All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

by Christopher Koehler

  Despite the fact that we both rowed, we had rarely sculled together. In some ways this night was as much a good-bye, a farewell kiss, as it was anything else. We’d both grown up at the Cap City boathouse, and while I suspected I’d always be kicking around here in one form or another, I already knew that Michael would never be back, just as I thought “we” would never be together again. While melancholy, I could bear it. Because something was sad was no reason to avoid it. Besides which, I had other, more pleasurable things planned, too.

  I stared out at the river while I waited for Michael to walk in the door.

  “What the…. Remy?” Michael whispered.

  “Hello, Michael.” I turned around to greet him. Michael’s jaw dropped when he saw me. I wore the suit my grandparents had purchased for me at Christmas, and I knew the suit looked like it had been shrink-wrapped to my frame. I wanted the night to be special for him.

  While more casually dressed, Michael looked good. But then, he always did. Biased much, Remy?

  “Wow, Rem. This is… this looks amazing.”

  “I wanted to make it perfect for you.”

  Michael took me in his arms. “It looks like you succeeded. What is this?”

  “A late dinner, then a midnight row under the full moon, followed by…?”

  Michael spun me around. Like a record, baby. I really needed to let the 80s music go. “A row? I didn’t bring—”

  “Oh, Michael. Give me some credit.”

  He laughed. “You brought something for me?”

  “What do you think?” I gestured to the candlelit extravagance around us. “If I can manage this much, I think I can be trusted to handle workout clothes.”

  “Of course you can.” Michael kissed my forehead. “I shouldn’t have doubted you. Care to tell me what we’re eating?”

  “Nothing too fancy,” I said, my eyes twinkling in the candlelight. “Your favorite dinner, maybe.”

  “How on earth did you make fettuccine carbonara at the boathouse?”

  “Not just fettuccine carbonara,” I said smugly. “Fettuccine carbonara with peas, and I didn’t make it here. I made most of it at home. I only finished it here.”

  I shepherded Michael to the table. “Ordinarily a crisp white would be the perfect thing to serve as a counterpoint to the heaviness of the cream in the fettuccine, but we’re minors, so we have lemon- or lime-flavored fizzy water.”

  “How do you know that much about wine, Rem?”

  “I’m a closet lush, Michael.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “My mom’s a budding wine snob, and I made my parents the same thing for dinner.” I smiled. “They were the test market for a new recipe.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you doubt my sincerity, Michael?”

  “I believe that you can be sincerely full of crap.”

  I raised my glass. “Eat up, Michael. Your pasta’s getting cold. And congratulations, by the way. This is only the beginning, you know.”

  “What is?”

  “Your life. High school is largely irrelevant.”

  He laughed. “You’ve learned that in the year since you graduated?”

  “No, I suspected it for years before I graduated. It’s been confirmed in the last year. I….” I stopped to choose my words carefully. “I know that next year will see us in places we hadn’t anticipated, but I hope you know that I want only good things for you. The best things.”

  “I know. I wish things had been different, but they’re not.” Michael looked at me over the table, the candles making his eyes appear dark brown, almost black. “I do know that you’ll be impossible to forget.”

  “That’s all anyone can hope for.” I sounded much lighter than I felt. This long good-bye to my happily ever after? It sucked.

  After that, we both consciously pulled back from the serious talk, or at least exchanged it for something less emotionally charged. Michael told me about preparations to start at Brown in the fall, at least what prep he could do this early. I updated him on how training was going. I was in the midst of my last push, so Michael was surprised that Lodestone had allowed me to eat what I’d made for dinner.

  “He doesn’t know.” I whispered like the boats themselves might give it away.

  Michael pretended to be shocked. “You mean the ultradiligent Jeremy Babcock lied to his coach?”

  “No, I simply didn’t tell him.” That comment deserved an eye roll, and an eye roll I gave it.

  “A lie of omission is still a lie, Rem.”

  Give me strength…. “Does this mean you’ll be forgoing that trifle I made for dessert out of solidarity with my much-violated training diet?”

