The Good Neighbor: A Novel

by Jay Quinn

  “Hey, Rory! What’cha doing?”

  Rory looked up and smiled. “Just hanging out. I’m slack until my new client calls the first of next week.”

  Rory couldn’t mistake the look of happiness on Austin’s face. “Feel like some company?”

  “Sure,” Rory said. “But how about I come over to your place? I’m so sick of looking around here I could scream.”

  Austin hesitated a moment. Rory imagined he swallowed hard as he considered it. Finally, he said, “Sure. Why not? I’ll meet you down front.”

  “No. I’ll jump the fence and come in through the pool deck,” Rory said and then added, “I don’t feel like getting dressed enough to wander across the front yards.” He didn’t wait for an answer or look up for the reaction on Austin’s face. He only flicked his cigarette into the pool and was out the screened door of his pool enclosure before Austin had a chance to respond. The grass felt extraordinary on the soles of his bare feet as he walked the few steps to the low fence between his house and Austin’s. He easily vaulted it and found himself waiting on Austin’s pool deck before Austin had even made it downstairs.

  For a moment, he looked around and registered the slight shift in perspective of the view out over the canal to the houses and sky beyond. While it was much the same scene as the one only fifty feet away, there was a difference that was marked and noted in his mind. As Austin opened the sliding glass door, Rory caught and held the thought that his world had changed in such a short space and time. He turned and gave Austin a smile.

  “You look sleepy,” Austin said. “At least more than you usually do,” and laughed.

  “It was a long night,” Rory admitted.

  Austin didn’t move from the open door. Taking in the slender form standing before him, he felt poised between steps. He had a sense of transition in his hesitancy and it confused and unsettled him. “Is everything alright?” he asked at last.

  Rory gave him tight shrug. “Bruno’s oldest brother, Brian, had a massive coronary yesterday afternoon. I was on and off the phone a lot last night with Bruno’s mom.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Austin said and stepped toward Rory with concern. “Will he be alright?”

  Rory pursed his lips and nodded. “He’s going to have bypass surgery. He’s only fifty. But there’s always the real risk of…”

  “How’s Bruno taking it,” Austin asked. “Were they close?”

  Rory turned away and looked out over the canal. “Bruno and Brian are close in their way. Bruno’s going to fly in from New York for the surgery.”

  Austin tentatively stepped toward Rory’s turned back. “How about you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Rory said as he turned around and gave Austin a sleepy-eyed smile. “I’m sure Brian will be okay. He’s another ox like Bruno. They have a way of bullying their way through things.”

  “Can I get you something? There’s some coffee left,” Austin offered. He felt a strong protective surge and was unaware he had reached out to lay a hand on Rory’s shoulder. “I could make some fresh.”

  “How about some water? With ice?” Rory said with a direct warm look into Austin’s eyes.

  “Sure, sure,” Austin said and gave his shoulder a squeeze before he dropped his hand. “Make yourself at home, sit down out here where you can smoke if you want.”

  “I won’t be smoking while I’m here,” Rory said.

  “You mean I’m not making you nervous anymore?” Austin teased.

  Rory shook his head and felt the coolness on the bony knob of his shoulder where Austin’s warm hand had rested. “Actually, I’m scared I might make you nervous today.” He took a half step closer to Austin as though to herd him toward the door. Austin swallowed and Rory watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. “How about that water?”

  Austin gave Rory a quick nod and turned. Together they walked into the house. Austin hesitated after they passed through the door and waited for Rory to walk ahead before shutting the sliding glass door behind them and locking it. Rory waited for him and gave him a shy smile. Austin felt an unexpected jitteriness in his legs that propelled him along into the kitchen, with Rory following close behind. As Austin busied himself with ice and water for Rory’s drink, Rory looked around the kitchen and family room without comment. “It’s all Meg’s design,” Austin said nervously. “She’s pretty proud of it.”

  “It’s nice,” Rory said noncommittally as Austin handed him the glass of ice water. He took a sip against his suddenly dry throat, then said, “I’ve always been curious about what your office looked like.”

