Wishing on a Blue Star (54 page)

Connor’s hands were wet and soapy, and he didn’t argue, not once.  His jeans were unbuttoned in a quick second, and Jimmy helped him shuck them down to his ankles in a little less time.  Jimmy stood up then and moved his other hand to Connor’s ass.  His hand was slick with lube, and there was a plug caught between his fingers. 

Connor gasped at the coolness of the plug as it pushed between his cheeks, and Jimmy spoke in his ear again.  “Just hold this for a minute, princess, while I get things ready, ‘kay?”

And then he thrust it, quickly, right into Connor’s entrance, and it was so slick with lube—and Connor was so begging for it—that it went right in…

Connor was jerked out of the dream of the past by the present.  He remembered that day—oh, God, he remembered.  But the sensations, the feeling of being bent over the counter and just…just
fucked
until his body was weak and liquid, and come spattered on the cabinets in front of him, that was, well…

His eyes wandered to the colostomy bag that took over when all things south stopped functioning. 

“You know what I remember from that day?”  Jimmy asked, not seeing Connor’s embarrassed, angry glance at the ugly truth of what was left of his life now.

“Fucking me senseless?”  Connor joked weakly, and Jimmy rolled his eyes. 

“I remember knowing I wasn’t going to leave.  Ever.  There I was, all afraid of commitment, afraid of being locked in a little cubicle of hell for the duration, and I realized that, you know… you could come in and chew my face off, and
I
could change that.  You loved me enough to let me change that.”  Jimmy shrugged, and to Connor’s blurry vision, it looked like he had wings.  “Most powerful goddamned thing in my life.”

It was like magic.  Transformation—a grim, ugly fact of his life was washed away in the glow of what the moment had meant.  Connor blinked, as entranced by the changing color of his thoughts as a child would be at a light show.  Suddenly the sex didn’t matter—or it mattered, but it was irrelevant to why they’d had it, and what it had meant. 

The months before that moment, the tension-fraught ones, where Connor was afraid, afraid of making plans with his family, in case he woke up, expecting to take his nieces to the zoo, and found Jimmy gone.  Those were the months when he was afraid to breathe the air in the hollow of his lover’s neck, in case he could scent another man’s breath, and they melted away as though they had never been.  Connor felt a moment of regret, because with the lightness in his chest now, he thought maybe they should have been the first things to go—hell, before the bowel function, at the very least—but he was so grateful that they didn’t exist anymore, that he refused to complain. 

“I could always dream about that,” he murmured, not wanting to tell his lover that it wasn’t the sex that mattered.  When you weren’t inches away from death, the sex
should
matter, because, he was starting to think now, it’s one of the things that made life sweet.  It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault you couldn’t carry it with you, like candy in your pocket, now was it?

“You could always dream about that day at the beach instead,” Jimmy told him out of the blue.

Connor managed to squint at him, which cost him, because he knew he was fading out for the moment.  “You mean the day that it rained?”

Jimmy laughed, and for a man who always claimed to live in the “now” (and hence the little problem with fidelity at the beginning of the relationship), the noise was laden with nostalgia.  “Yeah—and we ran for the car, and we were all wet, but we didn’t want to leave the beach, and you ended up giving me the world’s most awkward hummer in the front seat of the car!”

Connor groaned—this time in memory, and not pain.  “Oh, Christ…and then the cop came knocking on the window—”

“And they were all steamed up, and then I rolled down the window—”

“And you were still fastening your pants, and I was wiping my mouth, and you said—”

They finished the story together, “Keep your shirt on, officer—all things considered, we should have just gone walking in the rain!”

They hadn’t, though.  The cop had left, and they’d turned on the engine to defog the windows and just sat there, talking, watching the great gray waves coast in and wreck against the sand in an explosion of froth.  It had been a few weeks after Jimmy made washing the dishes a pornographic sport, and they’d played a Dave Matthews album on the iPod while the fan was running, and held hands without thinking much about it. 

Connor’s laughter faded, and then his consciousness, and then he was back in that car with Jimmy again, just talking…

…and then Jimmy got out of the car, and started racing down the beach, hopping on one foot to pull off his tennis shoes.  The jeans went next, and then the hooded sweatshirt in hideous San Francisco Giants orange, and then the ring-collared T-shirt underneath, and then the boxers, and there he was, naked, and running full force into the surf, his hands fisted over his head, and he jumped up and down, shouting, exuberant, and triumphant. 

