After they ate, David put the leftovers in the fridge and started dishwater in the sink. He washed the dishes and Christie dried.
“How old is this farmhouse?” Christie asked as he took a wet plate from David.
“The main house was built in seventeen fifty-three. That’s pretty much the front two rooms.”
“No shit! Can I take a look after we’re done here?”
“Sure.” David wasn’t used to the profanity, but Christie didn’t seem to mean anything bad by it, so he decided it didn’t matter. It made Christie seem even more worldly and mysterious in David’s eyes.
After Christie’s bag was repacked with clean and empty containers, David led the way to the front of the house. The front two original rooms had high ceilings, old-fashioned crown moldings, deep windowsills because of the thick stone walls, and a huge fireplace. Susan had turned them into a formal parlor and a study, but they were rarely used even when Amy and Joe lived at home. These days David spent all his time in the kitchen, where a small table and TV served his needs. It was easier to heat too. Which meant the front rooms were tidy but could use a good dusting.
Christie wandered around looking at everything. He ran his fingers over the fireplace’s old lintel and ended up in front of the bookshelf with its shelves of magazines. “Someone likes
National Geographic
.”
“Those are mine.”
Christie turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised in surprise. “What do you like about them?”
David hesitated. It wasn’t something he talked about much, but he felt an urge to show Christie he thought about things other than the farm and the next crop. “I like to learn about other places. It’s my way of traveling, I guess.”
“Yeah?” Christie’s smile was soft. “What’s your favorite issue?” He trailed his long, thin fingers over the spines.
David immediately knew the answer to the question, but he felt a twinge of doubt. Probably Christie would think he was ridiculous. He hesitated then reached out, pulled a magazine, and handed it to Christie.
Christie looked at the cover. “Polynesia?”
“Yeah. Maybe because we’re so landlocked here, but I like islands. Polynesia has the best ones, like Bora Bora.”
The magazine was still in Christie’s hands. David carefully turned to an oft-viewed page. The double-page title spread had a gorgeous picture of a white sand beach, a turquoise ocean, and little beach huts built right over the water. How many times had David looked at this picture and tried to imagine himself there?
He looked up at Christie from under his lashes, ready to back off the subject with excuses and dismissal.
But Christie grinned. “Oh yeah. That’s gorgeous! I love beaches. I haven’t been to Polynesia, but I’ve been to Cancún. The beaches there are fantastic.”
“I have an issue on Cancún.” David scanned the titles and unerringly pulled the issue. He found the page quickly and handed it to Christie. “More than a third of all Mexican tourism dollars come from Cancún. That’s a lot when you consider the size of the country. They call it the ‘Mayan Riviera’ in that article.”
Christie got a curiously amused frown between those blue eyes. “You know these magazines backward and forward, don’t you?”
David shrugged, uncomfortable. “I’m not much of a TV watcher. I prefer to read, and facts stick in my head. That is, they do if I find them interesting.”
Christie flipped through the Cancún article. “Have you been able to travel much yourself?”
David laughed. “No. It’s hard to leave a farm. When Joe was in high school, I could trust him with the place for a few days at a time. I went to a farming conference up in State College and another one in Washington DC. I enjoyed that. I have a guy who works part-time for me now, but I still need to be here myself.”
He remembered the excitement of that trip to DC. Time had made the details fade, but he clearly remembered standing in front of the massive Lincoln Memorial and thinking how much bigger and
realer
it was in person. It was as real as the bark on a tree or the shingles on the farmhouse roof when he repaired it one sweltering summer, as though, if he touched it, some residue would come off on his skin and be there forever. And all the time Lincoln’s Memorial existed out there—massive and real and solid—heedless of whether or not a man named David Fisher ever went to see it, or that he even existed at all.
Head in the clouds. Daydreaming never got a lick of work done
. Yup. Just like his dad always said. Maybe daydreams didn’t get work done, but they sure helped pass the time. His thoughts were his own in a way nothing else was. They kept him company while his body was busy doing repetitive tasks.
