Where Do I Start?

by Chase Taylor Hackett

I could immediately feel my face glowing like a space heater.

  “He’s obviously very fit,” Dr. Scruff said, whose actual name I had forgotten. Stone. Name tag right there. “No exercise for at least a week, until that wound is good and closed, and then take it slow. Common sense.”

  “I’ll make sure.”

  “And the same with sex. Common sense. Nothing strenuous for a few days.”

  “Hear that, Dweeb?” Fletch said while he slid around and pushed his face under my arm. “No. Rough. Sex.”

  I wanted to pinch him soooooooo hard.

  “You dolt,” I said.

  He nuzzled his face a little deeper.

  “I’m not mad at Haggis, you know that.”

  “I know.”

  “I love that dog.” He was still talking under my arm.

  “I know. I do too.”

  “And I love you, Roger.” And my heart stopped. He squeezed me tighter. “Did you know that? I need you to know that. I’d do anything for you, anything, because I love you so much.”

  I was paralyzed. The doctor cleared his throat.

  “I’ll just get those meds for you, and we’re done.” And he stepped out.

  Fletch had never said that, not ever. At one time, I’d have given the world to hear that from him, even in a drugged-up stupor.

  Why hadn’t he ever said it? Why hadn’t I? Would it have changed anything, if he had? Of course I’d been too cowardly to say it. What if I’d told him? Would it have stopped him maybe? Was this really all my fault in the end? All this loneliness and this terrible emptiness? All because I was such a miserable coward and now he loves me? I knew it didn’t quite make sense, but still. I closed my eyes, lest they start gushing, as I continued to tailspin.

  I had been so scared he’d just laugh at me, but maybe—

  “Ah,” said the doctor.

  I looked up and quickly wiped my eyes on my shirtsleeve. I hadn’t heard him come back. We were both a little embarrassed.

  “Excellent,” he said.

  Fletch pulled his face out to look up to me.

  “That’s a code word. Did you know that?” He smiled at me. “It means ‘oops.’” His head fell back into place, and I felt how hard his arm muscles were as he pulled me tight to him.

  The doctor smiled, sheepish.

  “Congratulations, by the way.”

  “Congratulations?”

  “He told me—you’re getting married.”

  “Shhhhh,” Fletch said to the doctor. “That’s a secret. Don’t tell Roger.” And he did his ostrich thing under my arm again.

  “I think that’s wonderful,” said the doctor. “Honestly, when he told me his boyfriend’s dog had bitten him, I thought that can’t be good. But obviously you two are fine. I envy you guys.”

  And he went out through the curtain.

  Fletch snuggled a little deeper, as though he couldn’t get close enough.

  I wondered if maybe my head was spinning more than Fletch’s. I’d forgotten—but when Fletch was around, there was just a hell of a lot of gobsmacking.

  After the nurse had bandaged his hand up, I walked Fletch carefully out into the waiting room. I managed to dig his wallet from his back pocket and then plopped him more or less upright on a chair. I could only hope he’d stay that way while I went off to deal with checking him out of this place. He had to have an insurance card in his wallet somewhere, didn’t he?

  Okay, lots of guys carry a condom in their wallet. Because hey-you-never-know. If an opportunity comes along, you want to be ready. Doesn’t mean the guy’s a slut. It shows he’s responsible, blah-blah-blah. Perfectly nice guys carry a condom in their wallet.

  But what guy carries three condoms in his wallet? Because hey-you-never-know when you might stumble into an orgy??? What???

  I swallowed my anger. Really, what did Fletch’s condom collection have to do with me? I asked myself.

  I dealt with the woman in the window, signed half a dozen forms, and handed over my credit card to pay everything the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees wouldn’t.

  Once again, I got one arm in his jacket and draped the rest of it around his left shoulder. I called a car, and I somehow managed to get him and his library book into it, where he immediately——fell asleep.

