When Irish Eyes Are Sparkling

by Tom Collins

  “It was amazing, incredible, wonderful, fan-fucking-tastic!”

  “Oh, c’mon! You gotta give me more than that.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  His expression clouded. “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Could you describe it the first time you got your dick sucked?” I countered and he nodded his understanding as his anger turned to resigned disappointment. I pulled them both against me and we stood in a circle with our arms around each other.

  “You know what you should do?” I asked Brendan.

  He gave me our patented mischievous grin. “Switch places with you tonight?” Jill cawed with indignation and I laughed.

  “Don’t worry, Sis,” I said, kissing her on the forehead, “I don’t want to share more of Oliver than I already am, any more than he wants to share you more than he does, and we both know it.” To Bren I said, “No, fool. Get our Jillybean a strap-on and teach her how to use it like a man…and lube. Lots and lots of lube…trust me.” He quivered against my side and I knew Jill would be fucking Bren in the near future.

  I went to my room and they followed me, chattering about dildos.

  Gram and Granda give each of their grandkids a hand crafted, Irish keepsake chest on their eighteenth birthday. I dug around until I found mine. It was a foot square and six inches deep. The natural red and white striations of the cedar wood from which it was crafted had been left unstained, and had my name burned into the lid in a Gaelic font. Bren had one just like it. Each chest held a second gift, the real present, a Claddagh.

  I pulled mine out, the scent of cedar filling my head as I slipped it onto the middle finger of my left hand. The heart faced in towards my heart. Brendan had pulled his out of the chest and put it on the instant we got them, wearing it the same way I now wore mine. Ours were in the traditional style with the hands cupping the crowned heart and the arms forming the band. They were bold, heavy sterling rings that didn’t go unnoticed.

  There were three ways to wear a Claddagh. Worn on the right hand facing out meant you were footloose and fancy free. Worn on the right, again, but facing in meant you were spoken for and not looking for more. Wearing it on the left facing in, as Bren and I wore ours, was equivalent to publicly proclaiming yourself married.

  “You really are serious about him, aren’t you,” Brendan said, eyes wide. It wasn’t a question. He knew I wouldn’t wear my Claddagh if I weren’t positive. My phone went off, playing the William Tell Overture with gusto to signal a call from Oliver.

  “What’s that ring tone?” Brendan asked loudly.

  “It’s the theme song for The Lone Ranger,” I replied.

  “Schweet,” he replied with a grin.

  Oliver went on about us needing to take the night off because I needed to recuperate and couldn’t be trusted. He was convinced I would “finagle”—his word, not mine—his cock into my butt. I promised to be good, but he wouldn’t relent and that was that. Even whining got me nowhere. I went to work feeling both glum and elated. I was in love with a terrific man, but I was looking down the barrel of a long day of work and an even longer sleepless night without him. I hated every second I spent away from Oliver, but he needed some time alone, I supposed.

  I made a piecrust promise to myself that I wouldn’t bother him, reminding myself I’d be seeing him Thursday night for the Fourth of July. So, of course, I called him as soon as I locked my bedroom door that night. We wound up having intense phone sex, another cherry broken by Oliver. He was loud, didn’t, or couldn’t, hold back at all, and it must’ve been a real gusher to judge by how long it took. His sounds of pleasure triggered my orgasm. I missed hearing the end of his, but he was still breathing hard when I came down.

  Even so, I didn’t sleep that night, but I was a lot more relaxed while I worked on my fantasy painting of Oliver.

  The night of the Fourth was magical. How many people have actually watched skyrockets in flight while their lover goes down on them? I was excited when he agreed to come to my place afterward so I could show him the painting of him I’d been working on. I was nervous about letting him see it even though I was desperate to show it to him. It wasn’t usual for me to let anyone, much less the subject, see a work before it was at least nearing completion and this one was still in the beginning stages. He seemed to like all of the ones that were hanging and lying about, so I thought he would love the one of him. I couldn’t’ve been more wrong. It was clear he hated it and I didn’t understand why when he liked all the others.

