Trading Partners

[This is a completed three-chapter story and will finish posting by the end of June.]

Avery moved faster than he normally would have from the jewelry store toward the men’s department of Dillards, in Richmond’s Regency Square mall. It had taken longer to buy the Gucci watch Dominick had been bugging him for months. Not just any watch would do for Dominick’s birthday either. It had to be a Gucci Timeless Stainless wristwatch. Of course, having scrutinized and categorized the well-dressed and very presentable Avery and seeing how expensive the watch was that he had asked about, the salesman had tried to sell him an even more expensive timepiece. That had eaten up more time than Avery had planned spending on this purchase.

Avery wondered if Dominick even knew how expensive such a watch was. They hadn’t mentioned price. What Dominick had mentioned was that he was restless in their relationship. In response, Avery was doing what he could to keep Dominick’s attention focused on how good life was with an indulgent corporate lawyer, and Dominick certainly seemed to know what sort of toys and clothes would maintain his attention.

That was what Avery was afraid of--that he’d left Dominick to his own devices too long in Dillards men’s wear department while he was doing a “surprise” buy of the watch.

Dominick was something of a last hurrah for Avery, who was turning fifty-five the week after Dominick turned twenty-two--not that Dominick would notice that Avery too was having a birthday.

Avery thus far had successfully negotiated a double life. For the decades of his thirties and forties, his days had been spent as a highly respected, and paid, corporate lawyer in Virginia’s capital. His evenings had been spent wining and dining and attending concerts, the theater, and gallery openings in and around the Fan District, where he lived in a large Queen Anne brick house with pillars and balconies on a quiet and fashionable tree-lined street. For those evenings he always had a stylish, model-thin lady on his arm--rarely the same one more than a couple of times. And in his late thirties he briefly was married to a politician’s daughter. But only briefly. Long enough, though, that no one at work and in his social circles questioned his sexuality.

He was a handsome man, with an athletic build, maintained by tennis, squash, golf, and regular visits to the gym--and he aged well; he perhaps was even more handsome as he turned gray and his build became more solid than trim.

It was only on long weekends, when he was younger and establishing himself on the desirable bachelor list in Richmond, that he traveled two hours toward the ocean, to Norfolk, to party in the gay district around Granby Street and make use of the studio condo he had in a high rise on the ocean in Virginia Beach. In stark contrast to his Richmond persona, in Virginia Beach, Avery had been a forceful, dominant lover, seeking out smaller, compliant men, who he fucked cruelly to exhaustion in one-night stands.

In his late forties he spent more time in Richmond and less time partying in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. He did less cruising the gay bars for one-night stands in his Virginia Beach apartment and moved to longer-term affairs with personal trainers and handymen working around his attention-demanding Fan District mansion.

By the time he hit fifty, Avery was ready to settle down to a more stable and committed relationship, and his interests returned to smaller, compliant men. The equally strong and hunky men he had gravitated to in his mid and late forties had worn thin with him--and, truth be known, had raised a scare in him. As he had grown older, such men had started to try to change him to the subservient role, to slip him into the position of being the one more grateful and yielding to a stronger, more virile man.

This slow change scared the stuffing out of Avery when he had stopped to analyze what was happening to the secret sexual side of him. He was managing to keep his confidence and commanding control of his Richmond corporate attorney life, but he realized, with alarm, that he was losing control of the secret gay-lifestyle side of him. The insecurities of growing older didn’t appear in his legal career, where age brought deeper experience and respect, if you kept winning cases and negotiations for clients, which he did, but they were becoming accentuated in loss of control to younger, more virile men in his gay sex life.

In defiance, fighting against the advance of age and weakening of his commanding position, Avery had gone back to concentrating on smaller, submissive men. Probably because of how a good life had refined him, now his tastes went to young, trim, and good-looking men, who had artistic talent and could carry a somewhat sophisticated dinner conversation. And tacitly acknowledging he was losing position and stamina in the one-night-stand cruising mode, he looked for longer-term relationships centered and maintained quietly and secretly in his home rather than in gay bars, where he’d once been quite the party boy.

Dominick was the latest in a succession of tries at a long-term relationship. They had met at a Careytown art gallery opening. Dominick was an art student at Virginia Commonwealth University, who had a couple of paintings in the exhibit and sale. Avery had been invited as a patron of the arts and, the gallery hoped, a buyer. Dominick had been there with a local flamboyant car dealership owner who Avery knew to be gay. So Avery had few questions what Dominick’s inclinations were as well.

