Where I Belong

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Harper arrived at Raleigh-Durham International Airport the second week of June with two suitcases, his guitar, and a thirty-day supply of Valium. The prescription for the anti-anxiety medication was Gavin’s idea and probably the best advice he got for the entire trip. As he stumbled off the Jetway, Harper straightened his rumpled yellow polo shirt and loose gray cargo pants, but he was still a disheveled mess.

Meg met him at baggage claim and helped him collect his luggage. From the instant she spied him on the escalator, she bounced around and babbled like every bubbly cheerleader cliché ever written. She was quickly exhausting them both. Harper hoped she’d allow him a little quiet to settle his jumbled mind, but it didn’t happen. Once in the car, Harper had to calm her down or he’d never make it to Ridgefield without strangling her. “Meg, I’m here. I lived here the first eighteen years of my life. You don’t need to sell me.”

“I’m trying too hard. Having you here is making me nervous. I’ll get over it once you’ve been to Mama’s.”

“She knows I’m not seeing her till tomorrow, right? We’re going back to the farm to chill tonight. You, me, and Joe, after his shift ends. No one else. You’re gonna let me start slow. Right?”

“That’s the plan. But, I did ask Lucas to stop by. Since the two of you are living out there together, we thought you should at least meet. Be forewarned, he may hit you up to volunteer at Tomorrow House while you’re here. We always need more gay men to help mentoring the kids.”

“You talk about Tomorrow House a lot. What do they do exactly?” Harper was genuinely curious about the place. His family seemed invested in the organization.

“The official answer is ‘Tomorrow House is a non-profit agency focused on finding at-risk teens the interventions they need in times of crisis.’ But basically, any kid between the ages of twelve and twenty-one can call or walk in and ask for help. Counseling and advocacy are most of what we do, but there are also substance abuse and tutoring programs, life skills classes, as well as just being a safe place for the kids to hang out. More than forty percent of the kids are LGBT and we host PFLAG and other support groups along with on-site STD testing and TeenPositive HIV programs. Our suicide prevention initiatives have received some recognition in the last couple years and I think we’ve saved some lives. This spring we added a few beds for kids with nowhere else to sleep for a night or two. It’s not a shelter, just a safe place to sleep until we can either return them to their families or get them into a long-term housing program. Mostly, it keeps the staff from bringing kids home with them.”

“Wow. I wish those kinds of resources been available when I needed them. It might have changed everything.”

“I couldn’t help you or Scott, but I can help these kids. You’ll be surprised at how many of the volunteers you know.”

“That might be enough reason for me to stay away.” Harper rolled his eyes and stared out the car window.

“Don’t be like that, Harper. People regret what happened to Scott and to you.”

“None of them felt bad enough to step in when it might have made a difference.” Harper didn’t want to sound bitter, but sometimes he was.

“No, they didn’t and they have to live with that.”

Time to move on, Harper thought to himself. “Tell me what’s changed in Ridgefield in the last decade.”

“Mostly, not much…” Meg went on to tell Harper about the new high school and the big box stores that opened over the last few years. She updated him on people around town and places they loved as kids as they made the hour long drive out to the farm. Harper’s questions about various family members and friends helped bolster the conversation and before long they drove down Main Street into the center of town.

Ridgefield was a quintessential North Carolina farm town which thrived during the heydays of the tobacco industry. They grew more sweet potatoes and soybeans than tobacco now, but it was still by and large a farming community. What passed for a downtown fell out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but Harper noticed a couple of empty storefronts and fewer cars than he remembered rolling down Main Street. The town seemed to be holding its own, but competition from the national chains took its toll on local business. Technically, the town was a far outer suburb of Raleigh-Durham, but no one thought of the little town with fewer than five thousand residents that way.

They passed his elementary school and the playground where he’d met Scott on the very first day of first grade. A few minutes later, they passed the house where Scott’s parents once lived and may still, Harper didn’t ask. He closed his eyes to help beat back the panic growing in his chest. The house where he grew up was a few houses down one of the side streets not far away. His mother was still there, even if he had no idea where to find his father.

A few miles later, they veered on to the country lane his grandparents once lived on. The county finally paved the road, which had been gravel when Harper was growing up. They turned left on to a long driveway bisecting what appeared to be sweet potato fields. The standard issue southern farmhouse appeared slowly between the large trees that surrounded the house as they approached. Two creaky rocking chairs with a small table between them sat regally on the deep wraparound porch that graced the front of the house, as if Gramma and Gramps would stroll out and sit with a pitcher of sweet tea any second. Harper’s eyes welled as he realized how much this piece of land meant to him and how deeply he’d missed it.

