BLUE’S EYES grew wide at the sight of the car, and then… then… he turned and looked up at the big hunky man and remembered.
Remembered where he had seen the guy before.
And the car.
The guy had almost hit him with this very car several months ago. Blue had been flying along on his skateboard—a thing of the past now; he’d sold it for grocery money—and he’d been lost in his head, singing a song probably. He’d been on the sidewalk, where he admittedly shouldn’t have been, and the big copper-colored luxury tank had come down a steep driveway and almost rolled right over him.
The car had stopped on a dime, but the driver had burst out of it like a jack-in-the-box, and Blue had steeled himself to be screamed at. To his surprise, the man—big and broad shouldered, with a businessman’s very short hairstyle and piercing hazel eyes—had just frozen and then fumbled over his words and stared at him in a way that made Blue hard almost instantly. The big dude, a good head taller than him at least, really didn’t say anything after that, and then Blue had gotten this overwhelming desire to touch him and he’d thrown his arms around him and….
I kissed him. I kissed his cheek.
Blue’s own cheeks heated at the memory, and he didn’t know if was embarrassment or something much more primal.
“I remember you,” he whispered. There was a flash in the man’s eyes, and then John was blushing, and damn, Blue loved it when a big ol’ hunky man blushed. It was so fucking sweet. So sexy.
“Yeah—ah, yes,” the man said.
John.
John Williams was his name, and wasn’t that a fucking sexy name? Strong. Secure. None of those silly names like Chaz or Sly or even Blue—although he did like his name, more or less. And everything about John was so… man. Tall and shouldery, and—Blue shivered—he was wearing a suit. On a Saturday afternoon. Was there ever anything as sexy and assured as a man in a suit? He wasn’t wearing a tie. No undershirt either, and his shirt was unbuttoned just enough to show a hint of hair.
“It was the day,” John said, “that I stupidly almost—”
“The day I stupidly almost got myself run over.”
John nodded once. “I should have been paying attention.”
“You paid attention enough,” Blue said, and he would have said more, but the dizziness hit him again, dammit. It had been a way-too-much day, what with sweet, sweet Chewie being hit by that car, and Blue being sure he was dead, and then he wasn’t and then he was running with his dog to Four-Footed Friends and then the operation and then this big kind man—so many big men weren’t kind, it seemed—was holding him and letting him cry.
As Blue felt the world go light, John leapt forward and helped him to the car—it was such a beautiful car, some part of him noticed—and all but lifted Blue inside, where he settled into the mind-bogglingly comfortable seat. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen anything like this. It was as if he were in some kind of leather-upholstered spaceship.
Then John let himself in on the driver’s side and asked Blue to put on his seat belt, and Blue almost said, as he always did, “I don’t wear seat belts,” which he mostly got away with. But now—he had no idea why—he didn’t want to argue with John or put up a fuss or anything.
So Blue clicked it on. For a moment there it’d looked like John was going to help him—like he was a kid or something—and it gave him a shiver of delightful goose bumps. Then John asked him where he wanted to eat, and the truth was he didn’t know. And didn’t care. Blue was quite suddenly ravenous and would have eaten anything.
A pang of pain hit him from nowhere, and Blue looked out the window at the big tan building—Four-Footed Friends painted along its length—and thought of Chewie and the way his dog had screamed when the car hit him.
“Think of him resting,” John said, as if he were reading Blue’s mind.
Blue trembled and looked at him, at that masculine face and that strong jaw and those kind eyes, and he felt that maybe everything would be okay.
“He’s not in pain now, and Elaine said he’s going to be okay. I can tell that woman is a no-bullshit kind of lady. Can’t you?”
Oh, those eyes. So caring. His little smile so sure. What a wonderful man. Mysteriously reassured and feeling a tiny bit better, Blue nodded. “Okay,” he said and closed his eyes and imagined it. Imagined Chewie resting. No. Sleeping. But not in that kennel. At home. In their bed.
He opened his eyes to find John looking at him, and Blue felt a little bit better still. Then John asked him again where he wanted to eat.
