All in for You

by David Horne

  He slipped out from under the covers and out of Pete’s arms, making his way to the shower.

  He wanted to gather himself for a moment and figure out what to make of what had just happened.

  A shower. That was the plan. And for once he followed the plan, soaking away the worries in the torrent of hot water as it cascaded over his body. It was comforting. There was something about hot showers that just felt like comfort and security, even if one was completely vulnerable and naked with vision obscured by the steam. There was a dichotomy in that. The writer in him appreciated the subtlety of it that no one else seemed to notice. He vaguely pondered how he would write a moment like this in one of his novels.

  He let it wash over him, allowing himself to stop thinking as he closed his eyes and just felt the world around him, the heartbeat of the planet that he was on.

  But the moment of peace wasn’t there for long before a welcome interruption cut into his thoughts. Pete stuck his head into the bathroom. “May I join you?”

  “Sure.” Toby opened up the door.

  From that point, there wasn’t as much bathing as there was kissing. The water was starting to grow cold by the time they slipped out of the shower.

  “I’m tempted to just spend the day in the room with you.” Toby felt his smiles coming easier and easier these days.

  “I would love to, but how often do you think you’ll end up in Vegas?” Pete shook his head.

  “I know, but how often are we going to have a hotel room, do you think?”

  “More often than ending up in this city with so much to see. What do you think about hitting the aquarium today? It’s pretty amazing.”

  “Sure, sounds great.” Toby pulled Pete in for another kiss before they separated to finally start getting ready for the day. It felt like they were separated far too long to get their clothes on. The distance wasn’t insurmountable even if it felt like it was the case.

  A shiver ran down his spine when they finally got out of the hotel and to the casino with the aquarium in it. This was another one of those amazing sights no one ever thought would be made. But here it was, a hotel with an aquarium in it, something magical that seemed to just exist supernaturally. But it wasn’t in a supernatural way. It was a tourist trap, attracting attention to them so that the casino could get more money from the people that wanted to see the spectacle.

  There was a part of Toby that wondered if he was feeding into the consumerism that had created this sort of place.

  That wasn’t what he wanted to focus on, so instead, he curled his fingers around the gambler’s hand.

  Pete squeezed his hand back, looking at him with a smile. “This is nice, right?”

  “I didn’t expect it to be this big. I guess I thought it would be a lot smaller.”

  “They don’t do small here.”

  “I thought that was Texas.”

  “Pretty sure Texas wishes they could do stuff like this. One of the hotels put the streets of Venice in the building. Texas hasn’t done that.”

  “A full-fledged aquarium, yeah.” Toby nodded, thoughtful. “This must have cost a lot of money.”

  “I don’t even want to think about it. It’s a lot more money than I would ever see in my lifetime, no matter how good a cardplayer I was.”

  “Don’t think you could make this kind of money with cards at all.”

  “Yeah.” The man nodded. “But anyway. I guess we should talk about some stuff.” Pete seemed a little reticent to bring it up, but he was eager for answers.

  “What do you want to know.”

  “Is this just a thing or the whole thing?”

  “What?” Toby couldn’t figure out what the man was saying. “I’m sorry? I don’t think I got that; can you repeat it?”

  Pete sighed. “Is this just the trip here? Or is it something more?”

  “I, uh, don’t know.” Toby shook his head. He had an idea of what the other man was hoping to ask, but he didn’t know the answer to it. Or maybe it was more that he was afraid of looking like a fool when the man wasn’t thinking the same thing that he was.

  “I don’t know either.” Pete sighed. “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.”

  “I’m sure it’ll all turn out.” Toby tried to offer a smile, but he was struggling to feel it.

  “What’s wrong now?”

  “I don’t know.” The writer shook his head. “I don’t know how to say it.”

  “Neither of us ever know how to say anything.”

  “That doesn’t bode well for us, I guess.”

  Pete paused, pulling Toby into a small alcove. They could still be seen, but they were out of the way of any sort of crowd that was in this place. “I don’t know what anything means anymore.”

  “Hey, it’s fine.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Pete frowned. “I don’t feel like I know much of anything anymore. You’ve got me all confused.”

  “Confused?” Toby had to ask the question. He knew that he was confused too, but he didn’t want to admit it. Or if he did admit it, he didn’t have any answers about it. He knew what he wanted, at least, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to answer that yet. “What are you confused about?”

  “Feelings and stuff.”

  “Feelings and stuff. That’s exact and descriptive.” Toby smirked. He was teasing a little bit, but they had hit the point where that could happen sometimes. At least that was what it felt like. “Why aren’t you writing the next great American Novel?”

  Pete laughed softly. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I think I get it.” The writer nodded along. “I don’t have a lot of answers either. It’s all just kind of weird.”

  “Everything is weird these days.” Pete shook his head. “I know that I should be happy, but I just feel so…”

  “Uncertain?”

  “Like the world can crack under my feet at any moment.”

