My First Love My Pet Hate

Freckledick Veins and his friend couldn't have been a day older than nineteen, whereas I could've fathered them had I been that kind of guy back in high school.

But this was the beginning of my slutty zaddy era. The chesterfield in my office hadn’t seen nothing yet. I sucked his tongue while his friend slit the seat of my Andrew Christians. Made me gasp, stretching my ass.

Earlier, they'd been bench-pressing, taking turns with that bench. Ogling me and my squats, they caught my eye.

But I acted disinterested. Forgot that when they squeezed each other’s bulges to make me envious.

In the end, I’d nodded toward the stairs that led up to my office.

The moment we got to the Chesterfield, I let them manhandle me out of my clothes. Ass in the air for the friend, and mouth wet for Freckledick, I gave them the moans they wanted to hear. Choked on Freckles's dick when he shoved it into my throat.

His cumming in there pumped his friend up. His making me lick the last of his cum drove his friend wild.

Mine shot onto the cushion. The point at which I finally noticed the guy standing in the doorway. Who, if the gleams in the boys' eyes were anything to go by, was the one who'd brought about their orgasms.

I blinked; this couldn’t be him.

Freckledick and his friend took their clothes and went down the hallway.

I could hurry back into mine, put an end to this man's gaze. What I didn’t want was him thinking he had that or any other effect on me. So I took my time. Proceeded to one of the windows that flanked my desk for the trough of cacti, which I wanted to take home with me. Before the lightning that loomed over the apartment building across the avenue became rain.

But when I turned to leave, I almost collided with him.

My startling put a twinkle in his eyes.

“It’s good to see you again, Wyatt,” he said.

“Seeing you again is the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” I answered.

“Even if I tell you that the old me is dead and gone, pfft?”

“Even if. I don’t understand why you dredged yourself up after all these years.”

“It's because,” he began, “I want to make things right between us.”

“Forget it.” I made to sidestep his lies.

His arm blocked me.

The softness of his gaze stayed me.

His lips too. Saying, “I treated you badly, my dear friend.”

“You can only imagine.”

He took the planter from my hands. Put it on the desk to take my hand in his hands.

“Let me make it right, Wyatt,” he said. “Go on a date with me.”

“Wait.” I needed to hear this right. “You, Corey, are asking me out?”

He bounced on the balls of his feet. “I won’t waste your time.”

“Because I won’t give you the chance to. Won't give your reality show my ratings, Mr Sommerfeld.”

“Have no fear. You're too good for”—eye roll—“that kind of world.”

I glanced at the doorway. No cameras.

Be that as it may, I left him for the other window. A clearer mind.

To his reflection, since he was again closing the gap between us, I said: “Thank you for this. However, I still cannot go on a date with you.”

Disappointment came onto his face. “Any chance you'll change your mind before I leave?”

I turned to face him. “No.”

“That's too bad. You were my only friend.”

“After Nell first-degree murdered you for saying this, yes.”

His eyes twinkled. “Didn't see you telling her this.”

“Now you do.”

“Now I do.” A double entendre I hadn't thought possible.

I chuckled.

His face assumed a nostalgic expression.

“You were my number-one friend, Wyatt,” he said. “Guys like you cannot be found around every corner.”

“But look how it ended.”

“I'm what most people call scum.”

I did not disagree.

“But it’s in the past,” I said. “Seeing your face on the cover of that gentleman's something something made me buy the print edition of it, which is something I've never done.”

“I hope you weren’t too disappointed.”

“You're flourishing, Corey.”

He mimed swelling up with pride.

I shook my head.

Suave as the world, he said, “So, date or no date?”

I answered him with a question of my own: “My bed or the restaurant's table? Tell me honestly.”

“I'll have both,” he said.

“Thank you for your honesty.”

But I also sighed. “This is not New York, Corey. Even though I've never been to New York. You cannot have both.”

“Even if I serenade you from the garden below your window, in the rain?”

“I'll sleep on it.”

