

Elsie Street

By

Gabriella West

_Elsie Street_ is a creative work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are created from the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 Gabriella West

All rights reserved.

Dedicated to the memory of Frank Cox,

and to Sharon, who lived on Elsie Street back in the day

Lastly, my gratitude goes to Christina Pilz and Ann Sisk for their invaluable beta reading and feedback, and to Elise Stengle for her last-minute research help!

# Prologue

June 2010

San Francisco

That summer started off with a bang. Not the kind of bang you want. I'd just gotten myself fired from the place I'd tended bar at for five years.

It wasn't the type of dive where I'd choose to hang out myself. Flannery's, on Clement Street in the Outer Richmond. A weeknight. It was usually dead during the afternoon, then filled with a few noisy drunks later on. It had the typical long bar, dingy floors, and thick windows that looked out onto the filthy street. Pigeons nested on the awning out front and soiled it copiously.

Seamus Flannery, the white-haired, ruddy-faced owner, was someone I'd come to dislike more and more as I dragged myself in every afternoon. It felt like a bad marriage, him and me, filled with poor communication and suspicious grunts.

Then one night we'd come to blows.

It was over a couple of lads who were clearly in the wrong place, out on what looked like a first date on queer-unfriendly Clement Street. They were young (only just 21, I found out when I carded them). They sat by the window and they held hands. It was the dead time before the serious drinkers settled in for the evening. I brought them over a plate of onion rings with their draft beers, and they smiled up at me.

I smiled back because they seemed so harmless. I made a little joke, asking them if they'd gotten off the bus in the wrong neighborhood and they assured me that they both lived in the area and loved it. I did too, so I wasn't sure why they loved it, but I nodded along.

Anyway, I'd made them feel comfortable so they held hands. I was back at my station behind the bar, cleaning glasses, giving them space. There was some kind of folksy Americana tune on the juke. It felt as good as it ever got in that place. And then Seamus Flannery came rolling down from the upstairs apartment and snapped at them to behave themselves. They might have kissed discreetly while I was looking away. I wasn't sure.

They stared at him like he was something out of the middle of the last century, which he was. Seamus was always a cranky boss—I'd never liked him—but over the last year he'd got more volatile.

And so, I suppose, had I.

He whipped around and asked me if I'd looked at their IDs.

"Of course," I responded coolly. "They're fine."

"They're not fine!" he shouted. "This is not a gay bar!"

The boys looked incredulous and giggled to themselves. I couldn't blame them.

"Tell them to leave!" Seamus spluttered.

"I will not ask them to leave," I replied levelly. I was still at the bar and he was suddenly standing up against me, too close, eyeball to eyeball.

"Are they your little queer buddies, then, Dave?" Seamus muttered in a way that made my skin crawl.

I heard the chairs scrape as the youngsters got up to leave. They were doing the right thing. He wasn't going to back down, I knew. But it still made me furious.

The door slammed.

"We _need_ all the customers we can get," I said in low, icy voice.

"Not like those little fags!" Seamus waved his hand in the air, his bloodshot blue eyes bulging.

I hadn't even heard the word _fag_ for a long time, not since Boston and my childhood and adolescence there. I just stared at him with a look of pity and contempt.

"You fucking bastard," I heard myself say suddenly.

He lunged at me and I put up my hands to stop him. I felt like throttling him, but threw a ragged punch that collided with his nose and cheek.

He was too heavy to fall over, but spun around and knocked into a table. He stood there for a moment, panting.

Then he turned around. "Get out," he spat. I was already taking off my apron. "Go work in the Castro, that's all you're good for."

My face burned as I gathered my things. But I wasn't sorry. I'd put up with the guy for five years and he'd become increasingly nastier during that time. They always did, in my experience. I was a good bartender, but it was time to let it drop. Though for what, I had no clue. I wasn't going to go work in the Castro—that wasn't my scene.

I silently wiped my hands on a rag for the last time.

He wasn't looking at me when he said the last thing in his arsenal. "I feel sorry for that girlfriend of yours."

That rankled. It hit me harder than the blow I'd given him.

# 1.

"Your official title will be museum security officer," Mike Malone said. "Not _guard_. Don't you love how these titles change with the times? Amazing, isn't it?"

"Right," I said. If my words sounded a touch hollow, it was because I had a splitting headache. We were standing in the empty courtyard of the Legion of Honor museum under the shadow of the massive, hunched Rodin statue, _The Thinker_ , and I was shivering in my shirtsleeves in the summer chill. Mike, a chubby, middle-aged guy whose face perpetually looked like it was either glowing or glowering, seemed amused.

"You're used to the fog by now, surely?" Mike enquired. "Janine mentioned you guys have been in the city, what, three, five years?"

"Something like that," I mumbled.

He shot me a weird look. "Do you have a problem with time, Dave?"

"Time?" I repeated, trying to focus. "Nope, not at all. I'm just trying to remember when I left Boston. I suppose it was 2005, that's right. Five years."

I could see him thinking, _not the sharpest stick in the toolshed, after all._ I had never met him before that morning, though my girlfriend, Janine, worked at Mike's brother's bar on Geary, The Shamrock, and had begged the guy to find me a job after my own employment at Flannery's was suddenly terminated. Janine had clearly been persuasive, because although I had come prepared for an interrogation, Mike's idea of screening was more like a friendly chat.

"I'm actually not really used to the summer fog," I confessed.

He shot me another odd look. _Something a little off about the guy_ , I could see him thinking. _Looks clean-cut, though. Keeps in shape._ Men often looked at me like that, and I didn't like it, didn't like having to live up to what they thought I was. Back in Boston, when I was a teenager, a family friend had actually once suggested that I try modeling, an idea I'd rejected immediately. My chestnut hair and gray-blue eyes were striking back then; years of bartending out here had worn me down to a nice-enough-looking guy and I was OK with that.

"Well, you look the part!" Mike said encouragingly. "Let's face it, Dave, you're overqualified for this. I have to admit, it's not very stimulating. You need to be okay with long periods of boredom. Keep watchful, even though your feet are killing you. Don't make the visitors uncomfortable, but keep an eye out for nuts. We occasionally get them. Do you think you can do it?"

It seemed like a rhetorical question and I didn't answer him right away. There was something in his eye as he looked at me, all bluff Irish charm, that made me swallow, made me feel a quiver of unease in the pit of my stomach. He knew something about me that he wasn't supposed to know. I'd seen men like him on the bar stools for years. All charm when they came in. Once they got talking, they were the nastiest, most homophobic bigots imaginable. I would listen and say nothing, just offer them a vague smile and ask them if they wanted another drink.

Of course, ask me why I, the son of an alcoholic, had drifted into bartending as a career? Other than that it paid the rent, I really couldn't say. But I'd had enough, and after talking back to Seamus and getting thrown out on my ear the previous Thursday night, I vowed I was never going back to that world. I'd had the weekend to cool off, which in my case meant going on a bender and smoking lots of cigarettes, neither of which I usually did. By Sunday night, my head was fuzzy and Janine was giving me a stony look, like "get a job soon, buster, or you're out of here." I knew she would wait a while to throw me out. She was good-hearted, mostly, and I'd seen her through some tough times. Still, I was on thin ice and I knew it.

Then she'd come home early Monday morning and, before crashing, told me that she'd been chatting to Mike Malone at the bar and that he could probably get me a museum guard job at the Legion of Honor, which happened to be only about half a mile away from our apartment, out in the Avenues of the Richmond District. I just had to go and see Mike later that day. The museum was closed on Mondays so it was a good time for an interview. Turned out they'd needed someone. I listened, not very closely, and said yes. What else could I say? I had no backup plan and Janine knew it.

So there I was, contemplating the empty courtyard, the classical museum ("a 1924 Beaux Arts–style building," Mike had said proudly). It had been built by a wealthy San Franciscan sugar magnate to commemorate the service of Californian soldiers in the First World War. Something like that. It didn't make much sense to me, honestly. He'd also added that it had been seismically retrofitted in the '90s, as if I was worried.

"The only thing," Mike said casually, "is that this isn't a party kind of place. The security staff here is all guys at the moment, though we do hire women. No woman ever wants to do it, which I can completely understand." He paused. "I try not to play favorites with the staff. But I also want it to be a comfortable environment for all the staff."

He was beating around the bush for some reason. I listened foggily, dying for a cigarette. Maybe he was dying for one too, for all I knew. It was a horrible habit, but most in our profession did smoke. Just like actors. It was the stress, the insecurity. Hopefully, in this cozy, ultra-safe environment, I could forget all that, all the exhausting, high-adrenaline shifts I'd pulled. And for what? I was 28 and felt washed up, though it wasn't even as if I'd been trying to _do_ anything with my life. I'd just been surviving. The city did that to you, put you in survival mode the minute you got here.

"So, no hitting on the other staff, is all I mean," Mike finished.

I shot him a frosty glance. Hitting on the staff? He'd just told me it was all men. A flush came to my face that I couldn't control, half anger, half fear. _Shit._

"I'm not sure what you mean there, Mike," I parried. My default deadpan look was useful in these situations. "You never look angry," Janine said once. "Just detached. Like you're out of it, somehow."

"Oh!" Mike said, shrugging. "It happens. It's San Francisco, after all." His slight, knowing smile was a dead giveaway, though. He clearly didn't say this to all the guys, just the ones who he thought might be...

"I'm not gay," I said quickly. It would help to say it upfront, rather than _not_ say it and have him always look at me funny. And as I said it, I believed it.

"Yeah, fine," Mike muttered. "We don't discriminate on sexual orientation here at the Fine Arts Museums."

"I believe you met my girlfriend?" I snapped.

He shot me a cool look. "Sure, Janine, a lovely lady. Relax," he added, touching me briefly on the arm.

I controlled my surge of irritation, staring out at the thin bubbling jet of the fountain, which must have looked elegant when the museum was originally built. Now it was a rather large, plain circular pool with not much going for it, rather oddly embellished by a spiky red steel sculpture off to the side and surrounded by a semicircle of parking spaces. Still, the water was softly blue. I could see wandering out here on my breaks and smoking a cig while leaning against the wall, staring at the gray city that lay beyond, a distant vista, mercifully far away.

_I had to view this job as a break_. I had to. Even though it was a measly $13-something an hour. Nothing compared to the bar, but the stress level was lower. Way lower.

"Well, that's it. You're hired, Dave," Mike said cheerfully. "I'll get one of the other lads to train you. Step into Human Resources and do a bit of paperwork when you come in tomorrow afternoon. Get used to the idea of working weekends. All right?"

I nodded, forcing a smile, and noticed that he didn't slap me on the back. It wasn't quite that chummy. But I had gotten over all that a long time ago: the need for friendliness, the need for approval. I didn't particularly like older men, and the thought of Mike as a mentor made me queasy.

"Janine said you were a bit of a cold fish," Mike quipped, as if he had expected me to shake his hand and been disappointed.

_You fucker_ , I thought. "Well, seems like I'll fit in around here then," I said with a smile.

"Good one," Mike said, unflappable. Uncaring, more like. We parted quickly.

***

Actually, I was a Pisces, but I wasn't about to share that with him. Looking at the fountain had reminded me of my birth sign. It was a paradox that I often pondered. The tough guy from Dorchester had been my persona for a while, and it was handy to slip into that when threatened, but if I could find an environment that allowed me to be peaceful and sensitive, I would gravitate toward it in a flash. Boston had been gritty, with all the toxic family baggage I had there. San Francisco, so far, had been cool and icy; I barely had a friend here, and Janine and I were way too dependent on each other for company. But something about the stately museum with its long drive and the cool, green golf course of Lincoln Park stretching out below made me feel like I could lower my guard just a bit. Even Mike, cynical asshole though he was, didn't seem like he would be an enemy, exactly. He was too complacent for that. Life had rewarded him; he was a Boomer, he'd gotten to SF at the right time, no doubt; more likely he'd grown up here and gone to the right Catholic schools. A mediocre guy with a nice income and a wife and kids, in Marin, I guessed, judging by the license plate on his shiny new Prius.

I walked down the drive thoughtfully, deciding to hoof it back home even though there was a dinky little MUNI bus that actually stopped at the Legion of Honor every half hour or so. I could have driven today but hadn't wanted Mike to see my beat-up old Toyota. I would explore the place better in the days ahead. There was a trail off to the side that led to Land's End, I knew. Literally right around the corner, though hidden, were dramatic cliffs, the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge. It was all so peaceful. Just waiting here to be discovered. But I knew there was something in me that was not peaceful, and that morning I remember fearing that I would mess up this little gig that had so strangely dropped in my lap. _But not by hitting on the staff._ The idiotic words came back to me and I laughed out loud.

Looking back, though, I have to wonder why Mike never warned me about hitting on the visitors.

# 2.

That night, I sat on the brown plush couch in our shabby upstairs apartment on Lake Street having my last drink, waiting for Janine to come home. Monday through Thursday she got off at midnight and was home by 12.15. It seemed early to us. I was going to have to get used to long evenings alone at home, something I'd never had to worry about previously. Maybe I could actually _read_ , I mused. I glanced at our small, neglected bookshelf. Nah, seemed unlikely. Or catch up on the TV shows I'd never gotten to see. Janine taped stuff sometimes, but we were usually too tired to watch it. I supposed I could go to films by myself at the local independent movie house, the Balboa Theater. Nothing wrong with that.

I wasn't a techie type of guy and was out of place in the city, the way it was now. I knew that. I wasn't an artist, either, and I wasn't much interested in hanging out in the Castro or the suddenly hip Mission. What had drawn me to the city, then? I really wasn't sure. I couldn't put my finger on it.

If anything, I was attracted to the friendly, laid-back quality of some Californians I'd met in Boston, including Matt Cohen, my college roommate from Marin. One time I'd flown back with him for Thanksgiving at his house in Sausalito—he had money and liked to throw it around like that. Since my family Thanksgivings were always miserable affairs, I'd done it—feeling guilty, of course, but also a surge of pride at being away in California by myself. He'd taken me to the Golden Gate Bridge and we'd walked across. It was no big deal. We didn't even do any heavy sight-seeing. But I was hooked. I was attracted to the skyline of the city and the pelicans flying overhead, and the fact that it was still decently warm in November. We'd also gone to Bolinas Lagoon and had checked out the harbor seals there, lying out in the weak sun. I was fascinated by all this rugged natural beauty. Muir Woods, as well, quiet in November. And what I didn't allow myself to look back on very often—hardly ever—was what had happened in his bedroom one night during that trip. We'd smoked some weed (a first for me) and things had followed on from there. I was 18.

That second semester with Matt had been so educational, so, dare-I-say, happy. I turned 19 that March. The few months that followed seemed to stretch out forever. It all had to end, of course, when I was yanked out of college that summer due to my parents' inability to pay tuition. A crisis had blown up at home due to my dad being fired (turned out he never worked again), and I wanted to do the right thing and get a job, anywhere, fast. Matt and I had not stayed in touch, which killed me at the time. I had no idea how these things were supposed to work. I just assumed he'd dropped me because he saw me as a loser. I certainly felt like one.

When I met Janine on a bartending gig out here, I'd told her about Matt. It was a mistake to do that, probably. I just thought that it was all over, would never happen again with a guy, and was a once-off. But I had no other relationship stories. I thought it would look odd if I had nothing to tell her about my past. She had a great way of making me feel as if I was normal, back then anyway, and laughed about having had too _many_ partners herself, and that most guys, when they heard about this, ran for the hills.

I didn't even know why I was thinking about Matt that night. The coincidence of Mike Malone being from Marin? I didn't even know he was; it was a guess. No, wait, I'd seen the license plate of his Prius when we'd met at the fountain. It said San Rafael.

It had been a lot of drunken rolling around with Matt, I told Janine. Nothing serious, except we were close friends, so it was not entirely casual. She'd nodded, her sheet of black, shiny hair waving slightly. She had pretty blue eyes. She was a striking Irish-Italian girl from one of the suburbs around Boston. I'd been drawn to her familiar accent immediately and we had lunch the first day we met. Then we had a first date at the Lucky Penny, a diner-type place a mile or two down Geary that we'd never been back to since. We weren't nostalgic like that.

It was 2006. I was 24, and I really wanted to make it work with this girl. I told her about my dad. My miserable mother. My fucked-up younger siblings. She'd nodded, then said, "So we both come from crappy families." I'd never forgotten that. I loved her honesty and I still liked it, but I'd come to realize that she wouldn't protect me from much. That wasn't her role in the relationship. I suppose I wasn't much of a protector, either.

Yet, here we were, living together still. It had worked out, sort of. I had believed in us for a long while. We lived in a bubble; our families didn't visit us from the East Coast, and we didn't go back to visit. _Too busy_ , we said, giving each other knowing looks. Too expensive as well, given that most of our incomes went to rent. I missed nothing about Boston for a long time. With Janine close by, we could always remind each other of what we hated about it.

Janine's black cat, the same guy she'd brought across country when she drove out here from Boston, came sidling up to me and I stroked his shiny back. Tom. He liked me well enough but was really Janine's. He arched his back happily and I told him that Janine would be back soon. I checked my watch.

I was feeling pleasantly numb. We lived in a creaky old duplex and I listened as Janine came up the stairs. I'd texted her earlier that the interview went well. (I'd just started texting in the last year or two and had a flip phone that I didn't particularly care for. Texting was what couples did, though. Janine had embraced it enthusiastically, and this was a major part of how we communicated now.)

She slipped in the door. For a full-figured girl, she had a quiet way about her. I waved from the couch and she approached me warily. It was weird the way we were nervous around each other sometimes. If I watched her closely, I could always get a good idea of what she'd been up to. She was dressed up a bit more than usual, a denim skirt, tights, short boots. It was a good look for her.

"I've got to shower," she said, looking at me.

"I'm glad you're back," I replied. It was true, actually; I was glad to see her. There was just something about the situation that was bugging me, making me uneasy. With Janine, you never had to wait long.

"You got the job," she stated. There was a faint smile on her face and she seemed pleased, but it was still as if she was taking my measure. I nodded.

"Got it, and without too much bullshit. _You_ made a good impression on Mike Malone."

It was fairly dark in the room but I noticed her blush. I exhaled a breath I didn't know I was holding.

"Dave, about that," she said nervously.

"I knew there was something," I muttered. "He called me a cold fish."

She came closer and sat down beside me. Tom moved quickly onto her lap, purring. He was a comfort at times like these. We called him a couples' counselor. It was because someone had once suggested that we go to one. Neither she nor I could stomach it.

"He shouldn't have said that," she murmured, sounding embarrassed.

"You told him something," I parried quickly.

She exhaled in a long sigh. "Dave, I told him we'd had some problems in our relationship. It made him feel sorry for me."

It was what I'd thought. That wasn't so bad, but I sensed there was more.

"Did you do anything with him?" I asked in disbelief. Incredulous, because the guy was so unattractive. But then, she liked older men. And I'd caught her in bed with one a year ago, in our apartment. Everything had been up for grabs since then. We'd carried on somehow.

I thought maybe she'd given him a blow job. Blow jobs happen a lot in bars, for some reason. It had gotten to the point with us where, if she told me she had given him a blow job, I probably would have laughed along with her about it. That was pretty bad, I knew. A bad sign, and all that.

Janine put her hand on my knee. She could tell, I think, that I wouldn't blow up at her. I was slow to anger when it came to her. And I'd always been very understanding. I didn't see myself as a doormat either. It was just that I understood her. And she understood me well enough.

"I went over to Marin with him," she said very quietly. "To a place he has."

"When?"

"Last week," she said. I could process that; last week was already slipping into the past. It must have been after I got fired, though, I figured that much.

"I'm sorry, Dave. I knew I had to tell you."

I was silent for a bit. "Was the sex even good?" I blurted out. I couldn't see it, couldn't see what she saw in him, what she'd want out of an encounter like that. I just hoped it had not been done for me, to get me a job. That would show our relationship was even sicker than I thought.

"You know I like older guys," she said in an abashed voice. "So, yeah. It was pretty good." She paused. "Kind of what I needed."

_Kind of_. I let that pass. I put my drink down. It was all so confusing if I let it mess with my head.

"I'm sorry," she repeated again, sounding rather pathetic. "It had nothing to do with you getting the job. I mean, he'd offered the job first. I just took a while to tell you about it."

I grimaced. Mike Malone. Now I knew he was an opportunistic letch. I'd just sensed it before.

"He can't know I know," I told her. "He'll treat me better if he thinks I _don't_ know."

She nodded, glancing at me. She always understood that sort of stuff: the way people were.

"At least you told me," I continued.

Oddly enough, I was grateful. She could have kept it to herself. Now that I was in on it, it seemed less ugly, almost like a game.

She pulled off her shirt, allowing Tom to nestle against her bare skin. Her beautiful full breasts in their tight black bra were very much on view, enticing. The cat didn't look, but I certainly did.

"Did he pay attention to your boobs?" I asked. The drink had loosened my tongue.

She smiled, getting into it. "A lot."

"He spanked you, didn't he?"

She nodded. "I felt like a very bad girl, so there was lots of spanking. Way more than you would have wanted to do."

_Old perv_ , I thought. He had probably fantasized about her for years, since she'd had the job at that pub for at least three years. Finally saw his "in" and went for it.

The thing is, we had an open relationship. But every time Janine brought this up, and luckily she hadn't mentioned it yet, I felt a chill of unease go down my spine. It was almost better to hear the sordid details of her fucking another guy than to have the "open relationship" talk. Janine got off on the talk every time, I could tell. She wanted me to know that I was free as well. But in all the years she'd known me, I hadn't done a damn thing with anyone else.

And it was stupid. Because I could have. But I knew, just knew, that the minute that I got serious about anyone else, Janine and I would be over. We were on our last legs in the relationship right now. And that made me sad, that she didn't know it, or hadn't faced it. And I still clung on as well. But all of her talk about relationship "options" just passed me by. I knew that if another "option" ever came up for me, Janine would be out of the picture. It was just how I was, and I couldn't seem to help it.

"I love you, Dave," she murmured, all warmed up now, leaning over to kiss me. I went along, pushing her bra to the side and suckling her until she was moving over to straddle me. Poor Tom landed on the floor with a sound of slight protest. Janine unzipped me and got herself in position, riding me gently as I buried my head in her breasts. A long time seemed to go by in this dreamlike state.

I could imagine how Mike had taken her: hard, doggie-style, with lots of dirty talk. But it was never like that with us, and Janine didn't want to put me in that role. She chose to sleep with near-strangers every now and then, and every time it happened I got to hear about it. And so our sex life had continued, juiced by this, but at the same time oddly childlike. There was a basic comfort in it for me. The fact that we still _had_ sex reassured us both that we weren't living in a total fantasy world, that there was still an "us" there. But I knew that Mike wouldn't have moved in on her if he thought she'd had a solid relationship. He saw me as no threat, and that was telling in itself. I was just her clueless boyfriend, a random figure that he could throw a bone to, so to speak. Would he carry on fucking her? Yes, he probably would. And the minute I spoke up about that, protested, we'd have to have the long, dreary, surreal discussion again about why I wasn't seeing other people...

If there were delicious prospects out there on the horizon waiting for me, I knew nothing about it that night as Janine embraced me, pushing me back against the couch as she moaned in my ear. I held her braced against me, smelling sweat and perfume, her shampoo, feeling her soft pale skin. This wasn't nothing. This was worth staying for, I told myself. This closeness...

"That was hot, Dave," Janine said. She relaxed against me, half naked, smiling.

"Glad you think so," I said, leaning back. There was a smile in my voice too.

"It always is."

It was nice of her to say. We had sex maybe once a week. "Hot" wasn't how I'd have ever described it.

"You start tomorrow?"

"The big day is tomorrow, yeah. I'd better go to bed."

