Love Is Always Write Volume 4

there was something he wanted to say, but couldn't.
    Aaron was glad of the conversation - it took his mind off the loss of the small slate heart that had been his talisman for so long - but he couldn't expect someone like Danny, with his country-boy wholesomeness, to understand what it had been like for him to sink that low.
    "We're not alike, Danny," said Aaron earnestly. "You're so... normal. Not like me. It's nice to be around normal dudes again."
    "Depends on how you define normal," said Danny, carefully. "You never asked me the reason I left home and ended up in Georgia with a bunch of people I don't know."
    Aaron was curious now, although something deep within him already knew the answer, something he did not want to admit to himself.
    "I like guys," said Danny, staring into the fire, afraid to meet Aaron's eyes. "Might not be such a big issue here in the city, but I come from a real small town. Once my folks worked it out, they stopped speaking to me, cut me out of the business."
    Aaron met his gaze, saw the hurt that still registered there, and chose his words carefully, anxious to reassure Danny that it did not bother him, that he was capable of having a buddy who slept with guys and not making a big deal of it.
    "Don't make no difference to me," he said finally. "It's tough finding a real buddy in this world, especially one that can handle a bike as well as you."
    "So we're cool, then?"
    He could hear the relief in Danny's voice, and something deep within him wanted to reach out and say something else, do something else about these odd feelings he had in the pit of his stomach, but the walls that had kept him safe from people for so long were coming down again, and he was thinking about the loss of his slate heart, so he just nodded and smiled.
    "Yeah, we're cool."
    Later that night, he woke in the small two-man tent they shared on these weekend trips, and lay on his back, listening to Danny's quiet breathing.
    He'd been doing that a lot recently, and it dawned on him that one of the reasons he looked forward so much to these weekend riding trips, that had started out monthly and somehow become fortnightly, was that feeling of closeness and comfort that came along with having someone sleeping next to you.
    He felt a sudden protective anger at the people who had hurt his friend so much, and wondered again about the twists and turns of life that had led him here, sharing a tent with a guy he knew liked other guys and having it not matter to him at all. He wondered briefly what it would be like to reach out and touch Danny on the arm, have him turn towards him with those wide hazel eyes of his and...but he shut his imagination down before it could go any further down that road.
    Danny might be gay, and it wasn't a problem, not at all, but he wasn't, he told himself - and one day maybe a girl would look at him again. He tried to conjure up an image of Jessie, his fiancée who had taken off and left him once things got bad, a long, long time ago, but however hard he tried to remember the feel of her skin and the smell of her hair, the more his thoughts kept returning to the young guy in his sleeping bag, just inches away from him, with his kind hazel eyes and hard-muscled body. He tossed and turned, and sleep took a long time coming.
    ****
    Friday morning dawned humid and cloudy, and Aaron was a mess.
    He lay on his bed sweating, curled in the fetal position.
    His cellphone had rung on and off since Wednesday, but he was in no shape to answer it. He neither knew nor cared whether the garage was trying to get hold of him. If they sacked him, too bad. It would just be another fuck-up in his life, like everything else.
    Carly had been calling, too. He'd left a message for her that he'd lost the heart and he didn't know what to do any more, and he knew she was worried about him, but he knew deep down inside that she couldn't drop everything and travel more than a hundred miles to be at his side. She had other clients now, and he could not blame her for not making him her priority.
    More than anything, he wanted to talk to Danny, but he felt too ashamed. He had seen the missed calls on his phone, and he knew his buddy was calling about the ride they'd scheduled for tomorrow, just a day's outing this time, but he couldn't bring himself to admit to Danny that he was messed up, that yesterday for the first time in a year, he had been so tempted to go out there and look for something that would make him feel good.
    He