Summer Sweat (Spruce Texas)

“… and one day, you’ll realize I was right in setting you free.”

“You’re wrong.” He takes hold of my head and presses his lips to mine with force. “You’re wrong, Harrison. We’re not a summer fuckin’ fling, you bastard.” He kisses me even harder, pushing me back until I’m against the desk. “What we got, it’s more than that, and you damn well know it. You’re just being your stubborn self.”

“You’ve gotta go, Hoyt.”

“Kiss me back. Fucking kiss me back.”

“I gave this a lot of thought. All day. All evening. All night, up to just mere minutes before you barged in on my shower. I know it’s the right thing to do.”

He lets go of me with a huff and steps back, furious. “Why are you just givin’ up on me like this? I said I don’t want anyone else. I like it out here. I like spending time with you. I think I …” His eyes turn wet and his lips tremble. “I think I’m fuckin’ in love with you, Harrison.”

I sigh. “You don’t know what that is.”

“Stop tellin’ me what I know or don’t know!”

I stare at the floor for a while. He doesn’t say anything more, his words lingering in my ears along with the soft dripping sound my shower always makes after it’s been turned off.

In truth, I’m not sure about this.

I might sound sure, but I’m riddled with so much doubt that it aches to see Hoyt almost crying in front of me.

I think I’m fuckin’ in love with you, Harrison.

Why did he have to say those words? He’s young. He’s full of emotions he doesn’t understand yet. I’m his first everything. He’s my first everything. We’re both ill-equipped to deal with this.

All I know is that my feelings for him are intense.

Incredibly intense.

That’s why I can’t rely on my feelings to make a decision on what’s right. I have to reason it out. I have to consider what our lives could look like a year from now. Five years. Ten. Is he really willing to be the twenty-eight-year-old hottie who has resigned to being a young house husband to a man who complains about his back after a long, hard day of work and takes blood pressure meds because he’s concerned about his health and pushing forty?

Hoyt won’t consider any of this. All he’s driven by is emotion. Passion. What he wants.

Not what he needs.

That part’s up to me to help him see.

“Hoyt …”

“Did you not hear what I just said? I’m in love with you.”

“I don’t deserve that,” I tell him. “You need to be saying those words to someone you met out there in the real world. You’re only saying those words to me ‘cause we got stuck on this farm together by circumstances out of our control.”

“Bullshit.”

“Take that job.” I nod at the application, which he still holds on to, now crinkled by his tensed grip. “You’ll see. In just a matter of a week, I’d reckon. You’ll realize how much better off you are.”

“No.”

“Hoyt, I’m telling you …”

The next instant, he balls up the application and throws it at a tiny waste bin I keep in the corner. It misses and hits the floor. “I ain’t goin’ to that fucking gym. I’m staying right here.”

I sigh, then pick up the wad of paper and begin to patiently smooth it out against the edge of the desk. Another moment with no words passes—just breaths and heat and tension. Hoyt sits on the edge of my bed suddenly, his eyes on my efforts. When I finish, I present the application to him again.

“It’s still crinkled,” he says.

“Whose fault is that? Here.”

He swipes it out of my hands, then stares at me challengingly. His breaths are slow yet forceful, as if we just got done wrestling around in the pig pen again.

When he speaks, his voice is soft. “You really want me to go?”

Of course I don’t. Don’t ask me that. Let this be easy, to let you go. “I want what’s best for you, Hoyt. And I think it’s best for you.”

“Even if I don’t want to go?”

“What we want now … doesn’t matter as much as … what we’ll realize we should have wanted later on.”

Hoyt doesn’t move for a while. Then he falls back on the bed with the application pressed to his chest and stares at the ceiling. “I hate life sometimes.”

I sit on the bed and lie down next to him. “Me too.”

“What you want, you can’t have. What you should want turns out to be bad for you. Or wrong timing. Or some other dang thing gets in the way.” He turns his head to face me. “Are you sure?”

I turn my face to his, too.

His sweet, puppy-dog eyes.

His half-pouting lips, which look unfairly kissable right now.

No, I want to say. I’m not sure at all. Stay one more night. Keep my bed warm. Prove to me how fucking wrong I am about this.