Chapter 1
“We’ve got about twenty more miles to go, and we’ll be at my parent’s house,” Jonah says to his boyfriend of six months. “It will be five-thirty when we land; one hour behind schedule.”
Sandy Keye sits behind the wheel of his 2017 Ford F-250 truck. It’s a massive truck, and Jonah thinks his boyfriend looks lost within the cab, almost miniature, a dwarf from some fantasy paperback.
Sandy’s a patient man at thirty-six and says, “I’ve got the next two days off to spend with you and your family. Something tells me we’re going to have the time of our lives by the lake, or it will be a total nightmare.”
Jonah Icicle still drools over Sandy after meeting him this past summer, believing him to be one of the most handsome men on the planet because of his blond hair and matching beard, blue eyes, and well-built frame. Stinging hot comes to mind. Sexy as hell. A guy who makes him go hard, erotically appealing, without even seeing Sandy naked. When standing, his boyfriend is six-two and bulky with muscle, probably because he works out at Pumps Gym at least four times a week. A Hollywood-perfect man with an athletic appearance. Top-notch American Ninja Warrior competitor or Thor ruggedness, if he wants to be. Dirty. Sexy. Never plain. Sandy isn’t like Jonah’s previous boyfriends. Not at all. He’s a keeper, adorable, caring, and…his
Their history together entails extraordinary fireworks from the start: meeting at a Fourth of July party in downtown Pittsburgh, both of them a little drunk by the Monongahela River, horny and giddy. They kissed, danced together, drank too much, and eventually ended up in a stranger’s bed together for an hour, two hours, almost three hours. After the fireworks display that lit up the sky, ending their evening together, they realized they liked each other and had a date, two dates, three dates and became boyfriends/lovers.
Although the two men are in love, dating for the last six months, they still live apart: Sandy in a townhouse on Cantell Road, hidden in the woods near Rossner Township, and Jonah in a Cape Cod in downtown Pittsburgh, next to the History Center. They see each other more than five times a week, spending long hours together: dining, grocery shopping, afternoon or evening coffee dates, walking, making love, watching movies, exercising, and other daily events they enjoy. Neither has mentioned marriage yet. And neither desires kids, abhorring the small creatures, what Jonah thinks as crayon gobblers. Simply, the two men like to date each other, spend quality time together, and make love, still learning the ins and outs of their close relationship.
Their jobs keep them away from each other sometimes. Sandy travels to the coldest parts of the Earth to study the environment. Jonah flies all over the country, creating slice-of-life articles for an e-magazine called American Lives. When they are not together, they miss each other. They use their phones to chat, send each other pictures of their voyages, and try to talk, depending on what parts of the world they are in. Always busy. Men at work.
This trip north is one of the few they take together. Jonah feels fuzzy-headed and romantic. Truth is, he’s been looking forward to this adventure since Thanksgiving, spending quality time with Sandy, consumed by the man, involved in their relationship.
* * * *
“Snow’s coming down harder than what weatherman Jack said it will,” Sandy says, always throwing Jack Lane, a mutual friend of theirs, under the bus for doing a shitty job.
“Jack’s a good guy. He can’t help it that he sucks at guessing what the weather’s going to be. We have to give him credit when it’s due. He at least gets half of his predictions right.”
Sandy cracks the driver’s side window, cooling the cab of the truck. Someone has to since it’s too hot and feels like the shuttle to hell.
Does Jonah think this two-day trip is going to be a disaster for Sandy? Yes, of course. Sandy should have stayed put in Pittsburgh. Nothing feels right about this trip. He’s nervous as hell, but he doesn’t really know why. The right corner of his left eye twitches, and his hands are shaky. Jonah believes Sandy will have a breakdown by the end of this short trip: an explainable explosion of corpuscles along both temples. Boom! and boom!
“Jack told me you have a bunch of loons in your family. That’s what he called them. Loons.”
Jonah chuckles in the passenger seat. “He may be on to something. What else did he tell you?”
Sandy lifts his right foot off the accelerator. He’s careful of the combative weather and the road’s icy and slick condition. Nasty shit. Bad weather all the way. ”Let’s just say it should be an interesting Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.”
“Jack and I go way back, which you know. He’s spent summers by the lake with my family. My mother treats him like one of her own sons, better than me most of the time. He knows a lot about the Icicles. All the good and bad things.”
“Has he spent holidays with you and your family?”
“Too many to count. Jack has seen the love and hate in full force. He’s always had a bird’s eye view of the chaos, love, tragedies, and whatnots. It’s probably why I’ve always considered him a brother.”
There’s a case of white zinfandel behind the seats, gifts for the Icicles. The bottles clink together in their box, and the sound is irritating. A perfect gift for an already polluted family.