“I know it’s selfish,” Brad said, “but when I pictured raising this baby I pictured raising it with you. I didn’t picture him or you. In fact, I didn’t’ even really picture him until today. If you don’t want to do it, I understand. Only I can’t do it without you. I’m not even going back to that apartment without you. If you don’t go I’m going to lay right down in this beside you.”
“I am just scared,” Nehru said. “We’re so new, and nothing we’ve done has been conventional, and the paint is still wet on this. And now a baby? That isn’t really my baby.”
“Please come home,” Brad said, lying beside him.
Nehru was a strong individual and Brad was used to his strength, not to reaffirming him. He remembered when Nehru had walked away from things, the moment when he’d heard Marissa was pregnant. He remembered the night they’d come back together and the next morning when they had awakened in the same bed.
The fairy lights on the walls were points against the pale sunlight from Kirkland Street, and in the morning, the apartment was warm. Nehru could smell coffee brewing and he was in Brad’s arms and Brad Long was looking down at him. It felt so good, like that first night when they’d believed they were together before Marissa had told Brad her news, and Nehru looked around the room that still smelled faintly of bud, looked at the evidence of last night, poppers like squat soldiers on the little table beside the bed, the tall lube bottle
“Where’s Cody?” Nehru’s voice was hollow, and his mouth was dry.
“He must have left,” Brad said. “He must have left us to be together.”
Nehru could still feel Brad throbbing inside him. He ached but liked it, ached but needed it, thrilled to be in his arms, felt himself rising, knew before an hour passed, before they were through coffee, the morning would see him riding Brad the way Brad had ridden him.
“We should… call him. Or… something,” Nehru said.
“I will,” Brad assured Nehru. “I will. But he understands. He’s like that. He understands.”
Nehru, turning on his back said, “It’s not right to always think people understand.”
“No,” Brad agreed. “But Cody does. Just like I understand Marissa is talking to Hale now.”
“Hale? Our Hale Weathertop?”
Brad nodded.
“And just like, even if Marissa doesn’t understand how I loved you, she understands my love wasn’t enough for her.”
Nehru nodded his head. It hurt a little, but he didn’t mind. Brad climbed out of bed, and Nehru looked on his body, so long and tall and dark haired, and the darkest hair the triangle where his sex hung. Brad went into the kitchen and Nehru made his way to the bathroom. When Nehru was done, Brad held a cup of coffee out to him and they both went back to the bed.
Nehru could smell the smoke of Brad’s cigarette now.
“And now do you understand?” Brad said.
“What?” Nehru said, sipping, surprised at the goodness of the coffee, its strength and sweetness. He remembered hearing something about how a good lover always knew how to make his beloved a cup of coffee.
“That we are together now, that you are not driving me away. That this is the way it’s going to be from here on out. Do you understand that?”
“But the….”
“Do you understand that?” Brad said again.
Suddenly, the only thing Nehru wanted to do was lean up and kiss Brad’s mouth, to linger over those lips, to look forward to the sex that would happen in this bed. More than that, to sit with him and drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and make new songs forever.
“Yes,” Nehru said to Brad Long, “I understand.”
“You are coming home with me,” Brad said, “because I love you and I need my best friend and, selfishly, I refuse to live without you. You don’t have to do anything but be you, but you’re coming home now. Do you understand?”
Yes,” Nehru said to Brad Long, “I understand.”
They drove in silence. It wasn’t a comfortable silence, but a resolved one, as if nothing else was going to happen this night but them going back to the apartment over the Noble Red on Kirkland Street, so they might as well. Back at home, Nehru heated up the chicken wings and Brad stripped, folded his clothes and went to the shower. A year ago, Nehru would have been so thrilled at the sight of Brad naked he would not have known what to do with himself. His love for Brad was troubling, not so much because he was another man, as because Nehru had never thought he would love anyone, and he had never known lust and desire. Tonight, while Brad stood naked, folding his clothes, Nehru was simply tired. He ate while the shower ran for a very long time, but it would have been a long time. When had Brad had the chance to shower. Nehru began to think, “He is waiting for me. He’s waiting for me to come in there with him. But it wasn’t in Nehru right now. He ate three wings and when he found a joint that Brad had rolled, but never lit, he smoked a few hits from that and then a cigarette, which he was finishing when Brad came out, towel wrapped about his waist and the steam following him into the large living room that acted as their bedroom. Nehru was sipping stale coffee and he said, “Do you want me to make another pot, or no?”
