Read Out of the Blues for Free Online Page B

here to celebrate with us. In a couple of days we will be saying our I Do’s and settling into old married people life. But tonight we’re all going to be young and get shitfaced. And while I’m up here, and my brother is here, looking gorgeous as ever, say hey to Mace, y’all. I had to beg him. Beg him ! To come to my wedding and be my best man of honor. He didn’t want to. He’s up in Napa being a lawyer and right now he’s going to do exactly what I say because he made me beg and promise not to…make him sing. So guess what? I’m not going to make him sing but I am going to make him play for us so I can sing, because I’ve had enough to drink to think this is a great idea. Oh hey, band guy, can we borrow your guitar since you’re not using it?”
    Her voice was thickly accented and perky as hell, but somehow I found that endearing. She wasn’t drinking. Neither she nor Hunter was drinking. Mason Foxworth was drinking…bottled water. Why was I the only one drinking? “Did she just say they graduated seven years ago? And she thinks they’re old. Fuck, what the hell does that make me?”
    “Besides the oldest person in this place?” Hunter thought he was so fucking hilarious.
    “I graduated fourteen years ago. And thirty-two is not old.” I was becoming argumentative. Time to go home. “Fuck, it’s what? Ten o’clock and I’m ready to go home and take a nap. Shit, I’m old.” I drained my beer and my brother laughed at me.
    “That’s one opinion, bro. A wrong opinion but you keep on with what gets you through the night.”
    “He’s seven years younger than me, Hunter.” I didn’t want to have this conversation.
    “And you want him so badly you’re sweating.”
    Was I sweating?
    “Kilby, it’s been four years. He’s a grown man. If he wants to hook-up with you while you’re both here, then don’t fucking sweat it. Get laid. Be happy about it. Go home Sunday and find someone you like and get on with your life because four years is a hell of long time to go without getting any, man. A long fucking time.”
    “Too fucking long, and how would you know? I don’t tell you everything.”
    “You don’t tell me anything, but I’ve known you most of my life. I remember when you threw up because you kissed a boy and the guilt ate at you so much you thought you were dying. Man, your mother was a damned saint.”
    I remembered that day. I kissed a boy at bible school when I was fourteen. The summer before high school. I’d wanted to kiss him for years but he only came around in the summers. So we kissed and maybe got to first base. I was so messed up over what had happened that I was physically sick by the time I got home. Hunter had found me on my hands and knees throwing up in my mother’s rose bushes and crying because I thought I was being punished. I came out to my family that night. “My mother was a saint.”
    “I miss her so much. She died before I really got a chance to tell her how much I loved her. God, I miss her.” Hunter sighed, maybe there were tears in his eyes. “Our parents accepted you, Kilby. You were a kid and you were letting it tear you apart, and my dad and your mom, they sat there with you and they told you it was okay. That you weren’t going to hell and that it was okay to love another boy if that’s what you wanted. I remember that even if you don’t. I was all of eight or nine at the time. It’s one of the things that stayed with me you know. I idolized you and there you were telling our parents that you were gay and that you’d leave if they wanted you too.”
    Hunter looked so much like his father. The resemblance punched me in the gut. His dad was probably around the same age I am now on that night. I remember Hunter standing on the porch, his hands wrapped around the railing, tears streaked through the dirt on his face. He’d played hooky from bible school and I went because I wanted to spend time with… “I don’t remember his name.” I was