by Sarina Bowen
“Ah.” He smiled again, and it was friendly. “Well, keep me in mind, in case you become less complicated. I did notice that the Celtics are playing the Bulls at home next month. Even if we’re just friends, I thought you might like to come with me.”
“Oh, man.” I rubbed my face, which was turning redder. “You don’t fight fair.”
He laughed. “I was trying to say that we should be friends anyway. You’re new in town. And we could go to a basketball game no matter what.”
“That is a hell of an offer. Sounds like a blast,” I said truthfully.
Jason sipped his beer. “This is a small town. You can’t have too many friends who like both basketball and dick.”
With a snort, I touched my bottle to his once more. “Good point, my friend. Good point.”
* * *
Caxtastrophe to Axeldental: I’m sorry I didn’t stay for a beer last night. It’s not you.
Axeldental to Caxtastrophe: You say that often.
Wait—scratch that. That was a shitty reply. I’m just frustrated. In all the ways there are to be frustrated. ;)
Caxtastrophe to Axeldental: I’m… yeah. But I DO say that a lot. It’s just that I don’t see that changing any time soon. My life is a suckfest, and not the enjoyable kind.
Axeldental to Caxtastrophe: And now I’m thinking about BJs. Thanks for that.
Caxtastrophe to Axeldental: You’re welcome. Frustrating you is my specialty. But I mean well.
Axeldental to Caxtastrophe: I know you do. But I don’t have to like it. Last night I turned down a date.
Caxtastrophe to Axeldental: You did? Why?
Axeldental to Caxtastrophe: Because he wasn’t you.
Caxtastrophe to Axeldental: Maybe you shouldn’t have done that.
* * *
I groaned.
“What?” Boz asked, chomping on his gum.
“Nothing.” I’d been grumpy all day. The emails from Cax weren’t helping.
Boz pushed back from his desk and then spun his office chair. “You’re in a mood. I’d ask you if you were having woman troubles but…”
“It’s possible to have man troubles, you know.”
“I suppose. But I refuse to believe that guys are tough to get along with. I mean…it’s tempting to go gay just to get away from female drama.”
I laughed for the first time all day. “Not sure you’re right about that. But it would be an interesting experiment. Can I watch?”
Boz crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it at me.
“Is that a no?”
He spun the chair again, and I was getting dizzy just watching. “So, whoever he is—just go talk to him. Bring beer. Play a gory video game. Problem solved.”
“If only it were that simple.”
“It probably is, though. I’m that simple, anyway.”
“Let’s not print that on your business cards.”
Boz laughed. “You really know what to say to a guy. You want to show me the work you’ve done on the subscribers’ list before the day is over?”
“Sure.”
* * *
I didn’t get any emails from Cax the following day. That made me grumpy.
The next night found me bumping around my apartment, alone again. It was December, so the sun had set at five o’clock. It was dark and cold, and my mood was bleak.
My gaze kept landing on the Barmuth sweatshirt hanging by my door. It belonged to Cax and I still hadn’t returned it. Thinking it was mine, I’d grabbed it off the backseat of his car when he’d dropped me off at the team hotel in Merryline.
And maybe in a weak moment I might have given it a little sniff, to see if it smelled like him.
It did. And that only made me miss him more.
What’s worse, I was pining for someone who’d never been, and who never could be, really mine. Maybe I was some kind of masochist to keep thinking about him, but we had so much potential as a couple. The chemistry between us was off the charts. And we’d been friends since we were eight. When I was sixteen, I’d realized I loved him.
I still loved him. Not that Cax wanted to hear it.
I stared at his sweatshirt. It would give me an excuse to see his face, if only for a minute.
I put it in my backpack when I walked to work the following morning. As I sat at my desk, thinking about taking it to him on a break or at lunch, I began to wonder if Cax would want me near his apartment building. He was so worried about the world knowing who he really was…
Fuck. Could he not even have a gay friend without casting suspicion on himself?
Axeldental to Caxtastrophe: I happen to have your Barmuth sweatshirt.
Caxtastrophe to Axeldental: I wondered where that went.
Axeldental to Caxtastrophe: Okay if I drop by later and return it?
There was a pause before he answered, and it made me feel like a pariah.
Caxtastrophe to Axeldental: You can swing by, but I might be out running.
Axeldental to Caxtastrophe: Fine. If you’re not there I’ll leave it in a bag at your door.
I had to stop brooding over him. It was only going to make me crazier than I already was.
That afternoon I left work at two o’clock, because I had a few hours coming to me on account of the basketball schedule. Cax had told me where he lived, and I’d written down the address. Still, it took the new guy in town a few minutes to identify the right residence hall.
When I finally found his door and knocked, there was only silence. Of course there was. He was probably running a half marathon right now just to avoid me.
I knocked one more time, just to be sure. I thought I heard a rustle on the other side of the door.
Weird.
“Cax?” I called.
I heard a mumble. And then a groan.
“Are you alright?”
Again I heard a groan, and the hair stood up on my neck.
