“Might just want to bring your car up.”
“Really? Traffic’s got to be at least as bad as it is in Portland.”
“Oh, it’s worse!” he said brightly. “But the buses are stuck in it too, and we still don’t have enough light rail, so.”
“Your commute doesn’t seem too bad.”
“I’m lucky. I work in South Lake Union; it’s only fifteen minutes away. If I worked at Microsoft, I’d be spending two hours a day crawling across Lake Washington. Anyway, I’ll drive you to Portland to pick up your car if you want. We could do it Saturday.”
“My parents want to see me while I’m there. Sure you want to come?”
“Sure. I mean, give me fair warning if you plan to make out with me in front of them or anything.”
I laughed, panicked. “God, can you imagine?”
After that high-school kiss, my parents had begun receiving Andy with coolness whenever he visited our house, and after he came out, their attitude dropped into a solid freeze when he was around—they said little, and stayed near but not too near, as if chaperoning us. But that had only been tested on a few visits over the years, since we had both started college around then, and thus usually met in other places to hang out. Maybe now, since we had both grown up, my parents’ approach would have matured too. It wasn’t inconceivable. Or at least, I was in a good enough mood to think so.
After finishing our sushi, we walked back down the hill. The January night was cold with a fog setting in, smearing the city lights into an indistinct glow. Though we talked about restaurants and coworkers and other ordinary things, my blood raced in anticipation of what we would do at the apartment.
When we shut the door, I caught him by the hips and pulled him close.
He grinned. “Was there something you wanted?”
I unzipped his coat, folded aside his shirt collar to find the hickey on his neck, and stroked it. “I have ideas.”
“Such as?” He unwound my scarf.
I swallowed, my pulse pounding. “Let’s lie down and warm up. Maybe in bed this time.”
He paused to look at me with interest in his eyes, but waited for me to elaborate.
“I mean,” I added, “just to get comfortable. Then we can see where it goes.”
His face bloomed back into a smile. “Okay. Let’s.” He tilted his head in the direction of his room, inviting me in.
Thing is, once you’re under the blankets with someone in a king-sized bed, kissing and rolling around together, it’s not such a big deal to start shedding clothes. Going shirtless, for example, seemed a modest step, nothing I hadn’t done in screen tests. So I was unprepared for how deeply it aroused me: skin against skin, the hot scent of him, nipples uncovered to play with—and God, the way he groaned when I licked them.
It was only the considerate thing to do to get rid of sharp objects like belts.
“I’m going to get multiple lacerations from that thing,” Andy said, laughing, as he watched me drag my studded belt out of its loops and flick it to the floor.
Then our jeans became uncomfortable after a certain amount of grinding, so we removed those too. In only our underwear, we kissed and tangled, rumpling the sheets into a chaotic mountain range.
I ached to touch everything on him. His teasing touches had erased nearly all my remaining inhibitions. I would have whined and argued if he’d said again, “So let’s stop for tonight.” (I didn’t whine at most lovers, but I could do that kind of thing to my best friend.)
So if I really didn’t want to stop …
I slid a hand down, straight inside his underwear. Touching everything. A handful of flesh, new, warm, sweaty, fascinating. He drew a quick breath, and I stilled, suddenly doubting. “Okay?” I asked.
In answer he only smiled and groped me right back. First outside the shorts. Then, a few seconds later, inside.
We shoved our underwear off and let both pairs get lost in the sheets. If any step was going to feel awkward and pull me out of the moment, it should have been this. Yet it didn’t. It even felt familiar—like touching myself, but from a different angle, maybe? It was sex and closeness and desire, just as it should be. I ached for it. For him.
“Question.” Panting, he stopped my hand as well as his own. “Do you want to be first, or do you want me to be? Either is fine, just, you’d better decide soon.”
I licked my lip, which stung pleasurably from making out with someone with a five o’clock shadow. “I would like … to finish you first.” My face scorched at saying it, but hell yeah, I wanted to finish him off while still as aroused as possible myself. Only what I’d been fantasizing about for a month or two.
