by Cardeno C.
“You don’t understand what it’s like for me,” I spat out, hoping the wetness in my eyes wasn’t visible.
“I understand perfectly, Ben. I did it, didn’t I? I came out. And I was a hell of a lot younger than you at the time.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course you did, Noah. But things aren’t as easy for me.”
He shot off the bed and clenched his fists. Clark walked over and stood next to him, keeping a hand on his shoulder.
“Easy?” Noah said incredulously. “You have no idea what I went through, Ben.”
I hadn’t meant to get into this, but now that we were talking about it, no way was I backing down. “I have every idea what you went through!” I shouted. “I grew up in that same house, remember?”
Noah opened his mouth to respond but then closed it. For the first time in my life, I had managed to shut my brother up. The angry heat left his eyes, and it was replaced by something else. Understanding, maybe? I wasn’t sure.
It hadn’t been easy in our house. It’s not that our parents didn’t love us, because they did. And money wasn’t an issue—we were pretty well off. But there had always been comments, clear indications of disapproval related to anybody different, especially gay people. Of course, when Noah came out, what had been a lifetime of snide remarks and mutters of disapproval about other people had turned into utter devastation about Noah himself and the reflection his choice had on our entire family.
“I didn’t tell my friends that you’re gay. I wouldn’t do that. I might not understand why you don’t just come out. I might not approve. But I’d never out you against your will.” His voice was quiet and sincere.
I believed him. I wondered once again why Micah thought I was gay. Maybe it was because I had never been married. That could be considered a red flag once a guy was in his thirties. I was already thirty-one.
I felt like I was going to throw up. I couldn’t do that, couldn’t marry a woman. Dating was one thing, but marriage… that meant something. I just couldn’t.
I was sitting on Noah and Clark’s bed, my forearms resting on my knees and my head turned toward the hardwood floors.
“Do you ever wish you were different? You know, that you were straight?” I asked them.
After I posed the question, I looked up at the two of them. They were standing next to each other, sides pressed together. Clark had both arms wrapped around Noah’s waist, and Noah had his arm draped possessively over Clark’s shoulder.
They didn’t need to say a word. I already knew the answer. They were at peace and happy. So happy. I wanted to feel that way more than anything.
I WENT for a long run the next morning, hoping to loosen my tight muscles and release some stress. My phone was ringing when I walked back into my condo. It looked like the main switchboard number from my office. Strange. It was Sunday.
“Hello.”
“All right! The cell phone list on the firm directory is updated. Hi, Ben. This is Micah.”
I couldn’t hold back the smile that immediately took over my face. Just the sound of his deep, gravelly voice did that to me. I was so completely screwed. “Hi, Micah. What’s up?”
There was a husky little laugh, and then he cleared his throat and answered. “I have tickets to this afternoon’s Glory game. Fourth row up, behind home plate. You interested in joining me?”
“Seriously?” Was I squeaking? “Ehm, yeah, I mean, yes, I’d love to come with you.”
Oh, God. I did not just say that. The man probably thought I was a complete pervert. No, he probably thought it was a normal comment. I actually was a complete pervert, which was why my mind had twisted it into something dirty. My entire face was on fire. Thank goodness we were on the phone and Micah couldn’t see me.
“Great. Game starts at one. Give me your address and I’ll pick you up at eleven so we can get lunch first.”
It wasn’t a question, more like an expectation that I would join him for lunch. It should have bothered me that Micah just assumed I would go along, right? What kind of man would want someone else to take control like that? So, yeah, I knew that it should bother me and that it shouldn’t make my dick get hard. Want to guess which one of those was my actual reaction?
“Why don’t I pick you up, instead? You said you live close to the office, so you probably aren’t too far from the stadium,” I said. “No reason for you to drive all the way up to EC North and then turn right around to go back into town.”
He agreed and gave me his address, and then we chatted for another couple of minutes. Just small talk, really, but it was nice. I enjoyed talking with Micah.
