Center of Gravity

by Neve Wilder

  “Even though he carried on with you?”

  Michael shook his head. “Our relationship was a bit unusual, I suppose, only infrequently sexual”—he glanced at me, I supposed to see if he was crossing any boundaries—“for various reasons. My age, our professional relationship, your mother, his own issues. But I loved him deeply in spite of those things.”

  “Why?” I bit out, aware that maybe I was projecting my own bitter experiences on the situation.

  “Why does anyone love anyone else? Sometimes it’s beyond reasoning, though I must have asked myself a thousand times over the years.”

  I stood, taking my water bottle with me to the window to look out over the lawn below. Stiff Bermuda grass neatly trimmed, a few students straggling across the quad, weighted down by backpacks.

  “You were at our house once.” I remembered it suddenly, a dinner in Jersey. I must have been close to fifteen.

  I glanced over my shoulder to catch his rueful smile. “Yes, that’s when she found out.”

  Christ, he wasn’t lying when he said it was complicated.

  “When your mother was diagnosed, she reached out, actually. I hadn’t seen him in half a decade. We always wrote, though, always, even after the rise of email, he liked the tangible qualities of a letter.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She asked me if I would check on him after she was gone. If I would take care of him.”

  I was glad to be facing away from him then, because it sounded so very much like something my mom would do that tears sprang to my eyes. I stared at the horizon until the sting went away. My shoulders sagged under a whirlwind of emotions and strangely, anger was only a small part of that. “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I agreed. Of course I agreed. It was what I’d wanted all my life and could never have. Understandably so, but when I talked with your father next—I called him that time—he refused. Said he was too old, had nothing left to offer me aside from the letters and his affection.”

  I shook my head.

  “He always wanted to do the right thing, Robert.”

  “The right thing would have been to not get involved with you in the first place. The right thing would have been to cut off what clearly sounds like a long-standing emotional affair. Or to have accepted his sexuality or…any fucking number of other things besides what he did. He was a coward.” I twisted the cap on my water bottle and pitched it into the trash, ready to be out of there, regretting coming at all. “How could you even stand it? It sounds parasitic to me.”

  “Perhaps.” Michael nodded evenly. “And I can’t explain it, really. Not to you. But suffice it to say that regardless of your own perception, the three parties involved had found a resolution that worked for us, and as two of them are dead, and it was personal, I don’t think it’s something that can be easily explained to you. My choices are my own cross to bear, but I suspect you’ve been in love before, and you know all too well.”

  I sighed and nodded.

  I left a half hour later, numb. I’d gone in suspecting I’d leave disliking him, but mostly I felt sad for him. He was right. Whatever convoluted relationship had existed was between the three of them. It wasn’t as if my family had been torn apart. Quite the opposite. Michael seemed like the sacrificial lamb in this story. Or perhaps all three of them were in some way, but I still couldn’t help but to think of my father as a coward.

  I stayed up longer than I should have that night, thinking about what Summer had said, and Scott, and then my own father and Michael—architects of their own loneliness, all of them convinced they were doing the right thing.

  22

  Alex

  Rob had a bug up his ass about something, and it wasn’t me, though I wouldn’t have minded being in his ass. I wanted it, but we’d kind of fallen into the pattern of me bottoming and though I didn’t get the impression he hated bottoming or anything, I liked getting fucked by him just fine. That was neither here nor there, though. He’d called rather than texted this time, and when I said I was free for the weekend—because, who was I kidding?—he instructed me to arrive at seven on Friday dressed “nicely.”

  I wasn’t sure if there was a difference between my kind of “nice” and Rob’s kind, so I met in the middle and showed up at his place at seven in a gray button-down and jeans free of holes, paint, and streaks of charcoal. That alone was a feat; since I’d started school again, most of my wardrobe reflected that. It’d taken three wash cycles to get my jeans clean.

