Call Me Home by Megan Kruse

seem like Don was here to fire him, but why else? To try to be his friend? Don looked like the kind of person Jackson normally would have avoided – beautiful – too beautiful, he thought – and capable, too much of getting his way in the world filling up his chest. Jackson could imagine him in a sports bar or out on the street, harassing queers just for the hell of it. Throwing peanuts at a couple fags across the bar. He looked like the kind of guy Jackson hated the most – the kind who would play grab-ass with his douchebag friends and then beat some queer kid down on the street. But that was a lie, too – the truth was he hated them because he was afraid. A beautiful man might see desire on him, might catch a glimpse of something sparking in Jackson that the man felt the need to extinguish. And now Jackson could feel his whole body being pulled toward Don, a warm need in him that he could not let Don see. Please, Jackson thought, looking at Don’s square shoulders, his easy smile, don’t look at me.
    â€œWhere you from?” Don asked.
    How to answer? “Portland,” he said.
    â€œMissoula,” said Don.
    Jackson nodded. He would die if he couldn’t come up with something to say. His thoughts whirred and lit on words and then abandoned them again. “Montana,” he said finally. Stupid.
    â€œYes.”
    Kill me, Jackson thought. Please God.
    â€œYou coming to the party?” Don asked.
    â€œWhat party?”
    â€œSaturday night. For Easter.”
    â€œEaster was two weeks ago.”
    â€œWell, it’s a party, still.”
    â€œSure,” Jackson said.
    â€œYou ever shot a gun?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œA gun.”
    â€œNo.”
    Don turned and grinned at him. “We’ll fix that Saturday, then.” He stood up, sandwich gone, and gestured toward his truck across the lot. “You want a ride back?”
    They rode back in silence. Jackson wanted to throw up. What was there to say? Nothing. Don was the most beautiful man Jackson had ever seen and it had to be written all over his face. Why had Don called for him? Jackson fumbled for a cigarette, lit it, smoked it through the cracked window. If Don had wanted to tell him something he’d done wrong, then why hadn’t Don brought it up? If Don had just wanted to see him … Jackson sucked on the cigarette and watched the paper burn down.
    Don pulled the truck up to the site and Jackson reached for the door handle.
    â€œHey,” Don said, and caught Jackson’s arm with one hand. Jackson looked down at Don’s long fingers, the trimmed oval nails with a hairpin line of dirt under each one. They both did. There was a long beat and Jackson felt a flush come over him, the bloodblooming through his body, electricity and fear. “If you need anything, let me know,” Don said, and dropped his hand. “If anybody gives you a hard time.”
    Jackson was suddenly feverishly hot. He didn’t know where to look, just nodded at Don and smiled in a way he hoped looked natural. He wasn’t being fired. He wasn’t being fired. Don had touched his arm. He watched the truck move off down the road, back toward the East side.
    Finally, he walked back to the sawhorses to split the rest of the beams, moving mechanically, thinking about Don, his long fingers, his coltish limbs. It had been twenty terrible, wonderful minutes and now he felt ruined and obsessed. The whole of his experience: Chris, a half-dozen anonymous men in Portland, Eric. A certain dark Sunday afternoon in the high school pool, Chris lying across Jackson’s lap while Jackson jerked him off, the damp warm chlorine, the wet trail of their footprints shrinking on the concrete. He’d looked down at Chris’s half-closed eyes, his warm cock – Jackson had felt so sure he was in love then, with Chris in the cup of his hand. But in all of the too-quick weeks of their friendship Chris would