Page 34 of What We Had

“Is this from the ‘cellar full of good stuff’?”

“Nothing but the best.”

He accepted the bottle meant for us as I set the one for his father on an end table next to the couch. I took in the surroundings. The same jazz music pumped through the speakers. Instead of a lavender candle, he had something that smelled mahogany and masculine. Dimmed lighting. All in all, I didn’t feel the bad vibes I thought I would. I was already thinking if I should sit on my hands with my palms gripping my ass or thighs, or reverse, so that I sat on the back of them. Decisions, decisions…

Bennett returned with a glass for me. “Cheers, Benny,” I said.

Once again, he responded, “Cheers, Conny.”

Clink.

Bennett finished sipping. Smacked his lips, then grabbed my hand and pulled me into the hallway and then into the guest room. He had organized the cardboard boxes since giving me a tour. A medium-sized opened box sat on the desk wedged into the corner. Bennett set his wine down and fished into the box, removing a black book with silver lettering.

“Feast your eyes on that while I get something else,” he said.

I put my wine down and cracked open the glossy, laminate pages. I needed no direction. This was the Acton High School yearbook. I flipped through the senior photos until I got to D.

There was Bennett. The slightest hint of a smile on his black-and-white gradient face. He wore a collared shirt, an undershirt beneath. He hadn’t changed much since this photo, except for the forward-brushed hair. Couple of pimples that the photographer botched at airbrushing in post. Underneath his name in bold was a list of sundry facts.

Favorite class: biology

Favorite teacher: Mrs. Kenneth

Memories: new school, b-ball buddies, tumbling and burning, convertible nights with new friends

“Convertible nights, eh?” I said.

“Oh, stop.” He had a stack of something in his hands. He smiled when he gestured for me to take them.

Our hands touched as I took a stack of Polaroids. And my eyes went wide. There must have been a dozen, all of them featuring Bennett and myself from fourteen years ago.

“Holy… where did you find these?” I asked and scanned them all at lightning speed before returning to the beginning for a slower review.

“My therapist told me to reminisce. About you, actually. Specifically, from that summer. There’s one in there from twelve years ago when we were both home for Thanksgiving. She told me to find any pictures I might have had and so… well, I spent hours going through these boxes.”

I held up one particular Polaroid from that summer of love when we were both eighteen. Bennett and I stood together on the riverbank, shirtless, arms around each other in a “bro” kind of way. A third friend, Vick, stood a little off camera. The fourth, Chris, had taken the picture.

“Do you haveany ideahow much I wanted a copy of this?”So I could jerk off to it like the horny teen I was. “But I could never find a way to ask Chris without seeming…gay. ‘Hey buddy, can you get me a copy of that shirtless pic of me and Bennett? For… reasons?’”

“Well, it’s yours if you want it.”

I shuffled it through as I continued. “Nah, I’ve got the real thing now.”

The last picture in the stack was a half-assed, candid selfie I attempted to take with the Polaroid camera. My system flooded with pleasure as the memory hit me. Our summer of love was fourteen years ago, and we had only seen each other twice in the following two years. That photo marked the last time Bennett and I had spent time together. It was the evening before Thanksgiving. My mother was at the playhouse and Bennett came over. We went three rounds in just as many hours. Bennett had brought that camera and asked me to take a picture to remember. So, with my lips smashed into his cheek, I had extended the camera with my long arms, rotated it toward us, and prayed I got the angle right. The picture was blurry from my shaky hand, but Bennett was all smiles as I kissed him.

The last time I saw him, I thought as I stared at the picture. I remembered how his body had changed, gained more muscle. Mine, too. But all the old familiars felt the same. The way his tongue moved in my mouth. The heat of being inside him. I would have savored everything longer had I known it would be another twelve years before we even spoke again.

We spent the next twenty minutes going through old photos. Noticeably, we both shied away from talking about that selfie. Bennett showed me old childhood photos, silly pictures with his friends from Virginia. He smiled a lot more in those pictures, before the accident that brought him to Massachusetts. Brought him to me. We held hands the whole time and he let me run my thumb up and down the length of his.

He confessed that he wouldn’t flinch if I put my arm around him, that hugging and hand holding was no holds barred. Physical intimacy, touching of the sexual kind, was the problem. I easily slipped my arm around his waist as we went through pictures, let him lean into me as if our bodies were pieces of a puzzle. I could have stayed in that room all night going through the past of Bennett Dubois to better know his present. The wine, the gentle jazz rolling down the hall. Him in that backward ball cap.

“Shoot, we gotta get going,” Bennett said after checking his phone. “You ready?”

I downed the rest of my drink. “Ready, Freddy.”

Old memories sealed away, we went back to the front door where we both slipped into our shoes.

“Actually. Um.” Blinking. Lots of blinking.

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