AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I knew I was reading too much into it. He’d said as much after he’d pulled out of me. I’d known it just from the sad way he’d said my name. So, I’d beaten him to the punch and told him it was a mistake.
Even though I didn’t think it was, nor did I regret it. And given the chance to have him again like that, I’d take it. Every single time.
But not at the expense of the kids. Aiden had been right. I’d lost focus about why we were here. And I needed to remember that this thing with Xander would come to an end in a matter of days, but the kids… they were forever. Just like with Colin, I wanted to be a part of as many of these kids’ lives as I could. As much as I wanted something with Xander, he wasn’t my future. He’d made that perfectly clear.
“I think we need to figure out how to make this work for the kids, Bennett,” Xander said.
I let my stick play with some of the shapes Xander had drawn with his stick. “I agree. What do you think? Truce?”
Xander was quiet and I smiled when I realized what kind of pattern he was drawing in the dirt. “Yeah. Truce,” he said.
I watched him draw an X in the middle square of the Tic Tac Toe board he’d drawn.
“Why are you always X’s?” I asked.
He looked at me flatly. “Uh, Xander. X. Duh.”
I chuckled and felt my body tighten up when I spied what I’d been working my ass off to see this whole fucking trip.
The smile.
The quiet, soft Xander smile that was mine. It was folly to think it was my smile… that he did it just for me, but I chose to believe it anyway.
“You’re so predictable,” I groused. “You always pick the middle square.”
We’d played the game often enough when we were kids that it was burned into my memory.
“Shut up and play,” he said.
I picked a square and drew a circle.
“Nice circle,” he said snidely. “No wonder you almost failed geometry.”
“Shut it,” I returned and watched him take his turn. “Can I ask you something?”
He nodded.
“Where did you and Aunt Lolly go?” I asked softly. “I mean… after… you know.”
There was just the slightest tensing of his body. I wasn’t certain he was going to answer at first. But he kept playing the Tic Tac Toe game so I figured I hadn’t pissed him off with the question.
“All over at first. West coast mostly. She had some friends living in a commune in Oregon.”
“A commune?”
“Yeah, all these people got together and bought some land and put a bunch of trailers and small houses on it. They shared all the responsibilities, worked the land together, ate what they grew and sold the rest at farmer’s markets and stuff.”
“What was it like?”
“Not bad,” he said. “Just… different. But it’s where I realized I wasn’t ever going to be that guy.” He looked at me and said, “You know, working in a cubicle, staring at a computer all day.”
I nodded. Xander had done well in school, but he’d never had any one particular goal in mind when it had come to a potential career. His father had dreamed of him going to college, which Xander had been planning to do, but he’d never been able to answer the age-old question of what do you want to be when you grow up like most kids our age had. I’d had the stock answer, the one that had been fed to me since birth. But I’d always dreamed of being able to answer like Xander did.
No idea, but I’ll know it when I see it.
“We joined a couple of communes for a few years before settling down here in Colorado.”
“Does your aunt still live nearby?” I asked.
“Um yeah, she… she lives in a colony in a small town just north of Denver.”
“A colony?” I asked. “Like that movie where all the people turned into zombies?”
Xander laughed and bumped me with his body. “No… idiot,” he said with a smile. “It’s… it’s a nudist colony.” His face scrunched up slightly.
“Oh my god,” I laughed. “A nudist colony in Colorado? Isn’t it too cold? I mean… things are probably so shriveled up, you can’t tell what they are.”
“Shut up— I have to work really hard not to think about that shit.”
“Sorry,” I said, though we both knew I wasn’t.
“They have a lot of indoor activities,” he said. “Can we not talk about this? I already have to consider bleaching my eyes every time I visit her there.”
I began laughing hysterically and barely managed to keep my voice low so I wouldn’t wake up the kids. “You go there?”
Xander pushed me so hard with his hand, I nearly fell backwards off the log. He grabbed me around the waist to stop my fall, but I couldn’t stop laughing.
