A SUMMER IN THE FARM PART II

THE NAP BEHIND THE BARN

After the lunch table was cleared, Bertha and Alfred retreated into the house, as they usually did every afternoon. Mark said he would go for a jog to keep at bay those enchiladas' extra calories and maintain his muscle definition. Kyle, never missing a chance, joked that those abs were bound to disappear sooner or later during his stay there.

Once Mark left, Kyle told Jeremy that he used to take a nap after lunch behind the barn on the sheaves of wheat, inviting his little friend to join.

After stacking a couple of them to make an improvised bed for Jeremy, Kyle slouched on his, scattering his limbs with delightful carelessness and a heavy groan of pleasure.

“Hey, Kyle, look at this!” Jeremy suddenly said.  

Kyle lifted his head to see Jeremy mimicking C-3PO’s gestures and voice with exaggerated precision—eyes wide, arms stiffly raised in the android’s signature posture.  

“Madam Bertha,” he intoned, “as a human-cyborg, I cannot taste your mixture, but an oil bath with it would feel so good for my joints!”

As Jeremy kept weaving every recent event into the robot’s personality, Kyle couldn’t help but burst into laughter.  

“Haha, oh man! Don’t make me laugh—it hurts!” he groaned, rubbing his round gut with both hands. Kyle lifted his tank top and pulled down the unfastened straps of his overalls, flashing Jeremy a playful look as he exposed his whole stomach. “I’m so full, dude! Haha!

Jeremy laughed back. Kyle patted the wheat next to him. When his friend sat by his side, Kyle said, “You have to do that tomorrow for Alfred and Bertha, haha.”

“What?!” Jeremy´s face suddenly changed to surprise, “No way, man!”

“Haha, you know I’ll get you to do it—just like I got you to mimic C-3PO for my parents, Mark, and everyone else!

At Jeremy´s muted expression of embarrassment, Kyle laughed even more, “Haha, I got you nervous already!”

A smile, twisted with resignation, peeped on Jeremy´s face, which Kyle found even more hilarious as if he were playfully teasing a baby and enjoying the tender fun of watching his changing expression

Kyle extended one arm to Jeremy while patting his chest with the other. Jeremy let him embrace and leaned his head on Kyle´s chest while both shared some quiet chuckles. Then Kyle released his hug and murmured, “Let´s have a nap, Jam. I´m still full and need some rest before my lift.”

Jeremy, like avoiding disturbing the quietness around them, lay down by Kyle almost noiselessly.

Kyle, caressing languidly his stuffed gut—round and swollen beneath his stretched tank that couldn’t quite cover the aftermath of that mountain of enchiladas, fries, and rice pudding—said with a voice full of delightful drowsiness, “This is one of the best things around here, Jam. Chilling out after a big and delicious lunch,” and let out a long sigh of pleasure.

“Indeed”, Jeremy agreed in a low tone, “I love it. Yeah, so nice and quiet here.”

Kyle murmured, “Hehe, I knew you´d love it, man,” and pulled his straw hat down to cover his face.

The summer afternoon sun shone high in a clear blue sky. Its intensity making all the surrounding colors — grass, trees, and flowers — appear bright, almost blinding to the eye. Everything was immersed in a soothing silence as vast as the sunny fields stretching to the horizon.

However, deep inside him, Jeremy wasn´t able to fully surrender to the peaceful ambiance. Since Kyle had moved out from Detroit to work on the farm, he hadn´t come back for a whole year—not even for Christmas—and he hadn´t even mentioned visiting the farm during their phone calls until just recently.

Kyle was perhaps the only friend Jeremy had ever shared that high grade of emotional bond and mutual understanding with, despite the stark contrast between their figures and temperaments. For someone as shy as Jeremy, such closeness meant an irreplaceable treasure. Yet, during Kyle´s absence, Jeremy never dared to insist on meeting. He kept his bitter longing for himself, afraid that Kyle—the most popular boy in high school, known for dodging girls´ slightest attempt at commitment with playful mocks—might have made fun of an affection that could be interpreted as an absurd pretension.

These thoughts and unresolved feelings stirred inside Kyle´s friend, beneath his apparent calm. After a moment, he sat up and shook off the stray bits of wheat clinging to him—like a little bird fluffing its feathers and fluttering before taking flight.