That may have been the largest part of turning him to Dominick. The young man obviously was approachable and, judging from how close to being a slob the car dealership owner was, Dominick probably also was for sale.

Avery was between “arrangements” at the time and took a fancy to Dominick, who sensed the interest and didn’t discourage it. Avery purchased one of Dominick’s paintings, which he half-regretted had to be hung in the Fan District house as it came with Dominick, and invited Dominick to come help install it.

Enough passed between the two in the gallery that Dominick knew that it wasn’t his painting Avery wanted to buy.

It was a large canvas. Dominick had to stand on a stepladder to reach where he was nailing the hook, and Avery stood close behind him to steady the younger man on the ladder. Dominick hadn’t minded Avery standing close behind him with his hands on his waist--indeed, he’d been flirting with Avery from the time Avery showed interest in his paintings in the gallery. Dominick had leaned back into Avery’s beefy, heaving chest and reached down and helped Avery’s hands to come up under the hem of his shirt onto his own chest--and then down to his belt buckle and zipper. By the time Dominick came down off the ladder, they both had lost their trousers and Dominick came down, ass on hard cock, without a complaint in the world. They both reveled in the strength of Avery’s muscles as, faces turned to each other, they kissed, and Avery lifted and lowered Dominick’s small, trembling body on and off his cock in an ever-faster, deeper motion. Avery had the presence of mind to pull Dominick’s channel completely off the cock so that Avery could ejaculate up the small of the young’s man’s back, the best that Avery could manage under the exigencies of the circumstances.

They belatedly reverted to condoms--several of them--after they had struggled into Avery’s bedroom, and didn’t leave Avery’s house--or his bedroom or his bed--until late the next morning.

Avery had grown older and had changed his hunting mode, but little had changed in his fucking mode from his cruising days in Virginia Beach. He had an oversized cock, which he delighted in stuffing inside smaller men and pistoning hard, listening to the young men squeal and pant and groan. Though Dominick’s channel was well used and opened quickly to Avery’s onslaught, squeal and pant and groan Dominick certainly did, surprised at how dominant and insistent--and lasting and frequently ready--Avery was on the bed, on the floor, in the shower.

Dominick didn’t know how long he could accommodate the demands and vigor of the man, but he was shopping for a new sugar daddy when he met Avery, the car dealer he was rather loosely associating with now being a bit short of sugar in several departments. So it had required only a cursory look around Avery’s richly appointed house and a scan of the older man’s clothes closet for Dominick to see the benefits of striking up a partnership with this man.

On their first encounter Avery fucked a willing Dominick until midmorning, and Dominick only had to half entice an invitation to a more permanent arrangement out of the lawyer. Dominick waved good-bye to the car dealer the next day, packed his suitcases, and moved in with Avery. It was less than a half-hour’s walk from the Fan District mansion to Dominick’s classes at VCU, where, at Avery’s expense, Dominick entered graduate school the following semester.

The two had been together for over six months when the intensity of the sexual relationship began to wane. The painting of Dominick’s Avery had purchased hadn’t been hung in that entire time. Avery didn’t really think it went well with his décor, and Dominick wasn’t under any illusions that it was his ass, not the painting, that Avery had purchased. Avery hadn’t lost interest in the sex, but although Dominick continued to accommodate him, he slowly showed that he was more interested in a material life than a sexual one, and it was increasingly evident to Avery that he was buying this relationship. He wasn’t a fool; he had known that he’d be buying any such relationship. But he expected his partner to be a good enough actor not to rub it in his face. The least that Dominick could do, Avery thought, was to show passion during their couplings. But more often than not now Dominick was more passive than compliant, compliance including some facet of responding to the fuck. Passivity only required being there.

And Dominick was spending more and more time away from the house when he wasn’t in class. Avery couldn’t avoid the thought that Dominick was seeing other men.

The two had settled into somewhat of a rut, neither one of them wanting to be the one to broach the subject of their relationship and the extent to which either found it satisfying. Avery had prepaid tuition for two years, and now Dominick was showing signs of restlessness.

Normally Avery would see the writing on the wall and start looking around, but he wasn’t getting any younger. He was growing tired of the changing partners routine and had hoped that Dominick would be the one he could grow old with. Unfortunately, Dominick was still young and was exceedingly hard to pin down. He knew about the apartment in Virginia Beach and the gay district in Norfolk and, increasingly, he was bugging Avery to take him partying there.