Brad shook his head and unwound the rest of the towel, drying himself.
“No, I think I just want to sleep.”
So Nehru rose and began turning off lights around the apartment. He stopped in the large old kitchen that always smelled like the inside of a cardboard box==that’s how he had to describe it—and filled the coffee maker for the morning. He touched the gold ring at his finger. Brad had gotten that for him on their trip to Tennessee. He flicked off that light and all lights till, only the amber party lights were on, and he stripped and climbed under the covers while Brad walked naked into the bathroom to brush his teeth and put up his towel and came out, rolling deodorant under his arms.
In the middle of the night Nehru woke, blinking at the ceiling. Though the bed was large, Brad was pressed to him, sleeping on his side. Nehru felt the ring on his finger and took it off, placing it on the little table where they kept the rolling papers, poppers and lube. He could hear the little noises of a settling building and the wind in the trees outside. A car passed down Kirkland. Nehru was in a mood he didn’t understand. All of his life with Brad, these last few years, had been full of moods he didn’t understand. It wasn’t lust; that wasn’t quite it. It was the desire for lust, the need for something else.
He leaned against Brad and reached down until he held his penis, and he began to massage it, rubbing, pulling only a little, working it until it grew in his hands and Brad, half asleep, turned on his back. He kept milking him. He reached for the poppers and shook them. He opened the bottle, and shutting one nostril, took a great, dizzying inhale, and then bent to take Brad all the way into the back of his throat. In a moment, not quite sure how they’d gotten there, Nehru was on his hands in knees, sucking Brad greedily, and Brad’s hands went up into the night as he cried out under Nehru’s touch. He sucked harder and harder, hearing Brad cry out, and when he was fully hard. Brad’s large, hairy hands pulled Nehru too him and Nehru put his cock in Brad’s mouth, moaning as Brad sucked him greedily, and then in desperation, Brad was turning over and exposing his hairy ass in the night, and there was a slip of the lube and then they both cried out as Nehru entered him. They fucked hard and fast, both shouting, and Nehru groaned the same time Brad did while he came inside of him.
He lay dizzy and exhausted, face down beside a gasping Brad before he felt him moving around and Brad, holding his hips, and he moved for Brad and then he exhaled while he felt Brad enter him. The delayed lust, the delayed pleasure of watching him dress this morning, of seeing beneath his black tee shirt his dangling penis, darker than the rest of his dark Mediterranean skin, darker than the intense cloud of unknowing that was his black bush, ended in this dull ache of Brad’s cock pressed deep in him, and then it began, slow and insistent, Brad’s fucking. Slow and steady, stopping, sometimes like a jackhammer, it continued in a timeless midnight country, Nehru rejoicing in Brad’s mouth against his neck, his teeth grazing his neck and the ball of his spine, his hips pounding, his dick deep in him. When Brad finally came, they both moaned with the loss, and then, almost as quickly as it had started, side by side, they went back to sleep.
Nehru woke before Brad. The sun came up before six nowadays, and it seemed as if what had taken place last night was in another world, a thousand years ago even though it must have only been a couple of hours ago. Summer time and restlessness meant the comforter was on the ground, and Brad was curled up like a baby or no, like Adam at his creation, Nehru imagined, just waiting to be brought to life, for there was nothing baby like about Brad’s long, strong body, or that dark hair that dusted his legs, his bunched thighs, the backs of his palms, his arms, his ass.
