Sweet (15 page)

“Oh.” Jules put his half-peeled peach into the bowl and wiped his hands. He looked at Andy, letting his fingers play in the fur so close to Teddy’s hand he could feel the heat of it. He didn’t, however, touch Teddy and he couldn’t look up. “No. Not exactly. He came with the name. It was a coincidence.”

Teddy kept his eyes on Andy, letting his own fingers circle through the fur closer and closer to Jules’s until the tip of his finger was barely brushing against the side of Jules’s thumb. He kept it there, a light and moving pressure, a quiet contact. “I thought he might be a reminder for you or something,” he said.

“He is,” Jules said, withdrawing his hand and pulling his knees up to his chest. “He belonged to Andy, and he’s what I have left of him.” This wasn’t, Jules realized, entirely true. The apartment had belonged to Andy before they’d shared it, and everything with which they’d filled the apartment (the slumped, soft couch, the bed, the books and the paintings, the silverware and the good wine glasses and the dishes), all of it had been collected and polished and loved with Andy. He was, he came suddenly to see, surrounded by things Andy had chosen, had lived with and touched. But these things, Jules thought, feeling small and stuck in the thought, belonged to
him,
too; he couldn’t entirely free himself of Andy without giving up a large part of his own life.

Teddy had stopped petting Andy and had laid both his hands in his lap, palms up, an unreadable gesture—defeated or willing or broken open, Jules couldn’t tell. “But,” he said, reaching over to slide his hands against Teddy’s palms, “I should have told you this before, on the phone, when we talked about it. There’s enough room, Teddy.”

Teddy’s hands stayed open; they didn’t close over Jules’s. Jules sighed, trying again. “Most people grow up with two sets of grandparents,” he said. “And you can love both grandmothers, even if they are very different, and even if they are both wonderful grandmothers. And when you’re visiting one, you don’t spend your time with her thinking about how much you miss the other one. It doesn’t work that way.”

Teddy nodded and he smiled at Jules and squeezed his hands, but his eyes were wet and glossy. “I get it,” Teddy whispered. “I’m not trying to be dramatic or needy or think too far ahead or something. It’s just… intimidating.”

Jules nodded. Gingerly, he picked up Andy and laid him on the pillow on the floor, then turned back and scooted closer to Teddy, until their arms and thighs pressed together. He slipped his hand into Teddy’s and laid his cheek against Teddy’s chest. “I think I really like you. I think it could be good, too.”

*

They took the bowl of peaches to the kitchen, and together they sliced the fruit into thin wedges, their fingers shining with juice.

“Would it gross you out if I ate one of these out of the bowl?” Teddy asked, holding a slice of peach to his mouth.

Jules rolled his eyes. “No, it wouldn’t gross me out. I’m not
that
uptight, thank you.” So Teddy slowly sucked the fruit into his mouth with a slick sound. It was meant to be a little obnoxious, a little challenging, Jules knew, but it sent a dazzling shudder through the pit of him as he watched. Teddy smiled at him, a little wickedly.

“Oh, so there you go, then. Would it gross
you
out to feed me one, too?” Jules volleyed, barely stifling the smirk in his voice. “My hands are a mess, and you make it… Look. So. Good.” He breathed this out in his best Monroe imitation, holding up his fingers, sticky with peach pulp and sugar, and lowering his eyelids and opening his mouth. Teddy laughed a little under his breath and slowly slipped one of the cool slices along Jules’s bottom lip before pushing it onto his tongue with one finger.

“Mmmmm,” Jules moaned, closing his lips on Teddy’s finger and sucking lightly, running the tip of his tongue along its length, doing his best imitation of a desperate starlet. It was
cliché and camp, he thought, and perfect to lighten an evening that had gotten too dark too quickly. “
Soooo
sweet,” he mumbled around the finger.

But when he opened his eyes to look at Teddy and share the laugh, he was startled to find the man watching him, hazy and wide-eyed and already reaching for another slice of peach with his free hand. Jules opened his mouth and let the finger go. “Oh,” he said, his own sugary, wet hands still held up awkwardly near his cheeks.

