by Tal Bauer
“I do. A Basset Hound. Her name is Etta Mae.”
“That is a good Basset Hound name.” Mike laughed. “Do you have any pictures?”
“Do I have any pictures…” He reached for his phone, swiping on the screen. His background was Etta Mae rolling on the grass on the National Mall, the Capitol Dome in the background. He clicked into the gallery and pulled up his camera roll. Idle snapshots of weird things he saw around DC, a few pages from law books he wanted to remember for later, and then row after row of Etta Mae. He was pathetic.
He pulled up a cute one of her looking at the camera, all long ears and droopy jowls and hangdog eyes, and pushed his phone across the table.
Mike put his fist over his mouth and chuckled, deep guffaws as his eyes seemed to melt. “She’s adorable. Look at that face.”
“She’s my princess.”
“And I bet she knows it. She’s got you wrapped around her paws, doesn’t she?”
“She does.” He glanced at the time on his phone. Damn it, it was getting late. “It’s actually time for the princess’s dinner.”
Straightening, Mike nodded, leaning back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you for so long, Your Honor—”
“Please, call me Tom when we’re out of the courthouse.” Mike gave him a wry look and a raised eyebrow, as if to say, ‘yeah right, fat chance.’ He grinned anyway. “This was great. I had a great time. Thank you for dragging me out of there.”
“I had a good time, too.” Mike smiled, really smiled, not his polite smile or his working smile, but an honest smile, uneven and dimpled. “You are a really good judge. I’m proud to work with you.”
He couldn’t come up with something good to say to that, so he just slid out of the booth and buttoned his jacket. Mike had slipped his credit card to the waitress when she came to refill their drinks for the third time. They ambled toward the door, Tom ducking into the bar to catch the score for the game. The Nationals were up by three.
“Thank you again, Mike. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll duck into your courtroom. Check out this case that has you building a fort out of law books.”
That would make the day infinitely better. But he didn’t say that, didn’t tell Mike that now he’d be waiting for him, glancing at the door every five minutes, hoping to see his smile and his blue eyes. Instead, all he said was, “Goodnight.”
“Night.” Mike trotted across the street, back to the courthouse, leaving Tom at the entrance to the Metro. Just a short ride across the city, and he’d be home with Etta Mae. She was probably wondering where he was, or, more likely, wondering where her dinner was.
“Say hi to Etta Mae for me!” Mike called back from the steps of the courthouse, waving one last time before he headed inside.
Tom felt his heart skip a beat and then crack in two.
Chapter 7
June 4th
GrindMe was out. That app wasn’t for him. At least… not right now.
Spark, the other app Tom found, was better. Kind of. Spark was supposed to be for men who were looking for something a little more serious. Or, longer-term than just the next thirty minutes. He put up a picture of his suit-covered torso instead of Etta Mae’s photo.
The first night he’d been on the app, he’d swiped right on a younger guy’s picture, and then got a message from him a few hours later. He was actually a they—a couple, two married men, younger and in love and looking for a little excitement and adventure. They were wondering if he was interested in meeting them to explore the possibility of a long-term threesome arrangement.
He had a hard enough time with himself, let alone the thought of one other man. Three of them together? He’d die. The stress would kill him. He politely declined and wished them good luck.
Another man and he had matched a few days later. Someone in his early forties, closer to his age. Honey hair and blue eyes, but not as suave as Mike. He didn’t have the same laughter in his gaze, the same boisterous smile that Mike had.
Mike had graced Tom with his perfect smile when he ducked into the back of Tom’s courtroom during the final phase of the white-collar criminal embezzlement trial. He, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney were alone in the courtroom, trying to hammer out instructions to give to the jury before sending them out to deliberate. The two attorneys exploded into a snapping match that threatened to escalate to shouts and possibly even fists. He dragged them both in front of his bench and read them the riot act, threatening contempt of court charges if they blew up again.
