We started doing more “buddy shit.” We’d go to the sports bar to root for the Mariners, started going to Sounders games (soccer is huge in Seattle), and of course doing lots of crazy outdoor shit.

Andrew had a knack for finding things that looked hard and scary that he’d never done before, and then signing us both up to do it. He decided one day that rock climbing would be cool, and the next thing you know we were at the massive Pinnacle wall at REI headquarters, getting strapped in and going for it.

Since that Hike of Death, I’d definitely improved my fitness. I’d let myself get a little pooch, but after that hike, I was all about a clean diet, high-intensity cardio, and serious weight lifting.

Part of it was male pride, not wanting to be watching Andrew’s ass for the wrong reason – because he was always sailing effortlessly ahead of me on a trail, for instance. And part of it was knowing that if I wanted to spend this time with Andrew, I had to keep up. There was no excuse after Mailbox Peak for me not to start making changes.

EMS doesn’t pay much, especially when you’re just an EMT. When we started looking at gear (especially at REI, and really you don’t want the cheap shit when you’re hanging off a mountain), my face fell at the price tags.

Andrew saw it, I knew, out of the corner of his eye. He made pretty good money as a senior medic for SFD, and he also knew that I didn’t make shit as an EMT.

“You know what? Fuck this. Let’s take up bouldering.”

“Sounds good to me,” I nodded, flushing with joy. Andrew always took care of me.

* * *

When we went to the movies, we did it “dude style.” You know – three seats for two guys, the one in the middle taken by the massive popcorn tub. But one night we went to a superhero movie on opening night and, yeah. We were lucky to even find two seats together.

I sat next to Andrew in the van all the time, but there was a world of space between us in there. Here, we did some friendly shoving to try and dominate the armrest, but I was…

I was faking it. My easy grin, my casual pushing back. Andrew’s skin on mine was like, well, I don’t know much about religion, but when people talk about the spirit descending or whatever, shit, I know what they mean now.

Take a piece of silk. Warm it in the oven, just a little. Drag it lightly across your forearm. Feels good, right? Well, that was not even close to what Andrew felt like, though, because silk doesn’t stay warm all night, silk doesn’t have a million tiny hairs brushing your million tiny hairs, every one of them lighting up like a girl taken for a spin around the floor at her first ballroom dance. Silk doesn’t exude pheromones that dissolve on your skin and go straight to your brain like a transdermal pain patch, causing you to sigh in ecstasy.

And Andrew always “ran hot,” a good quality to have in this cool, damp part of the country. I’d have to wrap up in a down jacket when Andrew was hanging his shirt-sleeved arm out of his wide open window. Try this: sit next to a radiator. Feel the heat coming off it, hot and steady. Then think of that radiator as the sexiest man you’ve ever seen in your life, and he’s right next to you.

You know you can’t touch it. You’ll burn yourself. You have to touch it. You don’t dare. You’ll catch on fire.

I don’t remember anything about that movie. I just remember the way I tried to hold my arm away from Andrew’s, while still “accidentally” brushing it. The way my knee would knock against his, both of us in cargo shorts of course because fuckin’ men don’t wear pants in Seattle, c’mon, it’s not that cold, ya fuckin’ pussy.

I’d been attracted to him since I first saw him. Then distracted from all that for a while, by how demanding he was, and then I was too focused on getting the job 100% perfect to remember how hot he was. Then I was attracted again, the more time we spent together.

But this was the first night I’d been that close to him, in physical contact for two-and-a-half wonderfully long and horrible hours of overblown world-apocalyptic “This Ends Tonight” CGI villain-defeating fight scenes.

I went home that night and, for the first time, I jerked off thinking about Andrew. I’d pushed around it as long as I could, set sexual thoughts about him aside in the name of professional standards and inappropriate touching or speech and la la la, close your eyes and think of England and all that.

He wasn’t attracted to me, I knew that. He had never mentioned a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, and by this time I would have known if he’d had either one. And as long as we worked together, of course he’d never go there, even if he was gay and thought I was hot. It was so totally unprofessional that it would be unthinkable, the idea of a universe in which Andrew would do that.

Still, all I could wonder about was, who was he attracted to? What was his type? I’d see a hot guy or girl walking down the sidewalk as we drove, and I’d just sneak a peek to see if his eyes, his head, was following the hottie, his male gaze targeting and locking. But I never did see him going all “ah-WOO-GA” like the wolf in those old, old cartoons.

I ran through gigabytes of porn, trying to find someone who looked enough like him to push me over the edge. I had a huge collection of Andrew-like guys, just my type, dark haired, dark eyed, pale-skinned wonders, but none of them were him.

The guys in my collection all fucked like wild animals, no vanilla hump-hump shit for me. They fucked like I imagined Andrew would, but I had to keep taking my hand off my dick to turn the sound down, because they didn’t sound like him, and it was his voice, that bag of gravel in a tumbler, that I needed to hear.

In the end, I did a truly amazing thing for a man: I closed my eyes and shut out the images I’d been given and created my own. I made Andrew’s face return to that cold, tight demeanor he had when we met, saw him sitting in the passenger seat, saw him yank down his uniform pants and pull out a colossal piece of meat, and glare at me like he’d glared at me those first days. And then he opened his sneering mouth and said, “Suck my fuckin’ dick.”

And I blew my load everywhere, made a fucking mess. I hadn’t put down a towel on the chair in front of the computer, didn’t have a wet wipe handy, hadn’t done any of the standard jack-prep work. I’d just… ran straight to the fucking computer as soon as he dropped me off, pulled up the clips, and started jerking the boner I’d had for hours.

I felt better afterwards, because it always does, taking off the pressure with a good wank. Not just off your dick but off your mind. It lets you forget what you wanted so badly. Even if your whole body doesn’t fall asleep, that part does at least.

The problem was… The next day, you’re horny again, and jerking again, and your dick remembers what made it cum so hard last time. And it wants to go back there. And so you start watching some porn, and your dick is all like, “What’s this shit? Who are these lame fucks? Where’s Andrew?”

But I thought this would work. Every time the pressure built up, every time my desire for Andrew built to volcanic levels, I’d just jerk it out, even if I had to do that three, four times a day.

And it did, for another month or so.

Until Andrew got a girlfriend.