An expression crossed his face. One that on someone else I would have recognized, but not on him. No way. “If you’ve got a tent, why are we trudging through the snow late at night?”
I didn’t answer, wondering if I had read the expression correctly.
“I mean, this would be easier in daylight. And I think the snow is supposed to stop by morning. So, we’d be able to see.”
He was right. I’d checked the forecast, of course. “Well, we could. But, like I said, it’s small. It’s a one-man model.”
That look surfaced again over his face. “Works for me.”
For a split second I saw the lists for Christmas morning waiting for me on the kitchen counter back home. “We could go pretty quick in the morning, right, if we left at sunrise?”
“Does that matter?” Logan might have quit smoking years ago, but the look he gave me was smoldering. And, shut up, I know how trashy romance novel that sounds. But it was. The look in his eyes was smoldering. I promise.
So much so that I apparently forgot that speaking when asked a question was an appropriate response. In my defense, the part of me that was responding was covered in three layers of undergarments.
“Does that matter to you?”
Always the wordsmith, I managed to nod as I uttered a suave, “Nuh uh.”
* * *
Several years ago, before my first Christmas Eve snowshoe ritual, I nearly bought a large tent. Big enough for four people. It had a nifty little flap that could be lifted to make a porch-like structure. It was sleek and outdoorsy. And about five times more expensive than the one-man option.
Not only am I always prepared, I’m also somewhat of a miser with my money. Although, that’s more necessity than anything else.
If I had splurged, the events after the ill-fated snowmobile disaster might have gone differently.
They might have gone like this:
I would have offered Logan my sleeping bag, as I am a gentleman and had enough layers of clothes to not really need it. Now that we were out of the snow, it wasn’t really that cold. And with the heat Logan’s body seemed to be generating, the four-person tent was sufficiently warm. We would have exchanged pleasantries before crawling to our sides of the tent. I would have lain on my lonely portion of tent, doing my best to not think of the fucking hot lumberjack of a man a few feet from me. Unsuccessfully trying to keep the thoughts from affecting my body, and I would probably have to turn on my side, facing away from him to keep from being noticed. There are certain things even three layers of clothes can’t hide. At some point, I would offer him another granola bar. As I’ve said, I’m a gentleman. And there would have been no ulterior meaning behind “granola bar.” And, if perchance I had meant the offer of a food ration as a double entendre, Logan would have been none the wiser, as he would have already been asleep on his side of the divide. I would have hosted the annual Gay Boy Christmas Dinner with blue balls.
That might have happened if I had given in to my desire to splurge on the fancy, outdoorsman-style tent.
Regrettably, my penny pinching ways ensured that version of the story couldn’t take place.
Therefore, despite the slender size of my skinny-fat frame, the small tent, due to Logan’s more than one sit-up a day frame, offered just enough room for us to lie side by side, with no space between us or the walls of the tent.
Now that we were out of the snow, it wasn’t really that cold. And with the heat Logan’s body seemed to be generating, within three minutes the one-person tent was so warm, it almost made it hard to breath.
“It’s kinda stuffy in here. Are you really going to sleep with all those layers on?”
My math skills kicked in at Logan’s suggestion. If I took off two layers of upper clothing and put them over my lap, that would be five layers. Surely five layers could hide Logan’s effect on my body.
“Good idea.” I slipped out of my jacket, pulled my sweater over my head, arranging both of them like a blanket over my lap before I lay back down.
Had Logan moved closer?
“Are those reindeer on your long johns?”
I glanced down at my chest. I’d forgotten. Shit. “I really like Christmas.”
He chuckled. Though the sound didn’t seem mocking. “So do I.”
There was only one way this would turn out if I kept looking at Logan like he was a big hunk of man sex lying next me. Though I’d decided, based on the evidence thus far, that Logan, if straight, wasn’t entirely so, I also know what number I am. Logan was all ten. He actually would score higher, but I really hate when people use a one to ten scale and then say something is an eleven. It’s just stupid. So, Logan was a ten. I, and there’s no ironic self-deprecation involved, am a five. I’ve done the math here as well. My face is a solid seven. My non-sit-up body a solid three, on a good day. Ergo, Paxton Peterson is a five. A five and a ten do not add up to sexy time. They just don’t. Again, it’s simple math. Consequently, to get through the night, I had to change my mind’s view of Logan from sex god to human. Find his humanity, not his sexuality.
“So, what brings you out in the woods on Christmas Eve? Most people spend it with their… families.” I’d almost said wives. But that would be fishing and achieve the opposite of what was needed.
“I spend about five days of Christmas vacation with my brother and his family. Tonight they went down to Longmont to visit our aunt in the nursing home. Now that our folks are gone, she’s the matriarch of the family.”
“You didn’t want to go?”
He hesitated, it was the first time he’d seemed anything less than confident. “I uh, made a decision this year. It may be narrow-minded, but I decided that I’m no longer having people in my life who think of me as an abomination, so I chose not to go with them.”
Well that answered that question. And here we were, back to his sexuality. “Ah, homophobic aunt, huh?”
He let out a snort that said much more than words. “Yeah, you could say that.”
A thought hit me, one I was surprised had taken this long to come. “Won’t your brother come looking for you when they get home tonight?”
He shook his head. “Nah. They know I go to bed early. They’ll just assume I’m asleep, and I for sure didn’t ask to borrow his new toy. It’s going to cost me a month’s paycheck to fix that fucking snowmobile, I bet. They won’t notice I’m not there until I don’t show up for Christmas breakfast, but I bet we’ll be back by then anyway.”
I really wanted to go back to the confirmation of his gayness, but I pride myself on being prepared, frugal, and self-controlled. While Logan was becoming more human, he was becoming more of a gay human. Unhelpful. And it still didn’t alter the equation of five not equaling a ten. Maybe if there was two of me….
Work. The great equalizer and king of all small talk. “So, what do you do that you have to go to bed early and that you get a Christmas vacation.”
“I’m a teacher. And I like to work out before school, so I wake up around four-thirty every day.”
Teacher. Didn’t see that coming. Cowboy. Mechanic. Model for cigarette companies, sure. “Do you teach shop or something? Coach?”
“No. Kindergarten.”