Professor Adorkable

by Edie Danford

  I’ve been expecting the question—the tat is bright and noticeable—and so I have an answer prepared.

  “Pete?” he asks. “Why is there a red balloon tattooed on your pelvis?” The kisses he’s pressing all around it—my skin is particularly tender there—make me shiver and hold my breath.

  “It’s a reminder,” I say, exhaling.

  His tongue darts out to test the skin a couple inches away from the right edge of the balloon—the base of my cock. I haven’t waxed there in months, but the hair seems to please him.

  “Yes.” He smiles up at me. “It is a statement. But I wonder if you could…interpret?”

  “Um.” His tongue begins making circles around my shaft, spiraling upward very slowly. I don’t feel up to interpreting, apparently, because what comes out of my mouth is, “God, that feels good.”

  “Tastes good too.”

  He tips me toward his mouth, takes the shiny head of my dick between his lips, and sucks. He has an inside track to all my nerve endings, making the response to hot, wet pressure seem like the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life.

  My hands are on his head, ready to encourage him to take more, when he stops. A distinct, popping sound echoes in the alcove as he pulls off. Loud, but not quite as loud as a balloon pop.

  “Is it a secret?” he asks softly.

  I shake my head.

  “No? Not a symbol of your desire to be a balloon peddler, or a circus man. A…clown?”

  I shudder. “God, no. Nothing like that.” I try to give him a smile.

  He’d been on his knees, but something in my eyes must worry him, because he suddenly sprawls beside me, propping his head on his hand so he can look down at my face, tracing the tattoo gently with one fingertip. His eyes are warm and clear.

  And now the moment has arrived, I can’t remember the answer I’ve come up with—a generic version of the truth. So I blurt the first thing that comes into my head. “My mom—she’s a movie buff.”

  “Yes,” he says. “You’ve told me. I want to meet her.”

  “She’d like to meet you.” I clear my throat. “Anyway, one of the movies she showed me when I was kid—God, really young, maybe five or six?—became one of my favorites. I watched it every year. It’s a French film that won all kinds of awards. A classic from the 1950s. The Red Balloon. Maybe you’ve seen it?”

  “No. You will show it to me sometime?”

  “Sure. Um, so in the movie a little boy finds a red balloon. It becomes his friend, in a way. Magic. It follows him around—to school, to shops, to his home. But then he loses it—loses the magic, loses his friend. And bad shit happens. But he doesn’t give up, doesn’t give up hope. And in the end something wonderful happens.”

  “What?” His eyes are wide—he really wants to know.

  I smile some more. “I don’t want to give the ending away.”

  “And so you got this balloon tattooed onto your skin because it made you think of happiness?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe? I got it when…” My voice cracks. I try again. “I got it right after I moved back to Chicago. I was unhappy. And I couldn’t imagine ever being happy again, really. And so…the balloon is a reminder for me that happiness is out there somewhere. And that if the dreams I’ve been following suddenly pop and disappear, I have to trust I’ll find new dreams. The red balloon—it’s like an idea you carry with you, in your heart.”

  I blink up at him, trying not to let him see the tears that are about to come busting out.

  “Pete,” he whispers. He eases his body over mine. I cradle him between my thighs, welcoming him. He cups my cheeks and places a kiss on my lips that is so, so, so tender.

  I don’t want to hear the promises—heartfelt and full of aching truth—that I know he wants to make me. I tangle my fingers in his hair and deepen the kiss. Make it more than deep. I make it desperate. I writhe and thrust my hips, jabbing my hard dick against his.

  “What do you need, pusinko?” he asks, coming up for air. He wraps his hand around us both, stroking with a rhythm he’s learned ridiculously fast. Shouldn’t be surprised. My genius is a genius, after all.

  “I know there are other things on the agenda,” I say. “But I want you inside me again. I want to feel you that way.”

  “Yes.” He kisses me. “Of course, yes.” More kisses. “I want that too.”

  He reaches down to the floor where I’ve thankfully left the lube and condoms.

  We help each other with prep. He finds my sweet spot, and the way he explores and manipulates so curiously, so enthusiastically, feels so fucking good that I arch my neck and let out a long, loud groan, a sound that might’ve been his name.

