Blink

by Rick R. Reed

  I step back to let him pass. I catch a whiff of sandalwood as he passes by. I breathe it in.

  He stands, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and we eye each other nervously. There are shy smiles. I think both of us have the same feeling of “What now?”

  I move to the kitchen. “Would you like something to drink? I’ve got beer and some Vinho Verde.”

  He comes up behind me and peers into the refrigerator. “The wine might be nice.”

  I pull out the green bottle and hold it up. “There’s only about a half a bottle here. But I have more.”

  Carlos goes to my living room area and plops down on the couch. “Thank God for that. Are you as nervous as I am?”

  I spill some of the wine on the counter in my first attempt to pour a glass. It’ll be sticky in the morning, but I can’t be bothered with it right now. “Me? N-n-nervous? Why do you ask?” I chuckle. I lift the two haphazardly filled glasses and hurry over to the couch to hand one to Carlos. I sit down at the opposite end of the couch, scared to death that, for the rest of my life, I will never be able to think of a single thing to say again.

  Carlos tastes the wine. “This is good. I always loved Vinho Verde. It’s such a young wine, so light.” He takes another sip. “Ah, we forgot to toast.” He holds his glass up, which forces me to move closer.

  We clink glasses, and I say, “To young wines.” That elicits a smile from Carlos before he takes another sip. He reaches into his wineglass with his finger and then brings his finger to my lips and runs it around their surface. It’s like his finger is electrically charged. He then kisses me, whisper light, and pulls back. He looks at me as though he’s testing to see what my reaction will be.

  I’m honestly not sure what my reaction is. I lean back into the couch, savoring the taste of the wine and even more, Carlos, on my lips. I both want more and don’t. This is weird. You never know how you’re going to feel about a thing until it happens. I confess, “This is strange.”

  “Why?”

  “You being here. I thought about you over the years. I never forgot you. And lately I even did a little searching for you, through the magic of social media.” I look over at him, gauging, wanting to be sure he’s not creeped out or that he thinks I’m a stalker. “But I couldn’t find anything.”

  “Ah, I’m not much for Facebook, and I don’t even know how to tweet.”

  I shrug. “So I really kind of came to the conclusion I’d never find you again.”

  “Andy? Why did you look? Why did you always remember?”

  I reach over and turn off the lamp on the end table next to me. The room is now dimly lit by just the light over my range, across the breakfast bar that separates my kitchen from the living room. It’s not a move to inspire romance, at least not consciously, but to allow me to talk more. I’ve been waiting years—decades, really—for these words to tumble out. I never thought I’d have the chance. I want to make it as easy on myself as possible.

  “I’ve wondered that same thing. I mean, why do I remember you? Don’t be offended, you were a hot guy and still are, but I’ve known lots of hot guys over the years.” I eye him. “More than I’d care to admit.” I laugh. “And I’ve had a few of those thirty-second love affairs on the ‘L’ too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A thirty-second love affair is when two guys’ eyes meet on the train and something passes between them. Most likely lust, but it’s a significant moment, captured just for an instant. But there’s an understanding that goes beyond words.

  “But those guys are like dreams, you know? Memories of them scatter quickly.” I take a sip of my wine, set the glass down, and then look at Carlos, my gaze probing. “But you. I never forgot you. I don’t know why that is.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe not. Maybe what matters is that fate, and not me, has thrown us together again.”

  Carlos inches closer on the couch. “Do you think fate is trying to tell us something?”

  “Ah, I don’t know if I believe in all that.” I finish my wine. I go in the kitchen and then call over my shoulder, “I don’t have any more of this stuff chilled. Do you want something else?”

  “I’ve still got some. I’m fine.”

  “One sec.” I run out the back door and grab my beer off the step, where it hasn’t warmed up too much. I go back and sit down next to Carlos, close enough that our shoulders now touch. I don’t look at him as I ask, “Did you ever think about me over the years?”

