by Daryl Banner
Connor rubs my back. Apparently the pair of them think I need consoling today. “Quit sweating it so much, man. What’re you doing sitting here? Aren’t you gonna go out onto that dance floor and spend some time with him? When does he leave?”
I flick the stem of a strawberry off our saucer plate with conviction. It flies across the table like a tiny football and lands in someone’s abandoned glass of water. Score! “Sunday night.”
Connor proceeds to yank me out of my chair and guide me forcefully toward the dance floor, despite my protests of, “I don’t wanna bug him. He is spending time with his family and sister. Hey, don’t be so rough, dude! This suit is rented!”
And then I’m dumped in front of Skylar, and Connor—his task complete—takes off back toward his table with Alan.
Skylar meets my eyes, his family and his new brother-in-law’s family dancing all around us, loud and colorful and happy.
I see the same thing written on his face. We are both probably having a similar emotional journey, despite it being his sister’s big day.
But I’m not gonna sulk. “You look amazing.”
Skylar smiles. “Speak for yourself, handsome.”
Suddenly the upbeat song ends, and at once and with comical grace, it turns into something romantic, sweeping, and in Spanish. All of the drunk partiers clear out, and only couples and lovebirds remain on the sprawling dance floor. The newlyweds are among them, sweetly enclosed in one another’s arms.
I offer Skylar my hand. “Can I have this dance, good sir?”
He smirks, then wordlessly takes my hand.
I bring him out into the middle of the big dance floor, then smoothly pull him into my arms as we start to slow dance to the romantic music. A soft guitarrón plays as a Mexican singer’s voice fills the room. I have no idea what he’s singing in Spanish, but from the emotional melody in his deep, thick, baritone voice, I suspect I don’t need to.
Skylar lays his head on my shoulder halfway through the song. I put a kiss on his head, then smile as I continue to sway with him to the music.
Nothing even needs to be said.
We both know.
“They ran out of chocolate-covered strawberries,” he mumbles against my shoulder.
“I know,” I mumble. “I’m sorry. I ate a hundred.”
“I ate none.”
“Why? They’re your favorite.”
“I know.” He lifts his head off of my shoulder. “Hey, Brett?”
“Yeah, Sky? What is it?”
“I think maybe I had it all backwards that first night we reconnected. When I … unintentionally made you feel like you were a loser.”
“What do you mean?”
His hold on me tightens just a little bit, nearly unnoticed. “I have a lot of things I need to figure out with my own life. Why was I so quick to judge yours? I need to figure out what truly makes me fulfilled. Software, apps … corporate offices … Maybe despite how good I’ve felt these past few days, it was possibly the worst time for us to reconnect.”
I flinch. “The worst time …?”
“I’m chasing a job with AppuCore back home,” he goes on. “My sister just married her sweetheart and is moving here. My parents are trying to sell our old house. Everything is in the air.”
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” I try to assure him.
He pulls away and looks into my eyes. “I want to believe it is, but … the truth is, timing has never been on our side.” He bites his lip and peers off at the other lovers on the dance floor. The song strokes a dramatic, curious chord. “I’m gonna be heading back Sunday night. Fuck … I don’t want to say goodbye to you again.”
“We don’t have to say goodbye. We can just say ‘see you later’ and hope for the best.”
Skylar chuckles at that. “That’s what I had told myself when you left the frat.”
I blink. “What?”
“That it was just ‘see you later’ and I’d … hope for the best. Whatever that means.” He shrugs and gestures at us. “Here is our best, apparently. Three years later, living in separate cities, living separate lives, never bothering to send as much as a text …”
“Skylar, c’mon. We can still make the most of the time we have, can’t we? Haven’t you had fun?”
“Of course I’ve had fun.”
“And won’t you visit your sister from time to time? She’ll need you.”
“She has Emilio and they’re planning to get preggers right away. Oh.” He chuckles dryly, then rolls his eyes. “Oops, I let the cat out of the bag. Was supposed to be a secret …”
“Look, we can make this work, Skylar,” I insist anyway, batting away his objections. “We can visit each other. I can see you on the weekends. I’ve got a lovely lenient lesbian boss who loves me and a roommate who’s occupied with his own love story. Maybe this is when my lifestyle pays off. I’m free. I’m free for you. We can make this work!”
“I meant what I said in that confession.”
His voice has hardened. I stop rambling and bring my face closer to his. “What part?”
“Every part. But … specifically … ‘I am in love with my best friend’ …”
I stare at him, struck.
“And,” he goes on, thinks it over for a second, then smiles at me and says, “I think I still am.”
“Skylar …”
He lingers for a moment, as if waiting for some kind of magic solution to drop on top of our heads like a chandelier.
The song ends. Like everything does.
Then a beat kicks in. Shouts of excitement ring out over the room, and almost at once, the whole floor is covered in dancing bodies again that engulf us on all sides.
All of the merriment around us suddenly feels so out of place, like it doesn’t belong.
I bring my mouth close to his ear. “I’ve got an idea. Follow me.”
Skylar gives me a half-lidded look. “Your ideas are never good news.”
