Best Gay Romance 2013

There is a dying dog the size of a small horse in my kitchen. She is nearly as tall as the kitchen table. Nearly as wide. With a hell of a lot more long white hair.

The man who brought her is on his knees on my kitchen floor, rubbing the dog’s brown- and gray-tipped ears. He has bits of gray in the dark hair above his own ears.

“It’s okay, Annie,” he says to the dog, who lets her tongue fall from her mouth and tilts her head sideways to listen. “This is gonna’ be sooo good for you. Okay, girl, it’s all good.”

He doesn’t seem to care that he’s talking baby talk to this polar bear–like creature in front of me. He doesn’t seem to hear me saying that the polar bear cannot stay in my kitchen.

When the man stands, his knees pop on the way up. “Ack, getting old.” He shakes his legs out and laughs. “Too much bending down to dogs is more like it.”

Even standing, he can’t seem to keep his fingers out of Annie’s fur. They nuzzle the pads of her ears while he pulls a clipboard from his shoulder bag.

I want to touch Annie, too. She’s almost all white, except for those ears. From here, her fur looks like soft fuzz all over. But I don’t touch her. I can’t. It’s not that she’s dying. That, I’m used to. It’s that she looks so damn healthy.

By the time Bella came to us, she was already missing her back leg from the knee down and was getting oral pain meds twice a day. Her owners had tried to save her by cutting off the tumored foot. But when the cancer spread, they decided it was too much and turned her over to the shelter. That’s when she came to Thom and me.

It had been Thom’s idea to take in a dying animal. A few years back, our local shelter had joined with a group of vets to start a hospice program for animals—some strays, some abandoned—who were dying, but still had quality time left in their lives. The goal was to get the animals into a good final home, a place where they could die with love and compassion. “We can still do something good,” Thom had said when he’d heard of it. “Think of it, these animals, having to die alone.”

He was thinking of himself too, of me after he was gone. That was after he got sick, but before we realized what it was. We’d thought it was AIDS, of course. As a gay man, you spend your whole adult life running from the thing you fear most, so fast that you don’t see the other things on the way by. Until you get sideswiped by them. Car accidents. A guy in the alley with a knife. With Thom, it was lymphoma.

I’d said yes to the first dog—Bella, a lab-something-or-other—because I loved Thom, and I wanted to give him whatever I could, even at the end. Especially at the end. It made his skin ache to feel anything on it, but even so, it was Bella he let in the bed at night, Bella he reached for when the pain was bad. It was helping Bella toward her death that gave us something to focus on, that helped us move toward Thom’s death in a way that felt, if not normal, no, never normal, at least like we were working with some kind of plan.

I didn’t know that somewhere between those last days at home and his final trip to the ER he’d signed us—no, signed me—up for another dog.

There is something in his dark eyes, a glimmer around the edges that shows he doesn’t have any doubts. I signed on for this dog. She is here in my kitchen with two months to live. Of course I can take her.

“Listen, Seth,” I say. “I can’t take her. My partner signed us up and…” It is too complicated, too much to say. The words pile into my throat like bones and stick there.

Seth holds the clipboard as though it’s a Frisbee he’d like to wing at my head. I can understand the impulse. He probably sees this all the time—people who sign on for this venture and then decide they can’t see it through.

At the sound of her name, Annie pushes her cheek harder against Seth’s hand. When she doesn’t get a response, she turns her head my way. The kitchen is small, and she’s so big that she nearly touches my thigh with her nose. Her eyes are so dark in all that white fur. I think what it would be like to have footsteps in the house again, noise at the door when I get back from errands. Somebody who needs me again.

“Great Pyrenees,” he says. “Full-bred and papered.” He doesn’t say it with anger. He doesn’t shake his head like I would have, to think of someone dropping off an animal, any creature, papered or not, just because it was terminal.

Seth smiles for the first time. It’s a half smile, shy enough to bring out dimples on both cheeks. “It’s Norwegian for small horse,” he says.

