Sky Full of Mysteries

by Rick R. Reed

  “I knew you weren’t into me—” Cole leaned forward, ready to speak again, and Tommy raised his hand to stop him. “Don’t deny it. You weren’t. You couldn’t be. You were grieving, and maybe you still are, but in a different way.”

  Cole sat back on the couch. Something went out of him. Tommy wasn’t sure what to call that particular something. He knew only that Cole looked defeated. Where before there had been a little spark, even if was only lust, now there was a kind of slackness about Cole. Boy, Tommy thought, I’m really well on my way to royally screwing things up. Why can’t I just be like every other gay guy my age and concentrate on simply screwing? But I need to be honest with him. I need him to know how I feel. And I don’t need to make a choice with my dick. I’ll just be hurting myself. So Tommy continued.

  “I’m sorry. You came over here for some quick and easy sex, which is totally cool, and I’m going off on a tangent.” Tommy turned to put a hand on Cole’s knee. The touch immediately felt like an electric shock. It turned Tommy on. He took his hand away. “For my sake and yours, though, I need you to know how I feel, what I want.” He shrugged. “Maybe after I go off on this tangent, we can get off… together.” Lame. Tommy smiled anyway.

  Tommy tried to compose himself by taking a few deep breaths. Where was I? Oh yeah. “I knew you weren’t into me, but I thought if I just tried hard enough, my charm, my freckles, my irrepressible joie de vivre would wear you down.” He laughed nervously.

  “And then we did crawl into bed together. I thought it was amazing. Until after. Until I saw how hurt you were and how selfish I was.

  “I was pretty sure I’d ruined everything. And even though the sex was mind-blowing for me, I regretted it, because I thought I’d ruined any chance I’d have with you.

  “And then tonight, of all things, a phone sex line hands us a second chance.” Tommy wriggled closer, until their shoulders touched. He leaned into Cole a bit, pressing. “I still don’t know what I want. I still don’t know what you want. I still—”

  Cole cut him off. “Maybe if you’d shut up for a minute or two, I could tell you.” Cole smiled at him. “Sorry. But you do have a tendency to go on.”

  “Guilty. Dora tells me the same thing. So does my mom. Even some of my professors say—”

  “Dude. You’re doing it again.”

  Tommy laughed. “I’ll bite my tongue. The floor is yours, sir.”

  “Thanks. Look. I’m probably in a similar place as you, Tommy. In spite of what you thought, I was into you, am into you. Two things, though, bugged me about that. One is that you look like him, like my Rory, and that hurts. And that doesn’t seem fair. I don’t want you to be a fill-in. You deserve more than that.

  “The other thing is that I felt guilty about being with you. Not the sex, but because I did feel something more than physical for you. Sex is easy. Caring for someone in a real way is hard. What I felt when I was with you seemed like a betrayal. Does that sound stupid?”

  “No, no. I get it,” Tommy said, his heart ripping a little because he felt like this conversation couldn’t lead anywhere good, at least not for him.

  Cole blew out a big sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I think it is stupid, especially now, since I’ve been using this dumb fuckin’ line on an almost daily basis, hooking up with dozens of guys, being a real man whore.” He chuckled, but Tommy couldn’t detect much mirth in it. What he could detect was the nauseous stab of jealous pain in his gut. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that—if your head’s in the right place. And mine isn’t. Wasn’t. Whatever. I know now, right now, that I was just using all that spectacularly unsatisfying hooking up as a Band-Aid. And as a Band-Aid, it wasn’t working worth shit. Isn’t. Whatever.

  “I didn’t realize that, really, deep in my soul, until tonight, when you opened that door. And when I saw you standing there, I was so happy because I thought, ‘here’s a guy who’s the real deal.’”

  When Cole looked over at him, grinning, foot tapping hard on the floor, Tommy swore he felt his heart drop into his gut. He also felt a burst of sunshine deep within him that he could only describe as joy. Yet his head told him tread carefully here. Tommy wondered what he should say, could say. He was great at running off at the mouth, which was one of the reasons he’d agreed to a law career. But now it seemed like there were no words in his brain, leastways none that would spill down into his mouth. So he stared dumbly at Cole, wanting to kiss him but not daring to.

  Cole reached out, touched Tommy’s cheek gently. “You want to kiss me. I can see it in your eyes.”