She got off me clumsily, pulling her skirt down. We hugged as I stood up. I didn't feel like a cold fish then. I also didn't want her to feel bad about Mike. It was just life. Somehow, with this new job, I felt there was the chance of progress. That was what kept me going. Janine complained about bartending, but she actually liked it, being more of an extrovert than I was. She had friends on the job. She got good tips, flirted more, had more stamina. She would continue on and I would start something new. We had to stop being so joined at the hip, I thought.

Smiling, my girlfriend went off to have her shower.

#

# 3.

Human Resources was no big deal, though I had to fill out paperwork for a background check and do a drug test, something old Mikey hadn't mentioned. It occurred to me that he hoped I would fail the drug test. Well, I probably wouldn't, given that I smoked like one joint a year.

That was something you didn't have to worry about in a bar, of course. I soldiered on in the office, and a youngish Asian guy came sidling up, introducing himself as Vic and saying that he would show me around. I much preferred to deal with him than Mike, so I was in a pretty good mood, for me. Vic was Filipino, it turned out. He lived in Daly City and had been working at the museum for eight years. He seemed proud of it. He also seemed to get a kick out of the fact that I was from Boston and had Irish roots. I wasn't really sure why he was reassured by that part of my background, but clearly there was some sort of Irish-Filipino brotherly vibe going on that I could benefit from.

I don't want to sound too cynical, but it had always been hard for me to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Now in my new black uniform, I watched Vic closely over the course of an hour while he patiently gave me the blow-by-blow details of what working there would entail. Nobody gave us a second look as we moved from gallery to gallery, Vic whispering stuff in my ear. All the museum's vast catalog seemed to float by me in a daze as we moved from room to room. It wasn't modern art: there was a lot of Renaissance stuff and even Roman antiquities. I found it reassuring. Vic said that exhibitions sometimes traveled here from Boston, since the museums in Boston had a lot of valuable older art, Rembrandts and the like. I nodded. It was good that you didn't have to have a degree in art history to have this job, but I had absorbed a little knowledge over the years. I wasn't bored stiff by it, at least.

Vic seemed happy at the way I was responding to the training. He probably got a lot of people coming in who were at sea in that refined environment, who hadn't the first clue. It's true that I had gone online and done my due diligence. I'd read about the museum and looked at some of the pictures in the collection.

We were outside by the fountain having a break. The sun was tentatively shining down. I felt a brief moment of happiness, of peace.

"You did the drug test?" Vic asked.

"Sure. That won't be a problem."

"I hope not." Vic chuckled slightly. "Mr. Malone is very strict about it."

"That's good to know," I said after a pause. "Is there anything else he's strict about?"

Vic mulled this over. "He likes punctuality."

"Right," I said.

"He leaves us alone most of the time," Vic admitted. "But don't step out of line in any way. And he has a wife, Wendy, she's Chinese, who sometimes makes surprise visits to check up on him."

His eyes crinkled and I laughed too.

"She's a tough lady?"

"Oh, yes..."

He didn't want to say anything more, it seemed. Finally he said quietly, "Mike fools around with the ladies sometimes. But he hates it when he sees any of us flirting or spending time with other staff, like the docents or whatever." He paused. "I don't do that because I have a girlfriend, but... Do you have a girlfriend, Dave?"

I nodded. "Janine."

"Oh, OK." He seemed thoughtful. "My sister is single, so I thought maybe..."

I grinned. "You'd really introduce an Irish guy you hardly know to your sister?"

"Why not?" Vic said, wide-eyed. He shrugged.

It was cute. At least _he_ didn't think I was gay. It wasn't a good idea to bring up what Mike had said to me, though I was tempted to. Maybe later on, Vic and I could have a laugh about it. Vic was medium-height, youthful, not bad looking... but I had absolutely no desire to hit on him.

***

That afternoon I was on duty in one of the 17th-century Dutch galleries. I would get to avoid the special exhibitions for now since they were crazy busy, Vic said. There was always one big one going on. This time it was Japanese _Uki_ something or other; it was hard to take it all in. I recognized the famous _Wave_ print by Hiroshige, but that was about it. I gave a nod to a few other guards, but no one paid any special attention to me besides Vic. I blended in. And I liked that. It gave me a feeling of being productive while also being essentially invisible. I never wanted to be the center of attention, and I didn't mind the long hours of silence.

Not at all.

And there were people drifting around, so it wasn't a totally anti-social thing, I told myself. Occasionally I stepped forward and told someone politely that they were standing too close to a picture. Usually they were old or short-sighted and they stepped back quickly, embarrassed. Somebody would come up and ask for directions, on occasion. Not often. I just had to know the lay of the land.

The Dutch pictures interested me, the rotting fruit and dead birds of the still lives, the healthy-looking young men, the soldiers and servants. I liked the brown and gold, earthy tones, the way the portraits showed their sitters as bluff and honest. These seemed like good people captured in the prime of their lives. One particular young nobleman caught my eye. His coloring reminded me of Matt, the brown eyes, the olive skin. And his confidence. Alright, his sexiness, I thought, staring at the picture with a slight shudder. Wouldn't it be weird if this guy was a distant ancestor of Matt's? His parents were Jewish; their ancestors could have emigrated from Amsterdam at some point. It was a crazy thought, and I was immediately troubled by how long it took me to think about something else. Why now? I kept thinking. Why am I obsessing about Matt now?

Nobody else gave the painting a second glance. This was in the permanent collection; it wasn't famous. But the intense eyes of the boy in that picture remained with me. They were trying to tell me something. I felt like I could look at it every day and it would either drive me mad or I could learn something from it.

But what was there to learn?

Matt and I had unfinished business, it was true. We had been separated at a point where I had wanted to deepen the relationship and it seemed to me now, looking back, that he hadn't.

I remembered us in bed together in late spring, one of the last encounters, a memory I'd suppressed for a very long time. His curly hair hung over my face, his sensual lips. We were both so turned on, our bodies sweatily mashed together. I was on the bottom as usual, something I accepted and enjoyed. But up until now, we hadn't gone further than oral. That evening I wanted to go further and I assumed Matt would too. I asked him to fuck me.

And he said no.

It should have been the most humiliating moment in my life. But Matt softened it. He said something plausible about not being ready for that yet. He said he hadn't ever done it with another guy; it was a big step.

_Fine, fine,_ I remember thinking. _I'll be his first. Sometime soon_.

And then Matt said he wouldn't want to get fucked. No offense, Dave, but that was a bit far for him.

"I'm not gay," he said earnestly.

And that had rung in my ears for a long time. In 2001, I'd accepted that as logical. Or, he had the right to define himself. Of course. It hurt, but...

I didn't accept it now.

So that journey, the journey along the road to being gay, had been abruptly cut off for me. And I could have picked it back up at any point. But I never had. It was like, if I couldn't have Matt, I didn't want anyone as a substitute. That was a very whacked-out way of thinking, for sure. I knew it.

Thing is, gay couples were frequent museum visitors. I watched them that first day without being too obvious about it. Something burned in me when they smiled at each other, at the little gestures of affection. I supposed that a lot of the other guards watched them with quiet contempt.

There were young guys wandering around, too, students who looked gay or bi. I watched them. Again, I felt cut off, unable to bridge the gap. I was older, I should know what I was about, but instead I felt deeply clueless. I suspected that if I ever tried to experiment now, it would be a disaster. _A mistake_. Yes, I was sure it would be a mistake, one that I'd regret. It had been easy with Matt, but it wouldn't be easy now, and I would probably mess it up.

***

That evening, waiting for Janine, I slid a DVD of _Brokeback Mountain_ into the player. We'd gone to see it as a date movie when we were getting together. Yes, sad but true. Back then, I was more focused on Janine next to me in the movie theater, the smell of her hair, her warm body next to mine.

This time as I watched, I felt the full emotional gut-punch of the men's inability to have a relationship. Heath Ledger, himself tragically dead now, looked so sad and worn out at the end. He had lost everything that mattered. I lit a cigarette and wondered if I had made the same mistake. Maybe I couldn't really love anyone now, either a man or a woman, and Janine would finally figure this out and leave me. She had such low expectations, didn't even want to get married, it appeared, though we'd never talked about it. Thank God we hadn't married. At least there was that, right?

Janine appeared as the credits were rolling, her arms full of a bag of fried chicken that she'd picked up at a local Popeye's. And a case of Corona. She'd clearly had a good night and she wanted to share the good times. She smirked at the DVD case but said nothing. Probably just thought, _Old melancholic Dave, brooding over a sad movie...typical!_

After we ate, I drank with her on the couch, trying to shake my mood.

"Mike Malone has a Chinese wife," I blurted out suddenly.

We laughed at that, laughed crazily. "I know!" Janine cackled. "I saw her on Facebook! Mike tries to be all respectful, but now and again he admits she's a bitch. She follows him, checks up on him."

"Was she hiding in the back of the Prius?"

More hilarity.

"I love that about you, Dave," Janine said dreamily. "That you can laugh about it."

I shrugged and said nothing.

She glanced at the DVD. "Did it work for you?"

"Uh, I'm not sure what you mean. It's not a porn flick."

"It would be OK if you watched gay porn," Janine said easily. "I wouldn't be freaked out by it."

I took this in. She'd rather I watched gay porn than straight porn. That was the subtext. Or was it?

"Even if you had a fling with a guy," she said, slurring her words, "I'd support you."

"I wonder what kind of support I'd need," I said quietly. As often happened, she was getting louder while I was getting more quiet, internal.

"But you prefer women, don't you?" she asked, serious suddenly. It was clearly important to her that I did.

There was a long pause. I was beginning to doubt it, but I didn't want to say something I'd regret. I sighed, petting sleepy Tom curled comfortably between us, words and images swirling in my mind. Old feelings.

"I don't know..." I admitted, hating to see the worried look coming into her eyes. She looked shocked.

"Oh... You said..."

"I know, when we met." My words came out slowly, as thick as molasses. "I said that. Yeah."

"Oh."

"It isn't you..."

We stared at each other. I'd crushed her, and I didn't like seeing it.

"There's no one else," I said hurriedly. There really wasn't, that was true. Except the ghost of Matt. Except that I felt like a shell of my real self, moving through this strange, constricted life in this chilly city. None of it was her fault. And I would probably be stuck like this forever.

"Wow, way to be a downer, Dave," Janine said, recovering. "Trust me, you're not gay." She raised her bottle of cheap beer to me with an ironic smile.

I glanced at her and glanced away.

# 4.

"Got something new for you, Davey," Vic said cheerfully the next week.

"What's that?"

"Uh, we have this monthly social event coming up at a new exhibition, mostly for museum members, on Thursday evening for a couple hours; it's kind of a younger group that comes, usually. No big deal, but it's at the other museum, the de Young. You know, out in Golden Gate Park."

"Right," I said.

"The de Young's a more hip scene. Should warn you, they'll be drinking and eating appetizers and yammering away. It's a little different, but maybe you'll like it. Extra money in your check."

I shrugged. It looked like I didn't have a choice. "You'll be there?"

"I'll be there," Vic said, smiling. "You're still new. We're not going to throw you off the deep end."

Turned out the exhibition was called _The Birth of Impressionism_ and _was_ kind of a big deal. Still, it would only be a few hours of my time. I'd drive over from the Legion in my battered grey Toyota Corolla and drive home after, a bit more exhausted than usual, but what of it? It wasn't like working till last call at Flannery's, now was it?

That Thursday I got to the de Young and was met outside by a relieved-looking Vic; perhaps he'd been afraid I wouldn't show. Me and a few other guys stood in a large room, a room that seemed to go on and on. It was a big exhibit, and the paintings intrigued me as I glanced at them before the hordes arrived. Sophisticated 19th-century Paris scenes, was my first take. More sex and violence than the Dutch galleries, more variety. I had my own favorite painters from that time period, Monet and Van Gogh being two of them. But I couldn't stray very far from where Vic had planted me to check anything out, and I watched as the room filled up with skinny men and women in their twenties and thirties, mostly wearing black, with trendy little eyeglasses. It was the San Francisco uniform, practically. People hung about, sipping from plastic cups, glancing at the paintings. There was an odd nervousness in the air.

Soon it was stuffy and people were chatting and laughing more loudly. It was reminding me of a few bars I'd worked at early on, not Flannery's, which was a dud most of the time, but bars downtown where well-heeled office types hung out and networked. I wondered vaguely whom Seamus Flannery had got to replace me. I would never darken his door again, that was for sure. Fucker.

I tried to tune out some of the inane chatter. You didn't get this at the Legion and thank God, I thought. What a nightmare—to be surrounded by chattering people on the make all day.

There were very few loners. People came together to this thing, or in groups. I noticed a few youngish women who seemed a bit lost and intimidated; their male companions had drifted off already. Who in their right mind would want to do _this_ on a date?

There was a big painting that most people were avoiding. It was kind of grim: the figure of an older woman in grey sitting in a rocking chair filled the canvas. She was formidable, not benign-looking. I would have gone up and checked the artist's name, but we weren't supposed to. That was a big no-no. The starkness of the picture interested me, though. It was probably famous. I could look it up online when I went home.

You had to make little challenges for yourself or you would go mad with boredom.

It was close to nine now. They wouldn't be letting new people in. I breathed a sigh of relief, checking my watch again. For some reason this evening had made me feel horribly lonely—the contrast between my silent, still self and the chattering, moving crowds of people around my own age had been a bit too much.

But it was a job; we were still in a recession. And without it, I'd be sunk.

I watched a young man pausing in front of the old lady picture. He was standing very close. As I watched, he wobbled slightly, almost pushing his nose into the frame.

Too much to drink? I kept watching. He was reading the info about the painting on the side, but still standing too close to it for my liking. Short-sighted, I supposed. Clumsy. I watched the hand that held the clear plastic cup of red wine and he appeared to have a slight tremor. His hair was short, fairish; you might say golden brown. I couldn't see his face at all. He wore a dark green sweatshirt with the hood down, and jeans. Slim.

Suddenly his hand jerked and I grimaced. Shit. He was going to drop the cup or spill it.

I was over there before I even thought much about it.

"Sir?" I said quietly.

He glanced around, surprised; again, the cup wavered. He was early twenties, boyish, clearly drunk. Thick-framed specs. I gave him a faint smile because I really didn't want to spoil his evening.

"Oh, me?"

"Yes. You need to step back from the painting, OK?"

"Oh, yeah." He wobbled again, throwing me a pleading glance. "Sorry, I... my knee's in a brace and I get unbalanced sometimes. I shouldn't have had this wine. I took a few Tylenol earlier."

I pulled the drink out of his hand, trying to be smooth about it. "Right. Got it."

"Sorry," he repeated, blushing. His eyes were a deep brown behind his heavy glasses. There was kind of a European look to him. I wasn't sure about his accent, either.

"You visiting San Francisco?" I asked. This was the longest conversation I'd ever had with a visitor, but what the hell. The room was emptying out. Everyone else had gone to check out the final room of the exhibit since they knew they'd be asked to leave soon.

"No. I live here," the boy said slowly, with a smile. "I work at Twitter."

I wasn't sure what that had to do with anything, but it explained the nerdy look. Maybe he wanted to assure me that he hadn't wandered in off the street.

I gulped for some reason.

He was swaying again. I put his cup down by the wall and gently took hold of his arm. "Are you going to faint?"

"Maybe, uh..."

I started to steer him out of the room, thinking on my feet. It was the best thing, to get him some air. I could always tell when someone was about to vomit: you learned that in bars.

***

We were out in the de Young's gloomy courtyard, then further, out alongside the long gray building. I'd heard the old de Young building, knocked down after the '89 earthquake, was charming; couldn't say that about the newer one, I thought. I much preferred the Legion of Honor.

He stood by the wall, shivering. Nobody paid us any attention. I waited, then pulled a tissue out of my pocket.

"Do you need this?"

"Not big enough," he muttered. Then suddenly he put it to his mouth. He retched, huddling against the wall. Then he knelt down stiffly. A strip of earth with flowers was a handy place to get sick in, which he proceeded to do. It was over soon enough. I glanced around but couldn't see Vic or any of my co-workers. They'd be going out the back entrance, most probably. My shift was over, just about, though we were supposed to stay till everyone was all gone and check in with each other.

I watched him stand up, putting his hand on the wall for support.

"Listen, my car's in the garage," I said quickly. "I'm about to take off anyway. If you live nearby, I'll give you a ride home."

"I could get a taxi," the guy muttered. He wasn't looking at me now.

"You could, but I just don't think..." I didn't finish the thought. I could visualize him getting sick in the back of the taxi or getting cheated on the fare. Somehow, I didn't want that to happen to him.

"Where do you live?"

"Bernal Heights," the boy answered. "Off of Cortland." Cortland Avenue was the main drag of Bernal Heights, I knew that much.

"Elsie Street," he added.

Elsie Street didn't mean anything to me. But that was OK. Bernal wasn't that far. It wasn't like going to Daly City, or something. I could just cut through to the Mission and follow Mission Street south and then go back home via... 19th Avenue, maybe.

"Sorry," he said with a kind of moan.

"It's no biggie. What's your name anyway?"

"I'm Aaron," the boy said. He had a fairly deep voice and spoke in a laid-back way, but I still couldn't place it. "Aaron Andersen."

"Dave Madden."

We shook hands, more like clasped hands, really, and I felt the shock of his cold skin.

"Let's get going," I said. There was no point in going back in, explaining to Vic. Or—I could text him.

I quickly pecked out a text in the dimming light.

Sorry Vic, had to leave a bit early. Visitor was taken ill and brought him outside. Going to run him home. OK?

A moment and then I got his response:

Fine by me. Thanks for letting me know. Be good. V.

"My manager says OK," I murmured, glancing at the phone, distracted by the "be good."

Aaron said nothing. He just looked at me in an odd way. I wondered what he thought about it all. Perhaps he thought I was crazy and would have preferred to get a cab?

"What was that painting, anyway? The one you were standing by?" For some reason I was in a really good mood now, energized by something.

" _Whistler's Mother,"_ Aaron answered slowly. "By James McNeill Whistler. He was a friend of Oscar Wilde."

"You know your stuff!" I said cheerfully. He smiled, a bit unsure.

"Kind of," he answered.

"You feeling better?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, I guess..." he said, sighing. "Just tell me where to go..."

I took his arm and we walked carefully toward the parking garage.

"I got here by bus," he said out of nowhere.

"Sure. But I can't see you wanting to take the bus back."

"Well, no."

He said nothing after that. I could tell he was preoccupied by something, but I didn't want to dwell on it. As far as I was concerned, this was the right thing to do.

"You from Boston?" he asked finally as we reached the car in the glaring light of the vast underground garage. Getting out of there would be a pain.

"How'd you know? Yeah."

"Accent. I'm good at those."

"I'd say you're wicked good," I said with a smile, just wanting to cheer him up a bit. He smiled uncertainly, his hand resting on the still-locked car.

"I don't understand... Sorry, I don't understand why you're going out of your way."

I didn't either, to be honest. "Oh... I'm new at the job and it's not a big deal. I get restless standing around for hours, so it helps to have something to do afterwards, not just go straight home."

He looked quizzical, but decided to go with it. I released the manual lock and he pulled the door open, then tucked himself into the car. He fiddled with the seat belt, which was one of those ancient two-belted ones. I helped him by buckling him in at the side. I wondered how drunk he still was.

"I used to be a bartender," I said, to break the silence. "Not long ago, I mean."

He sighed. "I rarely drink. Hope you don't get the wrong idea."

"Oh, no." I waved that away. "It's the people who hardly ever drink who get caught out by it."

I was bullshitting, but in a nice way. I didn't want him to feel bad.

We were out of the garage soon and speeding through the relatively empty park, or rather, speeding as fast as my poor Corolla would go. At least the engine was fairly quiet and there were no embarrassing creaks or rattles. The car was in good condition for its age, but it was nearly as old as the guy sitting beside me in the passenger seat, I guessed.

"It's a 1990 Corolla," I said, as if in apology.

"Wow."

"Yeah. What year were you born?"

"1986," he said laconically. He was not trying to flirt; in fact, the furthest thing from it. With people like that, I often became chatty, warm. It just happened that way.

We were zipping down Lincoln now. I felt slightly drunk myself, though I hadn't even taken a sip of anything on the job tonight. Soon we'd be on Oak, then Market, then I'd take Valencia... I was plotting the directions in my head.

"You're a good driver," he muttered. "I can't drive because of my leg. God, I hate this disability."

He sounded drunk still, but I supposed it was the combination of drink and painkillers that was making all this come out.

"I wouldn't have known," I said. "Until I saw you swaying."

He chuckled ruefully at that, holding his head in his hands. "I shouldn't have come tonight."

I didn't respond, just kept driving and let him talk. He needed to get home. I switched on the radio to an alternative music station. Coldplay came on. "Warning Sign."

"See, I asked this guy at work... to come with me. I had tickets only because my sister sent them. She lives in LA. She sends me things like that, trying to get me to go out and try new stuff. She worries.''

"Because?" I prompted, after he lapsed into silence.

"Because I'm perpetually single."

We were almost at Market.

"So the guy didn't show?" I said lightly.

"Right. Yeah. It was stupid of me. He said he'd try to make it, but I knew he didn't want to come."

"Maybe he doesn't believe in dating co-workers."

Aaron chewed his lip, giving me a quick glance. "It _would_ have been a date. I suppose that was too obvious. To him, I mean."

"He could be seeing somebody," I said.

"No. It's clear. I'm totally not his type."

"Do you even know he's gay?"

We were at a traffic light and he shot me an odd look. "I...yeah. But most gay guys aren't into me. So it figures."

"Why do you think they're not into you?" It was so easy to have this conversation. I wondered at it. I felt almost glib as I pushed down on the gas.

I'd always liked Valencia, though the scene had become too hip for me. Still, it felt nice to be driving south in the city, far away from boring old Lake Street. I rolled down the window. The night air felt warmer here. We passed jammed taquerias and bars, and Good Vibrations, the adult store where you could get sex toys and floggers, if that was your thing.

Aaron had gone very quiet. He seemed to glance at my hand every time I shifted gears at traffic lights. Perhaps he was too young to have ever driven in a standard-shift car, I mused.

"Tell me if you're feeling sick again," I said.

"No, I'm OK. Just thinking about your question."

I laughed. "Sometimes there's no answer, right?"

He nodded. I noticed a faint tremor in his hand again. Maybe that happened when he was nervous.

I ought to bring up Janine at this juncture, I knew, to clue him in to where I stood, sexual orientation–wise. It just felt like such a cliché, such a shitty thing to do, name-dropping my girlfriend so that he wouldn't get any ideas. He hadn't shown the slightest bit of interest anyway.

"What are you into?" he asked quietly. I felt the first jab of nervousness at that. Damn.

"I have a girlfriend," I said. "That's the boring truth," I added.

He nodded without saying anything.

I glanced over at him. His eyes appeared closed. We were nearing Bernal Heights, though. I had to get directions.

"Where do I turn on Cortland?" I asked him.

"Take the fourth left, I think."

I obeyed, straining in the dark to see the street sign, but I couldn't. "Looks fine to you?"

"Yeah. You got it," he answered. "It's number 403."

403 Elsie Street. I drove slowly along the narrow street, which tilted slightly upward. There seemed to be a lot of small, charming, wood-shingled houses set close together.

"You renting?" I asked, sure he would say yes.

Pause.

"Nope. I own the house," he said. His voice sounded weary.

That silenced me. I finally crawled to where I thought it would be, and he pointed out the house. I pulled up.

"There's a driveway," he said, almost reluctantly. "I don't use it. You can pull in."

I thought for a moment. Why not? I would at least see him inside the house, see that he got there OK. I'd gone so far out of my way for him that a little further wouldn't hurt. And it was only 9:45. Janine wouldn't be home for two hours.

I set the handbrake and switched off the ignition. We sat there in silence for a second. Aaron tentatively pushed the button on his belt and it released.

"I might need your help to get out of the car," he said. I could tell it was hard for him to say it, so I jumped out and was around at his side promptly.

Resting on my arm, he pulled himself up, wincing.

"It's a low car," I said.

