“You’re a helluva man,” Jeremy responded to Kyle’s suggestion, “but everything’s been moving way too fast for me. I don’t think I’m ready to take it up the ass just yet.”

“OK, sport, but just remember where to come when you are ready.”

Jeremy smiled back at the giant teddy bear. At the same time, he recalled the advice that Kenny had given him earlier: “You need to decide what you really want.” In having sex with Brandon and then with Kenny and Kyle, was Jeremy simply spreading his wings, exploring his new-found sexual interests, or was he trying to escape the feelings he had begun to develop for Brad?

“We gotta be going anyway,” said Kenny. “Brad’s gonna be wondering why we aren’t back with his things.”

As Kenny and Kyle got dressed, Jeremy called out, “Hold on. I’m going with you.”

“I’m not so sure that’s such a good idea, Jeremy,” said Kenny.

“I don’t care. I’ve got to talk to Ford, and there’s no time like the present.”

Reluctantly, Kenny and Kyle acquiesced.

When the three men got to Kenny and Kyle’s apartment, they heard primal moans and screams emanating from the guest room. “Sounds like Brad’s entertaining right now. We’d better just wait ’til he comes out.”

Kyle mixed some drinks while Jeremy blazed a footpath in the living room carpet. Nearly an hour later, a very attractive young woman exited the back of the apartment, buttoning up her blouse as she headed for the door. A few minutes later, Red, the physical trainer Jeremy had met at the bar with Brad, emerged, zipping up his denim shorts. Directly behind him came Brad, clad in nothing but his police cap and gun belt. Daammnn sexy.

“Jeremy, what the fuck are you doing here? Never mind. I don’t need to know. Just don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”

“Wait, Brad,” said Kenny, blocking him from returning to the bedroom from which he had just come. “Hear him out. I don’t know what he intends to say, but I do know that the two of you have got to work this thing out.”

Reluctantly, Brad agreed.

“And put some damn clothes on!” Jeremy mocked.

Hearing his own words thrown back at him brought a defenseless smile to Brad’s lips. He went to the bedroom, put on a comfortable warm-up suit, and returned to the living room.

“We should leave the two of you alone,” said Red.

“Wait. Before you go, I want to ask a favor of you. I don’t really know anybody else in New Orleans. I want the three of you and Brandon to be my groomsmen, and I want Ford…uh, Brad…to be my best man. Will you do that for me?” Kenny, Kyle, and Red thanked Jeremy for the invitation and readily accepted. Brad held back.

“You don’t have to answer me right now, Brad. Let’s talk, and then you can decide.”

Brad didn’t exactly accept the idea, but he didn’t reject it either, so Jeremy took that as a positive sign.

“We’ll be there for you, Jeremy, regardless of what Brad decides,” said Kyle. “Now, we’ll leave you two to talk it out.”

Once Kenny, Kyle, and Red had left, Jeremy suggested that he and Brad sit down on the sofa, but Brad turned instead and walked over to the wet bar to mix himself a drink. Jeremy waited for him to return. When Brad meandered back over to the sofa, Jeremy signaled toward the couch with his open hand and said, “Please.” The two men sat at opposite ends of the sofa like two boxers in opposite corners of a ring.

“Look, Brad, please don’t be mad at me.”

“Goddam it, Jeremy! I’m not mad at you! I’m mad at me! You didn’t do anything wrong. I came on to you, and, God help me, I’d like nothing better right now than to rip your clothes off and fuck your brains out! But I can’t, and it’s tearing me apart.”

“Brad, Brad. It’s not your fault. You had no idea who I was. I could have stopped you, but I didn’t. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t. I wanted you to take me. I still do...but I won’t. Truth is, I really do love Amy, and I want to spend the rest of my life with her, and I’m not going to give her any reason to doubt my loyalty. Can you accept that?”

“What about that night?”

“Well, maybe it was a mistake; maybe it wasn’t. We’ll just chalk it up as a once-in-a-lifetime experience and let it go at that.”