  The door was unlocked, as it usually was, so I let myself inside, walked through the quiet house and found him and Winslow out on the back porch, which was also the norm. I’d often find him drinking a beer and he’d have one out waiting for me. There’d be take-out in the kitchen. We’d hang out, shoot the shit. I’d tell him what I was working on in school. He’d give me any updates about the house and talk so little about his job that I sometimes wondered if it was a cover story and he was really CIA. Then we’d eat and screw around, sometimes watch TV. Rinse, repeat. I was kind of starting to feel like we were stuck in a spin cycle, but the sex was still so good that my dick overrode any lingering doubts about what exactly we were doing.

  He gave me a long look that I couldn’t read as I stepped out. That was beginning to frustrate me, too, that I still couldn’t read him. And it wasn’t that he was moody, he was just reserved. Until we got into the bedroom. That was another thing that kept the sex so hot for me. I couldn’t get enough of seeing his armor peeled off, watching him writhe and come apart in my mouth, my hands, my ass.

  “Should I turn around? Make a pedestal out of that table right there so you can admire me better?” I quirked a grin and picked up the beer he’d left out for me, twisting off the cap. The beer went down refreshingly cold as I guzzled it, his eyes still upon me.

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?” A glimmer of a smile crossed his lips before he hid it behind the mouth of his beer bottle.

  “When in doubt, I always assume the most flattering option.”

  “Unsurprising.”

  “You could just tell me I look nice,” I said, dropping into one of the wrought iron chairs that decorated the back porch.

  I continued to eye him as I picked up my beer again. The sleeves of his button-down were rolled up to his elbows, tan still clinging to his forearms, though over the past week Mother Nature had let us know the season was changing. His hair was damp from the shower, his neck flushed. He must have gone running before I arrived. If I leaned in, I knew exactly how he’d smell: the scent of soap and his shampoo and beneath that, the subtle metallic tinge of sweat and exertion.

  “Did that admission hurt?”

  “Only because you wrenched it from me.” Rob’s lips curved into a smirk.

  “So maybe next time you should just offer it freely.”

  “I have this funny idea that you’re well aware of how attractive you are, whether in paint-spatter or linen.” His brow rose and I turned my answering smile aside to Winslow, leaning lazily over the chair to scratch his belly. “That doesn’t mean a guy doesn’t like to hear it every now and then.”

  “I see.” Rob sounded amused, but his eyes softened. “Did I fill your daily quota or do you need more?”

  “I imagine my tank will be full by the end of the night.”

  The slight flush of his cheeks that followed my comment was satisfying. I cracked up, then settled back with my beer. “There’s no take out in the kitchen. You want to head over to The Tap House instead and grab a bite?” There was a trio of nearby restaurants we’d sometimes haunt before getting down to the business of fucking. None of them required me to dress this nicely, though.

  “I thought we’d go somewhere different tonight.” Rob finished off his beer and rattled it back onto the table.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to start romancing me now,” I teased, and caught a shadow pass through his eyes before he looked away. Oh God, had I misread things? Was he going to take me out and tell
me he didn’t want to do whatever it was we were doing anymore? That seemed weird, though. And expensive. Who took somebody out to ditch them when a phone call or text would work just fine? Oh wait, Alain had done something very similar. It just hadn’t stung as much because I was sick of him by then, anyway.

  But I wasn’t sick of Rob. A cool unease passed like fingers over the back of my neck. My stomach somersaulted once, then Rob’s hand was in front of me, extended and waiting. I slid mine within his and he pulled me up. “You’ll see.”

  Brass was halfway back to the city. The name struck me as vaguely familiar, but as the cab pulled up to the curb in front of a modest, strip mall-style facade, I realized I’d never been. Not that that was unusual. I frowned as I got out and studied the dark plate glass windows and the small, subdued gold-script lettering. Rob chuckled. “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “Tell me about it,” I murmured.

  His head canted to one side and I felt myself beginning to smile. “Yes, that was aimed at you. Businessman by day, wildcat by night.”