Connor was stuck in the car.  He kept trying to open it, but the latch slipped out of his hand, or the door fumbled closed, or his legs got caught on the steering wheel, and at one point, a gust of wind blew the door back into his thigh, which ached and ached, and he was stuck, pressing his hands against the condensation on the windows, watching his lover shriek naked in the rain…

He came to abruptly, surprised that the autumn blue that marked time through the bay window in their living room had turned to purple/black. 

“Shit,” he mumbled.  “How long was I out?” 

Jimmy was sitting on the couch, asleep, and he startled, jerking his head off of his fist and jumping to his feet abruptly. 

“Wha?”  Jimmy asked, all frowzy from sleep, and Connor managed a dusty chuckle. 

“How long was I out?”  The sky was dark.  Had he slept through the afternoon?

“Twelve hours,” Jimmy yawned.  “It’s ass-crack-of-the-a.m., my darling.  You want anything to eat?”  It was a courtesy, mostly.  Connor had been eating broth and mushed noodles for weeks.

“Mmm…water,” he begged, feeling piteous. 

Jimmy was there though, and Connor sipped from the big icy thermos gratefully. 

“Better, baby?”

Connor grunted—talking seemed to be hard, so hard, but he wanted to say something important.  What was it?  Oh, yeah.  “I dreamed of you,” he croaked.  “You were…naked, at the ocean.  You were free.  Free enough to dance in the rain.”

Jimmy shivered, and perched himself on the edge of the couch again, so he and Connor could talk closely.  “Sounds cold,” he murmured. 

“Yeah, but you were free,” Connor said insistently.  Jimmy had wanted to be free at the beginning, and Connor had given him that.  It had been painful, and there had been nights when he hadn’t come home, and Connor had howled bile into the pillow.  But that bitterness was truly gone.  Now all that remained was a desire to see Jimmy happy, shrieking glee into the stormy waters of a life without him.

Jimmy’s laugh was humorless.  “After five years with you, baby, what on earth makes you think I want to be free?”

“No?”  Connor asked, a little sadly.

“No.”  Jimmy kissed that limp, sickly hand.  “Like I said, Con, it sounds cold.”     

“Maybe warm rain, then,” Connor said, willing himself to adjust the dream, fix it, so it would be perfect.  If he only had a few dreams left with Jimmy, he wanted them to be right.  “Warm, like August, when the clouds are so heavy, and the sky is suffocating and hangs in the mouth like wet wool…” His lungs weren’t working well.  When did that become a perk?  He tried to take a breath and couldn’t, and Jimmy stood up with frightening alacrity. 

“Not yet,” Jimmy breathed.  “Dammit, not yet.  Connor, your mom’s coming, okay?”

“Why…” would his mother come?  He couldn’t remember inviting her, and the place looked like shit. 

Jimmy stood up and spoke quickly, rifling through the drugs on the stainless steel tray with shaking hands.  “Remember, baby?  It was part of that fucking will.  You said you wanted your mom to come.”

Well, yeah, but only at the end…oh fuck, wait.  “Not yet,” Connor told him through a clogged chest.

“Damned straight!”  Jimmy muttered.  “Here.  Here.  Holy shit, it’s here.”   Whatever he came up with, Connor was glad it made him glad.  His chest felt like a thousand pounds of wet laundry, and he thought, maybe, if he closed his eyes for a minute, just stopped trying so hard, the breath would come, the breath would come…but first, but first, he wanted to make that dream perfect for Jimmy.  Jimmy who had clipped his own wings to settle into Connor’s little nest, and shelter Connor in the soft down under his chirpy, sharp-beaked, tough-little-chickie exterior.  Jimmy, who didn’t want to fly anymore.   There was an incremental decrease in the pressure in his chest, and he took a breath and closed his eyes, and…

This time, it was Jimmy doing the dishes.  This time, it was Jimmy who was hurt, because Connor hadn’t believed him.  This time, Connor came up behind Jimmy, planting his square chin hard on Jimmy’s narrow shoulder.  Connor pulled Jimmy back against his swollen groin and swiveled his hips, and Jimmy’s hands on his were warm and soapy.  They danced there, without any music but the beating of their hearts, and Connor closed his eyes, feeling Jimmy in his arms, secure, not flying away, simply nestled there, making sated, grunting noises as their bodies locked together in rhythm. 