  “Oh fuck,” he murmurs. His finger slides out and he falls onto his back.

  “What?” I ask, panicking, running my hands over his chest. “Does something hurt?”

  He presses the heel of his hand down hard on the base of his cock. “That sound you made…the way you looked. Almost came.”

  I stroke the spot over his thumping heart. I’ve never had such a responsive lover. I mean, sure, I’ve lived through and delivered plenty of fumbling, mistimed jizz-i-dents. But I’ve never had a guy who cares so damn much, thinks about it all so intensely. It’s sexy as fuck.

  “Try to think about something boring for a few seconds.” I coax him back on top of me.

  “These seconds we are having right now are too exciting. It’s impossible to contemplate boring shit.” He braces himself above me. I adore the annoyed look on his face. Marek never, ever gets bored—his brain won’t let him.

  “How about…” My breath gets stuck when he uses the head of his dick to smooth a forgotten blob of lube from my ass cheek to my hole. “Statistics?”

  His laugh cuts off abruptly as I reach down and take hold of his shaft, showing him where I want him and what I want him to do.

  He eases inside slowly, slowly. We’re looking into each other’s eyes, watching our reactions. It’s hot and it’s intimate and it’s almost too much. I feel another lump form in my throat.

  When he’s all the way inside me, I wrap him up tight, my heels digging into his back, my arms crushing his shoulders.

  He starts to move. And he laughs again. “You are such a joker.”

  “Me?” I arch my neck once more, so he can nibble on it.

  “Yes. You know damn well that statistics are exciting…” He gives a punctuating thrust. “And stimulating.”

  “Mmm.” He tries for a new angle, and I gasp.

  “I love it so fucking much when you make that sound.”

  “Make me make it again.”

  He does. Over and over.

  “I’m gonna come,” I groan.

  “Do you want to come yet, pusinko?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  He bends and, after placing a luscious kiss on my lips, he moves his mouth to my ear. And begins to whisper. Theorems. Formulas. Stuff from Chapter Three. And Chapter Four. His method might’ve worked, except I start to giggle. And he starts to laugh too, and the jiggling motions of his dick inside me and our bellies shaking against my too-primed dick send me over.

  “Fuck! Marek!”

  He shudders and groans, coming with me. I find his mouth with mine and we kiss our way through the last hip grinds, the last pulses.

  “See?” he breathes. He licks a drop of sweat from my temple.

  “Mmm.” I close my eyes. He’s going to make a joke, but I’m too blissed out to appreciate it properly.

  “Statistics are very, very exciting.”

  “Mmm,” I repeat.

  He pulls out of me with another laugh. My eyelids close and he kisses them gently before I feel him get off the bed. I get a kiss on the mouth when he comes back. And a warm washcloth too.

  I clean us up, without my usual enthusiasm for cleaning.

  “Next agenda item,” he says as he takes me in his arms and pulls the comforter over us.

  I make a sound that’s more of
a laugh than a groan.

  “A nap.”

  “Seconded and filed,” I mutter, nuzzling his neck.

  Marek

  Pete’s phone is chirping from somewhere in his room. I’m not getting out of this bed to find it. And neither is he. His arms tighten on me, and I hug him impossibly closer. We are having our second nap of the day. This pleases me because it means he’s relaxed and in a good place. And it means I’m doing an excellent job of wearing him out.

  The phone stops chirping, and I close my eyes. When I open them again, the light has changed. I squint at the space beyond the window. The surrounding buildings are all three or four stories and the only time there’s bright-ish light in the small yard is late morning and early afternoon. I don’t really like living in the city—it’s gray and dark, and, as Pete says, January gives everything a case of the dismal dulls.

  But today I’m holding brightness in my arms. Pete would laugh if he knew I was feeling inspired to compose dorky poems about cosmic rays and starshine and fractals. Or, alternatively, to sing a song like “You are My Sunshine.” (I know the song well, because it’s one of the few tunes Zoe can play well on the ukulele. I’ve suffered through many YouTube listens of that particular lesson.)