Blue shook his head. “I don’t know.”
John looked out the windshield for a long moment, then bit his lower lip and nodded. “Okay,” he said, and they were off.
Blue settled in. Pretended he really was in a spaceship of some kind. Something from Star Wars maybe. Not an X-Wing…. “What is this thing called, anyway?”
“Thing?” John asked.
“This car,” Blue said.
“Oh. A Lexus.” John pursed his lips. “An LS 600h L.”
Blue burst into laughter. He couldn’t help it. It felt good to laugh. “A… what? LX 600?”
“LS 600h L,” John corrected.
“That’s the name of the car?” What kind of name was that?
John rolled his eyes. “I know, right? What happened to a car being called a Saturn or a Sentra or Taurus or Mustang or Focus or—”
“It’s like a robot from Star Wars!” Blue cried. “C-3PO, R2-D2, BB-8, and now… LS-600!” And then he clapped his hand over his mouth and realized he’d done it again. No filter. Something entered his head and then flew right out his mouth and—God!—this guy was taking him out to eat and Blue was making fun of his car.
To Blue’s relief John laughed, and it was all rumbly and manly. “I’m never going to think of this car as a Lexus again.”
“Is that okay?” Blue asked.
John smiled at him. “It’s fine. I’m just happy you’re laughing.”
JOHN WASN’T sure where to take him. Anyplace fast? Because the kid needed something to eat, and soon.
Blue. His name was Blue. Could that really be his name? He’d have to ask, but not now. Food! Maybe Chubby’s on Broadway for a big burger or something? McCoy’s in Westport? They had a good variety. Jerusalem Cafe was wonderful, but maybe Blue didn’t like Middle Eastern food? Freebirds made huge burritos to order. He loved Minsky’s Pizza. Everyone liked pizza, right? Or right nearby there was Temujin’s Mongolian Grill, where Blue could pick out exactly what he wanted, and they cooked it up right there in front of you. He could have as much as he wanted, and he looked hungry.
And Temujin’s was quiet.
Quiet was good.
“Do you like food with an Asian feel?” he asked.
Blue nodded but didn’t say anything. Was that good or bad? Did he need to think of another place?
In the end, John thought, What the hell, and that’s where they went. It wasn’t far, which was a plus, and again, there was the quiet aspect. No loud music. They could talk, if that was what they were going to do, although John was at a total loss what they would talk about. What was he doing? He was taking a boy to dinner.
A boy he’d been dreaming about.
It shocked him to think it, and he had to be careful not to hit the brakes. John dared a glance toward Blue, and he….
Why, it looked like he’d drifted off to sleep.
And why not? He’d been through quite a lot.
The West Thirty-Ninth Street neighborhood wasn’t one you drove through swiftly, not normally anyway. The street wasn’t wide—one lane going either direction—and there were a lot of lights. They seemed to be stopping at every one. It gave John time to look at the kid, and every time he did, his heart skipped a beat.
It’s a guy, John. A guy. A young guy. A very young guy!
Blue’s head was tilted to the right against the window. His hair was so ridiculously white, it couldn’t possibly be natural. Even oblivious John saw that it wasn’t that well done. Blue’s eyebrows were quite thick, more than one might expect on such a face, but John couldn’t think of them as a flaw. How would he describe Blue’s face? Certainly not feminine. But not masculine. Elfin, maybe. There was that nose, of course. A button nose. He had a long neck, clearly revealed from the way his head was turned, and John wondered how the skin there would taste.
His eyes widened at the thought, and he jerked his face back to the windshield and forced himself to stare forward. Taste? What would Blue’s skin taste like?
What are you? A damned vampire or something?
John managed to keep his face pointed forward for about a block. But then he had to turn and look again.
Blue was wearing a burgundy sleeveless shirt, and John could see now it hadn’t come that way. The sleeves had been removed. It really wasn’t that warm yet. Was Blue cold in that? His left arm had fallen in such a way that John could see hair showing at his pits, and damn, it looked just as white-blond as his head. Could that really be his natural color, or had the kid found a way to bleach his pits? There wasn’t a lot of it from what he could see, but then, the kid’s arms weren’t up over his head either.
