Nick Nolan

by Double Bound (Sequel To Strings)

  "Neither did I," Arthur told him, peeling off his shirt. He tried not to watch Jeremy do the same; instead he turned to scan the water, which was the precise Technicolor hue of those swimming pools in movies from the 190s.

  Doris Day blue, someone once called it--only this was a blue so blue it almost burned your eyes.

  They stretched out their big white towels side by side.

  Arthur wore his modest board shorts; they were generously cut, and patterned with huge vermillion hibiscus flowers. But he saw now that Jeremy had forgone modesty, as he slipped off his cargo shorts to reveal a skimpy black square-cut Speedo that accentuated provocatively the bulges and curves of his glorious body's lower half.

  "This place is so great, huh?" Jeremy asked, pumping sunblock from a brown plastic bottle onto his legs, then rubbing it in.

  "It's unbelievable. I didn't know there were still any places like this."

  "You know what it kind of reminds me of?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Do you remember that dream I had a long time ago, where my dad and I were walking along this deserted beach at night, and one second I'm a kid and then the next second I'm full grown, like I am now?"

  Arthur furrowed his brows. "Was that the 'Father's Star' dream?"

  "Yeah! So you remember!" He lay down, and slipped on his sunglasses.

  "Remember what he said to me?"

  "Something about making a wish on a star?"

  "Remember what else?"

  Arthur shook his head.

  "He said that to be a 'real man,' I had to be courageous, honest and selfish. And I thought that was the weirdest thing, because it didn't seem right to be thinking about myself only, you know? Like you learn that being selfish is bad, even back in kindergarten."

  "So what do you think about it now?" he asked, holding out his hand for the sunblock.

  Jeremy handed it over. "Actually, I was kind of wondering what you think about it."

  Arthur pumped the oil onto his forearms, then his chest, stomach and legs. "To be like that really wasn't how I was raised, so I still spend my life only doing what I think is the right thing, I guess." He began rubbing the sunblock into his skin.

  Jeremy laughed. "I didn't ask you what you always do; I asked what you think about going after the things you need to be happy. About being 'selfish.'"

  Arthur stopped rubbing and stared at the younger man. "Why do you ask?"

  "Because I think you're kind of afraid or something to go after things you want in life...like right now you'd probably want me to put this stuff on your back, but you won't ask me because you don't want to bother me-- you'd rather get a horrible sunburn, or wear a shirt all day than ask."

  Arthur blushed. "That's ridiculous."

  "You did it with the hat this morning."

  "You needed one, and I had my handy bandana, which I always take with me when I go into hot climates. old trick left over from the Marines."

  "But it's your hat," he protested. "You always do stuff like that for me."

  "It's because that's what I'm supposed to do. look out for you."

  "But then who looks out for Arthur?"

  He paused. "I look out for both of us, or rather the three of us--at least on this trip."

  He grimaced. "I sure hope Carlo's OK."

  Jeremy laughed. "Sure he's OK. People don't fuck with him; he's too..."

  "Sassy?"

  "Yeah . Sassy." Jeremy chuckled. "Plus he's smart. He'll be fine. Now, what about the sunblock? Are you gonna ask me to put some on you? But I won't do it unless you ask me real nice-like." He tugged down the brim of the straw hat over his eyes in classic "howdy" fashion.

  Arthur rolled his eyes. "OK, Jeremy. Will you please put some of that on my back?"

  "Only if you'll put it on mine after."

  "Deal." He turned facedown on his towel.

  An instant later, he felt the cold spray on his shoulder, and then shivered as it was spritzed down his spine. But then the coolness gave way quickly to the warmth of Jeremy's hand as it traced circles up and down his back. And surprisingly, Arthur felt no erotic thrill from this experience; if anything, he was both preoccupied and deeply unsettled by Jeremy's uncanny appraisal of him.

  "My turn," Jeremy announced, and moments later Arthur had returned the favor.

  That was easy enough.

  "So," Jeremy began as he slipped the hat back on, "if there's one thing in your life that you're missing, that you could change just by going after it and being selfish, what would that be?"

