Kiss and Tell

by R. W. Clinger

  Eventually, they left the bookstore and ended up having dinner at an Italian joint called Louis’ Pasta Three, which claimed to make and serve the best meatballs in the tri-state area. Mixed with dim candlelight at a table for two, snug in one of the restaurant’s corners, they discussed their lives: Cal and his job as a behind-the-camera fact collector for Channel 8 news; Burke’s early retirement and recent trip to Mexico; Cal’s liking for parades and puppies; and Burke’s new experiences with True Blue.

  Following the meal, the pair walked back to Cal’s apartment. Cal invited Burke up for a quick nightcap, which Burke accepted. Before Burke realized, both men had their shirts off and were making out on Cal’s Scandinavian sofa. Between prolonged kisses, Burke studied the man’s bare, model-perfect chest: hulking, smoothly hairless, dented with abdominal lines of crafted muscles, and half dollar-size nipples. Burke had learned, while kissing the man, trapped under his weight, Cal could easily become his Prince Charming, perfect for all his needs and longing desires.

  Things were going quite well for Burke on his date until…Cal climbed off him and the sofa and then rushed into his bedroom. At first, Burke believed the jockish man with the perfect chest of molten steel went in search of condoms and a bottle of lube for a few heated rounds of body-meshed-with-body sex and a good time of adult play.

  What transpired became an immediate turn of events for him.

  No longer had Burke’s date been with Cal Yuell. Rather, a strange leather beast of sorts exited the apartment’s only bedroom. Cal had become some kind of black leather minotaur from hooves to head, including a tail. His cock and balls drooped out of the costume. He moved up to Burke, snorted in his face, huffed, and stomped one of his feet on the living room floor.

  “Done!” Burke exclaimed, fear pulsating on every pore of his body. He pushed Cal’s chest with his right hand. Burke jumped up and off the sofa, snagged his shirt in one hand. “This is too much for me, Cal. This is fucked up. I’m not into men dressed as bulls.”

  Before Burke knew it, he stood on the sidewalk outside Cal’s apartment. He shook his head and heavily sighed. “Unbelievable,” he told himself before walking home.

  * * * *

  Later that evening, Burke demanded to see Colby Blue at his agency, unable to take no for an answer.

  “I’m done, Mr. Blue. Your agency isn’t working for my best interest. I hate to kiss and tell, but…I can’t do this anymore.” Burke kept huffing, puffing, and stared at the handsome man across the desk. “I’ve been on three dates, all of which were terrible. This last one was quite the doozey, if you want to know the truth.” Burke rambled, detailing his time with Cal Yuell. Then he added, “Keep the twenty-four thousand dollars. I don’t want it back. And tell your staff to lose my email address. I don’t want to hear from them. There won’t be a fourth date.”

  Burke became irritated since Colby simply sat behind his desk with his hands crossed, calm, cool, and collected. The owner of True Blue had an impish smirk on his face, which made him look ten years younger. Colby didn’t blink, unwavering for what felt like a string of three hundred seconds.

  Then he said, “I’m sorry again. True Blue has more kinks than I ever anticipated, which I’ll take the initiative to work on. Until then, Burke, how can I make this good between us?”

  Burke shook his head, flushed. This meeting with Colby Blue felt awkward, something he believed he shouldn’t have to go through. “I don’t know if you can. The guy became a Minotaur, Colby. A Minotaur. He had every intention of fucking me as a bull.”

  Colby nodded. “I realize that.”

  “He freaked me out.” Burke shook his head and spoke quickly, frazzled. “No, wrong. It freaked me out. I just had to get out of his apartment. I just had to bolt. I’m still sick to my stomach, thinking about the date.”

  “No more dates, Burke. I promise. You won’t be hearing from my staff. You’ve opened my eyes to True Blue’s screening process and…”

  Burke cut him off with, “I don’t think you have a screening process.”

  It sounded more like a bark over an explanation. Burke’s ears and cheeks felt as if they were on fire, and the back of his throat had instantly turned dry. He kept blinking, thinking he was becoming dehydrated by the passing seconds, needing a glass of water, juice…something.

