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Ben Stirling

I packed Luca off around four this afternoon with a backpack, a big bag of treats, a bunch of flowers for his grandma, and a massive smile on his face. Amy, Rory, and Cam were all suitably impressed by the news of his wiggly tooth. He told them about it before Amy’s car had come to a full stop. Cam was quick to share tips on how to twist it to get it to fall out sooner, and Rory was so envious he couldn’t hide it. Luca was in seventh heaven.

I dropped the kids off at Ellen's and Jeff’s this afternoon. Amy is going to pick them up on Sunday morning.

I’ve been at a bit of a loose end since he left. I told Jeremiah to come over after eight. Not sure why. He’s home now, and so am I. There’s no real reason to wait, but here we are. The plan has been made, and it’s too late to change it.

I’ve been killing time by carting Luca’s toys out of the living room and into the playroom. It’s an endless procession. From a logistical point of view, I can’t help finding it kind of impressive that someone that small is able to move this much stuff in a day.

When I’m done tidying, I put out some snacks for tonight. Chips and queso go in the blue pottery bowl Liz bought at a farmers’ market years back, and a selection of cheese and crackers goes on a rustic wooden board I have no memory of either of us buying. I put out some roast nuts as well. Salted and plain. For good measure, I bake a batch of sausage rolls and cheese balls. I have plenty of time on my hands, so I whip up some guac and salsa and put that out too. Out of pure habit, I cut up some celery and apple slices and arrange them around a large dollop of peanut butter.

When the doorbell rings at last, I open the door to find Jeremiah on my doorstep wearing a big shithead grin and the Tampa Bay Blackeyes cap. It’s pulled down low, black with orange and yellow trim, and a flaming B embroidered on the middle of the front panel.

“Thought you said you wanted a Vipers cap,” I tease, reaching up and tapping the visor of his cap so it dips to cover his eyes. “Thought you said it would match with a bunch of your tops and wasn’t at all tacky.”

“I changed my mind”—he smirks from under the bill—“had to ’cause this one has a B on it.” He takes the cap off and holds it in both hands, turning it slowly and showing me the logo like I haven’t seen it a million times before. His grin changes. Shithead to something unnamed in two seconds flat. He’s still looking down, the apples of his cheeks bunched high from the way he’s smiling. “B for Ben Stirling,” he says with a throaty laugh.

I laugh too. The same way he does, but lower.

He turns the cap over in his hands, picking at a seam to remove a speck of lint before putting it back on his head. He hits me with a look that makes my breath catch in my throat and swipes at the cap hard enough to spin the bill to the back. A tuft of dark curls finds the gap, peeking out of the little window above the backstrap and spilling onto his forehead.

It gives me pause. He looks different like this. With the cap on backward, most of his hair is out of his face and his features are on display. More on display than they usually are. His cheekbones are pronounced. His jawline is sharp. His eyes are big and blindingly blue and the dip in his bottom lip is more obvious than usual.

I lean against the doorframe for balance and say, “Fuckboy,” very, very quietly.

The word lands and settles heavily in the space between us. Jeremiah reaches over it and hands me a bottle of red. For his part, he seems happy to pretend that it didn’t happen.

That he didn’t flirt with me.

And that I didn’t flirt back.

“Wow,” he says when we get to the kitchen.

It’s clear to me now that I’ve over-catered. The island is groaning with enough food to feed a hockey team. Not only that, almost everything I’ve laid out contains a copious amount of cheese.

I decide to sidestep the catering fiasco by uncorking the wine. As I pour a healthy glass for each of us, I wonder, not for the first time today, what the hell is going on with me.

I’m not myself.

Maybe I should start with beer and perhaps even stick with it all night. Wine has a way of going to my head.

I ignore my intuition and raise my glass to Jeremiah. He does the same. He looks at me over the rim, soft, fleshy lips distorted by the curve of the glass. His eyes dance a mischievous jig that makes him look pretty and impossibly boyish.

I take a large sip and swallow it quickly.

