This is a story about the skin of things. This is the story of the love of Donovan and Cade. This is the story of meeting the person you've longed to meet and not knowing what to do about it. This is a story about the pain therein. This is a story about loving who you are before you can love someone else the way you must. This is a story about learning to accept what you've done.
They lay side by side in their bed, the snow blowing over the roof above them and whistling at the windows. Donovan finally stood up to close the thick curtains and then returned to bed.
The very first morning, after Simon came into the bed, he slept on one side of Don and Cade on the other, and gently, Simon and Cade began to make love to him. Cade was not going into work, and in this moment after everything had happened, he shrugged off caring.
Did Simon know that Don knew about the weekends he planned where he and Cade would meet strange couples and have group sex? Did Don know that it was Simon who had told Cade it was over? And Don said nothing. He never did.
We cannot decide what is more important, to kiss, to touch, to kiss the totality of each other's bodies, to place heads between legs and pleasure each other, to pleasure each other together, to delve tongues into secret places.
Cade woke up the sun was in his eyes, but there was a key jiggling in the door, and he wondered if that had brought him back to consciousness as well. He'd slept in his shorts and tee shirt on the surface of the bed, and now Donovan, in very old khakis and a rumpled dress shirt walked in.
My very first real true I'm-in-love-with-you-boyfriend used to tell me shit that would break my heart. He would watch my face change, and then he would say, "I'm being honest. Don't you want us to be honest? Would you rather I lie to you? "
All I know is you were my friend, and I did love you and no matter what the truth is now I think you loved me too. I won't feel right until we talk again. So, please do write me back.
In this room, in this house at this party he felt like a stupid teenager who had done a very dumb thing, and Ezekiel was, indisputably, a grown man. How could he have thought that this wouldn't matter?
He could still feel Ezekiel's mouth on his, and on his neck. He could still feel Ezekiel's chest and stomach against his back, Ezekiel in him, and through him, his penis, swelling and pumping in his mouth, the warm touch of the palm of his hand.
Cade fiddled around with the radio and eighties music, oldies, or the newest new songs whined through making half efforts against bad reception, and then flew away on the radio waves.
Those last few minutes, when Donovan was winding up the road to the coffee shop, and when he was parking in the lot outside of it, his hands cold with the winter air, the wind stinging his cheeks red, his heart beat faster. He thought, he won't really come. We won't really meet. Something'll come up. He won't really be there.
Sweat dripping into his eyes, hands planted on the surface of the wooden dresser that banged against the wall, Ezekiel slammed into Don over and over again.
As Donovan, fully forty, stood in the shower with Brian, washing his back, turning around to let an old friend and very old lover administer to him before he left town, Brian said, "And was that your Cade who called last night?"
He sat down on the edge of the pool and dipped his legs in the water, kicking about slowly. Only a moment later, the door opened to the pool room and the night manager entered.
Donovan began to undo his shirt, and Brian helped him. Brian undid his pants and Donovan helped him, and soon they were naked and coming to the bed, kissing and tasting and touching, and then lying there linked together.
They were speaking every couple of days, and then once a week, and Don began to wonder if that time when Cade had lived with him, and they had spent whole hours together was an illusion.
He needed Don as he always needed him, and wrapping the towel around himself because all of his clothes from the past day were dirty with that day, he went into the darkened room, and lay beside this man.
The hotel room was empty. Wherever Simon was, it wasn't here. After showering and being bored and that odd feeling that always comes after you've been having sex and now you're all alone, Cade got online. His friend was on.
That night back at home is the roughest one Donovan has had in a long while. Anger competes with other thing. Loss, the sadness that this love will not happen.
We had been together for a few months, and it was right after Simon said, "We should do interesting things. We should push the envelope if we want to keep things fresh."
The night moved on in an ordinary fashion except that Donovan kept wondering what the hell had been going on. He needed to talk to Cade. They had fucked three nights before, all night. Cade had started it. Hadn't he?
This is a story about the skin of things. This is the story of the love of Donovan and Cade. This is the story of meeting the person you've longed to meet and not knowing what to do about it. This is a story about the pain therein. This is a story about loving who you are before you can love someone else the way you must. This is a story about learning to accept what you've done.