“Kyle”, Jeremy whispered. His voice, faint, barely perceptible over the soft buzzing of the invisible insects around, as if making sure not to wake his friend in case he was still asleep.

With his face half covered by his straw hat, Kyle emitted an “Mmm” to let his little friend know he was listening.

Jeremy stirred his lips to say something, but kept silent for a few seconds. Then, Kyle´s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out with a lazy hand and tipped his hat up a bit to glance at the screen. He just put it on speaker on his chest, “Hey”, he said with a relaxed tone, leaning back on one arm.

A girl´s voice came through, cheerful and a bit flirty, “Hi, babe! What are you up to?”

“Just chilling out,” he replied casually with a smile, “You?”

She giggled, “Thinking about you.”

They kept chatting lightly, the girl trying to sound playful and teasing. Kyle kept his answers short but friendly, his tone never crossing into anything serious. Finally, she said with a dreamy voice, “Okay… I´m gonna head out to catch up with my cousin. Talk to you later. I love you.”

Kyle grinned, “Thanks, bye.”

“Kyle, don´t you forget to say something to me?” She insisted, repeating herself, “I´m gonna head out to catch up with my cousin”, and her last words with a stressed tone,” Talk to you later. I love you.”

“Oh, yeah … say hi to your cousin. Bye”

“No, Kyle!” Her voice sharpened.

“Okay,” Kyle´s tone still casual, as if nothing had happened, “have fun then?”

“I LOVE YOU!” She said, clearly frustrated, “Why can´t you say it back?!”
Kyle took his phone, “Alright, Lady. Yeah, I love myself too. There. Bye now”, he tapped the screen, ending the call, and slipped it back in his pocket, ignoring the melody of an incoming call, which Kyle didn´t even bother to check and got nothing but prompting a new wave of chuckles from him and Jeremy. 

Kyle shifted on the piles of wheat and said, tipping his hat, “That chick’s piano is missing a few keys, man. I’m not saying ‘I love you’ just because she dropped her panties.”

Jeremy answered, “But it´s like girls want you to say it, even if they know it wouldn´t be true …”

You bet, Jam!” Kyle confirmed. “The funny thing is, they end up even more hooked on me, even though I don’t do what they want. Chicks are addicted to drama; if you don´t give it to them, they’ll give it to you.” Kyle, finding the topic amusing, chuckled and asked, “Why do you think that is?”

Jeremy said, “You want me to find out why?”  

“Yeah,” Kyle confirmed, still with his hat covering his face, “If anyone can, hehe.”  

Jeremy curled one lock of his hair around his finger, his gaze wandering as if searching for something without focusing on any particular point, gathering his thoughts to frame his answer. Then he said, “I’m going to explain why using the same example you used to teach me how to tell a real posh boy from a fake one.”

Kyle lifted his hat and looked at his friend, curious about his approach.

Jeremy started by addressing Kyle´s lesson, “I remember when we came to your place after shooting some hoops. You took off your Lacoste t-shirt and tossed it on your bed. Then you told me that if I ever see someone taking off an expensive t-shirt and carefully placing it on a chair, it means that’s the only one he can afford, so he takes care to make it last. Do you get what I mean?”

Kyle nodded. “I get it, man. Girls go crazy when I don’t take them seriously because that makes them think I have more options.”  

"Exactly. That’s why girls get bored so easily with guys who treat them like princesses and hand them everything just for being girls.”

Kyle agreed, “Haha, yeah, you mean all those suckers who spend their attention and money on girls in exchange for nothing. They think the girls will appreciate their patience and eventually hook up, but those chicks just see them as losers who settle for crumbs—only good to be taken advantage of.”

"That’s it," Jeremy confirmed. "Girls can smell the desperation in those guys. And when they realize they can’t lock you down with the sex those guys would kill for, it blows their minds. Girls see you as a top guy and wanna have you—they crave your commitment."

“You’re right, Jam,” Kyle said. “In fact, when sex doesn’t work out, they start dropping bullshit like, ‘I’m a very special girl, lots of guys wish they could be my boyfriend, you know?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah… the thing is, none of those simps turn you on and make you feel the way I do.’ Then they freak out and it’s all ‘you’re such a narcissist,’ and blah blah, but they still keep chasing me, haha. You’re kind of scatterbrained with everyday stuff, but when it comes to explaining the unexplainable, you’re a damn phenomenon.”

