Platonic (7 page)

“I’m not.” Daniel softened, relaxed into the bed and closed his eyes as he took a breath.

Mark sighed. “You are.” He reached out a third time and watched Daniel lean into the touch of Mark’s fingertips to his neck, his eyes fluttering open to look at him and then closing again. “You need to go out there and be as fantastic as you can be. Like I know you want to be. You’ll get swept up in it once you’re there, and this is me saying don’t feel guilty about that.”

“But...”

“Daniel, you…”

Breathe
. “I’m giving you a free pass on all of it. You being happy is so much more important to me than us right now. If waiting is going to hurt too much, if it’s going to make you feel like you have for the last two weeks…”
Don’t wait. “
You don’t have to… you… Don’t wait. And trust that it’ll work out in the end. Trust that.
I
trust that.”

Daniel opened his eyes and stared, turning his head he pressed his lips to Mark’s palm and whispered, so unsure, “You are. You’re breaking up with me.”

“I’d never.”
I couldn’t.
“I’m saying, don’t stop yourself from experiencing everything that you deserve to experience because you’re missing me or feeling guilty. That’s what I’m saying. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t want you to hate me because leaving me was the one bad thing about going to New York.”

When Daniel didn’t recoil, Mark gave him a shaky smile and squeezed his eyes closed for a second. When he opened them Daniel was staring at him with those beautiful light brown eyes he knew so well. Then Daniel shifted forward and kissed Mark once softly on the cheek before turning his body and leaning heavily back, pulling Mark’s arms around his waist and interlacing their fingers over the bottom of his sternum where his skin was thinnest.

Thankfully, Daniel fell asleep quickly, probably due to a combination of having spent the better part of half an hour crying and Mark holding him so tight in the warmth of his arms.

Mark waited until Daniel’s breath was even and his body heavy and then he let his mind flood. Allowed the anxiety to overtake him and make his heart hammer and his throat constrict as he blinked back his own tears.

The feeling, he knew, would pass. It always had and it always would, and life would go on no matter how much it hurt.

***

When Mark woke up the next morning, the warmth of Daniel was missing, and he panicked, his mind still shrouded in sleep. He thought Daniel must have already slipped away from him, out of his arms and into the ether, irretrievable and lost. He started to move, to scramble his way fully awake and out of the bed.

Daniel shushed him from where he sat cross-legged in the armchair next to the bed, leaning forward and laying a hand against Mark’s arm. “Don’t move yet, please.”

Mark stopped, started to breathe again and recognized the nightmare for what it was as it dripped away and left him with reality.

Daniel was still in his underwear, his skin soft, pale and freckled where it shifted over his ribs as he breathed and pulled taut on his legs where they bent, the feather-light brown hair on his legs mussed from sleep. He had his sketchbook propped against one thigh and was rushing over it with a fine-tipped pen, drawing deep dark lines on the paper.

“You’re drawing me one last time?” Mark asked.

“To remember,” Daniel said, but didn’t smile. He chewed on his bottom lip as his eyes flicked between the page and Mark, who was deliberately settling back against the pillows.

“You’ll have lots of things to draw in New York.”

***

Patrick doesn’t interrupt. He waits until Mark’s story slows and they’ve both eaten breakfast and he’s cleaned up. Even then he waits for Mark to look up at him. “So it wasn’t even about you not asking for the stuff you wanted. You weren’t even capable of wanting it.”

Mark doesn’t respond; he doesn’t know how. He thinks this is the worst part of the breakup, worse than the actual moment he realized it had fallen apart, worse than actually being without Daniel. Not knowing how to make things right for himself—worse, not knowing how to make them right for Daniel—this is the bit that will always break his heart.

“You know what else I think is fucked up about all this?” The coffee has run out by this point and it’s mid-morning on a Saturday. They usually go to a farmer’s market, bump into some non-lawyer friends of Patrick’s for lunch later on. That sounds much more appealing to Mark right now because he’d hoped, just for a second, that speaking out loud would fix everything and now he’s realized how stupid he was. At least Patrick isn’t looking at him as though still caring this much is as pathetic as Mark suspects it is.