"Whatever," he said. "It's not the car's fault. I'm just messed up. Some days I don't feel it. I really feel it today."

"What happened, anyway?" I asked.

"Skateboarding accident, a long time ago. I tore a ligament."

I nodded.

He made his way to the front door, glancing around with a half-smile. I took that as a sign to follow him, so I did.

From what I could see, it was a sweet little house with dark wooden shingles. No front yard, though. It wasn't that suburban.

"The backyard is nice," Aaron said.

"I'm sure," I said politely.

Then we were inside, and I gasped.

I don't know what I expected, but it was light years away from Janine's and my dump on Lake Street. It was domestic and charming, with freshly painted walls, new carpeting, and a kitchen where I did a double take as I looked around. It resembled a movie set for a film in a French country kitchen, all reddish tiles, large fancy range, and copper pans on the walls.

"Does Julia Child live here?" I blurted out.

Aaron smiled at me. He looked young and mischievous suddenly. "I'm the cook. I can do that much, Dave."

"You've got me beat, then," I answered.

"It's my Scandinavian blood," he said.

I looked at him, bewildered.

"We're, you know, progressive," he said easily.

I sat down at the table, watching him move along the counter, effortlessly pulling things out of jars. He didn't seem drunk at all now, just focused.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making us a drink."

I supposed it was going to be some sort of a hot toddy. I didn't say anything but just watched, my arms resting on the long wooden table that I would have expected to see in a 19th-century servants' kitchen. I tried not to get distracted by his ass. He wasn't moving that way deliberately, surely?

"You entertain a lot?" I said finally.

He laughed. "Only when Tessa is in town. My sister. She decorated this house. She stays here sometimes."

He was stirring a pot at the stove now. "She's an extrovert. I'm not."

"I'm a loner as well," I said, smiling to myself. It was such an odd conversation. And rather endearing. I had never told anyone else in my life that I was a loner. But now that I thought of it, it fit.

He smiled back at me, his eyes dark behind his glasses. "I was different when I was younger. I was a wild kid for a few years."

"Where?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, I didn't tell you where I'm from. Carlsbad, California. Down south."

"I have no idea where that is."

"Nobody knows it, up here. It's close to San Diego. Or, between San Diego and LA. On the coast."

"A good place to grow up, then?"

"Sure," he responded, pouring whatever it was into little ceramic cups. "Good for a while, yeah. Until my accident. And then my mom died."

"How old were you when...?"

"I was sixteen."

He sat down across from me and gestured toward the beverage. "Try it."

I took a wary sip. The burning tang of alcohol hit me and I couldn't help an involuntary smile.

"It's a hot chocolate drink with rum and cinnamon."

"It's delicious." I meant it. Though it amused me that he had essentially made me cocoa! I sipped away, enjoying the frothiness on top.

He ran his hand through his short hair. Although he looked young, there was a weariness and fragility to his face. I tried not to stare, though I was curious to know more about him. He seemed to notice my interest.

When he took off his glasses, I tensed up. He looked completely different, suddenly. _Hot_. His face was relaxed and there was an aliveness in his eyes. He looked at me in what seemed like a seductive manner. I didn't say anything, just let the moment play out.

"Well, you've seen me at my worst tonight," he said lazily.

"That's nothing," I said.

"Well..." He smiled slightly. "I'm not usually that much of a dork, Dave. Seriously."

_A dork_. I grinned. "I wouldn't describe you that way."

"I'm trying to behave now."

I said nothing.

"I'm trying not to come on to you."

I looked at my watch. "I just got here. Don't you think it's a bit early for that?"

He took a sip, shrugging. "I'm not sure why you're still here."

"I don't have many friends, Aaron. I like you. So why can't we be friends?"

He put his glasses on again. Instantly he seemed harmless, and I felt I had mostly imagined what had just passed between us. Although I was sweating slightly.

"We could be," he said slowly, "if that was possible."

"I don't see why it isn't possible," I told him. I swallowed the last of my drink.

"Well, you know I'm gay." He seemed almost sad.

"Yeah, and it doesn't bother me."

"It doesn't seem to affect you much," he agreed. "So where are _you_ on the Kinsey scale?"

I got up. "It's been so long since I... learned about that. I wouldn't know."

"You can tell me next time," he said.

"Next time?"

"Yeah, when I go to the de Young again next month for the late Thursday thing. I still want to check out _Whistler's Mother_. Won't you be there?"

"I usually work at the Legion," I said carefully. My heart rate had sped up a little bit. "I might be there, though. I might..."

"Would you drive me home again, if you are?" he asked.

Pause. I nodded. "Yup."

I grabbed my leather jacket from the back of the chair and pulled it on.

"Goodnight, Aaron," I said.

He got up with surprising swiftness and grace. "I'll see you out, Dave."

We walked down the darkened hallway together. He didn't turn on the light, which made me nervous.

At the door, he suddenly turned and hugged me. I smelled the sweat on his hair mixed with a slight odor of vomit (probably some had splashed on his jeans) mingled with the sweet drink he had given me, which was on his breath. And mine. His slight body was lithe and strong. We both held the hug a little too long. I got hard instantly. Was it my imagination, or was that his heartbeat thudding against my chest? I pulled back, but it was with a sense of reluctance, not annoyance. I looked down at him.

His expression was hard to read. I would have called it "yearning," but I had never seen it in anyone's eyes, not Janine's, certainly. It was like he knew me, like we had known each other a long time. Like we were parting after a long time together. And yet we had just met, and he was a stranger. He was nothing to me.

But I stared down, still. And I knew that this hug was his way of showing me that we did affect each other. That we _were_ something to each other already.

"Do you still want to be friends with me?" he asked very quietly, his hand on the lock of the closed door.

I put my hand over his hand and turned the latch. He moaned slightly, or it could have been my imagination. My hand stilled.

Whatever he had put in my drink—had he actually slipped an aphrodisiac in there?—had lowered my inhibitions considerably. It must just have been a strong shot of rum, of course. But I was dying to kiss him, and suddenly I knew I had to do it. _Now._

I pushed him back against the wall of the hallway, leaned down, and met his lips. He wrapped his arms around me, straining up. When our bodies were fully pressing together, something wild took over me. I shoved my tongue into his mouth, cupping his ass. He writhed against me, meeting my tongue with his own insistent thrusts. It felt more than right. It felt crazy right.

"Come upstairs," he said breathlessly.

"No way," I said, breaking off. "I can't do that."

"Because you're in a relationship?"

"Yeah. Something like that."

"I should have known you'd be a tease."

But he didn't sound angry. In fact, he looked happy as he stared up at me. But stunned. As stunned as I was.

I passed my hand over his face. Just once.

"Next time," he said.

"I'll see you."

And then I was out.

In the car I lit a cigarette with shaking hands, desperate to get the smoke into my lungs. I started the car, glancing back at the dark house. As I drove off down the street, I saw a light go on at the top of the house. His bedroom. Where, if I played things right, I would probably end up next time. But before I did that, I told myself, I _had_ to tell Janine. And maybe—maybe—just telling her would take away all my desire to do it.

But I didn't think so.

# 5.

The guy I used to be wouldn't have minded that month apart from Aaron. I could have spent it in quiet contemplation, going over what might happen next, playing with my options. I could even have got out of working at the de Young next time if I needed to, called in sick that day. My old cautious self might have decided to do that, call in sick.

I couldn't.

I was sick in another way, though, in some sort of internal frenzy of anticipation and guilt. Why had I gone into the house? Why had I kissed him? First I'd been congratulating myself on feeling nothing, and then... What had changed?

I'd been so confused that I'd told Janine nothing. Nor had she asked how my evening had been. Lately, I'd taken to going to bed before she got home. She'd rolled into bed beside me and we'd said goodnight. That morning we'd had breakfast together and talked only about perfunctory things, both of us tired and groggy still. She wasn't a morning person, which made it easier to avoid talking.

Even getting into the car the next day to go to work was a strange experience. I expected to smell cigarette smoke from the night before, and that was fine. I wasn't fussy about not smoking inside, since Janine never rode anywhere with me; she was embarrassed by the car. But what hit me instead was a mixture of that old-cigarette smell—not too strong, since I smoked menthols—and Aaron's own scent, undeniably there, and arousing to me. I imagined the back of his neck sweating against the seat—maybe he'd been in a cold sweat, for all I knew. And then, sitting in the warm car at the Legion before getting out for work, I imagined beads of sweat sliding down his face, sliding down his Adam's apple. And me. There would be things I could do to him to make him sweat that way, to make him moan and clutch at me. And I wanted to do them.

That was it. I wanted to do them. I couldn't blame him for instigating anything at all. Sure, he'd hugged me. Big deal. Another guy would have just gone through the motions, pushed him away, glad to get out.

I sat there in the car that Friday morning feeling paralyzed. I didn't even want to face Vic, though he wasn't a mastermind and could not have known what had happened the night before. Sure, it looked bad. Or weird. Maybe Vic would just dismiss it as me going out of my way for someone. I tried to think. If I'd known Aaron, known him as a _friend_ , it would have been fine to give him a ride home. So maybe that's what I needed to say to Vic, that I knew him from outside of work. It looked as if I'd picked him up otherwise. Picked up a young, drunk guy and brought him back to his house.

And let's face it, that was pretty much what I'd done.

In the car, for those few sheltered, quiet moments before work, I found myself praying for some clarity. Did I want to have an affair? _No_. Did it seem likely that I was going to have an affair? _Yes_. Did I want to sleep with Aaron? _Yes_. Did I want to have a relationship with a man, have a boyfriend? _Not really_. Did I want to leave Janine? _No_. Did I think that sleeping with Aaron would ruin things with Janine? _Yeah, most likely._

I could ask Vic to pull me off duty for the next de Young event. It would look odd, but it wasn't something I could get fired over. Especially if I gave him lots of notice. Aaron didn't know my address or phone number. I would never see him again.

But that event in July was looming in my mind as huge. Just huge. _Maybe he won't be there_ , I thought. He'll have cold feet. Or he isn't as interested in me as I thought. I'd imagined it...

I rejected that. I hadn't imagined the way we'd kissed, the happiness in his eyes afterward.

Could I make him happy? Or him, me? _Oh God_. It was such a leap from my previous life. It was a dizzying jump, and it seemed too far for me. I would have to take very slow, cautious steps toward this...whatever it was. After all, I was the inexperienced one compared to him. I didn't have much to offer him! He was younger than me, he made a lot more money than me, and he was living in a secure environment. All I brought to the situation was myself.

I was trying to be honest about the situation. If he had just wanted a hookup, it would have been easier. I couldn't fool myself that he just wanted that. The kissing had been too passionate, the yearning in his eyes... It just didn't add up.

No, he wanted a lover. And that's why he had been so quiet and awkward in the car. He'd realized he was there with a straight guy who was doing him a favor and it was embarrassing. But then when I'd come into the house, he must have wondered.

And the kiss. No, he knew there was potential now. And I knew, too. I'd never kissed anyone like that, even Matt. Matt's kisses had been a turn-on, but they were steps on the road to both of us getting off, basically. The kiss with Aaron had had this crazy electric quality and also this addictive feeling to it.

And as the son of an addict, I understood that.

Glancing at my watch, I realized I was already late. I got out of the car unsteadily to cloudy skies above. Making my way to the narrow road that I would cross to get to the Legion, I noticed a familiar but unwelcome figure waiting for me.

"Dave!" Mike Malone said. "Heard you had your first event at the de Young last night!"

He was bubbling with his usual strange humor, which I couldn't help but peg now as malice.

"I did," I said, clearing my throat.

"Yeah. Vic mentioned to me that you took someone home afterwards."

I gritted my teeth, my face flushing. "I... yeah. He was getting sick. I thought he was going to vomit on the painting."

"You _are_ a good Samaritan," Mike said. I wasn't imagining the sarcasm in his voice. It was definitely there.

My shirt was now drenched with sweat.

"I'm late, Mike," I said tightly. "Is there something you want to say?"

"You know, Dave," Mike answered slowly, "whatever you do on your own time is fine, of course. I would just ask you not to pick up people at work events. I have to give you a verbal warning. I'm sorry."

He didn't sound in the least sorry. Traffic kept passing, and I wanted to throw myself into it.

"I didn't _pick him up_ ," I muttered.

"Maybe there's a different word for it in Boston," Mike suggested.

He was having too much fun with this.

"There's a word for what you're doing as well, Mike," I said loudly. I couldn't, of course, think of what the word was right then, but I wanted to startle him. Something flashed in his eyes.

"You're right, Dave." He paused. "I guess we've figured each other out." I waited. "You don't have to tell me whether you screwed him or not."

He was unbelievable! "I didn't," I said through gritted teeth. "Should I just have left and not let Vic know?"

"You shouldn't have left _with_ him. You know that."

We both watched as the bus went by. I was rooted to the spot. I didn't want to spit out the lie about Aaron being a friend. It wasn't believable anyway.

"Now, I'm doing you a favor by not calling you to my office to have this conversation. This isn't the '70s, Dave. It was anything goes, back then..."

"I wouldn't remember," I snapped.

He thought for a moment. "That was a very strange thing to do last night. You've only been on the job for a week."

I nodded, capitulating. "Mike, OK, you're right. I should have called him a cab."

"You didn't even have to go that far," Mike said, glancing at me. "Someone at the reception desk could have called him a cab."

I stayed silent.

"I had to bring it up, nip it in the bud, so to speak. I don't know who this guy is to you, but you can't hang out with him during work hours or leave work early again to hang out with him. Believe me, this is a problem not just with you, Dave, but something that's come up again and again over the years. The job is the job. When you socialize, you do it on your time outside these buildings. But you're not here to meet people. I know it can be a blurry line."

I shook my head. "I never picked people up when I was bartending. _Never_."

"That's good," Mike said. "I know this work environment seems more relaxed and you lowered your guard. I get it."

Yeah, you get it, I thought. _Asshole_. But I was on thin ice and I shut my mouth. Sure, I had something on him that _he_ didn't know, but the minute I brought up his disgusting behavior with my girlfriend I'd be out the door. He'd cook up some reason to get rid of me. And now he actually had ammunition.

I couldn't believe I'd been that stupid. And I think he couldn't believe it either.

"It wasn't sexual," I forced myself to say. "I know it looks that way, but I didn't go home with him in order to sleep with him. That wasn't my intent."

"I believe that," Mike said, nodding. "I don't think you really know who you are, Dave."

_Jesus._ I nearly choked. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck.

"I get it. I was raised Catholic too."

We trudged across the road. I felt like I was never going to get rid of the guy now. We passed the Rodin statue and I gave it a despairing look.

I thought I understood him, though. Janine had told him that we had an open relationship. That's why he was doling out all this heavy condescension and pity. He thought I was an idiot for staying in a relationship with a woman who was sleeping around. And the only reason I was doing it was that I was a closet case.

I hated the idea of myself as a closet case. Wasn't that what Flannery had implied?

"Do I still have this job?" I asked in a low voice as we entered the museum. Plenty of visitors were milling around the ticket counter, as always, and no one could hear us.

"You do," Mike replied. He seemed to be thinking over what he was about to say next. I waited.

"You've got good instincts," he said slowly. "You took the guy outside. I noticed him, too, weaving about. I walked through the gallery and saw you two talking beside the painting. I don't think you saw me."

I shook my head.

"You did everything right, up to a point, but you have to remember how things look to outsiders. You don't want to get the reputation..."

He paused for a moment.

"I'm trying to keep an open mind about you, Dave. I'd genuinely like this to work out, you know."

I just stood there, pondering. I felt some sincerity in his words but I sensed a deeper cunning. He didn't want to look bad to Janine, not yet anyway. And if she was upset enough by his actions toward me, she could tell his wife. So he would soft-pedal things with me while keeping me in a state of discomfort.

"Me too," I said as neutrally as possible, disengaging. "OK, gotta go. Thanks!"

He was rubbing his face in an irritated way as I disappeared. I rushed up the stairs.

***

Vic was standing in my usual spot in the Dutch gallery. He walked toward me rapidly. "What happened?" he hissed.

"Sorry. Mike caught me and gave me a freaking lecture."

He rolled his eyes. "Happens."

"You didn't have to tell him about the text," I muttered.

"Nah. He saw you leave with... him," Vic said. He seemed rueful and not pissed with me, at least. "He watches us like a hawk, you know."

"The whole thing is so fucking hypocritical! He was probably there to pick up women himself!"

"Yeah, but he's at a higher level. We play by his rules."

He seemed to want to say something more, lingering. I didn't know what he would say.

"You were doing great," he said finally. "Don't give up on the job. I know you were just trying to help out someone in a tough spot."

I nodded. I couldn't lay out the complexity of it to him: my mixed motives. Would he even understand? I doubted it.

"I didn't get laid last night," I said finally.

"Alrighty. That makes two of us," Vic said. He smiled innocently and touched me on the arm, then drifted away. I looked after him, feeling undeserving of his kindness. The scene in the hallway at the house on Elsie Street lay uncomfortably at the back of my mind, resurfacing every so often and filling me with shame. But there was also a sadness that I had not done more. Would I even get the chance now? Or had I blown it? What if Aaron, during this endless month, went out with a really great guy who didn't have the baggage I had? What if he fell in love?

_Falling_ in love, such a telling word. I looked around the empty Dutch gallery and breathed in the scent of wood polish. I collapsed onto a cushioned seat and stayed there for a moment or two, though we weren't supposed to. They were for visitors only. I stared at my right hand, the hand that had covered his on the lock, and that had touched his face. And other parts.

Mike's interrogation had stirred up questions for me. I had to take this seriously; I couldn't bury it. What I felt for Aaron, already... there was a word coming to my mind, but I pushed it down because it was too early for that, too early to even think like that. It scared me.

I had to wait.

# 6.

Sometime later that month, I told Janine. She'd taken time off from work and we were in the bedroom, dressed, hanging out on the bed. She said she was PMSing. She had bags under her eyes and was clear of makeup. I'm sure I looked a wreck as well. I hadn't been sleeping much.

"Janine, I met someone."

She looked at me enquiringly, her hand stroking Tom, who was purring sweetly at this cozy little bedroom scene. Cats liked that, hanging out on the bed with couples. He probably just liked our body heat, I thought.

"At that de Young thing I went to," I continued. She still didn't say anything. "A guy," I blurted out, blushing.

She still didn't say anything, which really freaked me out. I saw her biting her lip.

"I knew you would eventually," she said, surprising me. She rolled over on her back and stared at the ceiling, which was filled with badly spackled cracks.

"It's not like that," I said. I summoned up the most positive statement I could make. "I don't want anything to harm our relationship. I don't want to lose it."

She smiled faintly, looking at the cracks in the ceiling. "You know I haven't been faithful..."

I waited.

"I always expected you to get it on with someone eventually. So you might as well go for it, Dave."

She was doing the tough chick act.

"Do you really not care that it's a guy?" I asked.

"I'm less jealous," she said abruptly.

I appreciated her honesty.

"I haven't slept with him."

"Well, don't let me stop you." She turned her back to me.

We hadn't had sex for ages. It wasn't the best time, and I didn't really want to; I wasn't even sure I could ever do it with her again. But I touched her hip tentatively.

"I told you I'm having cramps!" she snapped.

Slowly, as we lay there, though, we began to talk. Talking was something I had dreaded, but I knew that if we didn't talk now, we might as well end it the next day. Still not looking at me, she asked me why I was attracted to this particular person.

It didn't sound good to say I was attracted to his youth. That didn't sound good at all. "He seems vulnerable," I said.

She laughed. "I see. You'd never say that of me."

It was true.

"He doesn't look like you at all. He's Scandinavian. Like, his last name is Andersen. And he's from SoCal."

She looked at me then. "You have a fetish for blond youths?"

"I never thought so," I answered honestly. "He works at Twitter."

Then she did laugh uproariously. "Oh God, Dave, this is too much."

"What?"

"You've fallen for a techie! Who is he, Mark Zuckerberg?"

"Nothing like that," I said, thinking of Zuckerberg. "Well, a little. He wears glasses and he's a loner."

"How delightful," Janine said tartly. "Why do you think he's attracted to you?"

"I have no fucking clue."

She shook her head. "You don't realize how guys notice you. And women notice you. You're good-looking, Dave. I thought you were a great catch!"

"Yeah, back in the day," I murmured. I saw her shrug slightly.

"Anyway, we just kissed," I said uncomfortably. She sighed at that.

"Look, you need to get it out of your system. You told me about this other thing you had, and you said it never went all the way. Maybe you just need to experience more and then ... you can decide."

"Thing is, I don't think it's going to be that enlightening," I said. "I know I'm bisexual."

"You've just never been slutty," Janine said with a sigh. "Problem is, once you are, you can't really walk it back. Ask me, I've tried."

"You're not that slutty," I said.

"Dave, besides that guy you saw me with, I've slept with other people..."

I listened as she went on, lying on my back. Her hair hung near my face and I stroked it gently. She talked about a threeway she had with a couple who I'd thought were just our friends. They drifted out of our lives and I never knew why. Janine said that she had sex with them a few times. It was hot, extremely hot, and she felt so guilty about it. She could never tell me because the guy was crazy about her and she was crazy about him too. But he wasn't going to leave his girlfriend and she felt it was too dangerous to carry things on. So she told him it was over...

I remembered that guy, Eric, his name was. He'd come up to me one day in the Castro and all he said was, "Hey, Dave. Are you still with Janine?" He'd had a funny look on his face when I said yes, of course. He shrugged and said, "Later."

I thought about her having sex with them, Eric and his redheaded girlfriend. It was a turn-on, and she knew it was.

"I want you to tell me what sex is like with Aaron," Janine said sleepily. "Will you?"

"I will, if it gets to that," I said, uncomfortable. "I won't see him till next month, though, at the next de Young art event."

"Well, let me give you something to tide you over."

The blinds were drawn in the room. She took out my dick and began sucking. I closed my eyes, thinking of Eric, his girlfriend, Janine, and ... Aaron. Aaron sucking my dick. I moaned, touching her hair. It never got much wilder than this. But today she surprised me by deep-throating me, taking me in all the way. I hadn't known she could do that, and maybe she saved it for her casual partners.

There was something revealing about our sex that day. I realized that there had always been other people in our lives. There'd been our cruel and disappointing fathers, first of all. Then the people that we'd slept with before we knew each other. They hadn't been far away. And the people that Janine had fucked while we were together. Those people had actually kept us together, somehow. I wasn't bitter.

Nude now, she moved on top of me, slamming down hard. I put my hand on her ass, pushing a finger gently into her asshole. I wasn't sure what she was trying to prove here, but I went along. I remembered her words: "Trust me, you're not gay."

I was still hard, right enough. The old bed rocked as Janine cried out above me. She screamed my name, which she almost never did.

When she came, I turned her over and thrust a few times lying on top. "Please Dave, oh God," she begged. "Please do it rough."

Her legs locked around me. I closed my eyes and slid in deep and hard.

"Well," Janine said a little later. "We've still got it, Dave."

I wasn't so sure. Sex was one thing. Love was another. I still cared for Janine and could feel lust, yes.

But it had proved something for _her_. And she moved into my arms, snuggling, saying that she loved me.

I wrapped her in my arms. Since I never said anything at times like these, perhaps she wasn't disappointed.

# 7.

Now I was starting to let the floodgates open, watching porn in the evenings while Janine was out. Of course I had watched it when I was younger, a lot of it, on DVD in my early twenties when I was single. It was all there on the computer now. I just had to type in what I wanted, and what I wanted was two guys together. Not the group scenes, just two young, healthy-looking, clean-cut, well-hung guys going at it. There was plenty of it.

I deliberated googling Aaron, then calling him. But I wanted to see if he would come back to meet me. Since Mike had noticed him, Aaron was actually walking back into a trap, where we would both be under scrutiny. He would have no idea of that, of course.