After we finally hung up, I had just enough time to throw in a load of laundry and take a long shower. Long because I wanted to take my time relieving my erection. Honestly, if you didn’t guess that was my reaction to Micah’s somewhat domineering personality, then you haven’t been reading carefully. Lost cause over here, remember?
OKAY, so before I’d had dinner with Micah Trains on Friday night, if you’d asked me to guess, I would’ve said he was one of those profile lawyers. You know the type. It’s like they came off the lawyer conveyor belt and they have nothing else in their lives except their law practices. And maybe their two divorces.
Anyway, that was before I spent any time with Micah. Now that I knew him a little, I realized there was a lot more to him, and I was really looking forward to spending more time with my new friend. Yes, friend. I would keep thinking of Micah in those types of terms—friend, colleague. But not anything more personal and definitely not anything more intimate.
I pulled up to Micah’s house and gasped. It was incredible. Seriously, like something out of Architectural Digest. The whole thing looked like it was made of concrete cut into angular slabs. Most were gray, but there was a red rectangle jutting out in the front and a green triangle coming from just under the roofline at an angle. I walked up to the door and noticed the plants arranged in perfectly symmetrical rows. Before I had a chance to ring the doorbell, the door opened and Micah Trains was smiling at me.
“Mister Forman. So nice to see you.”
I scrunched my nose. “Mister? You’re older than me, you know.”
Micah laughed and threw his arm around my shoulder. “I don’t think it’s very polite to call your date old, Ben, but I’m willing to let it go.”
I chuckled nervously, realizing I would have to be very careful. It was just so easy for me to misread any conversation with Micah. My brain’s capability to turn every phrase into something unintended seemed limitless.
We walked to my car and got in. As soon as I turned the key in the ignition, music blared from the stereo. I blushed and reached for the dial, turning it down. “Sorry. I like to sing along to the stereo when I drive, and I’m pretty bad, so I crank it up high enough to drown myself out,” I explained.
He chuckled and his smile reached his eyes, the little crow’s feet on the sides showing. My heart skipped a beat. “Moody Blues fan, huh? Nice. Looks like we won’t have to fight over control of the radio. That’s critical.”
“Just as long as you don’t try to make me listen to Celine Dion, we should be safe,” I responded.
Micah shuddered. “Then we’re all good. As far as I’m concerned, the best way to secure national secrets would be to hide them inside a Celine Dion compilation and put them on the front curb with a sign that says ‘Free—take me’.”
I cracked up and glanced over at him. “You’re a fun man to be around, Micah Trains.”
The look in his eyes softened, and my heart skipped another beat. At the rate I was going, I saw a pacemaker in my future.
“You are too, Ben Forman.”
Chapter Five
I HAD never thought of food as something erotic. Don’t get me wrong, I like to eat as much as the next guy. But a meal had always been primarily about filling my belly with a secondary benefit of satisfying my taste buds. That lunch with Micah Trains forever changed my perception of food.
When we
’d had Indian food for dinner the other night, we’d shared a couple of dishes, eating them family style. Lunch was different. Micah had a club sandwich with fruit salad. I had a burger with fries and a side of constant hard-on. Seriously, constant hard-on.
It started with the fruit. Micah popped a strawberry into his mouth and moaned. My dick woke up and started paying attention.
“These are delicious. Perfectly ripe. And I think they’re organic.”
Did he say orgasmic? I licked my lips.
“You want to taste one?”
I think I nodded. Hard to remember, really, because I was concentrating on swallowing. Did Micah make moans like that in bed too? Oh, God.
“Here you go,” he said, holding a strawberry up. I expected him to drop it on my plate, but he didn’t. Instead, he smudged it against my lips like it was Chapstick. Or his dick. Yeah, my mind was in total overdrive. “Open up.” I swear, his voice was huskier.
