by Roan Parrish
“Hiya, Dan,” my dad says, and I can hear the roar of football on the television in the background and my brothers yelling at the screen.
“How are you?” I ask.
“Oh, fine, fine. You know. Same as always. How’s the car?”
“It’s fine,” I say. Which isn’t entirely true. It keeps stalling out if I don’t drive it every day. Though I don’t really need a car to get from my apartment to campus and around town, it’s nice to be able to drive to Rex’s now that it’s cold.
“Hey, shithead, throw another empty beer can at that TV and I’ll throw a full one at your head!” my dad yells. Has to be at Brian, who has a habit of throwing things at the TV when sports don’t go his way. “So, you’re okay?” my dad asks me.
“Yeah, I’m good, Dad. I just wanted to wish you and the guys happy Thanksgiving.”
“Boys,” my dad calls, “your brother’s on the phone.”
There’s a long pause.
“Hey, Daniel.” It’s Sam. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Thanks, Sam. How’s everything going?”
“Fine, thanks,” he says. “Liza’s bringing a turkey over in a bit since these idiots were drunk by 10:00 a.m. and didn’t even order chicken.”
We always used to get fried chicken from this cheap place about ten blocks from my dad’s house on Thanksgiving.
“That’s nice. How’s Liza?”
“She’s fine. Good. Work’s busy.”
There’s a long pause.
“All right, kid, well, I’ll see you later,” Sam says, and hangs up.
My phone beeps with the disconnection.
“You okay?” Rex asks, sliding an arm around my chest.
“Um, yeah. I’m done,” I say, gesturing to the cheese plate.
“Okay,” Rex says, but he holds me against him for another minute and I breathe in his comforting smell.
Dinner is delicious—of course. Leo turned out to be quite the little helper and I can tell he liked feeling like he had something to do. He never says why he’s here with us instead of at his parents’ house, but I’m glad he is. At one point, he started asking everyone to tell about their best Thanksgiving ever. Rex was silent and I caught Will’s eye and all three of us started cracking up at the same time.
“What?” Leo asked, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was probably the only one of us who had a single happy Thanksgiving memory.
Will took Leo home around ten, and Rex and I exhaustedly abandoned the dishes until tomorrow, choosing to take Marilyn for a walk instead.
It’s beautiful out. Cold and sharp, but with no wind, so you can smell everything. By the light of the moon I can just see Marilyn as she trots ahead and circles back to us, joyfully peeing on trees and nipping at low-hanging branches.
Rex has his arm around my shoulders and I feel so fucking peaceful. It doesn’t hurt that I’m also full and wearing Rex’s heaviest sweater and coat.
Marilyn stops to contemplate a bush and I find myself pushed up against the strong trunk of a tree, with Rex in front of me.
“We have got to stop meeting like this,” I say.
He huffs out a laugh and kisses me, one hand pulling off my hat to tangle in my hair. Rex really likes to touch my hair. He kisses my neck and then both cheeks. Then he kind of sags against me, hugging me and the tree. He says something, but it’s so muffled by my shoulder that I can’t hear him.
“What’s that?”
“I said, I’m really glad you’re here. That we did this.” I think he means Thanksgiving dinner, but I’m not totally sure.
“Me too,” I say. “It’s actually the only time I’ve ever eaten turkey. That wasn’t in a sandwich, I mean.”
As I’m about to say something incredibly sappy, my phone makes a loud and unfamiliar sound.
“What the?”
It’s a text, but I always keep my phone on vibrate.
Rex chuckles.
“Will.”
“Huh?”
“I bet Will changed your ringtone. He does that. It’s a gesture of goodwill, I promise.”
“Some fucking gesture,” I grumble as I open the text. And immediately grin, tilting the phone to show Rex.
There, lying against Ginger’s purple velvet couch, is a naked (and red-haired) chest. And on it, a huge, half-eaten Thanksgiving burrito.
