“Yeah, it would.”
“What have you been doing while I was gone?”
“Nothing much, just bank stuff, balancing the checkbook, that kind of thing. We should celebrate. Should I open some wine?”
“I have a better idea. How about if we go out? I’ll take you to dinner then maybe we could go to a club or something. Maybe dancing. Do you like to dance?”
“I haven’t gone dancing in years.” Phillip didn’t care for dancing. “Just let me change my shirt then we can go.”
“Cool. I’m going to change too.”
Michael listened as Robby mounted the stairs. As soon as his footfalls faded, Michael picked up the phone.
Alan answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
Michael’s heart stuttered at the sound of Alan’s voice.
“Alan, it’s Michael. I was wondering if I could ask you something?”
There was a pause then Alan said, “Sure. What is it?”
“When you were writing checks for me, did you happen to notice payments listed in the register to a United Properties Alliance? For fifteen hundred dollars, going out once a month for the past year or so?”
There was a moment of silence.
“No, but I wasn’t looking either. Why?”
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Michael explained about the payments and he could tell Alan was listening. He didn’t interrupt or ask any questions until Michael was finished.
“You should probably call the property management company and talk to them about it. Or I could call, if you want? Of course they may not give me any information.”
“They may not give me any either.”
“Maybe before you do that, we should look at the bank statements for the time in question. Do you want me to come over?”
“That would probably help. At least I’d have all the information when I called them.”
There was another pause.
“Michael, I’m sorry about the other night. I know I was out of line.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it, Alan. I probably overreacted.
I’m sure I overreacted.”
“Yeah, well, I felt kind of bad and, honestly, I miss talking to you. This morning I was reading the Times and I saw this article.
I almost sent it to you because I knew you’d get a kick out of it.”
“Was it the one about the hotdog vendor and the skateboarder?”
“Yeah, you saw it?”
“I nearly sent it to you before I remembered we were pissed at each other.”
They both laughed and something eased in Michael’s chest.
“Yeah, well, I’m glad that’s over. Listen, I’m off tonight so I could come by and help you with the bank stuff and we could get pizza or something.”
“I actually have plans for tonight.” Michael started to tell Alan about Robby’s interview then didn’t. Somehow he didn’t think Alan would be all that thrilled to hear that Robby might be moving to Philly, or that they were going out for a celebration too soon FoR Love
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dinner.
“Oh, sure. I guess it is kind of last minute. When would work for you? Or you could just call me?”
“How about tomorrow night? If you’re not working?”
“I’m on third shift starting tomorrow and don’t have to be in until eleven, so that will work fine.”
Michael heard Robby’s footsteps on the stairs. “Okay, great.
See you tomorrow then.”
Michael hung up the phone just as Robby entered the study.
“Hey, I thought you were going to change.” Robby crossed to the couch and dropped into the deep leather cushions. They sighed under him.
“I am.” Michael pushed back from the desk and stood. “I just got caught up with a phone call. Give me five minutes, then we’ll get going. Oh, and think about where you want to go.”
As he mounted the stairs, it was Alan and not Robby Michael was thinking about. Not until he reached his bedroom did he realize Alan had suggested getting together to review bank statements. Except now that he was set up for online banking, couldn’t he review the statements himself?
So why had Alan suggested that?
Alan was a smart guy. The likelihood that he didn’t realize that Michael could do the same thing on his own was slim to none.
Michael was smart too. And in any case, it didn’t take a genius to know why Alan had offered his help so readily.
Michael paused in front of his closet with one hand on the door-knob. Alan just wanted to see him. Not only that, but Alan had taken the initiative and apologized for their disagreement, a thing Phillip had never done.
Suddenly Michael didn’t feel so much like going out with Robby. The idea of an evening at home and a pizza with Alan seemed so much more appealing.
Oh, for Christ sake, just stop being so damn fickle.
