The Good Doctor 16

Pete opened the door to the changing room and slipped inside.

“ Peter! You can’t come in here!” I was trying on Levi’s. My Mom’s idea, something
about the way the old ones looked. “That saleslady is gonna beat the crap outta you!”

He grinned. “S’okay, I told her that I was your fashion consultant.” He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me as he pushed down the unbuttoned Levi’s and grabbed my ass.

“Oh great! You shoulda just told her that you were a barbarian looking for a good rape and pillage!”

“ I don’t think that I had to tell her. By the look on her face I think that it was assumed. By the way aren’t you supposed to be trying these on with underwear?”

“ Huh?”

“ Never mind. Just be sure that you buy this pair.” What a boy scout!

“ You gotta get your hands outta them before I can do that.”

I’ve always wondered if there were security cams in these fitting rooms. Well it’s not like we were fucking, just kissing but Pete did have his hands on my naked butt, once again the constant seduction thing. God that’s great! His hands slowly moved up under my shirt and up my back. Hot hands on bare skin. Fuck I love this! He overwhelms me, physically and emotionally and sexually, he envelopes me in a cocoon of kisses and hot hands and packed crotches and flashing blue eyes that have all the confidence in the world. He’s this solid rock of a guy that you know is gonna take care of everything. Nothin bad is gonna happen when Pete is with me.

Pete’s right hand is lightly holding my neck on one side while he kisses the spot where my neck joins my shoulder; it’s sending shivers down my spine.

I tell him. “We can’t fuck here!” At least I don’t think so. Maybe he wasn’t even thinking that.

“ We’re not fucking. I’m kissing my boyfriend.” His voice is soft and throaty. I’m standing almost naked with my new not yet paid for Levi’s down around my ankles. I’m wondering how many times we’ve fucked. Lots! I wonder how long it would take us to drive home? It’s so fucking weird! Him inside of me, how bizarre! Course it sure feels great, great and more, there’s more to it than just how it feels, more than just the physical sensation. There’s a whole huge fucking emotional thing there too. There’s something about the act of fucking that triggers something in a guys mind. I don’t really think that it matters if he’s straight or gay but as soon as he starts fucking someone he begins to feel protective towards them, like he needs to make sure that they’re okay.

“ We could go home! My mom is figuring on keeping Jase until three-thirty maybe four o’clock. That gives us like two hours.” Poor Jase, the kids gonna be warped!

He’s holding my face in both of his hands and is slowly kissing me, his lips moving lightly over my face and his warm breath against my skin. I know that he doesn’t really want to fuck, not here, not yet. This is just to keep me primed and it works really great. He’s got me to the point where I’m horny like 24/7! I mean we just fucked like seven hours ago and already he’s got me like crazy horny again. Course I’m not doing this by myself, he’s as horny as I am, maybe hornier! My prostate feels like it’s been used for batting practice…………..but in a really, really good way.

He ducks his head and then looks up at me. “We could do that, we really could.” He hands me my old jeans. “Why don’t you put these back on, buy those and then we can make a quick run home before we pickup Jase.”

I pull the new jeans off and feel the expected hand on my ass as I pull them off. “You’re gonna make me fall!”

Pete pulls me back against him and whispers. “I wouldn’t let you fall.”

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I’m kinda of two minds on this whole dinner at mom’s house. On the one hand I’ve got that fresh-fucked feeling, kinda all warm and drained and on the other hand……………well on the other hand there’s mom. I wonder for the millionth time why people put themselves through things like this.

Why is it that nobody ever considers running and hiding? Everyone figures that they gotta face things head on, how fucking dumb! Get in the car and drive. Hit the A&W Drive In, go to Olive Garden and get blasted on cheapass Chianti and salad, actually go through all of Home Depot! You don’t have to hang around and wait for disaster to come to you. Move! And for god’s sake don’t answer the fucking telephone!

Oh well……….one foot in front of the other.

We walk cautiously into my mom and dad’s house. Well I do anyway, Pete is oblivious to my angst and is wearing a lopsided grin that tells me that he’s feeling pretty satisfied with himself and the hand that slides down my back and over my butt as he nudges me into the house tells me what he’s feeling satisfied about.