You know what, fuck it. I have the weekend off for the first time in a really long time. The entire weekend. I can let my hair down as much as I want tonight. I have the whole day tomorrow to recover.

Jeremiah and I each carry a couple of platters and bowls to the living room and sit on the good sofa. The Hot Sardines are playing their soulful, sultry brand of jazz. A distinctive sound that’s somehow youthful and nostalgic at the same time. A sound that’ll transport you to a dark, smoky bar in New York if you let it.

Part of me, the part that’s spent most of today trying not to think about purple sex toys, was worried it would be awkward when Jeremiah got here. It isn’t though. It’s the opposite of awkward. We fall into an easy conversation about everything and nothing. Jeremiah still has his cap on backward, and for some reason, that makes a lot of what he says very funny.

“So, are you going to reschedule with that guy? The random?” I ask, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with what we were just talking about, and I promised myself I wouldn’t bring it up again.

“Nah,” he says. “That ship has sailed. I’ll find another one when I can be assed. Like I said, one of the perks of being gay is that it’s easy to get laid.”

Prickly heat crawls in my chest and snakes downward. “And that’s what you want? To get laid left and right?”

“'Course it’s what I want. Who doesn’t want that? Don’t act so surprised, Ben—I told you I was a perv the day we met, didn’t I? The first day on the porch. I did. I remember because your face went like this…” He opens his eyes really wide and pinches his mouth into a small, tight dot.

See? He’s being so funny tonight.

“I did not pull that face…but yeah, you did say you were a perv.”

I raise my glass to my lips and take a sip, letting it pool in my mouth for a beat so I can appreciate it. It’s good. Balanced and complex with a light floral note.

Fortunately, it pairs well with melted cheese.

Jeremiah chuckles softly. “So, yeah, being an established perv, getting laid is what I want. Of course it’s what I want. I’m a horny little shit, and I like doing horny little shit things…” His voice drifts and fades as though he’s forgotten he’s talking. Or he’s forgotten who he’s talking to, “…right up to the point I get what I want.”

Even though the relief is the same as it was last night, weighted and profound, this time, it’s tinged with concern. His expression has changed. Humor has been wiped off and replaced with something else.

“Then it’s not what you want anymore?” I finish for him.

“Yeah.” He sighs, and when he speaks again, his voice is quieter. “Then it’s not what I want. When it’s done, and I’m home, I feel…I dunno…used, I guess. Then I feel sad. Then I feel bad. Then some time passes, and I feel horny again, so the whole cycle starts all over again. It’s a bit of a shit show, really. A catch twenty-two. Sex is right there, ready to be had, but it’s not what I want. At least, not the way I want it. I want something that’s… Something that isn’t impersonal or mean. Or meaningless. I want to wake up with the same person over and over and know that they don’t regret what they did with me when post-nut hits. Or hurt me. Or leave me. Or ghost me. Or cheat on me. Basically, I want to be with someone who makes me feel safe, not like a piece of shit.”

“I know what you mean about impersonal sex. I was a slut before I met Liz, but”—his eyes widen more than they did when he was doing his impression of me. His neck goes pink and a little blotchy. Must be the wine. Red wine makes a lot of people flush—“I don’t think I could go back to that kind of fucking. Once you’ve had sex that matters…”

There’s a painful stab in my side, between my ribs. A missing. A warning. A reminder that since I’ve opened the floodgates with Jeremiah once, they’re unlocked for good. They could open again at any time because he knows me now. Really knows me. I don’t mind that he knows me. I like it, but the Ben that cried in his arms isn’t the version of myself I want to be tonight. I want to be the old Ben. The one that was happy and fun. “It’s hard to go back.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “I’ve never had sex that mattered.”

“Surely you can have it if you want it?”

“Oh, you’d be very unpleasantly surprised by what dating while gay is like. The bar is so low it’s in hell. It’s a shit show out there. Getting laid is one thing, but trying to date is…fuck. It’s hard. It’s an awful, counterintuitive mess because the apps make it so easy to hook up, but they also make it so hard to find something that sticks. Something real. Something that lasts for more than one night.”

