Candy Man

by Amy Lane

  Adam nodded and reached for the book. “Uhm, thanks.” God, could this moment end?

  “No. Adam, I mean it.” Finn put the book in Adam’s hands and squeezed his shoulder again. Then he broke Adam’s world by bending down and placing a warm, chaste kiss on Adam’s temple. “I’m a big boy. I can deal with this too.”

  Adam couldn’t answer. He was busy gaping and trying to contain the shivers that racked his body in the aftermath of that careless kiss. He managed a nod and gratefully put the sketchbook in his pack.

  “The sandwich looks, uh… really good.”

  Finn shook his head and sighed. “I really just fucked with your head, didn’t I?”

  Adam nodded and talked through a full mouth. “’S a great sandwich.”

  “Yeah, Adam. You enjoy that.”

  Adam looked fixedly at the plant. “I did,” he confessed. They both knew he wasn’t talking about the sandwich, but he didn’t have the words for anything else.

  Finn started talking—rambling, really—about something, anything, and Adam could only be grateful. It was uncanny the way the kid knew how to settle Adam down. When Adam was done with lunch, he wiped his mouth and managed a twitch of his lips for Finn, who had worked really hard not to let silence take over the table.

  “It was real human, you know? To sit and talk to me. Oh!” He’d almost forgotten. He reached for his backpack again and pulled out a little cardboard packet, which he shoved at Finn, embarrassed. “Here. It’s, well, more personal than the last one—”

  “Do you have any in your diary?” Finn asked, so dead-on Adam knew his Latino-mocha skin washed ruddy just from the heat in his face.

  “Of, uhm, you?”

  Finn shook his head. “Asked and answered. That’s okay, then. Even if this one isn’t personal, I know you’re thinking about me.” He smiled then, luminously, and Adam was possessed with the desire to spill his sketchbook out for Finn to see, to share his secrets, to invite this kid into his heart.

  “But I hope you like this one,” he said weakly.

  Finn looked at the picture with avid eyes. “That’s the other night at sunset, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We were standing closer than that,” Finn told him surprisingly. “I know because I realized how brown your eyes are.”

  Adam’s face heated all over again. “Yeah, well. Macias. Mexican. You know.”

  “Hot,” Finn said playfully, raising his eyebrows.

  “Yeah, it is getting that way in here. You know, I gotta—”

  Finn’s face fell. “Yeah. You gotta go. Hey, when do you get off tonight?”

  “Seven, wh—”

  “Good. I get off at six thirty. I’ll pick you up.”

  “Where’re we—”

  “Movie. My treat. Popcorn too.”

  “I gotta walk the dog!” If Adam had paws, all four of them would be splayed out, just like Clopper’s when Adam tried to pull him away from some especially tasty-smelling dead thing. Abort, abort, abort! Friendly human is taking me somewhere I don’t want to go!

  “Good! I’ll go with you. We can dose the cat, walk the dog, and then go to the movies. Now hurry, you’re going to be late. Don’t forget to wait for me!”

  And Finn got up and left, returning to work and the line of customers who hadn’t diminished one bit, even though other people who looked much like Finn were busy serving them.

  Adam was left gaping after him, aware that he’d just been hauled into a date by the collar.

  The people at Candy Heaven were not sympathetic.

  “So,” Darrin said delicately as Adam returned from lunch a few minutes early, “how is Finn?”

  “He’s fine. He’s terrific. I think he’s taking me on a date. Does that bother anybody else? That should bother you. It bothers me. Is anybody else freaked out about that?”

  Darrin listened to him ramble as Adam put on his apron and stationed himself behind the counter at the weighing bowl. Then Darrin pulled a gummi lemon sour from a pile of them, extracted it from the wrapper, and while Adam was in full cry, asked, “Are you allergic to lemon or sugar?”

  “No, but did you hear what I—omph!”

