Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
Jason
I wake to the sound of the shower running and Victor singing. Chapel of Love by the Dixie Cups, of all things, and it makes me smile because he has such a romantic, tender heart. He has a pleasant voice, if untrained, and he’s more of a tenor, so I harmonize on the thirds but drop down an octave.
His eyes light up when I peer around the shower curtain and he motions me to step in with him. The water is nice and hot and Victor belts the song out with gusto while he soaps me up.
And feels me up, with a wicked gleam in his eyes and a waggle of his eyebrows.
When we finish the song, it’s my turn. I swing him around so his back is to the shower wall and pin him there with a hand around his throat. I keep my hand loose, so his breath isn’t cut off in any way, and he could get out of my hold easily, but he doesn’t try. “Okay?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he whispers back. His cock thinks this is a-okay, for sure. It hardened more or less as soon as I joined him in the shower, but it’s poking me in the thigh right now.
There are canisters for shampoo, conditioner, and body wash bolted to the shower wall. I pump a glop of body wash into my hand and grasp his cock. A few strokes and Victor’s mouth falls open, breathing hard.
“Give us a hand here,” I say and tip my head toward the body wash canister. I step closer to him and line our cocks up together.
Victor pumps some into his own hand and wraps it around both our cocks, too. It takes a minute for us to find the right rhythm together, but when we do, it’s warm and slick and perfect.
I come first and shoot all over Victor’s stomach and our joined hands.
When the stimulation gets to be too much, I let my cock slip free and watch Victor’s face while we jointly jack him off.
His pupils expand until the blue is barely visible and sweat slips down his temples.
His hand picks up speed and I follow along for the ride, our fingers entwined around his cock.
When he finally shudders and comes, I lunge forward and kiss him hard. It’s sloppy and wet because of the shower spray but also because he’s trembling and shaking while his cock jerks and spurts in our hands.
I release his throat and slide my hand around to the back of his neck. His head bows and he rests his forehead against mine. “Jesus, Jay,” he pants. “You’re…”
“Depraved?” I offer. “An unrepentant sinner? I believe we’ve covered that, haven’t we?” I kiss him so he doesn’t think I’m upset with him.
“Amazing, I meant.” He kisses me back until the hot water runs out and we’re pelted with an icy spray that does little to cool the heat between us.
If anything, he should be upset with me. All this week, I’ve alternated between pushing him away and pushing him to do exactly what I want. He’s been compliant—enthusiastically compliant—but I’ve given him no assurance that I won’t revert to the way we were before this week began.
Distant. Untouchable. Unreachable.
It was my defense mechanism. If I didn’t spend any time with him, if I barely spoke to him, I could keep the memory of what we did fifteen years ago buried. If I never touched him, I could keep myself from grabbing him and never letting him go.
All the efforts I put in to keep my wife’s memory alive and I’ve forgotten—or suppressed—all the good memories of her best friend.
He continues to hum the melody of Chapel of Love while he shaves and I brush my teeth.
Then we swap places and I shave while he brushes his teeth.
We’re jostling for position at the small bathroom sink, shoulders brushing, hands occasionally wandering to naughty places, and it’s so…
domestic. There’s a sharp pain in my chest as I realize how much I’ve missed having someone to love.
The razor falls into the sink. My hand shakes and I’m staring at my face in the mirror. The right side of my face is still covered in shaving cream but my left cheek is almost as white.
Is that what this is?
Do I love Victor?
“Hey, are you okay?” Victor approaches from behind me and puts a hand on my back. “You didn’t cut yourself, did you?”
I can’t speak around the boulder lodged in my throat and Victor turns me to face him. He examines my face, turning my head side to side, then wipes a stray bit of shaving cream from just under my right ear. “You’re fine,” he says. His eyebrows draw together. “Right?”
I swallow that immense boulder down with no little difficulty. “Yeah,” I manage. “I’m fine.” I turn back to the mirror and fish the razor from the sink bowl. “Can’t believe our girl is getting married, that’s all.”
Mother of God, how inappropriate to connect our daughter to whatever illicit epiphany I’m having about her father, but I’m definitely not ready to tell him what’s really going on.
“No kidding,” Victor laughs. I finish shaving and watch his reflection as he leaves the bathroom. The muscles of his ass flex appealingly as he walks to the wardrobe in the bedroom and again as he steps into a pair of black boxer briefs and pulls them up over his hips.
Victor sings snatches of more wedding-related songs while he dresses and I have a quiet panic attack in the bathroom.
I’ve been deliberately not thinking about what sleeping with Victor this week would mean when we leave Costa Rica.
I told him from the very beginning that it would only be this week, and he hasn’t asked me for any future promises since.
Maybe he doesn’t want any. Maybe this is just a fling for him, too.
But what if I do want a future with Victor? It would upend everything about my life.
