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For a kid that had only ever had to drive for an hour at a time when they were traveling to his grandparents estate in the woods, Bobby was handling the trip from Texas to Wyoming very well. He had transitioned from flicking through the radio stations to find something interesting to staring out of the window to reading a book, at least until he got carsick. Jack was glad that he had been the one handling the majority of the parenting for when Bobby was young when that happened.
“Almost there,” Jack muttered as he reached down and turned on the music again. He had been turning it on and off as they passed through dead zones. He knew every single one of them, since he had been driving up to Wyoming several times a year every single year for more than a decade. Bobby had barely even noticed and hadn’t asked any questions, which was nice.
“You’ve been saying that for the past hour and a half, Daddy,” Bobby commented. He was looking out of the window again, the sickly green of his face from his bout with motion sickness now only clinging to the top of his cheeks and ears.
“Well, when the drive is fourteen hours the last two start to feel real short,” Jack replied. “Plus I gotta pee again. Ennis house may be way smaller than ours, but I know it’s gotta a place to piss.”
“You’ve had to pee every half hour. That’s why it’s taking so long,” Bobby complained.
“Yeah, well, I gotta medical reason for that,” Jack commented. He pursed his lips and then cleared his throat as he gripped the steering well a bit tighter. The thought had been on his mind since they had left their house in Texas, all the things that they’d need immediately packed into the trunk of the car. Lureen was allegedly going to mail out the rest of their things once they had a permanent address for her to do so. He hadn’t yet told Bobby the reason that all of this was happening and he felt bad for it, but he wanted to be able to give his son the entire story.
Bobby looked at him like he was waiting for the reason, and when it became apparent that nothing was coming he turned his head and looked away. Jack kept an eye on his son as they continued down the dirt and barely pathed paths that led Jack back to the man that he had always wanted. Guilt grew more and more in his stomach as he began to realize just what he had done to all of the people in his life.
He had loved Lureen like any man would love a woman, she was a good wife that didn’t nag too much but was a shitty absent mother. He had broken her heart when the truth had come out and she realized who and what he really was. He had broken Bobby’s heart by forcing him to move away from all the friends that he had made back in Texas and the family that he had known far better than Jack’s folks. He was driving to Ennis with boxes full of stuff, a story about a divorce on his ear and lips, and the biggest secret that he had ever kept in his entire life. He knew that there was a very good chance that this could end up with his heart shattered into pieces, but the money from the Lureen’s daddy sat heavy in his shirt pocket to remind him that he had a way to support himself while everything was getting figured out.
“I want you to stay in the car with the windows up, there’s a chill and I don’t want you getting the flu before we even get to meet grandma and grandpa,” Jack said when they finally pulled into the driveway that led to Ennis’ house. While they were driving, he had been afraid that he wouldn’t be able to find the place since he had only sent postcards to it before. Given that it was the only house down the dusty road, though, it was easy to find the trailer.
“Fine, Daddy,” Bobby sighed. Jack knew that it wasn’t really fair to ask that of his son given that they had both been in the car for the same amount of time and deserved to stretch their legs, but it was important. He needed to have a discussion with Ennis without his son around, that was part of the reason he hadn’t actually told Bobby about why they were moving or the exact reasons the divorce had happened.
“Ennis Del Mar!” Jack shouted excited. Despite the anxiety and nervousness that had plagued him since that first day he had gotten himself into this situation, the moment that he saw that mop of blond, curly hair, he felt it all wash away from him at once. Ennis looked just as he had the last time that they had disappeared into the wilderness together. He had never really aged, other than more freckles than the last time they had seen each other as he began to spend more time int he sun without his hat.
“Jack, what are you doing here?” Ennis asked. He stepped away from the truck where he had been talking to someone through the window and then walked in the same path that Jack was taking. The two of them were quickly in each other’s arms, the same magnetism that they had experienced all those years ago bringing them back together. It felt right, reassuring and proper in a way that barely anything else in Jack’s life ever had before. He hoped that he got to experience that emotion again once their conversation was over.
“Well, I heard about the divorce and figured that I would come up,” Jack began.