And in fact, it was just like that. Jeremy, who often lost track of any crime movie, would put on mismatched socks by mistake or need more than a week to memorize his new phone number, had a strange kind of intuition. He could dive into the depths of people’s subconscious and guess the invisible links between their behaviors and emotions. Like a selkie on one of her rare, fleeting visits to our world, he revealed to a trusted few humans the secret, ignored underwater caves that led from any beach to the heart of the most remote islands, or to forgotten treasures sunk beneath the sea, or to the lairs of never-seen abyssal monsters.

“I like the way your insights give everything more depth,” Kyle said.  

Jeremy looked down with a slight smile. “It just comes naturally to me.”  

“Yeah, man,” Kyle continued. “Like when you told me what was really going on in my parents’ heads and why they sent me here. That freaked me out. I was in a bad place when they got so pissed at me, and it hit hard when you told me the truth. But it was better than being left with all those questions and no answers… That was a year ago.”

Now that Kyle hit that topic and they were alone, engulfed in that place and moment of intimacy, Jeremy´s heart raced at the chance to address his longing for Kyle. A longing that Jeremy drowned in his heart, revealed only by a sigh.

Kyle asked, “Are you ok, Jam?”

“Yeah, it´s nothing”, Jeremy replied, and without another word, he rubbed his nose with his knuckles.

Awake, Kyle—familiar with that gesture—knew his introverted friend was holding something back. He tapped Jeremy’s knee.  

“Jam, everything okay?”  

Jeremy let out a quiet sigh and lowered his forehead.  

“Jam!” Kyle repeated, this time with a firmer tone, shaking his friend’s knee.  

“It doesn’t matter, Kyle. Really,” Jeremy said, trying to sound unconcerned.  

Kyle pushed himself up onto his elbows with determined insistence.  

“C’mon, man, make your point!”

Jeremy gave up his reserve, “It’s just that… you said earlier it’s been a year since your parents sent you here for the summer. I was with you that day—when you walked out of your house, crushed after their blow-up. But then you ended up staying longer because Bertha and Alfred were so kind to you. I’m really glad for that…”  

He paused, rubbing his knees nervously, unable to meet Kyle’s eyes.  

“But during all that time… you didn’t come back to Detroit. And I noticed you didn’t seem too keen to meet up here either”, he quickly added, waving his hands, “but it’s okay! I mean, we’ve kept in touch—talking on the phone and all.” Then, lowering his voice and shrinking into himself like a timid little turtle, he mumbled, “It just… surprised me a bit, you know, that we didn’t see each other at all for a whole year. If I can be honest.”

Jeremy then moved to the edge of his pile of wheat, turning his back, like giving Kyle a chance to give no explanation if he didn´t want to.

“Jam”, Kyle pronounced his friend´s name, trying to sound comforting. The wheat under him crunched as he slid off the mattress of cereal to stand up and kneel before Jeremy. His protruding triceps flashed as he planted his strong arms next to each of his friend´s sides, “Jam …”, Kyle shook his head while frowning his features, “You know I felt lost. My world fell apart. I´m always playing around to keep a cheerful atmosphere around me and forget the pressure and anxiety my parents wanna put on me with their stupid standards. But the day I was caught cheating on that test … and the way my parents came down on me overcame me.”

“I know, Kyle,” Jeremy said, “and I know it was hard. But I thought you needed to understand what was wrong with your parents, so I told you everything I was sensing.”

With a bittersweet smile, Kyle placed his hands on Jeremy’s knees. “And you did good, Jam. Like I told you before, that’s better than being left with a bunch of questions and feeling bad without answers.”

Jeremy nodded. “I tried to be as gentle as I could.”

“It’s okay, Jam,” Kyle shrugged with a nonchalant smile. “You’re really lucky. Your mom reads tons of books to help you deal with your shyness, and your dad knows exactly how to be both a friend and a father. They never said, ‘Jam, you have to be more outgoing,’ but they didn’t pressure you or make you feel bad for being yourself. They help you understand who you are, and then let you decide when and how much to open up. Thanks to them, you avoided the usual mistakes shy people make—like doing tons of favors just to make others accept them, like it’s some kind of defect you have to compensate.”

