Uploading some of my old content. Please don't steal any of it like a few other people did. THANKS.
*****
We watch each other, like always.
He moves slower than usual tonight, dragging his feet across the floor. I can hear the soft slide of his feet as he passes from his closet to his bed, his white Hanes socks against the unremarkable apartment carpet, his fuzzy shadow gliding around the room in the ambient lamplight. It had been a private lullaby since we'd moved in, since I'd first watched him fold his maroon sweater and tuck it neatly into the drawer, hang his slacks, turn out the light, turn down his covers, and do all the night things people do. Sometimes he sleeps in his undies and other times in flannel pajamas and once in a hot dog suit.
Sometimes naked.
But he always wears clean socks, and if they're white, he'll throw them away after one use and buy new ones. He hates dingy socks.
"Well..." He's stopped moving and is leaning his hip against the wall by the bathroom, tapping his finger silently on the door frame. He opens his mouth like he's going to talk, to say something else, something to fill the already-full silence between us, but he doesn't. Just stands there with his mouth open, shirtless with plaid pajama pants on. The plaid ones are my favorite.
I can't speak either. So we stand and lay, respectively, in the silence.
I have no right to feel this way, I know. It doesn't make any sense, in this world or any other. I'd never had a gay thought in my life, and that is not an exaggeration. Not even a passing glance at a porn dick, no wistful thoughts in the locker room, nothing. Until Scott.
Room assignments had been random, and our cheap fucking company made us share rooms. I was so pissed. I knew it was going to be a fucking nightmare - I hadn't shared a room since college, and I had never planned to do so again.
And then I met him.
He was standing by the table, and they had written our names on little cards with the room numbers, like we were fucking twelve. His back was to me, and he appeared to be reading his phone. He turned as I approached and smiled, and took my hand. I didn't think much at the time - I didn't think
anything
at the time - but looking back, I felt it then, or at least the beginning of it.
Nothing
happened
, per se.
Not
really
.
Not at first.
Our apartment only had one bedroom, with two full-size beds in it, but the living room was big enough, and it had a nice entertainment system and a great sofa. We watched something the first night we stayed, I don't remember what. What I do remember is the weight of him beside me, the rise and fall of his chest, and other bullshit like that. I must have been staring, because every now and again he'd turned to me and smiled with one corner of his mouth. It was so fucking sweet.
I ran to bed during a commercial.
I tried to avoid him, but we were on the same work team, and we were in the same room, and it was impossible. And I liked him. God help me, I liked him, and nothing would happen anyway, right? I would make sure of it. I'd make sure.
He started making me food.
It was just small stuff at first, toast and juice, when he made some for himself. And then I mentioned how much I loved French toast one day in an offhand comment during a work meeting a few months in. The next day he cooked it in the early morning, before I woke up. He left me this little handwritten note about it, and I would have puked if I wasn't so hungry. I ate it, and of course it was wonderful, and my heart grew three sizes that day, and I knew I was in trouble.
At work, I thought it would be awkward, but it wasn't. He was in advertising and I was in supply chain management, and there was some bullshit about inside sales and advertising to our distributors and the next thing I knew, we were together every day, all day, him chattering about target markets and segmentation and psychographics and optics, and it should have been annoying, it should have driven me up the wall
.
But it didn't, and I couldn't look away when he spoke and I couldn't say no if he asked and I couldn't say goodbye if he said hello, and that was worse. That was so much worse.
If I came in after he'd gotten home, he'd smile at me and scoot over on the couch. Sometimes he even patted it and laughed. After a while, he didn't need to pat anymore.
I couldn't fight him.
It was like he had his own gravity, and whenever he walked into a room I could feel him, even in the dark, and he was warm and solid and alive and he had a physical pull, I swear to God, and I couldn't fight it anymore. I tried and I tried, but I couldn't.
And soon we were falling asleep on the couch together spooning, and tossing food into each other's mouths and playing Modern Warfare 2 and laying in silence, feeling each other breathe and shift position and yawn and stretch. And sometimes feeling other things, things we never spoke about.