“Don't take too long.”

“Alright.”

He grinned.

His phone dinged in his back pocket.

“It doesn't know I was already on my way,” he said. “To step aside and watch the seeds I planted shoot out of the ground as endless love.”

“Or it's reminding you that a man must water his seeds if he wants that shooting out of the ground thing to happen.”

“It knows best then.” Which reminded him to ask: “Will I find you here again tomorrow?”

“Do you want to find me here again tomorrow?”

“I left everything I know for it.”

“Then you'll come here, looking for me.”

“In the meantime…” He gave me a salute. Glided to the door. There, he pressed his lips against the air that I breathed.

Eyes on his back, I allowed myself a daydream. Saw the Ferris wheel and a starry sky. Him holding me closer and capturing my lips with a kiss.

In the garden of a cottage all flowers and shrubs, the realtor put our keys in Corey's hand.

But I had bought that house. Alone. 

I sighed.

Fast-forward to my living room and the couch on which I lay, I sighed again. There really was no winning with men. Rubik and his cube now.

Somewhere along the line my former sister-in-law cocked in. Setting the food container in her hand on the end table, she said: “At least you’re not bingeing on Pretty Little Liars again.”

I ignored her.

She settled into one of the armchairs. Where she said, “What are the bitches in our association hiding from me this time?”

“Nothing. Quiet week.”

What was there was what I just couldn't keep to myself.

I sat upright. “Guess who fucked his arch nemesis's nineteen-year-old, made the boy think it was all his idea?”

“You did, Wyatt.” She made a ho-hum face. “You’re always fucking your arch nemeses' little children and making them think it’s all their idea.”

“No two men are the same, though,” I argued. “Even when leaving me, going out through the same door.”

She too left. But for the kitchen. Saying, “Get a grip on yourself.”

When she came back, there were three beer bottles in her hand.

Because “You keep misplacing the speed opener”, she gave them to me so that I'd open them with my mouth.

I took a good swig of the beer when she took two of the bottles with her, going back to her seat. “Once upon a time I had you.”

“Now that bitch wants me buck naked and wet all the time.” She frowned.

“There was Seventeen too.”

“Now there’s friends her age, gossip, and the sex scandals of this town.”

“Woe is me, Zara.”

“Grow a pair, Wyatt.”

But she also said, “Not all is lost. Since love is that important to you. Summer has brought an unignorable number of men to our town.”

“Backpackers and hunters,” I smiled.

“Honeymooners with love-lives-here attitudes.” The scowl they put on her face.

But they widened my smile. “Sweet men are my weakness.”

“The god of gays knows you,” she answered. “He brought Corey back.”

“Corey's not sweet.”

“He's a changed man, so Nell thinks.”

“Oh please. He only came out of the closet. And not very long ago, mind her.”

“Then feel free to wallow in the loneliness of these.” The walls she showed me.

An idea came to me.

“Seven, Zara,” I said. “Seven nights and six days!”

“Of what, where—who?” Not knowing things annoyed her.

I asked: “Have you told him where I live?”

“A bit.”

“Let it stay that way.”

Tomorrow morning I turned off the alarm when it woke me up. Pretended I was a bum till there were six Xs on the calendar.

The morning I finally returned to work, I learned that Corey was as avoidable as heartbreak.

“The other day I was this close to calling one of my cousins,” said the receptionist. “The one in Hamas. Mr Sommerfeld wanted to pitch a tent right in the parking lot and would not go, saying love favored the bold. If he comes back again, what must I tell him?”

“That I know the kind of man he is.”

In my office, I drafted a fatphobe. A beginner's four-week diet and workout plan.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Come in!”

Corey did.

“This is obsession now,” I said. “Very very healthy.”

He glided to one of the visitors' chairs at my desk.

Said, slumping in it and sitting low on his spine, “Your office is a resting place. I won't let anyone tell me different.”

“You always did as you pleased.”

“I haven't changed.”

“It’s not a compliment, Corey.”