Christie was watching him with a penetrating gaze, as if he could see all of David’s thoughts and secrets. It felt intimate and yet comfortable, which was a bit unnerving in itself. Christie was a stranger only this morning, but he didn’t feel like one now. In fact, David couldn’t remember the last time he’d connected to someone like this.
He cleared his throat. “So. You ready for that sorbet? I can put on some coffee. And if you’re up for it, I’d love to hear about your Cancún trip.”
“Deal.” Christie turned away and the strange moment ended. David carefully put back the magazines.
“God, I’m going to have to run six miles tonight to burn off that tikka masala,” Christie groaned, patting his stomach.
“You’re welcome to swing the hay bales around in my barn if you want to.”
Christie laughed. “Nice try.”
Chapter 7
EVERYTHING CHANGED
after that Sunday. Nothing earth shattering happened during that comfortable fall afternoon when Christie took Indian food over to David’s house. And yet something shifted between them in a fundamental way. Christie had enjoyed David’s company, and the feeling seemed to be mutual.
Christie wanted
more
—more exotic cooking, more shared meals, more time in David’s company. It was an itchy feeling that gave him little peace until he indulged it.
On Tuesday Christie went over to the farm in the morning with his sketchbook. He walked around the barn until he found a vantage point he liked—one with the big white silo peeking over the front of the barn and two big windows facing him. It was so quaint it made his teeth ache. He took a chair from David’s porch and carried it to the spot, sat down, and opened his sketchpad. It was a little cold to be drawing outside, but not so cold he couldn’t stand it. He drew a line sketch first and then started to fill it in with the woodcut swirls he’d established as the style in his other drawings.
After an hour or so, David came by and brought him a travel mug full of coffee. They chatted for a few minutes about the weather and the features of the barn. David said it was several hundred years old and was called a “bank barn” because it was built on a slope. The back of the barn could be driven up to for delivering hay and feed to the second story, while the lower level opened onto the pasture and was where the animals were kept.
“Well, I should let you get back to work. And me too,” David said after a bit.
Christie smiled. “Have a good afternoon.”
David looked like he was about to walk away, but he hesitated, gazing at Christie. He clenched his fist, then left abruptly. It was weird, as if he were resisting an impulse to ruffle Christie’s hair or something.
Christie mused over it as he worked on his sketch, a low warmth in his belly. Had David really wanted to ruffle his hair, maybe the way he’d buttoned up the coat? Or perhaps touch his shoulder? Brush the hair out of his eyes? Kiss him?
Don’t get excited. It’s probably a paternal instinct, if anything at all.
Yes, because it would be just his luck if the hot farmer next door saw him as a son substitute.
And yet… that didn’t explain the little frissons of tension Christie sensed there sometimes. Though admittedly those frissons could be entirely one-sided.
He loved that things with David were so…
not
blatantly sexual, actually. Christie had been getting jaded; there was no doubt about that. Picking up men was so easy in the city: flirt for ten minutes, have sex, and it was over. But being back in the country, being around Aunt Ruth’s things, and David—definitely David—it felt like he’d shifted to a simpler, more innocent time. It was softening his cynicism like stiff leather soaked in brine.
It reminded him of where he’d come from, of who Christie Landon was before he became fierce Christie Landon, Manhattanite. He’d left small-town Illinois with a lot of anger. He earned it, bitter drop by bitter drop. He never fit in, either at school or at home. And he hated the church his parents dragged him to, mostly because he knew they’d hate him if they knew who he really was. He understood from a young age he was gay, and even though he didn’t come out ’til right after high school, he’d stored up slights like broken shards of glass. Didn’t they say living well was the best revenge? Christie
had
lived well in New York. A little too well. But maybe… possibly… when he left his small-town home, he threw out the baby with the bathwater.
Maybe there was something to this simple life after all, especially if it included a guy like David Fisher.
That night Christie made blue cheese stuffed burgers with grilled mushrooms and herbed sweet potato oven fries. When it was almost ready, he debated with himself and then sent a carefully worded text:
Dinner is ready. You’re welcome to eat with me over here or just pick it up.
