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Something real sick is going on here, depending on who you ask.

Four of us are in the family room right now, three sitting and the fourth sprawled at my feet, finally holding in the coughs and sniffles through his sleep. A Quilava. He's the kind of sick I see going on, nothing more. Uncle Joshua's at the right of our family night huddle, hunched an inch towards the television from his rocking chair. When his program is on, nothing else is. Aunt Doreen's in the center beside him in her recliner, crissing her fingers in her lap and kind of sagging into her chair without slouching. That burly kind of look from black and white photos, where the old lady keeps her posture all right as she's staring down the camera but you can tell someone had to ask her real nice to sit there for the picture.

Those two, at this point, see only the same kind of sick I do. It makes me like to think we're all on the same page, but when you're living under another woman's roof without having to pay rent, you're hardly ever on the same page with her.

“It doesn't matter why he did what he did, Bailey. Our job is just to collect the evidence and discover the truth. The rest is up the court. We did our job. So that's how I sleep at night."

That's the man on the tube, his top button popped open from under his messy tie so you get just a peek more of his hairy old cleavage. He's the star of Uncle Joshua's “crime drama," as all his television gossip rags call it. The man's voice sounds like he stuffed his vocal chords through a blender, but this next guy speaking, he's trying even harder.

“I don't know if that's goin' ta work for me, Tom. I just don't unnerstand what makes a man do that sortsa thing. He slept with an Abe-sol, for Godsakes! I cain't accept that."

Uncle Joshua's pursing his lips and shaking his head, but it's not to the crony's voice. Uncle Joshua's got that look on his face for when he's already bought in completely to the Genuine Human Emotions unfolding before his very eyes. Aunt Doreen's just staring at the exact same corner of the television she already picked.

So to the same effort as on the program, I say, “Slept with an Abe-sol."

Uncle Joshua hesitates a second before he looks over towards me and rolls his voice out deep from his throat, saying, “What was that?"

“You ain't heard him? He slept with an Abe-sol."

The poor, sick thing at my feet stirs against my shins, sniffling quick again. He's not burning up the same as he's been burning up the last few days, but there's still a regular heat coming through my jeans just fine from his special little inner glow. He's my big, furry radiator through sickness and health.

Uncle Joshua just sighs to me, “He didn't say it that bad."

“He did, and he did it on purpose," I tell him. “That man is hamming it up."

“He said it just fine. He is not hammin' it up."

Aunt Doreen rolls her head over from her recliner and pipes in, “Maybe a little bit of hamming."

“He is not hammin' it up," Uncle Joshua says. “Let me watch my program."

My Quilava shoves against me again, leaning his paw up to his snout a second and wiping. He don't keep a wet nose. I lean down for a quick scruffy nuzzle behind his ear and chuckle, “Least the guy didn't have a Miltank hardon or sumpin, right?"

Sometimes I still have to learn the lesson of when I'm going too far. Aunt Doreen looks over at me sharper than she was, like she thinks I'm the one like to fuck some Miltank.

“We don't talk like that in this house, Harley."

Aunt Doreen's tone is coming through clear no matter what she's saying.

“Just let your uncle watch his program."

Even Uncle Joshua don't touch that topic. He settles his eyeballs back towards the tube and that's that. I just get on up, shoving back against my little man.

“I should get Apollo in bed anyway. He needs a little extra sleep, I think."

“Don't let him sleep in your bed again, please," Aunt Doreen says. “I don't like him thinking he can climb up on our furniture."

Now I bend with my knees to scoop the fat little furry up, nudging like a third of him over my shoulder like the big baby he plays. He just sniffles again. I rub him square on the back.

“You ain't got to tell me," I say. “I ain't willing to catch his shit just yet."

Around Aunt Doreen's Miltank farm, the intimacy of squeezing someone's tits enough that milk spills out from them is hardly ever earned, but I find it better just not to think about it most of the time. You just take each fat nipple, drain what you can get, and fill another pail. You push yourself back up from your squat and pat your Miltank on the ass and smile at her face, and you make sure she still don't care, either. You make sure she's nice and comfy with her chew and you move on.

