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“You know there are stairs, right? And the gate opens, so you didn’t have to leap over that either.”
“Yeah, but I like to show off for ya. Come on, didn’t it turn you on a little?”
“I can hardly contain myself,” I joked.
“Fuck yes!” he shouted, arms in the air. “I am the champion! Emerson Fox can’t contain himself around me.”
I shook my head but couldn’t hold back my smile. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m good at makin’ you smile, though.”
He was. Probably better than anyone had ever been at it. “Let me put him up.” I took the goat with me and put him back in his pen. They were always escaping somehow.
When I made it back to Sam, he was already in the water, head tilted back, resting on the edge. He turned and faced me, giving me this sweet, pure smile I wished like hell I could capture to keep with me. I thought maybe I could live off it, because how could there be anything bad in the world when someone smiled at me like that?
Stop. Don’t think like that.
He’d said earlier he was tired, and I was too, so I ignored that voice, opened the gate, and went inside before I stripped. “Next time you can get undressed where it’s safe.”
“But then I couldn’t have run all over the place naked. I told you I like it.”
I went up the stairs and sat across from him. The floodlights on the back of the house kept it bright back here, but Sam had also turned on the colorful LED lights in the water. He skimmed his hand over the waves the jets created. “This is nice.”
“Yes, it is. Tell me about the ring.”
Sam seemed confused for a second, then said, “Oh, Molls gave it to me when we were teenagers.” He bit his bottom lip, looked at me, then nudged me with his toe. “Tell me something good about your life…or your childhood. All good stuff tonight. I wanna learn more about you. I want happy Emerson stories.”
I should tell him no, but a memory bloomed in my head, so big I couldn’t keep it in. “My dad and I used to go camping a lot. We both loved that shit.”
“You loved camping?”
“Yes, brat. Why do you say it like that?”
“Just givin’ ya shit. Keep going.”
“I loved it. I always felt connected to him out there. So much of my life was spent trying to keep my secret. Even before I understood what it meant to be gay, I knew I was different. I remember those sermons in church, the words thrown around, and I knew that whatever that was, I wouldn’t be accepted if I was that. So I did my best to tell myself it wasn’t true and to be who I knew he needed me to be so he would accept me.”
“This don’t sound happy.”
I chuckled. “It is. I promise. Anyway, those camping trips were just for us, and out there, sleeping in tents, fishing for our food, everything was perfect. We’d talk. He treated me like a man out there, an equal. Tell me how proud he was of me. Sometimes we’d share a beer around the fire and just…be. I loved those moments with him. My dad was my hero when I was younger, and I remember wanting to capture all those happy times, all those nights spent talking and days fishing, and keep them. And that’s it…that’s my happy memory. Just camping with my dad and feeling loved by him.” When was the last time I’d talked about anything like this? Let myself remember good times?
“I saved someone from drowning once,” I continued. “One of the scariest moments of my life. I didn’t think, just dived in the lake after them. It was this big old thing in the papers, which I hated. I remember how my mom looked at me when she found out. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so proud. It filled me with such warmth. Not all the attention from everyone else, but knowing I helped someone and feeling my mom’s smile about something I’d done. I always wanted her to look at me that way.”
These kinds of memories weren’t something I ever talked about. I tried to act like my life began when I left home, disconnected myself from anything before I was eighteen, but of course Sam found a way to bring it out of me.
“She should have always looked at you that way. Tell me another one. Molly’s been my best friend my whole life. Who was your best friend when you were a kid?”
“His name was Mike.” I smiled, remembering him. “We were always together. I think maybe he was my first crush, but I didn’t realize it at first.”
“Hmm. Don’t know if I like this Mike fella. But then, I betcha he can’t jump onto a deck naked the way I did for ya.”