He also was young enough to be impressed with gifts and to show his interest blatantly, which had led to the shopping spree at the Regency Square Mall for his birthday.

Avery approached the men’s wear department at Dillards in time to see Dominick trying on a cashmere jacket and modeling it for another young man, maybe in his early thirties, tall and heavily muscled in contrast to Dominick’s lithe build and small stature, on the macho side where Dominick was slightly effeminate, and the taller young man had curly blond hair and blue-eyes in contrast to Dominick’s Mediterranean olive complexion and dark hair and eyes, a look that had always aroused Avery. The young man Dominick was talking with looked more like a high school football coach or car mechanic than a Dillards sales clerk.

“There you are, Avery,” Dominick said brightly as Avery walked up. “Isn’t this coat lovely?”

“Yes, it’s very nice,” Avery answered. He might have added that it looked very expensive, but that would be a waste of breath. Everything that attracted Dominick was very expensive. And he was more concerned with the man Dominick had been talking with. There was an interest or even a shared intimacy between the two that Avery didn’t like to see.

“What do you think, Logan?” Dominick said, turning to the blond giant. “Doesn’t it look stunning on me?”

“Ratty jeans look stunning on you, Dominick,” the other young man said and then he laughed.

Dominick turned a questioning look toward Avery, who, immediately capitulating, as he knew he must, said, “If you like it, of course you must have it. We’ll have to find a sales clerk . . . unless, of course, this gentlemen is a clerk.”

The “gentlemen” looked a bit amused.

“Oh, you haven’t met,” Dominick said. “This is Logan, he’s with a fellow student of mine, Kelsey. Avery’s the man I live with, Logan.”

Avery wasn’t wild about the baldness of Dominick’s explanation, but he was somewhat relieved that Logan was hooked up with someone else. Only somewhat, because he very much didn’t like the familiarity being displayed between Dominick and this Logan guy.

He was justified in not being quick to be relieved, because on the way home from the mall, Dominick revealed what he was thinking of them sharing--a trading partners date or two--with Logan and Kelsey, and, although Avery didn’t like the suggestion one bit, he knew he was being backed into a corner if he wanted to keep Dominick with him and didn’t want Dominick pointing to age as the source of Avery’s reluctance.

“You remember Kelsey, don’t you?” Dominick said. “He’s a grad student studying painting too. We’ve been in some of the same exhibits. You’ve been to the openings.”

After some further explanation, Avery was able to surface a vague sense of this Kelsey. Dark complexioned like Dominick. Not noticeably gay like Dominick was. Certainly not flamboyant. Even smaller of stature than Dominick. Slim. Quiet. Now that he thought about it, he remembered the shy smile of the man. He hadn’t thought of him as being gay, though. Maybe that’s why the young man hadn’t made more of an impression on him. Avery hadn’t considered him approachable. It was a surprise and shock to think of him with this Nordic blond, Logan. More of an image of him came to Avery’s mind, however, as his imagination viewed the small, dark Mediterranean-type man in a coupling embrace with the hulking blond. He forced his imagination to stop spinning before seeing himself in Logan’s role with the young man. He didn’t want to give in to the proposition that easily.

* * * *

“I don’t particularly like the idea.”

That was an understatement. Avery hated the idea. It scared him. It hadn’t helped that Dominick had seemed almost a disinterested lump while Avery was fucking him just before Dominick had whispered for the second time what he wanted them to do.

Avery had been more forceful, more cruel, than he had intended with the sex. Dominick had been a snotty little shit since Avery had come home from a particularly difficult day at work. One of the few chores Dominick had was to get dinner started. His classes ended two hours before Avery was due home. But Avery was an hour late this evening, and nothing was even defrosting.

“I thought we’d go out,” Dominick answered when asked about dinner. “I’m in the mood for Azzurro.”

Naturally. An expensive Italian restaurant, Avery thought, bitterly. He’d been on edge about this since he’d given Dominick that Gucci watch on top of buying him the cashmere coat--and Dominick had completely overlooked Avery’s birthday. The thanks for the birthday presents had been, to put it generously, lukewarm. This was getting old.

“I’ve had a rough day.”

