by Xavier Mayne
“I’m not Thomas. This is completely different.”
“Is it, really? Thomas was straight until suddenly his tongue was down Jake’s very accommodating throat. Right up until that night, he would not admit even the tiniest possibility that he could be attracted to Jake.”
“I’m not attracted to Drew.”
“Your therapist and I beg to differ.”
“She’s not my therapist.”
Chad ignored this objection. “So you’re not at all attracted to him, and yet you spent last weekend all alone with him. How did that go, by the way? Did you play poker and talk about chicks all weekend?”
Fox stared across the table. “I’m not going to post-game my weekend like it was a date. It wasn’t a date.”
“So stipulated. How, then, did you spend the weekend?”
“We went kayaking and went for a long cycle through the hills and did like ten miles on the beach.”
“Sounds like a lot of work.”
“And that was just on Saturday.”
“What did you do on Sunday?”
Fox swallowed hard. He’d let himself forget that Mia had trained Chad well, and he now knew how to listen and ask follow-up questions. Shit.
“We, um… went for a hike along the top of the bluffs. And we ate too much, of course, because their chef is amazing.”
“How does a grad student afford this kind of thing?”
“Oh, it didn’t really cost anything. I helped them get a sweet deal on one of our systems last year, so they pretty much hosted me. Us, I mean.”
“They comped two rooms and all of those activities and the meals too?”
“Not only that, but they put us up in the Founder’s Cottage.”
“Wow. Sounds fancy. So it was, like, a two-bedroom suite?”
Goddammit.
“Sort of,” Fox said lamely, picking up the menu for closer study. He already knew it by heart, of course, as it hadn’t changed in years.
“Sort of?” Chad asked. “Foxy, was there one bedroom or two?”
“One,” Fox replied as casually as he could with his throat clenched tightly around the truth.
“And in this bedroom, was there one bed or two?”
“One. I think I’m going to get the oatmeal. My stomach’s a little—”
“So you slept together is what you’re trying not to tell me.”
Fox slammed the menu down onto the table. “We did not ‘sleep together,’” he hissed.
Chad sat back in alarm. “But you said—”
“I said there was one bed.” Fox’s voice was an outraged whisper. “Nothing happened.”
Chad nodded slowly. “I think the oatmeal would be a good choice for you this morning. It’s supposed to be good for your heart, and you look like you are about two minutes away from an infarction.”
“Fine.” Fox turned and stared at nothing out the window.
Chad sighed deeply. “Foxy, I’m going to be the asshole you need me to be. I know you don’t want to talk about this thing with Drew, and I get that. It’s all new and scary and whatever. But as your friend, I gotta be honest. You’ve got some shit to work through. What you’re doing right now, this whole ‘keep it bottled up until you explode’ thing, it ain’t working for you. It’s not gonna end well. So what I want you to do, right now, is look me in the eye and swear to me that you will tell me the truth, and all of it, right now. I will not judge you or think any less of you or stop being your best friend in the world. I love you, and I’m here with you and for you and behind you all the way. But you gotta get real with me on this, okay? Will you do that for me?”
Where the tears came from Fox had no idea, but he was powerless to squeeze them back into his tear ducts. He knew his voice would be a broken, reedy, weak thing should he try to speak, so he did the only thing he could. He reached across the table and took Chad’s outstretched hand and held it in his own.
They sat there for a few minutes, and then he began to speak.
“WHEN FROM your weekend you came home, you were very sad about Fox,” Mrs. Schwartzmann said. “You said things between you were very bad, and that you might not see him again.”
“It was bad,” Drew replied. “I thought we might become more than friends, but that’s not what he wanted.”
“When you say ‘more than friends,’ you mean you have fallen in love with him?”
Drew bit his lip and looked into her kind eyes for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I have fallen in love with him.”
“And with him you want to be, in the way Mr. Schwartzmann was with me when married we were?”
“I do. I want to be with him in all the ways two people can be together.”
“Then tell him. You must tell.”
“It’s a hard thing to say. He’s never… been with a man, and neither have I.”
She nodded gravely. “And you are afraid you will not know how?”
He had to laugh—this conversation was too insane. “No, I don’t think that’s it. I’m sure we could figure that part out. But I don’t know if he wants to be with me in the way I want to be with him.”
“Then you must say, ‘Mr. Fox, I want to with you be sexual, and I think you will like it very much. Will you with me make the love?’ You can do that, can’t you?”
“It’s not really the kind of thing one simply comes out and says,” Drew said.
“Then how will he know you want with him to be sexual?”
“As charming as you make that sound, I don’t just want to be sexual with him. I want to be with him, to wake up with him in the morning and go to bed with him at night, to talk to him about everything, and hold him and laugh with him and plan a future with him.”
“But none of that will happen if you tell me and not Mr. Fox.”
“But I don’t know how to do that.”
She shrugged. “Let us not worry about how you tell him. Let us think about how you will feel if you do not tell him.”
His heart sank.
