Chapter 10 Sully
Chapter ten
Sully
The lemons were fine.
I knew they were fine. I'd cut them myself at the start of the shift, twelve wedges per tray, angled the same direction so the flesh faced up and the rind didn't bleed onto anything. It was good work, clean work.
I didn't need to revisit it, but I did anyway.
The last hour was winding down, and the bar had gone soft around the edges. A few customers remained. A tab was still open at the far end of the rail. Nobody needed anything urgently.
I moved a wedge a quarter inch to the left, then moved it back.
"Sullivan."
Nora appeared beside me like a ghost. I hadn't heard her arrive. When I suggested she might be part spirit, she insisted it was only good shoes. She had her coat on and her till sorted.
"What?"
"Nothing." She looked at the tray and back at me. "Nothing at all."
"Prep," I said. "Getting a jump on tomorrow."
"You already did tomorrow." She nodded toward the far end of the rail. "Before your break."
I looked at the tray. She wasn't wrong. I picked up a lime that was perfectly intact, turned it over once, and set it back.
"He's back in town tonight," she said.
I didn't look up right away. I did a last check on the left side of the tray, confirming it was correct. It had been correct the last four times I had checked it.
"I know the schedule," I said.
The words came out without hesitation. With the next beat, I understood I'd handed her what she needed.
She looked at the lemons again. Then she picked up her bag from the service end and looked at me sideways.
"That's the part I find alarming," she said.
She was through the service door before I could answer. I heard her say something brief to Tomasz in the back before the door swung shut.
I stood there. The lemon tray was as good as it was ever going to be, and I had the lime bin organized. The citrus station was, by any reasonable standard, overdone.
It was time for the closing routine: wipe the rail, check the wells, and cap everything that needed capping. The motions carried me to the door and out to the street.
Outside, Chicago was its late-night self, never quite shutting down. A cab turned onto LaSalle, and the cold hit the back of my neck where my scarf had slipped.
I didn't put my earbuds in. Usually, I had something going during the walk home. It might be a playlist, a podcast about true crime or cocktail history, or occasionally true crime about cocktail history.
Tonight, I let the city provide the soundtrack.
I walked north and kept my hands in my pockets. Halfway through the second block, I began rehearsing. I could open with something good, shaped in a way he didn't see coming.
I let it go.
Whatever I built would get dismantled the moment Pratt looked at me, and I'd be standing there holding the pieces. I knew that from past experience, weeks of it.
Our building came up on my left. I didn't slow down.
The elevator opened on four, and my key was already in my hand. When I passed Pratt's door, everything was quiet. There was no sound of TV or footsteps coming through the door.
A thin ray of light leaked out from underneath.
It wasn't there while he was gone. I checked while pretending I wasn't checking.
It was one forty-five am, and I was trying to decide what to do.
I stepped up to Pratt's door and knocked once, no rhythm to it.
He opened the door. It wasn't immediate, but it was fast enough to know he hadn't been far away. He still wore his coat.
The counter behind him was clear, but he'd turned the lamp on. He looked at me how he always did: like I was a problem he'd decided he didn't mind having.
"You're back," I said.
"Yes."
"Good road trip?"
"Good enough."
No wasted words on either side. I'd learned early on—Pratt's economy wasn't coldness; it was his style of using words. He said the thing and stopped when it was done.
I knew how to open a conversation, find the angle, apply a little pressure, and let it swing. I had a catalog of ways in. Some of them were funny. Some were even disarming. A few of them earned praise. I'd been running them so long they didn't feel like moves anymore. They were instinctual.
With Pratt, none of them seemed right.
I tilted my head slightly.
"I was going to make a whole thing of this," I said. "But you're going to see through it, anyway."
He shifted his weight to the other foot.
"You want to come to mine?" I asked. "Not for soup or any particular reason."
I didn't deliver a joke. I had one ready, a callback to the lockout tax, but I kept it to myself.
Pratt looked at me. Then he reached back, grabbed his keys off the hook, and headed for the hallway.
We walked into my condo, and I immediately realized I should have staged it better.
I waved an arm and said, "Welcome to… this," like I was revealing a bargain-basement Price Is Right showcase.
“For the record,” I said, “this is not my best work.”
There was a jacket on a chair and a book face down on the coffee table. I didn't move either of them. Pratt came in and shut the door behind him.
Every other time Pratt had been in my place there'd been a reason attached—soup, pasta, or a lockout. There was always something we were planning to do.
Not tonight. At least not that either of us said out loud.
I sat first on one end of the couch, foot tucked under me. He sat at the other end. Not far, but separate.
Neither of us spoke. There was no music. I forgot to turn it on.
I heard a faint wheeze in my breathing. Could he hear that?
Pratt's hands were on his thighs, relaxed, not fidgeting. I watched him not watching me.
