Best Gay Romance 2014

by R. D. Cochrane

  Ethan watched him check his pocket for the money he kept hidden inside. Then his hand drifted to his dog tags—CRADY, LUCAS, M., 045265894, O NEG, CATHOLIC—which clinked together softly as he looked for his guitar case. It was a familiar ritual, and as usual, Lucas didn’t breathe easy until he found his baby propped up by the door. “So,” he said, “did I piss myself?”

  Ethan laughed and shook his head. It was important to have priorities. “Not this time,” he said, squinting to get a closer look at Lucas’s hand. Dirt and blood, little bits of what looked like gravel. He’d have a fuck of a time playing for the next few days, but it didn’t look too bad. Ethan turned Lucas’s palm over and brought the thick knuckles to his lips. It was sweet, the way Lucas’s cheeks flushed at that, bright pink splotches on his pale skin, but Ethan just shrugged, unembarrassed. “Looks like you puked, though.”

  “Might do that again in a minute,” Lucas said. Ethan pointed toward the window by their bed.

  Asking Lucas not to drink was like asking a trick not to be an asshole; it just wasn’t going to happen. Ethan didn’t even want it to. He liked Lucas the way he was. Besides, the tricks who pretended not to be assholes were always the worst in the end, and that was just a fact.

  Ethan grabbed their good towel and the dish soap from the crate in the corner, found some clean clothes tucked underneath. Faded jeans and thick blue sweatpants, a couple of long-sleeved cotton tees. It made his heart beat hot thinking about Lucas down at the St. Francis shop without him, picking out things Ethan could wear only at home, touching everything, making sure it was soft.

  Lucas pushed at the window, coughed until his whole body was shaking with it and spit into the alley below. He didn’t puke, but he didn’t sound good, either, and Ethan thought they should probably go to the clinic. Soon, Ethan promised himself, kicking a pair of flip-flops in Lucas’s general direction. He gathered up the dirty dishes from around the room: three forks and four spoons, a bowl, a couple of mugs Lucas nicked from the truck stop Ethan worked only when he was desperate. Last time he got beat up pretty good, broken ribs and antibiotics he couldn’t afford, and he’d lost his take for the night, too.

  Man, that was a shitty week. Lucas had gone out in his place to make it up, but he wasn’t Ethan, wasn’t even the right type. Lucas earned in the subways mostly, black felt hat and his guitar thrumming in his hands, his voice rough and open, songs that made the city feel timeless, old and somehow new again, too. Ethan thought he sounded like a fallen angel when he was singing in the tunnels, especially when the trains were rolling through.

  Lucas said he’d missed his guitar more than anyone when he was overseas, said he hadn’t felt like he was home until he had an acoustic in his hands again. He’d stopped at a pawnshop as soon as he was stateside and picked his new baby right off the wall. He didn’t talk about being over there much, though sometimes he had nightmares, or he’d say things like “racked out” or “squared away,” and Ethan would grin and imagine him in uniform, sexy and sharp. Mostly it made Ethan sort of sad to think about Lucas serving his country and hiding who he was, made him wish they’d known each other then, too. Ethan would have written him letters, made sure he had something to miss for real.

  Ethan heard the window close, the solid thunk of wood on wood, glass rattling in its casing. By the time Lucas slung his arm around Ethan’s shoulders he was humming to himself, almost steady on his feet. Christ, he was gorgeous, his dark hair just growing in and his milky skin all scarred up. He was sweating booze and stale smoke, but his eyes were bright when he looked at Ethan, blue as the ocean, blue as the whole world.

  “Look what I got today,” Lucas said, digging a toothbrush still in its packaging from his pocket, and a tiny tube of toothpaste, too. “Someone dropped these in my case. Maybe it was a dentist? Or a joke.” Lucas frowned for a second before he smiled again. “Who the fuck cares, right? It’s as good as money.”

  “It’s better, fuck.” If they could afford it, Ethan would use a new toothbrush every day. Fuck, he’d use two. He had a thing about it, but Lucas didn’t care, would kiss him right on the mouth

  no matter how many johns he’d been with that night, whether he’d brushed his teeth or not. He never shied away from Ethan, from the bruises, from the way he lived his life; never made him feel like he was dirty, used up. Lucas would run his fingers up and down the paths other men etched into his body, breathing whiskey songs into his skin, reshaping the streets with his hands, his lips, his tongue.