He leaned toward my face, heart-eyed. “Go on a date with me.”

I searched his eyes for daggers in roses.

Sighed the father of all sighs when I found none.

“There are no cons here, just pros and dancers' bodies,” he said.

“I don’t care, Corey.”

He took the portrait on the desk. Wyatt, Haley, also known as Seventeen, and Ingo on Haley's sixth birthday.

“Wow, gasp,” Corey said. “He's gorgeous.”

“Yeah. But aren’t you supposed to be jealous?”

“He's not a threat to me, babe.”

I rolled my eyes. “I'll ask you again: what brings you back to Cedars, Corey? After all these years.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He put the portrait back where it'd been. Put his gaze on me.

I said, “It just doesn’t make sense to me that you suddenly remembered you have family after all these years.”

“What matters is that I’m back in their lives.”

“Aren't they lucky to have you in their lives.”

He took my hands in his. “I came back for you too.”

“Gee thanks, now I'll go around feeling special.”

He cupped his face with my hands. Gave me a puppy dog face.

But love was neither cute nor funny.

“Corey”—I took back my hands.

Opening a drawer, shuffling through the papers in it, looking for nothing, I explained: “I was in the middle of something.”

“Ah”—he seemed to see it. “It’s that man, isn’t it?”

“You've got no right to be jealous.”

He took a newspaper clipping out of his wallet, his pocket. Tattered paper he extended toward me. A picture of him when we were boys. A picture of him and everyone who loved him; some of us delirious on that stage because our boy had won and gold confetti was falling.

“Remember that accident, my first time auditioning?” he asked.

“How can I forget? You refused to dance again after that, saying dancing would only bring more bad luck into your life.”

“Because”—duh look—“I was heartbroken. You still don’t understand.”

“Because”—duh look—“everything you do, Corey Sommerfeld, you see it through.”

“Come off it, you know that's not true.”

I said, “You started dancing again only after I’d tricked you into it.”

“The why of my refusing to forget you even after all these years.”

“Yeah, yeah, bring out the tissues.”

He took my hands in his again. “I still want that date, Wharton.”

“Of course, you do.”

But I also said: “Okay. You’ll come by my house, yes?”

His eyes softened with what could only be his infatuation with me. “I'll kiss your ass when I get there.”

When I got there that evening, I regretted not having taken the rest of the day off. There was so much to do and even thinking about it made me more tired than I already was.

As the lamb chops marinated, I mopped the floors. While the lamb chops sizzled in the skillet, I made a paste out of aspirin and water, for the pimple I hadn't noticed until now. Washed the pigs that were my Rhodesian ridgebacks so that they could be as overfamiliar with a stranger as they wanted.

Then he knocked on my door.

“Coming!”

But I was ironing a button-down. Throwing it on. Asking myself if I should let loose only one button or if I should act like I owned the place.

I chose modesty, rolled up my sleeves.

Breathed in and out, before turning the doorknob.

“Look who looks terrific,” he beamed.

“Thanks, New York.” I ushered him to the rear porch. Where there was a breeze and, beyond the trees, the moonlit lake.

The ridgebacks were nowhere to be seen.

Chair pulled out for him, I set the chops on the table. They were even more mouth-watering now thanks to the oregano I'd chopped and sprinkled over them, and the avocado Greek salad.

He opened the bottle of red. “I feel like a soup-stained glutton.”

“The whole point. Minus the soup stains. God forbid that my soups should ever burn you.”

As he cut a piece of his meat, I asked him: “So you’re a celebrity dancer now?”

“A choreographer, mm-hmm.”

“Can you believe I”—blush blush—“have never ever even gotten lost and found myself anywhere that is not Cedars?”

“I can believe it. You were always a hillbilly even when not.”

I clapped his arm. “Tell me about all the cities you’ve been to, Corey. The people you’ve met.”

“Where do I start?” he smiled.

“Everywhere and everyone.”

