"Good lord," Ray said, pulling away at the strong breath of alcohol and fanning it away with his hand. "Did you drink it or swim in it?"
Alan laughed loudly, and Ray clapped a hand over his mouth, casting a quick glance towards the end of the hall. There was no way he would be able to get Alan up to his room and keep him quiet, so Ray grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him over the threshold.
"Rough! At least buy me a drink first," Alan said, tripping in and falling onto the bed with another loud laugh. "Oh, now I remember!"
Glancing towards the staircase again, where all was still quiet, Ray quickly closed the door, locking in all of Alan's noise. He turned, then stopped and blinked at what seemed to be an empty bedroom. "Alan?" he called, wondering for a brief, panic stricken moment if the young man had gone out the open window.
Then the muffled sound of victory led him to the space between the wall and the bed, where Alan lay flat on the floor, legs sticking out from underneath the bed. Ray didn't know whether to laugh or help him as Alan wriggled backward, whiskey bottle in hand.
"I used to hide beer in here all the time," Alan said. Dropping down on the edge of the bed, he twisted off the top and put it to his head for a deep gulp.
"Okay," Ray said, taking hold of the bottle and pulling it down, making some trickle down Alan's chin. "I think that might be enough for tonight."
"I'm still thirsty," Alan said, wiping his chin as Ray took the bottle away.
"Then I'll get you some water," Ray said, putting the cap back on.
"I don't want water," Alan said, rising and making a grab for the bottle.
"Then some coffee," Ray said, pushing him back down on the bed. "Sober you up some."
Alan's eyebrows drew together in a dark, petulant frown. With a sharp exhale he stood. "I don't need you to baby me," he said, reaching around Ray for the bottle. "If I want to drink, I'm gonna drink!"
"Oh, yeah?" Ray said, holding the bottle out of reach and holding Alan back with his body. "Then how about we go wake your Pa and have a drink with him?"
Instead of subduing him, the mention of his father only seemed to spur Alan on, and he lunged forwards, jostling Ray from behind. Caught off balance by the solid body bumping into him, Ray stumbled into the bedframe, and together him and Alan fell to the bed, Alan on top. The bottle of whiskey bounced off the bed to land on the floor with a thunk and slosh.
At any other time it would not have mattered, but to Ray's not quite mended ribs, Alan's weight was murder, and he cried out as sharp, stabbing pains shot through his torso. It stole his breath and left him seeing stars.
"Sorry!" Alan immediately pushed himself up. "Oh, god, Ray," he said, bracing his hands on the bed. "Are you okay?"
Arms wrapped around his torso and knees pulled up, he lay still, eyes closed, taking short, shallow breaths, unable to answer.
"Let me take a look," Alan said. "Move your hands."
Settling on his back, Ray slowly moved his arms away, and still half leaning over him, Alan placed a hand on the t-shirt clad torso. Sliding first to the right, then the left, his fingers gently pressing through the toned muscles to the bone beneath, he felt nothing broken.
Ray, breathing coming back to normal, opened his eyes and looked down at Alan. "All good, doc?"
Alan glanced up into the hooded blue eyes. "Yeah," he said. "All good."
Ray nodded, closing his eyes once more and taking slow breaths through his mouth.
Lifting his hand reluctantly away, his fingers curling in on themselves, Alan withdrew and shifted to the bed beside Ray, his own heart beating fast. "Sorry," he murmured.
"It's fine," Ray said. "But there are easier ways to hurt me if you're mad at me. A sledgehammer comes to mind."
Sliding off the bed to sit on the floor beside the whiskey bottle, Alan said nothing. At his silence, Ray turned to look at the back of the cornsilk head. "Are you mad at me?"
"Aren't you the one who's mad at me?" Alan said. "You say you're worried I'll act different finding out about you and Joel, but you're the one acting different. If you didn't trust me—"
"I trust you," Ray said. Carefully rolling onto his side, he sat up. "I told you, I'm grateful."
"Nothing says grateful like being avoided," came the sad voice. Scratching at the wooden floor between his legs, he added, "That feels real good."
Ray sighed. Shifting to the edge of the bed, he swung his legs beside Alan's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said, laying his hand on the other young man's head and tousling the silky hair. "It just seemed like the safest thing to do."
