Winter Wonderland (2 page)

That was somebody
assembling a snow penis
on his front porch.

He scooted to the edge of the couch, checking the urge to rush to the door. If he made too much noise, whoever it was might run off. If he tiptoed to the door, he could pull it open and catch them by surprise. Halfway to the door, though, it occurred to him he should maybe have a weapon. Nothing lethal, but…well, if it
wasn’t
a couple of kids, he should be ready.

He didn’t have a baseball bat, though. He had his hunting rifles in the closet, but those were hardly appropriate. He also didn’t have a lot of time. A peek through the curtain revealed the penis was nearly assembled.

One guy. Not a kid, and not a bruiser. All Paul could make out was a dark-colored parka and a knit hat with earflaps. The pants were different. Kind of like the things they wore in hospitals. What did you call them? Scrubs. Something about them rang a bell, but he couldn’t figure out why.

In the end, he went without a weapon. Whoever this was, Paul could take him, though he doubted it would come to that. Drawing a deep breath, he steeled himself for God only knew what and put his hand on the doorknob.

He managed to flip the light switch
after
he yanked, which meant as the dim bulb illuminated the porch steps, he got a good look not only at a seriously articulated frenulum but the face of a bright, blue-eyed young man, cheeks pink from cold.

Paul stared. “Kyle? Kyle Parks?”

Kyle’s lips closed, pressing into a thin line. Then, bold as you please, he lifted an eyebrow, and his sly smile made Paul shiver in a way that had nothing to do with cold.

Blowing Paul a kiss, Kyle stepped off the porch and into the night, leaving Paul to stare at the snow penis, which he saw now came with a piece of printed card stock hanging by yarn cemented into the sculpture.

The card read,
Let’s play in the snow.

Paul lifted his gaze to the intricately crafted penis, seven feet tall, flared glans gleaming like an icy jewel in the porch light. He thought about Kyle Parks, the nice night nurse standing out here on his porch, carving the penis, shaping all those veins.

Sending him all those PrinceCharming1990 Grindr texts.

Kyle. Little Kyle. Offering to lick his…

Paul shut his eyes, but he still saw the wicked smile from Kyle mixed in with PrinceCharming1990’s naughty suggestions.

Letting his breath out in a ragged huff, he opened his eyes and yanked the card off the penis. He kicked the sculpture over, not taking a photo, not lingering to watch it crumble in his haste to get inside and flip off the light.

But he lay in bed for hours, staring up at the ceiling, so far from sleep he wasn’t sure he’d ever get there again.

That couldn’t have happened. Of all the people who might have mounted a snow penis on his porch…

Let’s play in the snow.

To his shame, Paul got a little hard.

He buried his face in his pillow, groaning into the stuffing. He couldn’t act on this. He needed to block PrinceCharming1990
right now.

He didn’t, though. He lay in bed until the wee hours of the morning, the cheesy Christmas movies mingling with Kyle Parks’s wicked smile, until they tangled together and he dreamed of sweet Kyle standing outside a picturesque log cabin, smiling and welcoming Paul home.

Flanked by an army of well-endowed snow penises.

Every
one in Logan thought they knew who Kyle Parks was. Everyone in Logan was wrong.

The problem of growing up in a town of less than one thousand was people couldn’t seem to let go of your youth. They remembered Kyle selling Boy Scout popcorn or sitting in their Sunday school class or wetting his pants in their backyard when he wasn’t quite potty-trained, and somehow all those memories meant they couldn’t accept he
wasn’t
that kid anymore. In their heads, he was still the leggy little boy with a bad haircut. And everybody,
everybody
still talked about how he’d had such a habit of tottering around in his mother’s makeup and heels.
Shouldn’t that have been our first clue?
Except even there he wasn’t a gay
man
. He was a gay
kid.

It didn’t help, Kyle knew, that he
looked
like a kid. Not only did he get carded everywhere he went, but more often than not people argued with him.
You can’t be twenty-five.
Out of town they talked about his baby face, but in Logan the people who’d known him since he was little insisted he still
was
little. The general consensus was he might, possibly, be almost twenty, but that was as far as they’d go. The State of Minnesota’s decree on his license that he’d been born in 1990 had to be a mistake. Someday Kyle supposed he’d be grateful for his youthful looks, but right now, he’d give anything for a few gray hairs. Or the ability to grow more than peach fuzz for a beard. Or a hometown where people were willing to believe he wasn’t Peter Pan.