Annie wags her tail as though she gets the joke, and then drops herself to the kitchen floor at my feet. Her body makes a thud that’s so loud I wonder if she’s hurt herself, but she just puts her head down on her paws.

I stare at her. She looks so healthy. Thom and Bella both showed their illnesses. They were twins in the way their bodies responded. Losing weight no matter how much I fed them, until their knees were bigger than their thighs, until I could count every vertebra and rib with my fingers. Thom’s fine blond hairs shedding on blankets next to Bella’s dark curls. Neither of them said anything, not by mouth, but at the end, their bodies knew no language but pain.

He is unpacking her things from his bag onto my kitchen table. The bag says, PAWSITIVELY PAWSPICE, in green letters with a big paw print on it. Like some kind of bizarre Mary Poppins, he pulls out two leashes, cans of dog food, an unopened package of very large bones, and a bottle of meds that rattles like maracas and makes Annie open her eyes warily.

I nod. Thom complained of that all the time. The pain, he said, was easier than the disconnect. But then the pain would come on, hard, and he would let me open the IV, watch the liquid drip-drip him into semiconsciousness.

“Nasal?” I’m not sure I know what that even means. I mean, I know what it means, but, “How does nose cancer land a dog on the hospice list?”

Seth keeps his eyes on Annie, who is, for the first time, starting to sound like a dog who might have something wrong with her. Her breath whines in, just a bit, only if you’re listening in a quiet kitchen.

Seth reaches into his canvas bag and pulls out a tennis ball punched full of holes. Then he goes down on his knees next to Annie. I’m getting used to seeing the top of him like this. Even though it’s not my own instinct, I like a man who will get down on his knees. Thom was a gardener, always in the dirt. Even near the end.

“C’mon, girl, open up,” he says. Then, to me, “Now, you’ll want to catch her just before she falls asleep, and get the ball in her mouth. The holes help with the stridor, so she can breathe. She’s used to it, so if you just ask her to open, she will. A bone works too, if you’re out of tennis balls. Anything big enough to keep her mouth open while she sleeps.”

Seth is still on his knees. I try not to look at his hands across her back. He has good wrists, muscled enough to chop vegetables and lift weights, soft enough to hold books and wineglasses by the stem.

Seth is still talking about Annie. “You could give her one of the pain pills, too, if she’s having an especially hard time, but the tennis ball usually does the trick.”

I realize I’m not listening. What I’m doing is eying Seth’s back, the curve of his shoulders and hips. This realization makes me want to fuck and cry. While Thom was dying I looked at everything—everything—that walked by. I didn’t touch; that was our rule. But, Jesus, I don’t know if I’d ever been so horny in my life. We fucked some, then, almost to the end. Thom joked we were like pregnant women or little old ladies. He was afraid I wasn’t attracted to him anymore; I was afraid to hurt him.

Near the end, sex took on this ritual: I would lie next to Thom, barely touching, and we would kiss. Just our lips and tongues. His lips still silver-soft from the lip balm he was addicted to. And then I would suck. As much as he was ashamed of his body at the end, he was always proud of his cock. I’m so grateful for that, that he had something to be proud of, always.

And I loved to suck him. The only part of his body that didn’t lose its weight, that stayed full and heavy and alive in my mouth. I’d run my tongue up the ridges and veins, play over and over the soft curve of his head until his sighs changed from a long, slow release to a near-pant. Until he lifted his hips off the bed and put his fingers in my hair and said my name, over and over. And then, sometimes, he could fall asleep without the pain meds. Sleeping then, he looked like my Thom again. If I squinted, I could pretend I didn’t see the IV poles, the hospital bed, the pill bottles, and tissues scattered around the living room. I could pretend he was just napping in the middle of the day.

And then the truth would come back and I’d go down to the laundry room and put already dry clothes in the dryer. Beneath the loud clunk-clunk of jeans and T-shirts, I’d masturbate, hard and fast, without lube, chafing my skin into some kind of pain. Sometimes I came. Sometimes I just cried.

But after Thom died, nothing. It was like my libido got dressed up in its best clothes, and lay down to be buried somewhere between Thom and Bella. For it to come back now, suddenly and with such force that my cock tightens in my jeans—it wrecks me.

