Resilience Read online

  The men finished stripping and Andrew grabbed a towel, a condom, and the lube. Then he bent over the edge of the bed and glanced at him over his shoulder. “Like I did to you the other night, love. Slow and easy with fingers first. Use one to start.”

  Need quickly overcame nerves. Andrew closed his eyes and rocked back against Colin’s hand, urging him on, savoring this. It’d been so damn long. While he never found his love life with Peggy lacking, he wouldn’t deny he had missed this. She might have been the family matriarch, but she’d absolutely abdicated all control to him in bed.

  Once Andrew knew he’d be able to comfortably take him, he stood and turned, kissing him again. “Let’s do this the easy way this time, hmm?” He lay back, bending his knees and propping his heels on the edge of the bed. Even easier would be him maintaining his previous position, but he wanted to watch Colin’s face this time.

  He had to help Colin roll the condom on because his hands were shaking too badly to manage it alone.

  A little more lube, then Colin stepped in and pushed forward, frustratingly stopping with the head of his cock pressed against Andrew’s rim. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Go slow and you won’t.” He rocked his hips as much as he could, gasping when Colin’s cockhead finally breached his rim.

  “Yesss!” Andrew hissed, smiling up at him. He reached down and fisted his own cock, slowly stroking it. With all the excitement, and the pleasant feel of Colin’s fingers in his ass, it had awakened, eager to play.

  Colin’s eyes dropped closed, his face contorted in something akin to ecstasy as he gently thrust, back and forth, savoring the sensation and making a little more progress with each stroke.

  “Eyes open, love,” Andrew ordered. “Look at me. I want you to watch what you do to me.”

  Colin forced his eyes open and stared down at him, transfixed, gorgeously handsome.

  Andrew reached up, caught his right hand, and placed it on his cock, his own hand covering it. “Now that’s perfect, pet. Just like that. Let’s see what we can do now, hmm?”

  He let Colin set the pace, slow and easy and as sweet as peach cobbler and ice cream on a hot summer’s eve. With each withdrawal, Colin’s hand slid up Andrew’s cock, back down again to match his thrust. Over and over again, closer to perfection with each movement as he gained confidence and old-fashioned need and desire took over.

  “That’s it,” Andrew whispered, holding back now because it felt so good and not wanting to explode too soon. “Savor it, because this is only the beginning between us.”

  “I love you.” His green gaze focused on him, laser-sharp. “I love you, Andy. I know it’s soon, but I love you.”

  Andy shoved himself up onto his arms so he could reach Colin’s sweet mouth and kiss him. “Love you, too, pet. Now fuck this arse like you own it, because you bloody well do.”

  It only took three more strokes before Andrew was coming all over Colin’s fist. And on his next thrust in, Colin’s back arched and Andrew muffled the other man’s gasps with his lips, sucking every sweet sound right from Colin’s throat as he came.

  They fell back on the bed, Colin’s wilting cock still inside Andrew and bracing himself against the bed on his arms. Andrew held him there with legs and arms wrapped around him, smiling up at him. “Nobody smote us in our tracks, hmm?”

  Colin started laughing, pressing his face against Andrew’s neck, his whole body shaking as he tried to stay quiet. Finally, he lifted his head and kissed Andrew. “Why do I even want to bother thinking about living at home anymore? I damn sure don’t want to spend a night away from you.”

  Andrew smiled. “Because, love, at some point I’m going to want to take you on all fours in your bed and make you howl my name to the moon. Until we get our new relationship fucking worked out of our cantankerous old bodies, we’ll need your house for our loud and raunchy sex and walking around nekkid whenever the mood strikes us.”

  Colin’s eyes widened again, and when the laughter hit him, Andrew thought it was the best sound in the whole blasted universe.

  * * * *

  One shower later, and they curled up together in bed, naked, with the TV on and the door locked.

  “I’m scared,” Colin admitted.

  “Of what?”

  “Of how easy this is.”

