The Pull of Yesterday

by Gabriella West

  She looked at me intently. “Do you want to do it?” she asked. “I’d need you to wear protection.”

  I shook my head. “That’s OK. I don’t have to do it. I’m good.”

  She sat up and gently caressed my aching cock with some lube in her hand. It was so much more sensual than Wendy’s mechanical actions in the car, it seemed almost a separate thing.

  “Come wherever you like, then,” she said.

  I came with a huge spurt all over her neck and chest.

  “I think that’s the best orgasm you ever had here,” Janine joked. Her eyes were bright and I nodded.

  “It was pretty great.”

  I felt amazing afterwards, so much lighter. And Janine hugged me to her. She seemed pleased with herself, happy it had all gone so well. A beeping alarm went off in some far-off part of the place. Her bedroom. Our old bedroom. Where I had not been invited this time. I knew why, I thought. She wanted to keep Guillermo and me separate in that way. The bedroom was his domain now.

  We hadn’t really kissed, I noted. It was strange. Was that off-limits now too? The touching had been so satisfying that it hadn’t really occurred to me. We both dressed in silence.

  I patted Tom before I left. Janine and I held each other in a long, wordless embrace.

  “It’s all going to be OK,” she said. “You have people who love you. I’m one of them. Don’t feel so guilty about Matt.”

  “It’s killing Aaron,” I said briefly. “It’s driving him back to therapy.”

  Janine collapsed against me in giggles. “One of us should go, right?”

  I had never felt as close to her. I looked down at her pretty eyes. “I’ll be in touch,” I said. “I’m lucky... I’m glad that you let me get close to you today. I needed this.”

  She nodded. “Me too, Dave. Me too. We can do more next time. Because I want to do that again, too. I don’t know about you.”

  I paused for a moment.

  “Yeah, I think I’d like that,” I said lightly. Then I thought again. “Is this our version of therapy?”

  “It’s therapy, for sure,” Janine murmured. Then she gave me a long kiss. It sizzled.

  “Matt’s going to enjoy you,” she said with a grin.

  I ducked my head, smiling. “I’ll tell you about it next week. On our therapy couch.”

  “Or in bed?” Janine suggested at the door of her apartment on Lake Street. She did like to have the last word. I bounded down the musty carpeted stairs with a feeling of temporary, unfamiliar ease. I would savor it.

  7.

  Tuesday. I lay on my bed after work around 7, feeling calm and kind of empty, aimless. Aaron was at his yoga class. I hadn’t stopped to get us food after work. I’d made myself a sandwich. The evening would draw out, I thought, and then I could sleep. There was Wednesday to get through, and then Thursday would come.

  It was dark outside. I hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains. I suddenly thought of Aaron, walking back from his class. I should go pick him up, I thought, surprise him. Why had I never done that? It was a long walk for someone with a bad leg.

  I checked the time. The class would be over in five minutes.

  Hopping in the car and taking off was easy, as was drifting down the hill into the heart of Cortland Avenue. There wasn’t an ideal place to park, but I managed to find a space opposite the studio that had just gotten free.

  I sat there waiting, letting the car idle, knowing he wouldn’t spot me as he exited; he wouldn’t be looking around. I just wanted to see him, for once, as somebody else would see him.

  He came out alone, mat under his arm, a faint, dazed smile on his face. He glanced up at the sky, then turned and began trudging up Cortland toward Elsie.

  “Aaron!” I called out the car window. The light from the nearby supermarket, the Good Life Grocery, would be enough for him to see the car.

  He turned, stared, and gracefully pivoted to the crosswalk, arriving at the passenger door, which I manually unlocked. He got in slowly.

  “Gee... thanks, I guess,” he said, puzzled. “What’s this for?”

  “Nothing, I just think it’s weird that I never pick you up after class.”

  We would have kissed in the car in earlier times. No question. This time he didn’t initiate it and just sat there, waiting for me to pull away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to walk home on a winter night.”

  “This isn’t Boston,” he answered after a moment.

