A Winter in Rome

by Francis Gideon

  She kissed me suddenly. I thought I had completely screwed up what I meant, but no, she was here, next to me, her mouth over mine and her hand on my chest. She could feel my heart rate sky rocket and all I could do was continue to hold her close.

  "Thank you," she said, almost desperately. "Thank you."

  I had no idea I had done something so worth thanking. I ran my hands through her hair, over her spine, and then held her lower back against me, rocking her for comfort. "Of course. Of course."

  She curled next to me for a long time, her head under my chin. It took me a while to realize her eyes were fixated on the calendar I had finally hung up and the corkboard next to it. "When does he get back here?"

  "Whenever Becca lets him go. Which could be hours or days."

  She nudged me. "You know what I mean."

  "I do. He'll come back here tomorrow, unpack… But I… want to see him first."

  "I know," she said, looking up at me. Her gaze was open, and I felt so relieved to have her here. If anyone else was going to fall in love with Alan, then she was okay. I ran my hand along her chin, before my finger moved to her mouth. She kissed it quickly, then looked up at me again. I felt my stomach tense and arousal quicken. I closed my eyes and kissed her again, so the moment didn't pass. She kissed back, for all that it was worth.

  "Go for it tomorrow," she whispered. "Have fun. I have to work, anyway."

  "But after?"

  "After… I'll talk to him. Is that okay?"

  I linked my hand with hers, pulling her close. "Of course. Just don't forget to write it on the calendar."

  "Pfft," she said, laughing so suddenly that it made me crack a smile. "You're devious when you're organized."

  "Am I?"

  "Yeah," she said arching her back. Her hands moved to her sides before she pulled her t-shirt up and over her head. "When you're organized, you suddenly realize how much time you really have, and you can go slow."

  "I can," I said, lingering by her mouth. "You're so beautiful right now."

  "Handsome," she corrected. "If I'm gonna be like you and him, you better start acting like it. Call me handsome."

  "Handsome. So fucking handsome."

  "Thank you," she said. When my lips pressed against hers, she opened to the kiss and allowed our tongues to touch. My hand went towards her back, flicking open her bra in a matter of moments. She gasped as her bra fell down by her t-shirt, her skin exposed.

  "I'm still shocked you can do that so quickly."

  "Lots and lots of practice." I ran my hands up her sides, before cupping her chest. Her breasts ached, or seemed to, since the smallest touch on her nipples let out a low groan. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes," she hissed, moving her hips into me. "Just more sensitive than I thought."

  "I'll be gentle." My palms cupped down over her ass, holding her close to me. She kissed my neck, her tongue moving around an old scar of mine and sucking on the skin around it. She loved to mark me, to leave her kisses and nail scratches all over my body. She did it without thinking, without realizing, but was always apologetic afterwards. When I told her I liked it, she always seemed to go much harder than before. I groaned as she continued to suck harder on my skin, palm against my crotch. While I was distracted, she managed to undo my belt, and then, slipped between my legs on the floor. I felt the chill of the room without her next to me, so I leaned forward and wrapped my hands around the base of her neck, where her hair kept her warm.

  "You still thinking of cutting your hair?" I asked.

  "Maybe," she smirked. She undid my zipper and watched as the head of my cock popped out between the slit in my boxers. Her eyes widened, before she smirked up at me. "What would you hold on to, though?"

  She took me in her fist first, before her lips pressed into the tip of my cock. And because she had asked, I gripped her hair into one of my hands and held on as she moved. Her tongue was warm on the underside of me, so hot that I didn't know what to do with myself but hold on. I didn't know if she wanted me to finish like this, or to take her into Alan's bedroom. My bedroom, I corrected myself. Mine and his. It was one thing to share an apartment and have Sybil come inside, have dinner, and give me a blowjob on the couch. But could I fuck her in our bed? Did she want to be? We had never done anything like this here, not with Alan in town. I suddenly felt my skin grow cold, goose bumps littering my arms.

