Friday

After my orgasm, he let me catch my breath for a few moments, holding me in his arms. I couldn't wait to feel him inside me, though. I hadn't realized how much I wanted to be close to him, until this moment. Somehow part of me had still assumed I was just doing what one does in those occasions; I had thought I was just having another of these meaningless encounters, this time with my neighbor, to satisfy the needs everyone has sometimes. But now I realized this was something I had been missing for a long time, without realizing it, and I was a bit afraid of that time, far away in the future, when this night would be over.

He interrupted my thoughts, as he shifted his body over mine and started kissing me again -- I could taste my own juices on his lips. He was still wearing his underwear, though through it I could feel his manhood pressing against my stomach. My hands searched for it, trying to free it, pushing down the underwear. He broke our kiss again, to sit up and take off that last bit of textile that separated us.

"Do you have..."

I didn't finish my sentence, but he nodded, and reached down to the floor, to his jeans, to fish a condom out of the pocket. I could barely wait for him to put it on.

When he was again lying on top of me, and with the help of his hand guided the tip of his manhood into my waiting sex, for some reason and only for the fraction of a second, the thought "If my friends could see me now" wandered through my head. Then, though, he slipped all the way inside me and pushed all thought out of my head, as he started moving in me a bit too careful at first, but then started picking up speed, making me moan loudly with each thrust...

***

Much later, as we were lying exhausted next to each other, my behind pressed against his stomach, his arms wrapped around me, I suddenly realized that I hadn't felt like this in years. A strange, tired yet wonderful feeling that was taking over all of my body. I couldn't think of any other name than happiness. I had always assumed I was happy -- happy with my life, happy with whom I was, happy with the feeling of knowing something all the others don't... Only now I realized I hadn't been happy in years. And now that I was, I must admit, it was a bit scary.

Maybe I wanted to get rid of that thought, maybe I wanted to bring some feeling of reality back into the situation, or maybe I just didn't want to fall asleep just yet -- otherwise, I don't know why I asked him this question.

"So... why are you always sitting alone in the pub on Friday nights?"

He didn't answer right away, and I assumed he wasn't awake, when he suddenly said, quietly, with a voice I couldn't quite interpret: "Don't know, really... Just an old habit, I guess..."

***

My friends Sean and Julia and Rubén and I sit together every Friday night in Sean and Julia's shabby little kitchen, to discuss how fucked up this world and the people inside it are. We love slandering everything and everyone we know, it is a kind of hobby, you could say.

Sometimes my boyfriend Alex joins us. Not every time, though. Sometimes he prefers going to the pub, or doing something different. My boyfriend Alex -- this phrase still almost sounds a bit strange, but I am getting used to it. Don't think he wouldn't still sometimes get on my nerves with his stupid constant smiling and his obsession with plants and with the way he looks with his silly favorite winter hat underneath the bike helmet. He does. But then again, who is perfect? And besides -- who wants someone perfect? I certainly don't. That'd be boring, I'd have nothing to talk about the days he doesn't join us.

It looks like Rubén has a new boyfriend too. It did surprise me a bit: I have known him for several years, and he mentioned his ex-boyfriend Robert many times, but I had never spent attention to it. I just wasn't listening very much when the others were talking. And maybe I was also a bit too convinced that he is giving Julia longing looks, and of the story I had made up around those supposed looks. He might bring him along to one of our Friday meetings soon, he said.

I am still looking forward to those Fridays, I like sitting in Julia and Sean's kitchen, and I like our late night conversations, even though I go home earlier than I used to, these days. And there are some Fridays that I don't go there at all, that instead I make some plans with Alex. For example, as soon as the weather gets better we are planning a weekend trip to the mountains. There are enough Fridays in the year. And, after all, it can be a good idea to break with old habits every now and then.