“In Sydney, that's the largest city in Australia, a guy I liked accused me of stealing his stoma bag when...” Pause. “When his sister had borrowed it that very morning.”

I laughed.

He fixed the spotlights that were his eyes on me. “How have you been, my dear Wyatt?” 

“My life hasn't been as eventful as yours.”

“Nell tells me that you and that handsome dude got married at twenty-two.”

“Only to divorce at thirty-four.”

“Eventful after all.”

“Everything to me until he became a cruise-ship chef. What he'd always wanted to be.”

Corey asked: “What attracted you to him, besides his looks?”

“He was kind, he was honest. And he liked the color maroon.”

“Your favorite.”

“Mm-hmm.” Then, because he, Corey, looked at home eating my food: “He was the man I thought you could be.”

He grinned. “So you really had designs on my ass, Chip.”

“I would’ve married your ass, Bully.”

“But,” he said, “twenty-two-year-olds don't know things like wills and life insurance. That would’ve been a deal-breaker for me.”

“Wait until the libertine you've always been hears that we said hi, rumping and pumping under someone else’s quilt.”

His grin widened. “You're a bigger libertine than me.”

“Debatable.”

He said: “Nell says you have a daughter?”

“This time we were twenty-eight. When we adopted her.”

“She’s a lucky girl.”

“Calls me a Viking every time she thinks I’m being unfair.”

He twinkled.

“And that's not all. Guess who she's recruited into it: your daughter.”

He swallowed hard at daughter.

Oblivious to it, I said: “Last weekend we celebrated her eighteenth birthday, rented a yacht for it.”

“Sounds like you had fun.” A spiritless smile accompanied that.

I stopped beating around the bush. “You fucked even your little girl over, Corey.”

“I was a child myself.”

“Now?”

“She's a grown woman. Nell and Zara are better parents than me.”

“But don’t you think she deserves to have you too in her life?”

“I'd hate to upset the life they’ve been living.”

“I understand.” Though I'd not asked him to upset our friends’ lives.

He smiled, “Fast forward to the present, the two of us are eating and drinking and it’s nice. Isn’t it funny both of us thought Liv was ours?”

“It isn’t. The paternity test disappointed me.”

“What if the lab made a mistake?”

“Because ah yes, it's something they do all the time. So that the child goes to the man who takes responsibility for his actions, right?”

He sighed like a martyr would. “Let's move on from the past, please.”

“No, Corey. Not when it just occurred to me that Nell and I wouldn't have slept together had you not cheated on her with not only her mother but also her grandmother and me, all in one week and she thought that fucking me, your best friend, was the punishment you deserved.”

He looked abashed. “I knew I was evil. Just not this evil. Please forgive me?”

“Take the dishes to the kitchen,” I said. Although we hadn’t finished eating. “This is your punishment. I don’t know why I keep forgiving you, but I forgive you.”

“You want to marry me, that's why.”

“You sound very sure of that.”

“Because I am.” He glided to the kitchen.

On his return he took my hands in his.

His face at its solemnest, which meant not very solemn, he said: “Knowing you is loving you, you know?”

I allowed myself a smile. “Someone’s getting warm.”

“Someone’s prospective someone is a captivating man, that's why.”

I feigned sudden tiredness, yawning. “Haven’t slept well in a while.”

I got up.

He stayed in the chair. “Wyatt, you're trying to chase me away.”

“I need to process this.” I put my hands under his arms. Lifted him up to his full height.

“But I'm no longer anti-marriage.”

“Keep talking and”—my hands went to his waist this time, gave his legs a jump-start—“there'll be more to process.”

At the main door, he turned around. Took my hands in his. “Thank you for brightening my evening, beautiful Wharton.”

“Thank you, beautiful Sommerfeld.” 

Because he'd been a good boy, I asked: “Do you still want that kiss?”

“You bet.” He put his hands on my waist. Brought me closer to him.

“You smell like wine.” I cupped his face in my hand.

“A good thing, yes?”

