by Roan Parrish
“So you haven’t been with anyone in all this time? Haven’t you been…lonely?”
Nights prowling the floor of my apartment, waiting for the sun to rise. Writing the facts I learned from podcasts and books in my notebook and reviewing them over dinners alone. Calls and texts at all hours of the day and night from sponsees in need of support. Loud shifts at the bar.
I shrugged. “I fill the time.”
Felix reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
“Has no dating meant no sex, or…?”
There was no judgment or surprise in his voice. He looked at me so sincerely it made my guts clench.
“I just jerk off. Basically the same thing, right?”
I had not intended to say that. Felix’s eyes went wide for a moment, then he started giggling and let go of my hand.
“Wow, way to kill a moment,” he said, going back to his food.
“Sorry,” I muttered, looking down at my plate. “Guess it’s been long enough I forgot you’re not supposed to bring up masturbation at the dinner table on a first date.”
Felix grinned. “Yeah, that’s strictly second-date dinner convo.”
We finished eating, and Felix cleared the table before I even stood up.
“Waiter?”
“Yup. At a diner for four years, so you’re in the presence of a professional.”
He waved me away from the sink and started to do the dishes.
“No, no.” I steered him away with a hand on his shoulder. “You’re my guest. Just leave it.”
His height made the angle he looked up at me from seem vulnerable, like he was baring his throat for my mouth.
“You sure?” he asked as I turned away.
I nodded. I liked the dishes to be done in a particular way, and the routine was important to me.
“ ’Kay.” He stood there, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Do you want to…do something else? Or I can get out of your hair if you want your apartment back…”
“Okay.”
“Okay, sure, no problem, I’ll just go,” he said.
“No.” I grabbed his shoulder. “I meant do something. Sorry. I’m…”
I felt strangely unsteady with Felix. Everything in me screamed, End the date, end the night, get him out of here before you have a chance to like him. But it was already too late.
“Cool,” Felix said. “Wanna lift weights together?”
He nodded toward the free weights in the corner. I was surprised at the suggestion but wasn’t about to tell Felix I hadn’t thought by looking at him that lifting was his thing.
“If you like,” I said slowly.
Felix made a face at me.
“Oh my God, I’m kidding. I don’t want to lift weights on our date. I don’t wanna lift weights at all.”
He wrinkled up his nose. He was kidding, messing with me…flirting with me?
Yeah, genius. When someone teases you gently on a date, that’s generally called flirting. Buy a fucking clue.
I took a step closer to Felix so I was looming over him, and let my gaze settle on his.
“Okay, smart-ass. What do you wanna do, then?”
His eyelashes fluttered and he swallowed hard.
“Um. Uh.”
Quick flick of his eyes down my body and back up to my mouth. Yeah, definitely flirting with me.
“We could…watch something?” he offered.
I nodded and led him to the couch. I watched television mostly when I couldn’t sleep or needed to distract myself. Watching with someone else as an activity wasn’t something I’d done much. A couple of times at a sponsee’s house when they needed company. The odd late-night movie here and there with a friend.
When Netflix loaded, my recently watched items were right there on the screen and as I grabbed for the remote to scroll away, Felix exclaimed, “Oh my God, you watch Secaucus Psychic!”
Jesus. “Um. No,” I said, fumbling with the remote.
“Come on!” Felix said. “I fucking love that show, are you kidding? It’s amazing.”
He tugged on my arm with both hands and was practically squirming with glee.
“You do?”
“Love it. Put it on!”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I couldn’t quite tell if he was messing with me again.
“You speak of this to no one,” I growled, and Felix grinned.
“You scared I’m gonna tell your friend Theo Decker the rock star that you like Secaucus Psychic?” he teased.
“Psh, Theo’d probably love it,” I said. “But don’t tell Whitman.” I jabbed a finger in his face.
“Theo’s partner? I don’t even know him. Don’t worry—your secret’s safe with me.” He settled back on the couch and then casually said, “Your secret deep love of Secaucus Psychic.”
When I glared at him he laughed.
“Oh, man, did you see the one about the little girl whose gerbil had died and she saw the host, Jackie, at the ice cream parlor and begged her to communicate with the spirit of the gerbil, and her mom was there and was staring at the camera like ‘Oh God, please don’t let this make it through editing’?”
I nodded. I’d seen every episode.
“I like that she never tells kids their pets are less important than people,” Felix said. “She’s so great. Do you like animals?”
I nodded.
“But you don’t have any? How come?”
A distant image of a cat from long ago dropped into my mind, and I shook my head to banish the thought.
I shrugged. “Just don’t.”
“Okay,” Felix said softly. After a moment, he scooted closer to me so our arms were pressed together, and gently took the remote from my hand. He scrolled through the episodes and chose one called “A Day at the Beach.”
I tried to focus on the television, but mostly I was paying attention to Felix, who’d tucked his legs up, knees tilting slightly toward me, and was absently twirling a chunk of hair around his finger as he watched the show.
