My Best Man by Andy Schell (unputdownable books .txt) 📗

I enter my room next door and fall onto the bed, full of conflict and question. The question isn’t whether I’m gay. I am. The question

is whether I could have done it without Bart somehow ” and I think the answer is no. Minutes pass, but I can’t get thought of him out of my head. His thick wrists, the veins in neck, his tongue lapping at Amity’s face. What would his ass look like out of those Wrangler jeans? Do his feet really those big, wide cowboy boots? I’m aroused again, and soon erection is spurred on by the sounds coming from the other side the wall.

I’ve got to hear them. I rip off my clothes and throw them the floor. Then I run to the bathroom, grab an empty water and return to the bed with it. I stand on the bed and place the on the wall, just to the edge of the huge framed knockoff of Gogh’s water lilies, and press my ear to the cold glass, absorbi the echo of Bart and Amity making love.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he moans as if his horse is cantering on the lead over pavement. It’s a rough ride, but he’s thoroughly it.

Amity breaks in, “Oh, baby, you drive me wild!”

The bed creaks and crunches, and I hear one of their moving against the wall.

“Yee haw, baby, Yee haw!” Amity whoops.

Yee haw? Is he tiding on top of her like a horse? Is he on to her hair like reins, his big, sexy forearms flexing as he her right, then left, then pulls back on her? Is she some Trigger, rearing up into his big, sexy chest while he takes her behind? No, wait: She said he’d go to his stall limping, so is she on top? Is he stretched out below her, his muscled legs reachin for miles, his big arms holding her shoulders while she rides him: to the edge of the cliff in a full gallop?

In my excitement, the glass slips from my hand, and as it falls toward the end table, I try to catch it, but in my haste I knock monstrous van Gogh off the wall, and it comes crashing down onto the headboard like thunder and flies sideways onto the end table,

breaking the water glass and smashing into the phone, which flies off the table with a booming ring. I turn to jump off the bed and catch myself in the mirror, naked, horrified, my stick of butter frozen hard.

I carefully step around the broken glass and grab the painting, lifting it away. As I set it on the other bed, I realize the rodeo on the other side of the wall has shut down. Ceased all events. There’s not a sound from the riders. Shit. I can only imagine what it must have sounded like to them. I gingerly place the receiver back on the hook and lift the phone to the table. As I’m setting it down, it

rings.

I let it ring. Four times. Then slowly lift the handset. “Yes?” “You all right over there, big guy?” Bart asks. “Yes.”

“Anything broken, Bubba?”

I look at my penis. “No.”

“Well …” he says. I hear Amity giggle in the background. “I’m going to take a shower now,” I tell him. “Keep the water cold, buddy. Keep the water cold.”

The next three days of the trip, Bart holds Amity’s hand when she steps out of the crew van, carries her luggage through the airport, opens any doors for her, orders her champagne at dinner, and fucks her as if she’s a sheep from Kansas.

And the two of them adopt me as their favorite son. We’re one little happy airline family. Our failed attempt at sex hasn’t hurt Amity’ sand my relationship in the least. Nor mine and Bart’ s. On the contrary, we have something to bind us and also make us laugh. And that’s how it is in the airline business, I’m told. People get incredibly close for a few days, and then they don’t see each other for maybe another year or two or five.

But I have a feeling that, if I stick with Amity, I’ll have some kind of a family here in Texas. And that’s what I intend to do.

The night of our arrival back in Dallas, Amity suggests Bart come to her house for a drink. She also enthusiastically invites me to come along, but I decline, since I get the feeling that Bart wants another rodeo ride, and I don’t want to be the clown who the bull this time. Amity and I agree to get together as soon as our days off coincide, and I bid her and Bart good night.

My days at the Mansion are over, my paycheck isn’t enough for me to make a deposit on an apartment, and I can’t spend for even a sleazy hotel room (because my student loan payments are starting, and my hospital bills will be coming in). So I decide to sleep in the one of the four commuter bunks in the flight lounge. It won’t be long, just over a week, before my next paycheck, and until then, I can crash on a bunk.

But tonight, the bunks are all taken, and I’m forced to curl on a sofa in the main lounge while attendants come and go. almost asleep when I hear Amity’s voice. “Christ on a crutch, Harry. What are you doing?”

I open my eyes. “Sleeping,” I say foolishly. “What are you doing here?”

“I was all the way in the parking lot when I realized I left my vest,” she says, grabbing it off the back of a chair. “And of course I’d hate to lose a single piece of this godawful uniform. Why are you sleeping in the lounge?”

I sit up. “I’m a little tight on funds. I need a couple weeks get on my feet.”

“Harry, you’re a Ford, but not an Edsel. Sleeping in the lounge is worse than living below the underpass. Wait