Jav had prayed more in the last month than in the entirety of his life. Prayers that started out with the best of grateful intentions, but quickly caved into neuroses.
Thank you, he’d think, present and mindful. This is going well and I’m grateful. It feels good. It feels easy.
It feels too easy.
It can’t be this easy.
This can’t possibly last. This is too good to last.
I’m just caviar.
He’s going to get his fill of this treat and then meet a three-balanced-meal kind of woman and it’ll be over.
I guess I’ll be all right with that.
No, I won’t, actually. I don’t want this to end.
God, don’t let this end.
“I can hear you thinking, you know,” Stef said. From the other end of the couch or across the room or on the other side of the bed, he looked at Jav. Looked up from his sketching or his laptop or his book. From any direction, any angle, Stef rested on Jav’s eyes the way a classic rock song always sounded good to your ears, even for the eight millionth time. You knew the words, you sang without thought, you air guitared or drummed on some available surface. Because you couldn’t not. Your ears heard and your soul obeyed.
Jav looked at Stef and goddammit, his soul started singing. Making up verses about Stef at work and at play. Resting or running. Eating, sleeping, shaving, showering. Anxious, brooding, worked-up, let down, excited, frustrated. Coming and going. And best of all, the bridge before the key change into the chorus—looking right back at Jav.
“Crying out loud, Landes, what?” he said.
“What?”
Stef’s smile broke apart laughing. “Stop looking at me.”
“No puedo dejar de verte,” Jav said, tackling him. Because he was a fucking hot mess and couldn’t keep his hands off the guy.
After their first weekend together, Stef threw out the stuff under his bathroom sink and declared no one was topping or bottoming in the foreseeable future. “Let’s just take it off the table,” he said. “It’s not a dealbreaker.”
Nervous, self-proclaimed idiocy soothed, Jav fell easily into bed and even more easily into himself.
So this is what it’s like.
This is what I’m like.
This was him, consumed and wrecked. Hearing the click of an apartment door closing in the mornings and thinking, When will I see you again? This was his work day filled with distraction, his attention span wandering off above the keyboard. Torrid moments tapping his shoulder and intense memories sitting in his lap, wanting to be pored over.
This was him learning, day by day and night by night, who he was and what he wanted. Hearing the words creep from his mouth. Clumsy and uncertain at first, then bold and brave. Inhibitions gradually giving way until this was him saying and doing the craziest things in bed, scarcely recognizing his own passion.
“God, I’ve never had anyone lean on me the way you do,” Stef said.
“I didn’t even know leaning was a thing,” Jav said.
As the days grew shorter and the nights longer, Stef curated all of Jav’s sexual discoveries, loaded them on a great ship and sailed it into open waters. But it wasn’t only sex in the vessel’s hold. Trunks and chests began to fill up with simpler moments as Jav realized he couldn’t have asked for a more custom-made buddy.
The way Stef grabbed, pummeled and roughhoused with him woke up dormant, childhood memories of horseplay with Ernesto. Only this time, no adult yelled at them to settle down, knock it off or take it outside. Roman was a hopeless chaperone. He pawed at them, wanting to be included. Or he gazed unblinking as the two men wrestled and laughed until they wheezed.
Some quiet evenings, Jav lay on the couch with Stef’s head on his chest and Roman sprawled on his legs, and happiness would fall on him like a thick blanket. When Stef locked arms around Jav’s waist at the stove and leaned on him, Jav had to stop cooking and taste the moment. Close his eyes and hold it tight, unable to remember the last time he felt this content. This complete.
It’s so easy with him.
It’s too easy…
He spent long moments tallying up Finch knowledge like gold coins. Stef loved The Police, U2 and R.E.M. He’d read Frank Herbert’s Dune series three times. His sneezes always came in threes and fours. He got weird but tremendous satisfaction from sweeping a floor. His expression turned distant and sad when he talked about his childhood cat, Ping. Mallomars were his favorite cookie. He kept a stash in the kitchen cabinet and his eyes narrowed when Jav took one. He often laughed in his sleep. He loved to be touched anywhere and everywhere, except the backs of his knees—he’d jump clear out of his skin.
Jav knew things like this now.
He recognized the wistful moodiness whenever Stef got off the phone with his father. He understood why Stef knocked shave-and-a-haircut on Rory’s door as he left for work in the mornings. He learned the difference between Stef’s creative silence and his exhausted silence. He could judge how bad a work day was by how much Stef put away at dinner. He knew Stef was horny when he took off his rings and his wristwatch and put them in a little pile. He knew the change in Stef’s breathing that meant he was falling asleep, and the sounds he made right before he came his brains out.
Their lives meshed effortlessly. Stef fit him like a second skin.
This is too easy. This can’t possibly last. It’s not supposed to be this perfect with the first guy I find. I didn’t even find him. We just met. It was an accident. This can’t be The One.
Or can it?
Desperate for a third-party opinion, he called the one person who probably had zero interest in offering him relationship advice. He sighed as he dialed. Only the idiotic Javier Landes would phone up an almost-ex-friend-slash-lover for counsel. With his wife’s counsel as a Plan B.
“¿Qué onda, fucky?” Alex said. “It’s been forever.”
“I know.”
“Are we friends again?”
“I need to ask you something,” Jav said, deciding to act as if they were friends and barrel straight in. “When you and Val started dating, was it easy?”
A confused pause. “Easy?”
“Yeah.” He could explain further but opted to hold still a moment.
“Dude, it was easier than breathing,” Alex said. “I can’t even say it was dating. Literally overnight, we went from being friends to being together. Are you asking me if we fought?”
“Well everyone fights,” Jav said. “I’m asking if it ever felt too easy. Like you were waiting for the other shoe to drop?”
“No,” Alex said, with a speed and assurance Jav envied. “And if you met someone, and it feels easy and you’re waiting for the axe or the shoe or the whatever to drop, it’s because you think you don’t deserve easy. What did I tell you about that?”
“Yeah, I know,” Jav said, exhaling.
“Say it.”
“I’m worth more and I deserve it.”
“Damn right you do.” A few beats of silence passed. “Did you meet someone?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” Alex said. “That’s great, I’m glad.”
“Me, too. It’s new. And it’s…”
“Easy.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, maybe I’ll meet them someday.”
Jav smiled at the safe, gender-neutral pronoun. “Maybe you will,” he said. “If I don’t fuck this up.”
“Oh my God,” Alex said. “You’re still the same idiot.”
“The only one allowed in the room,” Jav said, laughing.