Blank Space

by Francis Gideon

  "Yeah," Adrian panted. His hand moved quickly too. "If he was being good and fucking my dick just right, I'd grab his cock. I'd squeeze and twist him as he rode me. I'd want him to come before me, so I could watch it cover his chest and then see his eyes roll back into his head. I like to watch people come."

  "Do you?"

  "Yeah. They're more vulnerable then. The most like themselves, because they forget who they are for a while. And if this guy, this random person I'd find, would allow it, I'd want to see him come first."

  "He would," Curtis said. He pressed a thumb to the underside of his dick and held it there. Precome coated him now. He knew he wasn't far. "He would let you."

  "Then I'd hold him down on my dick and wait. Sometimes, I may not even touch him. Or let him touch himself. It's rare, but watching a guy come without help is so hot."

  "But if he needed help?"

  "Then I'd spit in my hand and grab him. Rock my dick into him and keep jacking until I saw his eyes roll back. Until..."

  "Oh—God." Curtis let out a long moan. He saw Adrian's eyes in his memory, staring at him through the dark, and that was what he needed. He felt his come coat his fingers and his dick spasm as his hand continued to move up and down. He stopped with a shudder, but still felt come on his hands, spilling forward. He gasped and writhed, no longer caring if he was visible anymore. He had never felt anything so dirty, so erotic in his life coming like this. It had been building up for so long, thick like the air at the show. And for a moment, like Adrian said, he did forget about where and who he was. Curtis was just a body and that was it. He was boneless, weightless.

  He wiped whatever come he could find on the bedspread, and then took off his new hoodie that had caught most of it and tossed it aside.

  As Curtis started to come back down, the sounds in the room had changed. There was no more murmured sex talk from Adrian, no more back and forth motion from the chair. Curtis felt a smile spread on his face as he closed his eyes, the hazy euphoria lingering on him. He thought of Adrian's eyes in the dark again and felt his dick spasm. He thought of Adrian's lips, their kisses when he was younger, and how that had been the most erotic thing he had done with another person. The tracing of lips across skin, across cheeks. The memory was like a pulse point, so much so that he didn't even notice that Adrian's lips were there. On his. Next to him. Adrian was actually kissing him. Not like a memory, but real.

  Curtis's eyes opened. He saw Adrian's face close to his, then felt his hand on the side of his cheek. He tasted him—Oh, God, I'm tasting Adrian. Then he pushed away.

  "No," Curtis murmured. "No, we can't."

  He scrambled up the bed, away from Adrian who now gripped the edge where Curtis had been, hunched over and kneeling on the floor. Adrian's fly was undone, but his cock was hidden. He let out a shakily breath, before he reached for Curtis again.

  "No," Curtis said. He extended his hand to brush him away—but Adrian clasped onto his fingers. Curtis moved closer to him, then found Adrian's hand on the side of his face. He didn't kiss him again, but pulled Curtis close so their foreheads touched.

  Curtis whispered, "No, no..." but it was softer. "No, Adrian we can't."

  "Please," Adrian begged. Curtis had never heard him this low, this desperate. His voice still shook with arousal, but a frown was twisted on his face. "God—Curtis. I won't tell."

  "It doesn't matter. We can't do this to our wives." Curtis's voice was less urgent now. He held onto Adrian's hand, but he refused to make their lips touch, though they were so close. "Adrian, Simone's pregnant. I... I have Darcy. I just... We can't. I'm so sorry."

  "I know," Adrian said. "But please."

  Curtis wanted to so much in that moment. But he realized, more than ever before, that this desire was now desperation. He had already come; his desire was past him. He wanted to hold Adrian, not to re-enact some fantasy anymore, sometime before they had grown into old men, but because Adrian was hurting. Curtis could hear Adrian's in the hollowed out sound of his voice and the fact that he was still hard in his jeans, but didn't seem to care. Curtis's eyes stayed on the dark patch of pubic hair set against his boxers, before he turned away from it.

  "I'm here, Adrian. I'm not going anywhere. But we can't… do this. We shouldn't have..."

