Maybe tomorrow I would think about what I’d done to my own family and see if I could begin to make amends before I lost another chance. I made my way down the carpeted stairs into the kitchen.
I WAS just finishing up construction of a peanut butter sandwich by the light of the open refrigerator when I heard a noise outside. The clock above the sink glowing neon pegged the time at a quarter after two as I froze at the unmistakable sound of a key scraping a lock.
Using the refrigerator door as a shield to hide my near nakedness, I wondered who in the hell was letting themselves into my mom’s house at this hour.
The cold air and the milk jug pressed against my groin left me a little uncomfortable, but I pushed that aside at the appearance of Henry entering the kitchen backward, using his body to push the door open as he wrestled a large box inside.
“Need help?”
It almost made up for everything to witness Henry Keller shriek like a little girl, juggling his box to the ground.
And just like that, we were transported back to high school, Henry every inch the boy I knew back then. He was looking back at me standing in the refrigerator light, and the dam broke for both of us, a laughing release we desperately needed—a spring rain in the desert Danny’s death had made of our hearts.
It sent me sprawling on the kitchen floor and kept Henry on his knees, helpless in its grip. The refrigerator door slowly shut until, caught on my shaking foot, it hung open, quivering like a prudish aunt trying to avert her eyes from the spectacle we made.
I moved my foot away, and the light dimmed and then disappeared.
“Oh man….” Wiping tears from my eyes before they turned into the real thing, I crawled across to Henry, who remained kneeling, his shoulders shaking. I reached out to him, and he turned, face wet. Before I could stop myself, I did the one thing I had regretted not doing every day since I walked away—I took Henry’s face in my hands and gently kissed him.
I HAVE moments of bravado. Mostly I use my words to fight injustice, to engage in battle. But I have never been brave where Henry Keller is concerned.
With him, I’ve always been a coward. I’d given up everything I held dear, hiding two thousand miles away because staying near, watching him happy with someone else, was more than I could contemplate.
Danny’s death had shown me that the moments we have together are like wheat chaff clutched in one hand. If we stop to count the individual pieces, they’ll blow away. The only true choice is to hold tight and cherish what we have now and trust that it’s enough.
So having the love of my pathetic little life inches from me, face shining with grief and release, finally gave me the courage to take what I needed.
Into this first kiss I poured every moment I’d looked up at him across the plaid bedspread and algebra books with a want I was too young to understand; every afternoon spent watching his muscles flexing in the sunshine as he ran laps around the track; every time he’d stop what he was doing and just fix me in his gaze, covering me in the warmth of his friendship. I added every night that he’d visited my dreams and threw open the cupboard where I’d hidden all my fantasies of the two of us together.
And as I fed them all into the fire of my desire, the flames between us grew until I wasn’t sure it was only my passion I tasted.
Kneeling on my mom’s kitchen floor, moonlight slanting through the window, we became something greater than the sum of our collective grief and, in my case, individual love.
We rose together, still kissing, moving in short practiced steps, both of us having grown up as much in this house as any other, and found our way back to my room.
I was afraid to speak, afraid to destroy this moment, and it seemed like Henry felt the same—his eyes remained closed as he deepened his kiss, moving his tongue softly against mine.
I didn’t even care if he was thinking of Danny, so much a part of us anyway that I could forgive him this final time with the three of us together—having Henry’s hands on my body, smoothing the skin of my back with his warm fingers, made up for the intrusion of ghosts. I moved closer.
Henry was at an advantage here. I was virtually naked before he’d even arrived, yet as he held me, Henry continued to explore my mouth with a tender restraint that made my heart ache. I wanted him to abandon the care he always took with me, to stop thinking of me and to start wanting me. Like I wanted him. Like I’d always wanted him.
I slid the plastic buttons through their holes on his white oxford shirt, vaguely wondering where he’d been all day, still partially dressed from the funeral. I pushed it off his shoulder, grappled with his cuffs, and finally tossed it aside.