  Maybe he’s one of those people who’re uncomfortable seeing their own image, I suggested to myself, trying to shrug off his reaction. Remember how he reacted to the sketch? I reminded myself.

  Time was my enemy over the next fortnight. The days clotted like wet sand in an hourglass, while the nights ran away like quicksilver into the sucking maw of a quantum singularity. Heinlein’s Lazarus Long might’ve had “time enough for love,” but I felt like I had none. I took to waking early, even setting my watch alarm to wake me before his alarm went off so I could steal more time with him. Some mornings I would just lay there and hold him while he slept, feeling his heart beating against my cheek or back, hearing his even breaths, soothing his twitches and mumblings when he would get restless. Other mornings I would wake him with my mouth and hands roaming over the veldt of his abdomen or the vale between his thighs.

  Life got better on a daily basis, no matter how good the day before was; Oliver managed to improve on the next. We did everything together that we could, eating, sleeping, working out, taking walks or going bike riding. My favorite was working out. The two of us, being such physical opposites and so obviously a couple, reaped sheaves of attention from the other men at the gym. Bren had been feeding our natural exhibitionistic streak for years every time he performed, and now I had found an outlet for mine. Both women and men had admired me in the past, but it was always done with subtlety. Until I came to Oliver’s side of town, that is. In this neighborhood, and most especially in the gym, the men felt no qualms about being open in their appreciation of another man. I found I liked it.

  Oliver took good care of me, too. He worried about my diet, my sleeping habits, my general heath, and just about anything else he could think of. He even ruined a set of watercolor pencils by soaking them in a bleach solution he was so concerned about me. I found them sealed in one of those throwaway Glad bowls in the kitchen one evening. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what his intentions were when he did it, so I brought them to him and asked. I could tell he felt like shit over it.

  “Aw, jeeze. I’m sorry, Liam. I didn’t know the bleach would melt the insides. I thought they were hard like the colored pencils I used in school.”

  “It’s no big deal, Ollie, I can get more.” He made a sound of annoyance in his throat. “Hey, you ruined my pencils so I get to call you whatever I want for the night. Right?” He growled, but nodded. I kissed him. “Good. Why’d you do it? That’s what I don’t get.” I was mystified.

  “I see you licking the tips all the time, and it’s unsanitary. I figured it would be a waste of time to try to break you of the habit, so I thought—”

  “That you’d keep me from getting sick by de-germing them!” I interrupted. “Duh!” I exclaimed, slapping myself on the forehead for not figuring it out and laughed like a hyena. He looked uncertain of my reaction. In truth, I was touched. “It was a good idea, in theory, but the reason they melted is they’re watercolor pencils, not colored pencils, which means they’re water soluble. You get color instead of grey-scale, by wetting the tip—”

  “Hence the licking,” he interrupted this time. It was his turn to smack himself on the forehead.

  “This is the sweetest, most thoughtful thing anyone’s ever done for me. Thank you,” I said, indicating the container of murky water. I gathered him up in a hug and nuzzled my lips just below his earlobe.

  “You’re not mad?” His hands on my butt were tentative, as if he expected me to stop him.<
br />
  “No, I was confused though.” His fingers slipped between my legs, pressing against my perineum. A groan caught in my throat and I did stop him then, saying, “This will have to wait until we get back. We have to go to Michael’s.”

  He tensed, “Who’s Michael, another cousin?” His question caught me so off guard that a tremendous blast of laughter escaped.

  “Oh, my God, you’re an art store virgin!” I teased. “I’m gonna enjoy this. Let’s go.”

  “Michael’s is an art store?”

  “Yeah, you owe me some pencils, Mister.”

  I teased him a little on the way there, but became enthralled with showing him around and explaining what things were when it wasn’t obvious. I’m sure I loaded him down with a lot more information than he either wanted or needed, but he acted interested and kept asking questions, so I kept answering them.

