by Edie Danford
I’m tempted to bolster my case by listing all the evidence of our friendship. I could take a two-hour slice from our morning and cite dozens of examples. When we sit drinking our coffee together. When he comments on the news and prompts me for my opinion. When he goes to three different stores to find my favorite cheese. When he gives me a half smile, half frown for helping with the dishes. When he ties my scarf around my neck and I make him laugh by telling a stupid knock-knock joke…
But I also know these are things that other people—guys like Pete, who have had lots of friends in their lives—might not think of as significant, and so I decide to keep these bits of data to myself.
He takes a breath and says, “We see each other as we are? Yeah. Um…I don’t know about that, Mar.”
Shit. His expression seems to be getting more sad.
Sweat forms along my newly shaved neck. It’s itchy. But I hold very still as I look into his eyes.
His features freeze—sharp, cold-looking lines around his mouth, his jaw, even his nose seems to have a new edge. He picks up the phone, but his hand jerks and it slides from his fingers. It drops with a clatter on the floor.
I don’t see if it breaks. My eyes are on Pete’s face, and his expression is the thing that has broken. Every rigid line cracks, crumbles. “Fuck,” he gasps.
I reach for him. He takes another step back. “Pete—”
“No.” His fingers bump his glasses; he takes them off with a moan and tosses them to the counter. His hands cover his eyes and he rubs hard, pressing down in ways that have to be painful. “You don’t get it.” He looks up at me, blinking. “I don’t think we do see each other. Your past and mine—our lives have been so different, I’m not sure they can ever meet.”
“Of course they can meet. They have already met, yes? We have proven these last six months that differences between people can be a good thing—”
“You don’t know much about the differences between us, because there are a million things about me I haven’t told you. I used to love to play the very kinds of games you’re talking about. On those apps and in real life.” He gestured at the phone on the floor. “And I didn’t stop when I went to work in the morning. My boss, my co-workers—everyone played, everyone fucked around.”
“Fucked around?”
“Yes. To put it plainly. Had sex. Or joked about having sex. Or gossiped about other people having sex. The show—the TV show we were making—it was about sex too. And for a while, I was kind of in heaven.” His smile is bleak. “Because I loved sex. I loved to party.”
“But then you didn’t love it?”
He shakes his head. “People got hurt. People didn’t listen to each other. Or, um, in my boss’s case, didn’t care about listening.”
“Were you…one of the people who got hurt?”
Another head shake. His throat works as though he can’t swallow. “No,” he says in a raspy voice. “Not really. But after three years of working there, I knew others were possibly being hurt. And I had one friend who definitely got hurt.”
“And this is why you quit that job?”
He makes a noise that sounds like despair. “I was fired. Although, not really in a formal way. My boss managed to blur lines even with letting me go. He gradually gave all my duties to other people. In the end, I just sat around and felt hopeless.”
“But you tried to put a stop to it—told them they were assholes?”
“God, I wish, Mar.” He rubs his jaw hard with his fist. “I wish I’d been noble and had done the right thing. That I’d been fucking brave. But, no. I was a wreck. Confused all the time. I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything at all.”
I shake my head. I can’t picture this. Pete backing down from a mess? Pete not telling someone when they needed to “get their fucking shit together”?
“When I moved back to Chicago,” he says, “I knew I needed to find a job where there were rules, guidelines. So the rules I made when I started working here—they were mostly to help me. To keep me on task. I wanted to do a good job and have it matter.”
“And also…” I clear my throat. “You probably wanted to find a job where sex and partying weren’t likely to happen. So when you saw the opening to work for an el-dorko astrophysics professor, you were pleased.” The tightness in my chest pulls tighter, even as my lips curve into a small smile.
There’s a flicker of bright blue in his eyes as they meet mine. “I jumped on it,” he says. “And I’m awful fucking glad I did, Mar. For reasons I didn’t expect. No matter what happens, you’ll always be my friend.”
I don’t like the way those words sound so final.
