by Con Riley
Maggie threw a dishcloth at him. “No platforms. No heights. No emergency room visits.” Her balled fist waving under his nose made Theo smile. The toddler hanging onto his leg started to climb, so he bent, scooping her up, tickling her until she almost twisted out of his grip.
“Okay,” he agreed as he popped the child back onto the floor. “No platform, no tree, no rope ladder.” Gathering up the boxes of screws and bolts, he and Mike headed out to the back yard. They worked together companionably, laying out the wooden partitions and planks in the order that they’d be needed. Theo never minded working on projects with Mike. He was easy company.
They carried the last of the wood out from the garage.
“Mind your back, Theo. My life won’t be worth living if you hurt yourself on my watch.” His tone was light, but the concern in Mike’s eyes was clear. Theo explained his new exercise regime, and the physio classes he attended, to Mike.
“It’s changed my life.” And it had.
“Dude, something has, for sure.” Mike bit his lip, then added, “It’s good, Theo, really good, to see you doing well. Maggie can’t shut up about your mystery man. When are you going to put her out of her misery and introduce them?”
Theo passed him a handful of bolts, taking a moment to look at the instructions again before answering.
“I’m working on it.”
“Well, get on that. Bring him over.” They started piecing the playhouse together, working quickly, fumbling their gloves off when they needed to tighten screws, their warm breath clouding in the cold air.
Theo was working on it. There were only so many times you could come, abs painted with pearly puddles on an Internet stranger’s command, without needing their hands on your skin, their mouth on your throat, their voice in your ear urging you to fuck them through their own orgasm. Sometimes he wanted that so badly, he ended up begging.
THEO: I’d make it good.
THEO: I’d talk politics while we did it.
THEO: I’d even talk….
THEO: Republican.
MORGAN: Man, that’s almost tempting.
Sometimes he’d lead up to the subject with a little more subtlety, sending Morgan a link to a back-to-back showing of movies by a director he’d commented on favorably. Once he pointed out an exhibition of photography Morgan had mentioned at the Seattle Art Museum. Surely meeting in a place filled with strangers would strip away any weirdness, wouldn’t it? They could talk, have some drinks, and walk away if they wanted to.
MORGAN: I don’t want you to stop talking to me, Theo.
THEO: Why would I? The others seem to manage okay.
That was true too. A group of friends from their Internet forum had gotten together for someone’s birthday. The forum had been flooded with their photos—completely average-looking people having fun with ice cream cake. It fascinated Theo to match the names with faces. Some of them had been surprising—female where he had pictured male, smiling where he’d imagined scowls—but none of them looked like psychos.
MORGAN: They never do, Theo.
THEO: Please?
MORGAN: Dude, if you aren’t Papa Smurf I’d be so fucking sad. Do you really want that shit on your conscience?
He held planks together while Mike screwed them tightly, wishing that he could check his cell phone for messages. He’d e-mailed Morgan a list of concert dates that morning before he left home, along with a message asking what the worst was that could happen if they met?
He thought about it a lot.
He thought about it all the time lately.
They might not be attracted to each other, he guessed. He could deal with that. The mental connection they had was incredible, amazing, like they had known each other forever. Morgan had dragged him from grief so deep he thought he’d drowned already. He would always be grateful.
Always.
Sometimes Peter crossed his mind. That was a mindfuck all right. Peter was hot, so fucking compassionate, and available. He wanted Theo. He wasn’t sure why, but he absolutely believed that the blue-eyed man wanted a future with him. It made no sense that Theo could only think about Morgan.
He couldn’t help himself.
Everything he heard, he framed in terms of telling Morgan. Every single almost-hand-touch his interns had in the office went right into his mental file of things to tell Morgan later. When he got together with friends—more often now, more easily too—he found that he introduced Morgan into their conversations as if he were real.
He was real, to Theo.
Very real, and very important. Increasingly so.