  Tommy nodded.

  “It’s funny. I don’t know if I’m ready. Not for the door that kiss might open. Because every kiss opens a door, and sometimes what we find behind that door can be wonderful, and sometimes it can be disappointing. If you kiss me and open that door… will I want to set foot in the room behind? Or will I want to run the other way?”

  “It’s always a risk, isn’t it? Making a connection?”

  Cole didn’t answer. Not right away. Tommy thought he could see him tremble—just a tiny bit. He knew Cole was perched on the brink of a big decision. Tommy kept quiet as Cole finished his beer. He watched Cole as he stood, turning off the lights in the room.

  He sat down again—close—and put his arm around Tommy in the darkness. The window in front of them was an illuminated rectangle, and the snow seemed to pour down more brightly in contrast to the deep shadows, making Tommy feel even closer to Cole, sheltered, comfortable. He let his head loll onto Cole’s shoulder.

  After a while Cole said, “Can we not do anything tonight? No kissing. No sucking. No fucking. Can we just hold each other and watch the snow? Can we just fall asleep together?”

  Tommy felt like Cole had proposed the perfect date. “Those things aren’t nothing, Cole.”

  “I know,” Cole said.

  “Okay. Let’s just settle back together.”

  Cole placed his other arm across Tommy’s front, making Tommy feel enfolded, safe. And then Cole said, “Right. And we’ll see what the morning brings us.”

  Part Two: Present Day

  Chapter 12

  “YOU KNOW, sweetheart, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think of you, even though it’s been twenty years now since you’ve been gone.” Cole set down the bouquet in front of the headstone. Irises, yellow daisies, a couple lilies, baby’s breath, all wrapped in green tissue paper. He did this every year on the anniversary of Rory’s disappearance. He still wasn’t able to reconcile himself to the fact that Rory was dead, even though a headstone was right in front of him. Black granite, solid, bearing the simple legend “Rory Schneidmiller, 1974—1997.”

  He hadn’t died, Cole told himself. I don’t know what happened to Rory, but he didn’t die. His parents had only had him declared dead after waiting for seven years after he vanished. Seven years was the legal limit one had to wait in Illinois. They thought it would bring them all some peace of mind, but the only thing Cole thought that could possibly bring peace of mind were if Rory were to return.

  Cole had never stopped feeling Rory through all the years. Oh yes, he’d accepted he was gone and wasn’t coming back (most likely). But he knew, somewhere deep in his heart, that Rory still existed. Even if it was only his spirit, he was always nearby. Cole couldn’t have managed to go on if he didn’t believe that.

  It was a hot and humid day, the moisture in the air making everything seem close, damp. Insects buzzed, delighting in the oppressive heat and wet. This was what August in Chicago was like, when it was saying “Here, take my worst. Live with it.” The sky was a milky grayish-white. To the west, a bank of gray, almost black, clouds massed. Cole’s face was slick with sweat, and droplets of the stuff leaked down from his armpits, tickling his sides.

  Heat lightning flashed, and thunder, low, like grumbling, sounded behind it.

  Now, on this day, Cole felt Rory’s presence especially strongly. Through the years he’d wake with thoughts of that awful night playing like some bad Lifetim
e channel thriller movie. He’d drive by their old place off Sheridan Road, maybe walk the beach they’d been so excited to live so close to. There were even times when he’d go have dinner at Moody’s Pub, which was, as far as Cole knew, where Rory had had his last supper. His waitress that night, Dora, left the job about a year after Rory went away, to have babies and live in the suburbs (Deerfield) with her attorney husband. She and Tommy had remained good friends throughout the years. She would often call or even drop by, but they never discussed Rory. At least, not as far as Cole knew.

  And in spite of his tenuous yet solid connection to his first love, Cole had found another love. He was as comfortable as a pair of old slippers, reliable as the sun rising over the lake in the morning. He was oatmeal on a rainy, chilly morning. He was a flickering fireplace. He was the embrace of a hot bath. He was everything—but exciting. Yet, at age forty-six, what need did Cole have for excitement? He’d had his share, like everyone, in his twenties.