  "Sybil," I called out. She kept sucking for a moment, my cock hitting her throat. I called out again, my voice louder. "Sybil."

  When she looked up, her lips were still red from the wine, now shiny with spit. She kissed the head of my cock, still staring at me. "Hmmm?"

  I ran my hands up and down her arms. "What do you want?"

  She continued to stare, her hand taking over on me from her mouth.

  "Tonight," I said. "What do you want from me? Here…"

  I looked over towards the bedroom and she followed my gaze. The bed sheets were still in disarray and I could see the old books that Alan had left by his bedside table. Sybil leaned closer to me, her hands trailing down towards my thigh. She took my lip into her mouth, kissing me as her only answer for some time.

  "In there?" she asked. "Can we go?"

  I nodded. "If you want."

  "I do."

  "And?" Our foreheads nuzzled, and she took my hand to place it between her legs. She had unbuttoned her own pants, and pushed me past her jeans towards her boxers, which were soaked through. She lined up my fingers to her hole, and then pushed me farther back. "Take me like that."

  I rocked my fingers into her folds with my thumb, then back towards her ass with my fingers. "Like that?"

  She nodded. "Suck my cock, then fuck me. Treat me like I'm…"

  "You are," I said, smiling and so relieved to hear her words, her desire on her tongue. I had given her this request before, several times, and she had returned the favour using toys. I kissed her and then wrapped my arms around her waist, picking her up.

  "I can definitely do that. Whatever you want," I said. I carried her, laughing, all the way to the bedroom.

  Chapter Six

  I jumped up as soon as I heard Alan's keys. I had been drinking coffee at the island, looking through old emails from people I used to know on Facebook, when I heard the unmistakable jingle and sigh as he couldn't find the one he wanted. I ran to the door before he could open it and stood with my hands on the frame. His eyes lit up right away. "Craig."

  We stared at one another, unsure of how to move forward. I was surprised that he looked exactly the same. His hair was a bit longer, his eyes tired from jetlag, but he was wearing his dress pants and maroon sweater. He was the same, even if four months had separated us.

  "I missed you so much," I finally gasped before I wrapped my arms around him.

  He picked me up a little, ushering me inside, along with kicking his bag in, and then shut the door with the back of his foot. He kissed me in quick burst before he finally rested his chin over my shoulder, arms around me in a solid hug. "I missed you too. But let's not pretend we're forlorn, okay? I don't like being fated."

  "Shut up and appreciate this."

  "Okay, okay," he said. "You have a good point." When we finally pulled away from our embrace, I picked up his suitcase to bring it in the kitchen. He looked around his apartment, as if assessing any damage. "Mostly the same. I'll get my security deposit back."

  "If you leave."

  "If we leave."

  I smirked over my shoulder and prepared his coffee. When I turned to give him his drink, he had already found the brownies that Sybil had left and was digging in. He also eyed the wine bottles behind me. He raised an eyebrow as if to ask, are we alone now?

  "Yeah," I said, sliding back into my seat. "Just us for now."

  "For now," he said, as if he liked that agreement. I slid my hand around his, touching the soft parts of his skin. We just touched one another like this for a long, long time.

  "You look happy," I finally said.

  "You too
."

  "I am," I said. "Will you tell me your stories, now?"

  With a smile, he began.

  *~*~*

  Alan had left for Rome with only one carryon bag, but he came back with another suitcase filled to the brim. Most of it contained notes and the papers he had written, the keynotes he'd given. He could have used Google docs to send them back, but he told me he liked the paper there. It was thicker, like parchment, with the university logo on the top. Though he didn't say, he also wanted to keep it all to remember later. Amidst the papers were the tiny shampoos he'd bought there and a dozen other postcards he hadn't sent me.

  "I could still mail them. Even if you live here now, it would be nice to get a letter."

  I nodded. "Or we could send them to Sybil."

