What It Takes (20 page)

Missing Milo—he perfected that, smothering longing with pragmatism for the sake of survival. He shoved it deep enough that after a while it was hardly noticeable, another background noise in the symphony of everyday life. For a very long time Andrew survived by reminding himself that Milo was moving on and that it was what he needed. Despite this, Andrew spent the first years without him fantasizing about surprise visits: Milo somehow suddenly at his doorstep, confessing that it had all been a terrible mistake.

Had he known that two years later Milo would still be missing him, searching for or wishing for him, Andrew isn’t sure he’d ever have pulled himself together. But he has that knowledge now, and, despite his better judgment, Andrew can’t help but wonder what might have been.

Although they hardly spoke of their lists through the rest of lunch, Andrew’s been thinking about his since. When he gave Milo his list of dreams, a family had been one of his wishes. He’s not sure why he wrote it down, because having a family isn’t a wish to be crossed off a list, like sky diving, or even a more abstract one, like finding success as a writer. Having a family was something Andrew wanted with
Milo
. Even without adding that specific, unrealistic dream, why confess such a desire only at goodbye?

For a long time, having a family remained an abstract dream. He and Dex have spoken of it a few times, but mostly in the context of how young they are and how they have time to think about it later. What had once been a visceral, if too mature and foolish dream, faded over the years into something less urgent.

Until today, Andrew believed he and Milo were making it as friends, despite the subtext always vivid between them. But figuring out how to navigate this friendship that’s so different from its childhood version, enmeshed and perfect and completely unworkable… Andrew has been kidding himself.

Milo will leave soon. Despite the quick subject change from Milo’s future plans, Andrew is sure of this. Andrew would never wish Shelby illness for the sake of having Milo back in his life. But it’s bittersweet, this good news, knowing Milo is going to slip back out of his life. For years Andrew built his whole identity around the idea of being Milo’s savior. He loved, and thought himself lovable, only as a satellite.

Dex changed that. Dex was patient and devoted and helped Andrew grow out of his fears and into self-worth, taught him to believe in love and held Andrew through terrifying vulnerability. Dex is his first serious relationship, but in any long-term relationship, things will get hard, and persistence is what they both need. Milo’s friendship is something Andrew can’t imagine giving up, but he needs to banish any
what if’s
because they’ll break things.

°

“I’m going to interview for the job,” Dex says.

It’s the middle of a quiet dinner. Andrew’s not particularly fond of cooking, and it’s not a strength. But he planned this, a nice dinner, hoping for something sweet and intimate. Dex’s words sink like stones in his stomach.

“What? I don’t—”

“I’m sorry,” Dex says, looking down. “I’m not deciding anything. I…I need to try, at least. I’ll always wonder, because this job is an incredible opportunity.”

“I… I don’t want to hold you back,” Andrew says. His lips feel numb, his fingers tingle and anxiety is cresting in his chest. Despite Dex’s ambiguous assurance, Andrew senses the immediate threat of goodbye. He feels a flash of blinding anger, and then more anxiety, because for one moment, he’s not sure he’s really afraid of Dex leaving him.

“Would you come?”

Andrew starts to respond, an automatic
yes
on his lips, because he’s supposed to want to be with Dex more than home. But he hesitates, for a split second unsure whether he would leave for Dex.

“Well, then,” Dex says. He stands, folding his napkin on the table. “I guess that’s what I need to know.”

“No, no.” Andrew grabs Dex’s hand. “I would, please don’t—I just…”

“Andrew—” Dex’s hand is gentle on his cheek.

“I love you,” Andrew says, pulling Dex into his arms. He wants the words to mean enough. Dex sighs and, after a moment, wraps his arms around Andrew. Andrew kisses his neck, behind his ear.

“Andrew, this won’t solve anything.”

“Go to your interview,” Andrew says. He kisses Dex’s cheek and grips the back of his shirt. “And we’ll decide what to do when it’s over.”

“Okay.” Dex kisses Andrew softly, then pulls away.

