Sky Full of Mysteries

by Rick R. Reed

  If Cole realized half of what goes on in my head when I look at him, he’d send me packing.

  “Ah, no worries. I only buzzed once,” Tommy lied. “I’ll just set this stuff down in the kitchen.” And he made good on that promise. In the kitchen, he began unloading the ingredients for their meal—a nice loaf of crusty Italian bread from a bakery on Broadway, a couple of cans each of San Marzano plum tomatoes and cannellini beans, celery, onion, garlic, carrots, and some elbow macaroni. A ham steak. He looked forlornly into the empty bag and, almost under his breath, said, “Shit. I meant to bring wine. I really did. I had a bottle of chianti set out….”

  “No worries,” Cole said, coming up behind him. “I already started on this.” Tommy turned to look and was surprised to see Cole holding up a bottle of cheap red wine—Riunite Lambrusco.

  Inwardly he shuddered, but he made himself smile. “Ah, you think of everything. That looks great. Pour me a glass. And then just grab a seat at the table. You can keep me company while I cook.”

  “Yeah, I bought four bottles at the liquor store over on Sheridan. It was on sale—two for five—I couldn’t resist.”

  Tommy was of the mind, perhaps the Sicilian mind, that no one should ever drink bad wine. But tonight he’d make an exception, especially since Cole looked so cute and pleased with himself, holding up the bottle. It wasn’t just that he’d gone out and gotten wine that delighted Tommy, but the simple fact that he’d done something proactive for their getting together. It seemed like a small step, but it was one in the right direction. Now just try not to read too much into it….

  His little head, toward the south, reminded him once more of what a bit of the grape could do for inhibitions. Tommy failed to keep the grin off his face. Right up until he tasted that sickening sweet wine….

  “This is delicious,” he managed to choke out, holding up his glass. “Salute!” He got busy doing his prep—chopping onions and garlic, slicing up celery, and dicing carrots. “You like to cook, Cole?” Tommy asked over his shoulder.

  “I used to.” He paused for a moment. “These days what I do best is call and order in pizza, Thai, and Chinese. I’m a wonder in the kitchen.” Cole’s eyebrows lifted.

  Tommy chuckled as he threw the chopped vegetables in a pot he’d heated up with some olive oil. They began to sizzle. Tommy dumped some salt into his hand and sprinkled it over them.

  “Make those onions sweat. Seriously, no cooking? How do you get by?”

  Cole’s silence, after a few seconds, told Tommy he’d said the wrong thing.

  He turned away from the stove to look at Cole. “Ah shit, I’m sorry.” Why did I have to go and say something that would remind him of his old, and missing, boyfriend? Tommy lowered the heat under the pot and then moved to Cole so he could stand behind him and massage his shoulders. To his surprise, Cole’s head lolled back, his eyes closed.

  He looked so sweet and vulnerable that Tommy couldn’t help himself. He acted completely spontaneously, not listening to his head but only his heart. Without allowing himself to think or hesitate, he leaned down and kissed Cole. He expected, even as he was pressing his lips to Cole’s, that Cole would reject him violently, pushing him away, acting indignant. The chair would fall over as Cole scrambled to get to his feet. Maybe he’d even tell Tommy to get the hell out.

  But what he did instead was grab the back of Tommy’s neck and mash his face even more into his own. He thrust his tongue into Cole’s mouth. The kiss went on… and on. The kiss lingered so long and so passionately that Tommy was actually getting a little breathless. But he’d have rather died than come up for air. He didn’t want to break the magic of this first kiss. He didn’t know how delicate the spell might be. From all prior indications, he feared Cole might “come to his senses,” push him away, and do exactly as Tommy had imagined earlier. Tommy found himself trembling slightly from the sheer force of the kiss. All sorts of thoughts were caroming through his head:

  Is this really happening?

  Where will we go next with this? Is it the beginning of something or a remorseful—on Cole’s part—end?

  Will my mirepoix burn?