I could now press my skin against Henry’s, feel the heat between us, the fine hairs that grew sparsely down Henry’s abdomen from his navel. I followed them with my fingers under the waistband of his wool suit pants.
At some point Henry had toed off his shoes, so when I released the zipper on the trousers and let them fall in a pile around his feet, it was enough to slide my big toe along Henry’s ankle and catch the cuff of his sock, easing it down and off.
We had achieved parity of a sort—both stripped to our underwear, aroused, needy. I pushed Henry to the bed, finally breaking the lock I’d had on his lips, and I was brave again.
“Is this okay?”
I can only imagine what I looked like, lean and pale, leggy and hard. I look at old photos of the three of us sometimes and realize by the time we were finishing senior year, I’d achieved the majority of my growth—and I remained a close twin to my teenage self.
I felt inadequate in the face of Henry’s hard beauty. But the look I saw reflected back didn’t seem to find me wanting.
His only response was to grab my wrist and pull me close enough to drag me down on top of him, leaving me there only long enough to lever me onto my back, where the cop in him had me under control. Everything I’d been silently begging for seconds ago came to me under the onslaught of his mouth and teeth and tongue, laying waste to my defenses as he invaded the territories of my neck, my chest, my stomach.
He rolled the damp cotton away from my cock, and I gripped the edges of my virginal bed, shuddering from the sensation of his hot wet mouth covering my glans, sucking across the head of my penis, tongue dipping into my slit.
I had no control, no balance, so I let go and held on, running my fingers through Henry’s hair, thrusting into his mouth as he controlled me with his hand. Even with the restraint, I couldn’t delay my body’s race to the finish, convulsing in his arms. He pulled away, pressed his lips briefly against my side, before returning his mouth to set me free.
After I came—short hard spurts of ejaculate tearing me apart—Henry moved swiftly up the bed, cradling my head to kiss me deeply. I tasted myself, musky and sharp on his tongue, and wanted to burrow into him, to make a home there.
“Condom?” His whisper pulled me back to the practical, and I leaned over the edge of the bed, hooking a finger through the loop on my toiletries kit. I heaved it onto my chest and rummaged through it one-handed until I nodded permission at Henry’s silent request to take over. From his vantage point, straddling my hips, he found the new strip I’d tucked in at the last minute and continued pawing around. Unsuccessful, he dumped it back on the floor.
“Lube?”
The request provoked my first blush since freshman gym.
I pointed to the nightstand with its box of Kleenex and my open travel-size bottle of lube, hoping he didn’t look into the wastebasket.
“Thinking of me?” His smile was easy—I don’t think he meant it seriously, just a small joke to keep any tension at bay before he gloved up. He obviously wasn’t expecting my face to go up in flames like it did.
“Oh, that’s so hot. Come here.” He rewarded me with a kiss so intense that it sent my body zinging, the slow grind that accompanied the assault on my mouth ramping me up once more. I was hard and panting, writhing beneath him, and all I could think about was finally having Henry in me�
�fulfilling the last of my unrealized dreams.
WE LAY pressed together in the last fading hour before dawn, Henry holding me within the frame of his arms. We were naked, spent. I’d stopped kidding myself that this was only grief sex two orgasms ago. Having Henry spread across my bed as I moved slowly in him was burned into every fiber of my being. Having Henry do the same to me made the etching permanent.
We hadn’t spoken words. Not really, not once since he landed on my floor. Certainly there were the bare minimums required by necessity, but we hadn’t laid Danny’s ghost to rest yet, and I could feel him hovering over us. I couldn’t decide if he was a vengeful spirit or if he was granting us sanctity over this union—no matter how brief it was doomed to be. In another eight hours, I would be on a flight heading back to Seattle.
