by Roan Parrish
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Angela was so pissed because he didn’t call her for advice and got some shitty public defender instead. She said if she’d gotten him a real lawyer, they could’ve gotten that time way down. Anyway. I mean, as for what can happen to people in prison… yeah, I think it’s pretty fucking grim, man.”
“Yeah.”
“So, if one of these kids is in trouble or something… I don’t know, maybe Angela could help? At least help hook them up with a criminal lawyer.” I always forget what kind of lawyer Angela is. Something with building permits, maybe?
“Nah, it’s not like that, but thanks, man. Yeah, I’ve just been thinking about it, I guess.”
“Yeah, okay, C.” X looks suspicious, but thankfully, he doesn’t push.
“Hey,” I say. “Thanks, man. Thanks for meeting me.”
“I’m glad you called, bro. You should come to the house sometime. Come for dinner or to hang out. Watch a game?”
“Aw, man. I just—Angela hates me. You don’t have to pretend she doesn’t. It’s awkward, you know?”
X sighs and rubs his temples. “She doesn’t hate you. But… you’re never serious in front of her. You don’t act like you do with me. You act like you do at the bar. So, she thinks you’re a player and she doesn’t like when I go out with you because she… you know.”
I snort. “Seriously? That’s what she thinks? That we’re, like, picking up women?”
X chuckles. “I know. I tried to tell her you’re not into it, but, hell.”
My breath catches. “What do you mean, not into it?”
X freezes and tries to cover it up by rubbing his nose. “Oh. Well, you know, just like, that you aren’t like that.” He laughs but it sounds forced.
At the YA, in the dimly lit basement, I help Rafe set up tables and a platform and move large speakers onto the risers in the front of the room.
I called him after work to make sure he knew we were still… friends or whatever, and to see if he wanted to run, so when he said he had to set up for some event they’re having here tonight, I said I’d come help and then hung up before he could tell me not to. He’s avoided looking at me since I got here, though, lifting and dragging like a machine. And every time he gets near me, it kindles a flame in my stomach, making me want to reach for him, feel his warmth, smell him.
“So,” I say as we’re setting up the last chairs in rows. “The kids say you never date anyone.”
This is the tidbit that’s stuck in my mind. Carlos said it almost as a throwaway comment, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since. For all that Rafe obviously has a lot of people in his life who need something from him, it seems like maybe he doesn’t need anyone.
Rafe stops, a chair in each hand. “And you trust teenagers to have the scoop on my intimate personal life?”
“Well, do they?”
Rafe sighs, puts the chairs in place, and sinks down on the platform we set up. “Well, I’m busy and people have a lot going on,” he says vaguely.
“So, they’re right. You don’t… date or whatever?”
“Yeah, it’s been a while,” he says slowly, leaning back on his palms.
“You were in love with Javier, huh?”
He sits up quickly.
“What? Why would you think that?” He’s studying me intently.
“Um. Just your face when you talk about him.” I used to watch Pop’s face when my mom would get home from the grocery store or from work. The way his eyes followed her every movement, keeping track of even the smallest gesture like it was important. The way he smiled with his whole face and his shoulders relaxed when she was near him.
“No. Well, yeah, at first. But then…. He was the best friend I’d ever had. The only person besides my mom who looked at me and thought I could be someone. Even my mom…. After—” He looks sideways at me. “After I went to prison, she never looked at me the same. But Javi…. Maybe I was just desperate for someone not to think I was a scumbag junkie criminal, but, man, I would’ve done anything for him.”
I sit next to him, our knees almost touching. It’s a strange kind of closeness, like we’re kids sitting on a curb or something, swapping secrets in between games.
“I was a kid when we met. Twenty-four. But I already felt like my life was over.” His voice is strained. “Felt like, who was gonna hire me after they saw that checked box on the job application. It’d just go right into the trash. And—” He leans forward, knees on his elbows, staring blankly. “—who was ever gonna want to be with me? Make a life with an ex-con.” He spits the word out, shaking his head.
