Cross Creek

Today, Scott felt like a comfortable pillow - malleable and easily arranged.

"You're snoring in my ear."

Jeff's smile was sleep-dazed. "Move your head."

"Sorry. I'm comfortable."

"So am I." Jeff rolled onto his back, stretching against the cool blue-green grass, and his shirt rode up, revealing apricot ripples of flesh. Raven's eyes skimmed this canvas of his lover's body and was reminded of a leisurely-arranged Monet sitting in the Louvre.

"What are you looking at, boy?"

Jeff's tone, gruff and tender in even portions, sent a pleasant chill up his spine.

"A gentleman of Shady Acres."

Jeff's exhaled into a laugh; its melody played over Scott's nerves in fine threads of undigested sound.

"Yeah? Where's my bourbon?"

Raven pushed himself into a sitting position, grunting from the effort. Tilting to the side and lying a hand upon his own splayed knee, he said lazily, "By your hip, Boise."

"Boise?"

"Boise; Oscar Wilde's lover?"

"How the hell do you expect me to know that? I ain't that much of a queer."

"Forget 'being queer'...I detest that term, by the way...what I'm talking about is classic literature. Every plantation owner should read it."

"Yeah. What school did you graduate from again?"

"Syracuse University."

"That where they go to study snow?"

"Ha ha." Scott's laugh, shorter, raspier, and without the easy sensuality of Jeff's, displayed his annoyance. "What did you read when you were in college?"

"Porn."

"That's my line."

"Every kid that age read porn. My dad, though...that man owns more pornography than a healthy person oughtta."

"...thanks. That's something I never wanted to know about Jerry Jarrett."

"I swear to God; when I was sixteen years old, I went into his library and started swipin' his books. I still remember the first one."

"What was it about?" To Scott's surprise, he felt genuinely curious.

"This guy gets a divorce and decides to take a position with a university. He starts doing it with one of his students. He's so excited to be screwin' her all the time, he neglects his kids, who're almost grown up at sixteen and thirteen..."

"...sounds like my dad..."

"Don't break in when I'm talking! Anyway, the girl won't let the professor do her in the ass. So he holds her down and..."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. She leaves him, and he prepares for a long, lonely life. End of book. And THAT was my sexual initiation!"

"...that is the most depressing story I've ever heard of. I think the worst thing about your entire speech is that you can remember that but you can't remember our anniversary."

Silence.

"So, can you?"

"I remember the kind of bourbon we drank that night."

"Thank you," Scott grumbled. He noticed that the lake seemed calm, empty and completely alone. "I need to swim."

"Good, you'll be sure to float," Jeff spiritedly noted.

Scott peeled off his shirt, walking toward the water. He was completely unprepared for a warm embrace and the brush of a stubble-coated cheek against his shoulders.

"Don't you ever leave without kissing me goodbye."

"Oh." His lips were hard but somehow fragile.

Jeff seemed to dissipate into the smoke-gray fog as Scott dove into the lake, leaving a semi-circle of lilypads bobbing on the distressed surface.


The End