Dex doesn’t come to bed until late, and then carefully keeps their bodies apart. Feigning sleep, Andrew wills himself with everything he has not to cry, not to turn over and yell at him for his selfishness. Not to let his resentment consume what he’s worked so hard to have. Not to use their bodies to bridge a gap he’s not sure how else to cross. For a very long time, Andrew used sex to cover things he wasn’t ready to feel, or to create false intimacy. He can’t stand the thought of doing that now, even when it’s tempting, when in the silence he can hear his relationship falling apart.

°

Andrew should see it coming, but he doesn’t. At least, not so soon. Not before he’s made up his mind. Holding onto Dex because he’s not ready to make a choice is incredibly selfish and disrespectful. Dex comes home from D.C. and informs Andrew he is taking the job, and that the time apart enabled him to really evaluate where they both are and what they want. And what they want, Dex explains, isn’t the same any more. It’s incredibly brave, Andrew knows, for Dex to be the one to acknowledge what they’ve avoided talking about. Somehow, in these last few months, Andrew has fallen out of love with him—Dex’s final words were too true—but in their parting, he can’t bring himself to tell Dex that not being
in love
doesn’t mean he doesn’t love him.

The resonant peal of the door slamming behind Dex vibrates in Andrew’s imagination. When Andrew manages to really look around, through the blur of tears, he sees all the spaces Dex erased himself from.

He finds himself on the beach, trying to smooth the rough edges of his thoughts, which bounce from self-loathing to righteous anger to acceptance, knowing that Dex was right.
They
weren’t right; it wasn’t going to work. Maybe it could have; maybe Andrew could have found a compromise or a solution. Only with Milo back here, worming his way back into Andrew’s heart despite every best intention, he can’t deny that he didn’t really want a solution. He was a fool to think Dex wouldn’t know or see the role Milo has played in this.

“You won’t admit it,” Dex said, one hand already on the doorknob, “but you wanted me to do this because you couldn’t. You can’t bring yourself to love him again, but you can’t let go.”

“That’s not true,” Andrew protested.

“I know,” Dex said, more gently, “that I’m the first person you ever really let yourself love. Other than him. So maybe I could understand your fear.”

“Dex—”

“But the truth is, I don’t want to. I can’t. That’s not enough for me, and it shouldn’t be for you.”

By the time Andrew gathered himself enough to stand, to go to him, Dex was gone.

The beach seemed the best place to go. It’s where his roots run deepest, grounding the secret self Dex could never understand. Maybe Andrew never gave him the chance. It’s cold, a deep chill that seems early for the season. He’s dressed warmly for once.

A senseless, shapeless, helpless anger fills Andrew—at his stupid heart that won’t unlearn Milo and let him appreciate Dex’s warm, uncomplicated happiness. And Milo… god, storming back into Andrew’s life, a changed, yet completely similar man. Contained enough not to need Andrew the way he had as a kid, but still so much himself that Andrew sometimes yearns for those days and old, familiar patterns.

He should have offered to leave. He should have seen into the heart of Dex’s silence and known they could only work if he left. But even as he wishes it, he knows he doesn’t really mean it.

chapter thirteen

A
ndrew doesn’t answer his phone for three days straight. Milo texts and calls, but saves his news for when he can actually talk to him. It’s something to share in person. On the third day, he takes a chance and goes by Andrew’s place. Things have definitely been awkward around Dex recently, but Milo is worried.

No one answers the door.

He waits for an hour, hoping they’re out running errands. After a while it seems foolish and useless to stay. What nags isn’t the silence, but a growing, subtle energy from Andrew that’s been building to something Milo thinks might be visible to others, not just to him.

Finally, he slips a note under their door, then decides to take a chance. He drives to Chickopee and parks. It’s verging on sundown; everything glows hazy pink and orange. October is really a little too cold to be out near dusk. He rolls up the collar of his sweater and begins his trek through the sand. It kicks up into his shoes and rubs against his heels, but it’s slightly less irritating than frozen toes. The air is swiftly leeching the warmth of the day; the swell of west-facing sand dunes blocks the last of the sun.