  “I don’t know that I’d go that far.”

  “I’m pretty sure we’ve gone farther.” I winked at him as he held the door open for me, hearing the soft hitch of his breath as I breezed past him.

  “And what does that make you?” he asked.

  My reply was delayed on account of me soaking up the atmosphere. Beige brick and tinted plate glass gave way to twinkle lights and heavy, velvety fabrics, leather, and the rich scent of food. Expensive food. If Rob hadn’t been wearing virtually the same thing as me I would have turned and walked back out, convinced I was underdressed.

  “That’s easy. Like me. I’m just neon-glowing hunger. My open sign is always lit up.” I only caught him sidelong, since the hostess had walked up at that point, but instead of seeing him smile, I thought I glimpsed a frown. That restraint thing again, I guessed, and my apparent lack of it.

  The hostess seated us at a tiny table that barely had room for our elbows. I settled in across from Rob, rearranging my water glass so I wouldn’t knock it off the table if I breathed wrong. It was the Manhattan of tables. Every inch was precious real estate.

  “The food is worth it,” he promised as I pushed my fork and knife next to my water glass.

  “How did you find this place?”

  It didn’t look like a place that Rob would pick, but the fact was also that I didn’t really have a clue what Rob would pick. Usually, he was all about convenience. Extending that metaphor to myself made my stomach knot up, so I tried to push the thought aside. Our interactions were limited and well-defined. I’d sooner be able to answer how he liked his dick sucked than his favorite movie or what kinds of foods he enjoyed eating. It was an odd kind of intimacy, like knowing in reverse, and it bothered me. I was curious what he did during the weekdays, what his life was like. Despite the fact that we saw each other almost every weekend, it was like he was becoming more of a stranger than less of one.

  “It was a while back. Some coworkers were talking about it.”

  “Do you come here a lot?”

  “No, not very often.”

  “Do you come with coworkers?”

  His eyes narrowed, like he was wondering why I was asking. “Sometimes.”

  “Who else?” Someone you’re fucking, like me? That was my thought, but I didn’t say it.

  The furrow between his brows expanded and deepened as he studied my face, thoughtful rather than irritated. Our waiter stepped up a second later, holding out a wine list that was larger than the table.

  I didn’t know wine, so I was happy to let Rob order for the both of us. Once the waiter retreated, he was back to studying me, his expression indecipherable. “You were trying to decide whether you should be jealous or not.”

  “Wrong,” I quipped, trying to keep my tone light. “I was trying to decide if you’re less tragically unhip than I thought.”

  “Tragically unhip,” he echoed skeptically. “I suppose after this we can just go back to my place then, rather than out dancing.”

  My eyes widened. “You want to go dancing?”

  “Sure, why not? I was thinking of that place you went for your birthday, Razz?”

  “Have you been there?”

  He exhaled another breathless laugh and nodded. “Yes. It’s been a while, but yes. And for the record, yes, I do have friends, and a social life. I go to poker night and sometimes I stand around the coffee maker at work and engage in actual conversation with others.”

  Instead of sounding like a broken record and expressing surprise that he went to poker night, I just stared, trying to imagine him at the table with a bunch of other guys. My imagination drew in a cigar crouched in the corner of his mouth, pouring thick tendrils of smoke into the air. Wisecracks, whiskey-laced antes. I smiled.

  “Are you any good at poker?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t doubt it for a minute. “Who do you play with? Do you play for real money?”

  “A few other guys in my complex, and yes. We play with real money.”

  It was like catching a glimpse behind the curtain, fascinating and kind of sad all at once because I was getting this tiny breadcrumb of his life and knowing it came from a whole loaf I was unaware of.

