AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“LaTonya’s wife volunteered to be auctioned off for a date,” I repeated. “Along with Nic, who is…”
“Nonbinary.” My little cousin Jack cruised into the kitchen, grabbed two cookies, and jammed them both into his mouth without pausing. At my look of confusion, he explained around a spray of cookie crumbs, “Vat means vey don’ idennify as a girl o’ a boy. Or mebbe as bofe.”
“I know what nonbinary means,” I said, frowning as Jack ran off again. I just… hadn’t been aware that there were nonbinary people living openly in the Thicket or that my ten-year-old cousin would know any.
“Milk?” Savannah held a quart bottle over the mug she’d poured me.
“No. Thank you.” I put my hand over the top of the mug. “I, ah, only do oat milk these days.” It came out sounding like an apology, and I hated myself for it.
“Sure.” Savannah shrugged and returned the bottle to the fridge. “Anyway, the auction used to be called the ‘Love on the Lick Castration Fundraiser,’ but these days, most of us just call it the Biddin’. And Fletcher’s right that it’s not a dating or matchmaking thing per se. It’s more like buying a few hours of someone’s time and attention.”
Jaden called from the kitchen table, “That’s why LaTonya wanted her wife to volunteer, or so she said. Apparently, Maureen had been promising to sort through their old baby stuff in the garage and bring it to the donation center but kept putting it off. LaTonya won a whole afternoon from her in the auction just so Maureen couldn’t wriggle out of the job.”
“That’s a terrible example,” Jaden’s twin brother, Jory, said from his place on the sofa in the family room. “Because now LaTonya’s waddling around like she swallowed a watermelon seed, and all that baby stuff is back in the nursery waiting for kid number three. I guarantee, whatever those ladies got up to that day, it wasn’t cleaning the garage.”
Everyone laughed except me. I was still confused. Openly gay, family-having Thicketeers was like a complicated statistics problem; nothing fit into any familiar pattern of what I knew about this place.
“Don’t stress, Junior. It’s all in good fun.” Savannah must’ve caught my wariness and attributed it to nerves because she patted me on the shoulder soothingly. “See, the Castration Society pays for the spay and neuter programs at the local animal shelter, and that ain’t cheap, which everyone in town ends up taking their turn on the auction stage at one point or another. Uncle Amos probably thought you’d fetch a high price since so many folks will want the chance to catch up with you.”
They would? I wasn’t sure about that at all.
“Your definition of fun is fucked, Savannah,” Fletcher said sourly. “When Amos roped me in last year, I spent a full night playing cribbage for money at the old folks home out on Faulkner Road. I lost forty bucks to Ethel Winalski, and I swear my favorite jacket still smells like Icy Hot.”
“Pfft. You got off easy.” Jory poked his head over the top of the sofa. “I babysat for Ava Siegel and her fourteen billion children, who all gave me big, sad eyes until I agreed to do Disney karaoke with them, over and over and over again. To this very day, I find myself singing the Moana soundtrack in the shower.” He shuddered.
“Sure, bro. That’s why,” Jaden teased, then ducked and laughed when his brother lobbed a couch pillow at him.
“I just don’t think you should be able to use your winning bid for evil,” Jory insisted stubbornly. “That’s all.”
Savannah rolled her eyes. “Shush, both of you. It’s not always like that. Just think about Willow Norris and Riley Fanning. Willow won a date with Riley, and now the two of them are married and raise boutique livestock.”
I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it was nice to know some winning bids had a happy ending.
I took a deep breath. “So it doesn’t matter, then, that I’m, you know… gay?”
My sexuality had never exactly been a secret. My mother had probably known before I had, and I recalled a horrifying safe-sex talk with Amos back in high school that began with, “Sometimes, Charlton, when a young bull stud gets real riled over another bull stud…” But I was suddenly very aware that I’d never said the words out loud in this house, in front of these people.
Three sharp gasps came from around the room, and my shoulders instantly stiffened.
“Gay, you say?” My dad’s cousin Charli clasped a hand to her chest, but her eyes danced. “My gracious! Why didn’t anyone tell me? We coulda found you a nice young man, Junior. Maybe one of the Johnson boys…”
“The happily married Johnson boys?” her husband, Milt, cut in with a grin. “You’d be taking your life in your hands if Cindy Ann heard you say that.” To me, he added, “I think what Charli’s trying to say is we’ve known you were gay for a while, kiddo.”