14
Chapter 14
December
The last week of classes, my students are in the usual frenzy, flooding my office hours for help with their final papers, writing me desperate e-mails at 3:00 a.m. (probably from the library) to beg for extensions, and falling asleep in strange contortions in the middle of classes. Usually, I kind of like this final week. It feels buzzy with the promise of winter break and the end of another semester. Unfortunately, this semester, in addition to grading all my final papers, I also have to read all the essays for that damned committee I accidentally volunteered for.
As a result, I’ve been locking myself in my office every day since classes ended. I can’t bear trying to work in my shithole of an apartment. It’s dark, depressing, and, now, freezing. I do have to smile every time I see the table Rex built, though, which looks amusingly out of place among my otherwise disposable furniture.
Rex. I can’t stop thinking about him. It’s like once we started spending more and more time together I got addicted to him or something. Everything reminds me of him or of something I want to tell him. I keep starting to text him things and then deleting them because I don’t want to inundate him. I asked him about texting tentatively last week. I wasn’t sure if, given plenty of time to read them, texts would be fine for him, or if he wouldn’t like them. He said he’d never texted with anyone so he didn’t know, but he was happy to try. I promised him that I wouldn’t care about his spelling, which he’s very self-conscious about. So, finally, this morning, after accidentally falling asleep and spending the night in my office, I sent him a simple, if sappy, text: Hi. I miss you.
About five minutes later, he texted back: Come here when yore done? It made my heart beat with anticipation. I didn’t exactly mean to sequester myself, but I know from long experience that the only way I can make grading bearable is to tackle it all at once, so I’ve been motoring through it all for the last few days. I’ve been grabbing to-go food from the diner or eating out of the vending machine in the basement and I really need a shower, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m not done by tonight. I’ll submit my grades to the registrar, drop my essay selections in the main office, and then I’m done for a blissful month. Just thinking about it makes me giddy with desperation to finish.
I text Rex back—Absolutely. See you tonight—and then dive back in. Now that I’m so close to seeing Rex, though, I’m back to what’s been distracting me for weeks. Will’s comments before Thanksgiving about whether or not I was in Michigan for the long haul. Whether I was with Rex for the long haul. I’m fucking crazy about Rex. That much I know. But I don’t even really know what a long-term relationship would look like. I’ve just never thought about it before. Does it mean, like, holidays and vacations? Barbecues and choosing paint colors?
There’s a hollow feeling in my stomach thinking about it. But it isn’t precisely anxiety. It’s something more tentatively… hopeful? What would it even look like to do those things with Rex? To be responsible for someone else—to someone else?
I shake my head to clear the fog and squint at the stack of essays in front of me. It’s page after page of potential and futurity and possibility and, for the first time in a long time, those seem like good things to me.
“Hi,” Rex calls as I drag myself through the door, my vision practically blurry from staring at papers for four days straight.
I drop my stuff by the door, scratch Marilyn’s soft ears, and slouch into the kitchen with her trailing behind me. I didn’t even go home to change before coming here, I was so desperate to feel the sense of calm that only Rex can provide.
The whole house sme
lls wonderful: a combination of wood smoke, trees, snow, and cooking that smells like, well, home. Rex is wearing a tight navy blue henley worn almost transparent in places. It’s pushed up over his powerful forearms and he’s doing something at the stove when I walk into the kitchen. His smile warms me immediately, and before he can turn toward me, I plaster myself across his back and hug him from behind.
“Hi,” I say, and it comes out as a tired moan.
Rex turns in my arms and leans back to contemplate my face. He strokes my cheekbones and rests his thumbs under my eyes.
“You look beat,” he says. I drop my head forward to rest on his breastbone and he holds me close. Every few seconds, I wonder if he wants me to let go—I know most guys don’t love to hug—but it’s as if he can read my mind, because each time the thought occurs to me, he gathers me tighter against him. I must fall asleep for a microsecond because the next thing I know, Rex is guiding me down onto one of the stools and I feel that lurch in my chest that happens when I’m awakened suddenly.
“You’re all done?”
