18 #2
Patrick doesn’t know how it’s never occurred to him that one day all of this will be told to Eleanor as a story, that one day she’ll hear something along the lines of “when you were a baby, we went to live with Uncle Patrick.” Or maybe it’ll be Patrick telling the story: You came to live with me.
We had a dog named Walt who stole your teething biscuits and let you pet his ears.
These will be the stories that all children hear, the stories about a time before they can remember, but in which You is still the protagonist.
There’s no way to tell any of those stories without including Nathaniel.
He’ll be in every story for the first few months of Eleanor’s life, and longer, Patrick hopes.
But how much longer? Why does this have to enter his thoughts now, when his hand still feels hot from where Nathaniel gripped it?
He finds his sunglasses in the beach bag and puts them on.
The breeze from the ocean is cool, and there isn’t enough sun.
“You don’t look great,” Nathaniel says, eyeing him carefully. “Let’s never go on a roller coaster again.”
“It’s a deal. Let’s get ice cream and walk to the beach,” Patrick suggests.
The water is freezing but Nathaniel says, “Oh, to hell with it,” and goes right in. Patrick strips off his shirt and follows.
“What the hell,” Patrick says as soon as he’s knee deep in the water. It’s freezing. He didn’t know water could be this cold in July.
“You’ll feel better if you come in past your shoulders,” Nathaniel calls. He’s already several yards out. This is a man who showers in boiling water. Patrick doesn’t know how he can stand it. “Come on .”
Patrick sighs and goes in further. He does feel a little better once he’s in up to his neck, but he isn’t happy about it, so he splashes Nathaniel. Nathaniel retaliates immediately, then ducks underwater.
“It’s the only way to deal with cold water,” Nathaniel says. “You just have to throw yourself in.”
Or you could stay on the warm dry sand, but Patrick doesn’t say that.
Instead, with his back to the beach and nothing in front of him but Nathaniel and the Atlantic Ocean, he lets his gaze drop to Nathaniel’s wet shoulders, to the hair on his chest, which he can just make out underwater.
He’s seen it all before, but not in broad daylight.
Later, Susan wades in with Nathaniel—sensibly only going in up to her knees—while Patrick watches Eleanor attempt to crawl on the beach blanket but mostly attempt to eat the beach blanket.
When Nathaniel and Susan come back, Patrick gets some hot dogs from a vendor and Susan produces a thermos of whiskey sours.
They don’t have cups, so they pass the thermos around.
The beach is relatively empty. About twenty feet away, a couple is kissing.
A few yards in the other direction two older women sunbathe on faded pink towels, the straps of their swimsuits pushed under their arms so they won’t get tan lines.
Latin music is playing on somebody’s radio.
Patrick is pretty sure he could close his eyes and fall asleep.
He does lie down, and he does shut his eyes. When he opens them, Nathaniel’s looking at him out of the corner of his eye, doing the same thing Patrick had done in the ocean, only more discreetly. Patrick watches Nathaniel look at him, a closed loop, something sparking through the circuit.
When they get home, they’re all tired and sandy and mildly sunburned despite all the clouds—except Eleanor, who had her strawberry sun hat.
Susan walks the dog while Patrick rinses Eleanor off in the bathtub and Nathaniel unpacks.
By the time they’ve all finished with their showers and Eleanor’s had a jar of mashed peas and fallen asleep in her crib, it isn’t even dark out, but they’re all ready for bed.
“Well, good night, boys,” Susan says, stretching. “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”
The Valdezes are at a cousin’s block party uptown, so the building is quiet as Patrick and Nathaniel go downstairs.
“Come here,” Patrick says as soon as the apartment door shuts behind them.
It’s only when the small of Patrick’s back hits the wall that he realizes Nathaniel’s pushed him there.
Well, steered him there. Guided him there.
Patrick doesn’t know if the whiskey sours have loosened Nathaniel up or if he’s just gotten bolder.
It doesn’t matter. Patrick isn’t complaining.
“Wanted this all day,” he says, his lips moving against Nathaniel’s, one of his hands in Nathaniel’s hair and the other pushing up the back of his shirt.
Nathaniel slows things down—Patrick has no illusions about who’s doing the speeding up and slowing down around here—and everything is careful and gentle again but it’s the carefulness and gentleness of two people who have already established that they’re going to push one another into things.
“Will you take this off already?” Nathaniel mutters, tugging at the hem of Patrick’s t-shirt. “Walking around shirtless for half the day and now—for God’s sake, Patrick, let go of me so I can get this thing off of you.”
Patrick pulls his own shirt off and is rewarded by both Nathaniel’s hands on his skin, forceful enough that Patrick can let himself feel pinned against the wall.
He brings a hand to Nathaniel’s hip, cupping his palm around the curve of bone under cotton.
When he skims his fingertips inside Nathaniel’s waistband, he feels Nathaniel suck in a breath, his mouth against the skin of Patrick’s throat.
