Dangerously Happy (14 page)

Every time I saw him, Dario was bea
ming like a proud new father getting ready to hand out cigars. That night I lingered to bask in the glow, but left while there were still a dozen people or so, so Dario wouldn’t wonder if I was planning on trying to overstay my welcome.

Monday, an hour into my rehearsal, Dario got up from the armchair where—his new habit—he’d been listening, watching instead of wor
king, and came over. When he patted the edge of the stage, I set my guitar aside and sat down. As soon as I met his gaze my belly went taut and my heart started thumping hard. Watching me closely, he laid his hands on my thighs again, moved forward until his hips were between my knees, and came closer, closer, until I felt his breath on my lips. And kissed. My chest aching because too much happiness had swelled up too quickly, I fought my unbearable urge to pull him against me, to delve deep into that kiss. I made myself wait for him.

He was patient. Cruelly patient. Slow. Gentle. The first long, delicious, excruciating moments he only brushed his lips lightly against mine. Then he drew back, just a millimeter or two, just enough so that our lips were no longer touching, lightly as two feathers, and waited. Was he testing me? To see if I’d retreat? To see if I’d impatiently push things too quickly? Panic-stricken, I stayed absolutely still, knowing I was trembling, almost sure he must be able to feel it. Then he kissed again, now a slow, deep, tender kiss that made me feel like I was heating and melting from the inside out.

He asked, “Do you want to go upstairs?”

I was almost too stunned to speak. “Are you sure?”

It was so joyfully familiar, so him, so us, the way he grinned and said, “I weren’t sure, I wouldn’t have asked.”

We went up to the warm nest where I’d been so shy and scared and happy, took off our clothes, and got in bed. I couldn’t believe he was kissing me, touching me, mouthing my ear, biting my neck with an eagerness that was an exquisite blend of tenderness and hunger, teasing my nipples with his fingers, with his tongue and teeth, mouthing my cock, denying me even a moment of real satisfying pleasure, teasing me, torturing me, until I was whimpering with every breath, writhing with every touch of his hands, every taunting touch of his mouth. Then he stilled.

“
Baby? Aren’t you going to touch me?”

I blushed. He smiled. “I guess I’m a little wound up. I don’t want to do anything to . . . make you nervous.”

“
Do I seem nervous?”

“
No.”

“
I needed time. You gave it to me. I’m in bed with you because I want you to touch me. I want you to kiss me. I want you to fuck me. Just stay away from the restraints. At least until I’ve given you a proper tutorial.”

We fucked like crazy all night. To this day, I think it was the happiest night of my life.

At work the next day, I was back to questioning what I was doing with my life, which for the first time in weeks felt like it was worth living, and more to the point, worth living as well as the need to pay my rent and grocery bill and health insurance would allow.
Now that the time I was spending playing my music and making love to Dario felt so intense, so lovely, I resented the hell of out the hours at a job that kept me from those pleasures and that meant nothing to me but a paycheck. But then again, maybe that was the price that had to be paid. Life couldn’t be all fucking and writing and playing and kissing. Nobody’s that lucky.

The next time we were alone—another game of feigned departures and coordinated text
messages after the Babel rehearsal—he kissed me deeply. Smiling, looking me over like a cake he was about to take a slic
e of, he said, “I love how you’re always warm and dewy after you play. You smell so good. Taste so good.” Then added, “I’m aching to take you to bed. But then we’ll fuck until we pass out, and in the morning you’ll have to race off to work. And we should really talk.”

I did not like the sound of that. I hated the sound of that. But I was trying hard not to fly off the handle over nothing now that I was on my second chance, so I tried to hide my anxiety and disappointment and said, “Alright, let’s talk.”

Dario wasn’t usually much of a drinker, but he grabbed two glasses and extracted a bottle of whiskey hidden in a high cupboard behind stacks of paper cups that came out on show nights. Then we curled up on one of the couches. We both took a drink, then he kissed me, a deep, whiskey-flavored kiss that lasted longer than I expected it to. He caressed my cheek, smiled.

“
Don’t look so nervous. I just thought we should check in with each other about a couple of things.”

“
Alright.” The pit of my gut still felt like a heavy, sharp-edged stone.

“
I want to talk about the night you got dosed. Not about what happened upstairs. About earlier,” he said, his serene gaze and voice doing very little to calm the anxiety the topic provoked in me. “I know that whatever got slipped into your drink played a big part in things that night. But I also know you were . . . pretty on edge all weekend. So I’m pretty sure there were other things going on that channeled your high in the direction it went that night. Or am I way off target?”

My throat felt tight, like it didn’t want to let any air out, but I forced out a limp little, “No.”

“
Baby,” he said in his most intimate, embracing voice, “this isn’t about me scolding you. I just want us to have an honest conversation about our expectations, so we can enjoy this weird world we seem to living in together twenty-four/seven. Doesn’t that make sense to you?”

I made myself take a deep breath. “Yeah. You’re right.” Then I took a big drink of whiskey.

“
Do you want to share anything with me? Or should I start playing twenty questions?”