  Colby Blue opened and reached in to the drawer near his Brooks Brothers-covered navel. He pulled out a faux leather checkbook the size of a kid’s picture book and opened it to available blank checks. Within seconds, he had a check made out to Burke, passing it to his client.

  “A full refund for your troubled experience. I’m sorry I can’t erase your dates and this endeavor for you turned sour.” Colby’s eyebrows twisted, and his forehead tightened. He leaned ever so slightly forward and whispered, “Please. Please, Burke, if I can do anything else, tell me. I feel horrible about what you’ve been through.”

  Burke took the check, slipping it into a front pocket of his khakis. He shook his head and stood. Nothing could make it right, he thought. Not Colby’s handsomeness, his green eyes, or his English-sloped nose. Nothing physical. Or emotional, for that matter. What had been done was done; a douche bag thing to think and say, but the truth. Juxtaposed dates that flopped were too much of an error. They could never be anything but bizarre and disastrous. The memories would probably haunt him for the rest of his life, well into his years of being a geriatric.

  Time to leave, Burke thought. He walked to the office door, making his exit. I won’t look back. Make this short, sweet, and to the point. Leave now and leave fast.

  “Burke, wait a minute!” Colby called out, standing. He rushed to Burke. “Don’t leave yet.”

  Burke felt Colby’s palm and fingers on his right elbow, grasping. Colby actually pulled him backwards, preventing him from leaving.

  Surprised, Burke asked, “What’s going on?”

  “I…I…I have something to say to you before you leave.”

  “Make it quick,” Burke snippily said. “I have other things to do.”

  The mood changed almost suddenly, within seconds. Time seemed to stop as a string of quiet hung between the two men. Burke locked his stare with Colby’s. His heart began to race within his chest: bolting to and fro, deflating its chambers, and spinning beneath the protection of his ribs. Everything felt lighter and swifter. Gravity felt as if it had lifted away from the earth, pulled into space and the galaxy. Burke never experienced weightlessness before.

  “I…I…” Colby stammered, blinked once, twice, three times. And then he fell into Burke, leashing his solid arms around the millionaire, hugging Burke against his frame, breathing on his neck and part of his face.

  What’s happening? Burke thought. What’s going on?

  Their chests collided. Burke didn’t understand why.

  Colby sniffed along the length of Burke’s neck, inhaling. Burke didn’t understand why.

  Their heartbeats quickened together, stopped, and started to beat faster, growing into some type of synchronized pattern and motion. Burke didn’t understand why.

  The hug reeked of power and masculinity as their pecs and privates touched. He felt Colby’s tight stomach and privates against his own.

  I don’t understand any of this. This is all so baffling.

  How? When? Where? Why…did Colby turn his head a fraction to the left and meet his lips with Burke? Burke wanted to know. But Burke didn’t understand why.

  And how? When? Where? Why…did Colby kiss him, rocking Burke’s world, causing Burke—this moment was real, right? Right!—to lose his balance and almost fall to the office’s floor? Tumbling. Unsteady on his feet. Collapsing. Becoming unconscious. No longer capable of using his mind for anything that offered clarity and stability and surety and…

  The kiss was everything Burke imagined it would be with Colby Blue. Enlightening. Useful. Appealing. Sugary. Spine-clenching. The kiss blew Burke away, this way and that, creating an opening or fissure of sorts inside his heart he coul
dn’t label or decipher or understand, an abyss of lust, and a shapely funnel of tenderness. The kiss turned out to be the best he had ever shared with a man. The only kiss that had ever felt important in his life, meant to be and purposeful.

  Something happened in Burke’s world that he didn’t understand. Blurriness occurred. Uncertainty. Misaligned events he couldn’t make heads or tails of. His world seemed to split into four quarters, breaking at their hemispheres. His legs started to wobble, and he couldn’t speak. How quickly his current state turned unstable, creating fault lines within his chest, earthquakes, and typhoons. A complete mess, but…but…it felt wonderfully right all the same. Perfectly flawless. Without any blemishes. Exquisiteness. Rightness.

  Then he pulled away from Colby’s grip and lips and heartbeat and privates and…

  Run! Run! Run! Run as fast as you can! Just run! Get out of here. Fast. Fast. Fast.