"You mean it was the easiest way out," Alan said, twisting his head away and smacking Ray's hand away. "Well, I got news for you, Raymond," he added, getting unsteadily to his feet. "If you were going to push me away, it had to be before Austin aired all your dirty laundry. I know now—I may not know everything, but I know, and you can't change that."
"I know."
Holding on to the windowsill for balance, Alan looked at him with a frown, as if suspecting some kind of trick.
Ray took a deep breath. The pain in his body had subsided, but the ache in his heart remained. "I trust you, Alan," Ray repeated. "The same way you trust me not to tell your Pa you been drinking."
"Well, you got a funny way of showing it," Alan muttered petulantly.
His hands lightly resting on his ribs, Ray turned his head. Directly behind him, on the dresser, lay his faded brown cowboy hat, half in shadow. Nostalgia and regret were familiar feelings whenever he looked at it, but tonight he was also panged with guilt, and a pain that pierced him more than his cracked ribs.
"You're so close," he sighed.
"I can't move any further away than this without jumping out the window," Alan said.
"No," Ray said, looking up at Alan and meeting the young man's gaze more clearly and steadily than he had in days. "That's not what I meant. I meant, that you're closer to the truth than anyone else has been in a long time, and if you still want to know everything, I'll tell you. I should have done it days ago—that night after Austin. But I wanted to stay in your good graces just a little longer. Because after I'm done..." he looked away, "...you won't feel the same way about me."
Sugar-colored eyes gazed down at him, hooded and gleaming in the bedside lamp light. "How will I feel about you?" Alan asked, voice low.
"The same way you do about Judith," Ray said, looking up from a lowered head, blue eyes dim, lips tilted in a rueful smile.
Alan sighed and slumped against the windowsill. "You don't have to tell me anything," he said, rubbing his head with the heel of his hand. "I just wanted you to stop acting so weird."
"I want to tell you," Ray said, his smile changing to one of sweet sincerity. "After spending so long on my own, keeping things to myself was just what I did. But tonight, I think, maybe talking to a friend would help."
His hand shifted up unconsciously from his ribs to cover his heart. Alan looked at it, then turned to face the window. He inhaled deeply of the warm night air, filled with the scent of greenery and dust. After a few breaths, he turned back. "Go ahead," he said. "I'll listen."
Looking into sugar-colored eyes, Ray smiled, but it faded as he sighed. Leaning down off the bed, he picked up the whiskey bottle that was still on the floor and hefted it in his hand. Unscrewing the top, he put it to his lips and took a sip. Under the call of insects from the open window, and the hum of the fan oscillating in the corner, sending waves of warm air into the room, he told Alan his story.
*
He met Joel when he was fifteen.
He'd taken refuge in a schoolhouse one rainy night, and the next morning woke up to Joel and Tommy, the schoolteacher, standing over him. His first instinct—to run—was read plain as day on his face, and before he could turn over and scramble to his feet, Tommy grabbed one arm, twisted it behind his back and pinned him face first to the floor. Ray struggled, but Tommy was a tall, muscular guy, and he barely budged. Then Ray tried to talk his way out, saying it didn't look good, having a young boy pinned to the floor.
Tommy said the boy was better pinned to his floor than dead in the gutter. That made Ray stop struggling.
Patting Tommy on the shoulder to ease up on his hold of Ray, Joel got down on one knee to ask his name. Ray only gave his first. Joel asked if he had anyone they could call. Ray said he had no one. The two men exchanged glances. Joel asked when the last time was he ate. Ray asked what day it was. Worried they would turn him over to the sheriff, Ray swore he hadn't stolen anything, and yes he'd broken in, but he wasn't going to stay. Joel asked where he was going. Ray said wherever he could.
There was silence from the men for a couple seconds, then suddenly Ray found himself free. When he got to his feet and turned to face them, he found a hand held out to him, and above it, Joel's smiling face.
Joel took Ray home with him that day. Two days later Ray was working on the ranch and taking lessons at the school, and neither Joel nor Tommy, or Alice, Joel's wife, ever did ask any more questions about who Ray was. They welcomed him, and listening to the banter and teasing, the laughter and warmth, and the fact they were willing to share that with him, made him feel like something he didn't yet have a name for. It was only after a long while did he understand that what he felt like was family.
