Lone Star Read Online Free PDF

tugged into an answering smile. “Is the Dance Box still open?” he asked of the studio where he had trained as a kid.
    “No. Miss Nesou passed away last year. The building’s for sale now.”
    That was a shock. “She couldn’t have been that old.”
    “Sixty something.”
    Mitch was silent, absorbing it. He’d always meant to thank her, to let her know those extra private lessons had not gone in vain. Miss Nesou, with her passion for vegetarian cooking and writing postcards and cake doughnuts with black coffee. She’d driven a 1963 Cadillac Coupe Deville and had a pet lop-eared rabbit. The coolest person the teenaged Mitch had ever known.
    Now an adult, he recognized she’d been a lot cooler than he’d ever realized.
    How weird was it that he was getting all worked up over Miss Nesou and he’d never shed a tear over his own father’s passing? He said over the unexpected tightness in his throat, “She’d been a soloist with the New York City Ballet. What do you think she was doing in a town like this?”
    “I guess she liked it here.” There was an edge to Web’s voice. Maybe he remembered some of those old arguments too.
    “I wish she’d known…”
    Web looked away from the road again. “Known what?”
    “What she did for me. That I…made it.” All the way to principal dancer with the ABT. At one time that goal had been as far away as the stars. The only person other than himself who had believed it possible—or desirable—was Miss Nesou.
    Web was disbelieving. “You think she didn’t know?”
    “Did she?”
    “Everybody in this damned town knows.” Web added grimly, “Everybody who gives a shit about that kind of thing.”
    Which Web clearly did not and never had. Their bond had not been built on a mutual love of the arts. More like being the only two gay kids in all of Llano County. Or so they’d believed at the time.
    They passed a brick store with a huge plastic Santa and flying reindeer suspended over the rooftop. Mitch remembered his crazy vision of the night before. Maybe he had been falling asleep. But man, it had seemed real for those few seconds.
    “Do they still do the lighted Christmas parade?”
    Web said, “Uh-huh. First week of December. Right now they’re doin’ the Starry, Starry Nights on the river. They’ve got a fifty-five-foot Christmas tree in the park this year and a thirty-foot snowman.”
    “That’s nice.” Mitch stared out the window as the shop windows painted with Christmas trees and bells and stars flashed by in the bright winter sunlight. Did Web remember that final Christmas Eve when they had walked through the lighted Christmas Park with its thousands of twinkling lights and animated displays of cute animals in toukes? Did he remember the ugly argument that had followed? Did Web remember that it had been Christmas Eve twelve years ago that Mitch had lit out for parts unknown and never looked back?
    “I guess it’s a change from New York City.” Web’s voice broke into Mitch’s bleak thoughts.
    “Yeah. Although in a way New York is just a bunch of little villages all crammed into one big village.”
    Mitch thought of his apartment and was suddenly intensely homesick. He didn’t belong here anymore. He never had.
    “Do you like being a Texas Ranger?” he asked, talking himself away from the loneliness.
    “Yep. I sure do.” Web smiled. Well, that had been his dream as long as dancing had been Mitch’s.
    “Are you—” Mitch stopped. It wasn’t his business for one thing.
    “Am I?”
    “Out?”
    The easy good humor faded from Web’s face. “I’m as out as I need to be. But I don’t guess I fit your criteria for bein’ out.”
    Just like that, the old resentment and hostility was back. “How do you know what my criterion is? You don’t know anything about me.”
    “I don’t think you’ve changed that much.”
    What the hell did that mean? “I doubt if you’ve changed that much either.”
    “Folks don’t tend to,” Web agreed