Theo started every day with Morgan’s sleepy “Morning, idiot” in his inbox, and ended it after an evening full of argument and laughter with his hand down his sleep pants. He couldn’t shop without thinking of the man, or work out, or concentrate on the news. His head was full of Morgan and he just wanted more.
He wanted to talk to him face to face.
“Theo, I asked you to pass the drill.” Mike stared at Theo over the frame of the cabin they had half built. “Are you okay? You look a little spaced out there, man.” His expression was mirrored by Maggie’s later as they stood in the kitchen, watching through the window as the kids ran like crazy around their new wooden house. Both Maggie and Mike were amused.
“Babe, he’s got it bad.” Mike patted Theo on the shoulder as his wife turned to look closely at them both.
“Oh, Theo.” She shook her head, forehead creasing. “You need to meet him already.”
“I’m doing my best.” And he was. He really thought he was. If wishes could make it happen, Morgan would be waiting for him when he got home, and he’d be perfect for Theo, filling his empty apartment with cutting wit and almost constant physical pleasure.
Maggie wasn’t without her concerns, though.
“What if he’s crazy?”
“Yeah, that’s a definite possibility,” he agreed.
“What if he’s not your type?”
“Then we’ll only hook up in dark places.”
Mike choked on his coffee, cursing as he spilled it over the table, saying, “Just be careful, Theo.”
If you thought too much about it, meeting someone you only knew from the Internet was dicey at best and downright dangerous at worst. He watched as hope and concern fought their way across his assistant’s face.
“Theo, be reasonable. I’m not saying he will be an axe murderer but—” He interrupted Maggie before she could get too far along that thought process.
“Just as long as he brings his big chopper with him, I’m down with it.”
“That’s it. I’m canceling your Internet. You’re a danger to yourself.” Mike reached over and put his hand over his wife’s mouth. Theo thought he was extraordinarily brave. Or dumb. Maybe both.
“Look,” Mike interjected while he had the chance. “One last question, then let’s change the subject, because I’m not sure if I can handle any more thoughts about you in the dark with someone’s huge chopper. What if he’s average, Theo? What if this man who you’ve been talking to for, how long—three or four months at the most?—is just an ordinary guy?”
Maggie wriggled free before adding, “Mike’s right, Theo. What if, after all this time, he turns out to be nothing very special?”
Turning to look out of the window again, amused at the way the children climbed the outside of the cabin and jumped from the roof, Theo smiled.
“Oh, he’s special all right.”
He thought that again later in the evening, after a long, hot shower which almost eased the dull ache caused by a day of manual labor. Morgan was special.
Theo had been out all day and came back to many e-mails pointing out other people’s idiocy on the Internet. Morgan hadn’t sent him constant chats, respecting the fact that he would be busy with friends. Later, Morgan asked after them all, remembering the kids’ names, asking what they were like. Yeah, he was more than just a casual Internet acquaintance.
So much more.
&n
bsp; There wasn’t anything Theo couldn’t talk to him about. The more he thought about it, the more Theo guessed—knew—that it was just a matter of time. They would meet, and the amazing chemistry they had would translate into real life. He was certain of it.
Theo lay in bed, curled up around his laptop, waiting for Morgan to get back online, thinking about Ben.
He could do that now, and he hardly ever felt like he used to. Before Morgan, he felt as if he stood at the bottom of a dam with hundreds of feet of concrete towering above him, holding back a world’s worth of water. If he didn’t keep leaning—shoulder pressed, shoving, scrambling for a foothold—against the wall, the weight of the water would carry him away. Grief was like that, Theo knew. It was too deep to describe and much too wide for one man to swim across on his own.
Morgan leaned with him until he trusted that the wall would hold.
He wasn’t turning his back on Ben; he never would. But he could walk away from the grief now. Maybe he’d dip his toes into the water from time to time. There would always be unexpected reminders and sudden squalls of temper, like storms along the coast, fast moving and unpredictable. But now he had Morgan.
