Red, Black & Yellow （2017） #3
“That’s not on the menu,” the bartender, a girl with messy hair and too much makeup, said.
“Can’t you make an exception for me?” Rio asked. “Pretty please?”
“Well…” she said as if she was unsure. Meanwhile, I was sure—sure that I’d catch a chill from the breeze created by the furious batting of her false eyelashes that sat below her drawn-on eyebrows like twin tarantulas.
I looked over at the food table covered with trays of Ritz crackers, cubes of Cracker Barrel cheese, pimento-stuffed olives, and imitation crab dip.
“OK, I guess I could,” she said finally. “For you.”
“You’re a sweetheart,” Rio said, glancing at me. I took the hint and placed a folded twenty-dollar bill in her tip jar.
“Don’t be like that,” Rio said, handing me a glass and steering me to an empty table in the corner.
“Be like what?” I asked, perplexed.
“Jealous that she was flirting with me.” He laughed. “It got us decent drinks. Who actually drinks Rolling Rock?”
“Oh,” I said and took a greedy sip of my martini as if it was Alice’s found elixir and would shrink me so I could escape down the nearest rabbit hole.
I had thought I would stay over, perhaps at the new W, but now I just wanted to escape Rio’s unexpected affection and wash off the stench of unfulfilled promise and cigarette smoke and Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds.
When I broke the news that I was leaving, Rio insisted on walking me to my car.
When we got to where I’d parked, he said, “You parked next to me. That’s probably the universe telling us we belong together. ”
Rattled, I asked, “Which car is yours?”
“The Subaru,” he said.
I got into my car, started the engine and rolled down the window, prepared to say goodbye. Rio settled his arms on the doorframe and leaned in so close I could feel his breath. “What do you think?” he asked.
“About what?”
“Me, silly.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve changed, I know. I’m older, I have a bad hip. Do you still think I’m handsome? Are you still attracted to me?”
Is he flirting with me? I wondered. He seemed genuinely curious, concerned even. “Yes,” I said as casually as I could, “I still think you’re handsome. And yep, I still have the hots for you.” It was true. The intensity of my desire for him had startled me.
“But I look different.”
I shrugged in the dark. “You’re still you. You’re like a beloved vase that one day falls and breaks. You glue it back together. And you still love it and think it’s beautiful, even with that scar of glue. You know it’s been through something, but it’s still there with you and bringing you joy.”
“I wish you would…”
“Would what?”
“Let me bring you joy.”
When I said nothing, he nodded as if agreeing with something he heard in his head or in my silence. His brilliant teeth flashed white in the dark. “If you change your mind about staying,” he said, “I’ll be spending the night at Mr. Fabricant’s. You know where his house is.”
I recalled all of this as I stepped out of the shower in my suite at Locust Hollow’s brand-new W hotel, exhausted from the drive, from the reunion, from seeing Rio and the resurgence of desire.
I regarded my reflection. My pubic hair, once a dark forest, is now an iron-colored thicket.
When had that happened and why had I not noticed? I wondered.
I sucked in my stomach and tried to see the abs I’d never had.
Moving to the full-length mirror behind the bathroom door, I examined myself from every possible angle: my butt was still high and firm, slightly bubbled; my legs, from behind my knees to my ankles, were still mottled, the lasting reminder of eczema; I was speckled as a hen.
I’ve never been naked in front of any man but Jackson.
What if my rendezvous with Rio ended up with us in bed together?
Frightened by the idea, I pulled on a T-shirt and turned out the light.
In bed, I tried to fall asleep, but Rio kept dancing at the edges of my vision, peeping under the covers at me, his hands dragging curiously over my body.
I worried also in this time of equality and versatility, that I was an anachronism: I wasn’t a top.
Jackson and I had tried once or twice; he’d gritted his teeth and tried to bear me entering him.
I’d felt as a man, I should suck it up and deliver what he wanted.
In truth, I hated topping; it pinched. Fortunately, one night before things went too far, we’d talked and, to our mutual relief, decided that wasn’t something either of us wanted.
But what if Rio expected to flip-flop—something I’d noticed, appalled, in porn?
What if I was too set in my ways, too old to learn this new trick?
Sleeping with Rio, once an impossible thing, now loomed as a possibility, so the idea that there might be an expectation on his part, out of curiosity, to be topped did not seem out of the question.
Wednesday, July 5, 2017, St. Jude—Today, Rio texted me a picture of him from the waist down, sitting in pajama bottoms in a red-and-black plaid with a yellow stripe running through them.
I texted, “I’m jealous.” And I was. Here it was noon, and he was just waking up while I’d been unable to sleep last night; I’d finally given up and crawled out of bed, defeated, at five a.m.
“Of my hand?” he texted back. It was only then that I realized in the picture his hand was shoved down the front of his pants.
He immediately sent another photo, this one with his pants lowered; his thickening penis emerging from his tangle of unruly pubic hair, lay across his palm semi-hard, the red, black, and yellow flannel now bunched under his balls.
“Thinking of me?” I texted, feeling bold.
“I dreamed of you again,” he texted back. “Would you really like to feel me inside you?”
Yes. A thousand times yes, I wanted to shout.
Monday, September 18, 2017, St. Jude—“Hey, Rio,” I said answering my phone. I was surprised by the call. We haven’t spoken much in the last couple of months. Assuming he needed time and space to figure out what was happening between us, I hadn’t reached out much. Now he sounded like his old self.
“Hey, babe,” he said, picking up right where he’d left off as if we hadn’t gone months without contact. “I wanted to call because I saw the photos you posted on Facebook last night.
I’d gone with MJ to yet another awards dinner and posted photos to give her a boost. Her marketing team loved when I did that.
“You looked so handsome and sexy all dressed up.” He stopped talking abruptly.
“Rio? You still there?”
“I’m here,” he said after another pause. “I just can’t believe I just told a guy he looked handsome and sexy.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I can’t believe my straight high school crush just told me I looked sexy. Every time I talk to you, I wonder if I’m dreaming. Or if maybe, we’ve fallen into some alternate universe…”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “But the thing is, I mean it. But I’ve never, ever looked at another guy and thought he was sexy. I wanted to like your post, but I was sure if I did, everyone would know what I was thinking.”
Now it was my turn to fall silent.
“So,” Rio said changing the subject, “how did you get invited?”
“Mary Jane invited me. She doesn’t really date, so I’m often her plus-one. When Jackson and I were together, we were often her plus-two. People were very confused.”
“You know Mary Jane Mitchell?”
“MJ? Yeah. We went to college together.”
“So, she was friends with Jackson, too?”
“Of course she was. He and I were already together when she and I met freshman year.”
“Do you think she’d like me?”
“She’s my best friend. She loves me. I probably love you, so of course she’d like you.”
He seemed satisfied with that answer for a moment then said, “I thought I was your best friend.”
“My best friend? No, Rio. You are something altogether different.”
“I am? What am I then?”
“I…don’t know. I honestly don’t…”
And I don’t. But I know I don’t want him to stop being whatever it is he is to me.