And feeling Henry’s fingertips slowly rake furrows through my brown hair, I wondered how I’d be able to take a single step away from him, even knowing he was probably counting the ticking seconds from the grandfather clock, waiting for the right moment to slip away along with the night. I closed my eyes and stepped once more into the abyss.
“Why didn’t Lucy go to the funeral?” I whispered into a darkness broken only by the faint bluing outside my window.
Henry’s warm breath stirred my hair.
“Miriam blames me for Danny’s death. She thinks I could have done more to stop this latest downward spiral.” He hushed my protest. “She’s not wrong, J. I thought it was just one more example of Danny drama. I should have done more. And because my mother is… my mother, they fought. And Miriam asked her not to come. So out of respect, she waited until the service started before slipping into the back of the church. She was gone by the time you had your meltdown in the hall.”
I rolled into him, half climbing onto his chest so I could look into his eyes. Even in the low light, I could see glittering pain.
I thought back over the calls I’d gotten from Danny. There’d been a sharp decline starting about two months back. I wasn’t a genius like Henry, but even I could draw a line between two points as closely fixed as these, so I was blunt.
“Danny was avoiding me, and then two months later he kills himself. Something happened to make Mrs. Anderson blame you and ruin a friendship she’s had with your family for over thirty years. Is that about right?”
Henry grunted—something between assent and dismissal—and I continued to think out loud.
“The only time you fought with Danny was when I was—” I stopped; Henry had physically shrunk back as my words spilled out. “—involved.”
The silence was terrifying. No denial came, no reassuring words, no snort of derision, nothing to cue me onto the right path.
Henry was up and rapidly dressing. Spooked.
“This is about me? Are you telling me that Danny offed himself because of me?” Holy fuck.
“That’s quite a leap, J. It was never about you—this is all on Danny. If you’d been around more, you’d understand that…. You were right—the things you said at his service. Danny had been stuffing himself in this tiny box of a town trying to be the stand-up guy for his mom. Ever since you left for school in Washington, Danny had plans for us to follow you. He knew you’d never come back here—why would you? Everything you’d tell him about your life…. He dreamed of us being there with you. And then his dad died and he was stuck.” Henry sat back down at the edge of my bed, sock dangling in his hand. “Look, Aggie came over to see me after I dropped you off.” He paused, looking for words. “She wanted to know what happened to you. She said she was tired of waiting for you to let her back into your life, and she wanted me to fix it. She’s afraid that when you leave, she’ll never see you again. Is she right, J?”
I’d been prepared for a lot of things, but hurting my sister hadn’t been part of the plan. I lay on my bed and closed my eyes as Henry stood up.
This had been a mistake, and I prayed to hear the sound of a door closing, even if I didn’t have the heart to watch him. But instead of the door, I heard his voice rumble. I didn’t have to look up to know that he was still there, leaning against my doorjamb. “Aggie told me something else—she said she knew I was grieving for the loss of my partner.”
“Old news.” I sat up.
“I corrected her—I said, ‘you mean best friend,’ and she just shook her head. Said that I didn’t have to hide with her… that it was understandable that I would be in shock after losing my lover ‘that way,’ which is odd, since there hasn’t been anyone I’d classify as a ‘lover’ in years. She could only mean Danny, and it made me curious as to what you thought.” I felt the bed dip, and his words ripped a hole in me.
“You’re implying… what, Henry? That you two weren’t lovers?” I tasted the sour tang of disbelief even as I spoke the words.
A flash of light seemed to burst from his eyes to match the brilliance of his smile. “See? That, right there? I knew it!” Henry hauled me forward and gave me a rough kiss before pushing me away in his excitement.
He jumped up and began to pace—three steps up and back—like a caged tiger in an old-fashioned zoo, before dropping to his knees next to the bed.
“What do I see?” I touched my forehead, checking for an indication of fever or concussion.
“Danny. Danny has never, ever been anything other than my best friend, J. Never. Not once.”
“No. That’s not right. That’s not possible….”