I was so embarrassed by all my headcase bullshit for that weekend, I didn’t know how to begin to tell him what had made me act like such a dick that night. So I just sat there, not saying anything.

He laughed. “Alright. First question. You wanted to keep the thing between us a secret, like we discussed—am I right?”

“
Yes.”

“
That weekend, I was trying to act more or less the way I used to act around you. That was me trying to honor our agreement. But I’ve wondered since then if I did anything to hurt your feelings. Something that started upsetting you on Thursday night?”

“
I got jealous,” I confessed, kind of hating myself.

He laughed again. “Yes, that was obvious enough. I wasn’t going to use up one of my twenty questions on that.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek to take the sting out of his taunt. “We’ll address the jealousy issue in a minute. I mean, should I have spent more time with you? Should I be more attentive? Because you have to know that when I’m far away, when I’m indifferent in my tone, that’s me working incredibly hard not to put my arms around you and whisper nasty things in your ear.”

“
I know. I mean, I guess I knew it that weekend, in my brain. But emotionally, it felt bad anyway.”

“
Yeah. I hate it, too. But I think it’s up to you to decide if you want to risk a step onto the slippery slope of being closer when we’re around other people. But meanwhile, your brain needs to convince your heart that there’s no one at these parties that I would rather talk to, that I’d rather watch blush, that I’d rather take to bed than you.” He leaned in and gave me a slow, deep kiss that lasted and lasted, and I hoped the talk was over. But no. “Now. The jealousy thing.”

“
Uh huh.”

“
I’m going to ask you a couple blunt questions, okay?”

“
Okay.”

“
I’ll start with the obvious, already demonstrated, just to get you warmed up. Since I saw you trying to kill Joe Burke with your stare of hatred, I’ll use him as an example. If I had kissed Joe in front of you that night—a romantic, maybe we’re going to fuck later kiss—would that have upset you?”

No filter. I just said “Yes,” and let all the hurt and revulsion of that image fill my voice.

He smiled. “I’m liking the honesty. And, just for the record, I’d rather stick a needle in my eye than let Joe Burke put his tongue in my mouth.” I laughed. It was the saddest feeling laugh of my life. “My next question’s going to be a little rougher on you, but I really hope you’ll tell me the truth.”

“
I will.”

“
Did you kiss Melissa on the roof to hurt my feelings? To make me jealous?”

“
I don’t think so. I think I did it to make myself feel less bad, because it seemed like half the guys in the loft were trying to get in your pants. But I really don’t think I was trying to punish you or hurt you.” Then I asked the painful question. “Did it hurt your feelings?”

“
A little, but not because I was jealous. It only hurt, because I thought maybe you wanted to hurt me, if that makes sense.”

“
But you weren’t jealous?”

“
I don’t really get jealous. Which bothers some people. Does it bother you?”

“
No. Except that it makes things kind of uneven.”

“
Yes. It does.”

“
I want to confess something. Another reason I did that with Melissa.”

“
Alright.”

“
The last thing I remember before that, was me watching you with Alex. Then Tom and Jamie noticed me watching you. They said something about my boyfriend cheating on me.”

“
Oh.”

I couldn’t read what the feeling was behind that quiet, even little syllable. “I’m not proud of it. I know I need to figure it out. And I’m sure whatever that cocktail was I got served didn’t help. But I felt—”

“
Outed.”

I think I must have blushed when he said that. Even sitting there, desperately hoping that this conversation was going to end with Dario fucking me, and not dumping me, the implication that I was gay felt like an attack. But he was right. “Yeah. My cowardice must be getting pretty old.”

He laughed. “Right. Because most people come out a couple weeks after they realize they might be into people of the same sex.” Then his smile faded and he sighed. “Know when I knew? Not like you, one aberrant attraction to one person. I mean, can you guess when I knew that I would never want to be with a girl, and that I couldn’t wait to kiss and get off with a guy?”

“
Sixteen?”

“
Eleven.” A wistful smile. Like he was remembering one particular bittersweet crush. The first one. “Know when I came out?”

“
When?”

“
Seven years later. All those years while other kids my age were playing spin the bottle and seven minutes in heaven in the dark walk-in closets, bragging about getting to first base, second base, bragging or lying about losing their virginity, I made up pretend crushes on girls, sometimes causing tragedies of Shakespearean proportions until I learned to invent crushes on imaginary girls I’d met at a summer camp no one else had gone to, other schools.”

“
Yeah. But I’m not eleven years old.”

“
I’m not convinced it’s any easier at twenty-six. Sure, it’s a little easier now because there’s a huge community of queer people. But I know how hard it is to face the idea of telling your friend
s, your parents, all the people who have an image of you as a straight guy who’s probably going to put a ring on some girl’s finger someday and make a couple babies, that maybe instead you’re going to live with or marry a guy.” For once, he blushed. “Or even just fuck one now and then. So, yeah, of course I wish we lived in a world where no one would feel embarrassed for being gay or bi or queer in whatever way, or even having people think it regardless of whether it’s true. But that’s not the world we’re in. So I get it.”