My job, for starters. How long could I stay on as director of music at Saint Sebastian’s if I’m in a relationship with a man? How long could I hide our relationship to keep that job?
I loathe lying. I’m terrible at it, to boot. The next time Mrs. Kowalski asks me if I’m ready to start dating again and offers to set me up with her divorced daughter, I should what? Say, “No thanks, I’m into dick now, just don’t tell Father Gabriel?”
Am I even into dick, or is it just Victor’s?
I shake my head at my reflection and pat some aftershave on my face. It doesn’t really matter. Whether I’m truly bisexual or whatever it would mean to be straight except for Victor, the consequences are the same.
I will lose my job. Either because the diocese fires me or because I can’t take the lying and the secrecy and I quit.
I don’t imagine I’ll lose many friends over this, although the small handful of friends who knew Leah that I’m still in touch with may be a little surprised.
Especially at me falling for Victor, considering what they know of our history.
Obviously, they don’t know what happened between us the night of Leah’s funeral.
To be honest, though, I don’t have much of a social life.
There are the other men in the Saint Sebastian Six.
We usually go out for a beer or two after rehearsals, though I don’t share a whole lot of personal information with any of them.
Julian Adeyemi, who I was in grad school with and who founded the group with me, is probably my closest friend, though we spend more time arguing about early music repertoire than we do talking about our relationships.
My father is dead, so at least I don’t have to worry about telling him, thank God. My mom would have been okay with it, I think. She died a few years after my father, but she loved Kelsey and took her engagement to a woman in stride.
I dress for Kelsey’s wedding day in this fog of swirling, conflicting thoughts.
Victor keeps casting sidelong glances at me, like he knows something is wrong but he’s weighing whether to confront me about it.
Finally, he approaches me as I’m standing at the full-length mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door.
I’m fiddling with my pocket square and Victor puts his hands on my sides and turns me to face him.
“You look great,” he says. He pulls the fabric from my suit’s breast pocket and spreads it across the palm of his large hand.
He pokes the index finger of his other hand into the middle of the square, then twists the fabric around his hand.
When he pulls it off his hand, he twists it a little more, then tucks it into my suit pocket and fluffs it until it looks like a rose peeking out of the pocket.
We’re not wearing ties but our suits and pocket squares match, and I see that Victor has already created a rose with his pocket square.
“You look very sharp,” I tell him. The peacock blue of the suit jacket sets off his dark blond hair and blue eyes, and the pink and emerald patterned silk adds a lovely pop of color.
I cup his jaw and rub my thumb over his smooth-shaven cheek. He closes his eyes and the corners of his mouth lift in a little smile. I moisten my lips. “Thank you,” I say.
His eyes pop open. “For what?”
“For being there for Leah. For helping me raise our daughter, even when I was less than amicable about that.” My own mouth twists when he looks like he’s about to object. “You know it’s true. I should have focused on the ‘co’ part of co-parenting when Kelsey was younger.”
Victor shrugs. “You were dealing with a lot. I didn’t need to make it harder for you.”
“Well, I should have gotten over myself earlier.” If I had, would we be in this situation right now? Would I have been tempted to start a relationship with Victor years earlier?
Probably not. My grief for Leah was too strong.
And that only means I would have had to face the dilemma about my job earlier.
I take a deep breath. “Thank you for this week, too. It’s been…” I struggle to find the right word.
Victor kisses me while I think. Or, try to think anyway. He’s very distracting.
“Inappropriate?” he suggests.
I snort. “Definitely.” He kisses me again.
“Incautious?” he asks when the kiss breaks.
“That, too,” I agree, and kiss him back.
“Instructive,” I add in between kisses.
“Ooh,” he says, and his lips curve under mine. “Really?”
“Also, inconvenient and insane,” I murmur, and pull his hips toward me.
We’re both hard under our wedding trousers and it really is not only inconvenient, when we’re supposed to meet Kelsey and Adrienne in half an hour, but insane, that less than a week ago, I’d been dreading spending so much time with Victor and now I don’t want to let him go.
Victor steps back to admire his handiwork with the pocket square, and I catch his wrist before he can pull away entirely.
"What happens after this?" I hear myself ask.
He goes still. "After the wedding?"
"After we go home."
The question hangs between us. It's the first time either of us has acknowledged that "just this week" has an expiration date that's rapidly approaching.
Victor's expression is careful. Neutral. The face he probably uses with difficult clients. "What do you want to happen?"
I want to keep waking up next to you. I want to know about the scar on your shoulder. I want to think of you as something other than my stepdaughter's father.
None of those are things I can say. None of those are things I'm supposed to want.
"I don't know," I say instead.
He nods slowly, like that's the answer he expected. "Then let's get through the wedding first. We can figure out the rest later."
It's a reasonable response. A mature response.
So why does it feel like a door closing?