“Please tell me,” Mark says, trying for sarcasm but hearing bitterness and desperation. He wishes Patrick could fix it, could fix him, at least, stop him from caring so much about someone he hasn’t seen for years.

“Surely all of this should have put you off love, not turned you into a disgustingly hopeless romantic.”

Mark sighs. “You wanna go see a movie?”

“You haven’t finished telling me about Daniel.”

Mark shrugs and starts putting on his shoes. Patrick doesn’t argue, which is worrisome because that means he’s thinking about it; and
that
means that at some point Mark is going to have to keep telling the story.

***

It’s months later, in one of the bars near campus, that Patrick brings it up again. Students are everywhere, but it’s the end of the year; there’s no more work, only internships and trips home. “I can’t believe you’re going back to New York and you still haven’t told me the end of the Daniel story.” Patrick slaps his hand on Mark’s back and leans in close. The smell of raspberry vodka and his intense, earthy cologne hits Mark all at once.

Mark is going to intern in the New York D.A.’s office. If he enjoys it as much as Patrick keeps telling him he will, he’ll be angling for a job there.

“You’re the one who talked me into it,” he replies, meaning the intern-ship, and he smiles lopsidedly at Patrick because they both know how happy Mark is with the potential of the summer.

“Am not.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Got a job offer.”

“Oh my God!” The grin on Patrick’s face, wide and happy, says it all. “You finally picked something to do with your giant brain and your devilishly handsome face?”

“Fuck no,” Patrick says. Mark’s brow creases. “No way I’m moving to L.A. But now that I’ve very graciously rejected the
top
firm on the West Coast, I am confident I’ll be getting more amenable offers.”

“You’re crazy,” Mark laughs. “And kind of a genius.”

“Wanna go back to my place and fool around?”

Mark scoffs at Patrick’s boldness. The bar is full of law students, drinking and laughing away the year’s work, and even though Patrick’s voice is low the way he’s leaning in close is unmistakably sexual.

Mark scans the room again under the guise of keeping watch and sure enough, when his gaze reaches the barstools near the door, the man sitting there is looking right back at him. The man has coiffed dark hair, honey-tan skin and eyes whose color Mark can’t quite make out but imagines is a startling blue. The man sips his drink and raises an eyebrow at Mark; there is no mistaking the offer.

Patrick doesn’t miss it either and whistles low, under his breath. “Mark Savoy, are you blowing me off to hook up with someone else?”

Mark stops looking down the bar, but takes his time looking back at Patrick. “You’re the one who told me to ask for the things I wanted.”

“That I did. Can I come watch?”

Mark snorts and almost chokes as he downs the rest of his drink. “Maybe another night.”

“I really have turned you into a better man.”

Mark grabs his coat from the back of the chair, practically vibrating with excitement, the edge of fear, the knowledge that he could very well be skulking back to Patrick in thirty seconds only making everything better. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he says. And then he presses his lips to Patrick’s cheek—he’s not quite sure why, but he does.

Patrick ruffles his hair and smacks him on the ass.

At the other end of the bar the stranger’s brows knit, but when Mark approaches, the man smiles and slips out of his seat. They’re out the door less than a minute later.

***

The next morning Mark is sitting on Patrick’s couch, giggling his guts out as he recounts his adventure from the night before: The very, very good blowjob he’d received, the mediocre kissing, and the rather unexpected but not entirely unwelcome request to call his bedmate “Daddy.”

Patrick listens to all of it, only makes two jokes about “daddy issues” and keeps his coffee topped off. At the end of the tale he remarks, “Well, I just came home, jacked off in the shower and went to bed naked before one.”

Mark starts laughing again, and when he stops Patrick steeples his fingers, puts on his very best closing-argument lawyer face and repeats: “See: sex, friendship, nothing more complicated.”

CHAPTER 4

The very first question Patrick asks Mark when he gets back from New York is, “Did you go and see him?”

Mark knows exactly whom Patrick means; Patrick had sent a dozen texts over the last two months urging him to contact Daniel. It was ridiculous, and he’d said so the first two times Patrick messaged him.

