Mongrel [bxb] | Bad Moon Book III

Chapter 8: headshot

Maybe Bailey was different, or maybe it was Matt. But something changed after that night.

Matt spent less time avoiding him around the farm and more time helping with the hard labor projects his father assigned. And in return, Bailey spent more time around the guest house. He started to shower every night and stick around for dinner and the evening news, and Matt didn't mind his company all that much. He wasn't like Jess; Bailey spoke when spoken to and the silence that occurred when he chose not to talk at all felt natural enough that Matt had twice now fallen asleep to the sound of his endless sketching and nothing else.

It was a Tuesday evening when he brought the first boy to the farm. Thin and small, clean and coiffed. He walked with an effeminate grace and weak ankles. Matt watched from the kitchen window that night, wondering just who and what Bailey Walters was waiting for, slouched beneath the motion light of his barn in the dead of night. Maybe he was amalgamating with the dark. Makin' skin to skin contact with the shadows that bore him.

Then the blond showed up. Seemed nice enough to Matt, but Bailey treated him with a strange kinda softness that felt all wrong to watch. Dark fingers ruffled through his fair, blond-white hair, like a pup praised for fetching the right pair of shoes. That was how Bailey always greeted him. Like a soft, stupid thing.

Then they'd go into the barn together, the lights would shut off, and in an hour he'd leave just the way he came. Gracefully effeminate and weak in the ankles.

They were a wrong pairing. The kid couldn't have been older than eighteen, the kinda dimples you could see from miles away. Long lashes and honey-brown eyes that swelled with the motion light of the barn. He was punctual. Kinda kid you'd see on retail posters. Always left with his cheeks red and his hands stuffed in his khaki shorts.

He wore khaki shorts, for Christ's sake.

Matt wondered what he was doing with Bailey—a boy who looked like he slept in the jaws of the city, dressed in black and drudged in dirt, and torn at every weak, outworn seam. More than anything, Matt wondered what he meant to the hound. The way Bailey treated him, Matt wanted to know—was he special?

But then Bailey started to bring other boys to his loft. Muscled tall ones, older ones that wore suits and fine watches, tiny ones, like the blond from before. He could do what he wanted, so long as he didn't get caught—that was what Matt told himself.

Then came the evening Jess arrived in a dress that stopped at her thigh. She unloaded armfuls of groceries and the words happy anniversary ticked in Matt's head like the countdown of a time bomb. They ate expensive steaks, drank fine wine. And as Matt leaned over the sink to do the dishes, he saw Bailey once again with the dimpled, brown-eyed blond. His hands were sudsy with the soap from the sponge, but his fingers went limp around the knife he held and he watched with the strangest curiosity as Bailey ran those dark fingers through that pale, downy hair. Jess came up behind him at some point—wrapped her arms around his middle and whispered filthy things in his ear. Matt listened to every word she said. Every indecent sound. And as he did, he watched Bailey pressed the kid up against the rain-wet wood of the barn wall. Felt Jess's hands slide under the waistband on his jeans as the two kissed in the cold night rain, beneath that pale motion light.

He never came in for dinner. He never came to shower.

That night, Matt laid tangled in the sheets beside Jess's tiny, naked shape. His hand rested between her bare breasts, watching her chest move as she slept. He wondered when he stopped loving the shape of her. The soft of her skin. She was beautiful—every bit of her. He didn't deserve it.

Tell your wife you don't want to fuck her, Bailey had said. Let her find someone who does.

He thought about it all the time. It would be hard, though. Hard to tell her. Hard to let her walk away when she was the only person in this world who'd ever loved him like this. It stung but he couldn't keep lyin' to himself anymore. He didn't love Jess.