“And she still wants to meet you? That is incredible.”
“Tell me about it.”
*
Where are you?
By the window.
Keith surveys the little bistro. Only a dozen tables fill the small space, but two sides of the little corner restaurant are nothing but window, flashing bright with the lights of the cars passing on the busy street beyond. Every ticking second echoes in his chest. Five minutes going on ten too late, and each one exponentially increasing his desire to just go home and forget it. He sends another text before looking over the tables again:
Bluebird on 6th and Broadway right?
Young couple on a date. Old couple on a date. Guy sitting alone, tapping on his phone. Woman sitting alone, but definitely not Marie. A sudden snare jerks his stomach tight. Maybe this is all a bad joke. A really fucking bad joke. Maybe his shaggy dark hair is really just a mess and his body not lean but unattractively skinny. Maybe he is, as Sarah once informed him, crap at dressing himself beyond jeans and a hoodie. Maybe he should have never downloaded Firebrand, and maybe he should never have moved here at all. Maybe—
His phone blinks.
I’m here! I’ll stand up.
A chair grinds against the floor a few feet away, and Keith looks up from the screen. Beside the window, a young man stands with expectant eyes turned toward the restaurant. He shoves a hand nervously through his ruddy hair and checks his phone, cradled in his palm.
Keith nearly drops his own when he sees another new message.
Do you see me?
Or maybe Sarah was right about more than Keith’s clothing choices, and he’s actually been catfished.
Shit.
Their eyes meet. The man-who-isn’t-Marie has freckles and a crooked smile. His collared shirt, beneath a woolen sweater, is recently pressed. They mirror each other’s slack surprise as the restaurant seems to fade away. With a tilt of his head and amusement on his lips, the redhead taps against his phone again.
Hi.
“Fuck,” Keith whispers, shoving a hand through his hair. “I mean, not fuck, I—”
“No, I agree,” the man says with a weak laugh. “I thought you might look different from your picture, but I wasn’t expecting this.”
Keith’s throat clicks, and he finally lets his phone slip heavy into his pocket. “Look,” he manages, “I don’t know what kind of game this is, but I’m not—”
“Cara.”
“Cara?”
“You’re not Cara.”
“Who is Cara?”
“The woman I’ve been texting with for the last week and a half,” the man says, raising a brow.
“And you’re not Marie.” Keith sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and holds it for a moment, releasing it with a failing laugh. “Are you?”
“Not last time I checked. Let’s start over. Hi, I’m Alex,” he says, extending his hand. “Who are you?”
“Keith,” he says, allowing a brisk shake. When the room starts to swerve, he takes the chair across from Alex and sits on its edge. “So, you’re not Marie.”
“Is that who you’ve been texting?”
“I thought so. But you’re not Marie.”
“Still no, not even after the third time asking,” Alex says, his nose wrinkling a little when he smiles. He settles back into his chair with his long arms draped across the back. Blowing a sigh toward the ceiling, he laughs, darkly delighted. “I see what’s happened.”
“Do you? Because it looks to me like you were faking a profile.”
“Like I don’t have better things to do,” Alex replies. “You should read the news more, you wouldn’t look so lost.”
“I try to avoid it.”
“I know, you’ve said. You should consider this the most extenuating of circumstances,” Alex says, accepting a menu from the waiter.
Keith looks away, pressing the backs of his fingers to his cheeks to cool away the blush there. He’s so hot, he’s sure he must be scarlet.
“Pull up ‘Firebrand hack’,” Alex tells him. “I’m going to get a drink. Do you want one?”
“I think I need one,” snorts Keith as he searches through his phone. “Whatever you’re having.” Keith hears Alex ordering a bottle of red wine as he searches the Internet. The spinning wheel on his screen disappears, replaced by bold headlines.
Pranksters Hack Firebrand—Firebrand Hack Paired Same-Sex Users—Dating App Firebrand Masked Users with Other Profiles
“Fuck,” Keith sighs again.
“You’re much more eloquent in text. No wonder you weren’t keen to use the phone.”
“I thought you were someone else.”
Alex’s smile widens a little. “I am,” he says with a grin, before lifting a hand to wave away the bad joke. “I’m exactly who I was then. I just don’t look like whatever selfie they showed you.”
“You’re also a dude.”
“Accurate,” Alex says. “Is that a problem?”
Keith shakes his head before he can stop himself, and he can’t help but wonder at the wisdom in immediate response. He meant to nod that yes—yes, this isn’t what he was looking for. This isn’t what he prefers. What he thinks he prefers. Because it should be a problem, shouldn’t it?
Outside of a couple of awkward, quickly ended fumblings in college, he’s had enough trouble trying to connect with one sex, let alone more than one. But the connection was there, over long nights and early morning meetings, flirtatious texts that weren’t bound to any particular body. The connection is still here as Keith feels himself blush from the lingering look that Alex gives him.
“Did you get a chance to watch that show?” Alex asks suddenly, as the waiter puts a bottle of red wine and two glasses on the table.
“Did I—”
“The one I told you about,” Alex says, tilting the wine into both their glasses.