Nehru rose to turn the coffee on and set out the toaster and the bag of bagels, the butter and cream cheese. Then he went to the bathroom and after that went back to the bed where Brad, still sleeping, turned over and threw an arm over his waist.
“Where did you get this?” Brad asked as he yawned, his thumb rubbing the inside of Nehru’s arm.
“From my mother, I was born with two of them.”
“Not the arm, this scar,” he traced his thumb down the darker scar that ran crookedly from an inch or so under his wrist to a few inches above his elbow.
“Oh,” Nehru chuckled. “Matrix did it.”
“Matrix?”
“My first dog.”
“Why did you call him—”
“Not for the movie, since it hadn’t been made. You’d have to ask my mother.”
“Was he a mean dog?”
“No, he was a meathead of a dog. You would have loved him, squat and fat, and very affectionate, and he jumped on me and scratched the fuck out of my arm in his excitement. It was more of a scratch than I suspected, but I was always glad for it, especially after he was gone.”
“We have a lot to work out, don’t we?”
“We have a little to work out,” Nehru said.
They said nothing about what had taken place in the middle of the night. They’d been friends for nearly four years, and in the last year they’d been more. They knew that sex was like any other shared thing. It may have made things smoother and said the things that could only be said in a certain way, but it solved no problems.
“Do you think we can?”
“Brad, the coffee is made.”
“I’ll get you a cup, too. Are you hungry?”
“Not just yet.”
“Me neither.”
Brad pushed out of bed. Thirty was just the right age. This was the age when a man was fully a man, Nehru thought. He wouldn’t let it be like last night when he had been so tired and so put out he forgot he loved Brad’s body, loved to watch him walk to the kitchen, see how his buttocks shifted as he traveled. He loved men’s bodies. How pleasant that there was one always for him to gaze at. Brad came back a moment later, humming. He always walked with his head hung down a little, like his hands were in imaginary pockets, even now when he was brandishing white coffee cups, the first that he gave to Nehru, and the second he put down on the little TV tray that acted as a night stand on his side of the bed.
“It’s perfect,” Nehru said. “It’s better than when I make it for myself.”
Brad smiled and sipped and pulled his knees to his chest, and he hadn’t had his first cigarette yet, which meant something was on his mind, and they both heard the bus heave and roll down Kirkland Street. The birds were singing and the sun was coming in fully, so Nehru got up and closed the shades. Brad had put his coffee down, and Nehru was glad to be beside him when Brad sighed much like the bus and pressed his head to Nehru’s chest. When he lifted his face, they kissed, and it was like last night when the damned up tension from the day melted from them, when sex was like an apology more than romance, and now they collapsed, melting together, and Nehru remembered Brad was his favorite play ground as their limbs linked and his hands went up and down his back, down his sides, caressed Brad’s ass, and Brad’s mouth sucked on him greedily, kissed his eyes, kissed his lips again, kissed his throat, sucked his nipples, kissed and sucked him down and down and all the way down, and Nehru buried his hands in Brad’s hair like a blessing, and arched his neck, raising his thighs as Brad’s face came between them.
“He looks like you,” Marissa laughed as Brad bounced the baby up and down and made faces at him.
“How can you tell?”
“How can you not?”
Marissa was sitting up in bed.
“At least he breast feeds easily enough. I was afraid of that,” she said.
“Why?”
“A lot of women have a hard time with it, and I’m not young.”
“You’re plenty young.”
“I’m having my first—and my last—baby at thirty-six,” Marissa said “I am not young.”
Brad looked at her.
“You want him back?”
“You keep asking.”
“Because I don’t want to be a baby hog,” Brad said.
“I’m with him all day. When I want Timothy back, I’ll let you know.”
“You look exhausted.”
“Thanks!”
“I don’t mean it that way.”
“I know you don’t,” Marissa shook her head. “I’m just playing with you.”
“She’s just playing,” Brad said to the baby. “Your mom’s just playing. She’s just,” he kissed Timothy on his head and smiled.