  It was still night as we made our way back toward Manhattan. My thoughts were a mess. I was a mess. What Fletch had said wouldn’t go away, and it left me with an uneasy thought.

  It had been my observation that things people blathered when they were otherwise completely wasted—whether it was Mel Gibson or my dear aunt Hannah—were not necessarily the things that the blatherer intended to say, but they generally were what the blatherer honestly felt.

  Gibson really is a bigot.

  Aunt Hannah—well that’s a whole other story.

  And Fletch. I turned to him.

  Fuck me.

  Head thrown back, mouth open, snoring lightly. Still gorgeous somehow. With three condoms in his pocket. Because hey-you-never-know when you’re going to bump into triplets???

  Just how oversexed could one twenty-five-year-old boy be???

  I was able to wake him up enough to get him up to my apartment. It took us probably fifteen minutes to get from the car to his falling face-first on my bed. I wrestled his feet up, rolled him over onto his back, and scooched him up so he wasn’t hanging off the end.

  Shoes off, socks off. Jeez, even his feet were sort of sexy, if that’s possible. I counted to ten.

  This next part could get hard.

  Difficult. Not hard.

  Nobody’s parts were going to get hard. I’m just like a nurse, I said to myself. I can do this without it being weird.

  I counted to ten again. I tried humming “On the Beautiful Blue Danube.”

  I opened the button fly of his jeans and then—moving to the ankle-end of things—I started working his pants down by pulling on the calf of one pant leg, then the other, and then back. It was slow but working. What I didn’t realize until I looked up was—his boxers were coming down with the blue jeans.

  Hel-lo.

  Long time, no see.

  Fletch never did go in for manscaping, did he.

  Okay, nurse or no nurse, this was mad wrong.

  I turned my head as far as I could to the side, scrunched my eyes shut, tugged his boxers back up, got everything safely back inside, and then finished—carefully—working his jeans down and free of his feet.

  Now he woke up. Or at least enough to notice that his hand hurt, so I sat him up, gave him the pain pill he was due for, and I talked him into taking his shirt off, with lots of help.

  I’m just like a nurse, I said to myself. I don’t notice things—like the tiny bit of golden chest hair that brushed against the backs of my fingers as I undid the buttons, or the galaxy of beautiful freckles scattered across his shoulders, or the lithe, easy muscles of his back that worked beneath his smooth pale skin as I pulled the shirt off his good arm.

  Hardly noticed them at all.

  With effort, I managed to get the remaining shirtsleeve off over his bandage. I laid him back down, propped his injured hand up on a pillow, and he started to snore quietly.

  My hero.

  And then I did something stupid, monumentally stupid. In a string of stupid things, I guess. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I looked down—his face was sort of turned toward me—and there was this clump of hair that had fallen over his face and his right eye. My horrific mistake? I reached down, and I pushed it back.

  Remember—during the course of this very, very long evening, I had leaned on Fletch’s shoulder and held his hand; I’d fumbled in the back pocket of his jeans while his ass was still in them; I’d practically carried him upstairs while he groped me the whole way; I’d even undressed him, which included, at one p
oint, actually having to tuck his hoober-hobber back under the elastic of his boxer shorts.

  All that had given me considerable stress and confusion, but it was nothing compared to the great smack in the gob that came from brushing that soft blond curl back from his temple, the shock that came from that one gesture, that one intimate, stupid, tender gesture.

  I looked at his face, the closed eyes, the eyelashes—and a ridiculous noise came out of me, as if I’d hiccupped, while simultaneously trying to swallow the gigantic dumpling that was stuck in my throat. My eyes stung. I was hit with a violent, crushing wave of emotions. Clobbered. A wave of emotions like a tsunami. It was all there—affection, longing, desire—sure. And loneliness. And fear.

  And oh-jeez anger. Lots and lots of anger.

  All of them and all at once. I couldn’t begin to deal with it. I turned away, went to the bedroom door, swallowed hard, flipped out the lights—and I pushed it back, all of it, everything, back. I looked at him for another second before I pulled the door shut behind me.