“Super.” He rolled onto his back. “Then please.”
We encountered a minute of delay while he helped me with my grip and technique. There was some laughter. But his giggles soon gave way to the most enticing, needy sounds, then his back arched and, oh God, yes, I was doing it. I did it. For another guy. For Andy.
After settling back down, he tugged a faded towel from under the bed—apparently he kept cloths there for cleanup.
After wiping his belly off, he hitched onto his side and reached for me. “Nice job. Very nice. Your turn?”
“Yes please,” I said in almost a groan.
Which was better, doing this to him, or him doing it to me? Had I wanted one side more than the other in my imaginings? With so much desire flooding me, there was no way I could remember or choose. He stroked me, accelerating. I had wanted it all with him, everything, and somehow everything was what he was giving me. My breath shattered apart. He stayed pressed up against my side, riding through it, and wrung me out until I melted into relaxation.
After tossing the cleanup cloths into the laundry basket, I pulled the sheet to my waist, lay with my arms sprawled on either side of my head, and pondered the new milestone I’d just sprinted past.
Okay. Obviously bisexual. Established that. But what else did it mean, our having done this together?
It didn’t make us boyfriends, surely? Not only was I wholeheartedly terrified of explaining such a development to my parents, but it felt too huge a leap for Andy and I to make from our longtime status as best friends.
On the other hand, my brain wasn’t screaming This was a mistake, nor was I planning my escape from the building. Not at all. I was far more interested in figuring out how to do this again—whatever this was—because it had felt fantastic.
Andy settled onto his side, facing me but not touching me. He said nothing. Maybe his mind was running through a corresponding set of questions.
I spoke up to save him the trouble of asking. “Wow. That was awesome.”
He laughed, sounding relieved. “Welcome to the team. Shoot, I forgot the rainbow confetti to throw all over you.”
I looked at him. His eyes were green and bright, his mouth raspberry-hued from kissing. “I wasn’t too horrible a rookie?” I asked. “Be honest.”
“No way. You did great. All those women must’ve taught you well.”
“Not sure it was them so much as the gay porn I’ve been looking up.”
He turned his face into the pillow, laughing. “Well. Good job researching, then. So …” He propped himself up on his elbow, taking a more practical tone. “I don’t know if you want to do this again after tonight. I do, but …”
“I do too. Totally.”
“Okay. So … we’re friends with benefits?”
I gazed at the plaster textures in the ceiling, pondering that. The term felt a little callous, but then again, I hadn’t really come looking for a commitment. I had been seeking exactly this: exploration and discovery. I also thought of Fiona’s sadness when I’d left her, and Andy’s devastation when Mitchell had betrayed him. Both of us could use a break from that kind of emotional turmoil.
Besides …
“Guess it’d be a little late to claim we’re anything else,” I admitted.
“Ha. Exactly. Then, uh … rules. Keep it simple, right? Neither
of us wants any drama. So if one of us wants to fool around, we just ask, and the other can say ‘Yeah’ or ‘Nah,’ and it’s cool either way.”
“Works for me.”
“And termination clause: if either of us wants out, we can say so. ‘I think I’m done with this for now.’ And that’s that, and it’s fine, and we’re still friends.”
“No drama,” I agreed.
We lay in comfortable silence a few seconds.
Then I realized it was getting late, and I was still in his space. “Guess I should get ready for bed.”
Andy yawned. “Yeah. I have work in the morning, unfortunately.”
I put my underwear back on and gathered up my clothes. He lolled in bed watching me, tousled and golden in the light of the bedside lamp. He looked sated and happy to be in the room with me, but didn’t ask me to stay in his bed.
Of course not. We weren’t boyfriends. This was good. No drama.
On the bed in the guest room, I moved my face around, chasing the fragrance he wore, which I smelled upon myself somewhere. I finally found it on my hair, one of the longer sections I could pull to my nose and sniff. I settled my cheek on the pillow, holding the strands near my nostrils, inhaling the scent and thinking thoughts that were somehow both erotic and cuddly, until I fell asleep.