He didn’t want to make assumptions or give David the impression he had nothing better to do. But the answer came back quickly.
Might as well eat there. Be over in a few.
Christie smiled and hurried to set the table.
“OH MY
God. That was too good. I’m going to get fat.” Christie pushed back his chair and patted his stomach. It looked flat to David, if maybe slightly full. It was hard to tell under the blue sweater Christie was wearing, especially since he didn’t allow his eyes to linger.
“You always say that, but I haven’t seen you gain an ounce yet,” David remarked, scraping some peanut sauce from his plate with his spoon. Tonight Christie had made pad thai, a salad with spicy sliced beef called “crying tiger,” and tom yum soup. He even played some instrumental music from Thailand on his phone, which was new. It helped make the food taste even more authentic. “Anyway, you have a long way to go before you have to worry about getting fat.”
“A long way to go is right. I’m going to have to run a couple of extra miles tomorrow. Thank God it’s Saturday.”
“How far do you normally go?”
“Four miles during the week, but I like to go longer at least one day on the weekend. I might do six tomorrow. I don’t suppose you need to worry about getting out of shape.” Christie smiled at him indulgently.
“No. But I see the appeal. I used to run track and field in school. I liked it a lot.”
“Oh yeah? Did you compete?”
“For a few years. The private high school I went to had a track team.”
It was one of the things David liked best about school. He traveled around the area for track meets. His team didn’t go as far away as the bigger public schools. Never to New York or Boston or even Philadelphia. But it was still a treat just to visit someplace new, to get away for a while. He had to fight his father to stay in school as long as he did.
You’ll go to Mennonite school or none at all. You don’t need to be exposed to a lot of worldly wickedness or subjects you’ll never need. I don’t know why you want to go in the first place. You can home school and help more on the farm, earn more money to put away. You don’t need all that learning to be a farmer.
But he stayed in school, at least until his father died and he had no choice. Thank heaven his mother was on his side in that debate.
“Would you like to run with me sometime?” Christie asked. “Might be fun.”
David was startled by the question. He barked out a laugh. “Oh no. I’ll run the day you do farmwork.”
Christie cocked an eyebrow. “Is that a dare? I will if you will.”
David passed it off as a joke and changed the subject. They finished their meal without any further dangerous references to running.
But on Sunday, a rare night Christie didn’t bring a meal over, David ate leftovers in the quiet house and then found himself staring out into the night. There was a full moon, and it was fairly bright out. Before he could change his mind, he went upstairs, put on some long underwear, a pair of sweats, and some older tennis shoes. He slipped out of the house.
He jogged slowly down the driveway to the road to warm up, and then set the timer on his phone. It was a mile to the old stone bridge. Surely he could go that far. He’d be damned if he’d run with some young pup and look like a worn-out and tired old man.
He made it to the bridge in twelve minutes. He worked hard on the farm, but little of it was cardio. His lungs felt like they were on fire, and his heart pounded like an engine that needed oil or it would soon start smoking. But
he made it. He hung over the side of the bridge, breathing hard and staring at the rushing water. The white foam glowed in the moonlight. That wasn’t bad, he told himself, not completely humiliating for someone who hadn’t run in twenty years. If he could practice for a few weeks and get down to a ten-minute mile for three miles, he might dare run with Christie Landon.
Why did he even want to, though? That was what he should be asking himself. In the past week, he’d shared four meals with Christie. That should be enough time spent in his company.
It still wasn’t quite enough.
Not enough for what?
The water coursing in the stream below was real—water over rocks. But nothing else felt all that real anymore.
He enjoyed Christie’s company; that was all. Looked forward to it. It was ages since he had something like… a friend? Someone to talk to. Why shouldn’t he run if he wanted to? If Christie wanted somebody to run with?
It wasn’t something to worry about, for goodness sake. It wasn’t a big deal. He turned and started back for the farm, running harder than before.