  Toby took a mental note of those words and the way Pete had said it. It was a powerful description. He might need to use similar symbolism later in one of his books. He was getting a lot of material on this trip. And a lot of it was not from researching the poker tournament. There was something about the emotional impact this entire trip had dumped on him that gave him inspiration for days. Maybe this wouldn’t last, but whatever happened he would have the words to describe it someday. That was if that ever came up. If he could ever bring himself to write this kind of love story. Because there was a part of him that wanted to keep this secret from the world. He didn’t want to express it to anyone. It was something that was all his own, something that he owned that no one else deserved access to.

  He smiled at the man sitting there with him. “Yeah, me too.”

  “What do you want?” Pete asked the question again.

  “Out of this?”

  “Yeah, this.” Pete nodded along with the conversation. “I was just curious about how you were feeling about all of this.”

  “It’s so hard to call how I’m feeling about all of this. I don’t really know. It’s hard to figure out what’s happening.” Toby knew that he was rambling a little bit.

  “Yeah, me too.” Pete nodded. “I just don’t know what I want anymore.”

  “It’s hard to figure stuff out between us. Everything just happened so fast. This has only been a couple of days.”

  “It feels like it’s been an eternity.”

  Toby sighed happily. It had felt like an eternity, but a happy sort of eternity. This momentary fling was something that would stick with them forever even if it ended. And the ending was what was up in the air at the moment. “Look, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Neither do I.” Pete chewed on his lip.

  “I know that I don’t want to lose touch when we leave,” Toby admitted. He was picking a soft way of saying what he wanted to say. He wanted to say that he would be around, calling Pete, talking to Pete, being a part of the man’s life.
He knew what he wanted, but he didn’t know if that was even possible. It felt like one of those hurdles that he might not be able to defeat. He pondered if it was even worth trying. Would this man be all right with trying? Pete was a hard man to read.

  Pete nodded. “I’d like to stay in touch too.”

  “Sounds like we have a plan then.”

  “Yeah, we do.”

  “You don’t sound like you believe it.” Toby took a stab. “Are you just saying that you want to stay in touch because you think that’s what I want to hear?”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s just hard to believe that we’ll still be in touch after we get back. We live in two different parts of the city. It’s not like we’ll even be in the same circles.”

  “We both have Mercer. He’s the one who introduced us.” Toby shrugged. “I meet up with him weekly.”

  “Weekly?”

  “Writer’s circle. Maybe not weekly, but most weeks we meet up. Sometimes we skip weeks. Maybe like once every month or two, we skip it.” Toby was rambling again. “I think he would help us keep in touch. He would be excited to do it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, kind of.” Toby tried to play it cool and shrugged.

  Pete burst out laughing.

  “What?” Toby glanced around.

  “Was that your cool guy impression?”

  Toby grinned back at him. “I thought it was pretty damn good if I do say so myself.”

  “It was good if you’re a fan of comedies.”

  “Oh, so it was funny, was it?” Toby countered. Moments like this had the conversation go easy. The flow was natural, comfortable, almost like they had been bantering for their entire lives. “I guess being around you just makes me a funny guy.”

  “Funny, I could see that.” Pete leaned back and tapped his chin thoughtfully. But the man was still smiling when he did it.

  “Mhm.” Toby put his hands on his hips. “Just around you though.”

  “Just me. What a charming line. One could say that you practiced these lines.”

  “In the mirror this morning.”

  Both men dissolved into laughter. The awkwardness and questions faded away once again. They just shared the night, loving the few seconds that they shared.

  Toby knew that he was starting to fall. If he fell, he was going to fall hard. It was something that he knew about himself. He didn’t take breakups easily. He didn’t do well when he lost something. And the thought of losing Pete was terrifying.

  He couldn’t say why it had become that way so quickly, but this was a point that he realized it was hard to think of a time when this man wasn’t around.

  That worried him, not because of what the guy meant, but what it would mean if this man didn’t feel the same way. That would cause a wound that he wouldn’t be able to easily heal.

  But it would be an easier wound to heal if they didn’t last beyond this trip. The human mind could recover from a great many things. He knew that. It was one of the things that writers knew when they were introducing trials to their characters.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Pete stared at the phone. He stared at it hard. He was willing a text to show up. The phone sat on the coffee table in front of his couch. There was nothing there.

  The phone wasn’t lit up. He was just staring at the dark screen. There was no reason to do that. If he got a call, it would light up and buzz or ring to let him know.

  The man focused hard on the phone. It was one thing to try to stay busy, but that wasn’t what he was doing at all. He was hoping for the phone to light up. Something had to happen. He tried to force it to ring with his mind, but it hadn’t happened yet. He had been home for a while now and he had been doing this the whole time until he forced himself to distract himself. He didn’t know how long he could stand it this time, but once he stopped it wouldn’t be long until he couldn’t stand not staring at the phone and started it again. It had become quite a habit in his life. And it wasn’t a good habit. He could probably be spending his time doing other things, staying busy, doing something useful.

  He stared at the phone once again. Not like he could pull his eyes away for very long.

  Nothing. No calls. No texts.