  So he did.

  * * * *

  Later that evening

  Burke hunted Ad down, finding him at Tab’s Pooling. The pool hall sat on the corners of Bescher and Timothy in downtown Channing. Eight pool tables occupied a dimly lit room as Luke Bryan and other country singers performed on the jukebox. An L-shaped bar sat to the left of the tables, and a beautiful brunette bartender, with piercing brown-gold eyes and a too-tight T-shirt collapsed over a buxom chest, waited on patrons.

  Burke knew the place as a straight bar/pool hall, not that he minded. A younger group of mostly men in their twenties and early thirties hung out at the business, enjoying their country music, the bar’s attractive female wait staff, pool tables, and the jumbo flat-screens where they could watch their sports or hide from their girlfriends or wives.

  Of course, it had crossed Burke’s mind, wondering if Tab’s just happened to be the place of choice for Ad to hide from Dina, relishing his time away from the woman and her cluster of feminine concerns/issues/everyday whatnots and jumbles. Burke wasn’t stupid and knew a high percentage of men, and women, in almost every relationship, had surfaced in such a business similar to the pool hall, whether it was a book store, salon, craft store, church, or racetrack. Sanity from a spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend could be needed.

  Home away from home, as Burke sometimes referred to those places like Tab’s, a safety haven to prevent divorces and breakups.

  Ad held a McDermott pool stick in his right hand, standing near the far-right corner of the table. “Your play, Burke.”

  Burke analyzed his remaining striped balls on the table’s green surface and realized he never really liked pool and only played the sport to spend quality time with his best bud. Truth told, after playing for the last ten years, lacking to master his game, he couldn’t do a bank shot if his life depended on it. He scratched plenty of times, causing failure during his games with Ad.

  He told Ad, “Eleven in the corner pocket.”

  Hunched over, manhandling the stick in his grip, he clicked its plastic tip off the cue ball, which struck ball number eleven, missing the corner pocket. No surprise.

  “You suck, man. You’re the worst pool player on the planet,” Ad said, taking a sip of his beer.

  “I purposely let you win to keep our relationship intact. Don’t forget you’re a sore loser.”

  Ad laughed. “Yeah. Right. I’ll believe that when you stop sleeping with men.” He stepped up to the table, analyzing the different ball-clacking moves to score a ball in one of the pockets.

  “Speaking of men,” Burke said, needing another beer. “I met with Colby Blue this evening…”

  Burke spilled his tale about his earlier date with the semi-naked and scary Minotaur and the True Blue Dating Agency setting him up with Cal Yuell. His story mostly occurred in one, long and heedless breath, which left him flushed.

  The pool game had stopped. Ad stared, wide-eyed, listening to the story, fully interested. Not once did Ad pick up his bottle of beer to his left and take a sip.

  Following Burke’s spiel, Ad said, “Don’t be a fool, Burke. Colby Blue has a crazy hard-on for you. He wants you in and out of bed. He’s probably already fallen in love with you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s purposely setting you up on bad dates just so he can have you for himself.”

  “We don’t even know each other, though. Hell, we’ve met a handful of times.” Burke shook his head. “He doesn’t like me that way.”

  Ad pointed the end of his pool stick at his best bud. “Don’t underestimate the power of serendipity and the magic of falling in love at first sight. The guy was all over you, and he kissed you.”

  “Serendipity is a bunch of bullshit.”

  Ad continued to point the pool stick in Burke’s direction. “Serendipity happened between Dina and me. So don’t be surprised that’s it happened between Colby Blue and you.”

  Burke felt as if he had lost his mind, having absorbed what Ad had just shared with him. He stood dumbfounded next to the pool table, unable to move. His arms felt weak, and his heartbeat slowed.

  Ad placed his stick on the corner of the pool table and walked up to his friend. He placed his arms around Burke and gave him a short, quick, and affectionate shake. “You’re pale, bud. What’s going on?”

  “I need to sit down,” Burke admitted. “I feel dizzy.”

  Burke felt Ad remove the pool stick from his hand and watched him place it aside. He let Ad walk him to a nearby booth. Burke sat down and placed his palms on the table’s surface.

