three
Colt Darling
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Duke mutters under his breath, searching his pockets.
“What’s going on?” I ask, twisting back to look at the darkened city. “Did you do that?”
“Yes,” Duke snaps. “I caused a major blackout all over Manhattan.”
“Damn,” I say. “You could have just asked me up to your place.”
“That was sarcasm.”
“I was just asking,” I say, hunching against the wind as I reach into my pocket for my cigarettes again. “Men have done more to get in someone’s pants.”
Duke fixes me with a look, though it’s hard to read his expression in the complete darkness. “I’m not trying to get in your pants.”
“Okay,” I say. “But I wouldn’t blame you if you were. My dick’s pretty rad, in case you’ve forgotten.”
He pulls out his phone and taps on the screen, texting someone. It pisses me off that he has someone to check on and I don’t. “I didn’t forget,” he mutters, not looking up from the screen.
I can’t be sure he’s even talking to me, and not his phone, but I choose to believe he is.
I tuck a cigarette into the corner of my mouth and search my pocket for matches, squinting against the slight wind.
It’s cold as hell up here, and with all the lights out, it feels like we’re stranded on some alien planet, far above the earth.
Below, tiny golden threads crisscross the city, the headlights on every road. Everything else is pitch black.
“I’m guessing the door is locked,” I say. “Or unlocked? How does that work in a power outage?”
“It’s unlocked,” Duke says. “But trust me, you do not want to go down into the city right now.”
“Ah, so we’re stuck up here,” I say. “Sounds like you planned it after all.”
“I didn’t plan a fucking blackout, okay?” Duke says, his voice catching a little.
I strike a match, and in the warm glow, I just catch his panicked expression before the wind snuffs the flame.
“Oh, shit,” I say. “You’re still scared of the dark, aren’t you?”
“It’s never really dark in New York,” he mutters, like he’s talking to himself, reassuring himself.
“Come ‘ere,” I say, scooting toward him.
He draws back, stiffening. “I’m fine.”
“Would you just come over here so I can get my damn cigarette lit?”
“Oh.” He relaxes, scooting over to me.
“Back to the railing,” I order, and he obeys. I move over, so we’re shoulder to shoulder, and he shelters my hand while I strike another match.
“Leave it,” he says.
For a few seconds, we watch the flame dance along the paper stem.
I check him from the corner of my eye, see how he’s staring at it like he’s willing it to stay.
When it burns out, I light another, and I feel him start to relax against me, so I pretend my cigarette isn’t all the way lit, and I strike one more.
The bitter scent of smoke and sulfur encircles us.
Duke’s eyes are softer now, almost faraway, when I glimpse them before the flame flickers out.
“Do you need me to keep going?” I ask. “I’ve got a few more.”
“Save them,” he says, but I light one more anyway, and he melts into me, his shoulder fully resting on mine.
“You already saw the roof when the lights were on,” I say. “There’s no one up here. Just us.”
“Uh huh.”
“In case you forgot, I’m scared of heights,” I tell him.
He drops his head forward. “Fuck.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him, reaching for his hand. My fingers close around his wrist, and I squeeze. “You’re okay.”
Under my fingertips, I can feel his pulse racing, though.
“Damn,” I say. “You’re not okay, are you?”
He doesn’t say anything.
I hand him my cigarette. “Here.”
While he smokes, I pull out the matchbook again. One by one, I light them, letting them burn until they consume the paper stem or flicker out. Duke leans onto me heavier, and when I’m on the last match and I peer over at him, he’s smiling a little, his eyes glazed and dreamy.
When I’m done, I drop the empty pack with the burnt out matches.
“Better?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks. But now you’re out of matches.”
“I’ll live,” I say. “Come on. Lay down.”
He draws back, his spine stiffening. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“For Christ sake, I’m trying to help you, not fuck you. I forgot how stubborn you are. Can you stop arguing and just do what I tell you for once?”
“Don’t I always?” he asks, but he shuffles around on the blanket with me.
I look out over the city again. It looks cool as fuck, despite the drop in my gut when I look too close to our building, and realize how far up we are, probably fifty stories.
It’s not the death at the bottom that scares me the most. It’s the fall to get there.
How long I’d be in the air, a being of nothing but pure terror.
