You're Welcome- Love, Your Cat

by Clancy Nacht

  “I’m older. I’ve had a lot of time to hone the craft.” Edwin waggled his brows and accepted one of the beers. He drank half the bottle at a go and then laughed. “I haven’t done anything like this since college. By the time I had my doctorate, everyone had got so dull and pretentious.”

  Eyeing Forrest over the bottle between sips, Edwin said, “I haven’t felt like this since then either.”

  “Hell, I been doing this all my life. Had I known this was what college was like, I woulda gone and never left.” Forrest chuckled and chugged his beer. “It’s hard to imagine not sucking down some great meat every now and then. But you did say it’d been a long time.”

  Forrest winked and then blushed as if he wasn’t used to flirting. Edwin imagined that banter didn’t happen much with Corey. If it did, it probably would’ve turned cruel at Forrest’s expense.

  “A very long time.” Edwin swigged more beer. The more he drank, the farther the past receded, leaving him deliciously alive and focused on the moment. “Thought I’d be too rusty to be much fun for a guy like you, but you seem to grade me on a curve, for which I am grateful. You’d be top of the class without breaking a sweat.”

  At that, Forrest really did blush, and seeming not to know what to do with the compliment, he looked away and finished his beer. “Did I really… Um, did you really need to take the next day off work?”

  Feeling more confident, Edwin cradled the back of Forrest’s head in his free hand and brought him closer to brush their lips together. It was just a brief touch, but it made Edwin’s skin tingle. He rubbed their noses together. “I could feel you there for almost a week. Couldn’t walk without that ache.”

  Forrest pressed their mouths together again, massaging softly until their lips parted and Edwin found himself in a fierce embrace. Whether Forrest was aroused by the words or struck with the memory of being apart, it was clear something had affected him.

  As Edwin rose, he slid his tongue into Forrest’s mouth and pushed Forrest’s chair back enough to climb into his lap. The chair groaned at their combined weight. Edwin ignored it in favor of sucking Forrest’s lower lip. “You’re going to hate me when I say this…”

  For the first time, Forrest’s expression registered real fear. His hands froze on Edwin’s back. Forrest curled his fingers inward, clutching Edwin like he might be ripped away. “I don’t think I could ever hate you.”

  Forrest’s worry and his tight grip thrilled and troubled Edwin. As they kissed, he rubbed against him reassuringly, then pulled back and gazed into Forrest’s eyes, wearing a crooked smile.

  “Even if I tell you I want you to trust me before we fuck again?”

  “I trust you. Can we fuck now?” Forrest grinned briefly, then looked down and bit his lip. “I don’t have to bend you over the table just ’cause we kissed. But, what d’you mean, trust you?”

  Edwin reached back and touched one of Forrest’s tight-clenched hands as if to remind him how frightened he’d been, then kissed the corner of his mouth. “When you fuck me again, I want you to know exactly what it means to me. And I want to know what it means to you.”

  Blinking slowly, Edwin rested his forehead against Forrest’s and gazed at him from up close. His glasses fogged from their mingled breaths, so he pulled them off and set them on the table. “Talking’s hard, but I want to know you. You’re worth knowing, Forrest.”

  “Talking’s not so hard with you.” Forrest eased his grip and instead massaged Edwin’s lower back. “If you got questions, you wanna talk about something, we can do that. I like knowing you, but I’m not that interesting.”

  “You’re the only man who’s interested me in years.” Edwin studied Forrest’s face, taking in an expression he read as reluctant hope. “I’m not here after so many years alone because you’re hot. You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever met, but it wasn’t your abs or those eyes that got me to take off my clothes for you when I was scared to death to do it. It was that I felt something for you.”

  It was evident no one had ever spoken like that to Forrest. His eyes widened for a moment, then looked hopeful before it all shifted into something more suspicious. “What did you feel for me then? Seems like after we did it, you felt less of it.”

  “I didn’t know what was going on after. I made some stupid assumptions. You aren’t the most forthcoming man, Forrest.” Edwin frowned, trying to choose his words carefully.