  I smile. Pete would pretend to be annoyed by poems and songs I sang to him, maybe. But secretly… I press my lips to his fragrant hair. Secretly, he loves that kind of stuff. The sillier, the more romantic, the better. A good thing, because he inspires those sorts of feelings in me, and I can’t seem to control them when he’s near.

  I’m glad he’s told me about his tattoo. It’s the first time he’s shown me that part of himself—the part I’ve suspected is still caught up in a painful past. And it’s telling, because it showed me something else I’ve long suspected. Pete is an optimist. Pete’s heart is waiting to be lifted, it’s ready and open to…magic.

  And what could be more magic than love? This thing we’ve been immersed in all day.

  I’m thinking about new items to add to today’s agenda—and longer term agendas I can possibly implement for the coming week—when a bell chimes from somewhere in the house.

  I hold my breath, listening. It’s unfamiliar. Not the timer on the oven. Not the fridge. Not my phone. Where is my phone, anyway?

  Maybe it’s the doorbell. This place has a doorbell, right? Has anyone ever rung it before? I look down at Pete. Still asleep. His lips are parted and the tender skin there depresses slightly with each exhalation. I want to bend down and feel that flutter of breath on my own lips.

  But the bell is insistent. Pete obviously needs more sleep and I don’t want it to wake him. I extract myself carefully from the bed and find sweatpants. After putting them on—they appear to be mine—I head through the kitchen and down the front hall toward the ringing bell.

  There are narrow panes of leaded glass on either side of the front door, but they don’t reveal the entire front stoop. I won’t be able to see the bell-ringer unless I press my nose to the glass and do some fancy contorting. I look through the peephole instead.

  Shit. I step back, take a breath, look again. Uncle Jakub.

  Questions crash through my still-sleepy brain, waking every neuron with a storm of oh-fuck-not-now’s. Why is he here? He’s supposed to be in Prague for another week, isn’t he? Should I run to wake up Pete? Should I put on more clothes? Should I pretend I’m not home?

  The ringing stops. I’m debating which way to go—back to Pete’s room or upstairs for more clothes—when the door’s locking mechanism clicks.

  I take two steps back, then I stand frozen, watching the bolt turn. The door pushes open. My uncle enters.

  His gaze fixes on me, and his eyebrows—thick, black brows that my father always called “Jakub’s caterpillars”—crash over the bridge of his nose. My cheeks get hot, and I have to stifle the moan that his stern appearance draws from my chest.

  “Marek. Is everything all right? I’ve been texting, calling, ringing. Both you and Peter.”

  I wrap my arms around myself, wishing I’d pulled on a shirt or a sweater. My hair follicles and my nipples are painfully erect in the cool air. Sweat forms along my hairline. And I become very aware of the slight burn of abrasions on my neck and shoulder. Kiss marks. Love marks. Signs that proudly proclaim, Pete was here.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Everything is fine. I’ve been…asleep.”

  The caterpillars zip apart and jump high. “All day?”

  “Um…yes. I was up for much of the night.”

  “Are you ill?” He unbuttons his coat, hands me his hat.

  “No, no. Just working.” This isn’t such a good lie. His gaze fixes on my bare chest.

  “Where is Peter?” He slides his big shoulders from his coat and hands me that too.

  My panicky mind focuses on the items I hold in my hands. Black, finely woven wool. Smooth cashmere.

  “Marek?” my uncle prompts. “Is Peter working today?”

  “It’s his day off,” I blurt. I begin to explain more, but I bite down on the words.

  I’ve made it sound like Pete isn’t actually here in the townhouse. Maybe that’s for the best? It will avoid contentiousness, and things I’m not sure Pete and I are prepared to “go public” with yet.

  My uncle can be difficult and I want to approach the topic of my relationship with Pete with caution. I don’t want to fuck up. Not like I’d done in Palo Alto when Jakub had seen the brutal evidence of my bad decisions.

  On the surface of things, my choice to be with Pete likely does look bad. Jakub will think it poor judgment to fall in love with the gorgeous, exuberant twenty-three-year-old he’s hired to be my housekeeper.

  So I need to line up ideas. Make a case. Create a foundation for good results. I can’t do this impromptu, standing half-naked in the hall. Can I?