It’s the other phrase that gets me, though. Make a life. It’s the first indication I’ve gotten of what Rafe wants. What he hopes for. How he thinks things work—like a life is something you can create rather than something that’s dumped on you.
“I didn’t want people to be scared of me,” he continues. “But they were. Anyway. Javi… got me. Man, without him I would’ve been just like all the shitheads I’d been hanging around with when I got sent up.
“He was my sponsor at NA. The relationship between a sponsor and a sponsee is intense. Intimate. You lay all your shit down for that person. You have to. And he didn’t judge me. He didn’t treat me like a kid. He gave me his shit in return. It was the first time I’d talked honestly with another man about being gay.”
He looks at me and his expression is open. This is the most I’ve heard him say at once.
“Um, you said ‘at first’—you were in love with him at first?”
Rafe looks down, embarrassed, but then he laughs. “Yeah. It was so embarrassing.” He shakes his head. “One night after a meeting, he asked me to help him take some boxes from his car up to his apartment. When we were done, he got me some water or something, and when he turned to give it to me—” He grimaces. “—I kissed him. I don’t know what I was thinking. That he’d used the boxes as a ploy to get me into bed or something. Hell, I don’t know. He dropped the water, the glass smashed, and he pushed me away. I was fucking mortified. I worshipped him. Thought he had it all together. I wanted to be him. But right then, fuck, I had never felt so stupid.”
“What did he do?” The notion of Rafe wanting someone that badly makes me tense, like I’m running out of time for something.
“Oh, he was really kind about it, of course. He’s the kindest person I’ve ever met. He didn’t mean to make me feel bad, but he said it wasn’t right. He was my sponsor, and I hadn’t been clean that long. Besides, he said he saw me as a little brother.”
“Wait, he was old?” I’ve been picturing some really hot variation on Rafe, I realize.
“Not old, but older than me. I was twenty-four; he was about forty.” Rafe’s smile is fond. “This big old leather daddy.”
“What the hell is a leather daddy?”
He glances sideways at me, looking a little embarrassed. “He was a big, beefy guy with a beard and slicked-back hair who always wore jeans and biker boots and a leather vest. Ate burritos or hamburgers for every meal.”
“So, um, is that, like, your type?”
Rafe snorts. He looks right at me and takes my hands in his. Ugh, I think mine are all sweaty.
“No,” he says. When he lets go of my hands, the disappointment hits hard. Suddenly touching him seems crucial. “Anyway, I got over it. Javi was great. He acted exactly the same around me after that, so I didn’t feel so awkward. Never stopped hugging me or hanging out with me. Eventually, I forgot it ever happened, really. He was… my mentor, my sponsor. My best friend.”
Rafe looks down at his hands.
“And now he’s just… gone. And I don’t know what to do with that.”
He doesn’t try to play it off or cover it up or act like he’s okay when he isn’t. He… feels it. And I wish so fucking bad I could be like that. My heart feels like it’s beating out of my chest and I’m sweating, but I can’t help myself. I need to touch him, breathe him in, absorb some of the sadness that feels
so familiar.
I push up onto my knees and gently touch my lips to his. He startles at first, like he didn’t think that’s what I was going to do, but then he relaxes and lets me kiss him.
I can’t believe I’m kissing a man.
I can’t believe I’m kissing Rafe.
And shit, I must be doing a terrible job, because Rafe’s sitting stock-still. After a few seconds, though, one hand slides up my back and the other cups my cheek. And he starts really kissing me. I mean, holy hell is he kissing me.
I’ve kissed women before and it was fine. Nice, sometimes. But it didn’t turn me on like this. Each time Rafe’s mouth moves over mine, bolts of sensation shoot straight to my groin. I’m hard in seconds—embarrassingly hard—high school hard—and my whole body is buzzing with energy. Then something inside me lets go, and it feels like I’m drunk. Everything’s melted into a soup of darkness and fog and I’m suspended there, where the only thing I’m supposed to do is to kiss Rafe. Nothing could have prepared me for this: feeling like I’m in the right place, with the right person. Like a weight I didn’t even realize had always been pressing down on my chest has suddenly vaporized, leaving me ungrounded but free.