  Forrest sounded so sad, resigned, and it was more evident all the time just how broken he was. That brought up another question, and Edwin wondered if he should push. Forrest had said he could ask.

  “You seemed as vulnerable as I did, fragile and wonderful in contrast to how stoical you are in public. It got to me. It made me think there was something inside you that I would love if I could just reach it.” Edwin’s tone gentled to just above a whisper. He stroked his fingertips over places he remembered seeing those deep, lasting scars. “I want to understand how you got so hurt, what made you so tough to read.”

  “What-ical?” Forrest tilted his head, though Edwin got the feeling Forrest was hedging. He looked down at Edwin’s fingers tracing over his chest and sighed. “Didn’t think I was hard to read. Maybe you think I got more going on than I do. I like you, so I want to spend time with you. I didn’t make it clear I liked spending time with you?”

  Edwin frowned at the evasion. It had been too much to hope that Forrest would make this easy, but it had been so long since he finessed information out of anyone that he wasn’t sure how to do it. He shifted his hips in Forrest’s lap, smoothing his hands over Forrest’s shoulders.

  “Am I wrong to think you’re hiding a lot of hurt? Am I wrong to think there’s someone tender hidden by the calluses and muscles who thinks and feels deeply about the world around him? Who’s been so fucked around and beaten down he’s forgotten how to express what’s inside?”

  Forrest frowned and looked away. “Ever picked away a callus? You know what’s under there? Soft skin.”

  He held his hand out palm up. There was a deep groove on the side of his index finger.

  “You just gotta grow the callus back anyway. I ain’t Oprah or Dr. Phil. I don’t know much about feelings or whatever, but I know better than to cut away at something meant to protect you.”

  Still Forrest didn’t meet Edwin’s eyes. “I know that ain’t what you wanna hear. It ain’t what I wanna say. But I express what’s inside. You can’t look at Betty and say I don’t express myself.”

  Edwin took Forrest’s scarred finger and kissed the mark, wondering if Forrest had made a habit of picking away calluses at some point. The way he spoke of it seemed furtive, like he was implying something he wouldn’t say outright.

  “I’m not as clever as you think, Forrest. I know your car is like your art, that you’re showing something of yourself in that, but it’s not…”

  Edwin hesitated, feeling uncomfortably girlish. He wanted so badly to feel close to Forrest, but maybe that was foolish. Maybe he should have just bent over the table after all, let Forrest keep his silences and his secrets and accept instead that overwhelming intimacy brought on by the fusion of their bodies.

  “I don’t have the key that unlocks those mysteries. I can’t decode the puzzle yet.”

  “Maybe you get enough pieces and you see the puzzle ain’t worth finishing.” Forrest smiled tightly, like he was trying to project an image of casual self-deprecation, but that it came from somewhere deeper. He stroked the side of Edwin’s face. “I don’t know what you want.”

  “I want to know you!” Edwin’s voice rose with his frustration, and he immediately regretted it when Forrest flinched. Edwin took a deep breath and tried again in a softer tone. “You aren’t easy to get to know. We’ve spent weeks talking, but I still feel like you’re a stranger.”

  By the end, Edwin sounded plaintive and bewildered. His own voice made him cringe. It was pathetic and clingy, something a teenager would say, but everything about Forrest appealed to that young, lonely part
of him. He wished he knew how to make him see that, how to draw that same part of Forrest out to play.

  “You do know me.” Forrest shifted as if he were uncomfortable. “What else is there? My middle name is Levi. Um, my mom divorced my dad when I was four. I barely made it through high school. My dad—my real dad—taught me everything I know about business and being a mechanic.”

  Forrest smiled, apparently thinking of his father. “It’s no accident the garage is across the street from a strip club, you know. He loved the ladies. He lived here in the garage. Upstairs. I’d come to visit him for a few weeks at a time sometimes. Those damn lights would keep me up. Didn’t know what it was until I was in the double digits. Thought it was a flower shop ’cause it’s named after a rose. I used to ask Dad to take me there before I come home to my mom so I could give her some flowers. He’d say they were too expensive there, and we’d pick some up from the grocery store. Still don’t know why I thought a flower shop needed flashing lights.”

