The thing that I wasn’t so sure how I felt about was Law. The way he’d come to stand next to me and then made sure I was fine even though I didn’t want him to? That was kind of hot. Also, a bit of dad behavior. He was trying to take care of me, and I didn’t know how to make my brain understand that it was fine for a crush to do that without it meaning anything more than friendship. Just becauseIwas crushing onhimmeant nothing.
As I changed the sheets in one of the rooms, I thought back of my limited experience with anything like relationships or even sex. I hadn’t had a boyfriend. I’d had a couple of friends with benefits type deals at college, but they hadn’t gone anywhere mostly because neither of us had wanted that.
My normal was a quick mutual jerking off or blow job in someone’s bedroom or bathroom at a party. Those encounters started quickly and ended by the time both of us had come.There was no taking care of the other guy. Only getting off as fast as possible and that was it.
Even the first guy I’d had a crush on and then ended up having sex with—big mistake on my part for various reasons—hadn’t felt like anything else than perfunctory-getting-off-partner. Not that I got off. Or that he cared. Yeah, those were a couple of the mistakes there.
This crush on Law? I already felt more cared for by him than I ever had with anyone I’d actually been intimate with. Andthatfucked with my head.
It made me think there was something there, for one. It made me feel more, because even though I found myself wanting him every time I saw him, none of this would go anywhere and I needed to try and stop these fucking thoughts.
I hummed along with one of my dirty country songs, when there was a knock on the open doorway.
Startled, I put my hand on my chest and glared at Law. “What the hell, man?” My heart was trying to escape through my sternum.
I paused the music and gave him an expectant look.
“I just wanted to let you know that I went to the kids’ school earlier,” he said, looking a bit awkward for whatever reason.
We’d all known that was where he’d been, so I just kept frowning at him questioningly.
“Right, so I don’t think it’s going to be an issue, but just in case, I put you on their pickup list.”
Well, if anything ever would pour a bucket of cold water over my dreams of Law, it was this. I was clearly a potential childminder. An almost-live in nanny. Nothing more.
I jerked into action, nodding. “Okay.”
“Like I said, I don’t think it’ll come up, but just in case.” He smiled. “I don’t have that many people who I trust them with.”
It didn't feel completely shitty to be trusted like that, so I smiled back even if I was experiencing why a crush is called a crush. “Okay,” I repeated.
“Okay,” he parroted, then rapped the doorframe with his knuckles twice, before vanishing from sight.
Sighing, I went back to work. At least I knew where I stood with him now.
Because I now knew that I would be staying at the cabin for a while, I decided to decorate a bit more.
I started with getting new curtains, including a shower one, because why not. I got pillows for the couch and a few plush rugs for the floor. Then I decided to get a couple of plants and ended up with two different colored Pothos, because I could put one in the bathroom and the other would sit on a little shelf Uncle Teague made for high up on the wall, so that once the vine started to grow, it wouldn’t be in the reach of certain black cat I expected to cat sit whenever needed.
Seeing my boxes of stuff that needed storage, Uncle Teague suggested that we’d lift my bed a little bit with risers, so that I could put the stuff underneath. He made me custom risers, too, and then put them in. That led me into buying a skirt for the bed so I could hide the new storage area, but all in all, it all ended up looking even cozier somehow.
As I was putting the boxes under the bed, I opened the one that had my favorite things. Including my fairy doors.
I still felt the same about them as I felt about thinking about having sex with a guy. I knew both were beautiful things thatgave me joy and satisfaction—in different ways, I wasn’tthatkinky, thank you very much—but that my parents would never approve of, because they marked me as exactly what I was, a gay man.
Of course I knew, logically, that plenty of straight men liked pretty, whimsical things, too. Hell, some of them even liked to have sex with men. It was just hard to get my parents’ teachings out of my head sometimes. A lot of times.Ugh.
I certainly wasn’t having one of those things anytime soon, but at least I could take one of the fairy doors and put it near the corner by the bathroom doorway. I could see it from the couch, then.
In my dorm room, I’d had them all over the place because my roommate had found them funny and he was a chill kind of dude anyway. A bit geeky and a lot friendly but not in an overbearing way. One time, I found a new fairy door in a secondhand store and put it on one of his shelves by his desk. The sound of pure delight he made when he saw it had given me hope in humanity.
So yes. I might’ve taken another one and taken it outside to the porch. I set it so that it looked as if there was a door into the cabin there and knew the kids would find it great if they ever noticed it.
As I turned to look toward the pond behind the cabin, I tilted my head.Huh.
I dug out my phone and called Uncle Teague.
After enough rings to let me know that I’d caught him at work, he answered, “Oak?”