When he finally breaks through the grasses into deep sand that bears the marks of wind and trespassing feet, leaving him unsteady in his gait, he scans for any figure on the beach. He almost misses the one lonely silhouette to the east; as Milo approaches, he sees that it is indeed Andrew.

“You haven’t been answering your phone,” Milo says when he’s within range.

“I haven’t been ready to talk,” Andrew answers without looking at him. In the waning light, it’s clear he’s been crying.

“Are you now? What’s going on?” Milo hovers awkwardly. Andrew looks up at him finally, and his smile is an invitation to sit down.

“I don’t know,” he admits once Milo is settled. Andrew leans into him a little, for warmth and shelter from the wind, Milo assumes. As the wind kicks up, so does the water. It’s a long time before Andrew speaks. The sky is pregnant with twilight, purple and indigo. Venus shines brightly in the east.

“He left,” Andrew says at length.

“What?” Milo turns to him, shocked—both by the words and by the calm.

“It was coming. We both knew.”

“I thought you were happy… you said you loved him. Are you all right?”

“I don’t think love is always enough,” Andrew says, simple and easy and light. Too light.

“Of course it... I mean—”

“I mean, loving someone isn’t enough to make a life complete,” Andrew clarifies. “He wasn’t happy here. I couldn’t be happy anywhere else. It pulled at us until we couldn’t ignore it: I think we fell out of love. He said—there were other things that—” Andrew stops and swallows.

“What?”

Andrew stares at him; they hold each other’s gaze and there’s truth in that look he hasn’t let himself speak out loud: a sense of home, intangible but electrifying. It sets his heart pounding so he can feel it in his throat and ears and where his breath is fast—too fast. Dizzy, he wonders who will say it first.

“My heart wasn’t there anymore. It was somewhere else.” Andrew’s words, caught breathless in his throat, almost get lost in the mutter of nature around them. Milo closes his eyes and feels the words lodge in his heart and stomach and buzz into his hands and lips. His own breathlessness pops colored pinwheels behind his eyes. When he opens them, Andrew’s eyes are still on him, only his lips tremble. His body is shaking, a little: a constant hum Milo can see and sense, and he knows it’s not all the wind.

“Andrew—” Milo reaches up to touch his cheek, or his lips, or to place his hand over what he’s sure is a galloping heart. But Andrew’s hands are already on his face, framing the sharp cut of his cheekbones, fingertips at the edge of his hair. Then his mouth is on Milo’s, lips too frantic, a kiss too needful, heady and helpless and shocking, but everything, everything, everything.

Milo hauls Andrew over his lap before the next breath. He doesn’t gentle the kiss and neither does Andrew, but they settle; they fit each other’s mouths and it’s nothing and everything to nip at his lips and taste his breath and feel the cold between their bodies disappear as the spaces between them grow incrementally smaller and smaller until they only exist where it’s impossible to fit closer together.

“Andrew,” Milo breaks away to whisper. Andrew’s mouth under his ear is wet and warm, and his teeth on his earlobe feel like too much. It’s almost full dark, but the wrong place for this, the wrong moment, because as in all his tucked-away fantasies, he wants to take the time to enjoy Andrew with steady touch and lasting kisses and enough light to discover every part of him. Even with Andrew in his arms, this feels like a dream, unreal and unsteadying.

“I know.” Andrew shudders against him and Milo’s fingers are in his hair, pulling him in for a few more stolen seconds. “Come home with me, please.”

“Andrew,” Milo says, thinking of a home Andrew shared with someone else days before, “I don’t know—will that be—”

“Please, I know, I know what I need and it’s you, please. I need to know this is real.”

“Yes.” Milo can give them permission to do this, and he can trust Andrew’s want and his yes. He can make this real as it never was, even after the funeral. “Yes,
yes
.”

°

It’s surreal, for a second, to be at the threshold of his apartment, key in hand, with Milo a few inches behind him. Without Milo’s body touching his, without that connection between their eyes, their frenetic magnetism eases. When he brings Milo in, it will be with a deliberate intent he let himself sink into in the car.