  I thought about that for a minute. “Yeah, the weather’s terrible there, and it’s milder here. OK, true. But is it really good for your leg to go so far?”

  We were going back up the hill now, nearing the turn to Elsie Street.

  He sniffed the air. “What’s the smell?”

  “Oh...clove cigarettes,” I answered. “Wendy, Mike’s wife, was in the car last week.”

  “Not Janine,” he murmured. We hadn’t discussed my time with Janine at all the evening before. Perhaps that was why he was acting like my not-very-interested roommate.

  “Nope. Janine hates this car,” I said with a laugh. “She always thought it was a mistake to buy it. The constant repairs pissed her off the first year or so. It settled down after that.” I patted the dashboard of the old Toyota. “I love this car, strange as it sounds.”

  “Mmm,” Aaron said. Perhaps he remembered waiting in the vast parking garage of the De Young Museum for me, telling me he had recognized the vehicle because it was my car, and thus special. I wondered if he thought he’d been foolish that night. The night we first had sex. The night that changed everything.

  I eased the car into the driveway and turned off the ignition.

  He turned to look at me. “Did you eat?”

  “Yeah. I had a sandwich.”

  “I can make us a drink...” he muttered.

  As if in response, drops began to fall from the sky, pattering on the car hood.

  “Yeah, why not?” I got out and went to open the door for him. He pulled himself out painfully—I could tell it was an effort. It had never changed, his condition, and I wondered why I’d thought it ever would. He would have this chronic leg problem forever. I held out my hand and he took it.

  “Thanks, Dave,” he just said. We stood looking at each other. He’ll be frail one day, I thought, and that was such a shocking thing to come into my head that my eyes filled with tears. Luckily, it was raining and he didn’t see it.

  Rain flattened his fine hair, but he lifted his head up to the sky as if he enjoyed it, as if he needed to cool down.

  “We didn’t talk much last night,” I said, fishing out the key. I walked to the door briskly, and opened up. He followed more slowly, dreamily almost.

  I suddenly got it. I waited until he was inside.

  “Aaron... are you on something?”

  He stood watching me in the hall. He dropped the yoga mat on the hardwood floor. For a moment a cynical expression passed across his face. It was like he was saying, why do you care? He didn’t answer.

  “You’re on something! That’s why you’re moving so slowly, and you seem kind of detached.”

  “It’s just muscle relaxants,” Aaron said in a bored voice. “They make me happy, actually.”

  “Then why—and you shouldn’t be drinking while you’re on them.”

  My voice had come out way too lecturing, panicked even.

  “You’re overreacting.” He drifted down the hall and I watched the way he moved.

  I followed. “You did yoga like that?”

  Maybe he did it every week. “How long has this been going on?” I asked, as he switched on the kitchen light and moved around, seemingly absorbed in his task.

  “When was the last time we fucked?” he asked abruptly.

  I cast my mind back. Surely we had done it in the last week... My short-term memory, never great, took a while to gel.

  “It was a week ago, wasn’t it?” I said doubtfully. “Because I told you about meeting Janine... we had
burritos...”

  He gave a short laugh, pouring a measure of alcohol into two glasses.

  “And your infidelity,” I continued.

  He suddenly looked at me. “I see. That’s what you remember. I remember it differently. We had great sex. From my point of view. We talked, intimately. I guess from your POV it was just another evening where you told me about someone else you’re interested in screwing.”

  “No,” I said blushing, remembering now. “You were very understanding. You’re right, it was intense.”

  He sloshed some liquid into a pan and whisked it. Rain was sluicing down outside. I watched the liquid darken.

  “Is that the chocolate thing you made when we first met?”

  He nodded, saying nothing. I watched him fill the glasses. We both sat down at the table across from each other.

  “Well, so how was yesterday?” he said, taking a sip. His eyes closed momentarily. I kept looking at him. I’d seen so many people at bars with the same expression, coming in with an edge, taking the first sip...

