The Sweetest Days

The phone suddenly buzzes, startling me into almost dropping it. I save it at the last moment and look at the screen. Connor. I stare at his name, my mouth dry, my heart thumping, a thumb hovering over the small button with the green receiver on it. Finally I hit the red button instead, rejecting the call. A couple of seconds later, the phone buzzes again, indicating a voicemail message. I erase it without listening to it, then switch my phone off and leave it on the coffee table.

Funny how Connor called me not two hours after Evan spoke about him. I switch the BlackBerry back on and dial Evan.

"Did we leave something behind?" Evan asks.

"Connor just called me."

"Did he? Wow. What a coincidence. We were just talking about him."

"Drop the innocent act. What did you say to him?"

"He didn't tell you?"

"I didn't pick up. What did you say to him?"

"Well, actually he called me a couple of days ago, and asked me to intervene."

"Intervene. What does that mean? Intervene how?"

"Not intervene so much, as figure out if you'd be open to hearing from him."

"And so what did you tell him?"

"That it depended on what he wanted to say to you."

"You need to butt out, Evan. This is none of your business."

"Of course it's my business. You're my brother, Nate. I hate seeing you miserable."

I hang up on him and switch the phone off again. Rather than inflict myself on an unsuspecting and blameless friend, I decide to go for a long walk.

*******************

The rain catches me about half a mile from home, and I sprint the last few blocks and up the steps. The lock on the outer door of my building is tricky, and I have to jiggle the key for a while, before I can finally get it to turn. I'm going through the second door when I realize that there's someone right behind me and I spin around.

"Hi, Nate," Connor says quietly.

He's soaked, his blond hair stuck to his head and dripping onto his face and down his collar, and his lips have a bluish tinge to them.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Hi."

"How have you been?"

"Okay. Fine. You?"

"Yeah, fine. Thanks."

We stare at each other. Connor clears his throat.

"I left you a voicemail earlier."

"I didn't get it."

"I... I wanted to see you."

Mrs. Fabbri, my downstairs neighbor, bustles into the lobby from outside, shaking the water from her umbrella, and looks at us curiously. Generally she's always up for a little gossip, but she must see something in my face, because she just walks between us and up the stairs without saying a word.

"Would you like to come up?" I ask Connor and he nods.

I lead the way, listening to his footsteps behind me. At some level, I knew he was going to show up. If he has something to say, he generally says it, regardless of whether the other person wants to hear it or not. He's brave that way, braver than me. Or just more selfish and less considerate, I think, futilely trying to work myself up to anger.

Once in the apartment, I bring him a towel to dry off and go into the bedroom to change my own wet clothes. What I'd really like to do is to take a hot shower, but I settle for a vigorous rubdown, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of sweats to warm me up.

When I return to the living room he's still standing there, clutching the towel. His hair is all mussed up and I quash a sudden urge to walk over to him and comb the blond strands into place with my fingers.

"Aren't you going to sit down?"

"My clothes are wet. Maybe the kitchen?"

"Fine."

I sit down at the small kitchen table and lock my hands together on it. Connor sits across from me.

"I've been trying to figure out what to say to you."

The rain is rattling against the kitchen window, making me feel cold all over again. I wait in silence for Connor to continue, but he doesn't.

"Well?" I finally prompt.

"I still haven't figured it out," he says ruefully.

That makes me laugh, and for a split second we sit smiling at each other. It's so easy to want to forget everything that's wrong between us. I look down at my hands.

"This shouldn't be so difficult," he mutters. I hear him swallow. "Look, Nate, I... Will you look at me, please?"

I look at him.

"You know I've never been as close to anybody as you, right?"

He obviously expects me to confirm that, but I can't. I don't doubt he believes what he says, I just don't know what 'close' means to him.

"And I guess I got some things wrong. A lot of things. I got a lot of things wrong. For a long time."

So help me, if he apologizes for what we did that Sunday, I'm going to deck him.

"And now you want to make them right?"

"I don't know if I can. I don't even know where to start."

"You want us to be friends again?"

He doesn't even hesitate.

"Yes."

"Okay, we're friends. Done."

"You don't sound as if you mean that."

"Yeah, well."

"I'm not like you, Nate. I'm selfish and a coward, and I don't think I can be what you want me to be."