  “I’ve only ever played strip poker. But,” I lifted my finger, “I’m pretty damn good at it.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised.” It seemed he never was, with me. God, was that what tonight was about? He was getting bored, trying to spice things up? I cringed at my own insecurity. This wasn’t like me at all. It was so rare for me not to feel on equal footing with a guy. The feeling bubbled and fizzed in the back of my mind, all through dinner—which was as good as he’d said it would be—and by the time we climbed into the cab to go to Razz, it’d been replaced by the fizz of alcohol coursing freely through my system.

  Razz smelled like intoxication and sex. People were grinding on the dance floor, in the hallways, against walls and tables. The entire ambience was heady and pulsating. I snuck my arm around Rob’s waist as we navigated through people, bypassing the bar for the dance floor.

  “I’m curious about you, is all,” I said. Twice, because the music was so loud.

  He tipped his head to shout back at me. “Well I’m not tragically unhip, maybe just a little slow on the uptake.”

  It wasn’t the best place for intimate conversation, so I let it go after that, focusing on the press of his body against mine as he laced his arms around me from behind. He moved to the music easily, naturally, the way he had when we’d first met at Liberation. I remembered being surprised by it then, because he’d seemed so buttoned-up and stiff as we exchanged names and polite smiles by the DJ booth.

  I tried to turn and couldn’t, which was frustrating and amusing all at once. Tipping my head back into Rob’s shoulder, I peered at the strong lines of his profile, at the stern but generous mouth. “You planning on keeping me locked up all night?”

  “Highly probable,” he murmured, and when I pushed back against him, he groaned and held my hips tighter, his fingers pinching into my skin until little blossoms of pain-pleasure unfolded petal by petal.

  We danced for the better part of an hour, until we were both flushed, damp with sweat, and thirsty. At the bar, I drained a bottle of water in a single go and followed, slower, with a beer. Rob did the same.

  Reese was up on his platform with all his little followers below. I watched his hips twist and undulate hypnotically, the flash of his legs in sky-high heels. He wore a miniskirt that looked as if it had been painted over his ass.

  I’d only ever seen Reese once outside of the club, casual in jeans and a T-shirt, and without make-up. I’d never have recognized him except that Max pointed him out at the all-night diner we were at after hours. Reese had come in with a group of twinks, and he was the standout. He must have been heavy-handed with contouring makeup because while he was the picture of classic femininity on stage, there was no getting around that strong jawlin
e unaided. He was androgynous, leaning toward masculine, with the petulant outward bow of his lower lip giving him an insolent, stand-offish appearance. And though he was cordial when Max had leaned out of the booth and bumped his knuckles, when I thought of Tom’s situation later, I felt sorry for the poor bastard. Tom didn’t stand a chance with a guy like Reese.

  “You know her? Him?” Rob shouted in my ear. “You’re staring.”

  “Not well.” I shook my head and then, as best I could, tried to fill him in on Tom’s situation. It wasn’t my secret to tell, but I figured Rob was safe and I’d been dying to tell someone anyway. Rob’s brows jumped up and then he laughed and had the same reaction I’d had, eyeing Reese as he said, “Tell Tom good fucking luck.”

  We finished our drinks and Rob leaned in to ask me if I wanted to dance some more. I slid my fingers through his belt loops and pulled until his earlobe was close enough to catch between my teeth.

  “I want to go back to your place and play you in strip poker.”

  For the record, strip poker was the only poker variant where losing was about as fun as winning, and if I could wipe the smirk from Rob’s face, I’d say it was even preferable. When I’d lost my shirt, and taken my sweet time peeling it off, his eyes had been riveted to me, breath going shallow before his mask flicked back into place and that smirk turned up the side of his mouth. He still had his shirt, partway unbuttoned, and his jeans. Since it was just the two of us, we’d modified the rules some, otherwise I’d have been naked in about five rounds, which wasn’t as much fun as stringing him along.

  “I’ll bet you’re a pain in the ass at poker night,” I said. “Always gloating.”

  “I don’t gloat.” His smile tilted higher and he leaned back onto the pillows at the head of the bed, careful not to disturb the pile of cards between us. “But you’re terrible at bluffing.”