“Yeah, I mean—yeah, it was great. How are you so calm right now?” he asks, his hands against the table and his voice dropping low. “Aren’t you upset?”
“I think it’s hilarious.”
“Hilarious.”
“I have to appreciate clever malware. They didn’t grab any personal information, and they didn’t compromise anything outside of our own presumptions. Besides, I’ve just spent a week and a half getting to know someone who, despite not looking quite like I expected, has had me attached to my phone like we were conjoined.”
Keith sucks in a breath and holds it, as if he might at least find depth in his lungs when the rest of him feels so shallow. Alex hadn’t deliberately deceived him. He wasn’t pretending to be someone else. And Marie hadn’t made Keith smile so hard his face ached.
It was Alex.
Alex who codes and binge-watches and loves a good argument. Alex with bright red hair and clever brown eyes and an easy smile. Alex who didn’t laugh and walk away but takes even this surprise in stride, in favor of staying for drinks. For dinner. For maybe more.
Screw appearing unavailable. Keith is nothing if not entirely available. “I don’t normally date,” he says, taking up his wine for a bolstering sip.
“Men, or ‘date’ as verb?”
“Both. Never the former, rarely the latter. Do you?”
“Almost never, anyone,” Alex answers. Keith watches as Alex rests his hand against his shoulder, fingers just beneath the pressed collar of his shirt, knuckles against his slender jaw. “It’s a pain trying to find a person who clicks. I try not to be picky about what body they inhabit when I find someone worth leaving the apartment for.”
Keith’s chest aches, a curious bruising sensation, as if his heart is too big for his ribs and trying to press its way free. All his earlier thoughts about how the night might go suddenly shift. He isn’t sure how the physical will play out, how it will feel to touch another body like his own rather than the soft curves he’d imagined. He isn’t sure how it will feel to kiss someone with a bit of stubble, or how it will feel to run his hand over furry thighs inst
ead of smooth.
He isn’t sure, but his stomach tightens pleasurably all the same, and none of that changes the fact that he still wants to spend time curled on the couch with the person who has already made his life so much more enjoyable just by lighting up the screen on his phone.
“Okay. We’re both engineers,” Keith finally says, and Alex nods. “And when we write something new, we don’t just release it out into the wild, right?”
“Right.”
“We test it.”
“Until we’re sick of looking at it,” agrees Alex with a grin.
“So before we commit,” Keith suggests with a shrug and a small smile, “maybe we should test.”
Alex glances around the bistro, and Keith does too, his tongue pressed between his lips. Small groups and couples speak low and laugh over the candles that provide pale light on each table. No one pays them any mind, all too busy making their own connections. Keith turns back to Alex, and when Alex leans forward, Keith does too.
Their mouths meet, almost chaste, as they hold a soft kiss above their glasses of wine. With the tang of red wine tannins sweet against their tongues, they deepen the kiss just enough to test their own coding, and when Alex breaks the kiss with a grin, Keith is smiling too.
“We should—”
Does he dare?
He does.
“Pay for the wine and ditch this place?” Keith offers.
Alex narrows his eyes, delighted. “Get take-out and watch a movie,” he counters.
“Or a series.”
“The entire thing,” Alex agrees, extending a finger to stroke down Keith’s fingers where they clasp the stem of his glass. “Or at least a season.”
“At least.”
“I already miss having emojis to reply with.” Alex laughs.
“It’s okay,” he says, curling his finger over Alex’s. “Now I can see you blush in person.”
Conversations with an Angel
Kevin Klehr
“He said your heart wants to protect the other person while your head tries to protect yourself.” Farnham stared at me as if I’d farted. “What’s the matter?”
“He said the same thing to me.”
“I guess it’s his token advice.”
Even with this curious look, he still was the man I wanted to share my life with. For six months, I’d found sanctuary each time I visited his one-bedroom apartment. It was always messy when I showed up, and, like a dutiful husband, I’d whip out the rag and the cleaning products I bought for him and get to work.
But it went with the territory. It was him, and he truly had me under his spell. And even though at first his weekend sleep-ins, his habit of buying gadgets he didn’t need, and his unbreakable pattern of always showing up an hour late to anything we’d planned irked me, in time they were the little quirks that made him who he was.
And let’s face it, when you wake next to someone who is clutching your naked body with their hand on your chest while you cushion their waist with your ass, you know there’s no use sweating the small stuff.
My phone rang. Farnham groaned, but not in a good way. “It’s her, isn’t it?” he asked.
I checked the screen. I nodded. “You know I have to answer.”
“No, Jamal, you don’t have to answer. Can’t you put that thing on silent?”
“It doesn’t matter. It stopped now.”
“But we both know it will ring again. Just wait five minutes. She’ll ring again!”
“Babe, do we have to?”
He stared through me as if I wasn’t there. Great start to the morning, I thought. Two people I love are going to be cross with me. I wiggled my ass against him.
“That’s not going to work, Jamal.”
“Isn’t it? It feels like it’s working.”
He grinned. “Smoke and mirrors. That’s your weapon, smoke and mirrors.”