  Arthur laughed. "I'd get myself one of those pretty new Jaguars. Black.

  Convertible. Chrome rims."

  "I'm not kidding."

  "Neither am I," he replied. "Why are you asking me these things?"

  Jeremy sat up and pulled off his sunglasses. "Because sometimes you seem kind of...sad. And even though you think you hide it pretty good, I can still see it in you."

  "You really can?" Arthur asked, suddenly disarmed.

  "And it makes me sad. And so I...want to do something nice for you but I just don't know what you need."

  Arthur shook his head. "You're just used to looking after adults, Jeremy, because of what your mom put you through. It's a reflex for you to see someone you care for that's in pain and to try and fix them. I think it's called codependency."

  "So you admit it. You are in pain."

  Arthur closed his eyes, then drew in a breath and let it out slowly through his nose.

  "Maybe. But everyone is at one time or another. It's part of life, and sometimes it gets more painful the older you get."

  Jeremy reached over and touched Arthur's arm. "So why is it wrong if I want to make someone happy? Just 'cause my mom was all fucked up doesn't mean everything I do is because she damaged me. I mean, from what you've told me it sounds like your parents were all fucked up, too, and you came out all right."

  Did I?

  "Look, old buddy, I'm fine. And I'm touched right here," he put his hand flat over his heart, "that you want to 'fix my sadness' or make me think about changing my life. But please, please don't worry about me. You've got enough to think about these days." He was growing more uncomfortable with where the conversation was heading, so he decided to change the subject. "Which reminds me, how are things going with you and Carlo?"

  He shrugged. "Good, I guess."

  "I'm glad to hear it. So what's gonna happen with that other guy you told me about before we left--when we were out on my patio?"

  "Don't know," Jeremy answered curtly. "But I'll figure it out."

  "What about Katharine? Is she still riding you as much as before?"

  He lay back and folded his hands behind his head. "Naw, not really. Can we not talk about her right now, Arthur?"

  Arthur nodded, also laying back. "Absolutely. To tell you the truth, I really don't feel like talking about her right now, either." What else could he ask him? "How

  'bout college? Are you looking forward to that?"

  "You never answered my question."

  Arthur sighed. "Which one?"

  Jeremy sat up and glared at him. "You know which question."

  "OK, OK." He chuckled. Then he looked skyward, as if divining a reasonable answer from the seagulls orbiting haphazardly overhead. "If there was one thing I could stand to be more selfish about, it would be... probably finding a partner.

  Someone to build a life with, even at my age."

  "Thought so. So how do you find someone? Even at your age? " He laughed.

  "That's the problem, Jeremy. I already did."

  He looked down. "Sometimes I forget about that, you know? And after what you went through with Danny, I don't blame you for not trying to find someone now."

  He reached into his backpack and pulled out a soda. "Want one?"

  "Sure. Do you want one of those chicken sandwich-y things?"

  "I think they called it a sanduiche." Jeremy laughed as he handed over a can. "See, I'm learning Portuguese."

  Arthur chuckled
, but then his face grew serious. "I guess I just don't know how to look for someone," he said as he withdrew their lunches from his bag and cracked open his soda. "That's the funny thing, you know? Because when I was younger, guys always came sniffing after me. But now that I'm older, it's harder--plus, I'm pickier, I guess." He handed over one of the stuffed flatbreads.

  "About what?" Jeremy asked, then took a bite.

  Arthur thought for a moment. "I guess about...settling. Because when you've really fallen in love with someone and built a life with them, it just seems like too much at some point to start all over."

  "But why? I think that'd be the fun part."

  "You're right. And some of it is really fun. It's just that I'm going to be forty soon.

  And in a few years, I'll be the same age my parents were when my sister Morgana got married.... I mean, some guys my age are already grandfathers, and here I have nothing."

  "Why would you say that? You have a lot," Jeremy told him, though he knew the man had very little to his name.

  "I've got my health, which is so important. But other than that, it doesn't seem like I have very much, to be honest. Now, you, you hunky rich kid, you have a lot."