  Austin looked at him with some dismay. Somehow, he felt as nervous as if Rory had said he wanted to see his bedroom. “It’s not much,” he countered. “There’s just my desk and an old couch left from our first place. Meg calls it my nap couch.”

  “I’d like to see it,” Rory said.

  “Really?” Austin asked incredulously.

  “Sure,” Rory said. “Why don’t we go up there and sit and talk for awhile?”

  “Well, if you want,” Austin said in a constricted voice.

  Rory nodded and gave him a smile that broadened into a grin.

  “I don’t know…” Austin said. “What do you want to talk about?”

  Rory turned and stepped toward the staircase. “I wanted to ask you about your friend, your buddy from back in high school.”

  Austin followed him and overtook him at the foot of the stairs. “I should have never said anything about that,” Austin said as he moved past Rory and began to take the steps two at a time. “I was a kid, just experimenting.”

  Rory took the steps singly. “No,” he said. “I’m glad you told me. It makes me feel like a friend.”

  Austin reached the top of the stairs and waited for Rory as he made his way up. “Considering what you told me yesterday, I was afraid it just reminded you of bad memories, of someone that hurt you.”

  Rory reached the last step at the top of the stairs and hesitated. He looked up at Austin and said quietly, “No matter how it ended, it was still my first time. I don’t think I’d do things any differently looking back on it. Would you?”

  Austin looked down at Rory and shook his head. “No,” he said gruffly. “I don’t think I would either.” He gave a dry laugh. “I had a girlfriend who kept saying no, no, no. He said yes. I thought I’d die if I didn’t, if I couldn’t just… well, you know.” With that he turned and walked toward his office door. Rory followed him across the sparsely furnished loft’s space. “The new stuff from Pottery Barn should be delivered in about a month,” he said as he stopped at his office door and gestured back at the loft. “I’m glad I did what you suggested.”

  “I look forward to seeing it,” Rory said obligingly as he stepped past Austin into the office. He walked straight to the window overlooking his pool deck and peered down. As Austin came into the room and stood awkwardly beside him, he looked up at him and smiled. “You have a pretty good view from up here.”

  Austin blushed and swallowed.

  Rory looked out once more. “It’s a little strange imagining seeing yourself from someone else’s perspective like this,” he said casually.

  “I watch for you,” Austin admitted. “I’m always happy when you come out.”

  “Why?” Rory asked softly. “Why is that?”

  “I told you,” Austin said a bit unwillingly. “I think you’re attractive. I like watching you. It’s not meant to be weird; it’s just something that’s mine. Aren’t your fantasies something that belong only to you?”

  Rory took a sip of his water and said, “Not if you share them.” With that, he placed his glass of water on the desk top, turned and slowly walked the short three steps to the old sofa across the room. “I’ve decided I want to share your fantasies,” he said simply.

  With everything he’d coveted, with every possibility he’d encouraged himself to consider and daydream about now so near at hand, Austin hesitated. He quickly searched for an out. “What about
Bruno,” Austin asked nervously.

  Rory looked Austin in the eye. “Bruno has his own fantasies and things that are only his, as he’s made perfectly clear to me.” He shook his head as if to ward off thoughts as stinging as biting flies. “I don’t want to talk about Bruno with you,” he said. “I want to talk about me and you. Why shouldn’t I share your fantasy and make it mine too?”

  Austin felt himself trembling. He looked over Rory’s lightly muscled form standing across from him. On his face he read no derision or condescension. There was only an open and honest questioning on Rory’s face. Austin could feel the pulse in the hollow of the base of his throat. He could smell him in the room. This wasn’t some daydream; this wasn’t anything other than honestly real. Austin looked away, and asked only, “Are you sure you want to?”

  “Yes,” Rory said clearly, then offered Austin his out. “But I won’t make the first move. I can leave if it’s not what you really want.”

  Austin heard the wind push at the screen of the open window rattling it in its frame. He glanced at the clock and noted the time. He looked at the stars whizzing past on the screen of his computer. He heard the song playing low on the radio by his desk. He looked up at Rory with many unsettled questions blurring his eyes.