Rafe makes a sound in the back of his throat and I realize I have my arms wrapped so tightly around his neck that I’m probably choking him.
“Sorry,” I mutter. He doesn’t let me pull away, though, and just shakes his head. We’re both staring at each other, breathing heavily. Rafe’s eyelids are heavy, his lips slightly parted. He pulls me closer, pulls me down so I’m basically straddling him.
“Oh fuck,” I mutter as he settles me on his lap. I’m aware of my body in a way I only ever am when I’m running. Connected. I could come with just a touch, which makes me start to panic. I feel helpless like this. Ashamed and nervous and so fucking turned on that I can’t pull away.
Rafe runs his hands down my arms, his touch electric. I can smell the warm spice of his hair, and I lean closer, chasing the scent. My nose is next to his neck and I breathe him in. Fuck. Rafe smells like a warm, velvet darkness that I want to dive in to and never come out of.
He leans back slowly, pulling me down on top of him. He spreads his legs and cradles me with his hips as my legs slide between his.
I make a humiliating broken sound, and Rafe kisses me until I’m light-headed and out of control. He pulls my groin tight against his muscled stomach and I know I’m gonna lose it. It’s like I’m coming out of my skin. Every nerve ending is electrified, all the pleasure routed to my dick.
I try to push myself away from him, terrified that I’ll come all over myself.
“You are so fucking hot like this.” Rafe’s words send a wave of equal parts shame and joy through me. I gasp and squeeze my eyes shut. “Keep your eyes on me.” He angles his hips up, intensifying the pressure between us.
“Don’t—” I beg. “I can’t—I have to—I’m gonna—”
Rafe catches my scrabbling hands and winds them around his neck, kissing me silent. I shiver when his hands run up my back.
“Look at me.” His voice is thick and terrifying, and my body responds to it. Rafe’s eyes are almost black in the dim light. Too intense. I concentrate on the light sprinkle of freckles across his nose instead.
His hand moves to my lower back, right above my ass, and I tense, eyes flying to his. He pushes down slowly and grinds our hips together. The pressure is incredible, his arm like a vise. I can feel it begin, little uncontrollable trembles of pleasure skittering from my balls and my spine and my stomach and my thighs like the electric arms of those plasma balls at the museum where I went to on a class trip before Mom died. I put my hand to the glass and the tentacles of electricity jumped to my fingers like magic.
Rafe presses me down harder and harder, his strength inexorable and his eyes ravenous. He runs his other hand up my side under my shirt, the light touch to my ribs a shocking whisper compared to the engulfing pleasure between my legs. Then he cants his hips up and pushes me down as if he could press us into one body.
One second I’m staring at Rafe, his mouth set in concentration, his eyes heated, and the next, my whole body tenses, seized with pleasure. Rafe’s hand is immovable, holding me to him even as every muscle clenches. He’s looking at me as I come, and his face is pure satisfaction. His eyelids go heavy, and he bites his lower lip between sharp, crooked teeth and shudders against me.
Then he pulses his hips up once, tightening his stomach muscles until his neck cords, and comes, his head thumping back against the platform, his mouth open, breath caught. He looks so vulnerable suddenly. Like I could do anything to him.
My thighs tense over and over and my stomach flutters, seeking the last shadows of shivery pleasure.
I want to kiss Rafe’s throat. My mouth is right there and I can smell him, warm and earthy. But then he moans softly, and his hand slides from my lower back down to my ass. He barely touches me, but I tense up automatically, bad memories tumbling it all down, the delicate, dreamlike fog turning tarry and black.
Rafe freezes and inches his hand up to rest on my back once more.
And I hate it. I hate that he made me feel so good and then I probably made him feel like shit. I hate that I just had the best fucking orgasm of my life and then I ruined it. I hate that I wanted to kiss Rafe’s neck and instead I’m freaking out. I hate it. I hate myself for fucking it all up. I hate myself for being such a mess that I can’t even get off without wanting to punch myself in the face.