  Jeremy looked out toward the water. "Not really, Arthur. Sometimes I think it looks like I do, but I really don't--no parents, except Katharine, who drives me crazy, and not a whole lot of friends; and I do have Carlo, but sometimes I don't think he's 'the one.'"

  "That's totally normal at your age. I'd be worried if you thought any differently."

  "But I don't feel my age. never have. I've always felt like I was ninety or something. I mean, I feel so old and worn-out inside that I'm surprised sometimes when I look in the mirror and see a young guy." He popped the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth, then downed the rest of his soda.

  "I remember that feeling, too, when I was in my teens; I wonder if all gay guys feel that way, because there's so much more we have to go through."

  "Maybe," he said, looking wistfully out to sea. "Jesus Christ, it's getting hot." He wiped the mustache of sweat from his upper lip.

  "See what I told you? Do you want to move into the shade?"

  He threw Arthur a sideways grin, his dark eyes sparkling. "With all that water out there, are you crazy?" He pulled off the straw hat and tossed his head toward the bay. "Come on, old buddy." He jumped up and held out his hand. "I wanna go swimming! And I need to work off this lunch--otherwise I won't have any guys sniffing after me."

  Arthur took his hand, pushed himself up and followed Jeremy toward the water.

  As he watched him jog across the sand, he was once again amazed by his grace and youthful perfection: his flawless skin and the taut shift of his ass, the impossible narrowness of his waist, and the glossy sheen of his buzz-cut, minky hair...hair that looked as impervious to the impending gray as a spring leaf is oblivious to the coming crimson.

  In a splash he disappeared from the horizon and was visible only as a telltale wake of water. Arthur stood at the water's edge, then decided to go in.

  He tossed his bandana onto the sand, held his breath and dove.

  The water was almost as warm as the air, and required no acclimation.

  Mmmm.

  He swam a few meters before allowing his head to break the surface.

  Jeremy was bobbing some feet in front of him wearing a grin on his face, and his Speedo around his neck. "No judgment, right, Dad?" he exclaimed with a leer.

  "I don't know, Son," Arthur answered brightly, trying to echo Jeremy's insouciance.

  "The water's great, huh?" Jeremy asked. Then he drew some water in his mouth and spit it in a perfect stream at Arthur's face.

  "Hey!" Arthur giggled as he splashed him back.

  "See what they teach us in swim team?" he hollered. "We do it in the showers. I can hit the guy over four spigots, no problem."

  "How proud your coach must be of your capabilities," Arthur yelled back.

  "So where's your European spirit?" Jeremy teased, then pulled the Speedo up over his head and turned to hurl it toward the beach.

  "Firmly around my waist, where it belongs."

  "Hey, come on. No one's looking..."

  "So now you're no one?" Arthur laughed. "earlier you told me you were the one with all the money--"

  "And you said I was the one with all the modesty, so I guess you were wrong.

  Anyway, what's money good for if you can't have fun?" He ducked his head, and in ten strokes he was an arm's length from Arthur.

  "Let's go in. You know I'm not that great a swimmer," Arthur suggested calmly, even though he was not calm--his heart was beating fast, and he hoped he'd been able to disguise the shakiness in his voice.

  He turned and began swimming toward shore.

  Suddenly, Jeremy's arms were locked around his neck and his chest was up against his shoulders and his knees clenched the tops of his hips. "Piggyback, sir?" came the breathy whisper in his ear. "I don't think I'm a very good swimmer, either."

  Jeremy's naked, on my back, with his arms around me.

  He felt two hands slip down from around his neck and rub his chest.

  His eyes drooped with pleasure. He felt himself harden.

  He managed to dog-paddle them closer to shore. But as his feet hit the sandy bottom and he started to rise out of the water, Jeremy's considerable heft began to droop on his back from the lessened buoyancy; and instead of letting go, Jeremy shortened the clutch around his neck and shifted forward, and Arthur felt that unmistakable ridge of hot flesh as it pushed into the small of his back.