Head spinning, I lay back on the blanket next to him, resting on my elbows and looking up at the night sky. “It’s not so dark up there,” I say. “And we could be flat on the ground, not on top of a tower a thousand feet up.”
He chuckles. “It’s not a thousand feet.”
“Might as well be.”
He lays down fully, folding his hands over his middle. “I think there’s more stars. I forget how many you can see when it’s really dark.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Exactly. You can’t even tell what’s going on in the city. We could be in Arkansas right now.”
“Nah,” he says. “Not going back there. But maybe a beach somewhere. Hawaii.”
“Too cold for Hawaii. But maybe a mountain. Colorado.”
“Do you always have to be right?”
“Of course,” I say. “Don’t you?”
He chuckles. “What now, Mr. Right?”
“Hm, Mr. Right,” I say, trying it out. “I’ve never been called that before.”
“Glad I could be your first.”
“You actually were my first,” I say. “I don’t think I ever forgave you for that.”
“Bullshit,” he says, rolling his head toward me. “You were a fuckboy when we moved to Faulkner.”
“You were my first experience with a guy,” I admit.
“Shit,” he mutters under his breath. “Damn, Colt. I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”
I lower myself all the way, so we’re shoulder to shoulder. “Yeah.”
“If it makes you feel any better, that was my first experience with a guy too.”
“It doesn’t,” I say. “See a good wishing star?”
“Is that a falling star?”
“I always heard it was the brightest star in the sky.”
“What’d you wish for?”
“You can’t tell someone that, or it doesn’t come true.”
For a minute, we search the sky. I think he’s right. I can see more than when we came up here already. I find one twinkling brightly in the stark black sky, and I make my wish.
“Did you find one?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Did you wish?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
I try not to think about the height of the building, the edge just a few feet past where we lay.
Just the idea makes my stomach drop out.
I think back to the market, how strange it was to run into him of all the people in the city.
How awkward it felt, and how easy it is to be with him now.
I can feel the time that’s passed, each year a maturing, a shedding of old hurts, a softening toward ourselves and each other.
There’s no animosity anymore, just the facts of a shared history.
“So, you going to tell me who the hat is for?” I ask after a while.
“You’ve been dying to ask that all night, haven’t you?”
“A little,” I admit, smiling at the sky. “A girlfriend, I take it?”
He laughs quietly. “No, definitely not a girlfriend. I haven’t had one of those… Well, ever, actually.”
“My sister was your girlfriend.”
He winces beside me. “Yeah. I guess that’s the last girl I was with.”
“A boyfriend, then?” I ask, careful to keep my voice entirely casual and without expectation.
“No one special,” he says. “But I’m out, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Sure,” he says, clearly seeing right through the lie.
“So you don’t date women at all anymore?”
“Why would I? I told you, I’m out.”
“Bisexuality exists.”
“Not for me. I’m gay as fuck.”
I can’t help but laugh. “How does your family feel about that?”
“A lot better than I expected, actually,” he says.
“Mom can’t talk about me without mentioning her Gay Son Duke.
I’m not sure if she thinks that will be somehow shocking to people, or if she just wants them to know how progressive and accepting she is.
King didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised, like he already knew.
Royal didn’t make a big deal of it either. ”
“And Baron?”
“Baron’s my twin,” he says simply. “Nothing could make him love me any less.”
“Did you think it would?”
“I was afraid it would,” he admits. “My dad always said the family would disown me if they found out. I should have known better. Baron doesn’t attach morality to anything.
He knew some people would have a problem with it, so he was worried it would make things harder for me.
That’s it. It didn’t change anything about the way he saw me. ”
“I’m glad,” I say, and this time, I’m not lying. “I’m happy for you.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”
For a long minute, we just look up at the stars. The only sound is the wind, and far below, a few distant traffic noises.
“The lights might be on again,” I say.
“Maybe,” he says, but he doesn’t sit up to look.
That gives me some encouragement, that he’s not running the way I thought he might.
He didn’t seem to want to be up here with me, despite bringing me here.
I reach for his hand again, and this time I find it.
I curl my fingers around his. I give him time to pull away, and when he doesn’t, I lace my cold fingers between his and squeeze.
For a second, he doesn’t move. Then, he squeezes back.
