Chapter Five: Bedtime, Or Sometime Thereabouts

“What are we going to make him do?” It was almost a week after the Youth Service Auction and Jake, he had corrected our use of Jacob the following day in church, was arriving tomorrow morning to pay off his debt. As I speculated, Adam was pissed. Not so much because he wouldn’t get the use of Jake’s services, but more because we had won. Landen and I were lying in bed, both having given up on reading the books we had on our bedside tables.

“I don’t know,” Landen responded, pulling me closer to his warmth. “I hadn’t really thought about it yet.”

“There must be some housework to be done, there are always more leaves to rake.” I tilted my head to look into his eyes.

“I’m sure we’ll find something for him to do.” Landen kissed the top of my head. “I could always have him put the molding up that you said you’d help me with.”

“Would that mean that I wouldn’t have to do it?”

“That’s what it would imply,” he smiled.

“Sounds perfect.”

“I’ll never understand why you hate doing housework.” I looked up at him. “You’ve been doing it for years, you know what you’re doing and you’re good at it.”

“It’s the dirt,” I responded honestly. “Not a big fan of dirty hands.”

“So I always have to be dirty?”


“But it looks so sexy on you.” I curled up closer to him.

He kissed the top of my head. Shoned rolled onto her back, which, as I’ve heard, is a sign that she feels comfortable in our presence. I guess dogs don’t do this in the wild because they always have to be on alert, or something like that.

“Do you think his parents know?” I said, breaking the silence.

“Know what?”

I tilted my head to look in his eyes. “That he’s…” I raised my eyebrows for emphasis.

“What?”

“Gay.”

“I don’t know,” Landen replied.

“I know you don’t know. What do you think?” I asked again.

“He’s what…17?” Landen thought out loud. “Probably not. He might not even know.”

“That’s a bummer,” I replied, reverting my eyes back to the ceiling.

“It isn’t like he’s a super queen.”

“Mm.” Another pause. “You think they know about us?”

“I would hope so,” he said, running his hand through my hair. “They’d be kinda blind not to.”

“We’re not super queens, either.” I could feel him looking at me. “Well…you’re not. You’re like this super uber-butch.”

He laughed. “Uber-butch?”

“Okay, maybe not uber, but totally butch.”

“You can’t retro-clarify a statement like that.”

“Do you think you’re uber-butch?” I questioned.

“Maybe.” I shot him an extended glance. “Clearly you do.”

“Clearly not, or I wouldn’t have retro-clarified,” I responded, smirking at him.

“Oh, I see. Now I’m beyond nelly?”

“I didn’t say that,” I retorted.

“Hmm.”

Insert dramatic pause. I pulled myself closer to him.

“I was thinking basic house cleaning,” Landen finally said.

“What?”

“I said, ‘I was thinking basic house cleaning.’”

“Yes, I heard you,” I replied. “I just didn’t quite understand the digression. We were talking about butchness.”

“I know,” he responded. “I thought we were done so I was answering your previous question.”

“But I had switched topics.”

“So I switched them back.” Landen smiled at me.

“Fine, we’ll discuss it later.” Landen chuckled. “Basic house cleaning? Why not house work? You know, stuff I don’t ever want to do.”

“Like house cleaning?”

“Right…no…you tricked me.”

“Not on purpose,” Landen said.

“You cornered me in,” I fake-pouted, “like a scared king in Chess.” There was a slight pause. I squinted up at Landen. “Don’t even say it.”

“Wasn’t going to.”

“I could hear you thinking it.” He kissed the top of my head again.

“I just figured that I could do the house work by myself and this way neither of us would have to do the house cleaning. Why does it matter? Either way you’re getting out of one and possibly both.”

“It’s the lesser of two evils,” I replied. “Revert to my previous statement about dirty hands.”

“So you’d rather clean the house?”

“No,” I said. “I’d rather he cleaned the house and did the house handy work. And this way you get out of having to do the handy work.” I smiled a broad smile.

“You’d trust him to do the manual labor on this house without my supervision?”

“You can still supervise him. Or I could supervise him. Either way would work. We have to get our five hundred dollars worth.”

There was a long pause. Shoned had slipped into sleep, her breathing becoming longer and slightly more pronounced, as it does when she’s sleeping. Landen’s hold on me had slightly loosened. I continued laying there, awake, inhaling Landen’s scent and running my fingers lightly over the parts of his chest that weren’t covered by blankets.

“Are you still awake?” I finally asked.

He responded with a low, soft “hmm.”

“How pissed was Adam?”

“Uh huh,” was all Landen said. In retrospect, it was pretty clear that he was only bordering on being awake.

“And I mean like P-I-S-E-D’d pissed.”

Another verbal, but not actual word response.

“Why do you think he hates us so much?”

“Mm huh. Yup.”

I tilted my head upwards. “How did that response make any sense to you? Landen?” I waited for some sort of response. “Landen,” I whispered. He gave a little grunt.

I carefully snuck out of bed. Trying not to move his arm too much I wiggled my way towards the foot of the bed, and rolled myself near the edge once I was out of his arm. Sitting up, a little exhausted after all that work, I grabbed my bathroom, a Westin terrycloth bathroom that Landen had bought for me on one of our San Diego trips, and wrapped it around myself. Knowing Nancy Walker, not that I actually did, she’d probably be standing outside my window being all lurpy. I delicately tiptoed over Shoned, who rolled over right as I was stepping over her. I crept out of the bedroom door and walked into one of the spare bedrooms. I closed the door and turned the lights on low. I insisted that the lights be adjustable, a task that took Landen longer than either of us thought would be the case.

Since we had moved in about a year ago, Landen and I had been slowly transforming this room into a library. We, and by “we,” I mean Landen, had finished painting the room a beautiful textured burgundy color. The room had the smell of relatively new paint, but not so new that you felt you were going to asphyxiate. Just last week he had put a couch and the bookshelves in. Remember, I said slowly. This whole week we’ve been moving the books that were scattered on various bookshelves throughout the house and placing them in boxes on the floor of the new library.

Sitting down among the piles I began to organize them according to type and author. Yeah, I’m that anal-retentive about my books. Undecided about how I exactly want them located on the bookshelves, I just place them in small piles by subject and stacked by author’s last name followed by book title. The way any good library or bookstore should do.

“Hello, Pale-Face,” I said quietly as I heard the door creak open.

“What are you doing?” Landen asked, entering the room and closing the door behind him.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I responded. “I thought I’d do some work in here.”

“Something wrong?” Landen sat down behind, wrapping his arms around my waist.

“No,” I said. “Not really. Just…just couldn’t sleep.”

“What’s really the matter?” Landen tightened his grip.

“You smell good,” I replied.

“Oh, now I know something’s wrong,” Landen said, clearly smiling. “It was today, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I replied quietly, leaning back against him. “Twenty years ago. Today.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” Landen responded.

“It’s strange,” I thought out loud. “I never really even knew her. I mean, I was seven. But still, ever year on this day, things…are…off. And it’s always hardest at night. I think that confuses me more than anything about it. It’s like, I barely even remember her, and yet, she has this pull on me. It comes in waves. It just hits me, crashes on the shore, to extend the metaphor. No reason, no rhyme. Just there.”

Landen didn’t respond. I could tell he was praying. It’s always so much easier for him to do that. He just lets things go. When nothing makes sense, when people need it, that’s what he does. He kept holding me as I leaned back into him. I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of the books, the paint, and Landen. At some point I fell asleep, maybe we both did. But some time during the night he carried me, I picture it like a prince carrying his sleeping bride, but obviously I wasn’t awake for it, back into bed.