Dangerously Happy (4 page)

Waiting for him to mount the five flights of stairs (why hadn’t he taken the elevator?) felt like twenty minutes, even though the beat of his footfalls were rapid and by the tempo and the breaks I could tell he was taking the steps two at a time. And then he was standing on the landing, just outside my open front door, barely winded. Holding my guitar.

So, this really was it.
He’d forgotten the amp, but Tom would bring that to me later and either I’d be out of the band, or the band would be out of the collective and that vivid, difficult, productive, creative community I’d been taking for granted all those months wouldn’t be part of my life anymore.

He peered past me into the apartment, then met my eyes, smiled (a little sadly, I thought) and said (in a strangely loud voice, I thought), “I got your text about getting your guitar. I’m on my way to meet some friends at a restaurant nearby, so I thought I’d just bring it to you since I was in the neighborhood.”

It took me a minute, but I finally got it. He was saying that in case there was someone else in my apartment. Handing me a pretext so I wouldn’t act weird about him dropping by. “There’s no one else here,” I finally said, trying to give him a friendly smile. “Want to come in?”

I was afraid he was going to more or less throw my guitar at me, tell me I’d been a dick, and leave. But he smiled his warm, confident smile, strode into my living room, carefully set the guitar by the wall, then stood there, gazing at me, looking so at ease I half wondered if all the craziness of the past week, from the handjob to my mad getaway from Saturday night’s gig to skipping rehearsal that night, had been fabricated by the onset of some kind of mental problem.

“
I’m guessing you’re not actually sick,” he said in that quiet, intimate tone he’d used with me that one night (so no, I hadn’t imagined any of it).

“
I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I’m not handling this very well. I’ve been a total asshole.”

“
I’m the asshole.” He perched on the arm of my sofa and nervously ran his fingers through his hair, dark, unruly waves he'd been letting grow out. It was slightly surreal seeing him suddenly so ill at ease. “I never should have pulled that with you the other night
. I’d always told myself not to fuck things up with you like that, but the way things worked out that night, Tom canceling, but you showing up anyway, you playing that song just for me—I mean, not
for
me, but with no one else there, and then . . . well, f
uck, then you reading my story—I just got caught up and I did what I did, even though I knew better.” It was the strangest thing, but him saying that, the way he said it, I almost wanted to cry. And then everything crystallized into incredible clarity for the first time since the moment that night when he’d said
, “I want you to stay. Do you want to stay, Aidan?”

I said
, “Please don’t regret it. It was one of the nicest things that ever happened to me.” A very bad job expressing what I was thinking and feeling, but even so all that rigid awkwardness so utterly alien to his character melted away before my eyes, and he looked at me with an incredibly tender, sad expression. “Just so there’s no misunderstanding,” I said, which was ridiculous because there’d already been a twenty-car pile-up of misunderstandings, “I’ve been jerking off every day, thinking about that night.” He looked like he was holding himself back from laughing, and possibly from crying. “It’s just that I’ve been confused about what that means, what I want. And I’m doing a shitty job of being normal around you and the whole loft scene while I do that.”

After a while he gave me an absolutely endearing smile, stood up, and said, “Well, as aroused and just absolutely charmed as I am by the image of you getting off to pictures of the two of us in your head, I’d still take the other night back if it’s going to wreck what you and the band have going at the loft. So know that you’re still as welcome as ever, that I’m not going to do or say anything to embarrass you. And that I know very well that it was a one-time thing, so it’s not like I’m going to be lurking in the corners waiting to pounce on you. My slightly stalkerish appearance at your door tonight notwithstanding.”

“
I’m a little disappointed to hear that,” I said, trying to be more earnest, more like him, but I know it came out like a joke.

That irresistible smile. “Even so.” He went to the door. “You won’t miss another rehearsal.” It sounded like a statement of fact that I had no hope of evading, until he tacked on a, “Will you?”

“
I’ll be th
ere on Tuesday.”

“
Good.”

When he reached for the doorknob I said, “Stay for a beer?”

“
I’ve got that thing, remember? The friends at the restaurant.” He was lying.

Feeling hopeful, or maybe desperate, I said, “Dario, I want you to stay. Do you want to stay?”

He gazed at me like he was trying to decide whether he’d heard me right. Then he said, “Yes. But I’m going to go anyway. If you want to get together sometime to talk, or anything else, you have my number. I sincerely hope you’ll use it. But if you don’t, I sincerely hope things can go back to the way they were.”

As promised, I went to rehearsal. I
t was more or less like it had been before, except that for the first time around other people I felt like he and I had finally crossed that threshold of polite distance where we’d been hovering for the three years we’d known each other. That, and I couldn’t wait until rehearsal was over so it could be just me and Dario, just so we could talk for more than five minutes without him having some far-fetched notion that he was intruding on me at my place. Except that was me lying to myself because what I really couldn’t stop imagining was him finally kissing me, which it felt like I’d been waiting for for a whole week by then. And after a kiss, I wasn’t sure what, but something more. Definitely something more. But after rehearsal, everyone stayed to hang out and smoke a little, and when they finally got tired and wanted to leave, it just seemed impossible to stay behind on my own.