I wondered about him, what he did at Twitter. He was probably a coder. Coding what, I scarcely knew. The site? Whatever that meant. I hopped on to Twitter one night and spent an hour puzzling it out. I registered, then searched for Aaron Andersen, whom I found under the handle @aaron. Simple. It took me a while to realize that only the people who worked at Twitter got to use their first names there.

He didn't tweet very much, just once per day usually, and had only 300 followers or so. I scrolled down to the day we'd met, where he tweeted to someone called @tessA (a pretty brunette, his sister, I guessed), "Going to de Young to see Birth of Impressionism. Should be awesome!" The tweet above it was the same night—after I'd left, I assumed.

@aaron: "I love this city."

And that was it. I stared at it, my heart leaping. And at his profile picture, where he looked younger and sweetly nerdy, though more tanned. He'd gotten paler in SF. Everybody did. His cover pic was his house on Elsie Street. It was so strange to think I'd been inside.

I followed him on Twitter and he followed me back almost instantly. He could have sent me a direct message, but he didn't. I didn't send him one. It would be too easy to say the wrong thing.

I worked every day. Janine and I fucked a lot now. I had discovered how to please her, really please her. It had taken long enough and I felt embarrassed at my stilted, overly gentle lovemaking of the past. It was bittersweet for me and maybe for her. I felt that she assumed that we would go on like this forever, but I no longer thought we would, or should. The sex didn't make me happy or unhappy, it just was. It calmed me a bit.

Of course, I wanted to please everybody; that was part of my nature. And there were guys who fucked other guys on the side. But I just didn't see myself that way, sneaking around: on the down-low, they called it in the black community. Though I was quite sure it was common in every ethnic group.

I had always felt I had a commitment to Janine. I would have preferred to keep it. I agonized over it. She needed me, she kept saying it, and the more we had sex, the more sweetly submissive she got. But she didn't ask me for promises I couldn't keep. She was wise that way.

I would come home, eat by myself, check Twitter, watch porn, get off, roll in to bed still aroused. Janine would join me much later after her shower, and she would light a candle. We'd fuck in the candlelight. Luckily, the walls were thick; I was fearful about how loud she got. The sex was good, rough, athletic, and so sweet later, when she would kiss my damp face, pulling me down on top of her.

It was like she was reminding me who I was to her. Who _she_ knew me as.

I could go through life being that guy, I kept telling myself.

July rolled around.

***

And so it was D-Day. Janine knew the significance, of course, but said nothing beyond kissing me on the cheek and saying, "It's OK if you get home late. I won't wait up." She seemed genuinely cool with everything, which I found hard to understand. I was grateful, though, because I was incredibly nervous.

I stood there for an hour at the exhibition, watching people come and go. Nothing.

Taking a chance that no one from the museum was looking, I walked over to _Whistler's Mother_ , which I found out was officially called something slightly longer and stuffier, but was indeed by Whistler, an American artist living in London in the 1880s and '90s. He didn't usually do portraits, and this one was somber but somewhat beautiful. Like so many other paintings by great artists, it had caused a stir at the time because it wasn't sentimental.

The elderly woman in the painting was nothing like my own girlish mother, but the aura of sadness in the painting intrigued me. Or, not sadness, exactly. There was pain there.

I felt a very light tap on my shoulder. I turned around.

_Aaron_. I froze. His face was so close to mine. His lips...

He took a sip of wine, staring at me, quite steady this time.

"I'll be done in an hour," I said in a whisper. "You can wait for me outside if you want, but I have to do the time."

"Aye, aye," Aaron said oddly, a twitch at his lips. I wasn't sure if he felt the same crazy desire to suck face that I did. Maybe he didn't. He touched me very quickly on the arm and moved away.

I moved back to a better position near the wall, noticing Mike Malone standing in the distance. If I hadn't looked for him, I wouldn't have seen him. He moved along quickly.

The next hour passed in a blur. I didn't see Aaron again. The room emptied out.

Finally, we were released. I walked alone to the parking garage, anxious to find out if Aaron had waited. I saw him nowhere along the path and my heart sank.

It wasn't fair to make him wait an hour, was it? Shit...

I located my car and was thrilled to see a slight figure leaning against it.

"How did you find it?" I asked.

"I remembered your car," Aaron said.

"That's wild. It's just an old grey Toyota..."

"But it's your car," he said, coming towards me. I watched him come nearer, nearer, and then he stepped up and kissed me quickly on the lips.

"Oh, Aaron, fuck," I groaned. I couldn't help it.

"Shhh," he said. "Let's go home."

I wasn't sure I could make it back to his house. I had to try. We could easily be spotted in the parking garage, and the idea of being seen by Mike Malone making out with Aaron in a car made me want to die.

We said almost nothing on the way home. I was acutely aware of my hard-on pushing against my light trousers. Aaron seemed composed, and yet... there was a coiled tension about him too.

I pulled into his driveway finally.

He released his belt, putting his hand on my thigh. I leaned over to kiss him. He pulled off his glasses.

There was the same electric energy to the kiss, which went on and on until we broke off, gasping for breath.

"God, this month has been..." I said.

"I know." He was staring at me, so seriously that I trembled.

"What, Aaron?"

"I don't know how to say this. I don't usually do this so fast. I need you to fuck me."

I exhaled. "Yeah," I said finally.

I remember the key rattling in the lock, and going into the hall with him. He pulled me upstairs and into a room. There was a large bed and we were on it. I noticed the bottle of lube by the bed. Condoms. Everything was ready.

And I was ready. More than ready.

"Take your clothes off," I said, staring at him. He obeyed in silence. There was no light in the room and it was dim, but I could see plenty.

He was so beautiful. His chest was almost hairless. I glanced down, wanting to touch him. He was well proportioned down there, I was glad to see. I stroked him gently, taking in his leg and the white puckered scars on it. He'd kept the knee brace on. It was one of those black neoprene sleeves with a hole at the kneecap that didn't look too bad, didn't look serious, really. It also looked sexy against his naked body.

"I only take it off to wash," he said. "Hurts too much otherwise."

I nodded, my mouth dry.

He kissed me almost shyly, touching my cock as well, stroking me expertly.

"You're so big, Dave."

That was funny, somehow. "I like big," he added.

He moved down gracefully to suck me. All his movements were quite assured. I couldn't say the same about myself. From the moment his mouth closed around my dick, I groaned loudly and I couldn't stop.

He continued the blow job until he knew I was good and ready, then slipped a condom on me. He lubed it.

I hadn't expected it to be like this. On the one hand, it was quite matter of fact and easy. On the other...

He smiled at me reassuringly, moving on to his belly. I really wanted him face up but found myself unable to utter a word as I positioned myself. He was so smooth, so gorgeous, so...

And I was in.

Then it turned into this crazy thing. Though I felt completely uncontrolled, I just kept going. I kept going even though I felt I was going to have a heart attack. He arched underneath me, squeezing with each thrust I made. I had moved beyond thinking into some sexual zone I had never been in before.

The bed creaked and our bodies were making slapping sounds. I was right over him, leaning against his sweaty hair, pressing down onto him. It felt completely insane. In a good way.

I didn't want to come. Then it would be over. But I wanted to come, because I knew it would be like nothing I had ever felt before. And I was right. I came in white-hot spurts while Aaron's body trembled below mine. I heard him cry out, scream really. And then we were both done, our limbs tangled together. Prostrate. I could not speak a word.

"Jesus fucking Christ," I said finally.

"Mmm," he agreed. "That was hot shit."

He was smiling up at me now, so beautiful, warm, and drowsy. We kissed, taking all the time in the world.

I clasped him to me.

"Let's not move for a bit," he whispered. I agreed. I was starving, sore, and needed to pee, but it didn't matter. The sex chemicals, whatever they were, were still in my system. I felt completely high, as a matter of fact.

"What's the time?" I asked, my words slow.

He glanced at the bedside clock, which had been ticking all the while and I hadn't heard it. "11.30 pm."

"No way."

"It is. Yeah."

This closeness was almost scary. As was my lack of shame. It had been blown away, somehow, by the sex. By fucking him.

We stared into each other's eyes. Matt had just looked dopey and sweet at times like these. But then, he'd gotten stoned before sex most of the time; I just hadn't noticed.

With Aaron, I always sensed his intelligence, and I was always curious to know what he was thinking.

"I can't believe it," I said.

"What?"

"That didn't seem wrong at all."

"There _is_ nothing wrong with it, Dave. You know that," Aaron said sleepily. He yawned. "Sorry, I had a long day at work..."

"I exhausted you."

"Well, yeah. That was the idea."

"I need to pee," I said.

"Me too. I'll show you the bathroom."

We slipped out of bed together, Aaron grabbing a beige flannel robe and then giving me one. I almost didn't wear it; it seemed so silly. But it was comfortable against my skin.

I would have been shy about going to the bathroom with someone else, normally. But Aaron splashed water onto his face while I used the toilet. He then used the toilet as well and flushed. I splashed water on my face, staring at myself in the mirror above the sink. Which was silly because the room was only lit by a nightlight plugged into the outlet. I could see myself in outline, dark and shadowy, and Aaron coming up behind me. I turned.

"I wanted to talk tonight, too," I said. "I thought we would."

"We can talk now, and eat," Aaron said. "There's food in the fridge. Lasagna."

"You prepared." I slid my hands around his waist and our gentle kiss turned fierce.

He broke off with a groan, resting his head on my chest.

"I need more sex later, though. I'm sorry, Dave, but this month has been hell on me."

"For me, too," I agreed. "I watched lots of gay porn."

He laughed, punching me gently. "Did it help?"

"It didn't totally do the trick, no."

"I won't ask about your girl," he said soberly, looking sharply at me. "Are you guys still...?"

"Up to now, yeah," I answered. But looking at him, the sex with Janine seemed to recede into the distance.

"Ah," he just said.

"Aaron."

We were still in the bathroom, standing on the rug. He had one of those claw-foot tubs. I reached out and touched his face in the dim light.

"What?" he whispered.

"It's you I want. I can't help it."

He just nodded. Moonlight was flooding in the window, I noticed, lighting up his face, making him look unearthly.

"I love you."

The minute I said it, I felt the floor drop under me. What the fuck?? I shouldn't have said it; it was crazy, totally crazy.

He took a step toward me, his arms going around me. "Dave, I'm ... sorry for the cliché." He paused, then said unexpectedly, "I'm madly in love with you."

_Madly in love_. With me. It felt like there was a rock stuck in my throat.

"I know we should eat, but I want to go back to bed with you. I want more."

I nodded.

This time he positioned himself differently on the bed, flat on his back, his ankles up on my shoulders. I knew what he wanted, especially from watching the gay porn clips, but I wasn't sure I could be so confidently dominant. But I had to try. And I surprised myself. I watched his face, his eyes, as we fucked. He was so incredibly sexy to me.

We both came, shuddering like mad. Tears slid down his cheeks as he pulled me onto him. He hadn't made me say any of the dirty words that Janine required, but I knew that had been his way of giving himself to me, really giving himself. I covered his face with kisses and he held me tight.

I'd really told him very little about myself. He didn't know that tonight was my first time having anal sex with another man. So I murmured it to him.

"I can't believe that," he said.

"I've only been with one other guy, Aaron."

He shook his head. "Unbelievable. I've been with ... a good few, but it was always kind of disappointing."

"How?" I asked.

"Oh, just didn't feel right," he said vaguely. "Sometimes it felt kind of dirty. Or, like, almost hostile."

I was silent. I didn't doubt him.

"When was your first?" I asked.

He stiffened up. "Don't ask me that now, OK?"

"Sure," I said, puzzled.

He kissed the tip of my nose, sliding out of bed and putting on his robe. "I'm going to bring some food in here. It's messy, but what the heck."

I didn't stop him. He switched on a lamp and I lay back, feeling deeply tired and satisfied. I closed my eyes.

Next thing I knew, Aaron was handing me a glass of white wine. We sat up in bed, propped up by pillows, eating Italian food on paper plates, talking, laughing. The scene was surreal to me. I had never been so happy in my life, so at ease. I wondered if he had.

He was running his hand through his hair, staring at me with bright, intelligent eyes.

"We doing this again? I mean, sooner than next month?"

I nodded. "Once a week works for me."

There was a flash of pain in his eyes. "Oh."

"No, Aaron, I didn't mean it like that."

He shook his head. "It's OK. I've no right to ask for more than that. Not now, anyway."

There was an uneasy silence.

"Janine knows about you." It was the first time I'd said her name to him.

"What does she say?"

He looked quite young and innocent as he asked that. I paused.

"She thinks it's good for me to sleep with a guy."

"She must be amazing," he said, slightly bitterly.

"She is, but ..." I stared at him.

"What?"

"You're more amazing, that's all."

"All?" he said with a grin.

We were snuggling and kissing again. I felt like pinching myself. I'd never felt so at ease, so happy, and so kind of _young_. He brought it out in me. But I was sure that this happiness was something that the real world would squash if I brought it out into the light of day.

"I love your chest hair," he said, petting me. "So, was it all that you expected it to be?"

"And more," I said, leaning back. He clambered on top of me, reaching to the side for a bottle of massage oil, which was soon helping him slide around on top of me.

"Are you going to make me come again?" I whispered.

He nodded, looking down at me, our bodies smushed together. I buried my face in his neck.

This was lovemaking, I thought with wonder. He captured my lips, and kept moving, gliding, until we both reached climax. It was so gentle and powerful, I almost couldn't stand it.

"I keep forgetting about your leg," I said.

He nodded. "Times like this, I just forget about it too. It hurts later."

I never wanted to leave that house. The street was so quiet outside. I felt totally relaxed, comfortable with his body and my own.

He looked down at me. "You're welcome here in this house. Anytime. But I won't force it to happen. I know this probably won't... last, Dave."

_Ouch_. I stared up at him. "You might be wrong about that."

"Really?" he asked. "Well, I've never had a boyfriend. And... I don't want to get my hopes up."

"I can see that." His expression tugged at my heartstrings. "I've never had a boyfriend either, and it wasn't something I thought I wanted. But with you, I can see it."

He just stared at me quizzically.

"I'm not lying," I added.

I got up and started dressing. He watched me, brooding, it seemed.

"You'll see me again," I said, dressed now. "Here, put your number in my phone."

That seemed to please him. He squinted at the phone, putting the number in efficiently.

"It'll say Aaron when I call. Is that OK?"

"Yeah. I don't know any other Aarons."

We hugged at the side of the bed. I felt myself preparing to face the cold, windy, dark world outside.

"What you said in the bathroom, Dave..."

"I meant it." I gulped, holding him tighter. "That's not anything that's ever been so easy for me to say."

He nodded. "I hope I'll hear it again."

"How about next Monday?" I said, choosing a random day not too far away. "I actually have Mondays off."

"Perfect." He lay back, looking at me, his face inscrutable.

"Do you have family, besides Tessa?" I asked suddenly. "I know you told me your mom died."

There was a long pause. "No. My dad's actually dead as well."

"Oh. Sorry." I bit my lip.

"Ancient history," he said wearily. "I was only ten when it happened."

I knew I shouldn't push but couldn't help it. "What was 'it'?"

"He OD'd," Aaron said bluntly. "He was a heroin addict. Most people didn't know he was using. I didn't."

I turned my back on him briefly, overwhelmed by the look in his eyes.

"My father's an alcoholic," I said, facing him. "He's a sodden mess. And I've hated him for years."

There I was again, being a downer.

Aaron sat up, then slid off the bed. We hugged.

"You're nothing like him, I'm sure," he whispered. "I look very like my dad."

He pulled an old framed photo off the shelf and handed it to me. A lovely, glamorous woman in a short dress stood on a beach beside a tanned, slightly more masculine version of Aaron.

"Tessa took it. She was only a young kid. I was a baby then."

"Cute couple," I murmured. I leaned down to kiss him, once again swept away by his touch. Here we were, two sons of addicts, unable to stop kissing, I thought. Did our pasts dovetail? Or was there something lurking there that was going to break us apart?

"You don't seem to mind my intensity too much," Aaron said, holding me. "I could do it again, you know." He nodded toward the bed.

"That's just too much sex."

We laughed, still standing up, meshed together. "Sorry, I'm a Catholic boy."

"You're right, though," Aaron said sweetly. "We've had just enough."

It was as if he had measured the sex, the way he had measured the ingredients for the hot drink the first time. Carefully, beautifully.

I was completely enraptured by him. And I had already said that I loved him. I wasn't sure what to think of that. We had rushed everything. Sex on the second date, and lots of it. But it still felt special, overwhelmingly so.

He held my wrist, looking at me with those soulful brown eyes.

"I gotta work tomorrow, but on Monday, let's just go to bed whenever you get here, OK? I'll take Monday off too."

"You got it," I said, relishing the prospect.

Outside on Elsie Street, I glanced at my phone. It was close to 3 am. A raccoon scooted by, giving me a piercing look. What sounded like an owl hooted in the distance. I stretched, glancing upward at the house. The upstairs light blinked off. It wasn't as cold outside as I'd thought. The air felt good. I stared at the moon, a small silver disc riding high in the sky. I felt a sudden surge of joy.

# 8.

Problem was, I hadn't given enough thought to the dismal reality of what it would be like afterward, going back to Lake Street. There was the usual hassle of parking the car way too far away from the house in a tight spot, then creeping into the apartment late at night, trying to be quiet, showering. Then crawling into bed beside Janine, who was lying there stiffly and didn't stir. I took a few breaths, trying to compose myself, and fell asleep. I was knocked out.

Later I awoke, rubbing my eyes blearily, to find Janine standing in the doorway, fully dressed. A harsh light filled the room.

"It's past ten," Janine said. "Are you ever getting up? You have to work in two hours."

I nodded. Little bits of the night before started filtering back to me. I put my foot down onto the worn gray carpet. I was naked, not my usual habit, and Janine stayed there, looking, staring really.

"I heard you come in," she said. "I couldn't believe it was so late."

"You said you wouldn't wait up," I responded. I felt like a woozy wreck, but there was an underlying happiness buoying me up.

"True enough," Janine said coldly. "All right. How was it, Dave?"

"Is there coffee?" I answered. I threw on a pair of sweatpants and made my way to the kitchen. This was weird. I felt like I was making excuses to a stranger. I had left for work the day before feeling close enough to Janine, and now I felt nothing of the sort. Could that completely be gone? _I'd spent years with this person_.

I sipped black coffee in a mug, eyes down, desperate to get the caffeine in me.

"How was it?" Janine repeated, sitting at the small Formica kitchen table. I stood there by the coffee machine, sipping. It felt like I was in a break room at work. There was no intimacy between us, and I suddenly realized that I didn't want to try to foster any. There was no point.

"It was good," I said curtly. "Amazing."

"Amazing," she echoed. Her blue eyes filled with tears. "Oh, OK."

I exhaled.

"Sorry, Janine, but I need some space for a while to think things through. It's just too confusing to... you know..."

She shook her head. "Did I ever make you feel this way?"

I kept drinking the bitter brew down. She'd probably made it four hours ago, I thought. Still, I didn't deserve anything better.

"No," I answered quietly. "But it's different for you. I don't know why."

She bit her lip. "Maybe it's different because I love you. You asshole."

I gulped. It was better to be silent now. But she wouldn't stop. She could see through me.

"You're not _in love_ with him, are you?"

Silence. I forced myself to say nothing. But then, the silence itself was...telling.

"I can't fucking believe it. One night!"

"That's all it takes sometimes," I couldn't help saying. I wasn't exactly doing a happy dance in front of her, but from her shocked expression I could see that she was taking it that way.

"Oh, you smug bastard."

She wanted to hit me, I could tell, and I wouldn't have minded.

But she sat there. And I stood, holding the empty cup. Time ticked away.

"I'm going to go shower," I said, though I didn't really need to. I took a long time in the shower stall, shampooing my hair, letting the warm water slide over me as best it could, though we didn't have the best water pressure in those ancient pipes. My muscles felt deliciously sore. It would be all right somehow, I thought. I didn't trust myself, or Janine, but I trusted Aaron. I trusted him to make it come right for us, because I knew he had the power to do so.

There was only Tom in the kitchen when I got out, half snoozing on his cushion, giving me a disapproving glance.

And there was a note on the table.

I picked it up.

Dave,

I'd rather live alone than with someone who doesn't give a shit about me or my feelings. You're turning into someone I don't know anymore. I think you should move out, but I'll give you a couple days to think about it and find a new place... I'm sorry, but I think it's for the best.

J.

Wow. That was a shock. I read it again and again, my blood pressure skyrocketing. Janine was right, though. That was the thing. I needed to go.

Part of me wanted to leave right then, never come back. I checked the time. I'd an hour before work, then I would have to work all weekend. She knew that.

I felt panic but, oddly, not despair. I picked up my phone, turned it on.

He had sent me a text, hours before.

Hey. How'd it go this am? I love you. A.

My throat clenched and I teared up. Jesus, I didn't deserve this guy. Then I started a text.

Hey. Not too well. J is tossing me out. If I brought everything I own, not much, over to Elsie St on Monday, would u be ok with it?

Could I be any more pathetic? I thought. I knew that if someone had approached me that way, I would have had a knee-jerk reaction of "go fuck yourself." I wasn't the groveling type and didn't like people who groveled. But...

Three minutes later, I had my answer.

Yes! I have a room. Come anytime on Mon with your stuff. You can park in my driveway permanently now :-) A.

Tears of relief slid down my face. I went into the bedroom and threw myself down on the bed, trying to get it together. The house was ominously quiet. The "I have a room" part was nice; it gave me a tiny shred of dignity. I'd pay him rent. There.

I could leave sooner. But there were things he'd probably have to do to get ready, and I needed a bit of space between now and then. There would have to be one last bruising talk with Janine. I owed her that, I supposed. I knew her: she would stay angry, that was her way of protecting herself. And she was right to be angry. I'd been her boyfriend. And now I was... someone else's boyfriend. Living in her apartment, in love with someone else. Ugh.

_This isn't me_ , I thought. But it was. And Mike Malone would find out soon enough. He'd know I'd left her. For another guy. That I'd only seen twice in my life.

I knew he'd fire me sooner or later. But the job was the one piece of my old life that I wanted to keep as long as I could. Without that I'd be truly adrift, dependent on Aaron; and much as I loved him, that wasn't right.

# 9.

I sat by the fountain at lunch while Vic and I chewed the fat.

"You look tired," he said sympathetically. "Late night?"

I nodded, munching my puny cheese sandwich. He was scarfing down something from a box, some greasy-looking noodle thing.

"Yeah. Vic, I'm moving out of my girlfriend's place this weekend."

"Oh." He was neutral, watching my expression.

"I'm moving to Bernal Heights." I couldn't help smiling.

"Yeah? Which street? I know that 'hood well."

"Elsie Street."

Vic nodded. "Nice. How'd you manage that? I hear it's hard to get a place in Bernal. It's expensive now. You should have seen it in the early '90s... Man, it was so dead! There was just a bank and a few liquor stores. Then the Good Life Grocery moved in."

He was a couple years older than me, that was right.

"I used to go to 30th and Mission for karate class," he added. "Anyway, so..."

"Well. I met someone who lives there."

"Not the guy that you took home?" Vic connected the dots. "OK. Are you guys...?"

I was fascinated by how quick he was. Would everyone be this quick? I stared down at the still water. I had to say something. Why not the truth?

"We're together now, yeah," I answered. "We started dating."

The bland expressions didn't seem to fit what Aaron and I had been doing.

"You date guys?" Vic's tone was so light he might as well have asked, "You like donuts?"

"Not usually, no. I've only dated one other. Back in Boston."

"I used to go to bars in the Castro when I was younger," Vic mentioned casually. "Got picked up a few times before I figured things out."

I glanced at him, nodding. How much had it cost to tell me that? "Are you sorry you did that?"

"No way," Vic said with a laugh. "I'd probably do it again if I wasn't too old now."

Too old at 30! I must have looked horror-stricken because he said "kidding" in a not very convincing voice.