“Nothing’s thawed and I’m not really in the mood to cook. But I am in the mood for Italian,” Dominick said. The way he stood there, just in cotton shorts, hip cocked and hand on hip, at the edge of the breakfast bar with Avery barely inside the house, briefcase still in hand, irritated Avery. It also aroused him, though.

I came home in the mood for Italian too, Avery thought. A young, Mediterranean man with his back on the bed and his legs open to me. “And you’re interested in expensive Italian. You want me to take you to Azzurro and foot the bill,” he shot back at Dominick. “And what do I get out of it if I’m not in the mood for expensive Italian food? What do I get out of what you want to have?”

“I don’t understand,” Dominick said. But he obviously quickly did understand, as Avery had tossed off his suit coat and was unbuttoning his shirt and unbuckling the belt of his trousers.

The look on Avery’s face caused Dominick to step back a couple of paces and then turn and head for the stairs to the second floor. Avery caught him at one of the guest bedroom doors. He picked him up, and propelled them both to the bed. Dumping the smaller man unceremoniously on the bed, he pushed Dominick down on his back, grabbed, spread-eagled the young man’s legs, and stripped his shorts off. In short order, he was fucking Dominick hard and fast, lifting Dominick’s buttocks off the surface of the bed, squeezing and spreading those pert little butt cheeks, and thrusting his cock deep. Dominick cried out and twisted and moaned through the first couple of thrusts. But then he sighed and settled down, wrapping his legs around the small of Avery’s back in acceptance and disinterested resignation. As Avery thrust and thrust and thrust, in hard, punishing jabs.

Hard and fast was usual for their first coupling, but not nearly as cruel and anger-centered as this. Dominick just lay there under Avery, quietly grunting and moaning, but not showing any passion, until he could hold out no longer and began bucking against Avery’s pelvis as hard as Avery was pumping him and crying out at the taking. This obvious effort to deny the pleasure made Avery more angry, which was translated to the way in which he was taking Dominick.

“Sorry,” he whispered in the younger man’s ear when he was done, realizing that it was a fuck he’d taken from Dominick rather than shared with him. “We’ll shower and then I’ll take you to Azzurro,” he said, his attempt at atonement, speaking, he knew, the language of privilege that Dominick understood.

The peace offering was being accepted. Dominick moved up onto the bed and pulled Avery up to where their bodies were stretched against each other and Avery was embracing the younger man. That’s when Dominick had made the suggestion.

“You know Logan, the man we ran across in Dillards the other day?”

“Yes.”

“His partner, Kelsey, is very nice. I’m sure you’d like him.”

“In which way?”

“You know in what way. In the ways you have said you liked me.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“I mentioned it before, but I don’t think you were really listening to me. I feel we’re getting too, you know, same same, you and me.”

“I still don’t know what you’re getting at,” Avery said. He didn’t deny, though, that the two of them had gotten into a rut. He had wanted it to be a comfortable relationship. But he had to admit that it was more of a rut. And somewhere in the back of his mind, his mind dredging up the hulking blond named Logan, Avery suspected that Dominick wasn’t allowing himself to be in as much of a rut as Avery was.

“I like Logan. Not as much as I like you, of course. But I was wondering if a bit of variety would be good for us. I know you’d like Kelsey.”

“You’re suggesting a swap arrangement?” Avery asked, sitting up on the bed, away from Dominick’s body, not being able to keep the shock out of his voice.

“Yeah, like I said before, the day we bought the jacket. Maybe just once . . . or twice . . . just to see if it spices our life up. A shared date, you could say.”

That’s when Avery said, in an understatement, that he didn’t particularly like the idea. Dominick wasn’t good with understatement, however. He took that as a maybe. And to soften up the suggestion, before they showered to go to Azzurro, Dominick pushed Avery gently on his back and mounted the cock he had been stroking hard again while outlining his suggestion, and rode Avery to a more languid and gentle coming than the previous fucks. This was the way Avery liked it--something wilder to start and then something slower, with a long buildup.

And Dominick was giving Avery more attention now, showing a bit more passion, being more into the fuck. Was it because of what he had suggested? Avery thought. Could Dominick be right? Would a swap now and then invigorate their own coupling? Maybe if the mere thought of it could produce the affection and attention that Dominick was showing now . . .

* * * *

The four of them met at an art gallery on Cary street, in Carytown, Richmond’s high-scale Bohemian district, where both Dominick and Kelsey had paintings and where Kelsey worked part time. After seeing several paintings by the two young men, Avery thought Kelsey was the more talented artist of the two and that he had a better sense of color than Dominick did--certainly colors that would go better in Avery’s house than Dominick’s painting that still was on the floor of the library waiting to be hung on the already-placed hook.