Fiona: How are things going? As you hoped?
I found the message when I woke up the next morning. Andy had left for work. I had mumbled goodbye to him when he stuck his head into my room, then fallen back to sleep for another hour.
I reached over from the futon bed and opened the blinds, squinting at the gray skies, gray skyscrapers, and gray patch of seawater behind them. In winter, Seattle displayed more color at night than in the daytime.
For instance, in green eyes, warm brown hair, rosy skin, and blue-and-purple blankets. I smiled.
I looked at my phone again, and the smile took a regretful twist as I tapped in my answer.
Sinter: I think so. I still need to find work, but with Andy things are good so far
Fiona: Good. You deserve to be happy
Sinter: You do too, you know
To which, again, she didn’t answer.
CHAPTER 20: SUBURBIA
THE FIRST WEEK OF JANUARY IN TERMS OF GOOD THINGS AND BAD THINGS:
Good: I got an agent in Seattle. Her name was Dawn, she worked in a small office in a high-rise, and she was energetic in a caffeinated way but not to the point of being annoying. She and her two fellow agents handled several actors at a “place in their career” similar to mine, she said. Excited about my credentials, especially the film, she promised to find me auditions and voice-over work.
Bad: that kind of thing could take awhile, even with an agent, and I still needed a day job. Which I still didn’t have by the end of the week, not even from places just looking for a waiter.
Good: Andy. Snogging. Exploring. Getting off together. Neither of us had said “Nah” yet when it was on offer, which had been every evening so far. We were still at the “no anal” stage—I asked him if it was expected, and he said not really, especially not for a rookie. It was the kind of thing you worked up to. Though I did look forward to leveling up, I was more than content with learning the other options in the meantime.
Bad: driving to Oregon to get my car.
We put the trip off until Sunday, because Saturday we were … busy. Andy and I took turns behind the wheel on the way south. I had a serious case of white knuckles for the first several minutes. I hadn’t driven in over six months, since I hadn’t dared try to drive in the UK, and besides that, I was terrible with manual transmissions and made Celery stall out twice, which cracked Andy up.
It was Andy’s turn driving as we cruised into our suburb. I glowered out the window at the tracts of pastel-colored houses with shiny cars in identical driveways.
“All of cool, liberal Portland to choose from,” I said, “and we had to be born here.”
“Kind of why we both moved out.”
“Your house wasn’t so bad.”
By “house” I meant “family,” of course.
“Yours could be worse too.”
He said it gently, but I bristled anyway. “I know! It’d be easier if I could cut them out entirely, but they’re almost something I can work with.”
“And they’re what you have.”
He meant, “They’re all you have,” though he was too nice to say that. No siblings, no warm relationships with any of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins. No family I would enjoy calling family. Yep, my parents were about it.
We pulled up at their curb, behind my dark blue Toyota, which I’d traded my Honda for a few years earlier. I stared at my car longer than necessary to put off looking at my dad, who was moving around in the yard.
I could play nice with them on an average day, maybe. But today, with Andy beside me, when I’d just spent my first week trying out all kinds of porn-worthy activities with him? Merely looking them in the eye would be challenging. Maybe bringing him had been a bad idea.
Then I detested myself for that thought—and loathed my parents. I shouldn’t have to hide my best friend from them, and it wasn’t any of their business what I did in private.
Andy turned off the Volvo and looked at me.
“Right, let’s do it,” I muttered, and got out of the car.
Dad strolled up in his raincoat and work gloves, rather threateningly carrying a hammer. “Have to replace a piece of siding,” he said, by way of hellos.
“Oh. Okay. Hi,” I said.
We stopped a foot apart on the wet, squishy front lawn. His salt-and-pepper hair had receded further lately. Everyone said I had his eyes, which sometimes made it unsettling for me to look at him, as if he were a Dorian-Gray-ish picture of how I would look in thirty years if I completely lost my sense of humor along the way.
