The Youth & Young Loves of Oliver Wade: Stories (24 page)

“I’ve felt really nice with you today, Angel. I’ve had a
good day. I want you to know that. You make me feel really comfortable, and
safe in this new place or whatever, and—”

“I’ve had a good day, too.”

“So—yes?”

“What good is one date, though, Ollie? If it’s good—that
would be bad.”

“Come on. Nothing is better?”

He looked from me to the cord in his hand. “I’m excited
about this move, Ollie. I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. I don’t
want to get down to Texas and have my mind be on Boston.”

It was a fair point, painfully fair. “I’m moving on, too. I
just— I feel like we’ve connected today, Angel, and I don’t want to say
goodbye with a handshake. I don’t want it to just be
that
.”

“How do you
want
to say goodbye?”

“Angel, don’t make me blush.”

“Ollie, I like you too. I’ve liked you since Denny’s. This
has been a fun day. I would be happy that you just asked me out, I just don’t
think I can do it.”

“OK. OK, yeah. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to pressure you, I
just wanted to be honest.”

“It’s cool, we’re cool.”

I leaned in the living-room doorway and put my hands in my
pockets. “I had an experience once,” I said, “where I was really into a guy and
I didn’t make a move and it became too late. I told myself I’d never do that
again.”

“You’re really into me?” He was still standing by the window
with the blinds cord in his hand. He pulled it again and they went straight.

“You’re right,” I laughed, “it’s silly. Shelley told me you
were off-limits. She’d freak out if I took advantage of you.”

I was halfway down the first flight of stairs before I heard
him shut and lock the door and follow after me.

In the car, when we were stuck in rush-hour traffic a few
blocks from Shelley’s, Angel interrupted what had been a deep silence between
us by asking if the sun was getting on me. I hadn’t noticed, but he was
right—a thick, late-afternoon beam of it lay across my arm and thighs,
had been for the minutes we’d been sitting here, burning.

He inched the Jeep up a few feet, almost touching the bumper
of the sedan in front of us; it was enough to put the sun behind a bank of
traffic signs. The shade was cool and I told him, “Thanks.”

A few minutes later, after I had pushed the R.E.M. CD back
into the stereo, he kissed me. It happened easily: He kind of just leaned
toward me, almost as if he was going to check his hair in the rearview, and I
noticed, and it happened. There in the sea of brake lights and honking horns.

When it was done I looked ahead smirking. I had been able to
feel him smiling against my lips. I savored the feeling of not caring if other
drivers saw us. What would they dare do to him, to someone like him, or to me,
with someone like him? Then I remembered something and couldn’t help grinning
and reached for the pencil and pulled out one of the printouts from Shelley’s
envelope. On the back I made some notes.

“You are
not
writing notes on my kissing,” Angel laughed. “Oh my god, what are you writing?”

“
Nice lips, nice
taste, perfect 10 of a kiss
.”

“You dork.”

“You did kind of set yourself up for it, though.”

“I did, I did.” He was smiling, shaking his head, playing at
being exasperated. “So we’re on a date,” he said. “You win, I surrender. We’re
officially on a date.”

“Yes! See, isn’t it fun?” I slapped his knee playfully.

“I don’t know, so far we’re just sitting in traffic.”

“Jerk,” I said, and he laughed.

“Kiss was decent, though. Yep.” Like in that one apartment,
he stuck out his bottom lip to indicate being mildly impressed.

“I’m gonna wipe that hurricane swirl right off your jerky
face,” I warned.

He laughed again. “What do you even mean by that, though?”

“I don’t even know.”

“OK, so you need to tell me what we’re doing on this date.
Where are you taking me? I want details.”

Suddenly I was deliriously aroused and had butterflies in my
stomach.

I said, “What if we say the whole day so far has been the
date?”

“Yeah, and—?” I noticed him shift in his seat the way
a guy shifts when he’s contending with a boner.

I said, “What if we go somewhere we can kiss more?”

We let the question sit there for a minute, sultry, way too
sultry, almost to see if that was really how this was going to play out. With
that tone. Then we both laughed. “Oh my god, I sounded like we’re in a porno,”
I said.