  One Thursday evening, Uncles Joel and Devlin came into the pub for supper and passed on some tickets to a baseball game Uncle Joel’s boss had given him. They couldn’t use them because they were going camping for the weekend. Oliver and I had the time of our lives. I’d never dreamed of a relationship like the one I had with him. None of the girls I’d dated liked sports and always got pissy when I would take them to a game. Oliver, on the other hand, screamed at the umpire even louder than I did then he took me home and screwed me blind. I sometimes wondered why the neighbors never beat on the wall.

  It couldn’t get better than that, or so I thought until I took him to an art fair. He met my Aunt Katie, Uncle Sean and youngest cousin, three-year-old Oona; who was quite taken with him, watching him with big eyes the whole time we were there. I couldn’t blame her when I felt the same.

  Then my aunt handed me a wad of cash and I almost filled my shorts. I held in my hand more than I made on my paycheck in a week, not counting tips, and hadn’t had to sweat at all to get it. The most awesome part was that people liked my work so much they wanted to hang it in their homes. Well, that was the second most awesome thing. What stole my breath was how proud of me Oliver looked. So proud, in fact, that he let me kiss him in public, with tongue, and enjoyed me doing it. Afterward, while we were eating supper, he tried to make me jealous by commenting on Uncle Sean’s pretty face and sexy accent. I didn’t take the bait, but turned the tables on him by imitating the County Cork dialect.

  “Stop that!” he admonished me with a grin. His face was rosy and I knew the sound was hitting him right in his stones. He hadn’t been kidding about liking Uncle Sean’s voice. I teased him the rest of the meal and all the way home, refusing to speak in my usual voice, and his face grew more flushed as the evening progressed.

  He was so eager he got started in the elevator, kissing me and grinding against me, which amazed me no end. The apartment door wasn’t even closed before he was ripping my clothes off. Buttons flew, and seams ripped. He shoved me down on the bed and went to work, touching, licking and sucking every part of me he could reach. By the time he progressed to tongue-fucking me, I was delirious with pleasure and mindless with need for him.

  Hotter than anything he was doing to me was the look on his face as he did it. The fire he’d been tamping down all these weeks had flared to a raging inferno. His eyes shone with an inner light, and his smile as he used my precum for lubrication, was rapacious. My insides quivered as he pressed his fingers in. He bit his lip, leaned close over me and watched my reaction with greedy eyes as his massaged my prostate. I dangled over a precipitous drop into a black sea of complete gratification for what felt like an eternity, while I practically pissed precum.

  Next thing I knew, Oliver had my thighs clamped to his chest with my calves over his shoulders, his balls were slapping my ass fast and his cock was hammering against my prostate. I hung onto reality by a thread as he leaned down, letting my knees slip down to the crook of his elbows and rode me harder than ever. I squirmed to get my legs down, while he sucked and chewed my nipples, and wrapped my legs around his hips. Anchoring my heels at the small of his back, I moved with him, using the clues his body gave me about his intentions the way I did when giving him head. The world was crumbling; I was burning. He stroked my insides so masterfully it felt as if he were caressing my entire body. I had what felt like a full body orgasm, like the Forth of July was happening inside me.

  It was so perfect; I didn’t understand how it could turn bad so suddenly. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, but even while we were still coming down, he couldn’t look at me. I apologized for the only thing I could think of; tensing up in eagerness as he entered me, but that didn’t help. When I curled against him, he didn’t respond right away as he normally would. I was on the verge of pulling away, convinced he couldn’t even stand my touch any more, when his arms wrapped me up. Even then, it felt forced. It was as if I disgusted him suddenly and I didn’t understand what I’d done to bring on that reaction. Had I enjoyed it too much? Should I not have been so unreserved?

  I had the most horrible feeling this was the beginning of the end. I’d been through enough break-ups to recognize when one was coming down the pike. I’d known it would only be a matter of time before he got tired of me. My girlfriends always did. I did hope it would take longer this time though. I was sure it was my fault. I’d gotten comfortable, been too much myself with him and now I’d pay for it. I didn’t know how I would get through this one. I could feel I wouldn’t be able to get over Oliver the way I had the others. I’d put too much hope into him and would reap a just reward for my carelessness.