  Adam’s entire face tried to squeeze shut, and he fought not to swallow the little round ball of goo down the wrong pipe. It took him several minutes of rolling the thing around in his mouth before he sucked in a mouthful of spit, tucked it between his teeth and his cheek, and managed, “What in the hell is the matter with you!” before he had to swallow again.

  “Well, my boy, I figured if you didn’t stop talking and go out on your date, you’d become a sour old man in no time at all. This was just a taste of it.”

  Adam squinched his eyes shut and wondered how in the hell those kids who ate this shit by the pound could manage it. As he did that, he had a vision of his grandmother, nose wrinkled, eyes narrowed, looking just like she’d been sucking lemons all day, while she told Adam’s mother what a loser he was and how he was going to turn out just like her.

  “It’s awful,” he said after another moment, although the candy itself was starting to grow on him.

  “Yes, well, you will be too if your whole life is about being alone.”

  Adam regarded him suspiciously, rolling the squishy thing around in his mouth as it disappeared. God, some people chewed those things. The thought boggled him. “You say that, but I don’t see you parading anything hot through the hallowed halls of Candy Heaven.”

  Darrin’s smile was perfectly self-contained. “I could be entertaining an entire brothel of sweet young things for all you know. I find that the more people know about my personal life, the less people are apt to listen when I am giving them perfectly wonderful advice. Now keep sucking your lemon, Adam, and I’m going to go into the back room and do paperwork.”

  “You don’t do paperwork. You watch Carolyn do paperwork.”

  “Yes, well, that will be fun too.”

  And with that Darrin disappeared, leaving Adam in charge of the counter, feeling strangely bereft now that the candy had gone.

  “He’s right, you know,” Joni said from the chocolate counter. “Finn’s a great guy. I mean, at worst you get to spend an evening out. What’s the harm?”

  “I got nothing to offer him,” Adam muttered. “What kind of candy was that? Can I get a few?”

  Joni sighed, moved to the appropriate barrel, and took out a handful, which she thrust at him. “He seems to think otherwise. God knows why, because right now you are irritating the fuck out of me. But then, I’m not all that crazy about things with peen.”

  Adam couldn’t decide whether to glare at her or thank her. He popped a candy in his mouth, closed his eyes and squinched up his face, and decided on option B.

  When he could see again, he said, “Well, thank you—and I promise to keep my peen to myself.”

  She nodded in her particular “no bullshit” way, and together they turned toward the customers who had made their way up to the counters.

  Bad Habits of Sweets

  FINN TOOK him out to an animated Christmas movie, which delighted Adam to no end. He’d forgotten why he’d gone to animation school, the particular blend of art and storytelling that he could lose himself in forever.

  But that didn’t stop him from breaking down the component parts of the animation and explaining them to Finn as they left the building.

  “See, the water? That’s stop-motion animation, so the action looks really sped up, but it’s not, you know, computer G or pen and ink. So they had to do something mechanical for that, and I think it was like, two layers of painted glass and flickering lights, and between that and the skipping every tenth frame, it looked like real water, right?”

  Finn nodded, smiling at him, a little bemused. Adam realized he’d been talking from the time they left their seats to the time they got back to the minivan. Finn probably didn’t know Adam knew that many words. “That’s amazing that you know that. How far did you get through your program?”

>   “Only a year. I had two more to go and—” He was tired of whining about his fucking grant. “I’d sort of been counting on that money.”

  “Yeah. That’s really unfair. Have you thought of other ways to get through school?”

  “Through that one? No. It’s pretty expensive, even though they have one here. I could probably get a BA at the state college, but I might need to retake some of my general education. It doesn’t always count when you transfer, and they usually don’t have degrees in animation, so it would have to be art or art history or something.”

  “What would a special school get you that a state college wouldn’t?”

  Adam shrugged, trying not to let this hurt. “You know, internships, connections. I mean, I could get the degree in art and even be really good, but generating that whole network thing you need to get your dream job…?” He shook his head and summoned up the same optimism that had sent him to Sacramento on a bus. “But, you know, maybe you just adjust the dream and keep going, right?”