Our farm markets its products as organic-fed and all-natural, so getting our milk might take longer than at some industrial fa-ci-li-ty around these hills, but we get to sell the milk for more than them, too. Works better for us. We ain't got a milk parlor, so we milk in the barn where our bessies are already comfortable. They don't like that automation kind of attention. No bessies really like it, I think, but at least ours ain't got to deal with it.

Aunt Doreen herself swings inside the barn just as the sun's peeking over her shoulders, and her cowgirl hat's covering all the wrinkles for her this early. She got a swagger in her swing already as she tips her hat up an inch, got the kind of energy only the break of dawn shines on her; something I may be missing with my lugging the pail of cowtit refuse over to the milk churns.

“Your uncle and I are about to be setting off now, Harley. Are you going to be good today?"

I don't splash a drop as I tell Aunt Doreen, “I'ma be great today. You two get yourselves going, I'll be fine."

She tips her elbow against the barn door and nods at a fellow behind me, saying, “Well, you just call the Hendersons if he starts getting worse again. Reggie or Tammy can come over and take him down to the vet if you want them to."

Apollo's sitting pretty at the end of all our stalls, leaning his shaggy spine against the very last one. He don't sit like a regular Quilava, and he don't groom himself nearly as well, either. He just likes to sit and watch me do the real work while he plays at guard dog.

“He'll be even more fine," I say. “He was prolly faking it half the time 'cause he likes the cuddles."

I grin. “Can't blame him for it. I'm a grade-A cuddler."

Aunt Doreen pushes off from the door and cocks her brow without really looking any different. Aunt Doreen's long since figured out she don't understand why young folk say the things they do anymore, and that is to my advantage. She scuffs against the straw on the floor on her way back out and waves over her shoulder like the hero to her own adventure, fingers cutting through the rays ahead of her.

“We'll be back before tomorrow, but I don't know right when. You have fun today."

“You too, Miss Auntie," I tell her. “Don't get too wild at Uncuh Leroy's. He can't handle you at a hunnerd."

Aunt Doreen shakes her head and she don't ask what that means. I pour the last bucket of milk down the churn, then even Apollo pushes off his lazy ass towards the edge of the barn to help me wave my aunt off, her climbing in the passenger side of her and Uncle Joshua's pickup, it shuddering to life only under his gentler touch. They both wave goodbye to me, then to, uh—that boy coming down the road, waving to them the same.

“Y'all have a good trip, Mister and Missus O'Pine! Y'all take care!"

Lewis, with the hair that ain't seen any work done but to its styling, with his sleeves rolled up so tight he must have done it before he put his shirt on, waving big and good-natured and just in time for my aunt and uncle to be getting on their way as he strolls on down towards me. That boy.

Apollo holds himself back to just a frown as he waddles back inside towards any one of his usual perches, waiting for me to finish my work. I start opening up the pens so our bessies can get to their grazing and sunshine, but I've hardly begun before Lewis is leaning against the barn door without quite the same panache sort of thing as Aunt Doreen manages. He's got a smile he's more used to, but not the kind I offer one back to.

So I say, “The hell you doin' up this early?"

And he pretends I can't see the bags under his eyes as he says, “I'm here to help."

“No you're not," I say. “Go help your farmhands if you're so fixed on working."

Lewis leans back off the door and slides his hands in his pockets, tapping the toe of his boot twice against the straw. I can smell his more-than-deodorant from here—it's about the one thing that he might know something good about—but it won't do him any good past an hour out in these hills, and don't he know that by now?

“Your aunt mentioned to my folks that she and your uncle were headed out today, and my folks suggested to me that I might be of some use to you while you're out here working alone."

He sidles up towards the first Miltank I'm letting out and pulls his hand up to rustle her head as she waddles outside, a few grains of hay still bobbing out from her lips while she chews and pays no heed.

“I know how to handle the work," Lewis says. “You just point me toward the chores you don't like, and I've got you covered."