I back away from Seth, trying to shift my legs to hide everything that’s happening inside me. Seth raises his eyes to the triangle of my jeans. I turn away and grab the first thing my hand finds. One of Annie’s tennis balls. When I squeeze it, the air shoots out the holes into my palm. I pick up the cans of food, put them into the cupboard, so I don’t have to turn around.

Even as Seth gathers his things, I keep my back turned. It isn’t until he says, “I’ll see you both in a week then,” that everything subsides and I can turn and meet his dark eyes.

This, finally, is when I realize that somewhere between “I can’t,” and “You can,” I’ve lost the battle. Annie is staying, and this man is going to be back in my house in a week’s time. And I have no idea how to feel about either.

For the next six days, Annie and I try to get acquainted with each other. She’s learning to navigate the small house with her big body, and I’m learning to get used to the sound of movement in the rooms.

Every day, she chews her tennis ball at the back of my home office while I build websites and answer emails. Every night, I make up the bundle of blankets for her to sleep on in the living room and every night, she stands at the foot of my bed watching as I read or do crosswords or try not to think about Thom. She doesn’t whine or even beg. If she did, I think I could turn her away, make it clear that the bedroom is not her space. But she just watches me, tongue hanging, until I sigh and pat the covers.

“C’mon then,” I say. And she does. Crawls on her elbows and knees across the covers like she’s trying to make herself smaller. Which is nearly impossible for a dog her size. Even the bed lilts sideways at her weight. I give her one of the holey tennis balls and she chomps on it for a while and then puts her head on Thom’s pillow to sleep.

So far, we haven’t needed the drugs, and I think that makes us both happy. It’s a slippery slope, and slipperier at the end. And although Annie’s chart says five weeks, I know that could mean anything. Bella lasted longer than she was supposed to. Thom didn’t.

Every morning, before our walk, I read the quality of life checkpoints off to Annie. It’s a lot of h’s and a few m’s. Hurt, hunger, hydration, hygiene, happiness, mobility, more. It’s supposed to gauge how she’s doing, what her quality of life is like, if she’s having more good days than bad.

I don’t know if we got one of these for Bella. I’m sure we did, but I don’t remember it. I wish I’d paid more attention. I wish I’d had a chart like this for Thom, although he probably would have thrown it across the room. He’d voted for calling the vet to put Bella to sleep as soon as she started showing real signs of pain, when she started having more bad days than good. But for himself, he wanted to hang in until the end, no matter the cost.

On our seventh day, the day that Seth is scheduled to come by for his check-in visit, Annie seems her usual tail-whipping self. Between breakfast and her walk, she manages to knock over the vase of yellow calla lilies that I bought…well, I won’t let myself think why I bought them. The vase doesn’t break, but the callas aren’t salvageable.

Sometimes I swear she knocks shit over just to say that she’s alive. Today, I wonder if she’s not doing it to spite me for running the vacuum last night. Or maybe she’s as nervous as I am about Seth coming. The way my body’s jumping, if I had a tail, I’d be knocking crap off every surface, too.

I tell myself that I’m just nervous because I’ve gotten used to having Annie in the house, and he could decide it’s not working out. But the truth is I’m excited, too.

“Okay, Missy,” I say as I give both of us a once-over in the bedroom mirror—the tip of her tail is soggy from its run-in with the vase and I’ve got a squeaky toy tucked in my shirt pocket, but otherwise we look pretty good. “We need to make a good impression today,” I tell Annie, who wags her tail at me.

And then Seth’s knocking, calling. Annie and I nearly trip each other up trying to get to the door. Halfway across the kitchen, I calm myself and let Annie run ahead. Even so, when I swing the door open, we’re both panting like fools.

Seth’s standing there with a bone the size of Texas in one hand and what looks like a hand-picked bunch of black-eyed Susans in the other. Annie looks back at me like she’s smiling. I take a big gulp of air.

“Hi,” he says. I’m not sure if I noticed his smile last time, but I do now: straight white teeth, a full bottom lip that I want to suck.

