Cleats in Clay Read online

  “Go ahead,” Odis urged as he sat in the chair next to Bobby. “You’re a man who needs a toke if I’ve ever seen one.”

  Bobby looked down at the pipe. He’d had weed before, of course, back in college. He’d always been too worried about his career to have any kind of drugs since going professional. It was one of the things Nate used to tease him about sometimes. A glass of bubbly at New Year’s was about all he did. Athletics, his body, were too important and kept him wary of such temptations. He’d seen too many other players crash their careers with booze and drugs.

  “Light up, dude,” Odis urged, echoing the voice of Nathan in his head. That voice of Nathan was also nagging him to loosen up.

  Bobby brought the pipe to his mouth and struck the lighter. He inhaled a little and held the breath, struggling not to cough as he fought the spicy burning tingle in his throat. He coughed anyway.

  Odis took the pipe from him as he exhaled slowly. Odis took his own hit.

  Bobby was a bit surprised at himself for taking the smoke. He watched Odis put the pipe and lighter on the table.

  “Now then, baseball.”

  “Baseball,” Bobby echoed.

  “You played a long time?”

  Bobby chuckled. “Since I was old enough to hold up a bat, seems like.”

  “Nice for a man to have a passion.” Odis nodded.

  Bobby looked at the corncob pipe. Go ahead, one more, the voice of Nathan urged.

  Odis followed his gaze, then picked up the pipe and lighter and put them in Bobby’s hands.

  Bobby inhaled deeply this time, letting the intoxicating smoke dance in his nose and throat as he held the breath in.

  “You got a touch of twang, but it’s not Texas. Where ya from?”

  “North Carolina, but Dad’s from Ohio. Spent a lot of time there growin’ up.” Bobby felt something stirring in his mind, like the fingers of that tight stranglehold of control he always felt were loosening slightly.

  Odis watched him put the pipe back on the table. “They fired you? When you went to the hospital?”

  Bobby shook his head. “Not then. They told me to show for the second game, but I refused. I wasn’t gonna leave Nate.”

  “Then?” Odis encouraged.

  “When I didn’t come in for the third game, someone leaked it to the media where I was. That’s when it turned into a three-ring freak show.”

  Odis picked up the pipe, but this time when he handed it to over, he cradled Bobby’s hand in his own a few seconds before letting go.

  Bobby inhaled another huge lungful, then slowly released it. “He died that night.”

  Odis gently took hold of Bobby’s hand. Then he slid the pipe from Bobby’s fingers with his other hand and put it back on the table.

  As his mind’s strangling fingers loosened more, Bobby felt suppressed anger emerging. “If it had been one of the other players, a player’s wife, there’d’a been memorials… people woulda written songs….” He felt his face hardening. “Sympathy of the media woulda been—”

  Bobby clenched his fists. “Instead, I get the clusterfuck freak show.” He leaned forward against the table as he scowled. “I’m some kind of villain for not supporting the team.” He took a deep breath and slapped his palm on the table. “Never mind Nathan’s fuckin’ dead, there’s a World Series to win!”

  All of Bobby’s strength poured out with his words. He slumped back down into his seat.

  Scooting his chair closer, Odis reached out and gently touched Bobby’s drooped chin, pulling Bobby’s head up to look into his face. “I hope the fuckers lost.”

  “Yep, they did.”

  Odis gazed at Bobby with sympathetic blue eyes. “Maybe”—Odis took his hand and pulled Bobby to his feet—“maybe you should see it.”

  He led Bobby by the hand back to the studio. “It was a work commissioned by the Equestrian Society,” Odis explained as he guided Bobby around the worktable. “I struggled with it over a week, not getting anywhere before….” Odis pulled the towel away from his work.

  The emotional impact of the piece hit Bobby like a punch. He clutched at his stomach as he stared at the horse.

  The clay sculpture was about twenty-four inches tall, and only the animal’s front section was visible. Its rear legs and rump appeared to be inside the table, trapped in a quagmire of muck. The horse’s eyes were wide with panic, a terror visible in its straining muscles as it fought to liberate itself from the puddle of thick mud, its right hoof cracked and split from the effort of trying to pull itself free.

