The Distance (7 page)

Zachary asked, “What did you say to him afterwards? How did you leave it?”

“I’m not proud of this, or any of it, but I just got dressed and left without saying anything. The moment we finished, it became painfully awkward. We’d been yelling at each other right before it happened, so it wasn’t like we were suddenly going to make polite conversation.”

“Who initiated it, you or him?”

I had to think about that before saying, “I guess I did. He had me pinned to the floor, and all of a sudden I got really turned on. When he let go of me, I grabbed him and kissed him.”

He said, “Sounds hot.”

“It was, but now I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Don’t overthink it. You were attracted to each other, you fucked, and that’s that. It might be a bit awkward next time you see him at the races, but there’s no reason to feel bad about this.”

“You’re right. It just threw me off.” I glanced at him and asked, “Do you think less of me because I did this?”

“Of course not.” He grinned a little and added, “You know, now that I think about it, I hated a lot of my customers, going all the way back to the trick who claimed my virginity. All of that probably counts as hate sex, so I’m clearly in no position to judge.”

“Oh God,” I murmured, then quickly added, “I don’t mean to sound shocked. I just didn’t know you lost your virginity to a client.” My heart broke for him a million times over.

He nodded and admitted quietly, “It’s fucked up, I know. So’s the fact that I’ve never had sex with anyone who wasn’t paying me.”

“Never?”

Zachary shook his head. “I tried. I clumsily propositioned Chance once when he was single, but he thought I was kidding. Thank God. Like this living arrangement isn’t awkward enough.”

I whispered, “I wish things had been different for you, Zachary.”

He tried to brush it off, and said, “Could have been worse.” My friend picked up a red-and-brown-striped throw pillow and fidgeted with it. After a moment, he added, “You know, I don’t usually open up about any of this shit, but you’re easy to talk to. Thanks for listening, Jessie, and for not giving me a lot of unsolicited advice or trying to fix me.”

“It’d be nuts for me to try to fix anyone when I can’t even fix myself,” I told him as I slid close and leaned against him.

Zachary put his head on my shoulder and asked, “Why do you need fixing? It seems like you have it all together.”

If only that were true.

Nana and Ollie (and their dogs) had gone out for Valentine’s Day brunch, so the big house was oddly quiet when I got home the next morning. Two of her grandsons had been staying there when I first moved in, but they’d both found love over the last year and went off to live with their partners. Only I remained.

Most of the decorations were still in place from the night before, but the peen forest in the foyer had apparently been heavily logged. Only six stragglers were left behind, and they were clustered around the front door, as if they were eager to go join their friends. I assumed some of the guests had taken the other two dozen balloon phalluses home, and grinned at the thought of cars driving all over the city with giant dongs sticking out the windows.

The house smelled a bit like a funeral parlor, since Ollie had had dozens of bouquets of flowers delivered to Nana for the holiday. Roses, lilies, and things I didn’t have a name for covered almost every surface in the living room and kitchen. I had to move three flower arrangements aside just to get to the huge chrome espresso machine.

I needed caffeine desperately, so I sighed in frustration as I spun dials and poked at the complicated device. After living in Italy, Ollie claimed he couldn’t function without espresso and bought the professional-grade appliance, replacing the standard coffee maker. He’d shown me how to use it more than once, but somehow the nuances escaped me. The two-inch-thick all-in-Italian instruction manual clearly wasn’t going to shed any light on the situation, either.

My need for caffeine grew more critical with each passing minute, but the only thing I managed to brew was a headache. Chance and Finn had invited me to stay for breakfast after I spent the night on their couch, but I’d decided to head home instead of intruding on their family time. They’d been trying to make heart-shaped pancakes while Colt and Elijah, the teenagers in the household, chuckled and called their guardians corny. The boys were clearly enjoying every minute of it, though. It was all very cute, and very sweet, and in just those few minutes, I totally understood why Zachary felt like a third wheel, despite the Chinns’ efforts to include him (that was the celebrity couple name Zachary and I had come up with for Chance and Finn, which the newlyweds found endlessly amusing).

I took off my hoodie and tossed it on top of the refrigerator since the counters were florist central, then tried to make sense of the staggering number of knobs and dials. As the water warmed somewhere inside the machine with a low rumbling sound, I actually managed to grind and dispense some coffee beans, which I caught in a little metal cup with a handle. Progress!

