Wherever we are, it’s not where I would’ve expected us to be.
The last few times I’ve jumped to meet Michael, we’ve been somewhere familiar—somewhere isolated. Like the only people who matter are him and me.
Wherever we are now is dingy, and the air is thick with the smell of alcohol, sweat, and smoke. Perspiration trickles down my neck and my forehead too. It’s a very specific feeling, the stickiness and the invasion of one’s personal space. It’s a sense and feeling that I can pinpoint to one location.
The Citadel.
But none of it seems to affect Michael. He’s smiling, like he always does, but this time, it’s a wider grin, like what you’d see on a family member who has just learned that someone they love is still alive.
“I did it,” I whisper to myself.
He arches a brow but doesn’t ask any questions. “Still as strange as always, Andre Cobb from Boston. We really need to stop meeting like this.” He scolds me but still wraps his arms around me tightly. The smell of alcohol is strong on him, along with the smell of cologne and smoke and sweat, but all of it comes together to make the Michael I know and love.
And I didn’t realize how much I missed it. How much I love those smells.
I wrap my arms around him, holding him close, like his molecules might slip through my fingers in that very moment. When we pull back, I’m the first one to speak.
“You’re playing here tonight, yeah?”
He nods. “That’s why you came, right?”
“If I say no, will I lose my brownie points?”
“Nothing can lose you points with me. Come on, sit, sit.”
I follow him, weaving through the room, which smells like the thick of bodies, and sit at a circular table about ten feet from the stage. There’s a pair of twins riffing off each other, like two athletes playing vocal Ping-Pong. It’s majestic, impressive, and a skill I’ll never have.
Michael taps his finger slowly against the table in beat with the two. He’s focused on them, his lips moving rapidly, like he’s whispering some incantation under his breath. Or a curse. A twinge of jealousy spikes through my body.
I’ve just traveled through time and space for him, and he’s solely focused on his music. Seeing him focused like that is attractive. There’s something different about Michael’s passion for music than other people’s. Maybe because I know what he’s been through to get here. Maybe because I know what he’s sacrificed. I’m not sure. But this feels like he deserves this moment, where nothing else but the music matters.
When the duo stops, the crowd erupts in jovial glee. People stand, hooting and hollering, sending a sharp note through the air. Once the crowd calms down, the noise in the room is nothing louder than a murmur. I notice, as Michael takes a long sip of his beer, that there’s a guitar next to him, taking up a seat.
“What are you going to play?”
“That’s the question you have?” he replies. “Usually you’re asking, What year is it?”
“Thought I would shake it up this time,” I tease.
“I appreciate that.” A beat, or rather another swig of beer, passes. “Saturday,” he finally says, looking over at me. “You’ve only been gone a few days. I’m not even sure if gone is the right word. Missing sounds better.”
“I knew where I was,” I remind him. “I was back home—in my time.”
Michael shakes his head, pushing the beer over to me and offering me a swig, which I take—begrudgingly. “Not what I meant,” he says. He pauses, then adds, “I missed you.”
Michael must know that I’m mentally freaking out. His rough hand squeezes my shoulder just once. His breath, warm and sweet-smelling, tickles my ear.
“Trust me,” he whispers.
His words feel like some sort of Russian activation code, because as soon as I hear them, my shoulders relax, I nod, and my heart slows down. Michael sits there with me, in the faint neon light, submerged in the smells of peanuts and bad beer, his eyes locked with mine.
“You okay?” he finally asks.
My throat feels dry, and all I can do is nod. But that’s enough. He leads me over to the bar for a drink, and I notice, for the first time, where we are.
It’s mostly filled with men, but the dim neon lights give it an eerie, sunset-like glow, which makes it hard to see clearly. It’s relatively quiet; the conversations are barely above a low murmur, even though the alcohol seems to be flowing. Michael’s at home. His body is relaxed as he chats with the bald bartender with strong, bloated pecs and triceps. And then it hits me.
The Citadel is a gay jazz club.
I quickly flip through the history I remember for 1970. Gay rights weren’t a huge thing, but they were starting to gain traction, thanks to the Stonewall riots a few months prior. But there was also a war going on. Vietnam. All of these men look draft age.
So why weren’t they there?
“You’re wondering the same thing I wondered the first time I came here,” Michael says, slipping me a glass of beer filled to the brim. By the time I look up, Michael’s already halfway through his own massive glass. When he sets it down, there’s a film of white on his top lip, making his mustache look like a salt-and-pepper one.
“College,” he explains. “Deferment. I’m sure you know all about that, yeah?”
“We don’t have the draft anymore,” I say, using my thumb to clean his face. His blue eyes cross, focusing on my thumb, then settle on my face, watching me, not my finger, until I’m done. “But I do know about it.”
“Because this war is a freakin’ shit show,” a man slurs next to Michael. He’s wearing a jacket, military issued, but I can’t tell what the patches and letters mean.
I do know what the missing right arm means. I want to tell him, Thank you for your service, or something, but the words don’t come out. It’s like I feel embarrassed to say something like that to a veteran. Or maybe it’s because I know that his sacrifice, in the greater picture, didn’t stop anything.
“Damn straight, Johnny,” Michael says, patting his back. Johnny grumbles, brushing off Michael’s hand. When a waiter in a tight shirt walks by, Michael taps his thigh and juts his head toward Johnny. “His drinks are on me.”
“You got it, sugar.”
Michael turns back to me. “It’s exactly like Johnny said. This war is a mess. It’s obvious that it’s going to go down in history as the most fucked-up war ever. I don’t even have to be a time traveler to know that.”