As he drove away from Paul Jansen’s duplex, heart beating too fast, memory of Paul’s shocked, slightly horrified face burned into his brain, Kyle hated his youthful appearance more than he ever had.

In his head, making the snow sculptures combined with Grindr taunts had been the perfect flirtation. It was true, he couldn’t get Paul to give him so much as a second glance in person, but he’d assumed that was the whole
you’re too young
thing again. Possibly the
I only date big, hairy bears
thing, though he’d seen Paul with a few svelte men. Kyle had already tried to alter his own type—for a week he ate nothing but fatty food and drank whole milk, but he ended up losing weight because he got sick from all the junk. In the end, he’d reasoned all he had to do was get Paul to see him as a fun, sexual object. And available. And willing. Ergo, Grindr. Except Paul had at best nibbled on his lures.

The first snow penis had been a lark, but he’d gotten more mileage out of that than a pile of dirty direct messages, so he figured what the hell—lather, rinse, repeat. If he’d thought Paul would catch him in the act, he would have dressed for the occasion, or worn something he could have
un
dressed in more quickly. Though from the look on Paul’s face, it wouldn’t have mattered. Dammit.

The drive between Paul’s house and his own home was brief, but no one else was awake at this ungodly hour, so Kyle was able to continue scowling to himself as he put away his coat and pulled material out of the refrigerator to make a sandwich. In deference to his shitty mood, he added an Angry Orchard cider. Putting the whole business on a tray, he shuffled around the corner to his room.

As he ate, he wondered, not for the first time, if it would help if he got his own place. It was possible Paul would reject him at any age and in any locale—which hurt—but…well, Kyle was willing to try anything.

He finished off his sandwich quickly but nursed his cider as he poked around the Internet, turning the volume down as he indulged in some shameless porn-clip surfing. Since he was cranky, he didn’t go for his favorites but instead fed his bad mood by searching for his kink in free two-to-six-minute teasers.

Because even in his porn he was “too young”. He’d bet his ass none of the guys in the bear-twink sections were twenty-five, and Christ, if he was dumb enough to go to the daddy-kink section, he got alarmingly young boys and men who reminded him of his grandfather. Which, he wasn’t casting any stones. But could a guy get a thin, handsome young man with a cute, cuddly bear who was either his own age or only a
little
bit older?

He knew better than to hope he’d stumble on the twink doing the bear. Oh, those videos existed, and you can bet your ass he had them bookmarked. But when he was in a mood like this…well, he didn’t know
why
all he wanted to do was drive home how impossible he was, but it’s what he reached for. In case he had some idea his problem was because he lived in a teeny-tiny town in the middle of nowhere. No way. He was a freak in every direction. Long, narrow feet. Skinny body and long legs. Baby face. Feminine mannerisms.
Nellie bottom
tattooed on his forehead against his will.

He had a nice haircut, and an excellent dye job, since Frankie Blackburn had moved to town and opened up a hair salon. Other than that, everything was miserable, and he might as well have a second cider.

He didn’t, because at this point it was six in the morning, and his mother was almost up. It didn’t matter how many times he told her it was
different
to drink in the morning when you’d been up all damn night, she still clucked and fussed. Which he supposed was another argument to move into his own place.

I’ll scan the ads tomorrow,
he told himself as he climbed under his covers and drifted off to sleep.

His dreams were a fucked-up mash of porn, Paul and work. Which got weird when his brief foray into medical porn clips inspired dreams of Kyle giving a naked Paul a prostate exam in a nursing home bed. Had he been awake, he’d have shut his imagination down, but as it was, he woke hard and came in the shower with the
very
pretty image of naked Paul Jansen on all fours, begging for Kyle’s cock.

His mother was in the kitchen as he came out, cooking pork chops for lunch, and she smiled and murmured, “
Good morning,
” to Kyle as he emerged. A country station played in the background, and Daryl Parks sat at the table, reading the paper. Kyle’s brothers sat across from each other, scanning through mobile phones. At the smaller table by the sliding door, three of Kyle’s nieces and nephews fought over who had more chicken nuggets and tried to spill each other’s milk.