“You bet.” I captured his lips with mine. Moaned into his mouth when he took over and both of us went for as much of each other as we could. Fondling this, kneading that.

Afraid that we'd be kicking our shoes next, and that he’d leave next, I pulled away. “See you.”

“See you.”

The next day, at the fitness center, he was the spring in my step. I wonder if he'll come see me today.

Mrs Gerber—a septuagenarian popular with everyone who frequented the center for not just her prowess on the tennis court but also the feminist/antifascist slogans on her t-shirts, like today’s Talking to You Reminds Me to Clean My Gun pulled me to the side—said: “This is new love, don’t you dare deny it.”

I didn't dare deny it. “You have a nose for these things, Eileen.”

But as the day wore on and there was no sign of Corey—him letting himself into my office, coffee in his hands; making me laugh with emojis; and me finding him in my chair when I came out of the bathroom—my cheerfulness turned into disillusion.

The day passed.

And another.

And another.

“Men are hellholes, Nell,” I said.

The two of us and my ridgebacks and her horse and her selfie drone were #HappyFeet #AfternoonStroll in the undeveloped land between our neighborhood and the downtown.

“The inconsistent ones are the worst,” she said.

“But if I don't see him again I’m gonna die. A child needs both fathers.”

“Want me to talk to him?”

I made a scale in the air.

“What's it gonna be?” Nell asked.

“I’ll ask Zara to help me with hiding his body.”

That night, in my bed, I was scrolling through Twitter when I came across a post by a late-night talk show, a show on which Corey had recently guested.

The caption on the video said: When the bee found itself trapped in Corey Sommerfield's pants during the filming of his reality show 👀😂😂

I hurled the phone onto the wall. “You bastard! So that's what you left me for.”

As if in response to my abuse, someone knocked on the main door.

I turned the bedside lamp on.

“Go away”—I cleared the lump in my throat, shouting.

They opened the door anyway.

“Shit.” I sprung out of bed and the room.

Over there, in my living room, there was Corey. Waiting for me to come out of a hallway he'd never been in. His being here took me aback. The moment his eyes met mine and softened with what definitely was his fondness for me, I gulped down my anger. 

“Wyatt, hi,” he said, proceeding toward me. Me in nothing but Andrew Christians.

I started toward the bedroom for something to throw over my Andrew Christians.

He caught my wrist. “You shouldn’t have left the door open if you'd run away from me.”

I replied: “I'm not running away from you. When my daughter is at Zara’s, I sometimes forget to lock the door.”

“So you think you got that dog in you, huh?” he murmured, eliminating the gap between us. To settle his hands on my waist.

“Corey, I thought you'd left.”

“Wyatt, I wanna be your guy.”

I wrapped my arms around him. “Thank you for coming back to me.”

He caressed my back. “The new Corey makes promises, but only to ... keep them.”

“If that's so,” I smiled, “I'll always remember that my guy is a heartthrob with midnight interviews to do. In big cities.”

“Meanwhile, but in the same master bedroom, I'll remember that my health club-owning husband has got some very conventional sexual tastes.”

I clapped his shoulder. “I was just bored, you dirty rube.”

“Now?”

I told him the truth: “I feel alive. Learning to let my guard down again.”

He put his forehead on mine. “This time I won’t disappoint you.”

“Even when I fall sick and expect you to take a break from all those stages?”

“Even when.”

I narrowed my eyes at his.

He chuckled at the expression. “I need to find a way to unboil this egg.”

“You can start now.”

He put his lips on mine.

He might hurt me, but at this moment I wanted to taste him too. And since he was still here with me, he deserved the warmth and softness and tenderness that was my mouth. The goosebumps that his and his hands put on my arms. My thighs.

Giving this kiss not just our hearts but also our souls, it segued into a choreography of heavy breaths and ragged breaths. Us fondling and groping each other on our way to the bedroom. Where I tore off his shirt and where he threw me onto the bed.

Now that we were here, he could free my cock, taking off my briefs.

But I did it for him.