“I used to go up to the quarry to look at the stars with Lo,” I say, staring resolutely up because I can’t turn my head and look at him right now when our palms are pressed together so intimately. “They’re better in Arkansas.”
“Nothing is better in Arkansas,” he says. “Especially for a gay man.”
“Yeah, that part’s true,” I admit. “You must have all kinds of clubs and stuff here. And you can probably be so open you don’t even have to wonder if someone is interested.”
“It’s pretty great,” he says, apparently not noticing the edge of bitterness that crept into my voice. “So, what did you wish for?”
“I told you, you can’t ask that.”
“Then back at the quarry,” he says. “What did you wish for then? Did it come true or not?”
“I always wished for the same thing. To find what was right for me.”
“Did you?”
“I thought so, at the time.”
“You don’t think so anymore?”
I can’t help but chuckle. “Between her and Dixie… Yeah, I chose the right one.”
“Were those the only choices?”
“At the time… Yeah. I think they were.”
“You’re probably right.” His thumb ghosts over my wrist, like he wants to feel my pulse but doesn’t quite dare to press hard enough.
I swallow hard. “You weren’t ready.”
“No,” he says. “And even if I had been, I would have fucked it up the way I fucked up everything back then. I was a mess.”
“And now?”
“Now… I’m less of a mess.” He laughs under his breath, like it’s just for him, and I find myself dying to know what he’s thinking, what makes him laugh, what made him take me up here, what’s making him stay.
He rolls toward me, pulling his hand away to fold his arm under his head.
“Where is she now?” he asks. “You still together?”
“Nah,” I say. “She’s at Yale now. Last I heard, she’s engaged to some blueblood who has all his shit together. I was never ambitious enough for her.”
“Is that what she said?”
“No,” I admit. “But it’s the truth. I like to go with the flow, never planning too far, because you never know what curveball life will throw your way. That’s what she wanted too, for a little while. Not for the long term. We broke up… It’s been a few years now.”
He’s so close I can hear him swallow. “That’s when you relapsed.”
“Breakups are hard.” I glance at him and then away. He’s too close, and not nearly close enough. “Especially when you have a lot of regrets.”
“What kind of regrets?” he asks, his voice wary.
The laugh that escapes me is low and bitter. “Every kind. What mistakes I made. What might have been.”
“And what’s that?”
“Do you really have to ask?”
I roll to face him too, searching his eyes in the dark, looking for an answer to that.
It doesn’t come in the form of words. Instead, he moves his leg to press against mine.
I push up on my elbow and lean in, until we’re only a breath apart. I can feel the ghost of his lips whispering to mine, the memory like a tattoo on my soul. But I don’t want to kiss the way we used to.
His fingers curl into the front of my jacket, and he pulls me in, closing the space between us.
I suck in a breath, tensing for a second when our mouths meet, before every part of me melts into him.
His lips are just as soft as I remember, but they’re sure now instead of fearful.
I let my weight sink into him, my fingers wrapping gently around his throat as I angle my head to get closer.
I flick out my tongue, touching that maddening, plump lower lip, tasting it.
His breath comes out half moan, and a shudder of pure heat races over me.
I slide my thigh between his, rocking my hips forward against him, and he makes that sound again, one of wordless, helpless pleasure.
It awakens some dark, feral part of me, hearing this huge, cocky man whimper for me.
He hooks his leg around mine, pulling me closer, and pushes a hand up under my jacket.
With a growl, I bite down on his lower lip, and he arches against me, grinding his hardness against mine.
Just as his cold hand works its way under my shirt, landing on my bare skin, the buzz and hum of the city resumes, and a faint glow rises from below.
“Fuck,” Duke groans, pushing me back.
He sits up and props his arms on his knees, his breathing ragged.
I fight off the disappointment for a minute while I get my raging hard-on under control. We’re alone up here. No one can see us. We could have kept going.
But he didn’t want to.
“You okay?” I ask after a minute.
He stands and grabs the edge of the blanket, pulling it up so fast he almost dumps me on my ass before I can scramble to my feet.
“Yeah,” he says, his concentration solely on folding. “Yeah, all good. We should get going.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say, unable to keep the disappointment from my voice. “Of course. Lights are back on. No reason to say.”