The attorneys stalked back to their tables like furious peacocks, and he ordered a half-hour recess for cooler heads to prevail. He needed to calm down, too, before he charged the jury and sent them off to deliberate. Damn it, but they all just wanted to get this case over with.
The attorneys stormed out. Usually, he left first, the bailiff calling the courtroom to stand for his stately exit, but it was just him and the attorneys, and he’d told them to get out, so he couldn’t be angry when they followed his command. The bailiff wisely decided to escape when he had the chance.
And Mike stood at the back of his courtroom, his smile a mile wide, eyes laughing, ambling down the center aisle like he was there to take Tom to prom. His anger vanished, melted away, disappearing in the face of Mike, his smile, his presence, everything about him making Tom’s heart skip a beat.
He shouldn’t be comparing other men to Mike, but damn it, it was so hard not to. The heart wants what it wants, or so Emily Dickinson said. One day, he’d get over this crush, get over the way his body felt as light as a feather, his skin turning inside out as his heart skipped beats and his palms sweated whenever Mike was near.
The man who looked like Mike, but not really, not enough, had messaged him first, asking easy questions every day or so. What did Tom do? He demurred, saying he was a lawyer. He was, still… But he wasn’t ready to go all out there, just yet.
What kinds of hobbies did he have? What did he like to do in his free time?
Free time, there was an idea. He’d been a workaholic for years. As a prosecutor, there were always more cases, always more trials to plan, always more evidence to review, and legal strategies to perfect. He could bleed away his hours at the office or bring his work home, scribble on his legal pad or peck at his laptop on the couch next to Etta Mae.
Reducing his life down to a few sentences to send back to a guy who was kinda-sorta close to the actual man he was crushing on was a depressing endeavor.
I swim to keep in shape, play with my dog, and I like to work on my house. Home renovation, design stuff.
[Ooo, a handy man. That’s great. What kind of dog?]
He didn’t respond quickly, letting the conversation drag over several hours. The guy’s name was Doug, and he was a physician specializing in podiatry. A foot doctor. He was the last man on earth to throw stones about a boring career, but next to being a judge, was there anything more boring than being a foot doctor?
Doug liked to kayak, liked to cook, and liked to visit California and go wine tasting.
All great things. All wonderful, normal things. He could be happy jetting off to California for a weekend, sipping merlot and pinot noir with his man, or cooking side by side with him, stepping around Etta Mae when she decided to be underfoot. She loved to park herself right beneath the stove when he cooked, as if she was afraid he’d forget her existence.
But when he tried to imagine it, tried to imagine paddling across a pristine lake, staring at the back of Doug, the image of Doug always shifted and shimmered into Mike. Mike twisted in the seat, grinning at him. Mike playfully splashed lake water into his face.
At night, he’d trade a few messages with Doug, give a thumbs-up to the picture Doug sent of his homemade dinner—risotto with a truffle reduction, and a spinach and cranberry salad with a glass of Chianti—and made small talk about the Nationals or the traffic on the Metro, or whatever else.
And when he lay down, his body went hot, the feel of his skin
against the sheets like a lover’s caress, the ruffle of his hair against the pillowcase like fingers sliding through his strands, his hands reaching out for a lover. He was a young man again, aching and eager and full of fantasies.
He tried to think of Doug. He was talking to the man, for Christ’s sake.
But it was always Mike. Always Mike he imagined, their bodies entwined as they drifted into sleep, Etta Mae snoring at their feet. Always Mike, hovering over him, leaning in for a long kiss, a nuzzle beneath his ear. Always Mike, smiling as they talked, as they laughed, over good wine and a dinner he’d made. Always Mike, filling the lonely spaces of his house made for two. Always Mike’s hands on him, and always Mike’s name on his lips when his release branded his skin, hot shame that made him want to crawl under his bed.
What was Mike like, as a lover?
He had to stop. He couldn’t fantasize like that, couldn’t think of Mike as anything but who he truly was: a coworker. Perhaps a friend.
And so far out of his league it wasn’t funny.
