WARNING: If it is illegal for you to be reading these stories or you find them disgusting or immoral, please refrain from reading further. Must be 18+ to read! Any characters, places, or people depicted in this story is entirely in the fantasy and imagination of the writer and is in no way meant to portray anyone in real life. Any people, places, or actions depicted in this story that reflect real life events or situations is entirely by accident or coincidence.
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Chapter Twelve
I woke up around 5:30, but when I went to reach for Jax my arm found an empty bed in the darkness. I got up and went to the bathroom, thinking maybe he was there, but it was empty. I did my business, then pulled on some shorts and went downstairs to make a cup of coffee. No sign of him downstairs either. I sat down in the recliner and popped the footrest up and was quickly joined by Momo, who stomped out a circle on my lap and lay down. I automatically petted him while I sipped my coffee; his contented purring was almost enough to put me back to sleep except for not knowing where Jax was. A thought occurred to me and I sat Momo to the side and got up and went back upstairs to the guest bedroom. When I pushed open the door, I saw Jax, in his shorts and tee-shirt, lying in bed with Mason hugging him close. Mason was asleep, but Jax was awake.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"I couldn't sleep. I got up and went to the bathroom and started to go downstairs, I heard sniffling. I came in to see about Mason and he was crying so I laid down with him. He was out like a light after a few minutes" he said quietly.
"You can't let it get to you so much" I said.
"I saw you last night; not exactly Mr. Composure" he said, carefully extricating his arm from beneath Mason's neck, replacing it with the pillow.
"Well...that was..." I took a minute to gather my thoughts. Jax padded quietly away from the bed and pulled me out of the room and shut the door. "Let the little guy sleep in peace" he whispered. We went downstairs and I picked up my coffee and put it in the microwave for a minute to heat it back up.
"My reaction was because of what Mason said" I told Jax. "I'm used to being called everything in the book, I've heard it my whole life. But Mason..."
"I know. You feel protective of him, you don't want him hurt" he interrupted. "Imagine, you feeling like you do, but then you saw him with a group of kids who were saying filthy things about you and he was laughing along with them."
For once, I didn't have a rebuttal; I just stood silently and sipped my coffee. I felt claws on the back of my leg just before crazy-cat started climbing me and pulled my shorts off exposing me to my mate. Jax looked at my soft peter and said "any other time I'd probably thank Momo, but this morning I'm just not in the mood." I reached down and pulled up my shorts and sat the cat on the counter, ignoring his comment.
"What do you want to do about...the uh...whole situation?" I asked.
"I don't know. Play it by ear, I guess" he said, making himself a cup of coffee. I went back to my recliner and once his coffee was done, he came and sat in his recliner on the other side of the end table. I picked up my phone and turned it on. By the time the apple disappeared, it started dinging, letting me know there were text messages and missed calls. Jax turned his back on too and had several text messages. I went through mine.
Texts from Cheryl: `What did he do?' Then, `he don't know what you're talking about' and finally `well, goodnight'.
From CJ: `Why are you mad at me? I didn't do anything' then, `Tommy was the one saying that stuff' followed by `why won't you answer?'
I texted back to CJ: `call your dad and explain it all to him' was all I wrote.
Jax threw his phone onto the table. "Think I'm gonna make my coffee Irish" he said.
"It's 6:30 in the morning for God's sake" I pointed out, he sat back down. I went upstairs to check on Mason.
He had dropped his phone in the floor at some point. I picked it up and it the screen came on showing a text conversation with CJ.
Chris: `don't go running your mouth to them'
Mason: `why are you acting like this?"
Chris: `you just don't understand'
Mason: `your right on that, I don't understand any of it, I didn't do anything to you or them'
Chris: `just keep your mouth shut, that's all'
Mason: `fuck you'
Chris: `come back home, let's talk'
Then conversation ended there. I put the phone on the nightstand and pulled the sheet up over Mason and rubbed his hair. I had turned to leave the room when he woke up. I heard him say "dad", and I turned back around. He was getting out of bed and coming with me. He reached for his phone and said "I need to use your charger". He was just in his underwear so I couldn't help but notice that puberty seemed to have gotten into swing with him since I last saw him. The front of his boxer briefs was showing a substantially bigger lump than they did just a few months ago. Knowing Cheryl's affinity for the big thick organs, it made wonder what Gary had passed on to Mason. We went back downstairs, him leading the way.
Jax showed me the last message on his phone from 2am from CJ: `why is the door chained?' it said. For the first time since we'd been up, I looked over and the front door was slightly ajar, just enough to see light around the edge.
"He tried to come over at two in the morning?" I said mostly to myself.
"I think I'm going to start looking for job out west again" Jax said "when your internship is up you can join me."
"You can't run from your problems, Jax" I told him "You already know that."
"Please don't leave, Uncle Mike" Mason cried. Jax looked at him and went up the stairs saying "I can't take this, I've got to get out of here."