He pulls a face on the doorstep of Patrick’s apartment and ignores the warmth that the thought sparks inside him. Of course he didn’t see Daniel, but being back in New York, finally doing a job he thought he might enjoy, had made him think of Daniel in a way that was pleasant and hopeful. Thinking about Daniel at all, after so stupidly long, was Patrick’s fault—at least a little bit—and Mark wasn’t sure what to do with it. But he doesn’t say any of that; he just says, “No.”

Patrick shakes his head and then pulls him in by the waist. They kiss, soft and practiced and then harder, exploring tongues and fought-for breath. At some point, Mark thinks to kick the door shut behind them and then he’s being pushed back onto the sofa.

“I thought we were going to catch up properly?” he laughs, but doesn’t stop wrestling Patrick’s pants undone. He managed two successful one-night stands while he was in New York, although he’d been run off his feet. They’d been fun and easy, exactly what he wanted, but Patrick knows how to make him come better than anyone.

“I’ve decided this is a better idea,” Patrick laughs back.

They fuck right there in the living room, ending up on the floor because there’s not enough room on the sofa. It’s hot and fast: bone-deep satisfaction interlaced with grins and teases and altercations with furniture. Mark pulls the blanket off the back of the couch afterward, and they lie on the cold hardwood floor and talk.

Mark tells Patrick all the things he loved about New York, all the things he loved about the work he did while he was there. And when Patrick asks him again about Daniel, Mark finally tells him the end of the story.

***

Daniel was coming home for the Thanksgiving of Mark’s senior year, and Mark wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He had gotten what he wanted: They hadn’t talked nearly as much as Daniel had planned and not nearly as much as Daniel had thought they should.

After Mark spent a few weeks of dodging calls and sending short emails telling Daniel to go out and enjoy, they’d settled all too easily into exactly what Mark had asked for.

And it had ached, of course, but it seemed to have worked, and almost everything Mark saw of Daniel on Facebook and in their few weekly emails seemed to indicate that he was happy and settling in. New York was big and exciting, and even though Mark still got texts from Daniel that were pining and sad and spoke of the moments when Mark was missed with every inch of Daniel’s being, they remained few and far between, and by the next day Daniel always seemed to be back to his New York-happy self.

Mark didn’t go to the airport to pick Daniel up. He didn’t offer, just sent Daniel an email saying his family was having an intensely scheduled and formal Thanksgiving, which was entirely believable. Daniel emailed back and said that his sister was going to pick him up, and that he couldn’t wait to see Mark, and when he would be free?

As it turned out, they didn’t see each other until the day before Thanksgiving.

Mark met Daniel at the coffee shop they used to frequent. When he arrived Daniel was already there, holding coffees for both of them as always. They almost had an argument when Mark tried to pay Daniel back for both drinks before Daniel relented, admitting New York had emptied his bank account and accepting Mark’s money with a smile.

They slid easily into conversation, clicking back into place as if they had never been apart, as if the fighting before Daniel left had never happened. There was no tension. Mark indulged himself by trapping Daniel into talking, talking,
talking
. About New York, all of it, just as he had when he first found out he was going.

Of course Mark still felt that pang of sadness, and a twist of jealousy when Daniel talked about people Mark didn’t know except from photos he’d seen on the Internet, when he talked about New York and classes and adventures; but the pain was nothing compared to the agony Mark felt when Daniel wasn’t talking at all.

If anything, it seemed distance had left no mark on them. Deciding not to cling hopelessly to each other when they couldn’t, Mark thought, had been the right decision. And Daniel seemed to have understood, seemed content to exchange stories and laughter and soft smiles and not dwell on the messy almost-destruction that occurred just before he left.

They ended up at Daniel’s house. It was after midday; a note on the kitchen counter from his mom read that they’d all gone across town to see a movie and do the grocery shopping. Daniel was welcome to join them if he liked. Mark too. It was clear from the note—written in Daniel’s mom’s tall, loopy writing—that they were being given the house for the afternoon.

And now the effects of distance showed. It was awkward. Meeting for coffee, they hadn’t so much as kissed each other on the cheek because it just hadn’t felt right; so much time had passed since they’d been any sort of intimate. Now they stood stealing glances at each other in the living room, and Daniel seemed to have run out of stories to tell. Mark was just about to say that he should get back home when Daniel spoke: “Come upstairs with me?”