  Rory nodded slowly, resigned, and started for the door.

  In one stride, Austin caught him by the upper arm and swung him around to face him. “Don’t,” he said and searched Rory’s eyes for permission.

  “Okay,” Rory said and smiled. “Okay.”

  “Wow,” Austin said and laughed nervously. He released his grip on Rory’s arm and noticed the redness on the skin where his tight grasp had caught and held. “Okay, then.” He looked quickly into Rory’s eyes and gently reached up once more and touched the redness on his upper arm. Rory instinctively flexed the muscle below Austin’s fingertips. The sudden flicker of firmness surprised Austin; the strength it bespoke was alien. This was not soft, yielding flesh under his touch. It held some other promise altogether. He met Rory’s questioning gaze and dropped his fingers. “I don’t know how to get started,” he said hoarsely. “It’s too strange.”

  Rory’s eyes answered with genuine caring. In reply, he reached and took Austin’s upper arms in his grasp and kneaded the muscle there firmly. Then he drew Austin to him and laid his face at the side of his neck and with his lips barely brushing the smooth skin there he whispered, “There’s no way to get it wrong, buddy.”

  Resolutely, Austin placed his hands on Rory’s waist, amazed at the shallowness of the space and narrowness of the flesh between his hands, it was so different from Meg’s body. He drew Rory’s body to his own hips and his groin registered a yearning sigh at the contact. He felt Rory’s erection give against his thigh and paused. The insistent firm stretch of flesh was as familiar as his own body’s terrain, yet shockingly alien. He almost felt as if he was feeling his own body as someone else would. It disconcerted him, but it did not stop his need to feel more.

  Austin’s hands left Rory’s waist as he shifted his leg behind Rory’s to hold him still closer to his hips. He found the top of Rory’s T-shirt and urged it upward while Rory obediently lifted his arms to allow him to strip it away. Once the barrier of the material was off Rory’s torso, he placed an arm over his shoulders and ran his palm over the stretch and reach of him, marveling at the tautness of the smooth skin and the tightness of the muscle underneath. He lingered his fingertips over Rory’s small nipples, amazed at the economy of their aroused expression, so different from when his fingers normally found and teased another’s superfluity of flesh. Austin teased the rim of Rory’s slightly protuberant navel, so unlike the shallow pool of his own. The hard, bald whorl of flesh was something else new and forbidden. He found it hard not to bend and attempt to map its topography with his tongue. Instead, he placed his palm flat on Rory’s belly and forced his fingers below the elastic of his short’s waist until he encountered the sudden surprise of hair and the rounded root of his penis. Shocked, he drew his hand away quickly. It was too much, too soon.

  Rory stepped away from his enclosing embrace and smiled at him shyly. Then, he turned and sat on the sofa. “Take off your shirt,” he whispered.

  The words snagged and caught on a memory. As a kid, Austin had been embarrassed by the long lankiness of his torso, its flatness and lack of definition. But by the time he was sixteen, his shoulders had grown almost freakishly broad and his chest had expanded and swelled with the promise of the larger man he would become. He recalled the boy so long ago who had hungrily requested the same nakedness. That was the first time someone had craved a view of his form and made it known. Meg rarely seemed to feel the need to see his body. He thought she merely took his nudity as inevitable. The boy back then had articulated his desire in a whisper, and now Rory huskily commanded him to offer himself once more. Austin grinned now where once he had been so shy. He grasped the bottom of his shirt and pulled it over his head, enjoying the flex and stretch of his torso as he did so. Once he’d tossed the shirt aside, he proudly looked for Rory’s reaction and wasn’t disappointed by the look he found.

  Enjoying his height, Austin took a step toward Rory and undid the button to his khaki shorts. As he reached for the zipper, Rory said, “No.” Austin looked down on his upturned face and Rory plainly said, “I want to do it.”

  Austin almost laughed, he was so surprised and happy, as Rory undertook an attention that his wife had early on made well known she preferred never to do. As Rory’s bright head nuzzled and suckled him where he stood, Austin stroked his head enjoying the rough bristles he found under his hands. The novelty of the act was heightened by his long subsumed desire for it. It was as if a song was being coaxed from him with a deep vibrato that made his knees weak. At last, fearful that it might lead too quickly to the end of the touching, the end of the thing itself, he pulled away.