  What he answers hurts. “No. Not really. Not all that much, anyway.” He turns my head with his hand so I’m forced to look at him. “I had someone. His name was Harry, and he made me very happy. I used to think that people who said they’d found their soul mate or that they could never look at another man were romantic fools. And then I met Harry, and they didn’t seem like such fools anymore.

  “We had a good many years together, and then he passed away.” Carlos finally looks away from me, and I can see the tears standing in his eyes. “Then I really believed I wouldn’t look at another man. No one could take the place of my Harry.”

  My feelings deflate. What are we doing here?

  But Carlos goes on. “And then I met you again tonight. And it all came back. And I realized that the same thing was true for me—that you were always there, in the background, that sweet memory of two young men, little more than boys, staring at one another on a crowded ‘L,’ both of us, I bet, thinking nothing would ever come of those looks.

  “Yet something did. And it was ripped away all too soon. Or maybe not. Maybe we were meant to follow the paths we did. I know I wouldn’t trade my time with Harry for anything.”

  A sudden realization hits me. “And I wouldn’t trade being married to Alison either. I got Tate out of the bargain, and in spite of the core problem in our relationship, I got a good friend and someone else to really love.” Over the years, I’ve made peace with my marriage to Alison and the fallout that my confusion caused, and she has too. The most important thing we both learned is that we did really love each other, in spite of sexual orientation.

  Carlos says, “So maybe we were meant to meet, just not when we thought. Maybe now is when fate or whatever intended for us to get together.” He smiles.

  “A second chance…,” I murmur.

  “No, a first chance.” And he closes the very short distance between us and takes me in his arms, this time for a real kiss. The kiss lingers, and I close my eyes. In my mind, I don’t see the older Carlos kissing me, but the young one, the handsome guy who caught my eye on the ‘L’ all those years ago. I can see him in my mind’s eye as though it were only yesterday when I first spied him on that westbound train. He was one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen, and he knocked the foundations of the structure of self-loathing and self-deceit I’d built up around myself right down. They crumbled like so much dust under a wrecking ball.

  The thing I liked most about him? His eyes, warm liquid chocolate. They had a way of seeing deep into me. I open my own eyes now as his tongue probes deeper into my mouth, finding my own tongue and calling it out to dance.

  The eyes are the same. Always.

  We’re too close for our gazes to really connect, and this is why, I suppose, Carlos breaks the kiss. He pulls back, holding my face in front of him, framed by his two hands. “Eres tan hermoso,” Carlos whispers. I don’t know Spanish, but I know what he means. Those deep brown orbs say it for him.

  And I’m flattered.

  We move together again, our lips becoming one. Somehow Carlos pulls at me, and through body language, I understand what he wants. I climb on top, my legs straddling his lap as our kisses grow more passionate, straying from our lips to our necks, earlobes, and eyelids.

  Our bodies are aligned in one formation of silken electricity. It pulses through me as my hunger for Carlos grows. The years vanish, and we become what we were then—two men hungry for the other, filled with a need so powerful it went—and goes—beyond words.r />
  Soon we are both ripping off our shirts and casting them to the floor so that more skin is revealed to touch, caress, kiss, and suck.

  In our current position, it’s impossible to do what our bodies are commanding—take off the pants! Take off the pants!

  I reluctantly pull away from Carlos, and the thought comes to me that I feel very comfortable with him, not just nearly blinded with desire. And I wonder if this is because we have been down this road before.

  Did I remember to turn the phone off? Is the door locked? Tate could walk right in on this scene, and I don’t know how he’d react. I wouldn’t want him to see his dad in such a state.

  For this reason and for the other, that I now want Carlos so bad to complete what we started thirty some years ago, I tell him, “We should go into the bedroom.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.” I think of what he does for work, and I hasten to add, “Not positive in the literal sense.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he says. He gets up from the couch.

  We are holding hands.

  He stops me at the threshold to the bedroom. Ezra jumps down from the bed and runs from the room. He’s never been much for live sex shows, even though those have been few and far between in the last several years.