Rafe slides his hand up my back soothingly. It’s not sex anymore. He’s rubbing my back like Mom used to do when I couldn’t sleep. I take a deep breath and force myself to relax. His hand moves up to my head, stroking the short strands of my hair. I let out the breath I’ve caught and lie back on him, trying to recapture the feeling of relaxation from a minute before.
But I’m also sticky, and with each passing second, it’s all I can think about, and the more I think about it, the twitchier I get. I need to get washed up, like, now.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I croak into Rafe’s neck.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, I just… um… sticky.”
Rafe chuckles and my face burns. I feel gross. Sticky and dirty and a little shaky. I clamber off of him, probably squishing something vital in the process. Before I can get away, though, he grabs my shoulders.
“Colin?” He sounds almost shy. I look at him, but I’m jonesing to get into the bathroom. He leans in so slowly that I have every opportunity to pull away. But I don’t. I let him kiss me softly on the mouth. “I’ll go with you,” he says, gesturing to the door.
I don’t want him to. I need a little distance, some space to think, but I nod.
Under the fluorescent lights, I look like crap. My face is flushed and my eyes are too bright. I want to put the door of a stall between us, but I force myself to stay at the sink and clean up. Every time I glance into the mirror, Rafe is hovering behind me, a slight frown on his lips. I don’t know why. It’s not like this is new to him.
I get myself cleaned up enough that my skin isn’t crawling, but I have no idea where to go from here. A door slamming outside makes me startle and drop the wad of damp paper towels. I swipe at them but miss, leaning on my knees and trying to get a deep breath. Fuck. Every good feeling rushes out of me. The weight on my chest is back and it doesn’t leave room for anything so warm or delicate as the things Rafe makes me feel.
“I didn’t say that about Javi to make you feel sorry for me,” Rafe says. He’s regarding me uncertainly in the mirror when I stand up.
“I don’t feel sorry for you, man. I mean, of course I’m sorry you lost your friend. But you’ve got a job you love, lots of friends, shit to care about, your family. Those kids worship you.” I shake my head. “From where I’m standing, you’ve got everything.”
He drops his hands from my shoulders and looks at the tile floor.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I’m lucky. Luckier than I have any right
to be.”
7
Chapter 7
Since Monday, Rafe and I have talked a lot, and it’s been easy. He doesn’t pretend that he’s into the same things as me. He doesn’t like horror movies, doesn’t know anything about cars, and doesn’t follow sports except for the World Cup and the occasional hockey game. He did give me shit when he found out I played football in high school, though. Said he was surprised I turned into a runner because didn’t most football players try their damnedest not to run more than a few yards at a time. So I guess he does have a sense of humor.
Well. Not really. And he doesn’t want me to entertain him the way I would with someone in a bar. In fact, when I try to joke around to fill the silence or make light of something, he doesn’t seem amused. He’s not rude or anything. He just takes things seriously, I guess.
It’s a strange feeling. I’ve spent so many years shooting the shit that I kind of forgot that I had things to say.
I’ve been remembering it lately, though. Remembering people I used to talk to. There was this kid I knew in seventh and eighth grade. Charlie Lancaster. He was kind of strange, always talking about morbid stuff like death and skeletons and plagues. But I liked listening to him. I liked how he didn’t care that people thought he was weird. And after Mom died, all the things he was talking about kind of made sense to me.
His parents had been killed in a car crash when he was ten, and he managed to sit with me and talk and not spout a bunch of shit about how sorry he was for me. Useless comments that made me want to scream and punch people right in their weepy, sympathetic mouths. But Charlie and I talked about what it meant for someone to suddenly cease to exist. About the space someone can leave behind. About where you go after you die—we never agreed on that one: he thought you just disappeared as if you’d never existed, lingering only in the memories of the ones who knew you; I thought there had to be… something. Now, though, I think Charlie might’ve been right.