Page 64 of The Moon Also Rises
“I’m not sure you should be so proud of that.” Rami cocks an eyebrow then goes back to applying more pressure on the door, eventually sliding his arm in the crack and bending down to presumably try and find Luigi’s body.
“Let me go and get Lionel to help. It may be less of a shock to have his hand groping Luigi than yours.” I turn and walk back into the kitchen only to see Lionel’s chair is now empty. A quick glance around the room finds him curled up on my sofa, his hands in a prayer arrangement under his sleeping head, like the beautiful Disney princess he is.
“Oh, Lionel,” I say, and I unfold the blanket I have at the end of the sofa and lay it over him.
Returning to Rami, I see he has managed to now get a leg and half his body through the door.
“Lionel’s passed out on the sofa,” I tell him.
“That’s a lot more thoughtful than where his husband decided to conk out. I can see him now and he’s literally unconscious. I think it wouldn’t matter if we pushed a bit harder; I can see that his head is safe.”
“Very considerate of you,” I say facetiously.
“I’m a considerate kind of guy,” Rami replies. “Who also needs to pee.”
“That makes more sense.”
Rami tuts. “Jake, are you literally giving me shade right now after I’ve sat through another fake date with you and I’m helping you remove a six-foot chunk of designer-clad Italian man from your bathroom floor so we can both empty our bladders before they burst?”
My top lip curls up in one corner. “Fine, you’re being very helpful. Thank you,” I say tersely.
“Now, push with me after three and I should be able to slip in. One, two, three.”
In a few seconds Rami is inside and the door closes again. I hear a long string of muffled noises – thuds, bangs, grunts – and then the door opens, and somehow Rami is standing there with Luigi over one of his shoulders.
“Out the way!” he barks at me and moves forward, a strained expression on his face, which I suppose is permissible considering he’s carrying more than his own body weight on his shoulder. Before I can tell him otherwise, Rami walks to the spare room opposite and dumps Luigi’s body on the bed and then he sets about taking his shoes off, his chest rising and falling from exertion. I watch him for a moment, taking in the sharp lines of his nose and jawline, and I see how perfectly scattered the shards of silver-grey are in his hair and how carefully, closely cropped it is. Then I find my eyes drifting to where his fingers are at work and I notice how long and thin his hands are, like I imagine pianists’ hands to be, and I suddenly have an urge to know what their pronounced knuckles would feel like, taste like, in my mouth.
Oh, shit.Watching Rami take care of Luigi is making me hard. Very hard.
I turn away to hide any possible evidence of this. “Will go find another blanket,” I mumble.
“He won’t know the difference,” Rami calls back. “He’s completely out of it.”
While I wait for certain… feelings to subside I find two mixing bowls in the kitchen and place one beside Lionel’s head on the floor next to the sofa, before returning to the spare bedroom and placing the second bowl on the bed close to Luigi’s face which is now slack and snoring, his mouth open and his nose pointed high in the air.
“He’s not a very pretty sleeper, is he?”
“Jake, you’re being a bitch about someone when he’s comatose. Even that is a new low for you,” Rami says with a light chuckle but when I look at his face, his jaw is tense and lips held in a stern straight line as he places Luigi’s shoes on the ground.
I should have asked him to say something like that a few minutes ago because it feels like a bucket of ice-cold water being thrown over me. Clearly, he no longer feels whatever it was that prompted the kiss and I was naïve to think otherwise.
“Come on,” Rami says. “Let’s go clean up.”
He’s gone before I can reply and I don’t know why I do it but I stick my tongue out at his back as I follow him to the kitchen. God, I can’t believe I’ll be forty by the end of the year.
“You don’t have to help,” I say, glancing at the clock on my oven. 10:45. “It’s getting late. You should go.”
“I’m not leaving you with all this washing up. I’d literally never hear the end of it tomorrow and probably all week.” Rami is already filling the sink with hot water and squeezing my bottle of washing-up liquid.
I snatch at a tea towel lying on the side. “Is that all you think I’m good for? Moaning and bitching?”
Rami’s head turns to me slowly, his silver eyes sparkling a little in the kitchen’s lights. “I also think you’re good at making a tagine. And kissing. You’re good at that.”
I would have more breath in my body if somebody karate-kicked me in the chest. It takes me so long to gather myself and formulate a thought that Rami has already washed up two dishes and is about to start work on the tagine.
“Stop!” I say, a little loudly but apparently not loud enough to wake Lionel.
When Rami drops the tagine in the suds, pulls his hands out and shakes the bubbles off his hands, I take a long, luxurious look at his forearms, enjoying the way his fine black hairs caress muscular flesh and bone.