  And I surely couldn’t talk. I’d had my share of alcohol to numb out lately. If we stayed together, we’d become a couple that drank instead of talking, had loud, vicious fights... The tape was running through my head and I tried to switch it off. Ignoring what he just asked, I returned to his initial challenging question.

  “Aaron, it’s only been a week. It’s been a hard week for us, I get it, but it’s not like we haven’t had sex for six months.”

  He glanced at me incredulously. “Oh boy, that’s a delightful yardstick.”

  “Well.” I shrugged. “Or is this about me not sleeping in your bed?”

  “I thought it was our bed,” he said, sipping. He was starting to sound defeated now. “But I guess it’s not. How is it, sleeping in the other room? Are you sleeping well? Because I’m not.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I answered after a moment.

  “A few things you don’t know about me, Dave,” Aaron said. “I don’t see why I should tell you now, but just for the sake of argument, I will. I get night terrors. I used to lie awake at night for years thinking there was an intruder in the house. I’ve always slept very lightly, but since you came, it evened out. I felt safer. Having you in the bed with me felt amazing. I was protected.”

  I said nothing for a little bit, letting this sink in. Of course, I felt bad to hear it. But all I could think of was the word PTSD. My father, a Vietnam vet, was also a terrible sleeper, muttering and shouting in the night. Aaron, oddly, was completely silent. I hated thinking of him feeling terror and panic alone in his bed.

  “I’ll sleep there with you tonight. No problem,” I said cheerfully. Somehow I had to turn this around.

  “And as for Janine,” I added, since he’d said nothing, “it was great to see her, talk, you know. It was a short visit. She had to go to work.”

  Aaron shot me a look of contempt. “Come on.”

  “That’s all true,” I protested. “OK, and we fooled around. We didn’t go all the way.”

  “How discreet of you not to tell me.” He took a big gulp of his drink. “It agrees with you, you know, this screwing around. I’m sure your upcoming reunion with Matt will be another highlight of the week for you.”

  I said nothing. If I’d ever wanted to tell him I would back out of the rendezvous, he had just made it impossible for me to do so. The sarcasm just killed any sense of duty I had. It was uncharacteristic of him, but it was a weapon I’d grown up with. And I hated it.

  “So here we are, then.” I responded coolly. “I chose not to hide things from you, but maybe I should have.”

  He looked at me with weariness now, his eyes almost closed. “I’ve had a long day.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. In the silence that followed, I reached out and touched his hand, clasped it. It was ice cold, which didn’t do much for my peace of mind.

  “Aaron, honey,” I said. “Let’s get you upstairs. This isn’t a good idea.”

  He looked at me with a bit of a smile. “I was high the night you met me. You took it well. Back then.”

  I nodded. “I was always concerned about you.”

  He bit his lip. “I’m more than that to you, aren’t I? I’m beginning to wonder. We both could have made a mistake.” His voice cracked on the last word.

  I still held his hand. “You’re tired. Overwrought.”

  “I made an appointment at work today,” he mumbled. “It’s a shrink. I’ll go on the weekend.”

  I squeezed his hand gently. “That’s good.”

  Rain sheeted down. His face was pale.

  “It’s not, really. They like to break people up. When they hear dysfunctional relationship stuff happening, they jump on it. I’m going to be honest, though. Otherwise, why go?”

  I shrugged, though my heart plummeted. All I had now was my good old Irish fatalism to get me through this.

  “It’ll be OK,” I said. I didn’t really feel that it would.

  I poured him a glass of water and saw that he drank it. He finally allowed me to help him upstairs, which was a clumsy process. I was glad I’d given him a ride—who knows what would have happened on the way home? Yet he didn’t seem grateful for it and I knew I’d probably overstepped. Perhaps he liked drifting home from yoga slightly high—maybe I’d cheated him of the experience.

  After he’d gotten into his pyjamas and slumped on his bed, I lay down with him in my stocking feet, still fully clothed otherwise.

  “I’ll wait till you go to sleep,” I said.