“It’s not that easy, Jeremy. I don’t know if I can—”

“You don’t seem to be having any trouble moving on,” said Jeremy, motioning toward the bedroom where Brad had apparently just enjoyed a three-way roll in the hay.

Brad let out an involuntary chuckle, which broke the ice and allowed the two men to relax a bit.

“So, Brad, will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Will you be my best man?”

“I guess I’ll have to,” replied Brad. “Somebody’s gotta keep you outta trouble.”

A brotherly handshake sealed the deal.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Brad?”

“Sure. Might as well.”

“Who knows that you’re bisexual? Besides Red, Kenny, and Kyle, I mean.”

“Well, just about everybody in the gay and bisexual community here. The ones who go to the clubs anyway. And most of the guys on the force. I don’t make an issue of it, and they don’t either.”

“What about your family? Does Amy know?”

“Nah, I don’t think Amy has any idea. Now, don’t get me wrong. She’s my sister, and I love her dearly, but she’s always been too wrapped up in her own relationships to pay any attention to mine.”

“And your folks?”

“Dad has never said anything, but for some reason I think he suspects. I don’t think it would really make any difference to him, though. He’s been all over the world and seen just about everything there is to see. I don’t think anything would shock him. Mom? Now, that’s another story. Even if she walked into the room and caught me in an orgy with 20 other men, she’d turn around and pretend that it never happened. She really does love Amy and me, but she’s also extremely protective of the family reputation, and being gay or bisexual just doesn’t fit into her grand design.”

Jeremy and Brad sipped their drinks and chatted for several more hours before Kenny and Kyle returned to reclaim their apartment. “How ‘bout we all go down to the Hellhole?” suggested Kyle. “It’s Full Moon Night.”

“Full Moon Night? What’s that?” asked Jeremy.

“Everybody who strips down to his underwear gets drinks for Happy Hour prices.”

“Sounds interesting,” confessed Jeremy, “but I think I’ve had enough to drink. Besides, I haven’t had much sleep the past few days, so I think I’d better get back to Brad’s apartment and hit the couch.”

“Take the bed,” said Brad.

“Are you still planning to stay here for the rest of the weekend?” asked Jeremy, with a touch of disappointment in his voice.

“No, I’ll come home later, but you can take the bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

Jeremy objected, but Brad retorted, “Age before beauty.”

“Pearls before swine,” Jeremy snapped back.

“Hey! Is that a pig joke?”

When Brad finally got home that night, quite late, Jeremy was curled up on the bed, sleeping like a baby. A faint light coming from the bathroom cast a soft glow over his angelic face. Brad sat on the floor and just gazed at him for more than an hour before he finally fell asleep himself on the bedroom carpet.

Sunday. With Southern Decadence still in full swing, every cop on the force was on duty. No leaves that weekend. So, once again, Jeremy was left to fend for himself. He browsed through Ford's collection of porno flicks but then said to himself, “Why do I need a movie? I can see all the porn I want on the streets and in the bars of New Orleans.” So, he left the apartment and headed down Dumaine Street, strolling into the first gay bar he came to.

He witnessed lots of kissing and groping, but nothing like he had seen his first night in the city. “Oh, the real action's upstairs,” said one of the patrons, eager to make friends with the handsome cowboy. Sure enough, there was plenty of action on the second floor, cocks being sucked, asses being fucked, everything imaginable. “Who's next?” Jeremy heard someone shout over the gaggle. Suddenly, the man who had ascended the stairs with Jeremy pushed him forward, and a huddle of other men grabbed him and quickly stripped him naked. Jeremy tried to resist, but the leader of the group reassured him, “We're not gonna hurt you, bro. You'll see.”

