Racing Into the Night

I apologise, but there isn't a lot of sex in this chapter. It's mostly for story purposes. I understand if you'd like to skip it over.

Racing Into the Night

Chapter 5 - Racing Into the Night

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It took no more than a couple of seconds to sign all the necessary lines, and before the ink had dried, I slid the stack back to Rachael. She looked at the stack over her coffee mug, like it was a live cobra, and it had its eyes on her. "Thank you," she said perfunctorily.

"No problem," I offered lamely. "That's all you needed from me?"

"For now." Of course. "There'll still be the matter of our assets, alimony...whatever fuck else is out there...." And in that moment, for the first time since she'd sat down she actually looked tired. Her shoulders sagged a little, and she had the air of being drained. I felt a weight settle in my stomach.

"Yeah, we can tackle those as they come up," I said, without thinking.

She smiled a little bit. "It's funny. That's what you said about other hard stuff, back when we were married." Her stare was so faraway; past me, past the distant wall, to somewhere only she could see. I wanted to comfort her, but that was no longer up to me. "Where did it go wrong, Jon?" I looked up. She wasn't looking at me, she was just wringing her hands like she wanted to tear the ring off.

"Me, Rach," I murmured. "I was the one who kept it going."

"But I can't help but think I did something to push you in that direction!" I blinked back my surprise at her self-flagellation. "Things like this don't happen in a vacuum."

I sighed. I couldn't stand to see her blame herself for what I'd done. "Rachael," I said, inching closer to her; "it's truly not you."

"Oh what, I'm only worth the 'it's not you, it's me' line?"

"No! What I'm saying is, just...there are bad people out there. I just never knew I was capable of being that kind of a person until...I was there."

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Things came crashing down in December. Both Mr. Rodriguez and I had the clarity to cool it for a while after his daughter's birthday party in the summer. We barely saw the Rodriguez family as a unit--likely because they got enough of each other at work--but the times we did were tense. Nitya would watch our every move with her silent, piercing stare.

Thus, I didn't see Mr. Rodriguez again until the fall, and by then, I had gone three months without his touch. My sex life with Rachael came back from the dead, but plateaued. It never reached the same heights it used to before Mr. Rodriguez, a fact I became painfully aware of when I realised I no longer wanted to cum inside her, or with her. I was more than happy to bring her to hers, but that was where it stopped.

She wasn't stupid, she definitely noticed the change--but I think she was confused by the fact that she was still getting off. Maybe that made it work for her.

With Mr. Rodrgiuez, however, things were different. We had crescendoed into the fullest parts of our sex life, having discovered the vast majority of kinks the other had. He wanted to be choked, held down and crushed. I obliged. I discovered I loved sucking on his fingers, especially after he'd just fingered me. There was a weekend that Nitya had taken the girls to visit her family in New York. She had barely crossed the border when Mr. Rodriguez texted me. She's gone, he said. Come over.

The first night after our self-imposed drought was the most intense sex I'd had since marrying Rachael. There were no limits anymore, no pride to get in the way of Mr. Rodriguez fucking me. The positions we tried that night left the bedroom in his condo a complete mess. The bedroom he shared with his wife. I felt like an intruder while I held his ankles up and pistoned into his hole. The one that belonged to me.

The comedown from that long night of orgasms left me delirious, sweaty, and introspective. I had never cuddled him before, and yet, here we were. Mr. Rodriguez nestled into me, nuzzling into my side. A confusing boil of emotions bubbled up inside of me at his touch. My body eclipsed his and the two of us looked like a waxing moon, shuddering heavily in the black night sky.

I held him close to me, a numbing buzz choking all sounds out. Rational thoughts. All I knew was us. Him, the vial of poison elixir, and me, the idiot that drank it down completely. Did I hate us? Well...I didn't love us. I didn't love him. But still...I held him close to me as if I wanted to keep him from floating away.

"Mr. Rodriguez," I mumbled into the stagnant air. He didn't say anything; he clenched his hand into a fist against my chest. "Mr. Rodriguez?"

"Aaron," he muttered simply. He shifted, propped himself upright to look me right in the eye. In him I saw softness so insistent that it burned me. "Just call me Aaron."

I smiled at him. "Then...just call me Jonathan." But he didn't return my smile.