Seth realizes what he’s done. “Oh, ah…” he says. The tips of his ears darken with color. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything so sexy. He tries to switch hands, to offer the flowers instead, but I take hold of his wrist. I don’t mean to. If I’d thought first, if a vision of Thom had entered my head, I would not have done it. But my body moved first, took his wrist, and now I’m holding the hand that’s holding the bone.

“Come in,” I say. His blushing, the way he fumbles through my doorway, are things Thom would never have done. I’m so grateful for the difference, for not having to compare him to Thom, that I pull him into the kitchen and press him back against the fridge. I find his mouth, that bottom lip, and I suck it into my mouth. He tastes of peppermint and basil.

Seth says something, but I can’t tell what it is. It must be good, because his arms go around my back and he pulls me against him. The knotty end of the dog bone digs into my shoulder, but I don’t care because our mouths are pressed together, our chests and cocks pushing into each other. He’s big and the feeling of him through his jeans makes me grow large too.

I put my hands in his hair, feeling the soft black curls, the coarse gray strands. Jesus, I want to unbutton this man right here, I want to bend him over the kitchen counter and take him. I try to tell him these things with my hips, the curve of my cock against his. He answers with his tongue, scraping the edge of my teeth, licking the inside of my cheek.

All at once, we’re a tangle of flowers and dog bone and tongues and panting. I step back, away from Seth’s dark eyes. A flower petal brushes my ear as I break from his arms.

He smiles, and for the second time today, I am aroused by straight, white teeth. He seems to have recouped his lost confidence. His face is still flushed, but I don’t think it’s embarrassment this time. My own cheeks feel overly warm.

Seth goes down on his knees to give Annie the bone. She pushes the healthy side of her face against his palm before she takes it between her teeth. Still on his knees, he holds out the slightly crushed bouquet of flowers. “Would you have a vase for these?” he asks.

We do what’s civilized. I refill the calla vase with water and try to rearrange the flowers in a way that makes them look less like they were in the middle of a lust crush. And then I offer him lunch and he accepts.

I slice up cheese and salami. Pull yesterday’s tomato and mozzarella salad from the fridge. He takes the knife I offer and slices a loaf of bread at perfect diagonals.

We eat while Annie gnaws her bone in the corner of the kitchen. We don’t say much. It’s the lunch of two men who were too nervous to eat all day. The lunch of two men who know that dessert is going to be the best—and longest—part of the meal. I watch his hands while he dips slices of bread into olive oil. I want to suck the oil from his fingers. Better yet, suck it from his tongue. But I hold myself steady. I eat. I mention how well Annie’s doing. How healthy and happy she seems.

At the end, we clear the table as though we’ve been doing this for years. There is no sidestepping. Seth doesn’t ask where the dishes go, or how to stack things. He just does. And then there is no more to do. Annie is asleep with the bone holding her jaws apart. Her breathing is nearly silent.

“I want that, too,” I say against his skin. I take his hand and pull him away from the towel rack. I mean to go to the living room, something less personal, but that’s where Thom is, the memories of his last months and days, and I lead Seth into the bedroom instead. I think it surprises us both, this wide, carefully made bed waiting in the middle of the room.

Seth stops in front of it. I realize that if I stop now, I’ll back out. I’ll send Seth on his way, and Annie and I will live out the rest of her days in the safe, lonely rooms of this house.

Instead, I push my hands against Seth’s chest. Somehow, in pushing him away, I pull him closer. My fingers open the buttons one by one. I’m shaking, and I have to hold on to each button tightly. Seth kisses my neck while I work. His hands slide down the back of me, from my shoulders to my waist. I hear my belt buckle open, feel the warmth as he slides it from my jeans.

Seth lets go of my jeans. He undresses quickly, dropping his clothes in piles. His body is lean but muscled. His cock swings up, long and thin, the smooth head a beautiful pinky-purple. His body is so alive, so much muscle and blood pumping, that I’m afraid to touch him.

