Strawberries for Dessert

by Marie Sexton

  But there was that hint of green in them too. He had delicately fine features, which somehow contrasted beautifully with the stubble on his jaw. And then of course there were his lips, which always drew my eye.

  How could I love him this much? And more importantly, when exactly had it happened? Because I could no longer deny that I was completely head-over-heels in love with him. Finally admitting it to myself, once and for all, was almost overwhelming. I had forgotten how it felt to be in love like that. It was frightening, and exciting, and exhilarating, all at once. It was something I hadn’t felt since….

  Since Zach.

  I pulled my mind away from him, instinctively, almost before I had followed the thought to its end. Not because it was still painful to remember him, but because I didn’t want to taint this, what I felt now with Cole, with memories of that past life. Zach and I had been young, and in many ways, we had been thoughtless. Even cruel. But this? This felt new and pure and fragile. It felt sacred.

  It felt like a second chance.

  And I knew without a doubt that I had no intention of letting it pass me by. I wanted to tell him right now how I felt. I wanted him to know how much I loved him. I wanted him to know that he never had to spend another birthday alone again.

  “Cole,” I said, but before I could finish, he put his soft fingers on my lips. His eyes were wide and a little bit scared.

  “Shhh,” he said. “Don’t say it, Jonny.”

  “But—”

  He shook his head. And then he kissed me. He pulled me close, his arms tight around me. His lips were soft and warm, and his mouth was sweet from the fruit we’d eaten. He wrapped his legs around my hips, and in that moment, he became my whole world. I wanted to pour everything that I was feeling into him.

  We took our time. The urgency of this morning was gone, and now there was only tenderness. I kissed him, feeling his thin body underneath me, his skin soft against mine. I tried to caress every part of him with my hands or my lips or both. His touch was light and gentle, but his fingers dug painfully into my shoulders as I pushed into him.

  And then there was only him in my arms, his legs around me, our breath mingling, and the building pleasure of our bodies locked together. And through it all, the knowledge that I loved him more than I ever would have believed possible.

  Afterward, he was silent. He let me hold him far longer than he usually did. I was just drifting off when he started to move to the other side of the bed. “Please don’t,” I said sleepily, holding him tighter so he couldn’t get away. “Stay here.” I could sense him debating for just a second, but then he sighed—not in frustration or exasperation. It was a sound of contentment. He relaxed again in my arms, and I curled up against his back. And for the second night in a row, I went to sleep smelling strawberries.

  Date: April 5

  From: Cole

  To: Jared

  I am a fool, and a coward. I’m not sure which is worse.

  ONCE his birthday was past, the overall melancholy that had shrouded him for the two weeks leading up to our trip disappeared. And yet he still wasn’t quite happy. At least not all the time. I, on the other hand, could not remember having been happier. Not for a very long time, at any rate. I loved him. I loved everything about him. Every moment we were together thrilled me. He was flighty and bright and beautiful and stubborn, and I marveled at how much fuller my life felt now with him in it.

  I was also happy that he seemed to accept now that our relationship had changed. He quit trying to keep his walls between us.

  He let me touch him more. He let me kiss him. He laughed more. And most of the time, he seemed to be as happy I was. But then there would be moments when it was as if the sun had suddenly gone behind the clouds. That laughing light in his eyes would suddenly dim, and he would seem sad.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him once when it happened. We were in bed, still not quite breathing steadily again after making love, and as I looked down at him, thinking that I loved him more than I could ever put into words, that sadness had come into his eyes.

  He was hesitant to answer, I could tell, and I suspected he was debating whether to deny that anything was wrong at all. But then he said, “I’ll have to leave soon.”

  “Okay,” I said, pulling him close and kissing him. Of course I didn’t want him to go, but it had always been his nature to not stay in one place for too long. “I won’t miss you at all,” I told him. He sighed, but he didn’t say anything else after that.

  My father called a few days later to invite Cole and me to dinner.

  I was still reluctant to put them at the same dinner table again, but my dad insisted. “Jon, you can’t divide your life in half and keep the two of us apart. If this is a relationship you’re serious about, and I’m pretty sure it is, then I think the fruitcake and I will have to get used to each other.”

  “Fine,” I relented, because as usual, he was right. “How about Saturday?”

  “Perfect.”

  “But not a restaurant. He’ll want to cook.”

  “Even better.”

  “And Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t call him a fruitcake.”

  For only a moment, there clouds in Cole’s eyes as I told him about dinner with my dad. But just as quickly, they were gone and he smiled. “Anything you want, love.”

  We had to go shopping on Saturday afternoon to buy what he needed for dinner. “I’m nervous about this,” I confessed as we got out of the car and started walking toward the store. “It didn’t go well last time.”

  “It won’t be like that again,” he assured me.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you trust me now,” he said, as if that made all the difference. Had I not trusted him before? I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I was used to feeling that way around him, and I decided to let it go.

  “What are you making?” I asked him as we walked into the grocery store. “You could make the cioppino again. He liked it so much last time he practically licked the pot clean after you left.” Of course that made me think about why Cole had left early that night and the horrible fight we had the next evening after the show. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was so—”

  “You were forgiven a long time ago, love,” he said, interrupting me. “But I love that you’re suddenly so repentant. And I’m not making cioppino.”