I top off his glass and mine and try to imagine a world where a guy like Jeremiah doesn’t have an army of men lining up, wanting to sweep him off his feet. I can’t see it.

Mind you, I’ve been out of the dating world for over a decade, so what do I know. Maybe things have changed.

“God,” I groan. “I’m no help. I know less than nothing about dating anymore. Did I tell you what happened the other day? With that woman in the park?”

He shakes his head firmly. “No, you didn’t.”

“Are you sure? I thought I did.”

“Yep, I’m positive. If you told me about an altercation you had with a woman, I would have remembered. Believe me.”

Wait. Is he flirting again?

He looks away and a gentle line forms on his cheek, near the corner of his mouth. When he looks back, his eyes flicker, heating and darting left then right as he takes the measure of me.

He is flirting. He definitely is. That look was flirty as hell.

Not that I’m complaining.

It’s confusing, but I like it. I liked it before I knew for sure that’s what he was doing, and I like it even more now that I know.

“Okay,” I say when I remember I have the floor. “So I took Luca to the park last week. I packed a picnic for us, and I was sitting under a tree near the swings, watching him, when this woman caught my eye. She was… How do I put it? Not being great to her kids. She was really short-tempered, and more than that, she was kind of…picking on them, finding fault with everything they were doing, you know?” Jeremiah nods. “It wasn’t good. I found myself thinking she must not be a very nice person, and I hardly ever think things like that, so I specifically remember thinking that. Anyway, a while later, she walked past me and said hi. I said hi back, and we started a conversation, and she was completely different from what I thought. She was attentive and interesting. Cracking little jokes and that kind of thing. I found myself confused, thinking I must have been wrong and she was nice after all. It was weird. Later, I was telling Amy how strange the whole thing was and how I couldn’t work out what this woman’s deal was, and Amy was gobsmacked. You should have seen her face. Pure disbelief. She was like, ‘For fuck’s sake, Ben. She was hitting on you.’”

“Holy shit.” Jeremiah laughs, his expression mirroring Amy’s almost exactly. “I can’t believe a woman hit on you in broad daylight, at the swings no less, and you didn’t even notice. Are you serious?” He looks incredulous and engaged. I have his full attention, and I like that too. “You really couldn’t tell she was flirting? God, you’re in even worse shape than I am. It’s sad, Ben. Super sad and embarrassing.”

“Hey.” I give him an indignant little nudge. My knee presses against his from the action. Ordinarily, I’d move it, but tonight, I don’t. Instead, I say, “I know when you’re flirting with me, don’t I?”

A pretty pale pink blooms on the apples of his cheeks. He reaches behind his head self-consciously and tugs at his cap, straightening it and pulling it down a little more.

“Yeah, but”—there’s a light pressure where our legs are touching. It’s warm. A gentle heat that teems and runs down to my toes. He parts his legs slightly. He must because the pressure on my knee intensifies. I watch him intently, waiting for him to back away first. He doesn’t move either. He gives me a smile that’s somehow both incredibly cocky and incredibly uncertain—“that’s only ’cause I’ve got mad skills.”

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh at what he said. I think maybe I should, but I don’t because the light in the room is low, and it’s done something to the mood.

I switched off the overhead lights before Jeremiah arrived because who the hell likes overhead lights anyway. They’re a bad mood waiting to happen. As a result, the only light in the living room comes from the table lamps on either side of the sofa. Their glow is soft and inviting, causing a subtle gold outline where it hits his features. It’s distracting. There are tiny, fine blond hairs on the sides of his face that I’ve never noticed until now. He must have shaved before he came over because there’s a straight horizontal line midway down his cheek where soft, downy hair has been shorn, even though, strictly speaking, he could have placed his razor a little lower to ensure he only removed coarse hair. His skin is smooth beneath the line. It looks soft. So soft and smooth that it’s taking everything I have not to reach out and swipe my thumb across it to test my theory.