Doug wanted to meet, for coffee or drinks or a walk on the National Mall. He hesitated, saying he wasn’t ready yet, and Doug’s messages started dwindling.
He wished he was sorry about that.
Benjamin was a few years older than him, grayer than him, a lobbyist for an NGO focused on climate change. After hello and how are you, Benjamin flat out told him he was looking to marry and start a family by the end of the year. He wanted children, and his biological clock was ticking. He wanted to find a good man to be his husband and the father of their kids.
God, he wasn’t ready for that. From closeted to gay dad? That was a warp-speed leap he couldn’t quite make.
Mike slipped into his courtroom in the middle of the patent case, during the testimony of one of the software engineers describing what their specific line of code in the program did, and how they had created the code, and for what purpose.
Tom’s ears were bleeding and his eyeballs were crossing, and he was struggling not to prop his forehead in his palm and just give in to the tedium.
But then Mike was there, sitting in the back, listening to the double doctorate engineer and attorney string together indecipherable sentence after indecipherable sentence. He started to smile, and even from the bench, Tom could see the laughter in his deep blue gaze. He was supposed to be listening to the testimony, but his eyes kept flicking back to Mike.
Mike smiled, and he almost hurt himself holding back his own answering grin.
“Your Honor?” The plaintiff’s attorney politely tried to get his wandering attention back to the case.
“Yes, my apologies. Please continue, counselor.”
Mike ducked out silently.
He wished he could follow him, go wherever he went, stay by his side for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the year. The rest of his life.
He had it bad. A bad crush that was going to crush him one day. Mike was going to find a new boyfriend sooner or later. A man like him… he didn’t stay single for long.
On that day, Tom was just going to have to listen to his own foolish mocking, his mind lambasting his heart with a thousand I told you so’s, and then scrape together the shattered remnants of his dignity, pluck out the slivers of his broken heart, and get on with his life.
Chapter 8
June 12th
Until then, though, he still fantasized. Mike was a mosquito light, and he was the helpless bug pulled towards Mike’s brilliance. It was going to burn, in the end, but it would be worth it for the ride.
He padded down the hallway toward Mike’s office after Peggy said goodnight and her heels click-clacked down the corridor. Judge Juarez and Judge King always left before four-thirty PM, and Chief Judge Fink usually called it a day around three. Danny had skateboarded out of there a few minutes before Peggy.
Tom slouched against Mike’s doorframe and shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d left his suit jacket over the back of his desk chair and had loosened his tie sometime after five. Some of his hair was probably sticking up from when he’d run his hands through it after finally escaping the last testimony of the patent case. He most likely looked like a dork.
But, Mike grinned when he saw him, looking up from his computer monitor. “Hey, Your Honor. You lived through another day of the patent case?”
“Barely. Just barely.” He whistled, gazing at the confines of Mike’s minuscule office. “This really is tiny. Are you sure it’s even an office?” If Mike spread his elbows, he could touch both walls.
“We marshals don’t get grand chambers like you fancy judges. They designed this office for us, unless they wired a custodial closet for internet and phone access.”
“That’s not right.”
“I think it’s to encourage us to get into the courtrooms. But…” Mike sighed. “That means I end up falling behind on paperwork more often than not. Winters is barking at me about my missing trial reports.”
“Trial reports?”
“Gotta file reports on all of the high-risk trials. Judge Juarez’s, yours. An after-action brief. Just describing what happened—or what didn’t happen, in this case.” Mike leaned forward, crossing his arms over messy piles of papers and lopsided stacks of folders. Sticky notes clung to the walls and the edges of his computer monitor, and waved like flags off the edges of his desk. “What’s up, Judge Brewer?”
He could stand here and talk to Mike all night long and be as happy as a pig in mud. But, he shrugged and rested his head on the doorjamb. “I was going to grab a drink. Celebrate the final day of patent purgatory. Want to join me?” He held his breath.