My instinct is to ask a thousand more questions. But I ignore my instincts. I don’t want to pressure him. I need to show him and not tell him I’m for real about this idea of being with him. He needs time, space.
“I am an idiot for pushing.” I stand. “Pushing you to say things before you’re ready. Please. Please, don’t be sad. I would never judge. I have disappointed myself, and others, in the past too. These are things I never want to talk about, never want to remember.”
He nods.
“What shall we do now?” I ask. “Do you want to be alone? Do you want to study?”
“I want to…” He swallows, takes a deep breath. “God, I don’t know what I want. I want to talk to you about a bunch of shit, but I can’t. Not right now. And I want to keep kissing you, but there are so many things standing in the way and I need to get them out of the way, but I’m not sure how to do that…”
“Maybe we could concentrate on what’s possible and practical for tonight. Maybe not everything needs to be examined or parsed or figured out right this moment.”
“Are you suggesting we ignore entire chunks of important data, Professor?”
“If it leads to kissing, yes.”
He’s affirmed my hopes that he wants something more, but I’m still in unknown territory—the data at my lab doesn’t have emotions; it never seems miserable. I think about this for a couple moments. Every problem has a solution.
“This is a paradox, maybe?” I suggest. “Because you are the best person I know when it comes to conquering messes. You beat up on messes—I have witnessed you being bad-ass many times. Maybe you need to take the same approach to the messes you feel in your heart or your head?”
I take his hand. It’s damp, and I press it against my shirt, right over where my heart’s beating hard. I say, “I know you think I suck at messes and so maybe hearing this from me is no good. But I am good at taking problems that seem unsolvable and making them clear. Sometimes it takes me a while, but I don’t ever give up.”
“I know. I know you don’t give up.” He smiles. And if I were to say this out loud to him, or to Zoe or to anyone who knew me, they would laugh and make fun of me—but I swear his smile is an actual rainbow, a curving arch of color shining through his tears. He doesn’t try to pull his hand away from where I hold it.
He looks at me with serious eyes and says, “I don’t think solving me is a thing you can actually do.”
“I want to help you. Tackle messes together, you see?”
He nods, but his teeth are making more dents in his lip. “Okay,” he says finally. “But, Mar? If I become part of your, um, data set, you have to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“We have to go super, super slow. We need to talk about anything we do together—set agendas like you do every day in your lab, maybe. And I’ll agree to it if—only if—you agree I will be only one small part of your data set.” He laughs without humor. “Because if you use me as your only source of research, you’ll end up with truly fucked-up results.”
“Okay,” I agree quickly, taking a big breath. He isn’t saying no. He isn’t shutting me down. My heart is full of hope, but I’ve done more pushing than is wise tonight, and I have plans for how to make it up to him.
“Here’s what we will do,” I tell him, capturing his other hand. “We
will—”
“This plan better not involve glitches, or pretending stuff between us didn’t happen. I used to think I was good at pretending, but it turns out I’m not.”
“I don’t want to pretend,” I say. “About anything. So I will admit that the kissing we are about to do may not be the best you’ve ever had. And if you feel tired after, I might let you take a power nap that lasts more than twenty minutes, because I believe sleep is valuable. But I will honestly say—no pretending—that after the nap, I will help you understand statistics well enough so that you can earn at least an A-minus on your exam tomorrow.”
“Um…”
I smile. He’s going to have trouble deciding which item to respond to.
“An A-minus. For real?”
“Yes.” I keep hold of his right hand and walk to the refrigerator. I open one of the giant doors and then reach for the cheese platter on the counter. After putting it on one of the shelves, I shut the door and lead Pete to his room.
I’m being bolder than I feel, opening his door and walking in.
But I’ve made a plan, and now I have to follow through.
Pete
I want to be held. A lot. I want it a lot. And I want a lot of holding. Greedy, that’s me.