Kyle peeked around the corner to the dining room and the TV room beyond before frowning at his mother. “Where’s Linda Kay?”

“I don’t know.” Jane Parks’s tone was heavy singsong, her eyes wide as she nodded toward the cupboard.

Kyle made a big show of scratching his chin and frowning. “Oh, no. Do you think she moved out?”

“It’s difficult to say.” Jane’s voice played along, but she returned her focus to lunch preparations.

“That would be a shame. It snowed again last night, and I was going to make a new fort. A big one.” He sighed dramatically. “I suppose I’ll just make a small one for the kids.”

The door to the pantry opened as two hundred pounds of beaming, gleeful woman emerged. Linda Kay enveloped Kyle first in a wide smile with her tongue protruding past her lips before wrapping arms around him and squeezing him. “I got you, little brother.”

Kyle hugged her back as best he could, and his smile, if not as beautiful and pure as hers, was heartfelt. “You got me all right. Does this mean you’ll make a snow fort with me?”

Linda Kay squinted her eyes shut tight and shook her head hard enough to flap her brown hair into his face. “
No
. I want to make a
dragon
. Breathing
fire
.”

“A fire-breathing dragon?” Kyle repeated, his brain already running ahead of him with the possibilities.

“That fire will be made out of snow, not the propane tank,” Jane remarked dryly from the stove.

Damn. Kyle grimaced at Linda Kay. “Our mother is
no fun
.”

Linda Kay got a wicked look in her eye as she leaned in and whispered loudly in Kyle’s ear, “I’ll sneak it out of the garage.”

“You will
not
, Linda Kay.”

When Linda Kay pouted, Kyle kissed her cheek. “We’ll find a way to make it cool. Let me get something to eat and a cup of coffee, and it’s on.”

Linda Kay followed Kyle around the kitchen as he made himself a pod of decaf in the Keurig, and when he leaned on his mother’s left shoulder to peer at his breakfast/lunch, his sister took up a similar position on the right side.

Jane sighed. “You
two
. Can’t you wait ten more minutes?”

“We’re
hungry
.” Linda tried to pinch off a corner of a pork chop only to laugh as Jane swatted her away.

This was because after twenty-five years as Kyle’s twin, she knew the drill. While she made her feint, Kyle stole a piece of bacon from the plate by the stove. He took a bite before surreptitiously passing Linda Kay the rest behind Jane’s back. As his sister scuttled off with a wicked chuckle, Kyle leaned on the counter and sipped his coffee while he chatted with his mother.

“Do you work tonight?” she asked him. “I know the schedule has been a mess lately, and I’ve lost track of your rotation.”

He nodded. “The late-late shift. Eleven-to-seven. But tomorrow I have off, because I’m day shifts over the weekend.”

Jane clucked in disapproval. “It’s not healthy for you to work such irregular hours. It’s bad enough with all those overnights.”

“Somebody has to work them. Though, there’s good news.” He grinned as he set his coffee aside. “I hear Dolorianne is thinking of retiring.”

Jane nearly dropped her spatula in joy. “Oh—does that mean you could take her shift? The regular days-only one?”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “God, I wish. No, this would mean I could have the three-to-eleven one if I wanted it.”

She frowned. “But, Kyle, you can’t
possibly
go back to school with those hours.”

Not this again. “Mom, I don’t
want
to be a registered nurse. I’m fine with being an LPN.”

“But you’d have so many more career opportunities as an RN, and you’d make more money.”

Kyle didn’t want to have this argument for the eightieth time, so he changed the subject. “How was your circle meeting yesterday?”

She brightened. “Oh—it was wonderful. The Ruth Circle
and
the Hope Circle met at the church, and the library board came over too, even Mr. Higgins. The fundraiser is on for sure.”

“So more sleigh rides with Santa and dancing after?”

“No, this year there will be more. A craft fair, an ice-skating rink, and all the local businesses will have open houses.
And.
” She elbowed him and waggled her eyebrows. “I told them you’d make snow sculptures.”