  Fletch could have the bed.

  This day had been about a week long, but no matter how exhausted I was—and I was so tired I could cry—I was never going to sleep.

  As I sat on the couch and rubbed my face with both hands. Haggis climbed up his steps, made one full circle, and dropped in a puddle of Scottish terrier.

  Must be nice to be you, Hags, I thought. One quick turn and you’re done.

  I, by contrast, was going to be doing to some serious tail chasing.

  Had Fletch really said what he’d said? He was in a drugged-up stupor. He would never have said it otherwise. But dear old Aunt Hannah haunted me still. Whatever else, no matter how many rye Manhattans she’d tossed back—I knew that old crow meant every vicious word. So—did Fletch?

  Jeff said he loved me once, just after Christmas last year. At the time, I sort of laughed it off and made a joke out of it. I didn’t respond. It was too soon, I’d thought. And then as time went on, I thought that maybe—you know, after what had happened with Fletch—I couldn’t. I figured that that part of me was permanently damaged. And done. I had had the great, passionate thing, and I had crashed and burned, and you don’t do that twice. It was wrong to expect to find anything comparable to that with Jeff or anybody. And that was fine. I could live without the drama. No more youthful passion, no more Sturm und Drang, it was time to grow up and develop more mature—and, of necessity, less intense—attachments. Like Jeff.

  But now? Maybe the problem wasn’t me. I thought about Fletch’s concern for me in Cancun, about how he had looked after me after the old folks’ recital, or about that mischievous smile he got talking about f-holes, or about how it had felt leaning on his shoulder outside his apartment. Or brushing back a curl of soft blond hair.

  Maybe I wasn’t so broken after all.

  Fletch had finally said he loved me.

  But he won’t remember it tomorrow, I argued with myself. So technically it didn’t really count, did it?

  Of course not.

  Absolutely not.

  Definitely not.

  Did it?

  I looked down at the dog next to me, the little wire-haired horror, his black eyes glinting up at me through his eyebrows.

  “You realize this is all your fault.”

  * * *

  When it was finally time to be up and about, I made myself a cup of coffee, showered, and then I tried to get dressed without waking Fletch. With my back to him, I dropped the towel from my waist, found a pair of underwear, and bent over to pull them on.

  “Hello, hot stuff” came sleepily from the pile of bedding behind me.

  “Hey!” I said. “Don’t be a perv. I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was,” he said, rolling over lazily, “and I was having this totally sexy dream. This adorable guy stepped out of the shower, and he dropped his towel and bent over—”

  “Creep. How’s your hand?”

  “I can feel it.”

  “Need another pill?”

  “Maybe not just yet.”

  “I’ll make you coffee if you’re up. Or go back to sleep. You can stay as long as you like.”

  “Thanks,” he said, yawning. With his upper body free of the sheet, he stretched quite languorously, luxuriously, arms over his head, reaching, his torso twisting a little.

  Fuck me.

  Did he do that deliberately, do you think? For my benefit? I’d always wondered.

  It wasn’t until I saw him smiling that I realized I’d been staring—and he had caught me at it. I could feel myself turning scarlet. I spun around and pulled open a drawer, looking for a pair of sweatpants.

  “Hey, does Jeff have his own key?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because wouldn’t it be totally awesome if he let himself in right about now?”

  “Oh-jeez, that would be—” I was going to say awful, but then I realized, it would actually be pretty damned funny, the two of us in our underwear. “Yeah, that would be pretty awesome.”

  “He’d come in, all manly-like, and we’d both be clutching the sheet to our chests.”

  “‘But, Jeff!’” I began.

  “It’s not what it looks like!” we said together, laughing.

  “And it would be the first time I’d said that, when it was actually true!” said Fletch, which shouldn’t have been funny but somehow was, and I had to sit on the edge of the bed, laughing, just thinking about Jeff’s big red face.