"I don't want you to be anything," I protest.

"Yeah, you do."

"No, I really don't."

He sighs.

"So what is it you want, then?"

After so many years, it comes down to this moment. I tell him what I want, and it'll be resolved, one way or another. Or I can simply pretend that I let a misunderstanding grow out of proportion, and at least I lock in that we remain friends, that we can eventually go back to the friendship we had in the summer and the years before that. Connor stays in my life.

"Tell me," he says, his hand covering both of mine as they rest on the table, still tightly clenched. "Tell me, Nate."

"I can't do this anymore, Connor. If you really know how I feel about you, like you said the last time, then you must know what I want."

"I want it, too," he whispers huskily, his gray eyes soft. "And it scares the shit out of me, because if I screw this up, I lose you forever." His eyes drop from mine. "And I've come to realize that I couldn't really handle that."

Why is it that the moment I'm handed what I want, instead of welcoming it whole-heartedly, I look at it with suspicion? But how can I help it? This is Connor, a man whose longest relationship was with me, and that lasted barely three months during which time the future was never discussed other than as it pertained to the Mets' chances at multiple pennants in our lifetime. And now he's concerned about losing me? Since when?

"You're fucking with me again."

"You know me better than that, Nate. Don't you?"

"Yeah. I know you too well. Which is why this... this..."

I have to stop talking. For a second I think I might actually hate him.

"Growing up, I saw my dad try one relationship after another. He'd be all down in the dumps, and then one day he'd come home and he'd be so excited, and I knew what would come next. The break-up, the depression, the heavy drinking for weeks on end. Then he'd pull himself together, just for the circle to start all over again. I met some of those women and they were great. If he was alone, it was all his fault. And I'm too like him."

"I didn't know your dad drinks," I say, surprised. "And you're nothing like him." As long as I knew him, his father was remote and blamed the world for his problems, and I doubt he's changed. Connor is warm and caring, and believes that he holds his fate in his hands.

"Well, I don't turn to the bottle when things don't go my way, like he does, but he and I really aren't that different. So I just told myself I don't need anybody, that it's better to be independent, to do my own thing. Except...in the past half year, since my birthday actually, I realized I've been fooling myself, and that I had to change things. Only I didn't go about it very well."

"I told you the big birthdays are best ignored."

"I was miserable. I was with the guys and we were bar-hopping, and I should have been having fun, but all I could think about was how I wished you were there, with me, or that we'd at least spoken. I didn't want to spend my next birthday without you. Hell, I didn't want to spend the next weekend without you." He smiles crookedly. "I wanted to yell at you for not calling me, and to have an inalienable right to do so."

"So why didn't you say anything back then?"

He grimaces.

"I was embarrassed. I mean, I'd been the one to set the limits on us. And what if you thought I was just pissed off or whatever about my birthday and you didn't believe me about the long term? I figured I'd have to work slowly, to prove some things to you first, before I said anything."

He had been different after his birthday. I mostly thought he was being weird, or that maybe he was just fed up with stuff, but looking at his behavior in the light of what he's just said, it all starts to make a crazy and wonderful kind of sense.

""And then Paul came along and I panicked."

"Paul? Why? We've both been with others; hell, you were with the Mighty Quinn that same night."

"Yeah, that. I sorta lied about that. I mean, I was with him, but there were five other guys as well and we just played poker all night. About Paul. Maybe if you'd both been naked, it would have been okay, just sex. But you were... well, he'd obviously spent the night on the couch, and you looked, I don't know, together. Like you were playing house, and you both liked it."

"Like we were playing house?" I choke out incredulously.

"Yes," he responds, his chin jutting obstinately, color blazing high on his cheekbones. "It looked serious and I realized I'd run out of time. And then we spent the whole day together, and I kept on thinking that I wanted that, you, us together, for the rest of our lives. After we... After, I knew I'd rushed things, when I shouldn't have. And everything I tried to say to you came out wrong, and you were just getting angrier and angrier." He pauses. "You looked at me like you hated me," he says finally, his voice tight.