“Can you—” Nathaniel starts.
“Anything you want,” Patrick says, too fast, not knowing what Nathaniel is going to ask for, but knowing it doesn’t matter. The answer is still yes.
“Can you make it different?”
“Sure.” Patrick’s about to ask what, exactly, Nathaniel wants him to do differently, when Nathaniel speaks again.
“I’ve never liked it before. Christ, that sounds awful. Ungrateful. Hell. What I mean is, I don’t want to think about all the times I made myself do that. I want it to feel different.”
Jesus. That asks more questions than it answers.
Patrick doesn’t know what kind of tragic obligatory straight sex Nathaniel’s been enduring.
Patrick doesn’t know much about straight sex to begin with, except what gets hinted at in movies, but he can put together a rough sketch: the man’s on top, the man’s in charge.
He’s the subject; she’s the object. If that’s similar to Nathaniel’s experience, and he wants something different, Patrick can maybe flip that around.
“Yeah,” Patrick says, his voice rough. “Yeah, I can do that.” He turns them, pinning Nathaniel against the wall, caging him in.
“Is this different?” he asks, speaking the words into Nathaniel’s ear.
Nathaniel nods. “Was what we did the other day in the shop different?” Nathaniel nods again.
Patrick toys with the hem of Nathaniel’s t-shirt.
“Will you let me?” He can feel Nathaniel swallow.
He pushes up Nathaniel’s shirt and skims a thumb over his nipple, going slow and taking his time, kissing him all the while, feeling Nathaniel’s skin warm under his touch.
With his other hand, he uses his thumb to stroke the fly of Nathaniel’s jeans.
Nathaniel makes a noise that shoots through Patrick like some drug that hasn’t been invented yet.
“We can do this in bed,” Patrick suggests when he’s on the edge of getting desperate and thinks Nathaniel might be getting there too. “With as much of my clothes off as you want. Yours too, ideally.”
In bed, Patrick kisses the sunburned curve of Nathaniel’s shoulder, the sharp edge of his collarbone. Nathaniel’s hands are on him now, exploring and insistent.
As Patrick gets the rest of their clothes off, he takes an inventory of all the places Nathaniel likes being kissed, the places where his breath hitches when Patrick’s fingers make contact: the hinge of his jaw, the small of his back, the curve of his ass in the palm of Patrick’s hand.
He makes a noise that sounds pleased and surprised when Patrick kisses the spot under his ear, like maybe he didn’t know he liked that until now, and that thought makes the heat in the room go from summer-warm to something incandescent.
Patrick braces himself over Nathaniel on one arm, then thinks better of it and lets Nathaniel feel his weight—it isn’t lost on him that Nathaniel’s spent the last half hour paying attention to his shoulders and his arms, the breadth of his chest. If he likes Patrick’s size, then he can have it.
He doesn’t know if it’s possible to have sex so good it eradicates the memory of sex that felt wrong or made you feel wrong.
He doubts it’s as simple as making sure Nathaniel remembers he’s with a man—if that was what Nathaniel needed, that’s probably what he’d have asked for.
If Patrick had to guess, he’d say that Nathaniel doesn’t exactly know what he needs.
He bends his head and brings his mouth to Nathaniel’s nipple, kissing it almost reverently, then sucking it into his mouth. Nathaniel makes a shocked sound, then one of his hands lands on the back of Patrick’s head, keeping him there.
Patrick gets a thigh between Nathaniel’s legs.
“Just like this. Okay?” Nathaniel presses up, looking for friction, and Patrick gives it to him.
He shifts them around a little, putting his hand where his mouth was, and kisses Nathaniel’s neck, his jaw, his mouth.
The slide of their bodies makes Patrick groan.
At the sound, Nathaniel moves one of his legs aside, making room.
Patrick’s been where Nathaniel is, and if you put your mind to it, you can imagine that you’re getting fucked. He doesn’t know if that’s what Nathaniel’s thinking, but the possibility that he might be is enough to make Patrick’s mind go blank.
When Nathaniel comes, he muffles the sound of it in Patrick’s shoulder, then lies back, panting and glassy-eyed, the angles of his face stark and lovely in the half light from the hall.
Patrick finishes himself off, aware of Nathaniel watching, then collapses messily onto him. Silently, he starts counting.
Before he gets to thirty, Nathaniel pushes at him. “We need showers.”
Patrick smiles into the skin of Nathaniel’s neck, delighted to be right, delighted to know this man well enough to guess. He rolls away and starts the shower.
“Stay,” Patrick says after they’ve cleaned up. “In my bed.”
Nathaniel is still in Patrick’s bed the next morning, cranky and incoherent, the way he is every morning.
Patrick puts on the coffee and they get ready for the day, then Patrick opens the shop while Nathaniel gets Eleanor.
It’s like the pattern of the last five months has simply shifted around a few degrees, all the pieces precisely where they belong, solid enough that Patrick can nearly trick himself into believing it could stay this way.