I’m not one of those poor people who’d been starved for touch or affection as a kid. My mom was a snuggler. There’d never been any lack of hugging or kissing or holding when I’d been growing up. And, in junior high and high school, my best friend, Nick, and I had been affectionate—holding hands, hugging, sharing a bed or a couch or a chair when we’d watched movies or gamed together. Weirdly, it was when I’d started having lots of sex with lots of guys that I’d started to feel lonely in a physical sense.
Maybe it wasn’t so weird. I’d had to build up quite a few protective layers to be free with my body. Getting off had been one thing, but sharing myself was something else. “Exposure” took on a new meaning. Over time, the layers had built and built—got so thick I hadn’t been sure what sharing myself felt like anymore.
As Marek leads me to my bed and gently pushes me down onto my flowery comforter, that’s kinda how I feel—like I’m coming out of a cocoon I’d made for myself over the past couple years. Exposing my neediness, my vulnerability.
He sits next to me, his long legs and pointy knees making my jersey-covered legs seem stubby. “Marek,” I whisper as he turns and grips the bottom of my fleece.
“What?”
“I think we should keep it strictly to kissing tonight, okay? Maybe make out just a little. No real sex until we figure out shit. New rules and whatever. The expanding-your-data-set thing needs some more discussion, and so we should—”
He pulls the fleece over my head. The thick, nubby fabric clings to my T-shirt and both shirts come off together. I blink at him as he drops them to the floor.
He says, “Kissing. Making out. Those two things. Tonight.”
I laugh softly. I can see tables and formulas and projected outcomes forming in his head. “Check and check.”
“I am a Czech.” His mouth twists into a smile. “A nerdy one.”
My heart wrenches. I want to tell him he’s my Czech. My nerd.
His button-down is already gone. When had that happened? And now he’s whipping off his undershirt, tousling his new haircut in all kinds of sexy ways he can’t possibly be aware of. He adds another layer to the shirt pile he’s built on the floor.
His eyes glow in gorgeous shades of sea and sky as his gaze sweeps over the parts of me he’s uncovered. He takes me in his arms and immediately begins to press kisses—eager kisses, bold but soft—along the left side of my neck.
Goose bumps erupt as he makes his way up to my ear. Shivers happen as he retraces his path back to my shoulder. “Pete…” Every exhalation is my name.
My fingers are fisted tightly on the bed, but when he starts another kissing run, this time along my jaw and with hot little licks of his tongue, my hands spring into slingshot-worthy action. I clasp his shoulders and let my head fall back as he goes after my throat.
“So good here. And here.” Nibbles over my Adam’s apple. Licks too. “You taste very—”
“Mmm.” I don’t hear the rest of his sentence. My eyes flutter shut. I can only handle one sense at a time, apparently. Touch.
I spread my fingers, feeling the bony points of his shoulders, molding my palms over warm, silky skin. Then…up. That neck of his, the elegant muscles. Oh God. My mouth waters, my tongue and teeth and lips aching to taste, to bite.
But I can only do so much at once. He’s kissing my collarbone now. My needy fingers find their way into his hair—the short, satiny stuff over his ears, the thick waves at his crown. Delicious-feeling shudders erupt along his upper half as I use my fingernails to trace and explore.
He pulls back to look at me, breathing hard, his hand clutching my waist tightly. My hands fall to his shoulders. We’re sitting side by side on the edge of the mattress, our torsos twisting so we can face each other. The bedside lamp is on, but the rest of the room is shadowed. The spinning sensation is back. For all I know the townhouse is sitting sedately on Blackstone Avenue, but Marek and I are up in the sky, twirling toward the lake.
“Now we can—we should—lie down. That would fall under the, um, making-out category. Yes?”
His accent is very thick. He’s intensely into this. It makes my heart thump against my ribs. “Yes.” I fall back against the bed and take him with me. I get the wide-eyed, whoa look as I tug and prod until he’s on top of me, my legs spreading so I can cradle him right where I want him. I shove my fingers into his hair and smile up at him.
“I like these moves of yours.” His return smile is another cute, crooked one.
