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He was right. It’d be a terrible idea to talk to each other at work. The way people look at me and my family, I’m basically a pariah. Even if my last name wasn’t Fairway, I wouldn’t want to risk people gossiping about him. He doesn’t deserve that.
Sighing, I close my eyes and allow the sweet memories to replay while they can. Here in my apartment, I’m safe. Pete’s safe. Our time together is untouchable in the secrecy of my mind. He gave me that gift, the gift of feeling whole for once. The least I can do is honor our agreement.
CHAPTER 12
Pete
My head is pounding. Every muscle in my body aches. My hands are dry, and my fingertips are raw after twelve hours of picking apples. I want a bed, but the one that awaits me isn’t mine anymore. How I ever slept on that contraption upstairs is beyond me, but they say teenagers can sleep anywhere.
“Refill?” Jesse asks, pouring the jug of apple moonshine into my Mason jar before I can decline. “You look like you need it,” he adds with a shit-eating grin, moseying back over to his rocking chair on our parents’ porch.
“Are you sure you’re not coming down with something, sweetie?” Mom asks for the fourth time today. “You have bags under your eyes.”
“Ma, why would you even suggest that? Now, he’ll probably spend tomorrow morning decontaminating the house instead of helping load the harvest like he said he would before he heads out,” Jesse gripes.
The little bastard. Always turning the screws.
“I’m not sick. I just haven’t been sleeping well. And if you’re so concerned about my hygiene standards, why don’t you refrain from throwing your dirty laundry on my old bed when you know I’m coming home for the weekend?”
“Jessup Carver, you did not!” Mom gasps, transforming my moment of retaliation into humility.
She doesn’t need to defend me. She’s an enabler, I swear. Maybe if she hadn’t let me wash my hands so much when I was little, I’d be more normal, more of a slob like Jesse.
Ugh. Forget that.
“How come you make Grandma wash your clothes, Uncle Jesse?” Bethany asks where she’s sitting on the swing between her dad and Miranda.
Ten years old and already so wise. It’s a shame she’s being subjected to the Carver family moonshine-on-the-porch ritual we do after a big pick. I suppose this is where life lessons are learned, though. It taught me I wasn’t destined to be an orchard hand for the rest of my life. Why I end up back here so often is beyond me.
“Because Uncle Jesse doesn’t know how to fend for himself,” Miranda says sweetly.
I snicker along with my brother-in-law, Craig. He glances cautiously at a sleeping Bradley whose head is collapsed on his chest. Not waking that child is in everyone’s best interest.
“Mom likes doing my laundry. We all moved out. She has no one to take care of anymore. I’m fulfilling her need to mother. You should all thank me,” Jesse defends.
“When that washing machine dies, you’re buying the next one,” Dad chimes in over his glass.
“It’s too late, Dad,” Miranda warns. “You’ll never get rid of him.”
My phone chimes with an alert, making me notice the time when I check the screen. Eight-thirty. I should not be this exhausted at only half-past eight in the evening, but my mother’s cooking is sitting heavy in my stomach, threatening to burst the button on my jeans. When I read the name of the sender of my new text message, however, my drooping eyelids spring open.
Cam.
It’s been three days since I heard from him. Three days since he texted me a picture of a giant silicone dick that he was apparently trying to insert. I don’t have to be an experienced gay man to understand where he was attempting to insert that behemoth. It’s haunted my fucking dreams all week.
It was… glistening. I know what glistening means. It was prepared for launch.
CAM: I received your package. Thank you. The stimulator works great!
Stimulator? Which one was that?
Blinking through my blurry haze of moonshine and lack of sleep, I open the secure folder on my phone that I titled, Research. Shopping for gay sex toys is not for the faint of heart. I went down a damn rabbit hole on the internet Wednesday night that I didn’t crawl my way out of until three in the morning. I honestly can’t remember what I sent him now, but I know whatever I’d settled on was smaller than that weapon-of-ass-destruction that he texted me a picture of. When I find the screenshot of a listing titled, ‘prostate stimulator’, my cheeks burn.
I may have selfishly avoided sending him anything that too closely resembled a dick. I want to help him, truly I do. He deserves to know the things he wants to discover, but the thought of him prepping himself to take another man’s cock just… I don’t know. It seems…wrong?
He smells like Snuggle. He shouldn’t be forcing large things up his ass that hurt. He should be moaning the way he moaned for me.
Everything I read about prostate stimulation, however, left me assured that was the way to go. The curved apparatus is slim, with a nub on the end no bigger than my thumb. It looked much less intrusive than that giant dick he sent me.