  Forrest shook his head at himself. “Dad said I didn’t have the kind of mind that’d think people would get up to shenanigans like paying for ladies to dance naked. Dale—the man my mom married—he said I was stupid. Dad said Dale was just one of those people that mistook kindness for weakness and that weren’t no way for a real man to be.”

  For a moment, Forrest’s eyes looked wet, but he blinked it away. “Anyway. You’ll laugh, but my dad’s name was Jesse.”

  “Jesse James, huh?” Edwin kissed Forrest gently, excited at getting him to talk. He allowed his fingers to roam over Forrest’s face and shoulders, down his back. “So Dale didn’t understand kindness.” Edwin paused, studying Forrest’s expression. “It’s a sore subject, isn’t it? How did you deal with it?”

  Forrest twisted his mouth to one side like he was chewing on how to answer. He looked past Edwin as if watching some echo of past events play out on the wall. “I guess at first I tried to be the son he never had. He wanted a son—a perfect family. But I guess ’round puberty it became obvious that I weren’t gonna be perfect.”

  A great sadness seemed to envelop not just Forrest, but the whole room. “There was something very wrong with me, and he was afraid others would notice like he had.”

  Forrest grabbed his beer only to discover the bottle was empty. Rather than move Edwin to get another, he set the bottle back down. “Think he knew before I did. Think everyone did. I’m slow, you know. Had remedial speech classes and stuff ’cause I was lisping.”

  Forrest rubbed his eyes like a tired child. “He thought I was lisping to spite him, so anytime I did it in front of him, he gave me the belt.”

  So much made sense now. Edwin’s heart broke for the miserable little boy Forrest had been and even more for this man in his arms whose sense of self had been skewed for so long he couldn’t believe he was worth anything.

  Edwin wasn’t sure he could fix so deep a hurt, but he had to try. The more he knew about Forrest, the more he hungered to know everything. He’d become a scholar because he loved knowledge, and Forrest was his new favorite subject.

  “I’m sorry you went through that.” Edwin nestled his body against Forrest’s and wished he trusted himself to take Forrest home so they could continue this in more comfortable surroundings.

  He felt awkward sitting in Forrest’s lap when they weren’t kissing anymore, but he didn’t want to break the spell that had Forrest talking. He reached for Forrest’s other scars, ones on his forearm that didn’t look like they’d come from a belt. His fingertips slid over them gently.

  “What of these?”

  Forrest looked down at the tender, sparsely haired flesh. Round, pale scars marred the skin. He made a low sound in the back of his throat and took a deep breath. “Dale smokes.”

  The ramifications of the statement staggered Edwin. They weren’t just on his forearm, but in sensitive places on his body that weren’t visible if Forrest was dressed. Edwin felt too sick to ask, and the way Forrest was working his jaw made it seem like the topic was closed.

  Instead, Edwin turned his attention to a neat row of fine lines in the crook of Forrest’s arm. They were thin like cat scratches but far too organized to have been unintentional. There was something familiar about them that Edwin couldn’t place.

  “And these?”

  Once the words were out of Edwin’s mouth, the likely cause of the scars clicked. As a professor dealing with young men and women barely out of adolescence, he was meant to watch for signs of self-harm. The university had been plagued with students acting out—either on themselves or others—and memos went out before finals reminding professors to watch for evidence of stress.

  Forrest wouldn’t meet Edwin’s eyes. His head was turned, teeth clenched, face bright red. Letting out a long breath, Forrest turned his head to look at the scars again. “Pain inside needed to come out.”

  That appeared to be all Forrest was willing to say on the subject. He tugged his sleeve like he could cover that spot and started to squirm out from under Edwin. “I need another beer.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Edwin started to speak, to try to backtrack with some kind of comforting words, but nothing would come. Sighing, he rose and retrieved another beer for Forrest.