“Mmm. If you like ’em so much, you can show your appreciation by kissing me. Just kissing. Nothing else.”
He must really like my moves, because the kiss he lays on my lips is so fricking intense and enthusiastic and amazeballs that I—once the most fun boy in WeHo for two years running—can barely keep up.
I’ve fantasized about kissing him a lot, and, for once in my life, I’ve had plenty of time to mull over how it might feel to hook up with someone before the hooking happens.
But, damn, this isn’t like any fantasy I’ve had about him at all. In my dreams, I’ve been the one in charge. In reality, I’m too worked up to do a damn thing except lie back and take it.
Every time I manage to register a new Mar-kissing-fact, he switches things up.
His flavor is earthy but complex—like the basic Budweiser he likes to drink has gone somewhere fancy for dinner and has been paired with a scrumptious appetizer made of melt-in-your-mouth pastry and thirty-dollar-a-pound cheese.
No time to analyze. Exploring his mouth with my tongue takes an abrupt back seat to the feel of his teeth nibbling on my bottom lip. Then the nibbling immediately switches to short, lip-centric kisses, kisses that give opportunities for him to breathe short words like “Pete” and “glag” and “miláček.”
The dark whiskers over his top lip, along his jaw, covering his chin—I find out they’re much softer than they look. Not bristly at all. I’d been thinking push broom, but they’re more like the soft whisk brush that came with my small-sized dustpan.
And if my mouth wasn’t occupied, I would laugh at myself, because, God, the thoughts rushing through my head are crazy.
He pulls back suddenly—he has a habit of doing this—and looks down at me. “Can I kiss your nipples?” he asks in his deep, serious voice.
“Um. Sure?”
He pulls back a little more, frowns—dark brows coming together—and then sits. His eyes narrow, his whole posture and expression becoming analytical. I squirm. My dick is aching inside and outside and every which way, sending needy throbs to every cell, demanding they all get together and grab the friction I fucking need now.
“Mar,” I say. “Just do it. In-depth surveys or analyses are not necessary. I am so fricking easy.”
&nbs
p; “Analysis is always necessary.”
I laugh because there isn’t even a touch of teasing in his tone.
He bends, slowly, slowly. Gives my right nipple a breathy, tip-of-the-tongue taste. My dick doesn’t appreciate his slow, careful approach, but I’m pretty sure my nipples do. They’re hard as stone now, the pink skin surrounding them pebbling into jabby little points, all the skin in the area wanting to get closer to Mar’s mouth.
I give his shoulders, his neck, his head encouraging strokes and nudges, but he’s concentrating so hard—giving each nipple the same thorough exploration—I’m not sure he can even feel my touches.
“Hey,” I whisper. “Sucking might be nice? I mean, um, it would be okay if you got a little bit more rough there.”
He pulls back, but he doesn’t meet my eyes. He’s examining his handiwork, his short, sharp breaths raining more hot, sweet torture on my skin. “Hmm. I don’t know if actual nipple-sucking falls into the making-out category, Pete. I will have to do some research.”
My breath seizes as he begins to fumble around in his pocket. For his phone? He’s actually gonna do research now? I tug on his arm. “Marek—”
He flexes his fingers and shoots me a look. There’s the tiniest hint of a twinkle in his eyes. His lips twitch.
“Fucker,” I say, gripping him harder, pulling him toward me again.
He laughs. “Not a fucker. At least not tonight. Rules we both agreed on, right?” I nod and then he says, “I have an understanding of what making out is, pusinko. And so you will let me take charge, okay?”
“Okay.” As my hands cling and the kisses continue, I realize maybe Mar’s interpretation is fine. Better than fine. These kinds of careful, intense touches, these passion-filled kisses feel brand new. Happy.
“I’ve been waiting to do this for so long,” he says more than once. And I’d known this was true in my heart, but feeling the results of his waiting and hearing the sounds in his raspy voice and his hitched breaths—it makes it all scary-real.