  “Water’s running next floor down,” Lucas said, and Ethan smiled, happy they wouldn’t have to go looking. Showers with Lucas were the best, the slip-slide of their soapy bodies, the way Lucas would press himself against Ethan, all big muscles and tender skin, and fuck him long and slow. Lucas would spread himself open sometimes, too, fingers scrabbling against the broken tiles, so close with Ethan’s dick barely inside him; he’d moan and gasp and shoot his load, just from the feel of them together. God, he was amazing.

  Afterward they’d stumble back upstairs all clean and lemonscented. They’d eat their croissants and drink their tea sitting cross-legged in their new bed, the morning sun shining through the windows and their knees bumping together, ratty blankets piled high.

  Ethan reached for the door then, ready to put the night behind him. He paused midway, his hand hovering over the table, bypassing the tangled lights and reaching for his tea instead. The paper cup was warm in his hand still, and the tea was delicious, strong and sweet. It was his favorite, and Lucas’s favorite, too.

  “Mrs. Cammelli make that for you?” Lucas asked, and Ethan nodded and licked his lips. And then, “Croissants, too?” He sounded so hopeful, his eyes darting over to the crinkled bakery bag, and Ethan nodded again, smiling. Lucas took a swig from his bottle and wrapped his arms around Ethan, kissed him real slow. “You’re too good to me,” Lucas said, but Ethan knew it wasn’t true.

  They were good to each other, and that’s just the way it was. Even this, right now, Lucas’s body against his, heavy and alive, his hand curled on Ethan’s shoulder, his thumb rubbing along the curve of Ethan’s throat. It was perfect.

  “You want to hang the lights later?” Lucas asked, and Ethan smiled then, too. “Cool,” Lucas said. He took a swig from his bottle and wrapped his arms around Ethan, kissed him some more, careful for Ethan’s bruises. Lucas was always careful with him, but not too careful, not like Ethan was fragile or broken. The way Lucas touched him, the way he kissed, made Ethan feel like he was the only thing that mattered. It was intense. And it made Ethan’s heart beat fast, made him press closer, made him want.

  “Happy Tuesday,” Lucas said, lips brushing against Ethan’s as he spoke, shivery hot, making Ethan feel like stars inside, like light, bright and beautiful.

  “Happy Tuesday,” Ethan said back, laughing, and Lucas laughed, too, like an echo, only better. They were going to make it, Ethan thought, suddenly. They were totally going to make it. He’d never been more sure.

  QUALITY TIME

  Lewis DeSimone

  We don’t sleep together when Sarah’s visiting. Victor’s afraid she would be traumatized by the sight of her father in bed with another man. So every other Saturday morning, I make up the convertible sofa in the study and sprinkle a few of my things around the room to give it that lived-in feel. The bottom desk drawer is full of socks and underwear; shirts and pants are crushed together in the tiny closet, fighting for space with empty stereo boxes and the barbells neither of us ever has the energy to use. I keep a pile of books by the computer—without a warm body beside me at night, I often have to read for hours before I can fall asleep. An adult would never believe that anyone could survive in such cramped quarters for more than a weekend, but it’s Sarah we’re trying to fool. She’s only five. While she sleeps in the guest room and her father sprawls across our king-size bed, I toss and turn, trying to avoid the bar that runs like a jagged spine beneath the thin mattress.

  We’ve been living like this for
six months now, since I moved into Victor’s Beacon Hill apartment. “Please, Greg,” he said back then, “it’s only temporary. Once Sarah gets used to you, we can sleep in the same room and she won’t think anything of it.” Sarah got used to me pretty quickly, but here I am again, piling sofa cushions in a corner of the room so I’ll have a place to sleep.

  I’ve just pulled out the mattress when I hear them coming through the front door, Sarah’s high-pitched rambling about the latest intrigue in preschool, every sentence ending with a plaintive “you know what?” to lead her to her next point. Victor calls my name over the continuous murmur.

  “In here!” I snap a fitted sheet into the air. Black and white stripes, faded in the middle to gray, the sheets I used for years in what Victor still refers to as my “bachelor pad.”

  Victor’s voice falls to a gentle, diplomatic tone. “Honey, why don’t you go in your room for a minute and play? I’ll have a surprise for you later.”