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Jerking open the door, Michael reached into the closet and tugged a random shirt from its hanger. He pulled off his ragged gray sweatshirt, his favorite for just hanging around the house, and stuck his arms through the sleeves of the button-down.
He knew by touch it was one of the fine Egyptian cotton shirts Phillip had bought him for his last birthday. Going to the dresser, he grabbed his color identifier and pointed it at the shirt.
“Light blue,” the synthetic voice reported.
Satisfied, Michael dropped the color identifier on the dresser and began fastening buttons as he left the bedroom.
He had reached the top of the stairs when he stopped and returned to the bedroom. He should brush his hair. Since he had a habit of running his fingers through it when he worked, it probably looked like a rat’s nest.
Pulling out the elastic that held his ponytail, Michael ran a brush through his hair. He’d leave it loose, he decided. Phillip had always preferred it down. He rubbed a hand over his jaw where three days beard had turned from stubbly to soft. Should he take the time to shave? Nah. Go with that scruffy disreputable look.
There was no one to tell him not to, besides Robby and somehow Michael couldn’t picture him caring.
“You look hot,” Robby said when Michael joined him in the living room. “I like your hair like that. You should wear it down all the time. It makes you look sexy.”
“You think?” Michael grinned, thinking of how he’d just decided on looking disreputable.
“Yeah, it makes you look like a pirate. All you need is a gold earring.”
“And an eye-patch.”
“Nah, I’ll pass on the eye-patch. But I bet you’d look good with an earring.”
“I had one years ago.”
“Yeah? What happened to it?”
“I let it close up.” He grinned. “That was back in my wild, too soon FoR Love
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misspent youth.”
“I have one. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“I do. I have a tattoo too. Two actually.”
“What of?”
“A sea serpent, on my lower back. And a Chinese character right at the top of my ass crack, right on my tailbone.”
“What does it mean?”
“The character? Beautiful boy.”
“Really.”
A shiver of recognition slid through Michael. In the beginning of their relationship Phillip had called him his beautiful boy, mostly when they were in bed.
“What made you get them?” Michael asked.
“The tats? Well, the sea serpent because I was a swimmer.”
“What about the other one?”
“Someone I used to know always called me his beautiful boy.”
One of those sudden waves of melancholy took Michael and he struggled not to show it. He turned away, but not in time.
“Are you okay? Did I say something?”
Michael shook his head. “No, no. I’m fine.”
“If you’d rather not go out—”
“No, I want to go out. We’re celebrating, remember?”
“If you’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Where did you want to go?”
Robby chose a trendy downtown restaurant that had only recently opened for business.
“Wow, it’s noisy in here.” Michael picked up his water glass and sipped.
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“What did you say?” Robby raised his voice to be heard over the roar of conversation, the clatter of silverware and the steady thump, thump, thump of music emanating from the bar area.
“I said it’s noisy.” Michael leaned in and raised his voice too.
“It’s the music. They do that on purpose.”
“What? Make it so you can’t hear each other even if you’re at the same table?”
“No. Playing music like that to raise the noise level. It’s supposed to make you feel like you’re having a good time.”
“Bullshit.”
“I swear, I read it somewhere. They were talking about bars and restaurants and how they engineer the ambiance to achieve a certain mood.”
“And do you feel like you’re having fun?”
Because he sure didn’t.
Michael hated noisy restaurants. He hated having to yell across the table and strain to hear what his dinner companions were saying. Since he couldn’t see their mouths move, it made it hard to keep up with the conversation, so he usually ended up just sitting back and saying nothing.
“I kind of like it,” Robby said. “There are some really hot guys at the bar. One of them keeps looking over here.”
“That’s how Phillip and I met you, remember?”
Robby laughed. “Yeah. I was cruising you right in front of him. I was such a ho back then. Didn’t you think I was?”
“No,” Michael lied. He had thought Robby was sort of a ho back then. And Phillip certainly had, referring to the young blond as ‘our little slut boy’ every time Robby’s name came up after they returned home.
