It soon became clear that thoughts of Kenny were going to eclipse any thoughts of getting work done. He got on his bike and rode over toward Dempster for 12:30 Mass at Saint Hyacinth’s. In the morning the mass was in Polish, and Brendan had discovered he didn’t really mind it, and could follow it. But the midday one was in English, in the chapel behind the school.
. Moses said to the people:
“Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees
which I am teaching you to observe,
that you may live, and may enter in and take possession
of the land
which the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you.
In your observance of the commandments of the LORD,
your God,
which I enjoin upon you,
you shall not add to what I command you nor subtract
from it.
Observe them carefully…
Brendan carried a white beaded rosary with him and it was not because he had a great devotion to Mary, but because it kept his mind from wandering. And wondering for that matter.
….or what great nation has statutes and decrees
that are as just as this whole law
which I am setting before you today?”
While the words of the Book of Deuteronomy went on from the lector’s mouth, Brendan’s mind went to Kenny’s hair, to the way he wore his jeans, to the shakiness in his voice, to wondering about his apartment. Did it have hardwood floors. Did the sun shine in bright squares across it? What was the view from his window?
“Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”
When Brendan returned home he was surprised to see Sheridan standing in the kitchen.
“What are you…?” he began.
Sheridan walked right up to him and pulled his face close, kissing him roughly.
“I’ve got a very long break,” Sheridan said,” kissing Brendan again.
“Do you want to have a very long afternoon?” Brendan began.
“No,” Sheridan told him. “I want it fast and dirty.”
“I haven’t showered or anything, and I just got back from church.”
“Then does that make you super clean or superdirty?” Sheridan wondered, pulling his tie off savagely and unbuttoning his shirt.
Sheridan was still in his tee shirt, his pants down, when he turned Brendan around kissing him down his back, and then thrusting his tongue inside of him. Brendan pressed his face into the wall, fighting a moment of self consciousness and pressing everything out of his mind except Sheridan inside of him, his tongue more intimate than even what came next.
“I have to fuck you,” Sheridan said, his voice rushed, trembling like they’d never done it before. He placed his hands on Brendan’s lips, his mouth on Brendan’s ear and Brendan’s hands opened when Sheridan entered him. More than the feeling of fucking, the knowledge of being entered, being the same thing, pleasured and pleasuring, undid Brendan. Sheridan’s hands went against his, his arms pressed against his, his body pressed into his. There were times when it was almost as if he could not only feel Sheridan, but become Sheridan, almost feel Sheridan’s pleasure in fucking him, when they weren’t two different people at all.
“Baby, I love you,” Sheridan whispered as he fucked him quicker and quicker.
“I’m going to come out of you.”
Brendan felt Sheridan’s penis shoved between this thighs and suddenly, Sheridan sighed and hardly moved as Brendan felt hot liquid pump between his thighs, making him harder than he’d been this whole hard morning since the letter from Kenny. Now, he slid to the floor and sat Sheridan down on him. He cried out as Sheridan fitted his cock inside of him, as he was taken into the heat of his husband. When he closed and opened his eyes there was Sheridan, head back, mouth open, smiling as he took his pleasure, and behind him the twinkling red and yellow and blue lights of the Christmas tree.
Sheridan rode him, and Brendan’s voice came out in little rasp until, soon after, crying out in staggered shouts, he came inside of his husband.
They were like that in the hallway for some time, Sheridan still straddling him, Sheridan pulling up his top and putting in on the floor until he was completely naked.
“What was that all about?” Brendan, his voice half gone, wondered, looking up at him.
“We left each other weird this morning,” Sheridan said, looking down at him. “I don’t know. I felt like we needed that.”
“Kenny McGrath wrote me.”
Sheridan, still straddling him, looked amused.
“What?”
“Kenny on the brain?” Sheridan kissed Brendan on his forehead. “Can’t say I blame you. I’m sure he’s still hot.”
“Sheridan.”
“Don’t Sheridan me,” Sheridan said. “Not when we’re in the hallway covered in jizz and half naked. Wanna talk about it?”
Brendan felt very close, very intimate with Sheridan, his warm legs wrapped about him, his sex pressed against Brendan’s stomach.
“I don’t know,” Brendan said.
“Bren,” Sheridan said, running his hands under Brendan’s shirt, “if we don’t talk, and if we don’t have trust, we don’t have anything.”
“One of us needs to get Rafe,” Brendan said, drowsily,
He lay on his side, sprawled across their bed, his eyes on Sheridan’s beautiful body, white in the afternoon sunlight, his perfect ass, his strong, slender back, his tea colored hair.
“We could both pick him up,” Sheridan said to the pillow. “Surprise him.”
“Have a boy’s night out.”
“Yes. Take him out for pizza.
“Say,” Sheridan rolled over and, propping his head on his chin, said, “Do you ever think about another kid? It’s odd for Rafe to be an only child.”