15
I take him by the hand and drag him off the dance floor. I catch sight of Connor and Alan kissing at our table in the back, and even in their kiss, Connor spots me, pulls away from him, then watches me with a hopeful smile on his face. Alan, coming out of the daze their kiss inspired, glances over at me too, then gives me a fist pump in the air, as if to cheer on a teammate.
We push through the side doors of the rented ballroom and spill into the hall of the fancy hotel we’re in. “Brett …” Sky keeps protesting as I, ever so stubborn and riding my high, continue to take him off. “You’re not dragging me into one of these bathrooms to blow me or something, are you?” I take him through a large, opened service door and down a narrow hall lined with food carts. “Uh, Brett, we’re not supposed to be down here.”
We push through the swinging doors of a dim kitchen. In the back, two uniformed women and an older gentleman are washing dishes and chatting softly to each other. It’s at one of the preparation tables by the wall that I take Skylar. I yank open one of the fridges, pull out a tray, and set it on the table in front of us.
The entire tray is full of big, plump chocolate-dipped strawberries.
He eyes me suspiciously. “How’d you know these are here? You friends with a chef or two who work here?”
“Does it matter?” I take one strawberry by its stem and bring it to Skylar’s lips. He closes his eyes and takes a bite. The chocolate cracks like dark ice, and the pleasure rushes over his face. “Heaven?”
He chews. Try as he might, it’s impossible to suppress the expression of sheer delight on his face. “This might be the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“That’s sad,” I tell him, “because you deserve this and ten times more, every day.”
He lets me feed him one strawberry at a time, not bothering to even pick one up himself. I fucking love every second of it. Bringing each one to his full lips—and watching him savor them a bite at a time—quickly becomes erotic for me.
“You’re so damned sexy.”
He comes out of his daze, his eyes finding mine through a chocolaty haze of pleasure. “Me?” he asks between bites.
I chuckle, then toss aside another stem. I hop onto the table, then wrap my arms around his waist, pulling him up against me and trapping him between my legs. He laughs, but is quickly silenced as I bring my lips to his.
The corner where the kitchen workers are has gone quiet. I suspect they’ve caught notice of us.
I taste chocolate and strawberry as I kiss him. I must kiss him so long, I feel like I’ve just eaten a whole platter myself. I guess I kinda did, earlier.
I pull away and look into his drunken eyes. “It is a very strong possibility.”
Skylar lifts his eyebrows. “Of what?”
“That I’ve been in love with you, too. All this time. Ever since the frat days.”
He sighs. “You’re just ‘in the moment’, Brett.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re at a wedding. You’re feeling romantic. The mood is set. Our feelings are up in the clouds. When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll realize what’s best for both of us.”
I frown at him. Is he trying to kick me in the balls again with his words? “I just fed you half a tray of your favorite thing in the world. Literally fed you. If that isn’t a physical expression of my love for you, bro, I don’t know what is.”
“Let’s just be adults about this, alright? Or do I have to keep reminding you that I leave tomorrow, and that we both know what’s going to happen?”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“I’ll tell you, then. I go back to my life. You go back to yours … and I know what your life needs. Big parties. Loads of alcohol. Random men in and out of your bed. Window-shopping at the gym with your landlord. Long and lazy shifts at the bookstore. Maybe a sex toy or two from that back section of your store to fill your spare time …” He peers down at my chest, then frowns. “You’ve got chocolate on your lapel.”
I put a finger under his chin and lift it back up, bringing his eyes to mine, and not caring about the chocolate—rented tux or not. “I don’t want my old life. I don’t want parties and boys and toys. I want you, Skylar. I want us. I want what we have, and I don’t care what it costs to get it.”
He gives me a few seconds of consideration. Then he tilts his head. “Alright, man. Let’s play it your way for a minute. Paint the picture for me, will you? Here’s how it goes: You and I try making this work for a few weeks. We do the long-distance thing. I’m home. You’re here.”
“I don’t see any problems with this,” I insist, my eyes alight and challenging.
Skylar isn’t done. “While working hard at my demanding new job at AppuCore, I somehow find two days of time I can take off, and I spend half of one of those days to travel here. We spend a single night together. One night. And maybe the following morning is filled with a big, sweet, delicious, maple-covered breakfast of our favorite pancakes and eggs. Heaven on a couple plates.”
“Already salivating,” I throw at him.
“Then I leave you. Just that one night is all we have. You return to your bookstore job and your life, and you try to satisfy yourself with a slightly unsatisfying text now and then from me—because let’s face it, my new job will be taking up all my time during the day, and by the late hour I come home, I’ll be totally wiped. What happens when you’re horny and I have nothing left in me to give? Not even a video call?”
“Then … we’ll just have our next weekend to look forward to that much more.”
“And what if my job takes that away, too?”
I open my mouth, then find myself paused, unsure what to say.
“What if it’s two weekends in a row that I have to stay home and work? Three weekends in a row? Can you go a month without seeing me? Without needing physical affection? What if I can only get one day off a month? Just one day. I’d spend the majority of it traveling here and back.”
“We could just …” I’m struggling to find any comeback or decent argument in my favor. Every point he makes crushes my spirit more. “We could just … I mean, we’d …” Frustration fills my chest.
