Cowboy Mike and Buddy Boy

One autumn a few years back, there was an attractive, young man who began to wonder if his life was heading in the right direction. He had good reason to wonder. But he was having such a damn good time sneaking around with his married lover, he decided not to think about it…too much.
He was only 22 years old at the time, a recent college graduate with a degree in business, still working as a waiter in a small, rural town in Montana, waiting for his real life to begin. He was slim and lanky and muscle-toned, with a shock of dark brown hair that screened his forehead and thick tresses that always appeared slightly windblown. Dark lashes framed his deep blue eyes and a dimple in his chin caused most people to glance at him twice. If someone didn't know him well, they would have thought his bland taste in clothing wasn't his best asset. He had an unadventurous style of dress, veering precariously close to parochial-school uniform.
He did deserve some credit in one area. Most guys his age, with his small-town background, would have settled for marrying their high-school sweetheart and ignoring their innate, natural urges with men. "It's only a phase I'm going through," they would have told themselves. "I'll just get married, have a few kids, and I'll stop thinking about guys sooner or later," they would have rationalized. In spite of how much progress gay people had made in urban areas, in rural areas, gay life was still one of the top-ten taboos, and gay people still had limited options.
It never occurred to Noah to say that even once. He simply could not help the way he felt about his married lover, Mike, and the things they did when they met up on the sly. For that matter, he couldn't help the fact that he'd always been attracted to men, especially cowboys.
On the night Noah began to question where his life was going and the magnitude of sleeping around with a married man finally hit him, he was meeting Mike at the rest stop on the interstate. They met here often; it was safe and no one ever would have thought to look for them there. Mike was Noah's first and only lover; a man who could curl Noah's toes and make his eyes roll to the back of his head with the simple touch of one finger. When Mike held Noah in his arms, the world tilted on its side.