"White guys dug me for a bit," he said, shrugging. "I liked the attention and all, but I really prefer chicks, so..."

"Can you keep this to yourself, Vic?" I asked. "It's going to be a hard weekend, and..."

"Yeah, yeah, sure," he said, looking at me thoughtfully. "I hope it's the right thing for you."

"It's very sudden," I admitted. "Maybe too fast. I don't know."

He shrugged. Finally he said, "What's his name?"

I blushed, saying it. "Aaron." Then I added, "He works at Twitter."

I watched Vic's expression change, _ah_ , as if he got it now, he understood what I'd done. I wanted to say it wasn't about security or status, this move from Janine to Aaron, but I wasn't sure it would come out the right way. Well, he'd think what he wanted to think. There was nothing I could do about that.

"I'll probably hear his name again," Vic said with a smile.

"You probably will," I agreed.

***

There was only one sighting of Mike that weekend. I saw him walking with a woman down a corridor; it could have been a docent. He glanced around and I could distinctly see him curl his lip. I ducked back into the gallery.

He had it in for me. It was going to be Seamus Flannery all over again, wasn't it? But the only way I would hit him was if he insulted Aaron, I thought. Any insult he threw my way, I'd swallow. This was the time to swallow my pride.

I craved Aaron that weekend with a deep physical longing. But I figured I deserved it. I didn't call him. I crawled into bed on Friday night; when Janine joined me later I could smell the booze on her breath. She curtly said "goodnight" and that was it.

Saturday and Sunday crawled by. Saturday night Janine was out till past 2am. I was busy throwing things in bags those evenings in preparation for putting them in the car. I didn't want the car to get broken into with my stuff inside, so I held off on taking anything out of the house. I would do that on Monday morning.

I didn't have much beside my clothes. I was leaving Janine the few pieces of furniture, books, and pictures we had, along with all the kitchen stuff. Aaron had everything over there. It was a well-stocked place on Elsie Street. I wondered how Janine would swing it financially without me, but she made just enough to get by, I thought. Things would be tighter and I was leaving her in the lurch—but she'd kicked me out.

There were things that hurt to leave. A photo album with pictures of us. Tom. It did hurt to leave Tom, but he was her cat first and foremost. I grabbed a few DVDs I'd bought over the years, _Brokeback Mountain_ among them. I had no laptop, no computer at all. I knew Aaron would be sweet about it, but I was embarrassed by my shabby belongings.

Monday morning turned out to be the most difficult time. Janine said she'd help me pack the car. She was tearstained, dead silent, pale, and worn. Because of the fog she wore a bright red fuzzy sweater that I'd always loved. After the car was packed up she asked me to come back inside the apartment with her. We sat on the couch for one last time.

"Davey, this doesn't feel right," she said in a whisper. "I don't understand how you can just go like this, so easily."

"But you wanted me to go, Janine."

"I did, but I thought you'd fight it."

I shook my head. "I'm sorry. I know you don't understand."

"But we had great sex!" she protested. "Right up until you went out a few nights ago and screwed him. How could that be... how could that not mean anything to you?"

"It did mean something," I said nervously.

She moved into my arms and we hugged.

"It did mean something, but for years we didn't really, you know, have that passionate a relationship."

"I wanted to," she murmured, sniffling.

"I know. It was me. I did love you, Janine."

"Did!" she exclaimed. "One month you do and the next month you don't. I trusted you, Dave."

I sighed. "Things stayed the same for a long time. A long time. Too long. We weren't growing."

She shook her head. "You were great about so many things. We were honest with each other."

I nodded.

"Janine, I want to tell you something."

She looked at me searchingly.

"You said, 'trust me, you're not gay.' But I think I am. When I'm with Aaron, I'm completely 100 percent _into_ him. And with this relationship, I wasn't totally there. I tried to be. But I wasn't."

She shook her head. "You don't know how humiliating that is to hear! It doesn't make me feel better, Dave."

"But it's honest, OK? I owe you the truth. I'm so grateful to you, Janine." I choked up. "You stuck with me, but I really wasn't... I wasn't happy. I'm sorry. You deserve to be happy."

She bit her lip. "I doubt that's going to happen."

"Men love you! It is going to happen if you let it, but you don't want me hanging around and us both being miserable. What's the point in that?"

"If you say you were miserable," she said slowly, "then you _should_ go. I wasn't miserable with you, though. For the record."

"I don't think I'll ever sleep with a woman again. OK? Does that prove my point?"

"Now you're saying I made you hate women." But there was a little smile on her lips.

"I stayed with you this long because you're a great _person_. But I should have realized I was into guys a lot earlier. I should have had more courage."

"It was the job," she said, watching me. "Bartending. It's a stupid job. You don't learn anything about yourself, just other people."

"The job didn't help any."

"Please, Dave, stay in touch," she said suddenly. "All sorts of things can happen. I don't mean that Aaron's going to throw you out..."

I smiled at her. "Maybe his patience will wear thin, too. I don't know."

We agreed to stay in touch; to meet once a month for coffee. It felt nice, that. Even though I wasn't sure we would.

She stood by the car as I drove off. Lake Street receded into the distance in all its grayness. Janine's red sweater stood out, a beacon that I was leaving behind. And perhaps, I thought, I would regret this one day; I'd look back and say, "That was my last chance at a normal life."

But I couldn't see it and I zipped down Geary feeling bright and alive, released from something I had once pursued and wanted. The Lucky Penny diner shot by on my left. Had it been lucky for me? Or was I luckier now?

# 10.

For once I was visiting Elsie Street in the daytime. I noted with pleasure that the weather was sunnier than in my old neighborhood. I made the turn up Cortland, noticing restaurants called "Zante's Indian Pizza" on one corner and "Spicy Bite" on the other. It all seemed pretty spicy to me. My car groaned up the hill, unused to the extra load. Aaron had said street parking was easier here. I made the turn onto Elsie, my heart starting to pulse. Slowly, I drove up toward the hill, noticing the leafy trees, the people out walking their dogs on the street. Toned women who looked like they'd been at yoga class. A Latino father and his young son. A different world.

I pulled in to the driveway of 403. Aaron was not there to greet me. The house looked well tended and charming, the windows painted with green trim. I just stared at it for a moment.

I lived here now.

I opened the trunk, and all at once Aaron was by my side. We hugged. He whispered in my ear, "I made something for you. Leave that till later."

I obediently closed the trunk, following him into the house. He pressed some keys into my hand. I stared at them.

"House keys," he said. "Yours."

I was quiet and I must have looked pale.

"Dave, you look exhausted!" he said.

"I worked all weekend."

Feeling like a zombie, I went to the kitchen behind him, and there in front of me was a spread that blew my mind.

"I made you a _smorgasbord_ ," he said with satisfaction, using the proper pronunciation.

I had to laugh, because that word seemed so funny. "No, there really is such a thing as a smorgasbord!" he protested.

I heaped a plate with food while he filled two shot glasses with a clear liqueur. "We can drink to this. This happy occasion."

"What is that?" I asked.

"Aquavit," he said.

I was sure it would be similar to vodka. Close enough. We clinked glasses. I ate. He didn't eat much, watching me.

"Not hungry?" I asked.

"For you," he answered steadily, and I put down my fork.

"Can we come back to this?"

"Yeah. It will be here all day."

I got up and held out my hand to him. He took it.

"I want to show you your room," he said. "Though... I hope you'll sleep with me at night. I'm not used to sleeping with anyone else in the bed, but..."

I pulled him to me for a scorching kiss.

"Show me my room, then," I said.

The upstairs room was small, across from his, with a desk on which he had thoughtfully put a small laptop. The full-size bed had a velvety flowered quilt.

"It's my spare. I thought you might like to use it here."

"This isn't Tessa's room, is it?" I asked. I had a sinking feeling that it was.

"Tessa? No," he answered. "I'll show you Tessa's room, if you like. It's more of a workroom, with a futon in the corner."

I was glad, though I didn't entirely believe him. There was a feminine quality about the room that hadn't escaped me.

Once I had landed on the bed, I found I couldn't get off. "I'm sorry, Aaron, I need a nap," I murmured, embarrassed.

"It's quite all right."

He looked down at me with such love. I felt a deep gratitude as I looked back at him.

"Aaron, I can't tell you how much this means. That you took me in."

"Of course." He was composed. "If it hadn't been for me, she wouldn't have thrown you out, right?"

"I suppose," I said. "It's true, but... Just because you sleep with someone doesn't mean you should have to take them in."

He shook his head. "Don't go all Boston on me, Dave."

I smiled.

"You can call it _sleeping together_ if you want, but it did seem like a tiny bit more than that."

"A tiny bit," I said, blushing.

"You said you loved me. Maybe you've forgotten."

He was playing with me, his expression mischievous. I liked it.

"I might have said something like that," I said, yawning. "If you let me nap, I'll try to prove it to you."

"It's a deal." He went out of the room and I stared at the door as he shut it softly. Everything was so clean and bright here, like a dream. A good dream.

A memory from my past snuck up, unwanted. I was eight or so. My father was lying on his bed, snoring, a stream of vomit pooling around him and dripping on the floor. I had just got home from school. It was a cool, drizzly day outside. It was the first time I'd seen him drunk, or the first time I said to myself, "He's drunk." I stood there, my nose wrinkling and this horrible empty feeling in my belly that I could now identify as panic. My pregnant mother came up behind me and said soothingly, "Let Daddy sleep."

"But don't you need to clean him?"

"No, honey, if we wake him now he'll be very angry. Let's wait till he gets up and then he'll be right as rain."

Right as rain. As if rain was ever _right_. It wasn't. I preferred the sun, the sun that was pooling in now from the little skylight above my head.

I shucked off my shoes, crawled under the covers. When I woke up, Aaron would be there.

***

"I moved all your things inside," said Aaron later, joining me in bed.

We snuggled a bit. He asked about how Janine had taken it. I gave him a brief description of the last few days.

"We're going to keep in touch," I said.

"Will you ever want to sleep with her again, Dave?" he asked.

"Never." I meant it. "And she'll move on. She's good at moving on when things are completely done. She and I are done, Aaron."

"I'm so glad," he whispered.

"Me too."

"When you texted me about moving here, I was like... hallelujah!"

"I was so scared when I texted you. I cried when I got your reply."

The words tumbled out. He kissed me fiercely, putting my hands on his flat stomach, pulling his T-shirt off. The next few minutes were deliciously hot and blurred. I felt I had not touched him enough yet and I needed to fix that. In the end, without much delay, I took his cock into my mouth, tonguing the purplish head, remembering how it went, how it had been with Matt all those years before, trying to go slow, hearing his startled gasps, feeling him move against me, using my spit to keep him wet, and, finally, swallowing his warm seed.

# 11.

It felt like I was on permanent vacation, that Monday. Every now and then, I remembered with a shock that I had to work the next day, and for the next six days. Living with Janine, work had seemed a necessary duty and not such a bad change from the everyday routine. Now, though, it seemed odd to be going back so soon into my silent, invisible world at the museum when I was seeing and feeling everything in joyous color.

We went downstairs and ate again, and Aaron showed me the yard in the afternoon. The vibe between us was loving and sweet, strangely different from our frenzied second "date," though, and I wondered when I would get to have full-on sex with him again. There was this fear in the back of my mind, I suppose, that being loving and cozy with him, domestic, might mean the sexual energy would fizzle. I couldn't know if that was going to be the case, and I just had to pray that it wouldn't be, have faith in him. Meanwhile, I felt a loving, warm glow inside every time I looked at him that was totally new to me.

The compact yard was sweet and had lots of potential. Tessa had worked on it, he said, and he tried to water, but he sometimes forgot. We walked on the grass in bare feet and I tried to think how long it had been since I'd done that. There was a fruit tree, a pretty fuchsia bush, some roses, lavender ... and a veggie patch that had potatoes and onions in it, Aaron said proudly.

"Oh, and the neighbors are nice," he added. "One's a doctor at UCSF, hardly ever home. There's actually a female artist couple on the other side. They've been here since the late '70s."

Worlds away from Lake Street. He noticed I had gone very quiet and came up to me, cupping my face in his hands. We kissed, and I slid my hands down over his shoulders, resting them gently on his ass.

"Tell me what you want, Dave," he whispered.

Words were escaping me. We hadn't come up with our couples' code words yet, so I could be vague about it, or clinical. I wasn't sure which he preferred.

"I'd like to spend some time in your bed," I said.

"Why?" he asked teasingly.

"Oh, I think you know why."

It was the right approach. He nodded happily and said, "Great!" which seemed an oddly perky thing to say, but I found it amusing.

His room looked different during the day. I noticed pictures on the walls, old photographs, posters. He was young enough to still have some rock group posters up on the wall, I noted with a pang. There was a big one of Nirvana near the bed.

It was almost a teenager's bedroom, not quite, but it wasn't a grown man's bedroom.

I noticed all this while he closed the blinds. Then he came up to me and it was a whole different vibe suddenly. We kissed again, but it wasn't the innocent kiss of the garden. I was still finding my way with him and noticing that each sexual encounter was oddly different.

His eyes were so intense. Once we were naked, he got on his knees, still wearing the flexible brace, and started blowing me, taking me deep into his throat and looking up as if to watch my reaction. This proved almost too hot for me to handle. Once we'd stumbled over to the bed, we settled down in a spooning position. Holding him close with one arm, I gently entered him. Locked together like this, with me moving in slow thrusts and him responding, felt almost unbearably hot. His cries became ragged and desperate, his movements jerky, while I breathed loudly against the back of his neck, my eyes closed.

There was so much I didn't understand, and could only sense. I sensed this was emotional for him, for some reason, and was shocked when I felt his warm tears splashing onto my hand. I asked him if he wanted me to stop.

"No... no, never... please, Dave... Keep holding me."

It was the holding that was driving him crazy, I thought. Why? I watched in a daze as he came in a sudden, convulsing movement as if an electric shock had crackled up his spine. That pushed me over the edge too, and I blacked out for a moment.

When I looked at him again he was watching me intently, tears still rolling out of his eyes. He rubbed his face but didn't say anything.

"Shit. I didn't use a rubber! I'm sorry," I said, suddenly realizing it. "You have to remind me sometimes."

He shook his head. "No problem. I trust you're clean."

"You shouldn't take that risk, Aaron."

"I trust you," he repeated. His eyes welled up again. "Sorry about this."

"No, it's all right. That was super-intense."

He nodded, sniffling slightly and I passed him a tissue.

"I don't usually cry after sex," he said, staring at the ceiling. "Or during," he added grimly.

"What's it about?"

Silence.

"Dave, you don't really want to know."

"I do want to know," I insisted. "I do want to. I don't like feeling that I'm the cause of this."

"You're not the cause." He sighed deeply, his eyes almost closed now. "We can talk later. I need to rest..."

His body relaxed but he was still turned slightly away from me, which worried me. I needed to rest too, though. I allowed my eyes to close in the darkened room.

When I awoke he was snuggling on top of me and looked much better, back to his old self.

I clasped him to me, feeling his heartbeat.

"It was old stuff," he said with a long sigh.

I just wanted him to feel safe enough to tell me, but bugging him wasn't a good idea, so I stayed quiet. I wasn't clueless about things that could happen to people in childhood but I'd put Aaron in a different category. Because he was special and because I loved him, nothing bad had happened to him, in my mind. Well, besides his father overdosing and his mother dying when he was sixteen, but surely nobody had harmed him. It was only that I hated to think of somebody messing with him before he was ready. And truthfully, _I_ wasn't ready to hear it. I would have preferred not to, but I wasn't the type to shut him down either when he was trying to tell me something. That just seemed wrong.

Uncomfortable, increasingly horrified, I listened to the tale he started to spill, lying against my chest.

After his father died, he said, his distraught mother had taken on a series of sketchy live-in boyfriends. There was one guy who was younger than she was. "He was twenty-eight, actually, the same age you are, Dave. I was twelve.

"He started by being really nice to me, like a buddy, an older buddy. And I looked up to him, of course. My mom worked and he said he could look after me during the day. He took me surfing, that sort of thing. But he seemed more interested in watching me. He watched me a lot.

"Well, one day he started messing around with me. He told me it was normal. Tessa was away that summer, traveling with friends. I had no one to ask. He started out really gentle and it seemed like no big deal. But he ended up having sex with me. God, the first time, I felt so dirty.

"He said he'd hurt my mom if I told anyone. Plus, they wouldn't believe me. And I believed that. My mother was a sweet, naïve person and I don't think she would have. Until she saw it. She walked in on us one day. We were in her bed."

Aaron heaved a big sigh. "I've never forgotten it. The way she reacted. Her face when she saw us! She did kick him out. And she said sorry to me later. She cried. She said he was a very, very bad guy and that I wasn't to blame. I wasn't bad, she said. But I knew that nothing would ever be the same between us. And it never was."

I didn't say anything, just stroked his hair. I felt that Janine's untold stories had come between us over the years. And now, with Aaron, he'd told me early on, and I hoped that was a good sign. But I wondered how sex would be for us now and whether I would be able to get that image out of my head.

I was filled with rage, of course. But it was pointless, too late. I hoped that guy was dead now, or homeless. There was never any kind of justice, just damage, it seemed.

"Do you remember his name?"

"Of course."

"I could hunt him down for you."

Aaron laughed dryly. "And then what?"

I said nothing. It would be easy to kill someone like that, in my fantasies, at least. But there was no point in making this about _me_. Let the guy recede into the past, if that was possible.

"I'm not surprised you moved up here," I said. "No chance of ever running into him again."

"He was from LA, I think." Aaron sounded weirdly calm now. "Look, Dave, don't freak out, but you sometimes remind me of him."

I groaned. That was unexpected.

"Just physically. I'm sorry. It's messed up. Would you rather not know?"

He looked at me wistfully.

"Oh, Aaron," I said. "Is this what it's all been about?" My stomach was in knots. "Is this why the sex has been so hot?"

A long, agonizing moment passed.

He pulled me over on top of him and we kissed.

"I love the way you kiss," he said breathlessly. "Just touch me, OK?"

I took some lube and stroked him, watching him, and he was hard instantly. I tongued his nipples as I stroked, patiently, the full length of him. When he came, splattering against me, it felt like a moment of pure release. He laughed. We both did.

"I don't know what that proves," he murmured. "But I feel better."

I understood then, looking down at him, that there was no going back. I was going to have to be very careful with him, and the worst thing I could do was abruptly leave. Everyone had left him.

"I'm here for as long as you want me, Aaron," I told him quietly.

His eyes filled with tears again. "Stop it, Dave," he said, putting his hand over my mouth.

I loved him so much. But I worried now that he would turn against me at some point. He had welcomed me into his life a little bit too easily, and I was starting to see why he had done it. We were all doing this, weren't we, trying to retrieve the past as we went, the good parts of the past, the parts we wanted to keep. But the bad things don't ever disappear, I thought. He had been brave to tell me. Now I had to stop it from infecting our happiness. I didn't know how to do that, but at least he had said he trusted me.

We stayed in bed as the afternoon drew into evening. The sense of peace after making love was addictive. I think we both felt it.

"I've never felt so good," he said with a sigh.

"Me either."

"I'm glad I could tell you about that thing. And you can tell me anything."

I was sure I could, but I didn't want to. Although finally I confessed, "I wouldn't mind if you wanted to fuck me, Aaron."

He grimaced. "Uh, no, I don't top. That's a firm boundary I have."

"But you could?"

"I suppose so, but I don't want to. I never have."

"Well, damn," I said, shrugging.

"It sucks, I know. I'm not a switch."

"I guess I must be," I said with a smile.

I didn't want to make a big deal of it. I was still exploring my own sexuality, and it wasn't fair to make him change something that seemed so fundamental to him.

"If you ever find someone you want to experiment with, you can bottom with him one time," Aaron said. "A free pass."

He was on top of me as he said this, nuzzling in my ear. My limbs felt heavy and warm.

"I could never be unfaithful to you," I mumbled.

He sighed against me. "You're unreal sometimes."

"You're not going to see other people, are you?"

He shook his head. "No, but that's because you're the best lover I've ever had. I don't want to risk losing you."

_The best lover_. I glowed. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

I suspected my competition had not been that impressive. We'd lucked out, finding each other, him and me. That was the truth.

***

There was just one more thing in the house he said he had to show me. He took me into Tessa's room in the evening, switching on the light that hung in a bare bulb from the ceiling. It was an artist's space, that was for sure. Canvases lined the walls. She painted in oils, vibrant, fleshy colors, mostly dark-haired women with flowers in their hair or their hands, the sea behind them. There were a series of paintings of nude women, women embracing. It all had a light quality, not too heavy, not sordid certainly. But I was taken aback. There were also playful, sexy images of men and women in bed together. She had an exquisite eye.

"Tessa's bisexual?"

"Yep," Aaron said, whirling around. "Like you." He kissed me on the lips, a quick friendly peck. My lips were sore from our earlier kisses.

We stood there in the room together side by side. I could have stood there forever.

_I think I'm gay, Aaron_ , I said to myself. But if I said it out loud, it would be slapping on a label that might be imprisoning in the long run. I just could not imagine a day when I was not turned on by him.

Bisexual would do for now. "Is me being bi a turn-on for you?" I murmured. It seemed like the sort of question that only someone like Aaron would have an answer for.

"Yes!" he said instantly. "Stop probing, Dave. It just is."

"I'll stop probing," I said with a grin. "Hey, so what's working at Twitter like?"

He laughed. "It's taken you so long to ask me that! Would it be OK if I told you it was kind of boring? All work is boring after a while, right?"

"I've always thought so," I said, nodding.

"It's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. But... it gives me a sense of identity and a good living for now, I guess."

He turned on a CD player at the corner of the room where a twin futon also lay, and the room filled with the slow, deep voice of Leonard Cohen.

If you want a lover, I'll do anything you ask me to...

"Tessa loves this. I do too. It's the best song ever," Aaron whispered.

He stared into my eyes. We kissed, pressing up against each other. He hadn't worn his glasses for the entire day, I noticed.

"You're beautiful, Aaron," I said.

He pushed his hand against my mouth and I sucked on his finger gently. That seemed to give him an idea.

He reached up and pulled the cord hanging from the bulb, which plunged us into almost complete darkness. He pushed me gently toward the futon. Down we fell onto the thin mattress. The room was cool. He gave me a hickey at some point in our make-out session. Like each of our encounters, it was unpredictable, and we ended up totally nude, 69ing, something Janine and I had never bothered to do. But that evening Aaron made me see the point in it.

I never felt anyone looking over my shoulder at that house on Elsie Street, no ghosts from the past inhibiting me. This was new and it was good. That was all I felt. I think for him it was different; for him, there were a lot more layers to it.

I was proud and thrilled that I could take him to a place where he wanted to be.

# 12.

I woke up the next morning in Aaron's bed, nude, to find him sitting on the side, dressed in a red Che Guevara T-shirt and jeans, looking pensively at me.

"I gotta go to work soon, Dave."

I glanced at his alarm clock, seeing it properly now, a fancy gadget that made zen-chime sounds when it rang. "Mmm. I'm used to waking up late. Sorry."

He leaned over and kissed the tip of my nose. "First morning in Elsie Street. Want coffee?"

"I can get up," I said drowsily, but I didn't. Little trills of birdsong were filtering in from the garden outside. "Is it always going to be like this?"

"Like what?" he asked.

"So nice."

He moved to lie beside me. "I hope so."

We hadn't had sex at all in the bed last night, just slept, both of us knocked out after our session in Tessa's room. It had been easy to fall asleep beside him.

He caressed the spot on the blanket where my hard-on poked up slightly. I closed my eyes, still not quite awake. I'd never been woken up so sweetly and I wanted to stay in this daze as long as I could.

I felt him move the blanket. With a gasp, I sensed his warm mouth on my cock. He moved his mouth up and down gently, even nuzzling my balls with his tongue. It took me about a minute to come.

"Mmm, tasty," said Aaron, wiping his mouth with a tissue. "I think I'll do that every morning."