“Andrew, it’s okay if you change your mind,” Milo says, almost a whisper. Andrew wishes he was so close he could feel the breath of that whisper, feel Milo’s heat so close to his own. He
can
have it. He only has to open the door.

He reaches behind him for Milo’s hand and finds it, pulls him in. Milo shuts the door and pulls him back, kisses the back of his neck softly at first, as his hands pull him closer by the hips. Gentleness gives way to hunger quickly, to biting kisses and short breath, fingers slipping down Andrew’s pelvis over his pants, teasing and so,
so
close to where Andrew is starting to harden.

Andrew puts his hands over Milo’s, spreading his fingers between Milo’s and pushing them down. He tilts his head against Milo’s shoulder and whimpers out a
please
, pushing their hands over himself.

“God, Andrew.” Milo’s hands mold over him, squeeze him, and Andrew is sure he’ll melt into it. He turns to crush their mouths together, coming up on his tiptoes to do so. It’s fevered, messy, but somehow with sweetness between them that he’ll never find elsewhere. He rushes his hands under Milo’s shirt. Stumbling backward blindly, Andrew manages to steer them to the couch while simultaneously finding Milo’s lovely brown nipples. He digs the nail of one thumb into one lightly and swallows Milo’s excited exhale.

“Here, here,” Andrew says, panting desperately. He pulls Milo over him onto the couch. Like this, on a couch a little too small for them, with Milo’s big body on his, Andrew is completely sheltered, overwhelmed by Milo’s touch and kiss and smell.

He tries to roll up into Milo’s body; their clothes are too constricting; the denim of their jeans blocks the connection he needs.

“Pants,” he says, wriggling a little to get his hands between them.

“Here.” Milo bats his hands away. He has Andrew’s pants undone and off incredibly fast. They hit the floor with a thump, and then Milo’s eyes are all over him. He runs his hands up Andrew’s legs, over the fuzz of his hair and then thumbing the vee of his pelvis. He kisses Andrew’s hip, then spreads his legs to nuzzle the curve of his inner thigh.

“Fuck,
oh god
.” Andrew gets his hands into Milo’s hair. It’s beautiful in the lamplight, soft in his hands. He tugs on it to bring Milo up to kiss him. “Yours too, please.”

Milo works his jeans off, a little more awkwardly. Andrew helps him kick them off, kissing Milo’s shoulders and neck and whispering
yes, yes
against the skin blooming red and damp with pleasure-flush.

Naked now, so close, but not close enough, Andrew folds his legs up to wrap around Milo’s hips.

“I didn’t—” Milo says, then gasps when their cocks rub together. They rock out of rhythm, desperation for that peak of pleasure making them uncoordinated and hasty.

“You didn’t?” Andrew asks, then digs his fingers into Milo’s waist.

“I imagined slow,” Milo says, then bites Andrew’s lip and kisses him, licking into his mouth, lush and edging toward a tenderness that’s slower than their bodies cry for. “I wanted to appreciate you.”

“Okay,” Andrew says with a smile, still grinding up against Milo. Their bodies start to move together more smoothly. “Next time. Fuck me any way you want, but now—oh shit,
yes
—don’t make me wait.”

Milo tucks his face close to Andrew’s and rocks against him harder; everything is desperate, too hot, with too much friction and perfect, perfect heat: the coalescing of all his longing making him come faster than he has in years.

“Shit, shit,
shit
,” he moans into Andrew’s skin, shaking hard and pulled apart on top of him. Andrew cries out, legs tightening almost painfully, and comes too.

°

It’s warm still, somehow, even when they come down with sweat cooling and come sticky between them. Milo is heavy, boneless on top of him. Andrew doesn’t want to ask him to stir, but has to.

“You’re heavy,” he whispers eventually.

“Yes,” Milo says without moving. Andrew starts to laugh, then Milo does. He kisses Andrew’s ear tenderly, then rolls off. He grabs Andrew’s shirt and wipes himself off. He folds it over and finds a dry patch to wipe Andrew off, too.

“Hey, my shirt!”

“We’re at your place,” Milo says with an unapologetic shrug.