“I like all the chores," I tell him. “Don't make me tell you twice that I got myself covered, Lewis."

He plays at me with some kind of duck-lipped shrug, setting his hand back in his jeans.

“That's your prerogative. So how's the, uh, applications going, yeah?"

Apollo scoots another foot out of my way as I get to the pen he's lounged in front of. I open it up and tell Lewis, “Nope."

“What's 'nope' mean?" Lewis says.

I say, “Means I ain't thinking nothing about that right now. Not where my mind's going. I got more important things to focus on."

Lewis ain't just some dipshit, but I sure prefer treating him like it to offering him any kind of respect he might take the wrong way. He sways himself back and forth on the balls of his feet, and maybe more than his balance is finally going somewhere as he says, “I got you. I got you."

Apollo gets up and strolls over to the very back of the barn again, thumping up against the wall out of the way from all the pens as I keep moving. Lewis looks over towards him and sniffs once, dryer than what I heard in a week, before he says, “And how're you feeling now, little guy?"

Apollo stares him back, paws in his lap, toes in the air, and does not make one of his nice faces.

“Apollo is feeling much better today," I say for him.

“Good." Lewis nods to himself, then looks back towards me. “Well, may I add one more thing before I bug you too much?"

To that, I peer back and smile sweetly. “I can't stop you."

“You ask your aunt when she gets back if I can come over for dinner sometime with all y'all," Lewis says. “I've got a genuine hankering for her mac and cheese. It's the one thing I need for sure before next semester starts."

“Uh-huh."

“It's true, though."

“Lewis, you're just goin' ask her yourself anyway."

He smiles again like he thinks he got me. “I sure will if you don't."

My little smile fades.

“Bye, Lewis."

Lewis's little smile remains. He just shakes his head at the ground and meanders back towards the road, elbows bouncing back and forth every step. But he pauses down the middle of his trot and swivels back towards me, pointing a quick finger in the air as he clears his voice.

“The offer's open as long as you need it to be. I'll take the tractor next time. Get here real quick. Just call me."

“Bye, Lewis."

He tones it down to a smirk and says before going, looking just at me, “Glad your little fella is feeling better."

Ain't any more turning around from him as he gets on down the road, scooting past another couple of our bessies who are picking which grass to nibble today. He just looks back one more time and waves, and I do not.

Soon as Lewis is out of sight and I'm opening the last pen, Apollo snorts through clear sinuses his cry for my attention. He's looking straight up at me as he lifts his paws, waving and tapping them together for the signs both of us know as going something like, What a condescending jackass.

Now I smirk down at him and say, “Lewis don't know no better."

He should, Apollo signs with a few taps and waves around his noggin. He was raised around people like me the same as you.

I pat the last bessy like a gentle soul as she wanders herself out the barn, then take my break sliding on down beside Apollo. The two of us are the same height sitting on our asses. Apollo slumps more than me, but that's how he gets comfortable sitting like he does.

“Ain't nobody else raised around people like you," I tell him. “I'm the only one got the pleasure of your fine company. Lewis never got a little angel on his shoulder growing up."

Apollo shakes his head, but that's a gesture that don't mean words. Not everybody who grows up around pokies, or, uh, whatever the right term is nowadays, learns the same values as some of us.

So I say, “Least he's only condescending, right?"

Never mind that, Apollo signs. You haven't touched those applications in a week, and barely any before then.

Growing up beside Apollo's different from growing up beside the bessies. Our bessies—they eat, they piss, they shit, and with a little help they squirt a few gallons of milk every day. They don't care about much more. Apollo takes his shits in private. In the bathroom, if Aunt Doreen or Uncle Joshua don't notice.

So he don't give you no shit.

Only took me a week to come up with that nugget.

Even if you don't know where to go yet, you should send out a lot of applications and pick your favorite from the acceptances, Apollo keeps signing.

I wipe a hand through my bangs and blow off the strands I miss, saying, “I might, but I just—college is about more than picking where to go, right?"