  So he instructed him, in the gentlest voice he could muster, to please let go.

  Jeremy climbed off him.

  Then he took Arthur's hand and intertwined his fingers with his own.

  Arthur could only look down and close his eyes, because he was afraid that if he turned to him, he couldn't help but proceed with what was sure to become one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

  "Hey," came Jeremy's whisper.

  His hand made contact with flesh. Jeremy's chest. He could feel his heartbeat.

  He opened his eyes.

  It was his chin he saw first, and how his beard stubble filled the cleft in it, and next the rosy pout of his lips. Then his eyes lifted to Jeremy's and saw neither mirth nor mischief in them, but seriousness...intensity... perhaps even fear--made evident by his lidless gaze, as well as the gentle crease between his lowered eyebrows.

  "Hey," Arthur said back to him. His other hand lifted from his side and went to his shoulder as he turned to face him. "Baby, this'll change everything."

  Jeremy's mouth formed the words I know, but no sound came out. Then he closed his eyes and nodded, and Arthur couldn't help glancing down to see that he was, in fact, magnificently erect; his shaft with its shiny, lip-colored dome strained enticingly up out of the water.

  Jeremy's hands reached down and released the ties on Arthur's board shorts.

  They drifted in slow motion through the water down to the sand.

  Arthur pulled his love to him and mashed his nakedness against him, and his arms encircled his shoulders while Jeremy's arms bearhugged his waist. "Ohhh," he moaned into his ear as they held each other chest to chest, and cemented themselves together as one writhing beast from knees to clavicles. Their cheeks met, and as Jeremy's mouth inched its way along Arthur's cheek, he heard him breathing in a manner he'd never heard: His exhalations were unsteady, jagged, lacking rhythm-- like someone recovering from a crying jag.

  Their mouths locked together.

  With their tongues twisting and thrusting like wrestling pythons, their hands grasped and smoothed and hugged and jacked and cupped and rubbed and kneaded crazily.

  " I love you." The phrase drifted in whispers about their ears, seemingly alchemized out of the sunlight and the foam fizzing about them, with neither aware of who was the speaker or who was the recipient.

  " I love you."

  Together they made each other spill their seed; then they
hunched in a slickened embrace as their breathing calmed and Yemanji's waves swirled around them, jealous over the pearlescent potion that dripped like sweat from between their bodies.

  Jeremy's mouth left Arthur's and began nuzzling his neck, and Arthur pulled close his naked back and opened his eyes, looking out to the horizon.

  Red sky at morning...

  Then Jeremy sighed and Arthur forgot about the impending storm.

  Because that sigh, it sounded so...contented. Full. Safe. As if every God-filled cell in Jeremy's body knew that he belonged in his arms; it was like the sigh of a child just tucked into bed, of a mother with her sleeping baby in her arms, of a father gazing at his soldier-son as he watched some old reruns from the sofa he used to jump up and down upon.

  I love you.

  Arthur sighed back.

  Chapter 23

  As they returned to their towels, the winds kicked up, and moments later they were shivering as a disapproving blanket of clouds slid in, blocking the sun. So they gathered up their possessions hastily, then scampered back through the water into the Sundancer just as the first sprinkles dotted its windscreen.

  After a full-throttle reverse and a tipsy U-turn, they were headed out to sea.

  You should've known better than to go there alone with him.

  How could you let that happen?

  They didn't talk. Arthur was just too stressed, and a bit frightened; he knew nothing about operating the vessel's complicated navigation equipment, and hoped he wouldn't have to try. So he pushed the throttle all the way forward once again, and hoped they could outrun the belly of the squall.

  That was a big mistake.

  But navigating the craft before a blustering headwind proved more of a challenge than he'd imagined. For one thing, the tank had been less than half full when they'd left the marina, and now, with the engine straining against the gale, the V-8

  devoured its fuel greedily. And the waves buffeting the craft necessitated his overcorrecting their wagging trajectory; it felt as if there were another boat tied to their stern, dragging them off course. But by and by the marina swung into view, and they managed to pull alongside the dock just as the downpour broke.