“Good point.” Andrew shivers without the furnace heat of Milo’s body on him. Milo is fishing through their pants for underwear. He hands Andrew his and then pulls his own on. Andrew doesn’t move. Everything happened so fast he didn’t get a chance to really
see
everything.

“God, you’re incredible,” Andrew whispers, sitting up. He reaches out to touch Milo’s toned stomach, then pauses. “Is this okay?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Andrew bites back any response that might give away uncertainty. Now that they’ve had this moment, he’s not sure what comes next. He knows what he wants, but the Milo he remembers was always an unpredictable mess, pulling him in, then pushing away in a dizzying dance.

“Come here.” Milo pulls Andrew up to his knees, kneels on the couch next to him and places Andrew’s hands on his body. Andrew noses along the line of his shoulder and sighs at the gentle touch of Milo’s hands, coming around to cup his ass carefully.

“I wanted to appreciate you, too,” Andrew says, kissing Milo’s bicep.

“Well then, let’s do that.”

“I’m not seventeen, you ass; I think I need a bit of recovery.”

“I’m not asking for sex right now. I want to touch you and look at you and make you feel good.”

“That sounds—” Andrew closes his eyes. Something heavy and bittersweet swells inside; Milo’s words are so much what he’s always wanted. He knows he has to take whatever he can now, though he’ll probably get hurt in the end. “—Yes.”

Milo laughs lightly. “Where’s your room?”

“Come on.” Andrew takes his hand and pulls him down the hall. There are blank spaces on the walls where Dex had hung cityscape prints. Half their bedroom is gone, making the space seem hollow. Milo hesitates, looking around.

“Is this—”

“It’s okay.” Andrew feels the awkwardness and hurt of what’s gone. But stronger than that, more compelling, is Milo, with him,
finally
. It’s the fulfillment of wishes and years of longing. “Come here.”

They lie on the bed, facing each other for a moment, looking at each other without speaking. Andrew feels words in his chest, beating with his heart, questions he can’t ask for fear of ending this moment. He reaches over and traces Milo’s jaw. Milo kisses his fingertips when they brush his lips. His eyes don’t leave Andrew’s. He sighs, but it’s a good sound: comfortable, like relaxing into something welcome.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. Andrew closes his eyes and shakes his head.

“Not really,” he says. He smiles, though. “Not too shabby, but nothing exceptional.” His fingers wander over Milo’s collarbone, down the incredibly defined pectoral muscles. His finger alights over Milo’s nipple. Fascinated, he watches Milo’s skin prickle with goose bumps. The delicious line between his abs beckons his touch, all the way down to the curls of his pubic hair. His cock is lovely: soft, relaxed and tender under Andrew’s fingers. Milo’s body trembles for a moment before he takes his hand gently and moves it, rolling Andrew over, placing it on the bed by Andrew’s head.

“No,” Milo says firmly. “You are. Your eyes—” He kisses Andrew’s eyelids when they flutter shut. “And beautiful skin,
god
, everywhere.” His touch is different than Andrew remembers. It’s open-palmed and sure and hot. He cups Andrew’s neck and then his chest and stomach. Andrew’s not a small guy, but Milo is big. His hand feels so encompassing over Andrew’s stomach. He bends and kisses above Andrew’s bellybutton. “Your body is beautiful,” he whispers, kissing again. Andrew’s hand finds its way into his hair. It’s such a rich, dark red against his skin. Milo ghosts a kiss at the head of his cock, barely a tease, but a little too much just yet. Andrew tugs on Milo’s hair.

“I’m thin and totally untoned and currently sporting what could be considered a farmer’s tan.”

Milo kneels and straddles him with both hands spanning his waist. “Stop,” he says, kissing Andrew to soften the words. “I’m the one looking at your body. It’s like you were shaped for my hands. To be under me and around me.”

Andrew cups Milo’s face in his hands. “Would you do that?” he whispers.

“What?” Milo kisses Andrew’s nose, then looks into his eyes when Andrew nudges him.

“Be inside me. So I could be around you, so I can feel you like that?”
Like I’ve wanted.