I followed him upstairs where he was changing into street clothes. Once he was dressed, he picked up his wallet and keyring, then brushed by me and down the stairs and out the back door to his truck with Mason screaming "Please don't leave Uncle Mike!!" He slammed the door and the engine roared into service and seconds later his tail lights disappeared around the corner. Mason was holding onto me for dear life, his body heaving with his sobs. I made him come into the living room and sit with me and held him until he started to calm down. My phone rang, Cheryl was hysterical, not making any sense.
"...the bed is empty. I don't think he stayed here last night. He better be over there..." was all I could make out.
"Cheryl, what's going on? Calm down. Speak slowly" I said. I heard her take some breaths.
"When I got up this morning, I walked by Chris's room and it was empty" she said. "From what I could tell, he didn't stay in there last night. I was hoping he was with you guys."
"No, Cheryl. He's not here. He texted Jax around 2am, but we had our phones off" I told her.
"2am? That would have been after the party broke up. Where could he be?" she said.
"Try calling his friends, see if he went with any of them" I suggested. "By the way, Jax is gone too. He got upset a little while ago and took off."
"Is Mason still with you?" she asked.
"Yes, I have him. He's safe with me" I said.
"I'm going to go ride around and see if I can find Chris, can he stay with you for a while?" she asked.
"Yeah, but we may go looking too, for both of them" I said "If Chris was on foot, he can't be that far, surely."
I told Mason to come on and sent him in to get dressed while I did the same. We met back up downstairs and went out to search. The first place I went was up to Tannehill, I asked the man at the gate if he'd seen a teenage boy on foot. He said no, and let us go through to come back out. Mason knew some of the girls CJ liked and where they lived from the bus route. We checked at some of the houses but nobody had seen him since last night.
I had a thought and asked if Mason knew where Tommy Butler lived. He did, and showed me how to get there. I went up and knocked on the door and a man I assumed was Tommy's father came to the door. I asked him if Tommy's friend Chris might have come home with him last night. He said "Hell no, that's the kid with the faggot daddy. That boy ain't staying around my son with his queer loving shit." I started back to the car when he said "Wait a minute...who are you, anyway?"
"I'm Chris's faggot daddy's faggot boyfriend. It's a real shame the way you've poisoned your son; he's going to grow up to be a heaping pile of shit just like his old man" I slammed the car door and we took off again. I could see the man still standing there with his mouth hanging open. We went to several more houses, until we started overlapping Cheryl. I dialed her phone, she said she had been to the houses of everybody who was at the party except Tommy Butler. I told her not to go there, I'd already hit it and her reception probably wouldn't be too nice. We met up at Bojangles to get a cup of coffee and discuss strategy.
While we were sitting there, she called the police department and asked about filing a missing persons report. They told her he had to have been missing for at least 24 hours.
I dialed Jax and it went straight to voicemail. "Jax, please call me. CJ didn't go home last night. After he tried to get in our house he took off. Call me. Please" I said. I asked Cheryl if she had tried CJ's phone. She said he left it on the nightstand by his bed. We decided that riding around in circles wasn't helping anything, so we went back to my place to wait and see if either of them called or showed up. Cheryl took an Advil and stretched out on the sofa to try and get rid of the splitting headache she'd developed. Mason came over and climbed into my lap, even though he was getting a little big for that kind of thing. I didn't mind. I was so quiet in the house that we actually drifted off for a while. Around 11 Cheryl took Mason back to their house and then I was alone. I couldn't just sit anymore so I got up and started sweeping, mopping, washing dishes and laundry. When the phone finally rang, I about broke my neck trying to get to the living room to answer it. It was a number I didn't know; I started not to answer it, but I had a feeling about it so I did.
"Hello?" I said.
"Eddie, it's me. Could you come get me?" came CJ's voice over the line.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"Captain D's in Bessemer" he said.
"I'm on the way" I said as I hung up. I made it to Captain D's in record time. As I pulled up, I saw CJ sitting on the edge of the parking lot with an old homeless man, I assumed the man was the one who let him use the cell phone to call me. I parked in the spot next to where they were sitting. As soon as I stopped the car CJ ran over and said "I told him you'd buy him lunch if I could use his phone." I nodded and took out a $20 and handed it to the man, saying "thank you so much". The old man nodded and walked inside to get some fish.
"Mike...dad...he won't answer my calls or texts" he said.
"Mine either. I don't think he has the phone on" I said. "You had us worried to death."
"Who?" he said.
"Me, Mason, your mom; we've been searching for you all morning" I told him.
"I tried to come over and tell y'all I was sorry for the way those guys were acting, but the door was chained. Then I tried to text dad but he wouldn't answer so I just started walking and ended up at Cedar Hill (the cemetery where his adopted dad is buried). I sat with Gary until a little while ago, then came up here and that old man let me use his phone."
