After His Eulogy
Chapter 1 Reece
ONE
REECE
He’s already half-hard against my thigh and he doesn’t know.
That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Here on the couch in his apartment, my hand inside his jeans and his mouth on the underside of my jaw. He doesn’t know.
He came home from the gym an hour ago. He ate the dinner I made. He complained about a seminar reading. He pulled me onto the couch like it was Wednesday — because it was Wednesday, because his body does what it does on Wednesdays. He doesn’t know this is the last one.
I do.
I knew at four-fifteen this afternoon, when Mendez closed the folder on his desk and said I’m sorry, Reece, the math has changed.
I knew on the train back. I knew when I unlocked our door and he wasn’t home yet.
Standing in our kitchen with my hand on the counter — knew it then, too.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t sit. Didn’t call anyone.
I made the goddamn pasta because he likes it and I waited.
He doesn’t know. I’m going to make sure he doesn’t.
“Hi,” he says against my jaw, like he just noticed he’s here.
“Hi.”
“You’re quiet.”
“I’m busy.”
He laughs into my neck and it goes through me. I don’t move my hand. I don’t change my face. He doesn’t notice that I’ve gone perfectly still. He shifts. I feel him hard now, fully, against my hip. His hand finds the back of my neck, where his hand always finds it. His mouth comes up to mine.
I kiss him.
I kiss him with my whole mouth. With my tongue. With my teeth catching his lower lip the way he likes. He makes the small sound I have spent six years learning to pull out of him. I make him make it again. He pulls back half an inch.
“Bedroom?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Here.”
He looks at me. His face does the thing it does when I’ve said something he wants to come back to.
Then he moves, fast, certain. He pushes me back against the arm of the couch, gets a knee between my thighs.
His hands are at the hem of my t-shirt. His mouth is on my chest before the shirt is even off my arms.
“God,” I say.
“What.”
“Nothing. Don’t stop.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
He works his way down. My chest, my ribs, the dip below my ribs that he has known about for six years and that nobody before him knew about. His hands are at my belt. He undoes it the way he undoes my belt — methodical, looking up at me from under his lashes.
He gets the belt open, the jeans open. He pulls them down with my underwear in one motion.
My cock is against his cheek for a second.
Then his mouth is on me, and I make a sound I have not made in months.
I’ve been at Mendez’s office on lunch breaks for a month.
I’ve been pulling away from him without telling him.
Tonight I’m paying for it. His mouth is hot and tight.
His tongue does the thing his tongue does.
His hand is at the base of my cock, his other hand on my thigh.
“Griffin.”
“Mm.”
“Slow down.”
He pulls off and looks up at me, his mouth wet, lips red, the small smile he keeps for me. I notice the chip at the corner of his front tooth. He fell off his bike when he was eleven. Told me on our second date, three drinks in, embarrassed about it.
“I want this to last,” I say.
“It’s Wednesday.”
“I know what day it is.”
“We have time.”
“I want it to last anyway.”
He looks at me. Really looks, the way he does when he has noticed something. For half a second I think he knows. I think he’s going to ask. I think this is where it ends, in his living room, my cock half in his hand. Then he kisses my hipbone and says, “Okay. Slow.”
“Slow.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“Your mouth,” I say. “Just your mouth. Slow.”
“Okay.”
He goes back down. He takes me into his mouth an inch at a time.
He pulls back and goes deeper. His hand strokes the base of me in time with his mouth.
He does the thing with his tongue at the head, the small flick.
I put my hand in his hair because if I don’t put it somewhere I’m going to put it over my eyes, and he will see, and I cannot let him see.
I grip too hard. He hums around me and I feel it in my spine.
I want this to last because the rest of my life is going to be made of remembering it.
“Griffin.”
He hums again. Christ.
“Griffin, come up here.”
He pulls off slow. “You okay?”
“Yes. I want you over me. Come up here.”
“You want me to fuck you.”
“Yes.”
“On the couch.”
“On the couch.”
“Reece, the couch is…“
“I don’t care. The couch.”
He smiles into my hip. “Okay.”
He gets up. He gets the lube from the side-table drawer where it lives because we live here.
Because this is our apartment. Because we keep the lube in the side-table drawer for couch sex on Wednesday nights, because that’s what our life is.
The life is ending in nine hours, at six in the morning, when I leave through the door I have walked through a thousand times.
“Hey.”
He’s looking at me, lube in his hand, small frown.
“Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere.”
“Reece.”
“Right here.”
