Between Boyfriends (30 page)

“What are they calling it?” Lindsay asked. “
Sheba, Where You At?
”

“Guys, could we refocus?”

“Sorry, mate. So how’d it feel to kick his sorry arse to the curb?”

“He only kicked with one foot.”

“Is Flynn right?”

What’s more attractive—hemming or hawing? “My, um, feelings for Jack are, well, you know, complicated.”

“They bloody well shouldn’t be. Not after how he treated you, Steven. One day it’s
I love you
, the next it’s
You’re suffocating me so get the fuck out of my apartment
.”

“You’re all absolutely one-hundred-percent right, I know that, but last night when I looked into his eyes and saw how sorry he was, how contrite…”

“Contrite? Mama no like this, Steven, mama no like!”

“Despite everything he did to me it was nice to feel his arms around me again.”

The three of them gasped at the same time.

Lindsay found breath first. “Tell me he did not fuck you. Or that you fucked him. Or any combination thereof.”

“There was no fucking. Just some kissing.”

“But you wanted him to fuck you, didn’t you? You wanted him to fuck you blind!”

Jefferson gave Gus his espresso and pulled over a chair to join us. “Now that’s my kind of dialogue.”

“This isn’t dialogue, actron,” Lindsay berated him. “This is real life. Steven, continue.”

“I admit it, if Jack wanted to spend the night I would have let him.”

Flynn grabbed my hand, then squeezed it until he almost broke more than a few bones. “Are you insane, Steven?”

“No, just lonely.”

They all looked at me with the same expression the Tin Man gives Dorothy when he realizes he must have a heart because he feels it breaking. But that expression was soon replaced with the look the Wicked Witch of the West gives her flying monkey flunky when she sees the snow-covered poppies.

“Not this lonely shit again!” Lindsay cried. “We’re all lonely, Steven! We’re gay men, it comes with the territory. Jack’s playing games with you; if he really wanted romance and not a mind fuck he would’ve been up front with you and not hide behind some secret messages.”

I explained to them how Jack had explained his decision to go the secret admirer route and see if he could get me out of his system. This too was greeted with skepticism, even from Jefferson.

“My last boyfriend tried to get back together with me during a scene from
Romeo and Juliet
at the Royal Shakespeare Academy in London. I was playing Tybalt and he was playing Mercutio and during one fight scene, he—”

“That’s a lovely piece of theater lore, but it would be most effective if we could concentrate on the specifics of
Steven’s
story. Steven, it’s like ice-skating. When the ice hits your ass one too many times it’s time for beer and Dick.”

“Random sex isn’t always the answer,” Jefferson said.

“A relaxing drink and a chat with Dick
Button
! Someone much, much wiser,” Lindsay explained. “Gus, will you please control your acquaintance du jour?”

Instead, Flynn took control of the conversation. “Steven, I know you want an LTR ASAP and that you’re still disappointed that it didn’t work out with Brian, but desire and disappointment are no reasons to give Jack another try. He doesn’t deserve you.”

“Flynn’s right, mate. Jack served his purpose in your life. He helped you realize that despite what straight America might want us to believe, two men can set up house and live together monogamously if they so choose.”

“And they, like straight America,” Lindsay continued, “can also fuck up and destroy one another and go their separate ways never to meet again. This is what you need to do.”

The part of me that should have embraced their words had shut down and instead I decided to ignore them.

“Guys, I hear everything you’re saying and I hope you don’t hate me when I say that I’m not going to listen to one word of it. I don’t know what happened to me last night, but I haven’t felt that alive since…well, since I was with Jack before, and I owe it to myself to see if the moment was fleeting or forever. So please raise your Starbucks cups with me and put the kibosh on those cynical looks. Remember we’re friends of Dorothy, which means we’re friends of optimism.”

I raised my SU and for a moment it hung alone in the air. Then one by one my friends found the courage, the heart, and the knowledge and raised their cups too, for they realized they couldn’t betray their friend as he was about to set out into the unknown territory of the second-time-around romance.

