SWNOVELS Sworn Enemy: Chapter 3
It’s been almost a month since the fire at the Wills ranch, and I heard through the grapevine it’s a total loss. After successfully battling his insurance company, Charlie’s gonna bulldoze everything and start over from scratch.
Meanwhile, anxiety and the non-stop shoulda-couldas have been eating my lunch for weeks. We shoulda had longer hoses on hand to reach the back of the property. We coulda maybe saved the house had we watered that down before attacking the fence line.
So much for making it up to him.
It feels ridiculous to admit, but I’m still not over seeing Charlie Wills up close. All those feelings from high school instantly flood back. The desire twisting in my belly, the need to…
The fervent wish to have his eyes on me and only me.
The only thing missing is my father’s voice in my head, screaming at me to not be such an f-slur. Gone is the internal conflict and the fucked-up need to hurt the object of my desire. Left behind is the crucial awareness of how much damage I did.
I wonder if he knows I also tried to kill myself nearly a year ago. If he does know, would he guess that he was the one on my mind? I wonder if he’d enjoy the sweet irony that his bully—truly the weakest kind of asshole on the planet—won’t ever forgive himself for what he did.
I mean, that’s gotta be good for a laugh, right?
Jason has been anxious over me since the fire. He’s worried about my mental health and sobriety, as he always is, but I’ve been…okay. Not super awesome or anything, but I’ll survive it.
I am surprised that Charlie still does it for me after all these years. To be fair, I’m shocked to find that my libido has returned at all, especially after years of pills and alcohol abuse.
That was the point of the pills in the first place. I’m gay, and for many, many years, I didn’t wanna be. When I look back on my teen years, my shitty homophobic behavior could not have been more textbook. I cringe, wondering how many people had me pegged for the truth.
Honestly, until my brother caught me with another man, I was ready to live on the down-low and die young. But Jason wasn’t having any of it. He admitted he was also gay and said that if we kept lying to ourselves, we’d continue to fall apart.
That’d been my plan the entire time, but he kept showing up for me in ways our parents never did. Even after the disastrous coming out to them, even after my DUI—when I flipped my car after running it into the Broken Oak—even after my suicide attempt, Jason never gave up on me. Weirder still, the people who should’ve hated us didn’t.
Never in a million years would I guess the community would accept Jason and me after all the shit we pulled. The Goodnights, owners of Rebel Sky Ranch, have been the real game changers for us. They’re a well-loved and queer-friendly ranching family, and even though we’d been awful to them, they’ve opened their arms to us. The second they saw us trying, they were there for us.
That is the most surprising result, and it brings tears to my eyes if I think about it too hard. More than anything, their acceptance is the element that got the community on our side.
Against all odds, the Jennings brothers are finding our way. Jason’s been not-so-secretly dating the town sheriff for the last several months, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be married before too long.
I’m okay, I suppose. Working for my brother, slowly building strength and endurance after years of treating my body like a chem lab, taking on more and more responsibilities as it makes sense.
All of which is to say that if this text thread setting my phone off is any indication, Trip Goodnight is going to be the death of me.
Taking a water break from the Cleary’s fencing project, I mop the sweat off my face and slide my phone out of my pocket, checking to see what’s the damn emergency.
Trip: Hey, Jason and Justin. We have a tradition of Sunday dinner at Rebel Sky, and we want to open it up to the wider queer community.
Trip: I would really like for you to come.
Sam: You have to be impressed with how sincere he sounds.
Trip: <eyeroll emoji>
Sam is joking about our complicated history, teasing his husband for not liking me all that much. Shame churns in my gut as I remember how much I hated Sam’s free spirit and obvious queerness when I first met him.
He still bears the small scar on his temple from our first encounter at the Broken Oak, a popular local bar and grill. I’d done my level best to imitate every redneck stereotype out there, all the way down to the baseball cap emblazoned with that loser Confederate flag.