"You're too good," I told him. He gave me a grin. _You're adorable_ , I thought, but I didn't say it. He must know that I thought he was adorable, right?

"It's no trouble. I enjoy it more than I should, actually."

He sprang up, all perky, saying, "See you downstairs?"

"Yeah."

I glanced at the clock again. 9:10am. He was leaving for work pretty late, wasn't he? It was early to me, and my brain had still not adapted to the change of living in this strange little house, strange only because it seemed so peaceful.

I stretched, feeling peaceful too, yet dreading the coming day at work. I would have to change my address in HR and the chances of running into Mike seemed very high. I could handle it, though. I was a big boy, right?

I put on the beige robe that Aaron had given me the day before and wandered downstairs just in time to kiss him goodbye before he left for work. The sun was shining on to the hallway downstairs from a window over the door, warming the rug. It was so tranquil. I still couldn't believe that I had lucked into this. He left to take a couple buses and then BART, leaving me alone in his house, where I sipped coffee in the kitchen for about an hour, trying to get my brain to adjust to this puzzling new reality.

Finally I went back upstairs to his bedroom, still groggy. There was a flat pine desk in the corner with a lamp and a computer and a holder for pens—it looked like a student's desk, very basic and neat. I opened one of the side drawers.

I saw a little red Moleskine notebook there.

I flicked it open. This was wrong, I knew, but he was such a mystery to me. I just wanted to find out something more about him. Something to ground me in reality.

His handwriting was spidery and black, as if he wrote with a fountain pen. I made my way to the last page.

Dave's lying there asleep. He's here. He's been here for one whole night now!

It's crazy. Tessa said I shouldn't take him in so quick. We had a long talk on Sunday. She begged me not to, said it was too much of a risk. Said I could still change my mind. I said I couldn't.

I told her not to be a hypocrite. She'd given me tix for the museum and told me to meet someone. Well, I did!

I still think she'd like him if she met him, which will be soon, I hope. He seems to dig her pictures.

I trust him. I love having him here. He doesn't know how depressed I've been for the last few years—I'm good at hiding it.

I just said I'd been with a few guys. If I told him the real number, he'd probably freak out, since he's only been with one other (!) in college.

The sex is off the charts. I knew it would be from the moment I sat in his car and watched him drive. He drives stick shift, unlike anyone else I've met for years.

I told him about P and the abuse but I didn't tell the full story, which would creep him out. I think a lot of my stories would creep him out. I told him about my dad, for example, which was hard, but important. I didn't mention I'd done H myself too or the other crazy things I did in my late teens. But, anyway. I'm different now. I mostly harmed myself and got other people to harm me, but I didn't harm them.

_Dave doesn't know about all the unprotected sex I've had. That disgusts even me, looking back on it. The Craigslist ads. I was such a fucking idiot. But, surprisingly, I'm still here. And I'm negative. The thought of putting_ _him_ _at risk fills me with horror. I really love the guy. He'll probably hurt me in the end. That's OK, it's worth it. To have him here for a bit._

I think he's waking up now.

The diary woke me up much more than the caffeine had, and gave the morning an unpleasant edge. I put the book back carefully. Then I left his bedroom and wandered into "my" room. Yes, it was my room.

I lay on the bed, stunned. I deserved that, I thought. I shouldn't have looked. And actually, what I'd read had not been so bad. I loved him even more because I pitied him now, just as I had pitied Janine. He seemed to love me...

From now on, though, I would have to protect myself during sex with him. Every time. I had no idea how long it had been since he'd gotten tested, and I was uncomfortable asking those kinds of questions. But he'd clearly put himself at risk. And he saw me as oh-so-safe, which told me a lot about the guys he'd gone out with.

He wasn't the saintly kid I'd thought he was. But for God's sake, I shouldn't want that. He was twenty-four. It wasn't fair to expect him not to have a past, especially when his parents had left him so young.

The depression part: well, that didn't scare me, but I wondered if he'd been suicidal at times.

He probably had. I felt I knew him now, knew him much, much better. It was falling into place around me. I started to conjecture what "the full story" of his abuse had been, knowing I was foolishly obsessing. If I could take a guess, it was that he'd tracked the guy down later, after the mother's death, I hoped, and... what, hooked up with him again? Maybe he even lived with him for a while.

I shivered. Lying there on the velvety bedspread in the sweet room he'd assigned me, I vowed to protect him while knowing, somewhere deep inside, that I couldn't. Sure, I might hurt him, but I would try very hard not to. On the other hand, he might well hurt me. This beautiful, healing relationship I wanted and thought we had was a fantasy: I suddenly knew that and got it. That's not to say that what we were doing was futile. I refused to believe it was all an illusion.

We all have to believe in something. I still believed, fundamentally, in his innocence. That he wouldn't wrong me. That he wasn't an addict. But the fear of that was starting to creep into my bones. He'd done pills the night we met, just Tylenol, he said. I wondered, though. Vicodin, maybe? He'd done heroin. Maybe many times? His arms were clean now. The hard drugs were all in the past, I concluded. And for myself, I drank pretty hard. I just had a genius for hooking up with people who wouldn't call me on it. Clearly, he wouldn't.

Nervous as I was about meeting Tessa, I felt it was a test that I would have to pass, and _needed_ to pass, in order to go forward with Aaron. That if Tessa and I didn't get on, it would be a sign that this relationship wasn't right. She knew him best of all. Wanted the best for him. I felt like he would blow off anything she said about me, but I would watch her body language and I would know, and if I got bad vibes from her, I would pull away. For his sake.

_Leaving Aaron_. I felt sick at the thought. I'd have to go back to Boston then because the city would totally be over for me. It had already lost most of its charm, anyway; I saw nothing but mercenary or desperate people when I looked around the congested, dirty streets. There was just a little bit left here in this house, with Aaron, of SF's original idealistic spirit. I couldn't throw the towel in yet. But I would have to be watchful. Of myself, most of all. I craved sex with Aaron in a desperate way, thought about it all the time, was thinking about it now.

Something clicked. Was Aaron a sex addict? Was I? I didn't even know the definition of it. I jumped up off my bed and grabbed the sleek little black laptop, waiting impatiently for it to boot up, googling sex addiction. _Sex and Love Addiction_ helpfully popped up. I clicked the link. There were group meetings here in the city for people (mostly LGBT) who were into that. Codependency was another associated word. It all seemed to be linked to the 12-step movement and AA. I paused. And one of the risk factors was... a family history of alcoholism.

I shuddered. It was a real Thanks, Dad moment. And there had been many of them.

# 13.

That day, which had started out so sweetly, continued to slap me upside the head.

I drove to work, giving myself extra time, nervous how long it would take. The cool thing was, I didn't have to get there till noon. They had shortened our shifts to six hours a day to save money.

I pulled into a spot near the fountain. On the other side of the fountain, I noticed a familiar figure—two familiar figures. I got out of the car, closing the door quietly. It was Mike and Janine. They were pausing in front of his car—having just had lunch, maybe? She looked like she'd lost weight, dressed in black, her face pale. They hugged. She got into his Prius and they drove off. Perhaps to take her to work...perhaps not.

They hadn't seen me. Now I could officially call her my ex, and she certainly felt like one. _My ex is screwing my boss_ , I said to myself. I blamed him more than her. I understood she was looking for emotional support, and he was probably good at saying the right thing. I didn't want to believe he actually cared for her. That was too threatening.

I lit a cig and had a quick smoke, reminding myself to drop by HR. I took a deep breath and crossed the courtyard, my eyes drawn, as always, to Rodin's sculpture. Across the courtyard, a bride smiled for the camera. People, for some reason I never quite understood, gathered here after their weddings to take pictures. Mostly Asian folks.

This wedding was a mixture of Asians and Caucasians. They all looked like young business types, what were called preppies back when I was a kid. I stood by the statue, my eyes lingering on a man's back. He wore a tuxedo, of course, but the brown mop of hair reminded me of Matt. The guy turned around.

_It was Matt_.

I was standing there in my dark uniform, cigarettes on my breath, my legs wobbly. Matt came up to me with a loping stride.

"Dave!" he exclaimed. He'd barely aged, just a few crow's-feet around the eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"I work here," I said uneasily. As if it wasn't obvious.

His eyes widened. "Oh."

A girl joined him. She had long, straight blonde hair and was giving off that faint "who the hell are _you_?" vibe.

"Taylor, this is Dave Madden, my old college roommate."

"Oh, OK," she said grudgingly, giving me a polite smile. "Are you here for the wedding?"

"I work here."

"Of course, sorry." She didn't look sorry at all.

"I haven't seen Dave since 2001," Matt told her.

"Uh-huh. Listen, I'll meet you back at the car. I just want to say goodbye to a few people I've missed."

We watched her walk away in her high heels, very straight-backed, quite sure of herself.

"I've got to get inside; I'm late," I said in a rush.

He nodded, his eyes more serious and earnest now, searching my face. He had brown eyes too, flecked with green. I felt a sudden lump in my throat.

He pulled out a business card from his breast pocket. "Take this. I want to catch up with you. But hey, friend me on Facebook. It's better than work email!"

Then he added, "How've you been?"

It was weirdly out of sync.

I was silent for a moment. Why now? I kept thinking. Why now and not before Aaron?

"OK..." I answered. "Things have been complicated lately."

"Aren't they always?" Matt said with an easy smile. "You in a relationship?"

I swallowed. "Yeah, a new one. With a guy. Before that I was with a girl for five years. It just ended, actually."

Matt shook his head, no judgment in his eyes: amusement, if anything.

"Things have a shelf life," he said randomly. "Taylor and I are getting married soon."

I said nothing, gobsmacked.

"My mom wants grandkids, you know. Seems only fair."

His eyes were sad for a moment. "My dad died so young, I feel I owe it to her."

"Wait, your dad died?" I stuttered.

"Didn't you know? Shit, I guess not. I wanted to tell you back then, but things got in the way. He died in September 2001. He was in one of the planes, the one that took off from Boston. He'd been visiting me."

I shook my head. "Oh no!"

"I never returned to college in Boston after the funeral, Dave." Matt's tone was wry. "Do you see now why I never contacted you? It was all too heavy. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the way I left it hanging, dude."

The conversation between us was getting too heavy as well. I felt what seemed like tears pricking behind my eyes.

"I was working full time that summer. I never went back to college either," I said breathlessly. "I just assumed you finished college there. I did send you a few emails..."

"To the college account, right? They closed that down," Matt said. "I should have written to you, though. I think I had your home address somewhere."

I wondered why he would have had it. I hadn't had his written down, but I remembered the house, the number on his street, the town. I could find it now.

"You made it out here," he said with a look of awe. "I would have never expected that!"

"It's been tough," I said vaguely.

He nodded. "Tough for me too. Sure, I'm doing well money-wise, but I haven't really gotten my act together till just the last year."

I looked at my watch. Crap. "Matt, I'm really sorry. I have to go." I stared at him. Somehow, I felt I'd never see him again.

At that moment Taylor called him from across the courtyard.

"I wanna see you one time before the wedding," Matt blurted out. "Friend me on Facebook, OK?"

I nodded, my heart heavy. I watched him go. Taylor gave me a frosty look and put her arm around him. He waved without looking back, a trademark of his.

He hadn't changed.

***

I clomped along the corridor to HR, my feet feeling leaden. I just had to do this address change. I hated being in limbo, and declaring Elsie Street as my new address was one more step away from Janine.

The mid-thirties Latina in the office looked a little more polite than last time.

She handed me the slip. I filled it out.

Glancing at it, she said, "94110. Same zip code as me. Bank info still the same? You need direct deposit?"

"Yeah, I already did that..." It came out in a big sigh.

"Let me just check." She tapped at the computer. "Yeah, Dave, we have you on file. Your money comes sooner that way, you know."

I nodded.

"I'm Elena. Vic's girl," she added.

Another surprise. "Oh really? He didn't..."

"I know, he doesn't tell anyone about me. I don't know why. Stupid Filipinos and their secrecy, you know?"

I didn't know, but I had to pull my eyes away from her cleavage. She was quite a hottie, although she had a stern look, with pulled-back hair. Maybe Vic liked that.

She gave me an appraising smile. "He did say you're a good guy."

"I like him too."

"Everyone likes Vic," Elena said. "Even M... Oh, hi there, Mr. Malone."

I turned around. Mike was standing staring at us, a look of thunder on his face. My saliva dried. Elena gave me this weird look, like "get away from me now, please." I turned and walked toward the doorway, toward Mike.

"I'll mail out your paystub next week to the new address, Dave," Elena called.

My first paycheck. It always took forever to get paid when you started a job. I wondered if I'd ever get another.

Mike must have thought the same thing. As I brushed past him he muttered, "Don't expect many more."

"Excuse me?"

"I just had lunch with Janine," he said out in the corridor in a low, gruff voice that raised the hair on the back of my neck. "She gets you the job here and you dump her a month later. You left her for a _guy_ that you picked up on the job. Good going, Dave!"

I shook my head, eyes lowered, feeling unable to say anything coherent.

"You disgust me!" he hissed. I smelled the booze on his breath. It was the first real thing he'd said. I wondered if I should quit right then. The animosity coming from him was so fierce, I knew he wouldn't drop it. I put on my best Dorchester face and squared off to him.

"Why should you care? She's not your daughter, is she?" I asked. "No, that's right, she's your mistress."

Everything stopped. His jaw dropped. He moved toward me. I felt sure he was going to hit me, hard.

"Dave!" Vic was running up the stairs behind him. "Dave, you gotta get to work. We're packed to the rafters down there with a big tour-bus group." He was breathless, rattled, and I listened to Mike's harsh breathing quieten as he stared at me. Had Elena texted Vic? Probably. She was a smart cookie.

"You dodged a bullet," Mike said coldly, brushing past me and going back into the office.

I almost fell into Vic's arms. I did give him some sort of hug. "Thank you!" I whispered.

"De nada," Vic said automatically. "Get your ass down there, OK?"

I left, turning to see him hurrying into the office as well. Maybe Mike would fire me today. I would get fired on the day I saw Matt again, the first day on Elsie Street. The day I changed my address in the system. Beginnings, endings. My stomach hurt. I was craving caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, the sweet release of a blow job. Anything. Anything but having to stand in a crowd of old people and watch them drift from room to room, lost in the audio narration on their headphones, while my thoughts festered. I asked myself again: should I quit? And then I figured, no, no, let it happen another way, let _them_ do it. I could claim unemployment then. It would be a pittance, though, because the salary I got from Flannery's was minimum wage, and that's what they'd calculate it from.

I was left with the unsettling thought that I had an old fuck buddy with a fiancée who wanted me to friend him on Facebook. And a lover who didn't know anything about him yet.

My stomach rumbled.

***

No firing occurred that day, although I never relaxed my guard. I left at the usual time, tootling across town via Geary and then Gough Street, feeling a little better as I crossed Market and headed south on Guerrero. I wasn't rushing to get home. I hadn't calmed down yet and didn't quite know what to say to Aaron about the day I'd had.

Turned out he got home just a little later than I did, his face lighting up when he saw me in the kitchen standing by the window.

We hugged. "I'm all grungy," he declared. "Want to shower with me?"

I followed his lead. We soaped up together, and the sharp needles of warm water felt caressing on my skin.

"We could do dinner here tonight," Aaron murmured.

"Sure. I don't mind."

"Hard day?"

"I shouldn't complain because it was shorter than yours, but yeah. I saw my ex at the Legion."

He kissed my neck tenderly. "Poor baby."

"She's screwing my boss."

He pulled my face down to meet his lips. "That's got to be... mmm.... really hard for you," he moaned.

It wasn't the only thing that was getting hard. I saw this was going to be how it was. He never really took anything seriously, or if he did, he didn't show it.

Aaron looked so fresh and young and pretty compared to Matt, who had a masculine, more intense look. But I couldn't help wondering which of them was really the more tough, the more worldly wise.

"Would it be OK to fuck, baby?" Aaron said sweetly as he toweled off. "I thought about you all day."

I just nodded.

We were soon in his room, him positioning himself over the bed. I took out a condom from the open pack near the bed. I saw him watching me.

"Damn," he said, pouting. "I love it when we bareback."

Barebacking. That was the word for what he'd done so much of.

"I know," I whispered, "but I think we should both get tested before we do any more of that. It feels just fine for me like this."

Clearly he couldn't believe that anyone would prefer it, or even tolerate it. I fingered him a little with some lube and then pushed in slowly, much more controlled than the first time, trying to keep my thoughts present and on his beautiful ass.

His moans were sweet to my ears, as always. He tightened around me and I moaned too.

I didn't feel like talking and he didn't say anything either. It was one of those "get off and feel better" quickies. Afterward, we rested on the bed. I felt like I had just been swimming, that delicious, exhausted swimmer's high. His eyes looked gentle and calm.

"Aaron, honey," I began, "you remember I told you I slept with a guy in college?"

"Mmmm," he said dreamily.

"His name was Matt. I saw him at the Legion today. Him and his girlfriend."

"He turned straight, huh?" Aaron was stroking my chest hair. "That must have been weird."

"Well... possibly, although I think he's still open to the idea of being with guys. Although he's getting married, so maybe not." I was starting to babble.

"Whatever, Dave," Aaron murmured. "If you want to hang out with him again, no problem. He's from your old life. I'm not going to get in the way of it."

"But, Aaron..."

He looked at me. "It's OK, Dave. You get to decide where you want to fit him into your life now."

But what if he hits on me? I asked silently. Why did it always come down to this, me desperately needing guidance on something complicated, and a lover pushing me on, sure I would do the right thing?

"Sweetie, is he a top?" Aaron asked.

I saw where this was going. "Uh... I think so."

"Well, since I said I wouldn't top you, it's OK if you want to do it with him. Remember, you get a free pass."

I sucked in a breath. "Come on, Aaron, are you really sure that's a good idea? It was great of you to say it, but..."

"No, I meant it. I can't imagine he wouldn't want to fuck you."

I was rattled. "Sorry, Aaron, this makes me nervous. You can't seriously be so blasé about it."

"Oh," he said shrugging. "I'll probably hate it if it happens, but I'll get over it."

I looked at him. His eyes met mine. _He's transparent_ , I thought.

"Don't ever say something to me just because you think I want to hear it, Aaron."

"Now you're getting too Bostonian for me, Dave."

He was up, shrugging into his robe, putting on his glasses. "Let's eat first, then watch a little TV, then fool around a little."

His face was quite composed. He held out his hand to me.

I slid off the bed, glancing at his left arm. No needle marks. Nothing. He looked as if he hadn't ever done anything wrong in his life. Or had anything done to him.

A feeling of guilt lay heavy in my gut, along with a feeling of love that I felt I had not fully expressed. Could never fully express to him. Guilt for reading the diary. Guilt for Matt.

"Matt wants me to friend him on Facebook," I blurted out.

Aaron chuckled. "You should friend me as well. Would you mind if I changed my relationship status to 'in a relationship with...'?"

"What is it currently?" I asked, smiling.

"Just nothing. I never wanted to say Single. It embarrassed me."

"I wouldn't mind, Aaron," I said. "First, I have to sign up to the stupid thing. I never had the energy for social media when I was bartending."

"That's good. You don't have to publicly switch from Janine to me, then!" he said, giggling. He was all bubbly, I thought. The sex?

"Was the sex that good?" I asked dubiously. "You seem so manic all of a sudden."

"No, it's that you're here! I was secretly afraid you'd run back to Janine today."

He was using her name freely now.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I told him.

"I still can't believe it." His feet curled into the carpet. "That you chose me over her. I don't even know anything about her, but she seemed like a nice person."

"Yes, but..." I stood looking at him. "Aaron, trust me, it was an easy choice."

"But if she hadn't kicked you out?" he asked, his face darkening. "Wouldn't you still... be there?"

_It was Janine he was threatened by. Not Matt_. I found it very odd. Perhaps he thought that Matt offered me nothing, being about to get married and all. He saw Janine as this powerful figure...

"She would have had to kick me out eventually," I answered. "I would have been over here all the time. Like a limpet, clinging to you."

We kissed. His warm, taut body pressed against mine, so different from Janine's cool, soft flesh.

"You're the one," I murmured. I'd always hated that expression, but it slipped out, and Aaron brightened.

"No one's ever said that to me. Just don't tell me I'm the love of your life. That's such a cliché."

"I know, I muttered, grinding against him. He slipped off his robe.

"Just one more round, hon?"

I groaned, about to say _no, we shouldn't_ , but he had grasped my cock at the base and was kneeling in front of me. Again, there'd been that switch from innocent youth to someone not so innocent. His lips engulfed me.

How could I refuse him? He knew what he was doing. I felt that somewhere there was a priest or authority figure writing in a notebook, ticking off every time we did it, intoning, "Too...much...sex."

But it was so hot. It was so hot and good. And now he was doing something that was driving me crazy. I was flat on the bed. He'd lubed my dick and positioned himself on top, sliding down...

"Oh, Aaron, that's too much... stop it... there's no rubber..." I groaned.

_He was so bad_.

He bounced sweetly on top of me. "Just let me feel you come, baby. I know what I'm doing. It's fine..."

My eyes went out of focus and I lay back, unable to do anything but let him have his way with me.

# 14.

That week continued on, with more sweetness at home, but sourness at work. Vic had distanced himself from me, and I rarely saw him now. The work hours dragged. I couldn't wait to get home to Aaron every day, marveling at how our schedules had synced up. We had the evenings together. And that was worth it; that made everything worth it. We ate, we talked, we wandered around the yard, we watched a little TV, we cuddled in bed. The evenings went by fast, as if the time was precious.

I didn't think we were running out of time, but I did feel a weird anxiety occasionally. The mornings, which I had all to myself, were calm. I found it hard to know what to do with myself in those few hours before work. I steered clear of Aaron's desk drawer, knowing that I'd made a big mistake there. I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop most mornings, browsing around.

And I finally signed up to Facebook.

Needless to say, I had no friends. The first thing to do, I thought, would be to find Matt. There were multiple Matt Cohens, but his face was unmistakable to me and I found him soon enough. I clicked on Aaron's name almost as an afterthought and friended him. I didn't associate him with Facebook; I associated him with the real world, which was far more meaningful to me.

But Matt... Once I'd friended him, I stared for a long time at his profile pic, which was him and Taylor entwined and grinning at some event. Then my eye was drawn to his old pictures. Sweating, I clicked on one that looked familiar to me. A young Matt, lying by his family's pool at eighteen, taken by none other than yours truly. His face was in close-up. I remember it had been early evening when I clicked the shutter: we were alone that night; his parents were out till late. We were stoned already. He looked slightly stoned in the pic, but his smile, the intimacy of it—that was what I remembered. And the first kisses, later.

Nobody else had liked or commented on the pic, so I clicked "Like." I knew it would get his attention. That was all I needed to do.

He'll do the rest, I thought. I didn't want to analyze it any more than that. If he did nothing, then no harm had been done, except to my pride. If he reached out, I could deal with it then.

Checking my own profile, I noticed that even though it was bare and that I had no picture up, and very little personal info except that I was from Boston, I already had one friend. Aaron. Facebook asked me to confirm that I was in a relationship with Aaron Andersen. After a moment of hesitation, I clicked yes.

What would my family think? My brother and sister, Barry and Lulu (she'd been christened Louise) would be swinging by soon enough to friend me, I was sure. What would they think had happened to their older brother? Boston wasn't the most gay-friendly place to grow up. I knew it would stun them.

But I didn't care. My mother was the only one whose feelings I cared about, and she wasn't computer literate. She actually sent cards and we talked, sometimes, on the phone around my birthday and Christmas. It would be a while before I'd talk to her again. Maybe when I did, I thought, everything would be more settled. I wanted to tell her about Aaron. That was the odd thing. I really wanted to tell her that I'd met someone and that I was in love with him.

As for my father, I shuddered to think of us ever talking about it. It seemed highly unlikely that we ever would. He was completely self-absorbed now, locked in his own world, in failing health.