  Carlos asks me, “Did you turn off your phone? Or phones?”

  “I only have a cell these days.” In my ardor I’ve forgotten where I left it. “I think it’s in here.” I tug him into the bedroom. My phone is on the nightstand, and when I pick it up, I notice the little red circle with the number one in it, indicating I have a new text.

  Oh Lord, please don’t let this be anything bad.

  I read the text, and it’s from Tate. He’s just letting me know that he and Kelly are heading down to the bars in Andersonville, and he will be very late. I shouldn’t wait up for him.

  Carlos comes up behind me and embraces me. He peers over my shoulder at the screen. The feel of his hands on my torso, moving restlessly up and down, are a small bit of heaven, and they make me weak in the knees.

  “Everything okay?” he whispers hotly into my ear.

  I turn to him. “Everything is fine. Couldn’t be better.” And I commence kissing him again. I tug at his belt buckle. He grabs my hand to stop me, and I look at him quizzically.

  “Your phone. Turn it off.”

  I laugh. I do.

  We both fall on the bed, making a clumsy yet oh-so-delicious dance of passionate kissing and taking off the final remnants of clothing and casting them to the floor.

  In a break to catch our breaths, Carlos pants. “It’s all coming back. You were just about to go get some lube when the phone rang.”

  I laugh. “You’re right. Shall we pick up from there?”

  “I think we should.”

  I roll over to take the bottle of ID Millennium out of the nightstand drawer, surprised it isn’t attached to the bottom by cobwebs, and set it on the table’s surface.

  “Back then, it wouldn’t have crossed our minds to even think much about rubbers.” I roll back to him, tracing a line with my finger down the cleft between his pecs.

  “But this is now,” Carlos says.

  I roll back over and remove a box of condoms from the drawer and set it next to the lube. I turn back to him. “We won’t plan anything,” I say and laugh.

  “Nothing at all,” he says, rising up to cover my naked body with his own.

  My legs rise up to meet his shoulders.

  CHAPTER 21: CARLOS

  WE AWAKEN to the sound of a door opening in the other room. I feel Andy tense next to me in the bed. He pulls away, and I wince a little as our bodies unglue from the come binding us together.

  There are footsteps. Another door shuts, and I assume it’s the bathroom. After a pause the toilet flushes, and I hear running water. I whisper underneath its rush, “Do you want me to go? Is this another guy you had lined up to come over tonight?”

  Andy punches me in the chest. “It’s my son!”

  “I know that.” I get up on one elbow and smile down through the pale yellow-tinged light filtering in through the blinds. In the dimness, Andy looks almost the same as he did back when I first spied him, and that makes me smile bigger.

  We say nothing as the bathroom door creaks open and there are more footsteps. Another door closes.

  “He’ll be getting in bed now,” Andy whispers.

  “As the song goes, should I stay or should I go?”

  Andy looks up at me and runs his fingers through my hair. He sighs. “I’d like very much for you to stay.” He pushes himself up to kiss me lightly. “But I think it might be a little weird to have scrambled eggs with you and my son in the morning. I don’t think I’ve ever had a man here when he stayed over. It just never seemed right to me.”

  I get up a bit, my back against the headboard. I continue to whisper. “It’s okay. I get it. Although I would like to share a meal with you guys one day.”

  “Oh, that can be arranged. Definitely. And soon?”

  “Yes.” I kiss Andy and then get up more fully, placing my feet on the floor. Over my shoulder I ask, “What time is it anyway?”

  “It’s a little after four.”

  “Wow.”

  “We were busy,” Andy says, snickering in the dark.

  “We certainly were. I didn’t know I could still go for not round two but round three at my age!”

  “Shhh,” Andy says, laughing. “We had a lot to catch up on.”

  I get up, and as Andy watches, I dress. Well, at least I pull my pants on. “I just remembered our shirts and shoes are out in the living room, helter-skelter on the floor.”