  “Owwwwwww,” Fletch said, holding his hand which apparently hurt from laughing.

  “It’s almost too bad it’s Sunday—which means a football game.”

  “Football?”

  “It’s absolutely sacred. He’ll be at his friend Rebecca’s watching some game. Or she’ll be at his place. Better TV.”

  “He has one of those huge screens, I bet.”

  “Like a drive-in movie.”

  “Compensating for something?”

  “Hey! In any case, I won’t see Jeff today.” Which was a relief for me because I wasn’t really looking forward to the big talk I knew I had to have with Jeffrey, and I could use some time to think about my approach to it.

  I tugged a pair of sweats on.

  “Football? Man-oh-man, no wonder you two are together.”

  “What?”

  “You have so much in common!”

  “Shut up.” I started rummaging through a drawer for socks.

  “I bet he hates the violin, hates chamber music.”

  “Stop.”

  “Does he like the dog even? Because I notice Haggis completely ignores him.”

  “Haggis ignores everybody.”

  “Except me.”

  “Except you,” I said. I threw a pair of white socks at his head anyway.

  Dick.

  I pulled out another pair for myself and sat back down on the edge of the bed.

  “Hey,” he said quietly behind me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for taking care of me last night.”

  “You’re welcome. Thanks for rescuing my dog.”

  “He’s welcome.”

  Pause.

  “Hey,” he said again.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I was kinda out of it last night.”

  “Um—yeah. You could say that.”

  “I’m sorry. You know I never lose control like that.”

  “I know. It was pretty funny. How much do you remember?”

  “All of it, I think, especially you pulling my jeans off.”

  “You bastard! You were awake?”

  “I woke up a little when I felt my boxers coming down.”

  “You jerk! Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you help me?”

  “I was hoping you were going
to try to take advantage of my condition—but noooooooo—you were the perfect gentleman.”

  “Sorry to disappoint. Ass.”

  “Actually, I was only sort of vaguely aware. In and out. Anyway. I’m sorry if I did or said anything at the hospital that was embarrassing.”

  “It’s okay.” I could feel the blush in my face. “I knew you didn’t mean any of it.”

  We were quiet for a few seconds.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I never said I didn’t mean it.”

  I looked at him over my shoulder.

  “Go take a pill. I’m walking the dog.”

  “I gotta pee,” he said and threw off the bedsheet.

  “Oh-jeeeeeeeeeez,” I said, looking away.

  Okay, it happens to all guys early in the morning, but Fletch’s had managed to pop out through the fly of his boxers. Fletch gave a goofy smile and shrugged.

  “Excellent?”

  Chapter 34

  Paradise Regained—Temporarily

  Fletch

  I knew where he kept his clothes, of course. I used to live here. I glanced through Roger’s underwear drawer—not to be a creep but because I was hoping to find some fresh underwear maybe and something I could wear that didn’t have dried blood clinging to it. The search for underwear, however, was a complete bust. Roger’s skinny-guy bikinis were way too small. A boy could hurt himself. I had no choice but—commando.

  I traded my boxers from the day before for a pair of gray sweatpants, and I flipped through his t-shirt drawer until I found a dark blue one—to set off my eyes. Both the shirt and the sweats were small and tight, with a gap between the two, and with no underwear—wow—the sweatpants did not keep a whole lot of secrets.

  I picked up the socks Roger had thrown at me—there was no way I was getting those on one-handed. Maybe I could get Dweeb to help me?

  I looked myself over in the mirror, adjusted a couple things, turned a little left and right, and checked out my ass over my shoulder. Just obscene.

  Perfect.

  In the kitchen Roger had one of those one-cup-at-a-time coffee machines—new since my day, and just the thing for the lonely guy, I guessed. I fixed us two cups, changed the dog water, and dumped some kibble in the dog bowl. I was rummaging around in the refrigerator looking for some eggs when I heard the boys come back in. Roger and Haggis, I mean. My boys.