My fingers itched to touch him, draw him closer to me, play with his hair myself. I held myself rigidly still, arms clamped to my sides.
I couldn’t pinpoint exactly the moment when awkwardness had turned to comfortable teasing, but…I liked it. I liked being teased by Felix. He had a vulnerability about him that made me feel deeply protective and was demanding in a way that gave me the sense that Felix would keep asking sensitive, personal questions. Keep pushing me.
I pressed my palm to my stomach. It was terrifying to hope.
“Oh my God,” Felix murmured, and I tuned back into the show. It was a part of the episode where Jackie told a young woman who’d lost her husband that she could feel the moment of his death and how he’d wanted to stay with her but had to leave. The woman was crying and Jackie was crying, and when I looked over, I saw Felix’s lower lip quivering just a little.
“That’s so fucking sad,” he said, blinking up at me. Unshed tears made his brown eyes luminous.
Before I could think it through enough to stop myself, I slid my arm around his shoulders and pulled him tight to my side. He made a small, happy noise and tilted his knees over to lean against my leg.
A sense of contentment washed over me and shook me to my core. Not because it was such a strong feeling. In fact, it was soft and quiet.
But I hadn’t felt it in a very, very long time.
My heart thudded heavily with the realization and my mind shied away from it. I slid my fingers into Felix’s hair to distract myself. He made a low, purring sound and pressed closer to me.
Felix seemed like a map folded up small and perfect that would sprawl when unfurled and show you everything. And I…fuck, I wanted to see it.
T
he episode ended and neither of us moved a muscle, both making the choice to let the next one play. A few minutes later, Felix began absently plucking at a loose thread on my shirt as he watched. I let him, steadfastly refusing to imagine what it would feel like to hold his small, warm body in my arms asleep in bed.
I didn’t let myself imagine how I’d gather him close and tuck his head beneath my chin. I didn’t let myself imagine drifting off to the smell of his clean hair or the softness of his skin against mine. I didn’t let myself imagine waking in the night to the feeling of him still in my arms. I snapped the rubber band in my mind and kept my eyes firmly on Secaucus Psychic.
When the episode ended, he gave one last tug on the thread, and a button fell off my shirt and bounced onto the floor.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Felix said, sitting upright, eyes wide. “I didn’t think that was attached to anything.”
My shirt gaped slightly and a bolt of warm tenderness shot through me.
I squeezed his shoulder lightly.
“It’s okay.”
“Do you want me to…sew it back on or something?”
“No,” I said, amused.
“Sorry,” he repeated. “Um, I guess I should go. I work early tomorrow. Besides, I don’t want to destroy any more of your clothing.”
He said it mockingly, but then his gaze caught on the bit of skin now visible through my shirt and he blushed.
I cleared my throat. “Okay. I’ll walk you down. You can leave through the side entrance.” I didn’t want him having to make his way through the bar.
Felix got his shoes on and took one last look around my apartment like he was memorizing it before I walked him downstairs.
At the door to the street, he turned and looked up at me.
“Thank you for dinner. It was great,” he said politely, then looked down.
When he looked up again, the polite calm was gone and in its place was something raw and needy. He put his hands on my shoulders.
“Huey,” he said softly, wrinkling his nose. “Wait—I just realized I don’t even know your last name.”
“It is my last name,” I said sheepishly. “Huey’s short for Hughes.”
Andrew Policzek had called me Huey when we played football together in high school. When I’d landed hard at my first NA meeting, I’d given it as my name when it was my turn to introduce myself. A thin patina of privacy that I’d never stripped away. Since then it had become what everyone called me.
“What? I’ve been thinking of it as a nickname for your last name this whole time, like we’re frat brothers?” Felix pushed at my shoulders. “What the hell’s your name, then?”
His outrage was adorable. Adorable enough that I found myself telling Felix Rainey what I hadn’t told anyone in over fifteen years.
“It’s Dane. Dane Hughes.”
He gaped at me, then nodded. “Well, yeah. You seem way more like a Dane than a Huey. Can I call you Dane?”
Hearing Dane from Felix’s mouth made me feel young and vulnerable.
Dane was the before.
Dane was the kid who lay out in the Virginia fields for hours, staring at the sky, so still he could feel insects’ legs move delicately over his skin. The kid who sat on his father’s sailboat in Cape Charles and pictured the bowl of the Atlantic floor, gasping at how deep it would have to be to hold such a vast volume of sea.
But Dane was also the man who turned his back on the fields and the sky and the insects and the water. He was the man who made choices like nothing he did mattered, even though he knew the effect of a single spark jumped onto dry grass.
I looked at Felix’s hair, rioting around his face after leaning on my shoulder, his big brown eyes, makeup a little smeary. He had his arms crossed over his chest like he was ready to fight about it, even though everything I’d learned about him so far also told me that if I said I didn’t want him to, he’d never actually press the issue.
“Okay,” I said.
Felix slid his hands back to my shoulders and pulled me down a little.