Yeah, now he had Morgan, a man just like him, who had been through tough times too and who had really lived. His experiences complemented Theo’s. They were well suited, and frankly, Theo felt so fucking lucky to have found him. Even with his annoying left-wing tendencies, even with his idealistic rhetoric, he was still a compelling human being. Theo couldn’t think of a single characteristic about the man that put him off.
MORGAN: Hey Tool-Time-Tim. How’s life in picket-fence land?
THEO: Hey. It was good. It’s better to be home.
MORGAN: Of course it is. Home is where I am.
THEO: My back aches now.
MORGAN: I know you’re angling for a massage.
THEO: Please don’t tease. I would pay you to come massage me.
MORGAN: Why don’t you call up your tall boy to come work out your kinks? J, yes?
THEO: Oh, I hope he’s too busy with E to come help.
MORGAN: Maybe a little jealousy would encourage E to make a move.
THEO: No way, I couldn’t do that to them. Besides, it’s Joel who needs the help making a move.
MORGAN: Joel?
THEO: Pretend I didn’t type that. I’m really tired. Yes, I think J took me too seriously when I told him to be professional.
THEO: That rule only needs to apply at work.
MORGAN: Joel Hudson?
MORGAN: Oh! Is E Evan?
MORGAN: Small world if it is. Joel’s a friend.
MORGAN: Theo? You still there?
Theo slammed his laptop closed, then staggered to the bathroom.
He leaned over the sink, splashing his face with cold water over and over and over before scrubbing at it roughly with a towel. When he was done he leaned hard against the basin, staring at his reflection.
A haunted man looked back at him, lips twisted tightly, brow deeply furrowed. The lines beside his mouth looked deeper than ever, the gray in his hair caught the light, glinting, mocking him. He felt sick. He felt so sick. Was this really happening? Had he been basing a fantasy life around one of his interns’ friends?
How old were they? Twenty? Twenty-one years old at most?
Theo stood at the bottom of the dam, his Morgan nowhere to be seen, and heard the concrete crack from top to bottom.
He held his breath and waited to get washed away.
Chapter 14
REVISITING grief after he guessed that Morgan—his Morgan—wasn’t who he imagined him to be left Theo feeling vacant and stalled, where just the week before he had felt as if he was finally moving on. The loss he felt—why? Why? No one had fucking died—left him aching.
Theo told himself to get over it already as he stared at the shadows crisscrossing his bedroom ceiling, willing sleep to take him away. But grief had a bite like a Great White shark: Its teeth tilted backward. Once it took hold, it had you until the bitter end. Loss bit Theo hard, just when he thought he finally had a handle on the urge to wallow.
Yeah, just when he thought he could walk at the same pace as the rest of the world, grief returned for a second go, kicking his legs out from underneath him, shoving him down into the dirt face first.
Maybe once you experienced real loss, the feeling never left you. Maybe it just hid until you were vulnerable. Theo was reminded of when Ben finally quit smoking. He kept a pack of cigarettes in his nightstand drawer, taking them out from time to time just to smell them. Theo called him a masochist. Ben used to pull one of his Italian shrugs, eyebrows raised, saying that he needed a reminder of the agony of addiction to help him stay strong.
Sometimes want, pure and sharp and barbed, would nearly overwhelm Ben.
“It is better to keep the pain fresh, tesoro. Better a little constant ache than that whole raw agony again, no?”
The night Theo guessed that Morgan was younger than he had ever imagined, he yanked open Ben’s nightstand drawer, going in two-handed, pulling out the contents—cufflinks, lube, postcards from friends, his mother’s rosary—scattering them across the bedroom floor until he found the crumpled red and white packet. He lit the first cigarette leaning over a burner on the kitchen stove, his eyelashes almost singeing in the sudden blast of heat, pulling on it until it was lit, then sinking to the floor.
Back against the cabinets, legs spread out across the floor in front of him, Theo smoked—coughing, wiping his eyes, flicking ash on the tile—until he was down to the filter. Dousing the butt in the sink, he had one solitary moment of perfect, peaceful nicotine high before he staggered, hand over his mouth, making it to the bathroom just in time to puke.