I’m out of things to say.
And Skylar can tell. It’s evident that what he’s saying is deeply affecting me.
I don’t think he wants to hurt me.
But I’m feeling it just the same.
“No one’s to blame, Brett. It’s just life … and bad timing. This isn’t easy for me either.” Skylar tries on a smile. It looks pained. “Just hang on to the good times and the memories, Brett. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll run into each other in another three years, and … time will be on our side, then.”
I’m desperate to say something that will refute all of the points he’s made, but deep in my heart …
I think I know he’s right.
I think he was always right.
Skylar puts a deep, tender, and significant kiss on my cheek, then slowly walks away, leaving me here in the dim kitchen. And for some inexplicable, foolish reason, I let him go, my heart crushed to pieces inside my chest, and my big and heavy eyes following him all the way to the door.
Even the workers in the back of the kitchen remain silent, watching this unfold. Maybe their hearts just broke, too.
[ THE BEST BRO ]
A week has passed since the wedding.
Brett is lying on top of five crates pressed side-to-side in the alleyway behind Bailey’s Bistro & Books, his pink coffee-boy cap lying on his chest over his hot pink apron. He watches the sliver of bright, sunny sky between the two buildings that sandwich him. He counts birds as they fly by overhead, but keeps losing his count. He’s at 4 … for the fifth or so time.
16
The back door to Bailey’s creaks open. A lazy set of gray-blue eyes find me under a messy bush of blonde curls. It’s my adoring boss Bethany. “Are you trying to get fired, Brett?”
“Not specifically.” I spot another bird fly over the alleyway, a pigeon. “Five,” I count.
Bethany sighs, lights up a cigarette, then leans against the opened door as she smokes. “Is this … some kinda ‘boy problems’ thing …?”
“Nope. Six.” I think it was another pigeon. “I’m completely free of boy problems. No more boys to have problems with at all. I’m boy-liberated.”
“That Sky guy who was in town. Is he gone?”
Seven and eight, a pair. “Gone.”
“Thought you were way into him or some shit. At least that’s what Quinton said.” She takes a puff and blows it out with a sigh.
It’s disturbing, how totally normal and fine and completely okay I am. In fact, I’m so obviously fine that Connor and Alan had an intervention with me just last night—all because I didn’t want to go out to the clubs with them, and it was a Friday night.
So what if I wanted to stay in and play games on my fat TV? So what if I didn’t want to throw a party, or hang out with Lex and Omar downstairs, or go to the gym with Dante at all this week?
I’m obviously.
Completely.
Fucking.
Fine.
“Alright, enough of this,” decides Bethany as she stamps out her cigarette prematurely. “Come in. You’re off coffee duty today.”
I lift my head from the crate. “I’m fired?”
“Nope. Reassigned temporarily.” She quirks an eyebrow. “Get your butt up and hustle.”
A minute later, I’m back inside and standing at the curtain leading into the adult toys section.
“This wasn’t what I thought you had in mind,” I admit, wincing.
“What’s with all the shock?” Bethany kicks the side of a box of who-knows-what by the door. “We haven’t had a customer back here in two days. It’s the weekend. There’s a problem with that. You’re the only one in this whole store who gets more ass than a doctor on prostate-checking duty. This back room is now your responsibility. Make it pretty.”
I gawk at it, then turn to her. “But who’s
gonna run the bistro?”
“Pfft. The Pope? Your mom? Who the hell did you think was running it now? Certainly not your lazy butt, lounging in the alley.” Bethany lifts her chin at me. “Make it pretty. Your job may depend on it … except not really, because I’ll probably never have the heart to fire you. I’d feel too much fucking pity. Now get to work. I want my butthole to pucker when I enter this room.” With that, she sees herself out.
I stare at the messy room. It’s worse than my apartment at its worst—and that’s saying something. On the shelves, dildos of all sizes, shapes, and colors are piled on top of each other like tired lovers, next to bins of cock rings, masturbators, and “massage wands”. There’s a tub of unused mannequin heads by my feet. Three posters of 90s gay porn stars are pinned to a nearby wall over a long rack of DVDs, which I’ll bet are sticky. There is no air in this room whatsoever, and its only source of light is two slightly off-white, pinkish fluorescent strips.
I feel like this “adult toy room” is the physical embodiment of Hell. And I deserve to be in it.
17
“Okay, so explain this to me one more time,” says Connor, leaning against the bar. “Why, exactly, did you just let him walk away at the wedding …?”
I spin around in my barstool to face the rest of Aubergines and prop my elbows up on the counter behind me. “Because I think he had a point.”
“A point? Really? … All of his negativity about how a long-distance thing wouldn’t work? C’mon.” Connor rolls his eyes and drops onto the seat next to mine. “That sounds like a lot of excuses to me.”
“It would be a strain on us both, right?” I shrug and gesture at the room. “Besides. Look at our nice lives here. I’ll never be short on boys to keep me company. Skylar knew that. I’m totally happy. He gets to pursue a career back home, so he’s happy, too. Look at us both! We’re so satisfied now.”