  “You won’t stay the night with me?” He sounded childishly puzzled, and I thought about it; why was I pulling back? It had never bothered me to sleep with him before. And after what he’d told me, it was the right thing to do.

  But I craved the peace of my own bedroom. What to do?

  “I don’t get high every day,” he slurred. “Oh, I took some Xanax as well.”

  I pulled away, furious suddenly. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t for me to lecture him about anxiety meds. But here it was. This was what I’d been worried about when we got together. It had crept up on us. He was back to dabbling in prescription drugs, and it might very well soon be worse than that.

  “Will you tell the therapist?” I asked in a low voice. “You’ve got to tell him, Aaron. Or her,” I added.

  He laughed softly. “No, I decided to go to a man this time. It’s more fun.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll behave. It’s just fun to try to seduce them. I mean, I’ve gone to quite a few therapists over the years.” He gave a big yawn. “It was more of a teenage thing. It was the way I rebelled. Unlike you.” One eye opened and he regarded me strangely. “It’s so weird the way you didn’t have sex till college.”

  I snorted. “Try being raised a Catholic. Your background is completely foreign to me as well.”

  “But neither of your siblings seem to have trouble in that department.”

  I didn’t answer, thinking. Then: “I wasn’t wild, Aaron. That’s true. I didn’t act out the way you did.”

  “Pity,” he murmured.

  Perhaps he felt as sorry for me as I did for him. Any sarcastic response that was on the tip of my tongue, I swallowed down. His early sex life hadn’t done him any favors, but then my general repression and belated experiences hadn’t done me any either.

  He still wasn’t asleep. “We will have sex again, Aaron.”

  That earned me a faint smile. He was lying on the bed facing me. “Not if I start taking drugs all the time. You don’t like druggies, do you, Dave?”

  “Does anyone?” That shocked him and he blinked. I could see his face in the dark, lit by the glow of the bedside lamp.

  “I guess not,” he said, sounding sober suddenly. “No, you deserve... something else.”

  I touched his cheek gently. “I’m here with you. Do you want me to turn the light out?”

  “No,” he whispered. Then: “Tell me somethin
g you still like about me.”

  My heart churned again. Looking into his eyes, I murmured, “I like that you do yoga. I like that you mix delicious drinks. I like it that you don’t throw in my face how little money I earn.”

  I stopped, my throat raw. He seemed to be listening intently.

  “I like your sweetness. You’re mostly very gentle. Your humor. Your practicality.”

  I paused.

  “I like kissing you. Your soft hair. Your smooth skin. Your body. The way you’re kind of outrageous in bed. You’re not shy about asking for what you want. I’ve learned so much from you.”

  “Do I make you happy, though?” Aaron asked in a very quiet voice.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The first word that popped into my head was no. I swallowed, panicked.

  “We’re happy, I think,” I hedged.

  “I’ll always love you,” Aaron whispered. “But you know the Sting song... If you love somebody...”

  I stared, knowing exactly what he meant. That song had played repeatedly in all the bars I’d worked at.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Your choice, Dave.” He seemed sweetly resigned as he looked at me. “It’s always your choice. I can’t go anywhere; this is my home. But you are free to go if you want.”

  “Not what I want,” I answered. I got up and made my way to his window, pulling the curtain closed tighter. I switched off his lamp.

  “Go to sleep now,” I said. He must have heard the exhaustion in my voice. He didn’t protest that I had said I would stay, nor did he spew anything nasty at me, the way another person might have when impaired.

  “G’night, sweetie,” was all he said.

  8.

  Matt and I had had no further phone contact since our brief texts about the time of meeting. The day I was to meet him, Thursday, I sat on a wall at work near the parking lot overlooking the Lincoln Park golf course. It was a cool, foggy day. Shadowy shapes were playing on the green far below; I heard the plock sound of balls being smacked. It would be nicer if sheep were grazing there, I thought, gazing out but not really seeing. I was woolgathering, a word my mom had used with me frequently during my childhood. She’d got it from her own mother, a child emigrant from Ireland in the early part of the last century.