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” Edwin frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. He wanted to explain why he was pushing Forrest, but he didn’t fully understand it himself. He needed to know the other man like he needed to breathe, and that was enough. “It’s hard for me to imagine growing up like that, but I…I’ve…”

  What was he going to say? Edwin could hardly tell Forrest of his own dark moments, the things he still thought sometimes when he was home alone in a bed he’d once shared. Fearing how insufficient it must sound, he managed, “Sometimes a sense of control is what one wants more than anything, more even than the absence of pain. The illusion of control is the illusion of safety, of comfort.”

  Forrest took a long drink of beer. His gaze flicked up to meet Edwin’s, but then Forrest looked away again. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his spread knees. The beer bottle dangled from his fingers. “Thought I could get the bad out myself. Wasn’t getting burned or beaten outta me, thought I could bleed it out. Or something. I dunno. It was dumb kid stuff.”

  He finished the bottle and set it on the floor. “Sounds like you know something about feeling low, but it’s hard to imagine you doing stupid things like that.”

  Edwin glanced at Forrest, then at the bottle on the floor. He knew he shouldn’t get drunk; he still had to drive home. Forrest could stay the night here, so Edwin didn’t interfere.

  Instead, he grabbed another bottle for the younger man. “I grew up very differently from you, but I think perhaps I grew up very differently from everyone. My family’s so liberal they’ve ceased to possess common sense. Live and let live is wonderful in theory, but when it stems from a self-absorption that robs one of any care for what others feel or suffer, it’s less admirable.”

  Edwin couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to his family. After Howard had died, they’d seemed to believe Edwin would just come back to them. As if Howard had never happened. That was the final straw.

  A sudden pang of loneliness made him want to cling to Forrest. Edwin shrugged and swallowed the sadness. “When I lost Howard, I lost the only one who was biased enough to think me the most important person in the world. I’d been so used to it that when he was gone and I was no one to anyone, it didn’t go well for me.”

  Edwin gestured vaguely at Forrest’s scarred arm. “Bleeding it out isn’t far from what I planned to do. At least you weren’t acting from such unworthy motives.”

  Forrest set the open beer on the table without taking a drink. Then he stood and pulled Edwin into his arms. “You’re important to me. That ain’t worth much, but it’s what I got.”

  Edwin’s pulse raced. He slid his hands over Forrest’s back, steadying himself with the solid strength of the other man’s body. He ki
ssed Forrest’s cheek, then nestled his face into the crook of his neck and held him. He could barely breathe, and his chest ached from the hammering of his heart, but he couldn’t bear to allow space between them.

  “It’s worth more than you guess.”

  Forrest sighed. “Wish I had that in my life, but I’m not the sorta guy…” His voice trailed off wistfully, and he snorted. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I’m glad I’m here too.” Edwin pulled back enough to smile at Forrest, though it felt wrong, as if he was too happy for the solemn moment. He wanted to say something clever and healing, something that didn’t just sound like Psych 101, but he couldn’t think of anything. Instead, he gazed at Forrest, losing awareness of anything beyond the two of them.

  Forrest smiled back, then leaned in for a light kiss. “I know sex is off the table, but we can still make out, can’t we?”

  Edwin returned the kiss, eager but slow, and shivered with the knowledge that Forrest was doing this because Edwin mattered to him. It wasn’t the stunned desperation he’d felt the last time they were alone together this way, but it was no less thrilling. This was something real to latch on to. As much as his insecurities told him Forrest couldn’t love him, deeper down he was beginning to believe it was possible.

  That belief opened doors he’d kept sealed for years.

  Edwin didn’t dare give unsteady voice to that nebulous hope, but he clung to Forrest with a ferocity he hadn’t known he possessed. He turned him to bump the backs of Forrest’s thighs against the table and pulled one arm free just long enough to place his hand over Forrest’s heart and give him a push to be seated. Then Edwin pressed forward between his legs and kissed him harder, reveling in the sense of power it gave him when Forrest didn’t resist his demands.

  Forrest gripped Edwin’s waist and pulled him closer, rubbing his hardening cock against Edwin’s with a throaty moan. There was something frantic in the way Forrest kissed him. He kneaded the back of Edwin’s neck, holding him in place.