Apollo taps his ear and his head before swinging his paw down to his heart.

It's about growing even more, from what I've heard.

Now I punch him on his little leg and tell him, “No, no, no, don't you start talking like that. Don't you get soppy on me. I'm warning you."

And he smiles again, bonking my shoulder right back with his noggin. He waves his paws around his mouth and elsewhere, signing, What have you got in mind for dinner?

“I was thinking mac and cheese," I say. “We can give Lewis a little toast from far, far away from him."

Only if you use the bourbon recipe. Is there any left in the cabinet?

“Sure is, long as we don't use it all up. Uncuh Josh-ya and Auntie Doreen don't much like finding empty bottles when they already got plans for 'em," I tell him. “So—I make that, and you pick what we watch?"

Movie night? Apollo signs, raising his brow. I might pick something extra sappy if you let me choose.

“You can get away with whatever you like as long as you're sitting in Uncuh Josh-ya's chair, and not Auntie's. I'm not explaining to her all the hair she finds in her seat if you do."

Apollo looks at me like I gave him the three-months-to-live. A little slower, he signs, I'm not shedding!

He darts out of my touch as I ruffle his scruff, so I shove up off from the straw and grunt so sweet, “You go panic to a mirror, then. I got shit to shovel."

Before I get to it, Apollo raps his paw against the slats behind him. Soon as I look back again, he signs, No one else is coming by today, right?

I just slip off one of the ponytail holders on my wrist and stretch as I please to shake my hair back, tucking my locks up tight above Apollo. To that, he's got one of his nicer faces. I give him one back.

“Just us, beau."

'Apollo' ain't a name from around here. You can see that. No one up here in the country names their pets more than two syllables, and that's just the rule.

Jebediah? That's a people name. Spot? There you go. That's what you were looking for.

'Harley' ain't much of a name from local tradition either, but you're forgiven for thinking I might be born here.

Apollo and me both were still kids when we moved about a hundred miles away from any shopping malls, but you don't much complain where you go when you're not living with your parents anymore. They got me a little Cyndaquil back before I remember, back when I was still small as one. They named him for me. Thought he'd be my little protector while we both grew up, and then I'd always have an obedient friend by my side, too.

God rest their souls and everything, but those college educations didn't stop my folks from keeping regressive when it comes to pokies. Apollo's got me in our bedroom right now, and he's the one getting us ready for that part past movie night.

“I can still—move my wrists," I say. “Cinch me tighter, Sir."

Instead of that, Apollo slaps a quick paw over my ass. The sharp kind of smack that sends a sting all the way down me. I squeeze my gaze over my shoulder back to him and I sip my breath in to say, “Please."

Scruff shades most Apollo's face but for his eyes and the thick grin he's making at me. He keeps unshaven everywhere. A few little hairs still stray down in front of his eyes from his brow, but it's the hairs on my face he leans in for and brushes aside.

Then he pulls back and cinches me tighter with his canines.

We use fake leather cuffs and chains to keep me tied. My wrists are shackled separately to the grooves in the hind bedposts and my hands are tugged just far away enough from my body that I don't get control over the proceedings, and with my knees bundled under my chest, I'm fixed in place against somebody who ain't looking to let me go.

Mind, these bracelets ain't the sort of toy you find in shops locally. Back when a package came from one Your Intimate Enterprises Dot Com, I exchanged my dignity for my privacy when explaining to Uncle Joshua that it was better he didn't inquire about the needs of modern young ladies. He took the rest of the mail and handed me that box, and I let him pretend he had never held it in his hands.

It's the first time I get to feel them squeezing me now. There's a fluff in between my flesh and the leather that keeps them not uncomfortable, but it's Apollo's sliding his paw closer up my arm that makes them warm around me.

He leans himself down beside me, getting himself comfy on the tousled sheets he's sprawled me over. He strokes me again. Then he pulls his paw away to his face and motions in a circle around his eye, then pulls it down to his heart again, signing just one word.

Harley.