  “You keep saying that, yet I keep reminding you when you look at the sum of our lives, nothing about getting to this point was easy. I consider this the reward for a lifetime of honest labors, both professionally and personally, and payback for the heartache we’ve survived.”

  Colin nuzzled his face against Andrew’s shoulder. “I wonder if Susan’s told her brothers yet.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I guess not. They can’t even be bothered to call me and blow up at me, I suppose. Even more reason I’m done.”

  “Had you really changed everything with your attorney?”

  “Yeah. I did it when I started seriously thinking about moving. Right now, my will is set up so everything goes to Steven and his siblings, and the two cousins, with Steven the executor once he turns eighteen because he’s the oldest. Not how I wanted to do it, but I’d be damned if I was going to leave it to Susan and her brothers after them treatin’ me the way they had.” He stared at Andrew. “I guess I’ll be visitin’ my attorney again to make some more changes.”

  “How so?”

  “To add you.” He kissed him. “Because I want you on it.”

  “We don’t need to do that today, love. That is something we can be conservative about, for now.”

  “I think Nevvie wanted to take a swipe at Susan.”

  “Oh, she absolutely did.” Andrew told him about the Publix encounter with Emily.

  “Wow.”

  “I know. Brilliant, right? I wasn’t altogether sure I could hold her back that day. I wasn’t relishing the thought of calling Peggy and telling her Nevvie had been hauled away in handcuffs.”

  Colin propped himself on his side and stared into Andrew’s eyes. “When Camille was first diagnosed, I thought about at some point in the future her having to go into a care facility. And then I’d be able to…I don’t know, have an actual life. With a man. I’d just turned fifty-one when she was diagnosed, and she was fifty. But as the disease progressed, I’d see the fear in her eyes as she couldn’t remember a word, or she’d stare at a picture and I knew she couldn’t remember the people in it, even her own kids. Or how she’d get frustrated when I had to drive her places and she couldn’t go by herself anymore.

  “When I had to take her down to the department of motor vehicles to change her license over to a state ID, she cried so hard on the way home I felt guilty as hell. But she didn’t even realize I had swapped the car keys out on her keyring months earlier for blanks I bought at the hardware store, because I was scared about her driving somewhere and either getting hurt or killed, or hurting or killing someone else.”

  He looked lost in thought. “I was still working when she was diagnosed, but then I retired a couple of years later, before she got really bad and couldn’t drive anymore. We got to take a few vacations she’d wanted to go on, driving places, like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. So I was able to do that for her. I did love her, as my wife and the mother of my children, but I never felt passionate about her like I do us. I never felt in love with her the way I do with you. I felt even more guilty about that the longer the disease had her. Because I knew she would never have another chance, and maybe I robbed her of bein’ with who she should have been.”

  Blinking away tears, he pressed on. “So I fought puttin’ her in a home, even though Susan was the first one tellin’ me I should lock her up. She never volunteered to help me out. I always had to ask her, and then it was like it was a huge chore. Especially if it conflicted with her church goin’. So it really pissed me off when she acted like me being gay was a sin when she had a damn log in her own frickin’ eye. At least Conner and Brad’s wives volunteered to come in and sit wi
th Camille for a couple of hours here and there, so I could get stuff done or run errands.

  “I took the knobs off the stove and put them in a cabinet above Camille’s head, where she wouldn’t be able to reach them even if she could remember where they were. I hid the iron and put the coffeepot and toaster on a timer at the outlet, so they would stay off even if she turned them on at the wrong time of day. I put chains up high on the front and back doors that she couldn’t reach, so I could sleep at night. I took her to every doctor appointment and made sure she took her medicine.

  “As she lost who she was, she would sometimes get mean and hateful with me. I reminded myself that I was a stranger to her, at that moment. She’d always cry later, when she came back to herself, as I called it. But then she was gone longer and longer. And then she needed more care, and more attention. I had to get night nurses four nights a week. You think Susan volunteered to help? Not a damn time.”