  “What are you making?”

  “It’s a surprise,” he said, in that voice that told me I wouldn’t get any more info out of him, even if I begged. “Should we get bread here or at that shop up the street?”

  “Let’s just get it here. We should buy a pie or something too,” I told him. “He likes dessert.”

  “We could have strawberries for dessert,” he said, picking up one of the little plastic containers of fruit and smelling it. “They’re perfectly ripe. You can tell just by the smell. Here.”

  He held the container up to my nose. The smell of strawberries was associated with him so strongly in my mind, and upon smelling them I immediately thought of how it felt to have his thin body underneath me, to be inside of him, to have my nose buried in his cinnamon-colored hair.

  And suddenly, I had a raging hard-on.

  What the hell? I was in the middle of the grocery store! I turned toward the racks of produce to hide my predicament from anybody who might be looking my way. I closed my eyes and tried to think of baseball. Or mowing the lawn. Or anything but the way he smelled, and the sounds he made when—

  “My goodness, love,” he said, interrupting my decidedly too- erotic thoughts. “Do you have a strange fruit fetish I don’t know about?”

  I glanced over to find his eyes on me, and not surprisingly, they were full of laughter. “It’s you,” I whispered in embarrassment.

  “Me?”

  “Your hair.” He still looked a little bit confused, and I had to say,

  “It smells like your hair!”

  I saw the comprehension in his eyes. I cou
ld also see how much it pleased him. “Strawberries,” he said. “That’s very interesting. Anything else?”

  I felt my cheeks turning red as I thought again about his hair—the color this time, rather than the smell—and his skin. “Cinnamon,” I admitted quietly. “And caramel.”

  Now he really looked amused. “All that’s missing is the whipped cream.”

  And that of course brought a whole new set of images to mind.

  And those images did absolutely nothing to alleviate the tightness in my groin. “You’re not helping,” I hissed at him and he laughed.

  “I wasn’t trying to, love.” He stepped closer, stood on his toes a little so he could whisper in my ear, “Too bad you’re stuck here. If we make it home in time, I might let you have dessert first.”

  “Still not helping.”

  “Would this be a bad time to tell you how much I’ve been thinking about your ties lately?”

  “Oh my God,” I moaned, and he laughed. I pushed him away, which only made him laugh louder. I grabbed the basket from him. If I carried it strategically, it would cover the embarrassing bulge in my pants. “Can we hurry this up?”

  “Anything you want, love,” he said in amusement. He turned and headed further into the grocery store, and I followed behind. I figured wandering through the aisles behind him would help take my mind off of sex. As long as we didn’t encounter any more strawberries. Or cinnamon. Or caramel. Or whipped cream.

  Yeah, this was going to work.

  Especially since he was in front of me, and I could see that butterfly on the back of his neck and the curve of his back where it arched into the soft globes of his ass. I was driving myself crazy, and he was laughing at me the entire time.

  We finally had everything he said he needed, plus the strawberries—we had to go back to the produce section to get them, which didn’t help—and we each carried a bag of groceries back to my car, which was parked near the back of the lot.

  “You’re absolutely cruel,” I told him as we put the bags in the back seat, and he laughed again. We got in, but before I could start the car, he took my keys from me. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He leaned over and put his lips against my ear. One of his slender hands went to the buttons on my jeans. “I’m making up for being cruel,” he whispered, and I felt his tongue move over my ear.

  I had been partially erect for most of our time in the store, and that was all it took to get my full attention. Still, we were in a parking lot. At the grocery store. “We can’t do it here,” I said in a hoarse whisper, and his laughter was soft in my ear. He had my pants undone already, and his hand slid inside of them, caressing me. After the torment in the store, it felt unbelievably good, and my breath caught in my throat. But I was still worried about being seen. He pulled my briefs out of the way, exposing my erection. His soft fingers slid over the end, where wet beads were forming.

  “Honey,” he said softly, “you’re always so uptight. Just this once, try to relax.” And then, before I could answer, he put his head in my lap, sucking me deep into his warm mouth.

  The world seemed to spin. I was torn between the pleasure of what he was doing to me, and the anxiety of being caught. I glanced around the parking lot. There wasn’t anybody too close to us, and the people I could see weren’t looking our direction. But what if the people parked next to us were the next ones out of the store? And then—then he did something with his tongue, and I was no longer capable of caring. I could not possibly stop him now.

  I had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. I closed my eyes, and I thought about the smell of strawberries. And the image of whipped cream on his dark skin. And the feel of having his thin body underneath mine. All of the desire I had felt for him as I followed him through the store, I quit fighting it. I let it fill me and reveled in the release he was giving me. “Oh Jesus,” I moaned, and he sped up, moving his head up and down on my shaft. I could tell by his soft moans that he was almost as turned on as I was, and that made it more intense. Nothing turned me on as much as hearing him get off. I wished

  I could somehow do something for him, but in the tight space of my front seat, it would have required a level of flexibility I definitely wasn’t capable of. He had one arm around my waist, and his fingers were digging into my back in a way that was almost painful. He was using his other hand to hold my pants out of his way. I pushed it away so that I could hold them myself, freeing him to use that hand in other ways. He immediately used it unbutton his own pants enough that he could slide it inside. He wasn’t quite stroking himself, but he ground against his own hand as he sucked me, and his moans got louder.