He motions in some more sweeping gestures.

Tonight, I want you to sing for me.

I might get romantic enough to sign back his name if I could, but I just whisper to him, "You goin' make me, Sir?"

Apollo pushes his head to mine. He slides his paw around my hair and pulls me into him, slides himself around my tongue and slicks it over his. The cuffs pull at my wrists and his paws guide my face where he pleases, opening me, tickling me against his scruffy plush and nibbling gently on my tongue.

No other soul can hear us now. He knows it, and I feel it. Only he hears the little gasps from where he touches, and only I offer the sweetest places for him to go.

The lock of my hair falls out of place again as Apollo pulls away. He thumbs it with his toe, then this time he leaves it be. With the same paw he shoves against the bed and spreads himself on top of me, sidling his legs down past my hips, grinning without that gentle smile into my eyes as my gaze is stuck towards his.

He takes the rest of my hair and holds it tight, and I brace myself for my other hole I feel widening to him.

Apollo throws in. He shoves me deeper in place into our bed and tosses me around on the inside, huffing into my ear like he ain't listening to the gasps stolen out from my lungs. His toes curl around my head like he's mussing my hair the same as my guts.

And God, it hurts.

We've made that the point. Apollo don't wait for me to loosen to him before he goes full speed at full sail. It's a grunting is all I manage at first, held back from holding on to anything as my hands dangle in sweat behind us, tugging against chains and empty air and effort I cannot sustain against Apollo's thrusts in a place not supposed to hold him. He shoves a great effort not to cry into my belly, and he just goes harder seeing me hold in what I can.

The looser struggles of my voice come when his tongue's at my lips again, lapping and petting me just so distant that he lets my whines escape louder. He trains me towards what he likes to hear. He rewards my difficulty squeezing him with clutching me like a dirty used sleeve.

And because of Apollo, I feel like the best goddamn sleeve who ever squeezed over someone.

To the both of us, hard fucking really is poetic. There's a comfort wider than romance in the roles we oblige to each other. He sheds me of the schedule outside our room and I take the every time he wanted to smack someone upside the head, but him using his other head now.

I let him in, and he holds me close.

He leans harder onto his paw and presses my cheek into the sheets, stuffing me against my own hot breaths. He licks the crease of my jaw and coaxes me louder. He rears back and squelches in, making his own lube, bucking me the painful half an inch forward each time.

I tell him, “Gon—too fast—!"

And to the both of us, it means he should go faster.

Apollo growls his message back to me through a fanged kind of smile he don't have to hold back anymore, and he thuds me from his rising tip to his slapping base. Then it's the same half a syllable I keep stuttering to him every blast that he don't give me the breath to finish.

Even already, before his big finish, I feel Apollo laying his mark on me and in me. It's that puffy red I'll only see in the mirror. That permission to sit down I won't quite feel the days after this. That look in his eyes tomorrow when I know he's just waiting for the next good chance to freshen me up.

I see him above me through all the strands blurring his face from mine, watching me, and he brushes my hair out the way so he can see my buckled eyes proper before I'm filled with more than his heat.

And then the both of us freeze as we hear a truck rattling down the road.

The breathing heavy keeps going, but Apollo tilts real slow towards the windows like he's holding himself in. I lay quiet as I can gasp under him, and that is not very.

We hear an engine whine to quitting in front of our house. Then a couple doors bumping shut.

And without what it should mean, I whisper, “Oh, fuck."

Apollo slides right out of me and I pull myself up nearly faster than he can pull himself off from on top, and we're moving all the quicker when Aunt Doreen's voice is coming through from under the window. Now I ignore the not sexy kind of burning in me as I scoot backwards on my knees til there's enough slack in the chains for me to reach each my wrists. Apollo's grabbing at one cuff with his canines as slack as he can pull it while I'm scrabbling at the other, and soon as the front door squeaks open like through the whole goddamn fucking house my fingers are slipping and Apollo can't get no good grip on the fucking bracelet I need to get out of fore anybody comes up and says hi or goodnight or gets their fucking gun—

I just get the cuff an inch looser and yank my hand out no matter how that hurts either, but Apollo's still working on making any progress. I ain't want to be the one taking from him, but I grab at his work and slip that cuff just loose enough to get out the same.