Was I even in front of the right door? Wondering if I was making a terrible mistake, I tried the knob, which turned willingly in my hand. “Cax?” I said, opening the door a few inches. “Are you okay?”
The studio apartment was even smaller than mine. The first thing I saw inside was a bed with tangled sheets. Cax’s fully clothed body was lying on it. Then I noticed his hands were pressed into his eye sockets.
“Cax?” I forgot to worry about propriety and walked right in. The door closed behind me as I crossed the little room. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” he rasped. “Migraine.”
I sat down on the bed. “Oh, I’m sorry. Do you get them often?”
“Only when I’m stressed out,” he muttered. “So that’s, like, pretty often.”
“Poor baby.” I dug my fingers into his shoulder muscle and squeezed. “You’re so tight.”
“That feels good.”
“Turn over,” I ordered him.
He flopped onto his stomach. I put both hands on his shoulders and began to rub. He moaned. “So good. Everything is in knots when my head aches.”
I toed off my boots and climbed onto the bed, one knee on either side of his hips. I had better leverage up there. Massaging everything I could reach, I worked the stiff muscles in his shoulders. I kneaded his neck and rubbed the tight muscles at the back of his head. I worked my way up to his temples and went to town with the heels of my hands.
“You are the most amazing human,” Cax mumbled. “Thank you.”
“I could touch you all day, babe.”
In some ways, he and I had the most confusing relationship in the world. We were close friends who didn’t spend time together. We were lovers who rarely got even a kiss. We had a long history together with a big gap in the middle.
In short, we were a tangle of disasters. But there was nobody I’d ever felt so close to. Laying my hands on him felt like coming home. He felt like mine.
“Mmm,” he sighed under my touch. “Wait. What time is it?”
“Almost three.”
/> Cax groaned. “Damn. It. I have to go pick up Scotty from school.”
My touch was light now, just fingertips on his forehead. “Can you drive like this?”
“I’ll go slow,” he said. “I don’t have any peripheral vision, though.”
“What?”
“It’s called an ocular migraine—the edges of your vision go dark. It’s creepy as hell but it always goes away.”
That did sound creepy as hell. “Don’t drive like that. I’ll do it. I’ll drive your car.” I climbed off him.
Cax let out a sigh. “Would you? I’m not doing so well.”
I could see that. “Come on. Where are your keys?”
* * *
“The school is up here on the right,” Cax said. He covered his eyes with his hands.
“The glare is killing you, isn’t it?” I asked. There was an inch or two of new snow on the ground. It made the town glisten. The sun had come out to sparkle on every white surface.
“Yeah. But tomorrow I’ll be fine. Just have to keep telling myself that. It always goes away.”
I pulled to a stop behind the line of cars at the curb. “The kids are starting to come out now.”
Cax dragged his hands off his eyes and sat up straighter. He wore an uncomfortable squint that made me ache for him.
“Here.” I took off my sunglasses and passed them to him. “Put these on.”
He accepted them without argument. “Thanks for driving. Some high school kids have been giving Scotty trouble on the bus, and I’ve been picking him up on the days when I’m not teaching.”
“Poor kid.” I’d been there.
“My asshole father is no help. He told Scotty to punch somebody and then they’d leave him alone. As if a sixth-grader can clock a high school junior on a crowded bus and live to tell about it. Dad lives in a parallel universe where a real man can take down a bully by merely emitting a bit of testosterone into the atmosphere.”
“Here he comes.” I saw a skinny kid approaching the car, a smile on his face. When he got close enough to see his brother in the passenger’s seat, his expression became curious.
“Hey,” the boy said, opening the back door. “You okay?”
Jeez. Sharp kid. I hated wondering why he’d jump to the conclusion that something was wrong with Cax.
“I’m just having a migraine headache,” he said. “I’ll be fine tomorrow. But my friend Axel offered to drive, so I took him up on it.”
“Hi Scott,” I said.
“Hey, Axel. You work at the basketball games, right?”
“Sure do.”
The kid pulled the car door closed. “You keep the stats?”
“Negative,” I said. “Stats would be awesome, but I’m just handling the Twitter feed, and I write articles about the games for the alumni.”
“No way! I liked that thing you did for the Yale game on Instagram. The bulldog rolling downhill?”
“Thanks!” I said, holding a hand back and over my shoulder, palm towards Scotty. He high-fived it. “Didn’t know I’d meet a follower today.”
Cax directed me to his father’s house. Even his voice sounded pained.
“Did you take anything?” Scotty asked.
“Sure did, pal,” Cax said, straightening up in his seat. “And when I get home, I’ll take a hot shower. That always helps.” He pointed up the block. “It’s the brick… Oh, shit.”
His father was on the front walk, shovel in hand. I recognized him after all this time—an older and grayer version of the sour man I remembered. He looked up just as I noticed him.
Tension radiated from Cax, so I stopped the car a distance away from where his dad stood. Cax clicked open the passenger-side door and got out just as Scotty did. Their dad walked towards us, an unreadable expression on his face. “Who’s drivin’ your car?” he asked.
