It wasn’t a fight.
Just a thing.
Me trying to seduce your girlfriend’s father. That kind of thing.
Hey, I was half successful.
Not that it’s something to brag about.
Shit…
The nauseating shame and heavy heartache Jav first felt in the affair’s wake had downgraded to embarrassment and functional melancholy. He missed Alex, yet every time he reached for the phone to text or call, he froze, not knowing what to say. Afraid anything he said would only make things worse. He wrestled with conscience and sentiment and ended up doing nothing. Then he glared at the phone for hours, pissed Alex wasn’t calling or texting. Wondering if he was going through the same mental gymnastics. The same bicep curls using the phone as resistance.
Do you miss me?
Jesus, he was lonely.
I knew a ton of women, but I didn’t know anyone.
Ari bounced around the tri-state area, hooking up with friends old and new. He headed up to Guelisten for weekends with Deane, leaving Jav alone and jealous in the city. Realizing what a reclusive life he’d led during the daytime hours, he forced himself out of the apartment from nine to five. He stuck a finger into a map of Manhattan and picked a neighborhood at random. He took his laptop, took Roman if the venue allowed, and hopped the subway. A different office every day. Coffee shops and diners and libraries. He changed his workouts from mornings to evenings so he could hit the gym at a more crowded and somewhat more social time.
Get out there, man. Meet someone.
Roman was an excellent wingman and ice-breaker. Jav met a lot of dog lovers. His laptop, notebook and pen invited overtures from grad students and freelancers.
“Hi,” they said.
“Hi,” Jav said. “How are you?”
“Good, what are you working on?”
“A book. You?”
An article, they answered. A research paper, a dissertation, a novel or short story they’d had in a drawer for years.
He met Oneida this way, when a Yorkville cafe’s outdoor seating area was crowded and Jav shoved things aside so she could sit at his little table. Beneath it, her bulldog began to sniff Roman enthusiastically.
She was pretty. Smart. Getting her master’s in literature at City College. A voracious reader. Cuban-American, and it was a treat to converse in Spanish, her throaty accent like honeyed cognac. He shared some of his folktale research with her. She shared a story her abuela used to tell at bedtime. Their brains connected, and the atoms between their bodies definitely crackled with physical chemistry. They exchanged cards.
A few nights later, they went to a movie. Tonight, they went out to dinner. The chemistry was still crackling and after dinner, they went to her place.
They had sex.
Jav couldn’t understand it. Once in Oneida’s bed, his body and brain disconnected completely. Below the belt, he was in the game. Upstairs, he was a thousand-yard stare.
What am I doing? What do I want?
He made up an early meeting commitment and left her apartment. Down the hall, into the elevator and out on the street to hail a cab, with a nagging feeling he’d forgotten something. His hands patted his person. Wallet, yes. Keys, yes.
Oh.
The envelope.
Which wasn’t there anyway.
“This is harder than I thought,” he said, staring down First Avenue.
“You ain’t kidding, brother,” said a homeless man shuffling by.
Jav lay in bed that night, eyes fixed on the ceiling. He pulled a pillow partly onto his chest, one palm smoothing it as if it were someone’s head. First it was the rough, coiled dreadlocks belonging to Flip Trueblood. A golden dream that slipped through Jav’s fingers, boarded a plane on 9/11 and disappeared forever. Then it was the thick softness of Alex’s hair beneath Jav’s palm. A dream that shouldn’t have been in Jav’s hands in the first place.
He pulled the pillow to his face, remembering a jaw rough with beard growth. He hugged it again to his chest. It became a tattooed arm, first olive-skinned with a silver globe, then black with a dragonfly.
Open your pants for me, rude bwoy, Flip whispered.
Put it against mine, Alex echoed.
Feel this and want it.
I want this.
Your voice gives me a hard-on.
I get a hard-on every time I think about your fingers between mine.
I wanted…but I left before I could get greedy.
I wanted it bad and letting it go is tearing me up inside.
I’m kind of missing you already.
I miss you.
Come here, Javier.
Come on, don’t make this harder…
Clutching his pillow, moaning into the dark behind his eyes, Jav came in his hand with the two men he loved in his head. A thousand times more engaged and aroused than he was mere hours ago, in bed with a woman.
“Maybe this will be easier than I thought,” he said softly, his chest heaving hard, his palm damp with desire.
It’ll be worth more, Alex silently agreed.