  “Hopefully it was too dark for Tate to see them. If he did, he’ll get over it. He’s a big boy.”

  I move to the bedroom door and open it a crack. The coast is clear. I creep out on tiptoes to retrieve the rest of my clothing. This is fun. It makes me feel I’m the age I was when Andy and I first attempted a night like this one.

  I come back to the bedroom and sit down beside Andy. “Do you have the same sense that I do?”

  “That it’s unreal?” Andy asks.

  “Yeah, that. But also that this is something special. I don’t want to get all philosophical or new agey here, but there must be a reason you and I remembered our very brief meeting for all those years and that we ended up back on each other’s radar now.”

  “It does seem like fate,” Andy says. I can see the weariness in his eyes. I should know. I helped put it there. I also know I should be getting on my way. He needs to sleep. But I have one more thing to say. “Not so much fate, but what’s kind of magical to me is that we held each other here”—I touch his chest above where his heart is—“and here”—I tap his forehead—“for all those years. That’s gotta mean something.”

  “I think it does. It always did.”

  I struggle into my shirt and then pull on my socks and boots. “I know I don’t have to say, but you know this is more than a one-night stand, right? I don’t do one-nighters anymore.” I think of Fremont and add, “Much.”

  Andy smiles. “If it was, how could I ever respect myself in the morning?” He touches my face. “Oh wait, it is morning.”

  “And I should get out of here before I run into your son.”

  “Ah, he probably won’t be up until noon. Youth. Sleeping until eight is sleeping in for me these days.”

  “Tell me about it. Anyway, if he was out drinking, he may get up for the bathroom.”

  “It wouldn’t kill him to see you.”

  “Still, I’d like to imagine our next meeting to be over a nice dinner. Maybe at my place? I make a mean ropa vieja.”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  I lean in to kiss him, and he pulls me hard to him, forcing me down. Our cocks stir again. I chuckle and look down. “Not bad for a couple of old guys.”

  “Should we go for another round?”

  “You don’t mean it,” I say.

 
“I wish I did.” Andy kisses me again and then pushes at my chest. “Go on now. We’ll talk soon. Okay?”

  “Count on it.” There’s a sticky note pad on his nightstand and a pen. I lean over and talk as I’m writing. “I’m leaving you my work number and my e-mail, just so you have no excuses.”

  At last I stand and walk to the door. I look over at Andy, who is lying in bed, eyeing me.

  Now we’re complete.

  THE STREETS of Rogers Park are, for once, quiet as I make my way to the ‘L’ station on Morse. It’s a walk of several blocks, and I’m grateful for the time alone to think and to savor the chill in the predawn air and the silence, as if the whole city is asleep.

  On Morse I pass restaurants, dollar stores, and cafés, many of their fronts covered with metal gates. To the east I see a thin line of silver where the lake would be, and I know the sun is preparing to rise. Papers and other trash skitter across the road. A lone cab cruises by, and its driver considers me. I’m tempted to splurge but wave him on. I want a ride on the ‘L.’ It somehow seems fitting.

  I climb the stairs up to the platform. A man, homeless I assume, sleeps on one of the benches. His head pokes up out of a filthy sleeping bag, and around him are gathered what I imagine to be his worldly goods, all tucked into black plastic garbage bags.

  I look down at the street, where a few more cars pass by. I see a young man walking west, and I imagine that he’s just left the arms of a lover, as I have.

  I don’t know where things will go with Andy. I have hopes, but we are now just as we were then, just beginning. I have pretty good intuition when it comes to people, and I’d be surprised if we didn’t build something significant, but it’s really too soon to tell.

  I see the lights of the train at the station north of me—Jarvis. A cold wind makes me shiver.

  The train pulls into the station, and I board. I’m the only passenger in my car, save for a young woman at the very back who’s asleep. She’s wearing what I would imagine to be a party dress—bright and sparkling fuchsia—and her lipstick is smeared. I hope she’s sleeping off a wonderful time.