His expression continued to linger in the back of my mind until December. It was the 2nd, and it was the anniversary of Rachael starting to work in the office of the mayor. She had just recently come into a raise, and the mayor extended personal praise to her in front of everyone else at the office. Of course she was over the moon. She was buzzing with excitement that entire week.

Naturally, she planned a party. According to her, it had been Nitya's suggestion to do so, and she ran with it. She invited much of the office over to our house. Earlier, I'd brought Bailey to a sleepover with her cousin at my Ate Aleena's, so the whole affair could be an adults-only thing, with drinking and work talk.

To my shock, the Rodriguezes arrived late. The house filled up with strangers I had very little desire to interact with. I kept my eye on the front door, paying a minimal level of attention to the conversations any of Rachael's coworkers tried to engage me in. She, meanwhile, was whirling about our space with a glass of chilled icewine in her hand, excited words pouring out of her as she went. Rachael was unstoppable. I had a feeling that'd work to my advantage.

Aaron and Nitya arrived a half hour later than everyone else, and I couldn't shake the feeling that they'd been arguing on the way here. Her look was dark, stormy, and she was not hiding it well at all, even if she slipped easily into conversation with her coworkers. Aaron hid it better, his smile flashing into the crowd. But what he couldn't hide was the fact that he was looking for me. Once he caught my eye, he began drifting towards me, meandering through the throng of coworkers.

"Heeeyyyy, Jon!" he said, his smile light. "Nice party. Thanks for inviting us."

"Of course," I replied. "Rachael couldn't have done it without her team, right?" His absent nodding told me that he wasn't paying much attention. I recognised this side of him. This was his impatience shining through. The nights he wanted to fuck before talking, he became inattentive. Uninterested in everything else. But here? At another party?

That was when I caught the smell of whisky drifting off of him. He came close to stinking of it, the stench mixing with his usual cologne.

I turned as if to head back to the kitchen for another drink. "You need to keep it cool," I whispered sidelong to him. "People are going to notice." And he shot me back a look that I'd never seen on him before: petulance. He looked like a surly child being chastised. I frowned back at him, wondering where the attitude was coming from. Nonetheless, I handed him a glass of wine I had poured out for the both of us.

Rachael's favourite soft rock playlist filled the living room and filtered out into the cool December night. Despite all expectations, snow had already started to fall this early in the month, and the deep orange sky was dotted with flecks of blue-white. It melted the moment it hit the ground. "Come on," I told Aaron; "let me show you the garden."

He shrugged his acquiescence, and followed me outside to the backyard. Fleeting snowflakes fell to their immediate demise all around us. Wine in hand, and the party music drifting to us in distant waves, the moment seemed to stretch on forever. Aaron stared away from, at the setting sun, not saying a single thing. But from this angle, I could see his mouth twisting as if he wanted to.

Sipping my wine, I led Aaron silently through the course I had worked on over the last seven years of living here. The stepping stones, which had become overgrown; the flowers, some in need of a trim, and some dying back in preparation for winter. Only the cedars with their rusting leaves remained, and their smell matched Aaron's. I should know, at this point. It was my favourite of his scents he wore.

At a certain point, we paused, finding the bench I'd put next to the expansive shed of my gardening equipment. It was shaded by a pergola, and hidden by a wall of cedars, and the quiet it offered in the middle of the suburban evening turned it into an island. Aaron and me, on that island together.

I became quickly aware of the wine warming in my hand, and I drank. Aaron, meanwhile, had already polished his off. When had he done that? And yet, instead of chattering my ear off like I knew drunk Aaron was apt to do, he said and did nothing. He turned the glass over and over in his hand, staring at it with his hard green eyes.

"Aaron...?" I said to him quietly, afraid to shatter the serenity of the moment. "What's wrong?" He turned to me slowly. The sunset lit his face up, and I could see them then. His tears. They welled up in the corners of his sleepy eyes, sparkling with the colours of the evening. "Aaron...!" I went to wipe one of his eyes clear. He sank into the touch, shuddering.

When he sighed, the wave of whisky stench rolled off of his tongue. "I'm sorry, Jon, I didn't mean to...." He scrubbed his other eye clear of tears. "I look stupid."

"No, you don't...tell me what's wrong." I knew everyone experienced sadness, but I'd just never seen it before from him. He put a hand on mine, sighing and pressing a kiss into my palm. My stomach lurched at the sensation.