  At last, though, due to the need for oxygen and the strain on Tommy’s spine from standing for so long and so awkwardly, Tommy forced himself to break away. He stood straight, relieving some of the pain in his back, and stared down into Cole’s eyes. Cole peered back, and the visual connection was, surprisingly, just as passionate as the kiss. Tommy didn’t think that would have even been possible until just that moment. But here was the proof, in the gorgeous, smoldering lust in Cole’s eyes.

  Cole suddenly stood and grabbed Tommy’s hand. Wordlessly he led him into the bedroom. For about half a second, Tommy thought he should run back into the kitchen, turn off the heat under the vegetables, but once again his fear that an interruption might break this magic spell made him think Let ’em burn.

  The bedroom was shrouded in shadows with only slivers of light, orange-yellow, sneaking in through the partially open blinds at the window. Tommy stood and watched as Cole undressed, savoring each bit of flesh as it was revealed. Cole’s body practically shimmered, looking pale and ghostly in the dim light. Tommy had to remind himself to breathe, let alone getting his hands to move to undress himself. Besides, he couldn’t recall when he’d been a witness to a more enthralling show.

  At last Cole stood naked before him. His expression was serious, almost somber, belying the erection that pointed straight up at the ceiling, so hard Tommy wondered if it would simply explode.

  Cole made no move toward him. He just stood there, breath a little heavier, watching and, Tommy supposed, waiting.

  “Oh,” Tommy said on a whispered outrush of air. Nudged into action by Cole’s silence, he rapidly undressed, leaving his clothes in a heap all around him.

  Cole moved to the bed and then lay down across it. He stared not at Tommy but up at the ceiling.

  What do I do? Tommy wondered. He knew generally the answer to that question, but not specifically. Let good old Mother Nature guide you….

  He moved to the bed and then waited a second beside it, as though asking for permission. When Cole said nothing, didn’t even look at him, Tommy chose to interpret the signs as acquiescence. He moved on his knees on the bed and, making of himself a big furry blanket, spread himself out on top of Cole. The tingle and spark of their two naked bodies pressed nearly head to toe felt like fire to Tommy.

  He had to kiss him. And he did. It was almost as though they’d never stopped kissing. This one was only a continuation of the one in the kitchen, the same fierce hunger. Their bodies moved to mesh even more, though that was impossible. Tommy reveled in the heat, the tensed muscles, the smooth skin and rough hair beneath him. Cole’s lips were sweet, yielding, and his tongue and mouth tasted like wine, but also like something indescribable, an essence that was uniquely Cole.

  Tommy was in love.

  He moved down then, hungrily kissing Cole’s chin, his neck, ears, lingering at his chest to tease the nipples up out of their mat of dark hair and to bite them so, so gently at first, and then hard enough to make Cole seize up a bit and gasp. He moved away slightly, but Cole grabbed the back of his head, forcing his mouth back down on his nipples. Tommy could feel Cole’s erection throbbing against him. And that made him move south more rapidly, pausing only briefly to savor the taste of Cole’s navel and then onward….

  Until he came to his dick, which rose, almost quivering because it was so hard, out of a mass of dark brown, nearly black, curls. Tommy swallowed him to the root in one gulp, and he didn’t gag because he wanted it so bad. He began swirling his tongue around the shaft, moving his head up and down in continual liquid motion. Cole began to thrust into him, matching Tommy’s rhythm, and it wasn’t long before he was groaning. Little shudders erupted from him every few seconds.

  “God, I’m close,” Cole said on an outrush of breath.

  “Don’t.” Tommy moved his head away from Cole’s jerking cock and
gripped its base tightly. “I want something else first.”

  Tommy struggled with the temptation to simply move up, continuing to grasp Cole’s cock tightly, and to let himself sink down on it… bareback.

  But he pushed the temptation away, powerful and demanding as it was, and forced himself to ask, “You have protection? I hope! Lube?”

  Cole nodded. “In the nightstand.”

  In record time Tommy managed to get Cole sheathed, lubed, and ready to lower himself down on. When he impaled himself—slowly, deliciously, impatiently—on Cole, Tommy let out a long, low moan. This is heaven. This is what I live for. He began to move, rocking slowly at first, then with an urgency born from need, faster and faster. He alternated the rocking motion with bouncing up and down, his heart pounding, breathing coming quicker, sighs and moans erupting out of him without thought, with only the fire of his passion.