Opened my legs for him. Wrapped them around his waist and moaned into his mouth when he slid his cock into my ass. Stretched it. The prelude to a skin-to-skin dance. The sweat that formed on us as we neared our orgasms: him shuddering and coming inside me, and me spewing it out and onto our chests.

We spooned.

I said to him, “Sorry for throwing away the note you left on the table.”

“It’s alright.”

“I don’t want you to think I didn’t enjoy our date, when it was the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

He kissed the back of my head. “I understand. Who's your guy again?”

“You're my guy, Corey.”

This time he nuzzled my head.

I closed my eyes.

The room was all sunlight when I opened them.

He was still asleep.

I took care not to wake him, getting out of bed.

I took the dressing robe from the men's valet. Wore it.

In the kitchen—making Caprese sandwiches with sliced avocado instead of cheese—I heard him come to me. Slippers on feet.

He hugged me from behind. “Good morning, my dear Wyatt.”

“Perfect morning, my dear Corey.”

“I wanna upgrade it. How can I upgrade it?”

“Boil water enough for two cups of tea.”

As he moved to do it, I saw that he was freeballing in Jockey pajama pants.

I said, “The pants are Ingo’s.”

“Huh?” His freakiness gleamed in his eyes.

“Keep them on,” I smiled. “I won’t tell him.”

The following days and weeks saw him visiting me at the center. Lunch in his hands. Things like Cubano sandwiches with rum onions. At the end of my days, he walked me home. Since Haley was a grown woman now, meaning no fear of her getting attached to Corey only to be disappointed, I let him show the world who was whose, kissing me at the gate.

One morning—my head on his chest, us in my bed—I asked: “So, we're really each other’s guy now?”

“Yeah. You’re important to me and I want it to stay this way.”

If only it were as simple as that. “This is not New York, Corey.”

“So?”

“When the novelty wears off, you'll leave me for dance and TV and—”my voice cracked—“I'm not too sure I'll be able to leave with you.”

He caressed my arm. “What if I leave New York for us?”

“I don't want to be selfish, Corey.”

“You can never be selfish.”

“But you’re only thirty-five.”

“Point?”

“I wonder what you'll do here, where each day is like the one before it, and we're pinching pennies.”

“Don’t be silly, Wyatt. Lately, I've been toying with the idea of opening a dance studio. Here.”

I sat up, against the pillow and the headboard. “Are you sure?”

He sat upright too. “As sure as we’re both here.”

“Really sure?” I read his eyes.

“Really sure”—his vigor put a grin on my face.

I said, “If you want, your studio can be at the fitness center. One of the things Nell does to stay trim is dance.”

“Then that studio is happening.” A small but fires bright smile accompanied that.

I cradled his jaw in my hand. Brought our foreheads together.

And our lips. A kiss that built up. Built up to me maneuvering myself onto his lap. Upping and downing on his hardy.

From then on he fucked me everyday everywhere: behind a tree in my back garden, where there was the risk of someone walking by. In front of the mirror in my closet, where we were surrounded by Ingo's scent.

When a splitting headache got me knocking off work one morning, it didn’t kill me. Corey would make it go away. Saying things like:

—My father is a doctor, so I'm a bit of a nurse. 

—There’s no need to play ill, my dear Wyatt. I like babying you.

About to open our cottage's door, I heard his brother's voice. The two of them were in the living room.

But his brother was saying, “You can't keep putting it off, Corey. Wyatt deserves to know that Liv is his child, not yours.”

The headache threatened to blind me now.

I swung the door open anyway.

Lunged at him. One moment he was sitting on the couch, the next the collar of his shirt was in my fists.

“You bastard,” I hissed.

But there was the headache. His sorry face.

I let go of him. “Why did you do it?”

He seemed not to know where to begin.

I showed him my fist.

“I loved you, Wyatt,” he said.

“It doesn't make any sense.”

“But I really loved you. When you and Nell had sex and the baby was yours, it killed me.”

“Now it is us that you've killed.” I pushed him.