  He stiffened a little as a car door clunked closed behind him, followed by whispering footfalls on the grass. His husband, as always, had been patient, indulgent of Cole’s annual ritual here at Graceland Cemetery in the heart of Chicago. But even Cole knew, enough was enough. He’d been kneeling here in front of Rory’s tombstone for almost an hour, just chatting. A quick glance at his iPhone confirmed the timing.

  A shadow fell across him—and the grave. Cole turned to peer up at the man standing behind, only a silhouette, backlit by diffuse sun, the man he loved and with whom he shared a home, a condo in Evanston. Cole’s eyes swam with tears, trapped here in a very literal way between the past and the future and the love of two very different men.

  He smiled at Tommy. “Sorry. You’re usually the one who tends to run off at the mouth. But I had so much to say to him.”

  He searched Tommy’s green eyes for signs of hurt and found only understanding. God, how did I get so lucky? This was why Cole loved him—he understood. Tommy had made peace with the fact that there’d always be a third presence with them, no matter what. Tommy also knew, Cole made certain, that Cole loved him, maybe not with all his heart, because all his heart was never a commodity he had to give, but with a deep and unwavering devotion.

  He allowed himself to size up his husband once more—remembering how what initially attracted him to the man was his resemblance to Rory. Now, at age fifty-three, Tommy bore little resemblance to the guy Cole had thought looked so much like his Rory. Tommy’s flaming red hair had dulled over the two decades they’d been together, becoming dryer, a sallower color, streaked with gray, wispy on his crown. His trim body, although he still ran twenty to twenty-five miles a week, had become less taut. He had a little paunch, which Cole only said made him look “well-fed” and sexier. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of tortoiseshell horn-rims. The edges of his eyes and mouth were lined with deep-etched wrinkles, from all the smiling and laughing he did.

  He was a good guy.

  Cole got to his feet, which drew attention to reminders of his own aging—the pain in his knees and lower back. Remember when standing up was an effortless thing? Tommy was forever on him about exercising, that he could stave off some of the joint pain if he were only more active and thus, fit.

  But Cole had always been a classic couch potato. At forty-six, he wasn’t about to leap off that proverbial couch and become a fitness buff. Tommy claimed to hate him because, over the years, dedicated runner Tommy had gained more than twenty pounds while Cole, whose most grueling exercise was lifting the remote to change the channel, stayed the same weight he always was, his waist size an enviable thirty-two.

  He smiled at Tommy.

  Tommy said, “You want to go get lunch somewhere? Or you just want to go home?”

  Cole knew what he really wanted was the latter—where he could hole up in the bedroom and pull out the few photos of Rory he had in a closet. Aside from visiting the gravesite, looking through the photos was another annual ritual Cole indulged in on this day. The photos, though, were something he kept secret from Tommy. Tommy would understand, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be hurt. So Cole said, “How ’bout a little lunch? I’m craving a burger.”

  Tommy pulled his keys from the pocket of his joggers and jingled them. “Yeah, sounds good. I’m craving a burger too.” He turned and started back to their car, a black Lexus crossover. Over his shoulder he said, “But I’ll get a salad.”

  “Lucky Platter?” Cole caught up with him, naming a restaurant that was right around the corner from their condo on Lee Street.

  On the drive north up Lake Shore, Cole was quiet. This day always made him pensive. He’d thought that, over the years, the memories of Rory would rust and fade away to little more than dust. Gritty, but manageable. After all, he and Rory had only been together for less than a year.

  But… Rory was his first love. His first real, head-over-heels limerant love, the kind they write songs and poetry about. And Cole realized, too, that if they’d stayed together, who knew how things might have gone? That spark they had might have flickered and died within a year. And these days Cole would hardly ever think of him. But the thing, the tragedy, the disappearance, made Rory, or at least his memory, firmly occupy a hallowed space in his mind. Forever, Rory would be young, charming, sexy, his man. His true love….

  He looked over at Tommy, his eyes hidden by the shades he put over his glass lenses. The day was dull, yet washed-out sunny. Cole touched his shoulder, feeling strength beneath the worn gray sweatshirt he wore. “Thank you,” he said softly.

  “Ah, I don’t mind running you down to Graceland. It gets me away from my desk, the characters that are driving me crazy. There’s this one kid at the school I’m writing about. He’s the quarterback, the big man on campus, but he’s still in the closet. Even though—”

  Cole interrupted. If he let Tommy go on, he would talk until he parked the car behind their building and turned the engine off. He’d go on and on about the characters he was writing about and project their entire story arcs. “I meant thank you for understanding. Not many guys would put up with me and these little annual rituals I have, especially around somebody else I once loved.” Still love, his mind corrected.

