Early on Saturday morning I went to the wholesale market and picked up fish for bait and then drove to the marina where I met my uncle and the rest of the crew preparing to take the
Tammany Jo
and
Sorsha Lynn
out for a day of fishing. As I dumped the chum in one of the tanks I cheerfully greeted the other four guys, all in their late twenties, and they responded in kind. Being the nephew of the owner has never given me any special privileges and I have paid my dues. Hard work alongside them has made me an equal, not a better.
I found Carl below in the cabin. It was an exceptionally nice salon considering what he used the boat for and had a big kitchen, known as a galley, and a dining area. There were two bedrooms, which are called berths, and one even had a queen-sized bed. The bathroom, uh... head, had a huge shower. You could comfortably live down there.
Carl smiled at me apologetically and reached into his pocket for his wallet. He drew a check from the worn leather. "Sorry I forgot your raise."
I shrugged to indicate it wasn't a big deal. "Um, thanks, Uncle Carl for not telling my dad about Jesse," I said.
He hitched his eyebrow up and asked, "What was I supposed to keep such a secret?"
I started to turn red and looked down at my feet, wishing he'd just accept the gratitude without making me talk about it. "You know, that he and I..."
"Look, Shane," he interrupted. "It's none of my business what you do with your private life, okay? You're a good kid, and I see you working hard here so I presume you do at school too. That's what's important in this world. I disagree with your mom and dad because, frankly, they don't have the right to tell you who to love. So no, I will never discuss you and Jesse with either of your parents."
I smiled at him, feeling a little self-consciousness over all the heart-felt encouragement. This was probably the longest string of words I'd heard Carl utter since I moved here. Then he leaned over and gave me a hug, and that turned into a
big
sense of awkward. Clearing our throats, we sort of pulled away from each other, causing us both to laugh. He ruffled my hair, and I went up on deck to begin my chores.
Over the next couple of weeks Jesse got three more suspicious notes, two in his school locker, one taped to his car. Each one was a little more ominous and little less vague. The last, received on the sixth of April, asked 'How red is Ur fag blood?' I was starting to get scared that someone was truly out to hurt Jesse but he passed it off like it wasn't of any importance and he wasn't intimidated. As he reminded me every time the subject came up, what the stalker wanted was the satisfaction of upsetting Jesse, and if he didn't give into the fear the person would eventually stop.
At least he didn't throw out any of the written threats, storing them in a zip-lock bag in the back of his school locker under a tattered hoody he kept for sudden weather changes. After the eighth one I actually considered swiping them and handing them over to the school principal; we knew each other's locker combinations and it would have been easy enough. But Jesse had such an easy-going way about him and was good at soothing and convincing me I was over-reacting. I didn't think we could be accused of being careless but his refusal to heed them was at least simplistic. We just wanted it to all go away.
And then there was the ongoing discussion of showing affection at school. Jesse was proud to be my lover and wanted to show me off. I wanted that too but I was still afraid. I had at last come to the conclusion that how the other students felt about me wasn't what was significant. No, my concern was that Jesse's name would be linked to mine in a conversation in front of a parent, and that adult would know my father and it would get back to him that I had a boyfriend. As Dad joked about at least once a week, he couldn't stand my mother but at least she had some common sense when it came to the matter of what hole my dick should be playing in.
I tried to explain it to Jesse, and he was more patient than I deserved. Actually, my vacillation made me feel like a wimp who needed his protection. It wasn't as if I'd lost all my self-confidence in the past three months, but I definitely was not the same happy-go-lucky guy I'd been in Rancho Martinez. I guess I could be getting more mature, but mostly I think I was scared of graduating high school and becoming an adult. Jesse was the only person I could talk about my fears to, and I wondered what he saw in me. He would grin and say it was my long blonde hair. Or that my eyes were such a unique shade of turquoise they complimented
his
hair, so we had to be a couple. It would pull me out of my funk, and I'd be alright for a couple of days.
By early April it came down to the wire where I couldn't put off making a decision on which university I would attend the following year, and Jesse and I disagreed on this subject too. I told him of my plans to attend Hope Ranch Community College with him in the fall, and he said I was throwing my life away by refusing my football scholarship and staying put in Calberia.
He had followed me home after school to find Dad's car mysteriously in the driveway, meaning we couldn't go in, so he left his Jeep in an inconspicuous spot up the street. Now my Impala was parked behind the baseball bleachers of a nearby playground. Taking advantage of the privacy that would evaporate once the younger grades finished their classes for the day, we were making out on the wide back bench-seat. He was at first shocked by my choice.
"How can you just blow off tens of thousands of dollars like that?" he demanded in a strangled hush. "Do you know what I'd give if some school offered me that kind of money for college?"