  Adrian's eyes met Curtis's—and his thought was derailed. They stared at one another for a long, long time. Their foreheads were pulled apart, their hands still clasped in front of them.

  "I know," Adrian finally said. "But we have to do something, Curtis. We can't keep fooling ourselves like this. It's ridiculous. We say we shouldn't do it, and then we do it. Then we deny it ever happened."

  Curtis laughed dryly. "Sounds like a plan to me."

  "Don't be an ass. None of us deserve it."

  Curtis's jaw felt hard. He opened up his mouth, but Adrian cut him off.

  "And yes, neither one of our wives deserve it either. But we can't keep using them as an excuse."

  "Darcy is not an excuse—"

  "No. Neither is Simone. We love them. We both know that."

  "Yeah," Curtis said, nodding indignantly.

  "So why are we here? We love them, yet we do this."

  "I... I don't know." Tear's slid down Curtis's face. He went to brush them away, only to feel the sudden sting of sweat mix into his eyes. Fuck, he thought. I should have had a shower. He knew he should have done so many things differently. And yet he didn't. Yet they kept ending up in this place. They could promise to never do it again, but they would. They could never see one another again. Stop talking and hope that distraction was the one thing that would finally win.

  But they had done that before, too. They would always end up here, in a hotel room, after a show. Maybe it wouldn't be this band in Waterloo. Maybe it wouldn't be the Pixies in Toronto. But it would be some band. And they'd wind up like this, covered in come and sweat and shame, only maybe next time they actually would fuck. For real. And Curtis actually would ruin everything.

  Curtis turned away, still wiping away frustrated tears. When he licked his lips, he tasted sweat from the show and Adrian. He tasted Adrian gain, after ten years. Always, always, always. We come back to the fucking start.

  "So what do we do?" Curtis said. He looked at Adrian, his eyebrows knitted on his forehead. "If you know so much about the future, then what's next?"

  Adrian laughed more bitterly than Curtis was used to.

  "I don't know either. But I can't walk around this anymore." Adrian got up, doing up his fly. He wasn't hard anymore. Now he shuffled across the room, his eyes fixated in front of him, no longer paying attention to Curtis. Curtis felt his stomach floor drop out beneath him.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Into the bathroom. I want... I gotta think."

  "No."

  Curtis felt everything—from the memory from the first song on Adrian's playlist, to the last one at the show—come crashing down. He remembered Adrian asking him here, to Waterloo, ages before and him saying no. He had said no and gone one direction and had Adrian go in the other. Curtis wasn't going to let anything like that happen again. He leaned forward on the bed, grabbing Adrian's hand to pull him close. Adrian flopped down on the mattress, moving close to Curtis, but not touching anything other than his hand. Their lips remained centimetres from one another. Curtis wanted to kiss him, but he was still shirtless and vaguely covered in come. They would both need a shower, to move on and deal with this, but for now they hovered on the bed.

  "I'll ask Darcy...I'll... I'll talk to her."

  Adrian didn't answer, but squeezed Curtis's hand.

  "I don't know what I'll ask her," Curtis added, "but I have to talk to her."

  "You do. I have to talk to Simone, too."

  Curtis still didn't know what either one of them could get out at the end of this. Simone may let Adrian fuck around, but that was just sex. Curtis and Adrian... they were more than sex. Even now, with just their hands touching, it felt so much more important, so much more in vio
lation of those rules than ever before. Look, but don't touch. And yet their hands were there, together, and Curtis didn't want to move them.

  "What do you think will happen?" Curtis asked.

  . "I have no idea."

  Curtis knew the worst case scenario. It always loomed over him. Both worst cases were that Darcy would be livid. She would be so angry, so upset that her trust had been violated, that she would leave him. He felt the sting of his tattoo just thinking about that option. He and Adrian hadn't really done anything—but after spending a weekend in a hotel together, even if they really had done nothing, who would believe them? The other worst case for Curtis was one where he'd never see Adrian again, where he would move to Waterloo with Simone so they would no longer tempt one another. That was hard to swallow, too. But Curtis thought he could let go and say goodbye to Adrian again, so long as they acknowledged their feelings. That way, at least, it wouldn't be a silent regret. Just something that couldn't work out.