Joel especially took care of him, and it didn't take long for Ray to develop feelings. Joel was slender, but still toned from his time as a rider, and just shy of six feet. His features were soft, with short, light brown hair that feathered over his forehead, warm brown eyes that twinkled behind small, frameless glasses, and his pink lips quick to part in a smile. Ray had always known who he was and felt no qualms about showing his interest, though he was careful about it among certain crowds. But Joel was less free. First of all he was married, to a woman, and almost ten years older than Ray. He certainly didn't encourage Ray and brushed off any advances as playful flirting, but he never really put a stop to it.
Then, one night when Ray was nineteen, just after his first tournament ride with Cash that ended in their sweeping victory, things changed.
Ray followed Joel out to the barn when he went to check on a pregnant mare, flirting all the way, and Joel laughing and shaking his head. He waited for Joel to finish his check on the mare, then, feeling warm and invincible and confident by whiskey slipped to him by Austin, Ray caught Joel outside an empty stall. He turned the man to face him, and in his face, Joel saw that tonight Ray would not be so easily dissuaded. His back hit the stall door, and before he could speak Ray leaned down and kissed him.
Alone, in the moonlight, Joel froze. Arm around his waist, Ray felt the man's body tense, and even in his tipsy state he knew to stop. But just as he began to pull away, Joel's lips moved against his, and between their bodies, hands laid gingerly on his chest. He leaned in once more, and so did Joel. His arms came around Ray, his lips parted and hot breath mingled with Ray's, and together they backed into the empty stall, sinking down onto the pile of straw, bathed in moonlight.
*
"We were together for about a year," Ray said, his mind flashing on good memories. But his smile faded when the bad ones surfaced. "Before we were found out, first by Tommy, then Alice, Austin, and her parents. Tommy kept our secret, but the others were furious—Austin especially. Like he said, he trusted us, and we betrayed him. Believe it or not, we used to be close."
Laying back on the bed with his legs dangling over the edge to the floor, Ray stared up at the white, peeling ceiling. "They had a big argument in the office in the barn; I could hear them all the way in the house. I watched Joel walk out, but he didn't come back to the house. Later, Austin came to me, and that's when I found out they'd asked Joel to leave. And he did." Ray's voice grew quieter. "Without me."
Absently rubbing his hand over his ribs, Ray took a breath. "The truth is," he said, speaking these thoughts for the first time. "I think he didn't tell me because he was angry. I was the reason he had to leave. I was the one who made the first move. The consequences to us, and to anyone else if we were ever found out never occurred to me. I never thought that far ahead. I never do, huh?"
A sharp breath passed his lips and he swallowed down a rising lump in his throat. Turning his head slightly to the right, he averted his face from Alan, laying on the bed next to him. "All I could see in front of me was him," he continued. "After all the trouble I caused, why would he ever let me find him? Maybe no one ever will. I mean, not even Tommy could find him, and he started searching before I did."
Closing his eyes, images of a sprawling ranch flashed before his eyes, of big family dinners in the house, of dances in the barn, of kisses in the snow. "It was the best time of my life," he murmured. "I know no one wants to hear my apology and I'll have to live with that. But I have to find Joel. I at least have to apologize to him."
Ray fell silent, breathing deep in the warm air currents of the oscillating fan. Beside him, he could hear the steady softness of inhaling and exhaling—and light snoring.
Looking over and seeing Alan fast asleep, one arm folded over his eyes, chest slowly rising and falling, Ray stifled a laugh. "Maybe I should have left it to the morning, when you were sober, and awake," he said.
Rising to sit—carefully—and then stand, he bent over and lifted Alan's feet to the bed. He pulled off Alan's boots and put them under the window, then shifted Alan's body on the bed, adjusting him to lay properly with his head on the pillows. Alan did not wake even a little, only mumbled in his sleep and curled onto his side.
Looking down at the sleeping profile, Ray smiled. With his hair spread on the pillow like a halo, the tanned skin bronzed and dewy, lashes resting lightly on the freckled cheek, and lips slightly parted in a light snore, he looked like the picture of innocence. Ray gave a heavy sigh. "I guess," he murmured, "as long as you're asleep, I'm granted a reprieve."
With one last look at the sleeping young man, wondering what judgement the morning will bring, he reached out and switched off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness.