Strawberries for Dessert

by Marie Sexton

  And then it hit me what was different: his affectation was almost gone, the sing-song pattern of his speech undetectable.

  This was a part of him I had caught glimpses of but never actually seen. It was as if some force field that normally surrounded him had disappeared, and instead of being strong and confident, I saw that he was terribly fragile. I knew he had no intention of letting me see him this way. If he realized that the walls were gone—that I could actually touch him—he would pull back, push me away, slam the walls back into place by cocking his hip out, batting his eyes at me through his hair, winking at me flirtatiously, and calling me “darling.”

  I wanted more than anything to grab him and hold him and make everything good for him, but I wasn’t sure how to even reach him without having him push me away. I was afraid even to speak. I slowly put my hand out. I was sure that when I touched him, he would crumble to dust beneath my fingers or vanish in a toss of his perfectly cut hair.

  I put one fingertip on his bare shoulder. He didn’t make any indication that he felt it, but when I slid it slowly down his arm, his eyes drifted closed, and his breath caught in his throat. I moved closer.

  I was moving slowly, quietly, desperate to connect with this secret part of him—to somehow own it and make it mine. I put my hand on the small of his back, and he turned his face toward me.

  I could see everything in his eyes at that moment. He was fighting tears. He was desperate for something, yet unable to ask for it. He was ashamed of himself for being vulnerable but too tired of pretending to cover it up.

  I kept my voice low and quiet, lest I scare him away. “Cole, there is nothing cliché about you.”

  He closed his eyes. His breath was shaky. I put one hand on his cheek, used my other arm to pull him toward me. His eyes opened, and they were moist with tears and full of uncertainty.

  He looked into my eyes. He said one word, quietly, only a whisper. But what he said was, “Jonathan.”

  Only my name and nothing more. And yet it was everything. He had never said it before—not once. It kindled a tenderness in me that was undeniable. It touched me in a way that nothing else ever had before. It made me realize with a sudden, painful certainty that my desire to own him was completely misguided. It was too late. I was his in every way, and until this moment, I hadn’t quite known it. I wondered if he knew it. I wondered if he cared.

  I pulled him tight against me and kissed him. I had kissed him many times, but never like this. Never with my heart in my throat and my hands shaking. Never with the need that I felt now. I wanted to taste every part of him. I wanted somehow to touch him the way he had touched me.

  His lips were soft and warm and insistent. He wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed me with a desperation he had never shown me before. I halfway carried him to the bed and pushed him back onto it. We still had our briefs on, and the lube was on the floor on the other side of the bed, and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to stop touching him long enough to change any of those things. I didn’t want to risk losing what we were both feeling at that moment. I only wanted to keep feeling his skin against mine, keep tasting his damp cheeks beneath my lips, keep hearing his trembling breath in my ear.

  I pushed against him, and he wrapped his legs around my hips, holding me tighter. We rocked together, kissing and holding each other, allowing only the gentle friction between us to bring us to climax, and afterward my cheeks were damp too. I buried my face in his neck, and he wrapped his arms around me, making quiet hushing sounds in my ear.

  I wasn’t sure when it had changed from me comforting him to him comforting me. I wasn’t sure if it mattered.

  Somehow I knew that everything had changed. We had crossed some threshold, broken through some boundary we had never intended to breach. I wondered if we could go back. I wondered if he would want to.

  Date: April 3

  From: Cole

  To: Jared

  What have I done?

  AFTER the intensity of what had happened, it seemed like the whole world should have somehow shifted in its orbit, but of course that wasn’t the case. We lay there for a few minutes holding each other, but soon reality set in. Particularly reality in the form of both of us now wearing wet underwear that was quickly beginning to dry.

  “I suppose it would have made too much sense to do that before I showered,” I commented, and he laughed as he pushed me off of him. I cleaned myself off and got dressed. There was a coffee shop in the hotel lobby, and I went down to get bagels (“Don’t you dare bring me a donut, love”) and lattes. It took longer than I expected. When I got back to the room, he had already showered and dressed. He was sitting on the bed, typing on his phone. I knew he often used it to check his email, and I was curious who was talking to, but I never asked. I suspected he wouldn’t have told me.

  Whatever walls had come down between us earlier, they were back in place now. His eyes were wary. I knew it was only his way, but

  I didn’t want to let him pull away from me so easily. I wanted to be able to touch him again. I put the food down on the table and went to him. I pushed him back onto the bed so that I could climb on top of him.

  “What do you want to do today?” I asked as I started to kiss his neck.

  He turned his head, tipping his chin back to give me better access, but otherwise he didn’t respond. He didn’t put his arms around me.

  “Whatever you want to do, love.”

  I brushed my lips lightly over his ear. “It’s your birthday,” I said quietly.

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  I moved to his lips then. Even I couldn’t quite understand my fascination with them. Yes, they were soft and beautiful. Still, I wasn’t sure why I was so drawn to them. I kissed his bottom lip softy, teasing it with my tongue. His eyes drifted closed, and I felt one of his hands on my side. He was finally relaxing again. “Whatever you want to do,” I told him.

  He smiled a little, and opened his eyes to look up at me. “You’ll laugh at me.”

  “I won’t laugh.”

  “You will.”

  “I promise that I won’t.”

  “Okay,” he said as he put his arms around my neck. “I want to go shopping.”

  He was right. I laughed before I could stop myself. “Are you serious?”

  “I told you you’d laugh,” he said, but he was smiling, and I was glad I hadn’t offended him.

  “I’ll do anything you ask,” I said, and I meant it.

  For the entire day, I simply followed him. I had been to New York once before, many years ago, and didn’t really know my way around, but he seemed fairly familiar with it. He had picked a hotel close to the theater we were going to later, but it was a few blocks from the main shopping district on Fifth Avenue. We decided to take a cab to the far end and walk back. It turned out his style of “shopping” wasn’t as painful as I might have expected. He mostly window shopped—unless it was a gallery. We went in every single gallery we encountered.

  He couldn’t seem to decide how he wanted to behave around me now. For a while, everything would feel normal between us. He kept up an almost constant monologue as we walked, talking about the people he saw and last trips to the city and the style of the jackets in the store window and whatever else happened to cross his mind. He could be wickedly funny when he wanted to be, and he was good at making me laugh. Slowly, his guard would start to slip. He would flirt more and touch me more without seeming to realize it. And had we not been on a busy city street, I thought I probably could even have kissed him at those times without him pushing me away. But eventually he would realize that his walls were down, and in the blink of an eye he would be distant again, still talking but not making eye contact and certainly not allowing any physical contact between us. What confused me the most was that it seemed to make him sad to do it. I couldn’t understand why he felt the need to do it at all.

  It was after eating lunch that we wandered into another gallery. It was a private gallery of photograph
s, mostly taken outdoors but blown up huge, some as big as couches. We had moved fairly quickly through most of the other galleries, but he lingered longer in this one.

  The gallery was one large room filled with cubicle-style white walls, creating seemingly random corridors. It turned the entire space into a maze and us into mice. It was quiet as a tomb. I felt like I needed to whisper. I stood very close to him so I could speak softly and have him hear me. He was relaxed at the moment and actually leaned closer to me. “Are you going to buy one?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “No. But they’re nice, aren’t they? I like the one that’s underwater. It’s very serene, don’t you think?”

  I knew which one he meant. It appeared to have been taken in fairly shallow, crystal-clear water. Sand and starfish filled the bottom of the frame, and the shimmering surface of the water could be seen at the top. “That’s not the word I would use.”

  “Oh?” he asked, looking up at me in amusement. “What word would you use?”

  “Claustrophobic. I feel like I have to hold my breath.” He laughed at that. Even his soft laugh seemed loud in the stillness of the gallery, but he didn’t seem as self-conscious about it as I was. “I like the ones with the snow better,” I told him. “Especially the one with the aspen.”

  He shivered a little. “If I were to buy anything, it would go in the bedroom up in the Hamptons, and I can’t have snow hanging in the bedroom. It will make me cold.”

  I laughed. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, although in truth, I was starting to imagine him in this bedroom I had never seen. He smiled back, and I had a feeling he knew my thoughts were wandering. He leaned a little bit closer to me—close enough that I could smell his hair. I put one hand on the small of his back and brushed my lips over his ear. “Would it be too predictable for me to offer to keep you warm?”

  He laughed again, but he didn’t pull away. “Yes, but you can offer anyway. I’m quite tempted to take you up on it.”

  I pulled him a little bit closer. “Are we almost done shopping?” I whispered. “Because I would love to take you back to the hotel and—”

  “Excuse m e.” The voice was loud and startled us both. I automatically pulled away from Cole, looking over to see who had disturbed us. It was a man in a suit, probably in his fifties, and the look of disapproval on his face was obvious. “Is there something I can help you gentlemen with?”

  I felt my face turning red. I wasn’t usually one for public displays of affection, and I was embarrassed that I had let my hormones get the best of me. I was actually about to apologize. But then I glanced at Cole, and I saw that not only did he not look apologetic, he looked positively annoyed. He flipped his hair out of eyes, his head cocked back a little bit in that way that allowed him to look down his nose at just about anybody.

  “Honey, I assure you, we don’t need your help with anything.”

  The man—his name tag said “Frank”—bristled noticeably. “This is a gallery—”

  “I know, honey,” Cole said, and I had a feeling he had intentionally used the pet name again just to annoy Frank more. “I’m not blind.” He actually put one hand on his hip, and cocked his hip out, and I suspected it was all Frank could do to maintain his composure.

  “My partner and I are trying to decide which piece will look best in our bedroom.” He turned to me, and I was trying not to look too startled at being referred to as his partner. “Isn’t that right, muffin?” He winked at me. “Which do you think? The snow or the water?”

  “I don’t know,” I stammered, trying not to laugh at his over-the- top behavior. “It’s really your call. Muffin.” And I could tell that tickled him to no end.

  “Perhaps,” Frank said curtly, “you’d like to see the price lis t before you decide?”

  “Excellent idea, honey,” Cole said. “Why don’t you run along and fetch that for me? We’ll wait right here.”

  Frank had obviously expected the mention of a price list to send us on our way, and being told to “run along and fetch” didn’t seem to be sitting well with him either. But he was professional enough to do his job, even if he couldn’t quite manage to hide his biases as he did it.

  “Of course,” he said, with a forced smile. He walked away, leaving us alone again for the moment.

  Half of Cole’s affectation dropped away as soon as Frank was out of sight. “What a pompous ass,” he mumbled. “Now I suppose I’ll have to buy something.” He turned to me. “Maybe we can compromise and get one of the above-water seascapes.”

  “It’s your house and your money,” I said. “Get the one you like.”

  But I wasn’t actually thinking much about the pictures. I was thinking about him.

  I remembered months before when I had taken him to the theater, and we had fought afterward about his flamboyance. I remembered thinking that I had seen him turn the levels of it up and down. Yet for some reason, I hadn’t ever realized exactly what it was that triggered it.

  At the time I had thought it odd that it would be worse when we were away from home. After all, it made more sense to me to be low-key when we were in public.

  Why had I never realized before that, more than anything, his affectation was a defense mechanism? The more uncomfortable he was, the more he added to it, like pieces of armor. The gestures and the attitude, all just used to put more distance between himself and whoever it was that was threatening him. That was why, when we were at home, it all seemed to fall away. Because he was comfortable there and he didn’t need it. But when he really had his guard up, as he did now with Frank, it was amplified. And that night with my father, and the next evening at the theatre, my own disapproval had probably only made things worse.

  Frank reappeared then with the price list. Cole took it and started looking it over. I glanced at it over his shoulder and tried to keep my jaw from dropping when I saw the prices. “So tell me, honey,” Cole said to Frank as he looked at the list, “do you work on commission?”

  Frank looked uncomfortable with the question but said, “We’re paid a flat salary, but I do receive a bonus for anything I sell, yes.”

  “And is there anybody else working today?”

  Frank’s cheeks started to turn a little bit red, and for the first time, he started to look a little bit worried. It apparently hadn’t occurred to him that his attitude could come back to haunt him. “Allison is here is well.”

  “Why don’t you go find her for me?”

  “I’m afraid she’s busy at the moment,” Frank said, but even I could tell he was lying.

  And then Cole did something that surprised even me. He yelled out, “Allison? Are you here, sweetie?”

  “Sir!” Frank snapped. “Please keep your voice down. This is a gallery!”

  “Honey, I know. But I asked you nicely to go and get her for me, and you refused.”

  There was a frantic bustling from the front of the gallery, and then a young woman stumbled around the corner and into view. She was only in her twenties, red-faced and flustered. “Yes?”

  Cole gave her his best smile and walked over to shake her hand.

  “Allison, darling, it is so nice to meet you.” He took her arm and steered her back toward the place where the underwater picture was hung. “I’d like to buy this picture over here.”

  She glanced at Frank, and she actually looked a little bit afraid of him. I suspected he wasn’t a fun coworker. “Is Frank helping you?”

  “No, darling,” Cole said in feigned dismay as they disappeared around the corner. “Frank has been absolutely no help at all!”

  Frank’s cheeks were red. There was an obvious pulse pounding in his temple. And I had to bite my cheek to keep from laughing at him as I followed Cole and Allison to the front of the gallery. And so Cole acquired a picture he never really wanted for his bedroom in the Hamptons. He arranged to have it shipped there, saying only that Margaret would know what to do with it.

  “I can’t believe you did all th
at just to annoy poor Frank,” I said as we left, and he laughed.

  “What’s the point of having money if you can’t have fun with it, right, love?”

  We slowly worked our way back to our hotel on foot. By the time we got there, it was time for dinner, and after eating, we changed and went to the theatre. The play was La Cage aux Folles.

  “I wasn’t sure which show to pick,” Cole said, winking at me, “but this one seemed oddly appropriate.” I hadn’t ever seen it, although I knew the story. I couldn’t even pronounce the title. Cole, being fluent in French, thought it was a perfect reason to laugh at me once again. I didn’t mind.

  We went back to our room after the show, and he stretched out on the bed with the room service menu while I changed out of my suit. He was on his stomach, with his back to me.

  “Would it be terribly cliché to order the strawberries and champagne?” he asked.

  I climbed on top of him so I could kiss the butterfly on his neck.

  “I think it’s a great idea.”

  So we drank champagne and fed each other strawberries and slowly undressed as we caressed each other. When our clothes were gone, I pushed him back on the bed and kissed his neck. He hadn’t shaved that morning, which was unusual for him. It took a couple of days for it to start to show on him, but now he had the tiniest bit of cinnamon-colored stubble along his jaw. “Happy birthday,” I said.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said quietly.

  “Thank you for bringing me.”

  “I hate having to spend my birthday alone.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said.

  He shrugged a little, seemingly lost in thought. He had one arm around my waist, and the slender fingers of his other hand were tangled into the hair on my chest. Looking down at him, I found myself thinking that he was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen. The brown in his hazel eyes was light, almost exactly the same color as his hair.