  "Yes," he said, the thought brightening his smile. "Or we could do that."

  After a small breakfast, he hauled out the rest of his artefacts. In between giving talks on the Byzantine Empire, he had been there to study some of the poems Michelangelo had sent to his lover. It sounded romantic, but he assured me, it was really very boring. When he wasn't teaching or producing some art the university could hang on their wall, he had wandered around market places and artist villas, collecting whatever he could. He had even found a polaroid camera one day, and in spite of himself, took about a dozen photos.

  "I even took a selfie, so help me," he said, taking that image and handing it to me. "I'm a terrible man. I couldn't help it. It didn't seem tacky, you know? If it's in Rome, it can't be tacky!"

  I laughed as I went through the other photos he tossed to me, going through and picking up each one, carefully considering them for our corkboard. He had yet to see that in person—he stayed so focused on the kitchen, and me inside of it, I wondered if he would ever see the corkboard unless I dragged him over.

  "What's wrong?" Alan asked.

  I touched the edge of a photo of a fountain I couldn't name, then looked away. "Nothing."

  "That's not nothing. What's going through your head?"

  "I'm just... I wonder if I'll ever get to travel."

  "You will. Where do you want to go?"

  "That's the thing—I don't know. I've always kind of lived in my head." I had been an only child with a single mom who worked two jobs for most of my youth. So I was alone a lot, and she never did well with men, so even then, I barely had people around. I made up stories in my head to pass the time; I gave every single animal I owned a backstory. I had told Alan all of this one night after we had had sex, and he had told me to be a writer.

  "But I don't want to be a novelist."

  "I never said that. I said a writer. A writer can be so many things. You just have to pick one."

  In bed with him, I had thought of Sybil in the coffee bar and the way in which she often looked longingly at the poets. She could have been a writer—I saw her that way and had told her as much. But me? I could barely make words sound good when they came out of my mouth. So if I couldn't even make whatever world I had inside of me come out, what did Alan think I could do with travelling? I wouldn't know where to begin, and I'd always feel as if I was chasing someone else's life.

  "You don't have to live in your head," Alan told me, touching my hand again. "If I've learned anything from this trip, it's that."

  "I don't want to have this conversation," I told him. "I'm not here to wax poetic. I'm here so you can tell me about your trip."

  He looked at me, tilting his head to the side. His fingers came up around my neck, looping through my hair that desperately needed a cut. "I love you; you know that, right?"

  I nodded, eyes wide. "Of course. I can't forget."

  "Okay, good. Love doesn't limit. It should open doors and windows, not close them."

  "I know," I said with a sigh. "Patti Smith waited too long. I should chase my own dreams, blah-blah. I know your little speech, Alan."

  "Fair enough. But I think I was being too hard on Patti, really. I mean, she eventually got where she needed to go. It doesn't matter how long you wait, Craig, so long as you get moving. And besides, she was supporting Robert. It's okay to support people—that's the point of a relationship. You can't be in love if you don't support."

  He leaned down and kissed me. I was relieved for the respite from the conversation, so I could just fold myself into him and wait out my thoughts. I moved my hands over his shirt, his hands, and warm sides. He leaned closer on the counter, before he finally walked around to me on the other side. I slid my hands around his back and we went back to kissing—long and slow. I missed tasting him, smelling him. There was a dead air aroma around him, like cigarettes and asphalt from the outside area of Pearson airport. There was exhaust from cars and taxi cabs, the stink of an airplane seat used by countless travelers. I thought of the ways in which smells clung to people and things—and how Sybil was always something without scent, like the air in winter or fresh water.