  Tommy took his eyes off the road for a second to glance over at Cole. “It’s okay, honey. He’s a piece of your history. I get that. I’m not threatened. Never have been.” He looked back at the road. “Besides, without Rory, you and I might have never met. Not the first time, anyway.”

  Cole took a little comfort in what his husband said. He still couldn’t help but feel guilty when he knew that, later today, he’d wait for Tommy to shut himself up in his office, where he cranked out a series of young adult novels revolving around a fictional inner-city Chicago high school, and pull out the box of photos and notes from Rory. He’d touch them with the tenderness of a lover, and for a moment, he’d be twenty-six again.

  He looked out at the lake as they whizzed by. They were at Hollywood, where Lake Shore Drive morphed into Sheridan Road. The gay beach was in view to the right. It was sparsely populated on this drab weekday afternoon marching resolutely toward summer’s end. Cole felt wistful, a sudden image of him and Rory at the beach on a windy summer day, trying to tame the old pinstriped sheet they’d brought long enough to get it down on the sand, where they could weigh it down with their boom box and flip-flops. They were laughing as the wind twisted and upended the sheet, threatening to snatch it away.

  And then Cole’s view of the lake was suddenly replaced by the canyon of high-rise apartment and condo buildings lining Sheridan. He reminded himself he was in the car with Tommy.

  Cole circled back to lunch, hoping to get his—and Tommy’s—mind off Rory, off the somber memorial today had become. “A salad isn’t bad at the Platter,” he told Tommy. “They have that tandoori salmon one that you like.”

  “Don’t try to make me feel better,” Tommy said. For a moment Cole thought he was chastising him over the day and the longing taking place in Cole’s
mind. But then Tommy added, “I’m going to be drooling the entire time you eat your cheeseburger. And your damn sweet potato fries!”

  “I can’t help it if I can’t gain weight,” Cole said, patting his still-flat stomach.

  “Shut up,” Tommy said, laughing as he switched lanes to avoid a CTA bus ahead.

  WHEN THEY got home from lunch, Tommy stretched, refilled his Camelbak water bottle, and told Cole, with a wink and a smile, “I’m going to head off to work.” Heading off meant going a couple of hundred feet to the third bedroom in their condo, where Tommy had his home office set up. It was where the magic happened—the Clinton High Books—the young adult bestsellers that had made Tommy rich and famous, relieving him of the burden of proving to his family that he was not cut out to be an attorney, as they’d originally wanted, but was to be a free spirit, an artist, a man who earned his bread and butter by his imagination.

  Cole interrupted Tommy only when he had to. Tommy had told him that his work was like a kind of self-hypnosis, that he “went under,” living his characters’ lives and getting caught up in the trials and tribulations of adolescent life. Apparently, whatever he did worked. Tommy’s books had been translated into more than a dozen languages, two had been made into feature films, one was in the works as a television miniseries for MTV, and whenever he deigned to do a book signing, overeager pubescent fans and their parents would line up for blocks for a glimpse of their hero and a chance to get his autograph. He wasn’t J.K. Rowling, but he did all right for himself and for Cole.

  Cole touched his shoulder. “You go to it, lover. Bring home that bacon. I’ll fry it up in a pan.” Over the years, Cole had become a virtuoso cook, good enough for Tommy to sometimes rumble that Cole should think about going to culinary school to become a chef. But they both knew that Cole was right where he belonged—at home. Over the years he’d tried on several different careers—retail, outside sales, and even dog walking/sitting—but nothing had ever stuck. He’d gone to school for a couple of stints—once to pursue a degree in marketing and the other time, six months at cosmetology school, believe it or not. Again, nothing stuck. He found no spark, no passion for the work. Sometimes Tommy would say Cole should get out of the house, even if it was just for volunteer work, but both of them knew he didn’t really mean it. All his talk about too many recluses under one roof was just that, talk. They were both settled in their quiet home-centric life in their vintage condo there in near-to-the-city suburbia. What with Amazon, restaurant, and grocery delivery, they hardly ever needed to leave the house. And that suited them.