He didn’t budge. “I won't stop fighting for our love, Wyatt.”

“Yeah, burn my house too, fighting for our love, Corey.” I turned my back to him. Proceeded toward our bedroom.

Before I even reached the hallway I conked.

When I opened my eyes, I was in bed. In hospital, and there was a bandage around my head.

In the visitors' chair at my side was Corey. Eyes red-rimmed, lashes wet.

He moved closer and grasped my hand. “Wyatt, I’m sorry.”

I sighed. Too tired to fight with him. “Must be nice, being you. Came back after all these years, saw that I was doing well for myself, destroyed that.”

“I feared losing you.”

“You lost me all the same.”

Tears welled in his eyes. “Please don’t say that.”

A lump lodged itself in my throat. To avoid crying myself, I closed my eyes. Changed the subject. “Why am I here, Corey?”

“Brain aneurysm. But they’ve clipped it.” As an afterthought he said, “I brought you here.”

I melted at the afterthought, despite everything. “Did you have to tell me that?”

A sheepish smile came to the corners of his mouth.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Did you cook it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then yeah.”

“Coming right back then!” He marched out of the room. Returned with a stackable lunch container and a glass of water. When he put them on the overbed table, he wheeled it toward my lap.

I sat up. “What’s in here?”

“This.” He opened the container. Made a salad: lettuce, red onion, shrimp, mango, and avocado.

“Colors are vibrant and no one is dying,” I smiled.

Modesty made him even handsomer as he dressed the salad. “Your daughter made the dressing. Cilantro and lime and ingredients she wouldn’t let me see.”

I dag in. “You guys are amazing.”

“We were worried sick about you.”

It prompted me to ask: “Have you told her?”

“Please don't tell her.”

“Betrayal is part of a child’s education.”

He looked hurt.

I sighed at my cruelty.

“How about we take a break, my darling?” I said. “If you want to try again after it and after you’ve told Nell and Liv and Zara what you told me, then...”

“I’ll make things right between us, I promise.”

I put my hand on the back of his head, kissed him on the forehead. “Whatever happens, I’ll never forget you.”

The morning the hospital discharged me, he was there. The car that took me back home was his Maserati.

But when we got home I went into the study, so that he'd take all the time he needed to pack his things.

“So this is goodbye,” I said to him. Him throwing his bag onto the backseat.

“No, my darling.” He took my hand. Wrapped both of his around it. “When I was away, I realized that I hurt you even when you didn’t think I was hurting you. So I’m just taking a break. When I come back I'll be the man you deserve.” 

I hugged him. “Take care of yourself.”

“Take care of you too.” He got inside his car.

But watching him drive away and disappear out of sight, it occurred to me that our neighborhood was the quietest.

It felt like this was goodbye. 

That evening, I took my daughter out to the movies. We had lemon cake in my Defender afterward.

Miming taking a backstabber out on the cake, I made my child laugh.

“Dad, you really are a Viking,” she said.

Thanks to who, Mr Sommerfeld. 

Thanks to him again, the pain of losing him again did not fade away. Watching my daughter kiss her boyfriend goodnight after a night out, I sighed. Watching Zara try to kiss Nell despite their helmets on the weekend we went sea-walking, it hit me: I might never see Corey again. On my way back home, after delivering a truck full of food to the communities in our state that needed it, I found myself going back in time. To ten-year-old us. Bored-shitless me peering through the curtains on hearing the movers that had pulled up next door. Him and his brother dancing around each other. Excited. 

Lost in him, I couldn't move away from the window fast enough when he turned and our eyes met.

But a beaming smile crept onto his lips. “Hey, howdy, bub.”

Standing at the window in my office, watching the rain clear night lovers off the sidewalks, I wept. There was no forgetting that smile. No forgetting him holding me down on the driveway too. His body something of a bag of sand on my back; because that's how everyone taught their friends self-defense.

“You're clever and handsome and I'm your friend—who here doesn’t like you?” he said. “But this is a rough town.”