  “Well, then.” Jakub clears his throat loudly. “You know where the tea things are, I hope? I am frozen from standing out there for several minutes waiting.”

  “Sorry. Yes. Tea.” Oh fuck. It would be best to avoid the kitchen. “Why don’t you have a seat in the parlor and I can—”

  “Kitchen is fine.” He brushes past me and heads down the hall. I scowl at his back. And I scowl at myself. What is it about Jakub that makes me so nervous? I mean, other than the fact that he’s much taller than me, much heavier than me, much frown-ier than me, and has seen me at my worst on many occasions?

  Not for the first time I wish I wasn’t a so-called “genius.”

  If I’d been an average boy, with average interests, my parents would be the people I’d turn to for advice. But Jakub is the only member of my family who has a college degree and who understands the world of academia. He has many degrees, in fact. He’s the only family member who has widely traveled, the only one who speaks a language other than Czech.

  Jakub is, as my old science teacher put it, “a worldly and formidable man.” So when it became obvious that I needed schools and teachers beyond what my small hometown offered, my parents had gratefully accepted Jakub’s help. And I’d been very grateful for his guidance when I’d moved to Prague, to Zurich, and then to the States.

  He is smart, yes, but I’m not twelve anymore. Or eighteen. Or twenty. And I need to remember my uncle is only a man. His advice about my personal life is only advice. I do not have to take it. As Pete would say, I need to grow a pair where Jakub is concerned.

  I take a big breath and follow him. And then, remembering I’ve left Pete’s door open, I run. I sort of crash into Jakub as he stops at the kitchen island to scowl at two plates full of crumbs.

  “What?” he sputters as he leans heavily against the marble counter, avoiding me.

  I toss his coat and hat on a stool on my way to Pete’s room. “Getting my sweater,” I say.

  “In Peter’s room?”

  I pause. Try to put a serene look on my face. “Yes. He likes to sort the laundry there. Fold and whatever. In his space. Where he’s comfortable.”

  Jakub’s gaz
e sweeps over me. It makes sense his eyes are earth-brown since his eyebrows are so caterpillar-like. Today the earth color seems darker than usual. Muddy.

  “Fine, fine,” he says. “I will start the kettle.”

  I slip into Pete’s room, pulling the door closed behind me in a way that I hope seems casual.

  Pete is sitting up in bed, his naked body half-covered by the comforter. “What’s going on?” He rubs his sleepy-looking eyes.

  I rush over to the bedside and whisper, “My uncle is here. I will get rid of him.”

  “Um…” He looks confused. This is understandable.

  “I don’t want to talk with him,” I explain, still whispering. “Not about us being together. Not right now. Not today. He doesn’t think you’re here and maybe that’s for the best. At the moment.”

  The confused look is replaced by something shadowy, harder to read. “Okay,” he says slowly. “So you’re saying you want me to stay in here? Like, pretend that I’m not home or something.”

  I smile in relief. “Yes. That would be perfect.”

  I begin looking around for my sweater. The room is very tidy. There are no stray items of clothing. Except for the flannel pants I’d torn off Pete earlier.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A shirt.”

  “You never put one on after our second bath.”

  “Could I wear one of yours?”

  “Not sure anything will fit. A T-shirt, maybe?” He stands and goes to the clothes chest.

  There’s a fingerprint-shaped mark on his left ass cheek, rosy-brown. Kiss-colored. I swallow hard. Why, why, why has my uncle shown up today?

  “Anything is fine,” I whisper.

  “Marek?” Jakub’s voice booms from the other side of the door. “What is taking so long in there?”

  “Nothing!”

  Pete frowns as he hands me a T-shirt. “Don’t act nervous,” he whispers. “This is your house, remember? If you want to go shower, go shower. If you want to have tea or coffee at the Medici or Quad Club, have it there.”

  I nod. “Right. Good idea.”

  “I’ll very quietly go hang out in the bathroom.” His mouth firms into a white line and his skin has a fragile-looking, gray tinge, like the brittle remnants of snow visible through the window behind him. Not the warm, sunshine-rayed Pete I’ve spent the day with.