The first hour of my first date with nuJack was going rather well. He took me to a new Italian restaurant in Chelsea,
Meat & Balls,
and we started the process of getting to know each other all over again. Jack told me that he had been promoted and was now the retail planner for Abercrombie & Fitch, which meant he’s the guy who decides how low jeans will ride on a boy’s hips and how much public pubic cleavage is acceptable.

Then I told him about my promotion to producer of
ITNC.
He offered his congratulations and told me how fortunate we both were to be succeeding in our chosen professions while not having to hide our sexuality. We were lucky that shopping and soap operas are two gay mainstays. I was doubly impressed with his enthusiasm because I clearly remember Jack telling me that he wouldn’t watch a soap unless he were in a nursing home, hooked up to an IV, and in the last stages of dementia. Obviously he was making an effort.

When job talk was exhausted, the conversation inevitably turned personal. I gave him a brief synopsis of my love life since the day we’d broken up, deleting the low points, embellishing the highs, and ending with my most recent stint as Brian’s other half.

“Did you love Brian?” Jack asked bluntly.

“No, I didn’t love Brian,” I said with a mouthful of meatball, “not the way I loved you anyway…. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Don’t ever be sorry for being honest. I told you, Steven, that’s what I love most about you.”

Self-consciousness crept in, at least for me anyway, and I felt every gay in the restaurant had stopped chewing and was waiting for Steven’s next statement. Should I allow the angry voice deep inside me the freedom to rise and shout, “If you love honesty so much, why did you deceive me when we were living together?” Or “Why didn’t you have the balls to call me up instead of sending me stupid notes?” But I decided the boys had seen enough drama for one meal and quashed those comments.

“What about you, Jack? What’s your personal life been like?”

For the first time all night, Jack struggled. Was he searching for the right way to express the truth of his life or the right lie to cover it up? I wasn’t sure—until he started speaking.

“It’s been a mess. It’s been one random hookup after another. I’ve had a long series of really hot twenty-minute relationships with every kind of guy you can dream up. Hunky, hefty, big-dicked, little-dicked, overeducated, underfed—you name it, I’ve fucked it. I even tried to extend some of those twenty-minutes into a couple hours. But none of them ever worked out.”

“Why?”

“Because none of them could make me forget about you.”

It was Jack’s turn to be way too honest. Much to his credit, he didn’t run away from it.

“When we were together I thought it was too good to be true; I convinced myself that it was playacting and would never last. I had to get out before you left me, as I was sure you would.” Jack smiled sadly, but it wasn’t for my benefit. “Once I was on my own I figured out pretty quickly that the only thing in my life that had any worth was my time with you. I’m sorry it took me so long to let you in on my secret.”

I tried not to think about what I should say next, but concentrate on how I was feeling right at this moment. “I wish you had never left us.”

“Me too.”

Jack paid for dinner and I asked him to stay the night. The sex, as expected, was mind-blowing. Imagine a filmic montage of the reunion between Dorothy and the brainy farmhand if they’d been having an illicit affair behind Auntie Em’s back. Jack and I started out rough and passionate, with clothes being torn off and tossed aside; then there was the pause when we were completely naked and realized that after five years apart we were really doing this. The frenzied pace slowed down and we kissed and giggled and mumbled about how incredibly fantastic our bodies looked and I commented that Jack still had the little scar on the inside of his thigh and Jack kissed the two birth-marks on my hip; first one, then the other, like he always used to before sucking my dick. He spent a great deal of time down there before coming back up to plant wet kisses on my mouth. Then I retreated south to return the favor and found myself smiling while sucking on a mouthful of Jack’s thick slab of a dick. When I was licking his big, hairless balls I heard my inner and more rational voice ask,
Is this really such a good idea?
but before I could answer Jack pulled me up, rolled on a condom, and fucked me silly, if not blind. When it was over the only thing that separated us was a thick layer of mutual cum.

“This is what I’ve missed most of all,” Jack sighed.

And with that he wiped away the cum, threw the towel on the floor, and kissed me on the lips before saying, “G’night, Stevie B.” He shifted our positions so we could spoon and drifted off to sleep. Me? I lay there unable to get his last comment out of my mind. What he missed most from our relationship was a hot fuck before bed?