I pushed back harder while I held my phone near his face, then with a master stroke of my thumb, switched it to silent mode. I placed it on the bedside table, turned to him, and planted the sloppiest kiss I could muster on his willing lips. He was mine, but more importantly, I had to show him I was his.
*
“I dare you not to look at that phone,” he said. His tone was half pleading, half demanding.
“Hun, I have to see what she wants.”
He gritted his teeth. With only one shoe on, I checked my phone. She’d left three messages in the last half hour, one saying I had chores to do around the house, one saying she needed to tell me something private, and the last informing me my brother hadn’t been home all night.
“I can already guess what your mother has texted,” Farnham said. His expression resembled that of a soldier who was losing the battle.
“At least she’s not claiming it’s a medical emergency.”
“She knows better than to try that trick again.”
He was right. My mom even got my dad to ring an ambulance the last time. The medics weren’t impressed when they were told to go back to their base because she suddenly felt better.
Farnham gazed at me, knowing I would soon leave. But I had to. Family was calling, and my job as the oldest son was to take responsibility for my siblings. Yes, I’d have a word to my brother when he got home. Yes, I’d turn the vacuum cleaner on or wash the bathtub or do whatever she expected me to do. And then I’d brew coffee so she could bitch about Dad like she always did.
“So what is it this time, Jamal? What excuse has she come up with to rip you from my arms?”
“I’ll come back this afternoon. Now don’t look at me like that. This afternoon, I promise!”
He sighed. “Is this a Jamal promise or a real promise?”
“Now don’t be like that, babe.”
“I’m serious. She’ll keep you there. She’s done it before. And I’ll sit here waiting for you to come back, only to get a text message or a very quick phone call saying you won’t be back, and you don’t know when we’ll see each other again. Come on, Jamal, it’s been six months. I know the drill.”
“Babe, it’s my brother. He hasn’t been home all night.”
“That’s because he’s out doing what you’re doing. But she’s not texting him—” My phone chimed. “Like I said, she’s not texting him ten times an hour because he’s out sleeping with a woman.” I glanced at my phone. He sighed again. “What does she say this time?”
“Same old, same old. Don’t worry about it, babe. She wants attention.”
“No, she wants your attention off me.”
“I have to go.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You just feel obliged to go.”
I wandered over, reached around, and caressed his back. I kissed his cheek several times as he kept his lips shut tight. So, I nestled my nose into his earlobe. He loosened up and half grinned. I brushed my lips against his. He kissed me, so I encouraged a longer embrace. Soon, he was rustling my hair and pressing his mouth to mine, and I was in a place where the world seemed normal.
*
Again I was dressing myself. The phone had chimed several more times while Farnham and I made love, but I told myself not to look until I was outside his apartment.
“Darl, I won’t be waiting for your return. I have things to do. Ring me if you’re definitely on your way back, and I’ll let you know where I am. And I mean ring me, don’t text.”
“I will be back, babe.”
“Only ring me if you are on your way back. If you’re not coming back, don’t contact me.”
“You’re serious.”
“Deadly serious. I’m learning not to wait for you.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry, Jamal, that’s just the way it is.”
We still kissed good-bye, but his severity haunted me as I made the journey home. And with his cutting words repeating like a broken record on my mind came the punch. That feeling in my gut that came with no physical contact, but boy, was it twisting me in knots.
> I parked to the side of the road. I had to think. In the past, only two other men came close to how I felt about Farnham. One was a two-month thing because we both realized I was more in love with his city views than with him. It still didn’t stop us seeing each other from time to time. We had more fun after the breakup than before. The other broke my heart. He said I was a rebound. I said I loved him. He said he was sorry for believing he loved me.
And Mom had a field day with that one. She said you can never trust men and listed off Dad’s faults for the umpteenth time. I replied that I thought we were talking about me. She answered that we were because she knew best.
With Farnham, I never expected more than just a bit of fun. But all he had to do was smile at me, and I’d slip into a daydream. Hearing his name by chance was better than a serenade from a thousand minstrels. And nights without him by my side hurt as if someone had cut off my conjoined twin in a botched operation.
A tear ran down my cheek. I didn’t know why. I turned the key and started the engine. Soon, I was back home with my accuser. She was washing plates and handing them to my brother, who was busy with a dishcloth.
“Mama, you said he wasn’t home!”
“He’s home now,” she replied. She gestured toward him like a prize on a quiz show. “He came home.”
“I came home from where?” my brother asked.
“Apparently I had to come home because she was worried about where you were.”
“You did? Sorry, bro. Were you with Farnham again?”
“Obviously. That’s why I have fifteen messages from Mama.”
“Don’t mention that boy’s name,” she said. “That goes for both of you, don’t mention his name.”
“Whose name? Farnham’s name? My boyfriend’s name?”
“No. No. No. I told you not to use the devil’s name.”
“Oh, he’s the devil now. What happened to the dirty temptress? At least that one was original.”
“I liked ‘the man who’ll sell your soul’,” my brother added. “That one was poetic, Ma.”
“What would your father say if he knew, Jamal? Think about that.”
“I’ll have to tell him at one stage,” I replied.
Men in Love: M/M Romance Page 10