Michael mutters the second half of that statement around the rim of his glass, grinning.
“What?” I ask.
Michael shrugs, nodding to my glass. He raises his hand, brushing hair out of his way. “Not a fan of beer?”
“You could say that.” I remember all the literature about drinking after a transplant. I’ve already been pushing my luck with the other drinks I had with Michael. Plus, he’s right, beer isn’t my favorite thing in the world. I hate the sour taste it has.
“Oh, so now you’re being picky?” he teases, nudging me with his shoulder.
“I’m not in the mood for this, Michael.”
The words come out far harsher than I intend them to, and the way that Michael pulls away and his shoulders tense tells me that he agrees. I sigh, staring at the brown liquid. You only live once, right? A few sips won’t hurt me.
With that, I grab it and take a long drink. It tastes like…yeast, bubbly yeast, but I stomach about three gulps of it. I set it down, wiping my mouth with my arm, and gulp down half the cup of tap water that was put in front of me. Before I can put the glass down, Michael pats my back—hard. Hard enough for water to spill on the front of my pants. That stupid grin, wide and boyish, is painted all over his face.
“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Absolutely awful.”
“Now you’re just playing hard to get.”
“There’s nothing for you to get here.”
“Oh, just you wait, Andre. You and I aren’t even playing the same game, and you’ve already lost.”
Normally, if I heard someone say that, I’d call them a creep. But when Michael says it, his features soften. He’s teasing.
“How did we get in here, anyway?” I say, clearing my throat and forcing another sip of beer.
“No one’s going to ask your age. You look older than you are. And no one really cares here.” Michael stops mid-sip, hastily putting his drink down. His eyes widen as he studies me, leaning in close, so close that I can smell the beer on his breath and his cologne.
“You’re telling the truth, aren’t you? About the draft?” he asks, pulling back. “Has anything else changed that I need to be concerned about?”
“We’re always going to be in a war of some sort. So just get ready for that.”
He groans, thumping his forehead against the table.
I flourish my hands, taking a fake bow. “Welcome to America, the land of the free and the home of hypocrisy.”
“Hear! Hear!” he replies, raising his glass, which sloshes beer onto him. He yelps and jumps, and his shirt and denim jacket are stained. “Shit!” he yells.
I quickly grab any napkins I can, patting him down. The napkins absorb a lot of the beer, but his shirt’s still damp.
“This is all your fault, you know.”
“How is this my fault?” I protest. “You spilled the drink.”
“You made me laugh!”
“I made a factual statement about our country! You cheered.”
“I know when to recognize and appreciate wisdom. What can I say?”
I stop with my hands on his pecs, looking up at Michael. When our eyes meet, he’s smiling an easy, open smile, strands of dirty-blond hair in front of his blue eyes. It’s a sight to behold, a dizzying image.
“You did this on purpose, didn’t you?”
Michael scoffs.
“I think you spilled that beer on purpose so that I would touch you.”
It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, and I clamp my lips tight to stop myself from saying anything else outrageous.
But Michael doesn’t seem to care. In fact, he acts more like a moth to a flame, attracted by my words, and takes a step forward, and then another. By the time he stops, he’s very much in my personal space, and my back is against the table. He places his hands against each side of me, and even with him so close, I can’t smell his beer, his cologne, or anything.
It’s because I’m not breathing.
Everything melts away as he leans in. The world behind him blurs into a black and faint neon nothingness. His lips brush against my ear as he whispers, “If I wanted your hands on me, trust me, it wouldn’t be at a bar.”
He pulls back once again, still close, our thighs touching, his eyes locked with mine.
This isn’t how I thought my first kiss would go. But we don’t always get to choose who we fall in love with. Sometimes we just have to take a leap of faith and be comfortable with things not going according to plan. I, more than anyone, should understand that.
Do I want Michael to kiss me? I think so. Do I want my first kiss to be with him? Probably. But should we do it here?
As Michael leans forward, I don’t stop him. I don’t move closer either. This is it. The moment I’ve seen on TV, heard Isobel talk about, watched porn about—this moment right here. A kiss. My heart thumps loudly in my chest, so loudly that I barely hear the MC on stage.
“Up next we have a regular here; Michael Gray is going to perform a song for us. Give him a good ol’ Citadel welcome, will ya?”
Michael stops, an inch or so from my mouth. The smell of beer doesn’t bother me anymore.
“Damn it,” he whispers, pulling back and grabbing his guitar. “To be continued. Be here when I return?” he asks, taking off his jacket, revealing a sleeveless black fitted T-shirt.
“Where else would I go?”
“I dunno, the future, maybe?”
“Rule number one of time traveling: no traveling to the future.”
He quirks a brow, waves me off, and heads onto the stage. He’s almost sitting down when he rests his guitar against the stool and quickly runs back to our table. I grab his beer, thinking that’s what he wants, but before I raise it, he quickly presses his lips against mine.
“Be right back,” he whispers as the crowd is hooting and hollering. If my heart was beating fast before, it feels like it’s going to jump out of my chest now.
Michael Gray just kissed me.
Michael Gray just kissed me.
Michael Gray just freakin’ kissed me!
I repeat it over and over again in my head until it sinks in. Once it does, Michael’s situated on the stool. Cool, calm, and collected, he speaks softly into the microphone.
“This song is for a guy I’ve only known for a few days, but it feels like I’ve known him forever,” he says, his eyes on me the whole time.
And in that moment, as he plays, for what feels like the first time since I started traveling, nothing really matters.