Why I didn’t just laugh it off and swipe the strawberry from him, I really can’t say. Micah told me to open my mouth, so I opened my mouth. He made a final round with the strawberry over my lips. Then he put it on my tongue and waited until I closed my mouth to pull his fingers out slowly. I almost came in my pants.
Micah was quiet for a bit after that. He just sat and stared at me chewing the strawberry. I did my damnedest not to choke under that intense scrutiny.
Then choking became secondary to breathing in my list of priorities, because Micah reached over, picked up a few fries from my plate, and started eating them. Now, you tell me, who eats french fries by dipping them in ketchup, then fellating them to suck it off before actually chewing on the fry? Nobody, right? But that’s exactly what Micah did.
Was he intentionally stirring me up? It couldn’t all be my imagination, could it? Maybe he was trying to be funny, or maybe he was making fun of me, or maybe he was…. I tried to stop my mind from thinking it, but then he sucked off another fry and I couldn’t hold back a groan or the thought that Micah Trains was flirting with me.
“You aren’t eating your lunch.” His voice was calm and even, but his eyes were sizzling.
“Oh, umm, I….” And that eloquent stammer was why Micah was a litigator and my career choice didn’t involve impressing a jury.
“You want me to keep feeding you, Ben?”
Oh, God, yes. Yes, please.
But I didn’t say those words. We were sitting in the middle of a restaurant. And I wasn’t gay. Okay, fine, the last one was crap. And continuing to deny it, at least to myself, was well past ridiculous at that point. But seriously, we were in the middle of a fairly busy restaurant in broad daylight. I picked up my burger and forced myself to take a bite.
When I set it down and started chewing, Micah reached his hand out, wiped some ketchup from the side of my mouth with his long finger, then sucked that same finger into his own mouth, twirling his tongue around it and keeping his eyes locked with mine. Christ! He was definitely flirting with me.
Have you ever found yourself wondering if your existence is God’s way of telling a joke? I mean, seriously, Micah Trains was coming on to me, and I wasn’t sure if it was the best or the worst thing that had ever happened in my life.
On the one hand, an incredibly sexy, super-smart man whose company I enjoyed and whose body I lusted after seemed to want me. On the other hand, if I gave in to Micah’s advances, it would be impossible for me to ever go back to living my life as I had been. Huh. When I thought it about like that, both of those things seemed like positives.
WE HAD to go through the now familiar security check when we got to the stadium. It wasn’t a big deal, really, just a single file line and a guy running a wand a couple of inches from our bodies. The problem was that my dick was still hard from the whole thing at lunch and I was nervous that the security guard would notice. Micah must have sensed my discomfort, because as soon as we got through the line and into the stadium, he started joking around.
“I had to go take some depos in Canada last year, and let me tell you, getting back into the country is way more invasive than this security process. The US Border Patrol skips the whole foreplay-masquerading-as-frisking bit and goes with a detailed question and answer session instead. I actually found that to be a hell of a lot more intimate. I mean, having a guy grab my dick on the first date is one thing, but asking all sorts of fucking details about how I spend my time is off the table until we’re at the whole toothbrush-at-each-other’s-places stage, you know? With as thorough as those guys were, you’d think I was trying to smuggle marriage equality, responsible gun laws, and universal health care into the country.”
I was smiling and chuckling, all my discomfort over the security check forgotten. It was amazing how that man could make me laugh and alleviate my anxieties so easily. And it was also amazing that he was gay. If there had been any remaining doubt about that, which there essentially wasn’t after that sex show he put on at lunch, it was gone after he made that last comment. I wondered whether this information was common knowledge. Probably not, or I surely would have heard about it at some point over the years when my colleagues had gossiped about the hotshot litigator or, at the very least, while we were interviewing him to join our firm.
We got a couple of beers and a bag of peanuts to share and headed to our seats. I won’t lie to you, when I saw where we were sitting, I almost bounced up and down like a little girl. All right, maybe there was just a bit of actual bouncing involved. But it was subtle.