She smiled. “Your face tells me how you will feel. So here is my advice for you. Do not worry about how you will tell him. If he is the person you think he is, he will see you, and he will know. Your face will tell him everything. If it is meant to be, he will see.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Schwartzmann. You have helped me more than you know.”
“You would be surprised what I know.”
“SO,” CHAD said, summing up as they finished their breakfast, “you spent most of the weekend in bed with Drew, except for the parts when you were busting up the room wrestling. And all of it naked.”
“We didn’t spend most of the weekend in bed,” he groused. “You’re forgetting about the kayaking.”
“Fox, you know I love you. But you are not being realistic here.”
“I don’t know why we’re talking about all of this. It was a weird weekend, and then I had a bad date, and I don’t know why it’s such a big deal.”
“It’s a big deal because you are fucking miserable. When I called you this morning, you looked like you’d been mugged. By a rhino. A pissed-off rhino. I’m not making a big deal out of this—it’s already a big deal. It’s eating you up. And you need to deal with it.”
Fox sighed. He was so tired. “How about this. I’ve been lonely since you joined all our other friends in holy matrimony. I’ve been on a bad run of first dates since Miyoko. Drew pops up through some computer glitch, and we find that we have a lot in common. It gets intense. I freak out a little. My date last night picks up on my freak-out because she’s a therapist, and she tells me I have stuff to figure out with Drew. That’s about all I see here—this is nothing more than a bump in the road.”
“How about this,” Chad countered. “Now that all your guy friends are married, you miss having guys in your life, because you need guys in your life. The bad dates come about because none of the women you’re dating meet the needs that the guys in your life used to meet. Drew shows up, and he’s a guy, and he’s also smart and funny and look
s great naked. Your date last night—”
“Fuck off. I never said he looks great naked.”
“Oh yes you did. I know because I listen when you talk. You’ve mentioned his body a dozen times.”
“I have not.”
“I have a clearer picture of what Drew looks like than I do of any other person I’ve never met. You’ve been thorough, and you’ve been admiring.”
“Again, fuck off.”
“Whatever. So last night this therapist woman sees exactly what’s going on, and that super freaks you out because she’s a woman and they’re supposed to be better at picking up on this stuff than guys. Even though she’s telling you the exact same thing I’ve been telling you since you met him.”
Fox closed his eyes. So tired of this.
“So now I’m going to tell you what to do.”
“Oh, this should be good.”
“You’re going to text Drew, and you’re going to tell him you need to see him. Invite him to that dive bourbon bar where you met. Sit him down and tell him you’re trying to figure out what this thing is between you, and you’re open to any possibility. Any possibility.”
“And I’m going to do this… why, exactly?”
“Because you owe it to yourself to see if this is what you need. You owe it to me, because I want to see you happy. You owe it to Drew because he’s been nothing but nice, and I think he’s got a crush on you.”
“So you’re on Drew’s side now.”
Chad smiled broadly. “I’m on the side of true love, my friend.”
Fox reached across the table and smacked him on the forehead. “Stop that.”
Chad laughed maniacally for a moment, but then turned serious again. “Are we going to talk about the elephant in the room? The thing that’s really bothering you?”
“And what would that be?” He could hardly wait to hear about Chad’s elephant.
“THERE, I sent it.” Drew set down his phone. His fate, the next turn his life would take, lay in the hands of a man he’d met only a few weeks ago.
“What did you say in?” Mrs. Schwartzmann asked.
Though he knew the words by heart—they’d drunk their way through an entire pot of tea while he composed it—he picked up his phone and read it to her. “I miss you.”
She sat for a long moment. “And?”
“That’s it.”
“But you were for an hour making the type-type.”
“It was no more than half an hour, and it took me a while to get the right feel.”
“It feels like nothing much,” she said with a shrug.
“In my first draft, I asked how his week was and whether we might get a drink sometime. But that sounded too casual, so then I erased that and wrote about how I saw a bird in the park yesterday that reminded me of one we’d watched building a nest when we were at the resort. But that sounded kind of creepy, so I deleted that. Then I wrote that I had fallen in love with him so I could see what those words would look like—”
“You should have sent that one.”
“Then I deleted that because he would have changed his name and moved to another city to get away from me. So then I thought, ‘What do I want him to know?’ And what I want him to know is that I miss him. It’s simple, straightforward, and it could mean ‘I miss chatting with you over coffee’ just as well as ‘I miss the way your skin feels when it brushes against mine.’”
“Ooh, I like that one the best. You should send that one.”
Drew burst out laughing. “Mrs. Schwartzmann, I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve been a great friend through all of this.”
“You want to thank me, to your wedding you invite me.”
“There would be a special place for you, I assure you.”
“Good boy. Now, let us finish this cake while we wait for Mr. Fox to type-type at you back.”
CHAD TOOK a deep breath. “Your dad.”
