Gabriel dressed for a day in the fields, dressed in silence as his brothers yelled and joked with each other, making the small house smaller still with heat and noise and the harsh scents of cheap coffee and overdone huevos. Gabriel dressed and said good-bye to Diego and Luis, told them he’d see them later at the grove, that he needed to walk this morning, watched them both shrug and tell him adios and mumble about his mother’s loco hijo.

Joey was deep in the field when Gabriel reached the edge of the carnation farm. The bright colors of the flowers—oranges, pinks, reds, yellows—swirled before him as he walked right up to Joey from behind, walked right up behind him and wondered what it would feel like to grab his hips and pull the boy’s ass back against his cock. In the stark sunlight he could see how burnt Joey’s skin was, how deeply red and freckled at the back of his neck and his arms. “Por favor,” Gabriel said softly as he came up beside Joey cutting down carnations the color of sunset.

Joey turned slowly, his hand still holding the heavy shears, his one hand gloved, the other glove stuffed in his back pocket. It was only six a.m. but already streaks of color bled across his white T-shirt. He looked at Gabriel and licked his lips, lips full and bruised from the sun. “Hola,” Joey responded, snapping the shears shut and standing up, the cascade of flowers in his arms.

Gabriel looked hard into Joey’s eyes, squinting in the sun, pale green, like sea glass. He wasn’t sure how to ask for what he wanted. Wasn’t sure he knew how to do it without money changing hands.

“When do you leave Fresno?” he asked, and ran the tips of his fingers along the zipper of his jeans. “Why don’t I go with you?”

Joey’s pale green eyes had followed the tracery of Gabriel’s fingers on his cock, had gone there at the same time Gabriel had led him there. “Another half hour,” Joey said, re-opening the shears and heading for the next stalks of flowers. “I’m nearly done here. You want to ride with me?”

Gabriel pulled his wallet from his back pocket and held it out. “Do I need this?” he asked softly.

“Nada, amigo,” Joey said in his lightly accented Spanish, shaking his head.

In the truck they rode in silence out through the fields. Gabriel could smell the carnations, sharp and flinty throughout the cab of the truck, and wondered what his brothers would think when they didn’t find him at the almonds or later at the lemons. When Joey took the turn off the highway half an hour in and headed onto a small road once used to drive cattle, Gabriel slid down in the seat, feeling dizzy suddenly from heat and desire.

“There’s water under the seat,” Joey told him and Gabriel reached under and pulled out a bottle for each of them. Ahead a small grove of old orange trees that looked like they hadn’t been tended in years thickened over the road. Joey pulled up into them and the leafy greenness enveloped the truck. Joey stopped and turned off the engine. He leaned back hard against the seat and looked straight ahead. Neither man spoke.

The first time a man had offered Gabriel money, had held out a fistful of pesos and slid his own fingers in and out of his mouth, making a loud sucking sound, Gabriel hadn’t been sure what to do, had felt a small frisson of excitement, a little twinge of fear. He had just zipped up his pants at the urinal in the back of the little cantina where he sometimes ate lunch when he worked the quarry just to get out of the heat and sun. The man, fortyish with dark hair graying at the sides, wore a suit and tie and kept looking toward the door of the men’s room. When Gabriel hadn’t responded the man had put his hand flat against Gabriel’s zipper, then had cupped the hand over Gabriel’s balls. He had rubbed his own crotch, too, as if showing Gabriel how to do it. Gabriel had reached out and taken the bills from the man, then unzipped his pants, pulled out his dick and begun to stroke it in front of him. He had put his finger in his mouth and then pulled it out slowly, sucking it hard. He remembered the soft moan that had come from the man as he gripped his crotch and rubbed back and forth over his suit pants. Gabriel had reached over and touched the man’s cock through his pants and been surprised at the intensity of his own excitement as he felt the other man’s hardness in his hand. He had stroked them both—his own cock, the other man’s—stroked them hard and fast until the man had said he was going to come and taken Gabriel’s cock in his mouth, taken his own cock in his hands and made them both shoot. He had given Gabriel more money after he washed his hands and rinsed his mouth at the sink.

After that it had been easy to go down to the club by the border and let the gringos do what they wanted to him. Had been easy right up until that tightly rolled peso had been slid into his ass by the one man he had wanted to see again.

Now Gabriel slid across the hot seat of the truck and ran his hand inside Joey’s thigh, ran his hand over the muscled chest under the stained T-shirt, traced his fingers along the sunburnt cheek and waited to see what would happen next. “You want me to suck your cock?” Joey asked him in his flat, breathy Spanish. Gabriel remembered the scene with Mr. Adamos. He shook his head no and leaned forward and began unbuckling Joey’s belt, unzipping his pants, reaching for his stiff cock. It was hot in the truck now that the air-conditioning had been turned off, and Gabriel felt the sweat leak down the back of his neck and under the hair that fell across his forehead. Beyond the open windows insects buzzed and a light breeze riffled the leaves of the orange trees. “Wait,” Joey said and leaned forward, reaching under the seat. “Push back.” Gabriel pushed against the seat and it moved back, nearly flat. Joey slid his pants down, kicking off his boots. He stripped off his shirt and reached behind the seat, pulling a thin blanket out. His skin was a burnished red except for the white section where he wore shorts in the sun. His cock stood stiff and straight out from his body and Gabriel leaned over and ran his tongue down the shaft. He heard the sharp intake of breath from Joey.

Gabriel sat back and pulled off his shirt and boots. Then he waited while Joey unbuckled his belt, bent to unzip his pants. They were both eager now, cocks swollen and hard and ready. This was what Gabriel had imagined as he stood jerking himself off in the dark in the yard while his brothers slept last night—Joey, his legs up, his ass open and ready, his cock thick and pink and aching for Gabriel’s hands and mouth. Joey opened the glove box and pulled out a small tube of something and a couple of condoms. He rolled one onto Gabriel’s cock, slowly, teasingly, like it was his tongue or his mouth enveloping Gabriel’s dick. Slowly, stroking Gabriel’s balls and running his long, tapered finger up toward Gabriel’s asshole while he pushed the condom down hard to the base of his dick.

Joey leaned back against the door of the truck. He was naked and his body was slick with sweat. Gabriel thought he looked oiled, like a bodybuilder in a competition. “Did you like that, what you did with Mr. Adamos?” Gabriel asked him as he lowered his body down onto Joey’s, felt his cock against Joey’s cock and their bodies slick with sweat slapping against each other.

“I used to,” Joey admitted, reaching his hand down to stroke at Gabriel—his cock, now tight in the condom, his balls, tightening with the need to come. “I still like the money.” Then Joey laced his fingers around Gabriel’s neck and pulled his body down onto him. “Fuck me,” he whispered into Gabriel’s neck as he ran his tongue from Gabriel’s earlobe to his shoulder. He slipped the little tube to Gabriel and Gabriel lubed Joey’s ass, then his cock. He pulled Joey flat along the seat of the truck, pulled his legs up and held them over his shoulders, licking and kissing the inside of Joey’s thighs, just as he had wanted to last night and every night since he had seen Joey sucking Mr. Adams’s dick.