Teddy raised his eyebrows. “Would it gross you out if I did
this?” he a
sked, and licked slowly up the back of Jules’s slick hand from his wrist to the tip of his forefinger, a long, warm rasp with the
flat of his tongue.

“No,” Jules said simply, swallowing hard. “Would this gross you out?” He pulled the peach slice from Teddy’s fingers and put it on his own tongue, crushing the fruit against the roof of his mouth and letting the juice spill slowly everywhere, down his throat and onto his lips. He kissed Teddy, his mouth open, pushing the sticky pulp onto Teddy’s tongue and licking there gently until Teddy made a soft, shuddering sound and put his hands, damp and cool and heavy with the scent of the fruit, on Jules’s neck and kissed him back.

After the kiss had finished, they simply stood, looking and breathing and not knowing, their faces shining with sugar and pulp. After the kiss had finished, there was a shift and pull, when the gravity of the moment had slipped off and it was, Jules thought, no longer funny in the least. There was a swelling ache in his throat.

“Our clothes,” Jules said under his breath. “The juice is going
to stain.”

So Teddy wiped his hands on a towel and hauled off his shirt and vest in one motion, then unbuttoned Jules’s shirt while Jules held his slick hands up in the air like a helpless surgeon. They pulled at buttons and zippers, pulled at fabric until it all slid away with a rough shush and t
hey stood, finally, with nothing to cover them, bare chest to bare chest, and Jules ran his hands flat down the length of Teddy’s body, leaving a thick trail of nectar glistening on his skin. He followed his hands with the slippery tongue of a peach, and then dragged his mouth over the skin that had opened up to him, tracing the path again with open kisses and little knowing licks, his fingers sticking in the sugared spots on Teddy’s ribs. Teddy shook beneath his hands, then bent and sucked the sweet spots on Jules’s neck where his fingers had left streaks of juice gleaming on the pale skin. Jules kissed him down to the tiled floor and they tangled there with the bowl of peaches placed nearby, digging their hands in and painting the juice and the flesh of the fruit across bellies and thighs, into the tender crook of an elbow, the small pool of a navel and the gentle dip of a clavicle, until the whole kitchen smelled like summer: peach-sweet and sweaty and close.

*

There is no kind and clean way to say it, no tender words for this: They fucked on the floor, slick with sweat and peach juice, the sugar crystallizing in the warm creases of their bodies, rubbing them raw where skin met skin. They fucked desperately, they fucked with absolute joy, they fucked so that they ached and shivered, so that their breath was too thin and frantic and made them dizzy and almost put them out into blackness. They fucked with loose and furious hands and mouths and tongues and flesh, and there was too much of it and not enough; they fucked with their bare toes scraping against the tile; they fucked and they fucked until they disappeared from the world, until their bodies were the only thing left, until their muscles shook and their bones bent under them and they thought they would break, and still they wanted more; they fucked until they yelled and cried and their throats were sore, and then they fucked silently, shaking and panting and smacking together in the dim blue light, searching with their mouths for air and skin and
oh, just, just, just a little more
until they were able to whisper again, and then they fucked with whispers, sweet and hungry and wailingly sad because they could not make their bodies closer, could not smash them together into one, could not ever wholly undo the distance between them and they felt that completely—they felt it like panic and they felt it like bliss and they felt it again like mourning.

They fucked until they broke and then fucked until they healed. They fucked and came and fucked again, until they burst open like sudden flowers and their fragile bodies shattered down to the bones and lay on the cool tile, heaving and shuddering, until they could make their eyes open again and pull their lips apart and slowly return themselves to the world.