It was a punch to the gut that Fox hadn’t seen coming. But as he struggled to draw breath, he knew Chad had lanced a boil he hadn’t been able to acknowledge the existence of.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Chad said softly. “That’s where a lot of this comes from, isn’t it?”
Fox shrugged defensively. His mind was reeling.
“I know it’s not that you’re worried he’ll freak out if you’re dating a guy, because he was like a second dad to Thomas, and he came to the wedding and gave that toast that made everyone cry.”
Fox nodded, still beyond words.
“You think you’d be letting him down. That you wouldn’t be the man he wants you to be, the man that he is.” Chad smiled sympathetically.
“I’d be giving up on being the man I thought I was.” Fox chuckled grimly. “The one I created in my spreadsheet.”
“What do you mean? You used the spreadsheet to evaluate your dates, not yourself.”
“That’s not true, though, is it?” Fox looked at Chad through eyes blurred with tears. He wondered if he’d ever stop crying. “I entered the scores, but as much as I liked to think they were quantitative and analytical, they weren’t. Not at all. Those women were measured not against objective standards, but by how well they fit into the spaces I created for them. And those spaces, they are exactly what’s left over, the stuff that fills in around the man I created for myself, the man I wanted to be.” He swallowed hard and looked out the window again. “The man my father expects me to be.”
“You didn’t stop being a man when you fell in love with one.”
“Could you stop with that, please?” Fox pleaded. “You’ve worn me down enough that I’m actually considering inviting him to the bourbon bar tonight. I’m not ready to talk about falling in love.”
“Yet,” Chad added.
Fox tried once again to activate the heat ray in his glare so he could melt the smug smile off Chad’s face. It still didn’t work.
“If I invite him to meet me for a drink, will you please shut the fuck up about it?”
“I would be happy to, my good man,” Chad replied with a chivalrous bow of his head.
“Fine.”
“Do it now.”
“I’ll do it when I get home.”
“Do it now.” Chad’s manner was placid, but his voice was certain.
“Fine.” Fox pulled his phone from his pocket. He glanced down and saw there was a message on it, waiting for him.
From Drew.
“What is it?” Chad asked.
“A message from Drew.” Fox read it, then read it again.
“Awesome. What’s he say?”
“He says, ‘I miss you.’”
“And?”
“That’s it.”
Chad frowned. “How do we feel about that?”
Fox couldn’t help but smile. “It tells me everything I need to know.”
“And what would that be?”
“That he misses me.”
“Yeah, I got that. What am I missing?”
Fox shook his head. “It’s classic Drew. He writes long research papers, but he’s really a poet. Every word matters.”
“So what does this message tell you?”
“That he wants to see me as much as I want to see him.”
“But I had to twist your arm to get you to even consider that.”
“Because I didn’t know if he would want to. Now I know he does.”
“Well, write him back, man! Seal the deal.”
Fox shook his head at Chad’s ham-handed attempt to be supportive, but he did actually appreciate it. He typed out a quick reply, then set his phone down.
Chad was beaming from his side of the table. “I’m proud of you, buddy.”
“Just so you know, I’m going to blame you if this doesn’t work out.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take. That’s why they call me a hopeless romantic.”
“They call you half of those things.”
The two old friends shared a long laugh.
Chapter SEVENTEEN
FOX SAT for a moment in his car. Could it really have been only three weeks since he’d pulled into this parking spot in front of the Barrel Proof? He could hardly remember a time when he didn’t know Drew, even though that was his whole life up until less than a month ago.
What would he find when he opened that squeaking door and stepped into the dark dive? His heart pounded when he allowed himself to admit what he hoped he would find: Drew, smiling at him, welcoming him with open arms and an open heart. He hoped he would read on his face the urgent, alien desire he knew was written on his own.
He got out of his car, locked it, and walked up to the door of the bar. He took a steadying breath, then opened it widely. Go big or go home, he thought to himself. Time to own this thing.
Inside, the bar was about as populated as it had been when he’d first been here, though with perhaps a little more subdued crowd—it was a Sunday evening, after all. He scanned the space quickly, but he knew exactly where he would find Drew. He would be, of course, sitting on the same stool as he had been the last time, because that’s where Fox would expect him to be. They knew each other.
He crossed to the bar, his heart still pounding with a possibility he hadn’t ever imagined for himself.
“Hey,” he said as he drew up beside him.
Drew turned the stool around, his face bright and joyful. It was exactly what Fox had hoped for. Drew jumped to his feet.
“Hey, good to see—”
He was cut off by Fox pulling him into a hug and holding him tight and close.
“I’ve missed you too,” Fox murmured into Drew’s ear.
Drew clasped him even tighter, signaling that he knew all of the ways Fox meant that simple phrase, all of the kinds of longing it contained.
“You’re bringing a tear to my eye and a boner to my pants,” Carlos cracked from behind the bar.
“Dude, stop,” Drew chided, releasing his hold.
“Something tells me that pretty soon I won’t be the only one,” he replied, casting a lascivious glance over them. Then he turned to grab a second glass, into which he poured a shot for Fox.