Chapter Five - Paul #2
“You need to get back?”
I shake my head, although I don’t really know if that’s the truth. I didn’t tell Aunt Amy I was going anywhere. Or that I wouldn’t be back for dinner. I stare down at my plate and feel a pinprick of guilt.
He lights up a cigarette, and I see the waitress has moved onto another guy down the counter in a suit. He’s as handsome as Asher, only he’s a square and a half. I wink at the waitress as she passes by me again, but she doesn’t see it.
Asher takes a puff, exhales. “You want to go for a ride or something?”
I look over at the square. “Ride to where?”
“Does it matter?”
I turn to Asher. There’s a grin forming on his lips.
I feel myself grinning back. “I guess not.”
I hold onto his hips lightly as we ride down a side street, unsure of how close I’m allowed to be now.
He doesn’t seem to mind it. That waitress could be right up against him, her breasts pressed to his back, and no one would think twice.
It would look as classic as a silent film, natural as a long stretch from sitting all day, and she was pretty.
Her hands were small, and she was light on her feet.
Asher could take her dancing, dip her at the end of the song, and people would clap.
She could kiss him, and it wouldn’t matter if anyone saw.
I want to hate her. I want us to be friends.
Asher slows and parks by an abandoned building. It looks like it used to be a store. It’s small and squat with red shingles. There’s a rusty Coca-Cola sign on the front and torn drapes in the two front windows that makes it look like it has droopy eyes. One window has a hole in it.
Asher approaches it like he’s going to shake its hand, flicking a cigarette onto the concrete. He turns to me. “You want to see inside?”
I hesitate. “Are we allowed to?”
“Probably not.”
I follow along then as he pushes open the door.
It tilts a little, scraping the floor. There isn’t much to see.
A pile of bricks in one corner. Collapsed shelves with cobwebs and dirt.
A faded sign with a finger pointing, the print illegible.
Bottle caps scattered here and there, a wooden carving of a squirrel with a nail stuck through one eye, and a busted countertop with the register still there, the bottom drawer open like a lopsided jaw.
But Asher smiles at it all, looking at everything as if it’s all brand new. He reaches down and picks up one of the bottle caps, tossing it in one hand as he looks at me. “What do you think?”
I nudge a foot against a broken shelf. “About what?”
“I just think places like this are kind of neat.” He smiles at me. “ Neato. ”
I smile back.
“It’s like,” he braces his arms against a door frame, “people used to come in here, you know? Maybe every day. Maybe for years. And they’d get their shit and go over here.
” He goes behind the register, mimes taking some cash.
“Pay for it. Walk out that door and be on their way. Like the most mundane thing in the world, something everybody does, so ordinary and routine. And then one day, somebody shut the place up, and none of those people came back.” He pauses.
“I’d ride past here and I’d think: why don’t they just tear it down?
It’s just sitting here, doing nothing, taking up space.
Forgotten.” He pauses again and looks out of the window.
“And then I stopped one day, looked around, came inside. It made me start to wonder things, you know?”
I lean against the wall as I listen to him, the stale air making sweat bead under my shirt. “What kinds of things?”
He walks from around the counter, his gaze still fixed out of the window.
“Just stuff. Where all those people went. If they’re still around.
” He crosses his arms. “How something can just be left behind and forgotten. Something that was alive in some way. To a few people. At least for a little while.”
I look around the place and try to picture it. Kids coming by for candy. Ladies coming by for cold cream. Shiny new toys in the window. Glossy ads on the walls. The shopkeeper in his white apron behind the counter, sweeping up after closing with a wooden broom.
It’s sad, in a way. I look over at him again, lost in thought. I go stand beside him by the window to see if I can see what he does, but I don’t see anything except an empty lot, overgrown and underused.
I don’t want to make any sudden moves, though. It isn’t just that he’s smooth and cool, I see. I don’t know if I’ll ever measure up. I don’t know why he’d spend his time with a fool like me. But this side of him is a surprise. I feel like I’m spying, only this time in plain view.
And he’s inviting me to watch.
He turns his head just then, a look on his face as if he’s just remembered I’m here.
One corner of his lips lifts. “Real silly, huh?”
“I don’t think it’s silly.”
“No?”
“No.”