I’m a sports guy. I like playing them. I like watching them. I like talking about them. And I enjoy all types of sports. But the thing I’ve always enjoyed most is watching Major League Baseball games. And we were sitting close enough to smell the grass and hear the conversations from the field. It was incredible.
“These seats are unbelievable, Micah.” My face hurt from how broadly I was smiling. “I’d imagine only people who bought in when the stadium first opened can own these. How’d you get the tickets?”
For a second it looked like Micah was blushing, but I wrote it off as being heat-related. The man was way too self-assured and confident to ever be embarrassed about anything. “I helped out one of the team VPs with a legal matter last year, and he owed me a favor, so I called it in.” He licked his lips and looked right into my eyes. “You were saying how much you like the Glory on Friday and that you planned to watch this game, so I figured you’d want to go.”
My jaw dropped. He had sought out these almost-impossible-to-get tickets just for me?
Micah reached his hand over and stroked my chin as he gently pushed it up to help close my mouth. “Don’t look so surprised. I like spending time with you, Ben. I’m happy to procure whatever tickets I need to make that happen.” After a few heartbeats, he relaxed into his chair, stretched his long legs in front of him, and tossed a peanut into his mouth. “Alright, so tell me the odds you’re giving our boys out there today. Think we can kick some ass, or are we gonna take another pummeling?”
I pried my eyes away from that sexy-as-hell body and looked at the field. “What kind of question is that?” I said. “Have you no loyalty? Of course we’re gonna beat ’em.”
I HAD never had more fun at a baseball game. Micah seemed interested in my embarrassingly detailed knowledge of every player’s stats. I loved his creativity when he yelled at the umpires over questionable calls. Our fingers touched constantly when we reached for the peanuts. And the Glory won with a home run in the bottom of the ninth. It was a great afternoon.
It was only four o’clock when the game ended, which was still early. I didn’t want my day with Micah to end yet. As we wound through the streets and chit-chatted about the game, I kept trying to come up with something to say that would keep me from having to drop him at his house and say goodbye.
“Do you like to swim?” he asked during a break in the conversation.
“Yeah, sure. I’m not great at it, but I like getting in the water.”
“Me too. I have a pool, put
it in last year. You wanna go for a dip?”
My head jerked to the side so I could look at him, and then I turned back to the road. “Right now?”
“Sure. Why not? Pool’s heated. We can swim and hang out and then order a pizza or something for dinner. What do you say?”
There were a million reasons to say no. Seeing Micah with less clothing was bound to ramp up my already out of control libido. If I was wearing a swimsuit, said out of control libido would be noticeably ramped. I didn’t have a swimsuit with me. “That sounds great. I haven’t been in a pool since last summer.”
I know, I know. I just said there were a million reasons to say no. But there was also a reason to say yes—getting to spend more time with Micah. As it turned out, that reason took the gold in my mental Olympics.
We walked into the house, and Micah gave me a quick tour, which ended in his sleek kitchen.
“Your place is great. It’s really unique.”
“Thanks. I was annoyingly picky when I was house hunting, much to my Realtor’s chagrin. Then one day he brought me to this lot. We pulled up and I saw a dilapidated piece of crap. One side of the house was practically falling down, the windows were cracked, it was a complete fuckin’ disaster. Turns out David, my Realtor, figured the only way I’d be happy would be to build my own house, so he found me a tear-down. The rest, as they say, is history.”
I nodded and smiled, acting calm on the outside. But inside was another story entirely. My heart was racing, and my stomach felt like it was tied in knots. I wasn’t sure whether my feelings were the result of standing so close to a man I found incredibly intriguing and painfully attractive or whether they were due to the realization that I might actually do something about those feelings.
What would it be like, I wondered, to stop holding back, to feel something and act on it? Just like that. What would happen if I let myself go?