I press the heels of my palms against my eyes and try to think. One of us needs to be logical about things, and it's clearly not going to be Connor. I want the possibility he's offering me, I want it more than anything. That doesn't mean things will work out – they're certainly not off to an auspicious start and after so many years of being friends, you'd think we'd understand each other better – and it will be hell afterwards. Then again, it's already hell now.

"Were you?" I hear him ask. "Were you serious? Are you seeing him?"

"No. I don't think we ever stood a chance, for too many reasons."

"Was I one of those reasons?"

I look up at the fearful hope in his voice.

"Yes. Yes, of course you are," I tell him and what he sees in my face makes him smile, the bright, sunny, unguarded smile that always makes me want to smile back, that makes me fall in love with him all over again, because for the first time tonight, I really see beyond it and I realize that he only ever smiles at me in quite this way.

*******************

Connor is fast asleep on his belly, arms and legs spread out so that he's hogging most of our bed. He's always taking up more than his fair space, be it his shoes in the entranceway, his untidy piles of books and DVDs on 'my' side of the couch, or his body in bed.

Sharing a home and a life with someone at this late stage hasn't been easy for either of us. We were used to being bachelors and doing what we wanted, when we wanted, without having to consult someone else. And it's taken us a while to figure out that dealing with each other as lovers, as a couple, isn't quite the same as being friends, that it's both easier, because we've made a fundamental decision to love each other and be together, and everything else simply flows from that, and more complicated, because love makes us feel both stronger and more vulnerable at the same time.

I strip, trying to make as little noise as possible, then sit on the side of the bed and lean over to kiss him.

"Hey, you," I murmur, and he smiles sleepily, his eyes still closed, and mumbles something back at me. He rolls over and curls himself around me, wrapping one arm around my waist and kissing my bare hip.

"How was dinner?" he asks.

"Boring."

"Hard to imagine," he smirks, and I smack him upside the head. "Ow!"

"Don't make fun of my colleagues, and I won't make fun of yours."

He kisses my hip again, and his fingers start exploring, dipping into my belly button, then moving south.

"What's more pathetic? That we're in the most boring professions ever, or that we actually enjoy them?"

I lean back into the cradle formed by his body to give his hand better access, and spread my legs.

"My job isn't boring," I assure him, and he laughs.

"You do sound a little breathless just thinking about it," he agrees.

"Damn right," I gasp, as his thumb traces light, barely-there circles around the head of my dick. I arch up a little, trying to push myself more firmly into his grip, but his fingers trail further down, briefly cupping my balls, then tickling behind them. "You fucking cocktease."

"Tsk. Language. Do you kiss your loved ones with that mouth?"

I squirm away from him and twist around so that I can force him flat onto his back, pinning his hands against the pillow over his head. He doesn't really resist me.

"As a matter of fact, I do."

But for a few moments, I don't. I simply look down at him, his tousled blond hair, his eyes still heavy with sleep, his curving mouth. Our fingers slowly lace together. Finally I dip my head to kiss him. He closes his eyes with a sigh and I brush my lips against his, soft touches, little nibbles and licks that slowly turn harder as he responds. Without losing contact with his mouth, I stretch out on top of him, and he lifts and spreads his legs and wraps them around my waist, hooking his ankles together behind me, so that he's pinning me in place as effectively as I am him. I still have more leverage though, and I butt my head gently against his, forcing him to turn so that I can nuzzle the curve of his shoulder. He starts to writhe underneath me, grinding his cock against mine.

"Love you," he whispers, and I lie more heavily against him, molding our bodies together, conscious of every place we're touching, of his fingers squeezing mine, his cheek, rough with stubble, scraping against my temple, his chest and belly muscles tensing and relaxing underneath me, his thighs embracing my hips. I relish in the warmth, in the full body contact, even in the occasional kick in the butt as he flexes his legs to arch up against me.

"Love you too, Connor. So much."

His semen spurts warm and slick between us, but he doesn't stop undulating and he feels so good, so very, very good, that I hold off for as long as I can, never wanting the moment to end.

It eventually will, of course, and later Connor will remind me to pick up the dry cleaning tomorrow, and then we'll talk about the baseball season that's about to start, and whether this year we'll finally make it into the final round, and then we'll fall asleep, countless moments ahead of us, some mundane, some sad, some happy, some, like this one, passionate, all of them shared.

And he kisses me and I start to come.