Summer Sweat (Spruce Texas)

I never realized that the only ingredients to eternal youth are twenty seconds and a bouncy trampoline floor.

I feel like a damned kid again.

It doesn’t end there. “Watch out!” he cries half an hour later when we’ve moved to the foam block pit. He takes off running down the runway, leaps, and catches the rope that hangs over the pit. He’s gathered an audience of children and teenagers by this point, and they cheer him on as he swings and makes obnoxious Tarzan noises, filling the room. “I’m king of the jungle, baby!!”

I’m on the side of the pit, marveling at his boundless energy. I can’t help but laugh and clap along with everyone else, though I’d be lying if I said a part of me wasn’t totally mesmerized by him.

This isn’t the same Hoyt on the farm.

This isn’t the Hoyt I knew as Toby’s tormentor, either.

Hoyt is an enigma I keep thinking I’ve got all figured out, until another onion layer peels right off, revealing yet one more part of his soul I’ve never seen.

Who the hell are you, Hoyt Nowak …?

I have no idea what time it is when we finally leave, but Hoyt is laughing at everything easier than he should be, and I’m feeling as delirious as if I’m drunk without a drop of alcohol in my system. “Where to next?” he asks through his laughter. “Man, we’ve gotta come back to this place, like, every weekend.”

“Gonna need a membership for that,” I point out as I stick the key in the ignition.

“Do we? Can’t you hook us up? You’re Coach Tanner’s bestie.” He frowns. “Coach. Phew, I’ve gotta get out of that habit. He’s just Tanner now. Tanner, Tanner, Tanner.”

“It’s getting late. We should head back.”

“C’mon. Let’s go and get ice cream from T&S’s! I might have to apologize to someone there for being snappish earlier. Or the Cold Spoon! I haven’t been there in forever.”

“You haven’t been there in forever ‘cause it closed, like, three years ago.”

Hoyt gapes at me. “It did??”

I take hold of his hand across the center console. “You and I can have more fun another night, but no matter how late we stay out, we’ve still gotta be up early tomorrow.”

Hoyt lunges over the console and kisses me suddenly.

I’m so stunned, it takes me a second to realize he’s kissing me. At first, it’s like I totally forgot how amazing his kisses make me feel—like I’m right at the peak of a jump on those trampolines, up high in the air, floating, happier than I’ve ever been.

Then I remember I’m in my truck in the middle of a parking lot where anyone and their drunk uncle can see us. I push him off of me. “Hey, hey, contain yourself!”

He laughs. “Why? We could have a little fun while we’re out here, can’t we?”

My heart’s racing just from the look in his eyes. “Hoyt …”

“You’re right.” He bites his lip, then settles back into his seat. “I gotta be a grown man, now. Gotta do grown-man things. Like practice restraint. And be boring, and go to bed early every day for work, and—”

“You alright?”

He reaches abruptly across the console and cups my crotch with a hand, giving it a squeeze. He lifts an eyebrow suggestively and gives me a look that could scare the Devil. “I just thought of another grown-man thing I can do.”

I stare back at him warningly. “Hoyt …”

Before I can stop him, he unzips my pants, slips my dick right out, and wraps his mouth around it.

My very first instinct is to grab him and pull him right off of it with some huffy protest about public parking lots and staying out too late and other adulty, responsible, daddyish insistence.

The next instinct, I grab the steering wheel to brace myself, drop my jaw, and feel the joyous edges of paradise.

All of that boundless energy I applauded earlier, he’s still got it, and now I’m experiencing a full-scale pleasurable assault of it.

“One day,” he says when he comes up for air, “I’m gonna fit this whole thing in my mouth.”

I stare down at him, for a moment pulled back to reality. “You gotta stop doing that, Hoyt. We’re not in the barn. We’re out in—”

“I know. Isn’t it exciting??”

He goes down on me again.

I rock my eyes back and suppress a whimper of delight.

Is he unwinding me, or am I unwinding him? Is he driving me crazy, or have I uncaged a beast in him that’ll forever refuse to be put back in? Who is responsible? We’re like a dangerous chemical reaction that’s been waiting to happen. Scientists couldn’t figure out a way to keep us apart. The world of Spruce, Texas is doomed to a certain end now that we’ve mixed our forbidden chemistry.

And I can’t get enough.