As Peter pulled onto the highway he resisted the urge to push the gas pedal to the floor and let the Road Runner soar. He had no idea how long the tires had been on the car. He would be lucky to get it to the tire store before one of them blew. As he drove the familiar roads his mind raced. Just the thought of Robin’s smiling mouth, velvety and warm on his lips made Peter’s body tighten with an all-too-familiar longing.

The boys who worked at the tire center spilled out of the service bays to get a look at his mom’s car the minute he pulled in again. Everyone wanted to check the Road Runner out. With a move like a magician, he opened the hood and displayed the Hemi. A mint muscle car that wasn’t beefy; she had slimmed down lines and was more aerodynamic than the boxy long rectangular cars of the sixties.

She was also a bona fide gas-sucking road hog born in the moments before the oil crisis and was all the more rare for being both way ahead, and far too late for her time. He didn’t blame them for wanting a look at her.

It wasn’t long before he drew a little crowd of people who had known his folks as well, many of whom saw his mom’s car from the street as they drove home from work and stopped to pay their respects. He had the uncomfortable feeling as hands slapped his back and older men and women reminisced that they were talking about someone else’s life.

Peter went to the machine to buy a pack of cigarettes, and then lit up while the boys changed out the tires. From where he sat he had a view of Angel’s Park, a city lot that had been landscaped with grass and a fountain. It had a statue of an angel by a wall on which the names of fallen Hadleyville men, and now maybe women, from all branches of service were inscribed. An uncle on his mother’s side and a number of cousins’ names were there from World War II.

There had been two times, once in Afghanistan and once in Iraq, that Peter thought his name would grace that wall as well. Peter crushed his cigarette out in the sand ashtray. He had been guilty on more than one occasion of thinking that would be the easiest way out for everyone.

Maybe Robin was right. Maybe it was time to bring his shit home.

Peter lay idly in his room as the blue farmhouse-Hospice facility—settled around him the way old buildings often did, with sighs and groans and creaking doors. In the background he heard the distant murmur of televisions, their volume turned way too loud because of the older people watching, but muffled where he was by solid wood and distance and good craftsmanship. Nearer by, across the hall, he could hear his mother’s oxygen pump and it’s eerie rhythm. He wondered if this was one of the times that his mother described when she breathed through

her mouth. He wondered how long she could go on like this, thin and weak, straining for breath until her shoulders heaved while she slept.

When he’d gone in there with Robin to visit with her that afternoon, his mother was having a bad time of it, refusing food and fussing for what seemed like hours as Robin attempted to make her comfortable. She had finally accepted their decision when they both insisted on heavy-duty pain medication, although he saw in her eyes it made her feel vanquished. He wondered how long she’d been so fragile, how long she’d keep fighting the inevitable. He’d envied his mother’s faith in the man who cared for her. At long last her mouth had hung open and slack as she slept, but her upper body still worked hard to bring in air. He’d left for his room then, while Robin went downstairs to the kitchen, presumably to get something to eat for himself and wait until Shelley needed him again.

He hated Robin for his patience. And loved him for it.

Peter put his hands over his eyes. God forgive him, he’d only been there one day and already he wished it were over.

The door to his room creaked and Robin’s head came through tentatively. “I thought you might be awake.” He opened the door more than a crack, but stayed where he was.

“Hi. I was just…”

Robin’s lips turned up in a tired half smile. “Shelley’s been sleeping calmly.”

“That’s good.”

“Can the same be said for you?”

“I don’t do a lot of sleeping.” Peter sat up on the bed. “You can come in, you know. Do I have to invite you in like a vampire?”

Robin came inside, and he closed the door behind him.

“Lock it.”

Robin turned his face toward Peter’s for a minute, and then simply did as he was told. He came to the bed and sat down near Peter, who wasn’t above noticing

that the bed didn’t squeak. Peter caught the scent he was beginning to associate with the man,—laundry soap, hand sanitizer, and something elusive that made him want to lean in. Peter watched Robin’s face while idly contemplating this, picking up the rainbow dog tags.

“This shit is easy for you, isn’t it?” He held up the chain so it clinked when it dropped back down on Robin’s chest. “Out and proud.”

Robin laughed somehow, without making a sound. “Oh, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He had a way of talking-all soft and low-that Peter figured came from sitting at a patient’s bedside. It was soothing and careful and it went straight to Peter’s dick. Robin chuckled and said in his musically accented voice, “I am a black immigrant living in the upper Midwest in a redneck town. Ask me how that’s working out?”

“Yes I tink so…” Peter teased, rolling his eyes. “I grew up in this town, and I was literally –get this– the boy named Hsu.”

Robin’s clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.

Peter fell backwards until his head hit the pillow. “Shit.”

Robin followed him down, but in a catlike and almost predatory move and straddled Peter, giving him a nudge with his hips.

Peter held still. “I thought you said you were nobody’s dirty secret.”

“I am nobody’s dirty secret.” Robin molded himself along the length of Peter’s body, raising the fine hairs all along his skin. “But maybe you’re mine.”

Their mouths met in an incendiary kiss that brought a shiver down Peter’s spine. “Fuck yes,” he breathed into Robin’s mouth.

They kissed again and when they finally broke apart to breathe, Peter met Robin’s eyes and found them full of something compelling and kind. “I’m sorry about your mother. This was one of her bad nights. I have to keep an eye on her so I don’t have long. When she’s like this she’s restless.”

“I never realized.” Peter wanted to hide his face, but didn’t. “How does she stand it? How do you?”

“She has no choice,” Robin smoothed the planes of Peter’s face with his thumbs. “Me? I think I love her. Something about her makes me want to be patient.”

Peter turned away, shamed that he couldn’t say the same. Her illness made his knees weak. Her fragility ate at him. In the final analysis, everything about her current condition robbed him of all the security she’d built into his life and he was sick with dread.

Robin made a hissing noise. “It’s not a crime to be overwhelmed.”

Peter swallowed hard. “Thank you.” Robin’s nearness was making it hard to think. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Robin placed a kiss on Peter’s closed eyelids. Robin’s weight lifted and Peter looked up when he felt hands on the waistband of his jeans. “For now we just feel good, yes?”

He unbuttoned Peter’s fly and carefully unzipped him. Peter’s cock was hard and sprang up into his hands. Robin dabbled a finger in the slick trail of precum on Peter’s belly and brought it slowly to his mouth.

“Geez.” Peter shifted.

Robin pushed Peter’s jeans and shorts down and followed his finger with his tongue. “Going to taste you, soldier man.”

Robin teased Peter’s dick with his hand again, even as he leaned over to the nightstand and switched on the clock radio with the other. He rocked and squirmed on Peter’s leg. Peter stifled a laugh. When he found a soft jazz station, he turned the volume up a little so the room was filled with smooth horns and suspended cymbals.