I tried to wriggle free.

“Fight back,” he demanded.

“I can’t, Corey.”

“Fight back, you bastard!”

Neither of us saw the granny who'd come and, hands on the waistband of Corey’s shorts, tried pulling him away from me.

We burst out laughing when she left.

“Bully”—I clapped his ass.

“Little Chip”—he clapped my ass.

Facial hair years later, at a classmate's birthday party, he danced his way to the drinks station, where Nell and I were. Said to her: “Lend me him for a sec?”

Her “Okay, but try not to drink my only friend under tables” was his leading me out of the apartment. Onto the building's rooftop.

I hadn't noticed how drunk he was until he backed me into a corner. Whispered against my lips: “We both know you've always dreamed about this, Wyatt. We can end it here and now and no one will ever know about it.”

“The thing is—”

He crossed my lips with his finger. “You sure you don’t want this”—the hands in which he cupped my ass—“after all this waiting?”

I didn’t know what to say. Or do.

But when his mouth swooped on mine, I could not not let him drop my pants down to my ankles, turn my back to his front.

“You're a good guy,” he murmured. Making me groan with his attempt to push all of it in. “I'd never hurt you, Chip.”

Then he knocked on my door the following evening.

Since there was no one but the two of us when I let him in and closed the door behind him and his new scent, I beamed. “I've been dying to talk about what happened at the party, Corey. Will we talk about it?” 

He couldn’t believe me. “You actually want to read into what we did while drunk? I'm ending this friendship here.”

Cut back to the present, me and Nell sat at the dining table in her garden. For the antipasto stuffed chicken Zara brought to us. To eat before the clouds darkening the evening came down on us.

“Food's my go-to woman whenever I'm feeling blasphemous,” Zara told us, nestling next to Nell, who then said to me, “Zara is abusive, Wyatt. This is one of the many pieces of the evidence you asked for.” 

“We’re surrounded by abusers.”

“Yet here you still are,” said Zara.

Me and Nell mimed disbelief. “Now you want us gone too?”

She ate her food. “Having the house to myself for once in our how many years together would be nice.”

After a while, and the gusto with which we ate her food, she asked me: “So what will you do about your abuser, the one you gave up on my brother for?”

“What can I do?”

“Whatever happened to, what do you call it?” It made her tut. “Fighting for love.”

“Sometimes you just wanna love and be loved. Without fighting for anything.”

“‘Tears of joy’ can fuck off too. So much disrespect in making someone cry.”

Here, Nell said: “You forget that Corey left the things he loves for Wyatt.”

“I don’t wanna get hurt,” I answered.

“No one will get hurt.”

“I don’t know anymore.”

She put her hand on mine. “Trust me.”

The engagement and wedding rings on her finger unclenched my jaw. “Nell, is it even love if I won’t fight for him?”

She shook her head.

I got up from the chair, Saying, “See ya, girls”, and hurried down the street to my house. Got inside my Defender.

Despite the rain, which could fall anytime now, I put it on the road and sped toward the beacon of his light house; the part of the peninsula where pines gave way to a rocky shoreline.

Taking a bend, I almost collided into another car. A Bentley instead of his Maserati. But that, looking that washed-out in the light inside his car and the darkness around us, was him. 

I jumped out of the Defender. Ran into his arms and squeezed him. Caressed his back to quieten his sobbing. Saying, “There, there, Corey, your darling's here. You're a big guy and are the handsomest man the world has ever seen, come on now.”

It did nothing to him.

I wiped his tears away.

“I haven’t eaten or slept since the day I left,” he said.

“Yeah, you look good. Goont, gaunt—I mean.”

His smile appeared from behind the cloud. “What are you saying to me, Wyatt?”

I kissed his nose. “I love you despite everything.”

The rain fell on us in a shower.

“Oh my God, Wyatt,” he grinned. “Where I come from, rain is a sign of good luck if it falls softly upon a good man's fields. Brows in our case.”