  Finn’s smile at him was not up to its usual wattage. “Wow,” he said quietly.

  “Wow what?”

  “I mean, here I was, thinking you were pessimistic as hell—”

  “I am.”

  “No! You’re not! Look at you. You’re ready to start again, start from scratch. That’s amazing.”

  Adam swallowed, feeling somehow like he’d let Finn down. “You don’t sound amazed,” he observed tentatively.

  “Yeah, no.” Finn unlocked the doors and slid into the driver’s seat. “I’m amazed that you’re optimistic about the future, I’m just depressed that you don’t seem to be optimistic about people.”

  Adam blinked slowly. “Well, I didn’t doubt you’d show up tonight. That’s something.”

  Finn’s troubled expression lightened up a notch. “That’s true. In fact, that’s awesome. Okay. I take it back. I can have a little faith.”

  Adam’s heart did a backflip, stopped beating, and started up again with a ragged little limp. “You were gonna give up?” he asked, a pain he’d been trying to avoid for the last two years blooming in his chest.

  “No!” Finn protested, sounding shocked. “No—Adam, you’re a tough nut to crack, but you’ve drawn me two pictures and taken a walk with me. I think we’re okay.”

  Adam thought about it for a minute, the pain receding but not quite going away. “You deserve more,” he said, feeling wretched. “How bad was the last guy that I’m something to hold on to?”

  “Wasn’t bad, really,” Finn said, starting the car and pumping up the heater. “Just, well, I’ve got about two more years on my degree, right? And Perry zipped through his degree, because hey, Humanities, no waiting, and then just didn’t ask me or anything. Went to Virginia for his MA and doctorate. I mean my family is here, and yeah, maybe I’ll have to leave them eventually, but he didn’t even ask me. Just said, ‘I’m going, and you can come with me or we can break up.’” Finn let out a grunt. “I mean, it hurt. We’d been together for three years. He was my first boyfriend after high school. I guess—I guess I thought my life would matter too.”

  “It should have,” Adam said gruffly, thinking about Robbie and their plans to come out, their plans to leave the Army together. Adam had already put in his papers. Robbie never did. “Those sort of promises, they should matter.”

  Silence fell, and then Finn took a deep, fortifying breath. “Are you going to tell me?”

  Aw hell. But he’d been losing faith. Finn had been losing faith. Suddenly Adam felt the need to give him faith, something real.

  “See, I was a real slut in the Army,” Adam started out, because hey, let’s be honest. “I pretty much blew anyone who didn’t look at me straight.”

  “Yeah? So you’re pretty good at it?” Finn asked, sounding like he was willing Adam to be the god of all blowjobs.

  “I got no idea,” Adam muttered. “It was….” He blew out a breath. “See, I joined the Army ’cause my grandmother is a real bitch, right? And she spent my entire childhood telling me I was a coward, and I sucked, and I would never amount to anything. So I joined the Army because she would respect that. But I never admitted I was gay, and I never told anybody that I didn’t like girls, and I just—you know—some guy in high school looked at me funny, pulled me behind the bleachers, and next thing I know, I got a dick in my mouth, and if I’m gonna suck, well, that’s the way to do it, right?”

  “Holy God,” Finn said, and Adam was doing this wrong, but at this point, he couldn’t stop.

  “So military was the same thing. But then Robbie and I, suddenly we’re not just blowing each other. Suddenly we’re—we’re important to each other, and I say the word, yanno? The big scary word?”

  “Love?” Finn hazarded.

  Adam shuddered, reluctant to burst his bubble. “Gay. That’s as far as I got. Said we were gay. And we were going to come out. So that was the plan, right? And we were going to put in our papers, and not re-up, and there you go. A boyfriend. A couple. Ta-da!”

  “And….”

  “And we were in the barracks and some guy I’d blown half a dozen times was using the word ‘faggot’ like it’s the word ‘like,’ and I came out. Said maybe not use that word anymore, since I’d blown half the guys in the unit. And I looked at Robbie and….”

  “Oh, Adam.”