He also found himself comparing Kelsey in visage and manner with Dominick and the aspects of Dominick that had slowly worked to irritate him. With the familiarity of living together. these were beginning to pop out. Of course Kelsey was completely new to Avery. A comparison with Dominick--a basic comparison being easily fallen into as both were handsome, young, Mediterranean-type artists--wasn’t fair, Avery knew. Still, when Avery saw Logan and Kelsey side by side, he couldn’t help but imaging them undressed and coupling, and he found that the contrasts in size and coloring aroused him. It wasn’t lost on Avery that he himself was very much of the Logan build and Nordic blond complexion.

Kelsey seemed shy and almost as reserved about this arrangement as Avery was. In contrast, Dominick and Logan acted like they were raring to go and weren’t nearly as interested in the paintings in the gallery as they were in looking at and touching each other. The plan was that they would go to a café down the block for coffee and pastries and chatting to break the ice. It would be nicer in the spring when they could sit out on the café’s sidewalk under the green umbrellas, but maybe in early February the café would have a fireplace going inside. Avery had never been inside that café.

Then maybe a movie--if they could agree on one to see--and dinner, followed by a stop at a gay bar to develop a mood, and then back to Avery’s house and separate bedrooms to, it was hoped, mutually enjoy the swap arrangement. Having now seen Kelsey, Avery was wavering on the plan, but he still wasn’t sold. Perhaps it was his age, he thought--as Dominick had hinted each time Avery had balked at the idea. Or maybe it was the danger of going to a gay bar in Richmond after all of these years of having been able to keep his lives separate. When he was younger, he hadn’t thought twice about fucking one or two strangers a night. Maybe he was just getting old and domesticated. He pushed that terrifying thought to the back of his brain.

That was the plan. Dominick had said that they could just break off at any time if it seemed not to be working, and Avery had clutched at that possibility, thinking it would be a probability. He’d voiced reservations about the arrangement for days, which had been met with comments on his age and lack of adventure--which had been enough to propel him to the point of being at the gallery at the start of the planned day and night.

Kelsey had been a pleasant surprise. He was small and olive-skinned, as Avery had eventually remembered him. A Mediterranean type. He had an inviting, shy smile, and Avery was pleased that he seemed as reticent about this arrangement as Avery was. Dominick had been that way at the beginning, if a bit more effeminate than Avery really liked, but he had lost his compliant nature as their relationship had matured and become matter of fact. Avery hadn’t thought about it until much later in the relationship, but, from the beginning, Dominick had honed in on the materialistic, commenting incessantly on how expensive everything Avery had looked. Well, it was expensive, and Avery had been flattered at the time. He just hadn’t realized until the bloom of their relationship had worn off how shallow the comments were. Here, in the gallery, Kelsey wasn’t being like that. He seemed more excited in discussing the artwork on the walls than the price of Avery’s silk tie.

Avery was aroused by smaller, cute men, who were boyish, shy, and compliant. Talking with Kelsey now, in the gallery, at the start of what was supposed to be steamy date . . . and if circumstances were different and Avery was actually on the prowl . . . like when he was younger and hungrier and more ready to party and take chances . . . but he wasn’t. Maybe Dominick was right. Maybe he was getting to be an old fuddy-duddy, ready to just stop this game--this life--altogether.

He had followed Kelsey around the walls of the gallery for quite some time He was working hard not to look too closely at Kelsey, not to allow himself to be taken up in the allure of the young man. Avery’s energy was going to striving to produce comments that wouldn’t seem too idiotic. Simultaneously, Kelsey seemed to be nervously straining just as hard to introduce the paintings that Dominick had said both artists had had to study in depth so that they could guide potential buyers around the collection--not just of their own paintings but those of the other artists as well.

He doesn’t like this any more than I do, Avery thought. And he’s lost in the art; he doesn’t seem at all attracted to me. This just isn’t going to work. He turned to spot out Dominick to tell him as much, but he didn’t see Dominick--or Logan, for that matter.

“Is there another room here?” he asked, realizing too late, with embarrassment, that Kelsey had been talking about one of the paintings and that he had interrupted the artist in midsentence. “The others aren’t . . .”