He sized me up. I wore black eyeliner, a multicolored temporary tattoo of a Celtic knot on the side of my neck, my motorcycle jacket, skinny jeans, and battered lace-up black boots, all selected because I thought outer self-expression would boost my inner strength. Which apparently was bullshit, because I felt fidgety as hell.
Dad made no comment on my appearance, and his mouth tightened as he took in Andy a step behind me. Then he said, “Your mother’s inside. She’d like to see you.” He turned and walked toward the house.
He hadn’t greeted Andy nor invited him in. My blood simmered. I turned and said clearly, using my stage projection abilities, “Great. Yeah, come in, man.”
Looking far more respectable than me (at least by my parents’ standards) with his tidy haircut and standard Northwest street clothes and lack of makeup, Andy smiled dryly—Super, thanks for inviting me into the torture chamber; I’d love to come. But he followed me in.
Inside, it smelled like something baked with cinnamon, and like my childhood in general—whatever the smell of my house was exactly. It knocked me back in time, bringing a mix of memories both pleasant and not. There at the hearth, Dad had photographed me on Mom’s lap when I was in kindergarten, both of us grinning with tinsel wound around us. There on that strip of wood floor between the living room rug and hall carpet, I raced toy cars in elementary school, and Dad occasionally knelt to roll some along too, and tell me about his first car. Through these rooms, I had paced in insanity as a fifteen-year-old, grounded for a month for kissing Andy, and feeling I could never understand my parents again.
Dad tromped down the hall to put his tools away in the front closet. I veered into the dining room. Mom sat at the vast oak table, potted ficus trees behind her, a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle spread in front of her. Looking through her bifocals, she clicked one tiny blue piece into another tiny blue piece, then lifted her face and gave me a polite bank-teller smile.
“Oh, you’re here, hello.”
“Hey, Mom.” I didn’t sit. Andy hovered beside me, a step away. She looked from me to him and back again, her smile turning more mystified. “How was the drive?”
&
nbsp; “Not bad,” I said.
“Not too much traffic,” Andy contributed.
She nodded, squinting at my appearance as if she couldn’t decide what to say about it. “Well, there’s coffee cake if you’d like some.”
Like Dad, she spoke only to me, as if Andy didn’t exist.
Rather than answer, I looked to him.
Mom picked up on the clue and added, “Either of you. Of course.” A smidgen better than Dad, then, but still the most stilted invitation I’d heard in a long time.
“No, thanks,” Andy said. “We just had lunch.”
Dad came into the room. Standing over Mom, he folded his arms and appraised me with a faux-amused look. “Hope that’s not how you’re dressing for job interviews.”
I shoved my mouth into a smile. “Depends on the job.”
“Well, in the theater, I suppose …” Mom said. She managed to make “theater” sound like “strip club.”
Irritation prickled through me, nettles all down my skin. “You guys like theaters. You go to them.”
“Occasionally.” Mom picked up a green puzzle piece and frowned at it. “We haven’t gotten out to one in a while, come to think of it.”
“Mainly Gilbert and Sullivan,” Dad said. “Now, if you’d do Gilbert and Sullivan …”
This was an ancient argument. For one thing, I couldn’t stand Gilbert and Sullivan—not because it was their theatrical favorite but because it annoyed me. For another thing, I couldn’t sing that well. They knew both things.
“Where are the car keys?” I asked.
Mom looked up again. “Are you leaving so soon? You just got here.” She still sounded calm.
“What was it you wanted me to do while I was here?” I had gotten louder without meaning to.
Dad’s fake smile vanished. Andy looked at me, worried.
They were being this unpleasant because I’d brought Andy. That had to be it. They’d wanted to see me, they’d claimed. They’d led me to believe they might be nice. But no, certain circumstances—like having a gay person in their house—were apparently too much for them.
“Well, we haven’t seen you since, what, last summer,” Mom said.
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