I wore it everywhere so people would know who they were dealing with. It’s embarrassing every time I think about it.
When Jason and I decided to come out, I purged my closet of all the hateful T-shirts, hats, and—as cringy as it is to admit—belt buckles. In the end, it felt like I was throwing out a bunch of old, ill-fitting Halloween costumes.
I thought it somehow meant I’d made everything better. I had to nearly kill myself to realize I was dead wrong.
Speaking of almost dying, Sam was also one of the first to come to the hospital after my suicide attempt. Despite everything, he insists on being my friend.
Trip’s had a harder time with me because Sam is so precious to him, so him initiating contact for dinner is big. Huge, really.
I don’t want to go, but this is not an invitation I can blow off. Besides, my brother, who loves me, knows my hesitation and is not about to let me back out.
Jason: We’re in. What can we bring?
I know I’m the unknown in this little text thread, so I play along.
Me: I make a pretty good potato salad.
Jason: He tells the truth.
Sam: As long as there aren’t any raisins in it, I’m good.
Me: I would never.
I then send a GIF of the California Raisins. Trip sends back a laughing emoji, and it loosens a little bit of the stress.
Nacho, perfectly coifed and kitted out in fencing chic, peers over the edge of my screen and snorts. Shoving my phone in my pocket, I glare at him and grab another picket, double tapping it to the top, bottom, and middle supports.
The shick-shick of the nail gun is usually soothing, meditative even, but Nacho’s insistent smirk damages my calm. After a few more pickets, I stop and turn to him.
“What?”
“You would rather shave your eyebrows than go to dinner at the Goodnights.”
“No shit, Sherlock. I mean, Sam’s been nice to me every time I see him, and the way he and Desi helped Jason get everything going with the store after vendors wouldn’t help us with the fencing supplies…”
“Then why are you being so weird about it?”
“It’s embarrassing, goddammit! I mean, you didn’t know me back then, but I did a pretty fair imitation of one of those white nationalist homophobes with the shit I used to say, hell…the shit I used to wear. You’d a crossed the street if you’d a seen me.”
“Mm, probably not,” he says, his grin tipping toward evil. “I might’ve tried to start something, depending on how drunk and belligerent I was at the moment.”
“That’s weird, right? Like, two years ago, we would have come to blows, and now you’re, like, my best friend.”
“Ugh. Don’t get emotional on me. You know I hate that.”
I wink and kiss his sweaty cheek. “We’ve come a long way, baby.”
He makes a hacking sound like a cat throwing up and pushes me away. Laughing, he says, “You do realize that Charlie and Erik are staying out at Rebel Sky, right?”
My shoulders droop. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope,” he says, popping the P.
“And how would you know that?”
He tosses imaginary hair over his shoulder. “Erik is a big, strapping Viking with big, strapping equipment that needs regular attending to, and you know I’m happy to oblige.”
It’s my turn to gag. “I don’t…shut the fuck up. I don’t wanna know.”
“You asked. It’s not my fault we both agreed to the whole bit about rigorous honesty.”
“See?” I say, grinning. “Goddamn sobriety fucking me over again.”
“Yeah, but it’s a kinder, gentler fucking compared to the rogering those pills were giving you.”
Shaking my head, I throw him the finger, then nail the rest of the pickets in place while he works back from the other side. We meet in the middle, and he’s still grinning like a jackass.
“You know this is going to be the world’s most awkward dinner,” I complain.
“I’m counting on it, amigo. Too bad I’ll be visiting my mom in Georgetown, or I would weasel my way into an invite, just to watch the tragedy unfold.”
The rest of our crew gathers around, loving when we get into it.
“I’m adding razor wire to the top of the Connelly’s fencing tomorrow. If you wanna take your chances between the wire and the goddamn rattlesnakes, keep laughing.”
That makes the crew laugh harder, and I throw my hands up, done with the whole thing.
Assholes.
Whatever. I can do this.
I can totally do this.