Later that week, I told Aaron that my father was a Vietnam vet. We were lying in bed together, just talking. We had so much to catch up on, and it was coming out in little pieces here and there.

"I've read a little about PTSD and self-medicating," Aaron said. "Do you think that's what he's doing?"

"I do, yeah. But he'll never change. Never go to therapy, for example. Or stop drinking."

Aaron's head was against my chest.

"My dad was self-medicating too, maybe," he said thoughtfully. "My mom didn't know why he did heroin. She thought if she said nothing, he'd trail off and stop. Get bored with it."

"What did your dad do, Aaron?" I had never asked him this.

"He was a freelance writer, a rock critic. He did pieces for _Rolling Stone_ in the eighties. And _Spin_. He had tons of musician friends. And my mom was an artist, so they had interesting, crazy parties."

"I bet," I murmured.

"All the same, we had lots of books and good food, and there was structure for a while, and everything."

Aaron sighed against my chest.

"But my dad never hung out with me. I figured that out when I was a young kid. I bored him, I guess. He was always busy with something. My mom took me around a lot of places, the local library and stuff, and kept me entertained. She had lots of friends in the town. Everybody stopped to chat with us."

"So your father was distant," I said gently, thinking of my own. The way my father had looked at me when I was a preteen flashed in front of my eyes sometimes still. His gaze had been heavy and lifeless. I avoided looking at him a lot because his expression scared me. It was as if there was something wrong with me, and only he saw it.

"He loved Tessa," Aaron said. "But everybody loved Tessa. I think he thought I was needy. Especially with my mom. Super-needy."

I rubbed his hair. It killed me that he had lost his mother so young. How unfair life was, how brutal.

"Do you think I'm needy, Dave?" Aaron asked.

These childish questions amused me and were a turn-on; perhaps he knew. "Nope," I said, kissing the top of his head. "You just don't like being alone, maybe."

I had said the right thing.

"That's right," he said, nodding earnestly. "When I was living here by myself—it's been two years since I got the house now—and Tessa stopped coming here as much because she found a girlfriend in LA, I went into a slump. I had this great house that I came home to alone at the end of each day. Life didn't seem worth living."

"But you got through it."

"Well, yeah. What else was I going to do? And I felt guilty. I had this house and a good job and I was living in a city that tons of people would be thrilled to live in..."

He paused. "I did go to therapy, actually, for about six months."

I stretched. "I've never been."

"It was OK. I guess I learned there that the stuff that happened with my parents was going to take a long time to sort out. And the other stuff. Before that, I'd never told anybody about the other thing, besides Tessa."

Tessa was sounding more and more like a sort of goddess, I mused.

"Anyway," he said, " _you_ don't need therapy. You seem fine."

"That's cuz you don't know me very well, Aaron."

"But I do know you," he said. "And having you here has made me so happy, Dave. Are you happy?"

Entwined with him on the bed, I thought about it. To my surprise, the immediate answer was _yes_.

"I am. I'm happier here than I've ever been in my life."

He hugged me close. "I see it. You seem happy!"

"What's the catch, though? There must be a catch. I'm not used to feeling this way."

He paused thoughtfully. "We'll stay happy as long as we keep talking about things and spending time here, I think."

He patted the bed with his hand.

I nodded.

***

Aaron had decided that we should go check out the full moon one night toward the end of July, which meant climbing Bernal Hill, apparently. I was game. We took a blanket and a bottle of wine in a backpack and climbed the long wooden stairway further down Elsie Street that led up to the hill. I could see how quick and nimble Aaron would have been were it not for his injury, which made him pause often in the dim light. I didn't mind, waiting patiently, getting my bearings on this new place. Other people passed us, walking dogs—the hill was a major dog-walking place, from what Aaron said.

It was a real hill. Once we climbed a narrow path that led over the top of it, we were on a summit where we could look down toward the East Bay. I took in the shining Bay Bridge, the bay, the foothills... and the moon rising, gigantic and deep yellow, over the water.

Aaron and I sat on our blanket. People grouped around us, talking quietly, yet it felt like we were on our own "trip." Very Californian, I thought wryly. And yet, sipping a Solo cup of red wine with Aaron while watching the moon rise that night was one of the most exciting things I'd ever done.

"I can't believe it's like this," I said. "Why did I never know about this before?"

He laughed. "Well-kept secret. Tessa and I used to come here and watch it sometimes."

"But not any of your lovers."

"I wouldn't bother calling them that. Hook-ups, maybe?"

"Well, their loss." I drained my glass, enjoying the familiar acidic buzz of alcohol.

"I saw you friended Matt." His voice was light.

"Sure. Yeah. He friended me back but we've had no contact. I suppose he's busy with his upcoming wedding." I laughed slightly as I said it.

"Do you think he's a fool to get married, Dave?"

I stared at the moon. "I don't know."

I didn't want to betray how cynical I was about marriage. It wasn't the most attractive side of me, and for all I know, Aaron was eagerly looking forward to getting married at City Hall one day. Times had changed so much.

He lay on his back, staring up into the darkening sky. "I love lying on the earth."

"It's nice being next to you," I whispered.

"Let's try to do this every month," he said contentedly.

***

But then that very same night, after some sweet lovemaking, we were lying in his room by the light of a flickering candle, and Aaron asked:

"What's your greatest fear... about us?"

Because I felt so close to him, I didn't censor myself very much. "I guess, that something destructive might separate us. Like addiction."

He was quiet for a bit and then said, "My greatest fear is that you'll leave."

I sighed. "I won't leave, Aaron. How could you think I would?"

He paused. "Well, you left... Janine."

I winced. "True, but that relationship had run its course."

Silence. _As ours might someday_ , I was sure he was thinking.

"You don't have to worry about me being an addict," he said slowly, in that drowsy, very relaxed way that he had of speaking after we'd been sexual.

I said nothing, glad he'd said it, not wanted to take the conversation further.

"I get what you're thinking... because of my dad. It makes sense. But anyway..." His voice almost trailed off. He yawned. "I've never done heroin."

I felt a chill go through me instantly. Pulling back, keeping my voice low, I said, "I'd better go to my room." I started grabbing my clothes off the floor.

"Aw, OK. If you have to." He seemed surprised, resigned.

"Yeah, I should."

His eyes were on mine. He looked so innocent. So loving, for a moment, relaxed, his head resting on his bare arms.

"Wasn't it the best night?" he asked.

I nodded, staring at him, wishing I could see inside his brain. What had prompted him to lie to me? I could say I'd read his diary, but then we'd both be exposed. I hated the thought of the ugly scene that would follow.

"Come here and kiss me," he said.

I went over and bent down. Our lips met.

"I love you," he whispered.

We hadn't said it since the first night in the bathroom. Cradling him against me briefly, I muttered, "I love you too."

# 15.

Mike Malone was a clever bastard. I reflected on this sourly as I patrolled my newly assigned territory at the museum: two or three galleries filled with huge battle scenes from the 17th century. They weren't to many people's taste, so the rooms stayed largely empty all day long, apart from a scattering of middle-aged men. Bored stiff, I was alone with my thoughts, and as usual, I wasn't relishing them much. Aaron's lie had wedged deep in my bones, creating a slight coldness between us.

Could I have read the diary wrong? What the hell else could he have meant by "H"? No, these were stupid thoughts. What was written down was generally the truth. I knew I should just let it go. Just be grateful that he didn't have an active addiction right now that he was hiding from me.

But I felt bleak. I just didn't trust Aaron to stay clean, that was the thing. I'd witnessed my father's futile attempts to stop drinking during my childhood. He'd get religion for a little bit, maybe after the priest talked to him or he'd done a little work in AA. He'd stop, but he'd be gloomier than ever, with that hair-trigger temper. My mother got the brunt of it, as women usually do, but he'd hit me a few times during those periods.

A _dry drunk_ , they called it. And then when he was back on the sauce, my siblings and I would grin at each other. There was a little bit of a relaxation because we knew he was off on a tear, would show no interest in us or our lives. We tasted a bit of freedom then. But my mother looked so defeated. She really hoped, for years, that he would clean up, and put so much effort into it. All for nothing.

Oh, well. I could feel my happiness fizzling, and determined that I would have to confront Aaron at some point. I didn't want the same thing I'd had with Janine: a daily routine, kind little lies to keep things going between us. I reflected that she was probably furious at me now; she was no doubt in the bitter and vengeful phase of the breakup. Perversely, I'd started having impulses to contact her, just to talk. But how could I expect her to give me advice? That wasn't fair.

I had nobody I could turn to, as usual. My fault, I thought. I was good at assigning blame to myself.

And then Matt turned up.

I was staring at one of the big pictures, filled with rearing horses and men with muskets and swords pounding away at each other, when I felt Matt's presence. It was eerie. I glanced up, met his hazel eyes, level with my own. It was a huge shock and my heart pounded. _Fuck._

"I came to take you to lunch," Matt said smiling, in a low, conversational tone.

"I, uh... get a break in half an hour."

"Perfect. Meet you downstairs?"

He was so self-assured. That was one way he was different from Aaron, and he knocked me slightly off-balance. But I didn't mind, oddly.

***

I stepped into the museum's cafeteria, scouting for Mike Malone or anyone I knew. Nope. Matt waved at me from a corner table, pointing to a plate across from him. He'd already got me something. I crossed the light-filled room.

"I remember what you used to get in college," he quipped. "Of course, this is the upscale version."

"The ten-dollar version," I joked, staring down at the gourmet sandwich. "OK, thanks."

We fell into this weird rapport that we'd had. I knew now, looking back, that we'd existed in a bubble back then, but what got me was that he actually remembered stuff, seemed to have cared about me, even cared about me still. It was the strangest thing. My cynicism was trying to detect some bullshit in his warmth, but I couldn't sense anything but sincerity.

"It's good to let down my guard with you," Matt said. "With everyone else now, I'm putting on a persona, I guess. It's normal, right? Or is it?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I do some version of that as well. Maybe it is normal."

We clinked glasses of soda. I was glad he hadn't bought wine or beer. What scared me, at moments, was the instinctive way we behaved around each other. It was just so easy to be around him, too easy.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

He nodded. "Good question. I know..."

"I don't have a lot of time now, Matt," I told him. "Can you make it quick?"

I kept checking my watch between bites, paranoid about being late.

He glanced over at me. It seemed like he was going to say something about me being on a tight leash, but he suppressed it. Clearly, he had all the time in the world, with nobody looking over his shoulder.

"Well," he said, "you know I'm about to get married." He named the date. It was five days away.

I whistled.

"Yup, it crept up on me. So the guys in the office rented me a hotel room for the night before..."

He was trying to feel me out. I felt myself blushing and glanced away. I immediately knew what he was getting at.

"And I have it for the whole afternoon and evening. Of course, they'll all be coming in the evening. There'll be the usual stupid crap, booze and probably a stripper. I'll have to act surprised."

His tone was nonchalant. He'd obviously been at a number of these things.

"I wouldn't subject you to that, of course."

I grinned. "What were you planning to subject me to?"

Now it was his turn to blush. He kept quiet for a moment, and I did too. The room was full of animated chatter, which ironically allowed us to have this conversation without fear of being overheard.

He shrugged slightly. "It's completely up to you..."

I bit my lip. I could read him; I understood it all, but I couldn't judge him. _I can always say no_ , I thought.

I glanced around again. No Mike.

"We can't re-create the past, Matt," I said. "I wish we'd reconnected a few years ago. Things might have been very different then."

He muttered something, looking down. It sounded like "they sure would have."

"I tried to google you, you know," he said suddenly. "You weren't anywhere online. I did have this weird feeling you were out here, in the Bay Area. I looked for you on Facebook. I kept searching, off and on."

"Pity you weren't more of a drinker," I said lazily. "You would have found me working in Flannery's on Clement Street. For years, that's pretty much all I did."

He nodded, smiling slightly. "Yeah, being a Jew and all doesn't make the drinking very appealing. I still smoke weed, though."

"Taylor didn't make you give that up?"

I placed my hands on the table, relaxing again.

"Nobody could," he said.

His eyes were intent now, focused. "You don't have to come, but I thought we could hang out for a few hours in the afternoon. After the wedding, it'll be different."

"Oh, well," I said, shrugging. "Write down the info for me if you like."

He scrawled something on a business card. Having never had a card in my life, I watched in some amusement.

He handed it to me.

I shoved it into a shirt pocket. Now we were both nervous. I stood up.

"You had chutzpah to come today. I'll say that."

He stood up too. "Do you think so?"

"Sure. I don't know what else you'd call it."

"Some would call it stupidity," he murmured.

"You're not stupid, Matt." _I am_ , I felt like saying. _For considering this_.

"I know you're being cautious, Dave. You're in a new relationship. I get that. I just want to know..." He paused. I stared at him, wondering what he was going to say.

"That you forgive me," he continued, his voice hoarser.

"For what?" I made a quick gesture with my hands. "Now that I know what happened with your dad, of course I forgive you."

"You felt bad about it all for years. Well, I did too."

"I see that now." And I did see it.

We wandered dazedly outside. We stood in front of the statue in the courtyard, where we'd met again not so long ago. The cloudy day was nothing like the day of the wedding. I wished I was drunk, suddenly.

"We should leave it here, though," I said, forcing the words out. "Shouldn't we?"

Standing very close to me, so close that I could smell his hair, almost touch him, he shook his head slightly.

"Please think about it."

When we hugged, it was more like an embrace, and I groaned inwardly, because it was going to be so difficult to fight this now. And it might be a battle that I didn't have to fight. I could just give in, go with the flow, and who would really be harmed?

He stepped away. His serious face stayed in my mind for a long time. I pressed my head gently against the marble plinth of the statue. My mind was whirling, my body tense and aroused by his warm touch.

When I looked up, Mike was standing by the door of the museum, inside, regarding me sardonically. I looked at my watch. I was, of course, late.

I stumbled toward the door, and by the time I reached it, he had gone.

# 16.

Back inside, in the empty gallery, I pulled out the card. On it, Matt had printed neatly the name of the hotel, the date, and the room number. Then he'd written: "Anytime after 2pm. Do it for an old friend?"

_Do it for an old friend_. I tucked the card away. The whole thing had been pitched so cleverly, with nothing overtly sexual expressed between us. But he'd always been like that. He didn't spell things out. They just "happened."

My throat was dry. I had just a few hours more to get through. And then I had a few days to get through, I thought. I could tough it out, and not go. I could also go. And then I'd get to remember Matt in a different way, not as the lost love, the one who got away, but...

I knew that, had I still been with Janine, I would have gone without question. She really would have shrugged off the whole thing. What would have happened afterwards would have been anyone's guess, though.

Since I'd been with Aaron, I felt a little more sure of myself sexually. But it was bound to be really different...

I breathed, trying to switch off the swarming thoughts. I shouldn't want to do this; it was ridiculous! I was happy with Aaron. He'd given me a free pass, but I felt like I should do the right thing here.

The right thing was to pass it up. Wasn't it?

Vic drifted by, giving me a faint smile. "Hanging in there?" he said.

"Yeah. I feel as if I'm in Purgatory here." My voice sounded odd.

His mouth twitched.

"Vic, if I had to take the afternoon off on, um... Friday, would that be OK?"

"Friday?" he said, considering. "It's short notice, but at least it's not the weekend."

I had the insane impulse to confide in him. I squelched it quickly. "I have a doctor's appointment," I blurted out.

"Yeah, so, if you can work for two hours with no lunch, that should be all right. Does that work with the appointment time?"

"Uh, yeah."

Vic nodded, smiling slightly. I knew he was the only reason I still had a job here. I couldn't thank him, though. That would just be too embarrassing.

"Use this," he said, tossing me a travel-sized tube of Old Spice. "I can smell you."

"Sorry," I mouthed, turning bright red as a nice pair of old ladies entered the room.

He winked at me. It was one of his good days, like old times. I felt subtly reassured, the tension draining from my body; everything was all right. I had just arranged to be unfaithful to Aaron, lied to Vic, and things felt good. What was that about?

The two ladies passed quickly through the room, not enjoying the scenes of battle much. I took the opportunity to quickly apply the deodorant. I always sweated when I was attracted to people.

I slipped it back in my pocket and looked up, only to see a woman walking toward me in a velvet pantsuit. Asian, glossy black hair, maybe early forties. Tall and slim. She could have been a grad student or an art professor. She smiled and said, "Dave?" I looked blankly at her.

"I'm Wendy. Mike's wife?"

"Oh, hi," I mumbled, holding out my hand. We shook hands briskly.

"Could you help me carry some bags waiting down at the front desk to my car? I always do my Christmas shopping in the gift shop early, whenever there's a sale. Vic said you weren't very busy up here."

I nodded, tongue-tied. She was not at all what I expected, and I worried that she was going to ask me about Janine.

But it felt good to be outside again. I trudged along at Wendy's side, carrying two bags loaded with what seemed like sets of dinnerware. I didn't ask. Wendy moved swiftly along to the parking area, and I recognized Mike's Prius.

"You must be spending the afternoon here," I said.

"That's right. I always like to go for a walk at Land's End while I'm visiting. And think about things."

She waited patiently while I put the bags into the back of the car. They barely fit.

"You're very helpful, Dave. Thanks." She paused. "Have you seen the Holocaust Memorial here?"

I stared at her. "I don't think I have."

"It's kind of hidden." She beckoned me along a path near the parked cars and I followed glumly, not sure what I was being led into.

There was a little circle hidden by some bushes. Inside, barbed wire ringed some grey-faced captives, statues in poses of agony.

We stood looking at it in silence.

"I thought you might like to see it," Wendy said. "Your boyfriend is Jewish, isn't he?"

I stared at her. "No. Not that I know of."

"Oh," she said brightly. "Mike and I were standing upstairs by the window in his office when we saw you hugging a young man by the Rodin statue. We thought it was your boyfriend."

I gulped. This was crazy. "No, no. That was a friend. An old friend," I said hurriedly.

"Ah," was all she said.

_Imagine if we'd kissed_. The thought flashed into my mind and I tried hard to push it back.

"Aaron's never been here to see me," I added, clearing my throat.

"Well, I hope to meet him someday," Wendy said with a faint smile. She looked back at the sculpture for a moment.

"This reminds me of what my mother and father went though in the War," she said. "Under the Japanese occupation, you know, of China. It was a horrible time. Just 15 years before I was born. I was born in 1960, you know. I'm younger than Mike."

I nodded, not sure where this was going.

"You mustn't mind Mike," she said. She put her hand gently on my arm for a moment. "He tells me that you remind him of himself as a young man. That's why he's so hard on you. He's actually quite fond of you, and glad you're working here."

I stared down at her, stunned into silence. She was fairly tall for an Asian woman, about Aaron's height, actually.

"I think it's nice that you have a boyfriend and that you're happy," Wendy continued. "Looking at this sculpture always makes me think of all the terrible, unnecessary pain in the world. I've told Mike that he shouldn't add to your stress, the stress of leaving your ex-girlfriend, I mean, with his disapproval. It's a brave thing to do, making a big, sudden change like that. I've often thought about making a change, too, but it's hard to do when things are... still pretty good."

Her voice had turned wistful and she glanced at me. I smiled at her, not sure of what she was getting at exactly, but at least catching some of the emotion behind her statement.

"Yeah, it's difficult to find the right moment for things," I responded.

"Timing is everything," Wendy agreed. "I hope we can chat again soon."

Before I stepped back across the road to the museum courtyard, she hugged me. I wondered if I was in some way being rewarded for an act of bravery, of showing something of my personal life at work. Perhaps I had kept it all _too_ hidden. Did she think I was having an affair now and somehow approve of that? How perverse, I thought. And yet, I liked the woman.

I watched her walk away down the hill toward Land's End. She seemed confident in her body. There was no trace of the jealous lady that Janine and I had laughed about.

***

Back home, Aaron was intent on making a cake. I poured myself a glass of white wine immediately, which he caught. "I'll have one too," he said, without looking up.

I watched him with the strangest feeling. He really was amazing. I adored the hell out of him. But I didn't deserve him.

He was mixing the batter with neat strokes. He looked at me over the top of his glasses.

"That bad, huh?"

"My day?" I paused. "So boring! But Matt showed up."

I decided to just throw it out there. It was counter-intuitive: I desperately didn't want to tell him. There was no reason to mention Wendy at all.

"Oh," Aaron said, licking his finger. I got nearer, rested my head on his shoulder.

"Too close," Aaron murmured. "Here, have a taste?"

I sucked something delicious off his finger, then pulled him to me and kissed him like crazy.

It was one of those days where he stayed slightly aloof. "I have to put this cake in. Get back," he said gently.

I watched from the table as he poured the batter into the pan.

My mind was whirling. Now I didn't want to see Matt at all. I could go forever without seeing him. The whole thing was a stupid blunder...

"Matt showed up?" Aaron repeated slowly.

"We had lunch in the cafeteria."

"Did he buy?"

"Yes," I said, blushing. "Before I got there, even."

Aaron shoved the pan into the warm oven. "There."

He set the timer.

"What kind is it?" I asked.

"Oh, couldn't you tell? It's a pretty simple lemon cake."

He sat down opposite me. "What is it, Dave?"

"Matt had a little proposition for me. It's stupid, really. I've been going back and forth about it."

He held eye contact. "It's clearly not stupid. You seem so wound up."

"He just wants to spend some time with me before his wedding. It's supposed to be a big secret, but I didn't want to keep it from you."

"Nice of you," Aaron said. "What do you want to do?"

"I sort of... Well, I sort of want to go."

Aaron was all business. "What day is it? Friday? Well, that's convenient. There's a company event to celebrate one of our milestones; I won't be home till late."

I felt horrible. "Aaron," I said. "If you don't want me to go..."

"No, it's not up to me. I told you that."

His tone was sharp. And no wonder, I thought. I saw what I was doing to him.

"Is he really worth it?" Aaron enquired.

"I've asked myself that." The glass was empty and I got up to pour another. "We were so close once."

Aaron said nothing. His face had paled a bit.

"It's like, he's part of me, and maybe he always will be. Even though we're so different and we really have nothing in common."

"I notice he didn't invite you to his wedding."

"Thank God for that," I murmured. "No, and I don't even give a shit. He knows that."

Aaron just looked at me, saying nothing. The hair rose on the back of my neck slightly.

"Are you angry with me?" I asked. I was getting drunk. I needed to. I realized that I didn't know what he was like when he was angry. He'd never been angry with me yet.

He sipped his drink slowly, as if considering. He cleared his throat.

"I don't know what to tell you."

"Would you rather I'd kept it a secret?" I couldn't help my voice from rising.

He nodded slowly, despondently. "I think that would have been...easier."

"Jesus Christ! You said we were supposed to talk!"

He just shook his head, going inward.

"Listen, Aaron, I won't go, then." I reached across the table to take his hand. It was icy cold.

"It's too late," he murmured. "You said you wanted to go, so you should."

I could have hated him at that moment, but it was all too easy to hate myself. I imagined what Matt would have told Taylor. Literally nothing. Nor would she tell him about whatever nasty little plans she had, I supposed.

We were at an impasse, and that was the first night since I moved to Elsie Street that we didn't have sex.

Later in the evening, though, he sat down beside me on the couch and gave me a plate of warm lemon cake, lightly frosted.

It was delicious. Our bare feet touched.

***

The next few days are blurred in my memory. I couldn't get over my own ambivalence. If I didn't go, I was afraid I would start to resent Aaron. If I did go, I know that I would suffer tortures afterwards. I knew I would find it easier to deal with the guilt over what I'd done than the frustration of being held back from doing something I wanted to do. But I also made the decision that this was going to be the only time. With Matt, or _anyone_. Maybe it was bullshit, but Matt was a special case.

I wasn't going to be repeatedly unfaithful to Aaron, though. After all, I'd been monogamous with Janine. I kept thinking about that. All that time... and it wasn't hard, really. So what had changed?