Eyes streaming again, he turned on the shower, filling the bathroom with steam as he viciously brushed his teeth, scrubbing the taste of bile and tobacco away. He didn’t wash in the shower. He just stood, head bowed, until the water ran cool.
Maggie called him the next morning, worried that he would miss his first meeting, wondering if he was okay. She accepted his lie completely, mistaking his hoarse voice as strep, rather than the sound made by a fool—a fucking fool—who smoked the remains of a stale pack of cigarettes through the night, throwing up after each and every one.
She accepted his lie for the next three days, adjusting his schedule, arranging for soup to be delivered, hoping to avoid his “sickness” for the sake of her kids. On the fourth day he guessed she couldn’t keep her concern to herself anymore. When his door buzzer sounded, he rolled over in bed, pulling the sheet up to his chin. He heard the creak of the front door opening, followed by her call, warning him to make himself decent. Maggie’s footsteps clicking along the hallway tile faltered as she reached the kitchen doorway. She ran to his room.
“Oh, Theo.”
He was okay, right up until he saw her. The moment she stepped into his room, just like she had all those months ago after Ben died, stepping over the wreckage that Theo’s devastated whirlwind temper had left behind, the weight of explanation crushed him. He slumped back across his bed.
Her palm was warm across his forehead.
“You’re not sick.”
He shook his head.
Looking around his bedroom as if through her eyes, he noticed the mess he’d made. He didn’t remember pulling open each and every dresser drawer. He had no recollection at all of hauling every single piece of clothing he owned out, hurling them on the floor behind him as he searched. He only recalled the inner lurch and sobbed exhalation as he finally opened the last drawer—the one that held the least—and found Ben’s old pajamas.
Maggie was kind and quiet, just as she’d been the first time, when she helped him out of bed, letting him lean when he stumbled as they made their way to the living room. She didn’t comment at his too-short pajama pants, or the rosary that wound around his wrist and fingers. Instead, she tucked him up in a blanket on the couch and then made him some tea.
When she asked, �
�Ben?” Theo shook his head again, then nodded, finishing by letting out a weird, hopeless sound somewhere between anger and complete misery. He didn’t resist when she pulled his head down to rest in her lap. He just closed his sore, dry eyes, and sighed as she stroked his hair.
“Your mystery man turned out to have an axe, right?”
Theo kept his eyes shut tight.
AFTER Ben died, Theo’s mom found him a bereavement group. He went twice, then couldn’t take the understanding and sympathy any longer. Back then he couldn’t begin to grasp the fact that others who had lost gained anything by attending. He was raw, still bleeding inside, and their stories of resurgence after loss made him rage. He saved his temper for home, slamming around, tearing paperwork, breaking things, until the kitchen floor was a minefield of shards and the study was heaped with drifts of ragged edged paper.
Maggie had cleared it all away without comment. She took away his photo albums from the years before they started to store their shit digitally online, and shut the vacation souvenirs that had escaped his first hollow, ice-cold temper away in the laundry room cabinets, figuring that he wouldn’t think to look there. He was grateful she had protected so many of the things Ben had loved enough to ship home when she helped him set his home back to rights later.
Some of his earliest memories after that first dark time were of his father sitting at his kitchen table, painstakingly gluing back together a fish-covered dish that Ben dickered for at the side of the street in St. John. He had loved Antigua, finding the climate, before the humidity kicked in, glorious. Ben smoked under the same palm tree every morning, smiling and chatting as the hotel staff shed their uniforms before retrieving the long, fine nets they’d stretched across the warm, almost milky-looking shallow water late the night before.
During the previous summer, a hurricane had swept in, devastating homes, destroying schools, even lifting palm trees from the coast before dropping them across inland streets. Theo calculated rebuilding costs and made mental forecasts of project times as they drove along pitted dirt roads. Ben laughed, saying that he should add years to his forecasts and subtract millions of dollars from the cost because these people seemed more concerned with living than with planning.