  Curtis was about to say something, when he felt Adrian's hand on his cheek. Adrian touched his chin, tilting it up to meet his eyes. "Are you sure, Curtis?"

  "Yes." Curtis nodded now, Adrian's hand bobbing as he did. "We can't do anything else until we talk to them. And I can't..."

  "I know, I know." Adrian caressed Curtis's cheek gently and then moved down to touch his lips. He let his fingers linger there, Curtis's warm breath on them, before he moved his fingers back to touch his own lips. It was almost like they had kissed. Curtis smiled, and Adrian laughed a little. They were skirting the rules, one last time.

  "I want to sleep," Adrian said. "Soon. I'll probably have a shower, first."

  "Me too. I mean, after you."

  "Yes, of course." There was no lingering temptation in his voice, no thought of having a shower together. But Adrian still remained on the mattress, his hands fidgeting. "Can we... Can you and I share a bed?"

  Curtis glanced at the space between the twins. It was so big, enough to fit another bed in between it. But the twins themselves were narrow. A dorm room bed, one that left nothing to the imagination. If he and Adrian only slept next to one another, he'd wake up in the morning with a hard on. And he didn't trust himself.

  "No..." Curtis said, his voice quiet. Adrian was about to get up—looking defeated, like a kicked puppy—when Curtis added, "but maybe we can push the beds closer. See how close we can get, while still leaving a space?"

  Adrian grinned. "Okay. I like that."

  "Good." Before Adrian walked away, Curtis kissed his own fingers and placed them on Adrian's lips that curved into a smile. "Good."

  While Adrian was in the shower, Curtis rearranged the beds. He pushed them closer and closer together, moving the tables, the lamps, and everything else—along with putting the chair back in order. When he was done, he saw the fine line between the two beds. Even though he had jammed them both together, there was always going to be a space. There was no way the two mattresses could become one.

  For now, that was good enough.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Curtis's palms sweated as he held his phone over his office desk. He and Adrian had come back late after getting stuck in traffic on Sunday. Then Lacey and Sierra had wanted to climb all over him and tell him about their fun time with Camille and Darcy. And Darcy, well, she had had the kids all weekend, so Curtis had stepped in and been super-dad the rest of Sunday night. The distraction had been nice, and Curtis fell into his routine rather easily. Except that now it was lunch hour on Monday, and his routine made it easier and easier to put off the news. He held his phone in his hand, his lunch untouched, skimmed his contact list for a long, long time.

  How exactly did you tell your wife that you were in love with your best friend? There was no quick guide or anything like that on Google. On the drive back, Adrian had told Curtis the real story of how Simone and he had decided to see other people (basically, Adrian had started to cry) and Curtis didn't exactly think that was a good working model of how these types of conversations could be started. He was feeling pretty close to tears, though. Curtis was about to give up calling or eating his lunch altogether when Silas appeared around the corner.

  "Hey, man. It's lunch. Why are you still here?"

  Curtis shrugged. He slid his phone down into his pocket. Silas still didn't move.

  "You're looking pretty pale, actually. Are you okay?"

  Curtis tried to nod, but even Silas—a work acquaintance who Curtis only talked about presentations and numbers with—seemed to see through his skin.

  "I know you don't like to get personal at work," Silas said, grabbing a chair from the opposite desk. "But I'm here if you need me."

  "What? I get personal."

  Silas rolled his eyes. "It took me two years to learn the names of your girls, Curtis. Not because I suck with names—I'm great with them—but because you barely mentioned them. I saw these blonde heads in cars every so often, but I never knew they belonged to you. Hell, you don't even have me on Facebook. And I have everyone on Facebook."

  "Okay, that's true. I don't like to mix work and home. Things are private, you know?"

  "Except they're not. You bring stuff with you wherever you go. And that's okay! There aren't any relationship lines, you know that, right? Our boundaries are kind of just what we make of them."