He turns to face me, and I turn to face him. I look down at our feet almost touching. The toes of his boots are scuffed like old. Mine are shiny like new.
I want to kiss him again, but I don’t know if that’s something I can do outside of his home.
“Hey,” he says softly.
I look up.
I don’t know how to read his face right this minute.
He seems on the verge of making a joke or telling me a secret.
I reach for his hand and he takes it. I like how rough it is.
The hands of someone who does things, repairs, and fixes.
I know how mine must feel. The hands of someone that does nothing and would fumble if they had to patch anything up.
I don’t know if I’ll ever measure up.
“I wouldn’t forget,” I say.
When my eyes meet his, they’re like blue flames. He pulls me up against him and his breath is warm. “No?”
“No.”
I want to ask him if I can spend the night.
Problem is, I don’t want to stop kissing him to ask.
I don’t know how long it’s been now. Hours, maybe?
His sitting room seems darker beyond my eyelids, his naked chest warm and hard with his soft downy hair brushing against me.
Our legs and feet get tangled as we push away our pants and then our underpants.
I hear them fall to the floor, as we press down into his sofa under a kiss that is strung together in one long thread that passes from me to him, and him to me, and circles us both.
A thread that tugs and pulls, wound up tight, until my breastbone is flush against his, and I swear I can feel the thudding of his heart.
And is it trying to get through? Is it trying to meet my own? Halfway?
A thread that’s tight rope walking, in and out of a needle, and he could string me along on it, lead me astray, and I’d follow him anywhere. As long as he met me. Halfway.
I know what I want. I don’t know if I’m supposed to ask, the polite thing to do, or if he’ll just let me.
I slide a hand down between us and feel the wet tip of his cock.
I was right, of course, he’s huge, bigger than me, and I have this strange sense of desire mixed with envy.
As soon as my fingers are on him, he lets out this sigh, and I break our kiss so I can see his face.
He’s got his eyes squeezed shut and it’s because of me.
He’s hard as a rock and it’s because of me.
I take pride in it. I could be some gloating fool, except I’m melting underneath him.
The heat of the evening and the heat of our bodies makes me sweat.
There’s a thin sheen of it between us, making my skin stick to his skin, and can’t it just be this way?
Who needs to eat? Who needs to sleep? When you’ve got him and he’s got me, and we’re not going anywhere.
We jerk each other for a time. My free arm is around him, my fingers clinging to the muscles on his back, and they move in tandem with his arm connected to the hand that’s touching me, stroking me until I’m about to go blind.
Then he sort of takes over, takes both of us in his one hand, and that’s something that evokes a sound from me I don’t even recognize.
I clamp my hand over my mouth. I want to look at him, right in his sky-blue eyes, to see what I’ll find there, but I’m going to come.
I’m such an amateur; such a gloating fool.
My cock twitches in his hand, and I see nothing but white.
I catch my voice in my throat, afraid of the sound I’ll make, afraid of what it will reveal about me.
Then I feel his lips on mine, kissing me hard, and my come spilling between us.
A handful of seconds pass before he grunts and I feel him coming, too, warm and sticky all over my sweating skin.
I swear, all life on earth has died out, gone to Mars on a flying saucer, except for me and him.
I swear, it’s all gone. We’ll walk out into deserted streets, if we can ever bring ourselves to leave this place at all, and find we’ve been gifted this world to have all to ourselves. I swear, it’s got to be true.
He rests his head against mine as our panting breaths slow.
When I open my eyes, I see he’s looking at me, watching my face.
Heat blooms over my cheeks. I feel like a ghost, transparent, and moving through his walls.
I dart my eyes away from his, focus on his earlobe, but he gently touches my chin, pulling my gaze back to him.
There’s a secret there. Something tender and fragile.
I put a finger to his lips as if I’m shushing him, when he’s saying nothing at all, not with his mouth at least. And then I close my eyes and listen to his breaths slow in my ear, feel his sweat cool on my skin, and somewhere far off there’s the sound of a train whistle.
Low and lonely and distant, and I feel a tear at the corner of my eye.
I mourn for its loneliness for I am not. I wish all things could be like me in this moment: safe, and covered, and found.
I slide the patio door closed, carefully and quietly.