“It’s true.” Only the cradle of his palms kept me steady.
I tried to make sense of everything I knew, versus everything Henry had just revealed.
Danny had played the linchpin in our relationship—I’d let him funnel all the significant information back and forth between us, and Henry and I had kept our phone calls brief, avoiding the festering wound untended in the wake of my desertion. As I reflected back over years of conversations, I realized that I might have put my own spin on things. Had I been interpreting Danny’s news the wrong way all this time, assuming that he and Henry had been a couple? We’d been inseparable before, so in the light of Henry’s revelation, Danny’s comments were just as likely to be innocent.
Henry leaned in, putting his large hands on me to cup my face. I had nowhere else to look but into his expressive eyes. The gray had deepened to slate. I pulled back. I wasn’t ready to let go of everything I’d been living with over the past ten years just because he said so—not yet.
“I saw you….”
“Saw who? Danny and me? When?” He looked genuinely confused.
“That day at the dorm. The day I was supposed to move in. I saw you kissing. Don’t tell me that was just a fantasy too. I know Danny had a crush on you—I saw it from the time we were kids—but honestly, I thought you were straight until that day.”
Henry sat back, leaning on his hands. He looked stunned—eyes wide, mouth slack. “You were there? All this time, you were there. This makes sense—no, no, it still doesn’t—not… unless….”
There was a question in his eyes, and the memory of the hours I’d just spent in his arms seemed to hover there, changing what we’d shared into maybe something more.
I climbed off the bed and sank down next to him. Leaning against the frame, I took his hand.
“You know, the idea of the two of you being in a relationship together isn’t so far-fetched. I always believed that you and Danny would end up together. The way you grew up, the story of your births, how you fit me into your friendship…. No matter what we did together, it was always Danny first, and I understood. I was the guy who got to tag along in your relationship.”
“That’s not true, J. Having you stand on his other side made Danny feel safe. You showed up in our lives, and he relaxed. But for me, someplace inside that had been empty was instantly full. That kiss you saw? That was Danny expressing his great joy and excitement at finally moving on to the next phase of his life. He was so excited. It only lasted a second, and it was the only kiss we ever shared.”
I let that sink in for a
moment.
“What happened with Danny?”
“It really was me. I told Danny that I was going to go and get you and bring you home, that I was still in love with you, and I was tired of waiting for you to come on your own. I don’t think he believed me when I said I was bringing you back. He thought as soon as I set foot in Seattle he’d lose me too.”
I was stunned.
“Before, whenever I started making plans to see you, Danny would go off the rails, and I’d have to focus on him until things blew over. I think he was always afraid of being stuck here alone. He’d already lost you when you chose Washington over ISU. But by the time I pulled my head out of my ass, seven years had gone by, and I was no closer to getting you in the same room with me. I’d had enough.”
“You… love me…?” The when must have shown on my face, or he was back in my head again
“Since high school. Maybe longer. I was counting on you coming back that first summer so I could tell you. Then Christmas, then spring break…. I’d had so many plans for us, J.”
Ah, poor Danny.
My heart broke again. All the anger I’d been directing toward Danny since I first got the news from Henry faded—replaced by overwhelming sorrow and loss for my friend.
“Fuck. What a waste of a life.”
“Of three lives. But, yeah. I’m so pissed at him for giving up, for not trusting me after all these years that I had his back… and then there’s all the time we’ve wasted….”
“We?” I broke in, trying not to be too hopeful.
“I’m not leaving you, J. And there’s nothing I can do for Danny anymore, and if you try to leave me again, I’ll follow you to hell and back. I’m not letting you ditch me, not again. If Danny’s taught me anything, it’s to cherish the people we love while we have them.”
I leaned against him, and Henry put his arm around me, pulling me in close. As we sat, I watched the first light of the day filter softly through the window, throwing soft golden light on my bedroom wall.
Grand Adventures Page 37