  I was awake long after he fell asleep with my chest, throat and eyes burning from unshed tears. I was a big puss-baby, and I knew it, but I’d be damned if I’d let Oliver find out.

  Things deteriorated over the next few days. He could barely stand the sight of me most of the time, even cringing and looking away when he thought I couldn’t see, and he didn’t touch me in other than a platonic way. I had fucked up so bad and didn’t have a clue how or what to do to fix it. By Tuesday, I was desperate.

  I came in late from work, having covered shifts for two people out with the flu. The day had been hot, humidity at an all time high, and I was exhausted. I made Oliver’s brown-bag breakfast, showered and crawled into bed, feeling like I didn’t belong, but couldn’t be anywhere else. I wanted him so badly, wanted to touch him like I used to, but I didn’t feel welcome to anymore. I knew I was losing him and felt frantic with powerlessness. I scooted under the covers and took him into my mouth, hopeless that it would make any difference, but I had to try.

  I knew when he woke because I felt his touch, light as snow, on my shoulders and hair. He guided me in pleasuring him as expertly as ever. I made it last for as long as I could, believing this might be the last time he’d let me touch him. He filled my mouth with a huge load, making me swallow fast to keep up. I didn’t loose a single drop though, and smiled up at him after I’d finished bringing him down slow with soft lip and tongue caresses. I hoped he might accept it as an apology for whatever I’d done. He did smile back, really looking at me rather than around or through me, for the first time since Saturday. My heart leapt, and the tight ball of tension I’d been carrying around in my chest for days began to melt away, when his eyes softened as he looked down at me.

  The next morning he seemed almost himself again, and I let myself hope, but I shuddered to think how narrowly I’d avoided cosmic disaster.

  The night before Private Dancer, Bren, Jill and Erin’s band, were set to perform at the pub, I stayed over at Oliver’s even though I was supposed to be at the apartment to help load and unload their equipment. I’d rather apologize for being late than spend the night alone when Oliver wanted me over.

  A couple hours into my double shift the Friday afternoon of the concert, I was behind the bar filling a drink order for one of my tables when Gram came up and stood watching me, head cocked, her deep blue eyes as penetrating as an eagle’s. She brushed a hank of coal-black curls back from her face, uncovering the silvery-white streak at her templ
e.

  “Hi, Gram. How are you?” I asked, noticing how little of her age showed. I didn’t know how old she was, but she had to be over sixty and could have passed for forty-five. She was tall, and still had the slender figure I’d seen in photos of her at my age. Were it not for the fact that I looked almost exactly like her, I would’ve sworn she’d never had children. She certainly didn’t look like a grandmother who’d raised five kids while running a pub with her husband.

  “I’m fine, youngling, and were I pressed to answer I’d say ye’re fairin’ right well, yerself, these days.”

  “Yeah, I guess I am. How did you know?”

  “Oh, I’m sure I don’t know, a hint here, a clue there…just wee things, really. You’re wearing your Claddagh for one.”

  “Right,” I laughed. “That would be a clue.”

  “No, that was a hint, my darlin’, the clue was the most extraordinary love-bite on yer neck when we saw ye here on the Fourth o’ July; it practically glowed.” She brushed my hair back from my neck, “Seems it’s faded away now.” I flushed and grinned, remembering how hot the hickey Oliver had given me that night had looked in the mirror.

  “I do like this new haircut Jillian’s given you boys, ’tis very fetching. I hadn’a realized how much the two of you’d grown up when I wasn’a lookin’. Ye’ve gotten so tall now tha’ I dinna ha’e to look down any longer. The both o’ ye remind me so much of yer father and Joel when they were your age.”

  I grinned. I could live with looking like my dad and uncle. They were both good-looking men.

  “Another hint might’ve been ye walkin’ ‘round here smilin’ like a cat with a cream-flavored arsehole.” My hole fluttered as the mention of “cream” and “arsehole” in the same breath caused Oliver’s leonine countenance to tumble around my head. “He’s knockin’ the hole off ye, yer young man is?”

  “Gram!” My face hurt I blushed so hard. “Wait…did you say, ‘young man’?”