Across the field to the west, Harper considered the cozy little two-bedroom bungalow built for his great-grandparents when his grandparents were married and took over the farm. Once his grandparents accepted neither of their sons were ever going to be farmers, they converted the bungalow into guest quarters. Harper’s father, Victor, became a fireman and eventually Ridgefield Fire Chief and Uncle Paul was an accountant with his own firm in town. His grandparents weren’t disappointed by their sons’ career choices, but they didn’t feel the need to move out of their home once their sons married either.

“Meg, what room should I put my crap in?”

“Joe and I use the blue room. We keep clothes and stuff here so we don’t need to bring a suitcase when we come down. Gramma’s room and the yellow room are clean and either one is yours. The attic is being used for storage and there’s no way anyone’s sleeping up there right now, but you should definitely poke around to see if there is anything you want to ship back to Colorado. The sheets and towels in the linen closet are fresh, too.”

“I guess I’ll take the yellow room. There is no way I could sleep in Gramma’s bed. If it’s okay, I’ll go up and take a shower and change. I may unpack before I come down, so don’t send a search party if I’m not back right away.”

“Whatever. It’s your house as much as it is mine. Joe should be here by six-thirty and Lucas said he’d bring chess pie from Miss Dottie’s over around eight. I’ll throw together shrimp and grits and make a salad when we’re ready. You have a few hours to settle in.”

Harper left his guitar in the living room and carted everything else upstairs. The yellow room had always been a guest room and was as timeless as ever. Someone repainted recently, but the mahogany sleigh bed and the white bedspread his grandmother crocheted as a newlywed were the same as he remembered. Harper sat in the floral overstuffed armchair staring out of the window at fields of sweet potato and tried to relax. Memories buffeted him as if he was being swept out to sea. Wave after wave of sadness flowed through him until he pushed the emotion back far enough to keep his head above water.

After a quick shower, Harper ran his fingers through his wet hair, sorry he forgot to get it cut before he left Colorado. He threw on a vintage Grand Ole Opry T-shirt from his Nashville days and his softest jeans worn through at the knees. Comfort was his only goal. As he ran out the door, Harper hollered to Meg that he was heading out to the pond and he’d be back to help with dinner.

The walk to the pond led him across the backyard, down the hill to the path into the woods and he could have easily followed it blindfolded and dizzy. The pond was special for a lot of reasons but mostly because it was Scott’s favorite place to hang out all summer. Spring fed and larger than a swimming hole, the pond was tucked in the woods and mostly surrounded by mature trees. Someone had installed a small wooden dock long before Harper was born and they spent many afternoons fishing there. Gramps stocked it with bass and catfish every few years, but who knew if there were even still fish down there now. This was also the place where everything changed the day Harper kissed Scott for the first time.

The summer before his grandfather died, Harper and Scott were fifteen and spending a couple weeks of their vacation helping out on the farm. Harper accepted he was attracted to other boys in the sixth grade, but couldn’t bring himself to say anything. Just the idea of telling Scott terrified him, mostly because he was already hopelessly in love with his best friend.

On that particular day, it was hot and muggy even by Carolina standards. They spent the late afternoon swimming to cool off after working hard most of the day. Scott hoped to make the varsity football team in the fall. He was a better player than a lot of the guys already on the team, but sophomores rarely made varsity. One of the coaches told him swimming would help build his endurance, so he always swam a few extra laps whenever they visited the pond.

Harper sprawled on one of the large flat rocks bordering the water, he leaned back on his elbows to watch Scott swim. His best friend was beautiful as his strong muscles rippled with each stroke. Before that thought bubble fully closed in his head, Harper’s d**k was already painfully hard. He sat up and crossed his legs indian-style and leaned his elbows onto his knees, hoping the bump in his shorts would be less obvious.

Scott finished his last lap across the pond and stood up to climb out. Harper’s breath caught as Scott’s perfect masculine body emerged from the water. The longing must have shown on his face because Scott stared back at him knowingly with enough lust that even fifteen-year-old Harper understood it plainly. Scott sat beside him on the rock and they continued to stare at each other for a long minute. Harper couldn’t resist anymore, and he planted a chaste kiss on Scott’s soft pink lips. Scott pulled away whispering, “What the hell, Harper?” They stared at each other again, this time a hair’s breadth away from panic. Scott reached out and put his hand on the nape of Harper’s neck and pulled him into a full-fledged tongue wrestling kiss, curling their toes and leaving little room for doubt that they shared more than friendship.

Later, they ambled back to the farm for some sweet tea before riding their bikes home without ever talking about what they’d done. More furtive kisses and groping happened over that summer and into the school year, but they hid behind an unspoken agreement to pretend they didn’t have all these powerful and confusing feelings. In their minds, if they didn’t talk about it, nothing would change.