  Curtis sighed. And this is why I don't have you on Facebook. Silas's page would be nothing but esoteric wisdom and un-sourced quotations as status updates. Even though Curtis sometimes felt like Silas's rambles were beleaguered, he knew he had a point. Curtis had taken his personal life into work today, and because if it, he could barely concentrate on anything. Now it was lunch, he was starving, but he still hadn't left—because he still hadn't talked to Darcy. He wouldn't get anything done, he knew, until he talked to her.

  "Yeah, okay." Curtis rubbed his hands over his face. "You're right. I've got some shit to deal with."

  "Heavy stuff?" Silas asked. "Not to pry, but I'm curious what type of illness I should concoct for you. Is this like—maybe food poisoning so you need the afternoon? Or are we talking flu so you need three days? Maybe even something like typhoid—if you need a couple weeks!"

  "Hah—no, not typhoid. I don't even think I have that many sick days left." And I hope I won't need them for this, Curtis thought with sudden panic. He worried his lip, then said, "So I hope it's just food poisoning for now. Just the afternoon. With possible lingering days where I'd need to recover."

  "Got it. But don't be afraid to take those extra days. These things happen, you know. We've all eaten street meat from Union Station we wished we hadn't." Silas stood from his chair, sensing that their conversation was over. "I'll tell the boss you needed to step out, okay? Don't worry about calling in."

  "Thanks. I really appreciate that."

  "Not at all! Do I have creative license with your illness? Can I make it seem hysterical and pathetic?"

  Curtis had to bite back another laugh. "Do what you think is best."

  "Excellent." Silas cheered. "I will spin an enchanting tale."

  "Maybe I should add you to Facebook," Curtis said, his smile lingering.

  "Well now, don't go too crazy. Just get your own shit done first, okay?" Silas narrowed his eyes, and Curtis felt the bottom of his stomach drop again.

  "Yeah. Okay."

  "Good luck!" Silas called out at the end of the hall, before he disappeared into the break room. There was only so much time Curtis had before his boss saw him. He turned off his computer and gathered his coat. In the elevator on the way down, he composed his message to send when he had a signal again.

  Hey, D. I'm heading home. Kids aren't there, right? I think I need to have an Adult Discussion. Don't worry. I just... Need to tell you a few things.

  Curtis read it over a couple more times. Before he stepped out of the elevator, he added: I love you more than anything. I'll be home soon. Then he hit send.

  *~*~*

  Curtis had no idea how to start the conversation. When he
got in the door, he spotted Darcy at the kitchen table, her brows knitted on her forehead.

  "Curtis... Who died?"

  "No one." He hung up his coat, took off his shoes, paying careful attention to each step he took. He wished someone had died. This entire conversation seemed easier to have over a dead body. Because possibilities were over then.

  "Okay. Then... What's going on? You never get that serious. So... just sit. Tell me."

  Curtis was relieved when Darcy actually got up, walked over to him, took his hands and dragged him to the couch. The TV was muted, but she soon turned it off so there was no distraction whatsoever.

  After another couple moments of abated silence and heavy breathing from Curtis, she finally sighed. "My God I hate men," she huffed. "You guys don't know how to express anything."

  Curtis didn't want to cry, but he had to admit, that Adrian's tactic seemed sound. If Curtis cried, he seemed like he really was torn up inside, instead of being an evasive dick. He thought of what Silas said—I know you don't like to get personal at work—and realized this was true even at home. Curtis didn't talk. He stayed silent, hoping not to offend anyone. When really, his evasive attitude was what frustrated Darcy in the first place.

  "I'm so sorry," he said.

  "You better be." She nudged him. "It's really hard keeping a positive attitude when I know shit's been eating at you for a while."

  "You know?"

  "Please. I've lived with you a long time now. I know your slowed movements. Your random bouts of anger and your silent melancholy. It's worse than a Victorian novel with you sometimes. I know you've been upset for a while, Curt."

  "Why didn't you mention anything?"

  "Because it's you. You hate it when people bring up your feelings."

  Curtis laughed lightly, then leaned forward on his elbows. "I've been hearing that a lot today."

  Darcy's hand went over his back, rubbing up and down. She played with the collar of his shirt and ran her fingers through his hair. She murmured, "you need a haircut" under her breath, but didn't say more.