“No, just this gallery,” Kelsey said, putting his own head on a swivel to see where Dominick and Logan were. “There’s the kitchen and bathrooms and the manager’s room at the back, but--”

“Perhaps I should go find them,” Avery said. “I’m not really comfortable with this . . . I think that perhaps--”

“Yes, right. I understand,” Kelsey said. “I could--”

But Avery was already on the move, toward the back of the gallery. The kitchen area was deserted, although it looked more like a storage area for the canvases than a kitchen. The manager’s room, lights off, was similarly deserted and stuffed with stacks of paintings.

Not even any desk space for Dominick’s back to rest on, Avery found he was thinking, already steeling himself for what he was likely to find.

Dominick and Logan were in the bathroom. Both were naked from the waist down, with their shirts hanging open. Dominick’s butt was perched on the edge of the toilet tank, and Logan was standing in a crouch astride the bowl. Dominick’s hands were on Logan’s waist. One of his legs was hooked on Logan’s hip and the other one ran up Logan’s torso, with Dominick’s ankle on the big blond’s shoulder. Logan was pistoning Dominick’s ass with a pride-worthy cock. Pistoning him just like Avery liked to do, Dominick giving Logan deeper moans of passion than he’d given Avery for some time.

Dominick turned his face to Avery at the bathroom door, but his eyes were glazed over and his mouth was in a slack smile. Avery wasn’t sure that Dominick even focused on him.

They were fucking like a well-oiled machine. Realization flooded into Avery’s mind that the two probably had been fucking for weeks--maybe even before Avery caught them together in the Dillards men’s wear department.

Avery turned and walked through the gallery and out onto Cary street. He was already on the street, walking down it, toward a sidewalk café with green umbrellas at the end of the block, before he realized that Kelsey hadn’t been in the gallery as he passed through it. Avery felt a little tug of regret. Kelsey probably was even less into this swap idea than Avery was and hadn’t been encouraged by the look of Avery when they’d come face to face in the gallery. He had fled at the first opportunity. This really wasn’t something for Avery to be doing. This quite possibly was the signaling that he was past it--past being able to get what he wanted, what he needed, from this lifestyle.

Of course it wasn’t working out, this crazy little plan of Dominick’s--not that it wasn’t working out very nicely for Dominick--but it was rather a letdown that a young man like Kelsey was as out of tune with it as Avery was. Maybe Avery had to take a harder look at himself in the mirror. He’d never had trouble getting attention before. Maybe overnight--or while he wasn’t paying attention--he had just fallen out of the game altogether.

He negotiated his way between the tables and leaning chairs of the unoccupied tables under the green umbrellas, entered the café’s interior, and made a beeline for the fireplace that, indeed, was set with a fire. His eyes spotted a free table, and he blindly stumbled toward it and sat down. A waiter appeared almost instantaneously, and Avery ordered coffee and a pastry. The coffee was set down in front of him almost before he’d finished ordering. As the waiter was wafting off to get the pastry, Avery heard the soft voice from the adjacent table.

“I think they’re starting into the busy time around here. Do you really want to be alone, or should we share a table?”

Avery turned his head and saw Kelsey sitting at the next table over. He already had his coffee as well.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you there. Yes, by all means. Let’s combine. Do you want to . . . or should I . . .” Kelsey was already standing and moving over, though, so he got his answer.

They sat in silence for a few moments, each pretending to be occupied with getting his coffee sugared and creamed to his liking until the waiter had returned with pastries for both of them.

“I guess this was the planned second stop,” Avery said, somewhat nervously. “But already, it’s just us. And not exactly what--”

“They were in the bathroom, weren’t they?” Kelsey asked.

“Yes . . . yes, they were.”

“Skipping several stops on the planned itinerary in this fiasco.”

“Yes. Yes, indeed they were.”

“I’m sorry . . . I . . .” It wasn’t just one of them saying this. They both said a variation of it in unison. Then they both gave a nervous little laugh too.

“This wasn’t my idea,” Avery said.

“I got that part,” Kelsey said.

It sounded to Avery like the younger man was a bit wounded by that. “I didn’t mean,” he quickly said. “. . . I just--”

“I understand,” Kelsey said. He stood up from the table. He’d taken his coffee in three big gulps but hadn’t touched the pastry.

“I’m really sorry,” Avery said. “Please, you don’t have to go. I’m just . . . just such an old man. An old, conservative man.”