  “Don’t be absurd. I’m not the one who’ll be rowing his ass off in mere weeks.” Michael leaned over and thumped my forehead.

  I rubbed the spot. “Then don’t say such stupid things. Honestly.”

  “Why don’t I serve dessert?”

  I glared at Michael. “Don’t trust me not to dump it on you?”

  “Actually, that hadn’t occurred to me, but now that you mention it….” Then Michael looked at me. “A plastic bowl? Really?”

  “We’re in a boathouse, Michael. I certainly wasn’t going to risk Mom’s crystal trifle bowl.”

  Michael shook his head slowly. “Now I know how much you really care.”

  That hurt. All I could do was stare. I’m sure I wore a wounded expression.

  “Too soon?” he said quietly.

  “Soon?” I closed my eyes, waiting for the sting to pass. “Try never.”

  “I’m sorry, Rem.”

  For what, I wondered. There were so many things. I’d always been a bolter. Given a choice, flight usually struck me as the best bet. If I escaped into my single, I’d ruin my suit. If I literally ran… well, who could run in a suit? “I didn’t deserve that.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “Any of it, Michael,” I snapped.

  He sighed. “No.”

  When I didn’t say anything for a while, he sighed again. “I’ll clean up.”

  What I longed to say was “You sure can fuck up, so why not?” What I said was, “You don’t have to. I’ll do it. Tonight’s my gift to you.”

  “Why’re you so forgiving, Remy?”

  I stopped and looked at Michael. “I’m not, really. But I’m trying not to invest further emotional resources into what’s essentially a dead relationship.”

  “Now that hurts.”

  “I didn’t say it to hurt you, Michael, but what do you want from me? We’re no longer romantically involved, and that was not my idea. I’m doing the best I can to work on my feelings in a healthy manner, but it’s too soon to say things like that. Maybe you’ll never be able to say things like that to me. Forgive me for not finding the humor in that yet.”

  “You’ve always been so damn pragmatic,” Michael muttered as he put food in the containers I’d brought it in.

  Yes, and that was the eighth cardinal sin. Besides, he’d known that since before we started dating. Did he think I’d changed? People usually become more themselves, not less.

  After we’d finished cleaning, Michael approached me like he feared an explosion of R-bombs. “Rem, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill the evening.”

  “I know you didn’t.” But you did, Blanche! You did. Sometimes I wished I’d never seen Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? But you did, Remy, you did!

  Michael put his hand on my arm. “Let’s go sculling. That always makes you feel better. I hope you know I didn’t mean to derail the evening you were awesome enough to plan for me.”

  “I know you didn’t.” He was trying, and that was sweet. And he was right. For me, at least, sculling cured a multitude of ills.

  “I don’t know what you plan to do with that suit, which looks fantastic on you, by the way.”

  I smiled. “I brought hangers. It cost more than my car. There’s no way this deserves to be wadded up in a bag.”

  We dressed
for sculling by candlelight, Michael and I, and something about that made it erotic. Stripping, sure, but putting on stretchy technical fiber clothes? That was a new one.

  After we snuffed the candles, we launched. The moon rode high in the sky, and we managed to scull in the middle of its path. In the ordinary course of things, all the rowing clubs observed a right-hand traffic pattern to avoid collisions, but it was well after midnight, and no one else was on the river.

  Michael had been right. I felt much better for being on the water, but then, I almost always did, especially when there was no tyrant in a motorboat running drills. While Michael knew how to scull, he was nowhere near my equal in skill, and awareness of that prevented me from turning this into another practice. It was good for me.

  But all good things, as the saying went, and we returned to the boathouse. I made sure the boats were properly wiped down and put away, not only because I knew Lodestone would check, but because I owned one of them. Enlightened self-interest for the win.

  Michael and I stood on the dock, watching the moon on the water. It would never not be magical. Michael had his arm around me to keep me warm.