They pulled apart from the hug and Jack’s hand moved on its own without even asking him what he wanted it to do. He was cupping the back of Ennis’ head, his fingers brushing over the longer of the golden brown curls that clung to his scalp. His eyes flicked down from the beautiful eyes that he could find himself lost in to the perfectly curved lips that he had kissed so many times before. He was a breath away from leaning forward and recreating the experience for the upteenth time when Ennis pulled fully away from him.
“The girls are in the car, s’all,” Ennis said as he pointed back towards the truck. “Got them for the weekend, so figured that we should spend as much of it together as we could. Now that I don’t get to see them every day after work outside of the overnights.”
“Makes sense,” Jack sighed. He turned back to look through the window of his own car and saw that Bobby had slunk down in his seat again. Poor boy was probably sore from the waist down from being in the same position for most of the day. Hopefully it would be over soon and both of them could go up to Lightning Flat to have an awkward dinner with Jack’s parents.
Before he had the chance to say anything else, Ennis turned them back towards the truck that he had been leaning on moments before. “Jack, these are my girls. Alma Junior and Jenny, this is Jack Twist,” Ennis introduced them with a vague motion from his hand. It was such an Ennis move that it made the longing in the pit of Jack’s stomach wrench his guts up into a ball.
Ennis turned back around, mirroring the action that Jack had done earlier by hiding his hands in his pockets. “You see why I can’t do this on this weekend? Gotta spend time with them where I can.”
“Normally I would take that and just go,” Jack said. He shoved his hands down into the pockets of his jeans as he tried to deal with the feelings that were tumultuously brewing in his chest, threatening to spill from his lips in a much less eloquent way than he wanted them to.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ennis asked. His eyes narrowed in that way that meant something dangerous was about to come. Jack had only ever seen it when he was doing something like this, objecting over a very fair offer that had been given to him by the grace in Ennis’ heart.
Jack rocked back and forth twice on his feet just to find something more to do with himself. He was stalling when he really shouldn’t, because the matter that he was planning on talking to Ennis about was more serious than one of their dates up into the mountains. “Ennis, we have to talk about something and we have to talk about it now. If we don’t talk about it right here and now then I’m going to lose my nerve.”
The other cowboy’s eyes went wide with alarm and he glanced back to his car. “I’ll just be a second girls, promise!” he called to them as he grabbed Jack’s arm and then led them a few more feet from where they had been before. He was grateful for it, he knew that he could only admit this secret to three or four people that day and he hadn’t really counted on Ennis’ girls being one of them even if he was sure that they were perfectly charming.
“What’s going on with you, Jack Twist? You ride all the way up here uninvited because you hear that I’m divorced and now you’re refusing to leave? I hope you don’t think that I left Alma for you,” Ennis said. Jack could see the hut in his eyes over that notion and understood then that the divorce the other had was very different than the one that Jack had.
He and Lureen had never been in love with each other. They had found each other at a rodeo and then she’d ended up in the family way. She was from one of the really proper wealthy families that were littered around the west, so when she found out that she was going to have a baby it resulted in a tidal wave of things. They had gotten married, bought a house, and retired from the rodeo work that they had both loved to do so that they could work with her father instead. Neither of them had felt any love lost when they had signed the divorce paperwork and Jack had actually been excited because now he had the money to get himself a house and some proper equipment for the ranch on Lightning Flat.
Ennis, on the the other hand, had mentioned Alma more times than Jack could count when they were up on Brokeback Mountain. He knew that she had been the only girl that had ever given him the time of day and they were close simply because they were both quiet. They had found companionship with each other and when that broke it hurt. They had also had two children together long after they were married instead of their first kid being conceived in the back of a car because they were too fast. It was a divorce that never should have happened and obviously hurt them both very much. Jack would be sure not to step on toes about it in the future, but he had to tread all over them in that moment before Ennis never found out about his own dirty secret.
“You remember the last time that we went up to the Mountain? You were in a surly way and you said that you had to be the one on top so that you could get the aggression out without putting my headfirst into the river,” Jack explained.
“Don’t pretend that you didn’t like it, I saw the way that you looked at me after that punch that first summer,” Ennis replied, his drawl a little thicker and his eyes a little heavier.