  “He called me a fag.” Adam blew out the breath. “Which, I guess he wasn’t wrong, you know?”

  “I’m so….”

  “It was a lonely fucking way to spend the last months of my assignment,” Adam confessed. “I…. You’re real nice. But I don’t know how much trust I got in me.”

  “Yeah,” Finn said softly. “I can see that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Adam said, looking out the window of the minivan. It had been a really nice time—maybe what dates were all about.

  “Don’t be. You up for some ice cream?”

  Adam looked at him and shook his head. “Naw. You can just take me home.” It was over. It had to be.

  “Okay, if that’s what you want.”

  Adam didn’t answer, and he watched the bright lights of downtown J Street flitter in front of his eyes before Finn took a right on Ninth. In another moment, he pulled up in front of Rico’s apartment, put the car in park, and left it on idle. Adam prepared himself for the brush-off, for Finn saying they could still be friends, and he was surprised by the bare hand on the back of his neck. Finn must have taken off his gloves, for one thing, and for another, the pressure was intimate and insistent.

  Adam turned to look at him and realized he’d taken the armrests up and was sitting sideways on the bucket seat.

  “Adam?” Finn said softly.

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want a blowjob right now.”

  “Then wha—”

  A kiss. A simple kiss. Mouth on mouth, Finn’s tongue slipping softly inside, Adam opening wide for his invasion.

  Finn groaning, pushing Adam back against the seat, and Adam tunneling his fingers through Finn’s curly strawberry blond hair, shuddering with the want that had just punched him in the nads.

  Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh… oh my God!

  Finn pulled back, panted for a moment, and studied Adam in the light from the streetlamp four houses down. “You want this, don’t you?”

  “So bad,” Adam admitted for the first time, even to himself.

  “We’ll kiss some more, but not further. Not tonight.”

  “It’s your rodeo,” Adam conceded, because nice boys like Finn got to call the shots. Adam was easy. He’d bend over for Finn in a heartbeat, or take him if he asked. Either way, didn’t matter. Adam had no moral code about sex. But he found he had a moral code about Finn, and his moral code went that whatever Finn said, that was the code.

  So when Finn pushed his hand under Adam’s coat and rucked up his sweatshirt, letting Adam feel the coolness of Finn’s fingers against his stomach, all he could do to that was suck in a breath and close his eyes. Finn�
��s hand went higher, along his ribs, and then he pulled back again.

  “You are all muscle and bone, aren’t you?”

  “I work out,” Adam confessed breathily, and Finn chuckled against his lips.

  “So do I. Wanna feel?”

  Oh hell yes. Adam fumbled with Finn’s waistband, finding the smooth skin of his back and digging in slightly. Finn flexed, and Adam felt them, muscle groups, biceps, triceps, the latissimus dorsi. Yes indeed, Finn did work out, and his flesh under Adam’s palms was intoxicating. Adam pulled Finn closer while Finn continued the kiss—and continued to grope his chest—and in the meantime, the swelling in his groin, the heavy ache of arousal, grew bigger, more painful, and harder to ignore.

  Finn maneuvered, and for a moment the awkwardness of necking in a minivan helped Adam control himself. Then Finn hit the seat latch, sending Adam flat on his back with Finn on top of him. They lay there, surprised, smiling at each other, groin to groin. Adam groaned and rocked his hips up, the better to push against Finn, to ease that pain. Finn’s delighted smile sobered, grew serious, and he took Adam’s mouth again with as much passion as intent.

  Adam slid his hands from Finn’s back down under his waistband. He dug his fingers into the muscles of Finn’s ass and pulled down, thrusting his groin up against Finn’s while Finn continued to explore his chest and, oh God, his sensitive, sensitized nipples.

  He brushed them a couple of times with his thumb, and Adam groaned some more, pulling harder. Through the plackets of their jeans, he felt Finn’s no-bullshit erection, and just the thought of Finn desiring him made him even harder.

  The kiss went on, and Finn stopped brushing Adam’s nipples and started pinching.