After another night of vacillation and masturbation, the next day, I texted him. Could I come by before the other group showed up for rehearsal, just for half an hour, so we could talk? Waiting for his answer was a little slice of hell. He’d obviously decided that whatever might happen between us—even possibly just becoming better friends—wasn’t worth all the labor that came with my vacillations and doubts. He probably had his eye on someone far less confused, more comfortable in his own skin (even forgetting about my inability to cope with our little erotic interlude), someone better looking, more fun, more talented, more successful. Then his text came. Absolutely. Come any time after eight. It felt like I’d been agonizing for hours, but it had been less than fifteen minutes since I’d texted him.

I was at his door at five past eight. Normally I’d hate to seem over-eager, bu
t I wanted us to have time before the guys from Painful Friction showed up at nine for their rehearsal. He gave me a smile that felt like an embrace. “I wish we had more time to talk,” I said, “but it’s
a little tough, between my work hours and the rehearsal schedule.”

“
We have all night.”

“
I’m not like you. I’m not good at tuning out the distractions.”

“
We won’t have any distractions,” he said. “I canceled on them for tonight. Told them I’m in bed with a migraine.”

“
Oh.”

“
All that means is that I wanted you to be able to say whatever you need to say without worrying that those guys were going to come barging in at any moment.”

Suddenly I didn’t know what it was I’d thought I needed to say. What I did remember was what I’d obtained, just in case it looked like we were going to do something other than talk. “I brought something.” I held up the gram of weed I’d bought, knowing I’d want to calm my nerves and not wanting to taint whatever was going to happen between us by seeming like one more person who smoked all his grass and drank all his beer every time I showed up. “Want to smoke?”

“
No.” So definitive. So final.

“
Okay.” It came out petulant. Hurt. As if I'd offered him my body instead of a little weed, and he'd coldly, indifferently rejected me.

“
Whatever you want to say, I don’t want to hear it through a haze,” he said.

I was still just standing by the front door, resisting my habit of crossing my arms when I’m nervous, or stuffing my hands into my pockets. Because I was so wound up, I didn’t ask the real, important first question. Instead I tried to push everything onto him. “What did you mean, when you said you’d always told yourself not to screw things up with me?”

“
Is that what you came here to talk about?”

“
No.” God, I was nervous. I could barely make myself say it. “I guess the main thing is, I wanted to ask you if I’ve blown it.”

“
Blown it?”

“
Wow. You’re really making this hard for me.”

“
I don’t mean to. Maybe I’m being a little compulsive about clarity.”

I’d composed everything in my head, but all those carefully arranged thoughts and meticulously chosen words were running and bleeding together in an incoherent mess.

“
You haven’t blown anything, Aidan.”

“
I’m not talking about the band stuff.”

That soft, intimate tone. “I know.”

It wasn’t part of the script I’d composed in my mind, but out of nowhere I said, “Then ask me. Ask me again.”

Without so much as a passing shadow of confusion or doubt, with that confidence of his that was as assuring as it was assured, holding my gaze, he asked, “Do you want to stay?”

“
Yes.”

God, he looked happy. He took a step or two forward, until we were close enough to touch, but he didn’t touch me. He stood still, gazing at me without a trace of embarrassment or awkwardness, but like he was waiting for something from me. “Then I’m going to kiss you.” He moved, brought his body, his face closer to mine. Raised one hand, brushed it briefly against my arm, my shoulder, my jaw. His breath smelled of toothpaste, and a sudden flood of tenderness rushed over me at the image of him brushing his teeth because I was coming over. In case we might kiss. And his lips parted slightly and I tried to relax my mouth, my jaw for a kiss as tender as the caresses he’d given me that first night. “If you want me to.” Not a kiss. His lips had parted for those words. “Do you want me to?”

I wanted it so badly. It was why I’d come. But it was so hard to say it. “Yes.”

He leaned in a little closer, so close that I felt the heat of him up the length of my body, felt his breath warm on my lips, so close that when he shifted his weight his knee brushed against my leg, and as I felt my blood accelerate, pumping my panic from my chest into my legs and arms and hands until I was trembling, and I noticed his breathing was like mine—strange and constricted and too fast—he touched my wrist again, the way he’d touched it that first night, made me move my arm, my hand again as if it were me and not him directing that movement, and he pressed my palm over the warm, rigid bulge of his hard cock sheathed under the fabric of his jeans. “You’re sure you want me to kiss you?”

I was almost in tears because I was sure I’d already used up all the generous patience possible, but it seemed better to say it sooner than later. “I’m not sure I’m ready.”

Not the look of disappointment or irritation I was expecting. Just a hint of a grin. “Not ready for what?”

“
For sex.”

“
That isn’t what I asked you. I asked if you want me to kiss you. This isn’t a bait and switch.”

“
Yes. Yes, I want you to.”

It seemed strange to me, but wonderful that he was trembling too. He slid one hand against my waist until it curved against the small of my back, warm, almost hovering he touch was so light, and he leaned in so that our chests barely pressed together, and his lips brushed against mine, not even really a kiss for those first seconds, my want expanding and submerging me so that when he finally did really kiss me, soft lips pressing against mine, his tongue seeking mine, I groaned and the faint warmth of his hand on the small of my back drew me closer, pressed me more firmly to him, his other hand curving around the base of my neck, his kiss gentle but desperate, ravenous. Never in my life have I felt so possessed, so completely taken in a kiss.