"It isn't blown if it means we can stay together," I explained, planting a kiss on his neck right below the fringe of his black hair. His pink lips were all swollen and kiss-bruised. "If I was going to college far away I wouldn't be able to concentrate anyway from missing you so much."
"Shane, I... I don't know what to say. Part of me is happy you love me that much, but I wish I didn't feel that you're making a big mistake. Playing football in college meant so much to you."
"But that's the beauty of it," I urged, almost bouncing excitedly on the seat. "I'm not giving up playing football. I can join the Hope Ranch team. The major schools scout community colleges too, and in a couple of years I'll transfer into a university as a junior. By then you'll be graduated with an AA. I will take you with me, and you can work or act or whatever you want to do. We'll be together, Jesse."
He shook his head, still unconvinced. "What if your dad won't let you stay with him for another two years? I thought you hated living there. Wasn't the whole idea for you to get into an out-of-state college?"
"Not without you, Baby," I pouted, wondering why he had to be so negative. It sounded like he didn't want me around which hurt my feelings and made me feel stupid for the plans I was making for the two of us. "For now, let's not worry about what my dad
might
do."
Like always, Jesse picked up on my mood. He gave the back of my neck a gentle squeeze. "Okay," he relented. "I guess there are options available if he kicks you out. You could rent one of the rooms that are available to college students, or you might even be able to live with your uncle or on one of his boats in the harbor... anything. I don't want to fight about it."
I hated fighting with Jesse, and thankfully, we didn't do it very often. We trusted each other and stayed in contact throughout the day with little texts of support, especially if one of us had a test or an important assignment or just seemed a bit more stressed than usual. Jesse was getting the best grades of his life because I was helping him study, and he gave me the love that had been lacking to help me focus too. He didn't allow his pals to rag on me for being a jock instead of a drama geek, and I made it plain to Mark Butler that he better keep his thoughts about Jesse to himself when I was around.
In fact, the two of us got along very well because of, or maybe in spite of, all our little idiosyncrasies. Mine was the baggage of deep emotional privation that until that night in my car, I hadn't realized was such a big issue. It was funny in a sarcastic way, but I guess my parents really did a number on me all these years letting me think I had to earn their love and approval. Jesse would not let me feel ashamed for breaking down in front of him in mid-March. He swamped my neediness by paying attention and with praise and vows of love, and he deliberately made me feel like there were no limits to what I could accomplish with him by my side.
You know how guys are. We talk about sex a lot, especially when you have someone as hot and adorable as Jesse for a lover. Maybe it was because we were content to ease into new things without either of us pressuring the other that we were so comfortable together. We hadn't progressed past handjobs and going down on each other because we decided to take the sex slow, but what we shared felt so right. He knew about Owen and the other guys I'd been with, understood that I'd done anal sex before, and I told him I enjoyed it. Jesse asked a lot of questions, leading me to find out that he was a virgin in that respect. He'd never been with anyone he trusted enough, and I wanted very much to have the honor. But I didn't push him.
I discovered he was just a bit on the OCD side. Even if he didn't regarding the stalker notes as conscientiously as I thought he should have, he was overly vigilant about safety otherwise, especially over locked doors and making sure appliances were shut off. Leaving the house with him could be an exercise in frustration as he had to be constantly assured the blow dryer was unplugged and his mother had turned off the stove hours ago. He didn't do the counting thing or having to touch every surface when he walked by, and he wasn't overly obsessive about germs, but I learned it was vital to bolster his memory so he could see himself taking proper precautions.
Jesse might not be an intellectual whiz, but he made up for it in common sense. He was such a pure soul who gave me strength and courage, and he was probably the least selfish person I knew. Every day I felt like I was falling more in love with him. Every night I wished for the freedom to have him sleep by my side. But we were kids with parents who didn't know we were in love with each other, and their rules could be bent but not broken. I was just very lucky that my dad was so busy during tax season and gave me so little supervision.
In some ways the middle of April sneaked up on us along with our two-month anniversary. The fourteenth was on a Saturday and I couldn't get time off from my job. I had secretly come up with a great idea for celebrating that would have to wait for the following Monday. Fortune smiled again because Calberia High gave us a two-week Easter vacation, meaning I could spend the whole day with him. Besides, I needed a special prop, in Jesse's admirable terms, which I'd only have access to on Mondays. My rampant excitement clued him in that this was going to be really over-the-top so he didn't complain.
That's not to say we didn't celebrate the exact date at all. On Saturday, Carl excused me with a "get out of here" and a smirk as soon as the Bayliner hit the pier, and I raced home to shower before Jesse picked me up. He paid for dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Cielito that served excellent tapas which I had never had. Eating tapas is kind of like sharing little snack-sized portions of a lot of different foods so it was definitely fun and different. What made it even better was feeding each other, and I watched his eyes darken as I sucked his fingers clean. Afterwards we went to see
Cabin in the Woods