But he didn’t let the thread go, only its cheesy tone. “Shelley’s?”

“She might come home.”

“We could, um—” He was blushing. “We could get a hotel
room?” He looked at me sheepishly. “Or, actually— One of the apartments
had its key in a lockbox, I saw him do the code on the lockbox.
Eight-seven-six. But— I don’t remember which place it was.”

I liked the idea of a hotel but I liked this even better. “Would
we break in? That would be crazy. What else do you remember? Where were you
standing? Think hard.” I was shifting in my seat, too.

He stroked his stubble thoughtfully. “We were standing on a
landing. Small staircase. Oh! It was the one with the fat landlord. The first
fat landlord.”

“I remember. Which apartment was that, though?”

“He had difficulty
ascending
.
You wrote a note.”

I grabbed the envelope and flipped through the printouts
scanning my notes. “
Difficulty ascending
.
Here it is! Brighton!”

Angel looked at me, perhaps a little bashfully now that this
was a real possibility, that we had a destination, that there was a plan. “Now,”
he said, “aren’t you glad I made you take notes?”

I was blushing so hard I couldn’t respond.

We didn’t touch or kiss again in the car, or even speak
other than for navigation, and the silence was full and sexy and exciting.
Outside the building in Brighton, we stood for five minutes waiting for someone
to go in or out so we could sneak through the locked main door. Still we didn’t
talk, just looked at each other once every few seconds and traded little
smiles. Finally, impatient and fearful that he might change his mind if we didn’t
get this show on the road, I pressed a button on the intercom by the door.
Someone answered. “Hey. Sorry,” I said. “This is Jimmy from 4R. I’m an idiot, I
locked myself out. Can you buzz me?”

Angel looked at me and mouthed, “Jimmy?”

A second later the door buzzed.

“Did you know a Jimmy lives in 4D?” Angel said, holding open
the door.

“I have no idea who lives in 4D. Neither do they, though, apparently.”

He cocked his head in appreciation.

As we ran up the narrow stairs our hands bumped together and
our fingers entwined. All the walls could’ve gone invisible and I wouldn’t have
cared who saw us.

Eight seven six—the passcode was almost like a
countdown. Six-thirty—nine hours since we were here the first time. We
locked the door behind us and went to the room with the couch in it. There was
no lamp except for the yellowish ceiling light in the kitchen; the light
filtered dimly here and washed into the blue, early-evening light from the
windows. We stood on the hardwood floor looking at each other, nonchalant, five
feet apart, like people who are about to fight. But we weren’t going to fight.

Angel’s voice was soft and shy. “Don’t watch me take off my
shoes,” he said, lifting a foot and holding the heel of his sneaker but
stopping short of pulling it off.

“Why?”

“I’m wearing those invisible socks and they look like ballerina
slippers and they look kind of silly. I didn’t know that—that this would
be happening.”

“I won’t watch,” I told him. But I did; I wouldn’t have
missed it. I watched him take off his black Nikes and then peel off his
invisible socks, which did indeed look like black ballerina slippers and which
did indeed look kind of silly. But then he was standing in front of me barefoot
on the empty floor and his legs looked like brown granite and his dark eyes
gleamed.

We took off our shirts. I had imagined him with tattoos but
his skin was clear. His chest hair was thick and black.

“You’re handsome,” I said.

“You too,” he whispered. He was whispering.

We let our shorts fall down, and then our underwear. I was
hard and he was hard and we stood looking at each other. My heart was racing
and I was happy.

Slowly I walked toward him naked and leaned against him, and
smelled the smell I’d wanted to be near, and felt the hardness and smoothness
of him, this goofy, thick, cautious guy on the edge of a new life and already in
it. He pulled me hard against himself with one hand and with the other he
ruffled the back of my mohawk playfully. He whispered, “Punk.” I was right
about how it would feel to be in his arms. Then I tipped my head and lay my
tongue flat against one of his hurricane swirls. And we were off.

Is it enough to say we did everything? Things I’d never
done with anyone? Things I’d never wanted to do before he was here to do them
to and with? Things that were risky, things we didn’t have the proper
protection for but did anyway? Maybe we thought that whatever happened that day
could be left behind with everything else when we moved on.