  He sniffled. “The day I finally realized she’d reached a point I couldn’t handle her by myself at home any longer was the day I couldn’t find a stupid knife to open a package of bacon. She’d asked for bacon for breakfast and I’d hid all the sharp knives from her, and hell, I couldn’t remember where I’d put the damn things. We were alone, and I was so tired. It’d been the night nurse’s off night, and I’d had maybe an hour’s worth of sleep because Camille had been restless and was getting up and down all night. But all insurance would pay for private nurses worked out to four nights a week. I looked at the stove and thought, you know, I could turn on all the burners for the stove, and open the oven and turn it on, and shut off the pilot light, and we could both just go to sleep.”

  Andrew caressed Colin’s cheek but didn’t interrupt.

  “And then I caught myself. I knew we’d hit that point of no return. There wasn’t a cure, there weren’t even any medications left in the arsenal for us to try to slow this disease. She cried so hard that day when I took her to the place I’d already arranged and had waiting, once they had a bed available. When I needed to leave for the night, she cried and begged me not to go, and I cried and hated myself and thought about going back home and using the oven trick on myself.

  “The next morning, she didn’t know who I was, and we had a pleasant chat about her husband, Colin. Did you know he took her to Yellowstone to see bison? And to the Grand Canyon. And they had three lovely children, including Susan, her only daughter. The whole time, part of me was torn between wanting to correct her, which is a special kind of hell in some ways, and just letting her…talk.

  “So I let her talk. Sometimes I was her brother who’d died fifteen years before. Sometimes I was Conner or Brad. A few times, I was her father, and once I was someone I have no clue who the hell she thought I was, but I played along. Sometimes they say you’re supposed to remind them what’s reality, but she was well past that point. It would only make her cry to tell her no, I wasn’t her dead father or brother, right? Why do that to her?

  “The days she didn’t know me, while she could still talk, we’d have pleasant chats about lots of things. She’d tell me about her family and her husband and people who she didn’t realize were from TV shows we’d watched, or movies we’d seen. And she went downhill fast at that point. Within a month she was completely bedridden. She became non-verbal and extremely combative two months after that, but we could get her to eat if we fed her and made her drink. But then she stopped doing that.”

  One of his tears trickled down Andrew’s hand. “Then we moved her to a hospice facility and within three weeks, she was gone.” He closed his eyes. “You’d thunk Susan had cared for her personally the whole damn time the way she carried on in front of everyone at the funeral. Hell, she’d barely visited her in the nursing home! Maybe three or four times!

  “I think that’s what finally made me snap. Watching her cryin’ crocodile tears and her churchy friends heapin’ all that praise on her when she didn’t lift a damn finger to help I didn’t have to beg it out of her. That’s when I told her. At my house, after the funeral. She’d followed me back because I’d told her I’d give her some of her mother’s jewelry that she of course had to ask me for before the damn funeral, and…it just came rushin’ out.

  “I guess, lookin’ back on it now, I should’ve known how she’d react. I was wrapped up in a tight bubble with carin’ for Camille all that time, over ten years from her diagnosis until she died. I was naive. She went off on me and never even got the jewelry. It just started spillin’ out of me no sooner we’d walked in the door. I told her I was gay, and once I finished grievin’ not to be surprised if I started datin’ men.”

  His green eyes met Andrew’s. “I know you don’t feel like this, and I understand why, and please don’t take it the wrong way. But I envy how you lost Peggy. It was fast, and she didn’t suffer, and you didn’t lose her one little piece at a time for years. I had a lot of time to prepare for losin’ Camille, but it was horrible watchin’ it take her away, who she was, and it was exhaustin’ on me and people who really knew and loved her. I wouldn’t even wish that endin’ on my worst enemy.”