“Mad skills, huh?” I say absently. “Bet they get you into a world of trouble.”

“Some.” He laughs, shrugging his shoulders but still not moving his knee. “Not a lot.”

“I find that very hard to believe.”

We keep drinking and talking, finishing the first bottle of wine and opening another. I’m having a good time. I’m completely comfortable. It’s not that I’m not. I’m always comfortable with Jeremiah, but something is different between us tonight. It doesn’t feel how it feels when we have our coffee on the porch. It doesn’t feel how it feels when Luca is with us. It doesn’t even feel how it feels when I’m upstairs in my room watching him.

There’s a dull hum in my bones. A tension. A pull.

An unmistakable pull of arousal.

It’s fucking with me.

It’s not that I mind exactly. It’s not even that I’m all that surprised, given that I can’t stop thinking about Jeremiah, watching him from my window, or concocting silly little things I want to say to amuse him the next time I see him.

It’s that he’s a man and my body is acting like it wants him.

I don’t feel like this about men. It’s not how I’m wired.

At least, I didn’t feel like this about men.

I’ve never felt like this before, and it’s not like I haven’t had ample opportunities and a ton of exposure to guys. I’m a hockey player, for Christ’s sake. I’ve been buck naked in crowded locker rooms for years, and I’ve taken showers with men more times than I can remember. I have a lot of male friends. We aren’t toxic. We hug. We talk. We get drunk together.

But not like this.

Never like this.

Jeremiah is talking about Marcus when I rejoin the conversation. At least, he’s complaining about him. “…really judgy lately. Like so judgy, and not even about things he used to be judgy about. He’s being judgy about new things. I don’t know what’s up with him. It’s been bugging me. You want to know something sad?” I nod, though I don’t particularly like the idea of sad things and Jeremiah in the same sentence. “Sometimes I think I’m more of a habit than a friend to him.”

“Why’d you think that?”

“I dunno, sometimes he treats me like he doesn’t really approve of me. Like I disappoint him.”

“How long have you been friends?”

“Mm…” He drops his chin into the palm of his hand. “Seven, maybe eight years. A long time.”

“Have you been friends-friends for all that time or friends who fuck?”

Jesus. What is it with me? It only took me five seconds to steer the conversation back to sex.

“Marcus?” His top lip curls up and tiny lines form on the bridge of his nose. “ My Marcus?”

“Yeah, why not? He’s a good-looking guy.” He is. I’ve seen him come and go on his way to Jeremiah’s. He’s very good-looking. Dark and brooding. Big. Up his own ass, but no one’s perfect, I guess.

“Well, actually, that’s a funny story. When we first met, we did go out once.”

My throat goes bone dry. “Did you fuck?”

“God, no! We kissed though.”

I hate this conversation. It was stupid of me to bring this up. It’s none of my business what Jeremiah has done with Marcus or anyone else.

“And it was awful.”

Scratch that. The conversation is fine. I don’t mind it at all.

“It was so bad. It wasn’t his fault or anything. He’s a perfectly fine kisser, and obviously”—he lowers his chin and looks up at me conspiratorially, placing his hand on his chest—“I’m an excellent kisser, but between the two of us, there was no chemistry. Like none. Zilch. Did you ever do that thing when you were a kid where you practiced kissing by kissing yourself in the mirror?”

“Huh?”

“No?” His brows shoot up, perfect twin arches that frame his face and make it look pretty. “Okay, just me then. Well, anyway, it was like that. Cold and lifeless. There was just…nothing. No spark whatsoever.”

“Damn, wasn’t that awkward?”

He grimaces and bobs his head. “It was at the time, but we got past it. We laugh about it now, and you know what? It’s a good thing it happened. I always say we’d never have been able to be such good friends if we hadn’t tried it and ruled it out early on.”

“Yeah, it’s good to try things like that and get them out of your system for good,” I say with a little more enthusiasm than the subject calls for.