*

In the earliest hours of the morning, Jules woke before the alarm, overheated and a little sweaty, with one bare leg stretching out from under the blankets in search of cooler air. Teddy was pressed against him, breathing in soft puffs against his shoulder; his arm curled up over Jules’s chest and his hand tenderly cradled Jules’s jaw, as if he were just about to bend him gently backward and kiss the breath out of him. He had, of course, done so the previous night, over and over, until Jules was so full of happiness he might shatter into a thousand spinning little stars, but this morning Teddy was still and sleeping and his face, in sleep, looked so tenderly beautiful—his eyelids almost translucent, his lips just barely open for his breath—that Jules was afraid to move. He ran a finger lightly down the slope of Teddy’s nose and pressed it, gently, to his lips, before dragging himself out from under Teddy’s arm and into the gray air of the morning.

He showered and dressed, walked and fed Andy, and left a note and a key for Teddy on the bedside table, then walked the short way to the bakery and let himself inside.

Hours later, when the front gate rumbled and ‘Trice hurtled in and straight to the espresso machine (“Jules!” she yelled, as she did every single morning, “I’m making coffee!”), the croissants and muffins, cookies and little pies were cooling on the metal racks near the back of the kitchen and Jules’s bag was slung over his shoulder.

“I’m going home early today,” he called, sailing as smoothly as he could toward the front door. “Call me with any disasters!”

“Whoa, there, Amelia Airhead!” ‘Trice said, pegging him with a paper cup just before he reached the door. “Are you sick? Is there a sample sale that’s also on fire? Is it Fleet Week? You got a hot date?”

Jules stopped and sighed, turning slowly on his heel. He had just opened his mouth to retort when she interrupted him, hurling another cup in his direction.

“It
is
a hot date, you dirty old man!” she yelled.

“I can go home early. It doesn’t have to be an event.”

“Chef Burns finally got laid!” she shrieked, banging through her routine at the espresso machine. “I can totally tell! You got grass-hopped!” She flung her arm up in the air; the spoon she was using to strain the milk flipped blops of milk foam all over the counter.

“You know,” Jules could feel the heat creeping over his face, even as he worked hard to sound sassy and indignant—”you are
not
psychic and most of the time you
don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

“
‘
Trice knows all and sees all,” she said in a deep, floaty voice, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at him through narrowed eyes.

“You’re a crazy person who’s obsessed with my sex life. It’s unhealthy. You need help.”

“
You
need help,” ‘Trice said. “And ooooh
, girlfriend
got
some help, didn’t he?”

Jules glared at her as she took a long, innocent-eyed drink from her mug. “Lots of help, by the look of you. Second helpings. And thirds and fourths.”

“Call me
only
if there’s an apocalypse here,” Jules said and turned toward the door.

“It’s
hard
to get good help these days,” she cooed at him, twirling her locks in big loops like lassos. “Don’t you find it
hard
?
”

“In my experience,” he grumbled, “it is incredibly hard to get good help these days. Help these days has a giant, smart-ass mouth.”

She laughed, and he felt another paper cup hit him in the back, but he didn’t stop to reply.

*

Teddy woke around seven in a bed that wasn’t his. The tree outside the window shook the light into unfamiliar patterns on the blankets. The only noise was the electric hum of the refrigerator and a little quiet snuffling and wheezing he was sure was Andy. By the bed he found a key and a note from Jules promising to return once ‘Trice got to work and hoping to catch him before he left for the office.

Teddy found his pants on the kitchen floor and his phone in the pocket. He called in sick, and his voice was hoarse enough from the night before, he might’ve even sounded believably ill. He cleaned up the night’s tossed-off clothing and the slopped bowl of peaches (in which Andy, by the matted and sticky look of him, had been exploring) and put a kettle of water to boil on the stove for coffee.

Jules came home while he was in the shower and poked his head suddenly into the bathroom to say, “It’s just me here; don’t let me scare you!” Which, as Jules should have known, startled Teddy so much he actually yelped and flattened himself against the tile wall.

“Are you rushing?” Jules said when Teddy met him in the kitchen, towel clutched around his hips. “I finished making the coffee, and there’s a travel mug for you just in case you have to run.”

“I took the day off,
but I can get out of your hair if you have stuff to do today.”