"Your dad...no, both of us were very hurt when we heard those boys saying all that stuff about us, but it wasn't what they said CJ, we're both used to that kind of bullshit; it was the fact that you didn't stop them, you went along with them and laughed at it all like it was a big joke. Then there was how y'all treated Mason, and the things you said to him. I saw the texts with you telling him to `keep your fucking mouth shut'. What have any of us have ever done anything to deserve shit like that from you?" I asked. I got up and got into the car and unlocked the doors so he could get in. There was nothing but silence all the way back to Cheryl's. When she saw us, she ran out the door and took CJ inside, leaving me idling in the driveway looking stupid, so I went home and garaged the car and went back into the silent house. I sat back in the recliner trying to clear my head from the negative energy. Momo jumped up and got in my face mewling and it hit me that I forgot to feed him last night. I got back up and opened a can of cat food for him and checked his water. He was so hungry he started eating before I left the kitchen. I went back in the living room and lay down on the sofa, and a few minutes later Momo came in, happily full, and lay down on top of me and purred himself to sleep. I lay there staring at the ceiling and trying not to think. I guess I dozed off with Momo, because I woke up to the sound of loud truck mufflers and the sound of the back door being unlocked.
He walked in and sat down, saying nothing.
"If you ever run out on me again like that, don't bother coming back" I said.
"I'm sorry, I was just overwhelmed" he said, "I should have never told him. I should have never let myself get so involved with him. It was my mistake. I can chalk it up as a failure, but I don't know if I can live this close and have it rubbed in my face every day."
"Wait until everything settles down, there's always hope until there's not" I said, but inside, all I was thinking about was the fact CJ didn't even offer an explanation while I was driving him home. I looked at the clock, it was 4:50 and I just realized I had not eaten all day.
"You feel like getting something to eat? I haven't had anything all day between looking for you and CJ" I said.
"What do you mean, looking for me and CJ" he asked, "where was CJ?"
"You didn't get my text?" I asked.
"My phone is turned off and sitting on the nightstand upstairs" he replied.
"We've been looking for you two all day" I went on to fill him in on the whole story.
"He was coming over here to bully Mason into keeping quiet about how they treated him, then?" he mused.
"That's what I got out of it too" I said.
"What the hell happened? He's never been like that" Jax said.
"I'm pretty sure a large part of it is the kids he's hanging out with. I had the pleasure of meeting that Tommy's dad when we were out looking for him" I told him "I had words with him. Good thing it wasn't you, he probably would have been in a heap after the kung fu or whatever it is you don't talk about."
"Tae Kwon Do" he said "Cheryl outranks me. I only got the black belt last year; she is 6th degree. Don't ever worry about her."
"Anyway, Tommy's dad said he didn't want his son hanging around with `the boy with the faggot daddy', so there's where some of it came from" I said.
There was a knock at the front door. I got up to see who it was. CJ was outside and asked if he could come in. I pushed the door open and he walked by into the living room.
"Mom told me to come apologize" he said.
"We don't want any forced apology from you. If you don't mean it...if it doesn't come from you, don't even bother saying it" Jax stated very bluntly. CJ stood there for a minute and said nothing.
"It wasn't that big of a deal, Tommy and Zach were only cracking jokes, y'all are just being babies about it because you're gay" he said. Jax's eyes could have burned a hole clear through him. Jax didn't say anything, he just smoldered.
"I thought you loved us?" I asked. I could see him get an uncomfortable look on his face. "What happened? I don't even know you anymore."
"The guys say if you hang out with gays, its only a matter of time before you end up being one too" he said.
"And you believe that? So, you were about to turn gay in Panama City?" I asked him.
"No, but..."
"How about when we went camping?" Jax added "Did you feel like you'd really like to suck a dick then?"
"I haven't ever wanted to..." he went quiet as the wheels started to turn in his head. "Tommy is such a dumbass" he finally said.
"That's the first intelligent thing to come out of your mouth since you walked in here" I told him. "What else did they say?"
"They started in on Mason because one of them said they saw him and another kid doing stuff in the bathroom at school. Zach said Mason wants to be a fag because he's around y'all too much" he said.
"Oh, Mason is choosing to like boys, the way you chose to like girls?" I asked.
"I didn't choose to like girls, I just do" he said, I could see the wheels spinning faster now.
"Mason isn't choosing anything either" I said. He sat on the edge of the coffee table looking miserable all of a sudden.
"I'm such a fucking asshole" he said.
"Watch the language, but you are onto something" I told him. He sat staring at his shoes for a minute, just thinking.
"I'm really sorry, dad, seriously" he said. Jax looked less than impressed.
"How long will you be sorry? Until you get back to school tomorrow?" Jax said. CJ didn't say anything, just kept looking at his shoes.
"The main reason I was hanging out with Tommy is `cause all the popular girls follow him around" he said sadly.
"I'd really talk to those girls before messing with any of them, if they're like Tommy do you really want to be around them? My brother married one of those; that's why he never gets to stay over here more than five minutes" I said. I could tell we had given him a lot to think about.
"Can you forgive me, dad?" he asked Jax.
"I do forgive you, but you'll have to earn my trust back. That'll be way harder than forgiveness" Jax said.
"I've got to go talk to Mason" CJ said, and slowly went out the door.
"And that's why I kept having those issues you used to dog me about" Jax said to me. "Every time I've trusted anybody, they've betrayed me."
"Not every time" I said, staring into his eyes.
"Okay, almost every time" he corrected himself.
Lambodara 6/19/21
Real life isn't all roses and butterflies y'all.