Page 31 of The Photograph

Everyone is always racing along at a hundred miles an hour: their careers, money, relationships, sex. I don’t know why Alex wants to take whatever we’re doing slowly: I really like him, but I’m still not quite sure what I’ve got myself into here.

11

DES

Three lunches in with Alex, and the whole situation is making me want to karate-chop though a pile of bricks. Ostensibly, we’re meeting to talk about the tech field, but really these sessions are dates—very nonsexual, we’re-just-friends dates. Is that how he views things? I’m accustomed to hooking up several times a week, but now I don’t want anyone else and I’m having dreams about his body that are, frankly, disturbing. I have had too many cold showers and used my hand far too often to be comfortable. On the plus side, Alex is an explorer. He never wants to do the same thing or go to the same place twice, and so I’m away from my desk and the simmering tension in the office and discovering new places downtown for the first time withhim.

When we step out from Black Fox, a coffee place down the road, it’s tipping down with rain and we run up Pine Street, skidding to a halt under the awning of a building entrance jutting out over the sidewalk. He laughs as he shakes the drops off his arms and shoulders, and I stare out at the torrent falling onto the concrete and passing car tires whipping the water into the gutters.

“Oh my God, it’s cold!” he says, and suddenly he steps into my body, shivering up against me.

My chest seizes up. Apart from a brief hello when we met for our first lunch, he’s never stood this close to me. My hands pop up like I’m on automatic pilot and I pull him closer. He rests his head on my shoulder, tremors running through him as his breath heats my neck and the soft curl of his hair tickles the underside of my chin. Everywhere he’s touching me radiates with some strange electrical impulse, spots of heat spreading outward, the sounds of the city fading out, the drumming of the rain disappearing in the rushing noise in my head.

I could turn my head and kiss his cheek right now, but that’s not my line to cross. So I hold on to him, floating up beyond the awning and the swish of the streets, looking down at his white shirt, stark against my dusty-blue bomber jacket. My blond hair and his dark waves, blending together, as the mist from the sleeting shower drips off the canopy and swirls into the air around us. Two ordinary guys in an embrace—nothing unusual in this part of town:Move along, move along.But oh, this feels anythingbutordinary!

His hand tenses on my waist.He’s going to step away. But his fingers press in, thumb resting on my hipbone, and I tighten my arms. God, I want to stand here like this forever. A smells drifts up like summer rain on grass and aftershave and something else, like fabric softener, but I can’t quite … shampoo? Tucking my nose into his hair, I inhale, and a hitch in his breath expands his ribcage against mine. It’sapples. Sweet, crunchy apples.

The noise and swish of traffic matches the whoosh-whoosh of blood in my veins, and a warm bubble winds around us as his chest moves:in out, in out. A siren wails in the distance, but it’s his breathing that’s the urgent thing, gusting over my neck as the prickle of goosebumps travels from my shoulder down my armto my fingers. The conversation of people walking by approaches and fades, and out of the corner of my eye an umbrella bobs past accompanied by two male voices and rough laughter, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the line of his collar against Alex’s throat. I shift and his hands tighten on me.

“I’m not moving away,” I say, and he laughs into my skin, hot warmth hitting just below my chin.

I take a slow, easy breath. His shirt is gaping slightly now, the steady thrum of his pulse visible in his neck, smooth shaved skin stretching up the side of his face. A tiny mole sits under his left ear, the pink of his lobe swollen immediately above it, the dark strands of his hair curling underneath.

My body clenches. I can’t be this close to him and not want him to do very bad things to me. Heat is building beneath my skin, and with his hip pushed into my groin, I’m half-hard. Perhaps he isn’t … he doesn’t … but then he shifts and presses right into me and—oh!—the shape of him, long and hard and …. He groans, pressing his lips to my neck before stepping back, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers, eyes fixed out over the rain-washed streets.

I grab his other hand and squeeze it, smiling. “That was nice,” I say. God, I could say so much more here, but for once I manage to keep my mouth shut. This is his decision. He’s leading here. I’m not going to force Des drama into every little interaction we have.

He nods as he gazes down the sidewalk pursing his lips.Is that all I’m going to get?But then he squeezes my fingers, turning back and giving me the widest smile.

“Thanks for warming me up,” he says.

And certainty buzzes through me:I want this.Alex is cautious, sure, but he isn’t playing games here. Taking it slow might kill me, but I can work with that.

12

DES

Alex messages me a day after the awning cuddle and says he’s under a lot of pressure at work and asks if we can move our lunches to evenings. And so for the next two weeks every few days Alex comes to mine and we cook and hang out before he heads back to Great Neck. He confessed to me that he lives with his family, and I get it: living in the city is expensive and I understand the desire to save money.

TV thrillers become our thing. And these soft warm evenings very quickly grow into my favorite nights of the week and the hours at the office are calmer and pass easier when I have this to look forward to. One night in April, I bring his food over to him on the couch, and when I peer over his shoulder at his phone I catch a picture of an attractive-looking dark-haired girl. His sister?

“Who’s that?” I say, plonking myself down next to him and handing him his bowl.

He rolls his shoulders and clicks his phone off, staring out the window, a tick in his jaw.

“Alex?”

“She’s a candidate for me to meet.”

“A candidate?”

He presses his lips together, brows scrunched up over his eyes.

“For what?” I ask, though I’m getting an inkling from his expression.

“From a matchmaker,” he says.

And then suddenly it all clicks into place. The reluctance, the covering up. Not only has he not told his parents, but they’re expecting him to marry a nice Jewish girl. Who knows, maybe even cement some connection. Does that even happen now? Maybe not formally, but … my heart stutters: I couldn’t be further from the kind of person that Alex’s family wants for him.

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