Mike laughed, tilting his head back. His Adam’s apple jutted from his tanned neck, sharp-angled and dusted with a five o’clock shadow. Tom wanted to bury his face in Mike’s neck, breathe him in, lick his way down his throat to the hollow of his collarbones, the fur of his chest. He must be furred, must have beautiful chest hair to go with that great body, those broad shoulders and slim hips.
“Only if you twist my arm, Judge B.” Winking, Mike stood, powering down his monitors and flipping a file folder closed.
They ambled out, stopping for Tom to grab his jacket and briefcase, and then headed down the center staircase to the ground floor. Mike was relaxed again, laughing and teasing Tom about the patent case, about his valiant ability to survive the dregs of technical testimony.
Tom steered them both to the Mexican restaurant they went to before. Mike grabbed a table in the corner, a tiny high top with two chairs practically side by side with a view of the bar and a wall for Mike to back himself into.
When Tom sat next to him, they were so close he could practically feel Mike’s warmth through his suit pants, the heat of his skin just beneath his button-down. Mike’s wrists rested on the edge of the table, his cuffs peeking through the dark sleeves of his suit as he flicked through the drinks list. Just the sight of his skin was enough to make Tom’s pulse quicken.
“What’s your poison, Judge B?”
Where had that nickname come from? If only Mike would call him Tom. He fantasized about it sometimes, Mike hovering over him in bed, whispering his name oh-so-sweetly. He had no frame of reference for it, no idea what his name would sound like on Mike’s lips.
“I’m a tequila guy.” Tom snagged the menu from Mike and flipped to the margarita section. “They keep tricking up margaritas. Coconut, pomegranate, cranberry, mango…”
“You’re a traditionalist?”
“I’ll try anything once.” He held Mike’s gaze for a moment too long. His eyes flicked back to the safety of the plastic menu, darting over words that swam under the dim lights of the bar. “Haven’t had a coconut margarita yet,” he murmured. “I’ll do that.” Please, make it a double. Could he flash his eyebrows twice as some sort of code, some bartenders’ Morse code that he needed Dutch courage, and stat? “What’s your drink of choice?”
The waitress walked up, perky and cute and young, her blonde ponytail swinging
behind her. She wore a low-cut top and itty-bitty shorts, and she eyed Mike up and down. Tom tried to hide his smile. Wrong tree, miss. But I know how you feel.
“I’ll take a whiskey on the rocks.” Mike winked at the waitress, and she gave him a coy smirk over her shoulder as she walked away. Mike sent a private grin to Tom, an inside joke in the curve of his dimple.
“So you survived the patent case.”
“Barely. Testimony wrapped up today. I get to rule on the patent tomorrow at three.”
“Will it be a coin flip again?”
Tom laughed. “No, this time I followed it a bit more closely. The tech was easier to understand. Software, instead of chemistry and nuclear physics.”
“You still looked like you wanted to run out of your courtroom.” Mike leaned into him, jostled his shoulder gently.
God, it took everything in him not to melt against Mike’s side, not lean in and just let go, rest his head on Mike’s shoulder and then turn into his neck, his collar, nibble on his skin—
He laughed, breathless, and curled half over himself, bracing his forearms on the edge of the table. “Yeah, I did, at times.” Get a hold of yourself! He reached for the center spinner, a pyramid of plastic and shiny advertisements. “How’s your week been?”
“Quiet. Full of paperwork. Intel analyses and reports.” Mike rolled his neck, as if shaking off the office. “For once, the prisons are quiet. No threats coming down the wire for any of my judges.”
“Your judges? We’re yours now?”
“Of course.”
God, Mike’s smile could melt his bones. Swallowing, Tom looked down at the plastic pyramid he held. He flipped it in his hands, over and over, not looking at the sides.
“What’s up next for you? Do you have a trial next week?” Mike kept talking, oblivious to the tempest in Tom’s soul.
“I do. A felony murder rule trial—”
“Who is your JSI?” Mike frowned. Every murder trial was considered high-risk and had a JSI providing personal security during the trial.