“Being with you helped me a lot, too, Kyle,” Jeremy said. “You know my parents appreciate you a lot for that.”

“I know, man. Every time I went over, they treated me almost like a medical genius. Makes sense, since back then I was the only one who could pull you out of that ‘coma’ keeping you locked up in your room with your stuff, haha.”

Between this joke and others, Jeremy’s uneasiness seemed to evaporate through the laughter he shared with Kyle, “I needed to completely switch off, Jam—from school, from my family, from everything. My mind needed it, man. Bertha and Alfred are like grandparents to me. No matter if my grades were a mess, they would’ve never prejudged me; they love my playful, fun-loving personality and never find my jokes annoying. And Bertha cooks so damn good, man!

Jeremy, concerned but with a glad tone, asked, “So, you’re better now, right?”  

Kyle just raised his thick, beefy arms in a double biceps pose. Jeremy had to turn his head from side to side to take in Kyle’s broad frame, as wide as his ear-to-ear smile. “Can’t you tell I’m better?” Kyle asked, his massive guns flexing and shifting in shape and size as he forced a quick pump around grunts.

“Oh, yeah!”, Jeremy agreed with short but quick nods, staring at Kyle´s large guns.

Kyle stood up and tossed his straw hat to Jeremy, whose heart raced as he anticipated his friend´s show of muscles. Kyle took off, after several tries, his ribbed tank, and pressed his fists against his torso sides as he raised his chest over his still stuffed gut; his massive pecs squeezing his chin. Then Kyle said in a jocular tone of exaggerated cockiness, “Look at these muscles, Jam! Have I gained or haven´t I? These are 300 pounds of muscle and belly just for you, Jam!” Kyle´s blue eyes sparkled with fun at Jeremy´s pure expression of amazement, “Baby, I´m just your strongman!!”

Jeremy lost sight of the vast landscape behind Kyle´s towering figure, and his senses didn´t perceive anything else. He thought he was just a plaything of an illusion. An illusion in the pretended shape of jokes, and yet, as exciting and impressive as if it were real, in the way Kyle radiated strong virility in every confident expression, vigorous gesture, and animal roar he used to accompany his powerful muscle poses.

Kyle said, “Jam, look at this!” He put his hat and work gloves back on and walked a couple of steps away. Then he pulled his hat down to cover his eyes, sucked in to enhance his chest forming a slender shape on his muscle torso, took his other hand to his waist, and added with a seductive deep tone, “Now muscle sexy cowboy”

Then he slid his hat back, the brim pointing straight up. He pushed his gut out further than his pecs, looking at Jeremy with widened, goofy eyes, and said with a throaty voice, almost without articulating, “Now gutted country pumpkin.”

Jeremy laughed, dazzled, as Kyle kept shifting shapes. Then Kyle squatted in front of him and grinned, “And now you get to show off your big, buff dude every time we hit the beach!”  

Jeremy, still captivated, replied, “I can hardly believe you’ve changed so much in just one year—still in your twenties, yet bigger and stronger than most older guys. I’m just glad you’re still the same crazy, cheerful boy I met back then.”

Kyle, moved by Jeremy´s sweet purity, gave him a warm smile tinged with sadness in his eyes—perhaps regretting his distancing for the last year, during which Jeremy, despite his dismay, never stopped tributing him his tender affection and loyal understanding. Then, Kyle, in a low voice like a lover's whisper, said, “I´m still your Kyle, just bigger and stronger.”

Both friends’ gazes merged for a moment. Before Jeremy could react, looking down, Kyle took his hand to his belly and said, “Oooff, I¨m still so full. Let´s keep on napping.”

They settled back into their spots on the piles of wheat. Kyle covered his face with his straw hat and murmured, about to fall asleep, “Later, you’ll see me lifting like an animal and getting all these muscles even bigger, all well pumped up.”

“It must be so crazy impressive”, Jeremy whispered

“You can bet … I´m gonna blow you away”, Kyle said with a guttural, low voice about to expire.

Jeremy felt Kyle's breath gradually slow down until he fell asleep. Jeremy´s senses were still enthralled by his big dude´s overpowering display of passionate virility. Display that, in an instant, swept away Jeremy´s meek bitterness for Kyle´s absence for a year, even though it had lasted an eternity.

To be continued.