Something wet hit Connor’s face, and again, and again, and when he looked up, he and Jimmy were outside, their bodies still swaying and the heavens opening up above them into the heart of a bright gray sky.  The water droplets were warm and fat, and they started out plopping one at a time and ended up deluging, full and heavy, until Connor caught them on his face, on his neck, on his shaggy, sand-colored hair, plopping in such quantity that he was covered, surrounded by water, barely able to breathe in the rainstorm.  It filled his mouth and his nose and permeated his skin with heat, until he began to moan, uncomfortably, and Jimmy, who seemed oblivious to the danger of drowning in the rain simply danced on. 

Connor fought for breath and began squirming in the heat of what was running under his skin, and Jimmy danced on.  He began shedding his clothes, slowly, sinuously, stretching his shirt over the stringy muscles of his back and shoulders, grabbing his jeans at the knees and sliding them off his lean hips.  Connor actually found breathing superfluous for a moment—who needed breathing when your lover was naked, his nipples pebbled and purple in the air, his cock semi-erect, every stretch of his shoulders and swivel of his hips pure invitation to something only the living could do?

But that heat, that uncomfortable heat was still flooding him, and eventually it began to tingle under his skin, and he gasped, dragging in a furnace blast of air that seemed to freeze his lungs.  He gasped again, and again, and…

“Oh, thank God.”

Connor’s chest was on fire, and Jimmy was standing over his bed, weeping, hot tears falling onto Connor’s hand. 

“Wha’ happened?”

Jimmy wiped his eyes with his sleeve.  His face was all crumpled, and he looked like hell.   Pretty Jimmy, who had always been so vain, especially before that day doing dishes, and he was crying ugly, just for Connor. 

“You made me promise,” Jimmy mumbled.  “I know it hurt to come back, baby, but you made me promise you’d get a chance to say goodbye to your mom, so I had to give you the Lacex to ease up the pressure on your lungs.  Your mom’s on her way—but you can’t leave until she gets here.”

Connor didn’t want to leave, period, but then, he was pretty sure he’d made that position clear when he was diagnosed as terminal. 
What do you mean, “die”?  Jimmy needs me—I can’t just up and “die”!

“Mom…” Oh, no.  Connor was leaving his mother too.  “Jimmy, you gotta take care of my mom.” 

Connor’s mom, as they were eating lunch in the family kitchen when Connor was sixteen, had teared up just a little.

“I’m sorry I’m a disappointment to you,” Connor had mumbled, heartbroken.  It was a lie—all that literature that said coming out would make him feel better, and now his mother didn’t love him anymore. 

Celia had shaken her head and wiped her eyes, then covered his hand with hers.  “Not a disappointment, Connor,” she sniffled.  “Never a disappointment.  I…” she smiled then, brilliantly through her tears.  “You bastard—I have to rely on your sister to give me grandchildren now, and she’s only twelve!  I was really hoping for a few before I was fifty, you know?”

Connor got a little sniffly himself.  “Well, maybe she’ll make up for it in quantity.”

Connor’s mom’s smile had gone a little crooked.  “You really are a sweet boy to say it.  Now, do we need to have the talk about condoms this instant, or can it wait until we’re done with lunch?”

Connor had blanched.  “If I tell you I’ve already bought some, can it wait forever?”

She’d let him finish lunch first.

And Joyce had done her share since, having four beautiful daughters after she graduated from college.  Celia adored them all, but when the fourth (and last) one had been born, she’d looked at Connor bittersweetly over Miranda’s downy little head. 

“I was hoping for at least one boy,” she’d said, her expression much as it had been that day during lunch.  “But then, I should have known there’d only be one you.” 

And now his mother was coming to say goodbye, and he worried, worried, worried, because he was going, and Jimmy…

“You promise?” he asked insistently, coming out of the memory of his mother’s face.  “You promise you’ll look after her, Jimmy?”

Jimmy pulled in a long, clogged breath, and Connor saw him, hovering right over the bed like people in medical dramas.  His face was rumpled and baggy, like a pink frog’s, and his hair—always perfectly moussed and gelled and what-the-hell-ever was greasy and slicked back to his head in clumps. 

“Not to make you feel guilty or anything, Con,” Jimmy said deliberately, “but I think I’m gonna need her to look after me, you feel me?”