I had no idea. I just couldn't turn down Matt's challenge.

And then it was Friday and I'd had no contact with Matt. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to tell Vic that my appointment got cancelled and stay on at work.

I was fearful of what was going to happen. I could get there, I thought, and Matt might have changed his mind. I'd walk into a room of raucous guys, Financial District types. The thought both amused and horrified me. I deserved that! But somehow I knew that it wouldn't be like that.

And it wasn't, of course.

I parked in an underground garage of a shopping center near the Embarcadero and took the elevator up. It was a part of the city that I liked well enough. In fact, Janine and I had seen _Brokeback Mountain_ in this complex. Getting to the hotel part of the building was a bit tricky, as I hadn't been there before. I wasn't fussing about time, particularly. In fact, I was enjoying the challenge of finding it.

I reached my destination, which was on a quiet, carpeted corridor. I checked the card. Knocked on the door.

Matt opened it, smiling, dressed in shirtsleeves and pants. The room was totally empty, very basic, not fancy at all, really. But that was just fine. I smiled too.

"You actually made it!"

I followed him in. "It's very quiet, Matt."

"I know," he said, shrugging. "It won't be quiet later."

My heart was thumping slightly, but other than that, it was just Matt and me chatting in a room. He pulled a couple small bottles of wine out of the fridge and gave one to me.

"Aren't you supplying your own booze?"

"They'll bring it later. I'm happy with this for now."

I was too, oddly enough.

"You're still in uniform," Matt said.

"You like that?"

He nodded.

We were lying on the bed together, since there was really nowhere else to sit.

"Where are they going to sit?" I asked.

"Oh, who cares," he murmured. "Let's not think about that. I have a very boring evening ahead of me."

But a less boring afternoon, I thought, gulping. Or maybe not. Perhaps it _would_ be boring.

The sun shone in to the quiet room, giving it a kind of purity. The absence of street noise was nice. A little time had passed, not much, but enough for us to relax.

Matt set down his bottle. "I don't like to get too buzzed..." he murmured.

"I remember. You can smoke if you like," I said teasingly.

"Maybe later."

He reached for me. There was this shuddering moment where we collided, or came together. Our lips met. The kissing was just as I remembered. I knew there wouldn't be much talking; that wasn't his thing.

What astonished me was my own reaction to him. I thought that it would be awkward, but I couldn't have been more wrong. I really wanted him to touch me, feel his hands on me. And he was very adept. Somewhere along the way he'd figured it all out.

We'd shed our clothes. He was lying over me. His hair, shorter now, trimmed for his wedding, was brushing against my face. My heart was going a mile a minute. I felt 19 again, young and unsure. I remembered what faith I had in him back then.

"I have supplies here. Do you want to?" he asked very quietly, and just as quietly I replied, "OK."

I wasn't going to tell him I'd never been topped, and he didn't ask about my experiences. I was glad, frankly.

"Turn over," he said.

I wanted to experience something of what Aaron experienced when we fucked: the electric pleasure. And maybe that wasn't going to happen. I still thought I might hate it, so it wasn't easy to let Matt do it. But then again, it was much easier to do it with him than with some stranger I picked up in a bar.

I'd completely lost track of time. The room was silent except for our sighs and groans. Having Matt inside me was strange, and incredible. All I had to do was transport myself back to my 19-year-old headspace, remember how I'd wanted him. And once my brain wanted him, my body cooperated. Welcomed it.

Sure, I was sore and he was stretching me. But then after a little the soreness disappeared. I began to enjoy it, and then to love it. The gasping and trembling started; it was involuntary. Matt's arms were wrapped around me, his breathing slow and steady. It was only when he came, moaning, "Oh God, Dave," that I realized how turned on he was.

"Did you come?" he asked. He grasped me from behind and I spurted all over his hand, not realizing I hadn't yet.

"Oh, baby," he said.

He wiped me and himself with a towel, throwing it carelessly on the floor. I wondered if the roomful of guys would smell the sex later, think anything of it. Turning, I smiled up at him.

"I'm glad we didn't do that back then. Know why?"

He shook his head.

"It would have been too much. Too intense."

"I'm sorry we didn't do it," he said thoughtfully.

We were just friends again, sort of, curled around each other. I felt that we weren't destined to go any further than this; that it was, in fact, our stop.

"Are you happy working at the museum?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"I thought not. I can help you, Dave, maybe. If there's something you want to train for, I'm happy to help."

"I don't need your help, Matt," I said drowsily. "That's not..."

"I know," he said. "But still."

Time passed. I just couldn't bring myself to look at the clock, and Matt seemed totally unhurried.

"What would you want to do, though," he asked, "if you could?"

"I don't know," I said, looking into his eyes. "Something like graphic design?"

He nodded.

"I'll always be here," he said. "The good thing about having my life all mapped out is that I can help, if need be."

"That's sweet."

It actually _was_ sweet. I just couldn't think about anything like that at the moment and filed it aside for later.

I got up to pee, and he followed me into the bathroom, where we wound up in the shower together.

We soaped up. His tanned, muscular body was so different from Aaron's, though I was slightly heavier than him. I felt like he was holding back things he wanted to say, things he was afraid to say. I wondered what they were. My mind was completely blank, pleasurably so.

The water felt so good. I let him touch me, get me hard again. He seemed to enjoy it. I leaned my head back against him, reveling in the passivity I felt. It was good to just give it all up, I thought. He knows what he's doing...

There was a little step in the shower. He pushed my leg slightly so that I was up on it with one leg. I wondered if he'd stayed in the hotel before, had assignations here. He entered me slowly, bit by bit; I put up no protest and suddenly found that my body was on fire. I grasped the bar that ran along the shower wall for balance. Matt pumped into me, whispering my name, and I began to realize that maybe this wasn't as cut and dried as I thought.

I came violently, and he held me there in the shower for a long moment. My whole body was trembling. Now I really felt like I'd given something up to him. That scared me. It wasn't the plan.

But maybe it was his?

We watched each other as we dried off. I literally could not think of anything to say, though it wasn't a terrible silence. Matt was smiling. The smile reached his eyes and made them crinkle.

"You're amazing," he said.

"You've had a lot of practice, haven't you?"

He shrugged. "A bit, but I kept trying to recapture something. And I couldn't."

"But today you did," I said softly.

"Today I did," he agreed. He came toward me and we hugged, kissed.

"Your guy is so lucky," he whispered.

That made me love him.

We dressed. The afternoon was flowing toward its ending, which was us hugging by the escalator I was going to take down. I didn't have to see myself in the mirror to know I looked completely transported. People walking by gave us odd glances. And there were a lot of people suddenly, making their way to a ballroom with tables and chairs set up. They were wearing Twitter T-shirts.

"Oh shit," I muttered. Matt glanced at me.

"What's up?"

"I have to go," I said, my throat constricting. "Aaron works for Twitter."

His jaw dropped. And there in front of me, standing on the escalator, was Aaron. He was looking at the ground. He hadn't seen us. And then he looked up.

He gave us this horrified, chilled stare. It must have looked odd; I was leaning against Matt, still feeling close to him. Our hair was wet and tousled.

"Aaron," I said helplessly.

"I'll see you at home tonight," he said robotically. A couple of Twitter guys coming up behind him glanced at us.

I turned around and looked at Matt. He looked alarmed for me. Aaron was gone. The ballroom doors were closing. I felt rooted to the spot, unable to go until he released me.

"Shit!" he said. "I had no idea he..."

"I know you didn't. Not your fault."

I suddenly kissed him on the mouth. Just because I wanted to. He looked taken aback, staring at me.

"What's that for? I..."

"None of this is your fault. Have a good wedding," I said briefly. I jumped on the escalator. Going down.

He was still staring at me. I'd made an impression, clearly. I smiled, because I didn't want him to be sorry. He smiled a little, looking down. He looked regretful. He raised his hand slightly.

Did he regret it? I didn't.

That was the thing. But it was already getting swept away in the rush of fearful thoughts about the future.

# 17.

As I drove up Elsie, I was glad Aaron wouldn't be home for a while yet. He might not be home till 9 or 10. And tomorrow was the weekend. We'd both have time this weekend to process things separately.

The late afternoon sun felt nice, so I sat in the driveway for a few minutes with the window open. My hair was dry now. Since I hadn't shampooed it at the hotel, it felt kind of gritty. My whole body felt sore, which I was surprised by, but I suppose I shouldn't have been.

I'd messed up. I knew it. _Things had been so good_.

Taking a last deep breath and letting it out, I rolled up the window and got stiffly out of the car. I had a funny feeling, like someone was watching me, but Aaron couldn't be home. I unlocked the door.

I heard a clanking coming from the kitchen, which seemed odd. It occurred to me there'd been a break-in. "Hello?" I called from the door, anxiety in my voice.

A woman appeared. As she came closer, I saw she was young and pretty, with wavy brown hair and creamy skin. _Tessa_.

"You must be Dave," she said with a laughing expression. "I'm Tessa. I thought it was time I paid you boys a visit!"

I stared at her with a sick, panicked feeling. "Hi. Have you spoken to Aaron?"

"No, not since this morning. Should I have? I'm sorry, I thought he'd texted you at work to tell you I was coming."

I picked up my phone. "He might have. I didn't check it for a few hours."

Yes, there were a few texts there. I read them quickly, feeling terrible.

"I'm sorry," Tessa said sympathetically. "Have you had a bad day? Come and have some tea."

As she went into the kitchen she turned and said, "Aaron sounded cheerful this morning. He said you'd be home before he would. He has that Twitter annual employee meeting thingie, doesn't he?"

She hadn't a clue. I desperately needed a wash-up, but decided to have tea with her, just because. I was trembling slightly. How awful to meet Tessa _now_. What would she think of me?

Tessa poured tea from a ceramic pot. She'd placed a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the table. They looked homemade.

"I love to bake here when I come. It's a great kitchen."

She was so nice. I stared at her.

"You don't seem like you're from Southern California at all," I blurted out.

She smiled. "I went to college in Oregon; that might have something to do with it. I much prefer Oregon. It's just the money's in LA and I run my own design business. It's important. For now."

She was meditatively sipping the tea, and I followed suit, after dumping a heaping spoonful of sugar in my cup and a dash of milk.

"You're from Boston, Aaron says?"

"That's right," I said, slurping the tea. Embarrassed, I took a cookie and began wolfing it down. "God, I'm hungry. Sorry."

"That's OK," she said, a curious smile on her face. "Have you been... ?"

I almost felt she was going to say "screwing around?" There was a strange pause.

"Tessa, I feel horrible," I explained. "I was downtown in a hotel, with someone I shouldn't have been with, and I saw Aaron."

Her mouth opened slightly and she took another sip of her tea.

"He looked at me, and it was horrible. I know I must have hurt him really badly."

"Well," she said neutrally. "Did he know you were out with this other person?"

I nodded. "He did. But I knew he wasn't happy about it. It's just that earlier he said it was OK, he said I had a free pass. This guy is getting married, you see. He's an old friend from my past and things got carried away."

"Someone you used to be in love with," she said gently.

"That's right," I babbled. "I'm not anymore. In love with him, I mean."

She nodded. Her eyes showed warmth and understanding, and I rubbed my hand over my own eyes, thinking how pathetic I must look. I was starting to feel panicked again.

"Calm down," she said. "Aaron's really quite strong. First of all, he's cheated on other people; he's no angel. I don't think he ever had a monogamous relationship before you."

"Yes, but he trusted me!" I said impatiently.

She smiled. "I'm sure he can still trust you. Dave, you did give him all the facts. These blips are hard but couples get through them."

"If it means anything, I would never do it with anyone else," I said numbly. "It was just Matt. I saw him again after so many years..."

Now I was really embarrassing myself, but I didn't care. "I've actually only been to bed with three people."

Tessa laughed then. "My, only three? Less than a handful?" she said teasingly.

I looked down at the table. Her loving banter made me feel worse. What had I done to deserve such a loving response? She hadn't seen Aaron's eyes.

"I love Aaron very much," Tessa said in a calm voice. "I can see you do too, and that's the important thing. You didn't come in and pretend that everything was OK, try to fake your way through the conversation. Now, it's fine if you need to go up and change. I'm quite happy by myself here."

"Thank you, Tessa," I muttered. I left her sipping tea, and dashed upstairs.

***

Before I showered, I went on Facebook. I had one message. I clicked on the home page and then Messages, hoping that it would be Matt. It really couldn't be anyone else.

It was Matt, and his email was simple.

Dave, I'm so sorry about how that all went down. But the before part was good, wasn't it? I can't tell you what it meant to me. I won't contact you again (or visit the museum!), but please contact me whenever you like. I meant what I said about your guy being lucky. xx Matt

I knew I shouldn't write back, but I felt it was wrong to say nothing. All I wrote was:

Don't worry, I'll probably be in touch at some point. Have a good wedding and honeymoon! Smoke some weed for me. D.

It wasn't enough. But maybe it was good for now. I sighed.

It was all going to take enormous strength, to hold this life with Aaron together. Strength I didn't have, really. I was good at the destructive bit. Pulling it apart.

Somebody else might have unfriended Matt at this juncture. I just couldn't. I'd loved so few people, and Matt was—astonishingly—a good guy. I still felt that. And then there was the way he'd made me feel this afternoon. I couldn't help but have gratitude for it. But still, I didn't want to have an ongoing affair with Taylor's husband. That way he'd looked at me, with regret, he knew it was all over now.

It would have to be over for me, too.

I signed out of Facebook and closed the laptop.

Showering was good, and took some time, as did dressing. I wanted to feel comfortable without looking like a complete slob. I finally felt presentable.

And then I heard the front door opening downstairs.

I gave them a little time before I came down. The lights were on in the house; everything was warm and comfortable. Tessa was sipping a glass of white wine. So was Aaron. He'd poured me one as well.

He gave me a faint smile but kept physically distant, chatting to Tessa. I sat down at the table and sipped my wine quietly, looking up in surprise when a big plate of curry was slid before me by Tessa.

"You cooked? Oh, great."

Tessa smiled. "Yes, and I hope you're feeding the boy enough, Aaron."

"I've been trying," Aaron said. "I'm actually the one you should be worried about, Tessa."

She kissed the top of his head. "You know I'm always worried about you, sweetie."

He beamed.

We all sat at the table, Tessa on one side, Aaron and I on the other. It was hard to eat, with the nervousness I was feeling.

"How did the work event go this evening?" Tessa asked.

"Oh, fine," Aaron shrugged. "We have a new CEO, it turns out, but nothing changes at my end. The company's growing in leaps and bounds. We keep being told how successful we are. I liked it when it was small, when I knew everybody."

"Things always get too big, don't they," Tessa said sympathetically.

"How's your business doing, Tess?"

Tessa talked about her company, and l listened, half tuning her out. It wasn't that she was boring, it was that I was afraid that Aaron and I were not going to be able to tackle what was between us. Their polite chit-chat was freaking me out, frankly.

"And how's Karen?" Aaron turned to me. "Karen's her girlfriend. She's a stylist."

I nodded.

"Oh..." Tessa answered. "Things were going great for a while there."

Brother and sister seemed to have an understanding of what that meant. I didn't, so wasn't sure if she and Karen had broken up or were going through problems. She didn't finish the thought.

"It's delicious," I said to Tessa. The food was very good. A nice, calm feeling had descended upon me.

"Thanks, Dave," she said, smiling. "I'm going up to paint. You guys will clear up?"

"No problem," Aaron answered quickly, and she bounced out with a little wave.

Then we were alone, and the silence got awkward very fast.

I got up and took my plate to the sink. I began to run hot water into the sink, mixing it with dish liquid. Aaron cleared what was left from the rack, then turned to help me with a towel.

I was afraid to say anything, but finally I ventured, "I'm sorry."

"I should have told you I was going to be at the Embarcadero Center." His voice sounded robotic again.

"Or I should have told _you_ the name of the hotel." I swallowed, my mouth dry.

"It was seeing you two together," he said with a sigh. He sat down at the table again. I sat down with him, leaving the dishes to soak. We stared at each other. Both of us looked hollow-eyed and ragged, I thought. In the distance, upstairs, the sounds of Leonard Cohen were coming from Tessa's room.

"Will she paint until late tonight?" I asked.

"Till midnight sometimes. I actually like the sound of her here. The sound of her, painting. It's reassuring."

"Yes," I said. I was twisting my hand around the stem of the glass.

"You must have had a shock, seeing her! She told me you hadn't got my texts."

"I did. I wasn't very... friendly, at first."

"She likes you, though," he said quietly. He took his glasses off and they clunked on the table.

"It's you that I'm worried about," I said matter-of-factly.

He glanced up, his eyes bleary.

"Whether _you_ still...like me."

He chuckled but said nothing.

"Seeing you with him..." he said finally. "Ugh. That was something I won't soon forget."

I nodded. "I won't forget your expression. I'm so sorry, Aaron."

"You don't have to say anything about how it went," he said. His mouth twisted. "That was totally obvious."

I sighed. I remembered what I had told Janine. What a bastard I'd been that day. I would not make the same mistake here.

"I won't see him again, at least not that way," I said. "I'm not sure how I feel about never seeing him again. But give it time."

"Yeah, don't promise me anything," he said tightly. "I'm not that forgiving of broken promises."

I looked down.

"I'm not in love with him."

"Really? How do you know?"

I rubbed my eyes. "I know how love feels now. So, I'm not in love with him. Maybe I do love him, and that's a bit awkward."

"Yeah, that must be difficult." Aaron's tone was cold.

This wasn't going well. I fished a battered pack of cigarettes out of my pocket. "Do you mind if I smoke? I'll go out in the garden if you want."

"I'll come out with you," he said.

We stood outside in the dim light. The fog had come in, little by little. I lit a cigarette and offered him one.

"Have you ever seen me smoke?" he enquired. Still, he took it and smoked it elegantly, his eyes on me all the while.

"No, but I think you've done everything." My voice was soft. "All the drugs."

Our eyes met. He stubbed his cigarette out against a plant pot.

"Not all," he said. "I actually haven't done LSD. It was before my time."

Pause.

"I figured you read my diary," he said diffidently. But he looked hurt, shaky.

"Only the last few pages. Only once."

"Once was enough, though?" Aaron sighed. "Yes, all right, I lied to you about that. I really wanted it to be true."

I nodded, saying nothing.

"And I think you're lying to yourself, and me, about Matt. I think you'll want to see him again."

"Why?" I asked.

"He looked crazy about you."

"Maybe I don't feel the same," I said. I glanced up at the moon, which was still round and bright, peeping through a cloud. "I can do without him. And the idea of sleeping with a married man, actually? It's not my thing."

"I've slept with plenty of them," Aaron said. "They tend to be pretty eager for sex."

Touché.

He came toward me slowly, putting his hands on my shoulders. "Listen, I'm so sorry I lied to you about not doing heroin. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it and not get hooked. It helped me through a tough time. I'd never do it again. I probably _would_ get hooked this time, if I picked it up again, I mean. Beginner's luck."

"It doesn't shock me that you did it. It scares me."

"I know," he said. "Seeing you and Matt scared me. I realized... you probably want someone more dominant."

We were clasped together now. It was cold, and neither of us felt like we were warming up. I was starting to feel desperately inadequate; I'd let him—us—down and there didn't seem to be any way to make it right.

"We gotta go in," I whispered. "Please don't think that, though. I love you, Aaron."

"Then prove it to me," he answered.

***

Even with Tessa there working in the room next door, once we had stretched out on his bed and begun kissing, the sex came naturally, almost without thinking about it. We were very quiet. I couldn't help the feeling of happiness that surged inside me as I stroked his cock. It was dreamlike. A bead of precome appeared and I continued stroking, not thinking of my own pleasure at all, for I had had plenty today. A chunky red candle in a jar glowed close by on Aaron's nightstand, lighting my task.

We giggled as the rhythmic sound of Tessa literally pounding the walls with her brush came through to us.

"It sounds like Tessa is having wild sex in there," I whispered.

"It's all for her art, you know." He was kissing me gently, deeply, stretched out atop me as I continued my strokes and he got hard. "Are you too tired to do much?"

"What do you want?" I asked, pausing. This was pretty intimate: a new kind of pacing for us.

"I think I could do it now."

Our eyes met. I felt a thrill of excitement, nervousness.

"You mean..."

"Yeah, top you," he said casually. "Would that be all right? I know you're tired."

"I am, but you'd be doing most of the work."

Thing is, I couldn't say no. I didn't feel tricked into it, either. I wanted to please him. To show him, somehow, what he meant to me.

"There's a way to do it that I like," he whispered. "Face up."

"You'll have to show me." I tossed him a condom. It felt strange, doing that.

So he did guide me, prepping me a bit, telling me to roll my hips up and interlace my legs behind his back. It was all done in this gentle, controlled way, so different from Matt. I was shaking, shaking even more as he pushed bit by bit inside me and he leaned down to kiss me, our hearts racing. Then it was just a question of him slowly pumping into me while we remained close, looking into each other's eyes. We both tried to keep it quiet, for Tessa's sake.

The candle flared up a bit and I just kept looking up at him, noticing a red flush creeping down his neck.

"You're all flushed."

"You too, Dave."

He was right. We both were.

"How long can you go for?" I gasped a little later.

"You have _no_ idea," he teased. He stilled, up on his elbows, holding himself inside me.

"Is this almost enough?" he asked. "Are you close?"

"Oh, fuck, yes," I groaned. "Really close."

"Then come for me, baby," he said, moving and hitting a spot deep within me.

I threw my head back, convulsing, and he bit my throat gently, marking me. I clasped him to me and I could feel him trembling with release too, his head dropping down close to mine.

We barely moved for a while, after. The candle flickered. Tessa had stopped painting, though her music was still playing softly. She must be on her futon now, I thought.

I ran my hand over his face, his damp hair. Saying nothing, close to tears.

"You're mine," he said clearly. We were still locked together, wrapped around each other, sticky and sweat-drenched as we were.

I nodded. _Thank God_ , was all I thought.

He smiled then, looking relaxed, looking surer of me. "Say it," he whispered.

"I'm yours, Aaron."

And it was true.

"Do you want to hear more?" I murmured.

He nodded, still smiling slightly.

"I love you with all my heart. So much." My voice cracked slightly. "I won't ever hurt you again, that way. Like today. Do you believe me?"

"Yes," he said, considering, pulling away slightly. And then, "Dave, I'm not going to let you down either. If there's ever a problem, I won't hide it. I promise."

I pulled him back against me, holding him, my darker hair blending with his lighter hair, our bodies half covered by the sheet. Cooling now. We were two, but we had merged for a time, and nothing had ever felt more blissful to me than that moment.

"Blow out the candle," he whispered sleepily, and I did.

Then the house on Elsie Street was silent as its inhabitants all rested. Cats and raccoons roamed the street outside and the moon rose up overhead, looking down on the city and the bay.

# About the Author

Gabriella West grew up in Ireland. She earned her masters in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 1995. She has lived in San Francisco since 1988 and is the author of two other novels, _Time of Grace_ and _The Leaving_.

From the Author:

Did you have thoughts about _Elsie Street_? Your review or rating on your favorite ebook retailer would be much appreciated!

Good news! The sequel to _Elsie Street_ is coming. _The Pull of Yesterday_ is now on preorder at all the major ebook platforms and will be released June 5, 2016.

Here's a quick synopsis:

Dave Madden starts off the new year of 2011 with a haunting dream, which doesn't bode well for his and Aaron's relationship. While Dave clings stubbornly to the emotional stability he has found with Aaron, thoughts of his old flame Matt Cohen obsess him. A sudden trip back to Boston for a family emergency adds to Dave's angst and shakes his sense of identity further. He has to ask himself the unthinkable: what if Matt is the man he was meant to be with all along?

In this powerful sequel to Elsie Street, set in contemporary San Francisco, all bets are off.

Finally, get more info about my releases, and read a long interview with me, on my Smashwords profile page:

<https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/gabriellawest>