“Yeah, thank god,” I say.
We talk a little bit about a new commission Rex has for a sleigh bed and he makes magic happen on the stove and the next thing I know, my forehead cracks against the counter. I have such a clear memory of this kid, Martin, in tenth grade who was always falling asleep during class. We’d all watch his head start to slump and usually he’d jerk himself awake. But once a week or so, he’d fall out of his chair, waking up halfway down and scrambling to catch his balance. At the time, I thought it was hilarious. Now I wonder what shit job he was working until late to make him that tired at fifteen.
“Jesus, are you okay?” Rex asks, rounding the counter toward me.
“Shit,” I say, rubbing my head. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“You’re asleep on your feet, sweetheart,” Rex says. “Why don’t you go take a hot shower? When you’re done, dinner will be ready and then you can crash.”
“Do I smell that bad?” I tease as he hoists me up by the elbow.
“Only a little,” he says, brushing my hair out of my eyes. “Go on.”
I manage to stay awake in the shower. Under the hot water, my mind wanders to my apartment and I realize that I should make sure to start running the taps every day so they don’t freeze. At my old apartment in Philly, the kitchen taps would sometimes freeze because I never used them.
I feel a little better after my shower—more floaty than lightheaded—and wander back into the kitchen to find Rex putting what looks like roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas on the table.
“Oh my god,” I groan. “That’s, like, the dinner I’ve been waiting for my whole life.” It smells amazing and looks perfect, like one of those fake dinners on a 1950s TV show.
Rex crosses to me in three steps and practically knocks me over when he kisses me, hard.
“You look so fucking hot in my clothes,” he growls, and kisses my neck. His smallest T-shirts are baggy on me and I’m wearing the sweatpants he left out for me the night we met.
“Got a binder clip?” I tease and Rex smirks.
“Nope,” he says wolfishly, looking torn between pulling my sweatpants down himself and waiting for them to inevitably succumb to gravity.
The chicken is as amazing as it smells and I basically stuff my face while I tell him about finishing my grading. He gets a pained look on his face when I mention accidentally falling asleep in my office last night, but doesn’t say anything.
I have all sorts of elaborate plans for how I’ll let go of my borrowed sweatpants, letting them fall tantalizingly to the floor in the hopes that Rex will follow through on the promises of seduction that his eyes have made throughout dinner, but when the moment comes, all I can really do is stagger to the bedroom and let Rex guide me down to the bed.
My eyes close the second the soft mattress and warm smell of Rex cradle me, and I reach out a hand to where I thought Rex would be but he isn’t there.
“Hmm?” he says, and I must’ve made a sound.
“Are you sleeping too?” I ask.
“Yeah, I’ll be right in,” he says, even though I catch sight of his alarm clock and it’s only 9:36. I wake up a few minutes later when he settles into bed beside me and roll toward him. He puts on headphones and settles in on his back, propped up on a few pillows. I put my head on his chest and sling an arm and a leg over him.
“What’re you listening to?” I ask, but if he answers I’m already asleep.
I wake feeling the kind of rested that only ever happens after being totally exhausted. A glance at the clock tells me I slept for twelve hours. I hear the shower running and slide out of bed, suddenly desperate to feel Rex’s skin against mine. I knock on the door because I still can’t imagine barging in on someone while they’re in the bathroom, even if it is Rex. He opens the door, not even in the shower yet, and pulls me in.
“You’re up,” he says. “Perfect timing.”
I watch him strip in the mirror as I brush my teeth, a glob of minty spit falling into the sink when he drops his boxers, revealing his thick erection.
“Can I be of some service?” he asks, smiling at my open mouth and stepping into the shower.
I rinse my mouth and practically trip over my clothes to join him. I’m barely even under the water before I reach for his gorgeous cock, the skin like velvet over steel, and he murmurs his approval, caressing my nipples with his thumbs. He drags me under the water with him and takes my mouth, hard, groaning as I squeeze the base of his erection. He pulls me into him, clutching my ass roughly as he grinds our hips together. We kiss, straining together, hands roaming one another like it’s been months rather than days since we were last together like this.