He looks at me a second longer. He puts the lube on the cushion next to my hip. He bends down. He kisses my mouth, soft, not sex-kiss, the other kind. The kind that has nothing to do with want. The kind that’s just you.
“You sure you want to do this here,” he says, against my mouth.
“I’m sure.”
“Bed’s three rooms away.”
“I want it here.”
“Why.”
“Because I want to,” I say.
“Okay.”
He gets the lube. Gets his fingers slick.
Gets them inside me and I make a sound and I let myself make it, because what does it matter now.
He works me open. He’s good at this. He has always been good at this.
His other hand is on my chest and his thumb is moving over my nipple in the absent way it does when he’s concentrating on something else.
“You’re tight,” he says, almost to himself. “It’s been a minute.”
“Two weeks.”
“Three.”
“Three.”
“You been okay.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Mm.”
He doesn’t push. He never pushes. I love him so much for it. For what that has cost me. For what it’s going to cost him later, when somebody comes to the door.
“Reece.”
“What.”
“Look at me.”
I look at him.
“Where are you.”
“I’m right here.”
“You’re not.”
“Griffin.”
“Hey.” He cups the side of my face with the hand that’s not inside me. His thumb is on my cheekbone. He looks at me the way he looks at me when he has decided I matter more than whatever else is in the room. “Come back.”
“I’m here.”
“Be here.”
“I’m here, Griffin.”
I am not. I am six months from now in a town I do not know yet, in a bed I have not slept in, alone, thinking about his thumb on my cheekbone on a Wednesday in May.
“Look at me.”
I look at him.
“There you are.”
“Here.”
“Stay there.”
“Yes.”
He kisses me with his fingers still in me, slow. I kiss him back and I make the kiss the kiss he will remember. I put everything into it I cannot say.
He pulls back. His eyes are dark.
“You sure you’re okay.”
“I’m sure. Griffin. Please. I want you. Now.”
“Okay.”
He gets the condom from the drawer. He rolls it on. I watch his hand on his cock, the way his hand knows his cock.
He moves over me. He gets my legs up, one over his shoulder, the other around his waist. He pushes in slow.
I make a sound.
He stops.
“More,” I say.
“Reece.”
“More. Don’t stop. I want to feel it tomorrow.”
“You want…“
“I want to feel it tomorrow, Griffin. I want. Please.”
Something in his face shifts. He doesn’t ask. He pushes the rest of the way in, hard, one stroke, and I cry out. He covers my mouth with his and swallows the sound. I bite his lower lip until I taste copper. He groans into my mouth.
We aren’t making love. We’re fucking. We are fucking on the couch in our apartment on a Wednesday night in May.
He’s moving in me hard and exactly the way I asked.
His forehead is against mine. His hand is on my throat, not squeezing, just there, the way only he knows I like.
Tomorrow night somebody else’s bed will not have this hand or this throat or this Wednesday in it.
“Reece, fuck.”
“Don’t stop.”
“I’m not.”
“Harder.”
“Harder, Griffin. Please.”
He fucks me harder. The couch moves. The lamp on the side table is rocking.
His hand on my throat tightens by a fraction.
His other hand is on my hip. He is hitting the place inside me that nobody else has ever found, because nobody else has ever been allowed to look.
I am going to come. I am going to come without him touching me.
“Griffin. I’m gonna.”
“Yeah. Come on. Come on, baby, come on.”
He hasn’t called me baby in six months. He saves it.
He saves it for when I’m too far gone to be embarrassed by it, and he’s using it now because he can feel me about to go.
He says it again. “Come on, baby.” I come hard between us.
I cry out. He kisses me through it. His rhythm stutters.
He comes inside me a few seconds later, his face in my neck, his teeth on my shoulder.
He makes a sound I don’t have a name for.
I know I’m taking it with me. That one is mine.
He collapses on me. I take his weight. All of it. I want to be crushed by him.
“Hey,” he says, into my neck.
“Hey.”
“That was…“
“Yeah.”
“What got into you.”
“I missed you.”
“You see me every day.”
“I missed you anyway.”
He laughs into my neck, a different laugh from before, lower, spent. I close my eyes. I’ll hear that laugh again. Not in person. I’ll hear it for the rest of my life, in the apartment I do not yet have.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You sure.”
“I’m sure, Griffin.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I just came.”
“That’s never made you shake before.”
“It was a good one.”
“Mm.”
He pulls back and looks down at me. His hair is damp at the temples. There’s a flush on his chest that will go down in about six minutes. I have watched it go down a thousand times. I watch it now.
“I love you,” he says.