To Pete my mom is colorful, maybe even a little eccentric, well………..she’s probably seems that way to most people. My mom doesn’t impose the same standards on other people that she does on me. She loves me. That’s the reason for all the yelling………………at least as nearly as I can tell. She doesn’t yell at other people………just me.

Jase is climbing me and my mom is dragging Pete to the kitchen table.

“ We’re gonna eat here, Dad.” I was watching Pete being dragged off and Jase holds my face with both hands and turns it back to him. “We’re having meatball sandwiches!” Obviously one of Jase’s favorite meals.

My mother comes back and grabs my arm and pulls us to the table with Pete. She’s already got a plate of food in front of him and is making one for Jase and me.

“ You boys sit. Don’t slump, Eric!” I don’t slump!

“ Where’s dad, Mom?”

She looks around like she expects him to materialize. “He’s in the basement!” There’s anxiety in her voice and she unconsciously shakes her hands. She hates the basement. “I’ll call him. He’s working on one of his projects.” She lifts her arms and then drops them. “You wouldn’t believe some of the sounds that come outta that basement!”

I get back up from my chair. “I’ll get him, Mom.”

She looks appalled. “Huh? You’re going down there?”

“ Mom it’s not the gateway to hell. It’s the basement.”

Jase climbs up so that he’s kneeling on his chair. “Can I come, Dad?”

I hug him to me and then turn his face up to mine. “You stay here and take care of Pete. Aaaaaaaannndd, eat your dinner.” He’s so thin.

Dad is in the corner of the basement standing in front of a machine. He turns when he hears me coming down the stairs.

“ Oh………..it’s you son. I shoulda known that it wouldn’t be your mother, this place scares her.”

I walk over and stand next to him. “Yeah, why is that?”

He shrugs. “Something about when she was little. She never wanted to talk about it and I never pushed. We’re all nuts in some way.” He looks at me and smiles and then reaches out and squeezes the side of my neck. “It’s nice to see ya.”

It takes me by surprise and I react without thinking and wrap my arms around him and hug him. “It’s nice seeing you too, Dad.” Now I feel really stupid! Why did I do that? I mean………..I’m glad I did but now it’s awkward. Will it ever be awkward for Jase? No! I won’t ever let that happen!

My dad looks at me a little indulgently. “Eric…………………..don’t freak out. It’s just you and me. I promise not to tell.” Finally he pulls me by my arm over to his machine.

“ You know what this is? You oughta, you sell supplies for them.” Thank god! Safe territory.

“ Aaaaaahhh, South Bend six inch lathe. Where’d ya get it?”

“ Ebay! I got it cheap but it cost a fuckin fortune to ship. I’m gonna build a clock.”

“ A clock?” Do people actually build clocks? “You know how to build a clock?”

“ Mmmmm, more or less. Some stuff I knew from long ago and some stuff I had to learn but yeah, I think I can build one.”

I gesture towards the stairway. “Mom…………is waiting………….dinner. Pete and Jase are up there.”

Dad’s sweeping the metal shavings off of the lathe. Then outta nowhere, “He seems like a good guy.” Oh god! Where is this leading?

He hangs up his brush walks over to me and stares into my eyes for a moment not saying anything and then. “He makes you happy?”

My mouth is dry. “Yeah, Dad……………he does.” What What WHAT is he thinking????

He smiles and touches my chest with his knuckles. “That’s great! Let’s go eat.”

What the fuck is keeping me from falling over dead from a heart attack?

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I don’t mind cutting the grass but I hate lawnmowers. The mower that I’ve got now is one of those that you ride on, we needed it mainly because our lot is pretty big and secondarily because I was badgered into buying it by my mother. Well the secondarily one is probably the real main one.

In the middle of the backyard is a bump in the lawn and no matter how many times I roll over it it remains, maybe it’s a boulder covered by dirt but whatever it is every time that I roll over it with the grass cutter I feel like there’s the possibility that I could be thrown off of the mower and that leads to the reason that I hate the mower.