  “Sit here. I’ll be back in a second.”

  Burke stared straight ahead at the multiple colors that exploded from the jukebox. Carrie Underwood’s hit, “Something in the Water,” filled his ears, erupting from the magical box. Burke recalled his meetings with Colby Blue, all of which consisted of heavy eye contact, deep interest, and Colby being affectionate with him on various levels. Burke hadn’t missed those signals. Instead, he merely chalked Colby’s actions up as overly friendly, polite, and having a positive personality. Burke sort of understood the man couldn’t be rude if he wanted to be. Something told him Colby rolled in a smooth and negative-free way, preventing drama in his life and having much control over it, day in and day out. Burke’s mind flipped back to the most recent moment in Colby Blue’s office: their too-close hug, Colby’s breath against his face, and the kiss.

  Serendipity?

  “Maybe he has fallen in love with me,” Burke whispered, lost in his jukebox and multi-colored dream world. “Maybe Ad is right. Don’t underestimate serendipity. Never.”

  Ad placed two shots in front of Burke and slipped into the booth across from him. “Drink up, man. You need these.”

  Burke slipped out of his distant mind-planet and smelled the whiskey in front of him. Definitely Jim Beam, one of his favorites. He looked over at Ad. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”

  Ad winked. “I’m just trying to help you.”

  Burke pointed to the pair of shots. “This should do the trick.” Then he downed one shot, the second one, and left out a comfortable, numbing sigh of completeness.

  Some bear walked up to their booth and asked, “You two dudes done with the table?”

  “Have at it,” Ad told him.

  The bear moved up to the pool table with a second bear, and the two started their game.

  “I feel like shit.”

  Ad winked. “You have a few options. We can stay here and get drunk on shots, or you can go home. What will it be?”

  “I think I want to go home,” Burke replied, still thinking about his hug and kiss with Colby Blue. It felt like a bomb going off inside his head and heart, nothing even MacGyver could prevent from detonating.

  “Let’s get you home then,” Ad said. “Besides, you don’t look so well.”

  Burke nodded. “I can handle the drive home.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to learn that you wrapped your Jeep around an oak’s trunk.”

  “I’m good. Really, I am.”

  * * * *

  Less than ten minutes later, comfo
rtable behind his Jeep’s steering wheel, Burke felt clear-headed. Did he ruin Ad’s pool time? Maybe. Burke wasn’t sure. There’d be another day for pool and them to hang out and enjoy each other’s company again. Soon, he was sure. For now, he wanted to get home and go to bed, calling the day off after labeling it shitty.

  Raindrops covered the windshield, and a wind started to brush against the Jeep’s windows. Some asshole in a Prius cut him off because they didn’t stop at the sign near the end of Negley Avenue, which caused Burke to slam on the brakes. Within seconds, his seatbelt collapsed against his chest. He swore, trying to keep his composure together. Then he continued his drive home.

  * * * *

  The place was quiet when he arrived, in the same condition when he had left earlier for his date with Cal. He kicked off his shoes, headed upstairs, undressed, and slipped into the shower.

  The warm water soothed his body, but his shower was cut short because of thunder and lightning overhead. Cautiously and quickly, he climbed out of the shower, dried off, and headed to his bedroom. Once there, he slipped into a pair of navy blue boxer briefs, snug against his skin, compacting his private parts.

  Thunder cracked overhead as lightning filled the night with an electric show of hot blues and gold lines throughout the heavens. The lights within his A-frame flashed off and on. More thunder rocked within the night’s sky, and springtime rain started to slap against the house, keeping Burke wide-eyed and alert of the storm at hand.

  Craving a glass of water, he went downstairs to the kitchen and poured chilled water over ice in a glass, enjoying the drink while leaning against the kitchen counter.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  At first, he thought an oak limb was blowing in the wind, scratching one of the living room windows. After walking into the foyer/living room, upon his review, he learned differently.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The noise surfaced at the front door. Burke saw the top of a head and a military cut in the half circle of glass.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Burke moved up to the door, listened to the sound of angry thunder crack overhead, and watched the downstairs lights within the A-frame flash off and on again.