Uncle Joshua and Aunt Doreen are talking loud right downstairs now and it don't matter what they're saying, but I hear my name. You can't hear the stairs creaking from my room, but God in heaven I swear I hear somebody coming up them like some funeral march crawling up my spine.

Apollo gets one chain wrestled off the bedpost and it tumbles onto the floor before he can catch it, knocking loud on the hardwood like an invitation. God Almighty, I just—I can't get the other chain, so I give up and he grabs at that and I wipe my eyes and limp off the bed for a shirt and just goddamn anything to cover up.

And you're just shaking your head like I'm some eyelinered teeny bopper hiding a boy the folks don't approve of.

That's what we look like right now, I know.

But it feels more like hiding somebody from the husband, or the wife, and no matter how bad it is, I cannot let them find out what's happening in this bedroom because I cannot let the both of us find out what really happens at the end of that story.

So when the bedroom door creaks all the way open and Aunt Doreen stands right behind it, peering down at me, she says, “Hey, Harley."

Apollo's curled up away from her, off the bed, and all I missed are my pants, so now I'm chilling on my pillows in just my shirt and skivvies like the younger generation Aunt Doreen just don't understand. My legs are not that sweaty and she does not need to ask about them, so I just knock one knee against the other and ask her, “What're you doing back already?"

“Actually, your uncle Joshua got in an argument with your uncle Leroy's new wife again, so Leroy and I decided the visit was over already," she tells me. With a glance back towards the stairs, she looks at me and sighs, “Don't ask about what. Folks our age do not find pleasant topics to argue over."

“Oh," I say. “I thought Uncuh Josh-ya was getting along fine with, uh—"

Aunt Doreen gets herself nice and comfy leaning against the doorframe and says, “Melinda. She ain't that bad. Your day go any nicer?"

“Oh, yeah," I say. “I ain't have any trouble. Got the bessies took care of. Watched a movie."

“Well, thank you for that. You hitting the sack already?"

“Maybe. I was thinking 'bout it."

Aunt Doreen nods and props her elbow higher, hand dangling easy over her. “Well, I'll try to keep your uncle quiet for you, but you'll just have to excuse him if he's still getting it out of his system. He's going to stay up tonight just ranting to me, I swear."

I smile back to her and kind of shrug, keeping my back and my backside still as I can. Ain't nothing more for me to mumble.

Aunt Doreen finally slips herself down the frame and steps back, pulling the door closed and pointing towards Apollo as she says, “He better not jump on your bed soon as I leave."

“Oh, my God, he knows the rules," I tell her. “And he follows 'em. He follows the rules."

I look her in the eye and say, “Trust us that much."

And Aunt Doreen looks from him to me, and I don't look her much in the eye anymore when she looks in mine.

She smiles, but all she says is, “Goodnight, Harley."

I don't really smile back to her anymore, either, as I say, “Goodnight, Missus O'Pine."

And the door clicks shut.

Apollo only even opens his eyes when he hears her walking back down the hall. I just roll over. Ass up, and not the way we like it.

Apollo pulls his forelegs on the bed and climbs up beside me, but he touches me on just the arm. I fumble my eyes around towards his, and he lays beside me and lifts his paws to sign over a frown he can't swallow.

I love you, Harley. Okay?

I can barely feel the words in my throat I need to say back. I just got a lump bubbling up where they should be. I wish it was from what he said, but it's the disappointment in myself getting on my outside.

Whether or not it's really like that keeping affairs from who else you love—living under another woman's roof, you don't ever get to feel more than like the teenager hiding her boy.

I give my hand to Apollo and thumb back the bristles over his eyes, and I tell him, “I'm sorry…"

He pulls his paws back down and just hugs me. Tonight, neither of us gets anything better than the pain.