I imagine myself being pitched off of it and the damn mower running on wildly in the back yard until Jase comes out to play. Then it heads straight for him and mows him down. Sharp, whirling blades turn my little boy into a puree while I lie unconscious on the ground. Stupid I know but probably no worse than the nightmare where I’m sitting in the backyard and watch as two police officers walk across the lawn to me.

“ Are you Mr. Cortland?” Says the big burly one.

“ Yes officer I am.”

“ Well sir we’re sorry to have to tell you this but your little boy was torn apart by a pack of wild dogs over on fourteenth street.”

“ Oh my god no!!!!”

“ Well sir, it’s not like your mother didn’t warn you to keep a better eye on the little boy and now we’re going to have to give you a ticket for allowing a child to wander about without proper parental supervision.” He looks so smug! This is all my mother’s fault!

Oh well, even if he makes it to adulthood he’ll probably end up making friends with the wrong people and wind up selling drugs for a living.

“ Eric!” I really don’t see any way that I can win.

“ Eric!!!!”

“ Huh?” Pete and Jase are standing there. Pete has two glasses of ice tea and Jase is sipping on his own. Pete looks really hot in his shorts.

Pete smiles at me. “Eric, you’ve been parked in the middle of the yard for fifteen minutes just staring into space. You okay?”

I smile back at him. “Oh…………..yeah………..I’m fine.” I sigh and look down at Jase.

“ Dad, I’m gonna play on my swing.” He turns and wanders off toward his swing. Odd, he’s looking in one direction and walking in another and no shoes or socks! Rusty nails, broken glass, fire ants, rattlesnakes, deep holes in the ground. Holy fuck it’s endless! Okay, so we don’t have rattlesnakes or fire ants but I’m sure that we’ve got stuff equally bad.

I’m never gonna survive fatherhood!

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Pete and I are watching television, the ten o’clock news. Well, Pete’s watching television I’m lying on the sofa with my head in his lap zoning out as he plays with my hair. Jase is in bed and probably asleep so what we got here is grownup time. I turn over so that I’m lying on my back looking up at him.

“ You think that it’s normal to worry about your kid all the time?”

He looks down at me and lightly brushes my hair off of my forehead. “You mean you, right?”

I nod yes.

“ Eric………for you yes. Well, all parents worry about their kids and that’s a good thing, a necessary thing.” He cups my chin in his hand and grins down at me. “Sweetheart……………maybe you worry a little too much but then again that’s just you, it’s the way that you are. It’s not like you obsess about everything, just Jase. There’s a ton of things that you don’t seem to notice at all and tons of things that you notice but just blow off. In my opinion, that’s healthy.”

Blow off? What do I blow off? “You really think that I blow stuff off?”

Pete puts his hand on my chest. “Not in a bad way! In a good way! Like work for instance. The women at work all drive you bonkers but you blow it off, you don’t bring it home.”

Pete slides his left hand up under my shirt and starts gently rubbing my stomach. “In some ways you’re more like a straight guy than a gay guy.” I must have gotten an odd look on my face because he hurried on. “It’s just that, well, like with clothes; you really don’t seem to notice them at all. Really kinda like a straight guy.” It’s not that I don’t want to notice!

Suddenly Jase comes walking into the family room. He’s wearing bright red pajamas and is walking but is still pretty much totally asleep. He walks over to me, climbs up on me without saying a word and lays on top of me falling totally back asleep the moment his head hits my chest. He seems to have done this without ever waking up. The top of his head is just touching my chin and his right arm is under his chest and his left is over my shoulder.

I look up at Pete and whisper. “Sleepwalking?”

Pete whispers back. “Hmmm, something less than that. I think he just woke up and did what he’s programmed to do, find you.”

I smile up at Pete. “He’s like totally out! I can feel it. You could drop a bomb on the place and he’d miss it.”

Pete laughed silently. “That’s easy when you’re five and a lot harder when you’re thirty.” He sighed. “He’s beautiful! He looks just like you.”

Me? Beautiful? Well………..okay, so maybe not ugly. “He is beautiful.” He’s sleeping on my chest, his trust in me is total. I’m his dad, of course he trusts me. The warmth of his body against mine, the beat of his heart against mine, is so fundamentally right, so deeply satisfying. When he grows up he’ll probably have me committed.