Page 22 of Regret Me Not
“I’ll send the papers to Sasha’s. I… I need you to know, I never wished her ill either.”
No. She hadn’t. “I know.”
“Take care. I’ll…. Can you call me on New Year’s Eve? I… I’m going to miss you, okay?”
New Year’s had always been them, alone, in a cabin in Tahoe. It had been special. “Yeah,” he said on a sigh. “I’ll call you.”
The line went dead, and Pierce fumbled the phone into the charger.God.Hal was there. Their bodies were touching, and Hal had heard everyth—
“What’s this?” Pierce asked softly, because he had a sudden armload of Hal, weeping softly on his T-shirted chest. “Oh, baby…. Hal… what’s wrong?”
“You were really nice to her,” Hal sobbed. “So nice.” The rest of it was lost as Pierce wrapped his arms around Hal’s shaking body, but Pierce heard the word “unicorn” in there somewhere.
He reached to turn off the light, wincing a little because it had been an active day for him, and his body had stiffened up. In the darkness, Hal seemed bigger somehow, warmth and weight, collapsed against Pierce’s chest.
Pierce wrapped his arms around Hal’s shoulders and rocked him, keeping him safe from the storm outside and whatever raged within.
They fell asleep tangled, Pierce curled around Hal, Hal’s head pressed against his chest.
Pierce dreamed about a sunny day and Hal, dressed in a white linen shirt and dark cotton trousers, offering him a flower and a kiss, in an almost perfect world.
Stripping the Vinyl
PIERCE GOTup in the middle of the night to pee, like he usually did, untangling himself gently from Hal, who slept like the dead—or an exhausted child.
He crawled back into bed, and Hal burrowed up against him again, tangling their legs and scooting down so he could rest his cheek against Pierce’s chest. Pierce, drowsy and uninhibited, stroked his back gently.
A warm human being in his bed. The joy of that event staggered him.
What’re you doing, Pierce? You leave in two and a half weeks!
Leave? Not see this absurdly pretty kid day after day? Not have Hal urging him unmercifully in the pool and chattering about Looney Tunes andBob’s Burgersin the meantime?
Unconsciously, Pierce tightened his arms around Hal’s shoulders. He fell asleep dreaming of a giant hole in his house at home and how nobody seemed to notice that if you walked into the bedroom, you’d fall into an enormous black pit without boundaries or bottom.
When the dark was still fathomless, he woke up to feel somebody—Hal—moving his lips down his bare stomach.
Pierce grunted and pulled at his shirt—it seemed to have rucked up in the night—and Hal gently but firmly pushed the shirt back up. His lips kept traveling down, down, then up, spending a moment on Pierce’s nipples, until the haze of sleep and arousal made him groan.
Words… Pierce had to make words….
Words like… ah, God, hands everywhere… nipples… nibble just… oh, nip? Lick? Suck… no, no, different words.
No words?
Should there be “no” words here?
“Hal…,” he whispered, raising his hands to Hal’s thick hair to maybe pull him off… or knead his fingers in it, silky, and massage fingertips against Hal’s scalp.
Hal pulled up long enough to say “Shh….” and hold his fingertips against Pierce’s lips.
Okay. Hush. That was the only word.
Pierce closed his eyes against the darkness, seeing the pressure and pleasure of his body as bright white clouds against his eyelids.
A cloud at one nipple, under the play of Hal’s tongue, and then at the other. Hal skimmed his fingers through the decently thick patch of hair on Pierce’s chest, and Pierce breathed deeply and arched his hips, trying not to flail, trying to decide if he was dreaming.
The strobes of light danced behind his eyes. Bongo drumbeats of visual sensation, nipples, played to explosions of light, soft thrums of caress, down his ribs, across his soft stomach.