  His words, meant to calm her down, have backfired; Sarah’s practically shrieking. “Surprise? What surprise?”

  “You’ll see,” he says, “but you have to be good.” Victor’s patience with Sarah, his ability to bury the more demanding part of his nature in her presence, has a way of stopping me in my tracks. In a moment, Sarah’s humming softly to herself, a tune she makes up as she goes along, and the guest room door closes behind her.

  Victor appears in the doorway of the study. “Hi,” he says, watching me tuck the sheet around the mattress. He’s had the convertible since business school; the back is starting to leak its stuffing in spots. It’s no wonder he didn’t have to fight with Christina for this thing; she was content with the Danish stuff.

  “Hi. How is she?”

  “She’s fine. I’m the one who’s a complete wreck.” He’s leaning against the doorjamb, one blue-jeaned leg crossed over the other, the toe of his Topsider pointing to the floor. He pulls nervously at his beard. “Where are the tickets?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, stifling a grunt as I stretch to reach the other side of the bed.

  “Well, where do you suppose they are?” His eyes are pleading behind his glasses.

  I spread the blanket and let it land, parachute-like, over the mattress. “Try the nightstand.”

  He vanishes like a little boy given permission for the cookie jar, and I start on the hospital corners. I’m fluffing the pillows when I hear him knock on Sarah’s door across the hall. “Sweetheart, it’s time for your surprise!”

  I join him in the hall in time for the door to fly open. Sarah’s jumping around, long brown hair bouncing in curls on the shoulders of her sweater. “What, Daddy? What?”

  He holds the tickets in a fan above her head. She stops jumping and peers up at them. “Yeah?”

  “We’re going to the ballet tonight, sweetheart. The Nutcracker.”

  The peals of delight begin all over again, followed by questions. I watch with my own sense of delight as Victor tries to explain the plot. Struggling over the Sugar Plum Fairy, he turns to me. “Greg’s coming, too,” he says and Sarah notices me as if for the first time.

  “Greg! Greg! We’re going to The Nutcracker!” She dances around me, steps she’s learned in ballet class, and leads us both into the living room, where she starts spinning in awkward circles. She’s clearly too inexperienced for a pirouette, and I find myself standing guard over the furniture.

  Beside me, Victor’s smiling broadly, his anxiety washed away by his daughter’s joy. This, I think, is what I love most about these weekends. With Sarah, Victor relaxes. With Sarah, he can be completely himself.

  Sarah’s excitement about the ballet carries her through the day. It’s all she can talk about over lunch, though Victor’s loaded her plate with the dreaded carrots she threw a tantrum over the last time. She squirms atop the Yellow Pages, a blizzard of energy.

  From the beginning, Sarah has seemed to me more her mother’s child than Victor’s. Perhaps because she’s a girl or because, like Christina, she entered my life as an interloper of sorts—an outsider in the sheltered male enclave. She has Christina’s liveliness and curiosity—a willingness to ask questions of everyone and everything at any time—which particularly upsets Victor’s characteristic reserve. When he introduced us in June, the weekend after I moved in, Sarah scowled at me for a long moment, her nose twitching as Victor’s does when he’s angry. “Is he going to be here all weekend?” she snarled, still staring. “Greg lives here now, Sarah,” Victor said, causing her to spin around in shock. But by dinnertime, she’d become distracted by the truckload of new toys her father had bought to appease her (Victor’s nothing if not prepared) and insisted on sitting beside me—as if I, too, were one of her new playthings.

  We take a walk after lunch to the Public Garden. It’s a surprisingly warm day for early December, but Victor still wraps a wool coat around Sarah. By the time we cross Beacon Street, beads of sweat are forming on her forehead. Looking askance at her father, she unbuttons the coat and puffs out a gentle sigh of relief.

  In the park, she reaches her free hand toward mine, the other already clasped in Victor’s. Together, we stroll along the winding path, Sarah swinging in the air as we lift her over puddles. She’s unimpressed with the standard kiddie attraction, McCloskey’s ducklings, not even deigning to leapfrog the bronze figures with the other children. Instead, she pulls us toward the lake, frozen now, crowded with circling ice skaters. We stop on the bridge, Sarah peering through the pale blue grate to watch. Beneath us, a young couple glides along the ice, hand in hand, the woman’s light hair escaping from her hat in single strands. The man releases her for a spin and promptly plummets onto the ice. She helps him up, and they both laugh. As they hold hands once more and continue together, their movements seem all the more elegant, flecks of ice flying up in clouds behind their skates.