  He looked down at Cole, whose eyes were closed. Tommy wished he’d open them. Cole mumbled something, and Tommy leaned forward.

  “What?” he gasped.

  “I’m gonna come,” Cole moaned, thrusting up hard inside Tommy. And Tommy could actually feel Cole’s cock pulsing as he emptied inside the condom—and him. He clenched down tightly on the base of Cole’s shaft as the pulses slowed and, at last, died.

  Finally Tommy felt as though he came back to earth. His breathing and pulse returned gradually to relatively normal levels. He looked down and was stunned to see long arcs of come lying across Cole’s belly and chest.

  He hadn’t touched himself and hadn’t even realized he was coming. He was so caught up in Cole’s pleasure.

  And then it all went south. Cole bucked, and Tommy wasn’t sure what was going on but was hoping for round two, even though he wasn’t ready, but by God, he could get there. But Cole bucked again, and with shock and sadness, Tommy realized the truth—Cole was bucking him off.

  Tommy reluctantly dismounted. He lay down beside Cole, who turned away from him.

  They lay in silence for a while. At last Tommy put a hand on Cole’s shoulder and asked, “You okay?”

  Cole’s response was to shrug Tommy’s hand away. A sniffle caused Tommy to realize Cole was crying. Even in the darkness, Tommy could see the tremors coursing through Cole’s body as he wept.

  “Hey, hey. Don’t cry,” Tommy said softly and, he hoped, soothingly. He rose up, close to Cole, and laid a hand gently on his shoulder.

  Again Cole shrugged the hand away. Almost violently, he moved away, sitting up suddenly on the bed, his head in his hands.

  Tommy wasn’t sure what to say or do. It was obvious the man didn’t want to be touched. All he could think to do was ask what was in his head. “What can I do to make things better?”

  Cole said nothing for a couple of minutes—minutes that stretched out so long they seemed more like hours.

  Finally he said, more levelly and conversationally than Tommy would have thought possible given the circumstances, “You can get the hell out.”

  The imperative took Tommy’s breath away. After he could breathe again, he got awkwardly up from the bed and, with trembling hands, dressed.

  He paused at the doorway to the bedroom, praying Cole would bless him with only a look over his shoulder. But his head remained in his hands, his spine hunched and trembling.

  Tommy hurried to leave. As he headed to the front door, he remembered the start of his dinner and rushed back into the kitchen. Smoke was coming out of the pot, and when he looked inside, the contents were nothing more than black things, unidentifiable, almost ash. He pulled the pot off the burner, scorching his fingers in the process, and then turned off the gas.

  He headed once more to the front door, thinking he’d just done the best thing in his life—and the worst.

  Chapter 10

  COLE LAY on his bed for a long time, doing nothing more than staring at the ceiling. He felt deflated, lifeless, a something rather than a someone. Paralyzed.

  He noticed a minute crack in the plaster, spreading out from the light fixture to a corner of the bedroom, sheathed in shadows. A spider or some kind of bug, it was too dark to be sure, scurried across the ceiling.

  He turned on his side, marveling at the little bit of yellow-tinged light that emerged from the crack at the bottom of the window blind where it didn’t quite meet the sill.

  He remembered lying there with Rory. His lips turned down in a frown, and tears threatened once more. The last time they’d made love was almost a mirror image of the time he’d just had with Tommy.

  How could he?

  In his head he knew he’d done nothing wrong. But betrayal, shame, and guilt ate up his heart. Rory still had to be alive out there somewhere, and Cole had cheated. Unlike most of his gay friends, young, some even in relationships, Cole was monogamous to his core. Even Rory, a true one-man man, had thought Cole a little old-fashioned for his judgment of their friends and their open relationships or their “monogamy with adultery” lifestyles.

