Page 14 of Tommy

“I didn’t even think cowboys existed,” he said.

I laughed hard. “Ok, kid, you’re from the city, so that’s to be expected.”

“I’m being serious. I didn’t know people like you were actually athing,” he said. “I might have to create a cowboy teddy that—well, I really don’t know what else cowboys do.”

“Depends on the cowboy in question,” I told him, holding back a smile. I’d inspired something in him. It warmed me. “But for me, I’ve lived and worked on ranches for a long time, probably longer than you’ve been a thought if I’m going to be honest kid.”

“Kid,” he laughed. “I’m twenty-eight. I’m hardly a—a baby goat.”

I assumed he was in his twenties, and that lined up with the notion. “Ok,” I said, nodding my head and near squinting as I recalled his name, but it escaped me, so I turned to the stove where I was about to put the pan of milk and oats for porridge.

“Hold up,” he said. “Do you even know my name?”

“I do, yeah, obviously.”

“I’m gonna call bull on that.”

My tongue squirmed in my mouth as if searches the recesses of it to find anything out about him. His name, it had to have been right there on the tip of my tongue, and yet it was nowhere to be found.

“Tommy,” he said.

“Tommy!” I repeated immediately. “I knew that. Obviously, I knew that.”

He shook his head with a big smile. “You are awful at lying. So, then Hardin, which I know is your last name, and what you prefer to go by,” he said. “June gave me the 411 on the drive.”

“Oh, she did?” I lit the wood under the stovetop with a fire lighter. “You know, June’s a bit of a gossip. Probably wouldn’t trust everything you hear.”

“You said you were nice when you really get to know you. I’m guessing that’s not true, but offering me breakfast definitely goes against that.”

I hummed away in thought before bringing a pot of oats to the stove. It wasn’t hot enough to scorch them, so it gave me a moment to fetch fresh milk from the fridge and think on my response to him. “I don’t want to have you dying on me,” I said. “And you can’t get food deliveries up here.”

“How did you know I’d thought about that?”

No response was required for that. He was from the city, it was hardly a surprise the first thought that came to mind was his want to order food for the convenience of not having to cook, especially on these old wood stoves.

I still had a lot of questions for him, and I needed to know if he was like the others. The guys who were interested in teddies, onesies, and looking for something a little more from life. He certainly had the teddies down, whether that was just for his comic books, I was yet to discover.

“So, do you have a wife and kids out there somewhere?” he asked, as if reading my mind.

For a moment, I processed the question, trying to figure out what directions the information would spin him in. If I told himno, which was correct, he’d probably thing there was something wrong with me, and if I told himyes, then there was definitely something wrong for me to abandon my family during what is considered the most festive month of the year.

“I’ll take it as a no,” he said as I seemed paralyzed to answer, stirring the oats and milk.

“Relationships and my lifestyle don’t work,” I said. “The timing has never been there. And what about you?”

“Oh. No, I’m gay, I definitely don’t have a wife,” he snort-laughed, and suddenly, I was more intrigued by everything.

7. TOMMY

Being gay wasn’t a big secret, and if it was, then I was hella bad at keeping it. I thought I’d already outed myself earlier, probably from all the teddies I had on my suitcase, or the fact that I was quite typically someone from the city who forgot how to dress for the weather conditions in different states.

Hardin finished the porridge oats off, all the while making small talk about what I did, and how much I enjoyed it. I thought thegaycard would’ve had him stumped, but I knew my gay cinema, and there were two very famous gay fictional cowboys who went broke and back again for seconds. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he was—

“I’m gay,” he said at the dining table, a spoonful of oats and raspberries ready to enter his mouth.

He’d stumped me now.

“It’s always nice to see younger folk so out and impassioned with their orientations,” he continued. “Back when I was younger, back when I didn’t come out, but I had also at the same time, it was different. Smaller counties, especially in Texas were a nasty place to be.”

---