It doesn’t matter. He comes to me, undresses me as fast as he did himself. Even so, I marvel at his hands everywhere: buttons, sleeves, sliding my underwear down my thighs so my cock springs up.

“Oh,” he says. And he never comes up from taking my underwear off. He stays on his knees, and I can see the lean muscle of his back, and just below that, the perfect curves of his ass. He licks his lips and presses them to the head of my cock.

It’s been so long since I’ve felt anything other than my own hand that just the press of his lips there makes me want to grab the back of his head and fuck his mouth. I try to keep still. When he opens his lips, lets me slide inside him, against the press of tongue and teeth, it’s almost too much. I grit my teeth to stem the rising pleasure. His tongue finds the sweet spot just beneath my head, laps at it.

“Ah, Jesus,” I say. Through my gritted teeth, it comes out as something less awed, more primal. I pull Seth up from his knees. His lips are cherry red and wet. He licks a drop of precum from his big bottom lip.

“What are you doing to me?” I ask, even as I’m laying him down on his back on the bed. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. The way his cock jumps as I position myself over him, the way he puts his legs up to give me access, says it all.

“More,” he pants. I enter with a second finger, let his body settle over it. He wraps his fingers tight around the base of his cock. The color darkens even more. My cock is jumping every time Seth’s ass tightens around my fingers. It wants in. I want in.

I fumble in the nightstand drawer for lube and condoms, hoping there’s something left over. Hoping I won’t break down when my hand hits a cellophane wrapper.

Thankfully, Seth puts his other hand around my cock. He’s wet his palm and his fingers slide over my skin, slick enough to take my mind off everything that came before this moment. I find a half-empty bottle of lube and one lonely condom in the bottom of the drawer.

Seth wraps his fingers around the base of my cock while I roll on the condom. He tightens his grip, a human cock ring that makes me pump my hips against his hand as I spread lube over the surface.

I push my way inside him. Just the head at first. How much I’ve missed this entering is something that I feel in my whole body. This is how I try to be: Slow. Careful. But Seth is sucking me in with his low moans, with his fingers tight on my ass.

And then I close my eyes, just for a second, and see Thom’s face. For some reason, it’s okay, though; he looks happy. Or at least he doesn’t look unhappy.

When I open my eyes, Seth is pumping his cock at the same rhythm as I’m fucking him. His head is thrown back, and he moans low. It’s visceral: the sound, the feeling of his hot skin around me. I come.

Coming is like this: Everything emptying. Everything filling. The long, slow release of something I’ve been holding on to for too long. It is liquid leaving and me becoming liquid and the way Seth says “Aw, god,” and Annie’s low whine from the other room.

“Thom came into the shelter in person when he signed up. He was so sweet, told us the whole story. He wanted you to have something after. It was supposed to be sooner, that’s what he wanted, but there wasn’t a good match. I asked to be assigned to you.”

“Maybe,” he says. “But Thom was so nice, and I thought, ‘A man who’s in love with this man must be amazing, too.’ I just wanted to see if it was true.”

It’s been three months and two days, and Seth has moved in. He’s brought his life with him: paperwork and photos from Pawspice, a shed full of gardening tools, his ability to grow herbs and tomatoes like he’s made of fertilizer.

Annie’s days are switching from mostly good to mostly bad. Something has speeded up inside her, is pushing her quickly toward the end. Five times a day, we coax her to eat by cupping Alfredo sauce in our palms and letting her lick it out.

This morning, while Seth cooks breakfast, I mix up the solution to wash Annie’s coat—mostly water, a little lemon juice, and hydrogen peroxide. She lies on the rug in the kitchen, the ball between her teeth. She has it almost all the time now, and still she needs the meds.

I wring out the sponge—my skin is permeated with the scent of lemons—and I run it carefully over Annie’s face. She closes her eyes when I get near her nose, and I talk low to her, tell her I’m sorry if I hurt her.

Not today, not tomorrow, but soon, we will lose Annie and all she has brought to us. Well, not everything she has brought to us. We’ll still have: Memories. Tennis balls filled with holes in every room in the house. A bed that sags on one side. Each other.