile turns dazzling.

“Congratulations.”

“You know, Ed, it would mean a lot to Ben for you to say that to him. And mean it.”

A bark from the end of the dock catches our attention before I can answer. Tina waves, gear bag at her feet and Elvis’s rhinestone-covered leash in hand. You expect a purebred purse dog to wear a leash like that, not a forty-pound mutt of indeterminate pedigree. But that’s Tina for you—making sure her pet has as much flair as his namesake. In addition to his sparkly leash and collar, he’s wearing a life jacket with handles on it. Personally, I suspect Elvis would learn to fly before he’d let her put him in the water, life jacket or no.

“Everybody hold on,” I instruct Ben and Wish, who sit down on the sundeck while I putter the boat around to the dock to collect the latest additions to the party.

“Hey, baby.” Tina hands Ben the protesting dog and smacks a kiss on his cheek. As soon as Ben sets him down, Elvis scurries under the steering wheel and curls up in a ball.

“Hey, T.” Dave holds out his hand to help her onto the boat where she sits down on the sundeck to join the conversation about the similarities in snowboarding and wakeboarding, her husky laugh filling the boat when Wish says something doubtlessly charming.

I nudge Elvis with my toe—I never met a dog who was scared of water before this one. “Okay, buddy?”

He shivers. Looking around me and seeing how well Wish fits in with my little homemade family, I think I have a pretty good idea how he feels.

“Hey Eddie, I’m gonna demonstrate the backside slide for Wish. Give me a pull?” Tina calls out, zipping up her vest.

After Tina rides, Wish takes the rope again, and Dave drives so I can watch while Ben and Tina call out instructions between pulls.

He amazes me—not only trying the slide, but also making a few small jumps and surface turns. Each time, he shouts his triumph and pumps a fist in the air. I’m giddy, watching him. It’s so like those early years on the lake with Ben and Tina, nostalgia stings behind my nose. Tina glances up at me and winks, like she’s thinking the same thing.

“He’s good,” she says.

“So were you—that demonstration you did was sick.” And she’s fit like I haven’t seen her in years—not since she quit riding pro. “And you look awesome. You do crunches in your sleep or something?”

She laughs. “The core is a very important muscle group. You’d have a six-pack too if you did some weights to go with your cardio.”

“Jocks.” I shake my head. “You’re all the same.”

She laughs again and turns back to watch my date attempt to fly.

When Wish finally sits down next to me, dripping wet and grinning like a kid at Christmas, I can’t help myself: I wrap my arms around him and kiss him. I kiss him, not because I’ve got an exhibitionist streak, but because he’s happy, and smiling, and not kissing him when he looks that good would be a crime. He tastes like sunscreen and lake water and joy.
Sweet.

“Hey, S-Class,” he whispers when he breaks away. “I like your family.”

“Hey, Hard Hat.” I kiss his nose. “I think they like you too.”

When we’re all hungry and sunburned, the party moves up to the backyard, with Dave and Ben cooking at the grill: brats and burgers and vegetables on skewers. Ridley’s buddies take over the swimming pool, and some of Ben and Dave’s neighbors come join the crowd. The atmosphere is festive, and when someone puts on music, Wish pulls me into a slow, grinding dance.

“You were amazing out there.” I drape my arms over his shoulders. “Like you were born on the lake.”

He shrugs, but he looks pleased by the compliment. “It’s not so different from snowboarding. Softer landings too. Hey, how come you didn’t ride?”

“Because Ben can’t. Remember how I said he had surgery last fall? Well, he can’t ride for a few more months.”

Wish stops dancing and stares at me, hands stilling where they’d been stroking my lower back in languid circles. “So you don’t do something you enjoy . . . because he can’t. Like not drinking because he’s sober.”

“I’m supportive.”
And defensive.

“No need to get your back up, man. I get it. He’s your friend; you want to help him out. It just seems a little overboard to me. I mean, has he ever actually asked you to deprive yourself for him?”

“No,” I admit. “But when you care about someone, you want to do what’s best for them, right?”

“Sure, I guess.” He glances up at Ben and then back at me. “Yeah, I get it.”

He starts us swaying to the music again, and I rest my head on his shoulder. It feels nice, not sexual really, though the chemistry is always there between us. I like the way he smells, a little like sunscreen, a little like the lake, and underneath it, the vestiges of some fragrance no man over thirty would be caught wearing. I nip the side of his throat, and he rumbles appreciatively, palming my ass with one hand. The frisson that runs through me when his fingers dig into the cane marks makes me shudder and realize I don’t want to share this moment with anyone but him.

“You want to get out of here?” I ask, breathless.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Home. Takeout. A movie. Bed and some really sweaty sex; the kind where the sheets stick to our skin and the whole room smells like us.”

His eyes widen, and he grinds his cock against mine. “Yeah. Um, maybe not in that order?”

I laugh.
Twenty-four.
“Anticipation is good for you.”

“Blue balls are not.”

“Horn dog.”

“Pervert.”

Clearly, a match made in heaven.