  I haven’t been to the ballet in years, not that I’ve missed it. Somehow I’ve never had a problem suspending disbelief in the opera house when an overweight diva coughs her way through an improbable case of TB, but the sight of a line of tutued anorexics tittering across the stage has been known to put me into hysterics. Fortunately The Nutcracker has enough semblance of a plot to keep me distracted.

  Sarah, on the other hand, is enthralled. She’s still wide-awake at intermission, eyes glowing from the spectacle. The three of us go out to the mezzanine and look down at the lobby, where the thirsty and overdressed crowd around the bar.

  “What do you think so far, angel?” Victor asks, hoisting Sarah onto the railing. He sets her sideways, against a pillar, so she can gaze comfortably at the buzzing crowd, and clutches her tightly around the middle.

  “Can I be in it someday, Daddy?”

  “Sure you can. If you want to.”

  She smiles brightly, tiny gaps showing between her teeth. A thick tress of her hair is tied in back with a white ribbon, leaving two long chestnut curls to frame her face. Her wide eyes scan the lobby, intrigued by everything they see. Victor, close behind, looks down at her head, indifferent to everything else. Sarah is the only thing that matters.

  Leaning against the next pillar, I turn in the other direction, toward the crowd that meanders through the mezzanine. A familiar voice pierces through and all at once Harlan is coming toward me. He has an entourage—Bill, Robert and Edward bringing up the rear, leaning in for whispers behind his back. Edward looks well, almost filling out his gray jacket. His hair is thicker than the last time I saw him; I wonder if it will ever fully grow back.

  I step away from the rail to meet them. “Hey,” Harlan calls, “what are you doing here? I thought you hated this stuff.”

  “Hi, guys.” I try to get them all in one sweeping glance. “We have Sarah for the weekend,” I explain. “She loves the ballet.”

  Bill pulls away and moves toward the rail. “So this is the famous Sarah, eh?” He spreads his legs out to bring his lanky frame down to her level.

  “Sarah,” Victor says, “say hi to my friend Bi
ll.”

  Sarah, as usual, is more curious than friendly. She smiles and lets out a garbled hello before falling into a long-held stare at Bill’s tie, studying it like a Technicolor Rorschach blot.

  “She’s adorable,” Robert says, sidling up beside me for a better view. He’s grown a mustache since I last saw him. He looks older.

  “You must be so proud, dear,” Harlan adds. “The stretch marks don’t even show.”

  I ignore him and turn my attention to Robert and Edward. “How are you enjoying the ballet?”

  “It’s wonderful,” Edward says. His voice is softer, as if his weight loss has given it less room to reverberate in his chest. “I haven’t seen this one in ages; I’d forgotten how much I love it.”

  Robert places an arm lightly against Edward’s back; I can’t tell whether the support is emotional or physical. “I’m not much of an aficionado,” he says, “but Edward’s teaching me the ropes. I’ll probably start to appreciate it in a decade or so.”

  Edward is the first to laugh. It gives the rest of us permission.

  “Let me say hello to Victor,” Harlan says, moving swiftly past me. Nothing pleases Harlan more than putting Victor on the spot. I fall in behind, for protection.

  “You’re awfully big for five,” Bill is saying, squinting at Sarah. His natural affinity for children has already completely won her over.

  “What’s shaking, Victor?” Harlan asks, slipping in beside him.

  “Not much. And you?” Victor’s arms seem just an inch tighter around Sarah’s belly. Perhaps it’s simply that she’s leaned forward to continue her discussion with Bill. She whispers to him, eyes set in a serious expression, as if she’s dispensing state secrets.

  “Oh,” Harlan coos, arms dramatically akimbo, “you know me. I’ll shake it anywhere it gets a reaction.” He winks back at me, certain he’s scored a point.

  Victor arches his neck to see over Harlan’s shoulder. “Hi, Robert,” he says, smiling at last. “How are you?” Harlan takes the hint and moves out of the way. Bill, still talking to Sarah, straightens up to stand beside her father.