Harper sat cross-legged on the same flat rock where they shared that first kiss and attempted to separate all the wonderful memories from the pain of what happened at the end. He wanted to remember without the debilitating grief, but Harper couldn’t get there. Agony washed over him with each memory and he wept. He wept for Scott, for himself, for his family, for everyone who was hurt because Harper and Scott loved each other so much they couldn’t deny it. Harper splashed cool water on his face and trudged back to the house, trying to figure out how he’d survive even a week in this place.

Meg was sitting on the back steps with Joe when Harper returned. Without a word, she stood up and wrapped her arms around him and whispered gentle words of comfort. “It’s gonna get better, Harper. You have been holding so much inside for so long, it’s gonna feel like a dam has burst inside you. But it will get better. It will. I promise.” Harper stood in Meg’s embrace and accepted the balm to his soul that was his sister.

The trio went inside and shared a simple dinner he and Meg had eaten at the same beat-up kitchen table dozens of times before with their grandparents. Harper listened to Meg and Joe discuss the day and the most recent plans for their wedding, but didn’t participate in the conversation except to answer questions directed at him. By the time dinner was over he was a little more in control of his emotions.

“Come on boys, let’s sit on the front porch and enjoy this lovely evening. Joe, bring the beer from the fridge and Harper, grab your guitar. Gramps would be thrilled to hear his guitar being played on this porch again after so many years.” Both men scrambled to do Meg’s bidding. Harper sat in his grandfather’s rocking chair and played requests from both Meg and Joe to pass the time until Lucas showed up with dessert.

As he sang the last of James Taylor’s “Carolina In My Mind,” Harper watched a handsome man wearing jeans and a slim, white, polo shirt wend his way down the driveway carrying a pink bakery box by the string. He appeared to be thirtyish, six feet tall, and stacked. The guy definitely put his time in at the gym. As he came closer, Harper took note of the short, golden blond hair and mossy hazel eyes that were nothing but soft and comforting. Harper assumed this was his neighbor, Lucas.

The overall effect of Lucas’s appearance was startlingly and for Harper powerfully s****l. Concentrating on the song proved difficult with all the blood in his body rushing south. It had been a while since he’d responded so strongly to anyone on sight alone. With Harper’s luck, the guy was probably straight and that would suck.

Lucas stepped up onto the porch and leaned against the column enjoying the last moments of the song. An awkward silence rang as Harper stopped playing before Meg made the introductions. “Lucas Rhodes, this is my long-lost brother and your temporary neighbor, Harper Ellison.”

“Nice to meet you. Don’t stop playing on my account.” Lucas smiled and gave Harper an appreciative glance.

“It’s okay. I’m played out for now and you brought pie.” Harper smiled crookedly as he caught his new neighbor checking him out. Oh hell. Maybe he’s not so straight after all.

Meg obviously caught the sparks arcing between the two men, but didn’t comment. “The bugs are going to carry someone off soon. We should have dessert inside.” Taking Joe’s hand, she pulled him into the house, leaving Harper and Lucas to follow.

In the living room, Harper stopped to put his guitar into its case. When he turned around, Lucas was standing a few feet away watching him. Harper grinned slyly and placed a hand on Lucas’s arm. “Time for pie. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.” Shocked at his own subtle flirting, Harper led Lucas into the kitchen without waiting for a reply.

Dessert was fun. They chatted about all sorts of everyday things as they got to know one another. Harper told a few funny stories about his grandparents and the farm no one had heard before. All the while, Lucas and Harper sneaked glances at one another whenever they thought they wouldn’t be caught and exchanged small smiles whenever they were.

“Well folks, this has been great, but I’ve gotta get some sleep. It’s a school night.” Lucas stood and stretched his back.

Harper wanted a few more minutes with the hot neighbor. “Thanks for coming over. The pie was awesome. Meg, I’ll walk Lucas out if it’s okay with you.”

Meg grinned. “Sure. We’ll finish cleaning up and head up to bed. See you in the morning. Good night Lucas.”

Harper rolled his eyes at his sister and stepped out the back door with Lucas. They strolled to the spot where the driveway bent towards the guest house. “It was great to meet you. I’ll be over here by myself during the week, and as there is no love lost between me and the good people of Ridgefield, I’ll surely need a friendly face from time to time, so don’t be a stranger.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be around. Meg, Joe, and I are close so I know why you’re here and what’s happening with Charlotte. Just remember that I’m pretty much a professional listener, so if you need to talk you can always call me.”

“Thanks. I’m not sure what I need right now.”

Lucas gave Harper a wink and grinned. “I might be willing to help you figure that out, too, if you give me a chance.”

“Good night, neighbor.” Harper blushed before he returned the grin and sauntered back into the house.