  I was so close already, and part of me was still worried enough about being caught to want it to happen quickly. But mostly I just wanted to keep feeling his warm, wet mouth sliding up and down my length. Mostly I just wanted to keep hearing the frantic sounds he made as my own breathing sped up. In the end, of course, I had no real control over it anyway. I felt myself peaking. I hung on tight to the steering wheel with my free hand so I wouldn’t be tempted to push his head down when it happened. His soft lips moved over my head again, and that was all it took. I came hard, felt his fingers digging into my back as I did, and knew by the guttural sound he made around my cock that he was climaxing too.

  I opened my eyes, still breathing hard. There was one person walking past the front of my car, looking at me suspiciously. It was a woman, probably in her sixties, wearing a muumuu and flip-flops, with curlers in her hair. I put one hand on Cole’s head to keep him from sitting up right at that moment, and I waved with my other hand, grinning like an idiot. Her cheeks flushed red, and she quickly turned away, shuffling to her car in the next row.

  And then, before I could help myself, I burst out laughing. I couldn’t believe how good it felt. Not just the blowjob, although that was part of it too, of course. But all of it—it was so liberating: being with him, trusting him, and letting myself relax. And laughing. The laughter felt almost as good as the sex. He was right. I needed to learn to let things go once in a while.

  I took my hand away from his head, and he sat up. He put his lips against my ear and asked in a teasing whisper, “Better?”

  “Oh my God,” I gasped as my laughter finally started to fade.

  “Yes!”

  “You should relax more often,” he teased.

  “I think you might be right.”

  He kissed me once on the cheek, then pulled away from me and started digging in the glove compartment. “I hope you have napkins in here somewhere. Otherwise I’m going to be stuck to my pants by the time we get back to your place. We may never get them off.”

  “That would be rather unfortunate,” I told him, still smiling.

  He smiled back and winked at me. “I’m glad you think so, love.”

  MY FATHER arrived early. I hadn’t even set the table. “Dinner’s not quite ready yet,” Cole told him as they sat down at the table, “but Jonny can get us some wine, right, love?”

  My dad looked a little bit nervous, I suspected because Cole was so obviously sending me out of the room so they could be alone, but I did as he requested. I went into the kitchen and opened the wine and got three glasses out of the cabinet.

  “I need to take some time off this year,” my dad was saying as I came back in from the kitchen.

  “Really?” I asked, surprised. “Dad, you never take vacation.”

  “I know. And that’s why my PTO bank is maxed out. They’re telling me I have to take some time off.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t decided,” he said. “I’d like to travel, but it’s so expensive, and I’m not sure where to go—”

  “Oh, honey,” Cole jumped in. I kicked him under the table for calling my dad “honey.” He gave me a dirty look, but didn’t slow down. “You just have to know the right people, and now,” he batted his eyes jokingly at my dad, “you do! I don’t know if Jonny’s told you or not, but
I have homes all over the place. You can use any of them you want. Where would you like to go?”

  “Well,” my dad said with obvious discomfort, “I’m not sure—”

  “How about Paris?”

  “Paris?”

  “Of course, honey. Who doesn’t love Paris?” He leaned forward in his chair, tucking one bare foot underneath him. It brought him a little closer to my dad, like he was about to tell him a secret. “I usually spend half the summer there, and Christmas too, of course. I have a condo there that is completely adorable. Really, it’s more convenient than any hotel, and it’s free, so that’s even better, isn’t it? Just tell me when you want to go and—”

  “Cole,” I said, but he ignored me.

  “—I’ll call Alain and let him know you’re coming. It’s rather small, but unless you’re planning some kind of soirée, it should suit you fine. Now, the lady next door has a bichon frisé that will bark its fool head off any time you walk past her door, which is terribly annoying, but don’t let it worry you. And don’t let any of those magazines in the bathroom scare you. Just toss them under the sink—”

  “Cole,” I said again, but he still ignored me. “—before you open them, or you’ll be in for shock. It has a full kitchen of course, so you don’t even have to go out, which is infinitely cheaper than restaurants every night, I’m sure. I’ll give you Alain’s number, and you can call him and let him know what you want him to buy, and he’ll have everything ready for—Wait! Do you speak French?”

  My dad looked like he was barely managing to keep up with Cole’s monologue, but he said “No.”

  “Well then, you better not call Alain, honey, because his English is terrible. I think it’s all an act because he doesn’t like Americans, but if we’re not careful, he’ll fill the kitchen with Spam. You let me know what you like to eat and I’ll make sure the kitchen’s—”

  “Cole!”

  This time he didn’t ignore me. “Good l ord, Jonny!” he said, turning to me in exasperation, “What is so urgent?”