A Simple Life: Chapter 141 (Patreon)

In the bit of time I had before work I pour over internet resources on pamphlet design and even start on a few test drafts. As I suspected actually seeing the bones of my initial ideas take form in full color had me tweaking and fine-tuning layout and palate in crucial ways that I couldn’t have using just my imagination. After a quick text to Sandra to ask permission to shift the shades of her pink and green into more coordinating and eye pleasing tones I already had something that looked ten times better than the primitive design Sandra and her husband had come up with all those years ago. Too soon I am forced to lay the project down to go to work, though it continued to simmer away at the back of my mind all through the day.

Dashing into work mere seconds before my shift began I get myself aproned up in record time and I’m out on the floor just as the second hand hits the top of the hour. Whew! Work was work. I see all the usual faces and do all the usual things, yet it was such a good day. It had nothing to do with the grocery business and everything to do with me. And during those few times that things do start to drag or I feel my mood being pulled down into the humdrum of it all I had to do was wiggle my bum and feel that glorious little remnant of Winona’s love. Her riding me last night had been absolutely wonderful but it hadn’t left me these deliciously naughty anal echoes that made a bottom like me feel so sexy and good. There was NOTHING so satisfying like the day after ache of a nice hard fucking.

After my shift I call Winona. A more mushy and lovey-dovey call there has never been. We don’t talk about anything of substance but just hearing her voice has me soaring all over again.

After getting changed and saying hello to my roomie I meet up for the coffee with Joshua that we’d planned. And it was…awesome! As soon as we sat down I could tell that this was going to be a conversation unlike any we’d had before as his usual closed off gruffness wasn’t there, in its place was a very uncharacteristic anxiety. After ordering he starts off by asking about me. Though I had news stacked on top of news going on in my life I keep it brief and focused mostly on Winona as I could tell that he had something he needed to get out, and I very much wanted to listen. Being as gentle as I could be I turn the focus back his way.

It takes some time to get past the usual clipped trite responses but with patience and care I eventually get him to open up. Primed by his therapy, once he got going he couldn’t be stopped. Sitting across from my brother I watch a slow transformation take place from the stoic and stony faced truck driver that I knew to a man as wounded and fucked up as I was. I might have been the most vulnerable and sensitive of us but I wasn’t the only one suffering the scars of a physically abusive emotionally distant father and emotionally abusive alcoholic mother. Listening to him struggle to put words to our trauma was heart wrenching, even more so as I had lived through much of it myself. Unlike any friend or counselor as his brother I actually had been there to see the shit as it happened.

His challenges had been different than mine. Some things had been easier for him, especially once he got big enough to fight back, but others had actually been harder. He’d just been better at hiding the pain than me. Growing up everybody had always looked at me as a weird sissy and so when I would cry or go quiet or hide away for hours at a time it was just seen as Avery being Avery. But with Joshua, a boy’s boy who grew into a man’s man, it had been drilled into him that feelings were shameful things to be buried way deep down and left alone. While I would run away, either literally or into myself, Joshua would add another brick to his emotional fortress. The hard inaccessible man that I knew hadn’t grown that way naturally, he’d been built brick by brick by brick. He sheds a tear and I shed many as we begin to catch up on a lifetime of bonding.

Grandpa’s news hadn’t hit him like it had me but it had made him stop and take stock of things, especially after he’d convinced him to go see that therapist. He said that it meant a lot to him to know that someone still gave a shit about him. We talk a bit about what a great grandpa we had and laugh at a few pleasant memories of him.

He then turns to the subject of he and I. He had a lot of regrets about the way he’d treated me over the years. He explained that it felt easier to him to be on the bully’s side than the bullied’s and he admitted that it was a cowardly thing to do. He doesn’t ask for or expect forgiveness, but he does offer an unqualified apology and tells me that he’ll be better going forward. I didn’t know what to say except to thank him for telling me all that and accepting his apology. And then he drops the most shocking bomb of all. I’d thought the topic was over when out of the blue he tells me that I had made him uncomfortable and that in me he continually had to face the one thing that upset him most of all. It wasn’t my size or stutter or soft-spoken fragility or anything like that. It was my bisexuality. I hadn’t even had time to process what that might mean when he just went and blurted…

“The shrink and I think that, err, I might be, um, in the closet?” He clears his throat. “Or somethin.”

“What!?”

He squirms as his face turns red. “Ya know…erm…”

“You m-mean gay!?”

“Shhh!” He looks back and forth to make sure nobody was listening. “That’s just between you and me, Avery.” He then shakes his head. “Forget it.”

I felt really bad for letting the surprise come through in my voice as the moment that door had been opened it slammed shut again. Shut, bolted, and locked up tight. I tried to coax more from him but back to his old self he shuts me down cold. I wanted to press but I could tell that that was as much as Josh was about to share, and possibly more than he ever meant to.

Deeply touched that he shared this with me but seeing that he was uncomfortable in the extreme and clamming up I steer our talk another way to ease the tension. I broach the topic of Win’s Garage, telling him that I was doing a bit of work for them now and that they were going to need all of the help that they could get getting their feet under them on an island where the people’s natural inclination was to support ‘our own’ over newcomers. Relieved to have something else to talk about he asks a few questions then agrees to check them out the next time his van needed work that he couldn’t handle himself. He also said that he’d help spread the word among the other drivers. I thanked him, happy I could at least do this for Amos and Winona and hoping it was the start of something good for him as well.

The whole talk only takes just over an hour, but what an hour it had been. We’d sat down as near strangers but as we rise from our table we do so as brothers. He covers the bill and out in the parking lot he actually lets me hug him. After an awkward second he relaxes and hugs me back.

With an approving nod, more to himself than to me, he backs away from me toward his car. “That was good. We’ll have to do this again, Avie.”

“Avery.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He corrects himself. “Avery.”

I smile. “Yes. I’d l-like that very much Joshua.”

As I watch him drive away I held such a joy in my heart. What a day! What an hour! Life could be pretty darned crappy sometimes but then along comes a day like this to remind you why you were here.

I take a deep breath and slowly let it out again. I’d been planning to head straight to Grandpa’s from here but speaking with Joshua had reminded me that I still had some unfinished family business to attend to. One bit of it in particular that had been gnawing at me and causing me problems for a few days now. One that wasn’t going to take care of itself. Something only I could do. I told Grandpa to leave it to me, I told Winona to leave it to me, and I was a man of my word. I would never feel better or braver or more confident than I was feeling right now. I’d put it off for long enough. It was time to deal with Jack.

Chapter 142