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He tossed his trowel into the pot. “With what, Ly? A fag in their midst?”
Lyra dropped her trowel, too, and turned to face him directly. “Don’t do that. I’m worried. For you. They’re outlaws. They’re violent. They’re probably not hanging Pride flags off their front porches. Why do you want to be with them?”
“I could ask you the same question. You downplayed it with Pop, but I know you and Zach are texting all the time. There’s something going on between you two. So why do you want to be with a violent outlaw bigot, if that’s what you think the Bulls are?”
“It’s different, and not just because I don’t think Zach is like that. You know why it’s different. Are you going back in the closet?”
“No! Fuck that.”
“Then what? You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
Abruptly, he stood. “I need a beer. You want something?”
“Are you mad?”
“I’m not mad, I’m thirsty. That’s why I need a beer. Do you want one?”
“Just lemonade for me, please.”
With a clipped nod, he turned and opened the slider. Brutus, who’d been lying under the acacia tree, hurried to follow him in, probably hoping for an ice cube.
Lyra sat and studied the yard around her, watching the new evening breeze spin the whirligigs and rustle the stunted leaves of the acacia. Even trusting that Reed understood her worry, she felt tense and tentative. They were discussing his right to exist as he was, after all, and it had to hurt for something so crucial to be up for debate by anyone.
He came back out and offered her an enticingly sweaty glass of cold lemonade. Instead of rejoining her on the patio floor, he sat at the table. Lyra got up and joined him there.
“Yeah, I’ve thought about it,” he said when she was seated and Brutus had taken up his role as their shared footrest. “Of course I’ve thought about it. But you asked why I want this, and I want to answer that first.”
“Okay.”
Before he answered, he took a long pull from his bottle. Then he stared at the sweating glass for a moment. “You know, it kinda sucks, being gay in a small town. I think the casinos make it even worse—a bigger crop of inbred assholes getting drunk and looking for somebody to take their losses out on. I can handle myself, and I have. You know that. I’m big enough that a fair number of shitheads think twice about coming at me, and I can handle most of the ones who don’t think twice. But it sucks to be on the defensive like that all the time. That patch, it’s like armor. Having a club full of men in the same armor behind me, that’s an army. And shit, Ly.” He gestured around the yard. “What the fuck else do I do with my life? I clean up dead people’s guts for a living. I live in a desert town that’s main claim to fame is being a cheaper Vegas. I’m pretty sure I’m on a first-name basis with every single out queer person who lives here. What the fuck better is out here for me?”
“Then why stay?” She didn’t want him to leave, but she’d understand. She thought Mom and Pop would, too. Eventually.
But Reed laughed. “Where would I go? LA? I hate it. San Diego? No thanks. Frisco? What a fucking cliché. I’m like one of these succulents, Ly. Desert bred. Too much water, too much fussing, too much crowding, it’ll kill me. I’m rooted here.”
“Okay. But if you’re not going to tell the Bulls, and you’re not going in the closet, then what?”
He smiled. “And here we are at your other question, huh? The way I figure it, there’s some time until the charter’s going. When some of the guys are here from Tulsa”—he leaned close with a devious grin—"maybe Zachy-poo.” When she grinned and shoved him back, he continued, “They’ll need some time to finish the setup. A few weeks or so, maybe longer. I’m just gonna be me. I’ll invite a couple of my buds over, maybe one of my fuck-buds, when the Bulls are over here, and let them see who I am. Onmyterms, inmyhouse. If they have a problem with it, I’ll know it. And so will Pop. What I amnotgoing to fucking do is ask anybody for permission to be who I am, and that’s what saying ‘Hey, FYI, I like dick, is that cool with you?’ would be doing.”
Lyra nodded; it made sense. Moreover, it was pure Reed. But she’d heard something else in all that, and it prompted a new question. “What if they do have a problem with it, but Pop still wants to join up?”
Reed considered his now-empty beer bottle again. “I guess he and I will have to work that out then.”
CHAPTER NINE