Four men laid Jeremy down on a padded mat on the floor, and a dozen more gathered around, stroking their cocks with varying degrees of vigor. Before long, they were shooting their loads all over his naked body, showering him with man cream. Then, two men knelt beside him, one on each side. They scooped up the lotion and rubbed it all over his cock and balls. Jeremy felt like his dick had touched a live wire. He screamed and jerked in spasms of tortured ecstasy. In no time at all, he was blasting his own ball juice into the gooey mix. The two men leaned over and lapped up all the pudding they could. The other men lay down in two rows, and each of the first two passed among them, dripping sweet nectar into their open mouths. Each man rolled over and kissed the man beside him, swapping cum and passing it down the line. The last man in each line offered the protein shake back to Jeremy, but he demurred, which they recognized as his right, so the two men kissed each other instead and swallowed the last of the manly loads.

The leader of the group took a damp towel and helped Jeremy clean up. He bought him a beer and then invited him back to his place to shower. Jeremy thanked him for the offer but declined. The man slipped Jeremy his card and invited him to call anytime he wanted to play, either one-on-one or in a group. “I know lots of party games,” he emphasized.

*******

 “Abuja,” mumbled Nick, realizing that the hospital room in which he now found himself was not the one in Denver, but the one in Cheyenne. “The word is ‘Abuja,’” he repeated to Ben Carter’s perplexed expression. “I’ll tell you about it after I get out of here.”

“You brought me flowers?” Nick asked incredulously as he spotted the bouquet across the room.

“Do I look like the kind of guy who would give another man flowers?” snorted the police chief. “No, these are from your secret admirer. There’s a card. Can you read it, or do you want me to read it to you?”

Nick took the card offered to him, but the writing was all a blur. “They’re from Patty,” said Carter. “The whole town’s talking about what happened, so I guess she must’ve heard about it. She called the hospital, but when she couldn’t get any information from them, she called me. Wanted to know if you were all right. I told her you were just looking for an excuse to go back to your cushy desk job at the police academy.”

“Whoa! Where do you think you’re going?” asked Dr. Singh, entering the room as Nick began throwing off his covers and reaching for his clothes.

“Got work to do, Doc. Got bad guys to catch, ya know.”

“From what I hear,” replied the doctor, “the bad guys in this case are nowhere to be caught.”

“There’s still an investigation to be done, and there are other crimes to solve.”

“Well, the good news is that the MRI did not reveal any concussion, but I’d still like to keep you here a couple of days for observation.”

“I’m fine, Doc. Really.”

“I can’t physically keep you here against your will, but I can note on your chart that you left the hospital AMA, against medical advice.”

“Duly noted,” replied Nick.

“Don’t worry, Doc,” Ben Carter spoke up. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Oh, Doc. One more thing,” said Nick as the physician turned to exit the room. “You said there were bruises on Randy Dawkins’ body.”

“Yes.”

“Would they be consistent with a fall from…oh, say eight feet?”

“Yes, I would say that such a fall could cause the kind of bruises I found on his body.”

As he got dressed, Nick filled the police chief in on his findings at the barn and his theory about Randy Dawkins jumping Carl Pipkins from the hayloft.

“Can you take me to the morgue?” asked Nick as Ben wheeled him out to his car. “I’d like to ask the coroner a few questions about Carl Pipkins.”

“Of course, I could take you there,” replied Ben, “but I won’t. It’s late, and you need to get some rest. If you won’t do it in the hospital, I intend to make sure you do it at home. Whatever you have to ask the coroner can wait until tomorrow.”

As Ben drove Nick home, Nick’s pager went off. He read the text message, smiled, and keyed in his response. The exchange continued until the two men reached their destination. When Nick finally put away his phone, he was beaming.

“A break in the case?” asked Ben.

“Nope.”

“Somethin’ personal?”

“Yep.”

After a long pause, Nick finally added, “Ya know, Ben, there’s really no point in bothering the coroner over the holiday weekend. We can put that off until Tuesday.”

“Tuesday? Not tomorrow?”

“Why, Chief. You should know that tomorrow’s Sunday, the Lord’s day.”

“Funny, I never figured you for the church-goin’ type, Nick.”

“Neither did I, Ben, but then again, I never had anybody ask me before.”