  “Remy?” he whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Make love to me?” The way Michael said it made me think he knew the memory would have to last him the rest of his life.

  I tipped his chin up and kissed him softly. “Sure, Michael.”

  “Can I confess something?”

  I’d have thought the time for confessions had long since passed us by. “Um… okay.”

  “I’ve kind of always wanted to do it in the boathouse.” Michael buried his face in my neck. He only did things like that when he thought his requests were somehow sketchy. Given what I liked people—him—to do to me, I’d have hoped he knew he could ask me for anything.

  “Me, too, actually.” I was the one with all the experience getting sexed up in public, after all.

  Michael looked at me, no longer looking quite so vulnerable.

  “I don’t think it’s really going to be making love, is it?” I said.

  “Maybe not so much.” Michael reached for me.

  I nibbled on the shell of one ear. “Does fucking like dogs work for you?”

  Michael groaned as I palmed the bulge growing beneath his shorts. “You have no idea.”

  Rowing kit turned my crank. One of the fun things about it was its variety. That night Michael wore an old pair of rowing trou, a pair of shorts that covered the same territory as a square-cut Speedo. So that bulge of his? It was in very real danger of exceeding the limits of the trou’s ability to contain it. A trashy hook-up in the boathouse sounded really hot right then.

  Michael grabbed my hand and pulled me up to the boathouse. “Now.”

  As soon as we were inside, I grabbed Michael. He wanted to be mauled, and I wanted to make the night memorable. One of the coaches had left a boat guts-down in slings, so I shoved him back against it and kissed him hard as my hands began their relentless assault on all parts of his body.

  I bit my way down Michael’s neck, pinching and tweaking his nips. I refused to be gentle, but rough appeared to work for him, based on his groans and little gasps. I felt him grab at me, but I had him so worked up he couldn’t concentrate long enough to reciprocate. Not that I minded. I’d planned tonight for him.

  I never drew blood for obvious reasons, but I knew Michael would feel this for a few days. Happy graduation, Michael. Good luck finding someone to do this to you. Yeah, hatefucking rocked, all right.

  The poor, overburdened trou lost the fight to keep Michael’s junk contained. So I made it official and pulled the short shorts down far enough to reach things. Then I spun Michael around. “Bend over, hands on the boat. Don’t move unless you’re told to.”

  I fell to my knees. Damn, he had a fine ass, and I intended to mark it up. I reached through his legs, and the moment I wrapped one hand around his cock—loosely, so loosely he’d barely feel it—I bit down on one cheek of that lovely ass, and bit down hard.

  Michael screamed wordlessly.

  Before he felt too much pain, I tightened my grip on his cock and ran my tongue across his pucker, barely a flicker.

  “Ohhh….”

  I laved the bite while stroking him, kissing it to make it better before I returned my attention where it belonged, to the world of possibilities in between the firm muscles of his glutes.

  With no particular pattern, I licked, I nibbled, I bit, nothing Michael could predict, and as he started pushing back onto my tongue, I bit the other cheek, loosening my grip on his cock. I wanted him off-balance and sobbing with need.

  “Rem. Killing me.”

  I reached forward to catch the precum flowing from his cock in a steady stream. It made such a pretty puddle on the floor of the boathouse. I used it to slick up his hole before I used my stubble to make him beautifully insane again.

  “Isn’t that the idea?”

  Damn, I loved the smell of sweaty jock. It dove straight to my own dick, stoking my need.

  “Take me bare?” Michael begged.

  I ran my stubble around his most sensitive area a while longer. “Are you still taking Truvada?”

  “Nooo.” He panted, trying to get his breath.

  I loved rimming him.

  “My viral load’s undetectable, but don’t be a fucking moron.” I slapped his ass. “I’ll be right back.”

  I ran to my bag and grabbed my supplies, then dashed right back. Then I caught more of his precum and fucked him with my fingers. Hard.

  “Remmm!” He stood on his toes to get away from me, but his cock never stopped leaking.