I nip at Rex’s neck and he practically lifts me off the ground, crushing me to his chest.
“Please, baby, I need you,” he grits out, voice rough with lust. His pupils are huge in his whiskey-colored eyes, wet eyelashes shadowing them, making him look intense and desperate. His cock is so hard he’s pulsing against me and I can tell it took some effort to even form the words. I nod at him, tacit permission for him to take whatever he needs from me. I love when he gets like this.
Rex spins me around and squeezes conditioner from the bottle to slick me up. He kneads my as cheeks as he spreads the slickness at my opening and slides two fingers in. Christ, his fingers are big. It takes my body a moment to adjust, but when my muscles rearrange themselves, a bolt of desire shoots from my ass right up my spine and leaves me shivering.
“All right?” Rex asks, more growl than query, and I nod frantically.
“Now you, please.”
He swears, and squeezes more conditioner out to slick himself up. He takes my hands and puts them on the bar inside the shower door, bending me over and lifting my ass to him.
“Stay,” he says.
He swipes his fingers over my hole one more time, making me clench in anticipation and moan when that’s all there is. Then I feel his heat hovering over my back, and he slides against me, filling me slowly. I can feel the trembling in his thighs as he seats himself fully inside me. He’s so tall he has to crouch to fuck me like this, and that tremble makes everything more intense, like he’s willing to do anything to get inside.
“Oh god,” he moans, resting his forehead at the nape of my neck. I clench around him and he swears, curling his hands around my shoulders from the front, and dragging me down even farther onto his cock. As he penetrates me this last little bit, it sends shock waves of pleasure through my ass, and I can’t help but clench up again.
“Move,” I beg, so of course he stays still, kissing and sucking the back of my neck. I can feel him, pulsing inside me with the beat of his heart. Now that we’re not using condoms, it’s like I can feel his blood close to the surface, his heat always just about to merge with mine. Then he starts to move, tiny little pulses of his hips that seem to stir my pleasure so slowly that I’m moaning and panting before I even realize I’m
doing it. He reaches down and spreads me open wider, and I can see our blurry reflections in the mirror through the shower door. Rex is looking down at where we’re joined and I wish I could see us through his eyes. Our hazy shapes in the mirror look like smears, shaking against each other with desire, straining to become one.
Rex ghosts his finger over my hole, around his erection, then pushes at my rim experimentally. My breath catches and I go still, my body tensed, every bit of my attention focused on the spot. He just keeps running his finger around my hole, sending shivers through me, until he flexes his finger slightly, sliding it in alongside his cock. I shudder, the sensation of being too full making me writhe away for a moment. But when he eases his finger out, I immediately want it back.
“Do that again,” I breathe, dropping my head down and trying to relax.
Rex pulls out and slams into me, that first stroke catching me so off-guard that I cry out. He fucks me deeply for a few more strokes, then surges in to the hilt and pauses again. He squeezes more conditioner and then his finger is back, sliding gently into me alongside his erection. Rex moans and I shiver, my breath coming fast. Rex slowly pulls out, leaving just his finger inside me, and he curls it to nail my prostate. I cry out, the sudden bright pleasure so intense and so different than the diffuse pressure of his cock that it’s shocking. He leaves his finger inside me and slowly slides back in, filling me.
“Oh, fuck, fuck,” I mutter, trying to squirm away, but he won’t let me. He’s trembling again, clutching at my hip with his other hand. As his erection slides in, it presses his finger against my prostate, turning my insides to liquid heat. I tentatively clench my internal muscles around him and pleasure shoots through me. Rex convulses against my back, groaning. I can’t take much more of this. I feel wracked on Rex’s cock and finger, my whole body straining simultaneously to get away and to move closer. I can hear myself moaning brokenly but it sounds like it’s coming from miles away. The water sounds close, though, like we’re fucking under a waterfall.