"Jon," he mumbled; "I need you to tell me I'm not a bad man. That I'm not doing everything wrong." He continued kissing my palm, slowly, his tattered breaths rising out of his chest. This explained the drinking, at least. "Nitya, she...fuck."

My blood chilled, and I became keenly aware of how cold it was out here. "What about her?" But he just shook his head, pressing his eyes shut against all sensation. "What about her?" Again, he didn't say anything, just leaned further into me like I was stopping him from breaking.

"Do you know we've never really kissed," he muttered. "I'd always stop you. For some reason, I never wanted you to."

"Like how I used to never let you fuck me."

"Jon, that's so much more than kissing. Even after I fucked you, I was still...what?" His eyes were pained, hard. "Scared?" His shoulders heaved; I watched snow land on his cheek and immediately dissipate into nothing on his hot, sun-painted skin. "Jon...I want to kiss you. Can I? Will you let me?"

I screwed my face up in confusion. "Now? Here? We're still at a party." And I couldn't stop thinking of how he'd cut himself off on the topic of his wife earlier. He took my hand in his, and I felt his pulse racing through his calloused fingers.

"The shed," he insisted, his throat dry. "Jon, please, I...I want to make it up to you."

I pursed my lips tightly together. "Maybe not the shed." I thought of the birthday party in the summer, and how our extended absence from the party raised Nitya's alarm bells. "You want to kiss so bad?"

"Yes," came his hoarse voice.

"Then we'll go back inside. Mingle for a little bit, separately. Go back to our wives." My chest tightened as the impromptu strategy spun out of me like a spool of thread--but I refused to be compromised again. "After twenty minutes, I'll tell Rachael I need to shower and lie down." He nodded. "A little after that, you'll ask her where the bathroom is. She'll direct you to either the first level, or the upstairs one. You'll know where to go. Okay?"

He held my stare, and I couldn't tell if he was internalising my plan, or tossing and turning it over like it sounded stupid. But, eventually he nodded, and wordlessly, he stood. I followed him back inside, fully expecting my plan to crack like an egg into absolute shit. And in Aaron's state, I wasn't sure if he'd go with it, or if he even grasped it to begin with.

We drifted back into the party, trying to stitch ourselves back in seamlessly. I found Rachael, sweeped her up easily into a side hug, and kissed her cheek. She giggled girlishly, and swatted my chest. She was still pink with that wine glow in her cheeks. Perfect. This would go well.

...which is a thought I came to rue when, not even fifteen minutes later, my plan had already buckled at the knees. In an effort to keep Rachael pliable, I would suggest she refill her glass. Which she did at least three times. All the while, Aaron always lingered somewhere not too far away, and not anywhere near his wife, with a plaintive pinch to his eyes. And before the twenty minutes was up, Rachael started to loudly complain of needing to go to the bathroom. God damn it all.

Pitifully excusing myself, I took Rachael by the arm and began leading her upstairs. Some guests muttered amongst themselves, eyes trained on us. "We'll just be a minute, everyone," I said in my best mediator voice. Soon, I had led Rachael upstairs to our bedroom. She collapsed on the bed, groaning.

"Jooonaaathann," she grumbled. "I drank too much..."

"It's okay, love. You were excited. You had one glass too many. It's alright." Hopefully she wouldn't remember that it was me who suggested she kept drinking.

"Can you get me an aspirin?"

"That's a bad idea when you've been drinking, Rach...." But her irritated groan told me she would brook no further discussion. I relented, and when I came back with an aspirin and glass of water from the bathroom, she readily took it down, and sank back into the bed.

"Just leave me with the lights off for a few minutes," she said. "I'll be fine."

"Okay. If you need anything...." I shut the lights off. When I returned to the party, I tried to assure Rachael's guests that she would be fine, and just needed some time in the bathroom. Some, not knowing what to do, just held my stare. "Keep helping yourself to food and refreshments," I offered, spreading my hands. "It's a party, after all." A couple forced laughs drifted out of the throng of guests.

I found myself in the garage, having excused myself to look for more beer. When I got there, my parked car greeting me with silence, I started pacing. Fuck. The plan had gone to such shit. And what was it even for anyway? To sneak away to kiss Aaron? And risk letting it slip further into an ill-thought out tryst at a party? Fuck.

When the door to the garage opened, I wasn't at all surprised to find that it was Aaron. He shut the door tenderly, as if he was afraid to shatter the silence in here. Just beyond us, the sounds of canned music and canned conversation drifted in mutely. Aaron closed the distance and threw his arms around me. Annoyed as I was, my sour mood melted away a bit at his touch. He just had that effect on me.