  “I want to give everything to you, sweetheart,” Cole had told Rory once, most likely in this very room. “And that includes my body.” Cole remembered shrugging and going on, “Sure, I’d be lying if I said I only had eyes for you. A hunky guy can turn my head. But that’s all—it’s just a visual appraisal, an appreciation. You’re the only man for me.”

  And now he’d had sex with someone else. It was a thing, once he was together with Rory, he’d truly believed would never happen again. It didn’t matter that the entire time the sex with Tommy took place, starting with that first heated kiss in the kitchen, Cole imagined Rory in his place, which was why he rarely opened his eyes. He and Rory had made love so many times in their brief period together, it was easy to cast Tommy in Rory’s role. It was easy to imagine Rory there, so close.

  When he’d come, Cole had actually, for the briefest and sweetest of moments, imagined it really was Rory he was thrusting up and into. He was surprised he’d enough restraint not to call out his name. He almost, almost believed that, when he opened his eyes, he’d look up and see Rory staring lovingly down at him. Rory would say something like “You’ve been dreaming,” and they’d cuddle, rest for a bit, and then he’d flip Rory over and they’d go for round two, Cole being the bottom this time.

  But when he opened his eyes, the illusion shattered. Tommy. He was a nice enough guy, and Cole realized Tommy was falling for him. In other circumstances Cole might have fallen right back, but he didn’t know if he was over Rory, didn’t know if he ever would be. It still felt like too much of a betrayal.

  He mustn’t see Tommy again. He couldn’t give him what he wanted, and that wasn’t fair to a man who only wanted to love him, to bring him joy and pleasure, to explore where their hearts might take them….

  He could smell the burnt makings of their dinner wafting in from the kitchen, and it was on that odor that he, amazingly, drifted off to sleep.

  THERE’S A knock at the door. Groggily, Cole opens his eyes, wondering if Tommy has come back to try to make things right or even just to pick up the groceries he’d bought, since dinner was now out of the question—perhaps for good.

  The knock comes again, a little more insistent. Cole feels as though he’s been drugged as he forces himself to get up. As another volley of knocks sounds, Cole manages to get to his feet and hurry to the front door, shouting, “I’m coming! Hold your horses!”

  Why can’t Tommy just leave him be? How has he gotten back inside the building anyway without buzzing?

  Irritated, Cole swings the door open and…

  It’s him! Rory! He’s standing there, head cocked, a crooked grin on his face. “I thought you’d never answer.”

  And he’s in Cole’s arms—as though he’d never left them.

  COLE WOKE to cruel, bright sunlight, the dream images scattering. Of course he was alone. Even knowing that fact, he got up from the bed and hurried to the door. He opened it, and a little groan escaped him as he took in the empty hallway.

  He rushed barefoot d
ownstairs, hoping against hope he’d see Rory in the courtyard. But all outside was still—mockingly. No one else, obviously, was even up yet, save for a gray squirrel scurrying up a maple tree.

  Feeling weighted down with heavy sleep and a disappointing dream, he headed back upstairs. The door was partially open, and the phone was ringing. He ran inside, a certainty that Rory would be on the line seizing his mind, his heart, his soul.

  But when he answered the phone, it was only his sister, Elaine.

  “Hope I didn’t wake you,” she announced.

  Cole plopped down on the couch, all the hope leaving him, despairing. “No,” he said, casting his gaze around the empty apartment, wondering how he’d manage to pay this month’s rent on his meager retail earnings.

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, good morning to you too!” his sister said with a laugh. “Don’t you have work today?”

  The reminder was a grim one. He glanced over at the clock on the VCR and saw that it was a little after seven. He was due at the store at ten. “Yeah, work. Good old work. Pays me just enough to choose between a roof over my head or eating.” He leaned back into the couch, suddenly longing for the meal Tommy was going to prepare for him. His stomach growled.

  “Well, I’m glad I called, little brother, because I can help out with the starving. I was on my way out the door, and thought I should give you a buzz to see if you’d like to come over for supper tonight. I just put the makings for my famous chili in the Crock-Pot.”

  Cole wanted to just say no. The appeal of holing up here was simply too great.

  “Before you beg off, I need to tell you I won’t take no for an answer.” She chuckled.