  Bobby slumped back against the cabinet. “Shit,” he moaned, not able to take his eyes from the raw clay. It felt as though all his suppressed emotional pain sprang to life in front of him. He felt himself sinking to the floor as the fingers of control in his mind completely released their grip.

  “Whoa, dude,” Odis said, reaching out to hold Bobby upright before he slid down to the floor. “I didn’t expect to knock ya off your feet.”

  “It’s, it’s very… powerful.” Bobby dropped his gaze to the floor, fighting the chaos spiraling inside. Odis’s hand on his arm felt so firm. The room seemed to be getting warm. His thoughts felt jumbled. The room got hotter. He couldn’t seem to pull them—his thoughts—together.

  Bobby thought he saw a blurring streak across the front of the glass as a strange buzzing noise filled his ears momentarily.

  Odis put his other hand on Bobby’s chest and pulled him up to his feet. “Oops.”

  “Oops?” Bobby asked, the word making a funny echo in his head.

  “Maybe my sister.” Odis leaned toward him.

  It seemed like Odis was going to kiss him. Bobby shook his head, trying to clear the fuzzy jumble of tangled thoughts. “Maybe?”

  Odis pushed him back to lean upright against the cabinet. “I said, it may be my sister.”

  Bobby saw Heimdalla appear in front of the glass windows. He watched the large dog bouncing and jumping in an excited way.

  Gertie strolled up and marched right through the sliding glass door—or maybe she opened the door first, Bobby couldn’t remember. “There you are. You don’t ever answer your damn phone.”

  Bobby gave her a friendly wave. “Heya.”

  Gertie started to say something else, but her eyes drifted over to the clay horse on the worktable. “Odis.” She sucked in a breath. “That thing is hideous!”

  “That’s why I backed out of the equestrian job. Unless you think maybe they’d want it?”

  “Lord have mercy, no! That thing needs destroyed!”

  “No!” Bobby yelled out, surprised by the sound of his own voice. “It’s Art. Can’t destroy Art.” He almost giggled from the way his voice gave art a capital letter.

  Maybe he did giggle.

  He glanced over and Odis was grinning at him. He could feel the heat of Odis’s handprint still on his arm.

  Gertie looked over at Bobby. “Odis!” She clucked her tongue. “Honestly, I send you a client and you get him stoned out of his gourd.”

  “Just a couple of tokes to help the man relax.”

  “You sure it wasn’t a couple of bongs?”

  Bobby giggled at the way the word “bong” seemed to keep echoing in his head. Bong. Bong. He looked over at Odis again. He was still talking to “his sister,” to Gertie, but their words were boring and he didn’t pay any attention. Bobby just looked at Odis’s face as he talked. The way his dark-pink lips moved to form words. The way his Viking nose sat boldly on his face, strong and straight. The way the tiny lines around Odis’s eyes seemed to flicker and dance as he spoke.

  Odis had a very handsome face.

  Bobby gazed lower. Odis had a nice body. Odis had big feet.

  “Mr. Lane!” Gertie’s voice said again.

  Bobby looked over at Gertie. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I’m glad you found the place. I would offer to have you follow me back to the B and B and I’d give you a room, but you’re obviously in no condition to drive. So there’s a free ro
om at the B and B when you sober up enough to make it back to town.”

  “In town, the B and B in town.”

  Gertie smiled tightly. “Right. Free room.”

  “Free room, okey dokey.”

  Bobby looked up again at the door, but Gertie had disappeared.

  Odis put his hand on Bobby’s back. “Right, then, let’s get you back in the house.”

  The hand on his back felt so large and warm. Bobby took careful steps as the hand gently pushed him forward. The floor didn’t seem to be exactly where it was supposed to be.

  Chapter 2

  AFTER some walking, Bobby was back at the patio table. Odis said something about a drink.

  Heim came over and sat next to him, putting her chin on his knee. Bobby reached down and touched her head. Her fur felt so soft, like warm melted chocolate. Heimdalla looked up at him with kind eyes as he rubbed and patted her head.

  Odis set a mug of coffee on the table in front of him.