After a restless night torn between loving the familiar feeling of Jack’s hard biceps holding me close and the equally familiar feeling of wanting to rip the bicep flesh off of his bones, I had decided to tell Jack that if the most important thing to him was fucking me, then round two of this relationship was over before it could begin.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s what you said.”

“And when did I say it?”

“Right after you fucked me.”

“And while I was holding you. That’s what I missed, Steven. The emotional connection after the physical, which I know sounds like therapist BS, but it’s what I meant. Do you know how happy you made me last night, Stevie, when you let me fall asleep holding you? That’s what I want in my life, you and me sleeping next to each other again. And not me running out of some nameless guy’s apartment in the middle of the night so I can wake up in my own bed alone.”

“Flynn, we have a problem,” I cried into the phone an hour later.

“Did Jack dump you again?”

“Are you taking bitch lessons from Lohan now that you’re half of a celebrity duo?”

“Mama, sorry. I’m just a bit ticked off because Lucas had to cancel our weekend plans. His agent booked him on a flight to L.A. to do
The Tonight Show
.”

“Aren’t you going with him?”

“Yeah, but this weekend we were supposed to go to that cute bed-and-breakfast in Vermont I told you about.”

“So you’ll have breakfast in bed at the Beverly Hills Hilton instead of the Vermont Arms, where should I send my sympathy card?”

“Assholishness duly noted. Now what’s the problem?”

“Jack wants to make me dinner. At his place.”

“He’s domestic, that’s nice.”

“He’s still living in our old apartment.”

The pause was thick and long. “If you’re able to reconnect with the guy who kicked you to the curb, you should have no problem revisiting the apartment in front of said curb.”

“Is that the whiff of an asshole I smell?”

“What do you want me to say, Steven? You’re going to have to face up to it sometime, might as well get dinner out of it.”

“I thought you might be a little more supportive, especially after the hand-holding I gave you when you were freaking out about Lucas.”

“I don’t support you and Jack! I told you that. If you’re having misgivings about having dinner with him at the apartment you guys once shared, that should tell you something.”

The only thing I knew was that the truth must sometimes be blocked. “You know what I’m hearing from you, Flynn? A superiority complex. You’ve turned into Mister I’m-so-important-and-smart-’cause I-have-a-boyfriend.”

“Who’s giving off asshole emissions now?”

“Whatever! Go hop your flight with Lucas and have a great time with Conan. I don’t need your help or your friendship!”

In some ways the apartment was the same and in other ways it was unrecognizable. Jack still used the same chocolate brown ultrasuede pillow as an accent to the sand-colored couch, but the abstract painting over it must have been a more recent purchase. I also recognized the multicolored throw on the club chair as the one his grandmother made, but the crystal vase that held a dozen red roses was a heretofore unseen heirloom or some knockoff he’d picked up at Bed, Bath & Behind.

“The place looks great,” was all I could muster.

He knew I was hedging. “You’re okay being here?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe you should ply me with some wine.”

Before Jack could uncork the bottle, the most unexpected thing—to anyone living in a New York apartment, anyway—occurred. There was a knock on the door.

“Have you become friendly with the neighbors?” I asked.

“Not that friendly.” Jack peeked through the peephole. “It’s Lindsay and Sebastian.”

“What?”

A second later Lindsay and Sebastian had invaded the apartment.

“What are you two doing here?”

“Flynn told Lindsay you were having dinner with Jackie Jack and we just had to see for ourselves if retro romance had made a comeback,” Sebastian announced. “I hope you have enough meat for four, Jack.”

“I’m sure Steven’s told you all that I have more than enough meat to go around.”

Sebastian squealed. “You know Steven doesn’t suck and tell. I, on the other hand, like to share my good fortune with the world.”

“Guys, I appreciate whatever it is that you’re trying to do here,” I started, “but—”

“No buts,” Lindsay said. “We are joining you two for dinner. If Jack is back in your life, Steven, then he’s back in ours too.”

Jack shot me a playful grimace. “It’s fine with me. I’ll open up another box of pasta.”