We did it all on the couch, and after all the things we did,
we finished together just sitting side by side, almost as if we were back in
the car. We sat for a long time afterward, close, hands still lying in each
other’s lap where they’d moved to take over in the final seconds. We glanced at
each other from the side of our eyes not knowing quite what to say; maybe we
were surprised at the things we had done. When we finally got up the couch
gleamed with our sweat and I used one of my socks to wipe it dry, and he told
me I was silly, it would dry by itself.

The bathroom had a shower curtain and a watercolor of Boston
Harbor on the wall. Using water someone else was paying for, we stood together
in the tub and rinsed off silently, probably still speechless. Finally Angel
cut the silence by joking that the only thing left for us to do now was to pee
on each other.

I stood looking at him, trying to judge if he was serious or
just joking around. I didn’t know if he was serious but if he was, it seemed a
small thing after everything else. And I wanted it all, even the things I didn’t
necessarily want. Spreading my stance and holding my fists at my hips, I told
him to go for it.

“Are you—? Really?” he said. “I’ve never done it, I’ve
never even really thought about it, I was just—”

“We
are
in the
shower,” I said. “Go for it.”

And he did; or, he started to try. For a while there was
nothing, just an embarrassed smirk, then a trickle came, then a stream as his
body relaxed or as he became confident that I wasn’t going to scream. He
targeted my belly button. The stream was clear and hot, hotter than the
lukewarm water crashing against my back. There was a serious expression on his
face. We watched it spatter against my belly, and after a few seconds it slowed
and stopped. Angel said, “That’s all I’ve got.”

We looked at each other and laughed.

I shut the shower off and, dripping, he pulled back the
curtain and said, “Uh.”

My first thought was that there was someone there in the
apartment, that we were caught. But the idea caused me no anxiety—I was
with Angel, after all.

“No towels,” he continued, looking at me with his lips
pushed out. “We forgot.”

“Oh,” I said, “uh oh.”

We squeegeed ourselves and each other, head to toe, front
and back, with our hands,
thwacking
loose water into the tub. But we were still too wet to put on clothes.

“C’mon, let’s stand by the window,” he said, “and air dry.”

“Air drying in a stranger’s apartment,” I laughed. “Whose
life is this?”

He laughed, hard—not
No. 1 Grandpa
hard, but hard.

I followed his footprints across the hardwood floor of the
bedroom that one month from now I’d be living in. We opened the window and stood
there side by side, looking out, Angel and me, our shoulders and side-bums
touching, our forearms folded on the wide sill. Outside was street, and some
rooftops, and beyond that a river, and beyond that Cambridge—a new city,
a new chapter much more pronounced now that I was leaving someone behind, and
being left behind.

I put my hand on his back, felt the now-familiar ridges of
his muscles, and rubbed in little circles. Only after a minute did I realize he
was dry.

“I’m hungry now,” he said, scratching his fluffy chest hair.
It was 8:15.

“We could go back to Denny’s,” I proposed. “For old time’s
sake.”

“Yeah, let’s. Old time’s sake.”

He got dressed and I watched him while I put on my own
clothes, confident that with every article he was putting on, he was covering
up something I’d never see again. But that was OK. I got to see it once, and
once is a universe away from never.

“You know you have to rent this apartment now,” he told me
as he was placing the key back in the lockbox.

In my head I had already filled out the paperwork.

I hoped we’d be put in the same booth, and I would’ve
asked for it if we weren’t, but I could see a couple of stoned guys sitting
there eating pancakes.

Again we ordered Lumberjack Slams, and while we waited for
them Angel again stretched his legs beneath the table and rested his feet on
the booth beside me—black Nikes that would be exchanged for Army boots
again soon. I tapped on the laces with my fingers and then cupped his leg, my
hand sliding across the fuzzy ridge of his calf. He smiled, but a moment later
he pulled his legs back.

Shelley called while we were eating. She was home. It was
late. She had an air mattress and half of her own bed to offer us, and Angel
and I went there full of pancakes, groggy as zombies, and slept.