Pratt moved close, and he put two fingers under my chin, gently angling my chin toward him. Then he kissed me.
I’d been kissed in a lot of ways.
There was a guy in high school who kissed me while he was still half-watching a video game over my shoulder, like he didn’t want to lose his place. One guy was so careful that he waited for me to give permission.
There were the drunk ones in college, enthusiastic at first and then losing focus. Some kisses felt like a formality, something to get through before the real night could start.
When Pratt kissed me, he got it right. He was steady and didn't rush. When I pulled back slightly, he gave me the space and waited.
I pulled him closer by the front of his shirt. He came without resistance and took the hem of my shirt in his hand, tugging.
"That's a tactic," I said against his mouth.
"It works."
We moved to the bedroom without breaking contact. Pratt had one hand on my waist, guiding me through his internal map of my condo.
The backs of my knees hit the bed, and I sat. He stayed standing for a moment, looking at me in the low light from the hallway.
He took the hem of my shirt in both hands and pulled it over my head. Climbing onto the bed on his knees, he pushed me back and kissed the side of my throat, then the ridge of my collarbone.
I had to remember to breathe when his tongue trailed over my bare chest. I reached up and gripped his short hair.
He smiled and then pulled back to strip his shirt off. His chest and abs were lean and cut. It was the kind of body I didn't think I'd ever get to touch. They didn't show the goalie shirtless on TV.
I swung my legs around and pushed back toward the pillow. Pratt gripped my thigh and planted kisses down my stomach, unzipping my jeans in one clean motion.
He leaned back and looked at me. I'd been told I was easy on the eyes, which I'd always taken on faith. Nice to have confirmation from someone who knew what he was looking at.
He leaned forward, wrapped his fingers around my cock, and took me into his mouth. There was no preamble or checking in. Just his mouth, hot and wet, with a grip on my hip that communicated clearly that he had a plan.
I made a noise that had no dignity in it whatsoever.
He didn't rush or let his concentration wander. He found the exact pressure and angle that worked. Something he did with the flat of his tongue sent a sharp signal up my spine all the way to my back teeth. He repeated it—methodically.
It happened fast. He didn't push, but my body had its own schedule. "Pratt—I'm going to—"
He didn't stop, but he made a slight change, a fraction of difference in pressure and suction. It slowed me down—for a moment.
He pulled off, and I learned how to breathe again. I untangled my fingers from his hair and reached lower, but he pushed my hands over my head, anchoring them to the mattress with a goalie's grip.
My eyes opened wide. No one had done that with me in bed before. I started to say something, but I didn't get there. He stretched his body out and took me into his mouth again. It took him seconds to take me there, to the edge, where I both wanted to stay and couldn't bear the tension.
I came with my shoulders arched off the bed as far as his grip would allow. My entire body spasmed as I unloaded.
I lay there for a moment, fighting for a breath. Pratt and I had been through… something.
He moved up beside me. I turned my head and found him watching me. Was that a satisfied smirk? It wasn't a smile exactly, but it was in the same county.
"Okay," I said, when I could form words again. "That was—that was a complete sentence."
"Yes," he said.
I reached for his cock, wrapped my fingers around it, and his breathing changed immediately. He burrowed his face into my neck, his composure beginning to fracture.
I took my time the way he'd taken his, keeping my grip certain and my pace steady, but it didn't take him long. He gripped a shoulder with one hand and my hip with the other.
He came quietly with an undignified, decidedly sexy grunt. His fingers left marks on my hip.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.
Pratt wrecked me. He lay beside me, warm and calm, breathing returning to normal.
"Okay," I said.
He turned his head slightly. "Yes."
"That's it? That's all you've got?"
"What would you prefer?"
I ran through all the things he could have said. None of them sounded like Pratt. I let all of it go.
"Nothing, actually," I said. "That was the right answer."
He moved an inch closer, settling his shoulder against mine.
At some point, my breathing evened out completely. Pratt reached for my hand and wove our fingers together as his breathing slowed further.
An image of Bryan entered my head uninvited. He was twenty-one, standing in the doorway of our dorm room, watching me get ready to go out. Sul, do you ever consider slowing down?
I didn't, but I thought: I'm not moving right now.
I wished he were around to talk about it. Professional athlete, Bry—can you believe it?
Pratt's breathing was slow and even.
I turned my head and looked at him. His eyes were closed and his face relaxed in a way I'd never seen. He was quiet, not assessing.
Somewhere down the hall an elevator arrived and departed. The building settled into itself. Pratt's fingers still curled into mine.
I closed my eyes.
I lay there in my quiet condo, more still than I had been in three years, thinking about Pratt waking up tomorrow in my bed. I would make coffee, and neither of us would need to knock on the other's door.