“Not old. Not too old at all,” Kelsey said. He leaned down and let his lips brush Avery’s, and then, before Avery could recover to think of something to say or do, the young man had turned and walked away.

“Shit,” Avery said under his breath. And he was so depressed that he ate both of the pastries, something he’d normally not do as closely as he watched his weight and conditioning.

Not that that matters much anymore, he thought.

* * * *

While managing to keep his two worlds separate and revealing no chink in his armor in his corporate lawyer life, Avery let depression pull him down in his private life over the next week, while Dominick remained his bubbly self. They didn’t have sex, at least Avery and Dominick didn’t have sex together. Avery more or less assumed that Dominick and Logan were fucking like bunnies. Dominick hadn’t come back that first night. He’d returned some time during the morning and slept in a guestroom.

At some point he’d asked how Avery and Kelsey had gotten on, but he’d paid no attention to the evasive nonanswer Avery gave him, and he left for a class soon thereafter.

Avery went out for a long walk. His steps carried him down into the Carytown neighborhood, and he walked down and up the blocks, gazing, without seeing, into the boutique windows. Without consciously doing so, his feet took him to the storefront windows of the gallery he’d been in the previous day. This time he did look inside. Kelsey was there, his back to the front window, working on taking a painting down off the wall.

As if the young man sensed he was being watched, he glanced around and their eyes met. Embarrassed, not knowing what he was doing there, Avery turned and walked briskly away. At the corner, where the café he’d visited the day before, he hesitated, but with a shudder and thinking himself a foolish man, growing older by the minute, he rounded the corner and, at the next street, turned for home.

He moped like this for the next three days, eating dinner alone after working himself so hard at work that he came home exhausted and then retreating to his own bedroom-sitting room suite and watching TV. He wasn’t sure what he had watched, and he would have registered surprise if it was pointed out that he had his ears cocked to listen to the front door opening and closing, checking on when--or if--Dominick returned for the night. Two of the nights he did--late--the third night Avery drifted off to sleep, in front of the low-hum of the TV, before he heard Dominick return. But the young man must have returned at some point, because he was perched at the kitchen island on a stool and drinking coffee and chewing on toast when Avery came out, dressed for work.

They exchanged mumbles that could be taken for a “good morning,” while studiously not looking at each other. The coffee pot was nearly empty. Avery had filled it and put it on a timer the previous night. He almost said something nasty, but then decided that he really preferred the excuse to stop at Starbucks on the way to work. He’d get something with a gazillion calories in it, but he saw no reason to care about that anymore.

“Tomorrow’s Thursday,” Dominick said, his voice chipper.

“Why, yes it is,” Avery responded.

“And Friday’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Is it?”

“They’ll be having something special on that night at Big Tim’s.” Big Tim’s was a gay bar, with a floorshow, on the southern outskirts of Norfolk, on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp. Avery had been a regular there at one time, dressing down and butching up to match the predominately Navy sailor clientele. His condo on the ocean was enough of a drive to the east in Virginia Beach for anonymity at Big Tim’s.

“Will they?”

“I’d like to go to Virginia Beach for the weekend and go over and take in the show at Big Tim’s,” Dominick said.

“That would be nice, but I have to work Friday,” Avery answered. “I’ll be bushed when I get home--too bushed for a drive to Virginia Beach and then to Norfolk to party that night. No rest for the wicked . . . or the old and employed.” If that was meant to get a rise out of Dominick--and Avery was too weary of the whole situation for it to have been calculated to get something going, Dominick didn’t bite.

“I just need the key to the condo,” Dominick said. “You wouldn’t need to go.”

“Logan has fucked you everywhere but my Virginia Beach condo and now he wants to have a go at you there?” Now Avery was aware that he was, in fact, trying to get something started. He’d dreamed much of the night of Logan fucking--not just fucking Dominick but fucking Kelsey as well. It had taken a while for him to realize that the image had switched from Dominick to Kelsey, but it had, and Avery was damned angry that Kelsey had drifted into his dreams. And he was equally angry--as much surprised as angry--to realize that he hadn’t cared half as much when the image was of Logan fucking Dominick then when he was a go at Kelsey. Avery had come out of the bedroom knowing that whatever he and Dominick had once had was over.

And worse than that--that whatever dreams Avery had of growing old with someone to hold and fuck in bed most likely were over too. If he’d just stop kidding himself about that.