From there, I moved on to frothing the milk with a steam spigot that protruded from the right side of the contraption. It went remarkably well, and I felt pretty good about myself as the milk foamed up and tripled in volume. But I forgot to turn off the spigot before pulling the pitcher away, so it blasted the frothy milk all over the front of me. Well, crap. It wasn’t all that hot, thank God, but Zachary had gone above and beyond in the friend department and had washed my clothes for me, and now my red t-shirt was once again ready for the laundry.

I jumped a bit as someone knocked on the door just as a thin column of steam shot up from the top of the machine. Shit, that wasn’t right. I quickly turned some knobs, but all that did was produce a second steam column and a sharp hissing sound.

Whoever was outside knocked again. Damn it! I gave a couple knobs a final spin and ran to the front door. When I flung it open, Trigger was standing there holding my wallet and baseball cap, and his mouth fell open as he stared at me in abject horror.

“What?” I demanded, before realizing I was surrounded by giant balloon penises.

That wasn’t what he was staring at, though. “Did you seriously not change your clothes from last night?”

“Dude, who are you, the hygiene police? Not that it’s any of your business, but—” I’d been about to tell him they’d been laundered, but when I looked down at myself and noticed the huge splatter of white foam all across the front of me, I exclaimed, “Jesus! No! That’s not what it looks like!” My words were partially drowned out as the hissing sound in the kitchen suddenly went up several octaves and a few decibels.

“What is that?” he yelled over the noise.

“The espresso machine. Shit!” I turned and ran back to the kitchen. Steam was shooting out of the appliance from half a dozen locations, and it had begun to shimmy and rattle, jerkily walking itself across the counter like a reanimated corpse. I dodged the steam as I quickly twisted every knob, but nothing changed.

Trigger appeared beside me and tossed my hat and wallet on top of the refrigerator. He then flipped a tiny, silver switch, pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt over his hand for protection, and slid open a panel at the top of the machine. A mushroom cloud of steam billowed out, and the hissing and rattling stopped instantly. He turned to me and exclaimed, “What did you think you were doing here? You were running this machine way too hot, it could have exploded and killed someone!”

“Well, good news,” I snapped, instantly annoyed, “I was the only ‘someone’ here, and I know you wouldn’t have lost any sleep mourning my untimely demise!” I pushed my hair out of my eyes, and when my fingers came away with foam on them, I sighed and stripped off my t-shirt, balled it up and used a dry section to wipe my face and hair.

“You’re a total and complete disaster,” he told me. “If you can’t even figure out a coffee maker, why doesn’t your car explode every time you turn the key in the ignition? Or do you pay someone to work on your Matchbox car for you?”

“No, I don’t pay anybody! And this thing is hardly a
coffee maker
, it’s an Italian Rube Goldberg device! I defy anyone to actually produce a cup of espresso with this thing without first dedicating twenty years of their life to studying its unfathomable complexities!”

Trigger shot me a look, then turned to the machine. He flipped the little switch again, closed the panel, and spent about a minute doing various things before handing me a cup of espresso and grinning smugly. He’d drawn a precise Chevy logo on the top with foam. “I hate you,” I said.

“I know.”

I added a splash of cold milk and slammed down the espresso (which, damn him, was absolutely perfect), and as I put the little white cup in the sink, I said, “You worked at Starbucks, right?”

“Hell no. I worked at an independently owned coffee bar in North Beach when I was in high school.” He turned back to the machine and wiped it down with a dish cloth. “You should really treat this better. It’s the Ferrari of espresso makers, but I suppose a spoiled rich kid like you takes things like this for granted.”

“I’m hardly a spoiled rich kid.”

“No, of course not. You just live in a multimillion-dollar mansion in one of San Francisco’s most expensive neighborhoods and have a five thousand dollar espresso machine.”

“Jesus, was that thing really five thousand dollars?”

“More, probably. That’s what it would cost wholesale.” He tossed the rag into the sink and started to leave the kitchen as he said, “I brought your wallet back. It was under my shirt on the floor of the garage. I didn’t use your credit cards or anything, but since you think I’m Satan’s spawn and probably don’t believe me, feel free to cancel them.”

“Thanks for bringing it and my lucky hat back.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder as he headed into the foyer. “Wow, you actually said thank you. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Bite me.”

“Ah, there’s the Jessie-with-an-i-e James I know and hate.”

“You didn’t hate me all that much last night, on the floor of your shop,” I said, despite myself.

He stopped walking and turned to look at me, narrowing his dark eyes. “I made sure to turn on the fan in my garage this morning. I can only assume there was a serious carbon monoxide problem in there, because I must have been completely high to do that with you.”

“Fuck you, Richard.”

“Why are you calling me Richard?”

“Oh you’re right, you’re really more of a Dick.”