  Bobby sat up and took the mug. He carefully took a sip. It wasn’t coffee at all. It was sweet and chocolaty with just a tiny hint of bitter. The warm flavor danced on his tongue and in his throat. This was the best chocolate he had ever tasted.

  Bobby looked up when he heard a chuckle. Odis was smiling at him. “You seem to be enjoying that mocha.”

  Bobby smiled. “Yep. It’s good.”

  Odis laughed. “You’re stoned,” he teased.

  Bobby just grinned without replying and took another sip. He gazed up at Odis over his mug.

  “So,” Odis said. “You keep lookin’ at me.”

  “You keep lookin’ at me,” Bobby warmly echoed back.

  “I asked you first.”

  Words. Bobby didn’t want words. Words got in the way. After all the friendly touching in the studio, Bobby wanted action. “Just kiss me.”

  Odis looked surprised. “And what makes ya think I’d be inclined to do that?”

  “You keep lookin’ at me.”

  “Really, now?” As he tilted his head, Odis grew a crooked grin. “But what if I’m mostly straight?”

  “Mostly? That leaves a bunch a wiggle room.”

  Odis chuckled. “And what exactly are you looking to wiggle?”

  Bobby sat forward. The buzz was thinning out, but he still felt strangely comfortable. “What do you mean by ‘mostly straight’?”

  “Like most artists, I don’t have a lot of hard and fast rules about what’s interesting or attractive.”

  “Oh.” Bobby took another sip.

  “Bein’ such a shrimp, though, it’s hard enough catching a woman’s eye, and men are even more difficult.”

  “So you’ve never been with a man.”

  “Never said that.” Odis smiled. “Yer puttin’ words in my mouth now, boy.”

  “Sorry. So tell me about them.”

  Odis sipped from his own mug a moment as if he was trying to decide if he should answer. “It was only one guy, actually. I thought it might be a mistake. He seemed to be reluctant about his desires. But I was curious and went along. We fooled around a little. As soon as he got off, though, which was way quick, he couldn’t get out the door fast enough.”

  “Ouch, that sucks.”

  “So what about you? What was your first time like?”

  Bobby drained his mug and held it out to Odis. “If you can get me some more, I’ll tell you the whole long gruesome story.”

  Odis took his empty mug. “Sure thing, stud,” he said with a wink.

  Bobby watched Odis putter around in the kitchen area. He filled the mug with some brewed coffee, then spooned in some sort of powder to give it the chocolate flavoring. Bobby noticed how large his knuckles looked as he stirred the coffee. Odis seemed to move slowly, almost gingerly, when he reached up into the cabinet to put away the flavor container.

  When Odis returned with the drink, Bobby looked him in the eye. “I’m just curious—how old are you?”

  Odis sat in the chair next to him. He started to come back with something quippy, but seeing the honesty in Bobby’s eyes, he simply said, “Forty-seven.”

  “I didn’t think you were that old. Is that why you act so elderly, then?”

  “Humph. And what’s an elderly man act like?”

  “Saying things like ‘humph’ and ‘boy’ and moving slow sometimes.”

  Odis took a sip. “The language prob’ly comes from hangin’ around my grandpa too much. The other stuff you see is prob’ly the arth-a-ritis. I got stuck with it early, before I was even thirty-five.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Bobby felt strangely embarrassed for bringing it up.

  Odis smiled back at him. “I though you was gonna tell me a story?”

  “Right. Well, I knew about myself in high school, about being gay and all, but I decided to keep up appearances and date girls. I was biding my time until college.

  “So, I start college, and I’m just itching to get with a guy, but I don’t have any clue how to go about it. But I notice one of the assistant coaches for the baseball team, Mitch, keeps looking me over. He wasn’t too much older, maybe twenty-five, so when he asks me to go fishing up at his cabin one weekend, I jumped right on it.”

  “Old man of twenty-five.” Odis chuckled.

  “As you can guess, we didn’t actually get any fishing done. It was a great weekend. I thought I might be falling in love. How sappy is that?”

  “You were young.”

  “Then the next week at school, he was kind of distant. Which I halfway expected, since I’m sure that kind of fraternizing would have been more than just frowned upon. It wasn’t until I found out he’d invited another player up to the cabin that next weekend….”