“Yeah, yeah, but that’s besides the point right now,” Jack immediately shut him down. If Ennis hadn’t been willing to talk to him with his girls in the truck then the blond would thank Jack for not dragging him further into those feelings of lust that they were always thrown into when they were around one another. “I started feeling like shit when I got back to Texas. Thought that it was that shit feeling that we manage to give each other every time we’re apart, feeling like we left our souls or hearts or whatever behind on the mountain. But then it turned physical, starting puking and pissing all the time. Clothes got tight, so I went to the doctor. I’m pregnant, Ennis.”
He didn’t know what reaction he was expecting from the other man, but arms around his body hadn’t been one of them. He had been expecting anger and shouting, maybe even another swift punch to the face, but not elatement and joy. Ennis had been so terrified of the idea that someone might find out that they were together that they had only ever met each other in a hotel once, every other time they had camped up in the woods despite their aging bodies not agreeing with it anymore.
“You alright there, En?” Jack asked as he dropped his hands down to where they belonged when they were holding each other. It felt almost foriegn to be displaying that kind of affection for each other when they both knew that their children were in their respective cars.
“I fucking hate you,” Ennis whispered.
That made his heart seize with desperation. He couldn’t hear that Ennis hated him, not right now. Their baby was growing in his belly and he needed support, he had just lost it in all the other forms that he had. His parents certainly weren’t going to like that he was pregnant and even if they did manage to persuade Ennis to marry Jack, then he would just be in the same place that he had been in with Lureen but finding more heartache around each corner.
Ennis pulled back, one of his large hands cupping the back of Jack’s head so that their eyes could look into the other’s. It made Jack feel like their souls were pouring out and into each other all at once. “Why do you hate me?” Jack asked, hating the broken way that the words dropped from his lips.
“You made me fall in love with you that first summer, and then I had to go down and be a good man. I had told Alma that I would marry her and so that was what I did. I was terrified of someone finding out that I loved another man more than I loved her, because that meant that someone might take their shitty feelings out on me. I know now that was what really happened to that man I saw in the ditch. He wasn’t killed cause he was a queer, he was killed because someone got their panties in a twist about words that were never actually written in God’s book. I couldn’t tear you away from your wife and son, I knew that you had made yourself a life like I did. Wouldn’t be fair of me to come crawling to you when I had blown up my life and beg you to do the same.”
“That doesn’t explain why you hate me, Ennis Del Mar,” Jack said. What Ennis was saying was sweet and kind in all the ways that he needed to be. His heart felt like it was bleeding into his chest, he was lightheaded and he knew that there were tears threatening to spill down his face like a river.
“I hate you because you’re giving me everything that I wanted. I loved Alma because she was the only person that gave me the time of day, not because we had some kind of connection. We got along fine, but not the way that I get along with you. I want this, I want us to be together and I want to raise a baby with you. Nothing can hold us back from this anymore,” Ennis grinned.
“Did you have some kind of divine vision or something? Is that what Methodists believe in?” Jack asked, narrowing his eyes as he searched for the anger that he had been expecting in some form or another.
“I have faith, Jack Twist. I don’t know about God or the Holy Spirit or anything like that, but I know you. You make things work when they’re not supposed to. You can make me talk more than I have in an entire year, you can make sheep appear outta nowhere without marks on their fleece, you can stay on the back of a bucking bronco for longer than I could ever dream. You make things happen and you’re making our family happen,” Ennis insisted.
Jack grinned, unable to stop the butterfly of feelings that rushed through his body and made him feel like nothing more than a giddy schoolgirl. “So you saying that the offer of the ranch is finally on the table nice and proper?”
“Not so much on the table as underway,” Ennis replied. One of his hands came down to hold Jack’s hand while the other cupped his stomach. They stayed like that for only a second before they leaned forward and shared a kiss with one another, not caring that their children were watching them.
The kids would learn. They got to know each other and their new step-parent, adjusting far faster than either man had expected. Bobby liked his other grandparents very much since they were quiet and respectful of his wishes while not just giving him everything that he wanted. They lived in Ennis’ cramped trailer while their house was being built, a quaint three story on the other end of Lightning Flat. Jenny and Junior visited as often as Alma and her new husband would allow them, which wasn’t very but they made the best of the time that they were permitted. Faith Twist was born six months after both men had divorced and then remarried each other. She had a hard life ahead of her, full of bigotry and idiocy, but her parents were stronger than they seemed and would fight for her no matter what.