  He sighed and picked up the phone. Then he set it down. Then he picked it up again. A motion that he kept repeating, but no change came on the screen. A few small notifications, but nothing that he wanted to see. This wasn’t what he wanted.

  Still nothing.

  He wasn’t being texted. Toby hadn’t been in contact since they had separated at the airport when they had gotten back home.

  The airport had been one of those goodbyes that showed up in the movies, tearful separation with a promise to stay in touch and figure out where it went from there. He had been nervous, afraid that Toby didn’t feel the same way that he did. It was starting to look like that was true.

  His apartment had felt quiet when he got back, an air of loneliness and desperation had fallen over the rooms. An atmosphere that couldn’t be dispelled no matter what he tried to do.

  He felt alone, left behind. It broke his heart. There had been a hope there that was gone, faded into the background now that it had been almost a week with the only contact being a thank you note from Toby, telling him that the writer had a wonderful time in Las Vegas. A single note mailed the old-fashioned way.

  He checked the phone again. Nothing.

  And nothing again a few seconds later. He knew because he picked up his phone and checked once again.

  But that had been everything. The rest of the time Pete found himself sitting there and wondering what to do. Should he call? What if it was taken wrong? Would this remain just a thing that he remembered and wondered about when he was older? He didn’t know the purpose of the world putting so strong a connection in his lap and then not doing anything with it. Why didn’t it go anywhere? What did it all mean?

  Did it even mean anything? Maybe this was just another random bit of life that he was reading too far into. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him and trying to make him read more into a short fling than there was. Toby probably didn’t feel the same way that he did.

  He made another phone check.

  Nothing again.

  “Of course, there’s nothing. He’s not going to call.” Pete talked to himself. It wasn’t something that normally did, but he felt the need to talk to someone.

  He sighed and leaned back against the sofa. He had to stop this. It wasn’t doing any good to freak out like this over this guy. It was less than a week. This guy didn’t owe him anything. He didn’t have to call him.

  Pete stared at the phone once again. “Maybe I should call him?” He asked himself the question.

  There was no one there to answer, so he wasn’t expecting anything.

  But his phone rang anyway as if it was an answer to his question.

  He checked the screen. It was his cousin, Mercer. A guy that rarely called, but he must have a reason to get a hold of him.

  Pete sighed and answered the call. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” Mercer sounded like he was a little confused. “How’s it going?”

  “Oh, it’s going.” Pete hoped that his internal torment didn’t sound in his voice.

  “Good.”

  The gambler listened to the tone of Mercer’s voice. It sounded more intense than it usually was when he heard it. Mercer was a determined man, but Pete didn’t know if he was ready to discuss anything serious with anyone at the moment. “Did you need something?”

  “Uh, not really.” But something sounded off about Pete’s cousin when he spoke.

  Pete frowned. Mercer never called for no reason. It was usually because he needed something. “Did I forget to pay you again?”

  Mercer didn’t answer right away. Maybe he was thinking about what to say. The gambler was pretty sure that he had paid him, but it wouldn’t be the first time he forgot to pay the man. And Mercer didn’t exactly call and mention it most times, at le
ast not unless the guy needed the money. “No, you paid me.”

  “What’s going on then?”

  Mercer was silent for a second before he spoke. “How was the trip?”

  The man had to know something. That means that Toby must have said something to him. Pete felt his heartbeat start to race. The pressure of this conversation was palatable. “It went well.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard.”

  “You don’t sound so sure about that.”

  Mercer sighed. “I guess, I’m not.”

  “What makes you think that?” Pete didn’t like the direction he could sense this conversation going. There was so much that felt like it had been left unsaid after he had spoken to Toby last, but he doubted that Toby would have said anything to Mercer to clue him in.

  “Toby was just acting weird around me at the last writer’s circle.”

  “Huh, why?” Pete’s heart started to race. “And don’t you normally text me?”

  Mercer’s voice sounded muffled like he was chewing on his lip when he spoke. “I wanted to hear your voice. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but there’s something wrong with him. I was just wondering if you had any clue about that.”

  “I… I don’t.” Pete didn’t want to admit that he knew exactly what was going on to his cousin. There was no point in it. Nothing he said mattered if Toby didn’t call him. That wasn’t going to get anywhere.

  Mercer fell silent again. “Did you two get in a fight or something?”

  The assumption was a surprise to the cardplayer. “What? No?” Pete answered way too quickly.

  “Then what is it? Something happened. You two are both acting weird now. Something must have happened.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “See, now I know you both are just lying to me. But I don’t know why. And if it’s not a fight then it had to be something.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Pete shrugged.

  Mercer didn’t see it, but he probably wouldn’t have believed it anyway. “I’m not so sure about that. There’s something that happened.”

  “Nothing happened there.” Pete was going to keep demanding that it was the truth. He couldn’t face the fact that it wasn’t the truth. So much had happened. So many things had happened there and he couldn’t accept how it had all turned out. His lips tugged down further and further. He couldn’t stop the frown from growing stronger and stronger as this conversation went on.