“He seems happy, though,” Bren said.
“We should think about it.”
“I’m getting old.”
“You’re not even forty.”
“So close,” Brendan said.
Sheridan drew Brendan’s face down into a kiss and Brendan, excited by the pleasure of Sheridan, straddled him and fell into the kiss. They linked limbs for some time, kissing intently, and then Brendan said, “we need to clean up and get the boy.”
“Right,” Sheridan said, weakly, as if he didn’t quite believe it. “Shower with me?”
“Yes.”
“And no funny business.”
“Well,” Bren said, rising from bed, “I can’t promise that.”
At the little pizzeria under the old Amtrak stop where they threw parchment paper on the table tops and Rafe, methodically turning his cup of crayons sideways, organized the colors and set to furious work drawing, they ate slice after slice of pepperoni pizza and Sheridan said, “Guys!”
But Rafe was lost in his drawing and so Sheridan said again. “Guys!”
This time the dark haired little boy looked up at him and said, “Yeah, Dad.”
“I just wanted to tell you that I am incredibly, incredibly happy right now.”
“Me too,” Brendan discovered.
Sheridan took his hand and kissed it quickly in the restaurant, and Brendan remembered a time when neither of them would have done that.
“Hold on,” Sheridan said. “I have to run to the little boy’s room.”
“Me too!” Rafe cried as if this were a trip to an amusement park, and Sheridan said, “Com’ on, little man.”
While the two of them wove their way through chairs and tables, Brendan pulled out his phone, and his finger hovered over the dark surface. There was no call from Kenny on the call log. His finger was still over the phone and, at last, he shook his head.
Brendan remembered when he and Sheridan had become a thing. It was Christmas day almost ten years ago. It was best to remember they had both come out of long relationships that had spun themselves to their final conclusion, and it was when Brendan had thought all was lost and all was over, getting drunk with Sheridan, they had fallen asleep, fully clothed and woke up together, looking at each other in a new way.
Tonight they did not sleep fully clothed at all, Brendan let Sheridan hold him, let the man who had once been the boy he had looked out for, hold him in his arms.
“We’re not the same, Bren,” Sheridan told him in the dark, “not after last Christmas. And we’re not like other couples. You think I don’t love other people in my past? I watched Logan make love to you.”
“What are you saying?” Brendan, feeling Sheridan’s strong hands in his hair remembered Casey, fucking him, remembered caressing Sheridan’s hair as Casey moved on top of him, felt no jealousy, could feel none.
“I think you should see Kenneth,” Sheridan said. “In fact… I demand—”
“You demand!” Brendan chuckled.
“I demand it.”
With too much time on his hands, Brendan Miller fully remembers a Christmas very unlike this one. Five years past. That night in the past, Brendan was also thinking of the past, of what had been, and every Christmas he remembered that first Christmas party with Kenny. It had, in fact, been the same one where Layla, having discovered Julian and Vanessa, brought her aunt to Fenn’s house. It had been that same Christmas that Fenn and Tom had been given Dylan. That night he and Kenny had been in matching clothes, new and full of hope, and the whole ugliness with Dena was finally past. In Kenny’s house, in Kenny’s bed, they had made love and fallen asleep. Somehow the memory of Christmas party, of holy Mass and fucking in the dark combined to stir something deep in Brendan.
“Maybe tonight,” he thought. “Maybe tonight, a seasonal miracle, something would be rekindled. He had gone home and forsaken parties because he couldn’t bear to go to a party alone, firstly. And then because he thought, in the back of his mind, something would happen with Kenny.
He parked on the street before their house, and on his way up the little hill, took off his glove and fiddled for the house key. He unlocked the door, and the house was in darkness.
Don’t wake Kenny. Or wake him gently.
He stood in the living room wondering if he should or not, and then decided he wanted to go to him. He took off his noisy shoes and padded up the steps, then down the hall.
“Damn, Kenneth,” he muttered walking into a pile of Kenny’s clothes, tossed on the hall floor.
He heard a startled sound, and went to the open door.
The curtains were open and the streetlight shone in. Kneeling, churning himself on the bed, pushing again and again on a man’s chest as he fucked himself, was Kenneth McGrath. His eyes were closed and his beautiful face was tilted up as he pumped up and down, up and down. Brendan allowed himself to walk into the room a little. Glassy eyed, open mouth, Ruthven Meradan was under him. Brendan stood there a little and then, as a gasp escaped Ruthven’s mouth, and Kenny panted, “Oh… fuck!”
Brendan turned to leave.
That was how things had truly ended with Kenny, and when Sheridan Klasko, plaid shirt open over his tight wife beater, baseball cap turned backward, sat down and kissed him on one cheek, and Raphael Klasko-Miller kissed him on the other, it was best to remember that.