  “I know, sweet,” Andrew whispered. “I understand and don’t take it wrongly. I’ve considered myself lucky after watching my children deal with their mother. Fortunately, Tyler is in the position to pay for her care, and they don’t personally have to deal with her, but it is a strain on them, nevertheless.”

  ‘What stage is she in?”

  “End stage. The doctors estimate a few months at the most, and that’s generous. She’s losing a great deal of weight and is starting to refuse food and water quite frequently. They don’t want to start an IV or a feeding tube.”

  “No. Don’t do that. Early on, Camille and I sat down with her doctors and we went through all of that. While she still knew what was goin’ on and was able to decide her care. Once she hit that stage, she begged me to let her go. She didn’t want to be stuck layin’ in a bed like that and kept alive with tubes.”

  They stared at each other for several long, quiet minutes. Colin turned his head to kiss Andrew’s palm, where it still lay cupping his cheek. “She did tell me, the one time we had this particular talk early on after her diagnosis, that she wanted me to be happy and find someone else.”

  “I know Peggy felt the same way from our talks.”

  “It scares me how easy this is. I know I keep sayin’ that, but it does.”

  “I know, love.” He brushed a kiss against Colin’s lips. “That’s why we’ll take our time. We now have each other. That’s all that matters. There are no pressing issues to settle right now beyond exploring this together.”

  “I like being here,” he said. “It doesn’t remind me of losing her. That’s the other reason I was seriously thinking about moving. Every time I turn around, I remember why I had to hide the knives, or remind myself I don’t need to worry about a timer on the coffeepot outlet anymore. Kind of got to be habits. And even ten years later, sometimes I still find myself reaching up on the front door to unhook that chain and then remember no, I was able to take it off the week after I admitted her to the nursing home.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Colin rolled onto his back. “She loved Yellowstone.” He didn’t bother hiding his tears. “We spent nearly three weeks there. She was like a little kid in some ways, and it was little moments like that when I knew I was doing the right thing, the kind thing. Because she would have done it for me. And I hated myself for feeling selfish and thinking I should have divorced her once the kids were old enough, because later I realized Susan damn sure wouldn’t have taken care of her. It would have overwhelmed Brad and Conner. Maybe you’re right. Maybe that was my penance for being gay.”

  “I don’t believe it works like that, love.”

  “My company sent me to Quebec for a project they were involved with there. We’d been married maybe ten years, at that point. We already had the kids, but we couldn’t turn down the extra pay they wanted to give me for it. Camille urged me to
do it, said they’d be fine. I brushed up on my French and everything. I was there the better part of a year, altogether, weeks at a time. One night I went into a bar, and I knew it was a bar gay men frequented, and I started talking to a guy. We ended up talking several hours, but I didn’t do anything with him. I think he could tell I needed someone to talk to. That was the closest and only time I’d ever come to breaking my wedding vows during my marriage to her.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I did.” He nuzzled noses with Andrew. “I don’t know why I’m…confessin’ like this now. I guess because I trust you. I’ll do anything to make this work and show you how hard I do want to work at this with you. I promise not to let you down.”

  “I promise to work hard at this, too—wait, did you say you learned how to speak French?”

  “Oui. I’m rusty now but I’d taken it in high school and college and wasn’t bad at it.”

  Andrew stared at him. “Not to derail our conversational train, but how much of your French do you think you retained?”

  “Quite a bit. I still have friends up there I write to. Well, Facebook, now. I’m way better at reading it than I am speaking it now.”

  “Hmm. Interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, love, I am about to pose to you the first instance in our relationship of needing to secure your complete secrecy and assistance with something, a personal matter, a favor I’m going to do for one of my children.”

  “You need me to stay quiet?”

  “And your help.”

  “Help?”

  “Translating.”

  “What?”

  “First of all, the promise of secrecy.”

  Colin kissed him. “Secrecy about what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Never heard a thing.”

  “Clever pet.”

  “Mmm. You keep callin’ me that, I’m liable to regain enough momentum to keep your mouth busy for a while.”