  I put some lube in the tip of the condom and rolled it on. Then I slicked Michael up. I planned to fuck him hard and fast, but not dry.

  I lined myself up at his entrance. “You ready?”

  “Uh huh. Get in—”

  I didn’t wait.

  “Meee!”

  Then Michael didn’t have room to think. If I’d known that boats in slings gave us the perfect angle for me to hit his sweet spot, we’d have done this sooner. I grabbed his hips and hammered that spot instead, over and over and over.

  I felt the heat of my climax growing down in my guts and then rising like a phoenix from its flames as the burn coiled up and around my spine.

  “Almost, Rem.”

  I nailed him harder. “Can you cum without touching yourself?”

  “Shit… yes! Damn! Remmmm!”

  I felt Michael clench around me, and fucknation if he wasn’t shooting onto the boathouse floor.

  My rhythm faltered, and I followed right behind him as the burn exploded across my brain. The force of my orgasm seared my cock as I filled the condom with shot after shot, pain as much as pleasure.

  I shook as I collapsed against Michael’s back, boneless and nerveless and trying to catch my breath.

  “Damn, Rem. That was….”

  “Oh yeah.”

  I forced myself to stand, holding on to the condom as I pulled out. My legs felt wobbly as I stepped back, but postcoital cuddles were for lovers. I hated that this was what Michael and I had come to. But here we were.

  Still, I pulled him up and kissed his cheek. “You okay?”

  “More than.” Michael sighed, half closing his eyes. “Too bad I have to move.”

  I smiled. I knew what he meant. “We could make you a nest on the safety bags that go in the launches.”

  “Can’t you see Lodestone looking from me to the stain on the floor when he shows up in a few hours for your practice?” Michael shook his head. “Awkward.”

  I held up a bag with all-purpose cleaner and paper towels. “That’s what this is for.”

  “Damn, you’re intense.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  Michael pulled his trou up. “I won’t be able to sit for a week.”

  I handed him the cleaner and towels. “Go for it.”

  “Me? You made the mess.”

  “No, I cau
sed you to make the mess.” I winked at him. “There’s a difference.”

  “A rather fine one.”

  “That’s not my DNA on the floor.”

  Michael smiled at me and went to work. After that he helped me load everything into my car, and I locked up behind us. No one would ever know we’d been there.

  “Well….” I felt incredibly awkward. “Congratulations again.”

  Michael pulled me to him, putting his hands on my shoulders. “Thank you. I had an incredible night. When I asked you to do something fun for me, I had no idea you’d go all out. This was… magnificent, Rem. Truly astounding. Just like you.”

  I wanted to scream. If I were so damn magnificent and astounding, why was I single?

  “Thanks, Michael. I… uh, I need to go. I have to get up in a few hours for more torture.”

  “Oh, Rem. Why didn’t you say anything sooner? Somehow I thought tomorrow… this morning, I guess, was a day off.” Michael looked upset, I’ll give him that much.

  “Michael, the U23 selection camp is in roughly two weeks. There’s no off until afterward.” I hugged him. “I have to go.”

  I got into my car and drove off. I saw him in the rearview mirror, watching me. I felt like I’d turned tail and run, but I hadn’t been lying. I had to be back at the boathouse in four hours. It was a toss-up whether or not I should’ve slept in my car. But I needed distance right then.

  I swore one thing as I drove home. Despite our pledge to each other to stay friends and stay in each other’s lives, I had to step back. Friends was one thing, but that kind of friend? No, not ever again.

  I thought about e-mailing Randy to see if he wanted to get some coffee or something, because I needed to talk, but then I realized I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. He was a great guy who struck me as wanting more than coffee. I also realized that sometime I might be up for more than coffee with him. I didn’t want to poison that stream with venting about the ex. I hated thinking about Michael that way, but he seemed intent on forcing my hand.

  I decided I’d e-mail Lance and Caden, instead. Caden would never happen, no matter how hard he tried, and a description of Michael’s grad night would surely torture him beyond all reason.