Trigger rolled his eyes and headed for the door again. “If you want people to believe your fake ID, maybe stop acting like a child, Richie Rich.”

“Dude, I’m the chauffeur. Do I really look like I belong in a place like this?”

He paused again and turned back to me. “Do you drive the limo that’s parked in the driveway?” When I nodded, he said, “While you drive it, are you dressed like a big, pink Care Bear with a rainbow on your belly?”

“Funny! Do you have a problem with gay pride?” He frowned at me and I said, “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You’re probably so deep in the closet you can see Narnia. Am I right?”

“I what?”

“Okay, technically it was a wardrobe, but that’s a type of closet so it’s still funny.”

“What the actual hell are you talking about?”

“Narnia.”

“You’re a total lunatic.”

“And you’re a closet case.”

“Whatever you think I am doesn’t change the fact that you drive around in a sparkly rainbow car and live in Rainbow Brite’s dream home.”

“So Nana’s enthusiastic about gay rights. The world would be a much better place if more people were even half as loving and supportive as she is!”

“Nana?”

“My employer.”

“Ah, so you work for and live with your wealthy grandmother. But you’re not rich,” he said with a smirk.

My voice rose as I asked, “Why do I bother trying to explain anything to you? You don’t listen, you think you know everything, and you always have to be right!”

“Right back at you, every word of that!”

“Why the hell did you have sex with me last night when you obviously can’t stand me?”

He put his hands on his hips and exclaimed, “Again, right back at you!”

“I have absolutely no idea!”

“Me neither!”

Trigger turned and stormed to the front door, which was kind of funny because he had to push several towering balloon dicks out of the way to reach it. He then swung the door open with such force that all the dicks skittered backwards in the updraft. For a moment he just stood there, holding the door open, glued to the spot. Then he slammed it shut and ran back to me.

I grabbed him in an embrace as he pulled me off my feet and crushed his lips to mine. He cupped my ass with both hands, and when I pushed my tongue in his mouth, he tasted so sweet. I stopped kissing him just long enough to strip off his t-shirt and sweatshirt and nipped his bare shoulder before kissing him again.

Trigger carried me to the curving staircase, his lips never leaving mine, and I wrapped my legs around him and rocked my hips to rub my swelling cock against his through our jeans. He sat me on the fifth step up and fumbled with my zipper before freeing my cock and going down on me. As he sucked me almost frantically, I moaned and arched my back, bracing my elbows on the stairs. But after a moment I regained enough of my senses to say, “Not here. I don’t know when my employer’s coming back.”

“Where?” he asked, breathing hard as he looked up at me from between my legs.

“My room.” I stumbled to my feet and pulled up my pants, then grabbed his shirts and his hand and ran up the stairs with him.

When I flung open my bedroom door, I blurted, “Holy crap!” The small room was completely filled wall-to-wall with what looked like all the missing nine-foot-tall dick balloons. The only open space was a two-foot square just inside the door, so I could open it.

“What the ever-loving fuck?” Trigger exclaimed.

“Dante, probably,” I said, mostly to myself. “He owed me one after I called his brother and husband while he was wearing that giant tampon dress.”

“What?”

“Nothing, never mind.” I shut the door and towed him down the hall to what had been Dante’s room, pushed Trigger inside, and locked the door behind us. I then threw his clothes on the floor and kissed him passionately.

He quickly maneuvered me to the bed and when I sat down on it, he fell to his knees in front of me. Once my cock was back between his full lips, his eyes slid shut and he actually murmured, “Mmmmm.” Trigger stroked my shaft as he sucked me, and when I ran my fingers into his thick, dark hair, he looked up at me. When our eyes locked, my cock twitched and my breath caught.

No way was I going to last long, given how great that blowjob felt, and in just a few minutes I mumbled, “Oh God, I’m about to cum.” I expected him to pull off me, but instead he redoubled his efforts, grabbing my ass as he took most of my length. I moaned as I came in his warm, wet mouth, and he swallowed without hesitation.

I fell back afterwards, trying to catch my breath, but before I hit the mattress, Trigger was on his feet. A very obvious erection strained the fabric of his jeans, so it made zero sense to me when he pulled on his t-shirt and sweatshirt and headed for the exit. “Hang on,” I called as he unlocked the door and slipped through it. Of course he didn’t listen. Nothing new there.

I jumped off the bed and pulled up my briefs and jeans as I followed him. “What about you? Don’t you want me to return the favor?” I called.

“I have to go,” he mumbled. Seriously? He was actually turning down a blowjob? A team of scientists should be studying him, because he had to be the only male of the species to ever do that.