“Dane,” he said softly. “I like you. I wanna see you again. Can I?”
His words pulsed through me, hot sweetness stealing through my veins. My name on his lips left me reeling.
I nodded but couldn’t find any words.
He smiled. “Can I kiss you?”
I nodded again, stunned. For some reason, I hadn’t thought that this might really happen.
Felix pulled me down a little farther and went up on his tiptoes. He pressed soft lips to mine and kissed me so sweetly I felt like I was drowning. After a moment, he put his arms around my neck and kissed me deeper, lips parting just enough to share breath.
Everything in me strained toward him. I wanted to scoop him up and hold him tight to my body. He weighed nothing; I could do it effortlessly.
I wanted to press him to the wall and feast on his mouth until he was shaking against me with lust, begging for more of anything, of everything. I wanted to slide inside him, feel him with my whole body, hear him scream my name—my real fucking name—as pleasure took him apart.
I wanted him. Fuck, I wanted everything he had.
But instead I opened my mouth to let him inside. I took the sweet kiss he offered and committed to memory everything I could. His taste, the feel of him stretching to reach my mouth, the soft humming sound he made when I parted my lips and his tongue touched mine.
I slid a hand up his spine and felt him tremble. With the other hand I cupped his cheek, finally, finally learning the feel of his soft skin. I let myself feel his flushed cheek and the lean muscles of his back, his lips and his tongue. I let myself feel it with everything in me for one more minute. Then I eased away, because with each passing second my need for him began to outstrip my control, and I did not let that happen anymore.
The soft protest he made when our lips parted would have to be enough for now, as would his hand tightening on my T-shirt before he let go and stood flat-footed again. He looked up at me, eyes heavy-lidded with desire, mouth soft and plump. I pressed my thumb to the center of his lower lip, almost surprised when his flesh didn’t give like a ripe berry. His eyelids fluttered shut, and he wrapped his arms around me in a hug once more.
The problem with feeling so much pleasure, so much joy, so much contentment—with feeling so much, period—after so long spent feeling very little was that I instantly craved more of it. It frightened me how much I wanted him.
Fear is the mind-killer, I told myself. I took a deep breath and tried to let the fear go.
“Will you get home okay?” I asked, needing to do something. “Want me to walk you to the subway? You need cab fare? Here, I should walk—”
“Shh, no, I’m fine,” he said. He stood on his tiptoes one more time and clumsily kissed my cheek. It landed more on my chin, and Felix screwed up his nose in a way I was coming to love.
“Too tall,” he said. I nodded, and a strange expression crossed his face. Then he said, “No, you’re not. You’re just right.”
It sounded like something out of a children’s book, or a group affirmation—and God knew I’d heard enough of those. But he seemed perfectly serious. Sincere in his concern that he might have hurt me.
I bent down and gave him a proper kiss on the cheek.
“You’re real sweet, Felix,” I said in his ear. “Get home safe.”
The smile he shot me over his shoulder as he walked out into the night stayed with me for a long time.
Chapter 4
Felix
On Wednesday, I sat on the steps of the Museum of Natural History, listening to my audiobook as I waited for Dane.
The morning after our date, I’d been a giddy mess at work, spilling coffee and fumbling bagels, too distracted by running the name Dane through my mind to pay a
ttention to motor control.
I hadn’t been able to play it cool. I’d texted Dane, Hi :) Wanna go out with me again? and then, cringing, immediately gotten into the shower so I couldn’t agonize over his response.
Now, I took a picture of myself with the museum in the background and sent it to my mom, saying, Look, educational programming! <3
After a few minutes she wrote back, Have fun honey. Learn lots!
My mom was endlessly curious, and she was constantly after us to pay attention in school and seek out knowledge the way she had always wanted to but rarely had time for. When I was younger, before Adrian, Ramona, and Lucas were born, my mom would narrate for me everything she was doing. In that way, I learned to change Lucas’s diapers, basic kitchen skills, directions, and whatever other tidbits she decided to impart.
Though I’d known she liked to learn, I’d never really thought about what it meant that she’d had me when she was nineteen. When I asked her if she’d wanted to go to college, she’d waved the question away. But the day Sofia announced she’d gotten into Fordham, I saw my mom’s mask crack and envy peek through.
I’d never been as into school as my mom or Sofia. I liked reading and I was interested in some of the subjects, but I didn’t have the attention span for hard-core studying and the things they taught us seemed so arbitrary. I preferred to sneak my earbuds in during class, daydream, and then learn stuff on my own—I’d always learned better when I could see and touch things. But I loved museums.
I put my phone away just in time to see Dane striding toward me, long, powerful legs eating up the distance between us. His shoulders were impossibly broad, thick muscles emphasizing their breadth, and his torso was solid muscle beneath a plain red T-shirt.
He was all flashing eyes, dark brows, tight jaw, and stern mouth. But I knew how kind those eyes could look. I knew how soft and sweet those unsmiling lips felt on mine. How gentle his hands could be despite all that strength.