  “You were just another notch in his bedpost,” Odis offered.

  “Yep, and that fuckin’ hurt.”

  “So how did you meet Nathan?”

  “Ouch, ya just go straight for the jugular, huh?”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “No, I will.” Bobby took a big sip. “Just give me a sec.”

  “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot,” Odis said with a tone of concern.

  “It’s fine.” Bobby took another sip. “We actually met that first summer after freshman year. I didn’t wanna go back and deal with my parents, so I hooked in with five other guys and we shared a crappy two-bedroom apartment. I got a summer job with a landscaping company to pay my part of the rent. And I met Nathan that first day after work, when we took the equipment back to the warehouse for the night. He was on another crew.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “Me? I didn’t say a word to him. I noticed him right away, of course—he was so hunkalicious I couldn’t not notice. Nathan recognized me, though, and came over. Turns out he was a big baseball nut and had seen me playing for the college team.”

  “You went out on a date?”

  “Oh no, we just hung out. I’m sure he was throwing out signals left and right, but I was so green I wouldn’t have noticed. It wasn’t until Fourth of July….”

  Odis waited, then urged him on. “What happened then?”

  “We were sitting out in the dark, watching the fireworks over campus, and Nathan turned to me and said, ‘Am I just wasting my time, or are you ever gonna kiss me?’”

  Odis chuckled. “So I’m guessing you did.”

  “Oh yeah, we had our own personal firework show that night.”

  “I’ll bet you did,” Odis teased with a wide grin.

  “So what about you? How long have you been living alone here?”

  Odis glanced around the space. “That obvious, huh? Well, Tina moved out about three years ago. I think she was a closet gold digger waiting for me to strike it rich in the art community. Guess she got tired of waiting. Last I heard she’s in Dallas with some famous painter.”

  “And you haven’t had anybody since?”

  “Nope. Once you get past forty, it’s hard enough to meet people if you’re six foot tall and ruggedly handsome. Somebody li
ke me, though, it’s pretty much a write-off.”

  “You shouldn’t put yourself down like that. You’re still handsome, even if ya are old,” Bobby said with a wink.

  “Are you flirtin’ with me again?”

  “Maybe….”

  “Humph.” Odis sat up and put his mug on the table. “I don’t know what I can promise. Never really went down that road before.”

  “I’m not asking for promises. I’m not exactly in the shape to be making any myself.”

  Odis leaned forward in his chair, hesitating as he got close to Bobby. “Then what do we do?”

  Bobby chuckled. “It’s not like there’s some queer manual we have to follow. Just do whatever you want to. I’ll let you know if I don’t like it.”

  “You sure about that? I’m an artist, don’t forget. I might have some strange notions.”

  “I’ll try to tolerate it,” Bobby teased.

  Odis reached out his hand as Bobby sat up and put his mug on the table.

  Odis rubbed Bobby’s head and traced along the top of Bobby’s ear with his thumb.

  Bobby sighed and moved his head closer to Odis’s open palm. It seemed like it had been forever since someone had touched him like that.

  Odis hooked his fingers into Bobby’s chestnut locks and gently pulled him closer to his face. He took in the fragrance of Bobby’s hair. The soft scent of lemongrass and faint masculine musk excited his nose.

  Bobby looked up and raised his finger to trace along Odis’s stubbly jaw.

  Odis peered into his eyes, appreciating every detail of the smoky cigar-brown color. Then Odis turned his attention to Bobby’s raised arm. He put his hand out and grasped Bobby’s bicep, squeezing Bobby’s solid muscles with his fingers. “Take your jacket off?” he asked.

  With his heart now racing and feeling the stir in his groin, Bobby removed the jean jacket and dropped it on the floor, revealing the plain green T-shirt underneath.

  Odis moved his mouth to the crook of Bobby’s elbow to explore it with his lips and tongue. He dragged his mouth farther up the arm, gently suckling at the solid bicep. He placed his nose near the armpit, hesitated briefly, then brought his mouth to the jaw below Bobby’s ear and licked and suckled at the stubbly hairs.