But knowing it was over with Dominick--all but the moving out and moving on--helped him keep his cool when Dominick so coolly and insensitively asked for the condo key. Other than the nasty retort, of course, which he delivered in a tired voice rather than an angry one. Dominick ignored the thrust of the accusation.

“Logan’s not in Richmond,” Dominick answered, with a toss of his black curls. “He’s down in Florida, fishing with some buddies. I’m going to the beach with Lawrence. We can get a hotel, I guess, if you don’t want me using the condo.”

“You didn’t go fishing with Logan?” Avery didn’t want to even get started with who Lawrence was, although, he knew who Lawrence was. Lawrence was an attorney in a competing firm. Built like a tank, black, twenty years younger than Avery. Dominick had been introduced to him when they’d found themselves in adjoining boxes at the horse races at the nearby Colonial Downs. Avery had been nonplussed to brush against someone from his work world when Dominick was with him, and he hadn’t liked the looks that Dominick and Lawrence had given each other, but it was only now that he’d realized the significance of those looks. He hadn’t, in his wildest notions, pegged Lawrence as gay. That meant he hadn’t pegged Lawrence as competition either--until right now.

Dominick was a fast worker, Avery now realized. He already was setting up a new arrangement. Somewhat bitterly Avery wondered why Lawrence didn’t have a condo of his own in Virginia Beach. He was up and coming. He was what Avery had been twenty years ago. But black, and built like a tank. More muscular than Avery. Avery knew he was hung too, because they belonged to the same tennis and squash club and passed each other in showers from time to time. But Lawrence wasn’t hung like Avery was, despite the legends about black men. Avery wondered if Dominick knew that--and then gave a low laugh, because of course Dominick would already know how well hung Lawrence was.

“I don’t fish,” Dominick had answered. “I’ll hook up with Logan again when he gets back. But Lawrence said he’d like to party with me on Valentine’s Day.” Avery had almost missed the response as he’d been imagining Lawrence fucking Dominick, which was more than a bit of a turn on for him--in a detached sort of way now.

Oh, yes, you do fish, he thought--and you’re a master at it. But Dominick wasn’t finished talking--and doing so matter of factly--openly acknowledging what they both knew was happening and doing so without remorse. Avery had known that the flamboyant little artist was shallow, but he only now was appreciating how shallow. And how much of this was his, Avery’s, fault anyway, he wondered. Had they ever had any sort of agreement to commitment or monogamy? Dominick was being so off hand about going with other men that maybe any such understanding had been Avery’s only. And Avery had agreed to a swap, hadn’t he?

The fact remained that Dominick was cute and very, very fuckable--when he chose to be into the fuck. Avery found himself wondering if there was time before his first meeting of the day . . . whether Dominick was up for a farewell fuck this morning. Sure, he would be, at the right price.

“So, the keys to the Virginia Beach condo?” Dominick asked.

“It’ll cost you,” Avery answered, as he unknotted and removed his tie. If Dominick could be bald and matter of fact about this, so could he. “And Monday morning, you can just push the key through the mail slot--along with your keys to the house and to the Land Rover.”

As it turned out, there barely was time, and they had to do it right there on the floor beside the kitchen island, with Dominick rolled onto his shoulders, his butt and legs in the air and dressing gown flared out beside him, while Avery crouched between his thighs, holding them outstretched, and pile-driver fucked down into his channel. To Avery, at least, it was one of the most satisfying fucks he and Dominick had ever had. And he was cruel and demanding this time. And this time Dominick felt the power of him from the very beginning, crying out and moaning, panting, and groaning in the taking, babbling, despite whatever intentions he might have had, about how much bigger Avery’s cock was than anyone else’s and how much deeper he could reach.

As Avery took a quick shower, he almost was lifted out of his depression and his doubts. Almost. He barely made it to his first meeting of the day on time, and someone else had to go out to get his Starbucks coffee for him. Still, he took the day on a high, feeling that a burden had been lifted from his shoulders, which was only deflated--and then only a bit--when he came home to a cold and empty apartment.

The painting that never had been hung was gone--which was rather a relief. But Dominick’s closet was empty too, which Avery took more as symbolic of a downturn in his life. He went to bed alone. And he masturbated alone, thinking alternately of Logan and Lawrence fucking Dominick and Kelsey. Arousing enough for him to ejaculate but somehow not satisfying--because no matter how he tried to force the images, he never was able to picture himself as a participant in the fantasies. All trading partners, but no longer including him.