Page 35 of Bone to Pick
Once the commencement ceremony was finished, we all met outside for pictures in the gorgeous Vermont sunshine. I congratulated several of my other students before making my way to the large group surrounding Porter.
“It’s about time you finished your degree,” I said in my sternest professor voice.
Porter turned to me with a grin. “No thanks to you.”
I shrugged. “You’re welcome?”
He launched himself at me, nearly bowling me over into the grass as I grabbed him around the waist to keep from falling. He kissed me hard on the mouth before moving his lips to my ear. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Theo. I hope you know that.”
“I do. And I can’t say I disagree. Thank you for not giving up when I discouraged you last year.”
He pulled back and cupped my face. “Never stop teaching me how to use my words to make a difference. Thanks to your advice, I was able to convince my boyfriend to take a chance on me.”
“Please.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m just a sucker for an angry sonnet, Sunday.”
I kissed him again before letting him pull away so he could return the well-wishes from a nearby classmate. I turned to his uncle and shook his hand. “Congratulations, Drew. You raised a fine man.”
The older man’s eyes sparkled with humor. “Didn’t do much, actually. He’s always been his own sort. But thanks all the same. I’ll take your gratitude out in that brisket you’ve been smoking since yesterday.”
Porter’s sister, Emma, leaned in. “And you can thank me for my role by making sure nobody bothers me when I take a long, hot shower in that fancy outdoor setup you have.”
My cheeks heated at the mention of the outdoor shower. Once I learned we wouldn’t be able to do the bulk of the addition work ourselves due to our schedules and building codes, I decided to do a very different project to add to our enjoyment of the house.
I’d built a large outdoor shower set away from the house to better see the night sky without light pollution. Porter and I used it embarrassingly regularly. It had seen quite a few white-hot moments in the few months we’d had it. I didn’t dare picture his sister in the damned thing.
“Me too,” Porter’s brother Knox said. “I find the idea of that shower very… inspiring.”
His boyfriend, Gage, nodded enthusiastically. “I’ll join you. You need a back-scrubbing assistant, baby, and I volunteer as tribute. It’s a public service, really.”
“You’re a giver, Goodman,” Knox agreed in a voice that made Gage shiver.
Drew’s partner, Marco, weighed in. “Fill out the sign-up sheet on the clipboard at the cabin. I believe there’s an opening tomorrow morning at six.”
I buried my face in my hands as Porter poked me in the ribs. “Pervert,” he said happily. “I told you it wouldn’t stay our little secret.”
“It’s not even in sight of the house!” I said. “How do they know about it?”
Porter gave me a teasing grin. “I mean… youdidpass around tequila shots last night. And you know what tequila does to me.”
I laughed. Of course I did. That was why I’d passed around the shots.
Everyone continued to give us hell the entire way up the mountain to the cabin, where three long picnic tables had been placed near a large gas grill. Camp chairs sat out around a fire ring further away from the house, still set up from the tequila-soaked night before when my friends and Porter’s friends had welcomed the other Sundays to town. It turned out that my colleague John and his boyfriend, Teagan, were already friendly with Knox and Gage, which was a crazy coincidence… the kind I’d gotten used to since having Porter Sunday in my life.
For the first time ever, I felt like part of a large, loving family. I glanced around the clearing and realized how happy Gramps would be to see so much joy and laughter, love and energy filling the land he’d claimed for our very own.
Porter had been right, all those months ago, when he said there was something I’d still been searching for, despite having my dream job and living in my dream place. Now I also had a man I loved—and a comfortable sofa where the two of us cuddled nightly—and I finally felt truly content.
“Thank God the rest of the Sundays are all sleeping outside,” Porter said when the two of us moved inside to our brand new bedroom to change into casual clothes. “Even with twice as much space now, I’m thrilled we only have one bed.”
I grabbed his wrist and yanked him into my arms to kiss his cherry-red lips. “Just think. If I hadn’t had just the one bed, you might have been safe from me all those months ago.”
He kissed me long and hard before pulling away. “Nah. Even if there’d been twenty beds, I still would have ended up in yours.”
We changed quickly, but before Porter could open the bedroom door, I caught him around the waist and pressed my lips to his ear. “Same code word tonight?”
“Twenty-seven.” He laughed and pressed back into me. “I’m starting to refer to it as the ‘old man sonnet’ in my head, you’ve used it so often lately. And it’s not even about sex.”
“Forget Shakespeare, then. I’ll pull out some Edna St. Vincent Millay. ‘And lust is there, and nights not spent alone.’ How’s that for old man?”