“Well, I was.” Robby laughed. “God, we had so much sex on that trip, the three of us. I couldn’t walk straight all week. You know, I never had a better vacation before or since.” There was a pause in the conversation as the waiter took their drinks order.
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Robby ordered a Heineken.
Michael started to order a glass of cabernet then stopped.
“Never mind the wine. I’ll have an Absolut dirty martini, straight with rocks on the side.”
“Whoa, dude. Am I going to have to pour you into the Jeep when we leave?”
“Maybe. You got a problem with that?”
“Nope. I think I can handle you.”
They spent the rest of the meal talking and reminiscing, about Mexico, about Phillip, about their college years though Michael’s were longer ago than Robby’s and the school he’d attended very different from the other man’s alma mater.
“You mean you actually met Phillip at school?”
“Yeah, I was in a seminar class he was teaching on film criticism.”
“He was your teacher? No fucking way!” Robby crowed with delight.
Michael nodded as a fresh drink was placed in front of him.
“Yep. Shit, I was so hot for him. I spent every class with a boner just from listening to his voice.”
Michael stirred his martini then plucked an olive off the stirrer and popped it in his mouth.
“Was he fucking you while he was your teacher?”
Michael hesitated. It couldn’t hurt Phillip for anyone to know, not now, more than a decade later, that the two of them had become lovers when they were still teacher and student.
“He was, wasn’t he? Oh man, what an old perv, banging his students.”
“It wasn’t one sided, you know. Not like he forced me or anything.” Michael swigged from his glass and set it down with a thud. Alcohol sloshed over his hand. “In fact, I practically threw myself at him.”
“Okay,” Robby said. He wiped the back of Michael’s hand
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with his napkin. “I was only kidding. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.” But the comment, joking or not, had pissed him off, mostly because it was exactly what his parents had said when he told them about Phillip.
He could still remember the awful scene with such clarity. It was like it had happened last week. His mother’s tears and his father’s rage, both of them threatening to report Phillip to the dean for molesting their teenage son. Of course Michael was nineteen at the time, well beyond the age of consent, but still Phillip could have, probably would have, lost his job. Michael had begged them not to go to the dean. When his pleas didn’t work, he had threatened to leave home.
Thinking back, he supposed it was this threat that had turned the argument down its fateful path, one that had inevitably led to his parents’ assertion that Phillip had ‘turned’ their son gay.
Because a boy of theirs, a good Catholic boy, couldn’t ever have actually wanted sex with another man.
And it was that, more than anything, that had sent Michael into a rage. He had said horrible, unforgivable things, all three of them had, after which he called Phillip.
His lover had come immediately to pick him up and take him back to his apartment where Michael continued to rage and weep and finally fall exhausted into Phillip’s bed where the two of them had made love and Phillip had dried Michael’s tears.
Afterwards, with his cock still inside Michael’s body, Phillip had said that he supposed Michael would have to live with him now.
“You mean it?” Michael asked, not really believing, not daring to believe what his lover was saying.
“Of course, I mean it, silly boy. I’m not letting you live with that kind of abuse. What sort of man would I be if I allowed them to treat you that way?”
“You don’t have to take care of me, Phillip. I’m not a child.”
“No, you’re not.” Phillip, his prick still hard even though too soon FoR Love
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he had already come, began to move again inside Michael’s ass.
“You’re the man I love. That’s why I’m going to take care of you.”
It was the first time Phillip had said he loved him. The first time Michael had said it, ever, though the sentiment had burned inside him for months.
And to that day, Phillip was the only man to whom Michael had ever given those words.
Would he ever say it again? Would he ever want to?
A lump formed in Michael’s throat. He lifted his glass to his lips and found it empty.
“You want another drink?” Robby asked.
Michael shook his head. “No, I think maybe I want to go home.”
Not until he stood, did Michael realize just how drunk he was.