“A friend from the department,” Cax said, leaning on the open door. “Came down with a migraine at my desk today. It screws with my vision, so I asked for a hand.”
“You pussy,” his father snarled. “A fucking headache takes you down?” He bent at the waist and stared into the car.
I was not, by nature, a fearful person. But the look that man gave me practically froze my blood. After ten seconds of giving me the icy-glare treatment, he straightened and gave Scotty a rough nudge toward the house. “Don’t know why you don’t just take the fucking bus, anyway. You’re a pussy, too. Learning it from your brother.”
Scotty’s narrow shoulders hunched as he stomped toward the house.
“I told you I don’t want your friends hanging around the boys,” his father said. And he said it right in front of me! As if I must have a contagious disease if I was hanging out with Cax.
Unbelievable.
“There’s nothing wrong with my friends,” Cax snarled.
The two of them stared each other down, and I found myself holding my breath, wondering how the confrontation would end. “I’m going,” Cax said eventually. The words were like two chips of ice.
“You do that.” His father lowered the shovel to the sidewalk and turned his back on us.
Cax got into the car. The second his door slammed, I pulled away.
We were turning onto the main road before Cax spoke again. “He’s not usually home at this hour.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “The distance you’ve been keeping between us seemed a little paranoid before. But it doesn’t anymore.”
“Yeah, it’s…” Cax swallowed hard. “He’s not easy to describe. I knew he’d treat you like…”
“The Ebola virus,” I finished.
“Stop the car,” Cax said quickly.
I pulled over immediately, and Cax opened the door. Then he bent over and vomited in the snow.
My heart contracted with sympathy. I looked around the car for tissues. Cax was a tidy person—he’d have something around for messes. I opened his glovebox and—bingo—napkins from a fast-food restaurant. “Here, Cax,” I said, leaning toward his open door.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, taking the napkin.
“Does this happen a lot with your headaches?”
With a sigh, he slid back into his seat and shut the door. “I don’t usually puke, but this isn’t the first time. Closing my eyes while you drove…” He groaned. “I won’t do that again.”
“Let’s get you home.”
* * *
When we pulled into the parking lot beside his building, he thanked me again for driving him.
“You’re not getting rid of me so easily,” I said.
“Axel…” he protested.
“He’s not here,” I said quietly. “I’m so sorry that happened, and your dad is the biggest asshole I’ve ever met. But right at this moment he can’t see us.”
Wordlessly he climbed from the car. And he didn’t argue when I followed him inside the building.
“Now, how can I make you more comfortable?” I asked after he’d brushed his teeth. “Cup of tea?”
“Sure. I’m going to shower for a minute.”
I put his kettle on and found a box of peppermint tea to fix for him.
He came out of the bathroom a couple of minutes later wearing only boxers. His hair was wet and his skin pink from the hot water. “I feel a little better now.”
I put the mug in his hand. “Lie down. I’ll rub your neck a little more before I go.”
He took a sip, then put the mug on the nightstand. “I won’t say no to that.”
Straddling him once again, I let my hands play over all that bare, soft skin. “You are so beautiful to me,” I whispered. “Kills me to see you feeling so ill.”
He let out a long, shaky breath. “I’ll sleep it off. That always works.”
“Hope it will.” I rubbed his neck, his head, his back. When my hands were too tired to continue, I lay down beside him. His face was turned away from me, but when I put a hand in the middle of his back, I felt him lean into my touch.
“Thank you,” he whispered
.
“Don’t thank me,” I returned, my voice hushed. “I meant to help you today, but I think I caused you trouble instead.”
“Not your fault.”
“I know, but…” I sighed. “There’s no solution, is there?”
Rolling over to face me, Cax shook his head. “I’ve been trying to tell you that.”
“I get it now.” I moved closer, pulling him into my arms. He put his achy head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I pushed you, though.”
His arms pulled me even closer. “And I liked it.”
Threading my fingers into his hair, I rubbed his scalp. “I love you, you know. Even if I’m not supposed to.”
He was absolutely silent, so I feared that once again I’d gone too far. That was my specialty, apparently. I was about to apologize for the seventy-fifth time when Cax made a strange sound. And then another one. He was crying.
“Oh, hon. No!” I crooned, my palm holding his head against my chest. “I’m sorry. You need to sleep and—”
“It’s just the pain, and…” He shook his head, his forehead rubbing against my shoulder. “No, actually. It’s not just the headache talking. I ache for you. Every night I lie in this fucking bed and try to find a workaround…” He paused to swallow hard. “Never can.”
Now my eyes were hot, too. “If there was anything I could ever do to help you, I’d do it.”
He let out another shuddering breath. I could feel how hard he was trying to control himself. And my heart broke again with each unhappy noise he made.
“I should go,” I whispered. Today I finally understood. Getting close to Cax only hurt him. That was just the way things were.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Not just yet.”
“Okay.” I could never refuse him anything. Not when he was lying in my arms with tears on his face. I brushed them away with my thumb.
“I love you, too.” He said it in an unhappy voice, though.
Ouch.
I squeezed him again to show that I understood.
Everything sucked. And not in a good way.