  Rather than offering him a put-off grudging expression of duty, Rory actually wiped his mouth on his shoulder and rewarded him with a grin of complicity. Austin knelt in front of him and took his face between his palms and kissed him deeply. He searched the inside of Rory’s mouth with his tongue and traced the texture of the teeth he found there, marveling at their small sharpness and their skillful restraint from causing him any pain.

  Amazingly, Rory began to laugh. Austin broke off his kiss and sank back on his heels to see Rory’s face. He was almost hurt by the merriment, not knowing its cause. “What?” He said, “What did I do?”

  Rory looked in his eyes and laughed once more. Suddenly, Austin understood he wasn’t laughing at him, he was laughing with him. “Nothing. You didn’t do anything but suck my breath away,” Rory said. “Are you having a good time?”

  “Hell yes,” Austin whispered fervently. “Are you?”

  “Can’t you tell,” Rory teased.

  “I didn’t know,” Austin admitted. “I wasn’t sure.”

  “You’re a hell of a good kisser,” Rory said. He held up his middle three fingers and grasped his pinky with his thumb. “Scout’s honor.”

  Austin reared up on his knees and wrapped his arms around him. Rory responded by licking his throat. Austin moaned despite himself.

  “Can I have my water?” Rory said, his hot breath against Austin’s throat.

  Wordlessly, Austin let him go and negotiated the small space to the edge of his desk on his knees. He took the glass and handed it to Rory, who drank deeply and sighed before handing the glass back to Austin. He simply set it on the floor out of reach and knelt before Rory once more. “What do you want to do now?” he asked eagerly.

  Rory gave him a sweet smile and shrugged. “It’s your fantasy.”

  Austin was momentarily at a loss. Once outside of the moment, his limited range of experience faltered and stalled. In the highly scripted scenarios of the intimate acts of his marriage, there wasn’t much variation. Improvisation wasn’t encouraged by Meg, who held very definite opinions of what was permissible or distasteful. However, the
re was a demanding physical reality between his legs that refused to be daunted by his lack of creativity. He glanced down at himself and then looked at Rory proudly. “I bet I haven’t been this hard since I was eighteen,” he said.

  Rory nodded and stood. Unashamedly, he stretched the waistband of his boxers to clear his own erection and let them drop to the floor. Austin looked at him with unhidden fascination. Rory was beautifully built, not imposingly, but proportionately. Without a second spent in hesitation, Austin reached out and took Rory in his grip. He teased, stroked and tugged the stretch of flesh, wondering how it could feel so unremarkably familiar yet be so utterly free of corresponding sensation in his own body.

  In response to Austin’s touch, Rory shuddered. He looked at Austin hungrily. Austin continued his rhythmic pull and considered tasting Rory. It was a favor he could return. But even as the idea was considered, he rejected it. Something in him rebelled at the thought. It wasn’t that he was put off by the thought of taking Rory into his mouth. The act itself did not repel him, but what it represented did. It was every epithet he’d heard hurled like so many sharp blows against men he considered himself above. Central to Austin’s notions of his self, there was no room to be a cocksucker. It was too passive an act in concept to allow him to perform. He tugged at Rory once or twice more and then let him go. He reached for his hand and urged him down on his knees in front of him and leaned forward to kiss his mouth once more.

  Rory, for his part, had had a marvelous morning so far. With his inhibitions and guilt obscured by the drug, he’d concentrated on the experience of the touch and taste of another man. He loved the fact that Austin was slick, like he was. There was no friction from Bruno’s friendly fur against his skin. Austin’s skin was simply cool and naked to his touch. He liked the feel of the man. He liked the generosity and angularity of his body. He had none of Bruno’s bulk; instead he was all angular and flat planes. Rory liked his genitals, as innocent and smooth yet hard as a statue’s. He liked Austin’s simple, direct hunger for him. He even liked the abrupt dead ends of Austin’s erotic experience.