His imagination flashed him a view of what that might look like—Blue lying on a bed asleep, arms over his head—and he could only wonder why he was conjuring such images. Why a bed?
John shook his head, looked forward, and then once more his eyes drifted back as if he had no will to stop them. He noted again just how tight Blue’s jeans were. And well worn. And showing a surprising large…. What to call it?
Bulge. You know what it’s called.
And God, just how big was Blue’s…?
Forward! Look forward, goddammit!
But by then he knew he couldn’t fight it. He was going to look. He was going to fill his mind’s eye, drink the kid in, memorize as many details as possible, and save them all for later, and then he would masturbate to very real pictures instead of the ethereal ones he’d used now and again for months.
John didn’t know what he was doing. Not exactly. Heart pounding, he realized that these were very homosexual feelings. He couldn’t deny it. But until today, until this moment, he’d never allowed himself to think such thoughts. He’d only ever allowed himself to think of men in the most peripheral or superficial way. Because he knew, he knew, dammit, that if he ever tasted that forbidden fruit—
or the skin of someone’s (Blue’s) neck
—he could very well be lost.
Lost because he didn’t want to be different. He had nothing against gay men. Nothing at all. And it was certainly easier to be a gay man today than it was a decade ago. Even a few years ago. Gays could marry now. Who would have ever thought that would happen so fast? John never thought it would happen in his lifetime.
But able to get married or not, by the most liberal of statistics, homosexuals made up only 10 percent of the population, and he felt it was likely that the reality was much closer to 2 percent. So said an online article he’d read lately. Not that he spent that much time reading about those things….
Liar.
The point was he didn’t want to be part of that 1.8 percent. He didn’t want to be that one gay guy in the room, one of the few gays at work, the only guy with another man at the neighborhood block party. He just wanted to fucking blend in. And since he liked making love to women—or at least Vivian—why be anything else? Sometimes he shuddered to think what it must be like to live a gay life.
John wasn’t sure when he’d looked back at Blue again. Looked at his purple sneakers—Converse sneakers, he thought they were called—and saw they were quite old. There was a hole worn at the left little toe and… skin. John saw skin. A tiny fraction of toenail. Blue wasn’t wearing socks.
John’s cock shifted in the confines of his slacks, and two things happened.
The first was a quick flash of Vivian shaking her head because he was wearing slacks on a Saturday afternoon. But he’d worked that morning and left at two and somehow found himself in front of an animal shelter instead of going home and doing something like changing into jeans and mowing the lawn.
The second thing was that the vision of his wife drifted away like a puff of smoke.
And he found himself wondering why it was that a peek at Blue’s toe had made him get hard—and he was hard now, fully erect—and none of the ogling he’d done of Blue’s every inch before had done that. Did he have a foot fetish? He’d certainly never paid that much attention to Vivian’s feet, no matter what new (and probably expensive) pair of shoes she’d purchased. Never really paid them much attention at all.
But he knew right then that he wanted this young man. He had no true idea precisely what he’d do with Blue. He supposed there was the obvious, but he didn’t know if he could suck a cock any more than he could leap off a building and take flight.
And he knew that wanting Blue could be just as dangerous as actually leaping from a building.
Because John knew that if he so much as touched Blue—more than he already had, touched him in an intentional way—he would want to go on touching for the rest of his life. And he thought Blue would let him. He remembered the way Blue had looked at him over his shoulder before he’d disappeared down John’s street on a skateboard. Surely the boy was gay.
John’s cock throbbed, and if Blue looked, he would see, would know. If he’d been wearing jeans like Viv said he should on a Saturday afternoon, the denseness of the fabric might have hidden it. But the light flannel wool of the slacks? No. He might as well be naked.
Please don’t look, Blue. Please.
What should he do? They were almost there. Think of squirrel guts; wasn’t that it? Maggoty squirrel guts. Hadn’t he read that in a book once? Or was it a movie?
