Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

mouth was otherwise engaged. After several long minutes, Daniel pulled back. "I want you. I have since the first time I kissed you. Hell, since the first time I saw you. That doesn't change just because you've had your nose to the grindstone until you can't see past the shavings."
    "Is that even a real saying?"
    "Does it matter?" Daniel stood and held out a hand to him. "Tell you what. Let's spend a little time together right now. Remind ourselves why we put up with each other."
    "It's one a.m."
    "Do you care?"
    "No." Jacob got up and gave Daniel his hand. He let his lover draw him down the hallway to the bedroom.
    "You know," Daniel said, raising his hands to his shirt buttons. "There's one way to make sure I never so much as think about Cliff."
    "Huh?" Jacob couldn't think when the lamplight was picking out the flat planes and curves of Daniel's chest.
    "Fuck me silly. Wear me out until I have no room to think about anyone else."
    It was one a.m. And he had to get up before six, and he'd spent thirteen hours at work today, not including the drive. But he thought nothing had ever sounded more appealing than that request from Daniel. "Oh yes." He stepped forward and put his hands on that hot hard flesh. "I can do that."
    "And not worry any more about Cliff?"
    Jacob knew it wasn't that easy. But maybe he could find more time to be with Daniel. And in his heart he knew Daniel would never go behind his back. Maybe Jacob would never have as many interests in common with Daniel as Cliff did. But he looked into his lover's flushed face and realized he had one thing that Cliff didn't have. Daniel's complete and rapt, lust-filled attention. Jacob moved closer and gave Daniel a fast rough kiss with a world of promise in it. "Cliff who?" he said.
    ****
    February 3, 1959
    Dear Jacob,
    You were right. I think I have to say that about once a decade so you might want to make note of the date.
    I should have just brought you with me.
    I thought maybe without Dad here to loom over the scene, Mom and the others might accept me, or at least pretend they did long enough to get through this. But somehow Dad dead is worse than Dad living here. It's like Mom is trying to make any past trespasses up to him by being the perfect wife now. Not one word comes out of her mouth that Dad couldn't have said himself. The first thing she asked me when I walked in the door was, "Do you have a girlfriend yet?" After eighteen years away, half my life, that's the biggest thing she wants to know.
    Of course I said no, I have a lover, the same man I've been with for seventeen years. You would think I'd stabbed her. If it wasn't for Maria, I'd have walked right back out again and come home. But my baby sis calmed me down and then she calmed Mom down. She's a born peacemaker. I'm staying with Maria and her husband, who is a pretty great guy. But just until the funeral. They don't need my help with Dad's stuff or the farm. And I don't need them watching me like I'm going to steal something or seduce the children. I changed my train ticket for an earlier one. Expect me back on the eighth, Trip.
    God, I can't wait to get home.
    Yours, Daniel
    ****

CHAPTER 14       
    June 28, 1969
    Daniel frowned across the room at his friend Philip, who had commandeered the loveseat. "You don't read anything without looking at a published review first? Never pick something up just because the cover caught your eye?"
    Philip stretched out long legs in carefully tailored trousers and shook his head. "My time is too valuable for that."
    "Honestly." Phil's lover Eddie passed behind him and swiped at the back of his neatly arranged hair. "Could you be any more pretentious, baby?"
    "Try me," Phil called after Eddie's back as the younger man headed for the kitchen.
    From where he had dropped onto the couch, Jacob laughed. Daniel pushed back his chair from the table and got up to cross the room to Jacob. Then he paused, his eye caught by a flicker of silenced motion on the television set that was visible through the open door of the study. He stopped halfway to Jacob to watch intently.
    Jacob was the first to notice his abstraction. He stood and came up behind Daniel. "What is it?"
    Daniel nodded toward the set. "Isn't that the Stonewall Inn? Can we turn up the sound?" The picture showed a crowd of people in the streets, jostling and waving, in front of the brick facade of the New York City bar with its familiar vertical sign. He and Trip had joked once or twice about checking