"Well, I've gone and fucked it," I grumbled to him, leaning against the car as he half-lay on me. "Rachael's one drink away from vomiting. Everyone's wondering what the fuck's going on out there. Shit." The erosion of the peace in this night was wearing on me, now.

"You could send everyone home," Aaron suggested. "Rachael might complain, but when she's sober again, she'll agree it was a good idea." I was lying backwards on the hood of my car, and Aaron pressed into me, staring up past my chest at me. It was an awkward angle, but I was soon growing used to it. His crotch was level with mine, and I could feel his heat growing. Inopportune. But that was just Aaron.

"Then what?" I muttered, stroking his back. From this angle, I stared up at the dim garage light, lost in the patterns burning themselves into my eyes. "We finally kiss, like you wanted?"

Aaron put an ear to my chest. My heartbeat picked up, and my breath caught. A distant, ugly thought came from the back of mind, that this was where we should have been all along. But I shoved it away--it was too real. Too much. "Like I wanted," he mumbled, his voice coming from the folds of my shirt.

"You'd have to go back home with your wife."

"And you'd come by to pick me up when she was sleeping. You've done it before."

"Yeah. That's true."

Aaron pushed up off of me, and I craned my head to look at him. His entire face looked punched in; his hazy voice had been betraying his heartbroken look this whole time. "Jonathan..." he said, his voice wavering. "I...I see just how good of a husband you are to Rachael and it just fucking kills me inside. How good you are to her." I pushed myself off of the car, a quizzical look crossing my face.

"Aaron?" I mutter. Again, I cradle his chin with my hand. I put my other hand on his side.

"You try so hard to be there for the people that love you," he continued, the corners of his mouth twitching, torn between a smile and a frown. "You're a dependable man, Jon. And I really like that about you. Unlike--fuck. Unlike me." He inhaled, his breath ragged. "I'm such a fuck-up, Jon."

"Aaron...." My hands twitched uselessly where they rested on his body. I wasn't sure what to say to him. Do I hold him and deny his words? Or do I hold him to them?

"How much more do I have to drink to be able to speak to you honestly, like a man?" He had his face pressed into my palm, holding my wrist with both hands. "I can't be as direct as I want. I'll sound insane." And he even shuddered then. I stared hard at him, my tongue thick in my mouth.

"Just...tell me," I ventured, even though I was terribly afraid of what he'd say.

"I'm scared."

Aaron Rodriguez, who once advanced on me like a panther that stalked in the night, scared. The concept seemed immensely too alien to me. But with the way he peeked over my own fingers at me, his face cracked in a mask of sadness, I felt crushed. Dumbly, I just nodded at him. "It's alright," I whispered.

"I'm unhappy with Nitya," he finally admitted, his voice breaking. I felt the hot pinpricks of tears stain my palm. Hearing him say it aloud made a dark feeling bubble up from my stomach. "I have been for years. And--and...fuck. I...I'm so...I don't know." He even sniffed. "How can I say this, Jon? It's so idiotic, it's so teenage. But--when you hold me...like this...I start fantasising, not even about sex. About being yours."

My breath caught in my chest. "Aaron, you--don't--"

"Don't what? Don't really feel that way? Well, I do. It's fucking stupid, because you're married, and I'm married. But, Jonathan Aguinaldo--I'm fucking pathetic, alright? I hate my life, and I wish you were my boyfriend, my husband."

There it was. It was in the air now, and I couldn't will it to go away. He'd said what I wish he'd never said, expressed the feeling I'd spent the last year denying was in him. Goddammit. Goddammit, Aaron Rodriguez. I pulled my hand away from his face, and he looked deflated. His eyes were watery with sincerity I'd never seen in him before. It scared me how he laid his emotions bare in front of me.

"Jonathan," he pleaded, his breath coming out in tatters; "please. Fulfil your end of the plan. Kiss me."

"Aaron, you can't just say what you said and expect me to be at peace with it."

"So don't think about it. Just kiss me. Please. I need to know what it's like."

Fuck me. Fuck me. My eye twitched; I couldn't look right at him. Not while he radiated so much raw honesty. We were not a waning moon; he was the sun, and I was the boy in the Greek fable with wax wings that flew too close to him.