“Can you believe how they smell! What is that smell?”
“It’s not the only smell,” Marissa said.
“You know I can’t wait to be out of this hospital,” she continued, “I think they kept me a little extra because I’m old—and don’t say I’m not. When my sister had her baby they practically tossed her out the door.”
“When are you getting out?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll come and get you.”
“Hale was coming.”
“Let me come and get you.”
“Alright, Brad. Come and get me. Thank you.”
She said, “The best thing we did was this baby and the second best is break up, cause I still like you,” she said. “Because I love you. I wouldn’t want anyone else to be the father of my child. And we’re happy, and if we had tried to keep things going we would have resented each other.”
“Yeah,” Brad said, looking serious.
“I’m going to be offended, though,” Marissa said.
“Why is that?’
“Nehru hasn’t been by to see the baby.”
“I think he thought it wasn’t his to step in.”
“Was he waiting for an invitation, cause I’ll give him one.”
“I think he actually was. I mean…”
“It must be strange for your boyfriend to become a dad when the baby is coming out of his ex.”
“Yes,” Brad said, pushing out last night, their fight, Nehru throwing a class of ice water in his face, the loneliness he felt when he’d sat in that apartment wondering where his best friend was.
Brad said, “He’s the kind of person that doesn’t want to be out of place, you know? I mean, he’s related to Chayne and Gil, but he’s not them. He’s not just going to stick his oar in.”
“Well, he better,” Marissa said, “and maybe I better make that known because the truth is, as much as I really do respect you, Bradley, when things get settled, I’m going to be sending Tim over to you some nights, and I’d feel a lot less easy about that if I didn’t know Nehru was going to be there.”
“In other words, you think he’s more responsible than me?”
“I’m not going to say that,” Marissa said, holding her hands out for the baby as it began to twitch and make the noises that said it was time to eat.
“But… He makes you more responsible, and less lonely.”
Brad nodded, thinking as Marissa opened her night gown and Brad felt the strange lightness of his now empty hands.
“He does.”
Brad didn’t feel like going through the Noble Red tonight. He wanted to be private and he parked behind it in the old lot and then went up the back stair and was surprised by the smells in the kitchen. True, the day wasn’t hot, but Nehru rarely cooked in the summer. There he was over the skillet, carefully turning, yes, sausage. Flour and salt and pepper and milk were there, and there was a tray of fat crumpets like little pancakes..
“Are you?”
“Biscuits and gravy,” Nehru nodded. “And eggs. And since we don’t have English muffins ,and I wasn’t going t down to buy them, crumpets.”
“You know that’s my favorite.”
“It’s one of your favorites,” Nehru agreed, adding in a little of the milk and standing there watching the gravy thicken.
“Marissa wants to know when you’re coming to see the baby.”
“Tomorrow morning if you don’t mind,” Nehru said.
Brad thought it was good how a whole conversation could happen in just those two sentences, and he slipped something into Nehru’s pocket.
“What was that?”
“Just a thing.”
“Bradley.”
“Reach into your pocket.”
Nehru did, and he pulled out a little box, and when he opened it there were to sugar cubes.
“Is this acid?”
“You said you always wanted us to trip together.”
“I thought we were kind of done with that. Oh, let me turn this stove down.”
Brad wrapped his arms about Nehru and he smelled to Nehru like cedar wood. Brad said, “We’re not done with anything, and he placed on Nehru’s finger a gold ring wih a fat blue stone on it.
“That’s the one.”
“I know.”
“I mean,” Nehru started, and then he said nothing. Brad was doing that little hip swaying dance he always did, the thing that had made Nehru feel happy and made him want to hold onto Brad and not let him go. Instead he turned up the stove again.
“Can you do the eggs?” he asked Brad. “You do such nice fried eggs.”
Brad squeezed him and kissed him on the top of his head, giving his ass a little slap as he went to the fridge.
“I can always do the eggs.”