  As Alan moved closer to me, I remembered a movie that I had seen years ago at a film festival, probably with Sybil. A Canadian film, and of course, it was terribly produced. But there had been some redeeming quality to it: the main character, a bisexual man—I remembered my little heart being happy to see someone like me on the screen—had just gone through a terrible breakup and had decided to go through all of his past exes to see what they smelled like. He was convinced, in the same way that scent triggers memory, that he could remember what love felt like as soon as he smelled it. There were other stories in the film that interconnected and tied together the theme of the five senses, like a cake decorator who couldn't make a good cake—but the bisexual man's story stood out. I wondered if the scent of airplanes and cigarettes, of lattes from the coffee I worked with Sybil, meant something broader, larger, something that I could contain inside my heart and remember forever.

  When Alan pulled away from me, he placed his forehead against mine. "I think I need a shower after that long, long flight and night with Rebecca. I probably smell terrible."

  "No," I said, gripping his shirt harder. "You're perfect."

  "Well, thank you. But I think I want one anyway. Will you join me?"

  I grinned, my eyes still closed, and kissed his lips again. "Of course."

  *~*~*

  In the shower, I could smell nothing but mint and the soap he used. He was never one for fancy things; said he got weaned out of the middle-class lifestyle when he went to grad school and had no money. Even now, as an assistant professor just back from a fully-funded research trip, he was still living as if he was a student, a pauper, an artist. I put shampoo into my hands and under my nose before I raised it to his head. He had to hunch down a bit so I could get all of his hair, and while it was tempting for him to get on his knees, shower sex as a whole was awkward and overrated for us. I rubbed in the shampoo and rinsed it quickly, then he turned around and did the same to me.

  Under the water as he rinsed me, I felt his hand on my neck move down lower toward my back. We kissed then, needier than before. My hands skimmed down his back, settled on his ass, and held him close.

  "Let me?" he whispered, his hand coming towards my cock.

  "Yeah," I breathed out, allowing him to spin me around so he could take both of us in his hands. He was gentle as he moved back and forth, kissing my neck away from the stream of water. We were fogging up his small bathroom, and I knew we were going to hit the cold water soon, but this wouldn't take long. He touched both of us together as if he had been missing this most of all—holding something solid in his hands and building towards something together. When he rubbed his thumb against the underside of my cock, I let myself go and came in his palm. Soon, I heard him gasp as he came on my thigh. Then it was gone; washed down the drain, and he was laughing in my ear.

  "I missed you," he said.

  "You too."

  Towelling dry, I caught a scent of something else. Of Sybil—her deodorant from Lush or her toothpaste leftover from the night before. The smell lingered, and then I remembered the conversation I stil
l had yet to have.

  "Are you okay, Craig?"

  "Yes," I said. "I just have a lot to think about right now."

  *~*~*

  "Do you like her?" I asked Alan. We were under the blankets in his bed, where he had practically dragged me after getting dried off. He had been away from his own apartment for so long that I couldn't blame him for wanting to fall asleep inside of it again. He was always so tired after seeing Rebecca, too, as if he never slept right at her place. She's ten years ago, he used to always say. She rehashed the same syllabus, applied for the same grants, and at least from what I could tell, was always successful without change. "Are you listening, Alan? Or have you fallen asleep?"

  He shrugged with a small yawn. "Just resting my eyes."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I'm sorry," he said, touching my bare back. "What did you ask?"

  "Sybil," I said, biting my lip. "Do you like her?"

  "Of course."

  "Yes, but, do you like her like I like her?"

  He tilted his head, examining me with a sly smile. "Oh, Craig, what have you gotten yourself into?"

  "Nothing," I said, a blush heating my cheeks.

  "Nothing that you didn't want, I hope."

  When he spread his arms against the bed, I nestled into the crook of his body. This was so familiar, like a mirror. I didn't know how to break the pattern of choices, of being stuck in between two pathways and two bodies. "Are you ever jealous?"

  His soft face seemed shocked. After all these years together, bouncing in and out of one another's lives, he seemed sad to consider something as trivial as jealousy still pulling us apart. He rubbed his thumb against my shoulder and sighed.

  "Why would I be jealous? I have you, she has you."