The street was before him. He turned left onto Bell without even having to slow down, because suddenly there were no other cars and no lights turning red. Now, when it would be convenient. He had to get rid of this infuriating hard-on before it was too late. His one hope was how notoriously difficult it was to find a parking space here, and… an Oldsmobile pulled out right in front of him, vacating a space directly in front of Temujin’s. It wasn’t a handicapped space either.
Shit.
He pulled into the empty spot as easy as could be.
Think of something sad.
But what?
His wife leaving.
And he suddenly heard her say, “For Christ’s sake, John. Even your name is boring. I know that’s mean. I know it. It’s really mean to say, and I’m a bitch to say it, but it’s true. Do you know that John is the second most common name in this country? What were your parents thinking?”
“It was my father’s name” he’d stopped saying years ago. “And my grandfather’s.”
“Then there’s Williams. The third most common last name. You don’t even have a middle name, dull or otherwise, to spice it up.”
And his erection was gone. Just in time.
Blue sat upright then.
“Are we there?” he asked.
“Here,” John said. “We’re here.”
IT DIDN’T look like so much from the outside, Blue thought. But gosh, Temujin’s Mongolian Grill was cool inside.
It was kinda dark for one thing, and Blue found he liked eating in the dark. Not the pitch dark, of course. Then you couldn’t see. He’d paid the price for eating Chinese food by nothing but the light from a television once. He’d had some General Tso’s chicken, popped one of those little flaming hot peppers into his mouth without realizing it, and just about choked himself to death. It had taken damn near a ton of water before he was okay. Spicy food was not his forte, at least not the really spicy stuff. Of course, that hadn’t stopped him from eating by the light of a TV after that. When he had that rare chance. There was just something so… unappetizing about eating by the glare of fluorescent lights. The food got a funny color. Now sunlight was okay. Picnic tables and picnic food and all that? But of course, that was natural lighting and—
“Any preference where you want to sit?”
Blue snapped to and realized someone was talking to him. He saw that John and a waiter were both looking at him. They were asking him where he wanted to sit? He shrugged. Looked around. Saw a couple dozen tables situated around the room and booths against two walls. The backs of each booth were high, offering plenty of privacy from the adjacent ones. And for some reason he wanted privacy for the two of them. John seemed so… not stuffy. If John were stuffy, he wouldn’t have held Blue when he launched himself into John’s arms. Shy, then? Was that it? Something was going on with John. Privacy would be a good thing. “How about a booth?” Blue asked.
“Whatever you’re most comfortable with,” John said. He even waited for Blue to sit first.
Wow.
He stood right there waiting for Blue to sit down.
Wow again.
Blue sat.
John’s sweetness didn’t make everything all right, but all the attention and kindness this stranger was showing Blue did make things a little better.
He could believe that Chewie would get better.
He had to.
But simply telling himself that Chewie would be okay reminded him of why Chewie wasn’t okay in the first place.
Why, oh why, hadn’t he put Chewie on a leash? A piece of rope would have done. Anything. And dammit, the tears were coming back.
John reached across the table and placed his big hand next to Blue’s. It looked to be almost twice as big as Blue’s, a real man’s hand, and then he said, “Chewie is going to be all right, Blue.”
“Do you promise?” Blue asked, fighting the tears.
There was pain in the big man’s eyes. John swallowed and nodded, but then more pain darkened his gaze.
“May I get you two gentlemen something to drink?” said a new waitress, one who had quite abruptly appeared at their side. “We have the standards. Tea, soda—Coke products if that’s all right.”
Blue looked at her straightaway. “Do you mind if I have something with a little more… punch? I could sure use it.”
“Is your son old enough to drink?” the waitress asked, focusing on John. She was very thin, Asian—or at least part—and had a mop of black hair hiding one of her heavily mascara-lined eyes.
“He’s not—”
“I’m twenty-three,” Blue said, sensing that this whole father/son thing was bothering John. Bothering him a lot. “I just turned twenty-three two weeks ago.”